Ubuntu 8.10 x64

As a line is drawn under October 2008, a new chapter in the life of Ubuntu opens in the form of Intrepid Ibex.  This is a “normal release” from Canonical, rather than a “Long term support” release and that usually means that it is a bit more adventurous than their LTS bretheren.  That said, when Hardy Heron was released it shipped with a beta version of Firefox 3, so even then they’re not exactly playing it cautious.

2008 has seen the rise of the “netbook”, a low powered, very cheap and very small laptop who’s only purpose is to get you onto the internet as cheaply and as conveniently as possible.  Linux has managed to find its way onto most of the netbooks on the market, whether it be the Asus EEE and its Xandros distro or the Acer Aspire with its Linpus distro and unsurprisingly, Canonical felt they were missing out on the action.

Needless to say Ubuntu 8.10 has turned its attention to connectivity.  The wifi configuration dialogues have been reworked and will now connect to 3G networks when the appropriate hardware is present.  It seems to connect to my home common-or-garden wifi connection quicker too.  Whether you have a wifi connection or enjoy the choice between downloading a photo with a 3g connection or paying the rent/mortgage, Intrepid Ibex will get you onto the internet.

Overall system responsiveness seems to have taken a step in the right direction too, it feels noticably quicker, boots a bit faster and shuts down a little quicker.  It is using the 2.6.27 version of the linux kernel as well, so it’ll detect and work with the GTX 200 series of Nvidia GPU’s, which is nice.  I have a GTX 260 and under 8.04 I was frustratingly limited to 800×600 on a 22″ screen and I gave up all hope of installing the drivers from the Nvidia website.

The bundled apps haven’t changed an awful lot, but there is now an option to create a USB version of your installation, rather like you’ll find on Fedora 9 and Mandriva.  There is a new network manager and Canonical have done a deal with the BBC to deliver content through the Totem app.

8.10 does come with a great new theme.  It looks like a cross between the Ubuntu studio theme and the standard “human” theme.  It is now my theme of choice, as is the funky new background image.

So far, Intrepid is a quicker, more polished and rock stable addition to the Ubuntu family and deserves it’s place as my laptop and desktop OS.

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.

 

Another experiment

I stumbled on a very helpful blog earlier today, suggesting that there was a “preload” app in the repository that reduces load times on Ubuntu apps. I’m not getting my hopes up too much – I mean, its not as if things take a long time to load as it is, but its something worth looking at.

The command line is:

sudo apt-get install preload

The blog I found it on is here

Gaming in Ubuntu 64

If you’re running the 64bit version of Ubuntu and are in need of some recreation, you may find yourself running into a few more brick walls that 32bit users, thanks to the lack of 64 bit support in most retail games. However, help is at hand.

There is an “Ubuntu Gamers Arena” which provides guides on how to get these games installed on your system. I’ve personally followed the guide for Wolfenstein Enemy Territory and it is spot on.

Enjoy!

Ubuntu Studio theme

There is another version of Ubuntu, a mod if you will, designed for the more “creative” among us.  It comes with a bunch of applications depending on which flavour you go for – either image editing, music or video.  You can find out more here.  It sports a “realtime kernel”.  I must be honest I don’t know what that means, but I’m told it isn’t for everyone, especially if you use wifi, due to the way it plays havok with some drivers (I guess…)

What you may be interested in though is the theme.  It gives Ubuntu a charcoal grey look, which is quite attractive and looks a bit more professional than the default theme.  It also replaces the African drum sounds on the login screen with a more tuneful umm…tune.

Being linux, you can have the bits you want and leave the rest, in this case, the theme.  Here’s how:

sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-look

type that into the command line and wait for it to download.  You’ll then need to go to System, Preferences and then Appearance in the menu’s to enable it.  You’ll find some nice new desktop backgrounds in there too.

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.

The Medibuntu Repository

The first thing to do when you have finished setting up your new Ubuntu installation is to add the Medibuntu repository.  The “official” guide on how to do it is here

Within it you’ll find the codecs you need for all the popular media formats, such as MP3, DivX etc as well as Google Earth and Skype etc

The reason why they are not included by default is because Ubuntu is open source through and through and some of these codecs as well as Google Earth and Skype are not!  As the website says, they’ve been left out for “legal” reasons.  They’re not illegal to use though and are very useful, so go get them!

There are different command lines for different versions of Ubuntu and different ones again for 32bit & 64 bit and I’m not patient enough to paste them all in here!

Ubuntu 8.04

After a few months of using Gutsy Gibbon (7.10), the arrival of Hardy Heron (8.04) was something I actually looked forward to – something that hadn’t happened since the arrival of Vista.  The main difference here was one cost £300 and the other was free – go figure.

Well, on launch day I waited patiently for the torrent to download (little did I know my broadband connection was faulty and running at a 10th of the speed it should have been) and quickly burned it to a CD.  In the meantime the auto-updater informed me that a Distro upgrade was available so I thought I’d try that in the hope of retaining most of my settings.

After much flapping and also downloading the “alternative installer” to compensate for the comically slow net connection, 7 hours later it had finished.

Well, the quiet splash worked – first time I’d ever seen it, sound worked, graphics drivers installed without fuss everything seemed to be working.  To cap it all, most of my existing applications remained in place – the ones that had released new versions that is.  VMware server had vanished but I can live with that.

Aside from the subtle but important improvements mentioned above, there are a few nice features bundled with the system, although you have to dig deep to find them.

Uncomplicated firewall

This is switched off by default and has no graphical interface, instead works with some simple commands in “terminal”

Usage: ufw COMMAND

Commands:
enable                           Enables the firewall
disable                           Disables the firewall
default ARG                     set default policy to ALLOW or DENY
logging ARG                    set logging to ON or OFF
allow|deny RULE             allow or deny RULE
delete allow|deny RULE    delete the allow/deny RULE
status                           show firewall status
version                          display version information

So to enable it, type

sudo ufw enable

Easy.

KVM

This is a virtual machine app, well the guts of it at least.  You need to download a couple of programs from the Ubuntu repository to actually get a new VM up and running, but this is just a case of typing:

sudo apt-get install virt-manager libvirt-bin kvm

in the terminal window.  When you run Virtual Machine manager it’ll prompt you to add yourself to the permissions before you can proceed, but it’ll give you the command line you need.

I was able to get Pupply Linux running in a virtual machine quite successfully, but although it says it can use ISO files by extracting the contents as is goes, it failed each and every time.  You need to burn the ISO’s to CD’s and let it run them.

Aside from these two the repositories are as packed as ever and I’ll give a run down of some of the best ones.