Snowulf - Linux

Changing timezone in under Ubuntu & Debian

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0800

In the old days of running Linux, I used to change timezone of a machine by running time --set= at the command line and simply including the timezone code (PST). These days, Debian, Ubuntu, and the other similar derivatives have made life so much easier. If you want to change the timezone, all you need to do is run (as root):

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

It will pop up a little config screen, asking you where you are and will summarily set your timezone. These is much easier than the old way since you don't even have to know your own timezone code (though... who wouldn't?).

Another day, another server migration

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0800

Sometimes I feel like all I do in my job and personal life is shuffle data around from one location to another. Last week it was re-installing Windows 7 on my two daily-use machines. This last weekend it was completing a server migration. Of course, I had just completed a migration 4 months ago.

To clarify, at the beginning of December I received an email from my hosting company letting me know that my VPS host was to be moved. At that point in time we were heavy into our project and I summarily ignored it. Not too long after that I got an email saying that my VPS had been replicated over to a new location and to check it out since I only had 3 days before they shut down the old server. Fun times, migrate all the data changes, make sure everything is functioning properly and then change the DNS. Not really a big deal but of course we were busier than hell with work.

A few weeks ago I warmed up a VPS with a new hosting provider. I wanted to play with Gallery 3 beta and the old VPS was running Ubuntu 8.04 with an old, old, old version of PHP. I had heard good things about this new company, and they offered Ubuntu 9.04, so I tried it out. In the end, I decided against using Gallery 3 and went over to SmugMug to host Snowulf Photography, but kept this new VPS. So I did yet another server migration (it feels like I do one every week) to this new setup.

All the sites I host have been moved and so far everything is working out. Really the only troublesome portion of a migration is dealing with MySQL. I exported everything from the old host which was running 5.0 (I believe) and the new one is running 5.1. They changed some of the setup in the `mysql` database, especially the `users` table which has caused some issues. In the end it got scraped and rebuilt by hand.

In the move I did some upgrades, like the blog software (Serendipity) and other minor fixes. So if you see something funny, odd, strange or generally broken, please let me know.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 Review

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:00:00 -0800

I've got an ASUS Eee PC 1000, and it is a fine little device. Originally it came with Xandros, which quickly became Ubuntu. I was especially happy futzing about with UNR 9.04. Unfortunately for Linux, Windows 7 was coming out, so I wanted to try that out on the netbook. I like Windows 7, but it wasn't designed specially for Netbooks; I find that it runs a lot of background processes that slows the machine down. So with the release of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, it was time to re-install again! Of course, I wasn't going to install the regular Ubuntu when there was the Netbook remix available. I have written my review in the form of pros/cons. Much of my comparison is based on UNR 9.04 (what I remember of it) and Windows.

Continue reading "Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 Review"

Benchmarking: Ubuntu 9.04 i386 vs LPIA on Eee PC 1000

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 06 May 2009 10:00:00 -0700

==Background==
The other week Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty was officially released, to my great enjoyment! Of course, I'd already been running it for a while on my ASUS Eee PC 1000. The one issue I had with it was that the Ubuntu Netbook Remix Alpha that I downloaded was for i386, and the Eee runs an Intel Atom processor (it was compatible, but not the same). I had assumed that once 9.04 was officially released, they'd put out a LPIA (Low Power Intel Atom) optimized version of the aforementioned remix.

I downloaded the Netbook Remix on release day, but didn't notice until a few days later that the download was for i386. The image file name was "ubuntu-9.04-netbook-remix-i386.img". I thought this was extremely odd since the UNR download page says 'What do I need to install Ubuntu Netbook Remix?' and then 'An Intel Atom processor'. Very strange indeed. So I went and asked about it on the Ubuntu Forums. As it turns out I was not the only one that noticed this little "issue". Later I also found a bug report for this problem and the reply from one of the mucky mucks of Ubuntu stated:

i386 was a safer bet for the first release of UNR, also having an i386 and a lpia version double the QA time; however we will consider this idea for 9.10, there are some issues with lpia still.

So.... No LPIA version for the first official release of UNR. Granted there was a UNR for 8.10, but it was sort of hacked together after the fact. I can accept that. After all Ubuntu doesn't release for a ton of platforms like Debian does. But the question came up in the forum thread, is LPIA optimized code really necessary? Some claimed that LPIA gave them an hour more of battery time, other claimed it was crap. This, of course, hearkens back to the early days of x86 versus x64 operating systems. In fact I found an article about 32bit versus 64bit on 9.04 which I ended up using as a base for my own series of tests.

==The Tests==
I installed Ubuntu 9.04 Alternate i386 and Ubuntu 9.04 Alternate LPIA on my Eee PC 1000, both with the most minimal installs. I then proceeded to run the following tests:

Convert an Album of MP3's into Ogg Vorbis
Bunzip2 the Linux 2.6.29.2 kernel tarball
Untar the kernel
Compile the Kernel
Bzip2 a 400+mb ISO of Wikipeida

==Results==
===i386===
uname -a : Linux happyfeet 2.6.28-11-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:57:59 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
dir2ogg : 9mn 45s
bunzip2 : 0mn 54s
tar -xf : 1mn 51s
make : 196m 18s
bzip2 : 7m 6s

===LPIA===
uname -a : Linux happyfeet 2.6.28-11-lpia #42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:56:10 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
dir2ogg : 9mn 58s
bunzip2 : 1mn 1s
tar -xf : 1mn 28s
make : 163mn 12s
bzip2 : 7mn 16s

===Differences===
dir2ogg: LPIA was 3% Slower
bunzip2: LPIA was 12% Slower
tar -xf: LPIA was 21% Faster
make: LPIA was 17% Faster
bzip2: LPIA was 3% Slower

==Summary==
The test was fairly inconclusive. With the exception of compiling the kernel (which took 30minutes less on LPIA), the difference in times between i386 and LPIA were statistically insignificant (for dir2ogg and bzip2). Frankly the tar -xf and bunzip2 tests took so little time that any minor flux on the machine (say a cron job) could easily skew the test in either direction. The kernel compile was, in my book, significantly faster. I think LPIA is worthy of a trial run on my Eee. Of course I noticed, as the bug stated, that there are a few issues. For example the wireless did not work out of the box like it did with the i386 Alpha I previously installed. This may be a quick & easy fix, but so far I haven't had the time nor energy to actually fiddle with the machine.

For those that are interested, after the jump I've got more details on exactly what commands I executed for the tests

Continue reading "Benchmarking: Ubuntu 9.04 i386 vs LPIA on Eee PC 1000"

Untangle - Don't bother

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:00:00 -0700

Recently, we've had an upwelling of spam at the office. The most problematic component of which is the fact that all the text is gibberish with only the images being "Spam". If your spam filter doesn't have an OCR plugin, it's not going to do a very good job stopping the spam - which is exactly where I was. To make a long story short, getting an OCR plugin for my implementation of SpamAssassin was going to be a royal pain in the ass, so I figured I'd give some alternatives a try.

I spent a little time looking around at anti-spam appliances before I remembered Untangle, an open source gateway. I've run into them a few times at places like LinuxWorld, but never really had a chance to give them a try. Their gateway offers a plethora of "applications" you can install with a single click, such as: spam blocker, web filter, firewall, VPN, and routing. The reason why I was never that inclined to give them a try was because I had all the features I needed & wanted already built into my current firewall (with the exception of QoS - not to be confused with Quantum of Solace, which is just awesome in general). Now that my spam blocker wasn't up to the task, I figured I'd give theirs a try. Plus if it worked well, I could use it to replace my current gateway/firewall completely.

But... I never got that far. I can't even tell you how well the spam blocker works, because I could never get Untangle running properly. I installed Untagle onto a VMWare image with enough system specs to make it happy, and 2 network interfaces. I installed it in Router/Gateway mode as that is how I'd end up using (as opposed to the "Transparent" mode which makes me nervous).

I suppose a majority of the problems I have with Untagle comes in the form of the forum goers. The people I talked with essentially told me that the spam blocking "just works transparently". When I tried to explain to them that you can't go modifying packets after they've already been sent (you can't go marking emails as spam until you've read the entire email) and therefor it must store the entire message (if nothing, in buffer), they gave me more "it just works transparently" crap. After that I tried to get help on actually getting the damn software to work. Ya know, accept emails and send them along (however the hell it was suppose to work, I didn't care at this point in time). I got some info about it, and a lot of lip. As frustrated as I was at this point in time, I followed the directions on the linked wiki page... and it still didn't work.

Apparently even with setting up port forwarding and installing the Firewall application to allow access to port 25, you're not allowed to access port 25. Kind of hard for a device to "just work transparently" when it is blocking access to the port. So after spending almost an entire day dicking around with the software and not even being able to forward emails through it (let alone anything else), I said "Fuck it". Untangle is supposed to be "point and click" software. If I'm reduced to SSH'ing into the box to flush IPtables just to get the machine to work halfway... I'm better off building the system myself. Which is EXACTLY what I'll do instead of EVER touching Untangle again.

Update 2009-05-01 20:13 UTC: Seems my Untangle thread friends found me. ROFLCOPTER!

Tethering my AT&T Tilt to the Eee PC

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:30:00 -0700

Car Geekery

As John was behind the wheel this past Saturday, I had many hours to burn; thus, I decided to try my hand at getting tethering working. I was attempting to tether my AT&T Tilt (HTC Kaiser II) with my Eee PC 1000 running Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04. When I was buddy breathing (IE Charging) the Tilt off the Eee PC the night before, I had noticed that it showed up as a wired network connection to the Ubuntu - tinkering ensued. I spent about 2.5 hours google'ing around under PIE (Portable Internet Explorer... sigh) on the Tilt while trying to find an answer. This is especially difficult on a tiny screen; visiting sites not designed for a mobile device; and then of course there's the cell service dropping periodically.

Anyway, I plugged in the phone and found out that it did indeed act like an Ethernet adapter to the computer, and even provided it an IP address via DHCP (169.something). I could ping the phone, but that was about it. I had remembered previously a "modem" application of some sort on the device so I found it, WModem Modem (Under Start > Settings > Connections) and launched that. Whenever that was enabled, the phone stopped providing network service and Ubuntu picked it up as an iPaq on ttyUSB0. I spent a good long while tinkering around here with the assumption that I could simply dial the phone like any normal modem. I found out that under Jaunty if I right clicked Network Manager and clicked Edit Connections there was a tab titled Mobile Broadband. I added some connections; thankfully, they had pre-made ones for AT&T and AT&T w/ Tethering. That was cool... so easy... but... I couldn't dial them. I'm not a newb, but I don't know what the new dialer is called apparently (and many applications are hidden in Netbook Remix, as far as I can tell). I spent a longggg time trying this approach but eventually gave up, being unable to dial the connections.

As I had exhausted all possible google's that I could think of centering on Ubuntu, I switched to the phone. Then came the magical google 'internet connection sharing at&t tilt'. As it turns out the HTC Kaiser II comes with an application called "Internet Connection Sharing" (which I had seen mentioned elsewhere), but it is removed by AT&T and replaced with that god awful "WModem Modem". Luckily for me (and you) the handy hackers at XDA Developers have ripped it out and provided the cab for download!

You can get the application on the XDA Forum (Login Required) or by my local mirror.

It is damn simple to use, and worked like a charm for me. Download the .cab to your device (via computer then ActiveSync, or just PIE it up directly from your device). Install the CAB. Launch Internet Sharing (Start > Programs). Make sure your USB cable is already plugged in. Click "Connect" and enjoy. For me, it kicks out the Phone<->Computer connection momentarily and comes back with the computer assigned to a 192.168 address. At this point the computer is online using the phone as a gateway. Shiny!!! While I didn't conduct many "benchmarks" other than actually using the connection (offline Gmail is extremely handy for its flaky connection mode), I can say that when I did an apt-get install (while in full 3G coverage in Sacramento) I got a max of 100KB/s download; I was floored. Granted the average was much slower, but 20-50KB/s for a mobile connection is still awesome. It was enough bandwidth to pull up and watch the Caltrans Live Traffic Cameras, which were helpful for our trip, but that is a story for another post.

MKV's & Ubuntu: Redux

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:00:00 -0700

For all (5) of our regular blog followers, you already know that I've installed Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Alpha on to my Eee PC 1000. It is running a Low-Power Intel Atom (LPIA) processor at 1.6Ghz. It is not exactly a fast little devil, but it does a decent job for most things you'd want to do on a netbook. One of the things I do, is watch videos on it and one of the perennial problems with doing so under Linux has been poor MKV (H.264) support. In fact I wrote about this a year ago.

On the Eee PC non-MKV videos generally work well. Occasionally, they'll have render troubles (due to lack of processing power), but for the most part, they work fine. What surprised me though was the fact that many MKV videos I've downloaded have also worked well, or at least much better than I recall. When I found that some MKV files didn't have any trouble at all playing, frankly I was shocked. I wasn't sure if it was something in 9.04 or what was going on, so I had a co-worker test on his 8.10 box and they also played well. Now I've found some videos, generally the ones that look like they are higher quality (therefor require more CPU time for de/compression) and have high-motion action scenes, that don't fare so well. Even with that being the case, turning off SpeedStep (so the Eee PC is stuck at 1.6Ghz) seems to remove a lot of the issues. On one of these "problem" videos for me, I had the co-worker test and he reported that everything went smoothly. He said that if he didn't know about Linux's sordid history with MKV's, this video would give him no reason to believe otherwise.

Info on machines after the break...

My previous post was in March of 2008, which means I was most likely using 7.10. It is possible the MKV issue or base line decoding algorithm was "improved" in 8.04 or 8.10 and has been tweaked in the last year.
Continue reading "MKV's & Ubuntu: Redux"

ASUS Eee PC 1000, Ubuntu Jaunty and You!

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:17:30 -0800

If you follow my twitter feed, then you know over this past weekend I got an ASUS Eee PC 1000. In fact, I spend a good deal of time tweeting about it on Monday when it arrived. I thought I'd spend a little time sharing my impressions of the device and some of the tinkering that I've done with it over the last few days (it lasted about an hour before it got reformatted). Please note: Most of this post is in the extended body, so to read it all you need to click the more button. In the past I haven't used this feature much, but this post is really long.

First the system specifications:
10.2" LCD @ 1024x600
1.6 Ghz Intel Atom
1 GB RAM
40 GB SSD (More correctly: 1x 8 GB and 1x 32 GB)
Comes pre-installed with Xandros Linux (of the Debian family)
1.3 Megapixel Webcam
Stereo Microphones (shows as 1 device, used for noise canceling)
~5 Hour battery
SD Card reader
802.11b/g/n Wireless
10/100/1000 Ethernet
Bluetooth
Multitouch trackpad
Ports: 3 USB, 1 VGA, 1 power, 1 microphone, 1 headphone, Network

Hardware Review
My first impressions is that this is a nice little package. My unit came in black and I think it looks good; granted it is a glossy surface so it picks up fingerprints. The accent pieces, like the buttons above the keyboard and the mouse buttons, have a brushed steel look (though they are probably plastic), which I think looks really classy. The screen is nice and bright at its brightest setting, though it doesn't get that dark. The buttons on the mice are a little tough for my preference, but it isn't really a deal breaker, especially since you can just tap the pad instead (which I have the tendency to tap really hard). Additionally, the important thing is, it is LIGHT, 3 pounds and change with the standard battery.

They keyboard is advertised as 92% full size which I think is a fair description, though some compromises have been made in the name of fitting into the form factor. My only real problem with the keyboard is that directly below the Enter key is the Up arrow - right where I expect the Shift key to be. The Shift key has been moved to the right of the aforementioned Up arrow. Since I have a preference to use that right shift almost exclusively, I hit that Up arrow by mistake A LOT when I first started on the device. But like any keyboard that is slightly different, it takes a little getting use to, then it is all good. In fact, I am typing this entry up on the Eee PC itself and I'm not hitting the Up arrow by mistake nearly as often (and I find myself using the left shift some, which is actually a good thing for me to do).

Overall, I'm pleased with how it is designed.

Semi-update: I got to take a look at Brion's Dell Mini 9, the shift key/arrow key setup is the same on his machine as it is on my Eee PC. So I'm under the impression that this is actually a fairly common design for netbooks. It makes sense, since most "regular" keyboards have the arrow keys off on their own little island and that wouldn't fit in such a small form factor.

Continue reading "ASUS Eee PC 1000, Ubuntu Jaunty and You!"

ComputerWorld / TechWorld / Researchers - All freaking idiots

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:00:00 -0800

I saw a Tweet not too long ago that caught my eye. It links to the article: "Amazon cloud could be hijacked to harvest BitTorrent files, researcher says". The synopsis of which is that researchers have "discovered" a way to use Amazon's EC2 service as a way to BitTorrent, through the use of software called TorrentFlux.

WOW. WHAT A FUCKING REVELATION. YOU CAN USE A COMPUTER TO BITTORRENT FILES. OMG. THIS IS THE BIGGEST NEWS SINCE SLICED BREAD. You (ComputerWorld) fucking morons. Of course you can fucking use Amazon EC2 service for BitTorrent. IT'S A FUCKING COMPUTER. Just because it is in the "Cloud" or actually a virtual machine, doesn't make it any different than any other computer in the world. I, personally, use TorrentFlux on my home network. I have it setup on my router/firewall/server machine because it makes more sense to be on the network edge. Plus, that machine runs 24/7, where as my desktops or laptops might not. And yes, I can administrate what I'm downloading and uploading remotely. It is just a PHP application that is an overlay for standard Linux based torrent software.

"It's not clear that O'Connor's clever work-out represents anything new in principle". No, it's very fucking clear, you fucking morons. There is nothing new here. People have been doing this for YEARS with dedicated servers & VPSs alike. The cloud is not different. Except for the fact that it is a shit load more expensive to do it through EC2 than it is to use a VPS, from say... TekTonic.

"This means, says Hobson, that hackers and other interested parties can simply use a prepaid (and anonymous) debit card to pay the $75 a month fee to Amazon and harvest BitTorrent applications at high speed with little or no chance of detection". Well first off, they _can_ detect you. Amazon controls the network, they can watch the port usage and the traffic. If Comcast can clamp down on Torrents using Sandvine, I'm fairly sure Amazon can do the same. More importantly. YOU FUCKING FAIL AT MATH YOU FUCKING RETARDS.. Let's take a quick look at the EC2 Pricing sheet. Small Instance, $0.10/hr ** 732 hours/mo = $73.20 . Ok, We're right at their number already... but oh wait... you gotta pay for bandwidth. Oops, must have fucking forgot that... let's say you transfer in 200GB (I can use more than that personally, but we'll use it) ** $0.10 GB/in = $20. Now we've got to assume you're seeding something else - otherwise you won't get anything - with a fair number being 50% of your download. So 100GB out ** $0.17 GB/out = $17. Then you want to actually get the files you've downloaded. So that's the full 200GB ** $0.17 GB/out = $34. Total that all up: $144.50 - ComputerWorld is off by almost 100%! Now those numbers don't even include the fact that the small EC2 instance only has 160GB of storage. So we'll pretend that you've offloaded and deleted some of your downloads mid-month. But what if you didn't? You'd need to use EBS. 200GB ** $0.10 GB/Mo-Provisioned = $20. Plus $0.10 per 1 million I/O requests. I won't bother estimating that, but you get the picture.

Yes. You can use Amazon EC2 to Torrent. You can use any internet connected computer to Torrent, YES, remotely. TorrentFlux does it great for Linux machines, but uTorrent has a web server feature and it runs on Windows & Mac. Oh, and one last thing ComputerWorld/TechWorld - why don't you fucking mention the LEGAL uses of BitTorrent. Companies use it to distribute software & patches (Blizzard). The entire Linux community uses it to get out ISOs of their distributions. I could just as easily use an EC2 instance to setup a Torrent seeder specifically for legitimate software distribution. Yes, I'd be paying for the upload bandwidth, but that could be much cheaper (and faster) than using a CDN like Akami or CloudFront, especially for larger crowds or larger files.

Truly non-interactive / unattended apt-get install

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:00:00 -0800

I've recently begun tinkering with Amazon Web Services (specifically their EC2 service) and RightScale. The major difference between these "Cloud" computing platforms and others is that the "instance" (i.e A running virtual machine) is temporary. Once it is shut down, all the data is gone. Additionally, the RightScale (and fairly common) way about going things is to use a "clean" machine image and script the install of the specific packages you need on Launch. So you can use the same image for an Application server, or DB server, or mail server - just have their respective packages installed on boot.

For Debian/Ubuntu (I happen to be using Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex), you have the joy of apt-get. If you run apt-get with -q -y, it will assume "yes" to everything (and do it quietly). Now the only major problem is that some packages ask post install questions using whiptail (The blue configuration screen). In my case it it was MySQL demanding a root password. But I was informed of an easy way around that, exporting a value before install.

Below is an example of what to run:

# export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
# apt-get -q -y install mysql-server-5.0

This will install and start MySQL without so much as a peep until it is all done. Of course you get a blank root password which is a security issue, but that is easy to fix later. Piece of cake, if you happen to know about these magical exports.

Awstats versus Google Analytics

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 15:59:35 -0700

So for along time now I've been running both Awstats and Google Analytics on my domain here. Mainly I watch Google Analytics because it provides me with much more "real" data. That being said Awstats has its uses too. Today I've been taking a look at both of them and I though I'd share what I've found.

First off, the easiest thing to spot in my Analytics records is September 28, 2007. You may wonder what is so special about that, nothing really. Other than a bunch of minor technical glitches turning a submission to Digg, into a fairly major story. I wrote up a story titled "Password Security - Or Lack There of" and sent it off to Digg. The submission managed to hit the front page which isn't that big of a deal, but then the Digg servers glitched out. For several hours the story got stuck at or near the top of Digg. It gathered 1500+ diggs and even hit the top 10 for a while also. The main problem was that it sent more than 7,000 visitors to my blog over those few hours. Needless to say Apache crashed several times.

One of the features that I enjoy with Analytics is the ability to compare 2 time periods. I've compared the first 2 weeks of October '08 with '07. All in all, traffic is more or less the same. I attribute this to the fact that there are really very few regular readers of my blog. It especially helps that I've been a slacker and not writing regularly for the last few months. I do get most of my traffic to older articles that are helpful to people. MKV's on Ubuntu, OpenVPN on Vista, Symantec Uninstall Password, and Daemon Tools / Itunes - are the articles that seem to stay on top generally.

As a comparison of Analytics versus Awstats. For the last month Analytics says I've been getting about 22-65 visits a day. Awstats says I have 3463 total for the month so far. My "hit" count on Awstats is even more insane. The last 6 months have all been in excess of 55,000 hits a month. Now, I know there aren't that many people stopping by - I simply get hammered by bots _A LOT_. For a while I was taking an active role in fighting them, but it is simply too much work. I even went as far as blocking all but 12 countries in the entire world. Sadly that only drove the hit count to 25,000 a month. Oh well.

The one major advantage Awstats has over Google Analytics is the fact that is reads the actual HTTP logs. It can tell me a lot more about the stuff that happens that Google Analytics will never see. Plus I have history in Awstats going all the way back to April 2006 (Versus September 2007 in Analytics).

And hopefully I'll get around to writing more useful techy stuff in the near future. Maybe I'll do some example codes from the PHP I've been working on.

MKV's & Ubuntu - The Saga continues

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Fri, 23 May 2008 10:52:48 -0700

(yea, slacking on the blog posting. I fail).

I still haven't found a fix on this particular little topic. Of course that doesn't surprise me seeing as how no one else has an answer either (other than the good ol "It's just not Linux compatible"). I really hope one of these days that someone gets it in gear and figures it out. Recently, I was watching a 720p anime episode that was only 227 MB. The graphics still chomped really hard. I ended up having to go into Task Manager, nice'ing VLC up to max priority and then reducing the window to about 1/4 my screen. Not really taking advantage of all that 720p quality, but at least it was watchable - still not great... but watchable.

I swear I've downloaded every video playing package on Ubuntu and tried them all without getting anywhere. I even tried to install CCCP & MPC through Wine. Didn't work.

6 Ubuntu Usability Problems

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:00:00 -0700

I was talking with Ben earlier today about Ubuntu and we got into a discussion of usability problems. They aren't necessarily major issues, but range from annoyances to "duh?". I figured I'd discuss them, and for a few of them I have Ubuntu Brainstorm links.

Mounting of unclean NTFS drives (Brainstorm #4994). This is a pet peeve of mine. All of my external hard drive drives are formated in NTFS - big deal. I also have a bad habit of not going through the proper unmount/eject sequence under Windows. Its Plug-and-Pray after all, right? So why not Unplug-and-pray? Besides, I always made sure whatever I was copying to/from was done before I yanked it. Now, plugging in a drive that wasn't properly dismounted isn't a problem. Under Ubuntu it is another story entirely. It pops up this message that is about a paragraph long telling you that it can't mount the drive, but you can modify your fstab file, or execute a certain command on the command line.

This is one of those things that should have been a "duh" moment when writing up the help text for the pop-up error. Instead of telling the user how to do it on the command line - how about giving them another button? Maybe the button says "Force Mount" and gives them a little warning about potential file loss. I'm sorry, but these aren't the days of DOS any more. People aren't going to migrate from Windows to Linux en mass if they have to hit the command line on a regular basis.

Unmounting removed devices. Going with the trend I mentioned previously, I tend to yank drives without unmounting them first. I did this in Ubuntu recently and the drive stayed on my desktop. I right clicked and hit "Unmount" several times and it never did anything. Finally, I tried it on the command line and it gave me some error about not finding HAL info... I dunno why... might have something to do with the drive being UNPLUGGED. Regardless, I ran 'sudo umount -f /media/THUMBDRIVE' and away it went. Ben also noted that the /media/ directory that is automatically created, isn't removed - so I had to that by hand.

Again, not a problem for me, but a newbie would only be able to fix this with help - or a reboot. Personally, I believe that when the OS detected that this drive was yanked - it should have removed its entry. Baring that, when I couldn't unmount (and gnome gave no errors) - it should have popped up a box saying there was an error - and giving me the option to Force Unmount.

Key Bindings This is another pet peeve of mine because it drove me up the wall. I've been a Windows user for a long time (also using Linux, don't get me wrong), so I've got habits. Like Windows+M, Win+R, Win+L, etc. Try Win+M in a recent (reasonably stock) version of Ubuntu. Yea ... Your screen just inverted colors. Trippy, isn't it? It might be cool to look at, but it is annoying as all hell. So if you were to go into Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts - you wouldn't find this entry. It is in fact a Compiz feature - and you have to INSTALL the administrative tool for Compiz (who thought of that!?).

Ubuntu needs to consolidate all key bindings that aren't application specific into a single location - even if it is Compiz. It is totally unacceptable to have several locations for key bindings. Not to mention the fact that once you get Compiz to give up the key bindings you want (which aren't all in one screen, they are stuffed away into sub menu's for each effect type)... Windows Key doesn't work properly by default. You have to go into the Keyboard layout preferences and change Windows key to act as "Super".

Monitor switching on laptops (Brainstorm #7846) This one is fairly self explanatory. I am one of many that use their laptop "docked" fairly often (read: every day) with an external monitor. Now I can move my screen from the laptop to the external display using nvidia-settings - but it's not user friendly. I know the process now, so I can do it fairly quickly - but why isn't there something very simple like in... well... Windows? Additionally, if I have the display pushed over to an external monitor, and I close the lid of the laptop - it turns off the screen. This is... cool... when the laptop is running normally - but when "Docked" this is silly.

Checking for Solutions (Brainstorm #7817) This is something that would be more of a nicety rather than a full fledged problem. But why not have an optional process that can scan core dumps, scan logs, scan hardware, etc and check a database of known issues and fixes. Wouldn't it be nice if you could scan your system and it would pop back saying "Hey, we've detected your X hardware doesn't work. This problem has been fixed with Y update." or "A workaround for this problem is known, please visit THISURL".

First Boot Tour(Brainstorm #7768) I know some people gasp in horror from the thought of putting in something like Windows XP first boot video/tour - but I think it would be a good thing. Have some easy explanations for Windows/Mac/First Time users. Heck, you could make a tour for each type of user. Just enough to get them into the system, understand where the programs are located and what software comes pre-loaded. Make it easy to skip for those of us who have used Ubuntu before - and everyone should be happy.

One additional thought. Have the installer ask if the user would like Ubuntu customized to be more like Windows. I know Linux zealots are going to try to kill me for this one. The typical "BUT LINUX ISN'T WINDOWS" crap. I know that people like Linux because it's not Windows. But even I would appreciate things being configured just slightly more like I'm used to. I'M NOT SAYING MAKE LINUX JUST LIKE WINDOWS. But why can't we get a default key mapping setup for Windows users that like Windows? Just as an example. Just a few simply changes would help newbies (who don't know how, or aren't willing to go through the crap I am to change key maps) be just a little less scared of this "Ew-Bunn-Too".

Just a thought.

Ubuntu 8.04 Day 2

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:53:28 -0700

I'm writing this towards the end of my second full day of use on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron (Beta 5) on the Dell Precision M6300. (You know I just write all this out so its easier to google). I have to say that everything is going relatively smoothly. I've got a few different bits I'll run down for everyone.

Kernel - Last night there was a new kernel pushed out ( 2.6.24-16 ). I installed and rebooted per normal - except my machine didn't come back up. This, of course, caused me more than a little concern. I rebooted several times - but it simply didn't work. So I gave up and booted back to the last working kernel (2.6.24-16). Today there were more kernel related updates, so I installed them and tried them out. This time the machine booted - but failed to start the X server properly. So once again back to -15 . This is a development build - so its not surprising that this might happen. No harm, no foul.

Hibernate - Now I've always thought that Linux's support for niceties like suspend and hibernate were lacking at best. Not that this bothered me. Regardless, my view will be changing as hibernate works like a charm.

PulseAudio - This was one of the major features that I really wanted to try out. I spent a little while setting it up properly and tinkering - and it works. I have to say I'm amazingly impressed. I've got multiple audio streams!!! I can play a game and listen to music at the same time, or I can mute music and watch a youtube video. So glorious. On top of that its got a network streaming functionality. You can send and receive audio streams across the network to other PulseAudio systems. I tested this briefly and it worked as advertised. I could send the audio (all the systems audio) across the network from my laptop to the machine hooked up to my sound system. This is going to be an amazingly handy feature down the line.

Volume Control - This is the one problem I have right now. I'm not sure if it is the laptop or Hardy. Basically when the volume is at 100% - its very loud (as it should be). At 70% is whisper quiet. At 50% it is dead silent. This is annoying. Granted the sound works, so I'm grateful of that - but I've lost that fine granular volume control. I've been hunting for ways to fix it - but no dice so far. I even posted on the Ubuntu Forums with no luck.

Installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron

nospam@example.com (Jon) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:40:21 -0700

You might be asking yourself "Is he a glutton for punishment? Didn't he just install Gutsy?". I wouldn't blame you. Yes, I enjoy pain - thats why I'm the IT Manager - because my own computer problems aren't enough for me, I want everyone else's problems too.

As it were, I'm being "traded" laptops. A co-worker decided that the laptop they had was too big so I'm giving them the smaller D620 I have in exchange for their M6300. I figured I was going to have to upgrade to Ubuntu 8.04 here shortly, so I just installed it straight away. So far it's going fine. Doesn't seem all that much different from Gutsy. There are some nice changes in Hardy - but I really haven't gotten to fiddling with most of the "cool features" yet, with the exception of PulseAudio. I did get that up and running and let me say... having the ability to stream audio from more than one application at the same time is AWESOME.