timothy's Journal: Complaints! No. 2

Three more complaints, all to do w/ my netbook, a 10" Asus Eee running Ubuntu (9.10 right now -- perhaps one or both fixed in the current versions of the upcoming 10.4, but haven't tried there yet, and that's not the point anyhow):

1) Suspend / Resume (and related stuff) still sucks. It works ... sometimes. Occasionally. Slightly more often than once in a blue moon. Have I filed a bug report? No; neither have I reported to the National Weather Service that it's occasionally overcast in Seattle.

- Regular "Suspend" (from the menu in the upper right on my quite conventional Gnome desktopo) doesn't work except once in a while. When it works, it works as I'd expect: screen blanks, HD spins down, power button blinks to signal that it's not actually *off.* Out of optimism, I often try using Suspend, but since waking up usually doesn't happen, I've taken to more and more often just fully shutting down.

- Sometimes, whether the machine is plugged in or not, my screen simply goes blank after a while; music playing in VLC continues to play, but nothing I can think of awakens the screen. (The three biggies I can think of: fingering the trackpad, hitting keys, pressing the power button, on the basis that the power button's the way to wake it up from suspend when it actually does suspend.) So, as annoying as this is, the only thing I know to do is force a shutdown by pressing the power button. I don't mind a screen blanking after a while when the machine is not used for a while, and in fact, I'd like it to be easier to trigger (as when it's just serving as a music player), but I don't like it happening at the expense of being able to actually use the machine.

- Sometimes my screen just freezes -- except the pointer. I can move the pointer around all I want when this happens; I just can't do anything else.

2) Firefox is my browser of choice; on this 600-pixel-high screen, though, I often want to run it full-screen; F11 should trigger (and escape from) full-screen mode, and sometimes it even does. Usually I have to go to the View menu and select Full Screen, though. This seems like a pretty basic thing. Not a life-ender, and I'll take a slightly broken full-screen selector over not having the option at all, but still. This is like having a passenger window in a car that only rolls down some of the time -- not the worst thing in the world, but doesn't make me happy.

3) And this one baffles me: When I start VLC (my favorite music player, generally) by clicking on an MP3 or Ogg file, it stutters for the first several seconds of whatever file I've clicked on. This is 2010, and this machine (upgraded to 2GB of RAM) was purchased in early 2009; MP3s would play acceptably on a 100 MHz 486, IIRC. At the very least, if playing MP3s is a strain, buffer them first rather than play the stuttering part. But how can it be a strain? Once it's playing, even subsequent tracks play fine.

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Don't get me wrong: I still like Ubuntu, and am glad that it mostly runs well and nicely.

Advice on fixing any of these things appreciated, as long as it's in short enough words and does not assume that I know much, because I don't. I remember that in Mac OS 8 (maybe 9, too, maybe OS X, and maybe in 7 and earlier, too -- not sure) it was easy to assign different amounts of RAM to different apps. Maybe there's a way to do that for VLC, and maybe it would help? Dunno. RAM starvation on a lightly loaded machine w/ 2GB seems unlikely ...

Ubuntu and blank screen

[f1vlad]

One of the biggest problems I had with Ubuntu (two years ago when I tried to use it daily) was it always went to blank screen mode after, I think, 90 minutes. I could not find a way to disable it. The reason I needed it because that machine was used for watching movies and stuff. I wish they implemented something that evidently works well in OSX/Windows; when VLC or any other media player plays a movie, _do_not_ go to blank screen.

Re:

[timothy]

Vlad:

Under Preferences / Screensaver / Power management (not very intuitive, though I can see the connection) I just set "Put display asleep when inactive for ..." to "Never," for the "When connected to AC" profile.

Maybe that will help.

IIRC, Gnome's screensaver system used to include hot corners for starting the screensaver, locking the screen, disabling the screensaver process (that is keeping the screen active even for long periods of no input), but if it does now, I can't find them. Perhaps I misremember

Wake from Suspend - close/open

[egcagrac0]

In many laptops, there is a sensor which detects the open/closed state of the lid (display). Several laptops in my experience will not resume from suspend by power button, but will power on when the display is closed and then opened. (Yes, with Ubuntu and UNR, as well as Windows.)

Re:

[timothy]

That also works for me on this laptop ... sometimes :)

I have not done methodical testing to see which method (suspend by shutting lid vs. selecting from menu) works most frequently, but that is a good idea to try next time I want to suspend it anyhow. That is, see whether just shutting it and then opening it works with any consistency. Could I test it Right Now? Yeah, but then I'd lose my currently running session, and I'm too lazy, am only awake now because of a stupid dose of caffeine.

OTOH, I'm at least g