Peng’s links for Sunday, 2 August

Holy crap it’s been a busy month and a half. Remember the long links post I wrote last month? I’m afraid this one may be even longer, in fact when I started writing it on Friday and I ended up having to save the post and finish it later. I honestly hoped it would have been published on yesterday, but that didn’t work out like it that.

I’ve pulled some of the older items I had flagged for posting, but there are still a few from early this month that I just couldn’t justify not passing along.

• Andrewsomething: GNOME-Colors in Karmic. I’ve played around with some of the Shiki-Colors themes available but I ended up sticking with the Mac4Lin themes. Your milage, of ourse, may vary. Which is the beauty of open source software. Andrew even has a screenshot to help you see why you may love GNOME-Colors.
• Dustin Kirkland The Ubuntu Museum. With Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) reaching the end of it’s support lifespan Dustin put together a great site with some great info and images from Ubuntu’s past. If you want to know more, just go to Dustin’s post. It’s one museum you don’t even have to get dressed to go visit.
• Chenthill Palanisamy: What’s cooking in evolution? There are some nice additions coming down the pike for GNOME’s email client, and Chenthill has some info.
• Tyler Mulligan: The “easy” way to listen to internet readio in Ubuntu. Tyler has gone through the usual pain of trying to listen to his favorite ‘net radio station while running Ubuntu, and he’s found a way to do it that is probably easier than any other way, including Rhythmbox and Exaile.
• Alan Pope: Migrating from WUBI to Full Ubuntu Install. Have you (or a friend of yours) looked at Ubuntu with the WUBI tools running on Windows? If so you may have decided you like Ubuntu and don’t really need Windows around anymore. If that sounds like you or someone you know Alan has a nice tutorial on making the switch to full Ubuntu without losing any of the data you currently have.
• Martin Owens: Learning: Identifying Computer Ports. Alan is teaching a System Adminsistration course, and he’s had to come up with some of his own materials for it. Luckily he’s sharing his guide to computer ports with the rest of us. Thanks, Martin!
• Christer Edwards: Updating Default GDM Theme: Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty” and My Ubuntu Look and Feel. Christer has posted a pair of tutorials that will show you just how easy it can be to change how Ubuntu looks. Who says you have to settle for how an operating system looks when it comes from the “factory”? Not a GNU/Linux user, that’s for sure, although in all fairness it’s getting to be easier for other OSes as well, although Linux users have a crap load of possibilities to choose from.
• Matthew Helmke: The Official Ubuntu Book, Fourth Edition — first review and more. If you have a copy and want to get an updated edition, or if you’ve been meaning to get a copy and never have yet, you can now get it in PDF format rather than in dead tree format. Matthew’’s even got a link for you to get a sample chapter if you’re not sure you want to get it yet.
• Muammar El Kahtib: Flash player in Google Chrome for Linux. If you’re testing Google Chrome, or even Chromium, you can now enable plugins such as Flash in Chromium! No more having to open another browser just to see Flash applets, whether it’s cheezburgers or something as simple as the MLB Gameday applet to keep up with your favorite baseball team. You can also get some addition info in a post by Omshivaprakash H L.
• Marc Deslauriers: Goodbye Apple. Marc and his wife have had quite a few iPods, but they won’t get another one. I’ll let you read his post for more details, and it’s not simply an I-frigging-HATE-Apple post. I will say, however, that once I can get some details worked out with the device I got a month ago I’ll be posting info on getting another company’s digital media players (DMP) working with GNU/Linux. There’s just one or two annoying little bugs I’m trying to get resolved, but I will say this: You can get a DMP that plays Ogg Vorbis files right out of the box, and as soon as you get it out of the box you can load not only Ogg Vorbis files on it, but also text, pictures and videos (but sadly not Ogg Theora vids) on the little buggers using nothing but your favorite file manager.
• Andreas Nilsson: A tale of menus. I really hate saying this, but they’re at it again. The GNOME devs are changing the themes yet again, this time adding 256×256 icons for places, etc. But it’s not all bad news, unless you’re a third-party theme designer like the good folks at Mac4Lin. At least this time we’re forewarned.
• Garrett LeSage: Nautilus, streamlined. The GNOME artwork devs have come up with a bit of a winner: a simplified Nautilus that gives you more space for the things that count, the filespace you’re working with. There’s a PPA with the new look and I have to say that it looks like it fits with the Mac4Lin themes really well.
• Hylke Bons: Adding fonts in GNOME. Yes, we have yet another post on adding fonts to your system, but Hylke is working on an even easier way to do it, complete with visual mockups. I have to say I really like what he’s come up with so far. Thomas Wood has a followup with a little more work on the idea.
• Linux * Screw: Top 3 Linux HTML editors. If you’re running the MacOS or Windows there are a plethora of options for doing HTML coding, including the old standby “real web designers code  by hand”. Let’s face it, some of us just like having a visual editor handy when we write or change HTML code, even if it’s just for some of the time. The guys at Linux * Screw have looked at three tools you may want to add to your Linux toolbox.
• Steven Rose: Removing Evolution Mail is NOT dangerous in the slightest… Some people want to remove Evolution from their Ubuntu installation, because they prefer another email client, and others are quick to predict doom and gloom if they even attempt to uninstall Evo. Personally I love Evo, but not everyone likes the same apps. Steven dumps some of the FUD and brings the truth of the matter of removing Evolution. And guess what, it doesn’t unleash the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Although you can have my Evo when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
• Mark Brown: Full quoting. Yes, it refers to replying on email lists, but it’s not another rant about the right way to write a response. In fact he says nothing about replying above or below the quoted message, although Mark reminds me I need to spend another half minute (or less) before I hit Send on any email response.
• Jono Bacon: Change for Change. Jono’s got a great idea for some of the loose change we keep finding in our pockets and purses. I can’t wait to see it get started and make its way to Beantown. It’s a hell of a lot better idea than all of the stemmers I keep finding outside of stores and restaurants, but then I know some stemmers who make more money in a given day than I do.
• Dougie Richardson: Replacing Firefox. I admit it, the moment I saw his post title I flagged it to read later, but now that I’ve read it I knew I had to share it. Dougie needed something leaner to use on his netbook and looked at all the possibilities “from Epiphany to Opera”, and he decided to go with a Webkit browser. He looks at Midori and Arora in his post, complete with some screenshots. If you need a browser for a device with a smaller screen (and available memory) you owe it to yourself to read his post. He does bring up some bad news, namely that some apps in Ubuntu’s repositories aren’t exactly current, and while he doesn’t have a solution he does have some good information.
• Shane Fagan: Reply to Ballmers recent interview. You may have read or heard an interview with Steve Ballmers on cNet, especially his comparison with Mac about quality and price. Shane has a great response for Ballmers, and no matter what OS you prefer you should see what Shane has to say.

For those who voted for Mac4Lin in the SourceForge Community Choice Awards, I’m afraid to say that they didn’t win. Anirudh Acharya, the main dev for Mac4Lin, does thank all their supporters and mentions a very nice surprise in the final tally. There was also a great article in Linux Magazine comparing Ubuntu 9.04 with Mac OSX, and while it doesn’t mention Mac4Lin it does present Ubuntu in a very nice light.

Baseball fans were made very happy last week with the news that Vin Scully, the voice of the LA Dodgers would keep working for one more year.You may remember that almost a year ago I posted the good news that he’d be working for this, his 60th year, and even if you hate the Dodgers you have to respect that man’s talent. There’s no better example of Suclly’s talent was shown just last month when Manny Ramirez his is pinch hit grand slam. Check out the video on that page if you need any more evidence of Vin Scully’s wisdom and class.

And for those who hate baseball and need a smile on this first Sunday in August, there’s a post by directhex from last weekend that I dare you to read and not smile at.

That’s a full lid. Have a good week, or at least have as good a week as you want to have.

Peng’s links for Saturday, 30 May

I bet you guys (and gals) thought I wasn’t doing these links posts anymore. Things have been crazy on my end of things but I’ve still been making notes of things I wanted to share with y’all. I won’t post all of them (some are well over a week old) but I do have a dozen or so that I think you’ll like.

• Leo Iannacone: A simple plugin for Sonata… If you love the Sonata GUI for MPD Leo has a plugin that you may love as well. What does it do? Read his post for all the good news.
• Martin Owens: Who Needs Flash, I Don’t, SVG For Me. Martin has found a great way to use rich graphics for the web without having to go the proprietary route with Flash.
• Josselin Mouette: Reporting userful bugs. One of the biggest issues for any software tester is the need to file a bug report with the information that will help the devs identify the problem enough so they can see about fixing it. If you even help test a single prerelease software application you should bookmark Josselin’s post.
• Kartik Mistry: artha. Ubuntu ships with a dictionary application, but every now and then you need a thesaurus. Artha may be just what the doctor ordered.
• John Stowers: Playing With Clutter. Last October I started a links post with some news about Gloobus, a nice open source way to bring the MacOS coverflow feature to GNU/Linux, and John has some nice info on getting it to play well with Nautilus, one of the biggest issues with Gloobus, which isn’t any fault of the Gloobus dev.
• David Thomas: Preston Gralla: Why you Shouldn’t Care. David read an article in Computerworld that tries to minimize the benefits of Linux. David writes a very well thought out response that shows why Mr. Gralla’s article doesn’t seem to have all that much to do with a little something we like to call facts.
• Matthew Revell: Launchpad’s YouTube channel. Matthew has created a channel on YouTube where you can find demos on how to use all the benefits of the Launchpad code hosting service.
• Paul Cutler: Meet Snowy, Tomboy’s best friend. Tomboy, the note-taking applet from the good people at GNOME, has gotten a web app that will make your Tomboy notes even more uesful.
• Lior Kaplan: “Get Openoffice.org” icon on a new laptop. What would you say if you bought a new laptop and found an icon to get the most popular open source office productivity suite on your desktop? No, I don’t mean like you get when you install a GNU/Linux distribution on your computer, because they tend to have the actual apps installed rather than simply providing you with a “get me” icon. What if that new laptop came from Toshiba? And had Microsoft Vista and MS Office 2007 installed? That’s right, that’s the very thing Lior found on his brand-spanking-new, fresh out of the box Toshiba laptop.
• Stefano Forenza: GiftWrap helps you create .debs. Every now and then a GNU/Linux user needs to install an application that doesn’t have a pre-compiled package. Now people who run Debian-based Linux distros have a nice little helper, except rather than using the link to the debs that Stefano provides for installing GiftWrap you should use the GiftWrap devs’ PPA so you make sure you have all the dependencies satisfied when you install it. I’ll see if I can use it to create a .deb of Mac4Lin to make the install process even easier.
• Paul Tagliamonte: Making a bootable USB drive. Have you tried creating a bootable USB drive so you can have your favorite operating system on just about any computer? I have, and I’ve run into some issues, although I’m thinking it may be due to a BIOS setting I need to tweak. Anywho, Paul has a great tutorial to walk you through the process of making a bootable USB drive.
• Andrew SB: “Because humans need Oxygen.” You may know Andrew from his andrewsomething PPA on Launchpad (which has a ton of software you should check out if you run a Debian-based Linux distro), brings a little Sweet to his news about a new icon set. Or am I the only one that thinks of that band when you read his article?
• Dave Richards: Evolution Picture Gallery Under Development. Dave tells us about a way to bring a popular OpenOffice.org feature to the GNOME email client.

HOWTO: Grab your favorite YouTube vids in Epiphany

It’s bound to happen every now and then. Your surfing through the videos on YouTube, marking some of them as Favorites and putting some on playlists to share with others. But every one in a while (or more often), you find a vid that you absolutely love and wish you could snag for your hard drive so you can always have it handy for when you want to watch it again.

Firefox users have the VideoDownload Helper extension to save and even convert your favorite vids. But perhaps you’re like me and prefer to use GNOME’s Epiphany web browser. Except although Epiphany is based on Mozilla’ s Geko rendering engine,  you can’t simply install Firefox extensions into Epiphany. Luckily there are quite a few extensions for Epiphany (as well as third-party extensions, as well as unofficial extensions) and one of them is Adam Schmalhofer’s Video Downloader extension.

While it isn’t as flexible as the Firefox extension, Adam’s extension brings a much needed ability to Epiphany. The first thing you will need to do is make sure you have Clive installed (install via apturl), as Clive does the heavy lifting of downloading and converting the video for you. Once Clive is installed snag the files for the Video Downloader from Adam’s brzr repository (yes, you can simply grab the files from the page I linked to). The main files you need are video-downloader.ephy-extension and video-downloader.py, but you can grab the other files if you want. I strongly suggest grabbing the README file (or README.it if you speak Italian).

Once you have the files downloaded, move (or copy) the files to ~/.gnome2/epiphany/extensions and launch Epiphany. You can move the files into that folder while Epiphany is running, but I recommend at least closing and relaunching Epiphany when installing any extensions. Now, before we enable the extension there is one thing that absolutely has to be done. Get into your Preferences window by running Edit > Preferences from within Epiphany. Even if you want Epiphany to ask you where to save your downloads each time, this extension requires that you have a location specified. Click the box for Automatically download and open files and select the location where you want Video Downloader to save the videos for you. If you want to be prompted where to save your other downloads then simply clear the checkbox once you make your selection. I decided to use the same folder that the Firefox extension uses, simply to keep things simpler. Unfortunately Video Downloader is unable to ask you where to save each video you download with it, so you have to set this preference via the Preferences dialog, but hopefully it will come in a later version of the extension.

Once you have the files in the proper folder (~/.gnome2/epiphany/extensions), you have Clive installed, and you have selected where the downloaded videos should go, it’s time to enable the extension itself. Simply go to Tools > Extensions and check the box for the Video Downloader extension. Once it’s checked you’re ready to start downloading.

Go to the page for your favorite YouTube video, and once the page is finished loading you will see a film icon in your status bar. (My screenshot shows the icon from the Mac4Lin theme. You can see the default icon on the extension’s page.) Simply click on the icon and the video(s) on the page will be downloaded as MP4 video files to the location you specified.

One very nice feature I found about from Adam this morning is available if you do a middle-click on the icon. In Firefox and Epiphany middle-clicking a link will open it in a new tab, and if middle-clicking the icon will attempt to load the video file into a new tab. What I discovered today, however, is that when I middle-clicked the icon I got an offer to either open the video or simply save it for me. As you can see from the screenshot, RealPlayer 11 is installed on my system and registered as the default MP4 player, and I’m asked if I want to open the file in RealPlayer 11 or save the file. Selecting Save As… will give you the file picker window so you can save the video file wherever you want it, and you will also have an opportunity to rename the file however you want.

For a list of all of the sites that Adam’s Video Downloader extension will work on, simply check out the README file.

I want to send a yooouge THANK YOU! to Adam Schmalhofer for all his help as he helped me resolve some issues I was having. That dude totally rocks, and I owe him several brews.

Peng’s links for Saturday, 28 March

I just have a few things to post today, whic is a pretty darned good thing since the ‘net is getting routed through molasses today.

• Behdad Esfahbod: Lots of GNOME happenings. Behdad has a number of things happening in the GNOME community that you’ll want to be aware of, including their Adopt a Hacker program. In fact I need to particiapte in that program myself.
• Bodhi.Zazen: Portable Ubuntu (for Windows). This isn’t just referring to running Ubuntu from a flash drive on a Windows box, so if you ever find yourself on a system that runs Windows you’ll want to check out Bohdi’s article.

That’s a lid. Tomorrow I’ll check out the beta of Ubuntu 9.04 (see yesterday’s post) on my rather old system and let you know what I find. I’ll also make sure Nanci get the new countdown onto the right hand sidebar.

Peng’s links for Sunday, 22 Mar

As much as I tried to stay on top of my feeds this week I still end up with 25 items in my ToBlog folder. Luckily I’m going to cull out some of the older ones as well as a few things that aren’t so post-worthy at this point. But I have a great (OT) vid to share with y’all at the end.

• ArsTechnica: Get it done with GNOME Do 0.8. A very nice story on how much easier Gnome Do makes using GNOME-based GNU/Linux distros. Thanks to Peter Stuifzand over on the Do Google Group for letting me know about it.
• Jonathan Ernst: HP refunds 520$ for unused software. There was just now way I wasn’t going to share this story.
• Jon Beebe: Top 10 Reasons I’ll Never Use Ubuntu. Yes, it’s from a Linux guy, but it’s a great tongue-in-cheek list.
• Srinivasa Ragavan: Announcing ‘Anjal’- the new mail for netbooks. If you use a netbook you should definitely check out Anjal for your email client.
• Stefano Forenza: Chinese MID deploying Ubuntu by default. Speaking of netbooks, I may have to find a way to get one of these. Not only do they run my fav OS, but they’re pretty darned inexpensive as well.
• Stefano Forenze: New wallpapers for Jaunty. Don’t hold your breath. I’m liking how some of them look, although I know they won’t be everyone’s cup of espresso.
• Wouter Verhelst: Dealing with apt’s GPG signing stuff — the right way. If you use third party sources for installing and updating your GNU/Linux you know about adding GPG signing keys. Wouter has instructions for adding them in a way that doesn’t inject a security flaw, and that defeats the purpose of importing a GPG key in the first place.
• Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo: Is ext4 unsafe? The next update to Ubuntu will add support for ext4 partitions, and lately people have been talking about security concerns with ext4. Luckily Jose has info to set your mind at ease.
• Josselin Mouette: Which logo for the main GNOME menu in Debian? I could have skipped this post from Friday, but the “swirl foot” icons are so cute I may have to grab them for my own system.
• Isabelle Duchatelle: Ubuntuforums nuts and bolts. Isabelle has some very handy Ubuntu Forums links you may want to bookmark, as well as some rather nice numbers for what’s going on at UF)
• Tom Dryer: How-to Install Google Earth 5 on Ubuntu. The latest update for GE brings some really nice new features. Tom gives us a very quick and easy way to install this new version, as well as some troubleshooting info.
• Joe Barker: Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) – My Thoughts So far. Joe’s been playing with late alpha of Ubuntu 9.04 and is kind enough to let us know how it’s behaving on his system. Remember, no matter how well (or unwell) any software runs on a person’s system, Your Milage May Vary, simply because their hardware, software and particular configuration is bound to be different from yours. But so far Joe’s pretty happy with it, although I’m hearing that those of us on the Mac4Lin dev team are unhappy about yet more bloody changes to things that are affecting our software. Yet again. Grrr.
• Guillaume Desmottes: Good GNOME news. We’re just about to see a beta release of Ubuntu 9.04 and that means there is an update coming down the pike for GNOME. And as a matter of fact it came out on Wednesday. Guillaume has the best post that I’ve seen with info on what’s new in this update, next to the release notes, that is. Hell, just looking at the improvements for users makes me want to snag the beta for Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackelope” just so I can play with it sooner!
  

I had a few other links I was going to share with y’all, but I think that’s enough for a weekend. If you’re in need of a good laugh (and some of your NCAA brackets may be in the toilet by now from what I’m hearing), check out this vid. As much as I try not to laugh at what happens to the poor feline I just can’t help myself.

Peng’s links for Thursday, 15 January

• Desktop Linux: “I’m Linux” contest open for video entries. Back on Chrismukkuh Eve I mentioned a contest from the Linux Foundation for videos spoofing the Apple and Microsoft adverts. The contest isn’t open just yet but you can start uploading your vids, so if you have a video get it in. Who knows, you may get a free trip to Tokyo in October.
• João Pinto: Development Plans for 2009. João, the person behind the GetDeb family of websites has posted some of what they have in store for the new year. Check out his post, and if you’re able to help with any of the projects please let them know.
• Lucas Rocha: New friends of GNOME. Have you ever wanted to find some way to help the devs of your favorite open source software? The GNOME team has a brand new way you can help their devs, mostly by helping funnel some cash to them to let them spend more time working on GNOME projects. I know the economy is in the dumps, but now may be the best time to help your friendly open source developer. I’m not talking hundreds of dollars, and even just buying a tee, mug, etc., will help in a real way.
• Jon Beebe: Theming Wine. Did you know there’s a way to make apps running under WINE look more like the theme you have running? WINE’s theming capabilities are kind of limited, but Jon has links to articles telling you how to do it.
• Ryan Troy: Recent Ubuntuforums Downtime. If you tried to use the Ubuntu Forums lately you know they were having some issues. Ryan was kind enough to post some information on exactly what went wrong.
• Karl Lattimer: Wine-doors 0.1.3rc1 released. WINE and CrossOver aren’t the only ways to run Windows apps on GNU/Linux, and Wine-doors is getting ready to ship an update. If you run WINE apps you should consider helping make wine-doors even better.
• Jun Auza: Free Software Song Rocks! Have you heard Richard Stallman’s “Free Software Song”? Jun has the lyrics, as well as a story about how it was written, as well as links to sone recordings of it. Plus you can see Stallman himself singing it in a video!

Peng’s links for Thursday, 8 January

Are you still writing “2008″? I caught myself writing the wrong year earlier today, so if you are doing it too don’t feel too bad.

I apologize for not posting much so far this year. We started the new year with my getting not only a new video card but having our router die and having to move to a wireless network here at home. I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to get Ubuntu to remember that I have a wireless USB “card” when I reboot but I’m still needing to open my AWN Terminal applet and run two commands as I get logged in after a reboot. I thought I had it fixed, but a reboot earlier today proved me wrong. I had some issues when I first installed my EVGA e-GeForce 6200 card but I think it may have had something to do with the fact that I forgot to disable the drivers for my current, very old, graphics card first. I was hoping to give the new graphics card another shot today but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. It’s now at the top of my list for tomorrow (after I check my email and news feeds, that is) so hopefully I will have some good news tomorrow afternoon.

• Ana Beatriz Guerro Lopez: New year’s proposal: look at your reported bugs. This post from Planet Debian is a great idea. If you’ve filed a bug online anywhere you should check to make sure the information is current. Some bugs may no longer effect you, and some bugs may still need more information so the bug can get resolved. You should take a look at bugs no matter where they were filed or what they were filed against, which means I should take one more look at my open bugs on  Bugzilla, even though I no longer use Thunderbird and I only keep Firefox around as an emergency backup in case something isn’t working quite properly with Epiphany.
• Jorge Castro: Resolutions and mean people. Jorge found someone who was giving Ubuntu a test drive for a week. Jorge does have some responses to things the person is writing, but he says he’s glad to see things like that because it reminds us why we do things to support open source software.
• Ubuntu Productivity: Best of both worlds . Geany, the text editor that so many of us love (it’s my preferred text editor of all sorts of plain-text tasks) is available for Linux and Windows, but not OSX. Jon Beebe found a way to get it installed on his other OS and he is kind enough to let us all know how he got it working with his favorite spotted kitteh.
• Vincent Fourmond: Switching to mpd. Vincent has discovered one of the best parts of using MPD: it isn’t the resource hog that other media players can be. Vincent’s post is short on details, but I couldn’t help sharing the good news that another user has discovered my favorite audio player, even if he prefers using a command line interface rather than my personal favorite front end.
• Felix Kaser: Announcing gnome-format 0.1.0. The GNOME devs are working on a new formatting tool for removable memory devices like memory cards and USB drives. Yes, Gparted handles that task already but gnome-format will be even easier to use.
• DesktopLinux.com: Vietnam mandates open source for gov’t servers, desktops. The minister of information and communications for Vietnam has asked both national and local government IS workers to get all their users on open source software by the end of June. It seems a tad soon for the deadline, but he’s mandated that all government workers use open source software by 2010 in some of the best news in a while for proponents of open source software. I bet the boys and girls in Redmond are trying to figure out who let this happen.
• Sven Muller: About Usability. Another resident of Planet Debian has a great post that I think you guys should read. Sven had seen a post by Sami Haahtinen about usability and while he agrees with most of what Sami wrote there’s one part he disagrees with. I don’t think I’ve ever read a better written post about making things easy not only easier for beginners but also keeping settings available for more advanced users. One of the problems I have with Epiphany is that several relatively easy tweaks I performed with Firefox are difficult, if not flat out impossible, with Epiphany thanks to the GNOME mindset of locking controls down and out of reach of users who could bork things royally by changing the wrong thing improperly.

There is one more bit of news I want to pass along. Back in June I started getting my Ubuntu-related posts syndicated on UbuntuWeblogs, also known as Planet Ubuntu Users. Tiago Faria, also known as Gouki, has added Ubuntu Universe, a new area on the UbuntuWeblogs, that will expand the posts of Ubutu bloggers syndicated to include non Ubuntu related posts. This means that if a person has their technical posts on Planet Ubuntu, UbuntuWeblogs or any of the Planet websites for the Ubuntu Local Community (LoCo) teams. Gouki and I sent emails back and forth this morning, and it looks like I have come up with a way to get all of my posts on the new Ubuntu Universe.

For those on WordPress.com blogs with other authors, like Nanci and I have here, I’ll share how we got the URI to submit. Have the owner of the blog go into the blog’s Appearance screen, and have them put up a widget that will let users see the articles posted by each author. Grab the link for your posts and simply add “/feeds” to the end of the URI. That should give you an RSS feed for only that author’s posts.

Get Amazon’s MP3 downloader to play with Epiphany

Since I switched to Epiphany last month there are some extensions that I’m having to do without, but there is one thing that I realized I had to deal with, that’s making sure I could download MP3s from Amazon’s digital media store was easily as I could with Firefox. Firefox users know that it’s a piece of cake to register the downloads with Firefox so that in the future all you have to do is accept the download and your system would automatically launch the Amazon downloader to snag the tracks you just bought.

Alas, it’s not so easy with the official GNOME web browser. in true GNOME fashion there’s no handy dialog boxes for telling your browser what to use to open the .amz files, thereby giving you the chance to either save the file or cancel the download altogether, something you probably won’t want to do with tracks that you paid for. Luckily I’m not the only one who had to deal with this problem.

Sean Fulmer looked into it and has an easy way to let Epiphany know what to do with .amz files, and it’s as close as a sudo gedit command away. Please be careful making these changes, because once you put in your sudo password you’ll have direct access to configuration files. I’m not saying you should be afraid of the instructions I’m about to give you, but any mime-type you add to the <safe> section will tell Epiphany to let you open that type of files in the future, and it will be up to you to know that the source you get them from won’t send you malware. (Not that Windows malware will work on Linux, mind you.)

Open up a Terminal window and run

sudo gedit /etc/gnome/epiphany/mime-types-permissions.xml

When the file opens in your text editor go down to the <safe> section (I like putting it at the bottom) and add this on it’s own line

<mime-type type="audio/x-amzxml"/>

Then save your file, close Epiphany and when you open your browser back up you can buy any MP3 that Amazon sells without having to save the .amz file first before you can actually download your new music. This will also work with other file types as long as you know the specific mime-type to use.

Now if Amazon would only add Linux support to their video downloads….

Is Epiphany ready to replace Firefox?

(Woops! This is an article about the Epiphany browser, not the Evolution email client. I’m blaming it on the fact that the names are so similar and I switched to Evo some time back. -Peng)

I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been hunting some things down for Epiphany, the GNOME web browser, and I was hoping that Epiphany 2.24.1, the current version in Ubuntu Intrepid, was good enough to let me kick out Firefox when version 3.1 comes out. While I’ve gotten really spoiled by some of Firefox’s features and extensions I’ve got some things that I have to be able to do in Epiphany if it’s going to replace Firefox.

• I have to be able to import my bookmarks from Firefox, if not the saved passwords
• I need to be able to open a new tab and have that new tab be the selected tab without having to do anything besides middle clicking on a link
• I need to be able to use Ctrl key combinations to zoom the text
• I have to be able to run Adblock Plus
• I have to be able to spellcheck my writing
• I need to be able to write blog posts without doing anything different

If any one of those things isn’t possible in Epiphany it could be a deal breaker for me. I know that there are a few extensions available for Epiphany, and there are some I’d like to be able to use, but they’re nice-to-haves, not Must Haves.

I went into my Firefox bookmark manager window and exported a fresh set of saved bookmarks, and when I tried to import them into Epiphany they installed without a hitch. Already this is different from what I experienced when I tried to do the same thing before Firefox 3 was released, so I started to hope that I’d end up pleasantly surprised by Epiphany. I set up my initial home page, a customized page I created several years and keep updated as I have new sites I want handy, and opened tabs with the two other pages that make up my Firefox “home page”, and the tabs opened in the background but that was something I’d check on later. I opened the preferences window and tried to set my home page to the three tabs I had open, but all that happened was to make the tab I was in the home page. That wasn’t what I had hoped for, but it’s a nice to have, not a deal breaker. The new tabs opening in the background? That didn’t make me happy. It was time to use my two Ubuntu-related search engines to see what I could come up with.

I found an question on Launchpad about the problem and found out someone made a third-party extension called Tab Foreground. I went to the page they linked to and found a page full of Epiphany extensions that weren’t part of the official extension package. Among them is Tab Foreground, and it looked like it would do the job, except for one problem. The newest version of Epiphany that the extensions supports is version 2.22 and I rub version 2.24. I installed it and enabled it, but it didn’t work. I emailed Chica, the person who wrote the extension to thank them for writing it anyway, and in a second email later I let them know it doesn’t play well with the newest version of Epiphany. Not to whine or complain, because I’m really thrilled that someone would take the initiative and put the time and energy into writing it in the first place.

Between the list of official Epiphany extensions, the list of third-party extensions and a separate list of unofficial extensions that I found  I found most of the things I’d really like to use in my Firefox replacement, and I was starting to think it might actually be close enough that I’d be able to make something other than Firefox my default browser. Yes, I’d miss the Smart Location Bar after all, but I’d just get used to not having it again. I tried to zoom the text in and out with the Crtl-+/Ctrl– (Ctrl and either plus or minus) and was pleased to see the size of the text change. Resetting the zoom with Crtl-0 didn’t work so well, but it’s easy enough to use View > Normal Size to reset the zoom level. Three Must Have’s down, three to go.

Make that four down, because when I first opened Epiphany and opened Tools > Extensions I saw an ad blocker with no other installation needed, I just had to make sure it was enabled. (It may have been enabled by default, but I don’t think so.)

When I was posting yesterday’s links I found out that the last two items on my Must Have list weren’t so easy to cross off. The first problem I saw is that I’m used to simply selecting text and then hitting Ctrl-B to make some text bold but when I hit those keys in Epiphany it opened the Bookmark Manager. Huh? That’s not what I’m used to from other browsers I’ve used. I put the mouse over the Bold button on my WordPress.com post editing window to see if a shortcut key was available and it showed a shortcut of Ctrl / Alt+Shift + B, but no matter what I tried I couldn’t bold text from the keyboard. You may find that an annoyance but I consider it a pain in the ass.

I finished writing the post I was working on and I looked for a spell checker but i couldn’t find one. Usually GNOME apps that edit text (like Gedit and Evolution) have a spell checker built in, but I couldn’t see where to turn it on. I saw a Link Checker and an HTML Checker, but no spell checker. I went back to my search tools and found a regression on Launchpad about not being able to use spell checking on Ubuntu Gutsy and another bug that keeps me from being able to edit the setting in about:config.

Epiphany isn’t ready to be my primary browser yet, but if you use a GNOME-based GNU/Linux distro and are looking for a replacement for Firefox you should definitely take a look at Epiphany. You may find it just what the doctor ordered, especially since the Firefox devs keep making decisions that make us want to either throw something at our computer or throw our computer itself out the nearest window. From what I’m seeing Firefox 3.1 will make things worse, not better.

Peng’s links for Monday, 24 November

I just have a few links this morning, but I wanted to make sure everyone knows that I updated my post about the documentation for Mac4Lin to include a link to the updated GTK themes. If you’re running the Mac4Lin 1.0 RC you’re probably seeing an error about a missing theme engine. It’s been fixed and I uploaded them to the Mac4Lin support thread on the Ubuntu Forums.

• Pavel Rojtberg: OpenOffice.org is on the right track. OpenOffice has a longstanding issue about the UI, one which Pavel shows you how to uncover, and the OOo devs have finally been made aware of it and are on the case.
• Pavel Rojtberg: Gnome Online Desktop. Pavel looks at how GNOME could better embrace online services.
• Luis de Bethencourt: is ubuntu for you? Luis has a great decision tree for helping you see if Ubuntu may be a good operating system for you.

I have one more link to share, although it’s from much earlier this month. Although I don’t use the GlobalMenu hack (formerly known as MacMenu) which moves most of the application menus from the application windows to the upper panel I’ve kept my subscription to the Ubuntu Forums thread about it so I can try to keep up with the developments. There was a post this morning by ayoli that included a link to a great tutorial on his site for installing it. Thanks to the hard work of the devs you no longer need to patch GTK to use the GlobalMenu, although Firefox (bug report) and OpenOffice.org still don’t use the GlobalMenu. Hopefully they’ll do what they need to in order to let us penguin lovers enjoy the OSX way of accessing application menus.