Posts Tagged ubuntu
How To Install Google SketchUp 7 with Wine in Ubuntu
Google SketchUp is a very popular, and free, CAD style application. So far so good, but the bad news is that it is written for Windows. The good news is that it will run under Wine with very little difficulty these days.
The first thing you must do is, of course, download SketchUp from: http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/download/gsu.html. Next, you need to either install the latest version of Wine, or update your current installation of Wine to the most recent version. I recommend you use the Wine (Ubuntu) repo’s, how to add the repository is at: http://www.winehq.org/download/deb. To check your version of Wine, click Applications > Wine > Configure Wine, and click the ‘About’ tab. To get SketchUp working properly, it’s best to have at least 1.1.11 of Wine.
Installing Ubuntu 9.10 and XBMC on the Acer Aspire Revo
Acer Aspire Revo
I recently bought an Acer Aspire Revo with the idea of turning it in to a media center. I decided to install Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) and use XBMC (Xbox Media Center) as a front end. Here’s how I did it:
First I installed Ubuntu 9.10 to a USB stick. I did this using the USB Startup Disc Creator app which is installed, by default, with Ubuntu. It’s under System > Administration. I just pointed it to the ISO of 9.10, it detected my USB stick and off it went. So, with Ubuntu on my USB I popped the USB in to the Revo and booted it up.
Full Circle magazine #24 released!
Full Circle
Issue #24
Full Circle - the independent magazine for the Ubuntu Linux community are proud to announce the release of our twenty-fourth issue. http://fullcirclemagazine.org Don't forget to give us a Digg/Reddit/Slashdot vote!
Ubuntu, SDLmame and Wahcade – a match made in heaven
With my new computer roaring like a Tiger, my old computer is like a kitten demanding attention. Thus it is now connected to my TV (via tv-out) running Ubuntu and is functioning as a MAME machine! Yay!
Retro gaming goodness ahoy!
How did I manage this? Funny you should ask, I’ve written an article about it right here.
Conky, finally! System monitor woes…
Having seen many a flash desktop with system info, I decided to give Conky a go. Going in to the package manager and installing ‘conky’ was easy enough! With no menu entry I did the old Alt+F2 trick and just entered ‘conky’ to see if anything would happen.
Life!
A small window popped up at the bottom left of the screen with some basic info, but it wasn’t embedded into my desktop, nor was it pretty. Back to the drawing board.
After a quick search at Ubuntu Forums, it seems you need to create a .conkyrc file in the home directory and configure it through that text file.I found a basic conky configuration and pasted it in to my .conkyrc file and gave it a whirl. Progress! Conky was now embedded in the desktop but it was flickering like mad. The almighty Ubuntu Forums then tells me that you need to enable double buffering in the conky config file. Ok, done that. Try again.
What the…
Now my desktop icons are missing! What gives?! But wait, moving my pointer over where the icons were, brings them back. For a flash. Then conky wipes them out again!
Grrr!
Eventually, after many a search, I came across a small piece of code which said:
own_window yes
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
… and that was it!
My Ubuntu desktop with Conky in the top right corner
Conky seems to work better when it is in a window which is transparent, has no decorations, and is stuck to the desktop.
Once I had conky working I found a more elaborate config file and chopped out some unnecessary bits to give me:
My current conky setup
As conky configs go, mine is pretty standard, you can get really creative and have Gmail alerts, weather reports (my next project) and all sorts in there!
Long live conky!
I’ll post my conky config in the comments below…
KDE to GNOME – I’m going through change-eee-es
* post should be read with the Black Sabbath song ‘Changes’ playing in the background *
For nearly two years now I’ve been using Kubuntu (Ubuntu + KDE) quite happily. It was a happy marriage between us, but yesterday we filed for divorce.
Kubuntu Gutsy, and Hardy, had been fine. I’ve even been using KDE4 since 4.0, but recently KDE would just, for no reason and with no warning, corrupt the screen and return to the login screen. When this happened yesterday in the middle of some (as ever, unsaved) work, I snapped.
The courtship of Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) began, and the divorce papers were served to Kubuntu.
Another reason to abandon Kubuntu was that most of the applications I used were all GNOME based, so essentially I had a KDE/GNOME hybrid. It had the look of KDE for things like Amarok and K3B but the look of Windows95 for things like Firefox, Thunderbird et al.
After a quick test of the Ubuntu 8.10 in LiveCD mode I saw that most of my needed apps (GIMP and those mentioned above) would be installed by default. And I’d only need to manually install Scribus and Thunderbird.
One quick backup later and Ubuntu was installing.
my spanking new Ubuntu desktop
What was yesterday. I’ve been using Ubuntu now, exclusively, for a whole day and, I have to say… I like it! I can definitely see a speed increase in Thunderbird and Firefox, in KDE they were ok to use, but a bit clunky and ugly – hence why I, at one point, switched to using Opera as my browser. I can get a decent screen resolution too, which I could never get in KDE. Ok so I lose Amarok, but Rhythmbox seems quite adequate. Not tried it, but Brasero seems more than capable of burning a CD/DVD.
All in all, I feel like a new man.
Wait, that sounded a bit…
EEE 701, Kubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) and Unetbootin
My desktop PC is still running Kubuntu Hardy, it’s running dandy, so I see no real reason to upgrade it to Intrepid. But my EEE 701 PC was still running an early Hardy with KDE 3.5.x so I decided to wipe it and do a fresh install of Intrepid on it. Just for the hell of it. Armed with my Intrepid ISO I fumbled about trying to remember how to use the iso2stick script, but accidentally discovered a GUI app called Unetbootin which will put almost any distro on a USB stick! You can grab a .deb of it from: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/
Unetbootin - awaiting orders...
You simply choose which distro you have (from the drop down menus at the top of the window), give it the ISO file, choose your USB drive and click OK.
Unetbootin - creating a bootable USB stick with Kubuntu Intrepid!
Installing Kubuntu Intrepid to the EEE was easy as ever. Just boot from the USB stick, click the install icon, fill in several details and wait a bit. First boot was pretty quick and everything looked (KDE 4.1) pretty. I immediately tried the wireless and… it didn’t work. Some posts in Ubuntu Forums suggest disabling the wireless drivers to make it work, but no go. So it was up to Google to (again!) provide the answer. And provide it did! One search result let me to Array.org which is a repository for an EEE PC *buntu kernel which fixes the wireless, webcam and such.
Kubuntu Intrepid with the Array.org kernel, note the (working!) wireless icon in the tray
Installing the Array.org kernel is easy. You basically add the Array.org repo to your sources.list (along with it’s key) and install the linux-eeepc package. Full details are at: http://www.array.org/ubuntu/setup-intrepid.html
I’m very impressed with KDE 4.1 on the EEE, it might be a low spec notebook but it can do semi-transparent wobbly windows, with drop shadows, and all without breaking sweat!
Will You Be Opening Pandoras Box Before Christmas?
Pandora - The Open Source Hand Held
You’ve never heard of the Pandora? OK, let me fill you in: it’s an open source, hand held, console running Linux. Just a hairs breadth bigger than a Nintendo DS this beast is far more powerful than the DS and PSP.
Today (Sun, 5th Oct) is the closing date if you want to pre-order one from the first batch. They’ll be released before Christmas. If you don’t get in today, you’ll have to wait until early 2009 for the second batch.
Some specs of this baby beast are:
- ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux
- 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
- PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
- 800×480 4.3″ 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD
- Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host
- Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output
- Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls
- 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
- Around 10+ Hours battery life
Test boards of the Pandora can already run a PSone emulator without breaking sweat and it’s SNES emulator is running so fast they have to hold it back! Similar to the GP2x (no relation) it has a TV-out which is excellent news for the plethora of emulators (and ROMs) it will have.
KDE 4.1.2 + Lancelot menu = Happiness
My KDE 4.1.2 desktop
It’s out! KDE 4.1.2 was released yesterday (my time) and I eagerly updated my KDE 4.1.1. No visual difference from 4.1.1 as 4.1.2 is merely a load of bug fixes.
I’m not entirely sure what they fixed, but many of the plasmoids still crash my plasma (KDE Twitter being one of the culprits).
In my opinon THIS (4.1.2) is what should have been released as KDE 4. As this release is FAR more stable, friendly and usable. I use KDE 4 every day at home and since 4.1 it has been a joy to use. 4.0 was nice, but not a joy. KDE 4 is still missing a LOT of things that make life that bit more easy, like right clicking on files and having them open in a suitable app. Speaking of apps, some are still a bit rought – Ark being the one I missed most. I had to install FileRoller as Ark was just impossible to use.
Lancelot (the menu) in action
The KDE 4 ’slab’ menu, or whatever it’s called now a days 
, is OK but a bit unweildy, Lancelot (above) on the other hand, while being similar, is much nicer to use. It’s only fault (which is apparently being fixed as I type) is that when there’s a long list of apps (eg: under the Internet menu) you have to use the scroll wheel on the mouse to move through the apps, there’s no visible scroll bar. So getting to an app at the end of a long list is a bit of a pain.
KDE 4.1.2 is recommended as a necessary update say the developers so go do it! 
Lancelot – The KDE Menu Of Greatness
While browsing through my RSS feed of Linux.com I noticed a post about ‘Lancelot’ a new KDE menu/plasmoid. I kinda prefer the old style KDE menu but have been forcing myself to use the new menu to see if it really is crap, and it kinda is.
But Lancelot (below) is the best of both worlds!
If you open your package manager and type in ‘lancelot’ you should see the plasmoid mentioned in the results. If not, then you need to add the LaunchPad repo:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu hardy main
Just install the Lancelot plasmoid then add it to your desktop or task bar.
Left is how the Lancelot menu looks. Down the left side is shortcuts to Documents, Contacts, Computer and Applications – clicking one of those changes what is displayed in the white area, at the moment it is showing Applications. In the left half of the white box is the list of Favourites, right side is the typical menu.
This is after clicking Graphics. The right side slides to the left and the right side displays what is under Graphics (GIMP, Xsane etc). To go back you click one of the blue tabs at the top of the white area.
Documents has handy links to Open Office applications and links to recently open documents.
Contacts has links to Kmail contacts (which I don’t have installed, I use Thunderbird) and also Kopete contacts.
And this is when you click the Computer icon on the left side of the menu. It lists the Fixed (drives), Places (home, root etc) and System (links to System Settings and a handy link to the KDE System Monitor.
All in all, I really like Lancelot, definitely keeping it installed as it’s a good compromise between the old menu and the new (pretty useless) menu. Oh, and it looks more pretty too.
Give it a try!
-
I use:
