Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

October 29, 2009 by Mike Szczys 108 Comments

ubuntu-karmic-koala-splash

Today is the official release of the latest version of Ubuntu, the most popular Linux-based operating system. Someone mentioned that there had been a new release of the Windows OS recently and if you’re thinking of going with that one, we feel you should a least give Ubuntu a try. Now in its 11th official release and codenamed Karmic Koala, this version of Ubuntu continues the traditional six month development cycle by succeeding Jaunty Jackalope which was released in April of this year.

We’ve been running the beta release of Ubuntu Netbook Remix for several weeks now. It cut boot time down to between 5-10 seconds and WiFi is already connected by the time the Desktop loads. Speed isn’t the only new feature, graphics have been redesigned, there is a new app store that serves as a front end for the extensive free software repositories, and the newest kernel and software versions are included.

We’ve been using this open source operating system since its third release, Breezy Badger. We love it for the quality, convenience, and the fact that we can get our fingers into the code and hack around a bit.

Ubuntu 9.10 Beta Now Available

October 3, 2009 by Mike Szczys 40 Comments

ubuntu_karmic_beta

The latest version of the world’s most popular Linux distribution is now available. Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala continues the six-month development cycle of this free OS. We’ve used Ubuntu since 2005 and, after a short adjustment period, never looked back at those other operating systems.

Never used Linux? This distribution is for you but we recommend waiting until the release makes it out of beta to the stable version on October 29th.

Comfortable with Linux and want to get your feet wet? The Hack a Day team is calling on all of you to test, report, and improve upon this community driven project. Get yourself a copy of the beta (we recommend using the torrents) and start reporting bugs. You can help fix them by joining the bug squad, or use your coding skills to become a developer.

Toilet And Figlet

September 21, 2009 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

toilet_and_figlet

We thought [Kristofer’s] Tech Tip about using figlet with scripts was kind of fun. It’s a throwback to the days of logging onto a BBS and being greeted by a vertically scrolling ASCII art image that had been meticulously hand crafted (although a lot of the coolest stuff was actually ANSI art). No hand crafting here, just feed (or pipe) your text to figlet and it outputs the message in ASCII style letters.

When we went to try install this in Ubuntu, the toilet package was suggested. This one’s worth checking out too. It works in much the same way as figlet but uses extended characters and has a lot more color and font settings:

hackaday_toilet

Give these packages a try and make character art cool again!

Jolicloud OS Seeks To Move Past Browsers

September 19, 2009 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

jolicloud_apps

Jolicloud is a new Linux based operating system aimed at netbooks. The developers were nice enough to let us get our hands on their closed development version of the new OS. This distribution is built off of Ubuntu Netbook Remix(9.04 Jaunty Jackalope). At first glance it looks like nothing more than Ubuntu with a new skin, but the difference is deeper. Jolicloud added an App Store type program that offers installation of web applications along with traditional desktop apps. Using Mozilla Prism, web based applications like Facebook, Gmail, and Wikipedia are installed, get their own icon in the launcher, and run without the aid of a browser. Continue reading “Jolicloud OS Seeks To Move Past Browsers” →

How To Write Udev Rules

September 18, 2009 by Mike Szczys 36 Comments

Since the adoption of Kernel 2.6, Linux has used the udev system to handle devices such as USB connected peripherals. If you want to change the behavior when you plug something into a USB port, this section is for you. As an example, we will use a USB thumb drive but these methods should translate to any device handled by udev. As a goal for this exercise we decided to create a symlink and execute a script when a specific thumb drive was loaded. The operating system we used for this exercise is Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope. Continue reading “How To Write Udev Rules” →

Ubuntu 9.04 On Kindle 2

September 3, 2009 by Mike Szczys 36 Comments

kindle2

[digg=http://digg.com/linux_unix/Ubuntu_Jaunty_on_Amazon_s_Kindle_2]Having read books on a Palm device for years we were excited when Amazon came up with the Kindle. Our problem is that if you’re going to carry around a portable device it should do a whole lot more than just display text from a few books. [Jesse Vincent] managed to get Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope running on the Kindle 2. This opens up endless possibilities to run whatever you want on this hardware.

The new functionality was presented in a talk at OSCON 2009. Be warned, [Jesse] has a very high geeky-hacker level. Make sure you have a tech dictionary and Google at the ready when you watch the video embedded after the break. His talk starts at about two minutes in and runs for five minutes total. Continue reading “Ubuntu 9.04 On Kindle 2” →

Lubuntu 9.10 Alpha Image Available

September 1, 2009 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

lubuntu_first_beta

The alpha version of Lubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala is now publicly availabile. The project brings together Ubuntu and LXDE, the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment. This combination makes for a lighter version of the most popular Linux distribution. Both Xubuntu (which utilizes the Xfce desktop) and Lubuntu are meant to run well on lower resource computers such as netbooks. With the ISO smaller than 400mb and using quite a bit less system resources Lubuntu looks promising.

Right now it looks like the original backup ISO link is down. If you can’t wait, try this torrent.

[via Softpedia]