Posts tagged ubuntu
2014 – Windows XP Deadline
Dec 30th
Its time for a shift. Windows XP, the longtime staple of industries around the world, has a deadline. It will no longer be supported by Microsoft in 2014. Because of this companies will either need to upgrade to Windows 7, or some sort of alternative. Windows 7 costs been 4-6 thousand dollars for a 30 license pack. If your company has thousands of computer this is a whole lot of money. Why not switch to Linux, it is free. Is free bad? Is free not good? There are many people that do not like free, which is just strange. Not liking Ubuntu is like someone coming up to you and saying “here take this for free”, and you saying “no thanks I don’t want it”. What a strange notion that Linux is not liked by millions.
Ubuntu can replace the standard workstation. There are some thinks holding back the switch. The main thing is applications that require .net framework. Its really messed up that there is no support for .net framework in Linux. Using Wine .net framework can easily be installed, especially with Wine tricks, but using programs that depend on its functionality is another story. Various frontends to database applications use .net to access the server. Is there an alternative application, made by the company, that does not depend on .net? If your company has thousands of computers, and you can save over a million dollars just in Windows 7 license fees, is it not worth investigating? You’d be surprised there are many companies out there that would rather spend the million dollars than investigate if implementing an alternative is possible.
Archivemount – Mount Zip, Rar, Tar, and Bz2 Archives
Dec 26th
Hate unzipping an archive to view, or add files? Why not just mount the entire package and edit it like a regular folder. Archivemount does exactly this. On Ubuntu install the dependencies to build the binary. You need fuse, and its development package, and you need libarchive and its dev package. I forget the exact names of the files but use:
sudo apt-cache search fuse
I think the dev package for fuse is libfuse-dev. Then do the same for libarchive, which I think the dev package is libfuse-dev. With the dependencies satisfied download archivemount:
There is a pending request for a package to be added to the Ubuntu repositories, but everything works fine, and is rather straight forward when installing from source. Unzip the package, configure it, make it, and install it. It will now be a binary with a global path. The installer even adds a convenient nautilus script integrated into the right click drop down menu. Just right click on a compressed package and select archivemount. It will show up on your Ubuntu desktop just like a mounted partition or drive. Unmount by right clicking the mounted directory and selecting, you guessed it, unmount. Now zip up anything that you want to save space. Depending on the files you can save a small amount of space or a lot. With small text files, and source code you will save a fair amount, but with images and videos you will save less. You can probably zip your entire home directory and mount it on login. I’ll take a look at that when I have some time.
This is an interesting way to deal with file compression without compressing the entire filesystem.
KDE Desktop Option – Various Environments
Dec 8th
Now that I can logout to GDM I have realized a couple of things. The first thing is that Ubuntu 9.10 does not support modification of GDM. This must be because of various changes / upgrades. But there is no option to install themes or modifications in any graphical way. I’m not working really hard to figure out how to modify things, but I’m not incredibly disappointed with the way things look or work.
I also installed KDE. It installs easy on Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
Then on the GDM it gives you a desktop session option. Toggle the drop down menu, and log in as normal to an alternative desktop environment. KDE is a nice change, I have been using Gnome for the longest time. Things work entirely different on KDE, and it will give me an opportunity to investigate something new.
Ubuntu Karmic – Codecs for DVD, MPG, AVI, and All the Rest
Nov 1st
I’ve hit this topic before, but nowadays its become much more simpler. In older releases of Ubuntu you needed to add the codecs separately, and sometimes even add a third party repository. No you just have to install the restricted extras package.
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
Now you can play for music, your videos, and watch your oldschool DVD if you still have them. I recommend using the default video player totem, but there are others. The popular ones are:
totem-gstreamer
totem-xine
gxine
VLC
Each one has its feature, but ultimately each will do the same thing; play your files. I used VLC for a while, but totem-gstreamer is will integrated into Ubuntu, and seems to work just fine.
Ubuntu Bugs in Release Candidate – Hating
Oct 28th
There are several posts going around about a bug in the Ubuntu Karmic release candidate. One post details the lack of the 64 bit installer being able to detect multiple sata hard drives.
“The 9.10RC Karmic Koala ubiquity disk partitioning steps (#4, #5 in the installation screens) seem to have regressions when booting the AMD64 ubuntu live desktop CD on systems with multiple disks.
This is a shame of a bug to be exploited by haters. Once Ubuntu is up and running it cannot be compared to Windows. It is much more stable, will run for months without needing to be shutdown. There is no worry of viruses, and spyware, and 99% of applications have a version that will run. The only two applications, that I can think of, that will not run on Linux is iTunes, and Quicken. THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES THOUGH, and always a way to do what you want to do.
The only reason Windows is liked more than Linux is because the majority of humanity is NOT TECH SAVVY. If a problem is encountered in Linux, Google is your friend. There is always a solution! It is worthwhile to find the solution, to get Ubuntu working, because of the benifits.
1) No more viruses or spyware. There are very few bad things that can happen when using Linux.
2) Stability, and no need to defragment. Your machine will run for months or years without needing to reboot.
One of the only reason to use Windows is for games. Drivers for top end video cards, and the games themselves, are generally only supported on Windows.
