Xamine and Xperience - Xenial Kubuntu 16.04

[NoWorries]

Alpha 2?

I could not help but notice the report on Phoronix about Alpha releases being questioned. Tomorrow is the official release of Alpha 2 and I will be interested to see if there are significant updates in addition to the stack that come down each day.

The phoronix report did say that:

"Ubuntu derivatives such as Kubuntu and Xubuntu have long been pushing out alpha releases to help with testing by the community. However, for lack of people stepping up to manage these releases, it's looking like they may not happen or with fewer alpha releases."

So far I am finding this distribution very reliable and never cease to be impressed with it.

I will be very interested to see if Kubuntu follows SABDFL in his desire to introduce snappy into 16.04. I just hope that it will not be wrought with problems like when MIR was first introduced.

I do look forward to Wayland making strong headway and that MIR will .

[NoWorries]

Samsung Galaxy Hotspot, Tethering and File Access

I am now pleased to report that after updates on Wily and Xenial, there have been improvements in USB Tethering for Wiley, and Mobile Hotspot for Xenial.

Xenial now works for both Mobile Hotspot and USB Tethering, so 2 out of 2.
Wiley now works only for USB Tethering, so it is now 1 out of 2.

With the improvements in Xenial at this early stage, I am increasingly tempted to replace Wily by Xenial on my Laptop. I remember being told a LONG time ago not to yield to temptation, so I will let you know when I yield.

Throughout this process, I have also been trying to get pictures off the Samsung Mobile. I kept getting the message that "The process for the mtp protocol died unexpectedly". After much searching I installed anything that was related to mtp, such as: mtp-service, libmtp-runtime, libmtp9, libmtpservice1, kio-mtp, libmtp-common, gmtp, gvfs-backends.

These all failed to solve the problem and it was only when I installed jmtpfs that it all worked.

[NoWorries]

OK new quirk @hear ,,,,,,,,,system tray ,,,,, trying to change what the system tray shows using "system tray settings" dose not stick ,,,, and dose nothing.

you can change the settings and click apply ,,,,but nothing happens and when you open the "system tray settings" again it is back to default.

VINNY

Hi Vinny,

Just got back from a 1 week break and was greeted with 460 upgraded and new packages. While I was away, I could not connect my Wily Laptop to the internet using my Wife's mobile as a Hotspot or USB Tethering. Previously on a trip last September it worked fine. I will investigate that later and check on all my different systems.

I have just tried clicking on the three bars at the RHS of the system tray and selected "More Settings . . ". I then tried options such as "Windows can cover" and that changed for me and held. It was still in that setting when I checked later. I assume that this is the area that you were wanting to change, or was it to change or add more widgets on the system tray?

I should mention that I have been using Pre-release and Unsupported updates for some time now without any problems.

Edit:

With a Samsung Galaxy S3:

Mobile hotspot works on Xenial
USB tethering DOES NOT WORK on Xenial

At least Xenial gets a score of 1 out of 2
Wily gets a score of 0 out of 2
Trusty gets a score of 2 out of 2

[vinnywright]

OK new quirk @hear ,,,,,,,,,system tray ,,,,, trying to change what the system tray shows using "system tray settings" dose not stick ,,,, and dose nothing.

you can change the settings and click apply ,,,,but nothing happens and when you open the "system tray settings" again it is back to default.

VINNY

[vinnywright]

That's awesome Vinny! Nice share...

what got me was how dang easy it is on the CLI ,,,,,hears a link to a more detailed example ,,,,,, https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...1-ProjectM-gif

I'll be trying one for a animated wallpaper next for my 16.04 net upgrade from 15.10 .

when the wifey gives me time

VINNY

[oshunluvr]

That's awesome Vinny! Nice share...

[vinnywright]

But then I have not done much but web browse and some image extraction from video and creation of .gif's from the images ,,,,,,and well some Amarok and ProjectM

VINNY

so speaking about .gif creating ,,,,,,,,,,,I have a SUPER easy way I found .

just obtain some images sequentially named and place them in a folder

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~/Templates/test3$ ls
gif1.jpeg  gif2.jpeg  gif3.jpeg

and run

convert -delay 300 -loop 0 *.jpeg test.gif

the convert command is from the imagemagick program so you must have it installed for this to work.
-loop 0 is an infinite loop ,,,,a 1,2,3 is that many times it will run through it ,,,,,,delay is the time between frames

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~/Templates/test3$ ls
gif1.jpeg  gif2.jpeg  gif3.jpeg  test.gif

and the result of using 3 screen shots for it




I have a cute one I made of my Grandson by shooting some video then using this

avconv -i foo.avi -r 3 -s 1280x720 -f image2 foo-%03d.jpeg

to extract 3 frames a second(-r 3) at a size of 1280x720(-s 1280x720) from a mp4 video.
of course you must use the actual name of the video file in place of "foo.avi" .



VINNY

[oshunluvr]

As you say, the dd command does not give any feedback on progress which I find frustrating. I think that after a period of no output, I hit the enter key which stopped the progress of the dd command. So that is why the USB failed to start the install process correctly.

When I let it go to completion I got the output, ie

sudo dd if=xenial-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=16M
[sudo] password: 
86+1 records in
86+1 records out
1448214528 bytes (1.4 GB) copied, 302.663 s, 4.8 MB/s

It is worth noting that this took 5 minutes! The USB this time, progressed correctly to the options menu.

You can try using pv like so...

dd if=/dev/your.iso | pv | dd of=/dev/usbdrive

pv isn't installed by default, so do sudo apt install pv first...

[vinnywright]

Sorry that I missed your posting. I searched my email and I did not get notified of your success and I just decided to visit this page and found your posting.

I will be away from tomorrow morning for about a week on our "Summer Holiday" and will not have access to this Xenial computer. So I am looking forward to a truckload of updates when I return.

Enjoy your use of Xenial and please let me know what quirks you find and what they are.

so far the only quirk I have run across is the one you saw ,,,,,,the "X" in the title bar of Muon Package Manager not working to close it.

But then I have not done much but web browse and some image extraction from video and creation of .gif's from the images ,,,,,,and well some Amarok and ProjectM

VINNY

[NoWorries]

. . . . be back when I find quirks

VINNY

Sorry that I missed your posting. I searched my email and I did not get notified of your success and I just decided to visit this page and found your posting.

I will be away from tomorrow morning for about a week on our "Summer Holiday" and will not have access to this Xenial computer. So I am looking forward to a truckload of updates when I return.

Enjoy your use of Xenial and please let me know what quirks you find and what they are.

[vinnywright]

done ,,,,,,,started about 9:00PM EST US ,,,,,,,,,1431 packages upgraded ,,,,,,,,,,about 1 hour later the updater "do-release-upgrade -d" complanes at the end of a package "plymouth-theme-solar" install-local and aborts ,,,,BUT it still worked .

Setting up initramfs-tools (0.120ubuntu6) ...
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.120ubuntu6) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.3.0-2-generic
sed: can't read /usr/share/plymouth/themes/solar/solar.plymouth: No such file or directory
E: /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth failed with return 2.
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-4.3.0-2-generic with 2.
dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 initramfs-tools

after reboot (with no plymouth) I remove the package and "sudo apt-get -f install" this updates the initramfs and defaults to plymouth-theme-kubuntu-logo ,,,,,,reboot ,,,,,,all good

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu Xenial Xerus (development branch)
Release:        16.04
Codename:       xenial

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~$ uname -a
Linux vinny-Bonobo-Extreme 4.3.0-2-generic #11-Ubuntu SMP Fri Dec 4 20:37:48 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

be back when I find quirks

VINNY

[vinnywright]

I hope all goes well with the upgrade. I must confess that I always use an installation usb as I have a separate home partition.

The only minor irritation that I have encountered so far is, that I cannot exit the Muon Package Manager using the top right "X". I have to use Ctrl+Q. On the plus side, I no longer get the "We are sorry, konsole closed unexpectedly . . . " message when I close Konsole.

I must confess that I think I will wait until Beta 1 before I consider replacing it on my main Laptop. Your success may convince me otherwise as Alpha 1 is just around the corner.

havent started it yet ,,,,,just finished Christmas dinner with the son and his family ,,,,we do one hear with them then the big get together with all the family (hear in town) at the mother in-laws tomorrow.

I quit doing a separate home partition ,,,,I have 5 OS installs on this box on a 500 GB HD and just link the usual home directories (Documents ,music , videos, ect ect) to each OS install from a 1TB HD used for storage .

that way all my data is accessible from whatever OS I am booted to seamlessly .

will report back later tonight on the success or failure of the upgrade

VINNY

[NoWorries]

ya think I'll go ahead and "do-release-upgrade -d" on the 15.10 install tonight ,,,,,,what the heck .

VINNY

I hope all goes well with the upgrade. I must confess that I always use an installation usb as I have a separate home partition.

The only minor irritation that I have encountered so far is, that I cannot exit the Muon Package Manager using the top right "X". I have to use Ctrl+Q. On the plus side, I no longer get the "We are sorry, konsole closed unexpectedly . . . " message when I close Konsole.

I must confess that I think I will wait until Beta 1 before I consider replacing it on my main Laptop. Your success may convince me otherwise as Alpha 1 is just around the corner.

[vinnywright]

ya think I'll go ahead and "do-release-upgrade -d" on the 15.10 install tonight ,,,,,,what the heck .

VINNY

[NoWorries]

Xenial is Well and Truly Diverging from Wily

The Alpha release from my records is due on New Year's Eve, 31 December. I have been enjoying using Xenial on a casual basis and I have not encountered any road bumps.

For those who have not yet tried this distribution, you might be interested in a brief snapshot of the packages now installed.

Package	Wily	Xenial
Kernel Version	4.2.0-19	4.3.0-5
Qt Version	5.4.2	5.5.1
Linux-firmware	1.149-3	1.154
kubuntu-settings-desktop	1.15.10	1.16.04
qtwayland5	5.4.2-3	5.5.1-2

There are many other packages that are being upgraded and I am impressed with the rate of progress and the stability of this distribution at such an early stage of development.

Well done all!