Ubuntu notes

Enable Sensible Repositories

A vaguely useful apt sources.list:

 deb     http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy          main restricted universe multiverse 
 deb-src http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy          main restricted universe multiverse 

 deb     http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-updates  main restricted universe multiverse 
 deb-src http://nz.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-updates  main restricted universe multiverse 

 deb     http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu    edgy-security main restricted universe multiverse 
 deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu    edgy-security main restricted universe multiverse 

 deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu   edgy-commercial  main 

 deb     http://packages.freecontrib.org/plf  edgy-plf      free non-free 
 deb-src http://packages.freecontrib.org/plf  edgy-plf      free non-free 

Note: Can replace security.ubuntu.com with nz.archive.ubuntu.com for faster transfers, with slightly less up-to-date-ness.

Crazy Wireless Drivers

If you are lucky enough to have bought a HP or Compaq laptop recently, you've probably got a Broadcom wireless chipset. Broadcom are lazy wankers and don't release their driver code.

Solution

Use ndiswrapper 1.8. Blacklist the built-in bcm43xx and download these Win32 Broadcom 4318 drivers.

sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.8 ndiswrapper-common

Google Earth Permission

Permission denied running googleearth?

sudo chown -R username ~/.googleearth ~/.local/share/applications/googleearth.desktop

Connect to a Windows VPN

Finally, some clever Ubuntu Gnome folks have written a network manager plugin for doing Windows VPN connections over PPTP. The extremely cool network manager is also available for KDE:

sudo apt-get install network-manager-pptp network-manager-kde