Little Brain » linux

Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Daily Build

kriwil — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:18:02 +0000

It’s available, ubuntu 11.04 daily build. No it’s not released yet. It’s the development build. If feel like to help ubuntu development, you could try it.

According to the release schedule, the first alpha will be released on December 2nd, and the final release will be available on April 28th.

Convert pdf to image

kriwil — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:31:36 +0000

Ever want to convert pdf file to an image? It’s easy with imagemagick. Ubuntu default installation has it. I believe it’s installed in most linux distribution by default. Anyway, here’s how:

convert file.pdf file.jpg convert file.pdf file.png

Yeah. That easy.

Banshee 1.0 Beta 2 in Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

kriwil — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:28:39 +0000

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

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/banshee-team/ubuntu hardy main

If you need the source, you could repeat the Add proccess, and paste this

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

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

Check Your System Compiz Capability

kriwil — Tue, 20 May 2008 16:49:30 +0000

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

Shorcuts for Managing Window(s)

kriwil — Sun, 11 May 2008 09:24:48 +0000

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.

OpenOfffice.org 3.0 Beta

kriwil — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:16:39 +0000

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.

Virtualbox 1.6 is Released

kriwil — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:53:43 +0000

Finally. This is the first VirtualBox version since being acquired by Sun Microsystems. The major update is support for Solaris. The release itself has over 2000 improvements. Go get the binary. ~~I’m downloading now.~~

Is Ubuntu 8.04 Ready for Non-Tech Savvy?

kriwil — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 02:44:53 +0000

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.

WebKit GTK+ Port

kriwil — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:39:16 +0000

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

Cool New Compiz Effect

kriwil — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:06:19 +0000

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)