Archive for October, 2008
If you are a FSF member… you are lucky!!
As of two days ago, it was announced that every FSF member, on their personal area at the FSF website, can ask for an USB disk with gNewSense. So… what are you waiting for??
Ulteo adds OpenOffice.org 3.0 to its Web OS
Yestarday it was announced that MS Office was going to have a web interface in order to allow their users to work from wherever. But that’s not new: Ulteo has been offering the same with OpenOffice.org as of one/two years ago.
And now, OpenOffice.org 3.0 is available through Ulteo where no download or installation process is required. This new service by Ulteo offers many benefits for users of the productivity suite, and is compatible with any operating system that can run Firefox 2.0+ or Internet Explorer 6.0+.
Anyway, there are some problems when using this web interface: it isn’t really smooth and it’s a bit slow, so I don’t think (by now) that this is a real option for working via web with OpenOffice.org. However, I must say that this is a good initiative and is improving every day.
So if anybody wants to try it, just go to the next link:
- Link | Ulteo OpenOffice.org
Gnash packages for Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian
Some days ago we told about the new release of Gnash, the 0.8.4. The problem was that we had to compile it from the sources and that could be kind of annoying.
En Russel Nelson has commented that finally the precompiled packages have been released as well and now we can install gnash on Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian distributions from them.
The packages can be downloaded from the official server. Anyway, here you have the direct links to the packages of each specific distribution:
- Packages for Fedora 9 or Fedora 10
- Packages for Ubuntu (hardy || intrepid)
- Packages for Debian (sid)
It’s a shame that there are no packages for x86_64 filesystems by now. We’ll wait!
Tip: Java plugin on Fedora 10 x86 and x86_64
Well, today it was necessary for me to install the Java Plugin on my Fedora 10. It’s so easy, but it’s good to write it down. Just open a terminal and type:
su -
(this is in order to be root)
yum install java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin
(to install the plugin)
Then restart Firefox and you’ll be able to use it. You can test if it works here.
New default wallpaper on Fedora 10
This morning a woke up with this pretty new wallpaper on my Fedora 10. Donwload the release candidate of this theme if you like it (if you’re not a fedora user):
Compiz? GNOME compositing!!
Three days ago a heard about the compositing extension in GNOME. In that post it is explained where it comes from and what’s its future. What I understood, basically, it’s that this extension is a kind of Kwin for GNOME (I know this is not, but it’s an idea).
Anyway, what I want to explain here is that this extension on GNOME 2.24 works very well. I’ve been having problems on Fedora and Ubuntu using compiz. The effects make the system work not smooth (can anybody help me and tell me whats the word to say when something is “not smooth”).
Activating native compositing in GNOME I’m able to use avant window navigator and other apps that need compositing without those problems that compiz usually cause when scrolling on Firefox, maximizing or minimizing windows, refreshing, etc.
So, if you want to be able to use apps that need compositing, but you don’t care about desktop effects, you can use this gnome extension… and I’m sure it’s what all we need (no more useless effects!!).
The way to enable it: you have to install gconf-editor (it’s not installed by default on fedora) and then open a terminal and type:
gconf-editor
A new window will appear. Go to Apps > Metacity > General and check the compositing_manager box. Of course you need that your graphic driver support compositing.
Ubuntu shipit, ask for ubuntu intrepid cds!
As of a few days, the Ubuntu Shipit Website was closed and was impossible to ask for cds (even for hardy). Now the website is re-opened and we can as for Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu Intrepid cds.
- Ubuntu | https://shipit.ubuntu.com
- Kubuntu | https://shipit.kubuntu.org
- Edubuntu | https://shipit.edubuntu.org
Fedora 10 Snap2: impressions
Well, finally I installed Fedora 10 on my two computers (the x86 version and the x86_64). First of all, it seems that the bug about the installation cds was solved and now there is no problem to install any of them.
The GNOME desktop has no really improvements: it’s just the GNOME 2.24 and the Fedora team didn’t add any special program or… whatever, so I know I promised you that I’d publish some screenshots… but it’s not necessary (what you’ll see is something like Fedora 9).
What about the performance?. It works fine, but SELinux is driving me crazy because it doesn’t allow me to execute Dropbox, Skype neither Compiz Effects!!, and that’s really annoying. I disabled it after all (I know this is not a good practice, I’m going to report the bug, if it’s a bug). Edit the file /etc/selinux/config and change to disabled SELINUX (be careful):
SELINUX=disabled
Also I needed to install NVIDIA drivers, but at this moment Livna has no an “stable” version for Rawhide (Fedora 10) so I had to install the “official” drivers (there was no problem to do it). But when I wanted to install codecs and other proprietary programs needed to play some of my music or movies there was no solution… until I found the RPMFusion repository. Just run:
su -c ‘rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-rawhide.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-rawhide.noarch.rpm’
(if it fails, look at the symbol ” ‘ “)
One thing that I loved installing Fedora from the LiveCD was that Anaconda installs just the basic software we need (it doesn’t install OpenOffice.org, for example), and this is really good (I don’t want some programs that other distributions usually install.
The conclusion: there are no important “visual” changes, as a “normal” users we don’t really appreciate the deep changes. Well, the new kernel is able to detect my wifi device, but it can’t enable the webcam of my MacBookPro (I have to say that the first fedora 10 snap could).
And… this is my current desktop.
Fedora 10 Snapshot 2
While Ubuntu is the centre of attention, Fedora is about to release its new version as well. Actually, today it’s available to download the second snapshot of Fedora 10 (only torrent at this moment).
The first snap that was published had some important issues because some of the cds/dvds were unable to start the system/installer (that was annoying… I wasted so much time downloading and trying to install them).
But today we have a new snap after all (and I’m downloading it). Next post will be a complete screenshot review of this new snap. I think there are not really important changes: the new kernel with webcam/wifi devices support (well, this is really important -and good-), GNOME 2.24 and KDE 4.1…
There were some rumors about that Fedora 10 “would start the system in a few seconds” (like Windows 7). But it seems that that was just a… rumor. Anyway… try Fedora!
GNASH 0.8.4 and Adobe Flash 10
When I talk about new versions of Adobe Flash, need to talk about GNASH as well. A few days ago, the Free Software Foundation realeased a priorities list where GNASH is one of the most important programs to develop.
And the 0.8.4 version was recently released. There are many improvements about flash video playing and flash animations support; but also there is something important on this new version: the implementation to create a XPI package for firefox (on older versions it was not really easy to install).
It’s a bit disapponting that there are no precompiled versions for Ubuntu, Fedora or other distributions. If we visit the website that promotes GNASH we will realised that it should be improved…).
About Adobe Flash, a new major release is now here: Flash 10. There are also many improvements, above all in performance. But that’s all: the new versions has not really important changes or features that we might use, it’s the same. What they should improve is the flash Linux Performance, because Flash is the main reason in most of the cases that Firefox crashes.
So it’s important to update your Flash Player to this new version. There is a download page where deb, tgz and rpm packages can be donwloaded, it’s really easy to install.
