Ubuntu Linux – Replacing Windows Day 3

8 February 2009 1 views No Comment

Ubuntu in 7 Days: Day 3

Day1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

Hope you have enjoyed and are following the series so far. In Day 2, I will go further into other non-essential hardware’s that needs to be working. This will be pretty short.

Camera – Still Camera

I have a 3 year old Canon Powershot S2IS and a new Sony A200 DSLR. Will it be recognised when I plug it to the USB port of my Ubuntu based notebook?

Absolutely.

The Canon and the Sony Cameras are mounted to the desktop. We will get a pop-up with message as shown. F-Spot is the default photo manager in Ubuntu. You might want to explore on your own. Its pretty simple and straight forward.

Video Camera

I am unable to get hold of a handy cam. I will provide an update to this portion of my article.

You are welcome to contribute to this portion.

Broadband on Mobile device

Just in case you are wondering, this is a USB based device making use of cellular network to provide internet on the go.

In summary, Broadband on Mobile(BBOM) is a high speed data service using HSDPA or 3.5G.

There was a promotion few months back from SingTel Mobile, costing S$11 per month for 10GB data usage. Grabbed it.

Will it work?

In the previous versions of Ubuntu I have noticed any options to easily add a Broadband on Mobile device. It could have been a nightmare trying to add it. With Ubuntu 8.10 everything has been made easy.

I noticed something in the network configuration option.

Yes, Mobile Broadband is one of the tabs.

I wondered are the drivers already built-in. Will my device, a Huawei E169 be recognised? Will I be able to select my network and so called dial-up? So many questions! Lets wait no longer and proceed.

I plugged in the device and waited. This is the message that pop-up. Oh good, so the device is recognised. Lets go to the next step.

Instead of clicking the above configure button, right-click the network connections and click edit network as shown. Select the Mobile Broadband tab and Click on Add.

Click Forward.

Select Network and click Forward. In my case will be SingTel.

Click Apply

We have added the device successfully. Now lets go on and connect to the internet.

Left-click on the network icon. You will see the newly created SingTel connection. Click on it and wait for connection to complete.

Tadaa.. connection successful. Just launch your browser to test internet connectivity

Windows Mobile Sync

At this point of time I am having trouble sync-ing my HTC Touch Diamond, Windows Mobile phone with Ubuntu. I have tried Mutisync and synce but has no response.

While I do some further research, please enjoy and try out on your own.

Conclusion

Pretty much all devices work with Ubuntu, with the exception of Windows Mobile based devices which would need a lot more tinkering.

If your camera is not recognised, don’t worry. Alternate way is to remove your Memory card and plug it into a card reader. Card readers are cheap, go and get one!

So go and try it out and experience it for yourself. Its fun trying something new.