My menuscript for a happy Ubuntu 64 bit installation

I have been extremely busy for the last few weeks and couldn’t find time to update my blog, so apologies are in place. I am sorry, and I will add later this week several tips and tricks about BASH scripting, which might save time and effort for those of you who use if for more complicated tasks.

But alas – This post is about the things need to be done after new installation of Ubuntu Dapper (6.10) x86_64 has just been done, including, of course, links.

First – This is PentiumD 2.8GHz, Duo, on Abit IB9 Mobo (which I wasn’t too impressed with), 2x 320GB Sata2 HDDs, 2GB RAM and NVidia 7100 Dual-Head (I didn’t want ATI due to their limitations with max accelerated resolution, and the limitations it imposed on my Dual-head setup).

Initial installation as follows:

Edgy Server x86_64, created software mirror (raid1) for /boot, 2x 2GB swap spaces (one on each HDD), and LVM2 VG on mirror on the rest of the disk. Created LV for “/” (10GB XFS) and LV for “/home” (30GB Reiserfs).

During installation the Mobo didn’t recognize my IDE CD, and as the quickest remedy I have used USB-to-IDE adapter with additional CDROM which worked just fine.

Post installation I had to fix /etc/fstab to point to the correct (and now working) IDE CDROM.

To install full Ubuntu desktop, I have used “sudo aptitude ubuntu-desktop”. Sound worked out of the box.

Requirements:

– Skype

– Hebrew TTF Fonts

– mplayer

– Beryl (+XGL because of NVidia)

– Flash in Firefox

Skype:

Skype website has allowed me to download the statically compiled Skype package. It didn’t work, of course, since it was 32bit only. I have installed the following additional packages:

ia32-libs ia32-libs-gtk lib32asound2 lib32objc1 linux32 lib32ncurses5 ia32-libs-sdl

Extracted the archived Skype package, moved its contents to /usr/lib/skype and created symlink from /usr/lib/skype/skype to /usr/bin/skype

Hebrew TTF Fonts:

It was a bit more tricky. I had to get these fonts from some Windwos machine. I got them from one of my licensed desktops, and copied them (only .TTF and .ttf) to /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-windows – a directory created for this purpose. I have then created a symlink for every ttf file in this directory to /var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType , which gets included in the default xorg.conf. After restarting X, it worked like a charm.

mplayer:

I have installed mplayer using the restricted and multiverse repositories. I was surprised when I was able to play movies out of the box. Maybe my common codecs are just enough… I will look into it later.

XGL:

I have installed the latest NVidia driver for amd64 from NVidia’s site, and configured Dual-Head setup per my already-existing-too-messy xorg.conf file. xorg.conf.nvidia

Followed the Beryl Wiki for Ubuntu, by the letter. Mind you – I was aiming at XGL with Gnome.

I was so delighted when it turned out to work with my Dual-Head at a total resolution of 2560×1024

Flash in Firefox:

That was to trickier one. I managed to find this guide in Ubuntu forums which was more than enough for me. I did not notice on the first attempt, however, that there are two RPM packages required, and thus failed the procedure. When I have noted it, I was able to complete the task flawlessly.

So, now I have a completely working system, per my needs and requirements. I’m very happy, and I hope I gave good pointers to others who want to use their new 64bit system in a normal manner, even when some vendors do not supply 64bit compatible binary software.

Remember the power of the open source – If it is required to work under 64bit environment it wil be ported to one, while commercial software companies tend to fall behind with new, and sometimes not too popular, propriety systems.