My company has just released an online store for electronic gadgets including digital cameras, PDAs and for all you audio gear heads - MP3 players. For the technically literate people out there, it was developed in Ruby on Rails a fantastic web application framework. I will of course be looking to provide products that are as Linux compatible as possible.
Take a look: Go Go Gadget - digital cameras, PDAs, MP3 players
Linux Desktop Blog has now moved to its new domain name: wantlinux.com.
The original URL will still work, but all links will now point the new site. If you notice that anything is not working, please email me at - ldb at danharper.org
If you’ve bookmarked or linked to the site, please update your links.
This is a comment on the article Linux not ready for the desktop by Asa Dotzler. Unfortunately, I’d crafted this great comment and then found that the comments had closed on the article! Hey Asa, speaking of user friendly, your blog shouldn’t have a comment submission form available if the comments are closed!
Asa,
Great writing, I hope that lots of Linux techies listen up. I definitely agree with the points on migration and stability.
On migration, I think that a lot of users trying out Linux don’t give it enough of a chance because their settings, mail, bookmarks, etc aren’t in the system. They install it, logon and then say “what do I do now?”.
With stability, this is definitely a big issue and source of confusion for new Linux users. The whole API stability thing does introduce a lack of confidence in the general public regarding Linux. They hear the stories, experience something similar themselves, and then are quick to write it off. Some work in this area to improve user experience would go a long way.
I think that I might have to disagree slightly with the other points simplicity and comfort.
In regards to simplicity, my wife uses Linux as her OS, and has done so for a number of years. She knows nothing about Linux, and admitedly I administer and support the system for her, but she can get around on a gnome desktop just fine. She doesn’t seem to find any further trouble than using a Windows system.
I also think that comfort is not so much a big issue. Users tend to pick up differences like this with no big problems.
Maybe there needs to be a desktopfest organised? To help all those Linux keen users to get the most out of their systems. Just like the installfests helped thousands of users navigate the once “dangerous” Linux install process.
And, haven’t installs come a long way? Let’s hope that the desktop is the next item of focus for Linux developers.
Yesterday I installed Fedora Core 4 for the first time. Now, in regards to audio and a Red Hat distribution, I usually follow the steps over at Planet CCRMA to setup everything to do with audio on Linux. It’s an extra bunch of steps added to an install, but it is worth it, and it has become a whole lot easier to set up audio on Linux now that Fedora Core4 has ALSA support out of the box.
So, I’m just going to jot a few handy hints here to help anyone else willing to give Fedora Core 4 a try.
The first problem I had was installing the planetccrma-core package, it didn’t exist! This is because at this time, Planet CCRMA is only starting to support Fedora Core 4, and not everything has been built for this distro as yet. But, let me tell you that it is worth going to Fedora Core 4, because most of the good audio software you need has already been ported to FC4.
The solution to this is to install planetccrma-core-edge as your first package. This installs a fairly nifty kernel that has enhanced realtime performance, but may not be stable on all hardware. I found that the kernel did lock up on my machine, so I didn’t use it, but it is handy to install this package anyway as it will install the latest ALSA and other prerequisite packages from Planet CCRMA.
The second problem I had in regards to audio was access for any non-root user. I’m not sure why this happened, but after installing Fedora Core 4 and then installing Planet CCRMA, I could only access the audio hardware as root.
The solution is this:
su) as root.groupadd audio This will create a new audio group on your machine./etc/group look for the line “audio:x:501:” (it should be the last line in the file). At the end of this line, type in the usernames that you want to have access to the audio interface. In my example, I placed root, my wife’s username and my own to belong to this group. After editing, the line should read: audio:x:501:root,user1,user2 where user1 and user2 are your non-root usernames that you want to give access to./etc/rc.d/rc.local This file is executed as the last thing the computer does when it starts up. For some reason, permission changes to the sound devices reset themselves on a reboot, so I had to edit this file for my changes to happen every time the computer restarts. Someone may be able to provide a better way, if so, please leave a comment. Anyway, add the following lines to this file:chgrp audio /dev/snd/*chmod g+rw /dev/snd/*These steps solved all my audio problems with Fedora Core 4, hopefully they help you to.
All I care about is getting out of the Vista View apartments, because there ain’t no ‘vista’, there ain’t no “view”, and there certainly ain’t no vista of no view.
I’ve noticed quite a bit of ruffled feathers at the release of the latest sneak preview of the new version of Windows “Vista” (previously Longhorn). Apart from the crappy name, there are many Linux people with many comments regarding the new operating system.
I’ll just say one thing, how unusable is this thing? I realise that while XP was going through this stage, the user interface changed dramatically, but XP got worse in many ways. It’s going to be good news for the Linux Desktop if Microsoft keeps going this direction with Vista.
I think my main complaint is the eye candy. The transparent shading really makes the screen look way too busy, almost to the point of distraction. Isn’t it unfortunate that it might all be wasted as Microsoft Windows users generally maximise their windows when using their computers. I used to also, until I used UNIX for the first time. When I experienced the goodness of having a true multi tasking operating system, I just had to have multiple windows visible on my screen to see everything tick over.
My three questions are… Will the eye candy be useful? The usefulness of Windows XP’s eye candy is debatable. My second question is, if it is usable, will they re-educate their user base to take avantage of it? The third and final question is… So they’ve changed the UI, but will they change the underlying system to actually cope with multi tasking? Just try and copy a large file over a network in Windows, and watch your Windows system grind to a halt. This has been an issue in Windows since day one, but Microsoft is yet to address it. This is one thing that Linux does so well, it really makes Linux enjoyable to use.
The upgrade has been completed. almost.
If you notice anything strange, please let me know. I’ll be on the search for a new site design too, so any recommendations would be helpful.
I’ve just decided that I’m going to upgrade this site to WordPress 1.5.2. If you find that the site is unavailable briefly, then you know why!
(Not that you’d be able to read this message anyway if the site was down… oh well)
Stay Tuned…
In looking over the site today, I realised that there had been 5 months between my last two posts! Wow! I didn’t realise that it had gotten that bad! Actually around 5 months ago I started a new job which has taken me away from my beloved websites for a while.
In brushing up on all the Linux Desktop news from the last 5 months, I see some things have changed, and in some places, not much has changed at all.
Microsoft has brought out its “desktop crusher” now called “Vista”. It will be unfortunate if they release the new version of Windows with that name. There is a well known el-cheapo blinds and curtains company called Vista in Australia. I can understand the link, but it would definitely bring an impression of el-cheapo dagginess in the Australian market.
Not too much has changed on the Linux front however. There is a lot of talk from Linux guys commenting on the new Windows beta, but not a lot of talk about good things progressing for the Linux Desktop. As far as I’ve seen so far, there doesn’t seem to be anything ground breaking on the deskop for Linux. Please prove me wrong and leave a comment!
This is the first in a series of Handy Hints. Like extremely mini-HOWTOs these hints could come in handy one day, so keep ‘em bookmarked for a handy reference.
Someone asked me today how to strip out the “%20″ characters out of multiple downloaded files off the Internet. If you’ve used the Internet for a while, you’ve probably come across this naming convention.
It comes from the inability of the Internet to cope with spaces. If someone has gone against the grain of the Internet and placed a URL or file on the web containing spaces, you may notice that your web browser automatically compensates by replacing these spaces with the “%20″ series of characters. This is a type of encoding that occurs so that the URL is usable for the Internet.
My friend has a whole bunch of files that he’s downloaded from the Internet, and they all contain the “%20″ characters. He was after an easy way to rename all of these files to get rid of these characters. My friend is not a Linux-nerd so I wanted to give him something that was usable in one line at a shell prompt.
Here’s the solution using some readily available Linux tools, just:
ls | sed -e p -e s/%20//g | xargs -i -n2 -t mvAnd you’re done! Easy huh? This command can even be used in Microsoft Windows with a little extra work, just download some UNIX tools for Windows (go to SourceForge to get some, there are plenty of projects that include all the handy UNIX tools you need) install the files somewhere to your drive, add the “bin” files to your path, and run the same command!
If you need a slight variation of this, or help getting the UNIX tools working in Windows, just leave a comment. The command is very flexible and with some slight tweaks it can be made to suit many different applications.
Gnome 2.10 (that’s two point ten, silly, I know, it confused me the first time) has just been released. You can apparently try it out with a LiveCD, which is a great idea, especially with such a software package that covers your entire desktop, there is normally no easy way to try it out on any older Linux distribution.
Release notes are available which covers details of all the new features that this version brings to your desktop.
If you’re running Ubuntu, apparently the packages have already been made available, which is very quick response time, especially for a Debian based distribution! Good on ya Ubuntu, but since I’m running SuSE, I’ll have to wait.
