[UPDATED] Initial thoughts on Ubuntu 9.10 beta

[Updated to include some great news on the evolution-rss bug. -Peng]

The Ubuntu devs released the beta of Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” back on the first of the month (now available as a Release Candidate), and while I snagged the disk image pretty quickly it wasn’t until Friday a week ago that I was able to actually get a chance to fire up the LiveCD long enough to see how well it played with my system. I couldn’t find any major glitches in it other than a problem with my USB WiFi adapter, and I had already seen that people were having enough major issues with the combination that there was a request to change the status on the support for the adapter from some support to absolutely no support. Luckily I was already having enough connectivity issues with our Linksys WiFi router that I has already gone back to using the good, old-fashioned CAT 5 cable to connect to it.

After looking at a number of other items that are important to me I went to the page on the Ubuntu website about the 9.10 beta to check for any known issues that I needed to be aware of and decided it was an upgrade I could probably do safely. I ran command sudo do-release-upgrade -d with the Run Application (Alt-F2) tool, although you could also run it in the terminal, and waited the two hours plus while my system got upgraded. Your system may take the upgrade more quickly or more slowly than mine, but having done a clean installation for version 9.04 I decided I didn’t want to go through the hassle of having to reinstall every bloody app and tool I use this time around. I did notice a number of dbus errors during the upgrade and unfortunately I didn’t think to document what they were about. They may have had something to do with how long my upgrade took, but I hadn’t found any dbus issues connected with the upgrade so I have absolutely no clue what the errors should have told me.

Now that I’ve used and updating Karmic for just over a week I found some things that I want to point out, some good, some not so good.

Overall Thoughts

I kept seeing people say that the boot times for Ubuntu 9.10 are shorter and sure enough my boot time is shorter. Of course since the Ubuntu devs decided to switch from using Usplash for the initial boot splash to XSplash any Mac4Lin boot splashes would have been broken anyway (I never did get a Usplash working for Mac4Lin 1.0, much to may chagrin) but I have to say that I really do like the look of the new splash screens. The boot splash is a simple Ubuntu logo on a dark background, but I have to say the new XSplash is a thing of beauty. As you can see in a YouTube video posted on Softpedia’s article on the newly released Ubuntu 9.10 beta, it’s no longer a simple case of the Ubuntu logo and a progress bar. The Ubuntu logo is now suspended and lit by an overhead spotlight and the animated bar now scrolls up rather than going from left to right.

In addition, they’ve added the Ubuntu Software Center (USC) as a new tool for adding software to the usual collection of Synaptic and Add/Remove Software. When I first looked at it I thought, “So what? I can do the same thing with existing tools.” Except the UI for the USC makes it a lot handier than Add/Remove Software. You can either search for a specific app or browse through the library and when you find what you’re looking for you’re provided with a much nicer information screen complete with buttons to wither install the software as well as to go to the app’s website where you can get even more information. The information screen even lets you know the version that’s available, something that Add/Remove Software never had. Have software you installed from a Debian package (.deb)? The USC knows about the app (at least what the package told the system) and gives you a button to remove it. It may not always have the application’s icon, but that may be more of a limitation in the package itself. Yes, you can do all this via Synaptic, but not everyone’s all that comfortable with it.

The Good

For the most part I’m pretty happy with the upgrade. I won’t bore you with a ton of specifics or screenies (I’ll include a link to some screenshots I made at the end) but there are a few things that I noticed are definite improvements in the user experience for me. The first thing I noticed was a dialog that popped up on my first reboot after the upgrade was done. I knew my hard drives were getting a bit old in the tooth, but now I could see just how bad things are getting. I dismissed the dialog, but now when I boot up I get an icon in my notification area and when I click on it I get a helpful message. I can click on the message and get more information, and I know I need to replace that drive one of these days but now I know I need to do it sooner than later (picture). I can disable the message if I want, as I can for the warnings that I’m getting low on disk space on my partitions. Those warnings come up each boot, as well as when I’m working with videos and the available space gets too small. Yes, they can be a little annoying, but I haven’t decided to silence them just yet.

An even nicer improvement comes in the Update Manager. Now it lets you know the source for the particular updates, plus it flat-out gives you more information on the update, such as the version number. This is information that’s been missing from the Update Manager for as long as I’ve used Ubuntu.

Another small, yet a very nice set of improvements came in Evolution. The first is a better visual notification of new messages coming in. In the past when you fired up Evo you simply saw the folder names bold when you had unread messages, which is okay, unless you left some messages marked unread to follow-up on as I do. Now you’ll see that there’s a star on the folder that has brand new unread messages.

The other improvements come to those who use Evo as their RSS reader. Not only does Evo show the site icons for the folders with feeds where available (the other folders use the stock RSS feed icon), but on many sites you can now see the comments when you look at the article summaries. I’m not sure why they show up on some feeds and not others, but I have noticed that some feeds still show a count for the number of comments without actually showing the comments themselves. But it’s not all good news with Evo though.

There’s one more fan-damn-tastic improvement in Ubuntu 9.10 that I just discovered trying to get caught up on my RSS feeds: It’s a piece of baklava to enable using Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to force a new X session. Just go to System > Preferences > Keyboard > Layouts > Layout Options. Then select Key Sequence to kill the X server and check Control + Alt + Backspace. That’s all it takes. Yooouge thanks to Panji Nushantara for pointing it out on his blog.

The Not So Good

First off all let me warn you about a potential deal breaker in the updated Evolution. If you’re like me and you use Evo for your RSS/ATOM feed reader you won’t want to grab the new Evo. The reason for this warning is the fact that for some unknown (to me) reason the evolution-rss plugin no longer works and no feeds are updated (filed as Bug #460462 with fixed link). Luckily you can export your feed list (Edit > Preferences > News and Blogs > Export) so you can migrate your subscribed feeds to another app like Liferea and hopefully not miss too many days’ posts. There’s also an advantage that Liferea has over Evolution’s RSS plugin: You can sort and rename your feed folders to your heart’s content without borking the feed settings, something that you can’t say about evolution-rss. Updated 26 October 4:00 pm: Thanks to some very quick work by Andrew Starr-Bochicchio the evolution-rss bug is already fixed. There’s a .deb package on comment #6 on the bug, or you can wait for it to be available through the Update Manager as it’s already been accepted for distribution.

There are more upgrades in Ubuntu 9.10 that aren’t such good news, and one that sticks out like a sore thumb on my system is the GNOME web browser, Epiphany. As I mentioned back in December I finally got tired of the decisions Firefox devs were making and switched to using Epiphany for my web surfing. There were two flavors of Epiphany, one using the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine and one using Webkit, but the Webkit version didn’t quite seem ready for prime time so I was using the Gecko version. It was great that I had the option and it allowed me the option of using a Gecko-based browser without dealing with what I thought were boneheaded UI decisions from Firefox devs. Unfortunately the Epiphany devs have stopped supporting the Gecko engine and since with the release of Epiphany 2.26.3 Epiphany/Gecko no longer exists, Epiphany/Gecko is simply not available in Ubuntu 9.10. You may think that’s not a big problem, except there are some basic behavior issues that no longer available.

There’s finally a semi-usable spell checker in Epiphany now. I saw semi-usable because if I select a correct spelling the misspelled word is deleted but not replaced with the correct spelling (filed as Bug #460450).

The biggest issue is that you can no longer right-click a link and select Open in New Tab from the context menu. You also can’t middle-click a link on every site and open it in a new tab, especially when the links are on a Google site like Gmail.

Another serious usability issue for me is that the extensions that I used don’t seem to work quite properly anymore. The biggest issue for me is the fact that my beloved New Blank Tab extension no longer seems to be working. I’m hoping someone will come along and fix it because while the Tab Foreground extension works it doesn’t let me open a new tab and go straight to the location bar so I can type (or paste) in a URI. This is a rather big pain in the arse, although not quite as big as the no middle-click issue.

Wallpaper Tray is another app that has broken in the upgrade. For some reason it flat out won’t launch on booting for some reason. I ended up switching to Desktop Drapes, which is a nice app that I can put right on my upper panel, but doesn’t have the hover feature of showing the path and filename for the current wallpaper like Wallpaper Tray does. Hopefully we can get that fixed before too long.

On the Whole

One the whole there are some nice benefits to the upgrade, as long as you don’t depend on the features I mentioned above. As I finally finish this post we have a mere four days before Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” is released, now may be a great time to snag the ISO for the Release Candidate and try it out on your own system. Remember, try the LiveCD before you make the upgrade, and look at every app that you use now to make sure the upgrade won’t bring bad news as I found. make sure you also read the overview before you make the upgrade for more information on what’s coming in the upgrade as well as the known issues.

Check out all of my Ubuntu 9.10 screenshots in my Picasa Web Album.

Karmic Upgrade screenies

Counting the Days

Yesterday the Ubuntu devs released Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic Koala” Beta was Thursday, and after a quick check of the new LiveCD I must say the update looks pretty nice. Just booting in with the LiveCD brought a very nice new feature that I have to write about in the coming days. I saw a message that one of my partitions has a number of errors, something I suspected but hadn’t confirmed yet. You should definitely grab the ISO file and burn the disc yourself to see some of the great improvements coming down the pipeline for us.

You’re also asked to help test some of the new goodies, and we really do need as many people as possible to test the new beta on their own computer since everyone’s computer is different and you may find a problem that nobody else catches. Of course this is a beta release and should not be used on the computer you use for your day-to-day computing tasks. It’s very possible that there’s a really nasty bug out there that may cause some major issues for you, and as much as we’d like to say you won’t find any major bugs we simply can’t promise that. Yet.

I’ll try to write my review of at least the LiveCD in the coming days (I’m not sure I’m ready to upgrade my Ubuntu box to 9.10 yet since it is my primary comp and I still have some tasks to complete with 9.04), and I also want to pass along some links to what others are saying about the beta.

With the release of the beta we also have a new countdown available. Unfortunately they still don’t have an option for those of us who can’t use JavaScript so you won’t see the real countdown on the right until someone is kind enough to create a PHP version of the countdown. Thanks to Jeffrey Detras for blogging the new countdown on Ubuntu Weblogs, which is where I saw the countdown has come out.

[UPDATED] Peng’s links for Friday, 27 March

Updated to include note about the PHP version of the Ubuntu 9.04 [countdown. -Peng]

I tried to post some links yesterday but as soon as I hit the save button to lock in some tage and my text I was rewarded with a 100% blank post. Hopefully this post will last long enough to publish it.

• Pavel Rojtberg: Giving Google Earth a native look & feel. One of the biggest complaints about Google apps on Linux (other than some apps actually not being native Linux apps because they shove an extra installation of WINE down our throats) is how butt ugly they are. Pavel walks us through what we need to do to get them looking like the theme we have selected.
• Jonathan Carter: The correct way to file bugs in Ubuntu. Filing bugs is important when you help test new releases, but I found out yesterday I was doing it wrong because I went straight to Launchpad to file my bug. Jonathan lets us know not only how do to it properly but also why the way I was doing it is a bad idea.
• Steven Harms: Thank You. Steven writes a wonderful post to the people who help make Ubuntu Linux such a wonderful distribution. As for me, I’m just going to say, “What Steven wrote.”
• Tiago Vaz: Some cool audio stuff for Debian. Usually when people write about cool audio tools for GNU/Linux they’re referring to media player apps like Amarok, MPD and Totem. But Tiago has good news for musicians, especiallt guitar players, as he tells us about some virtual processing gear.
• Steve Langasek: Ubuntu 9.04 Beta released. I know this should probably get a post of it’s own, but I’m tight on time since I needed to reclaim yesterday’s links from Google Reader. The first beta release of Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackelope” is now available for downloading. I’ll snag it this weekend and post my thoughts about it.
• Nick Ali: Ubuntu 9.04 Countdown Banner. If you have your own blog or website you may want to snag the countdown banner to help countdown the says until Ubuntu 9.04 is released. Stefano Forenza also has the code on his site, as well as tips for people like Nanci and I who aren’t allowed to use any JavaScript on their blog. That was a pain in the rear the last two releases (Thanks, WP.com) and we’re glad the devs thought of us this time around. Updated 29 March: If you can’t use JavaScript grab the PHP code from Stefano’s post. It’s working fine on our blog!
• Daniel T. Chen: Lessons Learned at Jaunty Beta. Not everything went 100%smoothly with the alpha versions of Ubuntu 9.04, and Daniel clues us in on some of the things the dev team had to deal with.

That’s it for today. I may have some links to share tomorrow, but look for our report on how Jaunty behaves on our hardware this weekend. Until then, enjoy the weekend!

[UPDATED] Nvidia released beta 96 legacy drivers, and we almost have Compiz back

[Updated to reflect Alberto Milone's advise on the matter. Please read the entire post, including what Alberto says, before installing the new driver. -Peng]

When I checked my email this morning I saw that Nvidia has released a beta version of their 96.43.09 legacy drivers. After following the instructions that Takahani posted on the Launchpad bug about it I finally have Nvidia drivers working again.

- Download NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.09-pkg1.run (or the other one if you’re running a 64 bit system) to your home folder (/home/simon/ for me)
- switch to pty1 (CTRL+ALT+F1)
- log in
- sudo service kdm stop (will kill X server) (or gdm if you are running gnome)
- sudo sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.09-pkg1.run
- say yes to everything (will compile nvidia kernel module)
- sudo reboot now (reboot now !!)

And that should be enough, login and check that “glxinfo | grep direct” says “YES”

Sure enough, I ran the grep and this is what I got

And yes, despite the fact that my computer still calls itself Icebox-Hardy, that’s with Ubuntu Intrepid running.

I did find that with Compix enabled I was getting white sections where my Screenlets were running, but I was able to get things fixed by following the instructions in this post on the nV News Forums.

I was able to get Compiz running and even use my desktop cube/sphere, but I changed a setting and it broke. Unfortunately I didn’t check things at each step so I don’t know which setting borked things, but Takahani said there’s an override that I can run to get Compiz working properly again, and as soon as I find ut what it is I’ll post it as an update to this post. In the meantime I’m back to Xcompmgr so I can use AWN. It’s getting so bloody close, but still no cigar.

Do you need the Nvidia 71 legacy driver? Good news: Nvidia release a beta for their 71.86.07 driver that you can give a try.

Updated 3:47pm: Alberto Milone, the developer of Envy, strongly recommends waiting until they come out into the -proposed repo, which should be fairly soon. Woops! I hadn’t seen his advice before I installed the new driver. I guess we’ll see what issues need to be dealt with downstream.

Ubuntu 8.10 enters beta stage

Yesterday Ubuntu released the first beta for Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex for both desktop and server use. Among the goodies in the Intrepid beta are

• GNOME 6.24 2.24, with all the great new GNOME features including tabbed browsing and an eject icon for removable drives in the Nautilus file manager as well as an upgraded File Roller that now supports ALZ, RZIP, CAB and TAR.7Z archive files.
• X.Org 7.04 with better suport for some hot-pluggable devices and an improved failsafe X. Unfortunately there are still some issues for fglrx and some older Nvidia binary drivers so these users will be automatically switched to the proper open source drivers.
• Linux kernel 2.6.27, with better hardware support and a number of bug fixes.
• The ability to start Guest sessions in the User Switcher panel for a quick and easy way to let someone use your computer for a quick email check without giving them any access to home directories or letting them permanently store any data.
• Network Manager 0.7 with a number of long desired features
• “Last successful boot” recovery entry to let you save and access the last known kernel and let you safely delete older kernel packages
• Dell’s DKMS to allow Ubuntu Intrepid to automatically rebuild kernel drivers when a new kernel is released. This will let you get the new kernels quicker rather than having to wait for the new drivers to be built.
• Samba 3.2 with clustered file server support, encrypted network transport, ipv6 support and better integration with the latest Windows clients and servers.
• A new Totem BBC plugin that will get free digital content from the BBC. With users around the world loving the content produced by the Beeb makes the new plugin useful for people everywhere.

There are some issues that users will have to watch out for. Users of Intel GigE ethernet hardware will find results in their e10001 driver being disabled, and users with static network configurations will need to disable the NetworkManager at startup. Links in GNOME programs (like Evolution) won’t launch Firefox automatically due to an issue in the wrapper script used by the firefox-3.0 package. (I have the beta burned to a LiveDVD and I’ll have to install the upgrade to see if the issue exists when using a version of Firefox 3 not installed from Ubuntu’s repos.)

For info on the other Ubuntu variants (Kubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Mythbuntu, etc.), as well as download links, check out the beta announcement from the ubuntu-announce mailing list, and get more details on the Ubuntu 8.10 Beta, including instructions for upgrading Ubuntu Hardy to the beta of Intrepid, from the Ubuntu 8.10 release notes. As always with testing releases, please remember this is a development release, not even a beta release yet, and should not be installed on any computer that absolutely has to work.

Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex is due to be released on Thursday, 30 October. (The countdown image on the right is as of when I wrote this post. It won’t update due to WordPress’ policy forbidding JavaScripts from unapproved sources. This makes at least two years running that we’ve asked them to allow Ubuntu’s countdown scripts.)

[UPDATED] Peng’s links for Friday, 22 August

[Updated to include an update for WINE. -Peng]

• muted articulation. I found this blog while checking the August 2008 Desktop Screenshot Thread and there are some great articles on it, especially one about timelapsed backgrounds in GNOME and his post on browser quirks. This blog belongs in your RSS reader, and I’m hoping we’ll get him on at least the Ubuntu Weblogs planet soon. Btw, if you’re looking for some ideas on things you can do to freshen up your desktop you should try to take the time to go through this month’s desktop screenie thread, and as many months as you can. I’ve gotten some nice ideas from those threads. It does take some time every day to get caught up (we’re up to 92 pages as of this writing) but it’s always worth the time to me. My only real problem is that I’ve got a lot more wallpapers for my rotation after getting some of the ones used on other people’s desktops. They’re that nice.
• Jonathan DiCarlo: Tabbing Through the Tabs and More Questions (and No Answers) about Tabs. Jono has some nice info on using tabs in Firefox, especially moving from tab to tab. I’m not sure if his ideas will be incorporated into Firefox, but if not I hope it becomes an extension. It would sure make moving between tabs easier, especially when I have several tabs open on a single site, which happens a lot more often for some of us than you may realize.
• Gervase Markham: Two Ways To Become a Beta Tester. A short but simple post showing the difference between how Microsoft and Mozilla, and for that matter most of the open source community, looks at beta testing.
• DesktopLinux.com: Linux to gain anti-virus software. McAfee is wanting to protect “Linux-based laptops and MIDs (mobile Internet devices) from ’security challenges.’” Does this mean programs like Clam AntiVirus are crap? Or does it simply mean that McAfee sees the growing popularity of Linux and figures people will get around to start writing Linux malware sooner or later and wants to start cashing in on it now? (For the record, Linux users don’t really need anti-virus software at this point because it’s so difficult to write and spread that kind of malware on the Linux platform.)
• Launchpad News: Launchpad 2.1.8: Bugzilla and Trac plugins now available, plus karma for commits. Launchpad, the bug tracking software from Canonical (parent company of the Ubuntu Linux distribution) just gets better and better. The plugins for Bugzilla and Trac make it even easier to link upstream bugs, thus getting fixes where they belong faster.
• Kevin DuBois: Tips for spawning GUI’s from the Command Line. Some people love the command line, some people prefer Gui’s (graphical user interfaces). But did you know there’s a way to start a program from the command line without having to tie up a Terminal window while it runs? I didn’t either. I’m going to have to remember Kevin’s info for later use.
• Aaron Leventhal: Firefox and OS X’s VoiceOver … Reading the Magic 8 Ball. OSX has some nice accessibility tools like their VoiceOver screen reader. Unfortunately they’re proprietary tools and it’s just not that easy for other programs to use them. But the Mozilla devs are bound and determined to find a way to make things easier to use for people with disabilities.
• andrewsomething/Ubuntu Forums: Contributing to Intrepid. While I really wish this has been posted to a blog on Planet Ubuntu rather than as a topic on the UF, this is a must read for anyone wanting to help get the next version of Ubuntu ready to ship in October. No programming knowledge, let alone experience, required, just the willingness to install and run Intrepid and help report bugs. Intrepid is still in development and may cause major breakage at any point, so it should not be run on your primary computer, but if you have a second computer you can run it on we’d love to have you help test it.
• WINE HQ News: WINE 1.1.3 Released. I know, another new version of WINE? You betcha, and there are a number of improvements, including “many installer fixes” and “tweaks for better PulseAudio support.” It’s not available in the Ubuntu repos yet, but this may be one of those programs you get directly so you can keep up with updates. Update Sat 23 Aug 8:00: When I checked for updates this am I saw wine_1.1.3~winehq0~ubuntu~8.04-0ubuntu1 presented to me as an update. I believe it’s in hardy-proposed, but I couldn’t confirm that. It should be available to all Ubuntu Hardy users before too long.
• Miia Ranta: If I really knew how to code… A member of Planet Ubuntu shares her wish list. You’ve got to love her emote at the bottom of her post. One of these day I may have to join her in that emote. [Get your mind out of the gutters. It's not that kind of emote. lol]
• Lydia Pintscher: Nerrivik released. You’re thinking “WHAT released???”, but Nerrivik is the code name for the first beta of Amarok 2.0, the next version of the KDE media player I use on my GNOME box, even though it means I have to install some KDE libraries. Amarok used to be my primary media player until I discovered MPD/Sonata. Check out the screenshot that Lydia posts, then go read the release notes. (Her link takes you through Digg, mine gets you there directly. No offense, Lydia.)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Peng’s links for Saturday, 5 July

It’s Saturday? I woke up this am and after the holiday yesterday (with the busses in town running on a Sunday schedule) I honestly had no clue what day it was. Sorry about not making a links post on Thursday. A roomie of mine had Achiles’ tendon surgery last week and he had to go for a follow up appointment Thursday. Unfortunately we finished a lot earlier than expected so we had to wait for The Ride to come get us. Unfortunately he wanted the fresh air and while there were no seats outside other than in the sun (I’ve had enough sunburn in my life, thank you) I wouldn’t leave him outside while I sat inside, so I ended up standing about an hour more than I should. Needless to say, I was in no shape for blogging last night, even with the maximum allowed dosage of pain meds. I apologize for some of these links now being a few days old.

I trust everyone had a great 4th of July. I’ll have another post soon for those who’s like to see the fireworks in Boston but either couldn’t get down there or didn’t see them on CBS last night.

• Mary Colvig: We’re official! The Firefox community has been certified as setting a new Guinness World Record for the “largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.” Asa Dotzler has answers to some of the questions people keep asking about the record.
• Markus Thielmann: Adobe updates Flash 10 Beta. a number of bugs got fixed in the newest Flash 10 Beta, including the pain in the arse windowless mode bug, and Markus has information on how to install it, complete with a PPA so Ubuntu users can get updates automatically.
• Eddie Martinez: Best Buy sucks at selling computers. Ok, now I know to never go to the Best Buy on W. Roosevelt in Chicago, especially if I want to buy a computer. I just hope the corporate office reads his post, because I seriously doubt it’s an isolated incident.
• Frank Taylor: Google Teleases Street View for Tour de France in Google Earth/Maps. It’s the time of year when people who otherwise don’t care about competitive cycling go out of their way to keep up with a bicycle race. Thanks to Google we can get an even better look at the course in the first time they’ve posted Street View images for a country other than the US. He also has a nice article on using Google Earth for tracking storms, a very handy thing to know now that the new hurricane season is upon us. Just remember to use it carefully, as the storm tracking layers are designed to be used one or two at a time, not all at once.
• Wladimire Palant: Blocking malicious sites with Adbock Plus. There’s yet another fantastic use for the software add-on that web site owners hate so much. And since there’s security issues on Flash that are being exploited this news is out none too soon.
• BBC News: It’s not the Gates, it’s the bars. Sichard Stallman has a nice article about the retirement of Bill gates. Thanks to Xkutzy on the Ubuntu Forums for pointing this out to me.
• Christer Edwards: Printing Diectly to PDF in Ubuntu 8.04. I have my default printer set to create PDF documents rather than having to worry about killing trees and buying toner, but Christer wrote a great HowTo so you can do the same. Now I won’t have to dig so hard when I have to find this info to set it up on another computer.
• Ken Gurnick: Ethier leads Dodgers to ‘lucky’ win. Nomar and Andru were back in the lineup for the Dodgers after spending some time on the DL, and Joe Torre had to call a team meeting after the game. Yes, they won 10-7 more thanks to some Giants errors, but it was a pretty messy win, But hey, the Dodgers are now just a half game out of first place! Woot! We have some great highlights to enjoy, too.
• Kevin Smith: Curious George, the Shadow of the Bat, and Other Stuff. “Silent Bob” has some great pictures from working with George Carlin, as well a link to a great Newsweek piece he wrote about his friend. As  well as a picture from his newest movie, due out on Halloween.

Sorry about stuffing so many links in this post. I have one more post that Nanci said I had to write and then I plan on taking the rest of the weekend off. It is supposed to be a three day weekend here in the colonies, after all. :p

Test drive Firefox 3 RC1, and Flash 10

Mozilla has released Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1, and it’s almost ready to be released. But now they’d like more of you to check it out and see if you find any bugs that absolutely, positively have to be fixed before Firefox 3 gets its official release.

Ubuntu fixes the Hardy NumLock bug

Many of us who have been testing Ubuntu Hardy have found there’s a bug that leaves the NumLock setting off as it boots up, despite our having it turned on in our BIOS. I’m glad to be able to report that the fix for the bug has been released and we no longer need to use workarounds.

Firefox 3 Beta 5 is HERE!

My sources in Mozilla QA tell me that Firefox 3 Beta 5 should be out this afternoon. There’s no download link available yet (duh) but I did want to take a minute to write what could end up being my final post on Firefox 3’s development.

Updated 2:30 PM EDT 2 April: Firefox 5 Beta 5 is now out! And the firstrun page does in fact continue the robotic theme of previous betas.