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Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal with Unity is Released

Ryan — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:29:51 +0000

Canonical has released its latest version of Ubuntu today. Under the hood 11.04 Natty has made many controversial changes, first and foremost the addition of Unity which replaces the standard GNOME desktop. The new desktop was originally designed for the Ubuntu Netbook Edition but has now made its way to the standard version.

Beyond the introduction of the new Unity shell, there have been several other additions. The Gtk+ theme has a new slim scrollbar style, and the default music player in Ubuntu changed from Rhythmbox to Banshee. The Ubuntu Software Center has finally included support for posting ratings and reviews. This addition will make it easier for end users to make better decisions when adding packages to their system.

Ubuntu has been heavily criticized as of late for its increasingly closed development process, especially since it touts itself as being the “community” distribution. It’s often confusing design decisions and break from GNOME have done a lot to annoy many users as of late. With the recent release of GNOME 3 and Fedora 15 right around the corner Ubuntu has a lot at stake with Unity. I for one think that more diversity and choices are a good thing. Parallel development of GNOME Shell and Unity will undoubtedly spur innovation and will be a positive for both desktops.

The Open Source philosophy believes that freedom and choice are important. The big question is will the Ubuntu users support the new desktop and Canonical’s increasingly closed methodology, or choose to stay with GNOME and move to another distribution?

GNOME 3 Featuring Gnome Shell is Released

Ryan — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 21:27:21 +0000

April 6th is finally here and those of us who have been keeping track of GNOME 3 development, you know that means the release of GNOME 3 desktop featuring Gnome Shell. GNOME 3 and Gnome Shell are a dramatic shift from what users have come to expect from GNOME 2.

From the press release:

Today, the GNOME Desktop project released GNOME 3.0, its most significant redesign of the computer experience in nine years. A revolutionary new user interface and new features for developers make this a historic moment for the free and open source desktop.

Within GNOME 3, GNOME Shell reimagines the user interface for the next generation of the desktop. This innovative interface allows users to focus on tasks while minimizing distractions such as notifications, extra workspaces, and background windows.

Fedora 15 will feature GNOME 3 as their default desktop when they release in May. Up next in the release cycle will be Ubuntu and their Unity that will be the default desktop for their upcoming 11.04 Natty release. It will be interesting how the two compare as they share many of the same design elements and functionality.

Installation

At the moment you can download Live CD images for both Fedora and openSUSE but no distribution currently has it in their repositories.

If you are running Ubuntu and want to try it out as your default desktop, there is an article on how to build the latest version from source.

Setup USB support in Oracle VirtualBox

Ryan — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 21:35:53 +0000

Since VirtualBox version 4.0 USB support can be enabled in the Open Source Edition (OSE) by installing the optional Oracle Extension Pack. You can find out how to install the Extension Pack here. If you have an earlier 3.2 version, you must make sure you have the Oracle closed source version of VirtualBox which was entirely separate from the OSE version.

Once you have everything installed correctly you need to make sure you have the VirtualBox guest additions installed on your guest VM. To do this select Devices -> Install Guest Additions from the VM menu.

Now you should have a USB section in your VirtualBox manager for your guest VM. Power down your guest VM and make sure that the USB and USB 2.0 controller are activated.

When you start your VM you should now see a USB icon on the bottom right corner of the screen. Unfortunately when you click on this the USB devices connected to your host machine are visible but deactivated and therefore invisible to your VM. To fix this we have to add your user to the “vboxusers” group on your host machine.

If your host machine is running a Linux distribution that uses GNOME (Ubuntu/Fedora /etc.) simply go to System -> Administration -> Users and Groups -> Manage Groups and scroll down to the “vboxusers” group. Click on Properties and select the checkbox next to your username to add yourself to th group. Now you must completely logout of your Gnome session and log back in for these changes to take affect.

You should now be able to fire up your VM and have access all USB devices connected to our host machine. Click the USB icon to see what USB devices are available. You will know if the USB device is visible to your VM if there is a check mark next to it.

Remove the envelope icon from the Gnome indicator applet

Ryan — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:09:31 +0000

In Ubuntu it can be difficult to customize the indicator applet which by default contains the sound, battery, Bluetooth, and empathy icons.

If you don’t use empathy and want to remove the icon there is no simple option to change. Since this is a default indicator icon you must completely remove the indicator-messages package to make it disappear.

$ sudo apt-get purge indicator-messages

Once you have removed the package you can log out and back into your account to see the changes take effect. Alternatively you can remove the indicator-applet and then add it back to the Gnome panel.

Fix for missing title bar and GNOME panel with Firefox

Ryan — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:22:55 +0000

This is a bug in Firefox 3 where it launches into full screen mode and completely covers the top and bottom GNOME panels as well as its own title bar. While in this buggy mode Firefox cannot be resized, and can only be closed from within the menu.

File -> Quit

A temporary fix involves pressing F11 which switches you into full screen browser mode and pressing it once again to switch back. Once you close Firefox and restart it however it will continue to have the same issue.

To fix this bug permanently, delete the file localstore.rdf from your Mozilla-Firefox profile which is stored in your home directory. Firefox must be closed in order for this to work correctly.

In your home directory run the following command:

$ find . -name localstore.rdf

./.mozilla/firefox/9m0erq4m.default/extensions.rdf

Close Firefox.

Remove the file that was output by the previous command.

$ rm ./.mozilla/firefox/9m0erq4m.default/extensions.rdf

Restart Firefox.

After restarting Firefox will rebuild this file and your browser should work correctly once again.

Customize keyboard shortcuts in GNOME

Ryan — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 23:55:21 +0000

Use the Keyboard Shortcuts tool in GNOME to customize the default keyboard shortcuts for your system. If you have a laptop that has special media buttons you can configure them here as well. In some distributions such as Ubuntu these media buttons may be automatically configured but you may still need to fine tune them to suit your needs.

To access this menu in from the GNOME desktop open the following menu:

System -> Preferences -> System Shortcuts

There are 3 groups of shortcuts you can customize: Sound, Desktop, and Window Management. These groups break down in the following way.

Sound – Deals with media players and system sound.

Desktop – Shortcuts for opening applications and managing menus.

Window Management – Shortcuts for working with windows and workspaces.

To make a change select the shortcut from the menu and enter the new combination, it should correctly appear as you have pressed it. If you are configuring media buttons press them here instead. To disable a shortcut select the shortcut from the menu and press backspace.