Fresh Ubuntu

Welcome back, You can download the podcast here, . Before I get started, i just want to say due to the Holiday Weekend (aka, the SuperBowl) I will not be putting out a podcast for the week of February 4th 2007. I hope you understand and may the best team win!

This week I talk a little about “The GIMP”. I consider it a viable alternative to Photoshop for my needs. I must stress that it is for “my needs”. In other words, for the casual (and I mean rare) user. Yes, I understand that GIMP does not support CMYK colors (or Pantone, I think) but, it can probably handle most anything just short a retouching photos for Architectural Digest and it might be able to do that as well only the final post printing colors will probably not look right so I’ve read. Here is an interesting article I came upon talking just about this very topic and if you are curious about the GIMP you can reach it here.

Whoops! Sorry I forgot this link to Gnome Hacks, click here.

The Command line of the command of the week was: netstat -tup

This specific command lists all the internet connections both incoming and outgoing. So if you are wondering about what programs are using internet access this would be a good command to use to find exactly that!

In the main segment, I talk about another package manager that I generically call the add/remove packet manager. I really like the user interface of the packet manager. First of all there are only packages in there! Unlike Synaptic which lists packages, dependencies, libraries and whatever else that packages need. As an end user, I am only interested in a couple of things. What applications are available to me and what applications are the hottest/latest/best. The add/remove package manager addresses both very easily as it does rate (at least) the most popular application from 1 star (the least) to 4 stars (you guessed it, the most). All of the packages are categorized in the left frame and the packages are contained in the upper right frame with the lower right frame reserved for a description. One esoteric addition albeit (IMO) an important one is the addition of the packages’ Logo icon to the left of the package name. I know, I am a bit shallow, but really folks, in all honesty, it adds the sizzle to the steak! The only downfall is that it is heavily dependent on Synpatic Package Manager to handle removal of closely related packages and utilities of the user interface, but, it handles adding packages with the same ease and grace that Synpatic does. Overall, I give it a 7 out 10, but what would be nice is if Synaptic Package manager used elements of the add/remove manager and we would have an even better package management system.

Music from the Podshow, Podsafe Music Network (PMN)

Music From IODA PROMONET

Download “Take The “A” Train” (mp3)
from “Artistry In Swing”
by Tony Evans & His Orchestra
Tema International

• Buy at iTunes Music Store
• Buy at eMusic
• Buy at RealNetworks / Rhapsody

More On This Album

Download

Hi, I am back!! This week I talk a little bit about root and sudo and how that is used in Ubuntu. Just a couple of things about it, firstly, that the root account and hence the ability to use a root terminal is turned off by default. You can however turn this feature on at your leisure, though not recommended. In any case, root as you may have heard on the podcast is like an administrator account in Windows. This account can do just about everything to your computer that you would want it to do and some things that you might not want it to do. Again, it is powerful, but, alas not idiot-proof. This is where sudo comes in. Sudo is a command line command that begs for a little more attention than the usual command line command of the week. What sudo does is allows the user with your regular run of the mill permissions to do administrative tasks. Things like edit configuration files, setup file permissions, and download..um…packages, yes, to install on your system. The way I see it as explained in the podcast root is to sudo as Superman is to Clark Kent. Either way, both have the same weaknesses and that is kryptonite, or incorrect command line input. See, Superman isn’t so BAD after all. For the regular user, you might never have to access a root account. I’ll be honest with you I haven’t even tried. But, one never knows when I have to rip off my button down shirt to reveal my Superman footie pajamas (don’t be jealous, I got them for Christmas!) Well, there you go, just a couple things about root and sudo and pajamas, hmmm. Here is a link to more informatioin about root and sudo:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

This weeks CLCOTW: wc - Counts word (among other things, check the man pages) in various files.

Pretty handy to have around if you are the obsessive/compulsive type that has to know how many word you type…97..98..99…excuse me. You can also find out how many characters and bytes if you want. From the screenshot, I wrote 1721 words in my preparation for this episode, wow, not bad!! I hope this helps someone!!!

H
ere is a great tip from Steve B., he recommends a package called Yakuake for all you command line geeks. I downloaded it and it does run on gnome as well as kde. Knock yourself out. See screenshot below.

See you all next week!!

Download the podcast here -

News

Item #1 - Linux Backer Lets Go Of Third Of Staff

Item #2 - Feisty Fawn (7.04) Herd1 Released!

Item #3 - The Open Source Car Project

Main - -The Disk Usage Analyzer for Ubuntu and Kubuntu

This was a neat little find!! The Disk Usage Analyzer located in the application menu under accessories, as well as KDirStat, included in the base installation of Ubuntu and Kubuntu will tell you how big your directories are and how much space is allocated to it on the physical drive. The utility will give you both a text version of the space and a graphical representation of the data that is on your hard drive. Above are the pictures of both the Ubuntu version and the Kubuntu version. The Fresh Ubuntu choice for disk analyzers is….Kubuntu!!! Yes, it is actually far and away a better implementation of this utility. It is located in the K menu under the utilities menu and is named KDirStat (Directory Statistics), the Kubuntu version gives both the graphical and textual information in a split window, whereas in Ubuntu you have to call up the graphic by pressing a different button on the menu. I also give a thumbs up to the way that Kubuntu walks you through the whole process by selecting the directory from a popup window upon initial startup of the utility. On the other hand, Ubuntu leaves you standing there wondering what to do. Now, I realize that once you learn the application this become less clumsy, but, when opening up the program for the first time it can literally stop you in your tracks. This is a novel utility which might come in handy someday when you are getting close to filling up your hard drive with documents, music, and, (ahem) graphics.

CLCOTW - aliases

This is not really a specific command, but a way of accessing a set of commands through “aliases”. An alias is a shortcut to a proper command that can be entered in the terminal. Aliases can be very handy with long and verbose commands. I am a poor typist, so anything that can alleviate that end of my work is appreciated. Before we can use any aliases we must declare them in our user’s ~/.bashrc file, which resides hidden in our home directory.

You can use sudo gedit ~/.bashrc to open the file. (I am not a big fan of Vim or Nano).

I would save a copy of the file before making any changes. For example, File -> Save As -> .bashrc.orig It is also a good idea to actually read the file before adding the aliases. Bash, the default shell, already provides some example aliases that have been commented out. It is here that I suggest adding the apt-get aliases.

alias agu=’sudo apt-get update’
alias agi=’sudo apt-get install’
alias ags=’apt-cache search’
alias agsh=’apt-cache show’
alias agr=’sudo apt-get remove’

These aliases could also be put in a file called .bash_aliases, and set aside from the .bashrc file. there is a provision in .bashrc to map all aliases to a file called .bash_aliases. That option is quite helpful for cross-pollenating your settings from machine to machine. This example was taken as an excerpt from the O’Reilly press book “Ubuntu Hacks”, chapter six, page 209.

Enjoy!!!

Links to the music - Because of the graciousness of the artists, they have allowed podcasters to play their music on our podcasts in exhange for a little promo. So here it is, thanks for listening.

Download “Hullabaloo” (mp3)
from “Hullabaloo / Calypso Blues”
by Spiritual South & Sleeptalker Sleepwalker
Raw Phusion

• Buy at RealNetworks / Rhapsody
• Stream from RealNetworks / Rhapsody

Download “Take The “A” Train” (mp3)
from “Artistry In Swing”
by Tony Evans & His Orchestra
Tema International

• Buy at iTunes Music Store
• Buy at eMusic
• Buy at Napster
• Buy at RealNetworks / Rhapsody
• Stream from RealNetworks / Rhapsody

HatHead - Rumba Lullaby

Download

I would like to thanks these artists that are featured as the bumper music on the podcast.

‘Kiss’ by Anna Lee - Visit site

‘Download It” by Clea - Visit Site

‘What U Got To Say’ - by Ax - Visit Site

Demographic information

Type of podcast aggregator - updated Stats
iTunes for Windows - 59%
iTunes for Mac - 24 %
Juice - 5%
Unidentifiable - 7%
iPodder Linux - 1%

As a side note, there are up to 3 people using the command line wget to download the media file!!! Also, of the roughly 20 episode of Fresh Ubuntu 25122 downloads have happened. True, not as big as some but not bad for an amatuer.

Top 5 episodes downloaded in order of highest to lowest

Windows Equivalent Apps for Ubuntu, Episode 6
Ubuntu Powered Security, Episode 7
Ubuntu Strength Security Pt II, Episode 8
Beginning Ubuntu Linux Book Review, Episode 9
Remedial Command Line, Episode 5

Top Five Visitors by Country in order from highest to lowest

USA
UK
Canada
Sweden
Australia

Bottom Five Visitors by Country in Alphabetical Order

Brunei Darasalaam
Kyrgystan
Kenya
Uzbekistan
Taiwan

Top Languages Spoken by Visitors

English
German
Spanish
French
Finnish

Top Five Referring Source
Google Search
Direct
beta.blogger.com
podcastalley.com
podcast.net

CLCOTW - lspci, Here is the output to lspci from my terminal window.

harlem@freshubuntu:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8601 [Apollo ProMedia] (rev 05)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8601 [Apollo ProMedia AGP]
00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 22)
00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 10)
00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 10)
00:07.4 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 30)
00:07.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 20)
00:09.0 Communication controller: Conexant HSF 56k Data/Fax Modem (rev 01)
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade i1 (rev 6a)
02:00.0 Network controller: Texas Instruments ACX 100 22Mbps Wireless Interface

Main Segment

Well, I promised pictures and I will post them the old fashioned way by uploading the files. But I want to get a lightbox script on here to make it more accessible as well as appealing.

Here is the background of the terminal window.

And below are the pix of the Synaptic Package Manager.