Enhanced web experience with Ubiquity
Firefox is one of the jewels of the Free Software crown, and it makes a great partner with Ubuntu. Out of the box you get a bleeding-edge, highly efficient platform for fully enjoying the bounties of the web.
As you might know, Firefox is also highly extensible. It's easy to add some features that were not originally bundled with the browser. Ubiquity is a über-extension, that a makes your daily experience on-line more agile and fun. I say über, because it provides multiple functionalities that are otherwise given by a plethora of other extensions or web applications.
Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat – “The Perfect 10″ Released
Canonical have said that there isn’t really too much changed in this version compared to the outstanding 10.04 LTS release.
Some of these minor changes are, better Ubuntu One integrations/sycing, Shotwell replaces F-Spot, the installer now gives you the option to install the mp3 codec (this is my favourite feature) and overall they did some more polishing on the desktop user interface (the menus look great).
You can download it here, however I'd recommend getting the torrent version because you'll probably get better speeds, here.
Howto: Use Ubuntu One to Sync Tomboy Notes Cross-platform
It was recently brought back to my attention by one of the FTN readers that you could sync your Tomboy notes cross-platform using Ubuntu One without actually having the Ubuntu One client installed, pretty handy seeing as a client does not exist on Windows and Mac. None the less this is the best way to sync your notes along with always having access to them via the web interface.
Howto: Use Dropbox to Sync Tomboy Notes on Ubuntu 10.04
Ubuntu by default comes with Ubuntu One, which is basically a Dropbox clone with a few cool additions. Ubuntu One has got some great desktop integration syncing which I really like, but unfortunately like most people I don't just work in an Ubuntu environment, so Ubuntu One just doesn't suite my needs. I want something that will sync all my files, Tomboy notes etc... cross-platform. So I've been using a feature in Tomboy that allows local folder syncing, which can take advantage of Dropbox's own syncing abilities. Basically what we're going to do is have Tomboy sync to a local folder which is located in the Dropbox folder.
Howto: Discover software alternatives that run on Linux
Whenever people think about switching to Linux, they wonder if all the applications they are used to work with will be available on their new system. Although not all software companies release versions of their applications for Linux, often there is a very good alternative available that performs at least as well.
Surf to alternativeto.net and learn what you can use instead of the application you use to have on your older system. Who knows, maybe you'll even find a fresh new approach to the task at hand that will boost your productivity!
Howto: Subscribe to TV and Radio shows using Miro on Ubuntu
Some on-line content such as radio or TV shows gets updated with new shows on a regular basis. Miro is a very handy piece of software that allows you to keep track of your favorite shows, and get the latest episode, every time it is released. All you have to do is subscribe to those shows, so the content can be automatically and conveniently downloaded to your hard-drive, ready to be enjoyed whenever you want. This way you get to choose what to watch (or listen to), and when to do so. Pretty much like having your customized TV / Radio Network.
Howto: Install Dropbox on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx
If you're like me and just can't switch over to Ubuntu One because they don't have a cross-platform client quite yet, Dropbox is still the king of easy folder synchronisation.
Step 1
Go to www.dropbox.com/downloading and download the appropriate .deb file.
Note: If you don't have a dropbox account sign-up for one here
Note: If you're not sure which one to download, you'll notice just above the download links they recommend which one you should download.
Step 2
Once downloaded, locate the file and double click it. You'll be presented with a package installer, just follow the on screen prompts.
Howto: Install Skype on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx
This is exactly the same process of installing it on the previous version, straignt forward, works great.
Note: Due to a recent update, you can now install Skype via the Ubuntu Software Centre, just do a search for it. You can also install it via the command line with the following: sudo apt-get install skype
Step 1
Go to www.skype.com/download and get the appropriate 8.10+ version for you (32/64-bit).
Step 2
Launch the Skype install .deb file (just double click it) and follow the on screen prompts.
Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 1 Released
Beta 1 is finally out after being postponed. I'd recommend you download the torrent version for the fastest download experience, check out the download page here.
What changes would you like to see in Beta 2 if it's not already been changed in this release? (I'm sure a lot of people are going to say, "buttons")
Howto: Fix Spotify sound problems on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
After installing Spotify on my Ubuntu 9.10 system I found that I was having some sound issues, popping, cracking and sound crashes. I'll walk you through my settings and point you to the Spotify FAQ for the suggested settings (they didn't work for me, but they could for you) So here we go...
Howto: Install Spotify on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
I finally got around to trying Spotify, unfortunately they don't have a Linux native application so we'll be running the Windows version under Wine. The install process is very straight forward and most people have had it work straight out of the box however I had some sound problems which you can see here.
Howto: Install TweetDeck on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
This is one of the best social networking application I've found out there, not only is it functional and stylish, but it's cross-platform as it's an Adobe Air application and it's really easy to install!
Note: If you don't have Adobe Air installed please follow this guide first and then return to here.
Step 1
Go to tweetdeck.com and click the yellow download button.
Howto: Install Adobe Air on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
There are some really great adobe air applications out there especially one revolving around social networks such as twitter, facebook, friendfeed. This is a pretty easy install and I'm going to show you how to do it via the command line because it's very quick to do.
Step 1
Download adobe air here and save it to somewhere you can find it like the /Downloads folder.
Step 2
Open up a Terminal window under the Applications->Accessories menu and navigate to the folder you download adobe air to, in my case it was the /Downloads folder:
Is Google’s Chrome OS Good for Linux?
The number one reason Linux has not gained as much ground on the desktop as I think it could is simply that it does not always work out of the box and this is is due to the lack of driver support for standard peripherals. Most of the time Linux gets drivers for products much later in the devices life and by that point something better has come out that you want to use, be it a graphics card, sound card, wifi card, printer etc...Vendors don't see it as been worth while to invest in releasing Linux drivers along side Mac and Windows, because the returns are not significant enough.
Howto: Install Firefox 3.6 on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
Update: The mozilla team has made a new ppa that will upgrade firefox 3.5, I've added that ppa below.
Firefox 3.6 has just come out and for people that don't want to wait for Canonical to officially upgrade the default Firefox 3.5 install on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala follow these steps:
Step 1
Go to System->Administration->Software Sources and in the Software Source window navigate to the Other Sources tab.
Step 2
Click the Add button and copy and paste the either ppa into the dialogue box:
Howto: Use Symbolic Links to Sync Folders with Dropbox on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
I've been using Dropbox to sync files over multiple OS's for a while now, but I've always found it annoying that I couldn't sync folder I specified rather than just the one Dropbox folder. While my solution isn't quite what I want, I does a pretty good job of it nonetheless, this is done by using symbolic links.
Basically a symbolic link will allow a folder to be in two places at once. In my case I'd like to make a symbolic link of my /Documents folder and place it in my /Dropbox folder so it will be synced to my other machines.
Step 1
Open a Terminal and simply run the following command:
Howto: Compile Dropbox from Source on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
It's very straight forward to do and doesn't really take much time at all. If you're on another Debian based distro it should work fine.
Step 1
Download the source files from here www.getdropbox.com/downloading and unzip it (right click and "Extract Here").
Note: If you don't have a dropbox account sign-up for one here
Step 2
We now need to install the dependencies in order to build our install files from source.
Open up your Terminal and type:
Howto: Install Adobe Flash 10.1 (pre-release) on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
As most linux users know Adobe Flash isn't particularly good, it's choppy and hogs your CPU. Well Adobe has a pre-release of Flash 10.1 which is really really good. It's pretty easy to install.
Step 1
Note: Download it to somewhere easy to access it like your Desktop
Howto: Fix Gnome Do Home Folder Bug on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
If you've had a problem opening the Home Folder with Gnome Do, basically if I add the Home Folder icon to my docky or even find it doing a search, it simple wont open. Well I did some poking around and found a fix.
Step 1
Open up your Terminal under Application->Accessories menu and run the following command:
gksudo nautilus /usr/share/applications
This will basically open up your file manager as root so you can edit the Home Folder executable.
Howto: Speed Up GRUB2 Boot Loader on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
If you're like me and are sick on the 10 second GRUB2 boot loader timer and would like to speed it up or remove you'll be happy to know that it's quite easy to change.
Note: This tutorial is for Ubuntu 9.10 if you're using an older version of Ubuntu and thus GRUB see my previous artical - Howto: Speed Up Grub Boot Loader Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.
Step 1
Open a Terminal window and run:
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
Recent Posts
- Enhanced web experience with Ubiquity
- Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat – “The Perfect 10″ Released
- Howto: Use Ubuntu One to Sync Tomboy Notes Cross-platform
- Howto: Use Dropbox to Sync Tomboy Notes on Ubuntu 10.04
- Howto: Discover software alternatives that run on Linux
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