ubuntu :)

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daedalus__
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ubuntu :)

Post by daedalus__ »

i recently moved to ubuntu because windows <span style='color:blue' title='I'm naughty, are you naughty?'>smurf</span> me off.

im so happy with my experience with it this time around that i really wanted to say something about it.

like if you ever worried about moving to linux, don't. just get ubuntu and try to work through the first couple of days with it.

i even have fl studio 9 working using wine. :)

oh and another cool thing about it is there are a bunch of quran study tools and prayer time things and stuff in the repos.

the only thing that bothers me is having to rebuild the nvidia driver every time the kernel updates. which has been twice in the past three days. L:|
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s.dot
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Re: ubuntu :)

Post by s.dot »

definitely++
Set Search Time - A google chrome extension. When you search only results from the past year (or set time period) are displayed. Helps tremendously when using new technologies to avoid outdated results.
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daedalus__
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Re: ubuntu :)

Post by daedalus__ »

forr real tho i wsh more people would tida up the thread. i neva thought i could get fl studio working. ive heard of many games too. like baldurs gate, fallout, etc.
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volomike
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Re: ubuntu :)

Post by volomike »

If you like a barebones editor now that you have switched to Ubuntu, I use gEdit, but with a twist. If you look in the package repository, there are addons for gEdit that are not normally installed. Install them. Then, go into the plugins menu inside gEdit and turn on Indent Lines, External Tools, and especially File Browser Pane. You can then choose other options available to you in the preferences such as line numbering, line highlight, right margin line, bracket matching, and auto indenting. When you configure External Tools, I recommend adding in "php -l" (little L) because it lets you run a PHP Lint on your current document to check for syntax errors.

I then turnaround and install mousepad so that I can have a zippy little text editor for small stuff, and reserve gEdit for when doing big projects.

Other dev tools I use are Inkscape and Gimp. You can work with PSD images on Ubuntu, but perhaps not always pixel perfect. You will need to ask your clients not just for the PSD image when doing any XHTML/CSS chopping, but also a PNG version, as well as any associated fonts that they might be using (besides the standard ones).

There's KRuler for measuring things on the screen.

You'll likely want to visit dafont.com and other places on the web for fonts, as well as pay for some fonts. And I stick with TTF right now. These install in a hidden directory in your home directory called .fonts, which you can reach in Gnome's Nautilus by typing in ~/.fonts or perhaps just .fonts.

Install Sun VirtualBox from the Sun website (Oracle website now?) if you want to run Windows inside -- or perhaps Mac inside although I don't know if Mac is possible.

There's a tool called Agave that helps suggest cool website colors.

There's a Skype client, Gmail checkers, and other IM and mail tools you might find valuable.

There's a great diff program called Meld Diff Viewer.

There's a great SVN GUI called RapidSVN, but you'll want to download and compile the latest from the RapidSVN website I found.

There's xCHM for opening up Windows-style help files (CHM files). PHP.net has a PHP CHM doc you can download for PHP help.

Usually after you install a copy of Ubuntu, you'll want to visit the pinned Multimedia thread in Ubuntu Forums on adding in the proprietary Multimedia stuff that might not come with Ubuntu naturally. But do so at your own risk -- back up your stuff first.

DropBox has a Linux version that you might want.

Can you tell I'm a fanboy? Hahaha.
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daedalus__
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Re: ubuntu :)

Post by daedalus__ »

haha maybe not quite a fanboy but well versed :)

ive been using the crap out of gedit, there are features i wish it had. a lot of the code formatting and finishing features in visual studio would be nice. i'd like line numbers, code folding, and have it place tabs automagically when i press enter on a line. im going to search for more plugins and research writing them because so far i love gedit.

i didnt know about php lint but i looked it up and it's really neat. im trying to write a compact template engine at the moment it'd be nice to check for errors without having to switch to firefox because i have implement an interface or complex error checking yet.

im wondering you have ever heard of a tool called screen calipers? a company named icono makes a lot of nifty little widgets. http://www.iconico.com/caliper/

yeah i did notice a lot of codecs did not come with ubuntu and i was frustrated to see that mp3s didn't work out of the box. but it was easy to find and add a package.

im on the hunt for cool softwares!! will let you know if i find something neat. :)
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volomike
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Re: ubuntu :)

Post by volomike »

Hey, if you ever figure out how to make plugins for gEdit and you come up with something super handy for PHP, do share! :)

My guess, and this is just a hunch mind you, is that plugins can be built with Python and Glade, or C and Glade. I found either the Python scripts or the C binaries (as *.so files) here:

/usr/lib/gedit-2/plugins

And then found the Glade UI components here:

/usr/share/gedit-2/

From the Python scripts you might be able to find out how to do your own. And Glade is fairly easy -- use it to draw a GUI sort of like Visual Basic, and then use PyGTK libraries and Glade libraries in Python to activate it.

There might even be a way to do this via Glade and PHP-GTK.
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daedalus__
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Re: ubuntu :)

Post by daedalus__ »

eh i'll probably use c or python. python has come along way and im pretty interested in seeing it go. but i will share for sure. (im notoriously fickle though)
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volomike
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Re: ubuntu :)

Post by volomike »

Wow, the motherlode of gedit plugins. Didn't realize there were so many out there. They're likely beta, but might work.

For now, I actually don't like IntelliSense, myself. It gets in my way after days coding on end with it back in the day. I use other tools in Firefox to give me other things I want, like help information for PHP or jQuery, etc.

Gedit gives me what I need and man oh man is it reliable. I've only had 3 cases in my entire time using it over 5 years where it locked up, and that was because I had like 15 files open and was repeatedly using it over a couple months without closing it, and was running system updates in the background that might have messed with the system stability. However, a quick shutdown and back open again and all is well. I haven't had that kind of luck with other IDEs, even in the Microsoft world. Most other IDEs and text editors lock up doing one task or another, or just using them too much. In fact, this was one of my beefs with the editor called Screem on Linux -- lockups. That's probably why they called it Screem.
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daedalus__
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Re: ubuntu :)

Post by daedalus__ »

i don't like editors that lag for any reason much less lock up. that's one of the reasons i always use lightweight editors. a lot of software out there is just overkill imo.

in fact, once you get enough plugins for gedit it starts to feel a lot like notepad++ :D

instability is something that bothers me a lot which is one of the reasons i wanted to switch to ubuntu in the first place. i haven't had a problem with anything (except fl studio w/ wine :)~~ )
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volomike
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Re: ubuntu :)

Post by volomike »

Yep -- same here. Was one of the many reasons why I switched from Windows to Ubuntu Linux -- to prevent lockups. I remember my old Mac days used to have lots of lockups, but those were Powerbook days, ancient history. Now that they're on BSD Unix, I have no idea if Macs are stable. Anyone out there used various Mac text editors and never had a lockup in 5 years?

Linux handles memory amazingly well. When you can have 1 host OS running and 2 VM OSes running, a bunch of apps open, two video screens, and you can function without lockups and have normal speed on the app that has the focus -- that's tremendous power. (Note my laptop has 2GB RAM and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor TK-57, which might be part of the reason.) The way it does it is with virtual memory primarily, but that dual core proc and the 2GB RAM sure helps. However, even though Windows has virtual memory, it has valuable system resources and heap and stack issues that I just don't run out of on Linux that I'm aware of. Not bad for an OS that's made by hundreds of people around the world for free, some as young as 12 years old! It's enough to make Gates and Steve "The Creature" Balmer weep.
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daedalus__
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Re: ubuntu :)

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Payton
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Re: ubuntu :)

Post by Payton »

I would use Ubuntu a lot more, if only my ISP supported Linux operating systems. The company filed for bankruptcy on April 1 this year (source) so hopefully they'll have someone really good take over the company, and support for Linux operating systems will become available.
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daedalus__
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Re: ubuntu :)

Post by daedalus__ »

how can they not support linux? i don't understand. perhaps the software they provide does not support linux but do you really need windows to use the services?
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volomike
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Re: ubuntu :)

Post by volomike »

I guess I don't understand what you mean by "ISP won't support Linux".

- If you mean that your ISP also doubles as a cheap web hosting platform (Verizon does this, but poorly), then yeah, would be nice if they supported Linux on that platform.

- If you mean that you want to connect Linux to your ISP, that's a snap whether they support it or not. Just go get a DSL/Cable modem router and connect it to it, and then use Linux to connect to that. For instance, when I call my ISP with trouble, I grab an old Windows laptop, tell them I have Windows, and troubleshoot problems that way. I then take those settings -- the WAN Type (often is PPP over Ethernet), the account username and password, the primary and secondary DNS information (or just use Google's, which are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for primary and secondary), and usually that's all you need. You then plugin your DSL/Cable modem router into your DSL/Cable modem, configure the router with the same settings you had on your laptop, and tell the router to give out DHCP addresses (I prefer reserved addresses, though). You connect your Linux laptop to that DSL/Cable modem router, don't tell your ISP you're running Linux, and off you go. Usually it just works. The trouble is when you need to go wireless -- that gets a little more difficult.

If you have troubles connecting your Ubuntu Linux laptop to any ISP, switch over to a Windows or Mac laptop temporarily and visit ubuntuforums.org under "Networking". Tell them what's wrong and ask for advice. They have fantastic free tech support there. Alternatively, you can go to canonical.com and pay for a support contract for the year for like 10 questions that are answered, cradle to grave. And an even other option is to post your question under the "Linux" forum instead of "General Discussion".

(BTW, moderator -- please move this thread to "System->Linux" because I think it's more appropriate there.)
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