AutoStart TweetDeck during System Startup

i was cleaning up my laptop today.  Totally cleared of everything from it and did a fresh install of Ubuntu.

Played around with Gwibber, but somehow did not like it.  Couldn’t see it working 20 minutes after configuring and logging.  It was showing only one direct message which i had recieved 2 days back.  so removed the account in Gwibber.  Searched around for some other twitter clients. Chanced upon Tweet Deck.  I have seen some of my colleagues us it in office.  so thought of giving it a try.  It seemed a little confusing at the beginning, but after a while got a hang of it.  Then i noticed that it was not starting automatically at system startup.  So did it manually.

First i looked around for the command which was launching TweetDeck.  Had to add the shortcut under Applications -> Accessories -> TweetDeck to the panel, and then opened the properties by right clicking the TweetDeck icon in the panel.  Copied the launch Command from there.

Now i went to System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications.  I Clicked on Add button and then Pasted the command in the Command text box.  While i was there, filled up the rest of the boxes too.  And then clicked Add and closed the window.

Well that’s it.  From the next time, TweetDeck starts during system startup, so i don’t have to remember to start TweetDeck everytime system starts up.

OMG! My Web Cam works!

Wow!  Lucid did its first wow, and may be the only wow i suppose.  My web cam works.  now i can use every piece of hardware that is present in my laptop.  I can’t say that the problem was linux.  Actually the problem was my webcam, it did not come with drivers for linux.  some wise geeks out there, had tried and had developed drivers for this brand, which had 3 variants, and mine was stamped as the hopeless variant (Genesys Logic – gspca_gl860).  After a valiant effort by me and my friends for 3 days during February, we gave up saying it was impossible.  We made the system to recognize the webcam, but to make it work, to make it show the view, we weren’t able to.   I took a pic of me

First Pic with my Laptop WebCam in Linux.

I used Cheese to take this picture.  I know it is not that great.  but come on, my web cam is working……….

Upgrading Karmic to Lucid.

As I said in the previous post.  I tried to do what was said in ubuntu website to upgrade to lucid. i pressed Alt+F2 and then typed update-manager -d and pressed enter, Update Manager opener, there was a message at the top that Ubuntu 10.04 was available, and i clicked the upgrade button, but then after some 15 seconds a message comes saying that Could not download Release Notes. Please check your internet connection.  The internet is working, i was checking the ubuntu website that time.

A little Google Check confirmed that some others to have faced this error.  One person told after doing a complete update of latest packages in Karmic, the problem got solved.  Assuming that could be the problem, i sat thru another half hour of updates.  Then again when i tried to upgrade to lynx, i got the same error.  I searched some more, but could not find anything,

Then i saw there was some upgrade notes, which talked about some software which could be causing problems.  I followed thru everything, which started the installation, in the screen after release notes, it said, again some problem, with updating software, and said it will not continue. (I had to u ninstall, Chrome, VLC, Mplayer)

Defeated I decided to  download the alternate install CD to do the upgrade.

After 2 power cuts during download and  me blacking out for the rest of the night.  I resumed again.  I had backed up a few files of mine to Ubuntu One. Then mounted and started the upgrade.  Everything went fine.  Upgrade completed after a wait of 2 hours.  And restarted into Lucid.  It was disappointing.

The Grub Menu was black again.  this is not nice, atleast something more colorful, like Chamelon would have been nice.  or atleast theming options would have been great,  But still it is black, then the screen remained black for the entire time it moved to the login screen, when i saw the new purple theme.  Ok now the login screen looks nice than the previous one.

After logging in it was even more disappointment.  The system was slow as hell, nothing was responding,  Accessing the menus froze the system.  I feared for a result worse than what i had achieved with mandriva.  So I pulled the plug, and went off to get sleep some more.

Later sat thru and decided that those xubuntu desktop which i had installed was somehow causing these problems.  System Update said it can do a partial upgrade, which confirmed my suspictions.  i did a

sudo apt-get remove xubuntu-desktop

, which did not work.  the other software was not removed.

Then again searching i arrived at a page saying you could easily remove things with aptitude instead of apt-get.  Which gave me the thought that i am right path of removing xubuntu-desktop, to get my system back to performing like before.  then i did a

apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

after completion, i searched the internet to remove xubuntu-desktop completely.  again psychocats came to my rescue.  I executed the command.

sudo apt-get remove a2ps abiword abiword-common abiword-plugin-grammar abiword-plugin-mathview app-install-data-commercial aumix aumix-common catfish exaile exo-utils fortune-mod fortunes-min gigolo gimp gimp-data gnumeric gnumeric-common gnumeric-doc gtk2-engines-xfce libabiword-2.8 libaiksaurus-1.2-0c2a libaiksaurus-1.2-data libaiksaurusgtk-1.2-0c2a libbabl-0.0-0 libexo-0.3-0 libexo-common libgdome2-0 libgdome2-cpp-smart0c2a libgegl-0.0-0 libgimp2.0 libgoffice-0.8-8 libgoffice-0.8-8-common libgtkmathview0c2a libjpeg-progs liblink-grammar4 libmng1 libotr2 libots0 libpsiconv6 librecode0 libscim8c2a libsdl1.2debian-alsa libsexy2 libt1-5 libtagc0 libthunar-vfs-1-2 libwv-1.2-3 libxcb-keysyms1 libxfce4menu-0.1-0 libxfce4util-bin libxfce4util-common libxfce4util4 libxfcegui4-4 libxfconf-0-2 libxmlrpc-core-c3 link-grammar-dictionaries-en mousepad murrine-themes orage oss-compat pidgin pidgin-data pidgin-libnotify pidgin-otr psutils python-cddb python-mmkeys python-mutagen python-sexy ristretto scim scim-bridge-agent scim-bridge-client-gtk scim-gtk2-immodule scim-modules-socket scim-modules-table scim-tables-additional tango-icon-theme tango-icon-theme-common tcl thunar thunar-archive-plugin thunar-data thunar-media-tags-plugin thunar-thumbnailers thunar-volman thunderbird ttf-lyx usb-creator vim-runtime wdiff xchat xchat-common xfce-keyboard-shortcuts xfce4-appfinder xfce4-clipman xfce4-clipman-plugin xfce4-cpugraph-plugin xfce4-dict xfce4-fsguard-plugin xfce4-mailwatch-plugin xfce4-mixer xfce4-mount-plugin xfce4-netload-plugin xfce4-notes xfce4-notes-plugin xfce4-panel xfce4-places-plugin xfce4-power-manager xfce4-power-manager-data xfce4-quicklauncher-plugin xfce4-screenshooter xfce4-session xfce4-settings xfce4-smartbookmark-plugin xfce4-systemload-plugin xfce4-terminal xfce4-utils xfce4-verve-plugin xfce4-volumed xfce4-weather-plugin xfce4-xkb-plugin xfconf xfdesktop4 xfdesktop4-data xfprint4 xfswitch-plugin xfwm4 xfwm4-themes xscreensaver xubuntu-artwork xubuntu-default-settings xubuntu-desktop xubuntu-docs xubuntu-gdm-theme xubuntu-icon-theme xubuntu-plymouth-theme xubuntu-wallpapers && sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

Then, as if it was magic, everything was back to normal, the system was performing cool.  The sluggishness had gone off.

The system is working fine, now i have installed VLC again, have to install libdvdcss, chrome and picasa again.  Then i am off to check how Lucid is….

Upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

Lucid is released today,  and i am gonna upgrade.  i just booted in to Karmic.  writing this as i am preparing for upgrading.  This is gonna be my second time doing an upgrade.  Am yet to do a successful upgrade.  The last time i did an upgrade was from Mandriva 2008 Spring to Mandriva 2009, which ended up being a cross between both the versions.  after that this is the first time i am gonna do an upgrade. Fingers Crossed.  i am doing the upgrade in my laptop.  i don’t think my desktop could handle lucid.  Will try that later.  I am just waiting to see how the lucid is gonna wow me.!!!

An improved Desktop…..

Like i had said in the previous post, i installed xfce or xubuntu-desktop.  First i installed it in my laptop, and played around.  it was nice, Though i couldn’t find any difference in performance in my laptop (core 2 duo, 2 GB of Ram).  It was slightly different and interesting.  But after around an hour or so, i was stuck with my first 2 issues.

1. My USB Hard drive / flash drives were not getting automatically mounted as in Gnome.
2. In VLC i was not able to access the Playlist window or the Equalizer window when playing a movie.

I did check both right then and there by logging out and then logging back into GNOME.  There they worked.  i don’t know why.  But anyway other than these two i did not find anything else out of place or a reason to cause trouble when others in house would use it.  So i decided to get it into my desktop machine.

Well, i was expecting at least some improvement in the experience.  But it was still same as GNOME, slow and sluggish.  I couldn’t understand, how come?!!  there’s got to be at least some improvement.  Since the whole effort was down the drain, i decided to go ahead with the next logical step, to see if any unwanted things were running in the background.  I noticed GUAKE and Evolution alarm something running, which we never use.  so i switched them off from starting up during startup.  I went to

System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications

and unchecked the check box for the two applications.  and restarted the system.  Wow.  now the system was responsive.  so it had been GUAKE auto start which was causing the sluggish desktop.  well, now i can use the Desktop without having to worry about long wait times. atleast not 10 – 12 seconds…..

researching xfce…

Dad has started to complain that the system’s responsiveness is becoming less and less day by day. (you load junk, then it is sure to go down).  Well any way,  Now how can i make it responsive, i mean i have to wait atleast 6 – 7 secs for firefox or chrome to open, and the system appears to have frozen during that time, now image if i have to open openoffice writer, it will take another 10 – 15 secs.  and running multiple tabs and switching between, you can go out have coffee and come back.  You wanna play cafeworld or farmville, i pray for all blessing, coz it’s gonna sleep.  So i have decided to push xfce as the UI to dad.  I know he will be a little hesitant, but he would accept if the system performs well.  I don’t know why he was not liking xfce.  i have researched for the past two days and have hit upon a few links which i am going to use as  the base and give it a try to install.  First on my laptop and then on the Desktop.  Will get back after installing.

www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/xfce

www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/xubuntu

Voice Chat + Microphone + Sound recorder

Yesterday!

I was starting to get some shut eye in the evening when my uncle (dad’s brother aka Prof.) called.  It was the usual how are you, where are you, what are you doing call.  Suddenly, his daughter (she want’s to be an astronaut.) and her younger sister (we call her scientist, coz she wears glasses like me.)  barged into the call, and said they were chatting with another person, on gtalk, and asked me to come on chat.  I said i’ll join them as soon as i find my mic.  and set out to search for it.

It was just there lying in the first place i decided to look.  But before telling them i am comming, i decided to check if it is working.  Unfortunately, google chat did not have voice & video chat options in linux(i just hate google for that, they always do things first for that windoze and then after a huge amount of time, bring the features to linux).  But i thought atleast i could check if my microphone works in linux, so i fired up Sound Recorder. (Applications -> Sound & Video -> Sound Recorder.)

i Connected my Microphone, and then clicked on the Red Record button, the recorded time parameter was running like anything and showed that i have recorded for an hour and a few minutes, while in reality i had recorded only for ten seconds.  i wasn’t worried, but decided to check if it had got any sounds.  which it did not.  defeated.  i decided to update the system and give it a try again.

In the mean time i switched on the desktop of mine (yeah the one with the 256mb of ram) to test it there. It worked.  It worked like it should.  I wondered.  Coz, i haven’t updated the system for nearly a month or two.  Still it was able to record.  So i guessed it to be some other problem.

After updating my laptop i again tried.  but with the same result.  i Could not understand. Defeated again, and with the knowledge that my microphone works, i decided not to waste any more time, i rebooted into Windoze to chat with my cousins.

Today!

Well, it was kinda nagging me at the back of my mind since i woke up this morning.  If this is really a problem with linux and my laptop, this would be the first point that my desktop gets against my laptop. But whatever it is, linux lost out to windows in this situation.  I decided to search launchpad bugs for any pointers, and i did get something for that timer running around erratically thing. But still couldn’t find anything for not being able to use the microphone.

I read a suggestion somewhere to use audacity to check the microphone, so i did apt-get audacity, then proceeded to test the microphone with it. but audacity too was not able to handle it.  I was crashing in less than 1o seconds.  Other than that, it worked fine, cut paste audio, export to other format, apply effects etc to a mp3 file.  When i restarted Audacity, it asked if i want to recover the files from the previous crash.  I played the recovered bit, and heard what i had spoken into my microphone during those 10 secs.  So it is something with the sound hardware and Karmic, which i am not able to understand as to what it is.

I am just out of ideas as to where to look, or what to do.  anybody any suggestions?!

Sound Hardware : VT1708/A [Azaliza HDAC] (VIA High Definition Audio Controller) Stereo.

Orangescape Studio

I have been trying for a complete switch to Linux in my laptop for a long time.  Though i achieved it for my desktop in home, Every time i get a plan to switch to linux, the Engg dept comes up with a new version which makes me to wait some more.

But with WINE i had been able to make the things to work in linux.  But as it happens, many a time the application fail to work even with wine.  Now after close to 4 to 5 months of trying to make the new Orangescape studio work on linux, atlast it works.  Even though it is a webapp still we need wine.

The latest Update of Kernel to 2.6.31-20 + a higher internet connection speed made it possible.  I had installed WINE 1.1.31 long back.  I had installed Silverlight 3 + Firefox 3.5.6 (windows version) on WINE.  It had not been working till last weekend, when i last updated the system. (Kernel version 2.6.31-20).  Plus the new changes which the Engg made over the last week.  Now it is working.  I did some basic validations and a straight workflow.  It worked well.  But i could notice the CPU usage shooting up when doing Workflow design.  But nothing so great to make the system unstable or crash to firefox as how it was happening before.

Studio

Process Designer

The Browser

The Operating System

But it is not working with moonlight.  Seems moonlight has a lot of catching up to do.

The Machine:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 @ 2 Ghz
• 2GB RAM
• Ubuntu 9.10 (karmic koala)

Update:

It works with Firefox 3.6, and seems like with Fx3.6 the working is more smother than with Fx3.5.x.  The CPU doesn’t go above 60% when loading or using Process Designer, which was not the case with the previous versions.  It would hit 95% in both CPU’s of my laptop in Fx3.5.x.  May be i should be using it a bit more regularly and try out different things before going all out on the decision of deleting Windoze out.  Still have a few doubts where it might stumble or even crash.  Need to check those out.

Masquerading Ubuntu Karmic as Windows 7

ok.  Before i start,….  This is about having only the look of windows 7 on a linux rig.  nothing more. If you might take any offence, then leave without reading any further.  And this is not a total convert, just the look of the desktop.

Ok.  So, Today, out of the blue, i had a day off.  I didn’t know what to do.  Was just looking around since last night.  Tried a few things here and there, then suddenly i chanced upon this piece of software called GnoMenu.  Which kinda rekindled memories, a few things from the past.  So once again, i decided to try to make the desktop look a little different from the usual plain jane default desktop.   I know this aint’t cool what i have done.  But, i kinda like it.

What did it do?  Well i set off to change the appearance of the desktop to that of similar to Windows 7.  And i can say i kinda achieved it mostly.  Except the windows and icons look and stuff.  But looking at the desktop is sure to confuse if it is a linux gig or wat…

Take a look and say how is it…

My laptop does not have those 3d thingis, so i had to stop with this, i tried to install the themes and stuff, but they kinda depend on emerald, compiz and others.  So I am happy with wat i achieved.  Later i found out some more of those how to do stuff, i liked one of those, though it did not work out for me, because of the above mentioned reason, may be it helps you.  Take a look here.

Karmic Updates (cont)

It seems strange.  The problems which i faced in my desktop, i did not face in my laptop.  Does it mean that is has goto to do something only with my desktop.   A few repos are failing consistently during updation both in my Desktop and laptop.  And lately when installing some software, it takes atleast 2 tries minimum to get it installed, coz some files fail to download.  Need to check them, i couldn’t make time for it.  Will soon find why,…..