Fourty Years On
Posted on Fri, Mar 5, 2021
| Alan Pope
This post, previously titled “Thirty Years On” appeared on another incarnation of my blog 10 years ago. I am being lazy nostalgic and re-posting it today as it’s the 40th birthday of my first computer, the diminutive Sinclair ZX81.
On Christmas day 1981 I awoke with the usual excitement of any 9 year old boy. I clearly remember going downstairs and being told not to go into the lounge because my Dad was busy setting up my main Christmas present.
[Read More]Unbreaking Unbootable Ubuntu
Posted on Thu, Mar 4, 2021
| Alan Pope
I run Ubuntu Hirsute - the development release which will become 21.04 - on a bunch of systems. It’s a trade-off though, getting the latest crack each and every day. Being at the bleeding edge of new packages landing means I can experience brand new shiny bugs on my systems. Bugs like 1915579 which rendered my system unbootable. Nobody wants to see this on boot:
I had updated yesterday and clearly something went wrong.
[Read More]Ubuntu Voltage
Posted on Wed, Mar 3, 2021
| Alan Pope
For a few years we’ve been performing a live version of an Ubuntu Podcast at FOSS Talk Live. This is a lively, nerdy, in-person Linux Podcast event at the Harrison Pub in London. A few shows are performed in front of a live slightly drunk studio pub audience. We are but one troup of performers though, over the course of the evening.
The whole thing is organised by Joe Ressington and attended by our friends and/or/xor listeners.
[Read More]Updating Snap Bases
Posted on Tue, Mar 2, 2021
| Alan Pope
This is a bit of a dayjob post, but as I maintain a bunch of snaps in my own time, I figured it’s not out of place here.
Typically when I (or indeed any developer) uses snapcraft to build a snap, a snapcraft.yaml drives the process. I’ll integrate some kind of CI or build system, and start publishing to the Snap Store. Usually, once created, the yaml doesn’t need much in the way of changes.
[Read More]You Don't Need To Ask
Posted on Mon, Mar 1, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Mar 2, 2021)
| Alan Pope
Ubuntu - the Linux distribution - has been around for 17 years. Over that time many projects and initiatives have been started, some successful, others less so. Not everything we try can work out, but as a group, we should feel empowered to try.
The Ubuntu community isn’t quite the same as it was back in 2004-2010, and nobody I know argues that it is. People who were keen and active contributors may have had circumstantial changes which meant they moved on.
[Read More]Mix and Match Rocketbooks
Posted on Sun, Feb 28, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Mar 2, 2021)
| Alan Pope
Last month I ‘discovered’ Rocketbooks. Well, now I’m in deep! I’ve picked up a bunch of coloured pens, a large folio cover for the full size Rocketbook, and now, I’ve grabbed some more!
Wait! Surely the point of Rocketbooks is that they’re re-usable, so you don’t need to buy many of them. Yeah, true. However, as they’re not super expensive, I can actually leave one at my work desk upstairs for business-related things, and another downstairs in the kitchen.
[Read More]Snapcraft Clinic Successes
Posted on Sat, Feb 27, 2021
(Last modified on Sun, Feb 28, 2021)
| Alan Pope
On Thursday I mentioned we were restarting the Snapcraft Clinic. Basically we stand up a regular video call with engineers from the snap and snapcraft team & us from Snap Advocacy. Developers of applications and publishers of snaps are invited to join to troubleshoot.
There was nothing especially secret or private discussed, but as we don’t record or stream the calls, and I don’t have direct permission to mention the applications or people involved, so I’ll keep this a little vague.
[Read More]Pro Breeze Air Fryer Review
Posted on Fri, Feb 26, 2021
| Alan Pope
Like many during The Event I bought an Air Fryer. Specifically I got the Pro Breeze XL 5.5L (affiliate link) from Amazon. I honestly didn’t do a tremendous amount of research, just reading a few reviews and using those as my basis for what to buy. The Pro Breeze models come in different sizes, and the reviews for the smaller model suggest the larger 5.5L one is preferable. I’m lucky enough to have enough kitchen workspace to leave it out on the side, so went for the larger model.
[Read More]Snapcraft Clinic
Posted on Thu, Feb 25, 2021
| Alan Pope
At work we have a forum where developers can discuss packaging Linux applications, specifically as snaps. Sometimes developers just want to pair through a problem to get it either resolved for themselves, or for whatever is blocking to be handed off to the right people.
One strategy for supporting developers we found effective was via regular live video conference. So last year we started the Snapcraft Clinic. On a semi-regular basis we dedicate time to join with anyone who has technical issues with snapping, to help them.
[Read More]A Tale of Two Updates
Posted on Wed, Feb 24, 2021
| Alan Pope
Helping your users stay up to date on their workstation is something I believe OS vendors should endeavour to do, to the best of their ability. Some users aren’t able to find time to install updates, or are irritated by update dialogs. Others are skeptical of their contents, some even block updates completely.
No OS vendor wants to be “That Guy” featuring in the news as millions of their customers are found to be vulnerable on their watch.
[Read More]Book Review: Split Second
Posted on Tue, Feb 23, 2021
| Alan Pope
As I mentioned in a previous book review, I’m a bit of a fan of time travel fiction. So after reading and enjoying Off to Be the Wizard (affiliate link) by Scott Meyer. the AI fed me My friend Marian on Telegram recommended Split Second (Split Second Book 1) (affiliate link) by Douglas E. Richards.
The premise revolves around a time-travel capability which can only send things back in time a split second (hence the title) rather than the weeks or years that other science fiction in the genre tend to exploit for their storyline.
[Read More]Jamming with Sonobus
Posted on Mon, Feb 22, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Feb 23, 2021)
| Alan Pope
Before last week, I’d never heard of SonoBus. While on holiday I’d packaged up Spot - a Gtk Spotify client, which I wrote about recently. The next day I made a snap of SonoBus too! I did this because while there were binary builds for Windows and Mac, there was no binary release for Linux, other than in the Arch User Repository.
For those that, like me, didn’t know about SonoBus, it’s an “easy to use application for streaming high-quality, low-latency peer-to-peer audio between devices over the internet or a local network”.
[Read More]Coffee Overload
Posted on Sun, Feb 21, 2021
| Alan Pope
Only weeks ago, I blogged about Trying Proper Coffee. Well, I tucked into the Lavazza (affiliate link) and ran out this week! I only bought the Lavazza because I recognised the brand, and needed something to drink. With me running low, I wanted to get suggestions for what to try next on my coffee journey.
So I put the call out to “Coffee Twitter”!
Oh no! Running low! ☕
Dear UK Coffee twitter.
[Read More]Scanning Frustration
Posted on Sat, Feb 20, 2021
| Alan Pope
“Printers are devices for causing pain and frustration. They also sometimes print stuff out.” - Me, many times over the years.
I have an HP LaserJet 100 MFP M175nw networked laser printer / scanner / copier. I’ve had it since 2013 where it’s generally worked okay most of the time. We don’t print a ton of things in this house, but when we do, it’s typically urgently required for work or school.
[Read More]Season Fourteen
Posted on Fri, Feb 19, 2021
| Alan Pope
Nearly thirteen years ago, on 11th March 2008, a few members of the Ubuntu UK Local Community Team released S01E01 of the Ubuntu UK Podcast. Ciemon Dunville, Dave Walker, Tony Whitmore and I had recorded it on the previous Saturday in my cramped, messy home office.
In the following seven years we recorded 187 episodes as “Ubuntu UK Podcast” - affectionately known as “uupc”. A re-brand in season eight to just “Ubuntu Podcast” led to another six years comprising another 251 episodes.
[Read More]Spotty Connection
Posted on Thu, Feb 18, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
I had a few days off work this week. It was very enjoyable to spend a bit more time with the family, doing some jobs around the house, going for walks, and generally nothing else, thanks to The Event.
However, in the quiet moments I still find myself browsing around, stumbling on new software I know will be enjoyed by my friends on Linux, and feel compelled to package it up, as a snap.
[Read More]Migrating Two Factor Auth
Posted on Wed, Feb 17, 2021
(Last modified on Thu, Feb 18, 2021)
| Alan Pope
I use a ton of services which either require or recommend 2fa as part of the authentication process. I used to use “Google Authenticator” then more recently “Authenticator Plus”. However Authenticator Plus seems to be no longer maintained. So while I have no problems with it, I think it is time to migrate to something else.
Step up, Aegis Authenticator, a free, open source authenticator app, available on the play store, and F-Droid.
[Read More]All Ahead Stop
Posted on Tue, Feb 16, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Well, things have escalated in Ubuntu-land since the posts I made on Monday and Tuesday! The Ubuntu archive for Hirsute (the in-development version which will become 21.04) has been temporarily frozen.
It seems there’s a rather knarly bug in the tools used to build packages, which is causing them to be “mis-built” - i.e. broken. I (and others) noticed this over the weekend, via a breakage in snapd - the daemon which mediates the installation and running of snaps.
[Read More]Going Backwards
Posted on Mon, Feb 15, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
Yesterday I wrote about how I made a mistake by updating my primary Ubuntu computer to include the proposed pocket. I shouldn’t have done this. So today I quickly hacked together a script to take any packages which came from proposed and “downgrade” them back to the release pocket. It’s not pretty, but it worked, for me.
#!/bin/bash TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d) PACKAGES=$TMPDIR/packages DOWNGRADE=$TMPDIR/downgrade # Get list of all installed packages dpkg -l | grep ^ii | awk -F ' ' '{ print $2}' > $PACKAGES # Start the downgrade script echo "sudo apt install \\" > $DOWNGRADE # For each package in the list of installed packages while read p; do # Get the summary of where the package came from apt-cache policy $p > $TMPDIR/$p # Get the line after (grep -A 1 and tail -n 1) the highlighted one with 3 stars SOURCE=$(grep -A 1 "^\ *\*\*" $TMPDIR/$p | tail -n 1 | awk -F ' ' '{ print $3}' ) # If that line suggests we got the package from proposed, add it to the script if [[ "$SOURCE" == *"hirsute-proposed"* ]]; then echo "$p/hirsute \\" >> $DOWNGRADE fi done <$PACKAGES # Tell the user what to run to actually do the downgrade echo "Run sh $DOWNGRADE" Don’t use this.
[Read More]Don't Use Proposed
Posted on Sun, Feb 14, 2021
(Last modified on Tue, Aug 22, 2023)
| Alan Pope
This is a short and sweet post to remind future me (and anyone else reading) not to use the “proposed” pocket of the Ubuntu Archive, if you want a bug-free and safe experience.
For those not “in the know”, each Ubuntu release has a bunch of pockets. If you’ve ever fiddled with your sources.list you may have seen the names updates, backports, security and proposed. These are usually prefixed with the codename of the release, such as hirsute-updates and hirsute-proposed for the current in-development version of Ubuntu, to become the interim release 21.
[Read More]