Karmic Koala Upgrade And Some Linux Questions

[Baniboy 3]

Hi trapsters. I installed Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala today after I got my new hard drive. I have a few questions tho. After installing, Grub is taking so much longer to load. Is this normal? Anyone else experienced this kind of thing? I can also see (in the boot-loader menu) that it's a beta version of Grub, can I downgrade to a stable version?When I have special effects on medium and I use the gnome panel to minimize and maximize windows, minimizing works fine but maximizing comes with a delay. Why is this? Some kind of graphics load thing? I prefer speed, so I'm happy without this if I can't get it to work. Is there any alternative software which will give me visual effects?I don't really like the new IM client empathy, it doesn't let me choose how much space I want in the typing-space and takes up a lot of memory, so I removed it and replaced with Emesene, which I used earlier before the HDD failure with Ubuntu 9.04.Now let's move on to other questions.I know how to(well, a little) compile a program from source in terminal, but the compiled things can only be started with the shell script? How can I add compiled stuff to the gnome panels menu(like have it in the option for example to define which programs are used to play various formats). And also have it in the right category(Accessories, Games, Internet, etc). Am I able to do this? Because without this I can't see how I'm going to make any use of a compiled WINE for example.

[The Simpleton 2]

Wow a lot of questions but I think I know the answers to only a few....let me try though.

After installing, Grub is taking so much longer to load. Is this normal? Anyone else experienced this kind of thing? I can also see (in the boot-loader menu) that it's a beta version of Grub, can I downgrade to a stable version?

I didn't experience this till now and mine is a pretty slow computer. But as it seems you're not comfortable with the beta, do try the stable version and see if you get better results. You can use the installation CD to reinstall GRUB if I'm not wrong.

When I have special effects on medium and I use the gnome panel to minimize and maximize windows, minimizing works fine but maximizing comes with a delay. Why is this? Some kind of graphics load thing? I prefer speed, so I'm happy without this if I can't get it to work. Is there any alternative software which will give me visual effects?

As I said before, mine's a slow computer and yet when I put special effects on "Extra" it does work for me and all that "wobbly" effects when you maximise/minimise the windows are all there. But when my friend tried using "extra" graphics on his computer which is much faster, he didn't get the required effects. So that setting is not working on a few computers

I don't really like the new IM client empathy, it doesn't let me choose how much space I want in the typing-space and takes up a lot of memory, so I removed it and replaced with Emesene, which I used earlier before the HDD failure with Ubuntu 9.04.

I removed Empathy too just recently! It wasn't that bad but Pidgin made me feel more at home....never heard of Emesene though - is it better than Pidgin?

I know how to(well, a little) compile a program from source in terminal, but the compiled things can only be started with the shell script?

I'm not entirely sure about this question as I didn't understand fully understand it, but you could always make an executable so that you can run it outside the terminal?

[truefusion 3]

After installing, Grub is taking so much longer to load. Is this normal? Anyone else experienced this kind of thing?

Interestingly, it only happens to me every now and then, not always. However, this is how GRUB works: it doesn't install itself into the MBR, it just installs something which loads the GRUB installed somewhere on one of your partitions. I am not sure if it keeps track of which partition or if it tries to search for it on start-up, but GRUB 2, at least in Ubuntu, from what i can remember from GRUB 1, has a bit more files in /boot/grub than GRUB 1 did.

I can also see (in the boot-loader menu) that it's a beta version of Grub, can I downgrade to a stable version?

You could, but i wouldn't recommend it, especially if the repository doesn't contain any older versions.

When I have special effects on medium and I use the gnome panel to minimize and maximize windows, minimizing works fine but maximizing comes with a delay. Why is this? Some kind of graphics load thing? I prefer speed, so I'm happy without this if I can't get it to work. Is there any alternative software which will give me visual effects?

I've always experienced some kind of lag when unminimizing, and sometimes when minimizing—but it doesn't bother me. I do not know of any alternative software (that integrates so well with GNOME) for visual effects, but what i would recommend instead is to download and install the Compiz configuration settings manager and just disable that window effect.

I don't really like the new IM client empathy, it doesn't let me choose how much space I want in the typing-space

I didn't like that either.

I know how to(well, a little) compile a program from source in terminal, but the compiled things can only be started with the shell script? How can I add compiled stuff to the gnome panels menu(like have it in the option for example to define which programs are used to play various formats). And also have it in the right category(Accessories, Games, Internet, etc). Am I able to do this? Because without this I can't see how I'm going to make any use of a compiled WINE for example.

Assuming you are compiling and installing GUI programs, there is a thing known as a "desktop file"—you'll find hundreds of them at /usr/share/application. That is one of the areas that GNOME looks for when updating its menus. Look at the ones already on your system and check out its structure and just mimic it. After creating your own desktop file, you can just drag and drop the desktop file into the GNOME applications menu, and it'll add it. Not all programs that are GUI programs bring their own desktop file. However, not all programs "allow" certain desktop environments to have it listed in their menus. That is, according to the standards for application menus, you can choose to inform the menu generator of the desktop environment to show itself in GNOME only, KDE only, or whatever desktop environment (you may see this when searching through the desktop files located at /usr/share/applications).

[Baniboy 3]

I removed Empathy too just recently! It wasn't that bad but Pidgin made me feel more at home....never heard of Emesene though - is it better than Pidgin?

Emesene is a simple IM client designed to look like windows live messenger.
@tf and TS:
I tried downgrading using this guide: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
But it isn't working, after a reboot, I'm still left with Grub2 beta.
I'm going to try again later. And it's so unstable piece of bleep! Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, what a piece of junk, who the hell decided to use that on Karmic Koala? if I only could get my hands on him...

Assuming you are compiling and installing GUI programs, there is a thing known as a "desktop file"you'll find hundreds of them at /usr/share/application. That is one of the areas that GNOME looks for when updating its menus. Look at the ones already on your system and check out its structure and just mimic it. After creating your own desktop file, you can just drag and drop the desktop file into the GNOME applications menu, and it'll add it. Not all programs that are GUI programs bring their own desktop file. However, not all programs "allow" certain desktop environments to have it listed in their menus. That is, according to the standards for application menus, you can choose to inform the menu generator of the desktop environment to show itself in GNOME only, KDE only, or whatever desktop environment (you may see this when searching through the desktop files located at /usr/share/applications).

All those files point to an executable, and I want to link to a shell script. I found a way to add these launchers in "System -> Preferences -> Menu(or something, I don't know, I have the Finnish version). I tried adding there and using shell script without luck.

Do you run compiled WINE? I've yet to try compiling it but does it have 1 executable which I could run to launch the whole thing? Do you use shell scripts for desktop files?

[truefusion 3]

who the hell decided to use that on Karmic Koala? if I only could get my hands on him...

They normally switch to it to increase support for it—not necessarily because it is something worth switching to (although, when it does have all the support it needs, then it may be something worth switching to).

All those files point to an executable, and I want to link to a shell script. I found a way to add these launchers in "System -> Preferences -> Menu(or something, I don't know, I have the Finnish version). I tried adding there and using shell script without luck.

Just because they don't end in .sh, doesn't mean they are not shell scripts. It is not unheard of to have a shell script without an extension and then providing their file name for the "Exec" field in a desktop file. The system knows it is a shell script because of the first line that all properly-written shell scripts start with. Do note, though, that most shell scripts were meant to run through a terminal.

Do you run compiled WINE? I've yet to try compiling it but does it have 1 executable which I could run to launch the whole thing? Do you use shell scripts for desktop files?

When you compile and install Wine, if i'm not mistaken, Wine modifies the mimeinfo.cache file located at /usr/share/applications. File managers constantly look at this file because it allows them to generate right-click, "Open with ..." menus easily. Therefore when you come across an exe file, you'll be provided the choice to run it with Wine—if you don't want to do it through the terminal (i always do it through the terminal, though). Likewise, when Wine installs a Windows program that provides its own Windows shortcut, Wine generates a desktop file for that shortcut, which most application menus list in their Wine category.
When Wine starts the Wine server (e.g. when trying to open a Windows exe), it opens up every other Wine binary executable in order to perform its task. When you close the Wine server, all those other programs close too.

[The Simpleton 2]

They normally switch to it to increase support for it?not necessarily because it is something worth switching to (although, when it does have all the support it needs, then it may be something worth switching to).

Well on some aspects they should listen to what the community says and try to implement it - Empathy isn't a popular choice for the default client, but I think they included it based on this support thingy?

[Baniboy 3]

I tried removing shell script file extension, mimicking a desktop file and doing it, but it just doesn't work! The compiled program I'm trying to add to the gnome menu is a First-Person-Shooter called AssaultCube. There's also a .deb available for it at playdeb.net. I tried installing from the playdeb repositories but the game sounds were so screwed up that I decided to compile. The compiled version's sounds are not as screwed up as the deb one, but they get worse as I continue playing the game for a long time. So is this my sound driver screwing things up? I can feel how my laptop heats up a lot while playing this game. I never had the problem with 9.04, is this new drivers that my hardware doesn't work well with? ARGHHH I still feel Ubuntu 9.10 was released for the sole reason of "a new version has to be released every 6 months". This is wrong, a new version should be released when IT IS FREAKING READY.

If anyone bothers and has time to(and maybe wanna shoot someone for no good reason ) you can try out compiling AssaultCube and tell me how it runs onn your machine. It's a nice game to play once in a while. Here are the instructions for compiling the game(dependencies and stuff like that...):

[b] Compiling AssaultCube[/b] If you find you need to compile a special binary for your operating system, follow these steps. Open a console Make sure all needed libraries are installed - you can do this by running the following command: sudo apt-get install build-essential libsdl1.2debian libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-image1.2 libsdl-image1.2-dev libopenal1 libopenal-dev libvorbis-dev Make sure to select yes if it asks you to install additional packages  cd ~/AssaultCube/source/srcmake installmake clean Congrats, AssaultCube should now be compiled and you can execute the new binary simply by starting the shell file.

And if someone also bothers, you could try adding the desktop file for it and tell me(us) how it went(Thanks to anyone who does this, I'll give you a cookie if I happen to meet you in real life )

As for wine, I found out at WINE HQ that the newest version(beta) doesn't have to be compiled and it can be installed from WINEHQ repositories.
Edited November 23, 2009 by Baniboy (see edit history)

[truefusion 3]

If anyone bothers and has time to(and maybe wanna shoot someone for no good reason ) you can try out compiling AssaultCube and tell me how it runs onn your machine. It's a nice game to play once in a while. Here are the instructions for compiling the game(dependencies and stuff like that...)

After realizing that i had downloaded a pre-compiled version from off of their website, i went back to download the source. After compiling the source, i realized the command "make install" does not install system-wide and reflects the same structure as the pre-compiled archive. Therefore compiling is unnecessary, let alone going to third-party sources just to have the game.

I tried removing shell script file extension, mimicking a desktop file and doing it, but it just doesn't work! The compiled program I'm trying to add to the gnome menu is a First-Person-Shooter called AssaultCube. There's also a .deb available for it at playdeb.net. I tried installing from the playdeb repositories but the game sounds were so screwed up that I decided to compile. The compiled version's sounds are not as screwed up as the deb one, but they get worse as I continue playing the game for a long time. So is this my sound driver screwing things up? I can feel how my laptop heats up a lot while playing this game. I never had the problem with 9.04, is this new drivers that my hardware doesn't work well with? ARGHHH I still feel Ubuntu 9.10 was released for the sole reason of "a new version has to be released every 6 months". This is wrong, a new version should be released when IT IS FREAKING READY.

The sound does not sound bad at all on my machine—at least from what little gun shots, knife swinging and item pick-ups i did. So, yes, it could be a sound driver issue, or, perhaps, that your computer is slower than you thought (though the latter is less likely to be the case).

And if someone also bothers, you could try adding the desktop file for it and tell me(us) how it went(Thanks to anyone who does this, I'll give you a cookie if I happen to meet you in real life )

[Desktop Entry]Name=AssaultCubeIcon=/full/path/to/AssaultCube/icon.icoExec=/full/path/to/AssaultCube/assaultcube.shCategories=Games

Worked for me—must have the pre-compiled version, available from their site.

As for wine, I found out at WINE HQ that the newest version(beta) doesn't have to be compiled and it can be installed from WINEHQ repositories.

You might find it to be faster to just download the source code and compile it.

[The Simpleton 2]

As for wine, I found out at WINE HQ that the newest version(beta) doesn't have to be compiled and it can be installed from WINEHQ repositories.

I've been having some issues with the latest version - it's not running some programs as smoothly as it did earlier. So I recommend to stick with the stable, old version for now....

[Baniboy 3]

I've been having some issues with the latest version - it's not running some programs as smoothly as it did earlier. So I recommend to stick with the stable, old version for now....

Well it does work for me. I run Crimson Editor, English-Finnish-English dictionary, Betsson poker client and Spotify without any problems.
@tf:
It doesn't work for me and I don't know why, even the shortcut doesn't work. I doubt it's my sound card, because I can run Nexuiz just fine.
And LMAO I didn't know it was pre-compiled. How dumb can I beeee....
I still think it's KK's fault, because I didn't have this problem with Jaunty Jackalope. I guess I'll just play antigravitator and nexuiz

Another thing I noticed on startup, is a "error" at startup. You know when the glowing animated white ubuntu icon shows up? That is when I get a small error at the bottom saying that it's waiting for /home to be mounted. I have a separate home partition, chose one partition to be used as /home in the partitioning program, did I do anything wrong?

And as for compiling, gee you must be very systematic tf, if you prefer compiling instead of having them all organized and easily removable through package manager!
Edited November 29, 2009 by Baniboy (see edit history)

[truefusion 3]

Another thing I noticed on startup, is a "error" at startup. You know when the glowing animated white ubuntu icon shows up? That is when I get a small error at the bottom saying that it's waiting for /home to be mounted. I have a separate home partition, chose one partition to be used as /home in the partitioning program, did I do anything wrong?

What partitioner? The one that comes with Ubiquity? Or did you download GParted and used that? If the latter, then that would be the problem. GParted may be able to mount and unmount partitions, but it doesn't save anything to /etc/fstab. You can download a program called "MountManager;" it'll save the changes to /etc/fstab. If the former, then it shouldn't have done that.

And as for compiling, gee you must be very systematic tf, if you prefer compiling instead of having them all organized and easily removable through package manager!

I have a folder called "sources" filled with source code. I like to live on the "bleeding edge." Ubuntu having the program in the repository just means that it therefore becomes easy for me to compile programs, because i can have APT install all the dependencies for the program with one simple command. I don't mind waiting for 6 months to see changes in very complicated programs, but some, the wait is unnecessary. That's one of the things i like about Gentoo: it's a rolling-release disto; it updates the repository whenever it can, not every six months.

[Baniboy 3]

I used the partitioner that came in the LiveCD of Ubuntu. Just set the mounting point to "/home" while the other one remained "/".But anyway, now I have bigger problems... Ubuntu is booting into some kind of shell. I installed XAMPP before I did this thing, does that have an effect? I can uninstall it through shell, gotta try that, but it's getting pretty late. I'll also post on the ubuntu forums but I thought I would leave this post cook here for a while, maybe someone could help me here before I posted on their forums.Another thing is that I uninstalled lamp and accidentally broke some packages, then I ran sudo apt-get -f install(don't remember if it was "install -f" or "-f install"). It fixed everything, I installed XAMPP, hibernated my computer, after a wake up sounds on assaultcube worked perfectly.(BTW, it lagged in antigravitator earlier, too.)So I shut down and go to sleep, the next time I boot, the OS list in GRUB looks different(the order, I mean) and when I boot into Ubuntu, I boot into some kind of terminal or something. I tried recovery mode, checked out fixing some packages and stuff, but didn't work.Do you use Gentoo? I considered using Debian, since a test result on facebook suggested that to me(I know, kinda stupid...) So, is debian any good? I know it doesn't have the same ease of installing since there are ISOs for different processor types? Anyway, I wanted to know, what are the advantages of using such distros.(well, I know debian isn't an ultra-pro-nerd OS, but isn't it a little more complicated to use than Ubuntu?) There must be reasons why people use these other than eliteness. ()