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One of the nice things about #! LINUX is that it assumes that you are smart enough to keep your system up to date by periodically checking to see if there are any updates available.  Ubuntu preferred to generate a window with a blinking icon, roughly as annoying as someone jumping up and down and waving their hands near your face just out of the corner of your vision while you're trying to compose a letter.  It was all the more annoying because I prefer to do my upgrades from terminal, because I can have an easier time handling kernel upgrades in that fashion.  This behavior is the norm from Microsoft because Microsoft assumes by default you are all idiot computer owners.  If, however, you are using LINUX, it can be safely assumed that you are not an idiot.  Of course this is what brings me to this post today.

Before I get into this, however, if you are new to LINUX or new to Debian based distributions, you should open a terminal window and type in the following two commands daily, or at the very least once a week, in order to keep your system up to date and secure:

The first command will make sure your sources are all up to date with their lists of available software, and the second will automatically download and install new versions of your current sources.  This command will not, however, install new kernels and you will typically see a message stating that certain updates have been "held back".  If you do not have any manually installed packages (meaning without the use of dpkg, aptitude, or Synaptic Package Manager which are built-in software package management utilities) you can type the following command to upgrade your kernel:

Two packages in #! that I install manually are AMD Catalyst to provide full 3D rendering support, and VMWare Player (which I have been using to create #! tutorial videos without having to modify my main system).  The downside to doing this is that these programs make changes directly to the kernel, consequently whenever the kernel gets updated, problems can occur.  Most notably they will occur when you try to upgrade other packages that impact these programs in some way, because aptitude or Synaptic Package Manager will fail to complete the upgrade.  Trying to remove the packages that have failed in order to reinstall them is not a good workaround.  Also, the following command will typically not work in this situation (but can be helpful if something did not install completely or correctly under normal circumstances):

Consequently the best method is to do a manual uninstall of each program before upgrading your kernel.  This is why it is beneficial that "apt-get update" does not automatically upgrade your kernel (the above explanation has been filed under the category of "things that nobody ever bothered to explain to me but which would have been helpful knowledge to have", hence this post).

Unfortunately each program you install in LINUX manually is bound to have a unique uninstall method, and in some cases different uninstall methods depending on the version of the software you are using.  It will require some research and potentially some trial and error to figure out the correct command.  However, again, terminal will be your friend as you resolve these issues and you'll feel better knowing that you are much more knowledgeable about your computer than you used to be.

For example, the command to manually uninstall AMD Catalyst 12.1 is currently:

Please note that if you have created .deb packages or installed Catalyst from a respository this command will not work.

Likewise, the current command to remove VMware Player is:

When prompted it is likely safer to not delete your settings, unless you do not intend to reinstall VMware Player.

Once the software has been manually removed it is now safe to upgrade your linux kernal using the "apt-get dist-upgrade" command listed above.  After restarting your system, you can then safely proceed with reinstalling the software that has been manually removed.  Depending on the kernel update, it may be necessary to obtain a newer version of the software.  If a newer version of the software has not yet been released, you may wish to revert back to the previous kernel in the meantime in order to keep using your current version (which should still be available as a boot choice in your Grub startup menu).

Once you have working software again, it should be safe to uninstall the old kernel if you wish to remove it from your grub menu.

VMware Player Update: I'm using VMware Player 4.0.2 and just upgraded #! to the LINUX 3.2 kernel, which resulted in VMware Player attempting to update the new kernel and then failing to start with a "module updater unable to start services" error message.  If you run into this issue yourself, you will need to apply this patch after reinstalling VMware Player 4.0.2 before you can run it (link to patch file found at VMware Community Forums).  Download the patch to your home folder, then open a new terminal window and type the following commands:

You should now be able to run VMware Player 4.0.2 on the LINUX 3.2 kernel.

For starters I don't even really like people.

Now that I've pissed everyone off and don't have to worry about site traffic anymore, let me amend that to state that I like certain people who are clearly not like the majority of humanity that has its head up its own ass.  If that's you (meaning someone who does not have their head up their own ass), hopefully you already know this (and if not I apologize in advance for not telling you) and if that's not you then you can take this opportunity to fuck off.

Let the hate mail commence.  Let me point out that you could simply change this situation by pulling your head out of your ass for a change, at which point we could be great friends.

But I digress.

So for a good long while there I held out.  No fucking MySpace, I said.  Fuck LiveJournal, I said. Then I had friends that devoted themselves to keeping in touch with each other on these spaces, and nobody could be arsed to get their own Blogspot account like I had done (not that I use Blogger anymore, I'm doing it right with my own personal LAMP server thank you very much), so suddenly I needed a LiveJournal.  I had LiveJournal for several months, posting this and that.

After Hurricane Katrina, I said fuck you to LiveJournal after I noticed there were a certain breed of anonymous commenting trolls that liked to sporadically appear on and mock people's misfortune, which wasn't the sort of positive support one needed after surviving a major natural disaster that forced us back to square one in terms of possessions, home and employment.

A few months later my wife was pointing out to me all of our friends from New Orleans that were now on MySpace for us to reconnect with.  Fine...(sigh...[clickety]) ok I've got a MySpace account (shudder).  Ok I've got contact with my old friends now.

Of course eventually everyone shifts over to Facebook, causing the inevitable transition to Facebook, resulting in the mounting aggravation as Mark Shuttleworth turns out to be a complete douche who wants nothing more than to ownz all yer private personal secretz and sell it to the highest bidder.  Aggravation rises further as I find myself fighting an ever losing war to maintain my security settings in such a way as to protect pictures of my kids and loved ones from being available to any perv surfing the web.  And they are, make no mistake.

So Twitter comes along, and seems basic, clean, no friggin malware advertisements, pretty straightforward, groovy. Then they start dissolving how they do things and initiating an evil plan involving the use of Java on their entire goddamn site.  In the meantime I've deleted my Facebook account, but due to overwhelming demand created a new one with the hopes that I could better protect my data by not loading as much of it and poisoning the well by submitting inaccuracies regarding my physical location, age, etc.

So along comes the almighty Google, promoting their solution of Google+ with its circles of trust that you can maintain.  But you still have to use your real goddamn name, first and last, no funny stuff, or risk having your account suspended.  If it's someone like me who has a Droid phone that would also become less useful in the process as a result of account suspension, I can't even tempt fate. So it sticks in my craw something fierce, even though I quite like the rest.

But then I watch as Facebook attempts to become more Google+ like, while Google+ seems to steadily become more Facebook-like and it seems inevitable to me that everything will implode.  Add a little YouTube nonsense involving someone reposting footage of my kids without permission and all hell starts to break loose, because it becomes painfully obvious how easy it is to track me down, whereas before Hurricane Katrina I didn't even exist online.  I dump my initial G+ account and create a new one under a different user to throw the possible stalkers off the track, but thanks to Google's caching of search content the original stuff still floats somewhat in the results, attached to my real name.  Thanks Google, your real name policy did cause a legitimate issue after all.  Fuck.

So I start listing shit on the new G+ account and after a while it hits me.  Fuck this, I'm just setting myself up again.  At some point G+ is going to follow the path of Facebook and MySpace and sell out everyone who has an account registered.  Furthermore, if I've really got something to say why the hell can't I just say it plain right here? I mean seriously, isn't that why I still have a blog?  It's not so I can waste my time posting inane vacuous shit on some other social media site, that's for damn sure.

The problem is laziness.  It's easier to post a quick blurb about how Taco Bell gave me the shits than to sit down and write something long-winded like this post.  And everyone's at the same site already posting about how their own feces turned liquid upon eating some other fast-food laced with parasites and human body bits that came off at the factory from some poor worker.  I mean, fuck, it must be really hard to type fatedtoend.com into the address bar of your Internet Explorer that you won't get rid of no matter how many times it's the direct portal to the viruses and spyware that turn your personal computer into a swollen bloated infected mass.  I can see why you'd rather just set your home page to http://www.facebook.com and forget that there's even an internet out there.  It's kinda like the shopping mall.  Or Walmart.

Sarcasm phone, it's for you.

So yeah, fuck it.  I deleted all content on my G+ account under my real name.  If you need my real name, G+, you can have it and a two year old photo of me without facial hair.

If you do check my website from time to time, check it more frequently because due to the sudden lack of social media sites I no longer post to, I should theoretically have more to spout off about here.  I apologize in advance for the technobabble, I'm a geek and that part won't change.  I likes me LINUX.  Maybe you could give it a go instead of rolling your eyes and heading off to http://icanhascheezburger.com for the rest of the night.  You might learn something.

Click here to skip to the howto section.  It's funny how it was basically the exact same problem that I ran into in Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhale) that put me on the correct path to resolve this issue.  Basically, to sum up, this problem affects a number of modern laptops that have dual-channel internal microphones, which (apparently) are intended to support dual channel audio recording.  Exactly how two microphone channels on either side of your laptop are going to produce anything remotely near to the quality of two microphones is beyond me, but in this case it causes special issues that need to be addressed in LINUX.

I like to create videos of my desktop and various other things, and occasionally even use the YouTube webcam recorder.  Even more occasionally I'll take advantage of Google Talk's built-in video chat.  Nothing drives me crazier than something that I occasionally use not working and costing me stupid amounts of time trying to resolve, so I've started categorizing this issue as a high-priority item to resolve just to get it out of the way before I need it.

After installing #!, I noticed that I was not getting any microphone response on the YouTube webcam recorder, and initially attempted to resolve it using the GUI mixer by right-clicking on the volume control icon and selecting "mixer".  I then activated the microphone by clicking the red X next to the speaker icon and, when that didn't help, I clicked on the chain icon and lowered the right channel volume to 0, leaving the left channel volume set to maximum.  This still didn't help, so I selected the Capture tab, clicked on the gray dot beneath the first Capture entry, and when this did not resolve the problem I set it aside for the time being.

Because these sorts of issues tend to fester in my brain, I took another couple cracks at it before finally applying myself to focusing on the issue in alsamixer like I had before.  In my experience, solutions tend to be more likely and also tend to stick when using terminal (or in this case terminator).

Again, in alsamixer I had the right channel of the microphone reduced to 0 volume, and the left channel set to 100, as this is what had solved my problems in Ubuntu.  This didn't help me here.  I then experimented with various settings, but finally came up with this as the final solution:

I arrived at this solution after pressing F1 to read the Help dialogue, and noticed that while Capture was selected, I could press the Spacebar to toggle Capture on and off (it shows up red in the above screenshot).  More importantly, I noticed that if I pressed either the ; or ' keys I would toggle the left or right capture channel off and on.  I toggled the right channel to off with the ' key and left the left channel enabled, then tried again.  Success!  In this case it appears that the left and right microphone channels compete with each other for the same resources, effectively cancelling each other out.  Disabling one allows the other to work.  Since I have no plans for recording dual channel audio with my internal laptop microphone, this solution works just fine.  YouTube and Record My Desktop work great now.

I still need to work out how to resolve issues with Google+ Hangouts / Google Talk, but that's not a priority for me at the moment.  See below for step by step instructions including support for Google+ Hangouts / Google Talk video chat / Google Voice.

Instructions:

Open a terminal window and type the following to open the mixer:

Make sure you have the correct sound card selected.  In my case it was the default sound card, but you can press F6 and use the arrow keys to select the one you want from the small window that pops up in the alsamixer, or the Esc key to leave the window and return to the mixer.  See the included screenshot above for reference.

Press F5 to view all devices - typically they will not all fit on a default size terminal window, but you can extend the window or maximize it so you can view everything on one screen if you so wish.  Alternately you can use your right and left arrow keys to move between each section as you jump from device to device.

Use the right and left arrow keys to navigate to Mic.  If you see MM at the bottom of the volume indicator, that means the microphone is muted, otherwise it should display 00.  Press the M key on your keyboard to toggle to unmuted if it is not already displaying 00.  Also use the up and down arrow keys to change the volume, I recommend setting it to 100 with the up arrow key.

Now use the right or left arrow key to select Mic Boost (there may be two entries) and lower the volume (on each) to 0.  Mic Boost is likely to cause problems by creating distortion and noise interference - only if you find your recording volume is too low should you raise the volume on these devices.

Verify that Input source is set to the correct device.  In my case, Input Source is set to Internal Mic, and Input Source 1 is set to Mic (to allow me to hook up an external microphone if I so choose).  To change either, use the left or right arrow keys to select each device, then while selected use the up and down arrow keys to select your preferred option.

Next, select Capture using the left or right arrow key.  Raise the volume to 100.  If you do not see the word CAPTURE in capital red letters, press the Space bar to toggle it enabled.  If your system is a laptop equipped with dual channel audio, press either the ; or the ' key to toggle either the left or the right channel disabled (only one needs to be disabled).  If this does not work, you may need disable CAPTURE on this device, and enable it on Capture1 or Digital (sometimes these entries are not labeled correctly and some trial and error may be necessary to determine which one matches your audio card's microphone).

Press the Esc key to quit out of the alsamixer.  This would be a good time to test audio recording using something like RecordmyDesktop or YouTube's web camera recorder.  YouTube's web camera recorder is particularly helpful because it will display microphone activity even if you are not recording.

If you intend to use Google Talk's video chat, Google Voice or Google+ Hangouts you will need to do the following.  If you have already installed the GoogleTalk Plugin skip down to the enxt step. Download the GoogleTalk Plugin here: http://www.google.com/chat/voice/ and select the correct .deb file for your system (32-bit or 64-bit).  Install it with Gdebi Package Installer by right-clicking the downloaded file in the File Manager and selecting this option.  Enter your password when prompted and allow the install to complete.

Enter the following commands into your terminal window:

Look the following entry (if you are creating a new options file or this entry is not present skip to the next step):

And change it to the following (or simply add this line if it is not in the options file):

Then press CTRL+X to Exit, and save your changes when prompted by pressing the Y key.  Enter the following into your terminal window to return to your home directory:

Now you need to figure out the hardware name of your microphone by typing this command:

This should generate something that looks like the following:

In my case, the device name I was looking for was to the right of card 0: - Intel.  Now it's time to create an .asoundrc file if you don't already have one.

Add the following into your new .asoundrc file (if you already have a .asoundrc file you may wish to copy your file to something like .asoundrc-old first as a backup):

Click CTRL+X to Exit, and save when prompted by pressing the Y key.  Reload ALSA by typing the following:

You should now be able to use your microphone via the Google Talk plugin in Google Talk, Google Voice or Google+ Hangouts.  Because Skype is now owned by Microsoft, please don't ask me to help you with your Skype issues - however, the above should help get you working.

Just to be clear from the beginning - this is meant to be a positive post in regards to #! - especially after my previous post regarding Ubuntu I didn't want to give anyone the wrong idea with my title.  My experiences thus far have been quite excellent.

In fact, for starters I had mentioned how much I love the Ubuntu community.  In my experience they are quite good at providing helpful information, especially for new users who have gotten stuck on something.  There have been a few cases where they were not so helpful, and occasionally downright rude, but in general Ubuntu forums tend to have less rudeness than you might find on the forums of other LINUX distros.

However, I immediately found that #!'s user forums are much friendlier by several orders of magnitude than the user forums of Ubuntu.  I took the opportunity to introduce myself in the section for new users, partly because new accounts are deactivated if there is no activity after a week, and got what to me felt like a very warm reception, something I've never felt existed on Ubuntu's forums in any form.  The feeling I got from everyone's nice response was very akin to something I haven't felt since my college days playing Meat MUD.  I felt like I was at home, or at least as much as anyone can feel like they are home while they are on the internet.  I hadn't even installed #! yet but I was already a happy camper.

I accidentally clicked report instead of reply on someone's forum post, and the administrator did not take me to task for bothering them with a mis-flagged posting, but gently mentioned that I must have accidentally hit the wrong button with a smiley face, indicating it was no big deal.  I remember getting lambasted at Ubuntu for cross-posting a support request after it had been ignored for several days.  That's a huge difference right there.

So I backed everything up to a new image file using Clonezilla, and dove into the install headfirst, formatting my primary SSD's ext4 partition and starting anew.

Graphical installation was what I remember from older versions of Ubuntu - I didn't boot into a Live environment to conduct the install, but it was still relatively straightforward and mostly easy to get through.  Getting the installer to simply format the existing ext4 partition on my primary hard drive instead of destroying it and creating a new primary partition with a swap partition was a little tricky - I've got 4GB of RAM on my laptop and I prefer to not have swap on my SSD to avoid shortening its lifespan.  Configuring fstab was roughly as simple as mirroring the one I had saved from my Ubuntu setup, although I had to first look up the UUID of my secondary hdd using the 'blkid' command.  My secondary hard drive now mounts automatically during startup just like it used to.

After installation is complete and upon logging into #! for the first time, the user is prompted to run a series of scripts to help make the system a bit more usable.  This was helpful and appreciated.

The OpenBox UI is clean, lightweight and fairly easy to get accustomed to.  Instead of launching apps by clicking from a menu list at the top-left corner of the screen, I can right-click anywhere and select from a customizable list of default applications.  There are also links contained within this menu for setting up some non-defaults, such as LibreOffice.  For programs not listed in the menu, a simple ALT+F2 yields a quick command box launcher. Other shortcut keys are listed in the Conky system monitor display, which I opted to hide and replace with some additional system info such as temperature and network addresses.

Updating and installing software is pretty similar to Ubuntu.  #! uses Debian repostories, with the source repositories disabled by default.  I went ahead and enabled those with the expectation that I may wish to compile certain programs as needed.  Synaptic Package Manager is included by default, which is no longer the case with Ubuntu Oneiric.  I typically prefer to use aptitude from the command line, but if there's something I can't remember the name of Synaptic comes in handy.

I was not happy with the default icon set, so I went ahead and installed Faenza and on reboot everything looked good.  I would like to replace Iceweasel with Firefox on principle, but that's lower priority since the two browsers are nearly identical.  I attempted to upgrade GIMP to 2.7.4 beta without success - unfortunately there are dependancy issues that would require me to use the latest development version of #! and I'm not quite ready to do that yet.  I also was not able to awaken the system once it went into standby, so I disabled all power saving features except for allowing the screen to go to black.  This has been a common issue with me with pretty much all systems I've owned, whether brandname computers or custom - I typically disable power saving because it rarely works as advertised.  If I need to save power, I'll be better off shutting the system down, because the total time to boot and reach the login screen is less than thirty seconds (bear in mind my primary drive is solid state, which makes bootup significantly faster than if it were a hard disk drive).

Other things I was able to do with relative ease was to restore PlayOnLinux and all installed games (this is a massive amount of invested time saved) and MPD+NCMPC (although some tweaking was necessary due to folders with capital letters being renamed with lowercase).  I also found that while I could not easily create deb files from AMD's Catalyst 11.12 installer, I was able to run the installer and end up with good 3D rendering support - signifcantly better than what I was getting in Ubuntu Oneiric with fglrx-updates (Catalyst 11.10).  The trade-off is that I will need to uninstall and reinstall Catalyst every time the system receives a kernel update, but I can live with that.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with #! LINUX and intend to keep it around as my primary OS.  Due to the fact that the UI is not quite as intuitive as other systems, when I get around to installing this on the family computer I will likely include the wbar launcher so that everyone using it can easily find the programs they are looking for.  But aside from that minor detail, I'm finding the issue of having to transition away from Ubuntu is not as big a deal as I thought it would be.  #! is a great way to migrate from Ubuntu without having to relearn the entire operating system all over again.  It's fast, it's lightweight, it doesn't get in the way, and I particularly like that it's not being developed by a "benevolent" dictator who could clearly care less what the community who helped get Ubuntu recognized thinks about the transition to a operating system for televisions.  Philip Newborough strikes me as a particularly cool guy, and someone who is developing #! as a labor of love, as opposed to a means to an end. 

Canonical has always clearly intended as a long term investment by Mark Shuttleworth, one which would eventually become profitable, and they are clearly making strides in that direction.  It is unfortunate that the process involves sacrificing those who helped make Ubuntu what it is today.

But hey, I'd rather commit my time and energy with a community that actually cares.  Goodbye Ubuntu.  It was nice knowing you while you were still useful.

Hello #!.  I'd like to get to know you better.

(logo created by Jens of #! LINUX Forums)

Let me start off by stating that when it comes to technology, I tend to hold a grudge for a very long time.  I'm still pissed off about what nVidia did to 3dfx.

I've been an avid fan and user of Ubuntu LINUX starting in 2005, sometime after we survived the Hurricane Katrina disaster.  The first release we installed was Hoary Hedgehog (5.05), and we've been using each subsequent release ever since.  Ubuntu has been great.  I've loved how each release has made massive leaps and bounds from the previous release, and how problems with each tend to be corrected in the next.  I've loved the usability, the style, and the overall sense of freedom that comes with using a LINUX desktop operating system on my personal computers, regardless of how sometimes things didn't quite work the way I expected.  I love the community and the additional support they provide.  With Natty Narwhale (11.04), I made the complete transition away from Microsoft Windows on my personal computer and haven't looked back or felt compelled to reinstall Windows ever since.

There was a lot of community grumbling with the introduction of the Unity window management system with Ubuntu Natty Narwhale, but it included the option to revert back to the classic Gnome 2 style desktop during login (which I took advantage of).  Most people violently hated Unity when it was first introduced, and many people still do.  I was ambivalent about it from the standpoint that there are always choices when using LINUX, and if I wanted to switch from Unity to Gnome after installing the next release (Oneiric 11.10) then that should be fine.  Regardless, I still gave Unity a shot and came away feeling that while it is an interesting approach to UI, it does not allow enough customization for me to make it feel comfortable, and breaks away so much from the Gnome 2 UI as to make transitioning between the two difficult at best.  The difference between the default Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat (10.10) and Natty Narwhale is night and day.  Canonical's statement that they are moving toward tablet, phone and television UI development helps clarify why Unity is the way it is, but that doesn't change the fact that many people (myself included) find it a detriment to day to day computer use.

Gnome 3 Shell also dramatically changes UI, but in a more intuitive manner, and I ultimately felt that once the Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot (11.10) release had a chance to settle down and work out the initial release bugs I would give it a shot with an upgrade install and use it as my default UI.  Things did not go as I intended, or hoped for that matter.

Part of the issue is that in terms of computer hardware, I'm extremely picky.  I'll use Intel products because I can (grudgingly) admit that they are typically high quality, reliable and stable and have a good reputation, regardless of how Intel chooses to run its business.  It's the Intel company that I dislike, not their products.  nVidia, on the other hand, has managed to earn my ire from both a company and product standpoint, and I wouldn't touch their unstable, overheating, poor-quality crap with a ten foot pole.  They very well may now make reliable products that are superior to the crap they were slinging a few years ago.  I could care less if they do.  The fact remains that they knowingly shipped defective product and tried to cover it up when they were discovered, which in my book lumps them directly into the same category as Dell.

So, sadly, in the LINUX environment, nVidia is more popular and therefore tends to have better support than AMD's graphics cards.  Part of the issue is that nVidia provides better driver support also (although they are not 100% perfect on the driver support end, nobody is).  But to cut to the chase, given a choice I only pick Radeon graphics cards.  And since Gnome 3 shell and Unity are both bleeding edge, driver support is limited at best.

Unity with fglrx drivers renders strangely, with artifacts all over the various window decorations.  Gnome 3 shell is unstable and frequently crashes, sometimes for something as inane as closing a tab in a Firefox browser window.  This is true whether the drivers are from Ubuntu's repositories or straight from AMD.com, and they've caused me endless frustration.  A newer version of the driver set listed as fgrlx-updates corrects some of these issues, but not enough to generate a stable Gnome 3 shell environment.  Consequently I found myself using the Gnome Classic (no effects) option when signing into Ubuntu, which is pretty much a stripped down version of Gnome 3 shell with a more classic interface and fewer customization options.

The next insult came when I found that installing the latest Catalyst drivers from AMD.com resulted in broken 3D rendering support, because Oneiric wouldn't load the drivers.  I've since logged a bug with AMD reporting the issue, but it has not been assigned to anyone and there do not appear to be any solutions for the problem other than to install fglrx-updates from the Oneiric repositories.  I don't know if this is just a 64-bit issue, or it is because I upgraded from Natty to Oneiric instead of doing a clean install, or what, but it turned into a major time sink for me as I attempted to find a better solution and failed.

So for the next few weeks I lived with fglrx-updates even though I knew I could get better 3D performance from the drivers from AMD.com, if they would only work.  I lived with signing into Gnome Classic (no effects) mode even though I could not fully customize to UI for ease of use.  I waited for updates that never came.  Then I made a big mistake.

I came across these instructions for installing the latest bleeding edge release of Gnome 3 shell, and even after reading the warnings, the comments from users who had suffered upon installing the PPA and so forth, opted to give it a go in the hopes that it would resolve these issues (and I will be removing the offending site from my favorites column on the left as soon as I'm finished with this post as a result of their keeping this bullshit published and available to the general public).  The resulting broken, unstable mess was too much for me to bear.  The ppa-purge program is a total pile of epic fail and did nothing to help me.  I struggled for over an hour trying to undo the damage and ultimately gave up.  Angry, frustrated, and just wanting a computer that simply worked correctly, I did something I have never before had to do since I started using Ubuntu.

I downgraded my system to the previous Ubuntu release version by restoring the backup I had created before upgrading to Oneiric. 

I am now running Ubuntu Natty Narwhale 11.04 again, and I have no intention of returning to Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot 11.10, either now or in the future.

I am doubtful as to whether I will install any of Ubuntu's future releases other than their server OS, which I currently run on the system hosting this website (it does not have a Window manager installed).  However, in the event that I upgrade the server to a 64-bit multi-core system, there's a pretty good chance that I will pick a different distro based on how misused I'm feeling right now.

This is not a tenable solution because it prevents me from being able to run GIMP 2.7.4 - I have had to revert to 2.7.3 because I cannot install the newer version on this release of Ubuntu.  There are a significant number of improvements between the two, enough to make this a rather serious issue in my mind.  I am going to have to find another distribution.

So to get back to the title of this post - Canonical has pissed me off by forcing everyone to use Unity in Ubuntu by default, and to further development of Unity they have forced everyone to switch to a new UI that is a) not finished and b) intended for tablets, phones and televisions, not laptop or desktop computers.  How this makes Canonical any different from Microsoft is a good question - in my mind Ubuntu's Oneiric Ocelot is akin to Windows Vista.  It's new, it's a departure from what has gone before, and it's a fucking broken turd.  Granted, it's free, and there are some out there who will point out that I have no cause to bitch, but getting this crap working does cost me an investment of time, and that's a luxury that I currently do not have in great abundance.

Likewise, Gnome has completely dropped support of Gnome 2 - the only way you can find documentation on how to customize the Gnome 2 environment is to use The Wayback Machine because they've scrubbed that data from the current website.  Gnome has turned its back on Gnome 2, and the Mate fork is just getting underway so it's barely an improvement when compared to Gnome 3.  Gnome 3 is an unstable UI when combined with AMD's Catalyst drivers, making it (in my book) an unusable solution.  Gnome Classic is worse than Gnome 2 in terms of usability, even though it mimics it relatively well. 

So basically I'm pissed because the Gnome development team cut off the branch we're all sitting on, and they're now sitting in a helicopter that has no tail rotor and offering us an opportunity to climb up the rope ladder to check out what they have so far, hoping we'll offer useful suggestions on the style of tail rotor they should use so that Gnome 3 can do something other than just hover in place.  I'm less pissed off with Gnome than I am with Canonical, because at least Gnome is attempting to build something usable for personal computer owners.

Canonical betrayed their user-base when they released Oneiric, in their pursuit of expanding their market for televisions, tablets and phones.  Something just doesn't sit very well with me there.  There is no longer a Gnome Ubuntu.  If you want a version of Ubuntu for your personal computer that is designed to be used on a personal computer, the choices are now Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Lubuntu - or else a derivative such as LINUX Mint.  To me there is now a vacuum to be filled here - there will probably soon be a Gubuntu or a Mubuntu (for Mate), take your pick as to which one.

I'm really not fond of any of the above choices.  I am planning on testing out Xubuntu as part of a tutorial I'm compiling for people who are still using Windows XP who want to switch to LINUX, and it's the distro with the XFCE Window Manager that Linus Torvalds, the father of LINUX, said he would be switching to as a direct result of his experiences with Gnome 3.  He's not the kind of person who minces words about things.  I tried Xubuntu once before and found it lacking, so I'm not really hopeful there.  Lubuntu is for really old computers that have as little as 128MB of RAM, and Kubuntu is the KDE version of Ubuntu, that again I'm not particularly fond of probably due to the amount of inspiration it seems to have drawn from Microsoft Windows. 

LINUX Mint seems to be on the path to migrate to Gnome3 as well, even though it is a step behind Ubuntu in that regard, so switching to Mint would only forestall the inevitable.  I am doubtful that Gnome3 is going to mature enough in the next six to eight months to fix its UI and driver support issues.  In a year or more...perhaps.  But I can't wait that long, support for Natty ends in October of this year.

So at the moment I'm at a loss as to which path to take.  A really significant part of me wants to go the route of Gentoo, or Linux from Scratch, but there is a significant time investment and learning curve involved before I would end up with a usable system.  Debian would have the shortest learning curve, but the whole Iceweasil incident was fucking clownshoes and they name their releases after Toy Story characters (petty, I know, but there it is). Archlinux is steadily gaining in popularity, but again seems very Windows-like in its UI.  OpenSUSE has been tainted by Novell's licensing agreement with Microsoft to not get sued and therefore cannot be trusted.  Mandriva may not be around much longer unless it can raise enough capital to pay for its development expenses.  Fedora just isn't my cup of tea, even if it IS based upon Redhat - and besides it was the first distro to embrace Gnome 3.  Slackware is tempting - it was my very first distro back in 1996, but it doesn't have package dependency checking by default, will entail a significant time investment in the form of a steep learning curve, and does not release new versions as frequently as I would like (the latest version 13.37 was released in April of 2011).  Any other distros I've looked into just don't seem nearly mature enough for me to even bother, although CrunchBang looks interesting enough for me to give it a serious try.  Downloading now.

Dear Canonical and the Gnome development team,

When you want your windows management system to evolve, it's generally a bad idea to take all the usability features and throw them out the window so that you can start over with a clean slate.  Those features were implemented over time for a reason, and forcing your userbase to do without them so that you can properly test out something is not going to win you many fans.  I understand that by eliminating support for these older systems you are making sure the new system are getting the proper testing they need for development and bug elimination, but the price you pay by pissing off the community at large cannot be measured.  Ego may help you in certain situations, but it will assuredly trip you up at the worst possible time.  I hope you both learn something from these experiences and avoid making these same mistakes again in the future. 

Dammit, I hate being in this situation.  Time to go do some more research.

So now it comes out that India's military strong-armed Nokia, RIM (Blackberry) and Apple into providing back-door access into their cellular phones using what sounds like some sort of rootkit application similar to Carrier IQ's rootkit.  The explicit purpose?  Unlike the supposedly benign purpose of providing cellular providers with helpful data to assist customers who are having technical difficulty, as claimed by Carrier IQ (right, sure), RINOA SUR is meant to spy on India's citizens.

So combine that with the increasing pressure to pass SOPA and you've got a nice recipe for complete takeover of all systems, whether they be on tablets, cellular phones, notebooks or desktop computers.  Clearly, Richard Stallman was correct from the beginning.

Now when I say takeover, I don't mean that you won't be able to use your computer.  I mean that you won't be able to use your computer without everything you do being recorded, and possibly interfered with.  I mean that what you do on your computer could possibly be used against you, and if you think you have nothing to hide, that won't protect you. I mean that someone else could use your computer to frame you, if they didn't like what you say or what you stand for.

A rootkit with backdoor access provides more than just a way to snoop.

Why do I have CyanogenMod installed on my Motorola Droid?  Because I don't trust Motorola or my carrier to provide me with a phone OS that has not been compromised.  Why does my personal laptop only have Ubuntu LINUX installed, and no other operating system?  Because I don't trust Acer or Microsoft to have provided me with a laptop and Windows operating system that are 100% secure from intrusion.  I don't even have the original hard drive installed.

Call me paranoid if you will.  They've been calling Stallman paranoid for years.  But the fact remains that commercial interests drive closed operating systems and software, and because there's no way for the code to be inspected by a 3rd party, there's no way to find out immediately whether it's been compromised, intentionally or otherwise.  If making money from software sales is the provider's primary goal, they will sell out their customers in order to sell their product, every time.  Prove me wrong.  I dare you.

Redhat LINUX generates money via Enterprise support contracts.  The software is free.  It is open source and can be inspected by anyone.  The likelihood that it, or any other distribution of LINUX, contains a hidden backdoor rootkit or some other access for military, government or law enforcement officials to snoop, compromise or take control of computers or servers upon which it has been installed is next to nil. I won't say it's impossible, but I will say it's highly unlikely due to the fact that the code can be independantly verified by anyone.  If it did have such a backdoor, it would be discovered almost immediately, as compared to the seven years it took for the RINOA SUR agreement to come to light.

I call bullshit on all of this.  Apple, RIM, Nokia, and anyone else who pulls this sort of crap to generate sales - fuck you.

To anyone else who wants to prevent this from happening - now is the time to start looking at making the switch to LINUX.  If they've been doing this to cell phones for the past seven years or more, what have they been doing with your Apple or Windows computers?

So I've been running Cyanogenmod 7.1 on my Motorola Droid (1st series) and it's been acting strangely.  It sometimes spontaneously reboots itself, it sometimes can't read the SD card, occasionally when people call the phone keeps ringing even after I answer, and it cannot restart music playback if the music player is interrupted by a call or another app.  So I'm downgrading back to 6.1.2, the stable release based on Froyo, which ran a lot better on this phone.  Here are the steps necessary to do so.

(I assume your phone has already been rooted if you have Cyanogenmod 7.1 already installed)

1. Install Titanium Backup and make a complete backup of all apps + data.
2. Install the latest version of ClockworkMod Rom Manager if it is not already installed.
3. I strongly recommend recovering from a backup image to the original Droid OS you started with, which you should have been prompted to do if you were using ClockworkMod Rom Manager to install Cyanogenmod 7.1 in the first place.  DO NOT DOWNGRADE YOUR IMAGE FROM 7.1 to 6.1.2 DIRECTLY or you risk making your phone unbootable.  Please pay attention, I am repeating this for your benefit based on personal experience, downgrading directly from Cyanogenmod 7.1 to 6.1.2 will BRICK your phone and you will need a variety of tools and a computer with Windows installed (why this is necessary when dealing with a LINUX based OS is beyond me, but sadly it's true) in order to get it working again.
4. After the recovery has finished and you have booted back into your phone's stock OS, upgrade ClockworkMod Rom Manager to the latest version (this will be necessary).
5. Use the "Fix Permissions" option in ClockworkMod Rom Manager and restart your Droid when it is finished.  I advise powering the Droid off and removing the battery for five seconds to establish a clean boot before the next step.
6. Open ClockworkMod Rom Manager again after the phone restarts, and select Flash ClockworkMod Recovery.
7. Once this is completed, you may select Download ROM and choose Cyanogenmod, selecting version 6.1.2 - I recommend keeping the ADW launcher option and selecting install Google Apps.
8. Let the phone do its thing - upon reboot you will want to reinstall Titanium Backup to recover your apps and data. (Note: do not allow Titanium Backup to overwrite the data on your built-in system apps or they may stop working, which will require you to go back to step 4)
9. Just to be on the safe side you may want to use ClockworkMod ROM Manager to "Fix permissions" one last time after everything has been restored.
10. Enjoy your stabilized Motorola Droid!

Update: YouTube finally took the video down!  It used to be here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXdlhCcgSXI

The last thing I had submitted to YouTube before writing this article was a defamation complaint, at which point they directed me to contact a lawyer to press charges against the uploader directly, or else to use their Safety Center to file a report.  I'm really not interested in turning this into a big legal battle, so I picked the latter option, even though I had already done this before.  I checked the uploader's channel again tonight and the video was no longer there.  A search yields the above link.  So all in all, I'm now a pretty happy camper.  Okay, now you can read the backstory drama if you wish.

I'm pretty good at embarassing myself.  It really doesn't take a whole lot, basically it occurs whenever I violate one of my own personal principles.  I managed to do that over the holiday, more than once, and I'm pretty much fed up, not just with myself but the entire situation.  It's hopeless, I feel helpless, I made a crapload of mistakes in the process and I don't know exactly what to do anymore except nothing.  Doing nothing seems to be the only smart course of action.

It's hard to do nothing when video footage of your kids is being portrayed in a less than friendly manner, and YouTube's staff does not appear want to do anything about it.

So  to give you the back story - my wife and I like to post videos on YouTube discussing somewhat esoteric subjects.  She studies religion, I study the nature of reality, and the two of us make a pretty good team.  Over the Christmas break my wife decided to upload footage of the kids opening their Christmas presents from their Nana, and we didn't think a whole lot about it.  20/20 hindsight has since told us the video should have been marked private while it was being uploaded, but there's not a whole lot that can be done about that now.

About a week ago a YouTube user posted a somewhat mean-spirited comment on one of my wife's videos.  Me being me, I responded with a quote from the Knights who say Ni in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  That seems to have been the wrong thing to do.  This same user modified a still image from one of my videos, posted it online, and in a return comment accused me of using (I'm not making this up here) shape-shifter camouflage technology that had a glitch.

This user appears to either be a troll with a perverse streak, or someone with a severe case of paranoia, or both.  He has regularly posted videos of people in media and also other YouTube users, representing them as being some sort of alien hybrid reptilian species that are using some sort of high-tech camouflage equipment to hide among the "real" humans.

I'm generally not the kind of person to back off from a troll, even though I really should know better.  I've been a 'Netizen since before that term was even coined.  But I sometimes get a perverse streak in me as well; when I see what I consider the behavior of a bully, my natural inclination is to stand up to the individual and not let them get away with it.

I responded with a statement along the lines of "Hey Time Pirate, the Spanish Inquisition ended in 1834.  You need to update your travel logs.  Also, you should take a look in the mirror.  Clown shoes, they are upon you."

Both of my responses to this individual were intended to be light-hearted mocking of their behavior, which appears to have been the wrong thing to do.  I also was a little annoyed that someone would take the time to take an image of me and manipulate it in such a way as to make me look like something evil or scary, so I did a little basic internet sleuthing with Google and turned up a possible real life name for the individual.  I deleted my Time pirate comment, and replaced it with "All you need is love, [real first name redacted]."

I then created a YouTube video which indirectly mocked this user, by wearing a reptilian looking mask and making clicking sounds and waving my arms around on camera, before taking the mask off and explaining that everyone has a "reptilian" brain according to medical science.

In hindsight, both of these were bad moves on my part. I had violated YouTube community guidelines, which explicitly states that you should not use a user's real name, regardless of what the other user had done. This immediately put me on shaky ground when trying to deal with what happened next.  I had also baited the troll, which does not make them go away.

The following day we found a video uploaded by this same user titled Reptilian Family with my wife and my YouTube usernames in the title.  Adding insult to injury, it first they show me listed as "Reptilian Dad", followed by my wife as "Reptilian Mom", and then shows "Reptilian children" with the footage of our daughters opening their Christmas presents.

My immediate reaction was shock and rage, which was fed by similar reactions by my wife, which led me to make my next big mistake.  Again, against YouTube Community Guidelines, I used my channel which had over 80 subscribers to enlist help among our friends in the YouTube community to get this video removed by posting a bulletin.  Other friends on the internet jumped to help.  Unfortunately, things got very ugly in the comments section very quickly as arguments broke out among our friends and other YouTube users who thought there was nothing wrong with the content in the video.

All in all, this turned what could have been an easy to fix problem into a big dramatic event.  The reason I know this could have been fixed easily is that a copy of the offending video was uploaded again on another YouTube user's account the following day.  Instead of reacting the same way by calling everyone's attention to it, I flagged it, reported the video as a YouTube privacy violation and a YouTube safety violation, and it was taken down within an hour.  The original video, however, remains available on YouTube for anyone to see it, almost a week after it was uploaded.

I attempted to reason with the individual by creating a reaction video asking him to take the offending video down.  It was ignored.  I left a couple comments making the same request which were also ignored.  These behaviors were acceptable under Community Guidelines, but were ineffective.

I reported the video to YouTube again, hoping perhaps by re-reporting it someone else would review the issue and take it down with no success.  I deleted my YouTube channel and the twenty something videos I had uploaded hoping perhaps vanishing from the site would accomplish something.  My wife was upset, I was frustrated, so I did something I'm deeply ashamed of.  I created a new YouTube account with the express purpose of trolling the users who were (in my opinion) attacking my family.

I left a comment on another video uploaded by the same YouTube user, which was accusing another member of the YouTube community of being a reptilian / human hybrid for the second time.  The comment stated that both the original uploader, and the user who uploaded a copy that was later taken down, were actually the same person using multiple accounts.  I also accused the uploader of being a Golem, figuring if he could call me a reptilian then it was only fair that I be able to call him something that was not human also.  I was upset at his lack of morality, compassion and even simple reason, so I was reduced to lashing out.

My comment was deleted.  This had not happened to anyone else's comment before, so I got excited, thinking perhaps I was finally striking a nerve, and thinking perhaps if I applied the correct pressure he would take the video with our kids in it down on his own.

No such luck.  He deleted the next comment I left, but then ignored the rest.

Still angry, I created a video mashup in a meme style of the dual personalities of the character Gollum from Lord of the Rings.  I stated that his user account and the second uploader reminded me of the character, and created written lines of dialogue between the two dual personalities in a (pathetic) attempt to show how ridiculous their behavior was in a comedic light.  Then I left a comment on his channel letting him know it had been uploaded.

Then I started feeling really bad inside.

Here I was, behaving just as badly, if not worse in some ways, than this troll.  Against all of my own personal principles, I was listening to my base urges and following through on them.  This guy was winning just by doing nothing.  He wasn't commenting, he wasn't communicating to me directly, and he wasn't doing what I wanted.  He wasn't taking the goddamn video down.  And in the process, I had become just like him.

So I deleted my troll channel and its single video after it had only been live for about an hour.

I just want the video footage of my young children taken off the internet.  I understand that the nature of the internet is permanent, and even if I manage to get this video taken down it could be easily uploaded by anyone who has a copy, even the original user.  But that doesn't change how I feel because my little kids are involved in something they should have no business being involved in.

I don't know why it's so hard for this user to understand this.  But aside from taking direct legal action I don't know what else I can do.  I took a bad situation and made it worse by overreacting. So, for now at least, I'm going to ignore it and hope that a kind-hearted staff member at YouTube gets a chance to take a look at this video and then realizes that it needs to be removed.

It's been about a week since NaNoWriMo ended, and I had the opportunity to spend time with my father face to face for the first time in years.  On November 30th I had 38046 words written in The Soul Collectors of Ian's Hollow, leaving 11954 in order to meet the 50,000 word goal.  If I had ignored everyone on November 30th I know I would have met the goal, but in my opinion family is more important than completing a 50,000 word challenge.

The time it took to develop the basis for the story, location, characters, plot and so forth was actually quite small - the entire premise occurred to me during one of many outings running errands, probably while picking up groceries.  I also managed to get sidetracked by a cool project involving the acquisition of a 1982 Pole Position arcade cabinet, and did not commit time to write each weekend like I had initially intended to do.  Again, time spent with my family came first.  Everything else came second, writing came third.

That's not to say I've given up on the project - quite the contrary.  I have, however, decided to take a short break from writing.  In the meantime I need to go through the 23 chapters that I have completed so far and look for inconsistencies and loose ends.  I'd like to establish a timeline, a character map, and some key points to the story in order to drive the thing home.  Upon completion, the next step will be the editing & revision phase, where I flesh out the story and include more detail, and possibly drop or rewrite the weaker chapters.  Once completed I am reasonably certain that I will be in excess of 50,000 words.

Here's where I'm torn.  I've intended The Soul Collectors of Ian's Hollow to be the first novel of a series.  However, in light of the rapid shift from mainstream books towards digital with the influx of iPads, smart phones and eReaders, I am reluctant to head in the direction of traditional publishing.  This reluctance is what inspired my making this novel available to anyone who chose to read it for the duration of NaNoWriMo, while it was in progress.  However, the reality of copyright theft is what inspired me to disable that free access once November came to a close.

So what happens next?

I need input - anyone out there who wishes to weigh in on this is welcome to leave a comment or contact me via email. 

I am thinking about making this novel available for digital download free of charge, from here, Scribd, Google Books and Project Gutenberg, assuming the last two will permit my submission.  The format would be ePub and PDF for the best cross-device compatibility.  I also want to make the novel freely distributable with no restrictions except financial gain without my approval.  I'm not sure what would be the best license to use for that purpose - Creative Commons springs to mind but I'd like other suggestions to review before I settle on that.

My intention is to a) determine whether anyone likes the novel and cares to spread it around and b) based on interest or lack thereof I will either start the experiment all over again with a completely different story and characters, or start sequels with the intention to monetize them.  Again I'd be focused on digital format primarily in the event that I do choose to monetize sequels, and most likely as inexpensive as I can price the book ($0.99?) depending on the venue(s) I decide to use for distribution.

Again, input would be awesome on this from anyone out there who has done this, is doing this or is researching how to do this.

In the meantime, friends and family are encouraged to contact me if anyone would like access to read the work in progress here on the website.