Ubuntu Global Jam, Does the new Ubuntu have “The Lynx effect?” & Oggcamp 10 – Advocating Ubuntu

Posted: March 28, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: linux, Ubuntu | Leave a comment »

This weekend has been busy!

Lets take it from the top!

Friday

I downloaded the latest ISO of Ubuntu 10.04 Beta (64bit), backed up my hard drive to my external drive, then spent a few hours installing Windows 7 (I know, its crap, but I need it to play my games), http://www.playonlinux.com is not reliable enough for me to use it on a day to day basis, but I hope it will be one day.

After installing Windows 7, I installed Ubuntu, the installer is slick and easy to use, and within 20 minutes I had a working desktop.

My laptop now dual boots Windows and Ubuntu, which it has since I bought it.

So when I rebooted and logged back in I did the customary “sudo apt-get update” then “sudo apt-get upgrade” to ensure that all of my packages are up to date.

Few upgrades later I was in business.

First impressions?

  • The buttons are in the wrong place, but I like it.
  • Love the background, but changed it pretty quick.
  • Love the fact that I have an ATI card, but I get compiz out of the box, with no proprietary drivers
  • Gnome-panel is very buggy, crashing at times (bug reported)
    • I keep losing icons from the panel, so a temporary fix is to press Alt+F2, and type in the box “gnome-panel –replace”, this forces the panel to reload, but I lost the Mail / Gwibber icons.
  • Broadcast, the social networking part of Ubuntu, good idea, but needs work before release

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Saturday & Sunday

I was unable to attend the Global Jam @ Mad Lab Manchester on Saturday (apologies to all involved), but I did manage to take part from home.

I logged 11 bugs with Ubuntu 10.04,

  • Segfaults in CouchDB
  • Npviewer.bin errors
  • Gnome-panel crashing
  • Suspend and resume causing an issue with the kernel (with a massive core dump that I reported)
  • Gwibber crashing (linked to CouchDB from what I can see)

I also logged a bug for Inkscape 0.47, where if you group two items together, and one has a stroke or fill property of blur, that the blurred item inherits the properties of the other item.

I also helped a new friend Raymii with their project EasyConverter 0.4 he needed a guinea pig to test the release. So habtool (http://identi.ca/habtool) and myself volunteered.

The project is an easy to use conversion tool, that allows conversion of varios audio file formats using ffmpeg in the backend

After an hour of tinkering, messages and a large http://pastebin.com/ file that clearly showed my taste in music ;) the final product worked!

Well done to Raymii http://identi.ca/raymii & habtool

And finally…I need some help….please

In 4 weeks it will be Oggcamp http://oggcamp.org/ and I have volunteered to setup and man an area in the exhibition hall. http://ideas.oggcamp.org/activities

I intend to advocate the use of Ubuntu, and provide face to face support to users.

What I need are volunteers, passionate people who can help me spread Ubuntu, and inform others.

Are you interested, if so let me know

Twitter @biglesp

Identi.ca @lesp

Thanks

Les

Blackpool LUG, Ubuntu, Oggcamp, Barcamp Blackpool 2010…and other musings

Posted: March 20, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: linux, Linux Outlaws, Ubuntu | Leave a comment »

It’s been a while hasn’t it?

Well lets not dwell on what has been, let us look forward to what will be…

Blackpool Linux User Group

http://www.pcrecycler.co.uk/club/


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I joined the LUG about a month ago, and it a very enjoyable experience.
Lots of different people all using free and open source software for different reasons. We get together weekly and either focus on one particular topic, or splinter into smaller groups, all looking at different subjects.
Last week we split into 3 groups.

  • Group one looked at installing a printer on a netbook. (Normally CUPS would handle this, but this printer was not avaialable in CUPS).
  • Group two looked at setting up and using a drupal CMS to create a basic website.
  • Group three looked at an alpha of Ubuntu 10.04, on an Acer Aspire Revo.

Every week is different, but we are introducing a focused session every month, where we concentrate on one particular aspect of open source software or computing in general. For example the last focused session was a beginners guide to web design.

If you live in the Blackpool area, then please do come along and join in the fun.

Ubuntu 10.04

Its almost that time of year again (well it happens twice a year, unlike Christmas)

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/beta1

The latest version of Ubuntu will be released on April 29th 2010, but there is currently a new beta version for testers / eager users to take a look at.

It also has a new “sleek” looking user interface https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand

Go and download a copy now, try it as a live CD, see what you think.

Theres also a Global Jam, on the 27th and 28th of March in Manchester https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ManchesterJam10-04 come along and help make Ubuntu the best distribution available.

Oggcamp 10

http://oggcamp.org/

The second live unconference, hosted by the guys from linux outlaws http://linuxoutlaws.com/ and the Ubuntu UK podcast http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/

This year it will be hosted in the city of Liverpool. It is a really good event, lots to see and do, so I urge you to get there and enjoy the fun.

Also, on the 30th April there will be a live gig hosted by Dan Lynch (Linux Outlaws) of his Rathole Radio podcast http://ratholeradio.org/.

Barcamp Blackpool 2010

Last year I was lucky enough to attend this event http://barcampblackpool.com/ and I had a real good laugh. There were talks on all manner of topics

  • Crowd sourced web development
  • Geo caching
  • Pokebook
  • And lots lots more

This years event is on the 3rd July, and will be hosted at the Paradise Room, Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

For more info follow http://twitter.com/bcblackpool

And finally

Do you like a lean, mean, fast and functional Linux experience, then give this a try…

http://crunchbanglinux.org/

Crunchbang Linux, once an offshoot of Ubuntu, is now based on Debian itself, and it is a really good distribution.

I use it on my eee pc (701sd if you must know).

The latest version is an Alpha, so it will have bugs, so please don’t use it on your production machines, unless you like taking a risk

http://crunchbanglinux.org/downloads/statler/alpha-01/

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