Maroon will save us

Turns out Popeye is the guy from the Ubuntu UK Linux Podcast and not somebody at Canonical. Sorry Popeye, had you confused with a Shuttleworth minion for a brief while. Waking up to the new reality -- Ubuntu has a new crappy logo or the old one got bent out of shape after a tussle between Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds  isn't as bad as it seems. The reason is the leap of faith necessary to become the world's first Maroon distribution!

There I was thinking black was out and Ubuntu was not only on weightwatchers but into Fanta Orange and Orange Tang in a big way, when along comes Fanta Grape, no kidding. Designer Chris Jones has a bubbly method in his soda madness.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="473" caption="A Maroon-ish boot screen with the logo bolded."][/caption]

Chris, I  love the  new Maroon aka Aubergine CD cover, wallpapers and boot screen, but can't say I'm mad about the emerging Lucid Gold and Charcoal themes in combination but don't quote me, I could be wrong, more detail and the new Murrine engine could make a huge difference if we get the shading right. Word of advice - stay away from Gold, Greysville is a lot better than Yellow. In other words, lets have a Snow Leopard Lynx option even if it kills us.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="606" caption="CD Concept - The Orange Tang is almost palatable next to a Maroon cover"][/caption]

Lucid = Light = Less Relevent?

[caption id="attachment_1230" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Controversial choice for new logo"][/caption]

While some people might associate Lucid with Clarity or Lucid as in Lucid Dreams, the folks at Canonical, Ubuntu's sponsor, seem to be going a little overboard on the lightness metaphor.

Is Canonical creating a new generic "corporate identity" for Ubuntu inspired by light, as in Coke lite?

It had to happen I guess, what with the recent Canonical shake-up. IMHO the new thinner Ubuntu logo looks a lot like cheap corporate stationary and less like the fatter and blacker Linux distribution we all love.

Has Ubuntu as in " Linux for Human Beings" been put on a diet  by designer Chris Jones  Are we about to see NoFuntu Fanta -- Linux for Carbonated Soda Drinks? If  Ubuntu is a soft-drink it really deserves more CO2 bubbles.

I don't get  the reasoning by Jones for not being uniquely relevant anymore: "Ubuntu is six, we have to stop playing with our crayons and grow up" is a piece of schtick if ever I saw one. "Playing with Ubuntu" is precisely why people turn to Ubuntu as an alternative OS. Goodness, do we all now have to fit everything into an Oracle Office vision of the world, in which nothing but productive clones exist, without any life purpose except to go to work?

Whatever happened to being human? Or being African and wholesome? Both black and brown are being  jettisoned, as we speak, in favour of outrageously unfashionable White and Orange.

Really now, the 1970s Orange Tang is so overdone as a design statement over the past decade, one might as well conceive of an OS from the Orange Free State or the former Transvaal. Think Cheesy as in sleazy. What next, fur on the desktop? Pimping Ubuntu is pretty sick, I guess.  I really hope the folks at Canonical wake up before they forget: Ubuntu will always be  a Community distribution based on Freedom, the four freedoms to be exact. Also Nelson Mandela's Principle Number 1. Which is why Orange is the one crayon you have to be careful with. Black, Grey, Red, anything but the Big O on its own. As for the typface, you heard write, it's a disaster from a monitor screen point of view, which is why I predict, those funky new letters will fatten up as practical issues such as visibility come into play.

Colours come and go, the typeface which made Ubuntu totally unique is an example of the playfulness in which the original design team appropriated pop-art with a style that will outlive today's horrible thinness. In six-months nobody will remember the exact point size of the redesign. They will remember only that it was thin as opposed to fat and that fat always comes back, no matter what diet you on.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Alternative thin but still black choice"][/caption]

Install Microsoft theme packs in Ubuntu

If you pining away for those gob-smacking Windows 7 theme wallpapers, here is how to install them in Ubuntu

1. Download any one of the theme packs from Microsoft

2.Install p7zip-full via Synaptic

3. Change the .theme extension to .7z and open with archive manager by right-clicking on the file

4. Extract the wallpapers and install via Appearance Preferences

If you really need to get the wallpaper to change automatically every so often, be a devil and install Wallpaper Tray.

While you at it, you may as well change the Xsplash background picture.

Here’s how:

Installing  Xsplash-Background-Settings will allow you to choose one of your new wallpapers as the background. No more gloomy Ubuntu.

Add Xsplash-Background-Settings ppa

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/meerkat/stable/ubuntu karmic main

apt-get update

apt-get install xsplash-background-settings

The programe will ask you to paste a piece of code in a terminal to change the permissions on the xsplash folder. Do it.

Windows 7 conversion to Ubuntu

I'm busy writing this as the Ubuntu installer is doing what it was designed to do,  deleting an installation of Windows 7 on a newish Samsung laptop. A close friend of mine is all fired up about Ubuntu and I guess there are going to be some comparisons to be made, after persuading him that having one installation ( as opposed to duel-booting) is the only sane way to go (No sense in having Windows AND Ubuntu problems, and if you have problems, let them be Ubuntu ones!). How does Ubuntu rate in terms of presentation?

Yes Windows 7 aside from the commercial excess and Microsoft cant, is a feisty thang indeed, a buxom blonde  whose features  stay with you for about a week or two, pity about the avaricious personality.

Yes, t'is not just the eye-candy, the OS is a beauty in the user interface department with some fine touches, like file previews in the taskbar, tool bars in the file manager, animations and system-wide sounds, which really all put KDE to shame.

There is no point in comparing Windows 7 to Gnome, so I won't even try. But the encounter with the dark side got me thinking:

We've really become too reliant on Compiz to save us at the end of the day. Enabling the default settings in Ubuntu just doesn't do it for the new user. One is expected to modify the system with Compiz-Config like every other LXER and isn't this the problem with taking the easy way out? More work for us?

There appears to be  no major design innovation occurring in the subtle world of Ubuntu graphics (aside from shifting things around and around). Also, absolutely nobody in the community is offering up overall system schemes to turn us all more productive creatures. (I know I sound like I'm about to sell my soul to a large corporation,. but stick with me)

I''ve harped on about this a few times in various forums:  The desktop computer is expected to function on so many levels. Daytime its an Office. Afterhours, its an Enterternment and Multimedia Hub. On Weekends it can go from Programming Interface to Gaming Centre in 0-5 seconds and nobody but nobody is offering us the kind of overall design solutions to make each of these unique activities stay in their rightful place. Perhaps Gnome-Shell will finally liberate us, but until then, we have a terrible mashup of all of the above. A desktop that is crippled by the demands of each sector of the community, as Ubuntu becomes the workhorse you toss around with no means of simply turning on the candy.

Ontop of this, the problem of too many candy options and not enough over-riding design statement. For example, have you tried flicking a switch and having Appearance Preferences, Compiz-Settings and System Sounds change to suit your mood? I know I can do it manually, but has anyone tried automating this and presenting us with the evidence of design statement that doesn't fall apart the next day when you have to pack everything away and go to work, WITH THE SAME BLOODY LAPTOP OR DESKTOP COMPUTER!!!!

Then again there are areas where we don't seem to have much of an option at present and maybe that is a good thing.

"What, you mean there are no sound themes to choose from and no wallpaper sets?" I can just imagine the sweat breaking out as my associate realises he will have to spend the rest of the week in an environment that:

A) Has no sound effects urging him to open and close nautilus windows

You can however download system sound themes which have this feature. Install as per instructions. To activate System > Preferences > Sound . Click on "enable window and button sounds"


B) No animations to waste time looking at while the nautilus file manager does its thing

C) No folder previews so that we can peak into media folders without having to open them.

[UPDATE:I guess this is a subset of the above issue, but the fix works nicely }



D) A Gnome menu that is decidedly outdated and difficult to edit.

E) Small scruffy icons which are hardly 3-dimensional and the complete opposite of the trend towards fat, or  icon is everything, started by Apple Iphone and now taken up to some degree by Windows 7.

F) No wallpaper sets (as opposed to single wallpapers) which are automatically cycled on login.

G) An upbeat login that matches the upbeat wallpaper.

If you feeling like a Grumpy Gnome, there is a quick method to rectify some of the Windows 7 design damage, well at least the last two points.

If you pining away for those gob-smacking Windows 7 theme wallpapers, here is how to install them in Ubuntu



[caption id="attachment_1155" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Hack Microsoft Theme Packs"][/caption]

1. Download any one of the theme packs from Microsoft

2.Install p7zip-full via Synaptic

3. Change the .theme extension to .7z and open with archive manager by right-clicking on the file

4. Extract the wallpapers and install via Appearance Preferences

If you really need to get the wallpaper to change automatically every so often, be a devil and install Wallpaper Tray.

And the coup 'd gras, change the bloody GDM background you doofus. Here's how:

Installing  Xsplash-Background-Settings will allow you to choose one of your new wallpapers as the background. No more gloomy Ubuntu.

Add Xsplash-Background-Settings ppa

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/meerkat/stable/ubuntu karmic main

apt-get update

apt-get install xsplash-background-settings

The programe will ask you to paste a piece of code in a terminal to change the permissions on the xsplash folder. Do it.

Flashcam with Adobe Flash support

If you want to get your webcam working with Adobe Flash, the Flashcam Project provides flash support for your hardware.

http://www.swift-tools.net/Flashcam/

Disabling Xv in video players

If you're like me and have an old laptop with an ancient video card you may find Movie Player quitting even with a new installation of Karmic.

All you need to do is disable Xv in your video players and use X11 instead. Its a bug in older GPU drivers causing this.

To do this for each of the main media players:

(helpful howto taken from here(clicky) (http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-513822.html))
GSTREAMER:
For Totem with the gstreamer backend (totem-gstreamer) open a terminal and type gstreamer-properties
Then click the Video tab and under Default Output select X Window System (No Xv) for the plugin. Then restart Totem. This will work for any video application that uses gstreamer as it's video backend.

MPLAYER:
If you use MPlayer (GMplayer) right-click on the screen and select Preferences then select the Video tab and under Available Drivers select X11 (XImage/Shm)
then restart MPlayer. The issue here is that it won't go fullscreen with the video. I suggest using VLC or totem-gstreamer.

XINE:
If you use Xine then go to File -> Configure -> Preferences.
(make sure under experience_level you select Master Of The Known Universe)
You will get a tab at the top for Video. Under driver select xshm. Then restart Xine. This also works if you are using the totem-xine backend. Just run gxine at the terminal and follow the steps.

VLC:
For VLC select Settings -> Preferences then in the bottom-right of the window check the Advanced Options box. Then expand the Video item on the left and select Output modules. Then in the list on the right for Video output module change it to X11 video output. Then restart VLC

Big Brover to the rescue

Definitely my favourite site of the week. Big Brover solved one of the nagging problems I experience  in Karmic - How to remove ppas that are installed via the new quicker method. That's right, they don't end up in ye olde sources.list and need special attention at the command line. Big Brover explains how to install ppa-purge, a utility which will regain control over your system.

http://bigbrovar.aoizora.org/index.php/2010/01/10/how-to-safely-remove-ppa-repository-from-ubuntu

Another post which caught my attention was A for Artha, the awesome offline dictionary for linux which is a great aid for Ubuntu users on low-bandwidth.