Full Circle #15 teaches us new tricks

The good people at Full Circle Magazine, the independent Ubuntu magazine, have released issue number 15 with several new things, including something I wish I’d had last year.

Among the new content this month is

• Command and Conquer: The Ins and Outs of Directories
• HowTos: How to create a separate /home partition (I wished I had this when I did it myself last year); part 7 of their series on creating your own server; part 4 of their series on using GIMP; and working with GRUB, the bootloader that lets you select which operating system or kernel version you want to use.
• My Story: Ubuntu Saves the Day and From Mickey’s ABCs to Kubuntu
• A review of the HP Photosmart C3180 printer
• much more

My article about Mac4Lin 0.4 still isn’t included, but Full Circle editor Ronnie Tucker tells me “It very nearly was! ” It’s actually a good thing, because Mac4Lin 1.0 is getting so close to getting released that I asked him to hold my article back until I can get him a new version that reflects the version currently in development.

Even without my article this issue is packed with some great information, so go get your own copy today.

Peng’s links for Saturday, 26 July

Finally I’m able to blog again. I had spied some great links I wanted to pass along in the last few days and I’m finally able to post them.

• Fabrizio Balliano: 10+2 things you’ll get with Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex”. We’re less than three months from the next version of Ubuntu, and we even have a third beta alpha that just came out (thanks for the correction, Mackenzie), but Fabrizio gives us some things to look forward to having when the Ibex hits in October.
• Edward Lee: Firefox 3.1 Restricts, Matches, Keywords. There will be new ways to limit what comes up in the Smart Location Bar. (Kudos to Ed for using that name for the bar rather than the name that so many of us hate.)
• Christer Edwards: OpenOffice Easter Egg and Joey Stanford: OpenOffice Credits. These two posts have some info on some fun Easter eggs in the open source productivity suite OpenOffice.org.
• Justin Dugger: Backgrounds for people with no talent. Justin praises the official background for Ubuntu Hardy (which I also love), but he also has a way for anyone to make a new desktop wallpaper, even if you aren’t artistically inclined.
• LinuxDevices.com: “Handheld recording studio” mixes with Linux. For all those who want to set up a demo recording studio in their place of abode, or even build a Linux-based rig for doing remote recording, Trinity Audio Group may have just the thing you’ve been looking for.
• Steven Rose: “Ultamatix: The New Automatix”. While some people hated the Automatix software source before it was shut down back in March, some people thought it’s closing was bad news. Someone’s come out with a replacement, although not everyone’s seeing this as good news. Personally I think there are already good ways to install just about anything in Ubuntu and if you can take the time to learn how to use them there’s very little software you won’t be able to use.
• Anat Narayanan: Microsoft joins Apache. You saw that right, Microsoft is now a sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation. I guess they’re really putting their bankbook their positive comments about Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). And someone from Mozilla got thanked for helping educate Microsoft about why FOSS is such a good idea.