Posts from May 2011

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Elementary music player ‘Beatbox’ adds PPA

If you've been dying to get your hands on a development release of the elementary projects' new music player 'BeatBox' then you're in luck - it now has its own development PPA for intrepid testers to try it out from.

22 May 2011

The Xtreamer Ultra HTPC may be powerful and cheap but runs a ‘refined’ version of Ubuntu styled like a Mac

Nothing screams 'win' like Ubuntu preinstalled on some sexy hardware. Sadly the Xtreamer Ultra, a relatively new HTPC from hardware manufacturer Xstreamer, manages to lose on both fronts. Aesthetically the device is a bit on the 'functional' side of style (it looks like a PS2 reimagined as a wireless router) and the Ubuntu 10.10-based OS it ships with is... well, we'll come to that...

22 May 2011
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Fifth alpha of warfare game ‘0. A.D.’ introduces Iberians, new music, better graphics

Wildfire games have announced the fifth alpha release of their open-source warfare game '0 A.D.'.

22 May 2011
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Ubuntu Sound Gallery could make finding and installing sound themes easy

Dylan McCall, seemingly frustrated by the lack of refinement in packaging and promoting of sound themes for Ubuntu, has ideas on how finding and installing sound themes in Ubuntu could be made better. He's knocked up a prototype 'Sound theme gallery' where one can preview sound themes without the need to download. Also provided are download links and a quick 'how-to' on installing Sound themes in Ubuntu.

22 May 2011
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Some GNOME OS clarity on the beauty of Interfaces (and systemd)

A few days ago I mused on systemd and GNOME OS, yet it seems clarity is still required on the subject.

22 May 2011
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Evolution 3.0 now available for Ubuntu 11.04 GNOME 3 users

Evolution 3.0 is finally available for Ubuntu 11.04 GNOME 3 users to install, thanks to danilo. Evolution 3.0 for GNOME 3 doesn't differ greatly from Evolution 2.x as found by default in Ubuntu 11.04 - at least not on the surface. But if you're using GNOME 3 in Ubuntu you might as well be using the latest version of its default mail application, too.

20 May 2011
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[How to] Convert Ubuntu into ChromeOS (kinda)

Whether the hype surrounding Google's soon-to-launch ChromeBooks has left you wanting a piece of the action, or whether you'd just rather have a "quickboot" interface for Ubuntu that gets you on the web in seconds, the following 'conversion' guide may prove useful.

20 May 2011
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Add Ubuntu One style dark toolbars to all apps in Ubuntu

Want UbuntuOne Control Panel style 'dark toolbars' in all of your Ubuntu apps? Now you can using the following modified version of the default Ubuntu theme, installable via PPA.

20 May 2011
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Neo, meet Ubuntu [Video]

The following Windows-mocking sketch by comedy website CollegeHumor has been knocking around for a while but I’ve only just seen it myself. Reimagining ‘The Matrix’ series of movies running on Microsoft Windows, the gags are […]

20 May 2011
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Ubuntu Power Users: taking Ubuntu further

Although Ubuntu continues to adapt itself towards being user-friendly, the needs of the "advanced" user are not being forgotten. Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon proposed a rather neat idea: the creation of an Ubuntu Power Users community. Here '...the needs of folks who love to tweak, tune, customize, hot-rod and otherwise amp up their desktops' would be catered for. And that idea has received a huge welcome.

20 May 2011
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Unity 2D PPA for Ubuntu 10.10 users

So you're still on Ubuntu 10.10 but you don't want to miss out entirely on the "new" Unity experience. What's the best way to experience Unity in Maverick? During the early development of Unity 2D - the less hardware-hungry version of Unity that uses Qt - Ubuntu 10.10 users were able to install Unity 2D for development purposes via a PPA. Understandably, the back-porting stopped as Natty got nearer.

19 May 2011
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Systemd in GNOME, PackageKit and what GNOME as an OS really means

A recent proposal be PulseAudio and systemd lead developer Lennart ?Poettering to add systemd raised concerns that GNOME might drop support for non-Linux platforms. This isn't the aim; and here's why.

19 May 2011