Ubuntu 7.04

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.

Gutsy Gibbon

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!

Feisty is shipping

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:

• Ubuntu
• Edubuntu
• Kubuntu

Galternatives

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.

Gaim has become Pidgin

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.

Ubuntu Shipit

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!

FireGPG

FireGPG is a Firefox extension, which allows the user to immediately encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify his email through GPG in Gmail. It will merge with the Gmail's interface, in order to smooth and integration. Great tool, for those who want to keep their secrets safe!

Launchpad out of *private* beta

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

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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:

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

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?

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!

Ubuntu Posters

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/

Listen Music Player

Listen is an awesome music player developed for Gnome. It has got some really cool features that lack from almost all players, such as:

• Automatic lyric fetching;
• Artist and album information from wikipedia or Last.fm;
• Very good podcast and internet radio integration;
• Excellent library management.
  

The project home page show us some nice screenshots from the application. It has been all written in python, and, despites it's early development stage, only at version 0.5, it is already fully stable and usable. The installation can be done through the Ubuntu repository by installing the listen package or, in any other distro, if the package is not available, the source can be downloaded here.