Author: Andy Ferguson

How to make a totally up to date bootable USB version of Ubuntu

I’ve written these instructions (371.6 KB PDF) for work, but think they might be useful in all sorts of other situations.

Basically it boils down to:

  1. Use Ubuntu Customization Kit to update all the packages in Ubuntu and add/remove packages as required.
  2. Use the USB creating tool in Ubuntu 8.10 to transfer your newly created iso to USB.

On my USB I’ve also added several portable apps, so as to ensure I’ve got everything I need for remote support of misbehaving Windows PCs.

Of course, you could just make the USB version first and then customise it using the free space on the USB, but this method allows you to remove software before transfering it to USB, which makes it useful for smaller devices (and for the sort of customised image you might want to install to a netbook).

OpenID

I’ve now (finally) got two-way OpenID support built into this installation of wordpress. What this means is:

  • I can log into sites like Livejournal using my account from teknostatik.co.uk. Not that useful, but fairly impressive.
  • Anyone who has an account with Livejournal, or a Gmail account, or one of a number of other things can leave comments on this blog.

Of course, I didn’t fix this today, I’m just catching up on writing documentation and blog posts while I’m off sick with face-ache.

Debian to the rescue (again)

The PPC version of Debian Testing seems to solve all the problems I’ve been having with my iBook.

It’s also the only Gnome based Linux Distro I can use for more than 5 minutes without changing the theme and wallpaper.

It might only be a backup laptop, but with my luck recently it’s better to be prepared.

Freely available albums of the year 2008

As promised, a top 20 just including freely available music released under a Creative Commons license.

  1. The Wind Whistles – Window Sills
  2. Abscondo – Midnight Snow
  3. Girl Talk – Feed the Animals
  4. The Rest – Atlantis, Oh Our Saviour
  5. Robin Grey – Only the Missile
  6. Nine Inch Nails – The Slip
  7. Death by Panda – House Made of Glass
  8. Josh Woodward – Not Quite Connected
  9. Depressive Art – Bye Bye Dear Everything
  10. Robin Grey – I Love Leonard Cohen
  11. Josh Woodward – The Simple Life
  12. Brad Sucks – Out of It
  13. Icarus Crash – 13 Segundos de Caida Libre
  14. After The Ice – It Happens All The Time
  15. Mountain Mirrors – Dreadnought
  16. Death by Panda – One Fifteen Four
  17. Silence is Sexy – This Ain’t Hollywood
  18. Sungod Abscondo – Imperfect People
  19. Saint Jean – Zikophren
  20. Nine Inch Nails – Ghosts I-IV

Albums of the year 2008

As always, these are determined by number of plays per track, divided by number of tracks (with anything available for free hyperlinked).

  1. Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid
  2. Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan – Sunday at Devil Dirt
  3. Elvis Costello & The Imposters – Momofuku
  4. The Gutter Twins – Saturnalia
  5. Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue
  6. R.E.M – Accelerate
  7. The Charlatans – You Cross My Path
  8. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
  9. The Wind Whistles – Window Sills
  10. Okkervil River – The Stage Names
  11. Bob Mould – District Line
  12. Abscondo – Midnight Snow
  13. Mercury Rev – Snowflake Midnight
  14. Amanda Palmer – Who Killed Amanda Palmer?
  15. Girl Talk – Feed the Animals
  16. TV on the Radio – Dear Science
  17. Black Francis – Svn Fngrs
  18. The Rest – Atlantis, Oh Our Saviour
  19. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!
  20. The Killers – Day and Age

    See also 2007 and 2006

    I’ll be doing a top 20 free/Creative Commons list later today (in theory).

    Thoughts on KDE4

    I’ve made an effort over the Christmas break to try as many new (or long-unused) software packages. This is party to ensure that I stay up to date (I can just about justify not knowing the inner workings of Vista, but not being able to configure Kmail is just embarrassing), but also because I will soon be buying a new main computer, and am still undecided as to what OS to run on it.

    My usual working environment revolves around the Gnome Desktop Environment, running on either Ubuntu or Mandriva. I’m also a regular user of Mac OS X (both Tiger and Leopard), as well as Windows XP which I have to use for a couple of tasks at work. I’ve not used KDE regularly for over 4 years, and have not used it for more than 5 minutes since KDE4 came out. To rectify this shortcoming, I’ve now set up two test environments:

    1. A fresh install of Mandriva One 2009 (KDE version) on a 6 year old HP laptop which has a flaky wireless card and a broken trackpad (but which is surprisingly fast otherwise).
    2. My usual Ubuntu laptop with the kubuntu-desktop metapackage installed on top of what is already there.

    The way KDE4 is set up varies a lot between the two distros, so some of my observations apply to one or the other:

    I like the overall sense of minimalism. Previously KDE seemed cluttered, and both distros have done away with the clutter to a greater or lesser degree. Kubuntu have made no preconceptions about what users might want on the taskbar, choosing instead to just have a menu icon and a very useful file management widgit. Mandriva have put shortcuts to configuring desktop and computer (both very useful), as well as a “show desktop” icon and a shortcut to Firefox. All of these work, but as with Gnome I find myself wanting to add my own frequently used applications (in Gnome I always add Firefox, Thunderbird and Gnome Terminal to the top taskbar as soon as I do a fresh install).

    Mandriva have chosen to go with a KDE3 style menu, while Kubuntu go with the KDE4 default. Both are fairly instinctive, but I had a little trouble finding Dolphin on Mandriva, and was a little baffled that Kubuntu doesn’t seem to have decided whether Dolphin or Konqueror should be used as a file manager (which is a shame because I’m really taken with Dolphin).

    Configuring Kmail was very different in each distro, which confused me, but both were at least as simple as Evolution, and I had no problem setting up my email, and performing a few basic tasks.

    The look and feel of both distros is excellent, and they certainly look prettier than anything I’m running at present. I can certainly make Gnome look this good, but out-of-the box KDE is more aesthetically appealing.

    My only real gripe is with Plasma; both the annoying Folder View that comes as default, and also the fact that adding or removing widgits can cause random crashes. It’s useful, but just doesn’t seem finished to me.

    I think KDE4 has the potential to be really good in about 6 months time, and I’d certainly recommend it to anyone coming to Linux from Windows. I also think both Mandriva and Kubuntu have taken KDE in interesting (but very different) directions, and I find myself wanting to see how other distros have implemented it now.