Ravi Ramaseshan

JRE on Ubuntu (Hoary Hedgehog) for Firefox

1. Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list
   $ sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
2. Add �deb http://ubuntu.tower-net.de/ubuntu/ hoary java
   from list of exisiting repositories.
3. Install sun-j2sdk1.5
   $ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install sun-j2sdk1.5
4. Create a soft link to your firefox plugin
   $ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/j2sdk1.5-sun/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/
5. Restart Firefox.
6. Optionally, you can remove again the java repository you added in Step 2.

Skype on Ubuntu (Hoary Hedgehog)

Skype doesn't work with the default sound setup in Ubuntu hoary as it uses the old style OSS methods and requires exclusive access to /dev/dsp. If you have a sound card that does hardware mixing things seem to be significantly nicer, but if you've stuck on a machine without hardware mixing you'll have problems. One solution is to setup up ALSA and thus enabling software mixing. This would avoid skype crashing whenever you play a sound.

1. Install libesd-alsa0
   sudo apt-get install libesd-alsa0
2. Create /etc/asound.conf
   sudo emacs /etc/asound.conf
   and insert the following into it:
pcm.card0 {
type hw
card 0
}

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

pcm.dmixer {
type dmix
ipc_key 1025
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
period_time 0
period_size 2048 #1024
buffer_size 32768 #4096
#periods 128
rate 48000 #44100
}
bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}
3. Change /etc/esound/esd.conf contents:
   sudo mv /etc/esound/esd.conf /etc/esound/esd.conf.orig
sudo gedit /etc/esound/esd.conf
[esd]
auto_spawn=1
spawn_options=-terminate -nobeeps -as 2 -d default
spawn_wait_ms=100
# default options are used in spawned and non-spawned mode
default_options=
4. Change ubuntu sound server to ALSA
   Change both (in the Audio Tab not the Video) from ESD to ALSA
5. Install Skype
   sudo apt-get install libqt3c102-mt
wget -c http://frankandjacq.com/ubuntuguide/skype_1.2.0.11-1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i skype_1.2.0.11-1_i386.deb