I've used my simple network schemes setup for many years. No worries
about how distros come up with a new network configuration GUI every
release; no worries about all the bloat that NetworkManager insists
on before it will run; no extra daemons running all the time polling
my net just in case I might want to switch networks suddenly.
It's all command-line based; if I'm at home, I type
netscheme home
and my network will be configured for that setup until I tell it
otherwise.
If I go to a cafe with an open wi-fi link, I type
netscheme wifi; I have other schemes for places
I go where I need a wireless essid or WEP key. It's all very easy
and fast.
Last week for SCALE I decided it was silly to have to su and create
a new scheme file for conferences where all I really needed was the
name of the network (the essid), so I added a quick hack to my
netscheme script so that typing netscheme foo, where
there's no existing scheme by that name, will switch to a scheme
using foo as the essid. Worked nicely, and that inspired
me to update the "documentation".
I wrote an elaborate page on my network schemes back around 2003,
but of course it's all changed since then and I haven't done much
toward updating the page. So I've rewritten it completely, taking
out most of the old cruft that doesn't seem to apply any more.
It's here:
Howto Set Up
Multiple Network Schemes on a Linux Laptop.
Tags: linux, laptops, net
[
09:51 Feb 27, 2009
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I've written before about how I'd like to get a netbook like an Asus Eee,
except that the screen resolution puts me off: no one makes a netbook
with vertical resolution of more than 600. Since most projectors prefer
1024x768, I'm wary of buying a laptop that can't display that resolution.
(What was wrong with my beloved old Vaio? Nothing, really, except that
the continued march of software bloat means that a machine that can't
use more than 256M RAM is hurting when trying to run programs
(*cough* Firefox *cough) that start life by grabbing about 90M and
goes steadily up from there. I can find lightweight alternatives for
nearly everything else, but not for the browser -- Dillo just doesn't
cut it.)
Ebay turned out to be the answer: there are lots of subnotebooks
there, nice used machines with full displays at netbook prices.
And so a month before LCA I landed a nice Vaio TX650 with 1.5G RAM,
Pentium M, Intel 915GM graphics and Centrino networking.
All nice Linux-supported hardware.
But that raised another issue: how do widescreen laptops
(the TX650 is 1366x768) talk to a projector?
I knew it was possible -- I see people presenting from widescreen
machines all the time -- but nobody ever writes about how it works.
The first step was to get it talking to an external monitor at all.
I ran a VGA cable to my monitor, plugged the other end into the Vaio
(it's so nice not to need a video dongle!) and booted. Nothing. Hmm.
But after some poking and googling, I learned that
with Intel graphics, xrandr is the answer:
xrandr --output VGA --mode 1024x768
switches the external VGA signal on, and
xrandr --auto
switches it back off.
Update, April 2010: With Ubuntu Lucid, this has changed and now it's
xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1024x768
-- in other words, VGA changed to VGA1. You can run xrandr
with no arguments to get a list of possible output devices and find
out whether X sees the external projector or screen correctly.
Well, mostly. Sometimes it doesn't work -- like, unfortunately,
at the lightning talk session, so I had to give my
talk without visuals. I haven't figured that out yet.
Does the projector have to be connected before I run xrandr?
Should it not be connected until after I've already run xrandr?
Once it's failed, it doesn't help to run xrandr again ... but
a lot of fiddling and re-plugging the cable and power cycling the
projector can sometimes fix the problem, which obviously isn't helpful
in a lightning talk situation.
Eventually I'll figure that out and blog it (ideas, anyone?)
but the real point of today's article is resolution. What I
wanted to know was: what happened to that wide 1366-pixel screen when
I was projecting 1024 pixels? Would it show me some horrible elongated
interpolated screen? Would it display on the left part of the laptop
screen, or the middle part?
The answer, I was happy to learn, is that it does the best thing
possible: it sends the leftmost 1024 pixels to the projector, while
still showing me all 1366 pixels on the laptop screen.
Why ... that means ... I can write notes for myself, to display in
the rightmost 342 screen pixels!
All it took was a little bit of
CSS hacking
in my
HTML slide
presentation package, and it worked fine.
Now I have notes just like my Mac friends with their Powerpoint and
their dual-head video cards, only I get to use Linux and HTML.
How marvellous! I could get used to this widescreen stuff.
Tags: laptops, X11, linux, speaking, projector, lca2009, linux.conf.au
[
21:12 Feb 06, 2009
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Linux Magazine has a good article by Jonathan A. Zdziarski on
Linux on
the laptop: Ten power tools for the mobile Linux user.
He gives hints such as what services to turn off for better power
management, and how to configure apmd to turn off those services
automatically; finding modules to drive various types of wireless
internet cards; various ways of minimizing disk activity;
and even making data calls with a mobile phone.
Lots of good information in there!
Tags: linux, laptops
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19:51 Oct 07, 2004
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