Netbeans 8.1 on the EEEPC 900

It's quite recent in the news that Netbeans, the Oracle Java IDE, is going to pass under the Apache wing. The immediate effect of this news has been to remind me to upgrade my EEEPC Netbeans installation.

Installation and first run

Netbeans for Linux is provided in the form of an auto-installing executable script, once downloaded I started it from shell:

chmod +x netbeans-8.1-javase-linux.sh
sudo ./netbeans-8.1-javase-linux.sh

when started with the “sudo” command the installation script install Netbeans into the “/usr/local” directory otherwise the script will install in your home directory.

Upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04 … (one way or another)

Ubuntu spring update has arrived, this year coinciding with Easter. As soon I had time I proceeded with upgrading my two computers. The upgrade process has not been as smooth as I'd liked but at the end I managed to have both computer up-to-date.

 

Acer Veriton S661

I started the upgrade process on my desktop computer and, after answering the usual initial “agree” and “confirm”, I left the computer unattended for the long file download part of the upgrade process. When I returned the computer had the screen locked and I couldn't manage to unlock it anymore. After many attempts I decided for the most drastic solution: forcing the computer to restart. The result has been the most drastic too: the computer refused to boot.

I've been so forced to download a Ubuntu disk image and proceed with a full installation. The installation procedure recognized, fortunately, the incomplete Ubuntu set-up and offered a “Reinstall Ubuntu 14.04” option. Re-installation from disk proceeded flawlessly and eventually I got my system mostly restored apart from some custom system files which have been overwritten.

Must be said that, since, I'm not new to similar problems, I have my home folder mounted on a separate partition. So, even if I need to format the boot disk, I have no fear for my data.

EEEPC 900

After the experience of upgrading the desktop computer I disabled the screen-lock on the EEEPC before starting the upgrade application. The upgrade process proceeded without any problems.
The EEEPC works fine with the new Ubuntu-Gnome release but it shows some odd error message during boot I never noticed before:
Sometimes, just after GRUB menu, it gives a worrying message about a malformed file, in addition it shows this message later during the boot process.

[drm:i915_stolen_to_physical] *ERROR* conflict detected with stolen region: [0x7f800000 – 0x80000000]

I'll check soon on the 'net for possible causes of these problems but I could also decide for a fresh install of the whole system.

Netbeans 7.4 on the EEEPC 900

It has been a while since last time I wrote about Netbeans installation on the EEEPC 900. I usually use Eclipse as my preferred Java IDE, both at work and at home, but on the nine inch EEEPC display Eclipse has too many parts falling off-screen. I so started using Netbeans on the EEEPC and, as the time passed, I learned appreciating it.

Installation

Installing Netbeans on Linux is quite simple: I downloaded the installation script made it executable and started it like following:

chmod +x netbeans-7.4-javase-linux.sh
sudo ./netbeans-7.4-javase-linux.sh

Then I just followed the wizard instructions:

New toy on the desk: Acer Veriton S661

Apart from the subtle pride of installing latest Linux releases on a six years old computer I have been feeling the need of a new desktop computer since some years. So, at last, I decided to buy a new one. Not so very new to be honest: I got it at a surplus fair, here in Genoa, where I go twice a year, and they told me it has been used only for “exposition purpose”. It must be true because its interior is almost free of any dust and we all know how is difficult to keep dust out of our computers.

The Acer Veriton S661 is a office targeted compact desktop: with a dual core 2600MHz processor, 1GB RAM and a 250GB hard disk. It could be better, especially on the RAM side, but there is time for expansions in the years to come. The compact case saves some space on my crumpled desktop (the Sempron 2400 was a mid-tower) and I needed this more than the improved performances. The case is well organized inside, in spite of its compactness and can even be opened without a screw-driver. Last but not least, it's wonderfully noiseless.

What would you do with a HP Omnibook XE2?

Sometimes I bring home old computers like other people bring home stranded pets. I've been given from a friend an old HP Omnibook Xe2 laptop. It's a 333 MHz Celeron based computer with 64MB RAM and a 12'' screen. It was a decent hardware configuration … twelve years ago. Of course the first question that came up has been: “Can I run Linux on it?”.

Wary or Lupu?

Speaking of old computers Puppy Linux is probably the most famous solution. Two version are actually available at Puppy's download page: the Ubuntu-Lucid based “Lupu” (V.5.2.5) and the more traditional “Wary” (5.1.2). I downloaded both but, unfortunately, while testing the distributions in live mode from CD Lupu showed some problem locking the system every now and then. I so went for installing Puppy Linux “Wary”.

Upgraded to Netbeans 6.9.1 (on the EEEPC)

From time to time it happens I start dusting off the development environment on my EEEPC in order to start with some little new experiment. I so decided to upgrade Netbeans 6.8 there installed to the latest version 6.9.1.

Upgrading the JDK

As first step I decided, even if It's not strictly necessary, to upgrade to the latest JDK. I downloaded the self extracting archive from Oracle's download page and extracted it into the /opt directory:

chmod +x jdk-6u21-linux-i586.bin

mv jdk-6u21-linux-i586.bin /opt

sudo /opt/jdk-6u21-linux-i586.bin

As alternative JDK OpenJDK can be installed by a simple apt-get command:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk

Installing Netbeans 6.9.1

I downloaded Netbeans installation file from Netbeans.org download page then I executed it:

chmod +x netbeans-6.9.1-ml-javase-linux.sh

sudo ./netbeans-6.9.1-ml-javase-linux.sh

the installation program starts and it's only matter of agreeing with licences and clicking “next”.

Xubuntu 10.4 on Sempron 2400 (full install)

The third and last act of the upgrade season is the desktop computer (Sempron 2400) upgrade. Unfortunately, because my recent switch from Ubuntu to Xubuntu I suppose, I cannot proceed with a regular upgrade. The upgrade process stops after the sources gathering phase with this message.

I so decided to go for a plain install in order to, eventually, have a much cleaner system.

Before installing

Before installation I only had to back-up my home folder since all data I have are kept in the home folder or in NTFS partitions that will remain untouched by the installation process.

I then downloaded Xubuntu install disk image from its download page and prepared a boot disk on a 1GB USB disk using Ubuntu's boot disk creator.

Netbeans 6.8 on the EEEPC

I recently updated Netbeans, installed on the EEEPC 900, to the latest released version. I first downloaded it from Netbeans download page. I usually prefer to download the base version, since I don't know preventively what I'm going to experiment and which plug-ins I'm going to need.

Installing Netbeans has been so only matter of executing the downloaded file

chmod +x netbeans-6.8-ml-javase-linux.sh

sudo ./netbeans-6.8-ml-javase-linux.sh

the installation then started and, after agreeing with the usual license, I selected the installation path and the SDK to be used.

Installed CVS

I've just installed CVS on PIII 550. I don't really write so much code to need a versioning system at home, but it's still an interesting experiment and also an easy way to share sources between laptop and desktop computer. I did it mainly following instructions from this howto.
first I installed CVS and XINETD with apt-get command:

sudo apt-get install cvs

sudo apt-get install xinetd

 then I added to xinetd the cvs configuration file

vim /etc/xinetd.d/cvspserver

here is the file content

service cvspserver { port = 2401 socket_type = stream protocol = tcp user = root wait = no type = UNLISTED server = /usr/bin/cvs server_args = -f --allow-root /var/lib/cvs pserver disable = no }

after restarting xinetd:

sudo /etc/init.d/xinetd start

I added two users to the machine (for the two computers that are going to use CVS) and added them to the src group.

(adding only CVS users would be safer but this is only a home network server so why worry about it?)

sudo adduser --no-create-home eeepc900 sudo adduser --no-create-home sempron2400 sudo addgroup eeepc900 src sudo addgroup sempron2400 src

and, at last, I configured Eclipse to use the CVS server