Archive for linux

My personal email setup

16/01/2009 at 06:31 · Filed under debian, evolution, linux ·Tagged

Unix has various powerful email tools. Unfortunately for me, most of it forces you to use command line or edit configuration files, which sounds unnecessary for a mere desktop user like me.

However, I find that I am using those tools because the weaknesses of my GUI email client, Evolution. It is a nice app, but it is very slow and often get unresponsive when handling IMAP. Combined to the fact that I often have slow ‘net connection, using it to read email sometimes is quite painful. Console email clients like mutt or even (Al)pine are perhaps faster, but I like the integration of evolution to PIM functions and the rest of GNOME desktop.

My first solution is using fetchmail, which is quite fast and capable to handle slow connections. The mail then delivered to local mailbox, which then read by Evolution. Because access to local mailboxes is fast, Evolution is behaving nicely. Fetchmail cannot handle IMAP folders though. I think fetchmail is more suited to POP accounts, although the original author of the software seems to hate POP.

Next solution is offlineimap, which copies and synchronises IMAP folders to Maildir mailboxes, which then can be handled by Evolution. Unlike fetchmail, offlineimap doesn’t support IMAP IDLE, but it can be worked around by put it into crontab.

I also learned to configure exim4 to treat Gmail SMTP server as smarthost relay. Now, on my iBook laptop I set Evolution up to send emails to SendmailExim. Fire and forget. Evolution doesn’t need to know whether Gmail SMTP server is up or not, because it is Exim’s job now. The result: I can close Evolution right after sending emails.

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Installing Debian on an iBook

28/01/2008 at 13:59 · Filed under debian, laptop, linux

MacOS X is shiny, elegant and all, but it is excruciatingly slow on the iBook. Dog slow. Slow as molasses. It is barely usable. I think the culprit is the lack of RAM (it is only 256 MB). I know I should upgrade, but I am loath to spend money right now.

So I decided to install Debian Etch on this iBook.

What, another Linux?

Well, perhaps I will switch again to MacOS X after upgrading memory. Later. Right now I want an usable laptop. “Usable” and “Linux” sounds like oxymoron, but I am quite comfortable with Linux than with Mac OS X. Besides, I am curious about using Linux on other platform than x86.

I downloaded the network installer, burned it on a CD. I copied some data I already accumulated in the laptop to a flash disk. Then I begin the net install.

It was surprisingly easy. The iBook booted from the installer disc without problems. I let the installer wiped out the Mac OS X installation and put a minimal Debian system. I edited sources.list to use the University of Indonesia Debian mirror, then I installed a minimal KDE system by typing aptitude install kde-core.

The problems: hotkeys were not recognised, and the wi-fi was not working. The first was easy to solve, just install pbbutton package. The latter is rather difficult. Apple use Broadcom chipset for the Airport Express card. The driver is included in 2.6.18 kernel, but the firmware is not distributed. After some googling found the solution is to install the bcm4xx-fwcutter package. I did just that but it failed to download the firmware, so I have to install the firmware manually.

Unfortunately, KNetworkManager seems unable to detect the access point at work. Back to the command line. I run iwlist command which detected one of the office’s access points. But it cannot associate with the Broadcom chipset.

Another difficulty is right clicking. In Mac OS X I can emulate it with Ctrl + click, but it doesn’t work in Linux.

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Linux blogging clients

08/01/2008 at 05:16 · Filed under linux

There is no satisfactory blogging clients in Linux, at least for me. Not yet. I have tried GNOME blog entry poster, Drivel, and Blogtk. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. For example GNOME Blog Entry Poster supports Blogger.com (which hosts my other blog), but has poor WordPress support. It cannot choose categories, for example.

Drivel support categories in WordPress, but cannot add it. And it fails to log in to Blogger.com. I tried Blogtk for a while, but decided against it when I found out it was no longer maintained.

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It works

09/12/2007 at 13:14 · Filed under fedora, linux, palm

My Palm Tungsten E2 finally synchronises with my Linux laptop. Finally. I can use it and get organised again.

After my old, used laptop died I depended on the PDA for everything: address book, calendar, writing articles, reading ebooks, listening to music. Sadly it had problems with every Linux distribution I tried (or, perhaps more accurately, Linux distributions had problems with Palm). This morning I idly reading pilot-link documentation on how to set up synchronisation with libusb. I blacklisted the visor module, copied the udev rules that comes with the distribution to /etc/udev/rules.d, set up partnership with the Palm, and hotsync. Voila, it works!

Incidentally, I use Fedora 8 now. Debian was good and all, but the laptop support sucked. There was no power management. Fedora is not perfect, but at least it is able to sleep and hibernate.

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Switching (again)

08/11/2007 at 07:33 · Filed under debian, linux

The Fedora installation only lasted days. The new features are nice, but I hate some of the annoying bugs. It couldn’t detect my SD card (again). And yum is really slow.

I burned Debian testing net install iso to a CD, rebooted, and wiped out the Fedora installation. I chose minimal install(meaning: no X, no gnome). I ran out time and only chose to add basic networking software needed to work with my cellular PC card modem. Last night I spent time surfing with lynx :D

Today I continue the installation. Hopefully I will get a minimal gnome desktop with Abiword, Tomboy and Evolution installed.

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Moving to Fedora 8

06/11/2007 at 04:08 · Filed under fedora, linux

Installed Fedora 8 RC3 from live CD to my laptop yesterday. It has a blogging client! Yay! I’m posting from it right now.

On the other hand it has some annoying bugs. For example it cannot import pictures from Canon Powershot G5 that I use (Fedora 7 do it without sweat).

Livna also haven’t updated their repository. I tried to add livna-development repo but I cannot installed totem-xine. Yum protested that it will break totem-plparser, which I have uninstalled. Mysterious, isn’t it?

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Using Fedora 7 with Compal HGL31 notebook

10/08/2007 at 10:28 · Filed under linux

A few weeks ago I bought a brand-new laptop, BYON M3311 G/C. It is a cheap laptop, priced at Rp. 5,199,000 (about US$ 550), with a Celeron-M processor clocked at 1.86 GHz, 512 MB DDR2 SDRAM, a DVD-CDRW combo, Intel WLAN and card reader. The shop attendant told me it was upgradeable to Intel Core 2 Duo, and came with 2 years warranty.

After some poking around I found that this laptop is actually a HGL 31, made by Compal, the second largest notebook computer original device manufacturer (ODM) in the world. PT Leadvision Technology, an Indonesian company, marketed it under BYON trademark.

Because this model was sold without operating system I had to install it myself. I already have a reviewer copy of Windows Vista Home Premium, OpenSolaris DVD, and several disks of various Linux distribution. With only 512 MB RAM (DDR2) this laptop does not have enough juice to handle Windows Vista, and should only run Windows XP family. The computer shop where I bought the laptop also sells legal copies of Windows. So out of curiosity I inquired the price of an Windows XP copy. It turned out that they price it at about Rp 900,000 (about US$ 95). Not attractive enough for an old operating system, albeit a quite good one. I have made up my mind to install Linux on it anyway.

I have copies of Ubuntu 7.04, Fedora 7, Mandriva, OpenSUSE and Slackware. Having tested it on various machines I prefer Ubuntu, but I was intrigued by Fedora 7. I have tried it and quite liked the appearance, although I think it is not quite user-friendly as a desktop-oriented (or laptop in this case) OS. In the end I installed Fedora 7. I intend to learn some web development and Fedora seemed more suited to it.

Fedora 7 detected the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 chip but could not connect to the Wi-Fi access points in my office. This I have anticipated. VoIP application Ekiga cannot detect the integrated web cam, modem and Bluetooth not functioning, and card reader behaving erratically.

Non-functioning modem and web cam does not bother me too much. I intend to buy cellular modem later, and I have no need of web cams. First priority is to solve the wireless LAN problem. Solutions I found mentions the need to compile kernel modules, or downloading some third-party RPM packages. I thought myself quite fluent in Linux, but I put off solving this problem and went on to tackle others.

Another HGL-31 user mentioned in a web forum that the Bluetooth problem can be solved by installing Windows and wireless switch utility provided by Compal, then activate Bluetooth (and Wi-Fi). After that Linux would have no problem in detecting the Bluetooth adapter. The card reader problem could be solved by using a new kernel. Thinking perhaps it also can make the wireless problem disappear, I decided to update the operating system and waited.

The updating took a while. I had to download some 447 MB of new packages). After installing the updates the card reader problem was cleared, but the wireless still doesn’t work.

A proposed solution was to use ipw3945 drivers. I tried installing it from RPM and from source, but nothing changes. NetworkManager was not able to connect to my office hotspot.

The wireless problem solved by using RutilT WLAN Manager. It was actually designed for Ralink hardware, but it works flawlessly with Intel chip. Not the most elegant solution though.

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