I can really see why Sheldon loves it. It’s slick, it’s stable, and lately has been doing what I want on a computer.

The only complaint about Ubuntu (not just 10.04 but previous versions as well) is that I cannot get games like Guild Wars, or Portal or any game that is either Windows based or intense graphics to run smooth on the Linux partition. Boxee also runs real jagged. I don’t know if this is a driver issue with the Intel based card that’s in my Acer 5720Z or what. Oh well, hopefully it will get worked out soon.

They really have come a long way. A lot of great new features since Karmic and even more since the initial release of Warty Warthog in 2004 when I first looked at Ubuntu as a Linux distro.

The biggest change in the latest release is the Mesaging Menu this little envelope on the top panel gives you access to Chat (Empathy),  Social Networking (Gwibber),  and Email (Evolution). After setting it all up you get notifications of new messages from that one icon.

I also added a few other notifications to the Me Menu thanks to some info found on OMGUbuntu.

Adding Lifera to the Messaging  Menu

This was posted by d00d on OMGUbuntu on 5/8/10

Download

The patch is due to go upstream but for the time being you can install Liferea from the following .debs, available from Maia’s PPA.

First install this .deb: liferea-data_1.7.4-2~llfsyncfix1+sikon6_all.deb

Now choose the appropriate .deb for your system:

• liferea_1.7.4-2~llfsyncfix1+sikon6_amd64.deb
• liferea_1.7.4-2~llfsyncfix1+sikon6_i386.deb

Add Gmail Notifications to the Messaging Menu

This was posted by d00d from OMGUbuntu on 5/2/10. I went with the first option and it works fantastically.

Gmail Notifier #1

GM-Notify is the first one and the only major difference between this and the next is that it doesn’t list your unread e-mails in the messaging applet, instead it simply displays the number of unread items in your inbox.

To install it open a terminal and enter the following lines carefully: -

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gm-notify-maintainers/ppa
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gm-notify

To set up your GMail account with GMail Notifier head to System > Preferences > GMail Notifier Configuration. From here you can also specify alert sounds, labels and on-launch preferences.

Gmail Notifier #2

The second – and again pretty much identical – version does all of the above but with the addition of listing the unread items waiting in your inbox (see picture).

Download

http://repo.ahadiel.org/apt/lucid/gmail-notifier_1.7_all.deb

Of course with this release, I did have to do the usual, install the restricted extras, add AWN, Skype, VLC, gPodder (along with the extras for it), Audacity, the Compiz management packages, Ubuntu Tweak (which adds a bunch of other things), and programs I actually would like to use on the desktop.

All in all it is stable and runs fine. I’m going to play with WINE some more to see if I can get the Windows programs I run will work right.

The longest thing I did under this release was download podcasts, but that has nothing to do with the system. My internet connection is slow unfortunately. Strange I get a fast connection at my parents house with the same provider, but again I think it’s location location location.

Another nice feature is the Me Menu which allows you to set your accounts up, change your online status (post to the social networks quickly without opening up Gwibber fully, and change online, offline, invisible, away, etc. on chat). This also links to the About Me (ala System -> Preference -> About Me) information where you can add an avatar and all your information as a user.

The look and feel of Lucid is nice and smooth. The only gripe I have and a lot of users have is the positioning of the Close, Minimize, and Maximize buttons have switched from right to left. It is something you need to get used to, but with Ubuntu Tweak and MANY different methods you can change that back to the right if you want. I find myself maximizing when I want to minimize a lot!

This release is so stable I installed it on my parent’s older machine and it runs pretty well. Does what they want for now. Unfortunately they only have 512MB of RAM which makes it a little boggy.

I am happy with this new release and already hearing exciting things coming up in 10.10 (aka Maverick Meerkat)!

KDE is visually stunning, but for me there is a few things I cannot use with it. Like UbuntuTweak.

I have been working with the GNOME interface more and I have my desktop the way I like it. I even have my girlfriend using my laptop from time to time and she’s not as scared of Linux as she used to be.

That’s really all I have to report at this time…

I have played around with previous versions going back as far as Warty the Warthog (version 4.10) and none of them really compare to the look and feel to Jaunty Jackalope (version 9.04) and Karmic Koala.

The first thing you will notice is that they have added a graphical splash screen to the OS load screen using xsplash. Of course being the type of guy who likes customizing his GUI I found information on how to modify it thanks to the Ubuntu Forums.. Well google first, but you get the picture.

I really like seeing this over the old text style loading and then blank screen.

Of course the load time has drop considerably. It takes 15 seconds to boot up from a cold boot. A lot better than the slow boot of the other OS’s I have ran on my computers.

They have ditched Pidgin for Empathy. Personally I don’t care for Empathy so I am continuing to use Pidgin.

The Software Center replaces the old Add/Remove programs option and it is a lot simpler. But for a better control of packages I still use the synaptic manager from time to time.

All in all Karmic Koala kicks ass and you will see a ton of other reviews agreeing with that statement.

I personally recommend downloading it and checking out the Live CD at least. Even if you are not ready to make the jump into Linux, you can play around with it and see how easy it is.

I will be compiling a list of alternative software VERY soon.

From the new graphical load to the other extra stuff that is added from the previous release. This is going to be the best release ever!

Here’s a little review on my thoughts on this upcoming release.

Now I recently had made a mistake with trying to convert my HD from the ext3 format to the new ext4. So I had to redo everything and the only CD I had was the Jaunty release.

Karmic formats to the ext4 on a clean install, however with people using Jaunty, I hope they come up with a user friendly utility to migrate to ext4 because by default Jaunty installs under ext3. In order to install jaunty on the ext4 format you need to use the Advanced partition option on the install. I know it’s a little tedious to do it but it is well worth it.

But I digress.

Karmic by default installs Empathy instead of the familiar Pidgin that we have been used to in previous releases. Personally I loved pidgin and some folks may find Empathy a little less powerful and odd to configure their personal settings for instant messaging. I deal with a lot of people on other OS’s and with file transfer it doesn’t always work well. So if you want Pidgin back, you can install it through the repositories.

Speaking of installing software, you can install things using the new Ubuntu Software center. This breaks down free software by category and installs what you need. However I am finding some things are not in the Software Center that are in the Synaptic installer app. So I am using both not just for some little packages, but some of the software that doesn’t get installed though the Software center (Super Maryo Chronicles install missed the music package for example. That should be a dependency in my opinion).

As I mentioned the boot up process is now more graphical because it’s using XSplash for the boot up screen. Very nice, but I can’t wait to find out how to customize that. Muwahaha.

As far as some other features coming soon, check out this article on OMGUbuntu.

• The Indexer
• Make Tech Easier
• HowToForge

This is a list of what I have installed on my machine as of now…

I have broken them down by Category. Bear in mind some you need to use their repository to get properly. See my notes or the proper websites for these apps.

Audio/Video

• gPodder
• Audacity
• dvd::rip
• ManDVD 2
• VLC
• Songbird
• LiVES
• WinFF

System Related

• Ubuntu-Tweak
• Compiz Manager
• Screenlets
• Avant Window Navigator (AWN)
• ububtu-restricted-extras

Productivity / Grpahics

• Fontmatrix
• Inkscape
• FontForge
• Gourmet Recipe Manager
• Gimp

Internet

• Adobe Air
• Skype
• gFTP
• Kompozer – http://www.kompozer.net/
• XChat
• SSH Server

Games

• Secret Maryo Chronicles
• Spring RTS
• Warsow
• Super Tux Cart
• Second Life

I remember the different versions of Windows up to it’s most recent Vista incarnation. And more and more I realized I was feeding into the mega-empire that is Microsoft. And I was also noticing that as the years progressed the OS I was using was getting bigger and bigger not only in the aesthetic of it’s design, but in the size of the space it was taking up on my hard drive.

Not just the OS itself, but some of the programs were growing as well. And let’s not talk about installing issues with Windows if you buy a new machine with an older OS or no Restore CD available by the OEM.

Enter the Penguin!

I’ve played with Linux here and there through terminal mode for work and I have installed older versions of Mandrake and even the early inceptions of Ubuntu. But I always turned back to Windows for my day to day computer habits.

I took the plunge and installed Ubuntu on my laptop. And having some knowledge about the OS helped a little. But all in all my experience was rather well and now over 45 days later I am still running under a Linux system and getting the hang on what works and what doesn’t in some areas. However I have a bad habit of pushing things till they break almost and a reinstall seems to be my only cure even if there is a way to fix what isn’t working right.

My experiment mostly was to try out Ubuntu and it’s KDE flavor (Kubuntu) and I am on the fence with both really. Both are really good GUI’s for what was originally a command line only OS and still uses command line stuff. But all in all I am able to have programs to do what I do computer-wise with all open source products. And I still have a ton of disk space to play with compared to what I had left with all the programs that were “commercial” in nature.

I’ve documented my journey at VooDooStevie’s Misadventures In Linux. I blogged up to 46 days so far, but I think I will use this domain as my primary blog of geek related stuff including Linux How-To’s and such.

In the end I am still using Linux and will try not to sway back to the Window necessary, but as for now I don’t see that happening for quite some time.

Now I know I can rip to OGG or FLAC and convert them to MP3 using Audacity, LAME, and a shit load of other convertors, but that is 1 extra step! I’ve tried Sound-Juicer and K3B and looked at tutorials for each of them and still no go!

So I went back to Gnome. Long Live the Foot!

One thing I noticed is when I installed UbuntuTweak the Add/Remove Programs app on the Gnome Menu generates no programs in it at all. So I have to go through UbuntuTweak or Synaptic to install programs now. No big issue, but hopefully when Karmic comes out this will not happen.

I’m going to add a Page that lists all the programs I use as a reference to myself and to anyone else who wants a similar system. Also I will post tips to install stuff. WHEE!

I didn’t mess anything up this time under Gnome. Everything was working fine. But I decided to back up and do a clean install of Kubuntu. Everything is back up and running and nothing was really lost (except time to get everything).

So last night I loaded up some games. I love the RTS genre so I got Spring Loaded and the Evolution mod. I would really like to play the Star Wars mod but it’s closed for beta testing.

I found my iTalk finally so hopefully I will be doing a new podcast. I really need to find a new power cord for the mixer but I cannot afford it. So please if you wanna help out with VooDooRadio donate!

I have audacity installed and now I have to figure how to work with it better. It’s been WAY too long since I used it. And hopefully I can make a show as good as I used to under Audition when I was under Windows.

I know I could take the OLD microphone I have (either the USB Logitech or the Radio Shack Omnidirectional) and plug it into the mic jack on the laptop. But the quality is really crumby. I paid good money for a condenser mic and now I can’t use it because the mixer has no power. This is very frustrating to me.

But anyway, nothing much to report on. Everything is running the way I like it more or less.

I decided to try out an online MMO called Vendetta Online. It’s a space type of MMO and it’s pretty decent. I’m just starting out so I am getting used to the controls and everything but it’s all in all a pretty smooth game.

I have been using Songbird for my music player of choice lately. I use Rhythmbox for ripping CD’s only and VLC for watching movies. Things are pretty smooth right now. However the Add/Remove programs thing is not showing anything. WTF! I’m going to research that later.

I also installed Sauerbraten which is a FPS game. Runs pretty smooth as well. However I am not used to FPS with the track pad. *sigh* I should hook up a mouse but I don’t have room to use one at the moment.

I installed a TON of fonts using the following method:

Created a directory to put my fonts into from my home directory:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/fonts/truetype/font-install

Now the script I used is this:

#!/bin/bash
#
# This script helps to install fonts
#
# Set your default font storage directory here
##DEFAULT_DIR="$HOME/fonts"
DEFAULT_DIR=`pwd`
# Set the default font installation directory here
DEFAULT_DEST="/usr/share/fonts/truetype/font-install"

# Don't edit anything below unless you know what you're doing.

echo "In which directory are the fonts?"
echo -n "[$DEFAULT_DIR] "
read DIR

echo
echo "What is the extention (without the dot) of the fonts?"
echo -n "[ttf] "
read EXT

echo
echo "Where should the fonts be installed?"
echo "DO NOT CHANGE THIS UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!"
echo -n "[$DEFAULT_DEST] "
read DEST

if [ -z "$DIR" ]; then
    DIR="$DEFAULT_DIR"
fi

if [ -z "$EXT" ]; then
    EXT="ttf"
fi

if [ -z "$DEST" ]; then
    DEST="$DEFAULT_DEST"
fi

sudo -v
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
    echo "Unable to obtain the necessary privileges. Exiting..."
    echo -n "Press <enter> to continue. "
    read WER
    exit $?
fi

echo
echo

if [ ! -d "$DIR" ]; then
    echo "Directory $DIR does not exist. Exiting..."
    echo -n "Press <enter> to continue. "
    read SDF
    exit 2
fi

if [ ! -d "$DEST" ]; then
    echo "Directory $DEST does not exist. Exiting..."
    echo -n "Press <enter> to continue. "
    read DFG
    exit 1
fi

echo "Copying fonts..."
cd "$DIR"

for i in *."$EXT"; do
    sudo cp -iv "$i" "$DEST"
done

echo
echo
echo "Updating the font cache..."
sudo fc-cache -fv

if [ $? != 0 ]; then
    echo "Error updating the font cache. Your fonts haven't been completely installed. Try running sudo fc-cache -fv manually. Exiting..."
    echo -n "Press <enter> to continue."
    read FSF
    exit $?
fi

echo
echo
echo "Finished."
echo
echo "You will probably need to restart running programs to use the new fonts."
echo -n "Press <enter> to exit. "
read WERT
exit 0

Which I named just installfonts and saved it in my home dir. You can download the script: here.

My fonts were in ~/fonts (a folder called fonts in my home directory) so when I ran the script it prompted for the following:

1. location of the fonts I am installing
2. extension. Remember this is linux so I ran it 2 times. Once with .ttf and the other with .TTF

Now I have over 300 fonts installed. YAY!

Now Amarok is a decent player, however I am sketchy on the organization thing it does. It really messes up on the ID3 tags sometimes.

I have a few tunes (1 Andrew W.K. tune, Some “Weird Al” tunes and some Kabuto the Python tracks) which it decided to put everyone in mismatched folders. *sigh*

I hope I can get back to Songbird. I loved that program’s sorting feature a lot better. Also Amarok uses Amazon ONLY for the album art. WTF? Nothing I listen to is on there. BAH!

That’s it for today.

So I installed Cairo Dock. Cairo-Dock is an animated application launch bar for the desktop, comparable to the dock in Mac OS X or Rocket Dock (for Windows). I trimmed out the task tray (still want to use my panel at the moment. But I added a few of the things I use frequently and of course Second Life was added as well. I just wanted to get things off my desktop as far as the icons. Want to add this to your machine? Read on!

I know people will say go through the Software Sources section or edit /etc/apt/sources.list which is done by:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

or

sudo kate /etc/apt/sources.list

Either way you add the following repository:

deb http://repository.cairo-dock.org/ubuntu jaunty cairo-dock

This repository needs an authentication key so run:

wget -q http://repository.cairo-dock.org/cairo-dock.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Then, to install Cairo-Dock, issue these two commands in the terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cairo-dock cairo-dock-plug-ins

The Cairo Dock will be under System on the KDE Applications menu. Not sure what it is under Gnome. I ran the Non OpenGL one and it’s really smooth under KDE.

After I did the install updates came in for the linux kernel.  So I ran the updates and then had to reboot. This is the only thing I really need to reboot for as far as updates. Suck it Windows! I can’t count how many times I have woken up to my desktop with windows I had left open overnight that were closed because of the autoupdate rebooting my machine.

I installed Inkscape and Gimp. I really need to sit and play with those more. I didn’t install Pixel so I could concentrate on these programs somewhat.

So now I am looking over things I need to get re-installed since the complete KDE install. I need the following things which have slipped my mind:

• SSH
• VLC
• Skype
• Audacity
• LiVES
• Some more Games (like Majhong (sp?) and some of the KDE games)
• Import pictures and other things from External HD

So my little list is still a bit large but I think it will be quick and easy to do for tomorrow’s posting. I think I will start documenting some How-To’s but I will probably open up VooDooStevie.NET to do that. We’ll see. I have a Joomla install going on there with really nothing on it. Maybe I will make it a one stop thing with a bunch of different things on one site. Wheee!

Now I have the latest version of Firefox.

I also removed the little desktop folder off the desktop and kept icons… I have to think of using a dock. Going to look for a decent one under KDE. SO that is about all I did for today.

One thing I didn’t mention is that in order to get the updates for the wireless, I actually had to create a network connection in the system settings area to get it going, but it  a real simple thing to get going.

This is a run down of what I did today and a little explanation of some things as well.

After installing Kubuntu I was really impressed with how far it has come since I last used it (but that was over a decade ago so a big duh on my part). The one thing I noticed off the bat is the way it handles the extra appearance stuff. It’s all native. Gnome needs Compiz installed to set up the extra things (like the cubes) and Screenlets installed for the Widgets.

KDE has all that stuff built in with Qt4 it seems. As you saw in the little gallery I had the cube going on. In case you missed it in that last post, I put it here on the left.

One thing I found is that it’s real easy to set up. Make your desktop have 4 desktops and check the cube. Yeah not much different. But you can name the desktops something other than Desktop 1, Desktop 2, etc.

I left them the default because I couldn’t think of anything to put in for now. But the fluidity of this is a lot smoother than it was under Gnome.

Ok enough talk about the extra effects, I am here to state what I had installed on the machine. Of course there is the necessities:

1. Firefox 3.0 (For now. I am going to see about installing the latest one from scratch later) but I also needed the following extensions for my personal browsing right away:
   • StumbleUpon
   • DownThemAll
   • Gmail Manager
2. gPodder – Runs perfect after install. Downloaded my subscriptions flawlessly from gPodder.com I love that little feature and it’s great when you have to reinstall or going to a new machine. You can also do the OPML file method, but this is off site which means if you don’t have your external media (CD, HD, whatever) you can access it over the internet.
3. All the dependencies for gPodder (Python libraries, ID3 libraries, OGG Tools, and Mplayer all needed to be installed for gPodder addons to work).
4. dvd::rip – yes I needed this back for sure. Which of course knowing what I needed for this to work right:
   • Kubuntu restricted extras
   • Kaffeine,
   • DVD libraries for reading encrypted DVD’s.
5. Weather widget for my desktop
6. Adobe Air
7. Tweetdeck

I also poked around and decided that I would like a few more things for software installed:

1. Second Life – installed from GetDEB then updated from Second Life’s website.
2. Super Maryo Chronicles – Installed from SMC repository
3. Extra Screen savers – This is odd that KDE came with Blank screen only. So I added the extras through good ol’ apt-get.

Seeing I want to use Firefox as the default instead of Konqueror I had to make a few changes so that could happen. In the System Settings area there is a place you can set Default Applications and that seems to work perfect. But there is also a command that you should run in terminal that will make it completely the default:

sudo update-alternatives --config x-www-browser

After putting in the root password you get the choice. And voila!

The one thing I like is how you can put the icons on the desktop and I am contemplating removing the desktop folder widget. Also how things appear in the bottom bar. I will customize this more soon I am sure, but the default layout is good enough.

I am not going to put Conky on here. It’s not really needed. I just need to adjust to how KDE handles things and the Software administration is kind of clunky in the regards to if you need things installed as dependencies it doesn’t prompt you to install them. So most of my administration of programs has been handled by command line. Go me.

I found that Kubuntu uses a lot of the same apps I was using before, Open Office is still there.. Oh wait, no it doesn’t no FireFox. It uses Konqueror as it’s web browser by default. But check this out, all those nifty things I was doing under Gnome that required extras, it’s all native here under KDE 4. Here’s some of the screen shots. I will report more about what I had installed and stuff tomorrow. Read on for the little gallery of pics.

I still have the ability to transfer stuff to my iPod with no issue, but I can’t listen to MP3′s on the laptop or even watch videos for that matter. What did I do wrong? I know I must have killed something, but I cannot find out where. BACKUP TIME!

So I moved the new pictures, music, and videos I ripped and transcoded onto the handy dandy external hard drive… And now the big decision. Do I attempt a reinstall over this installation and hope it fixes the issue that way or do I try out another flavor of Linux.

I chose that I would stay with the Ubuntu family. But I will try Kubuntu unstead. For those who do not know what this is. It’s Ubuntu with KDE as it desktop instead of Gnome. Now I have used KDE a LONG time ago with Mandrake Linux. When Linux was still kind of a clunky and not so userfriendly Operating system. Although there is some things you still should install via terminal there are a lot of things you can use the GUI to install things onto the system. But you always have the terminal (aka command line) to help in doing things quicker.

So I basically began downloading Kubuntu from it’s main site and burned the CD under Gnome. Did a completely clean install of Kubuntu and did the updates.  Tommorrow I begin reinstalling some applications or poking to find what I can use that I used under Gnome.

It gives you an idea of how breaking boundaries of the Windows OS can be. Read on…

Computers started making their way into homes, en masse, 15 years ago. After 15 years, computer users should not be afraid of using their computer.

This case study tells the story about a customer of mine, Wanda, who happens to be in her 70s. Like most computer users she used a Windows based computer. In her case, it was a system put together by her grandson in 2002 or 2003 and has a 1.8ghz processor, 256mb of RAM and the XP Home version of Windows.

When I first met Wanda a few years ago, she had typical Windows user problems; slow computer, slow Internet, couldn’t open some attachments, virus and spyware problems. She used dialup Juno for Internet and Norton Antivirus on her system. I couldn’t talk her into getting a DSL or cable connection, but I did change her security from Norton to AVG and optimized the startup and running of the system. However, with dialup and Juno, she continued to have problems that cropped up every 3-4 months.

In April of 2008, I talked with her in detail about computer usage. She stated that she really only needed to do three or four things with her computer:

1. Email
2. Word Processing
3. Solitaire
4. Very light Internet browsing

We talked about the cost of a new computer and a high speed connection. And then we talked about taking Windows off her system, installing a different system (Ubuntu and Linux didn’t mean anything to her) that would be virtually trouble free and no cost to acquire besides my install and configuration time. She liked the sound of that, but I informed her that I could not install Ubuntu unless she was agreeable to getting a DSL connection for the Internet. She agreed.

I installed Ubuntu for her and configured her desktop with shortcuts to her email, the web, solitaire, and her word processor. Again, that was April of 2008. Prior to that I received at least one call from her every month, and visited her for cleanup and troubleshooting appointments at least 3-5 times per year.

Today, Wanda called me for the first time since I installed Ubuntu on her system 14 months ago. She asked two questions:

1. Why can’t I get email from my daughter?
2. My printer stopped printing, do I need a new one?

Knowing that it would be a quick visit, I stopped by her house in between two other appointments. To my delight, the computer desktop looked exactly the same as I left it the prior year except for a few saved PowerPoint slideshows she saved from email to it.

Since she was using Hotmail, I could almost guarantee that she had blocked her daughter’s email address (Microsoft places the spam / junk mail button dangerously close to the delete button). Sure enough, a trip to the blocked senders settings revealed what I suspected. Her daughter’s email address and a dear friend were blocked. I rectified that in a few clicks.

Next, her printer problem turned out to be a paper jam. After clearing it, the computer was happily printing again. I left her home in under 15 minutes after correcting the problems that had nothing to do with Ubuntu, and she was beaming like a kid in a candy shop.

MORAL OF THE STORY

Properly setup and customized for an individual’s computing needs, Ubuntu Linux can be used successfully and easily by anyone of any age and computing ability. AND, the problems associated with computing under the Windows environment disappear.

My only regret is that I did not start looking into and learning about Linux prior to 2006.

I may play with layout some more later. But for now this is what it is. Shows information I personally need to know about my machine. And of course what the time is. I think I should put the clock back on the panel because most of the work I do covers up the desktop and I always have to minimize to see what time it is.

I imported pictures off a SD Card for our digital camera using F-Spot. It worked flawlessly. It was really easy and this shows that the card reader also works on the laptop under Linux. Wheeee! Now I have the pictures that Sarah this past month on my machine. That’s about 400 pictures. Seriously. We have taken over 8GB of pictures of Emma in the past year and a half almost. Think we’re obsessed with our child? Got a problem? Fuck you.

I took pictures of the labels I added onto the machine. As you see they look awsome! I trimmed the picture of Tux to remove the shadow that was in the original because it would look nasty with the white and gray shade that was in it. And yes I put a VooDooRadio logo sticker on my laptop. What’s it too ya! People will ask me about it if they see it and that promotes my show… Kinda… Sorta… Leave me alone!

During the last update, Ubuntu had released a version of Firefox called Shiretoko. It’s Firefox v.3.5 but looking up info on it. It’s a Beta of the browser. All I have to say is that Shiretoko is a little slo-mo. It locked up while uploading the pictures you see here. But also the original files are 3MB average each. But still. It runs a little ragged.

So we are nearing the end of the 30 Days point. Where do we go from here? I think I may continue to blog about running under Linux but we’ll see. Still missing some of the games I played under Windows and watching Netflix. But maybe I will load the games on the desktop and hope it will work ok.

I got this setup from the Ubuntu Blog website which it was very helpful, but seeing how I am wireless more I needed more variables to add to my setup. And this information was easily obtainable from Conky’s Sourceforge site more specifically the variable section.

The one thing I have been finding out about conky is that is is very tedious to really set it up. There is no “user friendly” GUI to configure it like the Screenlets so you have to do a lot of text editing to get it to work right. And you have to really ignore word wrap.

Another little thing about conky is when you make changes you can kill the process (I use top in the terminal to kill it) and restart it, reboot the machine, or log out of your Gnome session. I have used all three and logging out seems to be a little quicker than the other two. Go fig.

Also I learned that gPodder has an option to skip podcasts when syncing them to your iPod. So the Ubuntu Podcast has been set to that because of the file format issue with the iPod.  You can also set up an autodelte ever 30 days or whatever you want. I prefer to manually do it, but that’s just me. Also you can save the files somewhere else if you please. This is  a nice option because some shows I like to archive or edit to get bits for my show (ala “This is Why we’re Fat” from Nobody Likes Onions being inserted into my show).

I have been shutting down the machine lately so I don’t log in from work too much. But I still think I got some things done in the short time I did them.

I am now trying to think of what I should remove or tweak next. I find it funny that with all the programs and files I have on the system now it’s only 20GB used and a large portion of that is the documents and files I have in my home folder Can we say Bloatware?

I am looking back on the things I have been doing through this experiment and it pleases me to see I am able to do a lot of things I was able to do under Windows just fine.

Netflix REALLY needs to get on the ball with the instant streaming stuff because this is a pain in the nuts having it be Silverlight 2.0 only. That is primarily one of the only things I miss so far.

Speaking of streaming I need to think about finding info about how to get my DirecTV DVR and this machine to talk so I can stream movies or pictures. I got it going under windows before. I also will have to hard-wire the laptop so I can get a decent connection for that as well.

It would be awesome to be able to stream videos off of the lappy because I have a ton of AVI’s I backed up onto DVD-R’s that I could easily copy onto the hard drive to play better. Maybe I will do this later today.. Or start that.

However the other one was correct and things went fine. More movie backups made. Go me.

I updated to a new version of Firefox that the name escapes me as I write this, but it’s a ubuntu based fork of 3.5 that seems to work fine. I also imported all my old bookmarks that I exported when I was under windows.

Also I found the Ubuntu Vidcast site. But the thing doesn’t play on my iPod because it’s in Ogg Vorbis. Dernit! And the video link for the ipod is a iTunes link. GAH!

I didn’t really pick up the laptop except to check the weather and search for the phone number for a pizza joint that we got pizza from a while back. Also I updated my ipod as I do every day and did a little stumbling (StumbleUpon) using the firefox bar extension.

I also installed the Trillian smiley set for Pidgin. I forgot I had it on my external HD. There is still some things that are on there I have to decide on keeping on there.

Looks like MySQL stopped working for some reason. I don’t know why. Looks like I am going to have to research this crap now. *sigh*

I also found that Songbird has an iPod add-on but it looks like it’s geared more towards earlier generation iPod’s. It picks my iPod up but it’s not seeing my playlist on there. Also I tried subscribing to some podcasts and it didn’t pick up anything when I added a subscription (Distorted View was my test subject for this). Let’s hope the next day is better.

Still bummed about the mixer. Thinking of picking up a headset soon as I can. Just can’t right now. Maybe I will pull out the original USB mic I used on the show MANY moons ago.

I added some stickers to the inside area where you usually have your Intel Inside and Windows stickers. I also HAD to add a VooDooRadio related sticker onto my machine so that is on here as well.

I also added a tux sticker to cover up the Acer logo on the front of the machine.

Basically I found the images I wanted, printed them out on the color laser we have at work and one of my co-workers added the adhesive and also laminated one side for me. Read on to see the images that I Have on here now.

Below is the images I added to the machine. I will take pics later.

Other than the external I decided to play with the Compiz manager and I got my machine to do that really nifty cube thing and a few other nifty effects on the desktop. Here’s a couple screenshots of it in the gallery above.

Finally I finished sorting out all my music files and got them back on the external HD! So I started to get things together to record my podcast. Hooked up my mixer, turned it on and plugged it into the USB port. The system found it OK. I checked it with Skype.

Beautiful.  Launched Audacity and chose the input for the mixer and started recording.  The waveform was flat..

Hmmmm..

Read on to find out what happened.Well, I’m looking all around on the machine for settings issues and everything seemed right then I looked down and realized that all of a sudden I had no power on my mixer. The powersupply died. FUCK!

And of course I find out there is an Internal Mic bug in Ubuntu. Great.

Before going out and getting a headset, I guess I should see if I can get the Internal Mic going.  I looked on the Ubuntu Forums and found a few others who have the same issue with Acer Laptops and the internal mic’s. Luckily there is a fix!

• Step 1: Download the Alsa Driver from here:

ftp://ftp.alsa-project.org/pub/driver/alsa-driver-1.0.20.tar.bz2

• Step 2:extract the contents.Open terminal and go to where you downloaded the driver. Extract it using

tar -vxf alsa-driver-1.0.20.tar.gz

• Step 3:  Compile the driverNote:  You need checkinstall if you don’t have it use apt-get to get it

sudo apt-get install checkinstall

Then run the commands below
This takes a little while to do its thing

./configure
make
sudo make install

• Step 4: Configure alsa-base.confAdd the following line to the end of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf file. I did this by using the command:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

I added these two lines at the end of the conf file then saved it.

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel model=acer

• Step 5:  Reboot.

This worked, but seriously, internal mic’s are shitty to say the least. But it’s nice to know that it works more or less. By this time I had gotten so fed up with my mixer dying, I decided that maybe it’s best I use a headset or find out if Daddy’s Junky Music will allow me to get a new cable with my extended warranty. GRRRR.

So after fighting with it all I gave up recording for the night and watched my friend’s do their show on XLR and called it a night.