Just wanted to quickly blog that the Logitech USB Headset H530 works on Mint 11 without any additional drivers to install. Since it's a Debian style OS, I think would on Ubuntu as well. I'm blogging wheneve I find hardware that isn't noted for Linux but works anyways.
I was playing around in Compiz and I enabled "Desktop Cube". This broke a myriad of things in such as missing title bars and the inability to move windows in Mint 11. I reverted the Desktop Cube, but Compriz did not return the setting before I enabled this plugin. Those were easily fixed:
I'm blogging this in case I need to remind myself how to fix this issue.
Dear Amazon.com,
You were the first in many ways
You are still king of sales of physical items, but you are going to loose out to Apple in the digital sphere because you have failed to support the Linux operating systems for your software. You take but do not give. You take Linux and use it for the Kindle. You have made hundred of millions of dollars on Kindle sales. You fail to recognize that Linux support will help you combat your biggest digital content competitor. Apple sells hardware - phones, MP3 players and computers. They have a captivate audience with their poor customers because they have hardware platforms. You're only hardware is the Kindle.
The time is up Amazon... You need to support Linux starting today or just give up now!
A little history of places where you don't support Linux:
Even Adobe is making an effort in making 64-bit version of the Flash Player for Linux. And I don't give praise to Adobe that often...
What Amazon can do today - I made a list for you!
With the greatest candor,
Peter J. Farrell
Software Developer / Open Source Advocate / Linux Fan
On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 10:32:09AM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:> I've been invited to give a talk at the forthcoming Ubuntu Developer > Summit, on May 13th in Brussels. I've accepted, since I'd like to take > the chance of the talk to present to the Ubuntu (and Canonical) people > how we feel about the state of the Debian-Ubuntu relationship. I'm > therefore seeking your feedback on the topic, in order to present our > views rather than mine only.So, I'm now back and with some feedback to share. I'll first post (in this mail) a summary of the replies I got to this "poll" and later on a more general summary of what I did at UDS.
Figures
I got about 50 feedback mails in a bit less than 2 weeks, which I consider a fair amount of feedback. In case people are interested in giving more feedback, by all means go ahead and mail me. The more, the better. Obviously, the summary I report below is limited to the feedback mails I got thus far.
Success stories
I got quite an amount of "submissions" for the success stories category (frankly, more than I expected).
The most appreciated collaboration paradigm between Debian and Ubuntu seems to be "mixed teams", where people from both distros work together using some $VCS. I got report about a dozen such teams, of varying sizes from a handful of packages to several hundreds. An interesting and appreciated trend is that such teams usually lead to a direct involvement in Debian by Ubuntu people: first as DMs, then as DDs, and in some cases also to greater involvement such as becoming members of our core teams (e.g.: ftp-master).
Other reported success stories are in the development of some core tools such as dpkg and d-i where, starting from Ubuntu-specific needs, generic technical solutions have been developed, benefiting not only Debian and Ubuntu, but all possible Debian derivatives.
People also appreciate bug filing from Ubuntu [1] (especially if with patches [2]) in the context of large changes such as the default gcc version.
Interestingly enough, even for parts of the two distros that are packaged independently (e.g. GNOME), some Debian people have now more trust in Ubuntu patches than in the past and that entails a more fruitful exchange or cherry pick of patches.
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=origin-ubuntu;users=ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=ubuntu-patch;users=ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
FAIL.
Now to what people don't currently like in the Debian-Ubuntu relationship.
I won't spare much mail space to discuss episodes that concern individuals. In fact, one such episode (i.e. the "python affair", see #573745) has been reported by several people, and details can be found in the tech-ctte bug log.
Beside that, people don't like when Canonical does not behave as a good upstream, e.g. when they are not reactive to Debian developers as their downstream distributors. More generally, people would like to see efforts in packaging Canonical software---when is not Ubuntu specific---into Debian directly.
Similarly, people don't like when Ubuntu does not behave as a proper downstream. In particular, there seems to be a desire to have more triaging of Launchpad bug and then forwarding to the Debian BTW when they apply to Debian too (no surprise here: it is the most "traditional" complain Debian had wrt Ubuntu).
Several people do care about the status of their Debian packages in the Ubuntu distribution. As a consequence, those people find annoying when those packages degrade in quality due to reasons not under their control (e.g. they are synced in bad moments, patched inappropriately, etc.); that seems to mostly affect the Ubuntu universe.
Requests
The last category of feedback sought in the poll was "requests".
A recurrent request is to give more credit to Debian. Coming from the tradition of free software, people have no problem with the fact that Ubuntu benefits from Debian work, but they feel that the mantra "give credit where credit is due" should be better respected. All in all, people don't like the equation "GNU/Linux = Ubuntu" which is slowly getting through.
Another recurrent request is to push the culture of "do changes in Debian first". That would mean discussing changes in Debian first; then, *if* an agreement can be reached (which is not necessarily the case, of course), people would like to see those changes implemented in Debian first; from there, they will naturally flow to Ubuntu.
Then, I've also collected tons of technical requests related to how Debian people can more easily interact with the Ubuntu infrastructure (most notably with Launchpad) in "their" way, i.e. via mail, via the Debian BTS, etc. In that category---that I won't detail to avoid abusing your patience---there is stuff like: an opt-in service to be notified of Launchpad bugs, Ubuntu accepting uploads from our keyring, Ubuntu having something like patch-tracker.d.o to better split patches, etc.
While on the above I've noticed no real convergence, it seems that in general those Debian people which care about their packages in Ubuntu, would like to have a contact point where to drop sync requests. It seems that using the suggested way to do that (don't ask me what it is :)) does not really work, as they get lost in the noise or similar.
Ok, for the first time I've seen -- a real account of the feud going on why some people are hating Canoncial (the makers of Ubuntu). Lately, I see 140 character posts on Twitter or Identi.ca that is just "complaining" without any real concrete reasons. If this is the reason, then there is something you complain about. However, denting/tweeting is not a good format.
Just recently started playing Alien Arena for fun (free) on Ubuntu which is Quake II or Unreal Tournament. AA is available for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. However, I found that after upgrading to Ubuntu Lucid 10 that the audio no longer functioned. Open up Synaptic Package Manager and see if "libopenal1" is installed. Installing the Open Audio Library packaged fixed the issue for me. See you on AA.
I was majorly annoyed when this was happening so I when to check the power management settings (System -> Preferences -> Power Management) and made sure that "Dim Screen When Idle" was unchecked for both AC and battery settings. Darn both of those options were unchecked and I just lived with having to move the mouse for a couple of weeks.
What you need to check is your Screensaver settings (System -> Preferences -> Screensaver). By defualt, the screeensaver is "Blank Screen" and the timeout for "idle" is rather low. So uncheck "Activate screensaver when computer is idle" or increase the slider for "Regard computer as idle after...". This solved my problems and I'm posting this so I don't forget.
I own an aging, but trusted workhorse of a printer - HP Series II. My printer was built in 1987 and to the surprise of many the toner cartridges are still available from mass retailers. The crux of getting old in the printer world is my Series II only has an LPT port and most new computers (even desktops) no longer have LPT ports. This was the issue for me in the recent years where I only had one computer (a Shuttle mini-box) with an LPT port. This was fine until our recent move and I now longer want to have my Shuttle system setup to just for my occational printing needs.
Enter the TrendNet TU-P1284 USB to Parallel Convert which I just got off Amazon for a cool $14. I'm using Ubuntu and CrunchBang as my operating systems. As any Linux user knows, having a manufacturer listing Linux support is pretty rare for the little items like a converter (although I am noticing it more and more). So the cable arrived today and I hurried unpacked it. I plugged it in and a big fat... nothing. CUPS would not even recognize a new printer connected.
After a whole bunch of Googling and a few thoughts of returning the cable to Amazon, I found a bug from a few years about about foomatic not recognizing printers connected via usb to parallel converters. So instead of editing CUPS configuration files I decided to check if I could find in "/dev/usb" if Ubuntu actually saw the usb converter plugged in and Ubuntu did at "/dev/usb/lp0". I was right! It was mirrored at /dev/usblp0. So I tried adding a printer again in CUPS by using this device URI "usb:/dev/usblp0" (yes, a zero - "0") and the test page did not work. I reviewed that bug report again and noticed his HP printer only worked when using the device URI of "parallel:/dev/usblp0". That worked and I was able to select the printer driver for HP II (there are three available) and had a successful test page printed.
So I'm posting this for two reasons:
Hope this helps somebody else out there.
By earning my bread through writing software, I made a pact with the Devil. In seventeen years spent working as a software engineer, I have been required to sign a non-disclosure agreement by everyone I have ever worked for. I have never been allowed to write Free Software. All but a tiny bit of the source code I have written in seventeen years of hard labor is now kept a jealously guarded trade secret by those who paid me to write it. Many of those companies are now long out of business, yet I could still be sued or even imprisoned should I release any of the source code I wrote for them.
So true and probably why there are a lot of people trying to figure out how open source can pay the bills. I'd be one of those as I like sharing my work, but if only it would pay my mortgage.
This tutorial assumes that you already have VirtualBox installed and that you have a CrunchBang Linux ISO downloaded. You may choose a 32-bit or 64-bit version of CrunchBang depending if your target system supports a 64-bit system.
In VirtualBox: 1. Click on "New..." 2. VM Name and OS Type
I think this goes to show how customizable Ubuntu (and Linux) can be. Not that I actually want Windows XP's GUI anyways.
