Saturday, March 31, 2007

Edubuntu Icon Set

Some days ago, while browsing the edubuntu home page, after seeing some screenshots, I got interested in the cartoonish icons they were using by default in gnome.

Today, I've decided to install this icon set in my machine, I've searched the repositories and, after a while, the gnome-icon-theme-gartoon package was installed. It appeared right away in the theme configuration menu, and it is now my default icon set.

Tv Series

Some months ago, I've found out that there are some TV series who are really worthy to watch. In the past months, I've been following Lost and Heroes every week and watched the whole 4 seasons of Nip Tuck.

Lost, which is probably known to almost everyone, is the story of a group of survivors from a plane crash in a island that was being used for some strange scientific experiments. I've already seen the two first seasons, and I still have no idea of what's happening in the island, but a I really think that this third season will give more details on that.

Heroes recalls to our childhood. When everyone wanders how awesome it could be, if we were able to fly, read minds, have super strength or some other super-mega-extra-cool special ability. In heroes, all this becomes true, when some individuals see them selfs acquiring this powers without no know reason. While some use those powers for good, just like any super-hero comic book, there are those who use it for bad. The story is really addictive and I really recommend everyone to watch it (it will be shown in Portugal, according to wikipedia, during 2007).

Nip/Tuck follows the lives of two Miami plastic surgeons, Sean McNamara and Christian Troy. In the first season, we are able to notice the differences in their lifestyle. While Sean is all about his family, Christian is a seducer, always with different women. While the seasons pass by, they face all types of problems, from plastic surgery addicts, through drug dealers to family problems.

A while ago, I've also watched the first season of Prison Break. It is definitely amazing. The story, the details, the.. the.. Everything! I'll begin watching the second season this following week.

I really suggest each one of them to everyone with some spare time, they're all worth watching!

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Beryl in Ubuntu

I'm happy to see that all the legal issues were put behind, and that beryl is already available in the Ubuntu repositories.

Beryl is a fork of compiz, but, in my opinion, it is developing way much faster! In the past few days, there has been some huge discussion, to define if beryl should merge with compiz, creatting a new project with a third name. Two days ago, Quinn Storm, the leader of the beryl project, has agreed with the merge. This probably won't be ready in time for feisty, but I'm sure that, if the merge goes smooth and no problem appears between the developers, feisty+1 will surely have some awesome desktop effects!

Friday, March 23, 2007

Introduction

Well, it seems that shutdown day has not affected my laptop!

My blog has been accepted into too planets which I really admire. Ubuntu Weblogs and, now, P*. I've been following both of them since they went online, so, it is really an honor to join both of those teams.

For those of you who have no clue who I am:

Tiago Boldt Pereira de Sousa, born March 24 (yes, happy birthday to me), 1988, I'm a student at Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, trying to make myself an informatics and computation engineer.
I'm an Open-Source fan, who's using Ubuntu for almost an year now. I've been also to getting into the Ubuntu community, helping with bug reports, translation and what ever help I'm able to do.

I hope you all enjoy my postings, as much as I enjoy to discover and share new stuff.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Ubuntu Weblogs

First of all, congratulation to gouki, who as recently been accepted as an Ubuntu Member.

Second, Hello World, from Ubuntu Weblogs. This is a planet, using planetplanet to manage the feeds. Ubuntu Weblogs is an aggregation of public weblogs written by Ubuntu GNU/Linux users. I've been following this planet since it went online, and I've just been accepted.I'm glad to be part of this team!

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Command Not Found

My machine's BASH has just received a brand new upgrade! From now on, whenever I type a command to open some application which is not installed in my Ubuntu system, the repositories are automatically scanned and, if there is an application with the given name, it will be suggested for installation.

Confused? Here's an example, I'll try to open gedit, which is not installed:

tiagoboldt@Niath:~$ gedit
The program 'gedit' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install gedit
bash: gedit: command not found
tiagoboldt@Niath:~$

This feature should be installed by default, but you can also install it through the command-not-found package, available in the repositories.

Edit:
There has been some discussion about how fast the output comes out, if it slow or not, so, see it for yourself:
tiagoboldt@Niath:~$ time kedit
The program 'kedit' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install kedit
Make sure you have the 'universe' component enabled
bash: kedit: command not found

real 0m0.154s
user 0m0.108s
sys 0m0.028s
Less than 0.2 seconds, yes, it is fast!

Digg!

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Ubuntu splash screen follow up

Following this post, the splash screen has already been updated, it seems that the community comments were heard!

New default splash:



Edit:
Wrong image was uploaded, the real new default screen is this one:



Digg!

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Ubuntu Home Page

Ubuntu's homepage has just received a face lift.

I have really get used to the old design, but, anyway, the new one is not bad at all, check it out yourself at www.ubuntu.com

Beryl 0.2

Beryl 0.2 is finally out!

I've made my upgrades and finally the ATI issues are solved. My window decoration is running fast and stable! If you're using Ubuntu, upgrade from these official repositories:

  • deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org edgy main
  • deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org feisty main
  • deb http://debian.beryl-project.org etch main

While nvidia user are able to run it from Aixgl, all of ATI users, using ATI official driver must use XGL, in order to do this, install xserver-xgl from your package manager and before you login, select the XGL session. Run beryl-manager to start it.

Enjoy

Digg!

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Ubuntu Desktop

I've been using Ubuntu for about an year now. This is, by far, the Linux distribution that has amazed me the most.

When I first tried out Ubuntu, it was version 5.10, Dapper Drake. It amazed me the simpleness of the system, yet, with all those powerful capabilities, characteristic of Debian based systems. For the first time, the only problem I had while installing a Linux distribution was the graphic card driver, which I had to manually configure. It automatically detected my sound card, monitor resolution, keyboard, auto-mounted dvds/cds, and lots of other goodies, that made me stick with it ever since. But, nothing is perfect.. The worst problem it had a couple of years ago is still here now. Looks!

Ubuntu is trying to take a great place in the desktop world. It is now taking on Microsoft's Windows Vista or Apple's Mac OS on. Despites being a great operative system, it lacks one small detail, it is ugly as hell! I've been using Feisty for some time now, and after a recent update, I really though that this situation was getting better. My splash looked like this:



Despite the usual brown look, the image was smooth, and better than the previous one. Just a couple of days later, after another update, I was seeing the worst splash screen I've ever seen.



It is not at all 'nice'. Planet Ubuntu's contributor Alan Pope has even called this splash phallic! Fedora is way ahead Ubuntu with their default looks. If we what any system to be attractive, the first thing he has to do, is make impact. And if Ubuntu whats to be able to fight the battle for Desktops, it has to be way more than just easy to use and secure/stable.

So, because maybe we're still in time, I challenge all of those, who have the knowledge, and all the other who think that they can help, let's embrace new ideas, Ubuntu needs a new and improved look! We are tired of the boring brown! Can this be done before Feisty final release?

Digg!

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Youtube to Divx

You can easily convert all of those youtube videos that you like for one of your favorite formats, and play it anywhere. Divx AVI, MP4, 3GP.. You name it. The download is a bit slow, but the quality is great! Try it out.

Get the glass!

Get the Glass is a flash based game, where you help family Adachi, some crazy mil lovers, to get to the fort and steal their so wanted.. glass of milk! The idea is kinda cool, the game is a board game, you must roll the dice in order to move, and you must play several interactive games, in order to run from the police.


Liked the idea? Try it yourself and Get the glass!

Sunday, March 11, 2007

XP Themes

Everyone is talking about making Linux look like Windows. The start menu, The icons, the everything! So, I really thought it to be a good idea, when I read in tux vermelho about making Windows look like Linux. Gnome, to be more precise!

In order to do this, you should download belchfire to be able to install non signed themes. Now, all you have to do is go to deviantart and download Clearlooks, Human and Plastik. Then,just extract the folders to C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes\.

Done, just right click your desktop, select preferences and select your new appearance.

To also alter the icons, you should download them from here.

You can read more and preview the result in the Tango for Windows webpage.
Some applications, firefox and thunderbird have this kind of themes available, just go to the theme option and search for tango, it should appear right away.

For the last step, the desktop background, search in one of these:


If everything went well, you desktop should now look like this:



Digg!

PS3 cluster

Dr. Frank Mueller, professor at North Carolina State University, has put together 8 PS3's, in order to create an awesome cluster, with incredible processing capabilities, for about only 5.000$US, less than some of those branded computers, which have only a fraction of the capabilities.

The PS3 allows the Linux operating system to be installed, and IBM designed the programming environment for programming the Cell processor (including eight vectorization units), which combined tremendous computing power within a single PS3. According to Mueller, each PS3 unit contains six operational special-purpose cores for number crunching and one general-purpose core that is two-way multi-threaded in his configuration, so the eight machines clustered have 64 logical processors, providing plenty of number-processing ability in addition to be able to run the latest games for a long time.

The cluster is going to be used for scientific research. By now, it is being used to teach classes in operative systems, parallel systems, compilers and gaming.

The software powering it:

  • Fedora Core 5 Linux ppc64
  • MPICH2 (also MPI API)
  • OpenMP v2.5 (via gcc)
  • gcc (C compiler)
  • CellSDK 1.1

Digg!

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Game Installers for Linux

Linux installers are not always that great, and for those who are beginning, a little help is always handy! Loki Installers for Linux Gamers are simple installers for several games, like UT2004, Quake3 and Savage! The installers are divided into two sections:

  • Native: These are developed for the Linux operative system. The installer puts the game in the selected directory and creates a launcher for the game.
  • Emulated: Games ported from Windows. The game is installed and the launcher will use Cedega, Wine or other available program,that must be installed separately, to run the Windows game.

The direct download is not always great, but the tracker is available for bittorrent downloads.

Have fun!

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Vista Activation

Windows Vista as been pirated!
Not a big new, it would be just a matter of time, but, anyway, the super secure system, whose bugs are already being revealed, is now crackable. The process takes advantage of the partnership between Microsoft and some computer brands, that allow them to ship Vista pre-installed, without the need for activation. APcMag has more to read about it!

Get OpenSolaris

So, you want to try Open Solaris, but are too lazy to download and burn the DVD? Ask for it, just like ubuntu's free cds, they're also shipping their system with a bunch of useful tools!