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Topic: General Unix/Linux Thread (Read 120508 times)

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #125 –
Note to self (and perhaps others): ARandR is significantly more useful as a graphical randr configuration utility than the Xfce display manager. Also, in order to properly deal with multiple displays on a Radeon HD 4850, I had to install firmware-linux-nonfree (on Debian). I'm still using the open-source Mesa driver though. Some benchmarks for the open-source drivers vs. binary blobs can be found on Phoronix.

I'll probably swap this card with an R9 270X in a few days for the maximum performance I can get out of this rig.

My biggest performance "problem" now is the HDD on which I installed Windows, but that @#$# isn't touching my nice SSD or my newest (faster) HDD.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #126 –
Oh, I'm getting the Skype thing now. I wonder why I've been able to connect up to earlier this evening, when it seems to be this started happening on August 1. Time to update and hope the experience doesn't go downhill, I guess.

Btw, why didn't they implement a proper notification or something?

Edit: hmm, I can't seem to install it at the moment because of some kind of dependency hell related to the i386 stuff. Hopefully it's just because I'm running Debian testing, although I'd have thought I already had all of Skype's dependencies from 4.2.

Code: [Select]
$ sudo apt-get install libasound2-plugins:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libasound2-plugins:i386 : Depends: libavcodec55:i386 (>= 6:10~beta1~) but it is not going to be installed or
                                    libavcodec-extra-55:i386 (>= 6:10.2) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.


The error message is helpfully mistaken.

Are there any decent Skype alternatives yet? By which I don't mean stuff like Ekiga which requires manual configuration of port forwarding, but something actually usable by the people I want to contact. Like how qBittorrent is actually equivalent to old µTorrent these days and probably superior to present-day µTorrent.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #127 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

Edit: hmm, I can't seem to install it at the moment because of some kind of dependency hell related to the i386 stuff. Hopefully it's just because I'm running Debian testing, although I'd have thought I already had all of Skype's dependencies from 4.2.

One of the things changed in new Skype is the way it uses sound. I don't know the names for the packages, and I care less as time moves on.

Skype is a strictly 32-bit thingy and multilib is a dependency hell all by itself. On my 64-bit installations, Skype frankly fails to stay open for more than two seconds. On 32-bit installation it works, but I will begin to try alternatives now.

Quote from: Frenzie on

Are there any decent Skype alternatives yet? By which I don't mean stuff like Ekiga which requires manual configuration of port forwarding, but something actually usable by the people I want to contact. Like how qBittorrent is actually equivalent to old µTorrent these days and probably superior to present-day µTorrent.

Well, all I have heard thus far is that Ekiga is most usable. If no friend can set it up on their own, take it as an opportunity to go visit the friend and set it up for her :)

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #128 –
Quote from: ersi on
One of the things changed in new Skype is the way it uses sound. I don't know the names for the packages, and I care less as time moves on.

I believe it already used PulseAudio, but the difference is probably that it updated to the latest API or something.

I already have libasound2:i386, but this new Skype also wants libasound2-plugins:i386. Given that I have all those packages in 64-bit I don't know why they'd pose a problem in 32-bit.

I've now started a big cleaning effort. It seems I still had an old mplayer hanging around, which is the kind of thing which might be problematic (although it was 64-bit). Checking among my obsolete packages, I also happened to notice Iceape, which apparently is no more.

If the cleaning effort doesn't work I'll probably just uninstall everything 32-bit (it's not much) and see if that helps. After all, as annoying as it may be, something other than Skype must be to blame.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #129 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

I believe it already used PulseAudio, but the difference is probably that it updated to the latest API or something.

What I remember from the messages I read as installing it, it was the other way around: It dropped support for some kind of older sound library.

I would still blame Skype. The update is not well considered and it's poorly communicated to users and poorly implemented dependency-wise. It's forced in corporate manic panic.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #130 –
I tracked down the problem to a lingering libmp3lame0 1:3.99.5-dmo2 and a libxvidcore4 3:1.3.2-dmo1 from back over a year ago when I had DMO in my sources.list to watch a DVD or two. I "downgraded" these badly versioned packages to the versions from testing, 3.99.5+repack1-3 and 2:1.3.3-1. This particular dependency problem was not a Skype issue.

What is a Skype issue is that it forced my package manager to switch from libavcodec-extra-55 to libavcodec55.

Quote from: libavcodec55
Libav is a complete, cross-platform solution to decode, encode, record,
convert and stream audio and video.

This is the codec library from Libav (both encoding and decoding).

It supports most existing codecs (MPEG, MPEG2, MPEG4, AC3, DV...).


Quote from: libavcodec-extra-55
This package is a replacement for the regular libavcodec55 library package;
it contains the following additional codecs:

* OpenCORE Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) Narrow-Band (Encoder/Decoder)
* OpenCORE Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) Wide-Band (Decoder)
* Android VisualOn AAC (Encoder)
* Android VisualOn Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) Wide-Band (Encoder)

Why did I have the extra package? I have no idea. Do I use any of those codecs? Probably not. But not a single proper Debian package forces any kind of choice.

Skype now has some ugly buttons on top, but besides that it seems to be okay.

Quote from: ersi on
The update is not well considered and it's poorly communicated to users and poorly implemented dependency-wise.

I quite agree. It's ridiculous that it just won't log in all of a sudden. But what corporate panic do you mean? What are they panicking about?

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #131 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

Quote from: ersi on
The update is not well considered and it's poorly communicated to users and poorly implemented dependency-wise.

I quite agree. It's ridiculous that it just won't log in all of a sudden. But what corporate panic do you mean? What are they panicking about?

Since they communicate it poorly, I naturally have no clue what they are panicking about. But I take the forced hasty update along with poor communication as signs of panic :)

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #132 –
Quote from: ersi on
What I remember from the messages I read as installing it, it was the other way around: It dropped support for some kind of older sound library.

Oh yes, it dropped support for ALSA, which seems kind of stupid because why would you drop something which you can support for free by not removing it? They also upgraded PA support. http://blogs.skype.com/2014/06/18/skype-4-3-for-linux/

Quote from: ersi on
Since they communicate it poorly, I naturally have no clue what they are panicking about. But I take the forced hasty update along with poor communication as signs of panic :)

I think it's probably just because Linux is a bit of an afterthought. I believe the whole consolidating MSN/Windows Messenger and Skype into one program was communicated reasonably well on Windows.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #133 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

I believe the whole consolidating MSN/Windows Messenger and Skype into one program was communicated reasonably well on Windows.

And if you haven't noticed, they consolidated Skype into Hotmail.com too. Your Skype history shows up there as you log in. Depending on how you relate to Microsoft, be hilariously happy or devastatingly shocked.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #134 –
I hadn't noticed. My Skype account and MSN account are still separate entities and I never check that e-mail. I would never want to pollute my Skype with all of my MSN junk.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #136 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

I hadn't noticed. My Skype account and MSN account are still separate entities and I never check that e-mail. I would never want to pollute my Skype with all of my MSN junk.

Today MSN has been turned off for me. I started my computer as usual, and Microsoft promptly sent me this e-mail.

Quote from: Microsoft account team
Unusual sign-in activity
We detected something unusual about a recent sign-in to the Microsoft account *****@hotmail.com. To help keep you safe, we required an extra security challenge.
Sign-in details:
Country/region: Unknown
IP address: x.x.x.x
Date: 9/6/2014 12:29 PM (CET)
If this was you, then you can safely ignore this email.
If you're not sure this was you, a malicious user might have your password. Please review your recent activity and we'll help you take corrective action.


The IP address was mine. 12:29 is when I turned on my computer. The "unusual" activity? Simply Pidgin connecting to MSN as it has done for years. The only thing unusual is that Microsoft stopped accepting it.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #137 –
How it MS (eventually) locking out 3rd party software unusual? :left:
Yahoo did the same thing to me years ago ( lock out pidgin, again ) but since I didn't really need the account anymore anyway I couldn't be arsed to do anything about it. Other than deleting it from pidgin that is :right:

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #139 –
After finally having upgraded my eight year old graphics card a few weeks ago, I decided to look into getting VDPAU to work. I understand this should result in less power usage, which is good for the electricity bill. For my Radeon R9 270X, the relevant package was mesa-vdpau-drivers. This in turn gave me the well-known Smurf Flash bug. I could work around this the way I once did back in 2012, but I figured I might as well try to get Fresh Player to work: a Pepper Flash wrapper for browsers like Opera/Presto and Firefox. Debian helpfully provided the package pepperflashplugin-nonfree so you don't have to install Chrome just to get Pepper Flash.

For the installation I don't really have to say anything, except perhaps that for Ubuntu there's a PPA if you're not comfortable compiling. It may work in Debian too, but since I compiled my own I didn't test it.

The Fresh Player Plugin page has very clear compilation instructions. The only thing not included I had to do to get things to work the way I wanted was to create ~/.config/freshwrapper.conf with xinerama_screen = 1 in it. That isn't quite ideal. The real Pepper Flash in Chromium or Opera/Blink automatically and correctly goes fullscreen on the monitor it's on using said monitor's geometry. Still, it ought to suffice.

A benchmark like this (via) runs probably twice as fast in real Pepper Flash as it does in Flash 11.2, but it still seems to run about 1.5 times as fast in the Fresh Player wrapper. If I'm bored I'll try actually running the benchmark instead of getting a quick feel for the FPS. I might also take a look at comparative Windows performance if I can be bothered to install Flash. Then again, that might be more of a comparison between the Linux Mesa Gallium drivers and the Windows binary blob Radeon driver.

PS I'm not sure if VDPAU was worth the trouble by itself. CPU use is quite low both with and without it. I'm not even sure what the power usage impact is of going from e.g. 10% to 6%. Only when playing a 4k video does it seem to have a truly tangible benefit on CPU utilization, from over 40% to about 20% when a lot of stuff is happening in the video.* Still, I'll probably run some extra tests where I'll check out CPU time rather than keeping a manual eye on top. Is there any way to automate that?

* Keep in mind that this percentage is based on 4 independently clocked cores, so 40% just means one of them is probably running at the highest step while 20% may indicate a lower step. Basically it's just hard to tell what exactly is going on.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #140 –
Did you know that with Ctrl+R you could search your Bash history? (via)

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #141 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

Did you know that with Ctrl+R you could search your Bash history? (via)
Indeed, works much better than history redo that I have been messing around with thus far.

What I really miss is to type help and see everything man-style.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #142 –
RISC OS and - to a degree - OpenFirmware have help commands like this :right:

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #143 –
Quote from: ersi on
What I really miss is to type help and see everything man-style.

You mean it'd give you a browseable list of all available man pages or something? I was going to say Yelp (the Gnome help thingy) can do that, but I guess Gnome 3 thought that was much too useful to keep. Maybe Mate's version still can.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #144 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

Quote from: ersi on
What I really miss is to type help and see everything man-style.

You mean it'd give you a browseable list of all available man pages or something?

No. I mean that man bash should give vital basics like Tab completion and the mentioned Ctrl+R up front. Basics should be up front, followed by the set of commands that cannot be uninstalled.

I opened up man bash and tried to read if Ctrl+R is there. Maybe it's this,
Code: [Select]

re-read-init-file (C-x C-r)
	Read in the contents of the inputrc file, and incorporate any bindings or variable assignments found there.

but after reading myself past lots of detailed intricacies of shell scripting, variables and other esoterics, I'm not sure. Also, it has C-x there so it's probably not this. Then it's probably not there at all. So the documentation is incomplete. Yet it should be right up front there among the introductory basics.

Yelp is a graphical thing, an overall help database. This is different from learning the bash or the shell. I meant I miss a readable and well-structured help concerning the bash right there in the bash.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #145 –
Ah, I see what you mean. How will can learn about these basic shortcuts without the Internet? I don't think it's in the man page, but in the tsunami of information I'm not looking for it's hard to tell.

The part where man pages are literally pages even if some are gigantic reference manuals is definitely not one of their best aspects. If I recall correctly some DOS software had significantly better structured help, more similar to what you'll get in Windows or Yelp (or LibreOffice, but that doesn't use any independently standardized mechanism).

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #146 –
Here's a fun little quiz to select a Linux distro: http://www.zegeniestudios.net

It seemed to fairly accurately reflect what I'd expect it to say given the answers I gave (openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint).

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #147 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

Here's a fun little quiz to select a Linux distro: http://www.zegeniestudios.net

It seemed to fairly accurately reflect what I'd expect it to say given the answers I gave (openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint).
To me it doesn't seem like much effort was put into it. The number of distros they considered is not that large, and at least one major issue with Linux compared to Win/Mac goes unmentioned: root permissions and passwords.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #148 –
Manjaro Pek edition in action. Pek has a windows stacking feature. Not sure how well it does tiling and cascading.

Note: The Opera browser in display does not come pre-installed. It's just that the author of the video is a fan :)
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04JQDPXCXac[/video]

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #149 –
Have you ever wanted to check dependencies in reverse? There's a tool for that. For instance, this'll list anything that depends on libwnck-3-0:

Code: [Select]
apt-cache rdepends libwnck-3-0


If you want to go more in-depth you can also use apt-rdepends for recursive dependency listings.

Code: [Select]
apt-rdepends -r libwnck-3-0


The reason I wanted to find out is because pretty neat programs like devilspie2 and superswitcher* make use of it and maybe I'd overlooked something useful. Unfortunately, I do not believe that to be the case.

PS apt-cache rdepends libwnck22 might also be of interest. Actually that's what superswitcher uses, as well as stuff like maximus and winwrangler — both of which can be useful (but I already knew them). Brightside I didn't know, but it doesn't interest me, and that's about it.

PPS fuzzy-window-switcher also uses Libwnck.

PPPS Why was I interested in this? After searching for terms like "window switcher" and "application switcher" I wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking anything awesome like superswitcher before I created this (forked from fuzzy-window-switcher):

More info coming shortly as it's not quite done yet.

* Not in the repositories, see here if you want to build superswitcher.