Records of my tumblings through the intarwebs
Bug trackers, mailing lists, IRC too involved for mere mortals? Visit Ubuntu brainstorm and vote up or down on countless wishlist items for Ubuntu. It’s as simple as using Digg, and only takes you a few minutes. Go do your part!
If you liked this post, please subscribe to my feed. Thanks for visiting!
Yay for the new Blubuntu theme, a blue sibling of the default “Human” theme for Ubuntu.
It’s good to be quirky and different, but the unorthodox orange theme really gets old.
In the old days, I used to be very afraid of breaking my xorg.conf. Ubuntu Gutsy has done away with this fear, as repairing a broken xorg.conf is dead simple!
Option 1:
Allow Ubuntu to boot into Bullet-Proof-X mode (which is a failsafe mode like Windows Safe Mode). Using the familiar graphical user interface, run this command and follow the simple instructions:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorgOption 2:
Choose “Rescue Mode” on boot up. When you get to the command prompt, run the same command and following the instructions:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorgNow reboot and enjoy a working X again.
P.S. Since Ubuntu aims to never throw people to the command line with the implementation of Bullet-Proof-X, there should be GUI interfaces/wizards for repairing xorg.conf. Just a GUI button/menu entry for launching dpkg-reconfigure would be great. Then again, newbies shouldn’t ever break their xorg.conf. 
There are things I dislike about Ubuntu Linux, like the inability to customize during installation and the silly orange theme, but I had always thought that Ubuntu was the very best representative from the Linux world for mere mortals. Alas, Ubuntu has failed to live up to this expectation of “everything just works” in a big way. Ever since Adobe’s release of Flash 9.0 update 3 (9.0.115.0) codename “Moviestar” on December 4th, it has been impossible to install Flash through conventional means like the Add/Remove panel, Firefox’s plugin installer, or Synaptic.
Flash is one of the essential applications that every normal computer user must have nowadays. For a typical computer user to be unable to install Flash for a month (and counting) on a major operating system is frankly ludicrous. I’ve always scoffed at those who claim that “every Linux distribution sucks; *insert my favorite distro* just sucks less.” But this time, I can’t help but agree. (For the record, Ubuntu is not my favorite, but it is the easiest to install and use and my distro of choice at the office.)
Read more about this Flash bug here.
P.S. In my eyes, Mozilla Firefox is still the lone shining jewel in the arena of open-source software for end-users. Everything really “just works” and when problems arise, like the recent regressions, they get fixed in a hurry and pushed out with a fool-proof automatic update mechanism. All hail the Mozilla wizards.
