OMG! Ubuntu (a blog you should certainly be reading if you don’t already have it in your reader) has the complete guide to tricking out XSplash, the new bootscreen manager in Ubuntu 9.10.
One of the great things about XSplash is that it starts XServer, what displays good graphics on your screen in Linux, BSD, and OS X systems, a few seconds into the boot instead of near the end. This means that you no longer have to really know your stuff to change the bootscreen; all you need to do is follow some very simple instructions.
First off, if you just want to change your bootscreen, play with the files in /usr/share/images/xsplash
But I’m not here to talk about that: I’m talking about a seamless boot experience that changes your login window and XSplash background to be your normal wallpaper. Continue reading
The latest release of Ubuntu has hit the streets. The much-acclaimed “Karmic Koala” (Ubuntu 9.10’s codename) is now out in earnest, bringing many usability enhancements as well as technical ones.
Make sure to use the torrents if you can, just to relieve server tension.
Because I can’t update incredibly often, I’ll use this post to point you to OMG! UBUNTU!, probably the best Ubuntu blog I’ve seen out there. Regularly updated, OMG! UBUNTU! gives you the low-down on everything Ubuntu-related, including upcoming plans.
So I was thinking about one particular thing that I wrote about in my review of the GNOME shell, when I said that you should drop the ideas you have about how a desktop should look. This was how artificial the “desktop” concept is. Back in the Stone Age we came from the desktop paradigm: it’s what we understood in terms of productivity. However, a computer is much different, much more powerful than a desk. On a desk you have a finite space which contains only the information and objects you put on it. It doesn’t fetch data, tell you anything, give you opinions or options. It’s a tool. A computer is different in that it has the power to fetch information, to move it, and to bring it all together and present it to the user. It can handle any type of media: where a desk could only handle text and photos (unless you put a boom-box on it) the computer can do text and photos and sound and video and social interaction through Twitter and other feed-based services. We need to embrace a paradigm that suits the computer. Continue reading
For starters, throw away all your conceptions about desktops. They no longer apply.
Also remember that I am reviewing a highly experimental piece of software. It may look unwieldy but that’s because it has no customization options yet (or at least, no GUI).
And lastly, remember that because there is a whole new paradigm introduced here it may seem that GNOME Shell’s whole concept is flawed. However, after playing with it I can safely say that I can’t wait for it to arrive and believe it will increase my productivity.
So what am I talking about? This (click for full view).
This evening I was going to sit down and play Age of Empires III with my mom. We have it installed on two computers and just trade discs. Then my little brother said he wanted to play. That’s great, but the problem is that neither his nor my mom’s laptop runs fast enough to play it well and my laptop runs Ubuntu. I checked and it wasn’t supported by Crossover Games, my beloved commercial WINE software, but after googling on a way to play AOE on my Ubuntu laptop, I found Play On Linux.
http://www.playonlinux.com/en/
Play On Linux is an application that supplements the WINE translation software that allows some Windows applications to run on Linux. It contains and applies scripts that provide the best configuration for a game.
One of the things that I love about Linux is that there’s always a community, open-source project that makes things work even when an upstream project like WINE doesn’t work by default. It’s by no means perfect – WINE is just a stepping stone to building Linux market share so applications like games would be native – but it’s encouraging when you look at all the junk that’s available for Windows to do a little thing (I looked over programs to encode video to/from OGG in Windows and it was a nightmare of shareware and spyware and uggggg!)
So as I wait for Age of Empires III to install, good luck to the people at PlayOnLinux!
The reason I haven’t posted in forever is that I’ve been planning to bring you a huge review of different Linux distros and specifically how they implement KDE.
Well, that’s the “reason”…
I was planning to do that, but got sidetracked. However, there is news on that front:
I am now a Konvert (this, to the uninitiated, is a reference to the sometimes annoying habit of KDE developers naming their apps with K, like KMail, amaroK, AKregator, etc). When I decided to update Ubuntu from 32 bit to 64 bit I decided to try installing Fedora while I had a clean computer. Fedora and I, well we just didn’t get along. Package management was confusing. So I went to more familiar territory: Kubuntu. And fell in love. Now, it should be said that package management is the same as in Fedora, but as soon as you start installing GNOME packages (like Cheese) you get Ubuntu’s Add/Remove and Synaptic Package Manager. It’s cheating, yet, but nice cheating.
Anyways, I’m here to show off my nice shiny KDE 4.2 desktop.
This is my KDE4 desktop with Qwit running my Twitter stream
Just a short overview of the desktop:
I’m running Kubuntu 9.04 64 bit. I added a few Folder Views to contain the icons. My twitter application is a gem called Qwit. I have a few Photo plasmoids as well to personalize my desktop. I’m using a plasmoid called STask to make all my open apps only use an icon instead of a windows-like bar.
I love it. Kubuntu’s installation is easy, and though I had to wrestle with Jockey (Ubuntu’s Restricted Driver Manager) for a while, it’s great. The plasmoids really sell it for me. They can do just about everything.
I’m using a theme called Bespin that you have to compile from source but doesn’t like 64 bits. I happened to find, however, a DEB of the respository while absolved me of having to compile the code. Much much much nicer than the default Oxygen.
I grew up on GNOME so this is new to me. But I love it. There are a few problems, mostly to do with artefacting on some windows, but I’m looking into fixing it.
btw, new blog policy: I know I haven’t posted in *forever* but the new rules are a Post A Day. Yep. Let’s see how far this goes.
After deliberately holding off from reviewing the new Ubuntu, I’m here with a review for a great Ubuntu program: Jokosher. Jokosher is a simple – and I mean, really simple – audio editor for Linux. It took me no time whatsoever to get familiar with its interface and the only audio editor I’ve ever used is Audacity, which is horrendously ugly (but still a great program) on Linux.
So I installed it through the repositories (Applications -> Add/Remove Software -> Jokosher) and took it for a spin. Continue reading
Today I am going to completely ignore the release of Ubuntu 9.04. Yep, ignoring it. Ignorrrriiiinnnngggg… Ok, get it at www.ubuntu.com and use the torrents instead of direct download!
That aside, let’s talk about music.
Earlier this week, I spent a $50 gift card that I got for Christmas at the iTunes store (I’ve been waiting for the DRM to come off and now that’s happened it’s completely worth the wait). My purchases include stuff from Great Big Sea, the Good Lovelies, the Doctor Who Soundtrack, Feist, and one of my favourites: 50 Most Essential Pieces of Classical Music (for $11.99).
But I’d like to look at taste in music and what exactly music is…
First off, what is not music.
Rap.
As I’ve said before, rap is spoken-word that focuses on beat rather than melody and – as I strongly suspect – stands for Retards Attempting Poetry. Rock, punk, country: I can accept this as music (having an issue with the last one, but to each his own) but rap is like the weird uncle in the family of music that no one ever does – or ever should – invite to the gatherings of the music family.
Despite my strong music on this so-called-music, I’m not going to hold any sacred cows. Not all Classical music is up to scratch either.
Now, the Classical style is firmly within the confines of any definition of “music”. However, I hold particular dislike for some of the rambling, lighthearted works of the Romantic era (prefering instead Beethoven’s darker pieces and Chopin’s minor compositions). I would consider myself a Beethoven fan, but there are some of his things that I just can’t stomach (particularly the fluttery bits in the middle of the 5th and 7th Symphonies, which are great, dark, dramatic pieces of music and then have a wish-washy glaze of bleh in the middle)
I would also say that I like big-band (especially Sing Sing Sing) but still some of that I can’t stand unless it’s in the background.
Does anyone else have musical bones to pick? I haven’t even started mine but if you have them poast them!
Apparently I have become among the newest casualties in the Browser Wars II. Firefox was running sluggishly and so I decided to give Opera – the speedy, powerful Scandinavian browser popular in Europe – a try again. Before I switched to Ubuntu I was an avid Opera user before being a user of Google Chrome (which is still not available for Linux) but instead of building the browser’s interface with GTK like most other desktop apps, it uses the cross-platform QT toolkit. By default, it looks really, really ugly in Ubuntu, especially when you’re running a dark theme like Dust.
However, with a little googling I found that using either a snapshot of Opera 9.6 or the alpha for Opera 10 you can bind QT4 (the version of QT used in the two builds) to GTK so that everything looks the same.
This was tested in Ubuntu 9.04. It should work for other Debian-based distros or previous versions of Ubuntu, but no promises.
svn co svn://labs.trolltech.com/svn/styles/gtkstyle
cd gtkstyle
qmake && make && sudo make install
There you have it! To make all your QT apps – including Opera – using GTK, open up System -> Preferences -> QT 4 Settings and under the Appearance tab set the GUI (first thing in the tab) to GTK+. Then open Opera.
Credits for discovering this go to king.pest at the Ubuntu Forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=956329
OMG! Ubuntu (a blog you should certainly be reading if you don’t already have it in your reader) has the complete guide to tricking out XSplash, the new bootscreen manager in Ubuntu 9.10.
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