Stubborn Intel Graphics Bug Haunts Ubuntu 12.04

jones_supa writes "The current long-term support version of Ubuntu (12.04) has been experiencing a remarkably tough-to-crack and widely affecting bug related to laptops using an Intel graphics solution. When the lid is closed, every now and then the desktop freezes and only the mouse cursor can be moved. Compiz is usually found hung in the process, switching to a VT afterwards works. The Freedesktop guys are also informed. Have Slashdotters been bitten by this bug and possibly could offer some detective work to help the OSS community find and apply the correct fix?"

Comments

What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[jellomizer]

I have been reporting that problem for a while, but they just assume that I am an idiot who just doesn't know how to use a computer.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Funk_dat69]

Yeah, this issue has been around long before 12.04. Glad its getting some attention. My workaround was to switch to a different distro. :)

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[muszek]

I have been reporting that problem for a while, but they just assume that I am an idiot who just doesn't know how to use a computer.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

but they just assume that I am an idiot who just doesn't know how to use a computer.

And this is why Linux will never be more than just an "alternative" desktop OS. Because its user base is always assumed to just KNOW how everything works, and if you pose a question that some neckbeard thinks is "stupid", he'll let you know it, and you'll be the focal point of mockery and derision. Linux needs to stop being that exclusive club for the cool kids and know-it-alls and start being a more user-oriented (rather than developer-oriented) community.

The Linux community needs a drastic culture-change before it's ready to compete on any meaningful level with Windows and OS X.

Oh, and I WILL be modded down for this, and it WILL validate my point even more.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[whistlingtony]

ditto... bug report submitted, nothing done on it. grumble!

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Skapare]

Problems like this are the result of closed drivers. Hardware manufacturers need to make their hardware interfaces open (keeping internal firmware closed is OK in this regard) and need to make all code that runs in the host CPU anywhere all open source.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except this Intel driver IS open source.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Robert Zenz]

Linux needs to stop being that exclusive club for the cool kids and know-it-alls and start being a more user-oriented (rather than developer-oriented) community.

Oh don't worry, that's already well underway with Gnome3, Unity, Ubuntu and Android. ... And it sucks badly for those who know what they're doing.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[h4rr4r]

You won't be modded down on modern slashdot but you should be.

What you are saying is not Insightful nor Interesting. It is blindingly obvious. If users want hand holding, they will have to pay for it like they do with OSX and Windows.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[serviscope_minor]

but they just assume that I am an idiot who just doesn't know how to use a computer.

  And this is why Linux will never be more than just an "alternative" desktop OS.

Every time I've tried to get help for something commercial, they assume I'm an idiot who doesn't know how to use a computer. It's a fair assumption, since it is statistically correct.

Linux needs to stop being that exclusive club for the cool kids and know-it-alls and start being a more user-oriented (rather than developer-oriented) community.

Why, what would that get us except more of Gnome3, Unity and Wayland? I rather like Linux: what benefit would it bring to have more users who aren't capable of contributing back on board?

Hardware drivers possibly, but it's not exactly hard to get good hardware which runs Linux excellently already.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Robert Zenz]

As far as I know, you don't get hand-holding with a purchase of Windows. Not sure about OSX.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[h4rr4r]

Sure you do, call the vendor they have support lines. Often the OEM handles it instead of MS though.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[riondluz]

Tho I prefer E17 to compiz I have CCM running on a toshiba that had this problem. The only fix (for me) that i found is to enable screen-locking.

It brings up the login dialog and restores the desktop

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux needs to stop being that exclusive club for the cool kids and know-it-alls and start being a more user-oriented (rather than developer-oriented) community.

Its success is base on the fact that it is developer-oriented and therefore attract developers. Drive the developer away, bring the flock of clueless and who is going to write the software? Why do you wish to kill Linux?

Oh, and I WILL be modded down for this, and it WILL validate my point even more.

The moderation is irrelevant, your comment alone prove that you don't know shit. Go tell other how they should do their work elsewhere.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Lumpy]

Exactly. my whole family abandonded Ubuntu when they did the Unity thing. Happy putting along on Fedora now.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[dvaldenaire]

over-generalisation... i've helped some totally clueless (bordering to aolish) users without being even gently ironic. As if support from windows guys was always free from sarcam !

oh, wait... isn't that you call trolling ?

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Joce640k]

I have been reporting that problem for a while, but they just assume that I am an idiot who just doesn't know how to use a computer.

Aren't they XKCD/806 compliant?

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[DigiShaman]

Depends on the hardware and feature set. Often GPU technology includes quite a bit of cross pollinated intellectual property (patented) that can't be released to the open. Also the manor in which the GPUs are programmed provide a key advantage that nVidia and AMD do not want to reveal. It's one thing to sell high performance silicon, it's quite another to have trade secrets that optimize it really well.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[INowRegretThesePosts]

Yeah, this issue has been around long before 12.04. Glad its getting some attention.

My Core i3 laptop didn't have this problem before 12.04. It appeared with 12.04.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[INowRegretThesePosts]

Tho I prefer E17 to compiz I have CCM running on a toshiba that had this problem. The only fix (for me) that i found is to enable screen-locking.

It brings up the login dialog and restores the desktop

My screen locks after suspend, and it doesn't fix the problem for me.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[h4rr4r]

Because the folks that know how to do that don't want wizards. This is a computer not a fucking magic kingdom. I would much rather edit the text file then guess what home network vs business network means in some wizard.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Lumpy]

So do the same with linux, you can call red hat and pay them. or any other linux support company... there are tons to choose from. Linuxcare, redhat, Emperor, etc...

Just like Microsoft and OSX. because they dont give you tech support for free. MSFT requires a credit card, Apple does too if you dont pay for applecare...

Oh wait, we cant compare that way, it would be fair and balanced... we cant have that....

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Kelerei]

I have been reporting that problem for a while, but they just assume that I am an idiot who just doesn't know how to use a computer.

I'm guessing that, in their eyes, you didn't ask your question in the proper form.

(I don't necessarily agree with all of ESR's points myself, but his essay is kind of like a creed that the OSS Folks That Matter religiously follow -- so, like it or not, you have to follow it too.)

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[jbo5112]

I have had rather few problems with NVIDIA chips and their closed source driver. VDPAU was buggy w/ Compiz and 256MB video RAM (now works except for low RAM issues), and I have to turn off desktop effects in KDE with a GeForce Go 6150. That's about it. Intel has given me a lot of problems with video drivers over the years, despite drivers being open source, and I always avoid them.

Open source drivers have no reason to be better than closed source drivers with good support. In fact, closed source drivers can contain technology licensed from other companies that they may not have the rights to release under the GPL (e.g. NVIDIA signed a deal with SGI several years ago).

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[macbeth66]

Actually, you might be right about him. But that is actually the case in my family. Kids went to Mac, which they griped about for other reasons, my wife, who prefers the old gnome, went back to XP, I'm using KDE and my mother ( 77 ) is just learning KDE. She came from an XP machine. I did put the icons ( about a dozen or so of them ) for her favorite programs right on the desktop. So, Ubuntu lost 60% of the users in my family because of Unity.

Just say no to Unity

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Not exclusively. (And in this case not at all since the Intel driver is open)

Bug-reporting is extremely important if you actually want to provide a high-quality product. Bug-reports can be seen along two axes.

1. 
    
2. Whether your product is understandable to the user. If people consistently make mistakes , you've got a design issue somewhere. The usage of the product is obviously not sufficiently clear, or the documentation is not sufficient etc etc etc.
3. Whether your product has bugs. In this case, getting a clear description of how you can reproduce the bug is key. These "submit error" pop-ups are popular for a reason - they can submit log files and stack traces, core dumps etc etc.

And some bugs are just plain hard to fix. They may also be a manifestation of a design issue, and those are rarely trivial to fix. I hope Ubuntu gets this sorted soon.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[INowRegretThesePosts]

but they just assume that I am an idiot who just doesn't know how to use a computer.

And this is why Linux will never be more than just an "alternative" desktop OS. Because its user base is always assumed to just KNOW how everything works, and if you pose a question that some neckbeard thinks is "stupid", he'll let you know it, and you'll be the focal point of mockery and derision.

Some Linux users are like that. But it seems to me that askubuntu.com is quite newbie-friendly.

Oh, and I WILL be modded down for this, and it WILL validate my point even more.

Yeah, right.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[macbeth66]

Same here. I had the lid issue, crashing programs and it would not play nice with my KVM box. I switched to KDE and after a few upgrades the lid and KVM issues went away. I still have an occasional issue with crashes. xfce seems to be a little more stable.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[h4rr4r]

I honestly though they included that in the sale of the OS.

Then yes, the user should call Canonical and hand over the CC.

Either way asking in forums is not proper support and GP should not complain about free support. Beggars not being chosers and all.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the generation that they licensed from PowerVR...

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[h4rr4r]

Try watching flash with an NVIDIA card. Youtube is blue. NVIDIA blames Adobe who blames NVIDIA.

There is a ppa with a patch that fixes it, but as typical commercial vendors rather blame anyone else than fix the bugs.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[fbobraga]

The same here :P

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow I didn't know GPUs were programmed in a manor ! How big are the grounds ? Do they have servants too ?

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[macbeth66]

I have never found that to be particularly true. Yeah, there have been the occasional a**holes, but surprisingly far fewer than with MAC. What a smug self-righteous bunch of turds. As for Windows, there are just so many people using it, that fixes and/or work arounds are found rather quickly. With Windows, skill level varies so much, that the level of expected understanding is quite low.

As for modding you down, when you speak out your *ss and hide behind A/C, what do you expect? However, I see that you have been modded up to 5, Insightful. I bet now you wish you had the balls to stand up and publicly state your case.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[cpricejones]

My workaround was to go back to 11.10 :\

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here!!! I keep reporting the same issue, and as well, when the lid is fully closed, the keyboard and touchpad also stop working. :-)

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[VGPowerlord]

Because the folks that know how to do that don't want wizards. This is a computer not a fucking magic kingdom. I would much rather edit the text file then guess what home network vs business network means in some wizard.

At the very bottom of that dialog, it tells you this:
"if you aren't sure, select Public network."

What does selecting "Public" do? As far as I can tell, it does nothing. Home activates local network file and printer sharing for that adapter. Work asks you to connect to an Active Directory domain.

Windows configures your network device to use DHCP IPv4 and stateless address autoconfiguration IPv6 regardless of which you choose; if you want manual IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, you're going to have to go configure them manually anyway.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[mcgrew]

And this is why Linux will never be more than just an "alternative" desktop OS.

No, the reason it will never be more than an alternative OS is because nobody but us nerds have ever heard of it. Windows and iOS have million dollar ad budgets, Linux doesn't.

Because its user base is always assumed to just KNOW how everything works, and if you pose a question that some neckbeard thinks is "stupid", he'll let you know it, and you'll be the focal point of mockery and derision.

That hasn't been my experience. I found that if I asked a legitimate question politely, I'd almost always get a good answer, whether asking in a slashdot comment, help board, or even from my own site I'd get helpful emails from readers.

OTOH I have seen idiots come up with "WTF?? Where's the C: drive in this stupid OS?" I say idiot because you'd be incredibly stupid to expect anything but "RTFM n00b" from a question posed like that. Say "I'm confused, I have two drives in this machine, how do I find them? Thanks." and you'll almost always get a good answer.

When you call a proprietary help desk that have to politely answer questions asked impolitely or even insultingly -- it's sales and money to them. If you're used to getting answers to rude questions, don't bother asking Linux questions until you learn to behave like an adult.

Oh, and I WILL be modded down for this, and it WILL validate my point even more.

Wrong, n00b. You're sitting at +4 right now, as an AC and you started at 0. It's perfectly understandable why you get dissed.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Psyborgue]

If you make a Genius appointment at your local apple store they will help you -- even without apple care.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Medievalist]

Wow I didn't know GPUs were programmed in a manor ! How big are the grounds ? Do they have servants too ?

Stately Wayne Manor, in fact. It was designed by Nathan Van Derm for Darius Wayne, and now houses Keith Packard's Bat-Cave. The grounds are huge but there's only one servant.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[h4rr4r]

So why make me guess and not just say that?

Hell, why not let me edit a text file to change adaptor settings if I want? Text files are easy to backup, easy to script against, easy to work with period. You could even use the silly wizards and dialog boxes while still just writing text files.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[sl4shd0rk]

And this is why Linux will never be more than just an "alternative" desktop OS.

Things have changed since 1998. There are a ton of moderated Linux forums available these days to help the less experienced. The http://www.stackoverflow.com/ and it's associated channels are a great place to search for, and ask, questions. Chances are, whatever you're struggling with has already been answered there. The moderation/ranking system used keeps the useless garbage cut way down. There's a big enough userbase that questions get answered quickly and accurately. There's no reason to subject yourself to IRC anymore.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Kjella]

No, but all your fellow users will gladly blame Microsoft while Microsoft itself will politely ignore you - at least not rudely trash talk you in an "attack is the best defense" way. You may not get any help in either case, but it'll be a much more pleasant experience. There's a huge difference between not getting your way and not getting your way as well as being insulted. Don't get me wrong I'm sure the Microsoft developers don't hold their users in much higher regard than in open source projects, but if you want to stay employed in customer support you don't tell it to their face.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Medievalist]

Because the folks that know how to do that don't want wizards. This is a computer not a fucking magic kingdom. I would much rather edit the text file then guess what home network vs business network means in some wizard.

The really annoying thing is that you could have both, and that used to be considered good programming. Being able to support different levels of user skill is a desirable feature.

Cause there's nothing wrong with a wizard that simply automates the creation of a pure text config file, right? What's fscked up is designing a configuration mechanism that consists of cryptic numbers in a binary database, which requires a wizard.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Rogerborg]

I tried turning mine off then back on again with a Mint LXDE usb key in it, and it's been fine ever since.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Rogerborg]

You backup config file before editing them?

Well, I guess it's easy to talk a good game.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Larry_Dillon]

At the risk of being unpopular, most of my complaints about Linux distros is that they try too hard to be easy to use for people that know nothing about computers. By doing so, they have often made it harder to configure things, especially from the command line. Not to mention the extra kloc's of code and the extra bugs that always come with extra code. What drew me to Linux was the relative simplicity and elegant OS.
If I wanted a Windows-like experience, I'd use ... Windows.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[LordLimecat]

Because its user base is always assumed to just KNOW how everything works, and if you pose a question that some neckbeard thinks is "stupid", he'll let you know it, and you'll be the focal point of mockery and derision.

I think thats a little exaggeration. My time on Ubuntu (several years and several upgrades) involved a lot of troubleshooting, and I spent a lot of time in the Ubuntu IRC channel. Generally people were polite; the only issue is that you may simply not have gotten a response if your problem wasnt "interesting" or complicated enough--you could end up just watching and repeating yourself every 10 minutes for hours.

The forums seem like theyre a lot better-- regardless of distro (even stuff like pfsense forums); youll get a response, it just may take a few days. I dont think Ive ever seen someone called stupid by a "neckbeard".

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[h4rr4r]

Obviously. Everything goes into cvs.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[fast turtle]

Then you've never tried the various Linux usenet groups. Be careful as "Dragons and Wizzards be there that are quick to Temper". Seriously though, after reading what Intel's chosen in regards to the PowerVR for their new GPU's, I'm having to look very hard at the lack of future support from them in regards to graphics capabilities.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[h4rr4r]

I totally agree.

Ideally there would be a text file, a command line program to make it and and a wizerd/gui that user that command line program to edit that text file.

We seem to only have the pure text files or the windows brain dead GUI + registry way.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[cheaphomemadeacid]

mmm i don't think its the intel drivers, i have the same problem (ubuntu 12.04 on an ATI card).

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly my exp with linux.

Oh its similar but not quite that. In fact it is quite similar to what I see in the windows arena. Just exaggerated as there are too many moving parts for people to wholly understand it.

Most 'neckbeards' are glad to help. The thing is MOST of them have no clue what they are doing. Usually they are just randomly flicking things that sort of worked for something else they had. No proper diagnosis. Or at worst a half assed solution that doesnt really fix the issue but is at best a mediocre work around. Then by the time you come across the same issue 3 years later the work around is clearly wrong (does not fix the issue at all, and/or probably does not work anymore)

Then if you really get someone who does understand it you end up doing this. http://bash.org/?950581 Then if you are lucky they will fix it.

For example fragmentation of files on disk. This is *clearly* an issue. But someone somewhere said 'it does not happen in linux'. Then people ran with that. When it is clearly provable it is an issue. Even in the code. Even with a real logical proof. Yet it 'is not a problem'. When there are hundreds of people saying 'i copied the files around and got my speed back'. You have people who have no clue what they are talking about saying 'it cant happen'. I pick file fragmentation as it clearly shows what is wrong in linux culture. You have users saying 'broken'. A second group saying 'not on my machine' oh and 'why would you bring up this subject at all'. A third group of devs saying 'oh dont worry about it'. Then a very small minority of devs saying 'oh yeah we should fix that'.

tl;dr version? What am I going on about? There is too much finger pointing and too many cheerleaders. Not enough 'here lets fix this' or at the very least 'as designed arguments'. It is why making supporting linux distros a nightmare. Or at best a major headache. I am not saying windows is better btw. I am saying linux is borderline worse.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[virtualXTC]

I tried that; but my wireless-N drivers don't work on anything less than 12.04; so I'm F-ed either way. Given the choice between patchy (and almost useless) wireless and patchy suspend, I'll choose the suspend issue, since really I'd rather fully shutdown to conserve battery anyway. It's good to hear that things are fine on other distros; I'll happily go back to OpenSUSE.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[seandiggity]

I have been reporting that problem for a while, but they just assume that I am an idiot who just doesn't know how to use a computer.

My fix is switching to the 3.4 kernel on the Eee PCs at work, and the Intel graphics problems go away. Needless to say, switching to a bleeding-edge kernel can break things, so be cautious.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[knapper_tech]

Ubuntu is n00000bix. Eventually someone has to deal with bugs, and not being developer oriented is bad for keeping developers with your distro.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[seandiggity]

I have been reporting that problem for a while, but they just assume that I am an idiot who just doesn't know how to use a computer.

My fix is switching to the 3.4 kernel on the Eee PCs at work, and the Intel graphics problems go away. Needless to say, switching to a bleeding-edge kernel can break things, so be cautious.

I'd try this PPA first with a LiveCD: https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

...for your /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
Identifier "intel"
Driver "intel"
Option "AccelMethod" "uxa"
EndSection

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

This is an issue on my lap tops and desktops also, 32 & 64 bit. I disabled screen saver and power management. I have had no more lock ups. Might help you too.

I was provided with a Dell i7 on a new project, installed 11.10 on it and had frequent freezes as described (mouse pointer still moving, other virtual terminal working although the lid was never closed) about 3 times a day, completely unacceptable. Didn't happen with KDE or Gnome classic. I've tried for 4 weeks and then switched to KDE and later tried Gnome. Same thing on a Lenovo ultrabook with 12.04 when testing it, within an hour it froze.

I think it has more to do with Unity than anything else: once I switched to another DE it did not happen again. (and it might depend on screen saver/power management/compiz)

Besides the frequent freezes, Unity seems completely unusable on several levels too. I've used Ubuntu since 2005 and am not happy with the latest "innovations" at all. I'll probably switch back to Debian if anything else about it gets "improved" in the same manner as the last 2 years...

Perhaps we are seeing the first attempts at monetizing what until recently was the most practical, usable, lovable operating system?

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[VGPowerlord]

Hell, why not let me edit a text file to change adaptor settings if I want? Text files are easy to backup, easy to script against, easy to work with period. You could even use the silly wizards and dialog boxes while still just writing text files.

If you really want to do it from the command-line, Windows has had netsh for a decade now, which allows you to script and backup network settings.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[tepples]

How big are the grounds ? Do they have servants too ?

I have pictures, and I have pictures.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[tepples]

If you make a Genius appointment at your local apple store

Which isn't very convenient for people living in a city of a quarter million people with the nearest Apple Retail Store 90 miles away.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Circuit Breaker]

I have the same lock up problem here with 10.10. It's actually worse - it usually happens when lid is closed, but randomly (with much, much lower priority) can happen at any time.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[__aanhjr1420]

I'm assuming you're assuming they're assuming.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[RabidReindeer]

Sure you do, call the vendor they have support lines. Often the OEM handles it instead of MS though.

"Press 1"

"Press 7"

"Press 6"

"Press 2"

"Press 5"

"All of our representatives are currently busy helping other customers. Please stay on the line. Your call is VERY important to us."

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Qzukk]

+5 informative.

Everything here goes into git (etckeeper), since then nothing has mysteriously stopped working on a restart because we know exactly who and when "nobody" touched something and screwed it up and how to undo it.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Immerman]

...and? Oh wow - I went to a hard-core geek community in a corner of the 'net that only geeks even know about, and I was treated like an idiot when I asked beginner questions. Why are people so mean? News flash, people are like that. Try going to a hotrod tuning club and asking people "Is this the steering wheel?", or sitting in with the hard-core football fans on a home game and keep interrupting your neighbors with questions like "What's a touchdown?" and you'll get similarly dismissive responses. Generally speaking beginners are not welcome in places where experts gather. You want to play with the big boys, first learn the rules and prove yourself to be at least minimally competent, and then join the discussion in a manner respectful of the prevailing atmosphere. You are an ignorant interloper whose presence is tolerated so long as you are not excessively disruptive, act like it or expect to be driven away.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[jedidiah]

Network setup? What wizards? That sort of thing just uses common defaults that have remained unchanged since the mid-90s. Anything deviating from that and you're getting into relatively obscure stuff where you need to understand what's going on just to be able to ask for it.

The "make it a toaster" concept is nice but tends to ignore the fact that the UI isn't the hard part.

Although there's plenty of automation in Linux and it's been there for awhile. The aforementioned common networking defaults is one of them.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[jedidiah]

If you don't act like a Troll on Usenet, you don't get flamed.

It's really that simple.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[jedidiah]

...or the problem you had was something that no one else had any experience with. Either they didn't use any of the components involved or they never had problems with them.

Not everyone has an answer for every problem.

None of us is the Kwitzatz Haderach.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[hairyfeet]

I am just sitting here literally gobsmacked. I mean here you all are, having seriously NASTY problems...yet you put up with it or do the distro tango....WTF people? Why are you not on their forums having a fucking shitfit? Why are you not telling the devs to stop acting like douchebags and quit fucking with the internals so shit isn't constantly fucking breaking like this?

This is why I gave up after nearly 4 years of fighting the damned thing and went back to Windows, and if someone doesn't want Windows I point them toward a Mac. How is ANYTHING ever gonna get better if you just let the devs crap all over the internals any damned time they feel like it and you just take it like an abused housewife...WTF people? Why aren't you royally pissed? Why are you not nailing their balls to the wall? if this were any other product on the planet you would be having massive boycotts and giving them hell. You know that free broken shit is STILL broken shit, correct?

I just don't get it. Religious dogma is the only reason i can think of for putting up with such obvious douchebag behavior, because its obvious the product is NOT working as intended and from the huge list we see here of people with serious issues is not suitable for purpose.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[h4rr4r]

How as your experience been with that?
Do you think there is enough gain to justify switching from cvs?

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Medievalist]

You backup config file before editing them?

Always. Typically I do this on a linux box: cp -a squid.conf squid.conf.`date -I`. If it's a brand new unconfigured system, I do this: cp -a squid.conf squid.conf.distroversion where "distroversion" is the name of the distribution, like RHEL5 or SuSe10 or whatever.

Obviously, on systems that only have "point and grunt" interfaces exposed to the user, it's a few more steps and less intuitive. But I do it anyway.

When a new version of a software comes down the update pipe, you diff the old distro config against the new version distro config, and you have an easy reference to any new options or gotchas. Or you can diff the current config against the distro config and find the custom site specific modifications you made and port them to the new config style.

It's just common sense. Modifying a config file without backing it up first is like going on a cross-country car trip without checking your oil and spare tire pressure first - total n00b mistake.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Medievalist]

I think the main point is about using a human-readable configuration method, manipulable with generic tools, rather than using a blob registry that has to be manipulated with special tools.

But you've still got a valid point. At least windows won't actively sabotage settings configured with netsh, the way the linux GUI's infamous "Network Manager" likes to wreak utter havoc on anything configured with ifconfig or iwconfig.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Microlith]

Why are you not on their forums having a fucking shitfit?

Cause we aren't all vulgar assholes?

Why are you not telling the devs to stop acting like douchebags and quit fucking with the internals so shit isn't constantly fucking breaking like this?

What internals, precisely, were broken? Oh, closed source drivers from an uncooperative company? You should blame the company rather than demanding others comply to the whims of lazy corporations that refuse to support their products.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Microlith]

The Linux community needs a drastic culture-change before it's ready to compete on any meaningful level with Windows and OS X.

No, companies that ship Linux on their systems should step up and actually support them, rather than push the support off on the communities that surround them. I have met my fair share of dickish Windows and Apple fanboys who attack people with questions rather than help, and seen more than a few people with questions regarding Linux get help.

The users at large are under no obligation to help anyone.

The worst are users that assume that they're entitled to an answer right this moment from someone who's helping others on their own time.

I WILL be modded down for this, and it WILL validate my point even more.

You weren't, but you should be just for adding this stupid passive-aggressive wannabe victim-complex "oh-i'm-so-oppressed" tag.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[sa666_666]

I know it's almost impossible for Windows' fans to understand, but sometimes dealing with things not working is still better than dealing with problems in Windows. At least with the former there's a chance that (a) someone will fix it, or (b) you can learn to fix it yourself. That just isn't an option in Windows. If there's a bug and it's closed-source, there's nothing you can do about it.

Now, I understand how someone using Windows without any problems (if that is even possible) would think that all Linux users are masochists, but personally I cannot stand running Windows, and I feel my blood pressure rise any time I'm forced to. I'll deal with Linux issues any day.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Microlith]

Hairyfeet's problem is that the kernel devs don't cater to the lazy whims of hardware vendors that write drivers once then forget about them for 5 years until the next Windows rev comes out.

Of course, when you're working with Linux you should know what you're getting into and how they work (and happily with many major hardware vendors) but apparently they're supposed to cater to the laziest, "our shit is special" bunch.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Decameron81]

Failure to recognize one's weaknesses is a sure way to fail. When a good number of people keeps telling you they reported errors and got treated as if they were stupid, ignoring them is just another confirmation for them to look elsewhere.

Companies have a human resources department for a reason.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Psyborgue]

Totally agree. I had to go almost 200 miles away to get my Mac's motherboard replaced (and had to pick it up at the store too), but they did it. Even out of warranty (8600m issue). On the other hand, a week later they screwed my out of all my iTunes purchases (long story) and told me I would have to repurchase all my apps, movies, and music, so it really can be a mixed bag with Apple. Needless to say I won't be buying another mac or any apple device after my experience.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[radtea]

Why are you not nailing their balls to the wall? if this were any other product on the planet you would be having massive boycotts and giving them hell. You know that free broken shit is STILL broken shit, correct?

And broken shit is worth what we pay for it.

I've been running Slackware on my netbook lately (13.37) after experiencing Very Bad Things from Ubuntu, Debian, Mint and another distro I can't recall. It's been OK, but just today I had a crash in the Xserver that took me down to the command line when I opened the lid. Besides that, printing still doesn't work (I can see the shared printer on my WinXP box but can't print to it, although I've been chipping away at that issue and it's been getting better). And wireless networking is hit and miss: some networks that I can connect fine with XP don't work, some do. The fancier the encryption the less likely things are to work, it seems.

So the story for "Linux on the desktop" in 2012 is pretty sad: still crashes, only Slackware actually worked out the box (and I've been using it since '94 or so, pre-1.0, so I'm happy tweaking it and building stuff I need from source, etc.) And basic functions like wireless networking and network printing are poor, and power management sucks.

But: it doesn't cost me anything but time (which is a non-trivial concern) and I get a few extra years out of an older machine even as Microsoft is twilighting XP (it's too lame to run Win7 on, but performance with Slackware is pretty good, in terms of raw responsiveness.) I put up with the clunky, broken, barely adequate feature set because of those things.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[armanox]

The people I know at NASA are running IRIX on their workstations....

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Tarlus]

Cause we aren't all vulgar assholes?

Quote of the day. :)

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[trevelyon]

I couldn't agree more. Unity and the standard Gnome3 desktop was a disaster for me. I just found glx-dock.org and now I have a usable Gnome3 desktop (menus, launchers, taskbar, etc.) It's a bit different than Gnome2 but it seems to work pretty well. I hope this helps. Good luck,

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[lsatenstein]

I have been reporting that problem for a while, but they just assume that I am an idiot who just doesn't know how to use a computer.

I am using a Netbook with Intel graphics and Fedora. After a suspend, the mouse pad is fully inoperative, requiring a reboot. Terminal mode works.
Same graphics chip as with 12.4

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[flyneye]

My recording studio desktop is sitting on an ancient version of Ubuntu Studio because the Intel driver still kinda works,back then....
The one before Onceric Ocelot...

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel's graphics (except one intel branded chipset produced by another) is more 'open' (free) than any of nVidia/AMD's chipsets. The only partially free driver for nVidia is a reverse engineered third party driver. For which I give the developers a lot of credit. They did it without ANY help from nVidia. I will never buy for myself systems or hardware with an nVidia or AMD graphics chipset.

NVIDIA in notoriously bad at working with the GNU/Linux community. And I'm not talking about 100% free projects either. Even Linus (who is responsible for a project containing non-free software) bitched about them in the recent past.

* Maybe it was nVidia/AMD you were referring.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[cbhacking]

YaST2 (Yet another Setup Tool) on Suse/openSuse is pretty much just what you describe: a powerful and user-friendly all-in-one-place GUI configuration tool, that works by simply modifying the underlying config files. It will also show you the relevant config files, so you can modify them by hand and/or see the changes that the GUI causes. It's got front-ends written for a bunch of interfaces (various versions of QT/KDE, GTK/GNOME/XFCE/probably others, and an ncurses-based terminal UI that works great over SSH and can be used to fix your system when the X11 server explodes.

I've often wondered why something like YaST (or YaST itself; it's GPLed and making it work on other distros wouldn't be terribly hard) isn't more commonly a part of Linux distros. It allowed me to learn the basics of many config files simply by tweaking options in the GUI (which comes complete with item-by-item help info) and seeing what happened in the file. It was easy to use when I needed my hand held, and didn't get in the way when I knew exactly what I wanted to change.

Incidentally, Windows does actually support a number of command line administrative tools. Net and netsh can be used to control a user's interaction with the network (mounting drives, setting home folders, etc) and control network interfaces, respectively, for example. Both are clear enough to be usable from the command line, and are designed to support scripting. There are many other tools like this too. Another one I find handy is manage-bde, which allows greater control over BitLocker drive encryption than the GUI offers.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[humanrev]

Its like mass insanity, that's what it is.

Mass insanity exists when people have become conditioned to believe in something which might not be true or correct or completely accurate, and they find themselves hanging out with people (in real life or on the Net) who have the same opinions as themselves and hence feed of each other's energy, and so the lie continues. It exists when you don't want to challenge your preconceptions since everyone in your circle of buddies thinks like you do. It becomes your reality, even if it's not healthy as you're rejecting the experiences of others as they don't fit your view.

It's bloody narrow mindedness and honestly, the realization that the alternative (which in this case is Windows) isn't so bad after all is worse than sticking with what you know (right or wrong) - and geeks are some of the worst at following this despite believing themselves to be more intelligent than the rest of the population.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[sjames]

My favorite is when they tell you to Google it but you can't because all you get is page after page of links to self satisfied idiots telling people to google it.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[sjames]

What would be wrong with just not replying at all in a support forum unless you actually wish to answer the question or want to point to a specific place where the answer may be found? Would it really be that painful?

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[bingoUV]

Oh, closed source drivers from an uncooperative company?

Actually, open source drivers with an extremely cooperative company. Ubuntu has screwed up its own kernel / xorg driver, but Intel graphics works awesomely on most distributions most of the time; with minor bugs ironed out quite quickly.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[h4rr4r]

Does Yast have a CLI tool as well.

I really do mean that the best is a GUI that uses a command line tool that edits a text file.

Windows does have quite a bit of cmd line tools, most dedicated windows admins are afraid of them. Even worse the config itself is kept in the brain damaged registry.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[drinkypoo]

Something everyone with Windows and OSX takes for granted, simply closing the lid and the system goes to sleep, is BROKEN, has been broken for several revs now and its quite clear the devs do not care

If caring were all it took then we'd all have everything we wanted already. Your comment is based on this fallacy, and it is therefore fallacious. Hardware makers do the work of making their hardware work on Windows, not Microsoft. If they spent half as much effort supporting Linux then stuff would work fine on Linux, and when manufacturers have then this has been true. This is, of course, vanishingly rare, due to the massive lead that Microsoft built up by illegally abusing their monopoly position, and through other anticompetitive trade practice. In short, this is not a technical problem, except insofar as that it is not technically trivial to get this stuff right on as much hardware as works with Windows.

It is worth adding that Linux supports vast quantities of hardware that Windows won't run on. In truth, Linux's hardware support is far superior to that of Windows. I have an HP ScanJet 4570c. Once it worked flawlessly, but now SANE is taking a long time to get data back from the scanner. However, it actually works. This scanner is supported only under Windows XP, the version of Windows that you don't want people to be running any more. Maybe Vista, which nobody wants to be running any more. The Windows 7 driver doesn't support it, in spite of the fact that it is based on the same engine as many other scanners, and speaks the same protocol as other scanners which are still supported. HP has chosen not to support this device in order to spur additional sales. A former Windows XP user who upgrades to Windows 7 will find their scanner not working, and it does not matter whether that's HP's fault or Microsoft's. By your own logic, that is Microsoft's responsibility.

Right now Linux is making greater strides than it ever has before, in the form of Android. You might call that not a real Linux, but it is important to the users for the reason that they are getting a device for which they can get kernel source. That means that someone or someones can produce alternate software for the machine because if in no other way it is documented with kernel source. If there is sufficient demand, then it can and likely will happen. The lack of this demand in any particular case is not an indictment against the availability of source code being useful, as you believe it to be. Having the code is not POINTLESS (and capitals don't make your argument more valid, either) but it doesn't solve all your problems; however, it's still better than not having the code. It means that you might get relief for your particular problems, whereas not having the code means you almost certainly won't get what you want if you haven't been able to get it just by spending money.

Your arguments are all essentially fallacious and are based on emotion masquerading as reason.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[hairyfeet]

Thank you for giving me a PERFECT example of religious lunacy, now watch how simple logic total demolishes that argument!

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that in each distro you have ...ohh 100 guys capable of low level kernel driver work. this is of course bullshit, Red hat MAYBE but everyone else will be lucky if they have 4, and due to the way everyone changes the layouts just enough a LOT of their work won't be cross compatible. But giving the benefit of the doubt let's say 100. Following me? Good now watch how logic destroys your argument.

You have 100 guys, code for 100,000 drivers, a six month release schedule, and devs that shit all over the internals with nary a care in the world to backwards compatibility because they treat their own little fiefdoms as personal vanity projects instead of code millions count on...SEE THE PROBLEM? If you gave your mythical 100 devs, which you in reality have maybe 4, but if you gave your mythical 100 devs qualified to write kernel level driver Bolivian marching powder and kept them up 24/7/365 for all eternity THE MATH WILL STILL NOT WORK.

And it is THIS, this right here, that leaves me gobsmacked and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that it all comes down to RELIGION, because like religion just a tiny bit of logic and math shows it to be myth, yet you have all these people that refuse to believe you can do these miraculous things that even basic math just obliterates. hell the ONLY argument you have by a kernel dev against an ABI even has the line "may all non free drivers break" which is NOTHING but religious dogma, because NO competent developer is gonna be actually HOPING that drivers for his own system is gonna be broken.

But you go right ahead and believe in the tooth fairy while calling dirty names anybody who points out its impossibility, just remember to be shocked! shocked I tell you! When your OS which you give away for 100% free gains NO SHARE and in fact is beaten by stolen versions of the competitors product several times over. Now when people would rather risk insane fines to steal the other guy's product than take yours for free? How big of a cluebat do you need to get hit in the head with before you wake the hell up?

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[riondluz]

Well, here is some other stuff i picked up:

If the issue is the blank screen being identical to what you would see if prompted to login - but w/out the login window

what worked for me was to Tick "Lock screen when screensaver is active" in screensaver preferences dialog

This host was running Ubuntu (Bug #150109), but other things to try:

Option "ForceEnablePipeA" "true" # in your xorg.conf:devices section
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Quirks#Force_Pipe_A_Quirk

try nomodeset (disable KMS) and/or vthandoff in grub

run below from a console:
compiz --replace --sm-disable --ignore-desktop-hints ccp

use xset to control DPMS
  sleep 1; xset s activate
      Or to turn the screensaver off:
  sleep 1; xset dpms force off

In a terminal (Applications-->Accessories-->Terminal), type: gconf-editor
Navigate to apps-->gnome-power-manager-->buttons and set lid_ac and/or lid_battery to "nothing" (without the quotes)

SEE: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/416236

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/Freeze
http://linux.bigresource.com/Fedora-14-Black-screen-with-pointer-only-after-waking-2Nn2FdoSA.html

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/138256?comments=all

Hope this helps

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[unixisc]

It's not lazy on the part of hardware vendors to write drivers once for an OS and expect it to run on that, and successive generations. It's not a problem under FBSD - only under Linux. Hardware vendors keep developing new products and their firmware engineers are busy developing drivers for those. Not to mention that if any particular reference platform of major customers fail to work, they have to be on it, if they want to keep the account. It's not like after they are done doing the Windows 7 driver, they write new ones for Windows 8.

Problem w/ Linux is that there are multiple possible points of failure. Sound card doesn't work? Is it a problem w/ the ALSA or PulseAudio version#? It turns out that every kernel version will work w/ 1 or 2 versions of that, but not more. This is just sound, but how about other things, like Wi-Fi? Do we want to get the tarballs of the drivers, do a .configure&&make&&make install and run it? To debug it, the devs have to take a baseline platform where all the variables except 1 is constant. But w/ Linux, any number of things can change - the kernel version, the glibc version, the gcc version, the Qt or GTK+ version and so on. So expecting firmware engineers @ the company to put all else aside & fix that, particularly for non-paying customers, is asking too much. Particularly when they don't go thru this rigmarole when they are developing for other OSs, such as OS-X and FBSD. In case of Windows, XP had been based on win32 and Vista & above on win64, so that's one case where XP drivers won't work w/ the new OS, but there too, MS didn't make the driver dev model more difficult that hardware vendors couldn't handle it. But that's what Linux effectively does all the time.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[hairyfeet]

But the worse part is the math doesn't work! You have X number of devs truly qualified to write and repair low level systems drivers (lets say 100, waaay overestimating but this is giving them benefit of the doubt) and over 100,000 drivers, devs constantly futzing with the internals and a 6 month release schedule.

Question: How are you gonna have ANY QC or QC with conditions like that? Answer: You aren't, even if the few devs they have truly qualified to write and repair low level driver code stay up 24/7/365 then MAYBE they will have gone through the drivers ONCE in 5 years MAYBE. The math? It just don't work. MSFT doesn't have to deal with this problem as the kernel only changes once a decade, same with the driver model, and most of the drivers aren't built and maintained by them anyway, same with Apple. The ones they do maintain they pay millions of dollars to huge teams of devs to deal with this long, slow, tedious and boring work.

So the idea that simply having the code will make it so that the kernel devs can take care of 100,000+ drivers is truly "magical thinking" and anybody using basic math can show its nuts, but still they believe, why? Because like religion they WANT to believe, that is why they attack those that point out the math don't work.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[kc0dxw]

Oh, I *love* "The IT Crowd"...

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[hairyfeet]

Because being an abused housewife and just taking shit? MUCH better, dumbass. Why do you think Linux has got NO share in 20 years? Hint, its NOT a conspiracy, its because the community will put up with devs that treat you like shit for fricking decades and won't do a damned thing about it.

Look up "Ulrich Drepper asshole" and see what I mean, here was a guy controlling CRITICAL CODE that told anybody that found a bug to literally eat shit and die, what did you do? Took it for a decade and a fricking half!

If you want to know why Linux is dead its YOU, look right in the mirror because guys like YOU that refuse to stand up, refuse to complain, that shout down anybody who points out the devs are treating you like shit! I repeat if any other product on the entire planet worked so poorly and ignored the users it would be in the dustbin of history, and rightly so. But because so many have bought into "The religion of FOSS" it doesn't matter what the devs break, how you get exactly ZERO QA and QC, because you'll take that shit sandwich as long as its free.

BTW did you know Dell has to run their own damned fork of Ubuntu, complete with their own repos, just to keep the damned thing from breaking their systems, even though they only sell a grand total of 8 models? Be happy to provide the links if you'd like. Its THAT kind of shoddy half ass approach that dooms Linux to nothing on the desktop and guys like YOU help it to happen. Congrats, I'm sure MSFT and Apple are grateful.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[hairyfeet]

Dude you didn't hear this from me but fuck it, I hate to see anybody wasting hours of their time on broken shit. Look up "Windows 7 Tiny" and just download a copy of that if your hardware is too old for regular Win 7. I can tell you I've run both win 7 and Win 8 CP on a Sempron 1.8GHz with 2gb of RAM, now that is pretty wimpy, but for all I know you have something even wimpier than that so there you go.

Win 7 Tiny was made by gamers to be the "Ultimate Win 7 Gaming OS" so its stripped to the bone, but will still run a good 98% of the software out there. I slapped it on a socket 478 Celeron, the weakest thing I had in the shop at the time and...holy shit dude, that thing fricking screamed. The whole OS takes less than 192Mb of RAM with running as Admin, just 226 when running as standard user. Its also had WGA stripped out so no worries there and it'll run any Win 7 drivers, even XP drivers if you use compatibility mode.

Not that I condone piracy but in this case MSFT left a lot of guys like you with older hardware in a lurch and the hackers just routed around the damage. Hell it even fits on a single CD so you don't even need a DVD to install the thing.

Believe me after 5 years of dealing with linux and having to constantly waste time fighting the damned thing to keep it running i wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. if you want a legal version they are gonna sell Win 8 pro for $40 and the same guys that made Win 7 Tiny are hard at work stripping the living hell out of it, rumor is it won't even have Metro but Classic Shell built in instead. But I've seen Win 7 Tiny run great on frankly old as dirt hardware, better than XP as a matter of fact, so if you have an older system you want to keep past 2014 might want to give it a spin.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[radtea]

I don't pirate stuff, but I could see myself buying a Win7 or 8 licence to try this out. Thanks!

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Crosshair84]

Exactly, just buy a regular Windows 7 license, leave it on your bookshelf, and use Tiny. How is Microsoft going to know the difference?

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Crosshair84]

If anything, MS could sweep Linux from the server market in about a year by pulling a Steam and pricing their server stuff competitively.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[hairyfeet]

To me that is what is truly sad, MSFT really did have a "lost decade' thanks to Ballmer caring about stock price more than market share.

If you put me in charge of MSFT I would right that ship and put them head to head against Apple in less than 2 years or they wouldn't owe me a dime. Win 8? You would choose on first boot whether to go with the Win 7 UI (and it wouldn't be the crippled mess that "desktop mode" is, we are talking the FULL Win 7 UI) or Metro so that problem would be solved. In mobile? 2 versions, Home and pro (Pro having all the business tools like AD and GPO support) and it would be $20 to the OEMs for Home and $50 for pro, second problem solved. Server? I would completely destroy Linux by offering 3 versions, SMB, Medium, and Enterprise with prices of $250,$500,$1000 and NO CALs and special discounts if you want to run multiple VMs of Windows.

Instead Ballmer is gonna gouge his way right out of mobile and is practically handing a large chunk of the server market to Linux with the stupid licensing rules. I only hope Win 8 is a WinME style flop and that the board punts Sinofsky and Ballmer like a 30 yard field retrun and brings in somebody with a brain, maybe bring back Allchin or Ozzie who actually knows the customer base and how to grow the company, because its obvious from Ballmer's abysmal track record he doesn't know WTF he is doing.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[hairyfeet]

Its not piracy if you just buy a license, go grab an OEM copy of Win 7 Home and like Crosshair said just leave it on the shelf and run Tiny.

I had it, with full Comodo AV and Firewall, running like a screamin demon and the thing was using less than 340Mb of RAM and it just flew, faster by far than bog standard XP on the same hardware, which just to give you an idea of how weak we are talking it was a 2.1GHz Celeron, 1gb of RAM, 200Gb HDD which Tiny used less than 700Mb of, and an old Geforce 6200 I had laying around. Now with spcs THAT lousy it was truly a joy to run, everything loaded fast, it was stable and solid, and even after applying SP1 and all the patches it still used less than 400Mb and was snappy.

The only catches are thus: If you want to run as a normal user you'll have to make an account, its set up as admin by default (for compatibility with older games of course, like I said it was made for gamers), you'll want to go to driverpacks.net since naturally having it fit on a CD means they removed the Win 7 built in drivers but driverpacks will take care of that, and no Aero because naturally Aero sucks GPU resources so its not good for gaming.

But since MSFT gives out a 90 day trial of Win 7 on its website if I were you I'd download a copy of Win 7 Tiny and try it for 90 days. That will let you see if its right for you and if it is? just pop over to NewEgg and pick up an OEM Win 7 and put it in the closet. Hell the install of Win 7 Tiny comes with a .txt file on the desktop from the creator with a full list of everything he tweaked so theoretically you could do this to any Win 7 disc, its just a hell of a lot of work so why not let some other guy do the tweaking for you?

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[gottabeme]

Settle down, cowboy, you're starting to sound like APK.

Your logic is...not. Your silly numbers and "math" show you know little about how the kernel is actually developed. Maybe you should spend more time on LWN than arguing with Slashdotters; they're rubbing off on you.

There is plenty of room to criticize Ubuntu and other distros, but you're the one acting like a lunatic. No Linux distro is perfect, but I'm happily enjoying my Software Freedom and freedom from Microsoft garbage, and have been for nearly a decade now. Now go enjoy your freedom to choose, as well.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[Qzukk]

It seems to work fine for us.

As far as switching, Etckeeper can integrate with package managers to commit configuration changes automatically when a package is installed or upgraded, but other than that, it's probably doing whatever you're already doing with cvs. You can read more about it here.

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[rjbradlow]

but they just assume that I am an idiot who just doesn't know how to use a computer.

And this is why Linux will never be more than just an "alternative" desktop OS. Because its user base is always assumed to just KNOW how everything works, and if you pose a question that some neckbeard thinks is "stupid", he'll let you know it, and you'll be the focal point of mockery and derision. Linux needs to stop being that exclusive club for the cool kids and know-it-alls and start being a more user-oriented (rather than developer-oriented) community.

The Linux community needs a drastic culture-change before it's ready to compete on any meaningful level with Windows and OS X.

Oh, and I WILL be modded down for this, and it WILL validate my point even more.

Really!?
Anybody can USE a computer... for something. Even a doorstop.

People who are willing to research and learn before they ask for help usually find the solution before they have to ask because you are usually Not the first person to experience the problem you are facing.
Thus the attitude you have been getting is probably due to you Not doing your Due Diligence and getting to know the community that you say doesn't exist.
It's not an exclusive club. There are a huge amount of people new to Linux and UNIX that are getting along just fine.

RTFM (renaming the F word in a polite way) means to Read The Frickin' Manual and research the issues at hand.
Neckbeards and the rest of us, including noobs who don't expect the hand that feeds them to wipe their butts too,
are people that are not mocked because they know how to find solutions to their problems on their own and ask for help correctly when they run into a wall.

RTFM is what you may see every so often when looking for help that has already been covered by so many other contributors so many countless times.
You will often see this when a person has not done any research and just dumps all over the forums.

I mean really! Can you crack open the hood and fix this kind of stuff on a windows box? No!
You have to wait for Microsoft or some other vendor to fix the problem.

But at least with Open Source software you can LEARN how to CONTRIBUTE and HELP solve issues, instead of crying about how your FREE software has issues and the only contributions you offer are to Flame the whole operating system and community, no matter that there are UPSTREAM issues that also include ATI,AMD and other software that breaks inside Linux at no fault of Linux itself.

Usually at least when software misbehaves in Linux you can jump out of the desktop and grab a text only terminal window and kill the zombie, then return to your now functioning graphical desktop, instead of getting a blue or black screen of death - break my machine - reboot Windows over and over illness.

AND, Every Tool is available to you for Free in Linux, no matter what programming language or system you would like to learn about.
Now show me all that free stuff in Windows.

Here's a test run for those who are Linux Haters...
Grab any old proprietary machine, motherboard, graphics card, and other harware.
Assemble it all if you didn't find a complete system such as an old DELL, Gateway, HP, Compaq (Yes they were separate at one time), MPC* or whatever you can find in someone's closet without the original software.

Preferably put new hard & optical drives in, take ANY flavor of Windows off the shelf and TRY to get it ALL to work for you.
Then when you find out that there is no sound, network, and the video sucks... Come back here and tell me how GREAT the Proprietary Gods are again.

NOW...
Take ANY Linux distro Old or NEW and see how much Just works Out Of The Box, And when something doesn't work how easy you can generally find a solution to fix.

Compared to how many forums and websites you'd have to scour trying to find windows Drivers for a defunct company like MPC* that used

Re:What they are actually reporting an Issue.

[WorBlux]

well... you are using Ubuntu, just saying..

Dell Netbooks do this

[Urban Garlic]

I have this issue on my Dell mini netbook, it's one of the older ones that actually shipped with Ubuntu back in early 2010.

The problem seemed to gradually get worse for a while, and at one point the graphical start-up screen stopped working, and the thing just booted in text mode. The most egregious symptoms went away with the most recent kernel update, but it's hard to tell if the hang-on-wake problem is actually fixed, because it was intermittent anyways.

Re:Dell Netbooks do this

[Otter Popinski]

It happened to my Mini 9 last night.

I can confirm this

[Anonymous Coward]

Lenovo Thinkpad x121
with Kernel 3.2.xxx one out of 10 times after opening the lid
with Kernel 3.4, 3.5 every second or third time

bug

[Anonymous Coward]

hopefully this issue is fixed in october with ubuntu 12.10

Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

While their devs are busy breaking everything in sight - they ask the community to fix the bugs lol

Its not like we don't report these bugs, but the response is usually as thus:
"ATI sucks, use nividia!"
"nvidia sucks, use ATI!"
"its not our fault, they should release their sources!"
"you're doing it wrong"
and the best: "works for me!"

Re:Irony

[aliquis]

Thing is this isn't neither of ATI or Nvidia. They sources are released.

And well.. Obviously it doesn't work for them either and if everyone are doing it wrong maybe there's something wrong in the dist ;)

Re:Irony

[rolfc]

I have this problem on a HP desktop-machine with Nvidia-graphics. It does not appear om My thinkpad X220 with intel graphics.

Re:Irony

[Robert Zenz]

I have to defend the "Works For Me"-closing. It is *very* hard to track bugs which are not showing up on your machine (or any test machine). You never know exactly what that user has already done to the machine prior to the bug occurring and it's hard to get additional information. While it for sure sucks if you get that response, the immediate reaction should be "well, how can I help you find this" and not "I still have that problem" as it happens many times. Also many bug reports which are closed with "works for me" never received any attention from the reporter after reported.

Re:Irony

[h4rr4r]

Then it is probably another similar bug, but not the same one. When folks like you add "I have this bug too, but everything else is different!" Then you are just adding more noise to the signal that is the bug report.

You have a different problem, it might look similar, report a new bug. Supply the requested information.

Re:Irony

[Larry_Dillon]

True, but I see it happen all of the time that a program works on a developer's machine (with all of the development libraries and development tools installed and god-only-knows what custom tweaking).

Re:Irony

[tepples]

You never know exactly what that user has already done to the machine prior to the bug occurring

For an intermittent bug, must the user send in an image of the entire hard drive, a log of all packets received, and a log of all keystrokes and mouse movements, as if someone were recording a speedrun in an emulator?

Re:Irony

[Immerman]

Not necessarily - it could be that the bug is somewhere completely unrelated to (in this example) the intel drivers, except that they regularly trigger a corner-case elsewhere that isn't properly handled. You never know what tidbit of may lead to an "Aha" moment when tracking down a bug. If the bug itself was known it would either be fixed, or at least recognized as "Here's where the cause, but nobody is motivated enough to do the work to fix it"

Agreed though - the "proper" way to handle the situation if Bug X has been narrowed down to "probably due to Y" is to report Bug Z with the same symptoms separately and then add a "possibly related to..." link in both reports.

Re:Irony

[bornagainpenguin]

I have to defend the "Works For Me"-closing. It is *very* hard to track bugs which are not showing up on your machine (or any test machine). You never know exactly what that user has already done to the machine prior to the bug occurring and it's hard to get additional information. While it for sure sucks if you get that response, the immediate reaction should be "well, how can I help you find this" and not "I still have that problem" as it happens many times.

Sooo....what you're saying then is that it works for you?

/me ducks.

Re:Irony

[Robert Zenz]

Yes...yes it does indeed. *eg*

Re:Irony

[Robert Zenz]

Yes, that would be helpful. Even better is if you have the machine and the user right next to you and shows you how to reproduce the bug, and then leaves the machine with you (and the user leaves the room...or better, the city).

Don't get me wrong, but it can be freaking hard to track stuff which is not happening on your machine...sometimes it's hard enough even if it is reproducible on a machine you have. Race conditions are such a case. I had some in my application I wrote at work (yeah, totally shame on me for not realizing that obvious thing) and some clients did *never* have a problem and others fell over every few hours. Figuring it out was...tricky...reproducing it even more. Another such case are overflows of all kinds which are not immediately wracking the system, but instead corrupting some parts and then slumber for quite some time.

Re:Irony

[Robert Zenz]

It shouldn't be the default excuse for not thinking about/looking at/keeping it in mind, yes.

Re:Irony

[cerberusss]

Even better is if you have the machine and the user right next to you and shows you how to reproduce the bug, and then leaves the machine with you (and the user leaves the room...or better, the city).

See, this is why I don't log bugs. The chance is just too big where some neckbeard poisons my mountain dew and throws my body in the dumpster, just to fix this bug in peace.

Re:Irony

[cerberusss]

Next time I'll take a page out of your book and log my bugs anonymously :)

Re:Irony

[gottabeme]

WFM is not a valid response for hardware/driver bugs. If the dev can't reproduce it, then mark it as Incomplete or NEEDSINFO and then leave it alone. Until a bug has been FIXED, it should remain OPEN.

This is the fundamental problem with Ubuntu's bug handling. Compare it to Debian, where bugs may remain open for years, but if they get closed, they are FIXED, and they aren't closed UNTIL they are fixed.

Wow! Common bug reports get front-page stories!

[CajunArson]

How about this one:
    KDE 4 has issues with displaying changes made to files in Dolphin. Sometimes the changes show up fine, other times they don't and you have to refresh manually.

Oh and... "Ubuntu" because that magic word has to be inserted for Slashdots "editors" (and I use the term loosely) to care.

There! Now give me a front-page story!

Re:Wow! Common bug reports get front-page stories!

[serviscope_minor]

How about this one:

For better or worse, ubuntu is the most popular distribution and Intel is the most popular vendor of graphics chips. I would say that this is a bug affecting a very substantial portion of the user base.

Re:Wow! Common bug reports get front-page stories!

[Artifakt]

If it's KDE 4 and Dolphin, shouldn't you say Kubuntu? I've got the same issue, although I've just gotten used to hitting the F5 for reload. I can confirm that a variety of external programs that change or create files still result in Dolphin not updating, i.e. I see it when using Dolphin to create files and folders, or even using cat from the command line, or after deleting files I've just burned using the file management available internally in K3B, and so on.

Re:Wow! Common bug reports get front-page stories!

[danomac]

The most annoying one I actually have for KDE is the taskbar - opening and closing windows can trigger a bug in the window grouping code causing nonsimilar apps to get overlaid on top of each other.

Not only does it look bad, you can't click on both windows (it seems to realize they're separate apps) so you can only interface/click on whatever the buggy grouping code puts on top. Thankfully alt+tab still works.

I've found you can fix buggered grouping by opening a new app, usually the code sorts itself out then, but then when you go close another windows it's a coin-toss as to whether the buggy code gets tripped again. It's weird.

Re:Wow! Common bug reports get front-page stories!

[Tarlus]

Distrowatch is not an accurate way to gauge how widely-used an OS it. It just gauges how many people give it attention on Distrowatch.

Re:Yep

[TechMouse]

PATIENT: Doctor! Doctor! It hurts when I do this...

DOCTOR: Well stop doing that then.

Ah, the old ones...

And this is why...

[ilsaloving]

And this is why I use a Mac. I don't have to worry about any of that unreliable unix-y stuff and shoddy quality from Intel!

Re:And this is why...

[VGPowerlord]

Just so the GP doesn't have to say it:

*whoosh*

Re:And this is why...

[WilyCoder]

Oh yeah well at least they don't use Intel chips in Mac!

Re:And this is why...

[spanky_poppagasket]

Good for you, some of us can't afford an extra $700 for essentially the same hardware just so our operating systems will be "bug free". I'm Poor, not because I'm lazy, but because I'm disabled.

Re:And this is why...

[ilsaloving]

I think next time I post a comment like this, I'll get a small wind farm set up first. All that woosh must be worth some serious energy.

Re:And this is why...

[ilsaloving]

When you say you're disabled, I can only assume you're referring to your sense of humour?

Re:And this is why...

[idontgno]

Poe's Law. Distinguishing sarcasm from genuine fanboi-ism is potentially beyond AI-hard.

Re:And this is why...

[Kavli]

We who actually uses macs understands why this is modded funny.

Try to make a softlink from a directory on an automounted filesystem onto the desktop, wait for the mount to time out and click on it.
This bug has existed since Leopard and all through the lastest Mountain Lion, and noone at Apple gives a flying f*ck about it.

Congratulations

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, you are a typical consumer, and have no interest in this computer nerd stuff. Bravo! (Crowd cheers.)

Re:Congratulations

[Anonymous Coward]

Woosh....!

Slow news day?

[wbr1]

I was under the impression that the ubuntu community had their own channels (forums, lists, etc) for this sort of thing. Are we now the help desk for a linux distribution?
Now if ubuntu had been found to have hidden bestiality videos embedded in it somewhere, that would be news.
Come to think of it, maybe that's what the version names are about. I need to find the hidden porn involving a Hoary Hedgehog or a Precise Pangolin!

Re:Slow news day?

[drinkypoo]

I was under the impression that the ubuntu community had their own channels (forums, lists, etc) for this sort of thing. Are we now the help desk for a linux distribution?

Ubuntu hit their quality peak around Dapper and has been slipping since. They need some shame. My problems have been multiplying since then. Some of them might not be their fault but I have no way to know what is and what isn't and they don't really seem to be taking things seriously, attempting to roll in new functionality before getting the existing stuff working right.

Only since 12.04 for me

[jimwelch]

Me Too, HP DV6

System76

[Anonymous Coward]

Been happening on my System76 gazp7 since I got it.. I rarely have the need to put the system to sleep so I haven't spent much effort in trying the various suggestions.

12.10 better not be the fix

[Concern]

It's an awful problem.

LTS release that can't reliably suspend (which means, it can't suspend) on Lenovo Thinkpads...

Ubuntu fixes this rapidly, in-stream or they cease to be credible.

Thank you Slashdot, for bringing attention to this.

Re:12.10 better not be the fix

[Anonymous Coward]

My experience has been it's something aggravated by dbus, as turning off zeitgeist almost totally eliminates the problem.
Note: I am not using unity, although again, unity aggravates the issue(s).
Using something like collectd causes an increase in the issue appearing, but at a way lower rate than zeitgeist.
e.g. collectd causes the problem to appear about once a week, vs 2-3 times a day with zeitgeist.
fox/plugin-container /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so -greomni /usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja also seems to
frequently aggravate the issue in question.
I sorta suspect it's something related to kernel polling/caching and resources limits, as changing user limits and/or changing
the shell associated with a uid in /etc/password (e.g. /bin/sh to /bin/nologin or /bin/false) alters the frequency at which
the problem appears. Altering cache sizes sometimes delays the issue. Flushing caches almost always fixes the issue (assuming
one can switch windows before the issue "freezes" things).
Giiven the size of the file cache (4GB) , it might just be due to the time required to flush the cache.
It is as if there's an exclusive lock/resource roadblock for which either dbus can use, collectd can use, or omni.ja can use,
but having more than one going at the same time will result in the issues discussed.
Note, the kernel is a standard, stock ubuntu kernel build.

Re:12.10 better not be the fix

[NatasRevol]

this is not somehow going to make HP, or Microsoft any less credible.

They're already un-credible.

Re:12.10 better not be the fix

[RowD1]

It's an awful problem.

LTS release that can't reliably suspend (which means, it can't suspend) on Lenovo Thinkpads...

Ubuntu fixes this rapidly, in-stream or they cease to be credible.

Thank you Slashdot, for bringing attention to this.

My lenovo laptop bluescreens on suspend running Windows 7, and Microsoft hasn't fixed it yet. Does that mean Microsoft ceases to be credible?

Re:12.10 better not be the fix

[Concern]

Yes.

Not showing up here.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been running Ubuntu 12.04 since it was released on my laptop with an Intel video card. Have not experienced anything like this. in fact I don't think I've had any hardware related issues at all. Perhaps it only affects very specific cards? Or maybe only users with a particular set of desktop effects?

Re:Not showing up here.

[interval1066]

I think you need a laptop with ACPI and you need close it or otherwise send it into suspend mode to see the problem.

Related issues

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like Ubuntu (or maybe even all Linux) has serious issues with reinitializing hardware correctly after a suspend/reanimate. I have been bitten by this specific bug on my Lenovo. I have also, on the same machine had problems with Network Manager and/or 3g hardware which dies after a suspend. My girlfriend runs the same version of ubuntu on her MacBook, and uses a bluetooth mouse. After a suspend the whole bluetooth subsystem seems to be down (very booring for her to use the builtin touchpad with only one button in freecad...)

Not just Intel

[Rik Sweeney]

I get this problem on my Dell ATI laptop. If I close the lid, then the screen will go black and become completely unresponsive. I have to power cycle to get it back.

What's most annoying is that I cannot click shutdown and close the lid. If I do that then it will lock up during the shutdown process and remain on until a few hours later when I notice. Granted, it only takes a few seconds to shutdown, but it's incredibly annoying to have to babysit.

A wider scale problem

[Theril]

My view is that this is only an individual symptom of a larger scale problem. It seems that there are a lot of old, verified, almost showstopper bugs that just get ignored. I'm too busy/lazy to hunt the links at this point, but for example GNOME3 has probably from the beginning had a bug that it gets very sluggish after a few days, at least on some GPU's/drivers, the kernel's trashing behavior in out-of-memory situations is horrible, the audio stack is a horrible mess etc.

It's probably a wider problem of QA, that may be very difficult to solve. At least as a programmer I'm first to admit that I don't want to use my spare time fixing bugs. Debian's almost draconian policies seem to do quite well in terms of stability, but the desktop often lags behind (this may be unavoidable) and the desktop doesn't seem to be a very high priority for them.

PS. This post in no way suggests that things are better, or aren't a lot worse, in Windows-world and OS X with the controlled hardware platform is a very different situation. Maybe I should check if the grass is really greener in the BSD-side.

Re:A wider scale problem

[lcampagn]

Regarding the out-of-memory thrashing, there is an Ubuntu bug that has been open for years that very recently got an interesting response:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/159356/comments/35

The tl;dr version is "sysctl vm.vfs_cache_pressure=100000" might fix the problem.

Re:A wider scale problem

[dargaud]

It seems that there are a lot of old, verified, almost showstopper bugs that just get ignored.It seems that there are a lot of old, verified, almost showstopper bugs that just get ignored.

Well, sometimes it takes a while. For the last few years Firefox in Ubuntu would grow in memory and then challenge the machine to a marathon in molasses. With 3 windows of 30 tabs and quite a bit of Web 2.0 browsing, it would start after only a few hours of use with 8 gigs of RAM. A few weeks ago they implemented a new memory retrieval process for plugins. Now it works like a charm. Took a few years though.

Probably unrelated, but...

[Bill Dimm]

I saw similar behavior the other day under different circumstances with a much older version of Linux. OpenSUSE 10.2, had a YouTube video playing and plugged in a Logitech USB headset (which I've never done before). Mouse pointer would move, but windows would not respond. Would not respond to key presses. Could not ssh into the computer. May be a different trigger for the same weird state.

Nope

[Zamphatta]

Have had Ubuntu 12.04 on my Acer laptop since late April, and I haven't come across this bug once yet. Altho, I never close my laptop without suspending it first, so maybe that's an easy workaround for anyone who's affected.

Re:Nope

[scharkalvin]

I'm using Linux Mint 13 KDE on a thinkpad R60. I too don't just close the lid, I use the "FN" key plus the blue moon key to suspend. I then have to use the power button and enter my password to restart the machine. I'm not surt that my older thinkpad is affected by this bug, or if the bug is even present in KDE. I have also not seen anything in this thread as to if this is a 32 or a 64 bit (or both) issue. BTW I have a newer thinkpad R400 on order and will be putting Mint 13 KDE 64 bit on it. We'll see.......

Re:Nope

[jones_supa]

Yes, that avoids the problem. I have been using the same workaround (HP 6910p laptop).

I have this problem.

[Psyborgue]

On an Acer Aspire 5313. I've been dealing with it simply by doing as the summary suggests: switching to VT and restarting lighttdm. I'd be happy to help any way I can. The problem doesn't seem to happen every time it suspends, but it happens enough to be annoying. Mostly I just use that laptop for browsing the web so it's no big deal, but I can see it being a major issue if somebody was, for example, working on an important document and hadn't saved.

Re:I have this problem.

[Psyborgue]

Yeah, but the computer doesn't lock up. It comes back up, but just the mouse cursor shows up as moving as described in the OP. Nothing else refreshes so I end up having to restart X. After that it's fine for a little while, then it does it again. As for windows doing that, it's par for the course. Only on Mac OS have I never had any suspend issues, not that I'm a huge Mac fan.

Re:I have this problem.

[ais523]

Something similar to the summary happens to me occasionally (although it isn't obviously linked to suspend or lid closing).

I'm using a (custom-patched) Unity, so I fix the problem with control-alt-f1, log in, DISPLAY=:0 unity &. (The DISPLAY=:0 is required because most window managers don't know how to run in a terminal.) If you're using a different window manager, just swap out its name.)

You don't even lose any work, but all the windows do end up collapsing onto the same virtual desktop.

Re:I have this problem.

[Mike Morgan]

I had a similar bug but on different hardware. Eventually I ended up manually installing lightdm 1.3.3. It fixed the hang problem.

Talked my Dad into new Ubuntu instead of mac

[katarn]

Even though the machine was new from a Ubuntu mfg, it randomly hangs. In this case there is no console available and the machine isnt pingable. Happens with the lid open or closed. Sometimea happens a few times a day, Sometimes happens after 3 days. It waa a major purchase for him as well; it cost half what he makes in a month. Now I dont know if I gave him good advice or not. Of course I've heard horror stories about major mfgs as well (yes even Macs) so it happens to all of them.

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

[tepples]

You didn't really need to switch to Fedora over that. What I did when Unity got on my nerves was sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

Re:sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

[Immerman]

Sure, you could - but why switch to a somewhat under-powered and less-well-supported community branch distro when you could switch to a completely different distro whose direction is more in keeping with your own desires? It's called voting with your feet.

Ubuntu really only has two things going for it - a nice user friendly interface, and a large friendly community that's nice for beginners. If you no longer feel you can have (1) without switching to a branch that will cost you a fair slice of (2), then why stick around at all? Especially if you're no longer a beginner.

Re:sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

[Patch86]

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

Or if you fancy something different:
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://packages.mate-desktop.org/repo/ubuntu precise main"
sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment

Or...
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
sudo apt-get install cinnamon

Honestly, it's not like you didn't have plenty of options besides "nuke it from orbit". The Kubuntu and Xubuntu communities in particular are pretty large and friendly.

Not that I'm saying you shouldn't vote with your feet if you feel strongly, and there's certainly nothing wrong with Fedora. But seriously, with the work involved in switching "your whole family" to a new OS, I might have considered something less extreme for the sake of a desktop environment.

Re:sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

[FreonTrip]

Forgive me, but how is Xubuntu underpowered?

Re:sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

[Immerman]

It was a while ago, but offhand there were a couple of panel additions that I consider mandatory that I couldn't find - most importantly hierarchical menu-based file browsing. It actually sounded like one of the base XFCE modules probably provided what I wanted, but didn't appear to be included in Xubuntu or any of the available add-on packages, and I couldn't be bothered with finding a compatible source version and getting it to compile correctly just to see if it actually was suitable. Perhaps the problem was simply that I'm still running 10.04 because I'm unwilling to deal with Unity's idiot-friendly interface. I had actually been testing out the xubuntu desktop for a few days to see if it was minimally acceptable before upgrading to 12.x, sadly it didn't quite pass muster.

I think another problem was a limitation to a single-level heirarchy on the program menu - I've got a couple categories that contain several hundred infrequently entries, without subcategories I'm stuck with either a ridiculously long scrolling menu, or cluttering up the top-level menu with several extra categories that I have to manage by hand.

I tried KDE as well - I believe my problem there was that the screen corners are "numb", all panel buttons start one pixel away where they require attention to click, and the nuisance factor is too great to put up with on things I click dozens of times a day. I'll put up with that sort of idiocy on Windows because there's compatibility gains to be had, but not on a Linux desktop manager.

Re:sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

[theshowmecanuck]

It also doesn't use RPMs. That's why I use Kubuntu and Ubuntu Server.

Re:sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

[theshowmecanuck]

I really have no clue what you mean by menu-based file browsing, but have you looked at Thunar? I believe it is XFCE and I install it on Kubuntu because dolphin is too bloated for my taste. I rarely need any of the crap that it has beyond file browsing and when I do it isn't much to use a better program suited to the task.

Re:sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

[Immerman]

You know the program menu - neatly organizes all your programs on one hierarchical menu instantly whenever you click the always-available button? Picture the exact same thing except instead of programs, categories, sub-categories, etc. it displays all the files, folders, sub-folders, etc in your desired folder - for example everything in your "Documents" folder. I find it absolutely indispensible - basically it shifts the workflow from
      app menu -> app (wait for app to load)... file menu -> open -> navigate to file -> open (wait for document to load)
to
    Documents menu -> file (wait for app and document to load)
Throw in a few symbolic links to keep the current projects readily available at the top of the hierarchy while actually living in their "proper" place, and I'm good to go with a document-focused interface. Heck, I don't even offhand know the name of half the programs I use to view/edit my documents - and unless they're dramatically better than the alternatives I don't actually care.

Re:sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

[metamatic]

I tried KDE as well - I believe my problem there was that the screen corners are "numb", all panel buttons start one pixel away where they require attention to click

They aren't in Kubuntu 12.04.

Problem started with 12.04 LTS for me

[SeanDS]

I have this problem on my laptop. It only started for me when I upgraded to 12.04 LTS. Ubuntu 11.10 worked like a charm, without this bug.

So if I am experiencing the same bug as the one this topic is about, then I guess it's to do with a new version of Compiz or X.org or whatever between 11.10 and 12.04. It's not a big issue for me - I use the laptop only to browse the web so I don't mind restarting when the bug appears. I'd be a lot more pissed if it happened on my desktop (productivity) machine. I would probably be driven to move distros.

I'm not alone!

[NotFamous]

I'm glad to know it isn't just me. I have an Asus Netbook with integrated Intel video. It happens about 1/3 of the time I suspend. I accidentally figured out I could switch to console VT and kill Xorg. I'll look for the bug on Launchpad and add my $.02.

not just for linux

[glebovitz]

I am not convinced that this is just a linux problem. I have a laptop with a Intel HD Graphics adapter (8086:01116) running Window 7 pro, that experiences similar behavior when coming out of suspend. Some times the screen freezes and the mouse moves, other times the mouse freezes but the screen continues to update (for instance alt-tab navigates windows that still respond to the keyboard).

.

Re:Bug fixing is not fun.

[Panaflex]

Moreover, a kgdb session could likely track this bug down. I'm going to guess that it's a simple locking bug, likely in the intel drivers. Compiz or whatever is performing some operation out of synch with what is "normal" activity and trying to perform a double-lock.

Since cursor operations are tied to a hardware interrupt they still continue to operate.

Another possibility is that the kernel is running at a higher interrupt level in the driver after wakeup, and not locking the iommu/register area away from userspace operations - thus the graphics chip state is getting corrupted and goes into a unknown hardware state. Switching video modes is causing an interrupt which awakens the chip again, and restarting X causes the graphics unit to reset properly.

Yes, I used to be a graphics driver developer for X long, long ago.

works on my machine

[pentabular]

..but it's probably just dumb luck.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/966744/comments/258

grub

[rokj]

I have Intel integrated graphics and I had similar problems, but following line into grub.conf at the end of kernel line fixed it: pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 i915.i915_enable_fbc=1

If you're in a position to re-buy hardware

[tepples]

it's not exactly hard to get good hardware which runs Linux excellently already.

This is true if you are in a position to discard old hardware and buy new hardware, not so much if you are trying to reuse an existing PC. Or are used computer stores where you live familiar with Linux?

Re:If you're in a position to re-buy hardware

[jedidiah]

I just upgraded a Win7 box recently. Actually it came with Vista but it was running Win7. Apparently the hardware was just crap because I put an ancient nvidia card into it to accomodate Steam and the thing suddenly got a lot perkier. Even non-gaming stuff that you would not expect to have improved improved.

Makes you wonder how many WinDOS systems are limping along annoying their users who don't realize that they could expect better.

The fact that your are using the monopoly product or the brand for morons doesn't insulate you from the finer points or the consequences of willfully ignoring them. I've got 2 Apple branded doorstops that proves the latter bit.

Re:If you're in a position to re-buy hardware

[serviscope_minor]

This is true if you are in a position to discard old hardware and buy new hardware, not so much if you are trying to reuse an existing PC. Or are used computer stores where you live familiar with Linux?

Old hardware tends to work well, since it's had time to get support. Well, except old, crappy hardware, but that works poorly everywhere.

Every new desktop I've bought has just worked out of the box. I did a cursoury online and all was OK. It was a bunch of basic systems with an ASUS mobo, a Phenom II x6 and nothing else. Little to go wrong with desktops.

The laptops I';ve bought have been a Lenovo, which are well supported and an Asus Zenbook, which after a little searching online turned out to be well supported.

I don't tend to discard old hardware. I buy it and use it for ages, then squirrel it away until the point it's thoroughly useless then bin it.

I've never tried to repurpose a Windows machine as a Linux one: the last machine I had which dual booted ran Windows 95.

Re:If you're in a position to re-buy hardware

[drinkypoo]

This is true if you are in a position to discard old hardware and buy new hardware, not so much if you are trying to reuse an existing PC.

My last three scanners were acquired in this manner; first one that wouldn't work with XP, then one that wouldn't work with Vista, and now one that doesn't work with Windows 7. I just retired a HPLJ1012 or something like that which doesn't have Windows 7 drivers, but which worked more or less OK under Linux. Wacom last supported their PenPartner USB tablets under Windows Vista, but I was only able to find the working driver for Vista (no Windows 7 support) by googling around.

You have missed the mark entirely, to the point where I wonder how you got these wacky ideas. Linux runs best on old hardware. Where you have problems is with new hardware. When I got my 240GT it was not officially supported by any nVidia driver despite having been out for some time. However, it worked fine under the driver I was already running, albeit misreporting clock speeds and the like. I tried a newer driver which reported support for 250GTS (240GT is like a wimpy 250GTS; it it based on the same design but with slower memory, slower clocks, and 3/4 as many stream processors — providing 3/4 the performance at 1/2 the cost and 1/2 the power consumption, and no SLI) and that crapped all over so I reverted. Now, of course, I'm having the same problems it seems nearly every nVidia user is having with occasional failed redraws of accelerated things, especially Firefox.

Do normal people even upgrade Windows? I usually just seem them buying a new PC. Then I buy their old one at pennies on the dollar, if they're not giving it to a relative.

Re:If you're in a position to re-buy hardware

[tepples]

You have missed the mark entirely, to the point where I wonder how you got these wacky ideas.

Where I got the idea was from sane-project.org. Microtek's ScanMaker 4850 flatbed scanner is still unsupported after about a decade.

Re:If you're in a position to re-buy hardware

[drinkypoo]

If you give Microtek money in the first place, you deserve what you get.

What's the most recent version of Windows that supports that scanner?

Not the only Ubuntu bug

[stoneguy]

There's an issue with network lockups first reported in 2007 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/132042. People have been adding comments ever since, but it hasn't been even been assigned yet.

Fedora and emulators

[tepples]

I guess part of the difference is the philosophy behind the inclusion criteria. Unlike Debian legal, Fedora legal has made the decision to exclude console emulators on grounds that the non-infringing uses (namely to run homebrew applications) are not substantial enough to overcome the risk of a lawsuit from Nintendo.

XQuartz is not installed by default

[tepples]

Mac is UNIX bro

But not X11. Mac OS X applications use Quartz instead.

Impaired sarcasm detector

[tepples]

When you say you're disabled, I can only assume you're referring to your sense of humour?

It could very well be a side effect. Asperger syndrome is among the disabilities that make it hard to distinguish sarcasm from sincerity.

Hunger hurts more

[tepples]

PATIENT: Doctor! Doctor! It hurts when I do this...

DOCTOR: Well stop doing that then.

PATIENT: It hurts even more when I don't do this because if I don't, I can't perform the duties of my job, I'll get fired, and then I'll have no food to eat.

Re:Hunger hurts more

[jedidiah]

...except what we're talking about her is superficial fluff that adds no functional value to the product. It's there to be pretty and make things seem more Mac-like or Windows-like.

A lot of this stuff was old news by the 90s. Some of us got bored with it LONG before the rest of your lot got fixated on it.

Some of us are more enlightened than others... '-p

Re:Hunger hurts more

[Tarlus]

Some of us are more enlightened than others...

I see what you did there.

Intermittent Errors

[Tenebrousedge]

Also send a copy of the relevant hardware, and the source code to every installed package, with history dating to before the problem started happening so you can bisect the error.

Or you could use your psychic powers to flip the appropriate bits in memory when this bug comes up.

Computers are fiendishly complicated. Sometimes there's no simple answer to a problem, and the problem ends up on slashdot as a result. Personally I'm just glad [a] I don't have this problem (debian stable), and [b] it's not my job to fix it.

How I solved the problem...

[Dr_Ish]

When I upgraded from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04 I ran into exactly this problem. It was a total pain. I looked around the Ubuntu forums, but found very little of anything helpful. I also looked at the Dell Mini 10v forums (as this is the affected computer), but again found nothing. While doing this though, I got increasingly annoyed with both the freezes and the Unity desk top. So, I installed KDE. What do you know, I no longer see the damn bug and I have a desktop that is much more suited to my needs. If you are having this problem, it might be worth giving it a try. Easy to follow instruction can be found at http://blog.sudobits.com/2012/04/14/how-to-install-kde-desktop-on-ubuntu-12-04/.

Autism

[dutchwhizzman]

Developers for both Unity and Gnome3 seem to be more autistic than rainman himself when it comes to user acceptance and usability. Shitfits have been tried and didn't even get a reaction other than "I don't see your problem. Until the very last user leaves gnome and Ubuntu, Unity and the gnome3 shell will be the default for those.

Keeps me stuck on 10.04

[nut]

A closely related bug has kept me on on stuck Kubuntu 10.04. If I try to run an external monitor on my latptop with any variant of *ubuntu from 11.x on - or recent versions of Fedora for that matter - it freezes up.

Every time I log on it asks me to upgrade to 12.04 now. I would dearly love to, but it would render my laptop effectively unusable.

"an Intel graphics solution"

[bug1]

We arent dumb bosses, no need for the retard talk.

Oh, and its obviously not much of a solution or this wouldnt be a story.

saw this one a while ago..

[arsemonkey]

on this pos netbook. Twas a pure unity problem,, gnome 3 rolled on just fine..

Xfce panel item: Directory Menu

[tepples]

there were a couple of panel additions that I consider mandatory that I couldn't find - most importantly hierarchical menu-based file browsing

Panel > Add New Items > Directory Menu

Perhaps the problem was simply that I'm still running 10.04 because I'm unwilling to deal with Unity's idiot-friendly interface.

I don't know about 10.04; I put up with Unity during 11.04 and switched to Xubuntu in the 11.10 cycle.

I tried KDE as well - I believe my problem there was that the screen corners are "numb", all panel buttons start one pixel away where they require attention to click

Windows 2000 had the same problem. Xfce doesn't; clicking in both corners of my top panel activates something.

Re:Xfce panel item: Directory Menu

[Immerman]

Yep, I think that's the one. Didn't exist, docs all said it was part of the default install, but no dice. And I couldn't find enough info to see if it would support my usage patterns anyway. Perhaps you can answer me as to about a couple common shortcomings in this class of programs.

1) Does it support subfolders intelligently? i.e. can I go Home->Documents->MyFolder->MyFile as a single menu-browsing operation? Many such programs don't support sub-folders, or try to load the entire thousands-of-files heirarchy up front rather than just caching the few folders I'm actually accessing, often gobbling atrocious amounts of memory and/or suffering from instability as a result.

2) Does it treat symbolic links to folders as being folders themselves? I like to make top-level links to the folders of current projects so that they're easy to access while still being properly organized in the heirarchy. If the menu treats such links as files rather than folders then I have to deal with a separate file browser and the associated delays of loading it, which defeats the purpose.

3) Is it easy to open folders themselves?

File Browser on Gnome satisfies all those requirements, while none of the XFCE or KDE "equivalents" that i could find did. Another major point against KDE for me. A shame, I rather like their modular desktop concept, but am unwilling to hobble my existing work patterns.

Re:Xfce panel item: Directory Menu

[tepples]

Yep, I think that's the one. Didn't exist, docs all said it was part of the default install, but no dice.

Did you try only in 10.04 or also in 11.10 or later?

Does it support subfolders intelligently? i.e. can I go Home->Documents->MyFolder->MyFile as a single menu-browsing operation?

It only lists folders, but you can go to Home > Documents > MyFolder > Open Folder, wait for the Thunar file manager window to open, and then choose MyFile from the window.

Does it treat symbolic links to folders as being folders themselves?

Yes. I created a symbolic link to a folder just to test that for this post.

Is it easy to open folders themselves?

Yes. Above each list of folders is a menu item "Open Folder".

Re:Xfce panel item: Directory Menu

[Immerman]

I only tried 10.04, I've been meaning to test it in 12.04 but the liveCD doesn't like Virtualbox and rebooting is a PITA.

At any rate if it doesn't list files then it's not suitable anyway - extra delays, useless windows to be closed, etc. I've been streamlining my workflow for decades, have managed to recreate the important features on all the major OSes I use, and am finally getting it to a place I'm really happy with - I'm not giving it up without some major incentives. Thanks for the info though, I do appreciate it.

Re:Xfce panel item: Directory Menu

[tepples]

At any rate if it doesn't list files then it's not suitable anyway - extra delays, useless windows to be closed, etc.

I guess the developer's thinking is that 1. a folder often has more files than will fit on your screen but rarely more folders, and 2. if you're going to work with one file in a folder, you're likely going to work with another in the same session.

Re:Xfce panel item: Directory Menu

[Immerman]

Perhaps so, but to my mind (1) is why we have scrollable menus, and is rarely the case for the folders I want menu access to anyway. And (2) is often true - which is why I want them all on an easily accessible menu. I don't want to have to dig through dozens of windows across several desktops to find an open folder - if I'm accessing multiple files in rapid succession then sure, I'll open a folder window, otherwise I just want quick, predictable access to the particular file I'm looking for.

CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE

[MOtisBeard]

I've been putting up with this minor annoyance for a while on my Toshiba Satellite. When I open the lid and find just the mouse cursor on an otherwise blank screen, I hit CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE and then type in my password to login again.

Excellent point

[cbhacking]

What an hour for my remaining mod points to expire. +Informative on this. It's different from (but serves the same purposes as) ifconfig and iwconfig, and it's different (although has a slight feature overlap) from ipconfig on Windows, but netsh is very much oriented at users like the GP of this post. To a complete newbie, it's confusing and a bit scary; to somebody who is comfortable with the command line and/or likes to use scripts to automate system administration, it's excellent.

Yep

[jampola]

As much as I like wobly windows and what not, I try to stray away from CCSM. (yep, same probably here using macbook with intel gfx)

Using xfce 4.10 with no issues on 12.04 with no CCSM with xfce compisiting turned on.

Affects the Thinkpad X220

[_bernie]

I see this bug regularly on my Thinkpad X220 laptop running Ubuntu 12.04. Is there a tracking bug on Launchpad or in the Freedesktop bugzilla?

This happens to me.

[wad4ever]

You don't have to shut the lid. Just let it sit, and all of a sudden, it will lock up. It doesn't seem to happen when I'm using my docking station.

Acer Extensa - same problem

[RockDoctor]

I'm pretty sure I saw the same problem on my Acer laptop until I fried it last week. The laptop, not the bug. Ctrl+Alt+F1 got me to a terminal where I could log in, and then ... I can't remember if I had to shut down, or if I could re-enter the X session.

That machine was on Ubuntu-11 (Gibbering Gibbon or Masturbating Macaque, I can't bear to remember) with the standard desktop in place instead of the heap of shit that came in with the downgrade from 10 to 11.

Ubuntu does what Ubuntu wants

[gottabeme]

Dude, just stop. I have reported many critical Ubuntu bugs to Launchpad--I'm talking about stupid bugs that should never have happened, should never have been released, could quickly be fixed or reverted--but no one at Ubuntu is responsible for fixing them, or for taking the lead on getting the right people to fix it, so nothing happens. That, or 6 months after you report it, a bot says, "Thank you for helping Ubuntu by reporting this bug. Please test the latest version of the software to see if the bug still exists." You confirm it, and 6 months later, same thing. Meanwhile, no actual effort has been expended to investigate or fix the bug. It's like a slap in the face to the bug reporter: it's saying that his time is worthless, when he's already spent time dealing with and reporting the bug.

So get off your high horse. There are plenty of people like me who do exactly that: we file bugs, we complain when they are ignored, we complain when they are not fixed, we complain when stupid regressions appear, we complain when boneheaded decisions are made to release buggy garbage that shouldn't have seen the light of packages.ubuntu.com--but Ubuntu does what it wants to do. New and shiny is more important than stable and reliable and consistent--even for a Long Term Support release, big fat ugly smelly bugs go ignored, and pleas to release the blatantly obvious fix fall on deaf ears.

If it wasn't for dpkg and apt, I'd gladly try another distro. One of these days I'll probably go back to Debian, where at least packages have maintainers who are supposed to be responsible for them, and bug reporters don't get told to test unchanged software over and over again.

Re:Ubuntu does what Ubuntu wants

[hairyfeet]

Then...I know, this is shocking...stop treating it as a fricking religion but a product and USE SOMETHING THAT WORKS! That is why I quit bothering to even mess with Linux and went back to Windows because guess what? Crap like switching between a video and a chat window didn't crash the damned desktop and bugs didn't sit around for years and years being ignored!

If anything it just proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that "many eyes' bullshit is just that, because those eyes would have to belong to someone with the skills to fix it and more importantly would have to give a fuck and its obvious that they don't.

Windows 8 is $40 and you can use Start8 to have a traditional desktop if you don't like metro. don't want Windows? OSX will let you have UNIX goodness without the sound crapping itself when an update comes out. The reason why the Linux community is looking like its full of religious nuts like Robert Pogson at linuxInsider is because all those that were sane moved to Windows and Mac to get stuff done.

hell if your hardware is too old for Win 8 just snatch a copy of Win 7 Tiny off of TPB, that thing runs like a dream on as little as a 1GHz with 512Mb of RAM, don't torture yourself using something that the devs obviously don't give a crap if it sucks, life is too short for that shit. Hell if you have to have Linux get a fricking Chromebook, at least that runs without crashing and bugs all over the place.

Re:Ubuntu does what Ubuntu wants

[Crosshair84]

If they treated it like a religion they would donate money to it to further the cause.

/I'll be here all week, try the fish.

Re:Ubuntu does what Ubuntu wants

[gottabeme]

How ironic that the one who complains most loudly about irrational zealots sounds more like one than those whom he criticizes.

I don't treat Linux as a religion. I do prefer the Free Software ideology, but that's not the point for most people: the point for most people is that Linux works better than Windows for their needs. Even if I didn't care about FOSS, Linux just plain works better in most ways.

You talk about bugs being ignored for years and years? Windows is like the poster child for that problem. With Linux, I can actually file a bug report that the actual developers can see and can actually get fixes--rather than having to wait for the next 3-5 year OS update, which might not even fix it.

The "many eyes" theory is primarily about security flaws in FOSS vs. proprietary software--it's not so much about bugs in general, though it can apply to some extent. And you'd have to be a truly irrational person (like APK) to honestly claim that Windows has a better security record than Linux.

I don't know nor care who Robert Pogson is, and I don't read LinuxInsider. No one said that the Linux community nor its press is free of annoying people--this is planet Earth. Maybe you should read LWN instead, where you can find people who are knowledgable, involved, and just as interested in pragmatism as in ideology.

You're basically just being hyperbolic and making gross generalizations. Linux WORKS great for me. I've been using it full-time as my desktop OS on at least four different systems for nearly a decade, and I've had far less trouble than I ever have had with Windows--and I used at least five different versions of Windows for over a decade before switching. I've never had to reinstall from scratch, and I've never had the system become unusable because of things Windows users suffer, such as viruses, malware, and registry corruption. On the other hand, when I used Windows, I would have to reinstall the OS from scratch every 6-18 months, and worry about any software I downloaded being infected, and deal with registry corruption and IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL BSODs which made the system unbootable (happened so much I remember the exact error!) on a fairly regular basis--while Linux on the same system had no such issues.

No system is perfect, and that includes Linux, the kernel, and any Linux distro you choose. If you expected perfection, then you set yourself up for failure and disappointment--these are computers we're talking about! (Sounds to me like you should have used Debian Stable or an Ubuntu LTS or even RHEL--those don't change for many years at a time, so breakage and regressions are hardly issues.)

To me, Linux is fundamentally about freedom and practicality. I exercise my freedom to choose by choosing to not be subject to Microsoft's whims and incompetence, and choosing to use software which cannot be taken away from me by EULAs or forced upgrades. I also have no viruses or malware to worry about (I'm not saying none exist for Linux--I'm saying it's not an issue in practice). I also have the freedom to configure my environment, UI, and UX to my heart's desire, and keep them the way I set them. You may exercise your freedom by choosing to deal with the problems Windows users' suffer. More power to you: that's what freedom is all about.

But quit with the non sequiturs and falling-sky anecdotes: Linux DOES work, and in many ways it works better than Windows ever has. Perhaps your bad experiences speak more of your incompetence than flaws in Linux, or perhaps you just got an unlucky combination of hardware and immature drivers (which are likely fixed by now, while Windows users are at the mercy of Microsoft and proprietary OEMs). The REALITY is that Linux works wonderfully for many people, usually with far fewer hassles than Windows.

It is now fixed.

[N1ckR]

A fix has now been released for Quantal (12.10), they are working on releasing the fix for Precise (12.04) as an update, until then there is a PPA with the fix from Timo Aaltonen at https://launchpad.net/~tjaalton/+archive/ppa until the official Precise xserver-xorg-video-intel package is updated.