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 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.

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.

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!