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Operating System

Background

I have been with PlusNet for over two years now and am a happy camper as far as fiber optic broadband is concerned but as I am no longer on a broadband contract with PlusNet and had no intention of going on one, so the only way I could get a change to my ageing router was by purchasing a new one.

Hence I started reading about my options and soon enough realised that an old router can be given new lease of life using DD-WRT. Equally soon-ish I also realised that the router from PlusNet - TG582n - is quite rubbish and does not play nice with any of the open source firmwares.

So I figured that if I have to just play around a bit, I might as well start with something cheaper and cheaper is what I found in the TP-Link router TL-WR841n at just £16.00. You can't get any cheaper than that in my opinion. OK, so now that we have established that I am cheap and my new router is cheap, let's move on to interesting stuff.

I had read that TP-Link router and specifically TL-WR841n plays nicely with DD-WRT but it was only after I had my new toy did I realise that these things also come in hardware version and while interwebs is filled with instructions on installing DD-WRT for upto v9, when it comes to v11 in Europe, it can be a bit tricky to proceed. There are some instructions in forums1 but nothing that walks one end to end hence this post.

Swap File to create extra memory

While renewing my LetsEncrypt certificate, I found myself in a strange situation where the certbot won't run asking me to update pip and then each time I tried updating pip it failed with the error error: command 'x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc' failed with exit status 4.

It turns out that this happens due to low memory and with my digitalocean droplet being the cheapest one this was bound to happen sooner rather than later. Fortunately there is a way around it as explained below.

Use of following commands will ensure that the swap file is created which in turn will help avoid the 'error: command 'x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc' failed with exit status 4'.

Following commands will create a swap file:

Sony VAIO N-VIDIA setup to make S-Video work

UPDATE for 9.10

For Ubuntu 9.10 I was just not able to get it work and finally I figured it out. The problem is with the latest Nvidia driver, the one that ubuntu says recommended. In order to make your TV Out work, you must uninstall the latest release version and install the one just lower than that. (The working version for me was 173.) Then follow these steps: 

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sudo nvidia-xconfig
sudo reboot
sudo nvidia-settings
Then follow the steps shown below. If you are lucky you wont need to refer Section A of this post at all. I did not have to do that.

Sony VAIO FE21H Webcam on skype

Alright friends not a huge tip but still I, being new fan of Ubuntu, installed it on my media laptop...Sony VAIO...

One might ask what is media laptop...well I had a bit of problem with my Sony VAIO some 1.5 years back and a key got stuck and as it goes with any Sony product there was no cheap solution at hand...

At that time for some reason it appeared like a motherboard issue and I just bought another Dell laptop...later I realised that it was a keyboard issue so I invested in a wireless keyboard and had two lappies at home just like that 😄... I figured that with wireless keyboard VAIO laptop will make perfect companion to my 32' Samsung and hence it got the name of media laptop.

AAO A150L Step by Step Installation Process for Linux4one

Linux4one is the only Linux distro other than pre-installed Linpus that worked out of the box on my and two other Acer aspire one A150L which belonged to my friends. With the GUI same as that for Ubuntu Netbook Remix, it is a fantastic OS to have on your machine. The only downside I felt was that the icons looked little washed out compared to those on actual UNR but that is not so much of an issue. Everything pretty much worked out of the box which matters the most. I did find the splash screen at the time of start-up a little childish but again these are not major issues.