The Agony of Desktop Linux

Having acquired a mini-PC from my son-in-law, I installed Ubuntu and the installation went smoothly enough. Here are the details of the PC:

System Details Report

Date generated: 2025-09-14 13:08:48

Hardware Information:

Hardware Model: Leader NUC PC

Memory: 8.0 GiB

Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-5200U × 4

Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 5500 (BDW GT2)

Disk Capacity: 240.1 GB

Software Information:

Firmware Version: 1.09

OS Name: Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS

OS Build: (null)

OS Type: 64-bit

GNOME Version: 46

Windowing System: Wayland

Kernel Version: Linux 6.14.0-29-generic

Here is what Gemini had to say about the unit:

The Leader NUC PC model SN6 is a small form factor desktop computer. Its key components include the Intel Core i5-5200U processor and Intel HD Graphics 5500. This model is part of the Intel Broadwell-U platform, which emphasizes energy efficiency.

---

Processor: Intel Core i5-5200U

The Intel Core i5-5200U is a mobile processor released in early 2015. It's built on a 14 nm manufacturing process and has a low TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 15W, making it suitable for compact devices like the NUC. Here are some of its key specifications:

• Cores/Threads: It has 2 physical cores and 4 threads, thanks to Intel's Hyper-Threading technology.

• Clock Speed: It operates with a base frequency of 2.2 GHz and can boost up to 2.7 GHz with Intel Turbo Boost Technology.

• Cache: The processor has 3MB of L3 cache, which helps with data access speed.

• Performance: The CPU provides sufficient performance for everyday computing tasks, including web browsing, office applications, and multimedia. However, it's not designed for demanding tasks like high-end video editing or modern gaming.

Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 5500 (BDW GT2)

The Intel HD Graphics 5500 is an integrated graphics solution that is part of the processor itself. It's based on the Broadwell GT2 graphics processor, which is Intel's 8th generation of graphics architecture.

• Execution Units: It features 24 execution units (EUs).

• Clock Speed: The base frequency is 300 MHz and can be dynamically boosted up to 900 MHz.

• Gaming Performance: The HD 5500 is an entry-level graphics solution. While it can handle older or less graphically intensive games, it will struggle with modern AAA titles. Its performance is comparable to some older dedicated graphics cards, like the NVIDIA GeForce GT 620 or AMD Radeon R7 240. It is not a gaming powerhouse, but it is capable of handling general multimedia and light gaming.

So the unit is now over 10 years old but it still does all I need it to do. The problem lies not in the hardware but in the software and the difficulty in installing software. I did succeed, with Gemini's help, to install SageMath but the installation of a simple screenshot app proved impossible. Currently I have no screenshot capability which is insane for an operating system. I'll probably find a workaround sooner or later but most people simply wouldn't bother. I'm only grateful that I have my Mac OS, installed on my MacBook Air to full back on. Ubuntu is simply a joke operating system and while Linux may dominate the servers that drive the Internet, it will never succeed at the desktop level.

Installation of Linux Mint 20.3

You can't say that there's no technological excitement in my life. I finally had to abandon the use of Ubuntu on my 2013 MacBook Pro. The keyboard, trackpad and mouse freezes were becoming too frequent and numerous reboots were required to activate these devices. Finally no amount of rebooting could activate them and so I turned to Linux Mint.

The installation went smoothly enough but the boot up process was, and continues to be, interrupted by a series of error messages. That is a minor irritation but far worse was to come. I discovered that the OS didn't recognise the WiFi adapter in the laptop. So, for the moment, no WiFi but thankfully I have an Ethernet connection. I had an old TP-LINK WiFi dongle that must be at least a decade old and I tried that out but no luck. Perhaps a can buy a more up-to-date dongle that works. This is a matter for deeper investigation but for the moment, as long as the keyboard, mouse and trackpad don't freeze up on me, I'll be happy.

 

 

My initial attempt to install the Chrome browser failed but then I was reminded that flatpak is built into Linux Mint and, by using that, the installation of the Chrome browser and also Calibre was straight forward. So far, after a couple of days of using Linux Mint, I've had no problems and I hope things stay that way.

I've put out a request for help on the Linux Mint Forums and hopefully help will be forthcoming. So far 20 views but no comments. However, it's been up less than an hour. 

I'll add an addendum if help arrives.

ADDENDUM

... and help did arrive! A user called sleeper12 offered two suggestions. The first was:

inxi -Fxxxrz && rfkill list && iwconfig && mokutil --sb-state 

This had no effect but the second suggestion did the trick:

sudo modprobe -r wl && sudo modprobe wl && sudo systemctl restart network-manager.service 

This is great news and my laptop is now fully functional, apart from the webcam that I assume is still not working. I should ask for help with that on the forums as well.

Ubuntu Upgrade

Maybe it was changing from the main server to an Indonesian server that finally enabled me to begin the upgrade from Ubuntu 20.04 to 21.10. Figure 1 shows the early stages of the upgrade process. Let's hope that this upgrade will resolve some of my problems but knowing Ubuntu I'll probably a whole new set of problems. In terms of hardware, my only persistent issue is that the webcam on my 2013 MacBook Pro isn't functioning. Sporadically however, as I've mentioned in previous posts, the mouse, trackpad and keyboard all freeze. Software-wise, there are many issues: few installations proceed smoothly but I would have to single out WINE and Flatpak as being especially troublesome.

Figure 1

After a few hiccups, Ubuntu 21.10 has been installed and so far so good. Flatpak, Stacer, Calibre, Wine and Astrolog have all been successfully installed. I must say that Flatpak, once it's up and running, makes software installation very easy. You need to remember however, to log out and then log back in again in order to see the programs that you've installed. It took me a while to realise that.

I've also managed to install SageMath which I'm quite happy about. Figure 2 shows a screenshot of my first use of it. However, just as I was getting excited, the whole system froze again and I had to reboot. I suspect the problem may arise when I have too many tabs open. The poor old laptop's fan was working hard and I had many tabs open when disaster struck. I need to close down tabs and applications that I'm not using. The freeze may be the result of overheating but I need to investigate further.

Figure 2

I should keep a log of these freezes in an effort to discern any patterns.

Ubuntu: Reinstallation

I really do need to remember that, the next time my mouse, keyboard and trackpad freeze, I should try holding down the option key while rebooting and then choose the only boot option available. Last time I did that I regained full functionality. However, just recently I forgot to do that, and instead reinstalled Ubuntu with all the problems that inevitably entails.

I did try to reinstall Mac OS but that didn't get far. Figure 1 shows the error message. Numerous attempts failed. I was using an Ethernet connection and not WiFi for the download but still it failed. The Time Machine was an option but I long ago abandoned that method of backing up. It was probably for the best as I'm sure the laptop would have been overly sluggish.

Figure 1

So it's back to Ubuntu, for the moment. Even reinstalling that was a problem as the mouse, keyboard and trackpad kept freezing up. I tried to upgrade to the latest version of Ubuntu in the hope that this glitch will go away but so far I haven't been able to download the necessary software to begin the upgrade process. That's hardly surprising.

If this laptop performs satisfactorily under Ubuntu then I've been thinking that getting a new MacBook Air later in the year is probably unnecessary. I spend most of my time at my desk anyway and so a desktop computer is probably a better choice. I think back to the good old days when I built my own PC from the ground up. I could do that again or experiment with a Raspberry Pi. I'm still undecided.

The updated 2022 version of the Mac Mini is tempting, if indeed an update is released. The current M1 version would certainly be sufficient for my needs. Currently, a model with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD costs around 15 million rupiah or about A$1,377 which is not bad. The M1 Mac Mini would be even cheaper if a new model is released in the near future.

Any purchase would be an indulgence as I don't really need such a device unless my venerable old laptop decides to call it a day. In the event that it did however, the Mac Mini is certainly portable and could easily be used in hotel rooms while travelling, provided a mouse and keyboard are brought along.

There are alternatives to the Mac Mini. For example, this mini-PC (SER3 3750H) from Beelink with the following specifications:

• Powered with AMD Ryzen 7 3750H CPU(2.3 ~ 4.0GHz) and Radeon RX Vega 10 Graphics. 16GB of DDR4 RAM and 512 GB M.2 SSD. Preinstalled with Windows 10 Pro 64bit. Support Ubuntu and windows 11.
  
  
• Triple Display Output: SER Mini PC comes with Integrated Radeon Vega 10 Graphics(graphics frequency 1400MHz), 4K@60Hz triple display output via dual HDMI and USB-C Port, which enable you to multi-task with ease.Stream 4K video, edit media, work from home, or finish your homework. Get ready for incredible graphics, sound, and performance.
  
  
• Large Capacity: Installed DDR4 16GB RAM (2x SODIMM slot, can be upgraded to 64GB), installed 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD(up to 2TB) and can expand the storage via 2.5 inch SATA HDD slot for your personal needs.

Its going price is US$529 which converts to about 7.5 million rupiah, half the price of the Mac Mini. This is definitely one to consider.

SER3 3750H

Ubuntu: Crash and Burn

Ubuntu gave me a birthday present. Yes, on my 73rd birthday, Ubuntu offered up a complete meltdown of my laptop's functionality: no mouse, no trackpad, no keyboard. So much for the 20.04 stable release! I couldn't be bothered trouble-shooting and simply reinstalled the operating system. Everything works fine again now, although I have to reinstall Astrolog and Calibre for starters.

It's not the first time this has happened. I made a post titled Mouse, Trackpad and Keyboard Freeze in Ubuntu on 15th March 2022. I'd forgotten that I'd solved the problem back then by holding down the option key while rebooting. At that time, I blamed the problem on keyboard remapping software Kinto that I hadn't properly uninstalled. In hindsight, that may not have been the cause at all. I fully removed what I thought was the offending software with a program called Stacer. 

I've tried to reinstall this Stacer and apparently succeeded but it doesn't launch. I installed it before using Flatpak but doesn't install either. So frustrations get heaped on top of frustrations. I don't have the patience to deal with these problems anymore. I just want an operating system that works and that's what I had by and large with Mac OS. 

This "crash and burn" of Ubuntu is disappointing and reminds that I need to store any important files online for easy retrieval later. My Astrolog charts are gone but I had already set up the Airtable database containing the original data, so the charts can be recreated. Likewise I may have lost a few books from my Calibre library. I'm not sure what their titles were but, if I remember them, they can be added again. The incident has motivated me to get organised.

I thought that I may as well install the latest version of Ubuntu now that I'm up and running again. My reason for sticking with the long term stable release was ... its stability! So I set about downloading the latest release, version 21.04 released in April of 2021. Not so fast.

Of course, there's no network problem but hey, who cares? I considered reinstalling Mac OS just to sidestep all this nonsense and actually set about doing it, following instructions at this site:

I got to the point where installation of Big Sur was about to start but a connection with the Apple server couldn't be established and so the installation was aborted. It's recommended that an Ethernet connection be used for downloading and so I should try this before giving up altogether ... but not tonight. I don't want to spend the remainder of my birthday dealing with technological issues.

Before closing, I must point out that my latest annoyance is the brightness of the screen now varying. This is a minor problem but nonetheless annoying. The operating system may be the cause or it may simply be  the result of old age. My poor old battery registers 46% when fully charged. No matter. Life goes on.

Flatpak Installation Now Working

For whatever reason, my installation of flatpak is now working. I followed the terminal steps as outlined on this site, a screenshot of which is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

I went to flathub.org and practised installing a free software program called Plots.

Figure 2

It took quite some time for the installation to complete but it eventually did and the program is up and working now.  I described flatpak in my post of Friday, 11 March 2022 titled Installing Calibre and Other Software on Ubuntu. 

Unfortunately, the webcam is still not working despite trying out numerous suggestions from within and without the Ubuntu help community. It's not a deal breaker as I rarely ever used in my Mac OS anyway. It's still annoying and I'd eventually like to resolve the problem.

Mouse, Trackpad and Keyboard Freeze in Ubuntu

Life with Ubuntu is never dull and predictable. Last night I discovered that my mouse, trackpad and keyboard on my Mac laptop had all frozen. This had happened a few days earlier and the problem had been resolved with a reboot. However, as I was tired, I simply shut it down and planned to restart it in the morning.

That proved to be overly optimistic. After the morning reboot, the problem persisted. I tried a couple more times. I removed the USB receiver for my Logitech mouse and tried again. Still no change. I searched online but most help involved using the terminal and I had no keyboard. It was looking like a reinstallation would be necessary but, if that were needed, I would not be installing Ubuntu again but another version of Linux.

However, I decided to reboot while pressing the option key which brings up the boot menu. When I did this the mouse, trackpad and keyboard all worked. There was only the Ubuntu on the hard drive to boot from so I chose this and hoped for the best. With the OS loaded, everything worked and life was back to normal.

It was certainly odd that all input options failed at the same time and I felt that I should investigate further to try to get to the bottom of the problem as it is likely to recur. I remembered that I had been initially frustrated that Command+C for copy and Command+V for paste no longer worked. Instead Control+C and Control+V had to be used instead. 

With this problem in mind I installed an app called Kinto that supposedly remapped the keyboard. However, I never got the program to work properly but the icon continued to display on my list of apps. It was only after installing Stacer that I found that Kinto was loading at Startup. I was then able to delete it and I suspect that this was the source of the problem. See Figure 1.

Figure 1

I came across Stacer in a 2017 post titled The 10 Easiest Ways to Keep Ubuntu System Clean that has quite a few good tips including:

• $ sudo apt-get autoremove (to remove unnecessary packages and dependencies)
• $ sudo rm -rf ~/.cache/thumbnails/* (the number of thumbnails can build up over time)
• $ sudo apt-get clean (remove all cache files)

Installing Calibre and Other Software on Ubuntu

At long last, I've managed to get Calibre working under Ubuntu 20.04 on my 2013 Mac Book Pro. I just followed the recommended procedure using the terminal as outlined on the Calibre website:

sudo -v && wget -nv -O- https://download.calibre-ebook.com/linux-installer.sh | sudo sh /dev/stdin

I'm sure I tried this before but perhaps whatever bug was stopping Calibre from working before has now been fixed. Calibre and the Windows-based Astrolog were the two programs that I really wanted to get working under Ubuntu and now I've succeeded.

My VPN is also working and so the laptop is fully functional again from my perspective. There's nothing that I was doing under the Mac OS that I can't now do in Ubuntu. On the general topic of software installation, I watched an interesting YouTube video titled Flatpak Tutorial - Setting up Flatpak and installing Packages:

The author references the FLATPAK website that explains how to install the software on the various Linux distributions and FLATHUB that lists the software available for installation once FLATPAK has been installed. I managed to install it on my granddaughter's HP Pavilion x360 so far attempts to install it on my 2013 Mac Book have failed. I'll keep trying. Nothing of course is ever easy or straightforward with Linux.

There's no urgency as the normal software installation works fine. I've just installed Stellarium and TexStudio and TexMaker without any issues.

Pinta: a Simple Image Editor for Ubuntu

Nothing is ever easy in Ubuntu. For anybody who just wants to get a job done, such as simply adding text to a screenshot, Ubuntu is not the operating system for you. I quite frequently need to add text to a screenshot and this was a painless process in Mac OS, using Preview. Doing the same thing in Ubuntu becomes an adventure, as I'll now describe.

I'm familiar with GIMP but I didn't want to use a program of that complexity for such a simple task. It didn't take too long to discover that Pinta was the software application that would serve my purpose best and so I went to the Ubuntu Software Centre to download it. See Figure 1.

Figure 1

Using the terminal's sudo apt install pinta was unsuccessful as certain files couldn't be downloaded. The Ubuntu Help Centre however, is always "helpful". I came across the following revelation:

This issue has existed for a long time. Ubuntu's Snap store isn't well-maintained and doesn't perform properly. As a result, in Jammy 22.04, they've chosen to use Gnome software instead. Gnome software is working fine without any issues. You can install gnome-software using: sudo apt install gnome-software.

Of course, I'm running Ubuntu 20.04, the long term stable release version of the OS and so I had to install it from the terminal. Once I'd done that Pinta was displayed within the little suitcase icon and I've added both the Gnome Software Centre and Pinta to my favourites on the sidebar. See Figure 2.

Figure 2

This installation wasn't totally without drama either but eventually I succeeded and have been successfully adding text to my screenshots. I've still to get my webcam working but this isn't a high priority as I don't really use it. I'd really like to get Calibre working however, so this is a more immediate challenge. However, one step at a time.

Previously, when I had Ubuntu installed as a virtual machine within my Mac OS, I could always run back to the latter if I had problems but now I have nowhere to run and so I'm forced to find solutions. So far, the solution to the fan problem referred to in my previous post is holding up so I'm well pleased.

Fan Problems in Ubuntu 20.04

One of the problems that I noted following installation of Ubuntu 20.04 on my 2013 Mac Book Pro was that the fan was running almost continuously, even if the workload was light. This was becoming quite annoying. Apparently other people have been having the same problem. For example, this Ubuntu user wrote to Ask Ubuntu in August of 2020:

I have a Lenovo Ideapad with Ubuntu 20.04 in it. 

Even when my computer is at idle and using less than 5% of processing power and less than 1 GB ram my computers fan makes loud noise and it runs every time .

My idle CPU temperature resides in the range of 40C to 45C which is medium hot. The weird thing is that the fan runs at really at high speed even when RAM being used is less than 1 GB and processing power being used is less than 5% and it is really annoying.

Hope i can get some help with this.

Fortunately, help was forthcoming:

Initially my fans were running a lot too. But installing TLP worked really well for me. Fans rarely spin now and the system stays cool. Just follow: sudo apt install tlp for Ubuntu. For other distributions and OS, follow Official TLP documentation.

The discussion continued:

TLP is to save battery not to correct fan speed which runs continuously on Ubuntu.

ACV on Nov 14, 2021 at 16:55

Actually don't you think it's kind of inter-related? TLP helps in killing/slowing-down those processes which are not being actively used by the system which ultimately decreases the load on the CPU and hence slows the fan down.

CapTen101 on Nov 14, 2021 at 17:31 

It happened every time when my notebook went to idle that the fan started to spin crazy. Even though I closed everything. For some reason TLP fixed the issue for me too. 

Zoltán Süle on Jan 20 at 15:53

That's exactly what I was talking about!

CapTen101 on Jan 21 at 9:44 

Figure 1 shows what the TLP website has this say once TLP has been installed.

Figure 1

Having done all this, I'm happy to report that the fan problem has diminished noticeably. Fingers crossed that this continues.  Even though problems like this are annoying, the good thing about Ubuntu is that there is plenty of online help available so that solutions can generally be found.

The Experiment Is Over

It was exciting while it lasted but after a few days, the flaws began to outweigh the attractions. I'm taking about the installation of Chrome OS Flex to replace the Mac OS on my 2013 Mac Book Pro. In summary, the defects of the installation included:

• a frustrating time lag between opening the lid of my laptop and seeing an active screen: I never timed this precisely but it started to get under my skin because I would stare at a blank screen for what seemed like a minute or more and no amount of key presses would make a difference.
  
  
• unresponsiveness of the track pad: having long abandoned a mouse when using my laptop, it was frustrating to have to rely on a mouse again but it was necessary as the pointer would become unresponsive every few seconds. This rendered it virtually unusable. Worse still, once I connected the laptop to an external monitor, even the mouse became "twitchy".
  
  
• total lack of support for Linux: even though I'd apparently installed Linux, there was no way to open to get a functioning terminal window. I was always confronted with an error message and so no installation of Linux apps was possible.

So Chrome OS Flex is gone, replaced by Ubuntu 20.04. I've had long experience with this operating system and there is widespread community support for it. Problems have arisen of course but all of the previously mentioned problems are gone. What remain are a non-functioning webcam and an apparent incompatibility between Calibre and the latest version of Ubuntu. I'll address these in the coming days.

The problem with Flex is that it was just too "beta". I'm sure once this OS evolves, it may well be a viable alternative to Ubuntu but for now that's not the case. As mentioned in an earlier post, I've installed Ubuntu on my granddaughter's HP Pavilion x360 as well. 

While the HP laptop desperately needed a replacement for the sluggish and unresponsive Windows OS, the Mac Book was still operating well enough under Mojave. I hadn't installed Catalina because it didn't support 32-bit applications and I wanted my astrolog.exe to continue running under Wine. I thought a lighter weight operating system like Chrome OS Flex would reinvigorate my ageing Mac which I guess it did if the problems created were ignored.

Right now, with Ubuntu running, the fan on my laptop is whirring even though I only have the Chrome browser open with 13 tabs. Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the system monitor.

Figure 1

I'm thinking that things are not all that different, performance-wise, from when I had the Mac OS installed. Anyway for now I'm happy to have far fewer problems than I had with Flex.

I've now installed WhatsApp and connected that app to my iPhone so that's a positive. There is no way that this could have happened on Flex, in its current state. Similarly my Express VPN is now up and running.

The Price of Mainstream Divergence

Having replaced the Mac OS on my Mac Book with OS Chrome Flex and Windows 10 on my granddaughter's HP Pavilion x360 with Ubuntu 20.04, the consequences are now being felt but it's OK, I'm retired and have plenty of time to deal with these problems. For a working person, who needs his or her laptop to be fully functional so as to maintain productivity, I wouldn't recommend my course of action.

On Ubuntu, I decided to install Calibre that I use to organise my collection of ebooks. However, once installed it wouldn't launch. Apparently, there are problems getting Calibre to run on the latest version of Ubuntu.

To add to my frustrations, I wrote in my Astrology blog about a similar problem:

... the Astrolog website links to openastro.org that has an Ubuntu repository that I'm keen to test out. Figure 1 shows a screenshot.

Figure 1

Unfortunately, I get the following error message:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:

openastro.org : Depends :  imagemagick

E: unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Given that Ubuntu is a far more mature OS than the beta Chrome OS Flex, these failures are disappointing. 

Meanwhile the problems with the latter OS are many. The webcam doesn't work on my Mac Book and the touchpad is all but useless. I had to resort to using a mouse again, a practice that I abandoned over a decade ago. Fortunately the mouse works fine unless I connect an external monitor in which case the mouse becomes unstable.

While I seem to have successfully installed the Linux development environment in Chrome OS Flex, I get the following error message when opening the terminal:

Starting the virtual machine Error starting penguin container: 5

Launching vmshell failed: Error starting crostini for terminal: 5

This of course means that no installations of Linux applications are possible. None of these things are game changers but there's also the temptation to go out and buy the M2 Mac Book Air when it comes out later this year and have all these frustrations disappear.

On the positive side, it's interesting with Chrome OS Flex to be actively involved in the ongoing development and testing of the operating system.

Trials and Tribulations

No sooner did I get Chrome OS Flex installed on my Mac Book than the charger gave out. It had been playing up for a couple of days beforehand, alternating between charging and not charging, until it finally died. This now dead charger I bought online about a year or so ago (to replace the original) so it's had a relatively short lifespan. I've ordered a new one and it should arrive today. I'm hoping it's the charger that is the problem and not the battery itself. If the latter, then that may be the end of my laptop. In the meantime, I'll remain optimistic.

In the absence of a functioning computer, I turned to my granddaughter's HP Pavilion x360 that I bought for her about four years ago and which she seldom uses, preferring instead her 2020 iPad Pro. The computer ran Windows 10 and she said that she sometimes plays games on it. When I first used it, it took forever to start up and ran maddeningly slowly when it did. She agreed to my replacing the operating system and so I tested out Chrome OS Flex on it by booting from a USB thumb drive.

The WiFi refused to work and so I installed Lubuntu instead but encountered the same problem. I then tried full-blown Ubuntu and that's what I'm currently using to create this post. I still have no WiFi but managed to access the Internet via a USB C hub into which I've run an Ethernet cable. There is no sound whatever. The keyboard of this laptop has long ceased to be functional because of several dead keys. I'm using a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse that work off a USB dongle.

The laptop was originally purchased because it can be converted into a (very heavy) tablet and has a touch screen. My granddaughter wanted to use it for digital artwork. From the beginning it was a dog of a machine and then the keyboard gave out. This abomination from HP is certainly the worst device I'm come across and it remains to be seen whether I can ever get it functioning properly again using some other operating system. 

While creating this post, I came across an intriguing workaround for my Mac Book charging problems. It's a USB C to MagSafe 2 converter. See Figure 1.

 

This particular one is rated at 90W whereas my charger is 60W. I haven't been able to find a 60W version of this adapter and I may not need to if my new charger works properly. However, if this charger fails again after a year or so, I may consider this USB C option. Of course, the latest Mac Books all have USB C charging which does away with all this proprietary nonsense.

Update: the charger arrived and it works fine so I'm up and running on my old Mac Book with Chrome OS Flex installed.

Flash Problem Resolved

I finally got motivated enough to search for a solution to the loss of audio when playing flash videos and animations. I found it here and it was as simple as typing sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio && killall -0 pulseaudio in a terminal window. This is more or less a repetition of the problems that I had when I upgraded from Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10, and the "pulseaudio" solution is the same. The Wi-

Fi router problem turned out to be caused by the cable from the ADSL modem being plugged into the wrong socket. How that happened I don't know but now that too is working well.

Jaunty Jackalope: The Aftermath

Having installed Ubuntu 9.04, I now have to face the aftermath. As I discovered with the last upgrade, there are consequences and the first one that I've discovered this time around is that there is no sound when I play flash games or flash videos. However, there is sound for music and movies etc. Why this should be, I've no idea but my six year old granddaughter was not amused when she couldn't hear any sounds while playing her favourite Yahoo flash game this afternoon. I'm now under pressure to come up with a solution. I did reinstall some drivers that had been disabled by the installation and had been warned beforehand that "some 3rd party entries in your sources list were disabled. Reenable with 'software properties' tool or your package manager" (which I did). Maybe when I restart the PC tomorrow, all will be well. I doubt it however, and will probably have to begin the inevitable quest for answers. 

This little problem has been coupled with the failure of my laptop to connect to the home Wi-Fi router. It connects at school without any problem but not at home. For some weeks now it has been slow to connect when brought home from school. Initially, it would not recognise that a network was present but after five minutes or so it would and then the connection would remain stable. This latest trouble seems to be an escalation of these earlier difficulties. So far I can't see any obvious differences between 9.04 and the earlier version but I've really not had a chance to look around much. I'd also like to try to run a portable version of Ubuntu within Windows as outlined on this site. The download is 438Mb. so I might try it next weekend. I really do need to clean up the hard drive on my laptop. As well as having a dual boot system (Windows and Ubuntu 8.04), I also have two virtual PCs set up within Vista using Microsoft's Virtual PC and VMWare. I should just reinstall Vista and start afresh, after all the laptop is now two and half years old and it is full of all sorts of rubbish that I've experimented with briefly and discarded.

Ubuntu 9.04 - Jaunty Jackalope

I've taken the plunge again and begun installing Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope. I'd never heard of a Jackalope but apparently it's a portmanteau of jackrabbit and antelope, an imaginary creature that nonetheless makes regular appearances in popular culture (see Wikipedia article). Even though it's just been released, the OS is getting favourable reviews so it will be interesting to test it out.

Recently I have been experiencing some strange problems with video downloads from YouTube. The downloads would play in Ubuntu but not in Windows. This occurred using both DownloadHelper and FlashGot plugins for the latest release of 3.0.9 release of Firefox. Needless to say this is frustrating given that I often download videos on my Ubuntu PC and then play them at school on Windows-based machines. I haven't done any research into the problem but I'll see if it recurs with the new release.