Rebel Zero (dot com)

So it’s been about a week since Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx reached the Alpha 3 stage. With it comes what I can only describe as the most stable pre-release of Ubuntu throughout its entire schedule that I’ve ever had the pleasure to use. I don’t have it on a physical machine, yet, but in a VirtualBox environment where, contrary to its limited resources, it seems much faster, especially in terms of boot times, than the host’s 9.10 Karmic installation.

I’ve dedicated some home bandwidth to the desktop torrents. As you can see from my rtorrent’s current stats below, there’s been plenty of demand for them throughout these past seven days since Alpha 3 was released.

lucid-desktop-amd64.iso
done 689.0 MB Rate: 1.4 / 0.0 KB Uploaded: 6185.9 MB [ I R: 8.98]

lucid-desktop-i386.iso
done 685.9 MB Rate: 6.6 / 0.0 KB Uploaded: 6937.8 MB [ I R: 10.11]

According to Lucid’s release schedule, we can expect another two weeks of testing before the first of two Beta releases come out on March 18. Three weeks later will be the Beta 2, followed by a Release Candidate two weeks after that, and finally the official release on April 29.

With the release of Lucid, we should also be seeing the death of 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. User will be urged to upgrade to at least 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope by then to continue receiving package updates and security fixes.

So, I wanted to watch some video on an external monitor connected to my Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala laptop, but everytime I closed the laptop’s lid, the external monitor would turn off. This is when I noticed the option of Do nothing in Power Management was noticeably absent.
[Read the rest of this entry...]

Ever since the Beta days of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, I had been wondering why certain icons were no longer visible. Most notably were the search engine icon’s from Firefox’s search toolbar and the System menu icons.
[Read the rest of this entry...]

[Read the rest of this entry...]

MatBoy: mhh, 9.10 upgrade on a eeepc 901 is not that easy with ssd
MatBoy: where does the 9.10 upgrade needs 1,5GB space ?
MatBoy: in /tmp ?
MatBoy: someone running 9.10 on a eeepc 901 with ssd ?
MatBoy: mhh, I can’t upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10… space issue of 1,5GB it says
MatBoy: LOL I removed my /home because I wanted to gpart the drives… which is ofcourse seperated :)
MatBoy: my install is on the 4GB part, so that might be too small by default…. I’m wondering if I move /tmp to the second drive if it works
MatBoy: I think I need a new install :(

Upgrading from Jaunty to Karmic through the Update Manager presented an interesting challenge on my Asus Eee PC 701. Since my / partition was only 4GB in size, there wasn’t enough room to download all of the necessary packages. Since there was no reason, or space, to put /var onto its own partition, the upgrade process was reliant on what the / partition contained. Fortunately, the Linux file system is very versatile making this more of an annoyance than a show-stopper.
[Read the rest of this entry...]

Gnome used to allow the user to change system sounds to their own liking. The System > Preferences > Sound menu option used to show a breakdown of the specific events with the option to choose whichever supported file the user wanted. Personally, I always opted to replace the login sound with MGM’s roaring lion.

With the new functionality introduced with Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, there’s no simple way to do this without a bit of hacking at the command line, or through a root nautilus window if one feels inclined.
[Read the rest of this entry...]

I finished reading Stephan Hermann’s blog post, Myths of Linux Distributions and other operating systems, where he lambastes several common Linux distro myths, and I had a moment of reflection. Part of his #5 wherein he states…

…You get your stupid Linux Kernel and Linux Distro for free, I repeat, You don’t pay anything for it….

…made me realize that I’ve been using Ubuntu for the better part of the last three years, for free. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Imac: I’m trying 9.10 and after I suspended it asked for my password when went back to the computer. How do I disable that feature?

Not that I would recommend it, I can understand the need to turn the password prompt off when returning from suspend. On Ubuntu 9.10, Gnome has that as a setting which can be toggled through the GConf Configuration Editor, gconf-editor, or at the command line with gconftool.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

ShipIt is now accepting pre-orders for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. You can request a free CD sent to you by visiting Ubuntu’s ShipIt page. If you’re a loyal KDE user, Kubuntu CDs can also be requested through Kubuntu’s ShipIt page. Expect the CDs to take up to 10 weeks to arrive. Special requests can be made for more than one, but they can take longer and may not be approved.

Since they do take a long time to receive, it’s recommended to download a CD and burn it for yourself once the 9.10 Karmic release is finalized. Also note that shipped CDs, assuming Canonical continues the trend, will be for i386 architecture only. That should work for the majority of users with both 32-bit and 64-bit Intel/AMD CPUs. However, if one wants or needs something else, IE: full 64-bit support, you’ll need to download an ISO from Ubuntu.

I keep forgetting exactly how to do this without searching for it, so what better than to post it here for myself and others?

I enjoy installing games that are either not in the official Ubuntu repositories or are newer versions than what is available. After downloading and extracting, I move them to /opt and add a launcher to the Applications > Games menu. Some of the games need to be launched from their own directory which makes simply pointing the launcher at the executable impossible.
[Read the rest of this entry...]