Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty Jackalope, is out

The latest Ubuntu, and quite possibly the best till date, has been officially released by Canonical.  This release is available in three editions – desktop, server, and the newly introduced “netbook remix”. Jaunty ships with the latest open source tools available, boots much faster than previous versions, and brings you a thoroughly revamped notification system. Take the tour for an official insight into what’s hot in this release. Ubuntu ’s official forks – Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Edubuntu – have also been upgraded to version 9.04.

Get Ubuntu Jaunty

• If you’re using Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex), navigate to System > Administration > Update Manager. A notification stating about the latest version will appear; just click through and follow the instructions to upgrade. People with older versions of Ubuntu (8.04 or earlier) need to do a stepwise upgrade to get Jaunty. For example, Ubuntu 8.04 users will have to first upgrade to 8.10 through Update Manager and then to 9.04.
• You can also grab the ISO file using this link, or via torrents.
• Windows users can try Wubi, which’ll download the Ubuntu package and install it as an application within Windows! This can simply be uninstalled from Add / Remove Programs (in XP) or Programs and Features (in Vista) any time.

Ubuntu 9.04 is just 3 days away!

Here’s a little reminder that the latest Ubuntu, codenamed Jaunty Jackalope, is just round the corner.

Ubuntu 9.04 will ship with Gnome 2.26, X.Org Server 1.6, Linux kernel 2.6.28, experimental ext4 filesystem support, and a thoroughly revamped notification system, among other improvements.

You can get a countdown banner for your blog / site from here. And it you’re too excited to wait, go grab the release candidate now!

Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference : A unique and concise guide for everyday Ubuntu use

Written by Keir Thomas, and claimed to be the world’s most widely read Ubuntu book, Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference has a lot to offer for beginners and advanced users alike. The book,

• focuses on core competencies and background knowledge needed to be an expert Ubuntu user;
• is accessible and easy to understand, even for first time Linux users;
• covers the latest Ubuntu versions – 8.04 and 8.10.

The book is available for just $9.94 at Amazon, but you can grab a free PDF version from the home page. If you’ve been wanting to try out Linux (err, Ubuntu Linux), this guide should definitely be the place to start.

Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference – Home | Amazon

My wishlist for Jaunty Jackalope <Ubuntu 9.04>

It’s been two months since Intrepid was released, and soon we’ll be jumping on our toes for the next Ubuntu – Jaunty Jackalope. I’ve been an avid Ubuntu user since Feisty and I’ve always waited excitedly for new releases, until now. Seeing almost the same desktop for almost two years is kind of killing my appetite for Ubuntu. Ok, there HAS been a lot of improvement but none of these has been substantial. That being said, I’ll still keep my fingers crossed for a hopefully fantastic Jaunty. This is my wishlist for Jaunty, do share yours as well!

Enter VLC, Banshee; exit Totem, Rhythmbox

VLC is easily one of the best media players out there, and with the latest 0.9 series it has become quite user friendly. It would be just so much better to have VLC instead of Totem in Jaunty. Same goes for Banshee, which I feel is a better replacement for Rhythmbox. Totem and Rhythmbox are Gnome defaults, but then Ubuntu has done away with Gnome products like Epiphany (to include Firefox), and Cheese.

Can we have a better F-Spot, pleeeeezzz?

Most applications in Ubuntu work very smoothly in proper hardware, except that damned F-Spot. Even on my Pavilion laptop with 3GB memory, an AMD dual core processor, and 256MB ATI GPU, F-Spot surprisingly chokes and yells for help while importing my digicam photos. I’ve a very pleasant experience with Windows Live Photo Gallery, and a really horrid time with F-Spot. I would certainly love it to get smoother and more robust.

A more thorough Help and Support

The built-in Help items in Ubuntu are just too little. A more comprehensive Help tool would be a good addition. It can be even better if the Ubuntu Help can import items from the Internet, like Windows Help does.

Do something about that package updating technique

It’s utterly ridiculous that no Linux distro provides updates to big releases of their included software. For example, if a distro version comes with OpenOffice.org 2.4, and OOo 3.0 is released meanwhile, you won’t be “officially” be upgraded to the new version – rather you’ve got to wait for a new version of the distro to use the new version of the software. For this reason, Ubuntu users will have to wait till April to get officially supported OOo 3, even though it was released more than 2 months ago.

I’m not sure if it’s possible, but it would be great if we get immediate updates for new software versions.

Release a special Ubuntu version with Ubuntu Restricted Extras installed

The Ubuntu Restricted Extras is a great package to install support for most proprietary stuff on your Ubuntu. Thing is it isn’t installed by default, meaning people without an Internet connection basically CANNOT use Ubuntu on their desktops. Canonical should release a special Ubuntu version with these restricted extras package installed.

Yearly cycles for new versions, half-yearly cycles for service packs

Releasing a new OS every 6 months is simply overkill. Look at Canonical’s state – at any given time it has support anywhere between three to four different Ubuntu versions. Oh, and there are Kubuntu, Gobuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu as well! It would be much better if Canonical decides to release new versions once every year. Of course this will be sensible only if that package updating, which I talked about above, is modified. 6 month cycles can rather be used for service pack type releases.

 

So. That’s my wishlist. Linux geeks, what do you think? Pour in your comments! :)

The Much Improved Hardy Heron

Canonical has made my birthday for the second year running (today's my 18th birthday, by the way). Last year I had received the wonderful Feisty Fawn (Ubuntu 7.04) CD s via their ShipIt! service on my 17th b'day, and today I received my Hardy Heron CD! I have read a lot about Hardy since it's beta was out and I was dying to try it out, so the CD was really a pleasant surprise (more so, as my Gutsy CD never arrived...).

Source : UbuntuOS

As mentioned earlier, I had migrated back to Windows XP for better blogging. But this CD made me forget everything and I just wanted to get Ubuntu back on my computer.Thankfully, the Hardy Heron Live CD includes the Wubi installer, with which you can install Ubuntu right within Windows (and uninstall it whenever you want). I went for it and Hardy was up and running within half an hour. A quick glance made it clear than Hardy is indeed a great improvement over Feisty (I haven't tried Gutsy). Three hours hence, I have already explored quite a bit of the newest Ubuntu. I have plans start my own "Ubuntu for Beginners" tips in near future; till then here's a quick "what's-great-and-what's-not" in Hardy Heron.

The Improvements
1.The UI has been greatly refined. Window borders are smoother, there are better inbuilt themes available (Human-Murrine especially) and desktop effects are present by default. Icons are sexier and there are better screen resolution options as well.

2.I am on Firefox 3! I have had trouble with beta products in the past, and that kept me from trying the betas of Firefox 3 in Windows. But this browser is inbuilt in Hardy and works without a glitch! Firefox 3 is easily much better than 2, which is what I still have in Windows.

3.GIMP 2.4 is awesome. I use Paint.NET in Windows, as it's lighter and still has everything that I need. Nevertheless, GIMP has a Photoshop like royalty about it. The perspective clone feature in the latest GIMP looks cool, and I will be trying it out soon.

4.Tomboy looks promising. I haven't quite started using it, but it feels much better than the old version in Feisty.

5.The NTFS editing feature is neat, though I will probably not need it. Looks like I will be needing it a lot...it was very helpful while creating screenshots for my article on Mozilla Prism.

6.Rhythmbox has got a more complete feeling about it. Addition of Jamendo and Magnatune stores has spiced it up.

7.Hardy recognizes and mounts my sister's Nokia N-72, something which Feisty didn't do.

8.Brasero is simple and un-Nero-ish, which is what I like. I use BurnAware free edition in Windows, and both have a very similar layout.

9.Geyes is great as ever. Everyone who has seen our desktop just loves those prowling eyes.

10.YouTube search integration into Totem makes my favorite movie player even better.

11.I haven't quite got grasp over this PolicyKit thing. It's supposedly very useful, which I should be finding out in a couple of minutes. I am comfortable with it now. Nice add to Ubuntu.

12.I had heard a lot of Gnome Do, so I downloaded it right after installing Hardy. It looks very handy at the moment, but I haven't yet utilized it completely.

13.The Help browser has been revamped for the better. I am still pretty much a Linux n00b, so I have to fire up the Help menus every once in a while.

14.The World Clock Applet is really cool, but our town Bhubaneswar isn't up in the list yet. I had to adjust my settings to the nearby metro Kolkata. :(

15.I hate to admit that I was on Gaim all the time on Feisty. Pidgin 2.4 feels so much better, smoother and simpler. Many feel it's boring, but I will keep using it full blast in Windows and Ubuntu.

16.F-Spot is hard to beat. Picasa or FastStone of Windows don't match up to it at all.



Things that could have been better...
Hardy is certainly a big improvement over Feisty (and probably Gutsy as well), but there are some minor tweaks that would have made Hardy even better.

1.I am not sure if there is any name of this feature in Windows. Anyway, I will try to explain :
Using the inbuilt CD writing wizard in Windows XP / Vista, you can write data to a CD-R which already contains some data. This is really helpful as I have a bunch of old project CD s containing now-useless things like a single document or a presentation (which are never larger than 100K). These CD s can't be erased for reuse, but with the CD wizard in Windows I can easily add more data to them.
This feature wasn't present in Feisty, and this isn't there in Hardy either (you will asked to enter a rewritable or a blank disk if you try this). With CD s getting obsolete, it may not be really a big deal for you anyway.

2.Plugins added into Firefox can be uninstalled only via Add / Remove Programs or Synaptic Package Manager. It would have been a better choice to provide an uninstall option right within Firefox. If there is a way to do this, please tell me.

3.No exciting games are available by default in Ubuntu, yet. There are some pretty thrilling games exclusively for Linux, but they are all massive size downloads - something which my limited broadband doesn't allow me to get.

Update:
4.Nautilus is better than ever before, but still not quite in the league of Windows Explorer or Konqueror. I would love it to shed it's simplicity and get a bit more robust.





These small snags apart, Ubuntu Hardy Heron has won me over. You can go ahead and give it a try as well, I am sure you'll like it.


Is there any more cool / useful feature in Hardy than I can try out? Feel free to share via a comment. :)

Better Webpage Viewing (Ubuntu Starter Tip)

The Firefox browser in Ubuntu uses the DejaVu Sans font by default and overrides the default font selection of all web pages. This may not matter most of the time, but some web pages look ugly / distorted in this font (especially if you have a low resolution CRT monitor, like me). Take a look at this portion of the Yahoo! Sports page to know what I mean :

As you can see, the DejaVu Sans font is just too big and the headlines overlap each other.

This problem can be addressed in two ways :

1.Every time you open Firefox, go to View > Text Size and select Decrease. Alternately, you can press the Ctrl + - . Note that you will have to do this every time, because the font size is automatically reset to normal when you close Firefox.

2.There is a better and permanent solution to this. Go to Edit > Preferences and open the Control tab. Click the Advanced button under Fonts & Colors, and select the check box just before this statement : "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above".

An immediate effect can be marked on the same Yahoo! Sports page, which is now displayed in it's default Arial font:

You can fix font problems in the Windows version of Firefox in a similar way (though you are unlikely to have any problem at all). However, take care that you need to go to Tools > Options and not Edit > Preferences. :)

The Mega Linux Countdown: Hardy Sulphur!

It's time yet again for the new releases of two of the best Linux distros - Ubuntu and Fedora. Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) is coming out on April 24th, Fedora 9 (Sulphur) will be released 6 days later. You can see the countdown tickers below (if you are on a feed reader, please visit the blog to see the tickers).






:)

If Ever Linux Rules....

Can you think of any changes that will take place if Linux dethrones Windows and Microsoft goes broke? Well, I just thought it over and these ideas came to my mind. Most of them are fictional and are meant for amusement only. Hope you enjoy!

• Penguins will be a happy lot. They will send lots of flying kisses from the Antarctic. Some will even swim north to meet their celebrity cousin, Tux.
• The guys at Google will be on wild celebration. Some of the Microsoft folk will join Al Qaeda to drop bombs on the Google office.
• Antivirus companies will close down. Headed by Symantec, they will open their own bakeries.
• Less PC users will die from the shock of getting a blue screen of death, or on finding all their important documents and photos missing.
  
• On the contrary, death rate among illegal hackers will rise surprisingly. Some will start funding Microsoft to revive the good old days of Windows. Some others will try to target Linux, only to be pecked away by Tux.
  
• Ships usually sink due to storms, faulty technique or accidents with icebergs. But now more ships will sink due to overloading of the free Ubuntu ShipIt! CDs.
  
• Intel Pentium will rise again - most Linux distributions run super fast on Pentium IV and 512 MB RAM without ever slowing down!
  
• Steve Ballmer will be caught using Linux on his PC. Reason - Windows Vista too heavy on the poor guy's pocket!
• Devastated, Adobe will slash the price of Photoshop from $700 to $7.00. People will still prefer the free and open source GIMP.
  
• Linux users will become game maniacs as the gaming companies turn their attention to Tux.
  
• Names like Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player will be featured in history books.
• Computer viruses will disappear. Biological viruses will be happy again - they will be no longer ignored like they were in the days of the computer virus. A search for "virus" in Google will display results for biological viruses, and not the computer ones, at the top. To show their gratefulness to Linux users, the viruses will stop spreading AIDS.
  
• Netscape Navigator will rise again and will be an instant hit. However, there will be no enmity with Firefox or Flock.
  
• Torrent sites like The Pirate Bay and Mininova will join already dead rival Demonoid, in Hell.
• Apple's happiness at Microsoft's ruin will be cut short by Linux's domination. However unlike Microsoft, Linux will recognise Apple for it's rock solid operating system, Mac OSX.

Alas! Linux is not going dominate the PC world and Microsoft is not becoming a "who-cares?" entity in the foreseeable future . I have been a full time Ubuntu user myself for almost a year and I find it pretty solid, but there are definitely some small improvements needed to make it a serious contender of Windows. And Windows users, please don't think I hate Windows or anything! I like both Windows XP and Windows Vista. As you can see, PC Ton!c is almost entirely about Windows.

:)

P.S. Oh yes, I had Chemistry yesterday and I have done pretty well. Today, I was reading Physics since 9 in the morning (it's 3:00 PM now), so I decided to take a break and write down something funny. Hope you liked it!

Linux And Linux Distributions ~ An Introduction

Linux is a Unix based operating system kernel. It is an open source development and the kernel source code is available to all for modification without any restrictions. Linux, by default, is a complex command line based operating system and is unsuitable for personal use. However due to it's universal availability, many other organisations and individuals have greatly modified the source code and brought out highly graphical and user friendly operating systems. These Linux-based operating systems are called Linux distributions or, more popularly, Linux distros. It's one of these Linux distributions that we use at home, for servers etc.
There are a large number of Linux distributions available today; however some of these have become very popular due their user-friendly nature or stability. RedHat, Debian, Gentoo and Slackware were some of the first major Linux distributions. These distributions greatly developed upon the Linux kernel to make it more user-friendly and remove the bugs. Like the Linux kernel, the source code of these distributions are again available for all, which led to later companies further developing upon these modified codes (rather than starting from scratch with the Linux kernel ). You can refer THIS Wikipedia page for a detailed list of the major Linux distributions and their derivatives.
Like the Linux kernel, many of the Linux distributions are completely free to use and can be downloaded legally from the internet. Canonical, makers of Ubuntu and it's derivatives, are known for their ShipIt! service, by which they ship Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu CDs for free all over the world (it's not a misprint!). There are some non-free Linux distributions too, which boast of added functionalities and greater resemblance with Windows.

You can find more information on Linux and some of it's major distributions from their Wikipedia articles:
1.Linux
~ home page
~ commercial home page
~ Wikipedia
2.Comparison of Linux distributions
~ Wikipedia
3.Debian Linux
~ home page
~ Wikipedia
4.RedHat Linux
~ home page
~ Wikipedia
5.Ubuntu
~ home page
~ Wikipedia
6.SuSE
~ home page
~ Wikipedia
7.Mandriva
~ home page
~ Wikipedia
8.Fedora Core
~ home page
~ Wikipedia
9.LinSpire
~ home page
~ Wikipedia
10.openSuSE
~ home page
~ Wikipedia

P.S. Please let me know through a comment or a mail, if I have posted something wrong!
:)

A flavor of Linux in your Windows

You can now use Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution that is based on Debian, as a normal application from WITHIN your Windows! Wubi - a free and open source software, is the unofficial installer that enables installing and uninstalling Ubuntu as any other application in Windows. There is no need to partition your disk either, as Ubuntu can be saved in any of your Windows drives. During start-up, you can choose to boot either with Windows or Ubuntu (dual boot feature). See these videos and tutorials for more details:

Using Ubuntu 7.04 within Windows - CNET video

How to dual boot Ubuntu 7.04 using Wubi?


Wubi Reviews & Download - Softpedia
Wubi Reviews & Download - Download.com
The Daily Download - Download.com
Wubi Information - Wikipedia
Wubi home page
Linux
Ubuntu home page

If you like Ubuntu, do explore it!

:)



P.S. I use Ubuntu.