Neil's Open Source & Linux Blog

You can see the current version of Ubuntu by selecting System > About Ubuntu . It's in the second paragraph. The other method to find your version is a command line method. There are two commands you can use: cat /etc/issue or you can use cat /etc/lsb-release …and finally to find your kernel version and a few more details about your machine use the uname command which, per the man pages, shows system information. Examples: uname -a : print all information uname -r : print the kernel release uname -v : print the kernel version uname -o : print the operating system

I performed a clean install on a dedicated hard disk. No problems there. I really like the clean desktop: no icons! Although the boot up time seems unusually long, Sound card drivers: Creative X-fi XtremeGamer 64-bit driver for Linux Error: neil@area-51u:~/Desktop/XFiDrv_Linux_US-1.04$ sudo ./installer [sudo] password for neil: This product only support 64-bit Operating Systems Setup will now exit neil@area-51u:~/Desktop/XFiDrv_Linux_US-1.04$ Here's why: Requirements: Linux x86_64 OS Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi audio devices listed above. Still, this should work! neil@area-51u:~/Desktop/XFiDrv_Linux_US-1.04$ uname -a Linux area-51u 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Sun Oct 14 21:45:15 GMT 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux It's always something, on the bleeding edge...

Before I do a clean install of Ubuntu on my ShuttleX, I want to make a complete backup. This From The Linux Documentation Project, Linux Complete Backup and Recovery HOWTO : Total restore, sometimes called bare metal recovery, is the process of rebuilding a computer after a catastrophic failure. In order to make a total restoration, you must have complete backups, not only of your file system, but of partition information and other data. This HOWTO is a step-by-step tutorial on how to back up a Linux computer so as to be able to make a bare metal recovery, and how to make that bare metal recovery. It includes some related scripts.

Although I successfully upgraded my Feisty Fawn 7.04 installation to Gutsy Gibbon (7.10), I'm having some problems with desktop effects. Basically, none of the window manager elements appear. I've decided to do a clean install, so I'm downloading the CD image, but it's taking forever... The torrent files are listed at the bottom of the Gutsy Gibbon download page , but it turns out the that the torrent files take some time to download, too. In fact, the HTTP download from Columbia's servers is coming through at 140 KB/sec, or higher, whereas Bittorrent has topped out at, well, just about 130 KB/sec. Hardly much of a difference, but then I get spikes on the HTTP download up to 320 KB/sec. It looks like the issue is the torrent file in question. When I downloaded the AMD 64 bit torrent, I'm getting speeds of over 1000 KB/sec.

Kompozer picks up where Nvu seems to have left off. Nvu was my favorite Open Source WYSIWIG editor, but has been stuck at version 1.0 for some time now I am pleased to say that I find Kompozer very useful on Windows & Linux, and even run it off my U3 USB drive. Since I haven't figured out how to trigger the "accelerator keys" (like Alt-F for "File," Alt-O for "Open," instead of Ctrl-O) on the Mac, it's not very keyboard friendly on OS X. Post a comment if you know how to pilot these programs with the keyboard on the Mac, or let me know if you like a different Open Source HTML editor.