In a previous post, we saw 3 add-ons for Firefox and Thunderbird that allowed them to use Ubuntu or KDE notification system, so they would integrate much better with the OS. There is a similar add-on available for the geat media player Songbird too! It can display title/artist/album name/genre/rating (any metadata actually and in any order you like) and the album cover! You can find ubuntu-notifyOSD here.
Rant: Why Songbird is still not in the Ubuntu/Debian repositories (PPA is not a good solution, it should be in the real repositories) is beyond my comprehension and probably beyond any (un)reasonable explanation. It can't be that hard for the Ubuntu, Debian & Songbird developers to package it, can it???
Rant update!!!!! As if absence form repositories was not enough, Songbird team announced that they are droping official support for Linux!!!!! Community builds will keep coming for anyone who still cares to use it. Maybe Songbird on Linux was doomed from the beginning with most KDE distros shipping with Amarok and Ubuntu and many others with Rythmbox. But this is a really lame excuse, as many other programs thrive, despite not being the default ones. The biggest reason for its failure was not ever really trying to provide packages for the most popular distributions and using the system theme to integrate better with the OS.
So, as my favorite Southpark character Cartman would say: Where "home" would be the preinstalled Rythmbox.
Since Jaunty, Ubuntu has a very cool notification system. KDE developers have also reworked the notification system to be more elegant and functional. The only problem is that not all applications use them yet, so there are inconsistencies between applications. This is solved for Firefox and Thunderbird, with the use of add-ons.
For Firefox, there isFirefoxNotify if you use Ubutnu and PlasmaNotify if you use any KDE based distribution.
FirefoxNotify for Ubuntu
PlasmaNotify for KDE
For Thunderbird you can use Mozilla Notification Extensions (currently experimental, didn't cause any issues to me) or Growl New Message Notification if you are using a MAC. The page of the last, notes that there is a newer version in the project's website, but at the moment it just displays "Blog program not done yet."
Mozilla Notification Extensions for Ubuntu
Since Firefox & Thunderbird are installed by default in many KDE distributions and Ubuntu (only Firefox), they should consider preinstalling those add-ons as well for a more unified look.
Having tried the Alpha 5 in September and finding it stable and fast in my laptop, I was very eager to try the official release. If reading the rest bores you, the verdict in 2 words is: it rocks!! And yes, the brown-orange theme has finally gone away!! Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope had nice improvements such as the ext4 filesystem, which offered faster boot times among other advantages and the cool redesigned notification system, the disaster of the Intel graphics driver made it unusable to 50% of laptops... Having this terrible regression fixed by switching to the new UXA acceleration method, what new does Karmic Koala brought that made me and everyone else write dithyrambic reviews??? (Apart from trolls and Ubuntu-haters...)
First of all, ext4 has now matured enough and it is the default option on a new installation. It makes the boot process a lot faster, which is a big plus especially to netbooks. In Karmic Koala, apart from the under the hood technical improvements, there were leaps in usability.
Usability improvements: During the development of Karmic Koala, the 100 papercuts project started with the aim to fix minor annoyances, which experienced users wouldn't notice any more, but are visible to newcomers and adding up they could make a noticeable difference in usability. While Ubuntu is being installed, there is a slideshow that guides users to the programs they need to use(Empathy for IM, Evolution for emails, F-Spot for photo album...) and most importantly to the Software Center in order to install programs. Amen!!!Finally the new Ubuntu user can figure out how to install a program without having to find someone who has done it before or ask in forums.The Software Center is a much improved version of the old Add/Remove(which many assumed that it was mainly for Uninstalling programs, like in the "intuitive" windows) and has the big advantage of fetching a screenshot of each application to help the user find what he/she wants among the thousands of available applications. It is also lays the necessary infrastructure for Companies to sell their applications, in the likes of the Android market.
(Software Center, new theme, "humanity" icons and cool notifications)
New Artwork: The artwork finally improved considerably, with a fancier boot screen and a very cool -in my opinion- GDM login screen. As for the notification system, it dims & blurs when you hover the mouse over it and it simply looks awesome!!! I really hope it makes way upstream to Gnome, so every Gnome based distro will have it. The Human theme was updated and it is dark brown instead of the much criticized brown-orange of previous versions and there are other themes you can actually use(in the past versions, I haven't heard of a single person in the world to have ever used Crux theme for more than a day...). The new Humanity icons are far superior to the mundane Human icons of the previous versions and there are abundant wallpapers to choose from vs the only 2-3 wallpapers in the past.
Ubuntu One client preinstalled: Ubuntu One can be very useful for sharing files between Ubuntu PCs. Unfortunately if you use other OSs apart from Ubuntu , you won't find the appropriate client for them...But you can still use the Web GUI to get a file you need or upload something. The more frequent use I can find for Ubuntu One is syncing files between my home PC and my netbook, which runs Ubuntu Netbook Remix.
(Ubuntu One web interface)
Default applications: The deafault applications are in their newest versions: Firefox 3.5, OpenOffice 3.1, Gnome 2.28 and kernel 2.6.31.Kubuntu comes with KDE 4.3.2, which has the awesome, the best theme ever "Air", to which win7 theme looks suspiciously alike (good move by MS!). If someone would make a Gnome rip-off theme of "KDE Air" I would immediately use it, in place of anything else. Unfortunately Kubuntu doesn't come with all the improvements of Ubuntu, such as the Software Center. Netbook users will prefer the UNR edition (Ubuntu Netbook Remix), whose interface was revamped to be even easier to use in the small netbook screens.
(Ubuntu Netbook Remix, new simpler-to-use interface design)
Servers: There is also the server edition, but personally I'll wait for 10.04, which will be an LTS version with 5 year support for servers. Till then my 8.04 install will keep serving me, as it has without failure for the last 1,5 year. For anyone who wants to set up a new server, it is a good choice because you can get official paid support from Canonical should you want to, and it also has Eucalyptus infastructure for deploying your Ubuntu installation to Amazon Servers.
The Future: Next Ubuntu version 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" will be a Long Term Support(LTS) version and will receive 5 years of support for servers and 3 years for all other editions. Since it will be an LTS version, the primary goal will be maximum stability, which will make it a good choice for OEMs to include in their products. The artwork design will once again improve, as well as the usability with another launch of the "100 papercuts" project. Currently, no radical new features have been announced and there probably won't be any, since ext4 is already the default file system and the next generation BTRFS is still under heavy development. Gnome 3.0 with the totally redisigned Gnome-shell won't make it for the same reason(not mature enough for an LTS version) but it will be available in the repositories. In the netbook field, Ubuntu Moblin remix will be released as well as the awesome (I have used awesome too many times, haven't I? But it's worth it ) looking Kubuntu Netbook Remix, which will be the best looking netbook OS by a long shot.
(Kubuntu Netbook. Was I exaggerating of it being awesome?? I think simply "awesome" is actually an understatement!)
So what are you waiting for?? Download Ubuntu today and give it a try.
I downloaded Ubuntu Karmic Koala Alpha 5 today and gave it a test in my laptop. This laptop has Intel 945 graphics chip and it performed horribly with Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04). For this reason, I still use Ubuntu 8.10 in that laptop and in my desktop I use 9.04.
The Live-USB booted with no issues. The boot process now uses Xsplash instead of Usplash and it is different than the previous version. The rest of the artwork is still the same, but it should change a lot until September 24th when the Artwork deadline exprires. The notification system dims & blurs when you hover the mouse over it and it simply looks awesome!!!
Default desktop, showing the cool notification system
The first thing I wanted to check was of course the performance of Intel graphics chip. Compiz worked flawlessly and glxgears run at about 1000fps, which was almost equal to 8.10 installed on the HDD. In 9.04, it had regressed several times slower.
I connected using an ethernet cable and as usual it worked fine. Sound was fine too and after 5 hours of running from the Live USB, it didn't crash (some applets crashed here and there, but the X system never)so I guess I could even upgrade now to this ALPHA version and start using it for my everyday computing!! After installation it will boot and run a lot faster compared to the live-USB and previous versions, since it uses the ext4 filesystem by default. By the time the stable version is released, the stable kernel and the tweaks by Ubuntu developers will probably give it another boost to speed along with stability.
I noticed a bug, the workspace switcher won't allow you to increase the number of virtual desktops, It was already submitted to Ubuntu's Launchpad, but not to Gnome bugzilla, so I filled it in the latter(copied Ubuntu's bug report actually...) So, that makes me a Gnome developer now, I guess...LOL!
Update: The bug is marked as fixed in Gnome bugzilla.
Summary of tests I performed on my laptop:
Graphics card: ✔
Sound: ✔
Ethernet: ✔
wireless: not tested
Microphone:✔
Touchpad, usb ports:✔
Function keys: ✔
So does an upgrade to Karmic Koala seem a good choice? For those with Intel graphics, it is an absolute must, since the driver in Jaunty was slow & broken and made many Ubuntu users skip that version or switch to other distros. For everyone else, it is a welcome (and free...) upgrade which includes a new kernel, ext4 by default, Firefox 3.5, Openoffice 3.1 and Gnome 2.28.
Next Alpha ver.6 will be available in September 17 and it will probably include new artwork, since the Artwork Second Drop, will take place in September 10th.
Sound Converter is a gnome sound conversion available for Linux. You can convert music files into another format (OOG, MP3 and Flac). The tool is very simple, just add the files, set the destination directory and convert the files.
Insert CD, The window below should open up. Click on Copy to Library
Disregard the time in the lower window. It doesn't take that long on my rig. More like 10 to 15 minutes. Open up home folder then music folder and you should have a folder like mine (though the one I'm doing is Tom Petty)
Now I'm going to create a Folder named Tom Petty 2 in harry/home
I wanna show you where sound converter now is.
Now select open file
Find your Music folder, Double left click it. Keep double clicking till you get to the listing of music you wish to convert.
Now click on edit and use select all. This will highlight all the songs you wish to copy off album. You can delete any songs later when you are done in its new folder (Tom Petty 2), Or you can select just individual songs to convert. Next hit the open button and your window should look like this below.
Now go to preferences. I make sure that destination folder is Tom Petty 2 by using the Choose button. I am converting my music from oog to mp3 if you look at the picture
Now just hit the Convert Button and you are off to the races. Not bad for a Tattoed knuckle dragging Biker who hated computers. If I can do it. Anybody can. Happy trails Guys and Gals
I 've been using Acer Aspire One for the last month and while I really like its GUI, which made it easy to use like a cell-phone, the pre-installed Linpus Lite is well...Lite... So I decided to install Ubuntu 8.10. But the conventional GUI of any OS, whether it is Ubuntu, Fedora or Windows is not well fitted to 9" screens. So my options where to install the "Easy Peasy" version of Ubuntu (Formerly Ubuntu Eee) or to install the interface of HP Mini. As you already guessed from the article title, I installed Easy Peasy!!!
First download Easy Peasy and burn the image to a CD(if you have a USB Cd-Rom) or creat a Live-USB, using UNetbootin. Unetbootin is a great tool that creates a Live-USB, using an ISO file of any Linux distribution. It works on Linux and Windows. It really can't get any better!!
Then press F12 while booting to invoke the boot menu and choose the USB. It will take a while to boot from the USB, since netbooks are not very fast, but once installed it doesn't take too long to boot(and the next version of Ubuntu & Easy Peasy will boot much faster, especially if you choose to use the EXT4 filesystem).
Easy Peasy will immediately present you the Ubuntu installer. If you want to try it first, to make sure everything works OK, just close the installer. After trying it for 2 hours I concluded that wifi & ethernet work OK, sound and videos OK, camera (using the cheese program) worked OK as well. In 2 words, everything worked out of the box!! Try installing Windows, entering the 25-digit password, going through the activation procedure, install drivers for everything (motherboard, wifi) codecs, firefox, skype, MSN or Pidgin, OpenOffice or MS-Office, antivirus, anti-spyware, anti-trojan, anti-everything and tell us how many hours it took you!!
Enough ranting, let's get back to business... The installation procedure is exactly the same as for Ubuntu. Select Language, time zone, keyboard layout, partitions, username & password and that's it. One important point is to use a non-journaling filesystem, because journaling is accussed of reducing the life of SSD drives. If your model has the classic hard disk, than select EXT3 (or EXT4 in the next version 9.04 of Ubuntu, to get better boot times). If your model has SSD, than select EXT2 filesystem. Apart from the EXT2 filesystem for the / partition, keep the swap partition as it is.
When the installation finishes, remove the USB and reboot. If you are connected to the Internet, you will be notified that there are updates available. These will probably be more than 150 and will take about 1 hour to be downloaded installed, but it is an easy 1click procedure.
If you prefer Thunderbird to Evolution, you can install it through Synaptic(in the Administration section) or from the terminal sudo apt-get install thunderbird I aldso installed vlc, although Easy Peasy has codecs for everything. Installation is the same as for Thunderbird.
It can't be that good, it just can't!!!! What's the catch??? If you can call it a catch, Ubuntu 9.04 was released in April 23rd, so you will either have to do a clean install or do an Internet update, which will take a LOT of time in a netbook and I can't recommend it. So you'll need to backup your /home folder, before the upgrade. Or you can wait for the next version of Easy Peasy that will be based on Ubuntu 9.04. Although Easy Peasy may stop being developed, since Jaunty has an official Netbook Version. I'll try it and post again in the next few days.
There is a minor bug, that you can fix within 30sec. The installer coming up every time you reboot after Easy Peasy is installed. Simply go to ->Preferences ->Sessions and disable Ubiquity
This is a tutorial on installing Songbird 1.0 on Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 LTS i386 32 bit. Installer also works for Ubuntu 8.10 32 bit Intrepid Ibex Also.As a Side note, Songbird is also available for Windows users also and I highly recommend installing it. You won't regret it.
I first went to this site here at Ubuntu http://unter-hund.com/2008/12/03/songbird-1-final-linux-installer/
Another trusted download site for this Deb package can be found here also http://www.getdeb.net/search.php?keywords=songbird
When Firefox download dialog box opened up I selected open file with gdebi package installer. After download finished, I closed my Firefox browser and proceeded to the open Window of Gdebi Package installer.
I then clicked on the install package button to let Gdebi install Songbird. You will be able to launch Songbird from Applications>Sound and Video>Songbird.
I launched Songbird and am first greeted with a EULA page. I agree to the terms and then click foward. Next are APPS that can be included in Songbird or removed depending on your tastes. I went ahead and let it install them all. That pretty much finished configuring Songbird.
Songbird opened up and looks like my top screenshot from my install. Enjoy Songbird. Details on it can be found at http://getsongbird.com/ for Windows users to find the download for it. 64 Bit versions are also available for Linux.
I downloaded Ubuntu 8.10 "Interbid Ibex" today and i am currently using it as a Live-CD. Everything seems to be working perfectly until now, so i will install it tomorrow and suggest it to all my friends & colleagues if no serious problem arises. What did i like the first 2 hours of use?
The new wallpaper that shows the Interbix Ibex (all Ubuntu codenames come from animals) is really cool.
The DarkRoom theme is cool as well. Many users like dark themes and this one is quite polished. It will also serve to lessen the accusations of Ubuntu haters, that Ubuntu's default theme sucks. Personally, i hope this really cool theme is released. It is currently only a mock-up, but it is very impressive and cannot be accused of being Mac or Vista rip-off.
The new network manager worked without any issues and can connect to networks before login, which is useful for network authentication (if i 've got that right). It is also more advanced in handling 3g networks.
Compiz 0.7.8 with the cylinder & sphere effects enabled! see screenshots below
It has 2.6.27-7 kernel which has A TON of new driver as well as new features.
X.org 7.4 which is suppossed to never require any configuration.
Gnome 2.24, with tabbed browsing in Nautilus.
You can search for printer driver from the internet inside the printer configuration program.(Although many printers will simply work out of the box)
You can encrypt files/folders. Works out of the box without installing anything else. I haven't figured out how it is done yet, though. I will write a new post about this.
The one thing that i did not like at all, was that OpenOffice was version 2.41 instead of 3.0. I hope that it will make it to the official repositories and soon. There are also 2 minor annoyances, that the compiz-settings-manager does not come pre-installed and that universe and multiverse repositories are not enabled by deafult (this can confuse new users). You can install it from System->Administration->Synaptic or from the terminal with this command: sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
All in all, Ubuntu 8.10 is a great operating system and once you install your first program using the Synaptic package manager, it is easier to use and maintain than Vista or even Windows Xp and way more impressive. (No defragment,1 click update for ALL YOUR PROGRAMS, virtually no viruses and malware.Those viruses can't even infect the whole OS, just the current user)
Harry informed me yesterday that he found this super cool "Portable Ubuntu". And what is this thing you'll ask? Yet Another Live-cd??? The answer is NO. Portable Ubuntu can be run INSIDE WINDOWS WITHOUT VMWARE or any other virtualization program!!
It did not take long to start and it did not reboot the system. The first "screen" i saw was actually this bar at the top of the screen.Don't let appearances mislead you though, it is a full Ubuntu System.
It comes with Firefox 3.0.1, Pidgin, F-Spot, Totem,Abiword & Gnumeric, Rhytmbox and 17 games. I connected to the Internet immediately, WITHOUT CONFIGURATION! And i have static IP and proxy server! It took the configuration straight from windows, without my intervention. It even played youtube videos(although very bumpy and not really viewable,4-5 fps), since it had the flash plug-in preinstalled. The first things i install on all Linux installations i make, are Vlc & Amarok. So, i opened Synaptic and installed them without any problem. It is similarly easy to install openoffice or anything else you want.
Note: default password is 123456
The only bug i discovered, is that you cannot change the time settings, which means that when you go to some websites(Google for example), you will see everything in Polish..I have already emailed the developer, Claudio César Sánchez Tejeda and i hope he will fix it soon.
All in all, Portable Ubuntu is a must. With it you can show to everyone how easy Linux is, without even rebooting their computer! How cooler and easier can it get?? I believe that it will allow even more people to learn how to use Linux, with no interruption their everyday tasks at home or work. So, don't wait any longer, download it now and show it to your friends! Thank you for the great work Claudio!
You installed Ubuntu so easy and are starting to get the hang of it, for tasks such as web browsing, emails and document editing. And then you read that there is this super-duper program that you must absolutely install(k3b for example, the best cd/dvd burning program). But when you double click the file you just downloaded, you see it is a compressed archive and apart from viewing the contents, nothing else happens:( Before you start screaming in terror and format your hard disk, read the following!!It is very easy to install something in Ubuntu, just a different approach compared to Windows.
First of all, i assume that you are connected to the internet.
Go to System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager Give your password Click Search
Right click on k3b and select "Mark for Installation" It will ask you to install some needed packages as well. Click "Mark"
Click "apply" twice.
It will start downloading files Success! K3b is now ready for use! It was not so tough, was it? You can find it now under Applications->Sound & Vieo->K3b.
Another option, which is faster in many cases is from the command line. Just open a terminal and type: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get install k3b
The third will install the program you want. Just replace k3b with anything. The first command will update the the information on new programs & updates. The second will install ALL updates(kernel, openoffice,firefox, etc) EVERYTHING IN ONE COMMAND!(2 clicks in update manager) Linux haters would kill to have this feature in their OS, although they won't admit it!!
Last step: HAVE FUN!That's what Linux is all about(apart from freedom,security and choice) :)
In order to get the awesome Compiz-Fusion effects(see the videos at the right part) you must install the proprietary Ati or Nvidia driver. A simple way to do this, is using EnvyNG. EnvyNG is a tool that downloads and installs Ati & Nvidia drivers.
Open a terminal and type: sudo apt-get install envyng-gtk If you use KDE type instead: sudo apt-get install envyng-qt
To start envyNG type: envy-gtk or envyng-qt, depending which one you installed.
You will see the following:
Just select Ati or Nvidia and Install with Automatic Hardware Detection. It will download the latest drivers and install them from the Internet. After the installation, reboot your PC. After the reboot, you will be able to enable Compiz-Fusion and play 3D games. If you encounter problems with low resolution or anything else post your problem to Linux Forums and the forum members will help you solve it.
