Pidgin e Google Talk group chat

O GTalk tem função de group chat, porém se você usa o Pidgin irá apenas receber um link para acessar pelo navegador, usando um cliente em Flash.

Investigando um pouco, descobri que é possível entrar no group chat usando o próprio Pidgin, ou até mesmo criar uma sala:

1. ao receber um convite, siga o link e quando aparecer o botão para iniciar o cliente Flash, selecione para ver o código fonte da página.
2. Procure pela string de conexão, algo parecido com: private-chat-12345678-dead-beef-feed-fedcba987654@groupchat.google.com
3. No menu "Amigos" do Pidgin, selecione "Adicionar bate-papo..." e preencha o campo de sala com a parte antes do @ da string anterior e o servidor com groupchat.google.com e clique em Adicionar.
4. Pronto, você já tem a sala na sua lista e já pode conversar

O mesmo vale para criar novas salas, é só criar uma string para o nome da sala que seja compatível e conectar. Se ela não estiver sendo usada uma nova sala será criada e você pode convidar pessoas para entrar (menu "Conversa" -> "Convidar...").

Se você tem uma conta Jabber, pode criar salas no servidor conference.jabber.org da mesma forma, ou mesmo ver as salas já existentes pelo menu "Ferramentas" -> "Lista de salas", selecione sua conta Jabber, clique em "Obter lista" e preencha com o endereço do servidor.

Fontes:

• Error 404: Google Talk Groupchat
• Harper Reed: Google Talk group chat integration with Jabber Chat

Dist-upgrade Hardy

Just dist-upgraded my Gutsy laptop to Hardy and a few issues have come up.

Gateway 5570Z (model 5570-2607)

Sound

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02) [8086:27d8 (rev 02)]

After the upgrade there was no more sound, whereas it was working fine in Gutsy. Needs further investigation.

PARTIALLY SOLVED: Seems the bug is on the headphone output detection. I had external speakers connected to the headphone out and no sound was playing, either on the internal or external speakers. If I unplug the external speakers, sound comes out from the internal ones. If I plug the external, no sound is heard again, only if I manually check the Headphone key on the volume control app. Definitely a bug.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/126157


WiFi

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI (rev 01)

I was using a manually compiled ndiswrapper on Gutsy, and on the upgrade it was probably replaced. Tried using the new b43 driver, which installed fine and even activated the device, but it isn't detecting my wireless network, so I'm going back to ndiswrapper. Seems ndiwrapper doesn't like loading in Hardy tho... hmm.

SOLVED: the ndiswrapper module doesn't like to be loaded after the ssb module, so you must remove b44 and ssb, load ndiswrapper and then load ssb and b44 back again. Fun.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/188621
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/214917


USB Keyboard

I use an external usb keyboard when at home, and Hardy is having issues in detecting the numeric keypad... any key I press there is completely ignored. Needs further investigation.

SOLVED: completely stupid bug, it is fixed by going in System->Preferences->Keyboard and disabling Allow to control the pointer using the keyboard on the Mouse Keys tab.
Thanks to this blog post: Fixing the borked numeric keypad in Ubuntu Hardy


Touchpad

Just doesn't works (completely disabled). A major regression from Gusty, where it was perfectly detected and functioning. No solution yet, just a workaround:

sudo rmmod psmouse && sudo modprobe psmouse

this makes it work, kind of, since no advanced synaptic driver functions are enabled (like the scroll button, tap gestures, touch scrolling, etc).
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/191024


Firefox 3

Firefox 3 is great, but I was having speed issues with it, in that accessing a Flickr picture (for instance) would make it use 100% cpu and lockup. Since it was using my old FF2 profile, I created a new one (Alt+F2 -> firefox -ProfileManager) and tried the same pages, and sure enough it worked fine. So I just imported the old bookmarks to this new profile, installed a few extensions and all was good.