Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Q I need a program to read documents aloud; is there one in Ubuntu?
A Searching Synaptic Package Manager for “text to speech” showed several, including espeak, festival, epos, jovie (for KDE), and mbrola. The first two seem to be the most supported.
Q I bought a Canon Lide 110 Scanner, but I can't scan with it.
A To get your Lide 210/110 scanner working under Ubuntu 10.10, you need to run Accessories/Terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:plaxx/random-fixes
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libsane sane-utils
Q The red triangle with the exclamation mark, which indicates that the system is unable to figure out if there are updates, never goes away.
A If you run Accessories/Terminal, and enter this command: sudo apt-get update
an error will appear. Open Administration/Software Sources, and un-click the repository which caused the error. In some cases, you can get rid of the error by getting a missing “key,” such as:
sudo apt-key adv –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv-keys 16126D3A3E5C1192
Q I just did a fresh install of Mythbuntu 10.10 on a box that was previously running 9.10. My homebrew IR blaster isn't working; it's the standard diode-resistor-led serial transmitter from the lirc website, and it worked flawlessly for over a year.
A Installing the version tagged “lirc-0_8_7pre1” from the lirc git repo worked.
Q I am an Ubuntu newbie. So far, my two partitions (Ubuntu and WinXP) worked fine, I always had a boot option at startup. Then my Windows boot option simply disappeared.
A Open Accessories/Terminal and paste in this command:
sudo update-grub
It will ask for your password, and it won't display it as you type. The next time you boot, you should have the proper options.
Q I have a Dell Latitude E5500 laptop, and I was trying to set up the fan control daemon to sort out my noise and thermal issues using i8kfan.
A (Thanks to Wipster in the Ubuntuforums) You need to get into a hidden BIOS screen. This can even be done when you are running programs, not just at boot time. Hold Fn+Shift and type 15324, the numlock capslock lights should flash (they did for me), then you can press Fn+r, and you are presented with the thermal control overrides, CPU throttling, and Fan control. I learned about this in the Dell Community Support forums.
Q My netbook only has 4GB storage space, so I'm wondering if it's possible to install programs to other devices such as an SDHC card?
A Go to http://portablelinuxapps.org/ to find several dozen applications which can be placed on any storage device. Download, make executable, and run!
Q I was messing around a little with the panel at the top of the screen when I removed something I really didn't want to remove. How can I restore the main menubar thing to have all of the original buttons and the like - without having to reinstall and start over?
A Open Accessories/Terminal and paste in this command:
gconftool –recursive-unset /apps/panel && killall gnome-panel
Q In the Ubuntu repositories, there are files listed by the Synaptic Package Manager as “place holders”, and some called “transitional dummy packages”. What are these files, and how are they used?
A You can think of those files as pointers, pointing to the real packages, which probably have more complicated names. So, for example, if you install “apache2,” you get all the components you need in order to run the current version of Apache2.
Tips and Techniques
Installing on an External Drive
If you want to do serious testing of some version of Ubuntu, without changing your current computer setup, an external hard drive can take you a lot further than a flash drive or a Live CD. However, I have seen that a lot of people are confused about how to install Ubuntu on an external hard disk. It isn't terribly difficult, you just need to be careful.
In what follows, I actually installed Lubuntu 10.10 to my external hard drive, but the same steps apply for any version.
Before you spend a lot of time downloading, I suggest you go into your computer's BIOS settings, and tell it to boot from a USB hard drive if it's present, from a flash drive if it's present, or from a CD if it's present, and only boot from the internal hard drive as a last resort. To change your BIOS settings, you need to press a key just after you turn on the power, and the key varies from computer to computer. Most often it's “Del”, but it might be ESC, or a function key. Some (mostly older) computers do not have these settings, other than boot from CD, so that's the end of your attempt to install to an external drive! Some computer manuals will tell you how to do it, but many manufacturers withhold the information. If you can't figure it out for your computer, turn to Google: “bios settings” computer-brand computer-model.
Any time you are changing BIOS settings, you need to be very careful; it's not a good time to have the cat jump onto your keyboard. Unless you installed Ubuntu using WUBI, you probably figured out how to get your computer to boot from CD, so you're half way there.
Now that you know the computer can do what it needs to do, go ahead and download the ISO, in my case, lubuntu-10.10.iso. I installed unetbootin using Synaptic Package Manager, and it appeared under “System Tools.” Plug in a flash drive, run unetbootin, tell it you're using a Diskimage, and click on the three dots to tell it where to find the ISO. When you click “OK,” it will take a few minutes to create a bootable flash drive. It might appear that it has stalled, because one file takes several minutes to process; don't cancel it prematurely. (You could make a Live CD instead, but I prefer a flash drive that I can re-use.)
Re-boot the computer from the flash drive, and select “try Lubuntu without installing,” or whatever similar option appears. Once the new OS is running, connect your external hard drive and turn it on. It should appear on the desktop. Open Accessories/Terminal, make it full-screen, and enter the command:
sudo fdisk -l
It will show you the partitions on the computer's internal hard drive(s), the flash drive, and the external hard drive. In my case, the flash drive is sdb and the external hard drive is sdc. Write that down! You can probably identify the drives based on their capacity, unless you have, for example, a 500 GB internal drive, and a 500 GB external.
Now you are ready to install the new OS. There's probably an icon on the desktop to do it.
Go ahead and answer the standard questions. You might be prompted: “do you want to unmount sdc.” Say yes! The most important moment is when you select: “specify partitions manually,” or “advanced.”
You will be taken into the partitioning program. Select sdc (or whatever it is on your system,) and click “New partition table,” then “Continue.” Scroll the window down, highlight the “free space,” and click on “add”.
What follows is a little more complicated than it needs to be, but it's a good method, because it will let you install a different version of Linux later, without disturbing your data. Specify that you want to add a partition of 20 GB (less if the external drive is small), “use as” ext4, with a “mount point” of “/” (also known as “root”). Click OK.
Next, highlight “free space”, and click on “add.” Specify a partition that is just a bit larger than your RAM, with a minimum of 512 MB. Specify “use as” “swap area.” Click OK.
Again, highlight “free space” and click on “add.” Accept the suggestion of all the remaining space on the drive, ext4 format, with a mount point of “/home.”
Finally, select installing the Boot Loader on sdc, and “install now,” and the tough stuff is done. There are more questions: pick simple, lower-case user- and computer-names. After a few minutes, the installation will be complete, and you can reboot - removing the “installation media” (flash drive) when prompted.
I have found that booting from an external drive is much slower than booting from an internal drive, but most programs run reasonably quickly. At least you can try installing your favorite programs to see how well they work in an alternative environment.
There are numerous minor variations on the above procedure. For example, if you use Microsoft Windows, and someone gives you an Ubuntu CD, and you have a spare external drive, then you just have to do the BIOS settings, boot from the CD, and take it from “Re-boot,” above.