Apress was kind enough to send me a copy of their new book “Beginning Ubuntu Server Administration: From Novice to Professional” by Sander van Vugt. Overall, I was very impressed with this book — it was well written, filled with applicable examples, covered a wide range of topics, and provided background for people new to Ubuntu or Linux in general.

On a recent vacation my laptop boot time (>4 min.) started getting on my nerves. I resolved to enjoy the vacation but fix things on my return. At home a few minutes with Google brought bootchart to my attention.

I’ve been in the market for some time, looking for a quality laptop that I can install Ubuntu on (in other words Linux Ubuntu compatible) and tweak as I need. Unfortunately, I don’t find much information that shows me which makes and models work… and nobody has offered me a test model that I can write a review about, yet.

This post will explain (in depth) how to request a package to be included in the Ubuntu repositories.Ubuntu is built around a packaging system called apt (advanced packaging tool), which uses Debian packaging. To keep Ubuntu as simple as possible there are 4 apt “repositories” which hold different classes of software. ‘Main’ is the main repository. It is basically everything that comes on your  Ubuntu CD and is installed by default.

I followed the instructions mentioned in this NetBeans Wiki to install NB 6.0 on my ubuntu. But I feel some more information can be added to this wiki. For example, when i ran the command "sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk", ubuntu complained to me that this package is not found in its repositories.

Htop is a process manager that builds on the functionality of top. It allows you to view available memory and CPU usage as well as kill and manage running processes. It integrates quite well into the system manager Conky.

Astronomy, considered as one of the oldest sciences, is the scientific study of celestial objects (such as stars, planets, comets, and galaxies) and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere (such as the cosmic background radiation). With the aid of powerful telescopes, Astronomers were able to study our vast skies. Since accurate and reliable software related to Astronomy are plenty these days, anyone can now have an opportunity to learn more about Astronomy without the need for telescopes. I’ve collected here a list of well-recognized free/open-source Astronomy software. I hope this helps:

From Techthrob.com:

There has been a lot of debate recently over whether or not it's a good idea to run an anti-virus program if you're using Linux. Reading the forums, I see a lot of misunderstandings, particularly around what exactly it is that these anti-virus programs do and whether or not they're necessary. I hope to clear up some of the confusion regarding the anti-virus situation on Linux.

From Techthrob.com:

Preload is an "adaptive readahead daemon" that runs in the background of your system and observes what programs you use most often, caching them in order to speed up application load time. By using Preload, you can put unused RAM to good work, and improve the overall performance of your desktop system. Best of all, it's easy to install and use!

Google earth according to wikipedia is: "... virtual globe program that was originally called Earth Viewer and was created by Keyhole, Inc. It maps the earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe. It is available under three different licenses: Google Earth, a free version with limited functionality; Google Earth Plus ($20 per year), which includes additional features; and Google Earth Pro ($400 per year), which is intended for commercial use"

Frozen-Bubble has blissfully stolen hours and hours of my life with its addictive gameplay and flippin' awesome soundtrack. It's an easy game with a simple premise: shoot colors bubbles onto the game board in an attempt to match up three or more similarly colored bubbles.

There comes a time, right after you burn your 137th MP3 CD, when you start feeling the need to establish a system for finding all the songs you treasure so much. It's the same with movies, application kits, books, and music -- you need software that lets you index your media quickly and output detailed search results. Here's a selection of Linux applications you can use to ease your work.

Renaming a big set of files can be a right chore. For example, if you’ve just imported a set of digital photos, they’ll usually have really unhelpful and undescriptive filenames such as DSC_0000.jpg.

Over the last few years I have been experimenting with time-lapse photography. One easy way to compile a time-lapse video is to use dvd-slideshow, a tool for creating video slideshows from digital photos, and more.

Webcams are everywhere these days: they're standard on a lot of laptops, LCD monitors are starting to incorporate them, and decent standalone USB webcams can be had for less than $40. In this two-part series we'll set up a Webcam on Linux, and then use it to perform a number of amazing and fun tasks.

CrunchBang Linux is an Ubuntu based distribution featuring the lightweight Openbox window manager and GTK+ applications. The distribution has been built and customised from a minimal Ubuntu install. The distribution has been designed to offer a good balance of speed and functionality. CrunchBang Linux is currently available as a LiveCD; however, best performance is achieved by installing CrunchBang Linux to your hard disk.

Ubuntu 8.04, a.k.a. Hardy Heron, Alpha 5 hit the wires late Friday evening. I downloaded my copy around 8pm Orlando local time (EST). After super and kitchen duty I sat down and ran the release around the four systems I have at home to see how it worked.

With the release of DRX's SEGA prototypes just a couple of days away, a lot of people are looking forward to trying some of this classic gaming goodness on their own. Ubuntu users need look no further: Gens is an awesome Sega Genesis emulator.

Photo management software for Windows makes us weep. For most people, photo management consists of loading the software (and drivers) that came from the camera manufacturer. So you've got a Nikon camera, and the photo management software is really different from your significant other's Kodak software.

The installation instructions in most free software reviews aren't enough. If you decide a package sucks, how do you get rid of it? If a package rocks, how do you upgrade it? GNU Stow, a package manager for packages you compile and install yourself, provides an easy answer to both questions.

If you want to install Nvidia drivers in Ubuntu Feisty and above versions is very easy to install. Ubuntu doesn’t include Nvidia drivers in a default installation for a number of reasons.

Free software programmers are fond of saying that they'd prefer not to reinvent the wheel. Apparently that attitude no longer applies to desktop menus, considering all the new options springing up.

None other than the father of Ubuntu Linux, Mark Shuttleworth, announced last night the name and the goals for the next version of this marvelous operating system, Ubuntu 8.10 (codename Intrepid Ibex); scheduled for release in October 2008: "With Hardy now past feature-freeze it's time to start to plan features that are being lined up for inclusion after Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is released in April.

Silly me. After reading about syslinux it suddenly dawned on me I was still making it too hard to transfer Ubuntu 7.10 LiveCD from CD to thumb drive. The key difference is copying all the files in the isolinux directory on the Ubuntu LiveCD to the root of the thumb drive, and renaming isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg. So here are simpler instructions for creating a bootable Ubuntu Live Thumb Drive under Linux.

From Techthrob.com:

Griffith is an application for the Gnome desktop that organizes your movie collection, much in the same way Alexandria is used to organize your book library. Simply by entering the name of a movie, Griffith will query various databases on the internet and download cover art, plot details, and cast information.