Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat Alpha has been available for download a few days back and I have decided to upgrade from Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx 64bit to 10.10. I’m sure there are no notable changes in the first alpha, but it is great to have it installed as changes are seen easy and I can help in development by reporting bugs and trying to fix some issues on my own.

To upgrade, I had to launch Synaptic and navigate to Settings>Repositories>Updates>Release Upgrade>Show new distribution releases>Normal Releases and then close the dialog and then update the package list. Run

update-manager -d

from the run dialog (Alt+F2) and in that box it says “New Upgrade release ’10.10′ is available”, click on Upgrade and there we go.

UPDATE Nov 2, 2008: If you don’t want to get into trouble installing Windows version of Picasa and happy to use F-spot instead, head over to the new article here.

The picasa application from Google repositories with Facebook button does not work for Facebook photo uploads. It ends up with a blank window with nothing but a link. However, I have found an alternative in Ubuntu Forums and it works.

The trick is to install Windows Internet Explorer under wine and then install the Windows version of Picasa. To do this, make sure you have wine installed and picasa removed from your system.
This is how you do it:
Open terminal and then create a directory

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mkdir ielinux

Download ies4linux, the internet explorer installer for linux and run it.

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wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
tar zxvf ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
cd ies4linux-*

Now run the following command

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./ies4linux

If you do get an error, close the dialog and run it again as long as it is not completely installed.
After it is done, type in the following:

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wget http://www.khattam.info/junk/picasadownloader.sh ; chmod 777 picasadownloader.sh ;./picasadownloader.sh

The installer will automatically be launched. Perform the setup as you would do on Windows.
Now, install facebook button. To do so, run the following command

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wget http://www.khattam.info/junk/fbbtndownloader ; chmod 777 fbbtndownloader ;./fbbtndownloader

Now install picasa launcher. To do so, run the following set of commands

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wget http://www.khattam.info/junk/picasa
sudo cp picasa /usr/bin/picasa
sudo chmod 777 /usr/bin/picasa

Now, launch picasa by running picasa from the terminal or from Run Applications Dialog (Alt+F2).

To upload pictures, select the pictures and click the Facebook button. You will be asked to login, select or create the album and then photos will be uploaded. See your album on Facebook to confirm the pictures.

If picasa stops responding, you can kill it by typing in the following command:

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killall wineserver

Source : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1093761

Recently, I encountered a package management related error in Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope 64bit.

The package was python-beagle and the error was: “E: python-beagle: subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit status 2″ and details showed:

dpkg (subprocess): unable to execute pre-removal script: Exec format error
dpkg: error processing python-beagle (–remove):
subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit status 2
dpkg (subprocess): unable to execute post-installation script: Exec format error
dpkg: error while cleaning up:
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
python-beagle
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I managed to fix it. Read on for how I did it.

Precaution: The process can break your system if not followed as mentioned (you may get into problems even if you follow the process). Please proceed at your own risk.

First, please try the following in terminal:

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude -f install

If it does not work, then you may want to try:

sudo dpkg --force all --remove

If both of them still produce similar errors, then continue. If the above commands fix your problem, you should not continue.

1. Close Synaptic or any package manager. Wait for or cancel any updates or install\uninstall.
2. Make Backups of current /var/lib/dpkg/status file. Just copy and paste to your home directory or Desktop.
3. Alt+F2 and launch type in gksu gedit /var/lib/dpkg/status and run it. Gedit will be launched with a text file open.
4. Now, search for the exact name of the package with problems and find it.
5. In my case, it I found the entry for the package python-beagle:

Package: python-beagle
Status: deinstall ok half-configured
Priority: optional
Section: python
Installed-Size: 168
Maintainer: Ubuntu Core Developers
Architecture: amd64
Source: libbeagle
Version: 0.3.5-2build1
Replaces: python2.4-beagle (<< 0.2.7-1)
Provides: python2.6-beagle
Depends: python (<< 2.7), python (>= 2.6), python-support (>= 0.7.1), libbeagle1 (>= 0.3.5), libc6 (>= 2.4), python-gtk2
Conflicts: python2.4-beagle (<< 0.2.7-1)
Description: Python bindings for beagle
Allow accessing Beagle daemon and peforming searches using Python.

6. Select and delete that information and that much information only, i.e. you will remove “Package: culprit-package-name” to “Description: culprit package description”. Remmber, “culprit package description” may be multiline and you will need to remove all the lines till a blank line. Don’t forget to leave a line blank between the package description above and the one below. To clarify things out, I have placed the images here, pelase have a look. Here the package to be removed is python-beagle.

Before Deletion

Selection

After

7. Launch Synaptic (or any package manager) and then search for package. You will see the package as not installed. Mark it for installation and install it. If you start to see the same error, restart the same process from Step 1 but the next time, stop at step 6.
8. Now, you should be able to remove it if you no longer want the package. If you can’t, restart the same process from Step 1 but the next time, stop at step 6.

Hope this was helpful. Please post in comments.

Back in the days of 2005, I did not use Linux because it did not support my cheap PCTEL HSP56 Dial-up modem. Now, I do not use Windows Vista because it does not support my cheap Telson Electronics CDMA 1x USB Wireless Modem. Sorry for my poor choice of internet (both in 2005 and now) because I live in rural area of Nepal and we don’t have a choice.

I tried to install driver for my PCTEL HSP56 modem by compiling the driver and even recompiling the kernel but in vain. My modem had drivers included in the CD for Windows XP and below.

My CDMA USB had driver for Windows XP and Vista, but only for 32 bit versions. I had a Windows Vista 64bit installation and my modem failed to work because 64bit drivers were not provided. I tried to search online but in vain.

I booted up Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex 64bit, my alternate OS and half-heartedly tried wvdialconf. I had very less hope based on my previous experience with winmodems but to my surprise, the modem was detected. I configured it and dialed in, and voila, I was online.

In Windows world, if a hardware has a driver for one version of Windows does not mean it works with other versions too. But in the Linux world, if your hardware runs with one distro or version almost essentially means that will run on all other distros. This proved to be true as I could run my modem with OpenSuse, Fedora, Puppy and other versions of Ubuntu as well, both 32bit and 64bit and it should work with all other distros (well, if they have a kernel with cdc acm module for my hardware).

So, however, Linux hardware support was poor and it still is for so many devices, it should change in the future and hardware incompatibility will become a Windows-Only terminology.

I recently encountered a Youtube video which featured Gnome Do with Docky. Then I dumped the Cairo Dock I was using and replaced it with Gnome Do. I have also tried kiba-dock which is quite buggy (it is in developement). I also tried the Avant Window Navigator but found it was not so good to my liking.

The Gnome Do features the Advanced indicators which mimics the OS X dock and it is totally awesome.

To install it on your machine, you can follow the instructions in the Gnome Do Wiki. If you have 64-bit Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, you will need to use the workaround. This involves downloading the deb of 0.8 as the repo only provides the older version and shows an error. Plugins, however, can be downloaded via Synaptic (or package manager of your choice).

To enable the dock, go to the Gnome Do preferences and in the Appearance tab, select Docky as the Theme. You will also like to tick the “Start Gnome Do at login” in the General tab. You can find great plugins in the Plugins tab.

Comments are welcome.