Showing posts with label gnu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gnu. Show all posts

Monday, October 11, 2010

Making the jump to 'Maverick Meerkat'

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Like so many others, I too downloaded the newest Ubuntu release version:10.10. Which happened to release on October 10, 2010. I did a fresh install today (over my existing 10.04.1 partition). From first glance, I honestly could't tell that much of a difference from 0.04. LTS). Sure, the new wallpaper looked nice. But the overall experience was still pretty much the same. Nothing seemed to be lost or gained in the new version of the Live CD.

Then, I launched the installer. And to my surprise, I was looking at a new install wizard. It had a few checkmarks denoting that my system had adequate free hard drive space, memory, and an Internet connection. Then I stepped through the somewhat simplified wizard and was underway with installing a lot quicker than I had remembered the process being. One of the big differences I saw were 2 new options before committing to the install.
1- Download updates during install.
2- the option to install 3rd party codecs like MP3 support during install.

I took both of the options for experimentation sake. And they worked flawlessly. My next steps were to download the restricted driver for my nVidia graphics card, run the Update Wizard (which came back as updated), and try out Gwibber. I was one of the many who were affected with Gwibber issues in 10.04.1 LTS. It just wouldn't function right (or at all in some cases).

For those who haven't used it, Gwibber is a social networking app that aggregates status updates from sites like Faceboook and Twitter (and several others). I setup my Twitter account with no issues. But the Facebook setup still wouldn't work. But no worries, Empathy picks up some of the slack; allowing access to Facebook chat instead of logging in only on the website. My next moves were to install some of the other apps I like to use (like Gimp and OpenShot). Which installed fine. I also setup Compiz with my desired effects, and downloaded Ubuntu Tweak (which I will have a review on very shortly).

After installing the Chrome web browser and downloading some custom wallpapers, and installing Docky to replace the bottom GNOME panel; I was once again happy with the way my Ubuntu install looks and feels. Cannonical has once again brought the world another great version of Ubuntu with many more features under the hood that I can't wait to try out.

By the way, a review will be showing up soon about the Ubuntu One features. And hopefully, I can find a way to replace my iTunes music shopping habits with the Ubuntu One music store that is integrated with RhythmBox. To my dismay, all of the songs I have purchased in the last week from iTunes for 99 cents, are on the Ubuntu music store for just 77 cents. What can I say, I'm cheap. LOL

Happy surfing!

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Website Review: SuseStudio.com-Build Your Own Linux Distro!

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Okay, for all of the Linux fans out there. You really need to checkout SuseStudio.com. This is an awesome site if you have any interest in creating your own flavor of Linux. This site is a build kit which you access completely through the web. All of the building is done on the server side, and basically allows anyone (even non-Linux people) the capability to pick what packages they want included, custom boot screens and logo's, and even setup predetermined user logins. When done, you can create a Live CD/DVD ISO file for burning to a disk, a Live USB/Hard drive image file, even virtual machines for use in VMWare and VirtualBox. This site is free, versatile, and just plain fun to mess with. Each user is given 15GB's of space on the server for storing your built operating systems. You can also share your custom Linux with the suseGallery. All building is done on top of openSuse, so your distro will be RPM based. For more info, checkout my indepth demo video below:


Happy surfing!