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Minibuntu – the tiny, minimalist Ubuntu-based distribution

Ubuntu has gained enormous popularity, since Canonical first released Ubuntu back in 2004. There were a lot of Ubuntu spin-off along the way including Ubuntu Christian edition, Ubuntu studio, Embun, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Ubuntu Muslim Edition, Linux Mint, gOS and many more. Some of it made its way as the officially supported Ubuntu version by Canonical.

ubuntu.png

Now comes yet another Ubuntu-based Linux distribution, named Minibuntu. What set itself apart from other distro is, it does not come with a window manager, instead it boots straight into command-line interface bash prompt.

This makes minibuntu suitable for acting as a rescue and emergency Linux boot CD, eventhough the main intention of minibuntu is to help others to create another Linux distribution based on Ubuntu using either UCK or Reconstructor.

To me, Miniubuntu is a nice distro as it provide a starting point for creating a new and customised Linux distribution based on Ubuntu.

Minibuntu can be downloaded from its official website, and is only available for i386 platform only (at this time of writing).

Ref :
Minibuntu Official Website
Minibuntu Launchpad Page

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How to install midori lightweight browser on Ubuntu

Here’s a quick how to install Midori browser. It is a lightweight browser which uses Webkit rendering enginer, the same engine that powers Mac OS X Safari browser.

Midori is a good candidate for an alternative browser if you’ve gotten tired of Mozilla Firefox memory leaking and its not so lightweight feature nowadays.

midori_about.png

1) Edit /etc/apt/sources.lst to include these line
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/stemp/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/stemp/ubuntu gutsy main

2) Update repository by executing,

sudo apt-get update

3) Install midori

sudo apt-get install midori

Note that midori is still under heavy development and quite buggy in this testing release. So expect application freeze or crashes during use.

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Google Maps Now Available in hometown – Alor Setar!

I just discovered today that Google (street) maps is now available for my hometown – Alor Star! Upon checking further I discovered that the street level maps is also available for various other places in the northern part of Malaysia too, including remote areas in Perlias and Kedah, w00t.

Here’s sample of the street map taken from Google Maps
alor-setar.jpg

alor-setar google map

Sungai Petani to Kulim

Check this feature in Google Maps now!

Now I can relate more stuff from my Dopod P800W to Google Maps and vice versa

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I’m going to get a new Desktop PC

Dang seems my 6 years old PC (my Ubuntu PC) is starting to show its age, so I decided to set some budget aside to get a new computer for my workstation. I’m going to use it primarily as my development computer to develop .NET, C and java applications for mobile and embedded device. My current computer, Pentium 4 1.7GHz occasionally slows down to a crawl and plays dead on me with the amount of pressure I put on it (compiling, debugging, profilling).

I’ve a budget of around RM2.3k for a complete system without monitor. I’m looking for an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, with at least 2GB of RAM and 320GB storage. I seldom play graphic intensive game so I don’t mind much about graphic cards. What concern me most is the computer performance when I’m compiling/debugging apps.

I don’t have an exact date when I’m going to get a new PC, but seeing the amount of annoyance I’ve to face with an aging workstation, I will probably get it by the start of next year. Hopefully I could write and improves more applications once I get a new workstation.

Btw, keen readers might notice that I write less frequently nowadays, rest assured this pattern will not continue for long because currently I’m being swamped out by a lot of work that I’ve to do. I’ll be back writing at full pace after this month, and yes according to statistic — November is kinda a slow month for me.

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Enabling automatic update in Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

Some people asked me about why automatic update hasn’t kicked in their Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. After investigating, I found out that this problem only affects a small portion of Ubuntu users that perform fresh Ubuntu installation on their computer.

It seems that in Gutsy, the installer choose to enable CDROM package installation by the default and this might has an effect to automatic update. To remedy this problem, you need to go to System->Software Sources and uncheck the “CDrom with Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon” option and check all the other options.

cdrom-apt.jpg

Your will be able to receive automatic update after that!