Opera 9 installable "with a couple of clicks"

By boredandblogging | Published: 2006-07-29

Opera 9 is one of the longest-surviving web-browsers out there, eclipsing classical Netscape and dodging any purchase and eliminate moves from Redmond. Some common features even appeared in Opera first. Back in the late-1990’s, I remember seeing “tabs” in use (but they were along the bottom of the window then!).

Over the years the makers of Opera (also called Opera) have been very supportive of the GNU/Linux community.

Several versions of their browser have been available for us freedom lovers, especially for users on Apple’s PowerPC chips and even a .deb package for Debian on Sparc. In recent years Opera’s blistering speed and compact size have given it a comfortable home on hand-held PDAs and mobile/cellular phones, so much so that they have been able to drop the price to a beautiful zero Norwegian dollars (for non-Americans out there, the currency is actually called “Kroner”).

Now all that power and excitment joins forces with the power and ease-of-use of Ubuntu. Opera 9 is now available with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS upwards—installing only takes a couple of clicks (directions behind the link). KDE and Kubuntu fans can also rejoice because Opera uses the Qt libraries and will fit in perfectly with your desktop.

System Administrator Appreciation Day

By boredandblogging | Published: 2006-07-28

Today, Friday 28th July, is the Annual Sysadmin Appreciation Day, celebrating the hard work of the tireless, hard-working people who jump out of bed to the sound of their pagers vibrating at 03:00 in the morning. Instantly wide-awake, they enthusiastically hop and skip down to the data-centre to fix whatever is required (like happened this weekend!).

The Ubuntu servers are looked after by a valiant team of three. James Troup (lovely cuddly “elmo”) has been with Ubuntu since the project started and has also famously been Debian’s single-point-of-failure for the last decade. Karl Tilbury (“Znarl” on IRC) started along side James about a year ago and just recently in the last month, Nick Moffit (aka “Spads”) joined the crew. If you can spot them hiding out on the IRC channels be sure to wish them your best regards.

In celebration of the day, our friends over at the UKUUG have produced an animation to liven up the day and just in case you haven’t got proprietary Flash installed, you can download an OGG audio file to listen to.

Hugs, flowers, chocolates and kisses can be sent via Claire at the Canonical office.

Ubuntu Weekly News #7 – Edgy Knot 1 and more!

By boredandblogging | Published: 2006-07-28

In Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter – Issue #7 for the week of July 15 – 21, 2006, you'll find:

  • Edgy Eft Knot 1 Release
  • The Classroom
  • Ubuntu Magazine Meeting
  • Canonical Commercial Repositories
  • Opera 9 for Ubuntu
  • Hug Day
  • Technical Board Meeting
  • Ubuntu Marketing Team Meeting
  • Lugradio Live 2006

Keep up with the latest in the community and submit your own stories.

This issue put together by Rich Johnson (Nixternal).

Ubuntu Magazine naming: vote early, vote often

By boredandblogging | Published: 2006-07-27

The poll for your favourite release of K/Ubuntu has been up for nearly as long as the DCC Alliance has been dead. Guess what, a truely whopping 85% of you rated Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) as the ruler of the releases and king of kompetition. Congratuations to the Duck (or was it a Dragon?).

Vidya Ayer suggested on the ubuntu-marketing mailing list that we have a poll to replace the current one. To help her and the rest the magazine team pick the title of the new Ubuntu Magazine, we’ve picked out a few names on the left-hand side. If you’ve got a suggestion, you can add it over at The Ubuntu Forums, or just select which one should be top of the titles!

Anyone interesting in helping the Magazine project get off the ground should check out the Magazine Project Charter which has a bunch of pretty colourful diagrams available showing how they’re expecting everything might in future.

[Post your own Magazine Titles on the Ubuntu Forums]

Xubuntu's Jani Moses interviewed

By boredandblogging | Published: 2006-07-27

Xubuntu core developer Jani Monoses (‘janimo’ on IRC) gets the A-list celebrity treatment and joins Ubuntu’s Walk of Fame over at Behind Ubuntu.

Xubuntu is designed for lower-specification or older machines and can install on machines with only 64MB of RAM. It manages this amazing feat by switching out the traditional full-scale KDE and GNOME desktops and replacing them with a slim-line interface based on XFCE. A huge number of packages have had to be tweaking to make Xubuntu possible and Jani’s time and effort to a tribute to what is possible.

What we’re all wondering is: What’s the name of Jani’s mouse in the photo and how did Jani pursuade the mouse to stay still long enough to pose for the Xubuntu logo photo-shoot?

[Discuss Jani’s interview on the Ubuntu Forums]