My Ubuntu Blog

Debian’s latest stable release Lenny arrived on Valentine’s day. Previously, I installed Debian using the net-install CD. This time Debian has made it easier, now you can download a single CD and install a fully functional Debian GNU linux with Gnome Desktop Environment. This CD or DVD is the first CD or DVD in the set. Debian Lenny is very easy to install in both text mode or a Graphical installer. The disk partition portion of the graphical installer was a little difficult for me to get familiar with but after a little difficulty I finally got it working. After that installation went smooth, it automatically detected all hardware and Internet settings and I logged into the same old Gnome desktop.

But the system you log on after the installation is very basic. It has two web browsers Epiphany and IceWeasel but it does not have Synaptic package manager. I am comfortable using apt but I prefer synaptic because I am lazy. This single CD install method does not install Open Office and Gimp. I decided to download the software I needed. But when I tried to install them from root terminal I got errors. After some troubleshooting I found that Lenny’s graphical installer installs packages not from the latest stable release but from debian-volatile. What is Volatile?

Some packages aim at fast moving targets, such as spam filtering and virus scanning, and even when using updated data patterns, they do not really work for the full time of a stable release. The main goal of volatile is allowing system administrators to update their systems in a nice, consistent way, without getting the drawbacks of using unstable, even without getting the drawbacks for the selected packages. So debian-volatile will only contain changes to stable programs that are necessary to keep them functional.

After changing the sources.list I installed Synaptic package manager and after that I will make a list of software I need to install. I will be downloading VLC media player, Urdu fonts, Pidgin, Gimp and Open Office. I am also thinking about installing Firefox but I am not too sure about it. I feel that Firefox is no more a lightweight web browser. It is heavy, slow and does not match the Desktop environment. I am forcing myself to like Epiphany web browser.

If you are an Ubuntu user trying Lenny, then remember that Debian uses a package called locales for dealing with National or native language support. If you did not add your language during the installation then you can run dpkg-reconfigure locales from root terminal to reconfigure locales.

If you are trying to write in Urdu language on Debian lenny and characters do not join correctly then you should replace the default Urdu keyboard layout ‘pk’ (found in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ ) with this one. I have filed a bug report for this error and hope it will get fixed.

I also tried LXDE on Debian and I am very excited about testing it on an old computer.

I am excited all over again on the new release of Ubuntu. Expected to be released next month but the beta version is currently availabe for download. It has:

• Firefox 2.0 RC 1 (code named: Bon Echo):
  • New Theme (Tangerine) and user interface have been updated to improve usability.
  • It has inline spell check support in web forms.
  • You can now restore session that crashed.
  • Bebuilt in phishing protection, Phishing Protection warns users when they encounter suspected Web forgeries, and offers to return the user to their home page. Phishing Protection is turned on by default, and works by checking sites against either a local or online list of known phishing sites. This list is automatically downloaded and regularly updated when the Phishing Protection feature is enabled.
  • Enhanced search engine management with built in OpenSearch support
  • Improved tab support: By default, Firefox will open links in new tabs instead of new windows. Each tab will now have a close tab button and users who open more tabs than can fit in a single window will see arrows on the left and right side of the tab strip. Epiphany had these features since some time now. and I found them very useful. History menu will keep a list of recently closed tabs, and a shortcut lets users quickly re-open an accidentally closed tab.
  • Improved support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds.
• GNOME 2.16: I am currently using Gnome 2.14.3, so I checked out whats new in Gnome.
  • Laptop support has improved with the integration of power management support. Since I don’t use a laptop so I don’t think that this tool would benefit me anyways. But it is quite obvious that it is going to help lots of other users.
  • A new utility Baobab now displays Disk usage, available free space and other useful information about your hard disks. Particularly useful for me.
  • Totem has new support for reading and writing XSPF playlists, an open standard allowing people to share playlists.
  • You can now preview a screensaver in fullscreen. Just a few days ago I was showing screensavers to my younger brother we talked about this feature and now it is made available.
  • You can now also use Reminder Notes from existing GroupWise accounts by using Evolution. I don’t use Evolution, I use Thunderbird + Gmail.
  • Improvements in menus, graphics and eye candy.
• OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 RC 2: I checked OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 RC 2, OpenOffice.org says “The software is not recommended for production deployment at this stage.” I am sure that Ubuntu maintainers had some solid reasons for this upgrade. Ubuntu Edgy Beta’s release notes mention this upgrade as “This is mostly a security and bugfix release, dealing with specific issues regarding sandboxing of Java applets and macros.”
• F-spot has replaced gthumb. F-spot allows easy tagging, editing and uploading to various online photo websites, including Flickr. Hence, making the photo sharing easier.
• Faster Boot and shut down with new Upstart – init. On my machine Ubuntu shut downs quickly but it takes a long time to boot. I have tried many solutions to improve this but still it is not fast enough.

Support forums and Ubuntu Wiki are full of articles to help out people using Ubuntu Dapper on older machines. I am using Ubuntu Dapper with a 800 MHZ processor and 256 MB of RAM. Ubuntu runs well on my system it is not slower than my previous operating system (Windows XP) at least. But there are some tweaks that I made to make Ubuntu faster and more responsive. There is no scripting or writing difficult to understand commands in the shell involved in these tweaks and these minor tricks has improved performance of Ubuntu on my computer significantly.

1. I added a 280 MB of swap space during the installation. I had more disk space but I found that adding a big Swap space could have an inverse effect.
2. I use themes that use less cpu resources. I use customized Clearlooks theme, with atlanta window border and gnome icons.
3. I have stopped icons to appear in menus, to do that go to System -> Preferences -> Menus and toolbars uncheck “Show icons in menus” option and select ‘Text only’ in Toolbar button labels dropdown menu. Doing so I am not able to view icons but it improves overall system performance.
4. I have also made changes under Preferences in Nautilus. To do that open any location using Nautilus, go to Edit -> Preferences, in the view tab select List view as Default view instead of icon view. In the Preview tab I select never for all options. It stops nautilus to generate previews of files which saves time and makes nautilus even faster.
5. Instead of Gedit, I use mousepad which is similar to MS notepad. Mousepad lacks certain features such as syntax highlighting, tabs, spell check, etc. But this doesn’t mean that it is any less capable of handling files.
6. Right now I am having trouble with web browsers. I can not just settle on one. Firefox on my computer is terribly slow and I am developing a taste for Epiphany which is faster than Firefox but lacks certain features.
7. There are many other settings that one can change to make Gnome faster using Gnome Configuration Editor. For more information check out Improving Performance and Using Gconf sections in Gnome 2.14 Desktop System Administration Guide.
8. These guides also come with default Ubuntu Dapper installation available under System -> Help -> System Documentation but then again Yelp the Gnome help browser loads like a turtle. I would instead read the same pages on my web browser either from my hard disk or on the web.

The only thing which is troubling me with Dapper is some bug with Firefox and Thunderbird. I check many Urdu websites each day, particularly blogs and BBC Urdu. There are two most popular Urdu fonts Nafees Web Naskh and Urdu Naskh Asiatype. Unfortunately Firefox, Thunderbird and Epiphany are unable to display these fonts. Instead pages are displayed first in sans-serif and after installing Tahoma, pages start appearing in Tahoma.

I tried my best to resolve this issue but nothing worked out. I filed a bug report and a support request (both unanswered till yet). If any one of you is facing this bug please add your comments on either my bug report or support request.

Konqueror and Galeon are two browsers that render web pages properly. Konqueror is just too advance for me. I liked Galeon which is simple and good. I still have to figure out some way to use alternate application for mail and news reader.

I am now a regular visitor to Ubuntu forums. I find it very exciting to learn the great things I can do with my free Operating system. Few days ago I came across this poll.

What do Ubuntu users feel should be the default web browser in Dapper?

• Epiphany
• Firefox
• Opera

Before switching to Ubuntu/Linux I was already using Firefox on Windows XP. So it was nice to see the same thing in Ubuntu and it never occured to me that I should consider using other browsers like Epiphany, Galeon, etc. Opera was out of question as I used it with Windows and didn’t like it.

After installing Epiphany and Galeon, I launched Epiphany first. Since I had already read the forums so I had a little idea of Epiphany in my mind, but it surprised me. It looks like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, just a little more cute and simple than Internet Explorer. It has cute large icons, a very simple interface and it is easy on eyes. This was my first impression of Epiphany. I typed in a random URI and it loads pages quickly.

It has an Up button which takes you to parent folder of the web directory you are currently viewing. For example if you are viewing http://www.example.com/2006/04/page.html the Up button can take you to :

http://www.example.com/2006/04/

http://www.example.com/2006/

http://www.example.com/

I liked this feature but it doesn’t show up by default you will have to add it from Edit > Toolbar or you can use it from Go menu. Epiphany doesn’t show the little orange icon in the status bar to indicate that the page displayed has RSS feed(s) to offer. Firefox has this little utility which saves time when you want to bookmark an RSS feed. Epiphany also has some problem displaying Urdu unicode text which firefox displays perfectly but Epiphany displays these pages in default fonts not the fonts specified in stylesheets. I know there must be some help available to solve this issue but since my daily browsing includes many pages written in Urdu unicode text so Epiphany is not useful out of the box for me.

Apart from discussion on Ubuntu Forums I found this article from Newsforge it was published some two years back. Epiphany is still not getting approval from Gnome Desktop users.

Tags: ubuntu, firefox, epiphany, gnome, linux