This little gem of a magazine got my attention during the previous HCC dagen. It contains the basic information a newbie could/would need to get started with Linux. Topics in the magazine are, but are not limited to: drivers, cd/dvd burning, desktop layout, netbook remix, music/video, fspot, firefox, evolution, ekiga/skype, empathy etc.. These are topics which I get a lot of questions about from new converts and this saves me precious time and energy. Another advantage of this ‘publicity’ is exactly that, publicity. There are not that many Linux magazines around, but there are dozens of magazines which focus on other operating systems. This is the kind of magazine I could give to parents to get them hooked on Ubuntu, good stuff!

P.S. Yes, the magazine is focused on Ubuntu (9.10 a.k.a. Karmic Koala)

Vandaag organiseerde Proxy het “Proxy Open”, een kartevenement bij Raceplanet in het mooie Delft. Raceplanet heeft een erg mooi parcours in Delft, namelijk 2 banen die verdeelt zijn over maar liefst 4 verdiepingen!

Proxy organiseerde dit evenement voor professionals die werken met Open Source en Open Standaarden, een nogal nobele zaak. Laten we het erop houden dat het goed geregeld was en bovendien ook erg gezellig. Er werd behoorlijk wat rubber verbrandt en het blijkt dat de Open Source mannen toch best wel een zware voet hebben, wanneer ze een voertuig besturen

Has it been 6 months already? Time flies when you are having fun or when you are very busy, it seems. The Dutch and English announcements can be found on the official Ubuntu wiki as well as the Dutch and English release notes. Another great upgrade, loaded with new stuff and changes. Here are some tips to get you through the potentially “rough” part of it

Fast upgrade

I gave a friend of mine a great tip. That tip enabled him to upgrade his system in less than an hour and downloading the updates took less than 10 minutes (at about 1.6 MB/s). I told him that the default is to use the official nl.archive.ubuntu.com as an update source and he should use an alternate local mirror if the main one is slow. Just add a line to your /etc/hosts :

ip.of.the.alternate.mirror nl.archive.ubuntu.com

Do not forget to undo this after the upgrade though

GNOME-RDP

Apparently the GNOME-RDP database “breaks” again if you upgrade. This bugreport also contained the “fix” (by Mick K), but make sure sqlite and sqlite3 are installed:

sudo apt-get install sqlite sqlite3
cp ~/.gnome-rdp.db ~/.gnome-rdp.db.backup
mv ~/.gnome-rdp.db ~/.gnome-rdp.db.old
# Open GNOME-RDP to create and initialize a new database and then close the application:
gnome-rdp
sqlite ~/.gnome-rdp.db.old “.dump session” | fgrep INSERT | sqlite3 ~/.gnome-rdp.db
# Keyring support slows it down a lot (and produces errors) so disable it:
sqlite3 ~/.gnome-rdp.db “INSERT INTO appOptions VALUES(‘UseKeyring’,'False’);”

Note: please keep your backup file in place (an extra backup is never a bad thing), since GNOME-RDP seems to have database issues when upgrading. I can not ensure this is ‘the’ best way to fix your current database, so use with caution.

Compiz and Intel

I suddenly found myself unable to enable compiz (“Blacklisted PCIID ‘8086:2a02′ found”). After a quick Launchpad error search I found this bug which referenced the Dell site, which eventually contained the workaround. Just edit /etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager and add the following line:

SKIP_CHECKS=”yes”

CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE

I really do NOT get this. This shortcut was disabled because some people accidentally triggered it and this restarts X. Which idiot accidentally presses CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE? Anyway, this is how you get the famous shortcut back and working as intended:

sudo dontzap –disable

De titel is heel erg wervend, maar met een reden. Ik weet namelijk niet hoeveel Ubuntu gebruikers in Nederland weten dat we meerdere mirrors hebben. Na diverse gesprekken bekroop mij het gevoel dat lang niet iedereen wist dat er mirrors zijn en waarom deze handig zijn (en wat ze doen), dus bij deze een korte uitleg. Zeker met de release van Jaunty Jackalope (9.04) morgen, kan dit ervoor zorgen dat je de updates sneller binnen hebt dan je buurman

Wat doet een mirror?
Een mirror is een spiegel (letterlijk vertaald). Een mirror in deze context is een lokale server, die onder andere de officiële (initiële) pakketten, updates en releases bevat. Met lokaal bedoel ik een server in je eigen land, in mijn geval Nederland. Het is namelijk een nogal zinloos om je updates/pakketten vanaf een server in Amerika te halen, als er ook een lokale server ter beschikking staat. Dit scheelt iedereen tijd, moeite en bandbreedte!
Opmerking: De officiële mirrors zijn te herkennen doordat de URL’s eindigen op .archive.ubuntu.com

Welke mirrors zijn er in Nederland?
Inmiddels zijn er 3 mirrors in ons kikkerlandje, welke onder andere te vinden zijn op de Ubuntu wiki.

• nl.archive.ubuntu.com gesponsord door Bit
• nl2.archive.ubuntu.com gesponsord door Universiteit Twente
• nl3.archive.ubuntu.com door PCextreme

Je kunt dus voor een andere mirror kiezen, als blijkt dat deze (tijdelijk) traag is omdat meerdere mensen van die server aan het downloaden zijn. Dit is natuurlijk enkel voor diegenen die weinig geduld kunnen opbrengen.

Alternatief: BitTorrent
Je kunt natuurlijk ook de Jaunty Jackalope (alternate cd/dvd) via BitTorrent downloaden, waarbij je niet gebruikt maakt van een centrale server. Hierdoor zul je dus waarschijnlijk erg snel kunnen downloaden en vervolgens kun je deze CD/DVD gebruiken om je systeem te upgraden. Let wel, dit is eigenlijk enkel bedoeld voor systemen die niet met het internet verbonden zijn.

Eventually I also got convinced to use GNOME-Do (Launchpad)  and I do not regret it. I use the keyboard even more and use the mouse less, what is there not to love? You can even enable searching your bookmarks, contacts etc. which means that you can open up a conversation window or an e-mail draft right away (yes, it is that easy). Unfortunately all the really cool stuff is still upstream, so if you want to latest/greatest version you have 3 options available:

1. Download it from the website (don’t do it, you want the packaged/maintained version)
2. Use the PPA of the GNOME Do Core Team to get the latest upstream version which is packaged (I used this version which is for those of us who like to live on the edge)
3. Upgrade to Jaunty (the release is only 2 days away!)

If you choose option 2), I can give you this small how-to:

1. Add the PPA’s key to your system:
   

   sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com a5d19fdcaa6abb440cd3464628a8205077558dd0

   Source

2. Add the repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list
   

   deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
   deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

3. Update your cache and install
   

   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gnome-do gnome-do-plugins

Note for 64-bit users! There is a bug in Launchpad’s ppa that causes 64-bit mono package builds to fail, but David was in the marines for 12 years and only learned one thing- Leave no man behind. This message doesn’t apply to plugins, however. Plugins are architecture independent and build fine in the PPA. You should use plugins from the PPA, and for core we’ve got a package for you at http://launchpad.net/do/+download (source)

Last saturday I visited the cebit again. I go there almost every year (I try to). This year it was a bit smaller than the year before. Not all of the exhibition rooms were completely filled, but it was extremely crowded nevertheless. At the end of the day my feet hurt and I had a memory card full of nice memories. I will share some of them with you:

The good:

• New toys / previews
• IBM sphere (extremely cool)
• Open Source was also represented (even if it was not a huge part of CeBIT)
• Ubuntu-DE stand
• Free/clean toilets and the parking

The bad:

• The weather, it rained a lot and I missed the sunshine.
• Ugly toys like the Hummer housing
• I was only one day at the CeBIT

The ugly:

• Extremely crowded ( a lot of children )

A lot of people do not know any alternatives to the Adobe flash player. Well there is an alternative and it is completely open source: it is Gnash, the GNU flash movie player ( website ). It exists in various flavours for Linux and even for Windows. For example Gnash works on 64 bit Linux (for quite a while now).

Since it is possible that Adobe will ‘update’ their flash software and Gnash will update theirs to keep them in sync, it is likely that you will get stuck with an older version of Gnash and that some flash enabled sites will stop working. The newer Gnash version would ship with the next Ubuntu release or with a backport to the current release. If you can not wait and want the update earlier you could try the gnash firefox plugin . Other downloads can be found at the original Gnash project page or at the getgnash website.

A bi-monthly meeting between LoCos should be a great addition to the teamreports and should stimulate collaboration between the LoCo’s. I also attended a session about laptop keypresses, which was really interesting. The group photo was taken and the launchpad translations will change a bit. Apport rocks and should be used even more (apparently only 10% of the bugs are reported with apport). At the end of the day I went to “Ubuntu All-Stars” and it rocked. That’s about it, the UDS is over and I’ll go home soon, but not yet