Debian

by 2 comments on "Enabling captive portal detection in GNOME 3.14 on Debian Jessie"

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GNOME 3.14 supports captive portal handling but it is not enabled by default in Debian Jessie probably due to the privacy concerns. To enable it, create a file /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/20-connectivity-debian.conf with the following content:

[connectivity]
uri=http://network-test.debian.org/nm
response=NetworkManager is online
interval=300

Then restart NetworkManager using the command service network-manager restart as root user (or use sudo if your non-root user has sudo privileges). Once this is done, whenever you connect to a network with a captive portal, GNOME will automatically open the captive portal login page where you can login to get access to the internet. Please note that the requests to the connectivity test URL could be logged and be aware of its privacy implications though no personally identifiable information is sent.

This is very helpful for me since my ISP ACT Fibernet requires its users to login to its captive portal before allowing internet access. Hope this is helpful for others. The configuration given above tries to reach the specified URL once every 300 seconds and tries to open the captive portal login page if it is not reachable. This could cause the NetworkManager applet to try opening the login page if there are any issues with the internet connectivity. So feel free to tweak the interval according to your needs.

by 3 comments on "Disabling automatic download of software updates in GNOME 3.14 on Debian Jessie"

GNOME Software application automatically downloads the packages to be updated and presents a notification in the notification area. It might be a good idea to disable it avoid excessive data usage on metered internet connections.

To do it from the command-line

$ gsettings set org.gnome.software download-updates false

Or open dconf-editor and navigate to

org -> gnome -> software

and unselect this key

download-updates
by 1 comment on "Moving away from Ubuntu after 5 years"

Ubuntu’s Amazon search “feature” fiasco (Probably I have enough in my mind to write another big post) was the last thread in the straw for me. Switched to Debian Testing with GNOME 3. Surprisingly, GNOME 3 isn’t that bad at all and not much different from Unity. Yeah having to install extensions to achieve some functionality expected to be out of the box, is a bit weird, but is something you can live with.

One thing that isn’t quite up to the mark is the notifications system. Most of the commonly used applications in Ubuntu, like Pidgin, Thunderbird, Gwibber, Transmission, Empathy, make use of the notification system created by Ubuntu. In GNOME 3, that sadly isn’t the case. A lot of work still needs to be done in integrating the applications with the notification system.

Since I have a 8 mbps internet connection at home, installing the proprietary drivers for my NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS graphics card and proprietary firmware for my Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945ABG wifi adapter was a breeze and went without any issues. I even tweaked GRUB’s resolution and enabled a cool bootsplash screen featuring the Joy theme.

All these years of using my laptop, a couple of times, I did try to move out of Ubuntu, but there was always something that made me come back to Ubuntu in no time. But this time I am having a good experience with Debian Wheezy and GNOME 3 and it’s highly unlikely I will come back to Ubuntu any time soon. Ciao Ubuntu, without doubt you were very good and worked without issues for me ever since I started with Feisty Fawn and I am very happy about that. But now it is time to go.

You have root? I have Debian!

P.S. It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post and to insert this image, I was struggling for minutes together to find the button to do it. It was on the top of the editor and not as a button in the toolbar as I was expecting 🙂