Display settings lost on reboot

As described here, this problem is affecting others as well:

• https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2305134
• http://www.bernaerts-nicolas.fr/linux/74-ubuntu/309-ubuntu-dual-display-monitor-position-lost
• https://askubuntu.com/questions/1031248/display-settings-lost-on-reboot-on-ubuntu-18-04

Here are the steps I tool to assemble the little script below:

How many displays do you have right now?

xrandr | grep -w connected | wc -l

How to position your displays?

xrandr --output PRIMARY-SCREEN-ID --below SECONDARY-SCREEN-ID

How to rotate a display?

xrandr --output SCREEN-ID --rotate [normal|left|right|inverted]

How to get your display IDs?
primary display:

xrandr | grep -w connected | grep primary | cut -d' ' -f1

secondary display:

xrandr | grep -w connected | grep -v primary | cut -d' ' -f1

How to position your gnome-panels?
Apparently there is no easy way, but for the note, here's where to find these setting:
org.gnome.gnome-panel.layout.toplevels.bottom-panel monitor 0
org.gnome.gnome-panel.layout.toplevels.top-panel monitor 1

Here's the script I put into my .bashrc (.profile would be also a good place for it) to restore the positions of my displays (I have the laptop below the monitor).

# set dual display positions
# because they are forgotten after logout
function reset_displays {
 display_count=`xrandr | grep -w connected | wc -l`
 if [ "$display_count" -eq "2" ]; then
  id1=`xrandr | grep -w connected | grep primary | cut -d' ' -f1`
  id2=`xrandr | grep -w connected | grep -v primary | cut -d' ' -f1`
  xrandr --output $id2 --rotate normal
  xrandr --output $id1 --below $id2
 fi
}
reset_displays

Share clipboard and drag&drop between VirtualBox host and guest

1. install VirtualBox guest additions
2. open Machine > Settings... (Host+S key)
1. open General > Advanced tab
2. set Shared Clipboard and Drag'n'Drop to bidirectional

source

How to make .sh files run on double click?

In Ubuntu 16.04 LTS unlike in previous LTSs executable shell script files when double clicked open automatically for editing instead of seeing a popup asking what to do with them.

To restore the confirmation popup do as it is said in this askubuntu post: make sure your file manager supports executing files:

$ gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences executable-text-activation ask

Alternatively:

1. Open dconf Editor
2. Navigate to org.gnome.nautilus.preferences
1. Set the 'executable-text-activation' to 'ask'

Firefox, AdBlockPlus and Ctrl+Shift+V

I use Ctrl+Shift+V (Paste as Plain Text) extensively overall. However I experienced that in Firefox instead of doing the Paste it opens a sidebar called "Blockable items on current page".

It turned out that this is because of the AdBlockPlus plugin.

To restore the Paste as Plain Text functionality you'll have to

1. open the about:config page in Firefox, 
2. search for the preference name extensions.adblockplus.sidebar_key 
3. change the value of it to something else than Accel Shift V
4. restart Firefox 

After doing these steps, you should have the Paste as Plain Text functionality back.

The solution comes from this source.

How to downgrade packages?

I upgraded packages from gnome3-team by mistake (forgot to take out the ppa), and I wanted to downgrade them (back to the official stable version).

ppa-purged worked for me in this case:
sudo ppa-purge ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3

I got this information from this superb askubuntu post. 

Nautilus Scripts for Tablet screen rotation

After some workaround in the past, I started using nautilus scripts to rotate my Tablet display together with the stylus and eraser.
(I moved this topic now to a separate post, because the original post is outdated)

#!/bin/sh
# for Lucid Lynx to rotate the display 180 degree
xrandr -o inverted
xsetwacom set 'Serial Wacom Tablet' Rotate HALF

#!/bin/sh
# for Lucid Lynx to rotate the display 90 degree to the left
xrandr -o left
xsetwacom set 'Serial Wacom Tablet' Rotate CCW

#!/bin/sh
# for Lucid Lynx to rotate the display back to normal
xrandr -o normal
xsetwacom set 'Serial Wacom Tablet' Rotate NONE

#!/bin/sh
# for Lucid Lynx to rotate the display 90 degree to the right (to take notes)
xrandr -o right
xsetwacom set 'Serial Wacom Tablet' Rotate CW

Nautilus scripting in bash: processing multiple files / handle space in filenames

Where do I put the scripts? 

Nautilus scripts folder is in your user home directory:
in Ubuntu 12.04 and before: .gnome2/nautilus-scripts/
from Ubuntu 14.04: .local/share/nautilus/scripts/

You'll have to make all script files executable in order to be able to run them.
chmod +x

What does a nautilus script do? 

All executable files in this folder will appear in the Scripts menu. Choosing a script from the menu will run that script.

When executed from a local folder, scripts will be passed the selected file names. When executed from a remote folder (e.g. a folder showing web or ftp content), scripts will be passed no parameters.

What nautilus script specific variables can I use?

In all cases, the following environment variables will be set by Nautilus, which the scripts may use:

• NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS
  # newline-delimited paths for selected files (only if local)
• NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS
  # newline-delimited URIs for selected files
• NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI
  # URI for current location
• NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_WINDOW_GEOMETRY
  # position and size of current window

# from Ubuntu 14.04 Nautilus does not have split view (extra pane), so these variables (most likely) will not work:

• NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_NEXT_PANE_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS
  # newline-delimited paths for selected files in the inactive pane of a split-view window (only if local)
• NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_NEXT_PANE_SELECTED_URIS
  # newline-delimited URIs for selected files in the inactive pane of a split-view window
• NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_NEXT_PANE_CURRENT_URI
  # URI for current location in the inactive pane of a split-view window

How do these variables work? 

To test what these variables do you might use this nautilus script:

#!/bin/bash
# test your nautilus variables
touch $HOME/nautilustesting.txt
echo "SELECTED_FILE_PATHS: " "$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS" >> $HOME/nautilustesting.txt
echo "SELECTED_URIS: " "$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS"  >> $HOME/nautilustesting.txt
echo "CURRENT_URI: " "$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI" >> $HOME/nautilustesting.txt
echo "WINDOW_GEOMETRY: " "$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_WINDOW_GEOMETRY" >> $HOME/nautilustesting.txt
echo " " >> $HOME/nautilustesting.txt

How to use these variables?

The variables you get will look something like this (in case of selecting 4 files with spaces in the names):

SELECTED_FILE_PATHS:  /home/username/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Screen rotate/Set screen inverted
/home/username/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Screen rotate/Set screen left
/home/username/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Screen rotate/Set screen normal
/home/username/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Screen rotate/Set screen right (notes)
SELECTED_URIS:  file:///home/username/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Screen%20rotate/Set%20screen%20inverted
file:///home/username/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Screen%20rotate/Set%20screen%20left
file:///home/username/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Screen%20rotate/Set%20screen%20normal
file:///home/username/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Screen%20rotate/Set%20screen%20right%20(notes)
CURRENT_URI:  file:///home/username/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts
WINDOW_GEOMETRY:  1022x690+0+1024

How to read nautilus selected file paths with spaces into a bash array?

To have a use of them as input file path for example imagemagick, I'll have to deal with the spaces, because these command line programs usually take "file path" as input and do not take "file URI" as input, and file path may contain spaces.

The FAQ of the G-Scripts site suggests some ways to handle this:

1. protect your variable with double quotes: instead of $1 use "$1"
2. process the filenames with SED:
   files=`echo "$1" | sed 's/ /\\ /g'`
3. process the filenames with AWK and SED:
   quoted=$(echo -e "$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS" | awk 'BEGIN {FS = "\n" } { printf "\"%s\" ", $1 }' | sed -e s#\"\"##); eval "your-program $quoted"

Actually, for me NONE of the above worked.
I found my solution in a stackoverflow post. It uses the IFS value to deal with the filenames. I read somewhere that using the IFS is an inelegant way to deal with field separators, and one should use AWK FS variable instead.

My solution: 

This is to use with nautilus scripts:

IFS=$'\n' read -d '' -r -a filelist < <(printf '%s\n' "$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS"); unset $IFS

This is to use with my image manipulation scripts (where the script file is located in the same folder as the to-b-manipulated files):

IFS=$'\n' read -d "" -r -a filelist < <(find -iname "*.jpg" | sort); unset $IFS

When you want to call the elements of the array, you'll have to put them in double quotes, like

for i in "${filelist[@]}" 
do echo "$i"
done

Google search keywords to find the solution:

• escape space in bash script
• awk fs line break
• sed change space to newline
• escape space in bash script with sed
• internal field separator
• bash read file names into array
• bash read space file names into array
• echo into array bash
• while read output array bash

Login screen - restore to default from ugly gray version

After my laptop shut down from suspended mode due to empty battery I experienced upon next login an ugly gray login-screen (fully functional) instead of the beautiful default unity login screen.

In trying to restore the default login screen, I learned that LightDM is responsible for running the display manager which starts the X servers, user sessions and greeter (which is the login screen). The one I'm missing is the Unity Greeter, which is default in Ubuntu 14.04.

Some forums suggested to reconfigure LightDM with

~$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

and set lightdm to be the default DM.
I did this and did a logout, but it changed nothing.
Then I logged in again, and tried out the following (user configure LightDM), but then I rebooted the machine, and the the unity login screen was back, and then I reversed the changes I made in the LightDM myconfig, and rebooted again, and the unity login screen was still there, so apparently the LightDM reconfigure solved the problem for me.

As I learned from LightDM Ubuntu Wiki page, LightDM configuration can be overridden with user configuration.

To open the example file showing all the possible configuration:

~$ gedit /usr/share/doc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.gz

To create the user conf file:

~$ sudo mkdir /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d

~$ sudo touch /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-myconfig.conf

To edit the user conf file:

~$ sudo gedit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-myconfig.conf

I just copied the example file content in gedit my config file and edited the relevant section.
To edit the greeter, you'll have to edit the "greeter-session" in "[SeatDefaults]" section.

in [SeatDefaults] section, there is a line

#greeter-session=example-gtk-gnome

uncomment this line by removing the #, and change "example-gtk-gnome" to one of the greeters available to you.
You can check available greeters by

~$ ls /usr/share/xgreeters/

greeters have an extension .desktop, their name is the one before the extension.
To use unity-greeter, you'll need the line

greeter-session=unity-greeter

to be in your user config file.

Restart your computer to try it out, if logging out does not show any changes.

Java Applets on Trusty Thar (14.04)

I had trouble with my net-bank in Lucid Lynx, which problem was solved by installing the sun-java6-plugin.
(this is the ominous page)

Now, after switching to Trusty Thar, my net-banking site still does not work out of the box, because java does not come preinstalled with Ubuntu, so I have to try and find the best option for myself again.

Luckily this time it was enough to install icedtea-7-plugin through synaptic, and the Java Applet of my net-bank works smoothly.

Gnome Flashback Services personalization on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

 Here are the settings and adjustments I made on Gnome Flashback Services (with Metacity) to meet my needs:

Setting up HP Compaq TC4400's native features

Pen features

• Pen, eraser and button are recognized out of the box.
• Pressure sensitivity has to be set specifically for the software you use.
• Gimp setup for pen usage (pressure sensitivity and differentiation between the pen and the eraser:
  Gimp > Edit > Input devices > Serial Wacom Tablet eraser/stylus > set Mode "screen"

Screen rotation

• the code in my nautilus scripts works fine.

On-screen buttons

• Ctrl-alt-del button is recognized out of the box.
•  Jog dial for scrolling: the code in my previously published solution works fine.
• Pen activated buttons: not working. Linked solution have not been tested.
• Fingerprint Sensor: not working. No possible solution have been tested.
• Ambient Light Sensor: not working. No possible solution have been tested.

Setting up everything else

Terminal:

Terminal usage

• works as usual. 
• keyboard shortcut (native) to open: Ctrl+Alt+T

Bash scripts


Desktop:
 
 Workspaces:

• works as usual (although only in Metacity version of Gnome2 Flashback)
• to configure: right click on the workspaces icon in the bottom right corner of the screen > Preferences
• keyboard shortcut (native) to navigate between workspaces: Ctrl+Alt + arrow keys

Menu panel (top and bottom) customization:

• works as usual (except for how to reach the right click menu)
• Alt+ right click to reach the panel menu

Synaptic Package Manager

• install from Software Center
• works as usual

File manager 

Nautilus
Nautilus went through major changes since Lucid Lynx, so let's see what remains of it:

• Nautilus was renamed to "Files"
• Compact View --> removed
• File or folder selection by simply typing --> still exists
• New Document > Empty Document --> still exists
• Menu bar --> removed.
• Menu button --> added. It's a gear wheel icon in the top right corner
• ‘Go’ menu --> removed
• Enter Location... --> added
• F3 split screen --> removed (this is most annoying!)
• Tabs --> still exists.
• ‘tree’ view --> not default for List view, but you can set it in Preferences
• Bookmark menu --> still exists. Only shown if there are items in it. 
• Locations' default bookmarks --> added. Cannot be removed and icon cannot be changed, but name and location can be edited.
• Backspace shortcut to return to parent folder --> still exists.

Nautilus scripts

• Scripts folder was moved from /home/user/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts to /home/user/.local/share/nautilus/scripts
• Right clicking to reach Scripts menu only works when you click on a file or folder.
• Otherwise works as usual.
• A graphical user interface to manage nautilus scripts now exists.

 Nemo
 Nemo is an alternative to "Files" (Nautilus).

• can be installed from Software Center ("Files (nemo)")
• works just like the good old Nautilus, with F3 dual pane and every other feature.

Nemo scripts

• works just like Nautilus scripts.
• scripts folder is /home/user/.gnome2/nemo-scripts

I chose Nemo as my default Ubuntu 14.04 File manager.
To set Nemo to be the default file manager, you have to follow these steps:

1. To make Nemo the default file manager run in terminal:
   

   xdg-mime default nemo.desktop inode/directory application/x-gnome-saved-search

2. To make Nemo handle the desktop run in terminal:
   

   gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons false
   gsettings set org.nemo.desktop show-desktop-icons true
   

3. (Optionally) To remove desktop shortcuts created by Nemo run in terminal:
   

   gsettings set org.nemo.desktop home-icon-visible false; gsettings set org.nemo.desktop trash-icon-visible false; gsettings set org.nemo.desktop computer-icon-visible false; gsettings set org.nemo.desktop volumes-visible false
   

More information on Nemo can be found here and here.

How to extract a unique distinct list from a column in LibreOffice Calc

Hi all,

to this problem: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Generate-Unique-List-from-Values-in-Column-td4077250.html

this is the solution in MS Excel,
http://www.get-digital-help.com/2009/03/30/how-to-extract-a-unique-list-and-the-duplicates-in-excel-from-one-column/

and to do this in LibreOffice the single difference you have to make is to not click and drag, but to ctrl+click and drag down the cell contents!

so, step by step:

you have a header: row 1.
your list starts in row 2 in column A.
your unique list will start in row 2 column B.

you type =INDEX($A$2:$A$20, MATCH(0, COUNTIF($B$1:B1, $A$2:$A$20), 0)) in cell B2 and hit CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER

this should result in you having one of the values of your A2:A20 list in B2.

now press CRTL and click and drag down the bottom-right corner of B2 cell.

if you drag down long enough, #N/A cell contents should show up on the bottom of your unique list.

Modify PDF pages as images, than reintegrate

what just has happened?!

I successfully reintegrated a modified PDF in the original file!

wow! that is definitely a level up in image-pdf editing for me.

pdftk input.pdf cat 2 output page2.pdf

pdfinfo page2.pdf 
Page size:      595 x 842 pts (A4)

pdfimages page2.pdf img

identify -verbose img-000.pbm
Geometry: 2496x3440+0+0
  Resolution: 72x72
  Page geometry: 2496x3440+0+0

  Modified the image through Gimp. Open, Edit, Save -> Export -> click Ok whenever needed.

convert img-000.pbm -resample 300x300 -resize 2496x3440 img2.ps

identify -verbose img2.ps
  Geometry: 599x826+0+0
  Resolution: 72x72
  Page geometry: 599x826+0+0

ps2pdf12 -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -dFIXEDRESOLUTION img2.ps page2_v2.pdf

pdfinfo page2test4pdf.pdf 
  Page size:      595 x 842 pts (A4)

pdftk A=input.pdf B=page2_V2.pdf cat A1 B A3-end output output.pdf

Crate a link file pointing to web URL

1. Create an empty text file.

2. Copy the following content in it:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Link to Ask Ubuntu
Type=Link
URL=http://www.askubuntu.com/
Icon=text-html

Edit Name and URL to desired name and url.

3. Save file

4. Close file

5. Rename file to have the extension ".desktop"

Done.

Video playback is lagging

Tips I've read some places:

What solved it:

using -vo gl2 option in mplayer
lie:
$mplayer myvideo.avi -vo gl2


Does not help:

• changing the refresh rate of the laptop display and the vga monitor to the same amount (75 or 60 Hz)
• installing mga_vid, or at least trying to install it.

Media file video stream showing nothing (black screen)

From one day to the other, video media files I could play fine earlier, stopped showing video output, and instead of that they put out a black screen, which held frozen any movement that was done in front of it (window openings, etc, like, when a software freezes...)

Solution came from this thread:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vlc/+question/166706

pietrino (pietrino) said on 2011-08-18:

#13

Thanks Eliah and sorry for the confusion I generated.
I manged to view video correctly in totem by alt+F2, typing "gstreamer-properties" and in the video tab selecting X window system (no Xv). This looks like a pretty general hint that might serve different people. In the case of vlc, others hinted at setting the X11 display in the video properties of the program, though haven't tried that yet.
Sorry once more

Multi-screen tablet usage: configuring the displays

ATTENTION! THIS POST IS OUTDATED!
In later editions of xinput it is possible to map the input device to the tablet screen automatically by using the 'xinput --map-to-crtc <device> <crtc>' option.
Check device with 'xinput list' and check crtc with  'xrandr'.
In my case the sylus was '12', the eraser '14' and the laptop screen 'LVDS1'

---

I had some time to take care about this problem of configuring the tablet screen to be able to take notes while reading stuff from the external display.

Here's my solution:

Make a nautilus script. It makes life easier.
You'll have to run all codes every time, otherwise this won't work.

Here's the pattern to use:

xsetwacom set 'Serial Wacom Tablet' Rotate [NONE | CW | CCW | HALF]
xsetwacom set 'Serial Wacom Tablet eraser' Rotate [NONE | CW | CCW | HALF]
xsetwacom --set "Serial Wacom Tablet" "TwinView" none
xsetwacom --set "Serial Wacom Tablet eraser" "TwinView" none
xinput -set-prop "Serial Wacom Tablet" "Wacom Tablet Area" x1, y1, x2, y2
xinput -set-prop "Serial Wacom Tablet eraser" "Wacom Tablet Area" x1, y1, x2, y2

Here's how to do it:
The amount to multiply resolution pixel numbers is: 24,2
You multiply with this number, and than round the number to a whole.

How to define x1, y1, x2 and y2?

Embedding code on Blogger

Thank you for NYRPNZ for the following solution, and css-tricks for the text wrapping part:

By default, you can use <code> and </code> in Blogger to keep the formatting of a code intact, and to differenciate it from the rest of the text. However, with this tweak you can create a new tag that will put an eye-catching ugly gray box in your post to surround your code.

Customize your Template, go into advanced, and then select the "Add CSS" subcategory. Insert this code (By the way, this is what the code will actually look like on your site when you have finished):

pre {
  background-color: #DFDFDF;
  color: #000000;
  border: 1px dotted gray;
  width: 95%;
  padding: 10px;
/* to make the text inside the pre tag wrap: */
  white-space: pre-wrap;       /* css-3 */
  white-space: -moz-pre-wrap;  /* Mozilla, since 1999 */
  white-space: -pre-wrap;      /* Opera 4-6 */
  white-space: -o-pre-wrap;    /* Opera 7 */
  word-wrap: break-word;       /* Internet Explorer 5.5+ */
}

Now to embed code, switch to HTML mode, paste the code into your post, then surround it with <pre><code>and </code></pre> like this:

<pre><code>
import pygame
from pygame.locals import *

print "Pygame imported without errors."
 </code></pre>

Important Note: In case you actually have <> brackets in your code, you will have to replace them with < for < signs and > for > signs. In case you actually need to embed an ampersand followed by some characters followed by a semicolon, you will need to replace the ampersand with &. Yes, this is annoying. Unfortunately I can find no better way to do this on Blogger at the moment.

Small size Color PDF

After years of struggling with color PDF-s, I realized today that color PS exists, which lead to a fast solution on the given problem.

Here's how it goes:

1. GSCAN2PDF
   scan image on 8-bit depth and 300 dpi resolution.
   save in PNM file format.
   this results in an approx. 20MB size file.
2. CONVERT
   resize to 50%
   convert bigimg.pnm -resize 50% smallimg.pnm
   file size abt. 5MB
3. PNMTOPS
   convert to ps
   pnmtops -equalpixels smallimg.pnm > smallimg.ps
   file size abt. 10MB
4. PS2PDF
   convert to pdf
   ps2pdf12 smallimg.ps smallimg.pdf
   */Sadly, I could not manage to have the pdf cropped to the proper size with ps2pdf, so I have to do it manually in the next step. However if You know the solution to this problem do not hold back on sharing it with me!/*
   file size abt. 200KB
5. PDFCROP
   crop pdf of unnecessary margin
   pdfcrop smallimg.pdf
   (resulting in smallimg-crop.pdf)
   final file size abt. 200KB

This is how you do a good quality color pdf from good quality large images.

...And a couple months later (19 May 2013) I realized that my method of producing black-and-white pdfs, which I use since years, is just as good to produce color pdfs as the above or even better because with the old method I do not have to use pdfcrop, ad the pdf page size of the color cover will be compatible with the b&w pages...

Canon LiDE 210 flatbed scanner on Ubuntu

So I got this brand new flatbed scanner: Canon LiDE 210.

I have read here, that it works with Ubuntu. Actually that was a good reason for picking this scanner. Remember, I still have the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS running on Alice.

This is how I got it work:

Sources: Bottomlesspit and Ubuntu Forums.

1.) sudo add-apt-repository ppa:plaxx/random-fixes

2.) Open System> Administration> Software Sources

...go to "Other Software" tab

Edit "http://ppa.launchpad.net/plaxx/random-fixes/ubuntu lucid main"

Change "lucid" to "maverick"

(leave the source checked!)

3.) sudo apt-get update

4.) sudo apt-get install libsane sane-utils
5.) reboot

In the process of trying I installed the latest SANE and libusb, I don't know what kind of effect this had on the outcome.

This is what happened before I got "Susy" (this is how I named the LiDE 210) to work:

1.) I unboxed the scanner. Made a video of it, 'cause this little thing is amazing.

2.) Plugged it in the USB...

3.) ...nothing happened.

Oh, no problem, this wasn't Ubuntu if everything worked out of the box.

So let's see, what we can do to get the scanner running:

1.) Check the SANE site for details on how the scanner is supported:

genesys

1.0-62

CanoScan LiDE 210

USB

0x04a9/0x190a

complete

GL124 based, resolution from 75 to 2400 dpi

sane-genesys

2.) Install the newest SANE version (1.0.22)

3.) Install libusb-dev files through Synaptic

4.) Install the newest libusb version

5.) Plugging in the scanner again...

...still nothing happens.

6.) Restarting the computer...

...still nothing

7.) Trying out on Windows7...

...it works! Yeah! At least the product is functioning for sure.

Okay... let's go another round... how should an usb scanner work on Ubuntu?

1.) Checking Ubuntu Documentation.

2.) Checking Support Forums... Found something worth a try. (Changing the bottomlesspit thing's repository from lucid to maverick, as it is originally for maverick.)

3.) Doing the update end install thing again

4.) Restarting...

...and it works! :-) Finally.

Mplayer is too quiet

Actually my problem was only, that MPlayer's own volume wasn't turned up.
Key 9 and 0 are used for volume - and + on your keyboard.

However, here's the manual on MPlayer volume adjustment.