Ubuntu

ZevenOS - Does it recapture the flavor of BeOS?

BeOS was a much loved and highly advanced desktop operating system that ceased active development in 2001. ZevenOS is a Ubuntu 11.10 based system (with a bit of help from Xubuntu) that attempts to recapture some of the BeOS look and feel.

Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 Enters beta

There are a wealth of changes which can be made to an Ubuntu system that sit in a category that is half way between the obscure and the genuinely useful. Ubuntu Tweak is utility that exposes these options with a handy GUI.

Books Lens

If you are an Ubuntu user and a fan of the new Unity interface, you might be interested in a new lens in development by David Callé. The Books Lens provides a real-time search interface for e-books. It currently interfaces with Google Books, Project Gutenberg and Forgotten Books. By the time you read this, that list probably will have grown.

Distro Spotlight: Bodhi Linux

Small, fast, light and easy to customize - we’ve heard it all before - but I’d say that Bodhi Linux has enough individual character to warrant consideration.

The Post Penguicon Unity Unification Story

This past weekend, I was a "Nifty Guest" at Penguicon. Being a nifty guest is both an honor and a curse. On one hand, you get that fancy "NIFTY" on your name badge, but on the other hand you need to dance like a monkey whenever asked. Thankfully my dancing was held to a minimum this year.

German Company Switches 10,000 machines to Ubuntu

German insurance company LVM has switched 10,000 laptop and desktop machines over to Ubuntu Linux with the help of Ubuntu creator Canonical (announcement). Some early reports on the net have hailed this as a victory for Linux, but it seems like the company was already a mixed shop of Windows and Linux machines with a long history of reliance on open source software.

No Ubuntu Default Extras Install

The Ubuntu Technical Board has voted not to install the non-free extras package by default during a standard Ubuntu Install. This an option that, if selected, installs proprietary software including hardware drivers, media codecs and the Flash player. It has been opt-in rather than opt out since its first appearance.

Canonical To Drop Support For Ubuntu 9.10

With an announcement on the security mailing list, Canonical has confirmed that support for Ubuntu 9.10 will cease on April 29 2011. This came as no surprise as it adheres to the expected support cycle of a .10 Ubuntu release, and 9.10 is now 18 months old.

Customize a Distro with Remastersys

Remastersys is a complete system backup tool, but it can also be used to create your own customized remix of an Ubuntu or Debian installation. Basically, you customize a running system and create an install disk that will recreate it. If you've ever wanted to create your own distribution, you won't believe how simple this is to use. Mikebuntu, here we come...

A Kernel By Any Other Name

For legacy reasons we standardized our environment on Ubuntu Server. Generally when a new Ubuntu LTS release comes out, we, like many others, start deploying any new installations on the new release while we start planning upgrades for our most out-of-date servers.

Spotlight on Linux: Puppy Linux 5.2

Puppy Linux began life as a really cool small-sized Linux distribution designed primarily for lower specification hardware while still providing most of the amenities that make Linux fun and usable. It included lots of original utilities and tools for completing tasks and configurations without a lot of resource overhead.

Google Linux search suggestions

Google Inc. continues to make incremental improvements to web search, and in this vein, Instant search was added in 2010. For better or worse, the accompanying search suggestions cannot be disabled. This drop down list is intended to save time, but it also gives some clues about what other people are searching for.

Ubuntu update policy change is probably a good thing

Despite some premature reports on the net, Canonical isn’t moving to a rolling release schedule for Ubuntu. However, the organisation is open to making some changes to the way that some software packages are updated. It’s seems likely that a mechanism that supports the adding of up to date application packages outside of the normal software repository updates is probably on the cards, and I’d say that it’s about time.

Spotlight on Linux: ZevenOS-Neptune 1.9.1

ZevenOS is a German-born project that offers Debian-based and Ubuntu-based versions of their BeOS-like system. ZevenOS is based on Ubuntu (Xubuntu) and ZevenOS-Neptune is based on Debian Testing. The main purpose is to preserve some of the features of BeOS in a modern, capable operating system.

When is a Gnome Not a Gnome? In Ubuntu 11.04!

At the Ubuntu Devloper Summit on Monday, it was announced that Ubuntu 11.04 will ship with Unity as its default shell.  It will still focus on Gnome applications, and depend heavily on the Gnome libraries -- but the default interface will be Unity.  For those unfamiliar with Unity, it's the default shell for the Netbook Edition of Ubuntu.

Centralized Logging with a Web Interface

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a web interface to the logs on your central log server? Well, dream no more because this one is a reality thanks to LogAnalyzer (aka phplogcon). Let's take a look at how to setup both it and its suggested syslog variant, rsyslog, on a central log server.

Guerrilla Tactics to Force Screen Mode in Ubuntu

Readers of my previous posts will know about the bad luck I've had when it comes to getting the screen setup on Linux, particularly with Ubuntu Linux. It's a particularly annoying problem when the hardware detection goes wrong and one is presented with a list of unsuitable screen modes.

Using Ubuntu as a thin client

Over the last few years there have been quite a few articles discussing the uses and advancements of the rdesktop application for Linux users. Rdesktop is an application designed to allow Linux users to access the remote desktop feature of Windows based machines, specifically servers.