As I didn’t have much luck with Ubuntu upgrade, this time I install Ubuntu 7.10, fresh. Still, it doesn’t stop the problems that show up on Ubuntu upgrade. Here are some quick fixes for Ubuntu 7.10:

1) Can’t connect / browse the net

This has something to do with bug #81507. Ubuntu 7.10 activates IPv6 by default and in this case, we need to deactivate IPv6.

gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/aliases

Look for a line which contains alias net-pf-10 ipv6. Change it to alias net-pf-10 off.

Save changes. Restart Ubuntu.

2) Can’t update / keep redirected to address 1.0.0.0 instead of archive.ubuntu.com

This is also related with bug #81507. This may not be a good solution, but you can somehow correctly redirected to archive.ubuntu.com by pinging it before you update.

ping archive.ubuntu.com

In my case, the update runs smoothly. Other reports that the update runs slowly.

3) Trouble activating compiz / 3D desktop

To activate compiz, we may or may not need to activate the restricted graphic card drivers. I use ATI Radeon X300 and I’ve managed to activate compiz without using the restricted ATI drivers. Anyway, we need to install compiz.

sudo aptitude install compiz compiz-core compiz-fusion-plugins-extra compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-unofficial compiz-gnome compiz-plugins compizconfig-settings-manager libcompizconfig-backend-gconf libcompizconfig0 python-compizconfig

Restart X by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. Try to open System/Preferences/Appearance and choose Visual Effects tab. If succeeded you should see four (not just three) different desktop environments.

If not, then you need to install the restricted drivers. Open System/Administration/Restricted Drivers Manager. Check to enable the accelerated graphics driver. Restart X.

Open the Visual Effects menu again. If you’ve got “The composite extension is not available” message, open X configuration file.

gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Look for a line which contains Option “Composite” “0″. Change it to Option “Composite” “1″. Save changes. Restart X.

Open the Visual Effects menu again. This time if you’ve got “Desktop effects could not be enabled” message, then you need to install xserver-xgl.

sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl

Restart X.

Phew. Now you should be able to see the four choices on the Visual Effects menu. Choose Custom. Click on Preferences. You can play around now with the available options. If you want to the enable the 3D desktop cube, check for Rotate Cube. And don’t forget to set your workspaces to 4 columns and 1 row.

For 3D desktop cube — hold Ctrl+Alt, left click and drag.

To switch between tasks, the 3D style — hold the Windows key and press Tab repeatedly.

So, it’s been a week since I upgraded my Ubuntu 7.04 to Ubuntu 7.10. The upgrade process was pretty easy. I saw one flashing button on the Update Manager window, telling me to upgrade to Ubuntu 7.10. So I clicked the button and upgrade I did. Some 1.4 GB of download later I restarted the PC and Ubuntu 7.10 was ready to run.

Yippee!

Not quite. The first thing that instantly bothered me was that I could no longer browse the Internet! What the hell!? I mean, there always be a bug or two… hundreds. But being unable to connect to the net is just too much for a bug. I played for a while with my network setting before I decided to go to Google for some helps. But of course, the internet connection was no longer there, so I was forced to switch to Windows XP to do just that. Talk about irony

And just as I expected, there was already some posts on this particular problem. To sum it up, the solution is here. Something to do with IPv6. So I went back to Ubuntu 7.10, apply the solutions, and they worked! The internet connection is back.

I was about to forget this small issue when I stumbled upon other problems while trying to perform some basic Ubuntu operations:

• Trouble with Synaptic / Update Manager.
• For whatever reasons, FireFox crashes a lot now.
• Couldn’t start VMware Player.
• Couldn’t connect using ssh.

These glitches makes the new Ubuntu 7.10 no longer deemed as “Linux that just works“. Instead it’s now a “Linux that just works — provided you know how to patch the holes“. It’s a shame, really.

Ubuntu 7.04 managed to be a “Linux for human beings” and wins a lot of converts from Windows, including me. After all, the intended users of Ubuntu are the ones that simply want to set up Ubuntu once and proceed with their daily activities, without tinkering deeply into configuration files. Upgrading Ubuntu should not be a ticket to n00b hell.

Next step: I’m going to try a clean installation. If the same problems remain, I have no choice but to deal with the fixes. On the positive side, my current Ubuntu is quite messy anyway, so this clean installation is a necessity.

Update, November 5th 2007: Done with a clean installation. The first bug remains the same: can’t connect to the internet. Hmm… should I switch back to Ubuntu 7.04?

It was October 24th 2007 and Big Brother Google gave me a gift: a PageRank penalty. For whatever reason(s) one of my site’s PR was demoted from PR 6 to PR 4. I said to myself, “Here it comes.”

For months I’ve been troubled by Matt Cutts — head of the Google’s WebSpam team — posts, here and here, and Google’s ‘advice’ for for us webmasters to use nofollow tag to stop comment spammers. In summary, Google wants us to use nofollow tag for every paid links on our sites. Sounds fair enough. Google wants to minimize people gaming the whole link-for-vote system. But here comes the question: “How in the world Google can automatically tell between natural and paid links?” The answer is: No, it can’t. Faced with a simple <a href> HTML code, not even a manual review can tell the difference. This lack of clarity would set any webmasters into paranoia mode. Should we now put nofollow tag on every link lest we risk a special visit from the Big G?

I must admit that I’ve been playing with a grey hat practice for 5 months, selling text link ads via TLA on my ex-PR6 site. I did this while knowing that people who bought the links were hoping to get some link love from the site and not just to get some focused traffic. I did this armed with several guidelines:

• I wouldn’t give links to non-relevant sites
• I wouldn’t give links to bad neighborhood
• I assumed that Google automatic scanner can’t tell the difference between paid and natural links from the raw HTML code alone (yes, evil me)

But of course, I’m not the one who set the rules. Google does. And Google did demote my site to PR4. I don’t know how Google come to conclusion that I sold text links. But I can only guess that their methods are not that sophisticated. One glaring example is what happened to Brian Clark. His CopyBlogger blog suffered a penalty, demoted from PR6 to PR4. This despites the fact that Brian doesn’t sell links on his blog. Fortunately Google restored CopyBlogger’s PR later to … PR7.

The good news is, the organic traffic stays about the same. And my SERP ranking doesn’t seem to be affected by the whole PageRank gymnastic. Perhaps this is a mild warning. Or perhaps the PR value displayed on Google Toolbar doesn’t mean a tad anymore. If that is the case, then Google doesn’t want people to rely too much on PR value, thus discouraging the whole paid link business.

At the end of the day, I took no chances. I dropped all my TLA ads which resulted in revenue loss. And I realize that few people (read: nobody) will purchase a link on my site for the merit of the traffic alone. Google won and I’m left with a reduced revenue and an ex-PR6 site.

Oh well… back to work.