Saturday, August 20, 2016

My Utter Disgust With Kubuntu 16.04.01 / This Never Should Have Passed Q&A

By Avatar JayR Cela

     With all the trouble I have been experiencing with the recent Kubuntu 16.04.1 distro, especially when it comes to dealing with and installing Virtual World software and hardware, I am not sorry to say or going to pull any punches here.

     Do Not Waste Your Time !!!!

      It is totaly screwed up, how this release ever made it past the final Q&A is beyond me.

      There are so many standard Lib files, that are just simply not installed by default, the driver manager is broken, this is a total piece of trash.

JayR Cela :(

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Singularty 1.8.7.6866 and Kubuntu 16.04.1 My Insanely Troublesome Crashing Problems Solved

    Hi there again, I'm back to offer some advice for fellow Linux / Singularity users.
 ( this post is intended as a comedic observation of the combination of Kubuntu 16.04.1 and the   Singularity_1_8_7_6866_x86_64 viewer and the troublesome instalation process )

    First off this viewer is crash happy on the newest version of Kubuntu 16.04.1, admittedly the 64 bit version has never worked for me in the past, due to the hybrid KXStudio distro I have been using for years on end, ( an oddball mixture of KDE-XFCE and GNOME some of the packages dating back to the Ubuntu Lucid release days ) and that was OK by me, I just used the 32bit version of Singularity, and everything was fine.

    Well not a whole lot of developing on the 32bit platform these days, perhaps some hobbyist working with specialty projects, but for the most part 32bit is a dead issue. And the Team Singularity folks seem to feel the same way.  Now I could just use Windows and be done with it, but that's not the point, I got nothing against Windows, I have been working with it since version 3.0, or I could just use FireStorm it seems to work, but again that's not the point, I wanted to have my KDE, and my Singularty LOL, and I was bound and determined to make this combination work, so it was time to do some reading.( uggh ) Looking over the Singularity web site they specifically tell you that it was compiled on Kubuntu 14.04.4  and if you were experiencing problems they recommend compiling your own, but again this was not the point, I wanted it to work with the new default Plasma 5 Breeze Desktop (GUI) in 16.04.1, and quite frankly I'm not very good at compiling anything. Further investigation led me to look at the KXStudio web site, and sadly the project leader is currently involved with some new Guitar effect's devices, and was doubtful he would be continuing KXStudio beyond Plasma 4, scratches head - Damm I'm screwed haa-haa :_) OK no problem, I figured I would just install Kubuntu 16.04.1 and add the stuff I need for audio work afterward. ( read on for some further comedy )

    So I downloaded a fresh ISO file pulled out a copy of RUFUS the ISO to USB stick program and got ready for some fun, it did not take to long for me to realize something was not quite right, make sure you check and verify the SHA256 sum.  I had two bad downloads in a row from the main repository and a mirror via HTTP, my third attempt I used the torrent file and 10 minutes later I had a clean copy.

    Ok so now the fun starts, after  a very quick installation and complete update, i find that Settings >Hardware >Driver Manager -is Broken!! LOL all you get is an Apt splash screen with greyed out options as a nonfunctional message of collecting hardware information is displayed. 
















    
    No problem I just use Synaptic or the official KDE package manager Muon, surprise surprise neither are installed by default. No problem open your main menu System >Discover app and proceed to install Synaptic
















    Be sure to select all available Add Ons












     
    This adds to your Main Menu >Settings sub menu an app named Additional Drivers.
















   That was easy enough (not) :_) So now we get to the really fun stuff, and that's adding all the missing lib files that for one reason or another are usually installed by default in most every other Ubuntu based distro out there, are not! This is just craziness, on the Project Leaders and Devs. part of things. It's not that big a deal though,with the use of Synaptic, and Konsole I kept running the program by right clicking on the singularity file selecting Actions > Run In Konsole, each subsequent run revealed a missing lib file, it was fascinating to say the least. Anyways here is the list of lib(s) and  a few other various files that I ended up using to get a mostly stable installation of the newest Singularity Viewer working properly. ( it seems to have the most  difficulty with inter Grid hopping especially if you try too fast between multiple hops, and on occasional single Grid hops ) 

libpangox-1.0-0 ( as advised on the Singularity Downloads page )
libasound2-plugins:i386 ( as advised on the Singularity Downloads page )
libsdl-image1.2
libsdl1.2debian
libsdl2-2.0-0
libsdl2-image-2.0-0
libsdl2-mixer-2.0-0
libsdl2-gfx-1.0-0
libsdl2-dev    ( this will add about 70 other packages -- not sure if they all are needed )
microcode.ctl  ( for Intel CPU's )
iucode-tool  ( for Intel CPU's )
amd64-microcode ( for AMD CPU's )
kubuntu-desktop
binutils-multiarch
binutils-multiarch-dev
libarchive13
( added a number of missing gstreamer files Evan some of the most obvious were not in the default Kubuntu installation ) "sheesh" LOL :_) 

   ( If you would like to take a stab at eliminating the notorious Screen Tearing issues with the x11 desktop you can add these files as well )

compton
compton-config
 --- and -- or ---
kwin-wayland
kwin-wayland-backend-drm
xwayland

    Thats a lot of extra files and libraries, once these are installed the next step is tweaking a few things within the Singularity >Preferences sections during or after installation.

    Texture Memory (MB) 1024
    Enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects
    Enable Streamed VBOs
    Enable OpenGL Frame Buffer Objects













    And this next setting is beyond me why, but you need to have both Use Verticle IMs
 and Use horizontal buttons for contacts floater, checked to the ON setting.(or suffer through lots of random crashes)

























    Then make what ever other adjustments that you usually use and restart Singularity ( preferably using Konsole )  That should do it.

    This was an Insane amount of crap to go through, but I am sold on both the KDE QT5 Breeze Desktop and the Singularity Viewer, so making them work together was Job-1 for a number of hair pulling sessions,  I am currently waiting for the Mint Linux 18-Sarah-KDE ISOs to be released sometime in late August and giving Singularity a standard installation routine tryout on another computer, my current system is as follows :
  
Singularity Viewer (64 bit) 1.8.7 (6888) Jul  9 2016 23:16:05 (Singularity Test)
Release Notes

Grid: 3RD Rock Grid

Built with GCC version 40805

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU         550  @ 3.20GHz (3200.09 MHz)
Memory: 7973 MB
OS Version: Linux 4.4.0-34-generic #53-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 27 16:06:39 UTC 2016 x86_64
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GT 730/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 361.42
RLV Version: RLV v2.8.0 / RLVa v1.4.10a

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.48.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2g zlib/1.2.8 libidn/1.32
J2C Decoder Version: OpenJPEG: 1.5.2
Audio Driver Version: Singularity Viewer (64 bit) 1.8.7 (6888) Jul  9 2016 23:16:05 (Singularity Test)
Release Notes

Grid: OSGrid

Built with GCC version 40805

You are at 2547427.5, 2522601.0, 22.0 in Eureka Homes1 (9950, 9853) located at dsl-205-134-200-35.aberdeen-1.reachoneinternet.net (205.134.194.35:9103)
OpenSim 0.9.0.0 Dev        OSgrid 0.9.0.0 (Dev) 71404be: 2016-06-26 (Win/.NET)


CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E7200  @ 2.53GHz (2534 MHz)
Memory: 5966 MB
OS Version: Linux 4.4.0-34-generic #53-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 27 16:06:39 UTC 2016 x86_64
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GT 730/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 361.42
RLV Version: RLV v2.8.0 / RLVa v1.4.10a

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.48.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2g zlib/1.2.8 libidn/1.32
J2C Decoder Version: OpenJPEG: 1.5.2
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 1.08.04 -or-(None) seems to work as well 
LLCEFLib/CEF Version: 1.6.0-(CEF-OSX-3.2526.1368)
Packets Lost: 29/72929 (0.0%)

LLCEFLib/CEF Version: 1.6.0-(CEF-OSX-3.2526.1368)

    You will notice I am currently running the Singularity Viewer (64 bit) 1.8.7 (6888) Jul  9 2016 23:16:05 (Singularity Test) version, it seems a bit better but it could just be my imagination Haa-Haa :_)

Well its been fun, hope you either got a good laugh, or perhaps were able to solve this or a similar problem.

JayR Cela :_)