Ubuntu 12.10 is released. Acting like the happy big fucking idiot I am I decide to upgrade within a month after its release. I don’t know why I just have to ruin a perfectly fine system whose quirks I’ve finally learned to live with for an upgrade to newer Ubuntu, despite that it never fails to piss me off by being broken in dozens of quirky little ways, each a little different than last time.
Each of these many small problems is just a bit too small to warrant a post on it’s own but big enough that they end up being very distracting to me.
Binary nVidia Drivers
You can’t just install the drivers from a GUI anymore. They’ve removed that feature. You have to install the nvidia-current-updates package. But wait. If you do that, your Ubuntu machine is fucked. You have to first install the linux-headers-generic package. Because … I don’t know why and I don’t care why. It took me a good hour to figure this quirk out.
Update 06-11-12: Guess what happens when the Linux kernel version is bumped through an update? The driver stops working! Why? Because the linux-headers package is not updated together with the kernel. You see, they’re not listed as a dependency (even though it IS a dependency for the driver to work) so fuck you.
Also, completely by accident, I found out that there IS a GUI option to select proprietary drivers. I just wish somebody would have told me before.
CompizConfig Settings Manager
I like to use the Compiz Put plugin. It’s a small plugin which can put a window to any place on the screen without resizing it. It’s feature is almost similar to the Grid plugin except I happen to think it’s nicer. I can press CTRL+ALT+ any key on my numpad to put a window to the corresponding placement on the screen. When I configure this in CCSM it turns out that not only does CTRL+ALT+NUM_5 center my currently selected window, but it also toggles maximization of that window.
Who the fuck uses CTRL+ALT+NUM_5 for maximizing a window? CCSM doesn’t inform me of the overlap in keybindings before I disabled then re-enabled the Put plugin in an effort to narrow down which fucking plugin caused this weird behavior. It turns out that was under General Options.
Once in a while, though, Compiz crashes and drops all my keybindings and customization. Just like that. Even after I’ve saved my settings, shut down the computer, booted it up again, it can decide to crash and drop my settings on a whim.
I tried making a backup of my compiz settings but when I search my home directory for anything compiz-related I get back a bunch of… everything other than what I’m looking for!
New Window
Each time I initiate a new application window, be it a browser, music player or terminal, the windows title bar is overlapped by the weird status/menu bar that Ubuntu has gotten since the change to the Unity interface. To move a window from there using the mouse I have to hit the hidden underneath window decoration that’s only four pixels visible. Since I’ve played a lot of shooters needing high-precision mouse aiming back in my day, it’s not so hard to hit it but I really have to concentrate to make it happen.
EDIT: Turns out this one was my own fault. I had disabled the Compiz “Place Window” plugin while trying to figure out which plugin was interfering with my above mentioned Put keyboard shortcuts.
Chromium Create Application Shortcuts…
… has stopped working, for some reason. I can see the .desktop files for my corporate webmail being created on the desktop but they are not clickable. On the odd chance out that a separate icon appears in the dash, it’s not usable and just blinks for a while then dies. What happened?
libMTP still outdated
I wrote a post not long ago about how libmtp for some odd reason could not help me doing the simple task of transferring files from my smartphone to my laptop using an USB cable. This was actually one of the reasons I wanted to upgrade: So that I didn’t get a fucking error every time I plugged in my insanely popular smartphone into a supposedly user-friendly operating system. Well the error’s still there and I still can’t copy a file from a phone to a laptop using a USB cable.
There’s probably more, but all this long ranting is proving to be therapeutic to my frustrations so this is all for now.