LinuxQuestions.org - Blogs - flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/ LinuxQuestions.org offers a free Linux forum where Linux newbies can ask questions and Linux experts can offer advice. Topics include security, installation, networking and much more. en Tue, 18 Jun 2013 06:40:01 GMT vBulletin 60 https://lqo-thequestionsnetw.netdna-ssl.com/questions/images/misc/rss.jpg LinuxQuestions.org - Blogs - flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/ Installation problem with Opera on HP-2133 running Ubuntu 12.04 http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/installation-problem-with-opera-on-hp-2133-running-ubuntu-12-04-35531/ Sat, 25 May 2013 04:04:31 GMT I recently installed Ubuntu 12.04 on my HP 2133 Mini-note PC, a small laptop. Gradually I have been installing the applications software that I use... I recently installed Ubuntu 12.04 on my HP 2133 Mini-note PC, a small laptop. Gradually I have been installing the applications software that I use on my desktops. Today, I installed the Opera browser, but with considerable difficulty. As of this date, the current stable version of Opera is 12.15. Opera is not an application that Ubuntu offers from its repository; so installation is not just a matter of running the Software Center (SC) and clicking on an install button, since Opera does not appear on the software listing.

So, I downloaded the Debian package for version 12.15 from www.opera.com. Usually, just clicking on the downloaded file from Nautilus starts SC and installs the package. But SC declined to install the package, indicating some sort of unrecoverable problem. So I downloaded 12.14 with the intention of upgrading if 12.14 installed. SC did install Opera 12.14 and it operated as expected.

However, when I proceeded to install the 12.15 update with the Update Manager (UM), UM failed to run and put up a dialog box indicating an erroneous entry in /etc/apt/sources.list and giving the line number where the problem occurred. With this error, UM declined to run further, so a few other scheduled updates could not be made either. Apparently, UM is totally disabled by any error in sources.list. So I commented out the erroneous line in sources.list, and then UM proceeded to install the other updates, but not Opera, of course.

I compared the sources.list line with that on my other machines and found no differences. The problematical line was

deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable

So I looked at the web site http://deb.opera.com. The instructions for Opera installation there said to enter the line:

deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable non-free #Opera Browser (final releases)

When I inserted this in sources.list, UM proceeded to install the 12.15 update without further problems. ]]> flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/installation-problem-with-opera-on-hp-2133-running-ubuntu-12-04-35531/ Computers do not produce high-fidelity music, do they? http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/computers-do-not-produce-high-fidelity-music-do-they-35475/ Fri, 26 Apr 2013 02:27:41 GMT Since my early 20s (40 years ago), I have been interested in high-fidelity equipment for music reproduction. To me, "high-fidelity equipment" means powerful amplifiers (100s of watts rms per channel), heavy big-box wooden speakers (several cubic feet each) capable of reproducing 30 hz to around 20 Khz with a flat frequency response and a bunch of other acoustic characteristics, and high quality devices to play music media. I am not into high-end equipment, where each component costs O($10^5) each. My range is more lower mid-fi where things cost O($10^3) each and the whole system might cost O($10^4). [I am using mathematical order notation here where, for example, O(10^2) means 10-100, O(10^3) means 100-1000, etc.]

Amplifier power is important because some music forms, particularly classical, can have a very wide dynamic range. While most of a piece of music may require only a few watts of amp power, transients can require orders of magnitude more power. It is my understanding that typical music transients can drive almost any amplifier, no matter how expensive, into clipping (where the amp hits the limit of its power capability). So you want as much power as you can afford. Hi-fi amps are generally heavy and expensive, and cost more than a typical computer.

Hi-fi speakers are big and heavy -- O(10^2 lbm) -- for good reasons, specifically, sound quality.

I only mention all of this as lead-in to my opinion that home computers, as typically designed and configured, cannot possibly constitute high-fidelity music reproduction machines. Computer speakers are typically small, plastic, light weight, and have no power to speak of. If the amp is on the sound card, you are probably lucky to get more than a watt or two out of it. I know some of the more elaborate computer speakers are self powered, have separate woofers with built-in amp; but they still strike me as decidely low-fi. Accordingly, if you want high-fidelity room-filling sound with deep bass and stunning highs, I can't imagine how you could be satisfied with computer quality sound reproduction.

Am I wrong about all of this? ]]> flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/computers-do-not-produce-high-fidelity-music-do-they-35475/ HP 2133 Mini-note PC crunching along just fine with Ubuntu http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/hp-2133-mini-note-pc-crunching-along-just-fine-with-ubuntu-35430/ Fri, 29 Mar 2013 21:42:45 GMT After about a month since I installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (overwriting SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10) on my HP 2133 Mini-note PC, I can report that... After about a month since I installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (overwriting SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10) on my HP 2133 Mini-note PC, I can report that the machine has not crashed once with Ubuntu. Under SUSE, it crashed several times during on a session. If you have one of these machines with SUSE (a vendor installation) and yours crashes repeatedly, I recommend you consider installing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. The process is a standard installation from an external DVD drive (I have an LG GP40, which is plug and play). Be sure to set the USB port as the first boot device under the set-up program. ]]> flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/hp-2133-mini-note-pc-crunching-along-just-fine-with-ubuntu-35430/ Installation of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on an HP 2133 Mini-note PC http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/installation-of-ubuntu-12-04-lts-on-an-hp-2133-mini-note-pc-35343/ Fri, 01 Mar 2013 01:43:14 GMT I have a little laptop computer, an HP 2133 Mini-note PC, that originally had SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (Novell) as installed by the... I have a little laptop computer, an HP 2133 Mini-note PC, that originally had SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (Novell) as installed by the manufacturer in 2008. I was never very happy with the machine for several reasons. It was unstable and crashed frequently, but I could never determine if it had a hardware or software problem. A lot of stuff didn't work at all: an outboard modem, sound, camera, auto software updates, to name a few. If HP or Novell offered OS updates, I could never find them. I did like the machine as a piece of hardware: the 9-inch viewable diagonal screen, though small, is very readable and bright; the compact keyboard is large enough for touch typing and has pretty good feel; RAM is adequate at 2 GB and the disk is 120 GB; and the machine is small enough and rugged enough for traveling. It was fairly cheap, about $650 in 2008.

With no OS upgrades, eventually the applications software became obsolete, particularly Firefox and Opera, which refused to install upgrades after a while.

So I decided to change the OS. I have Ubuntu 12.04 on my two desktops. I downloaded a 12.04 CD iso image and burned a live CD. I used the setup program to make the external DVD/CD drive (LG Slim Portable DVD Writer) the first bootable device. The bootup was very slow, but the machine appeared to run correctly under Ubuntu, running off the CD drive.

So I decided to go ahead with the install. Preferring simplicity, I chose to overwrite SUSE rather than have a dual boot system. The install took about 4 hours with downloads over AT&T DSL but was uneventful. The install was successful. Much to my surprise, stuff started working under Ubuntu that never worked at all under SUSE: the sound card, the camera, the wireless. After the initial install, the Software Center wanted to install an additional 300 MB worth of stuff, so that took a few more hours.

The next morning, upon boot up, the machine was still working nicely under Ubuntu. So I started configuring things the way I like them. The default desktop had four workspaces -- not nearly enough. I found that the gconftool commands in the help system (the ones that set hsize and vsize, the number of horizontal and vertical workspaces in the matrix of desktops) didn't do anything: the number of workspaces wouldn't change. I suspect my video driver can't support all of Unity's capabilities. But the following command did work:

gconftool-2 --type=int --set /apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces 16

This gave a 4X4 matrix of workspaces, which is more to my liking. My primary desktop machine has 8X8.

So far, I would say that I am tickled pink with Ubuntu on this laptop. Sound, camera, videos, and wireless internet all work for the first time ever. And it has not crashed, not even once, but I am holding my breath on that. ]]> flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/installation-of-ubuntu-12-04-lts-on-an-hp-2133-mini-note-pc-35343/ Definition of Insanity http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/definition-of-insanity-35327/ Wed, 20 Feb 2013 23:09:58 GMT If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, what do you call doing the same thing over and over and GETTING a... If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, what do you call doing the same thing over and over and GETTING a different result? A computer operating system! Linux, Windows, ..., whatever. ]]> flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/definition-of-insanity-35327/ Email disaster with Opera, Plan B: Thunderbird http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/email-disaster-with-opera-plan-b-thunderbird-35235/ Sun, 30 Dec 2012 15:38:41 GMT After loosing my email history to some failure associated with the Opera email client, I have not yet decided to attempt a recovery using Opera. If... After loosing my email history to some failure associated with the Opera email client, I have not yet decided to attempt a recovery using Opera. If it happened once, it will happen again. I prefer Opera as a browser, but I have soured on its email client.

So, as I mentioned previously, I decided to implement Thunderbird as my primary email client. Thunderbird has some official status with Ubuntu in the sense that it is a part of the standard Ubuntu installation and they provide reliable updates as needed. Opera is not part of the Ubuntu standard installation or part of Ubuntu's repository. However, Opera can be maintained easily using Ubuntu's Software Center.

I did have considerable difficulty getting Thunderbird to work with my email provider, Concentric (https://register.cnc.net/), which is why I didn't implement it when I first moved to Ubuntu in Sep 2011. I had chosen the Opera email client initially because it seemed to be working already. After the Opera failure, and with help from a smart and competent lady at Concentric, I got Thunderbird configured and it worked. I think my working configuration settings may be peculiar to Concentric, so I won't post details here unless someone wants to see them (let me know).

I have been using Thunderbird for about a month now and have had no problems. Of course, Opera email client worked for a year with no problems. So I will continue to monitor Thunderbird. I am, at least, backing up .thunderbird, which I hadn't been doing with .opera. ]]> flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/email-disaster-with-opera-plan-b-thunderbird-35235/ Nedit copy/paste failure http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/nedit-copy-paste-failure-35192/ Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:55:19 GMT At the risk of revealing myself to be a computer muggle, I will start by saying that I do most of my code writing/editing using NEdit. I have been... At the risk of revealing myself to be a computer muggle, I will start by saying that I do most of my code writing/editing using NEdit. I have been using NEdit for most of a decade. I know I should learn Emacs, but I just haven't gotten around to that. I like NEdit a lot, except for one fairly serious problem ...

Seemingly at random, when I have multiple instances of NEdit running simultaneously, the copy/paste function suddenly stops working on all instances. Closing all NEdit sessions and restarting them seems to clear the problem, but that's too traumatic.

If NEdit was started from a terminal window, it will generate error messages saying something about clipboard lock after the copy/paste failure occurs. When NEdit's copy/paste fails, other applications seem to continue working normally in terms of copy/paste.

I have searched on-line for others' experience with this problem, and I found many mentions of this going back many years. I have not found any suggested solutions.

I have observed the problem under Red Hat Enterprise and Ubuntu (currently 12.04 LTS). Some posts suggest it may be OS-dependent.

In the last few weeks or so, I have noticed a suspected but unconfirmed connection with another NEdit event: the copy/paste failure seems to occur when one or more of the NEdit instances have open a modified file, i.e., changes that have not been saved. It seems that when the save is accomplished, the clipboard lock goes away and copy/paste begins working again.

This is a tentative conclusion and may not be correct. I will report any further developments on this problem. ]]> flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/nedit-copy-paste-failure-35192/ Email disaster with Opera http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/email-disaster-with-opera-35189/ Sun, 09 Dec 2012 02:11:01 GMT I do my email using Opera. Opera is fast as a browser and it's convenient to open web links from emails in the same application.

A few days ago, I had an email disaster. I had just switched from internet work to email only to find, much to my horror, that all my current and previously stored emails had disappeared. Somewhat surprisingly, Opera's email client continued to work normally in terms of downloading and manipulating new emails. I had not been backing up the .opera directory. I did discover that all but the latest emails were stored in .opera/mail/store/account1, but they are not showing up in the email client display. I don't know if this situation was caused by an Opera glitch or was due to some corruption of the .opera directory.

I posted a bug on Opera's web site -- that was probably premature -- as well as a forum comment there.

Someone at Opera's forum referred me to a previous post about how to restore the email. I have not yet worked through that. I remain somewhat suspicious of Opera because my installation (under Ubuntu 12.04) has been showing other somewhat spurious behavior. For example, it sometimes stops downloading new emails unless I kill and restart it. Sometimes emails appear to be partial duplicates of previous emails, but without the actual content (i.e., just header info is present). These two anomalies might be related.

So I decided to get Thunderbird working, which is provided as part of the standard software suite by Ubuntu. It took me a while to get that working with my email service (Concentric), but it seems to be working satisfactorily. ]]> flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/email-disaster-with-opera-35189/ Trying to get video capability working under Ubuntu 11.10 http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/trying-to-get-video-capability-working-under-ubuntu-11-10-35014/ Tue, 09 Oct 2012 22:12:26 GMT *Problem description:* I am struggling to get a working video capability on my Pogo2003 machine, which was recently upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10. My... Problem description: I am struggling to get a working video capability on my Pogo2003 machine, which was recently upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10. My specific problem is that I cannot display the magazines from https://www.zinio.com. The Zinio site requires Adobe Flash Player. I use three browsers: Opera 12, Firefox 15, and Chrome 18; Opera is always my first choice. After accessing Zinio and opening a magazine, Opera reports "Shockwave Flash has crashed"; Firefox puts up a mostly blank screen but no messages; and Chrome reports "Adobe Flash 10 required."

The "Adobe Flash Plugin Installer", which provides Flash to Firefox and Chrome, is installed.

To research this problem, I looked at
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu
and found information at
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu...uestion/188140
Recommends running the following commands from the terminal:
sudo apt-get --purge remove adobe-flash-properties-gtk:i386 adobe-flashplugin:i386 browser-plugin-gnash gnash gnash-common
sudo dpkg -P flashplugin-installer
after which the Flash Plugin Installer was reinstalled using the Software Center.

This process had fixed the same video display problem on my Pogo2011 when I first upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10. However, so far, this has not worked on my Pogo2003 running Ubuntu 11.10. Still, none of the three browsers will play videos. The identical problem was occurring on Pogo2003 running Ubuntu 11.04. I was never able to get videos to work then either.

I wonder if there is a hardware incompatibility between my nVidia card and Adobe Flash. I believe, even under the old Red Hat 9 (overwritten by the Ubuntu 11.04 installation), that I could never play videos, either.

So this problem remains unsolved. If I find a fix, I will report it here.

[This blog entry was "stuck" in draft mode, and I just figured out how to get it to published status. Sorry for being so thick.] ]]> flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/trying-to-get-video-capability-working-under-ubuntu-11-10-35014/ Gear To Go Digital Still Camera works with Ubuntu (!) http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/gear-to-go-digital-still-camera-works-with-ubuntu-35038/ Tue, 18 Sep 2012 15:55:21 GMT A decade or more ago, I bought a little digital camera at Walmart for $20, a Sakar Gear To Go Digital Still Camera. To see the pictures you had to... A decade or more ago, I bought a little digital camera at Walmart for $20, a Sakar Gear To Go Digital Still Camera. To see the pictures you had to run some sort of proprietary software, apparently on a Windows computer. I could never get it to work, and my old Windows 95 machine didn't even have a USB port. Even my first linux computers couldn't do anything with it. The OS didn't even recognize it as a USB device. But yesterday, fresh from a successful OS upgrade, and on a whim, I plugged it into my Ubuntu machine. Surprise (to me)! Ubuntu has sofware that recognized the device and displayed its picture files (Gnome image viewer). The files are ".ppm" files (portable pixel map, according to Ubuntu Properties). The pictures aren't the greatest quality and nothing approaching a modern SLR -- as well they had better NOT be given the price differential. But the pictures are OK and the camera is much smaller than anything else I have seen, except in spy movies. ]]> flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/gear-to-go-digital-still-camera-works-with-ubuntu-35038/ Upgrade Pogo2003 from Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04 LTS http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/upgrade-pogo2003-from-ubuntu-11-10-to-12-04-lts-35033/ Sat, 15 Sep 2012 22:21:13 GMT My AT&T DSL was running at its peak data rate today -- 80 KB/s (yeah, I know that's slow and I'm not bragging about it, but it's cheap) -- so I decided it would be a good time to upgrade my older linux box Pogo2003 to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. The complete upgrade took about 5 hours but was uneventful. So far, the installation appears to be successful.

My new desktop under 12.04 appears to be the full 2D matrix of workspaces with both right/left and up/down workspace changes. However, I don't think the installation is the full Unity desktop. Maybe it's not Unity at all -- I don't know how to verify this. I do have the launcher, which I did not under 11.04. In any case, it's much better than 11.10, under which I only had linear workspaces (no up/down workspace changes).

The only major deficiency on the machine, which was present under 11.04 and 11.10, is that certain videos won't play under any of the three browsers (Opera, Firefox, and Chrome) using Adobe Flash Player. I was hoping that going to 12.04 LTS would fix that. So I still have that problem to resolve. ]]> flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/upgrade-pogo2003-from-ubuntu-11-10-to-12-04-lts-35033/ Upgrade from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10 http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/upgrade-from-ubuntu-11-04-to-11-10-35007/ Mon, 03 Sep 2012 16:25:20 GMT Since this is my first entry, I need to define a few of my boundary conditions. I have two primary computers, both from Pogo Linux. The machines are... Since this is my first entry, I need to define a few of my boundary conditions. I have two primary computers, both from Pogo Linux. The machines are configured as follows:

"Pogo2011":
- Pogo model Altura M3, purchased Sep 2011
- 3-processor AMD Athlon(tm) II X3 450 Processor, 3200 MHz
- 8 GB RAM
- 2 500 GB Seagate HDs
- GF108 [GeForce GT 430] nVidia Corporation
- Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (64-bit) as of 04 Aug 2012

"Pogo2003":
- Altura Workstation, purchased May 2003
- Single Athlon-XP 2400+ (2.0 Ghz) 266 Mhz FSB Processor
- 1 GB RAM
- 2 Maxtor 120 GB UDMA-133 7200 hard drives
- Gainward GeForce4 Ti-4200 64 MB AGP video adapter
- Ubuntu 11.10 (32-bit) as of 02 Sep 2012

Peripherals:
- Brother HL-2140 monochrome laser printer
- Epson Perfection V33 flat-bed scanner
- AT&T DSL internet access
- Dell 14-in. flat panel monitor
- Logitech keyboard and mouse
- IOGEAR KVM switch
- USB printer switch
- Cyberguys RJ-45 ethernet switch to Linksys wireless access point
- 2WIRE wireless router

Primary software:
- NEdit
- Libre Office
- Opera, Firefox, Chrome
- gfortran
- Evince document viewer
- ghostview

The following discussion is how I got to the event listed in the title of this blog entry.

The Pogo2003 machine was originally configured by Pogo with Red Hat 9. Not long after I received the machine, Red Hat dropped support for their free OS. Accordingly, no further updates were available. Somehow, I lived with this situation for about 8 years, updating applications software as long as the updates were compatible with Red Hat 9. Eventually, of course, this situation became an impossible situation. Since the machine was old but nevertheless my only access to the outside world (i.e., the internet), I opted to purchase a new machine Pogo2011 configured with Ubuntu 11.04, which was the current release at the time.

Shortly after receipt of Pogo2011, I upgraded Ubuntu to 11.10 with a lot of difficulty and good help from https://answers.launchpad.net and some nice people here at LQ. My problems apparently came from having an obsolete sources.list file. There were some issues with getting Unity to work, but these were solved by reinstalling a proprietary display driver from nVidia, which was apparently removed by the 11.10 upgrade. In early August, I again updated Pogo2011's Ubuntu to 12.04 LTS. That took nearly 7 hours but was largely uneventful and ultimately successful.

Back in March 2012, when I was confident that Pogo2011 was stable under Ubuntu 11.10, I installed 11.04 from CD on Pogo2003, overwriting Red Hat 9. That was largely uneventful and successful, too.

Upgrade from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10

After a month of stable operation on Pogo2011 with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, I upgraded Pogo2003 from 11.04 to 11.10. This is the OS configuration I am currently using.

The Pogo2003 upgrade to 11.10 was completed yesterday. The upgrade took about 4 hours at DSL speeds (about 80 KB/s) for a 683 MB download + installation + cleanup. I had no difficulties during the upgrade process.

However, there are several problems with the Pogo2003 installation, none debilitating. Under 11.04, the machine supported a HP Laserjet 5L printer; but with the 11.10 upgrade, the printer no longer prints. The same thing happened when I upgraded Pogo2011 to 11.10. I worked a long time trying to get the HP to work on Pogo2011, but eventually I gave up and bought the Brother HL-2140 (there is story there, too, which maybe I'll blog eventually). Today, both machines are working well with the Brother shared through a USB switch.

Another problem with the Pogo2003 with Ubuntu 11.10 is that Unity appears not to be supported by the hardware, although that explanation is speculative at present. I am unable to configure workspaces in the N X M matrix that worked so nicely under 11.04 (I had an 8 X 8 arrangement). The workspace configuration is apparently limited to 1 row with N workspaces. Ubuntu identified an nVidia proprietary display driver for this machine, which I installed. It had no effect. The commands
gconftool-2 --type=int --set /apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/vsize 2
gconftool-2 --type=int --set /apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/hsize 2
given in the help facility don't do anything. However, the command
gconftool-2 --type=int --set /apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces 9
does change the number of workspaces in the linear configuration (1 X 9 in this case). I had this same problem on Pogo2011 after the 11.10 upgrade, but that was solved by reinstalling it's proprietary nVidia display driver after the upgrade.

Another problem on Pogo2003 under the new 11.10 is that videos from some sources will not play. However, this problem was present under 11.04, too. Specifically, the magazine site Zinio doesn't display at all. The problem began with an upgrade of Opera and/or Firefox and possibly involves redundant installations of Adobe Flash. For a short time I had a similar problem on Pogo2011, but that was solved deleting all Flash installations and reinstalling. That didn't work on Pogo2003 under 11.04, but I am still working on this. ]]> flshope http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/blog/flshope-479775/upgrade-from-ubuntu-11-04-to-11-10-35007/