Support NeoGAF

[Vanillalite]

I'm currently working on the Ubuntu 12.10 topic. I'm actively looking for topic thread title ideas. My current placeholder is ...

Ubuntu 12.10 |OT|: Thread of QQi'ng those Quantal Quetzals

but I am total open to suggestions.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

You took my suggestion and made it worse/less inflammatory. :<

Also, take out the colon, it's nonstandard. Also "Thread of" is probably redundant.

 

[Vanillalite]

You took my suggestion and made it worse/less inflammatory. :<

Also, take out the colon, it's nonstandard. Also "Thread of" is probably redundant.

I like to keep myself with 0 bans!

 

[Hieberrr]

.

 

[Vanillalite]

.

? WTF does that mean? LOL

 

[-KRS-]

He asked how well Cinammon works on Ubuntu but it seems he found out the answer before anyone could answer him. So he edited out his question. I don't know the answer myself since I don't use Ubuntu otherwise I would have answered when I saw it.

 

[Vanillalite]

On a side note I should be working on the Ubuntu 12.10 topic while I sit here and drink coffee, but I just can't gather the urge or the energy. Plus I have a song in my head that I can't remember WTF it is and it's distracting me.

 

[Hieberrr]

Yeah, I asked about cinnamon since I was interested in trying it, but I opted not since I didn't like the interface.

 

[peakish]

Phew, finally spent some time troubleshooting my new Arch install. Switching to systemd went fine once I understood why the hell it would fail at boot with it (an EFI partition with a bad boot flag) and how to enable services. Also, Gnome 3.6 - mostly better polish than before. Very nice. Disappointed in that you can't start entering your password directly from the lock screen, Enter or Escape has to be pushed first. But, eh.

Only thing remaining now is fixing my touchpad support, the defaults are crap and knowing what to change to what (or if to change driver even) is not easy. Miles behind OS X on this front.

 

[Hieberrr]

I just installed a daily build of Elementary OS Luna on my USB and holy moly, it's running like a dream. Every single thing, from launching apps to using them, is absolutely a pleasure to use. Everything is smooth and fast, and :O It's simply incredible. The only real issue I have with it is that I can't use the desktop (no icons on the desktop; apparently it's their philosophy), but other than that it's an absolute dream. Oh and clicking on a folder or icon pretty much launches it instead of having to double-click it.

 

[injurai]

How do you install Ubuntu without Grub and without using Wubi? I can't seem to figure it out. Perhaps I'll just go with Mint if I can't get it to work.

 

[zoku88]

Phew, finally spent some time troubleshooting my new Arch install. Switching to systemd went fine once I understood why the hell it would fail at boot with it (an EFI partition with a bad boot flag) and how to enable services. Also, Gnome 3.6 - mostly better polish than before. Very nice. Disappointed in that you can't start entering your password directly from the lock screen, Enter or Escape has to be pushed first. But, eh.



Only thing remaining now is fixing my touchpad support, the defaults are crap and knowing what to change to what (or if to change driver even) is not easy. Miles behind OS X on this front.

Do you also notice faster boot times? Or is that me just being crazy?

How do you install Ubuntu without Grub and without using Wubi? I can't seem to figure it out. Perhaps I'll just go with Mint if I can't get it to work.

What do you mean 'without GRUB'?

Do you have some other bootloader that can boot into Linux?

 

[peakish]

Do you also notice faster boot times? Or is that me just being crazy?

No idea, before switching there was some problem with loading udev which held it up for ~30s extra. It's also my first Linux experience with an SSD. But it is fast. Very fast.


Edit: Gnome 3.6 has tons of visual goodness, so slick. Really polished. Except for some parts of the default icon theme (the new sidebar icons are amazing otoh) it's the best looking OOTB setup I know of, MS and Apple don't hold candles to it <3

Edit 2: Hell, nautilus itself is one piece of nice design right now. Clean, with the most important options plain in view with nice and self-explanatory icons. Integrated file search that doesn't suck, replacing type-ahead :/ No there's no option outside of (maybe) dconf-editor to choose between them, I'm not sure what to prefer but search is good to have at least. Besides I do a lot of file management in bash these days, hehe.

Besides my gripe about not being able to enter the password at once the lock screen is awesome as well. I don't know why it has taken so many years for that to happen in DE's.

BTW Gnome users: Don't forget the Tracker extension. No idea why it's not enabled by default but it's awesome.
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/284/tracker-search/

 

[injurai]

What do you mean 'without GRUB'?

Do you have some other bootloader that can boot into Linux?

Ehh, perhaps I don't know as much about this stuff as I thought I did. But at one time it was just the same grey screen that lets you boot into windows recovery mode. But It also had Ubuntu as an option. I just assumed that was the stock boot loader...

I thought Grub makes your Windows partition dependent on the Ubuntu install, and if you ever reinstall Ubuntu you lose access to your windows partition after Grub is lost.

 

[zoku88]

Ehh, perhaps I don't know as much about this stuff as I thought I did. But at one time it was just the same grey screen that lets you boot into windows recovery mode. But It also had Ubuntu as an option. I just assumed that was the stock boot loader...

I thought Grub makes your Windows partition dependent on the Ubuntu install, and if you ever reinstall Ubuntu you lose access to your windows partition after Grub is lost.

How people usually did that, was that Grub chainloads the Windows bootloader, and then the Windows bootloader boots into Windows.

What was probably happening before was that the Window bootloader was booting GRUB which then booted Ubuntu. IDK, though.

Anyway, installing Ubuntu shouldn't take away your access to Windows. What happens, usually, is when you install Ubuntu, is that it runs a script (called os-prober), which scans your HDD for other OSs. So, it will include a menuentry for Windows in the GRUB bootloader, which loads Windows' bootloader which boots Windows.

EDIT: Anyway, I'm not really sure how to edit Windows bootloader very well. I've only messed with it once, but I think I pretty much did what you want to do. I think this is pretty much what you want to do. http://blogs.technet.com/b/port25/a...3a00-a-conversation-with-the-author-aspx.aspx

 

[injurai]

How people usually did that, was that Grub chainloads the Windows bootloader, and then the Windows bootloader boots into Windows.

What was probably happening before was that the Window bootloader was booting GRUB which then booted Ubuntu. IDK, though.

Anyway, installing Ubuntu shouldn't take away your access to Windows. What happens, usually, is when you install Ubuntu, is that it runs a script (called os-prober), which scans your HDD for other OSs. So, it will include a menuentry for Windows in the GRUB bootloader, which loads Windows' bootloader which boots Windows.

Yes I have Grub and all that on one pc already. But one time I went to reformat my Ubuntu partition and it "broke" either my Windows partition or perhaps the Windows bootloader. Just trying to avoid any such dependencies.

To help with my issue, when I installed Ubuntu it asked me to create some small partition, and otherwise it would do something else... I ignored this, maybe that separate partition was to avoid this very dependency that I'm talking about. Actually I think the main purpose of UEFI is to avoid these things.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

No idea, before switching there was some problem with loading udev which held it up for ~30s extra. It's also my first Linux experience with an SSD. But it is fast. Very fast.


Edit: Gnome 3.6 has tons of visual goodness, so slick. Really polished. Except for some parts of the default icon theme (the new sidebar icons are amazing otoh) it's the best looking OOTB setup I know of, MS and Apple don't hold candles to it <3

Edit 2: Hell, nautilus itself is one piece of nice design right now. Clean, with the most important options plain in view with nice and self-explanatory icons. Integrated file search that doesn't suck, replacing type-ahead :/ No there's no option outside of (maybe) dconf-editor to choose between them, I'm not sure what to prefer but search is good to have at least. Besides I do a lot of file management in bash these days, hehe.


Besides my gripe about not being able to enter the password at once the lock screen is awesome as well. I don't know why it has taken so many years for that to happen in DE's.


BTW Gnome users: Don't forget the Tracker extension. No idea why it's not enabled by default but it's awesome.
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/284/tracker-search/

Looks awesome. :O

What's Tracker?

 

[zoku88]

Yes I have Grub and all that on one pc already. But one time I went to reformat my Ubuntu partition and it "broke" either my Windows partition or perhaps the Windows bootloader. Just trying to avoid any such dependencies.

To help with my issue, when I installed Ubuntu it asked me to create some small partition, and otherwise it would do something else... I ignored this, maybe that separate partition was to avoid this very dependency that I'm talking about. Actually I think the main purpose of UEFI is to avoid these things.

UEFI doesn't have anything to do with this.

But what you probably did, was install GRUB on the MBR of the HDD, which overwrote the Windows MBR. It aksed you to make a separate partition to install GRUB on it's own partition (instead of the MBR.) That's what I'm assuming anyway.

Anyway, UEFI doesn't address that, since there really isn't a problem to address.

Looks awesome. :O

What's Tracker?

Isn't it basically a thing that keeps track of files (like locate) and usage patterns?

 

[Massa]

Looks awesome. :O

What's Tracker?

Tracker is a backend program that indexes the files in your home directory so you can search for a term and get the results instantaneously.

And peakish, Files (nautilus) already provides search resuts by default in the Shell overview in GNOME 3.6, so that extension is no longer necessary.

 

[zoku88]

Oh, it doesn't do the usage pattern thing?

Was that zeitgeist? Does that thing still exist?

 

[Massa]

Oh, it doesn't do the usage pattern thing?

Was that zeitgeist? Does that thing still exist?

It does, I believe Ubuntu installs it by default. zeitgeist does the usage pattern thing, tracker does the extremely quick search and retrieving.

There was a bit of a conflict between the two for a while with overlapping functionality but it got resolved and now each tool does a very specific function.

 

[peakish]

Tracker is a backend program that indexes the files in your home directory so you can search for a term and get the results instantaneously.

And peakish, Files (nautilus) already provides search resuts by default in the Shell overview in GNOME 3.6, so that extension is no longer necessary.

Huh, nice. And I thought I did something useful for once.

 

[mug]

Just installed Ubuntu 12.04 - it's been a long time since my last linux experience and I'm enjoying it so far. However I'm really annoyed with the fonts. I'm sure this has been addressed before but is there any way I can have NeoGAF's fonts look less microscopic? It's much more readable on OSX or W7 - am I missing some font packages?

 

[Massa]

Huh, nice. And I thought I did something useful for once.

Oh, but you did. Now more people on GAF know about this awesome new GNOME 3.6 feature.

Just installed Ubuntu 12.04 - it's been a long time since my last linux experience and I'm enjoying it so far. However I'm really annoyed with the fonts. I'm sure this has been addressed before but is there any way I can have NeoGAF's fonts look less microscopic? It's much more readable on OSX or W7 - am I missing some font packages?

Yeah, you need to install Microsoft's fonts. I believe it's available in the software center.

 

[Vanillalite]

My intent is to post the 12.10 topic tonight! Sorry I didn't get it up already!

 

[benjipwns]

My intent is to post the 12.10 topic tonight! Sorry I didn't get it up already!

I don't like the new update manager.

I just like clicking that reload button on the old one for some reason. Must be the five years or whatever I've done it...

 

[GameplayWhore]

Tracker is a backend program that indexes the files in your home directory so you can search for a term and get the results instantaneously.

And peakish, Files (nautilus) already provides search resuts by default in the Shell overview in GNOME 3.6, so that extension is no longer necessary.

I'd like to chime in with a note that tracker-miner-fs is currently using 42.1% of my 8GB memory. I'm assuming this is the same package as what you're discussing. I've seen this process do this before, and I've seen it with other programs that serve similar functions, like striki/akonadi, and I've seen it on multiple computers with multiple distros.

It drives me crazy, because having a meta-based (or at least tag-based) file search tool that knows everything on my system is one of my killer apps. I've just never seen it work well.

edi: 42.3%. Gonna have to murder this bastard.

 

[peakish]

I'd like to chime in with a note that tracker-miner-fs is currently using 42.1% of my 8GB memory. I'm assuming this is the same package as what you're discussing. I've seen this process do this before, and I've seen it with other programs that serve similar functions, like striki/akonadi, and I've seen it on multiple computers with multiple distros.

It drives me crazy, because having a meta-based (or at least tag-based) file search tool that knows everything on my system is one of my killer apps. I've just never seen it work well.

edi: 42.3%. Gonna have to murder this bastard.

Wow, so almost 4GB? Mine is hovering at 58MB Although I don't have a lot of stuff in my /home yet, and it's only indexing "a few" folders in there, ~5GB in total. I guess these things just aren't made to index entire systems yet :/

 

[Massa]

I'd like to chime in with a note that tracker-miner-fs is currently using 42.1% of my 8GB memory. I'm assuming this is the same package as what you're discussing. I've seen this process do this before, and I've seen it with other programs that serve similar functions, like striki/akonadi, and I've seen it on multiple computers with multiple distros.

It drives me crazy, because having a meta-based (or at least tag-based) file search tool that knows everything on my system is one of my killer apps. I've just never seen it work well.

edi: 42.3%. Gonna have to murder this bastard.

The first run is more resource intensive but it shouldn't be that bad after that. The miner also only runs while your machine is idle (you should see that it's a low priority process). Right now it's using 7,7MB here.

If you keep seeing this behavior you should consider filing a bug. Maybe something particular about your setup is causing it to choke. You can also find more details about what it's doing with the tracker-control utility, see the documentation here.

 

[GameplayWhore]

Wow, so almost 4GB? Mine is hovering at 58MB Although I don't have a lot of stuff in my /home yet, and it's only indexing "a few" folders in there, ~5GB in total. I guess these things just aren't made to index entire systems yet :/

Does it automatically crawl through mail? I'm using Thunderbird, and I have most of the email I've received since 1998.

Anyway, I don't actually use it. What's the program or config file that controls whether or not it runs?

 

[Massa]

Does it automatically crawl through mail? I'm using Thunderbird, and I have most of the email I've received since 1998.

Anyway, I don't actually use it. What's the program or config file that controls whether or not it runs?

Indeed it does, there's a Thunderbird plugin I think.

You can use tracker-preferences to configure what it indexes.

 

[Vanillalite]

Does it automatically crawl through mail? I'm using Thunderbird, and I have most of the email I've received since 1998.

Anyway, I don't actually use it. What's the program or config file that controls whether or not it runs?

Damn son. I think it might be time to clear out some email. It's one thing to keep it all in the cloud, and but all your email since 98 locally seems nuts.

 

[-KRS-]

Is it possible to configure it to not index specific folders? Because I remember when I had just installed gnome 3, I typed in a single letter in the gnome-shell overview, like 'e', and all of a sudden pictures from my porn stash showed up in the files. xD

 

[peakish]

Is it possible to configure it to not index specific folders? Because I remember when I had just installed gnome 3, I typed in a single letter in the gnome-shell overview, like 'e', and all of a sudden pictures from my porn stash showed up in the files. xD

Well it uses a whitelist in Tracker Settings, also you can ignore catalog "patterns" like lost+found etc. Rename it to something nonspecific and put it there, lol

 

[GameplayWhore]

Damn son. I think it might be time to clear out some email. It's one thing to keep it all in the cloud, and but all your email since 98 locally seems nuts.

It's on an imap server at home. That doesn't mean it isn't all cached by thunderbird.

 

[Vanillalite]

Official Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal Thread!

Sorry if it's not up to Linux-GAF standards. I'll fully admit ahead of time I can't shake the feeling it's not my best effort. It's something none the less though. So go post away people!

 

[ThatObviousUser]

The colon is annoying! >:|

 

[peakish]

Good job on keeping up with the release threads, Brettison.

 

[Pctx]

Not sure if any of you have had the chance to see this video but I watched it and agree with 90% of what the guy said. He talks about why specifically, desktop Linux "sucks".

Give it a go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh-cnaJoGCw

 

[ThatObviousUser]

Who is he and why should I care?

This blog post makes some good points, but Linus disagreed with it.

 

[peakish]

I'll watch the rest of it later (gotta go out for now) but it seems good. Breakage is unacceptable, Ubuntu staying on the same x.org (etc.) version for several cycles could make sense I guess although I'm not sure if it's that simple. Packaging, yes, sucks.

 

[Pctx]

I'll watch the rest of it later (gotta go out for now) but it seems good. Breakage is unacceptable, Ubuntu staying on the same x.org (etc.) version for several cycles could make sense I guess although I'm not sure if it's that simple. Packaging, yes, sucks.

Pretty much. X.org and how they get back ported to everything is I think the biggest thing holding back the interfaces to Linux. Almost akin to Microsoft having "legacy" drivers for seemingly everything under the sun these days, except in this specific sense, its simply UI drivers.

I thought it was funny (or perhaps telling) that he liked .deb better than RPM or other installs as their scripting (from a purely technical standpoint make more sense than anything else) is incredibly bullet proof. I still hate apt-get vs. YUM though because of the breakage with apt-get on downloads or retries, makes me wonder if they will ever fix that. Anyways, great video and I hope to attend next years conference.

 

[angelfly]

I'll watch the rest of it later (gotta go out for now) but it seems good. Breakage is unacceptable, Ubuntu staying on the same x.org (etc.) version for several cycles could make sense I guess although I'm not sure if it's that simple. Packaging, yes, sucks.

Funny thing is he did another talk the same day basically debunking every thing he said in the previous one.

 

[peakish]

Watched the rest of it. I also totally agree with him on the lack of commercial software on Linux - I definitely do think that eg. Ubuntu has the tools that most average users need, but doing more professional things that isn't heavily involved with academia often seems to mean that the tools won't be as good. The Yorba team apparently talked about this in a recent GUADEC, summarised here.

Pretty much. X.org and how they get back ported to everything is I think the biggest thing holding back the interfaces to Linux. Almost akin to Microsoft having "legacy" drivers for seemingly everything under the sun these days, except in this specific sense, its simply UI drivers.

X.org seems to be such a beast of a project. Mad props to it for being what it is considering what it started out as, but man. Not just X.org though, there should never, ever be regression in newer versions of Linux - my wireless should never stop working if I upgrade. And it has. Not sure if this is due to eg. Ubuntu or the Linux kernel drivers though.

I thought it was funny (or perhaps telling) that he liked .deb better than RPM or other installs as their scripting (from a purely technical standpoint make more sense than anything else) is incredibly bullet proof. I still hate apt-get vs. YUM though because of the breakage with apt-get on downloads or retries, makes me wonder if they will ever fix that. Anyways, great video and I hope to attend next years conference.

What are the real pro's and con's between these systems, anyway? I mean, why do competing "standards" exist? Did RPM lack some functionality that the Debian developers wanted or vice versa which made them create their own (actually don't know which one came first, lol)? Like, just create one standard package type and build specific managers around it to download and stuff. Help evolving the standard if required.

Funny thing is he did another talk the same day basically debunking every thing he said in the previous one.

Hehe, well some things simply are good in some ways and bad in others. This talk took the negative viewpoint which is fair. Is there a link for that talk? (Nice avatar btw.)

 

[angelfly]

Hehe, well some things simply are good in some ways and bad in others. This talk took the negative viewpoint which is fair. Is there a link for that talk? (Nice avatar btw.)

Why Linux Does Not Suck

 

[peakish]

Why Linux Does Not Suck

Thanks, will watch tomorrow. After all, Linux doesn't suck.

 

[Pctx]

Watched the rest of it. I also totally agree with him on the lack of commercial software on Linux - I definitely do think that eg. Ubuntu has the tools that most average users need, but doing more professional things that isn't heavily involved with academia often seems to mean that the tools won't be as good. The Yorba team apparently talked about this in a recent GUADEC, summarised here.


X.org seems to be such a beast of a project. Mad props to it for being what it is considering what it started out as, but man. Not just X.org though, there should never, ever be regression in newer versions of Linux - my wireless should never stop working if I upgrade. And it has. Not sure if this is due to eg. Ubuntu or the Linux kernel drivers though.


What are the real pro's and con's between these systems, anyway? I mean, why do competing "standards" exist? Did RPM lack some functionality that the Debian developers wanted or vice versa which made them create their own (actually don't know which one came first, lol)? Like, just create one standard package type and build specific managers around it to download and stuff. Help evolving the standard if required.


Hehe, well some things simply are good in some ways and bad in others. This talk took the negative viewpoint which is fair. Is there a link for that talk? (Nice avatar btw.)

To your second question about apt vs. yum, one of the issues with apt breaking is how it caches things. yum as it were has a much better identification handle of what it is actually pulling down from upstream and can organize it more "logically" in its cache system. However the caveat is in how they cache and grab if you will. YUM caches as it downloads and calculates what it is going to be installing. Apt caches the download and figures out what to script and install after it has downloaded the packages; Hence why Apt can break if you interrupt the download process.

In the Linux world though, I'm sure it came down to that and just because they could.

 

[Reave]

Okay, I need some help.

To make a long story short, I have Ubuntu 12.04 installed on my laptop but I need to reinstall Windows 7 (I'm installing Ubuntu on a different computer, for the record).

Downloaded the .iso file for Home Premium SP1 and burned it to a DVD, but every time I try to initiate the install it gives me this:

Not sure what I'm supposed to do. Just need to get Ubuntu off this computer and Windows 7 back on.

Help? I'm too noob to figure this out.

 

[GameplayWhore]

Okay, I need some help.

To make a long story short, I have Ubuntu 12.04 installed on my laptop but I need to reinstall Windows 7 (I'm installing Ubuntu on a different computer, for the record).

Downloaded the .iso file for Home Premium SP1 and burned it to a DVD, but every time I try to initiate the install it gives me this:

offwhitedialogboxofdeath.jpg

Not sure what I'm supposed to do. Just need to get Ubuntu off this computer and Windows 7 back on.

Help? I'm too noob to figure this out.

Welcome to the Windows Noob thread!

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...-missing/51ecd2ed-b678-e011-9b4b-68b599b31bf5

One of the things this thread suggests is «disable AHCI mode for your disk controller in the system BIOS. Typically the controller has to be changed from AHCI mode to "IDE" or "ATA" mode.» There are a few other suggestions there.

My personal attack would have been to find the directory containing all CD-ROM drivers (look for a directory with lots of ".inf" files) in the install disc and copy them to a flash drive then use that "Browse" button to tell it where the CD drivers are. I had to do that a shockingly high amount of times from the late nineties to the early-mid naughties.

 

[Reave]

Welcome to the Windows Noob thread!

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...-missing/51ecd2ed-b678-e011-9b4b-68b599b31bf5

One of the things this thread suggests is «disable AHCI mode for your disk controller in the system BIOS. Typically the controller has to be changed from AHCI mode to "IDE" or "ATA" mode.» There are a few other suggestions there.

My personal attack would have been to find the directory containing all CD-ROM drivers (look for a directory with lots of ".inf" files) in the install disc and copy them to a flash drive then use that "Browse" button to tell it where the CD drivers are. I had to do that a shockingly high amount of times from the late nineties to the early-mid naughties.

Yeah, I know this didn't exactly fit the Linux theme but I wasn't sure if there was something Ubuntu-related that was messing up the installation, heh.

I'll give that stuff a try.

EDIT: IT WORKED! Thanks a lot.