KnowUbuntu

My, my, my how the time flies by.

Well its been a while since I first downloaded and installed Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) on my work laptop (64 bit). I have to say, it has been fun. I just love it when stuff works. I started off the whole process with a home directory backup. I have a 500 GB external HD that I just copied my whole home directory straight over to. It took quite a bit of time, but then I had everything safely stored in another location so I could completely wipe the HD in the laptop and install a 64 bit OS (previously I was running Ubuntu 9.04 32 bit). The install went fast (from a CD about half an hour) and then I was up and running. The ATI card in the laptop was already supported (no need to install a third party driver to get compiz to work) and within an hour I had everything I needed to get the work I needed to do done. A nice chunk of that hour was spent trying to customize and figure out empathy (the new default IM client for Karmic replacing Pidgin). After that I decided I just needed to install Pidgin for my IM client and everything else went smoothly. I have tried using the new software center a few times now to discover new software that I might like to install. It is great for just that, but don’t try installing anything from it. I don’t know if it is just me it not but it seems to take forever to install anything through that application. I have also done a lot of customizing with the humanity icons in my panel. These are the one color icons that showed up in Karmic. For example my last post shows some of the Pidgin icons I made to look more like the theme. I have since used most of the custom icons posted on OMG Ubuntu.

My work laptop running Ubuntu 9.10

These are not professionally done. Fair warning. I just like to customize things to the way I like them and when I saw that most of the icons in the gnome panel in the notification area were gray scale icons, I had to make (or find) some for pidgin (my personal IM client of choice).

Example Icons | |

You can download my icons if you wish.

Changing the icons is easy enough to do.

1. Backup your existing icon directorysudo cp -r /usr/share/pixmaps/pidgin/tray/22 /usr/share/pixmaps/pidgin/tray/22.oldNOTE: The size that my gnome panel uses is 22. Yours may differ and there are other size folders in the tray folder to choose from.
2. Copy the new icon folder where the other one wassudo cp -r ~/22 /usr/share/pixmaps/pidgin/tray/You can use mine (if your panel also uses size 22) or you can make your own. Just make sure your image files are named the same.
3. Restart Pidgin and you will have nice humanity themed icons.

I took a little stroll with karmic today and I’m not talking about karma either. Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10 release) is scheduled to be released next week so I thought I would download the release candidate live CD and take it for a little spin. In short, I was pleased though not surprised with the changes that were made (that I could see).

Following is a list of the features and changes (as well as my thoughts and opinions) that I noticed and have heard about so far.

• Ubuntu One – This feature looks very promising. If you know anything about Dropbox and like it, then you will most likely like Ubuntu One (man, that was a lot of likes). Coming pre-installed, Ubuntu One will allow registered (nothing too dangerous) users to automatically backup and store up to 2 GB of stuff in the cloud. Like Dropbox, Ubuntu One creates a folder in your home directory and everything that you put in it is automatically taken to the cloud and stored for you. If you have another Ubuntu system (I assume with Karmic) those files are accessible from there too. I don’t know all of the details about this, but rest assured, I will know all about this feature in the future because I have a feeling it will be one that I use a lot.
• Empathy not Pidgin for the default instant messaging client. To be honest at first this infuriated me. I have been using Pidgin for years and have had no problems with it. There are some nice plugins and other features that it has that I like in an instant messaging client. However, after playing around with the version of Empathy that is installed by default in Karmic, I have to say that it might be a good switch. Empathy is light weight, but has actually more capabilities than Pidgin. With video and audio support in Empathy, I have a feeling we will see GoogleTalk integration real soon.
• Firefox 3.5.3 is the default web browser. I tried several times in my Jaunty installations to get Firefox 3.5 installed and running without incident to little avail. I am just pleased that the new and improved Firefox made it in.
• Ubuntu Software Center - This is a new one for me. I hadn’t read or heard anything about this change before playing with it myself. The “Add/Remove” program that aids you in installing and removing software on your system in Jaunty has a new name, and has been severly made over. As a programmer I will probably still use the command line installation proceedures, but for the casual everyday user, this new software center will provide a nice interface for finding and easily installing new software. The interface was easy to use for exploring the repos.
• Overall Feeling I’m excited. In less then a week I will be installing the newly released Koala on my home system and begin again to customize it, which should provide for some more fresh material on this site! There are a few things that I hope will be in this release that I haven’t heard heads nor tails about. Will I be able to customize the notification theme that was introduced in Jaunty? I guess we will see. Stay tuned.