Since 2006 I have been using Ubuntu as my main OS, come rain or shine, and without too much doubt I can say that 11.10 is simply the best that we have seen to date.

That being said it is not perfect … at least not for me …

1. Ubuntu Software Centre

I find it slow and painstakingly frustrating to use. It takes too long to load up and then when installing it also is sluggish. About the only thing about it that is quick is performing an actual application search.

Because of this I end up reverting to Synaptic Package Manager which seems to always work the way it should. Why can’t Ubuntu Software Centre play nice too!?

2. Overheating

On two laptops I have loaded 11.10 on the temps are noticeably higher than running 10.04. One of the laptops is an Intel C2D with an Intel graphics chipset and the other is an AMD Turion with an NVIDIA graphics chipset.

The Intel machine gets very warm when watching flash videos at over 80C. With 10.04, 10.10 and even 11.04, I recall the temps reaching about 70C max.

The AMD/Nvidia system reaches over 90C on the GPU and about 65-70C on the CPU. Here mainly the GPU is way above what it was prior to 11.10.

I don’t know if this is due to the fan’s not being told to increase their speed properly, or something else, but it is very disturbing!

3. Audio Input/Output

One of the machines I loaded 11.10 onto is a Thinkpad R51 which has seems to have always suffered from an issue where the mic does not work at all and the audio output is distorted or too quiet etc …

Thing is that since 2009 there has been a fix created and released to the public by a member of the Ubuntu community, but for some reason this fix has not made it into the OS to this very day! Bugs have been filed and all the known hoops have been jumped through … and yet it is 2011 and many releases since 2009, and this patch is still not integrated into Ubuntu.

If this is how fast things work … I just don’t know …

All in all I think Ubuntu is headed in the right direction, but I wonder when will these pretty basic issues be resolved – if ever!?

One thing I came across was someone wondering if there could be dirt inside of the LCD panel itself, and after opening it up and cleaning it they proclaimed that it was indeed bits of dirt and not dead or stuck pixels.

Now anyone who has messed with removing/replacing LCD panels in laptops knows that it can be a bit tricky at times. But this is going a step further in not only removing the LCD but actually disassembling the LCD panel itself. – Not for the faint-of -heart – ha!

So I set about to accomplish this daunting task …

After removing the LCD panel from the lid cover and detaching the wireless cables and video cable, I proceeded to unscrew the panel itself.

Opening the panel up took some time as I had to be extremely gentle as it is very easy to crack the bulb at the base of the panel which lights up the whole thing when it’s on. But finally I have it open with the glass on one side and the plastic-looking sheets on the other.

I could see the dirt particles and removed them with a chamois cloth (usually used for cleaning glasses). I gave the glass and the plastic sheet a nice wipe down and then closed the LCD back up. Whew! Now to test it … plugged everything back into the LCD but did not re-assemble anything as such – just enough to power it on and see if it still worked.

At first the screen was a horrible gray color with lines … then after about 30 seconds it went black … still on, but black. I held the power button down to send the system into standby and then hit the power button again to wake up. The screen was up and running perfectly again! I then re-assembled the whole laptop and that was that.

I now have a beautiful clear screen again.

Basically the RTF files on my Ubuntu system would always be seen as being executable and when double-clicked there would appear a window asking what you wanted to do with the file. I had already set OpenOffice as the default application to open RTF files, but still would be asked each and every time I attempted to open the file.

After poking around the Ubuntu IRC community I was given the magic command to make all RTF files non-executable. Here it is for your benefit:

find -name \*.rtf -type f -exec chmod a-x {} +

I executed this command from the Terminal and from within my home folder.

- Open a Terminal and execute:

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

- Add this line to the file:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=” splash vga=795″

- Save and close the file, and then execute this command:

sudo update-grub

- Then execute this command:

echo FRAMEBUFFER=y | sudo tee /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash

- And finally execute this last command:

sudo update-initramfs -u

Your done and can reboot!

1) Download the 32-bit DEB from Adobe HERE

2) Install the package called ia32-libs either through Synaptic Package Manager (System > Administration), or by opening Terminal and running the following command:

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

3) In Terminal run the following command to force the install of the Adobe package you downloaded in the first step:

sudo dpkg -i --force-all /home/username/AdbeRdr*

Note: Change the path to match the path where your Adobe file is.

DONE!

There is an easy fix if your using Skype 2.1 Beta.

Go to the Options menu for Skype and in the General area you will see “Choose Style” with a drop down menu. Simple select GTK+ and Apply the change.

Enjoy!

Now this system has the Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c) and I was told in the #ubuntu by some well-meaning folk that this was due to a known issue/bug with the Intel drivers and that I would just have to wait it out for a patch or bug-fix of some sort.

Well I was just not happy with that so I bug around, asked around and bugged people for answers. By and by it came down to something so simple and a tad weird.

For some reason when I upgraded to Lucid all the Nvidia drivers were installed so they were loading with each bootup and then basically crashing. So the solution was to completely uninstall all Nvidia packages, reboot the system and EUREKA  – now Desktop Effects work 100%.

Since there is no Symphony installer for 64bit Ubuntu I had to do the following to get it working: (Courtesy of Symphony support … I just changed what’s in red to suite Ubuntu Karmic.)

How can I install Lotus Symphony on 64-bits Ubuntu?

You can install Lotus Symphony in 32-bit mode on 64-bits Ubuntu after installing ia32-libs and libxkbfile1 first. To install Lotus Symphony on 64-bits Ubuntu, perform the following steps:

1. Install libstdc++6 (this is same as install on 32-bits Ubuntu).
   sudo apt-get install libstdc++5
2. Install ia32 libs.sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
3. Download and extract libxkbfile1, and make use of them.
   • Make a directory to save libs.sudo mkdir /libxkb
   • Download libxkbfile1 to /libxkb/*.deb (Do not install! Will extract the package manually later):http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/libx/libxkbfile/libxkbfile1_1.0.5-1_i386.deb
   • Extract the deb package.cd to /libxkbsudo dpkg -X libxkb*.deb ./

     Folder /libxkb/usr/lib will be created, the libs located in this folder.

   • Create symbol link of libxkb.sudo ln -s /libxkb/usr/lib/libxkbfile.so.1.0.2 /usr/lib32/libxkbfile.so.1
4. Install Lotus Symphony.
   • Download Lotus Symphony ISMP installer to a folder, such as /HOME/$USER/temp. (Now, I had downloaded the .deb package and it worked fine when installed with the following command: sudo dpkg -i –force-architecture symphony_3.0-1hardy1_i386.deb)
   • Install Lotus Symphony.cd to /HOME/$USER/tempsudo -H ./IBM_Lotus_Symphony_linux.bin