Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Gets the Official Code Name!

As most knows, with almost all the other GNU/Linux distributions (or other major software projects in general), Ubuntu also assign a code name every time they release a new version of their operating system. The current version number is 11.04 has the code name of "Natty Narwhal" and the upcoming 11.10 is called "oneiric ocelot".

I'm not a marketer thus have very little knowledge about how or why code names are used... but I guess it has something to do with branding. Anyhow, few hours ago, Mark Shuttleworth announced (the founder of Ubuntu OS) the official name for the upcoming 12.04 which will be released in 2012 April (if everything goes according to plan) and it'll be called, Precise Pangolin!.

As always, Mark had something interesting to say about the name (or the creature behind the name actually)...

"Now, I’ve recently spent a few hours tracking a pangolin through the Kalahari. I can vouch for their precision – there wasn’t an ant hill in the valley that he missed. Their scales are a wonder of detail and quite the fashion statement. I can also vouch for their toughness; pangolin’s regularly survive encounters with lions..."

Anyway, the 12.04 release has another importance also since it's the "Long Term Support" (a.k.a LTS) which is for those who just can't stand for having to update their OS once every 6 months. So, once every 2 years a LTS version is released which carries no particular differences in packages but will be supported by Ubuntu (updates, bug fixes, etc) up to 3 years for the desktop edition and 5 years for the Ubuntu Sever Edition.

And in somewhat a recent interview, Mark said that they "might" replace Firefox with Google Chrome which could have happened with the 12.04 version but since it's the LTS version ... it won't. But it could be something that'll take place in the 12.10, perhaps.

Anyhow if you're wondering about the official code name for the upcoming Ubuntu 12.04 (both LTS and the standard versions)... then it's Precise Pangolin and it's all about surviving the "lion"!. 

Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Beta 2 is Released!

It's been like 2 or 2.5 weeks since Canonical released the Ubuntu 11.10 beta 1 and few hours ago they've released the last of the "testing versions", the 11.10 Beta 2!. This is the last of all "tests" and all that remains is the official release of the Oneiric Ocelot, scheduled at 13 October 2011 (man I'm so excited!, I can criticize, etc... a lot to write about :P).

With this release they've finally made it possible to fit it inside a standard CD (about 695MB for the 32-bit version) and more ARM architecture support has been added (via different disk images). Below are few of the new updates in the 11.10 Beta 2 version

*. Gnome 3 has been updated to the latest beta 3.1.9 which is on its way to the official Gnome Shell 3.2 released. A quick remainder for those of you who've been just woken up from your hibernation sleep ;-), remember, Gnome 3 is well supported in Ubuntu but it is not included in the default CD disk image. But you can install it via the online Ubuntu repositories nonetheless.

*. Includes the Kernel 3.0.4 version.

*. Comes with the Mozilla Firefox 7.0 beta 6.

*. And Thunderbird 7.0 beta 3.

*. Synaptic is removed (as most knows) but also the default video editor PiTiVi has also been removed.

*. LightDM with a new theme.

*. Banshee 2.2.0.

*. Shotwell 0.11.1.

These are the usual main apps to remind and as usual the Ubuntu Software Center is also updated with some bug fixes, etc as well. All the other official Ubuntu derivatives such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc have also released their Beta 2 version simultaneous to this release too.

As mentioned, from now, since the CD disk image fits into a 700MB CD, now you can download the beta 2 and use it as a LiveCD rather than the USB version with some of the previous "alpha and beta" versions.

If interested, you can get it from this official release page. Good luck.

KNOPPIX 6.7.1 Live CD/DVDs are Released!

KNOPPIX (based on Debian) was one of these GNU/Linux distributions that came (still do!) as a "Live desktop environment optimized" one. When other vendors ship their distribution primarily as a desktop edition, KNOPPIX on the other hand has been  releasing their OS as a primary Live CD "environment", thus if you're looking for a portable GNU/Linux distribution, then KNOPPIX is certainly one of the best.

What do you mean ?, isn't Ubuntu or others have Live CDs of their own?

True. But as said before, the hardware detection or configuration in general in those distributions aren't optimized in the live-cd mode that much, thus if you want to use those GNU/Linux distributions as your desktop and integrate/configure your hardware to their fullest extent, then you gotta install them and configure them later rather than once inside their Live CD/DVD versions.

But KNOPPIX comes pre-optimized to work as a completed Live CD desktop and has been around for few years now... thanks to the develper's experience + the pre-installed packages of propriety drivers, multimedia codecs, etc, it's a pretty cool and feels like a "completed" Live desktop environment in my experience.

Anyhow, two days ago they've released a new version of KNOPPIX (6.7.1) below are some of the new features...

*. Starting with the version 6.0 they've decided to ship LXDE (0.5.1-4) as the standard desktop instead of the Qt written KDE in the past. This also makes sense, since LXDE is a lot faster than KDE which should help to speed things up (especially if you use a CD drive where the output MB/S a bit slower when compared with others media).

*. Comes with the LibreOffice 3.4.3 instead of the OpenOffice.

*. Uses the "nouveau" (the reverse engineered version of the proprietary Nvidia driver released under GNU/GPL) including 2D and 3D rendering.

*. Firefox 6.0.2 is the default web browser. But if you happen to download the DVD version, then you'll find Chromium 13 as well.

*. ADRIANE updates: This is the visually impaired optimized package in KNOPPIX and with this released they've done few enhancements + better scanned text recognition and several cell phone models support, etc.

*. GIMP 2.6.10-1.

*. Comes with both MPlayer 2.1.0 rc4 and Gnome Mplayer versions.

*. FFmpeg multimedia library (0.7.1-4) so you'll be able to watch all the proprietary multimedia codecs.

*. Abi word: Only in the DVD.

*. Synaptic 0.70 package manager.

*. eViaCam: Another one available in the DVD which lets you control your mouse using your head motions (via a Webcam) and few other recovery utility, etc.

These are just a handful of updated packages to mention. You can get it from this KNOPPIX download page  but if you find those FTP servers to be a bit slow, then as always, I humbly advice you to try this Torrent version (which is fully legal :P) instead. Good luck.

Bodhi Linux 1.2.0 is Released! (Added support for ARM)

Bodhi Linux is another distribution that's based on Ubuntu. Although it seems that they've done a lot of changes to the system... it seems like a completely different distribution to me ;-). Anyhow, Bodhi linux is not for everyone though, in a way.

The reason is simple. It uses the Enlightenment Window manager as the desktop "creator" which has a  reputation of being extremely fast and low on system resource. But if you're looking for a modern desktop with fancy effects + with features that Major desktops such as Gnome/Qt-KDE or even the relatively new Unity desktop, etc offers, then you may not like it.

Okay, I take back that "not a modern desktop" part ;-)...

But the rest assured, if you're looking for complete desktop with extremely faster responsiveness, well in that case, Bodhi Linux can be extremely competitive. Unlike many other distributions, Bodhi also has a completely different UI design that's optimized for the touch sensitive devices as well.

And few months back, Jeff announced (the main dude behind it) that Bodhi will be having a completely different version for the ARM architecture related devices (if you aren't much of a tech geek, then ARM is a processor that's seen on a lot of touch screen based devices, even in Apple iPad!). Below is a video that he gave us back then.



So with this new released, which happened like few days ago now if you have an ARM based device, then you can download the ARM optimized Bodhi Linux version since now that platform it's officially supported.

Anyhow, let's have a look at some of the new package updates with this latest 1.2.0 release.

*. GNU/Linux Kernel version 3.0.0 (this is one of the reason behind the ARM architecture actually).

*. Midori 0.4.0: A fast loading web browser.

*. Firefox 6.0: No one needs an introduction to this one. Anyhow, for GNU/Linux, Mozilla announced that Firefox will not only be more secure but will me a bit faster on GNU/Linux thanks to some optimizations.

*. Chromium 13.0.

*. Opera 11.51.

*. Seven, totally awesome themes!.

*. Enlightenment SVN built (based on 09/06/11) are among the main core changes according to Jeff's announcement page.

You can find all the downloading links from this official link if interested.

Ubuntu Forums Introduces a New User Permission Policy

Anyone who're familiar with Ubuntu Linux knows about Ubuntu Forums. If you don't, then it's a pretty awesome community, filled with dudes and dudies who're sharing their knowledge and helping the Ubuntu newbies on solving various Ubuntu related issues (driver installations, troubleshooting, commands and new applications, etc).

To show you how big the community is, currently they have a registered user database of 1,427,121 users! (with  95,754 of active users). But managing the community is not that easy, especially considering the community expansion + not everyone who register at Ubuntu Forums have the same good intentions (yep, apparently there seems to be massive "SPAM campaigns" going on too :D, not funny though).

So as a result, Isabelle Duchatelle, one of the UF council members, in her personal blog yesterday announced that from now on, the newly registered users will not be able to change their profile information (such as links, etc) until they've posted at lest 50 posts. This actually makes sense and according to her own words in the UF announcement thread...

"... We will be taking away profile customization from users having less than 50 posts. We are quite sorry about that, but currently it takes at least one hour from 2-3 persons, each day, to clean profile spam. New users register only to fill the account with spam links, pics and things... we are quite tired of spending so much human resources on so little interesting tasks"

If you're a new UF users, then you don't have to worry about anything because as soon as you have 50 or more posts in UF, the system will automatically update your user permissions thus you'll be able to add/change your profile information. But since it's an automated task, which updates the database once an hour, Isabelle says that there could be small delays but you should see your permissions updated within 1 hour at max.

You can read more from this Official announcement thread in Ubuntu Forums.

Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Beta 1 is Released!

Not just Ubuntu Linux but almost all the GNU/Linux distributions (with few exceptions of course) make sure to release a new version of within like 6 month-cycle. And within these usual 6 months each distro has a slightly different beta release versions of their own ... but for Ubuntu Linux it usually start with "Alpha1" to "Alpha 3" and then two Beta versions (1 and 2)... then arrives the official release.

What's new?

So, since Ubuntu has already released the Alpha3 few weeks ago, few hours ago the developers made the official announcement of the Ubuntu Beta 1!. As usual the Beta 1 comes with updated package versions + one major difference.

Starting with Beta 1, Ubuntu is letting the users download a DVD image that's about 1.5GB of size! which in comparison with the standard 4+GB ISO image.

According to the developers, this DVD image is actually the expansion of the ever growing, standard CD image thus this new DVD includes additional packages such as Inkscape, GIMP, additional language packages and more LibreOffice related files (clip-arts, templates, extension, etc) as well.

Other new features include...

*. Gnome 3.1.5 (which is on its way to the Gnome 3.2 that's going to be included in the official launch of the 11.10).

*. LightDM is the default display manager.

*. DajaDup comes pre-installed as the data backup manager.

*. New updates to the Ubuntu Application indicators system (including new power manager and a session indicator).

*. Top rated section added to the Ubuntu Software Manager + "major" speed improvements over .deb file installation according to the developers.

*. Major Core infrastructure feature: Now users of the 64-bit version of the Ubuntu Linux OS can install 32-bit packages without the need to use the separate "ia32-libs".

*. Kernel update to the version 3.0.0-9.15 which brings bug fixes and improvements.

As usual the Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, etc distributions have also released Beta 1 versions of their own which brings latest KDE 4.7 Plasma desktop and related package updates, Amarok 2.4.3, Muon software center, pastebinit support in Xubuntu are just a few to mention.

You can try out the latest version of Ubuntu Beta 1 from this download section of the release page. Good luck.

Fedora 16 Alpha is Released!

Well, the stubborn boys and gals :) working in the Fedora community has made the official announcement of the availability of the Fedora 16 Alpha 1 which the first step towards the upcoming Fedora 16. Fedora was actually one of the first distributions to include the Gnome 3.0 (yikes!) by default with the introduction of the current version 15.

Just like with Ubuntu where you have certain different desktop versions aimed at different users such as Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc, the Fedora team has ones of their own which they called "Fedora Spins". As usual, simultaneous to this release ISO images of Fedora spins are also updated and available for downloading too.


What's new?

This is an old screenshot from Fedora 15 actually :)...

*. Gnome 3.1.4: Yep the latest builds of the Gnome Shell and hopefully they'll ship the upcoming Gnome 3.2 (which brings some major features but in a way, "nothing will change", if you know what I mean) when it's officially released.

*. KDE 4.7 (comes with the separate KDE spin) :

Well, "thanks" to Gnome, the Qt written KDE desktop is getting more and more popular by each day it seems. Although KDE used have a shi* load of features in the past but with their version 4.0, the desktop is a bit heavily cleaned-up (which is a good thing, I think :/) and has one of the best eye-candy related stuff as well.

Fedora 16 alpha 1 also has the KDE plasma desktop edition for the Netbook users too.

*. LibreOffice 3.4.2 is the default office productivity suite which was also started to appear in Fedora with the current 15.0 version.

*. Firefox 6.0 is the default web browser (obviously). According to the developers + in my humble experience, the loading times specially of Firefox 6 in GNU/Linux feels a bit faster than with other versions and comes with few minor features + the usual bug fixes as well.

*. Impressive SELinux "version": According to their release page, this version of Fedora comes with an optimized SELinux (if you're a bit new, then SELinux is a software that manages "policies" inside your computer, sort of a firewall) that takes about 4 times lesser amount of time to install (including less memory consumption 38MB to 6MB!).

These are just the few of the main features of the Fedora 16 Alpha 1 and other things like GRUB2, enhanced virtuliazation support, GCC updates and a hell lot of individual application updates are also available as usual.

And if you want to try it out, then please visit this page for more. Good luck.

About: Few Upcoming Major Features to the Unity Desktop Module

Mark Shuttleworth on his blog posted another interesting article that showed-off few of the major changes that are going to be integrated into the Unity desktop module with the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 version. Now since it's introduction, Unity got caught up with a lot of "feedback". Although Canonical is certainly good at one thing, which as anyone can see, is planning (ahh! the "benefit" of a controlled "environment", kidding).

For instance, it's no secret that they've been thinking about the Unity desktop for sometime thus they slowly invented some of the major changes (although they seem "little") such as moving the buttons to the left side of the titles for instance which is a necessity within the Unity desktop module.

Although not everyone loved the locked application launcher that sits to your left and I still think that if they moved it to the bottom side of the screen would really help to preserve some of the screen since, especially most of the Laptops and Netbooks come with 16:9 screen ratios. For instance, a 10.1 inch Netbook after opening certain amount of applications would easily fill-up the launcher space thus after minimizing it one would require to "find" the appropriate icon on the application launcher.

Unity 2D in action...

But then again, as Mark said himself, Unity desktop is designed in a way that lets the users to do one thing at a time with less distractions. In that sense, it makes sense (kinda). Another thing that was criticized was the location of the "three musketeers" (also known as Close:Minimize:Maximize buttons :P).

After you maximize a window, the buttons are rendered around the upper left corner, right next to the Ubuntu Logo at the near beginning of the left side of the upper panel. Now some did not like it since not all the time that we use that Ubuntu Logo to manually launch our apps thus that space is wasted (every pixel counts, hey!).

So in some recent daily 11.10 images, some found out (I've never used the 11.10 alpha) that the buttons had finally move into that "space" but I think it was temporary, just for testing purposes, and I think you may not find it in the daily builds of the Alpha images.

Anyhow, as you can see with the below screenshot, Mark points out few interesting features actually. Although I won't be going into the details that much since I use Ubuntu 2D "thanks" to my ATI GPU that gives me a lot of headaches (crashing, etc) due to Compiz I think, but as you can see Unity 3D (including the 2D too) has gone some impressive changes, not just the little buttons dance :).

3 align looking buttons :), "Lenses", "Sources"... what are they?!...

Please read the full post from this page by Mark himself and give him some feedback (including angry ones too :D). Personally, with all the due respect to KDE developers, I'm a bit scared by the Qt integration in Ubuntu + many other philosophical differences that it carries, thus it may not be my primary desktop (who cares what you use Gayan! ... :) ).

Not because I find it difficult to handle (seriously, it's got issues! but...) I gotta admit, I actually like the Unity 2D module, although I ain't a hacker, but in a way, GNU/Linux is a part of my identity as with many of ya folks, thus I ask more from a desktop rather than it's been seen as a user friendly "tool" by the "usual users".

Unity-Linux Distribution is Going to be "Discontinued!" (in a way)

First of all, Unity-Linux is a separate GNU/Linux distribution and has nothing to do with the Ubuntu's Unity desktop interface. In fact, Unity Linux is actually based on the Mandriva distro and their goal "was" to give users a very light-weight desktop environment (just enough packages to log-in to their desktop) thus enabling them to install only the software that they want rather than "embrace" the ones that most distributions impose, "forcefully".

So in general the idea "was" to let users build an OS from scratch (well, almost) and light-weight and Unity Linux in fact, has a reputation of being fast as well. But they never had a lot of developers or bug-testers, etc ... so as a result few days ago in their blog, they posted that, they've no choice but to move the Unity-Linux project into Mandriva's repositories from now on.

What does this mean?, is it the end?

Not really actually. To make a long story short, as a Unity-Linux user you'll still receive updates and it'll continue as a separate "Brand" but the developers will be concentrating and operating in a much smaller scale.

In their own words...

The benefits will be that we no longer have to maintain packages as a small team…upstream will do that for us.  We’ll be able to focus on meta packages for install, dependency resolution and default desktop environments.

So unlike in the past where they'd concentrate on Kernel, desktops and a lot other areas of the distro thus making it a unique, separate OS, but from now on, they'll still be working on and release bug fixes and optimizations, etc for a smaller number of packages in comparison with their older releases.

So in short, no, this is certainly not the end but in a broader way, I think it kinda is :/. But at least on the bright side, hey!, it's GNU/Linux and we can choose the heck out of any distro that we want! :D.

Gentoo Linux 11.2 is Released! (DVD Edition)

GNU/Linux is all about variety or a hell lot of choices :D. Unlike with MS Windows or Mac OSX in that sense, if you don't like your current GNU/Linux desktop or the distribution in general for some reason, then just ditch it and find something amazing that meets your requirements (even if you have special needs!).

I came across Gentoo few years ago and in a way, it's actually "one of a kind" GNU/Linux distribution. One of the main reasons for its popularity is its ability to let you compile (creating executable out of the original programming codes) the whole OS, almost all the packages, from scratch thus giving you an optimized operating system for the hardware installed on your system which means enhanced performance and stability in general. Although most of the time you're better off with the pre-compiled packages because...

... To be honest I'm not sure how easy it is these days but while I was using it, yep it wasn't that hard but if you're a newbie, then it may not be that easy to perform. But that's a bit of a long time ago + if you don't like to use the command-line a lot to setup and optimize the OS then even back then and nowadays, you can still  use this amazing GNU/Linux distribution by using the "usual methods" of installing it using a LiveCD/DVD or using the pre-compiled packages as with almost all other GNU/Linux distributions.

A recent version of Gentoo Linux (not the latest 11.2 version of course...)

Anyhow the latest news is that, like 2 days ago they've released a new DVD Edition which makes it the version 11.2, as a way of celebrating the collaboration between her users and the developers. Here are some of the main features of this latest DVD Edition.

*. Comes with the Kernel 3.0 (including patches from Gentoo developers).

*. GLIBC 2.13-r2, GCC 4.5.2 (the GNU C/C++ compiler).

*. Gnome 3.0.

*. KDE 4.7.0.

*. Proprietary ATI driver 11.6 version. 

*. Xfce 4.8 (another excellent alternative for those of you who has lower-end PC hardware).

*. Openbox 3.5.0 (a "lightweight" window manager and a desktop environment).

*. LibreOffice 3.3.3 (interesting that they haven't picked the 3.4 version, which makes sense in a way since it's more likely a "test" version rather than the 3.3 long-term version).

*. AbiWord 2.8.6 (another fast word processor that uses the GTK toolkit).

*. GIMP 2.6.11.

*. Inkscape 0.48.2 (an advanced vector graphics editor/creator).

*. XEmacs 21.5.31 (a derivative of the original, super powerful source code and text editor GNU/Emacs).

*. Amarok 2.4.3 (this version in fact was actually introduced very recently and Gentoo was also one of the first distributions to provide precompiled packages within hours of its release!).

*. Mozilla Firefox 5.0, Chromium 13 and Opera 11.50.1074, Epiphany, Seamonkey and few others are included as web browsers (man that's a huge list!).

These are just a fraction of the new packages included in this latest Gentoo Linux DVD release and other applications such as MPLayer (Gentoo is know to included all the proprietary codecs installed by default!), ffmpeg 0.6.9 (a collection multi-media playing libraries), Gnome-Mplayer 1.0.4, SMPlayer 0.6.9, etc again just a few to mention.

It's available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions and if you want to give Gentoo Linux a try, then please consult this download page (look at the end of the page and you should find your links below a sub-heading called "3. Other Media"). Usually these newly released Linux ISO files on the servers could give you slow downloading speeds, in that case it's advised that you try out the Torrent section. Good luck and enjoy the Gentoo 11.2 "ride!" :).

Sneak-Peek into the Upcoming Xubuntu's Redesigned Website!

As all ya GNU/Linux geeks knows ;-) Xubuntu is the official part of Ubuntu operating system that comes with the light-weight Xfce desktop environment that's aimed at lower end computer users. Personally I'm actually quite fond of the Xfce desktop since not only it's fast (maybe not as fast as it used to be But!) but it also comes with a lot of customizable tool which gives better control over the desktop when comparing with Gnome (yikes!).

Anyhow, according to the Xubuntu developer Pasi Lallinaho, dudes and dudees ;-) at Xubuntu are gonna totally redesign the current Xubuntu website's look-n-feel which is launched simultaneous to the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 release.

So the website is not "launched", but and it seems that they'll be releasing it with the Ubuntu 11.10 release.

He also said that they moving from Drupal (web publishing platform) to the awesome WordPress as well. As said they haven't rolled-out the new site yet and he's asking for new ideas and things that they can do to improve the existing, new layout of the site in general.

So if you have fresh ideas and a sharp and well developed eye ;-), then why not head over to this "sneak-peek page" and throw in some comments!.

Asus Eee PC X101 Unboxing Video! (in Vietnamese)

Yes, it's true!. Although it's said that Asus will start shipping one of their thinnest and cheapest netbook called the Eee PC X101 this month for the US customers but it seems that YouTube has just received a Vietnam user un-boxing video of the X101, for real!.


Update: This actually seems like the X101h model rather than the X101 (although the only difference is actually the OS. X101H runs Windows 7 starter and X101 as promised runs the MeeGO platform).

What's interesting is that the fact it has got a VGA port and a Ethernet port. Of course it's ain't necessarily bad but as you can see from the below video this new "version" of the X101 does not look impressively thin thanks to these ports. Although it's not just sure whether they're just dummy ports (now why the heck they'd do that) but nonetheless it's not as impressively thin as the original version.

But other than that the hardware details seems to be just as Asus promised...

*. Intel Atom N435 running at 1.3GHz (single core).

*. 1GB of RAM (DDR3, max supported 2GB).



*. 1024x600, 10.1 inch WSVGA display screen.

*. 8 GB of solid state disk (SSD) which certainly makes things happen faster but I'd have preferred a SATA disk (even if it was about 100GB, don't you?).

*. WLAN 802.11 and Bluetooth 3.0.

Not impressively thinner as the original version (screenshot from the above video)...

*. 4 Hours of batter life (which of course will change according to your actual usage) of the 3Cell battery.

*. MicroSD card, 2 USB ports.

*. VGA and RJ-45 ports as with this model.

Here a side-view of the original version (which is not "dead" or anything seems like Asus has few versions perhaps??)...

Now as said, Asus may have few different versions (with slight variations), so perhaps for all ya folks who were waiting for a sexy looking, very thin netbook, well perhaps Asus has something that looks like the original one (without the VGA and the network ports). But even with these ports, the thickness is not that much increased actually and other than the fact that Glossy looking screen, can't say anything about it's actual performance, etc either.

But if you're searching for a cheap netbooks under $200 then Asus may have just about the perfect companion. But again I'm a bit disappointed with the SSD drive, although it runs the MeeGO Linux operating system thus that SSD should help to cut out some boot-time yet if they have a separate version with a larger SATA drive for the same price range ;-) it would've been just about perfect!, at least for me. Yes there is a separate MS Windows version with slightly larger HDD and faster processor but we won't be able to grab it for a price around $199-200 nonetheless.  

Dragon Player (Qt Written Multimedia Player for KDE) Version 3 is On its Way!

Dragon player is a qt-written, multimedia front-end that's designed for the KDE desktop. As said it's a front-end rather than a player engine (such as MPLayer or VLC, etc) thus you can set it to use either Gstreamer or with Phonon (the newlywed KDE multimedia framework).

Although the player itself is a bit awkward when viewing from a KDE's point of view because KDE is always about features and lots of options but the Dragon player is all about simplicity and less features!. Thus it loads fast and does its job quite nicely and many just love it.

Although I actually haven't been using it for a long time but according to the KDE apachelogger, the Dragon player has been there with KDE for almost 4 years as the version 2 but yesterday at the current Berlin desktop summit, the developer of Dragon player Ian Monroe has announced that there's gonna be a Dragon player version 3 in the very near future!.

Few of the "things" expected in this release...

Although the "Blacky" background will most probably be removed which doesn't look that good actually ;-)...

*. He has promised not to clutter anything at all thus the player version 3.0 GUI will also be quite simple :).

*. No features are dropped thus all the things that were/are visible with its older versions will be ported into the version 3.

*. Cool looking (more smooth) start-up animations (well, I ain't a huge fan of those since it slow down the app loading times).

*. Enhanced, "recently viewed" display section.

*. When you stop a multimedia file (both video and audio) they'll fade-out!.

*. Although not revealed yet but in "apachelogger's" own words...

"A revolutionary approach that will make it tons easier to watch a series of videos (yet to be unveiled ;))..."

Well, that's about it for now. If you can't wait till it's out then you try out its scratch repository but please be aware that it's in its early development stage thus even if it builds just fine might not work properly. So use it at your own risk :).

Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 3 is Released!

Well, it took a bit long than predicted but few hours ago the Ubuntu Linux developers officially announced the availability of the Ubuntu 1.10 Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 3, finally!. But before you jump into the downloading section please be aware that these images are over sized thus won't fit in the usual 700MB CD + are developers snapshots only.

So, unless you're a developer or a bug-tester, etc please don't use them and expect a stable environment since they aren't even at the beta stage yet (which should be the next release actually). And as usual, simultaneously to this release other Ubuntu projects such as Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Mythbuntu and Lubuntu Oneiric Ocelot (including the Ubuntu server version) Alpha 3 images are also available.

Main changes...

*. Comes with the Kernel version 3.0.0-7.9 since the 11.10 will be using the recently introduced Kernel version 3.0 RC (well it ain't that recent anymore!) which also brings some new features (even though according to Linus it's just a "number's game") such as better compatibility with AMD Fusion chipsets, ARM support, etc. 

*. Updates and bug fixes for Compiz and Unity desktop (including the new Alt-Tab-Style), enhanced performances, etc. So hopefully Compiz will be less buggy and "crash-y. Especially on netbooks or any other PC/Laptop with both Nvidia and ATI/AMD GPUs.

Unity Alt-Tab-Style...

Intel seems to do better at the moment thanks to their a bit open-source friendly approach (although some of their GPUs have "missing" technical documentations which makes developing open-source drivers hard as with proprietary AIT/Nvidia).

But as a general knowledge, although Intel GPU are a bit slow and lack support for enhanced 3D, etc in comparison... but for GNU/Linux users, they usually work better than ATI and Nvidia with OpenGL rendering and other under other advanced 3D settings anyway. 

*. 11.10 Users now can enjoy the latest Gnome version 3 (3.1.4 to be precise), although not included in the ISO image but you'll have to install it using the repository. And they're also on their way to making the Gnome 3.2 upcoming major release available simultaneously to the future launch of the 11.10.

*. Thunderbird 6 is the default e-mail client, although not everyone is a fan of it yet it's pretty stable and rich-in features nonetheless.

*. Updated Gwibber micro-blogging client with few performance and GUI enhancements. 

*. Mozilla Firefox 6 beta comes as the web browser. Although Mark said in an interview recently that in the future Ubuntu might be switching to Google Chrome!. 

*. Improved Ubuntu Software Center : Since we all know that 11.10 uses only USC and does not come with Synaptic. But the problem with the USC in 11.04 or latter is that it's dauntingly greedy on system resources thus can easily slow down the PC/Laptop. So obviously the Ubuntu developers are pretty busy at the moment making it faster and less buggy.

With Alpha 3, apart from it's performance enhancements, it'll also include a new "top rated" section + now we can edit/delete our reviews later times as well.

Also concerning Kubutnu fans, this image includes the latest builds of KDE 4.7 desktop with a new Oxygen icon theme, a whole new KPEM with Kmail 2, Amarok 2.4.3 + a lot of other Kubutnu related packages are updated as usual.

But they also emphasis on that all new KPEM suite, since it's really new and all that they advice you to backup all your contacts, etc before migrating into the new KPEM suite. 

And the other major news is that, starting with Kubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3, Kubuntu will be using the Muon suite which is another more simplified and beginner friendly software GUI, as the default package handler. 

Muon Software manager (looks a lot like the Ubuntu Software Center doesn't it? :D)...

Edubuntu will also be using Unity as the default desktop environment + if your hardware isn't capable of handling the Unity 3D then the fallback mode will be the Unity 2D that uses Metacity as the composting manager rather than Compiz. As mentioned about, other desktop solutions such as the recently "integrated" Lubuntu, etc are also updated to their latest package versions.


Few precautions ...

Not all of 'em but most of these ISO images won't fit inside a 700MB CD as mentioned before. So you'll have to either use a DVD or a USB as the booting device. And there's also seems to be a bit of a big issue with the Ubuntu server installation concerning encrypted volumes which can even lead to a permanent loss of your data on an encrypted volume/partition! (get more information about this bug from here). Again this seems to be with the Ubuntu server images only.

Anyhow as said, the Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 is certainly not recommended for those of you who wants a highly stable environment/OS and is only aimed at developers and tester only. So, other than you're ready to take few risks + if you're a bit new to Ubuntu or GNU/Linux in general then I'd like to humbly advice you to stick with your current "working" version :).

But at the moment it seems that the Ubuntu developers are really giving it a go since they've already make some big improvements on the boot-time of 11.10 Alpha 2, so if you want to get a taste of all the new things and features/improvements, etc then other than upgrading your current 11.04, I think you'd be better off doing a fresh installation (at least in my experience anyway).

Go to this official downloading page for getting all the available ISO images. Goo luck.

Asus Eee PC X101 Secretly Gets a Product Page!

Few weeks ago Asus showed off one of their upcoming netbooks called the Eee PC X101. Concerning the cheap hardware this netbooks had nothing "major" in it, except for the physical design!. This netbook without a doubt will be one of the most thinnest ones in the market and the price range, according to Asus will be under $200!.

Although at that time Asus did not confirm about its launching date but few hours ago it seems to have a dedicated product page in Asus Eee section which appeared kinda secretly because Asus didn't even make any official announcement, but it should be a matter of days if not hours perhaps.

A 10.1 inch LED Backlight WSVGA with screen resolution of 1024x600, Intel Atom N435/N455 (it will have two versions) processor, 1GB of DDR3 RAM (max 2GB), 8GB SSD drive, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 2 USB 2.0 ports, audio headphone and a card reader (SD/ SDHC/ MMC), 0.3 MPX front camera, 2 built in stereo speakers, 17.6 mm thin!, 0.92 Kgs of weight...

The only disappointing thing is (there's always one :/) the battery life. According to Asus the X101 will have about 4 hours of battery life which is not bad but when considering some other popular ones and netbooks in general I think it's a bit low for its caliber.

And also it will be able to handle 720p HD videos but not the 1080p ones, I mean, even the Intel Atom dual-core versions struggle when it comes to trying to play some of those. It would've been nice if the X101 came with an AMD fusion version because the Fusion ones have no problems whatsoever playing 1080p videos thanks to the powerful ATI Raedon 6200/6300 HD GPUs.

But I guess it might raise some of that price tag anyway.

There's also a separate MS Windows 7 powered version available, although not sure about the price of that version at the moment, but by default it comes with the excellent MeeGO operating system which must have helped to cut out some of that cost :).

They wouldn't say but from the pictures I don't think it has a full keyboard but it's a Chiclet one and looks comfortable but will have to wait until it's released to see how well it performs while actually touch typing. Oh and it has three color choices at the moment - White, Red and Brown.

So, if you're looking for a very very light weight, awesome looking (well Asus has a bit of a reputation) netbook under $200, then the X101 will be (or maybe) an excellent choice, although in no way it can replace the MacBook Air... but for a price under $200 I really gotta say it "looks" impressive, don't you agree?. 

Few Upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 and Development Related "Update notes"

Well as everyone knows the Ubuntu developers at Canonical keep us updated from time to time by giving the current Ubuntu development updates. And few hours ago they released another update which is somewhat especial since we have the Alpha 3 coming in the next week.

Now since most know that Ubuntu 11.10 is certainly faster than all of its predecessors (and other GNU/Linux distributions in general, as far as I know) because it has an impressive 12 seconds of boot time!, but there are a lot to improve (especially the new and faster + a bit buggy USC, etc), so the upcoming Alpha 3 should be something "interesting".

Anyhow to brief you about what's new and other whatnots ...

*. It seems that Gnome 3.1 x pre-builds are already (some of 'em) available for Oneiric Ocelot + the Gnome team do have few major improvements of their own for the upcoming, 3.2 major release as well. 

*. Compiz is updated to 0.9.5.

Although the actual or the original Compiz version is 0.8.6 (which many other distributions prefer) but this version "change" occurred because the Ubuntu developers decided to do their own improvements since Unity 3D depends on it so having a "Unity optimized" Compiz compositing manager makes sense.

But as many have claimed, it's a bit buggy at the moment (in 11.04 I mean). So hopefully this may have fixed few bugs and performance improvements :).

*. Firefox 6.0 beta (6.0.b3 build 2 to be precise).

*. Unity desktop module updated to 4.4 (current version in 11.04 Natty is 3.8) which include few of its own bug fixes such as - Metacity related fixes, drag-n-drop related bug fixes, Compiz related crash fixes, etc.

*. Switching from Gtk2 -> Gtk 3 which is happening slowly at the moment (understandable).

And many other Gnome 3.1x related application builds for the 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot updates are just a few to mention.

Anyhow, if Canonical can make Compiz a bit stable and fix performance issues with the Ubuntu Software Center (which is looking good in the 11.10 alpha version as said before), etc ...

... then I think the upcoming 11.10 might be one of the robust and fastest (at least concerning boot-time, which seems to be the "only thing that matters" in the current trend) operating systems that can stand up against the Google Chrome OS "being the fastest" challenge :). We'll see.  

Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot is Just 2 Seconds away from Instant Boot!

Yup, according to the tests done by crn.com experts, the recently released Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 2, although, still in the earlier beta versions still it's significantly faster than the current 11.04 Natty Narwhal!.

There are few ups and downs at the moment since it's in alpha stage but in their own words...

"...judging by its early “alpha” version. It has the fastest boot-time we’ve seen on an HDD-based PC, shows snappy performance between applications..."

Although not entirely sure if the adaptation of the Kernel 3.0 RC+ has anything to do with it but it seems that the removal of GDM and replacing it with LightDM has done the trick. In any operating system, one of the early-loaded GUI services is the log-in manager, and since...

LightDM...

GDM has been criticized by many developers saying that it has about 50,000 pieces of codes while LightDM only has 5000, that's at least 10x lesser amount of software code thus it should have helped.

Anyhow in their test PC (Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 at 3.00 GHz and a usual hard disk, not a SSD drive, other hardware unknown) the Ubuntu 11.10 alpha was able to boot up (from the moment of switch on to log-in screen) within just 12 seconds!.

Thanks to Google Chrome type operating systems, there is now a "standard" that says any OS that has about 10 or lower seconds of boot up times is considered as an operating system with an instant boot, so in that sense, Ubuntu 11.10 is just 2 seconds behind and most importantly it has been able to achieve that not using a SSD drive (which is significantly faster) but by using a SATA HDD!.

Another key improvement is the Ubuntu Software Center since Ubuntu decided to remove Synaptic from the official CD/DVD (but still available through the official repositories), starting with the 11.10 version.

It's about time that they started to pay some serious attention to improving the USC, because from the beginning USC requires a lot of system resources (CPU actually, although RAM usage is not that high, pretty much closer to Synaptic according to my experience anyway) and the new improved USC in the 11.10 Alpha 2 seems to be quite responsive and fast than the one in the 11.04. 

Anyhow it's really interesting what this means at the end because as any developer knows, since Ubuntu has no interest in targeting the "hacker" and rely on the "actual PC users", which I think will help them immensely in the future because it's this change of "attitude" (for good or bad) that has put them up there at the top.

If I remember correctly it was actually Ubuntu who was one of the first GNU/Linux (is it really?) distributions to speed up the boot up times where in the past GNU/Linux was painfully slower as well. 

Anyhow, this should send some "alarms" across other distributions (or may be not) + we also have a little Gnome OS thingie going on at the moment, so it should be really interesting whether the other distributions have the ability to compete against this "Ubuntu trend".

Because a trend is a far more powerful tool which, if properly used can easily let you pass through the popular "players" easily, which can be seen a bit too much to dream about right now (oh I didn't made up that statement all by me own, saw something similar somewhere recently :D). But the rest assured, whether you love or hate Ubuntu, interesting times ahead, it seems.

Lubuntu ISO images are Available via Official Ubuntu Servers (Finally!)

Lubuntu is an excellent, Ubuntu Linux based GNU/Linux distribution that comes with the LXDE desktop which is at the moment is one of the fastest, light-weight desktops out there (even faster than XFCE). Although it was started as a derivative rather than an official part of Ubuntu but since Ubuntu did miss the LXDE desktop version in their long list of other options such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu... soon after the initial release of the Ubuntu 11.04 release Mark Shuttleworth said that now they'll consider treating Lubuntu as one of their "own", soon enough.

I think that pretty much became a reality for the Lubuntu developers since from now on we can download Lubuntu from the official Ubuntu servers!. Now before you're gonna go ahead and download please be aware of the fact that, according to the official announcement these images are not quite ready yet and are missing splash images, over sized (over 800MB in size thus won't fit in a CD!) and won't even load the default desktop session, etc. In simple terms, they are not stable.  

Anyhow you can still use them using a USB drive or DVD, etc... and these images currently have ...

*. Chromium web browser (well I guess it's better at low resources rather than Firefox, or maybe not).

*. Openbox as the window manager.

*. PC Man, the default file manager of the LXDE desktop, which is quite fast and resembles a "lighter" version of both Nautilus and Thunar.

*. Abiword and Gnumeric (excellent spreadsheet application which is not that famous thanks to both LibreOffice and OpenOffice :D).

*. Pidgin as the default IM client.

*. Gnome mplayer as the multimedia player (excellent front-end that uses the MPLayer "engine").

*. Audacious as the audio player.

And also not just the LXDE desktop but you'll also get some portions of the Gnome desktop such as file-roller (archive manager in Gnome) and Gnome-Keyring (a password keeper). Well, that's about it mates!. But as said these are the daily build ISO images and are certainly not stable at the moment. So use it at your own risk ;-)... (seriously!). Oh and congratulations to the Lubuntu Geeks as well, finally, you made it!.

Vanillux - An Ubuntu Based GNU/Linux Distribution that Comes With Gnome3!

Since we're gonna be, somewhat missing the "Gnome support" in the future versions of Ubuntu (starting with the 11.10, although it'll still be officially supported through online repositoreis but not in the CD/DVD) it's about time that someone comes up with GNU/Linux distribution that's based on Ubuntu as the "core" yet uses the Gnome 3 or the Shell as the default desktop rather than the Unity interface.

It's called Vanillux and it's so new at the moment that it's not stable thus not recommended for everyday usage. Now to be honest I haven't tried it (yet) but the thing that got me excited, as said, it uses Ubuntu as the core + supports Gnome desktop only (both the classic and the new Shell). So basically if you (like me) happened to both hate and love Ubuntu at the same time then I'm pretty sure that could be the sort of a community that is building the Vanillux Linux at the moment.

According to their home page the aim is pretty much straight forward, quoting...

"Contrary to most other OS suppliers out there, our goal is not to take large amounts of market share; Our goal is to keep our users happy and involved, regardless of their numbers..."

Nice and clean Gnome 3 desktop...

Now they have a downloadable ISO images but according to themselves they are a bit troublesome at the moment. Because of a possible "bug" with the ubiquity (Ubuntu's installing wizard) if you use those ISO files you cannot install the OS into the HDD but since they're liveCDs you can enjoy experiencing the OS nonetheless.

By default it does not come with a lot of applications since again according to the developers own words...

"The basic Vanillux desktop is simple and only includes the basic to get you running..."

Although I'm not entirely sure about all the software packages and their version (as said I haven't used it) but you'll get ...

*. Gnome 3 as the primary desktop.

*. Also the classic Gnome version (for those of us with slower hardware, you ain't alone in that :D).

*. Chromium web browser rather than the Firefox.

*. VLC and another media player (so that we can run proprietary codecs/files by default, man what A relief!)...

If you want to get more software such as LibreOffice and Flash, etc for the Vanillux OS then you can do so by using their online repositories. As said the LiveCD version does not let you install it because of a bug.

But if you want to install it permanently then you'll have to install the most basic version of Ubuntu using the minimal installation CD and then (make sure you have a faster Internet connection) after the installation issue the below command in the Command-line environment.

wget http://dl.vanillux.org/ubuntu-vanillux/vanillux-install.sh && chmod +x vanillux-install.sh && sudo ./vanillux-install.sh

This script, according to their wikipage is designed to automatically install the Vanillux graphical desktop and the applications. So all you gotta do is just run the script. Other things like System requirements are unknown (I didn't find them on the site) but they do have some nice screenshots at the moment. Although it would be nice that they could give the system requirements (I understand that it's might be too early for that but...).

But as a final note, it's no way in its final stages, only experimental at the moment so use it at your own risk. In the mean time if you want one of the most secure and stable GNU/Linux distributions but willing to let go of the need of having latest software versions, etc then I highly recommend the latest CentOS 6.0.

Anyhow, I'd like to wish good luck to the Vanillux developers one more time, Oh one more thing I almost forgot!. You can get the latest versions of the full ISO images from this FTP page. Good luck.

CentOS 6.0 Live CD/DVD Editions are Finally Released!

For those of you don't know, CentOS is a GNU/Linux distribution that's based on the RedHat Enterprise Linux. Just like with RHCL, CentOS is also well known for being painfully slow to release new versions where most other GNU/Linux distributions give away new versions about ever 6-10 months.

CentOS on the other hand do a lot of testing for their packages thus even when they release a new version the packages may not have their latest versions nor features. But the rest assured, if you want a highly stable, less crashing secure operating system (say for our server), then this is one heck of an OS and I don't think there are that many who can compete against it either!.

Anyhow, after a long pause few weeks ago (2) they released the CentOS 6.0. It's available for both 32bit/64bit architectures but at that time there was no Live CD or DVD available for the users. But few hours ago (yesterday) they finally announced the official availability of the CentOS 6.0 Live CD/DVD!.

The Non-LiveCD CentOS 6.0 desktop...

In general this is only the LiveCD edition thus no new packages nor versions are included.

Main features of the 6.0 version ...

*. GNU/Linux Kernel 2.6.32.

*. Gnome 2.28.2 (Yup no Gnome 3 and if it's ever gonna get into CentOS that would be after a long time from today :D).

*. Mozilla Firefox 3.6.9 (Forget about Firefox 5 but not even Firefox 4).

*. Thunderbird 3.1.3.

*. Gimp 2.6.9... just a few to mention.

It comes with both CD and DVD versions. So if you want all the packages then you should go for the LiveDVD since they've stated that because of the lack of space, some of the apps are missing in the CD version. You can download CentOS 6.0 Live media from this official release page. And if you're looking for a review, then Igor Ljubuncic at dedoimedo.com has a excellent one as always. Good luck.