Ubuntu 14.10, finally

I seem to have gotten into the habit of writing a post each time I do an upgrade, so here is the one for Ubuntu 14.10. It's really easy - by far the simplest upgrade I can remember. This, I'm sure, is partly because the changes behind the scenes this time are more about stability than new features but it's a welcome change. Nothing, and I mean nothing has broken for me either on my desktop install or this laptop.

I can't say I'm immediately noticing many improvements either, other than the latest packages. Not that I'm complaining - mostly, an obvious improvement means a change and frankly I like Ubuntu 14.04 enough as it was that it didn't need another overhaul to make me happy. Some minor bugs have been ironed out - the big one is that it no longer randomly forgets my keyboard language preferences.

So, don't fear this one. For me, this is the perfect upgrade - nothing broken and no major changes to learn.

Ubuntu 14.04 - here we go

Quick post about the upgrade from Ubuntu 13.10 to 14.04. It went ahead without any real problems. For the first time my decision to disable the utterly horrible "shopping" lens in Unity was honoured over an upgrade (well done - finally).

Bad things: the window close buttons have wandered over to the left AGAIN. This time apparently Canonical have removed the all of the options to move them back (well, someone is recommending recompiling the window manager but there is no way I'm doing that). Thanks guys, that's really helpful.

Further bad things: synaptiks is currently missing from the Ubuntu repositories so if you want a middle mouse click on your touchpad you're out of luck. Fortunately there is a way around that - you can install it from the debian repository:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wget gdebi
wget http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/s/synaptiks/kde-config-touchpad_0.8.1-2_all.deb
sudo gdebi kde-config-touchpad_0.8.1-2_all.deb

That solution pulled from here.

Now to man up and do this on my work machine...

Quantal Quetzal - second impressions

Printing has broken. Sigh.

This is actually a cups issue, not an Ubuntu one - Ubuntu has simply included the latest version of cups in its repositories. Sadly, cups 1.6 removes the network discovery feature so if you're using it, your printer list post-upgrade will look rather barren.

There are an assortment of bugs opened about this issue. Here's hoping someone forks or patches the project.

Quantal Quetzal - upgrade and first impressions

The new version of Ubuntu is out. In a fit of enthusiasm I upgraded my work machine this morning. Turns out that although the new version is out, it hasn't been out long enough for the packages to all make their way across - consequently I'm without my ldap browser of choice, luma. Sigh. Hopefully this will resolve itself in the not too distant future.

Mostly a simple upgrade otherwise. Just a couple of things broken:

• autofs now needs to restart on network up instead of reload else it doesn't mount properly
• needed a new method for moving the window close buttons
• some glitches with the window manager (which seem to have gone away on their own)
• slower boot times
• keyboard shortcuts reset (thanks...)
• shopping in lens (remove with "sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping" although you'll need to restart your window manager)

Fairly painless all in. I just don't recommend doing it for a week or two. The lack of a decent ldap browser wont bother most people but the Unity config tools we've all come to depend upon have also yet to make the jump and their absence will be more annoying.

New things? Well, there is the incredibly annoying shopping integration in the Unity lens which presented me with something that looked suspiciously like porn for the 30 seconds it survived before I killed it. Upgrades? I'm sure there are some of those too.

Nautilus since Ubuntu 12.04

For the record, a collection of things I've had to learn about nautilus since Ubuntu 12.04:

• alt + up / down (or alt + left / right) navigate the breadcrumb trail from the keyboard
• ctrl + l switches the breadcrumb trail for a more traditional address box and gives focus
• F9 disables / restores the left panel
• apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal provides an "open terminal" option in the right click menu

Not very exciting, but at least I'll remember it next time I have to install a system now...

Configure the window close buttons in Ubuntu 12.04

One thing I really don't like about Ubuntu if the insistence in putting the close window button in the top left. I don't know if this is a Linux thing, but I'm sure older versions defaulted to close in the top right.

Anyway, you can easily change it.

* install gconf-editor
* navigate to /apps/metacity/general/
* find button_layout and change it to whatever you like

The key to the positioning of the buttons is the colon. I went with:

:minimize,close

because I don't really care about maximize. Everything to the right of the colon is floated right.

Another tweak worth considering if you're a keyboard shortcut person is rebinding "Key to show HUD" in the Keyboard config screen. That is the one which, if your experience is anything like mine, is capturing your keypress when you try and alt-tab around.

Edit:
Since 12.10 it seems the gconf-editor setting is sometimes ignored. You can move everything by running this on the command line:

sudo gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout ":minimize,maximize,close"

Restore u300s touchpad on resume in Ubuntu

I have finally found the time to fix the touchpad on my u300s. It was causing problems on resume from hibernate (as per notes from before). After a bit of poking around I've found a work-around.

I have synaptics which applies its changes on boot, however I have a problem with resume. Solution is this script:

#!/bin/sh

# Restore three finger tapping

case "${1}" in
    resume|thaw)
        # faster speed and acceleration
        DISPLAY=:0.0 su  -c "/usr/bin/synclient MinSpeed=1 MaxSpeed=2.81 AccelFactor=0.13"
        # 2 fingers scroll
        DISPLAY=:0.0 su  -c "/usr/bin/synclient VertTwoFingerScroll=1 HorizTwoFingerScroll=1"
        # enable tap to click (2 fingers for middle click, 3 fingers for right click)
        DISPLAY=:0.0 su -c "/usr/bin/synclient TapButton1=1 TapButton2=2 TapButton3=3"
        ;;
esac

Put in /etc/pm/sleep.d/ called something like 80_touchpad_restore and remember to make it executable. Done - mouse settings will be set as per this script on resume from hibernate.

Solution was cobbled together from here, here and here.

Playing with <audio>

I was looking for a better option than directory listings for making a folder of mp3 files accessible on a website so I wrote a very simple php loop.
Initially I omitted the firefox support (firefox doesn't play mp3 files) then, when adding it, I needed to convert my mp3 files into oggs. Step forward dir2ogg which is completely perfect:

dir2ogg -d .

Will quite happily convert all the mp3 files in the current dir to oggs. What more could you ask for?

Getting it on ubuntu is as simple as:

apt-get install dir2ogg

How to play Star Wars - Harmy's Despecialised Edition

Are you one of those fans who think the Star Wars original trilogy has gotten worse with each successive release? Do you get angry watching Han Solo step on Jabba's tail and not get his face shot off? Do you go on about Han shooting first? Or wonder where the mountain went in the twin sun sunset?

In short, are you a human being?

Help is at hand, from a chap named Harmy. This colossus of a man has created a "despecialized" edition - basically an upscaling with all the new additions taken out. You can find the iso files here.

Actually playing them is a bit of a trick. The first (platform non-specific) tip is:

Make sure your files are not corrupted.

Seriously. That cost me a couple of evenings.

Windows 7

* mount the iso as a drive using daemon tools
* download vlc - I have this running with version 2.1
* in vlc do media -> open file -> select your virtual drive -> bdmv -> stream -> m2ts file

Et voila!

Linux

* mount the drive thus:

sudo mount -o loop -t udf $path_to_iso/ANH.ISO $mountpoint

* download vlc or pull it from a repository (package name vlc in ubuntu)
* in vlc do media -> open file -> mountpoint -> bdmv -> stream -> m2ts file

Suddenly you're back in the past, watching Star Wars version awesome.

Installing Ubuntu 12.04 on a Lenovo u300s

After a bit of faffing I have Ubuntu 12.04 running on my Lenovo u300s.

Important info:

* You can build a usb installer using the utility here

* It is possible to keep One Touch restore working and nuke all of Windows if you're brave with the partition table

* Windows will keep booting until you remove the small partition no matter how many times you think you've deleted it - presumably the mbr is in there?

* The touchpad is a pain - you need to install the synaptics drivers and tune it there, but it will reset when you wake from hibernate. Found a fix for this.

* Hibernate and Suspend are easy to fix using this script

* Hibernate can be re-enabled in the power menus using this fix

* To save battery power, Bluetooth can be disabled on startup using the first answer here

Don't forget to install build-essential and synaptic packet manager. You want also probably want rcconf to update applications running at startup (command line tool). Finally, you might want to move the window buttons.

Unity seems quite good on the u300s. This isn't the first time I've encountered this environment but it's the first time I've not utterly hated it. The extra width on the laptops screen (over a standard 4:3 ratio screen) makes the left menu bar work - especially once it has been shrunk as far as it will go. There are a couple of oddities (such as some programs sometimes not appearing in the alt-tab list) which I hope will be fixed soon.

Note about the touchpad. This is the first modern (ie less than 7 years old) touchpad I've used and it took some getting used to. Sensitivity and cursor speed can all be configured in the synaptics driver menu obviously but it's worth mentioning the "disable touchpad on keyboard use" option. If you're using the keyboard to navigate (such as alt-tab) you will find this triggers the mouse disable regardless of the "ignore multiplier combinations" setting which is really annoying. Also, the mouse responds to taps thus:

* one finger tap - left click

* two finger tap - right click

* three finger tap - middle click (needs enabling)

Horizontal and vertical two finger scrolling can be enabled in the synaptics interface.

Upgrading to Hardy Heron

Finally, mere months behind the rest of humanity, I have upgraded my machine at work to the latest release of Ubuntu. It's too early for any fair impressions but there is one thing that has come up that has annoyed me a great deal and I thought I'd share a solution for it. For some reason the gnome devs have seen fit to remove Multimedia tab from the Removable Drives and Media Preferences window in the Preferences menu which prevents you changing your default actions for when (for example) a CD is inserted. Strangely the icon is still CD, but that's another annoyance.

So how to make this change in Hardy? These options have been moved to the Nautilus Preferences menu (Edit -> Preferences -> Media tab) but thanks to a change in the way mime types are handled in Gnome you may well find your favourite applications are not listed in the drop down lists provided. For some reason you can't manually specify a program to run (thanks guys) so until the various package applications catch up with Gnome and this is done automatically we'll need to make changes to the application's description file.

So:

• Go to /usr/share/applications (or /usr/share/applications/kde for a kde app)
• sudo vi $application.desktop
• Add the appropriate MIME types. I used this line:

MimeType=application/x-ogg;application/ogg;audio/x-scpls;audio/x-mp3;audio/x-mpeg;audio/mpeg;audio/x-mpegurl;application/x-flac;x-content/audio-cdda;x-content/audio-player;

(I was playing with grip in this case and there is almost certainly more than I need here, but I was in a hurry)

• sudo update-desktop-database
• sudo update-mime-database /usr/share/mime
  

Bingo. When you open Nautilus and look at the options menu you should see your application in the list.

Credits:
The solution came from here, I am merely distilling it to avoid having to hunt through pages of comments

Compiz-fusion is a nice place to visit, but i wouldn't want to live there

Gutsy Ubuntu then (yes I know, not exactly cutting edge). Is it exciting and are the new desktop effects going to usher in a new era of cooperation between man and computer? Hmm, probably not.

It looks great, make no mistake about it. The way windows bounce around and beam into existence is suitably pleasing. I especially like the mammoth number of options which make your desktop anything from mildly annoying to utterly impossible to use. For most fun try turning down friction on the windows and watch as the slightest twitch of the mouse sends your window shooting off into the distance.

There are clearly more options than any sane human being could possibly want, but this is a new feature so they'll be playing with them and then removing them as you'd expect in gnome. Problem is the defaults - they don't really replicate the existing desktop but with added whiz. Try using the mouse wheel to switch between desktops for instance. The poor old wheel seems to have been neglected throughout in fact. I'm reliably informed these options can be turned on but either these people are lying to me or I don't have the patience to hunt through a million menus trying to find the option that makes my desktop behave as it did before.

I'm willing to believe the fault is with me here, but patience is something that's sadly lacking when I'm using a computer. It's a tool - I don't want it to get between be and what I'm trying to do, in the same way I don't want to spend an hour gently stroking a hammer before hitting a nail with it. Especially when, in this case, it's just garnish that slows things down. When I hit a key I want a response now, not half a second later when the graphics card has finished rendering everything or the desktops have finished scrolling around or
whatever.

I have to say I'm somewhat disappointed, but again I suspect the fault is mine. I was hoping for a great leap forward in usability. Something that makes the computer a joy to use. Something different, like the glove things in Minority Report. Instead I got the same thing as before but slower and with the ability to add fire trails to my desktop. Thanks, but I'll be switching this off for a while I think.