Perhaps I’m a bit late in posting this, but version 6.10 of Ubuntu was released this week. I highly recommend you give it a go..there’s no need to install anything, you can boot the whole OS from the CD (and then choose to install if you like it). I’m using the live CD now to write this, neat huh? Even if you can’t be bothered with that, I recommend you find out what all the fuss is about anyway:

Finally, we can watch youtube and google video properly without stupid lag (or random browser crashing). Thanks to Adobe and the linux flash team!! Get it here: Flash 9 beta for Linux. Read about it here: Penguin SWF. Having said that, it is still beta..although it’s more than likely much more stable than the current ‘stable’ version.

Amazingly, the skype people have finally released a version of skype for linux that actually works. I thought I’d never see the day, but here it is. Yes, it’s still a beta, but a massive improvement on earlier versions which wern’t even worth bothering with! Download Skype 1.3 Beta for Linux. Finally, something we can use. Also, bear in mind skype is evil and shouldn’t be used regardless. Use a proper SIP phone and VOIP network.

After reading a few guides, and a lot of trial and error, I’ve found this script I wrote works pefect every time, just supply you xvid file with the script and it’ll create the vobs. You need tcmplex, transcode, and dvdauthor. #!/bin/bash FILE=$1 NEWFILE=`basename $FILE avi`vob rm out.* transcode -i $FILE \ -y ffmpeg \ --export_prof dvd-pal \ --export_asr 3 \ -o out \ -D0 \ -m out.ac3 \ -J modfps=clonetype=3 \ --export_fps 25 tcmplex -o $NEWFILE -i out.

If you’ve just updated your MySQL installation and have found this happening: 060511 22:38:11 [Warning] ‘./mysql/host’ had no or invalid character set, and default character set is multi-byte, so character column sizes may have changed 060511 22:38:11 [Warning] ‘./mysql/user’ had no or invalid character set, and default character set is multi-byte, so character column sizes may have changed 060511 22:38:11 [Warning] ‘./mysql/db’ had no or invalid character set, and default character set is multi-byte, so character column sizes may have changed 060511 22:38:11 [ERROR] Fatal error: mysql.

If like me, you performed a yum update this morning and your gnome-terminal has stopped working and instead is doing a lot of this: (gnome-terminal:2274): Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_screen_get_number: assertion `GDK_IS_SCREEN (screen)’ failed gnome-terminal: symbol lookup error: gnome-terminal: undefined symbol: vte_terminal_set_opacity This is probably because you were trying out aiglx and you’ve removed the aiglx repo. Try this: rpm -e gnome-terminal vte –nodeps ; yum install gnome-terminal The tricky part was figuring out why it’d happened.

XGL, an X server from Novell has been creating quite a stir this year. I thought I’d give it a try, so after faffing around for a while trying to get it working in Fedora, I had a go with Ubuntu Breezy… unfortunatelly it didn’t run well enough on my laptop (i810 gfx) for it to be any good so I went back to my lovely FC5 install. I’ve recently tried AIGLX which is an extension to the xorg X server, which also didn’t run great.

About a week ago, I went to the Hampshire Linux User Group (LUG) meetup at the University. Quite an interesting experience. If you’re interested about linux, even if you don’t know what it is, you could go to one of these meetings and find out! Having said that, my friends recently confirmed my nerd status. Oh well!

Just caught this video on google from CeBIT, $146 small form factor linux computer, 40gb hard disk, does loads of cool stuff, check it out here. Quite impressive (even if you’re not a linux nerd like me).

Dead on Schedule is the next version of Gnome, the open source desktop environment. If you’re wanting to find out more about using Linux as a desktop operating system, I highly recommend you look into gnome. Personally, I think it’s great. Find out about Gnome 2.14