Alex at ‘The tech and other cents’ has a great post titled “There’s more to Linux than Ubuntu“. He is worried that Ubuntu will overshadow Linux.
Debian Ubuntu – Webcam in Yahoo! Chatrooms
Recently my internet service provider gifted me a webcam. It is a Creative Vista Webcam and came with an installation disk for Windows. I wanted to see how it works on my Ubuntu Linux. When I plugged it in Ubuntu didn’t recognize it. I had to download drivers for it. Ubuntu’s community documentation’s Webcam page helped a lot. The EasyCam utility recognized my webcam but didn’t offer a driver for it. So I tried manual driver installation.
Rastageeks provides a hacked driver for webcams. My webcam was listed on the Working Webcams webpage. The installation instructions were simple, and since I was familiar with adding third party repositories I had no trouble installing the debian packages. Running the module assistant installed the driver on my computer and now I was able to see it working in Ekiga.
But I don’t use Ekiga, I use Yahoo! Messenger, so it has to work with Yahoo. We have Pidgin (Gaim) installed by default in Ubuntu. But it does not support Yahoo webcams. I have seen webcams working on Gyachi but I didn’t like its cluttered interface. So I decided to try Kopete. KDE Wiki has a very helpful Kopete Webcam Support page. From there I found out that I need to download libjasper-runtime package to see my webcam working. Jasper Runtime package is called libjasper-runtime and is available from Ubuntu Archives so it was much easier to download and install it. After that I ran Kopete and by clicking on Settings > Configure > Devices I was able to see my webcam working. Fantastic!
I was pleased with the picture quality. It was much better than Windows, and what I saw on Yahoo! messenger installed on my Windows PC. But unfortunately Kopete does not support Yahoo Public Chatrooms. So I had to try Gyachi again. While trying to Install Gyachi, I came across more dependency issues. But these were no big issues, I simply had to install two packages libgpgme11 and libmcrypt4. Finally getting Gyachi installed, this is what I got:
I browsed the forums to find out a solution, I read about adjusting brightness, contrast and colors. I did that too, but nothing worked. I am still unable to use the web cam in Yahoo chat rooms.
Gwget – Download Manager for Gnome
I still haven’t upgraded to Drapper, with my slow internet connection I was unable to download Dapper. So I ordered a Desktop CD from Shipit. Rechecking the Drapper Upgrade instructions again, I found that I will not be able to upgrade to Dapper using the Desktop CD. I will need Alternate CD to perform the upgrade and the only way to obtain this CD is by downloading the image file.
Firefox is unable to resume downloads so I needed a download manager. I quickly found Gwget the download manager for Gnome and installed it. I copied the link of Alternate CD and pasted it in Gwget and now as I write this post I have downloaded 58% of Alternate CD.
What I liked most about Gnome download manager is that it has powerful preferences option where one can setup proxy settings. I didn’t really need to setup proxy settings as the Gwget automatically used my default Gnome settings but I think all open source products must have this option. While downloading a file Gwget nicely displays progress of download. Enabling all columns in preferences I found that I can download this 700 MB file in a few days. I have also downloaded a few movie clips using Gwget and I am very happy that I found it. It would be unfair if I don’t mention Ubuntu Blog which helped me find this great tool.
Tags: gnome, ubuntu, linux, download manager
Upcoming Ubuntu Version
Jason Norwood-Young takes a first look at Ubuntu Dapper Drake Beta. Another noteworthy read is Jane Silber’s interview he gave to computer world Australia. I am quite excited about trying the new version of Ubuntu. With my limited bandwidth it is nearly impossible for me to download the beta versions. I am going to wait till the final release so that I can use Update Manager utility to upgrade my system.
Og Maciel expresses his desire to see Epiphany as the default browser with Gnome. He writes:
I could be wrong, but maybe all that it really need is a bit more love? Add a bit of “cosmetics†updates (a face-lift if you will) and some way to get to the more advanced properties for max tweakage et voilá! Sure I’m way out of my league here, but Epiphany, IMHO, has a lot of untapped potential!
I wrote about my experience with Epiphany and I do not agree with Og Maciel that it needs a face lift actually it is already looking as great as possible and lack of themes is not the reason why people prefer Firefox over Epiphany. I think it is lack of technical features that makes Firefox an ultimate choice. I think Firefox should have better integration with Gnome Desktop environment.
Pick Colors From Anywhere
There is a firefox extension called “Colorzilla“. I used this extension with Firefox in windows, but I am unable to get it work in Ubuntu. I needed a tool to pick up colors from other web pages, my own blog pages and images on the web. I can use Gimp for that but it takes some time to load, I needed a quick and handy solution for that.
I checked Add New Applications and found “KcolorChooser”, a utility which is part of KDE graphic utilities but you can install it on Gnome aswell. It comes with another utility called “Kcolor Edit” which is another great utility to replace and edit the color pallete. After downloading and installing these two tools I added Kcolor Chooser in my panel and now I can easily access it from anywhere and pick colors from any part of my computer screen.
Gedit vs Leafpad
Gedit is not notepad for Ubuntu Linux. It is a text editor which is not similar to the Microsoft window’s notepad. It is the official text editor of Gnome desktop environment and Ubuntu Breezy Badger. It has many great features that notepad lacks:
- Tabs, you can open multiple files in the same window using tabs. This feature adds great productivity to Gedit and makes it a great choice for people who work a lot on text files, HTML, css, php. etc. Switching between documents, saving and closing documents becomes a lot more convenient.
- Syntax highlighting C, C++, Java, HTML, XML, Python, Perl and many others.
- Spell Check
- Plugins
There is no doubt that developers made the perfect decision by making Gedit the default text editor in Ubuntu.
I used Gedit for a while but then I switched to leafpad which is another text editor which is a lot more similar to notepad. Unlike Gedit, leafpad is fast. Since I don’t work with many text files at once and I don’t work much with HTML, PHP, CSS, etc. So syntax highlighting is not necessary for me. As far as spell check is concerned I use blogger’s spell check interface for that. My needs gave leafpad an edge over the perfect choice that is Gedit and I switched. This is what I am loving about Linux, you can modify things to meet your needs.
Read The Manuals
Ubuntu Linux is very easy to use, it simply works. But I am new to Linux and I have no Idea why Linux is different or better than any other operating system. I also need to learn more about Ubuntu to further familiarize myself with the system I am using. I also need to learn how to do the same things in Open Office that I previously did in Microsoft Office.
I love Open Source because it makes me a part of a community. A community eager to help each other. There are lots of support options for almost every Open Source software. There are online forums, wikis, mailing lists, IRC channels and free manuals and books available on the web. I Googled for Linux, Ubuntu and Open Office and found these three great resources:
Tags: ubuntu, linux, open office
