[HOWTO] Fixing Chromium on Linux Mint Debian Edition with KDE SC 4.7.2

Yesterday I wrote about updating to KDE SC 4.7.2 and the fact that Chromium broke thanks to a long known issue in Debian testing repos. My original fix was to install Google Chrome, but that wasn’t that great of a fix because I really want to run Chromium, not Chrome. Although running Chrome seems to fix the problem of missing the first character of Facebook status updates, which is a royal PITA. Today wayne128 shared a fix he uses to get past the “Aw snap!” messages.

NOTE: Please note that this fix uses an unusual source for getting the updated Chromium packages. If you add this source to your sources.list please disable it once you get Chromium installed to prevent other breakages.

The fix is to use a repository for aptosid. Before we add the repo let’s make a backup of your sources.list.

kdesudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.backup

Now open sources.list by running this command in your terminal

sudo kate /etc/apt/sources.list

Here’s the repo to add at the bottom of the list:

deb http://oscar.aptosid.com/debian/ sid main fix.main
#deb-src http://oscar.aptosid.com/debian/ sid main fix.main

You can leave the source code entry commented out or you can enable it by removing the “#” at the start of the line. Save and close the file and let’s get your package list updated.

sudo apt-get update

Let’s check to make sure your system can see the right version by running apt-cache policy chromium in your terminal. No sudo is needed for this command. You can ignore the version listed for Installed but the Candidate version should match this

~$ apt-cache policy chromium
chromium:
Installed: 15.0.874.106~r107270-1+c0.aptosid.1
Candidate: 15.0.874.106~r107270-1+c0.aptosid.1
Version table:
*** 15.0.874.106~r107270-1+c0.aptosid.1 0
500 http://oscar.aptosid.com/debian/ sid/fix.main amd64 Packages
500 ftp://ftp.spline.de/pub/aptosid/debian/ sid/fix.main amd64 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
15.0.874.106~r107270-1 0
500 http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable/main amd64 Packages
14.0.835.202~r103287-1 0
500 http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing/main amd64 Packages
~$

If the candidate version matches you’re ready to take the next step. If you already have Chromium (the browser) installed run sudo apt-get upgrade and make sure chromium is available to be upgraded.  Otherwise run sudo pat-get install chromium in your terminal. Either way you get Chromium 15.0.874.106~r107270-1+c0.aptosid.1 you can now launch it and be able to use the browser instead of being greeted with “Aw snap!” on every tab you open.

You’re almost done with the task. Before you go back to your web surfing open sources.list again and comment the lines you’ve added out by putting “#” at the start of each line. That way you won’t have to worry about getting prompted about updates you don’t need.  When Chromium gets fixed in Debian it should make the aptosid repos unnecessary, and if Debian updates it and you end up with the error messages again it will be an easy process of uncommenting the lines, getting aptosid’s newest packages and commenting them out again.

You can see wayne1287′s post itself on the Linux Mint Forums.

On a side note, you’ll see a number of packages being held back, and I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m not sure why the packages are being held back but I haven’t missed any held back package since I’ve done these updates. (If someone knows why they’re held back please leave it in the comments so we can get the info.) Updating and upgrading in the terminal will keep some packages held back but if you select all the updates in Synaptic they’ll be installed so I wouldn’t update with Synaptic if you’re running KDE SC 4.7.2 on Linux Mint.

[HOWTO] Get KDE SC 4.7.2 on Linux Mint Debian Edition, and a fix to the LMDE Chromium issue

[Updated 5 December to include an additional pair of apps  the broke with the upgrade. - Peng]

I love being able to run KDE on Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), even if it is just KDE 4.6.5. I was able to install it without jumping through any hoops or using any repositories not counted among in the default Linux Mint software repos. Boo had been working on getting Linux Mint 11 KDE ready for release, but before we could get to a release candidate The Powers That Be realized that a ton of work would be needed to get Mint 11 KDE, based on Kubuntu, ready for release, and that rather than fix the problems they’d move Mint KDE to the LMDE base. Before that could start clem, the founder of Linux Mint, had to get LMDE Update Pack 3 released to the user base, and he needed to get Mint 12 out. Unfortunately before Mint 12 was released boo found that he couldn’t continue being the lead maintainer of Mint KDE any longer, so now all the work of getting LMDE KDE ready falls on clem’s plate, along with everything else he has to do.

But back in August I noticed a thread on the Linux Mint Forums called “KDE SC 4.7.2 enters Debian (only amd64).” Since Kathryn runs the amd64 version LMDE I was eager to get KDE 4.7.2, and all I needed to do first was get some other work out of the way and have some time to make sure the updates I would get wouldn’t break my system. This is especially important since the first step is to upgrade to the Debian Testing repos rather than using the Linux Mint Incoming repos and I was already seeing posts in a thread about broken apps in Testing upgrades. This wasn’t that big of a problem to me because I’ve run nightly and testing builds of software before and knew how to be careful. But there was a huge issue in the fact that I couldn’t find the information I needed to switch to the testing repos, the first step in getting ready to get KDE 4.7.2. Luckily GeneC gave me the information I was looking for, and since it was so hard to find I’m going to list the steps you need if you want to get KDE 4.7.2, or even just get packages from Debian Testing rather than even LMDE incoming.

Important: Please read the entire post and make sure you understand what you’ll be doing and have backed up your system before performing any of the steps I lay out. I’d hate to get you partway to the new KDE and have you stuck with something you don’t understand. Also, the KDE 4.7.2 update is a semi-official Debian-kde build so you’ll be using different repositories to get it. All the information on this release of KDE 4.7.2 is available on the qt-kde Debian site.

Disclaimer: These steps are not to be taken lightly. There is a very good chance that you may get an upgrade that breaks your system, leaving you to hunt for a fix (if there is one) or even having to reinstall LMDE all over again. If you’re not not comfortable with the risk of completely wrecking your computer don’t perform these steps. And even if you are willing to take that very real risk, check the latest posts in this thread on the Linux Mint Forums to see what problems are cropping up lately. Even if the coast looks clear think long and hard about taking these steps on the computer you use on a daily basis. And of course don’t forget the most important step: Back up your system before doing any of this.

You’re still here? You must be a glutton for punishment, and I’m not even going to make too many puns. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) After you’ve backed up your system (I’m not kidding about that step), start by making sure your system is up to date by running this in your terminal:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

When you have made sure your system is up to date you need to back up your sources.list file before you start changing anything there. An easy way to backup the file is by running this command in a terminal

kdesudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.backup

Now open sources.list by running this command in your terminal

sudo kate /etc/apt/sources.list

Your current sources.list should contain entries very close to this:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/incoming testing main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/incoming/security testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/incoming/multimedia testing main non-free

Comment out those lines, except for the very first line, by putting “#” as the very first character in each line (except the one for packages.linuxmint.com). Before you can snag the new KDE 4.7.2 packages you need to upgrade your system to use the Linux Mint Sid (testing) repos. First let’s get you updated to the Linux Mint Incoming repos. To do that add these lines at the bottom of your sources.list.

deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/incoming testing main contrib non-free
deb-src http://debian.linuxmint.com/incoming testing main contrib non-free

Save the file and update your package list and software again, and let’s apply the first batch of updates if you don’t have them already. Run this command in your terminal

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

The upgrade could take some time, so have some coffee or a soda, and a smoke if you are part of the wonderful group of folks on the planet that smoke. Don’t go too far though because the process will have some questions about the upgrades for you to answer. When it’s done you will probably need to apply more updates after rebooting your system. Why reboot your system? You may be getting updates that can only be applied with a system reboot, the only kind of updates and installs in Linux that require a reboot, unlike Windows’ insistence on reboots after installing anything. You may also have other updates waiting for you after the reboot, and apply them with

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Make sure you’re happy with your system after the updates, and don’t apply any more updates from this post until you’re happy with how your system is operating. Did something break already? It’s time to hunt down what got broken and how to fix it. Once you are completely up to date with incoming and happy with your system you need to update your system to Mint Sid (unstable testing). Here’s where you can really hose your system, so don’t do the steps below unless you’re willing to risk making your system completely unusable. Ready to take the risk? Comment out the lines for the Testing repo and add these lines at the bottom of your sources.list

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import backport
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org sid main non-free
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

Update and upgrade again, and again this could take some time and it could have some questions for you to answer again. Reboot your system after it’s done because once again you’ve got updates that can’t be applied and used until you reboot your system. Again, make sure you’re happy with how your system operates, and if you’re not bookmark this page and come back to it after you’ve resolved the problems you’ve discovered.

/me fires up the David Wax Museum and enjoys their tunes while you take care of your new issues

Welcome back. Everything copacetic now? Cool. Let’s get you KDE 4.7.2. Backup your sources list again, and if you’ve done other things since you got Sid installed backup your system again, just to be on the safe side. Like I said at the top of the post, this update isn’t coming from the standard Debian repos, so you’ll need to add the appropriate repos to your sources.list file. Open the file and see if you have the following lines, and if so remove them.

deb http://qt-kde.debian.net/debian experimental-snapshots main
deb-src http://qt-kde.debian.net/debian experimental-snapshots main

deb http://qt-kde2.debian.net/debian experimental-snapshots main
deb-src http://qt-kde2.debian.net/debian experimental-snapshots main

Update your system again with

sudo apt-get update

and let’s tell your system that the packages from those repos are trusted. Run this line in your terminal

sudo apt-get install pkg-kde-archive-keyring

Once it’s installed update your package list and make sure your system is updated one more time with

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Everything green? Let’s get you upgraded to KDE 4.7.2. This update is different from most upgrades you run, including dist-upgrades. This time you want to run

sudo apt-get -t experimental-snapshots dist-upgrade

This upgrade could be the longest of the bunch, and you’ll definitely need to stay close by to answer some questions the upgrade process will ask you. When it’s all done go ahead and do one more reboot to apply the last set of upgrades. When you log back in your desktop may not look all that different, but checking About KDE in System Settings will have a new version number for you to see. Here are a pair of screenshots of my system after the upgrade.

Clean

Dirty

Updated 5 December: It turns out two other apps died with this upgrade. Electric Sheep broke because I had to reinstall xscreensaver. The wallpaper finder and changer app Webilder also broke, but this is due to the fact that python-appindicator is not available in my current repos. Unfortunately I don’t see a way to fix it

What the hell happened to my Chromium???

There’s one big casualty in the upgrade process to KDE 4.7.2, and that’s the fact that the Chromium browser is borked. Every time you launch chromium-browser all your pages show the “Snap!” error, even the preferences page. It’s a known issue and to fix it you’ll have to install Google Chrome instead. The Google Linux repos are borked so you’ll have to install the it manually. Go to the Google Chrome website and download the package. Open the directory you downloaded it into and run this command in Terminal

sudo dpkg-i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

You can also install the package from Dolphin by double-clicking it, but if it opens in Ark you need to install a package.

sudo apt-get install gdebi-kde

That package will let you install packages with a graphical installer. Many Linux hate using graphical package installers like this, but it’s a matter of personal preference. I love being able to use Gdebi and had to do some searching to find it when I installed KDE on top of LMDE.

There’s one more thing to to before you launch Chrome for the first time. You’ll want to import your Chromium settings into Chrome, but there’s no settings import option that I was able to find. Luckily it’s easy to do. Just copy everything from ~/.config/chromium/ into ~/.config/google-chrome and all of your settings from Chromium will be available in Chrome, including your passwords, cookies, extensions and search engine settings.

A great app featured on Make Tech Easier: wxBanker

Yesterday the good folks over at Make Tech Easier, a website with some very nice tutorials for technology users on all platforms, wrote a post called Manage Your Finances (Simply) in Linux with wxBanker. I’ve used wxBanker to help me manage my budget when I had a desktop computer (mine died several months ago and I now run Linux Mint KDE on a persistent LiveUSB) and I think the only thing I dislike about it is that it’s only available for Linux users. It may not have all the bells and whistles of apps you may see on Windows or the MacOS but if you’re one of the growing numbers who run Linux I can’t recommend it enough. It’s readily available on Ubuntu and it’s even in the Software manager on Linux Mint.

Rather than rehash what the article says, including how to get wxBanker installed, I’ll just point you to the article on Make Tech Easier. Their tutorials are always good whether you’re a noobie or an old hand, complete with screenshots to help you see how things should look on your system. You may even find that you want to subscribe to their daily newsletter and that’s not a bad idea at all.

Recover files deleted in Linux, as well as Windows and MacOS

I did something really stupid today. My digital media player, an iriver E100, always shows files in the order they physically appear on the drive unless you run the Windows app to sort them specific ways. Being a Linux user I can’t run iriver’s Plus app, which means that if I want files to show up in a specific order I have to copy them to the device in that order. Luckily Linux Mint 10 KDE does a great job of copying files over alphabetically in Dolphin if I have the directory sorted by name.

I recently changed how I stored podcasts from NPR shows and the directory listing became pretty jumbled so I copied the files to a hard drive partition so i could blow them away on the E100 and copy them back over. Except I didn’t pay attention to the status notifier and blew away the files on the player before they were finished copying. Crap! Needless to say I stopped doing anything except to look for a tool to recover those files.

I ran a query in CrunchBang’s Ubuntu Search Engine (ok, it took a few tries) and found info on using Foremost and recoverjpeg on the Data Recovery page on Ubuntu’s documentation site. I tried both of them but couldn’t figure out how to use them, so I looked through my search results some more. I found a post on the Ubuntu Forums about undeleting files on FAT32 partitions which recommends TestDisk, a command-line app for recovering lost partitions and files that’s available for Linux, Windows and even DOS and the MacOS.

Wow. Not only is it already on my Mint 10 KDE LiveUSB, but it’s so easy I can’t believe it took me so long to find it. On TestDisk’s wiki page for undeleting files from FAT partitions I found step by step instructions, complete with screenshots, for getting the files I so stupidly deleted. The best part? I could recover deleted directories with the files inside them! I couldn’t just undelete my NPR directory since it wasn’t deleted, but I could go one line at a time and recover each file and directory. I think the hardest part was to remember to select the specific location to store the recovered files but once I did I could simply hit C to copy each entry and it would even put the files in the directory structure.

Once I recovered all of the files and directories I did need to go through the directories and kill the older files I had previously deleted but after that I was ready to copy the files back to my E100.

TestDisk is one of the best utilities I’ve ever found, and now that I know about it I plan on using it any time I stupidly delete folders I mean to keep. Hopefully it won’t happen too often but I’m thrilled to know there’s a tool that’s just what the penguin ordered for the task.

I found another great Linux podcast you guys should check out

Since I stopped running Ubuntu Linux I found myself looking for some new Linux podcasts to listen to. Luckily I discovered mintCast, a great podcast for all users of Linux by folks who run Linux Mint. It comes out most every Monday, and despite being over an hour long (which my digital media player doesn’t seem to like too much) it’s always filled with news I can use. Each show starts out with news for the Linux community, which makes it even better.

Last week’s show, which I was finally able to listen to over the weekend, included an interview with Larry Bushey of the Going Linux podcast. Going Linux is built on the premise that their users are not Linux techies, in fact they give information as if their listeners have never even fired up a LiveCD which is great for folks who are just looking at Linux for the first time.

Of course it made me want to check out the latest Going Linux podcast, a listener feedback show. Going Linux is recorded far enough in advance that they don’t include a news segment, but I have to say that it’s a damned nice podcast whether you’re already a Linux user or just considering checking out our favorite penguin.

I also found a podcast called The Linux Tech Show, which I just downloaded and wanted to let everyone know about since I haven’t found many good Linux podcasts that aren’t either Ubuntu or Gnome based.

My other podcasts

Speaking of podcasts, I have a list of podcasts I regularly check, if not download, on a daily or weekly basis. A most of them are daily news show podcasts from public radio shows I enjoy on WBUR but there a few entertainment shows (most but not all are from public radio shows) that I make a point of snagging so I don’t miss them. I’m going to give links to the home pages for each of them for you to check them out for yourselves. Most of them are available on iTunes but each one has ways to download or subscribe via a basic RSS feed so anyone can enjoy them.

Weekly Podcasts:

• mintCast – usually comes out on Mondays
• The Drum Literary Magazine - I heard about this “literary magazine for your ears” through Radio Boston. They don’t have a traditional podcast but every week they post a new audio file every week. As I was checking my email today I found a message telling me that this week’s post is  Jonathan Levy Wainscoting IV narrating Askold Melnyczuk’s novel-in-progress Excerpts from SMEDLEY’s Secret Guide to World Literature.
• The Splendid Table – A weekly show from American Public Media for “people who love to ear”, host Lynne Rosetto Kasper not only talks to people who know about creating good food but also takes questions from listeners. The questions run the gamut from how to prepare something to what goes with the food item in question. I’ve started downloading it every week since my commute has changed to while it’s on the air on WBUR every Saturday at 6pm. I always learn something new from Lynne, and this past week’s show is even better with an interview with the guys from the…
• Dinner Party Download (DPD) – Every Friday Rico Gagliano and Brendan Francis Newnam provide info that “helps you win the dinner party.” APM’s Marketplace often features the Small Talk segment, stories that didn’t quite make the news shows in the preceding week, and the DPD also give us an Icebreaker (a joke), a History Lesson with Booze (something that happened in the past and a drink to serve with the info), a Guest of Honor (this week was Randy Newman), a Main Course, and even a song to listen to while going to or from your dinner party. The DPD just celebrated their 100th episode, showing that they have a damned good idea that can only get better with age.
• Weekends on All Things Considered – NPR’s award-winning All Things Considered has long been known for looking at a variety of things, and as I’ve heard listener feedback about topics we’re amazed they even looked at (I won’t even try to name some since you may want to hear things I’ve heard more than enough about), but they always remind us that the show isn’t Some Things Considered. The podcast is kind of a “Best Of” for the weekend shows, which is a great way to catch stories you may have missed, although the best way to catch up on things is still by checking the show rundowns on the main page. New episodes are posted Sunday nights.
• The Moth – The Moth is an organization that was created to share “true stories told live”, in regular events at their stages in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit, as well as at their tour stops all over the country, such as events in New Orleans in cooperation with the USA Network’s Characters Unite program.  The Moth has redesigned their website and made it harder to find their podcast unless you use iTunes, but they do make it easy to find The Moth Radio Hour, a monthly public radio series that shares some of the incredible stories that have been shared. The podcast is updated every Monday.
• Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! (WWDTM) – The NPR news quiz from WBEZ in Chicago is always good for laughs, and between their celebrity panel and each week’s special guest I dare you to not enjoy their hour long show. Among the weekly segments are Who’s Carl (Kassell) This Week?,  Bluff The Listener and Limericks, and the listener winners in each segment have a chance to win Carl Kassell’s voice on their answering machine. WBUR airs it multiple times, but my commute is now while they give the show a final airing on Sunday evenings so I snag the podcast so I don’t miss anything. The podcast is posted each Saturday at about 5pm (ET).
• How To Do Everything – Produced by Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag of WWDTM takes your questions about how to do things and gets answers for them. Recent questions include how to get soap out of your eyes in space, how to treat jellyfish stings and how to keep bees from stinging you. The podcast doesn’t have regular release days like other podcasts, but I start checking midweek. You can also follow them on Twitter or Facebook to get notified when new episodes are available.
• Studio 360 – This weekly pop culture podcast looks at music, movies, television, art, books, design, performance and even science and technology. Another production of WNYC, this show quickly became a Must Hear, and with being shuffled around the WBUR schedule I am glad to be able to just get the podcast and hear it every week.
• Radiolab – Yet another WNYC production, Radiolab is an incredible way to shine a light on things you may not have thought about, but it uses sound as big tool to use rather than just having people talk. I discovered the show over a year ago when I stumbled on an episode called Animal Blessings that had an incredible piece about whales. They only produce a limited number of hour-long shows so it’s not on the air as often as Studio 360, but their hour-long podcasts are worth hearing as soon as they come out, and they also produce shorts that are welcome as you wait for full podcasts.
• On The Media – More of a news show than an entertainment show, this program from WNYC in New York looks at how the media is covering stories in the news. There are no sacred cows, in fact I discovered the show when they looked at the issue of bias in NPR’s news coverage.
• This American Life – Another show from WBEZ, I suspect most folk have heard of the television and radio show with Ira Glass. It’s hard to describe the show, but each week’s show has a theme that they investigate. This week the topic is First Contact, and recent shows have looked at The Old Boys Network, The Psychopath Test and Infidelity. New podcasts are posted late in the weekend, although I can’t see exactly when.

Daily Podcasts

• WBUR Daily News Update - While you can easily go to the website for NPR’s Morning Edition to check the stories covered on the national level this WBUR podcast compiles some of the local stories covered by Bob Oakes and the WBUR news team.
• On Point – Five days a week Tom Ashcroft takes two hours to look at a wide range of topics and letting callers add their own views. The first hour usually looks at a more hard news story while the second hour tends to take a lighter side. Produced at WBUR in Boston, the live show is on from 10am to noon each weekday with a repeat starting at 7pm, but there are often days when I miss parts of shows I really want to hear despite the two airings so I am glad to be able to turn to their podcasts. Updates are available weekdays at 4pm ET.
• Here & Now – Another daily from WBUR, Robin Young looks at multiple topics every hour from the things that are in the news in the middle of the day. Their partnership with the BBC has expanded their ability to look at what’s going on the world over.
• Fresh Air – Terry Gross hosts this Peabody Award-wining daily radio magazine for contemporary arts and issues from WHYY in Philadelphia. New episodes are available weeknights at 10:30pm ET.
• Talk of the Nation (TotN)  - Monday through Thursday Neil Conan hosts the third program actually produced by NPR. (Morning Edition and All Things Considered are the other two shows produced by the network itself rather than by affiliate stations.) Neil hosts this show designed as “a part of the national conversation,” and everyone is given a chance to weigh in on topics at hand, whether they be experts that the show brig on the air or listeners who call in. Wednesday shows include the Political Junkie, which includes a chance to win TotN “No Prize” t-shirts, and Fridays the show is handed off to Ira Flatow and the Science Friday staff. Five days a week the show is two hours long, so if your local station is like WBUR and only airs an hour of the show the podcasts are great ways to get any or all of the segments from a given day.
• Radio Boston – This local show hosted by Meghna Chakrabarti and Anthony Brooks was created to be a local version of shows like On Point and Talk of the Nation, and since it became a daily show last May Meghna and Anthony have given us a wealth of information on things going on in the Boston area. Each show includes a Today’s Talker that let the listeners chime in to help us understand the topics even better than if it were just Meghna, Anthony and the experts alone. New episodes go up around 5pm ET.
• Marketplace – You’d think since I don’t have much money to play with in the financial markets I wouldn’t be that interested in a show that is centered on financial news but Senior Editor Kai Ryssdal and the rest of the marketplace team look at not only what’s going on in the financial world but they also look at how it impacts the individuals, whether they live in America or in another country. Their weekend show, Marketplace Money, is an even better way to see how the choices in the world of finance impact us, and they also have podcasts for midday news and tech news. The fact that many Fridays they bring in the Small Talk segment from DPD just make a damned good show even better.

Sorry about the Jabba-sized post, but when I started writing it I didn’t realize it would end up being such a long post. Is there a podcast you guys love getting that I missed? Let us know in the comments.

Help spread the word about Linux Mint KDE

You may have noticed some new images in the sidebar, although one of them is missing and had to be fixed  After looking at making the move to KDE4 back in July I was amazed at how much nicer it was than when I looked at KDE3 a few years ago, back when I first decided it was time to kick Windows to the curb. At the recommendations of Henry and Mekenzie (on that post) I ended up moving to KDE, and after using Kubuntu for a bit I moved to Linux Mint 9 KDE. It didn’t take long for me to become a very happy Linux Mint KDE user. There isn’t an upgrade to use the latest packages that come with Kubuntu 10.10 yet (Mint is based on the *Ubuntu family of distros) but that’s simply because Mint doesn’t release updates based on a calendar date, preferring instead to make sure it’s as ready and bug-free as it can be before they release it. Mint 10 “Julia” (GNOME) was released on the 12th but the KDE version has a bit more work to be done. I’m actually fine with that and I’m waiting as patiently as I can.

Nanci has also made the move to Mint KDE and over the weekend we decided it was time to add some image links to our sidebar to promote both the KDE Software Compilation and the specific GNU/Linux distribution we use. There are already a number of images people can use to promote KDE but there are few images for promoting Mint, with even fewer promoting the KDE flavor of Mint. I ended up creating a pair of images that can be used for promoting Linux Mint. Both images measure 280×175 pixels to fit in the sidebar of our blog although I may be able to create other sizes if interest warrants.

MintKDEpromo_Dew_280x175.png

MintKDEpromo_Emotion_280x175.png

Both images are free to use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Simply right click on either (or both) image and select Save As… and them post them on your blog, Facebook page, etc. I recommend having the link for the images go to the Linux Mint website.

You can also get the Gimp file I used to create the image if you’d like to modify the image for your own use or use it as the basis for a new image. Just leave me a comment with your email address in the proper field (which will be available to Nanci and I but won’t be visible to anyone else) and I’ll email it to you.

Credits

The images are created with images from a few different sources and I want to make sure I give credit where it’s due.

• The logo for Mint KDE came from the Mint-KDE icon theme included with my Mint 9 KDE installation
• The KDE logo came from the KDE Clipart page
• The text is in the formintElegance Medium font that I found in this post on the Mint Forums
• The two background images are resized wallpaper from the Emotion wallpaper set and from Zwopper’s most excellent Unbranded Dew package.

Long live the Mint!

[HOWTO] Quick Tip: Opening Adobe Illustrator files in Linux

A couple of weeks I was looking for a good graphic of the LA Dodgers’ logo to use as a “bug” for wallpapers I make from images from Dodgers games and I found a nice pack of vectors for all the MLB teams. There was just one problem. It was an Adobe Illustrator image file with an .ai filename extension. How the hell do you open those in Linux? After doing a bit of searching I found ai2svg, a script that converts .ai files to .svg files that Inkscape can open without a problem.

Today I was checking for updates to threads I follow at the Ubuntu Forums and found some great news from davim in the thread for Gloobus, an app that brings an OSX-style “Quicklook” file previewing to Linux, and found some great news.

You can open adobe illustrator files by changing their extention from ai to pdf, gloobus showld [sic] be able to preview .ai files by treating them as pdf files  what do you think?

Hot diggigity damn! Not only do I get a thumbnail of the image in Nautilus but I was able to import it into Gimp to select just a part of the overall image, such as the Dodgers logo from a page of 40 or so team and league logos.

And for lovers of Gloobus badchoice has asked davim to file a bug to track the feature request.

Yooouge thanks to davim for this incredibly handy tip.

Benjamin Humphrey writes a Must Read article for anyone helping in the Ubuntu Community

One of the things I love about Facebook is that not only can I find some great articles but it gives me more information than Twitter does to help me decide if I actually want to click the link and read the article. Today I saw a link to an article on OMG! Ubuntu! written by Benjamin Humphrey. It was actually posted to Facebook twice, and the first time it gave me just enough info to make me want to read the article.

OMG! Ubuntu! writer Benjamin Humphrey shares his thoughts on Ubuntu’s standard of quality: http://goo.gl/fb/FeGmu

Since I’ve been less than wholly pleased with the upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx I was definitely curious to see what Benjamin has to say. His first paragraph was definitely written to grab the reader’s attention.

Ubuntu lives in a special place between Windows and Mac OS X reserved only for Linux: more shine than Windows, less than OS X, resulting in a steaming pile of mediocrity.

While I loved the Ubuntu experience with version 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon I can’t help noticing that the upgrades have left me less satisfied with each new release. It seems the last two upgrade cycles have been especially aggravating, with applications that I use on a regular basis breaking to the point where I have to find some hoops to jump through to get even a good measure of the function that I used before the upgrade. With the upgrade from 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope to 9.10 Karmic Koala I found that iriverter, an app I use every day to convert video files to take on my iriver E100 digital media player, can no longer read files from my DVDs to convert them to the AVI  format that my E100 can play. And now that I’ve upgraded to 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx my beloved Webilder was borked and I’m having problems just booting my system thanks to changes in how the boot screens are rendered on my Nvidia GeForce 6200 video card. (I just realized I haven’t written a report on my upgrade to lucid yet. I think I was trying to chase down bugs first and I’ve been getting some new bugs in the past week that have taken my attention. I’ll try to write my report this week for those who are still looking for it.)

If you think Benjamin’s article is simply the whining of a user who is being asked to take some extra steps to figure out how to do things you’d be wrong. Benjamin does take Ubuntu devs to task on what I think are some pretty boneheaded errors, including the fact that some of the newer “features” don’t work nearly as easily as advertised and the lack of documentation on how to use one of the features that are supposedly a big selling point for this new release.

If you are one of the programmers that help develop software for Ubuntu you should consider Benjamin’s article, Many hands make the light work; few make it shine, a Must Read. If you don’t develop code but help in the Ubuntu Forums you should consider the article as strongly recommended. In other words, if you come under either of those two groups go read the article now.  If you’re someone who is simply a user of Ubuntu you may want to read it as well, if only to make yourself aware of what Benjamin has to say.

If you’re simply considering trying Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx you may want to read it as well. And then find either an Ubuntu 9.10 Jaunty Jackalope Karmic Joala LiveCD or grab the disk image and burn it yourself. It’s not the newest and “best” release but you will find it supported for longer than any of the older Ubuntu releases. That’s right, I’m not recommending Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx to new users. If those of us who have used Ubuntu for several years are having big problems with it, it would be a mistake to use it as your introduction to the operating system.

Now that I tweet, do I have the best client?

Late last week I finally set up an account on Twitter so I can post share-worthy items I find without waiting to write a links post. Sharing things via Twitter has it’s pros and cons, including the fact that I spend so much time in the am getting caught up on the tweets from the 15+ hours I’ve been away from my comp that it leaves me with even less time for writing links posts. Just today it took well over 2 hours just getting caught up on tweets and re-tweeting that I’m seriously wondering if I have the best Twitter client. I know I can simply use the web-based front end for Twitter, and I do use it for some of the really old(-ish) tweets I haven’t seen, but I really prefer not to tie up my browser like that.

I looked through the Ubuntu Software Center and through both Uboontu and CrunchBang’s Ubuntu Search tools and settled on Gwibber for my primary Twitter client. I really like the fact that it can be themed, although the daily builds doesn’t like the older themes. I also like the fact that I can pull up the tweets from a single user pretty easily, which is extra handy for getting caught up after being AFK for a while. You can’t clear the users you isolate but it comes in handy first thing in the am for obvious reasons.

But Gwibber isn’t prefect, even in the current stable release. To get back to a user you previously isolated tweets from you have to hover your mouse over each icon (the simian heads on the left in my screenshot) to see which user is which, and there doesn’t seem to be much reason in the order the icons appear. Plus every time you do much of anything with a tweet it wants to refresh the list, even if you just mark a tweet as “liked”, as I do for each tweet I retweet so I can find them more easily. It makes doing multiple operations, such as marking as liked and responding to or retweeting, a real pain in the rear because it may want to refresh your list, taking the tweet you’re looking for out of the current view. If you’re looking at older tweets and retweet something you have to scroll back down, even if you’ve got the refresh frequency to 10 minutes.

I also finding Gwibber lagging my arse off so getting back to where I was just before retweeting can take quite a bit of time. I know it may be due to memory requirements of Chromium, with it’s failure to clear the cache after closing tabs, but even without Chromium open, or even freshly started before starting a Twitter session, Gwibber seems to flow through molasses.  Thanks to the lag I checked out the Pino client when I saw it mentioned on Twitter. It takes it’s look from the current active theme so it doesn’t always look as nice as Gwibber does, and it does seem to have a little more flexibility than Gwibber has in terms of interacting with each tweet, but I keep going back to Gwibber, despite the immense lag.

Does anyone know of a better Twitter client I should check out? It needs to work on GNU/Linux without WINE, so Windows apps are useless for this task, and I’d prefer an app that has packages for Ubuntu 9.10 so I don’t have to compile it. If it can use the lists I’ve set up in Twitter it’s all the better.

I look forward to hearing your suggestions, and feel free to let me know @BostonPeng on Twitter. I love getting tweets that mention me, as well as getting direct messages in Twitter. What can I say? I’m already a bit of a Twitter addict.

How did that happen over just a few days and why wasn’t I warned that this would happen?

Has wicd gone stupid? There’s an easy fix

[I added a jump on this post as well for the same reason as for the poll post. -Peng]

If you use wireless networking in GNU/Linux it’s a good chance that you use wicd. When I switched from  a regular wired network connection to using the Linksys WUSB600N WiFi networking adapter back in January I had a devil of a time getting the wireless up and running so I ended up grabbing wicd and was finally able to get it running. The only problem is that a few months ago our wireless router went stupid on us, and in the process of switching over to the wired connection my settings for wicd got borked.