Ted Carnahan

I use Asaph, a lead-sheet creation program for musicians, and I discovered that since upgrading to Gutsy, printing doesn’t work. Apparently this is a common problem, detailed in this bug on Launchpad.

The (albeit ugly) workaround: in Software Sources, add deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty main as a “Third Party Source.” Then downgrade to cupsys version 1.2.8-0ubuntu8.

Here’s the simple process for installing Koine Greek input method support for Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon:

1. Make sure you have scim installed
2. Add this repository to your apt sources: deb http://packages.sil.org/ubuntu gutsy main
3. sudo aptitude update
4. sudo aptitude install scim-kmfl-imengine kmflcomp
5. Download scim-greek-koine.tar.gz, which contains a KMFL engine file I got from somewhere else that I have modified to work.
6. Extract the tarfile and compile the kmfl file by running kmflcomp GrkPolyComp.KMN
7. Run scim-setup, click on the new “KMFL” option, click install, browse to the GrkPolyComp.kmfl file you just compiled.

It was a twisty road to get to this point, so if it doesn’t work for you, post in the comments and I’ll try to help you work it out.

I just read this article on xsol.se and tried out a few of the changes on my Ubuntu Edgy system. The results were impressive! Just changing the boot process to run in parallel (idea #2) improved my time from power-on to a login screen from 40-ish seconds to about 15! I can probably do better if I don’t start my rather large MySQL server (used for development at work) on every boot too.

I also recommend disabling Java from OpenOffice - that alone improved startup time of Writer from 10-ish seconds to about 2 seconds.

Any other creative tips to make Ubuntu even faster?

Edit: - I’d also recommend trying prelink. Prelink links your applications to their runtime libraries in advance so that they start faster. It’s not for everyone - it’s not necessary in Feisty, and it might break your system (but if it breaks, you do get to keep both pieces!) but it has made a tangible improvement in application startup speed for me. This guide has a quick tutorial on enabling prelink.

Edit 2: - If you run a large MySQL database on your desktop / laptop, you might want to check out my post on using ionice to de-prioritize mysqlcheck

Both Jennifer and I have had a problem with our laptops for a long time where wireless does not always get reinitialized when our computers come back from standby. On Friday, we ran into this same problem with a work laptop. All three are Dells, but they are very different machines: a 3-year-old Inspiron 5150, a new-ish Inspiron 9400 (my baby), and a brand new Latitude D620. In every case, this little script helps:

#!/bin/bash

# Pick the right kernel module for the hardware here
sudo rmmod ipw3945
sudo modprobe ipw3945 ieee80211
killall nm-applet
nohup nm-applet 2>&1 > /dev/null &

This solves two different problems. First, sometimes the wireless fails to show up as wireless - that’s what removing and reinstalling the kernel module does. Secondly, even when the wireless interface is available, sometimes the NetworkManager applet drops the ball and won’t recognize it. A restart of the applet fixes that problem. Hopefully someone else will find this little script useful too.

A few weeks ago I bought a new Dell Inspiron 9400 laptop after my three year old Dell died, 37 days out of warranty. I was running Dapper on that laptop, and I wanted to continue that with this new machine.

The good news: everything works. (Intel) Wireless, Bluetooth, CD/DVD burning, suspend, hibernate, touchpad, brightness dimming, all of the special buttons, USB. I haven’t tried the modem, but I don’t really care about it.

I picked the Intel 945 graphics, so I’m running the experimental xserver-xorg-air-core Xserver. That means that all of the shiny wobbly windows and compositing work well too. However, be sure to switch back to metacity (the default GNOME window manager) before attempting the Quit Gnome screen - the screen becomes active, but it doesn’t work with the compositing so you can never see it. Also, if you use the suspend or hibernate buttons with compiz, usually the system won’t come back - again, switch to metacity using compiz-manager before suspending or hibernating.

Graphics-wise, I was worried that I’d have trouble with the WUXGA screen (1920×1200) on this laptop, but that hasn’t been the case - it worked out of the box with Dapper.

The centrino CPU frequency scaling works well. I went for the Core 2 Duo, so I have independant control of frequencies and frequency governors on the two CPU cores. Thermal monitoring works, so I can get neat graphs.

Altogether, I definitely recommend this configuration to anyone who wants a capable Ubuntu laptop.