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That difficult second episode…but it’s worked! :)

That’s right! They’ve made it to the second episode of the Ubuntu UK podcast (a.k.a. UUPC).

I was privy to a pre-release airing last night and I was very impressed, having sat through hours of recording time on Saturday… ;)

The show now has its own Twitter ID (@uupc) so that you can follow its progress from recording, through editing, to release.

Enjoy!

Posted by Laura on 25-03-2008 at 11:03 pm
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Early birthday pressie!

This is me with my early birthday pressie from the lovely Tony:

Laura with new Ubuntu bag.

Perfect for travelling to geeky conferences. ;)

Posted by Laura on 11-03-2008 at 09:03 pm
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Ubuntu-UK podcast: Episode 1 now available!

The title says it all really.

Some of the guys in the Ubuntu-UK community have released a podcast. And Episode 1 of, hopefully, many more is now available.

Okay, it’s not just ’some guys’. One of them is my other half, Tony (a.k.a. TonyTiger), I know the others, and I was actually present forĀ  part of one of the interviews on there. So my pimping the podcast here is probably slightly predictable. On the other hand, it really is rather good! :-)

So give it a go.

You can download it from the podcast’s funky new site at podcast.ubuntu-uk.org.

Posted by Laura on 11-03-2008 at 07:03 pm
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Using the ’service’ command on Ubuntu (and other handy tools)

Here’s how to get handy equivalents of the RedHat service and chkconfig commands on Ubuntu.

I’ve been using Ubuntu as my main desktop on my T41p Thinkpad for - what seems like - ever but is actually only since sometime last Summer. Before that, I used RedHat Enterprise Workstation for a time and, as RH isn’t (or, at least, wasn’t) quite so user-friendly as Ubuntu, and I’d recently been on a Linux Networking course, I quickly got used to using the service command to restart networking or whatever, and, occasionally, the chkconfig command to set which services started/stopped at boot. My main use of the chkconfig command was to stop the vmware service from starting at boot because the extra networking interfaces confused my VPN connection (IIRC).

When I moved to Ubuntu, I soon forgot the existence of such commands with the arrival of the lovely (but, unfortunately, slightly buggy) Network Manager GUI. Yesterday, I wanted to stop the vmware service from starting at boot as I used to (not for any particular reason but just because it seemed silly to be starting when I’m not always needing it). So I started to hunt it down…

System > Administration > Services seemed the obvious way to go…and, indeed, it did reveal a GUI listing some services. I’m not sure, however, how that particular GUI decides which services to list. Maybe it’s a lucky dip? Whatever. They’re certainly not all there. I’ve not yet found that GUI at all useful (unlike the GUI it replaced, which was probably daunting for new users but much more useful than the current one).

I started to google and found some useful tools. I never actually found the vmware service listed anywhere - if anyone knows how on earth I can prevent it starting at boot, I’d love to hear from you. In the meantime, here are the handy utilities that I did find…

Boot-Up Manager (BUM)

It’s childish, I know, but apt-get install bum makes me smirk. So, I installed BUM - it doesn’t seem to get added to the Applications menu but you can just type sudo bum in a terminal to start the BUM GUI:

Screenshot of BUM GUI

It seems to be a more useful alternative to the Services GUI that comes in Ubuntu.

sysv-rc-conf

This is fairly close to chkconfig (but in a terminal-based GUI) or the GUI that you used to get in Gnome that listed all the services and the runlevels at which they’d start on your system. Less pretty than BUM but looks okay:

Screenshot of sysv-rc-conf

sysvconfig (provides the service command)

And finally, this is just a package you install which contains the service command. Once you’ve installed the package, you can type things like sudo service vmware restart to restart the vmware service (which did work, btw, despite not being able to actually *see* the vmware service listed anywhere).

So, there you go! All of these are available in the Ubuntu Gutsy repository.

Posted by Laura on 13-02-2008 at 11:02 pm
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LugRadioLive 2008 USA trailer

Slightly late to the party but, in case you’ve been living in a cave the last couple of weeks, here’s the trailer for LugRadioLive 2008 USA!

Lovingly prepared by my other half using Free and Open Source Software only: Kino and Audacity on Ubuntu.

Posted by Laura on 10-02-2008 at 08:02 pm
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