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Bought a new desktop system in 2008-01 and installed Ubuntu 7.10 on it, to make dual boot with the Polish Windows Vista that came installed.

Contents

Repartition and install

As advised by Ubuntu docs, reduced size of Windows partition.

Was:
C: 40 GB NTFS
D: 193.82 GB NTFS

Shrank partition, got:
C: 22.61 GB NTFS
16.45 GB Nieprzydzielone
D: 193.82 GB NTFS

Helpful links: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot?highlight=%28windows%29 http://vistarewired.com/2007/02/16/how-to-resize-a-partition-in-windows-vista http://apcmag.com/5046/how_to_dual_boot_vista_with_linux_vista_installed_first

The install then went OK after that. I read various differing suggestions about partitioning, and eventually decided to keep it simple and just put all of Linux in one partition instead of trying to make lots of different fiddly little partitions for specific parts of the filesystem.

Screen resolution

For some reason, both Windows Vista and Linux seem to think my monitor (Flatron L1953TR) has resolution 1280x960, but cause a large chunk of the right end of the desktop to be off the right end of the monitor. Resetting to 1152x864 seems to solve it, although at least once Linux ignored my repeated attempts to change the resolution. Oddly nothing seems to change vertically. Usually it remembers fine, though. Maybe the problem is in my video card since Vista was confused at first too. I need to sort this out, since supposedly the monitor actually displays 1280x1024...

Window resizing problems

The screen resolution strangeness may explain why windows are often too tall, so the bottom part of the window is behind the task bar. Resize by right-click/resize is a bizarre interface I don't understand which often only lets me resize the width, not the height and seems to require clicking both buttons when done. ? But I found that alt + middle mouse button drag lets me resize a window, so that's a decent workaround.

Solved!

OK, finally figured it out; it was purely a hardware issue in the monitor. Figured out I was not seeing the rightmost 100 columns in 1280x1024 mode. Needed to adjust CLOCK via the monitor's built-in menu, which widens or shrinks the displayed image, so then the rightmost 100 columns can be brought into view from off the edge. Phew.

Firefox

Firefox seems to work fine as expected. Set up my various preferences as before.

Differences from Windows:

  • When moving a tab to the bookmark bar, the site's icon doesn't accompany it. But upon relaunching browser, the site's icon is there.
  • Flash may be an annoying issue. Apparently Adobe doesn't supply a Flash plugin for 64-bit Firefox, and the open source Gnash doesn't seem to handle some Flash files that I want to watch. Apparently the sole solution is to install 32-bit Firefox and Adobe's Flash plugin.

The problem url = http://farbskatol.net/dotclear/index.php?2008/01/10/108-itv-projekto

youtube.com however gave me a popup to search for codecs; it suggested GStreamer, which I installed, then said I still don't have appropriate codecs, and suggested some GStreamer additional package for "ugly" formats, which I installed, and then it played the video OK. But Gnash is buggy, e.g. youtube's "Replay" causes replay of sound but not video.

Disappearing scroll bar at paypal

While trying to buy the Trax book at http://traxgame.com I went to the paypal checkout; when pressing a button to check out, the right scrollbar disappeared from window, making it unscrollable even though there was more stuff "below". Affects some other windows/tabs also, grr. Only recourse seemed to be exiting and restarting (which made doing the purchase impossible). Worked fine on Windows Firefox.

See http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Missing+vertical+scroll+bar

Java

jMemorize

Trouble running jMemorize.jar.

Need to explicitly invoke java -jar jMemorize-1.1.0.jar

But then get errors:

Exception in thread "main" java.awt.AWTError: Cannot load AWT toolkit: gnu.java.awt.peer.gtk.GtkToolkit

Not entirely clear how to get the Abstract Window Library, but apparently it's in JDK not basic Java.

Ubuntu help pages are very into using the free versions, so I try free-java-sdk, downloading the package via the GUI in System/Administration/Synaptic Package Manager. Info for free-java-sdk says:

After installation of this package you should be able to set JAVA_HOME environment variable to /usr/lib/fjsdk (and preferably add /usr/lib/fjsdk/bin

But now jMemorize runs and presents a partially drawn GUI window that doesn't work, or none at all with a core dump.

Further reading at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Java makes me try the package: icedtea-java7-jdk Sadly, that also leads to core dumps.

massimiliano della rovere pointed me to http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Gutsy and http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Gutsy#Browser_Plug-ins and said I just need sun's java6 jre, not the sdk/jdk crap. but still get core dumps. but suspect this was from running in a shell with old env vars, for starting a new shell works. but gives various error msgs in jmemorize, so it may be buggy, but it mostly runs. once the result screen after learning was white with no info. Then it seemed to run fine mostly. But still get white result screen, and ń letter in card text or category name causes terrible display problems (misaligned text, or entire side of card not being displayed). Other Polish letters seem to display fine, only ń is a problem!

Eventually decide problem is probably 64-bit Java, so I set up /usr/local/bin/java to point at 32-bit java. Font problem seems partially solved; font "monospaced" works, but not some others, which still cause crazy kerning and moving up and down vertically of the successive letters. (Based on advice found later for javaws/KGS below.)

Various attempts later, still broken. (Found that somehow I had old 1.1.0 version of jMemorize, but using current 1.2.3 didn't solve it completely.) Currently have Polish looking ok in Monospaced but not other fonts, and Esperanto looking ok in Monospaced except for gx which causes whacked kerning (printing the gx on top of previous letter) or causing the gx and following text to simply not be shown. Behavior can vary in word list and on word card. Not sure if I suspect Java bug or jMemorize bug. Need to try some other Java programs next to compare. (CGOBAN didn't have text problems, hm.)

KGS client

Need Java web start, which according to Sun docs may be in SDK not JRE.

http://www.gokgs.com/download.xhtml just gives an infinite loop opening successive browser tabs. It suggests that on Linux Web start is broken, and one should try this: 

russ@komputronik:~$ javaws http://files.gokgs.com/javaBin/cgoban.jnlp
The program 'javaws' is currently not installed.  You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install j2re1.4
bash: javaws: command not found
russ@komputronik:~$ sudo apt-get install j2rel.4
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package j2rel.4

Continued to get this failure after installing Sun's sun-java6-sdk package.

Found

Apparently others have had problems with javaws also.

Found info: Sun hasn't released javaws for 64 bit Java. Solution is to install 32-bit version and use its javaws:

Windows in KGS client don't resize properly, though. Found http://www.gokgs.com/help/faq_en.html?helpLocale=de_DE#beryl which says it's a Java problem and "Some Linux users with 3d beryl have met this problem." and refers to a known Java bug: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6429775 which has people saying it's a problem in Ubuntu 7.10. Great.

Aha, found http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=478081 which suggests modifying /etc/environment to have:

  • export AWT_TOOLKIT=MToolkit

This improves it - I can expand the window, and then the board grows larger as expected. But shrinking the window back down doesn't change the board size! Argh. Maybe the environment file is only read at boot, though; rebooting made it work. Perhaps jMemorize will work better now too... (cross fingers)

goproblems.org / 32-bit firefox for Java to work

Had to install icedtea 7 and then the pages still don't show anything. So I read https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AMD64/FirefoxAndPlugins and decided to just install 32-bit firefox and be done with it, since there seem to be problems with Flash AND Java due to 64-bit lack of support. Grr. But successfully installed 32-bit firefox and made it the default browser.

Too many files open

Sometimes jMemorize wouldn't start, giving error message about too many files open. Then it seemed other programs wouldn't start or would do nothing sometimes. Googling suggests this happens to many Ubuntu users with various programs. Possible solution: the command ulimit -n 4096 (the value should be something larger than 4000). Don't fully grok the causes and solution yet. Even when I've killed all applications, the problem wasn't solved and I needed to reboot to be able to run programs again. Will try this ulimit next time it happens.

Hibernation

Hibernated it for the first time, and it seemed to work fine (shutting down and restoring next morning), yet when I restarted it, there was a popup saying that sleep failed (even though everything seemed ok).

MP3s/DVDs/restricted formats

Did sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras as per https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

But when burning a DVD, Nautilus complained that I needed a DVD+R DL instead of plain old DVD+R. Opaque error message apparently caused by 4.7GB vs 4.3GB (1024 vs 1000) and it was just meaning there wasn't enough room on the disc, doh! Meanwhile I used the commandline as per https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CdDvdBurning?highlight=%28burning%29%7C%28DVD%29 and growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -R -J *

note the -dry-run option is handy!

Font problems

Further research on the jmemorize issues led me to go to System Administration Language Support, whereupon I was told that not all of Open Office was installed, and do I want to install it? So I did. The behavior changed, but isn't better. Still being corrupted.

http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php/Fix_Java_Applications_in_Beryl suggests adding the AWT_TOOLKIT declaration to .bashrc also

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/awt/1.5/xawt.html has more details about this AWT_TOOLKIT stuff.

Perhaps will try deleting all Java and reinstall just 32bit, grr.

Also tried a .fonts.conf file to do smoothing, hoping vainly that might have some effect.

Printer

My HP1018 worked fine for several days, then (possibly as a result of power loss shutting down computer accidentally) it stopped; Ubuntu still recognized it and sent docs to be printed supposedly, but printer never got them or printed them.

Later: it occasionally simply stops working. Linux shows printer status "Stopped", Evince has "print" button grayed out. Not sure if it's connected with logging out, locking screen, or just random. Sometimes restarting helps, sometimes not. Try unplugging the USB cable and replugging, that sometimes restarts it and it prints.

Also see:

Command line programs:

  • to print: lpr
  • to remove from queue: lprm
  • to see the print queue: lpq

Issue still there in Ubuntu 9.10... Ubuntu recognized printer correctly, automatically gets driver, sends test page, but no printing happens.

Seemingly SOLVED by 2 steps:

  • 1: http://hplipopensource.com - install latest hplip (maybe not needed - supposedly the (slightly older) version that came with Ubuntu 9.10 supports the 1018 according to this site)
  • 2: changing printer driver (System / Administration / Printing) (then double click on laserjet icon) and change Device URI from zjs to hpcups...!

Evince PDF printing broken

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/181164

Trying to print a PDF created by open office, the printed version (including print preview) is garbage after the first non-ASCII character.

stdio.h not found

Downloaded SmartEiffel and tried to make all, got problem with stdio.h and other h files not found. It turns out that for some reason Ubuntu comes with the compiler itself but not the standard library headers, which must be installed separately. build-essential seems the way to go:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=137192

  • sudo apt-get install build-essential

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/5953

  • sudo apt-get install libc6-dev
  • sudo apt-get check

http://help.lockergnome.com/linux/Ubuntu-gcc-headers-ftopict469419.html "There's a metapackage which will install all that's needed for compile/build - install 'build-essential' and you should be away."

X11 not found

SmartEiffel's eiffeltest uses X11, which also wasn't on Ubuntu install.

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-490781.html

  • sudo apt-get install libx11-dev

But "Just in case somebody comes back to this via Google, xlibs-dev is now obsolete. The command you want is:"

  • sudo apt-get install xorg-dev

In fact the libx11-dev worked fine for me and SmartEiffel make all build eiffeltest OK then.

(But there was another problem, seemingly a minor bug in the make file about creating a directory... manually creating the directory solved the final "make all" problem: Generating API docs cd: 1: can't cd to ../work/html/site 

   OK

Done. russ@komputronik:~/SmartEiffel$ mkdir work/html russ@komputronik:~/SmartEiffel$ mkdir work/html/site russ@komputronik:~/SmartEiffel$ make all

Typing Esperanto letters

Ubuntu comes with a lame keyboard layout for Esperanto: type qwyx;' to get ŝĵĝĉŭĥ. I am used to typing x-system to get Esperanto letters, via the Windows program Ek, and using AltGr+letter to get Polish letters. That looks harder to set up in Linux. Since I usually don't mix Polish and Esperanto typing too closely, perhaps I'll use AltGr+letter for Esperanto text and toggle between the 2 keyboards as needed.

http://sonjaaa.livejournal.com/522621.html

OK, eventually I edited the eo-keyboard to use AltGr; /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols has the files. http://goulo.livejournal.com/247902.html has more info.

Adding Keyboard Indicator

Right-click on a panel and then Add To Panel the Keyboard Indicator to have the Epo/Pol clickable option.

Changing default layout

For some annoying reason, it randomly jumps back to Polish (the default) occasionally. When using Esperanto more often, that is irritating. So I wanted to change the default to Esperanto. Clicking it wouldn't change it though (system/preferences/keyboard/layout). Later found a bug that this is intended behavior (?!) and you need to check the per-app layout box to change the default. (Then you can unclick that again.)

Scanner

Big problem: My Canon 4200F is unsupported on Linux. Tried using Windows software for it via Wine with no success. Emailed Canon to complain/ask about it, and got form letter sort of reply about how Linux is not supported. Based on reading forum threads, it looks like Canon sucks for supporting Linux (not just their scanners). So... I won't be buying Canon any more, it seems.

Windows / Wine

Wine installed ok following advice from https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wine and was able to run St. Petersburg PC game program. Unsurprisingly it could not run Canon's Windows driver for my scanner 4200F.

CD-ROM / ISO / etc

How to run programs that need the CD-ROM in the drive? On windows I had a program VirtualDrive to manage a library of CD-ROMs on the hard drive. On Linux, it seems to be that I can make an ISO and do:

sudo mount -t iso9660 -o loop /path/to/file.iso /path/to/mount

To make an iso is simple:

cat /dev/cdrom >image.iso

or

  1. dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/tmp/cdimg1.iso

Rosetta Stone

Annoying Rosetta Stone won't install. Like a guy maurin.alex ĉe gmail.com in http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=607470&page=2 I have java errors when running Setup.exe. It starts to run with an Install Anywhere popup, but then: cwd: C:\windows\temp\I1201511286\Windows cmd: "C:\windows\temp\I1201511286\Windows\resource\jre\bin\javaw.exe" -Xms16777216 -Xmx50331648 -classpath "C:\windows\temp\I1201511286\InstallerData\IAClasses.zip;C:\windows\temp\I1201511286\Windows\resource\jdglue.zip;C:\windows\temp\I1201511286\InstallerData\Execute.zip;C:\windows\temp\I1201511286\Windows\InstallerData\Execute.zip;C:\windows\temp\I1201511286\InstallerData\Resource1.zip;C:\windows\temp\I1201511286\Windows\InstallerData\Resource1.zip;C:\windows\temp\I1201511286\InstallerData;C:\windows\temp\I1201511286\Windows\InstallerData;" com.zerog.lax.LAX "C:/windows/temp/I1201511286/Windows/Setup.lax" "C:/windows/temp/lax1fdc.tmp" Invocation of this Java Application has caused an InvocationTargetException. This application will now exit. (LAX)

Stack Trace: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError 

       at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
       at java.lang.Class.forName(Unknown Source)
       at java.awt.Toolkit$2.run(Unknown Source)
       at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
       at java.awt.Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit(Unknown Source)
       at sun.awt.GlobalCursorManager$CursorEvent.<init>(Unknown Source)
       at sun.awt.GlobalCursorManager.<clinit>(Unknown Source)
       at java.awt.Cursor.initIDs(Native Method)
       at java.awt.Cursor.<clinit>(Unknown Source)
       at java.awt.Window.<init>(Unknown Source)
       at java.awt.Frame.<init>(Unknown Source)
       at java.awt.Frame.<init>(Unknown Source)
       at com.zerog.ia.installer.LifeCycleManager.f(DashoA8113)
       at com.zerog.ia.installer.LifeCycleManager.g(DashoA8113)
       at com.zerog.ia.installer.LifeCycleManager.a(DashoA8113)
       at com.zerog.ia.installer.Main.main(DashoA8113)
       at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Native Method)
       at com.zerog.lax.LAX.launch(DashoA8113)
       at com.zerog.lax.LAX.main(DashoA8113)

This Application has Unexpectedly Quit: Invocation of this Java Application has caused an InvocationTargetException. This application will now exit. (LAX) err:heap:HEAP_ValidateInUseArena Heap 0x110000: prev arena 0x125e48 is not prev for in-use 0x126078

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=325425&page=2 that suggests one may need to install windows version of Java, or use some other emulation method besides Wine. I installed Sun's Java for windows (seemingly successfully) but then Rosetta's Setup.exe gives the same error. VirtualBox apparently doesn't run on 64-bit Linux.

But Wine handles Rosetta for some people, e.g. "Yeah Rosetta Stone has worked fine with Wine since breezy at least. A little trick for those who doesn't like to use the cd for languages; make a directory and copy all the directory's from the cd into the directory you just created, then in wincfg / Drives you just add a drive, point it to the directory you just made and in show advanced set type to cdrom. I used to have one directory for each language. Hope it's any help."

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/rosetta-under-wine-emulator-508111/

Clock losing time!

Around Sat 2008-02-09 there was a software update of Ubuntu stuff, and since then my clock is losing time rapidly, many minutes per hour. Seems possibly a bug specific to 64-bit Ubuntu. http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-435807.html

The problem mysteriously solved itself later.

Linksys router

The router has worked fine until 2008-02-12, a day of weird problems with all our hardware. At first I thought it was Ubuntu, but it seems the Linksys router itself started dropping connections, and for a brief while exactly 1 of the 3 computers could be connected. Pinging 192.168.0.1 from my Ubuntu box seemed to steal the connection from the other computer. Then all 3 randomly had it again. Maybe the router is failing. Maybe it got zapped by a power surge - the tablet pc was flaky today too, and windows wouldn't boot despite repeated various trials, and then complained of memory damage, and then behaved normally again. I hate that crap. We should get a UPS and start plugging into the wall in the living room since our fine Polish electrical work doesn't have the 3rd prong on outlets in the office.


Asus 900 eee

See http://www.ubuntu-eee.com/wiki/index.php5?title=User_Guides

Install partition problems

2008-12-16 - try installing Ubuntu-eee 8.04.1 onto Asus 900. First issue was picking what version of Ubuntu. Read some forums and blogs, and went with http://www.ubuntu-eee.com Second issue was getting the installer onto flash drive - never did that before. Used Unetbootin (specifically unetbootin-eeeubuntu-linux-276) Needed to reformat the flash drive with GParted. To do that I need to select the 4GB drive, unmount, reformat as FAT 32, then run the unetbootin and give it the Ubuntu distro file name ubuntu-eee-8.04.1.iso . Then the Asus boots from the USB, woot! But install fails with partition error and returns to the the partition (step 3 of 7) in a loop:

  • Failed to create a file system
  • The ext3 file system creation in partition #1 of SCSI3 (0.0.0) (sda) failed.

Tried guided resize, guided complete... read forums, it seems this is a common issue when installing from a 4GB flash drive. Not clear, but possibly the installer is confusing the 4GB USB flash drive with the Asus internal 4GB flash drive. Idiocy. So next step is try installing from a CD... That worked (just right-click the iso file and write it to CD, then boot the Asus from that CD), but the 4GB internal drive is not visible now, so it installed on the 16GB internal drive. For now, 16GB is enough, maybe I'll try to recover the 4GB later...

Java/jMemorize

No java on the Ubuntu eee, so install sun-java6-jre (which causes some other packages also to be installed) via Synaptic.

password problem upon logging in after suspend

Some file permissions were wrong. Workaround is switch user and then log in works ok. Or fix the permissions http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=49159

  • sudo chown root:shadow /sbin/unix_chkpwd
  • sudo chmod 2755 /sbin/unix_chkpwd

Also see https://lists.launchpad.net/ubuntu-eee-coders/msg01471.html

Update problems

Updater wants to Remove Ubuntu-eee and eee-osd ... and says it can only do partial install of some packages. Cancelled and googled for this. Others have same problem, glad I didn't proceed, it would throw away the eee kernel and put tons of inappropriate stuff on. http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?pid=431949 zer0s says:

  • use the updater, but then when it wants to do partial upgrade and throw away ubuntu-eee, don't!
  • Click 'Cancel' in the 'partial upgrade' prompt
  • Go into Synaptic (package manager) and click 'Mark all updates'. It should prompt you to remove eee-osd and to update eeepc-config.
  • (It does not want to remove ubuntu-eee)

I also then found this which suggested:

  • sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/*
  • sudo rm -R /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/*

So did that as well after the fact.

Keyboard Layout Problems

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-832467.html 

Edit your xorg.conf: sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

The keyboard section should look like this:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us,XX"
Option "XKbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle"
EndSection

The two changes to make are:
(1) under "XkbLayout", replace "us" with "us,XX", where XX is the ISO country code for the alternate language(country codes can be found at http://www.iso.org/iso/support/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists/iso-3166-1_decoding_table.htm). You can add more codes if you want, separated by a comma (I have three: US, DK, ES).
(2) ad the line
Option "XKbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle"

Then it works, also after reboot.

But that doesn't solve my problem. I see no clickable Pol/Epo/Mao on the top bar as on my main computer.

Eventually gave up and just copied my modified (see above for main computer) epo file onto the pl file. :) That works...

Motion Tablet 1600

Installed Intrepid 8.10 OK. But then software updates caused extreme screen flicker and unreadable right half of screen.

Found it's a known issue with Motion computers: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/324142/

an upgrade of xserver-xorg-video-intel from version 2:2.4.1-1ubuntu10_i386 to 2:2.4.1-1_ubuntu10.3 was offered by the update-manager. following the update, the gdm log-in screen was showing a secondary ghosting of the log-in screen together with some other garbage. some degree of operation was possible, and a log-in was achieved. the desktop after log-in showed the same video problems, with the left half of the screen ok, and the right half confused.

Try pinning to older version http://dimitar.me/?p=62

create a file called preferences in /etc/apt. The file should contain 3 lines per each package that you want to revet to an older version. These 3 lines need to specify the package name, the version that you would like to “pin” and the priority. For example, if I wanted to revert the package libbz2-1.0_1.0.5-0.1_i386.deb to libbz2-1.0_1.0.4-2ubuntu4_i386.deb, I would put the following in the preferences file: 
Package: libbz2
Pin: version 1.0_1.0.4-2
Pin-Priority: 1001

Note, that the Pin-Priority has to be over 1000 if you are going back to an older version of a package.

After I am done with this, all I have to do is execute sudo apt-get install libbz2 and I will get the older version installed.

Keep in mind that this package version will be “pinned” and no future updates to that package will be picked up by the update manager. For further information on this subject look at the man pages for apt_preferences.

Unfortunately then apt-get install complains that xserver is a virtual package and there's no candiate.

So then I tried using Synaptic and downgraded to version "3" of xserver-xorg-video-intel. Unclear if it will attempt to upgrade again later...

...

2010-03: installing 9.10 on the 1600 was tricky; the "try it out" option simply hung with a mostly black screen, but graphics glitch of mouse movable and visible only on left part. Anna then tried installing from the net, no luck. I then tried installing from the CD and noticed the F4 "safe graphics mode option". Installation went smoothly, including repartitioning her disk to have separate mountpoints / and /home to make future upgrades easier.

Motion bluetooth mouse

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bluez-utils/+bug/32415 suggests removing some bluez packages. We had bluez-cups and bluez-utils, so I used synaptic to remove them and rebooted. No difference. Further info in that bug suggests that removing bluez stuff is a lame hack anyway that removes mousewheel functionality. So I re-added them, and bluez-compat, to try hidd --search (as per https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothSetup ) since hcitool scan still finds nothing.

Gave up and bought a cheap USB/cable mouse.

Motion sound

No sound, no idea why, read many forums and articles. Really irritating. Found a recent blog entry of a guy who installed 8.10 on our exact model, Motion LE1600 : http://mordfin.net/2009/03/06/linux-on-motion-computing-tablet/comment-page-1/

It seems there's some new sound system pulseaudio included in recent Ubuntu releases which is theoretically good but in practice breaks many things. But the details remain hazy.

Pidgin

Pidgin worked on the Motion LE1600 for weeks, then mysteriously quit working. Starting it would basically cause nothing to happen, and sometimes oddly change the red logoff icon to something else. A zombie process would still be in existence but nothing was on the task bar. We googled and found various similar problems reported over the last couple years. Tried reinstalling pidgin and purple. running "pidgin -d" gave lots of info but not immediately obviousl. Found a bug report that it works with "sudo pidgin" but not plain "pidgin". Some possible useful links:

Seemingly deleting .purple or .purple/icons from your homefolder solves it.

Firefox window jitter/shake

Anna's Firefox started shaking the browser window (but not the outside frame or entire screen). Turns out to be an apparently common problem with Firefox if you start messing with themes (she didn't) or certain add-ons - in her case Smart Bookmarks that compresses the bookmarks on the toolbar into icons instead of text. I noticed when mousing over an icon, so that it expanded to text, the shaking stopped. Uninstalling Smart Bookmarks solved it. Apparently a general Firefox issue, not just Linux.

Mplayer unicode subtitles

Our Esperanto subtitles weren't working - non-ASCII was displaying as underscore _ ... I eventually found:

to set system-wide subtitle font for mplayer.

I still have to start it via command line, e.g.:

  • mplayer dlug.avi -utf8 -sub dlug.eo.ssa

I have no idea why the Totem GUI subtitles menu shows only "None" and doesn't notice the existing subtitle file in the directory.

Solved problem of black-and white display even for color movies by Edit/Preferences/Display/Saturation.

Mplayer stutter on Asus

Grr, the sound stutters every minute or so on the ASUS, after installing mplayer.

But neither of those help. :(

Seems that -framedrop is useful to get rid of or greatly reduce stutter. I also set -autosync 0 -mc 0

Note that with vo sdl the mouse cursor stays in the middle of screen in full screen mode. Remove vo sdl to solve that.

Repartition pen drive

My stupid 4GB pen drive often seems to corrupt files on it and reformatting it fixes it for a while...

  • sudo gparted

select the pen drive, right click to unmount, right click to reformat, FAT16


9.10 ever-growing log files

Found a week or two after installing that the /root partition was filled up because several files in /var/log are way too verbose and growing without bound apparently. syslog, kern.log, messages. see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-meta/+bug/115774 for others reporting such issues. Deleting old ones is a temporary fix to regain gigabytes of disk space. Need to research more.

mms streaming web content

mms stuff (e.g. at http://esperanto.cri.cn ) didn't work for me in the past, but with 9.10 installing restricted format stuff as per https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats made mms streaming work fine.


How to install spellcheck dictionaries for OpenOffice

Basically use Tools/Extensions, install them, and restart OO.

How to install spellcheck dictionaries for gedit

install aspell-eo (e.g. with Synaptic package manager) to spellcheck esperanto within gedit. (It comes by default with just English dictionaries.)

OpenOffice crashes when trying to change spellcheck language

Tools , Options , Language Settings , Writing Aids simply crashes immediately. No solution found... Grr.

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