Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 2

I have decided that I am going to go through the whole of Karmic Koala’s development, and will write bugs, and document my problems etc with it.

So, I just upgraded from Alpha 1 (in which nothing was different really…just a debian sync) to Alpha 2.

What happened now? My audio setup has been mucked up. Woop! I had a great pulseaudio setup with pavucontrol, and everything was working fine. Now…its gone back to only 1 output working. Which is kind of annoying. Will try and fix it and see if I can.

I have also notices that firefox 3.5 is in the repo now (although it is called firefox-3.1, even though the version number is 3.5b4).

Gnome 2.27.1 is the version now, but I can’t see anything different with it, and also the kernel has been updated to 2.6.30-5.6.

Apart from these things, I can’t notice anything else really new, but it is only the second alpha, so there should be lots more to come.

***EDIT***

Turns out the problem lies with firefox. I can have more than 1 app using my sound card. Unless one of them is Firefox. If firefox uses my sound card, nothing else can. And if something else is using my sound card, firefox can’t. But, everything else seems fine. Odd.

TomTom added to my "Good Companies" list

You may remember a while ago, Microsoft started to try and sue TomTom for its use of the Linux Kernel and the Fat filesystem (in a big mess of patents that noone totally understands). Well, TomTom then decided to try and sue Microsoft over their mapping system. Supposodly it breaks a TomTom patent. Ok, so noone likes suing and patents, but that is only part of what TomTom has done which has made them into my Good Companies list.

TomTom joined the Open Invention Network. This is a group of companies (such as Red Hat, IBM, Google, etc) who joined together to share patents and fight Microsoft and Apple essentially. By joining the Open Invention Network, TomTom promise to not sue any other companie in the Open Invention Network and to help fight any companies trying to sue another companie in the Network. In return for this, TomTom get the protection of all the other companies in the Network. The only other requirement is they have to have something to do with Linux or Open Source software.

This is a great move, because, by doing this, it stops TomTom being able to make a patent deal with Microsoft, and shows that TomTom are really willing to fight Microsoft. This is great, because now we will see if Microsoft really has anything, or if it is just scaremongering. I think this is fantastic and I am very happy with TomTom, and for this reason, they are now on my Good Companies list. Good on ya TomTom

Video of the Week: Bumptop

I haven’t done a Video of the Week for a while, so decided to give you another one. Enjoy this super fantastic, amazing, special great video, and get as excited as I am. I sooo can’t wait for this.

They are currently in Private Beta with the Windows version, working on the Mac version, and will start work on the Linux version soon.

Hope you enjoy this.

3 cheers for Sony

Now, you normally won’t hear me saying good things about any big companies. Its not actually that they have done anything good anyways. Allow me to explain.

I, obviously, use linux. And this, no doubt, makes people ask me questions. One such person is a guy who is on the same Uni course as me. He asked questions, and this led me to telling him that linux is fantastic, free, etc etc etc. This obviously impacted on him, and today he told me that he installed Ubuntu 8.10 from a WUBI. Obviously, I was pleased, so I asked to see his laptop to see what it was like.

Apart from being kinda slow to start up, it was very pleasing. I assume the slow starting up was because it was going through 2 bootloaders, and stuff. He told me that he had installed compiz, and this made me very shocked, as this implies his graphics card was automatically detected and installed with an Open-source driver. Because as far as I know, Ubuntu does not install anything proprietry without actually asking you. Specifically with drivers.

So, he turned it on, asked me to turn it into a cube, and I did, thus proving that it installed open-source drivers that can handle open-gl. Score 1.

Second of all, I realised that it had automatically connected to the Uni wireless. I asked him if he had installed anything or if it had just worked. The answer – it just worked. Score 2.

Next, I installed and booted up Cheese to see if his webcam worked. It did. Score 3.

Finally, I asked if his sound was working. It was. Score 4.

So, all in all, a very good effort on all accounts. I know Sony probably didn’t have much to do with this, but it is good because I assume that most Sony Viaos will work pretty much the same way with Ubuntu. We now have a new happy Linux user. Granted he hasn’t entered the command line yet…but it’ll come. Don’t worry.

Crunchbang Planet

Just thought I would introduce myself to the Crunchbang Planet.

My name is Alistair McKinlay, I am an Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering student at Strathclyde Uni in Glasgow. I have been using Linux almost exclusively for around 3.5 years, and I am hooked. I was addicted to Gnome with Compiz, but I agreed to a bet to use something else for a month. This was when I heard the Linux Outlaws talking about #!, and thought I would try it.

Since then, I have become obsessed with openbox, and #! in general. I think it is amazing the amount of control you have with openbox, and I just find it sooooo great to just play around with it. I also think that #! in general is the most friendly distro I have come across. Everyone is so welcoming and always keen to help.

In my spare time, I help at a couple of youth clubs at my church, and I try and fit in some guitar-playing and some book-reading in amongst the configuring of my computer, and trying to learn some python.

I am also a Christian, and I may post some things to do with that now and again. I do believe that God exists, and I believe his son, Jesus, came to earth to save us for our sins. Now, you may not believe that, and I am up for any discussions you may have on the issue, but I do not like shouting matches, nor name calling.

I hope that you enjoy my blogging. It is my thoughts, my annoyances, my everyday stuff, my life essentially. If you find it boring, tell me. If you find it funny, tell me. If you agree with me, tell me. If you disagree with me, tell me. If you don’t like me and you wish I wasn’t born…keep that to yourself. Nah, I’m only joking . Tell me whatever you think about them. I want you to.

ClawsMail vs Thunderbird vs Spicebird

I have been getting increasingly annoyed with Thunderbird, as it hasn’t had a lot of work done on it, and Thunderbird 3.0 is looking like it is going to take ages to come round. Once it comes out I’ll try it. So…I found this cool program called Spicebird. However…it didn’t quite cut it.

I recently moved to Crunchbang Linux, and realised there was a very cool program that is installed by default. It is called Claws Mail. So I decided to try it.

There are many good things about it, and there are a few rubbishy things about it. Thing is, it seems like a program that wasn’t designed for ease of use. It is very powerful, very configurable, but very hard and confusing.

For example…I wanted to view html emails. I thought this would be simple. But it wasn’t.

1. sudo apt-get install claws-mail-html2-viewer
2. Go to Configuration > Plugins
3. Click on Load and go to /usr/lib/claws-mail/plugins and choose gtkhtml2_viewer.so
4. Configuration > Preferences > Message View > Text Options
5. Untick “Render html messages as text” and tick the 2 below it.
6. Configuration > Preferences > Plugins > GtkHtml2Viewer
7. Tick “Load remote images in mail” If you want it to.

So yeah…7 steps to view html messages in Claws mail.

So maybe it’s not the easiest. But it certanarily is the most configurable I’ve used in a long time. If you’ve not used it, then I would say use it. NOW.

Tech Predictions

Right, ok, so its that time of year when everyone tries to say what they think will happen with tech in the next year/few years.

Now, I don’t know why people keep doing this…because they are almost always wrong. Let me give you a few examples.

Bill Gates 1982 – “640K is more memory than anyone will ever need”
PC World in 2000 – “Within 3 years we will have PDA and phone batteries that last a year, like watch batteries.”
Alan Sugar 2005 – “Next Christmas, the ipod will be kaput”

If you want more you can go here http://listverse.com/history/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/

So…the question we all ask is…why on earth do we do it?
I have an answer…because its fun.

I am not expecting anything I say to be correct…but at this point in time this is how I feel it will go this year.

1. Microsoft will postpone their deadline for Windows 7. (Currently at 3rd quarter of this year)
2. Apple won’t wait till Christmas to release their new Iphone, which is what they said they will do.
3. 10000 people will once again say that this is the year of linux.
4. This will be the year of linux.
5. I will get my computer working again.
6. Google will release 2 more versions of their G range of phones, taking as long to release the source code as they did with the first version.
7. Canonical will make an increasingly stupid name for version 9.10 of Ubuntu. Kranky Kangaroo or something.
8. We will see the start of the silicon -> something else switchover, near the end of the year.
9. Google will release a desktop OS, because they don’t have one yet.
10. Thunderbird 3.0 might get released…that would be nice…taking long enough.
11. 3d desktops will become all the rage, and noone will believe linux users when they say we’ve had the cube for 6 years.

Ok, these are my predictions. If I think of anymore, I will put them in, but I will post one at the end of the year discussing what was right, and what was wrong.

Maybe I’ll be quoted as one of the top 30 worst predictions ever. Nah…that crown belongs to the people in the link above.

Open Office 3.0

Before I start, I would like to point out that OOo3 is not fully stable yet. It is in Release Candidate stage, which means that it is pretty much stable, but there may still be bugs in it.

I read recently that OOo3 has just gone into RC1 stage, and decided that I should give it a try, because I think it is a fantastic peogram, and an advancement for the OpenSource world.

So basically, I was very pleased to see that actually, OOo3 now has a database program, which I believe it didn’t have before hand. This is fantastic addition, that will probably please many people who had this reason only not to switch to OOo3, which I think I may know a few of them.

Another good addition for the OOo users is the fact that we don’t have to email back to people and say “Could you please send me this back in something other than .docx. .txt would be preferable, but .doc will suffice. The reason for this is because OOo3 has support for read-only support for MSO 2007 formats, and read-write support is planned. However, why send anyone a .docx when they can read .doc anyway? And if MS stick to their plan, they will be able to read .odt anyways. So I’m not fussed about being able to write to docx files.

I have told a number of people who are confused by 2007s format, that OOo has a format similar to 2003, and this is still true, however, it may be simple and similar to previous MSOffices, but it could do with a bit of sprucing up. As Preston Galla says in his review of the beta, “it is like taking a trip to the ’90s”

That being said, I do prefer its format to MS Offics ’07. It just doesn’t work. I don’t know why MS like to change things all the time just because they can. A comment from the blog I just quoted says “Suppose every time you bought a new car, you had how to drive all over again.”

I am all for redesigning and resprucing of programs, but why completely change the way it looks, works and is designed, just because you can. It worked like it was, just add stuff to it and make it better. Don’t completely redo it so noone know how to work it.

OOo3 really feels like a full Office suite thanks to The Start Centre.

If you are not running an OOo application already, this pops up and asks what you want to do. Makes it feel very professional, and integrated into everything else.

To summarise, all in all, I really really like OOo3 but I would like a wee bit of polishing up on the UI. If anyone can do something in Microsoft Office which they cannot do in OOo3, (something that you would actually use in real life) then please tell me, because I would really like to know.

Computer

I haven’t been on for a while, because I have been setting up my new computer. Took me a while, but I’ve mostly got there. I’m now just annoyed at the fact that I got such a new motherboard. A couple of things on it aren’t completely compatable with linux yet. I’m told Ubuntu 8.10 should sort these out, but we’ll see.

Just now, my sound doesn’t work properly, because I hear a crackling out the speaker. And my graphics driver doesn’t work with the drivers yet. Why O Why must I be so cutting edge. Means I can’t run Compiz yet. Ach well.

Anyways…on with the computer

Nvidia 8200 motherboard, with 8200 graphics card, 7.1 surround sound, hdmi output as well as DVI and VGA outputs, quad-core 4×2.6 AMD processor, 4GB RAM, upgradeable to 8GB, 20 GB IDE harddrive, 250GB Sata HD (once it gets support for the Sata controllers on my MB), 500 GB external HD. And currently I’m running Ubuntu 8.04, but I’m going to run Fedora, openSuse, etc, to see if I can get stuff to work.

Watch this space.

Flock – The Social Web Browser

Ok, so I recently found this fantastic web browser called Flock. Now, to be honest, it is very very like firefox, in fact it is based on firefox. Ok, it is firefox which has been edited. But the edits are fantastic, and really work.

This web browser has been created with people like me in mind. People that have joined almost every social networking site in the world, and don’t want to have all those loaded up in tabs all the time.

Flock includes a sidebar, which I then incorporate with the AIOS (All-in-one Sidebar) for Firefox. And the great thing is, you can use any normal Firefox addon as well. The built in sidebar gives you access to your Accounts, your RSS and ATOM feeds, your bookmarks, a blog editor, a media uploader, a web clipboard and a people’s status updates etc. If you add AIOS (like I have) you can also have your addons, bookmarks, history, downloads, and the source for the website, as options for the side bar.

On the right, you can see a screenshot of, almost, the default layout of the flock browser, with the “My World” page open, the sidebar on the “People” option, and the media bar on the top open. On the left, you can see my view of Flock, with the Sidebar on “People”, all my sidebar options on the AIOS bar, a black theme, on the “My World” page.

To be honest, this browser will not interest anyone who does not use Social Networking sites, however if someone was like me, and was infact a member of almost every social network on the planet, then it would be amazing.

Currently, Flock has support for adding your Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Pownce, Twitter, Youtube, Photobucket, Picasa, Piczo, Blogger, Blogsome, LiveJournal, Typepad, WordPress, Xanga, del.icio.us, Magnolia, AOL Mail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail, along with any self-hosted blog you have. I also believe that Myspace and Bebo support is in the pipeline now that they both have an API to work with, but not sure when they will be implemented, apart from the fact that on the forum it is stated that Myspace will be sometime this year, which will be great.

The accounts that I have that they currrently don’t support are – Myspace, Bebo and identi.ca. If/when they implement these accounts, I will have all of my social networking in my browser.