Cagdas's Blog

Temperature Monitoring and Power Managing in Ubuntu

cagdas — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 21:57:00 +0000

My notebook came with pre-installed Vista. I used it for a few days. It had all the drives and utilities installed. When I switched to Ubuntu on this machine, I couldn’t find alternatives to some of those utilities like power profile manager and system temperature monitor in the default installation. However, after some quick searching, I found a way to do all these in Ubuntu;

For temperature monitoring, install “Computer Temperature Applet” for Gnome (and dependencies) by typing :

sudo apt-get install computertemp lm-sensors

in the terminal.

Then, to activate power profiles, type:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-applets

in the terminal, and say ‘yes‘ to ‘Install cpufreq-selector with SUID root“.

You can now add “Computer Temperature Monitor” and “CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor” to your gnome-panel. You can decrease heat and improve battery life by using the power profiles.

Here’s how it looks =) :

(and yes, i like showing off my desktop =).. )

Why my Ubuntu setup was dead slow lately.

cagdas — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:59:00 +0000

My Ubuntu setup had been running insanely slow for a couple of weeks. I tried deleting all my configurations, but it didn’t work. Then 2 days earlier, when I was browsing Ubuntu forums, I stumbled upon some threads suggesting editing my /etc/hosts file would help. I desperately tried this not hoping this would change anything. Then as suggested, I added my hostname (which is ubuntu) to the end of the line :

127.0.0.1 localhost

Now it’s :

127.0.0.1 localhost ubuntu

This unbelievably increased the desktop performance. The gnome-terminal would take more about 10 secs to load, now it takes only about 1 or 2. Firefox loads much more faster.

If you are experiencing performance problems on a high-end computer, the /etc/hosts file should be the first to check.

Note that this will not make your old pc fly. I guessing that my /etc/hosts was corrupted somehow and that the “fast” version is the default one.

Google Calendar & Gnome

cagdas — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 10:17:00 +0000

If you want to view your Google Calendar events on your Gnome Desktop;

First, go to your Google Calendar and find out your private ICAL url (This can be found after clicking Manage Calendars > Your Calendar Name). You need the one in the private address section, not the one in the calendar address section.

Now, open a terminal and type :

/usr/lib/evolution-webcal/evolution-webcal YOUR_PRIVATE_ICAL_URL

And that’s it. Here’s a screenshot from my Ubuntu desktop :

Note : evolution-webcal may be in different folders in different distros. (For example in SuSe, it’s in /opt/gnome/lib/evolution-webcal/evolution-webcal). If the above code doesn’t work for you, you can locate evolution-webcal using :

find / -name evolution-webcal

command. (Thanks to Jeff for this info. )

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) on Acer 5920G

cagdas — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 20:43:00 +0000

I have been using Ubuntu 7.04 on my new Acer 5920G. There were some issues with it. First problem was that I couldn’t use the live CD; had to use alternate CD. And the nv drivers didn’t seem to work with the 8600M GT vga on this machine, so no X after the first install. After I used a tool named envy to install the latest Nvidia drivers, I had Gnome running and everything looked fine… till i realized my wireless card was not recognized. Being too lazy to try ndiswrapper, I used the machine without the wireless network capabilities for a while.

After beating the laziness, I decided to try Ubuntu Gutsy on the machine. I grabbed the latest alpha alternate CD (Didn’t want to waste a blank CD for the live version which might not work) and installed it. And ‘Voila!’. Everything was working… Wireless card, bluetooth, sound… Then I installed the latest Nvidia drivers in the repository, restarted X (at least tried to restart it), and I got an X error like :

” Failed to load module wfb …”

I did a quick search on Ubuntu Forums, and found this post . I followed the instructions in the post, and now I have Ubuntu Gutsy running on my notebook.

Compiz Fusion comes out of the box with Ubuntu Gutsy. I like the new effects. And I like that everything concerning the Gnome theme (fonts, effect, icons, etc) are configured from one application (System > Preferences > Appearence).

Ubuntu Gutsy has given me only minor troubles. I guess I won’t have to wait till the release =)

Qt Jambi

cagdas — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 19:54:00 +0000

While I was browsing random websites, I stumbled upon Qt Jambi: TrollTech’s Framework for Java desktop development. After I ran the demos, I got really impressed. The demos look/run just like native Qt applications, and use many cool Qt functions. Another great step for better Java desktop development.

And also, with the release of Java 6, we have seen great improvements on the GTK Look&Feel. Applications with GTK L&F also look just like native applications.

Since it’s also free, I am expecting Java to be the first choice for Linux desktop applications.

Working with GWT

cagdas — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 10:59:00 +0000

I’ve been asked to code a multi-user web based project in the second week of my internship (in IBM Turkey, by the way), and left the programming language choice to me. First I thought PHP would be easy, but I decided learning GWT and coding the application in Java would be better for me. I started by reading the excellent tutorials in IBM Developerworks ( 1,2,3,4 ).

I had some bookmarks about GWT, and checked them out. One was Googlipse plug-in for Eclipse, which was renamed to Cypal Studio. After many hours of trying to get it to work, I found out that the problem was Turkish locale. Changing the system language to English helped.

Later, I decided to try Instantiation’s GWT Designer. It looked great until I added a RichTextArea to my design. It crashed, but when I removed the RichTextArea, everything was back to normal.

I guess I won’t be needing any GUI tools for GWT development. Eclipse with Cypal Studio will be enough.

Java & Excel Documents

cagdas — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 06:27:00 +0000

During my internship, I was asked to code an application that parses a given text and adds the data to an Excel document. Parsing was easy, but Excel part seemed difficult. But after a quick google search, I found JExcelApi. It is simple, and nicely documented. Thanks to JExcelApi coders, I finished the application in just a few hours.
These kind of situations makes any coder appreciate “free software”.

Subversion Management Tool - "subman"

cagdas — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 21:28:00 +0000

I’ve completed the Web Based (PHP) Subversion server management tool I was coding. It’s usable, but many things may need improving. Current features are :

Create / Delete Repositories
Create / Delete Users
Add users to repositories
Remove users from repositories
Change rights of users in each repository

Notes :
You need to have a SVN server setup with Apache Webdav in order to use this tool. And you need to specify paths for SVN server related files in config.php . And don’t forget to backup everything related, prior to trying this
It is compatible with PHP 5+. License is Apache 2.0. I have used Hashmap codes from Phrame.

Download it here : Subman 0.1

I will try to make it better in my free time, so I’m open to suggestions. If you try this tool, please write a comment here.

Perfect fonts in Ubuntu

cagdas — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:02:00 +0000

I followed this how-to to install freetype and cairo libraries. Now my fonts are better anti-aliased, thus look very cute :). And for anyone who wants to have better fonts and don’t want to worry any details, here’s how to do it, in a brief way;

Just open gnome-terminal (or any other of your choice) and type these in order.

1. sudo echo “deb http://www.telemail.fi/mlind/ubuntu feisty fonts” >> /etc/apt/sources.list
2. sudo echo “deb-src http://www.telemail.fi/mlind/ubuntu feisty fonts” >> /etc/apt/sources.list
3. wget http://www.telemail.fi/mlind/ubuntu/937215FF.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
4. sudo aptitude update
5. sudo aptitude install libfreetype6 libcairo2 libxft2

and installing is complete. Restart the X server ( Ctrl + Alt + Backspace), and you are done
Edit : Installing MS fonts first would give better results. I guess you can do it easily using Automatix which is a GUI tool for easy installation of many additional applications in Ubuntu.

Eclipse PDT & Zend Debugger

cagdas — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 10:09:00 +0000

I’m working on the Subversion server administration program I mentioned on my previous post. Till now, I had only programmed small projects using PHP, and didn’t need a good IDE. Advanced text editors (Gedit, Notepad++ etc) were more than enough.
This time, I want to use a good IDE for ease and stability of development. I had previously read about the Eclipse PHP IDE project. So the first IDE I checked was my good old IDE Eclipse. I downloaded the PDT & Zend Debugger all in one package. And that’s it, didn’t try any single other PHP IDE.
I don’t like PHP much. ‘Type-unsafe’ languages drive me mad. But Eclipse PDT was there to help me. With javadoc-like comments before variables and functions, I can notify the IDE of the type of the variables and return values of the functions. And when I call the function, or use the variable, the IDE guides me. This prevents many possible errors. This single feature of PDT was enough for me, but with that package, I also had auto-complete for PHP functions, documentation for each standart PHP function and an integrated debugger/interpreter. I didn’t even need a web server (Although I already have one set-up).
For the HTML side, Aptana plug-in is my choice. I have used it on several occasions before, and I’m pleased with it.
I guess Eclipse will always be the IDE to try for any new languages.