Who I am

My name is Christopher M. Penalver and thank you for visiting my wiki.

I am a current member of Ubuntu Bug Control, with a heavy focus on LibreOffice and Linux kernel bugs. As well, I contribute to community support articles on https://help.ubuntu.com/, and debugging documentation at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProcedures.

While I am not a developer, I strive to learn as much as possible about the bugs I help triage. As well, triage in a way that is in line with the Ubuntu Code of Conduct. Also, my triage effort is focused on getting reports in a position where a developer can easily see all relevant information quickly, that is necessary to fix the problem, and not have to ask follow up debugging questions of the original reporter, other than to test a patch.

I am an avid Xubuntu/GNU/Linux user and very thankful for it.

Wiki documentation contributions

• As of 2012-10-28 I have contributed ~187 edits, across ~43 different articles, in both https://help.ubuntu.com/ and https://wiki.ubuntu.com. Here are some notable examples:

• Articles started:

  1. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LibreOfficeBugWrangling

  2. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LibreOffice

  3. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/vt.handoff

  4. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ApportRetracingService

  5. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Screencast

• Articles significantly improved:

  1. Overhauled article, including explaining difference between official/unofficial AMD resources, as this was a point of confusion for many Ubuntu community members - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI

  2. Added "Read out loud" accessibility information - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AcrobatHowTo

  3. Overhauled article to make current - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SensorInstallHowto

  4. Rewrote article to help both new and experienced kernel bisectors - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/KernelBisection

  5. Redid Ubuntu Kernel team responses to increase probability of requested information provided by original bug reporters, and increase quality of information given - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/BugTriage/Responses

  6. Transactionalized and started debugging information request section - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LinuxWireless

  7. Transactionalized and started debugging information request section - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Debugging/Backlight

  8. Redid upstreaming procedure to be more inline with Kernel.org maintainer contact preferences - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeam/KernelTeamBugPolicies

• Articles requested deletion due to them being duplicates, covering EOL information, being too long, or combination thereof:

  1. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VideoDriverHowto%3F/ATI - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2012-October/017000.html

  2. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/b43 - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2012-October/016997.html

  3. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Dapper - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2012-October/016996.html

  4. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Feisty_No-Fluff - https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-doc/2012-October/016995.html

AMD 3100 legacy graphics overheat

10/27/2012 Since I started purchasing laptops exclusively (Toshiba Satellite L305D-S5934) I've had overheat problems with this laptop using the open source Radeon drivers, and much less so with the AMD Catalyst ones. Currently, I have to use xfce4-sensors-plugin to monitor my temps approaching ~200 F, in which case it will promptly shut off. As a work around, I've governored the CPU via the command line:

sudo cpufreq-selector --cpu=0 --governor=powersave && sudo cpufreq-selector --cpu=1 --governor=powersave

As well, it is known which applications, and in what combinations, will cause my temp to spike.

Unfortunately, the legacy AMD fglrx drivers downloaded directly from their website do not work in Quantal due to it not working with Xserver 1.13 http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=625. While AMD is aware of the fglrx driver bug provided by their website directly, they are currently not willing to fix it. As well, this may affect legacy card users using fglrx from the Ubuntu repositories in Quantal https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fglrx-installer/+bug/1058040. Thankfully, my Intel graphics based Acer Aspire 5750-9668 does not share this problem, typically running at a cool 116 F even with video running.

Why I had to switch E-Mail from GMX to GMail

10/27/2012 When I first started using a dedicated E-Mail account, I tested out a number of different free services (GMail, GMX, and Yahoo). However, being accustomed to Outlook Web Access from past jobs, I began using GMX as my first major E-Mail account, due to it being the closest to OWA. It had a really sleek GUI web interface that worked really well with all browsers and operating systems. And the overall design was intuitive and reasonable.

However, a few months back the website had an issue the GMX Support team was aware of, where all browsers across all operating systems were spontaneously logged out after 10 seconds to a couple minutes. Me being a reasonable and understanding person, I figured they will knock that issue out with no problem. So, I worked around it by using Evolution in Quantal, as I could not get Evolution to work with GMX in Precise. Simultaneously, I sent the GMX support team a message advising them of the problem, assuming after a while it would be all cleared up and I could go back to using the web GUI that I've come to enjoy using, combined with the added benefit of using anywhere from 100-300MB less RAM due to Evolution not running.

Unfortunately, I received a response noting not only is the problem resolved from their end, despite the fact it continued for me using both Firefox and Chromium browser, but that it is now caused by my using Ubuntu, due to how no further complaints have been made by Windows or Mac users, and they won't even try to support it. As well, Evolution was giving me troubles, where it would intermittenly crash, hang, and take longer than expected to do certain tasks.

So, having changed absolutely nothing on either browser, I started up a GMail account and it worked flawlessly, no spontaneous log outs. Not only that, Google Docs worked around a rather inconvenient LibreOffice PDF document import issue! Also, GMail auotmatically imported all my folders from GMX, preserving the structure, and auto-forwarded all my GMX E-Mail to GMail for the next 30 days! It was like GMail anticipating my having this problem (and others due to their extensive list of competing E-Mail platforms one could choose from in their import list), and then delivered exactly what was needed on a silver platter. Wow!

Now that I've migrated over to GMail, hopefully it is smooth sailing.

Get Hulu to work with your Samsung Stratosphere Android phone via Xubuntu

I wrote this tutorial as I am very leary about downloading some zip file found on a random forum to get what I want to work. Instead, I did it myself and wanted to share the results.

Install the Android SDK via the Terminal:

cd ~/Desktop && wget http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r16-linux.tgz && file-roller -h android-sdk_r16-linux.tgz && cd android-sdk-linux/tools && sh android

check the checkbox Tools -> click button Install 2 package -> click radio button Accept All -> click button Install.

Once this is done, enable USB debugging via Settings -> Applications -> Development -> check USB debugging and then via the Terminal:

cd ~/Desktop/android-sdk-linux/platform-tools && ./adb pull /data/data/com.adobe.flashplayer/lib/libflashplayer.so && ghex libflashplayer.so

Find a part of the code in the right hand ASCII window that looks like:

PlugIn..5.1.AND 11,1,11

and change it to:

PlugIn..5.1.WIN 11,1,11

save the file, and then at the Terminal:

./adb push libflashplayer.so /data/data/com.adobe.flashplayer/lib/

Finally, change the user agent on the Dolphin Browser via Menu button- -> More -> Menu -> Settings -> Dolphin settings -> User Agent Custom -> Custom useragent WIN

Enjoy!

Unity in Ubuntu

Pros

1. Gives the user more screen real estate by hiding menubars when not in use, thinning out vertical scrollbars unless hovered over, and consolidating a windows top bar into the top task bar.
2. Consolidates Applications/Places/System into the Ubuntu Start icon.

Cons

1. All the menu structures I've enjoyed using and been accustomed to in GNOME 2.x are completely hosed.
2. Synaptic Package Manager is gone.
3. the Unity bar is an efficiency regression for my applications. I have 12 desktops open, and having the name of the windows open at the bottom is critical in keeping it all straight. This is a show stopper for me and I use Xubuntu.
4. Having an army of GNOME developers work on bugs, instead of UI design changes/fixes for GNOME 3/Unity and the bugs created because of this. It's pretty clear that Unity is an initative to create a unified experience across diverse hardware architectures. I just wished they kept developing for GNOME 2.x while pushing that initative forward!
5. Being able to simply and easily use CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor applet to governor my CPU(s) with GNOME 2.x. I could just governor all my CPUs, and blissfully run any combination of programs without the fear of a temp shutdown. Unfortunately, Xubuntu does not have a working GUI based governor at the moment.

Testimonials

• Please feel free to post a testimonial about my work with the Ubuntu project here.

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