How To: Install Adobe AIR & Seesmic for AIR on Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04LTS
I've been running Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04LTS on my Acer Aspire One for a couple of weeks now. It still doesn't auto-connect to known WiFi access points after booting or awakening from sleep. But, other than that it has been running reasonably well. So, I decided to try to install Adobe AIR and Seesmic for AIR to get a Twitter client on the netbook. The process was pretty simple:
1. Download Adobe AIR for Linux in bin format from Adobe
2. As root made the file executable: chmod +x *.bin
3. Run the executable: ./longname.bin (where "longname" == the AIR file name)
4. Download Seesmic for AIR installation file
5. Use UNR GUI file explorer and double click on the Seesmic AIR installer file. It will be recognized as an AIR file and let AIR install it.
Unfortunately, Seesmic for AIR is extremely slow and a huge memory hog on my netbook which only has 512MB RAM. It consumed to much processor time that I had to hold the power button to force a shutdown. So, I need to find a good lightweight Twitter client (AIR or native) to use with UNR On my netbook
Confirmed: Ubuntu Netbook Remix Caused Aspire One Netbook Battery Issue
Back in December 2009, I noted that my Acer Aspire One netbook could not work on battery power after updating to Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) 9.10.
I can confirm this is the case now. Here's what happened.
I decided to take a look at the recent MeeGo release. MeeGo is the project that resulted from the merger of Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo projects. Unfortunately, I discovered that MeeGo is nowhere near ready for production use on a netbook (no GUI). So, I decided to take a look at the soon to be defunct Mobile 2.1 instead. I installed it on the Acer Aspire One and discovered that it saw its battery as completed drained. UNR reported the battery as fully charged. With Moblin installed, the Aspire One charged up in less than 2 hours. I'm using it right now on battery power to post this blog entry.
So, it looks like UNR was completely unable to deal with the Aspire One's battery subsystem.
Moblin doesn't solve my desire for a netbook running Linux though. Moblin seems to have a lot of problems with the Aspire One's trackpad. It is very difficult to do something as selecting a checkbox on a web form.
That said, it is good to have a netbook running a Linux variant that can be used on battery power.
Unlikely, But Did Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 Kill My Acer Aspire One Battery?
This is probably just a coincidence, but...
Last week my Acer Aspire One got about 2.5 to 3 hours of use on its 3-cell battery. I was running Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) 9.04 at the time. I updated the netbook to UNR 9.10 last weekend. After the update, the netbook won't boot unless it is plugged into an A/C electrical outlet. Pulling the plug with the netbook running results in it shutting off immediately as if the battery does not have any charge. UNR's battery status icon reports that the battery has a 0.0% charge level (no charge) but is, at the same time, "fully charged."
I suppose I could test it by wiping the SSD and reinstalling UNR 9.04. But, that takes a lot of time and I'm don't have a lot of incentive to do so (the Aspire One is not my primary netbook). Anyone else having netbook battery issues after upgrading to UNR 9.10?
CentOS 5.3 packaged installs are a mess
I spent the vast majority of this decade (up to 2008) manually installing and configuring the AMP part of LAMP. It seemed like a good idea to try to use only the pre-packaged and autoupdated by the Linux distro maintainers. It seemed like it would be a lot faster (it is) and cause much fewer headaches. Unfortunately, my favorite distro's current version, CentOS 5.3, uses ancient versions of Apache, MySQL and PHP. And, their configurations (such as no Apache DSO support compiled in) are causing me so many problems that I'm going back to manual AMP component installations.
I'm also going to take another look at using Ubuntu for my Linux server needs.
Configuring VirtualBox to run Moblin 2.0 Beta
Moblin is a Linux distro developed by Intel and Novell that is tweaked for netbooks. I decided to test it out in a virtual machine first to see if I liked it or not. If you use the free (for personal use) VirtualBox 2.2.2 like I did, you need to make two simple configuration changes to the VM before starting to install Moblin. If you look at the screenshot above of the VirtualBox General-Advanced settings, you can see red arrows pointing at the two configuration options that need to be selected: APIC & PAE/NX.
The screenshot above shows Moblin 2.0 Beta running in VirtualBox. I'm not very impressed with Moblin 2.0 Beta so far and probably won't try it on a physical netbook. I think Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR) is better suited for my netbook Linux needs.
SUSE Studio Lets You Build Custom Linux Distros
...is one of those product ideas that makes you wonder why it hasn't been done before. It looks like a simple-to-use utility that lets you build custom SUSE Linux appliances by letting you choose which components are installed with each appliance.
Linux Haxor has a good preview article about it here...
CentOS 5.3 Released: Free Red Hat Enterprise Linux Community Build
CentOS takes the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) source code and repackages it as a free Linux distro. I used to use CentOS on nearly all my servers in my old job. I even installed it on a PC in the home. But, somewhere around the 5.1 or 5.2 release, it became a problematic install on some PCs so I switched to Fedora. I noticed that CentOS 5.3 was released on April 1...
[CentOS-announce] Release for CentOS-5.3 i386 and x86_64
I've been pretty happy running Fedora 10 on my home PC. But, I may download CentOS 5.3 and try it as a Guest OS in a virtual machine.
Updating Adobe AIR in Linux
I don't use my dedicated Linux PC (running Fedora 10) as much as I used to a year or two ago. So, when I fired it up today to update Fedora and install Seesmic for Facebook, I found I also needed to update Adobe AIR from version 1.5 to 1.5.1. However, since I was logged in as an unpowered user (not root), AIR wouldn't auto update even if I su-ed to root and tried to run twhirl or Seesmic for Facebook to start the process. Here's what I ended up doing.
- Manually downloaded Adobe AIR 1.5.1 for Linux from the Get Adobe Air download page
- Open a terminal window
- su - to root (sudo on other Linux distros)
- cd (change directory) to where the AIR installer was downloaded
- chmod u+x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
- Run the installer from the shell -> ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin
The Adobe AIR installer detected the older version and asked if I wanted to install it. I clicked OK and the installation proceeded as expected.
HP Inkjet Ink Use & Cost Mystery Part 2 (HP 02 Cartridges)
Way back in in September 2008, I posted an item titled...
You might want to go back to that item just to read a very interesting and detailed comment to it posted by Eric Hochstein. Eric took a hard long look at the HP 02 ink cartridges and points out a couple of things I didn't know such as the fact that the different HP 02 color cartridges contains different volumes of ink!
I printed out about 200 sheets of paper (double sided) for our annual holiday newsletter last month. This behemoth annual project had over 20 photos of various sizes scattered throughout the 4 printed pages. I bought two sets of ink cartridge packs. The one purchased earlier in the year (2008) included a black. The one bought in December did NOT. The Yellow and Magenta ink were used the fastest followed by Dark Cyan. On the other hand, I still have 2 each of Light Cyan and Light Magenta (pink) cartridges. Based on this, my current belief if that given the kind of things I print (heavy mix of photos and text), it is cheaper to buy individual cartridges.
Thanks again to Eric for posting the detailed comments of his investigation of the HP 02 ink cartridges!
Fedora 10: Do NOT Perform an Update; Adobe AIR Doesn’t Install
I installed Fedora 10 over my ancient Fedora 6 installation on my Linux test PC and wrote about my experience over on the O'Reilly Media blog. You can find the piece at...
Fedora 10: Upgrading an Earlier Version Still a Bad Idea + Adobe AIR Doesn't Like 10