NotebookForums.com › Forums › General Notebook Discussions › Linux & Other OS's › Ubuntu 8.10 Configuration Questions
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Ubuntu 8.10 Configuration Questions

post #1 of 10
11/11/08 at 4:13pm
Thread Starter 
Ok guys (first post here in a while)...I finally got Ubuntu 8.1 semi-fully working like XP works (wifi and ethernet with the dreaded mac address spoof) but I have a bunch of questions. 1) is it possible to make the taskbar double-decker so it can hold more programs? 2) How do you configure hardware settings....like say I want to optimize the wifi card for "Throughput" over "CPU" like I can in XP. 3) How come I don't see any power-status icons (will it work when I go on battery) 4) Firestarter sucks IMO...is there any better firewall options out there from the community or do i need to go closed source. 5) What's the laptop-feature support of 8.1....like does it do CPU throttling and whatnot and if it does, how would I control it. (The power-status/battery mode would also fall in here). 6) Any chance of getting the windows key to pop up the main menu (i've got it looking right now XP-style on the taskbar) 7) Where the hell are all the Windows fonts...Sans is driving me crazy and all the other ones look the same. 8) Is there any sort of drag and drop to create shortcuts? OH and how come I have to hold down the Ctrl key to get it to boot....like I almost have to put the key in the ignition and then crank it for a few seconds before it loads all the way through. It happens on the initial loading bar screen where the bar gets stuck and nothing happens until i press the ctrl key. And how to I get rid of the "Press ESC to goto menu in 9..8...7..."
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 10
11/11/08 at 6:05pm
Hmm almost all of those seem to be distribution specific, but the CTRL one seems to be an odd one no matter how I think about it. I am going to hold off on trying any of them and see if anyone else here that might have tried 8.10(I haven't yet) might be able to answer some of those.

For the record, I already changed the title of the thread to reflect this, but in Ubuntu it is actually 8.10, not 8.1. The reason being is it isn't really version numbering like you would think of for software, but rather version dating. 2008, in the 10th month, thus the 8.10

Not a huge deal, just one of those random trivia things.

Seablade
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 10
11/11/08 at 6:34pm
Thread Starter 
Ok I believe I have a more general linux problem. My ethernet card appears to get a new mac address after every reboot. So every time I reboot i get another eth*. The problem is that my ISP requires me to have a registered mac address. This isn't a problem in XP as I just spoof and register that. However, I'm finding that Ubuntu is having a helluva problem realizing that it is indeed the same network card (address didn't change) and to just use the manually assigned mac address from last itme.
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 10
11/11/08 at 9:14pm
Hmm... never assigned a mac address manually... lemme see what I can find out about that.

Seablade
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 10
11/11/08 at 10:04pm
Ok, assuming you are using the ifconfig command to set the MAC address, try adding that to /etc/rc.local

More correctly, if I understand correctly you will need to take the interface down before you run it, so you might want to put the ifconfig down command first, then the MAC address setting, then the ifconfig up again.

That was the quickest way I have found, but I actually strongly suspect that you can do this by adding an appropriate line into the net config file, I just don't know it off hand and didn't turn anything up with a quick google search.

Let me know if you want me to look into it some more and I can see if I can turn anything up. I put a dev version of eLive on a VM over here so worst case scenario you shouldn't be to different from that.

Seablade
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 10
11/11/08 at 10:48pm
Thread Starter 
Yes, the problem is that every time I do try and make a permanent fix via a config (70-net-rules i believe)....I reboot and the same ethernet card gets a new mac before the config is executed and gets assigned to another eth* ID and then my permanent fix is only applying to the "last" network card....which is no good.
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 10
11/11/08 at 11:40pm
Yea that wasn't the way I was thinking of doing it. Remind me tomorrow or the day after and I can dig into it.

Seablade
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 10
11/12/08 at 12:40pm
Thread Starter 
Well I fixed the incremental eth* problem (3 hours of work) by modifying /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules so it didn't identify the ethernet adapter based off mac address and thereby stayed to eth0. Then to get the spoofed mac address to be permanent I modified /etc/network/interfaces adding:
auto eth0
pre-up hwaddress eth0 XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

I found the laptop-support option in the nautilus settings.
I got all the classic MS fonts (and now it looks like XP)
Got the power status and CPU throttling widgets on my taskbar
No double decker task bar from what I can tell.

The Ctrl key required to boot remains but is currently being looked into by the kernel developers as this problem exists for all HP users using any flavor of linux.
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 10
11/12/08 at 2:35pm
I THINK that you should be able to increase the size of the taskbar, I seem to recall doing that in gnome back when I used it, but can't tell you to much about how I did it anymore. The CTRL thing to boot, yea it sounded like a bug, but it is a particularly odd one I will say. And yea you got exactly what I was going to look into for how to set up a persistant MAC address.

In as far as firewall solutions, what precisely are you looking for? Are you looking to allow or deny access based on software running? Or are you looking just for a standard firewall that blocks incoming ports? The latter is built in to most Linux distributions and Firestarter only configures it IIRC. There are a few other firewall configuration tools, or you could do it by hand as well.

In as far as performance of WiFi vs power savings, In general I think Linux errs on the side of performance a bit more, but I can't answer that question specifically, and I would imagine it will vary a bit depending on the driver in use(Which by the way is what for you?)

In as far as the windows key to pop up the menu, yes that should be possible simply by mapping it to whatever combination of keys pops up the menu now. A quick look around should turn up something on this one, though again it tends to be specific to the WMbeing used and it has been some time since i used Gnome.

Hmm to get rid of the press ESC to go to menu... not sure of the official Ubuntu way of doing it, but that is typically a setting in the bootmanager config, which will be in the /boot directory(Or partition depending on how you partitioned your disk). For example in the Grub, in the menu.lst file it would be changing the value of timeout from 10 to 1 or less(As i got corrected on in the past here, 0 makes it infinite, so set it to the number of seconds you want to wait).

I think that covers about everything I know off hand, let me know if you want help digging in deeper in any of that though. As I mentioend I don't really know the officialy 'Ubuntu' way of doing things, just the general linux ways.

Seablade
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 10
11/18/08 at 10:02pm
On the Windows fonts -- go to the package manager and try to search for fonts. There are a lot of extra font packs out there. Unfortunately, a lot of the fonts that you find on Windows machines are proprietary, and many don't even come with Windows but are installed along with MS Office or the Adobe suite.

I have come to like Linux Mint over Ubuntu as a general-purpose home distribution. Granted, everyone likes different distros, but I think Mint has a more complete out-of-the-box feel and has slightly less fear of proprietary software.

Out of curiosity, what laptop are you using? Ubuntu 8.10 is usually better than that.
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Linux & Other OS's
NotebookForums.com › Forums › General Notebook Discussions › Linux & Other OS's › Ubuntu 8.10 Configuration Questions