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Saturday, March 1, 2008

Ubuntu and OS X Update

It's been while since I've posted an update on my conversion to Ubuntu and OS X so I wanted to share my progress.

Ubuntu:
I upgraded to 7.10 with no difficulty on my desktop machine. I've had no issues and my only complaint is the lack of a driver for my printer and webcam. Because I'm on the go this machine doesn't get a lot of use by me. At one point I loaned it to my parents when their motherboard went. I made a few quick changes to give it a more Windows look and feel so they could easily adjust. They said it worked great! I've been recommending Ubuntu to all my friends. I frequently have this conversation right after they tell me about all the problems they have with Vista.

Frequently Used Software:
･Word Processing / Work Productivity: OpenOffice works great!
･Browser: Firefox
･Music: I haven't found a single app. I'm using consistently. Suggestions welcome.

OS X:
I'm spending most of my time on my MacBook. (I'm sitting in a barber shop typing this post on it) I'm running 10.4.11 and thinking about upgrading to Leopard. Chris Hart of the Connecticut Macintosh Connection gave a good presentation on it last week. Yes, I attended my first Mac Users group meeting, let the Fanboy accusations fly.

Frequently Used Software:
･Word Processing / Work Productivity: NeoOffice is fantastic. Use it.
･Browser: Flock. It's based on Firefox but comes out of the box with lots of great features. A media bar shows my favorite Flickr tags and I can drag and drop photos to my friends on Facebook in the sidebar. (I haven't tested any other social networks)
･Music: Spotify. When I heard about Spotify my initial reaction was that I needed another music streaming service like I need a hole in my head. Then I tried it and my opinion changed. Most of the time I'm in front of my computer when I listen to music so it works fine for me. You can't move music from Spotify to any portable players. It's streaming only but the library of music is huge and the interface is clean. Spotify is still in private beta. Go sign up.
･Photos: Flickrbooth. It automatically uploads every photo taken with Photo Booth to my Flickr account. For me it's great because my 3 year old daughter loves to play with it and take photos of herself making silly faces. I can watch them roll in while I'm at work (errrr.....on break). I've read about cases where a laptop was stolen and they ended up with a nice stream of the thief in Flickr. I guess this could be considered a poor mans security device too!
･Security: Trucrypt. Good easy to use encryption program to keep your confidential documents safe. Like details of our next ...... never mind ;)
･Widgets: Airport Radar for displaying available wireless networks. Screenshot Plus for quick captures of the entire screen or a smaller desired area. IStat pro to monitor system performance.


Posted by Steve Ross on Technology
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You can run Spotify in Wine on Linux. It is quite tricky to get working. You need to replace the built-in codec in wine with one that works on Windows. It also crashes now and then. Some instructions are here:

https://beta.spotify.com/help/linux/

# 1 | Sent by: Jon Åslund – Monday, March 3, 2008 (00:33)

Music program for Ubuntu :
Xmms
Amarok
Rhythmbox

# 2 | Sent by: Joaquim – Monday, March 3, 2008 (00:46)

@Joaquim -
Thanks any suggestion of the three? I've found lots but nothing that I really love so far.

# 3 | Sent by: Steve.ross – Monday, March 3, 2008 (01:55)

Leopard and earlier has it's own screen capture keyboard shortcuts:
cmd-shift-3 captures the whole screen
cmd-shift-4 presents a cross-hair to click drag and release
Also when in this mode if you press the spacebar the cross-hair turns into a camera and if you move over any open window it will be highlighted even if it's behind another window, click the mouse and just that window is grabbed

# 4 | Sent by: Ian – Monday, March 3, 2008 (21:56)

I'm also running Ubuntu 7.10 and use Exaile for playing music. It's like Amarok (which is excellent) but for Gnome rather than KDE. Full featured and has plug-ins for some extras.

Songbird is also promising if you like iTunes but is not quite there yet for me.

Exaile is in the Universe repository

# 5 | Sent by: Mike Street – Thursday, March 20, 2008 (12:11)


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