GraphHopper – A Java routing engine

karussell ads

Some weeks ago I got a Dell Latitude E6400 with Quadro NVS 160M from nvidia. It has vista and a xp downgrade included, but I went the linux way. So I installed ubuntu 9.04 and … installed it 😉 Nothing more. What can I say? Even a newbie could have been done this installation.

Nice! All things worked like expected.

Update: Upgrading to 9.10 works like a charm.

Update 2011: Upgrading to 10.04 worked again really great.

Update 2012: Upgrading failed. Fresh install of 11.10 was horrible. Major problems with the graphic card [Quadro NVS 160M] and my Logitech USB Headset.

Update 2013: Installation of 12.04 xubuntu worked like a charm again (using nouveau or the nvidia driver) – except the easy to fix pulse audio problem

• dsl Internet without setup and WLAN worked out of the box
  • btw: you can easily select through which network device you want to connect (more intuitive then any other OS I know …)
• bluetooth works with my mobile (samsung b2100): sending + receiving files … but only with kbluetooth4
• External Nec Monitor
• External Fujitsu Siemens USB keyboard
• Logitech USB Headset (skype)
• Trackpad (with scrolling!) and trackpoint
• webcam (tested with cheese)
• … all the rest hardware simply worked like my Canon printer and my Epson scanner
• After 1 hour + 1 hour for the windows installation within VirtualBox I could use WinXp under linux – very cool!
• all the time ‘sudo apt-get install xy’ was my friend.
• Some days after the initial installation I tried my bamboo tablet. And… you can guess it – it was strange – it works 🙂 !
• video, sound worked too out of the box with the help of medibuntu and gstreamer-plugins

I never did a smoother linux installation and this even on a laptop. I have now sound, videos, mp3s, … with less effort even compared to any windows installation I did so far. Before the external monitor can be used I installed the nvidia driver. This was a ‘one clicker’ – I do not even remember what I exactly did. After this I disabled the laptop screen and enabled the external. I can post my xorg.conf if someone is interested. Even going to hibernate and standby are working fine. I tried to work with kde, but it looks like the plasma stuff is crashing regularly on this laptop (or because of my hardware config). So, I will have to stay with ubuntu as long as I can make WindowMaker, Enlightenment or the future of WindowMaker (Azalea) useable.

Okay, so far, so good.

But I would’nt post this stuff if things haven’t at least one drawback. The most annoying thing about this Dell Latitude E6400 is that the fan is always on. It is okay (not loud), but not as quiet as I read in some reviews :-(. It would be okay if the fan goes on on load – but it is always on. If you are in “battery mode” the fan sometimes switches off (Wow! This is silence!) I think this is a BIOS settings. Hopefully dell will turn this on in a later BIOS version for “network mode” too .

And then there is a very high cheeping, uhm! (of the harddisc ?) For other (more silent?) notebooks you should take a look at Lenovo T400 (or the recently published T400s) first or the previous version of E6400: the Dell Latitude D640.

The good thing is that the fan volume stays the same even on heavy load. Only if the heavy load remains for several minutes or it is relative hot in your room then the pc will increase the fan speed.

So, what I did with this ‘loud’ box? Dell don’t offer a 14-days-ship-back guarantee for business customers (this has nothing to do with Dell – it is normal here in Germany). So, I will use this ‘loud’ box and maybe I will tune here or there with some linux utilities.

But it seems to me a very good laptop for linux. Or maybe ubuntu is the true king here!!?

Device / Parts

• The whole (Regatta Blue) case of the Latitude looks stable and at the moment nothing is bouncing or looks cheaply processed. I choosed a blue color (matt) and this surface looks robust, too.
• The 14” display is very good (matt) and the resolution of 1440×900 is nice. There is an auto dimming function enable, but you can disable this as well. It can be used in bright outside even if you dimm the display a bit.
• The black keyboard is stable and for a notebook keyboard useable.
• An external button can enable/disable the WLAN+bluetooth to save energy.
• some other devices/connectors: 3 USB, 1 SD card, 1 audio in + 1 out, sata, dvd burner, webcam, …

I know that a picture is sometimes more worth than 1000 words (hopefully not in this post):

Hopefully at least one of the listed tools can be of use for your linux installation. The following application normally do not need a lot of configuration:

• opera – the most innovative browser
• kate – the best graphical editor. Even with block selection (enable/disable via CTRL+SHIFT+B)
• kdirstat – get an overview of your hard disc usage
• liferea –  a better blogbridge?
• kpowersave – worked for my Dell E6400 (save to disk and save to ram)
• gnome-power-manager – can show the enery usage and battery state over time! really useful!
• VirtualBox – hosts windows xp like a charm
• amarok – mp3, podcasts, internetradio, …
• totem – watch videos and search youtube videos with this application
• gimp and inkscape for your graphics
• k3b, grip and k9copy for your cd/dvd burnings
• openoffice and latex (with kile) for your documents
• and last but not least: TimeFinder 😉 an open source timetable optimizer for universities and schools

Now I list some apps where you can tweak a little bit:

• WindowMaker – my favourite window manager. Some things should be enhanced to be usable by a wider audience.
  • you will need to configure a shortcut for hiding all windows
  • you have to tweak a lot of things… maybe I should put this into a separate post 😉
• konqueror
  • I changed the view to details and saved this for all folders
  • To change that konqueror selects a folder on the first click (double click to  open it) you can change it in the following dialog even under gnome: kcmshell4 mouse
  • if you type fish://user@123.123.123.123 you can use it as a graphical scp client

• thunderbird
  • you should install enigmail and lightning. The latter one you can install via sudo apt-get install lightning-extension
  • import/export mails
  • open urls with opera via adding or changing the following lines in a file ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/<profile>/prefs.js user_pref(“network.protocol-handler.app.http”,”/usr/bin/opera”);
    user_pref(“network.protocol-handler.app.https”,”/usr/bin/opera”);

• firefox download some plugins: all-in-one-sidebar, scrapbook, firebug, live http headers, FoxyProxy

Here are some applications for development

• kdesvn – the best subversion client I ever used. Works even for large repositories (>2GB) … unlike Tortoise for win.
• netbeans – the best IDE, install java before
• squirrel-sql – the best database editor
• konsole – the best command line
• joe – the best command line editor (but not on every linux box available unlike vi)

BTW: ‘best’ does not mean that there are other good tools. Feel free to post your application stack as a comment or you can create your stack here.

From my favourite window manager (WindowMaker) I am used to switch applications via ALT+TAB and then select the icon via mouse or arrow keys.

In gnome I couldn’t find a way to configure it with arrow keys (compiz enabled), but I found a way to switch via mouse.

First do:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Then execute ccsm. Now you should go to the configuration of the “static application switcher”. Under Behaviour (in German ‘Verhalten’) you should see sth. like activate mouse selection (‘Erlaube Mausauswahl’). That’s it

Happy application switching! And tell me if you find a way to switch with arrow keys!

Yesterday I wanted to backup some mails of my thunderbird, but I realized that I hadn’t installed the great tool. But how was it called?
I finally found the name: ImportExportTools and the link! So here it is as a mnemonic.