HowTo: Pair your Bluetooth mobile phone with Ubuntu Jaunty for file transfers etc.
Following up my previous article of how to pair your Bluetooth mobile phone with Ubuntu Intrepid, I present this updated article for pairing your mobile phone using the updated version of the Bluez Bluetooth stack and the newer and better Blueman applet for Jaunty which greatly simplifies the process of pairing Bluetooth devices and transferring files to your mobile phone.
HowTo: Setup your Nokia N95 mobile phone as a Mobile Broadband Device via Bluetooth in Ubuntu Jaunty
Following up my article of how to setup a Nokia N95 as a mobile broadband device using a USB cable, we’ve been waiting for the Network Manager and/or Bluetooth stack to be updated so we could do the same thing via Bluetooth – damn those pesky cables to hell!
Well, it’s finally happened. While Ubuntu itself hasn’t been updated yet, the Bluetooth package that Ubuntu uses has been updated by the parent Blueman Project.
So here’s a guide on how to update your Ubuntu Jaunty installation to the latest version of the Bluez Bluetooth stack, pair your Nokia N95 and how to setup a Broadband connection to go through it.
HowTo: Get a Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook 5000 mouse working under Ubuntu Jaunty.
The Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook 5000 mouse is an affordable, compact mouse that worked really well under Ubuntu up until Jaunty 9.04 when the Bluetooth stack changed so drastically that the mouse would not pair or work anymore.
While the Ubuntu-provided Bluetooth stack has not been updated to correct this problem yet, the Blueman Project that Ubuntu uses keeps marching on in development and the latest version of of the Bluez stack and Blueman applet finally corrects this problem.
Here’s how to employ it on your own setup.
HowTo: Flash your BIOS without a boot floppy disk using Ubuntu
All current “IBM-Compatible” PC’s use a Basic Input/Output System also known as a BIOS. It’s a program that tells the PC how to start up when you switch it on, raises any critical faults with the system and then passes control to an operating system on a boot medium.
As time goes on, like any program, bugs are found, improvements are made, and the manufacturer of your PC’s motherboard will provide updates to the BIOS, usually supplied as a small downloadable file. Normally it is usually intended that you reboot your PC onto a DOS-compatible boot floppy disk and run the BIOS update program to install the new BIOS firmware. These days this process has been a bit simplified what with Windows users generally being able to do this from within Windows itself and even more recently, from the BIOS itself or even though starting the system on a FAT16-formatted USB stick.
This is all well and good, but what if you have an older system that cannot be flashed from Windows? What if you don’t even have Windows? What about a system that still relies on booting from a floppy disk to flash the BIOS? I don’t know about you, but I highly doubt any of the remaining floppy disks in my garage work anymore, and besides that, there’s a good chance that the floppy drive itself on older PC’s probably doesn’t work anymore.
So what can you do?
Well, we can utilise a floppy disk image that ultimately boots from your hard-drive, but acts and operates exactly like a DOS floppy disk would.
