Of TED and Meerkats

Hello yet again my peers. Two things this update.

Chosen TED talk: Open-Source economies

I choose this topic because I am an active supporter of the open source movement, I even work for a group that is making it's own custom Linux (we are not trying to compete with Ubuntu, we are just making a new Linux crafted for a certain group of people). Anyway I figure it will be fun to see how collaborative efforts are helping to change and evolve the way things work.

Here is the video:

Maverick Meerkat (Ubuntu Linux 10.10)

Maverick (Ubuntu releases are always referred to as the adjective for short) is the newest release of Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu is made by Canonical a company founded by Mark Shuttleworth, yes the same Shuttleworth that went on the spaceflight. Ubuntu gets it's name from the African philosophy of Ubuntu or "Humanity to others". Shuttleworth is from South Africa by the way. Anyway as part of a long standing tradition Ubuntu's numbering scheme is last to digits of the year a dot then the two digits for the mouth, and since it is on a six mouth release cycle the last to number are always 04 or 10. The naming scheme is alphabetically and done adjective and then animal. The logo is called the circle of friends and is supposed to represent three different skinned people in different colored shirts holding hands in a circle. Anyways enough about the name and logo. A new version of Ubuntu usually brings a few new features, some times the changes are major, like the switch from Add/Remove Applications to the Ubuntu Software Center. Some are mostly technical like the switch form grub to grub2.

On the topic of the origin of the name Ubuntu lets have Nelson Mandela explain it (this video actually came as a sample file in a release of Ubuntu):

New Stuff :

• Pay option and PPA (non-official download channels) support added to Software Center.
• Shotwell replaces F-Spot
• Ubuntu One now features phone contact backup and is now integrated into nautilus (default file browser), now allowing you to select files other then Ubuntu One to back up.
• Rhythmbox (the default music player) is now has previous, pause/play, and next buttons in the sound menu.
• Nautilus now has a Coverflow view (press F4 to activate) and a built-in terminal (press F7 to activate).

 Problems I have had:

• Compiz and the new Xorg have a problem involving the wallpaper plugin. (Not a super easy to set up plugin so this error does not affect everyone) - FIXED IN LATEST XORG UPDATE
• Some PPAs do not yet support the maverick meerkat, you can either remove them and wait or rename them to lucid (later is not recommended for normal users as it is at an intermediate level to do and may cause dependency errors)
• Info boxes on google earth are not working, looking into if this error is from the package, if my 64-bit system is missing some 32-bit system libraries, and such.
• Those Funny Funguloids now starts but crashes. (error in game library that needs patching)
• Wine (windows emulation layer) sound is creacking on some games. (possible error in wine sound running trough pluseaudio)

Hallelujahs (stuff that works for me finally):

•  Earcandy (fading sound manager, ex: music fades out when someone skypes you and fades in when they hang up) now works.

Well that is all the stuff I have space for. Hopefully i can do a demo video by next post. Till then have a good day.

Fall Break

So end another week. Given it was only 3 days... which i found quite nice. I have had a busy 3 days, a Psychology test on Monday, the last day of FYS101 with a trip to the UT garden (beautiful place... was cold as heck that day though... really from 90 to 40, what is with the weather this fall). Sorry i looked like an idiot on Monday, lying about having technical problems, I had a very busy weekend of homework and had forgot about our presentations, and I figured technical difficulty would let me have till Wednesday, never occurred to just ask to turn it in then, guess i am used to the "due on the assigned day, even when there are other times to turn it in, Unless you had a problem with the presentation. But this serves as a lesson to all, one, ask your professor if you can have more time if you need it and the thing has other days you can turn it in and two, don't lie about technical problems to someone who can use linux X3. Anyway, i have been losing a lot of stuff lately, my mailbox combo, my dragon claw holding a marble necklace (i hope i left it at home), my Ubuntu install (When i was tying to reinstall it i split my personal file from it and then tried to reinstall, but i didn't move the file because it was 30gb, but then the uninstall deleted it and i could not recover it, but other then a few IM logs i only lost some notes but i managed to get copies from my peers), and this little rubber thing from my laptop cooling stand. Also this coming Sunday, on the 10th, Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" is released, so i might review it for you guys. Oh and my contextual analysis will be on the Hitler image again. Have a great fall break.