Wine 1.0 has been released

Big Day for software

Distributing Ubuntu

... is much better then Windows ;-)

In other news: I requested my Hardy Heron dvd =)

Fixing Nvidia 8600 GT on Hardy Heron

After updating to Hardy I got a white screen of death upon rebooting. After some research it turned out that this was more of an Nvidia driver issue rather then Ubuntu. This may not have been the most correct way to fix it, but it worked for me.

1. Completely remove nvidia-glx-new
   
   
2. Remove nvidia-kernel-common (this also removes linux-restricted-modules), (I am not sure if step 2 is required)
   
   
3. install build-essentials
   
   
4. Download the Nvidia beta driver that came out on April 10. You can get it here
   
   
5. hit ctrl + alt + f1 to break out of gnome
   
   
6. "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop" to shutdown the X server
   
   
7. sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.08-pkg1.run to install the driver. If it asks you to update you're xorg.conf file, let it.
   
   
8. Reboot. ("sudo reboot") You should now be able to enable Desktop effects. YAY FISH!
   
   

This issue has also been addressed on the Ubuntu Forums and on launchpad

Note: I have a Dell XPS M1530

Upgrade Ubuntu to 8.04 Hardy Heron

Hardy Heron came out this morning and ubuntu.com is very much down for the count

You can Still update though, click here for the Google Cache version.

Happy Updating!

New Features in this release:

Install on an existing filesystem without overwriting /home
When I moved from feisty to gutsy, I decided to do a fresh install. One of the things I had to do was back up my home folder, and when I finished installing gutsy I just copied it back onto my computer. This new feature will allow people to install the new version of Ubuntu without it overwriting their home folder.I'm sure this will come in very handy for people who like trying out different distro's.

Hardy Hardware Detection
This is more of a bug fix than a new feature. Gutsy already has excellent hardware support and the plan for hardy is even better and more robust detection of hardware. Sounds good to me.

GDM Face Browser
One of the changes I made to my gutsy is the GDM. I replaced the old one with something that allows me to just click on a picture of my username and login. This will hopefully be the default for hardy.

Auto Detection of Monitor Frequency
While I was testing gutsy beta I had to manually configure xorg.conf to get it to the right resolution. It wasn't fun. This should be a thing of the past with hardy as it will automatically detect everything for you. Huzzah!

Apt Authentication Reliability
Have you ever had an update fail for no reason? Well it actually fails because of 'transient network failures'. The aim is to make hardy more robust against these errors.

Redesign Restricted-Manager Code
They want to expand the role of the restricted manager and change it so that other distro's can share the joy.

Handling Full Disks
I've never had this problem with Ubuntu, but if your disk gets full, things can get quite ugly. They plan to add a notification and disk clean-up tool when your running low on space.

Desktop Effects
Make compiz fusion more robust and easier to use.

New Theme
Hardy Heron will be getting a shiny new theme, I hope they move away from the brown theme and choose something lighter and more fresh.

Easy File Sharing
To allow people to easily share files over a network. Not more I can say about this.

Dual/Multi Monitor Support
Currently you have to manually tweak Ubuntu if you want to use more than one monitor. They want to fix this for hardy.

Integrate Prefetch into Ubuntu
I noticed a slightly increased start up time in gutsy compared to feisty. Hardy will use file prefetch and other optimisations to speed up boot time.

Automatix-Ubuntu Team Collaboration
Automatix was extremely helpful for me in feisty. Although I don't use it in gutsy, its good that they are collaborating with the automatix team.

Single Click Install
Installing software is already pretty straightforward in Ubuntu. They want to make it even easier to install third party applications. I'm not complaining.

Apparmor Integration
This is already a part of gutsy, the plan is to increase integration to make Ubuntu even safer.

Firewall
Make it easier for users to configure their firewall.

Third Party Apt
Now when you install third party apps, you have to manually add the software repository to the sources.list. This spec makes it easy for users to install third party software and have it update automatically.

Revamped Logout Screen
They want to streamline the options you have when you click that big red button, to make things less confusing.

Better Integrated Wine
Better Wine will make it easier for Windows users to convert, thus helping to solve bug #1.

Xorg 7.3
This is one of the features that missed the gutsy deadline. This should make manual configuration of xorg.conf obsolete. Another much anticipated feature is Bullet Proof X, which will go into a graphical safe mode if anything goes wrong with X.

Slick Boot
To improve the boot and shutdown process and also make the things look nicer.

Almost time for a new Ubuntu

Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron comes out in two days

Be ready for it.






(Or install it now)

Linux Distro Popularity According to Google

Over the years I've used a variety of Linux Distros: Mandrake, Red Hat, FreeBSD, Fedora, Gentoo, and Ubuntu. Distrowatch keeps track of everything we need to know about the distros, and recently there has been an enormous push in desktop Linux thanks to Dell putting Ubuntu on desktops and Compiz-Fusion bringing snazzy eye candy to even low end machines. Distrowatch gives some pretty decent stats on the main Distros but for a while I've wanted to know how Google sees their popularity; mainly by how many pages mention specific distros.



Using some python, a spreadsheet, and a little scraping, I was able to get my answer. To see how Google would rank different distros I'm using the number of results Google returns when searching for the Distro's name as my numbers. I'm going to write a HOWTO on the technical aspects of what I did sometime this week, but here are the basic steps

1. In a Google Spreadsheet I made a sheet that held the names of the top distros on Distrowatch.
2. Another sheet holds the full list from distro watch (366 on record at the time of this writing)
3. I set up a dapp to take these names, and return the number of results Google would have if you searched them
4. A python script pulls the distros out of the spreadsheet, queries the dapp, and puts the results back into another sheet

I have 2 sets of results. One is a query using the vanilla list out of the spreadsheet. The second is appending the word Linux to the distro if it does not already have it as the title, I was curious as to how this would effect the results. Below are the results of the most popular Distros on Distrowatch. Look, Ubuntu! The spreadsheet that has all of the findings (and all 366 distros) is shared here

Distro	Page Hist
Ubuntu	96,800,000
FreeBSD	36,700,000
Fedora	35,800,000
openSuse	29,500,000
Debian Linux	28,100,000
KNOPPIX	12,500,000
Mandriva Linux	5,720,000
Gentoo Linux	4,430,000
PCLinuxOS	3,170,000
Slackware Linux	3,010,000
MEPIS Linux	1,640,000

Stay tuned for the code behind it! Subscribe to the feed to get more updates.

Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon is out!

Get it while its hot! (Or try to, the servers, as usual, are bogged.

To upgrade, do the following: (note: you can only upgrade using this method if you are already using Feisty Fawn)

1. Go to System -> Administration -> Update Manager
   
   
   
   
2. Hit the Check button to check for new updates to your current install (Feisty)
3. If there are any updates, hit the "Install Updates" button, this will install any updates for your current installation.
4. A Message should appear stating there is a 7.10 release
   
   
   
   
5. Hit "Upgrade"
6. Follow the instructions

Ubuntu Gutsy Goes Beta

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon has gone beta and is on track for its October 18th Release. So, if you haven't been using it since tribe 2 like me, and want to upgrade from Fiesty Fawn, follow the below steps.

1. Open a terminal.
2. Type sudo update-manager -d
3. Follow the instructions

More information about upgrading can be found here

If you want to upgrade from a cd or do a fresh install, ISOs are available here

Google is NOT working on a desktop OS for the public!!

This is really just a quick response to this Digg. How it made the front page is completely beyond my comprehension. The article itself is a year old and Google has denied countless times they are going to release "Goobuntu". Heck, I've been to a tech talk where its been stated that Goobuntu is just their internal OS that developers can use that comes with some snazzy Google tools. See below for some other confirmations that Goobuntu isn't coming out.

http://digg.com/linux_unix/Google_is_preparing_its_own_distribution_of_Linux
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3052748545.html
http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/02/01/goobuntu-analysis-of-a-hoax/
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/98978.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goobuntu

I'm going to add to this list but I really need some dinner....

Goobuntu is on every one's most wanted list from Google, Heck I'd rather have that then the gPhone... maybe... but as of right now, I'll have to wait forever....