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

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.

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!

gnome-osd: Handy On-Screen Display for XChat and Evolution

I just want to share with you about gnome-osd, a GNOME desktop add-on that I find handy when working on my computer’s desktop.

This add-on provide informational on-screen display when triggered by certain events such as new email, somebody mentions your nick over the irc and when the music player changes the song.

Personally, I use gnome-osd with Xchat IRC client, when I’m in a mood for online chatting with friends.

To use gnome-osd, you need to install ‘gnome-osd’ package and configure it by accessing System->OSD Notifications. You can enable certain triggers by checking the appropriate box on the dialog box as shown here :

osd2.png

Here’s an example of gnome-osd in action:

gnome-osd-papit3.jpg

From the screenshot, you can see that I’ve tweak the settings a little bit to display the messages on the lower right corner of my screen. The OSD is triggered whenever anybody mentions my nick on the IRC.