Hardy Heron 1 Week In - Update Time!

Ubuntu 8.04 has been out for almost a week now and I have seen a lot of mixed feelings on different blogs and forums. I would say most users love it but there is the occasional user with some strange and annoying problem. I've had my share of strange and annoying problems too. I've found a way around most of them though. But many of these problems may now be fixed. A bunch of updates have already started rolling out. These are not just security patches either, they are also lots of bug fixes. So be sure to pull down the latest greatest updates. I installed 29 of them today.

Ubuntu Desktop Screenshot of the Day #7 - ATI Big Desktop

Why in the world have I waited so long to play with Big Desktop?? I can't live without multiple monitors these days but in Linux I have dealt with a limited setup for a while. I've had my system setup with dual monitors but with dual X sessions too. This has kept me from being able to drag icons and windows between monitors. Fortunately things like Cut/Copy/Paste worked but it was less than desirable. I also could not open the same application in both windows so if I wanted a browser in each window one was Firefox and the other Epiphany.

Tonight I decided to just mess with the aticonfig program that helps you setup your xorg.conf for ATI cards. I followed the Ubuntu forums thread on Big Desktop (but only part of the way) and now look what I have:

Click for the full size 3200x1200 desktop image

Isn't that sweet? One interesting note is the screen is not really that large. The monitor on the right is a smaller resolution than on the left so really the gedit window is almost to the borders of the right monitor. I wonder what other tweaks I can get working. I only messed a little with this to get to this point. It is just so tedious fooling with my xorg.conf file!

I see a lot of others have had success too (some more easily than others, lucky nvidia owners):

• Ubuntu 8.04, ATI, & Big Desktop
• Dual Head and Compiz Fusion (user not stuck with ATI like me)
• My first look at Ubuntu 8.04 LTS as a Desktop and Server (another nvidia user)
• Ubuntu 8.04 : Hardy Heron (I envy nvidia owners more now!)
• Configuring Dual Monitor on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon (ati how-to)
  

Also, better background support would be nice here. The background I have now works well tiled. All the other single images I tried didn't work well split across screens. Vote for the brainstorm to have that fixed. Fortunately it may come sooner rather than later as Google Summer of Code has sponsored the GNOME project Individual Workspace Wallpapers which might help some.




And for my future reference (and yours) and backup, here is my new /etc/X11/xorg.conf for my Big Desktop setup of an ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)] on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron (I have a Logitech MX1000 mouse in there too).

#Section "InputDevice"
# Identifier "Configured Mouse"
# Driver  "mouse"
# Option  "CorePointer"
# Option  "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
# Option  "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
# Option  "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
# Option  "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
#EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"

 # Uncomment if you have a wacom tablet
 # InputDevice     "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
 # InputDevice     "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
 # InputDevice     "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
# Inputdevice "Configured Mouse"
 Identifier     "Default Layout"
 Screen      0  "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
 InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard"
 InputDevice    "Logitech MX1000"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
 Load  "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier  "Generic Keyboard"
 Driver      "kbd"
 Option     "CoreKeyboard"
 Option     "XkbRules" "xorg"
 Option     "XkbModel" "pc105"
 Option     "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier  "Logitech MX1000"
 Driver      "evdev"
 Option     "Name" "Logitech USB Receiver"
 Option     "HWHEELRelativeAxisButtons" "7 6"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier  "stylus"
 Driver      "wacom"
 Option     "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
 Option     "Type" "stylus"
 Option     "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier  "eraser"
 Driver      "wacom"
 Option     "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
 Option     "Type" "eraser"
 Option     "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
 Identifier  "cursor"
 Driver      "wacom"
 Option     "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
 Option     "Type" "cursor"
 Option     "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
 Identifier   "Generic Monitor"
 HorizSync    30.0 - 70.0
 VertRefresh  50.0 - 160.0
 Option     "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
 Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
 Option     "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
 Option     "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
 Option     "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
 Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[1]"
 Option     "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
 Option     "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
 Option     "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
 Identifier  "ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)]"
 Driver      "fglrx"
 Option     "DesktopSetup" "horizontal"
 Option     "Capabilities" "0x00000800"
 Option     "PairModes" "0x0+0x0"
 Option     "EnableMonitor" "crt1,tmds1"
 BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
 Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]"
 Driver      "fglrx"
 BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
 Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[1]"
 Driver      "fglrx"
 BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
 Screen      1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "Default Screen"
 Device     "ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)]"
 Monitor    "Generic Monitor"
 DefaultDepth     24
EndSection

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
 Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]"
 Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
 DefaultDepth     24
 SubSection "Display"
  Viewport   0 0
  Depth     24
 EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[1]"
 Device     "aticonfig-Device[1]"
 Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[1]"
 DefaultDepth     24
 SubSection "Display"
  Viewport   0 0
  Depth     24
 EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
 Option     "Composite" "0"
EndSection

View XPS (XML Paper Specification) files on Linux

A few days ago I was looking at the page for Windows XP SP3 and noticed some documentation at the bottom in a file format I had never heard of before. In addition to a PDF, there was an XPS (XML Paper Specification) available.

XPS is a new competitor to PDF. It was developed by Microsoft and included in Vista and Office 2007 (no wonder I have never heard of it before). They have submitted to the ECMA for standardization but I don't have much hope in them using the ISO Standard stamp as much more than a selling point. Microsoft has not shown they intend to play nice with standards. Remember their HTML extensions and ActiveX? And the latest crap with OOXML? They like to "Embrace, extend and extinguish"

Either way, if you are running Linux and need to view one of these files, I've only found one program so far that does it. The Gnome viewer Evince doesn't yet but the KDE4 viewer Okular does. To install it on Ubuntu just use Synaptic. There is a lot to install since you have to have the KDE base libraries but other than that it is fairly simple.

Logitech MX1000 Mouse on Ubuntu 8.04 Linux (Hardy Heron)

I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 tonight but when I did, my mouse didn't work at all anymore! I just had a dead pointer. I was able to get it working previously under Ubuntu 7.10 (Getting my Logitech MX1000 Mouse to Work, Fully, on Ubuntu 7.10) but those settings no longer worked. After playing with the settings some more, removing "CorePointer" from the InputDevice line did it for me. So, I am going to write up a new, improved and simpler how-to for the Logitech MX1000 Mouse on Ubuntu 8.04 Linux (Hardy Heron). This may also work for other multiple button mice but I don't have any other multi button mice to find out.

The very first thing to do is BACKUP your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. Want a command for that? This will copy it to your home directory as xorg.conf.backup.

cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf ~/xorg.conf.backup

If ever you need to go back to your working config, just login to the terminal failsafe mode and switch the destination and source for the command below (plus add sudo to the front). Like so:

sudo cp ~/xorg.conf.backup /etc/X11/xorg.conf


Now then, first thing to do is install or make sure you have evdev installed. evdev is a generic input driver for keyboards and mice. (Read the man page I linked to for more detailed configuration options. Look most at the Absolute Axis Configuration section.) I think evdev is installed by default but run the line below to install it either way. If it is already installed it will just say so and not change anything.

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-evdev

Next you will want to edit your xorg.conf file. You must edit it with super privileges or you will not be able to save it. To edit it in gedit, issue this command:

gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Add a new MX1000 InputDevice section and comment out the old mouse InputDevice section. I first thought you didn't have to comment out the old mouse section but if you don't then your buttons will get mapped to 3 and 2 instead of 9 and 8 and they will not work for forward and back.

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Logitech MX1000"
Driver  "evdev"
Option  "Name"  "Logitech USB Receiver"
Option  "HWHEELRelativeAxisButtons" "7 6"
EndSection

#Section "InputDevice"
# Identifier "Configured Mouse"
# Driver  "mouse"
# Option  "CorePointer"
# Option  "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
# Option  "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
# Option  "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
# Option  "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
#EndSection

The "Name" option must match the device name exactly. It is case sensitive. To determine your device name, run:

cat /proc/bus/input/devices

You will get output (along with other devices) that looks something like this:

I: Bus=0003 Vendor=046d Product=c50e Version=2500
N: Name="Logitech USB Receiver"
P: Phys=usb-0000:00:1d.3-2/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/virtual/input/input5
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd mouse1 event5
B: EV=7
B: KEY=1f0000 0 100 38 c0000000 c0000 0 0 0
B: REL=103

The Name listed there is the same name that must match in your InputDevice section. Next, add the new Logitech InputDevice that you created in the ServerLayout section and comment out the old mouse. Do it this way so if you messed something up, you can comment out the new Logitech mouse and uncomment the old mouse to switch back.

#    Inputdevice    "Configured Mouse"
Inputdevice    "Logitech MX1000"

Now just logout and log back in. Logging out seems to restart the XServer, a necessary step, but if that doesn't work you can use Ctrl + Alt + Backspace. Use caution as that will kill your X session immediately and all open programs will just get killed.

If you have any problems with this, you might want to try my previous write up from when I was running Ubuntu 7.10. I upgraded from 7.10 -> 8.04 so I may have missed some necessary steps because I'd already done them previously. I don't think I did though.

And for reference, my full /etc/X11/xorg.conf after I was done:

Section "ServerLayout"

# Uncomment if you have a wacom tablet
# InputDevice     "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
# InputDevice     "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
# InputDevice     "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
Identifier "Default Layout"
screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
screen "aticonfig-Screen[1]" rightof "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
Inputdevice "Generic Keyboard"
# Inputdevice "Configured Mouse"
Inputdevice "Logitech MX1000"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load  "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver  "kbd"
Option  "CoreKeyboard"
Option  "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option  "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option  "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Logitech MX1000"
Driver  "evdev"
Option  "Name"  "Logitech USB Receiver"
Option  "HWHEELRelativeAxisButtons" "7 6"
EndSection

#Section "InputDevice"
# Identifier "Configured Mouse"
# Driver  "mouse"
# Option  "CorePointer"
# Option  "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
# Option  "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
# Option  "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
# Option  "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
#EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "stylus"
Driver  "wacom"
Option  "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option  "Type" "stylus"
Option  "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "eraser"
Driver  "wacom"
Option  "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option  "Type" "eraser"
Option  "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "cursor"
Driver  "wacom"
Option  "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option  "Type" "cursor"
Option  "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Horizsync 30.0 - 70.0
Vertrefresh 50.0 - 160.0
Option  "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
Option  "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option  "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option  "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[1]"
Option  "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option  "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option  "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)]"
Driver  "fglrx"
Busid  "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver  "fglrx"
Busid  "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[1]"
Driver  "fglrx"
Busid  "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device  "ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)]"
Monitor  "Generic Monitor"
Defaultdepth 24
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
Device  "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Monitor  "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
Defaultdepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[1]"
Device  "aticonfig-Device[1]"
Monitor  "aticonfig-Monitor[1]"
Defaultdepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option  "Composite" "0"
EndSection

And one more thing, a good program to test out your mouse buttons to figure out what is what is xev. The forward and back buttons should show as 9 and 8. Your left button is 1, right is 3 and pressing the scroll wheel is 2.

Upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) from 7.10 on my home desktop

Ubuntu 8.04 has been out for a day and a half now so I figured it was time to upgrade. I've documented my previous attempts at upgrading to 8.04 Alpha 4 on my laptop but that did not go so well. The upgrade failed and once I finally was able to get the upgrade to work, things like my lame Broadcom wireless card no longer worked. I've since installed a Beta and upgraded to the final on my laptop and it is working better than ever. Compiz now works on it and the wireless that used to have problems when connecting to WPA access points now works as expected.

So I had high hopes for my desktop. It already worked pretty well. My only 2 issues with it are no Compiz (but I can live without that) and my dual monitors are setup as 2 separate sessions instead of "Big Desktop". That means I can't move windows between them and if some application like Firefox is running in one window it can not run in the other. I imagine I could fix that with enough work though.

So here is how the upgrade went.

First, to start the upgrade you just have to run the update manger with the -d option (update-manager -d). Last time I tried this I ran it from a terminal window but since then I have learned about Alt + F2 to open the GNOME "Run Application" box. (Screen shot below taken after the fact.)


My first attempt resulted in my not having enough disk space.


After deleting/moving a bunch of files, I was off again.


It took about 1 hour and 45 minutes to download the 1,333 packages to upgrade, 40 minutes to install them all and another 3 minutes to cleanup. There were a few dialogs along the way. I had to decide what to do with my Samba "smb.conf" file (I kept the old one) and what to do with my Grub config file "menu.lst" (I overwrote it). I then was asked if I wanted to remove the 57 obsolete packages and I decided sure.


When I rebooted though, my mouse did not work. It looks like I am going to have to figure out how to make my MX1000 work in Linux again. Fortunately I had just commented out the old config so I switched my comments and wala, I have a mostly working mouse. The video was also super slow (but Compiz was enabled). I opened up the restricted drivers manager and the proprietary ATI drivers were enabled but not in use. Strange.


This is where everything went downhill fast. I disabled the driver (it was uninstalled) and then re-enabled it (it was reinstalled) and restarted. It has been so many configuration changes and restarts now, I don't even remember what didn't work. I think the first time it worked as before the upgrade except I didn't have window borders. Booting in safe mode sort of worked. I tried some other settings that failed and got a message that I needed to install "get-edid" but after a quick sudo apt-get install read-edid all I fixed was there was no error listed in the same exact screen as before. At some point too, I installed the xserver-xgl but that just caused other problems so I removed it. My favorite problem of them all though was when I got it sort of working, the screen saver would lock up the primary screen and nothing but a Ctrl + Alt + Delete would fix it.

So now I have a semi working setup, I think, based on my old config. Here is is for when I screw things up again, I will have a backup online:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf with Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron and an ATI Radeon X300

# xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
#   sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "ServerLayout"

# Uncomment if you have a wacom tablet
# InputDevice     "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
# InputDevice     "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
# InputDevice     "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
Identifier "Default Layout"
screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]" 0 0
screen "aticonfig-Screen[1]" rightof "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
Inputdevice "Generic Keyboard"
Inputdevice "Configured Mouse"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load  "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver  "kbd"
Option  "CoreKeyboard"
Option  "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option  "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option  "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver  "mouse"
Option  "CorePointer"
Option  "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option  "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option  "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option  "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "stylus"
Driver  "wacom"
Option  "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option  "Type" "stylus"
Option  "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "eraser"
Driver  "wacom"
Option  "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option  "Type" "eraser"
Option  "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "cursor"
Driver  "wacom"
Option  "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option  "Type" "cursor"
Option  "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"# Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Horizsync 30.0 - 70.0
Vertrefresh 50.0 - 160.0
Option  "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
Option  "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option  "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option  "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[1]"
Option  "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
Option  "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
Option  "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)]"
Driver  "fglrx"
Busid  "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver  "fglrx"
Busid  "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[1]"
Driver  "fglrx"
Busid  "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device  "ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)]"
Monitor  "Generic Monitor"
Defaultdepth 24
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]"
Device  "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Monitor  "aticonfig-Monitor[0]"
Defaultdepth 24
SubSection "Display"
 Viewport 0 0
 Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[1]"
Device  "aticonfig-Device[1]"
Monitor  "aticonfig-Monitor[1]"
Defaultdepth 24
SubSection "Display"
 Viewport 0 0
 Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option  "Composite" "0"
EndSection

Should beta software be in the Ubuntu Long Term Release?

I've been wondering since the alpha 3 release notes what Firefox 3 beta was doing as the default browser in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), due out on April 24th, a mere 4 days away (RC notes). I wonder this because the final Firefox release is not expected to be released until about June. It seems odd to me to include beta software as the default for a LTS release that will be supported for 3 years. It seems a little odd for most any release really.

I am assuming though that as subsequent betas, release candidates and the final release are made available, those packages will make their way into the OS as updates and that the Firefox version in Ubuntu 8.04 will ultimately be Firefox 3 (not stuck at beta 5).

I have not seen any formal discussion or mention of this decision but there have been a few Brainstorm ideas (see images above) concerning the issue and a 12+ page discussion on the Ubuntu Forums (Ubuntu 8.04 - worried about Firefox 3 Beta).

Most people, and I am one of them, think the 2 months of dealing with a beta version is well worth it in the long run. Do we really want people to be using Firefox 2 in 2011 because Firefox 3 was only 2 months away from a final release in early 2008? Mozilla certainly will not be supporting it anymore by then. This is one of the unfortunate side effects of time based releases but I think Ubuntu made the right decision.

Can Vista unzip files any slower?

While preparing to run the scanning software for the Open Source Census on my wife's Vista laptop, I realized another reason why I am switching to Linux instead of the next Microsoft OS: Extracting zip files is ridiculously slow!


When extracting the 43 MB archive that contains just over 14,700 items and about 100 MB of data, Vista took an eternity in comparison. Extracting this file on my old slow laptop (Pentium M, 1.4 GHz) running Ubuntu 8.04 took 35 seconds, on a slow old (6 years old, Pentium 4, 1.4 GHz) XP desktop extracting this file took about 2 minutes, on the newest computer in the house (less than a year old, Core 2 Duo 1.5 GHz), it took well over 20 minutes!! That is Vista for you.


This is the release version of Vista and not service pack 1 so maybe the problem has been fixed. That is no excuse for something this slow though in a release product. Vista is over 10 times slower than XP and 34 times slower than Ubuntu 8.04 for this particular file. Did no one test extracting files before releasing Vista? Surely they would have noticed how slow it was.

I am not alone in noticing this either.

• Vista Zip Slow and Broken?
• Unzip (Extract All) Zip Files in Vista is Painfully Slow - Workaround
• Extracting a file in Vista is surprisingly slow
• Microsoft Vista archive bug?
  
• Is Vista Slow at Decompressing ZIP Files or is it Just Me?
  
• Another Vista wtf
  

Does Vista SP1 fix this problem? I am a little too scared to install it to find out. Some are happy with SP1. This guy still has the problem and so does this guy who upgraded to SP1. The real solution (though I have not tried it yet) seems to be install a new application to handle your archive files like WinRAR or 7-Zip. Remember when we had to do that on Windows 98 and earlier? Moving back to move forward should be the new Microsoft motto.

Let the world know how much OSS you are using with The Open Source Census

I just read today about The Open Source Census. It is a project aimed to get a better understanding of what and how much Open Source software is being used in a business setting. From their about page:

The primary goal of The Open Source Census is to promote the use of more open source software in the enterprise. We know that if we can show companies how much open source they and their peers are already using, they will feel comfortable using even more.

I've already submitted 3 systems (a Linux server (CentOS 3), Linux desktop (Ubuntu 7.10) and Windows XP desktop). All you have to do is download their scanning tool (it is about 45MB assuming you are without Java and Ruby), get a submission key and run it on your system. It took anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours for each of the 3 systems I ran it on today to finish the analysis.


From their results so far (there are only 619 unique systems at this point), 81% of people have zlib (a de/compression library), 80% have Firefox and 75% have xerces (Apache XML parser for Java). Those are the top 3.

So help out by running the scanner on your machines.

Want are others saying?

• Open Source Census Launches
• OpenLogic Kicks Off Open Source Head Count
• Ubuntu takes early lead in open source census
• Census for open-source apps kicks off
• Open Source Census Launches [blog post]

And other similar projects/ideas:

• Smolt - A hardware tracking project mostly used by Fedora. It is supported on other platforms though. I have not tried it myself. Check out the results.
• Ubuntu application popularity - You can enable sending what you have installed to Ubuntu to keep track of the most popular applications. That is how they know how many stars to show under Add/Remove Applications.
• Most popular Linux distributions by page hit over at DistroWatch

Kino: raw1394 kernel module not loaded or failure to read/write /dev/raw1394!

I am borrowing a video camera this week for a project and I want to be able to edit video. The first program I decided to install was Kino. It seems pretty full featured so far and I am impressed. I wasn't able to pull down video over the 1394 (FireWire) interface (/dev/raw1394) at first though. I got the error message:

WARNING: raw1394 kernel module not loaded or failure to read/write /dev/raw1394!

This was an easy fix. My problem was the latter. I could not read/write from/to the device. To fix that, open up a command line and do this:

sudo chmod a+rw /dev/raw1394

That will change the file permissions to allow all users read and write access. You can verify all users have read/write access now by doing this:

$ ls -l /dev/raw1394
crw-rw-rw- 1 root disk 171, 0 2008-04-12 19:56 /dev/raw1394

(File permissions explained) The third set of rw needs to be there.

That is hopefully all there is to it for you. It would be nice if the file permissions were automatically changed.

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron: Coming Soon!

I just got around to getting the 8.04 beta installed and now there are only 2 weeks until the final release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS!! I sure can tell too. It is solid on my laptop (more on that later).

Ubuntu Desktop Screenshot of the Day #6 - Hello Hardy Heron!

Just a quick post before I go to bed. I finally got an Ubuntu 8.04 beta installed on my laptop with the proprietary video drivers installed and most importantly with wireless access working! For the wireless, all I really needed to do was install the b43-fwcutter package which actually downloaded and installed the firmware as part of the package installation. How nice is that! Using the wifi card with WPA seems to be pretty solid now. It was almost never usable before and I would always a have to connect to good old linksys to get online. Shhh...

I still do not think kindly of the Broadcom 4306 wireless card I have thanks to the lack of openness. I will be doing a lot more hardware research on future computer purchases!

The last time I tried to upgrade to 8.04 it was a disaster. Today I started fresh with the daily DVD image from 4/5/08. I have to get a DVD because the drive in my laptop no longer reads CDs. Installing the DVD went fairly smoothly but then I realized I was just running 7.10 that pointed to the Hardy repositories so I had to preform an upgrade. ~600MB of packages downloaded later... The install/upgrade went well except Mono (the Linux .NET implementation) didn't work so a few applications like F-Spot and Tomboy likely do not work either (I haven't tried them yet).

Anyway, I need some sleep so here it is. Click on the image for the full resolution image.



Ugh, the sun will be here way too soon. Thanks for the info there new world time clock applet.

Convert shn (Shorten) to MP3 or FLAC in Linux

Many months ago I downloaded some Jump Little Children live shows from the Internet Archive Live Music Archive. The files, of course, were in a lossless format but it was the older Shorten (*.shn) format instead of the newer and open FLAC. Shorten has limited support in Linux (and Windows too) so instead of trying to play them as shn I decided to convert them to mp3.

Tappers: I know you hate when your lossless recordings are converted to mp3. Heck, the notes that come with the files explicitly say "DO NOT ENCODE INTO MP3!" I am going to do it anyway. I would go with FLAC since it is also lossless, creates smaller files than Shorten and is better supported but I still have problems with FLAC. First, it is still much larger than an mp3 and my hearing and/or audio systems are not good enough for it to matter to me. Second, FLAC does not play on my iPod so I would have to convert it to something else to listen to it there. I promise though that I will not distribute these crappy mp3 copies of your recording and I plan to keep a copy of the shn files around (or maybe a FLAC copy as an archive). Thanks and keep up the good work!

I first installed the shntool package using Synaptic. This page showed me the command line arguments. But that didn't work as planned.

$ shntool conv -o wav *.shn
shntool [conv]: warning: failed to read data from input file using format: [shn]
shntool [conv]:          + you may not have permission to read file: [jlc2003-02-14d1t01.shn]
shntool [conv]:          + arguments may be incorrect for decoder: [shorten]
shntool [conv]:          + verify that the decoder is installed and in your PATH
shntool [conv]:          + this file may be unsupported, truncated or corrupt

I needed to download the Shorten codec too (shorten-3.6.1.tar.gz)... but would not compile because the C compiler cannot create executables. Fixing that was a simple:

$ sudo apt-get install libc6-dev g++ gcc

Then I was back to compiling and installing with:

$ ./configure
$ make
$ make check
$ sudo make install

And now I can convert the Shorten files to wav files (or FLAC but that takes more processing and I want to go to mp3 eventually so instead of going Shorten -> FLAC -> WAV -> mp3 I decided to just go Shorten -> WAV -> mp3. I did convert a few to FLAC which worked well. (To do FLAC, use shntool conv -o flac *.shn, wav is the default as you see below.)

$ shntool conv *.shn
Converting [jlc2003-02-14d1t01.shn] (0:35.65) --> [jlc2003-02-14d1t01.wav] : 100% OK
Converting [jlc2003-02-14d1t02.shn] (5:18.22) --> [jlc2003-02-14d1t02.wav] : 100% OK
...

To then convert your wav files to mp3 I would suggest lame (LAME Ain't an Mp3 Encoder). What else is there anyway?

$ sudo apt-get install lame

lame does not support batch processing thought like shntool did so I found a good FLAC to mp3 post that helped me write this little gem:

$ for file in *.wav; do $(lame -V2 "$file" "${file%.wav}.mp3"); done

using the -V2 option will encode the mp3s with variable bit rate at a fairly high quality (4 is default with a range of 0 to 10 and 0 being the best quality)

Now instead of the about 1.2GB of shn files, I have 272MB of mp3s to listen to most anywhere.

One final resource I found helpful was the shn in Ubuntu thread. Enjoy your music.

Ubuntu Desktop Screenshot of the Day #5

Wow! I have not posted in almost 3 weeks! Blogging takes a long time and I am short on time lately. I still don't have a ton of time so I am just going to take the easy way out and put up a new screenshot. Today's shot comes from my work desktop.


In it you see me downloading the Music For The Motion Picture Into The Wild by Eddie Vedder (you know, from Pearl Jam). When I first tried to download my album I got a message indicating there was a new release. The Linux Amazon MP3 Downloader was upgraded from 1.0.2 to 1.0.3. Here are the release notes:

Released: 1.0.3
- Fixed bug where read-only .amz files weren't being loaded.

Released: 1.0.2
- Initial release.

So they fixed that annoying bug keeping a lot of people from being able to download files. Nice work. I wonder how long ago they released it. I don't download a new album very often so I did not really keep up with it. I wrote about a work around for this problem before on March 4, 2008 though. I only had problems myself when I was running a Firefox 3 beta.