Skype Video Chat on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

Took a short break from Ubuntu accessibility work to try out the Skype 2.1.0.81 beta on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx).

We used the Static build of Skype client on my Ubuntu Lucid laptop, while Kaprie Kanu used Ubuntu Jaunty laptop across the room. Downloaded and extracted the compressed archive to /opt/skype-version location on both the computers.

First I faced few issues with my external web camera (see LP #502866). Starting skype with following command fixed this issue. LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /opt/skype-2.1.0.81/skype

And the results are good, text chat and Video chat works well. There is slight video distortion (green lines at the bottom of video frame). File transfers are quick and Desktop sharing, a new features in this version works out of the box.

You can use Desktop sharing for making online presentations with Ubuntu. If you need sound events from the computer to be streamed as well, unplug the headphone and use the external speakers.

Skype Desktop Sharing

ALSA Jack Sense problem in Jaunty

Update: Ubuntu Lucid user should read the this updated post Headphone jack sense problem in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx instead.
The newly ordered batch of Dell Vostro 1014 Laptops have a ALSA sound problem. When you plugin the headphone, sound plays both on headphone and internal speakers as well.
The solution seems either to upgrade ALSA which time consuming and painful. Or pass the correct model name by adding options snd-hda-intel model=dell-bios to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf.
For now I settled for simple workaround (that is easy for blind users). Created two shortcut keys to enable and disable headphones with gnome keyboard shortcuts.

Name: Enable Headphones
Command: amixer sset Master frontleft mute

Name: Disable Headphones
Command: amixer sset Master frontleft unmute

The downside of this workaround is that you hear only single channel sound on headphones. If you managed to fix this problem on Ubuntu Jaunty, leave a comment.

how to override compiz blacklist?

Enabling Compiz eZoom desktop plugin for our partially sighted and low vision users hit a snag. Compiz refused to work as Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 chipset is blacklisted in Ubuntu 8.10 Jaunty. This tutorial describes how to override and enable compiz on blacklisted hardware.

You need to add SKIP_CHECKS="yes" at the end /etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager. That should fix it.

$ SKIP_CHECKS=yes compiz Checking for Xgl: not present. xset q doesn't reveal the location of the log file. Using fallback /var/log/Xorg.0.log Blacklisted PCIID '8086:2a02' found aborting and using fallback: /usr/bin/metacity # Edit the following file and add at the end of the 'SKIP_CHECKS=yes' $ sudo nano /etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager # restart compiz and try enabling compiz again. $ compiz Checking for Xgl: not present. xset q doesn't reveal the location of the log file. Using fallback /var/log/Xorg.0.log Blacklisted PCIID '8086:2a02' found SKIP_CHECKS is yes, so continuing despite problems. Checking for texture_from_pixmap: not present. Trying again with indirect rendering: Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present. Checking for non power of two support: present. Checking for Composite extension: present. Checking screen 1Comparing resolution (1280x800) to maximum 3D texture size (2048): Passed. Checking for Software Rasterizer: Not present. Checking for nVidia: not present. Checking for FBConfig: present. running under gnome seesion, checking for gnomecompat Checking for Xgl: not present. /usr/bin/compiz.real (video) - Warn: No 8 bit GLX pixmap format, disabling YV12 image format Starting gtk-window-decorator

Pqi i810 : Worlds Smallest USB Flash Drive?

Pqi i810 series USB flash drives from Power Quotient are extremely tiny in size. They not much larger than your finger nail. But don't let that fool you they pack lots of storage space, the one that landed in lap was whopping 8GB. And they are cute and pink :) . The Power Quotient product page claims that these are world's smallest USB flash drives. However I didn't find any reference to this neither on Engadget nor anywhere else on the web.

At first glance its looks more like a MMC card than a USB slot. It really felt strange to plug it into my USB drive. Like most exotic hardware I thought it would be a pain to make it work with gnu/Linux OS. And Surprise, surprise it worked just fine on my Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 laptop.
The USB Id's of this device are given below. Bus 002 Device 006: ID 3538:0059 Power Quotient International Co., Ltd If you are planning to buy one, go ahead and indulge yourself.

Openoffice.org Spell Checking

Openoffice.org spellcheck doesn't seems to work on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty either. It's a well known problem that can be easily fixed but somehow it gets carried on from one release to the next. When you run a spellcheck, Openoffice immediately says that spell check is complete even when the document has mis-spelled words.

Openoffice.org uses hunspell so you better check if its installed. Secondly make sure that the default language is set correctly.
# apt-cache policy hunspell hunspell: Installed: (none) Candidate: 1.2.6-1ubuntu2 Version table: 1.2.6-1ubuntu2 0 500 http://jp.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages # sudo apt-get install hunspell Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: libyaml-syck-perl libftgl2 libchm1 python-chm libalut0 libindicate0 Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following NEW packages will be installed: hunspell 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 91.5kB of archives. After this operation, 246kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://jp.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main hunspell 1.2.6-1ubuntu2 [91.5kB] Fetched 91.5kB in 2s (45.2kB/s) Selecting previously deselected package hunspell. (Reading database ... 190374 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking hunspell (from .../hunspell_1.2.6-1ubuntu2_i386.deb) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Setting up hunspell (1.2.6-1ubuntu2) ...

Go to Tools > Options > Language Settings > Writing Aids. Select Hunspell Spellchecker and set the default language, on my computer it is English (USA).

Also make sure to do the same for all the menus under Tools > Language.

Enable Ctrl-Alt-Backspace in Ubuntu

Here is one change in the latest Ubuntu release Jaunty (9.04) that is *really* not blind friendly. You can no longer use the Ctrl-Alt-Backspace key combination to restart the graphical (X) session by default. Most of the Orca screen reader users have to resort to using this key combination to start over when Orca screen reader stops or hangs for some unknown reason.

Its not very difficult to turn on this feature back on. To enable this Ctrl-Alt-Backspace key combination you have to use the dontzap program. You might want to install this package on your computer. They type this command in the terminal.
sudo dontzap -d
Reboot the computer and you are ready.

Update In Ubuntu Karmic the dontzap has been removed. You have use the keyboard preference tool.

• Select "System"->"Preferences"->"Keyboard"
• Select the "Layouts" tab and click on the "Layout Options" button.
• Select "Key sequence to kill the X server" and enable "Control + Alt + Backspace".

Tracker index corruption in Jaunty

Few hours into the Jaunty Update, I ran into the Tracker index corruption issue mentioned in the Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Release Notes.
In some cases it can happen that the index of the "tracker" desktop search engine becomes invalid. A dialog will be shown, offering you to "Reindex all contents". This button does not work, and the tracker service might start to use large amounts of CPU and disk resources. As a workaround, please press Alt+F2 and run tracker-processes -r. This will be fixed in a post-release update soon (361205).

However tracker-processes program was not installed on my laptop, so I installed tracker-utils package and ran the tracker-processes -r which seems to fix the problem.

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) Released

Few hours ago latest version of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) was released. After three days without Internet connection, today evening the damaged optical fiber was patched just in time for the release. As I am writing this post my laptop is downloading the packages to complete the upgrade from Alpha release.

Read more about the features of Ubuntu 9.04 in the following press releases:

• Desktop edition http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-9.04-desktop
• Server edition http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-9.04-server
• Netbook Remix http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-9.04-unr

Meanwhile in the server room I am seeding ubuntu 9.04 desktop (i386) image via bittorrent . If you are downloading Ubuntu in India, I suggest you download this torrent file. I think I would continue seeding this image until the end of the month (30 April, 2009).

Reliance Netconnect USB card in Ubuntu Jaunty

New version of Ubuntu Linux 9.04 (Jaunty) is due to be released next week. So if you are a Reliance Broadband USB CDMA modem user then you should make these (slight) changes to your configuration .
Thejesh has already posted a detailed Reliance Netconnect USB card on Linux Howto so I don't think I should repeat myself again.

In Jaunty the usbserial module is complied as builtin in the linux kernel. So if you are searching for us usbserial module you won't find it. What you have to do instead is to pass USB vendor ID and Product ID at boot time.

Add this line at the end of default kernel line in your /boot/grub/menu.lst usbserial.vendor=0x19d2 usbserial.product=0xfffd
Happy Browsing !!!

Notify-OSD Now Works with Orca

The message came in last night as I was leaving office. It was response to bug #333134, it was a request to enable notifications from the new Notify-osd system work with Orca screen reader.

Hi Arky,
I would like to believe that this is resolved in recent updates. Please make sure you are using the most recent version of gnome-orca and notify-osd.

Thank you guys! You really made a difference to all the blind users around the world. Now there is one more good reason to grab the jaunty.

Ubuntu Installer :: Installation Failed Input/Output Error

Here is an update on the strange error on dell vostro 220s desktop problem reported on this blog sometime back. It was very puzzling but my hunch turned out to be right after all. I tested the latest alpha release of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on this machine. The LiveCD booted but half way through the installation it died with a [Errno 5] Input/output error.