Will Lucid play havoc with the Dell Mini 10?

Saturday, 27th March, 2010 — Mark

There has been a lot written about the change in position of the window controls in the alpha- and beta-releases of Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx. I haven’t really got much to add that’s not in this excellent post, and it’s already been discussed to death in this bug report. Basically the problem is that the window controls have been moved from their historical position on the right of the title-bar (where Windows also has them), over to the left:

The rationale behind the change – what there is of it – seems to be that the Ubuntu developers have some ideas for things that they want to put in the top-right of the window. I’ve always felt the window title bar to be a bit of a waste of screen space; I don’t want to see it removed entirely, but rather would like to see it gain some more useful functionality. For example, the window title on Apple’s Finder can also be used to navigate to parent directories, or as a drag-and-drop widget for the parent folder.

So I’m definitely not averse to them adding more power to the title bar, but why does that require the widow controls to move now? Why does it require them to move at all? Unless they’re going to magic some extra space from somewhere, I don’t see why the window controls can’t stay at the top-right, and the new widgets go to the top-left, or to the right of the title bar but just left of the window controls. There may be a very good reason why their new widgets should go to the top right, but with no indication as to what those new widgets might be, it’s a little hard to judge.

So what’s this got to do with the Dell Mini 10, specifically? It’s all about the trackpad.

I have a Mini 9, which I think is a great machine. It has a traditional old-fashioned trackpad, with a pair of buttons underneath it for left- and right-clicking. At the weekend I was working on a friend’s Mini 10, which has the buttons integrated into the trackpad itself. The result was that almost every time I tried to click, the mouse pointer would jump down the screen a little, often meaning I missed the target I was aiming for. Although my friend (who has owned the machine for a few months now) fared much better, even he had more mis-clicks than I would consider reasonable.

I’m not averse to integrated trackpad-and-button systems per se. The recent multi-touch trackpads on Mac laptops seem to work quite well in this regard – perhaps because the whole trackpad is a button, so there’s no need to move your finger away from the target to initiate a click. That’s not the case with the Mini 10: you always have to move your finger to the “button” area at the bottom of the trackpad, but doing so is liable to be interpreted as a desire to move the cursor. It also prevents the “move with the finger, click with the thumb” approach to trackpadding that I prefer. This isn’t the only machine I’ve ever used with such a troublesome trackpad, it just happens to be the most recent.

These jumpy mouse-clicks are problematic enough when window controls are at the right, but putting them on the left makes them a prime target for mis-clicks every time the user tries to open the Applications menu. Apart from the claim of mystery widgets in the future, I have yet to see a good reason for moving the window controls, while I’ve seen plenty of good reasons to keep them where they are. The Mini 10′s trackpad is just another one to add to a long list.

Posted in Linux, My Green Life, Tech, Things I Hate. 1 Comment »

DVD Menu Overkill

Thursday, 24th September, 2009 — Mark
Previously in My Green Life…
‘I own a lot of DVD box sets…’
‘…tediously animated DVD menus…’
‘Worse still are those that drop you straight into a graphical “chapter selection” screen…’

Thank goodness I managed to jump out of the car when it was passing that handy boulder which hid my exit from the camera, just before the car sped off that nearby cliff.

Having escaped from certain death with little more than a cosmetic cut which will be gone by the next scene, it’s time to continue my diatribe against DVD menus. Last time it was the use of spoilerific images that got my back up, but this time I want to talk about the many obstacles that are put between me and the programme I want to watch.

Generally DVDs fall into two categories: features (films, long documentaries and anything else which fills most of the disk with a single programme), and series (several programmes on a disk). In the former case I want to start the feature playing with as little delay and hassle as possible, but I’m happy to accept a few more steps to access the extra features on the disk. In the latter case I usually want to watch a single episode at a time – so I’d like to select and play an individual episode with ease, but don’t mind a few more steps to access the extra features associated with either the episode or the disk as a whole.

In both cases my efforts to get a programme playing quickly are usually thwarted by several interstitial elements which serve little purpose other than to get between me and the content I want to see:

  • Trailers for other programmes. These are usually skippable, but not always. Stick them on as an extra – not something that plays by default. They’re particularly annoying when you forget they’re there, put a DVD in the drive and go out to make a drink expecting to return to the screen showing the DVD’s main menu.
  • The anti-piracy advert. A stock piece of propaganda telling me that piracy is bad and I shouldn’t be a part of it. Often it’s not possible to skip this, even though I’ve seen it dozens of times before. The irony of having to sit through this every time I want to watch a legitimately bought DVD is not lost on me. This is the sort of thing that makes me tempted to download torrents of my DVDs just so that I don’t have to put up with this interfering, accusational, nannying waste of my time.
  • The copyright notice. This is the page of text which tells me that I can’t play this DVD in a hospital or an oil rig. I assume this also prevents me from playing it in a hospital that’s on an oil rig. Do I really need to see this every time I play a DVD? And if you’ve put it on the first DVD in a box-set, do I really need to watch it on every subsequent DVD in the set as well?
  • Das kopyrighten notis. Or something like that. From the general formatting I think this is the same as the previous item, except I get to see it in a different language. Or more likely in several different languages – none of which I understand. Once again there’s often no way to skip these, leaving me to waste another five minutes trying to find the most amusing scandinavian word I can out of the jibberish characters before me.
  • Publisher/Producer/Studio/Tealady Idents. These are the little animations that tell you you’re watching something from Fox, or Dreamworks, or the BBC, or whomever. Then there will be another ident from some other company who had something to do with the DVD, though as you’ve never heard of them before it’s hard to tell what it was that they did. And possibly a third or fourth for good measure.

    I think these are here as advertising – or at least I can’t think of any other reason why they should be put in such a prominent place. If they are advertising, then they don’t work. I can honestly say that I’ve never met anyone who buys their DVDs based on studio awareness. Good reviews or previous familiarity with a film, series, actor or director, maybe – but never “I really enjoyed that last 20th Century Fox movie I saw, so I’ll buy another one from them even if I’ve never heard of it before”.

  • Don’t forget the THX ident that might be on the disk. Great for showing off your surround sound system. But you know what else is great for that? Actually playing the bloody film!
  • There! I’m finally at the DVD menu. Oh, hold on, I’m not really. Yes, it’s there, but some pillock decided it would be a great idea to show me their animation skills for a minute or two before I can even interact with the damned thing.

And so, after somewhere between two and twenty minutes (for the full trailers + anti-piracy + copyright + kopyrighten + idents + animated menu experience) you finally get to a point where you can actually choose what to watch. Hurrah! If you’re very lucky the selected item will already be “Play main feature”, and you can just click the OK button to get started. Of course there are likely to be more idents before the film actually starts, but at least you’re onto the home straight.

For series, however, you’ll often find that the default option is to “Play all episodes”. Really? What genius thought that one up? This episodic programme, which was originally broadcast in weekly segments, should actually be watched in chunks of four episodes at a time? I’m far more likely to watch one episode per night than four episodes back-to-back. Why not start with Episode 1 selected but design the menu so that “Play All” is just an arrow-press away?

At this point there’s often another pointless animation before I land on another page whose sole purpose is to let me get to the extras for that specific episode. Couldn’t they have been relegated to an “Extras” option on the main screen? Or shown as a second item alongside the main menu entry? Most of the time I just want to watch an episode with no director’s commentary and no original storyboard pictures, so make that the default.

So there you have it. In my ideal world all the trailers are sent to the “Extras” screen. The anti-piracy and copyright notices are relegated to a line and button at the bottom of the menu which says something along the lines of: “This product is protected by copyright. Select this here menu item to see more details”. The idents can go away entirely, or be moved to the copyright information page. And any animation on the menus should not get in the way of me being able to actually use the thing as quickly as possible.

The likelihood of any such changes are remote at best. In the meantime trying to watch a single 30 or 40 minute episode of a programme can easily take five minutes longer than needed – over 10% of the episode time, and that’s on one of the less obnoxious DVDs! That torrenting option starts looking better and better if it lets me get straight to the action.

Posted in My Green Life, Things I Hate. No Comments »

Nonimation

Friday, 28th August, 2009 — Mark

No, it’s not a misspelling of “Nomination”. It’s just me wondering if the English language needs a new word.

It’s common to see the word “decimate” being used in reference to a near-complete destruction. Dictionary pedants are quick to point out that decimation actually refers to a reduction by 10% not to 10%. Clearly there’s a need for a word to describe a 90% reduction, or similar – so I’m proposing “nonimate”.

This is a tongue-in-cheek suggestion. I’m not an etymologist, so it’s probably incorrectly formed and means “by a ninth” rather than “by nine-tenths”, but then “nonodecimation” isn’t likely to catch on. The question is whether you prefer mis-use of an existing word, or misconstruction of a new one.

Anyway, I’m off to steal some apostrophes from greengrocers to stick on road signs.

Posted in Miscellaneous, My Green Life, Things I Hate. No Comments »

Museum? “Exhibit” or “Gallery” would be more honest

Sunday, 26th July, 2009 — Mark

A few years ago I visited the Design Museum, just down from Tower Bridge in London. It was, as you might expect, a museum dedicated to design. It dealt largely with product design, though there was some content about architectural and graphic design, too.

As you might expect of a museum largely dedicated to product design, there were lots of products which were considered iconic or interesting in their design. I can’t remember the specifics (it was many years ago), but I do recall an original Apple iMac, a Dyson vacuum cleaner, a bit about the Mini, and so on. What I particularly liked was that the chairs that were dotted around for visitors to sit on each also had a descriptive tag tied to it – they were part of the exhibit too.

Fast forward to last week. We went to London for the day, and decided to visit the Design Museum – largely based on those memories of my previous visit. What a let down! It cost £8.50 each to get in (so £17 for the two of us), and the “museum” part that I’d so enjoyed was gone entirely. Instead there was one large exhibit about design in London through the ages, which was interesting but very text-heavy, and a couple of smaller exhibitions: one showing daring architectural models (though only a couple of the designs actually seemed to have been built), and one showing the work of Javier Mariscal.

The latter, however, looked largely like a super-fan’s bedroom. Just walls of merchandise and comic books, and hundreds of drawings hanging from the ceiling of the entrance. There was little explanation or description, making it hard to follow any specific themes or development in his work. One wall, in particular, was just filled with hundreds of products themed around the Cobi mascot he designed for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. That was it: just a wall of products all themed with the same mascot.

We didn’t spend as long as we perhaps should have in the first exhibit, because we thought we would be eating into time for visiting the “real” part of the museum – but we didn’t exactly rush it either. We spent probably about 45 minutes in there – then found the other two exhibits to be so poor that we had finished the whole “museum” in less than an hour. Definitely not worth £17!

Don’t let this post stop you from visiting the Design Museum if you really want to… just make sure you know exactly what it is you’re going to see, so that you can decide if it’s worth the price. Based on my recent visit I think the name is misleading: I wouldn’t really consider it to be a “museum” anymore, at least not by most people’s common definition. Perhaps it’s time to rename it to the “Design Gallery” or “Design Exhibit”.

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Today’s Life Lesson

Monday, 13th July, 2009 — Mark

If you find a Wagon Wheel at the back of your office drawer, with a Best Before date of 2003, despite it appearing to be perfectly fresh, under no circumstances should you actually try biting into it.

Not only was it tooth-breakingly hard, but it tasted vile.

Posted in My Green Life, Things I Hate. No Comments »

A Viewer’s Contract

Friday, 26th June, 2009 — Mark

In my previous post I lamented the annual round of TV show cancellations, leaving plotlines unfinished and cliffhangers unresolved. But is there actually anything that can be done about this?

I think one of the big problems is that we are not actually the TV company’s customers. We might think that we are – indeed they often suggest that we are – but we’re not. We’re the product.

The broadcasters are selling eyeballs. They’re selling viewing figures. They’re selling a captive audience to their advertisers. The programmes they produce are just a means of pulling in as many viewers as possible in order to improve their ratings – and thus increase the amount they can charge for advertising. With subscription channels you might even be getting reamed twice – not only do you pay for the privilege of being their “customer”, but you still get subjected to advertising.

In the case of the BBC the situation is slightly different – but still similar. They also chase ratings in order to bring in money. In their case it’s not advertising revenue, but money from the TV licence fee. In order to get that money they have to show that they’re serving the British public… which requires good ratings. Sure, there are also requirements about quality and content which ensures that minority interests are served to some degree – but if they didn’t also produce ratings-chasing mainstream programmes you can be sure that their funding would get cut pretty quickly.

The broadcasters have contracts in place with the producers of the programmes. These contracts typically cover a series at a time, usually with an option to renew. That option gets exercised if the show is a ratings success, otherwise the contract isn’t renewed and the show is effectively cancelled.

The broadcasters also have contracts in place with the advertisers. These contracts basically sell our eyeballs at a certain rate based on the time of day and number of viewers. If a programme fails to attract enough viewers in one timeslot, it will often get moved to another cheaper slot (typically losing a portion of the viewers in the process). If it fails to get sufficient viewers that the advertising revenue more than pays for the show, it is unlikely to be renewed.

So there’s a contract with the producers, and a contract with the advertisers. Note, however, that there’s no contract with the viewer. There’s no contract that guarantees the completion of a story. There’s no contract to stop a programme being moved around the schedules and then dropped entirely (even if there are unshown episodes available). There’s no contract to stop the programme being sold to a different channel that the viewer may not even have access to (such as when Lost and 24 moved from terrestrial to satellite TV in the UK).

I think it’s time for a viewer’s contract. Not a literal piece of legally-binding paper, but an implied consideration towards the viewers and fans of a show. A set of guidelines that tries to minimise the artistic compromises that occur when a show is cancelled without sufficient warning.

Perhaps it would mean putting a stop to cliffhanger endings. Perhaps it would mean that each series has to be self-contained, closing all the major plotlines. Perhaps it would mean and end to dropping programmes entirely if there are still episodes to show.

More realistically what I would like to see is a contingency fund. When a show is commissioned, a proportion of the money would be put into this fund, to be used in order to produce one final episode when the series gets canned. Instead of commissioning a series, the studios would instead commission a series plus an episode. If the programme runs to more than one series, the contingency could be cumulative – providing enough money for a TV-movie, perhaps.

A programme that runs for a single series might only get a small contingency fund – enough to create a short or an alternative ending. The commission for a second series would provide enough for a whole extra episode. Add a third series and there’s enough for two episodes, or one TV movie. After that point the contingency contribution would drop off – still adding something to the fund, but not a whole episode’s worth.

This scheme adds little to the price of creating a single series, so as not to reduce the incentive to try out different ideas. Seasons two and three are a little more expensive. After that each series becomes relatively cheap again, so there’s actually an incentive to keep a programme running.

What this does, more than anything else, is create a complete narrative – with a start, middle and most importantly an ending. Surely that’s got to make it easier to sell DVDs in future, or to sell programmes to other countries and broadcasters. Most of all it stops the viewers feeling let down and cheated, and that’s got to be worth something.

Posted in My Green Life, Things I Hate, Things I Just Don't Understand. No Comments »

To be (dis)continued…

Thursday, 25th June, 2009 — Mark

Consider how you would feel if you bought a book from a bookshop and found that the last chapter was missing. Or if you’d been reading a series of books, and the last one was never released.

Of course no self-respecting book publisher would omit the last chapter or leave a popular series incomplete – but this is exactly what happens in the world of TV every year.

A few weeks ago it was cancellation time; that frustrating part of the year when you discover that many of the programmes you’ve been following will not get renewed for another season. When you have to concede that the plots you’ve invested time in will remain unresolved. When the characters you love (and hate) will be left in perpetual limbo.

This year the cull seemed particularly harsh:

  • My Name Is Earl – Cancelled after four seasons, with the last episode promising “To Be Continued”
  • Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – Cancelled after two series, leaving several open plot lines and a cliffhanger ending
  • Pushing Daisies – Cancelled after two series; although many of the plot lines had been brought to a close, there was no overall resolution
  • Primeval – Cancelled after three series leaving unresolved plotlines and a cliffhanger ending

This is by no means a comprehensive list – it just covers the particular programmes that I watched. Notable mentions also go to Chuck (nearly cancelled, but given a temporary lease of life by a fan campaign) and Kyle XY (cancelled this year, but I don’t know what happens at the end because I’m watching it on BBC2, and they’ve only shown series 1 so far). Although it was cancelled last year, I’ll also mention Jericho (killed, resurrected by a fan campaign, then killed again).

As a viewer, I feel somewhat cheated by this state of affairs – in particular by the lack of closure for most of these series. This is the equivalent of a missing last chapter, or no final book in a series. This willingness to abandon a programme on a whim, with no concern for the integrity of the series as a whole, makes me disinclined to invest my time in watching such narratives in future. Why waste hours of my life on characters and plots that will never get a proper ending?

Perhaps the answer is to wait until after a programme has been cancelled – then download or buy it on DVD if it had been given a real conclusion. But if everyone did that the viewing figures would drop so low that no company would bother investing in anything with an ongoing narrative, and the airwaves would become so much poorer for it.

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Thoughts on Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope

Thursday, 7th May, 2009 — Mark

Having upgraded a few machines to Ubuntu 9.04 a few days ago, here are my thoughts on this latest version:

Things I Love

The speed of the system – both in booting and in general use – seems to be faster. There’s more of a delay after logging in before it draws my desktop, but when it does the system is immediately usable. Previously the desktop appeared quickly, but it would take a few seconds longer before the panel applets were drawn and the system could actually be used.

Things I Hate

The artistic direction of 9.04 leaves something to be desired. The primarily dark login screen is intimidating, rather than friendly and welcoming. Yes it can be changed easily, but it’s not the sort of thing that will encourage a novice user

Reasonably friendly login screen from 8.04

Reasonably friendly login screen from 8.04

Intimidating login screen from 9.10

Intimidating login screen from 9.10

Similarly the default desktop image is dull. It looks like someone took a blue wavy-line desktop image off an Apple machine, and converted it to brown. The best thing that can be said for it is that it’s inoffensive. The Hardy Heron desktop image was daring and imaginative – and beautiful enough as a work of art that I bought the T-shirt. The Intrepid Ibex image was a bit too abstract – with many comments that it looked like a coffee stain (rather than the Ibex it was supposed to be). But even that was more interesting and inspirational than a few wavy lines.

Good. Artistic. Original

Good. Artistic. Original

Coffee stain? But at least it's original and different.

Coffee stain? But at least it's original and different

Just like an Apple desktop image, only more dull

Just like an Apple wallpaper, only more dull

While I’m on the subject of desktop images, why does Jaunty have packages for “edgy-wallpapers”, “feisty-wallpapers” and “gutsy-wallpapers” but no sign of “hardy-wallpapers” or “intrepid-wallpapers”?

Things I Just Don’t Understand

Since the first version of Ubuntu, five years ago, the “Log Out” and “Shut Down” options have been available from the System menu. Now they’re gone. Sort of. Depending on whether or not you’re using the “User Switcher” applet.

That’s right – the presence, or absence of some key menu items, which muscle memory has trained me to look for in the same place over the past five years – is determined by whether or not you want to switch users from within a running session. In what universe does that make sense?

The logic seems to be this: the User Switcher applet offers Log Out and Shut Down options on its menu; therefore to avoid duplication/confusion, when the User Switcher applet is present those options should be removed from other parts of the user interface.

What I don’t understand is why I can’t have both. Why can’t I shut down from the System menu most of the time, as I’m used to doing, but still have the ability to switch to a different user from time to time? Why can’t I log out from the System menu if my mouse is close to it, or log out from the user switcher if my mouse is closer to that?

To make matters worse, the icon on the User Switcher applet tends to change. This is what it looks like with my normal settings (there’s also an option to show your name instead of the little person icon, but as I already know my name, I prefer it to take up less screen space instead):

user_switcher_1

See, a little red icon that contains a well known symbol denoting power controls. A new user might not spot it as a means to log out quite as quickly as a sweep through the menus, but at least when they do spot it they’re likely to remember that they need to click on the red power button to log out.

Now look what happens when I do something that’s largely unrelated to logging out or shutting down: I’ll launch Pidgin, the instant messaging (IM) client shipped with Ubuntu:

user_switcher_2

The “power” icon has now been replaced with a green circle, indicating my IM status. If my IM status changes, so does the icon. So for any user who wants to have the User Switcher applet, and who also runs Pidgin, the options to Log Out or Shut Down are hidden behind an icon whose colour and shape changes based on instant messaging settings. That’s nice and user friendly, isn’t it. Whatever happened to the principle of least surprise?

If the Log Out and Shut Down options were also still present on the System menu, this wouldn’t be so much of an issue. Users who are thrown by the changing state of the User Switcher icon would soon learn to use these functions from the System menu instead. Those old Ubuntu hands whose muscle memory still sends them to the System menu wouldn’t be surprised by the absence of the Log Out and Shut Down options.

By all means expose common functionality like this in more than one place, but please don’t expose it in one place if you’ve got an applet installed, and another if you haven’t. And please don’t make the one place that it’s exposed also be an icon whose shape and colour can change frequently, depending on the state of yet another application. If you want to confuse new users that’s a good way to go about it.

Posted in Linux, My Green Life, Tech, Things I Hate, Things I Just Don't Understand, Things I Love. 7 Comments »

Got a band? Had some hits? Then bloody well play them!

Monday, 2nd March, 2009 — Mark

I went to see The Cure on Thursday at the 02 Arena in London (one of my least favourite venues, but that’s another story). It was a sold-out gig, with the stage at one end, which according to that Wikipedia link means that I was one of about 16,000 people.

The gig was in honour of their “Godlike Genius” award from the NME – given to them at an awards ceremony the previous night at Brixton Academy. According to Wikipedia, Brixton Academy has a maximum capacity of 4,921 – but I would guess that an awards ceremony would have been nearer to the all-seated capacity of 2,391.

So, two gigs in as many nights – one 30 minute set at Brixton, one 90 minute set at the O2. Here’s the set list for the 30 minute gig, performed to less than 5,000 people (taken from here):

  • ‘Lullaby’
  • ‘The Only One’
  • ‘Friday I’m In Love’
  • ‘Close To Me’
  • ‘The End Of The World’
  • ‘In Between Days’
  • ‘Just Like Heaven’
  • ‘Boys Don’t Cry’
  • ’10:15 Saturday Night’
  • ‘Killing An Arab’

Top 40 hits are shown in bold, top 20 hits in bold-italic. Looking at it that way, that’s a heck of a half-hour set list.

The set list for the 16,000 strong 90 minute set, with the same bold and italic coding (taken from here):

  • ‘Underneath The Stars’
  • ‘From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea’
  • ‘The Perfect Boy’
  • ‘The End Of The World’
  • ‘Sleep When I’m Dead’
  • ‘A Forest’
  • ‘Three Imaginary Boys’
  • ‘Shake Dog Shake’
  • ‘Maybe Someday’
  • ‘The Only One’
  • ‘In Between Days’
  • ‘Just Like Heaven’
  • ‘Primary’
  • ‘Want’
  • ‘The Hungry Ghost’
  • ‘Disintegration’
  • ‘One Hundred Years’
  • ‘Its Over’
  • ‘Boys Don’t Cry’
  • ‘Grinding Halt’
  • ’10.15 Saturday Night’
  • ‘Killing An Arab’

Let me pull one little quote out of that NME report for you:

…Smith said he saw the two sets as linked, and having done some of their more famous tracks 24 hours earlier, he was keen to showcase some different areas of their career at the arena show.

Yeah, thanks for that Robert. I’m sure that the 16,000 people at the O2 Arena really appreciated you showcasing different areas of your career, rather than including a few more well-known hits, for more than £30 per ticket.

That was sarcasm, by the way, in case you hadn’t twigged.

This is my plea to bands and artists who have had some hit singles: play them. Yes, you might be bored with them by now, but that’s what a large contingent of your audience wants from a gig. That’s not to say that you can’t go off on an indulgent ramble of album tracks and “fan favourites”, but you should make sure that you provide a good mix with the well known numbers. For every hardcore fan in the audience, there will also be someone who only really knows you from your chart successes. Try to make your gig inclusive enough for both sets.

So, in short, here’s a quick list of things not to do at a gig, if you don’t mind:

  • Perform mostly album tracks and very few hits
  • Rub your audiences noses in it by telling them that you played a load of hits the previous night at a gig that they weren’t present at
  • Play the whole of your new album from start to finish, leaving too little time for your hits (Ash, I’m looking at you)
  • Play the opening lines, or the first verse of your hits, but rarely get as far as actually finishing any of them (Prince, at least on the night that I saw him)
  • Go off on some rambling, self-indulgent, stream-of-consciousness instrumental break that takes up half the gig (yes I mean you, Hawkwind)

P.S. For what it’s worth, I do own about half of The Cure’s albums, so recognised a fair number of the tracks they played. I still would have preferred a higher proportion of hits and well-known numbers though.

Posted in Music, My Green Life, Things I Hate. No Comments »

Perhaps a little too edgy?

Friday, 3rd November, 2006 — Mark

The latest Ubuntu release, 6.10 or “Edgy Eft“, came out last week. I’ve got a few Ubuntu PCs that I maintain; a couple of my own, some at work, and a few others for friends and relatives. Rather than overburden the Ubuntu servers with numerous updates I usually grab the “alternate installer disc” which can also be used to update an existing system. One download, one CD, multiple updated machines.

So far I’ve updated two systems – one at work and my main machine at home – and I have to say that I’ve been less than impressed. This has been the most problematic update I’ve dealt with, and from the posts on the Ubuntu forums it looks like I’m not the only one to have experienced problems.

One updated machine wouldn’t get to the login screen, and wouldn’t let me access a command prompt either[1]. The other machine refused to update at all[2]. When I finally massaged them into submission, I logged in to find that my games were missing[3], half my virtual desktops had gone AWOL[4] and my Apache/PHP installation had also disappeared[5].

In fairness I should point out that Edgy is very nice indeed – once it’s up and running – and I have no plans to jump to another distro just yet ;) But my systems aren’t all that far from a standard install: I really think the upgrade should have gone more smoothly, especially on a system that bills itself as “Linux for Human Beings”.

I have one Tablet PC with no optical drive, so that won’t get updated until Edgy is pushed via the update servers. I can only hope that the delay in this is due to some of the issues being resolved before they flick the switch to make it live[6]. The friends and family PCs will be getting their updates from the servers, so it would be nice to think that a slight delay now will mean that I don’t have to go visiting people to rescue their systems.

“Edgy” indeed. I guess there’s quite some way to go before the “Stable Sable” release.

[1] The solution to this one was the addition of “vga=791″ to the grub scripts, but how is a novice supposed to work that one out?

[2] It turned out that the update wanted to remove some old kernels that were there from previous versions of Ubuntu, but it wasn’t allowed to because they’re marked as essential components. The installer should have made it clearer what the problem was, or preferably just removed them anyway; so long as it doesn’t remove the kernel currently in use then it’s a pretty safe bet that the machine will still be able to boot afterwards.

[3] Simply re-installing the Gnome-games package got them back, but they shouldn’t really have disappeared in the first place

[4] This was a trivial issue of re-setting the number of desktops in the preferences of the pager applet. Still a little annoying though.

[5] I had to reinstall Apache and PHP. There was also a little configuration required to enable the PHP module which was less-than-obvious. This page contains all the relevant information, once you’ve worked out which sections apply.

[6] I’d also like to know when Firefox 2.0 is going to start hitting the Mozilla update servers. I’m waiting for the update on my Windows box at work (Edgy already has FF2.0), but that also seems to be taking a long time to get out. Much longer and I’ll just get bored enough to download the installer directly.

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