Showing headlines posted by kiterunner

'Attention to detail' or 'enhanced UI experience' are not the kind of terminologies normally used in the Linux world. At least, that is how it used to be. It's all changing now. KDE 4.0 is a typical example. Developers completely revamped KDE from scratch and gave it a uniform user friendly appearance. Canonical's flagship Ubuntu is the next candidate. A lot of changes already happening and a ton of innovations are in the pipeline.

I have upgraded my Ubuntu 10.04 to Ubuntu 10.10 beta. Chromium Web Browser was the first thing I installed in my new upgraded Ubuntu 10.10. When I finally launched Chromium, it had a small surprise in store for me. Chromium prompted me with a choice of popular search engines I could use.

Songbird Music Player was among the most beloved Open Source project and it still is for many, except for Linux users. Songbird is still open source, but developers behind Songbird have decided to discontinue support for Linux and the concentrate on Mac and Windows versions of Songbird. Nightingale is a Songbird fork which is undergoing rapid development and is pitched to become the Songbird alternative for Linux users.

Equinox GTK Theme + Faenza Icon Sets are probably the best combination of themes I have ever found for my Ubuntu. Last day, I was doing my regular repository update when I noticed some new Equinox packages. Two new themes were introduced by Equinox team and the whole package keeps getting better.

Valve is all too familiar with gaming folks out there. They are the guys behind the awesome STEAM online gaming platform. They were in a bit of controversy recently when they denied all reports of a Linux version of their famous online gaming platform. But once again, Valve is in the news.

Not many mainstream PC manufacturers have a Linux preinstalled version of their products. But some do have and the there are many other not-so-mainstream providers of Linux preinstalled laptops, netbooks and PC's. Here are a few of them you should know.

Firefox 4.0 is probably going to be one among the most important release Mozilla team has ever made. Competition is breathing down its neck like never before. Even IE, in its latest avatar(read IE9) is fast becoming a better piece of software. Mozilla's answer to all this is the upcoming Firefox 4.0. Already a lot of improvements have been made. But the biggest change is going to be the the new JavaScript engine called “JaegerMonkey”.

Think you all knew this already, the c-korn/vlc ppa has been removed by the author himself. You can't live without PPAs in Ubuntu especially for most downloaded apps like VLC. Guys at LFFL have made a dedicated PPA for VLC. I just gave it a try and it worked awesome.

"Your mother was right, it's better to share", that's the tagline of one of those awesome RedHat commercials that we featured some time ago. The idea of sharing is infectious and is fast spreading. Take Apertus for example, a project aimed at building an Cinema Camera based on the idea of sharing and mutual respect(read Open Source).

Ubuntu Software Center is something we all overlooked for long. Even while writing tutorials about installing different applications in this blog, I prefer to provide command line instructions only. But a lot of Ubuntu users are new comers and Software Center means a lot to them. Ubuntu is gradually waking up to this fact and have finally started focusing on bringing a lot of polish and usability to Software Center.

After browsing through LinApp website for sometime, I was awed by the sheer number of commercial applications available for Linux. Never in my wildest of imaginations did I thought that, this many number of commercial applications ever existed for Linux. And I think thats exactly the point. Thats why LinApp is here.

I hope you guys do remember the awesome little preview application called Globus Preview. Here is another beautiful application from the same team. It's called CoverGloobus. It displays cover art and lyrics in your desktop and it supports almost all popular linux media players.

As I have said before, I started searching for top 10 xkcd comics initially but ended up with nearly 20 of them. So here is the part-2 of my favorite 10 xkcd comics. Between, don't miss top 10 xkcd comics part-1.

Ubuntu is already the most popular Linux distribution and probably the first ever Linux distro to overshoot popularity of Linux itself. Now, what Ubuntu needs is a lot of promotional activism from the community. Here is a few Ubuntu adverts from YouTube that I hope will inspire designers among you to get up and start working.

GNOME Shell is a component of GNOME 3.0, the next generation of the GNOME desktop environment scheduled for release in March 2011. We did introduced Sonar, Elementary and Ambiance GNOME Shell themes before and we have one more to showcase, Equinox GNOME Shell theme.

According to Fortune, Open Source is slowly gaining acceptance in the corporate world. More and more corporates are beginning to see the merits of Open Source and have started embracing it. But all these changes didn't happened overnight. It was rather a painful journey. 'Sharing' was never a good thing for Corporates until recently. These changes were largely brought about by a string of Open Source success stories that happened over the years.

Ubuntu Artwork Pool in Flickr is buzzing with activity once again. With the release date of Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick getting nearer everyday, the submissions onto Ubuntu Artwork Pool in Flickr keeps piling on. Here are a few of those wallpapers that I think, are worth mentioning. Click on the links provided to get wallpapers with different resolutions.

We introduced to you guys probably the best combination of gtk theme and icon set for Ubuntu/Gnome[Equinox gtk theme + Faenza icon theme]. Now take a look at Awoken icon theme. I won't say it is better than Faenza icon theme, but it is almost as good.

After 2 long years, Google finally releases Google Voice and Video Chat for Linux err.. not entirely though. Only a DEB package is available now. And hence only Debian based distros like Ubuntu can enjoy the merits of these changes for now.

Microsoft Windows comes pre installed with hardware in most of the cases and hence a vast majority of Windows users probably have't ever seen Windows installer. But that is not the case with Ubuntu. Only a handful of manufacturers sell pre installed Ubuntu hardware and hence the need for down to earth simple and eyecandy Installer. Take a look at the proposed changes with Ubuntu 10.10 'Maverick Meerkat' Installer.