Ubuntuswitching

Applications

ubuntuswitching — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 09:39:37 +0000

VLC for general media playing:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ubuntu.html

Songbird (iTunes replacement):
http://www.arsgeek.com/2006/10/06/how-to-install-songbird-on-your-ubuntu-box-and-then-enjoy-the-music/

Etherape
http://www.arsgeek.com/2006/08/23/using-etherape-to-watch-your-network/

Avant Window Navigator (Dock)
https://launchpad.net/awn

Conky (System Monitor)
http://conky.sourceforge.net/

Newgroups

ubuntuswitching — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:54:39 +0000

I didn’t ever find a program I was happy with for OSX to deal with Newsgroups. This is a good walkthrough for setting them up on Ubuntu, using KLibido.

http://www.slyck.com/Newsgroups_Guide_Ubuntu_Linux_Guide

Just a little Samba…

ubuntuswitching — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:20:59 +0000

http://prash-babu.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-setup-samba-in-linux.html

Some help here for giving rights to set up Samba sharing…

Dock

ubuntuswitching — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:43:09 +0000

I’ve been playing around with using a OSX style dock…I’m not interested in making the whole system look like a mac, but I do want to tweak things. So I used the dock instructions in the following link.

http://maketecheasier.com/turn-your-ubuntu-hardy-to-mac-osx-leopard/2008/07/23

Adding codecs…

ubuntuswitching — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 13:27:06 +0000

Adding all the proprietary codecs… (what?! I’m not a purist okay?!)

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

Graphics driver fun

ubuntuswitching — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 13:10:43 +0000

I was optimistic that a restart would sort out the display drivers. It didn’t! So I set about having a look around the forums (well I searched on Google). I remembered there was some messing around with a text file last time which wasn’t fun. But this time there was some fresh challenges. Downloaded the driver, had to learn how to stop the graphical shell and had to download some extras (see help3 below).

Driver: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_100.14.19.html
Help: http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-9755/README/chapter-02.html#id2504503
Help2: http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ubuntu-help/92402-how-close-x-server-nvidia-drivers.html
Help3: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=405271

And the result….

Spec

ubuntuswitching — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:38:32 +0000

Here’s the spec of my machine… chosen for it’s cheapness.

ASUS M2N-VM DVI GeForce 7050PV Socket AM2 Onboard VGA 6 channel audio mATX Motherboard
Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB Hard Drive SATAII *32MB Cache*
Samsung SM2253BW 22″ LCD Monitor 1680×1050 300cd/m2 8000:1 5ms VGA/DVI
Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Socket AM2 2.7GHz Energy Efficient L2 1MB (2x512KB)
Extra Value 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered

Link

ubuntuswitching — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:34:03 +0000

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-roadmap6/

Useful doc about technical differences between Windows world and Linux.

How to printscreen

ubuntuswitching — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:30:48 +0000

Hmmm so I have an Apple keyboard which helpfully has no printscreen key. Searched around and found Ubuntu has an application:

Applications/Accessories/Take Screenshot

So far…

ubuntuswitching — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:28:27 +0000

This isn’t looking too great squashed on the 22″ widescreen.