Shankar Ganesh

I just managed to install the latest version of Ubuntu on my PC, and it was like a smooth ride. My modem and other things worked smooth, and updating was a charm. Just a few commands and I’m done. I like the way this kinda command line updating in Linux. I really love it, and I’m exploring more commands and Googling a lot of stuff.

I wanted to install Epiphany (the name tempted me to try it), so used Synaptic and marked it for installation. But something was wrong.

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If you know what’s Ubuntu, you must have probably seen this kind of a picture on most Ubuntu branded stuff:

Today such a picture looked different on the Ubuntu Homepage, with a modification:

The guy with the blue T-Shirt just got a Dell logo impression there.

Cool. You might have known that Dell will ship PCs bundled with Ubuntu. Seems Ubuntu is getting popular day by day.

Image Sources: 1, 2

Blender is a completely free and open source, 3D animation program. Blender is cross-platform, and is available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD and others. Blender has a unique user interface, that may confuse a newbie. Mostly all functions can be accessed via Keyboard shortcuts, and it has many workspace themes. And also you have transparent floating widgets for assisting your 3D modeling tasks.

A complete list of features in Blender 2.43 is here for you to check out.

Wikipedia says: Blender was used in the Spiderman 2 Movie, in the storyboard department. Even more, the Blender team has made a short film called Elephants Dream, and I’ve even watched it. I guess it was supplied with a Digit Magazine CD. Watch the movie right here. Many more movies created using Blender are listed here.

Here’s something that was created with Blender:

Source: Blender Gallery

Wanna learn Blender? Get a book in their eShop and start right away!

Ubuntu Studio is a multimedia flavour of Ubuntu. It’s aimed at the creation and editing of multimedia: for audio, video and graphic enthusiasts and professionals.

Ubuntu Studio has a whole lot of open source software packages for the multimedia user. They include audio creation softwares, players, sequencers, recorders, music synthesizers, typesetters, video editors, graphic editing programs like Inkscape, GIMP, Blender 3D Modeler and whole lot more. A complete list of available packages is can be found here.

Here’s a screenshot:

More screenshots can be found here

The website seems to be jammed as of now, so you’re lucky if the page loads!

Ubuntu Studio | Ubuntu Studio Download Page | Ubuntu Studio Wiki

It’s now possible for Linux users to mount Wikipedia as a Virtual Filesystem in their computers, thanks to a project called WikipediaFS.

Wikipedia editors can now create and edit any Wikipedia page in their text editor or word processor, without any hassles. This translates lesser reloads in browsers.

Cool, isn’t it? But there’s no idea how this is gonna help newbies.

This entire project is based on Filesystem in Userspace or FUSE and this even gets more interesting. A variety of FUSE-based tasks can be found in this page.

[Via Digg]

Very recently, the GNOME Mobile and Embedded Initiative was announced to make sure that software freedom is a reality beyond desktops, available in the hands of users around the world. And Intel recently showed up their prototype of a mobile internet device based on Ubuntu.

Now, folks at the Ubuntu Developers’ Announcement mailing list have proclaimed the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Project.

According to the announcement, a detail project planning will start at Seville in the Ubuntu Developer Summit and the mobile edition will be released in October along with Ubuntu 7.10

[Via Jeff Waugh's Blog]

Of late, there’s been a lot of news about my favourite operating system, Ubuntu. Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn was released, and now there have been reports that Dell PCs will ship pre-installed with Linux.

People in India who’re interested to try Ubuntu, with very less bandwidth especially, how do you get the discs?

You could get your discs via Shipit, but it takes time. There’s an Indian Ubuntu team striving hard to spread Ubuntu. It’s active all over India, and you have many regional teams functioning. Here’s a CD Request Wiki.

If you need a CD, you could try contacting these regional teams. A list of regional teams is here. Each team probably has it’s very own IRC channel and you could try asking them for CDs and other Ubuntu Support. #ubuntu-in is the Indian Team’s Official IRC Channel.

Now, if you need another quick option (fast delivery), a new site has been launched at UbuntuStore.co.in. They will ship both CDs and DVDs for all versions of Ubuntu 7.04: Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu. Don’t forget to bookmark UbuntuStore.co.in.