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31 October 2008

Debian OpenOffice Updates

This article has pointed out that there are some important updates for Debian OpenOffice users. It would appear there are 17 patches in total which effect Stable, unstable and experimental.

The above article details the flaws being fixed.

30 October 2008

Kubuntu 8.10 Is Out

Kubuntu

The latest incarnation of Kubuntu is now out and if you are really lucky you might find a mirror you can download it from. Or for those that want to do an upgrade of an existing system you should hit Alt-F2 and type ...

kdesudo "adept_manager --dist-upgrade"

This should open up Adept which should offer you an upgrade button.

Kubuntu has now switched to KDE 4. After playing with the previous release on Kermit my work laptop for some time I'll be interested in seeing what the new version is like. I have been meaning to blog about Debian Lenny which I have installed on my own Thinkpad which is brilliant. Kubuntu 8.04 had some silly little bugs which although not major really annoyed me. Things like Alt-F1 not working.

Anyway lets install and play.

28 October 2008

Denied By Reign - Jono's Album Is Out.

Anyone that has been involved within the Linux Community over the last 10 years will know of Jono Bacon. Ex-Kde hacker, Linux Format scribe and now Unbuntu Community Manager.

Jono has now released his first (metal) album and you can get it here. It is released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license which means that you can share, copy, remix the ablbum.

20 October 2008

Aaron Seigo On Another Podcast

Aaron Seigo is the guest on the current podcast at twit.tv/FLOSS.

This is not a podcast that I have come across before but Aaron is interesting as ever to listen to.

19 October 2008

Debain Lenny KDE 4.1.2 Backports Are Out

Just got back from a great week away with Lorraine and Bean on the Norfolk cost to see that KDE 4.1.2 is out for Lenny.

For those not in the know, Ana Beatriz Guerrero López one of the Debian KDE maintainers has been maintaining a site and repository of backports for KDE 4 for Lenny. The site is pretty basic but does detail how to install KDE 4 for Lenny and provides news of when the updates are out.

I would warn that the updates do take longer then say Kubuntu to be added (as in 4.1.1, 4.1.2 and as in they take a week or two not months) but then when they do appear they are rock solid and it is the work of a small group.

As far as I am concerned Debian KDE 4 rocks over Kubuntu.

9 October 2008

Gimp 2.6 And Visual Studio 2008.

Having downloaded and started playing with GIMP 2.6 on windows as part of the day job I have noticed a few new tricks.

The best of which is that you can now set GIMP to be your default graphic file handler in Visual Studio 2008. (I have tried this with previous versions of both GIMP and Visual Studio and it has never worked as expected. There may have been fixes or workarounds but life is too short!)

Simply right mouse click on a graphic file, select open with. In the dialog box that appears select Add and you will be able to set the path to the gimp-2.6.exe file and set a name that will be displayed in the available applications list that VS displays when you select open with. Once you have entered these click OK and click Set As Default. Now every time you open a graphics file it will load up into Gimp.

7 October 2008

Kubuntu 4.08 Adept-Notifer (Update Program)

Since updating Kubuntu to 4.1 I have been suffering a reoccurring problem with the update program that usually sits in the system tray.

Madberry.org a Kubuntu font of knowledge who's tips I regularly follow, recommended running the following from a terminal

adept_notifier

Which I have used in the past but now I have updated to 4.1.2 even that has stopped working. Now I'm left with running adept and using the "fetch updates" toolbar button. This is turn turns the above back on until I reboot.

If any one knows a straight fix..... please comment.

nobackup VIM Setting

Something I have meant to sort for a while is VIM leaving backup (swap) files littering my windows laptop.

set nobackup

Add this to the bottom of your ~/.vimrc and this will mean those backup files will be removed when you close the instance of VIM using the file.

A Week Of New Toys....

So what with KDE 4.1.2, Python 2.6 and now Mono 2.0 and a new free windows Rails environment this week is turning out to be the worst ever for bankers but the best ever for development geeks.

Ruby In Steel is a new free (for personal use) Ruby on Rails IDE based on Visual Studio 2008. Download the installer and it will set up a full environment including MySql and Rails. I have yet to try it but I have seen the commercial version which looked quite promising.

Mono is the other big release (so far) this week. Releasing version 2.0 they have added major support for lots of API's including ADO.Net 2, LINQ, Cairo and System.Drawing 2.0.

6 October 2008

KDE 4.1.2 Is Now Available.

KDE

KDE 4.1.2 (codenamed "Codename"). Is now out. This is later then planned but only by a couple of days (I believe the issue was caused by a misbehaving binary in 4.1.2 branch.

This is the second update to the 4.1 branch and includes only bug fixes (4.2 is in feature freeze I believe).

Anyway Kubuntu packages are out already although the backports for Debian Lenny normally take another week or more to make it out.

Changelog can be found here.

Download/Update and enjoy.

Python 2.6 Is Out.

Python v2.6 is now out and available for download.

The above link is to the official release page which has loads of links for downloads, changelogs etc.

3 October 2008

Linux Format - Meet The Team

The team at Linux Format are planning a meeting with readers of their fine magazine.

Details can be found here.

If you can get to the Bristol and Bath area then enjoy.

1 October 2008

GIMP 2.6 Is Out.

The GIMP, one of the great Open Source applications, has released version 2.6 today.

You can download it here and read the release notes here.

For a history of the GIMP (which is quite long) see here.

This version has numerous small fix's and changes but also brings in some quite big changes as well such as the early integration of the GEGL library.

The great thing about GIMP is the fact you can give it to a windows user and prove that OSS can be solid, fully functional and dependable. Since I started at Konetic the whole development team have adopted it to do all of our image work. Why?? Well I was able to sell it on the "oh no I don't use photoshop as I prefer the GIMP. Yes it is free!" angle. This usually hooks people. "Oh it's free well I'm sure it can't handle layers or mask's", "erm yes it can", "oh really??". I had that very conversation with a colleague just last week who has been using Corel draw for 10 years. He is now porting his work to Gimp.