Ubuntu Youtube

While it is very easy to play Youtube video’s through Firefox (or any other Open Source browser) on Ubuntu, I am not so fond of the fact that, in the browser, when having listened to a couple of music pieces, Youtube presents me with a list of related video’s: I like to choose myself what I want to see and listen to. Now today I just stumbled upon a very fine possibility of the built-in Ubuntu 9.10 media player, which is Totem Media Player: you can watch and listen to Youtube video’s directly from within the player. Just check out (edit / preferences) that the Youtube plugin is active…and off you go! Have fun!

totem media player playing a youtube video

Ubuntu 9.10 article in Dutch Computable Magazine

Just have look here (article in Dutch). Dtch Computable Magazine  litterally says (at the end of the article, conclusion): in terms of functionality and multimedia support, the Ubuntu desktop has a lot of more possibilities than Windows 7. Quote: “The costs are lower. In terms of total cost of ownership (TCO), Windows can not really compete with Ubuntu. If you are not dependent on .NET environments, there is actually nothing that would hold you from at least considering using Ubuntu. (…)”

The cost looks better. In terms of total cost of ownership (TCO) Windows can not really compete with Ubuntu. If you are not dependent. NET environments, is actually nothing you from Ubuntu on the desktop to consider. At the Ubuntu servers offers everything appliances to build with, but also ordinary servers with various services. The role-based system is very flexible and easy. And all with a much more limited use of system resources and hardware than a typical installation of Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2.

Ubuntu and games

I’ve never been a big gamer – I use my computers for professional and home administration purposes. That’s why I comments on games in Ubuntu will never be published on this blog. However, today, I took a quick look at the numer of games that are available through the Ubuntu 9.10 software center: four hundred and sixty four games! All available just for free… And to see the quality of the games: just have a look at the official Ubuntu games documentation section.  Enjoy the tour!

Virtualbox OSE seamless window applications

Today, I found a nice feature of Sun’sVirtualbox OSE: the usage of windows applications in a seamless window. This feature (which has been around for quite some time, I just never used it before) allows you to use your Windows applications on Ubuntu (through VirtualBox) in an application window as if you were working…on your Linux desktop. To use the feature, install the VirtualBox guest additions. To use the feature, just press (setting by default) Host key + L (Ctrl by default). You will get a warning that you’re entering the seamless mode. To go back to the default Virtualbox view, press Ctrl + L again. The screenshot below shows a simple application (Windows Notepad) in a seamless window on Ubuntu 9.10. Have fun!

Starting applications remotely on Ubuntu (and other Linux distributions)

For quite some time, I have been looking for a fine way to start applications remotely – using my laptop downstairs, and wanting to access, for instance, my computer in the attic, which holds my financial data and my personal e-mail. I wouldn’t want to go to the attic every time I want to check some financial data, or check my e-mail. I want to access those data from my laptop.  The solution that is described in this short blog is neither revolutionary, nor does it require extensive knowledge of how to edit configuration files, neither does it require opening specific ports in an Ubuntu firewall. It just uses some software pieces that are intended exactly to do what I want: start a Linux application remotely from another computer, “pulling” the screen of the remote computer towards my laptop, at acceptable speed.

Here is how to do it.

First of all, for the machine that you want to access remotely, install the ssh package. It is available in Synaptic (System -> Management -> Synaptic Package Manager, look for ssh). Install it. This package will allow you to remotely access your computer from another location on your network straigtaway. On the computer that you will be using to access the remote computer, install the putty package, which, for Ubuntu, is available in Synaptic as well. PuTTY will allow you to access your remote computer, entering the ip address of the remote computer in the connection screen. A PuTTY session is really simply a non-graphical terminal sessionto the remote computer. Now to be able to start applications in a graphical way from that puTTY session, the only thing you will need to do is enable X11 forwarding. Just do the following: click on SSH -> X11 Enable X11 forwarding. This way, you will litterally pull all screens that you want for graphical applications (e.g. the  evolution e-mail program). Now, when entering the evolution & command into the PuTTY session…you will have your Evolution screen right available in your current desktop session. The & at the end of the evolution command is just to regain access to the PuTTY terminal prompt.  Check it out!

Share a local printer in Ubuntu with a couple of computers at home or in a small business

Ever wondered how to share your Ubuntu local printer with other Ubuntu computers at home? Just follow the instructions in this document. Maybe there are other methods as well, but this is how I did it, and it works quite fine. Just follow the instructions in the PDF file.

Beta of Google Chromium OS running in Virtualbox

Just this morning, I started to google for Google Chrome OS; a public beta is available. Google Chrome OS (available somewhere in the second haf of 2010 probably) is a Linux desktop OS, targeted at the Netbook market, just like for instance Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Novell’s Moblin. The major difference between Chrome OS on one side, and the other two is that Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Novell’s Moblin allow you to save your data on your netbook, while in Google Chrome OS, all the applications and the data are present online, not on your netbook (so you don’t have to worry about backups any more Here is some info for whoever would like to test this beta version of the Google Linux desktop:  a VMWare virtual disk image (containing Google Chromium, that’s not totally Google Chrome yet!) is available for download at Chip download . The download file is about 300 MB, and unzipped it takes about 750 MB. The fact that it is a VMWare disk does not mean that it does not work for Sun’s Virtualbox (a free virtualization solution available for Windows as well as for Linux host systems; install it first before beginning). Then, just create a new machine, and when selecting a hard disk for it, simply point to the unzipped hard disk file. Start the virtual machine in Virtualbox. Starting the virtual machine will only take a couple of seconds. A Linux  login screen will appear – to login, you will need to use your Google account; if you don’t have one, just create a new one, and use that account to get to the Chromium OS desktop. This video shows the procedure firs. To be continued!

Installing Ubuntu software that is not available in the Ubuntu Software Center

Ubuntu offers a lot of programs through the Ubuntu Software Center. Of course, some software you would like to have on your PC is maybe not available through these channels…you will need to do a true installation, comparable to the setup routine that you would do in Windows. To do so, numerous possibilities exist. The most obvious way to do an installation is to download the installation program, like you would do in Windows. But what’s the next step after that downloading phase? How should you run setup, or anything similar? Many times, you will download a *.deb package. In that case, installing the software is a matter of double-clicking after downloading the package. However, some software packages are not in *.deb format, and require installation through a terminal command.

The PDF presentation ubuntu_extra_software (just click on the link) contains a walk-through with a simple example of installation through the terminal: the installation of Google Earth for Linux. Just have a look at it, and decide for yourself whether that terminal console is really that difficult

Ubuntu and Windows with Virtualbox

Ever wondered how to use your Windows applications within Ubuntu? Have a look at ubuntu and Windows with virtualbox.  This PDF file was created with OpenOffice.org Impress. Ideally, I would have presented this file in Macromedia Flash format (a format that you can create directly with OpenOffice.org, no extra tools needed!), but due to WordPress restrictions, I was not able to upload the file in that format.  So anyway, open the PDF file, click to move forward.

View hardware in Ubuntu

Recently added memory? Or an additional hard disk? Of course, you want to know whether they are recognized within Ubuntu. For that purpuse,  just install the sysinfo package. It will show you graphically all the information you need.For Ubuntu 9.10, it’s available with just one click through the Software Center. Within the Software Center, just look for sysinfo, click on the item, click on the right arrow, and click on …and it will be installed.

If you want more detailed information, there’s another very useful piece of software: lshw. This package is installed by default in Ubuntu 9.10, but it’s a command line utility by default. So if you just want to know what’s inside your machine, click on Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal, and type in: sudo lshw>hardware.txt Enter your password. When done, type exit (enter). You just have created a text file hardware.txt in your personal folder, with all the information you need. If you want to view the information graphically, do the following: in Synaptic, look for a package called lshw-gtk. Install it. When done, close Synaptic. Press Alt-F2, and type in: gksu lshw-gtk Press enter.  Enter your password. You should now have a detailed graphical overview of your hardware, like in the screenshot below. Have fun!