Vlogcanic

Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring Available

Vlogcanic — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 08:12:57 +0000

Mandriva Linux 2008.1 Spring is ready for download (or purchase).

The new Mandriva edition, 2008.1 Spring, arrives with a lot of new features after their previous delivery gained lots of very good reviews.

Among the new features are:

New parental control system.
The Elisa multimedia center.
Support fo many Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Nokia devices to synchronize with GNOME or KDE.
Support for the Asus EeePC.

Among many, many others.

As usual, you can download the Mandriva One edition for free, and the Powerpack editions are available for purchase at prices ranging from $69 to $89 depending on the package you choose.

SimplyMepis 7.0 available since last december.

Vlogcanic — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 03:47:01 +0000

SimplyMepis 7.0 final release became available last December 23rd.

The now not so new version features a major base-system upgrade from Ubuntu to Debian stable for the core system and apps compiled from the latest source code available form Debian unstable and Ubuntu.

Among the new features are:

2.6.22.14 kernel updated, patched for improved security.
KDE 3.5.8
OpenOffice.org 2.3.0
FireFox 2.0.0.11
Thunderbird 2.0.0.6
Java 6
Amarok 1.4.7
Acrobat Reader 7.0.9
Evolution 2.10.3
Drivers for ATI and nVidia cards.
Compiz 0.6.3

Two .iso images of the installable LiveCDs are available, one for each of Intel’s architectures, 32-bit and 64-bit, which you can get form the MEPIS download mirror list.

Knoppix 5.3.1 will be ready for download in four days.

Vlogcanic — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:23:40 +0000

Klaus Knopper, Knoppix founder and lead developer has announced that, after a year’s time of unavailability, the next release, Knoppix 5.3.1 will be ready for download no later than 22/03/2008 –some four days from now.

The announcement comes after Knoppix 5.3.0 was released at Germany’s CeBIT conference some days in order to avoid speculation about a longer delay. The new 5.3.1 version will include may bug fixes and the accesibility features for the visually impaired developed for Adriane Knoppix.

How to automatically update your xorg.conf file in Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron.

Vlogcanic — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:56:39 +0000

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.

Foresight Linux 2.0 released.

Vlogcanic — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:04:32 +0000

As usual the new Foresight Linux release is the first distro to feature the new GNOME desktop environment, GNOME 2.22. Besides that, the rPath based distro has some new things to offer with the new version:

A new .tar based installer which should take no more than 10 minutes to install, according to the release announcement.
PackageKit software administration.
Syslinux bootloader instead of GRUB.
Improved ease of installation and use for ATI and nVidia drivers.

So if you’d like to give Foresight a try or just want to see what the new GNOME 2.22 is all about, you can go and get it from the rPath download mirrors.

GNOME 2.22 is here.

Vlogcanic — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:46:14 +0000

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.

How to read Linux partitions (ext2 and ext3) from Windows.

Vlogcanic — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:47:26 +0000

Typical nuisance: your machine has Windows XP and a Linux distro sharing a hard drive with dual boot. Whenever you are using your Linux system (say, Ubuntu 7.04 or something alike) your NTFS partitions get mounted automatically without any hassle (unless you left them hibernating) BUT the day you are working (or trying to work) in Windows and need some file from your Linux filesystem you either have to reboot or have had to copy that file to an USB pendrive or the NTFS partition beforehand.

There are tools that allow your Windows to read ext2 and ext3 partitions out there (if, on the other hand, you have SuSE or used ReiserFS, or any other file system… you’ll need to wait for another post) with varying degrees of functionality.

The one tool I can recommend to suit your ext2/ext3 partition reading from Windows is Explore2fs because of the very simple reason that is the one free program that actually worked in my computers. It’s free, very small in size, simple, efficient, it has a GUI, needs no installation and it does the trick.

There are a couple of catches, of course. Explore2fs does not integrate into Windows Explorer (which means you won’t see your ext3 partition by clicking in “My Computer”) and any file you want to retrieve must be imported into the NTFS partition (no previews, thumbnails, direct access and things of the sort).

In order to get Explore2fs all you need click in the official website link and download a binary version for Windows ( explore2fs-1.08beta9.zip is the one I’m using). Unzip the file, and double-click on the Tux icon in order to get it started.

It’s that simple.

Linux Mint 4.0 KDE Community Edition available.

Vlogcanic — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:34:07 +0000

Linux Mint 4.0 KDE community edition is available.

Dont’ get confused: this is not a KDE 4.0 or KDE 4.01 demo LiveCD but a full desktop system in a LiveDVD based on KDE 3.5.

In Linux Mint 4.0 KDE Community edition you’ll find the 2.6.22 kernel (Ubuntu Gutsy’s), KDE with a customized Compiz, many Linux Mint custom apps (mintInstall, mintWiFi, mintUpdate), customized versions of FireFox and Sunbird and many other typical Minty perks such as automatic support for NTFS partitions reading and writing, out-of-the box multimedia codecs.

The bad news is that in order to fit everything into a single disk, it had to be a DVD (996 MB). The good news is that it isn’t so big. Here’s the download mirror list.

Linux Mint 4.0 Out and About… since last November.

Vlogcanic — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:20:51 +0000

Linux Mint 4.0 has been available since last November, which is the reason this post is included in the belated category.

Daryna, as it’s codenamed was released in two editions, standard and light, it’s based in Ubuntu but features some improvements in terms of out-of-the-box experience such as pre-installed multimedia codecs.

The installation LiveCD includes CompizFusion, Gnome 2.20, NTFS read and write support, migration assistant and many other good features have made Linux Mint 4.0 one of the big moves and shakers. Even the guys at distrowatch have hailed Daryna as THE distro for newcomers.

More information in the release notes and download link’s here.

PS. Ok, so GNOME is not your thing… XFCE, Fluxbox and KDE Linux Mint Editions are on the way, so just be patient.

Long awaited Knoppix 5.3.0 LiveDVD soon to come.

Vlogcanic — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:15:17 +0000

Knoppix new releases have not been that common in the last few months, but the distro is alive and kicking. Klaus Knopper, the distro’s founder, has announced that Knoppix 5.3.0 will come to light at the CeBIT expo in Hannover, will be mad available through inclusion in the c’t magazine to be published during CeBIT and will be made available for download a bit later on.

The kernel will be 2.6.24, it will feature KDE 3.5.8 with Compiz, Iceweasel and Icedove, OpenOffice 2.3.1 and some other experimental features.

Get Knoppix 5.3.0 LiveDVD now.

While you can’t download it from any mirror now, the fine guys at Distrowatch have located a bittorrent in LinuxTracker for you to download: here’s the link.