Re: PulseAudio Managers

[Shentino]

Interestingly enough PulseAudio just got the fame (shame?) of getting
featured in this slashdot article:

http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/10/19/0155235

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:44 AM, George Farris wrote:

> On Tue, 2009-10-13 at 22:33 +1100, Kyle Amadio wrote:
> > There seems to be something seriously wrong with the PulseAudio
> > managers.
> >
>
> And has anyone seen this little blurb from Lennart? Did Ubuntu really
> f**k this up or 
>
> http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/pa-in-ubuntu.html
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
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File perms on console login

[Shentino]

Hey all, new member here.  Using ubuntu on my desktop since Feisty after
Fedora crapped out due to a bad driver.
Anyway, to get straight to the chase...

One issue that's been a thorn in my side is dealing with file perms while
logging in on console.

Somewhat recently I uploaded a workaround patch to mc to allow cons.saver to
access /dev/vcsa* as needed.

But that begs the question of what I think is a larger issue.

What package, if any, has the responsibility of updating file permissions on
/dev/vcs(|a)X when you login on ttyX?

My guess would be something that hooks in with PAM but I could be completely
wrong.
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Re: Ubuntu Domain Server

[Shentino]

I can't very well speak as a "heavy iron" type server administrator but as
an "end user peon", so to speak, I have found that GUIs add convenience, and
in many cases "point and click" is faster and more convenient than doing
everything on a command line.  Doubly so if due to a caffeine shortage I'm a
bit of a sloppy typist.
My two cents.

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 3:41 AM, Ryan Dwyer  wrote:

> OK, I take back that statement to some degree.
> I just can't picture a small or medium sized business installing any CLI
> operating system when all they want is a basic domain or file server. I get
> the impression that Server Core is only used by large businesses with their
> own dedicated IT team.
>
> -Ryan
>
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 8:54 PM, Thierry Carrez  > wrote:
>
>> Ryan Dwyer wrote:
>> > The vast majority of system administrators are Windows admins. Windows
>> > admins won't use anything without a GUI, so making it CLI only would be
>> > shooting yourself in the foot.
>>
>> So Windows admins won't use Windows Server 2008 "Server Core" [1] ?
>>
>> Note the interesting quote from Andrew Mason:
>>
>> Andrew Mason, a program manager on the Windows Server team, noted that a
>> primary motivation for producing a Server Core variant of Windows Server
>> 2008 was to reduce the attack surface of the operating system, and that
>> about 70% of the security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows from the
>> prior five years would not have affected Server Core.
>>
>> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_2008#Server_Core
>>
>> --
>> Thierry Carrez
>> Ubuntu server team
>>
>
>
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Re: Ubuntu Domain Server

[Shentino]

My first impression is that it's something to look into.
I'm sure that us open source monkeys can improve on Microsoft in this area
:)

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 6:24 AM, Ryan Dwyer  wrote:

> I've made a specs page here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBusinessServer
> You can also see some mockup pictures I made here:
> Name and Role: http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/1210/namerole.png
> Computer Details: http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/1740/computerz.png
> Workstation Images: http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/6757/22666240.png
> Web Server: http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/1795/webserver.png
>
> I'm unsure at this stage whether I'll submit it to Brainstorm or go
> straight to a Launchpad blueprint, but at least I've got a spec for people
> to look at.
>
> Any feedback or suggestions are appreciated.
>
> -Ryan
>
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 11:43 PM, Chan Chung Hang Christopher <
> christopher.c...@bradbury.edu.hk> wrote:
>
>> Shentino wrote:
>> > I can't very well speak as a "heavy iron" type server administrator but
>> as
>> > an "end user peon", so to speak, I have found that GUIs add convenience,
>> and
>> > in many cases "point and click" is faster and more convenient than doing
>> > everything on a command line.  Doubly so if due to a caffeine shortage
>> I'm a
>> > bit of a sloppy typist.
>> > My two cents.
>> >
>>
>> You obviously have not tried to 'point and click' a few dozen iterations
>> while installing and configuring a Windows computer. That is
>> INCONVENIENT and takes AGES. Although it is not command line, I use
>> keyboard shortcuts to speed up the process. Alt-N, Alt-A, Alt-I for
>> installing dotnetfx for example. No way you can beat the keyboard. Even
>> better if you can use command line switches to forego the entire process
>> of "point and click". A command line version asking 'Y/N' is just as
>> likely to be faster than any point and click too.
>>
>>
>> This whole GUI for administration business is a complete sham imho and
>> only serves the needs of paper MCSEs or whatever they call the latest
>> version of certificates from Microsoft. These guys need to LEARN MORE
>> whether they will continue administer Windows or move to Linux.
>>
>>
>>
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Re: artwork

[Shentino]

Well I won't be quite so angsty about it but I will share my two cents.

When I saw the plain white logo at the bottom when I upgraded in place to
karmic beta, I was very surprised.

Actually, surprised is mild.  I honestly thought that the lame artwork was a
bug of some sort.  Considering NVIDIA's recent hissy fit with KMS, plus my
video card going kaput under karmic after a driver update.

But I would myself like to see that warm blend of yellow, red, and orange
that says "ubuntu".

The progress bar, however implemented, was notably absent...and for a brief
moment I thought that karmic had decided to crap out and lock up.

It is my opinion that a boot screen should be the pulse of the boot process,
providing the user with a reassuring "yes I'm ok and I'm booting just fine".

On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 4:33 PM, Martin Owens  wrote:

> Hello Coz,
>
> Lets not call for people to be fired just yet, I'm sure things can be
> improved with some community involvement and a little unmooding of the
> style.
>
> Though it's totally subjective, as style usually is. A lot of people
> call my graphics too cartoonish and not serious. I tend to iconify
> instead of illustrate and that's reflected in my styles.
>
> Is there an art team? much like the technical board?
>
> Regards, Martin
>
> On Sat, 2009-10-24 at 19:18 -0400, coz DS wrote:
> > Hey guys,
> >   I had been on the art team for a number of years.
> > I am really surprised that some of the artwork,  ie,,,boot splash  and
> > splash screen with progress bar  , were able to be considered let
> > alone actually used.
> >I have to tell you that that the choices for these images and
> > colours  are completely not ubuntu in any way and certainly the worst
> > choice.
> >   When booting into karmic,  the white ubuntu symbol should have had
> > the colours gradually fill it in as a progress bar...and the following
> > boot splash the ubuntu logo certainly should have had color and the
> > background for that image most definitely should NOT have been
> > used...it implies  a dark..albeit muddy,, theme is going to be default
> > system theme.
> >I have seen none of the major distributions have any
> > inconsistencies...including ubuntu...with graphics during install..or
> > boot..as radical and inappropriate  as karmic has.
> >   Who ever has made these decisions  is most likely a developer and
> > there are NO developers capable of making final choices for anything
> > without discussing the options with at least one "qualified"  artist.
> >Creating and deciding on graphics , especially for a distribution
> > as globally used as Ubuntu, takes as much skill and time and mental
> > capabilities as it does to code "any" application...or DE..and any of
> > the developers who think otherwise  should be kept as far away from
> > decision making about graphics  permanently!!!
> >   To mr shuttleworth,,, if you are making final decisions then you
> > need to pull yourself away from graphics altogether and let the art
> > team back in as official...if on the other hand you are relying on an
> > "artist" at cononical to make these final decisions ,, then please
> > give them their walking papers.
> > coz
> >
> >
>
>
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Re: artwork

[Shentino]

>
> Third, open criticism of the appearance of the Ubuntu development
>
branch is most certainly welcome.  However, please consider that these
> splash screens have been in the present form for several months now.
> To provide this sort of feedback in an inflammatory manner days before
> the release is hardly constructive.  This feedback might have been
> quite useful around UserInterfaceFreeze, over a month ago:
>  * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicReleaseSchedule
> Please keep this schedule in mind for our next release:
>  * https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidReleaseSchedule


I didn't notice the artwork problem myself until after that date, as I'm not
normally one to jump straight on the development version.  Having only one
box and not enough beef to run a VM kinda makes me beta shy.

However, I would hope that a new version of the splash screen could get
pushed out as an update later.

Normally I wouldn't make a fuss over the artwork, as it's inherently
subjective.  But in this case I'd actually consider it a bug.

I'm guessing here, being new and all, but I figure that filing a bug report
on the splash screen in question would be the most productive step to take
here at this point.  I'd file it myself but launchpad is about to go down
for awhile for maintenance.

I wouldn't consider it critical enough to be a release showstopper but I do
believe it needs some attention once the release buzz dies down.
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Re: Ubuntu-devel-discuss Digest, Vol 35, Issue 54

[Shentino]

Just curious here.

Apart from the obvious cases of failure to boot the CD and legal issues,
what are some examples of what would be considered a "showstopper" level bug
that would suspend/defer a release?
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Re: why update-manager doesn't mark new packages as auto-installed?

[Shentino]

I would tend to second the motion, especially in cases where said new
packages are already a dependency of another package.

IIRC, ubuntu-desktop (and maybe a few others) are the apex packages that
represent what is installed.  Anything new that is already a dependency of
the new version of these "meta packages" should IMHO be just as auto-flagged
as they would have been had they been installed for the first time on a
clean system.

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 9:00 AM, yurik 81  wrote:

> In update-manager some packages marked as 'new install'. I think, this
> packages always depend on currently installed ones. Therefore, why
> wouldn't mark new packages as auto-installed? This will prevent the
> accumulation of unused packages in the system.
>
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Re: Ubuntu Domain Server

[Shentino]

Just curious, but would Landscape have any feature set overlap with what
we're talking about here?  I read that canonical uses it commercially.

On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 8:32 AM, Derek Broughton wrote:

> Dotan Cohen wrote:
>
> > Here is a great example of people administering things that they
> > shouldn't:
> >
> > http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/PHP-has-an-eval-function-like-perl.aspx
> >
> Very funny.  Now, wouldn't it have been better to give Jim some useful
> tools?
> --
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>
>
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Re: Broken session idling/power management in Karmic

[Shentino]

What are the chances of an update being pushed out for this later?

I realize that there's a tight schedule and all but a post-release update
would seem to be a nice compromise.

The shipping company has already processed and received my shipit order
though so it appears the barn door's been locked for good.

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 2:36 AM, Alexander H Deriziotis <
derizio...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Is there hope for this to be fixed in karmic?
>>
>
> I'm no developer, but I think that's very unlikely.
>
> It seems to me your best bet would be to try and avoid using the software
> which breaks the idle-indicators, or if that's too much hassle, just skip
> Karmic altogether and hope it's fixed in Lucid.
>
> Ubuntu does ship pretty bleeding edge software provided by upstream, so
> regressions are to be expected. It's only a 6 month wait after all.
>
> Good luck.
>
> Alex
>
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Re: Ubuntu Domain Server

[Shentino]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Morten Kjeldgaard wrote:

>
> On 20/10/2009, at 15.35, Derek Broughton wrote:
>
> >
> >>> I will never understand why a server GUI would improve anything?
> >
> > I will never understand why elitists hate GUIs.  A good UI should
> > improve
> > things by absolutely preventing misconfiguration.
>
> That's because the GUI often gets in the way of good sysadm practices
> and also automated configuration such as cfengine and the like.
>
> One example is the /etc/resolv.conf file, which used to be a simple 3
> line file that in karmic has been replaced with a complex and
> intransparent resolvconf system, that is part of the network
> configuation gui and clobbers /etc/resolv.conf at every boot.
>

IIRC, resolvconf leaves a big fat #AUTOGENERATED, DO NOT EDIT comment line
in the file, so at least any potential conf-file monkeys looking to poke
around are clued in, and presumably a short operation can tell resolvconf to
go away or at least disable itself.

>
> There's a huge difference maintaining a single-user system on a laptop
> and hundreds of workstations.
>
> -- Morten
>
>
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Re: upgrade from 9.04 - 9.10: the most broken Ubuntu / Debian upgrade I have ever experienced

[Shentino]

Here comes the rumor mill...

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/11/03/2211231/Some-Early-Adopters-Stung-By-Ubuntus-Karmic-Koala

There seems to be a general consensus that, overall, the ubuntu team as a
whole bungled this release.  Whether that's true or not I reserve judgement
on until my CD arrives in the mail and I can see for myself.  But the
impression is clearly there, deserved or otherwise.

Thus far though, tip top shape, especially on LTS versions, has been par for
the course, but I'm probably going to agree that ubuntu bogeyed this time.
 I think we could all chip-in a bit and buff out the rough spots in time for
lucid.

I'd consider the recent flames and attacks to be a wee bit out of bounds
though.  That sort of thing only drives us apart as a community.
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Re: cancel the 9.10 release... it is not ready

[Shentino]

Seeing as the horse is already out of the barn, I don't think there's
anything more we can do except hope for updates.

Meantime, I think focusing on getting an early polishing to Lucid as a
preventative measure would be a good idea.

On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 4:03 AM, Mohammed Bassit  wrote:

>
> > El 10/26/2009 12:28 PM, Mohammed Bassit escribió:
> > > [...]
> > >> I really like to persuade people to use ubuntu. But as long
> > >> as it looks unready it will strengthen their opinion, that linux
> > >> is only for nerds. Pleas learn your lesson from the debian
> > >> community and release a new version only if its ready.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > > You are free to use Debian !
> > >
> > After being migrated from Jaunty to Karmic in three machines (one at
> > work, one mine, and one of a friend), specially seeing that all that
> > works in Jaunty (wireless, ethernet, sound!) stop working in Karmic
>
> Can you give us more details about what went wrong with your network and
> sound ? was it working in Jaunty out of the box ? did it just break once
> you upgraded to Karmic ?
>
> And those three machines you're talking about, do they have similar
> network and sound cards ? are all three of them from the same make and
> model ?
>
> > in my end-user friend machine (I replaced her Windows Vista to Kubuntu,
> > and since Jaunty she was happy and I was proud of that), I seriously
>
> I don't see why you decided to upgrade to Karmic if the user was happy
> with Jaunty ?
>
> > considering that option. In this moment I think Debian releases are more
> > "user friendly" that the "for human beings" latest distribution.
> >
>
> I have to agree that Debian releases tend to be more stable, but I'm not
> sure about the user friendly thing !!
>
> > Sorry, I don't want to make FUD, but I'm really sad about it. And I see
> > I'm not the only one :-/
> >
>
> I have seen a few people complaining about their upgrades from Jaunty to
> Karmic that went bad. I personally upgraded three computers to Karmic
> without any issues (Actually the jack sense on my work computer's sound
> card wasn't working in Jaunty and it works now in Karmic).
>
> Anyway, it doesn't seem like a common issue, I have only seen a few
> cases of upgrade fails, and in most of them it was the users
> "fault" (using apt to upgrade for instance).
>
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Natanael.
> >
> > > Thanks,
> >
> >
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> --
> Mohammed Bassit 
>
>
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CLI friendliness

[Shentino]

Most of my important work is done on command line, and personally, I like
nothing better than a snappy full-screen VT.

Typical uses:

* MUDs
* SSH
* Kernel development

Generally, how friendly is ubuntu planning to be with users like me?
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Re: cancel the 9.10 release... it is not ready

[Shentino]

I just received the free CD package I ordered awhile ago.  And...

I don't know what happened, it looks very bland inside.  None of the
familiar red/orange/yellowness ubuntueyness.  It's just black text on white
background, no border, looks almost like what you'd expect at the back end
of a user manual where they put the warranty.

The front picture is a yellow background with just 9.10 in 2 places and
Ubuntu Desktop written on it.  For some reason I didn't get much of an
"ubuntuey" feel from it.  The package also felt a little flimsy and there
was even some shipping-induced deformation in the paper.  This could be due
to cost-cutting measures though, as I recently read in slashdot that
Canonical is having budget problems with its "ship-it" program.

That is my honest criticism.

Naturally of course I commend all the volunteers that surely put forth a
fine effort.  Without them I'd be forced to eat Windows...and being on a
shoestring budget as it is I was barely able to afford the $275 I spent
getting and putting together a new computer.  Yes, I just built it from
parts I got from newegg :).  So on an absolute scale I'm not terribly
displeased with ubuntu overall.

Anyway, I hope that my feedback, and probably a post-mortem of what went
wrong with Karmic's release, will be beneficial to future versions.

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 12:40 AM, Natanael Olaiz  wrote:

> El 11/11/2009 10:37 PM, Derek Broughton escribió:
> > Natanael Olaiz wrote
> >> El 11/11/2009 08:32 PM, Derek Broughton escribió:
> >>
> >>> Natanael Olaiz wrote:
> >>>
>  Another thing: many shortcuts doesn't work anymore. Even configuring
>  them by hand!! For instance: screenshots, knotes, etc...
> 
> >>> "knotes"?  So you're presumably using Kubuntu: most of those shortcuts
> >>> got broken with the upgrade to KDE4 - LONG before 9.10.
> >>>
> >> Yes, I wrote I installed Kubuntu. And yes, I was using Hardy with KDE
> 3.5.
> >> But even setting the shortcuts from the KDE settings control doesn't
> >> work:  http://picpaste.com/screenshot_shortcuts.jpg
> >> This also happened in previous versions of Kubuntu with KDE 4?
> >>
> > Shortcuts, particularly in embedded kparts, have been a pain in the butt
> > with every release that included KDE 4.  Welcome to KDE4.
> >
> :-/
>
> (that was one of the reasons because I waited so much to upgrade from
> Hardy: I loved KDE 3.5)
>
> Anyway, thanks for your reply. :-)
>
>
> Best regards,
> Natanael.
>
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Re: Stop the madness

[Shentino]

Personally, I was ecstatic to try out Kernel Mode Setting.

I was very happy with it...until I found out that it absolutely butchered
the VGA console.  Finding out that vgacon was not supported broke my heart.

However, these decisions seem to have been made by the graphics guys up at
high-on-the-geek-totem-pole positions on grounds of conflict.

Seeing as I'm not prepared to give up my text-mode console, I promptly
disabled mode-setting once I found out that there was absolutely no way
around it.

Ok, now that my off the side rant is taken care of...

What about going the gentoo route and just having endless updates?  What
would be the merits/disadvantages in that case?

I'll be happy to admit, perhaps with a tinge of shame, that even 6 months is
too long.  Whenever a new release comes out I am always antsy and want it
badly.  I guess you could call it asynchronous development, where version
numbers levitate smoothly as new versions from upstream prove their worth.

Just as an aside...if gentoo's customizability were combined with ubuntu's
stellar package management and user friendliness I would consider it the
perfect distro.

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 7:29 AM, Markus Hitter  wrote:

>
> Am 17.11.2009 um 12:19 schrieb patrick:
>
> > Give a distribution the time to mature, listen to your big chief, even
> > when it's for only time only: 1 distribution a year will bring quality
> > software instead of buggy software like it is now !!
>
> I had some thoughts on this as well and came to the conclusion, the
> base system and applications should be decoupled. Currently, the
> major reason to upgrade to the latest is for getting recent versions
> of applications.
>
> Right now I'd be glad if I could run e.g. the latest VLC or AbiWord
> on last year's Ubuntu (Hardy). Hardy worked so well with my hardware
> while Jaunty asks me to do 5 minutes of manual tweaking until all
> subsystems are running. After each boot!
>
> Of course, I could compile packages manually from upstream sources,
> and I have to for some packages as the distributed one is broken or
> removed intentionally (kqemu). But that's not the intention of using
> a distribution, after all.
>
> There are some buddies providing PPA's across Ubuntu releases for
> popular applications and I appreciate that very much. Perhaps it's
> possible to extend that path and allow users to run modern
> applications on a matured base system (kernel, drivers, blank
> desktop, admin controls).
>
>
> Markus
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter
> http://www.jump-ing.de/
>
>
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Re: CLI friendliness

[Shentino]

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <
jonat...@ubuntu.com> wrote:

> Shentino wrote:
> > * MUDs
> > * SSH
> > * Kernel development
> >
> > Generally, how friendly is ubuntu planning to be with users like me?
>
> You can do a minimal install that will give you just VT's to begin with,
> Ubuntu has some nice screen profiles and has KMS support so you should
> get fast switching between your VT's. Ubuntu probably has most that
> you'd want to run from all your VT's packaged already, including mc,
> ethstatus, htop, irssi, mutt, figlet, ccze, links2 and much more.
>
> In short, you should be able to do anything with VT's on Ubuntu that you
> could do on any other decent system :)
>

Ok then, thanks :)

I just got a wee bit burned by the apparent forced obsolence of the vga text
console by KMS having the nasty side effect of forcing you to use fbcon.  I
think fbcon, while nice in principle, is just plain UGLY when you're used to
working in console.

Seems though it's here to stay, as apparently the big three (intel, nvidia,
and ati) are all abandoning vga console support with the enabling of KMS.

I think it's a really bad idea, but my vote might not matter much versus
video geeks high on the totem pole.

For the moment I've disabled KMS.
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Re: Ubuntu Domain Server

[Shentino]

On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 11:54 AM, Chan Chung Hang Christopher <
christopher.c...@bradbury.edu.hk> wrote:

>
> >> Letting someone use gparted to partition his disk who doesn't know
> >> anything about partitioning will probably end in a big data desaster.
> >> And whom will this user blame for it? Certainly not himself for doing
> >> tasks he doesn't understand but the GUI for letting it do him (even if
> >> it has big warnings).
> >>
> >
> > The user can blame anyone he wants. The rest of the world shouldn't
> > care about that. I find this whole blaming angle very unproductive.
> > Should Gparted not exist? Should Synaptic? Or the PolicyKit editor?
> > Rapache? The LVM manager? All can be used to destroy data or create
> > security leaks. But all are used to save time for those that
> > understand how they work.
> >
> >
> And we have no problem with that. We have a problem with those who
> believe that such tools should be marketed to the uninitiated. This
> thread was started with the premise of doing what?
>
> "What are your thoughts on having a server product that competes with
> Windows Server? Something which has a GUI, is very easy to manage and
> works best with Ubuntu workstations."
>
> "My theory is that people trying Ubuntu Server are probably Windows
> administrators and find it daunting that there's no GUI. If they don't turn
> away then, they turn away when they discover there's 48 chapters of Samba
> documentation to read through just to get a functional domain server. Very
> few administrators would see this as a viable replacement for their Windows
> server."
>
> You want to tell me that most Windows administrators cannot handle the
> command line and scripts? You want to tell me that Windows is 'very easy to
> manage'? Right. Maybe for setups that just use the bare minimum, does not
> use group policy and scripts.
>
> But guess what. Microsoft uses a predefined configuration and so they can
> release tools that automate that. I say give those in such situations a
> predefined configuration and a foolproof gui tool but then somebody opposes
> that. I point out that a gui that 'supports' everything is not suitable to
> the uninitiated then somebody accuses me of protecting my iron rice bowl and
> being some elitist jerk.
>
> So, short of an AI, I cannot think of something that will satisfy all you
> out there. If someone can use a manual drive, that one is free to drive a
> manual or an automatic. You don't blame the manual's designer if it cannot
> accommodate a person that only knows how to use an automatic nor a
> semi-automatic's designer if the person does not understand the effects of
> trying to start off in the highest gear.
>

It almost implies here that one of Microsoft's tactics is to dumb the user
down on purpose so that their minds are crippled and they come to rely on MS
doing the majority of the configurational grunt work for them.  A form of
"lock-in by frustration" if you will that triggers whenever they try to step
out of the "windows penthouse".

Then, when we try to open them up to "the second choice" they promptly get
scared off or frustrated, or both, by the huge menu of options open to them.

My opinion is that for ubuntu to attract people from the windows admin crowd
it needs to mimic that sense of "opaque hood" that keeps them from ever
worrying about the guts.

I think that any spin of ubuntu catering to such users should have a
configurable setup option along the lines of "express" or "custom" or
"expert mode" or something, so that those folks who don't have a clue about
anything but pushing the high level buttons won't be forced to risk screwing
up.  Any user who wishes to use "express" setup should be set up with a rock
solid default profile and have most of the configuration done for them.
Naturally, peppering it with "learn more..." or "under the hood" links to
where they can get themselves an education about what's REALLY going
wouldn't be a bad idea ;).

Deciding that those defaults actually would be is another kettle of fish
entirely and I surmise that a democratic process of some sort, perhaps
brainstorm, would be a good way to settle this inherently political section.

Finally, I think it's fair to give MS its due here.  Whether by fair means
or foul, MS has a commanding presence in the market and we simply have to
accept that as the way things currently are.  Any meaningful effort to get
market share away from MS needs to be able to successfully accomodate the
windows users and help them migrate, at least long enough for them to get
the feel for "The Linux Way (tm)".

People used to Windows that are trying out Ubuntu anything for the first
time are from their point of view venturing into uncharted waters.
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Re: Install Wizard 'Looks Too Complicated'

[Shentino]

With regards to cracking tools being bad, I imagine they do come in handy
during security audits.

If there's going to be hacking tools out there anyway, the good guys may as
well have them too, since you can't really take them away from the bad guys.

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 10:47 AM, John Moser  wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 12:55 PM, Matt Wheeler  wrote:
> > 2009/11/30 Jan Claeys :
> >> Op zondag 29-11-2009 om 00:47 uur [tijdzone +0800], schreef John
> >> McCabe-Dansted:
> >>> There are also algorithms for extracting the password from XP as
> >>> well...
> >>
> >> XP passwords are compared to hashes, and you can't extract the password
> >> from a hash.
> >
> > There are brute-force password cracking methods, but including
> > something like that as
> > part of the Ubuntu installation would be a bad idea for several
> > reasons.
> >
>
> List some not-silly reasons.  "Because people could use it for
> theoretical/practicable attacks" is not a reason, because 1) you could
> decline to reveal the password (but allow verification); and 2) there
> are other tools for this that are just as accessable.
>
> I guess I can give a longer example here, but I'd rather not get into
> the specifics of this discussion:
>
> In the state of the art, I can pop in a BackTrack CD, fix 1 line in
> Kismet's config (is this automatic now?  It could be), run one
> command, and drop keys for all the WEP networks around me.  There are
> tools included that find "hidden" SSIDs and you can even find MAC
> addresses in use to get around all the maze-like non-security.
>
> I have made the argument that Ubuntu could contain a version of
> Network-Manager (I prefer by default, but it could be an additional
> package) that automatically does all the hidden SSID detection in the
> background, and does some monitoring and WEP cracking, marking off
> "Secured, broken" networks.
>
> This usually brings up arguments that this is somehow "bad," but
> doesn't explain exactly how it's bad.  It doesn't decrease security,
> because well... if you want to "steal internet," you're a mostly
> harmless leech; if you want to do something serious, you're going to
> have the skills anyway.  I figure it would probably make it extremely
> visible to the owners of 6 (of 7) WiFi networks reachable from my
> apartment that their @*#$ is not secure when it becomes common
> knowledge that most of that stuff is flat-out ignored and
> automatically bypassed by some operating systems.
>
> Cost-benefit arguments aside, it seems that the above extreme case
> doesn't actually de-securify anything (it is, however, a good way to
> make fun at hilariously bad security devices that actually got
> released to market).  A quick and painless password cracking mechanism
> (background, started as soon as the CD can see a partition with a SAM,
> and time-restricted) doesn't seem like an issue to me.
>
> Of course, I'm a very coarse person and have no desire to play nice.
> Sure, I definitely advocate NOT flashing the cracked passwords in
> peoples' faces, and keeping them in secured RAM (i.e. XOR'd with a
> canary, in locked memory, until needed; or better, hash them out for
> storage in shadow and clear the originals out of RAM).  But I see no
> reason to care about the difference between "we could easily crack
> these passwords" and "we have cracked these passwords," unless you're
> uploading the passwords (hashed?) to Canonical for further use.
>
> > --
> > Matt Wheeler
> > m...@funkyhat.org
> >
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Re: Install Wizard 'Looks Too Complicated'

[Shentino]

One of my pet peeves with the installer is how long it takes to detect the
partitioning...and redetect it every...single...operation...so...slowly.

My suggestion is that GParted be used to handle this.  In fact I often use
that to do the partitioning BEFORE I do the installer because I don't want
to slog through it.

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 8:40 AM, John McCabe-Dansted wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 12:06 AM, Daniel Hollocher
>  wrote:
> > password.  Any sort of password automation would simplify the
> > situation for a few people at the expense of making it more
> > complicated for the rest of us.  The level of encryption doesn't seem
> > to matter.
>
> OK. The issue where we want to migrate multiple users for whom the
> admin does not know the password may be better handled by the
> Migration Assistant.
>   https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MigrationAssistant/Karmic
>
> --
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>
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Re: Here lies the responsiblity

[Shentino]

I've just switched to gentoo and intend to stick with it.  Getting burned by
karmic had only a little bit to do with it.

Not a slight against ubuntu, but dealing with gentoo has been a real eye
opener to what the ubuntu devs probably go through, and I haven't even
started tweaking or bugfixing yet ;).

My opinion of ubuntu overall remains very high.  Except for karmic Ubuntu
has been making me very happy because it allowed me to stay away from
windows.  Apart from its infamy as a piece of swiss cheese, I'm on a
shoestring budget and can't afford it anyway.

And that is one of the many things I'm thankful for this year...all the hard
work you devs do in giving us an OS that is pretty darn reliable considering
it doesn't have a large budget behind it.

Don't let Karmic get you down.  It's still better than vista :D

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 3:27 PM, Joseph Miller wrote:

>
> Canonical now has the responsibility, yes let me say that again,
>> "Canonical has a responsibility", to the entire Linux world, to be very
>> careful with what they put out.  Now I have no problem with releasing
>> Karmic but please, for all the rest of us, including other distributions
>> and companies that have worked hard over many years to promote Linux,
>> MARK IT AS DEVELOPMENT.
>>
>>
> I completely agree.  I would have upgraded to Karmic anyways no matter what
> it was labelled. But you know what, many people and most new people probably
> need the LTS.  And you know what else, I have a hard time finding the LTS on
> Ubuntu.com.  Should be a big sign for the LTS and a small link to Karmic for
> those of us who want it and have been following the countdown for months.
>
> Google provides email to companies for day-to-day business and these
> businesses pay them.  Google has an excellent reputation and is highly
> respected in the industry.  How do you think the business image of Google
> changed during the major email blackouts for practically an entire business
> day for the customers affected?  This is still 99%+ uptime, but if your
> company had to put off thousands of dollars worth of business for a day or
> even half a day, it would have you a bit worried.  Same thing with a distro
> perceived to be not as stable as competing OSes.
>
> -Joseph
>
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Re: Install Wizard 'Looks Too Complicated'

[Shentino]

For what it's worth, my vote is that gparted should be included as part of
the installer.  Everything else though seems fine.

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 2:16 AM, Kyle Amadio wrote:

> Just for FUN I did a Fedora 12 install of Gnome and KDE.
>
> Must say that Ubuntu is dead simple and fast. Fedora was "nearly easy" but
> for some reason it just does not flow like Ubuntu's does.
>
> Leave the installer alone it is simple and fast.
>
> --
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>
> Kyle Amadio
> International TV Shopping Systems
> +61 411707081
>
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Re: karmic trashed in Tomshardware.com

[Shentino]

Indeed this list lately has been buzzing somewhat with grumpy messages
regarding Karmic's bellyflop.

I must admit that some of mine could have been a bit less condescending than
they were.

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Patrick Goetz wrote:

> I've been out of the loop for a couple of months, so pardon me if this
> has already been discussed, but Karmic got thoroughly trashed in a
> TomsHardware.com review:
>
>   http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ubuntu-karmic-koala,2484.html
>
> Some of these issues (system freezes when copying large files on ext4)
> I've never heard of before.
>
> My personal gripes with karmic were finding out that fakeraid now
> doesn't work at all, a regression caused by grub2
> (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/392136)
> and that the network applet, nm-applet still doesn't work in a
> multi-user context:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/284596
>
>
> Either of these is a deal killer for some significant fraction of users
> (e.g. dual booters or household shared PC users, respectively).
>
>
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Re: GNU Hurd port

[Shentino]

Just observing that ubuntu itself is a downstream of debian's unstable
branch.

So in a way we already are on the "cutting edge" as it were, so it would
seem.

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 10:38 AM, John Moser  wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 11:17 AM, Patrick Goetz 
> wrote:
> >> Subject: Re: Supporting a GNU Hurd port?
> >> From: Scott James Remnant 
> >> Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:14:38 +
> >> To: Danny Piccirillo 
> >>
> >>
> >> Speaking as the guy who maintains the boot and plumbing layer, I am
> >> completely and utterly uninterested in such a port.
> >>
> >
> > My question is why are we even talking about this?  The linux kernel is
> > by far the most robust, dynamic part of the whole distribution, and it
> > should be quite clear that there aren't enough developers to maintain
> > even the software that's in the distro now.
>
> I'm the guy that thought street lamps run on burning gas was a
> perfectly workable idea, but using some sort of glowing electric wire
> without fire would be even better.
>
> Would you have rather kept your indoor lighting as kerosene torches on
> the wall?  At the very least you'd be warmer in the winter
>
> A Ford Shelby V8 still has a live axle in the back.  It works, but an
> independent rear suspension engineered properly (the one in the Cobra
> 03/04 was crap, the LSD was done wrong, and it got horrible wheel hop;
> it was basically a FWD non-diff suspension for a 200ftlb car shoved
> into a RWD car with a rear diff getting 400ftlb torque) would be much,
> much better and the car would be able to corner VERY hard without
> flipping or skidding sideways.
>
> At some point, all of these things were non-obvious; at some other,
> more recent point, they were considered "interesting, but not
> important."  These days, we're sitting around laughing at Ford because
> the Mustang has LOL LIVE AXLE 1920 SUSPENSION
>
> Right now, a microkernel is still between "non-obvious" and
> "interesting, but not important;" we haven't quite determined if there
> is a real benefit, we'll argue over if there is or isn't, and most
> people who decide there is a significant benefit declare that it's
> simply not significant enough to matter even though they've never seen
> it put into full practice.
>
> We could be "innovative" or "technological leaders," but that puts us
> all at risk of "doing something stupid and having it not work out
> quite right."  It's more palatable for most people to just sit back,
> wait for someone else to do it, and then either watch it collapse or
> play catch-up; who the hell wants to take risks on new technology
> themselves?  Especially if what, maybe we use HURD and find out Minix
> was much better and surpassed HURD support-wise; or we use Minix and
> find out HURD was just better in a HUGE way.  Maybe a third player
> will come up and omg, The Perfect Kernel!
>
> The core of the whole argument is, of course, that some of us see
> these things as more interesting than others.  Scott simply doesn't
> want to do more work -- trust me it's a hell of a lot of work, and
> I've already given the best way to attack it ("best" being "mitigates
> any extra work in the future"), and that's still a hell of a lot of
> work.  Others here don't trust the technology, still others are
> (mistakenly) convinced it's already been determined that the
> technology is a worthless research project with no practical benefit.
>
> And then there's the crowd that believes this is the future and we
> need to get on it RIGHT NOW and doesn't understand the concept of
> prioritization.  Our pet projects obviously deserve 100% of the
> resources, right?  Ubuntu should go to Minix right now (I am a Minix
> fan), they should implement Linux d-bus and NF_NETLINK and udev stuff
> so the boot process is drop-in, they should start porting FreeBSD
> driver code to the Minix code base, and not a damn thing else matters.
>  That makes sense, right?
>
> No?
>
> It probably doesn't make sense if you have any freaking clue about how
> a large project is run; but why should reality get in the way of your
> pet projects?
>
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Re: Introduction to Ubuntu Distributed Development

[Shentino]

Reinventing the wheel might be a good idea if the wheel then rolls faster

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 6:24 AM, Scott James Remnant wrote:

> On Thu, 2009-12-17 at 08:58 -0500, Adrian Perez wrote:
>
> > So, I might propose to have a voting on which VCS system we will use for
> > our centralized approach, (if that hasn't happened already).
> >
> Bazaar was designed and written to be the distributed version control
> system for distributions, in particular Ubuntu.  There is an enormous
> amount of infrastructure built up around it, and a large number of
> people working on it.
>
> We do not presume (as a community) to tell people what they should and
> should not be working on.  If those people are happy working on Bazaar,
> then that is entirely their decision.  We would not hold a vote to tell
> people to stop what they are doing.
>
>
> If another group of people were to work on GIT, Mercurial or some new
> DVCS - making improvements to better suit a distribution, and were to
> put the same amount of work into building an infrastructure around it,
> then that is entirely their choice.
>
> Having two competing infrastructures would be cause for a discussion
> amongst the Technical Board about which one (if either) we recommended.
>
>
> Personally (as a member of the TB), in that situation, I'd be more
> likely to ask why the GIT or Mercurial folk didn't instead leverage the
> existing bzr infrastructure.  For example, by adding support to their
> DVCS to be able to pull from and push to the LP server.
>
> That way users could use whichever command-line tool they wanted, and
> we'd all have access to the same branches.
>
> Scott
> --
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> sc...@ubuntu.com
>
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Re: Introduction to Ubuntu Distributed Development

[Shentino]

First off, apologies if being a non-developer posting here is...not kosher,
or whatnot.

Personally, I think that allowing variety of a sort in the actual repos
would allow more freedom for the developers to work with what they are most
comfortable with.  Considering the wide variety of packages that exist, my
first impression is that a "one size fits all" claim for bazaar is somewhat
dubious.

My first move, if I were to make it, would be to put in support for
competing SCMs and let the package maintainers choose for themselves if they
wanted to switch out of bzr or not.

Sourceforge recently did this to provide more options to their developers
and it personally made me very happy.

As an aside I share Adrian's concerns about grafting other SCMs on top of
bazaar, on grounds that metadata may potentially be mangled in translation,
so to speak.  Having had bad experiences with git-svn myself in fact.

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 7:55 AM, Adrian Perez wrote:

> Exactly my point. +1.
> I think Git is better suited than Bzr for the job, and I don't make to
> make it personal.
> It's true that there's an infrastructure set up, but I think the idea of
> voting is letting the community decide for itself, and don't impose us a
> tool which might not be the preferred choice for most of our developers.
> Building a layer around LP and Bzr seems like a reasonable idea, but
> there are some many pitfalls on that.
>
> On Thu, 2009-12-17 at 07:44 -0800, Shentino wrote:
> > Reinventing the wheel might be a good idea if the wheel then rolls
> > faster
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 6:24 AM, Scott James Remnant
> >  wrote:
> > On Thu, 2009-12-17 at 08:58 -0500, Adrian Perez wrote:
> >
> > > So, I might propose to have a voting on which VCS system we
> > will use for
> > > our centralized approach, (if that hasn't happened already).
> > >
> >
> > Bazaar was designed and written to be the distributed version
> > control
> > system for distributions, in particular Ubuntu.  There is an
> > enormous
> > amount of infrastructure built up around it, and a large
> > number of
> > people working on it.
> >
> > We do not presume (as a community) to tell people what they
> > should and
> > should not be working on.  If those people are happy working
> > on Bazaar,
> > then that is entirely their decision.  We would not hold a
> > vote to tell
> > people to stop what they are doing.
> >
> >
> > If another group of people were to work on GIT, Mercurial or
> > some new
> > DVCS - making improvements to better suit a distribution, and
> > were to
> > put the same amount of work into building an infrastructure
> > around it,
> > then that is entirely their choice.
> >
> > Having two competing infrastructures would be cause for a
> > discussion
> > amongst the Technical Board about which one (if either) we
> > recommended.
> >
> >
> > Personally (as a member of the TB), in that situation, I'd be
> > more
> > likely to ask why the GIT or Mercurial folk didn't instead
> > leverage the
> > existing bzr infrastructure.  For example, by adding support
> > to their
> > DVCS to be able to pull from and push to the LP server.
> >
> > That way users could use whichever command-line tool they
> > wanted, and
> > we'd all have access to the same branches.
> >
> > Scott
> > --
> > Scott James Remnant
> > sc...@ubuntu.com
> >
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> >
>
>
> --
> Best Regards,
>
> Adrian Perez 
> Ubuntu Developer
>
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Re: Introduction to Ubuntu Distributed Development

[Shentino]

Considering that ship has already sailed a long time ago, I don't think its
wise to waste lumber on another ship when it is already needed elsewhere.

If the bzr galleon runs aground or hits an iceberg in the future, however,
things may change.

Not being a developer myself I'm not aware of bzr's shortcomings/virtues, or
those of git/hg, but if frustration with bzr is indeed nearing critical mass
then it may well be prudent to consider adding support for alternatives.

Personally though I think it's a bit of a waste of time discussing this
"holy war of the DVCS's" if canonical and launchpad have both made it clear
that bzr is the only offically supported VCS.
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Re: slow boot-up

[Shentino]

Having been grazing with the gentoo herd (admittedly out of frustration with
karmic) I discovered that their RC system is dependency based, where each
init script lists which other init scripts it depends upon.  Sounds like
just the sort of "hey that's cool" that could be included.

Now, assuming that dependency siblings don't depend on each other, I presume
it would be possible for such dependency information to permit
parallelization of the startup process.  I imagine most of the time during
bootup is spent in disk-sleep with stuff being loaded so it seems like a
good optimization to have the idle CPU time being put to good use.

No I'm not trying to troll here, but I think that forking the ubuntu startup
process so that non-dependent init-scripts can execute in parallel would be
a good idea...no pun intended btw.

Does ubuntu already have rc parallelization?



On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 6:29 AM, Scott James Remnant wrote:

> On Thu, 2009-12-17 at 22:56 -0500, Vikram Dhillon wrote:
>
> > Hope everyone is doing good. I beg your pardon, if I am
> > posting this message in the wrong place, someone in launchpad answers
> > is dual booting xp and ubuntu. After the update to 9.10 he is
> > experiencing quite slow boot up, a bootchart is attached to this
> > message and also [1], can you guys see why the last few processes are
> > taking unusually long. I suspect the problem is due to the dual
> > booting in GRUB 2. Thank you very much guys for your help :D
> >
> > [1] http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/6260/srikumardesktopkarmic20.png
> >
> His boot time is 23s.
>
> We don't generally consider that slow on a hard-drive based system; what
> kind of time was he expecting?
>
> Scott
> --
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> sc...@ubuntu.com
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Re: slow boot-up

[Shentino]

Sounds double plus good then.

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 12:13 PM, Scott James Remnant wrote:

> On Fri, 2009-12-18 at 11:15 -0800, Shentino wrote:
>
> > Does ubuntu already have rc parallelization?
> >
> Ubuntu uses the Upstart init daemon, and has an event-driven boot
> sequence; this has even more advantages than dependency-based, as well
> as performs tasks in parallel.
>
> Scott
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> sc...@ubuntu.com
>
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Re: Ubuntu Help Center

[Shentino]

Just curious, would adding a "support ticket" system of some sort help?

Not sure about the nitty gritties of how they work under the hood but it's a
common support feature I've observed in other systems both amateur and
professional.

On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 5:55 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Hi Brian
>
> Brian Vidal Castillo wrote on 22/12/09 03:29:
> >...
> > I want to start a new project related to the way help and support is
> > given to the final users.
> > We know that a lot of tools and ways are available to get the right
> > answer, but none of these are really out-of-the-box.
>
> Previously: 
>
> > For example, the faster way to get help is from IRC channels, but it
> > needs a *decent* IRC client installed, like X-Chat.
>
> IRC does not scale, as a way of getting help, even to the small
> proportion of Ubuntu users who currently know about it. (There are 1324
> people in #ubuntu as I write this.) For any given person joining a busy
> IRC channel, *most* of the things they see will not be relevant to their
> problem. That's fine if you're already familiar with how IRC works, but
> if you don't, it's bizarre.
>
> If IRC was embedded into the standard help viewer, most people also
> would not understand the difference between official support and some
> random troll telling them to sudo rm -r *.
>
> > Also, Yelp depends on gecko even when webkit is faster .
>
> Apparently the only thing holding it up is accessibility.
> <
> http://blogs.gnome.org/shaunm/2009/06/17/yelp-2271/comment-page-1/#comment-198
> >
>
> > The main idea is to replace completely Yelp with a unified and faster
> > Help system with an integrated IRC client, a Live Support panel. It
> > will support man pages, docbooks, html manuals, xml-based manuals and
> > the new Mallard pages.
> >
> > Also, it will give a 'tunnel' to access screencasts as
> > 'demostrations'.
>
> The ability to embed screencasts would be very cool. It almost certainly
> doesn't require replacing Yelp, though.
>
> >...
> > A few mockups (done in Balsamiq Mockups)
> > Gallery: http://picasaweb.google.com/dael99/HelpCenter?feat=directlink
> >...
>
> Remember that a help viewer needs to be compact enough to fit
> *alongside* whatever you're wanting help with.
>
> There are many ways in which you could improve the existing help system.
> One would be devising a method by which help pages can show conditional
> help depending on what environment you're running (e.g. Ubuntu vs.
> Ubuntu Netbook Edition). Another would be implementing a mechanism for
> help pages to have a "Show Me" button, that highlights the relevant item
> in the interface. Another would be to clean up the poor use of icons,
> ruled lines, and italics in the help page style sheet. Another would be
> to improve the search (for example, from an application's help pages,
> the search should return results just about that application).
>
> Cheers
> - --
> Matthew Paul Thomas
> http://mpt.net.nz/
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Re: proper procedure regarding bug reports

[Shentino]

I've sorta had this dance with a problem in mc that, due to improper perms
on cons.saver, prevented the usage of C-o to flop the screen in and out.

I uploaded a patch that highlighted the problem and I thought that someone
would eventually get around to testing it.

Unfortunately, it recently got the wave-off as now it no longer builds under
Lucid and I'm being asked to test a new upstream version, when I know that
the fix needed cannot come from upstream on account of the fact that I've
run into the same problem on Gentoo, with the same version I was being asked
to test.

On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 3:34 AM, Patrick Freundt <
patrick.freu...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 12:01 PM, Michael Bienia  wrote:
> > You know that your Ubuntu systems also checks for package updates
> > automatically? So it goes online without your consent too.
>
> As I said before, firefox is just one exaple of multiple topics.
>
>
> > And I don't want a dialog popping up asking me if it can look for fresh
> > updates now.
>
> By clean concept, you take a concious decision once that you want
> updates and that you connect to a specific remote host for that and
> then you can let that happen in an automated way in the future.
>
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Re: White-on-black terminal should be default

[Shentino]

My personal opinion is that the default should be gray on black like the vc.

For some reason the terminal colors just work better that way, particularly
with midnight commander in a shell in a term.

my two cents.

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 12:54 PM, Derek Broughton wrote:

> Fred . wrote:
>
> > Everybody knows that a terminal has white text on black background.
> > Windows has a terminal like this. Mac OS X have a terminal like this.
>
> Ugh.  I really thought that only primitive systems use white text on a
> black
> background.  It's ergonomically very bad.  I never use such a terminal
> except in Windows, where I haven't figured out (nor spent enough time to
> need to) how to change it.
>
> > Even Linux have CLI terminal like this.
> > KDE also.
> > But in GNOME and xterm are black text on white background.
> >
> > Why?
> > That is not how a terminal should look!
> >
> > Change the default colors to be white text on black background!
>
> That is a very bad idea, imo.
> --
> derek
>
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Re: Removal of PulseAudio from Ubuntu

[Shentino]

I would just like to throw my two cents in and express my own disapproval of
PulseAudio.

It's clunky and hard to configure, and personally I think it rather tries to
do too much at once, and by so doing is latent.

I would not miss it if it were removed from Ubuntu in favor of something
more simple.

2010/5/7 Flávio Etrusco 

> On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 9:21 PM, Chris Jones 
> wrote:
> >
> > >>Date: Thu, 6 May 2010 20:17:04 -0400
> > >>From: Daniel Chen 
> > >>
> > >>(Grr, Android mail clients)
> > >>
> > >>Have you filed a bug report against the alsa-driver source (or
> alsa-base
> > >>binary) package?
> > >>
> >
> > Why on earth would I file a bug for alsa-driver when alsa is the driver
> that is working. Pulse is what I'm having issues with. Perhaps you
> misread/misunderstood my post.
>
> I had this conversation with Daniel in pvt. Well, with a somewhat
> different words  ;-)
>
> > On May 6, 2010 8:52 PM, "Flávio Etrusco" 
> wrote:
> >> If VLC is working with the ALSA emulation, isn't it more likely a bug
> >> in the VLC plugin for PA?
>
> > It is no more or less likely. For hardware bugs, you start at the bottom
> of the
> > stack for debugging, not the top. The fact that early requests mode works
> > implies that the buffering semantics are incorrect, which could be the
> > pulse output plugin for vlc *or* the driver.
>
> Actually, it was a stupid question on my part. VLC is working fine in
> my desktop and notebook so, indeed, it may/must be related to the
> "real" alsa driver.
>
> Best regards,
> Flávio
>
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Re: Removal of PulseAudio from Ubuntu

[Shentino]

Also, I question the wisdom of having audio specific bluetooth support.

My hunches tell me that a proper bluetooth support layer would be better.

2010/5/11 Shentino 

> I would just like to throw my two cents in and express my own disapproval
> of PulseAudio.
>
> It's clunky and hard to configure, and personally I think it rather tries
> to do too much at once, and by so doing is latent.
>
> I would not miss it if it were removed from Ubuntu in favor of something
> more simple.
>
> 2010/5/7 Flávio Etrusco 
>
> On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 9:21 PM, Chris Jones 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > >>Date: Thu, 6 May 2010 20:17:04 -0400
>> > >>From: Daniel Chen 
>> > >>
>> > >>(Grr, Android mail clients)
>> > >>
>> > >>Have you filed a bug report against the alsa-driver source (or
>> alsa-base
>> > >>binary) package?
>> > >>
>> >
>> > Why on earth would I file a bug for alsa-driver when alsa is the driver
>> that is working. Pulse is what I'm having issues with. Perhaps you
>> misread/misunderstood my post.
>>
>> I had this conversation with Daniel in pvt. Well, with a somewhat
>> different words  ;-)
>>
>> > On May 6, 2010 8:52 PM, "Flávio Etrusco" 
>> wrote:
>> >> If VLC is working with the ALSA emulation, isn't it more likely a bug
>> >> in the VLC plugin for PA?
>>
>> > It is no more or less likely. For hardware bugs, you start at the bottom
>> of the
>> > stack for debugging, not the top. The fact that early requests mode
>> works
>> > implies that the buffering semantics are incorrect, which could be the
>> > pulse output plugin for vlc *or* the driver.
>>
>> Actually, it was a stupid question on my part. VLC is working fine in
>> my desktop and notebook so, indeed, it may/must be related to the
>> "real" alsa driver.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Flávio
>>
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