Ubuntu Living

On Ubuntu 11.04

2011-05-01T06:43:00.003+08:00

I did an in-place upgrade of the Ubuntu 10.10 running on my mother's netbook to Ubuntu 11.04. I had it run overnight, and by morning, voila!, I had Natty Narwhal on the computer. The upgrade went by without a hitch; real sweet, considering this was a Wubi installation.

I can't say I'm too fond of the new Unity interface yet, though. I like the simplicity, but I've just gotten far too used to the old way of working. Unity just hides several icons so it was at first confusing to look up applications. That said, I'll keep this on for a month or so and see how this works out for me.

The upgrade offered to replace old staples like OpenOffice.org and Totem with LibreOffice and Banshee. It also put in the new Firefox 4. I took all proffered upgrades as I don't think they'll break any files I have.

Ubuntu One looks much slicker than before. If it works as it should, I'll consider using it again.

Setting up Ubuntu 10.04 on the HP Mini 2144

2010-05-10T00:27:00.001+08:00

Stuff I did when setting up Ubuntu 10.04 of my HP Mini 2144 (listed for my future reference, details to follow):

1) Install Ubuntu.
2) Install driver for WiFi (requires wired broadband connection).
3) Switch menu buttons back to the right.
4) Change themes and backgrounds.
5) Remove user list.
6) Set up additional users.
7) Add MP3 and AVI codecs.
8) Rearrange Firefox default search engines.
9) Set up shortcut icons.
10) Install applications:
* Pyroom
* ImageMagick
* Cheese
11) Set up Empathy.
12) Set up Evolution.
13) Set up Ubuntu One.

Humble Indie Bundle

2010-05-10T00:22:00.000+08:00

Just a short plug for an offer that's worthwhile every which way for gamers: Wolfire Games, publisher of small independent games, has put together the Humble Indie Bundle, a collection of five top-selling games. The games are

* World of Goo
* Aquaria
* Gish
* Lugaru
* Penumbra Overture

All these games are playable in Windows, Mac, and Linux.

This will sound crazy but you get to choose how much you want to pay for the games. Proceeds of this sale are split between charity and the developers (and you also get to choose how to split.)

As if that wasn't crazy enough, they've also added Samorost 2 into the collection.

What are you waiting for? Check it out now!

Lucid Lynx due within the next 36 hours

2010-04-29T15:35:00.001+08:00

...and I am honestly excited by the prospect. The Beta has been very good on my laptop, and I'm looking forward to using the release for a long time to come.

First impressions of Pitivi

2010-04-21T21:21:00.001+08:00

I first saw Pitiv i a few weeks ago, when I took Ubuntu 10.04 Beta for a spin. I got curious then but didn't have enough time to fully try it out. Yet another Linux movie editor? I had some passing experience with Kino and Open Movie Editor but at the time I used them they fell short in functionality and stability. Would Pitivi do better?

Today I finally found out. I tried Pitivi on my HP Mini running Ubuntu 9.10. Stability-wise, lots of plus points. I haven't run into any crashes yet. Granted, it's not as full-featured as some people might like, but I think that's another advantage (people complain about the GIMP for having too many features). If all you want to do is assemble clips with some minor edits here in there, then Pitivi should work fine.

Since Pitivi works with the gstreamer plugins, anything that Ubuntu can read, e.g., AVI, MP4, Ogg Theora, MP3, etc. Pitivi should also be able to read. Thus far, I've worked with test clips that involved Ogg, MP4, and JPG files. Quite intuitive, actually.

I'll see if I can post a fully assembled clip tomorrow.

Backing up large files

2010-04-14T16:11:00.000+08:00

As backup devices, USB flash drives and hard disks are by no means perfect; but they give the most bang for the buck today, and they're fast, too, which is why you should be using them regularly.

Just a small tidbit when you're backing up: if you're backing up a large file, say, an ISO, to a FAT/VFAT-formatted USB drive (which is most likely the case) be aware that there is a 4GB file size limit. This is a limitation of the FAT file system. Thus, you'll need to break you up into smaller chunks.

Neither ZIP nor TAR.GZ or any of the other default compression formats on Ubuntu can do this, however. You'll need to install p7zip-full or rar. The Create Archive... dialog that appears when you right click on a file should recognize these formats once they're installed.

Adding a PPA

2010-04-13T12:13:00.001+08:00

PPA stands for Personal Package Archive, in essence, a private repository for Ubuntu packages. Developers use this to distribute software that would not otherwise be found in the main Ubuntu repositories.

A simple way to add a PPA into your repository list is:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:reposite/ppa

Credits to this Ubuntu Forum thread.

Jamendo

2010-04-13T07:21:00.001+08:00

Thanks to Rhythmbox on Ubuntu, I've discovered Jamendo, a music site for truly independent artists. The selections veer away from mainstream music industry fare. I particularly appreciate the offerings under Latin, Blues, and Electro. My favorite so far is La Caja Negra, a Spanish group that plays both Latin and Rock.

The site doesn't just offer individual tracks but complete albums. They come in both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats. They're all legal, too: Jamendo works on a system of voluntary donations.

You can also use Rhythmbox to stream music from Jamendo.

Adding a watermark using ImageMagick

2010-04-12T09:19:00.000+08:00

First, create your watermark image. This can be text or logo, in any format. For best results, use either a black or white image and adjust the opacity to 50%.

Then, run the following command:

composite -gravity center wm.png image.jpg output.jpg

where wm.png is the watermark image, image.jpg is the image to watermark, and output.jpg is the output image. The -gravity option has alternative parameters, e.g., north, south, southwest, etc.

If you have several images to watermark, you can run the following script:

for i in *.JPG
> do composite -gravity center vis-watermark.png $i tmp.jpg;
> mv tmp.jpg $i;
> done

ATI HD 4890

2010-04-09T09:22:00.001+08:00

I'm not that big of a gamer so I don't pay much attention to graphics cards. However, this question pops up quite often: what's a good video graphics adapter for Linux? The recommendation I got from a thread in the forums today: the ATI HD 4890. The suggestion owes much to the open source driver support that ATI provides.

Phoronix has an in-depth review of the ATI HD 4890 on Linux. A scan of eBay reveals that it's pricey, thogh, for me at least: around P10,000 ($200), give or take.

iPhone and Ubuntu

2010-04-08T10:11:00.001+08:00

Everything you've wanted to know about getting the iPod Touch / iPhone working with Ubuntu. Well, almost everything, anyhow.

One trick I learned, though not specifically Ubuntu-related:

On the iPhone, for an image on the web browser, hold your finger on the image until options appear. Click "Save Image" and it will be available in your photo browser for use as wall paper.

So it's Google, after all....

2010-04-08T09:58:00.001+08:00

It looks like Google will be the default search engine on Firefox for the final release of Ubuntu 10.04. From the forums:

Each release we determine the best default web browser and the best
default search engine for Ubuntu. When choosing the best default search
provider, we consider factors such as user experience, user preferences,
and costs and benefits for Ubuntu and the browsers and other projects
that make up Ubuntu. Up until Ubuntu 9.10 these defaults have always
been Firefox and Google. Earlier in the 10.04 cycle I announced that we
would be changing the default search provider to Yahoo!, and we
implemented that change for several milestones.

However, for the final release, we will use Google as the default
provider. I have asked the Ubuntu Desktop team to change the default
back to Google as soon as reasonably possible, but certainly by final
freeze on April 15th.

It was not our intention to "flap" between providers, but the underlying
circumstances can change unpredictably. In this case, choosing Google
will be familiar to everybody upgrading from 9.10 to 10.04 and the
change will only be visible to those who have been part of the
development cycle for 10.04.

Cheers, Rick

I hope this is the last we'll hear of this non-issue. Quite interesting to see how the development team works, though.

Ubuntu One Music Store

2010-04-07T07:31:00.001+08:00

Apparently, Canonical is venturing into the music distribution business with Ubuntu One Music Store. Rhythmbox is the primary interface. More on this in later posts.

iPod Touch and Ubuntu 10.04

2010-04-07T07:25:00.001+08:00

Oh, wow, now this is good news: the iPod Touch now works properly with Ubuntu 10.04, specifically, with Rhythmbox. Plug in the iPod Touch and Ubuntu offers to start up the app. You can drag and drop MP3 files into the iPod Touch.

The Rhythmbox that came with older versions of Ubuntu didn't properly recognize the iPod Touch (though older iPod players worked fine.) I gave up trying to get them to work as all I really used the iPod Touch for was as web browser and e-book reader. iTunes was just too much of a hassle to work with.

Now that things just work, I expect to be using the iPod Touch more.

Presumably this works for the iPhone as well, but I don't have one to test with.

Lucid Lynx two weeks after

2010-04-06T11:20:00.001+08:00

While still in Beta, Lucid Lynx is humming along quite nicely two weeks after I installed it on my Acer laptop. Sure, there are the little annoyances linked to using a Beta product from Ubuntu, for instance, the large daily updates of software and the occasional application crash. For the most part, though, Lucid Lynx is quite usable and I'm growing to like it.

To be honest, I was prepared to dislike Ubuntu 10.04, as I've come to dread new releases. The six-month cycle is a tad too aggressive, and each new version brings with it changes that somehow break the experience for me. And really, Lucid Lynx is no exception: the decision to move the control icons from right to left is hasty and unwise, and the vaunted color scheme is simply meh. But I've come to accept that these changes are minor and easily resolved with some personal customizations.

The other parts I thought I'd dislike didn't really bother me at all:

Losing The GIMP wasn't the dealbreaker I thought it would be. Sure, I still installed it afterwards, but then I really only use GIMP nowadays for cropping, resizing, and minor color adjustments, things I couid as easily do with F-Spot.
The deal with Yahoo! doesn't really substantially change the experience with the browser. You can still use Google for the search engine. Just about the only major change is that the Yahoo! icon features more prominently in the search page if you opt for Yahoo! in the Firefox search toolbar.

Some pleasant surprises, too:

Lynx boots up just as fast as before, but shutdown? Really fast. You can turn the machine off in under 5 seconds.
Integration with Ubuntu One seems much tighter, so much so that I'll be using it regularly now.
Some nice new apps and a more streamlined menu.

However, the jury's still out on the performance of Wine on this version. Some games wouldn't run as smoothly as they did before.

All told, I'm looking forward to the final release.

Left or Right?

2010-03-31T07:20:00.003+08:00

Every new release of Ubuntu brings with it something new. Sometimes the users like it, sometimes they don't. Most of the time, the changes aren't so drastic that people don't really notice too much.

Not this time, though. The Ubuntu folks, through a newly formed usability team, decided to try something really radical in 10.04: they moved the window control button from the right to the left.

I know, I know, it shouldn't be that big of a deal, right? After all, they're just window control buttons. You know, the ones you use to minimize, maximize, or close the window. But it does.

I would guess this stems from a bit of Mac-envy, as this follows the convention used by Apple. But not too many users, myself included, like the change. It just throws me off.

It would have been great if the placement of the controls were part of a theme, but no; for the Beta, anyhow, the control placement is global, applying to all themes.

Luckily, the fix is easy enough (though hidden under layers):

1. Start gconf-editor from the terminal
2. From the branch, select Apps->Metacity->General
3. Modify button_layout to read: menu:minimize,maximize,close

After that, the controls should be back to where they are. Lucid is still on Beta, after all, so I hope the Ubuntu team come up with a reasonable solution for the ordinary users. You know, the human beings.

My first look at Ubuntu 10.04

2010-03-25T18:18:00.000+08:00

Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx, is now out on Beta. I thought I'd give it a quick spin to see what it had to offer.

First and most obviously, the brown Ubuntu theme we've come to know and love/hate is no more. In its place: a light shade of purple. Sigh. This will take some getting used to all over again.

The applications menu looks the same as it ever did, but with some changes in applications.

Fewer games than we had before, but in their place, some new ones, like the IQ test gBrainy...

...which looks to be quite challenging, actually. But I think it's an improvement over the old selection.

As promised, The GIMP is no longer installed by default (though still installable via Ubuntu Software Center and Synaptic.) I must admit, though, in recent days, I have been using F-Spot more and more, and it suffices for most of my needs. That said, I will still be getting The GIMP.

A new addition to the Internet tools: Gwibber, a social networking client that connects to Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. It's pretty slick, but since I've sworn off social networking, my blogs excepted, I don't expect to be using it at all.

Another controversial change when first announced: default search engine is no longer Google but Yahoo! (and behind it, Bing, from Microsoft.)

Default browser is now Firefox 3.6.

Roughly the same set of tools for office productivity.

Installed OpenOffice.org is now at version 3.2.

A new tool: PiTiVi video editor. Haven't really tried it yet, but will check it out soon.

One thing I will continue to hate: the hard-to-modify login screen.

A way out of all those Wubi problems

2010-03-19T11:02:00.003+08:00

With Ubuntu 9.10 came a serious problem with Wubi: sometimes, it just won't load the kernel, sometimes, it won't find the initial RAM disk. It's something I've already covered here. What makes the problem worse is that it's intermittent. You don't know when it will strike.

Apparently, this is the cause:

To be able to boot Wubi, Grub2 has to access the ntfs partition which is hosting Wubi. There is a bug in Grub 2, which prevents Grub2 to read any files on an ntfs partition beyond the first 4GB. If any of the boot files is outside of the 4GB limit, booting will fail. Depending on which boot file is outside the limit, the symptoms can be quite different. Since any kernel or Grub update relocates some of the boot files, you might be hit by this bug at any time.

To fix the problem, go to the link above, download the new wubildr, and replace the one you have in C:\ of your Windows partition.

Removing the user list from Gnome 2.28 login screen

2010-03-19T10:55:00.002+08:00

From a security standpoint, it's not wise to present a list of users at the logon window. Why give intruders an idea of the accounts on the system, after all? Why make it easier for them to guess for access?

Unfortunately, Gnome 2.28, which comes with Ubuntu 9.10, uses the dropdown list by default, and what's worse, doesn't give you any easy and intuitive way of changing it. That's just sad.

In order to modify this, you'll have to open a terminal window and execute:

sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --set --type boolean /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_user_list true

Idea from Ubuntu Tutorials: Remove the User List from Ubuntu 9.10 GDM.

Resizing with F-Spot

2010-03-17T09:02:00.003+08:00

For the longest time I've resisted using F-Spot. Plain old bullheadedness on my part, I guess. I preferred to do things old school, manually arranging my photos in folders. But it just got to the point where I had too many photos and F-Spot became the most rational way to manage my pictures. Now that we've gotten acquainted, I'm loving it.

Today I hurdled another problem that had been bugging me for some time: resizing photos in F-Spot. Apparently, you can install a plugin for resizing. Just go to Edit->Manage Extensions.

From then on, a Resize button will appear in the Edit panel on the side.

The resize feature is fairly rudimentary. Aspect ratio is locked, so all you can do is change the width. For basic editing, this should be all you need.

More F-Spot Extensions.

Entering Unicode

2010-03-08T15:19:00.002+08:00

For more recent versions of Ubuntu (starting with Edgy Eft), if you want to enter a Unicode character, press first

Ctrl-Shift-U

followed by the number of the character.

If you see a small box with four even smaller numbers inside, then that simply means you don't have the right font installed.

DecodeUnicode.org can give you a preview of some unicode characters.

New Ubuntu theme

2010-03-04T12:31:00.002+08:00

Along with Ubuntu's new branding, we also get a new boot splash and a new default theme.

I just find it ironic that the theme's name is "Dark", when the supposed direction of Ubuntu now is "Light." But all this is still subject to change, I suppose.

Ubuntu's new look

2010-03-04T11:51:00.004+08:00

Ubuntu has a new look, ready to take effect when 10.04 rolls out. Read more about it.

Project Euler and Python

2010-03-02T21:39:00.001+08:00

Having done the workshop last week, I didn't have anything more to ask of my CS312 Advanced Topics class. All of them were graduating, and this week was supposed to be their finals. Why did I have to inflict another class on them? Or on myself?

Alas, such generosity was not to be. This week, we had an evaluation team rating our division, with accreditation hanging in the balance. They would be visiting us in our natural environment to see how well we taught. That meant I would have to add one more session to my Advanced Topics class.

As it turns out, I didn't need to anymore. The evaluation team did pay brief visits to my Operating Systems lab and lecture classes yesterday, but there were no more visits today. All the same, my students were all there: so why waste time when we could be, you know, learnin' and stuff?

Since we only skimmed on Python the last time (along with other scripting languages), I dedicated today to that. Then I pointed them out to Project Euler, and told them to do the problems using Python.

Now, my class is mature enough that I didn't really expect a whole lot of bellyaching. But I needn't have worried. I got quite the opposite reaction: they loved it!

For the next three hours, I couldn't get them to peer away from their monitors or take their hands off their keyboards. Probably the only time they did was when I showed them some of the basics. The level of concentration was so intense, it was scary. I called my co-teacher Michelle to witness the phenomenon; same result. I was afraid if we bothered them too much, they'd snarl at us.

At the end of the lab class, we had one guy finish nine problems, and most of the others finishing three or four. I rounded it off with another couple of hours explaining the rest of the mechanics of Python.

I only really have two regrets: one, why didn't I do this before; and two, where were the evaluators when my students were already acting at their best?

Open Source Mini-conference

2010-02-25T13:07:00.001+08:00

In hindsight, I realize I took a gamble when I decided to organize an open source mini-conference at Ateneo de Davao. The way I envisioned it, the students from my CS312 Advanced Topics class -- whom I had been guiding through various open source technologies -- would be the ones to run the sessions. I would be strictly hands off.

They came up with all sorts of interesting topics, too: ELGG social networking software, site management with Joomla and Drupal, application development with CakePHP, Android, and Google App Engine with integration to Facebook. I also shanghaied two students from my operating systems class to talk about Ubuntu, and three students from last summer to talk about osCommerce, Synfig, and Blender.

I had a daring plan, too, one probably never been tried in Ateneo before: we would be running parallel sessions. That meant four rooms, with at least two sessions each.

But a day before the event, all sorts of worries plagued me, foremost among them: would anyone show up? That worry continued right until 5 minutes before we actually started.

Well, I guess I needn't have worried. We were flooded with participants from all year levels of the Computer Studies Division. Though I asked my guys to keep the sessions at under twenty people, all controls went out the window and we had some rooms packed with students.

My other big worry was the lack of active participation from the attendees. From my experience, Filipino workshops are notorious for their passive audience. But yesterday, we broke through those cultural barriers as several people posted questions to the speakers. It wasn't quite the lively exchange I was hoping for (some were still quite passive), but I felt it was a breakthrough nonetheless.

Several students came to get ideas for their upcoming theses projects. Perhaps the most heartening sight was a pair of third year students approaching my fourth year students for technical advice post-session. This was just the connectivity I was hoping for.

Our division chief Rey Aliño also sat in one of the sessions. He seemed pretty happy about the whole affair. He said it might have even been better if we had run these sessions much earlier. That opened up all sorts of ideas for future semesters.

Before I forget: a big shoutout to my co-teacher Michelle Banawan for encouraging her students to attend the mini-conference.

I should have brought a better camera, though.