Going back to Ubuntu 12.10

So, installing Ubuntu 12.10 on my HP laptop came with some unforeseen issues, but I think they are mostly sorted at this point.

After install, I had to go to /etc/apt/sources.lst to change all references to old-releases.ubuntu.com which is to be expected from an OS that is no longer supported.  I also decided to grab all the updates which took a bit of time to do.  It asked me to reboot which turned out to be a bad decision as I forgot to install the kernel headers and source which meant I had no wifi when I rebooted.  Why on earth did Ubuntu not auto-install the kernel source when these dkms dependent packages need them is beyond me.

So, to solve the lack of wifi from my Broadcom Wifi Card (4313, if I'm not mistaken), I had to boot back to the old kernel.  Right after the laptop's POST and just before booting Ubuntu I hit the shift key to get the grub menu.  The old kernel is at the advance option.  This allowed me to get my wifi back.  Then, I did some serious apt-getting.

$  sudo apt-get install linux linux-headers-generic kernel-package

After that, I loaded Software Sources and disabled and re-enabled the Broadcom drivers which did some apt-getting and dkms work on its own.  Reboot after and voila, wifi on a new kernel.  Now for fglrx.

Random thoughts: Wii and Youtube PLUS Latest on ALSA

I've been playing around with the Youtube app from the Nintendo Shop Channel and the old Wii and it buffers like there's no tomorrow.  I found a tip online that suggested to set the MTU (Maximum transmission unit) to 1500 instead of 0.  A higher MTU means more data is being transmitted per packet.  This seemed to improve the Youtube streaming.

On ALSA and Ubuntu, the last bit of my research lead me to Realtek's own ALSA fork as the daily HDA drivers from Ubuntu do not do me any good.  I could not wrap my mind around trying to dkms it, so instead, I'm going to shop around for a decent sound card.

That's all!

Ubuntu 13.10 and Wifi

Seems like there's an issue where wifi keeps dropping on my new Ubuntu 13.10.  So, I found this article that seemed to help.  These are the commands:

sudo modprobe -rv wl
sudo apt-get remove --purge bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo modprobe -v brcmsmac

Unsurprising Failure of being with AMD

Today, I upgraded my HP Pavilion G4-2123TX from 12.10 to 13.04.  I was very leery of the AMD hardware and I expected problems.  Well, I got them alright!

First off, the AMD drivers bombed HARD.  No amount of reinstall and reconfigure would help.  I would two helpful links that helped me get through this (here and here).  It is annoying to see AMD hardware fail so hard at simply working but such is the life of AMD owners.

Next problem was the wifi.  No matter what I did, I could not get my wifi to work with my security even though everything worked perfectly fine on the old 12.10 install.  I changed my security to WPA/TKIP from WPA2/AES and that seemed to help quite a bit (which messed with the wifi connectivity of my phone.  Ah, c'est la vie.)

Lastly, dual monitor is broken in my laptop.  Broken.  Bad.  Still no solution in sight yet.

Update: WPA, Ubuntu, and my Linksys WUSB54GC

I've been analyzing the logs from syslog and kern.log and I can see no real errors happening during the instance of the failure.  I can further confirm that reconnecting will not fix the connection stability.  Also, I can clearly see that rekeying does not bring down the internet connection.

What seems to stabilize the connection is if I re-apply my router settings on WiFi.  Then, it will run without issues for a while and then run into the connection drops.  It doesn't totally disconnect from my access point.  It just seems to lose packets.  But since there's no errors in the logs, it is unclear why this error happens at all.  I did read some person saying that when the device would scan for 802.11 n access points, the connection would momentarily fail.  I doubt that is the case, but I've reconfigured my router to be 802.11 b and 802.11 g for the outside chance that my router causes weird problems with 802.11 n.

Annoying stuff on my HP laptop

First of all, the dual head stuff with the radeon driver is just crap.  One time, it went to hell and dropped my resolution to like 640x480 except it was all in a corner of the screen.  Second time it went crazy, the settings auto-reverted to mirror mode.  Dumb stuff.

Wifi isn't as good as I hoped it would be.  After a while, it would stop seeing my router and connect to a different hot spot.  I have to perform QPC on my router to make it connect again.  ARG!

A few thoughts...

My DSi XL suddenly refused to connect to my WiFi even though it works on all my devices including my old banged up DS (circa 2004).  After a short check with Nintendo's site, they recommended a Quick Power Cycle (QPC) of the router.  I unplugged my DSL modem (disconnected while playing SWTOR!!!) and my router (for 30 seconds) and hooked everything back.  My DSi XL connected once again fine.

Been slowly pushing my graphics detail on SWTOR while still playing on Wine and am noticing a few things.  Unlike Witcher 2 where I played on horribly low resolutions, I couldn't take 800x600 on SWTOR.  Adding Bloom and High Shader Complexity slowed the game down too much, but setting the Shader Complexity to low gave the game a nice layer of polish while not compromising too much in terms of performance.  Still managed to play the game at 1024x768 on Wine.  So, nice!