The new Ubuntu release 9.10 brings version 2.18 of GTK+ to the desktop. GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, the GTK+ is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off tools to complete application suites.  In version 2.18, client side windows are introduced which brings nicer redrawing and resizing, as demonstrated in the video :

Some applications – Eclipse, but also Acroread – assume that they can just operate on the X windows corresponding to their GDK windows without ever telling GDK, which causes some widgets to exhibit weird behaviour. Bug 287307 was filed with the Eclipse foundation and this is fixed for the upcoming 3.6 release.

Fortunately, the GTK+ people provide a switch to turn off the client side windows. So to work around the bug with Eclipse pre-3.6, just make sure you set environment variable GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1

#!/bin/sh
export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1
/home/koen/eclipse-galileo/eclipse

Start coding

The permalinks now all have the structure /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/ where the previous the structure was /%post_id%. Permalink rewrites are based on the Apache Rewrite engine and there are a few caveats when changing the permalink structure. Here’s a checklist to get you going…

First of all, you must make sure that the mod_rewrite module is loaded in your apache instance.

root@export:/var/www/blog# apache2ctl -t -D DUMP_MODULES

and check for

rewrite_module (shared)

If not, checkout the apache document on rewrite engine to enable this module in your apache instance.

Finally, make sure your virtual host configuration has :

RewriteEngine On

When changing the permalink structure in your Wordpress backend, it will generate a .htaccess file. This is what it looks like for our permalink structure :

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Normally, this is supposed to be the end of the story but when you receive a 404 surfing to your newly generated links, then verify the following two settings in your virtual host configuration :

• The FollowSymLinks option enabled
• FileInfo directives allowed (e.g. AllowOverride FileInfo or AllowOverride All)

Good luck!

PS: If you don’t want to loose your pagerank for the posts that have incoming links using the old permalink structure, go checkout  “Dean’s Permalinks Migration 1.0“. This will redirect the old permalinks to your new structure, and keep Google happy It is available from the plugins menu in the Wordpress backend.

UPDATE :

UPDATE : Bad news : the latest updates (3.0.195.0~svn20090714r20617-0ubuntu1~ucd2~jaunty) break flash again

Good news for chromium-browser users on Linux.

As of today you can get Flash to work. Make sure you have the latest version installed, pay special attention to the date and build (20090710r20374).

koen@d820:/usr/lib/chromium-browser/plugins$ apt-cache policy chromium-browser
chromium-browser:
Installed: 3.0.194.0~svn20090710r20374-0ubuntu1~ucd1~jaunty
Candidate: 3.0.194.0~svn20090710r20374-0ubuntu1~ucd1~jaunty
Version table:
*** 3.0.194.0~svn20090710r20374-0ubuntu1~ucd1~jaunty 0
500 http://ppa.launchpad.net jaunty/main Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Now, make a symbolic link to the flash library in your chromium plugins directory.

koen@d820:/usr/lib/chromium-browser/plugins$ sudo ln -s /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so

That’s it. Go give it a try at YouTube.

Enjoy!

Now, the webcam issue : I have a QuickCam Messenger webcam, which is recognized correctly by Ubuntu, but it does not work with Skype or JMF (Java Media Framework) applications.

Here’s my dmesg output :

[30850.333403] gspca: probing 046d:08da
[30851.979243] zc3xx: probe 2wr ov vga 0×0000
[30852.023239] zc3xx: probe sensor -> 11
[30852.023244] zc3xx: Find Sensor HV7131R(c)
[30852.030593] gspca: probe ok
[30852.030667] gspca: probing 046d:08da
[30977.315326] zc3xx: probe 2wr ov vga 0×0000

koen@d820:/home/koen$ lsusb

Bus 005 Device 003: ID 046d:08da Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Messanger

I never had webcam issues with the previous Ubuntu releases.

Jaunty is using V4L2 and although drivers that are in the mainline kernel are often v4l2, many applications will only work with v4l1. Even v4l2 apps often don’t work with v4l2 webcams as the webcams often have camspecific (compressed) pixelformats and most applications don’t support all these.
Skype for one does not work. JMF applications either. The image from the camera is green and black garbage/noise.

The solution is to preload the backward compatibility library for v4l to get it to work.

koen@d820:/home/koen$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype &

If you want to setup system-wide and at startup, then create a file /etc/ld.so.preload and put the path to this library in. Or use ld.so.preload-manager from the Ubuntu repositories to do this for you.

koen@d820:/home/koen$ sudo ld.so.preload-manager /usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so

Happy camming !