gregghz's questions

First of all, I don't expect that something like this already exists, but I am interested in knowing how something like this would be accomplished.

I want a program that I can have running in the background that will intercept ALL keystrokes entered (I'm assuming X is running and perhaps even that Unity is also running), process those keystrokes and then send the original or modified keystrokes on to be handled as normal.

My ultimate goal is creating a sort of keymapping that more closely mimics OS X shortcut behavior. This is very difficult with a standard Ubuntu install since things like ctrl+c seem to be set in stone whereas to mimic OS X behavior, it would need to be cmd+c. Anyway, I'm less interested in discussing the why and more interested in discussing the how. I'm not adverse to writing a daemon in Python, C or whatever else might be needed (I'm also somewhat comfortable with standard UNIX apis). I am, however, completely ignorant about where to begin with something like this.

When the keystrokes are intercepted and processed, it should be able to send them back to the OS following the same interface that the strokes were originally sent with. Maybe this would have to be a patch to X itself? Or would something be able to be in place between the keyboard and X?

When I boot (11.10), I get the message that it's "waiting for network configuration" and then the same, but "60 seconds longer" and then finially it "boots" but to a black screen. No cursor, just black. It doesn't seem to respond to anything.

I am able to boot with the "recovery" kernel and do anything you can normally do there. Except "root prompt with networking" doesn't actually have networking. ifconfig returns nothing. iwconfig says that eth0 and lo are uninitialized. I was going to load the networking kernel module, but I don't know which one to load. I am also able to boot with a live cd (technically a usb drive) and it boots fast with no messages/errors and networking works.

The networking adapter is from a Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 motherboard.

I have read this: "Waiting for network configuration" adding 3 to 5 minutes to boot time

This doesn't seem to help my problem.

My /etc/network/interfaces had

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

So I added

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

This solution here: Network not starting up on boot Gives the error that /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server: file does not exist.

I installed Ubuntu on my macbook pro (8,1) a few months back using the rEFIt method (so it's an emulated BIOS). I want to give EFI mode a try. Unfortunately I have not found a clear guide on where to begin. I have read through scattered forum posts with hints about patches needed in the kernel and things like that, but I haven't seen any comprehensive guide.

I have seen this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MactelSupportTeam/AppleIntelInstallation#Single-Boot:%20Ubuntu%20Only

That appears to be what I'm looking for. If it is, then my question is this: Is there a way to do EFI and maintain a dual boot environment? The dual boot guides on the same page require rEFIt. If that's not what I think it is, where can I find info on how to install with this method?

The File & Folders lens and default Applications lens is missing from my dock. How can I get them back?

I attempted the guide here: http://www.webupd8.org/2011/04/how-to-reset-unity-launcher-icons-or.html

All the icons came back except the two missing lenses. unity-place-applications and unity-place-files are both currently installed.

I am running the 8,1 Macbook Pro. It has the integrated Intel HD 300 gpu. I've noticed the graphics performance is drastically worse in Ubuntu than in OS X. I tested this using the bullet physics library (http://bulletphysics.org/wordpress/) demos. In OS X, they all run flawlessly and smooth. In Ubuntu on the same laptop they're unusable. I can't properly interact with them because they hang so much and the framerate is so low.

Is this a driver issue? Any fixes or possibility of this being fixed?

I was planning on working with some bullet stuff, but the performance is much worse than is reasonable.

I'm running 11.04 on a 2011 13" mackbook pro (intel hd 3000 gpu).

Previously everything had been fine, but today when I plug in an external monitor (17" Acer being plugged in via a mini display port to VGA adapter) the laptop immediately recognizes the monitor, but the screen turns black. It seems that everything is still responsive. I can see the cursor and I can see it change as it moves over things like text boxes or the edges of open windows. But even after unplugging the monitor, I can't get anything but a black screen until I restart gdm.

Yesterday I was using the laptop with a 22" Asus monitor using a mini display port to DVI adapter and everything was fine. This same monitor was also working fine last week when I was running OS X, and on an older HP laptop without an adapter (straight to VGA).

How can I fix this?

I recently purchased a laptop with a sandy bridge CPU that is supposed to have turbo boost. Is turbo boost supported in 11.04? How can I tell if it's working?

I tried this but it seems to only detect Nehalem CPUs.

How can I check how much power my laptop is pulling at any given time?

Why doesn't Ubuntu require restarts on more updates? I know that for kernel updates and things like video drivers, it can't load the changes without a restart. But I'm curious about more basic updates of pretty fundamental packages that often don't require restarts. Things like Telepathy, glibc, gtk, etc. Why don't packages like this require a restart to be updated? Is the new version actually running right after an update?

Another example would be Gwibber. I recently received and update to gwibber via the Update Manager while gwibber was running. The update completed successfully. Would gwibber be running the new version without manually restarting it? And is that the same for other packages? (I know some like mysql and apache automatically restart on an update). For packages that don't automatically restart, can't that be somewhat of a security issue for security fix?

This comes up because I have been running OS X for about a week and almost every update requires a restart even if it isn't kernel/video driver related (as far as I can tell - they don't give you a lot of information). A friend of mine said that Apple forces restarts on most updates "just in case" it would be weird if you didn't restart. Windows is the worst because almost any install/uninstall or update requires a restart (often forcing shutdowns to take a very long time). This may be a bit broad for this venue, but why do the different operating systems handle this so differently? Or, more specific to Ubuntu: why doesn't Ubuntu follow a more strict restart policy?

I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 on a Cr48. I'm attempting to bind xbacklight -dec 10 to f6 (decrease brightness in chrome os) and xbacklight -inc 10 to f7 (increase brightness in chrome os). The decrease command works fine, but the increase command appears to have no effect. It's the same whether I run the command from the command line or use the bindings I set in CompizConfig Settings Manager.

I found that I can use:

ignore.default = \A#.*\Z
                 \A.*~\Z
                 \A.*\.py[oc]\Z
                 \A.*\.sw[nopx]\Z
                 \A.*\.swpx\Z
                 \A\..*\.tmp\Z
                 \A.*\.git\Z

In /etc/xdg/ubuntuone/syncdaemon.conf to ignore files. I'm not really up on regex so I tried to add the last line to ignore the .git folder. It doesn't appear to be working though. Anyone have a correct solution?

I recently installed an 11.04 alpha on my laptop. In the Additional Drivers program, it offers me "Experimental 3D support for NVIDIA cards". I went ahead and installed this to see how it works. Seems at the very least good enough. It runs Unity just fine.

What exactly is being installed with the experimental driver? How is it different from the default driver that Ubuntu uses when it detects an Nvidia card?

I'm using an HP dv6000 (not sure of exact model) with a pretty basic Logitech wireless laptop mouse. From time to time, the USB mouse will be very stuttery and less responsive. Not all clicks register and the motion is not smooth. It seems like it's related to the notify-osd coming up when I get an IM or Email or whatever else, but it happens other times as well.

It's not the whole computer becoming less responsive, because if I use the touch pad during one of these fits, it works perfectly smooth. I've replaced the batteries in the mouse and have tried different USB ports with better line of sight, etc. I can't figure out what's going on. Any thoughts?

Are there plans to get U1 syncing only changes in files? It seems like anytime I listen to a sync'd song, it re-uploads the whole song instead of just the (very small) part where Banshee incremented the listens count and what ever else happens when I listen.

If I remember correctly, Dropbox handles this more gracefully. Does anyone have any answer about plans like this for U1?

Is there any way to add an option to right click menus for text files and/or highlighted text to "send to Tomboy" so that it would create a new note with the contents of the text file or highlighted text as the contents of the new note?

Is there a way to encode/decode prores mov files (mostly decode)? I've been playing around with ffmpeg and mencoder/mplayer from the ubuntu repos, but they both report that it's an unknown codec. Totem as well.

I guess it comes down to getting the right codecs in place. Maybe compiling from source?

I have seen a few comments on the internet about getting mplayer/mencoder working with prores files in OS X, but I'm hoping there is a way to do this in Ubuntu.

Whenever I come back from suspend, the fan spins at full speed for about 2 minutes before it clams down. It will do this regardless of load on the cpu. And the laptop just came back from a (potentially long) suspend so it isn't hot. At all.

After two minutes or so, the fan goes back to normal and then responds to load as you would expect.

How can I get it to not do this?

Edit: This is on an hp pavilion dv6000

I'm not looking for recommendations on what music player I should use. I would simply like to know which Music players use Ubuntu's new sound menu. The only two I know of for sure are Banshee and Rhythmbox. Maybe Amarok does too? Are there any outside of these?

I don't necessarily expect a whole tutorial for creating a sound indicator entry here on askubuntu, but I've searched and searched, and I can't seem to find any documentation on creating a sound indicator. Preferably, I'd like to be able to do this in Python. Can someone point me in the right direction??

I'm looking to get rid of rhythmbox as my primary music player. Preferably something that allows multiple folders for the music library and has support for the new sound indicator.

Mostly I want more playback options that Rhythmbox lacks like a related suffle or mood shuffle type of thing. Also, auto rating based on listening habits would be nice (like Rhythmbox used to have).

I have tried Exaile and Banshee. But I couldn't add more than one folder to my library.

Let me know what you all have experienced with various different players. Even some good rhythmbox plugins to add these types of features would be great.