There is another fix to the “well known” issues with the ATI Radeon X1400 and Ubuntu 10.04 to 10.10 besides the one posted about one year ago (see here).
The previous fix kept the graphics card working normally but harmed the overall operating system’s stability, so here is another fix based on disabling all 3D features of the device to get rid of the flickering screen.

It’s up to you to choose what you are able to live without
a) The desktop settings panel and “Segmentation fault” errors now and then, or
b) 3D acceleration (does not harm video playback or any other basic OS functionalities)

For solution a) see this.
For b) create this file: /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf — and add following content

options radeon modeset=0

Solution found here (in German).

Create a file in /usr/local/bin/skype and insert

#!/bin/bash
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype

Finally, make it executable by sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/skype
Use this file to start Skype from now on. Done.

But not for me. Skype refused to eat it: ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
Until I finally found this one here.

Just to cut a long story short, here is why: all the other solutions work for 32bit Linux only — but hey, I do not have any of my old laptop’s potential to be wasted — I am running 64bit Ubuntu (tested with version 9.10 and 10.10 64bit). And with a minor tweak, the fix will work for you, too.

Install the video4linux libraries:

 sudo apt-get install lib32v4l-0

And change /usr/local/bin/skype to

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so /usr/bin/skype

Its just about the “32” — and one good example more of why you should put meaningful error messages in whatever software!

Thanks Eoin Murphy.

But it is not possible to resize system relevant partitions while the system is running — makes sense, right?

But you can download GParted as LiveCD ISO file and burn it on a CD. After that, restart your computer with the CD in your drive and a small linux will start up directly from CD including GParted, thus allowing you to modify any drive and partition there is. Do all required changes, click the exit button and you are done. In my case, the computer did not reboot automatically, instead I ended up with a command line interface — use the command “sudo reboot” to restart the system yourself if that happens.

And just by the way, GParted does also handle Windows partitions easily — so there is no need to buy or “get” Partition Magic from somewhere. But never forget to backup your data first.

Yet another hint: GParted works most reliable if you do one step at a time. So for example, there are partitions A and B (A is in front of B) and you wish to give some of the free space in A to B. You need to do following steps: Shrink A, move B left and finally grow B. From my experience, GParted works best if you really do all those steps separately, apply each of then, and go for the next one if the last one finished successfully.

There was only one problem I ran into and I want to share the solution.

I am running Kubuntu 10.04 (just upgraded today) on a Lenovo IBM ThinkPad R60 (Yes, one of those with both brands on them ) with an ATI Radeon X1400 graphics device. But since upgraded, my display started flickering — not permanently but unbearable.

The solution that worked for me (at least partially — see below — and this is of cause depending on the graphics device type) was to install the proprietary ATI drivers. I know, it is not a good solution, I do not like to use them neither and if anyone out there is reading this with a better solution in mind, let me know it!!
Edit 2011-02-14: Added a new post with an additional, alternative solution here.

So what you need to do is  to get your favorite package management tool (e.g. Synaptic or KPackageKit) — just hit Alt+F2 and type “package” and pick KPackageKit from the list (it will ask you for the super user password). Then, search for “fglrx”. In KPackageKit, you will find a result titled “Video driver for the ATI graphics accelerator”, and something below the title like “fglrx — 2:8.723.1-0ubuntu3” but the version number should not matter. Click the arrow to the right, hit “Apply” and after rebooting, everything should perfectly without any configuration.

Good luck.

Problems noticed so far: The driver causes “Segmentation Fault” error messages, e.g. when trying to open up the display settings. That’s ugly, I know. But you can read in several forum and blog posts, that the support for the former nicely working driver for the ATI X1400 has been discontinued since 10.04, hence, it’s just good luck that the fglrx works somehow — good to know *after* upgrading, right. But still, the flickering was unbearable for me, thus, I accept the issues for now. I will keep my eyes peeled hoping for a proper solution in the future.

[For those without a glue what a keystroke launcher is:] It is THE tool for launching any kind of software or even opening documents. Instead of moving your mouse to you applications menu, click it, search the program, move the mouse there, maybe pick a sub-folder, move mouse again and finally click — unless you accidentally moved a little but to far and the menu close again, completely. But it is easy to put an end to this (as described below). Instead of doing all that clicking, you hit a special key combination, by default [Alt] and [Space], this will make a small input box show up, now, you only enter the first letters of the program — e.g. “f” will do after a few uses to start Firefox (the program learned that you use it a lot). It might save only a few seconds each time, but the sum up and, hey, it is very convenient, too!

So here is what you need to do:
Mac OS: It is already built-in — Just hit Alt+Space and type the name of the program you want to start (or files or whatever).
Windows: Get/install Launchy and use it as explained above.
Kubuntu: built-in as well, BUUUT you have to hit Alt+F2 instead.

And there it is, something that kept annoying me about Kubuntu for quite a bit. I was hoping to get used to it but for what reason? Alt+F2 is really not handy compared to Alt+Space.
Finally, based on this old forum post and a few adjustments to fit nowadays Kubuntu, all you need to do is this:

1. Go to “Settings” -> “Keyboard and mouse”
2. Select “Global Keyboard Shortcuts”
3. Pick from the select box “KDE component” at the top “Run Command Interface”
4. Now, you can access “Run Command” — Change it to whatever you like

This post is based on an article in German — I will mainly translate it, strip some plush and add some stuff to make life easier and to reduce the risk of data loss. But be aware: to perform any of those following things, you will need super user rights and you should feel somewhat comfy with using the command line. And of course, it might be possible in circumstances unforeseen, that you lose all your personal data — but there are a lot of backup steps included below.

Here we go: (console input or statements are written in italics)

1. Preparation
   1. Create a backup: rsync –avx –progress /home <your backup destination>
   2. If you do not have a free partition yet, I recommend GParted to create one (use sudo apt-get install gparted). I recommend ext3 for compatibility issues — but if you use Linux only, you can go for ext4 (please change ext3 to ext4 in step 1.6 in case) — make sure your new partition is big enough for your home folder! Try to remember the size (get size: du –sh /home) of /home, you can use it later on to verify your new home location.
   3. Get partion name sudo fdisk –l /dev/sda — e.g. /dev/sda7 — I will refer to this name as (name)
   4. Copy your current file system configuration: sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.new
   5. Get partion UUID of new partition: sudo blkid — you will find a line about (name) stating a UUID (quite a long hex string), I will refer to it as (uuid) — copy it.
   6. Edit /etc/fstab.new, add a new line at the end as follows (the layout should follow previous lines — simply copy one and adjust it):
      UUID=(UUID)  /home                ext3         defaults                    0  2
2. Copy
   1. Sign off / Log out
   2. Switch to console mode by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1
   3. Create a mount point for the new partition: sudo mkdir /mnt/tmp
   4. Add partion: sudo mount (name) /mnt/tmp
   5. Copy home from the old location to the new partition: sudo rsync –avx –progress /home/ /mnt/tmp
3. Test
   1. Mount copy of home as new home: sudo mount (name) /home
   2. Check size of home folder — should be the same as in step 1.: du –sh /home
   3. Check mounting worked: sudo mount| grep /home should print out something like
      (name) on /home
4. Switch
   1. yet another home backup: sudo mv /home /home.bak
   2. create new home mount point: sudo mkdir /home
   3. create a backup of fstab: sudo mv /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak
   4. put updated version in place: sudo mv /etc/fstab.new /etc/fstab
   5. reboot and you should be done: sudo reboot

Ok, that’s that. If everything works fine, you can delete the backup home sudo rm –rf /home.bak and the fstab backup sudo rm /etc/fstab.bak. Hope you found it useful and I did not put in a mistake or typo. Gimme feedback!

Simple reason: Gnome does not support drag-and-drop in combination with alt+tab (see bug tracker), but there might be hope with the upcoming Gnome 3.

[Edit 2011-06-14: Indeed, drag-and-drop + alt-tab works since since Ubuntu 11.04 (did not try with 10.10). One major difference remains: Do you need a lot of configuration and customization options? And are you will to accept complex, maybe not that self-explaining menu structures for that? If yes, KDE is your choice, otherwise Gnome might make your life easier. See also this page for more details and screenshots.]

In more detail: using drag-and-drop together with alt+tab key combination allows to work very efficiently. For example, while ordering my photos, I want to work on one of them — as I do this regularly, Gimp is opened already, but in the background — so what I do using KDE or MS Windows is, I grab the picture, switch to Gimp by using alt+tab and immediately drop the picture without moving the mouse at all — I am quite confident that this is the fastest way of opening a picture for editing. Some people advice to set Gimp as default application to open JPEGs, but I am not always editing pictures, most of the times I just want to view them.

Using “Open With” on a JPEG file for sure is the common approach — but let’s compare it:

• Drag-and-drop & alt+tab
  • Actions to be performed: mouse down + key down + key up + mouse up
  • In total: four fast steps
• “Open With” solution (holding mouse down as improvement)
  • Actions to be performed:mouse down + moving to “Open With” + wait for sub-menu to open + move to sub-menu + mouse up
  • In total: two fast, three slow steps