tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-309133752012-01-27T08:04:43.793+08:00Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.comBlogger3341100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-39226678512351358872012-01-21T08:11:00.002+08:002012-01-21T08:12:40.660+08:00

I started gaming pretty late, so I haven't played some old games that apparently are awesome. Thanks to ScummVM, I can play some of these. The Ubuntu repositories has some of these available for installation. You can even install ScummVM on your Android device and take those classics along with you. Awesome stuff. Installing on Ubuntu For Ubuntu, it's as simple as a single command run from

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-49340298970569865652012-01-14T06:54:00.001+08:002012-01-14T06:54:12.351+08:00

A new Firefox 10 Beta release is now available with Anti-Aliasing support in WebGL, Full Screen APIs, CSS3 3D transforms, and a new tag for bi-directional text.  Check out the release notes for more. Ubuntu users can easily upgrade to Beta 10 by adding the Beta Channel PPA. ~$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-next ~$ sudo apt-get update ~$ sudo apt-get install firefox At

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-82481030762067561412012-01-08T07:25:00.000+08:002012-01-08T07:25:17.072+08:00

Precise Pangolin Alpha 2 isn't due out yet, so there's plenty of time to dream of the improvements that we'd like to see make it into our favorite Linux distro. Unity in Ubuntu 11.10 is certainly better than it was in Ubuntu 11.04. Just the speed improvements alone makes it much easier to work with. Of course, there's plenty of room for improvement. Here's some items I'd like to see improved in

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-88197939213667316832012-01-05T23:26:00.000+08:002012-01-05T23:26:06.692+08:00

As with the Brother MFC-295CN, you may get a "Clean Unable 46" message from time to time with the DCP-130C. The reset method is essentially the same, just modified as this particular model doesn't sport a keypad. Here's the steps: Press Menu, then Mono followed by the Up button 4 times. This should bring you to Maintenance Mode. Press Up and look for the following (the panel should display

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-33375138228405068282012-01-02T23:26:00.000+08:002012-01-02T23:26:58.334+08:00

Nothing like a few favorite videos in your Android device for those occasions when you've nothing better to do with yourself. If you haven't already, install Handbrake. It's simple to use and multi-platform. Non-Linux users can get their installer from the official site. This guide is based on this wonderful post which also contains instructions for using software other than Handbrake for

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-28794292934245945892011-12-26T16:39:00.001+08:002011-12-26T18:31:19.222+08:00

Handbrake isn't available from the official Ubuntu software repositories, so to install this handy video transcoder you'll need to make use of the Handbrake PPA on Launchpad. Unfortunately, there's only snapshot builds for Ubuntu 11.10 at this time but it's still more than stable enough for daily use. Handbrake 0.9.5 running in Ubuntu 11.10 Here's how to get Handbrake onto your Ubuntu. ~$

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-89768089614246212792011-12-24T07:47:00.002+08:002011-12-24T07:49:10.056+08:00

Getting Chromium (the open source version of Chrome browser) on Ubuntu 11.10 is just a few clicks away. Search for Chromium in Software Center From Ubuntu Software Center, search for Chromium and install. It's as simple as that. Chromium 15 from the official repositories Installing the latest stable build The latest stable build can be installed from the stable PPA. It's been a while since

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-88245379262171720382011-12-22T23:05:00.002+08:002012-01-18T22:59:03.405+08:00

Mozilla released Firefox 9 with Type Inference for improved Javascript performance, support for querying Do Not Track status via Javascript, better Mac OS X Lion integration and lots more. Info on other improvements available on the release notes page. Ubuntu 11.10 is, unfortunately, still on Firefox 8.0 at this time. Maybe we'll get an upgrade within the next few days.

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-67330607579589648642011-12-18T06:54:00.000+08:002011-12-18T06:54:12.264+08:00

With so many games made for a plethora of system specs, it can get mighty tiring checking your computer's specs and comparing with the minimum/recommended specs for each of those games you'd like to play. System requirements lab has a nice tool for checking your hardware for you. Just type in the name of the game you'd like to play and it checks the specs on your computer to see if it meets the

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-37503163020900419442011-12-11T08:18:00.001+08:002011-12-11T08:20:47.222+08:00

Totem unfortunately doesn't support 10-bit encoded x264 videos yet. If you want to play those videos, you'll need to use a different video player than the default included with Ubuntu. Gnome Mplayer works fine, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to prevent your monitor from going to sleep while a video is playing. One way to work around that is to use Caffeine, a tool for disabling the

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-22266165786506264472011-12-07T21:08:00.000+08:002011-12-07T21:08:17.010+08:00

Looks like Firefox isn't the only one going through a diet. Here's a sneak peek at what could be a new UI for Gnome's default web browser. Since Ubuntu's on a default apps selection rampage, why not consider a change of browser? I'm sure Chromium has a lot of supporters, and the new Epiphany UI looks pretty interesting too. Epiphany looks to be aiming to do one better than the competition. We

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-27201203427313128442011-12-05T19:43:00.006+08:002011-12-05T19:43:00.080+08:00

2epub.com provides a simple (and free) service for uploading and converting PDF format ebooks to ePub format. That's not the only thing it does, of course. It can take quite a few other ebook formats as well (including doc, html, rtf, txt and many others). The catch is it's limited to 25MB at a time, so large ebooks are out of the question.

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-76944237478845945612011-12-04T19:33:00.001+08:002011-12-04T19:33:01.343+08:00

Wine 1.3.34 was released days ago with changes to wined3d and jscript. Here's a shortlist of some of the improvements: - Bytecode support in JavaScript. - Support for gradients in the DIB engine. - A number of Uniscribe improvements. - Fixes for DirectDraw mode switching. More info can be found on the release announcement page. More Windows apps should work (better) now but who knows?

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-39432926087487853372011-12-03T07:17:00.000+08:002011-12-03T07:17:42.938+08:00

It feels like the longer you use Ubuntu 11.10 the more "issues" grow out of the woodwork. This time it's the Bluetooth support. This one's much more annoying than the other issues I've posted previously. It's been a while since I've last encountered issues with using Bluetooth on Ubuntu. About a year ago, I believe. For reasons I'm unaware of, I can't find a device for pairing. Visibility's on,

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-62652815995890382292011-12-02T23:21:00.001+08:002011-12-02T23:22:21.868+08:00

Ubuntu "Precise Pangolin" Alpha 1 is released with the usual for a first Ubuntu Alpha build: mostly syncs with Debian. As usual, expect stability issues at this point in time and check out the known issues. More details are available from the technical overview, but it looks like we're reverting back to Rhythmbox as the default after only a single release with Banshee as the default music player

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-6496823285651980562011-11-28T15:28:00.003+08:002011-11-30T10:19:56.901+08:00

Galleria isn't working right now. It uses gconf whereas Gnome 3 is on dconf. Ubuntu 11.10 is on some weird hybrid of both as far as I can tell. Since I used Quickly to develop galleria, and that's still generating code that doesn't work with the way we're supposed to use dconf (dynamic binding) things are kinda in limbo at the moment. So I whipped up a script to do the job instead. Just replace

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-54007781860094953992011-11-26T07:03:00.001+08:002011-11-26T07:09:46.599+08:00

If recent trends are to be believed, Ubuntu's in decline. And Unity's pinned as the main culprit for this. Unity or no, it looks like the decline started before Unity even existed. Personally, I don't mind Unity (too much). Gnome Shell looks good too. I'm currently using Unity but I've tried both and each has its quirks to work with. With Gnome 3 officially no longer using the classic Gnome

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-37052412016891017332011-11-19T06:34:00.000+08:002011-11-19T06:34:31.405+08:00

Firefox Aurora was released over a week ago on 11/11/11; same day as Skyrim. Current Aurora will eventually be released as Firefox 10. They even have a nice new release notes page highlighting the changes in Aurora. CSS3 3D transforms, Full Screen API, and WebGL Anti Aliasing make it into Aurora. Sounds like useful improvements for web-based games. There's a daily PPA for Aurora for Ubuntu

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-61304359641987452312011-11-13T14:33:00.000+08:002011-11-13T14:33:48.292+08:00

Soon after Firefox 8 was released, the first Beta release of Firefox 9 is already out and ready for testing. Since it's so soon after Firefox 8, the only feature of note in version 9 is the Javascript improvements. Beyond that it's the usual improvements here and there. It's probably due to UDS but it seems Ubuntu 11.10 users haven't gotten their Firefox 8 update yet. Maybe in another week when

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-37607960248298286792011-11-09T20:57:00.000+08:002011-11-09T20:57:12.931+08:00

Firefox 8 arrives with extensions off by default, Twitter search, and lots of improvements sprinkled all over. Going over the release notes, it doesn't look like anything major was included this time around but the complete list of changes is pretty hefty as usual. Tab animations got shoved back due to regressions. Sad. Ubuntu 11.10 looks like it hasn't received the update yet, but it should

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-91646116415490099882011-11-05T19:08:00.000+08:002011-11-05T19:08:00.061+08:00

Since Warcraft 3 seemed to be working fine with the Gallium3D-based drivers on Ubuntu 11.10, I thought I'd give Heroes of Newerth a go. I've been rather curious about the game play for a while now. Installing the game is simple enough. Just download the latest installer (it's pretty hefty) then fire up a terminal and run it: ~$ sh ./HoNClient-2.1.10.sh You don't even need root access. In fact,

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-50671808268158479252011-11-01T23:00:00.003+08:002011-11-04T22:19:40.328+08:00

Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne on Wine If there's one thing good about Ubuntu 11.10, it's that we're using Gallium 3D for Radeon GPUs. Simply put, hardware acceleration got a big boost compared to previous open source drivers. In previous releases, Compiz and 3D games just don't mix. If you want desktop effects, you couldn't play 3D games. You'll just get a black screen. Ubuntu 11.10 seems

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-43781538767146665412011-10-29T08:53:00.000+08:002011-10-29T08:53:46.270+08:00

Ubuntu 11.04 was a controversial release, and Ubuntu 11.10 didn't help much to improve the situation. With Precise Pangolin being a LTS release, hopefully things will improve. Plans aren't set in stone yet, but the blueprints for Precise gives some hints on what the developers are looking into. Boot speed improvements look to get some focus again. My fastest boot was with Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-53659735910960889782011-10-26T08:44:00.000+08:002011-10-26T08:44:25.332+08:00

Sad to say, but I think it's true. Ubuntu 11.10 is the worst release ever. It's got tiny little niggles here and there that, while not necessarily big issues on their own, add up to one really annoying experience. Maybe it's due to all the criticism but Unity randomly tries to resize my app windows. I'll get that orange box that shows up whenever you drag a window to the top, left or right edge

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-36233905626571774492011-10-22T07:03:00.000+08:002011-10-22T07:03:06.087+08:00

If you use Gnome Shell on Ubuntu 11.10 and tried to use the proprietary fglrx driver for your Radeon hardware, you might have problems with rendering glitches. Strangely, Unity seems unaffected although Unity and Gnome Shell both use desktop effects. It must be something in the way Gnome Shell does it that Compiz doesn't. Anyway, the usual method of installing proprietary drivers using Ubuntu's

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-44431144951033014572011-10-20T20:31:00.001+08:002011-10-20T20:31:24.610+08:00

Ubuntu 11.10 finally includes a backup tool in the default installation. Even Windows has had a backup tool for years and years. Finally, the Ubuntu user has something simple ready-to-use. Deja Dup's first run main window Just restore, or backup. It's really simple. Backup settings overview Canonical is really pushing Ubuntu One here. The default settings has Deja Dup saving your backups

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-27106343672735209902011-10-15T15:25:00.040+08:002011-10-15T15:25:00.136+08:00

Ubuntu 11.10 is out with a revamped Software Center, improved Unity (with Unity 2D as fallback), successful migration to Gnome 3.2, Thunderbird as the default email client, LightDM and many more. Software Center gets UI re-design to make discovering new apps easier. Unity 2D is now available as a fallback option for those that don't have the required hardware or drivers to support Unity. The

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-37994059293395299122011-10-13T21:28:00.001+08:002011-10-13T21:30:09.520+08:00

I've had a DVD for Fedora Core 15 for some time now but somehow never got around to trying it out. Since Ubuntu 11.10 is almost out and Fedora Core 16 Beta is well under way, I'd better get this out of the way first. So, I'll be running this in VirtualBox as usual. Fedora Core looks nice, but I'm not sure I'm ready to give up on Ubuntu just yet. I've left everything in the VirtualBox VM at

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-23969113397445043832011-10-08T07:50:00.001+08:002011-10-08T07:51:02.175+08:00

On Windows startup you may get a window dialog stating "The instruction at 0x00000000 referenced memory at 0x00000000. The memory could not be written", or something to that effect. Fortunately, Microsoft has a KB article on how to fix this that works. Just follow the steps and you should have your print spooler service back in order. I'll reproduce the essential steps here. The article has the

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-7024196007520491932011-10-06T20:25:00.000+08:002011-10-06T20:25:02.236+08:00

Mark Shuttleworth announced the name for what will be Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and it's Precise Pangolin. Stable, solid, reliable. That's what to expect from a LTS release. Of course, we'll need to get Ubuntu 11.10 out the door first. That's coming soon...

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-82501538986944512272011-10-02T15:39:00.002+08:002011-10-22T17:36:09.559+08:00

Gnome Shell is pretty lacking in the customisability department right now. Gnome Shell extensions provide a way of augmenting the default Gnome Shell desktop with features not available by default. For some reason, Gnome Shell doesn't let you customise the theme by default. Thankfully, there's an extension for that. It's the user themes extension. Getting it to work on Oneiric proves a little

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-60816518809861801392011-09-29T20:28:00.000+08:002011-09-29T20:28:41.547+08:00

So this is it. For years, people have criticised Firefox for its memory consumption. With Firefox 7, we're finally seeing the benefits from MemShrink trickle in. That's not all, of course. Here's the highlights (mostly copy and pasted from the release notes): Drastically improved memory handling for certain use cases Added a new rendering backend to speed up Canvas operations on Windows systems

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-87773980657866793742011-09-25T20:11:00.000+08:002011-09-25T20:11:55.849+08:00

LightDM apparently doesn't yet provide a UI for setting the default desktop session. At least it's not available in Oneiric. Changing the default session requires running lightdm-set-defaults from terminal. After installing Gnome Shell from the repositories, it's a simple command away from setting it as your default desktop: ~$ sudo /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults --session gnome Once

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-6598950035309748282011-09-23T20:52:00.000+08:002011-09-23T20:52:14.415+08:00

Oneiric Beta 2 comes out with improvements in multiarch support, kernel 3.0.4, an update to Gnome 3.1.92, and lots and lots of bug fixes (of course). Multiarch support lets you install 32-bit versions of supported software on 64-bit Ubuntu sans ia32-libs. We're getting ever closer to not requiring ia32-libs anymore on 64-bit Ubuntu setups. Kernel 3.0.4 is the latest stable release.

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-81242341928927505262011-09-17T07:51:00.000+08:002011-09-17T07:51:01.834+08:00

Some files you get online come with a crc32 checksum as part of the filename, but without an accompanying checksum file that you could use to verify said files. Since it's annoying to manually create such files (especially when there's a lot of files a set), why not just get Python to do it for us? from glob import glob from zlib import crc32 First, start with the imports. We'll need glob (to

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-85025472297393875422011-09-12T23:33:00.000+08:002011-09-12T23:33:29.687+08:00

Unlike Ubuntu 11.04 which still used Gnome 2.x as its base, Oneiric is already using Gnome 3. That means the user no longer has to choose between Unity/Gnome Panel, or Gnome Shell. It's now possible to have them installed side-by-side with a few simple clicks. Just head over to Software Center and search for Gnome Shell. You'll probably want gnome-tweak-tool as well to change the theme.

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-16247309823956998392011-09-09T09:03:00.000+08:002011-09-09T09:03:35.148+08:00

Now that the beta for Oneiric is out, it's a nice time to be thinking of the little things that make the Linux desktop experience not so pleasant. Particularly now, after the upheavals of Maverick and Oneiric. Like it or not, there's bound to be corners missed when creating a new desktop experience (Unity, Gnome Shell) and moving to a new platform (Gnome 3). That's not even considering the old

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-61199790313546951712011-09-05T08:06:00.059+08:002011-09-05T08:06:00.733+08:00

Upgrading to Ubuntu 11.04 was nice and smooth. That's pretty normal for the current release. Upgrading to the development release is a whole different story altogether. Since this is a development release, I'll be using the daily install image for this experiment. The obvious caveat is, of course, the results may be completely different from day to day. Things may or may not work depending on the

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-55287165884038815322011-09-04T14:09:00.005+08:002011-09-05T09:12:26.972+08:00

So here we are. It's the upgrade to the latest stable release of Ubuntu. Things should proceed as smoothly as can be. Upgrading to Ubuntu 10.10 was mostly okay. There was just that small bump with the open source driver for nVidia hardware. Other than that things went as expected. Update Manager performing the upgrade Over time, the Ubuntu upgrade took longer and longer to complete. The

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-81236308873997641432011-09-03T08:43:00.022+08:002011-09-04T16:11:04.354+08:00

Upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to 10.10 has a slight snag. There's a bug report related to this. There's a package that's preventing the upgrade from proceeding. Run the upgrade and you'll get something like this. Update Manager can't resolve the package conflict To fix this, you'll need to remove a certain package: ~$ sudo apt-get purge xserver-xorg-video-nouveau~$ sudo apt-get

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-23899491485842666382011-09-02T06:23:00.057+08:002011-09-02T07:27:19.129+08:00

The first Beta release of Oneiric Ocelot is available for testing. As always, this is a test release for the next version of Ubuntu expected sometime in October. It's meant for early adopters and testers. If you need a stable system then Oneiric isn't for you. Here's some of the highlights for this release. LightDM greeter LightDM with Unity greeter A new greeter is now being used in

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-28921691838703158692011-09-01T15:37:00.004+08:002011-09-03T16:19:14.889+08:00

After the slight speed bump during the Jaunty-to-Karmic upgrade, upgrading to Lucid turns out to be uneventful. That's exactly the way you want an OS upgrade to be: boring. Things should just work. Do I want to upgrade?.. I wonder... Pop in the install CD, click on the "Run Upgrade" button, and answer some confirmation dialogs during the upgrade process. That's about the extent of what the

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-25648260887123859032011-08-31T07:41:00.031+08:002011-09-01T16:47:04.748+08:00

The previous upgrade was pretty uneventful. That's a Good Thing. Upgrading an OS is a delicate process where anything that goes wrong could cause you to not be able to boot. This upgrade to Karmic will be the last of the EOL'd releases. The complete list is available on the Ubuntu Releases page. Currently, there are only 4 supported releases (Hardy, Lucid, Maverick, and Natty) and a single

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-9181639017592218912011-08-30T16:49:00.003+08:002011-08-31T18:27:52.762+08:00

The online upgrade to Ubuntu 8.04.4 "Hardy Heron" really paved the way to a much smoother upgrade experience in subsequent upgrades. Upgrading to Intrepid went without incident, and now the upgrade to Jaunty looks almost as smooth a ride. Upgrading direct from Ubuntu 9.04 install CD Running the cdromupgrade script that comes with the install CD works wonders. Except for a couple of

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-41108015563457876922011-08-29T07:53:00.002+08:002011-08-30T21:26:28.202+08:00

For quite a few releases, it's been nothing but troubles. That includes the latest upgrade to Hardy that needed and online upgrade to properly run to completion. Now comes the upgrade to Intrepid. Here we go. Pop in the Intrepid install CD and Hardy offers to run the upgrade or start the package manager. This pop up dialog really should be present in every release since Hoary but for some

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-31090405307512440402011-08-28T11:13:00.035+08:002011-08-29T08:41:49.117+08:00

The upgrade to Gutsy is, unfortunately, the worst yet. For the upgrade to Hardy, Update Manager offers a partial upgrade (as usual) but I'll keep that as a last resort like last time. Synaptic fails to detect the Hardy CD despite the fact it _is_ present Synaptic seems to not be able to see the Hardy Heron CD that I've mounted. Quite ironic since the CD was successfully added using Synaptic

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-69986314556769585982011-08-27T23:55:00.038+08:002011-08-28T11:25:47.773+08:00

After a rather messed up upgrade process in Feisty, I'm quite ready for the robust upgrades I'm more used to seeing from Ubuntu. I'm surprised I've not seen any of these on actual hardware. Maybe it's because I'm doing this on a VM, or maybe my memories fail me. Ubuntu offers an upgrade In any case, the upgrade to Gutsy doesn't look like it will get much better. Right off the bat, Ubuntu

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-30363945195320040582011-08-26T21:21:00.004+08:002011-08-28T07:33:39.976+08:00

After the problematic Dapper to Edgy upgrade, Feisty doesn't make things any simpler. Update Manager, Synaptic and even apt-get indicate that some packages will be held back. Update Manager offers a Distribution Upgrade That's never a good sign. It makes a broken upgrade a much more likely scenario. After the rather troublesome Edgy upgrade, you'll forgive my paranoia. Upgrading

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-44629009288331924962011-08-25T20:31:00.029+08:002011-08-26T22:17:24.109+08:00

Dapper brought quite a few firsts to Ubuntu. It's the first ever Long Term Support (LTS) release, it's the first (and to-date, only) release with an extended development cycle, Ubiquity made its debut in Dapper, and we got a fresh new theme based on Clearlooks that looks way better than the default theme in previous releases. But the upgrade also made Update Manager disappear for some reason. It

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-8474805113619756902011-08-24T23:14:00.018+08:002011-08-25T21:30:36.043+08:00

Unlike with Hoary, Breezy doesn't offer an upgrade when I popped in the Dapper install disc. At least it still offers to start the package manager. Since Update Manager is the recommended method for upgrading Ubuntu, that's the way I'll attempt the upgrade to Dapper. Ubuntu's Update Manager Unfortunately, Update Manager itself is suggesting I use Synaptic's Smart Upgrade or even a

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-49908451487130021682011-08-23T18:51:00.003+08:002011-08-25T17:49:48.429+08:00

The upgrade from Warty to Hoary was a quick 15 minute affair. Upgrading to Breezy is just as quick and easy. This time though Ubuntu asked if I wanted to upgrade, start the package manager, or just ignore the CD. The average user with little to no experience but wanting to upgrade would probably choose the upgrade option, so that's what I did. Upgrade in progress This time though the

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-6019199931743192152011-08-22T15:20:00.004+08:002011-08-23T19:33:33.423+08:00

After previously installing Warty, this time I'll be upgrading to Hoary. ISO images for old releases can be found here. Since EOL'd Ubuntu releases are no longer available I'll be doing upgrades direct from CD only. In fact, I'll be upgrading from CD for the entire series of posts in this experiment. Upgrading to Hoary Upgrading from Synaptic Update Manager didn't exist in Warty so I made

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-414371246184709562011-08-21T08:44:00.001+08:002011-08-22T19:32:59.629+08:00

Seven years is a long time. Ubuntu has come so far since it's first version release back in October 2004. Now that we've so many EOL'd releases, is it still possible to install Warty Warthog and upgrade, one version at a time, all the way to the present release? Let's find out. The testbed Ideally, I should be doing this experiment on real hardware. But seeing as how it's easier to document by

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-73336023461584922202011-08-17T20:36:00.000+08:002011-08-17T20:36:00.062+08:00

Barely a day had gone and Firefox 6 is already available to Ubuntu 11.04 users. Just fire up Update Manager and pull in today's updates if you haven't already to enjoy Mozilla's latest and greatest. So, what does Firefox 6 bring? The three most impactful, I'd say are: Reduced browser startup time when using Panorama Fixed several stability issues Fixed several security issues Startup time,

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-61051845058065724902011-08-14T23:27:00.000+08:002011-08-14T23:27:51.232+08:00

The beauty of open source is in the wealth of tools available. Most Linux distributions should already come with rsync by default. The rsync man page describes it as a "fast, versatile, remote (and local) file copying tool". That's really the simplest and best way to think of it. It's a good idea to keep backups of your files. Even the configuration files in your /home folder are important. If

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-45381702358561464002011-08-13T10:20:00.001+08:002011-08-13T10:22:27.271+08:00

So I just bought myself a 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green hard disk. It’s been 6 - 7 years since my last hard disk upgrade. I did upgrade my PC a while back but I opted to reuse certain components to minimise cost. My dual 160GB SATA hard disks worked well at the time so I didn’t see a need to replace them. They still work well now, in fact. Be that as it may 6 - 7 years is a long time so I

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-3432713121585742052011-08-12T08:38:00.002+08:002011-08-12T08:40:37.778+08:00

We've come a long way from Ubuntu 4.10. It's easy to forget the great improvements to the Ubuntu desktop we've experienced over the years. Every once in a while we should count our blessings. Update Manager. Warty didn't have an update manager to perform updates and version upgrades. All we had was Synaptic, or apt-get for the console user. Update Manager greatly simplified the process for a lot

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-47177381048878365952011-08-11T20:52:00.001+08:002011-08-11T21:03:05.353+08:00

Installing and uninstalling multiple antivirus software just to clean up PC after PC gets very tiring very quickly. Sometimes, it's just not an option. That's where portable antivirus removers come in real handy. Here's a few I've used and found quite effective. Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool 2011 Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool 2011. Easily one of the best portable virus removers out there

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-34412488624071290692011-08-09T23:07:00.000+08:002011-08-09T23:07:45.386+08:00

Searching for apps is just like Windows Vista/7 Just as Ubuntu uses Update Manager to keep the system updated, so does openSUSE employ its own update tool: KPackageKit. With search baked right into the Gecko button (sorry, I have no idea what it's officially called) it's easy to find. Just type "update" into the search field. Updating in progress Available updates are listed and you

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-41610108809618984242011-08-06T08:38:00.001+08:002011-08-06T08:50:56.116+08:00

Lots of people complain about how hard installing Linux is. But, is it really? In the early days that might be true, but the Ubuntu install is so simple and straightforward I find it easily compares to Windows 7's installation process. Simpler than that even; faster too. So, here I'll give installing openSUSE a try. Even if Ubuntu's easy to install there's no guarantee that other Linux

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-23677107258754035212011-08-04T08:32:00.006+08:002011-08-04T08:32:00.207+08:00

So you've forgotten what your Windows password is and can't login to your Windows computer. With SystemRescueCD you can reset your Windows password to regain access to your desktop. It involves using the Linux terminal but the tools aren't too hard to use. Here's how to go about doing it. Create a SystemRescueCD boot CD You'll need to download SystemRescueCD from the website from another

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-50182003717278797612011-08-01T07:49:00.001+08:002011-08-01T08:15:15.642+08:00

WinZip and WinRAR are pretty much the de facto file compression software these days. The only trouble is, they're commercial software. If you're looking for free alternatives, there's a lot of choices out there. Just take your pick. 7-zip archiver 1. 7-zip. 7-zip supports zip and rar file decompression, and can compress to zip as well as its own 7zip format. It also has support for a lot of

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-51994432565789931242011-07-30T09:12:00.002+08:002011-07-30T14:20:03.526+08:00

So, I finally get off my procrastinating behind and make an icon for galleria. It looks like crap in 16 x 16 png on the Unity launcher so I guess I'll need to look into that. This, in spite of the fact I made it from a SVG. It should be nice and crisp but instead looks like some purple blob on the launcher for some reason. Oh well. In case anybody's wondering, galleria is a simple utility for

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-67517093709896656852011-07-24T23:16:00.001+08:002011-07-25T20:05:02.764+08:00

gddrescue is a really powerful disk cloning tool, but the fact that it runs from terminal means it's quite scary to a lot of people. It's also more prone to mistakes by the user. When it comes to disk cloning software, a GUI-based solution helps us to visualise what we're doing better. That's where EaseUs Disk Copy comes in handy. This free tool comes as a bootable CD so it works regardless of

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-21377379522959096862011-07-23T06:59:00.000+08:002011-07-23T06:59:27.434+08:00

Ubuntu 11.04 now runs Firefox 5 so there's really no reason to try this unless the latest stable release isn't cutting edge enough for you. For those that want to take a peek ahead without upgrading to Ubuntu "Oneiric", the various Firefox channels PPA offers an option. Here's the gist of it in order of stability from most stable to least stable. Firefox Beta Channel (currently Firefox 6) : ~$

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-253705104377137722011-07-21T21:05:00.003+08:002012-01-05T23:13:14.417+08:00

Your Brother MFC-295CN shows "Clean Unable 46" on the control panel display. Putting aside the strange English, here's how to reset the waste ink counter to remove said error message. Press Menu then Mono. Press Up four times. You should now be in maintenance mode. Press 8 0 then press Mono many times until you see "Purge: XXXXX". "XXXXX" should be showing a number. Press  2 7 8 3 to reset the

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-60464896572028673382011-07-20T23:34:00.000+08:002011-07-20T23:34:21.911+08:00

While it's good to have a reliable password manager to track passwords to your various accounts, it's even more important to have a good, secure password in the first place. The best security in the world is only as good as your password. Choosing an easily guessed password means that even the best protection schemes won't be able to save you from yourself. This isn't anything new, but it's

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-54816410868887751732011-07-16T19:14:00.000+08:002011-07-16T19:14:19.603+08:00

Nowadays it's not surprising to own numerous online accounts on various websites. Most people will probably have at least one webmail account, one social network account (FaceBook, Twitter, Google+), and maybe an account on various forums or even mailing lists. If you're security conscious then you'll probably want to have a different password for each of those online services. Remembering all

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-31371690494092394972011-07-14T23:38:00.000+08:002011-07-14T23:38:07.691+08:00

If you're like most people, you're probably running your computer without a backup of all your important stuff. If there's anything in your hard disk(s) that you don't want to lose, now might be a good time to consider available backup options. You never know when that new disk drive will give way. With storage hardware getting cheaper all the time, it's not that hard to get an extra hard disk

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-83061497917532950212011-07-13T23:17:00.001+08:002011-07-13T23:36:53.661+08:00

It's always good to have yet another anti virus tool in your arsenal. No matter how good a anti virus software is, it can never have 100% detection and removal rates. Having multiple tools on-hand to deal with unexpected events is a good thing. Avira Rescue System initial boot screen So here's Avira's AntiVir Rescue System. It's similar to the Kaspersky's Rescue CD I blogged recently in that

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-56780527464979439532011-07-10T06:40:00.000+08:002011-07-10T06:40:31.184+08:00

For the busy people out there, having a to do list to assist in managing tasks is essential. But most task lists have one big problem. Many people might not even realise there's a problem because they've gotten so used the the way things are. The problem is, of course, there's only a single task list. Sure we could prioritise our tasks, but the fundamental problem is that we don't just have

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-76486987302153671722011-07-09T06:48:00.001+08:002011-07-09T07:00:40.907+08:00

When it comes to antivirus tools, you never can have enough. There's almost always going to be situations where your usual methods don't work. Whether it's because there's a virus infection that's interfering with scanning, an antivirus that can't yet detect a particular virus, or even a LiveUSB that can't boot for various reasons. Kaspersky Rescue CD is a Linux LiveCD meant for when you can't

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-56434950116770236662011-07-08T09:51:00.000+08:002011-07-08T09:51:57.448+08:00

Ubuntu Oneiric Alpha 2 is finally out. This being only the 2nd Alpha release, things are still not set in stone but here's the highlights. Oneiric Alpha 2 is running on Linux kernel 3.0 (based on kernel 3.0-rc5). Barring any show stoppers, we can expect the latest and greatest stable version of the kernel when Ubuntu 11.10 is released come October. The latest hardware support; doesn't get much

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-49153764351988082582011-07-03T22:57:00.001+08:002011-07-03T22:58:59.105+08:00

I'm currently running a poll on the GNOME desktop. More specifically, I'm curious what people think of Ubuntu's Unity desktop and the new GNOME Shell desktop. Which is more user friendly? Which desktop is more pleasant to work with? Which do you think will be the dominant desktop for GNOME 3? If you're a GNOME user, please vote in the poll. The poll will run till the end of the month so that's

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-28470485941499350092011-07-02T09:21:00.000+08:002011-07-02T09:21:03.169+08:00

So you've forgotten your Windows password and need to regain access to your Windows account. There's a open source tool to help you do just that: Ophcrack. Ophcrack is a Windows password recovery tool based on rainbow tables. It comes in really handy for password auditing and password recovery. It can also be used for less than noble deeds, of course, but that's not the purpose here. Ophcrack

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-57359898580944609452011-07-01T21:31:00.000+08:002011-07-01T21:31:43.629+08:00

You want to access your desktop remotely using your Android device. With VNC for Android it's possible. Ubuntu comes ready for remote desktop access. On the Unity desktop just search for "Remote Desktop" using the dash. For classic GNOME, it should be at System -> Preferences -> Remote Desktop. Configuring the remote desktop on Ubuntu You just need to enable it in Remote Desktop. Make sure "

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-5719137948269807902011-06-29T21:01:00.001+08:002011-06-29T21:05:09.635+08:00

An interesting thing about smartphones is it's capabilities as a remote access device. Quite literally, you can control your favourite BitTorrent client directly from your Android device. All that's needed is a little setting up on your torrent client, router, and the Android app called Transdroid. Now why would you want to remote control your torrent software from your smartphone when you could

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-34191226871344112202011-06-28T23:30:00.000+08:002011-06-28T23:30:46.702+08:00

Having never needing port forwarding for my home network (until now), I've never realised just how convoluted it is on the Netgear DG834Gv5. So I've had this wifi router for some time now. I had a post a while back on configuring wifi for the router. Now that I'm experimenting with remote control software on the HTC Desire HD, it turns out I need to setup port forwarding on the Netgear router.

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-86135002714593724822011-06-26T17:52:00.000+08:002011-06-26T17:52:59.757+08:00

So Firefox 5 came out about a week ago. Just how much "faster" is it? Let's find out. As in previous benchmarks, I store the results in a Google Docs spreadsheet and create the chart with Google's default chart gadget. As you can see it's not terribly detailed, so bear with me here. In future, it'd be nice to get better looking charts. Anyway, here goes. HTML5 Test Firefox 5 does improve on

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-44109023540920201962011-06-25T19:06:00.000+08:002011-06-25T19:06:34.507+08:00

To Setup rTorrent to automatically start as a service/daemon, you'll need to install screen and create an Upstart job. First is to install rTorrent and screen if you don't already have them: ~$ sudo apt-get install rtorrent screen Once installed, you'll want to setup your rtorrent settings and ensure they work as expected before continuing (read more). Next comes the upstart job script. Here's

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-43470190589860630312011-06-24T00:03:00.000+08:002011-06-24T00:03:08.199+08:00

Clutter is everywhere. It's in the real world, it's in your computer. It even builds up in your mind. I guess reading ZenHabits has that effect on you. The idea of removing clutter boils down to just one simple idea: simplicity. It's an addictive concept. Modern operating systems have tonnes of clutter in them. Sure, we've come a long way. But that just means we've had time to pickup a lot of

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-86803491726321169082011-06-22T20:07:00.001+08:002011-06-22T20:10:11.460+08:00

Firefox 5 is officially out mere months after Firefox 4. It's already available to Ubuntu 11.04 users according to the Launchpad page for Firefox. How's that for fast? So fire up Update Manager and update today. What's new? This being the first Firefox release on the new release cycle, there's very few changes compared to previous major version releases. Of course, that's still quite a lot

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-31355680864204136232011-06-19T11:11:00.002+08:002011-06-22T20:12:47.153+08:00

You could get Homeworld to run in Linux using Wine, but Homeworld: Cataclysm unfortunately doesn't work. The install process works fine, though. Just double click the setup like you would in Windows and things just run fine. From terminal, you'd do: ~$ wine /media/cdrom0/HWSetup.EXE The installation proceeds as usual and ends without a single error. Run the game and you'll find the copy

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-12715989817311598722011-06-18T07:57:00.001+08:002011-06-18T08:23:39.865+08:00

Recently, Ubuntu started making Hybrid ISOs. It's an ISO that can be burned onto a CD as usual, but also can be copied to a USB key and used as a LiveUSB without the help of Startup Disk Creator. It's just in so currently only the daily images are built that way. But, there's some differences that you might want to be aware of before jumping on the bandwagon. It's both a CD and regular disk

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-88451551929705906702011-06-17T00:02:00.000+08:002011-06-17T00:02:12.131+08:00

So first came Chromebook, and now we have another cloud OS. JoliCloud is an open source cloud-based OS. The downloadable ISO is there for you to install a local client that connects to Joli OS which is cloud based. That's right. No Internet no go. The faster your subscription the better, of course. Installing JoliCloud JoliCloud installation aka Ubiquity JoliCloud works right from your

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-77753211551811029282011-06-14T23:51:00.000+08:002011-06-14T23:51:31.680+08:00

How long has it been since AMD first talked about Fusion? Back in 2006 if memory serves. First, Brazos. Now, Llano is finally out the door. If not for AMD's Fusion plans, Intel probably would've let us consumers continue running their slow GMA. Such is the beauty of competition. Despite the fact that AMD's CPUs can't compare clock for clock with Intel's in many cases, their strong GPU is a real

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-14530929395719103462011-06-13T23:24:00.000+08:002011-06-13T23:24:06.091+08:00

Computer Janitor on Ubuntu 11.04 Ubuntu comes with a handy little tool called Computer Janitor designed to help you find and remove obsolete software packages. It doesn't matter how tightly we control the packages that get installed on our computers, obsolete or orphaned packages inevitably accumulate over time. In particular, this happens when we perform system upgrades from one version of

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-93043635674501352011-06-12T09:16:00.001+08:002011-06-12T09:20:21.730+08:00

The thing about Chromium (and Chrome) is that it always seems to show massive improvements with each new version. Let's see how Chromium 12 does compared to version 11. I'll even throw in Firefox 4 and Aurora's results from a previous post to make it easier to compare the two rivals. I'll omit the Acid3 test since there's no change in the results. Here's the numbers. HTML5 Test It's quite

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-24397157313759971312011-06-11T00:22:00.000+08:002011-06-11T00:22:06.150+08:00

Chromium 12 came out not too long ago. It's not available from the official repositories for Ubuntu 11.04, but those who'd like to give it a go without upgrading to still-in-development Ubuntu "Oneiric" can do so easily using the Chromium Stable Channel PPA. Here's how. The Terminal way ~$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chromium-daily/stable~$ sudo apt-get update~$ sudo apt-get install

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-35015207862074188302011-06-09T23:31:00.001+08:002011-06-09T23:32:30.453+08:00

Yesterday, I installed Firefox Aurora on my Ubuntu 11.04 setup using the Aurora PPA. So, I've run it through the typical benchmarks and today will post the results alongside the Firefox 4 results from my earlier open source browser comparison. HTML 5 Test The current Aurora build destined for release as Firefox 6 improved on HTML 5 support by a bit. It's nice to have support in place, but I

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-70679810031861697972011-06-08T21:08:00.000+08:002011-06-08T21:08:42.329+08:00

The nightly Firefox builds may be a bit too bleeding edge for some. With Firefox 5 now in Beta and slated for release soon (barring showstoppers, of course) some users will inevitably be looking towards something a little more bleeding edge. For Ubuntu users, there's the Firefox Aurora channel. Firefox builds currently in the Aurora channel are meant for eventual release as Firefox 6. Here's how

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-36307056631401465272011-06-05T23:40:00.000+08:002011-06-05T23:40:46.460+08:00

I've uploaded a new build of Galleria to LaunchPad. Galleria main window Now you can just select the wallpaper(s) you want to set it just like Gnome's very own wallpaper setting tool. The difference is, of course, you can select multiple wallpapers and it'll create a slideshow in that case. So, I've removed the "Set As Wallpaper" button since it's not needed anymore. Also, mouse over a

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-23246011836796213932011-06-05T09:47:00.000+08:002011-06-05T09:47:26.062+08:00

Firefox and Chromium aren't the only open source browsers out there. There's lots more. So I thought I'd take a peek at a few of them and make some basic comparisons just to see where they stand. The contenders This is a test on Ubuntu so obviously Internet Explorer will be excluded. Safari and Opera aren't open source so they're left out too. We're looking at open source browsers on the Gnome

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-8602385715256419042011-06-04T05:29:00.002+08:002011-06-04T05:30:53.534+08:00

The first alpha release of Oneiric Ocelot is out and ready for testing. The release cycle is still early but this time, expect a lot of breakage due to the transition to Gnome 3. It's already well underway. With the move to the new Gnome 3, basically everything needs to be updated to make use of the new components. That means you can expect a lot of things to not work properly yet (themes,

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-92161350956175792872011-06-02T23:22:00.000+08:002011-06-02T23:22:30.077+08:00

When you try to open any .msc file you get an error similar to the screenshot below. Error dialog you get when you try to open any .msc file This happens when there's a registration corruption with msxml3.dll. To fix, just run the following: regsvr32 msxml3.dll and you should be able to open Microsoft Managment Console again.

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-16431769526520186872011-06-01T23:17:00.000+08:002011-06-01T23:17:49.754+08:00

I encountered an error with using regsvr32.exe that says 'a dynamic link library (DLL) initialization routine failed'. As if trying to re-register a system .dll that had its registration corrupted wasn't bad enough. Thankfully, the web provided a simple solution. By using a nice tool called Dependency Walker, I immediately identified that it was a missing msjava.dll file that caused the error.

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-79733546110672916342011-05-31T23:36:00.004+08:002011-06-04T18:17:23.905+08:00

First off, I like the nice big Trash icon. It's so much easier to aim for when I want to to just drag n' drop to delete a bunch of files. I also like the screen space Unity provides especially when a full screen app opens and the launcher just automagically hides itself. But after using Unity for about a month I think it's time I accept I should go back to Classic. Why? Well, here's my list.

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-16119679975104132532011-05-30T23:19:00.001+08:002011-05-30T23:26:44.757+08:00

Wasn't really expecting it so soon since apparently the officially released Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" needed to get by the service providers first, but tonight I just happened to check and Android 2.3.3 is now installed and running on my Desire HD. At 100MB, it's a pretty hefty download so it's definitely recommended to use Wifi rather than data (not that I have a 3G subscription anyway). The

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-9894446201086381762011-05-29T23:17:00.000+08:002011-05-29T23:17:29.901+08:00

As the recent news on malware on Mac shows, Windows users aren't the only targets for unscrupulous people. Once market share increases to a certain level, users on any platform start getting attention from malicious software developers. Of course, the same goes for us Linux users. We're not as "immune" as many like to think. While there's no real hurry to protect ourselves, it's best we start

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30913375.post-8191032949566529052011-05-28T17:49:00.003+08:002011-05-28T17:55:52.052+08:00

The galleria window Galleria is a simple tool for setting your desktop wallpaper on the Ubuntu GNOME desktop. It's made with help from Ubuntu Quickly and should be available now on PPA. Using it is simple. Just browse to the folder containing your wallpapers and it displays thumbnails of each wallpaper in the iconview. Select the wallpaper you want and set your wallpaper with the "Set As

Kah Ping Tanhttps://profiles.google.com/106586980836574988877noreply@blogger.com0