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.

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!

The issue I had with ripping movies in the past is the sound didn’t sync with the video. It was like watching an old Kung Fu movie but more annoying for the audio. You”d hear a bang and then see it 5 seconds later. Not good.

I looked around for some more games to play. I downloaded a RTS game called Warzone 2100. Here’s a blip from the developer:

Warzone 2100 is a real-time strategy game, originally developed by Pumpkin Studios and published by Eidos Interactive, now developed by the Warzone 2100 Project. Compared to other real-time strategy games, it has a greater focus on artillery, radar, and counter-battery technologies, more frequent in-game cinematic updates as game play progresses, a massive research tree, as well as a vehicle design system.

Now the only way to install this under Linux is to compile it so I have to do that… Later.

There is a windows based client so I can play with you Windows folks if you wanna.

So not too much done today, I had to look at a co-worker’s home computer for him. They were getting a lot of poor performance on their machine. Hrm WinXP and only 512MB of Ram?! BAD!

I post these the day after I do them. In other words, all this that I am posting here on Thursday was actually done on Wednesday. In case you hadn’t figured it all out yet.  Oh and today (Thursday 8/13) is my birthday. I don’t know what I will be able to do when I get out of work so Day 14 will be real short.

When Transmission opened I chose where to save the download and voila torrent downloading.  Simple.

While waiting for the torrent to do it’s thing I moved some files from my external hard drive to my home folder to sort out things that I have floating around. Some music I put into the Music folder and when I launched Songbird it sorted it for me. YAY!

I really need to reorganize the HUGE collection of music I have on the large External and  catalog them all as well. I think I will look for a program that can help me with that soon.

Poking around the Add/Remove Programs application I poked around for some more programs I wanted to check out. I tried Ardour which is a audio editor that has been

Installed Kraft which is a small business program for creating invoices and tracking inventory.

I also install Internet DJ Console which for some reason isn’t running. Hmmm.. Looking into that later.

I also installed a game called Open City which seems to sound like another SimCity clone. I will check this out because LinCity-NG seems totally different than expected.

I want to get my Razr set up to get pictures and sounds off it so I installed gMobileMedia to see if that is something that will help with that. I know moto4lin is supposed to handle that as well but I need to dig deeper into configuring it to work.

I am thinking of trying to get some vector graphics made for designing stuff so Inkscape was the next thing I installed. It’s a replacement for Adobe Illustrator.

I like putting pictures on my iPod from time to time and GpixPod is suppsed to handle that

I installed an app called Camera which is listed as an app to aid in getting pictures off of digital cameras. If I can’t get the card reader going (yeah I haven’t tested that yet) I am going to see how this works out.

I am thinking of making my own Fonts sometime so I installed FontForge

For some web development I figured I’d install MySql Manager to help with databases. I think I am doing something wrong because it won’t connect to any database I use (local or remote).

Yet another test of an audio application that can sync podcasts and handle my music library, I checked out Exaie Music Player, which I installed some of the extras but didn’t play with it that much.

I am trying to see if I can connect to this site from my desktop rather than loading up Firefox and logging into my site so I installed BloGTK which supposedly connects to WordPress blogss.

I have a TON of pictures of my daughter and I saw a lot of picture mosaics out there  and think I would like to make one of her. I found a program called Pixelize that is supposed to do exatly that. Take a bunch of pictures and make a mosaic of them to produce 1 picture.

I Removed Gwibber because I am using TweetDeck and it seemed redundant to have 2 programs to tweet with.

I had another DVD I wanted to rip (for backup purposes, yeah that’s it) so I decided to try dvd::rip this time. It was getting late so I started the rip of the main movie and hit the sack. More on this tomorrow!

I downloaded a game called PlaneShift which is a free MMORPG. Not as good as Rapellz… Man I am missing that game. I should just install it on the Windows machine to play it. But I digress…

I said I wanted to Rip and Burn DVD’s as one of my points of usage for a computer, so I played with that. However I ran into some issues.

Stupid me forgot to get the package to read encrypted DVD’s (which is basically EVERY movie DVD out there) so I had to install it. If you are trying to watch movies, do this:

After that fail, decided to play around with the screenlets and AWN some more.

Opened up Audacity and made a quick opening sound for my next show (which I need to work on). I was able to recreate and improve on the walkie talkie sounding thing that you hear in the opening. Originally that is made with Audition’s Multiband Compressor Filter but seeing I am not using Audition anymore, I have to take more steps. Annoying to some extent, but the outcome I think is AWESOME.

I also played a little with torrents which work fine… Yo Ho!

Nothing much today, maybe more later on. But I so far have not returned to Windows.

I think I need to try out Banshee to see how well it handles podcasts. gPodder works, but just trying out some other things to see what feels better. Banshee was recommended as an iTunes replacement. We shall see.

I played with gPodder some more to understand it’s workings. I figured it out I think. Some folks say this is one of the best apps for syncing your iPod. So far it seems that way.

I removed all the old shows on the iPod and loaded up all the newly downloaded episodes. Synced the iPod an voila!

I installed Ubuntu-Tweak, Compiz Manager,  Screenlets, and Avant Window Navigator (AWN). Now with AWN it makes the system look a little “Macintosh-ish” but I like the way it handles running applications and some of the other features are real nice. Very similar to Object Dock for windows as well. If you look at the screen capture I put up as a tumbnail for this post you will see the way the desktop looks now.

Ok, I now installed Skype. I downloaded .deb file from website. Double clicked and installed. Ran the program, logged into my Skype account. So far so good. Hey Webcam works under Skype awesome! I hope it works for other things as well. We’ll see.

Installed Avast antivirus – Initial download instructions I found were not right so I downloaded it directly from site and manually installed. Downloaded updates and setup for a scan. I ran scan (took a while because I did a FULL scan and had my external HD hooked up. Might as well, I was on a windows system, heh).

For graphic manipulation I downloaded Pixel (website). Pixel is a RGB, CMYK and HDR image editing, photo retouching and manipulating program available for many operating systems formerly known as Pixel32. It is available for Windows, Linux, Linspire, MacOSX, BeOS, Zeta, QNX, MorphOS, FreeBSD, eComStation, OS/2, SkyOS and even old plain DOS, for both x86 and PowerPC architectures. It’s exactly like Photoshop!

I registered this software a long time ago when I initially was thinking of switching, so it is a bonafide copy. But you can check out the demo.

I noticed on a reboot I didn’t check start at login on a few items, now I have Skype, Pidgin and all my screenlets loading up when I get into the system. Pidgin somhow doesn’t have the option to load when the OS boots up so I had Gnome remember all applications running when I shut down. This should help that perfectly.

I can’t believe I forgot to install my add-ons for firefox. Namely the Gmail Manager to check my mail and Stumble Upon. I use the Gmail Manager to check all my email for both my domain hosted mail and my original Gmail account I had gotten a long time ago.

I have a Motorola Razor that I like to plug into the USB port primarily for charging. In order to do so I needed to install moto4lin for it to work. Very simple to get because its located in the repositories so apt-get worked like a charm.

I downloaded Gourmet Recipe Manager to keep my recipes. Downloaded version on Sourceforge rather than the one in the repositories for it’s more up to date. Gourmet Recipe Manager is a gtk-based recipe organizer and shopping list generator intended for GNOME (though it does not need all the GNOME libraries). Gourmet can import Mealmaster(tm) files and can export recipes in a number of formats, including text, RTF and web pages. Gourmet also can calculate nutritional information for recipes. I tested it by adding the recipe for the New Mexico Cow Patties I made last week.

I got some games today that were all in the repositories (I went into the Add/Remove Programs area and chose Games). The game I installed were the GFCE NES Emulator, Glest, LinCity-NG, Scorched 3D (a classic favorite of mine), Secret Maryo Chronicles, ZSNES Emulator (Super NES Emulator). I downloaded Alien Arena but it crashed whenever I played the darn thing.

Ok enough games, I need to get things for web design. I already have the graphic tools, now for the editors. I downloaded Kompozer (website) because NVU is no longer being made. I needed something that is an alternative to Dreamweaver and this was highly recommended. It’s the same folks that made NVU so let’s hope it works just as good.

Ok, it’s time for DVD ripping and making time! I installed dvd::rip, Dvd955 convertor and ManDVD. I will play with these more VERY soon.

While poking around the Add/Remove Programs app, I found a Pre-School Bundle in the Education section. So I grabbed it for teaching my daughter things. She needs to learn to use a mouse first.

Installed XChat for IRC, Art Manager for making the computer look pretty.  Now the Art Manager supposedly connects to Gnome-Look.org for its content. I tried installing a theme and it failed. Oh well try more later.

Graeme called me and was having issues with Nasusa Live’s chatroom so I attempted a login to uStream using Xchat. Either they are having IRC issues again or it was quasi-fail. Normally XChat works fine.

Well, sadly Amarok was not working properly, so I uninstalled it. I tried playing Distorted View and it just skimmed right through it. Where VLC and Rhythm Box worked perfectly fine.

That is Day 2. Day 3 will contain less installations (I hope) and more hankering down and reporting what I was able to accomplish with Linux based software over my old M$ Habit.