Tag Archives: Ubuntu

Random Update

Posted by on April 7, 2014 No comments

Once again its been awhile since posting here.  I have been pretty busy as of late, with a decent amount of work coming in, but also the family side is taking a lot more of my time, thanks to the wife working more then me! 

Let see, Ubuntu 14.04 will be out in a matter of weeks! So that's pretty exciting.  They are brining in a few nice updates, such as allowing local menus again (not all the file menu's at the very top, but in each app if you desire).  Its a setting you can enable in the settings panel.  They have also improved the scaling for super HD monitors, such as the 4k displays.  The kernel will also be 3.13 with a already back port from 3.14 for the new intel graphics support.  So I'm fairly excited about this LTS release.  Things we will NOT see for a fairly long time is the Mir display server, as its not up to spec yet, which is a bit disapointing, but understandable, as that's something you want rock solid!  Due mostly because of all the contraversy, I kinda wish Canonical would just go back to making Wayland their target but o well (I just hate seeing a big divide in use of a main OS subsystem).  

In other news, SteamOS is coming along nicely and thanks largely to SteamOS, the 3 main Video card makers seem to be picking up the slack for improving the Open Source Drivers for their video cards!  Nvidia is not doing a heck of a lot for older cards, but they seem to be doing a fair bit of work for their SoC Tegra graphics support.  They will also hopfully open up more documentation along the way to help out the open source driver.  SteamOS is also using Debian as their main OS instead of Ubuntu (As I think I mentioned before).  If the Open Source drivers keep inproving, I may give straight Debian a try instead of Ubuntu.  

 

Linux continues to please

Posted by on May 13, 2011 No comments

It seems like the more you figure out linux, the more you just love it. It is truly amazing at what you can do with it. When I found the screen program, that made me very happy when dealing with servers and SSH, now I’m happy about finding update-rc.d. This handy system prog allows you to run scripts on startup under a runtime level. If you don’t care to know too much about it, simply create your script, give it execute permissions and put it in /etc/init.d/ and run “sudo update-rc.d script defaults” (assuming your script name is “script”). Wala, it will now run automatically for you on boot. pretty spiffy eh? I just used it to bind some directories from my windows partition to my Ubuntu folders so my files stay up to date on either end, but you can do much more then that.

Updated Windows XP Install disk’s!

Posted by on April 24, 2011 2 comments

This has probably been on my to do list for years, but I have just now completed it! I have made a USB stick with the installation disks of XP Home (OEM/Retail) and XP Pro (OEM/Retail/Corp) on it! Now that’s nothing fancy, but having them completely updated to a few days ago and pre-done with almost every driver out there is! Not only that, but it also has the mass storage drivers built in to use when you first install it. What’s that mean? It means it can be installed on RAID and some special SATA interfaces without having to load drivers from a floppy!

Doing this was not a easy task. It took me 3 days of messing with a lot of programs to find the right ones and doing it in the right combinations. That being said I can now do a full reload with updates and drivers in under 30 min depending on the system 🙂 I also found a way to pre-load applications in there, but only added a few like 7zip, defraggler and VLC player.

Next step is doing it for Windows Vista and Windows 7! O yea, did I mention I also have Ubuntu 10.04-2 install ISO on there? 🙂 One usb stick to install them all! … Minus Vista and 7 due to lacking space…

Ubuntu 11.04!

Posted by on April 18, 2011 No comments

10 days away now and I’m a bit excited about this release. I have been using the beta for awhile now, and although it was pretty buggy at first (lots of crashes), it seems to be pretty stable now. There are a lot of things I like about the Unity interface and think its the right direction for sure. That being said I have also tried the new gnome3 and actually like it a little bit more (maybe because it was more stable at the time) but in time I’m sure they will both become very attractive for varying reasons.

I’m interested to see how the community reacts to this release, since its the first that will come default with unity.

Ubuntu moving away from X?

Posted by on November 5, 2010 2 comments

An interesting move Here. I’m all for moving things forward, so it will be interesting to see how this goes. I like the ideas that mark mentions in here, like taking advantage of the newer graphics cards. Hopefully this will encourage video card manufactures to open source their drivers or a variant of them too. Also if its easier to develop on top of Wayland as apposed to X, this will help improve the development process and get better UI’s out sooner!

Looking forward to seeing a Ubuntu version using it!

RedShift GUI

Posted by on July 13, 2010 No comments

Heres something interesting. Its called RedShiftGUI and its a interface for the program RedShift. Essentially it changes your monitors color depending on the time of day, in order to make it easier on the eyes. I just installed it (at like 3 in the morning) and I noticed a difference right away! Granted the colors seem a bit off (more red) but the strain on my eye’s decreased dramatically!

There is a windows and linux version available. So far I have only tried the linux version on ubuntu 10.04.

Get some instructions Here

Download it Here

Meritocracy not Democracy in Ubuntu

Posted by on June 12, 2010 2 comments

I read this article that reminded me a bit about The Venus Project. It talks about how the founder of the Ubuntu OS, Mark Shuttleworth, made a comment when people where complaining about the close/minimize/maximize buttons being moved to the left hand side in Ubuntu. Here’s what he said.

“(Jono Bacon says) As we discussed different approaches, I recommended that we could hold a vote, to which Mark responded: “No, this is not a democracy.” At first, my reaction was pretty much the same rabbit-caught-in-headlights response that some people experienced recently. Democracy felt like a culturally familiar, comfortable and fair approach to community, so the idea it was not our culture came as a bit of a bolt out of the blue. Mark continued to explain the position:
“In Ubuntu, decisions are not driven by a popularity contest, but instead by informed decision-makers with firm experience of the problem and making solutions.” After he’d clarified what Ubuntu was not, he followed up with what it was: “Ubuntu is a meritocracy.” ”

It reminded me of The Venus Project because they don’t advocate democracy for every decision. Not every one is well enough informed to make an appropriate decision in all areas. Think of it this way, would you ask your mechanic to fix your computer? or your lawyer to to plan your dream wedding? or your plumber to fix your teeth? Of course not, because that is not their area of expertise. Of course input is welcomed and encouraged because you don’t need to be an expert in order to think of something to contribute, but its up to the people who are well informed to interpret your idea’s and suggestions and ultimately make a decision.

Read the full story Here

Ubuntu Light

Posted by on May 12, 2010 2 comments

Seem as though Canonical (Ubuntu guys) has created a version called “Ubuntu Light” which can boot in 7 seconds to a working web browser on a dell mini 10v using a solid state drive. They are still actively developing it, so its not in its final release yet, but may be of interest to people who are tired of waiting for the computer to load when all they want to do is check email or Facebook. This will definitely give Google a strong competitor vs. their “Chromium OS” since Ubuntu Light still runs apps off the local disk, as apposed to Chromium which runs most things off the cloud (aka internet servers).

You can get more info Here

Good point about Windows & Ubuntu

Posted by on May 11, 2010 1 comment

I read a good article about how people say “Linux is not user friendly” but what they really mean is “Linux is not Windows”. They are so used to windows that they expect all other OS’s to be exactly the same. If you take a person who has no experience with computers, they’ll probably pick up Ubuntu faster then windows.

Click Here for the article.

Ubuntu 10.04 thoughts

Posted by on April 30, 2010 No comments

Well I have used ubuntu 10.04 for a few days now, and overall I like it. The integrated “system tray” is very pleasing. It not only integrates what I will call your “identity” (chat, ubuntu user, ubuntu one service, Facebook, twitter, etc) but it does it very nicely 🙂 Like when you put your status to away it does it for all chat clients, you can also broadcast a message to all your social services like msn, ICQ, Facebook, twitter, etc.

As for glitches, I have run into a few.  Like when I tested out the Ubuntu one by sharing a folder outside the usual ubuntu one folder, that went ok, but un-sharing it crashed naustils like every time and the folder is still shared.  Also if you use the new theme with the icons on the left, just changing the color of the theme will break the icon placement back to the right hand side… which might be nice for some people who don’t like the placement 😛  I’ll mention I did do an upgrade as apposed to a fresh install, so that may have something to do with some of the glitches (old config?).

All in all though, I give Ubuntu 10.04 a 8/10 because all the usual stuff runs rock solid and there are some nice new shiny features!  O yea they also fixed a sound glitch I ran into with 9.10 (pop sound when re-initializing sound card from sleep).  So that’s a plus!  I also just want to mention, unlike some others OS’s, I have yet to find a problem in Ubuntu that could not be fixed by yours truly (and a Google search).  This is one of the huge benefits of Open Source software!