Category: Ubuntu

I’ve made some major changes to my Ubuntu installation script over the last few weeks. Mostly because I finally replaced the hard drive in my laptop and needed to do a clean installation, but also because I wanted to try and get DisplayLink drivers installed by default, which has historically been a pain.

for the latter I’m now using a lot of someone else’s work, and a little bit of my own:

install_displaylink() {
    git clone https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/displaylink-debian.git
    cd displaylink-debian
    sudo ./displaylink-debian.sh
    wget -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/teknostatik/debian/master/20-displaylink.conf -O /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-displaylink.conf
    cd ..
}

One day there will be a more elegant solution, but for now this will do.

Since writing the original draft of this post I decided that having these drivers on all my computers really isn’t required, and I would generally just plug a HDMI cable in and use the dock for just the standard I/O. But it’s still there in a script as an optional setting, in case anyone else might find it useful. I’ve also added a few more optional settings, for QMK installation and enabling the firewall by default. I tested all this on a clean install of both 24.04 and 24.10 and it all seems to work fine.

I upgraded to Ubuntu 23.10 on my laptop last night. It took less than 20 minutes, and so far everything has just worked.

This is the kind of user experience I want on all my devices, and also the kind of experience I strive to deliver to others.

Recently I found myself needing to make a DVD from a recorded stream (of a family funeral that my Mum couldn’t attend because of covid). This is not a task I normally do, and I thought it was worth writing up how I did it in case I ever need to do it again.

Most of these instructions were put together using this wiki page, and assume you are using Ubuntu or some other Debian derivative.

Dependencies

• ffmpeg
• dvdauthor
• mkisofs
• k3b

The command line stuff

ffmpeg -i video_file_name.mkv -aspect 16:9 -target pal-dvd  -b 1800000 dvd.mpg
dvdauthor -o dvd/ -t dvd.mpg
export VIDEO_FORMAT=PAL
dvdauthor -o dvd/ -T
mkisofs -dvd-video -o dvd.iso dvd/

The GUI stuff

Take dvd.iso and burn it to DVD using K3B (or your burning software of choice – I really should investigate doing this on the command line next time).

Testing

Put the DVD into a normal DVD player and check it plays. The video should load automatically with no menus.

This worked for me. Hopefully if I have to do it again it will be in better circumstances.

Last night I was experimenting with ulauncher as a way of easily launching apps on my computer. After using it for a few hours it seems like something that I might want to start using all the time, but it also made me start looking at other launchers like Albert which seems a little harder to install but which promises to search across my applications, my local files, and the internet.

I think that as I try and use a keyboard for most things this is the sort of application I need. At the moment I’m using dmenu which does the job well enough but which is also quite basic and relies me to choose between knowing the package name or the name that would be displayed if I was using it in a more traditional menu (so files or naultilus but not both). The launchers I’m looking at now do both of these and more, but both of them require a little hoop-jumping to get them installed so may not be suitable for my default installation image (although there is at least a PPA for ulauncher so I may very well have a go at getting that added this afternoon)

It’s something I’ll come back to, but in the meantime it’s always fun trying out new software that may one day become part of my workflow.

I’ve been running a lot of experiments using Multipass, which is a (fairly) new application for deploying and working with containers on various operating systems (including all the ones I use). I’ve now set up a script to deploy these containers on any Ubuntu machine I install, and thought it might be worth sharing the script that I use.

#!/bin/bash

# Script to set up multipass and then deploy a load of containers for various things
echo "---------------------------------------------"
echo "Multipass Deployment Script - v0.1, June 2020"
echo "---------------------------------------------"

# Changelog:
# 28/6/20 - Created script to deploy 5 containers (POC)

# First off, install multipass:

sudo snap install multipass --classic

# What we're going to do next is:
# 1. Deploy a container for the current LTS version of Ubuntu
# 2. Run my usual post-deployment and update scripts inside that container
# 3. Shut the container down

multipass launch focal --name ubuntu-lts
multipass exec ubuntu-lts -- wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/p5jjsbvuuskeotl/deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh
multipass exec ubuntu-lts -- sudo mv deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh /usr/local/bin/
multipass exec ubuntu-lts -- sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh
multipass exec ubuntu-lts -- deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh
multipass stop ubuntu-lts

# We will then do the same for the LTS before

multipass launch bionic --name ubuntu-lts-old
multipass exec ubuntu-lts-old -- wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/p5jjsbvuuskeotl/deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh
multipass exec ubuntu-lts-old -- sudo mv deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh /usr/local/bin/
multipass exec ubuntu-lts-old -- sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh
multipass exec ubuntu-lts-old -- deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh
multipass stop ubuntu-lts-old

# Then we will follow the same process for the latest build of the next version of Ubuntu

multipass launch daily:20.10 --name ubuntu-devel
# TODO: investigate why the devel alias doesn't work for this
multipass exec ubuntu-devel -- wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/p5jjsbvuuskeotl/deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh
multipass exec ubuntu-devel -- sudo mv deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh /usr/local/bin/
multipass exec ubuntu-devel -- sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh
multipass exec ubuntu-devel -- deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh
multipass stop ubuntu-devel

# Do the same for any other versions of Ubuntu you want but this is probably enough for a POC

# Next up let's try a snapcraft development and test environment. This bit needs work once I know more about it

multipass launch snapcraft:core18  --name snapcraft-build
multipass stop snapcraft-build
multipass launch core18 --name snapcraft-test
multipass stop snapcraft-test

# Finally let's see what we now have:

multipass list

I’ve maintained my own scripts for updating software on a few Linux distributions for a while. This weekend I decided it was time to consolodate all my installation and update scripts in one place, and amend them to reflect the new ways I work with Linux (both in using i3 as a window manager and relying more on WSL and Multipass).

What follows is largely for my benefit, but I thought it may be of interest to others.

Ubuntu

  wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/hwfvynamcy6bkcs/deploy_ubuntu.sh
  sudo mv deploy_ubuntu.sh /usr/local/bin/
  sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/deploy_ubuntu.sh
  deploy_ubuntu.sh

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/p5jjsbvuuskeotl/deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh
sudo mv deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh /usr/local/bin/
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh
deploy_ubuntu_wsl.sh

This one also works with Multipass (which will probably be the subject of a blog post soon).