Ubuntu 11.0.4 (Natty Narwhal) The Good, The Bad and The Unity

So, Ubuntu 11.0.4 is out, so I decided to upgrade one of my laptops that was running 10.10. The laptop in question is an HP nc4400, Core2Duo 2Ghz, 2.5GB RAM, and a 120GB hard drive. Ubuntu 10.10 notified me of the new release and asked me whether I'd like to upgrade. However I thought I'd check if there was any updates for 10.10 which is advisable before upgrading. lo and behold for there was a large batch of updates ready, surprising really since I only did updates a few days ago. Clicking on Upgrade now then starts the usual upgrade process. It would be nice if they made that prettier since it uses the Root user's theme which is quite ugly. Since I was upgrading over wifi, the downloads took awhile. Ideally I would have used ethernet but then I couldn't sit in a comfortable sofa!


upgrading to Natty:



















Eventually it finished upgrading and I rebooted to the login screen. I thought I'd give the now default Unity desktop a chance so I logged straight in and was greeted with what looks OK at first glance but doesn't seem to work as smoothly as it should.


Unity:



















All the application icons that I previously had on my desktop's lower panel have been crammed into the Unity dock, along with quite a few that I don't use that often so I had to remove a lot. One by one. Next I opened my usual set of apps, Pidgin and Hotot, Firefox and a single nautilus window. Nautilus goes full screen, blocking everything else out of view. If feels like a phone or a tablet, how am i supposed to multi-task with every window trying to go fullscreen? I dread to think how I'd use it on a dual monitor setup. And with window previews enabled the Unity dock reminds me of the Windows 7 taskbar, but even more confusing. None of this is helped by various graphical glitches that kept occurring (top left):


Unity graphical glitches:



















After around 30 minutes or so with Unity, I'd just about had enough, so I thought I'd try 'Gnome Classic'. Only one problem though, presumably due to bugs, I could not find the logout button or any other way to log out and I did not want to force a shutdown, so i had to kill Xorg. Not good. So I logged into Gnome Classic (which you can select at the GDM login screen) and that's what I using now. It's more familiar and usable and I think they should make it the default rather than Unity, which as far as I'm concerned should be reserved for tablets, and isn't ready for prime time. Not sure on the 'good' side of things with this release, other than unity it's pretty much like 10.10, at least in the time I've used it so far. it does have Firefox 4 and LibreOffice by default and which is a good thing, though I already had both installed. Also the Software Center has been tweaked a little with app reviews. Disappointingly, Canonical have done a KDE4 with this release, change for change sake. If they drop Gnome2 in the coming releases, I think I'll install the Xubuntu desktop (sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop) and if that runs OK I'll use that, if not I'll go back to 10.0.4 LTS on this laptop and recommend that for new users too. Perhaps by the time the LTS stops being supported they'll be other options or Unity will get more stable or be abandoned. I may also try Gnome 3 and the latest KDE4 and see how well they work.

Gnome Classic:


















Update 29/04/11 Fresh install on a Toshiba M200

Since there were some graphical glitches with Unity I thought I'd try a fresh install on a different laptop, my Toshiba M200. Everything went fine during install, took around 10 minutes, all was well until i rebooted. Firstly it seems to have a weird bug. When i reboot all I get is pretty colours and no proper boot screen and cannot see the login, just weird patterns. If I shutdown then do a fresh boot it boots an reaches the login just fine. However even after I installed the proprietary Nvidia drivers, it still won't login to Unity desktop, it just hangs. Also if i try to CTRL+ALT+F key into another screen it goes white or just weird colours. That just will not do. Unity-2D works (sudo apt-get install unity-2d) but it's not exactly much consolation.

gggg

How To Setup Music Player Daemon With PulseAudio On Ubuntu 10.0.4

I've been wanting to get Music Player Daemon aka MPD working in Linux for a long time but never got round to it, but today I got it working properly with PulseAudio! The main reason I like MPD is it's actually gapless unlike most other Linux media players (I'm looking at you Rhythmbox, Banshee, and other Gstreamer based players). Also you can fully control MPD from over a LAN via other MPD clients, even from a mobile phone.

Setting Up MPD

With a lot of Googling, I've found a lot of different tutorials on getting MPD to work in Ubuntu. It seems on a desktop PC it's easier to setup MPD as a user service rather than a system service. i could not get it working at all as a system service. I based my setup mainly on this tutorial and updated it for 10.0.4 / Lucid and modified it to fix problems with PulseAudio. This should also work in 10.10 and higher too. Although you can do some things with graphical installers, apps etc, it is far easier to write down commands to copy and paste into a terminal.

First install MPD:

sudo apt-get install mpd

Disable MPD from starting as a system service:

sudo /etc/init.d/mpd stop

sudo update-rc.d mpd disable

Extract and copy the default config file:

gunzip -c /usr/share/doc/mpd/examples/mpd.conf.gz > ~/.mpdconf

Edit the config file:

gedit ~/.mpdconf

Change all paths to point to: ~/.mpd. You need to change the following entries:

music_directory

playlist_directory

db_file

log_file

error_file

pid_file

state_file

Audio setup

At this point I needed to adjust the audio config and modify it slightly from that tutorial to make it work with PulseAudio, (I found the right config for Pulse output here). Find the audio_output section and comment out the alsa section (which is first up in that section) then add:

audio_output {

type "pulse"

name "My Pulse Output"

#server "localhost" # optional

#sink "alsa_output" # optional

}

Make MPD start at login:

In a terminal do:

sudo nano ~/.config/autostart/mpd.desktop
and paste this into it:

[Desktop Entry]

Encoding=UTF-8

Version=0.9.4

Type=Application

Name=Music Player Daemon

Comment=

Exec=mpd

StartupNotify=false

Terminal=false

Hidden=false

Then Ctrl+O to save it and Ctrl+X to exit. Now it should start upon login

Modifications:

I also changed 'user' to my Ubuntu username and I've also enabled (uncomment the relevant lines) zeroconf, replaygain and volume normalization. And also it wouldn't bind to localhost so I changed bind_to_address "any".

And here is my resultant MPD config file (gzipped for convenience). now run MPD by typing 'mpd' into a terminal. If it shows no errors and then disappears (it runs in the background) then all is well.

Finding and playing music:

Next you need to add your music directory, I found it was best to create a link (right click your music folder, select 'create link') and move the link into /home/username/.mpd/music

Now we need an MPD client, Ario and Gnome Music Player Client both run fine in Gnome but there are plenty of choices. Next we need to update the database, in Ario do File, Update Database and we're done. Most of the players I've found so far use an Artist / Album / Title setup which is handy for playing single albums, but I am searching for an easy way of just dumping the entire collection into one playlist and whacking it on random. I've tried using the file system browser in Ario but when I try to dump all the tracks into the playlist it only seems to find less than half my collection. Update: I've discovered that MPD is quite picky about tags so it's apparently best to use EasyTag on your collection which automatically corrects broken tags. Since I have quite a it of music, this may take awhile! Next thing I want to get working is streaming music over the network!

NOTE

Confusingly the MPD wiki states:

"mpd.conf is the configuration file for mpd(1). If not specified on the command line, MPD first searches for it at ~/.mpdconf then at ~/.mpd/mpd.conf and then in /etc/mpd.conf."


Update: you may need to do "chmod g+X /path-to-music" on your music collection to give it the right permissions.

Update2:  I'm still having trouble with MPD seeing only part of my collection

Installing Ubuntu On a Dell Latitude D505 Laptop (Updated)

Updates at the foot of the page

I've just aquired a Dell Latitude D505 laptop for a very good price. It's got a 1.6Ghz Pentium M CPU, 512MB of RAM, a DVD/CD combo drive, and a 30GB hard drive which had Windows XP Home installed. Naturally I wanted to put Linux on it straight away! I chose Ubuntu 10.0.4 as I mainly use the LTS releases. I plan on upgrading directly to the next LTS when released. I'm not keen on Unity or Gnome 3 so I may switch to XFCE when the time comes. It's also missing the battery at the moment and I intend to get one very soon.























Installing Ubuntu

First I tried the Ubuntu live CD and it seemed to boot but never got to the desktop, only a black screen, so I did a bit of Googling and found various solutions including this on the Ubuntu Wiki. To fix the graphics problem, just follow these instructions in "Workaround A."

In some cases, this bug causes i8xx users to boot into a blank screen on both the LiveCD/USB and a clean install or upgrade. To enable the above workaround in these situations, add "i915.modeset=1" to your kernel boot parameters.

From the LiveCD:

1) At the purple screen with a keyboard and stickfigure, press Enter to get to the menu.

2) Hit Enter to select your language, and then press F6 and then Esc.

3) Add "i915.modeset=1" after "quiet splash".

4) Press Enter to boot the LiveCD.

Now the live CD boots like normal into the desktop. The install only takes around 20 minutes but after rebooting you need to follow the second set of instructions:

1) Hold down Shift while booting to enter the GRUB menu.

2) Press 'e' to edit.

3) Add "i915.modeset=1" after "quiet splash".

4) Ctrl+x to boot.

Now we just need to permanently add these to the GRUB menu so we get working graphics every time! ina terminal enter:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

and edit line 10 so it reads:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i915.modeset=1"
then save and quit gedit, then do:

sudo update-grub

..and now we have working graphics on every boot!

Ubuntu boots in a only around 30 seconds and is quite snappy though I think I need to upgrade the RAM to 1GB as it swaps quite a bit after a long Firefox session. Ubuntu also suspends properly unlike my HP nc6120 which used to until I upgraded it to 10.0.4. When i get a new battery I'll update this post to include battery life.

Update 26/03/11
Got my new battery, a little disappointed I'm only getting around an hour and a half out of it when mainly browsing the web. Apparently laptop batteries need to be fully charged and discharged a few times before they reach their full capacity.

Update 29/03/11
The only other thing that doesn't seem to work is lm-sensors does not detect any temperature sensors, though this is only a minor inconvenience since it doesn't seem to get that hot most of the time. it's certainly running cooler than my HP nc6120. The latitude is currently my favourite of my laptops. I'm also thinking of getting a secondary battery which replaces the DVD drive and gives it an extra 4 hours of battery time!

Update 30/03/11
Unfortunately I've discovered video problems when trying to play videos with Totem, VLC etc but YouTube videos work fine, I'm working through these workarounds found on the Ubuntu Wiki

Update 30/03/11 (2) Graphics Fixed!
Well I fixed the graphics problem by upgrading the kernel to one from the Mavericks Backports repository. Add the repo with:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kernel-ppa/ppa

then install the Maverick kernel with:

sudo aptitude install linux-image-2.6.35-25-generic

I've also upgraded the RAM to 1GB so it feels a bit snappier now and swaps memory less. Video playing is still a bit glitchy in Totem but fine now if I use Gnome Mplayer and VLC.

Update 02/05/11
Having had some weird random reboots recently I decided to see if it's hardware or software related i decided to try Fedora 14 on it. I have just installed using the Fedora LiveCD install on a spare HDD and it went very smoothly. I didn't have to mess about with GRUB to get the graphics working, however the first thing I did was disable SELinux, as it's fine for corporate desktops but too much hassle for the average user. Whether I will keep Fedora on there is another thing, i'll see how it goes, as I tend to miss little things of Ubuntu like UbuntuOne and Tomboy Notes

Update 05/06/11
I have wiped Fedora 15 out having tried that for awhile and thought I'd try out the iQunix re-mix of Ubuntu 11.0.4 and surprisingly it actually works without any modifications to GRUB.

Hotot Love!

I have blogged about Hotot before but I thought I'd say a bit more since it is now one of the first apps I install on Linux and my favourite Twitter app. Having become tired of Gwibber's slowness and bugs, and consuming all my available RAM, it took me awhile to find another decent Twitter app. I used Pino for awhile but needed something better. It also seems there are too many Adobe AIR Twitter apps which are too slow for slower PCs. I also tried Tweetdeck in Chrome/Chromium but I find it far too messy and confusing. Luckily Hotot came along. I now use it on Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian, and it's available as a deb or an rpm from their Google Code page. It is also available on for Windows. Bizarrely their main site just says "coming soon" for PPAs and doesn't actually have any download links! Installation instructions are also here on their Google Code page. I'm also surprised that Hotot don't seem to have a presence actually on Twitter!

Hotot uses tabs for main feeds, replys, DMs, retweeted, and search. I really like the way conversations are shown:



























What I'd like Improving:

I often find I keep losing my place as new tweets arrive, as they push the old ones down. I'd like it similar to web Twitter, where they arrive queued up. A similar thing happens on Gwibber.

Keep the input box open (Hotot autocloses it after a short time) as when it auto closes I end up losing my place again as Hotot jumps about in the timeline with it's unwanted shortcuts like 'T' which makes Hotot jump back to the top!


Conclusion

Hotot has great features, is light on resources and easy to use. I've tried dozens of other Twitter clients for Linux but I can't find one better than Hotot, but feel free to suggest any I might have missed in the comments!

Install Hotot Twitter client in Debian Squeeze / Mint Debian Edition

I've recently installed Mint Debian Edition on my Toshiba 6100 laptop which comes with Gwibber as it's Twitter/Facebook app. I prefer Hotot since it's lighter and I'm not bothered about Facebook usage.



























Hotot isn't in the MDE or Debian Squeeze repositories it uses but you can use the Ubuntu PPA instead.


Edit /etc/apt/sources.list as root with your favourite text editor and add these lines:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/hotot-team/ppa/ubuntu maverick main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/hotot-team/ppa/ubuntu maverick main




Then save and exit then enter this command as root (you can use sudo on Mint Debian Edition):

apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 41011AE2


Then do:

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install hotot


And enjoy :)

Mint Debian Edition

The root partition became corrupted yesterday on my Toshiba 6100 laptop, possibly due to a faulty hard drive, so I had to do a fresh install on a fresh drive. It was running Lubuntu 10.0.4, the lightweight desktop derivative of Ubuntu. It started out as Ubuntu but was too slow for this old beast. It has a 1.6Ghz Pentium 4 CPU (yes, it runs way too hot!), 512MB RAM and a 20GB hard drive. I then installed the Xubuntu (XFCE) desktop then settling on the Lubuntu (LXDE) desktop, but it still seemed sluggish, so I considered my options. Slackware would be very light but a lot of effort and I prefer Debian or Debian based distros as that's what I'm used to and know best. I like Debian but I find it's packages to be a little old, at least in Lenny and it's not quite as user friendly as Ubuntu. After a brief but failed install attempt with Saline OS (another Debian-based distro) I thought I'd try Mint Debian Edition which is a rolling release distro based on Debian Testing. The main advantage of being a rolling release means it never needs to be reinstalled but it means things may break occasionally.























Mint Debian Edition installs in a similar way to Ubuntu, using a live CD but with a different installer. It didn't take too long to install even on this old thing. It asks the usual questions, users, root password, partitioning etc. One interesting thing I noticed was it automatically chose a hostname based on the model of my laptop - "satallite6100-laptop" which was a nice touch. After the install finished, it prompted a reboot into the new OS. Boot time was nice and sprightly, taking around 35 seconds. A Notify message popped up informing me of wireless networks available, this uses onboard Intel wireless so it's probably why it works just fine 'out-the-box'. I then found I had 708MB / 646 packages to upgrade!






















The default desktop uses a single panel along the bottom, like Windows, with it's Mint Menu. I'm not too keen on it as although the search feature is nice it still takes far too much of my 1024x768 pixels for my liking!





















I've changed the layout to a more traditional Gnome arrangement by removing the Mint Menu and adding the Gnome 'Main Menu' from the 'add to panel' dialogue, to my new top panel. I also added the User Switcher to the top right of the top panel, it's not quite Ubuntu's MeMenu but it will do. Also for the chop is the colour scheme - black and green is just not my scene! I'm using Human-Blue icons (taken from the Ubuntu version of Mint) , Murrina-Blue controls and Bluman window border and some tasteful wallpaper.






















Just like Debian, you can only install Deb packages via the commandline until you install the Gdebi installer. I'm not sure why the Mint devs didn't include it. It is nice to see the nautilus-terminal extension already installed so that you can right click and select 'open terminal' in a folder. To manually install a downloaded Deb package on the CLI, do something like "sudo dpkg -i package-name.deb". The main user is in the sudoers list so you can use sudo to temporarily become root, just like in Ubuntu. Of course the best place to start with packages is by seeing if it's available in the repositories using either Synaptic or with it's 'Software Manager' which looks a bit like Ubuntu's Software Centre. MDE uses Debian Testing so packages are more upto date than in a standard Debian install. MDE includes the latest Firefox (once I installed updates) as well as Debian's Iceweasel.




















Standard packages include MPlayer, Gnome MPlayer and VLC, which is nice since I always install VLC anyway. MDE plays encrypted DVD movies straight off since libdvdcss is installed by default, as are all the useful codecs and Adobe flash player. It's also nice to see GIMP already installed too, since Ubuntu has removed it recently to save space. Two packages I immediately removed were F-Spot and Gwibber since I prefer Gthumb or Picasa (which is in the repositories) and Hotot, which is a much lighter Twitter client than Gwibber. By default Thunderbird and Evolution are installed.

Conclusion

Overall Mint Debian Edition offers a good compromise - it has the speed and lightness of Debian and some of the ease of use of Ubuntu and I'd recommend it for older desktops and laptops. It has up-to-date packages, has all the codecs for music and DVD playing so it's fairly easy to use out-the-box. According to their website "LMDE requires a deeper knowledge and experience with Linux, dpkg and APT" due to it being a rolling release and to "expect rough edges". The main thing I miss from Ubuntu is UbuntuOne for syncing my Tomboy notes.

Update 19/03/11

I've kind of gone off the various versions of Mint mainly due to it's use of a difficult to remove custom search for Firefox, I prefer to use Debian itself rather than LMDE. I have now installed Fedora 14 on the Toshiba 6100 to try out and I've kept it as it's pretty good distro, much more stable than when i tried Fedora 11. The only thing I don't like about Fedora is I can't seem to ssh or VNC into it on my network, I even tried disabling its firewall and SELinux to no avail.

Snackr: An RSS Ticker

I've been looking for an RSS feed 'ticker' for Ubuntu for a long time without much luck, until I found Snackr, which is also the first Adobe Air app i've found that I haven't immediately uninstalled! Being an Air app of course means it is cross-platform too. Amongst other features, you can set scroll speed, position, opacity, and set it to sync with Google Reader.


Screenshot on my main (dual monitor) desktop:











Screenshot of Snackr's horizontal arrangement my laptop: