I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04 from 8.10 over the weekend.
The good: Faster boot up. (worth the upgrade all by itself)
New notification “bubbles” that appear and then disappear again without any fuss.
OpenOffice 3.0 and other software upgrades.
The Bad: Required tweaks to my pam_mount.conf.xml file to get my encrypted home directory to work. (Not an issue for most users.)
Bluetooth communication ports (serial over bluetooth) started giving errors because standard users no longer had permissions to use them. Adding the following code to an /etc/udev/rules.d/rfcomm.rules file allowed all users in the “dialout” group to access the /dev/rfcommXXX serial over bluetooth ports. (Ubuntu developers know about this problem and it will be fixed eventually.)
KERNEL=="rfcomm*", GROUP="dialout"
Java support for MIDI music failed until I installed timidity again with the following command: sudo apt-get install timidity pmidi
The Annoying:
The hardware buttons on my thinkpad (brightness, volume, etc) still work, but no longer have an on screen display. I could fix this by installing the tpb (thinkPadButtons) package, but it takes up extra CPU cycles and power. I found that the packagers are actively discussing this issue and have decided to wait until they fix the issue within the default packages.
When running Pidgin (IM client), an “envelope” icon appears inside a “indicator-applet 0.1″ to show that it’s running. Of course, Pidgin itself pops up another icon to show that it’s running on my gnome panel at the same time. I’ve thought about removing the indicator-applet from my panel to remove the duplicate items, but worried about what else I may miss if it’s not there to “hold all of the system indicators”. I eventually decided to go into the Pidgin preferences and select “Show System Tray Icon” only “on unread messages” which mostly fixed this annoyance, although now I need two button clicks to bring the IM window to the top instead of just one.
The ATI M6 graphics processor on my IBM X31 laptop was not automatically configured to use hardware acceleration. To use ppracer and other applications that require hardware acelleration to work well (such as the new version of lyx!) I had to edit my xorg.conf file following directions I found here.
One of the claimed features that made me upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04 was the boot-up speed increases. Before the upgrade using Ubuntu 8.10 it took my computer 55 seconds to boot up to the login screen. Including a very fast (2 second) login, it took 1:25 until the desktop was “usable”. Starting Thunderbird and Firefox immediately took until 1:55 to bring up both windows.
After I installed Ubuntu 9.04 I timed the login. I was impressed with the speed increases. It took
35 seconds to get to the login screen. Including a very fast (2 second) login, it took 1:05 until the desktop was “usable”. Starting up both Thunderbird and Firefox were ready to use by one minute and thirty seconds after bootup.
The bootup time of Ubuntu 9.04 is identical to that of Windows Vista (the shutdown time is approximately 5 seconds faster)
I just used the distribution upgrade option to move from Ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04. My dm-crypt encrypted home directory initially refused to load, and I had to change my volume entry in the /etc/security/pam_mount.conf.xml to make it work again.
Specifically, a few of the defaults had changed, so now I had to specify the old (8.04) defaults (ripemd160 hash).
Just replaced an HP 74 black ink cartridge and purchased another backup cartridge for $13.11 (well below the standard price). Difference in weight between the full (28g) and empty cartridge (23g) is 5 grams. Assuming ink has the same density as water, that is $9507 a gallon. Assuming the 200 page per cartridge yield from HP is accurate, that’s also 15.26 cents a page.
The Delta Airlines Skymiles American Express card will offer 20 to 25 thousand bonus Skymiles (Frequent Flier Points) when you first sign up. However, once you have signed up for a card, collected the miles, and then canceled the card, they no longer give you bonus miles for signing up again.
However, Northwest (NWA) and Delta are now in the process of merging. If you have a worldperks account, you can transfer it’s miles (points) at a 1 to 1 ratio into your delta account (after linking the two accounts). NWA also offers a WorldPerks Visa that gives you a 20,000 mile bonus for signing up. So, if you apply for the WorldPerks Visa, and purchase something with it, you get 20,000 miles in your NWA account, which you can then transfer into your Delta Skymiles account. (If you decline to give them an email address, you get a flier with a URL in your first bill that offers another 500 bonus miles if you register an email address.)
Our MythTV entertainment system uses a decent amount of electricity. While watching TV, the television, DVD/Amplifier and computer (plus misc other items) use 335 watts of power. However, as we only average an hour or two of TV a day, this isn’t as large as the continuous power draw from the system when it is not in use. Even though we turn the TV and DVD/Amplifier off when not in use, the computer, HD Tuner, external HD, antenna preamplifier, printer, etc take up 141 watts when idle, and around 160 when recording, trans-coding, or detecting commercials in a television show. As the MythTV computer runs 24/7, this adds up to just over $10 a month of electricity (101 kW/h).
In an effort to save power, I have configured the MythTV system to shut itself off when idle, and wake up automatically five minutes before the next television show it is scheduled to record. This saves power, but has the major downside that the computer is not running and instantly ready whenever we want to watch TV. If the MythTV box isn’t already awake recording a show, you have to manually push the power button and then wait for two minutes while it boots up and gets itself ready. We are no longer able to press the TV-Power button and start watching TV five seconds later. However, this saves about 105 watts whenever the system is off (about 20-22 hours a day), or about $75-$84 a year.
We still have a constant drain of 36 watts, even when the system is turned off due to various peripherals and parasitic power drains.
The UPS & Computer, even when turned off, takes 10 watts (Mostly the UPS keeping its battery charged).
The external USB Hard Drive takes 8 watts.
The printer takes 6 watts when in standby mode.
The DVD/Amplifier, even when turned off (in standby mode) takes 5 watts of power.
The HDTuner (Silicon Dust HDHomerun) takes 5 watts of power even when idle.
Various other items (PDA charger, External Antenna pre-amp power injector, TV when off) take a watt each.
With the exception of the 10 watts from the UPS/Computer, the other power draws could be eliminated by using a “master-controlled” power-strip (such as the APC P7GT), which automatically turns off the controlled outlets when the computer (plugged into the master outlet) is turned off. This would save 26 watts whenever the computer was turned off, and would save about $20 worth of electricity in a year, paying for the fancy power saving power-strip in less than two years. Also, if I replaced the UPS with a “green” version, it would take less than 10 watts to keep the battery topped-up, but that cost savings would take longer to pay for itself.
We recently replaced most of our incandescent bulbs with instant-on CF light-bulbs. I cheated by upgrading our light output (using 100 watt equivalent bulbs to replace 60 watt incandescent bulbs) but each bulb should still save 34 watts.
I loosely estimated our daily light usage (over weekdays and weekends) on the newly CF fixtures as the following:
We are saving (57 bulb hours * 34 watts) 1938 watts a day, approximately 2 KWh a day, or 60 KWh a month, or $6 a month (at $0.10 a KWh). We should pay for the CF light bulbs in seven months.
I bought a six pack of GE “General Purpose” (as opposed to “Cool natural light”) compact florescent light bulbs [item number: 71285, bulb model number FLE 26HT3/2/SW 26watt, equivalent to 100watt incandescent light bulbs] at Wallmart and was pleasantly surprised. In addition to having a warm color temperature (no harsh blue-white light here!) the bulbs turned on practically instantly! No more waiting for a half second for the CF bulb to flicker while “charging up”.
I needed a few more, so I bought a two pack of “General Purpose” GE bulbs [item number 72877] at Wallmart a week later. Unfortunately, these bulbs were slightly different, and did not have the immediate “instant-on” ability of the bulbs that came in the six-pack. The “slow startup” bulbs had the following serial/model number: Helical 26 W 102VAC 60Hz 400mA FLE 26HT2/2/XL/SW
Physically, their helical glass coil is just slightly smaller than the “instant-on” versions.
Both types of GE 100 watt bulbs are slightly too large for some fixtures. I have found an alternative 23W (75W equivalent) CF bulb by Sylvania (the CF23EL/Micromini 3000K) that also has very nice “instant-on” behavior, and is a good inch shorter than the GE 26W bulbs. (As it’s a 3000K color temp, it is also very “normal” looking.)
At Kroger I found a rare 3-way CF bulb (50/100/150 equivalent) from GE with model number “FLE32HLX/2/D/SW”. Unfortunately, it had a full second delay before it produced any light at all.
To summarize, the following model number CF bulbs turn on instantly:
Sylvania 23 watt: CF23EL/Micromini 3000K
GE 26 watt: FLE 26HT3/2/SW
And if you want an instant-on experience, you should avoid the following:
GE: FLE 26HT2/2/XL/SW
GE: FLE 32HLX/2/D/SW
Our Canon S410 camera recently exhibited some strange behavior. When using the LCD display on the back as a viewfinder, it would display a shimmering curtain of pink and purple pixels instead of the correct view. The problem was not with the image sensor, because pictures could be taken normally, and it was not with the display, because when in playback mode the camera would display photos correctly. My best guess is that the camera CPU was using the wrong mode when moving the data from the image sensor to the LCD display when in viewfinder mode. (Icons would correctly display overlayed on top of the purple curtain). This error survied through multiple on/off cycles and removing the battery. Finally, I tried to shoot a video using the camera (which resulted in a video of the purple curtain that you see here), but when I switched away from video mode and back to video mode a second time the viewfinder started to work correctly! I’m not sure if it was specifically the video mode switch that caused it to fix itself, or just a large amount of mode shifts, but it’s working correctly again.