This post will detail some stuff I’ve done to a plain Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop (bionic) to make me feel a little more at home in the transition from my daily driver for years the 16.04 release using Canoncial’s Unity as the primary desktop interface to the GNOME Shell of 18.04. Canonical abandoned the former after shifting focus from the convergence and personal device market to cloud and IoT in 2017 leaving development of its mobile OS, Ubuntu Touch which Unity is a part of, to the community formed UBports project (Unity8 is now known as Lomiri). I’ve been putting off this transition exactly because I knew it would require me to make some tweaks to my daily routines, but this system is not one I use on a daily basis so it will make the transition a gentle ride.

The intention is to update this as the experience progresses.

EDIT 2021-08-25: clean up and publish dormant draft post

Browsing GNOME Extensions

To be able to install GNOME Extensions directly from a browser while perusing the directory at extensions.gnome.org, add the GNOME Shell Integration extension/add-on to your browser (Firefox add-on, Chrome Web Store), then install the Integration extension in GNOME to communicate with the browser extension:

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

After this you can go to extensions.gnome.org/local/ to see, configure and update installed extensions.

Useful GNOME Extensions

• Clipboard Indicator (source): access clipboard history
• Better Volume Indicator (source): adds scroll to adjust and middle-click to un/-mute
• Fuzzy Clock (source): changes time in notification area to textual clock
• Alarm Clock (source): shows alarm notifications for gnome-clocks (see below)

Time Keeping

World/Alarm/Stopwatch/Timer application

GNOME includes a nice Clock application which is available in the package repository but not installed by default;

sudo apt install gnome-clocks

Installing the Alarm Clock extension described above, will also show the application’s alarms in the notification area.

Notification bar

I like both the date and seconds to be displayed in the head of the desktop, so to format the text a couple of extensions are available;

• Clock Override (source)
• Panel Date Format (source)
• Datetime Format (source)
• More options described here, ;
  • https://askubuntu.com/questions/1096203/how-to-display-custom-formatted-clock-in-top-bar-on-multiple-displays-in-ubuntu
  • https://superuser.com/questions/573951/how-can-i-show-the-date-in-the-gnome-3-menubar
  • https://askubuntu.com/questions/968860/how-do-i-customize-the-date-time-display-in-gnome-shells-top-bar

Lidt flere dråber i Spørgsmål&Svar-kategorien fra Facebook.

Når jeg endelig forvilder mig derind, og går på opdagelse i de tekniske grupper, ender det ofte med at får jeg skrevet en fristil i forsøget på at hjælpe.

Denne gang en snak om Android på “PC”, og basale digitale processeringsbehov for den almindelige dansker.

Spørgsmål

Stillet i gruppen “Danske Android Brugere “:

Er der nogen som ved, om man kan få en pc med Android system?

Svar

Mit svar:

Som andre omtaler, kan der fås en uofficiel variant af det frie styresystem Android til x86-arkitekturen (den gængse Intel/AMD-baserede computer kendt som “personlig computer”).

Det projekt lever på https://www.android-x86.org/. Installationsvejledning på engelsk er på https://www.android-x86.org/installhowto.html. Man kan både installere som multiboot på samme disk som et eksisterende operativsystem, starte fra en ekstern disk (USB-medie, cd/dvdrom e.l.) eller evt. køre i en virtuel maskine på et eksisterende operativsystem (VirtualBox,QEMU/KVM, VMware Player/Workstation).

Jeg har kun erfaring med livedisk boot fra USB og VM, og der synes jeg ikke altid tingene spiller perfekt, så forvent ikke en helt problemfri oplevelse.

“Android på PC” er på kanten af noget understøttet, hvor man ofte er på egen hånd. Nogle af folkene bag Andoid-x86 forsøgte at lave en kommerciel forretning på det, hvor det var tanken at sælge det som færdige hardwareenheder, RemixOS – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_OS, men det gik ikke så godt og er lukket ned igen.

Hvis behovet bare er “en bærbar computer uden for meget vrøvl”, så er en færdig Chromebook med Chrome OS (der ligesom Android også er bygget på GNU/Linux) eller noget af det der dyre Frugt-udstyr nok det mest tilgængelige (men jeg fornemmer at pris også kunne være en faktor?). Til forskel fra traditionelle operativsystemer til computere, er Chrome OS dog møntet specifikt på at få dig til at bruge Googles webbaserede tjenester (mere om softwaren bag på https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os), så hverken software eller hardware er beregnet til at lagre data på selve enheden, og der er sjældent meget diskplads tilgængelig til f.eks. billeder.

Et hurtigt kig på markedet identificerer Acer Chromebook 15 (https://www.edbpriser.dk/produkt/acer-chromebook-15-cb515-1h-c7kg/) og Lenovo S330 (https://www.edbpriser.dk/produkt/lenovo-chromebook-s330-81jw-3292492/) som populære Chromebook i 2k kr.-klassen, men kender ikke maskinerne specifikt.

God jagt :).

Edit 2020-02-20: Som min erfaring heldigvis bød mig at handle efter skal man ikke stole på at universet er statisk, så status i dag er at ovennævnte gruppe og tråden med diskussionen, inklusiv mit svar, er fordampet fra Facebook, og jeg kan ikke finde nogle indikationer på hvad der er sket med den ellers ret aktive gruppe.

Working on a Beaglebone Black based product, running the latest Debian GNU/Linux system image (bone-debian-7.5-2014-05-14-2gb.img) from the BB HQ at beagleboard.org I just had the following strange experience.

Using Subversion I wanted to commit a change to a file made locally on the BBB. The file resided  in a working copy of a repository on which I had done the initial work on my x86_64 laptop. The working copy was checked out and updated on the BBB without any problems, but comitting I got the following error:

debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$ svn ci rc.local -m"Append to vncserver.log."
Authentication realm: <https://svn.xx.xx> Subversion Repository
Password for 'yaya': 
Sending        rc.local
Transmitting file data .svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: File not found: transaction '414-1', path '/trunk/BBB%20deployment/rc.local'
debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$

This failed repeatedly, and checking out a fresh new working copy exhibited the same result.

For the fun of it, because file name issues are long gone in my everyday computing life, I tried to remove the space from the directory path. And voila, unexpectedly it succeeded!

debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$ svn ci rc.local -m"Append to vncserver.log."
Authentication realm: <https://svn.xx.xx> Subversion Repository
Password for 'yaya': 
Sending        rc.local
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 416.
debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$

Without spaces, things actually did work. Apparently there’s an issue with ARM built subversion and repositories containing spaces.

URL before

debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$ svn info | grep URL
URL: https://svn.xx.xx/trunk/BBB%20deployment
debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$

URL after

debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$ svn info | grep URL
URL: https://svn.xx.xx/trunk/BBB_deployment
debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$

Investigating a bit further narrowed down that the Debian distribution uses an old (old, old) subversion 1.6.17 release from 2009:

debian@beaglebone:~/VCAS_FR$ svn --version
svn, version 1.6.17 (r1128011)
   compiled Mar 15 2014, 21:37:31

Copyright (C) 2000-2009 CollabNet.
Subversion is open source software, see http://subversion.apache.org/
This product includes software developed by CollabNet (http://www.Collab.Net/).

Probaly, this has been fixed since, a quick investigation in svn issue tracker revealed no open issues regarding this. I’ll look further into this later, and of course report it appropriately if this is an unknown issue.

But as you see, you can still experience basic issues on the latest and greatest stuff out there. Be wary!

Nice story in the media (GTrans) (+2 (GTrans), 3, (GTrans)) in Denmark right now, is of a consumer who filed a complaint to The Danish Consumer Agency regarding reimbursement of his OEM Windows license, and won in a principal judgment (warning Google Translate exaggerates the price by some decades, the correct refund is DKK 850 ~ EUR 114 ~ USD 151 ).

He wanted to use his new computer for GNU/Linux only, but the store (a supermarket) and the computer manufacturer would only accept a refund for the complete purchase, regardless of the Windows Vista license offer to get a refund for the bundled software.

The consumer agency ruled in favor of the consumer, citing his right for reimbursement as pr. the license agreement, and the Danish consumer law that interprets in favor of the consumer when doubts arise.

This is very good news for the rights of Danish consumers, after we were let down by Poul-Henning Kamp’s recent loss in court (GTrans) about a similar complaint.

Go get those Vista refunds!

But remember for Windows 7, the license reads “you must return the entire system on which the software is installed for a refund or credit”, effectively making any product distributed with Windows 7 a madatory subject to the Microsoft tax.

UPDATE 2011/01/18 20:40:

A followup article at ComputerWorld Denmark (GTrans) states that HP Denmark doesn’t think the ruling will have any “practical effect” on their business. They believe very few consumers are interested in alternative operating systems,  and haven’t seen any demand for it in the market. How a demand can be established without a product,  HP doesn’t have any insights into, as they have never had alternative offerings.

Even though we all know what the OEM license says, an OEM director from Microsoft Denmark cleverly enough states that; “we can not and should not interfere with the wording of return policies, including whether the software can be returned with the PC only“. In the last blow to any logic, the HP response is to; “await a statement from Microsoft, and then implement a solution“.