Ask Ubuntu General Room

Jorge Castro

00:16

@karthick Can you post this as an answer? askubuntu.com/questions/18683/…

Roland Taylor

01:43

>.< so lonely

asysbjkpg

DoR

02:05

Roland Taylor

03:27

:/

MJB

05:01

/me is doing the +100 rep dance!

askubuntu is addictive ;)

DoR

@MJB I'm not addicted, I can stop whenever I want.....ok I am addicted. :P

MJB

Can you imagine... ppl actually getting paid to do this? Where can I apply? ;)

Jorge Castro

05:34

I have been addicted since launch

cool, I approved my first edit just now

some guy just submitted an edit and I approved it

ajmitch

it's a pity that we only have one vote for good answers

Jorge Castro

0

Q: Brand new Ubuntu laptop. System Configuration setup problem

Hello! I just got a Pangolin laptop (from System76) and I immediately ran into a problem. When I boot it, I get prompted with System Configuration questions. I get to "Who are you?" but the "Forward" button remains grey, even after I fill it out. What do I do? The dialog box looks something ...

setup

Vote for duplicate!

ajmitch

05:49

if only I knew how

I suspect I need rep :)

Jorge Castro

yeah

I noticed you had a few answers I hadn't upvoted yet. :)

@ajmitch this might be a good place to chip in if you want: askubuntu.com/questions/23714/…

ajmitch

@JorgeCastro I noticed that my rep just shot up by a few points in the last few minutes :P

Jorge Castro

I am already out of votes for tomorrow

ajmitch

You must do a lot of voting

Nearly 4300 votes cast, not bad

Jorge Castro

I do all 30 in a day

jgbelacqua

05:55

30 seems like so few, when one gets on a roll....

ajmitch

I've been a bit lazy with doing that

Jorge Castro

@jgbelacqua if you had way too many it would make rep worthless

enough to spread the wealth, but enough to not just upvote the universe

stackexchange.com/sites?expand=true

we are now the 4th busiest SE traffic wise!

jgbelacqua

@Jorge -- yuck -- re-tagged a bunch of wacom questions, and so now they are all interesting according to, what do you call it, the front page? because of the tags

Jorge Castro

yeah it happens

jgbelacqua

@jorge Yeah, the traffic is awesome. So many questions....

Jorge Castro

05:57

I try to do it in small bursts

jgbelacqua

I can see why.

Jorge Castro

or if I do too many that are answered, I'll go edit a bunch of unanswered ones to get them another chance on the front

jgbelacqua

Yeah, in all honesty, 30 is a pretty good number.

Jorge Castro

though the community user will bump an unanswered question every hour

jgbelacqua

Site magic is nice....

ajmitch

05:58

We still have a few unanswered

Jorge Castro

we have way more than we did before

we were around ~300 for a long time

now we're approaching 700

jgbelacqua

I nearly flagged some of the ubuntu / grub / windows ones as duplicates, but then wasn't really sure I grokked them

Jorge Castro

those will be tough

3

Q: Improving boot/grub questions and answers

If you look at the grub, grub2, and boot tags you'll likely find pretty vague and incomplete questions and answers. I personally consider these 3 tags as the ones that we could improve the most on this site. This is probably because: It's insanely difficult to troubleshoot boot problems remote...

discussion best-practice

jgbelacqua

I guess some questions are perpetually unanswered? one-time users hitting and running and so on?

Jorge Castro

I suspect they will always be a problem

yeah, I looked at a bunch today

a bunch are answered but not accepted

jgbelacqua

05:59

right

Jorge Castro

and because people don't vote enough the answers don't have enough upvotes

ajmitch

A bunch can have answers that can be voted up

jgbelacqua

Yeah...

Jorge Castro

if an answer has at least 2 upvotes the system doesn't count it as unanswered

as it assumes that the community has decided that that answer was good enough

jgbelacqua

good to know.

Jorge Castro

06:00

and then a bunch are basically cheap bug reports

ajmitch

6

Q: Poor sound quality and headphones not working

I'm running ubuntu 10.10 and my soundcard is a realtek alc880, with intel HDA controller. I have a very low sound, and, when I raise the volume over 50%, it sounds "cracked". When I plug the headphones in, it keeps on playing through the speakers (and the headphones don't play any sound). In win...

10.10 sound

6 answers, none upvoted

Jorge Castro

right

jgbelacqua

hair puller there.

Jorge Castro

that probably should be a bug report

jgbelacqua

is there some kind of 'perhaps you should report this as a bug' boilerplate we could slap on that kind of thing?

Jorge Castro

06:03

flag for offtopic and leaving a "file this as a bug report" is the way to do that

21

Q: How do I report a bug?

I found a problem with a application on Ubuntu. How do I best report the issue? What sort of information should I provide?

launchpad debug bug-reporting

linking to that

jgbelacqua

Good deal. thanks.

Jorge Castro

however for sound one of the maintainers was doing a bunch of answering

so I am hoping he comes back soonish

Daniel T Chen

1.4k 7

sound 10.10 audio kernel wireless pulseaudio skype

yeah

jgbelacqua

It's very cool that some many of you Canonical guys and linux rock stars hang around here.

Heh. Glad Kees Cook dropped in and straightened me out on AppArmor.

Jorge Castro

yeah

ajmitch

I fit into neither category :)

Jorge Castro

06:05

Kees used to be really addicted, but work caught up with him

ajmitch

Kees was providing some really useful answers as well

Jorge Castro

before he went on holiday he was all over every edit like I was

jgbelacqua

I imagine that happens....

My actual work is in cisco/juniper/whatever networking, so this is a nice escape....

Jorge Castro

nice

I've been meaning to get more involved in serverfault

and I asked some of the server guys to keep an eye on the ubuntu tag on there

but they tell me the quality of questions hasn't been very high. :(

jgbelacqua

I keep trying to get involved in serverfault, but it generally doesn't work for me.

ajmitch

06:08

I got rep today for associating AU & serverfault accounts

it was a bit odd

Jorge Castro

yeah

you get 100 if you associate

jgbelacqua

the quality of the network questions there kind of sucks for the most part.

Jorge Castro

with any SE

jgbelacqua

@ajmitch Yeah, that was a nice bonus.

Jorge Castro

@jgbelacqua yeah I too was surprised by the lack of quality

ajmitch

06:08

But I'm sure I was associated long before that

Jorge Castro

though, last time I touched servers it was setting up a windows AD and at the time all that existed was experts-exchange

ajmitch

I've been touching servers a lot more lately

jgbelacqua

I was once a Unix sysadmin, doing SunOS stuff before Solaris....

ajmitch

been experimenting with fabric for deployment

Jorge Castro

I hope when we get as big as SF or SU that we don't lose our quality

ajmitch

06:10

I've also been delving into mysql replication, cluster filesystems, etc lately :)

Jorge Castro

I tried to answer a few ubuntu questions on superuser and couldn't even get a single vote. :(

jgbelacqua

@jorge experts-exchange has a lot of good content, just impossible to find anything

ajmitch

lots of interesting things to read

Jorge Castro

@ajmitch you guys sticking with mysql or moving to mariadb?

jgbelacqua

@jorge yeah, we'll have to organize an expedition

ajmitch

06:11

@JorgeCastro personally I wouldn't mind using postgresql

I also want to dump PHP, but that's probably not realistic;)

jgbelacqua

Hmm -- just saw the 'edit' change people were talking about. Cool.

Jorge Castro

stackexchange.com/leagues/31/week/askubuntu

you are #11 for this week!

jgbelacqua

Lots of php lovers out there....

Jorge Castro

doctormo killed it this week

jgbelacqua

Yikes.

Yep, I've seen quite a few good ones he's done lately.

ajmitch

06:14

woohoo, #41

jgbelacqua

@jorge --- I must be spending too much time here. ha.

Jorge Castro

heh

we just need enough people over 3k to edit for the big surge for 11.04

we were kind of lucky last release since the site was so new it launched on release day

this time we have to build up to the release

ajmitch

I thought it was 2k?

jgbelacqua

Hmm -- that'll be a stretch for me, I think.

Jorge Castro

and you need enough people with enough rep to vote to close, dupe, edit, etc.

@ajmitch 2k votes to do stuff, close, 3k is editing

jgbelacqua

06:16

Need more people voting....

Jorge Castro

@jgbelacqua I think it'll work, you're almost to 1k and pretty new

and people are voting way more now than they used to

@jgbelacqua the trick is to go back and keep improving your answers

when you do that it bumps your question

jgbelacqua

@jorge -- cool, thanks.

Jorge Castro

and people will see it more, and vote on it

I usually go back and add screenshots

or more links, etc.

ajmitch

I should clarify that ipv6 link-local answer then :)

jgbelacqua

Seems a little too game-able. I suppose they see people added tags, deleting tags for bumping and so on at SO....

I mean just gameable enough.

Jorge Castro

06:18

yeah, but everyone can see what you're doing

jgbelacqua

True ... and the more people, the more people who are paying attention I imagine.

Jorge Castro

another "trick" is to gather all the incomplete half-ass answers on a question and make one really good one

ajmitch

askubuntu.com/questions/21231/…

that one needs some actual answer

jgbelacqua

I sort of stumbled into that method a couple of times.

ajmitch

it's a bit annoying when an answer can only really be given when the original person adds some more details

Jorge Castro

06:20

@ajmitch on the other hand that dude is kind of doomed if he doesn't know how to tail a log, heh

jgbelacqua

Weird. "my other question can be closed, it's solved, but I cant comment on it anymore."

ajmitch

@JorgeCastro yeah, I wouldn't let him run around with scissors like mysql :)

jgbelacqua

Ha.

Jorge Castro

also ... avoid link and run

those are the worst answers

"Try this $link_to_some_shady_blog"

ajmitch

Linking to someone's blog post? yeah I've been guilty of that

jgbelacqua

06:22

I think one like that was my first downvote....

ajmitch

Sorry :)

jgbelacqua

Ha.

Jorge Castro

linking is fine

summarize though so they get the answer right away, and can reference

jgbelacqua

Well, the one I checked out (I did visit the link) was not good.

ajmitch

I'll go back & edit it then:

askubuntu.com/questions/16477/…

oops, double paste

Jorge Castro

06:24

right, i see what you mean

jgbelacqua

Well, you've got words and whatnot surrounding the link with context....

ajmitch

Right, I didn't just want to copy & paste someone's blog post into an answer

Jorge Castro

here's an example:

2

Q: How do I get a Boxee Remote working?

I purchased a Boxee Remote, which is an RF remote so I don't need to mess with lirc or anything like that. How do I get it working in Ubuntu for use as a media center remote?

boxee xbmc

@ajmitch it can get tricky, especially if their blog doesn't have clear licensing info

ajmitch

Knowing that I'd answered the question was useful when I was doing preseeding myself last week :)

Jorge Castro

oh yeah, another trick

which is also an example from my boxee remote example

is I use the site as my own personal remembering wiki now

so when I do stuff I write it down

I used to just blog it to document it for myself

ajmitch

06:26

I should write down some of the stuff I'm doing with virtualbox & fabric then? :)

Jorge Castro

but this way at least I have people's help keeping it up to date

yeah!

jgbelacqua

@ajmitch -- that would be useful

I wish I had documented all the PAM to AD/LDAP stuff I did for tacacs+ ....

I'll have to do it again anyway.

ajmitch

Because it's nice to be able to start a VM from a snapshot, throw some stuff at it, shutdown & restore the snapshot, all from a script

jgbelacqua

It's a nice way to do it, because there's the chance that it might actually be used, since it is a high traffic blog

ajmitch

Yep

And you can be told when you're doing it wrong :)

jgbelacqua

06:28

@ajmitch I would be interested in that actually

ajmitch

It was a cheaper method of testing than starting up an EC2 instance

jgbelacqua

We have some redundant servers that should really just be snapshots....

ajmitch

I was testing a deployment script to load up apache, mysql, exim & various other parts before doing a checkout of our app

jgbelacqua

(Virtual servers)

OK. I've got to be off for the night.

ajmitch

Bye

jgbelacqua

06:30

Good night (probably) to you all.

ajmitch

Yeah, only 7:30 here, i'll be round for awhile :)

nebukadnezzar

07:45

sup

@JorgeCastro just thought i'd let you know that I don't exactly agree with your decision to close my latest question (especially since these kind of questions tend to get completely lost on ubuntuforums.org) ;-)

it's fine with me, it's not like i can do anything, or w/e. so please go ahead

fluteflute

@nebukadnezzar This blog post is long but it explains when 'subjective' questions might work

nebukadnezzar

@fluteflute mm, these kind of questions seem to be hated or disliked, for whatever reasons... i think it's a good topic, but apparently other people disagree with me

fluteflute

So if you can make a case as to why that question fits the six points...

nebukadnezzar

this is a place for questions that can be answered! technically speaking, my posted question can be answered

fluteflute

I think the main problem is that you come down quite heavily on one side in your question

nebukadnezzar

07:52

which side?

fluteflute

that we don't need a thousand distros

nebukadnezzar

I've tried to put my opinion as objective as possible, but given circumstances, it's a little hard not to take a position

anyway, you should probably post it as answer in the question

fluteflute

@nebukadnezzar do you mind if I edit your question, to make it more "Why have we got so many linux distributions?" - asking for why people have created distros, etc

nebukadnezzar

sure, go right ahead

fluteflute

Hmmm I'm completely twisting what you originally said

I'll post it here before actually saving it

 Pointed from an answer to [another question](askubuntu.com/questions/23818/…), I came across [this graphic](upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Gldt1009.svg), and I'm shocked how many linux distributions currently exist.

    However, it seems that most of these distributions are forks of already popular  distributions with minimal changes, usually limited to themes, wallpapers and buttons.  It would still seem easier to create a subdistribution with the required changes, such as XUbuntu with XFCE4, KUbuntu with KD…

@nebukadnezzar Thoughts? Feel free to say you hate it ;)

nebukadnezzar

08:18

well, i'd also include the question if we really need so many distributions, though...

beside that, it's fine

nebukadnezzar

15:28

so it still got closed :P

7

Q: Why have we got so many Linux distributions?

Pointed to from an answer to another question, I came across this graphic, and I'm shocked how many linux distributions currently exist. However, it seems that most of these distributions are forks of already popular distributions with minimal changes, usually limited to themes, wallpapers and ...

linux distribution

seems like a hopeless situation to me

fluteflute

16:00

@nebukadnezzar you have two reopen votes now

0

Q: Czy uruchomie Unity na 9400GT ?

Cześć. Chciałbym się was spytać czy uruchomie Unity na GeForce 9400GT i czy będzie lepiej chodziło czy gorzej. Pozdrawiam

11.04

Stefano Palazzo

0

Q: Will unity run well on my 9400GT?

Hello, I'd like to ask whether Ubuntu will run better or worse with Unity on my GeForce 9400 GT. Thank you.

unity 11.04 nvidia

\o/ google

fluteflute

@StefanoPalazzo Nicely done :)

Stefano Palazzo

I didn't even pay attention to the language detection, so I've no idea what language it was (: Internets for the win

fluteflute

Polish

Stefano Palazzo

Oh, yeah. my neighbours

fluteflute

16:08

@StefanoPalazzo you have more neighbours than me in the UK ;)

Stefano Palazzo

hehe

nebukadnezzar

@fluteflute thanks :D

Stefano Palazzo

@nebukadnezzar have you asked the same question in the ubuntu forums?

I think you'll get much better answers there

nebukadnezzar

nope, and i personally think that crossposting is eeeeevil :P

if it doesn't get reopened, or closed again, i'll just let it rest

Stefano Palazzo

Well. It wouldn't be cross-posting, this isn't a discussion board after all

But I'd like to see you open a thread about it; it's a very interesting question (just not one that is easily and clearly answerable here I dont think)

nebukadnezzar

16:30

good point actually

DoR

17:06

1

Q: How to make nautilus display Artists and Albums in column view?

I view/sort/edit lots of songs frequently, and it would be great to have an Artist and Album colums, amongst others. Is it possible? Or do I need to switch to some other explorer? I use Ubuntu 10.04 on one PC, and Ubuntu 10.10 with nautilus-elementary on another.

nautilus

This is a duplicate

Marco Ceppi

Anyone seeing blue numbers on the top of their bar?

lazyPower

0

Q: Is ubuntu good for a programmer, computer power user?

Trying to figure out the best distro for a power user/programmer. A distro test suggest Fedora (and I've started using it), but the amount of resources for Ubuntu makes me wonder "maybe I should switch". What do You think?

distribution

is that a valid enough question? or is it more of a forums/wiki question?

Stefano Palazzo

@lazyPower It's a perfect example of a subjective/argumentative question (:

lazyPower

@StefanoPalazzo I thought so. I got nailed on one similar to it in the past :)

(: :) i'm beside myself

Sid

17:26

@StefanoPalazzo @MarcoCeppi Some closed questions have a [closed] label and some disappear without a clue: What's the difference?

Stefano Palazzo

@Sid some questions get deleted, instead of closed

Sid

Ok. So are closed questions open for reopening?

Marco Ceppi

@Sid Most all closed qusetions can be reopenend.

Stefano Palazzo

here's a nice example

Marco Ceppi

Stefano Palazzo

17:32

:P

Sid

@MarcoCeppi Thanks. :) The 4 arrows helped! :P

@TheX @StefanoPalazzo Great example of a question that oughta be destroyed. :D

21

Q: Why isn't software as reliable as a car?

I had a user ask me this question. We know that cars break down, but that's because of something physical (unless software is involved!). I tried to answer that software is a much younger industry, but the user countered with "didn't the automobile industry become much more stable than and relia...

development-process software-engineering

"If somebody was almost done assembling a car when their boss came over and says "oh hey, the customers would like us to attach a jet engine to it, can you have it done in a couple days?", cars would be pretty unreliable too." – Anna Lear

Jorge Castro

18:32

good morning

Sid

Good Morning!

Stefano Palazzo

Hi @Jorge

@MarcoCeppi you'll let me know if I'm flagging too much, right? (:

Jorge Castro

heh I flag a bunch too

Marco Ceppi

You can never flag too much!

3

Stefano Palazzo

that's good to know

Sid

18:38

@MarcoCeppi +3.1416

Marco Ceppi

As you can see by earlier screen shots I had 13 flags this morning. That's about an average day. But the SO team drop in from time to time and help out with flagging

Shubh

Hello

Stefano Palazzo

I wish I could see the flags

Sid

@Shubh Namaskar. :P

Stefano Palazzo

and possibly help out

Marco Ceppi

18:39

@StefanoPalazzo By flagging you help out a ton!

5

Shubh

@Sid :D

Stefano Palazzo

@MarcoCeppi I'm still wondering, for days now, why I can see the flags at At.se, but not here

I'm talking about the 10k tools @sid :)

Marco Ceppi

@StefanoPalazzo Because of different setups. At.SE is under BETA laws atheism.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation-abilities meaning everyone over 1,000 rep is a moderator

Sid

@StefanoPalazzo Oh! :P I misread. Multitasking! :P

Shubh

Yes, like askubuntu was in the beginning

Marco Ceppi

18:42

Right, once they elect Pro Temore Moderators that ability will go away.

Stefano Palazzo

oh I see!

Marco Ceppi

Stack Overflow Blog: Moderator Pro Tempore

Posted by Robert Cartaino on July 27th, 2010

There’s a bit of a leadership vacuum inside the new Stack Exchange communities in public beta. We’ve put a lot of responsibility on each group to take ownership of their own site. The Stack Exchange team can act as guide, but we don’t always have the domain knowledge to understand the needs of each group. As the Network expands, this stretches our ability to assure that each community’s issues are properly addressed.

That’s why I am in the process of identifying and organizing a team of provisional Moderators from within each community (about three per site, starting about seven days into the public Beta). This is a temporary, short-term appointment. Moderators Pro Tem focus and expedite the essential needs of each new site. By the end of Beta, the community will be better suited to hold their own elections. …

Stefano Palazzo

the flags-interface should be hidden then, instead of being empty

Marco Ceppi

@StefanoPalazzo I think it's designed for 10k users or something else because it doesn't show anything for me

Sid

"Pro Temore" sounds grand!

Shubh

18:43

@MarcoCeppi You were one of them for AskUbuntu, right?

Marco Ceppi

@Shubh I still am - we haven't had our elections yet

Shubh

Oh..

I see.

Stefano Palazzo

@MarcoCeppi I am one :P

Shubh

@StefanoPalazzo Good

Marco Ceppi

@StefanoPalazzo Holy cow! Great job! Didn't even notice :D

Stefano Palazzo

18:45

heh, thanks (:

Sid

0

Q: Changing brightness on a Sony Vaio laptop

I just installed Ubuntu on a Sony Vaio laptop. The shortcut and functions keys do nothing. When I try to change the brightness I can see the levels going up and down in the notification bubble but it doesn't actually change the brightness. Is there any way to fix this?

troubleshooting brightness sony vaio

badp

@MarcoCeppi 1,000 rep? Pussies! Back in my days you had to sweat the 10k tools! You had to go to 1k and then back! Uphill! Both ways! Literally!

Shubh

@badp You mean the rep was reset?

badp

@Shubh No, I mean you had to get 2k rep.

Shubh

@badp Oh

TheX

18:51

I need some rep...

Sid

@TheX Steal Oli's.

TheX

I don't know how

Stefano Palazzo

@MarcoCeppi In "up:3 fv:2 cl:3", what does "cl" mean?

never mind I've got it

stupid me

Sid

Up, Close, Favorite.

Stefano Palazzo

thanks (:

Sid

18:54

I did that on purpose.

Stefano Palazzo

I thought so

Shubh

I need some rep...

Stefano Palazzo

@TheX @Shubh Ask Questions!

TheX

@StefanoPalazzo I do but they keep getting closed

Sid

@Shubh Give Answers!

Shubh

18:56

@StefanoPalazzo Just asked one.

Sid

@TheX Rocks my socks... Winders. :)

TheX

@Sid lol. no I deleted that one

Stefano Palazzo

that was pretty funny (:

Sid

TheX

yeah but i didn't want to cause any wars or anything so I deleted it

Sid

18:59

Why did you ask it (in that way)?

TheX

@Sid to get a chuckle...

and it did...

so i deleted it before any harm was done

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