Full Circle Magazine FR

The time has finally come. After struggling mightily to get modern PIM technology working on my antique steam-powered Ubuntu 16.10 rig, the end was finally in sight. I was already having hardware issues on my ancient Fujitsu T4215 convertible tablet/laptop, with the keyboard having birdseed under the keys and jamming frequently, thanks to my cockatiel’s sloppy eating habits and frequent proximity to the computer. In addition, the sound punked out on me a few months back for some inexplicable reason. The system is dual-boot with Windows 10, and the sound doesn’t work on the Windows side, either, so it’s evidently a hardware issue. I put on external speakers and soldiered on for a while, but the end was clearly approaching. Then, my main Windows laptop’s hard drive started to fail. Since I was going to need to buy a new hard drive for it, I decided to buy two and install one to my spare parts T4215 (which had no drive). This was obviously a good time to install a fresh copy of Ubuntu, and since version 20.04 LTS just dropped recently, so much the better. So, it’s time for a ‘soft reboot’ of Everyday Ubuntu, as we go through setting up the ‘new’ machine, transferring data from the old machine, and learning more about the GNOME interface, since Unity has now fallen by the wayside for the main Ubuntu distribution. I’m pretty used to Unity, but Unity was developed from GNOME (and I have used it on Ubuntu previously), so the adjustment shouldn’t be that seismic.

L'heure est enfin arrivée. Après avoir lutté férocement pour arriver à faire fonctionner la technologie PIM moderne sur ma machine à vapeur antique sous Ubuntu 16.10, je en voyais enfin le bout. J'avais déjà des problèmes matériaux sur mon ancien Fujitsu T4215 convertible tablette/ordinateur portable, dont les touches du clavier restaient sur des graines pour oiseaux et se bloquaient fréquemment, grâce aux habitudes alimentaires négligentes de ma perruche calopsitte et à sa proximité habituelle à l'ordinateur.

De plus, le son est mort il y a quelque mois pour une raison inexplicable. Le système est en double démarrage avec Windows 10 et le son ne fonctionne pas non plus sous Windows ; c'est donc de toute évidence un problème matériel. J'ai branché des haut-parleurs externes et fait de mon mieux pendant un certain temps, mais la fin s'approchait clairement. Puis, le disque dur sur mon ordinateur portable principal sous Windows a commencé à rendre l'âme. Puisque je devais lui acheter un nouveau disque dur, j'ai décidé d'en acheter deux et d'en installer un sur mon T4215 fait de bric et de broc (qui n'avait pas de disque). C'était évidemment le moment d'installer un nouvel exemplaire d'Ubuntu et, puisque la version 20.04 LTS est sortie récemment, tant mieux.

Le moment est donc venu pour un redémarrage d'Ubuntu au quotidien, pendant que l'on configure la machine « neuve », transfère les données de la vieille machine, et en apprend davantage dur l'interface GNOME, puisque Unity a été laissé de côté par la distribution principale d'Ubuntu. Je suis habitué à Unity, mais Unity a été développé à partir de GNOME (et j'ai déjà utilisé ce dernier auparavant sur Ubuntu) ; aussi, m'y accoutumer ne devrait pas être un si grand séisme que cela.

Getting Things Sorted – Adjusting Sleep Mode We’ll skip over the initial installation, as there are myriad Ubuntu installation guides available online and it really is pretty straightforward. There are a lot of things I like to do immediately after installation in terms of initial setup of the system, though, so let’s consider a few of those. First and foremost, it drives me nuts when I’m doing initial setup that the system defaults to going into idle/sleep mode after such a short period of time. I have never understood why operating systems all seem to default to requiring either constant, non-stop activity, or sleep. I don’t think most people use their computers in a way that’s conducive to that. Maybe a lot of corporate IT departments prefer this, and maybe that’s why every OS I’ve ever used does it, but can’t I at least stop for 5 minutes without having the screensaver or lock screen invoke? Well, it is what it is. Easy enough to fix. Go to the upper right of the screen and hit the downward-pointing triangle, then click Settings: Select Power on the left, then select ‘Never’ from the ‘Blank Screen’ drop-down (shown below) Now we can work without the constant screen-blanking interruptions.

Organisation - ajustement de la mise en veille

Nous allons sauter l'installation initiale, car une foule de guides d'installation d'Ubuntu est disponible en ligne et c'est en fait assez simple. Toutefois, il y a beaucoup de choses que j'aime faire tout de suite après une installation quant à la configuration initiale du système ; aussi, regardons quelques-unes.

Avant tout, quand le système se met en veille après une si court période de temps pendant que je fais cette configuration initiale, je deviens fou. Je n'ai jamais compris pourquoi tous les systèmes d'exploitations nécessite une activité constante, sans arrêt, ou se mettent en veille par défaut. Je ne pense pas que la plupart des gens utilisent leur ordinateur d'une façon qui est favorable à cela. Il se peut que beaucoup de services IT dans les entreprises le préfèrent, et c'est peut-être pourquoi tous les OS que j'ai déjà utilisés le font, mais serait-il possible que je m'arrête pendant 5 minutes sans que l'écran de veille ou le verrouillage de l'écran se fasse ?

Ubuntu Software Center The next thing I wanted to do was to install what I consider the ‘essential’ software that I use regularly. So, I fired up the ol’ Ubuntu Software Center from the Favorites (Launcher) on the left side of the screen. The software center is the icon that looks like a red briefcase or shopping bag with an A on it: You can select from the Editor’s Picks, or go to one of the categories and choose the application you want to install, then click the green ‘Install’ button. Now, I really do like the fact that the Software Center gives you a nice, well-designed catalogue with some decent information on most of the programs listed, and it also gives you an intuitive GUI interface for software management. However (as shown below), I ran into many, many error messages while installing software, that required frequent reboots and relaunching of the software center to resolve.

Additionally, many of the installs that were tiny (less than 1 MB to download) would start and seemingly NEVER complete, nor even generate an error. Eventually, I’d pull up the page for the application and hit ‘Cancel’, at which point it would ask for my login password and complete, then any other pending installations that were stalled would proceed. I don’t know what was causing this, but the Ubuntu installation was brand new and about as clean as was possible. I really hope they fix this. Additionally, after some of the repeated reboots, the software catalogue did not seem to fully load. It would show the Editor’s Picks (shown above) at the top, but none of the categories. Sometimes a generic search like ‘game’ would pull up a list of games, sometimes not. After some online research, it seems that this could be resolved by either going to the Update section (top of screen) then hitting the ‘Refresh’ icon on the upper left, or by invoking the terminal and using the command line: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

The ‘&&’ characters in the middle of the command signify to Linux that you are executing two commands in one command string. Sudo stands for ‘Super User DO’, and is used when you are not logged in as an administrator, but need to do administrator level functions, like installations and system software updates. These paired commands seemed to usually do the trick to get the catalogues in the Software Center to load properly, although a follow-up reboot was frequently required. But wait a minute – how did we get to the terminal to type in the command? You have to invoke the Linux terminal in order to type in commands at the CLI, or Command Line Interface. It’s a lot like the MS-DOS prompt on a modern-day Windows installation. However, there wasn’t a terminal icon on the Launcher immediately after installing Ubuntu, nor did it show up in the Show Applications list (that’s the unmoving set of white squares at the bottom of the Launcher):

Adding Items to the Launcher/Favorites Well, first we have to find the terminal. At the top of the screen, click on Activities. In the box that says ‘Type to Search’, type in term. This should be sufficient to bring up the Terminal icon. Right-click and select Add to Favorites. This will add an icon for Terminal to the Launcher (and since I use the command-line frequently, this is absolutely key for me). I’m a little surprised that the terminal is not in the Favorites by default, like it used to be. Again, though, not hard to fix. NOW we can open Terminal and use our update and upgrade commands to resolve our Ubuntu Software Center issues.