Michael Macha's questions

I've got a brand new Lenovo Ideapad which I just installed KUbuntu 23.04 onto. However, the package manager isn't updating everything. Specifically three packages, all related to GStreamer, are failing to update.

The specific warning message is:

The advice is to try again later, but if it's attempting to overwrite a package, I'm not sure that that will have any affect.

When I attempt to remove GStreamer and reinstall it from scratch (sudo apt remove gstreamer1.0-plugins-good), I'm greeted with a list of missing dependencies, and the advice to run `apt --fix-broken install, which wants to download about 700 kB. That's fine, but it's again stopped by the same error in doing so.

Verbatim after --fix-broken:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libbdplus0 libdca0 libdirectfb-1.7-7 libfaad2 liblrdf0 libmjpegutils-2.1-0 libmpeg2-4 libmpeg2encpp-2.1-0
  libmplex2-2.1-0 libneon27 libopenni2-0 libpocketsphinx3 libsidplay1v5 libsphinxbase3 libssh-gcrypt-4
  libvidstab1.1 linux-headers-6.2.0-20 linux-headers-6.2.0-20-generic linux-image-6.2.0-20-generic
  linux-modules-6.2.0-20-generic linux-modules-extra-6.2.0-20-generic pocketsphinx-en-us
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0 libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0
Suggested packages:
  frei0r-plugins libvisual-0.4-plugins
The following packages will be upgraded:
  gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0 libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0
3 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
102 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/4,619 kB of archives.
After this operation, 700 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 260527 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad_1%3a1.22.3-dmo1+deb12u1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad:amd64 (1:1.22.3-dmo1+deb12u1) over (1.22.1-1ubuntu1) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad_1%3a1.22.3-dmo1+deb12u1_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-1.0/libgstcamerabin.so', which is also in package gstreamer1.0-plugins-good:amd64 1.22.1-1ubuntu1
Preparing to unpack .../libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0_1%3a1.22.3-dmo1+deb12u1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0:amd64 (1:1.22.3-dmo1+deb12u1) over (1.22.1-1ubuntu1) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0_1%3a1.22.3-dmo1+deb12u1_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgstbasecamerabinsrc-1.0.so.0', which is also in package libgstreamer-plugins-good1.0-0:amd64 1.22.1-1ubuntu1
dpkg: regarding .../libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0_1.22.3-dmo1+deb12u2_amd64.deb containing libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0:amd64:
 libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0:amd64 conflicts with libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0 (<< 1:1.16.0)
  libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0:amd64 (version 1.22.1-1ubuntu1) is present and installed.

dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0_1.22.3-dmo1+deb12u2_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 conflicting packages - not installing libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0:amd64
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad_1%3a1.22.3-dmo1+deb12u1_amd64.deb
 /var/cache/apt/archives/libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0_1%3a1.22.3-dmo1+deb12u1_amd64.deb
 /var/cache/apt/archives/libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0_1.22.3-dmo1+deb12u2_amd64.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

It's the same deal with other commands, but if anyone needs specifics, I can look it up.

The laptop/graphics tablet works fine, but I would really like to get this resolved, and I'm personally running out of ideas. Can someone give me a pointer on what to do next to resolve this?

The only software I've installed is Krita, Blender 3.6 (by direct download, not through a repo), and OpenToonz via snap. It's a particularly fresh machine, I never put GStreamer on it myself save by installing KUbuntu.

I typically have my keyboard set up to use multiple alphabets, toggling with alt+shift; I use American English and Greek most frequently, followed by occasionally Japanese with Anthy, and occasionally Cyrillic. It works very well in almost every program.

However, Scribus, which is otherwise very decent layout software, refuses to recognize Greek. I really need that λ! Am I missing a package, or is there something else I need to do? The space isn't even filled with a filler character, it just remains blank.

This alphabet is awfully important to engineers, so I would be very surprised if there was no solution.

Update: I have determine that the π key consistently works fine, apparently on all fonts; but even on Neohellenic, it is the only one. Is something weird going on with font processing?

I have now attempted this on two completely physically separate machines, with different hardware, and gotten the same result. I typically use alt+shift to switch layouts, via Mint 19's keyboard manager. Doing so works on literally every other program I've tried, on both machines. However, Scribus, on both machines, ceases accepting input until I switch back to en mode. In gr, the only key that works is π; all others have no effect.

Symbol insertion works reasonably well, but this is a non-solution if I'm to attempt to type anything in the Hellenic alphabet.

I've got a weird issue that requires someone with more Pulse Audio experience than I have.

Whenever I launch "Ark: Survival Evolved" through Steam, on KUbuntu 16.04, I have no sound. I've checked Pulse and it shows that the audio is being piped to the system sound device; I attempt to change it to my USB external sound card (which works for everything else), and it refuses to change. The menu closes, and it's still defaulting to "Built-In Analog Stereo", which isn't hooked up to anything.

I did not have this issue on KUbuntu 14.04; and this is a fresh install on a different hard drive. No configuration files were copied over, just music, pictures, videos, and documents. I've used Pulse for a long time (musician), and with a lot of different equipment; I've never had this issue with anything before and I've done some weird stuff.

The current "solution" is either to attach my speakers to my default audio output--which is not easy due to space limitations--or to play it on another OS, which is just obnoxious.

Is there a way to set it up to pipe to a specific output before starting the program? Given that this is early access, I'm guessing that it just isn't "getting" Pulse Audio when it attempts to pipe; but I could be wrong.

Thanks for any help you can give me. This is my chill-out game. It isn't worth a reboot.

UPDATE: I discovered that most of this can be resolved by copying default.pa from /etc/pulse to ~/.config/pulse ; special thanks to Nebuzaradan at https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/293399/how-to-set-hdmi-sound-output-as-default-on-ubuntu-16-04 . This forces every program, including the fidgety ones like the above, to default to the settings established in it. Probable bug?

ADDITIONAL UPDATE: My method seems to work, but occasionally requires me to kill and restart pulseaudio; which is a move from highly-inconvenient to a-lot-less-inconvenient-but-not-quite-perfect. I'm still not sure what's going on with the default file; but will update this for others who have the same question as I figure it all out.

I just made a jump from Maté to KDE Plasma. (Kubuntu v. 14.04.4) (I love everything else about it.) I'm hardly a linux beginner, but I don't usually mess with X and some help is appreciated.

When I first start my machine, everything runs smoothly, but standard keyboard shortcuts (like ALT+TAB and CTRL+ALT+RIGHT) are not recognized. Every window does accept keyboard input; just not the window manager.

For the moment, I can fix this by switching from KWin to Compiz, and then back; after that, everything works fine and I can get on with my work. However, it's something I would like to find a permanent solution to, if I can.

Thanks for any tips and pointers anyone has to offer on this.

I just had a major issue with Audacity, on the first Ubuntu Maté distro. I was doing some sound work, and recording directly from microphones and audio monitors; but when I attempted to play back the sound, it was consistently done at an extremely high pace. Further experiments uncovered that even generated sound, like tweets, was playing back maybe 10x too fast—I could see it on the time bar.

Since I didn't really have time to mess around with it, I tried just uninstalling it, deleting all config files, and installing it from scratch. It works now, at least for the time being (thankfully!), but does anyone know what could have caused this? I don't really understand where the problem was coming from, so there's a good chance I'll see it again.

Thanks for all of your time and expertise!

I need a little help from a GRUB expert.

I just cloned a 1 TB Seagate drive onto a brand new 2 TB Hitachi, and before swapping them out, I decided to boot-test it. It's tied to my computer through a SATA 2 to USB adapter. The 25-hour cloning operation seems to have worked fine; I used dd piped through pv.

However, when I boot, I now get a message from GRUB2 saying that the partition is not found; then get dumped to the grub rescue prompt.

ls gives me a one-partition drive on hd0 (not sure what this is, possibly a thumb drive), a sequence of partitions on hd1, and a single-partition on hd2 (again, no idea what this is). (hd1,msdos10) seems to be a non-bootable partition that I keep around; most of the others (those on an ext file system) are recognized. I find my Ubuntu Trusty Tahr root on (hd1,msdos5). However, even after "set root=(hd1,msdos5)", all attempts at insmod ("insmod normal") and ("insmod linux") return "Partition not found".

I'm guessing that the MBR of my new drive is not relevant to the partitions cloned onto it. What I'm not sure of is how to fix that. Again, the target drive is mounted externally (even though it's ultimately an internal drive); and I can boot to a LiveUSB or hda, but not it. It has a Windows 7 partition, Ubuntu 14.04, and a sequence of additional partitions inclusive of Windows Recovery/Repair/Whatever-They're-Calling-It, my extra partition at the end, my home partition, swap, and probably one or two other guys like temp.

In the worst case, I suppose I could reinstall all of Ubuntu 14.04, but that would require a lot of further time prying through the repos to get all my old stuff back. I'm sure this is simple, but the MBR is not the kind of thing I screw around with unless absolutely necessary, especially when I don't know what I'm doing and it's a potential 25-hour fix!

Quoted terminal output from GRUB:

 ls

 > (hd0) (hd0,msdos3) (hd0,msdos2) (hd0,msdos1) (hd1) (hd1,msdos11) (hd1,msdos10) (hd1,msdos9) (hd1,msdos8) (hd1,msdos7) (hd1,msdos6) (hd1,msdos5) (hd1,msdos3) (hd1,msdos2) (hd1,msdos1) (hd2) (hd2,msdos1)
ls (hd0,1)
 > Filesystem is unknown
ls (hd0,msdos1)
 > Filesystem is unknown
set root=(hd1,msdos5)
insmod normal
> Partition not found
...