Shami's Blog » ubuntu

Ubuntu 10.04

Mohammad Al-Shami — Sun, 02 May 2010 06:29:50 +0000

When Ubuntu 9.10 came out I was very eager to try it, but sadly I was very disappointed. So when I was downloading 10.04 I wasn’t really expecting anything. I’m glad I was wrong.

So far it appears the sound and flash issues have been fixed. Empathy seems to have gotten some improvements. Most noticeable are the fact it now saves the window position of the contact list, and gives you an indication when the person you’re chatting with on Google Talk is typing something on the keyboard.

If you hate the new window button placement, like I do, here’s how to fix it:

Open gconf-editor
Got to /apps/metacity/general
Change “button_layout” to “menu:minimize,maximize,close”

Slow Browsing Under Ubuntu

Mohammad Al-Shami — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 19:35:23 +0000

EDIT: This post only covers IPv6, please check the update post which covers IPv6 and Firefox

Today when I rebooted to my Windows installation which I very rarely do, I noticed that browsing under Windows feels much faster than under Ubuntu. After booting back to Ubuntu I noticed the “looking up domain.tld” part was taking a lot of time, which seemed a little odd.

Anyways, after some googling I found out that Debian enables IPv6 by default and uses that before and uses it before IPv4. A quick remedy was:

sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/bad_list

#Add this line
alias net-pf-10 off

After which you should reboot your system. Now browsing feels much faster. To speed it up a little I installed a local caching DNS server which works like a charm. A quick HOWTO can be found here

Hope this helps.

Surround sound under Ubuntu Hardy Heron

Mohammad Al-Shami — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:50:18 +0000

Been using Ubuntu Hardy Heron for about a month now, and I have to say it rocks, the best Desktop Linux so far.

Anyways, I have a Creative Audigy 2 card since I’m not a fan of software mixing under Linux, which is connected to an old creative 4.1 set. Since I don’t have any space I hooked only the front speakers and use the rear channels with a headset. After upgrading to Hardy I couldn’t get the headset to work. I just found the solution on the Ubuntu forums and thought I should document.

The new Ubuntu uses PulseAudio as it’s default sound engine, you can set volume levels for each application separately which is cool if you ask me. PulseAudio uses 2 channels by default. All you have to do is change:

; default-sample-channels = 2

To:

 default-sample-channels = 6

In /etc/pulse/daemon.conf, then restart gdm and you’re done