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Re: [tlug] Ubuntu 10.04 - kernel update snafu



On 2014-06-09 22:10, Jim Breen wrote:
Three days ago an updated kernel and headers arrived for
10.04, taking it to 2.6.32-61. I updated (as usual), ...

Yes, I am another victim. Please excuse if I drift into rant/essay, but there are a number of specific questions, and I would be eternally grateful for help on any of them. (Just quote the bit, and throw the rest away. Actually the more acute questions are nearer the end.)

First aside: If after reading a bit, you want to scream - "You are doing it wrong, you should be using Debian", or similar, please do. My biggest disappointment in adopting Linux was to find that the notorious hundreds of text files for configuration are hidden away never to be found.

Since Ubuntu 10.04 is no longer supported, and my previous experience of "Upgrading" to Unity was worse than nightmare, I installed Mint 17 Cinnamon. I read some stuff about "modern technologies" or similar, and thought that as long as I get used to something, the important thing is that it does not have to change for at least n years. But I'm not sure that "modern technologies" (in the sense these people use the phrase) and I get on together. I am getting older, and my eyesight is not what it once was; even though I'm working on a Chopin study, my fingers don't seem to be as nimble as they were. So for me there are some major usability issues: I want legibility of words, not a dazzling array of blobs in shades of grey, and I also want as few finger slips as possible to take me somewhere unexpected that it takes 20 minutes websearching to recover from. This appears to be the polar opposite of all modern interface "design". Every combination of finger movements does something (unpredictable), and "Design" means darkish grey text on a light-to-medium grey background, with splashes of 56% grey for contrast. And transparency and wobbliness. I just want to get rid of all this crap; I switched to the "Mint-X" (whatever that means) "theme", and some things got better, but the terminal window, F G'DNS SKE, is slightly transparent. How do I escape this madness?

In the course of this major upheaval I did at least learn something. My hard disk seems to have two partitions, so I was able to keep the Ubuntu 10.04 partition, and by connecting a PS2 keyboard (won't work from a USB one), I can press any/all of Esc, Del, F12, to select an older version of the 10.04 kernel, which then seems to run fine. (Fine-ish. I don't *like* Ubuntu, particularly, but I can manage with it. I dream that one day I might meet something new that I actually like.) How would I go about deleting the latest version, so the automatic boot might even go to the working 10.04?

My immediate problem is that I am involved in a largish translation project, of some school arithmetic materials. And this is supposed to be done in Memsource. So I downloaded a file called "Mem_something.run", and after a bit of fiddle executed the version said to be for Ubuntu 12 (listed here: http://wiki.memsource.com/wiki/MemSource_Editor_Installation ). Despite being 15MB, it simply does nothing. How would I get a clue whether this is because it really only runs on "Official Vanilla Unity Ubuntu" or what? (If I were a Debian user would using something notionally only available for "Ubuntu" be harder? Easier? Impossible?)

Of course, I do not think Memsource is the right tool for this job: if you have a manual, preferably translating between two Indo-european languages, it may be brilliant at picking up common, almost identical sentences. Generally for Japanese it strikes me as miserable, ...well perhaps that's not relevant here, except to note that the programs I have most difficulty getting to work in Linux are ones I don't want to use really.

Since there is a Memsource version for Ubu 10 and 12, I chose 12, thinking it closer to Mint 17. But should I think Old Better?

That is enough. I read Stephen Fry's novel "Making History" this week - very recommended. Depressingly thought-provoking.

Brian Chandler





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