https://www.starryhope.com/ Recent content on Starry Hope Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Tue, 30 May 2017 16:12:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/chromebook-deals-amazon-prime-day/ Mon, 15 Jul 2019 11:50:00 -0400 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/chromebook-deals-amazon-prime-day/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/prime-day/chromebook-prime-day-top-83db8088.png?&w=845&h=332&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=a02876f6cd74a98145552649f0d86b49" alt="Chromebook sale Prime Day" width="845" height="332" class="hero"> <div class="deal-alert" style="background: #FF9900 !important; text-align: center; padding: 25px; margin-top: 0;"> <p style="font-size: 24px;"> <a href="https://amzn.to/2jYTiOG"> Find all the Prime Day Chromebook deals here! </a> </p> </div> <h1 id="the-deals-have-arrived">The Deals Have Arrived!</h1> <p>Amazon has officially kicked off their yearly Prime Day event, and the Chromebook deals are rolling in! Check back often for the latest sales as models will sell out fast and new deals will be activated throughout the 2-day event.</p> <h2 id="latest-updates">Latest Updates</h2> <p>The following deals are not listed on the <a href="https://amzn.to/2jYTiOG">main Prime Day Chromebook page.</a> <em>Be sure to look at the prices closely, as some deals are only applied at checkout!</em> <div style="margin-top: -20px;"> <ul style="list-style-type: disc !important;"> <li style="padding: 6px;"><strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KB3M5DR/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Google Pixel Slate Tablet, Intel Core m3 + Pixel Slate Keyboard</a></strong></li> <li style="padding: 6px;"><strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KB33C9H/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Google Pixel Slate Tablet, Intel Core i5 + Pixel Slate Keyboard</a></strong></li> <li style="padding: 6px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G26U492/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Acer Chromebase AIO Desktop, 23.8" Full HD, Intel Celeron 3215U</a></li> </ul> </div></p> <h2 id="lowest-price-chromebooks">Lowest Price Chromebooks</h2> <p>These Chromebooks are the least expensive you will find. If you&rsquo;re looking for a simple Chromebook for kids or as a second computer to surf the web with, this is the category for you. These prices are likely to be the cheapest …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/chromebook-deals-amazon-prime-day/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/chromebook-comparison-chart/ Thu, 11 Jul 2019 14:50:00 -0400 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/chromebook-comparison-chart/ <h2 id="what-is-a-chromebook">What is a Chromebook?</h2> <p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/computers/samsung-chromebook-pro-0dbba6cd.jpg?fit=fill&bg=fff&w=150&h=120&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=77b8f8b7f0a4f8c9cdb843e746175095" alt="Chromebook R 11" width="150" height="120" class="align-right" style="margin-top: 0;"> A Chromebook is a computer that comes with Google&rsquo;s Chrome OS operating system instead of Microsoft&rsquo;s Windows or Apple&rsquo;s macOS. Chromebooks all conform to a specific set of specifications set out by Google and are designed with portability, long battery life, and ease of use in mind. Chromebooks tend to be priced less than most Windows and Apple laptops because Chrome OS requires less system memory (RAM) and internal storage (SSD) space than competing operating systems. Recently, however, various manufacturers have entered the mid-range and high-end Chromebook market, offering devices with much higher specifications and feature sets and competitive prices.</p> <h2 id="what-is-chrome-os">What is Chrome OS?</h2> <p> <a href="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/chromebook-chrome-os-screenshot-2018-fad23b11.png?fit=max&w=1200&h=1200auto=format,compress&q=90&s=2697edf2a278a6a035daff062fd408eb" target="_blank" class="lightbox"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/chromebook-chrome-os-screenshot-2018-fad23b11.png?&w=275&h=183&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=9f3ba5993d219cd777d6b645ad66343f" alt="Chrome OS on Chromebook with Microsoft Word and Google Play Store" width="275" height="183" class="align-right"></a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrome_OS">Chrome OS</a> is a lightweight operating system based on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux">Linux</a> and the <a href="https://www.google.com/chrome/">Chrome Browser</a>. Google makes most of Chrome OS available for free via the open source <a href="https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os">Chromium OS</a> project. Unlike traditional desktop operating systems, Chrome OS is designed primarily to work with …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/chromebook-comparison-chart/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/best-chromebook-under-300/ Thu, 27 Jun 2019 14:07:00 -0400 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/best-chromebook-under-300/ <p>2019 has been another stellar year for Chromebooks! Computer makers are rolling out new Chromebooks regularly, and not just low-end models, but mid-range and high-end models as well. A whole new category of Chromebooks has emerged, featuring better processors, more RAM, flexible designs, and much better screens. Here are three of the best Chromebooks you can buy for under $300.</p> <h2 id="asus-chromebook-flip-c101pa">ASUS Chromebook Flip C101PA</h2> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B075KFFMZS/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/computers/asus-chromebook-flip-c101pa-770b5ee8.jpg?&w=250&h=146&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=235cbfab08ccdf0909d5127e0d503f88" alt="ASUS Chromebook Flip C101PA" width="250" height="146" style="float: left; padding: 0 10px 10px 0;"></a> <p>The <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B075KFFMZS/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ASUS Chromebook Flip C101PA</a> is a great little device that comes in under $300. With a 10.1 inch screen that flips around into tablet mode, it is slightly smaller and lighter than the Acer Chromebook R 11. It features a Hexa Core 1.6 GHz (max 2 GHz) ARM-based processor and 4 GB of RAM which provide plenty of computing power. The screen is a bright touch display similar to those found in many of today&rsquo;s tablet computers. If you want a small and more stylish device that won&rsquo;t weigh down your backpack, you will love the Chromebook Flip.</p> <h2 id="acer-chromebook-r-11">Acer Chromebook R 11 …</h2><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/best-chromebook-under-300/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/apple-music-chromebook/ Thu, 27 Jun 2019 11:20:00 -0400 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/apple-music-chromebook/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/thumbnails/apple-music-chrome-c0242547.png?&w=120&h=120&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=8678ce1157d54302671c440f8f1e6987" alt="Apple Music on Chromebooks" width="120" height="120" style="margin:0 0 20px 10px" align="right"> <h3 id="short-answer">Short Answer:</h3> <p><strong>Yes!</strong> You can install the Apple Music app from the Google Play Store on Chromebooks that are compatible with the Play Store.</p> <h3 id="long-answer">Long Answer:</h3> <p>For quite some time, Apple refused to allow the installation of Apple Music on Chromebooks; however, this recently changed. Not only has Apple changed their policy towards Chromebooks, they even took time to optimize the Android version of Apple Music for Chromebooks and other large screen devices.</p> <p>If you&rsquo;re an Apple Music subscriber, you can now enjoy your music from the comfort of your Chromebook!</p> <div style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://sh.imgix.net/i/apple-music-chromebook-2019-4e99a01d.png?fit=max&w=1200&h=1200auto=format,compress&q=90&s=fec21217a3033195ab82b0b4cbcfabd7" target="_blank" class="lightbox"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/apple-music-chromebook-2019-4e99a01d.png?border=1%2C999999&w=600&h=&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=3b0925acd7675f651ce1b285733e0c10" alt="Apple Music Play Store Chromebook" width="600" height=""></a></div> <p>Have you had any luck listening to your Apple Music account or iTunes music on a Chromebook? Share your experiences in the comments below!</p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/apple-music-chromebook/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/keyboard-for-chromebook/ Fri, 14 Jun 2019 14:22:00 -0400 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/keyboard-for-chromebook/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/keyboards/chromebook-keyboards-top-6e90d97a.png?border=6%2C16181a&w=845&h=&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=4435308a55e88ac989bfa2ca21945eac" alt="Keyboards for Chromebooks" width="845" height="" class="hero"> <p>Chromebooks have a unique keyboard layout unline Windows laptops and MacBooks. When Google designed the keyboard for Chrome OS devices like Chromebooks and Chromeboxes, they changed a few keys. For example, the Caps Lock key a Search key on a Chromebook. The traditional function keys (F1 - F12) have unique icons and functions on Chrome devices as well. Recently, Google has also added a Google Assistant button where a Windows key would be on most keyboards.</p> <div style="text-align: center;"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/keyboards/chromebook-keyboard-highlighted-f3de2091.jpg?&w=700&h=&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=82f837ae0ed9183dcac2252bf28b87b4" alt="Chromebook Keyboard" width="700" height=""> </div> <p>While it&rsquo;s possible to use a Chromebook or Chromebox with a standard USB or wireless keyboard, it&rsquo;s not very convenient since the special Chrome OS keys are not available. In the past, it&rsquo;s been nearly impossible to find external wired or wireless keyboard for your Chrome device, but these days there are some available.</p> <h2 id="brydge-c-type-keyboard">Brydge C-Type Keyboard</h2> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RGRGKLC/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/keyboards/chromebook-keyboard-d6008512.jpg?&w=300&h=&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=67ea8fd50ccad9b1b57e0c7b3c611939" alt="Chromebook Keyboard" width="300" height="" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 10px 18px;"></a> Until Brydge recently decided to make their <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RGRGKLC/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Brydge C-Type keyboard</a>, there were no wireless keyboards with the Chrome OS keyboard layout available on the market. …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/keyboard-for-chromebook/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/10-alternative-browsers-for-ubuntu-linux/ Wed, 12 Jun 2019 16:50:00 -0400 https://www.starryhope.com/10-alternative-browsers-for-ubuntu-linux/ <p>While Firefox has always been the default web browser for Ubuntu, there are many alternative and special-purpose browsers available to install on Linux. If you’re looking for a break from Firefox or need a browser to accomplish a particular task, there’s probably an alternative browser out there for you.</p> <p>Here are 10 alternative browsers that you may find useful or interesting. This page is not a comprehensive list of Linux web browsers, just 10 that I found interesting. If you’re using Firefox or Chrome on Ubuntu, you can install these browsers by clicking on the “Install Now” button after each summary.</p> <h2 id="chromium-or-google-chrome">Chromium or Google Chrome</h2> <p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/ubuntu-browser/chromium-browser-icon-2016-e3942906.png?&w=64&h=64&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=2dd410e85b5b30a93aff6d46422a5c15" alt="Chromium Browser Logo" width="64" height="64" style="float: left; margin: 0 10px 0 0"> Since its release in late 2008, Google&rsquo;s <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome">Chrome</a> browser and its open source brother <a href="http://www.chromium.org/Home" target="_blank">Chromium</a> have quickly become the most popular replacement for Firefox on Ubuntu systems. Canonical includes Chromium in the Ubuntu repositories and is installable via apt or as a <a href="https://snapcraft.io/chromium" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">snap</a>. You can also download Chrome <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome" target="_blank">directly from Google</a>. Chromium <a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/05/chromium-to-replace-firefox-as-default-browser-in-ubuntu" target="_blank">has been considered …</a></p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/10-alternative-browsers-for-ubuntu-linux/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/chromebooks-with-backlit-keyboards/ Tue, 11 Jun 2019 21:15:00 -0400 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/chromebooks-with-backlit-keyboards/ <p>Even the best touch typers sometimes struggle to find some keys on their keyboards in the dark. Whether you&rsquo;re up late watching youtube in the dark or you suddenly have a power outage, having a backlit keyboard can be very handy. Backlit keyboards on Chromebooks are especially convenient as the keyboard layout is different from most laptops.</p> <p>While most low-cost Chromebooks don&rsquo;t come with backlit keyboards, there are now many mid-range models that offer this feature. Below, you&rsquo;ll find all of the Chromebooks in our database that have backlights on their keyboards ranked by popularity. We hope you find one that meets all of your needs.</p> <h2 id="compare-chromebooks-with-backlit-keyboards">Compare Chromebooks with backlit keyboards</h2> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/chromebooks-with-backlit-keyboards/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/chromebook-deals-memorial-day/ Wed, 22 May 2019 14:20:00 -0400 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/chromebook-deals-memorial-day/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/memorial-day/chromebook-memorial-day-weekend-93350928.png?&w=845&h=334&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=0ad9794a269f89fcb21057c78db2e026" alt="Chromebook sale Memorial Day" width="845" height="334" class="hero"> <h1 id="2019-s-memorial-day-sales-expired">2019&rsquo;s Memorial Day Sales (expired)</h1> <p>Memorial Day deals are here! We expect more amazing sales this weekend. We&rsquo;ll try to keep the latest, current deals updated here multiple times a day, so check back!</p> <h2 id="dell">Dell</h2> <div style="clear:both;"> <div style="text-align: center; float:left; margin-right: 20px;"> <a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-8213852-13502820?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dell.com%2Fen-us%2Fshop%2Fcty%2Fpdp%2Fspd%2Finspiron-chromebook-11-3181%2Fq2mmsnchrm111h&cjsku=Q2MMSNCHRM111H" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/computers/dell-chromebook-11-3181-089c1929.jpg?&w=175&h=150&fit=fill&bg=fff&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=ff3421a8b0faa721b2f1a438b05dd9e3" alt="" width="175" height="150"></a> </div> <div style="padding-top: 20px;"> <h3><a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-8213852-13502820?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dell.com%2Fen-us%2Fshop%2Fcty%2Fpdp%2Fspd%2Finspiron-chromebook-11-3181%2Fq2mmsnchrm111h&cjsku=Q2MMSNCHRM111H" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Inspiron Chromebook 11</a></h3> <p style="margin-bottom:0;">List Price: <strike>$199.99</strike></p> <p style="font-size: 150%; margin-bottom: 0; padding-bottom:0; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-8213852-13502820?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dell.com%2Fen-us%2Fshop%2Fcty%2Fpdp%2Fspd%2Finspiron-chromebook-11-3181%2Fq2mmsnchrm111h&cjsku=Q2MMSNCHRM111H" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">$129.99 direct from Dell</a></p> </div> </div> <div style="clear:both;"> <div style="text-align: center; float:left; margin-right: 20px;"> <a href="http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-8213852-13502820?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dell.com%2Fen-us%2Fshop%2Fcty%2Fpdp%2Fspd%2Finspiron-chromebook-14-7486-2-in-1%2Fdncwchrmb402h&cjsku=DNCWCHRMB402H" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/computers/dell-chromebook-14-7486-bcbaec7f.jpg?&w=175&h=150&fit=fill&bg=fff&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=46e7e67ebd3039843219fa33fbe94e4a" alt="" width="175" height="150"></a> </div> <div style="padding-top: 20px;"> <h3><a href="http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-8213852-13502820?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dell.com%2Fen-us%2Fshop%2Fcty%2Fpdp%2Fspd%2Finspiron-chromebook-14-7486-2-in-1%2Fdncwchrmb402h&cjsku=DNCWCHRMB402H" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Inspiron Chromebook 14 2-in-1</a></h3> <p style="margin-bottom:0;">List Price: <strike>$599.99</strike></p> <p style="font-size: 150%; margin-bottom: 0; padding-bottom:0; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.kqzyfj.com/click-8213852-13502820?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dell.com%2Fen-us%2Fshop%2Fcty%2Fpdp%2Fspd%2Finspiron-chromebook-14-7486-2-in-1%2Fdncwchrmb402h&cjsku=DNCWCHRMB402H" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">$449.99 direct from Dell</a></p> </div> </div> <div style="clear:both;"> <div style="text-align: center; float:left; margin-right: 20px;"> <a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8213852/type/dlg/sid/bfriday/https://deals.dell.com/en-us/work/productdetail/2exo" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/memorial-day/dell-2019-3-abc178c4.jpg?&w=175&h=150&fit=fill&bg=fff&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=28a9697332c0851583d4a5d0bda3534f" alt="" width="175" height="150"></a> </div> <div style="padding-top: 20px;"> <h3><a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8213852/type/dlg/sid/bfriday/https://deals.dell.com/en-us/work/productdetail/2exo" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Chromebook 3180</a></h3> <p style="margin-bottom:0;">List Price: <strike>$355.71</strike></p> <p style="font-size: 150%; margin-bottom: 0; padding-bottom:0; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8213852/type/dlg/sid/bfriday/https://deals.dell.com/en-us/work/productdetail/2exo" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">$229.00 direct from Dell</a></p> </div> </div> <p style="margin-top: 100px; clear:both; font-weight: bold;"><span style="padding: 14px; background: #D92600; border-radius: 0.5rem;"><a href="http://www.tkqlhce.com/n5101vpyvpxCLFEGLIFCEGJMJHFJ" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" style="color: #fff">Memorial Day Deals at Dell Home</a></span> <span style="padding: 14px; background: #D92600; border-radius: 0.5rem; margin-left: 20px;"><a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/p7121vpyvpxCLFEGLIFCEGKFKKDG" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" style="color: #fff">Memorial Day Deals at Dell Small Business</a></span></p> <p style="clear:both;">&nbsp;</p> <h2 id="hp">HP</h2> <div style="clear:both;"> <div style="text-align: center; float:left; margin-right: 20px;"> <a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=7168&awinaffid=612147&clickref=&p=https%3A%2F%2Fstore.hp.com%2Fus%2Fen%2Fpdp%2Fhp-chromebook-14-db0030nr" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/memorial-day/hp-2019-1-32e4fd28.png?&w=175&h=150&fit=fill&bg=fff&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=2973fa30db7e2cccd011c0239a62c8a6" alt="" width="175" height="150"></a> </div> <div style="padding-top: 20px;"> <h3><a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=7168&awinaffid=612147&clickref=&p=https%3A%2F%2Fstore.hp.com%2Fus%2Fen%2Fpdp%2Fhp-chromebook-14-db0030nr" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">HP Chromebook - 14-db0030nr</a></h3> <p style="margin-bottom:0;">List Price: <strike>$269.99</strike></p> <p style="font-size: 150%; margin-bottom: 0; padding-bottom:0; font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=7168&awinaffid=612147&clickref=&p=https%3A%2F%2Fstore.hp.com%2Fus%2Fen%2Fpdp%2Fhp-chromebook-14-db0030nr" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">$209.99 direct from HP</a></p> </div> </div> <p style="clear:both;">&nbsp;</p> <p><a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?s=2405664&v=7168&q=307059&r=612147"> <img src="https://www.awin1.com/cshow.php?s=2405664&v=7168&q=307059&r=612147" border="0"> </a></p> <!-- Begin Mailchimp Signup Form --> <p><link href="//cdn-images.mailchimp.com/embedcode/classic-10_7.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <style type="text/css"> #mc_embed_signup{background:#f6f6f6; border: 1px solid #ccc; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } </style> <div id="mc_embed_signup"> <form action="https://starryhope.us19.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=7b9325b9b141937369f6475f3&amp;id=211322137f" method="post" id="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" name="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" class="validate" target="_blank" novalidate> <div id="mc_embed_signup_scroll"> <h2>Miss the Memorial Day sales? Get …</h2></div></form></div></p></!--></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/chromebook-deals-memorial-day/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/linux/enable-emojis-ubuntu-1904/ Wed, 15 May 2019 11:30:00 -0400 https://www.starryhope.com/linux/enable-emojis-ubuntu-1904/ <p>For most Ubuntu 19.04 users, color emoji support is installed out of the box. However, if you&rsquo;ve done a minimal install or some other alternative installation, you might be missing the necessary font package to view emojis correctly.</p> <p>You can quickly test if emoji support is enabled by visiting the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji">Emoji page on Wikipedia</a>. If you&rsquo;re missing the necessary font, you will see a lot of black boxes like in the screenshot below.</p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/ubuntu-emojis-broken-f4d16020.png?&w=531&h=171&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=f9a6361c0e8145c91dec91561aa0be44" alt="Broken Emjois on Ubuntu 19.04" width="531" height="171"> <p>Thankfully, enabling emoji support is super easy. Simply open a Terminal and run the following command.</p> <pre><code>sudo apt install fonts-noto-color-emoji </code></pre> <p>That&rsquo;s all there is to it! Restart your browser and go back to that Wikipedia article and you should now see all the emojis rendered correctly like below.</p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/ubuntu-emojis-e012f617.png?&w=533&h=172&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=59996050ec8ba46e8a893548a0f54cc4" alt="Working Emjois on Ubuntu 19.04" width="533" height="172"> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/linux/enable-emojis-ubuntu-1904/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/chromebook-deals-black-friday-cyber-monday/ Mon, 26 Nov 2018 10:45:00 -0500 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/chromebook-deals-black-friday-cyber-monday/ <h1 id="current-cyber-monday-sales">Current Cyber Monday Sales</h1> <p>Cyber Monday deals are here! We expect Amazon to have more amazing sales on Cyber Week. We&rsquo;ll try to keep the latest, current deals updated here multiple times a day, so check back!</p> <h2 id="amazon">Amazon</h2> <table style="display:none;" class="comparison-table" data-asins="B07JYFHWGX,B071LB1GG4,B079616WNY,B07GD4CMDH,B0795W86N4,B07HS2RCKG,B07G2XB2MB"> </table> <div style="clear:both;"> <div style="text-align: center; float:left; margin-right: 20px;"> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B071LB1GG4/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/computers/samsung-chromebook-pro-0dbba6cd.jpg?&w=175&h=150&fit=fill&bg=fff&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=ff27eebdae8b5c9fcee174c4fbb38bb4" alt="" width="175" height="150"></a></div> <div style="padding-top: 16px;"> <h3><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B071LB1GG4/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Samsung Chromebook Pro</a></h3> <p style="margin-bottom:0;">List Price: <strike>$549.99</strike></p> <p style="font-size: 150%; margin-bottom: 0; padding-bottom:0; font-weight: bold;"><span class="amazon-new" data-asin="B071LB1GG4"></span></p> <p style="font-size: 75%; margin-top: 6px;">as of <span class="a-date-time"></span>. </div> </div> <div style="clear:both;"> <div style="text-align: center; float:left; margin-right: 20px;"> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JYFHWGX/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/black-friday-2018/products/amazon-1-8e7d6610.jpg?&w=175&h=150&fit=fill&bg=fff&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=9cf5052d41bf1a914cf902496e1f9d3f" alt="" width="175" height="150"></a></div> <div style="padding-top: 16px;"> <h3><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JYFHWGX/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Acer Chromebook 14 Bundle</a></h3> <p style="margin-bottom:0;">List Price: <strike>$299.99</strike></p> <p style="font-size: 150%; margin-bottom: 0; padding-bottom:0; font-weight: bold;"><span class="amazon-new" data-asin="B07JYFHWGX"></span></p> <p style="font-size: 75%; margin-top: 6px;">as of <span class="a-date-time"></span>. </div> </div> <div style="clear:both;"> <div style="text-align: center; float:left; margin-right: 20px;"> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0795W86N4/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/computers/acer-chromebook-11-cb3-132-bf180ef2.jpg?&w=175&h=150&fit=fill&bg=fff&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=0081152f00b76c24da5c30050be26177" alt="" width="175" height="150"></a></div> <div style="padding-top: 16px;"> <h3><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0795W86N4/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Acer Chromebook 11</a></h3> <p style="margin-bottom:0;">List Price: <strike>$219.99</strike></p> <p style="font-size: 150%; margin-bottom: 0; padding-bottom:0; font-weight: bold;"><span class="amazon-new" data-asin="B0795W86N4"></span></p> <p style="font-size: 75%; margin-top: 6px;">as of <span class="a-date-time"></span>. </div> </div> <div style="clear:both;"> <div style="text-align: center; float:left; margin-right: 20px;"> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HS2RCKG/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/computers/asus-chromebook-c523-781d53e6.jpg?&w=175&h=150&fit=fill&bg=fff&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=ab06b1c182dbf01f0345d10731d28142" alt="" width="175" height="150"></a></div> <div style="padding-top: 16px;"> <h3><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HS2RCKG/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ASUS Chromebook 15 C523NA-DH02</a></h3> <p style="margin-bottom:0;">List Price: <strike>$269.99</strike></p> <p style="font-size: 150%; margin-bottom: 0; padding-bottom:0; font-weight: bold;"><span class="amazon-new" data-asin="B07HS2RCKG"></span></p> <p style="font-size: 75%; margin-top: 6px;">as of <span class="a-date-time"></span>. </div> </div> <div style="clear:both;"> <div style="text-align: center; float:left; margin-right: 20px;"> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G2XB2MB/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/computers/asus-chromebook-c223na-cb988244.jpg?&w=175&h=150&fit=fill&bg=fff&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=3ed1fe30c8c7c3288605fb274581dab9" alt="" width="175" height="150"></a></div> <div style="padding-top: 16px;"> <h3><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G2XB2MB/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ASUS Chromebook 11 C223NA-DH02-GR</a></h3> <p style="margin-bottom:0;">List Price: <strike>$229.99</strike></p> <p style="font-size: 150%; margin-bottom: 0; padding-bottom:0; font-weight: bold;"><span class="amazon-new" data-asin="B07G2XB2MB"></span></p> <p style="font-size: 75%; margin-top: 6px;">as of <span class="a-date-time"></span>. </div> </div> <p style="clear:both;">&nbsp;</p> <h2 id="dell">Dell</h2> <div style="clear:both;"> <div style="text-align: center; float:left; margin-right: 20px;"> <a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8213852/type/dlg/sid/bfriday/https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/inspiron-chromebook-11-2-in-1/spd/inspiron-chromebook-11-3181-2-in-1/dncwchrmb212h" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/computers/dell-chromebook-11-3181-2-in-1-f03f78ca.jpg?&w=175&h=150&fit=fill&bg=fff&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=79593e2debaba87002412d6067d40380" alt="" width="175" height="150"></a> </div> <div style="padding-top: 20px;"> <h3><a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8213852/type/dlg/sid/bfriday/https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/inspiron-chromebook-11-2-in-1/spd/inspiron-chromebook-11-3181-2-in-1/dncwchrmb212h" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Inspiron Chromebook 11 2-in-1 (4 GB RAM, 64 GB eMMC)</a></h3> <p style="margin-bottom:0;">List Price: <strike>$299.99</strike></p> <p style="font-size: 150%; margin-bottom: 0; padding-bottom:0; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/8213852/type/dlg/sid/bfriday/https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/inspiron-chromebook-11-2-in-1/spd/inspiron-chromebook-11-3181-2-in-1/dncwchrmb212h" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">$249.99 direct from Dell</a></p> </div> </div> <p style="margin-top: 100px; clear:both;"><span style="padding: 14px; background: #D92600;"><a href="http://www.tkqlhce.com/79115shqnhp4D768DA74688BA5B5" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" style="color: #fff">Visit the Dell Store for More Cyber Week …</a></span></p></div></div></p></div></div></p></div></div></p></div></div></p></div></div></p></div></div><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/chromebook-deals-black-friday-cyber-monday/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/nintendo/nintendo-deals-black-friday-cyber-monday/ Sun, 04 Nov 2018 00:01:51 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/nintendo/nintendo-deals-black-friday-cyber-monday/ <p>The Nintendo Switch console is the best family-oriented console on the market this year. The Switch features great kid-friendly games like Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Super Mario Party, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.</p> <p>You&rsquo;ll rarely find a sale price on the Nintendo Switch as Nintendo controls Switch prices tightly. However, you will find sales on the Switch when you apply store-wide percent off coupons, and sometimes stores will bundle extras with the Switch.</p> <h1 id="nintendo-black-friday-2018-deals">Nintendo Black Friday 2018 Deals</h1> <h2 id="target">Target</h2> <p><a href="https://www.target.com/" target="_blank"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/nintendo/black-friday-2018/target-switch-black-friday-2018-be158159.png?&w=303&h=260&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=a6690ed0dd280836553233edf59f5af9" alt="Target Nintendo Switch Black Friday Cyber Monday 2018" width="303" height="260" style="margin: 0 0 0 10px;" align="right"></a> This year, Target is bundling Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with Switch purchases on Black Friday. This is a $59.99 value and everyone in the family is sure to enjoy racing each other on Christmas morning!</p> <p>Target is also offering free 2-day shipping this holiday season, so you might want to skip the stores and pick this deal up online. REDcard holders can even get early access on Novmeber 21st (this should give you an extra 5% discount as well)!</p> <div style="clear:both; margin-top: 60px;">&nbsp;</div> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/nintendo/nintendo-deals-black-friday-cyber-monday/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/can-i-hack-school-chromebook/ Mon, 10 Sep 2018 21:59:27 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/can-i-hack-school-chromebook/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/hack_a_chromebook3-ae42c72c.png?&w=845&h=&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=f09297181568b84a69beaec236403b53" alt="hack a chromebook" width="845" height="" class="hero"> <p>Sometimes people ask if it&rsquo;s possible to &ldquo;hack&rdquo; or &ldquo;bypass&rdquo; the security on their school-issued Chrome OS devices. Sometimes they want to log in with their own personal Google account, and sometimes they want to bypass school or job enforced content filtering and app limitations. So, can you bypass the administrator restrictions or school enterprise enrollment on your Chromebook?</p> <h2 id="summary">Summary</h2> <p><strong>You can&rsquo;t, and even if you could, you probably don&rsquo;t want to.</strong> Hacking your school-issued Chromebook would most certainly lead to disciplinary or legal action from your school. Also, if you do figure out how to break the security on your school enterprise enrolled Chromebook, Google might pay you a lot of money for that information.</p> <h3 id="recommended-alternative">Recommended Alternative</h3> <p>Instead of trying to hack your school&rsquo;s computer, you&rsquo;re better off saving up a few bucks and buying yourself a laptop or tablet. Chromebooks are pretty cheap, and you can find some …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/can-i-hack-school-chromebook/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/online-backup-solutions-for-ubuntu-linux/ Thu, 15 Mar 2018 15:05:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/online-backup-solutions-for-ubuntu-linux/ <p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/cloud_backup/cloud_2018-299f947d.png?&w=300&h=&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=9c29de737af41640a1a9461d74242606" alt="Ubuntu Cloud Backup" width="300" height="" align="right"> As the digital age progresses, the amount of data we produce each year is snowballing. There was a time when we could fit all of our personal digital data on a few floppy disks, but many of us now have hundreds of gigabytes, or even terabytes, of photos, videos, music, and documents that we need to backup and protect. Backing up our data locally is essential, but any good backup plan should also include off-site backups. &ldquo;The Cloud&rdquo; has promised us unlimited, cheap storage where we can save our ever-growing data. Online cloud backups should be a part of your overall backup plan, but it&rsquo;s crucial that your data is secure, encrypted, and backed up automatically. Here are a few online backup tools that aim to make cloud backups easy for desktop Linux users.</p> <div class="disclosure-inline"> <p><strong>Disclosure:</strong> Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. <span id="disclosure-click"><a onclick="document.getElementById('disclosure-details').style.display = 'inline'; document.getElementById('disclosure-click').style.display = 'none';">Click here for more information.</a></span> <span style="display: none" id="disclosure-details">Some of the companies that I love and recommend to my friends and readers have affiliate programs that allow me …</span></p></div><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/online-backup-solutions-for-ubuntu-linux/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/chromebook-ethernet-adapter/ Tue, 31 Oct 2017 16:26:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/chromebook-ethernet-adapter/ <p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Ethernet-Gigabit-Network-Compatible/dp/B00AQM8586?SubscriptionId=AKIAXBZAMVKUQXAFQD4T&tag=starryhope-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00AQM8586" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" data-amzn-asin="B00AQM8586"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/thumbnails/chromebook-usb-ethernet-adapter-m-251c05b1.jpg?&w=150&h=150&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=b80806f06849b2e2e9e4031277a09d96" alt="Chromebook USB Ethernet Adapter" width="150" height="150" style="margin: 0 0 0 10px;" align="right"></a> Wireless internet is great, but sometimes you might find yourself in a situation where the only Internet connection is a wired one, or you simply need the stability of a wired connection. While most newer Chromebooks do not include an Ethernet LAN port, you can easily add this functionality with a reasonably priced USB Ethernet adapter.</p> <p>I recently needed to connect one of my Chromebooks to a wired network, so I headed over to Amazon to look for a USB Ethernet adapter. After reading lots of reviews, I settled on a USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet model from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Ethernet-Gigabit-Network-Compatible/dp/B00AQM8586?SubscriptionId=AKIAXBZAMVKUQXAFQD4T&tag=starryhope-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00AQM8586" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" data-amzn-asin="B00AQM8586">Plugable</a>. The reviews were good and several people reported that it worked on Chromebooks and other Linux based computers, so I decided to give it a shot.</p> <p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/chromebook-ethernet-connection-a9be8aa0.png?&w=261&h=329&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=bec418fcf9014abb6a24b74e9989775b" alt="Chromebook Ethernet Connection" width="261" height="329" style="margin: 0 0 0 16px; border: solid 1px #e9e9e9;" align="right"> Using the adapter was really straight forward. I simply plugged it into a free USB port and plugged a network cord into the Ethernet port. After a few seconds, the Chromebook hid the WiFi connection and connected through the Ethernet LAN. When connected to the wired network, the …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/chromebook-ethernet-adapter/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/skype-for-chromebooks/ Sun, 29 Oct 2017 21:52:33 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/skype-for-chromebooks/ <p>One of the most requested apps for Chromebooks over the years has been Skype. Many people use Skype for chatting or talking with their friends, family, and work contacts. Until recently, the lack of Skype for Chrome OS was a real deal breaker for many. However, it&rsquo;s now possible to use Skype on your Chromebook in two different ways.</p> <h2 id="1-install-skype-from-google-play-store">1. Install Skype from Google Play Store</h2> <p> <a href="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/chromebook-skype-android-390c587b.png?fit=max&w=1200&h=1200auto=format,compress&q=90&s=0cf64367b77c1ef620b3604f2028413a" target="_blank" class="lightbox"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/chromebook-skype-android-390c587b.png?&w=165&h=239&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=73836f31f166c2794a9bc4c346a85c44" alt="Skype for Chromebooks" width="165" height="239" align="right"></a> If your Chromebook is one of the many that supports Android apps from the Google Play Store, you can install the same <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.skype.raider&amp;hl=en">Skype application</a> that you use on your Android smartphone right on your Chromebook.</p> <p>The Skype app currently works quite well on Chromebooks. Full-screen mode works great, voice and video calls work well, and Skype chat works as expected. Microsoft will most likely continue to support Skype on Chromebooks in the future as a first-class platform.</p> <p>Find Android compatible Chromebooks with our <a href="/chromebooks/chromebook-comparison-chart/">Chromebook Comparison app</a>.</p> <h2 id="2-skype-for-web">2. Skype for Web</h2> <p> <a href="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/chromebook-skype-web-6759bc28.png?fit=max&w=1200&h=1200auto=format,compress&q=90&s=d2c0b2f0e0213d9b7ae24a247992ff23" target="_blank" class="lightbox"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/chromebook-skype-web-6759bc28.png?&w=366&h=250&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=81988c626f91c00c1ecc8b247d0d4d57" alt="Skype for Web on Chromebooks" width="366" height="250" align="right"></a> If your Chromebook doesn&rsquo;t support Android …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/skype-for-chromebooks/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/untangle-multiple-wans/ Tue, 24 Oct 2017 01:27:42 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/untangle-multiple-wans/ <p><a href="https://www.untangle.com/">Untangle</a> has been my favorite Linux based network firewall and gateway system for several years. If you need to set up a gateway quickly and cheaply, you can download Untangle and throw it on just about any hardware with 2 or more network cards.</p> <p>If you need advanced features like web filtering, SSL inspection, and detailed bandwidth control, you&rsquo;ll need to pay for a license (as low as $50/year for <a href="https://www.untangle.com/untangle-ng-firewall/untangle-at-home/">home use</a>).</p> <p>Two of the advanced apps that I&rsquo;ve found very useful at work recently are <a href="https://www.untangle.com/shop/WAN-Balancer/">WAN Balancer</a> and <a href="https://www.untangle.com/shop/WAN-Failover/">WAN Failover</a>. We&rsquo;ve had a lot of reliability issues with our primary internet provider, so we recently added a second connection with another company as backup.</p> <div align="center" style="margin: 20px 0; clear: both;"> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1323350189657787" data-ad-slot="7543572758" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div> <p>The WAN Balancer was very easy to configure and automatically …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/untangle-multiple-wans/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/wiki/golang/ Tue, 10 Oct 2017 18:22:44 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/wiki/golang/ <h1 id="links">Links</h1> <h2 id="tools">Tools</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://gohugo.io/">Hugo</a> - The amazing static site generator.</li> <li><a href="https://caddyserver.com/">Caddy</a> - A lovely webserver.</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/spf13/cobra">Cobra</a> - Create command line apps written in Go.</li> </ul> <h2 id="learning">Learning</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/toddmcleod">Learn To Code</a> - Todd McLeod&rsquo;s youtube channel which has tons of amazing Golang content.</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/GoesToEleven/GolangTraining">Todd McLeod&rsquo;s Golang Training</a> - Github repo with tons of code examples from Todd&rsquo;s videos.</li> <li><a href="https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B22KXlqHz6ZNfjNXTzk1U3JHUkJ6VjJ3dnJKNzVtNjRUM3Q2WFNqWGI2Q3RadERqUlVrOEU">Todd McLeod&rsquo;s Google Drive of Golang Awesomeness</a> - Lots of great documents and slides about Golang.</li> </ul> <h2 id="libraries">Libraries</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://github.com/ngs/go-amazon-product-advertising-api">Amazon Product Advertising API for Go</a></li> <li><a href="https://unidoc.io/">Unidoc</a> - Comprehensive Golang PDF Library</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/jung-kurt/gofpdf">gofpdf</a> - PDF document generator</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/asciimoo/colly">Colly</a> - Website scraping in Go.</li> </ul> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/wiki/golang/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/wiki/powershell/ Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:37:39 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/wiki/powershell/ <h3 id="number-formatting-in-powershell-https-technet-microsoft-com-en-us-library-ee692795-aspx-f-255-mspperror-2147217396"><a href="https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692795.aspx?f=255&amp;MSPPError=-2147217396">Number Formatting in PowerShell</a></h3> <div class="highlight"><pre style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4"><code class="language-powershell" data-lang="powershell">$a = 348 <span style="color:#e6db74">&#34;{0:N2}&#34;</span> <span style="color:#f92672">-f</span> $a <span style="color:#75715e"># 348.00</span> <span style="color:#e6db74">&#34;{0:D8}&#34;</span> <span style="color:#f92672">-f</span> $a <span style="color:#75715e"># 00000348 (Decimal)</span> <span style="color:#e6db74">&#34;{0:C2}&#34;</span> <span style="color:#f92672">-f</span> $a <span style="color:#75715e"># $348.00 (Currency)</span> <span style="color:#e6db74">&#34;{0:P0}&#34;</span> <span style="color:#f92672">-f</span> $a <span style="color:#75715e"># 34,800 % (Percentage)</span> <span style="color:#e6db74">&#34;{0:X0}&#34;</span> <span style="color:#f92672">-f</span> $a <span style="color:#75715e"># 15C (Hexadecimal)</span></code></pre></div> <h2 id="links">Links</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.powershellgallery.com/">PowerShell Gallery</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.pluralsight.com/paths/powershell">Pluralsight PowerShell Courses</a></li> </ul> <h2 id="video-tutorials">Video Tutorials</h2> <p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/MVZAbQEkegU" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video"></iframe> </div> Passwords in PowerShell</p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/wiki/powershell/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebook-language-settings/ Tue, 19 Sep 2017 13:21:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebook-language-settings/ <p>Want to change the display language of your Chromebook or add a keyboard layout for typing in another language? The Chromebooks operating system (Chrome OS) is a fully multi-language operating system, so changing the system language or adding keyboard layouts for other languages is really simple. Follow these instructions to add a keyboard language layout for typing in another language (Russian, Spanish or any other language).</p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/VsXDYQ0IzCw" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video"></iframe> </div> <h2 id="how-to-add-languages-and-keyboard-layouts">How to Add Languages and Keyboard Layouts</h2> <ol> <li>Click on the status area in the lower right-hand side of your screen.</li> <li>Click the Settings button (looks like a gear).</li> <li>Scroll down to the Device section and click Keyboard.</li> <li>Click &ldquo;Change language and input settings.&rdquo;</li> <li>Click Language to expand the language section.</li> <li>Click the &ldquo;Add languages&rdquo; link.</li> <li>Search for and click the checkbox next to the language you would like to add and click Add button.</li> <li>To manage the input methods for each language (select keyboard layouts, etc.), click …</li></ol><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebook-language-settings/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-check-version/ Fri, 07 Jul 2017 15:01:01 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-check-version/ <p>Finding the version of Ubuntu that you are using is quite easy and can be accomplished from both the terminal and the graphical interface. When following online tutorials or installing software, it&rsquo;s often important to know what version of Ubuntu you have installed, the code name of that version and if the system is 32-bit or 64-bit.</p> <h2 id="check-ubuntu-version-in-the-terminal">Check Ubuntu Version in the Terminal</h2> <p><strong>To find the version of Ubuntu in the terminal, run the following command.</strong></p> <pre><code>lsb_release -a </code></pre> <p>The results show the Distributor ID (or distribution name), a description of the installed version, as well as the release number and codename.</p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/screenshots/lsb_release-8381d13d.png?&w=410&h=161&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=69e2071e5b9f428744be0b79bededea5" alt="lbs_release output" width="410" height="161" style="margin: 0 0 10px 0;"> <p><strong>To determine if the installed system is 32-bit or 64-bit, you can run the following command.</strong></p> <pre><code>uname -i </code></pre> <p>If the system is 32-bit, you should see one of the following results: i386, i586 or i686. 64-bit systems will display x86_64.</p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/screenshots/uname-a-4049243d.png?&w=229&h=48&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=46af7a04eeeab287bdd2111a1a4e96e2" alt="uname -a output" width="229" height="48" style="margin: 0 0 10px 0;"> <h2 id="check-ubuntu-version-in-the-unity-graphical-interface">Check Ubuntu Version in the Unity graphical interface</h2> <p>If you have the Unity desktop installed, you can find all of this information by …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-check-version/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/antivirus-for-chromebook/ Thu, 29 Jun 2017 15:30:52 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/antivirus-for-chromebook/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/antivirus-for-chromebooks-f67affaa.png?&w=845&h=250&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=940184a4b60db7768d372baea9a7dc14" alt="Antivirus for Chromebook" width="845" height="250" class="hero"> <h3 id="short-answer">Short Answer:</h3> <p>No, you do not need to purchase or install antivirus software on your Chromebook. Chromebooks use a combination of automatic updates, process sandboxing, data encryption and a verified boot process to protect from viruses and malware.</p> <h3 id="long-answer">Long Answer:</h3> <p>While Google has gone out of their way to make Chromebooks as safe as possible from viruses, it is still technically feasible for malicious software to get into your system. Such malware often takes the form of malicious Chrome extensions or bad acting Android apps from the Play Store and can be simply uninstalled.</p> <p>Here are some of the ways that Chromebooks protect you from viruses.</p> <h4 id="sandboxing">Sandboxing</h4> <p>Each web page and each application runs in its own restricted environment called a &ldquo;sandbox.&rdquo; Most of the time, sandboxing protects against dangerous websites and rogue Android applications. Of course, it is still possible for bad sites and apps to do nasty things like collect data on you or try to scam you, but …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/antivirus-for-chromebook/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/chromebooks-with-upgradeable-storage/ Fri, 26 May 2017 20:42:30 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/chromebooks-with-upgradeable-storage/ <p>While the internal storage in most Chromebooks is not upgradeable, some Chromebook models do feature user replaceable solid state drives (SSDs). Two of the most popular models with upgradeable drives are the Acer C720 series and the 2015 version of the Toshiba Chromebook 2.</p> <h2 id="compare-chrome-os-devices-with-upgradeable-ssds">Compare Chrome OS devices with upgradeable SSDs</h2> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/chromebooks-with-upgradeable-storage/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/best-chromebook-under-200/ Mon, 22 May 2017 19:14:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/best-chromebook-under-200/ <p>In 2017, major computer makers have pushed the price of their entry-level Chromebooks lower than ever. There are several Chromebooks available for less than $200, and a few for even less. You often can find Chromebooks for as low as $149 online. Here are a few popular models from top manufacturers that you can get pick up this year for less than $200.</p> <h2 id="acer-chromebook-11">Acer Chromebook 11</h2> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B019G7VPTC/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/computers/acer-chromebook-11-cb3-131-09aa24e6.jpg?&w=240&h=175&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=cd3fa7a0df3d3d930f6310dc9a4e5d0d" alt="Acer Chromebook 11" width="240" height="175" style="float: left; padding: 0 10px 10px 0;"></a> The <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B019G7VPTC/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Acer Chromebook 11 (2016 version)</a> has been one of the best-selling Chromebooks since its release last year. This Chromebook features a 2.16 GHz Intel processor with 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of fast eMMC storage. The 11-inch screen is quite good for the price with decent brightness and viewing angles. The small, lightweight design is great for students or anyone who is on the go. With WiFi, HDMI, USB ports and an SD card slot, the Acer Chromebook 11 has pretty much everything that most users need and expect. And at a list price of $179, it’s hard to beat this the Acer Chromebook 11!</p> <h2 id="asus-chromebook-c202sa">ASUS Chromebook C202SA</h2> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DBGVB7K/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/computers/asus-chromebook-c202sa-355065ea.jpg?&w=234&h=175&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=7249ea3eead1abad4e292f49249f610d" alt="ASUS Chromebook C202SA-YS02" width="234" height="175" style="float: right; padding: 0 0 10px 10px;"></a> The …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/best-chromebook-under-200/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-dvd-video/ Mon, 07 Nov 2016 12:49:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-dvd-video/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/thumbnails/chromebook-dvd-a6bba476.png?&w=200&h=200&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=ee82993e89b6f227eed80e232452b26e" alt="Chromebook DVD Video" width="200" height="200" style="margin:0 0 10px 10px" align="right"> <h3 id="short-answer">Short Answer:</h3> <p><strong>No</strong>. Chrome OS does not currently have support for playback of video DVDs included by default. <del>However, it&rsquo;s now possible to play DVD video with the help of <a href="/chromebooks/tutorials/vlc-for-chromeos/">VLC for Chrome OS</a>.</del> Also, VLC for Chrome OS and VLC via the Play Store no longer seem to allow accessing DVD drives.</p> <h3 id="long-answer">Long Answer:</h3> <p>While it is possible to connect an <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C2AMK2M/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">external USB DVD drive</a> to a Chromebook, you can not currently watch DVD movies by default in Chrome OS. Unlike simple movie file formats that you might find online, playback of DVD Video requires special decoding software and codecs to work. Google has not licensed this software and included it with Chrome OS, <del>however, VLC for Chrome OS provides limited DVD video playback for Chromebooks and Chromeboxes (<a href="/chromebooks/tutorials/vlc-for-chromeos/">details here</a>)</del>. Considering that no Chrome OS devices ship with DVD hardware, it is unlikely that Google will license DVD Video software and include it in Chrome OS.</p> <p>Of course, it also would be possible to watch video DVD movies using <a href="https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton">crouton …</a></p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-dvd-video/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/best-chromebook-for-kids/ Tue, 27 Sep 2016 20:45:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/best-chromebook-for-kids/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/chromebooks_for_kids-882a33dd.jpg?&w=845&h=384&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=c84905eb4b597067a17b9feb8542c180" alt="Chromebooks for Kids" width="845" height="384" class="hero"> <p>There has been a lot of debate recently about children using technology. While some think that kids should only have very limited exposure to computers, others allow their children to play with tablets, phones, and laptops all they want. Over the past few years, schools have been adopting Chromebooks as an inexpensive way to provide students with computers in a more controlled fashion. Schools can easily limit the functionality available on Chromebooks and keep things running smoothly for students and teachers at a much-reduced cost compared to traditional legacy computing environments.</p> <p>Chromebooks can be a great fit for your kids at home and not just at school. Their low cost is attractive to many parents. Other features like automatic seamless system updates and the built-in virus protection also make a Chromebook a good choice for kids. With the upcoming introduction of the Google Play Store (Android apps) for Chromebooks, children will have access to even more software than …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/best-chromebook-for-kids/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/steam-on-chromebook/ Fri, 26 Aug 2016 16:01:58 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/steam-on-chromebook/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/thumbnails/chromebook-steam-392c280c.png?&w=200&h=200&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=7bd2a99731dc1584134ae689753d7214" alt="Steam on Chromebook" width="200" height="200" align="right"> <h3 id="short-answer">Short Answer:</h3> <p>No. <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/about/">Steam</a> is currently available on Linux, Mac and Windows, but not on the Chromebook&rsquo;s Chrome OS.</p> <h3 id="long-answer">Long Answer:</h3> <p>While it would be technically possible for Valve to work with Google to create a version of Steam for Chromebooks, it is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Steam does run on other versions of Linux like Steam OS and Ubuntu. Chrome OS is a Linux based system, but considering the focus of Steam on gaming, and the inexpensive (low power) nature of Chromebooks, Steam on Chromebooks would not make a lot of sense.</p> <p>However, if you are technically literate (and enjoy tinkering with computers) you can install Ubuntu using <a href="https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton">crouton</a> on Intel based Chromebooks. Many have reported success with this approach to installing Steam.</p> <h3 id="update">Update:</h3> <p>It&rsquo;s now possible to run some Steam games using the <a href="https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-android">CrossOver Android Preview</a> on some Intel Chromebooks like the <a href="/chromebooks/models/acer-chromebook-11-cb5-132t/">Acer Chromebook R11</a>. Here&rsquo;s a video demonstation of running the game Limbo on Steam on a Chromebook! …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/steam-on-chromebook/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/windows-apps-on-chromebooks/ Thu, 25 Aug 2016 14:05:30 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/windows-apps-on-chromebooks/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/chromebook_windows-cc8e2dac.png?&w=200&h=200&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=c9419bc9acb72ac297793a3eb48db447" alt="Chromebook Windows" width="200" height="200" style="margin: 0 0 15px 10px" align="right"> <h3 id="short-answer">Short Answer:</h3> <p><strong>No</strong>. Chromebooks come with Google&rsquo;s Chrome OS, not Windows or MacOS. Windows applications are not supported by Google on Chromebooks.</p> <p class="amz-books"> Learn more about your Chromebook with this in-depth book for Chromebook owners: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0789755343/?tag=shchbooks-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">My Google Chromebook</a>. </p> <h3 id="long-answer">Long Answer:</h3> <p>If you really need to run a specific Windows app on a Chromebook, there are ways you can do it (for some, but not all applications). Of course, this will only work on INTEL-BASED CHROMEBOOKS! However, all of the current methods for installing Windows apps require more than basic technical skills and putting your Chromebook into Developer Mode.</p> <p>One way to run Windows apps on a Chromebook is to install Ubuntu via <a href="https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton">Cruton</a> and then use <a href="https://www.winehq.org/">Wine</a> or <a href="https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-linux">CrossOver Linux</a> to install your Windows apps. Quite a few applications, such as Microsoft Office (2007, 2010, 2013) and Steam will work with this method.</p> <p>Another way to install Windows apps is with <a href="https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-android">CrossOver Android</a>. This is still very much a software PREVIEW, but if you …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/windows-apps-on-chromebooks/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/best-chromebook-for-college-students/ Wed, 24 Aug 2016 14:45:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/best-chromebook-for-college-students/ <p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/chromebooks_for_college-69177803.jpg?&w=845&h=254&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=46812e89ceb7baf483f71b9217f04ba3" alt="Chromebooks for College Students" width="845" height="254" class="hero"> The last few years have seen a huge increase in the use of Chromebooks in secondary and elementary schools. While schools certainly seem to appreciate Chromebooks for their security and simplicity, many are new students are asking &ldquo;is a Chromebook good for college?&rdquo;</p> <p>If you&rsquo;re a college student looking at <a href="/chromebooks/chromebook-comparison-chart/">Chromebooks</a> as an alternative to expensive Macs or Windows 10 notebooks, you should be careful to check your university&rsquo;s technology requirements. Some colleges require specific software for use in your studies, especially if you will be studying in a field that requires specialized software. If you plan to study graphic design, which usually requires the Adobe software suite or something like drafting which requires CAD software, you&rsquo;ll want to stay away from Chromebooks for your main computer. Some universities also require Microsoft Office, and while you can use the online versions of Office apps for free, and soon will be able to use the Android …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/best-chromebook-for-college-students/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/aquaris-m10-ubuntu-edition-photos/ Fri, 22 Apr 2016 03:35:40 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/aquaris-m10-ubuntu-edition-photos/ <p>I just got my BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition today. Here are a few photos of the device and the contents of the package.</p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/m10/bq_aquaris_m10_ubuntu_boot-0e2f20b8.jpg?&w=800&h=533&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=a3967cb7c6cd92dd040b450b781fe424" alt="BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition" width="800" height="533"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/m10/bq_aquaris_m10_ubuntu_box-7454866d.jpg?&w=800&h=533&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=974f1dd32fb413363eabf71a9f7389a0" alt="BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition" width="800" height="533" style="height: auto;"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/m10/bq_aquaris_m10_ubuntu_box2-f78bd08f.jpg?&w=800&h=533&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=bf813f64cb0ea6021c7ac933322724c7" alt="BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition" width="800" height="533" style="height: auto;"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/m10/bq_aquaris_m10_ubuntu_box3-c6d56faf.jpg?&w=800&h=533&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=749020b7f6a4a77b40dc63ccb24de5b9" alt="BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition" width="800" height="533" style="height: auto;"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/m10/bq_aquaris_m10_ubuntu_package_contents-6bb2b1fd.jpg?&w=800&h=533&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=e2c8cc6e6029854daa6254077a3841a0" alt="BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition" width="800" height="533" style="height: auto;"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/m10/bq_aquaris_m10_ubuntu_desktop_mode-3d3a71ab.jpg?&w=800&h=533&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=0e17b33750c51fe5fed1c4d535e9f6cf" alt="BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition" width="800" height="533" style="height: auto;"> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/aquaris-m10-ubuntu-edition-photos/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/chromebooks-with-touchscreens/ Wed, 24 Feb 2016 18:18:34 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/chromebooks-with-touchscreens/ <p>Several Chromebook models offer touchscreen functionality that lets you interact with Chrome OS through touch gestures. Some simply have a touchscreen and others are convertible and let you flip the keyboard out of the way for a more tablet-like experience. Below are some of the ever growing list of touch-enabled Chromebooks.</p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/top/chromebooks-with-touchscreens/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-touch-convergence-desktop/ Wed, 20 Jan 2016 14:07:26 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-touch-convergence-desktop/ <p>The team over at Canonical have been hard at work on realizing the dream of &ldquo;convergence&rdquo; for several years now. While, to many, it seems like the promised convergence of phone, tablet, and desktop Ubuntu will never be realized, progress is being made (and more importantly, demonstrated) in new builds of Ubuntu for devices like the Nexus 4.</p> <p>I recently decided to give Ubuntu touch another try on my aging Nexus 4 phone, and I have to say, I&rsquo;m very impressed! The Nexus 4 is by no means a cutting-edge phone, and it feels underpowered compared to newer Android devices. Nine months ago, the Ubuntu experience on the Nexus 4 was unbearably slow and pretty much unusable. Today, with the upcoming OTA-9 release, Ubuntu runs significantly faster (although, still much slower than Android) and is approaching something I might attempt using on a daily basis.</p> <p>For me, the most interesting part of running Ubuntu on the Nexus 4 is the ability to check out the progress being made on …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-touch-convergence-desktop/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chrome-os-mac-pc/ Thu, 14 Jan 2016 19:31:30 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chrome-os-mac-pc/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/chromebooks/chrome-os-mac-pc-big-7b2d95af.png?&w=300&h=200&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=5afecf9a32b65951133d16aa6c20f2a2" alt="Chrome OS on Macbook" width="300" height="200" style="margin:0 0 20px 20px; border: solid 1px #e5e5e5;" align="right"> <h3 id="short-answer">Short Answer:</h3> <p>No. Google does not make Chrome OS available for download and installation on general PCs or Macs. Chrome OS is only supported on officially licensed Chromebooks, Chromeboxes, Chromebits and Chromebases.</p> <h3 id="long-answer">Long Answer:</h3> <p>Chrome OS is based on the open source <a href="http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os">Chromium OS</a> project and it is possible to build Chromium OS from the source code and install it on a variety of hardware and even virtual machines. For detailed instructions on downloading the Chromiums OS source code and building it for your system, see the <a href="http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-guide">Chromium OS Developer Guide</a>.</p> <p>Prebuilt images of Chromium OS are also available from <a href="http://arnoldthebat.co.uk/wordpress/chromium-os/">ArnoldTheBats World of Whimsy</a>. These <a href="http://chromium.arnoldthebat.co.uk/index.php?dir=daily%2F">images</a> are automatically built daily and may work on your system.</p> <p>Neverware also uses the Chromium OS code base for its <a href="http://www.neverware.com/free/">Cloudready</a> operating system. This is a modified version of Chromium with added driver support for a wide variety of hardware. Cloudready is your best bet for easily getting a Chrome OS compatible system up and running on …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chrome-os-mac-pc/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/bittorrent-on-chromebook/ Tue, 29 Dec 2015 20:21:41 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/bittorrent-on-chromebook/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/thumbnails/chromebook-torrents-e1a215e6.png?&w=200&h=200&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=58352cbacb0f07983883d45421a381ed" alt="Torrents Chromebook" width="200" height="200" style="margin:0 0 15px 10px" align="right"> <h3 id="short-answer">Short Answer:</h3> <p>Yes! While Chromebooks do not come pre-installed with BitTorrent software, you can download JSTorrent from the <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jstorrent/anhdpjpojoipgpmfanmedjghaligalgb">Chrome Web Store</a> for $2.99.</p> <h3 id="long-answer">Long Answer:</h3> <p>There are several torrent apps available for Chrome OS. The most popular and robust option is JSTorrent. The software is open source and can be downloaded for free from <a href="https://github.com/kzahel/jstorrent">Github</a>. Installing from Github requires some extra steps that may be confusing to new users and also requires manual updating. If you purchase through the <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jstorrent/anhdpjpojoipgpmfanmedjghaligalgb">Chrome Web Store</a>, installation is simple and updates are automatic and syncronized between all of your Chrome instances.</p> <p>JSTorrent also works on the Windows, Mac and Linux versions of Chrome. This may be useful for quickly downloading a torrent on a computer where you do not want to install a full-blown torrent client or where you do not have administrative privileges to install software.</p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/bittorrent-on-chromebook/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/vlc-for-chromeos/ Thu, 17 Dec 2015 09:50:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/vlc-for-chromeos/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/thumbnails/chromebook-vlc-629cc9ea.png?&w=150&h=150&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=ba69f54065d3fb7d99497a900334febc" alt="VLC for Chrome OS" width="150" height="150" style="margin:0 0 10px 10px" align="right"> <p>While the built-in video and audio players in Chrome OS can play quite a few different file formats, you are likely to come across media files that won’t play by default on your Chromebook. Windows, Linux and Mac users have long turned to <a href="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/">VLC</a> to play audio and video files, network streams, <del>and DVDs</del>. Recently, VLC has been released for Chrome OS as well.</p> <p>The version of VLC for Chrome devices is a modified version of VLC for Android which takes advantage of the Google’s <a href="https://developer.chrome.com/apps/getstarted_arc">App Runtime for Chrome</a>. VLC for Chrome OS plays most local video and audio files, network streams. Supported formats include MKV, MP4, AVI, MOV, Ogg, FLAC, TS, M2TS, Wv and AAC. The player will even play video files off of an <del>external USB DVD drive</del> or a DVD ISO file.</p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/vlc-chrome-os-1-f5842330.jpg?&w=670&h=&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=cd57c5b0c7edbd5b1c3a71fa3e7e4fa5" alt="VLC on Chrome OS" width="670" height="" class="centered"> <p>To get started with VLC on your Chromebook, visit the <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vlc/obpdeolnggmbekmklghapmfpnfhpcndf" target="_blank">VLC page on the Chrome Web Store</a>, read the instructions and click Install. The installation process takes quite a bit longer than normal, but it will eventually install. On first launch, point …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/vlc-for-chromeos/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/dropbox-for-chromebooks/ Sun, 06 Dec 2015 02:55:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/dropbox-for-chromebooks/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/thumbnails/chromebook-dropbox-c0e1e944.png?&w=150&h=150&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=a0b70bb1990aa26961f2fca8ec0a5df5" alt="Dropbox for Chrome OS" width="150" height="150" style="margin:0 0 0 10px" align="right"> <p>Thanks to the hard work of developer <a href="https://github.com/yoichiro/">Yoichiro Tanaka</a>, Chromebook users can now access their Dropbox accounts directly in Chrome OS. The <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/file-system-for-dropbox/hlffpaajmfllggclnjppbblobdhokjhe?hl=en">File System for Dropbox</a> extension uses the <a href="https://developer.chrome.com/apps/fileSystemProvider">File System Provider API</a> to integrate Dropbox into the Chrome OS file browser. This provides a nicely unified way to work with Dropbox files on Chromebooks. Watch the video below for complete instructions on setting up Dropbox on your Chrome devices.</p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8VjaYeoXX9Y" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video"></iframe> </div> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/dropbox-for-chromebooks/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/hp-chromebook-11/ Wed, 22 Jul 2015 20:58:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/hp-chromebook-11/ <p>There are currently four generations of notebooks called &ldquo;HP Chromebook 11&rdquo; and this article is an attempt to demystify the different versions. On this page, I&rsquo;ve summarised the most important information about each generation and also included a compraison chart at the bottom featuring the base model of each generation.</p> <h2 id="hp-chromebook-11-g1">HP Chromebook 11 G1</h2> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FJXVRM8/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/computers/hp-chromebook-11-colors-8b400004.jpg?&w=350&h=277&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=40cf98082233483bdc7000576fae6e7b" alt="HP Chromebook 11 G1 Colors" width="350" height="277" style="margin: 0 0 0 10px" align="right"></a> The release of the HP Chroembook 11 in late 2013 was met with much anticipation and press coverage. Google marketed it as the laptop &ldquo;for everyone&rdquo; and HP seemed poised to take on the Samsung Chromebook which had been selling extremely well. One big selling point of the first generation HP Chromebook 11 was the bright IPS display that was a clear winner over other Chromebooks at the time. HP shipped the Chromebooks in black and also white with blue, red, green, and yellow accents. The device had no HDMI output, but HP&rsquo;s <a href="http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04370548.pdf">QuickSpecs</a> say that it can support an external monitor via Micro-USB.</p> <p>The Chromebook …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/hp-chromebook-11/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/dell-inspiron-14-ubuntu-edition/ Fri, 05 Jun 2015 00:05:00 -0500 https://www.starryhope.com/dell-inspiron-14-ubuntu-edition/ <h4 id="tl-dr">tl;dr</h4> <p>Dell has released a pair of low-end notebooks with Ubuntu pre-installed. I picked up the 14 inch model. With the exception of a few software glitches I encountered during setup, I think the <a href="http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-14-3451-laptop-ubuntu/pd" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Dell Inspiron 14 3000 Series Laptop Ubuntu Edition</a> is pretty great.</p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/dell-inspiron-14/dell-14-ubuntu-edition-10c097a8.jpg?&w=800&h=563&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=e993509df2277d65c71957c0121467e1" alt="Dell Inspiron 14 Ubuntu Edition" width="800" height="563" class="centered" style="border: 1px solid #e1e1e1; height: auto;"> <h2 id="some-background">Some Background</h2> <p>Last year, I was looking for a new laptop. I wanted something inexpensive with decent specs and preferably without Windows. At the time, I wasn&rsquo;t able to find an Ubuntu laptop in America that fit my needs and cost less than $400. I ended up buying a Toshiba Chromebook 2 for $320 (you can pick one up <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N99FXIS/?tag=starryhope-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">at Amazon</a>. As much as I love my Chromebook and enjoy Chrome OS, I do find it quite limiting at times. So, back in January, I wrote a blog post begging computer makers to release a cheap Ubuntu notebook in the US.</p> <p>A couple of weeks ago, I was excited to see that Dell started taking orders for two low-end notebooks on their US store, the &ldquo;<a href="http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-15-3551-laptop-ubuntu/pd" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Inspiron 15 3000 Series Laptop Ubuntu Edition</a>&rdquo; and …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/dell-inspiron-14-ubuntu-edition/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-itunes/ Tue, 26 May 2015 15:40:00 -0500 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-itunes/ <h2 id="can-you-download-and-install-itunes-on-a-chromebook">Can you download and install iTunes on a Chromebook?</h2> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/thumbnails/chromebook-itunes-db58468f.jpg?fit=fill&w=200&h=145&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=6730dac6051fa2f939d325a3f8556fb6" alt="Chromebook iTunes" width="200" height="145" style="margin:0 0 15px 10px" align="right"> <h3 id="short-answer">Short Answer:</h3> <p>No. Apple does not make a version of iTunes that is compatible with Chromebooks and other Chrome OS devices. iTunes currently requires Mac OS X or Windows to run.</p> <h3 id="long-answer">Long Answer:</h3> <p>While nothing would keep Apple from writing a version of iTunes for Chrome OS, it is very unlikely to ever happen. The iTunes model of keeping all of your music on your local hard drive doesn&rsquo;t fit very well with the Chromebook&rsquo;s cloud storage approach to computing. In fact, most Chrome OS devices only come with 16 or 32 GB of storage, not nearly enough space to store your entire music collection.</p> <p>So, what is Google&rsquo;s response to iTunes? <a href="https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/3217385?hl=en">Officially</a>, Google recommends that you upload all of your music to their Google Play Music online music streaming service and use that to listen on your Chromebook (and other devices like Android phones). It is also possible to use other online music services such as <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/cloudplayer/web">Amazon Music Cloud …</a></p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-itunes/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/speed-up-computer-with-ubuntu-mate/ Tue, 03 Feb 2015 16:07:50 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/speed-up-computer-with-ubuntu-mate/ <p>Remember the days when Ubuntu was a fast and light Linux distribution that worked well on low-end and old hardware? One of the big features we talked about to convince people to try Linux used to be that &ldquo;it is so much faster than Windows!&rdquo; Well, those days seem to be a distant memory. As desktop environments have matured, adding features and lots of flashy desktop animations, things have become slow again. It is no longer a certainty that Ubuntu will run any faster on any given computer than Windows 8.1 (in fact, it may very well run slower).</p> <p>I recently inherited a fairly new, but very low-end, Lenovo laptop at work. I was not happy with the performance of Windows 7 on the laptop and upgraded to Windows 8.1. The laptop was still slow, in fact, it was barely usable. Wanting to both rid myself of Windows and speed up the laptop, I decided to install Ubuntu 14.10, because of course this would be faster, right? Wrong!</p> <p>I really enjoy the Ubuntu desktop, and unlike some …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/speed-up-computer-with-ubuntu-mate/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/right-click-chromebook/ Wed, 28 Jan 2015 20:57:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/right-click-chromebook/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/thumbnails/chromebook-right-click-ff1f1ccf.jpg?&w=&h=&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=64d6ed97ccd3b77f254c0ea47e9a84f4" alt="Chromebook Right Click" width="" height="" style="margin: 6px 0 0 10px;" align="right"> <p>Because Chromebook touchpads don&rsquo;t come with left and right buttons, people are often confused about how to right-click on a Chromebook. Thankfully, opening the context menu (or right-click menu) on a Chromebook is quite easy. Here are three easy ways to right click on a Chromebook.</p> <ol> <li><p>The easiest way is to <strong>double tap on the touchpad</strong>. Simply tap or click on the touchpad with two fingers at once. This may be a familiar gesture for some Mac and Windows laptop users.</p></li> <li><p>Alternatively, you can <strong>hold the alt key while tapping the trackpad</strong>.</p></li> <li><p>Finally, if you don&rsquo;t like touchpads and gestures, you can always <strong>connect a traditional mouse to your Chromebook</strong>. Most USB and wireless mice work fine with Chromebooks and offer a traditional right mouse button along with other features such as scroll wheels.</p></li> </ol> <p>Watch the video tutorial below for examples of each right click method.</p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/hBkYPwdO7Rk" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video"></iframe> </div> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/right-click-chromebook/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/disable-touchpad-chromebook/ Sat, 17 Jan 2015 20:50:40 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/disable-touchpad-chromebook/ <p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/thumbnails/chromebook-disable-trackpad-2391a195.jpg?&w=&h=&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=69865ea111479d19dc2aad4dd9d6450e" alt="Chromebook Disable Touchpad" width="" height="" style="margin: 0 0 0 10px;" align="right"> Google is constantly updating the Chromebook&rsquo;s operating system, Chrome OS, however, some basic features available in other operating systems are still unavailable on Chromebooks. One such feature is the ability to disable the touchpad on a Chromebook when you plug in an external mouse. Almost any USB mouse will work with a Chromebook, but many people would like to disable the touchpad when using an external mouse.</p> <h3 id="updated-method-br-disabling-your-touchpad-is-easier-as-of-chrome-os-version-48">UPDATED METHOD: <br> Disabling your touchpad is easier as of Chrome OS version 48</h3> <p>Chrome OS developers, as of version 48, have added the ability to disable both touchpads and touchscreens. However, this feature is still rather unintuitive to find.</p> <p>First, you need to enable an experimental flag named &ldquo;Debugging keyboard shortcuts&rdquo; at chrome://flags/#ash-debug-shortcuts</p> <p>After restarting, you&rsquo;ll be able to use the following keyboard combinations to toggle touchpads and touchscreens on and off.</p> <p>To toggle a touchpad, press <code>&lt;Search&gt; + …</code></p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/tutorials/disable-touchpad-chromebook/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/i-want-an-ubuntu-notebook/ Fri, 16 Jan 2015 11:05:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/i-want-an-ubuntu-notebook/ <h4 id="dear-hp-dell-lenovo-toshiba-asus-and-acer">Dear HP, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, ASUS, and Acer,</h4> <p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/thumbnails/ubuntu-notebook-2a58253c.jpg?&w=200&h=&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=1200c3f49e67c8f85fc0cdeebe391082" alt="Ubuntu Notebook" width="200" height="" style="margin: 0 0 0 10px" align="right"> I want to buy an inexpensive, low to medium-end notebook that comes preinstalled with Ubuntu. I want it to have hardware that is supported by the latest Linux kernel so I can put any GNU/Linux distribution on it that I want. I want it to look nice, you know, like all those fancy HP Stream notebooks and Chromebooks that you&rsquo;re selling. I want it to cost $300 to $450.</p> <p>I was recently looking for a new notebook computer to take with me on the road, to meetings, and for occasional use around the house. I do most of my compute-intensive work on desktops at home and work, keep most of my media in the cloud, and spend a lot of time connected to remote systems, so I don&rsquo;t need a high-end notebook. I spent quite a bit of time looking online and couldn&rsquo;t find a notebook that seemed to meet my needs and have good Linux support. There are systems out there with good Linux support, but I didn&rsquo;t want to spend $800 to $1600 …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/i-want-an-ubuntu-notebook/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chrome-os-linux-distro/ Tue, 13 Jan 2015 07:58:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chrome-os-linux-distro/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/thumbnails/chrome-os-linux-distro-6b07e3ed.png?&w=200&h=200&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=da9816a8d72826724665279196dfca42" alt="Chrome OS Linux Distro" width="200" height="200" style="margin: 0 0 0 10px" align="right"> <h3 id="short-answer">Short Answer:</h3> <p>Yes. Chrome OS, and its open source variant, <a href="http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os">Chromium OS</a>, are distributions of the <a href="https://www.kernel.org/">Linux kernel</a> that come packaged with various <a href="https://www.gnu.org/">GNU</a>, open source, and proprietary software. <a href="http://www.linux.com/directory/Distributions/livecd/chrome-os-linux">The Linux Foundation</a> lists Chrome OS as a Linux Distribution as does <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions">Wikipedia</a>. Even Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman, while he does not approve of Chrome OS&rsquo;s restrictions, recognises it as &ldquo;<a href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/judge-internet-usage.html">a variant of GNU/Linux</a>.&rdquo;</p> <h3 id="long-answer">Long Answer:</h3> <p>Some in the Linux community have criticised Chrome OS as not being a &ldquo;<a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2867025/opensource-subnet/3-ways-to-run-normal-linux-on-a-chromebook.html">normal</a>&rdquo; or &ldquo;traditional&rdquo; Linux distribution. This is true in the sense that traditional Linux distros generally provide more customization and the ability to install a wide variety of software and desktop environments. However, Chrome OS&rsquo;s simplistic, restrictive nature, does not mean that it is not a Linux distro.</p> <p>Others criticise Google&rsquo;s Chrome OS as proprietary and not developed in the open. It is true that Chrome OS contains …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chrome-os-linux-distro/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-network-shares/ Mon, 12 Jan 2015 16:55:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-network-shares/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/thumbnails/chromebook-network-share-23cc71e3.png?&w=200&h=200&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=a571173cebb93136cde6a1f2ecfed1e5" alt="Chromebook Network Shares" width="200" height="200" style="margin:0 0 0 10px" align="right"> <h3 id="short-answer">Short Answer:</h3> <p>The only &lsquo;network shares&rsquo; that are available by default are shared folders on Google Drive. However, there are several extensions available that allow access to other network share types and onlines services like Dropbox (see <a href="/chromebooks/tutorials/dropbox-for-chromebooks/">Dropbox Integration for Chromebooks</a> for more details).</p> <p class="amz-books"> Learn more about your Chromebook with this in-depth book for Chromebook owners: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0789755343/?tag=shchbooks-20" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">My Google Chromebook</a>. </p> <h3 id="long-answer">Long Answer:</h3> <p>Chrome OS&rsquo;s new <a href="https://developer.chrome.com/apps/fileSystemProvider">File System Provider API</a> allows virtually any network file system to be integrated directly into the Chrome OS file manager. This should allow traditional Windows Shares (aka Samba or SMB) to be accessed on Chromebooks as well as WebDAV, SFTP, FTP or any other traditional file sharing technology. It will also allow 3rd party online storage providers such as Dropbox, Box, Microsoft OneDrive, and Amazon S3 to provide extensions that will let Chromebooks seamlessly interact with their storage services. As services roll out Chrome OS …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-network-shares/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-adobe-flash/ Fri, 02 Jan 2015 16:12:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-adobe-flash/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/thumbnails/chromebook-flash-c652c083.png?&w=200&h=200&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=6bc708cb93c17f8535f8bc76bc39607a" alt="Chromebook Adobe Flash" width="200" height="200" style="margin:0 0 0 10px" align="right"> <h3 id="short-answer">Short Answer:</h3> <p>Yes! Chromebooks come with a version of Flash pre-installed. There is no need to download or install anything in order to view Adobe Flash content on a Chromebook.</p> <h3 id="long-answer">Long Answer:</h3> <p>Google maintains a version of Flash that is integrated into the Chrome browser, and Chromebooks, via the Pepper API (PPAPI). This version of Flash is updated along with Chrome OS automatically when your Chromebook updates. Auto-updating of Flash is convenient and also a security benefit as users do not need to manually update Flash and can not be tricked into downloading fake Flash upgrades (a <a href="http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/fake-adobe-flash-update-installs-ransomware-performs-click-fraud">popular method</a> of infecting Windows computers with viruses). <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2475966/cybercrime-hacking/chromebooks-defend-against-the-flash-player.html">Some</a> have even suggested that Chromebooks offer the safest environment for browsing Flash enabled sites.</p> <p>Flash versions are provided for all Chromebook hardware platforms including both ARM and Intel based processors. The version of Flash that Google provides also includes DRM functionality required by sites such as Netflix and Amazon …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-adobe-flash/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-java/ Mon, 18 Aug 2014 16:20:30 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-java/ <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/thumbnails/chromebook-java-9e795205.png?&w=200&h=200&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=575672bb09d3d1310b3a2b1718b3af57" alt="Chromebook Java" width="200" height="200" style="margin:0 0 10px 10px" align="right"> <h3 id="short-answer">Short Answer:</h3> <p>No. Google has chosen not to include support for Java in Chrome OS. For the average user, installing Java or the Java browser plugin is not possible.</p> <h3 id="long-answer">Long Answer:</h3> <p>Similarly to Apple’s decision not to allow Java apps on the iPhone, Google does not support Java or the Java plugin for Chromebooks. They do support the Java plugin for Chrome on Windows, Mac and Linux desktops, so including support for Java on a Chromebook doesn’t seem to be a real technical problem but more likely a clue to how Google really feels about Java on websites. Google is a huge supporter of HTML5 and want to encourage developers to write web apps for HTML5 web standards instead of Java or Flash (although, ironically, they do support Flash on Chromebooks).</p> <p>Now, if you <em>REALLY</em> need Java to run on a Chromebook, there are ways, but not without installing another operating system like Ubuntu via <a href="https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton">Crouton</a>. This is not recommended for anyone but real power users and Linux geeks! You could also access …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/chromebooks/faq/chromebook-java/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/printing-from-chromebook/ Sun, 30 Jun 2013 14:21:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/printing-from-chromebook/ <p>So, you have a new Chromebook and you want to print some documents, but simply plugging in your printer via USB won&rsquo;t work. Fortunately, Google has introduced their Cloud Print technology that makes it really easy to print from your Chromebook (or from any other computer) to a &ldquo;Cloud Print Ready&rdquo; printer or any standard printer that is connected to another computer.</p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/3ijOhaoI76c" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video"></iframe> </div> <h2 id="cloud-ready-printers">Cloud Ready Printers</h2> <p>You can find a list Cloud Ready Printers <a href="http://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/printers.html">here</a>. If you use one of these printers, you can simply follow the manufacturer&rsquo;s instructions to set it up and there is no need to connect it to another computer. This is an easy and efficient way to print if you&rsquo;re in the market for a new printer, but if you want to connect your existing printer, that&rsquo;s easy too.</p> <h2 id="connect-your-existing-printer-to-google-cloud-print">Connect Your Existing Printer to Google Cloud Print</h2> <p>If you already have a working printer that is connected to a Linux, Mac or Windows computer, connecting that printer to Cloud Print is pretty easy. …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/printing-from-chromebook/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/compress-images-with-trimage/ Tue, 14 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/compress-images-with-trimage/ <p>If you do a lot of publishing on the web, you probably know that you should be optimizing your images for speed. However, this can be a rather tedious task, especially if you&rsquo;re received images from another person or department and you just want to quickly get them online. There are many great command-line tools available for Linux that will quickly optimize your images, but using them is not so convenient.</p> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/trimage/trimage_screenshot-7bb8c4d4.png?&w=620&h=229&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=cbc40c91d098f625aa7168ad005ea2e5" alt="trimage screenshot" width="620" height="229" class="centered"> <p>Thankfully, Kilian Valkhof and Paul Chaplin have put together a little tool to help streamline your image optimization. <a href="http://trimage.org/">Trimage Image Compressor</a> provides a simple to use graphical interface (as well as a command line interface) for compressing JPG and PNG images. Just open Trimage and drag and drop the images you want to compress. The original images are overwritten with losslessly optimized versions in just a few seconds.</p> <p>Because Trimage also offers a command line interface to the standard optimization libraries available on Linux, it can come in handy if you need to …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/compress-images-with-trimage/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/take-a-break-workrave/ Fri, 26 Apr 2013 08:00:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/take-a-break-workrave/ <p> <a href="https://sh.imgix.net/i/workrave-1d7e6910.png?fit=max&w=1200&h=1200auto=format,compress&q=90&s=3b442820ccd840bdcf646c33ef263451" target="_blank" class="lightbox"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/workrave-1d7e6910.png?&w=250&h=177&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=be6ede3ffae934af7684bec90bf25930" alt="workrave screenshot" width="250" height="177" align="right"></a>Those of us who spend our days working at computers are well aware of the health problems associated with sitting and staring at a monitor all day. It&rsquo;s very important for your health to at least stand up and walk around on a regular basis. Long periods spent at the computer can also lead to pain in the hands, arms and shoulders. <a href="http://www.workrave.org/">Workrave</a> is a program for Widows and Linux to help prevent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury">Repetitive Strain Injury</a> (RSI), and it&rsquo;s very useful for reminding you to get up and walk around or take a break.</p> <p>You can download Workrave for Windows on the <a href="http://www.workrave.org/download/">Workrave download page</a>. For Ubuntu users, you can find Workrave in the standard Ubuntu repositories.</p> <p>Once installed, Workrave will remind you to take micro-breaks every few minutes and a rest break every hour. I personally use these micro-breaks to stand up and stretch. I try to take a longer break every 45 minutes to get some fresh air and let my mind relax for a few minutes. Of course, you can always postpone a break or skip it …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/take-a-break-workrave/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/going-static-with-nanoc/ Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:53:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/going-static-with-nanoc/ <p>I used Wordpress to publish this website for many years. Wordpress is a great piece of open source software and has helped millions of people get into online publishing. However, after some frustrating experiences with updating themes on this site and helping a couple friends recover their sites after hackers trashed them, I started looking around for something different. I heard about static site generators and tried several including <a href="http://middlemanapp.com/">Middleman</a>, <a href="http://jekyllrb.com/">Jekyll</a> and <a href="http://octopress.org/">Octopress</a> before finally settling on <a href="http://nanoc.ws/">nanoc</a>.</p> <h3 id="static-site-generators">Static Site Generators</h3> <p>A static site generator is software that generates HTML, CSS and Javascript that you can then upload to any web server. In contrast to a modern CMS like Wordpress, which compiles pages on-the-fly, all site content is pre-compiled before being uploaded to the server. Consumer software like Adobe Dreamweaver could be considered a static website generator. These days, there are a plethora of static website generators aimed at web programmers. They are written in …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/going-static-with-nanoc/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/installing-software-ubuntu/ Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:21:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/installing-software-ubuntu/ <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/1RD9Rv23wW8" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video"></iframe> </div> <p>Today I&rsquo;d like to show you how to install software in the newest version of <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu</a>. One of my favorite features of Ubuntu and other Linux distributions is that they have always come with a huge repository of open source software that you can install and use for free. Ever since the first release of Ubuntu in 2004, users have had access to a massive online repository of apps, something similar to Apple&rsquo;s App Store for Mac and iOS or the Google Play Store for Android.</p> <p>In the early days, you had to be a bit of a geek to install apps, either entering commands into a terminal or fiddling with less-than-user-friendly programs like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaptic_(software)">Synaptic</a>. Thankfully, in the latest versions of Ubuntu, things are a lot more user friendly and finding apps to install is easier than ever.</p> <p>Newer versions of Ubuntu feature the Ubuntu Software Center, which provides a very user-friendly interface to the online software repositories. Here, you can browse and install thousands of free apps by …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/installing-software-ubuntu/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/best-tablet-for-a-linux-user/ Mon, 04 Jun 2012 11:52:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/best-tablet-for-a-linux-user/ <p><img src="/cdn/i/articles/linux_tablet.jpg" alt="Linux Tablet" align="left" style="padding: 0 15px 15px 0;">As an Ubuntu Linux user and someone who has aversion to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in#Apple_Inc.">vendor lock-in</a>, I&rsquo;ve been holding out on getting a tablet computer, waiting for something better and more Linux friendly to come out. With some of the improvements in the new Android tablets, I think I&rsquo;d finally like to get a tablet. However, doing some <a href="http://tabletnation.com/compare">tablet comparison</a>, I don&rsquo;t know which tablet I should get. Of course, my ideal tablet would be something that comes with a fully open Linux OS or even with <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android">Ubuntu for Android</a>, but it looks like such a tablet won&rsquo;t appear on the market for quite a while.</p> <p>So my question is, which currently available tablet makes the best companion to Linux desktops and notebooks. I would prefer to not rely completely on cloud services from Apple or Google for synchronization with my desktop, but I&rsquo;m not sure what other options are out there. Is it possible to use something like <a href="http://owncloud.org/">ownCloud</a> with an Android tablet?</p> <p>What are your experiences with using a tablet along with …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/best-tablet-for-a-linux-user/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/dell-project-sputnik/ Tue, 08 May 2012 11:41:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/dell-project-sputnik/ <p><div style="padding: 0 20px 10px 0; float: left;"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/sputnik-small-2b3b41fc.jpg?&w=250&h=348&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=abe7730829ad22d44c01307fb11fef38" alt="Dell Ubuntu Sputnik" width="250" height="348" style="margin:0"><br /><span style="font-size: 10px;"> Original scan by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/perolofforsberg/6206885506/">Per Olof Forsberg</a> </span></div> When I first saw <a href="http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2012/05/project-sputnik-developer-focused-dell.html">news</a> of Dell&rsquo;s <a href="http://bartongeorge.net/2012/05/07/introducing-project-sputnik-developer-laptop/">Project Sputnik</a>, I was pretty excited. I&rsquo;ve been looking for a good Ultrabook and have been considering buying a Macbook Air to run Ubuntu. As a developer, I was intrigued by the idea of an Ultrabook running Ubuntu and aimed specifically at programmers. After reading more about the project, I feel like this would not only be a great notebook for developers, but something I would suggest to all of my friends and family. Dell is simply focusing on too narrow of a market, instead of making an Ubuntu Ultrabook for developers, they should be making an <strong>Ultrabook for human beings!</strong></p> <p>Let me say that I in no way want to criticize the guys behind this project. Helping developers is a good cause and any work done to make Linux run better on Dell hardware is very much appreciated. I simply think that focusing on developers is not the best idea for Dell. Here are a few reasons why I think Dell should change their …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/dell-project-sputnik/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/mountain-goat-ubuntu-apple/ Mon, 07 May 2012 12:01:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/mountain-goat-ubuntu-apple/ <div style="padding: 0 20px 10px 0; float: left;"> <img src="https://sh.imgix.net/i/mountain-goat-ubuntu-apple/ubuntu-macbook-air-mountain-goat-cf57951d.jpg?&w=350&h=490&auto=format,compress&q=80&s=d83673407e6bea62ac5ae3f9d78fd6fd" alt="Mountain Goat Ubuntu on Apple Hardware" width="350" height="490" style="margin:0"><br /><span style="font-size: 10px;"> Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/odfw/5489809988/">Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife</a> </span></div> <p>There&rsquo;s no doubt about it, Apple hardware is hot these days. It seems like everywhere you look, someone is using an iPhone, iPad or Macbook. Apple is now the top computer maker in the world, outselling giants like HP and Dell. They also have some of the best consumer satisfaction ratings in the industry. Simply put, Apple is currently making the most reliable, desirable and fashionable computer hardware on the market. Some people, however, have issues with Apple&rsquo;s OS X operating system and Apple&rsquo;s ever growing control over the software that runs on their devices.</p> <p>One such person is Adam Curry, the outspoken host of the <a href="http://www.noagendashow.com/">No Agenda</a> show. Adam recently surprised his co-host, John C. Dvorak, and many listeners when he announced that he was moving to Ubuntu for his daily computing. He installed the latest Ubuntu on his Macbook Air and dubbed it <a href="http://blog.curry.com/stories/2012/02/20/movingToMountainGoat.html">Mountain Goat</a>. Here&rsquo;s the conversation from the show.</p> <div style="clear:both; text-align: center; margin-bottom:15px;"><iframe width="250" height="127" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Bg79nKpYzM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div> <p>So, in the end, …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/mountain-goat-ubuntu-apple/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/searching-for-files-in-ubuntu/ Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:38:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/searching-for-files-in-ubuntu/ <p>Over the years, Ubuntu has included several different tools for quickly searching and finding files on your computer. With the introduction of the Unity Dash interface, it is now extremely fast and easy to search for recently used files. Unfortunately, this search functionality is limited only to recently accessed files and there is no ability to turn on a system-wide search.</p> <p>Until Unity allows you to search all of your files, you&rsquo;ll need to continue to use the GNOME program &ldquo;Search for Files&rdquo; or the search functionality in Nautilus. Unfortunately, the Ubuntu team failed to even include a program icon for the &ldquo;Search for Files&rdquo; application or provide a quick way to find it. Ironically, you need to enter &ldquo;search&rdquo; into the Dash search bar in able to find &ldquo;Search for Files.&rdquo;</p> <p>Once you&rsquo;ve found and opened &ldquo;Search for Files&rdquo;, you can now search for files by their file names, by the content of files and many other …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/searching-for-files-in-ubuntu/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-most-popular-linux-distro/ Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:05:37 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-most-popular-linux-distro/ <p>For the past few years, Ubuntu has been considered the <a href="http://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-just-how-popular-is-it/" title="Ubuntu: Just how popular is it?">most</a> <a href="http://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-still-popular/" title="Ubuntu: Still Popular?">popular</a> Linux distribution. Recently, there has been a flurry of blog posts claiming that <a href="http://linuxmint.com/">Linux Mint</a> is now more popular than Ubuntu. While Linux Mint seems to have gained greatly in popularity since the first release in 2006, all meaningful statistics (if there is such a thing) point to Ubuntu&rsquo;s clear lead in usage and popularity.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s nearly impossible to tell how many people are using any given Linux distribution. Each distro probably has some internal statistics that they can use to judge relative popularity, but tracking how many people have installed a distro or use it regularly (let alone how much they &ldquo;like it&rdquo;) is currently not possible. We can, however look at some general trends online to get an idea of a distro&rsquo;s relative popularity.</p> <p style="text-indent:0; background:#f7f0ea url(/i/emblem-important.png) no-repeat left; border-top: 1px solid #f79537; border-bottom: 1px solid #FF5959; padding: 5px 10px 5px 50px;"><strong>Please Note:</strong> this article is in no way a scientific study of distro popularity, it is just a bunch of interesting statistics from around the internet. …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-most-popular-linux-distro/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/tarsnap-online-backups-for-security-conscious-geeks/ Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:11:26 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/tarsnap-online-backups-for-security-conscious-geeks/ <p><a href="http://www.tarsnap.com/" target="_blank">Tarsnap</a> is an online backup service written and run by Dr. Colin Percival, the FreeBSD Security Officer. The service is aimed at true UNIX geeks who want secure online backups and are familiar with things like GPG keys, compiling source code, bash scripts and cron jobs. It is built for the &#8220;truly paranoid&#8221; and encrypts all your data before it leaves your computer. It&#8217;s a great alternative for those who don&#8217;t trust their data to other services such as Mozy and Dropbox.</p> <h2>Installation</h2> <p>The <a href="https://www.tarsnap.com/download.html" target="_blank">installation instructions</a> are just incomplete enough to make even seasoned Linux users do some quick google searches to fill in the gaps. To help you along, I&#8217;ve included my own instructions for installing Tarsnap on Ubuntu below. If you manage to get everything installed, the rest of the process should be pretty easy and even fun.</p> <h2>Pricing</h2> <p>Signing up for an account and adding money via PayPal was simple and painless. You need to add at least $5.00 to your account to get …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/tarsnap-online-backups-for-security-conscious-geeks/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/introducing-the-starry-hope-uploader-for-facebook/ Sat, 15 Jan 2011 20:52:05 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/introducing-the-starry-hope-uploader-for-facebook/ <p>Over the last few years, I&rsquo;ve often been frustrated by the way that every new iteration of the web-based Facebook photo uploader never seems to work right with Ubuntu. Even more annoying is the fact that Facebook&rsquo;s ever-changing API often leads to many Ubuntu based tools for uploading photos being broken. With the introduction of <a href="http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/" target="_blank">Facebook&rsquo;s Graph API</a> and Ubuntu&rsquo;s <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Quickly" target="_blank">Quickly</a> project, it seemed like building a Facebook photo uploader should be pretty easy.</p> <p><img src="/cdn/uploads/2011/01/Starry-Hope-Uploader_004.png" alt="" title="Starry Hope Uploader" width="201" height="215" align="right" />I decided to spend some time over the holiday season to learn enough <a href="http://www.python.org/" target="_blank">Python</a> and <a href="http://www.pygtk.org/" target="_blank">PyGTK</a> to write a simple uploader that I could share with the open source community. Starry Hope Uploader 0.1 is the result of that work.</p> <p>Starry Hope Uploader allows you to batch upload photos to Facebook by simply dragging them unto the uploader, choosing an album and clicking the upload button. It&rsquo;s designed to be super simple and to follow the old UNIX philosophy &ldquo;do one thing and do it well.&rdquo; Currently, you …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/introducing-the-starry-hope-uploader-for-facebook/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/openoffice-default-paper-size-for-printing/ Thu, 13 Jan 2011 19:43:04 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/openoffice-default-paper-size-for-printing/ <p>Sometimes, OpenOffice and Linux don&rsquo;t play well together. One little quirk with OpenOffice on Ubuntu about drove me nuts recently. It&rsquo;s a problem that, if judging by number of forum posts on the topic, is experienced quite often. The problem is with the default page size for printing in OpenOffice. We had this problem recently at work, and after quite a bit of searching, I found several solutions that I thought I&rsquo;d share with you.</p> <p>In our case, all of our printers use A4 sized paper, but OpenOffice constantly defaults to &ldquo;Letter&rdquo; size for printing. This is incredibly annoying because you have to reset the page size each time you print a document from OpenOffice or be faced with strange page formatting or missing lines of text. This happens no matter what the default page size for the printer, independent of CUPS settings, and no matter what page size your document is formatted &hellip; it ALWAYS defaults to printing Letter sized paper.</p> <p>Here are the …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/openoffice-default-paper-size-for-printing/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/install-or-upgrade-to-dropbox-1-0-on-ubuntu/ Fri, 17 Dec 2010 20:33:18 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/install-or-upgrade-to-dropbox-1-0-on-ubuntu/ <p>The folks over at Dropbox <a href="http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=581" target="_blank">released version 1.0</a> yesterday. This release has been a long time coming and is a major upgrade for Windows, Mac and Linux. For Ubuntu users, the biggest changes include the introduction of selective sync, Indicator Applet support, and a much more efficient client-side engine.</p> <p><img src="/cdn/uploads/2010/12/Selective-Sync1.png" alt="Dropbox Selective Sync" title="Dropbox Selective Sync" width="271" height="226" align="right" style="border:1px solid black; margin:10px 0 0 15px;padding:0;" /></p> <h3>Selective Sync</h3> In the past, Dropbox forced you to sync everything in your Dropbox folder with all of your machines, making it impracticable for syncing with netbooks. The selective sync feature lets you choose which of your Dropbox folders you want to sync with each computer. This is especially useful if you have a very large Dropbox folder and want to sync only certain files with a netbook or other computer with limited drive space. <h3>Indicator Applet Support</h3> <p>Dropbox 1.0 uses Ubuntu&rsquo;s new Applet Indicator instead of a traditional system tray icon. While not a huge change, this keeps Dropbox in harmony with the standard application indicators. They also added some new …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/install-or-upgrade-to-dropbox-1-0-on-ubuntu/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/make-your-own-templates-for-the-create-document-menu-in-ubuntu/ Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:06:17 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/make-your-own-templates-for-the-create-document-menu-in-ubuntu/ <p><img src="/cdn/uploads/2010/10/Screenshot2.png" alt="" title="Create new document in Nautilus" width="300" height="132" align="right" style="margin:0 0 5px 5px;" />Like with most things in computing, there are usually several different ways to solve a problem. Some people do things one way, othersprefera completely different approach. Personally, when I was a Windows guy, I rarely used the function where you right-click to create a new blank document in a folder. When I moved to Linux, I never even noticed that Ubuntu doesn&rsquo;t include any templates for the &ldquo;Create Document&rdquo; menu. Recently, someone pointed out the lack of these templates and asked me for advice on what to do. The answer is actually quite simple.</p> <p><img src="/cdn/uploads/2010/10/Screenshot-Templates-File-Browser1.png" alt="" title="Templates in Nautilus" width="300" height="230" align="right" style="margin:0 0 5px 10px; border: 1px solid #e1e1e1;" />Each new user in Ubuntu has a default set of folders created for them in their home folder. One of those folders is called &ldquo;Templates.&rdquo; Anything you put into the Templates folder will automatically show up as an option when you right-click in the file manager or your desktop and choose &ldquo;Create Document.&rdquo; This is actually rather nice, because it means that you can make your own custom templates. …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/make-your-own-templates-for-the-create-document-menu-in-ubuntu/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-for-facebook-users/ Sun, 02 May 2010 00:30:24 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-for-facebook-users/ <p><img align="left" style="margin-right: 5px;" title="Ubuntu for Facebook Users" src="/cdn/i/articles/ubutu_facebook3.png" alt="" width="100" height="54" />Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx, is a great desktop operating system for Facebook users. Not only is it faster and more secure than using Windows, it also has features that help integrate Facebook into the desktop experience. These features can help you stay in touch with your Facebook friends while remaining productive. Here&rsquo;s how to setup Ubuntu 10.04 for an optimal Facebook experience.</p> <p>If you haven&rsquo;t installed Ubuntu on your computer yet, never fear, it&rsquo;s easy! We recommend downloading the <a href="http://ubuntu-manual.org/" target="_blank">Ubuntu Manual</a> to help you get started. The Ubuntu Manual includes installation instructions and lots of helpful information to get you started with Ubuntu. <h2>Step 1: Install Ubuntu Restricted Extras</h2> After installing Ubuntu, the first thing you&rsquo;ll want to do is install a package of applications called &ldquo;Ubuntu Restricted Extras.&rdquo; This will install Flash, Java, and a bunch of other features that most Facebook users will find necessary. If you don&rsquo;t know how to …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-for-facebook-users/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/whats-new-in-ubuntu-10-04-lucid-lynx/ Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:49:31 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/whats-new-in-ubuntu-10-04-lucid-lynx/ <p>Ubuntu 10.04, aka Lucid Lynx, is the result of years of continuous work from the open source community and Ubuntu corporate sponsor <a href="http://www.canonical.com/">Canonical</a>. A new version of Ubuntu is released every 6 months, but version 10.04 is a special &ldquo;long term support&rdquo; (LTS) release which will be supported for an extended period on both desktops and servers. Lucid Lynx also brings us an incredible amount of changes in both the look and functionality of Ubuntu. Here is a list of the most noticeable changes and new features that you&rsquo;ll find in desktop edition of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. <h2>Brave New User Interface Design</h2> With version 10.04, the Ubuntu design team has abandoned the traditional brown and orange of past releases and started using a new color pallet based on purple, red and orange. Canonical also <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand" target="_blank">introduced</a> new logos and design ideas for future websites and marketing materials. The design team seems to have taken Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth seriously when he said that …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/whats-new-in-ubuntu-10-04-lucid-lynx/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-restricted-extras-lets-ubuntu-play-everything/ Mon, 19 Apr 2010 23:40:59 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-restricted-extras-lets-ubuntu-play-everything/ <p>A fresh install of Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) comes complete with Firefox, the Rhythmbox music player, and the Totem movie player. You may find, however, that some websites don&rsquo;t work correctly because Flash and Java are missing, you may also find that a lot of your media files do not play. This is because Ubuntu (for legal reasons) only comes with support for free and open source audio and video formats. Many technologies such as Flash, MP3 and DVD are proprietary or patent encumbered and can not be included on the Ubuntu CD.</p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/bJo5GVJevZs" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video"></iframe> </div> <p>Thankfully, it&rsquo;s extremely easy to set up your new Ubuntu system to play just about any media file you can throw at it. All you need to do is install one software package from the Ubuntu Software Center and your system will be configured to enjoy all of your media files and the whole internet. The software that we need to install is called &ldquo;Ubuntu Restricted Extras.&rdquo; This package, in turn, will download, install and configure …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-restricted-extras-lets-ubuntu-play-everything/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/last-fm-support-in-ubuntu-10-04-scrobbling-and-streaming/ Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:04:02 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/last-fm-support-in-ubuntu-10-04-scrobbling-and-streaming/ <p>Setting up Last.fm streaming and scrobbling in Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx, is fast and easy. The Rhythmbox music player provides scrobbling support and the Last.fm client will let you stream your favorite stations in a nice stand-alone application. Here&rsquo;s a screencast and written instructions on exactly how to set things up.</p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/X6QUy7IqUNc" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video"></iframe> </div> <p><h2>Setting up scrobbling in Rythmbox</h2> First of all, what is scrobbling? According the the <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Scrobble">urban dictionary</a>, it is the act of automatically sending the name of each song played by an audio player to Last.fm. Sending information about the music you listen to to Last.fm is useful because it helps them build a profile of the music you like which in turn enables Last.fm to suggest relevant new music to you which you&rsquo;re likely to enjoy.</p> <p>If you are using the default music player in Ubuntu, Rhythmbox, then setting up scrobbling is pretty quick and easy, just follow these steps: <h5>1. In Rhythmbox, click on the Edit menu and then click Plugins.</h5> <img title="Last.fm in Rhythmbox" src="/cdn/images/last/lastfm1.png" alt="" width="263" height="332" /> <h5>2. Select the …</h5></p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/last-fm-support-in-ubuntu-10-04-scrobbling-and-streaming/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntus-new-light-style-defaults-to-dark-theme/ Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:27:16 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntus-new-light-style-defaults-to-dark-theme/ <p>I wanted to get a closer look at the new Ubuntu &ldquo;<a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand">Light</a>&rdquo; styles that have been announced for version 10.04, Lucid Lynx, so I loaded up the today&rsquo;s <a href="/ubuntu-desktop-in-the-cloud/"> daily build in EC2</a>. I was a little bit surprised to see that the default theme is Ambiance, a <strong>dark</strong> theme. It seems a little strange to roll out a new branding strategy called &ldquo;Light&rdquo; and make the default them a dark one.</p> <p>The Ambiance theme seems a little half-baked, and doesn&rsquo;t work well with some applications such as OpenOffice (where it becomes impossible to see the menu text). I&rsquo;m sure that the Ubuntu team will work out all these bugs before the final release. Hopefully it will be fixed sooner, so that people can start writing documentation for the upcoming release with proper screenshots and videos.</p> <p>One other disturbing change is the order of the window controls. For some reason, they&rsquo;ve switched the position of the minimize and maximize buttons. I can&rsquo;t imagine why they&rsquo;d do …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntus-new-light-style-defaults-to-dark-theme/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-desktop-in-the-cloud/ Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:09:59 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-desktop-in-the-cloud/ <p>For the past few releases, Canonical has put quite a bit of energy into making Ubuntu a first-class OS for use in the cloud. Ubuntu now has <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud">cloud support</a> for Amazon&rsquo;s EC2 and Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (a &ldquo;private cloud&rdquo; system based on <a href="http://www.eucalyptus.com/">Eucalyptus</a>). This means that it&rsquo;s easy to spin up Ubuntu instances on EC2 or to make your own private cloud with Ubuntu &hellip; where you can spin up more instances of Ubuntu &hellip; there&rsquo;s a lot of &ldquo;cloud&rdquo; going on here!</p> <p>One new feature in Ubuntu 10.04 that caught my attention is the &ldquo;<a href="https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-lucid-desktop-cloud">Desktop in the Cloud</a>&rdquo; project. Until now, most of the attention on cloud technologies has been focused on servers in the cloud. If you wanted to use a desktop environment on EC2, you needed to do quite a bit of tweaking and installing of packages yourself. With the Lucid release, the Ubuntu team is making desktop in the cloud much easier.</p> <p>You can now find daily testing images for Ubuntu Lucid desktop in EC2. These …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-desktop-in-the-cloud/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/crossover-9-0-improves-windows-application-support-on-linux/ Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:31:10 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/crossover-9-0-improves-windows-application-support-on-linux/ <p><a href="http://www.codeweavers.com/">CodeWeavers</a>, supporter of the open source <a href="http://www.winehq.org/">Wine</a> project, have <a href="http://www.codeweavers.com/about/general/press/20100302/">released</a> their latest version of CrossOver for Linux and Mac. CrossOver 9.0 (codenamed &ldquo;Snow Mallard&rdquo;) is a commercial product that makes installing Windows applications via Wine extremely easy for Linux users. We&rsquo;ve been waiting for this new release for several months, and it seems it was worth the wait. So far, we&rsquo;ve tested it with Office 2007 and IE 7 with great results. Look for a full review at a later time. For now, here is an overview of the new features and some screenshots.</p> <p>The first thing you&rsquo;ll notice about version 9 of CrossOver is the greatly improved user interface. The entire interface has been rewritten in GTK and fits in much better with a GNOME desktop. The interface also seems much more intuitive. Installing a supported Windows application only takes a few clicks. CrossOver takes care of setting up a new &ldquo;bottle&rdquo; (or fake Windows environment) for your application …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/crossover-9-0-improves-windows-application-support-on-linux/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-lucid-makes-scanning-simple/ Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:29:50 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-lucid-makes-scanning-simple/ <p>Canonical is aiming to make the task of scanning documents super simple with version 10.04 Lucid Lynx. Canonical developer <a href="https://launchpad.net/~robert-ancell">Robert Ancell</a> is working on <a href="https://launchpad.net/simple-scan">Simple Scan</a>, a great little program that does exactly what it claims - it makes scanning documents simple! Simple Scan is now the default scanning software in Lucid.</p> <p>Simple Scan makes scanning, emailing, printing and saving documents much less complicated. Sure, many of us geeks might want something like XSane that offers much more control over our scans, but for beginners, Simple Scan should take all the mystery out of scanning. Scanning documents and attaching them to an email in Evolution is now just a few-click process. <div><img title="XSane vs Simple Scan" src="/cdn/uploads/2010/02/scanners.png" alt="" width="542" height="228" /></div> Simple Scan offers only the most basic of controls. It lets you choose the type of document you are scanning (photo or text), lets you do basic cropping, then lets you save the scan as a file, email your scans via Evolution or just print. It also handles multi-page documents, allowing you to save them as a PDF file …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-lucid-makes-scanning-simple/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/4-cool-new-features-in-ubuntu-lucid-lynx-alpha-3/ Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:54:49 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/4-cool-new-features-in-ubuntu-lucid-lynx-alpha-3/ <p><p class="alert">UPDATE: Please read our <a href="http://www.starryhope.com/linux/2010/whats-new-in-ubuntu-10-04-lucid-lynx/">updated post on the final release of Lucid Lynx</a>!</p> <h3>iPhone &amp; iPod Touch Support</h3> <img style="padding: 5px 8px 5px 0;" title="iPod Touch on Ubuntu" src="/cdn/uploads/2010/02/ipod2.png" alt="" width="75" height="82" align="left" />Just last week, I was <a href="http://www.starryhope.com/linux/2010/confessions-of-an-ubuntu-fanboy/">complaining</a> about Ubuntu&rsquo;s lack of built-in support for iPhones and newer iPods. Personally, I think this functionality is important if Ubuntu wants to grow in the consumer market. With the release of Lucid Alpha 3, I saw a <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1416507">couple</a> of <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2010/02/confirmed-ubuntu-1004-supports-iphone.html">reports</a> saying that iPhone and iPod Touch support was included out of the box. So, I plugged in my iPod Touch and was amazed to see it not only show up on my desktop, but also working inside Rhythmbox!</p> <p>Rhythmbox now allows you to drag and drop music to and <em>from</em> your iPhone or iPod Touch. Now, the only time you would need iTunes is to do a firmware upgrade on your iPhone or iPod Touch. So, how long will it be before Apple moves to block Rhythmbox with an update?</p> <p><a href="/cdn/uploads/2010/02/ipod1.png" class="lightbox"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-654" title="iPod Touch in Rhythmbox on Ubuntu Lucid" src="/cdn/uploads/2010/02/ipod1_small.png" alt="" width="650" height="384" /></a> <h3>Gwibber and the MeMenu</h3> <a href="/cdn/uploads/2010/02/gwibber1.png" class="lightbox"><img style="padding: 5px 0 5px 8px;" title="Gwibber" src="/cdn/uploads/2010/02/gwibber1_small.png" alt="" width="180" height="173" align="right" /></a>Ubuntu 10.04 brings social networking to the default desktop with <a href="https://launchpad.net/gwibber">Gwibber</a> and the new <a href="/ubuntu-memenu-to-encourage-social-media-broadcasting/">MeMenu</a>. This is part of Canonical&rsquo;s &ldquo;Social …</p></p></p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/4-cool-new-features-in-ubuntu-lucid-lynx-alpha-3/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-10-04-to-include-chromium-web-browser/ Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:41:09 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-10-04-to-include-chromium-web-browser/ <p>While Firefox will remain Ubuntu&rsquo;s default web browser, the Ubuntu community has added the <a href="http://www.chromium.org/Home">Chromium browser</a> to Lucid Lynx&rsquo;s repositories. Chromium is the open source version of <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome">Google&rsquo;s Chrome web browser</a>. In Lucid Lynx Alpha 3, the Chromium browser is super easy to install right form the Ubuntu Software Center. The current version of Chromium is from the 5.0 branch and seems to be very stable. Hopefully, this package will be kept up-to-date as Google seems to be upgrading Chrome at an amazing pace.</p> <p>To install Chromium web browser, just search for &ldquo;chromium&rdquo; in the Ubuntu Software Center and click &ldquo;Install&rdquo; - it&rsquo;s really that easy!</p> <p>Are you using Chromium, Firefox or some other browser with Ubuntu? Leave your comments below!</p> <p><a href="/cdn/uploads/2010/02/software_center_chromium.png" class="lightbox"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-636" title="software_center_chromium" src="/cdn/uploads/2010/02/software_center_chromium.png" alt="" width="419" height="316" /></a></p> <p><a href="/cdn/uploads/2010/02/chromium_menu.png" class="lightbox"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-639" title="chromium_menu" src="/cdn/uploads/2010/02/chromium_menu.png" alt="" width="401" height="266" /></a></p> <p><a href="/cdn/uploads/2010/02/chromium_lucid.png" class="lightbox"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-640" title="chromium on ubuntu lucid" src="/cdn/uploads/2010/02/chromium_lucid.png" alt="" width="625" height="431" /></a></p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-10-04-to-include-chromium-web-browser/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/confessions-of-an-ubuntu-fanboy/ Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:25:51 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/confessions-of-an-ubuntu-fanboy/ <p>Hi, my name is Jim and I&rsquo;m a recovering Ubuntu fanboy.</p> <p><img title="iloveubuntu" src="/cdn/uploads/2010/02/iloveubuntu.gif" alt="" width="150" height="150" align="right" />The Urban Dictionary defines a <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fanboy&amp;defid=166016">fanboy</a> as &ldquo;a person who is completely loyal to a game or company <em>regardless of if they suck or not</em>.&rdquo; In the past, I&rsquo;ve been exactly that, and I think that a lot of other people in the Ubuntu community have been too. We&rsquo;ve been loyal fans of Ubuntu, telling all our friends, blogging the praises of Ubuntu and Open Source Software, being quick to point out the faults of the evil Microsoft, and all this time overlooking whenever there&rsquo;s a problem with our favorite operating system.</p> <p>Let me be clear, I&rsquo;m still a huge fan of Ubuntu. I still think Linux is the best operating system on the market today, and that Ubuntu is a great choice for most people&rsquo;s desktop computers. <strong>What I&rsquo;m saying today is that I no longer want to be a fanboy!</strong></p> <p>Below are some of the things I&rsquo;ve said in the past, things that we&rsquo;ve all said, things that Canonical …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/confessions-of-an-ubuntu-fanboy/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-memenu-to-encourage-social-media-broadcasting/ Sat, 20 Feb 2010 22:59:23 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-memenu-to-encourage-social-media-broadcasting/ <p>It seems that a huge segment of the world&rsquo;s population has gone Twitter and Facebook crazy. People are busy updating their statuses, sending each other links, and trying to see how many &ldquo;friends&rdquo; and &ldquo;followers&rdquo; they can get. We are becoming social &ldquo;broadcasters&rdquo;, constantly bombarding our &ldquo;friends&rdquo; with 140 character chunks of information. In reality, these social networks are all about making &ldquo;ME&rdquo; feel good about myself, tricking us into thinking that people care about what we say &hellip; or maybe they really do care?</p> <p>While sociologists are studying the effects of this social networkphenomenon and what it means for society, there&rsquo;s no doubt that social networks are big, really big! Not to be left out of the bit &ldquo;ME&rdquo; craze, the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 release will include the &ldquo;MeMenu.&rdquo; The MeMenu will be your one-stop spot for sending out all your social media broadcasts right from within …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-memenu-to-encourage-social-media-broadcasting/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/os-x-to-ubuntu-2-years-later/ Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:18:13 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/os-x-to-ubuntu-2-years-later/ <p>A little more than 2 years ago, I made a switch away from Mac OS X to Ubuntu Linux. Since then, I have used Ubuntu Linux about 98% of the time on my personal and work computers. I still have to support Windows on some computers at work, I kept my Macbook (which rarely got turned on), I kept Windows XP in a virtual machine (which I need about once a month) and of course all my friends and family still call me with Windows and Mac problems.</p> <p>Today, I want to revisit the <a href="http://www.starryhope.com/tech/2007/switching-from-os-x-to-ubuntu-ten-things-i-miss/">article</a> I wrote 2 years ago about 10 things I missed when switching from OS X to Ubuntu. There have been 5 major Ubuntu upgrades since I wrote my original article, have things changed that much? Do I still miss the things I missed back then? Let&rsquo;s look at each point again, and see how things have changed. <h3>1. Dashboard <img style="margin: 0 0 -5px 0;" src="/cdn/i/articles/dashboard_icon.png" border="0" alt="" width="32" height="32" align="absmiddle" /> - <span style="color: green;">No longer missed</span></h3> <a href="/cdn/i/articles/weather.png" target="_blank" class="lightbox"><img style="margin: 6px 0px 4px 6px;" title="Time and Weather in Ubuntu" src="/cdn/i/articles/weather_small.png" alt="" width="108" height="260" align="right" /></a>When I first switched to Ubuntu, I really missed the OS X Dashboard feature. Most of all, I missed being able to open the Dashboard and quickly check the weather, see the calendar, …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/os-x-to-ubuntu-2-years-later/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-switches-to-yahoo-search-kinda/ Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:08:37 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-switches-to-yahoo-search-kinda/ <p>There&rsquo;s been a lot of noise recently in the Ubuntu community about the <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20100131045450/http://popey.com:80/blog/2010/01/26/yahoobuntu/">announcement</a> thatCanonical is planning to switch the default search engine and home page in Firefox to Yahoo! Search. People are tweeting about it, podcasting about it, and generally getting worked up. Some think that it&rsquo;s the end of the world (or an MS takeover of Canonical), some could care less.</p> <p>Personally, I think it&rsquo;s a good move. It&rsquo;s actually kind of refreshing to see results from a different search engine now and then. Besides, it only takes two clicks to get you back to using Google. This is where things get interesting. You see, if you chose Google as your search engine in the search bar at the top of Firefox, you also will get a new default home page &hellip; featuring Google. A closer look seems to show that Canonical has not abandoned their partnership with Google at all and still sends a partner ID along with your search results.</p> <p>Is Canonical partnering with any search engine …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-switches-to-yahoo-search-kinda/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/restore-the-default-panels-in-ubuntu/ Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:17:54 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/restore-the-default-panels-in-ubuntu/ <p>Sometimes crazy things happen when you&rsquo;re using Ubuntu, especially when you&rsquo;re first getting started. It&rsquo;s easy to mess things up and sometimes hard to get them back to normal. One problem I oftensee is that people accidentally delete their top or bottom panels (the bars that go across the top and bottom of your desktop and contain menus and other useful widgets). It can be especiallyfrustratingwhen your top panel disappears along with the Application Menu &hellip; what&rsquo;s a person to do?</p> <p>You mightsee instructions in a forum or on a blog post that tell you how &ldquo;easy&rdquo; it is to restore your default panels with some &ldquo;simple&rdquo; Terminal commands. While these commands might be easy for the seasoned Linux geek, they can be confusing for everyone else. In an attempt to make things as simple as possible, I edited a small program originally found <a href="http://ubuntu.online02.com/node/23">here</a>, and made something that will hopefully get you back to Ubuntu bliss as quickly as possible. …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/restore-the-default-panels-in-ubuntu/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/facebook-chat-on-the-nokia-n900/ Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:21:28 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/facebook-chat-on-the-nokia-n900/ <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/WaWTQeBRugM" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video"></iframe> </div> <p>While it&rsquo;s always been possible to use Facebook chat through the N900 web browser, chatting through the web interface on such a small screen was a real problem. Since Facebook has recently <a href="http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&amp;story=361" target="_blank">enabled Jabber/XMPP support</a>, you can now add Facebook chat to the N900 and get a real integrated experience. This makes Facebook chat much more usable, and can help you keep in contact with all your friends.</p> <p>Here&rsquo;s a how to set things up.</p> <ol> <li><p>Open the &ldquo;Conversations&rdquo; application and click on main menu at the top.</p></li> <li><p>Choose &ldquo;Accounts&rdquo; from the menu.</p></li> <li><p>If this is your first account, you will immediately be asked which type of account you would like to set up, if you already have accounts set up, you should tap &ldquo;New.&rdquo;</p></li> <li><p>Choose the account type &ldquo;Jabber.&rdquo;</p></li> <li><p>Enter your facebook username followed by @chat.facebook.com in the &ldquo;User name&rdquo; field. If you haven&rsquo;t yet chosen a Facebook username, you can set one up in your <a href="https://register.facebook.com/editaccount.php" target="_blank">Facebook …</a></p></li></ol><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/facebook-chat-on-the-nokia-n900/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/15-ways-nokias-n900-is-better-than-apples-iphone-and-5-ways-its-not/ Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:34:27 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/15-ways-nokias-n900-is-better-than-apples-iphone-and-5-ways-its-not/ <p>For almost 3 years, Apple&rsquo;s iPhone has set the standard for mainstream smart phones. Recently, Apple has taken over a large portion of the smart phone market, now manufacturers like Nokia are taking the iPhone threat seriously and bringing out new phones to try to compete. One phone that looks like it has a real chance to compete with the iPhone is Nokia&rsquo;s new N900 phone/internet tablet. Here are 15 ways we think that the N900 is better than the iPhone, and a few reasons why the iPhone is still better.</p> <p><img title="Nokia N900" src="/cdn/uploads/2009/11/N900-1s.jpg" alt="Nokia N900" width="300" height="185" align="right" /></p> <p><h4 style="margin-bottom: 10px;">1. No contract needed - N900 Cheaper Over Time</h4> <strong>Nokia N900: $560</strong></p> <p><strong> iPhone 3GS 32GB: $300</strong></p> <p>At first glance, it seems that the iPhone is the clear price winner, coming in a full $260 cheaper than the N900. However, because the N900 is an unlocked GSM phone, you&rsquo;re not stuck with a single mobile provider. The $300 iPhone 3GS is subsidized by AT&amp;T and locked to their network. With the iPhone, you must agree to a 2-year contract which will end up costing you thousands …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/15-ways-nokias-n900-is-better-than-apples-iphone-and-5-ways-its-not/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/easily-install-chromium-daily-builds-on-ubuntu/ Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:34:44 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/easily-install-chromium-daily-builds-on-ubuntu/ <p>There has been a lot of talk about <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome" target="_blank">Google Chrome</a> since it was released last September. Google has promised a Linux version of Chrome, but it&rsquo;s still not here. Some people have found ways to run the Windows version of <a href="http://www.myscienceisbetter.info/2008/09/install-google-chrome-on-linux-using-wine.html" target="_blank">Chrome using wine</a>, but we want to see a native Linux version. Enter <a href="http://code.google.com/chromium/" target="_blank">Chromium</a>, the open source version of Chrome.</p> <p>Google recently released a <a href="http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel" target="_blank">developer preview of Chrome</a>, but I&rsquo;ve found that the <a href="https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa" target="_blank">Chromium daily builds</a> for Ubuntu are more up to date. Unfortunately, reading the instructions on their site about how to add the repositories can be rather confusing. I&rsquo;ll show you here how to install Chromium in just three commands. Choose your release below and just copy and paste these three commands into your terminal. This will install the correct repositories, download the repository keys and install Chromium.</p> <p><strong>9.04 - Jaunty Jackalope</strong></p> <p><pre>sudo wget <a href="http://starryhope.com/apt/chromium_jaunty.list">http://starryhope.com/apt/chromium_jaunty.list</a> -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/chromium_jaunty.list sudo apt-key adv …</pre></p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/easily-install-chromium-daily-builds-on-ubuntu/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/stream-music-with-the-last-fm-client-on-ubuntu/ Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:36:41 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/stream-music-with-the-last-fm-client-on-ubuntu/ <p class="alert">For Ubuntu 10.04 instructions, <a href="http://www.starryhope.com/linux/2010/last-fm-support-in-ubuntu-10-04-scrobbling-and-streaming/">read our updated post here</a></p> <p>These days, it seems like we&rsquo;re doing more and more important work inside our browsers. We&rsquo;re checking our email, Facebook, Twitter, writing documents, listening to music, watching videos, etc. Sometimes, this increased use of the browser can lead to a serious slowdown or even browser crashes. Not to mention that Firefox on Ubuntu seems to be <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=firefox+ubuntu+slow" target="_blank">really slow</a> these days.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve been looking for ways to move some of my online activities out of the browser and into their own processes. One service I often use is <a href="http://last.fm">Last.fm</a>. Using the standalone client works more reliably and keeps Last.fm from bogging down Firefox. Thankfully, it&rsquo;s easy to use Last.fm from its own Linux client, and there&rsquo;s even a special Debian/Ubuntu repository that makes installation really simple.</p> <p>To add this repository and install the Last.fm client, open a terminal window and run the following commands (you can copy and paste them). …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/stream-music-with-the-last-fm-client-on-ubuntu/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/linux-is-losing-to-windows-xp-in-netbooks/ Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:38:56 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/linux-is-losing-to-windows-xp-in-netbooks/ <p><img style="margin: 0 5px 5px 0;" title="Asus EEE" src="/cdn/i/articles/eee.png" alt="" width="230" height="197" align="left" />The Linux community was very excited when the first netbooks came out from Asus and they were running Linux and <em>not</em> Windows. These days, however, it seems that Linux has all but lost the netbook space. There are <a href="http://blogs.computerworld.com/microsoft_strikes_back_at_linux_netbook_push">many</a> <a href="http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/06/20/0250205/The-Truth-Behind-the-Death-of-Linux-On-the-Netbook?from=rss">theories</a> out there about why Microsoft is taking over the netbook market. Sure, they&rsquo;re probably playing hardball with manufacturers like Asus, and I wouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if they were involved in all sorts of dirty business practices in an attempt to kill the mainstream use of Linux. That Microsoft will ruthlessly defend their monopoly is not news to the Linux community. But perhaps the real answer is simpler? Could it be that people are simply not buying Linux based netbooks?</p> <p>A quick look at Amazon would suggests that Windows XP is the most popular OS for netbooks. In fact, every one of the top 25 netbooks on Amazon comes with Windows XP! This is not because there are no Linux netbooks available. In fact, there are lots of Linux netbooks available at Amazon. …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/linux-is-losing-to-windows-xp-in-netbooks/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/atom-desktotp-ubuntu-windows7-mac-osx/ Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:28:49 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/atom-desktotp-ubuntu-windows7-mac-osx/ <p>I recently wanted to get a new desktop computer to use for some programming projects. Seeing that I have a bunch of old computer parts laying around, I wanted to build my own computer. I started out by looking at some of the newest top-end Intel and AMD processors and motherboards, but the total price kept growing out of control, even if I used some of my old parts. Then, I noticed an interesting desktop motherboard from Intel that included a dual-core Atom processor. This got me to thinking, do I really need a top-of-the-line computer, or can I get by with something as cheap as this $90 CPU/motherboard combo?</p> <p>After doing some quick googling, I realized that this motherboard series is actually quite popular and that people are using them for all sorts of tasks. Some make them into entertainment centers, low-powered servers, car computers and even hackintoshes. This peeked my interest and I decided to try it out for myself, after all, using some of my old computer parts (HD and DVD …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/atom-desktotp-ubuntu-windows7-mac-osx/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-still-popular/ Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:35:37 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-still-popular/ <p>Back in November of 2007, we wrote an <a href="/ubuntu-just-how-popular-is-it/">article</a> about the popularity of <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com" target="_blank">Ubuntu</a>. At the time, it appeared that Ubuntu was the most popular Linux distribution according to many different web metrics. Of course, there&rsquo;s no way to say for sure which distro is the most popular and to know exactly how many people use Ubuntu. That being said, we thought it would be interesting to take a fresh look at Ubuntu&rsquo;s popularity. Is Ubuntu gaining in popularity? Is it being used by more people? Are more people searching and talking about Ubuntu?</p> <p>So, how many users does Ubuntu have? It&rsquo;s really hard to tell. In October, 2007, Canonical <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-desktop710">claimed</a> that there were over 6 million users of Ubuntu. Then in October, 2008, in an interview with <a href="http://www.internetnews.com/software/article.php/3780651" target="_blank">IneternetNews.com</a> a Canonical spokesman claimed that <blockquote>&ldquo;In terms of numbers we&rsquo;re very confident this is an <strong>8 million plus</strong> user base of active users. That is a hard thing to count and there are lots of issues about methodology for counting but I …</blockquote></p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-still-popular/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/find-share-and-install-ubuntu-apps-on-facebook/ Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:48:46 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/find-share-and-install-ubuntu-apps-on-facebook/ <p>Recently, I wanted to learn how to make Facebook applications using Ruby on Rails. For my first project, I decided to build a small application to let people find, share, install and promote Ubuntu software right from within Facebook. Determining which software we use can be a very social experience, often we&rsquo;ll ask our friends what they recommend, so why not take this social aspect to the (currently) most popular social networking site?</p> <p>Here is a quick video that I put together to show off some of the features of the Facebook app.</p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/l4jD52zlnvQ" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video"></iframe> </div> <p>Give Apps for Ubuntu a try by visiting <a href="http://apps.facebook.com/ubuntuapps">http://apps.facebook.com/ubuntuapps</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4jD52zlnvQ">Youtube Link: Find, Share, and Install Ubuntu Apps on Facebook</a></p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/find-share-and-install-ubuntu-apps-on-facebook/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/synchronize-tomboy-notes-with-dropbox/ Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:09:05 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/synchronize-tomboy-notes-with-dropbox/ <p>One of my absolute favorite online services of the past year is Dropbox. It&rsquo;s a very easy to use service that integrates with your Linux, Mac and Windows desktops and allows you to sync files across computers (among other things). Think of it as a big USB flash drive in the sky.</p> <p>Not only is it useful for storing daily documents and sharing files with friends, it can also be quite useful for keeping your application settings in sync across computers. One example is syncing Tomboy notes across computers. Tomboy is an extremly handly note taking application for Linux, but I always found it annoying that it was so hard to sync across machines. With Dropbox, it&rsquo;s amazingly simple.</p> <p>If you&rsquo;re not already a Dropbox user, sign up at <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTEzNTc0NDk">Dropbox</a>. Once you have the software installed, you should have a folder in your home directory called &ldquo;Dropbox&rdquo;. All of the files in this directory will automatically be synced with Dropbox and with other computers where you install …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/synchronize-tomboy-notes-with-dropbox/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/view-your-site-in-almost-every-browser-with-browsershots/ Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:14:41 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/view-your-site-in-almost-every-browser-with-browsershots/ <p>Ever wonder what your website looks like in different browsers? Even though most of us would prefer that people didn&rsquo;t use browsers like Internet Explorer 6, these old browsers are still widely used. If you want to make sure that your site is not completely broken in these old browsers, try <a href="http://browsershots.org/">Browsershots.org</a>.</p> <p>Browsershots generates screenshots of your site in up to <span style="font-weight: bold;">56 different browsers</span>. You can easily test your design in such obscure browsers as Kazehakase, K-Meleon, and Galeon. Of course all the standard browsers are there too, the most useful being older versions of IE and Firefox on Windows and several versions of Safari for Mac OS. Give <a href="http://browsershots.org/">Browsershots.org</a> a try, it&rsquo;s free!</p> <p><img src="/cdn/i/articles/browsershots1.png" style="border: 1px solid #999; padding: 6px;" title="" alt="Browser Shots" /></p> <p>Note: While preparing this post, I found a bug in my design that causes problems with IE 7. Microsoft &hellip; Grrr.</p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/view-your-site-in-almost-every-browser-with-browsershots/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-just-how-popular-is-it/ Sat, 03 Nov 2007 01:19:02 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-just-how-popular-is-it/ <p class="alert" style="text-indent:0"><strong>Update:</strong>See newer statistics <a href="/ubuntu-still-popular/">here</a>.</p> There is no doubt that Ubuntu's popularity has grown dramatically over the past few years, but just how popular is Ubuntu? How many people have ever heard of Ubuntu? How many people visit the Ubuntu site each month? How many people have tried Ubuntu, and more importantly, how many people are actually using it? According to Canonical's <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-desktop710">official press release</a> for Gutsy Gibbon, Ubuntu has a <strong>"strong and growing user base of over 6 million people."</strong> Where Canonical got this number is not clear, and they have provided no evidence to back up this claim. Nobody really knows how many people are using Ubuntu, but we found some interesting statistics online that show Ubuntu's popularity is growing. From these statistics, it looks like Ubuntu has become far more popular than any other Linux distribution. <p style="text-indent:0; background:#f7f0ea url(/i/emblem-important.png) no-repeat left; border-top: 1px solid #f79537; border-bottom: 1px solid #FF5959; padding: 5px 10px 5px 50px;"><strong>Note:</strong> this article is in no way a scientific study of Ubuntu's popularity, it is just a collection of interesting stats from around the net. Have fun with …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-just-how-popular-is-it/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/switching-from-os-x-to-ubuntu-ten-things-i-miss/ Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:57:26 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/switching-from-os-x-to-ubuntu-ten-things-i-miss/ <p>About 2 years ago, I stopped using Windows on my main computers at work and home. I switched to a Mac Mini, then to a Macbook, for all of my daily work, web design, programming, photo organizing, etc. We also have a large install base of Ubuntu Linux machines and a few Windows 2000 boxes at work, so I didn&rsquo;t use OS X exclusively, just whenever possible.</p> <p>Then, about two months ago, I switched to using a new <a href="http://www.starryhope.com/dell/2007/review-dell-inspiron-1420n-with-ubuntu/">Dell with Ubuntu Linux</a> at work. For the most part, I couldn&rsquo;t be happier, but there are a few things I really miss about my Mac. Here&rsquo;s a list of the 10 things I miss the most. If you know of replacements for any of these under Ubuntu, please leave a comment and share your solution.</p> <p><h3>1. Dashboard <img src="/cdn/i/articles/dashboard_icon.png" align="absmiddle" width="32" height="32" border="0" style="margin:-5px 0 0 5px;" alt="" /></h3> When I first upgraded to OS X Tiger, I thought the Dashboard was silly and a waste of processing power. After almost two years, it became the thing I instantly missed the most when using Ubuntu. With a selection of Dashboard widgets including clocks displaying …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/switching-from-os-x-to-ubuntu-ten-things-i-miss/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/nokia-n800-price-drops-while-gaining-new-features/ Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:36:30 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/nokia-n800-price-drops-while-gaining-new-features/ <p><div style="margin: 10px 0 5px 10px; float:right; text-align:center;"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2410/1499878241_f4fa5b4614_o.png" alt="Nokia N800"></div>When Nokia first shipped the N800, a popular linux based internet tablet, it cost $399. It also shipped with an incomplete set of applications and with limited 3rd party software availability. Today, there is more software available than ever for the N800 and the price has dropped to $257.99!</p> <p>Less than a year after its initial introduction, not only has the street price reduced dramatically but much more software is available for the N800. First, Nokia surprised us by adding an <a href="http://maemo.org/downloads/product/fmradio">FM tuner</a> application, a feature that was not even mentioned in the initial technical specifications. Then in July, they introduced a <a href="http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/nokia_N800.php">software update</a> that added the much anticipated <a href="http://www.starryhope.com/nokia-n800/2007/skype-on-the-nokia-n800/">Skype</a> application for making internet based phone calls.</p> <p>Besides the official Nokia software, 3rd party developers are busy porting great software to the N800. Some of the more notable applications include a great port of the popular <a href="http://maemo.org/downloads/product/pidgin">Pidgin</a> instant messenger, a <a href="http://maemo.org/downloads/product/microb-browser/">mozilla based browser</a>, the <a href="http://maemo.org/downloads/product/canola/">Canola</a> media player, and <a href="http://maemo.org/downloads/product/gnomesword/">GnomeSword …</a></p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/nokia-n800-price-drops-while-gaining-new-features/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/review-dell-inspiron-1420n-with-ubuntu/ Wed, 15 Aug 2007 01:21:28 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/review-dell-inspiron-1420n-with-ubuntu/ <p><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1263/966661078_21a972e703_m.jpg" alt="Dell 1420N" style="margin:0 0 10px 10px; float:right;" />After two weeks of using the new Dell Inspiron 1420N with Ubuntu, I decided it&rsquo;s time to write down some of my thoughts about this new Linux offering from Dell. I have quite a lot of experience with Ubuntu and with Linux in general. I administer several Ubuntu servers including an Edubuntu terminal server setup in a computer lab. I&rsquo;ve been using Linux off and on for about 8 years and have seen desktop Linux improve greatly in the last few years.</p> <p>The time seems right for a company like Dell to partner with a distribution like <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu</a> and bring Linux to the masses. Unfortunately, Dell and Ubuntu&rsquo;s parent company <a href="http://www.canonical.com/">Canonical</a> have not worked together closely enough to make this a first-rate offering. While I think the 1420N is a great computer overall, the lack of attention to detail (and unbelievably bad driver support) keep these latest Linux offerings from being ready for the general public. Hopefully Dell and Canonical will resolve these problems and make a truly …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/review-dell-inspiron-1420n-with-ubuntu/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/dell-inspiron-1420n-with-ubuntu-unboxing/ Wed, 01 Aug 2007 02:54:17 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/dell-inspiron-1420n-with-ubuntu-unboxing/ <p><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1263/966661078_21a972e703_m.jpg" alt="Dell 1420N with Ubuntu" width="240" height="160" border="0" align="left" style="margin: 0 10px 10px 0;" /> Dell recently added the Inspiron 1420N to their<a href="http://dell.com/open"> lineup of Ubuntu Linux notebooks</a>. I&rsquo;ve been looking for a good notebook to run Linux on for some time and wanted to support Dell in their decision to offer consumer computers with Ubuntu pre-installed. I just received my new (and first) Dell today and decided to take some photos of the unboxing process.</p> <p>Overall, the unboxing process and first few hours with the machine are going well. I&rsquo;m writing this post and even edited and uploaded the photos from the Dell - all with no extra software installed. While Dell still has a long way to go to catch up with the style and elegance of an <a href="http://matthew.botos.com/album/2006/MacBook_Unboxing/index.html">Apple unboxing</a>, it seems like they&rsquo;ve come a long way over the last year. I&rsquo;m just happy to have a computer running Ubuntu out of the box. <strong><em>Ah, the smell of freedom is in the air!</em></strong></p> <p>Check back later for more reviews and info about this latest Dell Ubuntu offering. Update: <a href="/review-dell-inspiron-1420n-with-ubuntu">The review is online now</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimjimovich/965489357/" class="tt-flickr"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1421/965489357_c5ebafe478.jpg" alt="Dell 1420N with Ubuntu Box" width="500" height="375" border="0" /></a></p> <p>The box that DHL dropped off.</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimjimovich/965487337/" class="tt-flickr"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1054/965487337_0478a6efb1.jpg" alt="Dell 1420N with Ubuntu 'Computer Made in Malaysia'" width="500" height="333" border="0" /></a></p> <p>Looks …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/dell-inspiron-1420n-with-ubuntu-unboxing/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/skype-on-the-nokia-n800/ Sun, 29 Jul 2007 04:51:30 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/skype-on-the-nokia-n800/ <p>Nokia has <a href="http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1138948">officially</a> released Skype for the N800 along with the newest software update. I haven&rsquo;t had many opportunities to use Skype on the N800, but the few calls I did make came through loud and clear. Here are some screenshots I took of the Skype interface on the N800. If you still don&rsquo;t have one, you can pick up a <a href="http://www.starryhope.com/nokia-n800-store/">Nokia N800 and accessories here</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimjimovich/932609821/"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1235/932609821_5fef7f7256.jpg" alt="Skype startup screen on the Nokia N800" /></a><br> N800 Skype startup</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimjimovich/932609533/"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1050/932609533_47eaab37c5.jpg" alt="Skype main screen on N800" /></a><br> Skype main screen</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimjimovich/933457726/"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1359/933457726_18ebe5464a.jpg" alt="Skype calling screen on N800" /></a><br> Skype dailing</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimjimovich/932608567/"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1193/932608567_28057f0d7e.jpg" alt="Skype making a call on the N800" /></a><br> Making a Skype call</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimjimovich/932609347/"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1304/932609347_e2f4f36d32.jpg" alt="Skype history" /></a><br> Skype history</p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/skype-on-the-nokia-n800/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/nokia-n800-gets-firefox-3-rendering-engine/ Sat, 28 Jul 2007 06:43:13 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/nokia-n800-gets-firefox-3-rendering-engine/ <p>The &ldquo;Mozilla based browser for maemo&rdquo; project has released a development version of the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine for the Nokia N800. This project, also known as &ldquo;MicroB&rdquo;, allows N800 users to replace the Opera rendering engine of the N800 browser with the same rendering engine that will power Firefox 3. Once the new rendering engine is installed, a menu option is available for switching between rendering engines. The project also supports better integration with RSS feeds, better AJAX support, and the ability to write browser add-ons.</p> <p>In our testing, we found that most AJAX based sites worked much better with the Gecko engine. GMail and Google Docs worked well but Google Reader crashed the browser. Popular social networking site digg.com worked much faster than with the Opera engine. Overall, sites rendered much more like you would expect on a desktop browser.</p> <p>The MicroB project is still quite new but looks very promising. If you&rsquo;re feeling …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/nokia-n800-gets-firefox-3-rendering-engine/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/safari-on-windows-could-be-a-huge-security-problem/ Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:12:28 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/safari-on-windows-could-be-a-huge-security-problem/ <p><a href="http://flickr.com/photos/pcrobot/541436104/"><img src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1110/541436104_3f64920840_m.jpg" alt="Safari Windows Installer" align="right" style="margin: 0 0 10px 10px" /></a>As you&rsquo;ve probably heard, Apple <a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/06/11safari.html">has released</a> a version of their Safari web browser for Windows. A lot has been said about why Apple would do this (my bet is that <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2007/06/wwdc_2007_keynote">Jon Gruber</a> is right and it&rsquo;s about the $$$ that Apple will generate from Google searches), about how fast it truly is, and about <a href="http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2007/06/cultofmac_0612">why</a> on earth anyone would want to run Safari on Windows. These are interesting topics of discussion, but I think the most important issue is what this release will do for Apple&rsquo;s security. I think that releasing Safari on Windows presents a risk not only to Windows users but also to Mac OS X and iPhone users. Here are a few thoughts that came to mind when I heard the Safari on Windows announcement.</p> <p><h4>This puts Safari in the territory of the bad guys</h4> With the release of Safari for Windows, Steve Jobs has placed key Apple software squarely in the sights of the world&rsquo;s black hat hackers and script kiddies. Security researchers and hackers, who have always been annoyed with …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/safari-on-windows-could-be-a-huge-security-problem/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/vmware-fusion-looking-better-than-ever/ Thu, 07 Jun 2007 10:42:35 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/vmware-fusion-looking-better-than-ever/ <p>While Parallels may have got the jump on VMWare in the Mac virtualization market, VMWare Fusion is looking better all the time. I first tried Fusion out of frustration over not being able to install the latest versions of Linux on Parallels. VMWare has a much longer history in the VM market and their support for Linux is first class. Today, I found this video via <a href="http://www.tuaw.com/2007/06/06/vmware-fusion-unity/">TUAW</a> that shows off some of the new features coming in the final Fusion release. The &ldquo;Unity&rdquo; feature of Fusion is similar to Parallel&rsquo;s &ldquo;Coherence&rdquo; but looks much more impressive. Watch this video and check it out for yourself.</p> <div style="position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden;"> <iframe src="//www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/JIApJMzGzDQ" style="position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border:0;" allowfullscreen title="YouTube Video"></iframe> </div> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/vmware-fusion-looking-better-than-ever/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/google-maps-on-the-nokia-n800/ Fri, 18 May 2007 09:03:59 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/google-maps-on-the-nokia-n800/ <p>I finally got my Nokia N800 today. I was amazed at how easily it connected to the internet with WiFi and with my mobile phone. One thing I found useful so far was being able to access Google Maps on the run. It&rsquo;s a little small on the screen, but I found it useable, and it sure would be nice if you were lost somewhere (because I know you wouldn&rsquo;t stop and ask for directions).</p> <p>I captured this short screencast of the N800 in action using Google Maps. The video was captured using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vnc">VNC</a> on the N800 along with <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/">Chicken of the VNC</a> and <a href="http://www.shinywhitebox.com/home/home.html">iShowU</a> on my Mac, so there was some overhead in both processing power and network speed that caused the video to be slightly jerkier than it usually is. The AJAX maps also rendered slower when running VNC and you see a funny looking cursor instead of the regular N800 cursor &hellip; but as far as I know, using VNC is the only way to capture video from the N800.</p> <p>Video Download: <a href="http://www.archive.org/download/GoogleMapsOnTheNokiaN800/google_maps.mov">Quicktime version</a></p> <p>If you want more than just google maps on your …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/google-maps-on-the-nokia-n800/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/install-ubuntu-704-on-your-intel-mac-with-vmware-fusion/ Wed, 02 May 2007 19:27:43 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/install-ubuntu-704-on-your-intel-mac-with-vmware-fusion/ <p>The latest version of <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu</a>, Feisty Fawn, has been getting a lot of press recently. With news that Dell will soon be pre-installing Ubuntu on some of its systems, it's almost certain that Ubuntu will only become more popular in the coming months. If you have an Intel Mac and would like to experiment with Ubuntu's newest release what is the easiest way?</p> <p>It seems there are 3 possible ways to try Ubuntu 7.04 on your Mac. <ol> <li>Install Ubuntu directly to your hard drive.</li> <li>Install Ubuntu in <a href="http://www.parallels.com/en/products/workstation/mac/">Parallels</a>.</li> <li>Install Ubuntu in <a href="http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/fusion/">VMWare Fusion</a>.</li> </ol> </p> <p><strong>Installing Ubuntu directly to your hard drive</strong> might be a good idea if you have a spare drive that you can use. From the instructions I've seen online, installing Ubuntu on a partition alongside OS X is not for the faint of heart. Personally, I'm not willing to risk all of my data and my OS X install on an experiment to see if I can install Ubuntu.</p> <p><strong>Installing Ubuntu 7.04 in Parallels</strong> is not such a walk in the park either. There seem to be some problems with …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/install-ubuntu-704-on-your-intel-mac-with-vmware-fusion/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/keyfixer-firefox-version/ Fri, 20 Apr 2007 14:27:22 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/keyfixer-firefox-version/ <p class="alert" style="text-indent:0"><strong>Update:</strong> This program is very old and was made for Firefox 2. It is not recommended to use this program with newer versions of Firefox.</p> <p>To help in the ongoing search to make the &ldquo;home&rdquo; and &ldquo;end&rdquo; keys work in Mac OS X like they work in other operating systems, I give you the Firefox version of KeyFixer. (See <a href="/mac-os-x-home-and-end-keys/">here</a> and <a href="http://www.starryhope.com/keyfixer/">here</a> for background on the problem and info on how to fix this issue in other apps besides Firefox).</p> <p>While I believe that this software will not harm your system in any way, it is offered to you for <strong>FREE</strong> with <strong>NO GUARANTEE</strong>! This patch for Firefox has been tested by several brave beta testers, and as far as I know, it won&rsquo;t damage Firefox in any way. I would however, recommend making a <strong>backup</strong> of your Firefox.app before running this patch. KeyFixer will only try to patch versions of Firefox 2.x found in your Applications folder. Also note that you&rsquo;ll need to re-run the patch each time you update Firefox.</p> <p>So, what does the patch do? It …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/keyfixer-firefox-version/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/gtd-mac-tools/ Fri, 09 Feb 2007 18:00:14 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/gtd-mac-tools/ <p>I&rsquo;ve recently been getting into David Allen&rsquo;s book &ldquo;<a href="http://www.davidco.com/">Getting Things Done</a>&rdquo; and trying to get a good GTD system set up on my Mac. It doesn&rsquo;t take much looking around to find a plethora of new GTD apps for Mac OS X. Here&rsquo;s just a few of the apps that I&rsquo;ve come across.</p> <p><a href="/cdn/i/articles/gtd_kgtd.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/cdn/i/articles/gtd_kgtd_small.jpg" alt="kGTD Screenshot" align="right" style="margin: 0 0 10px 10px;" /></a></p> <p><h4>kGTD</h4> <a href="http://www.kinkless.com/">kGTD</a> seems to be the grandfather of Mac GTD apps. kGTD is somewhat difficult to understand and depends on <a href="http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnioutliner/">OmniOutliner Pro</a>. It&rsquo;s basically a set of AppleScripts that work to sync your data between OmniOutliner and iCal. Considering its complexity and the $70 price tag on OmniOutliner Pro, I don&rsquo;t recommend kGTD.</p> <p><a href="/cdn/i/articles/gtd_actiontastic.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/cdn/i/articles/gtd_actiontastic_small.jpg" alt="Actiontastic Screenshot" align="right" style="margin: 0 0 10px 10px;" /></a></p> <p><h4>Actiontastic</h4> <a href="http://www.kaboomerang.com/blog/">Actiontastic</a> is a fairly simple GTD application that&rsquo;s still in beta. It integrates well with OS X, featuring iCal syncing and a Quicksilver plugin. I found Actiontastic a bit too simplistic, but I&rsquo;m sure more features will be added as it nears version 1.0.</p> <p><h4>Ghost Action</h4> <a href="/cdn/i/articles/gtd_ghost.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/cdn/i/articles/gtd_ghost_small.jpg" alt="Ghost Action Screenshot" align="right" style="margin: 0 0 10px 10px;" /></a><a href="http://ghostparksoftware.com/">Ghost Action</a> looks remarkably similar to Actiontastic …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/gtd-mac-tools/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/10-ways-the-nokia-n800-is-better-than-apples-iphone/ Fri, 12 Jan 2007 22:33:51 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/10-ways-the-nokia-n800-is-better-than-apples-iphone/ <p><span class="alert" style="text-indent:0"><strong>Looking for the N900? Find out how it&rsquo;s also better than the iPhone! <a href="/15-ways-nokias-n900-is-better-than-apples-iphone-and-5-ways-its-not/">New article here</a>.</strong></span></p> <p><div style="margin: 10px 0 5px 10px; float:right; text-align:center;"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/134/353385165_9cc0c031ed.jpg?v=0" alt="Nokia N800" style="border: 1px solid #999;" /></div>All the buzz these days is about the <a href="http://www.apple.com/iphone/">Apple iPhone</a> (not to be confused with the <a href="http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Promotion_C1&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1165633244027&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper">Linksys iPhone</a>). I have to admit, the iPhone is pretty cool, and I was really excited about it for a few hours. Then, reality started to sink in and I realized that the iPhone is probably not something for me. Here are 10 reasons why I&rsquo;d like to buy a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070125085317/http://www.nokiausa.com/N800/">Nokia N800</a> instead of an Apple iPhone. I realize that there are areas where the iPhone will be better than the N800, I just don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s worth the extra cost and lack of freedom that comes along with having an iPhone.</p> <p><h4>1. Price</h4> <p style="text-indent:0">Nokia N800: <strong>$399</strong><br /> Apple iPhone: <strong>$499 or $599</strong> (Plus 2 year Cingular service contract)</p></p> <p><h4>2. Open Source</h4> The Nokia N800 is a Linux device based on a modified version of <a href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian GNU/Linux</a> that they call &ldquo;Internet Tablet OS 2007 edition&rdquo;. Nokia created the open source Maemo development platform for the 770 and …</p></p></p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/10-ways-the-nokia-n800-is-better-than-apples-iphone/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/osx-application-icons/ Thu, 21 Dec 2006 12:21:37 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/osx-application-icons/ <p>The latest generation of Mac applications have really focused on the way an application looks. Developers are creating beautiful user interfaces and slick looking icons that make their apps more pleasing to look at. I appreciate the time and energy that people have put into making their apps look great. </p> <p>Here's a list of 10 Mac OS X applications with really cool icons. What are your favorite OS X application icons? </p> <div style="clear:both;"> <h3><a href="http://appzapper.com/"><img src="/cdn/images/application_icons/AppZapper.png" width="128" height="128" border="0" style="float:left; margin:0 20px 0 0;" alt="AppZapper Icon" /></a>AppZapper</h3> <p>An uninstaller application on steroids - <a href="http://appzapper.com/">AppZapper</a> is not only useful, but has a killer icon. </p> </div> <div style="clear:both; padding-top: 20px;"> <h3><a href="http://cyberduck.ch/"><img src="/cdn/images/application_icons/cyberduck.png" width="128" height="128" border="0" style="float:left; margin:0 20px 0 0;" alt="Cyberduck Icon" /></a>Cyberduck</h3> <p>This is the only open-source FTP and SFTP application that will run on my mac. While it's not as efficient as Transmit for SFTP transfers, <a href="http://cyberduck.ch/">Cyberduck</a> is free and has a great icon. </p> </div> <div style="clear:both; padding-top: 20px;"> <h3><a href="http://www.xtralean.com/IWOverview.html"><img src="/cdn/images/application_icons/imagewell.png" width="128" height="128" border="0" style="float:left; margin:0 20px 0 0;" alt="ImageWell Icon" /></a>ImageWell</h3> <p>&quot;The Handy Image Editor that will save you time and money.&quot; <a href="http://www.xtralean.com/IWOverview.html">ImageWell</a> is a program that really lives up to its hype. I had my doubts about ImageWell, but find it extremely useful when I want to make a quick edit to a picture without spending the time …</p></div><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/osx-application-icons/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/keyfixer/ Tue, 14 Nov 2006 12:00:13 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/keyfixer/ <p>A few months ago, I wrote a short article about how to fix the &ldquo;home&rdquo; and &ldquo;end&rdquo; keys in OS X. I published a <a href="/mac-os-x-home-and-end-keys/">step-by-step guide</a> to adding your own custom key bindings via the command line. Many people found this too much of a pain, so I decided to make an easy clickable solution.</p> <p>I wrote a quick shell script to copy a custom <a href="/cdn/downloads/DefaultKeyBinding.dict">DefaultKeyBinding.dict</a> into the current user&rsquo;s Library folder. Then, with the help of <a href="http://www.sveinbjorn.org/platypus">Platypus</a>, I made it a nice clickable application.</p> <p>To fix your &ldquo;home&rdquo; and &ldquo;end&rdquo; keys (as well as &ldquo;page up&rdquo; and &ldquo;page down&rdquo;), just download and run KeyFixer. If you already have a DefaultKeyBinding.dict file, the script will exit without making any changes.</p> <p>If you want to remove the changes that KeyFixer makes, just run the following command in Terminal. <pre>rm ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict</pre> Please note that this software has only been tested on Mac OS X 10.4 and it does not fix the home and …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/keyfixer/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/macbook-screen-problems/ Wed, 08 Nov 2006 19:53:20 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/macbook-screen-problems/ <p>A few days after I got my <span>MacBook</span>, I started to notice how horrible the screen is. I have a grid of diagonal lines that are especially visible in the left corner and on light colored images. Now, I&rsquo;m noticing distortions on just about anything that has a gradient on it. This screen is just horrible!</p> <p>I thought about sending it back, but only had a week before I needed to leave for an extended stay overseas. I didn&rsquo;t want to risk not having a notebook at all, so I decided to live with the lines. It seems that others out there are having this same problem, and that Apple is unwilling to fix the problem for most people. You can read more here: <a href="http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/313708/macbook-screen-problem/">MacBook Screen problem? - <span>MacNN</span> Forums</a></p> <p>All this gets me to thinking about why I use OS X and buy Apple products. With <a href="http://www.appledefects.com/wiki/index.php?title=MacBook">all the complaints</a> we&rsquo;ve heard about the MacBook. It&rsquo;s becoming obvious that Apple no longer makes superior hardware. Their design is great, but these notebooks are cheaply made.</p> <p>What&rsquo;s even …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/macbook-screen-problems/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/apache2-mod-deflate/ Fri, 03 Nov 2006 18:07:00 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/apache2-mod-deflate/ <p>If you&rsquo;re a website operator or up-and-coming blogger, you may have noticed your bandwidth bills growing larger each month. Fortunately, there&rsquo;s a very easy way to transparently compress your pages and save bandwidth and download time for you and your visitors. Version 2 of the Apache web server features a module called &ldquo;mod_deflate&rdquo;, and if configured correctly, it can dramatically decrease your bandwidth usage.</p> <p>According to <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_deflate.html">Apache&rsquo;s website</a>, &ldquo;The mod_deflate module provides the DEFLATE output filter that allows output from your server to be compressed before being sent to the client over the network.&rdquo; Basically, it allows you to automatically compress certain file types before the server sends the files to the browser (html, css, etc). The browser then decompresses the files once it has received them.</p> <p>I first heard of mod_deflate when searching for a new host about 2 years ago. I was looking for a host with PHP5 and came across …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/apache2-mod-deflate/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/second-day-with-edubuntu-606/ Tue, 06 Jun 2006 14:13:58 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/second-day-with-edubuntu-606/ <p>Our second day of working with the newest release of Edubuntu was much more successful than the first. In just a couple of hours, we got six of our old computers up and running. We needed to replace the video card on one machine. For the rest of the machines, we just needed to add their video card and monitor settings in the lts.conf file. Our biggest problem is that every machine is different from the next, and the monitors are all different too. It takes some time to look up the sync rates for each monitor, but once you have those in the lts.conf file, you&rsquo;re good to go. I&rsquo;m feeling much more hopeful about this project.</p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/second-day-with-edubuntu-606/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/first-24-hours-with-edubuntu-606/ Sat, 03 Jun 2006 00:25:27 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/first-24-hours-with-edubuntu-606/ <p>I got my hands on <a href="http://www.edubuntu.com">Edubuntu</a> 6.06 about 24 hours ago. Since then, I&rsquo;ve had a chance to install it on 2 different machines. Here&rsquo;s a brief rundown of how things have gone so far.</p> <p><h4>First Install - My Notebook</h4> I have a Sony VAIO V505BL that was running Ubuntu 5.10. I decided to go ahead and do a workstation install of Edubuntu on this laptop even though it was already getting late at night. Things didn&rsquo;t start out well at all. The install seemed to take forever, then, as it neared the end, GRUB failed to install. Now, this is a major problem. You can&rsquo;t really run the system without GRUB to boot it up. I tried every way I could think of to fix the problem, and finally gave up and decided to try reinstalling. The second time, everything went smoothly. I&rsquo;m not exactly sure what the problem was, but I&rsquo;ve experienced this problem before with early pre-release versions of 6.06. I&rsquo;ve narrowed it down to one of 3 things.<br /> <ol> <li>You must manually delete …</li></ol></p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/first-24-hours-with-edubuntu-606/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/edubuntu-606-lts-released-download-now/ Thu, 01 Jun 2006 13:29:03 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/edubuntu-606-lts-released-download-now/ <p>The newest version of Edubuntu (6.06 LTS - Dapper Drake) has just been released to <a href="http://us.releases.ubuntu.com/releases/edubuntu/6.06/">download servers</a>. This release has many new features (<a href="http://www.edubuntu.com/news/5">see press release</a>). I&rsquo;ve used previous betas of this release and was very impressed. We&rsquo;re downloading now, and tomorrow we start a new project to setup our student computer lab with Edubuntu. We plan to blog all about it in the coming days. Stay tuned.</p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/edubuntu-606-lts-released-download-now/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/mac-os-x-home-and-end-keys/ Mon, 13 Mar 2006 15:26:35 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/mac-os-x-home-and-end-keys/ <p class="alert" style="text-indent:0"><strong>Update:</strong> Now you can skip all these instructions and just download my <a href="http://www.starryhope.com/tech/apple/2006/keyfixer/">KeyFixer</a> application to fix your home and end keys. <a href="http://www.starryhope.com/tech/apple/2006/keyfixer/">Read the new article ...</a></p> <p>The default behavior of OS X&rsquo;s &ldquo;home&rdquo; and &ldquo;end&rdquo; keys drives me nuts. In every other operating system that I&rsquo;ve used, these keys move your cursor to the beginning (home) or end (end) of your current line. Thankfully, Dreamweaver on the mac behaves this way, but everything else behaves oddly (usually moving you to the beginning or end of the entire document, and sometimes moving just the focus, while leaving the cursor in place).</p> <p>Today, I decided to try to change this default behavior, and thanks to this blog post by Jon Evans (no longer working, but used to live at: evansweb.info/articles/2005/03/24/mac-os-x-and-home-end-keys), it was easy. Thanks for the tip Jon!</p> <p><strong>Update:</strong> If the files don&rsquo;t already exist, you need to create them. Here&rsquo;s the easy way to do it in Terminal (easier, because …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/mac-os-x-home-and-end-keys/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/mac-os-x-install-instructions-that-dont-suck-rails-lighttpd-mysql-apache2-php5/ Tue, 28 Feb 2006 13:17:21 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/mac-os-x-install-instructions-that-dont-suck-rails-lighttpd-mysql-apache2-php5/ <p>I had to reinstall my computer the other day, it&rsquo;s needed it for a while (mostly because I&rsquo;ve installed every stupid program I could get my hands on for the last 6 months). I haven&rsquo;t wanted to reinstall because I had a &ldquo;working&rdquo; install of <a href="http://www.rubyonrails.com/">Rails</a> and I remembered how hard it was to install last time.</p> <p>After reinstalling OS X 10.4.5, I started looking for some good instructions on installing Rails. A <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%22os+x%22+tiger+install+rails">google search</a> will quickly find about 15 different &ldquo;suggestions&rdquo;. Many people suggest using Fink or Darwinports &hellip; others have different ways of doing.</p> <p>Then, I found somewhere on the Rails site, a link to <a href="http://hivelogic.com/articles/2005/12/01/ruby_rails_lighttpd_mysql_tiger">these instructions by Dan Benjamin</a>. Finally, instructions for installing Rails on OS X that don&rsquo;t suck! Sure, you have to compile most of the apps yourself, but in the end, you get a solid Rails, Lighttpd, MySQL install that should be safe from OS upgrades and the likes. Besides that, you get to learn something along the way. …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/mac-os-x-install-instructions-that-dont-suck-rails-lighttpd-mysql-apache2-php5/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/no-native-flash-player-for-intel-macs/ Sat, 21 Jan 2006 10:54:50 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/no-native-flash-player-for-intel-macs/ <p>According to <a href="http://silentrant.com/blog/index.php">reports</a> from <a href="http://www.flashinsider.com/2006/01/19/adobe-on-mac-intel-and-why-flash-is-guiding-my-buying/#c949221">around</a> the web, the Flash Player does not run well inside Safari or Firefox on the new Intel Macs (using Rosetta). Adobe has known about the switch to Intel for more than half a year, isn&rsquo;t that enough time to make the Flash Player work on the new processors? Where is the Univeral version of Flash Player?</p> <p>I&rsquo;m sure the answer is something similar to the reason that Flash Player 8 is not shipping for Linux. I&rsquo;d guess that they&rsquo;re waiting to ship version 8.5 before it will work on Intel Macs and Linux. Seems reasonable &hellip; but then again, all the new iMac users out there will be without Flash Player (or at best, they&rsquo;ll have a poorly performing player).</p> <p>This is just the latest thing that has bothered me since Adobe purchased Macromedia. It seems that the company I loved, the company that was so good at communicating with their developers, has been swallowed up by the corporate mindset that Adobe has displayed so …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/no-native-flash-player-for-intel-macs/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/webkit-nightly-builds-offer-great-new-features-for-web-developers/ Thu, 19 Jan 2006 17:35:59 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/webkit-nightly-builds-offer-great-new-features-for-web-developers/ <p><img align="left" title="WebKit Logo" alt="WebKit Logo" src="/cdn/i/articles/webkit-svg-3.png" />I recently learned that you can download nightly builds of <a href="https://webkit.org/">WebKit</a>. What is WebKit? From the site, &ldquo;WebKit is the system framework used on Mac OS X by Safari, Dashboard, Mail.app, and many other OS X applications. It is based on the KHTML engine from KDE.&rdquo;</p> <p>Why would you want to download and use WebKit nightly builds instead of Safari? Well, for most people, you wouldn&rsquo;t. But if you&rsquo;re a web developer, there are some gems in the latest WebKit that you&rsquo;ll enjoy. My two favorites are the new Web Inspector feature and SVG support. Below, you can see both of these features in action on my <a href="http://www.haveamint.com">Mint</a> install. The graph is done in SVG (something not supported in current Safari builds) and you can see the Web Inspector HUD.</p> <p><a title="Photo Sharing" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimjimovich/88699762/"><img title="Mint in WebKit" alt="Mint in WebKit" src="http://static.flickr.com/27/88699762_1febf38560.jpg" /></a></p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/webkit-nightly-builds-offer-great-new-features-for-web-developers/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/why-im-switching-to-mac-and-linux/ Fri, 30 Dec 2005 03:14:03 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/why-im-switching-to-mac-and-linux/ <p>People sometimes ask me why I would want to switch away from Windows and use <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/">Mac OS X</a> and Linux. I sometimes ask myself the same thing. Then, I go and read the news, and I&rsquo;m reminded (every day) of why I&rsquo;m making the switch. People, it&rsquo;s just not safe to use Windows anymore. The news is all around us. Here are some example stories I read today.</p> <p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/29/AR2005122901456.html">The Washington Post - Windows Security Flaw Is &lsquo;Severe&rsquo;</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180244,00.html">Foxnews.com - &lsquo;Extremely Critical Flaw&rsquo; in Windows Discovered, Already Exploited</a></p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/why-im-switching-to-mac-and-linux/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/goodbye-windows-sorta/ Fri, 30 Dec 2005 01:54:14 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/goodbye-windows-sorta/ <p>Last night, I took a major step in my long-term goal to free myself from the curse that is Microsoft Windows. I&rsquo;ll never be able to get completely away from it, but I can choose to use something other than Windows for my daily work. I&rsquo;ve spent the last 3 months using my <a href="http://www.apple.com/macmini/">Mac mini</a> almost exclusively &hellip; but what to do about my Sony laptop? I&rsquo;ve messed around with Linux a lot over the last few years and have seen the OS become much more appropriate for the desktop environment, so I decided to take the plunge!</p> <p>First, I installed <a href="http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/">SUSE Linux 10.0</a> (don&rsquo;t ask why, I&rsquo;m still not sure myself). The install process was ok, but I never could get my screen to work correctly. Also, I soon realized that I just don&rsquo;t like KDE.</p> <p>So, I scrapped SUSE and installed <a href="http://ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu</a> 5.10 (Breezy). It took only 54 minutes to install, and about another 10 minutes to configure my monitor. Even the Sony hot keys work (they haven&rsquo;t worked under Windows for some time …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/goodbye-windows-sorta/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/mac-tip-spellcheck-almost-everything/ Tue, 20 Dec 2005 06:30:36 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/mac-tip-spellcheck-almost-everything/ <p>I'm constantly finding little gems in Mac OS X that make my life easier and make me love the Mac even more every day. Recently, I realized that you can automatically spellcheck in just about any program in OS X. This is especially great when writing blog entries and emails in Safari. I no longer need to copy and paste my text into a word processor in order to check my spelling. I can type right in any text box and if I make a mistake, it gets underlined in red just like in my word processor. I can even right-click (yes, I have 2 buttons on my mouse) and get spelling suggestions.</p> <p><img src="/cdn/i/tutorials/spelling1.gif" alt="" /></p> <p>To turn this feature on, simply go to the Edit menu, then to Spelling and click on "Check Spelling as You Type". Crazy easy. You can do this in most apps. Some programs are missing this function, most notably the Firefox browser.</p> <p><img src="/cdn/i/tutorials/spelling2.gif" hspace="20" alt="" /></p> <p><a href="http://people.ict.usc.edu/~leuski/cocoaspell/"><img src="/cdn/i/tutorials/cocoAspell.gif" align="right" border="0" alt="" /></a>If you want to take it a step further, you can also spellcheck in other languages. Thanks to great open source software and the UNIX base that OS X is built on, Anton Leuski …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/mac-tip-spellcheck-almost-everything/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/mac-tip-use-curl/ Wed, 30 Nov 2005 08:55:52 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/mac-tip-use-curl/ <p>Apple includes quite a few nice UNIX utilities with Mac OS X. One that I find useful is curl. According to the manual, curl &quot;is a tool to transfer data from or to a server... &quot; I find it useful when downloading large files from the web. Isn't it annoying when you need to download a large file and you keep getting disconnected? With curl, you simply type a command into Terminal and let it work. Curl will download your file and automatically resume downloading if your connection is somehow disrupted.</p> <p>Lets say that you wanted to try out the latest version of <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com">Ubuntu Linux</a> on your Mac Mini or iMac. You go to the <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com">Ubuntu site</a> and find the link to the latest Live CD for PowerPC processors. Control Click on the link and select Copy Link.</p> <p><img src="/cdn/i/tutorials/curl1.gif" alt="copy your link" width="383" height="112" /></p> <p>Now, open up Terminal (found in Applications -&gt; Utilities -&gt; Terminal) and type &quot;curl -O&quot;, then press <strong>Command V</strong> to paste the address to the Ubuntu Live CD </p><p><img src="/cdn/i/tutorials/curl2.gif" alt="your curl command" width="361" height="17" /></p> Hit Return and just let it run. Curl gives you some nice stats to …<p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/mac-tip-use-curl/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/radrails-the-ruby-on-rails-ide/ Fri, 25 Nov 2005 10:55:06 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/radrails-the-ruby-on-rails-ide/ <p>I&rsquo;ve been looking for a good, cross-platform IDE for doing my Rails work. I&rsquo;m currently using Eclipse with a lot of plugins (<a href="http://napcs.com/howto/railsonwindows.html">thanks to this blog entry</a>). It works great, but it&rsquo;s a little slow, and takes a while to set up. Now there&rsquo;s RadRails, an Eclipse based IDE made just for Ruby on Rails development. It&rsquo;s free, open source, cross-platform, and it works. They&rsquo;re now at version 0.5 and developing at an amazing pace.&nbsp; It runs much faster than Eclipse with all those plugins I&rsquo;m using now.&nbsp; There are still some bugs, but I think any future Rails projects will probably start in RadRails.&nbsp; Also, be sure to check out the podcast that the developers put together.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s quite random, but funny and informative.</p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/radrails-the-ruby-on-rails-ide/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/run-windows-apps-with-darwine/ Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:15:04 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/run-windows-apps-with-darwine/ <p>I knew this one was coming as soon as Apple announced their switch to Intel processors.&nbsp; Introducing <a href="http://darwine.sourceforge.net/">Darwine</a>, it&rsquo;s a Mac OS X (Intel only) version of the <a href="http://winehq.com/">Wine project</a>.&nbsp; Wine has let Linux users run their Windows apps for years, and it looks like it&rsquo;s coming to the Mac too!&nbsp; Just another reason to save your money for one of those new Intel Macs when they come out next year.<br /></p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/run-windows-apps-with-darwine/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/diving-into-ruby-on-rails/ Thu, 18 Aug 2005 11:27:43 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/diving-into-ruby-on-rails/ <p>It seems like everyone in the web development community has been talking about <a href="http://www.rubyonrails.com/">Ruby on Rails</a> for the past few months. It's the latest thing; it's the bee's knees. So, a few months ago, I read <a href="http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rails.html">this article over at O'Reilly's ONLamp.com</a>. It was pretty easy to follow along and I had everything set up in no time. I played around with it for a few hours and then put it aside.</p> <p>About a month ago, I decided to really take the dive into Ruby, so I started reading &quot;<a href="http://www.poignantguide.net/ruby/">Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby</a>&quot;. It's a <em>very</em> strange book, but kept me interested as I read it on the train each weekend. Seeing that Ruby was cool, I decided to go ahead and learn about Rails. </p><p>I quickly found myself frustrated with the lack of clear tutorials and examples of Rails. I decided to buy the PDF version of &quot;<a href="http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/rails/index.html">Agile Web Development with Rails</a>&quot; and I've been working my way through that. If you're looking to learn Ruby on Rails, this is the book you need. In fact, it seems to be the first and only book …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/diving-into-ruby-on-rails/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/web-debugging-and-throttling-tool/ Wed, 26 Jan 2005 11:48:25 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/web-debugging-and-throttling-tool/ <p>I came across a really cool tool today to help with website debugging. It&rsquo;s called <a href="http://www.xk72.com/charles/index.html">Charles</a> and it acts as a proxy server that records the details of all outgoing and incoming traffic. It records all the headers and allows you to track problems that are hard to find when using a browser. <br /><br />The thing I found most useful was <a href="http://www.xk72.com/charles/index.html">Charles</a>&rsquo; ability to act as a bandwidth throttle. It&rsquo;s always hard to judge just how fast (or slow) your site will be for someone using a dial-up modem. With <a href="http://www.xk72.com/charles/index.html">Charles</a>, you can simulate different modem speeds and see just how annoying your site is for your dial-up friends.</p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/web-debugging-and-throttling-tool/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/free-open-source-software/ Fri, 10 Sep 2004 20:36:40 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/free-open-source-software/ <p>It seems that &ldquo;Open Source&rdquo; is one of the industries favorite buzzwords right now, but what does it mean to you and me? Well, many times, it means that great software programmers from around the world collaborate to make FREE software that we can use. This software is sometimes even better than the stuff people pay hundreds of dollars for. A few well-known examples are <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/">Mozilla&rsquo;s Firefox browser</a>, <a href="http://www.gimp.org/">the GIMP</a> image editor, and <a href="http://www.openoffice.org">OpenOffice.org&rsquo;s free office suite</a>. What I&rsquo;d like to do over the next few months is point out great FREE and open source programs that I find useful. Hopefully, you&rsquo;ll find them useful too.<br /><br />Today&rsquo;s tool is called <a href="http://www.7-zip.org/">7-zip</a>. It&rsquo;s a great little compression tool that lets you open and compress files in many formats (including 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, and RPM). It creates small files and can even make self-extracting archives. I&rsquo;ve used it a lot recently with gzipped Tar files (tar.gz) for UNIX systems. …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/free-open-source-software/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/php-5-the-easy-way/ Thu, 22 Jul 2004 09:25:01 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/php-5-the-easy-way/ <p>As you probably know, <a href="http://www.php.net">PHP 5.0</a> was just released a few days ago. I&rsquo;ve been keeping an eye on this new PHP release because it looks like the community has made some great improvements. The main things that interest me are a new object-oriented model (it&rsquo;s about time!), better xml support (again, about time!) and a built-in database program (sqlite). I&rsquo;ve quite honestly become attached to asp.net, mostly because of it&rsquo;s completely smooth object-oriented approach to things that lets me separate my code from my html &hellip; so hopefully the new version of PHP will make life easier on PHP users. Anyway, if there was ever a time to learn PHP, it&rsquo;s now. <br /> <br /> So, now what? You need to install PHP and mySQL (and maybe Apache too) &hellip; but what a pain! Well, the guys over at <a href="http://www.wampserver.com/en/">Wampserver</a> have a solution that will help you get your testing server up and running in no time. It&rsquo;s called Wampserver and it installs and configures Apache, PHP 5, mySQL, and …</p><p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/php-5-the-easy-way/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/a-css-redesign/ Tue, 18 May 2004 17:17:59 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/a-css-redesign/ <p>I just finished reading Jeffrey Zeldman&rsquo;s book &ldquo;<a href="http://www.zeldman.com/dwws/">Designing with Web Standards</a>&rdquo;. All I can say is, wow! If you work with websites, this book is a must-read. The only problem is that now I feel awfully ashamed of the websites I&rsquo;ve designed in the past 2 years and I feel a compelling urge to redesign them. I still think everyone should read this book, so go out and buy it!</p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/a-css-redesign/">starryhope.com</a></p> https://www.starryhope.com/my-blog/ Fri, 14 May 2004 17:28:14 +0000 https://www.starryhope.com/my-blog/ <p>I decided to start a blog. Yeah for me!</p> <p>Read more at <a href="https://www.starryhope.com/my-blog/">starryhope.com</a></p>