Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Ubuntu Upgrade

/sigh

After ignoring the Update icon at the top right corner of my ubuntu laptop for quite some time (because everytime i tried to upgrade, the downloading of packages will inevitably FAIL), i realised its time to do something about it since I have fixed my desktop (err well, not totally but at least it is 'gaming-able').

So I changed the repository source to "Singapore Server" and tried again. Half-heartedly actually, cos I didn't really expect it to work.

But it did.

The upgrade went without a hitch and the upgrade was done after a reboot. All was fine except for 2 things:

a) The wireless is down again. Expected, cos I needed to put the firmware into the new kernel folder (I didnt really try to see if i can just dump the firmware files into /lib/firmware instead of /lib/firmware/2.6.22-14-generic, on hindsight i think i should give it a try lol). This time though, a reboot is needed after copying the files over to the new kernel folder.

b) Audio issue. The OS is totally ignoring the fact that i muted my hardware. There is NO volume control. Every single sound is made at the highest volume. This means that before I had the chance to disable the login/logout/any system sound, I must run out of the room before the sound is triggered (the power of a built-in Altec Lansing is still a force to be reckoned with). And yes, even when the speaker icon showed that it's muted.

Zzz.

a) was solved in less than 5 mins, mainly cos i spent tonnes of time solving it the previous time.
b) is a new problem i didnt encounter before and its a headache because unless i get it fixed, all my anime are going at MAX volume if I were to watch them. Which means, I can't.

So I googled around to see if there is anything i can do. Unfortunately, people are reporting issues different from mine. Their Ubuntu become soundless after the upgrade. My searches of "ubuntu upgrade 7.10 max audio" or "ubuntu upgrade 7.10 volume control" yielded no relevant results.

Sian. I think i will do more research. And I am starting to understand a bit of those Linux haters' logic: "Linux is free, yeah. Only if your time is worth nothing". Well, if i look at it another way, at least i will know how to solve it next time. =P