Preparing HP 440G1 Laptop to Load Ubuntu 13.10

Preparing HP 440G1 Laptop to Load Ubuntu 13.10

Note:- This will completely remove Windows 8.1 from the system. Strongly Recommended to make recovery Flash Drive (yes, flash drive, starting from Win 8.1, Recovery CD/DVD can't be made. Also, the flash drive size would have to be about 32 GB as Recovery files can occupy > 16 GB)

When the Laptop boots, Press ESC to enter into the UEFI Menu. Press F10 for setup. Navigate to the 'Advanced' Tab:-

Section Device Configurations:-

1. place a check mark on Virtualization Technology (VTx), this will be required if you plan to run VMWARE player in linux to create virtual machines.

2. Unchecking Hybrid Graphics disables the Discrete AMD HD 8750M graphics with only Haswell integrated graphics. Since I planned to use 'switchable Graphics', this remained checked.

Section Boot Options:-

1. Disable Fast Boot
2. Check on CD-ROM boot, SDCard boot, USB device boot.
3. Define Customized boot option, select button Add. Type custom boot path as \EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi ( the same path which you will be using to boot from the USB drive in the next step.)
4. Boot Mode :- UEFI Hybrid (with CSM)
save and close setup

Procedure to install linux. 

I had downloaded the Ubuntu 13.10 ISO. Using an ISO extractor or winrar had copied the entire file structure onto a USB drive.
Plugged the USB drive into the laptop, powered on, presssed Esc and then F9 for boot options:-
1. Select boot from EFI file
2. select the USB device, the complete folder tree would be displayed
3. browse to folder EFI/Boot/grubx64.efi
Installation starts and follow the steps to complete the Ubuntu installation!

Notes:-

1. UEFI Firmware only supports 64bit OS.
2. Windows 8 boots only from UEFI supported firmware
3. The Windows Product keys are stored in ACPI of BIOS. The ACPI can be accessed from acpidump utility to read the product keys, for an excellent article visit www.nextofwindows.com/how-to-retrieve-windows-8-oem-product-key-from-bios
4. Booting from Disk size > 1TB needs GPT (GUID Partition Table)
5. 3D hardware can't be virtualized (as of now)
6. UEFI does not support MBR only GPT.

Installing Linux Drivers for AMD HD8750M Discrete GPU.

1.Download the Beta driver from the AMD download page.
2. Prepare the system as per this excellent post :-
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1930450&page=82&p=12755069#post12755069
 3. after reboot, wait :) wait..it takes 3 odd minutes to load the modules and give a silky display. you will see only black screen with cursor till such time.
3. you can switch between Integrated (power saving) and Discrete (more performance) from the Catalyst Control Centre.  This can be accessed from the terminal by typing gksudo amdcccle

Applications :-

1. VLC player can be installed from ubuntu software centre.
2. Download and install vmware player from the VMware site. complete graphical install. launch the file with gksudo and complete the steps.
3. Flash player is supported for youtube etc.
4. Skype can be installed from the ubuntu software centre. allow multiverse repositories to download skype. A bug does not allow to connect, workaround is to run sudo gksu and then open skpe from there as root.

Converting Figures to Words in Excel Column using VBA

Suppose you have a column of figures in Excel, say, a long one having hundred entries , and you have to write the equivalent in words corresponding to that figure, say, 1 should be reported as 'one' and 2367 should be reported as 'Two Thousand Three Hundred Sixty Seven'. This macro can come in handy. written in VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).

Antenna Pattern plot using QBASIC

Radiation & Propagation Engineering (RAPE), one of the toughest subjects in Electronics Engineering course. Flipping through the book (Jordan) is like going to Greece. Equations and 3D abound and a very strong background of mathematics in cartesian and spherical coordinate system is necessary to understand things. I took two attempts in my course to clear this paper. But, I was determined, no studying from 'examination point of view'. Even if I understand at-least one equation after some struggle, it would be worth it. Those were the days when google and internet were not around to help and following Jordan was a nightmare, as ,some steps in the derivation of  equation were 'skipped' because the author considered them to be too trivial to waste paper which could anyhow be dealt with in the classroom..Alas for us..most of this theory was passed on as 'Assignments'. I saw some beautiful pictures of Antenna patterns in the book, and then was tempted to do the same on the computer using QBASIC. The trick (if I remember right), to plot the pattern was to 'project' the wave equation on to the cartesian axes. This was not mentioned in the book (again..maybe too trivial from author's point of view) .
Twelve years after leaving college, and checking some old floppy disks, I found this software which I had written in QBASIC during those malnourished student days ....and it was such a good feeling when the antenna pattern lobes showed up according the the input given. wow! it still gives me goose bumps. 

Using Zend Debugger with PHP 5.3 installed on Debian 6

1. This entry is followed from this youtube post:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kwQFzwSifE

The same is described in text:-

2. Zend studio web debugger  can be downloaded from this link
http://www.zend.com/en/products/studio/downloads

3. click the linux tab and copy the tar file to a folder in your linux system. untar the contents

4. create a folder zenddebugger in /usr/lib
5. copy the contents of the untarred folder to zenddebugger folder created  in /usr/lib in your linux system.

6. nano -w /etc/apache2/conf.d/debugger.ini  //creates a debugger.ini file
//write the following lines in the file:-

zend_extension=/usr/lib/zenddebugger/5_3_x_comp/ZendDebugger.so

zend_debugger.allow_hosts=192.168.1.0/24 //depends on the hosts which you want to allow

zend_debugger.expose_remotely=always

7. copy /usr/lib/zenddebugger/dummy.php to the directory in webserver where you have the code to debug. if your files are /var/www, then copy dummy.php there.

8. Restart apache /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

9. write a php script to show phpinfo( ) and verify whether zend debugger line is shown and an entry for zend debugger exists in the phpinfo( ) page.

Next post on integrating this with eclipse IDE..