On to Hardy Heron!

Well, over spring break I upgraded to Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04) on my laptop. It went pretty smoothly. I'm still trying to get Avant Window Manager working the way I had it going in Gutsy. I think it's actually going to be another month or so before they get everything on that ironed out so it works up to par.

Gnome-Do came in the regular repositories, which was a relief. Overall, I do enjoy it a bunch. I have had a little difficulty with Rhythmbox and Amarok sporadically not working, and whenever I try to watch trailers in Firefox Beta 3.0 the whole computer freezes up. I had to download Firefox 2 to use my school's website to take tests and stuff because JRE (Java Runtime Environment) isn't working that great in 3.0 yet.

Pretty good, overall, though, I'd say. I'll be posting an installation guide this summer. I gotta get past exams before I spend much time on anything else.

Picasa for Gutsy

yeah, so I finally got around to installing Picasa for Ubuntu Gutsy on my laptop...yeah, the new version of Ubuntu is coming out next month, but I figured I could figure this out now, and then I'd be right on track for it when I redid everything next month.

Wow, it ended up being a little more involved than I expected. To say the least, I'll be including a tutorial on this with my next setup guide for Hardy Heron.

Okay, you can download an installation .deb file here, but to do it through the repositories you gotta hit the FAQs and you'll find your way to this tutorial which shows you how to add the google repositories through Synaptic. So that's what I did, and then when I reached the bottom of the page, in smaller print I find a link to a page which includes the commands for adding the google repository via the terminal - which I like more than using synaptic.

The cool thing is, after you add the repositories, you also can install the google desktop. Cool stuff, eh?

New favorit Disk analyzer

one of my new favorite little things about Ubuntu is the Disk Usage Analyzer tool...it's found under Accessories in the main menu. When you open it up, it just tells you how much of your disc is being used (or how much free space you have). But if you tell it to scan, it'll scan your disk and give you a great little chart of what folders are taking up the most space, and even break down the larger sections of those folders. Really nice if you're trying to figure out what's eating up all your disk space!

Gnome Do - Launchy for Linux!!!

Okay, so one of my huge regrets of switching to Linux was that I had no application launcher like Launchy - which is just awesome in Windows. You just press Alt+Spacebar and a little window appears and you type in whatever program (or action/file/location...etc.) you want to launch and it pulls it up. Awesome stuff.

Well, I just heard about Gnome Do, a program similar to Launchy, but meant to be run in Gnome (a linux environment - note that it apparently also works with KDE and some other environments as well).

Pretty simple stuff really. Used these instructions.

file synchronization

been thinking about doing file synchronization between my new ubuntu laptop and my existing ubuntu desktop. I found some instructions in Ubuntu's community documentation about iFolder. Apparently I'll have to compile it from source...not sure if I really want to deal with that. But there are the links to it!

Reveal effect in compiz fusion

okay, one effect on a mac that I love is the "Reveal" effect. Where it scales all the open windows down onto one screen so you can see them and choose whichever one you want to switch to.

If you're running CompizFusion (say, on Ubuntu), open the CompizConfig Settings Manager (right-click on desktop, go to "Appearances" tab and select the "preferences" button next to the "Custom" option). Then go to the "Window Management" section and click on the "Scale" option (it should already be checked - if not, do so), then go to the "actions" tab and choose your action to activate it (I like to use the upper right corner to show all the open windows).

this is one of my most favorite effects, and probably the most practical one I use (wobbly windows being the most unpractical but most visually pleasing!).

(this info much thanks to this thread)

making your linux desktop look mac-like

here's a great how-to on making your ubuntu desktop look like a Mac's....the best thing is he gets into the AWN doc-like bar. That's a great tool I use on my desktop. Love it to death!