I recently got a Three Skypephone and found that it could be paired to your PC and used as a modem. The software provided was Windows-only, so I set about looking for a way to connect my Ubuntu laptop as this is what I’ll be using any time I’m away from home.

The closest match I found was this tutorial at davesource, but it didn’t work right off the bat for me. All it took, however, was a few restarts to get bluetooth playing nicely - then I disabled my existing network connections:


sudo ifconfig eth0 down
sudo ifconfig lo down


Then edited the gprs-connect-chat script from davesource’s tutorial so that line 47:


OK 'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet2.voicestream.com","",0,0' \


looks like:


OK 'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","three.co.uk","",0,0' \


I then followed the connection routine detailed in the davesource tutorial and after a short while I was up and running - fired up Firefox and was able to connect straight away.

Speed was pretty good, the service I selected with my plan was “Broadband Lite” and it isn’t an overstatement, you get pretty decent performance. This was with my 3G signal indicator at 3 out of 4 bars.

Quick one tonight - I’m currently attempting to breathe some new life in to an old laptop (a Sony Vaio purchased to kick off my University days in Summer 2002). As you’d expect, my first decision was to switch to Ubuntu rather than chug along with Windows XP, so I ran the latest official CD image. When the X Server (Graphical Interface) loaded up, the top half of my screen was fine and displayed as normal, however the bottom half was a hazy mash of lines and squiggles (official technical term there).

Having restarted the machine several times, disconnected USB devices and so on as per the usual suspects, the problem persisted. A random decision to choose “Log Out” instead of “Shut Down” led me to a login screen on the Live CD, which auto-logs in to the default ubuntu user again after 10 seconds. This time when it logged in, the screen displayed correctly.

No idea what caused all this, but in case you’re hitting the same wall I thought I’d put what worked for me online so you have something to try.

I split my time fairly evenly between Windows (XP & Vista) and Linux (primarily Ubuntu) environments so I have a fair amount of experience with both. Each have their merits and drawbacks but the main thing I felt Windows was missing that seems to come as standard in most if not all Linux distributions is the multiple workspaces option.Call me picky, but I can’t handle cluttered taskbars bursting with programs, but as is often the way I’ve got a bunch of things open at once through necessity at work so the ability to divide the various programs across multiple desktops is very useful.

After having this thought at the back of my mind for far too long, I finally got around to searching for something that would replicate this functionality in Windows and came across the Vista/XP Virtual Desktop Manager yesterday. I’ve not had it long but it stood the test of an extremely busy day yesterday, managing to handle 22+ programs open at once and switching around frequently between workspaces.

I’m currently running it on Windows Vista Enterprise on a Toshiba Tecra M4 Tablet PC w/ 2GB RAM. I plan to test it out on a lower spec’d machine soon - I’ll update here once that’s happened. As the name suggests, the software is capable of running on both Vista and XP.

So with only two days usage down, I’m happy to say I’m sold on this free software. It’s exactly what I was looking for and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone finding themselves in the same situation I often do. Feel free to leave your experiences with the software below, or share any other useful programs you’ve taken a shine to.

I’m having a hard time working out what I (or anyone else, for that matter…) would do with it, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to own a picotux - the smallest Linux computer in the World.

Quick one - if you are using an Ubuntu Live CD to access your NTFS drive and deleting files, you might wonder what’s happening to those files: they’re disappearing from view but your free disk space isn’t increasing; They’re not in the trash.

It actually creates a hidden folder on the NTFS drive named .Trash-ubuntu  (replace ubuntu with whatever username you are logged in as - default for an Ubuntu live session is “ubuntu”).

To see this folder, navigate to your NTFS drive and hit Ctrl+H, which will show hidden files/folders. Deleting the files from this folder removes them permanently, freeing up that precious disk space.