Call me old fashioned, but I still don't see why I or anyone else has to become an expert at saving this and that, tweak the other and tweek the same, stand on your head and drink a pint of beer from the far side of a glass, just so you can upgrade your Ubuntu [...] without any problems. I just want to use my computer..... not program the damn thing!It took me a week of googling to get Ubuntu 12.04 to work my way. Eventually Gnome Classic gave me a similar 12-desktop 24-terminal environment as I had before. With welcome improvements in addition to regaining support and updatability: automount for USB gadgets, better control of the noisy Portégé R600 fan, easier and better sound control, easier second-monitor projection, and more.
Installation detail (warning: this remains a snapshot anno June 2012):
Backup. I started by backing up my whole 9.04 system on a new USB
disk. I formatted that with
sudo mkfs -L BACKDISK /dev/sdb1
followed by
sudo chown myusername:myusername /media/BACKDISK
.
I wrote the backup with
sudo rsync -vau --exclude /media/ / /media/BACKDISK/backup0904/
,
which is better than with
cp -upr
because it also copies the .xxx files and logical links. It
needs sudo for root-root etc ownership files.
Installation. The initial install of Ubuntu 12.04 was
problematic because my Portégé R600 wouldn't write an error-free
boot CD-rom from the downloaded
ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso
file. After too many endless installation tries I found that the
check is that the CD should contain many folders, not just one large
file. I then tried to produce a boot USB stick
using
usb-creator
found in my Ubuntu 9.04. Apparently that was too old to produce a
viable booter. In the end, also in multiple tries, I wrote a working
CD-rom on my discarded Mac (my wife has it) and installed Ubuntu 12.04
from that on my Portégé R600. Font selection: English (US) with
the Euro on 5 (with the ALT GR key to the right of the space bar). I
then installed my user directory with
rsync -vau /media/BACKDISK/backup0904/home/myusername/ /home/
.
And returned to the tcsh shell by adding tcsh
at the end
of ~/.bashrc
and typing sudo chsh -s /usr/bin/tcsh
.
Note: toshset no longer works but can be compiled back into the kernel
following this
recipe.
I did not because the fan noise and second monitor problems I had
under Ubuntu 9.04 are solved in Ubuntu 12.04.
Desktop. Ubuntu Unity was an unpleasant surprise. Far too
alike to macOS that had made me, in disgust, transfer to Ubuntu in 2009.
A too cluttered dock, too much mouse-clicking, as bad a workspace
gadget as the Mac's (instead of the twelve clean desktops under the
function keys that I am addicted to). Fortunately, Gnome Classic [no
specials effects] is at hand in Ubuntu 12.04
(sudo apt-get install gnome
)
and likely will be supported the coming years. I installed it
following this complete-concrete-concise
instruction.
Style: Applications > System Tools > Preferences > Advanced settings >
Theme. For the window theme I like Metabox best but not its too loud
Ubuntu-brown active-window title strip. This theme
collection
furnished a Mint-theme. Combining this under GTK+theme with Metabox
under Window theme made the active-window title strip mint-green,
perfect on my lightgreen background (get the menu by rightclicking
with the cursor in the background; I prefer a smooth background).
Using this theme with emacs produced many Gtk warnings that went away
with
sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-pixbuf
following this thread.
Remaining bug: I get nested terminals that do not vanish at typing logout
or
exit
.
Ubuntu packages. Applications > Ubuntu Software Center > Edit
> Ubuntu Software, turn on all types of software except source code.
Other Software: turn all on. Statistics: turn Submit on. I installed
(sudo apt-get install packagename
): tcsh, csh, gnome, screen,
xdotool, gconf-editor, emacs-23, emacs-goodies-el, auctex,
gtk2-engines-pixbuf, texlive, texlive-lang-dutch, texlive-publishers,
acroread, libreoffice, ap2s, paps, abiword, xfig, gv, mgdiff, xpdf,
libjpeg62, gthumb, feh, qiv, gqview, mplayer2, ffmpeg, mencoder,
transcode-utils, jhead, mutt, msmtp, elinks, fbreader, xine-ui,
xine-plugin, lftp, libstdc++5, libxt-dev, dos2unix, adobe-flashplugin,
mc, curl, youtube-dl, rar, gparted, disper, hfsprogs, ttf-inconsolata,
git-core, tesseract-ocr, tesseract-ocr-eng, gpac, pdftk.
OpenOffice has become LibreOffice. Adobe Reader (acroread) needs
green light for website opening, defined under Edit > Preferences >
Trust Manager > Change Settings. Latex2html gave deprecation error
messages that went away by commenting the offending lines out. Xpdf
gave segmentation faults; the remedy was to install an older version
following Michael Gilbert's
recipe
after first installing libjpeg62. Mplayer didn't play some .mov
movies anymore; the remedy was to install mplayer2 instead with
reinstall (sudo apt-get install --reinstall packagename
) of
ffmpeg and mencoder.
Other software. Dropbox, Skype, Google Chrome, Google Earth,
Calibre from their websites, usually downloading the xxx.deb
into ~/Downloads
and installing with
sudo dpkg -i xxx.deb
. Chrome: in URL
chrome://plugins/
disable
/opt/google/chrome/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so
to get /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
.
IDL: not a (far too expensive) update but simply copying my old IDL
6.4 from my Ubuntu 9.04 backup with
sudo rsync -vau /media/usb0/backup0904/usr/local/itt /usr/local/
including the license (opened by
setenv LM_LICENSE_FILE /usr/local/itt/idl64/license.txt
in ~/.cshrc
). The IDL help didn't work, which I repaired
with
sudo apt-get install libstdc++5
,
adding this older version to Ubuntu's libstdc++6.
Viewer xv: again
following this recipe
plus installing
libxt-dev and converter jpeg2ps.
Emacs. Again a long day of trouble. Why remains emacs so
unpredictable and incomprehensible? My workhorse emacs-snapshot-gtk was
gone. Color theme Feng Shui
was not recognized. Google delivered emacswiki,
a warehouse of nerd stuff without useful information. Finally, the answer
found here
is to add a line (color-theme-initialize)
to file ~ /.emacs, not needed in Ubuntu 9.04. For within-the-terminal
sessions and my mutt-window mail answering I now need to use
emacs -nw --color=no
. My special sessions now need
--title windowname
instead of the former
-name windowname
.
I keep my emacs windows clean with lines
(tool-bar-mode -1)
,
(menu-bar-mode -1)
,
(scroll-bar-mode -1)
in ~ /.emacs; CONTROL + rightclick delivers the menus when I need
them.
Remaining bug: at session start the Emacs default windows flash
distractingly and irritatingly into view before my specified layout
comes up.
Cursor blink off. Applications > System Tools > System settings > Keyboard.
Caps lock key to Compose key. In Keyboard > Typing > Layout settings (left bottom) > Options (right bottom) > open Compose key position > flag Caps lock on. Now you can type German: typing caps lock, ", and a gives ä. Und so weiter. This Wikipedia compose table specifies many more.
Panels. For panel adaptations: ALT + rightclick on panel >
Properties (this was rightclick without ALT in Ubuntu 9.04). I have
the panel bar with Applications, Places and notification area hidden
at top right, a second panel bar with the workspace indicator and
this-workspace window clickers hidden at bottom right. No arrows on
the un-hide clickers to minimize their width.
Remaining bug: the applet icons in the notification area do not resize
with the panel width.
Workspaces. I again have 12 labeled workspaces accessible with the function keys, defined in Applications > System Tools > System settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Navigation. I set CNTRL + cursor left/right to shift one workspace left/right, and CNTRL + ALT + cursor left/right to shift the currently active window one workspace left/right. I have two terminals in each workspace and perform specific tasks in each (like to-do, diary, and journal files under F1, mail under F11, browsing under F12).
Reboot. With googled help I wrote script initworkspaces to auto-start my standard 12-workspace 30-session desktop layout at login.
Mime defaults. Define the defaults for the application that should
open when clicking on linked files in .html or .pdf displays with
mimeopen -d examplefile.typ
. This is a faster
and better way than clicking on an example file of the given type in
Places, for which the GUI does not offer command-line application
specification anymore (it did in Ubuntu 9.04). For example, to play
movies in my talks I set them to click-start with a shell script calling
mplayer -fs ${1} -loop 0
playing them full-screen in a loop without interruptions. I click
graphs and images into full-screen projection with feh -FZ
which enables zoom-in with the mouse during a talk (depress the wheel
and shift horizontally).
Browser. I retrieved my Firefox profile and bookmarks from my
Ubuntu 9.04 backup with
sudo rsync -vau /media/usb0/backup0904/home/username/.mozilla ~/.
Google Chrome now installed properly (not in my Ubuntu 9.04) and appears
to be a nice fast browser. However, it does not play
my .avi and .mov DOT movies
and does not use my
mime defaults. No remedies found so far.
Second monitor / projector. I followed
Jon Dowland's Portégé recipe
by getting to the BIOS (press ESC at startup), go to second page
(Page Down), change setting "Power on display" to "LCD + Analog RGB".
I use alias
alias vga-beamer 'xrandr --output LVDS1 --mode 1024x768 --output VGA1
--mode 1024x768 --same-as LVDS1'
to start a talk projection, and alias
alias vga-auto 'xrandr --output LVDS1 --auto --output VGA1 --auto'
otherwise. Another option is to use disper.
Remaining bug: a flat background (not wallpaper) becomes black and
remains black.
Printing. Selecting EN-US as language apparently sets the printing
to letter size. I use cups at http://localhost:631/ to manage
printing: > Adding Printers and Classes > Add Printer. Then > Manage
Printers, click on the printer name, > Administration > Set Default Options
> media size A4 small margins, etc. I wake up cups with
sudo service cups restart
which seems to replace the former
sudo /etc/init.d/cups restart
,
and I define the desired printer by specifying its name in
~ /.cups/lpoptions. This way even the simple command lpr file
works.
Update manager. For some obscure reason the Ubuntu update notifier minimizes itself immediately on the workspace I happen to be on when it appears. I added the window selector applet to the panel and click on it to find where it went and to reopen it.
Auto login / How to revive Ubuntu. Because the Ubuntu updater
often requires computer restart I tried to enable password-free
automatic login so that I can do something else while it takes minutes
to shut down and then again minutes to boot up and execute
my desktop startup script, instead of having to pay
attention and type my password halfway this lengthy procedure. Oops: this
became a nightmare. My first try was sudo-editing
/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
as
specified here. It didn't work. I then tried the GUI
recipe: Applications > System Settings > User Accounts, unlock the
lock at the top and slide the Automatic Login slider so that ON
appears. I relocked the lock. Disaster: restarting my laptop gave a
dark screen without any information or response. Nothing, not even
the grub booter. I tried power-on pressing ESC, no success. Deep-panic
googling with my wife's Mac eventually gave me
this excellent recipe. Press SHIFT during power-on, select and boot the recovery-mode
entry, cursor down to get the root shell prompt, type
mount -o rw,remount /
and you can do at least something. I cleaned
/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
which didn't help. Normal reboot then got stuck displaying text
messages like "stopping system V runlevel compatibility". Pressing
CNTRL+ALT+F1 gave a command-line login. Logging in to my user account
and typing startx
gave a Unity version of my Gnome startup
script, with my aliases working but my scripts not working and with a
weird low-resolution screen format. Clicking on the gearwheel+spanner
icon opened the settings GUI but the User Accounts GUI was locked and
could not be unlocked. I then went back to the recovery-mode boot and
root command line, defined a root password with
passwd -u root
and passwd root
,
restarted with CNTRL+ALT+F1 login to the root account with the new
root password. Typing startx
now gave a fresh default Unity
opener screen. The User Accounts GUI now had no lock. Selecting my
user account and shifting the Automatic Login slider back to the OFF
position restored my laptop functionality. Phew! (In retrospect:
typing sudo startx
in the CNTRL+ALT+F1 user login might have
worked without need for defining a root password which Ubuntu advises
against. I subsequently removed that and relocked the root account
with sudo passwd -dl root
on this
advice).
Remaining bug: I guess I better live with having to type a password
halfway the lengthy reboot.