Ubuntu

The latest version of XBMC, codenamed Babylon is finally released. It has many new features and enhancements. For beginners, XBMC is an award winning Open Source Multimedia Application with eye candy and easy to use interface. Take a look at the screenshots of XBMC. All new XBMC 9.04 comes with a lot of improvements and added features. Some of the new features include support for Power PC architecture, improved FanArt support,  VDPAU hardware accelerated video decoding under Linux on NVIDIA graphics and so on. Here are the detailed instructions on How to install XBMC 9.04 - Babylon in Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope and also further details on the application.

Open Office 3.1 has been released with improved features and bug fixes. Some of the  new features include antialiased drawings to smooth the edges of graphics, replying to notes, improved grammar checking, hyperlink management and sorting etc. Peek into the full list  of features in the all new release of Open Office. Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope comes with Open Office 3.0 as default and the new release of Open Office is not yet listed in the official Ubuntu repo. You will have to add launchpad repo to upgrade to this all new Open Office 3.1. Take a look on different steps detailing the Upgradation to Open Office 3.1 in Ubuntu Jaunty, Intrepid, and Hardy.

Firefox is a not only a choice, but a better alternative to Internet Explorer for GNU/Linux users. Windows version of Firefox is also available for download for free. But some sites may not at all show up properly in Firefox. This has nothing to do with Firefox, it is more or less an issue on part of the designers of the site itself. Since Internet Explorer does not have a Linux version, you will have to use wine to install and run Internet Explorer in Ubuntu. We have compiled a step by step procedure on how to install Internet Explorer in Ubuntu with useful screenshots.

There has been certain issues with the recent updates of Firefox in Ubuntu 8.10. After installing all the recent updates in Ubuntu intrepid ibex, Firefox may start showing up some errors while trying to run the same. The most common error is the one which Firefox simply fails to start with an error message "Could not find compatible GRE between version 1.9b3 and 1.9b3".

Windows Media Player is a multimedia player owned by Microsoft Corporation. It is a Windows only media player and doesn't have any Free alternative. Newbie GNU/Linux users find it difficult to find a good alternative for Windows Media Player. There exist a plethora of highly efficient media players in Ubuntu like XBMC Media Center, Amarok, Smplayer, VLC etc.

XBMC Media Center (XBOX Media Center) is an  award winning free and open source media center which is also multiplatform.  It looks stunning and is also feature rich. Apart from being an excellent  multimedia player, it has of features like visually appealing user interface, playlist playback, picture viewing, some really good skins, and even third party softwares and addons. XBMC media center is released under GNU General Public License.

Even though Open Office is a really good Office suite, newbie Linux users find it difficult to migrate from Microsoft Office 2007 to Open Office. There are other options as well, like KOffice suite among others, which are really good Free software alternatives. But for those who desperately need to use Microsoft Office 2007 in their Ubuntu 8.10 desktop, WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is there to help you. All you need is the latest version of WINE. We have compiled the different steps required in installiing Microsoft Office 2007.

Upgrading a working server application is always tricky. This is especially true if the upgrade had changes in configuration files and you had customizations done in your local configuration file. The recent exim4 upgrade to version 4.67-3 had structural changes in the configuration files. The suggested upgrade method is to accept all the modifications provided by the upgrade and redo the customizations. But what if you did not read the instructions properly and ended having an exim4 installation that throws out errors every time you try to start exim4.

Two months after the release of Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, we have downloaded the complete Ubuntu Repositories for Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. The full set of Ubuntu Repository DVDs (set of 6 DVDs) is now available and you can order it through our RequestCD Program. If you get the complete Ubuntu Repository on DVDs you do not have to have an internet connection to install any package that is normally available through Synaptic Package Manager.

After a long 3 months since the release of Ubuntu Hardy heron, we have managed to download the complete Ubuntu Repository for Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. The full set of Ubuntu Repository DVDs (set of 5 DVDs) is now available and you can order it through our RequestCD Program. If you get the complete Ubuntu Repository on DVDs you do not have to have an internet connection to install any package that is normally available through Synaptic Package Manager.

We install Ubuntu on almost all systems built at Zyxware. One common request we have heard from our customers was for a simple printed user manual that they can use to learn and start using Ubuntu. We have been guiding people to the web to learn the ins and outs of using the operating systems but this does not always work very well. As a permanent solution to this problem we are embarking on an ambitious project to create a print ready Ubuntu Manual. As the first step towards this we have created a website dedicated to compiling content that can go into the ubuntu manual. You can check out the ubuntu manual site.

We had recently been involved in a project to set up a Conference Management System for an International Conference to be conducted in Kerala sometime later this year. We had zeroed in on Pentabarf as the solution we were going to base the system on. Pentabarf is a Ruby on Rails solution that has been used for the last couple of DebConfs. Pentabarf as such is an excellent system, being a system created by programmers for programmers, but it heavily lacked in documentation both on their site and on the world wide web. We however managed to get it installed on Ubuntu with Apache, Ruby on Rails and FastCGI. We are sharing the installation instructions for Pentabarf on Ubuntu here

Matrix Screensaver is a very popular screensaver based on the digital rain shots (moving text) in the blockbuster movie trilogy - The Matrix. This is available as a screensaver in popular GNU Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian with their default installations. But the default Matrix Screensaver that comes with these distributions contains only falling English alphabets. Now Santhosh Thottingal of SMC (Swathanthra Malayalam Computing) has modified this for Indic scripts and has made it available for everybody.

Most of the web based systems that we build at Zyxware uses Drupal as the content framework. The following are the steps involved in setting up Apache, PHP, MySQL and Drupal on a freshly installed Ubuntu 8.04 system. If you follow the instructions you should be able to set it up as is but if you face problems let us know and we will try to help you.

The much awaited Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu - version 8.04 codenamed Hardy Heron was released on April 24th. We now have the CDs and DVDs for the different flavors of Ubuntu 8.04 available at Zyxware. You can drop by our office to write a copy for yourselves or you can use the RequestCD Service to order the CDs and DVDs online.

Ubuntu can be installed on a USB flash thumb drive and such a drive can be used just like a Live Ubuntu CD except that it would be faster and that you can save changes back into the pen drive. The process is easy but you can save yourself the hassle of doing that order for yourselves a fully working Ubuntu Live USB Pen Drive from us.