Upgrading... #ubuntu

RT @openattitude: 10 portable computers that will ship with #Ubuntu 11.04 Natty on-board. | Tech Drive-in

Mark Shuttleworth Steps Down as Ubuntu CEO #operatingsystems #ubuntu

Oh great, Kubuntu 9.04 is out! http://tr.im/jvR3 [from http://twitter.com/citizenk/statuses/1594353436]

The Dell Latitude D630 comes with a number of different video cards but if you use the Intel chipset you may be frustrated when trying to activate the visual effects eye candy of Compiz:

Checking either of the lower two options brings up this alert saying, “Desktop effects could not be enabled”.

I didn’t bother trying to fix it for ages and put it down to using Ubuntu on exotic hardware. Fortunately it’s simple to get working. I just needed to install the xGL server:

# aptitude install xserver-xgl
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Building tag database... Done
The following NEW packages will be automatically installed:
libglitz-glx1 libglitz1
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libglitz-glx1 libglitz1 xserver-xgl
0 packages upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/1843kB of archives. After unpacking 4854kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]

Once I logged out (and rebooted, for some reason my external monitor doesn’t always “catch” when I restart X) and back in again xGL was loaded and I was able to enable desktop visual effects. Despite my misgivings about using an embedded graphics chip it actually works really well. Windows bounced around, bent out of shape and did lots of nice animation stuff.

Then I removed the whole lot by uninstalling the xserver-xgl package again. Why? Unfortunately it conflicts with other openGL apps. In a toss up between fancy desktop effects and decent SDLMame performance, SDLMame wins hands down. It’s nice to know the visual effects work though!

Related PostsUbuntu Gutsy on the Dell Latitude D630Ubuntu Linux on Dell D630: the DVDUbuntu WiFi problems on the Dell D630 laptop

Filed under: OS Updates, Linux, Open Source, Canonical
Dashing the hopes of thousands of children of the 80s, the Ubuntu development team has announced that Ubuntu 8.04 will not be named Hungry Hippo. The alliterative Linux distribution is always named after an animal and an adjective. Thus, Ubuntu 7.04 is Feisty Fawn, while 7.10 will be known as Gutsy Gibbon. 8.04 will be Hardy Heron.While Ubunty 7.10 isn't even out yet, there are a few details we can share regarding 8.04. It will be the next "long term support" version of Ubuntu, which means it will be supported with security updates for three years on the desktop and 5 years on the server. That makes Hardy Heron both an appropriate name and a good choice for businesses seeking a Linux distribution that will be supported into the future.Hardy Heron is scheduled for an April 2008 release. As one Digg commenter points out, there's still hope for a Hungry Hippo distribution. After the ZZ version of Ubuntu is released in another 7 or 8 years, perhaps Ubuntu will move to a three word naming cycle, and one day there could be a "Hungry Hungry Hippo."
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Google recently created their own Linux software repositories to streamline the use of Google software in Linux. Google's repos make it very easy to download and stay up-to-date with current releases of Google software. In layman's terms this means you can now install and update Google software using "typical" installation commands like: apt-get install picasa. You can quickly add the Google repos to your distro's installation configuration file (sources.list in Ubuntu) and be on your way. Google has tutorials for all major distros including: Ubuntu, Debian, openSUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, and RPM.

Linux Software Repositories [Google]

The Indie Tribune weblog gives the skinny on how to re-theme Windows XP to look like Ubuntu Linux. Not a whole lot of productivity with this tutorial, but it is thorough. The tutorial demonstrates how to replace practically every aspect of Windows to make it resemble Ubuntu starting with the theme and rolling through the boot screen, logon window, icons, explorer theme, and the Firefox theme. This'll give you the look of Ubuntu without giving up Windows. Thanks, JuventusCadillac!

How To Make Windows look like Ubuntu Linux [The Indie Tribune]

This tutorial will show you how to mount NTFS and FAT partitions in ubuntu

This is Scibuntu, Ubuntu Linux for scientists and science students. Scibuntu is not just another Linux distribution. It is a script that adds scientific programs and other convinient tools to the plain desktop Ubuntu.

Ubuntu. That was what Bill Clinton told the Labour party conference it needed to remember this week. "Society is important because of Ubuntu."

Index of /vmware

Linux is supposed to be the fastest of all operating systems, but sometimes poor use of your desktop can lead to slowing it down

This HOW-TO covers up the whole process of installing Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 & Macromedia Flash 8 in a Ubuntu box in a few simple steps.

I edited the ~/.kde/share/config/kbluetoothdrc file and changed the line that read "AutoStart=true" to "AutoStart=false".

An A-Z Index of the Linux BASH command line

When Flash 8 and 9 weren’t released for Linux, I thought, “why doesn’t someone just edit Flash’s code and change the 7 to a 9?” Turns out it’s possible.

Unofficial Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) Starter Guide

EasyUbuntu is an easy to use (duh!) script that gives the Ubuntu user the most commonly requested apps, codecs, and tweaks that are not found in the base distribution - all with a few clicks of your mouse.

AIGLX ('Accelerated Indirect GLX') is an open source project founded by the X.Org Foundation and the Fedora Core Linux community to allow accelerated indirect GLX rendering capabilities to X.org and DRI drivers. This allows remote X clients to get fully h

Xgl is an X server architecture designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards via their OpenGL drivers, layered on top of OpenGL via glitz. It supports hardware acceleration of all X, OpenGL and XVideo applications and graphical effects by a composi

Mail Notification monitors your mailboxes for new mail.

How to install Multimedia Player (VLC) with plug-in for Mozilla Firefox

For anyone with a laptop who works in a library or other quiet area, system beeps every time you press the backspace key one too many times, or just using emacs, can be quite disturbing.

No compiling, all packages downloaded from Ubuntu repositories.

Support of NTFS partition for linux has always been a problem. Projects exist since many years but was always experimental, and was claim to be not safe. But here come a new project ntfs-3g which claim to be capable for unlimited file creation and deletio

Canonical, Ubuntu’s parent company has announced the dapper-commercial repository, where one will hopefully find packages released by commercial companies (read non-open-source) for use by Ubuntu users. Right now, all the repository has is Opera 9, and

here I have put together a collection of sites which are dedicated to Ubuntu Linux and where one can find a wealth of information on general topics or accomplishing a particular task in Ubuntu