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Arch Linux -- Exhausting, but fun!

Going to upload full install process soon!

Well, decided to install Arch Linux today. For those of you that don’t know, Arch Linux is a command line installation of Linux. However, you’re basically setting up the system from scratch – and it’s all done via the terminal, no GUI at all. So, after 5 hours, I finally have a working system! :)

The Arch “Beginner’s Guide” definitely helps, and the BIGGEST help of all was a reddit user who got Dell’s terrible Broadcom WiFi driver working. Solution is below: (NOTE: This is after install “broadcom-wl-dkms” from AUR!)

SOLUTION:

Got to /lib/modules/extramodules. Next, execute:

modprobe wl

Then you will be able to use iw dev and wifi-menu to install the system.

All in all, was a lot of fun! Now, time for bed.

Dell XPS13 Ubuntu Fixes!!

Just posting this link here, as it helped me with a few issues, such as kernel panic, trackpad issues, etc.. http://hgdev.co/installing-ubuntu-15-04-on-the-xps-13-9343-2015-a-complete-guide/ Will update this post later!

New Career, Linux!

Hello all! Haven’t updated this in quite a while! There’s been a lot of stuff going on, let’s get to it!

--I’m starting a new job in the IT industry on the 1st of September. Super excited!!! I’ll be giving IT support for the entire company. Lots of work, but also a lot of fun!

--Linux. I’ve been running Linux full time for over 2 and a half months, it’s been great! Haven’t tried Windows 10, and have no plans to either.

And yeah, hope everyone has a great Sunday!

Linux & Career change OH MY!

Decided to blow away Windows and use Ubuntu 15.04 as my daily OS. I'm loving it! Been running Linux for over three weeks, haven't had any issues or need to switch back to Windows at all. On another turn of events, I've been working onsite at a client for the past few months, and they offered me a great job opportunity. I'm taking it, as I want to branch off and expand my knowledge, get more opportunities, etc. Plus, the psy upgrade isn't too bad either :)

Hello Linux, Did You Miss Me?

Well, decided to give ol’ Ubuntu another shot. Currently running Ubuntu 15.04 alongside Windows 8.1, as I have the new Dell XPS 13 laptop, and with it, bugs are sure to be crawling!

Upon booting from the LiveUSB, I wasn’t able to get any network connection over WiFi at all. Had to enable the proprietary Broadcom network card. After, was able to see and connect to my WiFi. Overall, it’s pretty nice! There’s one pretty big bug that’s on the Dell XPS laptops with Ubuntu: Sound! Sound doesn't work off the bat, you need to do a cold-boot first, and magically the sound card gets detected. There’s a bug that’s been filled regarding it.

Overall, really liking it. Want to get into shell scripting, figured the best way was to run Linux and program on it!

EDIT: Completely removed Windows. Running Ubuntu 15.04 full time now! :)

Also found that sound works all the time! Seems when I was switching between Windows & Ubuntu, the sound wasn’t being detected. Since I’m now running Linux full time, sound issue is gone! :)

#ubuntu

Hello, World x2!! (Sony, career & updates OH MY!!!)

Why, hello Blog. I have't updated you in ages! Let's change that, shall we?

Well, seeing as how it's been close to a year and a half of not updating this puppy, guess it's safe to say there's been a TON of stuff going on. I graduated from Seneca college and I'm officially a College graduate -- Sweet!! Next would be I have a full career in the IT industry.... Sweet! Working at an IT Consulting company in the GTA, and I love it! Looking at getting my own car and place in the coming months, very exciting!!

Also, in a huge twist of events, I have said goodbye to the Xbox Fanboys and converted to Sony!! Yes, that's right -- I am now a Sony Fanboy! Currently rocking all three systems (Vita, PS3 & PS4) and I love it. The remote play on the Vita is a little finnicky, but it's got some decent games. Just shelled out some cash on the Vita Slim, mainly for the added bonus of the MicroUSB charger. The proprietary charged on the 1000 modem was alright, but come on, I'm in the Android ecosystem -- MicroUSBs are a GODSEND!!!

And that pretty much does it for this update! I'll try and keep this thing updated least once a month if not more, but no promises!!

Riding the Microsoft train

Decided to try Windows 8 after using Linux for a few months, and I must say, I really enjoy it! I even decided to remove my Google account and totally switch over to Outlook.com for everything. My next phone I plan on getting is going to be the Nokia Lumia 920 and I also have a free developer account because I am in college. Pretty sweet!!! :D

Back on Linux, Nexus 7 = AWESOME!, Data Plan & CyanogenMod on GNex and Nexus 7!!!

Haven't updated my blog in awhile, which means more stuff to talk about :) I got my Nexus 7 a few weeks ago and, without a doubt, one of the best purchases I've ever made. This is my very first tablet (read: Phablet) and I absolutely love it! I take it with me pretty much everywhere I go. I mainly use it for reading. Also, I installed CyanogenMod's experimental build on it, and it is awesome :) As for my phone, it's running the featured build of CM10. Now that CM9 as hit stable releases, there will be a lot of work done on CM10, and I can't wait :)

As another side update, I've made the plunge yet again to switch from Windows to Ubuntu, but this time I have made the decision that I will be staying with Linux. After all, I am running a Linux-based phone :P But seriously, I've actually missed using Linux for awhile. I thought it was only fair to go back to using it.

And lastly, I've upgraded my phone plan to have 6GB of data!!! Another good thing with the Nexus 7 is I can tether it to my phone and use it anywhere. Pretty sweet :)

Running Jelly Bean on my Galaxy Nexus & Pre-ordered Nexus 7

How sweet it is! Currently running the latest "leaked" version of Android and it is, without a doubt, a great improvement. I absolutely love using Google Now, the anti-Siri voice search. I also pre-ordered the first tablet from Google, the Nexus 7. Can't wait to get mine!!! A few sites say it could be shipping as soon as this week!!! :D

Huge update! {May to now}

Haven't made a post on my blog in months!!! Lots has gone on in my life. - Went back to Windose. Not because I wanted to, but I wanted to be able to get back into gaming and recently bought Diablo III and StarCraft II, as well as playing World of Warcraft (which by the way are all AMAZING!!! :) ) - I've also reduced my phone bill from just over $95 to roughly $57 a month. Still get to keep all my features except I only have 100 MB. I figure I can just use my laptop and, in the near future, I'm going to be investing in a tablet for school. Thinking of getting a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. - I was in the hospital due to an obstruction in my bowels due to scar tissue from a previous surgery. Let me tell you, it was not fun. I had to have an NG tube which is this long tube that gets inserted into your nose and goes down into your stomach to suck pretty much everything out of it. It's to relieve pressure and had a %90 chance of resolving the blockage. However, it is not a permanent fix. It could either occur in a week or 50 years, or never happen ever again. And yeah. That's my update :). I'll try and use this a lot more often.

WiFi Solutions for atheros on Ubuntu

First and foremost, the main issue was NetworkManager. I found it kept disconnecting me a lot, so I switched to wicd. No problems after switching and following the below steps. First, install wicd and remove NetworkManager:

sudo apt-get install wicd && sudo apt-get purge network-manager*

After that, reboot the computer, open the Dash by either clicking it or pushing the, dare I say it, Windose key and typing "wicd". Open it up and connect to your router.

I have an Acer Aspire laptop which I absolutely love. The only downside I've seem to have problems with is the WiFi. There have been a lot of people with problems regarding this specific wireless card, which is obviously not good. Wish I knew about it before I made the purchase. It shows a very weak signal, sometimes doesn't even connect at all. I did a lot of Google searches for the problem and came across this AskUbuntu question: Why is my internet slow with an Atheros wireless card? Thanks to an AskUbuntu user named Dante Ashton, this solution seems to do the trick:

I've found out the problem; it's some sort of problem with my wifi driver (ath9k) which was resolved with a simple command:

sudo echo "options ath9k nohwcrypt=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf

This doesn't just work with ath9k cards either; it's suppose to work with ath5, 6, etc cards as well. No idea why this bug appears with this card only, but least there is a work around for it.

UPDATE: I've been getting really slow connection speed so my Dad decided to do some investigating cause I told him I don't use Windose anymore :P Apparently the cause of the slow connection is due to power management being turned on for my network card. The solution is to enter the command:

sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off

And that should do it. The signal will still go up and down like it's suppose to, but it shouldn't disconnect you from the internet, nor will it stop pages from being loaded.

Also, this fix isn't permanent. After reboot, it will set power management to the on state. In order to make it permanent, you need to add a file to /etc called "local.rc". In this file, enter the following script:

#!/bin/sh -e

sleep 10 iwconfig wlan0 power off exit 0

This will turn the power management setting off upon 10 seconds after startup. And that should do it for fixing WiFi :D

#Ubuntu #networking #ath9k

How to install LAMP & phpMyAdmin inside Ubuntu

Lamp (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP or Perl) is a web development environment you can use to make PHP web pages, or start working with MySQL.

Installing LAMP

The most efficient way to install a LAMP environment is to simply run

sudo apt-get install lamp-server^

in the terminal. As it goes through the installation process, it will ask you to enter an administrative password for MySQL. Enter your desired password, and then confirm it by entering it a second time.

Testing Installation

Now that we have installed LAMP, we need to make sure Apache is running. Simply open your browser and type http://localhost in the address bar. It should go to a blank page that has the words It works! on it.

Testing PHP

Alright, next is to make sure PHP works. Open a terminal and type sudo gedit testing.php and type the following in the text editor:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Save it in the directory /var/www. Now that that's done, we need to restart the Apache server, so enter this in the terminal: sudo service apache2 restart . After that, load up your browser and this time, go to http://localhost/testing.php and it should list a web page that has information based on your Apache and PHP environment.

Install phpMyAdmin

Now that we have a LAMP environment installed, we don't need phpMyAdmin, but we can use it to easily maintain databases in MySQL using a webpage interface.

Execute this command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql phpmyadmin

It will do the same thing as the phpmyadmin installation: go through some screens to progress the installation. The first screen will ask you to select the webserver. Simply push SPACE to mark the apache2 package and then hit ENTER to go to the next screen. Accept the default setting by hitting ENTER a second time. For the next three screens, simply enter the MySQL administrative password you created during the previous installation, and that should be it! We now have a fully operational web development environment running on our Ubuntu box just waiting to play with :D

Testing phpMyAdmin

Now we should test phpMyAdmin to make sure everything is working properly. Simply open a web browser again and enter http://localhost/phpmyadmin and you should come to a page that asks you to log in. For the User, it will always be root and the password will be the one you created previously during installation.

And that is how you install LAMP inside Ubuntu :)

#ubuntu #LAMP

The day finally came, and I'm never looking back

Yes, that's right. I have finally made the switch from dual-booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.10 to pulling the plug on Windows and I am now fully converted to Ubuntu. I have never been happier. As I stated in my previous posts, I have longed to fully switch to Ubuntu for a very long time. I first started using Ubuntu when 8.04 LTS was up and running. I found out about this amazing OS that pretty much does everything both Windows and OS X does, only it was FREE. I haveused Ubuntu off and on for a long time, I mean over a span of least 10 years or so. So I tried it out and I absolutely loved it!! Back then, I did most of my gaming on the computer, so I didn't spend too much time on Ubuntu. Fast forward a few years later (more like a lot, really) and here I am, fully switched. I even got rid of my iPod Touch and went out and bought a SanDisk Sansa Fuze+. From now on, I will use only open source software unless I painstaking have to use Windowse for some horrible reason ;)

#Linux #Ubuntu

Thinking about Switching to Linux

I've been thinking about switching to Linux for awhile now and saying goodbye to Windows for my day-to-day computing. I would still use Windows (if I had to ;) ) for work which I'm sure I'll more then likely have no choice with the career I am going for. None the less, as far as gaming goes, I hardly ever play games on the computer; if any, they are web-based anyways. As for school, I mainly use hard drives to install Windows Server and for my Database course, I had to show relationships between tables, but I'm sure I could use an open-source alternative such as LibreOffice. That's the beauty of Linux: there is always an open source alternative to the best software out there. For example, Adobe Photoshop, probably one if the best proprietary image editing programs on the market, not to mention it runs at close to $800 - $1000 a pop. The open source alternative called gimp has everything you can do in Photoshop, and best of all it's free :)

So that's just my two cents. I'd honestly love it if I did go full Linux.

Freedom Toaster Update

I've installed and updated the distributions available on the Toaster. Currently, there is:

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Ubuntu 11.04

Fedora 16 Live and Install

OpenSUSE 12.1 Live

BackTrack 4 R2 Live

Freedomtoaster Maintenance

I am now in charge of maintaining the FreedomToaster at Seneca@York. What it is is a computer that you can use to download different versions of Linux. I will be making a few post-it "notes" on what I am going to be doing.

Currently, I updated the website http://freedomtoaster.senecac.on.ca to show what latest versions are on the toaster. So far, there is Fedora, Ubuntu and BackTrack available. I still need to get:

- Fedora 15 x86_64 DVD - Fedora 16 i868 Live CD - Ubuntu 11.10 i868 Live CD - BackTrack 5 x86_64 DVD

Joined the Android Programmers Klub (APK) & Linux Club!!!

Last Thursday was the first meeting of the semester for both the Android Programmers Klub and the Linux Club at Seneca@York!! I am very excited to be a member of both clubs as I have a huge interest in learning how to program for Android. As for Linux, I absolutely love using it. I'd take Linux over Windows any day, but of course, I require Windows for some of my courses at Seneca. I've used Linux on and off for a few years now, never really stayed fully on it though, always bouncing back and forth between it and Windows. I mainly go back to Windows for the gaming-aspect as Linux does have gaming capabilities, but not that much. All in all, I don't really game too much on the computer, more so on my Xbox 360. Maybe I'll make the full switch to Linux some day, maybe even tonight :P Only time will tell...

Here are links to both clubs at Seneca:

Android Programmers Klub (APK)

Linux Club

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