Debian Lenny setup

Ok. A fresh install of Debian Lenny. I used the net install. I started the install and let it do it’s thing. It took about an hour and a half with my connection. I went and watched Bourne Supremacy while it was installing. I’m not going to go over the install. There are a bunch of guides and examples on the net Here’s a link to a quick over view. Remember, you do want the base system and desktop environment installed.

Debian 5 (Lenny) Step-by-Step

First thing I want to do is add myself to the sudoers list. This is how.

Add user(me) to sudoers list. In a terminal type:
$ su
Then type in the root password.
Then type:
# visudo
Now you can add a username to the list.
Under: root ALL=(ALL) ALL
Add:Your_username ALL=(ALL) ALL
Now press Ctrl+X and press Y when prompted to save. Then press enter.
Now you should be on the sudo list.

ADDING REPOSITORIES.

In a terminal type:
$ su
Type in root password.
Then navigate to etc/apt
then type:
# nano sources.list

My sources list looked like this:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main
deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main
deb-src http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main

I changed to to this:

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main contrib non-free
deb-src http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main contrib non-free

Now press Ctrl+X and press Y when prompted to save. Then press enter.
At a terminal type:
$ sudo apt-get update
Done.

AUTO MOUNT USB STICKS.

In a terminal type:
$ sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g
This will also mount external hard drives formatted as NTFS.
Done

INSTALL FLASHPLAYER PLUGIN

To do this we must add backports. Here’s how.
In a terminal type:
$ su
Type in root password.
Then navigate to etc/apt
then type:
# nano sources.list
Add this to the source list.
deb http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib non-free
Now press Ctrl+X and press Y when prompted to save. Then press enter.
At a terminal type:
$ sudo apt-get update
Now from a terminal type:
$ sudo apt-get install debian-backports-keyring
Press y when asked.
Now the backports work. Lets install flash.
In a terminal Type:
$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
Press Y when prompted.
Done.
Now you are officially a freedom hater. Congratulations.
That’s enough for tonight.

Open Office Writer Auto Complete

My daughter is writing her Christmas list right now. She’s getting an early start. The auto complete is throwing her off so she asked me to turn it off. I said I would as soon as I learned how. So here’s how. Go to TOOLS > AUTOCORRECT…
Then go to the WORD COMPLETION tab. Uncheck ENABLE WORD COMPLETION. Done. She is using Open Office 3.0 . A few pics below.

TOOLS > AUTOCORRECT

Uncheck ENABLE WORD COMPLETION

IBM Linux ad: Prodigy

gpodder

screenshot gpodder

gpodder is an app that I use daily. I always update my feeds and sync my portable ogg player because I’m attached to the thing. The media player has replaced the radio in my world. I have an adapter for the car and ear buds for everywhere else. Check it out.

website: gpodder

Streaming Internet Radio Station

HARD RADIO.COM

Excellent streaming content. It hits the sweet spot for my age group… at least I think so. Get some in ya!

ogg stream

mp3 stream

Texas Hold’em Poker

screenshot pokerth

PokerTH is a Texas Holdem style poker game.

I myself am not a big poker player but I do know a few people that are. I just switched my dad over to Linux Mint 6 on one of his machines. He is tired of his windows machine running like crap all of the time so I figured I’d let him try Mint for a while. Thing is that he likes quite a few games that run on windows. I’ve never been able to get wine to work very well so I’ve been looking for replacement games. One of the games is Texas Holdem Poker and I think that PokerTH will do nicely. It’s fun and runs very well.

It is in the Debian repositories. I’ve installed it on Debian(Squeeze), Ubuntu(8.04) and Mint(5 & 6).

Install through Synaptic or at the terminal type:

sudo apt-get install pokerth

website: PokerTH

ConvertAll

screenshot convertall

ConvertAll is a conversion program for just about any unit of measurement that you can imagine. I found a similar program many years ago for windows and I still use it at work. I would recommend everyone have this installed on something somewhere.

It is in the Debian repositories. I’ve installed it on Debian(Squeeze), Ubuntu(8.04) and Mint(5 & 6).

Install through Synaptic or at the terminal type:

sudo apt-get install convertall

website: convertall

Serious Red Hat Linux Commercial

You don’t see many if any Linux commercials anywhere. Well, I’m going to link to a few as I find them. Just for my amusement.

Text to Speech under Linux

This was accomplished with a little nudge in the right direction from a Mr Dave Yates…and a few beers.

Parties involved: Linux Mint 5(Ubuntu Hardy), Packages: festival, festvox-kallpc16k.  And some Blue Moon Spring Ale.

Install the above packages. In a text editor, I use gedit, write your text. Save your text. I applied a txt extension to it. Without the txt, festival didn’t find it. Go figure. From the command line type:
text2wave yourfile.txt -o newname.wave. Not sure what the -o is for.  So lets say my text file name is oatmeal.txt. I want to name the wave(sound) file beer.wave. So the command would be
text2wave oatmeal.txt -o beer.wave. The -o is an option meaning save file to wave form. That should land that wave file in your home directory. That should do it.

:

GNU / Linux and The Logitech diNovo Edge Bluetooth Keyboard

I took a gamble buying this keyboard because it’s not advertised as Linux friendly. Seems that I gambled and won.

I’m building a Computer for my mother. She has used web TV/msnTV2 for years. It was easy, straight forward, virus free and didn’t required maintenance. She loved it. After upgrading to the msnTV2 box and getting about 15 months of use out of it, the box died. Figures, 3 months out of warranty and it dies. Call MS support, they give me to RCA. They send me to the 3rd party warranty people and we are S.O.L. . Ok, screw it, I’ll just build a Linux box on the cheap and she can use that. Linux Mint is the distro for her. Everything works out of the box and it’s easy to use.

Anyway…..She needed a keyboard/mouse combo that can be used without the need for a table or tray to use the mouse. Something that could be used from the comfort of the couch. In walks the diNovo Edge.

Take it out of the box, plug in the usb blue tooth dongle, turn on the keyboard, hit the sync buttons and away we go. Works great. All the buttons work. All but 3 of the fn buttons work. And they might even work, I just don’t know what they do. (fn = home page, mail, media player controls and a few more) Very nice. The only problem is that when Mint6 is rebooted, the keyboard does not work unless you remove the usb blue tooth dongle, plug the dongle back in and re sync. After some searching on the net, I found the fix. Now this is on Linux Mint 6 which is base on Ubuntu Intrepid. You have to remove the package “Bluez”. Go into Synaptic and remove it. Now reboot. Plug the dongle back in and you should be good on every boot now. Apparently the dongle is a blue tooth hub and for the some reason the Bluez package interferes with it’s operation. I don’t pretend to know how or why it does or does not work, I just know how to get this keyboard/mouse combo unit working under this Debian based distribution.

The keyboard/mouse combo is nicely constructed, not flimsy and appears to have the full keyboard layout minus the number pad on the right. The mouse touch pad works about as good as a mouse touch pad can work. No problems there. The charging cradle is also a big plus. When you’re not using it, put it on charge. I’ve only been using it for a few days to test it out. Tomorrow it’s heading to moms house for install. I think she’ll like it.

Reviews of this board:

ExtremeTech , CNET

Update march 6 2010 : I just installed Linux Mint 8 on her machine with this same keyboard and the “bluez” package was not a problem this time. The keyboard is still going strong without a problem.