This is rather strange. Recently I’ve noticed the BBC will not let me watch any video content site with Firefox 3 beta 5 on Ubuntu. Now I know this is not a country based issue, I live in the UK. Secondly, I know it is not an issue with my ISP that makes me look like I am accessing the content from abroad. How do I know this? Simple, by switching user agents.

First I clear my cookies and try to watch a video, say one of Fabio Capello’s crazy interviews in English, the site greets me with the following message:
“Sorry this content is not available at the moment”

Now, if you’ve had ISP issues before with the BBC’s site you will know that if your ISP has acrazy routing scheme up the BBC site will give you the following message:
“Sorry this content is not available in your country”

Notice the difference?

Now all I have to do to watch the video is clear my cookies once more and use the User Agent Switcher plug-in for Firefox to gain access. Simply switch the agent to crappy old Internet Explorer on Windows Vista and enjoy the videos…

 Update:

I thought the flickering problem was fixed, but there is a caveat. With Compiz watching videos under VLC and Xine the video flickers, but under SMPlayer, using X11 output the flicker is gone. The X11 output is the same quality as the XVideo or OpenGL output of other players; although, I would presume it takes more resources.

After upgrading to Ubuntu Hardy Xine crashed with two nasty errors: X Error of failed request… and option glx-shm does not exist. In addition to this, VLC output was blocky and I could not force VLC to work correctly with OpenGL simply changing the output method to OpenGL would crash VLC on startup. This is probably an issue users of modern ATi graphics cards will have, as the drivers aren’t really all that.

So here’s how to get Ubuntu Hardy video output sorted and have Compiz running too; as unlike Gutsy, Hardy does not fall foul of the ‘flickering video’ in Compiz. I know many people have issues with video under Compiz when using Fglrx, so this may help those people.

First, you should install Envy-Ng — you will need to configure Synaptic to use the Multiverse repository to install Envy-Ng– and let it sort out your graphics cards drivers. This program will keep your drivers uptodate and sort out your xorg.config for you. Use Envy-Ng to install the latest drivers for your card (at current Envy will install version 8-3.)You should then restart the X-Server (Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.)

Next up you will need to sort out your Xorg to run XVideo, without it being so blocky. This is due to Envy not setting the options for XVideo correctly. Open up xorg.conf with the following command in the terminal: sudo /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now change the section “Device” to have TexturedVideoSync, TexturedVideo, and VideoOverlay on and have OpenGLOverlay off. The section should look as follows:

Section “Device”
Identifier    “aticonfig-Device[0]”
Driver        “fglrx”
Option        “TexturedVideoSync”    “on”
Option         “TexturedVideo” “on”
Option        “VideoOverlay”    “on”
Option        “OpenGLOverlay”    “off”
EndSection

You may want to check the following sections, with the following setting I get Compiz effects with no flickering video.

Section “ServerFlags”
Option        “AIGLX”    “true”
EndSection

Section “DRI”
Group        “video”
Mode    0666
EndSection

Section “Extensions”
Option        “RENDER”    “Enable”
Option        “DAMAGE”    “Enable”
Option        “XVideo”    “Enable”
Option        “Composite”    “Enable”
EndSection

As ASUS are making a move to sell the Eee Pc with XP, I thought I’d post something to show that there’s nothing wrong with Linux — even for Windows novices. I, and many others, feel that ASUS simply chose the wrong distribution of Linux to ship with the Eee Pc. Xandros may be very much like Windows, but it has a relatively small user base and little support. Leaving ASUS to deal with the vast challenge of providing adiquate customer support for new Linux users, as there is no-where else for customers to go. In addition, the inadiquacy of the operating system mean opensource customised version of a popular distribution like Ubuntu in the first place. It’s strange why Everex have decided to fall into the same trap as ASUS.
The following text is from a review of the ASUS Eee Pc in general, eeeXubuntu, and the installation process, by Wyowind. The original source is from the EeeUser forums.

I have just received my black Eee PC 4G Galaxy and I am very very impressed. I bought it to be able to view some work related reference materials and stay in touch with my employer for work assignments. It seems like it will do a lot more.

It feels very sturdy. Heavier than I thought it would feel. The screen is small but I knew what it would be like from looking at some DVD players before I purchased it. It booted quickly! I didnt time it but it seemed very fast.

Like a lot of folks here I was planning on replacing the default O/S with somehing differnent. I did my research on what was available and even played with some of the live distro’s on my winPC before I picked one to try on my Eee. EeeXubuntu (r3) had about everything I would need, and the feel of an MS operating system that I was used to. I have found that a lot of the things work the same but have different names.

A disclaimer before I continue, I have never used Linux before in m life. I have some friends that use it and have always wanted to give it a try but never got around to it. I have used many versions of MS Windows for about 10 years now and consider myslf a novice user at best.

After playing with, and trashing, the xandros distro that came installed in both beginner and advanced modes I was ready to put EeeXubutu on. (This is a learning proccess for me)

I installed EeeXubuntu onto a 2GB thumbdrive just like the wiki instructed and it worked flawlessly. I booted it up on my Eee and played with it for about and hour and figured I was ready to wipe out my hard drive and install it.

The install was very straight forward at first. Pick a primary language and timezone then the partition/format section came up. I was lost for a while because I couldnt remember reading much about how to partition/format using the installation program. All I had to do was about 10 minutes of reading to figure it out. Long story short, you have to select manual and go though each aspect of the drives you have. There is plenty of help scattered throughout the forum on this. A suggestion for the guys that maintain the wiki is maybe you could put a more indepth guide for beginners to this proccess in the EeeXubuntu installation guide. Anyway, after I figured out how to setup for format I moved on to the next section.

(A tip for new people that havent used Linux before, choose a password with more than 6 characters. I found this out the hard way. It seems that if your password is too short it dosent allow you full access to edit things in root. This might be common knowledge to people familiar with linux but it took me a while to figure it out. One I did then everything else went smooth)

After I entered my personal info and password I was ready to install. The next part was fully automatic. It took about 20 minutes total time and was trouble free.

I booted up for the first time and it worked great. Imediately the update manager told me there were some 111 updates available. I had to manually connect to my wireless conection first but that was easy. (just click on the icon in the lower right corner and select your connection). I started the updater and it began downloading everyting to update my O/S. After about 15 minutes it asked for a reboot.

I felt like I was at a milestone. I was ready to try out EeeXubuntu for the first time in all its glory. It booted quickly and before I knew it I was at the screen to enter my login info. I did and it finnished the boot. My wireless connection was automatic this time. No problems there. If you make it to this point you are ready to go on with the list of know issues and fixes in the wiki. This is where I found out about the password problem. it wouldnt let me edit in root on mousepad. after I enetered the commands and my short password in terminal the mousepad would open with a blank page and the warning at the top about changes made inroot could be dangerous. It was s simple fix, I went into the system>users & groups> and eidited my account info to change my password, reboot and waaaalllaa. that fixed it.

It took me a while to figure things out but once I did, following the instructions to te letter in the wiki worked great.
(a warning to new people like me, you MUST use the exact keys/fonts as they are listed in the wiki. You cannot substitue upper and lower case letters)
I recommend going trough the list that the wiki gives you in the order listed. If you mess something up then its easier to go back and fix it.

I could write 10 more pages about the trails and tribulations of fixing the know issues of this install but I think everyone will have a different experience with this. In my particular case I was learning from the beginning and as I went along. Suffice to say that I have completed almost the entire list and EeeXubuntu is up and running strong. I can tell you that my confidence level has gone up ten fold in just a couple of days using linux. The installation seems scary at first but even if your a novice, newby, noob like me you can do it too.

I think you will like EeeXubuntu r3, I know I do so far!
I have also installed:

Open Office 2.3 & Konqueror (they work great)

Post Script:
I am writing this on my Eee using Open office Writer and testing the battery at the same time. So far the battery has lasted 3 hours and 15 minutes with full screen brightness and wifi on. The meter that was automatically installed for me seems to work well, it shows 13% remaining.

Credit once more to Wyowind.

It all goes to show, that with a little effort, the change to Linux isn’t really that hard. After a few months, you’ll find yourself reasonably proficient in the ‘duanting terminal’.

Getting Diablo 2 mods working in Linux can be a pain (especially when you try running them from an Asus eee pc,) although Diablo runs perfectly in Wine, mods can be somewhat more tricky. I do know that any mod that uses Nefarius’s NefEx system will run perfectly, as I created and tested the Ragnarok mod using this system (on my eee too!) However, some mods can be more tricky to run and TFW: The Awakening is a special case as it utilises a vbs script to run under Windows. This is the only mod I know of that uses such a system.

One user on the Keep, AGUtilities, has created a nice bash script, which simulates the effects of the vbs script under Linux. All the calls to Wine are inserted in the script so all you have to do is put the script into your TFW folder and run it. Make sure you have Wine installed before running the script, otherwise you’ll just get a bunch of error messages.

I’ve checked the script and it does nothing malicious,  it’s pretty easy to understand what it is doing.

You can get the script from here.

I’ve provided a download mirror here.