Good news for open source loving musos

I have some things that I want to post from my usual sources (hopefully tomorow), but I saw this on Google News and I wanted to make sure it got posted before I forgot about it. Or left an icon on my desktop for so long it’s no longer newsworthy, but it’s practically the same things.

The good news was seen on Nillabyte.com, a tech news and rumor site, and it’s about the so-called fact that if you want to make music you have to use a Mac. This is ignoring all of the great software available like Cubase, cakewalk, etc., for Windows users, not to mention all the great open source titles available for Linux.

Karl Martineau over at Nillabyte has the tale of a music professional who switched all of his Mac live and recording gear over to Ubuntu.

Now if it only didn’t make me miss working as a soundguy.

Peng’s links for Wednesday, 18 February

• Emma Jane Hogbin: Playing with PDFs. Emma Jane looks at open source tools for work with PDF files.
• Ingo Juergensmann: Upgrading to Lenny. Monday’s links post had news about the release of Debian 5.0 “Lenny”, and Ingo shares his thoughts after upgrading his servers with it.
• Sandy Armstrong: Tomboy 0.13.5 Brings a Better Windows Installation Experience. You read that right, not only is Tomboy updated, the lovely little GNOME note-taking tool that comes in the default Ubuntu installation is now easier to install on Windows boxes. I didn’t even know it was cross-platform, but the download page has installers for both Windows and the Mac OS.
• Jun Auza: Free and Open Source Finance/Accounting Software for Linux. Here’s a nice companion to one of Monday’s links. If you’re looking at finance/accounting software and don’t want a proprietary program you should look at the apps Jun talks about. Unfortunately wxBanker isn’t on his list, but it isn’t a 1.0 release yet.
• Eric Schubert: Weird Sansa Bug with 20+ playlists. If you have a Sansa portable media player you should know about this bug. He also has a workaround until Sansa gets a proper bugfix out.

The Ubuntu Chronicles

Amber Graner is a Mac user married to a guy who works for Canonical, the company who puts out Ubuntu. She’s decided to take her spare computer and put Ubuntu (promoted as Linux for human beings) on it to see how easily a human being can use it. She got an install disk from her hubby and is going 100% on her own rather than depending on her hubby to get past the rough patches.

As of this writing she has posted six installments of The Ubuntu Chronicles: The Saga of Amber and Ubuntu on her blog, and so far she seems to be doing pretty well, although today’s post had Gimp sending her back to her Mac until her hubby said something about it. (His comment is on today’s post.) If you’re even thinking about trying Ubuntu you should read Amber’s posts, especially if you’re a Mac user. Thanks to the Ubuntu Weblogs (formerly known as Planet Ubuntu Users) for picking up her posts, which is where I finally discovered them.

And a quick question for our readers

Since installing my new EVGA eGeForce 6200 last month, and especially in the last week or so) I’m noticing that I’ve gotten dumped to a command line interface at some point during the evening. When I log out of everything I usually keep my computer on with Seti@home running on BOINC, but the other night I found my system dumped to a terminal-like screen with errors about Compiz timing out or something. Today I had to run to the grocery store and when I got back I found a blank screen with nothing on it, and it took a reboot to be able to do anything.

Does anyone have any ideas what’s causing this or a way to better identify the issue itself? I’m running the nvidia-glx-180 drivers (version 180.11-0ubuntu~intrepid1) and the 2.6.27-12-generic kernel, and I have the Skyrocket screensaver set to kick in after the comp has been idle for ten minutes.

Peng’s links for Monday, 16 February

• Stuart Langridge: IE6’s backlash. A short, sweet message to web designers.
• Dave Neary: Migrating to Linux: Tip 1: Do DHCP and DNS first. Moving your computer network to Linux isn’t as painless as we’d really like, but Dave points out why we should do one thing before anything else.
• Michael Rooney: Setting up a fingerprint reader with ThinkFinger in Ubuntu 8.10. Remembering passwords is so 20th century. If you’re lucky enough to have a fingerprint reader on your laptop it’s easy to get it working in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex).
• TualatriX: UbuntuTweak 0.4.5 released! Among the goodies and fixes in the new version is the ability to catch error messages, ad well as the ability to change your panel logo or even revert it back to the default logo. But that’s not all in the update, so check out TualatriX’s post and screenshots.
• Jordi Hernandez: Gloobus-Preview 0.03 RELEASE. Jordi is working on a coverflow-like app (from Mac OSX) for Linux, and while it’s still early in development you can help make it better by giving feedback on how things are going so far.
• Debian Package of the Day: localepurge: Automagically remove unnecessary locale data. For every locale you have installed not only takes up extra space it also makes your system install needless extra loacla when you install new packages. You may only need this app once every good while, but you’ll be glad you have it.
• Michael Rooney: Lightweight personal finance just got easier with wxBanker in Jaunty! If you’re looking for a native GNU/Linux app to help you manage your finances (like a lite version of Quicken and it’s ilk in Windows) you may have heard about wxBanker. People who have looked at it like it (here are some screenshots) really like it, and I may have to check it out myself. It may end up replacing GnuCash, which really doesn’t seem as easy to use as I’d prefer.
• Martin-Éric Racine: Roadmap to a better FreeDesktop: ridding us of the Firefox filth. Martin-Éric looks at Firefox and Linux web browsers, including why users put up with the bloat that seems to keep fining it’s way into Firefox releases. Personally I hope Epiphany devs read Martin-Éric’s post and gets to work making the official GNOME web browser better. As a person who switched to Epiphany to get away from (IMO) the boneheaded decisions the Firefox3 dev team have and are making, I really wish Epiphany was easier to use than it is.
• Jon Beebe: How does Ubuntu make you productvity? Jon is looking for people who would be willing to write articles for the Ubuntu Productivity blog.

Before I head off to take care of some things I want to congratulate the Debian team on Saturday’s release of Debian 5.0 “Lenny”. I look forward to seeing the improvements in Ubuntu 9.04 (which, like all Ubuntu releases, is basen on Debian), and if you can’t wait Julien Valroff has packages in his personal repo. I wouldn’t recommend using his packages unless you know what you’re doing because they may cause some conflicts and other issues in your system.

Peng’s links for Wednesday, 12 November

• Obey Arthur Liu: Aptitude 0.5.0 (aka Aptitude-gtk) released. If you love using Aptitude for installing software on Linux you may want to check out the version that has been released in Debian Experimental.
• Richard Hull: Slowly but surely. I’m helping with the 1.0 release of the Mac4Lin Transformation Pack, and Richard’s working on a native theme for getting GTK+ on Mac OSX. If you’re an OSX user you should check out Richard’s blog and his screenshots.
• Scott Kitterman: Please be nice on the mail lists. Mailing lists are great ways to keep up with what’s going on in the tech community, but some folks on the ubuntu-devel-discuss list have been rude enough that it’s scaring off some devs. If you’re on that list, or any mail list for that matter, please don’t be an asshat to the others on the list. The user you chase off may be just the person who can help with something you’ve been wanting for ages.

That’s a lid, although we may get a second release candidate for Mac4Lin soon and if (or should I say when) we do I’ll write a post to let y’all know about it.

Peng’s links for Wednesday, 22 October

I do have some other links I want to share with y’all today.

• Ubuntu Productivity: Re: Switch to Ubuntu Linux not Apple Mac OS. A Kubuntu user asked why people are going from Windows to the Mac OS but not to Ubuntu, and the Ubuntu Productivity blogmaster brings the not so great news: Ubuntu, and Linux distros in general, simply have a way to go before they’re as ready for Windows users than OSX is right now. Case in point from my own experiences: My local library will let you download eBooks, but they require either Mobipocket or Adobe’s Digital Editions version of their Reader software. Adobe’s app is different from their Acrobat Reader software, and is a Windows based program that has been ported to the Mac but they haven’t released a Linux version yet. The Windows version can run under WINE, but I’ll be damned if I could find a way to get the sucker so I could try it with a little software vino. Bottom line? Too many firms simply haven’t started supporting Linux yet, and that’s not even counting the game developers.
• Frank Taylor/Google Earth Blog: Links: Planet Search, Interactive KML, FlightSim, iPhone GPS. First there was the Sky layer, now you can fly through Our Solar System. Plus a new goody for fans of FlightSim in Google Earth, which reminds me I wanted to check out the openGL version of YS Flight Simulator.
• Beyond the Forecast: Human Biometeorology. Mish Michaels over in the WBZ Weather Center wrote a great piece on why our body can let us know when weather changes are coming. There was a nice piece she did for the five o’clock news yesterday but I can’t find it online yet. Hopefully I’ll have an update for you with a link before too long.

OpenOffice.org 3 is here!

OpenOffice.org, the open source productivity suite that keeps many of us from having to shell out so much dough for Microsoft Office (or have to run it under WINE) released version 3 of their software on Monday. I would have blogged it sooner (before Wednesday) but I had been having some issues with the spreadsheet component in the beta versions, but once I got the final version everything works like a champ.

The changes are obvious even from the moment the splash screen pops up, and there are also a new start screen, new icons, and a boatload of improvements. Among them are

• A new slider tool for zooming in the Writer word processor. Writer also has multi-page display when editing, better multilingual support, improved notes and can even handle editing wiki documents for the Wide Wide World of Web.
• The Calc spreadsheet can now handle up to 1024 columns per sheet, and it also has a new equation solver and new collaboration tools.
• Draw accepts poster-size graphics up to 3 square meters.
• The Impress presentation editor finally supports multiple monitors, making it an even better replacement for PowerPoint.
• Chart has cleaner looking graphics by default, and the requests from power users have been granted with some of their most demanded features being included.
• The built-in PDF exporter now supports PDF/A and has even more user-selectable options.

I’ve been using Writer to work on some software documentation and it’s even easier to use than the previous version, and while I hadn’t been able to work on a spreadsheet while beta testing OOo3 I can now say that it was definitely worth waiting for, not just in the better graphics but also in just plain being easier to use.

OSX users can rejoice in finally having OpenOffice.org as a native program, without having to run it in a compatibility mode. With Microsoft admitting that MS Office/Mac isn’t nearly as nice as it is for Windows users they may find they’re losing even more market share to the FOSS upstarts.

There are even more extensions available than version 2 had and I’m looking forward to taking some time to see what new and improved goodies are available.

You can read the official release announcement, release notes and a guide to all the new features, and you can download the latest version for yourself.

Tombuntu has info on how to install it in Ubuntu Hardy and Intrepid, but it won’t be available by default in Ubuntu Intrepid. Granted, if you follow Tom’s innstructions you’ll still have to create launchers for OOo 3, but if you uninstall the older version of OpenOffice.org (Tom shows you how) you can install the Desktop Integraton package included in the installer and it will create menu items for you.

[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 Monday, 18 August

• Markus Thielmann: Adobe updates Flash 10 to RC. Flash 10 is a little closer to release, although it seems some new bugs were introduced for x64 users. Markus looks at not only the update but also gives info for possibly dealing with issues in the RC.
• Jonathan Carter: Not blogging enough? No, it’s not a question of where either Nanci nor our buddy Sus has been lately. Jonathan posts a small collection of links, but within the post is a response to Mark Shuttleworth’s challenge to make Ubuntu prettier than OSX. (I meant to blog the challenge to Ubuntu devs but I see that I didn’t. My bad.)
• David Futcher: Announcing Freespeech: Simple Cross-Platform Text To Speech. Some may consider text-to-speech just a toy, but there are a lot of people for whom it’s a must have. And this is truly cross-platform, working on not just on Linux but also Windows and Mac.
• Douglass Clem: Comcast Gives Cold-Shoulder To Non-Profit School Running Linux. I was checking out this week’s issue of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter when I found this story about a Florida school that had to deal with the joy of getting Comcast support for their Linux system. The boys and girls at Comcast really need to support Linux, especially since they already support OSX and Unix, and both Linux and OSX share a basis in Unix. I trust that Comcast tech support guy got enough detention to help him realize that they should support Linux, too.

Peng’s links for Saturday, 9 August

• Asa Dotzler: shortcut to launch a specific firefox profile on mac. One thing that Windows users, and even Linux users, can do in Firefox is to create a shortcut to launch Firefox with a specific user profile. I do this myself since I’ve created several profiles during beta testing that I haven’t killed off yet. But Mac users? They don’t have shortcuts. They do have aliases, though, and Asa shows you how to create an alias on OSX that launches Firefox with a specific user profile. Of course he also lets Windows and Linux users know how to do this particular Firefox trick in case you haven’t found it yet.
• Launchpad News: Survey about Launchpad’s upstream bug workflow. I know many of you won’t give a flip about how Launchpad handles bugs, but many Ubuntu users do, and should know that you can link Launchpad bugs to other bugs, even if they’re not hosted on Launchpad. So that bug you find in Evolution (the bug is hosted on Bugzilla) can be linked to a bug on Launchpad so folks working on things upstream can quickly and easily see work done by the Ubuntu community. This is also good for users who also experience the bug so they can know that the bug is definitely being worked on.
• Matthew Helmke: An interview with Alan Pope. Matthew preents another Ubuntu Community Interview, this time with Alan Pope, the person behind the Ubuntu Screencasts project. Find out why he doesn’t like forums and his one bit of advise to Ubuntu users. I swear that one belongs to a t-shirt. I hope Alan will grant permission to make the tee (when I get around to it).

I’m going to call that a full lid from me. Have a great weekend, y’all. I’ll probably see you on Monday. I definitely have a few things I need to check out to see if they’re things I want to post about.

Peng’s links for Monday, 4 August

• Ubuntu Productivity: No! Wha…oooh…wow. Yes! Have you ever shown someone Linux? The writer of this blog is an OSX user who has decided to give Ubuntu a try after hearing so much about it. This post has some of the reactions he gets when people he does business with see he’s running Ubuntu. You should definitely check out his entire site. Thanks to Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #102 for bringing this site to my attention.
• Robert O’Callahan: Why Ogg Matters. Firefox 3.1 will have support for Ogg Vorbis/Theora media files, but some people don’t quite get why this is even desired, let alone important. Robert has a mini-FAQ to show why Firefox 3 users need Ogg support.
• LinuxDevices.com: LiMo touts new phones, members. The Linux Foundation has great news for people wanting smart phones based on Linux.

Some of us are taking kernel updates for Ubuntu and finding that the numeric keypads are borked (again). If this happens to you remember to disable allowing the keyboard to control the cursor. I spent a couple of days fighting with it until I remembered I dealt with this before. D’oh!

And if you need a smile to help improve the start of another week may I suggest my very first loldog?