elvisd blog

Enable eclipse global menu integration in Ubuntu (>= 11.10)

2012-01-18T15:20:00.004+01:00

I have just reinstalled my workstation and have chosen to give Ubuntu Precise Pangolin, 12.04 LTS, a try.
Everything seams snappier compared to Oneiric Ocelot.

What isn't fixed is that Eclipse is blacklisted from Global App Menu bar.
I have found this method to solve my issue:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/eclipse/+bug/618587/comments/46

Simply:

step 1:
$ sudo vim /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so

step 2: (search for "Eclipse")
/Eclipse

step 3: (replace "E" with "X")
rX

step 4: (save)
ZZ

step 5: (maybe optional, not sure)
sudo ldconfig

Thank you Vasile Rotaru!

Ubuntu 11.10: eclipse e l'appmenu

2011-10-28T15:28:00.001+02:00

Nella versione 11.10 di Ubuntu (Oneiric Ocelot) eclipse è stata 'blacklisted' per quanto riguardo l'utilizzo dell'appmenu (menu globale).
Sinceramente non ho capito esattamente cosa ancora non funzioni come dovrebbe, io ho applicato il workaround che vi posto e funziona.
Consiglio di fare una copia di sicurezza del file che andremo a modificare con il seguente comando:
sudo cp /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so-original.

Questo workaround l'ho appreso seguento il bug 618587.

Installate vim
sudo apt-get install vim
Aprite il file con vim
sudo vim /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so
Ricercare Eclipse
/Eclipse <enter>
Sostituire 'E' con 'X'
rX
Salvare
ZZ
potrebbe essere opzionale
sudo ldconfig
Profit!

Se trovate dei malfunzionamenti non esitate a aggiungere le vostre impressioni e commenti al bug di cui sopra.

Scrolling naturale

2011-07-28T12:01:00.000+02:00

Rimango confuso davanti alla questione scrolling 'naturale', non so battezzato da chi, che consiste sostanzialmente ad invertire la direzione di scroll delle pagine, dei documenti, e così via, introdotto da Apple nell'ultima release del suo sistema operativo, Lion.

Potrebbe essere naturale per dispositivi touch-screen, ma direi innaturale nelle interfacce con interazione via mouse.
Ciò che mi colpisce è lo spuntare, a destra e manca, in Gnome ed in KDE, di how-to, guide, articoli di come implementarlo nel DE preferito.

Mi sorgono spontanee alcune domande, riflessioni senza risposta, o che la risposta non la vogliono sentire.

Se Canonical avesse introdotto una modifica simile in Oneiric, per esempio, quale sarebbe stata la reazione della comunità?
Gli utenti Ubuntu come avrebbe reagito?
E gli altri (dato che non si astengono dal commentarne una)?

Solo perché lo fa Apple è «figo»? È giusto? È «naturale»?
Mah.
Seguo l'avanzare delle distro Ubuntu da molto tempo, ho visto sollevare polveroni per molto meno (recentemente la modifica della toolbar divenuta 'scura', lo spostamento dei pulsanti finestra e via discorrendo).

Chi ci capisce mi aiuti.

Ubuntu & Unity. Qualcosa intuivo...

2011-07-05T11:20:00.000+02:00

Prendo spunto da questo articolo http://goo.gl/HfFi7, scritto da Ricky.

Anche lui, ma anche molti altri, corregge il tiro delle opinioni inizialmente (e forse ingiustamente) negative.

Quando fu annunciato che Ubuntu avrebbe avuto Unity quale interfaccia per difetto si alzò, come tutti ormai sapete, un polverone di opinioni, soprattutto negative.
Personalmente l'idea mi piaceva. Unity è bello, su questo non si discute. Si vede che qualcuno ha curato il look. Deve impressionare a colpo d'occhio l'utente.

Dopo l'uscita di Natty ho installato due computer ad utenti con conoscenze medio - basse, abituati a MS Windows (XP o Seven) oppure a Ubuntu pre-Natty, quindi Gnome Classic (come lo chiamano ora).

Ne i pulsanti delle finestre a sinistra, ne la dash, tantomeno il launcher hanno causato problemi di rilievo.
Anzi.
Per avviare il browser piuttosto della piccola icona (16px) accanto al menu 'places' ora c'è un bel bottone nel launcher. Più facile da trovare e da cliccare. Bello grosso, insomma.
In MS Windows l'icona era piu grande se piazzata sul desktop, ma se si desiderava aprire un'altra applicazione bisognava iconizzare le finestre oppure avventurarsi nel menu.

Per il menu (AppMenu) non vedo grossi problemi. Osservando come questi utenti lavorano ho notato che non accedono praticamente mai al menu dell'applicazione del browser o di altre applicazioni.
E comunque spiegato una volta il tutto è risolto.

La dash la trovano comoda, invece di scorrere i menu in cerca dell'applicazione desiderata (ricordate che MS Windows NON categorizza le applicazioni? Vi ricordate il disordine nel menu?) digitano, per esempio 'internet' ed il sistema propone loro il browser e la chat.
Vogliono aprire internet, non un browser.
Digitano mail ed il sistema presenta loro il client di posta.
Non importa se si chiama Evolution, Thunderbird oppure Outlook. Vogliono l'e-mail.

Piccola parentesi: questo mi ricorda quando facevo del supporto tecnico: preparavo dei PC e la richiesta era spesso quella di creare delle icone sul desktop (sulla sinsitra, ouch!) che si chiamavano: Internet (per Internet Explorer), e-mail per Outlook, Lettere per MS word, Tabelle per MS Excel, e così via.

Il prossimo PC che migrerò è un portatile per una persona di 65 anni, sul quale avevo dovuto installare Mint perché Ubuntu aveva problemi con la scheda video e non avevo tempo di risolvere.
E anche li so già che sarà un successo. Pulsante di internet ca. 4 volte più grosso, quindi più facile da cliccare.

Quindi dopo queste esperienze, quando leggevo degli articoli che mettevano in croce Unity e Ubuntu in genere proprio non capivo.
Cosa costa ai power user installare il sistema operativo ed al primo login definire Gnome classic come ambiente di default? Nulla.
Lo stesso succede ora con synaptic. Ti piace? Lo usi? Lo vuoi? Prenditelo. È «one apt-get away».

Non è che ai linuxiani forse da fastidio che sempre più gente usa Linux (via Ubuntu o altre distro)?
Li fa essere meno diversi, fuori dal gruppo? Allora si passa ad Arch, è per questo?
Mah.

Questo meccanismo che si vive in rete in questi ultimi tempi non lo capisco. Dovremmo essere contenti che Ubuntu si avvicini agli utenti finali, semplificando e semplificandosi. Lo abbiamo desiderato per anni e lo hanno predicato anche gli analisti, «è quello che manca» dicevano.

Inoltre, per concludere, chiunque ci pensi un attimo capisce che Unity è stato spinto dentro un po' a forza per arrivare in tempo alla prossima LTS. Chiaro come il sole. E dichiarato.

Attendo opinioni.

Ubuntu, the community and me

2011-06-01T11:56:00.000+02:00

Ok. I decided. I want to start contributing the ubuntu community. After many years as ubuntu power user it's time to start giving something back.
I want to develop and deploy.
That's what I like.

I'll keep this blog updated about my progresses.

What I have tried is to download Revelation's sources to fix some annoying bugs, but I can't find some up-to-date doc to learn how to compile/package/redistribute.
I 've found Daniel Holbach's blog post http://bit.ly/lofhMK hope to learn something starting from there.

UBUNTU 11.04 Natty Narwahl on my SONY VAIO VPCF1

2011-05-04T22:21:00.003+02:00

Installed UBUNTU Natty 11.04 and almost everything works out of the box.
Some minor things to edit/adapt:
- install NVIDIA binary drivers (apt-get install nvidia-common)
- edit xorg.conf (must generate it using NVIDIA XServer settings function 'Save to X Configuration'
- create a file to fix the scrolling zone on trackpad

what's missing:
- fix custom top-right keys: not important at the moment

Enjoy the laptop and ubuntu natty.
Unity's awesome.

Links
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Laptop/Sony/Vaio/FSeries/Natty
http://code.google.com/p/vaio-f11-linux/
http://code.google.com/p/vaio-f11-linux/issues/detail?id=49
http://code.google.com/p/vaio-f11-linux/wiki/ProgrammableKeys

Enable mouse wheel scroll between workspaces

2011-01-10T14:08:00.000+01:00

- Install Compiz Config Settings Manager (CCSM)
- Open CCSM and go to: Desktop > Viewport switcher > Desktop based viewport switching
- Set «Move Next» to button5
- Set «Move prev» to button4

Done.

Be in hurry to format the HD

2010-11-09T09:57:00.000+01:00

Just learned something today:
«Never format a new computer's HD without having burned the restore DVD», upgrading the BIOS often requires MS Windows. Or, at least, before formatting update firmwares and the BIOS!

On the Toshiba Satellite C650 i can't boot UBUNTU on the older BIOS, need to upgrade it.
Finally I upgraded it, and now i'm installing my beloved UBUNTU.

UBUNTU: update to light themes.

2010-08-09T17:07:00.000+02:00

In a today's post of the Ubuntu Design team, they make public some restyling on light themes for the next ubuntu.
I can't wait, so i downloaded, as described, the deb with a beta version to try it out.

WOW.

I'm trying a new Icon set too, Faenza.

another- WOW.

Links:

http://design.canonical.com/2010/08/an-update-to-the-ubuntu-light-themes/ for light theme deb (+ murrine engine)
http://tiheum.deviantart.com/ for Faenza Icon theme by tiheum

Listen to Radio Marca in UBUNTU

2010-07-26T15:08:00.002+02:00

Today I would like to listen live Raúl's press conference, the Real Madrid's Great Captain, cause is leaving (sadly) the club of his life. The web-player/plug in doesn't run in chromium, so I googled and found a quick tip/solution.
Simply open a terminal window and paste this command:

#> mplayer -user-agent NSPlayer/8.0.0.447 mms://reflector.marca.com:9050

First install mplayer, using the following commad:

#> sudo apt-get install mplayer

Rhythmbox and desktop-art in Lucid

2010-06-04T10:00:00.001+02:00

I have tried to install and activate Desktop-art for Rhythmbox in Lucid (64bit).
The plugin failed to load, after a bit of googling i have found the solution:

#> sudo apt-get install python-rsvg

Thank you Mathias for the plugin
http://nedrebo.org/code/rhythmbox/desktop_art

Shutter in UBUNTU Lucid

2010-05-31T12:08:00.001+02:00

Finally upgraded to UBUNTU Lucid (10.04 LTS).
What a nice OS.

What drives me crazy are applications without ubuntu-mono styled icons in notification area.

2 examples: Shutter and Skype

For shutter the solution is so simple:
A quick how-to in 3 steps:
https://answers.launchpad.net/shutter/+question/110413

Many thanks to Mario Kemper and Duncan Lock!

UBUNTU Karmic and eclipse Galileo problems.

2010-02-10T15:51:00.003+01:00

Problem:

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=287307

Solutions:

http://mou.me.uk/2009/10/31/fixing-eclipse-in-ubuntu-9-10-karmic-koala/

found on

http://tonyfire.altervista.org/2009/11/eclipse-galileo-problema-pulsanti/

... will try. hope solves the bug.

Looking forward to downlad an eclipse 3.5.2 weekly build.

Adobe Flash 10 64bit on Jaunty (Ubuntu 9.04)

2009-07-22T13:32:00.003+02:00

Had strange problems with apt-provided flash player: freezes of flash videos, no sound, can't listen to music if an instance of flash was once started in firefox, and so on.
Finally, decided (and found time) to find a solution. :D

First followed a Pulse audio how-to
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789578

Than installed the latests flash player 10 64bit for linux refresh
http://www.myscienceisbetter.info/2008/11/install-native-64bit-flash-player-10-on-linux.html

Now every thing works just fine.

Jaunty NEW Update Manager pop-under

2009-04-30T17:20:00.002+02:00

To disable the new Jaunty Update Manager's pop-under feature, just copy the following code in the terminal:


gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false

I have found the tip in the comments of TuxRadar's «Open letter to Mark Shuttleworth».

Bye

Jaunty's out! Check it out!

2009-04-24T01:15:00.003+02:00

Finally!
Ubuntu released Jaunty Jackalope 9.04.
I haven't the time, till the w-e, to install it on my main laptop, due to full backup time... :)
Since.... I don't remember since when.... I have at home a laptop IBM Thinkpad R30. I tried many times over the past years to install an Ubuntu release without success.
I haven't given much time to find out the problems.
This was the perfect machine to try, and hope in, Jaunty.
And...
Tadaaaa...
Ubuntu installed without problems... nor kernel boot parameters... nor ... nothing at all.
The only problem was that the screen res was only 800x600... :) ... I say «was» cause after a bit of googling I found (as always) the solution.
Below the content of the super-natural /etc/X11/xorg.conf:


# xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
#   sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "Device"
 Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
 Identifier "Configured Monitor"
 HorizSync 28-49
 VertRefresh 43-72
EndSection

Section "Screen"
 Identifier "Default Screen"
 Monitor  "Configured Monitor"
 Device  "Configured Video Device"
 DefaultDepth 24
 SubSection "Display"
  Modes  "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
 EndSubSection
EndSection

Credits to draimus, 2009, april 2nd post found at
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-trident/+bug/209018

I'll post during the week-end how my main laptop upgrade is gone and something about my first Jaunty's impressions.... :P
LOVE IT!

waiting for 15 years....

2008-11-24T11:10:00.002+01:00

Wait's over!
Wow... this brings my memory back for some days... months... years... yes. Many years. 15. (Better 17 years... 'cause haven't loved «The spaghetti incident» so much... )
It's a good album. Very good.

Thank you Axl Rose. Thank you very much.

GDD2008 Milan

2008-10-21T23:42:00.002+02:00

Today I attended the GDD 2008 (Google Developers Day) in Milan. Was the first time. What a nice experience. Sessions were ok (not all what I expected) but, ok.

Interesting the topic on OpenWeb and the Keynote (overviewing all Google products), not bad GWT and Chrome V8 sessions, disliked the GData API; the content can be interesting but to much code to follow on slides, without the possibility to follow live on our Pc. But I understand... one day for so many things...
I love that Company.

The dream...

2008-10-17T16:55:00.001+02:00

Check here
No comments needed...

Gnome Icon theme

2008-10-16T11:30:00.003+02:00

I recently found an impressive wonderful icon theme for Gnome...
Meliae... now at version 0.2.3

Here the link to Gnome-look
Thanks to Sora for creating and sharing this piece of art!

Metacity opacity change (On inactive windows)

2008-10-16T11:14:00.005+02:00

Since one of the last releases of metacity, at least set as default in UBUNTU, inactive windows have set opacity to a semi transparent value. That's nice but... with some skins the effect is terrible.
Here the gconf values to set to achive a nicer look.
(Eventually if you like the opacity effect, my advice is to set to the entire window that effect (using compiz)).
Howto:
1. Open the GConf Editor (alt+F2, gconf-editor, Enter)
2. Navigate to /apps/gwd and set the metacity_theme_shade_opacity Value to 1 (should be 0.75 as said in Ubuntu)
Done!
Here some screens...
...Before

...After

Nicer GNOME clock applet

2008-08-06T10:04:00.004+02:00

I have found how to change the look of the default-almost-ugly GNOME clock applet...

gconf-editor
goto /apps/panel/applets/clock_screen0/prefs

set

format = custom
custom_format = <span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);font-size:smaller;">%a %d %b</span> <b>%H:%M</b>

Example:

best eclipse.ini

2008-06-13T10:17:00.001+02:00

Is this the best possible eclipse.ini file content?
---------- 8< ----------
-showlocation
-showsplash
org.eclipse.platform
-vmargs
-Xms768m
-Xmx768m
-XX:PermSize=128m
-XX:MaxPermSize=256m
-Dosgi.bundlefile.limit=100
-ea
---------- 8< ----------

IBM iSeries Access for Linux in Ubuntu

2006-10-31T22:34:00.000+01:00

finally... follow http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=165337 ... the continuation of my post... http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=97066

Dock for gnome!

2006-08-24T16:05:00.000+02:00

see: http://www.gnome-dock.org/trac

Installation instruction on Ubuntu 6.06:
( from http://www.compiz.net/topic-2839-gnome-dock)
Install dependency
sudo apt-get install build-essential librsvg2-bin librsvg2-common librsvg2-dev libglitz-glx1 libglitz-glx1-dev

Download and move the tarball

wget http://www.gnome-dock.org/prerelease/cairo-dock-0.0.1b.tar.gz && tar -xvzf cairo-dock-0.0.1b.tar.gz && sudo mv cairo-dock/ /opt/

Make and run it
cd /opt/cairo-dock/ && sudo make clean && sudo make && sudo ./cairo-dock --no-glitz --no-background

Works like a charm with this !

Received new Laptop

2006-08-24T11:43:00.000+02:00

After much waiting I have received a new laptop. A DELL Latitude D820, here's the specs:
- Intel Core Duo 2GHz
- 2 GB Ram 667 MHz
- 80 GB Harddisk, 7200 rpm, SATA
- 15.4" display, NVIDIA 110, 1920x1200
- Wireless, Giga-Ethernet, Modem
- and so on...

Wow. I'm happy.
I'll install Windows XP, in a 23 GB Partition, and the rest for Linux. I have chosen to install UBUNTU 6.06.1, gnome as UI.
I'll post here my installation notes in the next days.

Bye bye.

elvisd

iSeries Access on my gentoo box

2006-03-01T16:04:00.000+01:00

Hi all,

I finally have a working iSeries Access (formerly know as Client Access, is a 5250 emulator, needed to work with the IBM iSeries, a.k.a AS/400)!

Here's how to:

1. Download the Linux version from the IBM web site (http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/access/linux/) I have downloaded version 5.2.0-1.10 (file name is: iSeriesAccess-5.2.0-1.10.i386.rpm)

2. emerge the rpm2targz utility (sudo emerge -av rpm2targz or emerge -av rpm2targz as root)

3. in the terminal console navigate where you saved the rpm file and type rpm2targz iSeriesAccess-5.2.0-1.10.i386.rpm, this will create a file named iSeriesAccess-5.2.0-1.10.i386.tar.gz

4. cd /

5. tar xvzf /iSeriesAccess-5.2.0-1.10.i386.tar.gz this will create folders in /opt/ibm/iSeriesAccess

6. now we create symlinks to required libraries:
a. sudo ln -s /opt/ibm/iSeriesAccess/lib/libcwbcore.so /usr/lib/
b. sudo ln -s /opt/ibm/iSeriesAccess/lib/libcwbrc.so /usr/lib/
c. sudo ln -s /opt/ibm/iSeriesAccess/bin/ibm5250 /usr/bin/
d. sudo ln -s /opt/ibm/iSeriesAccess/bin/setup5250 /usr/bin/
e. sudo ln -s /opt/ibm/iSeriesAccess/mri/en /opt/ibm/iSeriesAccess/mri/en_US

7. launch the application typing ibm5250 in your console... Should work... ;-)

8. create all the links/launchers you'll need.

Prerequisites:
- openmotif
- glibc
- unixODBC --> don't sure if must be here (?)...

Everything available on portage

References:
- http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37428
- http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-306492-highlight-iseries.html --> for font issues, xorg.xonf file
- http://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=76122 --> copied what the ebuild does...

Hope this can help someone setting up the iSeriesAccess on linux and that helps someone else to be free to leave the Win-World, or maybe live in a more mixed one.

Gentoo on my IBM Thinkpad R51 1829-9MG

2006-02-22T14:06:00.000+01:00

why: me, thinkpad and gentoo

I am an employed java developer. MS Windows user since 90s.
since the announce of win-vista I have decided to switch to linux. I won't to explain why on this post... maybe another day.
I need, obvious to say, a stable and usable system. and fancy too.
I always tried many linux distros: The first one was Suse, than RedHat (later Fedora) the last one was Ubuntu, for approx. 3-4 months. Then I'd like to try a more customizable distro, and I have found and tried gentoo, because of his package management system (portage).
The first install took 2 days, to have a not-yet-fully functional system. Not happy I have reinstalled gentoo from scratch. This time the system was better, but not perfect. To many experiments... :-)
Now i'd like to install a perfect instance of gentoo on my thinkpad R51 (1829-9MG), and this is my adventure journal. Hope can help someone else.

objectives and requirements

here a list of what needs to work on my laptop

Graphical user interface (still deciding if GNOME, xfce or KDE, but till now I've used GNOME)
Ethernet: wired and wireless, including network profile switching (very important!)
display switching (LCD, External Monitor, Both)
Video card performances (ATI Radeon)
two or more jdks (1.5 and 1.4)
eclipse and other java tools
VMWare 5 for a Windows environment
USB Devices (External HD, Memory sticks, dig. camera)
An audio player (not decided yet. help needed) w/ mp3 and ogg support
A video player (not decided yet, help needed) w/ DVD DivX Xvid mpg wmv ... support
Open office 2.0 as office suite
Firefox 1.5 ( +plugins ) and Thuderbird 1.5
A 5250 emulator for iSeries connections
A terminal server client
Graphics/Photo tools
IM (MSN+Jabber) and Skype (with bluetooth headset working)
MySQL Database server 5 and JBoss 4
CD and DVD Burning with both my internal drive and an external USB2 drive
Photo printing on my HP Photosmart 7760
Windows shares access
Some other software (picture previewer, acrobat7)

Let's go

1. Basic gentoo installation
I have followed the Official gentoo installation handbook available here
I have chosed to create 3 partitions on my 60 Gb /dev/hda:
- /dev/hda1 for /boot of 128 Mb ext2
- /dev/hda2 for swap 1 Gb swap
- /dev/hda3 for /, all available space minus 4 Gb for future usage reiserFS

2. UI
I have chosed to use KDE, till now I've used GNOME, it's time to try something else. I have downloaded a distribution with KDE 3.5 to play with, and I must say that my first impression is very positive. Surely better as for 2-3 years when I tried KDE for the first time.
What I absolutely don't like is the default theme (window, style and icons) but I have browsed www.kde-look.org and I think there are some good looks.
What has impressed me a lot is Karamba the widget engine, seams better than gDesklet.

...to be continued...

SUN Creator 2 on my gentoo box

2006-02-17T10:42:00.000+01:00

I have found this blog entry, in Marco Walther's Weblog, describing how to install SUN's creator 2 on gentoo.

A quick-resume-guide

Just to know my system:

elvisd@tped ~ $ uname -a
Linux tped 2.6.15-gentoo-r1 #8 SMP PREEMPT Wed Feb 15 16:14:51 UTC 2006 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.70GHz GNU/Linux
elvisd@tped ~ $ cat /etc/*release
Gentoo Base System version 1.12.0_pre16

Then install required library, and symlink:

elvisd@tped ~ $ emerge sys-libs/libstdc++-v3
elvisd@tped ~ $ cd /usr/lib/libstdc++-v3/
elvisd@tped libstdc++-v3 $ ln -s libstdc++.so.5 libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3
elvisd@tped libstdc++-v3 $ cd /usr/lib
elvisd@tped lib $ ln -s libstdc++-v3/libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 .