ROTR

I've fallen in love with Mercurial. It's used by projects and people that I respect, and I'm using it more and more.

I wanted to make sure I was using the latest version, but I didn't want to uninstall gutsy's version 0.9.4 and install it from source, nor did I want to upgrade my entire system to hardy. I've played around with such bleeding-edge things in the past, and while I still like to bleed sometimes, the Linux desktop is not one of those areas in which I desire to. :)

So, what to do?

Fortunately, it's easy to backport it from hardy. Here's what I did:

1. $ vim /etc/apt/sources.list

2. Add this line to the end:

   deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ \
       hardy main restricted universe multiverse
   

3. Save and exit.

4. $ sudo apt-get update

5. $ sudo apt-get build-dep mercurial

6. $ fakeroot apt-get source -b mercurial

7. $ sudo dpkg -i mercurial_0.9.5-2_i386.deb

Lather, rinse, then repeat steps 4 through 7 as necessary if you're anxious. Or, just wait three months for hardy. :)

Symptoms:

• Strange, intermittent, erratic, and persistent key repeating

Setting:

• Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)
• AMD Athlon 64 processor

Potential cause:

• Differences between how Intel and AMD chips handle timing, exacerbated by the use of the i386 flavor of the kernel included with Ubuntu.

Solution:

• Install the generic flavor of the kernel: * sudo aptitude install linux-generic
• Make that kernel the default option: * Edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file as root. * Counting from zero, find the generic kernel from the list at the bottom of the file. * Change the default option at the top of the file to the number of that kernel. * Save and close the file.
• Reboot.