Most of the 3D visual effects are controlled by keyboard shortcuts by default in Gutsy Gibbon. Obscure keyboard commands like Super(Windows Key)+E to emulate Expose, or Super+Right Click to Zoom around… but where’s a list of all the shortcuts? Who knows, it’s probably hidden in the Gnome configuration somewhere.
What I do know is that we can install the Compiz Fusion configuration tool and setup our desktop the way we want to. It’s easy as baking no-bake cookies. 🙂
Shopping for Linux-compatable hardware is only slightly more difficult than finding out if that RAM upgrade for your computer needs 168, 184 or 240 pins on it. I have been in the market for a new motherboard for a couple months now, and I will detail what steps I took before finalizing a purchase decision.
The reason why I’m writing this article about selecting a motherboard instead of another component is because it requires the most research. There are a dozen different components that need to be analyized before knowing for sure that everything works in Linux. Things that are trivial to get working in Windows, such as USB, RAID, or Sound chipsets may need to be validated to work properly in Linux.
When I originally read about PowerTOP from Intel, I figured it was designed completely for laptops. I decided to install it on my desktop with a Core2Duo and see what happens… strangely enough, it worked!
Although there is less data available when using a desktop CPU, it is certainly VERY useful in determining what is using the most power.
Ubuntu does not come with any graphical tools to repartition or resize a drive. Luckily, GParted comes to the rescue!
That’s about it. 🙂
This is the 6th weekly edition of “Linux Nation” where I talk about the top stories of the week in the Linux/Unix section on Digg.com. I’ll be out of town for the next couple of days, so expect a huge update on Monday after spending a weekend with my brand new black Macbook that I’m getting tomorrow!
🙂
I’m reminded of a scene in a pretty famous movie…
Yippee-ki-yay, motherfu(BANG)! -John McClane
2. Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Torrent RELEASED
See #1.
3. Go to school on how to admin a server
Wow! After going through in detail, this website has TONS of very in depth articles on setting up all sorts of Linux servers. Very nice!
4. Linux vs. Patents : first round 🙁
Ahh… IP Innovation. Notice the singular innovation? I did. Apparently these patents go all the way back to Xerox Parc, and if you’ve ever seen the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, you’ll know EXACTLY what this is about. It’s quite comedic. Apple settled with these folks awhile back, I wonder when Microsoft is being sued?
5. Red Hat sued for patent infringement!!
See #4. Goto your local library and pickup Pirates of Silicon Valley and watch it for free… you’ll understand.
6. Ten Funny Quotes By Linus Torvalds
Linus, Linus, Linus. You’re so passionate about the right things, good read.
7. Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) Release Candidate
Apparently this week is going to be a Gutsy Gibbon marathon. See #1.
8. Linux Jeolousy: My Wife Switched to Ubuntu
Not only does she like Linux, she can do neat tricks with her tongue – watch! Just kidding.
9. Wine is Getting Good – there’s less and less need for Windows every day
Amen! By the way, check out my article on running the Orange Box in Wine, it’s seriously easy. I haven’t had any need for windows at all, other than my pesky iPhone… arrrg. I guess that’s what a laptop from work is for, right?
10. 13 reasons why Linux should be on your desktop
I like this quote from the article:
“Once the gloss wears off, it’s about applications” – Kim Brebach
11. PICTURES: Ubuntu gets gutsy, Screenshots
PICS PICS PICS!
12. Wired Review: Ubuntu’s New ‘Gutsy Gibbon’ Brings Linux Out of the Jungle
This is a really sweet article, I hope it makes it into print.
These aren’t really “free” as in speech, but they are “free” as in beer.
14. A Look at Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon” RC1
See #1… again. I have a fever, and the only cure is more Gutsy Gibbon!
15. 7 reasons why Ubuntu is so successful
Probably the biggest reason is the last one listed:
7) Fragmented competitors: When Ubuntu started it’s “march to glory” there were three “big” distributions, SuSE, Mandriva, and Fedora. Debian and Slackware were popular but were not very appealling to newbies (Debian still had a text based installer…). All of the “big three” were not at their best when Ubuntu came out and started gathering users. SuSE had recently been bought by Novell and was still undergoing internal reconstructions, Mandriva has in the middle of a severe financial crisis, and Fedora was just at FC2 which wasn’t nearly as easy as it now is. – Linux4Coffee
That’s pretty damn insightful. The rest of the article is a great read, have a look.
That’s it this week, enjoy Gutsy Gibbon without me!
Migrating from Windows to Linux is no simple task. One of the things that some people complain about is the difficulty of text editing in console mode.
You may or may not know that Notepad.exe is actually pretty damn complicated. Just take a look at all the documented keyboard shortcuts:
New Ctrl+N
Open Ctrl+O
Save Ctrl+Save
Save As Alt, F, A
Page Setup Alt, F, U
Print Ctrl + P
Exit Alt+F4
Undo Ctrl+Z
Cut Ctrl+X
Copy Ctrl+C
Paste Ctrl+P
Delete Del
Find Ctrl+F
Find Next F3
Replace Ctrl+H
Goto Ctrl+G
Select All Ctrl+A
Time/Date F5
Word Wrap Alt, O, W
Font Alt, O, F
Status Bar Alt, V, S
Help Topics F1
About Notepad Alt, H, A
Here are some some undocumented keyboard shortcuts:
Goto Beginning of Next Word: Ctrl+Right Arrow
Goto Beginning Previous Word: Ctrl+Left Arrow
Select From Current Position To Next Word: Ctrl+Shift+Left Arrow
Select From Current Position To Previous Word: Ctrl+Shift+Left Arrow
Select From Current Position to Beginning of Line: Shift+Home
Select From Current Position to End of Line: Shift+End
This list of undocumented keyboard shortcuts for notepad are pretty long, that’s just a start from memory. If you count all the extra undocumented keyboard shortcuts, notepad has tons of functionality that is under utilized.
Did we ever notice or care that notepad had that many shortcuts? Most power users simply knew these shortcut commands by heart and never even had a second thought that notepad was difficult to learn, or poorly documented.
Using the vi editor is not complicated. I think most people just assume at first glance at a huge list of commands that it’s really hard to remember everything. It’s not that hard! Remember how ‘easy to use’ notepad seemed at first? Apply that attitude to learning vi!
The hard part about learning vi is that it doesn’t have a graphical interface for training wheels. You get right dropped right into a window that doesn’t necessarily want to help you get up and running quickly. So here are a few keyboard shortcuts for vi starting from the equivalents for notepad that are listed above:
New vi newfile
Open vi filename
Save :w[Enter]
Save As :w filename[Enter]
Exit :q
Undo u
Cut y
Paste P
Delete d
Find /text
Find Next n
Replace :%s/search/replace/g
Goto :linenumber
Help F1
Here’s where you, my readers come in. I’ve been looking all over, but I just can’t seem to find replacements for the following commands that have similar function without making things difficult:
Copy ?
Select All ?
Time/Date ?
Word Wrap ?
Font ?
Page Setup ?
Print ?
I assume since these were something I couldn’t find really easily that they are probably configuration settings, somewhere, but I’ve been looking for awhile and no luck.
Also, here is a pretty fantastic cheat sheet for vi (or vim) that I’ve found pretty handy:
Enjoy!
Few more announcements: Friday is my birthday, and I’ll be out of town. The the next several days will be pretty quiet. I’ll probably do the 6th edition of Linux Nation tomorrow morning, but that should be all you see from me until Monday, and I’ll be back with a vengeance.
Good news if anyone is keeping up with the times here, girlfriend has been quoted as asking, “can’t we just take off Windows?” Needless to day, that experiment is also going much better than I expected.
Also check out the right sidebar, Atlas carrying the Firefox icon was an idea I came up with, it was all done using Inkscape and GIMP. Let me know what you think of it. If you’re too lazy to scroll up, here it is:
See ya next week,
-Wayne
For those of you who are not familiar with The Orange Box, it’s five games in one box. It contains Half-Life 2, Half Life 2 Episode 1, Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Portal, and the one everyone has been waiting for: Team Fortress 2. My god! For 50 bones this IS the best deal in video game history.
Let’s start with a overview of what we need to accomplish: Copy DVDs to Hard Disk, Install & Configure Wine (including obtaining a proprietary, non-free font), and finally, configure the game to run properly.
I highly suggest finding some music to listen to while you do this. It takes about 30 minutes total, but well worth the time invested, as you could conceivably spend hundreds of hours playing these games.
May I suggest some Led Zepplin? OK, now that you’ve got something to kill time with, let’s get down and dirty.
Most reviews start with something like “Distribution this, Mandriva that, user friendly edition, blah blah bleep boop” I don’t play that game.
Downloading the ISO of the Gnome desktop version of Mandriva 2008 is pretty boring. It’s just like any other download, so I didn’t take screenshots. I have an idea – how about a customizable Mandriva Download Theme for Firefox? That would make downloading Mandriva just as exciting as the actual installation! Brilliant.
I like the fact that Mandriva has two different desktop managers bundled completely separate and not calling it something new. It’s like the choice of Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/bleeepuntu without the extra brand dilution issue, plus I really don’t care for KDE, so we’ll take care of that right off the bat.
Burning the ISO to CD was just like downloading Mandriva. Booring! Ah well, enough on that – let’s have a gander at the file system. Oops! Someone forgot to update the README.pdf, it’s the old Spring 2007 release PDF file:
Load up Qemu and to get some tasty screenshots of the bootup process:
Nothing flashy here, what’s the rest of the installation like?
Finally, after pressing “Next” a total of 7 times and wasting a lot of time, we’re looking at the desktop. It’s alright, the background is sorta… meh. The DNA/humans theme does not do it for me.
We’re ready for what we came for – installing!
Wow, there’s no warning that you’ll delete everything, it goes straight to deleting and formatting!
Next, you wait and stare at products for 10 minutes. Hmmm… Is someone thinking like Microsoft?
Alright we’re finally done! Let’s get excited!
WHAT? Not even a “congratulations?” Lousy fscks!
Overall, installing Mandriva is a pleasant experience, and ultimately boring, compared to other distributions’ installers. Out of spite, I’m going to backup my /home directory and install Ubuntu 7.10 RC, because I just got The Orange Box (thanks for the early Birthday present!) and I want to get it running in Gutsy Gibbon.
There are currently 200 articles on Wikipedia about Linux that need more information within the page, or they will probably be deleted (eventually).
For example, Ubuntu Studio is one of 34 Linux distributions that are categorized as “stubs”. Why is a distro like Ubuntu Studio is categorized as a stub? It’s simply because we haven’t taken the time to put up a few facts and a short time-line. I’m sure you could catch a developer of such a prominent distro in IRC or in the Ubuntu Forums and not break a sweat helping them out with something that they may not have the time themselves to do.
After looking around a little bit, I created an account on Wikipedia that takes all of 2 minutes. If you use the Ubuntu wiki as a guide, there can be several hundred edits added in very little time using resources such as DistroWatch.
Some people forget that something simple like this can drastically improve the visibility of a distribution – you don’t have to be a coder to contribute to Open Source.