Make GIMP interface look like Photoshop

I love GIMP and I've been trying to learn how to use it for image processing. However, I've gotten quite good at using Photoshop and the thought of learning a new interface and work flow is not appetizing. To that end, I did some googling and discovered that GIMP can be themed.

I installed a great theme that mimicked the Photoshop interface and I must say it looks pretty darn good. It's almost like I'm using Photoshop. See images below and judge for yourself.

GIMP with Photoshop theme.

So far I've not noticed any issues with GIMP and everything works as it should. Now if I can only do the same with Inkscape and Scribus, I would be golden.

Enable hibernation in Xubuntu 14.04

Hibernation is disabled by default in all Ubuntu-based distributions because of problems in some laptops. However, it works fine on my Thinkpad. I do not use hibernation much, but sometimes I want to switch batteries without closing all my applications.

Before enabling hibernation, test that it works on your machine by running the following code.
sudo pm-hibernate

If hibernation works, enable it permanently by opening, with sudo,
/var/lib/polkit-1/localauthority/10-vendor.d/com.ubuntu.desktop.pkla

Then find the two sections below,
[Disable hibernate by default in upower]
[Disable hibernate by default in logind]

Finally, change
“ResultActive=no” to “ResultActive=yes” in both cases.

Restart your computer and you should be able to hibernate your computer from the power menu.

How to monitor Thinkpad power consumption in Xubuntu

I received my new battery yesterday and was curious about my laptop's power consumption. I did some searching and found the perfect tool. It's a small command-line application called powerstat. It's easy to run and available in the package manager.

Output of powerstat

 

To install powerstat

sudo apt-get install powerstat

Installing Tex Live 2014 and using LaTex in Xubuntu 14.04

I got into the LaTeX game late--after I had already written my PhD thesis--but I am glad I discovered it and now I use it all the time to write reports, letter and anything I will export to PDF and want to look nice.

Installing LaTeX on the mac is as simple as installing the MacTex.pkg, which also includes LaTeX editors, a bibtex reference manager, a spell checker and an equation editor.

On the linux side of things, it's not as simple to get the latest release of TeX Live but not that difficult. You should know that Tex Live 2013 is available in the Ubuntu repositories and can be installed with synaptic. However, I wanted the latest release.

Install Texlive 2014

I used a script by  Scott Kosty to install the latest version of TeX Live. Literally, all you have to do is down and run the script and have a cup of coffee while the script downloads, installs and configures LaTeX.

Texlive 2014 installed

UPDATE 1:

I've decided that the full Tex Live install is overkill and I will probably never use most of it. Plus all the extra fonts increased Inkscape's startup time from a few seconds to almost a minute. So, I uninstalled the full Tex Live 2014 and install the following Tex Live 2013 packages from the Ubuntu repos.

1. texlive-base , 
2. texlive-latex-recommended 
3. texlive-fonts-recommended 
4. texlive-lang-eng

I tested this install with a few existing tex documents and it worked fine.

Install a LaTeX editor

There are many latex editor for (X)ubuntu to choose form. I tried Texstudio, Gedit with latex plugin and a few others, but I eventually settled on Gummi, which is lightweight and simple with an integrated PDF viewer. I installed Gummi using the synaptic package manager.

Gummi LaTex editor

UPDATE:

Gummi apparently can only run bibtex, but I use biblatex with biber. Unless an update is released that support biber, I will use TexStudio for editing latex documents.

TexStudio

Install a bibtex reference manager

For writing reports that require references and a bibliography, using bibtex is the way to go. The most well-know bibtex editors available for linux is JabRef , but I like Pybliographer, which is lightweight and simple. The version in the Ubuntu repositories is outdated so I downloaded a .deb of the latest version of from the website and installed with GDebi.

Bibtex file editor

With those applications you are now ready to write beautiful, well-formatted documents.

Package management in Xubuntu

Xubuntu ships with the bloated, clunky, slow and ugly Ubuntu Software Center. I always remove this monstrosity from my system and replace it with more sensible options that run great on old machines.

Software Center

For installing apps in the Ubuntu universe, I install Synaptic Package Manager. This is the old G of package management. I use it for updating, installing and uninstalling applications, adding and removing repositories and other package management tasks.

Synaptic Package Manager

For installing DEB files downloaded from the internet, I use GDebi. GDebi is a simple application that also fetches dependencies if needs be.

GDebi

 

To remove Ubuntu Software Manager
sudo apt-get autoremove software-center

To install Synaptic Package Manager
sudo apt-get install synaptic

To install GDebi
sudo apt-get install gdebi

IBM T42p RAM upgrade and new (used) 9-cell battery

My IBM T42p came with 1.5 GB of RAM--a 500 MB stick in the slot under the keyboard and a 1 GB stick in the slot on the back of the machine. Don't get me wrong, 1.5 GB of RAM is not bad, especially  using Xubuntu. However, the machine can address a maximum of 2 GB, so I wanted to max it out.

I had an old 1 GB stick around the house from the old PC2700 DDR days, so I removed the keyboard and replaced the 500 MB stick with the 1 GB stick. See instructions for removing the keyboard below.

My Thinkpad came with a pretty crappy battery that lasted a cool 30 minutes. This meant, I was pretty much tethered to my outlet with the AC adaptor. I wanted a better battery, so I went to eBay. I bought a SANYO replacement (not genuine IBM/Lenovo) that was dead on arrival (DOA), but the seller gave me a refund. With the refund, I then bought a genuine--but used--IBM/Lenovo 9-cell battery that was guaranteed to last at least 3 hours.

DOA SANYO replacement battery

I'll update this blog post when I receive my new (old) battery.

UPDATE:

The 9-cell battery I purchased on eBay arrived today and it looks like a great purchase.

New 9-cell battery

It's been through only 3 charge cycles, and retains 96% of the designed charge capacity. With this capacity I should get between 3.5---4 hours of battery life between charges. See the tlp stats below.

My new 9-cell battery is awesome

Essential applications on a new Xubuntu install

Xubuntu is a pretty bare boned system, which makes it fast and lightweight. It's also easy to customize and really make your own. Following are a few things I did to customize my Thinkpad to my work flow.

Power Management
For advance  power management I installed tlp. See site for details.

Office Suite
Xubuntu ships with Abiword  for word processing and Gnumeric for manipulating spreadsheets. These programs are lightweight and easy to use, but not powerful enough for my needs. The obvious choice is LibreOffice, but I decided to go with Kingsoft Office. Kingsoft has been around for a while but only recently ported their office suite to linux. Although, it's still in alpha testing the applications are powerful, the UI is familiar and they are completely compatible with Microsoft Office generated files. Download here.

Presentation Application

Spreadsheet Application

Word Processor

Design and graphics
For editing images, creating illustrations and page layouts, I use Gimp, Inkscape and Scribus, respectively. These are all available from the application center.

Gimp

Inkscape

Scribus

Internet
I use Firefox browser, which ships with Xubuntu. I added the Adblock Plus and Youtube HTML5 extension. I uninstalled Thunderbird and installed Geary mail client.

Python development
I use the Geany IDE for working with Python.

Geany

More to come later...

Installing Xubuntu 14.04 LTS on an IBM T42p Thinkpad

First off, I decided to go with Xubuntu because it was more resource and user friendly compared to Ubuntu or Kubuntu. Also the interface felt more natural to me because I'm an OS X user both at home and work.

Downloading  Xubuntu 14.04 LTS and creative LiveCD

1. Get the 34 bit iso from xubuntu website
2. My Thinkpad came with XP, so I used LiveUSB Install to create a bootable USB with the iso.

Running the Live environment

1. With the LiveUSB in the usb port, I restarted the computer and entered BIOS where it can the boot order to check for usb boot drives before my hard drive. Restart again.
2. The boot failed because my IBM T42 does not have PAE enabled. The get boot to work use these instructions (see summary).
3. Play around with the Live environment to make sure that the keyboard, trackpad and track point work.

Install Xubuntu

1. Double click on Install Xubuntu to install the operating system.
2. From my 60GB HD, I create swap (2GB), root / (20GB) and home (rest of drive) partitions. 
3. After installing, restart computer and remove the LiveUSB. You may also want to change to boot order so that the hard drive boots first but this is optional as it only add a few seconds to the boot each time.

Xubuntu is awesome on the T42p. It's fast and all my hardware is recognized without any issues. There were only three issues I had to deal with.

Replace the default screen locker

The default screen locker has a nasty bug, which prevents the display from powering up after sleep. When this happens, you will have to force logout or restart and lose all unsaved documents or edits. To remedy this, I uninstalled light-locker (sudo apt-get purge light-locker light-locker-settings) and install xscreensaver (sudo apt-get install xscreensaver).

UPDATE 1:

The problem with light locker has been fixed. xscreensaver is no longer required. I've moved back to light locker and it works great.

UPDATE 2:

There are still lingering issues with light locker in Xubuntu. To get the system to work properly, set light locker to lock session "When the screensaver is deactivated." See screenshot below.

Light locker settings

Fix for on-screen display for volume and brightness changes

The volume, mute and display brightness buttons worked but there was no on-screen display when the buttons were pressed. I fixed that by:

sudo -i

cp /sys/devices/platform/thinkpad_acpi/hotkey_all_mask /sys/devices/platform/thinkpad_acpi/hotkey_mask

gedit /etc/rc.local

Add Line:  cp /sys/devices/platform/thinkpad_acpi/hotkey_all_mask /sys/devices/platform/thinkpad_acpi/hotkey_mask

UPDATE 1:

Systemd is disabled on newer Xubuntu release. For the above to work systemd has to be activated. See this page to instructions. 

Fix to unlock keyring on login

The login keyring not opening after logging in. This can be fixed by:

Opening /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-keyring-pkcs11.desktop

Find OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity

Append ;XFCE to change to OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;XFCE

That is how I installed Xubuntu on my IBM T42p.

My Desktop

My IBM T42p running Xubuntu 14.04 LTS

My New (Old) Thinkpad has arrived

I'm a big Thinkpad fanatic--have always been. Recently, I saw an old IBM T42p on eBay for $80 and immediately purchased it. I thought it was a good deal considering that it originally cost almost 3 grand in 2005. I have a late 2011 15" MacBook Pro that I used for work and when I need lots of computing power, but I love playing around with the Thinkpad for everything else

The laptop has a large and bright 14.1" screen with 1400x1050 resolution. It has a 1.8GHz processor and came with a 1.5 GB of RAM and a 60GB Hitachi HD.

It came with Windows XP SP3 installed and not much else. Since, XP is no longer support I've decided to run Xubuntu 14.04 LTS, which is supported until 2017. I opted for Xubuntu because of its resource friendly and works great on older machines.

This blog serves two purposes:

1. A place for me to keep a record of everything I did to the system. This is essential because I know I will break the system in the future because I'm always messing around with configuration files and installing unstable applications from untrusted sources.
2. I decided to keep a blog so that others trying to run linux on old Thinkpads can learn from my experience and avoid spending hours in forums looking for solutions to problems that I've already encountered and solved.

If anyone has any questions or advise, please contact me by leaving a comment.