Ubuntu and stuff for the rest of us

The storage continues...

2009-07-28T14:44:00.000-07:00

Having ditched Dropbox (see earlier posts), I have tried Mediafire (also in an earlier post) and now, also, Gspace and Humyo.

Mediafire seems to me a bit tricky to use. You have to go through a sequence of steps to upload anything.

Humyo has a drag-and-drop method that seems like a good idea, except how do you drag something from your desktop (or another folder) on to an area of a web page that fills your screen? You'd have to resize the browser window each time you wanted to upload anything. Not very handy.

The easiest of all is Gspace. This presupposes that you have an account with Gmail, and it simply exploits the large amount of space that Gmail provides for its users. Gspace is a Firefox add-on (or add-in, or whatever they are called). You just select the file or folder you want to upload from a list on the left of your screen and click an arrow to move it to a panel on the right of the screen. Then it does its stuff. Simple.

With all of these services, though, there is waiting involved. Folders of media files can take a long time, all depending, of course, on your broadband speed.

The cloud is still a bit misty, but the fog is slowly clearing.

Open with... WHAT?

2009-07-25T07:29:00.000-07:00

When I download any kind of text file (via Gmail, in Firefox) this is what happens on my system:

1) If it is a .doc file, an Open Office 3.0 start-up window appears and makes a failed attempt to open it. This is despite the fact that I long ago uninstalled Open Office in the approved manner. I want the document to open in Textmaker, which is the word processor I use, and which has no problem opening .doc files when I double click on them. However, in the case of a newly arrived attachment, I have to right click the file and choose 'Open containing folder'. Only then can I double click on the file and have it open correctly in Textmaker.

2) If it is an .rtf file, Jaunty erroneously states that this is an executable file and makes a fuss about it, but eventually agrees to open it.

3) If it is a PDF file, the document automatically opens without further ado, which is great, UNLESS I am silly enough to close the document and go back to it again later (back in the list of Firefox downloads). Then, double clicking on it confuses Jaunty horribly, and it claims not to know how to open it. This leads to an 'Open with...' routine, as you often get in Windows, except that Jaunty does not present a list of programs to choose from. Instead, it shows you all your folders and leaves you to get on with it! This is not helpful. I have no idea where to find any program whatever from this point (since I've never known where Ubuntu stores programs, and never cared about it anyway). I would like to know (a) why Jaunty suddenly forgets how to open PDFs and (b) fails to present a list of programs to choose from. My only way round this has been to download the PDF for a second time.

There must be a better way.

Ubuntu as good as Windows or Mac?

2009-07-15T01:32:00.000-07:00

What does Ubuntu need (if anything) to be 'as good' as the big name OSes? By 'as good', I mean as easy or pleasant to use for the normal (non-geek) user.

Well, Ubuntu is already well on the way. I think it is just as easy, or easier, to handle than Windows. For me, it installed more easily than Windows XP, which basically failed - that's what persuaded me to switch to Ubuntu the laptop I'm typing on now.

I can't speak for MacOS, since it is a long time since I used a Mac, but I know from others' comments that it leads the way in user-friendliness. It should, of course, since Apple has the luxury of exactly matching the hardware and software.

What does Ubuntu still lack?

(a) You still have to deal with a command line. It's only just below the pretty, friendly surface. I had to do so on my very first day with Ubuntu, when my printer wouldn't work. I found the solution, via Google, but it wasn't pretty. I know many Linuxites think that the command line is one of the best features you could wish for, but I don't. And the world agrees with me. Would you expect to delve into the code that underlies the programming of your washing machine? I thought not.

(b) Windows programs don't work. Well, I can't make Word 2002 work. Don't mention Wine or Crossover. They do not hack it. And don't tell me of the wonders of Open Office. I've written about that in previous blogs. I need Word, both for compatibility and for ease of use - simply because I have years of experience with it and a whole host of settings, etc., that make it do what I want.

That's about it. So, Canonical, fix it, please.

Google Chrome OS

2009-07-08T03:09:00.000-07:00

Did Bill Gates choke on his caviar when he heard the news? As a billionaire he needn't worry too much personally, but it will be a big blow nonetheless if Google manages to deal his company a punch that hurts more than any that Steve Jobs has landed so far.

Google Chrome OS might be the Big Thing that shows up Windows for the bloated dinosaur that it is.

Remember how everyone thought (only 25 years ago) that the Berlin Wall was there for ever and the Soviet Union was too powerful ever to fall? In 1989 the Wall and all the rest of it crumbled and tumbled almost overnight.

We'll look back at Microsoft in a similar way.

The cry will be: the King is dead. Er, long live... the new dictator.

Can Mediafire pick up Dropbox's dropped mantle?

2009-07-06T00:51:00.000-07:00

I'm trying out Mediafire. This is a web-based file storage site, which allows unlimited space for files up to 100 MB. Of course, you can pay if you want more.

Signing up is the quickest you could ask for (email + password + password confirm) and it seems to work.

I wonder if there'll be any snags?

Firefox 3.5 rules OK? Not

2009-07-06T00:13:00.000-07:00

All the reviews are great: Firefox 3.5 is the best thing for browsers since they opened the British Library.

I installed it using the standard Synaptic installer provided by Ubuntu. Nothing happened, and it was 3.0.11 that continued to load. Dave Walker on Ubuntu-UK kindly provided a string of blurb for me to enter in Terminal to make 3.5 start in place of the earlier version.

Well, 3.5 may have tried to start, but it didn't get far. One error message succeeded the other. Yoono (a social networking add-in that I use) seemed to be the first thing it couldn't cope with. I forget its next complaint.

Fortunately, Dave also gave me a command to undo the first one, so I was easily able to revert the old version. Phew.

I think I'll wait a while.

RIP PCW

2009-06-27T10:14:00.000-07:00

It's sad about Michael Jackson. It's sad about Farrah Fawcet. It's also very sad about Personal Computer World.

Anyone outside of the UK may not realise what news this is.

PCW was the computer mag in the UK, and for decades. It began back in 1978. I have the most recent issue, which I bought only a week ago. In the back it confidently advertises the content of the next issue - an issue that will never see the light of day. The plug was pulled that suddenly.

It was a mag that combined articles that any computer user could understand (comparing printers, for example) and much more esoteric stuff about how to fix arcane problems in databases. At lot of it I couldn't understand, but I still enjoyed buying it and reading at least the easy bits. It was also very well written by people like Guy Kewney and Gordon Laing. (Micromart eat your heart out).

I had noticed that it had been on a diet since the nineties. In those days it was so thick and heavy that you needed a shopping trolley to get it home from the newsagents. So, I suppose, just as video killed the radio star, it was the internet wot did it.

Computer Shopper, PC Pro and PC Advisor watch out! I'll keep on buying you.

I hope it helps.

Drop Dropbox

2009-06-26T12:16:00.001-07:00

Since my last post, I have heard more from Dropbox. They say they only root around in the titles of your files, not the contents. Hm. Even the titles might include sensitive material. And if they can see the titles, who knows for sure they don't go further?

The Dropbox helper this time gave me some detailed (and fiddly) instructions for fixing the fact that I can't actually get or view updated files in my Dropbox on my home computer (this one). I tried to follow the instructions. I really did. But they didn't work.

Once it gets down to having to type complex gobbledygook into a command line, I'm off.

Come back USB stick. Come back Gmail.

Goodbye Dropbox.

Dropbox: it gets worse

2009-06-25T13:01:00.000-07:00

In my last post I mentioned various less-than-ideal features of Dropbox.

Well, they did respond to a gripe I wrote in a comments box on their site. I did not leave a name or email address. I wasn't actually looking for a reply.

However, I soon got one. How did they know who I was?

What's more, the reply showed that the helper person at Dropbox had rooted through the files in my dropbox.

Hello? They are meant to be secret, secure and sealed!

Not from Dropbox employees, it seems.

Churning hard disk, glacial startup

2009-06-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

This was the problem: the computer took ages to start, the hard disk churned endlessly and everything slowed to a snail's pace. Seems to have been caused largely by Dropbox. Such a great idea: a virtual folder in the 'cloud' into which you can drop files and access them anywhere.

That's the theory. Only it takes over.

If it finds it can't update itself for some obscure reason, it too just churns on and on forever. It doesn't even give up and tell you it's failed.

And it doesn't quite behave like it should. Despite the name, you can't just drop files onto its icon. You have to open its window first. And unlike other disks and 'volumes', it doesn't create a copy of the files you drag into it, it moves them, so that they are no longer present at their original location.

These are bad features.

Maybe the great idea is not so great after all.

Ubuntu-UK rules OK

2009-06-21T14:54:00.000-07:00

Ubuntu-UK rocks. I take back everything I said about the Ubuntu community not helping. These people do!

I've been having trouble with an endlessly churning hard disk, plus very slow start up times. They are really on the job.

More on the actual problems next time.

Adobe Air - the killer app

2009-06-20T07:38:00.000-07:00

Adobe Air nearly did for my computer. DON'T TOUCH IT. I installed it because I wanted to use Twhirl (a Twitter client). First it slowed the machine down, so that Textmaker suddenly took ages to launch (instead of about 3 seconds normally), the hard disk churned endlessly and Add/remove now claimed that there were no programs on my computer.

A kind person on Ubuntu-UK, Matthew Daubney, provided this:

sudo apt-get --reinstall install gnome-app-install

It worked. Whew!

Twits and Faces

2009-06-19T11:44:00.000-07:00

I feel like some kind of dinosaur, because it's taken me till now to try to get to grips with Facebook and Twitter. I went for the double whammy and grappled with them both at once. I think I'm vaguely starting to realise what they're good for. But I also have a dim feeling that they are a decadent and self-indulgent waste of time. It's all about me, me, me (and a bit of you, so that you can get more about me, me, me), isn't it?

I heard on the Gadget Inspectors (see the telegraphonline website) that Twhirl is a good Twitter client. This got me a bit bogged down in installing Adobe Air (a fiddle-faddle involving the dreaded Terminal. I so wish that didn't keep rearing its ugly head. And why does copy and paste not just work with Ctrl C and Ctrl V as it does in every other program on the planet?)

Otherwise Adobe Air takes you back to the Wonderful World of Windows because its installation goes through the typical Windows-like stages. And no sooner had I installed it than it popped up asking to be updated!

Then to the Twhirl website, which proudly states it is for Windows and Mac. Luckily there is an Adobe Air logo. Sure enough, this makes it Ubuntu-friendly. Well, not exactly, because it seems to tell you that it is going to insist on installing Adobe Air (again!) before installing Twhirl. Are you still with me? It's wearisome, I know. However, you can choose Manual Install and you are at last in business.

After all that, Twhirl takes ages to start - the only program on my Ubuntu system that does that.

Textmaker: the nightmare continues

2009-06-07T08:17:00.000-07:00

Whew! I have finally got a working Textmaker (and chums) on my system. It took a bit of doing. See earlier posts for my first frustrations. This week Softmaker finally sent me the licence number I needed and links to click for a new download. So I downloaded. That was the only easy part.

Does Textmaker work on the 'unlock code' principle? No, that would be too simple.
Does Textmaker work on the 'overwrite and amend' principle? Nope. That might be user-friendly.

Textmaker expects you first to have uninstalled the trial version that you had. BUT IT DOES NOT TELL YOU THIS.

That's where my woes began. All I ever got was the trial version, continually counting down the time until it ran out and inviting me to acquire the full version. Huh!

The one good thing about Textmaker is that they are quite quick at answering emails. They tried to help. They don't rush to apologise, however, and can slightly give the feeling that you are being dense by not understanding some of the usual Linux command line goobledygook that they throw at you.

They sent me a command to put in Terminal to uninstall the trial version. Hurray. It worked. I was then able to install the new version.

This was sort of OK except that Textmaker and its two chum programs failed to put themselves into the Applications menu and so were difficult to start. (I didn't know about Alt-F2 as a way to start programs at that point.) Textmaker's help failed at this point, and I had to search around in Google and Ubuntu forums until, somehow, I solved the problem myself. I don't know quite how I did it and I'm not sure I could do it again.

Anyway, it all works now.

Where is my photo screensaver?

2009-05-29T06:45:00.000-07:00

I had a slideshow screensaver that made use of the photos stored on my computer.

One day it stopped working. I wonder why that was? All I get now is a blank screen where it should be.

Maybe I should post a question on one of those helpful Ubuntu forums.

Then again, life's too short.

Perhaps I'll just forget it and choose a different screensaver.

News from Textmaker

2009-05-29T06:42:00.000-07:00

Textmaker tells me it has a new shopping system. This means, apparently, that they cannot process and fulfil my education-based order. At least not for a while.

Great new shopping system.

My panel's stuck

2009-05-23T07:00:00.001-07:00

Have I read this right? Click and drag an empty space on a panel to move it to a new location? Sounds great. I can't make it work, though. The panels are stuck rigid.

That wonderful, warm, cuddly Ubuntu community

2009-05-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

I've discovered that Ubuntu exists in a world of myth and mantra.

One of these speaks of the wonderful community that can't wait to answer your problems and queries.

Well, it can wait, and so can you or I. I've found that my questions just languish. I've posted a few. Only one of them has had any kind of answer, and that one missed the point.

Tick, tock, tock, tock, er, tock...

2009-05-21T11:04:00.000-07:00

The Ubuntu clock looks nice at the top of my screen. There's just on problem.

It shows the wrong time.

Yes, I have installed the thing that synchronises it with an internet clock, and it sometimes rights itself.

But a lot of the time, it is SLOW.

Maybe it's the battery in my computer, but maybe that internet clock could be consulted a bit more frequently.

Textmaker... Hello!?

2009-05-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

I hate OpenOffice Writer. A program that forces styles upon you that you don't want... Well, I've already written about that.

So I downloaded TextMaker. Because for all those confident statements about the 'thousands' of wonderful programs available for Linux, it turns out that OpenOffice and TextMaker are the only two full-featured word processors. (Forget AbiWord - it's a Mickey Mouse program that can't even manage smart, curly, quotes.) Yeah, that's right. Two word processors. TextMaker seems quite good to me. It's easier to fathom than OpenOffice and its attitude to styles is similar to that of Word - but with easier access to them than most versions of Word have provided.

The downloadable version is hobbled: no saving, no printing. You have to pay if you want it to work properly. It is quite pricey - cheeky, when you consider that its competition is entirely free of charge. However, there is a cheaper way to get it if you are a student or teacher. I am one of the latter and I duly emailed off a scanned document to prove this. All TextMaker have to do now is email me a code to unlock the missing features in their program.

I'm waiting. And waiting. And waiting...

Jaunty, or not so Jaunty?

2009-05-03T00:38:00.000-07:00

I was scared of updating to Jaunty. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Never go for version 1.0, etc., etc. But, after all, this is 9.04 not 1.0, so I clicked the update button. A mere matter of hours later, and Jaunty was operational. Why does it take so long? My broadband might not be the world's fastest, but still.

Well, it's working now, and, you know what, I can tell virtually no difference. The volume control is now horizontal. You get a countdown message when you shut the computer down. Wow!

On the downside, Tracker went bananas (but seems to have calmed down again now), and playing DVDs is not a happy experience. In fact, it's barely doable.

I'm not sure if this is due to Jaunty, but in Movieplayer, the video plays, as long as you don't try to touch any controls, such as skip forward or back. As soon as you do, it crashes. VLC works, but, for some reason, it changes my 4 x 3 home-made DVD (from television) into a shape like a piece of A4 or letter paper in portrait mode. In despair, I installed Mplayer (confusing "front ends"), which does sort-of work, but you can't get at the controls while it's playing. Well, not easily. I want something like PowerDVD, which, on the dreaded Windows "just works". I shall try never to watch a DVD again on Ubuntu.

Open Office Writer - Word substitute?

2009-04-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

I've often read that Open Office Writer is an equally good and totally compatible program that can go head to head with MS Word any day of the week.

I admit that it is quite good in many ways, and some of my problems with it might be just to do with the fact that I have been using Word since 1992 (Mac version 5 and Windows version 2) and know a lot about its methods and its quirks.

One thing that Word has never done, however, is suddenly change the style of what you have just typed the moment you touch the return key. In Open Office, anything goes. Your text may be turned into a large heading, and the line spacing may be totally altered. This is really, really infuriating. Really.

Don't get me wrong. I'm highly in favour of using styles, but I'd like to be the one who decides which style, when and where.

I've already spent quite a lot of time struggling with this and looking for help. On the help front, it is quite hard to get past the eulogies assuring you that Open Office's system of styles is one of the best word-processing features in the known universe. There is some kind of insecurity at work here. Why do Open Office's devotees have to keep stressing how wonderful it is all the time?

To tame OO's manic styles, my only solution so far has been to change all of its preset paragraph styles (default, text body, headings...) to 12 pt Times to stop them from changing to something else of their own volition. The idea is that I can then create my own styles, ones that I can actually control. This almost works. It's still the case, though, the OO insists on regarding a single line at the top of a document as a heading and interfering in some way. If only it had a switch somewhere to turn its inbuilt style system right off.

Going back to 1992 (on a word processing nostalgia trip), I loved the style system of those old versions of Word. Let's say you wanted to change the standard paragraph style from 12 pt Times to 14 pt something else. You could just make the changes in a paragraph you were writing, then click on the name of the style in the the style window of the toolbar. At that moment a simple dialog box appeared, asking if you wanted to change the style's attributes or not. If you said yes, hey presto, you had amended the style. Some time in the 1990's MS stopped this from working and made changing and creating styles much more difficult.

That's progress.

Ubuntu's Selective Bloopers

2009-04-25T23:18:00.000-07:00

It's great how Ubuntu displays plugged-in devices right on the desktop. This is a Mac touch that I'd almost forgotten about after years of Microsoft's shifting drive letters. The only snag - and it's a serious one - is that Ubuntu reserves unto itself the right to decide which devices it will deign to recognize. Some USB sticks yes, others no. My external hard drive is also totally ignored.

The not-always-that-helpful forums seem only to discuss, in their arcane way, the problem of no USB devices being recognized.

Another weird 'feature' is that, sometimes, seemingly randomly, it becomes impossible to drag files on to a USB stick. What's going on here?

And what's all that "Unmount volume" stuff about? How about understandable English - maybe "Disconnect device"?

Tracker loses track

2009-04-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

It's happened twice - Tracker just suddenly forgets everything it ever knew. When it works, it's great. Sad I can't rely on it. Searching Google, I haven't found any sign of this problem.

Come on, Ubuntu/Tracker, get your act together!

Ubuntu - Day One

2009-04-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

On my aging Celeron M laptop, Windows XP had nearly ground to a halt. I rashly decided to reinstall it. Eek! It reinstalled, sure enough, but it was goodbye to sound reproduction. All my attempts to fix this failed miserably, however much I searched Google.

In a moment of madness (or of inspiration), I remembered that I had a computer magazine cover disk with an up-to-date version of Ubuntu (version 8.10) on it. As I had other Windows machines that were still working all right, I decided that I might risk it.

Whew! Ubuntu installed really easily. I let it take over the entire hard disk. After the installation, the sound immediately worked again. What's more, Ubuntu identified and installed the Logilink wifi USB stick without any special prompting (a feat that Windows had not managed).

I immediately liked the uncluttered, smart-looking Ubuntu desktop with its three self-explanatory menus at the top of the screen. A glance in the Applications menu revealed that several key programs had already been installed (e.g. Open Office and Firefox).

It all seemed great, and was great. Of course there had to be a fly in the ointment. Although Ubuntu appeared to have installed a driver for my HP Laserjet 1020 printer, this did not in fact work.

This was when I had to turn to some of those scary and very geeky Ubuntu forums. If you haven't sampled them, I recommend you give them a look. Typically, some user writes in that he or she has a problem with some piece of software or hardware.

Even the questions can include great obscurities, e.g. this one from a question about USB sticks:

"I've tried running lsusb and this is what I got:

Bus 004 Device 005: ID 058f:6387 Alcor Micro Corp. Transcend JetFlash 110 USB 2.0 Flash Drive (2GB)
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 046d:c00c Logitech, Inc. Optical Wheel Mouse
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000 "

The first answer to all this said: "Plug it in" -- so far so good -- "and post the last 10 or so lines of dmesg."

So that's clear then. Or, if not, try the next answer:

"Is this a new drive or have you already used it? If it's new you may need to format it.
You can use gparted (found under system-->admin-->partition editor, install with synaptic etc. if not present) to look at what partitions are on the device if any, and what filesystems they are formatted as."

These examples are from an "Absolute beginners forum"!

When I encountered this kind of stuff, it put me in mind of a comment I once read in a review of Linux, to the effect that below the nice graphical interface there is "a world of pain".

Somehow, blindly, without in the least knowing what I was doing, I discovered the 'terminal' in Ubuntu and typed in a long string of seeming jibberish. Fortunately, it worked!