Tag Archives: ubuntu

Installing Xilinx in Linux

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Xilinx is the most widely used FPGA simulator available and can be installed in multiple platforms. Here’s how I installed it in my linux system which runs Ubuntu 10.10.

In the Xilinx folder, select the archive that contains the ISE data and extract it. In my case it was named ise_SFD.tar

Open up a terminal, go to the extracted directory and type:

sudo ./setup

A installer will open and follow the simple instructions given. The install takes up more than 5GB in the drive. After the setup is completed, go to the ISE directory inside the installation directory and enter the following command in the terminal:

. settings32.sh

Notice the space after the first dot and the letter s. Now you’re ready to run the ISE. Just enter the following command:

ise &

This should start the ISE. However you’ll have to run the above two commands in order to start ISE each time. What I did was to write a bash script with the two commands above and gave it executable rights with chmod.

Good luck!

A sudden "Desktop effects could not be enabled" problem in Ubuntu 10.10

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UPDATE: If you ran into the “desktop effects could not be enabled” error, try one of the following:

  1. Check if you have installed the recommended drivers for your video card in System -> Administration -> Additional Drivers
  2. In case of NVidia cards, install the latest driver as showin in this post
  3. Remove any theme-related software you installed recently. Eg: compositing managers, themes
  4. Install the compiz-fusion-plugins-extra package
  5. Try the command: compiz –replace
  6. Completely remove all the  compiz stuff and reinstall
  7. Try this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9212078&postcount=10
  8. Install Ubuntu Tweak

The above are some of the methods different people around the world have solved the issue. But there’s no guarantee these may work for you.

When I switched on the laptop today evening I had no idea that I was in for a shock. All the desktop effects had gone; the desktop cube nowhere to be seen; no animations or effect whatsoever; and docky reports some compositing problem.

Then I go to my Appearance Preferences and find out that Visual Effects option has been set to None. Trying to change it resulted in the age-old problem: “Desktop effects could not be enabled”.

I do some googling and find out that I’m not alone and there’s an easy remedy, too. Just go to the Package Cleaner in Ubuntu Tweak, click Purge PPAs and purge the Compiz package out of the list. And everything’s back to normal.

No, wait. Not everything. I had once installed the extra compiz plugins package which added some cool new effects, and it’s gone missing. Apparently this and the update I did in the last boot has resulted this.

And later found out that it was actually the update that messed up the things. All you have to do is to go back to the previous version.

Installing Matlab 2008a on Ubuntu 10.10

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Update: This method also worked in Ubuntu 11.04.

So I successfully installed Matlab on Ubuntu after much ado. Here’s how I did it.

First mount the matlab ISO:

sudo mkdir /media/matlab

sudo mount matu2k8a.iso /media/matlab/ -t iso9660 -o loop

Create a base directory for Matlab manually:

sudo mkdir /usr/local/matlab

Go to where the ISO is mounted and run the installer:

sudo ./install

Give the path of the directory we’ve already created for the Matlab base directory. Give the serial key and the license file when prompted.

After the setup is completed, don’t start Matlab. Create a .matlab directory in your home and give user permissions.

mkdir ~/.matlab

sudo chown -R ${USER}:${USER} ~/.matlab

Done! Now you can run Matlab using the command:

sh /usr/local/matlab/bin/matlab

You can of course add a shortcut to your main menu.

EDIT: When you’re adding a shortcut to the main menu or desktop, add the “-desktop” option (without quotes) at the end of the command, otherwise only the popup screen will be displayed.

Syncing files with Unison in Ubuntu

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I have this music collection in my local hard drive which I wanted to sync with a folder in my portable HDD. What I wanted was to sync any changes done in any of them to the other with just one click. And came across Unison.

It’s available in the repositories and once installed all you have to do is to give the two folders for it to start syncing. However it seemed that most of my folders won’t sync. An error appears saying “Failed to set permissions blah blah”

Then came up with a simple solution in the Ubuntu forums. All you have to do is to add an entry called ‘perms=0’ in the Unison’s profile preferences file. It’ll bypass the frustrating permissions. This file can be found under ~/.unison directory. For my case it was ~/.unison/default. prf

Simply open up that file, enter a new line saying “perms=0” (w/o quotes) and save the file.  Works like magic 🙂

Cool improvement for Nautilus thumbnails

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Saw this trick in OMG! Ubuntu today. You can check out the original article here.

All you have to do is enter the following three commands in a terminal.

  • wget http://a.imageshack.us/img135/8666/thumbnailframe.png
  • sudo mv thumbnailframe.png /usr/share/pixmaps/nautilus/thumbnail_frame.png
  • killall nautilus

And check out the improved look in nautilus thumbnails. What this actually does is changing the default border in the thumbnails to a more 3D looking one.

Chrome is odd in Ubuntu

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Starting from Lucid Lynx, the control buttons are placed at the left side of the title bar in Ubuntu. This is quite cool. Once you get used to it, it seems more intuitive than having them on the right side.

But unfortunately one single app still has its buttons in right side, and that’s Google Chrome. Wish they’d let the users choose where to place the buttons.