Archives
Screencasting sound jumbled – solved
gtk-recordmydesktop is brilliant and easy to use. You just open it and press record. Click a button on the top panel to stop it. Simple! Then you have a video screencast of whatever you were demonstrating on your desktop. Installation is a breeze on ubuntu with: sudo apt-get install gtk-recordmydesktop Unfortunately I had a problem [...]
Beautiful Ubuntu Wallpaper
What a brilliant site: 60 Beautiful Ubuntu Desktop Wallpapers (http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/60-most-execellent-ubuntu-wallpapers/).
Positive Future for Linux Netbooks?
Caitlyn Martin argued that Linux netbooks have a bright future in a recent article entitled Linux To Regain 50% Netbook Market Share. It was noted that netbooks powered by ARM processors are a good fit with linux and that these devices have advantages over larger, more powerful machines. Those who assure us that Linux has [...]
SOFA Statistics packages available
SOFA Statistics has now been released in the form of a deb package for Ubuntu and an NSIS installer executable for Windows. SOFA stands for Statistics Open For All which is not a bad summary of its goals. The program is still under heavy development but nested tables (including summary tables, nested tables, and straight [...]
ACID test for ODF needed to ensure interoperability
The ODF (Open Document Format) Alliance has revealed the many ways Microsoft’s support for ODF interoperability falls sort. See http://www.odfalliance.org/blog/index.php/site/microsofts_odf_support_falls_short/. “Support for ODF represents an important and ongoing test of Microsoft’s commitment to real-world interoperability,” said ODF Alliance managing director Marino Marcich. I liked the Alliance’s focus on real world interoperability rather than minimum compliance [...]
Scroll Wheel Randomly Pasting In Eclipse Under Ubuntu
There is a frustrating small annoyance in Ubuntu when using gedit and eclipse (and probably other programs). If you accidentally push the scroll wheel too hard while scrolling it pastes whatever is in the clipboard. Random text inserted into code is not a good idea . Fortunately there is an answer that works thanks to [...]
Tax Dollars Supporting Microsoft Monoculture
[Breaking news - G2009: There's no deal] Don Christie, president of the NZ Open Source society makes an insightful plea in the news release: http://nzoss.org.nz/news/2009/press-release-nzoss-stop-g2009. The complete release is well worth a read. The NZOSS is calling for: an immediate cessation of the G2009 process a complete, line by line review of the money spent [...]
Client-device Linux use reaches 2-5%, world better off
Preston Gralla, in a provocative article entitled “Client-device Linux use reaches 1%, world yawns”, makes a series of negative claims about desktop linux; Linux will never be a big player in the desktop market Linux should not be Linux flounders on the desktop because there are too many variants Linux flounders because it is too [...]
Jaunty Surround Sound Requires Simple Adjustment
I just completed a dist-upgrade from Intrepid to Jaunty. Everything worked except I needed to reinstall OpenOffice and rerun sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras VirtualBox was OK but I needed to select More>Backup to cope with a changed format. My surround sound was gone though. Fortunately the answer was dead easy. See http://www.automaticable.com/2008-05-28/how-to-enable-surround-sound-on-ubuntu-hardy/. Basically you uncomment [...]
New Project to Develop Open Source Statistics Program
SOFA (Statistics Open For All), is a new, open source statistics program currently under development (see http://www.sofastatistics.com). The development version of SOFA can already connect directly to a range of different databases and lets users display results in an attractive format ready to share or put in a spreadsheet. A packaged release is being prepared. [...]