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3 updates in Feisty : Xorg 7.2 , System menu , and Compiz!

* Xorg 7.2 made its way in Feisty.

* Finally the System menu is back to old style, and Alacarte was updated. This means you can choose if you want to see the control panel, or the old style cascading menu.

Just run alacare in a Terminal and:

The Control Panel may be nice feature for new users, but accessing the cascading menus is faster when you know what you want.

* And it looks like Compiz is in Ubuntu Feisty! It will Installed by default, but Not enabled by default. default, just have to go to System - Preferences - Desktop Effects to activate.

When every one thought it was going to be deferred, they surprised us.

2 little tips for Nautilus that may help you.

1- Nautilus Open Terminal

With this plugin you can open the folder you wish in nautilus using the right-click menu, just install the package nautilus-open-terminal .

2- Browse Nautilus has Root

I think this is self explanatory, to browse files and folder having root permissions.

gksudo gedit /usr/share/applications/Nautilus-root.desktop

and add:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Nautilus (Root)
Comment=Browse the filesystem with the file manager has root
Exec=gksudo “nautilus –browser %U”
Icon=file-manager
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Application;System;

Applications -> System Tools -> Nautilus (Root)

Hope they are usefull for you, they are for me

DRM is being talked about in many blogs lately, it is a actual discussion theme.

Today I was watching in BBC World the Click Online (Click explains the latest developments in the world of technology. The team review the latest gadgets and major tech news.) and I enjoy it. Today they talked about the DRM situation in the UK:

U.K. government rejects calls for DRM ban

The British government has rejected calls to put an end to digital rights management in the UK. 1,400 people signed a petition against DRM, which they argue unfairly restricts our ability to use media like downloaded music on different devices.

The government says DRM also enables content companies to offer us unprecedented choice in terms of how we consume content.

So why are some online music companys in Europe removing DRM from theyr media? For example the French VirginMega store is planning to offer 200,000 songs without DRM.

I’ll leave you a Portuguese project created to inform about DRM : http://drm-pt.info/

And a International Project : http://www.defectivebydesign.org (Thanks José for the Link)

Finally the day has arrived, NTFS-3G Stable Release is out!

http://www.ntfs-3g.org/releases.html

There are still some issues :

- access to encrypted files
- writing compressed files (reading is ok)
- change file ownership and access right

But the rest is fine. I’ve been using it for about 3 months and it’s rare to see an error, but nothing a Chkdisk wont fix. Development will continue, and only the best we can expect.

Honestly I dont think it should be in the next Ubuntu release, Feisty Fawn 7.04 , because of the issues I mentioned above, because a new user wont care about them and will try to do something, and my damage information. I would prefer to wait for development to work those issues out before being made default in a Distro.

-> For more Information see the FAQ .

-> Installing in Ubuntu : EN & PT

Just arrived home today and went to see the stats of my project GuiaUbuntuPT.org (Portuguese Ubuntu Guide) and i was suprised with one of the incoming links, it was fro m tek.sapo ( a news portal of tech stuff )

* http://tek.sapo.pt/4M1/723092.html

It was one of the Pages Of The Day.

Its nice to see other people talking about your work isn’t it

Ai isto de estar de ferias sabe mesmo bem, estava mesmo a precisar. Nao ter de me preocupar com nada, maravilha!

Desculpem a falta de acentos e afins, mas este teclado e estranho para mim.

PS: Estao 3 graus, e tou rodeado de neve

When i was complaining about gaim and aMsn in the Portuguese Ubuntu channel @ PTNET, and i was told about this client. I think aMsn is a bit heavy, and gaim hmm i just don’t like it.

emesene is an OS independent MSN Messenger client writen in python and GTK. The main idea is to make a client similar to the official MSN Messenger client but kepping it simple and with a nice GUI.

Its light, fast, supports nudging, “personal messages”, plugins (xmms, winamp, speeling, etc) but it doesn’t support file transfers and audio/video yet. but development is going so its just a matter of time i hope.

Some screeshots: (source : Projects Blog )

I’m using the SVN, but you can have it in tar.gz, rpm or deb, but they or a bit out-dated.

svn co https://emesene.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/emesene emesene

cd emesene/trunk/emesene/

sudo ./setup

This last step only creates a desktop shortcut ( I think ).

* Projects Blog : http://emesene-msn.blogspot.com/

Does this remind you of any country?

I’m back to Feisty, this time to show some of the new things

Boot Time

In Edgy my boot time is 33 seconds, and in Feisty it’s just the same, so in that area there are no changes that affect me. check the graph’s below.

If you wish to see your boot install the bootchart package, and go to /var/log/bootchart/

Easy Network Management

Feisty has Network Manager by default. Its a Gnome project to help connect to wireless networks and cable.

Easy Multimedia

One of the most frequent questions I see in the #Ubuntu channel (at PTNET) is about codecs, multimedia, etc. To help this, Ubuntu has a meta-package (in a simple way, this means that its a package which will install other packages) that will install almost everything you need to ear music, watch movies and internet pages that use flash or java.

To install this you have 2 ways, go to Add/Remove Applications and search for “ubuntu-restricted-extra”.

Or go to Synaptic and search for “ubuntu-restricted-extra”.

This does not install w32codecs or libxine-extracodecs. You can see below the list of software installed by “ubuntu-restricted-extras”.

The Control Center

This is one of the changes that might call more attention. In the early versions of Ubuntu like Dapper or Edgy, the System menu as a cascading structure for Preferences and Administration, in Feisty this does not happen. This 2 sub-menus were merged in to the Control Panel where you can access their tasks.

The control Center has two ways to limit the search for a specific task, you can search for it, of choose one of the Groups.

Its a nice feature, but i wish i add an option so i could use the old-style menus instead of the new ones, because for me they were faster.
Well, hope you like the info and the article, when new thinks appear I’ll talk about them.