sdm networks weblog

Last year I got myself a new laptop. Actually it is my very first laptop ever. Although I never really wanted to have a laptop I found it useful to have one for studying purpose and more. Of course I set it up with Ubuntu.

Hardware

This is the configuration I bought the laptop with.

• Intel centrino 1.73GHz
• 1024MB RAM
• DVD+RW/R DVD+RW/R DL Writer
• 12″ Display 1280×800 WXGA Crystal Bright Display
• 80GB harddisk

Software

Ubuntu 6.10 is about to be the operating system of my choice. After installation I had to add some more applications to fit my needs, but all in all the base installation gives you quite a lot you need.

• Ubuntu 6.10 Base Installation
• Firefox Extensions
  • DOM Inspector (apt-get install firefox-dom-inspector)
  • Adblock
  • Web Developer
  • Download Statusbar
  • VideoDownloader
• Evolution
• Inkscape
• ntp-server
• mplayer, w32codecs
• banshee
• clamav
• j2sdk1.5
• ImageMagick
• gcc, g++, gcc-4.0, g++-4.0
• Gnome Applets
  • CPU Frequency Monitor
  • Network Monitor
• openvpn

Further Tweaking

If you like to have more recent mplayer versions then add the marillat source to the sources.list file. Remember to backup your sources.list before changing it!

echo “deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ sid main” >> /etc/apt/sources.list

Since we don’t have the public key of Christian Marillat we have to import it from the keyserver. You can do it like this:

gpg –recv-keys 07DC563D1F41B907 && gpg –export 07DC563D1F41B907 > marillat.sig sudo apt-key add marillat.sig

You might have to rerun the first line since gpg creates your personal config file when first running and doesn’t load it the first time. Just check the message given.

Suspending

All modes of suspending (to RAM, to Disk) are working now. At first Suspend to Disk didn’t work because my swap-disk wasn’t set up properly. I had a hell of a time figuring this out, but at last it works fine now. It takes some time to suspend (hibernate), but it’s worth the wait.

I’m not sure if one really needs the hibernate package, but here’s how to install it:

sudo apt-get install hibernate

Further Reading

• My first 48 hours enduring Ubuntu 5.04
• MSI Megabook s260 by Christian Wiedel