Changes

I hope you'll find the new layout more friendly and more useful. There are other things that I will try to improve on this blog, and they will be here soon, I hope. Stay tune. :)

Mac4Lin v 1.0 is out

I am sure that you know that. Only just to be sure that nobody will miss the news, and because I am a heavy user and supporter of Mac4Lin project, I'm telling you that you can download it from here. Together with a very comprehensive installation manual and a easy-to-use installation script. Enjoy Mac4Lin! [...and of course I can't resist to insert a screenshot of my desktop. Again!]

Amarok - Five good reasons to roll back on 1.4 .10

The fact is that I'm not a very patient person, and still it can be said that I have been indulgent enough (3-4 months already!) with the 2.0 version of Amarok. Yep, the interface rules, but everithing else sucks. There I am, rolling back to the 1.4.10 release, and here are my 5 big reasons for doing so:

1. Weird behavior of KDE 4.X. interface under a Gnome environment: it lags a lot when it has to refresh something/everything (the play list, the collection etc.);

2. It messed up my music files on hard-disk, ok, with my help of course by clicking on something called "Organize files on media" or smth. like that;

3. Pretty curious statistics. In fact the statistics plug-in did not work at all at the beginning. I'm a fan of statistics, I love my song collections, I hoped that somebody would do something but... it became unbearable!

4. Wikipedia plug-in, I mean the one on the side bar which allows you to display instantly the artist page, the album page and so on!

5. Veeeeeeeery loooooong starting time.

Thanks to this article I managed succesfully to install Amarok 1.4.10 on my Jaunty, so the cloudy days are over.
What I miss? The pretty interface, but...

I still rock with Amarok

After upgrading to Ubuntu Jaunty Beta, my Amarok 2.0 did not work for some time and today I found out that one of my friends had the same problem. To be more precise, the application start but didn't play any kind of file. I become pretty annoyed by the thing and I managed to solve my Amarok problem within minutes. This is how:

1. Start synaptic package manager
2. Remove phonon-backend-gstreamer (will also uninstall amarok)
3. Install phonon-backend-xine
4. Reboot (Donẗ know if this is necessary)
5. Install amarok via synaptic.
6. Reboot

Thanks to this post.

Upgrading Ubuntu to 9.04

Oooops! I did it again. That is I didn't have enough patience to wait until the stable release. I started it this morning, and because I had to go somewhere, I assisted only partially to the network upgrade.

When I returned, the login screen was waiting, I entered my credentials. Nothing happened. After few restarts, I entered safe mode, and thanks to the 'repair' options I manage do finish properly all updates. After graphic mode started, the mess was all over the place. Broken packages and error reports over and over again. I think from 10 or 15 errors I managed to report 3 or 4. Most of them I think were caused by the Nvidia driver, that didn't manage to start properly.

I started the update manager once more and after the restart things came back to normal. Except one thing: Amarok 2.0. It loads but it not 'sing'. But I don't have time for it, and I started already the Rhythmbox player. Also, my Compiz advanced settings were resetted and need a quick reconfiguration.

All in all, I am content with the result.

Good night Google Earth!

Of course that is not nice, but this is the way how Google Earth 5.0 works on my machine... Dark as hell. No globe. No Earth, just Google. I found some workarounds on forums and other blogs, but it seems none worked for my Nvidia... I know is because of the graphic card somehow because I had this problem before, with another version of GE and/or Nvidia driver, but I do not know exactly what's wrong and how can be fixed. I guess I will wait for a driver update or a final release of GE.

Secret Maryo Chronicles v 1.7

Today I was glad to find (after a quick check on it's website) that Secret Maryo Chronicles was launched in it's 1.7 version. Well, somehow it's old news, because the version was released on 25th of December last year... I am a huge fan of this game (as I've already told you) and of course that I can't wait to take part again from Maryo's adventures.

See GetDeb for a quick download of Ubuntu/Debian version.

My iPod Nano works fine with Amarok 1.4

Santa came earlier this year with a brand new iPod Nano (4th gen) blue. Since I am a fan of Amarok, and all my music is stored and organized with 'the wolf', naturally I was very fond to manage my iPod with it too. It wasn't too hard to find out how. Here is the link, if you're interested.
p.s.: I admit that first I tried the 'default' optiun for Ubuntu, Rhythmbox. It worked ok, but...

Installing Ubuntu 8.10 on a laptop with SATA drive

Making long story short: Ubuntu 8.10 does not boot with default options on a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Pi 2530 (at least mine did not). It breaks after Ubuntu Splash in a 'dead' cursor status.I have tried many different solutions found on forums (with noapic, nolapic options etc), using both Ubuntu 8.10 Live CD and Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD and after a while finally I managed to identify this solution:

Step 1: Boot using Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD;
Step 2: Before selecting "Install Ubuntu" press F4 and select safe graphic mode option;
Step 3: Press F6 (advanced options) go to the end of the line and remove the splash option replacing it with 'pci=nomsi';
Step 4: Press F6 twice and check both "noapic" and "nolapic" options;
Step 5: Press Enter. After Ubuntu 8.04 Install, check for updates and install all of them;
Step 6: After updating, upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10.

Enjoy the Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex on your SATA drive laptop. The whole process takes approximately 1 hour.

Inspiration: Unixszen.

Intrepid Ibex: first, second and third look

Of course I could not wait for the final release as promised, and I made my upgrade on Friday to 8.10 release candidate. This time, all things run smoothly, and after an hour and a half (I used network update) I gave my first look to the new Ubuntu version. The only problem visible was that my Mac4Lin (version 0.3) was broken, but I solved the problem installing Mac4Lin v1.0.

On the second look, I realize that neither Cairo Dock nor Avant Window Navigator did not start. I completely removed them and re-installed both using Synaptic. It took me an half an our to make all the adjustments to Cairo Dock, but afterwards it seemed to work better than before. Only until today when the first update of Cairo Dock the package broke again.

On the third look I was glad to notice that all my sound problems were gone. I also found out the System Cleaner in the System Tools menu and I think it is a great tool. I immediately have got rid of those 7 or 8 old linux kernels in my Grub menu.

That's all I had to say for the moment. Now, I will try to fix the damn Cairo Dock... Again.

later update: I managed to repair the damn thing. Here is how!

now all seems to be just fine.