Web Camera

My Sony Vaio FE790G has a built-in web cam, a "Motion Eye" lens located in the top edge of the LCD screen border. Last time I tried Ubuntu, in 8.10, I couldn't get it recognised, but the truth is I didn't do much research and I probably didn't expect it to work. I know that in Windows XP, I needed to install special Sony-provided driver.

This time around, given that I am trying to get as deep into the Ubuntu/Linux world as possible, I did some googling, and found this very lengthy and comprehensive thread from other users of Sony Vaios with Motion Eye web cams. It seems that was was needed was something called a "gspcav" driver.

I actually got as far as downloading the driver source code and attempting to compile it (failed) before I thought to ask Ubuntu/Linux whether the driver was already installed:

    $  modprobe -l | grep gspca
 

This command seems to indicate that this is already present on the system. But how to activate the camera? I tried running Gimp and creating a new image from a scanned source, and some intermediate helper application called xsane popped up and allowed me to "scan" from the camera. The results were not encouraging:

That's me holding up my hand in front of the camera, but you can see my Escher print in the background. Do the three copies of the image represent RGB scans? Is this because the xsane program thinks it is talking to a flatbed scanner? I have no idea, but clearly there is a possibility that I can get the webcam to work. More on this as I get around to it, as having a working web camera is not the highest priority right now.

Printing

"It just works" almost applies. My traditional default printer is a Minolta/QMS Magicolor 2350 EN Laser printer, networked on the LAN. I turned it on and went to System > Administration > Printing. Click on the New toolbar button, and up comes the New Printer dialog, giving me a list of two choices: "Other" or "Network Printer". When I clicked on Network Printer, the list expanded to show an addition entry: "Minolta-QMS magicolor 2350 192.168.100.3". The Location host and port parameters were already filled out with 192.168.100.3 and 9100 respectively. Very cool.

I clicked Next and saw briefly "Searching for drivers…", then "Searching for downloadable drivers…", then a new dialog, "Choose Driver". This gave me three options: Select printer from database; Provide PPD file; Search for a printer driver to download. Always the optimist, I selected Select printer from database. The comprehensive manufacturer list contained three possible choices: KONICA MINOLTA; Minolta; and QMS. I tried each of them, and the closest I could get to was Minolta > magicolor 2300 DL. I tried this, and long story short, it didn't work. (I would have been very surprised if it did.) My test page was rendered as a few garbage characters at the top of what could have been a vast number sheets of paper, had I not switched the printer off.

I tried the third option, Search for a printer driver to download. This appeared to be searching the same database as the first option because I could not find a better match from the results. Time to try google to see if I could find a .PPD file for the printer. I can't remember what search terms I used but it can't have been 10 seconds before I got to this gem:

http://www.openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=KONICA_MINOLTA-Magicolor_2350

This led me to download 2350lin_ppds.tar.gz, which contained a bunch of language folders, and inside the English folder was KM2350NP.ppd, which allowed me to select the Provide PPD file option. This worked perfectly. I can now print from applications, in duplex too.

This was no harder than searching for printer drivers in Window XP, in some ways easier, particularly in cases where you don't have a CD from the printer manufacturer stuffed with drivers for your convenience.

I plugged my camera into a spare USB port, and waited. It just works… Ubuntu recognised the attached storage and prompted me for an application. I chose F-Spot Photo Manager because it seemed like the right thing to do, and successfully copied the images to the filesystem. That is a complete success, in my book, except for the following issues:

• I'd created a folder ~/pictures/camera but for some reason I could not copy the images from the camera to that location. I ended up putting them in ~/pictures instead, and then moving them manually later.
• By default Ubuntu apparently created a directory called ~/Photos for me but I swear I don't remember seeing it before. Did F-Spot do this, or am I just blind? [Update: The directory was created last night, so I expect F-Spot did it, or perhaps Ubuntu did after it recognised the camera.]
• I couldn't figure out how to move the images from the camera (thus relieving me of the need to delete them from the camera in a separate operation).

(The camera is a FujiFilm FinePix 602z. The laptop is a Sony Vaio FE790G.)

I have Windows XP running in a Virtual Box 2.2 virtual machine now. I gave it 950 MB of RAM, very smooth now that the VirutalBox Machine Additions are installed. Seemless Mode is mindblowing the first time you see it – that's where you have Windows XP applictions floating in the Ubuntu desktop with no container window. For now I have it set back to "normal" mode. Both it and the host Ubuntu OS seem to be getting their IP addresses via DHCP, I never had to specify an IP although I had some all ready to assign to them. I suspect that static IPs will be required at some point…

This blog website looked a little weird in Ubuntu until I installed the Microsoft Core TrueType fonts for Linux. I should do something about that at some point, I guess. On the other hand, I'm not ashamed that my heritage is Windows, so for now, it can stay the way it is.

The Flash plugin isn't installed by default but it was very straightforward to install. I just followed the "Click here to install" link and it worked. Quicktime was almost as easy – it seems that there is a plugin registered to Quicktime but it needs some codecs, but again, it prompts you for the installation and after a few minutes, it just works. Great.

Now, I have all my Windows documents, etc, backed up on to our NAS drive, and although Ubuntu found the network resource and let me browse it (it helps to use the same username/password for every device on the LAN), it seems that many Ubuntu/Gnome applications won't load files from network drives. The "Open File" dialog will allow you to go there and select a file, but it doesn't seem to take effect. Two examples: Restoring my Firefox bookmarks from a .JSON  backup – I needed to copy the .json file into my home directory on the local filesystem before it worked. Also, copying some truetype fonts in to the /usr/share/fonts folder: I was running the File Browser as root, but it still wouldn't let me drag and drop from the network drive. I had to copy the ttf files to a local temp path, and drag and drop from there.

Speaking of the Linkstation network drive, the Windows VM could see it, no problem. Again – I'm using the same username/password for the Windows login. I realise as I write this that I haven't verified that Windows applications can read and write files on the Linux filesystem, but if VirtualBox is anything like VMWare's software, I'm sure there is a way to set up a shared folder and mount it in Windows Explorer.

This post is being written from inside Firefox runing on Ubuntu 9.04.I repartioned the disk into one single EXT4 partition – Windows XP has gone, but the plan is to bring it back via a virtual machine in Virtual Box.

I backed up all my files to our handy network attached storage, a Buffalo LinkStation 250 GB, and I've confirmed that I can access the files from Ubuntu, without any additional configuration. It just scanned the network, it showed up as an icon, and I double-clicked on it and entered my username and password (nothing different about that). It just works. Very cool.

I see the update Manager has just notified me that there are updates. I suppose I should let it have its way with the OS for a bit.

I'm writing this post from inside of Firefox running on Ubuntu 8.04 on my Sony Vaio laptop. Let me give props to the Ubuntoi, because the install process was very smooth, and it detected my screen resolution first time (1280×800) and the networking/internet connectivity just worked. I can contrast this experience with the Windows XP Professional install I performed yesterday on the other partition, and let me tell you, it was all about 800×600 and no network until I had installed the Sony-specific drivers downloaded laboriously last week from support.sony.com.

But let's rewind and discuss some background: My laptop hard drive has been filling up and I was short on free space. So I went into a frenzy of backing up important personal files, uninstalling unused applications, defragging, etc, and after a while it really felt like time to perhaps reinstall the operating system from scratch.

Many people will criticize Windows and even call the need to periodically reinstall the OS the "Windows Tax". Let me say here and now that Windows XP has been running flawlessly on my laptop for a year and a half without blue-screening once. It went to sleep, hibernated, did everything a boy could want, and never complained. It has been great, and my urge to "clean house" had nothing to do with the OS performance.

The thing about Windows XP dropping out of the retail channel as of June 30 reminded me that I had no easy way to recover my laptop OS if something happened to the hard disk. Sony Laptops have a special, hidden partition that contains "system restore" information that, if you hold your tongue the right way on bootup (and press F10 or something), will reformat your main partition and put things back the way they were when I bought it. Coupla things wrong with that:

• It's Windows XP Media Center Edition, with multi-megabytage of extra stuff I don't want, not counting the shovelware stuff like AOL or whatever;
• What if the hard drive fails? 

I could have sent away for the (optional?!) set of System Restore CD's but chances are it would be Vista Home Premium version, *vomit*, (which actually would have come with the laptop when I bought it except that Vista *ahem* wasn't ready yet). Also, there was a utility on the harddrive that would create the System Restore CDs for me if I asked nicely and gave it a couple of blank CD-Rs to play with. So I did that.

Now, I was free to reclaim that unuseable space, if I repartioned the drive… and I'd be able to restore Windows from the CDs.But that would still leave me with Window MCE. And I've heard that Windows Server 2003 makes a really nice desktop OS… so perhaps this was a good opportunity to try it out?

Yeah, long story short: Windows Server 2003 is particular about the device drivers it talks to. By default, I had 1024×768 non-native LCD resolution,un-accellerated graphics, and no network connectivity. The afore-mentioned Sony drivers looked like they were going to work: first networking… success! Then video…. no go. And neither Sony nor Intel make Windows Server 2003 drivers for the hardware in my Vaio.And believe me, once I got the Ethernet driver loaded, I searched for them.

No biggie. Back to tried and trusted Windows XP – Professional this time, not the MC edition. I booted up on my Norton Partition Magic 8.0 CD to re-format C: ready for the next attempt, and discovered that, somehow, it recognised Windows Server was there and refused to run! Really! It said "Partition Magic is not supported on Windows Server. Press any key to reboot" or words to that effect. And here I was thinking that I was booting on the CD in order to take the installed OS out of the equation…

To the rescue: my Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD. This is a great tool. Booting on the Live CD puts you into a Linux desktop, and System->Administration->Partition Editor, and you're there. It can reformat a partition with NTFS despite the fact that you're running Linux. I think that was when I noticed that Linux got the screen resolution and network connectivity working without breaking a sweat…

Ok. So I decided now was a good time to give Linux (or to be precise, the Ubuntu distribution of Linux) a fair shake, and used the partiion editor to create three partions on the 100GB hard disk: 47GB for Windows, 47 GB for Linux, and 4 GB left over for Linux swap space. (It's easy to overlook this until too late. Fortunately, the Ubunu install gently reminds you to do it – but I'm getting ahead of myself.)

Rebooting on the Windows XP Professional CD followed, and the Sony drivers all installed cleanly, leaving me with a much less cluttered environment than when I first started using the Vaio. I got web browsing and email working, then said "What the heck" and rebooted on the Ubuntu Live CD, this time selecting the Install option.

Which prety much brings us up-to-date. I have configured Evolution for email and so far it seems to work. Obviously web browsing is working. I have no idea what my IP address is… so what are the next steps?

• Finding out what the linux-equivalent to IPCONFIG /ALL is;
• Getting me some Microsoft TrueType font goodness (the default fonts in Ubuntu are ok, but not great);
• Seeing if I can get Wireless networking to function;
• Sleeping? Hibernating? Power Management?
• How do I take a screenshot?
• Can I see my LinkStation 250 attached network storage? (That's where my backups are)

Of course, I still have my Windows XP available. I don't expect to be giving it up anytime soon.