New Linux User » wifi

Remuco as Remote for Your Media Player

Clair Ching — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:43:40 +0000

Those with bluetooth or wifi on their machines will most likely enjoy using Remuco, an application to let you use your mobile phone as a remote control. Right now, Remuco can be used with the following media players:

Amarok
Audacious
Banshee
Exaile
MPD
Rhythmbox
Totem
TVtime
VLC
XMMS2

Remuco

You may use any of the above mentioned applications on your Linux box but features with regards to control, information displayed, and browsing depend on which one of them you use. If you’re using Banshee, there are no browsing features available. But you could control the volume, skip to the next track (or go to the previous one), toggle shuffle mode, toggle repeat mode and seek forward as well as backward in the currently playing track. Other features such as browsing the playlist and/or media library are mostly availble to the other media players. For a complete list of features and media players, check out the Remuco Features page on their wiki.

The Remuco project has packages for Arch Linux, Debian, Gentoo and Ubuntu. If you’re using any of the mentioned distros, you should have a way to install the package instead of installing from source.

Hmm. Right now, the information available regarding mobile devices you could use with Remuco are limited. Basically you need JavaME support (MIDP ≥ 2.0, CLDC ≥ 1.1). If you use Bluetooth to connect to a player adapter, there must be JSR-82 (Java Bluetooth) support too. Nevertheless it looks like an interesting thing to use. Too bad I have to borrow someone’s bluetooth dongle first to try it out. That or I could try using my older laptop once I get to the office.

But I think it’s cool, especially if you’re reading a book and you’re using your computer to play music in the background. Sometimes it’s just too fun lying down and reading rather than having to go up and change and the music. I hope that more phones could be tested and checked if Remuco works just fine with them too.

Thanks to the Ubuntu Manual for giving information about how to install Remuco on Ubuntu Karmic, Jaunty and Intrepid. I wouldn’t have known about this app if not for the blog entry.

Post from: New Linux User

Looks like the Broadcom driver works better now

Clair Ching — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:12:48 +0000

So far, I haven’t had much troubles with the wireless network in the office when I am using Ubuntu Hardy Heron. I don’t get disconnected after 15-20 minutes of being online. It used to happen that way a lot and it was really so much trouble having to connect to the wireless network that often. Now that it seems to be much better, I also feel better about using the bcm43xx driver instead of using ndiswrapper to make the wireless networking happen.

That or I was experiencing a bad combination of things. Bad Broadcom driver, slow internet speeds, etc.

But seriously, I am relieved. I don’t have to rant as much as I used to about the Broadcom wireless networking issues on my laptop. I suppose there are still many of you who struggle with it. Don’t lose hope! It can still improve as I have seen things with my own eyes.

I have to admit though that it was my biggest mistake to just buy a random laptop two years ago and that’s why you should be smarter and not follow my example at all.

To my fellow Broadcom victims who are on Ubuntu Hardy, there are answers on the forums. Some of them don’t always work but it’s good to read and learn from them by trying them out. You’d never know, right? And through our feedback developers have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Post from: New Linux User

When you can choose your own laptop, get something supported

Clair Ching — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:42:10 +0000

As much as there are ways to use the built-in wifi on my laptop. There’s fwcutter and ndiswrapper. Actually, my dilemma with it is the firmware. I still have to get it from the internet and I can’t because I have problems with my LAN port. I’d probably try that tomorrow though, when I get to the office where the cable is longer.

In any case, it’s a pain to get things working from time to time. Especially after our sys ad changed the Wifi network’s security protocol to WPA. It seems that my built-in Broadcom wifi card really has difficulty connecting. I get dropped easily. When dual-booting to Windows, I seem to have no troubles. It’s either I work using Windows or I work when there’s not so many people competing for wifi connection.

There are other models with their wifi cards supported without hassles or issues. I envy them in a lot of ways. This is why the next time I agree to buy a laptop I’d check out the wifi card immediately. The only thing I am thankful for at the moment is that at least there’s fwcutter.

So there’s the lesson for the day: Don’t be like me when it comes to buying laptops. Buy something well-supported.

Post from: New Linux User

WPA without ndiswrapper on Xandros (for Asus EEE)

Clair Ching — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:02:19 +0000

Timelady gave me a lovely link for all you Asus EEE users out there. It’s a guide on configuring WPA on Xandros.

What does it involve?

Removing the WPA supplicant installed by default.
Installing WPA supplicant from the Debian repositories.
Installing MadWifi drivers.
Creating wpa_supplicant.conf_MINE
Creating a new network configuration.
Making sure that you fix the network monitor icon.

The steps are all there and you just need to follow them one by one.

Hope that helps you with your wifi needs! All thanks to the people of the EEE User wiki and Timelady.

Post from: New Linux User

Get rid of the Broadcom blues~!

Clair Ching — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:38:24 +0000

I saw this tip from one of the blogs on Planet Ubuntu:

* Create file /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper
o gksudo gedit /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper
* Add the text below, save and close
o #! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: ndiswrapper
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start: S
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: enable to load ndiswrapper
# Description: enable to load ndiswrapper
### END INIT INFO
rmmod ohci_hcd
rmmod ssb
rmmod ndiswrapper
modprobe ndiswrapper
modprobe ssb
modprobe ohci_hcd

* Set file access permissions
o sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper
* Finally, create a symbolic link call S99ndiswrapper in the folder /etc/rc2.d, from /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper
o sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper /etc/rc2.d/S99ndiswrapper

The tip is from Jim Hutchinson’s blog entry about Broadcom blues. Sounds like it’s something I should try out because I am still Broadcom blues every so often because of the modules issue.

Post from: New Linux User

HOWTO: Bringing Up Wireless Cards (continued)

Jon — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 12:51:48 +0000

I recently recorded a video over at The Linux Learning Station on using iwconfig, ifconfig, and dhclient to bring up a wireless network card. The process in the video is the process that I’ve always followed because, thankfully, both my PCMCIA cards are usually recognized by most distros.

My process basically involves setting the essid and WEP password on the card and then bringing it up. In order to ensure that it comes up every time I boot, I make a little script and use update-rc.d to put it in the proper init directories.

What I didn’t know was that I could put the essid and WEP values into the /etc/network/interfaces file rather than writing a script. Reader Kurtis put me on to that little gem and when I took a look at my interfaces file, it explained a lot to me about the difference between distros that pick up my card and distros that don’t.

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
# wireless-* options are implemented by the wireless-tools package
wireless-mode managed
wireless-essid driveon
wireless-key1 8FB06577D76E84EE6D4233651D

I’m currently running flight 5 of Kubuntu Dapper Drake and it picked up my network card during install. It asked me for my essid and WEP key and lo’ and behold – this is where it stored it.

So, instead of writing a script to bring your card up, you may also want to try putting the correct values into your interfaces file (if your distro doesn’t do it for you during install) and see what happens.

Thanks, Kurtis!

Post from: New Linux User