It is with great pleasure that I'm announcing to everyone that Niath's new home is finally ready. I've registered a new domain, tiagoboldt.net, and the blog is now hosted in tiagoboldt.net/. I changed the theme a little bit, I'll write about some of those changes later. Please tell me what you've thought about it! Enjoy
I've been working, for a couple of days now, in a new blog, were Niath will be ported to. It will be wordpress based, and in my own domain and hosting. It will be up whenever I like it enough. Be patient, I'll try to make it worth the waiting!
As I've said, I had 3 Joost invites to give away. I've sent them to rizzah@gmail.com, brhersh@gmail.com and pbmoita@gmail.com. I hope to get some feedback from them:)
Today it is the scheduled date of the final Feisty Fawn version of Ubuntu, 7.04 which has been under development for the past six months.
Ubuntu's website is already under heavy traffic, and, for those who will want to download the distribution right after the release, bit torrent should be the best choice. There will be hundreds of people sharing, so, speed won't be a problem.
I hope that Ubuntu 7.04 is at least as successful as the previous version, and I'm happy to congratulate everyone involved in this awesome community. Thank you for your work. We're all making the most usable Linux distribution out there! Let's keep raising the bar!
Update
It is out, see the release notes, or, go get it.
From Joost:
Hello Tiago,
We hope you are enjoying your Joost experience.
Good news! We've posted 3 invitations in "your Joost" so you can invite
your friends to watch your favorite program with you. To invite your
friends, start up Joost, click on "my Joost" and fill in your friends'
details in the "invite friends" widget box. Enjoy the ride!
I've been really busy in this past weeks, due to the tests which I had these last days. I'll will probably have more time now, meaning some more time to blog.
I've been thinking on how I could improve Niath, probably a change to a better blogging engine and get it it's how (I'm really tired..) own domain.
Suggestions are accepted.
That's it, it has just started at 13h52, portuguese hour, in the portuguese channel TVI. Go watch it, you won't regret it!
Update:
Learn more from the tv series post.
Ubuntu's Feisty has already got a successor. With the release of Ubuntu 7.04 scheduled for April 19th, Ubuntu 7.10, to be released in October, is already being thought, and it as been codenamed Gutsy Gibbon.
Congratulations to everyone who worked in this version, it kicks ass!
Ubuntu's ShipIt is already accepting orders for free feisty cds! Unfortunately, we can no longer order large amounts of cds. I've already ordered my 3 feisty cd's, go get yours:
It is usual to have in a Linux system several programs used for the same task, for example, several text editors. To choose the default program for a certain task, update-alternatives is used. I'm now aware of a graphical tool to do this, galternatives.
Galternatives is intuitive and really useful to simplify those configurations. It is easily installed with a sudo apt-get install galternatives in Ubuntu.
In the screenshot, I'm configuring java6 as the default java interpreter.
Known through Marco.
Probably, every Linux user out there knows GAIM, the instant messaging client for Linux.
Well, due to some legal problems with AOL, this great project has changed it's name to Pidgin. The story was covered in slashdot.
They now have a new URL, pidgin.im.GAIM Pidgin is a fast and light IM client, best integrated in GNOME, which I recommend to everyone.
Marco has just blogged about the recent ShipIt status. I was in doubt if Feisty would be freely shipped, since Edgy was not. Well, there is no confirmation, but the ShipIt site says:ShipIt is currently closed while we prepare for the Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) release. We'll be back in a few days.
That seems to be good news, those free cds are always a great way of spreading the word through friends! I'll be hoping to see Feisty available there, so I can get everyone around here trying the last Ubuntu version.
Update:
After login, we can read the following:We'll be back in a few days, shipping Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) CDs.
I'll be waiting!
Yesterday I've won two tickets to the premiere of Dot.Com. I've just answered a couple of questions and received an email announcing that I was one of the winners.
The movie was AMAZING. Everyone was laughed from the beginning, until the end! Portuguese movies aren't usually really that good, but this one amazed me.
The story begins with an engineer who is trying to get the government to build a decent road to a small village, Aguas Altas, to make the beautiful village known. To do this, he registers the domain aguasaltas.com (it is really online), and starts promoting the village through the website. The problems start when Drinam, a Spanish company, demands the domain, to promote their branded water, aguas altas (aguas is the Portuguese/Spanish plural of water).
When a small village takes on a big multi-national company, nothing can go right!
IMDB link
Trailer:
Launchpad, the web interface managing Ubuntu bugs and packages and a lot of other projects, has finally came out of beta private beta. It is all 2.0 now, more usable, but, the most important about web2.0, it looks really much better! :P
Today, someone emailed me an attached .xls spreadsheet file from Microsoft Office's Excel. My surprise was when google offered me the option of opening it in the browser with Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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!
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:~$
tiagoboldt@Niath:~$ time keditLess than 0.2 seconds, yes, it is fast!
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
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:
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 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:
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?
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 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!
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:
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:
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:
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!
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!
Alcohol, LSD, Ecstasy, Heroin, Marijuana and others. You probably know these names, and you also probably know what they do. But, do you know how they act? Mouse Party will teach you how these drugs affect the brain, through a pretty nice flash animation, by the Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah!
As all of us have probably already heard off, privilege escalation, or, vulgarly, become admin, in Windows XP is not that hard. These guys have it all explained, video included! You just need access to the machine. Wanna now how?
I've found some posters, Ubuntu themed, which are an awesome way to publicize the Ubuntu Operative System. The following, and a lot more of marketing images, can be found through http://doc.ubuntu.com/~marketing/spreadubuntu/
Ever heard of the trusted computing alliance? The alliance that might some day control what you compute in your PC? Want to know a bit more about it? This video from youtube can explain the what and why (not) of trusted computing.
I've seen this through Raúl Ricardo Vidal's blog (sorry Ricardo), and it amazed me! Bio-Genica has just developed living genetically created pets. These little - what do we call them!? - toys, come with a life supporting system to keep them alive while they are on the shelves. The company claim their pets to be:
OpenMoko calls itself:
The world's first integrated open source mobile comunications platformSpecifically, they are developing a phone in order to compete with Apple's Iphone and Nokia's best mobile phones. In order to this, and this is the innovative part, they are building the software, based in Open-source software only. In order to do this, according to their mailing list, they will put together the OpenMoko Linux distribution, that will be based on:
2.8" VGA (480x640) TFT Screen
Samsung s3c2410 SoC @ 266 MHz
Global Locate AGPS chip
Ti GPRS (2.5G not EDGE)
Unpowered USB 1.1
Touchscreen
micro-sd slot
2.5mm audio jack
2 additional buttons
1200 mAh battery (charged over USB)
128 MB SDRAM
64 MB NAND Flash
Bluetooth (2.0)
Linux 2.6.17.14
gcc 4.1.1
binutils 2.17.50.0.5
glibc 2.4
Xorg 7.1
glib 2.6.4
gtk 2.6.10
dbus 0.9
eds
(more)
(In)Secure magazine number 10 is out. This is a security magazine, reporting everything important there is to know, with sugestions to open-source security. It is freely distributed, and this month edition covers the following aspects:
It is really sad to see how many bloggers are online just in order to steal content from another, some even removing the credits, others by leaving a small unnoticed 'via' word, linked to the blog. This has happened to me in my last post, IM Clients for Linux. I've found several blogs with exactly the same text, the same hyperlinks, well, a copy of my post. Here are two examples:
If you use Linux, there are a lot of Instant Messaging clients for you to choose from. And this is not an easy choice at all. There is the features vs stability problem all the time. In order to simplify your choice, I've decided to come up with the most know.
IMified is a middle point between your IM application and your blog, calendar and what else they will enable it to do. Basically, You're able to talk to IMified contact and tell it to appoint you a new meeting, post a certain blog, ...
WHY SHOULD I USE IT?
Because you shouldn't have to launch your browser to add a new appointment to your Google calendar, or complete a todo in your backpack account. Imified is always open, sitting right there in your favorite IM client ready to help. If you have an IM client running on your mobile phone, you've got instant access to your applications wherever and whenever. Cool huh?
I've been using Gmail for a long while now, more then one year, I guess. It puts together everything that I need from an email provider. There are some particular points that makes me think Gmail is the best email solution out there:
Awesome! I've ordered my router freely from from FON, just a week ago, and it has already arrived. It's installed and it really surprised me. It is really small, but, still, the signal is great, and I can login from my whole house, two floors, with signal strength always greater than 75%. The installation is quite simple, just plug the power cable and an ethernet from an internet source. The two networks become immediately detectable. I'm truly impressed, and recommend it to everyone! Go get your invitation for a free router!
I've just found a pretty nice video with a self-explanatory demonstration of what web 2.0 is all about. It shows google, youtube, flickr, wikipedia and a lot more of those sites that are changing our everyday living. It's just awesome how the cooperation is showed, and web 2.0 opened up.
Someone appears to have thought that a novel could be written by the community, through a wiki. The wiki was hosted, the title "A Million Penguins" was given, and now it's up to whoever wants to participate to develop the story. If you think you've got what it takes to help doing it, just make yourself an account and start editing the text, I'll be waiting for the final result, but, still, I don't really think it will be a best seller. Anyway, the story at the wiki can be read and edited at www.amillionpenguins.com.
Update: How the community works, via youtube
Vista is getting released worldwide. Not for my computers!
UPDATE: Similar thoughts after vista release party
Following the Ubuntu installer for Windows initiative, Debian has just released their on version of the operative system installer in an .exe, for those who want to just try this operative system. This, just like the Ubuntu version, can be uninstalled through the add/remove programs in windows, just like any other program! Download and infos here (with a very suggestive URL).
I've decided to update my Edgy Eft, Ubuntu 6.10, to the development version of Ubuntu, the Feisty Fawn, that's going to become Ubuntu 7.04.
Some updates might still be needed, but, anyway, it will be just a small part of it.gksu "sh /cdrom/cdromupgrade"
I'm a comic lover. Especially those who pretend to be funny, with a little bit of geekness included. Due to this, I've decided to post those specially funny comics that I sometimes find online, from xkcd, dilbert, sinfest and a lot more, under the label comics.
Donald Crowdis, born December 24, 1913, as just surprised my, after I discovered is blog. With is 93 years of age, Crowdis writes about is daily life and thoughts. Recently, he has posted a very interesting article about is fear of death. While Don to Earth, is blog, is a very interesting view of the world, through the eyes of life experience, it's also a way to show us that the new technologies aren't definitively only for new people, and that the blogosphere is here for anyone who wishes to use it.
CNR, standing for Click and Run, is a package management system, originally developed for freespire, that is now spreading to other linux distros, like ubuntu, debian, fedora and others. It seems to be a good alternative to apt-get/aptitude/synaptics, since it's able to give a lot more of information about the product that's going to be installed, it will be able to install proprietary software, check all package dependencies and still manage to keep the computer clean. It will maybe be a good choice, but, still, I think I'll stay with the official ubuntu package manager, I believe that it would be changed if CNR really becomes that great!
More at CNR official page.
I've spent some time enabling my ATI Mobility Radeon X700 on my Acer 1694WLMi Laptop. It gave me some headaches, there was some problem with the official ATI, driver, fglrx, and mesa didn't want to go away. After some tries, I've decided to reinstall everything, xserver and fglrx, with the kernel restrictive modules. After that, I've just "sudo moddep -a" and rebooted. All went smooth, and I can now see:
tiagoboldt@Niath:~$ fglrxinfoThis means that my graphic card was already recognized and was ready to be user. So, what is a graphic card used for? GAMES, I've just installed the recently released second life client, savage for linux and a couple of games from the repositories, like Xmoto or Tremulous.
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: MOBILITY RADEON X700 Generic
OpenGL version string: 2.0.6011 (8.28.8)
Almost a week now, since my last post. The work at FEUP has been giving me some really headaches. I'm still a freshman, and the whole new experience is being really great. Despite all the studying hours needed, the people are great, the facilities awesome and I'm really loving it. Yesterday I had my last test, for now at least, two weeks to the next round, I'll spend them happily online.
For those of you who are afraid of removing or try partitioning your windows in order to try to install some linux distribution, you can now try the ubuntu installer for windows. Just like any other problem, it's a normal .exe file, it allows you to install a ubuntu system. After the installing is done, a reboot will be needed and, before your windows begins, grub, a boot manager, will ask you if you want to boot windows or ubuntu linux. If you ever want to remove it, just go to the add/remove programs and there will be a ubuntu entry. Remove it, and all will be back to normal. There are still some problems with the application, but I believe they'll be soon corrected. The only important issue is that, at this point, you're forced to login with the username and password 'ubuntu'. This will surely be corrected in the next releases. Wanna test it? Get infos here and download it here(version 3, there could be a new one available).
Virtualbox, just like VMWare, is a virtualization software. Specifically, Virtualbox allow the user to create virtual machines to run several operative systems. The program is freely available as open-source here, and it has binaries available for several operative systems. Ubuntu package available!
As all of us already know, the Microsoft empire is being more and more attacked by a lot of other companies and open-source movements. In this image, we're able to see who's attacking what, with all the companies and applications names, from the Microsoft side, against some big names, like Oracle, Mozilla, Linux, Google, Apple, Sun and several more!
For those of you who use, witch I recommend, Ubuntu, I've just found what could be a very handy tool, a sources.list generator. For those of you who don't know what the sources.list is, it's the list of repositories to be used by ubuntu software manager, in order to update and install software. This generator will give you, according to our selections, the appropriated sources.list file. Once done, you should put the file in /etc/apt/ directory. For that, save the text in your home directory and just use the command sudo mv file /etc/apt/sources.list (this will erase the previous config). After that, just run synaptics or any other package manager and you'll notice some speed improvements, and the whole new available packages for you to try. Give it a try!
According to the rumors, there was a new apple mobile phone to be released and called iPhone. The rumors have become true, a couple of days ago, Steve Jobs, the apple man, has himself divulged to the attendees at CES, this past Monday, the capacities of this new apple beauty.
The mobile phone is able to browse the web throw wi-fi and the new EDGE technology, receive and send emails, view maps, and a lot more!
The Specs:
