Dani Berg

In December I bought this brand new laptop and had the perfect excuse to upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10. Like I mentioned in this post, the video drivers were the only issue I had.

Nvidia released new drivers for Linux 64 (v. 190.53) so I took the chance to update and plug an old 19” monitor to my laptop. To enable TwinView I muddled through some documentation but finally made it work.

Here’s the code from xorg.conf that enables TwinView:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection
 
Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option	    "TwinView"
    Option	    "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP-0, CRT-0"
    Option	    "MetaModes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select, CRT-0: nvidia-auto-select"
    Option	    "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/path/edid/monitor1.bin; CRT-0:/path/edid/monitor2.bin"
    Option	    "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-0,CRT-0"
    Option	    "TwinViewOrientation" "DFP-0 LeftOf CRT-0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

I had to add the binary EDID files because the X server was unable to identify the correct resolution for my laptop: 1366×768. The second monitor is 1280×1024… now I’m really seduced by a 27” monitor.

I was planning to skip Karmic Koala. Jaunty was running just fine but since I replaced my notebook I had an opportunity to try it.

I bought another Sony Vaio but this time without a stupid keyboard. I opted for the VPCCW model because it offered an NVIDIA (GEFORCE 230M) graphics card. I was interested in the SR series but because of my bad experience in the past I didn’t want to deal with ATI.

And that is the irony. Installed Karmic and even wireless worked out of the box. Surprise! After enabling NVIDIA proprietary drivers (190.42) and rebooting my screen was black. Frustration.

After some time googling and reading NVIDIA documents I found out that I had to set xorg.conf to use a custom EDID.

Option "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP-0"
Option "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/path/to/bin/edid/SNY05FA.bin"

Everything is running smoothly now but I can’t stop thinking that this kind of problem is what makes linux desktop adoption harder. It’s just a matter of time though.

In order to accomplish my goal of keeping this blog updated and grant me some good memories in the future, let me write down about what is going on in my small PHP world:

CakePHP

In my daily job we deal with tons of code written in the pre-framework era but I had a chance to experiment with CakePHP in the past months. I had a good time being involved in three side projects using the framework.

The documentation is good and written like a tutorial but some times you still need need to dive into the framework’s source code to get specific details about classes and methods.

Emacs PHP mode improved

I replaced php-mode for php-mode-improved. The improved version has fixed some bugs in from the previous version but it is sad to read:

;; This has been submitted to the php-mode maintainer, but I've not yet had a
;; response.


The (probably) most popular php-mode is abandoned.

Xdebug

I occasionally read Chromium’s tools written in Python and - as the newbie for life that I am  - I wasted a significant amount of time adding print and exit statements to the code.

It was time to learn how to use a Python debugger and make life easier. Enters pdb.

It didn’t take long to look for a similar tool for PHP: xdebug.

I just wonder why I didn’t try to learn these tools earlier.

PHPUnit

This was something I was excited to do. To move all the crude test scripts to a test framework as dictates industry’s best practices.

Some tests were written using SimpleTest but after a few grep and sed commands they all work with PHPUnit now.

PHPUnit’s documentation is better and development is active. SimpleTest is stuck in version 1.0.1 since April 2008.

In theory it would be good to test web applications on several different browsers but I must admit that I’m mainly concerned about Firefox and Internet Explorer. Well, now that I have a “Windows Day” during the week I included Google Chrome in my tests. It is such a nice browser and since it uses Webkit I can fool myself and pretend that everything running on Chrome is perfectly fine for Safari users.

Couldn’t wait any longer to have Chrome on Ubuntu so on Sunday night I checked out the Chromium source code files, installed depot tools and all software dependencies, typed hammer and voila! Binaries up and running after a few hours. Gosh, I need better hardware.

I did not expect for it to run at all but I was able to navigate through most of the websites I needed. I was quite amazed by the results. It is more than a plausible promise after all.

I’m an Ubuntu fan. These guys at Canonical know how to get things done. They release 2 Ubuntu versions per year full of improvements. It should be a case of study on how fast Ubuntu gets better.

This week I decided to add a second monitor to my notebook. I first thought I was going to have a hard time. Check manuals, forums and alike. Especially because the 2nd monitor and my notebook have different resolutions.

Surprise. It was too easy. Plug and play.

Well, almost. I could not set the 2nd monitor to a higher resolution. I had to open /etc/X11/xorg.conf, increase the Virtual resolution and restart gnome.

Anyway, having fun with 2 monitors again. Wohooo!!