May 28th, 2008
Now Banshee 1.0 Beta 2 is released. If you want to try the music player in your ubuntu hardy box, you could add sources.list entry from banshee PPA team.
Open software sources (System > Administration > Software Sources). In Third-Party Software tab, click Add and paste the code below
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| deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/banshee-team/ubuntu hardy main |
If you need the source, you could repeat the Add proccess, and paste this
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| deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/banshee-team/ubuntu hardy main |
Close the Software Sources. Wait for a few moment while the software update your package database. Then open the terminal, and type
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| sudo apt-get install banshee-1 |
Yes, use banshee-1. If you use banshee, you’ll get the old Banshee 0.13.2 from universe repository.
And, enjoy your new Banshee 
May 20th, 2008
There is a great script created to check whether your system is compiz ready or not. It’s called Compiz-Check.
Gathering information about your system...
Distribution: Ubuntu 8.04
Desktop environment: GNOME
Graphics chip: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce 7300 GT] (rev a1)
Driver in use: nvidia
Rendering method: Nvidia
Checking if it's possible to run Compiz on your system...
Checking for texture_from_pixmap... [ OK ]
Checking for non power of two support... [ OK ]
Checking for composite extension... [ OK ]
Checking for FBConfig... [ OK ]
Checking for hardware/setup problems... [ OK ]
If you got [ OK ] in every check, like mine, then your system is ready to run compiz. If something fails, go check the forum 
May 12th, 2008
While you’re thinking by installing 64 bit linux you’re standing in the edge of new technology era, it sucks knowing our 64 bit system is less supported than the old 32 bit system. We have to install 32 bit flash since Adobe didn’t have the 64 bit one. We have to install 32 bit oracle xe since Oracle also didn’t have 64 bit version.
And now I will try explain how to install oracle xe into the 64 bit system, ubuntu way. Of course we couldn’t follow the guide from oracle, since apt-get will detect our system architecture and we won’t get the 32 bit packages list.
Before we start, make sure you have the 32 bit library installed. It’s in reposity, all you have to do is
sudo apt-get install libc6-i386
The next thing to do is download the files needed. It’s libaio_0.3.104-1_i386.deb and oracle-xe-universal_10.2.0.1-1.1_i386.deb. You could use wget for this
wget -c http://oss.oracle.com/debian/dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/libaio_0.3.104-1_i386.deb http://oss.oracle.com/debian/dists/unstable/non-free/binary-i386/oracle-xe-universal_10.2.0.1-1.1_i386.deb.
After your downloads are finished, we continue to the main issue, forcing the package to be installed. You could try to install with usual dpkg -i first to make sure your system is really 64 bit.
sudo dpkg -i libaio_0.3.104-1_i386.deb
You’ll get error,
dpkg: error processing libaio_0.3.104-1_i386.deb (--install):
package architecture (i386) does not match system (amd64)
Errors were encountered while processing:
libaio_0.3.104-1_i386.deb
Added guide from Venka A
sudo apt-get install bc
To force the installation, do these
dpkg -i --force-architecture libaio_0.3.104-1_i386.deb
dpkg -i --force-architecture oracle-xe-universal_10.2.0.1-1.1_i386.deb
And after the installation is finished, you need to configure it
sudo /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure
and edit your ~/.bashrc
ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server
PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin
export ORACLE_HOME
export ORACLE_SID=XE
export PATH
And, voila, the oracle xe is ready. You could go to http://127.0.0.1:8080/apex from your browser.
References:
May 11th, 2008
Since I’m not using any window decorator for my gnome setup, I always count on keyboard and mouse combination shortcut for managing my windows. These are my regularly used shortcuts when I’m working.
- Alt + mouse button 1 (left mouse button): move window. Remember this, and your life would be lot easier. Seriously. I even bring this habbit to MS Windows. You don’t need to move your mouse to title bar and click it there to move the window. Just hold Alt button, and click anywhere inside the window, and you could move it anywhere.
- Ctrl + Alt + d: show desktop. Easily “minimize” all your opened windows. Very useful when your desktop is cluttered and you want to open new application.
- Alt + F9: minimize current window.
- Alt + F8: resize current window. Having no window decorator makes resizing window a little bid harder. But Alt + F8 really helps a lot.
- Alt + F7: move current window.
- Alt + F10: maximize current window.
- Alt + F5: unmaximize current window.
- Alt + F4: close window. Some application could also use Ctrl + W, Alt + Q.
May 8th, 2008
OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta is ready for testing.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 will support the upcoming OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard, and is capable of opening files created with MS-Office 2007 or MS-Office 2008 for Mac OS X (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.). This is in addition to read and write support for the MS-Office binary file formats (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc.).
See more features in the website, or go try yourself.
April 28th, 2008
Maybe it’s very suprising to know that very easy task could be very complicated when it comes to non-tech user. Apparently, what we think easy enough is actually hard to do when the information isn’t clear. Content Consumer had a great experiment on how regular non-tech user (in his case, his girlfriend) doing things in Ubuntu 8.04.
The main issue with the desktop experience is that the geeky programmers and designers assume too much from the average user. They assume the user knows about the way in which programs are installed, or how the file system is set out. The average user will not go out of their way to google for help or even read the associated documentation that comes with Ubuntu and its default software. The little information pop-ups and guided wizards are critical to explaining how the user can accomplish the basic tasks they most probably are trying to do.
– The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment
Great article, and definitely great input for ubuntu development team.
April 25th, 2008
Epiphany is always my browser-of-choise for my daily internet activities. It’s build on the real GTK, it’s simple, it’s light, and it’s integrated to Gnome. It is the konqueror of gnome. I’ve never had any memory leak when using Epiphany.
Epiphany is definitely fulfil my needs. I don’t need Firefox. Firefox is used only when I need it’s awesome Web Developer plugin (and Firebug, but now it didn’t work on Firefox 3 beta 5). I only use firefox when I need to design some html pages. Other than that, Epiphany is the answer. What? Adblock? Oh epiphany does have adblock.
But there is one think I always want to see in epiphany, the ability to choose rendering engine. Konqueror has this option. Konqueror user could pick Gecko or KHTML as the rendering engine. And now, KDE4 has webkit-enabled konqueror. Webkit itself is KHTML fork, and been said to be faster and better than Gecko (citation needed). Who doesn’t want faster browsing experience?
And now my dream is coming. Apparently, WebKit is being ported to GTK+. And if that is not good enough, it passed acid3 test, 100/100. For a comparison, Epiphany using Gecko 1.9 only scored 71/100.
Nice job for everyone involved. I can’t wait to use it
April 24th, 2008
Today is April 24. And today, Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron is released. The ubuntu site was down for couple hours. I couldn’t access is on 8 PM (GMT +7). It’s said Service Temporarily Unavailable. But now, 10 PM (GMT +7), the site is back online.
Welcome to the world, Hardy Heron!
April 19th, 2008
We consider this release candidate to be complete, stable, and suitable for testing by any user.
It’s released. Finally. I’ve been waiting forever. I’ve been using Hardy Heron beta in my notebook for almost a week now, and I’m very pleased with the upgrade, especially the Gnome 2.22.
Now the RC is coming, I’m pretty sure everything will be just fine. It’s time to upgrade my main box.
April 15th, 2008
New Compiz Effect, Cube Cylinder. It’s not I will use it in my daily activity since I’m not into compiz effect things. But, it still great effect to be shown to all non linux user. I’ll try it when I have time.
(via planet compiz)
