Connect to school/workplace network on Linux (Meru Networks/C2K)

The following quick and dirty fix will allow you to connect to school/workplace C2K (Meru Networks) network on Linux Mint and Ubuntu.

First of all if you can, connect to your Guest hotspot at school/workplace, log-in and download the Ubuntu installer and the profile file. If you are unable to do this, try this installer.

Once downloaded, double click on the file and the installator will apear, I have tested this on Linux Mint 18.1 and all dependecies (supposedly) were met and installation went without errors.

After the installation the "Smart Connect" program will appear in your program list - however you should notice that nothing happens whenever you click on it, it simply does not execute.

The fix to this as I have found out is to run the program as root so open terminal up then "cd /opt/SmartConnect" and "./SmartConnect".
Do not be disturbed if you are greeted by series of squares instead of text, they can simply be copied and pasted into text editor if you need to read them. 

Of course to actually connect as the unreadable square sign explains, you will also need a profile file (or address) which you can only obtain from your school/workplace wifi.

The usage is:  
"SmartConnect -f http://location/of/profile.scl" or
"SmartConnect -f file:///location/of/profile.scl" or  
"SmartConnect -f /location/of/profile.scl".  
Do not forget to prefix "sudo" otherwise nothing will happen.

If you have succesfully obtained the certificate you will be presented with the window with more of the unreadable square characters. But it is pretty self descriptive, all you need to do is hit the button - one of them will be for connecting and the other for cancelling.

If you want to make the shortcut work refer to this answer which should work for both Linux Mint and Ubuntu.

Fully tested (internet connection working) on Linux Mint 17.3 at school with C2K network. Only program operation (root fix) tested on Linux Mint 18.

Linux combo jack and white noise fix

If you are using linux on a laptop, chances are that you have combo jack - that is one jack for both microphone input and headphone output. 
If you are using Linux Mint 18.1 (or earlier) or Ubuntu and your audio card is made by Realtek (Intel HDA) there are also chances that the combo is not being detected by your system. 
There are also high chances that after connecting your headphones you hear a quiet white noise in the background. In this quick and easy guide I will explain how I have fixed these problems.

There are two approaches to solve this problem and either of them could work for you - first one simply adds an entry into the Alsa (part of Linux kernel responsible for audio) configuration file which allows your system to detect the external mic and operate in "headset mode" and is very neat, second one is slightly more dirty and bases on the idea that you can retask unused (forgotten by system?) pins on your card to do what you want - that is use external mic.

I have tried both solutions on Linux 18.1 and earlier ones (such as 17.3) and only the first one worked for me. These solutions should also work for Ubuntu.

All the credit goes to these two guys and their videos:

Alsa config entry - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00fhAW7qYQk

Pin retask - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx33W-c4Cmg

As videos may go down (and the world may end) I will provide summarised guide here:

Alsa config entry

1. If you don't have text editing program like Gedit, Vim, Kate etc. install it (none is provided by default in Linux Mint 18.1) by invoking:
"sudo apt-get install gedit"

2. Invoke "sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf" - this will open the config file in root privilage mode so that you can modify it with gedit. Since in the video this is done on Ubuntu and I was able to replicate it on Linux Mint 18.1 with no problems, path is correct on both systems.

3. Append (add new line) to the end of the file following entry: 
"options snd-hda-intel model=,dell-headset-multi" - the comma at the start is necessary.

4. Save the file, restart and voila!

HDAJackRetask

1. First install alsa-gui-tools by invoking:  "sudo apt-get install alsa-tools-gui" - this will add couple of interesting looking programs to your program list (on Linux Mint they are under "Video and Sound"). 
The one we are interested in is "HDAJackRetask". If you can not find it, you can start it from terminal by invoking "hdajackretask".

2. Program window will apear offering different options, make sure to select the correct codec at the top, in my case Realtek ALC668 then click "show unconnected pins".

3. A series of pins with various options will apear and essentially what you want to do is override those that have "Microphone" option and hit "Apply" one by one while looking at your sound settings until you see "External Microphone" (or something similar) appear in the sound window.

White noise fix 

1. Open terminal and open alsamixer by invoking: "alsamixer".

2. Press "F6" to switch to correct sound card (Intel PCH in my case) then keep pressing "Right key" until you get to "Loopback" - disable it by pressing "Down key". Notice how the white noise has disappeared.

Some screenshots:

Razercfg - configure your Razer mouse on Linux

There is very nice little open source project at: http://bues.ch/cms/hacking/razercfg.html (which you can also contribute to) that allows you to control some of the Razer's mouse models.

The support table as shown on the website (as of 31.01.17) is quite good:

Device name	Support status	Usb id
Razer Boomslang ce mouse	stable, but missing minor features.	1532:0005
Razer Copperhead mouse	stable, but missing minor features.	1532:0101
Razer Deathadder classic mouse	stable	1532:0007
Razer Deathadder 3500 dpi mouse	stable	1532:0016
Razer Deathadder black edition mouse	stable	1532:0029
Razer Deathadder 2013 mouse	stable	1532:0037
Razer Deathadder chroma mouse	stable	1532:0043
Razer Imperator classic and 2012 mice	driver exists, but is currently broken	1532:0017
Razer Krait mouse	stable	1532:0003
Razer Lachesis classic mouse	stable, but missing minor features.	1532:000c
Razer Lachesis 5600 dpi mouse	driver exists, but is currently broken	1532:001e
Razer Mamba (tournament edition) mouse	stable	1532:0046
Razer Naga classic mouse	stable	1532:0015
Razer Naga epic mouse	stable	1532:001f
Razer Naga 2012 mouse	stable	1532:002e
Razer Naga 2014 mouse	stable	1532:0040
Razer Naga hex (v1) mouse	stable	1532:0036
Razer Naga hex 2014 mouse	stable	1532:0041
Razer Taipan mouse	stable	1532:0034

Personally I use Razer Taipan Battlefield 4 Edition and everything works as it should. Sure it is not as fancy as Razer Synapse but hey... at least it  does not require account and login!

Website and Readme.md file have pretty good instructions and if you follow them closely you should be able to use the Razercfg. Tested on Linux Mint 18.1 but it should work on Ubuntu in exactly same way and probably some other Debian based distros.

Quick guide throught the installation process:

1. Install all of the mentioned dependencies in the Readme.md file:

• Python 3.x  "sudo apt-get install python3-pyside"
• libusb 1.0 "sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev"
• PySide (for GUI) "sudo apt-get install python3-pyside"
• CMake (for building only) "sudo apt-get install cmake"

I had no problems with any of these on Linux Mint 18.1.

 2. Either download tar.gz from the website and unpack it or use "git clone https://git.bues.ch/git/razer.git" - if you choose to use Git, the "razer" folder will appear in your home directory (/home/user/).

3. Open terminal, cd into the "razer" folder (if you used git simply type in "cd razer")

4. Invoke "cmake ." - beware the dot is required!

5. Invoke "make".

6. Invoke "make install" - after this step everything should be installed, if you get errors try running these commands with root privileges (prefix "sudo") otherwise you did not satisfy the dependencies (installed everything required in step 1).

7. Razercfg should run at system startup - if it does not invoke following: 

"sudo cp ./razerd.initscript /etc/init.d/razerd"

"sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/razerd /etc/rc2.d/S99razerd"

"sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/razerd /etc/rc5.d/S99razerd"

"sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/razerd /etc/rc0.d/K01razerd"

"sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/razerd /etc/rc6.d/K01razerd"

Every single of these steps is listed and explained in more detail in Readme.md file provided within the tarball or folder you have cloned into. 

After all of this simply restart computer or type in "razercfg" in terminal. For GUI version (if you installed it) type in "qrazercfg".

Here are some screenshots:

Note: Your console output might be slightly different as at the time of doing this tutorial I already had Razercfg installed.