July 4th, 2008
I was cruising around the Ubuntu Blogosphere and found an interesting post on Mark Shuttleworth’s blog about “netbooks”.
I’d never heard of the term before, but it does make sense. The concept is to have a mini-PC like the ASUS Eee, that is primarily used for accessing the Internet. Low weight, low profile, rugged design, cheap, free O/S and wireless-ready.
I predict that 5 years from now there will be a divergence between computer and phone. People will carry 2 devices, a ultra-portable PC, and a reliable and easy to use mobile phone. And the PC and the phone will work together via Bluetooth or some other technology.
As much as I love my iPhone, as a telephone it isn’t great. The volume is too low, the voice quality poor, and if you hold it too close to your face, as you do because the volume is bad, you accidently touch buttons that can disconnect you from the call.
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July 1st, 2008
Over the years you have probably accumulated a stack of bookmarks, passwords and security certificates in Firefox that makes you Internet browsing just a little more easy.
If you want to take all those Firefox settings from Windows XP to Ubuntu, then it’s a pretty straightforward process. All you have to do is copy a directory and all its files from your XP machine to your Ubuntu machine.
Here are the steps:
1. It’s a wise idea to make sure you are running the same version of Firefox on each machine. If I were you I’d make sure that both Windows and Ubuntu have Firefox 3.
2. Go into Windows and copy the directory C:\Documents and Settings\your_log_in_name\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\***.default to a USB drive or other portable media.
If there is more than one file with a .default extention in the Profiles directory, sort by date and copy the most recent one. An example of thew sort of file you should see would be ascjnmzh.default The beginning of the directory name is randomly generated by Firefox when the profile is first created.
3. Boot into Ubuntu and using the file browser tool, navigate to your Home directory (it lives under System). Make sure you have selected View hidden files in the options.
The .mozilla directory is a hidden directory and you won’t see it if you can’t view hidden files. You are looking for a directory called $HOME/your_log_in_name/.mozilla/firefox/
4. Copy the directory from step one into the directory $HOME/your_log_in_name/.mozilla/firefox/
5. There is probably another file with an extention of .default already there. Take a note of it’s name then rename it to old_file.default
6. Rename the directory you have just copied to the directory name that you just renamed.
7. Start Firefox.
With a bit of luck all your old bookmarks, passwords, X509 certificates and so on will now work in Firefox on your Ubuntu system. It’s probably a good idea to keep a copy of all your Firefox settings in a safe place anyway just in case your Windows system gets trashed.
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May 20th, 2008
If you do a reasonable amount of business travel and carry a notebook personal computer with you, it’s probably a good idea to also carry a Ubuntu bootable CD and a USB drive with your most important files on it. Think of it as very cheap business insurance.
Murphy’s Law states: anything that can go wrong with a PC, will go wrong with a PC, and usually at the most inconvenient time.
Here’s an example. A friend on mine traveled to Sydney last week to do some sales training. He has his Powerpoint slides on his Dell, Vista-based PC.
To save battery life while mobile, he had fiddled around with the power settings. Bad idea.
Come presentation time his Powerpoint slides didn’t display properly. After each click he had to wait up to 30 seconds for the next slide to appear. Very disconcerting to him and his audience. He tried putting the setting back to the way they were, but to no avail.
If he had a Ubuntu boot CD with him, he could have recovered this situation in about 2 minutes. All he had to do was insert the boot CD in the CD drive, ensure that his notebook’s BIOS was set to boot from CD, then go for it.
His Dell would have loaded the Ubuntu in a minute or two at which time he could have proceeded with his course.
Ubuntu comes with Open Office. Open Office can read and edit Powerpoint slides. He would have been in business.
So the bottom line is, always carry a Ubuntu boot CD with you. And for added insurance, also carry your most important files on a USB drive. For less than $20 it’s very cheap insurance. Here’s a Linux product pack you may be interested in.
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