Category Archives: linux

A Compact Theme for Spaz

I gave up on Gwib­ber a while ago–it was just too buggy for me to stand using on a day-to-day basis. In my search for an open source Twit­ter client, I found Spaz. While it’s based on Adobe Air, it’s not too bad. I found the default theme a bit too big, though. And while I deeply [...]
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Install ConkyForecast on Mandriva

Conky Fore­cast is an awe­some way to get some quick weather data on your desk­top. Together with the sweet conky con­fig Fab from Linux Out­laws put together, it’s awesome. It’s easy to install on Ubuntu–just add the ppa and install it. On RPM-based dis­tros, though, it’s not as easy, par­tic­u­larly Man­driva where the rpm avail­able won’t [...]
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Install Gnome Global Menu on Karmic

Mac-style menubar for Ubuntu

The Gnome Global Menu is an applet for the Gnome panel that func­tions like the menu bar on Mac: it removes the menu from GTK win­dows and dis­plays it in panel. I love the global menu for a cou­ple rea­sons, and had a hard time fig­ur­ing out how to get it on Karmic. Why Use the [...]
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Review of New Distros

Karmic, Mandriva 2010, Fedora 12, OpenSUSE 11.2

When the new ver­sion of Ubuntu comes out, I tend to install it right away, but always seper­ate, never over the old install (I’ve been burned too many times by try­ing to upgrade in place). But when Karmic came out, I found it seri­ously wanting. So I decided to go dis­tro hop­ping to see what else [...]
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Karmic Koala–Wost Ubuntu Yet

Orig­i­nally, this post was going to be titled: Karmic Koala–the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. But I’ve renamed it: Karmic Koala–Wost Ubuntu Yet, a not-​​so-​​subtle play on my take on Jaunty (which I highly approved of, dispite a glar­ing graphic driver error). Karmic Koala, unlike Jaunty, doesn’t have just one glar­ing prob­lem. It has scads of them. It’s actu­ally [...]
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How to Fix It When Your Buttons Don’t Work on Hulu in Karmic

When I first down­loaded Karmic Koala, Ubuntu 9.10, the but­tons on hulu.com didn’t work, so I couldn’t put the video into full screen. I also couldn’t pause the video or do any num­ber of other things. For­tu­nately, I found a solu­tion. After read­ing through this length bug report, I fol­lowed the instruc­tions here, which I’ll repeat: back up /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer.bin.  sudo mv /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer.bin /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer.bin.real down­load this [...]
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Upgrading Ubuntu: from Annoyance to Favorite

I don’t know how it hap­pened, but I’ve found I’m a sucker for Ubuntu’s con­stant updates. I’m con­stantly try­ing to update my sys­tem and get some sort of bizarre plea­sure out of it. It wasn’t always like that. In fact, when I first started using Ubuntu, it drove me crazy that there were so many updates–there was con­stantly some­thing ask­ing [...]
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Resizing Multiple Pictures in Linux

Oné of my biggest frus­tra­tions with Linux, or with Ubuntu in par­tic­u­lar, is that there’s not an easy way to resize a bunch of pic­tures. gTh­umb pro­vides an Infraview-​​style solu­tion to that problem. On Win­dows, I use the image resiz­ing power toy. It’s just a shell exten­sion that gives you a bunch of options as far as size goes. Very [...]
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xkcd Hits the Nail on the Head, wrt Flash + Linux

Man, xkcd nails it with this one, some tough love from all us Linux-​​lovers about how much Hulu can suck on Linux: Is Flash this crappy on Mac, too? Or are we just get­ting the short end of the stick?
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Will amd64 Linux work on Intel Processor? Answer: Yes

It’s kind of con­fus­ing when it comes to Linux: most of the time your choices are 32 bit and 64 bit, which is almost always labeled “amd64.” As it turns out, the “amd” part is a bit of misnomer–it does NOT mean that the 64bit stuff only works on 64-​​bit amd proces­sors, despite what you (or I, [...]
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