Desktop Computing Made Easy...

One of the best how-to tutorials for getting the most out of your new Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) system that I have ever seen is posted here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1310795

Many thanks to TrakerJon for a fabulous post that will really help a lot of people. Enjoy!

Has the Koala got Karma? Experiences with Ubuntu 9.10

My experience so far with the latest (64 bit) version of Ubuntu, Karmic Koala (or 9.10 for those of you with a purely numerical bent) has been largely positive, but there are a few niggling annoyances. Having done a clean install on an AMD quad core machine with 4 GB RAM and NVidia graphics, I was gratified that the whole process took less than 30 minutes and booted with little fuss. The NVidia driver was easy to install and soon I had my desktop back with Compiz enabled and nice eye candy.

Then the crash reports started. I was told that my system had suffered from a major kernel problem and would probably need to be restarted to avoid instability. However, every time I did restart, the same crash report cropped up. Some Googling put my mind at rest - this is a known bug, and the system continues without crashing. However those new to Ubuntu or Linux may be very disturbed by these messages and Ubuntu should have done more to allay fears. I note that recent updates seem to have improved this problem, and maybe even fixed it.

I like the new Ubuntu Software Centre, though my experience of using it to install the Drivel Journal Editor was less than positive and I could not get it working at all (see post below). Gwibber 2 is an excellent Twitter client - though I am using TweetDeck on my MacBook and would like to use it under Ubuntu. Adobe Air does not work on my machine - though to be fair this would seem to be an Adobe problem rather than specifically Ubuntu. Evolution still has a nasty bug that vanishes all deleted items when expunging trash, while leaving the trash.

On the whole I like Karmic. It is fast, responsive, stable and clean. I have no hesitation in recommending it to people for business and home use. Technorati Tags: Karmic, Ubuntu 9.10, crash reports, bugs, 64 bit

Drivel Sucks, BloGTK waits, but Scribefire Rocks

Trying to get a decent blog editor working in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) has been hard work. The one that looks most promising on paper is Drivel - fully featured and supporting Blogger 1, 2 and Atom. It is also available in Karmic's repositories and can be installed from the new look Ubuntu Software Centre. Wow! Let's give it a go!

It fails to connect to Blogger2/Atom and segfaults with Blogger 1. Simply does not work. Nada. Nuffink. The version of BloGTK available in the repos does not support the titling of posts using Blogger. Version 2 will, I am reliably informed. I'm also informed that it crashes a good deal.

That leaves Scribefire - a clever and easy to use plugin for Firefox that allows you to post to your blogs directly from your browser. It is very nice and to prove it - this post!

Evolution Bug

Evolution is a great email client and PIM for the Linux platform - and may one day be a viable alternative to Outlook in Microsoft Office. But not now.

There is a bug in Evolution which causes all deleted items to disappear when expunging junk - and even worse, the junk in the junk folder stays there.

I have had my bacon saved many times by searching for mail in my deleted items folder, and the last thing in the world I wanted was for all my deleted mail to vanish. Checking on the web it seems that this bug has been known about for over 2 years. Nothing has been done about it and that is why Evolution can't compete with Outlook for business use.

Get it sorted, and push Linux forward.