Re: [Dorset] Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard no longer works properly
On Wednesday, 25 May 2022 11:24:31 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > Out of interest, is there any particular reason you use Chromium? If > this is a deal-breaker, which I think it would be for me, I can vouch > for Firefox's stability and compatibility. It's not a stability or compatibility issue. The default browser on Android is Chrome, my contacts and appointments are all stored in Chrome / Chromium and the Favourites and recent sites visited are all shared across platforms. I'm sure Firefox can do that, but I've been using the Chrome(ium) approach for years so all my usual suspects are there. In a similar way, I still use Kmail (Kontact) rather than Thunderbird. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2022-06-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard no longer works properly
On 25/05/2022 11:16, Terry Coles wrote: On Wednesday, 25 May 2022 11:07:36 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: It depends on the sound system that Chromium uses, which is probably Pulseaudio. ALSA is the one that only allows one playback device at once. This is sounding more like a Chromium bug than an KDE/Kubuntu one to me. Does Firefox have the same problem? No. I was beginning to think the same thing. I added the same information to my original query on the Ubuntu One site, but no-one has responded. If an update that fixes it doesn't arrive in the next few days, I'll probably escalate my query to a bug report. Out of interest, is there any particular reason you use Chromium? If this is a deal-breaker, which I think it would be for me, I can vouch for Firefox's stability and compatibility. Hamish -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2022-06-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard no longer works properly
On Wednesday, 25 May 2022 11:07:36 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > It depends on the sound system that Chromium uses, which is probably > Pulseaudio. ALSA is the one that only allows one playback device at > once. This is sounding more like a Chromium bug than an KDE/Kubuntu one > to me. > > Does Firefox have the same problem? No. I was beginning to think the same thing. I added the same information to my original query on the Ubuntu One site, but no-one has responded. If an update that fixes it doesn't arrive in the next few days, I'll probably escalate my query to a bug report. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2022-06-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard no longer works properly
Hi Terry, It depends on the sound system that Chromium uses, which is probably Pulseaudio. ALSA is the one that only allows one playback device at once. This is sounding more like a Chromium bug than an KDE/Kubuntu one to me. Does Firefox have the same problem? Hamish On 24/05/2022 06:38, Terry Coles wrote: Hi, I have just spotted something which shows that the keyboard was a red herring. When the Play / Pause button is pressed the music stops and the player goes to Pause mode. When the button is pressed again, the music may or may not be heard. The key phrase is 'be heard'. If I have just been listening to the audio from a video played in Chromium, the player restarts (I can see the progress indicator increasing), but there is no sound. It seems to me that Chromium is grabbing the audio channel and not letting it go. I find that a bit confusing because I thought that the linux sound system could play music from multiple sources and certainly if I don't press the Play / Pause button while watching a video, I can hear both audio tracks. Any thoughts on this? BTW. This shows why the fault was such a chameleon; if I hadn't been watching video it worked and if I had it didn't. It's just that I hadn't realised this at the time. -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2022-06-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard no longer works properly
Hi, I have just spotted something which shows that the keyboard was a red herring. When the Play / Pause button is pressed the music stops and the player goes to Pause mode. When the button is pressed again, the music may or may not be heard. The key phrase is 'be heard'. If I have just been listening to the audio from a video played in Chromium, the player restarts (I can see the progress indicator increasing), but there is no sound. It seems to me that Chromium is grabbing the audio channel and not letting it go. I find that a bit confusing because I thought that the linux sound system could play music from multiple sources and certainly if I don't press the Play / Pause button while watching a video, I can hear both audio tracks. Any thoughts on this? BTW. This shows why the fault was such a chameleon; if I hadn't been watching video it worked and if I had it didn't. It's just that I hadn't realised this at the time. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2022-06-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard no longer works properly
On 19/05/2022 06:48, Terry Coles wrote: On Wednesday, 18 May 2022 19:46:45 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: Huh, must be some configuration then. Maybe making a copy of /etc on both machines and then comparing the difference between the files. I'm not sure if there's some fancy recursive diff command to make that easy, but Ralph might know :) You may well be right, but as noted elsewhere, that will be a lot of work. I'll try it to see if there is anything obvious, but otherwise the current install is for the chop. I thought you said it didn't work with live media on your desktop though? I never tried it with a live instance of Kubuntu, only Ubuntu, Mint and Fedora (which worked). Having seen it working with Kubuntu on the laptop, then I guess it wouldn't hurt to give it a try. I've been doing upgrades for several years now and the system tends to gather lots of cruft that way. The only downside of a clean upgrade is that my /home directory has its own partition; precisely to prevent the config files being lost. If a clean installation retaining the /home partition doesn't work, then I'll try installing with everything on one partition and moving /home afterwards. I've done it before. It means a lot of reconfiguring, but needs must. If a clean install doesn't work, you could just restore your previous install from a backup, and then start messing with your config in /home, or just delete it, might save some hassle. I hope you don't have to do a fresh install, they're really annoying. Maybe sticking to Kubuntu LTS releases would help - I had a really terrible experience from around 2012-2014 until I started sticking with the LTS releases. Granted, that was a long time ago and maybe that just reflects when I'd learnt enough to not break things when I was messing around with the system. Over the years I've done a clean installation quite a few times and appreciate that it will take some time to get back to where it was in terms of Plasma Activities and installed packages etc, so I'm reasonably confident (famous last words). It may even solve some of the other niggles I've had with Kubuntu over the last few upgrades. Nothing major, but annoying. Makes sense. Debian might also be more stable, if, like me, you really don't like where Canonical's going with snaps. I would certainly prefer not to have to deal with the plethora of snaps, flatpaks and 'stuff' that's been creeping in over the past few years, but I like Kubuntu, I'm used to working with it and other distros with native KDE Desktops have other disadvantages. Yeah, that's fair enough. Hamish -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2022-06-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard no longer works properly
On 19/05/2022 06:14, Bob Dunlop wrote: Hi, On Wed, May 18 at 07:46, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: ... Huh, must be some configuration then. Maybe making a copy of /etc on both machines and then comparing the difference between the files. I'm not sure if there's some fancy recursive diff command to make that easy, but Ralph might know :) Well "diff -r -w DIR1 DIR2" usually works well for me. -r is the recursive flag, -w causes diff to ignore white space differences. However comparing two /etc directories is gonna produce a lot of noise changes unless the distros are very closely related. Try to work with smaller sets like the configuration sub directories. Cheers, I'll save that for mid-late Summer when I migrate to LMDE. Hamish -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2022-06-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard no longer works properly
On Wednesday, 18 May 2022 19:46:45 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > Huh, must be some configuration then. Maybe making a copy of /etc on > both machines and then comparing the difference between the files. I'm > not sure if there's some fancy recursive diff command to make that easy, > but Ralph might know :) You may well be right, but as noted elsewhere, that will be a lot of work. I'll try it to see if there is anything obvious, but otherwise the current install is for the chop. > I thought you said it didn't work with live media on your desktop though? I never tried it with a live instance of Kubuntu, only Ubuntu, Mint and Fedora (which worked). Having seen it working with Kubuntu on the laptop, then I guess it wouldn't hurt to give it a try. I've been doing upgrades for several years now and the system tends to gather lots of cruft that way. The only downside of a clean upgrade is that my /home directory has its own partition; precisely to prevent the config files being lost. If a clean installation retaining the /home partition doesn't work, then I'll try installing with everything on one partition and moving /home afterwards. I've done it before. It means a lot of reconfiguring, but needs must. > I hope you don't have to do a fresh install, they're really annoying. > Maybe sticking to Kubuntu LTS releases would help - I had a really > terrible experience from around 2012-2014 until I started sticking with > the LTS releases. Granted, that was a long time ago and maybe that just > reflects when I'd learnt enough to not break things when I was messing > around with the system. Over the years I've done a clean installation quite a few times and appreciate that it will take some time to get back to where it was in terms of Plasma Activities and installed packages etc, so I'm reasonably confident (famous last words). It may even solve some of the other niggles I've had with Kubuntu over the last few upgrades. Nothing major, but annoying. > Debian might also be more stable, if, like me, you really don't like > where Canonical's going with snaps. I would certainly prefer not to have to deal with the plethora of snaps, flatpaks and 'stuff' that's been creeping in over the past few years, but I like Kubuntu, I'm used to working with it and other distros with native KDE Desktops have other disadvantages. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2022-06-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard no longer works properly
Hi, On Wed, May 18 at 07:46, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: ... > > Huh, must be some configuration then. Maybe making a copy of /etc on > both machines and then comparing the difference between the files. I'm > not sure if there's some fancy recursive diff command to make that easy, > but Ralph might know :) Well "diff -r -w DIR1 DIR2" usually works well for me. -r is the recursive flag, -w causes diff to ignore white space differences. However comparing two /etc directories is gonna produce a lot of noise changes unless the distros are very closely related. Try to work with smaller sets like the configuration sub directories. -- Bob Dunlop -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2022-06-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard no longer works properly
Aaaand, one to the list, seeing as I forgot. On 18/05/2022 16:52, Terry Coles wrote: On Wednesday, 18 May 2022 14:21:48 BST you wrote: Interesting. What about Linux Mint Debian Edition? I didn't try that, see below. What if you plug the keyboard into your laptop? My Dell XPS13 laptop comes with multimedia keys of its own, so I booted it up and tried playing some tracks in Clementine. Everything worked. However, this was with Kubuntu 21.10 installed. I then upgraded to 22.04 and the multimedia keys continued to work as they should. I then plugged in the Cherry K/B and, guess what? The keys all worked. Huh, must be some configuration then. Maybe making a copy of /etc on both machines and then comparing the difference between the files. I'm not sure if there's some fancy recursive diff command to make that easy, but Ralph might know :) This is odd because I upgraded the desktop too, so this problem presumably has to do with some other software that I have installed on my desktop but not on my laptop. There's a lot of that, so it may be a losing battle to track it down. Unless any other ideas are forthcoming, I think I'm going to have to do a clean installation of Kubuntu 22.04 and then add the software back, one package at a time until it either breaks or I get a fully functional system. I thought you said it didn't work with live media on your desktop though? See the above, and also maybe comparing the contents of ~/.config and/or ~/.local (and some of the other .folders) on both systems might be useful. I hope you don't have to do a fresh install, they're really annoying. Maybe sticking to Kubuntu LTS releases would help - I had a really terrible experience from around 2012-2014 until I started sticking with the LTS releases. Granted, that was a long time ago and maybe that just reflects when I'd learnt enough to not break things when I was messing around with the system. Debian might also be more stable, if, like me, you really don't like where Canonical's going with snaps. Hope this helps, Hamish -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2022-06-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard no longer works properly
On Wednesday, 18 May 2022 10:56:36 BST Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty wrote: > In terms of commonality, all the distros are Ubuntu-based, so might have > the same issues for that reason. Linux Mint Cinnamon at least uses a > service to watch and send the actions to the player (Firefox/VLC/etc). I did think about that and then got diverted by something else. I just tried Fedora 36 live and the multimedia keys work fine in RhythmBox. The problem is that with the ephemeral nature of the fault, I can't be sure that this is the problem, although I must say it is likely. -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2022-06-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard no longer works properly
On 18/05/2022 09:48, Terry Coles wrote: On Wednesday, 11 May 2022 09:35:11 BST Terry Coles wrote: Does anyone else have this keyboard or can hazard a guess as to what has gone wrong? I appear to be able to map some at least of the media keys, but then they aren't remembered after a reboot. Not a lot of response to this ;-( Since I posted the above, I'd also posted on Launchpad (the (K)Ubuntu bug/ queries tool). There wasn't a huge response there either; mainly outlining the use of xev in a console to check that the buttons were working; I'd already tried this anyway and they were. The other suggestion was using the Desktop Settings to assign the keys. I'd already done this also, with no improvement. I then tried several things: I spent a happy hour or so trying different live distros to see if the behaviour changed and it certainly did! This problem is a bit like a chameleon; it changes it's behaviour depending on what is happening. Here's a summary of what I saw in Clementine and Rhythmbox in the various distros: 1. In Kubuntu 22.04, I got no Play/Pause button support at all, the Stop button worked and the Next and Previous Track buttons worked OK but only when the player had focus. 2. In Ubuntu 22.04 (clean live installation) the Play/Pause button worked but the Next and Previous Track buttons jumped several tracks at a time. 3. In Linux Mint 20.3 (clean live installation), the Play/Pause button worked with Next and Previous Track buttons only working some of the time At the time I thought that the problem was the lack of CyMotion Master Linux keyboard driver support, eg the driver that I installed originally or the kernel has had something dropped. I then bought a nice shiny new Logitech G213 keyboard.and the symptoms changed yet again: I still couldn't get the Play/Pause button to work, but Stop, Next Track and Previous Track all worked fine. The Volume Up, Volume Down and Volume Mute all worked as advertised, so this was definitely a step forward (plus the keys light up very prettily, which can't be bad with my ageing eyes). :-) However, the button that I use the most still didn't work; Play/Pause. The following day, I booted up and the Play/Pause button worked I have no explanation for this; there were no updates applied after the tests on the previous afternoon and I did reboot after I plugged the new keyboard in. I was happy. :-) However... This morning when I booted up, the Play/Pause key was not working again ;-( So what could be common to three distros (Kubuntu, Ubuntu and Mint) two different keyboards, two different players (Clementine and RhythmBox) and also be ephemeral in the way described above? Any ideas anyone? In terms of commonality, all the distros are Ubuntu-based, so might have the same issues for that reason. Linux Mint Cinnamon at least uses a service to watch and send the actions to the player (Firefox/VLC/etc). Maybe try something Debian-based, like LMDE, or Fedora? Other than that, no immediate ideas. Hamish -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2022-06-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
Re: [Dorset] Cherry CyMotion Master Linux keyboard no longer works properly
On Wednesday, 11 May 2022 09:35:11 BST Terry Coles wrote: > Does anyone else have this keyboard or can hazard a guess as to what has > gone wrong? I appear to be able to map some at least of the media keys, > but then they aren't remembered after a reboot. Not a lot of response to this ;-( Since I posted the above, I'd also posted on Launchpad (the (K)Ubuntu bug/ queries tool). There wasn't a huge response there either; mainly outlining the use of xev in a console to check that the buttons were working; I'd already tried this anyway and they were. The other suggestion was using the Desktop Settings to assign the keys. I'd already done this also, with no improvement. I then tried several things: I spent a happy hour or so trying different live distros to see if the behaviour changed and it certainly did! This problem is a bit like a chameleon; it changes it's behaviour depending on what is happening. Here's a summary of what I saw in Clementine and Rhythmbox in the various distros: 1. In Kubuntu 22.04, I got no Play/Pause button support at all, the Stop button worked and the Next and Previous Track buttons worked OK but only when the player had focus. 2. In Ubuntu 22.04 (clean live installation) the Play/Pause button worked but the Next and Previous Track buttons jumped several tracks at a time. 3. In Linux Mint 20.3 (clean live installation), the Play/Pause button worked with Next and Previous Track buttons only working some of the time At the time I thought that the problem was the lack of CyMotion Master Linux keyboard driver support, eg the driver that I installed originally or the kernel has had something dropped. I then bought a nice shiny new Logitech G213 keyboard.and the symptoms changed yet again: I still couldn't get the Play/Pause button to work, but Stop, Next Track and Previous Track all worked fine. The Volume Up, Volume Down and Volume Mute all worked as advertised, so this was definitely a step forward (plus the keys light up very prettily, which can't be bad with my ageing eyes). :-) However, the button that I use the most still didn't work; Play/Pause. The following day, I booted up and the Play/Pause button worked I have no explanation for this; there were no updates applied after the tests on the previous afternoon and I did reboot after I plugged the new keyboard in. I was happy. :-) However... This morning when I booted up, the Play/Pause key was not working again ;-( So what could be common to three distros (Kubuntu, Ubuntu and Mint) two different keyboards, two different players (Clementine and RhythmBox) and also be ephemeral in the way described above? Any ideas anyone? -- Terry Coles -- Next meeting: Online, Jitsi, Tuesday, 2022-06-07 20:00 Check to whom you are replying Meetings, mailing list, IRC, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk New thread, don't hijack: mailto:dorset@mailman.lug.org.uk
