Idiotprogrammer Blog

Category: Linux/Open Source

  • Getting back to Ubuntu (Again!)

    I thought I’d do a quick post detailing my return to Ubuntu.

    I installed 12.04 LTS Precise Penguin last June  and experienced a variety of small issues. Mainly I experienced crashes related to memory dumps — often with mounting file systems or loading music libraries. I thought it might be related to my ATI video card or just with the fact that Ubuntu was still receiving bug reports. My main goal in using Linux was to have a test server environment for  a new CMS for my Personville Press site.

    I managed to fix most of my user issues (mainly with dropbox) , while I had to live with several others: Oxygen XML Editor was incredibly slow, and I still had not found a decent desktop blogging editor.

    Let me define what the problem is: Bloggers need a desktop client for linux which has a preview mode, an  offline mode which you can save  (if necessary) and the ability to withstand a browser crash.  Optionally the  Windows Live does this well (although over time I have noticed some deficincies  — crappy code). The greatest thing about Windows Live is that it was very reliable and did all of these things. (Update: I just checked Live Office 365 which I paid for…Its blog client incorporates most of Live Writer’s elements, while leaving out some important things — like the ability to position an image in terms of pixels instead of inches).

    Because Windows Live produced good clean code (basically), had a preview mode and a save/restore mode, it was basically better than MS Office itself….. I tried several linux blogging clients. The best so far I’d seen is blogilo, which has a lot of Live’s features, but just isn’t as reliable (it also hasn’t been updated in a while). More importantly, I lost some work…and I don’t think I ever lost work in Live Writer.

    At someone’s recommendation, I am trying Scribe Fire (a browser plugin). This doesn’t really solve the offline mode problem, but it is better than nothing. On the other hand, the WordPress rich text editor is so good and reliable that you might as well do that from another browser. WordPress does autosaving, so if the browser crashes, you are protected generally (thanks, Matt).

    Last summer, just as I was getting comfortable and productive in Linux, I had two major projects in MS Office, so I had to live in Windows Vista for a long while. Then I started learning about some Windows music tools and  and then was already comfortable using Oxygen in Windows (it had all my settings configured).  Then, I started doing a lot of music-related research for my upcoming ebook on music collecting  that involved Windows tools. Despite my resolution to have a working Linux desktop, I spent almost all of it in Windows.

    Finally, I’m ready to return to Ubuntu, first having to do some updates. Here are some things I discovered:

    1. Ubuntu and specifically Unity  is much more stable than before. Horray! Also, more apps are built into the Unity framework. I know Linux people have been ragging on Unity, but I loved it from day 1.
    2. The Firefox flash plugin still causes problems — especially for Youtube. This firefox plugin lets you set the Youtube default to play the HTML 5 video player.
    3. The Clementine music player (which was the fork from Amarok 1.4 before they ran it into the ground) is awesome and stable. It even makes me less inclined to try Foobar2000 on Wine.
    4. There is an linux client for Evernote called Everpad.
    5. Music streaming program Rdio now has official linux support for their client.
    6. It wasn’t too hard to find, but gpodder podcast client for linux seems to work well.

    Another thing. I noticed that Ubuntu works significantly better on my dual boot machine than Windows Vista (which has lots of Firefox-related memory problems and Flash memory problems). Vista is just slow and especially slow to boot.  (Ubuntu by contrast boots in record time). Windows Explorer is ridiculously slow.  Despite the fact that my HW is  6+ years old, its specs are still good:  4 gigs of RAM and lots of HD space. So a new 64 bit OS will have to work much better and faster than an OS several years old which has been patched to death.

    So I’m generally happy with my Ubuntu machine and don’t expect to have to revert to Windows (especially because my Win 7 laptop is several feet away). On that laptop I have several indispensable  programs which simply must run on Window: dbpoweramp, Camtasia, Sony Vegas, MS Live Office 365.

    Postscript: One very annoying thing is that Firefox is continuously showing a Flash plugin error whenever a website (like my blog) requires flash. Need to figure out how to turn that message  off because (on my system at least) the player and Youtube does work, so the error message is in fact mistaken.  (Solution found: go to about:config, set value for plugins.hide_infobar_for_missing_plugin to True).

    Update #2. I’m about ready to give up again on the Unity Window Manager. Really, I had high hopes. I like the interface a lot; I can get things done  quickly, and everything is intuitive. The problem is that it always crashes catastrophically. Whenever I have an application crash (Firefox, etc), the windows manager crashes and then Ubuntu needs to be rebooted. I’ve been rebooting an average of 5 times a day at least.

    Here’s a thread I started last summer about alternative window managers. Unfortunately, from a usability point of view, none of the other window managers came close. Now that I’ve decided to ditch Unity 2D, I’m going to have to try again. Here’s a more recent discussion about Ubuntu stability issues. What would be interesting (and sad) is if these random crashes still occur in other windows managers. Then, I  would be in bad shape.

    (PS, I am typing this in Windows).

    Update #3. My computer crashed and I re-installed Ubuntu on a slightly newer PC.  I learned a few important things. First, with a decent video card, I could use the 3-D Unity. In terms of performance, my PC handles Unity much better, but more importantly the application darkens whenever the app uses too much CPU or memory. When I used Ubuntu before, I think I had tried the 2-D Unity, which apparently didn’t have this feedback feature. I don’t think I’ve had to reboot once. Ironically on my new machine I have only 3 gig of RAM (I had 4 gig before), but because of the better video card and the darkening window, I have avoided any catastrophic crashes. Sometimes a specific app will hang (I’m looking at you, Firefox!), but most of the time it’s just a matter of waiting for the memory usage to decline to more manageable levels.

  • Nostalgic about Slashdot

    I stopped reading slashdot a few years ago. It became really popular and it was overwhelming to read. Besides, there were all these corporation-oriented topics and tight control over news stories. I jumped ship and went to Digg (which lasted about 6 months before I grew bored with that as well).

    I wrote several book reviews for Slashdot and was delighted to find they were being run. Then, two of my stories were rejected without good reason, and Slashdot’s luster seemed to fade for me. Also, their interface for viewing threads was insufferable. They switched to an ajax interface, and I could never figure out the best way to view things.

    But now that Slashdot has lost web traffic to other geek sites, many of the loyalists remain and the last few times I’ve visited Slashdot, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Today, I read on slashdot that the SCO vs. IBM and Novell lawsuit (this crazy and baseless lawsuit which became a subject of hilarious ridicule) is now reinstated after a judge rejected a previous summary judgment. I just read a discussion about transgender and was amazed to find that at least 5 of the commenters were transgendered. From a discussion  about why linux battery life sucks, I see this great comment:

    My first Linux install was Slackware (if I remember correctly)…back in 1998. That’s 10 years. And for all 10 of those years, my experience with Linux has been like this…

    Linux Community: ‘This new version of Linux is totally great. Easy to use, great hardware support, best Linux ever. Totally better than Windows!’
    Me: "Ummm, that’s cool and all – but I have a problem with X"
    Linux Community: "*I* don’t have a problem with X! I don’t even believe you have a problem. Where is your proof? It’s totally not a problem with Linux, if it’s even a real problem at all."
    Me: "Umm…okay. Well…all I want to do is be able to X (where X was get on the internet, hear sound, use a wireless network card, have decent battery life – all of which were or are problems). Here’s more information….
    Linux Community: "You are using Y? Y is worthless. Everyone knows Y isn’t supported in Linux because of XYZ. You either need to write your own driver or get a real Y."
    Me: "Can you tell me, specifically, what Y I should buy?"
    Linux Community: "*I* have ABC and it works great. But it’s more than just what is on the box, it’s the chipset and stuff. It’s kind of hit or miss.’
    Me: ‘Wtf? This sucks….I’m going to run Windows’
    Linux Community: ‘N0ob.’

    *six months later*

    Linux Community: "Great news! We’ve totally made it so you can do X"
    Me: ‘Wait, last time you told me you could do X, and that it was easy, and free, and better than Windows. When I said I had problem doing X, you all told me I was crazy and to RTFM!’
    Linux Community: ‘Oh well….yeah…in the past, we’ve had some problems with X. Some users couldn’t do X at all, but now we’ve totally fixed it! Now Linux is is totally great. Easy to use, great hardware support, best Linux ever. Totally better than Windows!”

    ——–

    You get the idea. Months after getting flamed for complaining about how my wireless network adapter doesn’t work in Linux, the Linux community raves about how they’ve improved wireless support.

    I’ve had plenty of problems with Windows….but when I have a problem with Windows, at the very least, people *believe me*.

    After lots of people  rise up to defend the Linux community, some snarky guy comments:

    This post is exactly what is wrong with Linux advocates. Instead of answering the question – why does Linux die when watching DVDs where other OSes don’t – the GP blames the user and suggests another, harder way to do the same thing.

  • March OLPC Meeting Houston (Notes)

    Hi, I wanted to provide information about the recent meeting of the Houston OLPC meeting, which featured Samuel Klein, the director of community content.   I don’t know how much of these nuggets of information was off-the-cuff and how much is official; use your own judgment. After the meeting, we met at Beck’s Prime for Hamburgers. Here is some tidbits we learned over that day:

    • OLPC is due to have a major update in a week or two. (Translation: two to three weeks). Here are the release notes. This update is expected to fix lots of things (which may have already arrived in the minor updates).; Klein mentioned a few things I don’t remember. He mentioned faster startup time for Activities,  better mappings of the game buttons on the display (useful for reading in tablet mode), improved handling of video and other multimedia. However, you will need to download  Activities and  Collections again, and possibly other customizations you made to the machine (such as Flash) . For this update, they separated Activities from Updates, so after this Update, it will no longer be necessary to reinstall activities.
    • Klein confirmed that that for Update 1, drivers/libraries have been written to make use of the trackpad (which up until now was disabled). That means that developers of Activities will be able to integrate the trackpad (and handwriting detection)  fairly soon although no activity included with the update will be able to use it.
    • Klein showed off a 3-D game called Bounce which was the hit for the meeting. In addition to being like a 3-D pong, children are able to configure/edit the game to increase the physical dimensions of the play area and speed.
    • I learned quite by accident how to install content collections (i.e., .xol files)  in XO. The collections page has so far been poorly maintained and documented. All you have to do is download the .xol file. Afterwards, when you open up the Browse Activity (as if you plan to surf the web), the newly added collections will appear on the left hand side of the home page  underneath each categories (after you expand them). This is so non-obvious it’s hilarious.
    • So far not a lot of .xol content has been available. Most of the content are image galleries and little else.  But here are three .xol files you should download: Wikislice General,  Wikislice Animals, and Wikihow. 
    • Building a collection is not hard.  It basically is a bunch of files readable by XO which are bundled together and zipped, along with a configuration file. So far, a lot of the collections are PDF files, so they take a while to load, but I suspect it would be possible to build a collection out of HTML files and view it inside the same Browse activity. That would definitely avoid the slowness of PDF loads. 
    • I have plans to put together a storybook/picture book of well known children’s tales. I plan to have two volumes: Level 1 and level 2 (depending on age level).  I am definitely taking suggestions for content!
    • Klein confirmed that XO owners have had difficulties sharing activities with XO owners who have already updated to a more recent version.  (That is why for example sharing activities was relatively easy at our first meeting, but became more difficult after people updated their machines with each minor release). Hopefully, if everyone gets updated to the Major Update 1, these problems will disappear. (I’m assuming that WPA authentication problems will disappear as well).
    • Klein confirmed that XO will be available for sale to Americans at the end of 2008.
    • Klein mentioned something interesting; although olpcnews.com is popular with users inside North America, in fact,  developers mainly follow the official forums, so if you want to give feedback or hear from people who actually know what they’re talking about, you should check the official forums in addition to olpcnews.
    • Houstonian Aaron Poffenberger did a demo to show off Webkinz on the XO. Our main problem turned out not to be XO but the library’s wifi capabilities.

    This was a really fun meeting. The topic for April’s meeting will be Updating; if you haven’t had time to update your XOs, someone at the meeting will be happy to do so. I haven’t picked a meeting date yet but would entertain suggestions. (We’ll try to meet at Montrose library this time on a Saturday afternoon).

  • Fedora 7 install…no problem ! (so far)

    Well, I had been worrying unnecessarily about installing fedora 7 on my laptop. Sure, it was a pain downloading the DVD and backing up data, but this time it didn’t present me with a lot of choices and installed things fairly quietly. Also, the dual boot situation wasn’t messed up at all.
    Right now, it’s upgrading the packages with pup. I have yet to try wifi. I expect that to be a pain, but certainly easier than it was before. I also have to install proprietary applications (and the forbidden items ), but things are going quickly now. My main fear is that some of my configuration files in my home directories will confuse my installations. Apparently, ntfs write is substantially more reliable than it used to be, so I might be in fedora more often than I used to. Frankly, I stay in windows only for two reasons:

    1. recording in Audacity–I have a usb adapter that doesn’t seem to work in linux.
    2. demoing ebook software.

    My main disappointment with linux solutions is that I couldn’t get my nokia pda to sync with my linux calendar. That was a reason I ended up buying a Dell Axim PocketPC pda.

    Update: Wifi worked out of the box (in Gnome anyway). There are advantages to keeping your /home directory. Now if only I can figure out the absolutely bizarre way to download mp3 libraries (and perhaps other codecs). (Here’s a solution for downloading all those closed codecs). Here’s the fedora 7 tips page. Here’s another tips page. You gotta hand it to Fedora though.  They’re losing the mindshare war to ubuntu because of these damn libraries and codecs, and they won’t compromise!

    Speaking of totally bizzare, here’s instructions on how to run IE on linux fedora.  I won’t be trying that anytime soon.

  • To install FC7 or not to install

    I just noticed that Fedora is no longer supporting FC5. lately I’ve noticed that support of things is waning: most notably Firefox 2. So now I’m faced with the perilous prospect of beginning another install on an older laptop. I would need to reinstall commercial applications, make a list of things I’ve installed and do the requisite backups. It would be a major time sink.

    Oddly enough, last Monday I made significant progress getting started with plone 3. To install FC 7, I would need to start from scratch. Also, there are potential gotchas (I seem to recall my Thinkpad doesn’t allow install from DVD). Also, the wifi chip on my Thinkpad did horrible things when I first installed FC5. It took me a good 2 weeks of persistent troubleshooting Wifi to get it to work. I am not really in a position to waste time on unproductive activities.

    So what do I do? At minimum, this is going to take a day and a half, possibly more if something fouls up. Someone suggested running the LiveCD to test hardware, a sensible idea if I ever heard of one. Also, apparently now you can boot the Live CD and then use an iso image from a hard drive. So Fedora people are making it easy. (Here’s an article about Fedora 7).

    Still, it looks like Ubuntu has made the problem of forbidden downloads (i.e., java, mp3, adobe, etc) much more palatable to ordinary users. (Fedora doesn’t seem to have changed on its policies).