Day in, day out…

It’s been around a week since Ubuntu 9.10 – Karmic Koala was released. Both my Linux systems are now up-to-date.

Linux systems

One of the two machines is a Sony Vaio Laptop (VGN-T140P) and other is a desktop built on a Asus P5K-e Wifi/AP motherboard with an Nvidia 8400GS video card.

Install strategy

In both cases I chose to do a clean install. I always keep /home on a separate partition, so clean installs are not much of a hassle. I usually move all the dot-files (and directories) from /home/me out of the way before a clean install. After the install, I bring the ones I need manually. This, I believe, prevents any configuration issues arising from new versions of applications adding/removing/changing any configuration items. I do have to configure some applications – like compiz – all over again, but it is not a big deal most of the time.

I also make a copy of /etc directory before a clean install, just in case I need to refer to the hacks that worked around bugs in the previous release.

Trends

If I look at the way thinks are working on the two of my systems since Ubuntu 8.10 – Hardy Heron, I see pretty consistent trends. My laptop was at its best in Hardy, things are not quite that good now. The desktop, however, is at its best in Karmic! I wonder if it has to do with the video hardware (Intel in laptop, Nvidia in desktop) or wireless usage (I use it in laptop all the time, never on the desktop).

Suspend/resume has gotten worse on the laptop, but almost perfect on the desktop.

Laptop is plagued with wireless issues, but I know I am not alone there (Launchpad bug reports as of today).

Sound, at least on my systems, has greatly improved. It worked out of the box on both of them.

Laptop experience

The general feel of the OS has definitely improved. With the new boot experience, artwork, new themes, Karmic looks pretty neat. It is snappier than ever, even on the laptop with mediocre specifications. All that good stuff is marred by the issues that have come up in this release – from back in the alpha days.

There has always been a problem with the laptop hardware, that when it resumes from suspend (to RAM), the backlight is missing. In the past, I have been able to work around it by setting quirks in suspend/resume scripts. Those hacks don’t work anymore. I haven’t found any work-around for Karmic yet. Launchpad bug #417599.

An even worse issue that has come up is with the wireless networking. In my case, it just doesn’t connect. Even when it does, it doesn’t stay connected for long. It is extremely annoying. Launchpad but #429035. So its mostly wired network for now. I know, laptop wired to the router? That sucks
I hope not for very long though.

Desktop experience

On the desktop, Karmic is just sweet. Out of the box, everything just worked. Sound, video, suspend/resume, everything!

The only thing worth mentioning is that when I first rebooted the system after installing Karmic, Windows entry was missing from the Grub2 menu. All I did to fix this was:

  % sudo update-grub

I wonder why it missed the Windows entry during installation. I am sure it runs update-grub as an installation step, doesn’t it? In any case, if you see Windows entry missing from your Grub menu after installing Karmic on a dual-boot machine, just run the above command.

One more thing I haven’t checked is if wake-on-lan works. If it doesn’t I’ll need to do what I usually do after clean Ubuntu installs – Howto: Wake on LAN with ASUS P5WDG2 WS Pro in Debian/Ubuntu. Hope it works this time too!

Well, there. Now that the computer are all working, time to get some work done!

Incidentally, I set up a github account for all my little hobby projects. Check it out. All the projects are purely experimental and educational. Nothing is going to blow your mind.

I like to read blogs/news items on Open Source/Linux related topics. Far too often, mostly in the comments, I sense the following sentiment:

I use [insert Linux distribution / some Open Source Software] and I love it! It fails in [insert some scenario/hardware/etc]. But hey, I can’t complain, it’s free!

I don’t know if this is a result of someone misinterpreting the term free or just not being responsible enough.

From what I understand, Free Software is software licensed such that anyone can freely copy, extend and redistribute it. It just so happens that with such a license, the software is easily available free of charge – so you don’t need to pay anyone any amount to install and use it.

What keeps free software alive is the community behind it. The community of developers (God bless them!) who make the software. Also the community of responsible users, who take it upon themselves to contribute in one way or the other. Many choose to make monetary donations to keep the development of free software funded, others choose to make contributions in form of testing. Using the software, reporting bugs when something doesn’t appear quite right, helping the project evolve and stay healthy.

Being free doesn’t mean it is any less in quality. In fact, price has nothing to do with quality. Look at Microsoft Windows and on the other end of the spectrum, look at Mozilla Firefox, Ubuntu or VLC to name a few good quality free software projects.

So when someone says – so what it’s broken, it’s free. You get what you pay for – it really bugs me. If you find something broken in any free software it should be reported to the developers. Most free software projects make it fairly easy to report bugs. Consider it your contribution to the software you use.

Users of free software who talk about the software they use on various platforms – blogs, comments, news websites, etc. – are also the marketing force for the free software. When we users are not careful of what we say about the free software we use, love and support, it is the project that is getting negative publicity.

Although free software is free of cost, it is – IMHO – not free of moral responsibility.

Kind of a rant, but had to say it!

I was watching the Apple Get a Mac ads today and this is what I got:

Incorrect hue in videos can be corrected by fixing the hue setting in Movie Player

This is on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), where Firefox uses GStreamer plug-in to display video. Movie Player (Applications -> Sound & Video -> Movie Player) also uses GStreamer as its back-end.

So to fix the hue issue, I opened Movie Player preferences (Edit -> Preferences). In the Display tab, under section Color Balance noticed the Hue. In my case it was set to the minimum value. I clicked on the Reset to Defaults button. It reset the Hue slider to a center position.

Closed Movie Player preferences and reloaded the movie. It looked so much better.

Now I wonder what changed the Hue setting in the first place…

Since its Alphas, I’ve been comparing font rendering in official Firefox 3.0 Linux builds and the ones I used to compile myself. Fonts in the official builds were, and still are, very crudely rendered. Upon reading a little, I learned that this difference is due to the use of different version of Cairo, a graphics library that Firefox uses under the hood.

Using --enable-system-cairo option when building Firefox greatly improves the look of fonts. I used to compile my own nightly builds using this option, hoping that the official builds will move to using that option too, before the final 3.0 release.

I just tried the final release and found that it still does not use --enable-system-cairo option, and the fonts are still not neat.

Thankfully, I also noticed that Ubuntu’s Firefox 3.0 – that got updated today as well, does use --enable-system-cairo option. Now I don’t have to compile my own builds. I wish I had noticed this the first time I installed Hardy – the Firefox 3.0 beta that came with it probably used system Cairo too. But I am glad I noticed this, better late than never.

Here are a couple of screenshots that illustrate the difference:

Click on the image to view full size – The one on top is the Ubuntu build, using --enable-system-cairo option. The one a the bottom is the official Firefox build, not using that option. Notice how the fonts in the Ubuntu build are so much better than the fonts in the official Firefox build

Now, go download Firefox 3.0 while it’s hot. You don’t get to set a world record everyday!

To me, this was a long time coming. Google Desktop Search for Linux is finally here. I did not waste time trying it out. So far it looks pretty impressive…

It does not have the sidebar and gadgets like the windows version, but the desktop search seems good so far.

Few months back when I installed Edgy on my Sony laptop, audio wasn’t working right out of the box. I had to spend a few days googling and ubuntu-forumming to find the fix for that. Eventually it worked fine after un-muting some channels in the Volume Control.

Last weekend I upgraded to Feisty. Again the same thing – audio is gone. Once again I found myself googling and ubuntu-forumming to see if people were having the same problem – and they were. So I was convinced that there was something wrong with audio in Feisty.

Until last night, when I accidentally hit the ‘Mute’ button on the laptop! I don’t remember that button working in Edgy! So I guess its a good thing after all

But oh, the wasted hours

Over the weekend, I upgraded the Edgy to Feisty on my laptop. The upgrade went just fine, mostly.

The sound is gone. Just like it was after a clean install of 6.10 a few months back. I’ll need to read up a bit and get the audio working.

There was a broken emacs21 module – battery had died when I installed it and I did not clean it up. The upgrade process quit once due to dependency issues with this module. I removed the module and started the upgrade again. It went through. It used all the same downloaded files from the failed attempt.

During the upgrade process, I was constantly worried if I was really upgrading to 7.04 (see the snapshot below). The Upgrade Manager window said Upgrading Ubuntu to version 6.10!. But About Ubuntu was already updated to read 7.04!

Back to work…

During a recent trip, I realized – again – that Linux still has a lot of catch-up to play on user experience front. I traveled with a Ubuntu 6.10/XP dual-boot laptop and a lot of times, I had to fall back on XP to get things done.

Wireless connection at Frankfurt airport

Getting a paid wireless connection at Frankfurt airport is easy. Just join one of the available open wireless networks, it takes you to a website where you can pay for the connection and you are all set. I could do this in no time with XP.

Although I first tried this with Ubuntu. The troubles started with the fact that in order to setup a wireless connection I need to know the name of the network to join. I really prefer the windows way where the wireless network setup process starts with a list of available networks. Then at least you are not lost to begin with. I talked with a neighboring traveler who was using a Mac. He did not have trouble getting on to a network – because the Mac connected to an available open network since none of the preferred networks were found. That works too. In any case, I was stuck and ended up using XP to get connected.

Once connected, I tried to find some information on this situation. Turns out that there are packages available via the Package Manager that can help – notably, the wifi-radar and NetworkManager. After getting back from the trip, I tried both. I like NetworkManager and am using it right now. It has made connecting to networks so much easier. I wonder why such a useful package is not installed by default!

Using the modem

Another instance where I had to go back to XP. It’s simple in XP all you need to know is the phone number to dial, a username and a password. Start -> Connect To -> Connection Name – enter the information and you are online. Why can’t it be the case in Linux?

I read a little bit in order to understand what’s missing in my installation and how I could get the modem going. It involved stuff about pppd, using scanModem utility, editing a bunch of root-owned files – things if I told my mother, she’s vow not to use the computer again.

Things gotta be easier than this. I am still trying to find an easier way to get the modem working. If I find something, I’ll update this post.

I installed Beryl on my laptop that I just switched to Ubuntu Linux. It’s quite an eye candy! I am loving it so far.

Before I installed Beryl, I was worried how it will run on my computer – not a very powerful machine by today’s standards. It amazes me how well it works.

The installation was also a piece of cake. I followed the instructions on Beryl Wiki command-by-command. Beryl was up and running in less than half an hour.

Just one note. I tried both ways of configuring Beryl mentioned in the Wiki – one by setting up new session that uses startberyl.sh script and the other that uses the Sessions system preference to add Beryl as a startup item in an existing session. I found that the latter was a much better option – at least in my case. With startberyl.sh, I noticed very unpredictable behavior whenever I started a new session or came out of hibernation.

So, let me go back to playing with the stunning visual effects …

I mentioned in one of the previous posts that I will reinstall Ubuntu from scratch and document the process in more detail than I did last time. Well, here it is!

It took roughly couple of hours to get back to where I was after the last installation. There were the same issues as last time after a clean install, and I knew exactly what to do to fix them. More than week of googling and trying different things helped this install go much faster.

Before I reinstalled 6.10, I gave 7.04 alpha (the Feisty Fawn) a shot. It was good for most part, but had major issues with hibernate and response to power button behavior. I decided to go back to a more stable 6.10.

Output of lspci and lsmod are near the end of this post. And here’s the installation process:

Dual Boot

I wanted to keep Windows XP alongside Ubuntu on this laptop. So I partitioned the hard disc with Symantec Partition Magic 8. Created one Ext3 (approximately 13GB) and one Swap (little above 1GB) partition for Linux install. PM8 has the capabilities to create Ext3 and Linux Swap partitions.

Clean Install

I downloaded Ubuntu 6.10 Live CD image. Restarted the Vaio with the disc in the CD drive. Selected to ‘Run Live CD/Install’. After the desktop was up, I double-clicked on the install icon. That started the installation process. After answering a few easy questions, installation was on its way. Since I was using dual-boot, I had to make sure I am using correct partitions for Linux installation. This process took about 20-30 minutes.

After the installation process was done, I restarted the machine. On restart, I was given the choice to load Linux or Windows – I selected Linux (its all about making the right choice baby ).

Wireless LAN (WPA)

First thing I had to bring up was networking, so that I could install updates and modules I needed to fix other issues. I use WPA for authentication. I created /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file with following contents:

    ap_scan=2
    network={
      ssid="myssid"
      psk="mypassphrase"
      key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
      proto=WPA
      pairwise=TKIP
    }

Then added following lines to the /etc/network/interfaces file:

    auto eth1
    iface eth1 inet dhcp
    pre-up wpa_supplicant -Bw -Dwext -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
    post-down killall -q wpa_supplicant

After I restarted the machine, wireless LAN was up and running. I added the Network Monitor applet to to a panel to monitor the eth1 connection.

Widescreen LCD

The thing that was still bugging me was that widescreen aspect ratio of the screen was not being used. I had to install the 915resolution package to get that right.

I opened the System -> Administration-> Synaptic Package Manager and installed the required module (after the required authentication).

After a restart, widescreen format was automatically detected and configured.

Audio

The computer was silent after the clean install. I found some help on ubuntux.org that helped me resolve my sound related problem.

I opened the Volume Control by double-clicking on the speaker icon in the panel. Un-muted every control in ‘Playback’ and ‘Capture’ and put the slider control somewhere in the middle for every output and input. Then I went to Edit->Preference, checked ‘Headphone Jack Sense’, ‘Line Jack Sense’ and ‘External Amplifier’ boxes. Back in the main window under ‘Switches’, unchecked ‘Headphone Jack Sense’, ‘Line Jack Sense’ and ‘External Amplifier’.

That was all I needed to get the audio working.

Touchpad

I customized Synaptics Touchpad to suit me. I turned OFF right-top and right-bottom corners, they were causing unintentional right-clicks and pastes. This is how my InputDevice section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf looks:

Section "InputDevice"
  Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
  Driver "synaptics"
  Option "SendCoreEvents"    "true"
  Option "Device"            "/dev/psaux"
  Option "Protocol"          "auto-dev"
  Option "HorizScrollDelta"  "0"
  Option "RightEdge"         "950"
  Option "MaxTapTime"        "225"
  Option "MaxTapMove"        "160"
  Option "MaxDoubleTapTime"  "225"
  Option "SingleTapTimeout"  "180"
  Option "MinSpeed"          "0.40"
  Option "MaxSpeed"          "0.90"
  Option "AccelFactor"       "0.0060"
  Option "RTCornerButton"    "0"
  Option "RBCornerButton"    "0"
  Option "SHMConfig"         "on"
EndSection

Applications

Ubuntu 6.10 comes with a few applications that I usually use like, Firefox 2.0 and Gaim. Next, I installed all the applications I need for day to day work and fun. All these are available via Synaptic Package Manager

• gVim: Available in vim-gname package. I use the GUI version of vim for most of my editing/programming work
• Banshee: Available in code>banshee package. I found this to be a decent MP3 playback and music library management application
• Ogle: DVD playback on Linux is a big pain. No single application/plugin plays all my DVDs well. Ogle plays some that I created myself pretty well. But it couldn't play the ones that I bought (encrypted?). Available in the ogle-gui package. I followed more instructions to use xine instead of gstreamer plugin for Totem, to play some DVDa that ogle does not play
• GNUstep: Framework, more than an application. I am learning Objective-C programming with GNUstep, so all my current fun projects use this. Available in gnustep-*devel* packages.

Like many blog posts helped me during my Linux installation, I hope someone finds this post helpful.

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 83)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
02:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI7420 CardBus Controller
02:04.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCI7x20 1394a-2000 OHCI Two-Port PHY/Link-Layer Controller
02:04.3 Mass storage controller: &lt:pci_lookup_name: buffer too small>
02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB PRO/100 VE (MOB) Ethernet Controller (rev 83)
02:0b.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection (rev 05)

Output of lsmod:

Now, that's a long list. I am sure there are some modules that I don't use at all. How do I find out which ones? How do I stop them from loading?

Module                  Size  Used by
battery                11652  0
ac                      6788  0
thermal                15624  0
fan                     6020  0
button                  7952  0
ipw2200               115652  0
ieee80211              35272  1 ipw2200
e100                   38020  0
mii                     6912  1 e100
isofs                  38076  0
udf                    89348  0
ipv6                  272288  8
binfmt_misc            13448  1
rfcomm                 42260  0
l2cap                  27136  5 rfcomm
sonypi                 24252  0
i915                   21632  2
drm                    74644  3 i915
speedstep_centrino      9760  1
cpufreq_userspace       5408  0
cpufreq_stats           7744  0
freq_table              6048  2 speedstep_centrino,cpufreq_stats
cpufreq_powersave       2944  0
cpufreq_ondemand        8876  1
cpufreq_conservative     8712  0
video                  17540  0
tc1100_wmi              8324  0
sony_acpi               6412  0
sbs                    16804  0
pcc_acpi               14080  0
i2c_ec                  6272  1 sbs
i2c_core               23424  1 i2c_ec
hotkey                 11556  0
dev_acpi               12292  0
container               5632  0
asus_acpi              17688  0
michael_mic             3712  4
arc4                    3200  4
ieee80211_crypt_tkip    12416  2
nls_utf8                3200  1
ntfs                  112116  1
sbp2                   24584  0
scsi_mod              144648  1 sbp2
parport_pc             37796  0
lp                     12964  0
parport                39496  2 parport_pc,lp
af_packet              24584  6
pcmcia                 40380  0
joydev                 11200  0
ieee80211_crypt         7552  2 ieee80211,ieee80211_crypt_tkip
yenta_socket           28812  1
rsrc_nonstatic         15360  1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core            43924  3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
snd_intel8x0           34844  1
snd_ac97_codec         97696  1 snd_intel8x0
snd_ac97_bus            3456  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm_oss            47360  0
snd_mixer_oss          19584  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                84612  3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer              25348  1 snd_pcm
tsdev                   9152  0
hci_usb                18068  0
bluetooth              53476  5 rfcomm,l2cap,hci_usb
psmouse                41352  0
snd                    58372  8 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore              11232  1 snd
evdev                  11392  2
serio_raw               8452  0
snd_page_alloc         11400  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
shpchp                 42144  0
pci_hotplug            32828  1 shpchp
intel_agp              26012  1
agpgart                34888  3 drm,intel_agp
ext3                  142728  1
jbd                    62228  1 ext3
ohci1394               37040  0
ieee1394              306104  2 sbp2,ohci1394
ehci_hcd               34696  0
uhci_hcd               24968  0
usbcore               134912  4 hci_usb,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
ide_generic             2432  0
ide_cd                 33696  0
cdrom                  38944  1 ide_cd
ide_disk               18560  4
piix                   11780  1
generic                 6276  0
processor              31560  2 thermal,speedstep_centrino
fbcon                  41504  0
tileblit                3840  1 fbcon
font                    9344  1 fbcon
bitblit                 7168  1 fbcon
softcursor              3328  1 bitblit
vesafb                  9244  0
capability              5896  0
commoncap               8704  1 capability