best linux games

found an interesting article online about what they thought were the best free linux games. Good idea to check some of these out, methinks.

true streaming video in firefox 3.0 Beta

okay, I figured it out in this thread from Ubuntu Forums. I used these commands to purge the old plugins:

sudo apt-get remove kaffeine-mozilla mozilla-helix-player mozilla-mplayer mozilla-plugin-vlc totem-mozilla xine-plugin

and then these to install the new mplayer gecko plugin:

sudo apt-get install gnome-mplayer gecko-mediaplayer

and I went back to Apple's trailer site and could watch trailers!

note, if you have problems, check the thread mentioned at the top for troubleshooting.

plugins for opera

I've been trying to get media plugins to work in Opera (since Firefox 3.0 Beta is freezing up my computer when I try to play trailers on Apple's website). In fiddling around, it seems that Opera is referencing my Mozilla directory to use the plugins I have there. I used Synaptic to install "mplayerplug-in" so I could use mplayer to play videos online.

it does play the videos...but I only get sound and a black popup window which opens up and blocks part of my screen. irritating, to say the least.

oh well, I'm gonna keep fiddling with this...let you know what works out in the end...

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.