I think I ran across this on some linux blog I read, but I’m not sure. Anyways, Tilda is just a little more customized ‘terminal’ session. The default hotkey is ‘F1′. So after you install it thusly:

sudo apt-get install tilda

you hit Alt+F2 and enter ’tilda’ in the dialogue that pops up (that’ll start the program running. The first time you fire it up, it’ll open up a preferences window. What I suggest doing is accepting the default settings, close the preferences window, and then hit ‘F1′. Now a terminal session opened up (probably) in a triangular area on the left of your screen. Right click in the black and choose “Preferences”. Now all the position and transparency changes you make can be seen immediately.

The transparency works especially nice with CompizFusion running, and it’s also got an option for “animated pulldown” in the Extras section of the ‘Appearance’ tab – you can set this so that the terminal session slides in and out, up and down, when you hit the hot key (a little more pleasing to the eyes that it just popping into existence…).

Anyways, if you use the terminal rather frequently, this is a nice ‘lil option to have at your fingertips…

Well, the jones clan (or at least this one…) is expanding it’s reach online. That’s right, Terra, my blog-tastic wife, is going to have her own little domain (to be announced later).

Unfortunately, that means I gotta upgrade my web package through my provider, 1and1.com. They’re great, but apparently when you upgrade a package as I’m doing, it wipes out your databases (which happen to be essential for WordPress to manage the blog). So I’m backing up all my stuff, and the upgrade will take place sometime between tomorrow night and Thursday.

Therefore, if you haven’t heard anything from me, say, by Sunday night, check back here, at linux.zachjones.net to make sure you haven’t missed anything. If you registered on this blog (there’s a link on the right), and have subscribed that way, then you should be okay. But if you use an RSS feed reader (like Google Reader), I’m not sure what this transition will do to the RSS feed – hopefully nothing.

Sorry for any inconvenience – by next week this should all be resolved!

in working on customizing my new install, I ran across a reference to a system monitor that I thought looked pretty cool. It’s called Conky. Supposedly it’s a pretty lighweight program – so not much drain on the CPU, something I need for my rather aged systems.

run to install:

sudo apt-get install conky

The hard part about conky, I quickly learned, is the raw install you get is pretty, well, bland. not very cool… After customization, here’s what I ended up with (I am still working out a few kinks…):

screenshot of my conky program...so far...

I followed a pretty solid guide found here. I have to get conky to detect my internet activity from my wireless card (right now it’s trying to get it from my ethernet card, which I’m not using…), and I think I might want to moniter my swap drives as well…just thoughts.

Just be prepared to jumpt into a little bit of config file editing – but it’s not too rough. Actually, I think it’s a great way to start dipping your feet into it.

Okay, here’s my super quick install – basically the basics of the install and a few programs I think are very useful.

Before the Install:

Backup – make sure you’ve backed up all essential files (Documents folder, Music Folder, Pictures folder, Desktop…any stuff you want to keep!)

Download – get the Jackalope (Ubuntu 9.04) install image here, or use the torrent to download it. You can burn the image in a program like K3B in linux, or another burning program (if you’re in Windows…or windoze as I’ve seen it called)

Lastly, make sure your computer/laptop is plugged into the internet directly (in case your wireless card isn’t supported natively). This is so that you can get all the drivers you need installed virtually automatically (you only have to say “yes”!)

The Install:

Whether you use the the Alternate install disk or the regular Live CD one, you basically boot up your computer/laptop off the disc and follow the prompts to install it (for windows users you have the option, also, of installing Ubuntu within Windows, which will not require a resizing/partitioning of your hard-drive – not a bad idea if you’re just trying out Ubuntu).

So follow the prompts, and, in my experience, it takes roughly 30-40 minutes start to finish. If you’ve got a rather large hard-drive (100+ Gb) then the formatting stage might take longer. After it finishes the install, it’ll prompt you to remove the disc so it can reboot into Ubuntu. If you’ve got multiple OSes, make sure you choose Ubuntu at the boot screen prompt.

Login, and I would suggest just letting about 5-10 minutes pass. Ubuntu will “explore” your computer, checking out the hardware and seeing if needs any proprietary drivers, as well as checking for updates. There will be updates, so install those. Do not try to activate/install any proprietary drivers (for video cards or wireless cards or other random stuff you might have on there) while the updates are being downloaded and installed – the drivers are installed through the same program that handles the updates and you’ll just get an error message and have to navigate to System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers.

You should be ready to rock ‘n roll!

Post Install:

Pop on the internet and hit your favorite sites. You’ll more than likely be prompted to install a Flash program and a Java program at some point – just follow the prompts!

Also, I’d suggest running this command in terminal:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager fusion-icon emerald gnome-do abiword vlc ubuntu-restricted-extras

These are packages/programs I’ve found very usefull. After running the command you’ll be prompted for your password – remember that it will not register that you’ve entered anything when you type it in, don’t worry, its being entered. Here’s what the packages/programs are:

compizconfig-settings-manager – this is the settings manager for CompizFusion – where you can control all the eye-candy that Ubuntu dishes out!

fusion-icon – a system tray icon for controlling your windows managers and compiz. You will probably want to set this up to run at start up (System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications)

emerald – fancy window decoration manager that Compiz can use. This is really nice because I supports opacity and stuff – highly recommend!

gnome-do – simply one of the most awesome programs in Linux. You set up a key combo (default is super+spacebar), which you hit and then can type in a program to launch, music to listen to, a website to go to – and there are tons of applets/add-ons to play with.

abiword – a lightweight word processing program. great for jobs where you don’t feel like firing up the incredible resources Openoffice.org has to offer

vlc – an awesome little multimedial player, which also includes bunches of useful codecs and stuff. A better DVD player than what comes with Ubuntu by default.

ubuntu-restricted-extras – this is a “metapackage” which will install what you need to play mp3s, as well as the files to activate commercial DVD playback (the commands to activate that are below). It’s a lot of stuff, but unless you’re wanting to keep a completely “open-source”-type of install, this package has a ton of stuff you’ll need.

Run this command to enable commercial DVD playback after installing the “ubuntu-restricted-extras” metapackage described above:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Well, there ya go! Enjoy your new Ubuntu installation! I’ll be posting stuff concerning more specific issues and programs in the coming weeks!

Well, my semester finally ended and I have been able to install Jaunty on me ‘ole laptop – as well as my desktop. I’m going to post a “super quick install” guide later. Right now, just a few of my initial thoughts on the Jackalope.

First impression is the new boot splash screen and login window – both are sharper-looking than the past ones. I do think the Intrepid default background was cooler. Other than that, the look is pretty good. I do wish gnome would sometime soon update the default look of their panels and windows. It’s pretty old-school.

One of the greatest adjustments which is readily apparent is the new notification system. I definitely like it. When I’ve got a chat in pidgin going, if I’m working in another window, it’ll pop up a notification of what has been said in the chat window. Which is especially good for me when I’m chatting with my wife…kinda wise to respond more quickly than slowly to what she says

As far as how fast the OS works…well, what I’m running it on won’t really show that. My laptop is a 1.5 Ghz Celeron, with 512 mg of RAM and a 60 Gb hard-drive. Not exactly top of the line – approximately 3.5 years old. The basic install runs very smoothly – it’s when I start running a bunch of programs (which I am rather infamous for) that things start to slow down a little. And that’s more to do with my laptop than the OS. If I want things to run more smoothly I can always switch over to Xubuntu (Xfce-based Ubuntu).

All in all, as far as I can tell, this is a very solid update to Ubuntu. You can download it here. But I’d suggest grabbing the Torrent file – I think that’s a little better way to download it (but that’s just a personal opinion…).