RSS feed reader – Liferea

Great little RSS feed reader for you here. I don’t know about you but I’ve so far found the RSS support in Ubuntu a little haphazard. In Windows Vista you can

subscribe to a feed and if you have Outlook 2007 installed it’ll appear in there under your inbox, but with Ubuntu you can subscribe to feeds through Firefox but you then find them in drop-down boxes under the address bar – not hugely convenient.

Liferea is an RSS feed reader that works much like an email client – it is available through the repository (Add/Remove programs) or by typing:

sudo apt-get install liferea

…into the terminal. It doesn’t cost anything and it works, so give it a go.

Create your own Live CD

I created my own Ubuntu live DVD yesterday, complete with all the apps & codecs I use and the Ubuntu Studio theme I install each and every time I reinstall. I think I’ll call it GavBuntu (haha)

If anyone else using Ubuntu or Mint would like to do the same, it’s really easy.

Go to “Software Sources” in the admin menu
add a new 3rd party source as follows

deb http://www.remastersys.klikit-linux.com/repository remastersys/

Then, in a terminal type

sudo apt-get install remastersys

Then, if you want to create a full live backup of your system, type

sudo remastersys backup

or, you can create a redistributable live CD with

sudo remastersys dist

When making a redistributable live CD/DVD, for best results, uninstall the restricted display driver if you are using one, or theres a chance you’ll be greeted with an error message when you boot the new disc suggesting it couldn’t set the display settings.

The guide I used is here

Axel Downloader

If you download a lot of files and are frustrated at the slow speeds you get, you may benefit from a download manager.  Whilst there are many around, few are as lightweight and as handy as Axel.  It runs in the Terminal (command line) and downloads from various sources to speed things up.  If you’re young and impressionable and a fan of such movies as Die Hard 4, you will love how it makes your terminal scroll like crazy, making you look like one of those strangely cool hacker types from the movies.

It is available in the apt repositories, so all you need to do is open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install axel

To use it, all you have to do is type (in the command line)

axel http://theurlhere

There are other flags too, many infact, but you don’t need to use them.  If you want to find out what they are, just type

man axel

…in the command line.

 

KDE

If you are using Ubuntu, you are probably aware of Kubuntu.  Kubuntu is basically Ubuntu but with a different window manager.  Ubuntu uses what they call Gnome and Kubuntu uses KDE.

“What you use” is something that causes much debate in linux circles.  Some will only use Gnome, some will only use KDE.

To the uninitiated, Gnome has its menu items across the top (Applications, Places, System etc), rather like the menu’s in MS Word, whereas KDE uses something that resembles the Start menu in Windows.  Applications written for KDE usually have a “K” shoehorned somewhere into their name too.  Gnome is apparently lighter on resources and some would say a little more basic.  I’m not about to say either way, but did you know you could have both?

A simple command line will install the Kubuntu desktop for you and you can choose between Gnome or KDE on the login screen by pressing F10 or clicking on “Sessions”.

In the terminal type:

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

or, if you are feeling brave and want to try KDE4 (which is still in development and is buggy as hell)

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-kde4-desktop

Its a hefty download, but it’s worth it to have a look and it’ll give you the required libraries to get all of the other KDE applications running in Gnome, such as Amarok.