This is the problem that affected me the most in the history of Linux using so far. Image, for two full years i just dint know the solution to this prob is that easy. Too late of me to find out. any ways, better late than never.

So the problem is with FX 5200 Ubuntu liveCD/installation boot will hang mid-way, as to most users, it fills to first three bars and then fails. But the cause is acpi settings create some problem with Ubuntu booting. Nope, “acpi=off” option in Ubuntu boot options does NOT work. Now, that’s what everybody suggests only to know it never helps. Even Sathya suggested to me.

It doesnt work because, BIOS settings dominate at the boot time. The entry makes no sense. SO now does it become clear? You disable ACPI in BIOS!  Wow, that worked like magic for me. Now am running Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) on my PC without any boot problems.

However, shutdown does not work properly. Other things like restart and general stuff work fine.

So try that comment on whether it works.

So if your xserser-xorg-video-intel is not that satisfactory to you, or if it doesn’t give the right screen resolution, just use this. If available in repos use it, if not use this link. You will have to remove xserver-xorg-video-intel either manually or through package manager. Then after installation restart Xserver (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace; Enable it thus in Karmic)

That should bring the resolution right or at least make it better.

Thanks to these articles and in case of problems please follow the links:

The PAINLESS way to set Screen Resolution for Intel Chipsets

Can’t change resolution with 915resolution

Finally got desktop effects working (915resolution + xorg.conf)

1. In the menu, go to System->Preferences->Keyboard (not Keyboard Shortcuts)

2. Go to Layouts tab, click Layout options

3. Expand “Key sequence to kill  the X server”. Check “Ctrl+Alt+Backspace”

4. You’re Done.

E: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/apt/extended_states (1)
E: _cache->open() failed, please report

or this error in apt-get in command line:

Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Error!
E: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/apt/extended_states (1)

and both just fail to open or install, then just execute this in command line (terminal):

sudo mv /var/lib/apt/extended_states /var/lib/apt/extended_states_tmp

You are done. Thanks to this post

Unfortunately  openSUSE has been lacking a install/boot from USB flash drive for quite sometime, upto now that is. The last Milestone (M8) and the first release candidate, RC1 includes support for booting from USB flash disks.

You will need access to a Linux environment, inorder to accomplish this step.

Once you’re in Linux, open the terminal. Insert your USB flash disk. ait for few moments  for the flash disk to be detected. Then, switch to root user by typing
su root

And then type in
dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M
Replacing image.iso with the full path of the iso file
& sdX with your actual device name of your flash drive. Be careful while entering the device name, all data will be wiped out, ensure you’ve entered the right one!

And, that’s about it. Reboot, using the USB flash disk as boot device & voila!

Note: I’ve tried this with the KDE4 LiveCD version, if anyone else has tried the DVD version please drop a comment!

When i installed Jaunty i had problems (as usual). One of them was this. First off, videos wont play in any video player. Codecs are in place, no doubt. But the player would go crashing down. Even vlc, which uses a seperate set of codecs fails

Then, desktop effects wont enable. No matter what. An irritating piece of  thing.

But it was so queer that when rhythmbox (may be others too; i dont know) starts playing (not just open but playing) videos work! But i dont think video players should be dependent on music players.

So what worked for me was I rolledback to intrepid’s version (2.4) version of xserver-xorg-video-intel. Now no problems videos play and compiz is enabled.

Click here to find out how to revert to the 2.4 version.

Hope this helps.

Amarok 2 users would know that Amarok 2 series is a shadow of its old Amarok 1.4(”Amarok Classic” self) – and quite a few people still prefer Amarok classic to Amarok 2 – primararily because of Amarok’s missing support for visualizations, equalizer amongst others. I don’t use equalizers – and as for visualization – well don’t use that either.

Coming back to the point – Amarok 2.0 release was somewhat like a KDE 4.0 release – more of a framework release, basic building blocks in place, but just about. I terribly missed queuing support, and promptly stopped using Amarok (and on a different note, switched to Gnome – Rhythmbox is sweet!).

Amarok 2.1 brings in a lot of improvements – and the most obvious one is the improvements to the playlist and main play window area. With Amarok 2.0 – the playlist area was a bit of a hit and a miss the lyrics, Wikipedia info was there but wasn’t obvious, you had to “Add the plasma” and once you added multiple plasma(”applets”) you had no idea how many were there without “zooming out” and overlooking it. And with the zoom effect not at its  slickest best it was a big chore.

Amarok 2.1 fixes this by adding buttons which bring up the respective applets making it easy to remove the exisitng applets, add new ones or simply re-arrange them.

Another nice feature introduced is “bookmarking” – any track with a length greater than 10minutes and Amarok will save the last listened position, so when you return to playing the track, it resumes from the last bookmarked place. There are other improvements too – only I couldn’t figure it because the damned player wouldn’t play anything

I’ve put my query in Ubuntu forums over here – my problem is that Amarok just refuses to play any local files. If any of my readers can help me figure this out, it’ll be great, just drop a comment.

Edit: Fixed the problem .

As for installing Amarok, its straightforward, Goto System -> Administration -> Software Sources.

Click on third party sources, click on Add, enter the below line.
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/backports/ubuntu jaunty main
Save, update. Launch Synaptic, search for amarok and mark for install.
That’s it, Amarok 2.1 is ready to rock. Were you able to get Amarok successful run on your system ? Do drop a comment.

1. Sign up for Dropbox using this link (Disclaimer: The link is a referral link, if you signup with the referral code then I get 250MB extra space on my Dropbox.)
2. Install Dropbox client by following the instructions here.
3. Create a private shared folder in Dropbox.
4. Now lets configure Transmission. Launch Transmission. Click on Edit -> Preferences. Ensure that “Automatically add torrents from:” checkbox is checked, and point it to your Dropbox folder. Also ensure that Start when added is checked, Display options checkbox is unchecked and point the destination to a suitable folder.

transmission-options

That’s it. Next time, whenever your upload a torrent file to the chosen Dropbox folder, the Dropbox client ensures that the torrent file gets pushed to your chosen folder, and Transmission will automatically start the download. Simple, isn’t it ?

The first thing we need to do, is have a Calender system in Mozilla Thunderbird. There are couple of addons for this, but IMO the Lightning project is probably the best of the lot. Lightning project also allows you to accept Outlook meeting invites, but we’ll get to that in a while.

Head over to Lightning project homepage, and download the addon as per your platform. Next, install the addon by clicking on Tools  -> Addons -> Install and then point it to the location where you have downloaded the addon. Restart Thunderbird and you will get a Calender and tasks pane on the lower left corner, and an events sidebar.

Now that our calender system is ready, lets do the next step – Integration with Google calender. This requires another addon, Provider for Google Calender which basically allows  Lightning to access and write back to Google calender. Follow the same steps as mentioned above to install the addon.

Next, lets configure Thunderbird to use Google calender. Click on File -> New -> Calender -> On the nextwork radiobox. Now click on the Next button.Click on Google Calender radio box. In the location, enter the location of your Google Calender shared URL. You can obtain this URL by logging on to Google Calender and then clicking on the Settings link from the left sidebar. In the lower corner, you will see an “Calender address” section, right click on the XML button and copy the link address. Now enter this address in the Location textbox mentioned above.

Click next, you will be prompted for your Google  accounts username and password. Login you’re done! Next time you receive a meeting invite, it will be available under Invitations link!

As a bonus, if you use Google contacts to keep your contacts in Sync, use the Zindus addon to Sync your Mozilla Thunderbird Addon with Google Contacts!