Samsung Spica i5700

In my case it’s a Samsung Spica i5700 (see picture), which was the cheapest I could get in 2010. I replaced it with the Geeksphone Zero last year, but it’s still a nice phone with a nice screen (which actually appears bigger than that of the Zero, but isn’t). I discovered quite by accident that I liked reading books on it.

It has no SIM card, but doesn’t need one to be a dedicated e-reader (and music player, and photo album, perhaps, when I get time). All it needs is an SD card (I bought a cheap one on ebay) and wi-fi, which it has, plus decent book reading software.

Aldiko 2 does the latter job just fine.

I use it mostly to download public domain books, as (a) there’s a lot of classics I haven’t read, and (b) I like to buy hardcopy contemporary books. I actually have hard copies of many of the classics I’ve downloaded – so why bother?

Indeed, but why go hunting for a book when I have an electronic copy to hand? And now that books by Joyce and James Stephens, and Virginia Woolf are in the public domain, it’s nice to dip in quickly and read a few pages of books one knows quite well, perhaps, just to relax after a long day.

I’m not sure if I’ll manage Moby Dick or War and Peace, or Proust (none of which I have managed to finish in hard copy either, to my shame), but it’s nice to have them handy. Just in case. As for re-reading The Prince, or stories from Dubliners, well, it’s just perfect. The Book of Tea is delightful bedtime e-reading, I assure you.

Another reason to stick to public domain is that I haven’t got my head around DRM. If I publish another book, and I hope I will, no doubt I’ll have to face up to its rights and wrongs, but for the moment I’m shying away.

Aldiko taps into a number of e-bookstores for both paid and free material, and Feedbooks is excellent for public domain titles. If I ever get around to purchasing ebooks, I’ll no doubt do it at Feedbooks. Hosting public domain books is an excellent way to promote loyalty, I would say.

I have no fears for hard copy books. They’ll survive, just like cinema and radio. They’ll just have to learn to live with their e-family.

Meanwhile, Thus Spake Zarathustra on your smartphone, anyone?

[and speaking of meanwhile, I got two spam about e-books while writing this]

The thing about it is that the pictures and videos I’ve seen of Unity are not energizing – not to me at any rate, and I know it has its many admirers and converts. However, I’ve been taken by the Gnome 3 gnome-shell on 11.10, and have watched several videos with pleasure, so I was tempted.

And then I discovered that I could install an earlier version of gnome-shell from the Software Center in about 20 seconds. How could I have missed that?

So it was back onto the web to hunt for videos and articles.

First of all see How to Install and use Gnome Shell in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

And then this video, for example, How to install Gnome Shell in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.

It looked great and I was in an edgy mood (probably a bit reckless) and I installed it from the Software Center, and added

Hit ALT + F2,run gconf-editor, and type the command

gnome-shell –replace

Have a look at the further tweaks suggested from 1’24 on the video.

It’s not the fancy gnome-shell you’ll find in Ubuntu 11.10, but I love it.

gnome-shell on my Ubuntu 10.10. Click to enlarge.

Ironically I couldn’t find the Software Center once I’d rebooted. Click on your name, System Preferences and you’ll find it in there. You can right click and make it a favourite in Activities/Applications if you wish.

The latest version supported in Ubuntu 10.10 is 2.32, apparently.
You can also install the full Gnome 3 gnome-shell, but that’s a bit more complicated.

We’ll see how I get on…

The Grey Geek
Android, Ubuntu, WordPress: Learning by mistakes

No jokes at the back, please. I know who you are ;>)

Image source ubuntu4beginners.blogspot.com

Now this is interesting… from Ubuntu for Beginners!

One can run AWN or Cairo Dock instead of Unity Launcher in Natty but none of them supports Unity quicklists till now, which is a handy feature. DockbarX does support the quicklists and it is capable of fully replacing the Unity Launcher.

I finally got a chance to download a fresh Ubuntu 11.04 and to give it a whirl.

It must be said that Ubuntu has done an excellent job with its download page, and burning the CD is a cinch. Previously I felt obliged to match checksum etc, but Ubuntu seems to take care of that now.

It takes a while for the CD/DVD to load but its worth the wait as it brings you to two simple options: Try Ubuntu or Install Ubuntu. I chose Try Ubuntu as I’m not ready to install, not having the time to cross-check that everything is backed up.

My idea of beauty is important to me and I suspect most others, having as we do to look at a desktop for most of the day. Beauty is subjective of course, and for some, utility is beauty, and the Unity launcher probably scores highly for such people and I respect that. However, to my mind I haven’t seen such ugliness on a desktop since the early versions of Windows.^(tm).

Aside from the Unity launcher, Ubuntu comes with a number of handsome desktop images, but sells itself short by presenting us with those awful purples (previously awful browns). May I humbly suggest at least a button which says Change Desktop, as it might take a newbie a while to figure out that it takes a right-click to access the desktop images.

But to get back to the Unity launcher, not only is it ugly, but there’s no need for it. Clicking on the Ubuntu logo brings up a number of aesthetically pleasing shortcuts, so all we need really is the option of getting rid of the sidebar and hey presto, all is well.

Incidentally, it seems it is possible to have Docky and I presume Cairo. See this telling image at Leafage, which contrasts the pleasantness of Docky with the clunkiness of the Unity launcher. Moreover, the former makes the latter superfluous.

This is just my opinion, of course. Decide for yourself if you haven’t already by downloading an iso.

UPDATE: Showed a friend Ubuntu from the live cd, which I’d used to rescue her files from her virus-trashed Windows PC. She was mightily impressed, both with the Unity Launcher AND the purple colour. A subjective disser am I…

with thanks to Quidsup. Quidsup’s Youtube Channel

Install Firefox 4 In Ubuntu 10.04 / 10.10 Via PPA Repository – The Proper Way
Add the Firefox 4 PPA and install FF4 in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat or 10.04 Lucid Lynx using the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox ubufox

[thanks to WEB UPD8]

It went very well and to my mind Firefox 4 is a fabulous upgrade, with the new default Tango them blending beautifully with my Ubuntu theme. I didn’t think I’d like the tabs on top, but I do. There were a few quirks. There was no refresh icon that I could see, and as I’m right -handed, the home icon was very awkwardly placed on the right. However, it was simple to resolve. On the Navigation Toolbar rightclick and choose Customize. Drag the home icon into it, and then drag it to where you want it. The refresh icon is in there too, so just drag and drop.

I’m one of those people who don’t like the Google search. If you don’t either, just drag it into the open Customize box. Gone. But here’s a tip. Just type g into your url box followed by your query, and up comes google with the result. Much better! eg

g Ubuntu Learner.

I was startled however to find that an add-on I rely on, namely Zotero, was incompatible with Firefox 4. Fortunately, you can now install the updated version directly from the Zotero website, which is pretty nice. I added the Zotero Open Office.org integration extension, but I’m still not sure how that works.

Once you’re happy with all of that, you can have some fun with Firefox 4′s new html 5 features at Mozilla’s Web O’(pen) Wonder – not all of them work without webgl, but The Planatorium, for example, is pretty impressive.

A couple of other add-ons were also incompatible, Foxclocks was the main one I was peeved about as I need a world clock, but I went for Simple Clocks instead – much lighter and does the job.

All of that worked so well, and I still didn’t feel like working, so I decided against my better judgment to get rid of Open Office and install LibreOffice. The fact that you have to get rid of Open Office before you install Libre Office makes it a bit complicated, so I’ll hand you over directly to the illustrated instructions at Softpedia. It downloads LibreOffice 3.3.1, and it’s for 10.04 as well as 10.10 and in my experience is painless.

I’m delighted with LibreOffice. It seems a lot faster, and everything just works, as far as I can see. I had always suspected I hadn’t OpenOffice installed correctly, but altogether LibreOffice feels more solid, and has some nice improvements like Title Page, and a search bar with up and down arrows. Well worth a whirl.

Needless to say, your Mac and Windows friends can download it too.

One final update: Shotwell, and I was delighted that I could finally Adjust the Date and Time. It had far too many photo folders listed with dates 2012-2017, but the adjustment does the trick and updates a folder by click on one photo within it and adjusting the date and time.

I’m a happy camper, with 11.04 to look forward to in a few weeks time!

La Dolce Vita

I’ve long been a fan of Fellini, and had bought a copy of La Dolce Vita some years ago, only to have it fouled up by a faulty dvd player. So some time earlier this year I purchased another copy.

But dammit, it wouldn’t play on 10.10. I had installed the Ubuntu-restricted-extras. I had installed libdvdread4,
libdvdnav4, libdvdcss2. No dice.

What was frustrating was that other dvds played fine. I tried Rebel Without a Cause, for example. No problem.

But still no La Dolce Vita.

I gave up.

But back fresh after the Yuletide break, I went hunting for the solution again, and I have sir_robert007 on the Ubuntu Forums to thank. Here’s his solution.

First open Synaptic Package Manager and install Ubuntu-restricted-extras. Then open up a terminal and execute the following:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Make sure any media players you have open are closed or you may get errors.

Bingo.

But why does it take the genius of one user in 2010/2011 to play a dvd I’ve paid for – twice?

Penguspy

I’m not a gamer but I like what this guy, Kostas Mavropalias, has to say. In part:

’I am a gamer in a state of denial. I refuse to use windows anymore! I love the speed, stability and ease of use of my Linux pc and I also love games.
One of the hard parts in Linux gaming is to find the actual games!
Being a professional Designer & Developer, I decided to create Penguspy as my contribution to the Linux ecosystem.
The goal of this project is to act as a showcase of the best Linux games (not all games, just the good ones), raise awareness of Linux as a gaming platform and provide an easy way to install all these games, in an aesthetically pleasing, feature-rich and easy to use environment.
Penguspy is constantly been updated with more games and extra functionality. On the technical side, Penguspy is built in pure HTML 5 and CSS 3 awesomeness (more cool bits are implemented as browsers add support for them) and some JQuery magic on top of WordPress, so if you use an old browser it’s time to update!.

Penguspy [via Lifehacker Linux]

Speaking of html5, check out html5Games. When I say I’m not a gamer, I’m temporarily [ahem] hooked on one of its featured games, Agent 008 Ball, until, that is, I sink ‘em all. Up to 1400 so far…

As I didn’t format the /home partition, I fully expected my documents, music etc to be where I left them, but for some reason Ubuntu shifted them to File System/Home/Username.
Wish I knew why, but at least all my stuff was there.

The little things:

create a link to home folder on Desktop

ln -s ~ ~/Desktop/home

thanks to andii

Flash in fullscreen is choppy, completely white or crashes
solution at Firefox tutorials: Flash Issues & Solutions (via Ubuntu Forums Ubuntu 10.10 and Adobe Flash)

In terminal try these commands:
sudo mkdir /etc/adobe
echo “OverrideGPUValidation=true” >~/mms.cfg
sudo mv ~/mms.cfg /etc/adobe/

Restart the browser.
That solved it for me.

Move Window Buttons Back to the Right
It’s a matter of taste, right?

Press Alt+F2 to bring up the Run Application dialog box, enter “gconf-editor” in the text field, and click on Run.
In the Configuration Editor click on apps, then metacity, then general. Double-click button_layout to edit it.
I changed it to menu:minimize,maximize,close, but again it’s a matter of taste, so you can juggle them around to suit you.
Hat tip to How-to Geek, who has illustrations

Eclipse Android Source

Meanwhile, I still haven’t got around to installing wordpress on 10.04, but I presume the instructions will still hold on 10.10.
Installing WordPress on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

With all due respect, I don’t really like Amarok or Rhythmbox. Lots of people do. It’s a personal thing. I settled on Banshee for a while and that is indeed a fine player, doing almost everything I wanted. But I’m a visual person and I like to change how a program looks and I couldn’t see any way of doing that. So I looked a bit closer at the Ubuntu Software Center and after several tries, found what is probably my ideal player, Jajuk.

As the website says, the software is designed to be intuitive and provide different visions of your collection. It also has skins.

It’s really easy to make a grey geek happy. Really.

I thought for a day or so that 10.04 had a serious bug on my computer. My screen dimmed and forced me to log in after five minutes of inactivity. It seemed to be replicated in other complaints on the web, mostly to do with a clash of compiz and firefox(???) so I took the plunge and filed a bug. Within minutes I got back this email from Andrea, who I believe is in northern Italy.

Hi and thanks for your bug report. I suspect the issue you are seeing is
caused by the screensaver. May you please open
System→Preferences→Screensaver and check the options here?

Never have I been so glad to discovered I’d been so foolish. One untick later, and I was free of all bugs. ;>) Andrea marked the ‘bug report’ as invalid, and all was well.

One other thing was annoying me. Maximize, minimize and close were on the left hand side of the screen, which is probably good for left-handers and Mac users, but I found it difficult. The solution to change it back, in case you’re interested is here: Move Window Buttons Back to the Right in Ubuntu 10.04.

However… I still found the theme to be dull. One of the changes I made this time around was to abandon Songbird, a faithful companion since its early versions. But I read that it’s dropping support for Linux, so I dropped support for it, and installed Banshee. As Ubuntu users will know, Rhythmbox is the default player but I’ve never taken to it, somehow. Banshee does everything I want and looks good, except… it looks dull in the theme I had. As does Open Office. I use the latter all day and the Grey was getting to me. So the solution was to change the theme, or actually just the controls in this case. I tried a few and chose Serenity, by Jean-Paul Bizet. What a difference it made! I even went back to the default skin in Thunderbird. The window buttons have gone back to the left but now that they look so well I don’t seem to mind and haven’t bothered to see if I can put them back on the right.

Different tastes for different folks, of course, but this suits me very well indeed, as my old eyes get tired unless I have a good colour scheme.

What else? The look of the Ubuntu software center has improved greatly, and while I don’t use Evolution, clicking on the envelope icon gives me Broadcast, so I can nip into twitter via gwibber handily – and nip out again! Thunderbird is on version 3.0.4. As I’ve several email accounts, the smart folders were a pain, but them I discovered it was just a matter of clicking the right arrow at the top of All Folders and it reverted back to a sensible layout.

As I say it’s one of the options… (which I didn’t, in the end, take).

This is arrimapirate’s guide on Ubuntu Forums

By default, Ubuntu only makes one partition (/) unless you create a partition setup when you initially install Ubuntu. Im going to show you how/why you can/should set up a /home partition after you install Ubuntu.

Advantage:
If Ubuntu for some reason crashes and becomes unbootable and unfixable reinstalling will not delete all of your important data and settings. You simply specify the /home partition to be mounted at /home when reinstalling.

Disadvantages:
Partitioning can end very badly if you dont know what your doing.
To help make this easier, everything we do will be done with a GUI. All of these steps can also be accomplished with the Terminal though.

Step 1: Boot into the live CD
Reboot your computer with your Ubuntu (or any live linux cd) in the cd drive and boot into the live system.

Continue reading at Ubuntu Forums
UPDATE:
I realise that what I want to do is move my home folder (identified by your username) to a separate partition, /home.
See Partitioning/Home/Moving
Pretty daunting, but once it’s done it’s done for good, and you can install new versions of Ubuntu or whatever Linux system you choose while keeping your data and settings.

See also HowToPartition.

Remember, I’m no expert. I’m just finding my way here just like you.