One more rant against ATI

I just updated the first post to mention that I have an ATI Radeon x1600. I think I will take an entire blog post to add to the chorus of bloggers angry at ATI. As of Ubuntu 9.04, ATI no longer supports their "legacy" video cards. My x1600 is one of those. I am seriously considering downgrading back to 8.10 because at least I could play BZFlag on that.

Skype with Logitech QuickCam Connect

So, I got a webcam so I could do video chat with my mom while I'm at Cal Poly. (Her idea, not mine, but she bought me a webcam so it's all good.)

I ordered (on her credit card) a Logitech QuickCam Connect. It's one of (if not the) cheapest webcams out there. I first tested it with Cheese Webcam Booth. It worked fine. Then I opened up Skype and went to "options" to see about using the webcam. It looked like all the settings were right, but when I clicked to test my video, I got some really wierd static. I went online and found a fix on http://cwraig.id.au/?p=122.

Here's the shell script that I wrote from his instructions.

#!/bin/bash
# For some reason skype makes a mess of the signal that the webcam sends through.
# The workaround is to get gstreamer to watch the webcam and then to output the video to a virtual device. Skype then gets its video stream from this new virutal device.
# Script from http://cwraig.id.au/

# Install the Dependancies
apt-get install subversion build-essential libgstreamer0.10-dev

# Get the source for gstfakevideo
svn checkout http://gstfakevideo.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ gstfakevideo-read-only

# Compile and Install gstfakevideo
cd gstfakevideo-read-only
sudo make
sudo make install

# Move the real webcam device out of the way
sudo mv /dev/video0 /dev/video1

# run skype every time with the following command
gstfakevideo v4l2src device=/dev/video1

# Sources
# http://cwraig.id.au/?p=122
# http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=967223

Now, I don't want to have to move the real webcam device and run that long annoying code everytime, so I made the following shell script and added it to my startup applications:

# !/bin/bash
# Run Skype With Video

# Move the real webcam device out of the way
sudo mv /dev/video0 /dev/video1

# run skype every time with the following command
gstfakevideo v4l2src device=/dev/video1

# Sources
# http://cwraig.id.au/?p=122
# http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=967223

I put this script in ~/bin and created a launcher on my desktop that launches the script so I can manually launch Skype if I ever need to.

First Post

I never thought I'd write a blog but here I am. I just thought this would be a good way to at least keep track of my learning curve in Linux even if no one but me ever sees this.

I've been using Ubuntu for the past few months. I installed 8.10 off a disk that I got almost a year ago and used the amazing Internet here at Cal Poly to update to 9.04.

I have an out-of-box HP Pavilion a1130n that I've made very few modifications to. When I first got it I was in high school and had time for gaming so I bought a video card for it. I don't remember what the card is right now but I'll check when I have a chance and update this post. (Update: The video card is an ATI Radeon x1600 which is no longer supported by ATI as of Ubuntu 9.04.) When I upgraded the video card, I didn't know that I would need to upgrade the power supply and almost fried the motherboard but a friend of mine was able to find the cause of the BSODs that I was seeing and upgrade the power supply before and permanent damage was done. I've also added a 500GB harddrive to the empty bay. Just recently, I disconnected the power from the Lightscribe CD/DVD burner because it was constantly opening and closing without prompt. I think my brother damaged it when he tried to force it open while it was turned off.

I think that's quite enough for now.