Death of the P4 Ubuntu desktop

My main computer, an old P4 desktop has finally died for the last time. It's been slowly failing me over the past year, with various parts being replaced, but yesterday it finally quit for good. The motherboard is fried and I won't bother repairing it. I'll be looking for a new system in the new year, so I'll have to get by with my trusty laptop. It's currently running Ubuntu Intrepid, and the only glitch is that the lcd backlight is slowly fading away. I've already replaced the lcd inverter, and now the backlight goes dim ever so often. I just have to partially close and open the laptop cover for the screen to come back on.
My desktop has 2 hard drives on it that I'll need to salvage before I get rid of it. I'll need to do full backups of both and reformat them to make sure there's no longer any personal data on them.
I was running Ubuntu on the one hard drive for quite some time now, and had it configured just right with everything running smoothly on it. I used the laptop to experiment with and to tweak settings. I'm using the laptop to log in to my blog via scribefire to post this update.
I'm glad that I discovered a great Firefox addon called Foxmarks that has allowed me to import my saved bookmarks to my laptop. I wish that I had done something similar with my passwords. I did use keepass on my computer, but unfortunately, I didn't save the backup file to a disk, so I can't access that yet. I may pick up a cheap hard drive enclosure kit so I'll be able to get at those files on my hard drive.
I'd suggest that anyone with personal files on their computer to not wait till 'tomorrow' to perform a backup. Those photos and documents can be gone in a flash, lost forever. Luckily for me, I can still access my files, but it may be a while till I can plug those drives in and backup my precious data.
Technorati Tags: ubuntu, ubucrates, p4 desktop, backup, foxmarks,

Recipe for Success

This month saw me in hospital for an unscheduled surgery. If you've never experienced a gall bladder attack before, I can only describe it as an incredibly painful experience I would never want to repeat.
Now that I'm out of hospital, I've decided to start eating a bit more healthier to avoid another hospital stay.
I've found an excellent program called Gourmet Recipe Manager that will help me achieve that.
This program has everything I'd want in a recipe storage program with more added features as well.
Gourmet allows me to import recipes from various other programs like MasterCook and Mealmaster. I used to use MasterCook with windows and have lots of recipes stored in that format, so it's great to see the import feature implemented and working well.
There is even an added bonus feature that allows you to import webpage recipes. This is an excellent feature that gives you the option to import the recipes directly from the website that you find it on. I didn't have much luck with this way of importing and found it hit and miss most of the time. Too bad, but this software is still evolving, so I'll be keeping an eye on this addon.
There are additional options that allow me to monitor nutritional data on each item and menu so that I can keep track of calories and individual stats of each item. I can customize the data by choosing from several menu options to help me fine tune the accuracy of the nutritional data being listed for each recipe.
There is also a handy shopping helper that lists items already on hand in your pantry and those items that I need to pick up on my next trip to the store. I just open up the shopping helper and drag and drop the items I already have to remove them from the list then hit print and I have a handy shopping list ready to take with me on my next shopping trip.
Adding new recipes is a breeze. Just enter each item one by one as well as the ingredient measurement and the recipe will soon be entered into the database. A photo can also be included to help make choosing recipes later.
Once your recipe database has started to grow ,there is a search feature that helps you track down to elusive recipes with options to search by title, category, cuisine, ingredient or even instructions. You can rate each recipe as well on a 5 star basis, so that you can even search for your favorites this way.
If you don't feel like typing in all your recipes by hand, and want to get started right away, do a google search for Mealmaster recipes. There are tons of recipes already online, so start those that download, import and start cooking.

Getting things done...one day soon

I've been so extremely busy this past month, that I've let this blog sit idle.
Here's a brief update of what I'm up to and what I'm thinking about for the future. I'm still using Ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop, which is running extremely well and I haven't encountered any glitches at all. Tomorrow is the day of the final release.
Download and enjoy!
I'm debating making the switch from 8.04 to 8.10 on my desktop computer. I don't want to risk breaking anything and losing the data I've got stored there. I'll eventually attempt it when I've got time to do a thorough backup.
There are a few ideas and projects that I want to accomplish with Ubuntu in the near future.
I have some high definition video archived on my hard drive that I want to convert and burn to DVD one of these days. I'm not sure how easy this will be since the hi def video format is still relatively new and not so easily recognized by main stream players/editors.
I also would like to scan the transparency slides that I have stored all around my house that I took before I made the switch to digital. I'll have to reconnect my old slide scanner and capture them at the best resolution that I can for backup and for future use.
I'm working on a website for my daughters soccer team and am testing out the various html editors available in the repositories such as screem, quanta and bluefish.
Also, I'm debating taking FreeBSD out for a test drive as a friend doesn't stop taking about it. Sounds interesting and I've downloaded the iso files, but I'm still having fun with Ubuntu for now.

Happy Birthday Tux!

On October 20th Ubuntu will celebrate the 4rth anniversary of its initial release.
This month also marks the 17th anniversary of Linux. These are two small milestones, but I thought it was worth acknowledging them regardless.
This post gives me a chance to have some fun with using Gimp. I've created a simple graphic of Tux celebrating both events by hosting his own party where he spins his favorite Linux tunes. Not the best graphic that you'd be able to create using Gimp, but I'm far from being the artistic type.

Countdown to Eight-ten

 

The month is flying by quickly and it won't be long before the next version of Ubuntu will be released.
It's currently available as a beta, and I did test out Ubuntu when it was still in alpha release.
Currently, I have the Kubuntu 8.10 amd64 beta running on my laptop.
I've never been too fond of Kubuntu or KDE in the past, but I've got some new respect for this new and updated version of KDE. It really makes me seriously consider switching over to Kubuntu for the next release.
I never felt completely comfortable with previous versions of Kubuntu. Maybe at the time, I expected it to look and run more like Windows. I was told that it was more "Windows-like" than Gnome.
The new version using KDE 4.1 really impresses on first bootup. Although still in beta, the interface is very pleasing and is easily navigated. I would have prefered to see Firefox as the default browser rather than Konqueror and Thunderbird rather than Kmail, but those are personal options and easily installable.
I suspect that there will be many Ubuntu users making a permanent switch to Kubuntu once the word starts spreading about this release.

Firefox 303

When I installed the Alpha version of Intrepid on my laptop, I noticed that Firefox 3.02 came installed with it. It was nice to see that it was included as my Ubuntu desktop still had vr 3.01 on it and no official updates were available.
Today I find that Ubuntu has several updates available, and Firefox is one of them. However, I find that they have upgraded Firefox again, which brings it up to version 3.03. That's two updates in a short time.
It turns out that this update fixes a bug that was present in version 3.02, where "users were unable to retrieve saved passwords or save new passwords".

There has been a bit of controversy within the Ubuntu community lately about the Firefox user agreement and upcoming Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex due for release next month.
Mozilla has added a Firefox 3.0.2 end user license agreement (EULA) to its upcoming release, which has caused an uproar among many open source supporters.
Mark Shuttleworth explained the reasoning for this where users had started a bug entry for this EULA license "bug"

He writes:

Mozilla Corp asked that this be added in order for us to continue to call the browser Firefox. Since Firefox is their trademark, which we intend to respect, we have the choice of working with Mozilla to meet their requirements, or switching to an unbranded browser.

It's strongly our preference, and that of most of our users, to have Firefox as the browser in Ubuntu.

I think it's perfectly reasonable for Mozilla to have requirements and guidelines for the use of their trademark - we have the same for Ubuntu, and many other free software projects do the same. I would in fact consider it a best practice to have a good brand on a free software project, which means having trademark guidelines.

That said, I would not consider an EULA as a best practice. It's unfortunate that Mozilla feels this is absolutely necessary, but they do, and none of us are in a position to be experts about the legal constraints which Mozilla feels apply to them. We had extensive conversations with Mozilla in order to find the best possible way of meeting their requirements while preserving the flow of use of the system for our users.

I am somewhat frightened that Mozilla would require a EULA which is so
waffly and contains so little substance. I also fail to see how not
carrying Firefox branding breaks "the flow of use of the system". Recall
that much of the world uses Internet Explorer, and doesn't know of the
Firefox brand in the first place.

This EULA also says strange things - that other packages might have
other licenses, for example. Why is it saying that? No other package
states that. Does it perhaps refer to the Firefox installer that we've
never used and never will? The agreement also states that portions of
the source code are available - if it is in main it must all be
available. Many parts of this EULA seem irrelevant and unnecessarily
frightening.

I'm not sure how this will end, but I don't think that this will change the way that people use Ubuntu. Firefox with or without a EULA agreement will still be the browser of choice for many users. It may be rebranded with a new name, but people will still choose it over the other alternatives that are currently available.

Alpha testing: Ubuntu Intrepid

This past Monday was Ubuntu Testing Day, and Ubuntu users were asked to download and test any one of the flavours of Intrepid that is currently in Alpha 6 testing.
I finally decided to try the amd64 version of Ubuntu on my laptop, which I have been meaning to try since I purchased it (Compaq Presario V2310).
I downloaded and burned the iso and proceeded to install the Ubuntu Intrepid alpha 6 image to my laptop. I have participated in many, many beta testing versions of various softwares over the years, but this is the first time that I have installed an alpha test version for testing purposes.
I decided that since this was an alpha test, I would completely erase my laptop hard drive and devote the entire machine to the testing process in case any serious problems wiped out my data.
I registered with the testing site and installed the Ubuntu DVD amd64 version of Intrepid.
I noted that there were many bugs listed for the various versions of Ubuntu, but I found that my install went flawlessly and I was up in running in no time after my hard drive was formated and partitioned.
The only glitch I encountered was entirely expected on my Compaq Presario V2310.
This laptop has wifi issues that I've found can only be rectified by applying the Fiesty No Fluff broadcom fix. Not a serious problem and not what I'd call a bug, but it would have been nice to have the software work right 'out of the box'.
I've been trying this version out the last few days and have not encountered any significant issues to report. I'm now planning on trying out one of the other alpha versions of Intrepid. I notice that the both desktop versions of the alpha have multiple bugs reported, so I think I'd like to try help iron out some bugs with those installations.
The beta version will be released on October 2nd, the RC on October 23 and the final release will be on October 30th.
Those that want to try out the next final version of Intrepid don't have long to wait, otherwise jump in now and try out the alpha. Just don't forget to backup your important data first.