Karmic - General Tips/Solutions

Would this be useful here ? If not please delete thread.

Gtk recordMyDesktop.
To get sound recording working:- Open 'Advanced' >'Sound' and where it says 'Device'
change upper case 'DEFAULT' to lower case 'default' and you can record sound. Just
tried with a usb microphone.

Only problem so far is Kdenlive - totally unusable in Karmic after very good in Jaunty.**

**Edit: It's OK now but must use sunab's repo.
ppa:sunab/ppa

That way you also get the libavcodec-extra-52 which replaces the unstripped version. Means you can probably play
all multimedia files from hdmov to divx/xvid etc.

 

i don't know about your tips, but i saw a good one the other day for encrypted home directories. i didn't think i'd re-find the article, but i remembered i bookmarked it lol. i'm not up on all the recent OSes updates so maybe everyone knows this already.
http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7568/1.html

on page two it shows the box you check to encrypt your home directory, all you have to do is give a passphrase then every time you log in you give the pass to access your encrypted data.

 

No not my tips, but tips and solutions from Karmic users. It seems to be quite a problematic distro for many. But maybe this is not the place - after all there are the Ubuntu forums.

 

Avidemux from repo - audio problem. Only works if you enable OSS in audio Prefs.
Haven't yet got a saved file to play audio without distortion.
Edit:- In Audio 'OSS' and 'ProLogic' is fine.

 

Ctrl+Alt+Backspace enable.

System>Preferences>Keyboard>Keyboard Preferences>Layouts>Layout Options>Key sequence to kill the X
server.
Place tick next to Ctrl+Alt=Backspace.

(From release notes Karmic 9.10)

 

Turn on autohinting for fonts

sudo ln -sf /etc/fonts/conf.avail/10-autohint.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/

If you change your fonts to medium hinting and sub-pixel rendering, you may notice Firefox 3.5 does not recognize it. That is because Firefox 3.5 uses the /etc/fonts/conf.d file for its fonts. This will give you medium hinting and sub-pixel rendering in 3.5.

sudo rm /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-hinting-slight.conf

sudo rm /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-no-sub-pixel.conf

sudo ln -s /etc/fonts/conf.available/10-hinting-medium.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/

sudo ln -s /etc/fonts/conf.available/10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/

sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig

 

If in Ubuntu Netbook Remix you'll notice that Home is not available in Files & Folders. To add Home open .gtk-bookmarks (in /home/your-user-name) and add "file:///home/your-user-name" to the list and save.

Small point I know but it made getting to Home a step or two easier.

BTW, UNR Karmic runs great on my old Sony VGN-S360 1.7 ghz, 1 gig ram, ATI 9700 laptop.

 

Cheers for that. I had not bothered looking for a fix for that as been busy fixing other issues.

Cheers, Nick

 

Here is a nice list of fixes and some very useful info:
http://www.webupd8.org/2009/10/things-to-fix-tweak-after-installing.html
Some good links at the bottom extend the list.
AND,
for anyone exploring: a little recipe..
http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-ubuntu-9.10-karmic-koala

 

Thanks, was wondering why some icons in context menu were absent despite having set them in nautilus actions configuration.

 

Still had some issues with audio but found out that one needs to install libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio (in Synaptic - it will remove the alsa package of the same description).
Then in Kdenlive settings>playback>audio change driver to pulseaudio.
That fixes it for me. No ill effects on all my other audio programs at all.