Tag Archives: Ubuntu

A long hiatus, nothing considering geological times :)

The so called summer season has started here. First day of vacation. I fresh installed Ubuntu 14.10 still in development, running great, and am testing out LXDE-Qt on top of lubuntu 14.04 which was not that of a good idea. Will probably have to fresh install over again and go for a pure LXQt environment. This laptop’s battery died last year, so it became a laptop on a leash for tests.

The Ubuntu Forums are keeping me busy, I’ve always liked forums, these ones in particular. Not sure why, I like the place, the Staff team, the way people can get helped, the way I can help and learn in the process. It is a great learning resource to me. One command I got reminded of a few days ago : apt-cache madison which shows packages versions available from the repositories, even if not in the sources.list. Complementary to apt-cache policy :)

Tutorial of the Month – May 2010

Long time no see..

I’ll revive this nice project as a monthly review of tutorials published in the Tutorials & Tips section on ubuntuforums.

For May 2010, we’ll highlight ibuclaw‘s “HowTO: Sudoers Configuration“. Permissions on Linux are sometimes difficult to understand by new users and this guide is a very good way to start. The subject has already been covered extensively by many forums, blogs and wikis, why point out at this particular one?

Well, first because it’s ibuclaw’s, formerly known as tinivole (you will always be tinivole to me, no matter what ;)).
Second, it’s built on user cases dedicated to walking new users through the sudoers file.
Third, it gets into some fine permissions and aliases, which make the sudoers file quite powerful.
Last but not least, even if the thread can be seen as a little old, tiniv.. ibuclaw will be happy to give you support.

Have fun reading, and please do not break anything :)

Reference

UF ToM thread
HowTO: Sudoers Configuration

UF Tutorial of the Week – June 1, 2009.

This week, we step again out of the Tutorial & Tips section of the forums, to highlight psyke83‘s gigantic HOWTO: Jaunty Intel Graphics Performance Guide. Intel graphic hardware is quite popular and Intel drivers code has been extensively developed. Jaunty has some problems with the latest intel drivers or acceleration method. You can choose one of the three proposed methods, from safe, to optimal and the always risky bleeding edge.

We hope this will help ou with Intel video chips, please feel free to post your questions in the thread, psyke83 is actively supporting his tutorial.

See you next week !

Reference

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7365345&postcount=54

UF Tutorial of the Week – May 18, 2009

This week’s featured tutorial is “Comprehensive ndiswrapper troubleshooting guide” by pytheas22. This tutorial is well written, regularly updated and supported, and has been very popular. If you have troubles configuring ndiswrapper even thought it properly installed, this is the place to look at. Wireless is just a few steps away!

Ubuntuforums Tutorial of the Week revived.

A year and a half ago, K.Mandla started a nifty Tutorial of the Week project. The project goal is described here. Basically, we try to push forward tutorials that are clearly written and well supported by the author. If you wish to have an idea of what we expect for tutorials, please see here.

K.Mandla has moved to other fun projects, you can still follow them on Motho ke motho ka botho :)
That was quite unfortunate for us as UF team, and in particular for the Tutorial of the Week. I dearly miss you, K.Mandla.

After much discussions about refining the tutorials review process (this takes time, skills and dedication), I decided to dive into reviving the project that was missed by many members. I’ll do my best, although I know I’ll never get near to K.Mandla’s art..

Please feel free to nominate tutorials here or in the UF discussion thread, that will help us, thanks!

I’ll write later about the tutorial review process. We have quite a few ideas, but we do not have a consensus yet.

So, Tada! please have a look at this week’s featured thread:

HowTo: Install the very latest MPlayer under Jaunty Jackalope by andrew.46

This is a nifty tutorial that will show you how to successfully compile the subversion MPlayer under Jaunty Jackalope. For memory, ubuntu-freak‘s “Comprehensive Multimedia & Video Howto” was the Tutorial of the Week for October 06, 2008 and should be used if you do not wish to compile applications.

This tutorial is very well presented, and, most of all, supported. You can even browse a recent tutorial from the same author, “Top 10 Tricks and Tips for the svn MPlayer” that focuses on MPlayer usage. Long hours of fun ahead!

Known Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope bugs with workarounds

With every new release, frodon starts a thread to gather known bugs and their workarounds. Please feel free to add to the UF thread if you know of a bug that meets the thread requirements, thanks :)

Medibuntu: non-free-codecs for Jaunty

The non-free-codecs from the Medibuntu repositories package provides codecs that are not distributed by Ubuntu.

  • Please first install the ubuntu-restricted-extras package from the multiverse ubuntu repository.
  • Add the Medibuntu repositories to your sources.list: 
    ## Medibuntu.
deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ jaunty free non-free
  • Add the key to your keyring, reload the sources.list file and install the package:

    wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install non-free-codecs

Enjoy!

Edit : If you get an error with gpg that cannot get the key, please run :
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2EBC26B60C5A2783
Should work..

Kill X session in Jaunty Jackalope

The usual CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE has been disabled in Jaunty, please read the Jaunty Jackalope technical overview:

Ctrl-Alt-Backspace is now disabled, to reduce issues experienced by users who accidentally trigger the key combo. Users who do want this function can enable it in their xorg.conf, or via the command dontzap –disable.

You can use ALTGR + SYSRQ + K or ALTGR + PRINTSCREEN + K instead.

If you want to enable the previous behavior, you can edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and add the following lines at the end:

Section "ServerFlags"
	Option 		"DontZap"	"off"	
EndSection

If you feel like voicing yourself in an already long thread, please go here ;)