Daily bootchart: 31st March 2012

Today's boot up: 55s. Is there not consistency anymore? Hopefully this is due to development.

Ubuntu "Precise Pangolin" Beta 2 is out

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is really close to release day now. Beta 2 came out with a plethora of changes.

If you're already running the development release then a simple update through Update Manager will suffice. I had to do a partial upgrade that thankfully didn't screw up the system.

Let's look at some of the software that comes with it.

Kernel

We're now on kernel 3.2.0-20. It's very unlikely we'll get to see kernel 3.3 in Ubuntu 12.04.

Firefox

Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 2 comes with Firefox 11. Those who prefer a more cutting edge browser can install from the Firefox Beta PPA. Unless you want to run Aurora or Nightly, this is as cutting edge as it gets.

Transmission

Transmission is on version 2.50. It's the latest stable release.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice got bumped up to 3.5.1.2 if anyone's interested. Does anybody really need all those features? Apart from a better UI or better performance, there's really nothing I'd like to add to any modern office suite right now.

Rhythmbox

After migrating over to Banshee in Ubuntu 11.10, we're back to Rhythmbox again in Ubuntu 12.04. The developers need to make up their minds. At least pick something and stay with it a while. Changing the default music app back and forth isn't helping the end user. It's annoying.

Well, that's about it for now. Remember to check out the Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 2 technical overview and release announcements for more.

Daily bootchart: 30th March 2012

Today's Ubuntu boot was 44s. That's a massive improvement over yesterday.

Daily bootchart: 29th March 2012

This'll be the first time I'm generating a bootchart since upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04 Beta. Ubuntu boots in 1m 29s. It's way slower than it should be.

How to disable the lock screen in Windows 8

If you've set a password for your user account in Windows 8, you'll be greeted by the Windows 8 lock screen by default. Logging in means sliding the lock screen up to reveal the login screen. It's pretty annoying especially on the desktop.

To disable it, you'll need to head over to the Local Group Policy editor. Just search for gpedit.msc from the Metro UI, or Win+R then run gpedit.msc.

Look under Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>Control Panel>Personalization for the option "Do not display the lock screen" and set it to enabled.

Related posts:

Windows 8: Vista 2.0 in the making

Windows 8: Vista 2.0 in the making

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview has been out some time now. If you haven't already it's available for free straight from Microsoft along with the Product Key you'll need to install it.

For testing purposes, I've tried an upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8. It's simple and straight forward for the most part, but if you're someone who dual-/multi-boots then you might come across some quirky behavior.

Here's what I got when I tried it: Windows setup failed to detect if my PC is able to support Windows 8. Those aren't the words used but that's how I understood it. The problem? The first boot device set in BIOS wasn't the hard disk that contained Windows. Just swap things around in BIOS, boot into Windows and re-try the upgrade.

I got a similar problem earlier when I tried installing Windows 7 so it's something that's part of Microsoft's Windows setup.

Remember to write down that Product Key before you even start the installation. Here's the key:

DNJXJ-7XBW8-2378T-X22TX-BKG7J

And don't just copy and paste it somewhere. Write it down. Unless you're installing into a virtual machine, you won't be able to access it otherwise.

If you're upgrading, then you'll be able to migrate settings, apps, and personal files over. Just how thorough the user migration feature is, I have no idea. I tried just migrating personal files and didn't lose anything, if that helps.

The installation is pretty quick, and you get to do more customization after the reboot. It's the usual 2-step Windows setup.

Once you're in, you'll be experiencing something like what's in this recent video.

It's a horrifying experience. I'm no expert, but I consider myself tech savvy enough to at least be able to find my way around simple daily tasks (browsing the web, managing my files, etc...), and to figure out how to customize settings to my liking.

I hope either Firefox for Metro or Chrome for Metro will already be available by the time Windows 8 comes along because IE Metro is a terrible experience. If you thought the IE6 experience couldn't get any worse, you're wrong. It can and it has.

The only takeaway we have is that this is still a Consumer Preview although everybody seems convinced this is going to be the final UI experience we can expect. Let's hope the dissenting voices out there are enough to change things for the better.

Kernel 3.3 released

Linux kernel 3.3 was released with Android code merge, improved Btrfs, and EFI boot support being some of the highlights. Since motherboards featuring UEFI are slowly getting more common, it's a good thing the kernel will now be able to boot on those newer hardware.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu 12.04 will not be using this kernel release. We'll most likely be skipping to kernel 3.4 come Ubuntu 12.10.

Check out Kernel Newbies for the thorough list of changes.

Firefox 12 Beta is now available

Following closely on the heels of Firefox 11 is, of course, Firefox 12 Beta. About the most interesting thing on the release notes would be the streamlined update process for Windows users. URL pasting in the download manager sounds like an interesting feature to finally land in Firefox.

Firefox 12 checking add-ons for compatibility

Ubuntu users can get in on the action by adding the Firefox Beta PPA and updating Firefox from there.

~$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-next

~$ sudo apt-get update

~$ sudo apt-get install firefox

Even Ubuntu 12.04 Beta testers can get the update if Ubuntu isn't "Beta" enough.

And if things get too shaky for your tastes safety's just a ppa-purge away.

~$ sudo ppa-purge ppa:mozillateam/firefox-next

Happy testing!

Firefox 11 released

A few days back Firefox 11 was released into the wild sporting Chrome user settings migration, add-on sync (when Firefox Sync is enabled), experimental SPDY support, and lots more.

Ubuntu 12.04 beta users will already be on this version.

Ubuntu "Precise Pangolin" is already on Firefox 11

Maybe the most interesting feature added is the 3D page inspector. Unfortunately, it's a developer tool and not really something to directly benefit the typical user.

Check out the release notes for the complete run down.

How to extract lzh archives in Ubuntu

It's rare to find an archive format Archive Manager can't open, but it happens. Recently, I came across an lzh archive that can't be extracted.

To add the feature to Archive Manager, just install lha from terminal.

~$ sudo apt-get install lha

Once installed, you can open lzh archives with Archive Manager the same way you open zip archives. Just right click on the file and select Extract Here to extract the contents.

Related posts:

Splitting CUE/FLAC files
Splitting CUE/APE files
Dealing with UIF files

Upgrading to Ubuntu Precise Pangolin Beta 1

I'm over a week past the Beta release date, but better late than never.

This past week Ubuntu 11.10 has been giving me shutdown/restart issues and from the forums it seems I'm not the only one getting the bug. There also doesn't seem to be a solution as far as I can tell just partial solutions that work for some but not others.

So, I may as well give the Beta a shot. I typically jump in around Alpha 3 or Beta 1 anyway.

Ugrading to the development release is a simple command away. Just press Alt-F2 then run update-manager -d to start the ball rolling.

Update Manager at work

It'll take a while depending on your connection speed. Once upgrade completes, you'll have a nice "cutting edge" Ubuntu installation. The only downside is, of course, third party repositories won't work until a while after official release.

The shutdown bug

Ubuntu 11.10 started not shutting down for me about a week ago. I had to do a reset, boot back into Ubuntu then attempt a shutdown again to succeed. Same goes for restarting. It's annoying.

It's clear from the forums that I'm not the only one seeing this.

Fortunately, the upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 Beta seems to have fixed it for now. We'll just have to wait and see.

Wi-Fi down

My Linksys wireless card using the rt61 driver was working in Ubuntu 11.10 but doesn't work anymore in the Beta release. Past experience shows this is pretty normal during development so it'll probably clear itself up soon.

The upgrades

So what's new in Ubuntu 12.04? Lots, as usual. But mostly things we wouldn't pay attention to.

We're running on kernel 3.2.0-18-generic for one.

Firefox 11 is the browser in Ubuntu 12.04

Firefox got upped from 10.0.2 to 11.0. It feels faster, but I'm sure that's the usual upgrade effect. Use it for a few weeks or months and it gets all sluggish again.

We're back to RhythmBox instead of Banshee. Looks like you can't not include the music folder in your home folder anymore. The library's always set to multiple locations and ~/Music is always a part of that. You also can't see where are all the locations RhythmBox looks into although I'm sure it's possible to find out if you're willing to dig in the configuration files.

Unity's panel doesn't seem to autohide anymore which somewhat reduces the screen real estate available for running apps, but it's not big deal on desktops. I can't comment on notebooks but it's probably a regressed experience.

That's it for now. Beta 2 will be coming in a few weeks which might bring further version updates along with behavior tweaks here and there.

Any.DO: A simple To Do app for Android

Until recently I've been using Astrid as my to do app of choice on my Android device. It's improving at a steady pace, but I've always felt it's a tad feature rich for my tastes.

So I came across Any.DO when Android Market (now Google Play) featured it.

And it's awesome.

It fills almost every requirement I'm looking for. On hindsight, the only feature it's missing isn't really something I need after all. I don't find myself wishing I could launch some other common task on my Device from within the task list anyway.

Simple animations make the app a pleasure to use. It just makes the whole experience better.

Here's a QR code to the Google Play download page.

Loading large bitmaps in Android

Loading images in Android is simple if you'd believe the SDK documentation and samples. In most cases, I suppose it is. The only problem is that the simple way assumes you're going to load "small" bitmaps into memory.

If you try to load one of those large photos that's so common nowadays, you'll get an "out of memory" error in no time.

To get around that, there's a few tricks that can be used.

Loading parts of the bitmap

The simplest way would be to just load enough of the image to fill the screen. Images large enough to cause out of memory errors will be much larger than the screen size of any Android device.

If you only need/want to display a part of the image, it's just a matter of loading up a portion of it. This way you can't go over the memory limits.

... // Do stuff (initialize variables/objects, load things, etc.)

BitmapRegionDecoder decoder = null;
try {
    decoder = BitmapRegionDecoder.newInstance(mRes.openRawResource(resId), false);
} catch (NotFoundException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Bitmap image = decoder.decodeRegion(mRect, null);

... // Do more stuff (draw the Bitmap, etc.)

Sampling the bitmap

Another way to do things is to sample the bitmap you want. Basically, you want to scale down a too large image to a more manageable size.

You'll first need to get just the image dimensions (width, height).

... 

BitmapFactory.Options opt = new BitmapFactory.Options();
opt.inJustDecodeBounds = true;
BitmapFactory.decodeBitmap(res, id, opt);

... 

The dimensions of the bitmap will be in opt.outWidth and opt.outHeight.

That's the easy part.

After this you'll want to make use of the info you've obtained for calculating an appropriate sample size to use when decoding the bitmap for real.  I referenced this blog post for a workable formula, but find that it doesn't really work well for me in most cases.

... 

int sampleSize = (int) Math.pow(2, Math.floor(Math.sqrt(factor)));

... 

It's recommended to use sample sizes in powers of 2. Once you have a sample size you can decode your bitmap safely.

... 

opt.inJustDecodeBounds = false;
opt.inSampleSize = sampleSize;
Bitmap image = BitmapFactory.decodeBitmap(res, id, opt);

... 

That's about it. Getting a nice looking image is a matter of getting the best sample size to use for your particular image. That's the tricky part.

Just for completeness, here's a site that gives an idea just how much memory an image can consume. The large images so common these days can easily take up nearly 20MB of memory. Possibly more. Much more.

Good luck.

Ubuntu Precise Pangolin Beta 1 is available

The first Ubuntu release in 2012 codenamed "Precise Pangolin" is now in Beta 1. It's just a couple months away from final release. Since this is an LTS version, the rough edges currently in Ubuntu 11.10 should (hopefully) get a nice spit and polish.

Users with Sandy Bridge hardware will find RC6 enabled by default now. The benefits? Improved power management. That's always a good thing to have in any OS.

64-bit users get multi-arch support. Upgraders should be migrated automatically by Update Manager unless you've mess around with the system and removed /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch. That means no more ia32-libs to provide 32-bit libraries.

Clickpad support sounds like another interesting addition to Ubuntu. It's not stated and I have no hardware to test it on, but it sounds like it should improve the behavior on those HP notebooks where the touchpad and touchpad buttons are integrated. I've encountered those before and it's really annoying to use. Hopefully, this improves the situation.

More info is available from the technical overview page.

As usual, remember to check out the list of known issues before diving in. A Beta release is still a test release. Expect things to break from time to time.