Installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus

I ran into a couple of problems while trying to install the new LTS on my HPQ TC4400 laptop.
It had the 12.04 LTS installed, and had the home directory on a separate partition.

1. problem: no booting from pendrive
I tried different pendrives (2, 4, 8 GB), different USB slots (there are 3 on my machine) and different Ubuntu versions (12.04, 14.04, 16.04).
The problem I ran into is this:
gfxboot.c32: not a COM32R image
So first I tried to create startup disks on my desktop 12.04 on different pendrives with 16.04 and 14.04 images. They all resulted in this error. I went with the "live" command for 16.04. But one pendrive did not even start up the live session, while another did. Once I was in live, I tried to install 16.04, with the same distribution of the hard drives as I had before. It seemed to be okay. However when I started it and logged in, the system never loaded. Instead I got this disrupted background image flashing in different resolutions for until I had enough and turned off the machine.
Next I tried creating the startup discs on the 16.04 live session. The 14.04 pendrive booted alright compared to the one created on 12.04, but then the installation failed, and then booting also wasn't smooth anymore.
Next I reinstalled the 12.04, however it had issues with settings already existing on the home partition. The system did not load properly throwing errors in ma face.

Luckily I just got a spare 500GB hard drive, switched it with the old one and went again for 16.04 with the strange boot interface typing "live" in, and then installing from the live session.
It turned out okay so far.

My conclusion is that the settings in the home partition somehow interfered with the newly installed OSs, but really I have no clue what happened and why.

A selection of Lightweight Ubuntu alternatives

I was considering to leave Ubuntu, and therefor I searched for alternatives.
These are the ones I found worthy of trying out in the first round:

	CrunchBang Linux	Lubuntu	wattOS	LXLE	Bodhi Linux
OS Type:	Linux	Linux	Linux	Linux	Linux
Based on:	Debian (Stable)	Debian, Ubuntu	Debian, Ubuntu	Debian, Lubuntu	Debian, Ubuntu
Origin:	United Kingdom	France, Taiwan	USA	USA	USA
Architecture:	i486, i686, x86_64	armhf, i386, powerpc, x86_64	i386, x86_64	i386, x86_64	armhf, i386, x86_64
Desktop Manager:	Openbox	LXDE, Openbox	LXDE, MATE, Openbox	LXDE	Enlightenment
Windows Manager:	Openbox?	Openbox	Openbox	Openbox?	Enlightenment
File Manager:	Thunar File Manager	PCManFM	PCManFM	PCManFM	EFM
Category:	Desktop, Netbooks, Old Computers	Live Medium, Netbooks, Old Computers	Desktop, Live Medium, Netbooks, Old Computers	Desktop, Live Medium, Old Computers	Desktop, Live Medium, Old Computers, Raspberry Pi
Status:	Active	Active	Active	Active	Active
Popularity:	22 (478 hits per day)	15 (723 hits per day)	58 (249 hits per day)	11 (770 hits per day)	20 (548 hits per day)
Official page:	http://crunchbang.org/	http://lubuntu.net/	http://www.planetwatt.com/	http://lxle.net

What I need from my OS, is written in a previous post. I'll use this as a checklist when trying out the new distributions.

Migrating from Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS to 12.04.5 LTS

I decided to abandon Ubuntu Trusty Thar LST after about two weeks of usage. I was pretty upset about it. This is what I wrote when I made the decision:

I actually have to do paid work on my laptop, so it needs to be as reliable and as fast as possible.
Ubuntu Trusty with gnome session flashback was great. Really. The only little tiny problem was that it lasted only until I had to really depend on it because of my job. My job, that is 99% spreadsheet and internet browser work. Opening 10-20 chrome windows during a single search process takes all the memory, and freezes the system. Firefox is not really that better than chrome in memory usage. And Libreoffice... the spreadsheet I work with is like 2000 rows by 40 columns data and another 6 sheets of database queries made with functions. Libreoffice just could not handle this. It was terribly slow, lagging when scrolling, saving took up to a minute, and all 4.x versions crashed regularly.
No, this is not something anyone would recommend to do your job on. Not in 2015.

 I was planning to abandon Ubuntu at all, and choose a lightweight alternative, probably one that is based on Ubuntu. Then I realized Ubuntu Precise Pangolin is supported up to 2017, so I thought I'll give it a try before completely saying good-bye to Ubuntu.

I set up a similar environment as on Trusty. In Precise, it is gnome-session-fallback that gives back the Gnome2 environment. It can be downloaded from Synaptic Package Manager, which can be downloaded with the sudo apt-get install synaptic command in the Terminal, which can be opened with the Ctrl+Alt+T command.

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (64-bit) Trusty Thar personalization

Your options for a Desktop Environment are:

• Unity (Ubuntu default)
• Gnome (3) (install from Software Center)
• Gnome (2) Flashback Services (install from Software Center) - use it with Metacity

You can install all of this and select the one you want to use at login by clicking on the circle icon in the up-right corner of the user selection.

There are several posts helping to make your decision:

• LifeHacker's Linux Desktop Faceoff: GNOME 3 Shell vs Ubuntu Unity helps to choose between Unity and Gnome 3
• This ubuntuforum post helps you customize Unity to get back some of the Gnome2 features you're used to.
• This blogpost helps you customize Unity further.
• This blogpost helps you get rid of Unity completely (this can be risky according to the comments) and get back to a Gnome2 style interface.
• This blogpost helps you get back to a Gnome2 style interface without removing Unity.

My decision is: Gnome (2) Flashback Services with Metacity.

Migrating from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx to 14.04 LTS Trusty Thar on HP Compaq TC4400 Tablet PC

For these 4 years I sticked with Lucid Lynx despite the lessening support and the increasing complications and deficiencies, because of the beloved Gnome2 interface and all the customization I made throughout the years I used it.
However, Lucid Lynx is not supported anymore, and the difficulties this bare fact caused me recently reached my limits.

I backed up all my data and profile files to an external hard drive, and erased the whole hard disk to start anew.

I gave Ubuntu 20GB space for the system, 5GB for swap space, and put /home to a separate partition.
I installed the 64-bit version (finally, after 7 years of using the 32-bit version on my intel dual-core cpu because the first ubuntu distro I set on it still did not cover my needs on 64-bit) of Trusty Thar.

Now what's next is the personalization.
Will I stick with Gnome2, or will I migrate to Gnome3 or Unity?

What do I need from Ubuntu?

• it should work with the HP Compaq TC4400's native features.
• Pen features: pen, eraser, pen-button, pressure-sensitivity
• Screen rotation for pen usage
• Screen mapping for multi-screen setup
• Display side located buttons (scroll jog dial, ctrl-alt-del)
• Pen activated buttons on the side of the display (have never worked with Ubuntu previously)
• Fingerprint Sensor on the side of the display (I never tested it in Ubuntu previously)
• Ambient Light Sensor (I never tested it in Ubuntu previously)
• it should support the functionality of nautilus scripts and bash scripts
• it should allow full control over the system from terminal
• it should support easy access of software, applications, files and folders, without having to remember any name at all, so basically it should support easy, icon-based and menu-based navigation, where the user only has to remember visually and motorically to be able to locate anything. (menus to navigate through with keyboard or mouse)
• it should constantly give feedback about system performance (System Monitor in top panel)
• it should have a file manager (nautilus) that makes copying and moving files easy (2 panel view F3), have favorite places stored to reach them easily (bookmarks), have compact view with small icons that allow a lot to be seen at once (compact view). It is also great to have tree view, to make file moving/copying even easier.
• it should have multiple desktop workspaces available
• it should allow switching between running software by clicking with mouse
• it should have a software center that allows switching between software versions (synaptic)
• it should be light on my hardware
• it should support working intensively with large xlsx, xls and ods files with a lot of cells being functions.
• it should support opening a lot of web browser windows simultaneously
• it should work with these specific software: 
• Dropbox
• Skype
• Rescuetime and Toggl
• keepass2 and keepassX
• Plex Media Server
• imagemagick, pdftk, mkbitmap, scanimage and other command line image manipulating tools I'm used to work with

Feisty and Gutsy no longer supported

Since Ubuntu stopped to support the versions Feisty and Gutsy I might want to look for another operation system for any newer version of Ubuntu is unable to deal with the tablet.

As I still can run some programs under Gutsy like Xournal and GIMP to use my tablet I might split the hard disk and install a supported newer version of Ubuntu beside the Gutsy to be able to use the features of those versions as well as I might install a Windows XP on the other partition instead of a newer version of Ubuntu to enjoy programs such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Recognita, and some .NET applications I'm unable to run under Ubuntu.

As I do hate Windows for it being absolutely not user-friendly compared to linux I might split the hard disk one more time and install 2 versions of ubuntu AND a windows.

Updating to Gutsy

After some time the pen just crashed: after using the pen none of the pointing devices would do a click.
So I updated to Gutsy.
...
Ta-damm:
- the scroll joystick on the edge of the monitor works out os the box.
- the 3 tablet button just don't work with the previous script.
- I had to reinstall linuxwacom to fix the pen buttons.
- Firefox works with Flash :-)
- I had to change the rotate script to this:

#!/bin/sh
if [ -n "$(xrandr | grep "768x1024+0+0 right")" ]; then
 xrandr -o inverted
 xsetwacom set "stylus" Rotate 3
else
 if [ -n "$(xrandr | grep "1024x768+0+0 inverted")" ]; then
 xrandr -o normal
 xsetwacom set "stylus" Rotate NONE
else
 if [ -n "$(xrandr | grep "1024x768+0+0")" ]; then
 xrandr -o right
 xsetwacom set "stylus" Rotate CW
fi
fi
fi

Which program to use to take notes?

The answer is: Xournal.
You can download Xournal with synaptic package manage. After installing it will be in the programs / tools menu.

(Note that I'm using hungarian ubuntu, so I'm just trying to translate the menu names :-))

To make the eraser tip to work go to the Options menu, and activate the "Eraser tip" option.
To make the pen button work as a highlighter go to the Options menu and choose highlighter in Button2 Mapping submenu.
---------------------------------------
Installing Xournal:

You have to download these packages through Synaptic Package Manager before doing anything:

• libgnomecanvas2-dev
• libgnomeprint2.2-dev
• libgnomeprintui2.2-dev
• autoconf
• automake
• xpdf

... and dependancies.

Compilation and Installation

Download the Xournal distribution tar.gz file, and unpack it. (it will be a folder)

Go to the folder in the Terminal and type:

sudo ./install-binary

(and upgrade GTK+ and the other libraries if needed).

Then type:

./autogen.sh
make
sudo make install
sudo make desktop-install

Configure error message:
If autogen.sh generates the error message configure: error: Library requirements (gtk+-2.0 >= 2.4.0 libgnomecanvas-2.0 >= 2.4.0 libgnomeprintui-2.2 >= 2.0.0) not met even though you have sufficiently recent versions of these libraries on your system, then you need to install some missing development packages.

Which Ubuntu?

Now the Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron is out, however installing this version on my tc4400, Alice, was not a good idea :-)
The tablet didn't work at all.

Trying to make my tablet alive, I decided, to install an earlier version.
So second time, I installed Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn.
The tablet works fine, but I've got some other problems, which I will try to solve.