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maveas: Is there a shorter version of rmdir –ignore-fail-on-non-empty?
maveas: can I cut down on –ignore-fail-on-non-empty?

There should be a hidden file called .bashrc in the home directory. It enhances the bash shell by enabling or disabling certain features such as the use of colors or the format of the prompt. It can also store aliases to make use of the command line a little easier with common tasks. On Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, the alias section looks like this:
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I’ve been hanging out in the Pidgin IRC chat room to see what kind of progress was being made to fix the issues users were having with Yahoo’s Messenger service. There was talk about the next release was probably going to be 2.6.0 but with the craziness that has ensued since Yahoo decided to upgrade their servers, they decided to issue a smaller release with 2.5.7.

Just moments ago, 2.5.7 was officially released for everyone to download and enjoy.

Version 2.5.7 (06/20/2009)

• Yahoo Protocol 16 support, including new HTTPS login method; this should fix a number of login problems that have recently cropped up. (Sulabh Mahajan, Mike “Maiku” Ruprecht)
• Only display the AIM “Unable to Retrieve Buddy List” message once per connection. (Rob Taft)
• Blocking MSN users not on your buddy list no longer disconnects you.
• When performing operations on MSN, assume users are on the MSN/Passport network if we don’t get network ID’s for them.

Users can choose to either upgrade their clients or continue using the workaround that was posted by myself and a few others this weekend. Ubuntu users wanting to upgrade will either have to add Pidgin’s PPA repository or hope that Ubuntu backports the new version.

The Pidgin PPA has not been updated with 2.5.7, yet, as it’s only just been released from the time I’m writing this (<45 mins).

Source … Celtic Wolf – Pidgin and Yahoo

I had been wondering why Pidgin was having problems connecting to Yahoo’s Messenger service for the last two days or so. I eventually had to go to Pidgin’s IRC chat room to find a link to some relevant information.

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I’m not sure why but WordPress users, especially those on the Planet Ubuntu feed, seem compelled to inform their readers that they just upgraded their blogs to the latest version. I can admit to doing the same a while back but couldn’t justify it afterwards, so I stopped. However, I feel the need to do so today in response to some upset and overly angry comments found in the WordPress support forum.

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I should be blogging more about Linux and Ubuntu in particular, but life has distracted me elsewhere. In the meantime, I bring to you an indirectly associated Linux t-shirt on sale at Shirt.Woot.com called The Aviator.

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Want OpenOffice.org 3.1 for Hardy, Intrepid, or Jaunty? Open a terminal window and follow these quick steps.

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I like using gufw to manage the iptables firewall rules. It makes for a clean an easy graphical way to implement rules. I was having an issue with the preferences where “Autostart with session” was grayed out. After a little hunting with Google, I stumbled across a question and an answer at Launchpad, which is someplace I should be looking to first and foremost.

The answer to enabling that option is to simply create a directory.

mkdir ~/.config/autostart

Now the option is no longer grayed out and you can have gufw start for your every session.

You can install it from Ubuntu’s repositories. Make sure you have the universe repos enabled. You can find it in Synaptic or at the command line, issue:

sudo apt-get install gufw

It will need to download ufw and iptables if you don’t already have those.

It’s finally here. As mentioned earlier, Canonical announced the eventual release of the Desktop, Server, and Netbook Remix editions of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope for today. Today, the official announcement appears on The Fridge.

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I’m looking to recruit some pupils for MyBrute.com. You choose a name, appearance and color for your Brute, and then go head to head with an opponent to the death.

You can initiate three fights a day. There’s also a tournament you can enter every other day. Every fight, even the ones during the tournament, are re-playable. As your Brute gains experience, it will attain weapons, skills, and buffs along with increases in speed, agility, and strength. Every Brute also gets its own unique URL which you can use to recruit pupils of your own, helping your Brute gain experience faster.

It’s all free and requires very little skill to play. An entertaining way to fill a few minutes out of the day.

Jonathan Carter’s latest post, aggregated on Planet Ubuntu, made note of the announcement posted at Sun.com about the agreement made between Sun and Oracle. Good news to Sun’s shareholders who got an immediate $2.50/share jump in price today, but the greatest concern in the Linux community will be how this merger will impact the development of the many major open source applications we use today.

Sun Mircosystems is responsible for OpenOffice.org, MySQL, VirtualBox, OpenSolaris, and JAVA to name a few. If the past proposed merger with IBM had gone through, these applications might have been safely earmarked for the open source community. Under Oracle’s leadership, things could possibly be different.

We’ll just have to see how it all plays out.

EDIT: Ars Technica just posted an excellent article about how this may impact the future of open source.