My Misadventure of Simple Back Up

I knew it. I knew I am the kind of person who should never do any backup or anti-virus kind of protection. It's just not me.

I thought I got everything covered after I bought my external enclosure and a 500MB hard drive. I run the Simple Back Up program on schedule. And one day I found out my harddrive was full 100%. To make the long story short, Simple Back Up is just as smart as me, which is to say not very smart and rather erratic. The time I didn't turn on my external hard drive, Simple Back Up still wanted to backup, you know kind of over enthusiastic in its work ethic. Instead of backing up to my designated partition, it just went ahead and backed up to /media. On some nights I notice under the top command that gzip is running even though my external hard drive is off. But I never thought too much about it because I thought the program might be checking for content for incremental backup. Seriously, what do I know? At first glance it seemed the gvfs-fuse-daemon was at default. So I was tempted to just remove the /.gvfs. Good thing I did more Googling before I did something I would later regret even I have a serious death wish. In the end, I could safely confirm that Simple Back Up is dumping stuff to where it shouldn't be. It took me a while to figure out things got dumped to /media, yes, I was that slow. I proceeded to delete them and delete them again in the root trash folder.

In the end, it wasn't all bad. Just a few hours of frustrations.

So I am not backing up anymore, at least not automatically.

Ubuntu 8.10 64 Bit

I wonder if anybody can shed some light on running Ubuntu 8.10 (or 8.04) in 64 Bit. My plan is to run Cinelerra and Kino. I don't know if it's going to be too much of a pain (though I can almost feel it already, I could have bought a Dell or a Mac, but I am such a masochist). My excuse for a possible new system is so hardware won't be holding me back to be the greatest one man movie maker ever. My preferred or compromised video format is the going to be HDV, I think. I have researched online for a day or so, and I couldn't find a lot of timely information. If anyone has experience, please drop me a few lines. Much appreciated.

Ubuntu And Flash Finally Work Together

This has been long plaguing my system from day one. In the beginning when it was at its very worst, it could actually bring down the browser, yes, the plugin actually brought down the browser. Then things got a bit better since Firefox 3 and Flash 9 onward, only the plugin went crazy, like totally gobbled audio, without bringing down the browser. But still, almost all web sites unfortunately use some form of Flash to pretty up themselves, sometimes to make up for lack of contents. So without a working Flash plugin, my Linux box is greatly handicapped. That's until today when I got some time in hand and did another search to solve this issue. Some of the resolutions, you just knew are basically mid wife's tale with no technical sophistication or merit like you call the help desk, the guy on the other end keeps telling you it's your fault or you have been playing with the computer and his sole resolution is to ask you to reboot the machine a hundred times.

OKAY enough of my bull. Here is the real McCoy for fixing this perennial problem.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4928900 Apparently it has something to do with PulseAudio. "Apparently" that is after 20/20 hindsight. psyke83 is a genius and he or she is from Ireland. I just followed the instructions and now I can play all the Youtube video without problems. There are still great people out there.

Ubuntu 8.10 Is Here

I did not even know about it. I must have moved on to other distractions. My PC is really old and I don't want to do anything new with it anymore. My AMD chip is I believe not well supported under Flash so my problem with flash has greatly diminished my web browsing experience. Anyhow, I still haven't backed up any of my pictures or video. I am living dangerously. The good thing about shooting film is I don't have to worry about any hard drive failure or computer failure or backup. My negative is my archive and I only need to file them accordingly like scattering them everywhere. I am hopeless.

Adobe Flash Crashes

Adobe Flash still crashes my system. I suspect it has to do with my old AMD Athlon chip from what I gathers.

I am running Ubuntu 8.04. Flash 9 or 10, Firefox 3. Flash 9, the production version, definitely without a doubt crashes Firefox 3 big time. I have to force quit the browser. I downloaded Flash 10 beta. Things get a bit better. Flash plays but not correctly, the audio will speed up in the midst of playing but it won't crash the whole browser but essentially defeats the whole Flash experience. It's Flash 10.0.0 d525. This is anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt.

Firefox 3 Available

So I have heard Firefox 3 available. Big deal I guess. Me using Linux has been crashing Firefox 3 beta since Ubuntu 8.04. Yes, it's Flash fault as it's been pointed out but it really doesn't matter. This whole Flash crashing Firefox thing has greatly diminished the user experience to the point that people are going to say Linux sucks. Right there, I said it. Linux sucks just because Firefox crashes whenever there is Flash.

I really hope that someone can tell me yes, there is a bug fix to this, or you suck, there is a work around that can actually loads Flash without crashing Firefox. Alas, there is none that I am aware of. And the workarounds out there have been either disable Flash, or let Flash crash without bring down the browser. So what gives? I wish I know how to fix it myself.

UPDATE: I didn't yet bother to upgrade my Firefox on Windows. I don't know if any upgrade will break some of the add-ons I have installed because of compatibility problem. I know it happens with FF3 under Ubuntu 8.04, some Add-ons can't be enabled in addition to the Flash crashing feature.

Firefox 3 And Flash Annoyance

Annoyance maybe an understatement. I am running Firefox 3 and before beta on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. Firefox will crash without exception if I play a Flash embedded video, like from blogger here or from Youtube. Again, totally anecdotal, no science to back it up.

I have done some Google searching but have yet to find a work around that really works for me much less a solution to the problem. It really is no good considering Flash is almost an integral experience for web browsing nowadays. With Firefox crashing, that's really no good. Using Flash for your page may not be the greatest idea but as it is, this Firefox and Flash really need to be addressed and resolved as soon as possible. But instead it's like languishing in the back burner.

Video Editor

So far I am not too happy with Kino in Ubuntu. For sometimes peculiar reason, some the dv clips in the project would just speed up. I remember the last time I used it in Ubuntu 7.10 the same thing happened. And the sound mix doesn't work well at all.

I wonder if I did anything wrong. No, I didn't. Wonder what's out there. The last time I tried another editor, it was so bad, every time I opened a clip and the program just closed, it's as if I quit the program, so basically it's unusable.

Look like I have to download another program other than kino. Hope the learning curve won't be steep. Well, if anything, the slow motion with pan and zoom works pretty well.

I may have to try Cinelerra?

UPDATE 6/3/08
Oh yes. So after all AMD is not Intel, it's better. I just needed to pick the right binary for my AMD processor which is cinelerra-k7gl and now I can run the application OK. Before that I tried some other Linux video apps, except for Kino which isn't all that bad, the rest are just simply unusable, the program just closes by itself. Now comes the hard part, actually using the program to edit video. Gosh, I want to edit some HD, but then I need to buy a HD camcorder, a new workstation and oh well, you got the picture.

Taekwondo

note: with repeat slow motion and zoom in.

(52 second video with audio, if you use Firefox 3 or even 2 under Ubuntu 8.04, it may crash your browser. Notice that it takes two guys to hold the board when Harry strikes, he generates so much force with his pint sized body.)

This is done by Kino. Unfortunately the interface and functionalities leave something to be desired. I was trying to mix a sound track, but alas, it wasn't doing it right. The video was slowing down even I didn't check the speed and the sound became garbled. And when I went back to edit mode, the speed of the whole project went up. So that was weird. I closed the entire project and re-opened and it at least then played normal. So forget about mixing a sound track and do the opening and closing credit, I just rendered the the dv to MPEG. I did the first run IN MPEG1, which gave me a smaller file 8MB but longer rendering. And this MPEG2 took shorter to render but got a much bigger file, 23MB. Enjoy.

Untitled

Viewing pictures at 100% sometimes is pretty discouraging. You find all the faults and warts in focusing, and camera shake. Life was better when people are just printing 4x6.

All pictures shot using my aging D70, Nikkon 80~200 f2.8, processed using UFRaw via GIMP under Ubuntu 8.04.

Internal Card Reader

SYBA PCI USB 2.0 & FireWire/1394a combo card Model SD-COMBO-02
A 10-pin USB header. Cut the yellow pin, i.e. pin 9, so it can take a 9-pin connection cable. If you screw up, don't blame it on me. You've been warned.
JPEG from Adeltek

This is a continuation of my Crappy PC hardware that works in Ubuntu
[WARNINGS: If you follow any of the instructions on this blog and cause some major or minor screw-up, like, but not limited to, PC blow-up or bodily harm or death, it's not really my problem. You have been warned.]

My latest additions to my ever expanding Ubuntu rig consist some big ticket items. A Koutech IO-RCM620 USB2.0 3.5" card reader and a Kingston 4GB USB drive.

The Koutech thing can read like 1,000 different cards. Actually "card reader" is an understatement. This thing can write between media as well. I tested that at least on two different media types. I was able to copy and paste a 5MB file between a 4GB CF card and a 4GB USB drive, which took no time at all.. The thing comes with a mini CD and no paper documentation whatsoever.

Installation:
Let's get the Kingston 4GB USB drive out of the way. The thing doesn't need any installation. It's just plug and play. It's a FAT32 file system so I guess Linux is just fine with it. I am not that technical.

The Koutech card reader is a bit involved, meaning I have to open my beautiful big ass beige box. To secure it on my empty 3.5" bay and connect the USB cable to my existing USB card.

The reader has a USB cable that needs to plug in some USB header which I know I have but not exactly sure how. My USB card is the legendary SYBA PCI USB 2.0 & FireWire/1394a combo card Model SD-COMBO-02. Turns out the card has a 10-pin USB header. And the reader USB cable is for 9-pin. So I don't know which pin to cut in order to plug the cable into the header. The SYBA site generally lacks those information but they do have some not so active forums and someone is nice enough to post a link that leads to a picture indicating what pin to cut. You know a picture is really worth a thousand words. With that picture, I cut the extra 9th pin. And I plugged in the USB cable onto the card. I plug the USB card back onto the motherboard on a different PCI card slot which is closer to the card reader. Power up the box. And everything just works. Instead of using my D70 as a mass storage device to read my CF card, I can now just remove the CF card and plug that into the reader. The D70 is just USB 1.1 (12Mbps) so I am gaining some serious USB 2.0 (480Mbps) speed too. Plus the reader has the a front USB so that's convenient for some iPod and thumb drive action. My hp w2207 has two USB ports on the left side, access is not very good as I can't really see sideway.

gtkpod and xmms

It's always one thing leads to another, and before you know it you almost forget why you are doing this in the first place.

I was trying to get my first generation 512MB gum stick iPod shuffle to load and play songs.

I got the gtkpod to work in Ubuntu 7.10 okay so this isn't exactly new to me. However, you know there is always a catch or something is wrong, otherwise life in the Linux world would be boring. Though Ubuntu claims to just work, I just don't believe it.

I got the song loading okay but when I try to right click the song to play it just says xmms command not found. So that begins my quest to find out what the heck that xmms is. For the die hard, it's the only audio player that should be on the machine. Anyway. I found some good sources and was able to follow the blow by blow installation instruction, i.e. getting the source and compiling the program, which I don't get to do too often. Of course, my newly minted Ubuntu 8.04 doesn't have the C library or the GTK+ to compile, so again it took me quite some time to figure out what ingredients I actually need and from where to get them.

Here is an excellent write up, this is especially helpful for a Linux newbie like myself. Here is another one that is like what should have been there but not there in 8.04 kind of write-up.

Queens Botanical Garden

Japanese cherry blossoms have done wonder to the parks.

This image is captured using my standard tools. It's monkeyed with using GIMP and UFRaw plug-in. Gimp comes with Ubuntu 8.04 but not UFRaw, I downloaded UFRaw via Add/Remove Program, but Gimp can't invoke that so something wasn't right. OKAY, I should have downloaded gimp-ufraw plugin not just the stand-alone version, so UFRaw can be invoked from gimp. All is well except I still couldn't find the nvidia driver to work with my display. This is loaded via Firefox 3.0b5. I didn't think they could improve on the browser but apparently they could and did.

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

I got my Vista to download the iso ... don't you think Vista is good for nothing. md5 to check sum and burned the image onto a CD-R. All by following Ubuntu's instructions which are usually are OKAY if you can find them. I find their site generally pretty hard to navigate.

My rig is a dinosaur machine with two harddrives with Ubuntu 7.10 running pretty well from the smaller 40GB drive. My whopping 160GB drive was pretty much unmolested. (The other earlier post using Update to update from 7.10 to 8.04 was for another machine all together. This is done via a CD-R burned LiveCD installation)

wifi using Realtek 8180, resolved.

So I decided to install Ubuntu 8.04 onto my whopping 160GB drive and see what happens. The installation takes about 15 minutes and it all went well except I still can't get my wifi works out of the box. My cheapo wifi PCI card uses realtek 8180 chipset and never worked out of the box. I was hoping the ndiswrapper (Windows wireless driver program) would be automagically installed in 8.04 to make life less painful. Alas, life is not a bed of roses when it comes to Linux. And how the hell am I going to get the 7.10 ndiswrapper back....I really forgot how I found this one out even though it was only yesterday. It's via Synaptic manager of course. I just need to put the LiveCD into the drive and let it be a source and then search for the string "ndis". Then installed the packages from the CD. I mounted my 40GB drive and find the INF file I downloaded from way back when I did Ubuntu 7.10 and copy it to my drive (what was I thinking? I could have just installed the INF from there why did the copy and paste). I then run the Windows wireless driver program from the System Administration menu and it's almost painless. I got my network connection back. Once I got the Internet under my thumb, I rule.

GRUB error 18, resolved.

Well things went kind of downhill and straight to hell when I tried to get the ATI graphics driver to work somewhat better like in 7.10. For some peculiar reason, after a couple of add and remove, my system or actually GRUB can't even boot to 8.04 nor 7.10 any more. That's major.

The error was like GRUB error 18 and the system just stopped cold.

Again I somewhat forgot how to fix it ... even it's only yesterday.
OKAY I will try to recall ...

I even tried to re-install the system again. But to no avail, thank goodness it took about 15 minutes....

Okay, more Googling....

Boot up from the LiveCd again,
get to the terminal
type some crap like
>sudo grub
grub>root (hd0,0)
grub>setup (hd0,0)
grub>quit

then reboot system
and magically, now grub gives me back my 7.10 boot menu.

But I am not happy with 7.10. I was but once you got it, you wanted to be at 8.04...
So more trial and error and more Google.

I tried to change hd0 to hd1 but again no good. I tried to re-install the system again, no good.

OKAY, re-installed again, but this time after some Google and some insights or sixth sense actually, when in partitioning, I clicked on the advance button, and changed the default hd0 to hda from the drop down and went through the rest of the 15 minutes installation process. Reboot, now I am in business, the GRUB menu now gives me the option of picking 8.04. I have yet to fully understand the mistake I've made and how I actually got it corrected. My primary drive is the hda where the boot takes place. My second drive is where 8.04 is. So far after 24 hours, a half dozen reboots, GRUB is still working properly so I guess I must have fixed the problem.

Now I have to go on solve the display problem...the thread I got for it didn't quite help.

UPDATE 4/27/2007

Display, nvidia-glx-new, resolved.

At least I got my display back to 7.10 performance.
The nvida-glx-new package was I guess never installed. Under System, Administration, Hardware drivers, the nvidia-new was marked enabled, but not used. It's really the pinnacle of message, what the hell is it trying to tell you? I have no idea. I googled a bit, and some easy but doesn't make sense solution was like unmark to disable. Reboot. Then mark enable. I tried a few times wouldn't do anything. And I even monkeyed with Synaptic manager to change the Repository to Other and let the manager find the fastest servers for download. But no go. BUT, the strangest thing happened. After I actually shut it down, and boot up, and marked it enable, actually the system went to download the package nvidia-glx-new this time and got the sucker installed. And now with a system reboot, I got my 1600x1000 back at least where it was. I could never get my 1680x1050 back and I read maybe I have to use the non-dvi plug for the HP w2207. So I am always 400 pixels short.
UPDATE: 4/28/08
Finally I unplugged the dvi cable and used the vga cable instead. And guess what, I got my 1680x1050 pixel back but the refresh rate is either 50 or 51hz, that's a bit mind boggling, why the 1 hz difference? The ideal 60hz is unattainable as of now. The DVI is supposed to give better graphics but I can't tell the difference. So I will stick with the VGA cable.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: 4/30/2008
Via Add/Remove, I got the Nvidia server and the System Info. And System Info I can configure using the Nvidia Server to make the display on spec, that is 1680x1050 @60hz. But I have the impression that it might not be very stable. Why, because I was doing that in Ubuntu 7.10 and for some inexplicable reason, or things I don't know enough I call inexplicable, when I changed it to 1680x1050@60hz, between users, the screen blackout. I haven't do a few reboots in 8.04 so I don't know if the setting will stay and reliable, but it's doable.
YET STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: 5/5/2008
Seems like the 1680x1050 @60hz is sticking just fine in Hardy Heron. Well, I haven't tested it when I switch between users as I don't have any other users setup there.
YET YET STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: 8/2/08
the 1680x1050 @60mhz is doable but you have to use the VGA plug. The DVI plug wouldn't work. That's my experience with my LCD monitor. That's not a new piece of information, just to recap.
YET YET STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: 3/11/09
The video card is GeForce FX 5500 with 128MB, the DVI just max out at 1600x1000


First impressions
The fonts look better from Firefox 3 in Hardy Heron, actually much better, much better.
Even got yahoo! blog display correctly.
You still need to download Gstreamer extra plugins to simply play mp3.

Ubuntu 8.04 Is Here

Perhaps it's time to crank up my hardware just a notch so I can have a better experience with the OS and the applications.

I am doing the upgrade now ...

For packages:
65 are to be removed.
193 to be installed.
903 to be upgraded.

[I began this upgrade at 9.30AM]

And together 702M to be downloaded. It goes on to estimate that it will take 2 hours and 2 minutes. Wow, how does it get to the 2 minutes part?

But of course, that was an overly optimistic estimate, with the traffic and unpredictable nature of the Internet, now it says it's going to take more than a day to download the packages. The download speed varies quite somewhat, from 70kb/s to 200kb/s. So there you have it.

This one is code named Hardy Heron, and it's LTS, WTF is LTS? Well, it's long term support, meaning for server it's 5 years free upgrade and desktop 3 years from Canonical. Wow, that kind of make it a must have upgrade, isn't it?

[2.20PM]
It took about 3 hours to download the packages. Now it's installing the upgrades.

[3:48PM]
The system is done and needs a reboot.

So the entire upgrade didn't take 2 hours 2 minutes or did it take a day. It took 6.5 hours in all. The whole process went so smooth that it seems rather unreal. Most notable change is the default desktop picture. Other than that Firefox is now version 3 Beta 5. Oh, I am so shallow in Ubuntu. I think I will upgrade my other monster Ubuntu rig when I have more time or maybe when their server is faster, I don't know. Maybe 6.5 hours isn't bad I really don't know.

Taekwondo

Mom, this is especially for you.

(The video is about 1:27 minute long, the audio is kind of loud I think, maybe because I am using a pair of earphones to edit ....)

Just whipped up this short video using Windows Movie Maker. The original was shot using a Canon G3. I can't suck the video out using Vista as there is no driver for my old G3. Ubuntu is my friend, so it sucked out the AVI video OKAY. But unfortunately kino can't edit the AVI. So I just have to move the AVI back to my VISTA notebook over my wifi by dancing some samba and did some quick and dirty video editing on my notebook. The Windows Media Maker wasn't all that bad for what I tried to do, until I tried to render or what Windows call publish the video. I just clicked publish and the notebook started thinking ... then I went to take a shower. When I was done showering like 10 minutes later, it was still thinking and then I noticed the title bar says not responding. Good thing I saved the project first before publishing. The second time I tried to publish, it went okay but the only format I can publish to was WMV. I was like where is my mpeg? Anyway, Google is okay with wmv. So wmv it is. Enjoy.

Ubuntu 8.04 Is Coming

Ubuntu 8.04 is coming to a computer near you.

Crazy

This is not Cloverfield. This is better. Original footage shot using a JVC GR-DVM70 U. Video captured via FireWire in Ubuntu 7.10. The FireWire combo card is listed a few posts below. I downloaded Kino and barely understand how things work. I rendered this video in mpeg2. And uploaded to blogger. The original mpeg2 is 720x480 30 frames per second, 42.6MB in size.

There is this good post detailing how to get FireWire, Kino, and essentially video capture going in Ubuntu 7.10. The poster uses a different or better FireWire card while your truly uses a cheapo combo card as told in my post below. Let me get the permalink ....

Crappy PC Hardware That Works in Ubuntu 7.10

If you were like me, who don't know dick about HW or SW, and are desperate to find out whether this or that $6.99 PCI sound card works in your crappy Ubuntu box, you are in luck. Most manufacturers and vendors don't bother to put up anything remotely resemble "Linux compatible" for some obvious (can't test every linux kernel combination?) and not so obvious reason (too busy sucking MS's dick).

To make a short story long, I am going to continue to list what works in my punny crappy Ubuntu box.

PCI USB 2 and Firewire combo card. Two in one card with plenty of ports for your PC's ass.

Today, I bring you the mighty PCI card that's manufactured by my fellow Chinese men somewhere in China or Taiwan. As far as USB 2.0 goes, I have been living under a rock for the past five years or so. I have never experienced the blazing 480 mbps speed until now.

Without much ado, I introduce you the SYBA PCI USB 2.0 & FireWire/1394a combo card Model SD-COMBO-02. The chips as read from the card directly are VIA VT6214L (USB2) and VT6307 (FireWire).

Here is what I got from lspci after booting up

00:0f.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
I/O ports at cc00 [size=32]
Capabilities:

00:0f.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 5
I/O ports at d000 [size=32]
Capabilities:

00:0f.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 63) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
Memory at cfffde00 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
Capabilities:

00:0f.3 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80) (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
Memory at cfffd000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K]
I/O ports at d400 [size=128]
Capabilities:


With this comforting lspci output, even without any exhaustive testing as if I know any, I am quite confident that this piece, this fine piece of crappy PC HW will work perfectly with my crappy box.


Display
HP w2207. This is a nice display with some big footprint. The base is so big that it's almost like having a CRT monitor. I wonder if one could accidentally knock it over. The native resolution 1680 x 1050 is unattainable here. With no skill whatsoever, I only manage to configure it to 1600 x 1000 and make it stick. So 400 pixels are missing in action. The text is a bit fuzzy which I think it's the OS' fault. It has a couple of USB 2 ports and a pair of puny speakers which I never tested.

If one knows how to make that 400 pixels appear or how to make text sharp or both, let me know. Thank you.

UPDATE on 5/16/08: I got all my pixels back, just use the VGA port, and under Hardy Heron or Ubuntu 8.04, all my pixels are back.

UPDATE: To make Firewire, video capture work in Ubuntu 7.10, please see here. I got mine work following the howto post.

PC Hardware That Works in Ubuntu 7.10

If you were like me who basically takes a cookbook approach to Ubuntu, then this may help you somewhat. I have this old beige box which is the opposite of sexy that lies around in the basement. And I decided to give it a second life. I did some research on some ubuntu forums but they are mostly for whiners and moaners like myself. I was more into looking at what works but instead they are posts for what doesn't work. Like my sound card has no sound or my wifi doesn't work. I did my homework and with some blind faith I just ordered what I think would work.

Here I can tell you what actually works, or at least what works somewhat. I got my goodies from newegg. Notice that they aren't the latest and greatest. These are parts for the budget minded. My motherboard (the almost 5~6 year old K7S5A, which you can still find at eBay) is an old one that won't even accept the newish parts even I want to. If you are looking for a souped up machine, look elsewhere.

Video card:
EVGA 128-A8-N319-LX GeForce FX 5500 128MB 64-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X Video card.
Ubuntu has something called restricted driver and it works. I don't play games so this card works for me. Plus I am still using my very humble 17" Dell CRT monitor.
UPDATE: 4/28/08
I got myself a whopping 22" hp w2207 monitor with 1680x1050 resoluton. Sadly I can only cajole it to a resolution of 1600x1000, so I got short changed of 400 pixels. This has happened in both 7.10 and now 8.04. I did some research I suspect it's the DVI connection that limits the resolution. I read that if connected through the vga, I might be able to get it. Even I read about it many months ago, I never bothered to try it. Maybe I should. The thread mentioned this was referring to the fx 5200 card, I guess it's close enough.

RAM
pqi POWER Series 1GB (2 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR266 (PC 2100) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model MD641GUOE-X2
The ram works and is recognized by the system. Not much to write about.

to be continued....
DVD
LITE-ON Black 20X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 20X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 8X DVD-R DL 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM IDE Burner with LightScribe Technology.
I just used it to play my DVD and audio CD so I don't know if its other features work or not. I guess they will, somewhat.

Sound Card
Creative Sound Blaster SB0570 Audigy SE 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card.
I guess this is the piece that sort of gives me the most trouble. I have a pair of speakers from my 7~8 years PC. They work. The sound capture doesn't seem to work. I did some digging online and it seems to be a GNOME problem as opposed to the sound card problem. In the end I was able to make it work from the command line environment. But the Gnome still bitches if I dare to sound capture. I don't see myself using the mic often but I just feel like to make it work. The command I used is from the alsa project.

% arecord -vv -fdat foo.wav

Ctrl-c to stop the recording from the terminal.

And % aplay foo.wav

does play back the sound.