Search results matching tag 'Kubuntu'

Re: Mozilla Expands 3D Support, Adds Revamped Add-On Manager In Firefox 4 Beta

3vi1 — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 21:44:36 GMT

I've been running 4.0b7 on Kubuntu 11.04 for a few weeks and it works great. I've seen a few Flash related issues on a few sites (nothing show stopping), but other than that it works fine.

Wine 1.2 Release Candidate now out!

3vi1 — Sat, 22 May 2010 20:04:07 GMT

Every day, I update my local git source repository and compile/install the latest Wine, to check out the new changes and keep an eye out for regressions. Imagine my surprise yesterday when I saw they bumped the version number, up to Wine 1.2-rc1. The official release statement is at: http://www.winehq.org/announce/1.2-rc1

Wine 1.2 will be only the second "stable" (ongoing support) release since it's creation - the first being Wine 1.0.

This is great news for the general Linux user, because many Linux distros only include patched versions of Wine 1.0 in their default repositories. Wine 1.0 was released almost two years ago, and many features have been added an performance improvements made in that timeframe.

If you're saying "WTF is Wine?" right now, that's understandable. Wine is a complete re-implementation of the Windows APIs, meant to run on multiple platforms (Linux, FreeBSD, OSX). I wrote a bit more about it over on my site when I put together a page on cross-execution (sorry for the certificate warning, I made my own so it's not signed by anyone you trust) that outlines all the options people have when moving away from Windows.

A lot of people will argue that Wine is not necessary, or a "bad" thing because it encourages companies to continue developing solely for Windows. I'd like to think I'm a realist in this arena; I believe that people should have the greatest choice in what they run, and while I will prefer a native solution for performance/support reasons, Wine gives me a much greater number of options in the areas where there will not soon be an equivalent number of native solutions (i.e. games).

For those not already using Wine: If you want to see if your apps will run under Wine on Linux, you can consult the Wine AppDB. I've personally had a 90%+ success rate, but mostly only use it to play Civ4 and CS:S. I have about 20 Windows games installed, and the only game I own that does not work at the moment is Dirt2.

Re: Ubuntu 10.04 Now Available For Loyal Linux Users

3vi1 — Sat, 01 May 2010 04:31:09 GMT

And it's even available to disloyal Linux users and the general public!

>> The new version is10.04 LTS, which is arriving right around a year after 9.10 "KarmicKoala" launched.

6 months after. The .## designations after the version number denote the month of release. It's always released in April and October - so it's always .04 or .10. Come rain or shine, all 'buntu distros are released every 6 months.

>> Anyone dared to download yet? Considering it as a weekend project?

I'm glad you asked! I've been running it (the Kubuntu flavor) since Alpha 1, and will be running Meerkat in a few weeks - because I love the bleeding edge. Heheh

I just put it on the new system HH gave me and it ROCKS. It boots In 60% the time of Windows 7 on the same box, and recognized all the hardware immediately. The install disk even let me resize the NTFS partitions on the C: (sda) and D: (sdb) drives and install the OS without any problems whatsoever.

Full Disclosure: I soon swapped the ATI 5870 card in the system with an nVidia 9800GTX+ from my kids' PC (which primarily runs Vista), because my cursory examination of the proprietary ATI drivers for Linux leads me to believe they *SUCK*. At least, as far as running Windows games under WINE goes (They do seem to work okay for Linux/OpenGL games and 3D desktop accelleration).

Re: Steam for Linux for real this time?

3vi1 — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 11:26:38 GMT

[quote user="TaylorKarras"]

*slap in the face*. I surprisingly forgot, Mac OS X is based on Linux so they can probably do the same thing for Linux although they may have to change some things. I can't believe I forgot Mac OS X was linux based.

[/quote]

Mac OSX is not based on Linux. Mac OSX is based on the Mach kernel, whose history draws pieces from FreeBSD. FreeBSD and Linux are entirely different, independently developed, kernels though both do implement the APIs necessary to make them POSIX compliant to varying degrees.

What this means is that you can recompile the same software to run on most any *nix-type platform, because the different kernels all support a core set of standards. This is why you see many of the same the GNU utilities across every one of these OS's, which tends to confuse people into thinking they're the same underneath, when they're actually very different underneath and only similar at a subset of APIs and above.

I agree with what Bob said in regards to Linux being extremely easy to use nowadays. My parents have used it for almost two years now, and they've literally never, ever, used the command line. Kubuntu 10.04 will be released in about a week and a half; you may want to give it a look (or check out the beta now - though I think the release candidate comes out tomorrow).

-J

Win7 now phoning home every 90 days.

3vi1 — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:29:03 GMT

Apparently Microsoft won their WGA lawsuit on the 10th. To celebrate, they've renamed it WAT and lined up a Win7 patch to make it start looking at your systems every 90 days: http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000681.html.

Get legal, or get Kubuntu.

Now - let's see who here can set the record for the number of times they need to re-authorize due to hardware changes. :)

RE: Google's Chrome Web Browser Finally Arrives On Mac And Linux

3vi1 — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:38:03 GMT

I installed Chrome a couple of days back. I've only used it a couple of times though: The Adblock extensions aren't as nice as FF's yet. I like to unblock specific sites, like HH, where I don't find the ads to be intrusive or irrelevant. Also: There's no equivalent to the FireFTP extension. :(

64-bit Chrome with working Flash 10 (alpha) - on Kubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 (alpha1) w/KDE4.4 (beta1) desktop.

Re: Kubuntu/Xubunut/Ubuntu 9.10

3vi1 — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:16:18 GMT

BTW: I'm not sure if anyone's testing and run into the bug where Flash apps aren't clickable (there are certain pre-requisites: I think you have to be using compiz+compositing on 64-bit), but there's an easy fix: download the new 64-bit flash beta and uninstall the flashplugin-installer package. Place libflashplugin.so in the proper plugins directory and you're good to go. Two of my four systems had this issue and were fixed in this manner.

The only other bug I've noted has to do with keyboard repeat taking affect within flash and Windows games running under Wine - normally those apps wouldn't see the key repeats, because they attempt to poll the hardware in a more direct manner. The problem is actually a bug in Xorg that has already been fixed, and will disappear when the repo packages are updated. The workaround is simple. in your keyboard preferences, turn off keyboard repeat before playing those games.

Kubuntu/Xubunut/Ubuntu 9.10

3vi1 — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:26:52 GMT

Kubuntu 9.10 was released today, as well as the other Ubuntu 9.10 flavors (Xubuntu, Ubuntu).

Here's a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzajPDcJJ5A) of one of the alpha's leading up to this release, if you're not familiar with the KDE desktop.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

RE: Windows 7 prices should come out mid-June

3vi1 — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:09:01 GMT

I can believe the full versions might cost more: It sounds like a calculated plan to get extra money from businesses that skipped Vista, and to gouge OEMs for more per PC.

But, I expect upgrade versions to remain the same cost. They might even be cheaper.

There simply won't be any "killer apps" available that require Win7 at the time of release. So, it makes more sense for them to keep the upgrade cost down and get revenue from more people that otherwise wouldn't have upgraded.

Feature-wise, their desktop already looks less impressive than KDE4.2 and by October they'll be competing with KDE4.3. If they charge more for upgrades, I'd recommend everyone try dual-booting their current versions of Windows with Kubuntu. Heck, I recommend that anyway. :)

Kubuntu 9.04a3 64-bit re-installation

3vi1 — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:39:21 GMT

I had a fun day... well, fun for a geek. I re-installed Kubuntu (using the latest daily CD's, here) so that I could repartition my drives.

Here are the highlights, while still fresh on my mind:

Switched from using SoftRAID to using DMRAID. I specifically used the alternate installer CD because I expected this to be a tougher process. But it turned out that I basically didn't have to do anything after enabling it in the BIOS to get it to work! It was automagically recognized and re-partitioning was a breeze. In contrast, setting up SoftRAID was something I recall as a minor PITA.
Switched from Ext3 to Ext4. Wish I'd done some benchmarking. I've been copying around a lot of data (178GB of Virtual Machines) while restoring my home directory, and it seems a little bit more responsive. But, I don't know if any of that is due to the filesystem change or the switch from Soft to Fake RAID (should be pretty equivalent, since all of the "RAID" motherboards actually make the CPU/OS do the work).

Problems:

AppArmor vs. Akonadi = Akonadi fails to start. Fixed it after finding this.
No sound (at first). It appears that pulseaudio is now installed by default, so I removed it - no loss there. Sound works fine using straight ALSA. Also, I completely forgot to install the ffmpeg libraries at first and thought something was wrong with Amarok for a good 15 minutes or so.

Everything else just worked! I'm now waiting for Ext4 to eat my data or something, to prove this is an alpha.