|
||||||
|
In the continued interests of helping to make Ubuntu rock as a platform for scratching itches and making awesome apps, I am putting together a new online learning event: Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week, happening online between 1st – 6th March 2010. The week will be just like our previous online learning events such as Ubuntu Developer Week and Ubuntu Open Week, but instead providing a week jam packed with awesome sessions about writing applications that scratch your itch, and predominantly focusing on Python tools and frameworks, Bazaar, Launchpad and infrastructure. The goal for the week is give attendees a head start on a given technology useful for applications. So, I am looking for volunteers. If you feel you could give a tutorial about a given Python module or associated technology (e.g. Glade, Launchpad, Bazaar etc), please drop me an email at jono AT ubuntu DOT com and I will liaise with you to get it scheduled. I am also look for some showcase sessions: stories about how you put together an application, how it scratched your itch and what tools you used. Thanks to everyone who contributes to leading a session! The week has already been added as a Lernid event and I am going to encourage session leaders to create slides for their sessions. As each session is confirmed it will appear in Lernid and on the wiki page. Rocking! BETTER late than never, eh? I know I’m way, way behind with this article on Mint 8 – it launched late last year – but I’ve been very busy with work, so apologies for that. Anyway, the last time I wrote about Linux Mint was when version 5, the Fluxbox Community Edition, launched in 2008, and I was mightily impressed. What pleased me was, among many other things, the way the developers had taken a potentially challenging window manager – Fluxbox – and made it much more approachable and useable for new Linux users. Now, back to the present, and my most recent experience with Linux Mint, now in its 8th iteration and codenamed ‘Helena’. In recent months I’ve acquired a ‘new’ – as in “It’s not powerful enough, Dad, you can have it” – hand-me-down test machine which goes something like this: Ever used OpenOffice? I remember submitting a document once using the open format, only to find that the person I sent it to could not open it in Microsoft Word. That pretty much killed the deal for me, but a surprising development for users of Ubuntu Netbook Edition (formerly known as Ubuntu Netbook Remix) is that no longer is OpenOffice their defacto productivity suite, as the powers-that be for the Linux OS built with netbooks in mind is replacing it with Google Docs. Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is Issue #179 for the week January 31st – February 6th, 2010 and is available here. In this issue we cover: * Open source industry veteran Matt Asay joins Canonical as COO This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by: * John Crawford If you have a story idea for the Weekly News, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki! Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) is a modified version of Ubuntu specially for the netbooks. The latest version of UNR runs Ubuntu Karmic in the backend, but the interface has been heavily customized to make it looks/functions good in small screen. Recently, I installed UNR on my netbook (as a replacement for WinXP). While I like the interface, I find that there are still many places that can be improved for better usability and performance. Here I will highlight several of my own customizations. Maximus is a desktop daemon used in UNR to automatically maximise the windows when they are opened and also hide the title bar to save space. While this is a good feature, it doesn’t give you any option to minimize/unmaximize the window. NameBar is an applet that puts the name list of the top-most maximized or the focused window in the gnome-panel so that it doesn’t take up precious space elsewhere. It also adds the minimize/unmaximize option to the namelist. I’m sure some of you would love to install and use Photoshop on your Linux box. So while I prefer using GIMP, I will still show you how to install Adobe Photoshop inside Linux with the help of Wine (not the alcoholic drink). On this tutorial, I’m using Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” and Photoshop CS4. Now let’s get started and install Adobe Photoshop on Ubuntu Linux: * Downloading and Installing Wine The first thing that you should do is to install Wine. Using the Linux terminal, add the WineHQ APT repository with this command: This insider tip comes from Ryan Troy, co-author of Ubuntu Unleashed from Sams. Troy started with Ubuntu in October 2004, and started up the Ubuntu Forums Web site for the community. As a computer consultant, he regularly sees Ubuntu at customer sites. While desktop Ubuntu shines as the leader among Linux distributions, with analysts estimating their share up to 95 percent of the Linux desktop market, Ubuntu’s server version lags. Expect huge advances in Ubuntu server installations during 2010 as a result of Ubuntu improvements, customer concern as SunOS comes under Oracle control, and restlessness among the Red Hat user base. Unlike Ubuntu server clients, Red Hat server clients must pay license fees, necessary because many applications remain Red Hat specific. Troy expects the Ubuntu server to make substantial advances attaining more application support and certifications. TestDrive is an Ubuntu application that is especially designed for non-technical users to easily download and run the latest Ubuntu development daily snapshot in a virtual machine. TestDrive can download: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Alternate, Ubuntu DVD, Ubuntu Netbook Edition or other ISO for which you’ll have to enter the URL. For now it downloads and runs Ubuntu Lucid, but the URL is automatically updated so when Lucid comes out, TestDrive will download and run Lucid+1. Since TestDrive is designed for non-technical users, it is very easy to install and run. Install it in Ubuntu Karmic by copy / paste the following commands in a terminal: According to the latest Ubuntu Netbook Remix Blueprint, the Ubuntu community have decided to drop OpenOffice from the default installation of Ubuntu Netbook Edition for the upcoming Lucid Lynx release, atleast for now. Now documents will be opened by default in Google Docs. We have previously told you about Gimp being dropped from Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu replacing Google with Yahoo as the default search engine. The developers have been removing applications that are irrelevant on a netbook. While document editing is clearly a not irrelevant on a netbook, the developers feel that with netbooks being used mostly for internet related works, Google Docs will suffice. Apart from this, some other changes have also been introduced. Canonical announced a few hours ago the immediate availability of a new Linux kernel security update for the following Ubuntu distributions: 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake), 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron), 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex), 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) and 9.10 (Karmic Koala). The update also applies to Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu and it patches 10 important security issues (see below for details) discovered in the Linux kernel packages by various hackers. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to update your system as soon as possible! The following Linux kernel vulnerabilities were discovered: |
||||||
|
Copyright © 2010 Ubuntu Look - All Rights Reserved Ubuntu Look is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache |
||||||
Recent Comments