Installing Ubuntu 9.04

Yesterday I finally was able to install the new Ubuntu 9.04 „Jaunty Jackalope“ using the Update Manager. I’m usually a bit suspicious about new releases of Ubuntu since I always had problems that kept me busy for at least some days. This time, however, I especially looked forward to a faster boot up, because Ubuntu 8.10 booted terribly slowly on my laptop most of the time. So, despite all my fears of a weekend of googling for stuff that stopped working I decided to update to 9.04.

The update itself went well, but as expected, I experienced several issues after starting up my new Ubuntu system. So I decided to make a list of all the things that hassle me at the moment. Some problems were easy to solve, for others I have yet to find a good solution.

1. ATI graphics drivers

Bad news for users of older ATI graphic cards. Several ATI Radeon™ graphic cards were moved to a legacy driver support structure in the new version of the proprietary driver for Linux (Catalyst 9.4). Visit this page at amd.com for more information.

The real problem about this is that the version 9.3 which does support these cards is not compatible with X server 1.6 which is included in the new Ubuntu release. Hopefully AMD will come up with a version that supports older cards and work with X server 1.6. Till then I have to use the Open-source driver radeon.

With the radeon driver I was not able to start Compiz. It keeps saying “No whitelisted driver found”. The good part is that Ubuntu feels much faster without all the eye-candy, I do miss my desktop cube though.

2. Mounting a Sansa Media Player

My Sansa e260 would not mount when plugged in using MSC mode, but I found a good description how to resolve this issue.

3. Tracker index corrupted

Today this dialog suddenly appeared, saying that the Tracker index is corrupted.

OK and Cancel didn’t do anything. The dialog simply reappeared. “Reindex all contents” seemed to cause the Tracker daemon to freeze. There already is a bug filed and an entry in the Jaunty release notes.

This is how I was able to fix this:

1. Open a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)
2. Install the package ‘tracker-utils’

   $ sudo apt-get install tracker-utils

3. Use this command to kill all running Tracker processes and remove all databases

   $ tracker-processes -r

4. And finally restart Tracker daemon and the Tracker applet

   $ /usr/lib/tracker/trackerd & tracker-applet & exit

4. VLC: Video is not integrated into the interface

When playing videos in VLC the video is displayed in an own window instead of being integrated into the interface. This feature was apparently disabled because it caused VLC to crash on some systems. You can either use version 0.9.3 or wait until 1.0 is released and in the Jaunty repositories. (Threads in the VideoLAN Forums: [1] [2])

Submit Pandora tracks to Last.fm

On my search for a way to submit songs I listen to at pandora.com to my Last.fm – Account I came across two Firefox extensions.

The first one is Harmoy (1.0). It has been a nominee for the Extend Firefox 3 contest and not only supports pandora.com but virtually every player that is supported by FoxyTunes. In addition it provides information about currently playing songs.

The other one is LastFM Firefox Extension. This extension focuses on song submission from your Pandora radio. Optional messages notify you when Pandora plays a new song and when it is submitted to Last.fm.

Pandora Stream als MP3 speichern

Pandora dürfte mittlerweile vielen Leuten bekannt sein. Diese Flash-Applikation sucht anhand eines Band – oder Songnamen weitere Musikstücke mit ähnlichem Stil. Auf diese Weise können Sie viele neue Bands kennen lernen.

Das Programm Pandora’s Jar kann den Pandora Stream aufzeichnen und als MP3 inklusive der Tags und dem Albumcover speichern.

Voraussetzungen:

• Ein Account auf pandora.com
• Den Browser Firefox
• Java

Installation:

1. Downloaden Sie Pandora’s Jar: Download
2. Entzippen Sie die Datei in ein beliebiges Verzeichnis
3. Öffnen Sie pandora.jar in diesem Verzeichnis
4. Es erscheint ein Fenster. Sobald “ready, lets grab some MP3′S!!!” erscheint können Sie Firefox öffnen.
5. Geben Sie in die Adressleiste localhost ein. Es erscheint der Pandora-Player.
6. Jetzt können Sie mit einem Klick auf Grab this track die aktuelle Wiedergabe speichern

Hinweise:

1. Schalten Sie nicht zu einem neuen Song während noch Musik gedownloadet wird, da ansonsten die Tags vollkommen falsch zugeordnet werden.
2. Das Programm funktioniert nur mit einer Flash-Player Version <9. Um trotzdem die aktuelle Version von Flash-Player einsetzten zu können, verwenden Sie am Besten die Erweiterung Flash Switcher.
3. Falls statt des Pandora-Players eine Meldung erscheint, die Sie auffordert den Flash-Player zu aktualisieren, öffnen Sie pandora.com und melden sich an. Laden sie localhost neu und schließen Sie dann erst das Fenster bzw. den Tab mit pandora.com. Jetzt sollte der Pandora-Player korrekt angezeigt werden.
4. Falls Sie andere Programme verwenden, die localhost verwenden, müssen Sie diese beenden, um Pandora’s Jar nutzen zu können.