Installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.10 on my Samsung NC10

1. Created an installation USB flash drive using Ubuntu's startup disc creator and the ISO for Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.10
2. Booted from it
3. Clicked "Install Ubuntu-Netbook"
4. Connected to my WLAN using the icon in the upper-right corner
5. Checked "Download updates while installing"
6. Checked "Install this third-party software"
7. Clicked "Forward"
8. Selected "Specify partitions manually (advanced)"
9. Clicked "Forward"
10. Partitioned my hard drive with a 20 "GB" (20*10^9 bytes) ext4 primary partition mounted at '/', a 6 "GB" swap area, and the rest as an ext4 primary partition mounted at /media/sda3
11. Clicked "Install Now"
12. Selected the Denver timezone and clicked Forward
13. Selected the default normal USA keyboard layout and clicked Forward
14. Entered the "Who are you?" screen as follows:
15. Your name: Mike Linford
16. Your computer's name: mmlnetbook
17. Pick a username: mike
18. Require my password to log in
19. Clicked Forward
20. Waited forever
21. Restarted and ran updates
    

Windows XP Installation Error

XP would not install after I told it what drive to use, because it wasn't a "windows xp-compatible partition". However, it never gave me the option to format it, so I don't know what I was supposed to do about that. After reading this: http://www.techsupportforum.com/microsoft-support/windows-xp-support/321356-disk-does-not-contain-windows-xp-compatible-partition.html I deactivated a DIFFERENT SATA hard drive and it installed fine.

NX> 500 Internal error

I was having some problems with NX, caused by a problem with the neatx server. The problem is described here: http://code.google.com/p/neatx/issues/detail?id=19 . Basically, to solve it I had to remove all the contents of /var/lib/neatx/sessions .

Samba Solution

The past few times I've tried setting up a Samba server, I couldn't get it to work and I've never known why. However, it looks like (at least this time) it was because I didn't make the ENTIRE path to the shared folder readable to everyone. I'll just try to remember that.

DMD1 + DMD2

DMD1 and DMD2 can be installed and used together as long as they don't have the same executable name. No problems finding phobos or anything.

Installing Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop

I restarted Fedora 13 and the weirdness related to the high resolution (which is apparently the default resolution for the login screen) was so annoying that I said screw it, it's back to Ubuntu (although a newer version). Here's the procedure I used to install it:

• Selected English as my language and clicked "Install Ubuntu 10.04 LTS"
• Region: United States Time Zone: Denver
• Keyboard Layout: USA
• Specify Partitions Manually
• Partition 1: 20480 MB, Primary Partition, Ext 4 FS, Mount point: /
• Partition 2: 1536 MB, Primary Partition, swap
• Partition 3: The rest of the space, Primary Partition, Ext 4 FS, Mount point: /media/data
• Name: Mike Linford Username: mike Computer name: mmldesktop Require my password to log in
• Install

Crap, 10.04 has the same video issue as Fedora 13...

Update: I did all the updates and installed the fglrx package and the weirdness as stopped. I'm not sure which of the two fixed it, but when I do lsmod it doesn't list the fglrx driver, just the free radeon driver, so it might have just been the updates. It's a pity updating fedora didn't help.

Additional Packages:

• flashplugin-installer: Flash plugin
• xserver-xorg-video-radeon: Proprietary video driver. Fixes the video problems.
  

Fedora 13

I just installed Fedora 13 and unfortunately it doesn't seem that great so far.

Issues:

• When my monitor is at 1600 x 900 everything looks fuzzy and it'll turn black for a while randomly.
• Audio didn't work out of the box
• Flash is way slow and jittery
• The software update program is incredibly slow
  

I'm thinking I'll give it more time and maybe switch back to Ubuntu. I wish Debian had a newer kernel so my wifi adapter would work without having to tear my hair otu.

Installing DMD2 alongside DMD1 on Unbuntu Netbook Edition 10.04

Here's my attempt to install the DMD2 compiler alongside my existing DMD1 installation without screwing anything up.

1. Downloaded the latest version for D2 (2.046 at the time of this post) from http://ftp.digitalmars.com/dmd.2.046.zip
2. Extracted the directory to ~/Downloads/
3. Created directory /opt/dmd2 with permissions 755 and owner root/root
4. Created directory /opt/dmd2/bin with permissions 755 and owner root/root
5. Copied /home/mike/Downloads/dmd2/linux/bin/dmd.conf to /opt/dmd2/bin
6. Copied dmd, dumpobj, obj2asm, and rdmd from /home/mike/Downloads/dmd2/linux/bin/ to /opt/dmd2/bin
7. Changed the permissions of dmd, dumpobj, obj2asm, and rdmd in /opt/dmd2/bin to 555
8. Made sure dmd, dumpobj, obj2asm, and rdmd in /opt/dmd2/bin had owner root/root
9. Created directory /opt/dmd2/lib with permissions 755 and owner root/root
10. Copied /home/mike/Downloads/dmd/linux/lib/libphobos2.a to /opt/dmd/lib/
11. Copied /home/mike/dmd2/src to /opt/dmd2/src
12. Changed the DFLAGS line in /opt/dmd/bin/dmd.conf to:

    DFLAGS=-I/opt/dmd2/src/phobos -I/opt/dmd2/src/druntime/import -L-L/opt/dmd2/lib

Later I'll try and see if I can set it up with DSSS

Update: It looks like DSSS is dead at version 0.78 and no longer compatible with the latest dmd2.

DSSS gives linker errors because of unrelated code in my class invariant

The following code appears in a class invariant for a project I'm compiling using DSSS:

240 foreach(row; _transitionTable)
241 {
242 T[] columnCharacters = [];//row.keys.sort;
243 assert(columnCharacters.length == _alphabet.length);
244 for(int index = 0; index < columnCharacters.length; index++)
245 assert(columnCharacters[index] == _alphabet[index]);
246 }

The linker errors imply that a module I use for exception classes isn't geting linked in. The code above makes no references to those classes, but when I remove it everything compiles fine. It also works fine if I just remove the body of the loop. Go figure.

It works just fine if I put that loop in a protected member function, so in the meantime I'm just running my assert() on that.

My .vimrc file

Here's my .vimrc file (it sets up the vim text editor how I like it). I'm pretty sure the one on my desktop has more stuff, so I'll add that when I can.

:set number " turns on line numbering
:set tabstop=3 " sets the tab width to 3
:set noerrorbells " turns off annoying sounds when you scroll too far
autocmd FileType * setlocal formatoptions-=cro

Installing DSSS on Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.04

The following is the procedure I used to install DSSS on Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.04

1. Downloaded the latest (and probably last) version from http://svn.dsource.org/projects/dsss/downloads/0.78/dsss-0.78-x86-gnuWlinux.tar.bz2
2. Renamed the extracted folder to dsss
3. Copied it to /opt
4. Changed the owner of /opt/dsss and its contents to root/root
5. Added /opt/dmd/bin to the path in /etc/environment
6. Set the compiler for rebuild:

   rebuild_choosedc dmd-posix

Installing the DMD compiler on Unbuntu Netbook Edition 10.04

Here's the procedure I used to install the Digital Mars D compiler on Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.04. I can't imagine that it would be incredibly different for similar distros. For the most part it's a personalized version of the steps found here: http://www.digitalmars.com/d/1.0/dmd-linux.html#installation

1. Installed gcc
   
2. Downloaded the latest version for D1 (1.060 at the time of this post) from http://ftp.digitalmars.com/dmd.1.060.zip
3. Extracted the directory to ~/Downloads/
4. Created directory /opt/dmd with permissions 755 and owner root/root
   
5. Created directory /opt/dmd/bin with permissions 755 and owner root/root
6. Copied /home/mike/Downloads/dmd/linux/bin/dmd.conf to /opt/dmd/bin
7. Copied dmd, dumpobj, obj2asm, and rdmd from /home/mike/Downloads/dmd/linux/bin/ to /opt/dmd/bin
8. Changed the permissions of dmd, dumpobj, obj2asm, and rdmd in /opt/dmd/bin to 555
9. Made sure dmd, dumpobj, obj2asm, and rdmd in /opt/dmd/bin had owner root/root
10. Created directory /opt/dmd/lib with permissions 755 and owner root/root
    
11. Copied /home/mike/Downloads/dmd/linux/lib/libphobos.a to /opt/dmd/lib/
12. Added /opt/dmd/bin to the path in /etc/environment
13. Copied /home/mike/dmd/src to /opt/dmd/src
14. Changed the DFLAGS line in /opt/dmd/bin/dmd.conf to:

    DFLAGS=-I/opt/dmd/src/phobos -L-L/opt/dmd/lib

15. Tested it with a simple hello world program

Some of the steps could be wrong, since I recorded them out of order and logged out once in the process...

So in summary, you just need the key things to check for are

• That the dmd can find a dmd.conf file
• That the dmd.conf file knows where to look for includes and libraries
• That libphobos is accessible as well as its source

Digital Mars had a .deb file, but I haven't played with it.

First Post

So this is where I intend to post my computer-related problems and their solutions online, as well as things that might not be considered problems (installation procedures). It's mostly for my own personal record-keeping, but if someone else runs into a problem that I've posted here, it might be useful.

Or this will be my only post.