lucid-desktop-i386.iso
done 685.9 MB Rate: 36.8 / 0.0 KB Uploaded: 15212.3 MB [ I R: 22.18]

lucid-alternate-i386.iso
done 651.7 MB Rate: 0.4 / 0.0 KB Uploaded: 3580.3 MB [ I R: 5.49]

lucid-desktop-amd64.iso
done 689.0 MB Rate: 5.3 / 0.0 KB Uploaded: 12409.9 MB [ I R: 18.01]

Those numbers should be much more impressive with Beta 1 due out tomorrow.

During the alpha stages of Lucid’s development, a major update to Ubuntu’s theme was introduced which went far and away from the familiar brown. With that, the designers decided to also incorporate a new title bar button layout that flopped the minimize, maximize, and close buttons from the right corner to the left corner. Understandably, chaos ensued as many users offered lots of reasons why this was a horrible design change. But the term “many” should not be confused with “most” as there are plenty more users who aren’t that affected by it, myself included.

There’s been a lot of focus on window design, more so since the introduction of Google’s Chrome web browser, which omits a title bar and a menu bar altogether, yet still maintains the min, max, and close buttons, and functions quite nicely. Ubuntu hasn’t been the only one to rethink the window managers as Microsoft and Apple have done so as well in recent years.

But as much as the debate rolls on, users should not fear it so much. As many things are in the Linux universe, the change need not be a permanent one. If you’re unhappy with it, change it as Gnome provides the means to your end with gconf-editor.

Use ALT-F2 to bring up the Run Application window, enter gconf-editor and click Run. Browse to apps > metacity > general and find the button_layout field.

You can use any combination of six values: : (colon), menu, minimize, maximize, spacer, and close. Button names need to be separated with commas. The colon denotes the separation between the left and right corners. Following are some examples.

The default Lucid layout.
maximize,minimize,close:

The previous layout that we’ve been familiar with looks broken as the minimize button is designed to be sandwiched between the maximize and close buttons.
menu:minimize,maximize,close

Here’s the previous look with Lucid’s button order.
menu:maximize,minimize,close

A spacer can be added. Although it too slightly breaks the design, it may still be helpful to keep the close button separated slightly from the others. The menu button has been removed in the following example.
:maximize,minimize,spacer,close

One alternate layout is to keep the minimize and maximize buttons to the left and pushing the close button to the right.
maximize,minimize:close

With gconf-editor, you can find whatever combination you’re most comfortable with. You can also use the command line tool gconftool-2 to set the value of the layout quickly. To get the pre-Lucid layout:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type=string :minimize,maximize,close

Just because Ubuntu made a small change to the layout doesn’t mean it has to be accepted.

UPDATE: Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical’s founder, takes a brief moment to voice some opinions over the matter.

mountall: error while loading shared libraries: libplybootclient.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory.
init: mountall main process (265) terminated with status 127

It’s getting some attention at Ubuntu Forums here and here. There’s also a bug report already filed with a fix on the way.

If you find yourself stuck with a non-bootable Lucid, the posts and bug reports have some ideas. Myself, I used a workaround suggested by Rob2687 and loaded a Karmic LiveCD (LiveUSB key actually), mounted my root partition and added a new symbolic link.

sudo mkdir /mnt/root
sudo mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/root
sudo ln -s /mnt/root/lib/libply-boot-client.so.2.0.0 /mnt/root/lib/libplybootclient.so.2

My Lucid install was able to reboot successfully after this.

UPDATE: Updates have been pushed out to correct this situation with the following versions:
plymouth 0.8.0~-14
mountall 2.8

I’ve dedicated some home bandwidth to the desktop torrents. As you can see from my rtorrent’s current stats below, there’s been plenty of demand for them throughout these past seven days since Alpha 3 was released.

lucid-desktop-amd64.iso
done 689.0 MB Rate: 1.4 / 0.0 KB Uploaded: 6185.9 MB [ I R: 8.98]

lucid-desktop-i386.iso
done 685.9 MB Rate: 6.6 / 0.0 KB Uploaded: 6937.8 MB [ I R: 10.11]

According to Lucid’s release schedule, we can expect another two weeks of testing before the first of two Beta releases come out on March 18. Three weeks later will be the Beta 2, followed by a Release Candidate two weeks after that, and finally the official release on April 29.

With the release of Lucid, we should also be seeing the death of 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. User will be urged to upgrade to at least 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope by then to continue receiving package updates and security fixes.

After some digging, I came across this Launchpad bug explaining the same condition. Lars Bengtsson’s comment explained with a link that there was a change in the gnome-power-manager package back in July that decided to hide the Do nothing option unless it was specified in GConf.

There are two ways to specify Do nothing in GConf. Pick what you’re more comfortable with. The GUI way is to press ALT-F2 and run gconf-editor. Use the tree to navigate to apps > gnome-power-manager > buttons > lid_ac and change it to nothing. The Long description that appears below in the Key Documentation area provides the other possible values.

From a command line, or in a terminal window, use the following command to change the value to nothing:

gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/buttons/lid_ac "nothing"

You should now see Do nothing as an option from within the Power Management application.

It’s only semi-persistent. Once you change the option to something else, Do nothing is hidden again. You’ll need to repeat the process to add it back. Some comments from the bug entry suggest this may not work for everyone. I suspect there are other issues preventing them from keeping an external monitor active with a laptop’s lid closed which I couldn’t suggest a reason.

I had assumed it was a design decision due to the artwork changes being done to the icon theme that would be corrected during the final release. Well, the final release is here and the issue is still prevalent. Since it didn’t affect the ability to use the computer, I put off finding an answer.

I had been upgrading some other laptops with fresh installations of Karmic which usually includes some tweaks to the look and feel of the default install. That’s when I noticed in the Appearance Preferences that Show icons in menus was not enabled. Seems Karmic is installed with it defaulted to off. I gave it a click and voilà, the menu icons reappeared to much rejoicing.

You can open the Appearance Preferences by following System > Preferences > Appearance from the main menu. Click on the Interface tab and make sure there is a check mark in Show icons in menus.

Ta-da! They have returned!

My ugly mug and the new Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Desktop CD. Thank-you to Canonical for getting it to me so quick. I wasn’t expecting it until later this month. This is consequently the last time I’ll be requesting a free CD, as I mentioned a few days ago.

MatBoy: mhh, 9.10 upgrade on a eeepc 901 is not that easy with ssd
MatBoy: where does the 9.10 upgrade needs 1,5GB space ?
MatBoy: in /tmp ?
MatBoy: someone running 9.10 on a eeepc 901 with ssd ?
MatBoy: mhh, I can’t upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10… space issue of 1,5GB it says
MatBoy: LOL I removed my /home because I wanted to gpart the drives… which is ofcourse seperated :)
MatBoy: my install is on the 4GB part, so that might be too small by default…. I’m wondering if I move /tmp to the second drive if it works
MatBoy: I think I need a new install :(

Upgrading from Jaunty to Karmic through the Update Manager presented an interesting challenge on my Asus Eee PC 701. Since my / partition was only 4GB in size, there wasn’t enough room to download all of the necessary packages. Since there was no reason, or space, to put /var onto its own partition, the upgrade process was reliant on what the / partition contained. Fortunately, the Linux file system is very versatile making this more of an annoyance than a show-stopper.

Luckily for me, I had upgraded the SSD to a 32GB drive. I had it partitioned so that /home had its own 20GB partition. This gave me the option of “borrowing” space on that partition. Packages are downloaded to /var/cache/apt/archives/ regardless if they’re regular updates or part of a full system upgrade. What I did was create a symbolic link to a new location on the /home partition.

First, I had apt-get clean out any old updates. This would remove any old packages from the archives directory and free up a little more space on the / partition.

sudo apt-get clean

Next, I created the new temporary location with the included partial sub-directory and lock file.

sudo mkdir -p /home/temp_apt_cache/partial
sudo touch /home/temp_apt_cache/lock

Then, I temporarily changed the original location’s name to maintain a backup.

sudo mv /var/cache/apt/archives /var/cache/apt/archives_old

Lastly, I created a symbolic link to the new location.

sudo ln -s /home/temp_apt_cache /var/cache/apt/archives

I now had plenty of room for all of Karmic’s packages. The link does exactly what it sounds like, linking one location to another. When the upgrade process began downloading packages to the /var/cache/apt/archives/ directory, it was really saving them to the new /home location.

Since I wasn’t expecting to ever borrow more than about 1-1.5GB worth of space from my /home partition, I left it set up that way. To reverse the changes, I would remove the link, remove the temporary location, and rename the original location.

sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives
sudo rm -rf /home/temp_apt_archive
sudo mv /var/cache/apt/archives_old /var/cache/apt/archives

With the new functionality introduced with Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, there’s no simple way to do this without a bit of hacking at the command line, or through a root nautilus window if one feels inclined.

Navigate to the shared sounds directory.

cd /usr/share/sounds

In it, there should be a directory named ubuntu. Within ubuntu is an index.theme file and the sounds stored in a directory named stereo. I first made a complete copy of the ubuntu directory into a new directory.

sudo cp -a ./ubuntu ./adam

I then opened the ./adam/index.theme file with nano…

sudo nano ./adam/index.theme

… and changed my new theme’s name. I changed:

[Sound Theme]
Name=Ubuntu
Directories=stereo

[stereo]
OutputProfile=stereo

… to:

[Sound Theme]
Name=Adam
Directories=stereo

[stereo]
OutputProfile=stereo

… and saved the file.

I now had a new entry in the available themes named Adam.

To change the startup sound, I had to copy over my MGM roaring lion file and change its name. I renamed the old file just in case. Not that it was needed as it was still in the original ubuntu directory, just following my back-up before editing rule.

cd /usr/share/sounds/adam/stereo
sudo mv desktop-login.ogg desktop-login.ogg.old
sudo cp ~/Audio/mgmua_lionroar.wav .
sudo chmod 0644 mgmua_lionroar.wav
sudo mv mgmua_lionroar.wav desktop-login.wav

The filenames are based on the XDG Sound Theme specifications spelled out at freedestop.org. So far, only .ogg .oga and .wav files are supported.

This should at least start you on your way. There’s a lot more information with examples at freedesktop.org’s website. There have been bug reports filed about having the old functionality restored, but we can only wait and see what develops.

…You get your stupid Linux Kernel and Linux Distro for free, I repeat, You don’t pay anything for it….

…made me realize that I’ve been using Ubuntu for the better part of the last three years, for free. Aside from the subsidized Windows licenses that are bundled with a few of my laptops, I haven’t paid for an operating system since before my first Ubuntu installation. And while I haven’t enjoyed every feature, Ubuntu has been a liberating computing experience. Knowing this, I began to feel guilty about my usual request of a free CD for every Ubuntu release from ShipIt. Theoretically, I could hunt down the area’s LoCo and get one through them, but that doesn’t make up for the added cost I’ve contributed to Ubuntu’s budget over the years. While the CDs are free to receive, it still costs money to make and ship them.

So from now on, I’ll be purchasing CDs through the Ubuntu Shop. I tried to look into canceling my recent free CD request for 9.10 Karmic Koala, but it’s already been given to the shipping department and most likely on its way. I did, however, put an order in at the Ubuntu Shop for a 5-pack of Ubuntu Desktop CDs and an Ubuntu cap.

It’s not much but at least it is a start.