I had this problem with a wubi install. Ubuntu would highly pester me and drop to command shell (that of grub) without showing the boot options (Why and who knows??). I every time will have to boot by manually entering boot options (really painful).  So I did this.

I entered the boot command of the “recovery console” manually by finding it out from grub.cfg through the Live CD. After getting to the repair option I selected the option “Update GRUB”. Then the system did something I dont know. Then after returning to the options I selected the option similar to Boot Normally (whatever the exact wording was). Now, that was a miraculous finding. I restarted and boot worked like it should.

P.S-Something or the other helps me huh??

This one seems to be a really famous problem for most folks in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. So I had it too. The problem was on the initrd file. It is a kernel related file needed for booting. So i did a simple thing.

I replaced initrd.img file of my kernel version with “initrd.lz” file from the Ubuntu LiveCD and edited my grub.cfg file (equivalent of menu.lst in older Ubuntu releases), to boot using initrd.lz

In other words, wherever there is an entry like initrd.img.2.24-16 or similar just replace it with initrd.lz and in my case I also copied over the vmlinuz file and made necessary entries (just in case). Now, am back in action with Ubuntu.

Nvidia Proprietary Drivers need nvidia-settings to set screen resolution and change other settings. In previous versions of Ubuntu and in other distros to make them permanent (used in every session) you click the “Save to X configuration file”. From Karmic on there is no xorg.conf by default!

As a result, nvidia-settings is not able to save the settings and every time I logged in I had  to change the resolution (Phew!!!). Then Sathya helped me. He gave me a link from Ubuntu Forums. Then I did the following to fix the problem:

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This is the problem that affected me the most in the history of Linux using so far. Image, for two full years i just dint know the solution to this prob is that easy. Too late of me to find out. any ways, better late than never.

So the problem is with FX 5200 Ubuntu liveCD/installation boot will hang mid-way, as to most users, it fills to first three bars and then fails. But the cause is acpi settings create some problem with Ubuntu booting. Nope, “acpi=off” option in Ubuntu boot options does NOT work. Now, that’s what everybody suggests only to know it never helps. Even Sathya suggested to me.

It doesnt work because, BIOS settings dominate at the boot time. The entry makes no sense. SO now does it become clear? You disable ACPI in BIOS!  Wow, that worked like magic for me. Now am running Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) on my PC without any boot problems.

However, shutdown does not work properly. Other things like restart and general stuff work fine.

So try that comment on whether it works.

This article appears too late i suppose in this site. Many know about it already. Just in case, i am posting it.

So if your xserser-xorg-video-intel is not that satisfactory to you, or if it doesn’t give the right screen resolution, just use this. If available in repos use it, if not use this link. You will have to remove xserver-xorg-video-intel either manually or through package manager. Then after installation restart Xserver (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace; Enable it thus in Karmic)

That should bring the resolution right or at least make it better.

Thanks to these articles and in case of problems please follow the links:

The PAINLESS way to set Screen Resolution for Intel Chipsets

Can’t change resolution with 915resolution

Finally got desktop effects working (915resolution + xorg.conf)

In Karmic the restart Xserver shortcut is disabled by default. Enable it thus:

1. In the menu, go to System->Preferences->Keyboard (not Keyboard Shortcuts)

2. Go to Layouts tab, click Layout options

3. Expand “Key sequence to kill  the X server”. Check “Ctrl+Alt+Backspace”

4. You’re Done.

This is just a quick tip. If you are getting this error message in Synaptic:

E: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/apt/extended_states (1)
E: _cache->open() failed, please report

or this error in apt-get in command line:

Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Error!
E: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/apt/extended_states (1)

and both just fail to open or install, then just execute this in command line (terminal):

sudo mv /var/lib/apt/extended_states /var/lib/apt/extended_states_tmp

You are done. Thanks to this post

So this is a short post on one pestering problem. If youre using Jaunty and find this problem then use the link that follows.

When i installed Jaunty i had problems (as usual). One of them was this. First off, videos wont play in any video player. Codecs are in place, no doubt. But the player would go crashing down. Even vlc, which uses a seperate set of codecs fails

Then, desktop effects wont enable. No matter what. An irritating piece of  thing.

But it was so queer that when rhythmbox (may be others too; i dont know) starts playing (not just open but playing) videos work! But i dont think video players should be dependent on music players.

So what worked for me was I rolledback to intrepid’s version (2.4) version of xserver-xorg-video-intel. Now no problems videos play and compiz is enabled.

Click here to find out how to revert to the 2.4 version.

Hope this helps.

After a long time’s search over the internet for many days I finally figured out how to do this. Many may know this already but many may not too. And since I hate to compile programs from sourceI have found here a method that involves less of actual compiling. Since am a ubuntu user I only have tried this in ubuntu and not other distros.

STEPS

1. Install these packages:

compiz-bcop

compiz-dev

compizconfig-settings-manager

build-essential

libtool

libglu1-mesa-dev

libxss-dev

libcairo2-dev

git-core

2. You need a working directory say ~/compiz

3. When in your working directory, in terminal, execute this command:

git clone git://anongit.compiz-fusion.org/fusion/plugins/snow

4. Download this file and extract its contents to your working directory

5. In your working directory now there will be a folder called snow. Change to that folder (~/compiz/snow in my case)

6. Execute these three commands one after the other:

make

make clean

make install

7. Now in your CompizConfig Settings Manager you can find the snow plugin and activate it.

This may sort of resemble a dreamscene on your desktop and i really like it a lot. A snowy wallpaper could be suitable.

A small variant of this plugin called Autumn Plugin is here (Thanks to Patrick Fisher and ubuntu forums)

Thanks to elgilicious and ubuntu forums for this

Ed’s note: Do we really need all of this ?  openSUSE, Fedora, Sabayon – all had Snow plugin without having to do any of this

I am probably writing this post too late. To many out there this could be an old news. But, since it was long since I wrote on Sathya Says, (been searching for something to write about) and also this post is worth featuring here, I decided to write this.

Recent times has given birth to many ideas in beautifying one’s desktop. Windows+Linux and related people contribute much towards this. Like Stardock, for example, is a company that offers variety of products to customise your Windows desktop. WinCustomize.com is also another website worth mentioning.

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