The fix is easy!

If you reboot after the upgrade and see something like this:

Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode
(EE) PSB(0): The stolen base is: ...
(EE) PSB(0): screenIndex is: ....
(EE) PSB(0): First SDVO output reported failure to sync or input is not trainded!!!
(EE) [drm] drmOpen failed.
(EE) PSB(0): [dri] DRIScreenInit failed
(EE) [drm] Could not uninstall irq handler
(EE) PSB(0): This driver currently needs DRM to operate

Well, then, you are having a problem with the troublesome Poulsbo drivers! You can reboot into the old kernel – selecting it at the GRUB screen – but that is not a good fix. Read the whole thing before trying anything.

I found this blog entry, which gives the fix:

sudo apt-get install psb-kernel-source
sudo shutdown -r now

A few details you might want to know before you get going, so you don’t stumble like I did:

1. When you install psb-kernel-source, you will rebuild the drivers for the currently running kernel! So, don’t do this under the old kernel, or you will have accomplished nothing. If you do this (like I did), then you will have to re-boot into the -14 kernel, purge the psb-kernel-source package, and apt-get install it again. It takes about 3 minutes to install and rebuild the drivers.

2. You might not have wireless working either in the new kernel before applying this fix. So you might want to make sure you have a LAN wired connection available, or boot under the old kernel and only download the psb-kernel-source package first; then, re-boot into the new kernel and install it.

3. That package is from the Ubuntu Mobile Developers PPA – if you’ve been upgrading Ubuntu on the Dell Mini you probably already have that PPA added. If not, make sure you have it all added before proceeding.

There is a mailing list (which I am on) and irc channel (which I have not yet visited). If you are into FLOSS games and Ubuntu, give this group a look!

I wanted to get a little netbook, and I had two criteria:

1. It had to come with Linux pre-installed on it. I wanted to support Linux that way.
2. They had to ship it to my APO/FPO mailing address.

That pretty much narrowed it down to Dell. After I ordered, someone told me about a shipping service that could have been used, but I didn’t know about that at the time.

This won’t be a comprehensive review, more of a first impression sort of thing.

The keyboard is nice and almost full size. The “outer” keys (like shift/enter) is where most of the typing mistakes are so far. Nice keyboard overall.

Screen clarity and picture quality is great.

The custom Dell interface is slow. Got out of there really quick and went to the normal Ubuntu interface.

The trackpad is crazy as all hell. The cursor jumps around randomly and is very frustrating. It has some Smart-pad control center — get this, the first section is “Patents”, where they talk about how patented this touch pad is. Crazy, check it out:

Something to be proud of?

There are like a dozen one-, two-, and even three-finger options to set up, but I just went and got a bluetooth mouse, because it was terrible control.

Wireless and bluetooth worked right off the get-go. It came with Fluendo codecs, so there is a EULA as part of the setup.

A special edition of Ubuntu comes on a CD as well: “Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS Mini Standard Edition Inspiron 1010 Recovery Media”. I looked for updates straight away, but didn’t find any.

This little thing gets a bit hot while being used.

Yahoo toolbar installed by default. Yuk.

I was up and on the net via my WPA-secured wireless in under 10 minutes from opening the box. I still have not opened the command line; the only changes I made were to revert to the standard Ubuntu desktop and disable a lot of those finger options for the touchpad.

Mighty impressive effort here on the part of Dell and Canonical. Fix the touchpad issues and it would have been a perfect experience (I can’t really fault the Dell interface, it just seemed to slow me down – it might be fine for someone else.)

As is my custom, I will be sticking with the stock stuff for a couple of weeks to give it a fair shake. Then I will proceed to putting on some crazy stuff. Your suggestions for superior netbook pleasure are welcome!

The title is a bit unclear, but the suggestion and the comments actually provide some interesting discussion material: is Ubuntu featuring and delivering freedom and openness? Or is it focused on “just works”?

Here’s the idea itself, just to put you in the frame of mind for my comments:

Instead of this “freedom” talk, we should emphasize the cool development systems that’re part of Launchpad that no one can duplicate because of Canonical’s copyrights, like Soyuz and Codehosting. And when Ubuntu One comes out, we should make a HUGE deal about its seamless integration with Ubuntu, and only Ubuntu. And about how it’s not Free / Open-Source, and you can only get it from Canonical.

When I first read this, I wanted to implement the deliver-bitchslap-over-TCP/IP RFC I’ve been working on, but on reflection I think it illustrates an area where Ubuntu is stumbling a bit.

Let me try to illustrate why I have a bit of a problem with the “users just want something that works” line of thought:

Ubuntu User Spectrum

Who benefits the most from blindly following the “user’s don’t care about freedom, only what works” trail?

Who benefits the most from all this “freedom” talk?

1. There is a nice refinement of the visual appearance in both font rendering.
2. Coloring of panels and menu launcher – the light gray beats the stuffing out of the dark black that was in effect.
3. Plasma (?) shading on the desktop.
4. A few missing icons in the menu launcher are now present.
5. Nice expansion / improvement of the network manager applet on the panel!
6. ALT-F2 launcher polished up, looking even better

Be aware that the kdm update killed my GUI, and I had to finish all the updating from a virtual terminal.

Kudos to those making the changes, and also to whoever is pushing out these updates! I think these are coming from the kubuntu-ppa/backports repository.

Is it possible that I am becoming a KDE fanboy?

Debian’s decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy which is an application written in C#, leads the community in a risky direction. It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use.

[...]

We should systematically arrange to depend on the free C# implementations as little as possible. In other words, we should discourage people from writing programs in C#. Therefore, we should not include C# implementations in the default installation of GNU/Linux distributions, and we should distribute and recommend non-C# applications rather than comparable C# applications whenever possible.

Earlier posts on KDE:
A Second Taste of KDE: Laptop Flavor
My first taste of KDE…

This is all based on the Kubuntu 9.04 desktop, not Project Neon or anything like that – I do welcome information about alternative KDE apps and upcoming changes!

Dual Monitors (Dual Cards)

This is an area where KDE is still not quite up to speed. It seems that KDE doesn’t support separate X screens, unless they are joined by Xinerama. I don’t want to beat them up too much about it, because it seems to me there’s a whole lot of fingerpointed between various parties on how exactly to handle multiple monitors. I really would like to see someone take charge of this area, because this is still a frustrating issue in almost all environments.

I run 3 monitors on 2 nvidia cards; usually I run [1|2][3], where [1|2] are joined with Twinview and [1|2] is one X screen and [3] is another. XFCE supports this fine, with the caveat that maximizing and opening windows on [1|2] was a pain, because it was always in the middle of the two monitors.Compiz can work around that for a large part, though.

Under KDE, this arrangement left [3] solid black with an “X” shaped cursor. Enabling Twinview brought up the third monitor, but that raises performance and compositing problems.

Right now I am running [1][2][3], 3 separate X screens with Xinerama, and it works out well enough.

Torrent

KTorrent is comparable to what I was using (Deluge). The main problem there is that the blocklist support is goofed up – it won’t load the most common blocklists. I haven’t found a good solution for that.

KTorrent

The interface is a bit complicated; for example, ordering a queue takes place in an entirely different panel (down there at the bottom), rather than a simple queue number in the “main” panel where the torrent information is presented (top right). Also, notice in the top that there are multiple panes – there is basically a web browser integrated there with about a half-dozen pre-set torrent search engines.

A final issue is that I can’t seem to examine the files inside the torrent once the download starts; often when getting a large, multi-file torrent, I want to look “inside” the torrent and perhaps open a specific file that has completed. If this is possible, I can’t see how to do it in KTorrent.

Kopete

This is the replacement for Pidgin, but apparently it does not support IRC (yet?). It used to I think, and there are IRC clients for KDE, but I liked only having to mess with one chat client. Outside of that, Kopete seems fine.

Dragon Player

This is a decent media player, but for some reason it “skips” — A LOT — when doing things like dragging windows, scrolling windows and so forth. Now, I’m not sure this is totally the player’s fault, it might be a particular mix of some other things, but I never noticed this sort of “skipping” with other players under other configurations.

When I say “skipping”, I mean the audio is smooth, but the video “stutters” as other window activity occurs (moving, dragging, scrolling) – sort of a Max Headroom sort of thing only on the video side. Crazy annoying.

Okular

This is a pretty nice graphic viewer. To my surprise, it came up as the default for .cbr/.cbz files (scanned comic book archives in .rar or .zip format). This would be a perfectly fine replacement for Comix – IF it would automatically open up the next comic book. When you have a bunch to read through, it is a bit inconvienient to “Open File” every time.

I understand that Comix is absolutely focused on that one specific niche, and I’ve seen some other apps that are focused specifically on .cbr/.cbz, but right now I am focused on the “out-of-the-box” experience.

Oh and if you could move through the pages with the mouse wheel – that would be nice, too!

Dolphin

Dolphin

Dolphin is a very-well done – if not the best – KDE application I’ve used so far. It has lots of features:

• Information pane previews are well done, morphing from one icon/preview to another as different files are selected; most media types can play, and text files show actual contents in preview.
• Split/Unsplit views – I love me a split-pane file manager sometimes
• When copying files, if there is a name collision, Dolphin can automatically suggest a new name – very nice!
• Breadcrump path at top of viewer is nice
• The panels are very nice, allowing a folder tree view and even a terminal that sort-of syncs with the GUI part.

There are a few minor issues with Dolphin:

• Sometimes the “breadcrumb” path turns into a regular input-style widget. I’m not sure why, nor was it immediately obvious how to toggle the style. (Settings  > “Configure Dolphin” > “Editable location bar” doesn’t seem to work)
• The “single-click to open” behavior is a bit tricky to get used to at first – only at first, though, after a few days, I’m pretty comfortable there.
• The interface is quite complex, perhaps overly so. For example, the panels are detachable – I guess someone might find that useful. This is not a problem of just Dolphin, most of KDE seems struggling a bit on how to expose all the customization options in a non-overwhelming manner.

Amarok

Amarok still feels about beta-level in terms of implemented features – mainly because the podcast and media player support is not complete. It works well enough as an audio player for a local music library, and has some nice touches like tracks fading out instead of cutting off and so forth.

I consider it inferior to what I had been using (Rhythmbox), and I’ve even been giving some other audio players a look lately (Songbird right now, which also has poor podcast support, sadly.)

Panel

The KDE Panel – the “menu bar at the bottom” is right nice.

The notifications are nice and well done – I like Dolphin sending things like file copy/move notifications to the panel, instead of a pop-up dialog. It really reduces on-screen clutter and gives an “integrated” feel to the desktop.

Another cool panel feature is the little file browser – called “Quick Access”, I think – a very nice pop-up file browser that lets you navigate to a file without having to start up Dolphin.

Keyboard Shortcuts

I haven’t been able to figure out how to set up keyboard shortcuts. There are a couple of keyboard shortcut options in the system settings: “Standard Keyboard Shortcuts” and “Global Keyboard Shortcuts”. Under “Global Keyboard Shortcuts” there are several drop-down options like “Amarok”, “KMix”, “KWin”, “khotkeys” and so on. Couldn’t figure out how to set up a shortcut to do something like, launch a shell, though.

In Summary

I’ve been using KDE for 2 weeks now – it’s still a bit rough around the edges, but usable. I wouldn’t actually recommend the KDE 4.x environment at the point, to be honest it’s still much closer to “release candidate” status than “.2 release” status.

That being said, at least 4.2 is usable, whereas I couldn’t stand 4.0 or 4.1 for more than a day or so. I’ll be sticking with KDE for a bit more, hoping that 4.3 and related applications continue to improve.

Apebox.org just posted the most comprehensive and best defense of mono I have ever read … and it’s still full of shit from tip to stern, but people are praising it like it was the work of Hume himself.

I haven’t yet encountered a pro-mono person that can directly address the issue without personal attacks, logical fallacies or other extraneous bullshit, and that includes the man himself on my own blog.

On the flip side, I’m often embarrassed by the behavior by some on “my side” of the issue. I do not want to be associated with that. I like to think I’ve held myself to a higher standard, and I hope I can walk away with that knowledge at least.

On top of all that, the ubuntu forums are “disappearing” threads that are critical of mono … and people seem perfectly alright with that. I spent a lot of time posting to a thread yesterday, only to come back on today to see it removed from the boards. Same thing on brainstorm with votes being “disappeared”.

Anyway, I have projects that I’ve been neglecting!

Earlier in the series:
Disinformation Disinfected, Pt. 2: The False Dilemma
Disinformation Disinfected, Pt. 1

The first lie: Banshee saves space.

As near as I can tell, the whole thing really got going from an apebox.org “rant” back around April. In this [cough]fact-filled[/cough] post, the assertion is made that 6.1 MiB will be saved on the LiveCD by replacing “bloated C-based” Rhythmbox with Banshee.

This, like most pro-mono propaganda is about 25% truth/ 75% lie. You see, it doesn’t count the accompanying documentation of Rhythmbox. The apebox.org ranter casually cedes the point on page 4 or so of this thread, pretending all the while like space was “never really my main argument.”

I challenge anyone to read this first rant and come away thinking that the so-called space saving was “not really the main argument.” It’s damn near the whole argument.

It can’t be the RAM savings because even in the what I am sure is totally fair comparison in the rant, Rhythmbox still uses 10MB less than Banshee.

(Sidebar: Reviewing the links I saw for the first time another apebox.org rant where he admits:

When I made my post, citing 6 meg saved, it was facetious of me. The numbers are true, don’t get me wrong – but it would be wrong to characterise Rhythmbox of being bloated.

How noble. The numbers are true in the same sense that I have just as much money as Bill Gates so long as you only count what is both in our wallets and they are both empty at the same time. And it’s not “would be wrong” it’s “was wrong” – because you did characterise Rhythmbox as being bloated. I mean, for god’s sake, man, you used the word “bloated”. Jesus, the bullshit.

Sidebar over.)

The second lie: Rhythmbox is dead.

In this intial rant, the insinuations begin that Rhythmbox development is dead/maintenance only. This lie caught on big in Ubuntu Brainstorm, where people began tripping over themselves to get the word out:“Rhythmbox is dead.”

Except of course Rhythmbox is not dead, as the maintainer takes great care to diplomatically point out:

I think people have read too much into my earlier statement about my plans regarding rhythmbox development, or perhaps I overstated things a little. Earlier I listed several limitations inherent in rhythmbox. I’m mostly going to stop working on those and let rhythmbox be what it currently is. There’s still a lot of room for improvement, and there are still many useful features that can be added.

That doesn’t stop some people from saying things like “Banshee is at least still being actively developed.”

The third lie: Rhythmbox doesn’t scale.

So, now that we know there are no disk size, RAM usage, or developement reasons to replace Rhythmbox, we are flatly told that “Rhythmbox doesn’t scale.”

I refute it thus:

23,000+ songs. 133+ GB

It takes Rhythmbox about 3 seconds to open on my machine.There is absolutely no delay in scrolling or filtering.

But we’ve got people with 2-3,000 song libraries talking about something “not scaling”. Puh-leeze.

The first false argument: Rhythmbox isn’t a good media player.

There’s a lot of people insinuating that Rhythmbox is a poor media player. But it just got 2nd in Linux Journal’s Readers’ Choice Awards 2009.

First place was Amarok – but no one is seriously going to suggest a KDE app on a GNOME desktop by default. Of course, Banshee made a decent showing…oh wait, no it didn’t:

1. Amarok (36%)
2. Rhythmbox (18%)
3. XMMS (12%)

So, why are we throwing out the 2nd most popular media player again?

The second false argument: Banshee has more features.

Related to the first false argument is the argument that Bansee is more “featureful”. This is questionable on its face, because even the most driven mono promoters couldn’t get it past a few blockers, but it’s also a poor argument for several other reasons:

1. Most of the time when you compare two similar applications, they will have some set of shared features, and some unique features. Unless one has every single feature the other has and more, then anyone can point to either application and say it has features the other doesn’t.
2. You can add features to Rhythmbox, just like they can be added to Banshee. So it’s not like saying “we can add these things to Banshee” is some sort of argument for Banshee.
3. Creeping featurism is a bug and a problem; not a feature and selling point.

The third false argument: All pro-Rhythmbox messages are FUD.

Banshee supporters continually state or imply that Rhythmbox is dead, un-featured, bloated, etc., even though in some cases even the FUD-originators have backed off the initial lie. I think this is clearly FUD and dishonest; but sadly, about par for the course for mono peeps.

In Summary

It’s my opinion that despite protestations of “oh, I’m just looking out for the best application”, it is clear the initial thrust of getting Banshee into Ubuntu as the default media player was based on the pro-mono agenda of simply pushing mono apps.

Let me be clear on my position: if people want to use mono apps, well then, drop it in the repos and drive on Power Ranger. It is the constant “shove it down their throats” of the pro-mono brigade which offends me the most.

Mindshare is very important; it is why all that shovelware pays to have their crappy applications on the WinXP OEM desktop. It is a major “win” for mono to be included by default, because then mono-supporters can simply point to some existing application and say “well, that mono app is already in, so why not this one?”

This is especially insidious in GNOME, because GNOME (to their eternal shame) includes mono applications by default, the pro-mono brigade can now run around saying that new mono apps don’t require additional disk space (because mono libraries come with GNOME). Thus, they can pretend like the supporting libraries under a new mono app do not “count against it”.

There is no clear and compelling reason to replace Rhythmbox as the default player. It works, it is stable, and is under active development. Keep Banshee in the repositories and let people install it if they feel the need.

Read on for some good nerding…

Alrighty then, virtual terminals are handy. You usually use CTRL-ALT-F[1-6] to grab one in Ubuntu. For some reason, a while back, they stopped working for me. I would only get a black screen. Not good.

I found a few threads in the ubuntu forums and nvidia forums about this, but I probably will miss some credit/links. Sorry about that – it’s something I goofed off with over a few days.

Anyway, here’s what I did to get it working:

1. Configure the nvidia driver

Check out the original settings:

jason@apollo:~$ cat /proc/driver/nvidia/registry
EnableVia4x: 0
EnableALiAGP: 0
NvAGP: 3
ReqAGPRate: 15
EnableAGPSBA: 0
EnableAGPFW: 0
Mobile: 4294967295
ResmanDebugLevel: 4294967295
RmLogonRC: 1
ModifyDeviceFiles: 1
DeviceFileUID: 0
DeviceFileGID: 0
DeviceFileMode: 438
RemapLimit: 0
UpdateMemoryTypes: 4294967295
UseVBios: 1
RMEdgeIntrCheck: 1
UsePageAttributeTable: 4294967295
EnableMSI: 0
MapRegistersEarly: 0
RegistryDwords: “”

You want this to be “UseVBios: 0″

Create a file, /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-fix.conf:

options nvidia NVreg_UseVBios=0

2. Check your usplash settings

jason@apollo:~$ cat /etc/usplash.conf
# Usplash configuration file
# These parameters will only apply after running update-initramfs.

xres=800
yres=600

Make a note of these. If you change them:

1. make sure you update your system with: sudo update-initramfs -u
2. make sure the right kernel is updated. compare the output with uname -r:

jason@apollo:~$ uname -r
2.6.28-11-generic
jason@apollo:~$ sudo update-initramfs -u
[sudo] password for jason:
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic

3. Set your grub boot line appropriately

Check out a handy chart. Then set /boot/grub/menu.lst up something like:

title        Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic
root        (hd0,0)
kernel        /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=SOMEVALUEHERE ro quiet splash vga=788
initrd        /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
quiet

Your UUID will be your real UUID, of course. Your kernel might be different too. Your vga= line might be different as well!

Note that my vga mode matches up with my usplash settings.

4. Reboot and test!

Well, there you have it! (I hope!)