Vlogcanic

Every now and then something will happen to your Ubuntu system that will break your xorg.conf file: module updates, a recovery session gone bad, things of the sort, so that the next time you boot your Ubuntu system you find your monitor’s resolution to be configured to 800×600 instead of the 1680×1050 pixels you actually want.

At this point your choices are: to edit the xorg.conf file manually (which is on the tricky side of things, specially now that Ubuntu’s xorgs are “minimal” and a bit more touchy), to reinstall your system or to run an update on your xorg.conf. This last option may or may not solve your problem, depending on what the actual problem is, but is quick and much less risky or time consuming than the other two.

Open a terminal and type

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

enter your password, wait for the thing to be done, restart the Xorg session (reboot will do the trick or Ctrl+Alt+Backspace) and see what happens.

By the way: once you have a fully funcional system, keep a copy of your xorg.conf file somewhere safe and at hand so that you don’t need to do this stuff again.

GNOME 2.22 is the new version of the most widely used Linux desktop graphical environment.

It’s now ready for use after half a year since the last stable GNOME release (the GNOME project releases new stable versions bianually).

Among the many new goodies in GNOME 2.22 are:

• The GVFS virtual filesystem framework an under-the-hood improvement so that external mounted volumes become more transparent to the desktop environment and all of its apps.
• The PolicyKit framework aims to make privilege management safer for users.
• Cheese is a free clone inspired by Apple’s Photoboot, an app developed to take and process photos from your webcam and also video.
• Vinagre a remote desktop client.
• Evolution remains GNOME’s mail and calendar client but now it supports Google Calendars.
• Totem has now better subtitle management.

GNOME 2.22 will become available in a distro near you in the following weeks. Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron and Fedora 9 will feature it but, if you just can’t wait, Foresight Linux 2.0 is released now, at the same time GNOME 2.22, was and it already has it. For more details, new characteristics and some photos go to the GNOME Project official release notes web page.

OpenGEU the distro that brings together Ubuntu’s usability with Enlightenment’s beauty and GNOME’s robustness released Luna Nova, the distro’s version 7.10, based on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, last december.

It’s available as an installable LiveCD you can get here. But if you already have a Gusty Gibbon running in your machine, you can bring the coolnes of OpenGEU’s E17 desktop by adding a repository to your Synaptic and installing a few .deb packages. You can see the OpenGEU’s wiki pages for further instructions.

If you used to be among the linux guys that wondered why the hell Enlightenment never turned into a real desktop environment such as GNOME or KDE and had to resign yourself to use it because of its lack of development, OpenGEU is the just the thing for you. You get the whole Ubuntu thing along with an extremely efficient E17 desktop.

Among the customizations peformed by the distro’s developers are the use of Thunar (XFCE’s file manager) instead of Nautilus (which is GNOME’s) and the XFCE panel. Both things will make your system go faster.

In the words of the Sirius Cybernetics Company: Share and enjoy!

As you probably already know, Ubuntu’s default desktop environment is GNOME. I like GNOME. It’s simple, intuitive, usable, things just work –when they work… this is Linux, anyway– and still retains quite a bit of versatility. And yet there’s stuff I like about KDE: its visually more impressive and some KDE applications (Amarok being probably the most obvious example) are simply better than their GNOME cousins.

Ubuntu’s Synaptic Package Manager makes it simple enough to install any KDE application you would want to use, but for those who like to walk an extra mile to have more choices (being able to run a KDE session in Ubuntu as well as GNOME in this case), here’s how to do it. How to make your GNOME-abled Ubuntu capable of running KDE sessions as well.

You’ll need to be connected to the internet or have a Kubuntu CD close at hand — unless you already have the CD I suggest you do it over the net… the download is about 193 MB which is much less than the CD’s 700MB download. You’ll also need 584MB of disk space.

So, open a terminal and type

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

type your password and then sit back and relax. You’ll be downloading almost 209 packages. Those are not exactly dependencies because kubuntu-desktop is not a package but a meta-package –something that calls for a bunch of other packages to be installed.

After the stuff is downloaded, apt-get is going to install and configure it automatically and at some point is going to ask you to choose a default desktop manager (gdm or kdm), go ahead and choose what you want. The thing will continue with the configuration task and once it’s done you can reboot. Just make sure you don’t interrupt the whole thing while it’s going on.

After reboot you’ll be able to choose between KDE or GNOME by clicking on “Options” at login and then clicking on KDE or GNOME.

Whatever desktop environment you want to use will give you all the default Ubuntu apps for both desktops and, also, future KDE application downloads will be much quicker as your dependencies will be much closer to being satisfied –or completely satisfied already.

The downside to all of this is the extra disk space you’ll need and longer, bigger updates, as you’ll have more packages installed.

Enjoy!

Hardy Heron’s fifth alpha release is scheduled for release today, but if you are running something like alpha 4 chances are you already noticed a kernel upgrade and of many packages in your system as well, including the new art for the desktop wallpaper which is really beautiful. It’s barely two months now before Hardy Heron’s final release is presented to the world so Mark Shuttleworth has notified the Ubuntu developing community that the time to think about the next step in Ubuntu’s history is now.

In a mail to the Ubuntu developers the distro’s founder unveiled the code name for version 8.10: Intrepid Ibex.

One of the goals for the Ibex will be to set it up to take advantage from the pervasive internet signals found almost everywhere these days so your roaming goat can get internet access using a variety of wireless technologies wherever you may find yourself.

This is interesting, specially taking into account the tumultuous relationship that Linux and WiFi have had over the years (let alone Bluetooth). So the Ubuntu enthusiasts all over the world have something to look forward to even if Hardy Heron hasn’t been properly released yet.

The development summit is planned for next May in Prague. Let’s see what transpires in the meantime.