Java Thinking

I've finally fixed sound via the browser on my Ubuntu 11.04 MythTV media center. MythTV was working fine, but the browsers never even tried to play sound (the sound settings would show NO applications using sound, when Chrome or Firefox should have been). The information I needed was here and I had no /etc/asound.conf so I had to put the following in ~/.asoundrc - pcm.pulse { type pulse } ctl.pulse { type pulse } pcm.!default { type pulse } ctl.!default { type pulse }

Ubuntu 10.04 is here! I've been running Ubuntu exclusively (my wife has the only Windows machine in the house) since (I think) around 6.XX and it just keeps getting better. Last year I converted my parents to Ubuntu 9.10 and every now and then they boot into windows because they don't know how to do something, but thats just because I'm in a different country - otherwise I'd be able to help them a lot more, and show them around. I've got remote control working well now ( Remmina has an option to drop the colours to 256 which means it performs fine across the Tasman) so that means I can show them how to do things easily. I'm looking forward to the new social network aspect of Ubuntu 10, with tight integration into chat and social networks - hopefully this will keep me in touch with my family much more. By the way, I really like Gwibber , and look forward to seeing that evolve. If you like the sound of Linux and/or Ubuntu, I encourage you to try it out. It can m...

There is some great new technology coming: Enso Zenpad 5 inches  http://enso-now.com/n/index.php Alex eReader  https://www.springdesign.com/us/index.action And the return of a classic: http://www.commodoreusa.net/index.html I'm back playing with virtual machines, trying to investigate a few products that might result in productivity gains. So, I'm using VirtualBox, and here's a couple of must knows: Bios settings for hardware virtualization  http://www.sevenforums.com/virtualization/20330-how-turn-hardware-virtualization-my-bios.html Networking - the default NAT network setting allows the guest to see the internet, but other machines can't see the guest - not too useful if your guest is a server. Here are some useful references: a)  http://www.callum-macdonald.com/2009/10/28/virtualbox-host-to-guest-networking/ b)  http://paparadit.blogspot.com/2007/08/virtualbox-windows-xp-guest-in-windows.html c)  http://mydebian.blogdns.org/?p=148 One thing I'm looking...

So I recently submitted a patch to the NetworkManager component: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=607731  - but it turns out to be a duplicate because this problem was addressed in https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600779 - by default Bugzilla doesn't seem to include 'resolved' defects in the search results. You have to go to advanced search and select all statuses . So, if my patch wasn't needed, and this issue has been resolved, then why doesn't the source code in trunk have this change? Bug 600779 mentions that service providers is deprecated, but by what? Ubuntu 9.10 still uses it, because when I edited /usr/share/mobile-broadband-provider-info/serviceproviders.xml it worked fine for me. If service providers is deprecated, then why isn't there something on the homepage? Bugzilla doesn't seem to report which source files were changed in a bug - something I quite like in JIRA. See comment #1 : VirginInternet would still be used for teth...

Something happened on my Ubuntu install sometime which meant that double clicking on an HTML file resulted in the file being opened by gedit . Not really what I wanted. I started looking through the GNOME system menu (Preferences and Administration) to find how to change the default action - but that turned out to be the wrong place. In Nautilus , simply right click on the file and select 'Properties'. From there, go to the 'Open with' tab and select the appropriate application.

A friend put me on to this blog post about extra repositories for Ubuntu. This is a great resource which highlights some great (and possibly essential) software that you should know about if you are running Ubuntu (and possibly any linux flavour). Have a look, you may find some software listed there of interest to you. I didn't know about some of the items listed (eg GNOME Do ) so its been a great resource for me.

I wanted to convert some CDs to MP3 - normally I'd use OGG, but you can't always rely on devices being able to play that format (i.e. DVD players). I was relieved to see it is easy in Ubuntu 8.10: enable multiverse and universe repos sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse  sound-juicer start sound-juicer and go to Edit/Preferences and switch the format to MP3 It was that easy. I seem to remember having to do a lot more with previous versions of Ubuntu.

I've been a little frustrated with the lack of my usual Firefox plugins due to most of them not being available for Firefox 3, so I've decided to install Firefox 2. It seems apparently easy: sudo apt-get install firefox-2 Now, I can run Firefox 2 from the command line with firefox-2 Firefox 3 still works, by running 'firefox' - so while I can use 3 for browsing, I can use 2 for developing. Note, I had to create a new profile for FireFox 2, because it didn't seem right to run it with the version 3 profiles (and the extensions had a few issues) - but this is fair enough. See Firefox Profiles for more information.

I've been running Ubuntu on my laptop for a while now - I think I started with 6.10 and then reinstalled when 7.04 came out, and just now I've done a clean install of 7.10. It hasn't gone totally smoothly though. I've had problems with wireless, suspend and hibernate. I was hoping 7.10 would resolve most of these problems, and I got quite excited when wireless worked straight out of the box. I set the laptop to suspend when the lid was closed, and when I closed the lid, it tried to suspend and failed- when I tried to use it again, it seemed to wake up but then immediately hibernated and powered off. After resuming the machine, no surprise that the wireless no longer worked. It was the same problem as always, /var/log/dmesg revealing: [ 17.004000] ipw2200: Radio Frequency Kill Switch is On: [ 17.004000] Kill switch must be turned off for wireless networking to work. (My laptop has a kill switch on the left hand side - this turns the wireless off hardware style) I fin...