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?

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

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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

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

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.

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!

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

Test install

1. Download the firefox-3.5.3.tar.bz2 file from www.mozilla.com
2. Extract the file by clicking on the file so that it opens in a new window, in the menu click on “extract” (just like a zip file)
3. Place the extracted Firefox catalogue where you want it, a tip is to place it in your home catalogue and rename it to .firefox3.5, this way it will be a “hidden” catalogue placed in the same place as all your other apps. To see your hidden files and folders in Nautilus, click on the view menu and check the show hidden files box (or simply press alt+h).
4. To start Firefox, go to the catalogue you installed and click on the file named “Firefox”
5. To create a shortcut in the menu, right click on the program menu < edit menu< new object and the path to “Firefox” /home/X/.firefox/firefox

Enjoy!

Upgrade to Firefox 3.5

I used the ubuntuzilla script to install the latest firefox version and the excellent guide from tombuntu. Easy and smooth!

Install flash player plugin in 64bit Ubuntu 9.04

To install the flash plugin on 64 bit Ubuntu, use the 32 bit version “install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz” that you can download from adobe. There are a 64bit version of flash player 10 available now, but it didnt work for me. I’ve read that it’s because Firefox is only available in 32-bit or can only use 32 bit plugins… I dont know its true but both flash and moonlight only worked in 32 bit versions for me.

To install the flashplayer

1. Download the “install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz”
2. Extract the file libflashplayer.so (Extract the file by clicking on the file so that it opens in a new window, in the menu click on “extract”) and
3. Copy the file in to the catalog /home/X/.mozilla/plugins, (X being your computer/home folder name). If you are new to Ubuntu: .mozilla is a hidden file, to see your hidden files and folders in Nautilus, click on the view menu and check the show hidden files box (or simply press alt+h).
4. To verify that the plugin works, open Firefox and write “about:plugins” in the adress bar, you should see the following result.

1.I started by making sure both computers are connected to my wireless netgear router

2. I then installed samba from program > add/remove software > samba

3. I then added smbfs from synaptic package manager system > administration > synaptic package manager > smbfs

(I dont know if I really need both samba and smbfs but after reading some forum posts I installed both and it does work…)

4. I then go to the folder I whant to share on the network, for example “pictures” in my home folder.

5. Mark the folder and right click and choose share options

6. I then choose to “Share this folder”

7. Repeat steps 1-4 on other computer(s)

8. Click on the menue Places > Network > Windows Network > WORKGROUP and here you should now find the connected computers!

This worked for me and was much more simple than I expected. I actually read alot before starting and almost gave up without even trying I also started by making the misstake and not share any folder before trying to connect to the network computers. A folder must be shared for the computer to show on the network, so make sure to share a folder on each computer!

I found the wallpaper here from the excellent blogg clububuntu.

I also use gdesklets that I have written aboute here, and the themes I have described how I installed/use to pimp my desktop.

The theme I use right now is a modified version of “DarkRoom”

Enjoy

My latest Desktop