How to enable fn-hotkeys

Having problems with fn-hotkeys not working? It seem to be fairly common. I’m running Ubuntu 10.10 and have experienced this problem on my Dell Latitude E6400. This can be fixed by following this fairly simple guide, just copy paste the commands to the terminal window.

Skype available in Ubuntu – A sign of whats to come?

This is probably a sign of what is to come. Canonical is taking Linux to the next level (again). A major, closed software is distributed on an Linux platform – Ubuntu. Skype is now available in Ubuntu software centre, just search for “skype”. The logo is missing and there will probably come more information in the future, but its there:

Skype available in Ubuntu

There are rumours that Skype is open sourcing parts of the code (the API?). That would make it easier to integrate other services with Skype creating new cool and usable features and functions. Skype for Linux is still behind the Windows version, hopefully it will catch up soon, during the meantime you can install the “extra functionalities for Linux Skype client” from sky essentials, also available in the software centre, only four rows from the main Skype package.

A sign of the future?

I suspect we will soon see many more popular closed or semi closed Software’s made available in Ubuntu Software Centre. And I wouldn’t be surprised if we really soon can buy software from there as well. This would make Linux an commercially interesting platform for software vendors, assuring that more and more popular software’s are made available. Why is this good? Well then everyone hopefully can choose to run Ubuntu if they wish, not having to use something else because of some important software isn’t available. This can only be good, open software will still continue to rapidly grow and compete with the closed source. It also makes it possible to pay/subscribe/donate for open source software, speeding up the development even further and also changing the software landscape by introducing a new software genre, commercial open source!

I like this idea, Ubuntu available and usable for everyone. The missing link between closed hyper commercial software’s and the free and open source. This will also benefit “pure” free and open source Linux distros. What do you think?

Great blogs for Ubuntu users

I want to share some awesome blogs, great sources for tips, trix, reviews, gossip, rants and more.

OMG Ubuntu – Always with the lates news  from and about Ubuntu and Ubuntu apps.

Web up8

Around the web

Ubuntu Geek – Tutorials, how-tos and news

Canonical Blog – The official Ubuntu blog

Works with you

Make Tech Easier

Asus UL-30A with awesome battery life with Ubuntu

I have upgraded my computers lately, both at work and at home. I run Ubuntu on all of them and I thought I’d share my experience.

Battery run time

At home I have a Asus UL-30A 13″ laptop with a 8 cell battery with a advertised battery run time of 12 hours. Now, advertised battery run time isn’t the same as actual battery run time. According to tests with windows 7 the Asus runt about 9 hours, now Ubuntu is known to perform poorly in comparison with Win7 and battery run time. This is mainly due to that new laptops are optimized for Win7 and there are many new efficient power saving features.

My Asus UL-30A has a battery run time of about 8 hours with Ubuntu 10.04! That is more than I expected since I had read others claiming that it runs for about 6 hours. I use the computer mainly surfing the web with wireless, listening to music and watching online TV or Movies. I have full screen light and don’t use any special power saving options.

Hibernate/sleep on Asus UL30-A

The hibernate and sleep options work without any glitches or problems.

Web Camera & SD card reader

The web camera works out of the box. The camera isn’t the best but good enough for video chatting.  The picture gets upside down in Skype… So i guess there are still issues to iron out for Ubuntu.

The SD card reader works but he card needs to be in the reader during boot…

Performance

I haven’t run any tests, there are plenty of performance tests out there. Everything runs smooth, the computer feels fast and there are no issues to report.

Summary

I can recommend running Ubuntu on Asus UL-30A. Its fast, stable and beautiful!

Do you have any other experiences, please share your thoughts by commenting!

Read more:

• Laptopmag Test&review

Picasa 3.6 works fine on Ubuntu 9.10

The latest version for Linux is Picasa 3.0, and that suck since the latest version of Picasa is now 3.6 (for windows). This doesnt matter much though since the windows version works just fine on Ubuntu 9.10. This is how easy it is to install:

1. A prerequisite is to have Wine installed (Wine is a windows emulation layer that makes it possible to install some windows apps)

• I would suggest to install wine trough Ubuntu Tweak so that you get a PPA (software source) so that the program is updated with all the other softwares you have installed. Ubuntu tweak is awesome, it lets you install some restricted softwares that is not included in Ubuntus official repositories, it also let you to easily tweak Ubuntu settings. So if you dont allready have it installed, do it now! To install Ubuntu tweak just download and double click on the .deb file.

2. Download the Picasa 3.6 Windows version from the Picasa homepage (just make sure you download the Windows XP/Vista/7 version, you might automatically be sent to the Linux download page)

3. Click on the picasa36-setup.exe file and choose to open with Wine (usually you get the option when clicking on the file, if not right click on the file and choose open with wine…). You can also choose to write “wine /path/to/picasa36-setup.exe” in the terminal (change the path to the folder where you downloaded the file). I got an error message when installing but only skipped installing update.exe and everything is working fine!

4. Enjoy using Picasa

Picasa 3.6 in Ubuntu 9.10

Playing poker on Ubuntu, a test of poker clients!

I like to play poker once in a while. I havent played since I started using Ubuntu and soon realized that its not totally uncomplicated to know what poker client to choose. So far I have not found any poker client that run natively on Linux. This does however not mean that you cannot play poker on Linux.

I have made a small evaluation of 9 popular clients. I have tested the clients on my now quite old Acer Aspire 5020 that runs Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope and I have installed Wine 1.1.30. Wine lets you run Windows software (check out the app database) on other operating systems such as Linux/Ubuntu. With Wine, you can install and run these applications just like you would in Windows.

There are two ways of getting a poker client to work when using Linux/Ubuntu:

1. Using Wine – Several poker clients can be installed and run on wine.
2. Use a web browser based client that dont need to be downloaded and installed. How ever as my test clearly shows is that a browser based poker client. isnt OS independent and in some cases still only support Windows or Mac.

POKER ROOM	LINUX CLIENT	WIN CLIENT	WORK IN WINE	WEB CLIENT	WORK	GRADE	COMMENTS
Party poker	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	3	ok, its great that their web client support Linux! but they get a big minus for the fact that the win client dont even work on wine.
Poker Stars	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	4	Just download the win client and install in wine, its easy and works well!
bet365	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	4	Works on Wine but slightly unstable and no web client.
betfair	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	0	Unusable, Only support Win/Mac, also for web client.
Unibet	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	0	Nothing works here, only support Win/Mac, also for the web client.
Bet24	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	5	Only the Linux client is missing. Installs Adobe Air under Wine, Great look, fast, great client, great game. Definetly the best Ubuntu/Linux client out there!
Expekt	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	2.5	Installs and runs in Wine but is unstable. No web client and a unstable wine client takes down the score, otherwise a nice client.
Full tilt poker	No	Yes	Yes/No	No	No	2	Installs and runs but the text in dialogs where missing wich made it hard to setup and run. This might be due to individual settings!? Some tweeking might solve the problem.
bet888.com	No	Yes	Yes/No	Yes	No	1	Kinda works but is very unstable and slow. The web client dont either. I cant recommended this client.

How did I test the clients?

Checked out the websites for Linux supported clients and/or web clients. When there where no Linux client I installed the windows client on wine. I have signed up on all sites and tried to run the clients playing “free games”. I have not done any tweeks or changes to try to get a client to work. I’m a simple user and the whole idea is that it should just work! Please comment if you have another experience of any of the these or other clients in Ubuntu. I will play with the client that 1. have a Linux supported client or a working web client, or 2. has a client that works flawlessly on wine.

Conclusion

From my quick and simple evaluation I can conclude that I will use bet24′s poker client that has a working web client and that works great on Wine, I also like the look and feel of the client. As a backup I would play on Poker stars where the win client works fine on Wine, minus tough for the missing web client and not as nice looking client. I have also noticed that basically all platforms have clients for Win/Mac but dont even mention whether they do or dont run on Linux/Wine. Some poker rooms have a short FAQ entry but generally there is very poor information. The great exception is Party Poker that displays web client support for Linux on the front page banner! Thank you Party Poker!

bet24 poker client works like a charm on Ubuntu!

So my conclusion is simple, use bet24 for playing poker on Ubuntu/Linux, there you can use both the win client on wine and their web client! Good luck!

Interesting features in the next Ubuntu version 9.10 Karmic Koala

The next Ubuntu version of Ubuntu, version 9.10 (the nr 10 is for the release month) called Karmic Koala is to be released October 29th (keep track of new ubuntu releases in you gcal). This is a so called LTS (Long Term Support) release. There are alpha versions available now for the impatient.

I have until now been of the opition that the next release seem to become pretty lame, lacking any “big” or revolutionary features. As the list of features get clearer the more exited I become The news from OMG Ubuntu have made reconsider. There seem to be several interesting features in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala (for more information please read the excellent blog from OMG Ubuntu):

• The main features have from start been better cloud computing support and
• Improved Netbook remix editions for better utilisation of small screens etc

This is nice but not “killer” features for me personally, but here are some other new features to be exited about:

• The most exiting feature is a very tight integration with Wine
• A improved migration assistant
• Improved network manager
• Social network integration/notifier
• Integration with UbuntuOne – Canonical’s cloud storage service
• Flickr free startup with x-based start-up screen
• Support for running Android applications
• Only one admin/settings menu
• Faster bootup (the goal is under 25 sek)
• Replace add/remove with “Software store”
• New Grub botloader version
• Support for the new file format EXT 4
• Better development tools
• Maybe a new theme colour

More sources about the Karmic Koala

• OMG Ubuntu
  
• Web upd8
• ars technica
• reddit