SPARCHER.TechBlog

2012-07-30

Acer Aspire 3810T (AS3810T): laptop LCD panel (screen) replacement compatibility list

Some of the Acer Aspire Timeline 3810T (AS3810T) laptops have specific LCD panels which often have backlight broken after some operation time (it's caused by a "flex strip"-type powerline bending breakup -- look at that blogpost for more info and pictures).

If your laptop is already out of warranty, you can buy a new LCD screen and replace it yourself.

Acer 3810T laptop commonly uses a 13.3" LCD screen [1366 * 768 WXGA; 18-bit RGB (3 * 6 bits) -> 262144 (2¹⁸) colors] with LED backlight and 40-pin connector.
Pay attention to the specific brackets it has, as some display variations will not fit.
To prevent future problems, try to get a display with no such overbent "flex strips"; in this list, I've marked supposed "fragile flex" displays with a [bent flex] label.
Anyway, better don't buy a display without checking the actual part numbers and product photos (and also datasheets, preferably).

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Info last updated: 2016-05-10.

Screens confirmed to fit by someone.

AU Optronics (AUO):
B133XW01 V2 [bent flex]

LG Display (ex-LG.Philips LCD):
LP133WH2-TLA3
LP133WH2-TLA4

Samsung:
LTN133AT18

And those displays are believed to work, but need some confirmation.

AU Optronics (AUO):
B133XW01 V3 [bent flex]
B133XW01 V7 [bent flex]
B133XW03 V2
B133XW03 V3

LG Display (ex-LG.Philips LCD):
LP133WH2-TLB3
LP133WH2-TLL1
LP133WH2-TLM1

Toshiba:
LT133EE09300

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List data last updated: 2013-08-21.

2012-07-29

HOWTO: GRUB 2 rescue mode

Sometimes (e. g., after some disk re-partitioning) your GRUB 2 installation may get corrupted, so after the power-on you get only a "grub rescue> _" command prompt.
In such cases you'll need to know which disk partitions Linux & GRUB are installed on. In our example, it's 'sda7' (the 7th partition of the 1st HDD).

Type the following commands into the GRUB rescue prompt:

set root=(hd0,7)
set prefix=/boot/grub
insmod linux
linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda7 ro
initrd /initrd.img
boot

Notes:

instead of '(hd0,7)', '(hd0,msdos7)' can be used for root;
an alternative prefix is '(hd0,7)/boot/grub';
an alternative insmod command argument path is '(hd0,7)/boot/grub/linux.mod'.

After successfully booting your GNU/Linux system, you should repair your GRUB 2 installation (execute these command as root, use su, or even better, sudo):

# grub-install /dev/sda
# update-grub2

Note: some people like to execute not update-grub2, but update-grub or even grub-mkconfig.

On the next reboot, it should work fine.

Some more useful GRUB2 reading:

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Last updated: 2013-08-31

And now for Debian "testing" / LXDE

After all the Ubuntu / Unity / GNOME 3 challenges, I've switched to Debian "testing" (pre-"Wheezy") distribution with LXDE, and it even seems to be usable :)

http://wiki.debian.org/LXDE

2012-04-07

MultiMedia Players in Windows and Linux

For MS Windows, my favourite audio player is foobar2000 [official site / Wikipedia]
(I'm tired of Winamp [official site / Wikipedia], and especially of the Windows Media Player [Wikipedia]; some people may like something else, e. g. AIMP [official site / Wikipedia]).

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For playing video, I use VLC media player [official site / Wikipedia], MPC-HC ("Media Player Classic - Home Cinema") [official site / Wikipedia] and (very rarely) MPlayer (incl. forks).

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In GNU/Linux, there are 2 powerful media players I frequently use (mostly for playing video): VLC and mpv [official site / Wikipedia].
mpv is a popular fork of MPlayer [official site / Wikipedia] & mplayer2 (itself a fork of MPlayer; now abandoned); they say it has more features and more rapid development process than the original one.
Sometimes I used mplayer[2] with a (now abandoned) GUI called gnome-mplayer.
BTW, I neither like nor use GNOME Videos (formerly called Totem) [official site / Wikipedia].
And some users also like xine [official site / Wikipedia] and Kodi (formerly XBMC) [official site / Wikipedia].

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There are some pretty console audio players: mpg123 (probably the best MP3 player around) [official site / Wikipedia], cmus ("C* Music Player") [official site / Wikipedia], moc ("music on console") [official site / Wikipedia], mp3blaster (now obsolete) etc., but I prefer mpv there :)

And now about GUI audio players. Some years ago I used XMMS ("X MultiMedia System") [official site / Wikipedia] (now discontinued) and Amarok [official site / Wikipedia] (it was too overweight for me). In the near past, I used Rhythmbox [official site / Wikipedia]; when Banshee [official site / Wikipedia] became the default player in Ubuntu, I was very disappointed (it was much more buggier than Rhythmbox and used that C# / Mono / .NET / etc. stuff); then I tried to use LXMusic (it uses XMMS2 [official site / Wikipedia] backend and has a minimalist GUI) for some time, used Exaile [official site / Wikipedia] a few times...
...and finally switched to Audacious [official site / Wikipedia]
(Audacious is a fork of (now defunct) Beep Media Player [official site / Wikipedia], which itself was a fork of XMMS; BTW, it supports Winamp skins; not to be confused with Audacity [official site / Wikipedia], a popular audio editor).

Some other popular players:

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Last updated: 2016-12-11

2011-10-29

Desktop environments (Unity, GNOME 3 and no classic GNOME 2) in Ubuntu >= 11.10

In Ubuntu 11.04, it was possible by default to use Unity (which itself run on top of GNOME 2 core) or classic GNOME 2.32.1.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu 11.10 (and 12.04 LTS) comes with Unity shell as default desktop environment and doesn't have a classic GNOME option; instead of it, there's a Unity 2D option (in Ubuntu 11.10, Unity runs on top of GNOME 3.2 core components).

GNOME 3 itself is completely redesigned and doesn't look like "classic" GNOME 2; IMHO, it's not any better than Unity in functionality.

Linus Torvalds switched himself to Xfce because of GNOME 3 "improvements".
Eric Raymond (who had used Red Hat and Fedora in the past and switched to Ubuntu in 2007) strongly criticizes both GNOME 3 and Unity and plans to switch to Xfce too.

~~If you wish, you can try GNOME 3 Shell environment by installing it:~~

$ sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

At last, there is a "classic" fallback mode in GNOME 3; it also can be installed manually:

$ sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback

After that, you can log in selecting "GNOME Classic (no effects)" ~~(or "GNOME Shell", or "Unity")~~ at the login screen (I don't recommend you to choose "GNOME Classic" as it uses Compiz, in the buggy way).

One note about GNOME 3 "classic" fallback mode: to call a panel context menu, you should right-click on it holding the <Alt> key. This way you can add some "classic" applets (e. g., "Show Desktop" and "Workspace Switcher") and application launchers to top and bottom panels.
Indicator Applet is missing in Ubuntu 11.10; fortunately, it was ported to GNOME 3 and comes back in Precise (12.04 LTS); if you want it in Oneiric (11.10), you can follow that article: Indicator Applet Ported To GNOME 3

If you don't like Unity, you can (almost) painlessly uninstall it. Don't forget about removing some useless components (they are installed with Unity and continue to run even in your plain GNOME session) like:

overlay scrollbar (scrollbar overlayed widget);
BAMF (some "application matching service" used in Unity?);
Zeitgeist (background user actions logger and indexer).

If you don't like the default Ubuntu 11.10 login screen, just install another greeter:

$ sudo apt-get install lightdm-gtk-greeter

You can even remove LightDM and install the updated GDM 3 display manager (used in GNOME 3 by default).

If you don't have a Synaptic GUI package manager which is useful for package searching, installing and removing (IMHO, Ubuntu Software Center is too weak), you can install it manually:

$ sudo apt-get install synaptic

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Updated (07.04.2012) to reflect Ubuntu 12.04 changes etc.