I ran across Cardapio a few weeks ago and have been using it since then. I love it – it’s very quick (supposedly only using 5mb of RAM after it finished loading), and you can fire it up using the Power+Spacebar combo and then just type in what you’re looking for. Very sweet.

Best way to install it, in my mind, is via the terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cardapio-team/unstable

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install cardapio

To put the menu in your gnome panel, just right-click on the panel you would like to add it to and then choose “Add to panel”. One of the first items on the list will probably be Cardapio – choose it and then enjoy!

It’s got a weird name, but I’ve found I really like it  a lot. It looks really sharp, runs fast, and uses the desktop notification system as well. All around, really solid program. Add their PPA and you should be good to go. Here’s how to do it via the command line:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hotot-team

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install hotot

After that, just open ‘er up and check ‘er out!

Found out about this program here.

After installing Maverick, to my great dismay, I discovered that two-finger scrolling (my personal preferred method for scrolling on my laptop), didn’t work.

Alas.

But, the fix was simple enough. I just had to open the Mouse properties (System -> Preferences -> Mouse) and enable it under the “Touchpad” tab. Simple enough!

Now if I can just get Compiz to play nice….

Just a quick reminder that Ubuntu 10.10 is here. I’m downloading it as I type this – gonna be a fun night later tonight!

As a suggestion, download using the Torrent file, which you can find on this page. With  so many people around the world downloading this today, using a Torrent actually increases downloading capacity.

Also, as a side note, if your computer supports booting from USB there’s a way to avoid the hassle of using discs altogether. It’s outlined on the main download page. I’m going to be attempting this for the first time with this installation…let ya know later how it turns out!

Well, tomorrow Ubuntu 10.10 comes out. In preparation, I always like to post up a list of all the programs I am presently using regularly. It’s actually a pretty small list this time:

• Chromium (web browser)
• Hotot (Twitter desktop client)
• Kupfer (kinda like gnome-do…but it’s working more dependably for me)
• tilda (desktop terminal)
• Avant Window Navigator (very solid dock, though I think for the next six months I’m going to use Docky to see how it holds up for an extended period of time)
• Tomboy Notes
• Basket Note Pads
• Guayadeque (music player)
• Xiphos (Bible software)
• PDFmod
• Ubuntu Tweak

That’s all the main ones! I’m planning on posting up a quick installation guide which will include installing these apps, so keep an eye out for that!

Hey, who doesn’t like playing around with how their system looks? I think that’s why my wife never lets me touch her phone anymore…

Anyways, I recently ran across what is (apparently) becoming a very popular third-party icon set. And with its own PPA now it’s easier than ever to install and try out. Here’s how I did it:

Enter these two lines in your terminal:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tiheum/equinox
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install faenza-icon-theme

Next, right-click on your desktop and choose “Change Desktop Background”, then click on the “Theme” tab and then the “Customize” button at the bottom. Now choose the “Icons” tab in the window that opens up and choose “Faenza” from the list. You can log out and back in to restart your X server to make the changes take effect across your system, but all my icons were changed just by the instructions above.

Enjoy!

With the release of Froyo for Android came the awesome ability to send stuff to your phone from your browser. Very simple and straight-forward to set-up. From what I can tell it uses your Google account to connect devices. Pretty easy to set up. Here’s what I did…

• installed the app on my phone (appbrain link)
• then install the extension on your browser of choice – firefox or chrome
• fire up the app on your phone and follow the prompts – it will have to log into your google account
• click on the extension in your browser, the first time you do this you will have to log into your google account.

I did a test run of this and the response was almost instantaneous. The best part? Since it’s browser based, it’s not OS specific – this will work in OSX, Windows, Linux or whatever else you might desire that has a firefox or chrome browser. I actually use Chromium (the open-source version of Chrome) and it worked perfectly in it as well.

Oh, and here’s a video of it for your viewing pleasure:

I recently acquired a new router which I flashed with the dd-wrt software [DD-WRT v24-sp2 (07/22/09) mega] I recently learned about openDNS and wanted to try it. Not sure if this software is linux based (I don’t really think so…) but it definitely is open-source. Here’s how I got it working:

• set up an account (free!)
• opened up my dd-wrt router in a browser window
• under Setup->Basic Setup tab I left everything the same, except for this:
  • section: “Network Address Server Settings (DHCP)”, in which I changed the first two static DNS servers to the openDNS servers (previously they had been ’0′).
  • those server addresses are:
    • 208.67.222.222
    • 208.67.220.220
• then went under Services->Services and to the “DNSmasq” section
  • had to make sure that both DNSMasq and Local DNS were checked “enable” and then under “Additional DNSMasq Options” put strict-order
  
  

And that’s it! After that the openDNS site confirmed that I was using their servers. Pretty simple.

So far I’m loving the options the free membership offers, especially the filtering you can do. I highly recommend checking out openDNS if you can.