Unclutter hides the mouse pointer when you haven’t used the mouse for 5 seconds. Although this is different from the Mac approach, it actually works fine for me. When the pointer is hidden you can type and read and when you move you mouse then the pointer is shown again.

According to the man pages it should be possible to let unclutter hide the pointer when you press (or release) a key, but I couldn’t get that to work.

Installation is easy, it’s in the Ubuntu repos:

sudo apt-get install unclutter

And start it:

unclutter & disown

If you want to start unclutter when you login you can add it to your session:

Open Sessions, click “Add”, type some name (”Unclutter”), command (”unclutter”) and comment (”Hide mouse pointer”) and that’s it.

First of all you have to fix the pkg-config path setting. I find this weird, since I have to set it to the default setting, ah well. Do this:

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/pkgconfig
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH

Then I had to replace some version numbers in the config. This sounds strange, but Johnny said it would work. Although I made a broad interpretation of his comment.

replace 2.25.2 with 2.24.2 in configure.in
replace 2.25.2 with 2.24.2 in configure

Of course there is a list of dependencies to fulfill:

sudo apt-get install intltool libmapi-dev evolution-data-server-dev evolution-dev libtalloc-dev libdcerpc-dev libsamba-hostconfig-dev libldb-dev libebackend1.2-dev libecal1.2-dev libedata-cal1.2-dev libebook1.2-dev libedata-book1.2-dev

Sadly that’s where things went wrong. The libldb-dev depends on libldb0, but to install libldb0 I need to remove libldb-samba4-0, libmapi-dev and libmapi0, which broke the dependencies:

For now I’ll have to wait until this issue is fixed.

To my surprise the setup failed at the very first step. I checked the iPhone’s bluetooth capabilities by finding the bluetooth address:

hcitool scan

And looking up the capabilities:

sdptool browse <address> | grep Networking

To my surprise the iPhone doesn’t support a dailup connection through bluetooth. Isn’t it rather strange that Apple sells us a phone that doesn’t allow us to share it’s network with the rest of the world? I would assume the TelCos wouldn’t mind, actually I’m surprised they even accepted it.

Apple has been down this road before, the whole Mac OS 9 and earlier was closed to the outside world. You’d have to buy Apple stuff to make it work. Mac OS X improved that a lot, and the hardware support also improved: USB, standard VGA. It’s strange to see that Apple is going back to the more closed approach now. The iPod was still a bit open; you can upload songs from Linux, but the iPhone can’t even be used without iTunes.

Watch it Apple, you won’t be able to hold this so much longer. There will be competition at some point, and then people will start to make different choices. So far you’ve been the best in what you’re doing, but you’re not the only one.

I hope Apple will start seeing that competition is not bad, but that they should learn from them.

I’ve been having problems with the automatic updates of OpenOffice 3.0. I’ve been using this PPA:

http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main

And automated update gives me the option to do a partial update, which doesn’t work either. Irritating! After some googling I found the following:

That fixed the problem! Update works and OpenOffice works. What I couldn’t find out is whether OO actually updated. That’s not the important part, since it worked fine and it still does.

But.

Why did Apple try so hard to make it impossible to use such a nice device without using other Apple products? First of all in the Netherlands you can only buy it  with T-Mobile. Since I’m a corporate phone user, I can chose between Vodafone. The solution is to buy a phone in Italy or Poland and insert a Vodafone SIM card. That works, but it’s annoying.

When I received the phone, I wanted to use it immediately. But you have to unlock the thing with iTunes. There is NO alternative. This means that you have to run either Mac OS X or Windows to even be able to use the iPhone. I don’t have that at work. I’ve tried to install iTunes in VirtualBox, but VB still has some problems with USB devices. Which is stupid, but not the point right now. So after trying to get it to work for an hour I gave up and asked a colleague if I could use his Mac to unlock the phone.

Ok, I’ve got a working phone. Nice, nice, nice. Good GUI, nice apps, GPS works great, wireless up and running in 10 seconds. For at least an hour I’ve been pinching, dragging, configuring and being happy.

Then I found out that the 3G network didn’t work. I only solved that when I got home. After some Google activity it appears that some iPhone vendors use the ‘Enterprise capabilities’ to lock the phone to their network. So, not SIMlock, but only the network capabilities. I had to download a configuration application to create a configuration profile that I has to mail to myself to install it on the iPhone.

Now it’s working and of course I’m happy and droowling but there is a weird aftertaste. Why did Apple take this approach? Do they think they won’t make enough money otherwise, or is it their idea of controling the quality of service to their customers? I don’t get it. Most people won’t care at all, they are running windows and don’t think about this. I do care, and I think Apple should care.

/usr/lib/gnomenu/DesktopIntegration.py

To get it to show up in the Gnome panel “Add to Panel…” dialog.

I must say that from reading about the GnoMenu, and seeing the themes on Gnome-Look, I was quite looking forward to the little panel applet. But after installing it I was disappointed.

First of all the GnoMenu catches your Windows key to open up.  I always hated that feature in Windows and I don’t want it in my Ubuntu. Especially since I’m using the Windows key as my main shortcut key: Windows 1-4 are my desktops, Windows-T is a terminal, Windows-E is Nautilus (yes, that’s a Windows shortcut).

Second, the thing just feel clunky. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it doesn’t feel smooth or elegant. I want my main menu to give me the feeling that I will find the application I’m looking for. GnoMenu gave me the feeling that it might take a while. Not only from the feel, but also because it’s just slow. When you start typing in the search field it takes ages before it shows you the application that you’re looking for.

I must admit that’s where I stopped testing. The GnoMenu is just not ready yet. It’s a nice idea, and the Gnome main menu is ready for an update for sure, but this is not the one.

I’ll just stick to Gnome-Do.

The update is pretty smooth, just follow the guideline on wordpress. Don’t forget to update your wp-config.php by hand, it has changed. I was stubborn and I didn’t remove the wp-admin and wp-includes directories before I upgraded. That doesn’t work; remove them.

That said: UE is not really special. It’s what it promises: Ubuntu with a lot of stuff already installed. The installed stuff ranges from a load of themes to five different development IDEs.

After booting, which was about as fast as Ubuntu booting from CD, UE shows a very techy desktop with a dark theme applied. And, OMG, a spinning mouse cursor. I thought we’d have passed that point by now. Aside from the visual part everything seems to be working just like Ubuntu does. The VirtualBox hardware is nicely recognized and supported.

Since I’m a theme fan I started by switching between themes, well, I switches a theme. At that point the Appearance Manager crashed and I was stuck with a half applied theme. Appearance Manager kept crashing so I had to restart X to make it work again. A really bad start for a review.

After the themes I started browsing through the applications. What I like is that it has some of the post install tasks already done: Gnome DO is already installed, AWN is already there, the CHM viewer, gDesklets and Screenlets (why?) all of them ready to use. And that’s only the Accessories section! There is so much software installed here, it tends to go after the Sony preinstalled Vista: who needs all this?

And that’s the central question in this distro: who needs this? There appears to be no direction in the installed software. Who will use gDesklets and Screenlets together? Why is aMSN and Empathy and Konversation and Kopete and Pidgin installed? Maybe the nedriest of nerds would need all of this to use the ‘best’ for every task, but I think 99% of users will be more scared then happy by UE.

The only useful application I can come up with is to use UE as a test environment for applications. Since nearly every application known to mankind is installed and ready to use, it’s really easy to start VirtualBox and play with the installed app before deciding whether you’d want it on your own machine. But that’s a very limited application for a distro. Especially since Ubuntu offers the .deb based software installation and removal tools which makes experimenting with application really easy.

I’m rather disappointed in Ultimate Edition 2.0. I was expecting Ubuntu, but then done right: something special and daring. UE is not that, it’s a collection of preinstalled software that has no use in the real world.