ubuntu category archive

3rd time not quite a charm: Upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)

The other night, sort of kind of on a whim, but not really, I upgraded my main machine from Ubuntu 7.04 to 7.10. There were some problems, but in the end, not very serious. No need for panic.

I’d upgraded my laptop when 7.10 was released, and that went fine. The plan for my other machines is to keep current, but to wait until the end of the six month release cycles, hoping that things will be more stable by then. After realizing that 8.04 will be coming out before long, I decided to upgrade my system76 box over the weekend, and that went pretty well. (My second upgrade on that one: 6.10 » 7.04 » 7.10.)

I was more apprehensive about upgrading Zodiac, however, since I’ve installed so much more stuff …

New Dirs in Gutsy: Documents, Music, Pictures, Blah, Blah

photo by mrmanc

I had mentioned my encounter with some new directories in Ubuntu 7.10, the Gutsy Gibbon:

Documents
Music
Pictures
Public
Templates
Videos

These showed up on an upgrade from 7.04 Feisty Fawn and on a fresh install of 7.10. On installs of previous versions, there has been the Desktop folder, and I’ve kept that around as a special dir that is actually linked to the desktop somehow. (Saved items in ~/Desktop will show up on the GNOME desktop.)

I was put off at first by these, concerned that we might be moving in to the Microsoft territory of “My Documents” and “My Favorites” types of folders, and rigid expectations of where we should put things, but after some investigation they don’t seem like …

Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon Swings In

photo by guppiecat

I’ve been running a dual boot on my laptop with Windows 2000 and Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft). I recently upgraded to 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) so that I’d be ready to try out 7.10 when it came out. I don’t use the laptop much, so it’s good for experimentation. I don’t expect to upgrade my main desktop from Feisty right away.

I first tried the upgrade route through the update manager. It was a little bit slow on Friday with everyone hitting the Ubuntu servers, but I made it through the process and had the brand shiny new Gutsy Gibbon running with no trouble.

I did the upgrade, wanting to verify that it worked ok, but my real plan was to wipe out everything and start fresh with 7.10. …

A Silly Post Brought to You by the Letters E and F

My daughter has a set of Sea & Learn Bath Shapes that are very entertaining for her and me and the wife alike. (The wife might not want to admit that. But for me I can say that they engage my brain more than a typical work-related meeting.)

I happened to notice that the “e” looks very Microsoft Internet Explorerish. It’s a small letter. It’s blue. So I looked around for the “f” and found that by an amazing coincidence, it is Firefox red!

(Ok, so the Firefox logo is predominantly orange and this is mostly red. Just play along, ok? The stars are orange. Take it or leave it.)

How about that? The forces of good and evil arrayed against each …

HOWTO: Installing and Running WordPress on Ubuntu GNU/Linux

Step right this way for instructions on setting up your own instance of WordPress using Apache 2 (with mod_rewrite), PHP5, and MySQL. I’m using Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft), but I suspect this will apply to 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) also.

You may already know that WordPress is free blogging software, Apache is a free web server, PHP is a free server-side scripting language, and MySQL is a free database, but maybe like me you haven’t used the supporting “AMP” pieces that much and would like to get WordPress running with a minimum of fuss and bother.

NOTE: This guide is for running WordPress locally for development purposes. It may help you in setting up a WordPress instance to be served on the Internet, but you’ll …

GNU/Linux Graphics Programs in Ubuntu

My graphics/image manipulation needs are relatively simple. I’ve gotten by pretty well with MS Paint and IrfanView in Windows.

In the past several months I’ve started using the GNU Image Manipulation Program (the GIMP!) for Windows and have learned how to fix red eye and make downgraded transparent PNG files that display properly in Internet Explorer 6, but that’s mainly all that I’ve used it for. I’ve never used Adobe Photoshop so I can’t compare them from personal experience, but the GIMP is apparently loaded with comparable features. For those Photoshoppers who are confused by the GIMP interface, or for people who want to use Photoshop tutorials in GIMP, there is GIMPshop which emulates the interface of Photoshop.

I’m looking forward to …