Comments for aliencam dot net blog.

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by eudinaesis

eudinaesis — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:11:42 +0000

Hi, I can't figure out how to get two of the tablet buttons, the reset button or the tablet-menu button, working in 9.10 – they worked fine earlier. You say they 'just worked' — any clue why they wouldn't for me? Perhaps because I originally installed this as xubuntu rather than ubuntu, and then installed the ubuntu-desktop on top?

Anyway, the tablet-menu button automatically blanks the screen, and the reset one doesn't do anything; neither shows up as keypresses with Xev or acpi_listen… arrrgh!

I can't seem to find your email on this page – anyhow, mine is eudinaesis … at … google's mail …

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by aliencam

aliencam — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 02:08:19 +0000

I get about 3 hours in 9.10, which is kind of upsetting, because I got 7+ hours in 8.10… I haven't done any battery tweaking yet, I might have to get on that. Firefox, flash (npviewer.bin) and banshee are my main battery killers. are you using powertop?

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by mace

mace — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:44:40 +0000

hows your battery life? I've got the same setup with the 8 cell battery, i can get around 6+ hours in Win7, only 2 or so in 9.10. Kinda new to Linux, any suggestions would be great.

Comment on Ubuntu 9.04 Setup Guide by aliencam

aliencam — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 02:43:35 +0000

you need to (in wacomcpl), go to stylus > tool buttons > then set "button 2" to "right" and "button 3" to middle. to get wacomcpl working, follow this: http://blog.aliencam.net/2010/01/wacom-cpl-config...

Comment on Ubuntu Setup Guide VIII. Wacom Tablet Config & Rotation by aliencam

aliencam — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:16:22 +0000

Do you have a thinkpad convertible tablet? The only reason I can think of that nothing would come back from "xsetwacom list" is if the tablet somehow isn't plugged in. In the x60/61/200 tablets, the tablet is wired in as USB (x60 might be serial), so you shouldn't be able to unplug it…

Comment on Ubuntu Setup Guide VIII. Wacom Tablet Config & Rotation by Igor G.

Igor G. — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:48:58 +0000

I followed your tutorial up until running "xsetwacom list", and I got nothing. Any ideas?

Comment on Ubuntu 9.04 Setup Guide by dan

dan — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 11:40:18 +0000

Hi Aliencam,

First of all thank you for your great website! It's very detailed and very helpful.

haves: x200t with Ubuntu Karmic 9.10
wants: Stylus and rotation work fine. I want to use the side button as a right click. Xorg is apparently history (looking for a solution for 3 hrs and getting nothing to work is frustrating). Can you help me to configure right click with wacom/fdi?

Thanks in advance.

Regards, Dan

Comment on Thinkpad Middle Mouse Scrolling in Ubuntu 8.10 by aliencam

aliencam — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:39:53 +0000

Another reason that there isn't much demand for these kind of simple configurations is that most linux users can figure out things like this, through google or some other means, even if they aren't programmers. I certainly do not claim to be a programmer, the most I can do is HTML and some BASH scripting. Most of what I post here is compiled from pieces I found on other websites (thats why I post a "sources" at the end usually).

because windows and OSX aren't free, the companies that make them can afford to hire artists, and "normal people" to see how things could be easier. Linux is rarely sponsored by a commercial company, and most of it's developers are volunteers. It is much harder to get these people who aren't inherently interested in something like Linux (artists, design people, etc) to volunteer their time and efforts.

Comment on Thinkpad Middle Mouse Scrolling in Ubuntu 8.10 by Jerk

Jerk — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:30:52 +0000

To answer your question more directly, which I figure is the least I can do after my shi**y comment, it's not as if the developers went out of there way to make Linux difficult — its just that the Windows and Macintosh developers /did/ go out of their way (probably because they were paid good money to do so) to make things easy in those operating systems.

For example, in Windows, this probably works very similarly to how it apparently works in Linux — there are low-level drivers that load some configuration data to decide how to behave. The only difference is, that in Windows, someone was paid good money to do the boring work of writing a GUI to write those configuration files, whereas in Linux, nobody has bothered.

Since the source is open, instead of complaining about it, a good solution would be to fix it yourself by writing a GUI to manipulate the .fdi files. It wouldn't be that difficult and afterwards you could stop feeling insecure about not being a programmer because you would be one.

-gmt

Comment on Thinkpad Middle Mouse Scrolling in Ubuntu 8.10 by Jerk

Jerk — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:16:25 +0000

Typical shi**y response that will just make you feel even more alienated, I suppose, but that isn't code and this isn't programming, imo.

Comment on Thinkpad Fan Control in Ubuntu by aliencam

aliencam — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:11:46 +0000

it should work, but I haven't tested it so i'm not sure… It wouldn't hurt anything to try.

Comment on Thinkpad Fan Control in Ubuntu by troll

troll — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:34:49 +0000

Does this work on the ideapad like lenovo s10?

Comment on Raw Configuration Logs 1 by sanktnelson

sanktnelson — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:02:12 +0000

okay, I have all the wacom input stuff sorted out now, this was very helpful: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/X61T I have not found a satisfactory solution for autorotation yet. Why actually doesn't acpid act on the events anymore? They're still visible with acpi_listen.

Comment on Raw Configuration Logs 1 by aliencam

aliencam — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:18:51 +0000

those should be resolved in wacomcpl (the wacon control panel). did you get that working yet?

I have exams this week, so I probably won't make any more progress until Friday.

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by aliencam

aliencam — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:54:19 +0000

I did just find how to do this using Arch Linux, you have to have the acpid daemon running though:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_Thinkp...

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by aliencam

aliencam — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:52:04 +0000

if you read the autorotation script on the wiki, it is an "if than" script, it just checks to see if the laptop is in tablet mode every 5 ms! Nobody that I found could get a working script to launch on an acpi event.

I did just check using acpi_listen, and putting the lid up and down in tablet mode DOES launch an event, they are:
DOWN: ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00005009
UP: ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 0000500a

I don't know why karmic won't execute custom acpi scripts, if that is true than that puts a dampener on some of my other plans…

it looks like this is you posting this bug, but everyone else with this problem should mark that they have this problem too on launchpad. Sanktnelson's bug report is at:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+...

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by aliencam

aliencam — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:52:04 +0000

I did just check using acpi_listen, and putting the lid up and down in tablet mode DOES launch an event, they are:
DOWN: ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 00005009
UP: ibm/hotkey HKEY 00000080 0000500a

I don't know why karmic won't execute custom acpi scripts, if that is true than that puts a dampener on some of my other plans…

Comment on Thinkpad Middle Mouse Scrolling in Ubuntu 8.10 by masterwang

masterwang — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:30:23 +0000

It actually worked! I have a X200 running Ubuntu 9.10. I tried everything from editing that fdi file to putting terminal commands in etc/rc.local… all failed. But your little script trick did the magic! May I kiss you?

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by sanktnelson

sanktnelson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:12:20 +0000

okay, read it. very frustrating. They just state that the acpi-stuff no longer works and then go and poll the hardware. Major suckage. Can anybody tell me what exactly they changed and how I can fix it?

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by sanktnelson

sanktnelson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:59:00 +0000

why would the auto-rotation scrpts use extra power (disclaimer: I didn't look at the above link yet)? They should be executed by acpid whenever it receives the "lid rotated and flipped" event and not be running otherwise. My problem currently is that karmic doesn't seem to be executing my custom acpi scripts at all. Any clue why this might be?

Comment on Raw Configuration Logs 1 by sanktnelson

sanktnelson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:54:02 +0000

have you managed to get the automatic tablet rotation to work yet? The custom acpi scripts I was using in Jaunty don't seem to be executed any more.
Also: I have to run "xsetwacom set "PnP Device (WACf008)" button2 3" to get the second stylus button to work as a right mouse click, which is a bit annoying. Also the eraser doesn't work for me.

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by aliencam

aliencam — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:41:34 +0000

I don't have auto rotation, and I really am not planning on it. I might try it out just to see how it is done, but from my experience auto rotation scripts increase power usage quite a bit, by causing more wakeups to check "is the lid flipped now?" every 50ms or so.

Unfortunately, the resource I used for auto rotation in the past is that same link you cited, so I don't know if that works still.

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by Stefano

Stefano — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:33:08 +0000

Do you have auto rotation working? I followed the instructions here (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/X61T) but flipping the screen does not change the rotation.

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by Stu

Stu — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:47:16 +0000

Thank you for the reply! I finally found out that the problem was having an SD card inserted when I tried to suspend. Unfortunately, I only realized this after I had wiped my system ^^; Ah well. On an unrelated note, you may want to take a look at this terminal based Pandora client for linux called Pianobar. It seems like something right up your alley: http://6xq.net/html/00/17.html

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by aliencam

aliencam — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:40:29 +0000

Yes, it works fine for me on a fresh install. It also worked fine for me before I reformatted, I had "upgraded" from 9.04 to the beta version of 9.10.

One thing that was in the release notes is that the default install does not always make the swap partition large enough to support hibernate, so make sure you change that.

Comment on Installing Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala by Stu

Stu — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:19:25 +0000

Suspend and Hibernate work for you? My X61T just blinks the little moon LED endlessly and never powers off. I installed the RC and just updated to 9.10, so maybe that has something to do with it… You haven't heard anything about this have you? You always have the most useful Ubuntu/X61T posts, keep up the good work :D

Comment on Lamy Vista/Safari Cleaning/Disassembly Guide by James

James — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:04:42 +0000

I was the same as Sam, removing the nib – after a couple of tries – worked wonders, it now works perfectly again. Its a wonder what a little google searching can achieve.

Thank you!!

Comment on Thinkpad Middle Mouse Scrolling in Ubuntu 8.10 by Driver Detective

Driver Detective — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:20:21 +0000

Linux seems to makes things so difficult for users that aren't already programmers. There's no way I would get all that code right if I had to go in and try to get it working this way.

Comment on Twitter posts this week. by aliencam

aliencam — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:57:08 +0000

Yes I do have a major problem with that happening on ASU campus. What seems to help a little bit is to use OpenDNS instead of ASU's normal DNS servers, but this doesn't always help.

Comment on Twitter posts this week. by Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:41:03 +0000

Hey, aliencam. Just wondering if you ever have problems with the wireless disconnecting and reconnecting all the time? If so, do you have any solutions?