yohbs's questions

I have recently asked about how to upgrade ghostscript to a version that is available on 15.04 but not on 14.04LTS (which I have). On this site there are numerous almost identical question regarding different packages, a few examples include:

1. How to upgrade to a newer version of a package than is available in the repository?
2. How to upgrade a single package using apt-get?
3. How to upgrade to a later version of Remmina than is in Repository
4. Upgrade tmux from 1.8 to 1.9 on Ubuntu 14.04 (on Stack Overflow)

So I thought it would be very useful in general to know: is there a general, automated way to upgrade a package, including all its dependencies, to a version that is newer than Ubuntu's repos? Is this more easily done if the newer version exists in more recent Ubuntu releases?

Hia all,

I have recently upgraded my internet connection, which included changing the wifi router. Since then, my wifi connection is somewhat shaky, works great sometimes, sometimes completely dead (usually around midnight! very strange...), and these kinds of problems. Everything works great when I use a LAN cable or connect, connect via wifi to other networks, or connect to this network from other devices.

I suspect that the problem might be related to the fact that I might have disabled my 802.11n wifi. It was some time ago and I don't quite remember what I did (I asked this question). How would I check if I disabled the n standard, and how would I reverse it? Are there any other wifi diagnostic tools that might help me here?

Thanks

BTW, I'm running 12.04

EDIT:

Thanks for all the suggestions.

a) I don't have a iwlwifi.conf in /etc/modprobe.d. The result of ls /etc/modprobe.d is

alsa-base.conf               blacklist-watchdog.conf
blacklist-ath_pci.conf       dkms.conf
blacklist.conf               nvidia-304_hybrid.conf
blacklist-firewire.conf      nvidia-current_hybrid.conf
blacklist-framebuffer.conf   nvidia-graphics-drivers.conf
blacklist-modem.conf         oss-compat.conf
blacklist-oss.conf           vmwgfx-fbdev.conf
blacklist-rare-network.conf

b) The result of lspci -nn | grep 0280 is

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 2230 [8086:0887] (rev c4)

I am used to changing keyboard layouts with Alt+Space, and worked fine until I upgraded to 14.04. I set it in the Text Entry control panel:

but it doesn't work. I suspect that there is a conflict with some other binding, but I cant find it in dconf. How can I fix this?

I use GNOME (boooo unity!), if this changes anything.

I'm producing vector graphics in my research with Maethematica and/or MATLAB, and I want to combine a few of them. I thought the best would be to use inkscape to do that, but unfortunately inkscape messes up the text in my graphics (usually the axes labels and greek glyphs, but also plain text).

This happens when I export the files in either PDF, SVG or EPS formats.

I'd really like to learn about two types of solutions:

1. Is there an easy way to fix this (install fonts etc)?

   OR

2. Is there a more suitable program than inkscape?

I run Ubuntu 12.04, and for some reason bash does not keep my command history. the ~/.bash_history file contains only 3 commands that I typed a few months ago.

How can I fix this?

EDIT: here's the relevant content of my .bashrc:

# ~/.bashrc: executed by bash(1) for non-login shells.
# see /usr/share/doc/bash/examples/startup-files (in the package bash-doc)
# for examples

# If not running interactively, don't do anything
[ -z "$PS1" ] && return

# don't put duplicate lines or lines starting with space in the history.
# See bash(1) for more options
HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth

# append to the history file, don't overwrite it
shopt -s histappend

# for setting history length see HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE in bash(1)
HISTSIZE=1000
HISTFILESIZE=2000

I have recently installed Ubuntu 12.04 on my brand new ASUS K55V.

The touchpad behaves weird - two finger tap is interpreted as right-click, click and drag is not working (a double click is needed) and so on. Two finger scrolling (horizontal & vertical) works great.

I want the touch pad to behave the "normal" way (that is - like in my old laptop...). I read the synclient documentation and many of the questions posted here, and I can even make some stuff work. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to make these work:

1. Click and drag (that is - physically clicking the button and dragging a finger)
2. Clicking in the right side of the button interpreted as right-click
3. Clicking button with two fingers interpreted as middle-click.

specs: The touchpad is equipped with a physical button that clicks. Here's the output of xinput list-props "ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad" | grep Capabilities:

 Synaptics Capabilities (294):  1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1

Any help will be much appreciated.

I have a new ASUS laptop that I got from the university. The guys at the computing centre recieved it before me, erased the hard disk, and installed all their crappy software (Novel, outlook, and the like).

I tried to install Ubuntu with dual boot, but because they apparently did whatever it is they did wrong, and the installer does not recognize the existing windows installation and only suggests to install Ubuntu as a sole OS. None of the advices here or here helped. My final decision is to indeed let Ubuntu erase all existing windows stuff (and then use windows occasionally through VirtualBox).

However, when I try to do that it tells me that the partitioning looks like GPT but doesn't have the correct signatures, or something like this. It asks whether this is indeed a GPT HD, and I don't know what to tell it.

What I ask is: should I simply use gparted from the CD to repartition the HD? If so, what would be the recommended partitioning (I have 750GB), and the recommended filesystem (ext3? ext4?).

Update: here's a screen shot

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I regularly connect to a server via ssh. Lately I've started copying files to and from it, and I find scp very annoying, mainly because bash cannot auto complete over ssh.

I find the connect to server... option very useful, as I can drag and drop and everything. However, it is very annoying to type each time nautilus sftp://server (or fill the dialog box) and then enter username and password, and then to cd to the desired folder. Is there a way to do it in one line, something like

nautilus ntfs://server -u user ...

I couldn't find it anywhere in the documentation.

I usually use vinagre or vncviewer to work from home, but since my screen size is not the same on both computers (Ubuntu on laptop, Fedora in the office) it's not comfortable at all.

I'm currently trying to use X, but when I use it to open firefox4 it opens the local version, which is not good for me (I want to have access to articles so I need the university's IP).

1. How can I fix this?
2. Better yet, is there a good remote desktop viewer that dosen't care about different screen sizes?

I recently upgraded to 11.04, and the unity launcher is really giving me a headache:

1. sometimes it gets stuck in the open mode.
2. after turning on the "auto hide" in compiz-config it does disappear, but pops up every time my cursor goes to the left part of the screen in a way the doesn't allow me to click on stuff there (i.e. the back button in mozilla).
3. configuring the "reveal mode" to be TopLeft, doesn't help: the lancher doesn't appear but still somehow blocks me from clicking stuff in the area where it's supposed to be

what's up with that?