Iovei I thought “What the Hay?”. I booted my dual boot machine with Xubuntu 12.04 and all was peachy. Tried a large update with Update manager, then powered down as normal. The next time I boot up my mouse was dead and there was no connectivity to the internet! What to do? At least I could get the session started, as normal but sans mouse. I plugged in a USB mouse and it auto detected. Back to Update Manager, which then did a “Partial Update”. This fixed itself, and now all is back to normal.
There is a whole lot of information on the internet about using the Arduino with Eclipse on Xubuntu 10.04 LTS, much of it out of date. Here I document my experience in the hope that this process becomes more smooth.
I followed documentation from a couple of very key people, which helped a lot. Still, there are certain issues that threw me off. I have added my experiences where I had issues. The Arduino IDE is the standard method to connect to and program the Arduino. It is simple to use. If you want a more rich programming environment you can also use Eclipse, with the Arduino plugin. Either method can be used to program and run the Arduino. Here are the steps:
Old PCs die a terrible death, lonely and forlorn. In the Windows world you need to upgrade your physical PC hardware every 3-4 years as well as buy the newest operating system, wasting money and stressing your budget. As an IT professional I not only do not buy into this propaganda, but rail against it. When the Windows operating systems on old PCs do not receive any upgrades, the PC slows down, often heavily laden with fat, bloated software. Ubuntu, a Linux OS version, and Xubuntu, it’s lighter version, may be the answer to unlocking the innate functionality of your old PC.
