• Support: PRIME: is it supported? no

    What happens if you see the error message “PRIME: is it supported? no” in the terminal when launching nvidia-settings application to configure your NVIDIA card on your Optimus system?

    Most probably there has been some issues when updating the driver or wrong configuration. The way to fix this is quite simple (tested on Ubuntu and Lubuntu 14.04):

    First of all let’s remove NVIDIA drivers:
    sudo apt-get purge bumblebee*
    sudo apt-get purge nvidia-*

    Then reboot the computer and install the latest version (in my case was nvidia-331-updates):

    sudo apt-get install nvidia-331-updates

    this will install nvidia-settings and nvidia-prime and reboot one last time – your configuration is now correct!

  • Support: fix missing network icon in Lubuntu 14.04 (nm-applet)

    After the update to Lubuntu 14.04, you may notice that the network icon is not present anymore thus making difficult to manage your connections (through the GUI)…

    Until the bug is fixed, you can use the following steps in order to make it working again:

    1. Open a console and type lxsession-default-apps

    2. go to the Autostart tab

    3. Tick and Un-tick “Network” (please note that if your Lubuntu is not in English, this field will appear as “Network” translated in the current language

    4. You can then close this window and in the terminal type: nano ~/.config/autostart/nm-applet.desktop

    5. search the line NoShowIn=KDE;LXDE; and change it to: NoShowIn=KDE;

    6. Save the file and at the next reboot the icon will be there again… Easy!

  • Migrate between Ubuntu distro or change desktop environment?

    One of the most visible changes (but not the only one!) between different Ubuntu distro is the Desktop Environment.

    Looking at the official information page about Ubuntu derivatives we can see many distributions like Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and so on, all officially maintained by Canonical.

    The beauty of any linux distro is that you can customize it as you want. Ubuntu is shipped with Unity desktop environment, however if you want to test (or remove) another environment, it’s quite easy:

    Install Ubuntu Unity:
    sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

    Remove Ubuntu Unity:
    sudo apt-get purge ubuntu-desktop

    Install LUbuntu LXDE:
    sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop

    Remove LUbuntu LXDE:
    sudo apt-get purge lubuntu-desktop

    Install Ubuntu GNOME:
    sudo apt-get install ubuntu-gnome-desktop

    Remove Ubuntu GNOME:
    sudo apt-get purge ubuntu-gnome-desktop

    Install KUbuntu KDE:
    sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

    Remove KUbuntu KDE:
    sudo apt-get purge kubuntu-desktop

    Install XUbuntu XFCE:
    sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

    Remove XUbuntu XFCE:
    sudo apt-get purge xubuntu-desktop

    Remember that when you install a desktop environment you normally install extra software like games, accessories, etc, therefore once you have removed one using the “purge” option, you can then run:

    sudo apt-get autoremove --purge
    To clean up all the extra software. This is because the extra software is not uninstalled when you uninstall the main environment.

    Another option is to skip the installation of extra software by slightly tweaking the command. For example to install KUbuntu KDE environment just add –no-install-recommends as shown below:

    sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends kubuntu-desktop

    Finally I have noticed that even if you remove completely the desktop environment associated to your distribution (for example you remove Unity from Ubuntu) leaving another one installed, as soon as a new version of the distribution is available, the original desktop environment is installed and set as default again. Therefore I’ve learned that the best way to migrate your Ubuntu distribution to another distribution is to download and burn the ISO of the next version (or even the same version!) and launch the installer.

    LUbuntu installation screen

    LUbuntu installation screen

    As you can see from the screenshot, by using this method you can migrate your distribution to another, without worrying about losing your settings or reverting back to the original one.