Ubuntu Studio - setup log

As promised, here is my setup log for Ubuntu Studio.

I'll keep it short and to the point, so don't expect flowery prose, just what was done, and why.

first things first - the hard disks:
My PC has 2 HDs, both 150GB in size. I decided to repartition the first one, which also holds my Vista install, in order to fit the Ubuntu installation. This was performed by using BootitNG - which the demo can be downloaded an used to resize an NTFS partition with no data loss - it took about an hour.

So now I had about 30GB of blank space on my first drive.

I booted up with the ubuntu studio DVD, and installed into this blank space. This took about a half an hour.

I then booted into studio, and did auto updates.

Then I tested...

Sound - OK!
Wireless Mouse - OK!
Keyboard - OK!
the video redraw feels slow. I went to the Nvidia site and grabbed their NON-open source driver. Damn, the instructions are convoluted. I'll wait on that.

I can access my windows disks! and just by accident I notice that CBZs view correctly (this is a surprise)

I notice that there under the system, administration, menu there is something called restricted drivers manager, and I enable nvidia driver from there. This requires a reboot, or at least I think it does, I can't recall. Either way I reboot, to make sure I can still get into Vista, which I can. The redraw is a bit better, but I'm still not thinking its perfect...

I then install the adobe flash player for firefox.

I look into Beryl - it looks like it would be pretty cool. I use the package manager to install it. I don't think its doing anything though - so I'll set that aside for a bit.

use add/remove programs to install openoffice.org spreadsheet - this distro only came with the text editor installed.

I now use synaptic to install pptp client and network manager stuff. I proceed to work with on a VPN connection for an hour - no luck (more on this later)

check Divx/Xvid playback - need to load codecs from the install DVD - good to go.

check mp3 playback over samba connection - good to go.

change to glossy theme from ubuntu studio (its to dark!)

install xmms plugin for wma/wmv - its works.

Comercial encrypted DVD support loaded:
in terminal:

sudo apt-get install libdvdread3 libxine1-ffmpeg

This installs the first components - now I need to add the medibuntu repository:

wget -q http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/medibuntu-key.gpg -O -
| sudo apt-key add -

(that should be one line)

Then

sudo wget http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/sources.list.d/feisty.list
-O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

(that is also one line)

Then I added the Libdvdcss2 (which is why we did all this)

wget http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/pool/feisty/free/i386/
libdvdcss2_1.2.9-2medibuntu2+build1_i386.deb

(that is also one line)

sudo dpkg -i libdvdcss2_1.2.9-2medibuntu2+build1_i386.deb

This is the first I've needed to drop to terminal.

I first tried Gaim for IM, but changed to AMSN - as it more closely mirrors MSN messenger functionality (including webcams)


At this point I encountered my first problem...

In the proccess of trying diffent media players i started getting this when attempting to access media from smb shares:

“There is no input plugin to handle the location of this movie”

After much digging, I found that if went into synaptic, and told it to install totem with gtstreamer and then it uninstalled the totem-xine and then it worked again.

Installed brasero for CD/DVD burning.

Installed cups-pdf for pdf printing

added a windows shared printer.

I figured out at this point that I could only read my ntfs disks - so installed the NTFS-config tool and remounted them to allow read/write.

At this point I finally got the VPN figured out - and this took HOURS of digging so I hope this will help someone (possibly me!) in the future.

the issue was this - I could connect to my PPTP vpn server, but only access that IP - no others on the network. It turns out this is designed behavior. By default PPTP VPNs only setup a route to the IP of the PPTP server. I guess I should have figured it out sooner - but hey live an learn.

to resolve this I put this script in here:
/etc/ppp/ip-up.d
called it addroute

here is what it said:

#!/bin/sh

route add -net 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev ppp0

(With the 192.168.1.0 being whatever the correct range for the remote network is)

then the script must be made executable:

chmod +x /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/routeadd

now it works great! but what a PITA.

back to the fun:

Installed Java

figured out how to use the menu item to add menu items - duh I was trying to figure out how to do it by hand.

Added Pan for Usenet reading

Added Comix and Qcomicbook to read CBR/CBZ files - but still needed to add the nonfree unrar to view CBRs

Installed Codine as my default media player - it opens movies in unique windows.


So that is it so far.

What is still missing? Glad you asked. A few things I can think of right away...

logmein.com - I would still like a remote solution like this (free of cost of course)
Orb.com - I miss my media streaming securely to the world.
Gametap - I doubt I'll get this back. I will need to cancel once my 3 months run out (and I just re-upped!)
Steam - I did some reading, and I guess you can get half-life (and maybe halflife2?) working on linux, so I will have to investigate further.


I'm also super annoyed that I can not copy/paste to and from my terminal service sessions, but I have not really investigated that yet.

my side scrolling middle mouse wheel does not side scroll, but I never used that anyway, so I think its coming along pretty well so far.

I'll be updating as I go...