Ubuntu UK Podcast

URL: http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/

The Ubuntu UK Podcast, fondly called “uupc”, is an obvious choice for this list. Presenters Laura Cowen, Mark Johnson, Alan Pope, and Tony Whitmore keep discussions funny and extremely “family friendly” (which is extremely difficult to do in an opensource world podcast !!). Segments like “So what were you upto last two weeks” (which officially might not be a segment), “Command Line Love”, “Bit About Ubuntu” and occasional quizzes makes uupc  a fun show. It airs live fortnightly and is made available for download in a variety of audio formats.

Linux Action Show

URL: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/tag/linux-action-show/

Linux Action Show (formerly Computer Action Show) aka LAS comes from American online broadcasting group Jupiter Broadcasting. LAS is currently hosted by Chris Fisher and Alan Jude. Chris Fisher takes care of the rants and the news and the soft spoken geek Alan Jude is the in house GEEK. LAS turns out to be extremely entertaining and opinated show not to mention informative. “Runs Linux”, “Android Pick”, “Universal/Linux Pick” segments spices up the show that circles around the featured content of the week, generally reviews or rants. It airs every Sunday and available for download in audio and video formats.

Linux Outlaws

URL: http://linuxoutlaws.com

Linux Outlaws, produced by Sixgun Productions, has a speciality that the hosts are in two different countries. Fabian Scherschel joins in from Germany and Dan Lynch from England. As the name suggests, the show turns out to be quite a bit ranty. But they do cover a lot of news and tips that the value of the show never really drains out because of all the rants. An interesting segment concentrating on Microsoft news is quite popular too. The two contrasting accents weirdly ties me to the show. Do not ask me why!

TuxRadar

URL: http://tuxradar.com/podcast

TuxRadar also comes from England. The show comes from the Linux Format guys. Andrew Gregory, Efrain Hernandez-Mendoza, Graham Morrison, Jonathan Roberts and Mike Saunders form the presenters group. Much like uupc, discussions are funny and informative at the same time. The show features segments like Discovery of the Week where presenters share one new thing they “discovered”, open ballot, and “Rants and Raves”.

FLOSS Weekly

URL: http://twit.tv/show/floss-weekly

FLOSS Weekly comes from the TWiT network. The show is hosted by Randal Schwartz who is joined by a gues host. The show focusses on an opensource project in each episode and turns out to be extremely informative.

Hope the round up helps !

How does it work?

Gnome Pie is triggered by keyboard shortcuts. Then a “pie” appears on the screen. By default there are five kinds of pies. One is a main menu pie which ports your main menu entries to a pie. The others are a media playback pie, a bookmarks pie, a window controller pie, applications pie and a session pie. There is an option to add custom options as well.

Here is gnome-pie in action :

How can I try it !!

You can install gnome pie on Ubuntu by adding a PPA. Run the following to do so:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:simonschneegans/testing
sudo apt-get update sudo
apt-get install gnome-pie

Arch Linux users can install gnome-pie from this AUR package. Others can find the code hosted at Github.

You can read our in depth preview of Ubuntu 11.10 here. For a quick glimpse, read along…

Whats on the CD ?

• The Unity Desktop interface, both the standard and 2D versions
• Linux Kernel 3.0
• Gnome 3.2 sans gnome-shell which can be installed from the repositories
• Firefox 7
• New look software center
• Dejadup backup utility
• Libre Office 3.4.3
• Ubuntu One sync service with 5 GB free storage
• Banshee Music player with Ubuntu One music store support
• Thunderbird Mail client
• Integrated social networking experience with Empathy, Gwibber and the Me menu.
• LightDM replacing GDM

A  few screenshots !

The desktop

The Dash

The Software Center

 All in all…

It is a more polished release from Ubuntu after rather unfinished 11.04. Unity has seen several performance and usability enhancements to strengthen it’s stance in the on-going “war of desktop interfaces” in Linux. There is no questioning the default applications on the CD. So highly recommended install for anyone who uses 11.04 currently. Unity haters can stay away and ponder options like Lubuntu which certainly looks a viable alternative.

We really appreciate the work gone into 11.10 from the awesome Ubuntu community. Time to look forward to 12.04 LTS !!

Unity Updates

“Whats new in Unity ?” must be the question in all of your minds. So lets kick off with Unity updates. This time out, Ubuntu ships both Unity and Unity 2D. Unity 2D is a QT implementation of Unity which is suitable for low end machines which can not ofer graphics acceleration. Unity looks considerably different from what it used to be in 11.04. Here are a list of changes which in no way is extensive, but certainly the highlights:

1. The Unity dash is now transparent and assumes colour of the background anf fades out the launcher and panel.
2. The dash layout is revamped, there are applications, files and music lens present.
3. The applications lens is integrated with software center ratings and categories.
4. The music lens categorises music on basis of genres.
5. Files menu zeitgeist integration is more consistant now.
6. The Ubuntu button in the panel is replaced with one on the launcher.
7. The maximized window controls are now hidden by default. It appears on hovering over the left corner of the panel.
8. Unity is customizable using Compiz Config Settings Manager for eg: opacity, removable volumes displayed etc
9. Alt-tab switcher gives live previews of open windows.
10. An integrated messaging menuon the panel.
11. The session switcher button now doubles up as settings button.

Here are a few screenshots :

The new look dash

The files lens

Unity 2D

Softwares in and out

There are quite a few changes on the default applications front also. Here is a quick list

• Deja Dup is on the CD as the default backup service.

Deja Dup

• Evolution is replaced by thunderbird as default mail client

Thunderbird

• The redsigned Gwibber is in the CD as well
• LightDM repplaces GDM as the display manager. It is customized to fit in perfectly with the Unity looks.
• Synaptic package manager is off the CD and the newly redesigned software center will act as the only apt-get front end.

The new look software center

Additionaly GNOME has been updated to latest snapshot 3.1.5 and Linux kernel 3 is also on the CD. Firefox 7 from the aurora channel is the default browser.

Software repository now includes GNOME Shell which works fine without breaking anything (unlike in 11.04). Synaptic Package manager can also be installed from the Software Center.

 To conclude,

In the breif live session I ran, I did get a couple of Unity crashes, which hopefully will be ironed out before the release. There is one more beta release on September 22nd before the final release on October 13th. Looks like an exciting release for lovers of the Unity interface. We shall be taking a look at the Server, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Ubuntu Studio 11.10 versions in the coming days. So stay tuned.

The paid plans are also changing. The current Mobile plan to Music Streaming for Android and iPhone will now include 20GB of storage built in for $3.99 per month. Existing mobile plan subscribers will be instantly upgraded to the new Music Streaming plan and automatically get the 20GB of storage. You can still buy additional storage as you need it, in the same 20GB increments and at the same price of $2.99 per month. The web interface is also set to be revamped. It comes with improved navigation and help section.

The Ubuntu One App developer programme is also open now. People with ideas for cloud based applications can join the programme here.

Thats it. Beats dropbox !!

Now Ubuntu one defenitely has better storage plans and features than dropbox. So make the switch friends.

Turpial 1.5

Turpial 1.5 has a nice looking interface. It lets you have a tabbed or a wide mode interface. In either case you have three columns which can be custom set, for eg Timeline, Replies and Direct Messages.

Turpial intrerface - wide mode

Turpial lets you configure a lot of stuff. Most importantly you can select which columns you would like to receive desktop notifications from. Desktop notification with GNOME 3 is a popup of full the tweet with “clickable” links. Also clicking the turpial icon on systray will show a popup of all tweets since you last used turpial window.

You can select the frequency of update of each table, select default browser, url shortening service and pic uploading service. You can also block unblock users using turpial. The best feature to me is that it works behind http proxy like the ones you have in offices and colleges.

So guys, do try out turpial. Its brilliant.

Mozilla believes that the web can displace proprietary, single-vendor stacks for application development.  To make open web technologies a better basis for future applications on mobile and desktop alike, we need to keep pushing the envelope of the web to include — and in places exceed — the capabilities of the competing stacks in question.

To that end, we propose a project we’re calling “Boot to Gecko” [http://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G] (B2G) to pursue the goal of building a complete, standalone operating system for the open web.  It’s going to require work in a number of areas.

The framework

The project is focused on the handheld/tablet/mobile experience, but will prototype some stuff for PCs as well. A stripped down Android kernel (not a full blown Linux kernel) will be used to set up a bootable system. Android graphics layer is also to be used. The hope is to have better device support on Android as hardware manufacturers are expected to come out with device drivers for android considering the current boom in the market.

Mike Shaver, VP of Technical Strategy for the Mozilla Corporation, says:

We want to take advantage of the work we’ve already done (and are doing) on Android, and the ease of getting devices that are known to work.  Specifically, we’re looking at Tegra 2 devices because they have hardware acceleration of open audio/video formats, and they match what we’ve got automated testing running on.

Project aims to develop APIs for exposing device and OS capabilities to content. These can be used to develop telephony, camera, bluetooth related web apps. Developing a privilage model is also on the cards to ensure a secure platform. The project itself will come out with applications on the platform to prove out and prioritize the power of the system. All the applications on the platform would be locally cached web applications.

Shaver explains,

This isn’t just about the web apps you have today. It’s about having your contacts manager, camera, gallery, dialer, SMS app, GPS-integrated maps, launcher etc. be hackable using web tech. That work will help on desktop as well, since many of those pieces are on desktop/laptop machines — if you write OS-specific code to get to them, and you’re allowed by the OS to interpose your version of it.

Entire development will be in the open and code will be released in real-time.

The framework sounds like this (I might be wrong. Correct me if I am) :

[Stripped down Android Kernel] + [Mozilla APIs to expose devices] + [Web Apps]

Sounds like Chrome OS ??

The technology defenitely sounds different from Chrome OS to me. Just the fact that Chrome OS is Linux based makes it different. Also Chrome OS launches into a browser as we know it. But it must be inferred that with the power of new, to be developed APIs, B2G should enable standalone web applications. Additionally, Chrome OS is currently aimed at netbooks while B2G will target handheld device market

Only time can tell if Chrome OS and B2G will battle it out to be the dominant web based OS of the future. Using a google product (android) to challenge another (Chrome OS) would be funny.

So…

This is an exciting announcement of an ambitious project. This could very well make the modern web technologies the heart and soul of the future devices. Go Mozilla Go.

A little bit of history

Haiku began in 2001 as OpenBeOS when Be, Inc , the company behind BeOS was taken over by Palm, Inc. Later in 2004, the project was rebranded as “Haiku” (after a trademark infringement notice from Palm) and got financial backing from Haiku Inc. , a non-profit organization. Since then the developement got the push it needed and went on to make first alpha release in 2009. The community built a hibrid kernel, a fork of NewOS, themselves and built a BeOS style interface around it. Now in 2011, Haiku is in limelight with an impressive alpha 3 release.

The user experience

I downloaded Haiku image and booted it off a USB drive. Honestly I did not expect it to even boot without a glitch. But surprise surprise, Haiku boots up into a graphical loading screen (which many linux distros are yet to achieve).

Loading Screen

Within seconds I was into a desktop which I could easily get around and customize. Finally this is how it looked.

Haiku Desktop

The top corner has a menu and applets to manage processes, and network. Haiku set up my ethernet connection automatically, but did not have a driver for my wireless card (forgivable). The web browser got me online without any trouble, but rendered certain websites poorly (especially twitter).Hopefully these glitches will be ironed out soon.

The Web Browser

I had a quick look through the default applications available. The media player worked very well. I did not have to install any codecs to play any videos and audios. The basic functionalities for video/audio playback are available and works well. Satisfied on that front.

Spock's last moments from "Star Trek - The wrath of Khan" playing in the media player

There are a host of other apps available like an image viewer, document viewer, IRC client, image editor, text editor and terminal and so on. There are plenty more which I did not try out. A quick googling also assured me that there are a decend amount of applications that work on Haiku.I loved the way you could group applications as tabs !!

Support for filesystems was also impressive. My Linux partitions could be mounted with a click !!

Overall I felt Haiku is very very good for an alpha version of a “new” Operating System and decided to install it on my hard disk. I was even more impressed with the installer which guided me to finish the installation in less than five minutes !!

Performance

All I would say is “super quick”. Everything is instantaneous on Haiku. Booting, launching apps, everything is quick. On the stability front the only app that crashed on me was the web browser which I felt could improve a lot. Otherwise, Haiku is very stable. The resource utilization is very low. It was lightning fast on my machine :

So ?

I would not recommend installation of Haiku on any machine as of now. But Keep an eye open for it, because it has been impressive at alpha 3 stage; so Final release must be awesome. Even then, the amount of applications available would not be as vast compared to windows, linux or mac anytime soon. But lets not be negative. Lets support this awesome community

Working

Pydiction generates a list of functions and classes from given moduls and lets you just press first few letters and hit tab to auto-complete (or to give suggestions) !! There is a python script in the package that lets you generate custom dictionaries from modules you use. Here is a screenshot of pydiction in action :

Installation

You can download the latest version of Pydiction from here. Downolad the archive to your home directory and run the following commands to install the plugin.

Source code

mkdir .vim .vim/after .vim/after/ftplugin/

Source code

unzip pydiction-1.2.zip
cd pydiction-1.2
mv python_pydiction.vim ~/.vim/after/ftplugin/
mkdir ~/.vim/pydiction/
mv complete-dict ~/.vim/pydiction/
mv pydiction.py ~/.vim/pydiction/
echo "filetype plugin on" >> .vimrc
echo "let g:pydiction_location='~/.vim/pydiction/complete-dict'"

Source code

python ~/.vim/pydiction/pydiction.py [modules list]

Yes ! Next release of the Linux Kernel will be Linux 3.0 !! Well but don’t get too excited, because this is just a version renumbering and not really any *milestone* release. Really out of the blue ain’t it? Thats almost literally how Linus Torvalds pulled it off.

How it happened ?

Few days back, Linus sent a mail to the Linux Kernel Mailing List. It was a reminder that the merge window was smaller than usual this time as he would be away in the coming weeks. But what became news was a PS in the mail :

Linus_Torvalds

“The voices in my head also tell me that the numbers are getting too big. I may just call the thing 2.8.0. And I almost guarantee that this PS is going to result in more discussion than the rest, but when the voices tell me to do things, I listen.”

This obviously started off a lot of discussion in and outside the mailing list and finally, Linus made this announcement

“I decided to just bite the bullet, and call the next version 3.0. It will get released close enough to the 20-year mark, which is excuse enough for me, although honestly, the real reason is just that I can no longer comfortably count as high as 40.”

So the linux kernel version number which was heading to 2.6.40 is now 3.0. Thats it. Obvious question is “Oh my God ! Its 3.0 Whats new ?”. Linus answers that too :

NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. Sure, we have the usual two thirds driver changes, and a lot of random fixes, but the point is that 3.0 is *just* about renumbering, we are very much *not* doing a KDE-4 or a Gnome-3 here. No breakage, no special scary new features, nothing at all like that. We’ve been doing time-based releases for many years now, this is in no way about features.

Pretty funny stuff eh ? Thought you might be interested to know !!