Tag: opensource

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New features in Ubuntu Hardy Heron (due in 20 days)

Though the main focus of the upcoming release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) is for long term support and bug fixes of existing features, Hardy Heron still packs quite a few notable features to look forward to :

Wubi and umenu

Installation without creating a separate partition for Ubuntu Linux is made easier with Wubi! Inserting Ubuntu CDROM will display a start up application which enables you to install Ubuntu on your windows partition using a loopback device.

wubi ubuntu installer

umenu ubuntu installer using wubi

After installation, Ubuntu will be added as one of bootable operating system in your Windows boot menu.

Install Ubuntu without the need to repartition, format and hassle.

Fine-grained User Permission Control
Ubuntu Hardy Heron integrates PolicyKit on administrative user interfaces. This allows you to have better control over user access on specific administrative task. For example, you can assign privilege for one user to access network controls but not software installation.

PolicyKit in Hardy Heron

Easy to use host-based firewall
The new Ubuntu release, Hardy Heron also includes ufw (uncomplicated firewall) that is easy to setup and use by end users without bothering network admnistrators.

New default bittorrent downloader
Transmission replaced Gnome Bittorrrent as the default bittorrent downloader in Ubuntu Hardy Heron LTS. Transmission is a lightweight bittorrent client with automatic banning feature and protocol encryption.

transmission.jpg

Additionally, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS also includes GNOME 2.22 and Firefox 3 Beta, which is better integrated with GNOME desktop environment. I’m looking forward for the next Ubuntu release, due on April 24th, 2008, that is three weeks from now!

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403 Forbidden during Ubuntu Gutsy Security Update

Some of you may encounter the message 403 Forbidden during Ubuntu Gutsy Security update, especially when you does your update using “sudo apt-get upgrade”.

The message was displayed because the Ubuntu team deliberately block security updates from the server side following reports that the updates are breaking xorg-server package (this very same incident also happened last year, during Dapper release).

Thankfully the issue has been handled by the Ubuntu team, and now you can continue updating your computer without any interruption or side effects from installing the security updates.

Was Ubuntu the only distro affected by this problem?
Credit to enforcer, now I know there are several other distro (OpenSuSE, Gentoo, Debian) besides Ubuntu that experienced this problem.

Should I install any security updates ?
It highly advisable to install security updates whenever they are available from the update server. Failure of doing so may expose your system to various security holes and vulnerability which can lead to your system being compromised by malicious party.

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Get Free Software Stickers for your computer!

Tired of having Windows XP/Vista logo stickers on your Linux computer ? Now you can tear away those stickers and replace it with one included in the Free Software Stickers book.

Filled with hundreds of creative sticker design, the Free Software Stickers lets you announce to the world that you are using Free Software operated computer.

fsf_book.jpg

The book is a must-have for all Linux and Free Software geeks around the world. It has a collection of distro related stickers including Debian, SUSE, Slackware, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Fedora, kubuntu, Red Hat and various other non-Linux Free Software.

How do I get the sticker book ?

As with the spirit of Free Software, the sticker book is available for free through the internet. What you need to do is to select which sticker you want to put on your computer, and print it out using a self-adhesive photographic paper, which is easily obtainable from computer shops.

fsf_stickers_tn.jpg

There you go, a great way to impress your friends at any Linux user group or FOSS-UG meetup!

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How to find fastest Debian apt-get mirrors with netselect-apt

Using the nearest server to your location does not guarantee that you will get faster connection speed, other factors such as network congestions, faulty routers and bandwidth may affect the speed of your software installations.

Thus it is best to update the sources.lst file from time to time to keep updated with the fastest mirror to you, to ensure faster software installation and updates on your computer.

Generally there are two ways to do this, one is by using Synaptic to check for the fastest mirror (works for Ubuntu too!) and secondly by using netselect-apt (currently does not work for Ubuntu).

How to get fastest apt-get mirror with netselect-apt (Debian)

Firstly you need to install netselect-apt. then just run the command by typing “netselect-apt distribution name” to get the fastest mirror. Append -n switch, if you want to include the non-free repository too

Example :
# netselect-apt lenny

Example (non-free repos) :
# netselect-apt -n lenny

The application will test each apt-get mirrors it could find on debian.org site and perform some connection to estimate its speed. At the end of the test, the fastest mirror will be selected and used in the /etc/apt/sources.lst file.

Nice, but does it work on Ubuntu?
Note that although Ubuntu has netselect-apt, the application is currently broken under Ubuntu
( as of Gutsy Gibbon ). Ubuntu users should try the Synaptic method instead.

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Squeezing size out of zip and gzip files in Ubuntu Linux

Here is how you can squeeze out few more kilobytes from your zip or gz files by using advzip or advdef from AdvanceCOMP package (installable from Ubuntu respository) :

advpng -z4 example.zip

Output
[code]
mypapit:$ advzip -z4 example.zip
761604 655677 86% example.zip
761604 655677 86%
[/code]
Saves you almost 6KB per file.

Similarly gzip files can be recompressed the same way to save more space.

advdef -z4 *.gz

[code]
mypapit:$ advdef -z4 *.gz
214451 207312 96% coolplayer.tar.gz
21523 20800 96% phex-pkg1.00.tar.gz
26527 25516 96% png2ico-src-2002-12-08.tar.gz
262501 253628 96%
[/code]
Saves you almost 11KB total.

The differences may be small for most of you, but it means a lot in situation where space is at premium and every little bit of Kilobytes count.

p/s: w00t, this is the first post for 2008!

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Tango Icons Theme on Nokia Symbian Phone

I know, I know. Tango icons has been done to the death on websites, documents, presentations and as Desktop icons. This is due to the popularity of Tango icons itself. and thanks to the liberal Creative Commons license, everybody is free to use the icons (without paying royalty) as long as they give credits (attribution) to the Tango icon project.

Checkout this cool Symbian Series 60 theme. It almost made your phone looks like its running a Linux based operating system, does it?

s60-tango-app-grid1.png

This theme can be downloaded from Tango Symbian60 Theme website and is available for Noka Symbian Series 60 2nd and 3rd Edition.