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This is just an archive of previous work.

Can you give me a pirate copy of Ubuntu please?

Bootable Indaba Browser UbuProject

This is just to keep readers in the loop about my plans to create an Ubuntu distro that has a bootable Indaba browser session/cloud based upon Mozilla. Expected savings on CPU and RAM overhead are massive and in line with the WEB 3.0 Wave that Google is creating. Obviously, some of you might ask the question, why not a Google Chrome Project, well all good. You go out and do it. For now, I have not been able to get 64bit Chrome running with any success on my home distro which is Hardy 8.04.
--DRL

PS For you edification, my first sighting of Buddahbuntutonight.

Thoughts on the Google Chrome OS

Google recently announced the launch of their "Chrome OS". The Linux-based desktop has been available for at least a year (codename) but for now Google considers it an "Operating System" and according to their marketing machine it will "eat the PC, destroy Microsoft and make every other OS meaningless". The press love a good story about the world's Number One brand taking on Microsoft.

Will this effect the exponential growth of Ubuntu, the worlds most popular Linux distribution? I think not. More likely, Google Chrome will become just another desktop variant of Ubuntu and it is Ubuntu which is swallowing all other Linux distros, as the original Gnu-Hurd strategy unfurls. As far as real world computing goes, Ubuntu has the better metaphor. The Ubuntu default Gnome desktop however, is far from being the better desktop.  Competition in the Desktop environment has thankfully hotted up over the past months, so users can expect great advances in usability as well as Internet connectivity.

In fact 2009 could turn out to be the Year of the OS and 2010 the Year of the Desktop as Microsoft unveils Windows 7 and Ubuntu Karmic Koala hits the streets, now Google Chrome is also vying for our attention, alongside at least 20 other Linux-based desktops and 250 associated Linux "Operating systems".

Jubuntu = Ubuntu for "Jewish People"

I find the niche marketing of Ubuntu quite ridiculous sometimes. Of course, given the infinitely variable environment of Linux and the freedom of Ubuntu, there's always bound to be somebody who asks the question: "What if Ubuntu was more like ....."

Since there was an Ubuntu CE and an Ubuntu ME, why not an Ubuntu Zion? See the problem? So instead of the logical offering, we get a joke - Jubuntu.

Who is going to use anything so idiotically sounding? Maybe the same people who are touting Bubuntu (the black ubuntu) as if Ubuntu wasn't black to begin with? Okay, okay, I get the joke. I am a Jew after all. No need to Kibbitz about everything.

According to Launchpad, Jubuntu provides "Jewish people (and anyone else) with a light-hearted, welcoming version of Ubuntu with a focus on Jewish culture."

"Emphasis for Jubuntu is placed on cultural aspects of judaism (eating, family, guilt) rather than focusing religious or linguistic aspects of judaism. For example, themes revolving around bagels or "call your mother" reminders, rather than Torah scrolls and Talmudic references."

https://launchpad.net/jubuntu

UPDATE: Stumbled across two "official" looking websites. The first one http://www.jewbuntu.org/ is hilarious and says its just a joke. Second one, http://www.jewbuntu.com/ actually provides a download and has a much better looking logo.

I guess this means there really is a Jewish Deli Edition? An should we hold our thumbs and wait for Kabbalahabuntu with Zohar Code?

Firefox About:Config Hacks

A lifesaver. Most comprehensive posting I've seen on the subject.

http://jamsubuntu.blogspot.com/2008/09/firefox-aboutconfig-hacks.html

You can do the same for Mozilla Thunderbird

edit>preferences>advanced> config editor

In the Config Editor, search for “mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads” by typing it in at the top. When you see the preference, change the value from “True” to “False” by double-clicking on it, or by right clicking and changing the value. This will help you keep the threaded view stuck across the different sorting methods.

Clone your Ubuntu machine into abstraction

Work in Progress. This is an exercise. I make no claims as to the efficacy or safety of the advice. In fact, this tutorial is incomplete and should not be used under any circumstances. This is test of the early warning system. I repeat, a test.

Clone your Ubuntu machine into abstraction

This is not the same as backing up. Making a backup of anything in today's age of superfast Internet, quad-core processors and near unlimited storage space is old-fashioned. Trouble is, in the third world, we still have to deal with issues of bandwidth scarcity, lack of resource capacity and so on. Ordinary people can't backup everything, and even if they did, using any number of devices, Time Machine springs to mind, the system fails if your array is stolen, if there is a natural disaster, or if simply you run out of time. Result, no backup.

So there you sit without an exact replica of your machine. Next best thing is to reduce the sum of its parts, its totality into an abstraction, with a series of awkward maneouvres which might result in a recipe for a script which presumably could resurrect your machine from the dead.

If there was an abstraction tool, capable of cloning my machine, I would use it. As of now, there doesn't appear to be suh a device. So here is the beginning of a list of abstractions. Wish I had started out doing this to begin with, with a new installation, but with a bit of reverse engineering, I might end up with an exact replica, a clone of my own machine.

Backup Cycle

1. Backup MBR
Method One

2. Backup Grub

cp /boot/grub/menu.lst ~/new-location/menu.lst

2. Backup Software Sources

cp /etc/apt/sources.list ~/new-location/sources.list

3. Backup Markings File

4. Backup Settings.

5. Output list of installed applications
dpkg --get-selections > apps.txt

Clone Cycle

5. Author a distribution of your setup.

6. Reinstall applications from file list

dpkg --set-selections < apps.txt
dselect update
apt-get dselect-upgrade show

What have I forgotten? If you have any comments, or wish to contribute to this experiment, then please give a shout out, but under no circumstances, do I intend crashing my machine in order to find out if the plan works, at least not for now

My apps

My sources

My MBR

How to get beautiful Mac OSX quality fonts in Ubuntu

This posting from Oh my God, its still breathing, caught my attention. I haven't implemented it yet, not wanting to increase the RAM and CPU overhead on my already strained system. What is the pay-off? If you're typesetting, this could be a lifesaver, if you're just surfing, there is no real need to have every bell and whistle turned on. But nice  knowing it is possible. Also, anybody know what the Hardy Heron defaults are, or how to backup and reinstall the fontconfig safely? Methinks there is a lot more here than meets the eye, and somebody should write a nice fontconfig application -DRL

Smart autocompletion of BASH commands

I have been looking for a way to favourite my commands. Turning on Bash Smart autocompletion is a start. I found this posting at Ubuntu Blog:

The Bash shell has this sweet feature where you can use the TAB key to auto-complete certain things. For example, when I am in my home directory, the following command:

$cd Do[TAB-key]

will automatically yield:
$cd Documents

If you are an absolute novice, like I was, not so long ago, discovering tab completion in the terminal can make you go “Wow!”. Wait till you hear the rest now :)

Though you can use the TAB key to complete the names of files and directories, by default the completion is pretty “dumb”. If you have already typed $cd D you would expect that the tab key would cause only the directory names to be completed, but if I try it on my machine, the tab completion tool uses filenames too.

Now, don’t despair! There is now a smart bash tab completion trick you can use. Smart completion even complete the arguments to commands!!

To enable smart completion, edit your /etc/bash.bashrc file. Uncomment the following lines, by removing the # in the beginning of the lines:

#if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
# . /etc/bash_completion
#fi

Now you can use tab completion to power your way through commands.

You can even extend bash smart completion to your own favourite commands by using /etc/bash_completion, the “complete” utility and /etc/bash_completion.d . Explaining the nitty-gritty is beyond me. I refer you to the Debian Administration gurus for more information regarding smarter bash completion.

Thanks Carthik, I do believe this is the solution. First turn on smart autocompletion, check to see if your favourite commands autocomplete, and if not, then create a file containing these commands using the link provided.

UPDATE: Working with history in Bash

Nautilus subversion integration tool and a workbench

Found a cool Nautilus Subversion Integration tool that allows one to execute SVN commands using Gnome scripts.

sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions

Requires Zenity and Subversion.

Link to download the scripts

Also, found the SVN Workbench  from Tigris.org - Open Source Software Engineering Tools

sudo apt-get install python-svn

sudo apt-get install svn-workbench

Also a newer beta version of Nautilussvn which imitates TortoiseSVN on Windows.

Configure Pidgin to do almost anything

This is where I am putting configuration information for Pidgin

Configure for Google

Configure for Yahoo

Configure for Twitter

My one dollar contribution to FSF

It's the principle that matters. And if we can get our banking system to work, then we can make a lot more of a contribution in the future. So, my apologies for the inevitable bank charge but this is a dry run. My first contribution to the FSF -- DRL

Dear David Robert Lewis,

Thank you very much for your donation of $1.00, made on 2009-07-03.

We have successfully processed the payment. No goods or services were received in return for this donation.

The Free Software Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
organization, so your contribution is tax deductible in the
USA. Our Tax ID is 042-888-848.

Thank you for your support! If you have any questions about this
transaction, please contact us at .

Sincerely,

Deborah Nicholson
Membership Coordinator

Free Software Foundation Phone: (617)542-5942
51 Franklin Street, 5th Fl. Fax: (617)542-2652
Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA http://my.fsf.org

Some cool consoles for Ubuntu

After struggling with a number of consoles, all of which claimed to provide the drop-down "Quake" experience, I found Yeah Console, which does exactly what it promises, nothing more, nothing less. I was pleasantly surprised, even though the installation details are not what one could call smooth sailing. If you want to grab the console, you'll have to pop over to this page

While waiting for the release of Guake for Hardy Heron, I came across Tilda, which is another nifty console, that is less of a killer app, than a good excuse to play around with an alternative to the default. Good work people, keep up the pressure on Canonical, to develop even better terminals.

Instructions for setting up YeahConsole

First, it needs to run every time you log in. So, go to System > Preferences > Session, select Startup Programs, click Add, and add a new command, name "YeahConsole", command "yeahconsole". Next, it looks a bit rubbish when you start it up. Here's how bare-bones yeahconsole is: you configure it with X resources. Party like it's 1989! I had to go look up how to do this; for the more tender in years among us, X resources were a sort of central configuration for all your apps, round about the same time that humanity was fighting off sabre-toothed tigers and wondering whether that hot flamey thing in the corner could actually be useful. On Ubuntu, you need to edit (actually, you probably need to create) a file called .Xresources in your home folder*. In that file, you put the configuration for yeahconsole, like this:

yeahconsole*toggleKey: None+F2
yeahconsole*consoleHeight: 20
yeahconsole*aniDelay: 0
yeahconsole*stepSize: 10
yeahconsole*faceName: ProFontWindows:style=Regular
yeahconsole*faceSize: 9

The toggleKey one is the important one: it sets which key you use to summon the terminal. I like F2, myself, but pick whatever. What all this stuff means is documented in the man page (man yeahconsole), apart from which font to use. This is the faceName and faceSize options above, and here you have to delve a bit (I told you this was old-fashioned; I started writing a yeahconsole-properties configuration utility that did all this for you, but couldn't be bothered). In a terminal, run fc-list. This lists all the TrueType fonts that you can use in an xterm. Choose one, and put it in faceName above. Now, simply start yeahconsole for the first time (press Alt+F2, type yeahconsole), and then press F2 (or your key of choice). Pow, a dropdown terminal, like Tilda, but one that won't keep crashing and make you cry. One other thing: if you hit Ctrl-D to log out by mistake, it'll close yeahconsole (tilda did this too), and that's really irritating. To fix this, put the following in a file called bashloop in your home folder:

#!/bin/bash
while true; do bash; done

and change your Startup Programs command above to be yeahconsole -e /home/username/bashloop. Now Ctrl-D won't close yeahconsole.

PageUp and PageDown history search auto completion on the BASH shell

The Electric Toolbox has an excellent tip on enabling your BASH history page up and page down which is a simple task because Ubuntu already contains the definitions in the /etc/inputrc file, just commented out. Thanks for pointing out some of the power behind Ubuntu.

The file looks like this by default:

...
# mappings for "page up" and "page down" to step to the beginning/end
# of the history
"\e[5~": beginning-of-history
"\e[6~": end-of-history

# alternate mappings for "page up" and "page down" to search the history
# "\e[5~": history-search-backward
# "\e[6~": history-search-forward
...

So it's just a matter of commenting out the original definitions for "\e[5~" and "\e[6~" and uncommenting the ones for history-search-backward and history-search-forward like so:


# mappings for "page up" and "page down" to step to the beginning/end
# of the history
# "\e[5~": beginning-of-history
# "\e[6~": end-of-history

# alternate mappings for "page up" and "page down" to search the history
"\e[5~": history-search-backward
"\e[6~": history-search-forward


And that's all there is to it. You need to log out and log in again for the changes to take effect.

The above makes the change global in scope and affects all users on the system.

Please visit Electric Toolbox if you want more information on making changes only for your login.

Fastest PPA fixkey method yet

This is the fastest "safe" fixkey method around, since it does not involve aliasing which strictly speaking should be kept for shortening or modifying commands that you already have in your shell, nor does it update software sources, which can slow down valuable time, especially if you have a lot of them.

1. Create a new file named ‘fixkey’ at '/usr/bin' with your favorite text editor:

sudo gedit /usr/bin/fixkey

Then, paste this code:

#! /bin/bash
echo please input your key
read KEY
apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com $KEY

2. Give the file executable privileges with this command:

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/fixkey

3. Start fixing keys using the command line by typing ‘fixkey’ [wait for prompt] [key]. See example below:

fixkey

please input your key

XXXXXXXXXXX

5. You have just fixed a PPA key via the Linux command line!

Previous threads on this subject can be found here and here.

6. Now to fix the key for the chromium-daily ppa:

fixkey

please input your key


4E5E17B5

For a more inclusive but slower method of updating keys, you might like this script from Dominic Evans, which was first noted here. If you have a lot of keys that need to be updating then I suggest you use it, at least once.


If you like my method, please let me know.