Illuminated keyboard function keys

By - Frantumn

The function keys on my Asus G51Jx laptop don't seem to work properly in Ubuntu. There is 4 keyboard back-light settings (Off, low, med, bright). When i use the keys to cycle the brightness up or down, the notification bubble appears as it should in the top right of my screen. The meter on the notification goes fine as it should with my commands. The problem is the that the lights on the keyboard don't actually always listen to what the keys are saying. The lights usually flicker with the FN key press, but don't get any more or less bright. However, SOMETIMES, they work perfectly. Any ideas why this isn't consistent?

 Ubuntu One behind proxy

By - Karthik

I have just installed Ubuntu 12.04. I am behind a proxy server which requires authentication.

While setting up Ubuntu One, it is able to sign into my account( step 2 ), but when it comes to step 3( Select Sync Folders ), it just keeps on saying gathering information and nothing happens.

How to make Ubuntu One work in this case?

Thanks in advance.

 I cannot enable wireless on ubuntu 12.04 - Acer TravelMate 4500 - it says wireless is disabled by hardware switvch

By - Sahil

I just updated to Ubuntu 12.04 from 11.10 but soon after updating I was disappointed to see that 'wireless is disabled by hardware switch.' I can not click the button 'Enable wireless' which is greyed out. Without wireless my computer is useless as I have to connect by wire which is NOT practical.

 Why I cannot start x server applications as different users?

By - Sorin Sbarnea

While this worked in the past, it doesn't seem to work anymore

sudo thg & - (tortoise hg)

jenkins@sorins:/home/sorins$ thg &
[1] 2498
jenkins@sorins:/home/sorins$ No protocol specified
No protocol specified
thg: cannot connect to X server :0.0

If I do this as myself, it does start but if I'm doing it as another user it doesn't, even if the user is root. This worked before.

Note: I verified and DISPLAY=:0.0 for both users, so it is something else.

 lubuntu firefox toggle fullscreen - the menu bar will not come back

By - giuspen

I'm using Lubuntu with firefox in place of chromium and I experience the following problem: when I press F11 the application goes to fullscreen mode but when I subsequently press F11 the application will only partially exit fullscreen, since the menu bar is totally hidden and the tabs/toolbar appear only when I move the mouse close to the titlebar. Other applications fullscreen (e.g. geany) do not have this problem, is this a bug? is there a workaround?

 How to programmatically fetch a list of applications from the Software Center

By - David Planella

Im writing a PyGI app where I'd like to show a list of matching applications from the Ubuntu Software Centre in an auto-completion text entry or dropdwon. I haven't yet figured out the best way to present the information, I just want to make it easier for the user to type the name of an application.

But before that, I'd like to figure out how to get the data. Is there an API to get a list of all applications from the Software Centre, or indirectly through the Applications Dash in Unity?

 Ubuntu Black screen crash

By - Vihaan

Alright so I've been using Ubuntu for about 4 months now and I was quite happy with it. I installed it through windows by downloading wubi.exe which I think then downloaded ubuntu. A week ago a message popped up asking if I wanted to update to 12.04 and I clicked yes. After a little downloading it said my partition filesize wasn't large enough (10gb) so I went and cleared some stuff hoping there would be enough for my next upgrade. Today the message popped up and I pretty much cleared off whatever I could and the update began. Files began downloading while I was working and surfing the web. Finally it began installing. About halfway throughh the installation something weird began happening. My computer started getting slower and began reacting with a 10 second delay. There was no audio playing on youtube and gradually videos refused to begin. Then finally I might have double clicked the tab on google chrome because the clenching hand icon appeared for me to move the tab. To my surprise, it wouldn't let go. I tried releasing it by clicking, double clicking everything. It was like everything was working on my laptop except the left and right clicks. I couldn't even click anything on my sidebar when I put my mouse on it because the youtube tab was moving with it. I thought the problem was my laptop was working too hard. After about 10 minutes nothing changed and in my frenzy of trying different keyboard commands I read a dialog box about there being no partition space left. Then another about google chrome not responding (this might have come before I can't recall) Since my laptop was still moving around that youtube tab I clicked and held my power button to reboot. I selected ubuntu and the usual purple background came on and loaded. Then it changed to a black screen with a flickering cursor and occasional flashes of short white stripes. Then a bunch of info came in about network state and battery state ok. I pressed enter and a bunch of jibberish came onto the screen, about 2-3 characters that I can't recognise. Same with up arrow, space etc. I rebooted again and left it there for about twenty minutes and now its just a black screen with nothing, and its not responding to anything except reboots. What do I do? Oh and I have a Nvidia card I think, it says 'Nvidia optimus' on the sticker on my laptop. Hope you can help!

 apache2 wont work correctly after upgrade to 12.04

By - ratzeputz

since i upgraded my ubuntu-server to 12.04 i do have some weird problems with my apache webserver.

It works, then not, then it works, then not again, then it works, .....

Someone is surfing through one of my websites, i am hosting on my ubuntu-server...everything works fine. After a few clicks, the apache seem to "hang", cause no site will be shown to the user. And NO user will see a site during this "hanging time"...after a few seconds the server will work again (no restart needed) and the sites are gonna shown again to the users....till the next time the apache will "hang" and users will get the "site not found" error message.

What i have regocnized is, that the server is going to hang, if a user is surfing with internet explorer on one of my sites.

I have absolutely no idea, what the problem is, cause i have nothing changed on my server config, or on one of my sites i am hosting.

Does anyone of you have any idea or suggestions?

Regards

 Does freewins (freely transformable windows) plugin work with compiz 0.9.7.8?

By - user63872

Can anyone tell me if they have tried to use the freewins plugin in 12.04 (compiz 0.9.7.8), I fear I may be wasting my time trying to get it to work. It will compile, with some ominous looking warnings

(for example: 'freewins.h:71:0: warning: "ABS" redefined [enabled by default]', and 'freewins.h:202:8: warning: ‘float FWTransformedWindowInfo::scaleY’ [-Wreorder]' and others)

it does appear as an option in ccsm and can be enabled, but it doesn't actually do anything. Would just like to know either way if it doesn't work or it's just me. I use gnome-classic.

I'm aware that it's not in particularly active development anyway.

Thank you

 Installing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Using Windows Installer

By - parkerd07

I've had Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10 on my PC, and just upgraded to 12.04 LTS. I didn't realize that there was capabilities to install it along side with Windows. So now I'm downloading 12.04 with Windows Installer. Should I UNINSTALL the Ubuntu version that's currently partioned?

 How to disable lightdm?

By - Samat

I want to disable lightdm from autostart. Currenty, I run service lightdm disable from terminal, then run startx.

update-rc.d doesnt help

 Is there any way to get a panel icon for UbuntuOne, similar to Dropbox?

By - Michael Durrant

I would like to see an icon so that I know if UbuntuOne uploads/downloads are going on. Haven't found it yet.

 Where does Unity store the chameleonic launcher/dash color?

By - Gergey Kalmár

I would like to use unity's average background color (the color of the launcher) in conky, is there a (configuration) file which contains that color information? Or how could I fetch that?

 Setting 16:9 screen resolution on Ubuntu 12.04

By - Alois Mahdal

I have a Philips 166V3LSB/00 LCD monitor connected to a box with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

user@host:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
...

The monitor is supposed to support 1366x768 (16:9) but I cannot get System Settings/Displays to even offer anything but ubiquitous 1024x768 and 800x600. I tried removing ~/.config/monitors.xml and re-logging in but that did not help.

Update (1):

I tried forcing modeline to Xorg.conf (added Modes "1366x768" "1024x768" "640x480"), but as a result:

• resolution os still the same
• System Settings/Displays now offers only 1024x768 (it previously offered 800x600 as well)

Here is my current xorg.conf and Xorg.0.log.

Any more ideas?

 Wake-on-LAN worked 3 times then no more

By - DavidBanner

Update: My main theories for now are (see below for details):

• Ubuntu system shuts down NIC power in standby mode?
• Realtek RTL8111 driver for 64-bit machines does not work?

Can anyone confirm or deny?

I installed Ubuntu 12.04 a few days ago and got Wake-on-lan to work by sending Magic Packets from a different PC after having put the Ubuntu machine in standby via the desktop menu. I did this 3 times and it worked beautifully. Then suddenly it didn't work anymore! How on earth can this be possible?!

I know potentially 1000 things can be wrong when WOL doesn't work but the fact it worked 3 consecutive times rules out most of them. It worked 3 times (a few minutes apart) and after that has never worked. During the 3 times it worked and the followingh 10 unsuccessful tries the only thing I fiddled with was the firewall on the PC that sends the magic packets, and I soon switched the firewall off to eliminate that potential problem, and also verified the packets come through with wireshark (with the Ubuntu machine on then of course). I made a full update of Ubuntu a few hours before the tests started.

Most of the time I feel like I'm just testing various things blindly. Is there for example any way to check that power isn't shut down for the NIC? And doesn't the "cat /proc/acpi/wakeup" being "disabled" mean something's wrong?

There's lots of threads on WOL, I know, but none where it works perfectly for 10 minutes then stops working for no reason. A few threads mention problems with WOL after 12.04 was installed. My only remaining idea right now is to install Ubuntu 10. But that would just be a test, not a permanent solution, and a very time consuming test. And I'm sure RTL8111/RTL8168 isn't properly supported on older Ubuntus (there have been major problems with those NICs with older Ubuntus) which complicates such a test even more.

You should only have to read the text above to understand my problem. But for in-depth info, here are some facts and tests I've done:

• I tried adding "pci=noacpi", "pci=noapic", "acpi=force" and "apm=on apm=power-off" to /etc/default/grub (and I verified the changes in grab.cfg). One at a time of course (reboot after each).
• I saw the NIC was disabled in cat /proc/acpi/wakeup, enabled it with command "echo -n LAN | sudo tee /proc/acpi/wakeup" and now LAN was enabled in the list
• Firewalls are disabled
• ethtool shows wol is in state "g" (I tried setting it to "pumbag", and also to "d" then "g").
• It is an ASUS board with Realtek RTL1111/R8168B (driver R8169 came with the kernel and it was with that driver is worked 3 times; lately I changed to driver R8168 which wasn't easy but I can't see any difference and people seem to report R8169 should be used for all nowadays).
• I also tried using wireshark on the Ubuntu machine to verify the magic packets got through to the PC
• Tried resetting CMOS RAM (both by jumper and removing battery for 5 minutes).
• NIC LED is not lit when in sleep but it's also not lit on my other PC when in sleep and WOL works for that PC.
• I tried enabling "Wake on when hit PS/2 spacebar" in BIOS, started Ubuntu, selected "Standby" from menu so that it got into standby, pressed spacebar, and it started. Also worked after Terminal command pm-suspend and halt -p (shuts down and reboots completely though) but does not wake after command halt. Halt makes the OS shut down but the HW to remain on. Still ignoring WOL in all cases.
• When in standby the power LED blinks, fans and hard disk are silent, and this remains the same after WOL attempts
• Program used for sending magic packets is: magicpacket(dot)free(dot)fr on a different (Windows) PC
• Settings for Magic Packet sender is UDP port 80 subnet mask 255.255.255.255 and that's the settings it worked with but I also tried ports 9, 7 and 0, TCp and mask 0.0.0.0. Have double checked MAC address but I entered it via copy-and-paste and it has worked with these settings 3 times as I mentioned.
• I have only used Ubuntu for a week (have some brief experience with Linux and Unix systems from long ago)
• I haven't added "ethtool -s eth0 wol g" (or "echo -n LAN | sudo tee /proc/acpi/wakeup") to startup scripts since I believe WOL should work ONCE if these things are set properly (script are needed to make it work after each reboot) The motherboard Asus AT5NM10T-I has no BIOS updates (is v0306) Tried most things on these pages: wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Wake_on_LAN -- en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/ACPI/Fix_common_problems#Nothing_Works -- wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO:Enable_Wake-On-Device_for_Ubuntu

Updates:

• Yes I have enabled "Power on by PME" (PCI Power Management Events) in BIOS. I also enabled "Power on by Ring" since someone suggested that in a forum but I can't believe it affects WOL but also can't hurt. Since it worked 3 rimes this is no BIOS settings problem.
• I actually tried reinstalling Ubuntu 12.04, and again it worked 3 times then after that is dead. (Actually this time it worked 1 time, then didn't work, then worked 2 times in a row, then never again.) --- Some details on this new test which probably have no significance: It didn't work until I enabled Samba properly for file sharing between PCs in a workgroup. The 3 times it worked I did not have to send sudo ethtool -s eth0 wol g (sudo ethtool eth0 always reports it is in wol mode "g" so apparently my NIC starts in that mode). And sudo cat /proc/acpi/wakeup now always shows LAN as "enabled" now. This time I used the downloaded 12.04 without updates (Ubuntu's desktop said there were no updates), later (long after it stopped working) it said there were 136 updates, I installed them and rebnooted, still didn't work.
• Apparently this NIC has been troublesome for Linux users for years, but I thought it was working properly since recently, with the driver that comes with the kernel. It isone of the most common NICs I think.

Update:

• I tested with Ubuntu 11.10. It has the same problems, or a version of it: WOL seems to work about 1 out of 4 times. Doesn't suddenly stop working, just doesn't work every time (far from it).
• Tested with Windows 7. Installed Realtek driver. Ticked "allow only magic packet to wake up" in NIC settings (HW manager) and it worked flawlessly, tested 5 times in a row. Note: First I didn't bother to install video and audio drivers and then only hibernation worked, but it did respond to WOL calls flawlessly. Installed video and audio driver plus "PC Probe II" which seems to have something to do with ACPI driver. Did this after I read in Wikipedia on ACPI that Windows might not allow standby (S3) if one device in the system doesn't support acpi.
• When in sleep mode (or hibernation) in Windows, I can still see this unit in the router's list of attached devices (but the LED on the NIC is out). (As I said before, for a different PC, it is not seen in this list even though WOL works, so apparently this isn't always the case). For this PC, however, it might indicate that the NIC hasn't any power, i e that the problem here is that Ubuntu shuts down the NICs power.
• I forgot to mention my machines are all 64 bit. It is not so uncommon that 32 bit drivers work while 64 bit drivers don't. So one suspicion is that the 64 bit Realtek driver still doesn't work properly on Linux with RTL8111 etc - I know there's been problems with these NICs for years which I read were solved rather recently, but can anyone confirm they have RTL8111/RTL8168&RTL8168B etc working with WOL on a 64 bit machine?

So my main theories for now are:

• Ubuntu system shuts down NIC power in standby mode?
• Realtek driver for 64-bit machines does not work?

 How to highlight buttons in a GTK toolbar

By - David Planella

I've written an application using Python and Glade. The app has got a toolbar with a dark background, and each toolbar button has got a custom image (i.e. no stock icons are used).

I've noticed that when using stock icons instead of custom images as icons, whenever the mouse hovers over the button the button is highlighted, which does not happen with my custom images.

Thunderbird seems to go a step further and rather than highlighting the icons, it inverts their color, which works quite well for a dark theme (see below):

Button not highlighted, normal color

Button highlighted on hover, color inverted

How can I get my custom icon images or the buttons to be highlighted on hover?

 VPN has not worked since upgrading to 12.04

By - Ben

I am trying to establish a VPN connection on 12.04. It had worked in 11.10 but not at all right now. I can connect with Windows 7. My roommate also recently upgraded and is having the same problem.

Here is an excerpt from my system log: http://paste.ubuntu.com/991558/

We would appreciate any help!

UPDATE: I have tried recreating the connection and allowing MPPE encryption. My roommate found that he is able to get a VPN connection at another location. Is it possible that this has something to do with the way Ubuntu is communicating with this specific (and, I forgot to mention, new Buffalo) router, while Windows has no issues at all?

 Why do I see a purple then black screen when booting and a 'failed to load module "nv"' error when running startx in tty1?

By - user63098

I just installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS from a USB stick. After the Installation (XP works besides) grub shows both OS. When trying to start there is the purple Screen for some seconds, and then the Screen goes black, but with backlight. No mouse no cursor.

With Ctrl+Alt+F2 I get into tty1. Trying startx I get to the Messages that state:

failed to load module "nv" and some other NVIDIA related error messages.

Well, from the stick without Installation on HDD everything was great, but now I dont get into the GUI.

Maybe there is some help for me? I tried updating of the Drivers and some other things, (ppa) but it does not work

 How to install VMWare Player

By - willy

I am new to Ubuntu/Linux and I want to install VMWare Player in my Ubuntu 12.04. Can anyone please guide me step by step how to install VMWare Player?

 Replace Realtek r8168 network card to enable wake-on-lan?

By - Andrej

I've been struggling with wake-on-lan (WoL) capability of my onboard Realtek RTL8111/8168B ethernet controller (MB: Gigabyte Z68AP-D3) for almost a week now. The main issue seems to be that network card is switched off completely during shutdown (i.e., both link and (act)ivity LED lights are off).

I made an extensive review of similar issues and tried the following (among others):

• Putting ethtool -s eth0 wol g to rc.local file.
• Installing latest r8168 driver(s) from Realtek.
• Putting echo -n "my_lan_id" >> /proc/acpi/wakeup to rc.local file.
• Switching WOL option on and off in BIOS.

I can find no way to prepare my NIC to work properly so I decided to try with external PCI network card. Please suggest me which network card should I try to enable WoL? (Maybe Intel® PRO/1000 GT Desktop Adapter?)

 Wireless network cannot be enabled for Sony VAIO E series

By - MiNdFrEaK

I cannot use the wireless network from my Sony VAIO E series laptop. My OS is Ubuntu 12.04. Please help.

 Ubuntu 12.04 Restarts to Login Constantly

By - Jeremy Person

I've tried the below settings which didn't seem to affect the restarts.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

I am now running the latest Nvidia drivers from the website installed manually and I'm still having problems with persistent restarts (below from the kern log). Any ideas on anything different I can do to try and resolve the problem?

May  6 07:16:47 jeremy-System-Product-Name kernel: [35742.561193] 
NVRM: Xid (0000:01:00): 6, PE0001 

May  6 07:16:47 jeremy-System-Product-Name kernel: [35742.586301] 
Xorg[13681]: segfault at b4f21000 ip b487d4a6 sp bf850eb0 error 7 
in nvidia_drv.so[b47a4000+707000]

May  6 07:18:04 jeremy-System-Product-Name kernel: [35819.932420] 
NVRM: Xid (0000:01:00): 1, Channel 00000001 Method 00000000 Data 000803c0

May  6 07:18:06 jeremy-System-Product-Name kernel: [35821.934616] 
NVRM: os_schedule: Attempted to yield the CPU while in atomic or interrupt context

May  6 07:18:08 jeremy-System-Product-Name kernel: [35823.958149] 
Xorg[20188]: segfault at b4efb000 ip b48584a6 sp bfca8340 error 7 in 
nvidia_drv.so[b477f000+707000]

 12.04 GUI Hangs when using multiload-indicator

By - Francis Upton

I upgraded to 12.04 Tuesday (1 May) and as of 3 May the GUI has hung 4-5 times:

1. the clock stops moving
2. the mouse cursor is responsive, but nothing happens when I click
3. I can ssh to the machine

I have tried killing various processes, but have not found which to kill to make any difference, so I end up rebooting.

I applied an update from yesterday (which was a new kernel) and that has not helped.

Linux berlioz 3.2.0-24-generic #38-Ubuntu SMP Tue May 1 16:18:50 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Machine: Intel 2 Duo X6800, Asus P5B Deluxe, Graphics: NVidia GeForce 7300GS (256MB)

I'm not using Unity (gnome3 instead), I did not install compiz, but I don't know if it's installed.

Obviously this makes it pretty much unusable. What can I do to capture some information so that someone can tell what's going on and I can get a fix? Or is there any process I can kill that will allow me to avoid a reboot? If this cannot be fixed soon, is there a way to move back to the previous working release?

EDIT:

I followed the suggestions in the answer to this question: Stuck at login screen

And now my system will not boot. The last line it gives is:

• Starting TiMidity++ ALSA midi emulation [OK]

(this happens consistently upon a full boot -- I suppose I need to see what's happening next in the boot, or perhaps remove the TiMidity thing in recovery mode somehow)

EDIT2:

I was able to boot in recovery mode after changing the gdm to use lightdm, I can not boot normally. I will try to see what's happening in dmesg if the hang happens again.

EDIT3:

dmesg output at the time of the hang:

http://pastebin.com/JNVDHcyg

EDIT4:

I have filed this bug report:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/994306

EDIT5:

Another data point, this seems to be related to the multiload indicator that shows multiple bar-graphs in the Gnome panel. I switched to this type of system indicator when upgrading to 12.04 (I previously used a different one that showed only a single bar graph, but I could not find that one again after I updated)

Here is a link to the multiload-indicator that seems to be causing the problems:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/easily-monitor-system-resources-in-ubuntu-with-indicator-multiload/

Note that I use this in the gnome-panel (below) rather than that indicator bar that it at the top.

Since I have disabled this multiload-indicator, the problem has not happened once.

 Ubuntu 12.04 can't reassign <alt>space keybinding

By - Gabriel

I use alt+space shortcut for Synapse.

I have reassigned the Activate Windows Menu from alt+space but cannot still receive an error Failed to register hotkey 'activate' with signature 'space'

 Eboard FICS guest doesn't work properly

By - foowg

I can log on to FICS as a guest through eboard. I notice that when I start a timed game with an opponent (say of 10 min), the console reflects the board (in ACSII) along with the remaining time, but the graphic board doesn't reflect anything. Other than just the name of the opponent, the graphic board only shows "unlimited time" and nothing goes on there. When I make a move on the graphic board, the console board will reflect my move along with its ticking clock, but graphic board doesn't show anything.

I tried doing the same in pychess, but similar problem crops up. I wonder if there is something fundamentally wrong with the configurations since both different softwares shows up the same problem? What are the workarounds suggested?

I am using ubuntu 12.04, upgraded from ubuntu 10.04 just this morning.

Many thanks!

 Is it possible to run a command on the client when a ssh session is closed?

By - Sorin Sbarnea

I know that I can run a local command when I establish a ssh connection, something which is quite useful for setting up terminal title for example.

Still, I'm looking for a solution to run a command when the ssh connection is closed.

Usage:

>ls
>ssh server2
# want to run something here on the client, this can be done with .ssh/config ProxyCommand
>ls
>exit
# I want to run something on the client, how!?
>ls

 How to upgrade SAMBA on UBUNTU 10.04.04

By - casey_miller

On Ubuntu 10.04.4 there is an old samba 3.4.7 how can I upgrade it to the latest 3.5.13 or 3.6.3?

 Permanantly set monitor as primary

By - user1131467

I am running Ubuntu 12.04 (beta) with a triple head setup and GNOME 3 desktop (ie "GNOME" selected not "Ubuntu" at login screen). It seems that it handles multiple monitors by blessing one monitor to receive the Activities bar, Clock, Login Menu, etc. Let's call this the "primary" monitor. How do I change it (permanently) ?

Update: Ok so:

$ xrandr --output DFP4 --primary

Does the trick temporarily. How do I make it permanent? I'm using latest fglrx ATI Catalyst driver

 Drag and Drop across (fullscreen) applications, switching via Alt-Tab

By - type

Example

Drag media file onto Totem's playlist to enqueue

Bug in Compiz

Especially for Unity (formerly Netbook Edition, being intended for small screens) this is quite a vital feature, as applications most often are run fullscreen, and dragging with the touchpad can be cumbersome.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/624810

Any hint on where to start fixing the bug? Which file/line in compiz source code?

Usability background

According to Fitts, Accot, and Zhai, the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the distance to and the size of the target (cf. Fitts's law and Steering law).

Drag'n'Drop without Alt-Tab across fullscreen windows requires

1. start to drag object
2. move to launcher/taskbar
3. steer to target app icon -- small and distant target!
4. wait for app to become focused
5. steer onto window -- (huge target)
   optionally: steer onto intended area of window, e.g. playlist (fairly large target)
6. drop object

Drag'n'Drop with Alt-Tab on the other hand only requires

1. start to drag object
2. Alt-Tab to other app
   optionally: steer onto intended area of window, e.g. playlist (fairly large target)
3. drop object

Thus, no small and distant target required for Drag'n'Drop whilst Alt-tabbing

Workarounds

Interesting and probably for many users useful alternative approaches are presented in the answers below. Great many thanks to the community!

Correct answer

... seems to be available only when the bug is fixed, though.

Some more recent action, maybe relevant as related bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/727903

 Black screen after "Lock Screen"

By - pf.me

I'm using a new HP Home G42-215BR notebook, which uses an Intel HD Graphics GPU (i915 kernel driver).

My Ubuntu 10.10 installation is new and is up-to-date.

When I choose to lock screen in the menu and close the lid, if I reopen the lid within a short period of time everything works. But if it stays idle for a while and I reopen the lid, I don't get the login screen. All that I can see is a black screen with my mouse cursor. I can switch to tty1 (which works) with no problem, but switching back to tty7 doesn't helps, I can't get the login screen anymore.

I don't want to have to reboot after I lock the screen.

Any ideas?