SWAT's blog

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)

Finally it happened, I joined the masses and added myself to Twitter and thus joined the Twitter hype.

Twitter is a website through which you can tell your ‘followers’ what you are currently doing and through which you can follow other people. They themselves describe it as follows: “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

My first reaction, was the same reaction I had towards the SecondLife hype: “Really, I am NOT going to join it, just because it is a hype”. Then I had a interesting talk with Kim who convinced me to use Twitter and not because it is a hype, but because it can be useful. Examples:

• Let your colleagues/friends know which projects your are currently working on. A lot can happen very quickly and the 140 characters Twitter allows you to use is just enough for one good tweet (one Twitter message) to Keep It Simple Stupid.
• Let your friends know what you are doing. The best example I could imagine: “I am sitting in bar/cafe X in city Y, anyone want to join me for a drink/bite to eat?”
• It integrates perfectly with my G1 (using twidroid).

So if you want to see what I am doing, you can read my Twitter page. I will try not to post useless stuff, but I can not promise anything at this time

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 while ago I found myself in the need of a new keyboard and I heard about this special keyboard, which supposedly would totally rock. I am always careful when I hear that kind of marketing and advertisement talking. After a lot of consideration I eventually bought Das Keyboard (ultimate) and I never looked back since.

Pros:

• Typing comfort
• Black keys, so visually less noisy
• USB hub in keyboard (if you need to charge your media player)
• Huge geek factor
• Compatible with Linux (duh)

Cons:

• ‘Typing sound’ needs some time to get used to. You hear every single keystroke, but after a short while I did not find it disturbing at all.
• The price

What would a geek do without some sort of gadget to keep track of the time, which is so volatile. This is about as geeky as you can get, the binary clock. I got the silver version with the blue LED’s (which are _very_ bright, when it is dark inside a room).

Pros:

• 12 and 24 hour mode
• Binary horizontally or vertically
• 3 Brightness settings
• Looks great

Cons:

• If you need to know the time when it is very early (and your brain did not boot yet) or when you are drunk (and your brain is too lazy to function properly), it takes a while to ‘see’ the time.
• Sometimes the LED’s feel too bright in a completely dark room, even on the lowest brightness setting.

Some of you might have noticed and probably a lot of you did not. This morning at 00:31:30 (Netherlands, GMT+1) the Epoch time was: 1234567890. There were a few people on IRC who were still awake at that time, so enjoy the screenshot.

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.