Tag Archive for ‘Ubuntu’ at sionide.net

MJ Ray wrote about a couple of things which puzzled him a while back…

Here are a couple of things that puzzle me.

1. Templates

Why is the ~/Templates/ directory empty on a default Ubuntu install? If there is a sensible reason, by all means comment and tell me. But if you right-click on the Desktop or somewhere in Nautilus you’re able to create a folder, or a document but since the Templates directory is empty, you can only create an empty file. What use is that?

sionide@zombie:~$ ls /home/sionide/Templates/
OpenOffice Calc.ods     OpenOffice Math.odf    Text Document.txt
OpenOffice Draw.odg     OpenOffice Writer.odt
OpenOffice Impress.odp  Shell Script.sh

As you can see, my Templates directory is full of files, they’re just filenames really - it’s the extension which counts and means that the “Create document” menu is filled with those file types as options of files I can create.. Seems silly to ship with a feature kind of half missing.

2. Bluetooth

I’ve already discussed this, so Bluetooth is supported out of the box but not properly. A pretty normal use case isn’t catered for meaning that from what I can tell, you have to install a few other things before it’ll let you send or receive files from another bluetooth device. It’s another half-a-feature..

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Perhaps these are ideas I should submit to the Ubuntu Brainstorm

My friend Max is a curse on Ubuntu. Whenever he’s near my laptop, something goes wrong, something crashes or doesn’t work the way it normally does. It’s okay though, I have the same effect on his Vista monstrosity.

It’s nice that Ubuntu supports bluetooth out of the box, I have had a little bluetooth icon in the notification area since I installed but what does that actually do? Right-clicking it gives some options and a “Browse Device” window which throws up an error when you try and connect to any nearby bluetooth device. Something like this;

“obex://[nn:uu:mm:bb:ee:rr]” is not a valid location.

I was trying to bluetooth a file to my phone and Max’s phone. Well, you’d assume it would be fairly simple, something like right-clicking on the file, then Send To, choosing Bluetooth and then selecting a device. No. Not by default anyway. To get this functionality I had to follow these instructions.