Martin Notes

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.

Linux, Ubuntu

VirtualBox 2.1 has been released. Apparently it is a major update from the 2.0.6 release. Check this installation guide to update or install.

Linux, Opinion, Ubuntu, Web

Ok, I have an iPhone now and I’m really happy with it. It’s a beautiful design, brilliant piece of technology, the app store is very cool. I’ve downloaded the most useless and useful apps, so I’m a happy camper.

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.

iPhone, Opinion, Personal

I’ve installed GnoMenu 1.6. It is a Vista style menu for the Gnome desktop. You can just download the deb files (gnomenu_1.6-2_all.deb) and install it. After installing I had to run:

/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.

GUI, Linux, Ubuntu

I just installed the new release of wordpress. The 2.7 is a major update from the 2.6 that I was running. The admin GUI improved a lot. Apparently it also supports gears now, I still have to try that.

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.

Personal

I must start by admitting that I only tested UE in VirtualBox and I have seen that booting from a CD makes Ubuntu less stable then fully installed.

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.

Linux

Ultimate-edition 2.0 has been released. It’s a release build on top of Ubuntu 8.10, but it has been hand tuned. There are three releases: 32, 64 bits and the game release.

Linux, Ubuntu

Will Williams made a mock-up for Ubuntu Intrepid a long time ago and people generally agreed that this was one of the best out there. Apparently Mr. Williams has found himself some friends (I saw some comments from the Elementary guys) to make the theme for real.

I have the theme installed now and I must say I’m impressed. It’s not a 100% perfect, but it comes really close. Especially the background and the menus are brilliant. After some time working with the controls I switched those over to the Dark Room set, which suites the brown better then the gray that Will used.

GUI, Ubuntu

There is a new code release of Google Gadgets. I’ve been looking for a .deb file all over, but apparently the interest is gone since the first release. So the only thing left to do is: compile it myself. Luckily Google has already posted most of the dependencies on their how-to-build page, that saves a lot of make time. I’ve described the build for Gnome GTK here:

Download the Google Gadgets source

wget http://google-gadgets-for-linux.googlecode.com/files/google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3.tar.bz2

Install the dependencies

sudo apt-get install libdbus-1-dev libmozjs-dev libxml2-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev libltdl3-dev libxt-dev libxul-dev libgtk2.0-dev librsvg2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev

I’ve added the “libxt-dev” which was missed in the Google instructions.

Configure the build

./configure --prefix=/usr

Google advises to add the prefix to avoid library linking problems.

Make the application

make

Install the application

sudo make install

And start it

ggl-gtk

I haven’t seen any major updates to the last release yet. All I can say is that it feels a bit faster.

GUI, Linux, Ubuntu

Since I own a Sony TZ laptop, and it has a wide screen monitor, I’m worried about vertical screen space. I’ve been blogging about that before. Now I found a hack that might help a bit. There is a thing called Global Menu for Gnome.

It kills the menu in the window and puts in it an applet in a Gnome panel. The idea is stolen from Apple, but it’s a good idea I think. It removes the completely useless line in each window. Now all that has to be removed ins the titlebar, then I’ll be even more happy with the interface.

Now the weak thing: I haven’t tried the global menu yet. I don’t want to kill my Ubuntu immediately after installing Intrepid. I want to create a VM with Intrepid and try it out there. It will take some time, but I’ll post the result here.

GUI, Ubuntu