Archives of Ubuntu

Using ZeroFree to shrink a VirtualBox Linux Image

My development Ubuntu image inside VirtualBox was using too much space to store empty but non-zero disk blocks on its virtual drive. This sucked space from my laptop’s SSD (which is already not big enough!). Shrinking it by zeroing the blocks took a little bit of effort. Inside VirtualBox if I boot my Ubuntu 11.04 […]

Dell E6420 with Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) 32 bit

Having hacked away with Natty Narwahl for a few weeks I’m regressing to the 10.10 distribution provided by Dell here. Installation took 20 minutes, it allowed me to use the previous ext4 partition (I had to edit it using the advanced configuration and set the ext4 partition’s mount point from blank to ‘/’). I formatted […]

Dell E6420 with Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwahl) 64 bit

I’ve just treated myself to a quad core (8 virtual core) Dell E6420 with 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, NVIDIA NVS 4200M GPU (with integrated Intel GPU) and the high spec screen. It is rather nice. It comes with Win 7 Pro installed (fine for some libraries I’ll need and maybe some MS Office), I’ve just […]

Running Skype on Ubuntu + QuickCam Pro 9000

I use Skype on my Win desktop and MacBook as a matter of course now, I rather like to use the video feed via the MacBook when co-working with my team on our screencasts. Since the desktop box usually runs Ubuntu 9.04, I wanted to try my new QuickCam Pro 9000.  The short story is […]

Enabling Marble Mouse Scroll-wheel on Ubuntu 9.04, PulseAudio

In my recent upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 to the latest 9.04 I lost the scroll wheel on my Marble Mouse.  The solutions is in this Logitech Marblemouse USB help page at Ubuntu via this forum entry. I’m also annoyed by PulseAudio (again).  Once again it takes over from ALSA but doesn’t output any sound, currently […]

Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 on Dell 9400 Laptop

We’ve just installed Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 onto Emily’s Dell 9400 laptop.  As ever there are some wrinkles, I’ll note them here. First – installation was fine and easy.  I used a 10Gb root partition and the rest (about 100Gb) as /home.  Sound worked straight away. Video is, as ever, a bit more interesting.  This machine […]

Installing IE6 on to Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 with ies4linux

I’m pleased to say that my earlier post on Installing IE6 on Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10) needs only a minor modification to work with Jaunty 9.04. For Jaunty you just need to replace any references to ‘edgy’ with ‘jaunty’ on the ies4linux Ubuntu install page. The ./ies4linux installer took 15 minutes to complete under VirtualBox (I […]