Ubuntu Tutorials

UPDATE: This post has been updated to include instructions for Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic”, 9.04 “Jaunty” and 8.10 “Intrepid”

Based on this recent post regarding Getting Android’s Fonts on Ubuntu by Stefano Forenza I have installed these new fonts on my machine(s) and I’m enjoying them very much.  I thought I’d pass on the instructions for how to install ttf-droid, the Android fonts, on your Ubuntu machine.

As you may have read in his post (linked above), the fonts are only available in the official repositories for Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty” and beyond.  If you are using a previous version you’ll have to install them manually.  Here is how we’ll do it:

Ubuntu 9.10 “Karmic”

sudo aptitude install ttf-droid

Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty”

sudo aptitude install ttf-droid

Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid”

Download ttf-droid package

• Double-click downloaded file to install

OR

• dpkg -i ~/Desktop/ttf-droid*.deb

I think these fonts look really clean and crisp. The ttf-droid fonts have now replaced the Red Hat Liberation fonts I was previously using on both of my work machines.

I’m curious what other fonts people generally use.  I’ve run into people that are absolutely passionate about using the right font, while at the same time others don’t really care and have never changed them from their defaults.  Which type are you?

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I’ve spent a few hours this evening putting together some articles on installing and configuring FreeBSD 7.0.  So far the articles cover installation, configuring a minimalist desktop, sound, boot config, etc and will span over the next week.  These posts are on blog.zelut.org.

Also, many thanks to all the comments and resources regarding getting started.  Those that I’ve been able to look at have been very helpful so far.

I had some time this morning on the bus into work so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to post _something_ here. I know its been quite some time since I’ve been blogging, and I’d like to get started again, life is just hectic right now.

Between starting a new job, having a 7 month old baby and our b0rken economy here in the US blogging is not the first thing on my mind.

One of the other things that has kept me busy is learning FreeBSD. We are very much a RHEL/CentOS shop at work but we have quite a bit of FreeBSD mixed in there as well. After I found that out I decided I should dive into it and get familiar with it. Well, so far, I’m enjoying it quite a bit. I feel like I’m back to the learning stage that I enjoyed so much when I started with Linux years ago. So many new things to explore and troubleshoot.

If any of you loyal readers are FreeBSD fans I’d appreciate any tips that you have or good resources to look into. So far I have been doing minimal installs + ports, and I like how efficient it seems to be.

I have a bunch of FreeBSD related articles I could write up, but I don’t know how fitting they are for this blog so I may put them on my other blog. Lets see if I have time today to write one up.

Anyhow, I hope this posts turns out as I am writing it via elinks on FreeBSD sans GUI on my laptop.

We were having a discussion in IRC this morning about how promoting free software and open standards can sometimes end up restricting your freedom.  Now tell me if I’m wrong here, but as I understand the idea behind OpenOffice is:

To allow you to use any document format, and in the end any application that works best for you.  Preferably you use the open .odt format, but when its all said and done compatibility is the key here.

In other words, Open Office reads and writes to a large number of document formats.  This allows Open Office users to read from many applications and write to many application.  At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter what application someone uses, its the underlying format or compatibility of that format that is important.

Now fast forward to this years BrainShare, put on by Novell.  A local contributor is going to present but they *require* slides be submitted in Open Office Impress format.  His slides aren’t in Open Office Impress format.  Now we’ve come to the point where promoting free standards and applications has actually ended up in a lock-in, removing the freedom from the end user.

His slides are in a standards compliant s5 format which, in my opinion, completely solves the issue (need?) of Impress or Powerpoint.  s5 is a standards compliant web-based presentation format.  You can recreate most of the features of Impress or Powerpoint through the use of standard css and javascript.

Everyone has a browser.  Everyone can view s5 presentations.  Not everyone has Word or Impress or Powerpoint and not everyone can view or submit presentations in Impress format.

To be honest with you I don’t even have Open Office installed.  I *never* use it.  What is the point of a word processor other than to communicate ideas via text?  What are you doing with your word processor that you can’t do with vi or emacs?  If you’re doing fancy formatting why not use the web?  Use html or, hell, even use Google Docs.

Google Docs is genious because it solves the whole issue.  It doesn’t matter what word processor you have (or don’t have), it simply requires you have a modern browser.  Done.  End of story.  (The fact that Google pwns your content is another issue for another time however.)

If someone out there can tell me why I should use a fancy (read:bloated) Word processor instead of vim, or can tell me why I should use Impress instead of the web I’m open to suggestions.

As I mentioned nearly a month ago I have decided to donate a portion of the earnings from this site to a Free Software or related project each month.  The first month I pledged to donate 25% of the monies earned, and that I have done.  The first donation has gone to help the EFF help protect our digital rights, and I actually did just a bit over 25%… just to make it a nice round number.

While this was a difficult decision–there are so many projects to donate to–I felt it was a good choice.  I will continue to donate into the future so if you have a project that you feel would benefit please leave a comment.

Also, in an effort to be transparent, and also considering this money was generated by many of you by visiting the site, here are the details:

$100 went to the EFF as a one-time donation.

I will receive the awesome EFF "swat" hat as a gift.   (I'll see about posting a picture when it arrives).

I want to thank everyone for continuing to support this site.  I hope you’ll continue to do so and I hope you agree with the donation decisions.  I know the money comes from many of you taking time to visit the site and I appreciate it.

I want to remind everyone that today is the second annual Open Discussion Day. The day where we celebrate and advocate open protocols and computing standards. One year ago today I set the goal to stop using proprietary “closed” IM protocols. Today I only use Jabber and I don’t miss the others. My friends and family can still contact me. They can still email me and the world has continued its orbital motion.

I invite everyone to participate in one of the following today (and hopefully into the future!):

1. If you’ve partially moved yourself to the open chat protocol Jabber make the switch complete.
2. If you don’t have a Jabber account go ahead and make one. Check out Jabber or even use your gmail account over Jabber. (see instructions here)
3. Invite a friend to use Jabber whether it be via a new Jabber account or a gmail account. Spread the word and celebrate!

This year I plan on extending my goal to other open protocols and continue to set a personal standard and example to those around me.

1. I will continue to advocate the use of Jabber.
2. I will dedicate bandwidth and torrent seeds to the OpenOffice project download.
3. I will support the Ogg Vorbis format and hardware that supports it.

I know it is a late reminder for those of you in Europe but for you in the US there is still time in the day to start a change.  I invite you to pick something from the list–something you feel you can accomplish–and set it in motion.  Protocols, standards and free software can’t continue to grow without each of us.  Please try to do your part and celebrate Open Discussion Day!

I’ve been reflecting this past week on what we have (and haven’t) yet accomplished this year with open source and free software.  I think we have made some great strides but we also have a long road ahead of us and it will continue to take hard work from all of us.  In reflecting on some of our future goals I also began to consider some of our potential shortcomings.  What is it about this community that people don’t understand?  Before we can answer that I suppose we would need to define what we are so that we can communicate that idea to the public.  Being able to communicate better with the people we’re trying to reach will be a big step in helping them understand who we are and what we do.  I think the current terminology that we use causes the issue that we face here.

I would first define what we are with the term Freedom.  Freedom of speech.  Freedom of communication.  Freedom of creativity.  Freedom of creation.  Freedom from restriction.  Have I missed anything?

As I mentioend I think our current terms fall short of communicating this.  For one we use the terms “open source” or “free software”.  What do these really mean to an outsider?  What does “open source” mean to your parents or neighbor?  What does it mean to someone who does or does not understand computers or operating systems?  I think it tries to clearly define what we as a community stand for but , as much as I use it, I think it falls short.  Simple for the fact that it doesn’t clearly communicate our ideals to the general PC using public.

The other term that many of us stand on is that of “free software”, but I think this falls shorter than the “open source” term.  For one how do you define “free software”? (yes, this is mainly revealing a weakness in the English language)  Is it simply “software that is free”?  I think that is the first thing that would come to mind for most people.  Would you believe that I have spoken with people that honestly believed Windows XP was free of charge?  “It comes on the computer when you buy it.  I didn’t pay for it.”  ..as if Bill Gates became the richest man in the world by giving a product away.

Also, on this definition anything that wasn’t for-pay could be considered “free software”.  This would include shareware, freeware, freely downloaded components of any OS.  While this again tries to communicate the idea of “freedom” I think the weakness in the English language is the shortcoming here.  (yes we could use the term “software libre” but I don’t know how well that would be adopted.)

Now what other suggestions do you as the “open source / free software” public suggest?  Do you use alternate terms to describe what we are about?  Do you communicate the idea behind the revolution in a different way?  What are your thoughts on adopting something more along the lines of “Freedom Software”?  That is what we are about isn’t it?  Software for freedom.  It began as a movement to gain freedom and now we are in a fight to retain our freedom (DRM, etc).

I’d like to get some of your thoughts on this.  How can we better communicate the importance of what we all fight so hard for to the public?  Can we use different terms to better communicate the critical need that we so desperately try to fill?  The floor is yours.

Technorati Tags: software, linux, oss, foss, freedom, open source, software libre

powered by performancing firefox

I have been using Skype for the past few months to take advantage of the promotion they had of “free calls to the US & Canada until 2007″. It has been nice to use a free phone service while my cell-phone battery has been dead. Starting Jan 1, 2007 however Skype will begin charging $14.95 / year for unlimited calls. While it is very convenient and a very competitive price I will no longer use Skype at the end of the year.

My reasons are not the price. Yes, free is appealing and $14.95 / year is by no means a large expense to anyone. My main reason is that Skype does not use a standard protocol for its communication. There are many other SIP options available, most of which use an open communication protocol.

What does that mean? This means that whether you use Gizmo, Ekiga or Wengo, Linphone, Kphone or gphone you are using a “free” open protocol. This does not apply to Skype.

I’ll admit that Skype is a very nice option with a clean interface. It has worked very well for me in the past, but it is the open protocol that is more important to me. It comes back down to freedom. Freedom to choose your own program. Freedom to communicate with whomever you please. Freedom to, if you so pleased, create your own VOIP program and interface using the open protocol. Skype uses a proprietary protocol. My Skype days are done.

I should mention that I have only recently started investigating alternate options to Skype recently. I wasn’t using Skype merely for the free calls. It was the only option I knew was available. Now we know better.

I know this post is a little off-topic as it isn’t a tutorial (but hey, you’ve already got one today!). This is a project that some great local guys have been working on that I wanted to share with everyone reading the blog. Free software alternative so XP & OSX all compiled into a single CD. You should definitely check this out and share it with friends / family that are still using “the other OS”.

The 2007.01 release of Software for Starving Students is now available for download. http://softwarefor.org/downloads.html

“Software for Starving Students is a free collection of programs organized for students (but available to anyone). We’ve gathered a list of best-in-class programs onto one CD (one disc for OS X, one for Windows), including a fully-featured office suite, a cutting-edge web browser, multi-media packages, academic tools, utilities and more.”

More info:

* Project homepage: http://softwarefor.org/
* A complete list of included titles: http://softwarefor.org/faq.html#q5
* Screenshots: http://softwarefor.org/screenshots.html

Please help us out by seeding the torrent, spreading the word, and burning copies for your friends and family. (Nothing spreads holiday cheer like good, free software.)

Happy Downloading!

Many of you probably remember the recent debate concerning Debian vs Firefox and the trademark issues. The last that I’ve heard it sounds like Ubuntu is going to honor the Firefox trademark and continue to include Firefox, but I’m unsure the status on Debian.

In any event I have put together a few quick steps to installing Iceweasel for anyone that would like to try the new browser, or would prefer it over the trademarked Firefox. (Note: This comes from a pre-release and non-supported repository. Use at your own risk!)

Install Iceweasel on Ubuntu

http://safeweb.sitesled.com/iceweasel/builds/iceweasel_1.5.0.8pre-2.deb

This will take you directly to the .deb file. Your browser should ask you if you’d like to open this with the GDebi Package Installer. Select “Open with…” and the Package Installer will take you through the installation.

You can also “Save As..” and save the file to your local machine. After the download has finished you can install it two ways:

1. Double-click the file which should open it with GDebi Package Installer (or “open with…” and open with the GDebi Package Installer) OR
2. Launch a terminal and use the command:

sudo dpkg -i iceweasel_1.5.0.8pre-2.deb

At this point you should have Iceweasel available within “Applications > Internet > Iceweasel”. Enjoy! (note: from what I can tell this version is still based on the pre-Firefox 2 engine.)

Remove Iceweasel on Ubuntu
To remove Iceweasel simply run:

sudo aptitude remove iceweasel

technorati tags:firefox, debian, iceweasel, ubuntu, trademark