Showing headlines posted by Steven_Rosenber

Ever since Ubuntu shipped its first long-term-support release, the 6.06 Dapper Drake (one of my all-time favorites by the way), the distro's LTS editions have enjoyed three years of support on the desktop and five years on the server. Now Canonical is extending desktop support for the upcoming 12.04 LTS (to be named Precise Pangolin) to a full five years on both the desktop and server, making the release that much more compelling for enterprise users and others (like myself) who might not necessarily stick with the release for the full five years but want the option of doing so.

ZDNet writer David Gerwitz is so fed up with the way his co-located Linux server responded to an upgrade (by not running) that he's made a huge deal out of giving up Linux for Windows. On a server. Fellow ZDNet writer and Linux partisan Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols (aka SJVN) wonders what all the shouting is about.

I decided to give the OpenShot video editor for Linux another try. Not entirely satisfied with my last effort in OpenShot, I wanted to try something else, and that something turned out to be Blender's Video Sequence Editor feature. That was a resounding failure. I had no idea how to do just about anything, and I find the Blender UI extremely uninviting.

I had to generate a report today, one that included a bunch of PDF documents, and I finally figured out how to import PDFs into LibreOffice (with the help of LO's PDF Import extension, which still appears to have Oracle's fingerprints all over it, by the way).

I don't have anything against Ubuntu 11.10, or the Unity interface. I might even like it. I'm getting so used to the way my Android phone works that I'm open to new desktop paradigms/metaphors.

The Make Tech Easier site offers a short post titled How to Build a Lightweight Linux for your Low-End Laptop on why and how to use Debian to set up an older laptop. I've used Debian many times to get old hardware running and, like the author of this entry, Joshua Price, I find the flexibility and lightness of Debian really helps the Linux distribution live up to its billing as "The Universal Operating System," which can run well on many different kinds (and eras) of hardware.

I like it when Jono Bacon, community manager for Ubuntu, can focus on the cool things the Linux distribution is doing and not just the problems with the project. Not that those problems should be ignored, but if Ubuntu doesn't have the goods, what's the point?

One of the main reasons not to run Debian Stable is that you have newer hardware that doesn't respond well to the older packages in the release. For those with Intel Sandy Bridge and other newer chips, the X server as it is packaged in Squeeze can be a problem, which can be solved by running Testing or Sid, or now with X in Squeeze Backports.

The Icedove (aka Thunderbird) mail client is back in the Debian Mozilla team APT archive. Mozilla.debian.net used to be the place to get a newer version of the Mozilla mail application for Debian, but Icedove disappeared from the archive for awhile when version 3.1 moved into Debian Backports proper.

I'm making a best effort to turn my Windows XP box at work into a usable system. I'm tired of lugging the laptop to the office, and I have neither desk space nor a network connection for it.

Buried in the late-June "Bits from the Release Team" minutes is the news that the Debian Project will aim for a time-based freeze for the next stable release, Wheezy. At the moment that date is June 2012.

I'm in the same situation now with Debian Squeeze that I was in back when Debian Lenny was the stable release: I can't think of a system that allows me to do so much, so efficiently and without trouble as Debian Stable. It works without complaint. And that means I work without complaint.

I'm calling this the 1.0 release of my Ode blog. I have all of Rob Reed's "extra" addins working (that's persistent-dating addin Indexette, web-editor addin EditEdit and the Disqus commenting addin).

Those who read my previous entry on this topic know that Service Pack 1 refused to install on the Windows 7 Home Premium portion of my Lenovo G555's hard drive. And it probably had something to do with my running Linux (specifically Debian Squeeze).

I've been hard on Ubuntu 10.04 over the life of the release. While the UI changes in 11.04 (GNOME giving way to Unity) are bigger, I thought the changes from 9.10 to 10.04 were too huge and unproven for an LTS release. My opinion was and is that 10.04 needed to be 9.10 with bug fixes and not a total reworking of the GNOME theme with buttons on the other side of the screen and lots of unproven, slightly broken Ubuntu-coded (or -ordered) enhancements.

Just when I'm thinking, "Windows sucks less than it used to," here I am with my dual-boot system -- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on one partition, Debian Squeeze 64-bit in LVM (with encrypted swap and home partitions) on another. Everything has worked well until the arrival of Service Pack 1. It just won't install. It won't install via the Windows Update mechanism. It won't install after downloading a 900 MB file. A 900 MB file. For a service pack. Let's ponder that for a minute.

This isn't a tutorial on how to install and run Dropbox in Linux without the GNOME desktop environment entirely. Instead it's a quick-and-dirty way for users who've already installed Dropbox in their GNOME-running Linux system to get Dropbox working when they're running a lighter window manager instead of the full GNOME desktop environment.

The versioning of Mozilla’s Firefox web browser, and the rebranded Iceweasel browser in Debian, going from 3.6.x to 4.x and now 5.x and 6.x has Linux users (and Debian users in particular) constantly messing with their sources to make sure they’ve got the version of Iceweasel they want. As I explain below, the Debian Mozilla team APT archive has got you covered. But first a little more informational whining.

I’ve added a few packages from Debian Backports related to LibreOffice to my Squeeze installation.

Mozilla has number-creep on the brain. After dealing with Firefox 3.6.17's abrupt end of life in favor of 4.0, and then 4.0's deprecation in favor of 5.0 (and yes, I had to change repositories every time because Linux in general and Debian in particular doesn't force new software on users), now I learn that Thunderbird is jumping from 3.1 to 5.0.