It’s Episode Sixteen of Season Nine of the Ubuntu Podcast! Alan Pope, Mark Johnson, Laura Cowen and Martin Wimpress are connected and speaking to your brain.
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We’re here again!
In this week’s show:
- We discuss having the motivation to adopt Ubuntu Devices whole-heartedly.
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We also discuss going on holiday, the on-going saga of fixing Mark’s laptop, and naming the new Entroware laptop.
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We share a Command Line Lurve –
pv, which was sent in by The Hatterman. It monitors the progress of data through a pipe and great when used in conjunction withddto provide a progress bar. For example:pv -pa ubuntu_16.04.iso | sudo dd of=/dev/sdb-p, --progressshow progress bar
-a, --average-rateshow data transfer average rate counter -
And we go over all your amazing feedback – thanks for sending it – please keep sending it!
- For the disappearing cursor fix, create the file
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-cursoron.conf, and put in it the following content:
#--makes mouse cursor re-appear Section "Device" Identifier "Device0" Driver "intel" Option "AccelMethod" "uxa" Option "SWCursor" "on" EndSection #--Be careful using UXA acceleration on modern Intel IGPs. It has been superceeded by SNA for some years now and may signifcantly degrade graphics performance.
- For the disappearing cursor fix, create the file
- This weeks cover image is taken from the http://ayay.co.uk/.
That’s all for this week! If there’s a topic you’d like us to discuss, or you have any feedback on previous shows, please send your comments and suggestions to [email protected] or Tweet us or Comment on our Facebook page or comment on our Google+ page or comment on our sub-Reddit.
- Join us on IRC in #ubuntu-podcast on Freenode
Really like the discussion about using (or not using) Ubuntu for Devices. It was honest and open and addresses some of the issues people have while using this system.
I am a Ubuntu user (not a dev!) since years. I have my home computers running with Ubuntu and have a Ubuntu Phone since April 2015. I would just like to point to one of the issues I encounter as an enthusiast:
Since I have started a new job I experience in my work environment that people all over the world are using WhatsApp as a standard cheap messaging system also for work/after work/… related issues. Colleagues, customers and suppliers in India, China, Venezuela, … are using it. Currently I am out of this group or I switch to Android or iOS. I could convince my direct colleagues but not the rest of the world to switch to Telegram… So I just experience myself that e.g. WhatsApp is really missing feature. And I can understand why Jane Silber still has not 100% switched to an Ubuntu phone also because of this.
Alan said (quite rightly) that if WhatsApp is there, then there will be other applications missing. Yes, that is true. Nevertheless one uses central messaging apps to stay in touch with other people. If my favourite Podcast app is not behaving as the one on other platforms, this is then my personal choice if I want to use it or not. For this personal remit I can persevere with the shortcomings of a new platform because it is my PERSONAL CHOICE which does not influence others. For interpersonal contact applications one has to go with the apps most people use.
This is mainly also the difference to the mid ’90ies where a PC was mainly my personal tool and not that much used for social contacts (except emails).
I say this not easily. As I said above, I have my Ubuntu Phone since 1 year as the only phone. In my personal environment I can say to my friends: I use Telegram, and if you would like to stay in touch with me also via a messaging service, install Telegram next to WhatsApp or leave it. (We can still drink beer, call us up, write text messages, etc…)
But this does not work on a professional work basis, especially if you are new in the business.
So what will I do? I may need to switch sooner or later to a work phone which I will carry around next to my Aquaris E4.5. (Wish I could get sooner or later a more up-to-date Ubuntu phone! Was too late for the Meizu Pro 5 …).
I use “yes | pv | ssh host ‘cat > /dev/nul'” to test my connection speed to other machines. Maybe you know a better way to do this?
I recently bought a new Android phone. After holding out for over a year for an Ubuntu phone that worked in the US, I couldn’t wait any longer. If one does come out, I will still strongly consider it. I use CyanogenMod without the Google apps.
I can confirm that CDN has stop asking me to complete captcha. Thank you Martin. (No I am not a spammer – my ISP quite recently put all of us behind NAT and all sorts of weird filtering rules started bugging us.)
I found the discussion about using Ubuntu/FOSS wholeheartedly interesting and since you wanted to hear from people who actually use Ubuntu on other devices than a traditional computer, here is my contribution.
I have used various flavours of Linux (mainly Slackware, Redhat, Suse, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and a few others) both at home and at work since 1994/1995. I don’t use macOS or MS Windows. I am currently using Ubuntu Mate on my recently purchased desktop and Linux Mint Mate on most of my older laptop/desktop/notebook computers and Ubuntu on my server at work.
My phone is a Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition and I was both surprised and disappointed to hear that no Ubuntu phone is currently available on the market. I was planning to get a new powerful device that could be connected to a display to try out the “convergence” thing. I was wondering whether the MX5 Pro would be up to that challenge (without using a dongle that displays the MS logo on the display). Wonder if the MX5 has been discontinued or is just temporarily sold out?
I am really happy with Ubuntu Touch on my phone, it is the best mobile phone I have ever had and the only one I use (other than the office phone at work). Admittedly, I have not used any of the flagship models from the likes of Apple, Samsung, LG or Motorola. What I had before the MX4 was a low spec Samsung Mini running Android 2.3 (and later 2.4 but Samsung didn’t make any further upgrades available). Before that I used dumb-phones from Motorola and Nokia.
I would probably have been less happy with my Ubuntu phone had I needed to use a lot of apps, but I don’t play games and I don’t have many friends who use WhatsApp. I also feel a bit uncomfortable with the Google-everywhere concept, so for me the Ubuntu phone is adequate as it is and I only wish I’d be able to connect it to a large display (and keyboard and mouse, but I’m sure that can be done with BT).
I’m ready to buy a new convergence-ready device and have a friend who is keen to take over my “old” MX4, so I really hope that there will be a powerful Ubuntu phone with enough connectivity on the market soon! I’m not so keen on the tablet form factor because I’m not sure what I’d use such a device for (other than trying out convergence).
I know that my comment is a little late (almost a month after the episode was publihsed) but due to a recent trip to parts of Mongolia where bandwith is limited, I didn’t listen to S09E16 until yesterday.
Stefan