This article originally appeared in issue 91 of Linux User & Developer magazine. Subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

The survey of managers at 300 large public and private sector organisations in the US, UK and Ireland revealed that 69 percent of respondents anticipate increasing their investment in OSS during 2010, with 38 percent expecting to migrate mission-critical software to open source in the next twelve months.

Showing how seriously OSS is now being taken at management level, nearly two thirds of the respondents said that their organisations now have a documented strategy for open source adoption with the remaining 32 percent currently developing a strategic plan.

Whilst previous Accenture research had found early corporate adoption of OSS to be driven by expected cost savings, this survey showed that cost was no longer the key driver behind increased OSS usage. 76 percent of respondents in the UK and US cited quality as a key benefit of open source. Overall 70 percent of those surveyed cited improved reliability and 69 percent specified better security and bug fixing as reasons for choosing open source. This compared against the still significant 50 percent of respondents who saw lower cost of ownership as a key benefit of using OSS.

Accenture themselves were downbeat about the finding that 29 percent of respondents were willing to contribute their own code back to the community. However, even at this level, 29 percent of the corporate sector contributing back to open source projects would almost certainly still represent a massive increase in new participation. It is also likely that many inexperienced corporate OSS users may not yet be aware of the hidden costs of maintaining and refactoring their own proprietary tweaks and developments in parallel with an evolving OSS product.

Looking at challenges to the adoption of open source, 35 percent cited the cost of retraining developers. The survey also found a lack of senior management support to be a common barrier to OSS progressing from evaluation to implementation within the enterprise.

Click here for more of the latest news from Linux User & Developer magazine, or see what else featured in the latest issue.

Develop with Google
Build apps & extensions for Google Chrome
Make your Android apps work on every phone

Take your desktop to the cloud with eyeOS
Get desktop functionality with Cloud practicality!

Jolicloud 1.0 review
Watch out Google Chrome OS – this cloud-based netbook OS means business

Exclusive interview
Google Talk
Linux User & Developer talks exclusively to some of the biggest names in Google

Also inside
- Backup and restore your data
- Inside Red Hat’s Cluster Suite
- Emacs made easy
- Peppermint Ice review

And much more…

This article originally appeared in issue 90 of Linux User & Developer magazine. Subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

Whether you are a freelancer or a small business owner, a project management solution is essential for keeping your operation running smoothly. And if you are in the market for a nimble and easy-to-use tool for managing projects and keeping tabs on your tasks, Collabtive might be exactly what you are looking for.

This web-based project management application is easy to deploy and has virtually no learning curve. It sports a slick interface which provides quick access to all the application’s features. While Collabtive lacks advanced functionality like Gantt and PERT charts, it has everything you need to track projects and tasks with consummate ease.

Since Collabtive is a web-based application, you can access and use it from any machine, and the ability to manage multiple users makes Collabtive a perfect tool for small workgroups and teams.

Being a web-based application, Collabtive runs on the Apache/MySQL/PHP stack. This means that you need a server running the required components in order to deploy Collabtive. Alternatively, you can use the XAMPP package from here which provides everything you need in one neat bundle. Although it’s designed mainly for testing, it can be used for deploying Collabtive for personal use or for a small team. For this tutorial, we will use XAMPP.

Installing Collabtive is a doddle. Grab the latest release of Collabtive, unpack the downloaded package, rename the resulting directory to ‘collabtive’ and upload it to your server’s document root (in the case of XAMPP, the htdocs folder). Next, create a MySQL database for use with Collabtive if you don’t already have one.

XAMPP comes with the excellent phpMyAdmin tool which you can use to create the required MySQL database. Once you’ve done that, point your browser to http://127.0.0.1/collabtive/install.php and run the simple two-step installation procedure. Once Collabtive is up and running, log in and you are ready to go.

The ViewPad 7 is an all-new capacitive multi-touch 7″ tablet featuring 3G, Wi-Fi, Blutooth and front and rear facing cameras. From what we’ve seen so far ViewSonic’s latest device takes Dell’s lead with the Streak, but increases product size to bring it closer in line with the Apple iPad.

ViewSonic say the lightweight, pocket-sized design means the ViewPad 7 is ideal for anyone who needs a mobile connection and a wide range of applications including email and video courtesy of the Android Market. It will feature Android 2.2 and is expected to weight in at under £350 upon launch.

With full 3G and phone functionality, a full size SIM card slot and integrated Bluetooth connectivity the ViewPad 7 will support instant messaging, text/mms messaging, VOIP and standard voice calls.

Additional features of the ViewPad 7 include a MicroSD slot for storage up to 32GB, a web browser and USB connectivity. Users will also be able to make full use of assisted GPS, eBook functionality and an office document reader as well as hand-written note-taking among other things.

“We are proud to announce another world first at Viewsonic. 3G phone functionality combined with dual cameras gives the ability for use of Android apps to use augmented reality or video calling on the move with the benefit of an excellent 7″ screen” says Derek Wright, European Product Marketing Manager. “The ViewPad 7 is aimed at users who require the ‘always on’ connectivity they are used to from a mobile phone with a more agreeable screen size for longer term use.”

We’re expecting review samples to surface at some time in October, but we’ll be back before that with more details, including specifications, just as soon as they’re available. In the mean time why not let us know if the ViewPad 7 ticks your boxes in the comments thread below…

Click here for more from Linux User & Developer magazine…

This article originally appeared in issue 90 of Linux User & Developer magazine. Subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Office, Feng Office – which is the odd one out? Yes, it’s Feng Office, but not because most people have never heard of it, and not because it lacks the extreme feature set of the other two. Feng Office is not about sitting at your desk writing office documents, it’s about collaborative working.

Feng still allows you to create text documents online, but that’s just a small part of running projects, taking notes, tracking tasks, passing milestones, keeping contact with your organisation and perusing reports of how the projects are progressing.

Feng Office, formerly known as OpenGoo, is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, the FOSS licence especially created for cloud software – this means that modifications must be made available for all web users of the service, guaranteeing sharing of improvements and new modules. You can sign up to a hosted account and be running the trial version in minutes, but we’ll show you how to install on your own server, from download to up-and-running.

01 On your marks. Get set. Go!
Download from fengoffice.com, or the sourceforge page. Upload to the web directory of your server – eg /var/www/ – you can combine both operations by shelling into your server and typing ‘wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/opengoo/fengoffice/fengoffice_1.7/fengoffice_1.7.zip?use_mirror=sunet’. Unzip the 7.5MB package and you’re ready to go.

02 Well documented
The Feng Office website contains both user and admin manuals, as well as some developer information. It’s useful, but by no means complete. However, installation is so simple that you only need the first few lines of the readme.txt in the directory that you unzipped, or to read the instructions on the following screens…

03 Problems?
Go here with your web browser and you’ll see the friendly install screen at Step 1, just a Welcome, so click Step 2. Now you may be brought up short – if you didn’t transfer and unzip the file as the web server user, you won’t have permissions to write the files.

04  Get permission
Don’t panic. From your shell, go back to the directory containing the unzipped fengoffice directory, and run ‘chown -R www-data:root fengoffice/’ – replacing www-data with whatever ownership your web files should have (ls -l on /var/www should give you a clue).

05 Green light
Now retry on Step 2 and you should get the green light. Step 3 is configuring the database, which the installer can do for you, but as our MySQL database is used by several web apps for the site, we prefer to do it manually. You may prefer phpmyadmin, or a control panel…

06 First the SQL
…But the mysql command line is straightforward enough: the create DATABASE and GRANT ALL… commands shown here, plus FLUSH PRIVILEGES; and the database is ready to go, so on to Step 3.

This article is due to appear in issue 91 of Linux User & Developer magazine. Subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

The Platform Sprint is something that is traditionally limited to Canonical employees, but in recent times there has also been attendance by certain upstreams. It’s held every six months, around the middle of the development cycle; shortly before Final Freeze. In normal Ubuntu style, a hotel is largely taken over for five days and this time it was held in Prague, Czech Republic. This event was also shared with Linaro, the non-profit organisation tasked with making an industry-wide ARM reference platform, with its roots stemming from Ubuntu.

I was asked to attend this recent Sprint which has now been renamed as Platform Rally. My interests are generally split between Server, Cloud and community. Not having been to one before, but being aware of their existence, I was somewhat excited and apprehensive about what to expect.

With every release, Canonical sets a certain amount of specifications it wants to deliver itself for the next Ubuntu release. These tasks are mainly created at UDS, within the public view. These blueprints are those that Canonical engineers are tasked to work on, and are generally maintained on Launchpad and the Ubuntu wiki. While Ubuntu and Canonical are well versed in the style of distributed development, it seems that occasional real-life collaboration helps to stimulate the development cycle: by collecting the right people, together focusing on the specifications they are tasked with.

However, essentially locking some of the core contributors to Ubuntu in rooms all week to work on specific problems also had the negative effect of normal bug work (triaging/uploads) not directly related to the blueprints seeming to get neglected for the week. In every other respect, it’s a normal work week for Canonical employees; it is certainly not a conference.

I feel it’s important to draw a distinction between what this Platform Sprint/Rally event is and the Ubuntu Developers Summit, which is also held every six months at the start of each development release.

The UDS is a planning event, where specifications and blueprints are discussed, ratified and specific goals are determined. These Sprints are different; they are held around the middle of development, with the task of giving Canonical’s platform developers a much-needed resource and development boost. For some teams, it also serves the purpose of reviewing what each of the engineers does and wants to focus on for the next term. This is quite well classified with team administration and in my opinion it’s an aspect not of great interest to the wide community.

Each team tends to have their own room for their day-long meetings and appeared to be self-controlling their timetable. The only mass-events were morning plenary sessions, and lunch. One of the key benefits of this event, was the ability to be able to drop into other rooms to speak with members of other teams. This is often referred to as cross-pollination, but I think I’ll avoid that terminology. Many Canonical employees work on their tasks from home; this event is not especially different from normal activity – the only key difference is the working location.

I feel that it’s important to raise that no decisions really get made during the week; it’s purely a ‘hacking’ time. Something that particularly struck me was the eagerness for people to help each other. I think the attendees would not dispute that they wanted to achieve a great deal during the week.

Canonical, being distributed by nature, could easily suffer from lack of team spirit and isolation. I observed team bonding, which seemed to be another major gain for Canonical’s teams being involved with this event.

There was also a social aspect to the week, was an official bowling and go-karting evening. It was proposed as being a team-building event, and it achieved this – if only to see fellow developers in a non-work setting and getting to know them better. Jonathan Riddell, of KDE/Kubuntu fame, also took me canoeing on moving water, which essentially meant I got very wet!

I didn’t quite know what to expect at this event, but I knew it would be hard work. What I didn’t expect was the level of hard . I came home quite exhausted, but a good sense of fulfilment with getting to know the team members better and making significant progress with some of the project I was working on. It was then everybody’s task to try and catch up on their normal tasks, outside of the blueprints and the mountain of email which I’m sure most neglected.

The next Ubuntu development related event will be the UDS for 11.04 (N release, codename not yet announced), being held this time in Orlando, Florida, USA. It will be held on the week commencing 25 October 2010; while this is open to everybody, it isn’t a traditional conference but a planning event with hard work involved. Further information on this event can be found here.

You can find more Ubuntu-related news, reviews & tutorials here.

This article originally appeared in issue 90 of Linux User & Developer magazine. Subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

Details:
OS: Ubuntu 10.04
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 1.3GHz
Memory: 4GB RAM
Storage: 320GB HDD
Dimensions: 230 x 330 x 16.5mm
Weight: 1.6kg
Price: £492
Buy Direct: Dell Europe

Pros: A smart, lightweight, business laptop
Cons: No removable battery and short battery life

This business-minded notebook comes in basic black, has a unique hinge that makes the 13.3-inch WLED screen look like it is a digital picture frame, and is made from a durable metal that feels like it can withstand some abuse. For any company thinking of deploying a laptop en masse to employees, the V13 is a solid and dependable system and is available with Ubuntu 9.04 pre-installed and ready to go.

Under the hood, there’s a slightly older Intel Core 2 Duo processor that provides just enough heft for most computing tasks, although it lacks the unique battery management characteristics of the newer i3 and i5 processors. (Dell says there will be an updated version of the Vostro with these new CPUs later this autumn.) The new processors actually put some cores into a standby mode to save battery power when they are not needed. This explains why the V13 only runs for about 3-4 hours on its six-cell battery compared to the 5-6 hours of i3 and i5 systems.

Still, the system is aided by the integrated Intel 4500MHD graphics, providing a boost that was noticeable even in basic apps like Evolution and Firefox – where the laptop seemed to have an extra spark, especially compared with any recent netbook.

One reason the V13 would work well as a notebook you use for most employees – even including developers and artists – is that the system is streamlined for getting work done. It is remarkably thin, at just 16.5mm, so it has a low profile. There’s aluminium plating and hinges made from zinc to add durability. The notebook weighs just 1.6kg so it has a pick-up-go quality that’s ideal for mobile users, yet has the specs of a full notebook with a powerful enough processor and 4GB of RAM.

One slight complaint is that, when testing the system, it is a little too easy to accidentally brush the mousepad, situated as it is directly under the space bar. Type too fast or without much accuracy and you may find your mouse jumps to a different location in OpenOffice. Other notebooks, such as recent Toshiba models, position the mousepad a bit farther away from the space bar to avoid stray finger swipes.

That said, the keyboard keys are soft and springy enough for fast typing – they feel a bit like Sony VAIO keys or Apple Mac Book

and less like the clunky keyboards of older Dell notebooks. The sizeable 320GB drive in our tests system was a welcome addition since many standard notebooks tend to just offer 250GB.

Another slight surprise is that our system, configured with Ubuntu 9.04, did not support 802.11n. This means, stuck at 802.11g, your Wi-Fi speeds will be around 45Mbps instead of the much faster 100Mbps that 802.11n provides.

Power users – those who need the latest graphics processing techniques or a fast enough system for running multiple applications and maybe a compiler or two – will find that the V13 is still adequate. In our tests, running about six applications including the Ekiga softphone client and several business apps, the V13 hummed along quite nicely without choking on a paltry allotment of RAM.

Verdict: 4/5
There’s actually just a couple of minor issues with this laptop. One is that, since the battery is not removable, you can’t carry a spare to help in those times when you need to keep working on a project but can’t recharge. The system also has plenty of RAM and benefits from the Core 2 Duo processor, but the actual clock speed of 1.3GHz is a bit slow for major compiling projects, though more than capable. Ultimately, though, this durable and stylish notebook is a smart all-around top performer that’s ideal for just about any home or office-orientated task.

You can view more Linux User & Developer reviews here, or follow the link to see what else featured in issue 90.

This article originally appeared in issue 91 of Linux User & Developer magazine. Subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

eyeOS is a slick and fast cloud-based desktop environment that can help you stay productive wherever you are, as long as you have access to a machine with an internet connection and a browser. eyeOS is not the first and not the only cloud-based desktop out there, but it’s by far the most interesting and feature-rich solution on the market. It’s also extremely easy to deploy as a self-hosted solution, so you can maintain an eyeOS instance on your own server.

eyeOS comes with key productivity applications, including a word processor, a calendar, an RSS reader and an email client. Basically, you have all the tools you need to put eyeOS to productive use right from the word go.

The eyeOS project currently maintains the 1.x and 2.x series of the eyeOS software. The former is considered a stable release ready for production use, while the latter is still in a beta stage of development. This tutorial covers the latest 1.x series release and provides a brief overview of the 2.x version. The project’s website offers both a hosted and a downloadable version of eyeOS.

Going the hosted route has a few obvious advantages: you don’t have to install anything, your system is automatically upgraded to the latest version, and you don’t have to worry about maintenance. But using the hosted version of eyeOS means that you rely on a third party to keep your data safe.

Moreover, you don’t have administrative access to the hosted instance of eyeOS, which means that you only have limited control of the system. So if you prefer to have complete control of your data and system, and you feel comfortable maintaining your own instance of eyeOS, you can deploy the solution on your own server.

This article originally appeared in issue 91 of Linux User & Developer magazine. Subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

Details:

OS: Android 2.1
Processor: 550MHz
Memory: 256MB RAM
Dimensions: 60.9 x 115.95 x 10.9 mm
Weight: 160g
Display size: 3.7”
Resolution: 480 x 854 pixels
Expansion: 1x microSD
Price: £285
Where to buy:

Pros: The camera is one of the best we’ve seen in testing so far. Overall, it’s a marked improvement on the previous model
Cons: The chassis contouring seems misguided and the power button is hard to hit. The 720p video recording is rather jittery

The XT720 is the highly anticipated follow-up to Motorola’s Milestone, the first Android 2.0+ device the firm released. Although we were relatively impressed with many of its key features in our review back in issue 87, it was let down by its excessive weight and bulk, which was largely attributed to its otherwise effective slide-out Qwerty keyboard. Other problems included a rather short battery life and a 5MP camera that ticked all the boxes on paper, but often left shots either blurred or washed out.

Motorola wouldn’t be one of the largest mobile phone manufacturers on the planet without being able to take on board user feedback, so we’re not that surprised to see that the XT720 addresses almost all of these problems in one way or another.

That’s not to say the XT720 didn’t go through the ringer on the run-up to its release, though. Motorola’s original 550MHz and 256MB RAM specification was altered a couple of months before its release, to a much speedier 720MHz core clock with 512MB of RAM. Perhaps to the phone’s detriment, however, the spec mysteriously reverted back to its original form once it hit the store shelves, despite the processor being capable of the higher speed. In terms of processor speed and memory, then, the new XT720 mirrors its predecessor’s core specification quite closely.

So how does the XT720 compare with other high-end smartphones with their 1GHz clock speeds and doubled RAM, all things considered? In terms of its core specification, surprisingly well as it turns out. We found the phone to be relatively responsive for the everyday use of Google Maps, web browsing and so forth, though we did find it started to wane a little once bogged down with a selection of third-party apps all vying for memory and processor cycles. The solid performance regardless of the middling specification was probably assisted by the notable absence of Motoblur, Motorola’s social networking user interface.

Though the basic Android UI serves the XT720 well enough, a stop by the Android Market was essential since Motoblur serves Facebook, Twitter and all the other social networking must-haves that would usually be bundled out of the box. We were certainly left rather cold with Motorola’s omissions in this regard, but soon had a usable social interface working, once Peep (an excellent third-party Twitter client) and the recently updated official Facebook apps were downloaded.

The real meat of the XT720’s improvement over the original Milestone comes from the absence of a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, opting instead for a fully realised touch-screen keyboard, and the inclusion of a top-of-the-range 8MP digital camera complete with a genuine xenon flash. Not only is the latter a first for an Android phone, but we found it really helped while testing indoor and low-light conditions – the images got the boost they needed to remain crisp and sharp.

As the new Milestone’s name suggests, it’s also capable of shooting full 720p video and the ability to output video via HDMI. While it was easy enough to get the camera rolling, we were met with distinct stammering and jittery frame-drops that were happening far too frequently for our liking. Although it was straightforward enough to lower the recording resolution (which immediately remedied the problem), we couldn’t help but wonder if the 550MHz clock speed was to blame.

The design of the chassis itself is very modern and angular. The 3.7” touch screen totally dominates the front face, with Android’s signature control buttons sitting across the full width of the base. Some people still favour fully fledged buttons, but we found the backlit touch-buttons here perfectly easy to use. The only drawback to the chassis is the rather strange outcropping on the right bezel – we didn’t find it particularly annoying per se, though it did jut into our palms.

In landscape orientation, though, it’s perfectly comfortable to use. It also became apparent that Motorola wanted to make the phone feel and respond like a camera in this orientation, since the shutter sits on top of the outcropping, in just the right position to comfortably take pictures. In camera mode the volume rocker also becomes the zoom, which is a clever feature you don’t yet see on many other models.

Verdict: 4/5
Awarding the Milestone XT720 an extra mark over its predecessor is fitting since it improves on the previous design in almost every way. The basic processor and memory specification left us a little downhearted, but it didn’t hurt performance quite as much as we expected. With its incredible camera and a slimmer, lighter chassis, we can’t help recommend it.

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This article originally appeared in issue 90 of Linux User & Developer magazine. Subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

Details:
OS: Linux derivative
Processor: Samsung S3C2440 (400MHz)
Memory: 64MB RAM, 512MB ROM
Dimensions: 130 x 190 x 13.8mm
Weight: 280g
Display size: 6” (E Ink Vizplex)
Display resolution: 600×800 (16 shades of grey)
Expansion: microSD, microSDHC card (max 32GB)
Connectivity: mini-USB, Bluetooth, WLAN
eBook formats: FB2, FB2.zip, TXT, PDF, RTF, HTML, PRC, CHM, DJVU, DOC, EPUB (inc. DRM), TCR
Price: £233
Buy Direct: GreenReader.co.uk

Pros: It’s an eReader featuring the full gamut of capabilities – touch screen, Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, web browsing, RSS feeds and more
Cons: At 280g it’s quite heavy and the addition of wireless and touch-screen functionality create some unwanted side effects

There is currently only one other eBook reader on the market that can match the functionality of the PocketBook 302, and that’s Amazon’s Kindle. It’s certainly an impressive display of know-how from what’s essentially a small and relatively unknown company from Ukraine. We first came across Green Reader back in issue 88, where we reviewed the PocketBook 301+ Comfort. It was received very well (scoring an impressive four out of five), thanks to the quality of the screen (second-generation E Ink Vizplex electronic paper), the simple but very comfortable chassis design and the staggering battery life it offers.

The 302 is quite sleekly designed with a minimalist approach that sees just five buttons on its front and a power button on its top bezel. By default the central button beneath the screen acts as a menu button (when reading, it takes you back to your book list), while the twin left and right sets of buttons act as forward and back page-turners. From the options menu, however, it’s possible to reassign all the keys to different functions – a useful touch that you rarely see elsewhere.

Since the PocketBook 302 features touch-screen functionality, it comes bundled with a telescopic stylus that fits snugly in the top bezel. This makes navigating by touch really quite easy, though the device can be quite slow to respond to commands. While you can’t tap or double-tap a page to turn, this does call up the options menu, which is a useful feature for changing fonts or altering the text size.

While usability and compatibility is just as good as with the 301+ and the specs look fantastic on paper, the 302 fails to live up to expectations in testing. One of our main gripes is the weight of the unit. All this extra functionality comes at the cost of bulk and while the 302 is far from fat, it’s just that bit too heavy for our liking. While this could be considered subjective, what isn’t is the sheer amount of reflectivity introduced by the touch-screen layer over the E Ink display. This almost completely negates the advantage of having E Ink in the first place. A real shame, and something we hope Green Reader can remedy with a technical refresh.

Verdict: 3/5
While the spec is one of the best you’ll find, the 302 is let down by screen glare and the extra bulk that Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and touch-screen technology has introduced.

Also Consider:
Pocketbook 301+ Comfort
We reviewed the PocketBook 301+ (Comfort edition) back in issue 88 of Linux User & Developer. It was really well received thanks to its low weight, excellent screen (readable even in bright daylight) and stunning battery life

Click here for more reviews from Linux User & Developer, or follow the link to see what else featured in issue 90…

Click here to view the embedded video.

We can’t wait to go hands on with the beta in the coming weeks – watch out for a full Ubuntu 10.10 beta coverage soon after…

Click here to see more from Linux User & Developer…

This article originally appeared in issue 90 of Linux User & Developer magazine. Subscribe and save more than 30% and receive our exclusive money back guarantee – click here to find out more.

Google Docs has been around for a while, and although it has not proved to be a Microsoft Office killer, it has become quite popular as a way to share documents. Today we’re looking at how you can integrate your Ubuntu desktop with your Google Docs account to streamline usability.

We’ll look at three solutions that help you with this integration in different ways. First we’ll look at nautilus-gdoc, which integrates Nautilus with Google Docs and then we’ll look at OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs, which connects the OpenOffice application to Google Docs. Finally, we’ll look at GMDesk, which will bring Google Docs to your desktop.

Resources:
A Google Docs account which usually omes bundled with Gmail (Google email)
nautilus-gdoc This plug-in enables Nautilus to integrate itself with your Google Docs account
python-gdata The Google Data Python client library is required to enable your applications to interact with Google’s apps using the Google Data API
ooo2gd This OpenOffice plug-in allows you to import/export documents from and to Google Docs
GMDesk This free desktop application enables you to run Google Docs in a window on your Ubuntu desktop
Adobe AIR This runtime is required to run GMDesk

1. Install prerequisites
Before we get started with the installation and usage of the scripts required to integrate Nautilus with Google Docs, we need to install a library that it depends on. This is the python-gdata, which is a tool written in Python that allows your Ubuntu desktop and its applications to interact with Google’s applications using the Google Data API. To install this, execute the following command:

# sudo apt-get install python-gdata

Enter your password to complete the installation.

2. Get nautilus-gdoc
To integrate Nautilus with Google Docs we will use the ‘nautilus-gdoc’ script. This is an open source project hosted by Google Project Hosting. Head to the project’s webpage here and navigate to the download section. Download the latest release of the project. Save the zip file that you download somewhere on your desktop.

3. Copy the script
Once you have downloaded the zip file, double-click on it to have it opened by the archive manager. You will see two files in the package. You need to copy the file ‘Send To GDoc’ to the directory ‘/home/username/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts’. Since ‘.gnome2’ is a hidden directory, you might not be able to see it in the Nautilus file manager. Therefore, to copy the file using Nautilus, use the Ctrl+ L key combination and type ‘/home/username/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts’ in the location bar, replacing ‘username’ with your own username.