Do we have a question for when an individual package that's installed but broken is not available prevents a release upgrade from succeeding. I don't think How to fix the updates? is off-topic because although 12.04 LTS is EoL, the goal is to upgrade. (So unless the only fixes are extremely involved, I see this as similar to the instructions we give people running non-Ubuntu OSes and trying to download and install Ubuntu.)

I don't think it's a duplicate of How to install software or upgrade from an old unsupported release? because the error message is not covered there and because I'm pretty sure 12.04 LTS hasn't actually been moved over to the old-releases servers yet. I could comment to ask for information, such as the contents of /etc/apt/sources.list, but I think there may be a solution for this that almost always works and that, for whatever reason, I haven't found.

@EliahKagan I only found this comment... I wonder if it's safe to do that

@edwinksl o.O

→ 57 messages moved to Ask Ubuntu General Room

@EliahKagan seems I was able to do it :)

@Zanna yeah not sure how much i believe that answer

coincidence? making stuff up because they hate ff?

lol

I think we can close this now?

hmm video is dead I think, but not really needed... solution was to use nomodeset, but was that really worth it to fix flickering on boot/shutdown?

@Zanna voted

thanks :)

@EliahKagan Until your meta answer about using html tags for code I had no idea you could format text inside a code block. I have been using some of those tricks :)

does that answer deserve saving? If so, can we merge&delete the question... Merge to what I don't know... maybe Installing Broadcom wireless drivers

@Zanna I'm able to watch the video without problems. What it shows suggests the flickering starts at the splash screen but doesn't stop after it. Nothing after the splash screen is shown so I'm not at all sure of this, it's sort of a hunch. If the flickering persists after the splash screen, then nomodeset is worthwhile. If not, I don't know.

thanks for looking at it! I wonder why the video doesn't work for me - maybe a geographical thing

maybe nomodeset had no negative side-effects for them

maybe I will comment on that post if OP hasn't completely vanished...

their question seems to say that there was no flickering after boot (except maybe at shutdown)

Although... the wording "It does this flickering at every start/restart of the laptop." in the question strongly suggests it's not always flickering.

that's what I meant

Yeah, sorry, I think it's actually quite clear that the flickering is not happening all the time.

even if the flickering doesn't persist, though, it obviously bothered them enough for them to ask the question...

some hardware info might make this question worthwhile... as it is... kind of meh

If nomodeset doesn't prevent one from using the resolution one wants, is it ever a problem?

Let me see if I can add that.

I don't know. I don't have any fancy graphics cards, so I don't know much about these things

For some reason I had thought the exact model had been given, but it actually just says HP.

there's an exact description of the iso :)

Nope, I can't tell from the video what machine it is. Probably one could discern the series, but probably not the speciifc model.

The answer does have an anonymous upvote

The answer seems like a good description of how to enable nomodeset, though I'm not sure how many novices will be able to use it easily by running vi.

@Zanna I think the answer (on that totally different question) is worth saving. I don't know if other people will agree. I don't know where the best place is for it, since it's not Broadcom-specific (and neither is the question). A moderator can merge it, though. How about How do I install additional drivers?

@EliahKagan Perfect, thanks... special flag time... done

That answer shows exactly what to click. It takes its time, showing three separate images, which I think is valuable. For network drivers in particular, I think a lot of users haven't really become comfortable with the user interface in their Ubuntu systems if they have great trouble connecting to a network, since so much of what we do with our computers these days is on the Internet.

In other respects, the other answers on that target question are superior. But they'll still be there, highly upvoted.

@EliahKagan if I'm editing a post that uses vi to edit some config, I just add exactly what to do for someone who has no clue how to use vi, or change it to sudoedit if post author has gone

@EliahKagan I agree that the answer is useful for someone new to the UI and unfamiliar with the terminology we use in our posts a lot of the time without explanation

sudoedit gives a choice of editor on the first run, right? So that's potentially confusing as well. ...Should I edit in a link to an explanation of basic vi usage from the "Remember you're using" part?

that's a good idea

@Zanna Thanks! One benefit of having them in main chat is that other people, besides me, are more likely to see the messages and reply. I didn't know all a room owner in room A needed to move messages to room B was write access to B (and not ownership of B).

I think sudoedit uses whatever editor is set in update-alternatives. I've never had it prompt me for a choice. I've had to use update-alternatives to get sudoedit to drop me in Vim instead of nano

@EliahKagan I thought it was better to send them to AUGR for that reason too :)

Do we not have a "How do I change a line of a file in vi, save, and quit?" question?

Because I work on so many old posts I try not to bump them if they are going to get deleted, so I try to decide whether I'm going to attempt to close the post (causing it to be deleted) before editing. If it won't be deleted whatever I do, I edit it anyway. I try to edit everything on the page at once, to economise on bumping. That's why I hadn't edited that poorly-formatted answer yet

If you're talking about the question with the video and the nomodeset answer, I think the question and its answers are such that the post shouldn't be deleted anytime soon. I usually don't let the possibility of future deletion stop me from editing, because if the deletion is immediately forthcoming, the question won't be seen after the deletion anyway, and if it isn't, then editing should make it easier for people to reason about in deciding if they should cast delete votes.

With that said, I think I differ from you in two ways that may matter here: (a) I don't edit as many posts as you do, at least not these days. (b) I'm generally more reluctant to delete questions than are most 20k+ rep users, so I suspect I might be more reluctant to delete things than you are.

Ah, I see you've edited that post. As linkable support, I was thinking cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/vi.html would be perfect for this if it had <a name="section-name"> tagging so I could link to specific sections of it. But it doesn't.

I never count on things being deleted by voters, but if the post is closed as anything other than a duplicate, and neither the question nor any of its answers have upvotes, it will be deleted automatically (as I'm sure you know). I used to edit everything regardless, but now I try not to edit, because a couple of people told me I was spoiling the front page (although I was working on a tag at the time and had gone into a trance). One of those people is someone I have basic disagreements...

... with about the whole purpose of the site and the need (or lack thereof) to pay attention to old posts. But I agree that it's important not to swamp the front page with minor edits

@EliahKagan Feel free to re-edit however you think best!

@Zanna * purpose of the site and need to pay attention to old posts, or lack thereof

When people see capital letters in <key> formatting, do they type them with Shift?

Single letters are tricky because I can look like l.

In chat they don't, but on the main site I think they do.

I am not sure. Most keyboards I use have the letters printed on them in upper case, so I normally use upper case

But in Vim shortcuts the case matters...

Yes. But if nobody actually presses Shift... :)

Anyway I'll leave it and just add small clarification.

hahaha oh we bumped it so much. If I was in AUGR someone would be pinging me about it

Well, I'm there. I'll see if someone pings me about it. I doubt it though. Extreme cases have happened where posts are bumped so much a moderator locks the post. Like where the post is incomplete and the author or editor submits the edit as a way of saving their work. This is far from that.

I think we should be able to close the question as a duplicate of something else. There must be a question about screen flicker on boot, in a system that was already installed, where the solution was to use nomodeset.

I don't mean How do I set 'nomodeset' after I've already installed Ubuntu?, because that's about how to set nomodeset, not about screen flicker.

I haven't found anything yet

As for whether or not it's worth it, I think setting nomodeset is pretty harmless if the splash screen already doesn't look good. I'm glad you commented though because (a) I'm not totally sure about this and (b) if they return to reply then they can add their exact model to the question, too, which may help others with the same machine who search and find it.

Do you know if anyone has made a userscript that displays the non-scoring anonymous and low rep feedback next on every post I look at? Either the actual numbers or a link that causes the script to retrieve and display them? Like a little thing next to the vote arrows?

@EliahKagan I am not aware of one, but it would be awesome... I use this query almost daily, often many times per day

it would save me a lot of clicks to have such a userscript

That's cool. I think the anonymous data are underrated, because they usually express something different from what votes do. Votes are usually a judgment of the post first, and everything else is secondary. In contrast, I think the anonymous clicks express if the post was useful for that person.

agreed, and they represent a different audience

The total percentage of votes that are downvotes is also really small. Like a couple percent, I think. I'm not sure why, but it might just be that rep is required for it so many users can upvote but cannot downvote.

So the anonymous stats might help to provide some of the information that downvotes ideally would provide, since they don't take away rep and I doubt most people are worried, "This post isn't bad enough to downvote, maybe it will help others," when the click the downvote arrow while either not knowing about the reputation system at all or while knowing about it and knowing that no actual post score change will occur.

I'm amazed by the anonymous feedback on my posts. It's totally different from the visible votes

Yes. A bigger audience, probably. I would guess that a far higher percentage of users who can vote do, than the percentage of users who can't vote who click the up and down arrows. But there are more such clicks in total than actual votes, at least on posts that are not currently deleted.

oh really? that's amazing

1.8 million votes and 2.2 million feedback clicks.

askubuntu.com/tools/post-feedback

is OP right about the linked post, or is it a dupe, really? I upvoted the new Q and A, but I still kind of feel it's a dupe and can be closed... Maybe I'm missing something

or maybe I'm just hungry :) Time to go cook something...

@EliahKagan OMG I don't think I've found this page before O.O

@EliahKagan whoa is this an hidden feature? i can see it but i have never seen a link to it from the tools page before

@Zanna I think it should be duped but that their answer can then be merged. I don't think they're really saying it's not one, but instead that the answers on the other question are inadequate for most people's needs. So merging seems like a good idea. I've upvoted and posted a comment--but also VTC'd as a dupe. I'll try to remember to return and flag for merging.

@edwinksl It used to be on the tools page. If I remember correctly, SE removed the link with the intention of replacing it with a better page (which they have not yet done) or perhaps eventually removing it altogether without replacing it with anything (which I very much hope does not happen), but they kept it accessible on all sites except Stack Overflow, where it was especially unwieldy and hardly useful due to the enormous scale of the site.

I visit the page from time to time--nowadays, I probably look at it on a third of the days I'm active on the site--and I find it useful.

I don't know if there's any official current information about what the plan is for this, and I am somewhat reluctant to ask on MSE because it might result in the page being removed sooner without being replaced by anything. I don't know if the planned removal was just for the link or the feature, but I think/hope it was just the link. If it was for the feature, I don't know if it was just for Stack Overflow's next build or the whole network.

Related: Is the /tools/post-feedback page removed? This suggests that "later in the week" has been demoted (or perhaps has always had) to the status of "eventually."

"eventually"

Should some of these questions be closed as duplicates of Apt/Synaptic needs to reinstall package but can't find the archive for it?

@EliahKagan nice comment

@EliahKagan I VTC loads of questions as dupes of that, but I got worried about what might happen if the package is essential recently

Should this answer really have been deleted? It is definitely not "plagiarism," at least not of any of the other answers there. Posting an answer that contains information already contained in other answers is sometimes unhelpful and sometimes merits deletion, but if this was deleted because it was "plagiarism" then that was a mistake (as well as an unfounded attack on its author's reputation).

I mean the effect of the comment, the deletion, and keeping the comment seems like an unfounded attack on the author of the post.

maybe it was copypasta from somewhere else

if not, then I agree that the comment is inappropriate, but I don't think we need that answer

Yeah, I'm not really inclined to undelete the post, even if it shouldn't have been deleted at the time. But the advice given in the comment doesn't seem to be about plagiarism. I'm concerned that it's sending a bad sign to 10k users about what plagiarism is, and then there is the author to consider.

If, when I was starting out on Ask Ubuntu, I had an answer deleted by a mod after a comment was left accusing me of "plagiarism" for saying something that was common knowledge and that had not been considered plagiarism when other people had said it without citing one another, then I would probably have assumed this community didn't care about falsely accusing people of wrongdoing, and I would probably have left and never come back. Perhaps that would've been an overreaction, though. :)

I would too; I'm very sensitive, and I agree with you that it's really not OK, unless it was actually pasted from somewhere, which is hard to determine now

I guess I'll leave it alone for now. I'd have to custom flag since it's rare to do anything with deleted comments, and I don't want to raise a flag that's hard to understand or that is inadequately researched. This sounds bad...but I don't want too take the time for it right now. This is a popular question with upvoted answers, so perhaps I'll come upon it again and flag the comment or something.

I should've said it's rare to do anything with old deleted comments. I've had a number of flags actioned that I had raised on recent comments on recently deleted posts. Mostly they were flags about duplicate canned comments. At least for a while, PSA: When reviewing, don't post duplicate (and near-duplicate) comments! greatly lessened that problem. It seems to be back now, though nowhere near as badly as before.

Was I right to close this as a duplicate?

nope, I meant to check back when it got migrated to see if my vote were required

usually a mod dupes those posts before they hit the ground :)

Should this edit be approved? askubuntu.com/review/suggested-edits/751187 I'm leaning yes but I'm not sure.

um... seems like using add-apt-repository is an alternative to downloading deb files from PPA, which is what author is suggesting, right?

I think the edit is fine, assuming it's a valid method, but I would edit it to add "or you could add the PPA to your sources and then install through APT, like so:"

You mean an alternative to manually downloading the files? I actually can't tell for sure if the post intends manual download or is giving the link just to indicate what PPA they are recommending.

yeah... I am not sure either though

in any case, I'm not sure why one would do that, so I think it's better to add the commands to use the PPA properly!

I've approved and edited to clarify. The edit already had an accept vote on it.

Unrelated to that... Even though at first glance it looks like it might be inapplicable to the question or trying to answer a different question, it seems to me that this answer is okay and should be kept. The top voted answer there is reasonably good, but I think the question could use a more detailed step-by-step (which that particular new answer is not).

Given the OP's comment and accept, should we still close this question as a duplicate?

@EliahKagan That answer doesn't seem especially delete-worthy to me :)

Should we hold off on closing that question after all? It's true that it is more specific than the one it's being voted (including by me) as a duplicate of. I'm asking because the OP replied to my comment:

interesting... I am not really satisfied with the canonical post. These days I am always looking for an answer to APT questions that doesn't say "use dpkg --force-<something>"

You mean about Can't use apt install at all after installing a deb package "intellij-idea-ultimate needs to be reinstalled, but I can't find an archive for it"?

Yeah, the answer there is interesting and different to the proposed dupe... I am not sure what OP did to get that error

I was saying I'm not satisfied with this answer to the canonical post because --force-all is probably going to break something somewhere for somebody

I see what you mean.

Sometimes I find questions where it seems like they should be CW-answered based on comments (or OP edits) rather than closed (or rather than languishing forever unseen until they are either roomba'd... or not). Sometimes I think, I don't have the time/energy/interest to figure out if that is the case. Would it be useful to have a list of such questions, so they can be gradually answered or closed? I don't have such a list, I'm just wondering if this would be helpful.

Or do we already have such a list? Is this something I should be using Trello for?

@EliahKagan They've expanded and clarified their comment:

@EliahKagan I don't have a list, but that would be an awesome list and we could use Trello for that :) I like Trello because we can re-review stuff, which is needed when posting CW-made-from-OP-comment/edit, so people can upvote them (and re-check them)

that is a good idea

@EliahKagan I retracted my vote. Maybe the title of the other post can be improved

Okay. I've added a comment linking from the other question so people will hopefully still find David's answer.

I think btrfs and missing free space should be closed as a duplicate of one of the two. Or should the new question be duped to it?

Is this comment needed anymore? It's advice was not... actually correct. Commenting doesn't bump questions, and while deliberate duplicates are almost always bad, the existence of duplicates often makes it easier to find questions and answers, rather than harder.

@EliahKagan I actually don't think I understand these questions well enough to say. The answers are all different!

@Zanna Does that mean I should get around to learning what Trello is?

@EliahKagan yeah! and linked-near duplicates are sometimes even better than everything-closed-against-giant-umbrella canonical-post i-m-very-h-o

@Zanna The comments linking the posts should stay, but that comment isn't one of them. As far as I can tell it's a meta-comment documenting what comments exist and giving bad advice about how to use the site.

I agree that comment should be nuked

Oh okay. I must've misunderstood you--sorry.

Oh, the "yeah!" was about Trello!

oh my bad, I didn't answer your question clearly, I was picking up on what you said about dupes making it easier to find info - the "yeah!" was to that

@EliahKagan I should probably have explained to you what we've been working on in this room? jokerdino mentioned to me that I could use this query which finds questions that have an answer by the OP but no upvoted or accepted answers to do cleanup

brb...

@Zanna Yes, I was somewhat exaggerating in saying I don't know what Trello is--I've read the guide and visited the Trello board. But I still don't really "get" Trello, and I haven't been using it yet in my own cleanup efforts.

I'd been meaning for a while to ask you if you recommend I do so, and my thought about having lists of questions that look like they should have a CW answer to show a solution indicated in non-answer activity reminded me that I should probably be using Trello.

haha I assumed all that, but your exaggeration made me think I was wrong

I sort of wish I had waited to clarify until after you had continued saying what you were going to say :), because I suspect it was going to include information that I actually do not know but should. Like I said, Trello isn't something I've used before (except in the sense that I've browsed the cleanup board a little bit) or that I feel all that comfortable using yet.

It has a lot of features... imho you can just approximate a design at first and adapt it to your workflow

Are there particular aspects of the current effort that require attention, that you would suggest I might want to work on?

@EliahKagan the To Be Reviewed bit is the most fun. Less fun is Pending / Unsure / Deferred. After I've been through that, I'm left with Skipped By Z, which is even less fun. It depends on where we are in the cycle what needs attention. We just started a new cycle, so nearly everything is in To Be Reviewed. But a (usually) easy job is checking the ones I've upvoted (the green ones) to see if the upvotes are OK. If you agree with them you can just archive the card

I think I'm going to close FF and do my paid work :/

later o/

Cya!

resistance is short-lived...

Do we have a question about how to restore desktop functionality after switching from Nautilus to Thunar? I suspect the part of Why does the removal of this nautilus security threat cause the desktop background to go black? that the OP most wants answered is a duplicate of something, but I haven't found it.

I'm not aware of such a question, but we have so many questions I've never seen :S

Actually, given the method they've just said worked, I'm not sure it would really be a duplicate of that or that I know enough about the topic to be able to judge.

I think this question is clear, but a duplicate.

I voted to leave open earlier as I agree it's not unclear. Glad there is an answer :)

oh majority already voted unclear... but I will cast my vote :S

I see better what you mean from before about it looking like everyone voted the same way. I guess it's just for off-topic closures that it lists the majority and makes it possible (because off-topic sub-reasons show their voters under them).

If you're the one who suggested the dupe, people can see you didn't vote that way I guess

@Zanna I don't think there's any reason for that question to have 14.04

lol gotta love unncessary version tags

👍

@Zanna lol we edited that post 2 seconds apart :D

oops

did they perhaps use a * and fail to mention it?