Fresh Ubuntu

Welcome back! Hope you enjoy some of the changes I've made to my blog. Hopefully soon I will be able to host this on my own domain, but until then this will have to do which isn't so bad at all.

Also, I recently had some technical difficulty with my feed. If it were not for the good folks at Feedburner most notably Eric Lunt of Technical Support who got me up and running earlier today (Sept 26, 06). This podcast may still be out. Thank you Feed Burner and Eric for your speedy response and top notch technical expertise.

This week I decided to hook up my old HP Photosmart 7350 to my laptop running Ubuntu and it was a huge success! Not that I was worried. So far, I have my PCMCIA wireless card running well and now my printer is working. You might be wondering, "what took me so long?". Well, primarily because I rarely print anything nowadays so I really have no need for a printer. Which leads you to the next question, "So why did you attach your printer given that fact that I don't print often?". Basically, to make sure that it could be done as easily as if it were done in Windows. And, IMHO, it was just as easy.

You can download the podcast here - Episode 10

Before you buy any new printer go to this website:

http://www.linuxprinting.org./printer_list.cgi

I hope you enjoyed this podcast.


NEWS ITEMS

1. Munich Begins to Switch Windows Out for Linux
2. Update your Wordpress Blog with Ubuntu
3. The best Linux distro ever: the results

Intro - This is episode 9 for the week of Sept 17 to Sept 23 2006.

Welcome - Hello and welcome back, thank you for joining me this week. I have a book review that you may find informative. on this weeks podcast. The book is called Beginning Ubuntu Linux by Keir Thomas and published by Apress. Enjoy!

Yes, I know. I inadvertently called WINE a Windows emulator. Which it is not. It is an application compatibility layer! W.I.N.E. = WINE Is Not an Emulator. A thousand apologies to the maintainers of WINE.

For those of you who are new, this podcast is dedicated to helping new users get comfortable with ubuntu and Linux in general as well as give information to potential users in order to help them get over their fears of switching to a new operating system.


News
1. Killing the 5 Myths against Linux - http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/myths.html

Myth #1 - Linux is hard to install Especially if I am not sure I want to keep it, but just try it out. Of course not true, Ubuntu is very easy to install take some of us less than 20 minutes. Also, many of the Linux distro's have a live cd where you can try before you write anything to your hard drive.

Myth #2 - Linux is free and therefore unsupported. If you have been on the forums you understand that there is a huge amount of information. From "how to's", support from Linux veterans, and general information. All provided for the end user free of charge. Canonical also offers professional service plans mainly for the business to business market. As a side note, when I installed ubuntu on my laptop, my main source for technical support were ubuntu forums and Google.

Myth # 3 - Linux is for techies and does not have an interface like windows. I could see where this is true. My only brush with linux was at a college and back then it was the old DOS style text interface that ran batch files to run programs. But Linux users have had excellent GUI's for years and they rival both Windows and OSX interfaces. Here is just a few examples of the many options that are available to linux users: Gnome, KDE, Xfce, Enlightment, Fluxbox. There are I'm told many more.

Myth #4 - There is not much software developed for Linux available. Possible. In terms of sheer magnitude maybe, but in terms of quality, is up for argument. I agree that the gold standards are MSOffice and Adobe Photoshop. And there may be other pieces of software that you just can't live without. For instance, I use Quicken for my personal finances, musicians might use Audition for tracking, and web designers might use Dreamweaver. But all is not lost...see the next Myth!

Myth #5 - I have to give up all my windows software. No yet! WINE, which is a "compatibilty layer" for Linux will allow certain Windows programs to run in a Linux environment. I hear that Cedega and Crossover are also options that allow Windows programs to run under Linux although for a fee. I haven't given this a try yet but I think I may do this for a future podcast. Hmmm...

2. Ubuntu live cd with Flash 9 that works!!! Here is the Link.

3. Free Linux and UNIX books

4. Edgy eft is coming soon here is some looks at the GUI and a link to the site on ubuntu.com devoted to edgy

Welcome Back,

The comic is from Randall Munroe from his website xkcd.com, funny! I would like to thank Peter who was vacationing in Greece for letting me know that one of my links was not working. the link should happily redcirect you to the Ubuntu Counter Project. Also, here is that link from Linux.com titled "top tips for new ubuntu users". Let me know what you think. Check out the new service from Google called Google Related Content the box should be in the left margin. I think it is still in beta but I have seen it and has given some relevant suggestions if not for ubuntu specific items at least Linux related stuff. I dont make any money of of this, I just thought it was a good way to give the end user more information. Here are the news items that I covered with the links to them

News #1 - http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6147197554.html
News #2 - http://www.linuxextremist.com/?p=100

This week, I installed a package that helps to configure the built in firewall (iptables) in Ubuntu. A usefull application for those of us who wish to add another layer of security to our already industrial strength security found in every linux machine:)

Thanks for all the comments and participation, I'll be speaking to you all very soon.

If you are looking for the ogg feed you can subscribe to it by putting the URL feeds.feedburner.com/FreshUbuntuOgg into your podcatcher.

Next week, I plan to do a short book review among other things see you soon, Ciao!

Hello all,

Here is a screenshot of the Kubuntu desktop. Yes, that is purple you all see. Looks appealing for the most part, although I am partial to blue. I hope the Ubuntu team heard that, haha.

I hope everyone had a great holiday weeekend. I am getting more and more comfortable with Ubuntu and getting to know my way around much better. Even though I still have a computer running windows xp here at home, which my family usually uses, while I use the computer with Ubuntu running on it exclusively. And as a regular user it is functional for 100% of the activities that I normally would do on an XP system.

This past week they announced the "Knot 2" release of "Edgy Eft". Note this is only for developers and those of you who are a little more adventurous. Edgy is at this point still beta testing in order to get the operating system ready for its final release date of October 2006.

Lastly, another billboard? Yes, this one spotted in the Silicon Valley on highway 101. Here is the link.

This episode I talked about common sense security. Here is a synopsis of the podcast:

1. Password protection for system administration tasks (root user vs. regular user)
2. Installing software packages from known and approved repositories.
3. Making sure that updates are current to plug up invulnerabilities.
4. Limiting who has access to your computer.

All this is fully explained in the podcast.