Monday, February 15, 2010

How I Fixed Flash's Sound In Chrome

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 (which is really fast, very nice looking, and all around great). Everything worked great out of the box for the most part. A few issues with the Wireless (it was picking an unsecured network instead of mine). One big problem, my sound in Flash did not work, which means I could not watch Bleach on YouTube!

It took a bit, I installed many different version of flash, moved files around, but atleast it did not work. Then I came across this thread, entry number 7. I brought up alsamixer (just type alsamixer in your terminal).

Arrowed over to Speaker (just use the right arrow key on your keyboard):
Do you see the MM, right above 64<>64 on the far right? Well, that is what is stopping your sound. That's right the speakers are muted!

Hit m (just type the letter m on your keyboard) to unmute:
See the OO, that means that you are no longer muted. Hit Esc to exit and return to the terminal.

I did this all while running Bleach in Chrome on YouTube and what happen?!? I heard sound; lovely sound!

All is well with my computer now (sad, but true).

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10

For few years now, I've been running Ubuntu on my Dell Vostro 1500. For about a year I've been using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron). I have never really had any issues but I would like to run a much newer version of Eclipse. You see I am running Eclipse 3.2 and I would like to run Eclipse 3.5 so I can use newer plugins like the Orc plugin. To be able to run Eclipse 3.5, I will need to upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).

Upgrading to Karmic Koala from Hardy Heron, will require an upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10, then from 8.10 to 9.04, and finally from 9.04 to 9.10. I believe this will take about 3 1/2 hours. I am thinking that since I am running on a Vostro 1500 on the upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04 (Intrepid Ibex to Jaunty Jackalope) I will most likely either have to enable my Wireless again through Backports or just use a cable.

Why would my Wireless stop working? Well you see the drivers I need to run my Wireless are not Open Source and as such I will need to use Non-Open Source; Backport; drivers to be able to use it. If you have only used Windows or OS X this most likely sounds odd, but what it comes down to is Copy Rights. Ubuntu does not install Backports, you have to enable them by saying that you will agree to their Copy Rights and then they will be downloaded and installed.

I did a quick Google search to make sure that I will not have an issues with Karmic Koala on my Vostro and what I found sounds like I will not have any. In fact it sounds like the Koala runs a lot better than Hardy. Even more import and the reason for the whole upgrade Eclipse 3.5 is in Synaptic.