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Measuring the popularity of distros – Part 4 Conclusion
5 Comments · Posted by jjt in Fedora, Linux, Mint, Slackware, Ubuntu
Having written about a few methods of measuring popularity, including Torrents, Google Trends and Distrowatch Rankings I felt that I could try and draw some conclusions from all the data collected.
debian · distrowatch · Fedora · Linux · Ubuntu
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Measuring the popularity of distros – Part 3 Torrents
1 Comment · Posted by jjt in Fedora, Linux, Mint, Slackware, Ubuntu
Continuing on with the theme of measuring the popularity of Linux distros, today we’ll go for another method. Linux Tracker is a website that provides a bit torrent tracker for various Linux distros and related projects.
centos · distro · distrowatch · Fedora · Linux · linux tracker · opensuse · Ubuntu
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Measuring the popularity of distros – Part 2 Google Trends
7 Comments · Posted by jjt in Fedora, Linux, Mint, Slackware, Ubuntu
Yesterday I did a post about using the Distrowatch rankings to measure the popularity of various distros. Today I’m going to use another tool, Google Trends.
distrowatch · google · graphs · Linux · ranking · trends · Ubuntu
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Measuring the popularity of distros – Part 1 Distrowatch Rankings
7 Comments · Posted by jjt in Linux
Measuring the popularity of Linux has always been a difficult thing. Since it isn’t a product with a shiny box on a shelf (or at least most distro’s aren’t) you can’t use licenses sold. You could use data from distro downloads, but many distro’s don’t publish these, and you can have the effect where 1 download might be used for multiple PCs, but another download isn’t used at all.
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Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx was released on the 29th of April, featuring a new interface design in order with Mark Shuttleworth’s earlier pledge that Ubuntu would have a better interface the Mac OSX by 2010. While this seems like a good idea, the new icon set came with trade-offs in Karmic Koala (9.10). Hopefully in the latest edition these bugs would be fixed and a fantastic new interface would be developed.
Three weeks ago, Mark Shuttleworth made a blog post on what he wanted the latest version of Ubuntu to look like. He’s been talking about Ubuntu having an interface ‘superior to OSX’ for a while now, and finally he has put his plan into action. With the 1st out of 2 beta’s now out, we have many of the improvements mentioned to have a play with.
The CPU beep is a really irritating thing in Linux distros and sometimes the graphical sound manager does not work when shutting it up.
Fortunately there is a simple way to do it in terminal. In Ubuntu (and distros based upon it) type:
gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
In Debian type:
su
gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
And add the following line to the file:
blacklist pcspkr
Save it and reboot. Now the CPU beep should be disabled!
To enter Root Terminal in Ubuntu, use Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal. Then type ‘sudo -s’ and hit return. Type in your administrator password, hit [Enter] and you’re done.
Generally, I use 01FTP for updating and changing the website, but to be honest that is rather slow and I much prefer having all my programs to do editing available.
I found an excellent way of browsing FTP servers as if the folders were on your machine in Nautilus, which is very useful for editing files on a remote server, because you can use your custom IDE rather than being forced having to use several programs. To do this is simple. Start up Nautilus and go to file > Connect to Server. You should get a pop up. On that you need to click on the “Public FTP” drop down list and on that select (FTP with login). Enter all the required values in the fields. (You will be asked for a password later if you need one) Nautilus will now connect to the server and should ask you for a password if you need one. If that all goes well, you should be able to browse the FTP server like it is on your computer!
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Playing Encrypted DVDs in Ubuntu: The Complete Guide
2 Comments · Posted by jjt in Linux, Ubuntu
Playing DVDs in Ubuntu is a nightmare, especially the many commercial DVDs that are encrypted. It is hard to find a clear guide that covers all the different problems and how to solve them. This guide is your solution.
1. Open the Terminal by Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal. Type in: sudo -s [Enter]
At the prompt give your administrator password. This logs you into terminal as the Administrator, giving you all the permissions you will need.
2. Type: wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/karmic.list –output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list [Enter]
(Replace “karmic” with the code-name of the distribution you are using.) This adds the medibuntu packages to your sources, allowing you to install the packages using apt-get. This technique may work with other Linux Distributions by leaving the Ubuntu code-name in but I have not tested that.
3. Type: apt-get update && apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && apt-get update [Enter]
This file contains the software keys which tell your computer that the medibuntu packages are legitimate.
4. Type: apt-get install libdvdcss-dev non-free-codecs vlc [Enter]
The above code installs the packages above and their dependencies, which include many important files such as libdvdcss2 and w32codecs. It also installs VLC Media Player. (more…)
