Robsta.id.au » Linux

Make Ubuntu usable in few minutes

robsta — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 10:04:51 +0000

Easy Ubuntu allows you to Add extra repositories, Activate the “audio preview” feature in Nautilus, Active the num lock at system startup, Replace the GNOME foot logo with Ubuntu’s logo and Install: multimedia codecs, Firefox plugins, support for RAR and ACE, P2P software, Skype, AMSN cvs with webcam support, NVIDA or ATI driver for 3D support.

Linux Chooser

robsta — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 04:37:00 +0000

Take a Quick Survey to determine which Linux distribution is right for you. Funny enough my own attempt at the survey went like this:

Your ideal distro is:

Built for newer computers
Installed with a graphical installer
Installed with everything
One that detects your hardware for you
Packed with only 1 program for each application to save space
Full of the latest and greatest features that may take up processing power
Binary package based
Free from dependancy hell
Windows/Macintosh like in GUI Nature

here’s how the distributions in the database match up to your choices:

Distro name	Match %
Ubuntu	9/11: 81%
Mandriva	9/11: 81%
Fedora	9/11: 81%
MEPIS	10/11: 90%
SuSe	9/11: 81%
Debian	8/11: 72%
Knoppix	9/11: 81%
Gentoo	7/11: 63%
Slackware	7/11: 63%
Damn Small	8/11: 72%
Arch	7/11: 63%
Vector	8/11: 72%
Beatrix	9/11: 81%
Ark	11/11: 100%
LFS	5/11: 45%
EvilEntity	6/11: 54%

I actually use Ubuntu (and love it) which scored 9/11 of my choices, but Ark linux got all 11! Maybe I should try Ark in my spare time, but I dont think I’ll be leaving Ubuntu anytime soon.

Free Sveasoft Firmware

robsta — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 02:15:13 +0000

This guy offers the Sveasoft firmware for download at no extra cost (free as in beer)! He also talks about how he was abused by Sveasoft and how they are in violation of the GPL.

Basic Networking: Windows to Linux Fedora

robsta — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 06:04:24 +0000

Can a Windows system and a Linux system talk together harmoniously? After all, there is a lot of work and personal data left on Windows PCs that many want to keep! So this question of networking the two systems is both reasonable and vital

Using VIM

robsta — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 00:59:41 +0000

VIM (VI-Improved) can be a real pain if you don’t understand the basics. It is included in almost every *nix distribution. Luckily I stumbled across this cheat sheet that shows the basics.

NetMovie, a concept

robsta — Sun, 08 Aug 2004 13:07:15 +0000

Imagine walking into your lounge room every Friday evening, sitting down on a couch and watching a movie you never knew you owned. It’s a concept, but it’s a good one.

A spare PC running an appriopriate Linux distribution could aggregate weekly RSS feeds for hot movies (the most shared ones) to download via BitTorrent. It could automatically add them to a directory that Freevo categorises. You sit down, a nice listing pops up and you enjoy your Friday night.

Concept Material

Linux Distro (low spec hardware): Gentoo,Debian, or similar
BitTorrent Client (w/rss): Azureus comes to mind
Freevo, MythTv, Geexbox etc. a movie player of some sort.

Rob’s Photo Album

Gnome to KDE

robsta — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 05:25:13 +0000

I’ve been thinking about moving across to KDE on my Fedora Core 2 system. Both desktop environments are fairly stable, mature and each have their own ups and downs. I’ve come to love Redhat’s BlueCurve theme.

edit: It is interesting to note that a Google Search for the BlueCurve theme shows articles on how to remove it.

Gnome on Fedora
Fedora comes with Gnome as it’s default desktop environment. This is due to the nature of the extra work added to the gnome code base by Redhat Developers. Most mainstream distributions (Gentoo, Debian, Suse) tend to support KDE as their preferred choice. I’ll have to evaluate Gnome and KDE from my own perspective in a future article.

Removing BlueCurve
A nice Article over here explains how: Read More

QNX 6.3 Released

robsta — Thu, 10 Jun 2004 05:23:57 +0000

QNX 6.3 was released on 3 Jun. New features include accelerated 3D, the Voyager 2 browser which supports HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1 now, SCTP (stream control transmission protocol) and packet filtering with NAT! GCC 3.3.1 is also included. If it’s not a typo, the Professional version costs $8695/user o_O Usual QNX NC (non-commercial = free beer).