This article is a run through of installing Google Earth to view points from a hike. At first, it was as easy as installing the Deb package, but then, I had a graphics issue that I had to work through. So, below you’ll find the error messages and the command that I used to fix the crash.
Author: digitaleagle
Ubuntu 12.10 and Discrete Video Card
One of the main driver things that I have to install is the video card. My laptop has a discrete video card. Without installing the driver, the graphics seem to work pretty well, but with the driver, I get a very noticeable improvement in power consumption. After installing the driver, the battery lasts significantly longer. Also, glxspheres does a nice job of showing the graphics performance difference with and without the acceleration.
Touchpad Drivers for My Inspiron 17R
The touchpad on my laptop (Dell Inspiron 17R) didn’t just work automatically. Thanks to alfc, I found out how to install the driver for it. The Ask Ubuntu answer is very well explained.
In any regard, here’s what I did…
Fedora: Install Microsoft Fonts on Linux
I had a problem a while back with a Word document needs the Verdana font, and I didn’t have it installed on my machine. A quick search revealed an easy package to install for Ubuntu. I found some more complicated instructions for Fedora. It looks like they were repeated here, but I found a better solution futher on down.
For some reason, I could not figure out where the rpmbuild directory was supposed to come from. Then, I found this article that was very helpful:
Mauriat Miranda:Personal Fedora 15 Installation Guide — Install Microsoft Truetype Fonts
I just downloaded his msttcore-fonts-2.0-3.noarch.rpm and ran:
sudo rpm -ivh ~/Downloads/msttcore-fonts-2.0-3.noarch.rpm
Note: I just peaked in my currently installed Ubuntu, and I do see Verdana listed in LibreOffice Writer. So, I think it installs by default for Ubuntu.
Software Installs for Ubuntu 12.10
After first installing Ubuntu, I had to install all of the tools and programs that I normally use. Last time, I just used the Ubuntu Software Center to search and find all of the tools that I wanted install. This time, I decided to use the command line and apt-get. You could still search by the package name if you want to use the GUI.
Installing Ubuntu 12.10
This post begins my Install steps for Ubuntu 12.10. This is my second Linux installation on this new laptop, and I am trying to document the steps that I take. Usually, the actual install process is pretty straight forward, and I don’t need to do anything special, but this one was a little different. Here are the steps that I took…
Software Installs on my new Inspiron 17R
This is a list of the software that I installed on my new 17R. My first installation on this laptop was Ubuntu 12.04, and I basically installed the same things as what I had on my old laptop. This was somewhat rushed and more like “notes”. Obviously, it’s been rushed because it has taken me so long to get it proofread and published.
Ubuntu 12.04: Games
I am not a big gamer, but I have found a few games that I do enjoy from time to time. So, this is a quick list of the games that I installed as part of my installation.
Getting Skype to work on Ubuntu 11.10
A while back, I typed up my research on Skype, and I forgot to publish it. My more recent installations on my current laptop haven’t required as much tinkering to get it to work. Still this article might help someone, and I already had it put together. So, here it goes…
Sound for Inspiron 17R
alfC got me into researching how to get the SubWoofer working on my laptop. I didn’t buy my laptop for high quality sound (as long as Skype works for teleconferencing with co-workers, I’m good), so I didn’t even notice that it wasn’t working. So, here’s my research…
The Problem
On Ask Ubuntu, the question was asked: How to activate subwoofer in Inspiron 17r?
Here’s the issue. The subwoofer control is disabled:
The sound works fine to me. The subwoofer is just a bonus feature, at least in my opinion. Still, it would be cool to get it to work.
About My Soundcard
I found my driver was snd-hda-intel:
skp@chestnut:~$ lsmod | grep -i snd_hda_intel snd_hda_intel 33491 3 snd_hda_codec 134212 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel snd_pcm 96580 3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec snd 78734 16 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device snd_page_alloc 18484 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
Here are the details on my card:
skp@chestnut:~$ lspci | grep -i "audio device" 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
I read in the documentation that you can find the model like this:
skp@chestnut:~$ cat /proc/asound/card0/codec* | grep Codec Codec: IDT 92HD91BXX Codec: Intel PantherPoint HDMI
Alsa-Base.conf Attempt
I found a Debian system that seems similar: Installing Debian On Asus UX32VD. Just to try, I added this line to the end of the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf file.
options snd-hda-intel model=alc269-dmic
To test, I found from Ubuntu documentation, that I could use this command to restart just this sound:
sudo alsa force-reload
Unfortunately, it didn’t work!
Default.pa Attempt
So, on to trying another solution from here and here.
Next, I added a line to the /etc/pulse/default.pa file:
load-module module-combine channels=6 channel_map=front-left,front-right,rear-left,rear-right,front-center,lfe
After restarting alsa, it seemed to work. I got a new Output device that had the Subwoofer enabled:
I still can’t hear the output in the Test sound window. But, at least I have the front and back speakers working:
HDA Analyzer Tool
I found an HDA Analyzer Tool in this question. You can see the instructions here.
Here’s how I downloaded it:
wget -O run.py http://www.alsa-project.org/hda-analyzer.py
It needed root access, so I ran it like this:
sudo python run.py
