Ice and Fire – by J‑C Berthon – Page 13 – Thoughts on operating systems, software engineering and beyond

May 5, 2007March 1, 2009

Commercial virtualisation product available for Ubuntu

A bit more than a month ago Spring just started, but it is so hot and sunny now that it feels already like Summer. Summer means much more outside activities and fewer inside topics: less blogging and less playing with Ubuntu.

Anyway from time to time, I still find opportunities to discover a new side of Ubuntu and to write about it. Today is about a recent update in the Ubuntu repositories that enabled the first commercial package: VMware Server.

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April 23, 2007March 1, 2009

Ubuntu 7.04 – spring cleaning

Ubuntu circle (logo) It is Spring and as every year it is time to do a bit of cleaning. Perhaps, you have recently upgraded your Ubuntu Linux from the release 6.10 (Edgy Eft) to the up-to-date 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). By doing so you might have some packages and residual files that are no longer needed, and by removing them you could free up lots of space on your hard disks.

To describe the various possibilities and reasons to do an Ubuntu Spring cleaning, I have started a wiki article. If you have any comments feel free to give them here, in reply to this post. I will try to take them into account.

April 23, 2007June 17, 2009

A web browser for Human beings

Ubuntu Linux is designed for Human beings. It tends to be as easy as possible for all of them and to make things just work. A similar contender on this concept but in the web browser/e-mail environment is Opera. Sadly it is not open source but it is freely available to anyone and on many platforms and languages.

Opera features many enhancement regarding accessibility (and are/were pioneer in many of this area). They have integrated into their browser things like mouse gesture, voice control and many UI improvements (some were adapted in other major software) including: tabs, sessions, zoom and private data management.

It seems as if Opera has always tried to make their software more ergonomic with each new release. Something that was not really considered seriously until recently by the contenders.

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April 20, 2007March 1, 2009

Upgrading Ubuntu Server to 7.04

Feisty official picture You might have read Canonical information on how to upgrade your Ubuntu 6.10 Server Edition to the latest Ubuntu 7.04 Server Edition. But somehow, you cannot install the update-manager-core program.

I might have the problem because I am not using the Universe or Multiverse repositories, but when using only the official ones, an installation of the above mentioned package will failed with the error that the package could not be found.

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April 16, 2007September 23, 2016

It is spring, the trees and Ubuntu are in Blossom

I love spring (though I love each seasons…) the nature is never so green and full of colour as during this season. The nature is all blooming and it is such a nice sight.

And like every year since 2004, Linux Ubuntu is in blossom (at least for the Northern hemisphere). The next Ubuntu release has been confirmed today for release on the 19th of April. Both the desktop and server edition will be available at this date.

So what’s new in Ubuntu 7.04 (a.k.a. Feisty Fawn)?

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April 16, 2007March 1, 2009

Getting more from your battery

Following my previous article on the Gnome Power Management applet, I want to talk about another new functionality of this tool that got added with the latest version of Gnome (2.18 available with the coming Ubuntu Release).

This new facility helps you getting more information from your battery and is available via the menu of the Gnome Power Management applet when clicking on it with the left button. In the menu, the first entry should be about your battery with the charge information.

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April 15, 2007September 23, 2016

The Wow had already started

It is not my intention to transform this blog into a video one. But I will from time to time add one that I found of interest.

Today is an alternative wow that I want to say. I have installed a 3D desktop on my computer last autumn and found it fun, I also found out how crap was my built-in laptop video card… sigh!

Anyway, today I was watching a recent video of such 3D desktop, and wow! They have evolved really fast. The video is a bit long at the beginning, but it is worth it. I like the dock at the bottom of the screen (kiba dock). Of course, the operating system is Linux.

April 13, 2007March 1, 2009

Hello, I’m an alternative!

Video MIME Type by Tango Even if you do not have a TV, it was difficult to miss the advertisement campaign from Apple: “Hello I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC.” If you have missed it out, here is one of the latest one to date: the flashback.

I am a big fan of Apple computers, and there are right that for a home computer desktop there are two possibilities: a PC or a Mac. However, there advertisement do not emphasise on the hardware (which is nowadays pretty similar) but more on what can be done with them. So it should have better been called: “Hello I’m OS X. And I’m Windows.”

But on this ground, there are more than those two systems, many alternatives like Ubuntu Linux, FreeBSD, etc. do exist. That is what maybe triggered a counter campaign from Novell (Linux distributor of SUSE Linux). I am calling it “Hello, I’m an alternative!“.

March 19, 2007March 1, 2009

100% free laptop

Hold on, I did not mean that I was selling my laptop for free. I am not selling it at all and I am more than happy with it as it is 100% free (libre) when I am using Ubuntu. There is no proprietary driver used even for 3D or Wi-Fi.
Ubuntu Feisty Fawn offers a new tool about restricted drivers in the administration section which deals with restricted drivers.
I was curious about its functionalities and I launched it.
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March 8, 2007March 1, 2009

Gnome Power Management

In the up coming Gnome 2.18, there have been several improvement of the Gnome Power Management applet. It still does the job of easily configuring many options that reduce power consumption. But recently it offers a power history.

This functionality is accessible upon right click on the applet icon. It displays a neat little plot of the power level of your battery and of various ACPI-related events (like session idle, suspend, etc.) I find it quite useful to see if the power management policies chosen are applied and if they could be optimised.

On your right is a screenshot of the power history (click the image to enlarge).