XBMC Ubuntu 12.10 sound over hdmi

I have XBMC installed on my htpc, a Shuttle XS35GT with desktop Ubuntu 12.10. XBMC is enabled in the Startup Applications list and launches fine on boot. However I had to exit and restart XBMC after boot to get the sound working, annoying and with no WAF at all, sadly.

It occurred to me that delaying the startup of XBMC itself was worth a shot, so off to google I went and found this tip.

Edit your startup applications so the xbmc entry contains the command

bash -c "sleep 10 && xbmc"

This postpones the launch for 10 seconds and fixed the problem for me. Might help someone else as well. :)

Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin - Wireless problem

Having installed the newest flavor of Ubuntu (12.04) I was hoping for a smooth experience, however I stumbled upon a few bumps in the road.

My laptop is an Asus U46SV with both a VGA and HDMI port. At work I always connect a full hd monitor to each port and use the two external monitors exclusively. This is totally messed up in pangolin. Adjusting the monitor settings have crashed Ubuntu several times to the point where I am now expecting some kind of fix from Canonical before trying again. Connecting one monitor seems to work OK but connecting two monitors freaks the system out.

My wireless netcard is an Atheros AR9285 and it worked pretty fine in 11.10, however the signal in 12.04 keeps dropping randomly, making browsing the web a pain. I tried removing the asus_wmi module with no effect, echoing something into a special ath9k config file, disabling the soft block through the rfkill command - everything failed.

Right now it seems that disabling power management from the net card, results in a somewhat better experience.

Check your iwconfig by typing in a console:

sudo iwconfig

My output was:

lo        no wireless extensions.
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"bea"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.422 GHz  Access Point: 00:1D:73:73:xx:xx  
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=16 dBm  
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=68/70  Signal level=-42 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:29   Missed beacon:0
eth0      no wireless extensions.

See the Power management line? Let's try to disable that:

sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off

This finally had the desired effect of making my web browsing tolerable again, although I guess the wifi will use a bit more power thus draining my battery faster. Oh well, here's to hoping for a fix eventually.