Ask Ubuntu General Room

James Gifford

17:00

@lazyPower It's actually fairly fast on my netbook. (1GB RAM, 1.6GHZ CPU).

lazyPower

I'd like to see whats going on, tho I dont think that it will warrant a hdd install until its released. I've gone through the pain of having to upgrade an alpha/beta release to production release. Its generally just easier to wait until the release party

Jorge Castro

@StefanoPalazzo ok so I had a call with sil about search stuff

he thinks we should investigate bing, the other options just aren't there unless we pay

I didn't dig enough into bing to see if they offer it

Stefano Palazzo

@JorgeCastro has he looked into it bing? I wasn't able to find out yesterday if they charge or not

Jorge Castro

nor me

but, he had an interesting option

take the data dump, put it on a server

and then serve out from there

and then just feed new questions into it via rss or something

or supplement it with live API searches

Stefano Palazzo

that's quite possible

Jorge Castro

17:05

but that brings up a new set of problems

htorque

2

A: How do I turn on Unity drag handles?

The Unity multitouch grab handles plugin ships with the latest version of Unity (the package) available in the Ubuntu development version 11.04 Natty Narwahl. To ensure plugin is enabled: Start the CompizConfig Setting Manager: Press Alt + F2 to open the run dialog, type ccsm, and press Enter (...

James Gifford

@lazyPower true.

Jorge Castro

bing.com/developers/tou.aspx

htorque

get jason some points :P

Stefano Palazzo

I guess I can write a server app that does what the API does, using the data dump and live updates via the API to keep the data fresh. That should't take me two days (aye no promises). But I've never written a search engine :)
That's actually meant more seriously than it sounds.

Geppettvs D'Constanzo

17:08

Hello everybody, nice to see all you

Stefano Palazzo

hello @Geppettvs

Jorge Castro

@StefanoPalazzo well, let's see if we can use bing as a stopgap

Stefano Palazzo

@Jorge I can see a problem straight away

Jorge Castro

blog.programmableweb.com/2009/06/08/…

you know

we should ask on webmasters

Stefano Palazzo

> You will not, and will not permit your users [...] to [...] modify, filter, obscure, or replace the text, images, or other content of Bing results, including by changing the order in which Bing results appear

Doing that is what makes the app work in the first place. I cut down links, fetch additional information about them, modify titles and re-order them

Jorge Castro

17:12

yeah but you're not the user

you're the app

Stefano Palazzo

I don't think that's what they mean,

"You will not, [...] modify, filter, obscure, or replace"

Jorge Castro

oh sorry, missed the first part

Marco Ceppi

@StefanoPalazzo There might be a loop hole

If the contents are fetched first through a middle man - then you fetch the results from that man. You're technically not modifying the bing results - but the results of a lookup from that 3rd party

It's a stretch - at best, but an idea

Or you could just scrape Stackexchange directly

Join that with the monthly dumps

minimize your scraping

Jorge Castro

hey wait a minute

if the bing thing is unlimited

you could do nearrealtime updating of the dump couldn't you?

Marco Ceppi

@JorgeCastro Yeah

Stefano Palazzo

17:17

@JorgeCastro I don't need bing for that

Marco Ceppi

Just need to know the last question and the next one

Jorge Castro

@StefanoPalazzo how badly do you mangle the results?

maybe we could try just showing them raw?

the reason I ask is beta is next week and now it's trivial to add the AU lens

so we'll hit the throttle like, any day now

Marco Ceppi

Or you could just mangle the results for a bit until a more elegant solution appears

It wouldn't be the first time I've seen a TOS broken for the better good

Stefano Palazzo

So, first of all, I check the url,
I do a search with "site:askubuntu.com/questions" and filter out any results that don't look like questions,
then I cut down the title, to get the question title, i.e. remove "stackexchange bla" and so on

I throw away a lot of results

Jorge Castro

ah

Stefano Palazzo

17:20

I wonder if I can write an algorithm that searches 10.000 questions in 10 milliseconds...

Marco Ceppi

Depends on your indexing :)

Stefano Palazzo

@JorgeCastro add the lens to what? isn't it just going to be in "Independent"?

Jorge Castro

yeah but it's in a PPA now and easy to install

ie. it's not just us 5 using it

Stefano Palazzo

Oh I see what you mean

Octavian Damiean

@StefanoPalazzo where is that data you are searching? If it is on a server on the web then I doubt it is really possible

Stefano Palazzo

17:21

yeah we/I need to get a move on with the search issue :)

@OctavianDamiean it would be local data

Octavian Damiean

@StefanoPalazzo well then what Marco said

Stefano Palazzo

@JorgeCastro I really have an issue with this bing stuff. The ToS are far too long, complicated and vague. It'd be awful if they revoked api access at some point

Jorge Castro

"Or you could just mangle the results for a bit until a more elegant solution appears
It wouldn't be the first time I've seen a TOS broken for the better good"

I say we try that, because we at least know there's no API limit

Marco Ceppi

Bing could care less about us at this size

Jorge Castro

right but we would have the same problem with google

this can tide us over until a) We do something with the dumps, or b) SE gives us something nice to search the site with

Stefano Palazzo

17:24

honestly,.. I don't think I want to take responsibility for that

Jorge Castro

ok

hey remember yesterday when you were returning some of the crappier results from the site itself?

Stefano Palazzo

yeah

Jorge Castro

is it possible to have that work when the google thing turns off?

so if we hit the cap we'll have degraded results, but it would still work?

Stefano Palazzo

@JorgeCastro yes it is, I was going to implement some sort of "switch"

Jorge Castro

ok that sounds least sucky

Stefano Palazzo

17:26

I'll probably have a variable somewhere, "use_google = True", and if users start to complain, I can just switch it 'round to use the SE api

It's not really much of a solution I know..

I should probably write an email to stackexchange, maybe I get lucky and they help us out somehow

@JorgeCastro Oh I forgot to mention something: The SE API results, it turns out, aren't that bad (if you do it just right). The only real problem is that each query takes about a second

Jorge Castro

ah

so basically, we either cheat and do it fast; or we do it in a way which is totally fine, but slower results.

Stefano Palazzo

right

can't cheat though, what would my chancellor say ;-)

Marco Ceppi

Well

what if an "anonymous" user made a patch

that "accidentally" got commited into trunk?

Stefano Palazzo

the real problem with cheating is that they may revoke api access at any point

in which case, the app will break for everyone

the API results, be it from google or anybody else, are pretty fuzzy. can't trust anything they say

Marco Ceppi

Yes, but the real problem with these TOS is they can revoke your api access at any point for no reason at all

Stefano Palazzo

17:32

true

Marco Ceppi

But that's neither here nor there :)

Jorge Castro

well, I think we should use the stack API

and as people use the API, SE will improve it

Marco Ceppi

But we can't get search results from the API - they have made it this way on purpose

Jorge Castro

just like they improved the other stuff as George and co made stackapps

Stefano Palazzo

@JorgeCastro I have a bit of time still, I'll make a version that uses the SE API, then we can see how it feels

@MarcoCeppi uhm. Sorry, how do I make a separate branch on launchpad?

lazyPower

17:37

@MarcoCeppi hey, what did you mean the other day when you said "welcome to launchpad" ?

Marco Ceppi

@lazyPower It was sarcasm :)

lazyPower

ah, i must have been bitching about svn or something eh?

Marco Ceppi

@StefanoPalazzo You just need to push to lp:project/branch

Stefano Palazzo

something like bzr push lp:askubuntu-lens/no-google?

Jorge Castro

lp:project/lets-try-stack-api!

yep

Marco Ceppi

17:38

@lazyPower Probably, don't remember now. Whatever it was I thought it was LP

Stefano Palazzo

> bzr: ERROR: Permission denied: "Cannot create 'no-google'. Only Bazaar branches are allowed."

lazyPower

heh heh. I'm getting excited for the 7'th.

Its going to be an epic time in DC, with no sleep for the next workday @thisguy

Marco Ceppi

@lazyPower It's going to be pretty good. Just got the place confirmed. Trying to hunt down food now

Jorge Castro

@StefanoPalazzo I think you need to create it first in the webui

@StefanoPalazzo code.launchpad.net/askubuntu-lens/+addbranch

there's a way to do it in bzr but it escapes me

Stefano Palazzo

that seems to work

Stefano Palazzo

18:41

@JorgeCastro I'm done, phew! :-)

that was a little bit tricky in places, you can check it out and give it a whirl at bzr branch lp:~stefano-palazzo/askubuntu-lens/no-google

I hope people don't use their dash more than ~450 times a day

Jorge Castro

hehe

@StefanoPalazzo I need to update an answer and then I'll get to it

Stefano Palazzo

sure, launchpad needs a minute to catch up too

If anybody feels like a bit of code review might brighten their day, the diff is just immense ;-)

Jorge Castro

18:55

@dv3500a a guy asking a dupe ended up bumping this: askubuntu.com/questions/10121/will-ubuntu-11-04-use-gnome-3

@dv3500a which is now out of date.

jgbelacqua

oops.

need some kind of expired content warning label plastered on things

Jorge Castro

the bump is the warning. :)

jgbelacqua

And I'm out of votes, or I'd vote up updated stuff.... :(

lazyPower

@StefanoPalazzo lol code reviews ALWAYS brighten my day, alas, i'm still dealing with server issues :)

jgbelacqua

oops .. gotta run. ciao

Stefano Palazzo

19:02

@lazyPower heh :) Well I'll notice any errors soon enough

Alvar

0

A: Skype doesn't find my audio input

The only way I've found to make my internal mic work in my laptops is to use pavucontrol (install it from the homonymous package) and disabling the volume of a channel (the right or the left one), since most of microphones are mono in fact. This is an huge workaround, by the way. I guess that th...

I didn't get this answer...

James Gifford

19:28

@Alvar Just try it his answer. Makes sense from my point of view.

@Alvar That answer worked for me. FINALLY, I HAVE SKYPE WORKING. :D

fluteflute

19:48

@Oli Thanks :)

Now nobody vote for my questions/answers - having such a round number feels good!

Stefano Palazzo

hey! congratulations @fluteflute

Marco Ceppi

700 away

htorque

0

Q: GNOME 3 in Natty

Will GNOME 3 (Nautilus, Empathy, Evolution, Tomboy, Totem, Brasero etc.) ship with Natty. Softpedia thinks so Natty Wallpaper Final

hey mods, make it die!

:D

fluteflute

I'm a bit uneasy about that

I'd prefer to actually check the packages versions of each of those pieces of software.

htorque

thanks

James Gifford

19:55

@fluteflute What packages? I'm on natty right now.

Marco Ceppi

Wait - they're replacing evolution with Thunderbird as the default?

fluteflute

@JamesGifford Nautilus, Empathy, Evolution, Tomboy, Totem, Brasero versions

@MarcoCeppi I don't think so

Marco Ceppi

Whew

Stefano Palazzo

I hope someone decides to maintain a fork of 2.32

fluteflute

@StefanoPalazzo gnome-panel do you mean?

Stefano Palazzo

19:57

and the apps, and metacity, and session and gdm

and so on :-)

like some people maintain forks of kernel 2.6.13 or whatever

James Gifford

@fluteflute Evolution: 2.32.2-0ubuntu4 Nautilus: 1:2.32.2.1-0ubuntu11 Tomboy: 1.5.2-1ubuntu4 Totem: 2.32.0-0ubuntu10 Brasero: 2.32.1-0ubuntu2

fluteflute

so 2.32 versions are not 'GNOME 3 versions'

htorque

poor little gobby gets its a** kicked on ubuntu-devel mailing list :D

fluteflute

@htorque how come?

htorque

but i agree, it really was a pain to use to remotely follow uds

James Gifford

20:01

I'd assume so. Empathy is 2.33 though.

fluteflute

@JorgeCastro there used to be a chart of all the gnome packages, and their version in each ubuntu release. I can't find it. don't suppose you know where it is hiding (if it still exists)?

Jorge Castro

I don't think it's maintained anymore

I updated the information on the question that I linked the dupe to

htorque

@fluteflute lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2011-March/032764.html - nah, just looking for an alternative ;)

Jorge Castro

natty is "gnome 2.32ish"

James Gifford

@JorgeCastro I realized that after I started looking at the package versions.

fluteflute

20:04

I don't think it's unusual for packages to be a gnome release behind. But it seems slightly sad that isn't mentioned anywhere...

Jorge Castro

I think distrowatch has some kind of grid

htorque

good night @all

fluteflute

@JorgeCastro I haven't heard mention of distrowatch for ages!

it does. still it's not that useful though... :P ah well

Jorge Castro

yeah

people.canonical.com/~platform/desktop/versions.html

aha!

fluteflute

20:19

Oooh that's not what I had in mind, but I like it

bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-mono/+bug/742024

Hmm launchpad oneboxing doesn't work anymore

lazyPower

@fluteflute!

whats happenin

George Edison

That was weird...

fluteflute

@lazyPower what's happening is I'm disappointed in a ubuntu design change, which is actually quite unusual :D

George Edison

My notebook just totally powered off.

I thought when the battery was low, it would hibernate or at least shut down first.

Jorge Castro

@fluteflute which one?

fluteflute

20:25

@JorgeCastro the new natty network indicator icon. bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-mono/+bug/742024

Jorge Castro

yeah

lazyPower

@fluteflute I still havent checked on FBuntu :| i need to get un lazy and do that.... i did sign up for testing after all

Jorge Castro

too fan

plus I hate that it looks like the speaker one sideways

lazyPower

@fluteflute has anyone else jumped on the bandwagon running 10.10 to test it?

fluteflute

@lazyPower not that I'm aware of. there's no hurry :) but do try using it if you think it'll be useful to you

lazyPower

20:27

@fluteflute i just want to beta test something that someone here has written :)

fluteflute

@JorgeCastro agreed. we need a new metaphor for networking....

lazyPower

makes me feel like i'm contributing

fluteflute

@lazyPower let me know how it goes / if you need any help

lazyPower

@fluteflute since i'm in the middle of downtime at work

i think i'll ssh in and grab it

George Edison

I think my battery is totally shot.

fluteflute

20:34

@lazyPower make sure you take a look at the README :)

lazyPower

@fluteflute what was the launchpad url again? i'm searching for fbuntu in the chat logs and its not coming up with anything

fluteflute

@lazyPower bzr branch lp:fbuntu

lazyPower

ty

fluteflute

launchpad.net/fbuntu

James Gifford

Just marked myself as being affected by that bug in lauchpad about the new network indicator icon.

@fluteflute If I used Facebook, I'd totally install that. But I don't really use FB...

fluteflute

20:36

@JamesGifford I think it's unlikely to be changed, but you never know...

What do people here use to put GMail in the Messaging Menu?

George Edison

I don't put it in the menu - I use the Gmail Notifier though.

Marco Ceppi

@fluteflute I add it to Evolution :)

lazyPower

+1 for evolution

George Edison

-1 for evolution

:P

+1 for Thunderbird.

lazyPower

throws @MarcoCeppi at @GeorgeEdison

George Edison

20:43

Ouch!

Marco Ceppi

I don't know what's more impressive

lazyPower

hulk smash!

Marco Ceppi

@lazyPower being able to pick me up or @GeorgeEdison surviving the crushing blow of my body.

lazyPower

hahaha

George Edison

I stepped aside :)

lazyPower

20:44

yeah, i only winged him :|

he's fairly cat-like with his reflexes

George Edison

I guess you don't like Thunderbird?

Marco Ceppi

It's not that I don't like memory leaks. I just like Evolution better :)

lazyPower

hahaha

George Edison

Memory leaks?

lazyPower

+1 @MarcoCeppi's answer. I was trying to sum that up.

Marco Ceppi

20:46

I've never had great success with Mozillas products. They're better then Microsoft, but not nearly the best.

George Edison

Well... I'm not as big a FF fan as I used to be.

...since Chrome came along.

But honestly... compared to Thunderbird, Evolution just doesn't cut it for me.

Marco Ceppi

I feel like, back when I was using Eudora and Netscape communicator Firefox and Thunderbird were like - God sends

Then I broke through and realized Evolution is really the way to go and Chrome has since replaced my need for Firefox

Jorge Castro

thunderbird has one fatal flaw

try exporting contacts from one install to another

I used to have to do that at my old job

it was basically pure, pain.

Marco Ceppi

I just think Mozilla has the same viewpoint on software development as Apple does "Screw the users, we do what we want"

And that's awesome if your view points align with theirs. But things like the stupid UA thing in FF4 comes along and it's like "great, now this doesn't work"

Jorge Castro

I actually like what they're doing

it takes guts to move to this aggressive new schedule

Marco Ceppi

20:50

I'm actually just sour about the user agent thing

Jorge Castro

and in the end even if you don't use FF the competition is awesome for us in the end

having lived through the dark times of the web when the idea of having a browser that wasn't IE, man.

Marco Ceppi

I like Googles release pattern - we've actually adopt a lighter version of it here at work

Jorge Castro

it could easily have been all over for the web

Marco Ceppi

scribd.com/doc/46659928/Chrome-Release-Cycle-12-16-2010

George Edison

User agent thing?

Marco Ceppi

20:55

Yeah, MPT is finally weighing in on the subject but the Firefox team is kind of being poop heads about it

User agent doesn't include Ubuntu in it so apt.ubuntu.com doesn't work

Binary package hint: software-center With Firefox 4.0~b10+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu2 the test case sc-001 Follow the link fails and the web page displays the following message: ===== You don't seem to be running Ubuntu ===== It works correctly with Chromium. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04 Package: software-center 3.1.10 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.37-12.26-generic 2.6.37 Uname: Linux 2.6.37-12-generic i686 Architecture: i386 Date: Fri Jan 28 10:27:31 2011 EcryptfsInUse: Yes PackageArchitecture: all ProcEnviron: LANGUAGE=en_US:en PATH=(custom, user) LANG=en_US.utf8 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8 SHELL=/bin/bash SourcePackage: software-center

firefox (Ubuntu)

High / Won't Fix

Jorge Castro

I say we just detect linux and try to launch software center

George Edison

I can't get it working in Chrome...

Marco Ceppi

@JorgeCastro Not half a bad idea

Jorge Castro

@GeorgeEdison right

George Edison

@MarcoCeppi But what about when a Fedora user visits the link? :)

Jorge Castro

20:59

because apt.ubuntu.com is trying to detect that you're on ubuntu

which is the wrong way imo

George Edison

I know.

Jorge Castro

when a fedora person clicks on it it just won't do anything

George Edison

There really needs to be a better way, IMHO.

This would be the perfect thing for our Chromify-OSD plugin.

Marco Ceppi

@JorgeCastro Just doing what the Spec said. I might change it so that if linux try to launch && show splash. After a few seconds say "Nothing Happening?" then include the "I'm not using Ubuntu" or "I'm on Ubuntu"

Greg

When ubuntu updates, will it update to new releases, or just fixes?

George Edison

21:00

There would be a function that it exports that launches the Software Center if it exists.

Marco Ceppi

each routing to the appropriate place

Jorge Castro

@MarcoCeppi right. I'm just saying that the situation isn't ideal for us so might as well just make it work for ubuntu users

George Edison

@Marco: By the way, what happened with Gmail and Chromify-OSD? I saw you patched it, but what was the problem?

Marco Ceppi

@GeorgeEdison Or I could just sneak in a global JS variable that says "IS_RUNNING_UBUNTU" and make it true

James Gifford

@fluteflute True that.

Marco Ceppi

21:02

@GeorgeEdison It was only injecting for pages that matched ^http://$

George Edison

@MarcoCeppi Well... how could you do that?

Marco Ceppi

Gmail is HTTPS

fluteflute

@JamesGifford sorry what's true?

James Gifford

@fluteflute That they might not change the network indicator icon, but you never know.

George Edison

I don't think you could sneak in a JS variable because I don't think you could even tell if it was Ubuntu from within the JS environment.

Marco Ceppi

21:02

Anyways. This weekend is my "finish everything" weekend since the misses is out of town. I'l make that small logic change in APTURL for MPT to review

George Edison

It'd need to be in the NPAPI plugin.

Marco Ceppi

@GeorgeEdison You can't tell from JS - but if it's Chromify-OSD installed then odds are they're on an Ubuntu machine.

George Edison

@MarcoCeppi No - it works just fine in Fedora.

...provided libnotify is installed.

(Which it is by default.)

Marco Ceppi

I'll just make the aforementioned change in the logic for processing requests from "Linux" UAs

that will fix Chrome and most other browsers by default

fluteflute

@JamesGifford ah yeah :) I posted in the natty forum so might gain some "affects me" from that

James Gifford

21:06

@fluteflute To be somewhat blunt, I don't see a point in saying "It affects me" other than to raise awareness with the Unity team that some users don't like it. However, anyone willing to bet that we'll see a icon theme with the old one? ;)

Greg

how do I know what version ubuntu I have?

fluteflute

@JamesGifford Yeah, if we could get 20+ people to mark themselves as affected then the designers may take note. They may not...

James Gifford

@Greg Open up a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal), then type in "lsb_release -a" and press Enter.

@fluteflute Also true.

Greg

@JamesGifford I installed 10.10. It's still 10.10 ... that's what I thought :)

just wondered if the automatic updates updated the linux version too

I know that sounds a bit noobish

fluteflute

@JamesGifford I don't have a "gnome-panel machine" here to check what the exact menu was...

James Gifford

21:10

@Greg Actually, 10.10 is the newest stable version, so it's all good. :)

Greg

@JamesGifford ah so will it update to the latest stable version on its own?

James Gifford

@fluteflute Actually, I've just got it memorized. I normally just type in "Alt-F2" "gnome-terminal"

@Greg I don't think so, but I'm not sure. I haven't done an distribution upgrade, I normally re-install.

Marco Ceppi

@Greg No, you'll have to initiate it. Typically (depending on your settings) a window will pop up saying new version is available

Greg

@MarcoCeppi @JamesGifford what I'm trying to ask without insulting too many people is "Is it like Windows update" ... there, I said it. Flame me.

Marco Ceppi

Or you can open an terminal and type "dist-upgrade"

@Greg Not entirely. You can set it up to do unmanned security updates - but other than that you'll have to initiate upgrades.

Greg

21:14

I see. I've only recently migrated fully to Linux, and ubuntu is the first GUI linux I've used

James Gifford

@Greg hehe. I won't flame you. I never flame people for questions like that. :)

Marco Ceppi

@Greg Unlike 98% of the internet we're relatively helpful and decent here :)

Jorge Castro

"Or you can open an terminal and type "dist-upgrade""

^^ NO!

@MarcoCeppi poke me tomorrow early and I'll talk some sense into mpt

@MarcoCeppi how much do you want to spend on a netbook?

I have an 11.6 acer I want to sell, but it's a real i3

Alvar

21:37

@JorgeCastro asus 1215 is good!

@JorgeCastro the updater version of mine 1201 with a 1.8 ghz cpu! :D

Oli

22:55

Samsung Q330 is good

Touch bigger at 13.something inches

James Gifford

Just their luck! I just (as in, 2 hours ago) finished writing a blog post on the answer to this question (no, I didn't post the blog post). - askubuntu.com/questions/31922/problem-installing-ruby-and-gems

Jorge Castro

@JamesGifford Heh, I've basically stopped blogging technical things I figure out and just self document on AU.

James Gifford

@JorgeCastro Nice idea there. Makes it easier to update as well.

Jorge Castro

@Oli I was frustrated before when I couldn't find the kernel configs, when I knew I had seen delta documents and them being published before. It wasn't until I saw Leann's post on feature freeze day (today) where it makes sense why they hadn't written it down yet.

@JamesGifford stackapps.com/questions/518/…

I need to use that in my blog

but I could never figure out how to get it working with ubuntu

er, with askubuntu

James Gifford

@JorgeCastro Hangon. I think I spot the thingy.

Jorge Castro

23:10

oh nice

lmk

James Gifford

nm. It involves changing the actual js. And I haven't learned js yet.

stackapps.com/questions/518/… - that looks like it might be what we're looking for

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