Just upgraded to Ubuntu 9.01 - couple of issues

[W1GUH]

Besides the s...l...o...w download speeds (but it's faster in off-peak hours), I've so far found 2 issues regarding playing videos.

No. 1 is that the colors were all messed up...red was rendered as blue. The fix is easy. In Edit->Prefreneces->Display, hit the "Reset to Defaults button, or adjust the "hue" slider to your taste. I believe this is the fix in any of the media players, but not sure. I only had to change it in one of the players & the others followed suit. Easy fix that took a loooong time to find !

No. 2 that I haven't resolved yet is that I can't play .asx playlists from the web. It keeps telling me I don't have the "helper application", but doesn't tell me which one it's looking for ???

BTW...thanks for the info about Oo on Windows boxes. If I ever go back to Windows (looking less and less likely the more I use and learn about Linux), that'll be very useful to know.

And is anyone running X-Plane. Haven't been able to install it yet...but haven't tried with 9.01 yet...it looks like it might be the thing the seals the deal in weaning me from Windows completely!

[W1GUH]

Major problems with X-Plane.....

As reported just about everywhere on the web, Ubuntu comes with libopenal.so.1; I guess that's an upgrade from libopenal.so.0. Problem is, X-Plane wants libopenal.so.0. So I made a soft link to so.1 from so.0. That made the first error go away...but then...the istaller complained (Well, X11 complained) about a bad character in a directory path. Seems there a "\" in the path, and X11 reports it "only wants \"

The I gave up! :x

[W3MIV]

Are you using 9.01? Or 9.10, which is the newest (released Thursday).

I have downloaded and installed it, and I am pleased to see that Linux is finally coming close to their boasted-of competitiveness with Windows. This new Ubuntu 9.10 is a vast jump over previous iterations, and seems both stable and offers a far better on-screen persona. I am using Gnome.

I have no experience with X-plane, so cannot help you with that. I imagine the download times -- I have just experienced a series of download rates ranging from a few thousands of B/sec to no higher than about 48kB/sec when running several additions and updates through the package manager. I imagine everyone in this end of the Milky Way is currently downloading and installing this newby.

BTW, downloading the CD iso file proceeded at a very good pace; it was only the various additions and updates that crawled.

[W1GUH]

Albert! So good to hear from you here on the Island, and a hearty welcome back to you, sir.

And Oops! Yes, it's 9.10.

I'm loving Ubuntu, and about the only application left that I can't do with Linux is the software that downloads stuff from my cell phone. But I haven't searched on the web yet, so it could be there. I sure hope so. I'd hate to have to swap out my hard disk just to get the pix I took on my phone.

The X-Plane thing looks like those people haven't made things play with 9.10 nicely yet. Maybe a good thing; I've spent more time than usual on my computer getting Ubuntu to work. In case you've missed it, I've also got Ubuntu on my PS3. That's limited, though, because not a lot of application seem to work with that architecture....whatever it is.

And my upgrade download speeds are in the range you report...but like you say, there's probably bilions and billions of Ubuntu users (if there aren't that many, there should be! ), and I guess one only has to do that "once in a while."

Again, so good to hear from you.

[W2NAP]

i use VLC for all media crap (vids and music)

also grab the "restricted extras"

VLC IMO is better then any other player around

[W1GUH]

i use VLC for all media crap (vids and music)

also grab the "restricted extras"

VLC IMO is better then any other player around

I'll get it and give it a whirl.

BTW, how can I add the current dir to the PATH? env PATH=$PATH:. doesn't work.

Thanks!

[W1GUH]

Installed VLC & it's fine with a "wrinkle." It'll play pay-per-view vids OK unless I pause it or try to jump ahead. Then it complains about something it can't get. Ah..the joys! But it's big improvement and thanks for the tip.

One thing the process did to really help out is it taught me to use the Synaptic Package Manager. I couldn't make head or tails of it yesterday...but this install had great web instructions. I tried the command line procedure they showed, but that didn't work. Not sure I care about that...I've read that using the package manager is highly recommended.

Thanks again.

[ad4mg]

i use VLC for all media crap (vids and music)

also grab the "restricted extras"

VLC IMO is better then any other player around

I'll get it and give it a whirl.

BTW, how can I add the current dir to the PATH? env PATH=$PATH:. doesn't work.

Thanks!

The bash command in Linux is "export" Paul, which is functionally equivalent to the MS-DOS "set" command. I don't have a full understanding of global vs local environment variables in Linux, but I believe globals are set on bootup in the "/etc/environment" file, and local (in reference to individual users) variables are set at startup in "/etc/login.defs", but these things vary widely in the Linux world, depending on the flavor and version of Linux being used.

In Ubuntu, I think one method of getting the variables to "stick" is to add them to your "~/bash_profile" file (you may have to create this file, and make it executable), then add the following line to the "/etc/gdm/Xsession" file:

. ~/.bash_profile    #execute export commands for this profile

just before the comment line that reads:

"# this will go into the .xsession-errors along with all other echo's"

The location within the "/etc/gdm/Xsession" file is important. And, you will probably have to run gedit as su to do this ... from the terminal, type: "gksu gedit /etc/gdm/Xsession", and give your password when prompted.

All learned through countless hours of trial and error, and endless searching on the web ...

[W1GUH]

i use VLC for all media crap (vids and music)

also grab the "restricted extras"

VLC IMO is better then any other player around

I'll get it and give it a whirl.

BTW, how can I add the current dir to the PATH? env PATH=$PATH:. doesn't work.

Thanks!

The bash command in Linux is "export" Paul, which is functionally equivalent to the MS-DOS "set" command. I don't have a full understanding of global vs local environment variables in Linux, but I believe globals are set on bootup in the "/etc/environment" file, and local (in reference to individual users) variables are set at startup in "/etc/login.defs", but these things vary widely in the Linux world, depending on the flavor and version of Linux being used.

In Ubuntu, I think one method of getting the variables to "stick" is to add them to your "~/bash_profile" file (you may have to create this file, and make it executable), then add the following line to the "/etc/gdm/Xsession" file:

. ~/.bash_profile    #execute export commands for this profile

just before the comment line that reads:

"# this will go into the .xsession-errors along with all other echo's"

The location within the "/etc/gdm/Xsession" file is important. And, you will probably have to run gedit as su to do this ... from the terminal, type: "gksu gedit /etc/gdm/Xsession", and give your password when prompted.

All learned through countless hours of trial and error, and endless searching on the web ...

Thanks much...it would have also have taken me "countless hours..." Appreciate that. That's really the hard part of unix/linux.

I also just installed wine & it seems to work just fine. To check it out I downloaded the Ultra-Edit demo & there's nothing wrong. But when Ultra-Edit comes out with it's linux version, that's the one I'll actually buy.

But, darnit, I can't get my cell phone software to work. Keep get the message "Failed FsUsbExService, No existing FsUsbExDevice" Whatever the @#$%@$ that means. Someone has posted this to tue Ubuntu forum, but so far no solutions have been reported. That's really the only Windows app that I need. Hope I can get that going on linux.

BTW...it took a while to find my external hard drives in wine. Ubuntu hides them in /media.

[ad4mg]

Thanks much...it would have also have taken me "countless hours..." Appreciate that. That's really the hard part of unix/linux.

I also just installed wine & it seems to work just fine. To check it out I downloaded the Ultra-Edit demo & there's nothing wrong. But when Ultra-Edit comes out with it's linux version, that's the one I'll actually buy.

But, darnit, I can't get my cell phone software to work. Keep get the message "Failed FsUsbExService, No existing FsUsbExDevice" Whatever the @#$%@$ that means. Someone has posted this to tue Ubuntu forum, but so far no solutions have been reported. That's really the only Windows app that I need. Hope I can get that going on linux.

BTW...it took a while to find my external hard drives in wine. Ubuntu hides them in /media.

Wine frustrated me a bit, so I turned to virtual machines as an alternative. I have installed VirtualBox 3 (by Sun-Microsystems) in both Ubuntu 9.04 & 9.10, and have installed and tested all Windows versions in VM environments from Windows 95 to Windows XP. The results are very impressive, and programs seem to run better under their native OS. Video support is very good by way of their virtual drivers (ditto for sound and networking), and some 3-D support is offered. Of course, there is the compromise of having to share system resources with both the host OS and the guest OS, but a machine with a fast processor and a good amount of RAM hardly works up a sweat. My Windows 2000 VM is running right now, downloading OS updates, and I'm running FF in the host OS (Ubuntu 9.04), merrily browsing the web while both OS's share the same network card!

If you decide to give VirtualBox a try, don't use the package manager ... go the apt-get install route instead. The package manager offers only an old version , unless you are running Ubuntu 9.10. The newest version of Ubuntu seems to have already updated the repositories for VirtualBox. You will need to update your repositories list if you have 9.04 or 8.10, and install a public key, but it's all quite simple. Although I haven't looked into it, USB devices are supported, but some permissions changes in the /dev files is necessary to make it happen.

The downside? You do have to spend the time to install the guest OS from scratch, and that involves all the updates. For my XP VM, I had a copy of XP-Pro SP2, so there was instantly 84 security updates that required installation, along with all the associated restarts, a total hassle. If you want to try VirtualBox, Paul, let me know, and I'll post detailed instructions on how to install it in Ubuntu here.