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This could be an outstanding news by its significance. The next version of Ubuntu (Lucid Lynx or Ubuntu 10.04) won’t include GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) by default due to its user interface that is too complex… What a #@^*?
Actually complex UI is not the only decision why GIMP should be vanished from Ubuntu so here is the full list:
the general user doesn’t use it
its user-interface is too complex
it’s an application for professionals
desktop users just want to edit photos and they can do that in F-Spot
it’s a photoshop replacement and photoshop isn’t included by default in Windows…
Still sounds like fresh nonsense? What about F-Spot as a replacement? Well, an average user most probably claim that above mentioned reasons are true. Maybe that’s why GIMP already dropped from latest Fedora 12. But what should do people who use GIMP every day and loves Ubuntu???
One of the easiest way to try Chromium browser in Ubuntu Linux (Google Chrome browser for Unix/Linux operating system is named as Chromium) is to use daily binary builds at https://launchpad.net/chromium-project. Today Ubuntu is the most popular Linux disributions for desktops so there are daily builds available for the following Ubuntu versions: hardy, intrepid, jaunty, karmic.
First let your Ubuntu know where it should find chromium-browser deb package:
vi /etc/apt/sources.list
add the following lines:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
Replace jaunty with hardy, intrepid or karmic depending which version you run at your computer. If you feel this information is not sufficient for you, follow this link to get Ubuntu official information on this matter or follow Launchpad help.
Once you press enter Ubuntu will download around 18 MB of data from launchpad’s server and will install Chromium with gnome menu entries and shortcuts. Now you can go to System menu –> Internet –> Chromium Web Browser in order to launch Google browser.
Ubuntu Chromium Google browser (Google Chrome Ubuntu)
As you might know there is still no official release of chromium/chrome available for Linux, so these daily builds from launchpad are for testing/observations purposes only. For example, there is no flash plugin available so you will be able to see html pages like this one and no swf/flash content. Anyway thanks to Google for great browser which has all chances to become “browser number one” for Linux or even for the rest of operating system such as Windows or Mac. Who knows?
You might also find this page using Google and the following keywords: Ubuntu Chrome, Google Chrome Ubuntu, Chrome for Ubuntu and others.
P.S. Linus “almost Santa” Torvalds’ announcement is definitely worth reading:
Listen to the cheerful grinding of your harddisk as you reboot into an all-new kernel – and I’m sure that if your computer could smile, it would have a big silly grin on its non-existent face. So as you sit there in your basement, give your computer the holiday cheer too.
4. Sabayon Linux 4.0 is realeased (smart Gentoo based distro): 25% boot speed gain, 8500 applications, ext4, KDE 4.1.3, Gnome 2.24.2, OpenOffice.org 3.0, Firefox 3.0 and more…
Apple iTunes is one of the most popular proprietary digital media players in the whole world. Using this no doubts outstanding application you can organize, play music/video files in very comfortable and user friendly way (it’s not an advertisement but real truth). Moreover iTunes is the only way to access Apple’s onilne music store and thus people often seeks the possibility to seamlessly access it after moving to Linux from Mac or Windows.
Well, unfortunately Apple doesn’t believe in magic so there is no native support of iTunes in Linux. At the same time none would deny that Wine does and guys from this project do their best to make things with iTunes in Linux better. In our example we use iTunes 7.3 which comes with Quick Time player 7.1.6, Apple iPhone support and of course iPods of any version, family and generation.
2. Prepare Wine for itunes installation (if not installed do “apt-get install wine -y” or “yum install wine -y” in Ubuntu/Debian or Fedora/Redhat/Centos respectively):
$winecfg
wine: creating configuration directory ‘/home/artemn/.wine’…
fixme:midi:OSS_MidiInit Synthesizer supports MIDI in. Not yet supported.
wine: ‘/home/artemn/.wine’ created successfully.
Select your audio driver, it may be something like OSS or Alsa so use one u actually use Set Hardware Acceleration to “Emulation” option. All other Wine settings are per your consideration e.g. Graphics tab.
cd ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32
mv richedit32.dll richedit32.bak
mv richedit20.dll richedit20.bak
wine richedit30.exe
Set richedit20.dll and richedit32.dll as native through winecfg.
4. $wine iTunesSetup.exe
It will open iTune’s installation program under wine so you just install itunes as usually you did it in Windows. If error happens just re-run installer. See screenshot below:
5. Now you can start itunes and go through first run setup (all related screenshots are here). Just don’t care about errors thrown into the console:
$ cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/iTunes
$ wine itunes.exe
6. That’s it! Now u can use iTunes in Linux as you did it before in other operatin system:
P.S. By the way there are numerous Linux really native alternatives for comfortable music/video organizing and iPod management. At the same time latter can’t be as native and seamless as it’s in iTunes because those playes use Apple’s proprietary file storage system.
My name is Artem Nosulchik (artiomix AT gmail DOT com) and I'm Linux/Unix, Cisco systems engineer. The main idea of Linux Screw is to share relevant knowledge, skills and observations over The Web. Here you can find a lot of information related to different Linux distributions, FreeBSD, IOS as well as a other Open Source around staff. Read more ››
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