I work with computers. They regularly frustrate the hell out of me. This is where I will vent, and where possible outline solutions as I find them.
Google shits me --DonovanBaarda, Sun, 14 Jan 2007 12:42:04 +0000 reply
I know it's not really Google's fault, but once apon a time I used to be able to cut and past an error message into the Google search dialog and find the solution. Now I find thousands of half-arsed posts asking for help for something similar with no solution at all, or at best some clueless newbies half-arsed busted suggestion that solved his not-related-at-all problem.
Galeon shits me --DonovanBaarda, Sun, 14 Jan 2007 13:00:03 +0000 reply
Was just half-way through writing a rant on gnome-cups-manager, tried a print preview and it opened it in a tab and turned off all my toolbars. I couldn't find any way to turn them back on. In attempting to restore them by dragging tabs into a new window that had the toolbars, it froze my whole X session so I had to kill it, loosing all my rant typing.
gnome-cups-manager shits me --DonovanBaarda, Sun, 14 Jan 2007 13:04:46 +0000 reply
Setting up an epson USB printer under Debian using gnome-cups-manager. All went well until printing the Test Page, at which point the job just stalls with "Stopped: job-stopped". Using the cups web interface at http://localhost:631/ the test page prints fine, it's only screwed for gnome-cups-manager. It appears that printing from other apps works OK, but there are some margin issues that need fixing... I've updated the bug report at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=383785
Unity Shits me --DonovanBaarda, Mon, 13 Jun 2011 13:33:07 -0400 reply
The new Unity UI for Ubuntu annoys the hell out of me... back to the Gnome classic interface for me. I've never been a big fan of apple's global menu idea, but can understand why it might make sense, but the main thing I hate is the lack of hierarchical menus. They seem to have decided hierarchies are too hard, lets just show a flat list of popular icons and make the rest searchable. The problem with this is it's not discoverable. I can't just browse around a logical hierarchy and find what I want or find out it's not there. The flat icons are only a fraction of what's possible, and the search dialog is so open ended I never know if I just didn't find the right search terms. I worry about a whole new generation of computer users who don't understand hierarchies as a way of organizing data.
Gnome Classic Flashback Mate Cinamon/WTF! --DonovanBaarda, Wed, 22 Oct 2014 14:18:16 +1100 reply
The year of the Linux desktop was so close and is receding into a fragmented mess. We still have all the not-gnome-desktops, but now Gnome forks are trying to outnumber them. Clearly Gnome3 was a mistake, because we now have not 1 but 4 different re-implementations of the old Gnome2 interface. Mate I can understand a little bit as Gnome2 lives on, and Cinamon as lets do Gome3 right. But why do we need two more gnome2-done-with-gnome3 "Classic" and "Flashback"? I've tried most of the new gnomes and within a day I'm finding that they are mostly OK and very similar, but each have some brokenness that is a regression on what I had with Gnome2.
Trusty Gnome Flashback rendermess --DonovanBaarda, Wed, 22 Oct 2014 14:22:47 +1100 reply
It seems gnome-terminal in Gnome Flashback on Ubuntu Trusty has some strange rendering bug where the terminal will flash/toggle between different tabs and/or old views over all or part of the screen (where it overlaps with a window behind it). C'mon people! This is basic draw shit on the screen stuff... if you can't get that right, why am I going to use your desktop. Come back to me when you have something that works.
Cinamon Themes? --DonovanBaarda, Wed, 22 Oct 2014 14:42:07 +1100 reply
What retards design the theming stuff for these desktops? Why does the default theme have to be so shit you are required to find something else? What idiot makes control icons 1/20th the size of the button they are in. WTF does that dot mean? Is this like traffic-lights for colour-blind people; you are supposed to know what they mean by the position they are in? Why put round buttons in a square bit of screen? I hate magic popup controls, particularly your stupid scrollbars. But even worse, WTF does selecting a "theme" do? It seems to only affect the panel. All the window borders/controls/etc have to be separately changed. Listen: How to do "Themes" right;
- Themes are for the whole desktop, never just particular apps or parts of the desktop. I want a single consistent interface for everything, all the time. And don't fucking change them all the time.
- Themes should include all the desktop related settings that you can set in one go by selecting the theme, and yes, that includes sounds. I don't want to waste whole days fiddling with all the fucking settings. I just want to choose a good theme and have all the settings done right.
- It should be possible to override individual settings of the theme. The possible values for each settings should include "default" meaning use whatever the theme has.
- Complex collections of settings can be done using "sub-themes". For example the "mycool" desktop theme can specify the "mybeeps" sound theme. I can override the whole sound theme with "yourbeeps" and/or override the individual "sizeup" sound.
LXDE lxterminal login shells... NOT! --DonovanBaarda, Mon, 17 Nov 2014 13:47:54 +1100 reply
If you don't have a login shell in lxterminal, your .profile and/or .bash_profile will not be sourced. The lxterminal manpage will tell you that -l gives you a login terminal, but this also changes to use /bin/sh instead of bash. So, right click on the menu item, click "properties; Desktop Entry", and change the command to:
lxterminal --geometry=160x75 -e "bash -il"
Note if you have copied this menu item to any panel "Application Launch Bar" you will need to remove and re-add it to get the changes. However, annoyingly this will only apply to the first tab created when lxterminal is started. Any additional tabs opened will not use the -e or -l flags. The only currently working fix is a nasty hack in your .bashrc to force a login shell:
# If running interactively, then:
if [ "$PS1" ]; then
# If .bash_profile has not been sourced exec a bash login shell instead.
[ -v PROFILE_DONE ] || exec bash -il "$@"
...
See http://sf.net/p/lxde/bugs/701 and http://sf.net/p/lxde/bugs/700 I filed against lxterminal about this.
LXDE lxpanel controls. --DonovanBaarda, Mon, 17 Nov 2014 14:05:34 +1100 reply
The lxpanel controls seem to often be hard-coded to particular programs/args. The volume control seems to insist on using gnome-sound-applet (Ubuntu?), which doesn't work, or alsamixer (Debian?) which kinda works but is an ugly text app, and neither are as good as pavucontrol for pulseaudio. The lock screen applet seems to be -xscreensaver-command -lock, which doesn't work if you are using gnome-screensaver or want to use light-lock. Fortunately they seem to rely on the PATH to find them, so the easiest fix I've found is to create the following symlinks in /usr/local/bin:
$ dl /usr/local/bin ... lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Nov 14 10:52 gnome-sound-applet -> /usr/bin/pavucontrol* lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Oct 23 18:02 xscreensaver-command -> /usr/bin/lxlock*
There does seem to be an lxsession-default-apps configuration utility for setting the commands to use for things like this, but it's very confusing and unclear if it actually does anything. Ideally there should be some sort of single config settings/tool that sets the default programs/commands for all the standard things.