Amarok and mp3tunes

If you've read this blog then you'll know that I'm a fan of the mp3tunes.com service.

I'm also a fan of Amarok, the media library and player that ships with linux distros running the KDE desktop manager.



Well the good news is that a coder over at the Amarok project has engineered Amarok to interface directly with the mp3tunes.com service. This is fantastic news as it means that one single app can sync up and down all the tracks on my machine.

The now defunct LSongs did this partially a number of years ago, being able to open the web player page from within the application. Amarok has now completed the goal.

Back home to Linspire

Having been round the houses with Linux systems I've eventually ended up back with Linspire. Recently I've tried openSuse, PCLinuxOS, Fedora, Sabayon, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Xandros, Elive and Dreamlinux. With each distro there have been issues with usability and performance. Most of this stems from my laptop hardware, the awkward components being an MSI mini-pc wireless card with an RT2500 chipset, ATI video chip. There have also been struggles getting my laptop to suspend or hibernate.

Of the distros that have really captured what I want out of a linux distro these all seem to have issues:

Fedora - no wifi
Sabayon - no wifi
Mandriva - no wifi
Ubuntu - no suspend
Elive - no wifi
Dreamlinux - no wifi
PCLinuxOS - ati driver issues
Xandros - old software packages

So I burned the latest Linspire, installed it and set to work tackling the issues I was getting. And I think I've managed to sort them all. Wi-fi works perfect, ati graphics card is using the fglrx driver without issues, suspend to RAM works perfect.

In an ideal world I'd be dual booting with Slackware but Slack is somewhat lacking with the RT2500 chipset.

Official Google Reader Blog: J-walking with Reader

Starting to use Google's Reader more and more recently. Being a penguin type of person I find that the system based feed readers available to the linux community don't include any that I like. And as with most stuff I'm finding more and more that it's just so convenient to have it all online. Especially now with my Nokia E65 it's so easy to access the internet.

Here's post outlining some keyboard shortcuts, most useful!

Official Google Reader Blog: J-walking with Reader

Ubuntu Synaptics Touchpad issue

Ever since I've had this lappy I've had issues with the synaptics touchpad. Basically what happens is at some point the scroll function disappears and the pointer becomes overly sensitive. Only solution is to log out and back in. But of course it happens again, usually within minutes.

I've lived with this through a number of distros, some more susceptible to this than others. Linspire and openSuse were among the better behaved.

So I've just installed Ubuntu again and the touchpad is crashing as expected. Happening on Gnome, KDE, Fluxbox, XFCE, Enlightenment in fact all desktops and window managers.

So I decided to have a nose in the syslog files and lo and behold some entries relating to the crash.

Feb 17 09:10:52 crossfire2 kernel: [ 5708.828000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio2/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Feb 17 09:10:52 crossfire2 kernel: [ 5708.832000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio2/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Feb 17 09:10:52 crossfire2 kernel: [ 5708.832000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio2/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Feb 17 09:10:52 crossfire2 kernel: [ 5708.836000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio2/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Feb 17 09:10:52 crossfire2 kernel: [ 5708.836000] psmouse.c: TouchPad at isa0060/serio2/input0 lost sync at byte 1
Feb 17 09:10:52 crossfire2 kernel: [ 5708.836000] psmouse.c: issuing reconnect request

A quick search on the internet shows a possible solution in adding 'i8042.nomux=1' to the grub boot parameters for the kernel.

And 24 hours later all is well!

Hopefully this is an end to this annoying problem and maybe someone else will find this information useful.

Laptop suspend in Ubuntu

Below is a copy of a post I made on this blog when it was running under NucleusCMS. The Ubuntu version was 7.04 but have recently discovered that this setuip doesn't work now Ubuntu is at 7.10. Hence I've gone back to PCLinuxOS especially as I've sorted the synaptics touchpad error.

---

Ubuntu has to be one of the best all round distributions as it seems to work on so many different types of pc hardware and has a fantastic range of packages in it's depositories. Especially good for me is that it overcomes most of the problems related to multiple sound channels that has plagued linux in the past.

But to put the cherry on the cake I've managed to get the suspend function working on my laptop! All it needed was a little tinkering with the options in the acpi-support file.

I changed the flags to what is listed below

MODULES_WHITELIST="fglrx"
SAVE_VBE_STATE=false
POST_VIDEO=false
DOUBLE_CONSOLE_SWITCH=true

My laptop is a model called Crossfire II from Novatech. It's basically a rebadged Uniwill summat or other model. Running a 64-bit AMD core.

You can see all of my acpi-support file here.

# Comment the next line to disable ACPI suspend to RAM
ACPI_SLEEP=true

# Comment the next line to disable suspend to disk
ACPI_HIBERNATE=true

# Change the following to "standby" to use ACPI S1 sleep, rather than S3.
# This will save less power, but may work on more machines
ACPI_SLEEP_MODE=mem

# Add modules to this list to have them removed before suspend and reloaded
# on resume. An example would be MODULES="em8300 yenta_socket"
#
# Note that network cards and USB controllers will automatically be unloaded
# unless they're listed in MODULES_WHITELIST
MODULES="rt2500"

# Add modules to this list to leave them in the kernel over suspend/resume
MODULES_WHITELIST="fglrx"
# changed from blank

# Should we save and restore state using the VESA BIOS Extensions?
SAVE_VBE_STATE=false
# changed from true

# The file that we use to save the vbestate
VBESTATE=/var/lib/acpi-support/vbestate

# Should we attempt to warm-boot the video hardware on resume?
POST_VIDEO=false
# changed from true

# Save and restore video state?
# SAVE_VIDEO_PCI_STATE=true

# Should we switch the screen off with DPMS on suspend?
USE_DPMS=true

# Use Radeontool to switch the screen off? Seems to be needed on some machines
# RADEON_LIGHT=true

# Uncomment the next line to switch away from X and back again after resume.
# This is needed for some hardware, but should be unnecessary on most.
DOUBLE_CONSOLE_SWITCH=true
# uncommented above

# Set the following to "platform" if you want to use ACPI to shut down
# your machine on hibernation
HIBERNATE_MODE=shutdown

# Comment this out to disable screen locking on resume
LOCK_SCREEN=true

# Uncomment this line to have DMA disabled before suspend and reenabled
# afterwards
# DISABLE_DMA=true

# Uncomment this line to attempt to reset the drive on resume. This seems
# to be needed for some Sonys
# RESET_DRIVE=true

# Add services to this list to stop them before suspend and restart them in
# the resume process.
STOP_SERVICES="mysql "

# Restart Infra Red services on resume - off by default as it crashes some
# machines
RESTART_IRDA=false

# Switch to laptop-mode on battery power - off by default as it causes odd
# hangs on some machines
ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=false