Recently in Ubuntu Category

Jono Bacon goes on at length at his blog on the contrast between the euphoria over the release of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) and the reports of problems by users.

Read the 10 or so entries below this one and you can see the problems I've had.

It's time to put this in perspective. I've had plenty of problems with all manner of Linux and other Unix-like operating systems over the past few years. Given all the hardware that a modern OS must contend with (and I'll include Windows in that number since it runs – or is supposed to, anyway – on a wide variety of hardware), there's bound to be breakage.

Apple has it easy because it controls the hardware and the software and hence has an easier time making all the bits work together.

In my experience, Ubuntu generally performs well, and its developers seem genuinely worried about whether or not hardware will work with the distribution's constant stream of releases.

In both Linux and OpenBSD, for instance, wireless support has only gotten better over time.

I wish I could say the same for sound and video. PulseAudio has been somewhat of a disaster over the past year or more. It just wasn't ready for the average user, and the above-average user is demanding Jack and real-time kernels to do sophisticated audio work.

Now PulseAudio seems to be getting better.

For me, my Intel video hardware on a couple of laptops (Gateway Solo 1450 and Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101) has been causing problems beginning with Debian Lenny's time in testing. Whenever you need xorg.conf hacks just to make video work, and those hacks aren't crystal clear and easy to find, there will be problems. People will try Linux and run away from it as fast as they can if they can't get the basics (sound and video) to work.

And for my particular Toshiba laptop, the use of Kernel Mode Setting killed X in my Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade. Once I figured out how to turn KMS off (with a new line in GRUB), I could run X without an xorg.conf for the first time since Ubuntu 8.04 and OpenBSD 4.4. That's a nice change.

But to get there — to get basic functionality — I had to bring my 2 years of FOSS knowledge to bear in order to solve the problem.

Then just about every ancillary GNOME app (Brasero, Rhythmbox, Empathy and the non-GNOME Pidgin) stopped working after the upgrade. A quick search determined that my previous installation (in 9.04) of KDEnlive brought in a plugin that kept the other four apps from working. I saw lots of chatter on the problem, but none of the solutions worked for me. I had to remove the offending plugin and then reinstall three opencv libraries to clear things up (you can see all the details in the previous entries on this blog).

Many will say that I should've stuck with the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (with the initials standing for "long-term support"), which performed well for me but wasn't as stable on my particular hardware as 9.10 (for which I had to do some hackery to get NetworkManager to manage my network).

And both Ubuntu 8.04 (I'm still using it on the Gateway laptop, where it's very solid) and Debian Lenny (now stable and running very well for me on two other machines) are viable options, but for my main laptop I want newer packages, especially Firefox 3.5, and I've been more inclined to upgrade the distro itself rather than use backports or PPAs to bring newer apps to older distributions.

Maybe I've got that wrong (or maybe not).

I've been meaning to move all of my user files to a Debian Lenny machine and see how well that performs with my regular abuse of the hardware and software. And there's always Fedora (and Mandriva ... and PCLinuxOS ... Mepis ... and dozens of others).

But despite all my grumbling, I do have a functioning Ubuntu 9.10 system. I even ditched my own "blue" theme and wallpaper and brought in the "human" theme and wallpaper that shipped with the upgrade. I'm back to Ubuntu s**t brown and orange, and I'm liking it. The new GNOME icons are cool. And we all have the next Ubuntu release — and 10.04 will be the next LTS — to look forward to with hope that many bugs will be squashed in the service of a stable desktop that will have the customary 3 years of desktop support.

In a nutshell: Ubuntu's under the hot lights. People expect more from it than they do from any other FOSS operating system. And it generally delivers more than any other, if not as much as people are counting on in their lofty expectations.

I use Ubuntu for many reasons: It seems to have the right balance between total "freedom" and the ability to play most multimedia, its developers are focused more on the desktop and less on the server (although Ubuntu is making a big play there), and its vast user base means that when there are problems, the community (including me in this blog) can often solve problems that benefit all users.

We're all looking for the time when Ubuntu (or some other distro, or some other OS entirely) can be easily handled by the average computer owner. That time really isn't here yet. With a Windows preload, the manufacture of the hardware generally makes sure there are drivers for all the hardware. Linux preloads — a few of which do exist — generally do the same. But in the wild and wooly world of geeks burning ISOs and installing Unix-like operating systems on all manner of hardware, a foolproof experience just isn't in the cards. Yet.

Will we ever get there? I hope so. I also have at least a little bit of hope for more preloads of Ubuntu and other Linux distros and maybe even a BSD.

There has been a whole lot of progress over the past few years on the Linux desktop. It's hard to predict where the state of FOSS will be five years from now.

In the near future I'll settle for Xorg and Intel playing well together, mass adoption of a free and open video standard and a move away from proprietary document formats since we barely need to print anything anyway.

I've had more than a little trouble with all things GNOMEish in Ubuntu 9.10 since upgrading from 9.04. I've solved all of the issues thus far but discovered another last night.

Rhythmbox, which wouldn't even start until I fixed the opencv bug, started but wouldn't play anything. When trying to play an audio file, I kept getting an error message that included this line: "unable to start playback pipeline."

That was enough to send me to Google, where I found the bug (#468577) in Launchpad. I happen to have a Launchpad account (which I created when I bought a shirt and hat from the Ubuntu online store), and I was able to add my solution to this 9.10 (Karmic) bug. I remember seeing this solution (albeit with one critical detail missing) somewhere on the Web but can't remember where.

Here it is:

If you upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10, can't play audio files in Rhythmbox and get the following message in a dialog box — "unable to start playback pipeline," you can fix the problem by removing Rhythmbox and then reinstalling it. I used the Synaptic Package Manager but apt or Aptitude will work just as well.

I first just reinstalled Rhythmbox without removing it beforehand. That didn't work.

Once I removed Rhythmbox and then reinstalled it, the app was and is able to play audio files.

Point of order: Other audio applications in Ubuntu 9.10 worked the whole time; only Rhythmbox was affected. Mousing over audio files in Nautilus produced audio. Before I fixed the Rhythmbox problem, I installed Exaile, which played audio with no problem.

Parting shot: I've had more issues with the 9.04-9.10 upgrade than with any other in the recent past (not counting my two attempts to do an in-place upgrade of OpenBSD that broke the installation completely). The fixes have been relatively easy, but there has been too many of them.

I haven't loaded up an IM client since I upgraded from Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic).

But I did today, and neither Pidgin nor the new GNOMEish Empathy would run. (Whether this matters or not, I upgraded from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10, as opposed to doing a reinstall.)

I started both IM clients in the terminal to see if I could determine what the problem might be:

steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$ pidgin
ERROR: Could not load classifier cascade /usr/share/opencv/haarcascades/haarcascade_frontalface_alt2.xml
Illegal instruction
steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$ empathy
ERROR: Could not load classifier cascade /usr/share/opencv/haarcascades/haarcascade_frontalface_alt2.xml
Error re-scanning registry , child terminated by signal
Run 'empathy --help' to see a full list of available command line options.

(empathy:2527): empathy-WARNING **: Error in empathy init: Error re-scanning registry , child terminated by signal
steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$

At least both apps seem to be suffering from the same problem, and luckily there is already a bug (#459940) on it in Launchpad. The bug is for the package opencv, and

According to notes on the bug, other GNOME applications affected by the problem include the Totem video player, the Brasero disc burner and Rhythmbox music player.

I can confirm that on my system, every one of those apps will not run.

I also confirmed that the XML file in question is NOT on my box:

steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$ cat /usr/share/opencv/haarcascades/haarcascade_frontalface_alt2.xml
cat: /usr/share/opencv/haarcascades/haarcascade_frontalface_alt2.xml: No such file or directory

One of the comments in the bug report says:

Thomas DEBESSE wrote on 2009-10-29: #6

seems to appear when installing frei0r-plugins (example: for kdenlive). When removing frei0r-plugins from my karmic I've no error messages at all, and totem (and other apps) runs fine.

Hey, I do have KDEnlive on this laptop. I would've removed the offending plugins package, but I decided first to do a software update to see if Ubuntu's package maintainers took care of the problem.

I opened a terminal and used aptitude to do it:

steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$ sudo aptitude update
[sudo] password for steven:

Reading package lists... Done

(listing of mirrors hit has been removed for brevity)

steven@toshiba-ubuntu:~$ sudo aptitude upgrade
W: The "upgrade" command is deprecated; use "safe-upgrade" instead.
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
binutils brasero empathy empathy-doc f-spot libbrasero-media0
libempathy-common libempathy-gtk-common libempathy-gtk28 libempathy30
nvidia-common python python-minimal ubuntu-xsplash-artwork xsplash
15 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 5,715kB of archives. After unpacking 160kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]

That seems like it would take care of the problem, but the missing file still hadn't shown up. Would a reboot fix things?

After the software update didn't solve the problem, I decided to go into the Synaptic Package Manager and reinstall the opencv packages, which I guessed were libcv1, libhihgui1 and libcvaux1.

That didn't work either.

The next step would be either removing KDEnlive or the offending package, frei0r-plugins.

I went into Synaptic and removed frei0r-plugins.

Nothing changed.

I reinstalled the three opencv libraries (libcv1, libhihgui1 and libcvaux1).

That worked. I was able to run Pidgin, Empathy (which has a nice dialog that offered to import my Pidgin settings, an offer I accepted), Rhythmbox, Brasero and Totem once again.

And KDEnlive seemed to be working, too. It at least loaded.

Let's review: If Pidgin, Empathy, Rhythmbox, Brasero and Totem are not running on your Ubuntu 9.10 system, first update the box, then use the Synaptic Package Manager to remove frei0r-plugins and reinstall libcv1, libhihgui1 and libcvaux1.

I'm a bit surprised that the software update alone didn't fix the problem. While the fix is easy, it's a little bit of "dependency hell" for a package-management system (apt) that is not supposed to suffer from that particular malady.

While I've solved my X issue and now this in 9.10, I probably should have waited an extra month or so before upgrading so these bugs could be shaken out.

Bug #459940 should be closed eventually, but at present it appears that the removal of the offending package and the replacement of those the offender affected is the way out of this problem.

I do have a Launchpad account (I had to create it in order to buy stuff at the Canonical U.S. shop), and I subscribed to this bug so I can keep an eye on it.

I've seen a lot of comments directed at me and others in regard to reporting bugs, and following this bug is hopefully a step in that direction for me personally as a Ubuntu user.

I did an update today on the Gateway Solo 1450 laptop that our 6-year-old uses mostly for the educational games GCompris, Childsplay and the excellent TuxPaint.

The Gateway (aka The $0 Laptop) isn't normally connected to the Internet, although that could very well change as our daughter gets old.

So it goes a long time between updates. When I do sit down to update it, I plug the Cnet CWD-854 USB WiFi adapter into the laptop's sole working USB port. It originally had two but the plastic tab inside the jack broke off quite some time ago. Luckily the touchpad still works on this 2000-era laptop, since I have to unplug the mouse in order to do the update over WiFi. (I'll eventually spring for the $5 to get a USB hub for this thing).

The update went without incident. It had been over two months since the last update on this installation of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, yet there were surprisingly few packages that needed replacing: Firefox and its ancillary packages, the kernel and tzdata.

I do have the Opera Web browser on this computer, even though I don't really need it to be on here, but in order to update it from the Opera repository, I had to reimport the GPG key. I followed my own recipe ignore the Debian Etch problems and go right to the Opera portion of the entry) and then updated Opera from 9.64 to 10.01.

At some point in the recent past, the "h" key popped off the keyboard, and after replacing it, the "h" had to be pressed really, really hard in order to make the letter appear.

I looked into a replacement keyboard, but I had an idea on how to fix the "h.":

I popped the key off again, placed a very small piece of paper, folded over once, between the "h" key cover and the key membrane itself, then snapped the "h" back into place.

That did it; we can safely type "h" again.

As laptops go, this Gateway is no "best of breed," but it does have a very nice keyboard (better than my Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101) and unlike the Toshiba, the Gateway still has a working touchpad.

Unfortunately the Cardbus slot's pins are horribly bent — there was a screw lodged in there, and when I tried to plug a PCMCIA card in there for the first time, that was enough to bend the pins. I tried straightening them, but it didn't work. I suppose I could find a replacement Cardbus assembly, but since the laptop does work with USB WiFi (and very well; better than the Toshiba did with this same adapter and OS), this laptop that cost me nothing a few years ago is still quite serviceable.

I did have to buy a new hard drive (I pulled the old one and gave it to the laptop's original owner). I also had to do a quick/dirty power plug replacement (the reason the laptop was dead and given to me; the repair quote was $800; a new motherboard just to replace a very poorly designed power plug). I did the repair guerrilla style for $3.

At one point the Gateway had 1 GB of RAM (I did buy the modules used), but since the Toshibas use the same PC133 SODIMM modules, I've moved them around a bit, and now the Gateway is running with 512 MB. That's a serviceable amount of RAM. More is always better, but 512 MB gets it done.

Since I'm having no stability or networking issues with the Gateway, I will not be upgrading it through 8.10 to 9.04 and then 9.10. When the next Ubuntu LTS comes out in 2010, I'll consider doing that upgrade, but I'll be worried as I always am about breakage on this now-9-year-old platform.

My three-part series on how my Intel-graphics-equipped laptop lost X in the upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 is a bit long.

If you just want to fix your computer, and by chance you are having the same problem as I, try this quick fix. It worked for me:

The problem is with kernel mode setting, which is causing X to die.

To test whether or not the fix works, when you get to the GRUB screen, hit esc to stop the boot, then go arrow down to the kernel boot line, type e to edit it and add the following to the end (or after the ro ... both work for me):

i915.modeset=0

Then type b to boot.

If your computer boots into Ubuntu 9.10 and you now have a working display, make this change permanent by adding that same line to the GRUB entries for Ubuntu permanently by using your sudo privileges to edit the GRUB configuration file, /boot/grub/menu.lst

Open the terminal and do the following:

$ sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

That will open GRUB's menu.lst file in the Gedit text editor.

Add this, again, either to the end of the kernel boot line for both the "regular" and "recovery" boot stanzas for the current Ubuntu kernel.

Here is what my "stanzas" now look like (excuse the skipped lines ... that's a CSS issue with this blog; keep the current line spacing in your menu.lst), with the additions in red type:

title      Ubuntu 9.10, kernel 2.6.31-14-generic
root      (hd0,2)
kernel      /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=UUID=dc3cf399-6b13-4704-80c5-0e02fe6cd364 ro quiet splash i915.modeset=0
initrd       /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
quiet

title      Ubuntu 9.10, kernel 2.6.31-14-generic (recovery mode)
root      (hd0,2)
kernel      /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=UUID=dc3cf399-6b13-4704-80c5-0e02fe6cd364 ro single i915.modeset=0
initrd      /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic

Save the file in Gedit and close it. If this hack worked for you when you added it to GRUB during boot time, it should work for you automatically when you boot the machine again. It's a good hack because you can test it before you commit to it in /boot/grub/menu.lst.

Note: DON'T directly copy my menu.lst stanzas into your /boot/grub/menu.lst. Your UUID information will be different than mine, and wrong UUID numbers will render your system unusable. IF THE HACK WORKS WHEN YOU EDIT THE GRUB LINE DURING BOOT TIME, JUST ADD THE PORTIONS IN RED TO YOUR EXISTING BOOT STANZAS IN /BOOT/GRUB/MENU.LST.

Additional note: My graphics chip is the Intel 82830 CGC (aka Intel 830M)

I had to do this in 9.04 and now again in 9.10. It's not a big deal, but it's a bit quirky.

I just upgraded to 9.10 (see the posts below this one for my particularly woeish tale), and in the Update Manager there's a "Distribution Upgrade" that can't be check-marked and installed.

The way to take care of this is to do a dist-upgrade in the terminal. I use Aptitude to accomplish this:

$ sudo aptitude update
$ sudo aptitude dist-upgrade

Then answer "y" for yes for the "solution," then "y" again to do the upgrade.

What this dist-upgrade did was dump a few files and bring in the latest Adobe Flash Player for Linux.

I don't know why this can't be taken care of in the Update Manager GUI, and for all I know it can, but it's easy enough to deal with in the terminal, and learning how to use Aptitude even a little isn't a bad idea, especially with the screwy way Ubuntu notifies users of updates in said GUI.

Our story thus far: Xorg has been a pain in the you-know-where for my Intel-video-running laptops ever since Debian Lenny was still in Testing, and those problems have made everything from OpenBSD (and the rest of the BSDs, for that matter) to Ubuntu render video everywhere from unreliably to ... not at all.

Over the past many, many months, I've discovered fixes that worked for various releases of Debian (Lenny is good now), Slackware (I've tamed the 12.x series) and Ubuntu (I debugged xorg.conf for Jaunty with the live CD BEFORE installing it ...).

But things broke anew in the Ubuntu 9.04-9.10 upgrade. I thought I had the hack ready to roll for my Intel 82830 graphics chip. But said hack did not work.

I found a new hack with a quick bit of Googling. Now I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 with no xorg.conf file, and X is back. I won't yet say it's "better than ever," but it does work, and after a day or so of evaluation, I'll come back and see how things sit.

Here's how I did it:

I found the hack here. Testing the hack involved adding a boot parameter in GRUB, something which I'm a bit familiar with. But nonetheless, I did find this Ubuntu Wiki page helpful, even though in this case I want to turn this parameter off instead of on.

It all has to do with kernel mode setting.

To make X work, I escaped out of the boot process in GRUB, edited the boot line and added this to the end of that line:

i915.modeset=0

Once I booted with that i915.modeset=0 in my boot parameters, X worked and I was able to log in. I still had my "test" xorg.conf file active. But since it didn't do anything for me without this kernel mode setting, I decided to disable the configuration file by renaming it:

$ cd /etc/X11
$ sudo mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.910

Then I rebooted, and X worked just fine with this boot parameter and no xorg.conf file at all.

Now ... to make the kernel mode setting permanent, I went back to the Ubuntu Wiki.

I copied the following from that Wiki, modifying the setting, since we're turning this off rather than on:

Turn onoff kms in your kernel modules

1. To turn it onoff for one boot, in grub add the kernel parameter, i915.modeset=0, and boot.

2. Or, to turn it onoff permanently, create (if necessary) /etc/modprobe.d/i915-kms.conf with this line:

options i915 modeset=0

and then reboot. If there are problems, you can turn it off via the kernel option nomodeset.

"If there are problems." There won't be any stinkin' problems, I thought. This is going to work.

It did not work. Just like the user in the Ubuntu Forums post, I instead needed to permanently add i915.modeset=0 to my boot parameters in GRUB.

So I did just that.

$ sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Then I added i915.modeset=0 to the end of the "kernel" line in both the "regular" and "recovery mode" portions of the kernel 2.6.31-14-generic areas of /boot/grub/menu.lst.

Now I have a working Ubuntu system once again. Thankfully I did this all in a single day (the helpful Ubuntu Forums post was only 12 hours old when I discovered it).

I'm used to mucking around in xorg.conf (and am damn glad I don't need one with this version of Ubuntu), just as I'm used to screwing with /boot/grub/menu.lst to make things work.

But in Ubuntu Linux, of all the operating systems out there, and with an in-place upgrade to the current distribution, and with a subset of video chips (Intel) that is problematic yet widely used, this is a total and complete deal-breaker for all but the most "Hardy" (pun intended) users.

The Linux geek who has encountered X issues before can muddle through this.

But a new user, a recent user, a "non-technical" user will most likely conclude that Ubuntu in particular, Linux in general (but perhaps not Xorg, which seems to be the real culprit here, or is it the Intel drivers?) and the whole not-Windows-or-Mac world is just not ready for them.

I don't mean to be reactionary here. Yeah, I thought I had the problem solved with a couple of hacks, but I had to find a third and fourth hack, adopting one and rejecting the other, in order to make what was a working system work once again. And yes, I made relatively quick work of it. But I consider that quickness a bit of luck. Nothing more.

If I had a 9.10 CD, which I don't (my CD drive is very flaky when it comes to CD-Rs, and I haven't yet sprung for the 5-for-$10 offer for Ubuntu CDs that is replacing the free ShipIt program), with which I could have tested this in a live CD environment as I did for 9.04. But I didn't have that CD (burning my own would've probably resulted in a coaster, at least for the laptop it was intended to test).

Whether or not the seeming end of the free-CD distribution from Canonical via ShipIt is an acknowledgment that Ubuntu is focusing on the already converted and abandoning the true newbie is the subject of another entry. Fresh from this X disaster, whether it's Ubuntu's fault, Xorg's or Intel's, I do have a working system, but the level of geekery involved is not in keeping with Ubuntu's "Linux for Human Beings" tag line.

Disclaimer: I'm not exactly sure about what is going on with the free shipping of Ubuntu discs to those who request it via ShipIt. The change in policy, which I can't quite figure out, was announced in this Jono Bacon blog post. Personally, I'd use OSdisc.com to get a single CDDVD for $5.95 (or CD for $1.95 &ndash go OSDisc.com!) if I couldn't burn my own, but I think the policy of limiting free Ubuntu CDs to LoCos and other "members of the tribe," as it were is a dangerous thing for Canonical to be doing at this point in time. I personally don't mind purchasing CDs directly from Canonical and probably will do so in the near future. But the ShipIt program, to me, is what makes Ubuntu different than the other 300 or so distros out there (although I'm sure Fedora will send out free CDs to those who ask for them; but Fedora — in my opinion anyway — doesn't have the commitments both to newbies and to the desktop that Ubuntu at least appears to have.

Maybe the overall wonderfulness of Ubuntu 9.10 will bring a restored sense of hope. I worried about breakage in the 9.04-9.10 transition, and breakage I got. All is well for the moment, but I can see 49 out of 50 users with my problem giving up before solving it.

Bottom line: This should be taken care of in the install/upgrade process. And whether it's Xorg or Intel that is screwing up the graphics for these "older" chips, I'd just like to let each and every one of you know that it's been a time-sucking pain in the ass.

I'll leave on an up-note: If this hack helped you, please leave a comment on this post (or if you really, really don't want to sign in with one of the many, many kinds of accounts we use on this Movable Type blog, send me an e-mail). You can even gloat over having an Nvidia or ATI graphics chip and thus skirting this multi-year nightmare entirely. Also, feel free to school me on any "better" ways to fix this issue (and I am very much open to anything "better" than this bit of hackery). None of you have been shy about correcting me before; don't stop now.

The day after – analysis: I've had the night to think about just what is going on with this Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop, its Intel 82830 graphics chip, Xorg, the Intel drivers and kernel mode setting.

Years of trouble with this graphics chip initially led me to believe that the issue I'm having with Ubuntu 9.10, Xorg 7.4 and Xserver 1.6.4 is caused by catastrophic regressions in support for a chip that worked fine back in the days of Debian Etch, Ubuntu Dapper and Slackware 11.

For a brief time I was able to run two systems — OpenBSD 4.4 and Ubuntu 8.04 — without an xorg.conf file.

Now I'm again running this Intel chip with no xorg.conf — not that the presence or absence of such a file is the sole determiner of "good" graphics. Good graphics are their own measure.

No, it seems to be the kernel mode setting in Karmic that is messing with my Intel 82830 video, and turning off this "feature" leaves me with as good an experience with X as I've ever had.

I just wish that somehow Xorg, the Linux kernel, the Ubuntu installer, or some other utility could recognize whether or not kernel mode setting will speed my boot or render the system totally unusable and configure accordingly. I haven't had to modify a boot parameter in GRUB in quite some time, and while it was easy for me, once again I don't think the new user of a very common graphics system should have to contend with this.

Whether it's the kernel developers, Xorg or Intel, I hope somebody can address this situation in future releases and at least give Linux a fighting chance on the desktops of those who aren't accustomed to the general level of hackery required to see something on their computer screen in the GUI.

Pulling the trigger on Ubuntu 9.10: An opera in three acts:

• Pulling the trigger on Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade, Part 1: Eyes wide open/shut
  
• Pulling the trigger on Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade, Part 2: Worst-case X scenario (no video)
  
• Pulling the trigger on Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade, Part 3: Bringing X back from the dead (and why, oh why didn't the installer just do this for me?)

When upgrading from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 this morning, I purposefully did not make any changes to my "custom" xorg.conf. You know, the one that made my Intel video chip (82830, for those keeping score) work in Ubuntu 9.04.

Yes it used EXA acceleration and not UXA. But it worked in 9.04, and I was curious as to what the Ubuntu upgrade process would do about it.

Turns out, nothing.

Yes, post-upgrade, my Intel-video-equipped Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop has NO video in X. I can't even bring up a terminal outside of X, it's that messed up.

I knew this could happen. I pretty much think I know how to fix it. I haven't done that yet.

I used one of my Puppy Linux CDs that happens to work in the Toshiba's very touchy CD drive — version 2.16 (again submitted for those keeping score) — and at first I renamed my xorg.conf to xorg.conf.old and rebooted Ubuntu 9.10.

I wanted to see how Ubuntu 9.10 would deal with the Intel 82830 graphics chip with no xorg.conf file.

No change. No X. Time to pull out the UXA acceleration hack.

I got most of the code from this blog post by Ivan Kristianto, which I previously mentioned here.

I didn't do everything he suggested, but I did use this code for the "Device" section of xorg.conf (ignore the skipped lines ... it's a CSS issue in Movable Type):

Section "Device"
Identifier    "Configured Video Device"
Option        "AccelMethod"            "uxa"
Option        "EXAOptimizeMigration"        "true"
Option        "MigrationHeuristic"        "greedy"
# Option        "Tiling"            "true" # i8xx users: set to false
EndSection

As you can see, I didn't use the "Tiling" option, either true or false.

Well, X still didn't work. I thought I had this one in the proverbial bag.

And remember. I've been doing this for a couple of years. I've suffered through a lot of sub-par Intel video and numerous xorg.conf hacks. And I still couldn't get it to work.

So I turned to the world's oracle (not Oracle, capital O, but oracle, small o) — Google.

Would the vast Ubuntu user community have solved this issue already? Stay tuned for my next post to find out.

Pulling the trigger on Ubuntu 9.10: An opera in three acts:

• Pulling the trigger on Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade, Part 1: Eyes wide open/shut
  
• Pulling the trigger on Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade, Part 2: Worst-case X scenario (no video)
  
• Pulling the trigger on Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade, Part 3: Bringing X back from the dead (and why, oh why didn't the installer just do this for me?)

Even though I said I'd wait a month, or two or more, before upgrading my main laptop from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10, I got in early enough today and had a fast enough connection to my chosen mirror that I decided to do the upgrade to Karmic today. Now. The download was quick, and I've as of now got about 45 minutes left for the installation to complete.

This is an upgrade, not a clean install, so I won't be getting (and don't really want) the new GRUB 2 bootloader. I won't get the ext4 filesystem, either (although I would like to try it, I'm not sufficiently motivated at present to do a full reinstall).

I'm fairly confident that all of my hardware — a 2002-era Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 and any one of three WiFi adapters — will work.

I'm less confident about the laptop's Intel video. Intel video hasn't just been problematic in Linux for the past couple of years. It's been a problem in the BSDs, too.

It all comes down to Xorg. Or Intel. Depends on who you ask. Or whom you ask.

However you slice it up, upgrades have been hell for anybody with Intel video chips in their computers. And that's a whole lot of people. I can think of bigger "negatives" when it comes to open-source-OS adoption over the past two years ... oh, wait ... I can't.

My basic contention is that video needs to just work. Messing about with xorg.conf should be a last, last, last resort, and if such messing is required, there should be extremely clear and easy-to-find guides on exactly what to put in said xorg.conf file to make the system work.

Then there's the whole switch from EXA to UXA acceleration (like I have even the smallest clue as to what that really means).

But I'm ready enough for X problems. I've posted a few entries of my own on how to clean up Intel video first with EXA and now with UXA acceleration. I applauded the whole idea of running perfect video with absolutely no xorg.conf file for the few months I was able to do it. I hope we get back there.

Anyhow, while you can see that Intel video has dominated my thoughts about the move from 9.04 (Jaunty) to 9.10 (Hardy), but there's more.

I ran the current long-term-support release of Ubuntu, 8.04 (Hardy) for a whole lot longer than I had planned. It ran very well.

But once I made the less-than-painless upgrade through Intrepid (8.10) to Jaunty (9.04) in a single, longish day (and after I finally got the new-to-8.10 NetworkManager to behave — and behave well, I might add), I suddenly had a Ubuntu Linux system with a whole lot more stability than before.

Here's the short version: 9.04 is better than 8.04 on my hardware.

So with all the talk of faster booting and better performance under Karmic (9.10), coupled with more than a couple of clues on how to fix Xorg video if and when it breaks), I was a bit anxious about the upgrade.

And after using the utility in System -- Administration -- Software Sources to find a faster mirror, I was ready for the big download and installation.

I've been doing Linux and BSD installs somewhat regularly since the beginning of 2007, and I'm still a bit worried about some of the things that come up in a Ubuntu upgrade. "Some packages are deprecated and will be removed" (I'm paraphrasing here) ... um ... OK. I can handle that. "Some extra software repositories are being disabled ... re-enable them after the upgrade" ... I dealt with this in the Hardy-Intrepid-Jaunty upgrade, so I remember it. I don't like it, but I remember it.

Then I got the dialog box about replacing the NetworkManager config file. That's the one I had to modify to get Intrepid/Jaunty working after the Hardy upgrade, which I did over wireless, leaving me with a non-managed wired Ethernet port until I figured out how to re-manage it.

Knowing that some or all of my NetworkManager configuration either might or definitely will be blown away by an upgrade? Not the best feeling.

Anyhow, with Karmic, I'll be getting Firefox 3.5 — yes, Ubuntu stuck with 3.0.x for the duration of the Jaunty release. I know I could've gotten 3.5 with a PPA, but I'm not in the habit of grabbing newer versions of things that are already in the distribution, so I kept Firefox 3.0.x around for the duration. There'll be updates on just about everything else, from OpenOffice to digiKam (my current "focus," so to speak) as well as the entire GNOME desktop.

As always, I hope for minimal regression and maximal improvement. I got that going from Hardy to Jaunty. I hope for more of the same as I go from Jaunty to Karmic.

Pulling the trigger on Ubuntu 9.10: An opera in three acts:

• Pulling the trigger on Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade, Part 1: Eyes wide open/shut
  
• Pulling the trigger on Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade, Part 2: Worst-case X scenario (no video)
  
• Pulling the trigger on Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade, Part 3: Bringing X back from the dead (and why, oh why didn't the installer just do this for me?)

There have been a few upgrades a day popping into the Update Manager on my Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope, for those keeping score on the animal names) installation, and have you noticed what I've noticed?

Those updates are downloading very, very slowly.

I'd say my speed from the Ubuntu mirror is roughly a tenth of what it normally is.

It must mean that a lot of users are already installing Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), which won't be "officially" released until Thursday, Oct. 29, but which is in beta right now. That means you, in fact, can upgrade from Jaunty to Karmic, or download the full ISO to burn a live CD and either test Karmic that way, or do a full install — and all the "final" tweaks to the release will just flow into your installation as they are released.

At least that's what I think is happening — and why even the smallest software updates or application installs are becoming extremely slow and therefore painful.

You won't see me clicking the "Update to Ubuntu 9.10" box in my Update Manager during the first week that Karmic is officially out. Probably not during the first month, either.

You see, even though Ubuntu releases every six months, each release receives a full 18 months of support in the form of bug fixes and security patches (with the LTS, of which 8.04 is the current release and 10.04 the next, getting three years of patches on the desktop and five years on the server).

So even though 9.04 (Jaunty) has been out six months and will not be the "current" Ubuntu release after 9.10 (Karmic) makes its official debut on Thursday, but Jaunty still has a full year of patches before it's end of life in October 2010.

I waited well over a year after Ubuntu 8.04 LTS was first released to upgrade it on my main laptop (where I've only been using it since May anyway), but my daughter's laptop is still running 8.04 (aka Hardy Heron) and probably will be for awhile — possibly until I can directly upgrade to the next LTS (long-term support) release in April 2010.

As it stands, I'll hold off on 9.10 on the main 9.04-running laptop until the download speeds from the Ubuntu mirrors creep back up to "normal" non-release-month levels and I can do the upgrade without it taking all the live-long day. Until then I'm covered security-wise, and the choice of when to upgrade is mine.

And either way, it won't cost a thing, since Ubuntu Linux is distributed free of charge. It can be downloaded as a CD-R-filling ISO file and burned as a bootable disc. While things are changing, Ubuntu has always offered to ship a free CD to potential users, though for the first time parent company Canonical is pulling back from shipping free discs to everybody and is ending its practice selling install CDs in quantities of less than 20 or 100 (yep, that's how they do it ... or at least did it up until now.

I've actually wanted to purchase a CD, since my old Toshiba laptop is quite finicky when it comes to reading CD-R discs and much prefers CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or even DVD-R discs. So for 9.04, I actually requested a free CD and received one.

This time, I'll be doing an in-place upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10 — meaning I'll let the Update Manager utility handle the whole thing and automatically download and install all the packages I need to make the move.

But I'd still like to have a CD handy, and I'm more than happy to go to the Ubuntushop / U.S. and pay $10 for a pack of 5 Ubuntu 9.10 CDs.

That way I'll have a few discs to give to anybody I happen to run into who is interested in giving Linux in general — and Ubuntu 9.10 in particular — a try.

Not that downloading the usually 600-700-MB ISO file and making a bootable disc out of it is all that hard. Macintosh computers can make a bootable disc out of an ISO in the Disk Utility program, and such discs are easy to make if you're already running Linux.

Windows didn't have an ISO-burning program included, but something like Nero, or my personal favorite, the free ISO Recorder, can do the job easily.

If you do have — or will have — Windows 7, I've heard that Microsoft's new OS finally includes ISO-burning capability in the base system. It must have something to do with baking your own Windows update or restore discs, but whatever the reason for its inclusion, it will make burning bootable Linux and other Unix-like OS discs easier for many millions of users.

And I probably mentioned but didn't fully mention that the Ubuntu discs is a live CD which you can use to try out Ubuntu. You put the CD in the drive, figure out how your PC boots from its optical drive by fiddling with your BIOS settings (it's not all that hard), and you can boot into a Ubuntu Linux environment without changing anything on your existing hard disk drive.

Ubuntu doesn't run anywhere near as well in live CD mode as it does when you do the full installation, but you can see how your hardware is recognized (or not) by the system. If your display, keyboard, mouse, network interfaces and other hardware bits seem to work, then your machine is a good candidate for a full Ubuntu install. And that live CD doubles as an install CD with menus guiding you along the way.

I realize that exorting readers of this blog to install Ubuntu (or any other Linux or BSD operating system) falls under "preaching to the choir," since most readers come to this blog via searches for these same topics, but I'd like to believe that at least a few of you are kicking the tires on running Linux on at least one of your computers.

Over the next week or so, I plan to write more about why I use free, open-source software such as the Ubuntu, Debian and Puppy distributions of Linux and how they differ from Windows and OS X.

So forgive me if you've been down this road before. I'll sprinkle in some geekier bits along the way; how can I not?

I resisted upgrading from Ubuntu 8.04 LTS — the project's "stable," long-term-support release — because everything worked pretty well, my hardware was fairly well-recognized, there were no showstopping bugs ... and that's a good thing.

After running the LTS for a year (I still have it on another laptop), I decided to undergo the pain of an in-place upgrade through 8.10 and to 9.04. My intention was to be ready for a semi-immediate upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 when it is released later this month.

But now that I'm running 9.10 and everything is working even better than with 8.04, I'm facing the same dilemma — and again, better a dilemma of this sort than the other.

Why is 9.04 so good on my particular hardware? I'm running a 2002-era Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop (1.3 GHz Celeron, 1 GB PC133 RAM, 20 GB hard drive) and a Cnet CWD-854 USB WiFi adapter.

Here's a rundown of Ubuntu 9.04 compared to 8.04 on my rig:

Better in 9.04

Boots faster
NetworkManager (after config-file tweak) MUCH MUCH better
Sound better (PulseAudio has improved)
Flash better (v. 10 way better than v. 9)
CNet CWD-854 USB WiFi adapter hasn't killed laptop once (major improvement)

The same in 9.04
Toshiba laptop suspends but won't resume
Intel video (I thought it would be worse, but at this point in the release cycle, it's OK)

Worse in 9.04
New method of notifying users of updates via minimized window instead of update icon is puzzling; not a deal-breaker, just a head-scratcher

I finally experienced my first "phantom" update notification in Ubuntu 9.04. In previous versions of the system, a little icon on the upper panel would notify me that updates were available. I could either click the icon and open the Update Manager, then do the update.

But in this new system, the icon is gone. At some interval that I don't understand, the Update Manager just opens, minimized. I brought the window up and did the updates.

It's kind of jarring to have that Update Manager window just start up on its own. I've seen a lot of controversy over this change, both in Launchpad and in the Ubuntu Forums (I don't have the links right now, or I'd link 'em up here).

I also have a single package, gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad, listed under the category "Distribution Updates" in the Update Manager, which can't be checked to update.

In this forum thread, the problem is acknowledged but not solved.

I did see somewhere that upgrading the package through Synaptic instead of the Update Manager can make it work.

Here's what I did:

I went into the Synaptic Package Manager, did a "quick search" for gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad and "manually" upgraded the package, which required the removal of another package, gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mpegdemux

Now I'm the proud owner of gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad version 0.10.11-0ubuntu1, and Update Manager is cleared out.

So ... it appears that the Update Manager is loath to remove a package, but Synaptic is not.

Instead of dropping the Ubuntu "xx days to go until 9.10" counter at the bottom of every relevant post, I decided to put it on the left rail of the blog — where you see it now.

So if you should feel the need to know how many days until the release of the Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Linux software distribution, you can find out on this very blog (or check the Ubuntu Web site for the inevitable further details).

Aside from whatever controversies are befalling the Ubuntu project (unfortunate choices of gender-specific wording in keynotes, the choice of default IM clients, more Mono or less Mono), I'm still very much on board as a user of the distro. From wide package choice and a relentless focus on desktop usability and hardware compatibility to a huge community that's both reporting on and fixing bugs, along with the choice of a six-month release cycle (with 18-month support) or a two-year long-term-support cycle (with three years of desktop support and two additional years on the server), Ubuntu might not be all things to all people but definitely offers something (a great and evolving user experience) for just about everyone.

OK, enough hyperbole for now. With my NetworkManager issues pretty much solved (and a more seamless transition between wired and wireless networking than in any previous system I've run), and not a single crash yet in 9.04, I'm a pretty happy Ubuntu user — this week anyway.

There's been a virtual storm brewing about Canonical/Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth's LinuxCon keynote speech (video available) and whether his remarks were sexist and/or belittling to women. I did make a couple of comments in one of the LXer threads, and I'll repeat them here just to let my 10 or so readers know where I stand:

First comment (before I watched the video):

Scott Ruecker (LXer editor in chief) wrote: So my question is, is there anything positive that can be taken from these threads? And my challenge to all of you is, is there something worth keeping? There needs to be a real dialogue begun on this and I am not sure if this is it or not.

Scott, I think the thread should remain. This is an important topic.

There are without doubt many instances of sexism, racism and other derogatory actions in many parts of the tech world, not just FOSS.

But in the FOSS world, we expect things to be better, more enlightened and more inclusive. And they should be.

Yes, this is about attitude and perception. But it's also about hero worship, putting FOSS "rock stars" on a pedestal and thinking they can do no wrong, especially since what they're supposed to be doing -- coding and supporting and promoting free, open-source software and liberating the world from dependence on a few companies and those companies' expensive, closed and proprietary offerings -- is so important to this community and its members.

I guess I'll have to watch this Shuttleworth keynote, at which time I'll probably have more to say, but from the tenor of the discussion above, I'll just say that if people are offended by what a particular person says, attention must be paid.

Just because the speaker doesn't think he's out of line doesn't mean said speaker and the community around him shouldn't listen to and acknowledge the thoughts, feelings and perceptions of others.

If Shuttleworth is belittling woman with his words, tone or context, or is perceived as such, he should clarify his remarks and issue an apology to those offended by those words.

But the fact that he's Mark Shuttleworth, space traveler and richest man in FOSS, creator of the one distro to unite them all, is buying him a whole lot of defenders when, as I say here, he should be addressing this all too large elephant in the room.

From what I see, and I could be way off the mark, one of the problems with the FOSS community is that it's extremely developer-centric. Yeah, there are those of us who don't code, who do everything from work on documentation, create and maintain packages (and Ubuntu is very big on packaging, which is still development, though not C and C++ hacking), to helping users who have questions and problems in forums, blogs and elsewhere, and work on the all-important but often ignored marketing and promotion of FOSS solutions.

But it's still all about developers, most male by a very long, long shot. Not that there aren't female developers involved in FOSS, because there are, and there should be more.

I'll talk about a project I know: OpenBSD. It's extremely developer-centric, and those who get involved in the community and are not developers pretty much know that they're along for the ride and won't have much say in anything. That's the way the project works, and nobody involved in it is trying to hide anything. The attitude is that if you don't like it, you're free to go elsewhere. And yes, everything Theo says is pretty much gospel and is taken as such.

But in Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular, inclusion and promotion are key to c continued growth and adoption of the project.

FOSS is very comfortable in the international arena. Just about all of the "big" projects have a community all around the world, in dozens of countries.

And as a potentially inclusive force, FOSS should be reaching out and encouraging everybody to participate. And there should be major initiatives to bring in those who are under-represented in the FOSS world, and that includes women.

So even if Mark Shuttleworth thinks he said nothing wrong, for the good of Ubuntu and FOSS he needs to get out there and lay down his cards.

Here's the deal: While developers on all software might be overwhelmingly male, users of computers in general are not. Just about everybody uses a computer, and hence everybody can and should benefit from (and contribute to, if they can) free, open-source software.

And we need to be better than the rest. In all ways.

If FOSS were a true Shangri-La and absolutely nothing was wrong, this discussion wouldn't have hit the 100-post mark.

Mark Shuttleworth is clearly a leader in this game. Time to do that.

Second comment (after I watched the video):

OK people, I watched the speech.

I'm an American, and yes, in this country a group of people is often referred to as "guys," as in "you guys," when it includes both men and women.

And yes, he was going for the laugh at a conference with a lot of hard-core geeks, mostly men, with the "explaining to girls" comment/joke.

I think all of us who use FOSS know that it's not "girls" who don't know what Linux and other free software is all about. It's pretty much everybody -- men and women of all backgrounds, in all countries -- who haven't a clue about what we're doing.

He did say "people" instead of "guys" at one point, and he used "guy or girl" at another (albeit in a slightly negative context about "trampling on" one's project).

And in the speech it's always a grandma who needs her geeky grandchild to set up a PC for her that just works. Presumably all grandfathers know how to maintain their own Unix boxes.

I see an unfortunate choice of words here. A change in attitude and language would only help Shuttleworth further his cause.

Yeah, I get that he feels he has to win over a predominantly male group of developers, but there's the rest of us out there who aren't comfortable with this sort of thing.

And the way he says design and usability are so important (and I wholeheartedly agree), he should also acknowledge that perception in the overall community -- as well as outside the community to potential users and participants -- is equally important, especially on a project with the ambitions and resources of Ubuntu.

I've seen Canonical's Jono Bacon speak a few times, and there's nothing belittling or derogatory in what he's said.

And since I've been looking at the latest blog posts on this controversy, I've seen more than a few individuals and groups that are very supportive of women working on and with FOSS. We need more of that.

I haven't seen any reaction from Shuttleworth (his blog has been dead since April).

Saying "somebody's always offended" is no cover here, in my opinion.

As the face of what is probably the biggest Linux distribution at this time, the community deserves better from Shuttleworth.

I'm a big proponent of the long-term-release concept in operating systems because I think both the enterprise and the home user doesn't want things breaking and should have the option of sticking with a particular distribution longer than 6 or 12 months.

And I stuck with the current long-term release of Ubuntu — 8.04 — for well over a year because it worked fairly well with the particular hardware I'm using.

But often a new release can clear up problems and be more stable than the perceived "stable" release.

That seems to be the case with my Toshiba Satellite 1100-S101 laptop and Cnet CWD-854 USB WiFi adapter.

While it worked great in OpenBSD 4.4 and worked OK in various Linux distributions with newish kernels, I was having intermittent crashes in Ubuntu while using the adapter. I'd be using the laptop with the CWD-854 for a couple of hours and, without warning, the screen would freeze and nothing short of a hard restart would bring it back.

Well, I finally decided to upgrade to 9.04 (on the cusp of 9.10's release, if you hadn't noticed). I'll have a review in the near future. (Bet everyone can't wait for my 9.04 review when 9.10 is almost here, right?)

The upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 and then 9.04 took about six hours, accounting for both download and install time.

The changes to NetworkManager between 8.04 and 8.10 (the app looks and works much unlike it's predecessor) threw me for awhile, and I've finally got a fair handle on how to manage both wired and wireless networking.

One bonus I've been enjoying for the past few days is greater stability when using the Cnet CWD-854 WiFi adapter. It runs great, has a strong connection to my router, and I haven't had a crash of any kind since I made the upgrade to 9.04.

So on my particular rig, Ubuntu 9.04 is looking pretty darn stable next to 8.04, which was no slouch in the stability department (after solving problems along the way with Pidgin and Flash).

What does this mean? As usual, I'll try to wait a while before upgrading to 9.10 because I'm enjoying use of such a good, working system, and I'd rather avoid the rush (and the overworked mirrors). And we're only six months away from the next Ubuntu LTS, 10.04 ...