Linux Mint

version 18

After using Ubuntu for the past ten years or so, I switched over to Linux Mint in late 2015. This distro is fantastic. I can program Android apps using Android Studio. I can program Arduino sketches using the Arduino IDE.

Do yourself a favor and give it a try.

Drupal

Installing Drupal on Ubuntu 12.04

This is Ubuntu 12.04 Desktop with the full GUI not Ubuntu Server.

I have a Dell Latitude C840 laptop with a brand new hard drive. There wasn't much value with selling it, so I decided to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on it and run a web server on it.

I followed these instructions to install Apache, MySQL, and PHP. The instructions are straightforward. Do *not* forget the password you chose for MySQL; you will need it later. The instructions also included install of PhpMyAdmin which isn't truly necessary, but it was useful to verify that the three pieces of software installed properly. Otherwise, you would get errors if you tried accessing http://localhost/phpmyadmin in a web browser.

Then I downloaded Drupal 7.19 to the desktop (which is the subdirectory /home/user/Desktop). Once that is done, issue the following commands in a Terminal window. Note that I plan on installing Drupal to a subdirectory.

  1. cd /home/user/Desktop
  2. sudo tar -xzvf drupal-7.19.tar.gz
  3. sudo mkdir /var/www/drupal
  4. sudo cp -r drupal_7.19/* /var/www/drupal
  5. sudo chmod a+w /var/www/drupal/sites/default
  6. sudo cp /var/www/drupal/sites/default/default.settings.php /var/www/drupal/sites/default/settings.php
  7. sudo chmod a+w /var/www/drupal/sites/default/settings.php

Steps 5-7 are mentioned in Drupal's INSTALL.TXT file.

Open another Terminal window and issue the following commands to configure MySQL for Drupal.

  1. mysql -u root -p
  2. CREATE DATABASE drupal;
  3. CREATE USER 'drupal'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '1234';
  4. GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON drupal.* TO 'drupal'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;

You will need to enter the MySQL password for Step 1. In Steps 2-4, you are actually commanding MySQL and a semicolon is required. Also, you can chose a different database name than drupal and a different password than 1234.

Everything should be ready for you to install Drupal at this point, so open up a web browser and type http://localhost/drupal

Joomla

Installing Joomla on Ubuntu 12.04

This is Ubuntu 12.04 Desktop with the full GUI not Ubuntu Server.

I have a Dell Latitude C840 laptop with a brand new hard drive. There wasn't much value with selling it, so I decided to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on it and run a web server on it.

I followed these instructions to install Apache, MySQL, and PHP. The instructions are straightforward. Do *not* forget the password you chose for MySQL; you will need it later. The instructions also included install of PhpMyAdmin which isn't truly necessary, but it was useful to verify that three pieces of software installed properly. Otherwise, you would get errors if you tried accessing http://localhost/phpmyadmin in a web browser.

Then I downloaded Joomla 2.5.9 to the desktop (which is the subdirectory /home/user/Desktop). Once that is done, issue the following commands in a Terminal window. Note that I plan on installing Joomla to a subdirectory.

  1. cd /home/user/Desktop
  2. sudo tar -xzvf joomla-2.5.9.tar.gz
  3. sudo mkdir /var/www/joomla
  4. sudo cp -r joomla-2.5.9/* /var/www/joomla

Open another Terminal window and issue the following commands to configure MySQL for Joomla.

  1. mysql -u root -p
  2. CREATE DATABASE joomla;
  3. CREATE USER 'joomla'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '1234';
  4. GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON joomla.* TO 'joomla'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
  5. exit;

You will need to enter the MySQL password for Step 1. In Steps 2-4, you are actually commanding MySQL and a semicolon is required. Also, you can chose a different database name than joomla and a different password than 1234.

Type sudo chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/joomla/. This last command will change the ownership of the joomla subdirectory from root.

Everything should be ready for you to install Joomla at this point, so open up a web browser and type http://localhost/joomla

Firewire LAN

Ethernet over Firewire (Firewire LAN)

This page is about how to create a peer-to-peer connection between Ubuntu and Windows XP using Firewire.

The Windows PC is a Dell Latitude D620 laptop PC running Windows XP SP3. It is not on the internet. By default in Windows XP, C:\Document and Settings\All Users\Shared Documents\ directory is already set up as being shared. So, I will try to connect to that folder once have the network set up.

The Linux PC is a Dell Precision M6300 laptop running Ubuntu 12.04, Windows XP SP2, and Windows 7 in a triple-boot configuration.

The Firewire CardBus card used in the D620 is Dynex brand. When plugged into the D620, it was automatically recognized and a 1394 Connection automatically showed up under Network Connections. The M6300 has a built-in Firewire port.

For Ubuntu, I followed the instructions at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EthernetOverFirewire to activate the Firewire driver.

For this private network, I chose 172.16.0.1 as the static IP address for the 1394 Net Adapter in the D620 and 172.16.0.2 as the static IP address for the M6300's Firewire port.

To make sure the two PCs "see" each other, I tried ping'ing the D620 from the M6300 first and was successful. Then, I simply went to Places -> Connect to Server on the M6300 and entered
Server: Dell-D620
Type: Windows share
Share: SharedDocs
Domain name: MSHOME
User name: xxxxx
Password: xxxxx

Gigabit Ethernet

USB2 and ExpressCard Gigabit Ethernet devices

This is about my experience with the Syba SD-EXP24010 Gigabit ExpressCard Adapter and a no-name USB-to-Gigabit Ethernet Adapter.

A thunderstorm with lighting had zapped the Gigabit Ethernet port on my Dell Precision M6300.

This laptop has a dual-boot of Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and Ubuntu Linux 12.04 32-bit.

I needed to replace the built-in Gigabit Ethernet port to be able to get online.

I purchased the Syba SD-EXP24010 Gigabit ExpressCard Adapter from Newegg. It shipped from their warehouse in NJ, and I received it in 2 days. Detected automatcially by Ubuntu Linux 12.04. It has the Realtek RTL8111 chipset. The latest drivers can be downloaded at www.realtek.com.tw

I also purchased a generic USB-to-Gigabit Ethernet device from a seller on eBay. It shipped from Pennsylvania, and I received it in 3 days. This device was not automatically detected by Ubuntu Linux 11.04 but was automatically detected in Ubuntu 12.04.

[Relevant to Ubuntu 11.04 only] From a search on Google, I determined that I needed to build the driver. The device did come with a miniCD with source files to build a Linux driver, but Ubuntu Linux 11.04 has the newer 2.6.38 kernel. From the miniCD, I saw that the device has the Asix AX88178 chipset, so I went to Asix's website www.asix.com.tw and downloaded the source files required to build the driver for the 2.6.38 kernel to my desktop. I double-clicked on the downloaded tar.bz2 file and extracted to a known directory. I opened a Terminal window and went to the directory where I had extracted the source files. Then I executed make and sudo make install. I rebooted, and I had a working connection.

Puppy Linux

Puppy Linux 4.3.1 on IBM Thinkpad 600E

I am still running Puppy Linux 4.3.1 on my IBM Thinkpad 600E with 288MB of RAM.

Puppy Linux 4 on Toshiba Satellite 2065CDS

Choose Xvesa 800 x 600 x 16 for the video. Xorg locked up the PC.


For Cardbus PC cards to work, the BIOS setting for PC Card must be changed from Autodetect to 16-bit/Cardbus. This setting is on the 2nd page of the BIOS.

Ethernet works with a 3Com 3C574-TX PC card that I bought on eBay.

Wifi works "out of the box" with 3Com 3CRWE154G72 and D-Link DWL-G630 PC cards that I bought on eBay. I did not test WEP or WPA with either PC cards.

Wifi works with Netgear WG511 using ndiswrapper and the Windows XP drivers. There are a few different versions of the WG511 card. Mine is WG511 v3 as described here.

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