Tonylog http://tonylog.altervista.org What geeks like Sat, 24 Oct 2009 16:33:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 en hourly 1 Tonylog redesign. What do you think? http://tonylog.altervista.org/2009/01/15/tonylog-redesign-what-do-you-think/ http://tonylog.altervista.org/2009/01/15/tonylog-redesign-what-do-you-think/#comments Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:22:31 +0000 Tonylog http://tonylog.altervista.org/?p=113 During last week I did a redesign of the blog . I focused on the development of valid Xhtml and CSS. The main issue addressed was the readability of the blog posts. I also changed the Xhtml so to make it  semantically valid. Thank you to the people that sent me an email addressing this issue.

What do you think of tonylog now? Please let me know by sending a comment from the about tonylog page.

]]> http://tonylog.altervista.org/2009/01/15/tonylog-redesign-what-do-you-think/feed/ Install NetBeans on Arch Linux http://tonylog.altervista.org/2009/01/14/how-to-install-netbeans-on-arch-linux/ http://tonylog.altervista.org/2009/01/14/how-to-install-netbeans-on-arch-linux/#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:32:17 +0000 Tonylog http://tonylog.altervista.org/?p=112 NetBeans is one of the most complete and used IDES out there. It is mainly used for Java software development but recently it has been improved with support for Php. With NetBeans any project can be brought from its very initial design stage, with UML, Use case diagrams to its final development with the support of ant scripts and CVS. On this blog post I am going to write a guide on how to install NetBeans on Arch.

In my Netbeans install I decided to use the shellscript of the version 6.10, given that the arch repository doesn’t have it.  NetBeans 6.10 is the latest version currently available at the NetBeans official website. The download size is 245 MB, so get comfortable.

After the download we need to install our new Netbeans on arch.  So, firstly we need to make the file downloaded executable (as a super user chmod +x name_of_the_file) then we need to run it (./name_of_the_file.sh or .bin). After the execute command is issued, given that your arch has a JVM correctly installed, the netbeans installer will come up. Following the step by step guide will allow you to install Netbeans on your system.

I received emails from people that had problems on arch with netbeans and tiled window managers such as dwm. For some reason the default advanced window toolkit shows some big grey boxes instead of the IDE. To solve this problem you need to reset to the MToolkit with the command: export AWT_TOOLKIT = MToolKit. At this point starting Netbeans with the command netbeans should correctly show “the only IDE you need”…quotation from the website.

]]> http://tonylog.altervista.org/2009/01/14/how-to-install-netbeans-on-arch-linux/feed/ Install and configure xorg and dwm on arch linux http://tonylog.altervista.org/2008/12/15/how-to-install-configure-xorg-dwm-on-arch-linux/ http://tonylog.altervista.org/2008/12/15/how-to-install-configure-xorg-dwm-on-arch-linux/#comments Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:02:16 +0000 Tonylog http://tonylog.altervista.org/?p=108 This is a tutorial on how to install and configure dwm on arch linux. Given that dwm runs on X, as most window managers do, there is a guide on how to install Xorg on arch as well. Both, will guide you through step by step in an hopefully easy way.

Installing all packages myself on arch linux I thought i might as well try something new and adventurous. Looking around the web I found a few enthustiac programmers that use tiled window managers. Researching i found that the one for me is dwm.

Main characteristics of dwm are size, it weighs less than 10 MB dependencies included, and possibility of customisation, given that it is written in C and that its code its very readable. Going to the official website of dwm I found this description:

dwm is a dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled, monocle and floating layouts. Either layout can be applied dynamically, optimising the environment for the application in use and the task performed.

So far it sounds very good! Light, fast, few dependencies. Regarding the customisation bit……every time a change is made you need to recompile and reinstall. It may seem a bit crazy, however, thinking about it:

  • There is no risk to introduce obscure bugs with config files
  • If you make a mistake nothing will freeze, it will not compile giving you the chance to fix
  • It is faster

Ok let me take dwm for a spin.

When installing arch linux, no Xorg is shipped with it so before installing dwm, Xorg has to be installed and configured. Fairly straight forward….

pacman -Sy xorg

Once xorg is downloaded and installed we need to configure it. There are many tools around but the favourite one  in the arch community is hwd

pacman -S hwd

hwd is a program that automates the production of the xorg.conf file. This configuration file is the most important as it sets the drivers and paths for:

  • Keyboard
  • Mouse
  • Video Card
  • Monitor
  • Fonts

Once hwd is installed we need to create the xorg.conf file with:

hwd -xa

This command will create two xorg.conf files:

  • Default vesa driver xorg
  • Video card specific xorg (which won’t work if you don’t have your card drivers installed)

The moment of truth

To verify the xorg files we need to run X with a different xorg.conf, to achieve this we need to use the command:

X -config name_of_the_conf_file

So let’s do it!

cd /etc/X11

X -config xorg.conf.vesa

The TWM window manager should start up. To run your card’s specific conf use its xorg file, xorg.conf.ati, xorg.conf.nvidia or xorg.conf.trident (in my case :) ). Once, you are certain of having a working conf file rename it to xorg.conf (eg. mv xorg.conf.vesa xorg.conf) so that when you startx it is automatically loaded.

Xorg is now configured. Let’s install dwm

pacman -S dwm

When done we need to set dwm to startup when we invoke startx instead of TWM, to achieve this we need to edit the file xinitrc so from the home directory:

cd /etc/X11/xinit

vi xinitrc

Here we need to find the line that says:

#Start some nice programs
twm&
xclock …
xterm …
xterm …
exec xterm…

Comment the above lines and add:

exec dwm

Now the command startx will start dwm as your window manager.

Resources:

]]> http://tonylog.altervista.org/2008/12/15/how-to-install-configure-xorg-dwm-on-arch-linux/feed/ Arch Linux a new adventure ahead http://tonylog.altervista.org/2008/12/14/arch-linux-a-new-adventure-ahead/ http://tonylog.altervista.org/2008/12/14/arch-linux-a-new-adventure-ahead/#comments Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:46:08 +0000 Tonylog http://tonylog.altervista.org/?p=107 Ubuntu has lately become a bit of a distro reserved to slightly more powerful machines with fancy desktop effects and lots of (not always) useful applications. Given that I have no intention to upgrade my system in the near fufure and that Ubuntu was running short of RAM I started looking around for a Linux distro slightly more compact.

While spending one of this long afternoons in the ITL (Information Technology Lab) i saw a friend of mine with its laptop. Knowing the, not very generous, specs of the machine I asked what distro he was running on it, the answer was Arch Linux.

Reading the installation guide on the website I was conviced by a couple of sentences.

Reminiscent of *BSD, Arch is installed as a minimal base system. The base system only includes the Linux kernel and GNU. Bash is the included shell. During installation, the user may choose to install a handful of extra libraries and modules, and only a few basic command line tools such as make and links. From the command line, the system is then expanded into whatever the user requires by pulling in software from internet repositories via pacman, the Arch package manager. This means there are virtually no ’system defaults’ beyond the slim package set of the base system. The user is given complete control of their system by choosing all additional packages themselves, and in so doing, assembles a completely customized system tailored for their own unique and individual needs.

Arch is what I was looking for for my beloved old dear.

]]> http://tonylog.altervista.org/2008/12/14/arch-linux-a-new-adventure-ahead/feed/ Come installare NDISwrapper su ubuntu http://tonylog.altervista.org/2008/04/29/come-installare-ndiswrapper-su-ubuntu/ http://tonylog.altervista.org/2008/04/29/come-installare-ndiswrapper-su-ubuntu/#comments Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:24:21 +0000 Tonylog http://tonylog.altervista.org/?p=103 NDISwrapper LogoChe cosa è NDISwrapper? essendo a conoscenza del fatto che molti produttori di periferiche non rendono publiche le specifiche tecniche di alcuni dei loro prodotti, gli sviluppatori Linux trovano molto difficile per non dire impossibile lo sviluppo di driver. Comunque tutti i Linuxiani trovano sempre una soluzione, qui NDISwrapper diventa utile. Il progetto NDISwrapper usa delle API e NDIS (Network Driver Interface Specification) native di Windows al fine di far funzionare periferiche windows su linux. NDISwrapper e stato creato nativamente per l’uso con wireless cards non supportate da linux ed ubuntu in particolare, comunque come scoprirete le wi-fi card non sono le sole perifieriche che fa “girare” su linux.

Installare NDISwrapper su Ubuntu è molto semplice specialmente con il package manager Synaptic, bisogna, inizializzare il package manager, inserire la password di root e con l’icona cerca dobbiamo trovare il pacchetto ndiswrapper-common, segnarlo per l’installazione ed installarlo, il pacchetto dovrebbe risolvere la dipendenza con ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 (cioè dovrebbe installarlo in automatico), se non è stato installato di nuovo cerca e questa volta ndiswrapper-utils-1.9, marca ed installa.

Fatto!

Cosa bisogna fare adesso è installare i driver windows sulla nostra linux box e divertirci ed usare periferiche windows su Linux Ubuntu.

Se trovate difficile l’installazione delle vostre periferiche windows su linux potete seguire questa guida su come installare driver CAB o EXE su linux in inglese.

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