Re: [tlug] Ubuntu 10.04 - kernel update snafu

[Travis Cardwell <travis.cardwell@example.com>]

Hi Brian,

On 2014年06月18日 20:05, Brian Chandler wrote:
> I want legibility of words, not a dazzling array of 
> blobs in shades of grey
<SNIP>
> How do I escape this madness?

As Darren suggests, using Xfce and turning off all eye-candy options might
be worth trying.

FWIW, I recommend Debian.  When installing Debian, you can select Xfce
under the "alternative desktop environments" menu before booting the
installation kernel:

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianDesktopHowTo#Select_a_Desktop_Environment

> How would I go 
> about deleting the latest version, so the automatic boot might even go 
> to the working 10.04?

In a Debian-based distribution, you can change the default entry to boot
by editing /etc/default/grub.  Removing one of your partitions (and
recovering the space) is more involved than I have space for in this email. ;)

If you decide to install Debian (only), then a quick way to get Debian to
use the whole hard drive would be to simply remove the partition table
before installation (after backing up any data elsewhere, of course).

(WARNING: The follow command will effectively kill your current
installations.)

$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=1

> How would I get a clue whether this 
> is because it really only runs on "Official Vanilla Unity Ubuntu" or 
> what? (If I were a Debian user would using something notionally only 
> available for "Ubuntu" be harder? Easier? Impossible?)

I just tried running it on a Debian (stable) machine, and it worked fine.

In general, Ubuntu tends to package newer libraries than Debian stable,
which can cause some software that is built for Ubuntu to not run on
Debian.  In some cases, such issues can be resolved by installing the
required versions of libraries, perhaps through backports.

In this case, the executable is statically linked, so there are no
dependencies:

$ file MemsourceEditor-4.151-ubuntu-12.04.run
MemsourceEditor-4.151-ubuntu-12.04.run: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel
80386, version 1 (GNU/Linux), statically linked, stripped

> Since there is a Memsource version for Ubu 10 and 12, I chose 12, 
> thinking it closer to Mint 17. But should I think Old Better?

It would not hurt to try both. :)

Cheers,

Travis