Slashdot Mirror

Good day Mr. Literal, you have a very limited concept of "work" but I don't blame you, it's a sign of the times.

Usually, an HD does not mangle filenames nor folder layouts, nor needs updating a firewire_id entry every time a different system mounts the ipod, else have it misbehave.

"Youâ(TM)ll find your music there randomly scattered across multiple folders and with scrambled file names"

I have used Ubuntu for a long time and have 12.04 version. Love it to bits, but the only problem is when we want to put different music on iPod products. Use Rhythmbox, but that doesn't work, it just seems to remove all the music. (suggested solution: use a VM)

Before android got dominant and ditched usb storage, the ipod was unique in having basic I/O functionality made difficult on purpose.

If you're using apt, you can just grab a list of manually installed packages.

Now if only Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/DebianCloneOfTheMonth had some way to do keyword searches on the package list from the command-line.

Not necessarily. That's the amazing thing about linux. If you don't want it to ask for a root password, then you can tell it to shut the Hell up. http://askubuntu.com/questions...

I use Shotwell, and it definitely has an option to write the metadata to files, so you can recover it later or from another program. The database is necessary for search - you don't want it to have to open each file one by one to find the image you are looking for.

and http://askubuntu.com/questions...

Youtube has a flashless version (www.youtube.com/html5)

With a lot of the video selection missing, as far as I can tell. Or has the situation changed substantially since January 2013 when a bunch of videos were missing from the HTML5 version of YouTube?

No, because renaming it has the same effects on existing systems. The installed package "ownCloud" is no longer there (by that name) so future usage of apt-get can still break.

Of course it can. The repository maintainer can introduce a new package pwnCloud and turn ownCloud into a metapackage that requires pwnCloud. This "transitional package" pattern happens often in Ubuntu updates.

In Linux, I have this problem. The performance of Flash is fine. More generally, the toolbar bookmark allows the video to be sized arbitrarily based on the browser. This is nice in Chrome, which has a minimal GUI, and allows a really flexible video window.

Bug post from a user using XMPP with Hangout. It works but offline message aren't supported (as Hangout instead use Gmail for history storage).

I also had a link with a citation from author explaining that hangout is still an XMPP derivative under the hood, but I lost it :-(

...I would put a lot more trust in this development. Things like hangs and inability to standby (5+ year old problem) or more recently brightness control that worked until approx 14 months ago and since then was never (fully) fixed despite dozens of bug reports. I mean, this is a simple matter of comparing the code for brightness between the version 14+ months ago and the latest one to figure out what is the problem and then fixing it once and for all... Instead, they announce "fix" for it in two consecutive versions, neither of which address the problem in its entirety, and consider it fixed... Yes, some will argue open-sourcing this may help fix things faster. My experience tells me otherwise whenever you have this level if incompetence involved, because after all it is that same incompetence that will drive the separation of open and closed components... Downvote or not, I would love to be proven wrong so that I can finally install a fglrx driver that actually works as it should.

A good property of UI is to remain stable so that user can get used to it. It would be nice if they could stop changing stuff on every release.

It would be even nicer if they would stop "fixing" things that are not broken. Ubuntu used to be the top distro on distrowatch.org; immediately after Ubuntu forced the switch to Unity, Linux Mint became the top distro. Coincidence? No, I think not.

People with really large screens had to move the mouse cursor a lot farther with the global menus. And the way Ubuntu did them was ugly.

I don't like global menus on Mac OS X, I don't like them on Unity, so I'm happy to hear this news.

I wasn't happy with the forced switch of the window decorators to the upper-left instead of the formerly standard upper-right. This was done to prepare for "windicators", but then "windicators" never happened.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/58466/what-is-the-current-status-of-windicators

I am going to have to agree with anonymous on this. Sure you think that nothing can go wrong. BUT if it were, will you be there to figure it out? Are you going to fix it? Probably not because you are already working on the next version of whatever you are working on. And that will be bleeding edge and your answer will be "upgrade it" and all will be fixed. Seen this quite often.

Let me ask what about the permissioning of /opt? Who owns it? http://askubuntu.com/questions/169314/default-permissions-for-opt-directory

Ah yes... So what this means is that if somebody screws around the system and changes the paths you app might break. Or maybe somebody saw a new version of python and decided to link to it. Yes whoever does that needs to be take outside to the woodshed, but it does not stop the task from happening. The problem is not that you can manage things, but whoever gets the box after you and they don't understand.

BTW if I ever have to get into such a situation my best approach has been to install everything under a specific user (meaning into their home directory). That way the user cannot break the app, though the user can have their app broken. That to me is a much better compromise and easier to pinpoint when things do go wrong.

What the hell reason would it not be enabled by default? I dropped an SSD in my webserver at home a year ago. I just assumed, since osx and windows both support it for YEARS, that forward thinking linux did. Wow.

Now i have to go check tonight when I get home with this article as a reference
http://askubuntu.com/questions/18903/how-to-enable-trim

I am shocked and appalled. We all laughed 10 years ago when M$ said installing linux may damage your hard drive, but in this case its true! What a sad state of affairs.

The kernel is now done. It has been done for years. Of course new hardware comes and needs to be supported. But everything in that department is rolling quite nicely. The kernel guys know what they are doing. The Linux kernel is stable and if a problem pops up, it gets fixed.

So these days the kernel is a nice black box which I don't have to worry about. Now, fix the desktop. That's where the interesting stuff is happening. Fix the terrible performance problems and lack of configurability of Unity. Make a rich graphical configuration tool for touchpads. Make the boot process beautiful: currently I just see the distro logo flashing in and out with some occasional scary lines printed in framebuffer console. Fix the little glitches here and there (quality assurance?!). Make DVD burning work correctly. Make it so that I have to never fight video tearing.

Try hear for advice:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/285434/is-there-a-power-saving-application-similar-to-jupiter

Also while clicking around looking for that link, I saw a recommendation for indicator-cpufreq, which is in the Ubuntu repositories. Again, no experience with it personally- but it looks like just the thing.

VirtualBox does 3d hardware accelleration. http://askubuntu.com/questions/139320/enable-graphics-card-in-virtual-box

Its the "we're going our own way" decisions - like Mir instead of Wayland, etc. This leaves you thinking - If I keep with Ubuntu I will be out on a limb, forced to use Unity, etc.

How is anyone forced to use Unity in Ubuntu? There's still Kubuntu, lubuntu etc. And even with straight Ubuntu, you can still install whatever desktop you want, and select it at login.

Will be forced once X is replaced by Mir. You will have to laod the whole of Wayland (or X as a legacy) to be able to run other desktops then - which means that it will be very different from the straight Ubuntu. There are already questions in the kubuntu forum and about gnome ubuntu.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/9306/do-i-need-to-defrag-ext-file-systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3#Disadvantages

There is no online ext3 defragmentation tool that works on the filesystem level.... While ext3 is more resistant to file fragmentation than the FAT filesystem, ext3 can get fragmented over time or for specific usage patterns, like slowly-writing large files.[23][24] Consequently, ext4, the successor to ext3, is planned to eventually include an online filesystem defragmentation

All filesystems running on magnetic media require defragmentation. Those that "do not" are defragging. Fragmentation is a fact of life with any filesystem. And before you start up with the "well ext requires less", so does NTFS: comparisons between ext and "the Windows world" are invariably referring to FAT, not NTFS, which is by all accounts a strong competitor to the ext family.

So a better remark might be "ext3 doesnt support online defrag? How unfortunate."

You have no idea what you are talking about. Your attempt to cite information you clearly don't understand doesn't alter this.

How appropriate for your post.

For a good laugh, look at what it takes to create a shortcut to a program in Ubuntu.

I _love_ how all of the upvoted replies start with "well first, run terminal command xyz --override", that is just gold. It's a bug that will get corrected, but seriously, how hard do they want it to be? Although, from a "rethinking the experience" perspective, if it stops users from having a sea of icons from edge to edge on their desktop, maybe they are on to something.

If you can't figure out LIbre Office you shouldn't have your job.

LibreOffice just isn't very good. I've used StarOffice, then OpenOffice, then LibreOffice. I haven't used Microsoft Word since Word 97. And I still think LibreOffice sucks. It's usable, but amateurish.

Open source just can't get user interfaces right. LibreOffice has subtle problems, such as spelling correction that insists on making a change even after you've undone the change. Microsoft Word will yield to the user in that situation. The command-line crowd will never get fine details like that. I have Windows 7 and Ubuntu machines side by side on my desk, but the Ubuntu machine is used only for robotics software development.

I've watched Linux blow it on the desktop for fifteen years. There was an opportunity when XP was late. Linux blew it. There was an opportunity when everybody hated Vista. Linux blew it. There's an opportunity now when nobody wants to go to Windows 8. Linux is blowing it.

For a good laugh, look at what it takes to create a shortcut to a program in Ubuntu.

I will counter your googling for office crashes, not with facts, but with my own googling of libre office crashes! That's a sure fire way to get people on-side!

Libre Office crashing all over the place:
http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/952/writer-35-keeps-crashing/
http://askubuntu.com/questions/41329/how-can-i-stop-libreoffice-from-randomly-crashing
http://www.sevenforums.com/software/163405-open-office-3-libre-crashes.html
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/data-crash-and-recovery-with-libre-office-937038/
http://en.libreofficeforum.org/node/1259
http://en.libreofficeforum.org/node/2908
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=12071436

Libre Office crashing on startup:
http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/3511/libreoffice-crashes-on-opening/
http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread.php/151139-Open-Office-and-Libre-Office-crash-on-start-up

Why would you do something like that, so you can spam windows with all the useless .folders and .files?

This guy has a better idea. And it is objectively better, don't tell me "wah, i have to do a workaround and it's keeping me from filling the ntfs partition with cruft".

Where's the revenue stream from their core clientèle? It seems like unless they can get it used on tablets by companies who pay a licence fee they don't have one. Or they could sell support. But slashdotters aren't going to pay for that. They need to get it onto corporate servers as a sort of software as a service

http://askubuntu.com/questions/21730/how-does-ubuntu-make-money

* Support services (mostly to business) alongside which they sell Landscape
* Contracting services to businesses (for instance working with OEMs such as Dell, or helping Google with Chrome OS). As Ubuntu makes its way onto mobile phones and TVs then this will grow.
* Ubuntu One (online file storage and syncronisation service)
* Ubuntu One Music Store (selling music from within Ubuntu)
* Ubuntu Software Centre's paid section (Canonical takes a cut of purchases)
* The Canonical Store (selling physical Ubuntu branded items)
* Closed-source projects wishing to use Launchpad.net can purchase a license

I think you need to be careful talking about 'core clientèle' when the clientèle is not the one that will make the company turn a profit.

Now admittedly I'm not sure how this development will get them any closer to making a profit. If they're going for tablets they are screwed because Google/Apple and even Microsoft have a competitive advantage their. And if they're going for servers who really cares about UIs when everyone is sshing in anyway.

But there is still a core functionality that every PC will have (as long as it's at least semi-current), about equal to a console.

A console will typically be connected to a much larger screen, and the player will typically be sitting farther away.

So why do game makers then complain about it being hard to make use of all the extra bells and whistles on the PC, when those things don't even exist on consoles.

In order not to generate a disproportionate tech support burden, PC games have to be able to scale down to an Intel GMA while still looking good on the latest piece of AMD or NVIDIA kit. It's like having to include the Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3 versions of a game in one box. And a PC game can't just store pre-compressed textures (due to patents) or pre-compiled shaders (due to architecture differences among Intel, NV, and AMD).

I think you're using deprecated packages

For anyone curious, I fixed the system tray issue using this answer. (It's for Ubuntu, but works for Fedora.)

Submitter here.
Asus P8H61-M LX

This board is supported by a vendor driver (open source, maintained by Realtek itself, just isn't in mainline). Your "complaint" is suspiciously similar to one described at http://askubuntu.com/questions/157969/dhcp-not-working-on-new-install/159031#159031 , what makes me question its authenticity.

XFCE? ....
Actually looking for the option, I did not find it...google gave me this page though, http://askubuntu.com/questions/15971/getting-visual-feedback-of-workspace-switch-in-xfce

I know one of the window managers I've used frequently in the past would do that...I thought XFCE, but maybe it was a *box or Enlightenment. Middle click in xfce will show you workspace names, and you can change them.

Also on Windows, you can grab the bottom of a window and pull it down to the taskbar to get a maximize vertical state. Why can't I do that in Linux?

You can do a similar thing in Unity (and have been for a while): you grab the window's title bar and drag it up to the global menu for full-screen or to the right or left screen edge for vertical maximizing (and using half the screen horizontally). I know it's not the same you do in Windows, but I thought I'd mention it. More at http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-keyboard-and-mouse-shortcuts

Seems pretty straight forward... I found both of the installation instructions in less than 30 seconds total.

prerequisite: apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk
1. Download Minecraft for "Linux/Other" from www.minecraft.net/download download-page.png
2. To do this, right click on the minecraft.jar link on the download page, click "Save Link as" (in Firefox - other browsers may word this differently), and navigate to your desktop folder as illustrated. Then click Save to save it to your desktop. save-to-desktop.png
3. Right-click on the file and select "Properties"
4. On the "Permissions" tab, check the "Allow executing file as a program" checkbox, as illustrated. permissions-execute.png
5. On the "Open With" tab, select "OpenJDK Java 6/7 Runtime" (depending on the version you have installed), and click "Set as Default" in the bottom-right of the window. This will cause all .jar files to automatically open in the Java Runtime in the future, and this step (Step 5) will not need repeating if you were to download Minecraft again and open the file on the same user account on the same computer. However, for each individual computer user/account, this process would need repeating on each individual account that is to play Minecraft. java-default.png
6. That's it! Just double click the minecraft.jar file on your desktop to start up the game! The Minecraft Launcher will work the same way as Windows or Mac from here on in.

[source https://yogscast.com/showthread.php?42194-How-To-Installing-Minecraft-on-Linux-Ubuntu%5D
[source http://askubuntu.com/questions/141073/installation-of-openjdk-7%5D

Replying anonymously not to lose my moderations.

The point of Wayland is NOT to remove network transparency. The point is to get a better rendering infrastructure so each app is responsible for its own drawing instead of the hogdepodge in X11 that no modern apps are using anyway.

You could try reading this answer: http://askubuntu.com/a/11877

There are some people who'd like a slim, easy to maintain graphic infrastructure in Linux, one that makes sense on constrained devices too. Imagine you are sitting on an old hairy code base which is at the core of your company, and gradually it turns out almost nothing of it is in use anymore, and what is still is suboptimal because the division of responsibilities don't match reality anymore. But you can't kick any of it out because it's hairy and you may need backwards compatibility. That's the situation the X developers are in, at last as far as I understand, and that's why they want to see Wayland happening.

It's most unfortunate the network aspect hasn't been answered yet, otherwise we'd all be cheering. The one in X sucks pretty hard over high-latency links too, so it's not that the situation is impossible to improve.

Good question!
Yes... apparently according to this
http://askubuntu.com/questions/91484/how-to-boot-ubuntu-from-efi-uefi
(briefed from the link)
1. Use a live CD which matches the UEFI architecture. Mostly x86-64. Boot up the live cd (instructions continue)
2. Once the live system is running set through the terminal a root password by typing sudo passwd root
Then log out from the default live cd user and log in as root in gui mode. Plug in the hard drive. I use a USB3 portable HDD but in most cases the hard drive is a SATA internal drive. Anyway, be sure you've BACKED UP ALL YOUR DATA, cause the process is going to wipe off everything on the drive..(instructions continue)
3. Install the system into the hard drive "/" partition and remember to point here the bootloader (GRUB 1.99) to install to. If you've created a separete "/boot" partition, you have to choose that one for the bootloader installation.
4. Here comes the part from the UEFIBooting guide:
Building GRUB2 (U)EFI .(instructions continue)
5. Open Synaptic and remove all grub packages and install just the grub-efi packages (amd64 for me) and all the necessary dependencies. Once the installation is over, run sudo update-grub in the terminal. (instructions continue)

You are behind the times, and should really be firing your complaints at Nvidia.

Discussions on graphics card performance show both suck in different areas.

They never fail! This is a problem because you never find out errors in your GL code until after you've shipped the product.

Or new drivers are released which break things like in Rage.

The upshot is that people incorrectly assume that ATI drivers suck. They don't. Nvidia drivers are the ones that suck!

Perhaps you missed the recent article stating AMD/ATI video drivers are incompatible with system-wide ASLR. 'Always On' DEP combined with 'Always On' ASLR are effective exploit mitigations. However, most people don't know about 'Always On' ASLR since Microsoft had to hide it from EMET with an 'EnableUnsafeSettings' registry key — because AMD/ATI video drivers will cause a BSOD on boot if 'Always On' ASLR is enabled.

I mean every damned thing I see nowadays is widescreen, so why put the fricking bar vertical?.

That's exactly the stated reason: all monitors are widescreen, so the expectation is you can more easily spare 50 pixesls of horizontal space for the launcher.

Regarding why there is no option for a horizontal launcher, see the second answer here (to summarize, a horizontal launcher would collided with various design choices in Unity): http://askubuntu.com/questions/33605/can-i-move-the-unity-launcher

I tried to search for an application and the unity dashboard presented me with music albums from the music store.

Ads or convenient search results. I feel we could give Canonical the benefit of the doubt. If you can't, what you can do is uninstall "unity-scope-musicstores" as described in this Ask Ubuntu question: How do I disable music purchase results in lens?

Seems reasonable?

I didn't really know what you were describing and I came across the following while researching. Wouldn't this fix your issue?

http://askubuntu.com/questions/64605/how-do-i-set-focus-follows-mouse

Next time you're try to fix your blue videos or wondering why X didn't start today, remember that that's apparently just as important as stem cell research.

One of the Stack Exchange sites would give you better answers, or at least a set of answers without "frist psot". Take a look at http://serverfault.com/ or even http://askubuntu.com/.

Unity has very capable keyboard shortcuts. Try the first Google hit for Unity+Keyboard+Shortcuts, http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-keyboard-and-mouse-shortcuts

I would like to use Ubuntu 11.10 for the native Cobbler support, but Unity is a real gripe.

It was pretty rough, but I managed to search far and wide on the internets for "removing unity from ubuntu 11.10."

This seemed to do the trick:
http://linux-software-news-tutorials.blogspot.com/2011/10/ubuntu-1110-oneiric-remove-unity-and.html

Or, if you prefer screenshots: http://askubuntu.com/questions/58172/how-to-revert-to-gnome-classic

Canonical would be wise to make the process of removing the default Unity window manager even easier with the next LTS release (Ubuntu 12.04 "Precise Pangolin").

You should look into adding the Firefox Stable PPA. It currently has Firefox 7.0.1. With Firefox 8 having just been released, I would say this is pretty up to date, especially for Ubuntu LTS. If you want to get brave, you can even add the Firefox Beta PPA.

In my experience, about 18 months into the LTS cycle, it starts to become a pain using up to date programs. Being able to update a few key apps takes away the temptation to go for the regular (6 month) releases. Other options to stay up to date while only relying on Ubuntu packages include using Ubuntu Backports and Prevu.

--
Andy

It was an app that did not have an icon or put it'self into the menu. So it was a custom launcher. Here is the page. http://askubuntu.com/questions/13758/how-can-i-edit-create-new-launcher-items-in-unity-by-hand . No on Windows i could just drag and drop. So what the hell. Glad I went to openSuse and KDE4.

Installing the latest Firefox on Ubuntu is as easy as adding a small string to the list of software sources in a GUI tool... then it will automatically get new versions. Details here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/6339/how-do-i-install-the-latest-stable-version-of-firefox/6348#6348

This really isn't hard and doesn't involve the scary command line (unless you want it to).

It really isn't any harder than on a Mac or Windows - the only issue is knowing about PPAs as a way of installing software.

Shortcuts: http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/unity-keyboard-mouse-shortcuts

Please, you can't even spell license. You're gasping at straws but as I showed you, charging is not in direct opposition to the FSF/GNU philosophy.

I do however know of many FSF/GNU repositories that I can update my FSF/GNU machines from for no cost. Will I be able to apt-get updates from such a 'marketplace' without having to go though a screen that says, "No thanks, I really don't want to give you some money at this point."

Unless you're using gNewSense, the GNU project does NOT decide which gets in those repos.

If you're talking about Debian, then it's the Debian Free Software Guidelines. And if you're talking about Ubuntu, they are already selling software, distributed through apt.

while you highlighted the former pat of the FSF's charter, I think the latter is much more important to keeping to the name.

Just because you keep repeating it, doesn't make it true. RMS and the FSF have never changed their minds about it. It is and always OK to sell FLOSS software.

And the BSD vs GPL debate has nothing to do with charging. It's about letting or not other people distribute the software along with closed source apps.