About my laptop
- Model - Dell Studio 1555 laptop that I bought in India.
- Processor - Intel Centrino Core 2.
- RAM - 4GB
- Hard disk - 500 GB
- Of which a 64 GB partition contains just Windows OS installation. ( only 5.7 GB is free)
- 10 GB for GNU/Linux alone.
- And rest of the partition is NTFS, which I share between GNU/Linux and Windows.
- Graphics - ATI 4570HD 512MB
The Operating system Installation
I wanted to install the version of Ubuntu or Fedora that had the new kernel - 3.11 . It has some good power management code for the ATI graphics card. I want to use the open source driver because I had random issues with the proprietary driver in the past and I don't play games in my laptop. It was a bad decision I made when I purchased this laptop some years ago. To this day I regret buying this model that had this proprietary graphics card. I tried Fedora 19 for some time. It was rock solid. It never broke down between updates like Ubuntu used to. But couldn't do most of the simple things that Ubuntu could through a GUI. I have four android devices (2 phones and 2 tablets) at home and I wanted to play movies and music from my laptop when it is ON. I tried the basic share available in Gnome 3.6 in Fedora 19. I was not able to find a client in Android to use it. I couldn't even access it in my other netbook that had Elementary OS in it. So tried using samba. And it also didn't work. I didn't try any commands on the terminal. Because I was spoilt by the GUI provided by Ubuntu which I was used to.
Firstly, I headed towards the Ubuntu wiki for UbuntuGnome to download the OS image. Use the torrent option to download the image swiftly. This is one of the few opportunities in the real world to legally use torrent software. I choose the 32 bit version because I wanted to use Skype. From my previous experiences I wasn't sure if Skype would work in the 64 bit version. If you don't use Skype then you can go with the 64 bit version.
Next you need to put the image on a usb thumb drive. Follow these instructions for Windows. And these for Linux.
Once I booted into it. I tested the distribution to find any hardware issues. Sound, Wi-fi , Bluetooth , Screen Brightness keys , Volume Keys , Multi touch on trackpad , Played a video on Firefox.
Now I restarted the system to test the new Dynamic Power management in the Linux kernel. Make sure in Grub the highlight is on "Try Ubuntu Gnome" and press "b" to enter into the edit boot entries screen. Give the option "radeon.dpm=1". You could also try this when you boot up for the first time itself. But I wanted to see if it boots otherwise. Once the boot is done you should notice the fan slows down when the system is idle - i.e. when nothing is going on. Or you could run "dmesg | grep dpm" to see if it was enabled correctly. Note: This is only for the ATI/Radeon cards.
Update: Just to add some more options that can be done even after enabling the DPM option in the Kernel. My Laptop has an issue with the High power mode. It turns off when the Laptop suddenly does something heavy like opening a browser or a rendering a translucent window. I tried changing the Dell Laptop thremal paste with Artic Silver. But only after following the below steps I was able to use the laptop properly. Please note I had this issue in Windows 7 and it still continues. I rarely open my Windows installation. But now that stopped because of this problem. :)
You too can check by just executing the below two commands
sudo echo battery > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_state
sudo echo low > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level
If you want this to happen everytime the system starts you just have to do the following.
sudo gedit /etc/init.d/atigraphics
And copy Paste the following text
#! /bin/bash
echo battery > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_state
echo low > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level
exit 0
Save and close Gedit
chmod +x atigraphics
update-rc.d atigraphics defaults
Check after Reboot if the files are populate with these values.
cat /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_state
cat /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level
There are so many things you could hate about the default install of Gnome 3.8 . But right now it is far polished and smoother than Unity. I used to think Unity would improve but it hasn't yet. If you use something for a long time, the lack of customization really makes you mad. Gnome is for those who use both a mouse and keyboard to operate (Although I am still waiting for the touchpad to support some multi touch gestures in Gnome). It is not for touch screen as I previously thought. Experience is better when I use the keyboard more. But you need to make some adjustments to make it really good. Gnome 3.10 looks great but I need something stable, hence 3.8
Applications I installed after completing the installation
- Skype
- Ubuntu-restricted-extras - For all codecs,flash support
- Easy tag - For editing tags for some songs to improve the image quality of my mp3's album art. (Android Kitkat now display big album arts in the Lockscreen)
- Gimp - For image editing
- Pitivi for video editing - Eagerly waitin for the new version though !!!
- SubDownloader - For easy Subtitle downloads
- Samba - For windows shares that can be viewed on Android
Tweaks
I would never say the default Gnome experience is great. The whole point of the extensions in Gnome is to provide the extras. It also provide a feedback to the developers of Gnome to understand what really needs to make it to the default installation. Without the tweaks Gnome would not be better than any other alternatives out there.
So here are the tweaks I enabled through the extensive list of tweaks from https://extensions.gnome.org/
- Caffiene - To play Youtube or some web video while I eat.
- Calculator - To have a simple calculator in the shell
- Dash to dock - Brings the dock to the desktop. And make sure you make it visible always if you have a 16:9 screen aspect ratio. I hid the trash can too. I have also enabled the shift click to minimize applications.
- Drop down terminal - For terminal when you just press "~" key
- Impatience - To speed up the animations
- Insensitive message tray - Disables the message tray from displaying while not in the Overview mode
- Lock Keys - For status of my CAPS LOCK. Dell saved an LED. I have a backlit keyboard. They could have added an extra led to indicate it. But this extension saves the day
- Media player indicator - I wish it worked like the one in Ubuntu. It even allowed to stop youtube videos.
- Overlay focus - Focus follows mouse in the Overview mode
- Place Status indicator - To jump directly to the folders in your home directory.
- Removable drive menu - Easily eject the drives
- Shade inactive windows - To darken the windows not relevant to you. This one made me crazy when I used Gimp. The image just darkens when I select a tool to correct the brightness. Need to disable it somehow for Gimp.
- User themes - Its on by default I think.
- App search - To install apps by default from the shell search. No need to open the slow Ubuntu Software Center anymore.
Somethings I found I could do
- Drag and drop is so easy. Just select and drag to the activities (top left corner) and hover over the preview of the window where you need to drop it.
- Searching is awesome in the new nautilus. Just type and it works.
- Shift+Ctrl+Alt+R starts screen recording. Yes, It's inbuilt.
- Goto Tweak application and turn on icons on desktop. Also the keyboard section "Typing" can be used to disable ALT key behaviour.
- I used to use a program called PySDM. It was used to set my NTFS partitions to be mounted during boot. This way I can point Rhythmbox and Shotwell to those drives. But after searching a lot. I found that the disks application in Gnome enables the user to set it very easily. It is not something that you would do every day. So as per Gnome guidelines these things should hidden. But then a query of "automount" in the Gnome shell Overview should bring up the disks application.
- Select the partition
- Click on the tiny gears icon.
- Select "Edit Mount Options"
- Disable Automatic mount option. I first thought what?? Why doesn't it automatically mount the partitions.
- Check the Mount at Startup
- Give a Mount point of your choice
Themes
I personally like a simple theme. There are plenty of themes for the Gnome shell. Just search in Google plus communities. People try out all themes. The best one gets a lot of +1s. So it will be relevant. I find it much easier than to browse the entire http://gnome-look.org/ website.
This is how my desktop looks.
If you like this theme then do the following:-
Run all the following in the terminal
- sudo add-apt-repository ppa:satyajit-happy/themes
- sudo add-apt-repository ppa:upubuntu-com/nitrux
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get install nitruxos
- sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-theme-elegance-colors
- sudo apt-get install shimmer-themes
- elegance-colors
Then set the themes in the Tweak tool.
- Numix for Gtk theme
- Elegance for Shell theme
- Nitrux for the icons. Numix and Humanity Dark are also good. I switch between these when I am bored.
Extras
Please find one method to use TOR. Its not the best way to use it, but it works for me. After following the below instructions you will have a small
button in Firefox at the bottom right corner. This can be used to enable
and disable TOR during browsing.
- Install TOR from the Software Center
- Open Terminal and run TOR
- Open Preferences in Firefox
Advanced>Network>Connection
Select Manual Proxy
SOCKS should be 127.0.0.1 and Port is 9050 - Then install Addon
https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/quickproxy/ - In the Bottom Right there will be an icon in RED. Right click and customize behaviour
- Manual Proxy
- Switch off Proxy when browser is restarted
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