Ubuntu Community Hub Proposal

Status Quo For over four years now, the Ubuntu Community Portal has been the ‘welcome mat’ for new people seeking to get involved in Ubuntu. In that time the site had seen some valuable but minor incremental changes; no major updates have occurred recently. I’d like us to fix this. We can also use this as an opportunity to improve our whole onboarding process. I’ve spent a chunk of time recently chatting with active members of the Ubuntu Community about the community itself. [Read More]

Ubuntu Artful Desktop July Shakedown

Ubuntu Artful Desktop July Shakedown We’re mid-way through the Ubuntu Artful development cycle, with the 17.10 release rapidly approaching on the horizon. Now is a great time to start exercising the new GNOME goodness that’s landed on our recent daily images! Please download the ISO, test it out on your own hardware, and file bugs where appropriate. If you’re lucky enough to find any new bugs, please tag them with ‘julyshakedown’, so we can easily find them from this testing session. [Read More]

Building Apps for Linux without Linux

It’s now super easy to build Linux software packages on your Windows laptop. No VM required, no need for remote Linux hosts. I spend a lot of my day talking to developers about their Linux software packaging woes. Many of them are using Linux desktops as their primary development platform. Some aren’t, and that’s their (or their employers) choice. For those developers who run Windows and want to target Linux for their applications, things just got a bit easier. [Read More]

OpenSpades Snap - pew pew

OpenSpades is a super-fun “Open-Source Voxel First Person Shooter”. I’ve been playing it for a while both on my GameOS desktop and under WINE on Linux. For whatever reason the upstream OpenSpades on github project had no Linux builds available for download, and I was lazy so I used WINE, which worked just fine. This weekend though I decided to fix that. So I made a snap of it and pushed it to the store. [Read More]

My Ubuntu 16.04 GNOME Setup

My Ubuntu 16.04 GNOME Setup This is a post for friends who saw my desktop screenshot and anyone else who likes Unity and is looking at alternatives. A big thanks to Stuart Langridge and Joey Sneddon whose linked posts inspired some of this. The recent news that upcoming versions of Ubuntu will use GNOME as the default desktop rather than Unity, made me take another look at the GNOME desktop [Read More]

Dell XPS 13 9360 Review

Dell XPS 13 9360 Review On the ‘Tasty Different Cow’ (don’t ask) episode of the Ubuntu Podcast - we reviewed the latest Dell XPS 13 9360 Laptop shipping with Ubuntu. Dell kindly sent us the review unit for a couple of weeks, and while we talked all about it on the podcast, I thought I’d jot some notes down here in case I missed anything or it’s not clear in the audio version. [Read More]

Migrating to a New Desktop PC

A little while ago I bought a Zoostorm PC from Ebuyer. It’s a farily basic (but powerful) i7 based system with 8GB RAM and a 1TB hard disk. This is to replace my older (but still fully working) Mesh PC. The newer one is more power efficient, quieter, a lot faster, and all Intel inside - the previous desktop was nVidia based. I wanted to migrate from the install on my old Mesh PC to a new clean install on the Zoostorm. [Read More]

Python 2d Physics Libraries

I’ve been playing with the python-elements but it seems like the project is dead. The upstream website has gone and the packages has had no updates for some time. I’d like to create a simple demo/game along the lines of some of the mini games you find in WarioWare on the Nintendo Wii. The Python Elements (and box2d) libraries seem to fit the bill but I don’t want to code using something that is going to disappear. [Read More]

HP ProLiant MicroServer Fun with Ubuntu

I recently took delivery of a new HP ProLiant MicroServer which I wanted to use for various small/home office server type tasks. It’s a cracking little server, ideal for small offices and home users who want a small, low-power server. With only one fan in the case it’s fairly quiet with most noise coming from the hard disk supplied, and any more you put in it. The reason I got it was because HP are currently giving £100 cash-back (until end of January 2011) on the ProLiant MicroServer. [Read More]

My Ubuntu Webcam Setup

For a few years I’ve owned a variety of webcams which I’ve used under Debian and Ubuntu on my desktop and laptop computers. As many others do, I’ve used them with the likes of Skype & Ekiga for video calls and camstream & guvcview for just capturing images. More often than not though, my webcam is pointing out into the garden, taking images and uploading them to my website. I frequently get asked how I set this up, so rather than explain lots of times, I figured I’d blog it. [Read More]

Ubuntu Spotted on Doctor Who Set

After watching the two Doctor Who Christmas episodes I thought I’d watch the ‘behind the scenes’ programme ‘Doctor Who Confidential’. During one segment where they discuss the set used in the Christmas episode I spotted a bunch of machines with what look like Ubuntu boot screens on them. If you’re in the UK (or have access to Freesat in Europe) you can see it on BBC HD at 16:55 on 3rd January, or on BBC Three at 04:10 on 5th January. [Read More]

Password reset policy

At work people often come up to my desk and ask if they can get their password reset. I usually do this and tell them their new password. I’ve decided I’m missing a trick here. What I now do is this. User: "Please reset my password" Me: "Sure" *tapety* *tap* *tap* Me: "Right, your password is 'ubuntu'" User: "Huh?" Me: "Here, take this, it will help you" I hand them an Ubuntu CD pack. [Read More]

Disk failure

As regular readers of my blog may recall, I recently gave my brother a PC running Ubuntu Linux. He uses it for surfing the web, getting email and chatting online. He also has an HP PSC 1610 printer/scanner/copier which works under Linux pretty well. He has a Dlink WAP/Modem/Router providing his ADSL connection via wired ethernet. I had a phone call from him a week or so ago telling me the PC was broken. [Read More]