Ubuntu blogs

Picking up on Friedrich.s blog, why not have a go at designing new wallpaper for BREEZY and then move on to DAPPER. I would guess a lot of us are using 1024x768 , so if this was made the standard size for submissions everybody could have a go. If anyone likes the idea lets get started!!!!!

Good night from France,
i'm using the Firefox 1.5 i've just installed manually in my /usr/local/ directory hierarchy because i have not found it yet as package for the latest stable ubuntu.
First, you need to download the firefox archive file on Get Firefox
After downloading the needed file, it was very simple because it's just a matter of executing only 3 commands :

tar -xzvf firefox-1.5.tar.gz
sudo mv firefox /usr/local/
sudo ln -s ../firefox/firefox /usr/local/bin/

That's all folks !
Because /usr/local/bin is before /usr/bin in the default user PATH shell variable you don't have to modify your default firefox icon on the gnome launch toolbar. The default firefox launching shortcut points to the "firefox" command so it will the "/usr/local/bin/firefox" before the packaged "/usr/bin/firefox" command.
Have an happy new year and happy using of you newly locally installed Firefoxof the next generation than 1.0
Freely,
Bertux

Another release candidate of the next Ubuntu version called Dapper Drake has been released. The "Flight CD 2" gives a preview of the new version based on linux kernel 2.6.15.

Because of this kernel change the release has been slightly delayed, as is requires udev 071 or newer. That's why Canonical has updated Udev and removed the old Hotplug. Own Hotplug rules have to be rewritten to Udev rules manually. Because of that change the hardware detection should be even better now. Even the PCMCIA infrastructure has been switchted to Udev so that the Cardmgr isn't required any more, even though some old config files are still being used.

Dapper Drake uses a new bootloader based on gfxboot. It integrates the language selector, which should be a great benefit for the Live-CD. The standard resolution of the framebuffer has been set to 640x480 pixels, so that the installer is going to be displayed on all systems correctly now. The APT- and user configuration within the installer has also been improved.

VMWare offers a free product called Browser Appliance, which is a virtual PC with Ubuntu Linux 5.10. It is aimed for safer surfing in a safe virtual environment using Firefox 1.5. The download is 258 mb in size.

To use the preinstalled Ubuntu image you need the free VMWare Player, which has now been released as a final version. The VMWare Player is available for Linux and Windows and allows starting existing images. To create new images you need the full product.

After every reboot the browser settings like history and saved passwords are being lost, as the image always starts in its original condition. This feature can also be deactivated.

Hi Ubuntu fans!

I'm in need of a good search engine. I mean Google does alright, but isn't there a specific search engine out there especially for Linux or Open Source?

As I'm using Ubuntu as my main operating system I sometimes just want to have search results in this area. Even better would be a search engine only for Ubuntu, of course :)

So leave me a comment if you know something about it...

Ubuntu and its founder, Mark Shuttleworth, both won awards at the Linux New Media Awards at last week's Linux World Expo in Frankfurt, Germany.

The Best Debian Derivative Distribution award was judged by a 200-member international jury from industry and the Open Source community. This is a significant award as it recognises the effort that the Ubuntu team have put into working with Debian in order to produce an easy to use desktop environment, suitable for everyone.

This award follows on from several other prestigious awards that Ubuntu has won since the launch of the latest release, 5.10 in October this year.

The KDE Project is happy to announce a new major release of the award-winning K Desktop Environment. Many features have been added or refined.

Notable changes include:

- Konqueror is the second web browser to pass the Acid2 CSS test, ahead of Firefox and Internet Explorer
- Konqueror can also now free web pages from adverts with its ad-block feature
- SuperKaramba is included in KDE, providing well-integrated and easy-to-install widgets
- Kopete has support for MSN and Yahoo! webcams
- The edutainment module has three new applications (KGeography, Kanagram and blinKen)

For a more complete log of changes, complete with screenshots and explanations, see the KDE 3.5 visual guide to new features.

A new Ubuntu derivative is under development. It's called Gnubuntu and only uses software which follows the Free Software Foundation (FSF) guidelines. Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu distribution, agreed this with GNU-founder Richard Stallman.

Stallman supports the idea, but isn't happy with the name. Anyway, the name Gnubuntu will be kept, the corresponding domain gnubuntu.org is already registered - but with no content on it yet.

The new distribution will only contain Ubuntu packages, which follow the Free Software Foundation guidelines. Most of the linux distributions already consist mostly of free software, but they also contain binary packages without the corresponding source code or commercial applications. One exception is the Ututo distribution, which already consists only of free software completely. Shuttleworth wants to ask these developers to join the Gnubuntu development.