If you know Linux like the back of your hand, just take a look at the acer-acpi project, and acer-acpi-deb where you will find the .deb files.

First up: the drivers for my wireless were already loaded. If there are no drivers available for your wireless card then this is not for you. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry!

This little trick works for many Acer laptop models, and quite a few other brands as well (have a look at the Supported Hardware for an incomplete list).

First up, we need to download the digital “signature” of the nice people who package the acer-acpi drivers, so that we can be sure they are who they say they are. Open up Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal, and type this bizarre line of code:

wget http://www.mumblyworld.info/ubuntu/depot.key -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Make sure you get it all! You will need to put in your password when it asks. (And yes, even though it doesn’t give you any indication, your password is going in. Just type it and press Enter.)

Basicaly, wget downloads the digital signature (key), and then the little | symbol sends it to the next program, apt-key, which adds it to our list of trusted keys. sudo means super-user do, and that will be explained in a future tutorial

Next, we need to add the repository that contains the Ubuntu-compatible packages of this driver. Open up System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager (if you’ve never used this program, check out my other post first). Then click Settings -> Repositories. This is where you edit which repositories (software databases) you want to search. Click on the Third Party Software tab, and then click Add:

In the box, enter:

deb http://www.mumblyworld.info/ubuntu gutsy main

or, if you are using a different version of Ubuntu, replace gutsy with its nickname (for example, if you are using Ubuntu 7.04, replace gutsy with feisty.

Click Add Source, and it should show up in the Software Sources window. Make sure it is checked (enabled), then press Close.

It may pop up a warning letting you know that you need to reload the software database. This is fine.

Back in Synaptic, click the Reload button (top left corner), and wait for it to download the new package information from the internet (this may take a while). Then scroll down and find the package called acer-acpi. Double-click it, so that it turns green (ready to install):

Click Apply, and the new acer-acpi drivers will be installed! This may be enough, and they will get loaded when you restart your computer. If not, we can force them to be loaded. Just open Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal, and type in:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

followed by your password if it asks. This file contains drivers to load, even if the computer doesn’t think you need them (it does no harm if you load drivers for hardware you don’t have). Each driver should be on a new line, so at the bottom of the file, on a new line, type in acer_acpi (use an underscore ‘_’ this time, not a hyphen ‘-’).

Save the file and close. You can now restart your computer, and the new drivers should be loaded!

~ub

STOP. Don’t listen to them for a second! Before I start, here is a quick overview of software packaging:

In Microsoft Windows, program authors are expected to provide their own installers for their programs. These sometimes get messy, and all trust is put in the author to provide a nice uninstall program too, which uninstalls everything.

In Mac OSX, program authors convert their programs into .app files, which are similar to .zip files in that they contain all the useful program data. It is then hoped that the user copies this file into a sensible location (the Applications folder), but this is not forced, so sometimes programs end up in very odd places!

In Linux, there are many different distributions (brands), and most are not necessarily compatible. For this reason, program authors usually don’t bother making versions of their software for every different distribution, they just provide you with the source code and let you figure it out for yourself! (I know, aren’t they generous?)

Ubuntu is part of a family of Linux distributions that use a system called APT. Basically, APT is a really complicated database that keeps track of which programs you have installed, and some that are available to you to install. It also remembers where it has installed programs, in case you ever wish to uninstall them. Luckily for us, the nice people at Ubuntu (with help from others, of course), have added basically every Linux application available to this APT database!

To access the database, open up System ->Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. Inside, you will find a massive list (about 25,000 on my system) of programs that you can install with the click of a button!

Try searching for the program you wanted to install.. I bet it is there!

To install, simply double-click on the application name, so that it turns green (or try clicking on the checkbox next to it), then press Apply. There is also a Reload button, which downloads the latest package list from the web.

Sometimes, the program you want to install will require you to install other packages alongside it. Go ahead and accept this- it’s not spyware, I promise! Basically this is because Linux (and more generally, all open-source) programmers like to share, so often a new program will require another program that someone else has written. These are known as dependencies.

If you can’t find your program, don’t worry. It’s probably a good idea to ask on the Ubuntu Forums before trying to compile (ie, type make) into a terminal. Quite often, if your program is very new, someone will have already made a package that is not yet in the official package list. Other times, your program is actually included in a different package, which is why you can’t find it!

Happy installing!

~ub

Right-click on the Volume Applet in the notification area (the one that looks like a speaker), and select Open Volume Control.

In the Volume Control window, click Edit -> Preferences. Then tick every single option you see (you can always un-tick them later, if they annoy you). Next, start playing a music file somewhere, and progressively go along raising the volume of each channel and un-muting it. As an example, the sound from my laptop speakers comes through the Surround channel, which is muted (and hidden) by default. If this doesn’t work, you could also try fiddling with the different options in the Switches and Options tabs, if you have them.

One final note: If your sound doesn’t work, have a look under File -> Change Device in the Volume Control program, and see if you have more than one audio device (for example, I have two different drivers available for my one sound card). If you do, try playing around with the settings found in System -> Preferences-> Sound, and change the default audio device.

Quite often you can save yourself a lot of time trying to figure out why the sound isn’t working, when it is simply an obscure, muted channel!

~ub

Start by looking in System -> Preferences -> Appearance. In here you can find many display-related settings. Head over to the Fonts tab, and then click Details..

At the top of the Font Rendering Details dialog, you can see a Resolution setting. Cut this down a bit: I recommend 80 dpi.

Now, this may be enough for you, but I have found this has an unwanted side effect: font sizes for some web pages viewed in Firefox become too small! I have no idea why this happens, but to fix it, open Firefox, and in the address bar, type in about:config. This is the place to go for hundreds of hidden Firefox settings. In the Filter box, type in dpi. You should see one setting appear: layout.css.dpi:

Change this setting from -1 to 0 and restart Firefox. Hey presto, font sizes are back to normal!

~ub

I intend to update this site with short tutorials and explanations of anything Ubuntu/Linux related. Ubuntu is not Windows, and quite often it is the small differences that confuse us. So most of these tutorials will fall into the category of “I wish someone had told me that when I was learning!”.

So for now, happy learning!

~ub