Re: [tlug] Ubuntu 10.04 - kernel update snafu

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Brian Chandler writes:

 > 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.

If you have enough yen (in either sense, beer can always be converted
to yen by not buying it if you have enough yen in the other sense), I
find that running all my favorite *nix software under X in the Xquartz
server, and using Mac OS X as my window/session manager, beats the tar
out of anything I've seen on a Linux desktop.  Dunno if your
translation software will work in that environment.  On the other
hand, there does seem to be a Mac version.

 > This appears to be the polar opposite of all modern interface
 > "design".

Youse gets whats youse pays for.  Linux companies cannot afford to
catch up to 35 years of HCI research (ie, going back to the Lisa) in 5
years, but they can hire "artistic" wannabes.  Sad, isn't it?

 > How do I escape this madness?

Step 1.  Buy beer for 10.
Step 2.  Install Debian "Bare Metal" or RH "Scorched Earth"
         distribution.  This consists of something like a recent
         kernel, an appropriate initramfs, a tree full of kernel
         modules, and staticly-linked executables of bash (or zsh) and
         dpkg (or rpm).
Step 3.  Find willing wizard, or at least some old-timer who isn't
         afraid of dpkg/rpm-level package management.
Step 4.  Buy pizza for 2, and enough wet-wipes to keep fingers clean
         nevertheless.
Step 5.  Feed wizard pizza and beer, and bitch bitterly about the
         stuff he's installing.  Make him get it right for you.
Step 6.  Repeat steps 4 and 5 four more times.  (Aren't you glad you
         bought beer for 10 like I told you?)
Step 7.  Tell the tale at next TLUG meeting.

I'm not entirely serious, but if you can find somebody who's familiar
with the structure of Linux reality to help you do this stuff, you'll
be a lot happier with the results and (perhaps surprisingly) I bet
you'll learn more useful things than you would hacking on your own.

Hey, TLUG!  We really ought to get back in the habit of installfests.
Now that we always have good net connections, it's even possible to do
most of the necessary work on a tower box in somebody's home from the (assuming
they know how to set up sshd reasonably securely).

 > 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),

Interesting.

 > 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?

If as you say 10.04 is installed on a different partition, then
possibly all you need to do is change the default boot command (which
specifies kernel and root partition) in grub.conf (which lives in
/boot/grub/grub.conf on my non-Ubuntu systems, one is Debian though so
probably Ubuntu is the same).  If that file doesn't make sense to you,
feel free to post it here (it's not very security sensitive).

 > 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.

Can you be more specific about what kind of nothing it does?  For
example, how long does it take to do nothing?  Does it produce any
output or error messages when doing nothing?  Did you click it to make
it do nothing, or did you run it in a terminal where it did nothing?

Try "ls -l Mem*".  If that doesn't give you a line with r-xr-x-rx near
the beginning (some of the dashes might be "w" instead, but you need
the "x"s), you need to make the file executable: "chmod +x Mem*".
Other than that I don't have any suggestions.

 > 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.

That's something we can all relate to, I suspect.

 > 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?

It can't hurt to try the other version, unless you're paying for
connectivity by the byte.