Unity

Stuff todo in Ubuntu 14.04 after install

Joar Jegleim Leave a comment

The atareao-team ppa ( Install on your own risk ) got some neat indicators for Ubuntu:

# add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao
# apt-get update
# apt-get install calendar-indicator
# apt-get install my-weather-indicator

The FFmpeg plugin for GStreamer 0.10 is not available in the official Ubuntu 14.04 repositories (because FFMpeg is not available either – libav is used instead) and because of this, Firefox doesn’t support the H.264 codec.
The mc3man trusty-media ppa fix this for you ( Install on your own risk ) .

# add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/trusty-media
# apt-get update
# apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

You can check you H.264 support at http://www.youtube.com.html5

If you use skype (which is 32bit) and are on 64bit, install these packages to enable support for your default desktop theme as well as enable the skype tray icon

# apt-get install gtk2-engines-murrine:i386 sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-pixbuf:i386 sni-qt:i386

Latest chromium-browser have removed flash support, the pepper-flash-plugin enable flash :

# pepperflashplugin-nonfree

I mostly ripped off these customizations from webupd8.org .

Ubuntu 13.10 console resolution

Joar Jegleim 5 Comments

Switching to the binary Nvidia driver usually ‘break’ the nice boot splash and console resolution in Ubuntu. It has something to do with Linux being gpl licensed and the kernel code will be tainted if you integrate non-gpl code / or the kernel crew simply won’t integrate binary code, which I personally respect .

I’ve been using some VESA framebuffer since like for many years, and for the last 3-4 years I’ve been using the uvesafb module to get high resolution console and boot splash on my desktop.
I just noticed my ‘howto’ for getting this stuff setup in Ubuntu 13.10 no longer works, well it did actually work but I was put off when the ‘hwinfo’ package no longer was available.

I google’ed this for about 20 minutes, and tried a couple solutions that didn’t work, so I’m pasting my personal ‘howto’ on how I got this working on my 13.10.

# apt-get install v86d

Reboot, and in grub type ‘c’, then type ‘vbeinfo’ to list resolutions supported by your card.

Edit your /etc/default/grub file and make sure you use your desired resolution and bit depth listed from ‘vbeinfo’

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset video=uvesafb:mode_option=1280x800x32,mtrr=3,scroll=ywrap"

Now scroll down a bit in that file and edit this line also to match your previous change

GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x800

Now force the use of framebuffer

# echo FRAMEBUFFER=y | tee /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash

Now update grub and your initramfs image and you’re done!

# update-grub2 && update-initramfs -u

What I used to do was installing hwinfo which would show me supported console resolutions from terminal in my X session (Unity in my case), but since Ubuntu 13.10 has dropped support for HAL ( if I got it right) that package is no longer available.
I kind of solved it with vbeinfo from within grub, but that isn’t really optimal since vbeinfo listed a lot more resolutions than could fit within 1 page, and I couldn’t pipe that command to less. Luckily I saw one of the resolutions I wanted to use so that wasn’t really a problem after all.

Note that since I’m using the uvesafb, I don’t get like really hardware accelerated console, and that if I use 1920x1080x32 which my card supports as a maximum, stuff get imho a bit slow. That is, text rolling off screen is slow and a bit stuttering.
I’ve found that 1280×800 is a perfect compromise in my case.

Evolution 3, google calendar sync prob.

Joar Jegleim 1 Comment

In ubuntu 11.10 I had problems adding my google calendar .
In gconf-editor, I found the evolution entry in apps/evolution
there is a key called “source” in addressbook and calendar also, and they differ. the calendar had no “google” source. I simply copied it from the addressbook part (double click on sources under addressbook, select the one with name=”Google”, press edit, copy it’s content) and added a new entry to the source key under calendar (same procedure, but press add when editing the key).

Got that from ubuntuforums.org

Getting rid of ubuntu violet colors

Joar Jegleim 3 Comments

I dist-upgrade’ed my Ubuntu at my laptop, and I’m again annoyed by the colors. I just can’t get used to the violet colors in debconf . Changing desktop background and colors, lightdm (yeah, they’ve replaced gdm with lightdm in 11.10) or splash (plymouth) themes is not a problem, and there are tons of howto’s out there. I’ve come to routinely replacing all of these things after installing or upgrading Ubuntu. Ubuntu now even has setup violet colors in debconf (!) . At the very least I want it back to Debian default blue .
This task turned out to be rather challenging (and quite stupid to spend time on figuring out) .
I guess my main problem was I didn’t really know which program(s) that was in effect when debconf was running. At first I didn’t even know ‘debconf’ had anything to do with those violet colors .
Long story short: it’s debconf, and some dependency involving libnewt . Thanks to the open source world, when I finally got my google phrase right, the solution was just one click away and I got insight right into the mail between developers that talked about moving away from default Debian blue colors. Have a look at lists.ubuntu.com and you’ll see that it’s all about a symlink in /etc/newt.
Before: violet background

root@juno:/etc/newt# pwd
/etc/newt
root@juno:/etc/newt# ls -l
total 8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  30 2011-10-05 22:00 palette -> /etc/alternatives/newt-palette
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 309 2011-03-22 14:32 palette.original
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 336 2011-03-22 14:32 palette.ubuntu
root@juno:/etc/newt# rm palette
root@juno:/etc/newt# ln -s palette.original palette
root@juno:/etc/newt# ls -l
total 8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  16 2011-10-05 22:00 palette -> palette.original
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 309 2011-03-22 14:32 palette.original
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 336 2011-03-22 14:32 palette.ubuntu
root@juno:/etc/newt#

And we’re back at the blue background with debconf.
After: