Banshee for Mac Beta 1.8.0

However, there are good things to say about Banshee. It will import your iTunes library, even correct and add metadata such as BPM and cover art automatically in the background. It supports plugins such as Last.fm, eMusic and Amazon which are killer features from my point of view. Using the Last.fm plugin you can view related artists and tracks as well as listen to your personalised radio stations.

The interface is clearly something they need to overhaul. It wouldn’t hurt to use default OSX UI elements instead of the default Gnome resources. Its simplicity however is commendable. If you’re so inclined, download it and help the developers kill some bugs. If you want to have a good alternative to iTunes, one that’s free and open-source, this is what has to be done.

“Linux doesn’t have viruses at all!”

Most of the time this is just a case of over simplification made by ‘Linux people’ in order to convince Windows people to try Linux. The truth is that there are about 30 viruses for Linux. I know this number sounds extremely large, but bear with me.

The trick is that there aren’t any viruses in circulation – that can currently infect systems and are present on USB sticks, malicious servers, etc. In fact, most of those viruses are gathering dust somewhere on a floppy disk. How come there are so few viruses for Linux? Linux is radically different from Windows because:

1. The source code is freely available, which means more eyeballs are staring at the code, ever since the 90’s, continually improving it. On the other hand, it’s a felony to decompile or reverse engineer any component of Windows. Which means only  Microsoft employees and hackers see the code.
2. Linux was built with security in mind. Windows started paying attention to security well after Windows NT. Like putting the money into the bank and installing the safe afterwards: the robbers came and went.
3. And even then, they set the combination on the lock to ‘1234’.
4. On any modern Linux OS, you get updates for the system as well as for the apps, automatically. On Windows, every app has its updater program, which isn’t as robust or reliable.
5. Multiple Linux package managers means that a Debian virus can’t infect a Mandriva system. To cover all the major Linux distributions, a virus programmer needs to write the same virus about 5 times.

Linux can however store the Windows virus executables without getting infected itself. Which is why the bad guys use Linux themselves. Smart, isn’t it?

The structure of Linux makes writing a virus very difficult as it requires root access to do anything of significance. For a virus to run it would have to be granted root access with a password request. If you fail to give it root access then the most a virus could do, if anything, is damage your home directory. It is unlikely it could even run again so it would die there in your home directory. Most smart Linux users grasp the power of root access and would question why an unknown program is suddenly requesting root access. (You don’t enter your password for just ANY prompt do you? Only for programs YOU have called up, right?) –BrunoLinux

There’s a Linux antivirus called Clam AntiVirus. Which is completely useless, because finding a Linux virus in the wild is like finding a unicorn in your backyard.

Windows fanatics, please leave angry thoughts using the comment form below. Yes, make the pain go away.

Reviewing all sorts of web 2.0 start-ups and more recently, cloud operating systems I’ve realized what Microsoft is so scared about. Microsoft is scared about losing marketshare; losing Outlook customers to webmail services such as GMail or Yahoo! Mail, losing Word and Excel customers to Zoho and Google Docs. The trend is more than obvious.

What is less obvious to end-users at this time is the existence of cloud operating systems, of which EyeOS, an open source solution, is the most advanced. EyeOS provides enough functionality to sustain a work environment, with productivity applications, integrated compatibility with Office documents and easy import/export of files. It doesn’t support Photoshop yet, but in a couple of years it might support Gimp, an open-source alternative to Photoshop.

The emergence of the ‘cloud computer’ metaphor urged, in my opinion, the creation of MinWin:

Its most recent and most well-known variation as a minimalistic, self-contained set of Windows components.

MinWin is Microsoft’s response to small Linux OS’s – and is significantly crippled compared to DamnSmallLinux, assuming that what I got from several sources was correct. Microsoft might just kill itself if this statement from Eric Traut is correct:

MinWin would not be offered as a stand-alone product, but would instead be used as the basis for future operating system releases.

As much as I like writing really long sentences, a diagram will better explain what I think will become a standard in the future. First of all, we have a low-powered netbook; this netbook comes preloaded with a very small operating system; this operating system loads the drivers for the hardware, such as networking and graphics and starts Mozilla Prism. Inside Prism will appear the login screen for Eye OS. You’d never know the difference by just looking at the computer.

Once connected to EyeOS, all the magic happens on the server side: checking email, viewing a movie or adding an appointment, all the processes take place on the server. The only requirement of this model is a decent internet connection; we already have some great wireless options at the moment: 3G, wireless 802.11n and soon WiMax.

End-users demand portability. Portability of document formats, data, music, pictures, their computer. You could have, and this is what is amazing, the power of a server machine in something as small as a MacBook Air. Why wouldn’t you want that extra power in your photo editing program?

Thin client computing is not new by far; first available in the late 1980’s, it was confined to corporate environments because of the lack of long range, high-speed connectivity. It had and still has some important benefits. For example, there are 3 computers in your household; when you’re working at your computer you can’t normally use the other two computers’ resources – but the server client architecture let’s you dynamically adjust performance; if you’re the only one connected you’ll get the power of 3 computers!

It will become increasingly hard to justify a product like Windows, as more and more advanced applications are coded and are available for free on EyeOS.

Like always with these kind of predictions, I could be right, or terribly wrong; while the benefits of this architecture are undeniable, nobody except John C. Dvorak, can be totally sure about this. But I do hope this will happen. Your comments are always welcomed and I really look forward to hearing what you think about cloud computing; how do you think it will improve your computing experience and your predictions.

The default desktop is quite good-looking – considering it is a RC release and based on XFCE.

First Impressions

My first contact with Dreamlinux was on their oficial website – which isn’t a design marvel – but does a good job convincing the visitor to give Dreamlinux a try. You’re greeted with a series of pretty good-looking screenshots, and a everything you need to know about the OS before jumping in:
Dreamlinux 3.5 RC4 can be run from either LiveCD, DVD, USB Stick or installed to the hard drive.The DVD version includes all the codecs necessary for playing popular music and video formats.A neat feature for the more ‘nerdy’ crowd, MkDistro LiveRemaster allows to custom build the OS to suit your specific needs:Its main goal is to make it possible for any user, when running Dreamlinux as a LiveCD, to customize the distro and then regenerate a new iso image mirroring the customizations made.

One of the screenshots posted on Dreamlinux official website, showcasing a Mac OS X Leopard themed Avant Window Navigator Dock and Google Gadgets for Linux.
User Interface
You’ve got to give credit to their full-on approach, from the bootloader-to the desktop, everything has the same clean ‘feel’, except for the verbose-mode being enabled by default at boot-up, which is most certainly just an RC ‘feature’.
The interface is clearly inspired by Mac OS X Aqua, with the translucent dock, shiny icons and windows borders. But the team behind Dreamlinux is working on more than just the surface – touching stuff like the control panel and making it look and work like its Mac counterpart – making it very easy and straightforward to change settings even for non-technical persons.

Admittedly its current implementation is far from perfect and it breaks down at the second step, opening a new window instead of allowing you to make the changes from inside the Control Panel app. This will be probably one of the kinks which will be ironed out before the final release.
Another thing worth mentioning is window environment: XFCE. It’s a lightweight engine which provides most of the functionality of Gnome or KDE, while cutting down on the bells and whistles. The developers said:
In this release candidate, Dreamlinux returns to its origin and comes with the XFCE Desktop only, since we are still aiming to produce a CD-sized ISO image.
Altough their goal is understandable – I really wonder why they didn’t include Gnome, a better, more refined window manager – after all Ubuntu fits on a single CD and Dreamlinux doesn’t include a lot of extra apps that would take that much space.

Overall I would say their approach to UI is a good idea, while it is currently rough at the edges.
Performance and Hardware
Dreamlinux boots up a little faster than Ubuntu with our timer stopping at 48 seconds from boot-up to desktop.
Like most linux distributions it has quite a few misunderstandings with WiFi cards – neither one of the integrated Atheros 5007EG or the external SMC stick was recognized, prompting for a 5 minute trip to the terminal and custom madwifi drivers. On the other hand, we have the ndiswrapper tool installed by default – which makes it a breeze to install wifi drivers for most cards.
No luck with the integrated Bison webcam either, something that Ubuntu 8.04 got out of the box using video4lin driver.
We couldn’t convince ALSA to work with the with the ATI chipset for audio in – but most of these problems are strictly related to our test hardware, an Acer laptop with some weirder components.
If you bought your computer with Ubuntu in mind, choosing compatible hardware, or have Ubuntu working perfectly out of the box you’ll be okay with Dreamlinux. Remember you can always use tutorials written with Ubuntu in mind because you’re using the same base: Debian.
Applications

Apart from a few useful addtions to the usual suspects, Dreamlinux doesn’t bring anything ground-breaking:
Multimedia: Rhythmbox, Mplayer, Gxine, SoundJuicer, SoundConverter, Avidemux.Internet: Pidgin Instant Messenger, Gftp, Thunderbird Mail Client, Iceweasel (Firefox)FlashPlayer, Java.Graphics: Inkscape, Gimpshop, Gthumb, Xsane.Open Office, Evince and SciTe.It’s based on Debian Lenny, which means you get the APT package manager (and the graphical interface to it, Synaptic Package Manager), .deb compatibility allows you to install a wealth of apps easily. It’s an easy switch for anyone used to working on Ubuntu – which is also based on Debian.

Conclusion

Dreamlinux is a linux distribution which promises a lot for future versions – especially on the user interface side, as developers have more time to tweak the details – for that perfect user experience.
Right now, I wouldn’t recommend installing Dreamlinux – because it just about halfway to becoming a really different, good linux distribution.

For someone looking for eye-candy and user-friendliness I would recommend gOS3 and Linux Mint, the former which I use as my primary operating system. Visit the official website here.

I have dealt with a lot of Linux distros since I first learned the power of my newfound penguin friend. He was free unlike a Microsoft or Apple product, had thousands of available programs (also free), and looked damn classy while he was in control of my computer.

My first forays were using live Linux CDs on an old 1998 Gateway computer, then I experimented with installing Fedora, Ubuntu, and Debian. However, after a while I started to stray from my new friend and I found myself going back to old habits, using XP and eventually embroiling myself in the OSX86 project and experimenting with Tiger and then Leopard. I gave up on Linux for a while and divided my OS use between my hackintosh and Vista boxes.

Choices
I was perfectly content with my two choices up until I started experimenting with network security. Sure, you can get network security tools for both of the major systems, but they are nothing compared to the plethora available when you choose Linux as your auditing operating system. I started with Kubuntu and customized my installation with as many security apps as I could find. This was a bit of a heavy-handed approach to things, and it took up a good size of my laptop hard drive. What I needed was a more portable solution.
Backtrack
I found everything I could ever want and hope for when a friend of mine introduced me to Backtrack. He performed a Man In The Middle (MITM) attack on a sample LAN, replacing every photo URL that I browsed for in Firefox with one of a skull and crossbones. I had never seen such pirate witchcraft done so easily, so I asked him what other things this Linux distribution could do. He basically told me that nearly everything you could ever want for wardriving, penetration testing, vulnerability testing, privilege escalation, and just all-round mayhem could be performed with this distribution. And the best part about the whole deal is that it is a live cd distro. You don’t need to install it to your hard drive in order to perform security tests, for that matter it doesn’t even have to be your computer! Just have the CD with you and you are good to go.
Backtrack is developed by the remote-exploit community over at remote-exploit.org. When I was first introduced to Backtrack the latest iteration was Backtrack 2, and I loved what I saw. Backtrack 3 has since come out and looks spiffier than ever with more tools and updated software.
Is it good?
I’ll sum up my feelings for Backtrack in one simple statement: This is the only Linux I use. It has exactly what you’re looking for. The only thing that it does not have that might be useful to me is Open Office.

Now, I’d love to list in detail all of the lovely tools that Backtrack has, but you would be scrolling for quite a while and and this article probably wouldn’t have gotten done until sometime around 2010. Don’t fear though! Here is the link to the Backtrack wiki page that details the tools that can be found in Backtrack’s arsenal.
Now, you might ask yourself, “What’s better than a live cd Linux that does penetration testing and just about any other testing I’d ever want?”. I will answer that question with: A live USB thumbdrive Linux that does penetration testing and just about any other testing you’d ever want.
Creating the thumbdrive
You only need the following to create a keychain portable Linux OS:
Requirements:
1GB or bigger thumbdriveBacktrack .iso fileNifty little program called UNetbootinIn order to guarantee a clean installation of Backtrack, be sure to format your thumbdrive to clean out any files. I suggest using FAT32 when you are formatting it, simply because I know that it works and I’ve never had any problems. The Backtrack .iso file can be downloaded here.
Because your thumbdrive is 1 GB, it can handle the USB version that has a bit more stuff packed into it. That is the version I suggest downloading.

UNetbootin
UNetbootin will take any .iso file and “burn” it to your thumbdrive painlessly and especially fast. It will do this with ANY Linux distro, not just Backtrack. I love this program and I’ve used it dozens of times. Its interface is pretty much self explanatory:

Click the … next to the ISO text field and select the Backtrack (or any other Linux distro) .iso file, make sure that the correct USB drive is selected in the Drive: drop down menu, and then click OK. UNetbootin will now copy over the operation system from the .iso file and burn it to your thumbdrive. Once its done copying the files, it will install a bootloader to your USB drive, and then prompt you for a restart in order to load Backtrack. This part is obviously optional, but if your a little zoned you you might just click ok and lose whatever you may have been working in in other windows, so try to be careful.

Conclusion
It’s as simple as that, you now have Linux on a thumbdrive that can travel with you wherever you go. Be careful how you use your new found power, a lot of the apps on Backtrack are useful for security testing, but could be twisted for use on the dark side of things. I don’t condone using Backtrack for nefarious deeds, and I suggest that you do not follow that path.

If you would like some tutorials in how to use the features found in Backtrack, IronGeek has a few videos available that can help you along.

A little history

On June 6th, 2008, Google Gadgets Team:

The Windows and Mac versions of Google Desktop has provided gadget hosting functionality on Windows and Mac for a while now and the Linux version of Google Gadgets will extend this platform to Linux users. By enabling cross-platform gadgets, a large library of existing gadgets are immediately available to Linux users. In addition, gadget developers will benefit from a much larger potential user base without having to learn a new API.

Google Gadgets for Linux is an open source project available under the Apache license. The Google Open Source blog invites everyone to contribute with bug reports and fixes on Google Code.

Installation

Binaries

Depending on your linux distribution, you can either opt to install via the binary packages, which are available for Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 8/9, openSUSE 10.3/11, Slackware and FreeBSD on this page.

For Ubuntu, the Google Code page points to a SuSE repository; Installing using these binaries is a bit disappointing – with no more than 8 packages to download and manually install. A better solution is via GetDeb.

Build from source code

If you want to get your hands dirty and compile Google Gadgets yourself, here’s the step by step process. You can read through the whole (very long) How-to Build Guide here.

• wget http://google-gadgets-for-linux.googlecode.com/files/google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3.tar.bz2
• tar zxvf google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3.tar.bz2
• cd google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3/
• sudo apt-get install build-essential zip flex desktop-file-utils shared-mime-info zlib1g-dev libxml2-dev libdbus-1-dev libx11-dev libxt-dev libltdl3-dev (for Ubuntu 8.04) or libltdl7-dev (for Ubuntu 8.10) libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev network-manager-dev libstartup-notification0-dev xulrunner-1.9-dev libgtk2.0-dev librsvg2-dev ibcurl4-gnutls-dev or libcurl4-openssl-dev libqt4-dev
• sudo ldconfig
• ../../configure –enable-debug
• sudo make install
• export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib
• ggl-gtk

Interface & Usability

They UI remains pretty much unchanged from the Windows version, and requires a compositioning engine like Compiz for the effects. There’s nothing really ground-breaking here – the same black transparent sidebar we all know.

• You can run “ggl-gtk –ns” to run the widget engine without the sidebar.
• You can load the widgets at start-up automatically by adding them to the ‘Sessions’. See above screenshot.
• The gtk version did not slow down my start-up time, and the app didn’t crash. Some of the widgets specifically designed for windows may not work properly but do not hang the program.
• For every widget not created by Google a pop-up appears notifying you.
• Installation of new widgets doesn’t take more than 3-5 seconds.

Conclusion

While some may argue that screenlets, widgets and gadgets are a waste of workspace and resources I have some good uses for them:

• I keep 3 clocks with the West Coast/Central and East Coast time + London. This is extremely useful when publishing and calling overseas relatives.
• Google Calendar tells me what classes I have to attend during the day; when are the articles due.
• The battery meter gives a more clear look at the status so I don’t have to squint at the monitor.
• Ah, and the plant is really cute.

Why is everyone obsessed with having the weather on their desktop? If I want to know today’s weather, I look out of the window.             -oobuntu

• The weather widget helps me pick the right clothes for the day – by giving me the high and the low.

Different people have different uses – so I want to hear from you. Are widgets useful?

Launched about 2 years ago,

It’s one of the most community driven distributions. You could literally post an idea in the forums today and see it implemented the week after in the “current” release. Of course this has pros and cons and compared to distributions with roadmaps, feature boards and fixed release cycles we miss a lot of structure and potentially a lot of quality, but it allows us to react quickly, implement more innovations and make the whole experience for us and for the users extremely exciting. –Linux Mint Team

I’m your father, Linux Mint!

While ignoring the reference to Star Wars, Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron), which guarantees  long term-support, APT package manager with the huge library and the best hardware compatibility so far.

Linux Mint benefits from the huge Ubuntu community, forums, websites; almost all tutorials written for Ubuntu work with Linux Mint.

Installation

Getting Linux Mint is fairly easy process: hit the download link, burn the .iso image and boot from the CD. You’re greeted with a fully functional desktop and a choice to install it – the same Ubuntu wizard we’re used to.

There’s no noticeable difference in boot-up time or install time, considering you’re getting a lot of extras from the start.

What’s new?

Booting up Linux Mint is like Christmas morning, and it’s not just eye candy either. There’s no need to manually install ubunru-restricted-extras to bring in those essential packages.

• Out of the box support for media playback, everything from .xvid to .avi, mp3 and flac. Default player: Rhythmbox, MPlayer.
• Easy wizard for installing proprietary ATI/nVidia drivers, with some additional options not included in the default Hardware Drivers app. Default player: MPlayer.
• Sun Java and Adobe Flash support out of the box.
• Drops the Ekiga package and adds an IRC client.
• Compiz Settings Manager: Allows advanced configuration options to the compositioning engine.
• Mint Update: An application specifically written from Linux Mint that allows users to install updates while providing a safety-level indicator, allowing un-experienced users to skip updates that may need further configuration or are not compatible with Mint.
• Mint Desktop: A configuration tool for various settings regarding the desktop. Makes useful stuff like hiding the mounted devices a one click affair.
• Mint Assistant: A first-time configuration tool that let’s you choose to enable the root password and terminal quotes.
• Mint Install: Allows installation of new applications from a simple 3 tab interface: .mint, getdeb.net and the APT repository. Useful for newbies, and definitely faster than loading Synaptic Package Manager.

Mint Backup: Easy wizard for setting up a backup.

User interface

From freedom, comes elegance.                              -Linux Mint motto

Initially skeptical about the elegance part, once it booted-up I was in love. The attention given to every aspect of the interface is unbelievable. From the GRUB boot logo to the login, and desktop, everything  inspires elegance. Even the start-up sound is nice – the first time I didn’t disable it.

The main menu resembles KDEs’ implementation – which initially made me wonder if this is Gnome.

Linux Mint’s purpose is to produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution.   -Linux Mint Team

Caveats

No operating system is perfect, and Linux Mint is no exception.

• Not up-to-date with with the latest improvements in Ubuntu – 8.10 features like the new Network Manager are not yet implemented.
• Doesn’t have the commercial backing of a corporation like Canonical or Novell.
• The release schedule fluctuates. New features might be just around the corner or not implemented at all.
• Google Custom Search instead of Google in Firefox. Can be fixed with ‘Add to search bar’ addon.

Conclusion

A lot of people may argue that the changes in Linux Mint are not that innovative or new. Some people will argue that you could spend a couple of hours and mod the Gnome panel to resemble Mints’. You can install all the Mint apps for Ubuntu. You can install ubuntu-restricted-extras  by yourself.

But that takes time – and why waste that when you can have everything you need out of the box? Linux Mint convinced me, and now has its own partition.

Visit Linux Mint website.

What about you? Are you happy with Ubuntu as it is? Share in the comments.

In this article, we’re going to look at the top reasons behind Ubuntu’s success and discuss what’s next for the linux community.

Availability

The principle is simple: the lower the barrier of entry, the more users you’ve got. Ubuntu is very easy and convenient to get:

• Shipit: Sends you free CD’s via mail.
• Downloads: Both torrent and FTP, with mirrors around the world, extremely fast – in my case over 1Mbit/second. You are presented with an .ISO file that can be easily transferred to a CD.
• Pre-loaded on PC’s – installed on compatible hardware, the best choice for non-technical people, available from Dell and others.

Reliability

Ubuntu is backed by Canonical, a company who’s primary focus is to promote its use. They made possible:

• Sustained development schedule
• Fast updates
• Organized and unified community

Canonical can afford promoting Ubuntu by cashing in on Professional Support services, and their whole business objective is making it as popular as possible.

Community

Unity was something a lot of Linux fans were waiting for, and were quick to adopt Ubuntu. By the time of their third release, they had thousands people on the bandwagon – and a tight knit community.

• Forums: Thousands of tutorials, help topics and discussions, virtually anything you need can be found on the Ubuntu Forums.
• Bug Tracker: The Bug Tracker is super-easy to use and lots of people contribute by finding and reporting bugs; coders with some free time often create ad-hoc scripts to fix problems. Some even contribute with drivers.
• Blogs: A lot of geeks, just like you and me, took matters into their own hands and started publishing for Ubuntu users – insights into features, tutorials and reviews; creating massive exposure.

Something I missed I my analysis, eloquently  expressed by weizbox in the comments:

Advertising, clearly. The distro itself doesn’t really separate itself much from the other major desktop distros in terms of hardware compatibility or special features, since all the major desktop distros all are essentially build on the same packages, just perhaps different versions depending on the release. Occasionally there will be some differences, like with the new BBC plugin (which others would have more easily at this point if it weren’t for the Ubuntu devs using apt code instead of a standard, like PackageKit) and the new Guest account (previously, only a ~3-click process).

Another interesting point of view from Darkhacker:

- Releases: The release schedule is predictable and releases are made often.
- Software: Ubuntu comes with very sane defaults and I don’t need to remove a ton of packages or spend all day downloading more packages to get my desktop the way I like it. They have also found a good balance between stable and up-to-date software. Fedora can be a little too bleeding edge at times and other distros are behind the times.
- APT: I just like APT better. I’ve always used Debian based distros.
- Single CD: One of my dislikes about Suse and Fedora is it comes on like 5 CDs. Yes I could get the DVD or I could just download a portion of the CDs but that’s really retarded to me. It’s wasting bandwidth on packages I’ll never want or need. Plus, some older computers only have a CD drive (no DVD) and it’s easier to handle a single disk.
- Support: 18 months for regular releases and 36 months for LTS. It’s nice knowing that I’m not rushed to upgrade.
- Popular: Sort of a chicken-and-egg scenario but I started using Ubuntu because I saw it was number one on Distrowatch. That creates a great community and means that I’ll get a well tested distro with lots of community support.
- Company Backing: We can sit around the camp fire and talk about “power to the people”, but I really like company backing. If a company (in this case Canonical) is backing a distro, I have more faith in the quality of maintenance (releasing security updates for all packages, reliable update servers, etc) than if It’s being run by a couple guys in their spare time. Who knows if they’ll continue to support it. What if they miss a security update for a package in their repos?
Yes I know that a few other distros meet some of these criteria, but Ubuntu hits them all.

And from MaxMWood:

Lets just make it clear that it’s popular only within Linux distros. Nothing else.

What’s next?

In the light of recent events, both from Apple and Microsoft, how would you see the future of linux? Will Windows 7 be a flop, will it generate a massive wave of switchers the open source community was waiting for?

I think the progress will be incremental – and the principles and ideas behind the open source philosophy will ultimately make the difference.

What made you switch to Ubuntu?

1. ubuntu-restricted-extras – Installing this package will pull in support for MP3 playback and decoding, support for various other audio formats (gstreamer plugins), Microsoft fonts,
Java runtime environment, Flash plugin, LAME (to create compressed audio files),
and DVD playback.

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

2. NTFS-Config – manage your NTFS formatted drives easily without manually editing fstab. Add/remove drives, create mount points and enable external NTFS write support. Great when dealing with NTFS partitions on a dual boot system. Much better than manually editing /etc/fstab .

sudo apt-get install ntfs-config

3. Better sticky notes – an easy addon for the main toolbar gives you one click access the yellow goodness. It’s time to leave behind the paper ones and save some trees.

4.Upgrade without burning the Ubuntu CD – why waste that CD and the time it takes to burn it when you can upgrade from the command line? Downloading all the packages and installing them may take a while, a decent broadband connection is recommended.

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

5. Better photo management – Picasa, Google’s photo management software.

Download Picasa Linux source code from here, then compile using this tutorial.

The interface  is great, it has basic photo fixes for white balance, contrast, crop etc. and even effects. Prints, emails and uploads directly to Blogger and Picasa Web Albums.

6. Better music jukebox and video player – Amarok and VLC.

Amarok is by far the most advanced player out there, although it’s a bit unstable under Gnome.

sudo apt-get install amarok

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. VLC supports a lot of themes and decodes everything from avi to matroska.

sudo  apt-get install vlc

7. Hardware testing – Let the developers know about your hardware – what works and what doesn’t, so they can fix it.

Main Menu>System>Hardware Testing

It’s a 2 minute wizard that guides that tests audio, display, networking and mouse/keyboard and then send the results, a list of your computer’s hardware and your comments to the developers.

Bonus Tip – The Matrix on your desktop:

Main Menu>System>Preferences>Screensaver

Are we living in a simulation? We are certainly capable of creating such a system, just look at Spore. Now imagine the computing power 50 years from now. Scary, huh?