polish, polish, polish

For those of you test driving budgie-remix you will have noticed that the default theme – Arc-theme looks kind of funky with Files…

That side panel just looks awful!

I looked at the Horst OBS repo (the author’s rep) and no fix is currently available.  So I went ahead and created a real Debian package using the latest bug fixes from Git.

There we go – Files as it should be!

I’ll backport this fix into my main budgie PPA for xenial users soon – but for those of you using budgie-remix tech-preview 2 … you have an exclusive.  Just update as normal.

Enjoy!

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For budgie PPA users coming down the wires is a fix for the missing network-manager applet:

Let me know if you have any issues.

How to upgrade to the 3.16 LTS Utopic kernel and graphics for Ubuntu 14.04

Long-term Support for Ubuntu 14.04 also means that you can get the latest stable kernel and graphics as well.  Importantly, these remain supported by the kernel and graphics teams and you’ll receive a regular supply of updates for 9 months.

Remember – you’ll need to update just before 9 months to get the next LTS kernel and graphics before support is officially withdrawn.  If this sounds like too much hassle – best stick with the 3.13 kernel and graphics – they remain supported for 5 years!

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The community wiki page describes how to install the latest kernel and graphics – but you need to be very careful.

For me the instructions meant that I could have destroyed my wine + pipelight installation but more importantly, bcmwl wireless could have been left in a broken state because the bcmwl package has not yet been backported.

The wiki page stated that to upgrade the kernel and graphics you use the following:

sudo apt-get install --install-recommends linux-generic-lts-utopic xserver-xorg-lts-utopic libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-utopic

Remember the magic “-s” parameter; with “-s” added you can simulate what would happen when you run an install command – for me, it revealed that amongst the packages it would have removed were vital wine & QT5 packages:

sudo apt-get -s install --install-recommends linux-generic-lts-utopic xserver-xorg-lts-utopic libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-utopic | more

N.B. press q to exit the paused display

Instead I preserved my wine & QT5 installation through this simulated command:

sudo apt-get -s install --install-recommends linux-generic-lts-utopic xserver-xorg-lts-utopic libqt5gui5 libgles1-mesa-lts-utopic libgles2-mesa-lts-utopic libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-utopic libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-utopic:i386 libglapi-mesa-lts-utopic:i386 libegl1-mesa-drivers-lts-utopic | more

Try the above and examine which packages would be removed. Once you are happy – go ahead and remove the “-s” after the apt-get.

What the above didn’t forsee thought was the following error:


Examining /etc/kernel/header_postinst.d.
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/header_postinst.d/dkms 3.16.0-30-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.16.0-30-generic
Error! Could not locate dkms.conf file.
File: does not exist.
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 3.16.0-30-generic (x86_64)
Consult /var/lib/dkms/bcmwl/6.30.223.141+bdcom/build/make.log for more information.


Until the ubuntu devs backport the utopic bcmwl package you can safely download this package yourself and install it (64bit Ubuntu):


wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_6.30.223.248+bdcom-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i bcmwl-kernel-source_6.30.223.248+bdcom-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb


If you are still using 32bit Ubuntu (why??) then download the 32bit package


wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_6.30.223.248+bdcom-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_6.30.223.248+bdcom-0ubuntu1_i386.deb


virtualbox and the latest 14.04… display stuck at low resolution

EDIT: 28/03/14 – Virtualbox 4.3.10 is now out – it is recommended to download this now together with 4.3.10 virtualbox guest additions and the issue below is resolved 🙂

• https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

However – it is also likely that if you just download the 4.3.7 or later guest additions and install in your v4.2 or 4.3 series this should work – but remember this is an unsupported configuration.

EDIT: 8/09/14 – as one commenter mentioned some people have been also had luck with the following package install:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-dkms

Restart the VM afterwards.

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The latest updates of Ubuntu 14.04 is broken in virtualbox 4.3.6 – the screen no longer resizes and is fixed at a very low resolution. It also appears all previous versions of virtualbox that is available in the repositories are also affected.

Attempts to reinstall the virtualbox guest additions does not fix the issue. Instead in the terminal you see this error:

Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules
The headers for the current running kernel were not found. If the following
module compilation fails then this could be the reason.

Building the main Guest Additions module ...done.
Building the shared folder support module ...done.
Building the OpenGL support module ...done.
Doing non-kernel setup of the Guest Additions ...done.
You should restart your guest to make sure the new modules are actually used

Installing the Window System drivers
Warning: unknown version of the X Window System installed.  Not installing
X Window System drivers.
Installing modules ...done.
Installing graphics libraries and desktop services components ...done.
Press Return to close this window...

It appears the the latest version of Xorg breaks the virtualbox graphics driver.

EDIT: there is also this bug (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/virtualbox/+bug/1282758)

Fortunately this is fixed in a test build of the virtualbox guest additions – version 4.3.7 (and later) together with installing the latest gcc library

sudo apt-get install libgcc-4.8-dev

Grab a copy of the ISO from this virtualbox ticket.  Connect the ISO to your virtualbox VM – and the guest additions including the graphics driver will update correctly.  Enjoy!

• https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12623

the good and the bad wallpapers… part 2

IMHO – here are a few of the great ‘buntu wallpapers you can dig up in the various wallpaper packages included in Saucy

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the good and the bad wallpapers… part 1

well maybe “bad” is a bit strong … but certainly makes you think why did they select that!

IMHO – here are a few of the not so great ‘buntu wallpapers you can dig up in the various wallpaper packages included in Saucy

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Could I do better … well maybe not … but tomorrow are my favourites!