Covid HEAVY USE Neon and Kubuntu

[woodsmoke]

Nice to see that things are working out online for you.

I had less luck when being invited to an online meeting using Microsoft Teams.
There is a linux preview version, so I installed that one..

Hi
I feel bad that the situation occurred.
I've settled on trying to use DISCORD if a student actually ever asks to have a face to face.
I figure that I will warn them that I am going to try using DISCORD and if it doesn't work they go to ZOOM.

As I posted elsewhere I was able to get DISCORD to actually "work" and it "seemed" to want to do the video using the Logitech web cam, I could "see me" in the preview / setup and there is a VERY nice display for the sound as to whether it is working or not, it is a very nice long horizontal bar that starts out blue and changes to yellow and red if the input volume gets very high.

But, when a colleague got onto it... "it plays a very loud sound" and there is a VERY small popup that says that "X has landed", and then nothing...

I contaced the help page and go absolutely no response, it has a canned reply system where it analyzes what you ask a question about and then offers some responses which are mainly posting previously asked questions and responses.

I imaging that they are getting "slammed" because of so many schools going to remote learning, they mention that, but anyway.

They ARE trying to be very proactive for teaching, they have a "professor classroom" add on that has a template for "out of office' "office hours" etc.

IT MAY be that the colleague and I were supposed to do a "chat"... I don't know... she is off doing her thing and this is not a big deal she uses ZOOM and what I'm doing is way on the back burner.

So, you 'might| try DISCORD, there might even be a template that you could use.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion.

woody

[jglen490]

As for Zoom. It depends on where it is homed. The DoD here in the US uses it, a lot. Not for sensitive information, but for the kind of info that one would expect to be on the evening news. Works fine, in that environment.

Most of the problems stem from NOT using features already available in the product.

[mbohets]

Nice to see that things are working out online for you.

I had less luck when being invited to an online meeting using Microsoft Teams.
There is a linux preview version, so I installed that one.
As I never used teams before, I started it well in advance of the meeting, and at first it seemed to work, I got to the meeting bridge of the company that invited me, but the meeting was not online yet.
30 min later, just before the start of the meeting, I tried again, but I was no longer able to connect.
I got all kinds of errors, telling me that I needed to re-install the 2 factor authenticator app on my cell phone, but that did not help, also MS Teams was not opening up anymore, even afer a purge and re-install.
The only way I saw that is was on my system was an icon in the taskbar telling me that teams was running, but I could not maximize it anymore.

So after having missed the first 20 min of the meeting, I got an older pc that still had a windows OS in dual boot on it, and logged into the meeting using Windows10
I kept Windows on that older PC for the occasional firmware update of a synthesiser, that has an updater that only runs on windows.

[GreyGeek]

TWP
yeppers to all that you posted, that is why im trying to get jitsi to run but can't as of now.
thanks again.
woody

There are a bunch of deb package (4-6) that contain various parts and rather than clog up my laptop with those, or with the electron version, I decided to download and use the AppImage.
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases which contains
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-...86_64.AppImage
Then I added the execute permission using Dophin.

There is a known issue which prevents the app from starting on some Linux distributions: #231
The workaround for now is to run the following command:
sudo sysctl kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1


Alternatively, launch the app like so ./jitsi-meet-x86_64.AppImage --no-sandbox

I did not want to run without a sandbox so I used the sysctl command.

I got an icon from here: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-...esources/icons
and used it to pretty up my menu entry.


It works wonderfully!

[woodsmoke]

TWP
yeppers to all that you posted, that is why im trying to get jitsi to run but can't as of now.
thanks again.
woody

[woodsmoke]

Don B Cilly
lol I NEVER thought of that!
thanks!
woody

[TWPonKubuntu]

Thanks for the report Woodsmoke. I note that the academics have invested in Zoom. There are many reports (Do a non-google search) on some serious problems, not just software glitches, with the Zoom tool. For me, the primary problem is that Zoom appears to be passing some of their bandwidth through China. I know how hard it is to get the educators AND their administrators to make a change, but Zoom has problems.
For example:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/fbi-watch...o-meeting-apps

[Don B. Cilly]

You can copy from the KDE connect notification so you can just paste the code in.

[woodsmoke]

This post could get confusing but it is "basically" about how, in the space of one day the college was moved from seated to "remote learning" (education speak there)>

For the folks who just want "the facts m'am"... this post discusses

A) OS stability of Kubuntu and Neon.
B) processor intensive native to Linux apps: OBS and Audacity
C) outside apps: ZOOM
D) Kontact suite all parts work
E) KDE CONNECT a surprising use

Well, I normally use both Kubuntu and Neon for my work machine and have done so for years.

IN TERMS OF THE COLLEGE...Kubuntu only dropped the ball ONE time and that was, what? 6 years ago when I had set up a "multi-campus" database for the laboratory inventories using Kubu on a Toshiba laptop and invited the honchos to watch a demonstration and Kubu failed... it just died... right there...well that shot that... and it wasn't the computer it was the OS.

Anyway... I kind of figured that we would be moving to online but didn't really forsee a problem so when it appeared I just e-mailed the students an alternative lab exercise to do at home from my phone and went back to visiting with some friends in a smokey 'ol barroom.

However, the next day things got serious.

Here is a listing of what has worked and what has not.

1) The only thing that did not do what was needed was VLC in terms of recording audio using a USB microphone. Now, it might have worked using a regular radio plug and it was NOT a fault of Kubuntu.

So what worked: well everything... the OS and the apps...

2) Several folks recommended Audacity and OBS and both work great, I have been doing a LOT of "voice over" of presentations that I normally show in class as a "hook to hang my hat on" for "commentry / lecture" I TRY to use "dialectic" when possible but that will turn into a whole " 'nother ball of wax" using ZOOM or whatever because... seveveral / many students literally use a phone or a computer at school.

I can EASILY view the presentation as a .pdf, slider down and provide commentary into the microphone which produces a very nice, small, file, rename it and it goes to Canvas...EXCEPT... Canvas limits our TOTAL file size to 1 GB...!!! !! WHAT...!!! so, I popped it onto YouTube, which was recommended by the college, so I do not have to worry about anything on that front.

SO...KUBU AND NEON both support OBS and Audacity, no crashes, etc.

3) KONTACT...now this is just a STUNNER... I had basically given up on KONTACT a year or so ago and it has, apparently, been given up on by the Kubuntu devs also, this from a comment made in a post a month or so ago.

BUT...KONTACT is completely operational on a NEON machine, the work machine... I am going to test it on the T.V. machine next.

THE PARTS of Kontact.

KMAIL
a) hooking into a Microsoft Cloud account that the college uses was easy peasy.
b) gmail worked! WHAT !! ?? THAT WILL NOT LAST LONG... unless Google decides to play nice.
c) delivered / read options... the delivered option DOES work, but I have not had enough feedback about e-mails to verify whether the "read" function works. I will continue to watch and report if it seems to work.
c) the Calendar actually NOW just prints a MONTH calendar!!! AMAZING... really... nice, clean month calendar...

and I have 5 of them taped to a door to have a visual representation of timeliines.
d) The calendar app itself...

this is amazing...really amazing...

PAY ATTENTION TO THIS...

I got an e-mail today about the students who use the greenhouse in botany studies etc. ( as an aside, I raise some plants there and take my intro biology students to get plants to take home for activities) but...the botany / ag science / etc. students are having their annual plant sale...

THIS IS AMAZING...

There was a clickable "date" IN THE E-MAIL to copy and past into a personal client...it offered gmail and Outlook...

I clicked the link, chose Outlook and "personal calendar"...and IT APPEARED IN KONTACT in my personal calendar and properly color coded on the correct date!!!!

WHAT !! ?? WHAT !!! ?

NOW GET THIS...GET THIS...!!! amazing...

i RIGHT CLICKED IN THE CALENDAR AND A DROP DOWN MENU APPEARED AND ONE OF THE OPTIONS WAS...TO SEND IT TO

TO DO... !!!! what !!! AND IT WORKED!!!!!!

just amazing...

e ) The summary pane works completely.

Feeds, journal, popup notes all work...

what did not work was importing contacts from gmail... THAT may be that I just do not understand what is going on with Akonadai client...I do not see an option, "like there used to be" for the gmial contacts, but again, that may just be me.

If anyone has a comment about that i would be appreciative.

4 ) KDE CONNECT... it works fine and now has popup reminders of a bunch of things, but this one little thing MAKES ME LOVE IT EVEN MORE...

The college has gone to a weird "two stage" authentication to get into the teacher portion of the website...

i) the normal password login ...

ii ) BUT... as soon as we do that it automatically triggers a a six digit authorization code text message to our phones....we now MUST have a smart phone to get in through the security...

well...then you gotta run and get the phone... and type in the 6 digit authorization code ...okaay...

today I literally just noticed that, for some reason NOW... KDE connect popped a notification of the text AND I COULD READ THE NUMBERS in the popup window instead of having to get the phone... amazing..really...

5) third party apps...

There is discussion in other theads but we are supposed to use ZOOM and I went to the site the site recognized the OS, both NEON and Kubuntu as "Ubuntu / Debian" and it downloaded and installed and works on both machines.

Depending on comments from others I may install ITSIE and try it as a ZOOM or DUO "client?" dunno...

So to sum this up...

Both Kubuntu and Neon went from well... 20 miles per hour to 60 mph in literally one day with NO hiccups...

Kudos to both teams!!

If there are any other comments or questions please ask.

woodsmoke