GIMP

Ah, GIMP. How can one do any photo editing without it? Well, in my opinion it needs work. And a lot. I have heard that it is equal to or nearly equal to Photoshop, but the few times I've used Photoshop, it seemed much easier to use. I am trying to get a flyer made for my wood refinishing business so I can hopefully get some work. So far, I've used a picture I cropped of a sheet of veneer for the background, added my text, and left space for a picture of my work. I'm trying to make the background of an RCA Victor radio be transparent. It is far from easy. The closest I've gotten to doing that was a small border that was transparent. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I just can't seem to figure it out even with all the tutorials floating around the web. Well, I better get back to work on it. Wish me luck.

9.04

After writing about Windows, you know I'm going to write about Ubuntu. Well, I'm back to using Ubuntu 9.04 even though it does have some shortcomings. Well, as of right now, on my One, I am using Vista, 7, and Ubuntu 9.04. Vista for my Xbox connection, 7 because it's neat, and Ubuntu for nearly everything. I was browsing the web last night, and figured out some neat and interesting things for Ubuntu.

First of all, Guake.This is a great little app for Terminal access. Once it's up and running, instead of going to Applications/Accessories/Terminal to do command line work, just press F12. It slides down from the top of the screen, and your off and running. Just like the standard Terminal program, you can have multiple tabs, and all the commands work.

Next up is Espeak. I don't know of much real use for it, but it is a neat program. In terminal type: espeak: Hello. Ubuntu is a great operating system. If it is installed (preinstalled in 9.04), and your speakers are turned up, it should speak it to you. If not, enter  sudo apt-get install espeak, then try again. Like I said, not much real use that I can see, but neat anyway. 

Emacs. There have been articles written about it before so I won't go into much detail. Basically, it's a text editor with extras. To get it, type in Terminal or Guake: sudo apt-get install emacs. It can be used like gedit, or any other text editor, but it can do more. One neat thing is the sudo therapist. Once you start emacs, press escape, and type xdoctor, and press enter. In comes the doctor. The "doctors" answers and questions can be very generic, but interesting indeed.

I decided earlier to make a list of useful command line commands for everyone. 

sudo command                                 run command as root

lsb_release -a                                   get Ubuntu version

uname -r                                            get kernel version

uname -a                                           get all kernel information

apt-get update                                 refresh all update information

apt-get upgrade                               upgrade all packages

apt-get dist-upgrade                       upgrade Ubuntu distribution

gksudo nautilus                                super user window manager (be careful with this!)                    

Those were just a few commands off the top of my head. I know their may be some that are more useful, but these seem to me, to be a few useful commands anyone could use. Hopefully they'll help you out sometime.

It's been a while..

Well, it's been a while since I posted last. Life has been sooo busy. I've modded my Xbox recently to run xDSL. That was interesting. It needs a memory upgrade from 64MB ram to 128MB of ram to do a lot, but it does stream videos, though. If anyone from Ubuntu Forums is reading this, then you know I've been trying to use Ubuntu on my Aspire One to bridge my wireless connection to my ethernet port to connect my Xbox to the web. That is one thing Ubuntu needs work on. I ended up installing Windows Vista since I had an install disc with the drivers on it. I have to give credit to the Windows developers for that feature. Just select 2 connections and select brdge connections. Very nice feature. Well, after all that, I had finally decided to try out Windows 7 on my One. 

Well, I figured I'd Google it to find a torrent to download it, but the first thing that came up was a link to the Microsoft donwload page. Downloading it was abreeze since I have a 10MB connection, but I had an issue burning it to install. The first burn seemed to go ok, but when I booted from the disc, I had an error screen saying something about a usb device being unplugged improperly. Re-burned it, and booted no problem.

Before I go on, I just want to say, I obviously am an avid supporter of FOSS and Ubuntu. But, I do try to keep up with Windows and on ocassion Mac OSX. I just believe to say Ubuntu/FOSS is better in any way, you must know about the competition. Hence, the reason I am trying out Vista and 7.

Back to the subject. I, so far, am highly suprised with 7, even though it is still just RC1. Microsoft seems to have finally taken some good cues from FOSS/Linux. At first with 7, the installer is quite pleasant, and easy on the eyes, finally. Installing 7 is faster than previous Windows versions, but still needs work. 

After the installation, 7 has a look similar to Vista. Once I saw that, I lost a little hope in it. But, it's far from Vista. So far, it typically takes 10% of the CPU and around 50-60% of the ram on my One. Not bad compared to Vista or XP. Using GTK+ themes was a head turner for me. Well, more to come as I use it. Download it and try it out.