lessons learned from upgrading to ubuntu 11.10

remember,  i upgraded to ubuntu 11.10 and was not happy with it. well, you learn from your mistakes.
i faced many issues like app installations not working, forced to use unity (there's nothing wrong with unity, it's just runs little slow on my old laptop). i couldn't get my macbuntu working on 11.10. i hated the slow boot (i googled, boot time has increased), my eclipse didn't work with adt, and the overall experience was slow.

i switched to xfce looking for performance, it looks little boring except for the cpu and mem usgae bars on top, they really look cool to me. it's little irritating as even for screenshot i've to go to programs and pull out screenshot utility and then take one instead of just pressing prtsc.

see my ugly responsive desktop.

desktop in xfce

another look at my desktop

as you can see, i'm trying to switch to lxde, i really don't have idea about that but i'm trying everything to make my desktop look cooler. i tried gnome3 but couldn't get rid of unity launcher.

i'm going to logout and then swithc in lxde and add some screen shots again.

lxde is blazing fast.
            i've never seen such a fast login on any linux desktop environment.
                                                                                                                    -aakash (23rd oct, 2011)


it's totally similar to what i had in windows (which is given in its review). it's bit uglier like xfce but way faster than anything. i'll try to look for theme file for making it look cool.

for now it looks like this

lot like windows but blazing fast desktop environment: lxde!

well, here's the list of things i learned from all this upgrade from 11.04 to 11.10

1. wait for some time after the next release is available. don't just update on the day of launch, it's not apple!
2. google about what things work and what not. your computer as you would have customized for years with apps and theme might behave abnormally with next update. wait for sometimes and let people review and check out. you can review on your own using virtual machines (if you have one and post about them). remember, it's a community thing.
3. specifically for themes: check compatibility and issues before upgrading. gtk+ based theme work most of the times but still confirm.
4. source links and keys (the way ubuntu manages software center) might get corrupt due to upgrade errors, after upgrade regenerate all keys for sources.
5. experimenting is good but not when you can't have downtime. i learned it the hard way. i still look for close button on left.
6. try to keep yourself in ubuntu lts builds. they are the most stable ones. ;)

let me know your experiences of upgrading to ubuntu 11.10.

crazy ubuntu 11.10

i was going to change the title of my blog to 'crazy ubuntu' after upgrading to ubuntu 11.10. it's really crazy out here and i can't understand a thing. gnome doesn't look like gnome. i can't get rid of unity launcher and i don't like it.

ubuntu 11.10 on acer aspire 5500z

why do i've to search for what i'm looking. i need to change font and if i search 'font' i don't get the way to change it. ahh it's so crappy. i wish i could restore back to my natty with macbuntu :(

- the boot time is high,
- sometimes it confuses me with single/double click,
- the dash is crappy (sometimes hangs between auto-hide),
- i'm missing my control and ability to explore options,
- there's gnome installed but i don't see gnome 2.x like interface.

- it screwed up my eclipse configuration

- re-installed default apps which i had un-installed

i know i'm not very much happy with the upgrade. are you?

post me your condition in comments. i'll try to figure out solutions to my problems and let you all know.

updated to ubuntu 11.10 oneiric ocelot

last night, i finally thought of upgrading to 11.10 oneiric ocelot. damn, i was stupid. i thought everything would complete in one click after completing everything else which i mentioned in my last post. i did complete and it said, it's going to download some 10xx megabytes of data and i slept after clicking on upgrade.

this morning, when i woke up expecting it(downloading and upgrading) to be done already, it wasn't. i had to go through multiple clicks as it asked me to replace multiple(5) files related to network and gnome(remember, i'm using macubuntu). after that, it took about 1 hour to complete. well, i faced no other errors in up-gradation.

important things i noticed.

1. it downloaded and installed multiple font related exe files, maybe because i've installed playonlinux
2. it also downloaded updated versions of all my default (canonical supported/verified apps like evolution, shotwell etc.)
3. somehow the macbuntu is gone but the docky still lies there and it's working to some extent.
4. new login page (but i liked the earlier one).
5. relatively slow i may say. i didn't get to test it completely as these are early comments.

anyway, it's done. i'll update more on what's changed and what's not.
let's tweak it to my basic needs of speed and awesomeness.

happy computing!

installing gnome shell 3.2, in ubuntu 11.04

right now, i'm trying to install gnome 3.2 to replace my macbuntu theme which has been so lovely experience so far. i'll revert back if gnome doesn't make me happy. let's hope that doesn't come.


on terminal, type 
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3


this will ask for your password. provide that.
it'll output something like this on successful completion.

Executing: gpg --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring /etc/apt/secring.gpg --trustdb-name /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --primary-keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80/ --recv 9D542E3D52C801D9F8E31682F1773AF13B1510FD
gpg: requesting key 3B1510FD from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: key 3B1510FD: public key "Launchpad PPA for GNOME3 Team" imported
gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:               imported: 1  (RSA: 1)

launch ubuntu software center and search for 'gnome', you'll get gnome desktop environment and page would look like this.

gnome 3 in ubuntu software center

this is what i love about ubuntu installation, i've clicked on install and it's downloading package in background and it'll install on its own and i don't have to worry about anything.

with my past experience, i think i would have to re-start ubuntu for gnome 3 to take effect. i don't know what'll happen to macbuntu. will it crash? will it simply go away?

i don't know. let's figure out that later when i'm done. it's crazy 271 megabytes of download. it's gonna take time to finish. i'll upload screenshots in next post.

till then, see ya.

google earth doesn't play nice on ubuntu 11.04

i'm a fan of geo imagery data. sites like maps.google.com, wikimapia.org are my favorites. i love flying above unknown places, figuring out, identifying patterns, places, things, buildings, houses, airports. there's so much to find.

with every new place, it's different. on my windows, i had google earth installed and used to love playing around with it. however, on ubuntu, google earth wasn't directly available in software center. so i downloaded from google's website and followed steps to install.

it installed very easily without any issues (so much of verbose output). anyway, when i launched, i was excited to get my days again but damn. it's somehow gibberish.


this raised my hopes

google earth splash

but the main window :( shattered my dreams. it looks like the font has some issue maybe. but even the globe is missing.

google earth program window

ubuntu 11.10 is here! are you upgrading?

canonical today launched ubuntu 11.10 aka oneiric ocelot. there's a small guide available on ubuntu's website, however i thought of letting you experience every step of it. i'm currently on 11.04 and targeting 11.10.

let the upgrade begin.

1. go to, system-> administration->update manager || alternatively, you can press alt+f2 and type update-manager -d
2. click on check.
3. on top, it'll show you "new ubuntu release 11.10 is available with a button to upgrade.

update manager with new release available message.

4. when you click on upgrade, it'll first show you release notice which contains links to license and other terms

release notes of ubuntu 11.10

5. on hitting 'upgrade', it'll begin downloading a small utility which is going to run separately from update manager and upgrade your ubuntu.

downloading the upgrade tool

6. after download, it'll prompt you for password and close update manager in background. the utility which was downloaded now takes control.

7. utility will list steps of upgrade along with the progress. 

preparing to upgrade

8. while preparing for upgrade, it'll disable third party sources and pop you with this

third party sources disabled before upgrading maybe for stability

9. after that it'll set/modify sources channels for new release

modifying sources to point to current release

10. once done, it'll then try to download the new packages for ubuntu but before that it'll let you know what all it is going to do.

final confirmation. after this, there's no going back.

well, i didn't had time today to upgrade. i don't want to end up troubleshooting my laptop on a weekday. i'll do this over weekend. but it's just matter of 1056 megabytes which it'll download. it'll disable some apps too, let's hope it doesn't affect our beloved apps. so i hit cancel.

things learned: it's very very easy to upgrade to next version in ubuntu. i wish every os was like this. oh, mac-os is already like that. ;) easy upgrade with a price to pay.

learning terminal commands the easy way

i'm not a big fan of command line interface when there's a ui available for it but sometimes you have to get dirty to get the work done. there are so many things which you can do with the power of terminal / shell in ubuntu (linux). take | 'pipe' for example, it lets you use output of one as input of other. it's so powerful that it lets to connect any two applications which use textual input / output.

learning commands is not easy. you can always type man <command> for the manual but it's never easy to read and digest. I luckily found a website which lets you learn the commands, the easy way.

playterm

PLAYTERM is intended to raise the skills of terminal  CLI users, share their skills and inspire others.
PLAYTERM wants to push forward a new way of education, because terminalsessions are language-independent, extremely educative & entertaining.


It has a nice and easy interface for you to learn commands. It's really interesting website for those who want to learn the command way!


Check out and happy learning.

blogilo: app for blogging

i was just searching for something in ubuntu software center and just typed blog. in search results, i end up my eyes on bloglio, an app for blogging. i read reviews, from reviews it looked like a great app.

blogiolo description in ubuntu software center

what next? i hit install and it asked me for password and begin downloading 62.1 megabytes worth of blogilo. sometimes i feel concerned about the amount of data ubuntu downloads. what if i don't have unlimited data plan and i'm running a school where i wish to maintain every system updated with new softwares and updates but i don't want my internet bill to go high. i think there would be a way to have a local copy of ubuntu software repository set up and fetch all downloads from there. i'll add that into my to-do(s).

well, i've installed blogilo and this is what i get on first launch.

i've no idea what this is. i hit next with 'basic setup'. and get another window.

i don't wish to use kde wallet so i click finish without actually setting it up. this is waste of time i guess, it should have asked me earlier. anyway, i now finally get blogilo's program window. it looks lot like any other blogging app. nice structured interface. nothing so great in ui but does the job, maybe. 

blogilo's main window

so, now let's setup my blog. i click on menu blog->add blog. i provide details for this blog, and then clicked on auto-configure. it tried searching but it failed somehow. it showed me some issue with internet connection but my connection works fine.

blogilo: trying to setup blog using auto-configure

i got this error.

i tried multiple options on the advanced tab of the configuration window but nothing worked. i even provided the blog id using what it is showing me right now in chromium browser address bar. but it didn't work out.

anyway, will look for more solutions to this. till then, i'll continue using the browser based editor for my blog.

i'm going to search for way but later. 

upgrading apps in ubuntu: so easy

in ubuntu, applications whenever installed add their source link to update manager's list of sources. it is then used to notify user whenever an update is available. updates are largely controlled by canonical however, third party apps also publish update notifications which could be checked.

also, all other important security and critical updates are available in update manager. to launch, update manager, either go to system->administration->update manager
or press alt + f2 and type update-manager -d


this will bring up update manager. click on check to check for latest updates in repositories (sources link).

update manager showing available updates

whenever updates are available, you will see all that here and you can choose which ever updates to install. it's not like windows updates as it's not just os related updates. it's also application updates.

for now, i chose all chromium (my browser, parent of google chrome browser) related updates and it'll show me how much data would be downloaded and installed. it does ask for authentication as it's an administrative activity. after that, it'll do everything on its own.

see, it's downloading updates. important: i kept chromium running while this update process was going on, this didn't ask me to close anything. after update, i just had to restart chrome to see if updates were installed. during process, it looked like this.

downloading and installing updates and showing progress

update process was never so easy. i mean, with just one click. i think there's an option to download and install updates automatically. yep, figured it out!

click on settings in left bottom corner, it'll ask for password, provide it. then you'll see something like 

see, there's an option to automatically install updates without confirmation. also you can control the frequency at which it checks for available updates. there's are other options too. check out for yourself. play around, it's all easy.

i hope you are convinced, it's too easy! isn't it?

intelligent copying management in ubuntu

sometimes small improvements have big impacts. take file copy program for an example. in my last operating system (windows), it used to display a new copy window for every file copying operation that i was doing. sometimes, i was organizing all my stuff with a lot of copy and move and hence, so many windows to manage.

sometimes, they hid behind each other. but for now, in ubuntu, i'm not worried about that. whenever, i'm copying or moving something, it gives a little, copy icon in the panel.

now, let's say i'm copying something and i forgot about that. it's lost somewhere in my multiple work-spaces that i've. my screen would look something like this.

copying somewhere in background

when i click on the icon in panel, next to my processor frequency applet, which's showing 600 mhz, it'll show me the copy dialog, no matter where it is. see..

copying dialog pops-up when i click on icon

also, when there are multiple copy dialog, i always wanted a single window with every copy operation in it, with individual cancel button and status. well, in ubuntu, it is already there.

i'm just loving it!

what's that key symbol in my ubuntu desktop panel?

have you noticed something fishy in your ubuntu desktop? some icon like key in your top panel sometimes? no? maybe this will help you remember

don't worry. it's not something fishy. it's simply a utility which shows up when you've given sudo level permission to any application (usually through ui) to modify settings of a system. such activities would range from changing power settings to downloading updates or maybe even installing a new package in ubuntu software center.

the use is if you want to revoke the approval, you can simply click on it and choose 'drop all elevated privileges'.

good utility to look for when you doubt something suspicious might be running in background with elevated (sudo type) privileges.

just a small utility, nothing big.

app review: disk usage analyzer

as it was clear from my last post about torrents, i download so much. hence, end up running out of space. well, yesterday my hdd had not much space but just some hundred megabytes. it popped-up a dialog saying you're running out of space and analyze your disk. 

out of curiosity (yes, i'm curious about ubuntu), i clicked on analyze. it popped-up this application named 'disk usage analyzer'. yep, it does what it stands for. it basically checks your files/directories(in ubuntu, folders are directories) for the space they take up. 

the ui is again simplified. on left, it contains the directories and the size they are taking up in your hdd. on, right, it's showing the space taken by each directory as a ring chart. there's option to change ring chart from top drop-down menu and there are only two ways.

as you can see, my home directory takes up the most of space. under that, my user directory
 /home/aakash
is taking up the maximum space. when i select that, the internal two rings fade away (if you don't know how to read ring-chart, that's the logic, you go down, you loose inside rings).

you can compare the two pictures to understand better. what more it does is, when you hover pointer over any ring area, it gives you the next level composition directories of it. like in my case, i'm hovering mouse over
/home/aakash/Music/By Artist
and it's showing the sub-directories of that.

i don't know if this app would be useful for most of us, but it's already in ubuntu. it's a small utility to check what's taking up your space. some might find it useful, some won't understand the ring chart. for those, use the left pane to understand only. no need to visualize ;)

one last thing. to refresh or re-analyze the hdd, you could click on the refresh like icon on top.

that's it. that's it for 'disk usage analyzer'!

torrent fan? you don't need to do anything in ubuntu 11.04

i can call myself a torrent fan but i just leech all the time. i never seed. why? i guess i just want to download not contribute. plus, my speed is so slow that even if i did, it won't affect much.

well, on windows, i used utorrent. in ubuntu, it supplies transmission bit-torrent client with os. i don't need to download utorrent. i searched for torrent and bam, it recognized and started leeching (downloading). it gives me simple controls like limiting my upload/download limit. other advanced settings like number of peers and 'asking tracker for more peers'.

it's not like, i didn't tried utorrent on ubuntu. i did. it gave me some utorrentserver.zip which i extracted and inside that i ran, utorrentserver executable. there was another zip named webui.zip, which i again extracted and opened index.html. however, things didn't work out.

i like transmission for torrent now. it's complete except for the option to shutdown when downloads complete ;) which is a nice power saving feature.

it's all pretty simple ui. you download a torrent, open it, transmission will give you option to select/deselect files in torrent and then you add it. preferences are pretty simple and self-explanatory. there's one thing which i found out on my own.

when you open properties of any torrent, under options tab, you'll see 'maximum peers'. by default it's 60 and if you try to supply a value more than 3000, it'll reset to 3000. i don't know if that's limit of torrent/bit torrent protocol or something, but it's what i see. 

happy file sharing! keep seeding, keep rocking!

why my cpu usage is always more than 25% in ubuntu (updated)

initially, whenever i used to check resource usages, i used to find cpu usage always going above above 25% even when the computer was idle. this was quite absurd as it was 4-8% in my earlier os. even in system details i saw my cpu frequency as 600 mhz which was incorrect as my cpu should be 1.7 ghz.

i didn't understand, why the system was behaving like this. i didn't see any performance loss but i thought maybe in ubuntu (linux) it's possible to do things even at 600 mhz!

well, there's nothing wrong with ubuntu!

just right click your panel (the top taskbar for people from windows world) and select 'add to panel'. select 'cpu frequency scaling monitor'.

when you've added it, you'll see your cpu frequency in panel. when you click on it, you'll see which scheme (scheme here refers to mode in which os will control power supplied to cpu for different purposes such as power saving or performance). by default, the scheme selected (when you install ubuntu for first time) is ondemand. ondemand, is a scheme in which os will only powerup cpu to maximum frequency when you load cpu.

it's a good scheme, as it saves power and never lets you down in performance. good job developers! so, the problem is now solved. so, when my laptop was showing 35% cpu during idle time, it was actually 600*35/1400 = 15% cpu usage ;) which is still normal as some applications were open at that time and they were quite responsive.

even now, with vlc playing, terminal, this chromium browser with 13 tabs open, shotwell photo manager, transmission bit torrent client, the cpu usage is still 35% on 600 mhz. see, how good it is ;)

so, it's true. ubuntu (linux) is cool!

update: looks like the 35% calculation i did was actually the percentage of clocking of cpu. i.e. (600/1700)*100 ~= 35%. for cpu usage, use system monitor. still it wasn't much high otherwise it would have clocked it to much higher frequency like 800 or so.

creating your own wireless network in ubuntu 11.04

network, dhcp, tcp/ip, 802.11, subnets, wpa security... aah all bloody confusing terms. 

i always thought network engineers/architects were wizards. creating network was like so complex that you would give up before even starting it. no one wished to deal with lan cables. even with wi-fi, creating a network was still a task.

i remember trying to create a personal peer-to-peer network in windows xp and first thing i googled was softwares for it. some were paid, i didn't download. windows 7 provides an easy way of creating wireless ad-hoc (peer-to-peer) network but my old laptop didn't supported it (everything supported except the wireless lan card). 

i wished there were a way of doing that in 1, 2, 3 ;)

now i found another wizard (not network engineers), called ubuntu. it lets me create network like a kid's play. 

1. turn on your wi-fi hardware button.

2. click on the network icon  on your panel (the topmost bar in your desktop).

network icon in panel

3. select "create new wireless network".

4. provide a name and security key to it (or just leave it to none. "not recommended" ).

create new wireless network with security

create new wireless network without security

5. click create and you are done. seriously, you are done.

i use this to connect to other devices in my home. since, i have internet connection through ethernet, i use this as an access point for my smartphone saving my money on packet data.

you could also use this for file-sharing and other home network activities. let me know if you cane any problem creating your own home magic network.

ubuntu is wizard!

app review: shotwell photo manager

after initial disappointment with photo managers in ubuntu, i finally found something which suits me and i love it. shotwell photo manager, the default application which comes with ubuntu. last time, i missed it as i couldn't make it scan my photos in hdd and hence i uninstalled it.

i was searching for my requirements, like being able to upload photos directly to available online services and do a little editing along with managing my photos. in preferences, i had to check "watch library directory for new files" and just like that, it scanned my photos.

also, it identifies and categorizes photos based on the date and time it was taken (interesting idea) as it's able to probably guess an event of which you took photos of. that's why it's 'shotwell' photo manager.

this is what my event screen looks like. the image editing capabilities are very basic. however, you can easily configure this to launch your images in gimp whenever you want to edit them. the basic toolbar for editing looks like this.

also supports cropping and publishing photos to online services like your picasaweb albums or your flickr account or maybe your favorite facebook album ;)

publishing is quite easy as your just have to go to file menu -> publish and then this small wizard would come up and you can simply re-size photos and publish easily to your web.

just minor things which it doesn't do at this moment.
1. gesture based scrolling between photographs.
2. a little bit more of editing like applying templates and frames.\
3. photo collection backup management.

anyhow, since it connects seamlessly with other softwares, i really love this now. i'll update when i stop using this, but for now, it's my place of organizing and handling all photos that i click.

need for vlc in ubuntu

well, i'm a media fan. i watch movies all the time. the default movie player in ubuntu, well after the codecs install, played almost every media content in my collection (except for some glitches with hd content when played through external hdd(s) connected.

anyway, recently i tend to develop interest for german movies but i really don't know german. hence, i use subtitles. the default video player does its job smoothly without single error. however, when it comes to playing with subtitles, it doesn't work cool. the subtitles were not shown properly when i loaded them (there was nothing wrong with subtitles).

hence, i had to do something about it. i opened, ubuntu software center and looked for vlc (because i know it's free :) ). it's simple, click install and it's done.

i really don't need to explain how smooth vlc is. the only issue is, how to make vlc, default media player? ubuntu doesn't recognize vlc as a candidate for being default media player. well, that's the beauty of open source i would say. you can modify things to work your own way.

i just figured out one on my own. in preferred applications, in multimedia tab, choose custom and type vlc in the command. i just guessed it but it works.

here's the way to make vlc default player in ubuntu 11.04 ;)

let me know, if you face any problems, trying this.