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I have been running Ubuntu Gutsy for the last couple of months while it was in Beta and RC stages, but this week marked Gutsy’s full release to the public. I have to say that this is probably one of the best Linux Distro’s I have used to date in terms on out of the box functionality and completeness. It looks like finally someone has listened to many people cries to make Linux more available to regular users, in order to penetrate the Desktop software market.

Although I wouldn’t say Gutsy is a complete success, it definitely has hit the nail on the head in terms on where Linux distributions need to move in the coming future. Being a software developer Linux has always felt comfortable to me. I never really took the time to consider that not everyone in this world wants to spend a day tweaking the kernel, or trying to configure some bleeding edge application. At the same time to me this was one of the things I always loved about Linux, was that it afforded me these luxuries. To me Ubuntu Gutsy finds a happy medium between both of these extremes.

Out of the box Gutsy can be used by any regular user without the need to spend time configuring and setting up the user environment. However Gutsy does not prevent more experienced users from taking this approach. Installing a few tools you can build your own kernel image or compile any bleeding edge software you need. To me this is the real strength in Ubuntu and especially in Gutsy. I find that in my day to day life I don’t always have to be using the the bleeding edge, or do I feel the need to spend hours on end trying to get some new software configured. I am happy with just turning my computer on, firing up my development environment and getting to real work. Don’t get me wrong I still enjoy “playing” around with Linux, but I have found more and more that I expect an OS that just kind of works without too much fuss. I would rather use my time to do my job, or write code then fight to get things working.

I think Gutsy does a good job of achieving this goal for me, since it includes some of the latest bleeding edge software like compiz-fusion, gnome 2.20, open-office 2.3 etc … but it doesn’t require that I spend hours on end getting any of this working, because all of it just works from the start. For example in Feisty I was running beryl, and just before I upgraded I had made the switch to compiz-fusion. Both these pieces of software took me many hours to get configured properly, not to mention that every couple of days they would break because of some new change to the SVN code base. This was acceptable for me since I knew ahead of time that both pieces of software were bleeding edge and would have their issues, but when you need to print a simple PDF and can’t get X to come up it can be a little frustrating.

Gutsy has done a good job of integrating these new bleeding edge pieces of software but at the same time running versions that are relatively stable and offer a good user experience.

A supposed great new feature of Gutsy is it’s automatic printer configuration. Gutsy will find printers connected to your computer and on your Network and automatically configure them to “work”. Well I have yet to get this feature to “work” properly, and since my printer worked just fine in Feisty I find this to be extremely frustrating. Although I don’t physically have a printer connected to my machine I do have a laser printer shared from a Windows XP box in our basement. It’s a simple Samba based printer share that worked flawlessly in Feisty and on all my other machines, except for Gutsy. It simply won’t print anything, it won’t even spit out garbage, since I’ve been so busy with school as of late I haven’t really gotten a chance to sit down and figure out why it’s not working anymore.

Other then this oddity though, Gutsy has been a great upgrade for me, and I don’t regret moving up to this release. I recommend Gutsy for anyone who wants to use Linux, whether you’ve been using it for years or simply want to make the plunge to the Linux dark side. I promise you, you won’t be disappointed.

Look forward to some configuration and tweaking articles I’m putting together, to really maximize how your gutsy install performs.

kungfuice Technology, Ubuntu

Well I have been using compiz fusion and beryl for some time now, but ever since I made the switch to compiz fusion I have noticed a very annoying “bug”.  When you try to move a window anywhere near the top of the screen it is repositioned to the very bottom, or simply sits at the top of the screen wobbling incessantly.

I tried a couple of different things to try and get it to stop the first being to disable window snapping, but for some reason that just didn’t work. Luckily trusty google was to the rescue and has provided me with a great fix for this silly problem.

I wish I could take full credit for this but I really have to thank TechBlog for this one.  The issue really comes down to a property of the wobbly window plugin called “Snap Inverted”.  Disabling this property gets rid of this annoying behaviour and makes compiz fusion work with windows properly. The steps for fixing this are rather simple, so without further adu let’s get to it.  These steps work with Ubuntu Gutsy, but should work fine with any Distro runing compiz fusion and having the compiz-settings-manager installed.

1. Goto System -> Preferences -> Advanced Desktop Effects Settings.
2. Scroll down to the “Effects” Section and Click the “Wobbly Windows” plugin.
3. Under the “General” tab you will see as your first option “Snap Inverted” simply uncheck the checkbox beside it to disable.
4. You are now done, close down the Compiz Setting Manager and enjoy.

I hope this helps anyone getting really annoyed with this behaviour.  Hopefully compiz will disable this property by default in upcoming releases.

kungfuice Linux, Technology, Ubuntu

OK finally Adobe has decided to release Flash Player 9 in Beta Form for Linux. I’ve decided to throw together a quick how to on how to install it on Ubuntu Edgy. This should hold true however for most flavours of Ubuntu as well.

1. Open Synaptic Package manager
2. Click on the search button and type “Flash”
3. Click the box beside any of the currently installed flash-plugins, this should be flashplugin-nonfree, and select for a complete removal
4. Now click apply and let Synaptic remove the package
5. We are now ready to download and install the flashplayer 9 plugin
6. Point your browser to “http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer9.html”, and select the “Download Installer for Linux” link. Remember where you save this file because we’ll need it next. Close down your browser when you are done since we don’t want it open while we install the plugin
7. Open your favourite terminal and navigate to the directory which you saved the plugin, and execute the following command:

tar -vxzf FP9_plugin_beta_101806.tar.gz

8. You will now have a directory called flash-player-plugin-9.0.1.21.55 or something similar, navigate to this directory
9. You will now need to copy the library “libflashplayerplugin.so” to “/usr/lib/firefox/plugins/”, execute the following command:

sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/

10. Navigate to your favourite flash enabled website and enjoy having the latest and greatest flash player.

I hope this helps, please post if you have any problems or further questions. I hope this helps everyone out.

Update …
Treviño from Ubuntu Forums was kind enough to pack the player into a package. You can now get the files from his repository at http://3v1n0.tuxfamily.org/dists/dapper/3v1n0/

Download the deb and install it

kungfuice Computers, Technology, Ubuntu

If you have been noticing messages in your logs about unknown key presses I’ve found a solution that gets rid of them.

I had been getting messages like this in my messages log and wanted to get rid of them

kernel: [17204628.240000] atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, ode 0xd9 on isa0060/serio0).
[17204628.240000] atkbd.c: Use ’setkeycodes e059 keycode’ to make it known.

[17204603.280000] atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0×81 on isa0060/serio0).
[17204603.280000] atkbd.c: Use ’setkeycodes e001 keycode keycode’ to make it know.

These errors were randomly generated when I used any keys on my keyboard. There are documented cases of having similar problems with media keys on laptops but nothing to do with regular keys.

I decided that since I was not having any problems using my keyboard that I would simply assign these keys to some empty key code to appease the system.

This is how you do it:
Edit The File:”/usr/share/hotkey-setup/generic.hk”

sudo gedit /usr/share/hotkey-setup/generic.hk

Place these lines in the file, remember to use the values of the keys that appear in your logs, don’t just copy and paste

setkeycodes e059 254
setkeycodes e001 255

Now simply restart the hotkey init script by doing:

sudo /etc/init.d/hotkey-setup restart

Voila those messages should stop appearing in your logs

kungfuice Computers, Technology, Ubuntu