mintCast 50 is now available!

In a podcast that should be heard by anyone who is unhappy with Ubuntu Linux, as well as anyone the least interested in giving Linux a try, the good folks at mintCast interviews Clem Lefebvre, the creator of Linux Mint, for their 50th podcast. This makes a podcast aimed at the general Linux community even better for people who don’t use Linux Mint specifically.

This final mintCast by the initial team of podcasters allows them to finally speak with the person responsible for creating Linux Mint. Among the questions answered by Lefebvre is news that the newer Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) can be great for people with older computers that can’t handle the demands of the current raft of releases of Ubuntu and Mint (the main Mint distro is based on Ubuntu Linux), and the fact that the newer versions of Linux Mint actually rolls back some of the decisions of the Ubuntu devs like moving to Unity and changes to the UI itself. Also included is the potentially fantastic news that they’re looking into bringing some much loved Windows features to Mint 11 like restore points to undo problems created by newly installed software and even the possibility of being able to rollback upgrades that can cause problems for some computers. This may even make mintCast Episode 50 worth hearing for people who haven’t switched to Linux yet.

Future episodes of mintCast will be made by a new team of users, and it sounds like the next episode is already recorded and being edited. It also sounds like mintCast may finally become the weekly podcast that the producers of mintCast have long wanted it to be.

At 36.7 MB and over an hour twenty minutes in length may make this the longest mintCast ever but the information in the podcast makes it worth hearing. mintCast is available on several platforms including MP3, Ogg Vorbis and even iTunes so it may be one of the easiest podcasts to get. You can find mintCast Episode 50, as well as the older mintCast episodes, on the mintCast website.

Looking for some great new Minty art?

As many of our readers know by now I love finding new desktop wallpaper images. In addition to the Ubuntu monthly desktop screenshot threads for new images to use I also check the National Geographic photo of the day to see what images they post that I want to have on my desktop. I also use Webshots and Webilder to get new images every day, and I used to use Webilder to change my desktop wallpaper on a regular basis. Unfortunately while I can still use Webilder to help find new images it can’t change my wallpaper images on KDE like it can for GNOME, but KDE has a wallpaper slideshow option to automatically change images on a regular basis for me. KDE also has a Photo of the Day plasmoid to help me check other sites for possible new wallpaper images. (Please note that one of the sites that Photo of the Day uses is Bonjour Madame, which is definitely Not Safe For work, and I don’t see a way to not show images from that site.)

Today while perusing the Naughty November 2010 Screnshots thread (“Naughty” is just a name, the thread is always SFW) and a user shared a link to some great wallpapers that use the concept of electronic circuitry and a Linux distribution’s logo to make some incredible images. As I was looking at the images on deviantArt I noticed a button for a group called the #LinuxMint-Club. The group has not only some killer Mint wallpapers, but also some wallpaper and other images for other distros as well. One thing that can be found there is artwork for your burned Mint CDs and DVDs, including art for the case for the disk. They also have some good GNOME-, KDE-, and Debian-related artwork.

If you’re on the lookout for some pretty incredible wallpaper art, regardless of what flavor of Linux you run, as well as some other good promotional artwork, surf on over to deviantArt and check out the work of the members of the #LinuxMint-Club.I think you’ll really like what you find there.

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The joys and pains of enjoying podcasts

One of the things I’ve come to love about having my digital media player is being able to snag podcasts and enjoy them when I’m away from my computer. I know this is nothing new to most people but I didn’t do much with podcasts before due to a somewhat limited amount of time I spend at my computer every day. I used to snag some tech podcasts, especially the podcasts from the Ubuntu UK podcast team and the Ubuntu Podcasts from Josh Chase and Nick Ali from the Ubuntu Georgia Local Community (LoCo) team. I ended up dropping the two Ubuntu podcasts when I stopped being a GNOME user since they had too little KDE content that I could find. I also listened to the Full Circle Magazine podcast but I found the format too painful to listen to and dropped it. (Sorry guys, but it’s the truth.) I’ll look for some KDE-related podcasts one of these days but as of this writing I have no clue what’s out there.

I haven’t stopped enjoying podcasts though.Now I snag podcasts of NPR shows every weekend, as well as for shows during the week that I was unable to hear when it was originally broadcast. I do podcasts on the weekend mostly because my commute routine has changed so they’re on when I’m on the subway, plus my local NPR station, WBUR, has juggled the schedule for some of my favorite shows and I’m unable to hear them when I used to. For those interested, the shows I enjoy via podcast are:

• Studio 360 with Kurt Anderson. Their website calls the show ” public radio’s smart and surprising guide to what’s happening in pop culture and the arts.” Produced by PRI and WNYC, I can’t believe I let myself forget how much I enjoy the show.
• The Moth. Real stories from real people, told with no notes and always enjoyable and entertaining. The Moth runs storytelling nights in New York, LA, Chicago and Detroit, with shows in other cities when the Moth goes on tour. The Moth Radio Hour isn’t aired all year long, but it’s always good news when PRX.org has new shows. Luckily there are podcasts even when the show is on hiatus.
• Radiolab. Radiolab isn’t your ordinary radio show and I found it when I stumbled across it on WBUR. I was hooked from the first show. Another production from WNYC, their website says, “Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience. Big questions are investigated, tinkered with, and encouraged to grow. Bring your curiosity, and we’ll feed it with possibility.” I’m glad they put it that way because I honestly couldn’t find the words to try and describe they show. It’s that different, and that’s a very good thing.
• Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me. The NPR news quiz, it combines current events with humor and the chance to win a damned nice prize. Hosted by Peter Sagal and Carl Kasell and with three celebrity panelists each week, with most shows recorded at Chicago’s Chase Auditorium, I dare you to listen to a single show without laughing. And be careful, as Fat Albert used to say, you might learn something.

There are other shows I may snag downloads for if I miss enough of the broadcast, like OnPoint, Radio Boston, The Splendid Table, Fresh Air and Car Talk.

The title of this post mentions pains, and unfortunately there are two things that can be a bit of a pain to enjoying podcasts. Of course you have to download them, but there are a number of apps you can use that will grab the podcasts you want with little hassle, although I tend to simply download them and manually move them over to my media player. It’s not that big a deal for me since I have my player set to simply use a directory structure and don’t have to worry about where my app puts my podcasts. The other advantage to doing it this way is that I can archive podcasts that I really enjoy and save them for later.

But there’s one more things that’s more annoying than anything else about listening to NPR shows on podcasts. “Wait Wait…” is a great example. Earlier this year the time for it’s last weekly airing on WBUR was changed so that I tend to hear the show start before going underground on the subway between Community College and North Station, and then I can hear the end of the show once I get to Jackson Square or so on the southern end of the Orange Line. What I end up doing now is to hear the broadcast of the show’s teaser and the top of the hour news break, then go to the podcast until I get down to Forrest Hills. At that point there’s 20-30 minutes of show left and while I end up hearing part of the show twice it tends to work out pretty well. I usually go back to WBUR in time for the Listener Limerick Challenge or the final Lightning Fill In The Blank round.

The problem is the way the show ends. Peter Sagal always ends the show by saying, “This is NPR,” and the podcast ends. But as this clip recorded at the end of this morning’s first broadcast shows, I’m very used to something else following the end of the show.

As I’ve said on Facebook, it just seems weird to hear Peter close “Wait Wait…” with “This is NPR” and not hear the local station ID. What about you guys? Do you have things like this with podcasts you listen to regularly? What are the podcasts you just have to snag every week or so? Let us know in the comments, and please include links to the podcasts’ websites so we can check them out as well.

TweetDeck died when I switched DE’s, but there’s a fix

I usually use the websites for keeping up with both Twitter and Facebook but sometimes I want to post something to both services at once., For those times I fire up TweetDeck (TD), a great cross-platform microbloging solution that uses Adobe AIR to deal with the details for each operating system whether you’re on GNU/Linux, MacOS X or Windows. TweetDeck can be used for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and other social networking sites.

When I switched from GNOME to KDE I didn’t expect a problem but when I fired up TweetDeck last week I got error messages. (Sorry, I forgot to snap a screenshot of the errors.) Yesterday I was posting the first part of my posts on the migration to KDE and decided to try reinstalling TD to see if it would resolve the issue. It didn’t, but there was a URL (http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/492/cpsid_49267.html) in the error message so I entered it into my web browser.  The page is about problems with their Encrypted Local Storage (ELS) and a little more than half way down the page I saw a section about Using ELS while switching desktops. This is exactly what I was looking for.

Currently ELS supports a single desktop environment either Gnome or KDE on a machine. If the desktop session is Gnome and an application stores some data in ELS, when the desktop is changed to KDE, the same application will not be able to access the data that was stored earlier when the desktop session was Gnome.

This is because AIR Linux supports GnomeKeyring on Gnome and KWallet on KDE, and there are no standard method to transfer data among these two password managers.

I needed to reset the ELS by deleting the directory where it’s stored, ~/.appdata/Adobe/AIR/ELS, with ~/ standing in for your user directory (/home/[YourUserName]/). I deleted the folder in Dolphin but you can do it by very carefully running this command in a terminal:

$ rm -rf ~/.appdata/Adobe/AIR/ELS

Once you delete that folder you should be able to run TweetDeck without a problem.

HELP! My mouse has gone completely idiotic!

For the last month or so I’ve noticed off and on that my mouse has had it’s sensitivity settings dramatically changed. I’d try to click a link or a button in my web browser and I’d end up clicking two links, which is a real pain in the rear if I’m in Gmail and all I want to do is remove the Inbox label but end up removing both of the labels on a piece of email. Or I’d click the menubar of a window to bring it to the front and find the window suddenly maximized. Hell, just clicking the category tags for this post is almost impossible because every time I click a checkbox the system treats it as a bloody double-click and trying to click to edit a word turns into selecting the whole frigging paragraph! Grrrr!

I tried resetting the mouse settings in GNOME to no avail, and when I installed KDE on top of GNOME to begin using that DE a week ago the problem seemed to have been resolved. “Seemed” being the operative word. Today the mouse is back to being a complete PITA and I don’t know what to do to resolve it. I’ve tried Googling and found nothing. The same results specifically searching Ubuntu, KDE, and even other distro resources. I could start a thread on either the Ubuntu or Kubuntu Forums but I don’t have a clue where to even post it.

I know the issue reared it’s ugly head after getting an update from lucid-proposed or a PPA but I don’t even know what package to look at. Can anyone make a suggestion (or ten) for things I could check? I know I can try a fresh, clean install of Kubuntu but I’m not at the point where I’m ready to show GNOME the door. I still have data in GNOME apps (like Evo) to bring into a KDE app plus I’m not really sure there are no GNOME apps I want to hold on to, although I haven’t used Gnome Media Player since I moved to KDE and even Do has lost it’s preferred shortcut keys so I could assign them to Krunner.

Looking at KDE, and looking at apps

Late last month I said I was looking at the possibility of moving from Ubuntu to a different GNU/Linux distribution. While I haven’t had a lot of time for checking out other distros I have I’ve managed to create a spreadsheet to compile information on the distros I’m looking at. It shows the current version of the distro, the website, and which distro it’s based on, along with what kind of packages it uses, which Desktop Environment it uses (GNOME, KDE, etc.) and whether it is available on a LiveCD. I’ve also got the comments the people made to my earlier post just to help me remember what was said.

It looks like I’ll be at least making the migration from GNOME to KDE, even if I don’t leave the *buntu family of distros, so I needed to make a list of what apps I use regularly and see if they work under KDE (without needing to install libraries) and if not what apps may do the job. Apps I now use are listed in BOLD text if I absolutely need to use it regardless of what distro I use, although if I can keep the same features in a different program that will be acceptable.

I’ve been asked to share my spreadsheet  and I’ve put it on my Dropbox. I’ve included links to many of the apps listed in case you’re not familiar with them. If you know apps that will fill any of the empty slots please let me know. I’m hoping to make a final decision on whether I’m staying on Ubuntu and with GNOME by the end of this month. I’m planning on checking out my Kubuntu LiveCD in the next day or so, and I’ll be adding info to my spreadsheet as I do.

There is one thing I’m wondering about using KDE. I know it’s possible to have both GNOME and KDE on a single computer, but if I do that should I use different user profiles for each or will the settings info be safe as I bop back and forth between DE’s?

Fixing the not quite transparent panel issue

In the process of trying out new themes for my Ubuntu system I came across the elementary theme from the Elementary Project (theme files came from their PPA on Launchpad), which I find I rather like, except for one thing. My top panel in GNOME should be pretty transparent but there are some sections that show a very visible background. It doesn’t happen much,  just for a few applets, namely the GnoMenu, timer and the clock applets. That’s bugged the daylights out of me, but I finally found a solution for the problem.

While perusing the newer (to me) posts on the Jovial June Screen shots thread on the Ubuntu Forums user TheNessus asked koleoptero about the problem that he had on his system with a theme that koleoptero made.

I’m using your gtk theme but cannot make the panel transaprent, it only makes parts of it transparent, but not the applet backgrounds as well. Dunno..

koleoptero knew just what he was talking about, and told TheNessus

Yeah you’re right. You have to go into the theme’s folder/gtk2.0/ , open the gtkrc file, find the panel line that sets the default panel background and comment it out (add a # at the beginning). It’s easier than it sounds. The panel part has a whole title saying it’s the panel part. After that reload the theme.

As TheNessus pointed out in the very next post on the thread, the file in question is the panel.rc file. I fired up Synaptic, did a search for the elementary theme, and found it in /usr/share/themes/elementary. Since I needed to edit it as root to apply the fix I simply copied that entire folder to ~/themes so I could make the edits without messing up the original file or finding my changes replaced when the theme gets updated. The first thing I did with my copied folder was to rename ~/.themes/elementary/elementary to peng_elementary (both the theme folder and the file got that name to help tell it apart from the original elementary theme components), and I then edited the file to change line 3 from

Name=elementary

to

Name=peng_elementary

This is just to let it show up in the theme customization dialog so I’d be able to tell exactly which components I’m dealing with. Then I edited ~/.themes/peng_elementary/gtk-2.0/Apps/panel.rc to comment out the line setting the panel background. While every theme may have it in slightly different locations you want to look for the panel.rc file in either [theme_root]/gtk-2.0 or [theme_root]/gtk-2.0/Apps. On line 7 I changed

bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = "/Panel/panel.png" # Disable for normal panel backgrounds.

to

#bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = "/Panel/panel.png" # Disable for normal panel backgrounds.

Then save the file and close your editor, then open System > Preferences> Appearance. If you’re changing the appearance you now use I’d select another theme, then close the Appearances window, just to make sure your system loads in the edited files. Reopen Appearances, select the theme you’re editing, and click the Customize button. In the Customize theme dialog stay on the Controls tab and select the modified theme you created.

Close the Customize dialog and click the Save As… button. Give the theme a name that will let you know it’s your modified theme, save it, and close the Appearance window. Voilà! You have gotten rid of the non-transparent backgrounds behind your panel applets.

You may notice that my modified elementary theme doesn’t use the traditional elementary icons. When I was customizing the theme I also switched from the elementary icons to the Mac4Lin icons because I’m not 100% thrilled with all of the elementary icons. One of these days I want to create a mashup icon theme to use some elementary icons and some Mac4Lin icons. Unfortunately Mac4Lin’s icon theme is set up to allow compatibility with older style GNOME icon themes so updating it to make it work with the current GNOME icon theme specifications is very tedious process.

Peng’s links for Sunday, 31 January

• Lior Kaplan: Hamakor, the Israeli Free Software Society, calls for the annulment of Software Patents. People have been calling for the end of software patents since it’s getting (almost) to the point where it’s getting tough to determine whether a new patent contains prior art due to so many patents being granted. I found this post on Planet Debian and I’m glad to see the Israeli Free Software Society taking the lead on this.
• MJ Ray: Get the Survey Monkey Off Your Back. I’ve long thought using surveymonkey was a pain in the rear because they (seem to) ask for so much from people who are just voting on a survey. It turns out that surveymonkey may be not just a pain in the rear but also violating UK accessibility and privacy laws.
• Lasse Havelund: OpenOffice.org is “a piece of crap” – or is it? OOo has gotten some pretty bad press lately so Lasse did a personal recreation of a study that had a group of teenagers try their hands at word processing and presentation management tasks using both OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office 2007, all in the name of seeing how OOo really compared. He tends to use LaTeX for his writing and hasn’t used either OOo or Office 2007 much “over the last few years.” I won’t spoil his results so you need to read his post. You may be glad you took the time to read it and you can follow his links to get more background info on the test.
• Siegfried Gevatter: GNOME Activity Journal, and installing it on Ubuntu. I’ve been hearing about this app (formerly known as GNOME Zeitgeist) and am curious about it. Siegfried some nice info on why you’d want to use it as well as some easy steps for getting it installed.
• Stephan Hermann: Is it just me, or… People have been kvetching about non-free software being included in distros like Ubuntu ever since it first came out. Stephan writes such a good post on the matter that I doubt I could have said it better myself.
• DesktopLinux.com: Second Lucid Linux alpha said to offer 15-second start-ups. Eric Brown takes a good look at the latest early test release of Ubuntu 10.04, listing both the good and bad to be seen in this bleeding edge release, including some kvetching about support for some proprietary software being included (see previous link).
• Google Chrome Blog: Over 1,500 new features for Google Chrome. Google Chrome dev Nick Baum writes about some of the new features in Chrome and includes a video walk-through for installing an extension (not one that I personally use but you may find it helpful). The post is mostly about using Chrome on a Windows-based box but some of the info is also good for Mac and GNU/Linux users, as well as users of Chromium. There’s also a great tips post on the Chrome blog about managing tabs that you may find helpful.
• Launchpad New: ACTION: Back up old sources from PPAs. It turns out that Personal Package Archives on Launchpad are a little too popular. You may need to back up some of the packages you’ve gotten from PPAs. Jonathan Lange has some info every user of software from a PPA should have.
• Bastian Venthur: How to find packages installed/updated yesterday? If you’re like me you take regular updates to the software you run and every now and then you find a problem has cropped up after updating. The problem is that sometimes you don’t recall what got updated to know where to start tracking down your issue. Bastian asked he readers for ways to find out which packages got updated or installed and he got some really good responses. This is one post you’ll want to add to your permanent reference/resource list.
• Nick Mamatas: Ursula K. LeGuin to Google: Hands off my books! Not every author is satisfied with the proposed solution to the problem of Google’s plan to digitize books to make available online.
• Carlos Garnacho: Multi-touch support in Linux/Xorg/GTK+. Apple made other OS’s jealous with their ability to use two fingers to select and modify content on their smartphones and DMPs (Digital Media Players). Now GNU/Linux users can use it, if they can resolve the dependencies, that is.
• Steve Langasek: Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS released. The Ubuntu devs have released the fourth maintenance update to Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” LTS (Long Term Support). Since Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” will also be an LTS release this will be the last maintenance release for 8.04 LTS but there are about 70 updates in this update so if you run Ubuntu 8.04 you’ll want to take this update.
• Mike Hommey: Feeling alone. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an experiment to see how much info your browser lets web servers know about you. I’m kind of worried about how much information they report about me.
• NewsAskew: Green Hornet #1 FREE! May 10, 2010… All right all you lovers of comics and Jay & Silent Bob. Kevin Smith has been lending his talents to comic books, including being the writer for the very first of the new series of Green Hornet comic books. Thanks to Free Comic Book Day you have a chance to pick it up without having to shell out any cash for it. And without risking an arrest for shoplifting!
• Nigel Tao: The Road to One Point Zerodom. Nigel is the author of the SuperSwitcher app, and he’s glad to announce that he has a goal of getting Superswitcher 1.0 out in time for the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. I. Can’t. Wait.

I have more things to post but I want to give them their own posts so if you’ll allow a  little commercial promotion, I found a great product that you may join me in wanting to buy.

• QMx Insider: Put a Firefly in Your Pocket for $9.95! Fans of the Joss Whedon show Firefly and it’s follow-up movie Serenity will be glad to know that you can finally own your own Firefly-class ship without having to spend an arm and a leg. Shiny!

Have a most excellent start of February 2010!

Peng’s links for Tuesday, 26 January

Ack! I meant to write another links post two weeks ago! I hate when things get so busy that I can’t blog for two weeks.

• Ante Karamatić: Is this for real? Ante found some interesting screenies in his sister’s high school IT textbook. They teach IT in high school? Damn, have things changed that much since I graduated in ’78?
• Jordi Mas: gbrainy 1.30. Once again the leading (?) open source smartness app gets an update, now bringing the ability to track your personal records, nine new verbal analogies and a new logic puzzle, as well as an improved scoring algorithm to the mix, as well as better multiplatform support.
• Elizabeth Krumbach: New Leader for the Ubuntu Women Project. I’ve been meaning to congratulate Amber Graner for being named as the leader of the Ubuntu Women Project for about ten days but I kept letting time slip away without blogging it. (I’m surprised that Nanci didn’t post about this, although I know she’s been about as busy as I’ve been so far this decade.) I’ve linked to some of her posts in the past and I’m glad to see that her work as a woman using Ubuntu has opened up this great opportunity for her. The project can only get better, and I don’t think there could be a better woman to lead the project. Amber has also written a post about her new position that you should take the time to read.
• Paul Cutler: Debunking GNOME 3.0 Myths. As news comes out about the upcoming GNOME 3 there are some things that GNOME 3 is supposed to bring that aren’t quite accurate. Paul gives us a great site to bookmark so we have quick access for when we hear something about GNOME 3 that seems almost too good to be true. Or even just a bit far-fetched. Shane Fagan also has an informative post about GNOME 3 and the shell and panel support, two subjects that are finding some confusion in the user community.
• David “Lefty” Schlesinger: Browser Discipline. Lefty has noticed that sometimes he has “a bazillion tabs” open in his browser. He found a nice solution that you may find helpful as well.
• Martin Owens: Ubunchu Chapter 04: Licensing. That’s right, all you manga lovers, there’s a new chapter in the ongoing story of Ubunchu, the world’s first Ubuntu manga written in English. They don’t have a left to-right copy of the newest issue for some reason, but don’t let that stop you from getting up to date on their adventures.
• Alan Pope: MiserWare Beta for Windows as well as Linux. You may have heard about this very nice software title for helping you save money on your electric bills, especially since it was initially a Linux-only app. It’s now available for Windows users, so if this app sounds like something you may be interested in and have a Windows box you should definitely check it out.
• Dustin Kirkland: LCA2010: Day 2, Wellington, New Zealand. While attending an open source software conference in New Zealand Dustin was able to sit in on a presentation that revealed the juicy little tidbit that Avatar, the latest blockbuster that has surpassed Titanic as the highest grossing motion picture ever, used Ubuntu to render their digital effects and graphics. Yes, when I saw this news the geek in me definitely went squeee! Big thanks to Algot Runeman from the Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo for bringing this news to my attention.
• Danny Piccirillo: Download Disobedience, pro-piracy campaign. I meant to pass this along last week because it’s a campaign aimed not at trying to get legal approval for theft of copyrighted materials but to raise awareness about the massive amount of misinformation that’s out there in the name of protecting intellectual property. He also has a nice vid protesting the heavy handed protection of the copyright of that old chestnut “Happy Birthday”.  Yes, it’s illegal to sing that without paying royalties, something Dan Rydell got slapped for doing. (Extra points to Danny for allowing me to include a link to one of my favorite shows. )
• Martin Owens: Generating Calendars. Picture this scenario: You want a hard copy of your calendar for the month but you want to have your birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates so you can let others consult it. And it can’t look like crap. Martin has info on a nice little app that can do just that, and he’s even been kind enough to share the 2010 calendar he made, but without his personal info. While it’s a bit late for helping you make personalized Chrismukkuh gifts you never know when you may find yourself needing just this kind of program.

Before I close this post I want to pass along some great news to people who want to use the Chromium browser but have heard that there are some annoying bugs that mat be keeping you from using it more often. Issue 24210 – Cannot drag a bookmark into desktop has finally been resolved (at least in the daily builds) so when you find a site you want to return to you can finally drag a bookmark to your desktop where you can remember that you want to revisit the page. In addition, Issue 2238 – Add search engine dialog doesn’t allow “{” (open curly brace) has also been resolved so you can use all those great bookmarklets you used in other browsers. There’s also a great extension for Google Chrome called Chromy that makes it easy to manage your bookmarklets, although it may not be as easy to use as it’s predecessor, Bookmarklets Manager. I just installed Chromy though so I may simply need to play with it a bit longer.

If you’ve begged for forward slash searching it hasn’t been added to Chrome or Chromium, but there’s an extension called Type-ahead-find that brings this function to Chrome although it’s not as easy as the behavior built into Firefox.

Of course I can’t close without extending my congratulations to the New Orleans Saints for winning the NFC Championship game on Sunday. I’m still amazed that they made it this far, especially after all the times they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the past. That gives the Crescent City even more to celebrate, especially with Mardi Gras Day 2010 about 20 days away.

I’ll try to get another post up in a few days, especially since I still have 18 items flagged for blogging. I do know that I may be offline for a day or three next week when I get my new SATA controller card and finally get my 160 GB hard drive installed. It will take some extra time because I’ll be doing a fresh Ubuntu install and creating a fresh user account, so I’ll also need to see about migrating some of my user data to the new account.

Peng’s links for Thursday, 17 December

Sorry about not posting a links post last week (or two). I’m going to include some of the links I found because they’re still beneficial even a week (or two) after they were published.

• Stephan Peijnik: How to copy partitions under GNU/Linux the easy way. I may not be the only one hoping to find a new hard drive under the Chrismukkuh tree next week, and you may need a way to transfer your data off a dying drive, or even just a smaller one, to a new one. Stephan has a very easy way to accomplish the task. And he has the added benefit of spelling his name the right way. Just ask my son Stephen.
• Launchpad News: Getting the most from bug mail. Filing bugs is an important part of being a member of he open source community, but sometimes the follow up emails may not seem to be giving you much value for your time. The Launchpad team has some information that may help you make the most of your bug reporting work while taking up less time out of your busy days.
• Chromium Blog: Extensions beta launched, with over 300 extensions! I know this post is just over a week ago, but if you don’t know that there is an official home for extensions for Google’s Chrome browser and its open source sibling Chromium then you should definitely check out this post. It’s not as easy to surf as Mozilla’s addon site but they have a lot of very helpful extensions to help you use Chrome or Chromium as your new default web browser. To make things even better, Google Chrome for Linux is now available for beta testing.
• Panji Nushantara: How To Use Google Public DNS or OpenDNS in Ubuntu 9.10. If you find that your ISP’s Domain Name System lookups are slower than you find on other systems you can try a pair of public DNS services. Panji makes it easy with step-by-step instructions and screenshots.
• Rick Spencer: And Do it Begins. We can no longer say that there are no malware threats to Ubuntu users. Luckily the news isn’t nearly as bad as you may think from that last sentence. Kees Cook follows up on Rick’s article with a very simple bit of advice: “As quickly pointed out by Rick, don’t install random software that isn’t in the official distribution archive unless you really know what you’re doing (and copy/pasting commands from a website doesn’t count). You’re just asking to be made part of a botnet.” You’re damned Skippy, Kees.
• Juanje Ojeda: Is GNOME 3.0 for users or developers? GNOME Shell is being mentioned as one of the cooler things in the upcoming 3.0 release of the GNOME desktop environment but Juanje looks at the important question of who are the new features designed for?
• Andrew Cowie: Get your icons back. Have you lost the icons on your dialog buttons? Some people prefer a plain text look to their buttons but some don’t. Andrew has information on on why it changed and how to get them back if you prefer seeing them.
• The Fridge: LoCo Directory. The official Ubuntu Local Community (LoCo) Directory is now online! If you’re a part of a LoCo make sure your information is accurate, and if you’re able please help get it translated so even more people can make use of it.
• Launchpad news: Showing the number of affected users. Launchpad has long allowed you to say if a particular bug affects you, but you can now see how many of your fellow users have been bitten by the same bug. That is one nice feature they’ve added.
• Martin Owens: Anime Boston: First Goal Reached. Back on the third I included a link to Danny Piccirillo’s article about efforts to get Ubuntu represented at Anime Boston. Martin has some very good news for us about the plans.
• Robert Ancell: The demise of the function key. If you’re like me you often use function keys to do things without having to wade through menu after menu to do something. Unfortunately many keyboards are re-purposing those very keys, if they include them at all. That’s not just bad news for users, it’s bad for developers as well.
• Tom Dryer: Setting up Ubuntu 9.10. Tom has finally gotten Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala on his system and he shares some tricks he used to get it to run better. He’s also got screenshots of a damned nice theme that he uses.

I hope you’re all getting things ready for Chrismukkuh. Rather than add to the holiday post I wrote last Saturday Nanci and I have been adding some vids to her stickied holiday video post. If you’re still looking for some great holiday wallpaper you should check out the offerings over at blirk.net. You can also check out the posts in the Delicious December 2009 Screenshot Thread over on the Ubuntu Forums. And speaking of Chrismukkuh posts, I have one more link to share with you all before I hit Publish:

• Collin Pruitt: Christmas Online. Collin has some sites to help you make the most of your holiday. And if you’re more of an anti-Chrismukkuh person you should definitely check out the official YouTube channel for Foamy the Squirrel and all the folks over at iLL WiLL PrEss.