TOPIC: APT
Installing Nightingale music player on Ubuntu 13.04
25th June 2013Ever since the Songbird project concentrated its efforts to support only Windows and OS X, the Firefox-based music player has been absent from a Linux user's world. However, the project is open source and a fork called Nightingale now fulfils the same needs. Intriguingly, it too is available for Windows and OS X users, which leaves me wondering why that overlap has happened. However, Songbird also is available as a web app and as an app on both Android and iOS, while Nightingale sticks to being a desktop application.
To add it to Ubuntu, you need to set up a new repository. That can be done using the Software Centre but issuing a command in a terminal can be so much quicker and cleaner, so here it is:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nightingaleteam/nightingale-release
Apart from entering your password, there will be a prompt to continue by pressing the carriage return key or cancelling with CTRL + C. For our purposes, it is the first action that's needed and once that's done the needful, you can execute the following command:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install nightingale
This is in two parts: the first updates the repositories on your system, while the second actually installs the software. When that is complete, you are ready to run Nightingale and, with the repository, staying up to date is not a chore either. In fact, using the above commands brings another advantage: it is that they should work in any Ubuntu derivatives, such as Linux Mint.
Using a variant of Debian's Iceweasel that keeps pace with Firefox
5th February 2013Left to its own devices, Debian will leave you with an ever ageing re-branded version of Firefox that was installed at the same time as the rest of the operating system. From what I have found, the main cause of this was that Mozilla's wanting to retain control of its branding and trademarks in a manner not in keeping with Debian's Free Software rules. This didn't affect just Firefox but also Thunderbird, Sunbird and Seamonkey with Debian's equivalents for these being IceDove, IceOwl and IceApe, respectively.
While you can download a tarball of Firefox from the web and use that, it'd be nice to get a variant that updated through Debian's normal apt-get channels. In fact, IceWeasel does get updated whenever there is a new release of Firefox, even if these updates never find their way into the usual repositories. While I have been known to take advantage of the more frozen state of Debian compared with other Linux distributions, I don't mind getting IceWeasel updated so it isn't a security worry.
The first step in so doing is to add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list using root access (using one of sudo, gksu or su to assume root privileges) since the file normally cannot be edited by normal users:
deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main
deb http://mozilla.debian.net/ squeeze-backports iceweasel-release
With the file updated and saved, the next step is to update the repositories on your machine using the following command:
sudo apt-get update
With the above complete, it is time to overwrite the existing IceWeasel installation with the latest one using an apt-get command that specifies the squeeze-backports repository as its source using the -t switch. While IceWeasel is installed from the iceweasel-release squeeze-backports repository, there are dependencies that need to be satisfied and these come from the main squeeze-backports one. The actual command used is below:
sudo apt-get install -t squeeze-backports iceweasel
While that was all that I needed to do to get IceWeasel 18.0.1 in place, some may need the pkg-mozilla-archive-keyring package installed too. For those needing extra information beyond what's here, there's always the Debian Mozilla team.
Adding Quicktime movie support to Firefox running on Linux
24th January 2013For whatever reason, my installation of Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10, didn't have QuickTime support added to Firefox by default. To make a website work near enough as it was intended, this needed to be remedied. The solution was to issue a command to install the missing software:
sudo apt-get install mplayer gnome-mplayer gecko-mediaplayer
Mplayer is the main component here but running the above command adds all the required supporting packages too, so that a Firefox restart was all that needed to get things going.
Changing from to Nvidia Graphics Drivers on Linux Mint Debian Edition 64-bit
22nd April 2012One way of doing this is to go to the Nvidia website and download the latest file from the relevant page on there. Then, the next stage is to restart your PC and choose rescue mode instead of the more usual graphical option. This drops you onto a command shell that is requesting your root password. Once this is done, you can move onto the next stage of the exercise. Migrate to the directory where the *.run file is located and issue a command similar to the following:
bash NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-295.40.run
The above was the latest file available at the time of writing, which may have changed by the time that you read this. If the executable asks to modify your X configuration file, I believe that the best course is to let it do that. Editing it yourself or running nvidia-xconfig are alternative approaches if you so prefer.
Since proprietary Nvidia drivers are included in the repositories for Linux Mint Debian Edition, that may be a better course of action since you will get updates through normal system update channels. Then, the course of action is to start by issuing the following installation commands:
sudo apt-get install module-assistant
sudo apt-get install nvidia-kernel-common
sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx
sudo apt-get install kernel-source-NVIDIA
sudo apt-get install nvidia-xconfig
Once those have completed, issuing the following in turn will complete the job ahead of a reboot:
sudo m-a a-i nvidia
sudo modprobe nvidia
sudo nvidia-xconfig
If you reboot before running the above like I did, you will get a black screen with a flashing cursor instead of a full desktop because X failed to load. Then, the remedy is to reboot the machine and choose the rescue mode option, provide the root password and issue the three commands (at this point, the sudo prefix can be dropped because it's unneeded) then. Another reboot will see order restored and the new driver in place. Running the following at that point will do a check on things, as will be the general appearance of everything:
glxinfo | grep render
Synchronising package selections between Linux Mint and Linux Mint Debian Edition
18th April 2012To generate the package list on the GNOME version of Linux Mint, I used the Backup Tool. It simply was a matter of using the Backup Software Selection button and telling it where to put the file that it generates. Alternatively, dpkg can be used from the command line like this:
sudo dpkg --get-selections > /backup/installed-software.txt
After transferring the file to the machine with Linux Mint Debian Edition, I tried using the Backup Tool on there too. However, using the Restore Software Selection button and loading the required only produced an irrecoverable error. Therefore, I set to looking around the web and found a command line approach that did the job for me.
The first step is to load the software selection using dpkg by issuing this command (it didn't matter that the file wasn't made using the dpkg command, though I suspect that's what the Linux Mint Backup Tool was doing that behind the scenes):
sudo dpkg --set-selections < /backup/installed-software.txt
Then, I started dselect and chose the installation option from the menu that appeared. The first time around, it fell over but trying again was enough to complete the job. Packages available to the vanilla variant of Linux Mint but not found in the LMDE repositories were overlooked as I had hoped, and installation of the extra packages had no impact on system stability either.
sudo dselect
Apparently, there is an alternative to using dselect that is based on the much used apt-get command, but I didn't make use of it so cannot say more:
sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade
All that I can say is that the dpkg/dselect combination did what I wanted, so I'll keep them in mind if ever need to synchronise software selections between two Debian-based distributions in the future again. While the standard edition of Linux Mint may be based on Ubuntu rather than Debian, Ubuntu is itself based on Debian. Thus, the description holds here.
An in situ upgrade to Linux Mint 12
4th December 2011Though it isn't the recommended approach, I have ended up upgrading to Linux Mint 12 from Linux Mint 11 using an in situ route. Having attempted this before with a VirtualBox hosted installation, I am well aware of the possibility of things going wrong. Then, a full re-installation was needed to remedy the situation. With that in mind, I made a number of backups in the case of an emergency fresh installation of the latest release of Linux Mint. Apache and VirtualBox configuration files together with MySQL backups were put where they could be retrieved should that be required. The same applied to the list of installed packages on my system. So far, I haven't needed to use these, but there is no point in taking too many chances.
The first step in an in-situ Linux Mint upgrade is to edit /etc/apt/sources.list. In the repository location definitions, any reference to katya (11) was changed to lisa (for 12) and the same applied to any appearance of natty (Ubuntu 11.04) which needed to become oneiric (Ubuntu 11.10). With that done, it was time to issue the following command:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Once that had completed, it was time to add the new additions that come with Linux Mint 12 to my system using a combination of apt-get, aptitude and Synaptic; the process took a few cycles. GNOME already was in place from prior experimentation, so there was no need to add this anew. However, I need to instate MGSE to gain the default Linux Mint customisations of GNOME 3. Along with that, I decided to add MATE, the fork of GNOME 2. That necessitated the removal of two old libraries (libgcr0 and libgpp11, if I recall correctly, which will tell you what is causing any conflict) using Synaptic. With MGSE and MATE in place, it was time to install LightDM and its Unity greeter to get the Linux Mint login screen. Using GDM wasn't giving a very smooth visual experience and Ubuntu, the basis of Linux Mint, uses LightDM anyway. Even using the GTK greeter with LightDM produced a clunky login box in front of a garish screen. Configuration tweaks could have improved on this, but it appears that using LightDM and Unity greeter is what gives the intended setup and experience.
With all of this complete, the system seemed to be running fine until the occasional desktop freeze occurred with Banshee running. Blaming that, I changed to Rhythmbox instead, though that helped only marginally. While this might be blamed on how I upgraded my system, things seemed to have steadied themselves in the week since then. As a test, I had the music player going for a few hours and there was no problem. With the call for testing of an update to MATE a few days ago, it now looks as if there may have been bugs in the original release of Linux Mint 12. Daily updates have added new versions of MGSE and MATE, so that may have something to do with the increase in stability. Even so, I haven't discounted the possibility of needing to do a fresh installation of Linux Mint 12 just yet. However, if things continue as they are, then it won't be needed and that's an upheaval avoided should things go that way. That's why in situ upgrades are attractive, though rolling distros like Arch Linux (these words are being written on a system running this) and LMDE are more so.
TypeError: unable to create a wrapper for GLib.Variant
31st August 2011A little while ago, I wrote a piece on here telling of how I got GNOME 3 installed and working on Linux Mint. However, I have discovered since that there was an Achilles heel in the approach that I had taken: using the ricotz/testing PPA so that I could gain additional extensions for use with GNOME Shell. If this was just a repository of GNOME Shell extensions, that would be well and good, but the maintainer(s) also has a more cutting edge of GNOME Shell in there too. Occasionally, updates from ricotz/testing have been the cause of introducing rough edges to my desktop environment that have resolved themselves within a few hours or days. However, updates came through in the last few days that broke GNOME Tweak Tool. When I tried running it from the command line, all I got was a load of output that included the message that heads this posting and no window popping up that I could use. Because that made me see sense, I stopped living dangerously by using that testing repository. Apparently, there is a staging variant too, but a forum posting elsewhere on the web has warded me off from that too.
Until I encountered the latter posting, I had not heard of the ppa-purge tool, and it came in handy for ridding my system of all packages from the ricotz repository and replacing with alternatives from more stable ones such as that from the gnome3-team. Since this wasn't installed on my computer, I added it in the usual fashion by issuing the following command:
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
Once that was complete, I executed the following command with the ricotz/testing repository still active:
sudo ppa-purge testing ricotz
Once that was complete and everything was very nicely automated too, GNOME Tweak Tool was working again as intended and that's the way that I intend to keep things. Another function of ppa-purge is that it has excised any mention of the ricotz/testing repos from my system too, so nothing more can come from there.
While I was in the business of stabilising GNOME Shell on my system, I decided to add in UGR too. First, another repository needed to be added as follows:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugnometeam/ppa-gen
sudo apt-get update
Because the next steps were to install UGR once that was in place, these commands were issued to do the job:
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install ugr-desktop-g3
sudo apt-get upgrade
While that had the less desirable effect of adding games that I didn't need and have since removed, it otherwise worked well, and I now have a new splash screen at starting up and shutting down times for my pains. Hopefully, it will mean that any updates to GNOME Shell that come my way should be a little more polished, too. All that's needed now is for someone to set up a dedicated PPA for GNOME Shell Extensions so I could regain dropdown menus in the top panel for things such as virtual desktops, places and other handy operations that perhaps should have been in GNOME Shell from the beginning. However, that's another discussion, so I'll content myself with what I now have and see if my wish ever gets granted.
Getting GNOME Shell 3 running on Linux Mint 11 with extensions and Cantarell font
3rd June 2011On the surface of it, this probably sounds a very strange thing to do: choose Linux Mint because they plan to stick with their current desktop interface for the foreseeable future, and then stick a brand new one on there. However, that's what last weekend's dalliance with Fedora 15 caused. Not only did I find that I could find my way around GNOME Shell, but I actually got to like it so much that I missed it on returning to using my Linux Mint machine again.
The result was that I started to look on the web to see if there was anyone else like me who had got the same brainwave. In fact, it was Mint's being based on Ubuntu that allowed me to get GNOME 3 on there. The task could be summarised as involving three main stages: getting GNOME 3 installed, adding extensions and adding the Cantarell font that is used by default. After these steps, I gained a well-running GNOME 3 desktop running on Linux Mint, and it looks set to stay that way unless something untoward emerges.
Installing GNOME 3
The first step is to add the PPA repository for GNOME 3 using the following command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
The, it was a case of issuing my usual update/upgrade command:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
When that had done its thing and downloaded and installed quite a few upgrades along the way, it was time to add GNOME Shell using this command:
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell
When that was done, I rebooted my system to be greeted by a login screen very reminiscent of what I had seen in Fedora. While compiling this piece, I noticed that GNOME Session could need to be added before GNOME Shell, but I do not recall doing so myself. Maybe dependency resolution kept any problems at bay, but there weren't any issues that I could remember beyond things not being configured as fully as I would have liked without further work. For the sake of safety, it might be a good idea to run the following before adding GNOME Shell to your PC.
sudo apt-get install gnome-session && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Configuration and Customisation
Once I had logged in, the desktop that I saw wasn't at all unlike the Fedora one and everything seemed stable too. However, there was still work to do before I was truly at home with it. One thing that was needed was the ever useful GNOME Tweak Tool. This came in very handy for changing the theme that was on display to the standard Adwaita one that caught my eye while I was using Fedora 15. Adding buttons to application title bars for minimising and maximising their windows was another job that the tool allowed me to do. The command to get this goodness added in the first place is this:
sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool
Since the next thing that I wanted to do was add some extensions, I added a repository from which to do this using the command below. Downloading them via Git and compiling them just wasn't working for me, so I needed another approach.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/testing
With that is place, I issued the following commands to gain the Dock, the Alternative Status Menu and the Windows Navigator. The second of these would have added a shutdown option in the me-menu, but it seems to have got deactivated after a system update. Holding down the ALT key to change the Suspend entry to Power off... will have to do me for now. Having the dock is the most important and that, thankfully, is staying the course and works exactly as it does for Fedora.
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-dock
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-windows-navigator
Adding Cantarell
The default font used by GNOME 3 in various parts of its interface is Cantarell, and it was defaulting to that standard sans-serif font on my system because this wasn't in place. That font didn't look too well, so I set to tracking the freely available Cantarell down on the web. When that search brought me to Font Squirrel, I downloaded the zip file containing the required TTF files. The next step was to install them and, towards that end, I added Fontmatrix using this command:
sudo apt-get install fontmatrix
That gave me a tool with a nice user interface, but I made a mistake when using it. This was because I (wrongly) thought that it would copy files from the folder that I wanted the import function to use. Extracting the TTF files to /tmp meant that would have had to happen, but Fontmatrix just registered them instead. A reboot confirmed that they hadn't been copied or moved at all, and I had rendered the user interface next to unusable through my own folly; the default action on Ubuntu and Linux Mint is that files are deleted from /tmp on shutdown. The font selection capabilities of the GNOME Tweak Tool came in very handy for helping me to convert useless boxes into letters that I could read.
Another step was to change the font line near the top of the GNOME Shell stylesheet (never thought that CSS usage would end up in places like this...) so that Cantarell wasn't being sought and text in sans-serif font replaced grey and white boxes. The stylesheet needs to be edited as superuser, so the following command is what's needed for this and, while I used sudo, gksu is just as useful here if it isn't what I should have been using.
sudo gedit /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/gnome-shell.css
Once I had extricated my system from that mess, a more conventional approach was taken and the command sequence below was what I followed, with extensive use of sudo to get done what I wanted. A new directory was created and the TTF files copied in there.
cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype
sudo mkdir ttf-cantarell
cd ttf-cantarell
sudo mv /tmp/*.ttf .
To refresh the font cache, I resorted to the command described in a tutorial in the Ubuntu Wiki:
sudo fc-cache -f -v
Once that was done, it was then time to restore the reference to Cantarell in the GNOME Shell stylesheet and reinstate its usage in application windows using the GNOME Tweak Tool. Since then, I have suffered no mishap or system issue with GNOME 3. Everything seems to be working quietly, and I am pleased to see that replacement of Unity with the GNOME Shell will become an easier task in Ubuntu 11.10, the first alpha release of which is out at the time of my writing these words. Could it lure me back from my modified instance of Linux Mint yet? While I cannot say that I am sure of those, but it certainly cannot be ruled out at this stage.
Extending ASUS Eee PC Battery Life without changing from Ubuntu 11.04
25th May 2011While it might just be my experience of the things, I do tend to take claims about laptop or netbook battery life with a pinch of salt. After all, I have a Toshiba laptop that only lasts an hour or two away from the mains and that runs Windows 7. For a long time, my ASUS Eee PC netbook looked like that too, only for a spot of investigation to reveal that there was something that I could do to extend the length of time before the battery ran out of charge. For now, the solution would seem to be installing eee-control and here's what I needed to do that for Ubuntu 11.04, which has gained a reputation for being a bit of a power hog on netbooks if various tests are to be believed.
Because eee-control is not in the standard Ubuntu repositories, you need to add an extra one for install in the usual way. To make this happen, launch Synaptic and find the entry named Repositories on the Settings menu and click on it. If there's no sign of it, then Software Sources (this was missing on my ASUS) needs to be installed using the following command:
sudo apt-get install software-properties-gtk
Once Software Sources opens up after you enter your password, go to the Other Software tab. The next step is to click on the Add button and enter the following into the APT Line box before clicking on the Add Source button:
ppa:eee-control/eee-control
With that done, all that's needed is to issue the following command before rebooting the machine on completion of the installation:
sudo apt-get install eee-control
When you are logged back in to get your desktop, you'll notice a new icon on your desktop with the Eee logo, and clicking on this reveals a menu with a number of useful options. Among these is the ability to turn off a number of devices such as the camera, Wi-Fi or card reader. After that, there's the entry named Preferences in the Advanced submenu for turning on such things as setting performance to Powersave for battery-powered operation or smart fan control. The notifications issued to you can be controlled too, as can be a number of customisable keyboard shortcuts useful for quickly starting a few applications.
So far, I have seen a largely untended machine last around four hours, and that's around double what I have been getting until now. Of course, what really is needed is a test with constant use to see how it gets on. Even if I see lifetimes of around 3 hours, this still will be an improvement. Nevertheless, being of a sceptical nature, I will not scotch the idea of getting a spare battery just yet.
Enabling DVD playback in Ubuntu 9.04
22nd July 2009This information is scattered about the web, so I decided to collect something together in one place in case it helps anyone else. Here are two commands that appeared to do the deed for me:
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras totem-xine libxine1-ffmpeg libdvdread4
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
The libdvdread piece is what sorts out encrypted disks and needs a two stage installation, hence the second command. For non-encrypted disks, ubuntu-restricted-extras might be all that's needed if my experience is typical. Taking things further, Wim Wenders' Buena Vista Social Club (Region 2 disk) worked when I tried it, too. In the interests of completeness, I tried the command combination on a virgin 9.04 installation with restricted and multiverse repositories enabled. Along the way, I spied a whole raft of helper components being set in place, and things worked like I would have expected with the aforementioned DVD afterwards. As with anything related to computing, your mileage may vary and, for more information, you can have a look here.