Today I finally installed the latest Ubuntu. I’m saying finally because since last February I didn’t install or upgrade anything… back then I was working in Seville and the internet connection at my place was crappy.

The new Ubuntu seems nice (as always) to me, a little slowlier than the 7.10 I used but not a real problem.

I still remember my Debian days, kernel compiling, always funny. Wireless fighting (not really good drivers and managers back then), interesting stuff and of course, telling my girlfriend: Uh, well, we cannot realy watch that movie right now cause I kinda screwed up the graphical environment…

To all the people behind Ubuntu and Debian, keep on, you’re doing a really good job as always!

Ubuntu 8.10 was released today!

Check out the new features and download this new version.

Ubuntu, the marvelous GNU/Linux distro is announcing its Developer Week and you are free to participate on it at #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net.

As it says on the web site, in the Developer Week you can:

• learn about different packaging techniques
• find out more about different development teams
• check out the efforts of the world-wide Development Community
• participate in open Q&A sessions with Ubuntu developers
• much more…

Recently I needed to come up with some sort of widget in PyGTK to be able to draw selection boxes, drag them around, etc. over a background image. After spending two days with pycairo and having only what would be the basis for what I need done, I found Goocanvas, particularly its Python bindings!!

I already knew the name due to my subscription on PyGTK Mailing List but never had a change to dig in further. It is amazing!! You create items on a canvas, and you can deal with them one by one setting their properties, dealing with input events, etc., really nice.

Now I pretty much have what I needed (the drag selection boxes on top of an image) and I might extract it from the main program and make it available for anyone with such needs like I had.

Checkout this amazing work that allows one to do some neat stuff with cairo without sweating too much!

Only yesterday I finally decided to take the time to try to set up my Asus X20s webcam, and it didn’t take as long as I was expecting!

After searching a little I found the French ubuntu-fr website that had the tutorial.

The webcam in my laptop is a Syntek one which also is inside a bunch of other Asus models.

So, here are the steps that worked for me:

1. Check the table in the ubuntu-fr website under the section Compabilité to check your model. Mine is a X20s and is NOT on the table so, maybe yours also isn’t, this means the best way is to check the USB Id. Just execute the command:
   $ lsus
   on a terminal and you should see the Ids of your connected USB devices. Check for an Id present in the Compabilité table (first column). Mine was 174f:6a33.
2. If you ain’t got yet the linux headers, install them by running:
   $ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
   Also, you’ll need subversion and build-essential (but it is likely that you already have it installed if you’re a developer):
   $ sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion
3. Now that you’re all set, create a folder (I suggest the name “syntek”) which will contain the driver’s source and checkout the source from the SVN repository:
   $ mkdir syntek
   $ cd syntek
   $ svn co https://syntekdriver.svn.sourceforge.net/
   svnroot/syntekdriver/trunk/driver
   (the last command above are to be considered only one line. It was screwing my website layout )
   Warning for non-geeks: You’ll see a bunch of stuff on the console output and be asked to accept something, just enter “t” and you’re done.
4. Now enter the driver folder and download a special Makefile:
   $ cd driver
   $ wget http://bookeldor-net.info/merdier/Makefile-syntekdriver
5. Once you get it, compile it and install it:
   $ make -f Makefile-syntekdriver
   $ sudo make -f Makefile-syntekdriver instal
6. Assuming the compilation and installation were successful, load the module:
   $ sudo modprobe stk11xx
   This might take a little but after it’s done your cam must now be able to fly!
7. In case you want to check if the system is recognizing the camera now, just use the commands:
   $ dmesg |tail
   $ sudo lsusb -v|grep -A 8 Syntek
   And check the Syntek related output.
   The webcam module will be loaded automatically the next time you restart your system so, no worries.

Now you’re ready for the wonders of your nice webcam! Check Skype options for the Video settings, it should now have found the Syntek driver and give you the “test” option which you can have fun watching your face when you cannot solve that damned bug!

And that’s all folks, hope it was useful. Have fun and let me know if you missed anything or if you find a bug in this tutorial.