Ciemon Dunville, Alan Pope, Dave Walker and Tony Whitmore present the third episode of the Ubuntu UK Podcast. In this episode we talk about:-

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I use Skype quite a bit. Not only to call family, friends, and clients, but also to record interviews and the occasional podcast. The recording part I had to do under Windows. While I’ve found quite a bit of advice on recording Skype calls in Linux, none of the solutions has ever worked for me.

Reports of beta testing for 8.04 LTS seem very positive all round, to the great credit of the desktop and server teams who have been working so hard to make Hardy Heron rock. I have been running Hardy on my laptop through most of the cycle, but took the plunge on my home firewall and [...]

One of the remaining gaps in the GNU/Linux desktop is an editor for producing Flash content. When viewing Flash files, users can limp along with Adobe's proprietary player or the still-incomplete although free Gnash player, but the best they can do for Flash creation is employ the limited ability of OpenOffice.org Draw to export to the format.

One of the reasons that I love Firefox is the dozens of extensions that I have installed to customize the browser, but it seems like every extension includes another icon or widget, and by this point the status bar looks like an instrument panel... so how can I make them hide until I need them?

Texmaker is an editor for the document markup language LaTeX. It lets you concentrate on the content of a document, while the underlying LaTeX engine takes care of the layout. Whether you are experienced with LaTeX or just starting out, Texmaker makes LaTeX easier to tame. It is GPL-licensed, cross-platform (running on Linux, Unix, Windows, and Mac OS X), and extremely stable.

With fires, thefts, and natural disasters it is a good idea to have a home inventory. In this video I am going to show you how to inventory your house using a digital camera and F-Spot on a Linux desktop.

LifeType is a full-featured GPL blogging platform designed for use with a MySQL database and PHP. You'll need access to a server in order to properly install and use LifeType, but the installation is easy with LifeType's wizard, which can even create your MySQL database and all the tables you need, automatically.

Nautilus, the default File Manager in most Gnome Desktops, is a very versatile and feature rich program that does its job pretty well. Did you know that you can instantly open special locations in Nautilus by typing in some special URIs?

Extensions have long been written for OpenOffice.org Writer. However, the fact that attention is finally being paid to other applications seems a sign that OpenOffice.org is finally starting to develop an active extension-writing community.

Phun is a physics sandbox toy and educational tool. Using its simple tools and powerful physics engine, you can build complex machines or just have fun! This video should give you an idea of what you can create in Phun:

In the last two weeks we looked at the two heavy hitters of the personal finance software world, Microsoft Money and Quicken. This week we look at a lesser known but equally attractive option, Moneydance. If you followed our last two articles you will have seen that while Microsoft Money and Quicken are powerful applications, the UK versions of both haven't been updated in a few years. So we decided to dig a little deeper to see if we could come up with an alternative.

Personally, Nautilus is my file manager of choice. It has plenty of built in features, and anything that isn’t included, I can add it myself with Nautilus Scripts. However, while not bloated by any means, it is a little heavier then a plain file manager needs to be. If you have decent hardware, it will be fine, but if you a lower-end setup, or want to squeeze out every drop of speed, you may want to consider an alternative. While their are plenty of choices out there, here are two of the most popular that I’ve had experiences with.

Ubuntu users, Firefox 3 beta 5 (3b5) has reached Hardy’s repositories. Gutsy (and older versions) users, enable Hardy repo’s to upgrade it.

To be able to install the extensions that are not supported by this version of firefox (since the new addons website interface which sucks by the way), here’s what you must do to bypass it:

http://icehot.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/firefox-3-beta-5-reached-hardys-repositories/

A video tutorial on how to embed the terminal into your desktop

http://icehot.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/ubuntu-linux-video-tutorial-embedded-terminal-into-the-desktop/

To this end I’ve been seeking free and semi-free online music—free as in beer, semi-free as in of limited choice—since the new year. So far, outside of bittorrenting (which is obviously of variable legality, depending on what you’re downloading), I’m having some success with Last.fm.

First off, cheers to Jonathan for his great work with Kubuntu and KDE. Everyone should go read his reasons why Kubuntu is good for KDE. I’d also like to share some of my own comments about Kubuntu and KDE.

Following on from my piece on whether OpenOffice.org can do the job I have remembered that OpenOffice.org 3.0 is due for release in September. So—with my comments on 2.3 in mind—let’s see whether the new version will address my needs.

High-end open source blogging applications may have all the features you can think of, but you may not need all that. For simple blogs, a lightweight alternative like Chyrp is worth a closer look. Chyrp runs on the PHP/MySQL stack, has a clean interface sprinkled with AJAX, and administration features that you can learn without resorting to a manual (in fact, there is no manual to speak of).

If you’re like me and use terminal sessions like tommy guns in twitch games - or if you just want easy access to a terminal whenever you like with the push of one key on your keyboard then you’ll love Yakuake.

A digital audio editor is a computer application for audio editing or digital audio manipulation. Usually, a digital audio editor allows the user to record and edit audio, mix multiple sound sources/tracks, apply simple or advanced effects or filters, playback sound, and convert different audio file formats and different sound quality levels.

Now don’t get all crazy on me. I’m not insinuating that Ubuntu isn’t Linux nor am I saying it is the only distro out there that is worth a look. With that said, it does seem that Ubuntu is becoming a name that may become as recognizable as Linux it self. This is definitely a good thing for Ubuntu but may end up being a confusing and frustrating issue for Linux users. While it’s clear that OS X is built on Unix no one calls OS X Unix. Will Ubuntu end up with the same fate? Will Ubuntu be seen as it’s own OS all together rather than a Linux based system to those that use it?

You know what Ubuntu is, so we will not talk about it in this article. Instead, we'll talk about some or the most popular Ubuntu-based distributions. There are enough (or not) Linux distributions derived from Ubuntu, so we thought it will be a very good idea to make a list with all of them, or at least the popular ones.

We have covered TrueCrypt before on polishlinux.org, in particular the article TrueCrypt Tutorial: Truly Portable Data Encryption explained how to encrypt your Linux partitions with TrueCrypt using the command line. This text will therefore focus on the new GUI tool.

Many Linux newcomers avoid using console windows because they seem to require a lot of typing. What they don't realise is that Linux has a secret speed-up.