A Man and his Penguin

Epiphany and Firefox were crashing with an apparant X server error, whenever I tried to visit a page on the Harvey Norman website. (By the way, good work webmaster, for making the product list dependant on Flash! </sarcasm>)

It even once crashed the X server. Now, I’d thought that I’d uninstalled the GPL Flash Mozilla plugin, but it looked like I hadn’t, and just out of a hunch I uninstalled it to see if that fixed the crashes.

It did, of course.

The moral of the story is: If you want to browse the web reliably on PPC, don’t install GPL Flash (it doesn’t work, anyway).

The other moral of the story is: If you want to browse Flash-based websites on Ubuntu, get an x86 PC. Which is something I will do. I’m currently thinking of a simple Sempron 3200+ system by Compaq, and when I get more money I’d upgrade the memory and possibly swap in an Athlon 64 processor. I heard that you can do that, so it’s always a good option.

I posted a message to UbuntuPeople.org about how I told the manufacturer of an MP3 player that their players worked with Ubuntu. Suddenly, I’m getting patted on the back for having such a good idea. The others there posted a message to UbuntuForums.org telling people to do the same, and even started a page on the Ubuntu wiki about it!

I feel like a hero

I also e-mailed iPrimus technical support to give them instructions on how one would set up their broadband on Ubuntu… but I got no reply, and the instructions aren’t on their website, so it’s safe to say that they’re ignoring me. Just like how they ignored me when I needed help setting up my broadband with the Mac in the first place! (they gave me the WRONG INSTRUCTIONS, the buggers!)

Prelink works by linking shared libraries to programs before they are run, and keeping those links in memory.

As a result, it slows down low memory systems (because the 16 megs of RAM needs to be swapped on and off the disk).

So I ended off disabling it and uninstalling it. However, I followed a tip from a poster on www.ubuntuforums.org to enable some feature of the Linux ext3 filesystem, and now my computer is a bit faster. I can feel it.

I downloaded the Hacked Links source code, but (lol) I couldn’t figure out how to compile it. The usual method didn’t work, and I tried getting automake and co. But nothing seemed to work, so I just got rid of it. On the upside, the whole computer is running a little faster, so if I restrict my surfing to sites I know, Epiphany is pretty fast anyway.

I also tried downloading Kubuntu Dapper overnight… unfortunately, I came through in the morning to find my computer turned off. When I turned it on and looked at the file, it was only 623 megs rather than 677 like it should’ve been. I did an MD5 checksum on it, and it failed. I burnt it to CD anyway (Toast couldn’t autodetect the ISO) and the CD wouldn’t read. Damn. I can’t download it again for another month, as my broadband account is shaped after 1000 megs. I might try freeing up some space on my Polly drive (my Mac startup partition) and using BitTorrent next month to get Xubuntu - I want to see if it’s good enough now for my primary system. I’ll probably get a new computer soon anyway.

My internet access is really slow since I’ve gone over my limit, but I timed it so that, at 12 midnight tonight, a new billing month starts and my connection goes back to full speed. Cool

Also: Our new comedy podcast is up! You can download it (7.6 megs) at: http://home.iprimus.com.au/lees107/episode_2.mp3.

In my continuing quest for a good lightweight web browser, I discovered Links2. It’s a fork from Lynx (text-only browser), with support for graphics, tables, Javascript, and apparantly Frames. Visit the Links2 website: http://links.twibright.com/. It looks and works the same in Links2 as it does in Epiphany - great! Links2 is fast, uses up less than a megabyte of RAM, supports some log-in sites that Dillo doesn’t (but Dillo supports some that Links2 doesn’t), has anti-aliased text, optional Referrer and User-Agent faking, and lots of other great little features. And it’s so fantastically stable. You can even run it in text-mode, although I tend to prefer w3m for text-mode browsing.

I’ve also downloaded the Hacked Links Project, which combines features from Links2 and Elinks (which was another fork). I’ll try it out in a little while.

Also, I downloaded Prelink. When I next restart I suppose my programs will start faster… or slower; I don’t know which. I’ll give you a status report.

Xubuntu Dapper Beta is up to number 32 in the Distrowatch list. It looks like quite a few people are interested in learning more about it. I’ve heard it has come a long way from Xubuntu Breezy, which frustrated me endlessly.

For those of you who don’t know, Xubuntu is a version of Ubuntu. Instead of using the Gnome desktop though, Xubuntu uses the Xfce desktop environment, which is lightweight (uses little memory and disk space). I’m seriously thinking of trying it out in the next couple of days, before my next billing month starts for broadband. Of course, I also want to download and try Ubuntu Dapper and Kubuntu Dapper.

Unfortunately, I only have a couple of hundred megs left of my download allowance before it’s shaped back to 64kbps; so I’ll have to choose one and one only.

I wonder what Edgy Elk (the next version of Ubuntu which uses bleeding-edge technologies and lots processing power) will do to Xubuntu?

Geez, Epiphany is a crash-prone web browser.

On the up-side of my Ubuntuing today, I found out how to find and delete orphaned packages using Synaptic. I saved almost 30 megs in orphaned packages. I saved a lot more also by deleting unused languages and locales.

Here’s how to do the former:
1. Go into Synaptic.
2. Go to Settings > Filters
3. Create a new filter called "Orphaned Packages". Deselect all the checkboxes except for "Orphaned" (in the right column).
4. Now, whenever you want to look at the orphaned packages, click the Custom button in Synaptic. I recommend looking at the dependant packages of each of the orphans, just to check that they don’t include something that sounds important.

In a few days I’ll download either a Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Xubuntu Dapper CD, and try it out on my ‘puter. I’m very interested in the speed and memory improvements in the new Gnome, but I’d also like to know what KDE is like; and I also hear good things about the new Xfce and Thundar.

My Linux box has always had trouble with OpenGL. I get roughly 1 frame per four seconds with the glxgears program, and similar figures for SuperTux with OpenGL on. SuperTux with OpenGL turned off is actually faster.

I tried a couple of things, like disabling DRI and reducing the colour depth, but that’s not improved the situation. I might just try and forget about it. What’s really frustrating is the glxgears program runs at full speed for the first second!

———————
Here are some tips for low memory/slow systems running GNOME:

1. Instead of using the default Metacity window manager, why not use Openbox? (sudo apt-get install openbox obconf). It is themable, customisable, and lightweight. You can use it standalone by selecting it from the gdm Sessions box, or as a drop-in replacement for Metacity by typing the command "openbox –replace".

2. Rather than open gnome-terminal just to run a command-line program, or open up the Applications menu and navigate just to use a GUI program, put the Mini-Commander into one of your GNOME panels. Right-click on a panel, choose "Add to Panel…", then select the Mini-Commander. To launch a GUI program, just type its name into the commander and press Return. CLI programs can be invoked in the same way; if they need to be run as root, append "gksudo" to the beginning of the command. The Commander also supports drag and drop, PLUS it automatically puts quotes around dropped files and folders!

My Linux box has always had trouble with OpenGL. I get roughly 1 frame per four seconds with the glxgears program, and similar figures for SuperTux with OpenGL on. SuperTux with OpenGL turned off is actually faster.

I tried a couple of things, like disabling DRI and reducing the colour depth, but that’s not improved the situation. I might just try and forget about it. What’s really frustrating is the glxgears program runs at full speed for the first second!

———————
Here are some tips for low memory/slow systems running GNOME:

1. Instead of using the default Metacity window manager, why not use Openbox? (sudo apt-get install openbox obconf). It is themable, customisable, and lightweight. You can use it standalone by selecting it from the gdm Sessions box, or as a drop-in replacement for Metacity by typing the command "openbox –replace".

2. Rather than open gnome-terminal just to run a command-line program, or open up the Applications menu and navigate just to use a GUI program, put the Mini-Commander into one of your GNOME panels. Right-click on a panel, choose "Add to Panel…", then select the Mini-Commander. To launch a GUI program, just type its name into the commander and press Return. CLI programs can be invoked in the same way; if they need to be run as root, append "gksudo" to the beginning of the command. The Commander also supports drag and drop, PLUS it automatically puts quotes around dropped files and folders!

My Linux box has always had trouble with OpenGL. I get roughly 1 frame per four seconds with the glxgears program, and similar figures for SuperTux with OpenGL on. SuperTux with OpenGL turned off is actually faster.

I tried a couple of things, like disabling DRI and reducing the colour depth, but that’s not improved the situation. I might just try and forget about it. What’s really frustrating is the glxgears program runs at full speed for the first second!

———————
Here are some tips for low memory/slow systems running GNOME:

1. Instead of using the default Metacity window manager, why not use Openbox? (sudo apt-get install openbox obconf). It is themable, customisable, and lightweight. You can use it standalone by selecting it from the gdm Sessions box, or as a drop-in replacement for Metacity by typing the command "openbox –replace".

2. Rather than open gnome-terminal just to run a command-line program, or open up the Applications menu and navigate just to use a GUI program, put the Mini-Commander into one of your GNOME panels. Right-click on a panel, choose "Add to Panel…", then select the Mini-Commander. To launch a GUI program, just type its name into the commander and press Return. CLI programs can be invoked in the same way; if they need to be run as root, append "gksudo" to the beginning of the command. The Commander also supports drag and drop, PLUS it automatically puts quotes around dropped files and folders!

My Linux box has always had trouble with OpenGL. I get roughly 1 frame per four seconds with the glxgears program, and similar figures for SuperTux with OpenGL on. SuperTux with OpenGL turned off is actually faster.

I tried a couple of things, like disabling DRI and reducing the colour depth, but that’s not improved the situation. I might just try and forget about it. What’s really frustrating is the glxgears program runs at full speed for the first second!

———————
Here are some tips for low memory/slow systems running GNOME:

1. Instead of using the default Metacity window manager, why not use Openbox? (sudo apt-get install openbox obconf). It is themable, customisable, and lightweight. You can use it standalone by selecting it from the gdm Sessions box, or as a drop-in replacement for Metacity by typing the command "openbox –replace".

2. Rather than open gnome-terminal just to run a command-line program, or open up the Applications menu and navigate just to use a GUI program, put the Mini-Commander into one of your GNOME panels. Right-click on a panel, choose "Add to Panel…", then select the Mini-Commander. To launch a GUI program, just type its name into the commander and press Return. CLI programs can be invoked in the same way; if they need to be run as root, append "gksudo" to the beginning of the command. The Commander also supports drag and drop, PLUS it automatically puts quotes around dropped files and folders!

Yesterday, I thought I’d share some MPEG files with a friend from India. Unfortunately, those files were on a VCD.

I’d just thought that I could drag and drop the files onto my hard disk, but I tried using the Finder and Ubuntu. I even used Disk Copy on the Mac to try and make a disc image of the VCD and then copy the files off that way.

It didn’t work. So I went to the trusty repositories and found a package called "vcdimager". I tried installing it, and it told me that the dependancies it needed were unavailable!

So now I’m really annoyed. I’ve mentioned it on the Ubuntu Forums and I hope the MOTUs fix the problem, or that someone provides me with another way to get the package(s) I need.

Now I’m wondering: Why can Quicktime read the files from the VCD, but nothing copy them? Surely it’s all just reading?