Linux General Questions

I'm using Oracle Virtual Box and my VM of Ubunto 12.10 runs awful.. I suspect it is some issue with 3D? in that any menu that comes up takes forever as it gets drawn at 1fps.

I'm not sure of the extent unbuntu needs 3D acceleration or how it falls back to something more basic without it. Have you got the guest additions installed? One thing is if you've done a system update that included a new kernel the vbox additions might need rebuilding.

Scratched wrote:

One thing is if you've done a system update that included a new kernel the vbox additions might need rebuilding.

I learned this last month: "sudo apt-get install dkms"

Then the vbox extensions will automatically rebuild themselves when you install a new kernel.

pneuman wrote:
Sparhawk wrote:

I installed the 310. After the second try it installed. After reboot still same issues though.
The window with settings will show, nothing is clickable and after a while the flash crashes within the browser.
Will have to dig some more into the forums I am afraid. But thanks for the suggestion :)

That's really weird -- here if I right-click on a Flash video and select "Settings", I get a little dialog box with an "Enable hardware acceleration" option that I can disable. That doesn't happen for you?

The other option to try would be to enable HTML5 on YouTube; that'd solve the problem there, but you'd still have issues with Flash on other video sites.

It does happen for me all the way. But after that I cannot click on anything and flash will crash given enough time. Will try the html5 route
----update---
Buddie of mine told me to go full screen first...and there you have it!! Works like normal again now
He found this somewhere:

The commonly accepted solution to this issue appears to be disabling hardware acceleration for Flash player. This is usually accomplished by right-clicking the Flash content, selecting Settings and then uncheck the Enable Hardware Acceleration option, but in the affected version of Flash player, it isn't possible to uncheck that particular option (clicking it does absolutely nothing). As such, the following two work-arounds exist for disabling hardware acceleration:

Method 1: Create (or edit, if it already exists) the file /etc/adobe/mms.cfg and add the following configuration parameter to it: EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=0
Method 2: Open a YouTube video and enable fullscreen mode. Then right-click, select Settings and uncheck the Enable Hardware Acceleration option. For some reason this only seems to work when Flash player is in fullscreen mode.

I've been using Slackware for seven years or so, now, since 10.2. It fits how I want to use a computer for the most part, but I'm periodically wooed by even Windows' ease-of-use in some regards. For instance, even with wicd (what I'm currently using) or wifi-radar, it's still easier for me to set up wireless access on XP [sic] or OS X, nevermind my iPhone. It's a relatively minor quibble, but just an example.

As I'm considering either upgrading to 14.0 from 13.37, or trying out another distro, it matters how developers' assumptions will affect my usage. For instance, here's a discussion about how GTK3.x is affecting (breaking) users' interactions with each new version. I know that development is a matter of balancing constraints, but reading this makes me feel that Slackware's philosophy has spoiled me a bit: I have fine control over what's installed, which, yes, requires me to manage dependencies but also is fully transparent. It's not perfect nor foolproof, even using sbopkg (which strikes a great balance between Slackware's package format, discovery of new utilities, ease of installation, and control), but I throw up in my mouth a little remembering how even Ubuntu 5.04 became unwieldy because so many different parts of the system were strewn across numerous GUI dialogs.

So, what I'm saying/asking is are the Linux Mints/*buntus/Fedoras of today just messes of developer conflicts, and are there distros that nicely balance easy administration with transparency?

Fixed problem with Firefox not remembering my passwords.
Removed some directories rm -r * and that cleared all settings (reinstall did nothing)
Now it works as advertised again

I think how much you notice it depends on how much of a power user you are, and if you insist on using UI for things. Something I'm reminding myself of is however much a mess linux is from a UI perspective, it's not as though windows is perfect either (no recent experience of OSX) with a good load of inconsistency there too. Heck, one of my gripes with the Win8 metro UI is that it didn't go far enough and it's not complete as far as functionality goes, for example some things live in metro, but it boots you back to desktop for some tasks.

I'd love for a linux dev team to pick up that torch and make some forks of apps that have unified UI styles and conventions, but like most linux end user stuff it'll happen when we're all on neural interfaces with flying cars. Projects like ChromeOS/Android seem to be a better bet for a more unified UI, although it's a big step sideways too, to what you might as well call a different alternate platform.

Scratched wrote:

I'm not sure of the extent unbuntu needs 3D acceleration or how it falls back to something more basic without it. Have you got the guest additions installed? One thing is if you've done a system update that included a new kernel the vbox additions might need rebuilding.

It does it with or without 3D Acceleration checked... when I saw it running poorly I tried enabling 3D.. no difference.

TheGameguru wrote:
Scratched wrote:

I'm not sure of the extent unbuntu needs 3D acceleration or how it falls back to something more basic without it. Have you got the guest additions installed? One thing is if you've done a system update that included a new kernel the vbox additions might need rebuilding.

It does it with or without 3D Acceleration checked... when I saw it running poorly I tried enabling 3D.. no difference.

It used to be that Unity had a 2D mode for older hardware but the latest Ubuntu removed that and now everything is 3D.

http://lifehacker.com/5952845/whats-...

12.04LT installed fine and I'm not getting the problem..

Ah, didn't realize you were on 12.04. Nevermind, the 2D depreciation is only in 12.10.

Edwin wrote:

Ah, didn't realize you were on 12.04. Nevermind, the 2D depreciation is only in 12.10.

I initially tried 12.10 and it was having the issue..

GOD my reading comprehension is awful today. Carry on!

Still using 12.04 myself, rather enjoying it.

I'm glad to see Unity 2D go -- it's one of the more spectacular wastes of development resources that Canonical has indulged in. The new approach in 12.10 is to use a software OpenGL renderer called llvmpipe to handle Unity's OpenGL requirement, which is the same approach that GNOME 3 is starting to take; I believe stock GNOME 3 still uses the "fallback" desktop when OpenGL hardware isn't present, but on Fedora 17, GNOME Shell was patched to work with llvmpipe instead.

I tried Fedora 17 in a VM a while ago and it worked surprisingly well despite the software rendering, so if 12.10 is really slow in a VM, it's entirely possible that Canonical messed something up, or that Compiz and Unity just aren't as well suited to running on llvmpipe as GNOME Shell is.

I wrote a snarky blog post about this whole situation about a year ago, contrasting Fedora's work on llvmpipe and its benefit for all Linux distros against Canonical going off on their own and short-sightedly wasting resources for the benefit of just about no-one. It's fair to say that I'm not Canonical's biggest fans these days, even if I do still run Ubuntu for the moment.

I have sent that post to Instapaper. I think I'll stick with Slackware, but once I've got resources to spare for VMs I'm goingto sample.

How bad is power management for something like Ubuntu 12.04? I continually consider making this my primary OS - seem to be spending more time in my virtualbox than outside of it, lately. And I'm not hating unity - I actually kind of like it.

Also, short of hacking around, are there any good tutorials (or online classes) for becoming more familiar with the capabilities of linux? I've always used the Debian-based distros, but I do remember you guys talking positively about Arch linux. I'm still pretty unfamiliar with how much transfers, knowledge-wise, from distro to distro.

The biggest thing that will probably be different is the package managers. If you want to jump into Arch, just head over to their Wiki, it's amazingly in-depth. Nearly all your questions should be answered there. I'm sure some of could answer your questions as well. They have a very comprehensive beginner walkthrough that will guide you through the entire process of installing and setting up.

trueheart78 wrote:

How bad is power management for something like Ubuntu 12.04? I continually consider making this my primary OS - seem to be spending more time in my virtualbox than outside of it, lately. And I'm not hating unity - I actually kind of like it.

Also, short of hacking around, are there any good tutorials (or online classes) for becoming more familiar with the capabilities of linux? I've always used the Debian-based distros, but I do remember you guys talking positively about Arch linux. I'm still pretty unfamiliar with how much transfers, knowledge-wise, from distro to distro.

Just came across this article, no clue how accurate it is, but still: http://pranavk.github.com/linux/powe...

I find power management under 12.04 on my laptop to be close enough to make no difference from Win7.

And yes, Arch is a great way to learn Linux. Load up the wiki and go. Just make yourself stick with it, come back here for some help, and you should be okay.

However, I fought with Arch for six month, learned a ton about Linux, then went back to Ubuntu for the sake of simplicity, so just know your goals going in.

Lex Cayman wrote:

I find power management under 12.04 on my laptop to be close enough to make no difference from Win7.

And yes, Arch is a great way to learn Linux. Load up the wiki and go. Just make yourself stick with it, come back here for some help, and you should be okay.

However, I fought with Arch for six month, learned a ton about Linux, then went back to Ubuntu for the sake of simplicity, so just know your goals going in.

Care to highlight some of the difficulties you faced with Arch (that you also overcame)?

Also, what were the items that made you finally decide to go back to Ubuntu?

I find one way to work out what a distribution is like is to see what it's objective and target audience is. For example Slackware is supposed to be as close to original (as the component parts come) as possible, so everything builds 'just right' and there's no weird per-distro config, Ubuntu derivatives are quite friendly to a non-techy user, so there's little need to dig into a terminal or dig out a weird config, Suse is a bit more plain for businesses, etc.

trueheart78 wrote:

Care to highlight some of the difficulties you faced with Arch (that you also overcame)?

Also, what were the items that made you finally decide to go back to Ubuntu?

I can't answer for Lex but I can answer this question myself.

My biggest complaint was encountering a few problems that I found intractable. Most were small, but not things I had to deal with in Ubuntu. The most obnoxious was that, if using their AUR package for Ubuntu's font rendering patches, Qt apps that were dynamically linked had annoyingly bolded fonts. No help from the community forums, as a lot of people don't use the Ubuntu font rendering patches, but they're must-have for me.

My second biggest complaint with Arch was the level of maintenance required. It's not nearly as bad as its reputation might lead you to believe (the distro, in spite of what some of its fans would like to believe, is not "hardcore"), but my daily use required more manual intervention than I cared for. Particularly when dealing with what I call "the boundaries" - when there's a change in something that a lot of other things rely on, and you run your update when certain packages have been updated to accommodate but other ones haven't.

Mostly, I found the returns of running a rolling distro to be a lot smaller than in the past. These days, I can add a PPA in Ubuntu for packages that I really care about getting new releases of, and for the rest, the 6 month cycle is plenty fast enough.

All that said, the main impetus for changing back to Ubuntu was the fact that my team members are all using it, and it's easier to support them when I'm running the same thing.

trueheart78 wrote:

How bad is power management for something like Ubuntu 12.04? I continually consider making this my primary OS - seem to be spending more time in my virtualbox than outside of it, lately. And I'm not hating unity - I actually kind of like it.

Also, short of hacking around, are there any good tutorials (or online classes) for becoming more familiar with the capabilities of linux? I've always used the Debian-based distros, but I do remember you guys talking positively about Arch linux. I'm still pretty unfamiliar with how much transfers, knowledge-wise, from distro to distro.

Desktop or Laptop? If you're on a desktop, you will have many less issues than a laptop. What hardware if in your laptop? Do you have an Nvidia Optimus (hybrid video card that uses both the onboard intel and the dedicated GPU)? Don't bother. If you need a laptop, get something that's Linux friendly. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/...

Running a laptop: Lenovo W520 with an i7, an Nvidia Optimus setup, and a Crucial m4 SSD.

In regards to Nvidia's Optimus, I've been pointed to the Bumblebee Project, which just rolled out v3.0.

Not really a question but an observation. I've just started the process of upgrading my NAS from Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04.1. When I booted from the CD, I didn't get an option to upgrade my install. That only came up when I logged on normally and then browsed the CD in File Manager.

Where this got annoying is the installer hung at one point because I have a screensaver enabled. Instead of giving me an error message and/or a way to kill the process, it hid that in a collapsed terminal view. Also, I couldn't launch screensaver settings or xterm to kill the process. I had to switch to console to fix this issue.

This is exactly the sort of issue I wanted to avoid by booting from CD, but apparently Canonical didn't bother putting the upgrade GUI in the server edition CD. Which doesn't make sense, because if there's one type of machine where you want an upgrade to happen without locked processes / files, it's a server. Anyway, done ranting.

This is exactly the sort of issue I wanted to avoid by booting from CD, but apparently Canonical didn't bother putting the upgrade GUI in the server edition CD. Which doesn't make sense, because if there's one type of machine where you want an upgrade to happen without locked processes / files, it's a server. Anyway, done ranting.

Well, you're not really treating it like a server if you're running X and screen savers.

The idea of "boot off the CD and upgrade OS with an installer GUI" is kind of a Windows-ism and not really how one would be expected to upgrade a Linux server.

Ultimately, you did find the process for upgrading if you have a GUI: shut it off and upgrade from the command line. Which is still much less of a disruption than rebooting the system into a CD boot environment and then rebooting again after the upgrade.

avggeek wrote:

Not really a question but an observation. I've just started the process of upgrading my NAS from Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04.1. When I booted from the CD, I didn't get an option to upgrade my install. That only came up when I logged on normally and then browsed the CD in File Manager.

Where this got annoying is the installer hung at one point because I have a screensaver enabled. Instead of giving me an error message and/or a way to kill the process, it hid that in a collapsed terminal view. Also, I couldn't launch screensaver settings or xterm to kill the process. I had to switch to console to fix this issue.

This is exactly the sort of issue I wanted to avoid by booting from CD, but apparently Canonical didn't bother putting the upgrade GUI in the server edition CD. Which doesn't make sense, because if there's one type of machine where you want an upgrade to happen without locked processes / files, it's a server. Anyway, done ranting.

Why didn't you just SSH in and run do-release-upgrade?

SSH is scary.

Actually, I didn't use SSH until I got the Raspberry Pi and didn't want to change the HDMI on the TV to update.

Most of the distros I've looked at recently recommend a backup - clean install - restore cycle, as upgrading is possible but inefficient and slow. Mint 14/Fedora 18 should be out soon so I'm probably going to do that as part of my training, and work out the best way to separate out my content to separate partitions, just as I have windows on it's own partition on that side of the fence.