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This is one of a number of pages about installing Kubuntu Linux on a Sony TX1XP laptop. To see the other pages go here
First we need to add a couple of new sources for packages. These are the Universe and Multiverse sources for Aptitude. Read the comments in sources.list : anything from these two locations may be more buggy and probably won't have the same level or security support. For a laptop situation, I personally don't care about these limitations, but check for yourself.
sudo -s cd /etc/apt vi sources.list
uncomment the following two lines, adding the multiverse values to the ends of both lines if they are not already there
deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy universe multiverse deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy universe multiverse
please read and understand the comments above these lines in the sources.list : files from these repositories are entirely unsupported by ubuntu.
apt-get install vlc mozilla-plugin-vlc apt-get install mplayer-586 qjackctl jack-tools meterbridge libjackasyn0 libggi-target-emu libggi-target-monotext libggimisc2 polypaudio mplayer-doc
vlc player should now be available from the multimedia menu, and should happily play many video files. However we are sill missing some windows codecs that will cause some quicktime movies and windows media file types to be unplayable.
Note that the following files are not free, this may be technically illegal in your country, but if you have purchased a Windows licence then you may be covered (but I'm no lawyer, so don't quote me here). Taking the information from here, we did the following:
download the latest "essentials" tarball from http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/ (if it doesn't work, try googling for "mplayer win32 codecs") in our case, this was
cd ~ wget http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/essential-20050412.tar.bz2 mkdir /usr/lib/win32 (if you are not root already, sudo -s first) tar xjf essential-20050412.tar.bz2 cp essential-20050412/* /usr/lib/win32/
whilst this doesn't appear to help vlc, if you have problematic files (quicktimes with no sound, or windows media files such as wmv) try using mplayer instead:
mplayer example.mov
I have found that the sound from the built in speakers can be a little crackly at times. These seems to be limited to vlc player, using mplayer appears to not suffer this problem.
To fix this crackly audio in VLC (v 0.8.4) I did the following:
Settings menu -> Preferences Audio -> Output Modules -> OSS Check "Try to work around buggy OSS drivers"
Hajo Drescher has suggested the crackling can be fixed globally with the following:
On (K)ubuntu:
cd /etc/modprobe.d/ cat "options snd-hda-intel position_fix=1" >> alsa-base
On none debian based systems, you may find you instead need to:
cat "options snd-hda-intel position_fix=1" >> /etc/modprobe.conf
When you run mplayer from the K start menu, it complains about a missing subfont.ttf
ln -s /usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont/FreeSans?.ttf ~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf
will fix this, but needs to be done for each user on your system. Another problem with mplayer is that when you full screen a movie, it doesn't adjust the size of the actual video, but surrounds it with black space in order to fill the screen. This can be fixed when mplayer is called from the command line:
mplayer -zoom your_movie.mov
With some movies in mplayer, the video and audio can get out of sync. The +/- keys can be used to shift the audio track, and in most cases I find pressing the minus key (-) four times re-syncs things nicely (if it was out of sync to start with, which is not always the case). Another trick that often works is to enable framedropping. This can make the video become jerky but it will tend to stay in sync better. Doesn't work so well with video encoded in larger resolutions.
mplayer -zoom -hardframedrop
Last up in this section, I've found mplayer is sometimes rather jerky with the audio. The following fix was grabbed from the alsa project wiki and improved things for me:
vi /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf # add the line srate=48000
Whilst I could get sound from the built in speakers having completed the multimedia steps above, when I plugged some headphones into the headphone socket on the front of the machine there was a deafening silence. Over on the bottom right of the screen, in the taskbar, there should be a small speaker icon. Click it, and select the Mixer button.
You can also get to it (kmix) from the K/Start? menu, Multimedia and select "Sound Mixer (kmix)"
You should see five faders, four of which (all bar the second one) with a light or dark green radio button at the top. Light green is "on", dark green is "off" and clicking the button toggles. The various sliders appear to be:
When playing with Skype it took me a while to notice that there are two tabs on kmix. One does inputs, the other outputs. Output is the default. After pluging my mic into the socket at the front of the machine (beside the headphone socket) I eventually found the following setup worked for me:
One thing to watch for is that the right most fader (Capture) appears to be automatic. It adjusts itself up and down when you start talking. The catch here is that it defaults to 0, or right at the bottom. When you place a Skype call, and start talking it takes a second or so for it to spot there is audio coming down the line and being used. It eventually sorts itself out quite well, but you often find the person on the other end cannot hear you for the first second of the call. "Hello? Can you hear me? Hello...Hello? Ahh, Hello!"
I bought the "Logitech Quickcam Express - Digital video camera - USB" via amazon for slightly over £13.
aptitude install xawtv xawtv
this froze my machine! Harder than I've ever had it freeze. I couldn't even turn it off by holding down the power button, but instead had to remove the power and battery.
Then I discovered this page, that states there is a problem/bug with the spca5xx driver in breezy. I followed the instructions given, except that I used a more recent version of the driver download and used the "sudo -s" trick to become root, rather than prefixing everything with "sudo". For the record:
sudo -s apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` linux-restricted-modules-`uname -r` build-essential gcc-3.4 su CC=gcc-3.4 export CC exit CC=gcc-3.4 export CC wget http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca50x/Download/spca5xx-20060301.tar.gz tar xvfz spca5xx-20060301.tar.gz cd spca5xx-20050906 make modprobe -r spca5xx rm -rf /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/usb/media/spca5xx* make install modprobe spca5xx
I'm sure that could be condensed some, but heck, it worked.
xawtv
now shows me a little window with the picture from my webcam. Pressing F makes it fullscreen. Now, on to play with motion
Again, for the record the relevent sections of my output from lsusb and dmesg with the Quickcam Express
# lsusb | grep -i logitech Bus 001 Device 004: ID 046d:0928 Logitech, Inc.
# dmesg | grep -i quick [4294702.926000] drivers/usb/media/spca5xx/spca5xx-core.c: USB SPCA5XX camera found.Logitech QuickCam? Express II(SPCA561A)
I've recently (March 2006) picked up a Freecom Digital TV DVB-T USB Stick Freeview receiver.
I do not believe it will work under Breezy (5.10) without some serious kernel recompilation jiggery, see this post and follow up, I have got this working with Dapper Drake (6.06), however not on the TX1XP Sony Vaio hardware. It is the versions of the dvb drivers : Breezys are too old, Dappers should be dandy ;)
Quick aside on (K)Ubuntu version numbers: The numbers designate the year and month the release came out.
5.10 = 2005, 10th month.