The Syntax of a Tech Kid

Well yesterday Mark Shuttleworth the creator and owner of Ubuntu has decided what Ubuntu 11.04 will be named, it will be named Natty Narwhal. If you don’t know what a Narwhal is, here is a quote from Mark Shuttleworth’s blog

“The Narwhal, as an Arctic (and somewhat endangered) animal, is a fitting reminder of the fact that we have only one spaceship that can host all of humanity (trust me, a Soyuz won’t do for the long haul to Alpha Centauri). And Ubuntu is all about bringing the generosity of all contributors in this functional commons of code to the widest possible audience, it’s about treating one another with respect, and it’s about being aware of the complexity and diversity of the ecosystems which feed us, clothe us and keep us healthy. Being a natty narwhal, of course, means we have some obligation to put our best foot forward. First impressions count, lasting impressions count more, so let’s make both and make them favourable.”

In this release there should be improved multitouch with Unity support. Mark also says “We’ll make the N release the best-dressed ever”. Better support for ARM processors and graphics hardware compatibility will also come. Hopefully a lot more as Mark came up with this because it was closest to a real unicorn.

Well, unfortunately Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx seems to not want to like my computer. It has been having random freezes and modules having to be loaded manually (either its 10.04 or it is NDISWrapper). The wireless drivers don’t really work that well (I can only connect to open networks without using NDISWrapper) and other little things that seem to drive me crazy. So for now I will be back on 9.10 Karmic Koala, although I will continue trying the next releases of Ubuntu to see if things get better. I will be cruzing back to the brown and orange for right now until most likely the next version of Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. I hope that it will work with 10.10 because I like Karmic (it does good with my graphics card) but if I can get the same in the updated versions that would be awesome . So for right now, the best thing in my situation is wait.

OH AND GUESS WHAT!!! This is my 100th post!!! YEAH!!!!

P.S. I keep forgetting my signature…

RJ,

Checking Out

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End of Transmission

So after a few days of testing my new desktop, I finally have gotten used to it. There are a few things / tips I figured I should let you know some tips that I decided to do.

1. Before you open plasma-desktop again,  delete your bottom gnome-panel, and change the top one so that it is on the right and it auto-hides. This will solve the blank space problem you might have noticed.
2. If you are going to be using plasma-desktop most of the time, go ahead and change the icon theme back to the default (oxygen I think) icon set. It will look better. Also change the Application style back to Oxygen.
3. If you want to use KDE’s notifications, then as soon as you log into GNOME, you need to double click on your “plasma-desktop.sh” file. Also while it is still in GNOME, don’t touch anything but your mouse to open KDE.

If all goes well, you should be a happy camper!

P.S. I changed my desktop a little bit, but not much. Here is the new screenshot.

Yes, its my desktop again

Well, some of you may or may not know that I have been running Ubuntu 10.04. Well I love KDE and I have not been able to get any distro to work with KDE because my wireless internet card. I have to use GNOME and NDISWrapper to get internet and it doesn’t work in KDE (at least with my luck). But I have finally found a work around with my problem. I run GNOME, but I run plasma desktop on top of it. I used this guide from the Ubuntu Forums. I think the result came out really good other than the fact that the gnome-panel gets in the way even though I killed it and removed it from the required components. If you want to see my desktop, well here it is!!!

My Desktop

So unfortunately X10 Hosting had a whole bunch of down time again! They had some sort of problem with cPanel and had to move servers to get it fixed. Then they were having problems with my account and I was just so angry at them. I figure next time they have to have another big move like this anytime soon, I will be moving to 000web host. I can’t afford another big set of downtime, and the worst part is that my site has really been down most of the summer. I hope that they will not be having any more problems in a long time, because other wise they are going to probably start loosing users (which they already have). Anyway, since all of this down time has occurred, I have decided to redo the theme, and now I have a new one! I am going to be trying to get one for the forums too! The downside is, because of this, some of the older posts may look a little messed up and I won’t be able to fix it. If you have been with X10 Hosting lately you will understand what has been happening. Then when I opened a thread / support ticket, they took forever to respond, and then they closed the ticket and I had to reopen it! I was and still very angry with this whole thing and I am just so sorry for this whole thing

Well everyone, Mozilla has released Beta 1 of the new Firefox 4! I immediately got my hands on it, and I love it!! It is super fast for me, I love the clean interface. It also just got Windows 7 (Superbar) Integration. Now whenever you download something, you can see the progress in the Taskbar/Superbar. Just like if you was doing a file operation withing Explorer. You can also see little “dents” (I don’t know what you call them) for each tab (Maximum it goes up to is three) just like in Internet Explorer (Which I recommend you don’t use as a daily browser). I wonder if Thunderbird will receive this new interface and integration. I do hope that if it does, it will have a little unread mail icon overlay just like Outlook 2010 or WLM. I have been using this awesome browser for a few hours and love it!! I would recommend it to anyone (I convinced my younger brother to install it onto his computer, and he likes it too!). Just remember it is a beta and may not be compatible with your current add-ons. But I believe you can keep your other Firefox installation separate from the beta. I also took a screenshot for you!

Firefox 4 Beta 1

So there you have it, my little review on this nifty browser, keep it up Mozilla!!

I am so sorry for the down time my site has had. My web host has been migrating servers and unfortunatley my files were lost (or maybe just misplaced). Lucky for me though they was able to get them back or find them. If you are looking at this, the perfect webhost (you should know which one I use), thanks for all the support and good luck with the rest of the migration!

P.S. More posts back up soon

Well I wanted to go to Ubuntu 10.04 today, but I didn’t think it was supported by EasyBCD so I was asking the Ubuntu Community at Ubuntuforums.org While I was asking I got convinced to use GRUB instead of EasyBCD, while talking to them about the pros and cons of doing this, I finally decided to go ahead and get it all setup. My experiences with using EasyBCD and the Windows Boot Loader was just bad, bad, bad!! I am going to post the post I did at ubuntuforums.org and at the bottom I will have a link to the original conversation.

I feel so proud!! And Now GRUB is my best friend!! And here is what my mixed experiences were.

Go into Windows and open EasyBCD to remove ubuntu entry

Reboot… GASP EasyBCD deleted my Windows Entry, and would not let me get into Ubuntu 9.10.

Boot my Ubuntu 10.04 Flash Drive, and do my partitioning in GParted.

Start installer, and set all mount points

Click install! (I started Shivering and Shaking)

Install finished, click restart. Choose the entry Windows 7 (Loader) on /dev/sda2 (remember the first one contains the BAD BOOTLOADER) it boots into Windows 7 perfectly!! I decided, I was afraid of GRUB when the real one I should have been afraid of was Windows Boot Loader!! I then also got over my fear of GRUB2 and it has become my best friend, on the other hand Windows (and there stupid bootloader), EasyBCD (the tool that helped me get into this dumb mess, but also made me realise my mistake in mistrusting GRUB2, and allowed it to become my best friend!!) has become my enemy!! I hope to not have to boot into Windows for a very long time and then one day convert this to an all Linux laptop!!

Here is the link to the conversation

So, yesterday I decided to install Ubuntu 9.10 on my laptop and dual boot it with Windows 7. Only instead of installing GRUB to the MBR I installed it to the partition and used EasyBCD to route The Windows Bootloader to Ubuntu (GRUB) and I can start it from there. I was very happy that everything worked. All the hotkeys (FN Key combos) The sound, wireless, everything! I even got the restricted drivers for my graphics card, and now I am rocking 3D. I hope that everything else goes well and I hope to write more stuff!

Most of us all remember that classic logon box that Windows XP Versions and down had. But sadly Microsoft took this away starting with Windows Vista. There is a way however to get a classic login prompt that is sort of like the old one.

Method 1 (Your Version of Windows Will need to be higher than Home Premium, because it has local security policies)

1. Go to Start and in search type secpol.msc
2. Open secpol.msc and you will see what is in picture 1
3. Go to Local Policies > Security Options

4. Then Scroll Down and

5. Find “Interactive Logon: Do not display last user

6. name” It should say “Disabled” (Second Picture, mine says enabled because I have already done it.)
7. Double Click it
8. Click “Enabled” (Third Picture)
9. Log back out and in, you will see what is on the fourth picture. (Sorry about the quality)

Method 2: The Registry (Any Version)

WARNING: DO NOT MESS WITH ANYTHING IN THE REGISTRY YOU DO NOT KNOW ABOUT, YOU SHOULD ALWAYS MAKE BACKUPS. THE REGISTRY IS ESSENTIAL TO YOUR COMPUTER AND IF MESSED UP COULD CAUSE DESTRUCTION TO YOUR COMPUTER. FOLLOW EACH STEP CAREFULLY!!

If you prefer to use a .reg file, they have one at Seven Forums on this tutorial

1. Open up Regedit.exe
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ MICROSOFT \ WINDOWS \ CURRENT VERSION \ POLICIES \ SYSTEM
3. Change the value of dontdisplaylastusername to 1

ONCE AGAIN I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE YOU CAUSE TO YOUR COMPUTER, PLEASE BE CAREFUL.

Sorry about how the formatting may come out on this post

RJ Checking Out

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End of Transmission