Colin Charles Agenda

When is Linux ready for the desktop? Or more likely, the laptop? Walt Mossberg recently has echoed that while Linux is easier to use, its still not for everyone (permanently archived at his blog, Linux’s Free System Is Now Easier to Use, But Not for Everyone).

I have to applaud Dell for having the balls to sell Ubuntu on their laptops. In fact, now, Lenovo/IBM are thinking that they might do this as well, and the polls seem to suggest that Ubuntu is the favourite.

However, I should caution all these companies from even going near Linux with a ten-foot pole. Quite simply, this is because Linux doesn’t work. If their product doesn’t work as advertised, what are the chances of a customer possibly suing them, for a product that isn’t fit for purpose?

Before buying a laptop, I was told that if I went with an Intel video card, I would be safe, and everything would just work. I was lied to.

• Suspend and resume work sometimes, but its so unreliable, that saying random prayers are handy, but don’t always work.
• Turning off the wireless on a plane and turning it back on, will somehow ensure that I need to reboot my machine to get it working again.
• Attempting to drive the external display, could lead my machine to stop functioning, requiring a hard reset.

There are so many known bugs that Dell had to create a special Wiki page to list the known issues with the systems they sell. And if there are bug reports attached, these don’t look like they’re getting fixed anytime soon. Keeping in mind these are Intel video cards, and Intel tells you that they’ve got such a big commitment to open source. Last I checked, my Linux/PowerPC laptop with an ATI card (last generation PowerBook G4’s) did suspend/resume, external display driving and working wireless much better than I currently get on my newer Dell.

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)

Frankly, most of the time, my laptop sits at my desk. But there are times in a year I travel, a lot, changing wireless networks, turning it off and on from time to time, having to make presentations, putting it thru many suspends and resumes, and so on. That is, using it like how a laptop is meant to be used.

I’m so unhappy to say that after over a decade of using Linux on my desktop, I still find Linux inadequate for basic laptop functionality.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Ubuntu. I like their release policy, the fact that I have a working machine most of the time, and during the past release cycle I might have only seen two new kernels. I like that I can run some restricted/commercial software with no issue - VMWare, Java, Flash, etc. Sure I’ve had to have random hacks to get some things working, but for the most part Ubuntu has struck a chord for a good balance between freedoms and usability (when I want to futz around, Fedora is still the best for that). I just wish they would go the extra mile to ensure that basic laptop functionality works better.

Do I give up some of my freedoms and move to using OS X, like most people seem to do now? With pervasive Internet connectivity available, and IPv6 address spaces to rid me of NAT, maybe I should harness screen + ssh and get work done remotely, via a Mac.

Technorati Tags: linux, dell, ubuntu, laptop, suspend, resume, wireless, display, walt mossberg

Not having played a game since Prince of Persia (and we’re talking the original game, with block-like graphics, on some ancient hardware, back in 1990), I decided to try out Second Life today. Surprisingly, the getdeb folk have this for Ubuntu, even in its 64-bit variety. Installation was simple:

• sudo dpkg -i secondlife-install_1.18.1.2-1~getdeb1_amd64.deb
• Realise that I’m missing a dependency, so install lib32asound2
• Attempt to start secondlife

And fail, of course. I got a Window Creation Error. Not content with this, I started it up from a terminal, and looked at the error messages pass by. Finally found the rather telling line: WARNING: createContext: window creation failure. SDL: Couldn’t find matching GLX visual. It seems that its all got to do with the bit-depth of colour, so a quick replace of the DefaultDepth in xorg.conf was in lieu (it originally was DefaultDepth 16 but its now DefaultDepth 24).

Restart X, and I launched Second Life with success! Now signing up was a bit of a chore as I had to find a new name and so on. A lot of ideal names are taken up, so I settled with Colin Pichot. One of the things I quickly changed was how much bandwidth SL was allowed to use - quick reduction to 50kbps from its usual default (of like 700kbps+). I joined the Linux Australia group, I’ve not developed anything in SL, and I haven’t given them my credit card details (yet). It seems to create a group, you need to fork out $100 Linden Dollars.

I’ll play with this after midnight I guess, when we’ve got more “off-peak” quota to utilise, but initial impressions are its a pretty impressive environment in 800×600. I’ve not met anyone, I’ve added a friend (I think), can’t for the life of me figure out how to put a photo in my profile, and here’s hoping that eventually, I understand what all the fuss about SL is.

Technorati Tags: second life, secondlife, sl, ubuntu, window creation error, glx visual, colin pichot, alter ego

I’ve recently started doing more development locally on my Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) laptop (as opposed to being logged in via ssh to various machines, generally running Fedora), and have noticed some quick snags.

Ruby Gems
They’re currently installed in /var/lib/gems/1.8 which is not in your PATH. So if for example, you use cheat, you’re not going to find it. Fix it via adding /var/lib/gems/1.8/bin to your PATH (my .bashrc has it looking such as: PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin)

Mono, and System.Windows.Forms
I have no problems with Mono and .NET related applications, normally. I run Tomboy (which I like, a lot), I can fire up f-spot, and when I need to Beagle runs fine too. But of late, I’ve had to run an application that required System.Windows.Forms, aka WinForms. Little did I know I’d need to install the winforms stuff, so a sudo apt-get install libmono-winforms* fixed this for me.

This still hasn’t made my required application run properly, but I’m now a step closer to finding out compatibility with Windows-based .NET applications and Mono. All thanks to the useful Mono Migration Analyzer (MoMA). Hat tip to Ditesh for pointing me to MoMA.

Technorati Tags: gems, ruby, path, mono, winforms, system.windows.forms, moma

It seems that for $29/month, I’m not getting my meagre 200MB quota on the 3 network, but can now get 1GB! Wanting to not fuss with a laptop card or USB modem (because they only support Windows and OS X), I decided that its time to setup a connection via my mobile phone, i.e. use my phone as a modem, via Bluetooth.

Ubuntu has got some amazing documentation on getting Bluetooth based dial-up networking working. I followed everything there, till the Configuring PPP session. Right upon there, I hit a bit of a snag, but my trusty LUG list pointed me to Using T-Mobile Nokia E65 as a Bluetooth modem guide. Using the gprs, gprs-connect-chat, and gprs-disconnect-chat from that website, I was able to use my phone as a modem. One important thing to note is that the gprs-connect-chat and gprs-disconnect-chat must be executable (fix this by doing a chmod +x).

The APN (access point) for the 3 network is “3netaccess”. So the one line I changed in the gprs-connect-chat reads as: OK              ‘AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”3netaccess”,”",0,0′ \.

Now, a simple pppd call gprs in a terminal works. Of course, it would make a whole lot more sense if there was a GUI for this (I’m surprised that Ubuntu hasn’t figured this out yet).

E61i has registered the WiFi connection and the phone as a modem

A quick word of warning: the phone doesn’t register how much packet data you use when its acting as a modem (so you can’t find it in the logs later, under packet data, from what I can tell). Also, keep in mind, that 3 counts both uploads and downloads as part of the quota you get per billing cycle. I’ve not started wanting to do usage accounting, but I’m sure its what I’ll conquer next.

If you’re wanting to do this via Optus, consider Menno Smits guide for Optus 3G.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, modem, bluetooth modem, e61i, nokia e61i, s60, series 60, 3, three, dial-up networking

Today I appreciate YUM’s mirror-select tool, in comparison to what APT offers me. OptusNet’s mirror is down, so its a case of editing /etc/apt/sources.list and doing a %s/au.archive/archive/g. With YUM, it’d have just found another mirror - now that seems like (good) redundancy to me.

Technorati Tags: yum, fedora, ubuntu, apt

Tell me what’s wrong with the picture:

Anyways, Ubuntu Live looks like a great conference. The session line-up looks more like a conference than the one-day FUDCon’s, and with the tracks (there are 4 concurrent tracks), I am truly impressed. A big part of me wishes I was there… Some interesting tech bloggers like Stephen O’Grady of Redmonk fame, and Matt Asay are keynoting.

Of course, MySQL’s very own CEO, Mårten Mickos is also giving a keynote on Monday July 23, at 9:20-9.40am.

One caveat with Ubuntu Live: its cost. FUDCon is free, and true to its nature, really does spread community love (with about two tracks). Its USD$895 to attend Ubuntu Live - very troublesome to the pocketbook.

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, ubuntu live, mysql, fudcon

My recent switch to Ubuntu for desktop use, hasn’t gone on without drama.

SeaMonkey
This doesn’t exist in Feisty Fawn. Apparently, it was around before, and is most likely guaranteed to be in Gutsy Gibbon, but if you’re a Feisty Fawn user, you’re bent out of luck.

My journey started with asking the nice folk at #ubuntu for help. They suggested that maybe #ubuntu-motu would have the answer. Those nice folk passed me on to #ubuntu-mozilla. But nobody really knows an answer. There is a Mozilla Team, and I do certainly hope they start rocking harder, failing which, Canonical might need to hire someone to be their “Mozilla (Wo)Man”.

Transmission
For Debian to claim they’ve got more software in the universe than anything else, I found it funny that Transmission (a nice little GUI application that handles BitTorrent) was available in Fedora but not in Ubuntu! Here you want to reference bug #104654.

BadAlloc errors when playing videos
Seems this is an upstream Xorg bug, but I never encountered this while Fedora was running on the same machine. How my brand new spanking machine can have insufficient resources to play a DVD just stinks. Logging out of X (that means closing all my applications) and relogging back in, makes things work again. Refer to bug #49360.

Spelling issues
It would only make sense that spelling packs for OpenOffice.org are installed by default. I selected Australian, but manually had to install myspell-en-au and openoffice.org-en-thesaurus-au. If it wasn’t installed, you’d not see red squiggly lines at the bottom of mis-spelled words.

Firefox in a chroot?
This is probably the only way to get working Flash content. The Ubuntu packages for gnash and swfdec are incompatible with modern Flash (and in fact, the packages seem dated) so the non-free plugin is required. For this, 32-bit Firefox in a chroot is a must. You’ll notice that spelling stops working, which is mighty annoying - fix this by installing aspell aspell-en dictionaries-common gnome-spell ispell libaspell15 libenchant1c2a libgtkspell0 myspell-en-au myspell-en-gb spell within the chroot.

MOTU vs. Package Maintainer
This is more a policy/practice niggle, rather than software related. I honestly think its important to have a package maintainer per package. Sure, a package maintainer can have many packages. But under no circumstance should a package be included, by the Masters of the Universe (MOTU), if there isn’t someone responsible for said package. This will avoid problems down the line. I think the Fedora Project got it right, in this aspect.

As Ubuntu becomes more mainstream, and there are more desktop users showing up thanks to its ease of use, and hardware partnerships like Dell (I hope their sales go well), Ubuntu is going to have to rock hard when it comes to software support as well as hardware support (for workstations and laptops).

Today, I was looking for video podcasting software on Linux. PenguinTV came out tops, and I’ve never really got Democracy TV to work the way I wanted. Stable version 3.0 is out, and there are quite a number of fixes since 2.80 (5 releases to 3.0). Feisty DEBs on the website are available, but they’re i386 only, and I opted to go via the apt-get, Ubuntu way (okay, Debian way). I got version 2.80 and I thought I’d bug report it: #119262. All in hopes of a newer version. Within the hour, my request got rejected:

Thanks you for your bug report. We can find this out via merges.ubuntu.com with a lot of extra information - there’s no point reporting an update bug unless you actually plan to do the merge, attach the debdiff, and subscribe ubuntu-universe-sponsors. However, if you would like to help fix this bug, please come help us.

Now, I’m your average, and typical Ubuntu user. I just expect things to work. I’d like software thats new, and at the latest release. I am your typical Dell purchaser. I have no interest in merging, attaching a debdiff, and getting on yet another mailing list.

I don’t blame the person closing the bug report, because thats what I would have possibly done when I was futzing with Fedora packages and actively doing volunteer distribution development. However, this doesn’t bode well to Bug #1 being fixed anytime soon - PCs for sale do include free software like Ubuntu, the marketing that it has amazing features and benefits are known to quite a lot of folk, but its not nearly as user friendly, yet. Let time pass?

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, penguintv, bug, new release, mainstream usage