linux

Pff I switched to fedora 10 a month ago because Ubuntu didn't have eclipse 3.4 in it's repository but I'm starting to have second thoughts.

1. It's freaking damn difficult to make a damn share. At least the first time.
How do you do it in ubuntu you say ? Right click and select share and click a nice check that allows guest accounts to check your share.
How do you do it in fedora ? Well you install samba. That's ok. You then have to configure samba a bit to add some shares and stuff. That's ok. Then you have to figure out that the firewall is blocking the smb port, normally I wouldn't have any problems with on a server but this should not happen on the desktop.

2. Printing
Why the heck does Fedora ask me to enter the smb address of my network printer and can't it detect it like Ubuntu / OpenSuse / Mandriva ?

3. Packagekit
Yum comes to the rescue. The add/remove interface for package is cute but the search functionality is retarded. You basically need to know the package name.

It seems that it's a cool meme nowadays to express your predictions for the next year so I thought I should give it a try.

1. AMD regains market share with Phenom II
2. Intel doesn't become an ass like the old Pentium 4 days when they didn't innovate at all and demanded high prices for their cpu's. Yes I'm talking to you Core 7.
3. Gnome reveals a roadmap to Gnome 3.0
4. KDE finally makes it mainstream with either their 4.2 or 4.3 release.
5. Nvidia buys VIA because of the increasing need of having a platform to offer to vendors.
6. More game makes start using OpenGL. That increases the change of games being ported to MacOSX / Linux ( See Unreal Tournament / Doom etc.)
7. I will get free cookies :D and finish my learning of django / drupal / jquery :P

On 17 September 1991 Linus Torvalds was announcing the first version of Linux 0.0.1.
The rest is history.

Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).
I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes – it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.

Also here's a small interesting fact from wikipedia

Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention Freax, a portmanteau of "freak," "free," and "x," an allusion to Unix. During the start of his work on the system, he stored the files under the name "Freax" for about a half year. Torvalds had already considered the name "Linux," but initially dismissed it as too egotistical[6].


In order to facilitate development, the files were uploaded to the FTP server (ftp.funet.fi) of the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) in September 1991. Ari Lemmke, Torvald's coworker at the HUT who was responsible for the servers at the time, did not feel Freax was a good name. Consequently, he dubbed the project "Linux" without consulting Torvalds[6]. Later, however, Torvalds consented to "Linux": "After many arguments, he finally admitted that Linux was simply the better name. In the source code of version 0.01 of Linux, the name 'Freax' was still used in the makefile. Only later was the name Linux used. Thus the name actually not planned at all became generally accepted world-wide.

OK so i admit I'm a lazy ass linux user. I never had that love for the console since the Red Hat 7.2 days.
So here's my short top 10 things that you can easily tweak in Ubuntu that you can do very easily using the GUI interface tools.
I'm specifying Ubuntu because in other Linux distribution the Gnome menu layout could be slightly different.

1. Make your fonts looks spiffier.

Usually if you have an LCD display the font config isn't set correctly and you have slightly edgier fonts. You can easily fix it by going to System > Preferences > Appearance > Click on the Fonts tab > Select Subpixel Smoothing. It should update in real time. Also it will crash/close your firefox session so you have to restart it.

2. How to share your home folder / any other folder easily. (Tested in ubuntu 8.04, 8.10)

Right click on a folder. Click Share, Select the name you want for your shared folder, select if you want or not writing permissions or if someone can access that folder directly without any password (guest functionality) . For the first time only it will ask you approve to install samba. The problem is that it doesn't tell you that you have to login/logout to be able to share folders after that (i really don't know if this is a bug),

3. Configure any boot parameters

So if you don't want to see a bunch of choices in your grub editor, want to change the timeout, the colors, prompt for a grub password etc, you can easily install Startup Manager

Click on Applications > Add/Remove > Select Show All available Applications (if you didn't already), confirm that choice > type in the search bar startup manager > check the package with the same name > apply changes.

Now the application will be in the System > Administration > StartUp-Manager.

See the application homepage for more details and some screenshots.

4. Enable Ubuntu Backports

Some packages remain fairly old in Ubuntu after a release is made, but thanks to the community the most popular packages get updated once a new release is made.
To enable this is fairly easy. Go to System > Administration > Software Sources > click on the Updates tab > Check Unsupported Updates.

5. Add a nice clipboard manager

Sometimes when you close a program from where you copied some text the paste becomes unavailble. To easily fix this and also have an history of past copies you can install the lightweight Parcellite clipboard manager.
Go to Applicatiosn > Add/remove > select all available applications (if you didn't do that already) > ype parcellite in the search box > Select the package and apply changes.

The nasty part about this is that you have to manually start it each time you start the computer. You can fix this very easy by going to System > Preferences > Sessions > Startup Programs tab > Click add > Enter Parcellite as the name of the program (so you know what program starts), Click browse for the command > Select Filesystem on the left side > double click the usr folder > double click the bin folder > select an entry and start typing the programs name, the search feature should take you to the parcellite entry > Click Open. On the comments entry you could add Clipboard manager (just to respect the gnome HIG :P) > click Add and that's it.

Remember that you can change parcellite's options by right clicking on it's icon from the tray and selecting Preferences.

Update: As somebody pointed up in the comments parcellite isn't in the 8.04 repository. You can search for glipper. It's very similar and the instructions match. Just replace parcellite with glipper :)

6. Automatically open the currently started applications when you start the computer.

Go to System > Preferences > Sessions > Options tab > Click Remember currently running application
If you always want to remember the applications that you have started you can check the Automatically remember running applications when logging out option.

7. To see the weather in your current location you need to configure the clock applet from the panel
Right click the clock, select Preferences go to the Location tab and add yours. Go to General tab and check Show Weather and Show Temperature. the Configure the weather tab if you want to change different settings like temperature options or wind speed options.

This wanted to be a top 10 list but meh. I can't remember what other options an average user needs.

Ok so I'm sick and tired of hearing everybody complaining about Ubuntu.
Ubuntu has to many bugs, Ubuntu this, Ubuntu that. Why did Ubuntu include Firefox 3 beta 5 in their initial release bla bla bla bla bla. You must understand that some package selections for the LTS release were made exactly because of the fact it's a LTS release.

Also from my personal experience I always had problems with various distributions that I didn't have with Ubuntu.
The package manager in OpenSuse still gives me an headache now and then, Fedora is too bleeding edge (yay no proprietary drivers at all, sigh) etc. Mandriva is a nice alternative but it's too KDE centric for my taste.

Also i always had problems with my pppoe connection on other distributions except the Debian based ones. pppoeconf just does it job plain and simple. In fedora i always got disconnects, in OpenSuse sometimes it didn't connect etc.

Also i like the fact that i can set up a good php development environment in 5 minutes in Ubuntu. I'm tired on configuring phpmyadmin by hand, trying to find some stupid php extensions etc.

Other people are bitching about the fact that Ubuntu in it's LTS release has too many new technologies. Who cares. If you really want to be sure that you don't have a problem use the old LTS release. It's stable and it has so fewer features, but hey who cares right ?

What I'm trying to say and nobody will understand is that EVERY DISTRIBUTION HAS IT'S FLAWS if you don't like Ubuntu stop being a little bitch and choose another, or fix the damn problems yourself. Most of the problems are upstream problems. If you're complaining that your rhythmbox crashes it's not Ubuntu's fault. At least submit a bug report, a proper one and eventually the bug will get fixed.

/ps
I'm disabling the comments on this post because I'm an ass and don't want to hear your opinions, because you're all trolls. Remember if you don't like it don't use it. Go back to your little windows installation and play gay games. K? Thx. Bye!

I don't consider myself in the position to ask for such changes but seeing Mark Shuttleworth talking about how he'd like having Gnome based on QT and the uncertainty in the gnome camp about the future of gtk 3.0 I was starting to ask myself if it was possible to have a Gnome-ish KDE.

As a warning I'm an extreme advocate of the hole Gnome KISS philosophy so some of my mock ups could be a bit too simplistic for you KDE guys. I'm just modifying existing applications based on some design philosophies from the gnome camp.

There are going to be several articles that will (hopefully) cover all of the (my) important applications.

Kate

What's with this session chooser thing.

Do i really need to select a session ?
I mean how often do you really need different sessions for an application
Wouldn't it be better to be a window after the Kate window is shown ? Or not to be displayed at all ?

Tip of the day is pretty decent and i don't have any cons about it. It can be disabled and it may show you some interesting options
from a beginner standpoint

Not from my standpoint it starts to get a bit messy.

Why do i need the Find in files and terminal buttons on the bottom of the screen ?

Also why is that filter system needed. Wouldn't it be better to have
something like Gedit "filter" system but improved. ?
Look at the screen shot for a better illustration of what i mean
and maybe it can do the real filtering as in Kate.

Also wouldn't it be better that the hole file system browser / documents sidebar to be more like the one from dolphin ? It's very configurable you can have
the views one under another or with tabs ( this could solve the problem of Kate
of not having a tab system and you constantly have to switch between the file browser and the documents).

Also wouldn't it be better that the file system browser would be the one used by the folder sidebar from Dolphin ? It's very slick and it's exactly what you need in an editor IMHO
a tree view of the file system.

Also the drop down from the top of the file system browser: wouldn't it be better to be similar to the one from dolphin such as in displays the current folder and when you click it it shows the sub folders and if you want to you can switch it to text mode and
enter your own.

Also just a small "hiccup" but i think that the top menu should be something like
File Edit View (so it's like all the other programs). The bookmark one should be made a side widget

The document one i think should be more like the one from gnome or it should dissapear completely. It doesn't provide a lot of functionality (as i said it would be nice if it would have the save-all / close all options.

Also the Back Forward is a bit strange. I wouldn't think from the start
that it actually goes trough the different opened documents.
Maybe this is because of the lack of tabs from Kate.

Also the window and the view menus should be merged together and some of their options should be moved into the settings manager. (after thinking about it for a while i think that it's prefectly fine to leave them as they are now).

Also please compare the following settings manager

The dolphin's one is on the left and Kate's is on the right.
As you can see it's an huge blank area on Kate's settings manager
The one from dolphin is better organized
Also all the subcategories from a specific topic are arranged in their own tab. Kate could use a better organization.

And now for the real torture. You're going to see my mock-up for a newer Kate editor. It is using elements from dolphin because I'm a really really bad graphic designer :D.

As you can see a bunch of my complaints are "fixed" very nicely in Dolphin.

In the next few days I'll add another mock-up with the settings manager.

/le
Damn i just saw that Dolphin has some nice tabs. I think the habit of trying to ctrl-shift-t for a new tab prevented me from seeing this earlier. Please use your imagination and replace my stupid little close tab icons with the ones from dolphin :P.

/le x2
I'm now on kde and hoping for a new driver from nvidia. X_x

Update: Read the comments below please for additional explanations

A picture is more than 1000 words :).

Ok so this is my first interview so please be gentile :).
For those of you that don't know Exaile is the default music player in the yet to be released Xfce version of Foresight Linux.

Alexandru: ok. first question. So tell me a bit about yourself. (this
isn't really a question no ? :)) but we have to start the "interview"
somehow)
Adam: Well, my name is Adam Olsen. I grew up in Utah and have lived
here my entire life. I currently work as a programmer and sysadmin for
a greeting card company called SendOutCards.com (who knew that a
greeting card company needed programmers?)
I've been programming professionally for about 10 years.
I've also been using Linux for about that long

Alexandru: How did you decide to start the Exaile Project ?
Adam: I was using Amarok on Gnome a little more than two years ago. It
crashed ALL the time, and not only did it crash, when it did, it tried
to launch the KDE reporting tool, which I didn't have installed.

Alexandru: Any particular reason on choosing python / pygtk ?
Adam: About this time my friends were talking about how cool Python
is. I've found that if you want to learn a language, jumping right and
creating something you might actually use is a great way to do it.

Alexandru: What are your future plans for exaile ? I've seen that you
plan a rewrite for it in the 0.3 version.
Adam: Well, right there is the downside of actually writing an entire
project while learning a programming language. There are a lot of
things that could have been done better. Exaile 0.3.0 will be almost
an entire rewrite. In the current version of Exaile, I basically wrote
the core myself. In 0.3.0, it will incorporate ideas from other
developers as well.

Alexandru: Ok one more question. Do you plan on keeping the current
.glade templating system ? It is imho one of the best features right
now.
Adam: Yes. Glade not only allows for custom "themes" (or different
glade files), but it makes coding dialogs and gui elements a lot
easier.

Alexandru: Great. Thanks for your time Adam.