Ubuntu 8.10 has been officially released. I’ll have some screenshots once I figure out how to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions in it.
In the mean while I’m going to have to leave you to download the live CD to try it for yourself.
Archive for the ‘Open Source’ Category
Quickie: Ubuntu 8.10 released
Friday, October 31st, 2008Secrets of command line VirtualBox
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008matt@foo ~ $ VBoxManage list vms VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 2.0.4 (C) 2005-2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Name: Ubuntu Guest OS: Ubuntu UUID: 7732c04e-0a50-461c-86d3-a18814ac9257 Config file: /home/matt/.VirtualBox/Machines/Ubuntu/Ubuntu.xml Memory size: 512MB VRAM size: 8MB Boot menu mode: message and menu [... truncated ...]
I’m a big fan of Sun’s VirtualBox. It allows me to run other operating systems (such as Windows and Ubuntu) safely and easily without having to deploy them beside my Gentoo install. Now here comes Linux.com with a quick guide to using VirtualBox from the command line (every Linux aficionado’s one true friend). You might as why you’d want to use the CLI, luckily for me the guys at Linux.com already answered that question:
The CLI works well for users who want to control a VirtualBox running on a headless server with no monitor or keyboard attached. Even desktop users, running and managing VirtualBox from the same machine, can pull a stunt or two with the CLI that they can’t do in the GUI, such as shrinking or cloning virtual disks, customizing the BIOS logo, and collecting metrics data from virtual machines.
Powered by…
Monday, October 27th, 2008At this point I thought I’d take a moment to go over how this site is powered.
First off, there’s the VPS from Linode (Linode stands for Linux Node) which comes with the following specifications:
- 360MiB RAM
- 12GiB storage space
- 200GiB data transfers per month
- Full SSH access (root)
- Managed DNS
- (and more…)
- $19.95 per month (about 14€)
I’d say that that’s pretty good value for money… So far I’ve been extremely happy with the Linode VPS, no glitches or breakdowns and it’s fairly zippy (even though I’m in Europe and the server is in the US). Oh, and when you order a VPS you get to choose which data centre you want it to be in.
If you do decide to get a VPS from Linode, I’d appreciate it if you used my referral code:
632bae5e8fd45745396cd410c14d94771105bc6a
I’ll be honest about it: I get $20 credit if somebody gets a VPS with that code (and keeps it for 90 days)…
Well, that covers the hardware, so to speak.
(more…)
Arduino, a brief introduction.
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
This week I’ve been on a introductory course for Arduinos, so I thought I might share some of what I’ve learned. Arduino is an open source rapid prototyping platform based on easy to use hardware and software. It’s intended to be used by hobbyists, artists, designers, and anyone who’s interested in quickly and easily creating their own gadgets.
It is possible to connect almost anything to the Arduino board. I myself have successfully experimented with servos, ultrasound distance sensors, and the Wii Nunchuck, among others. What’s more, an Arduino can easily be connected up to a computer that can control the Arduino, and can receive data from it.
The Arduino can work with pretty much any computing platform, and the official IDE is available for Linux, Mac OS X, and even Windows.
I’ll soon post some of my projects here, and in the meanwhile you can get more information on Arduinos on the Arduino home page and on the Arduino Wikipedia article.
For an idea of some of the things that you can do with Arduinos, go to Arduino Playground.
If you understand Finnish, you can also go to Sulautetut.fi
Google releases Andriod source
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
Google has finally released the full source code of its Linux-based Android platform. The source files are available for download at:
http://source.android.com/posts/opensource
David Bort writes on the Android page:
Even if you’re not planning to ship a mobile device any time soon, Android has a lot to offer. Interested in working on a speech-recognition library? Looking to do some research on virtual machines? Need an out-of-the-box embedded Linux solution? All of these pieces are available, right now, as part of the Android Open Source Project, along with graphics libraries, media codecs, and some of the best development tools I’ve ever worked with.
[via Ars Technica]
OpenOffice 3.0 released
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008OpenOffice 3.0 is now available for download. I myself will be testing it out once there’s an Gentoo eBuild that isn’t hard masked.
Linux kernel 2.6.27 released
Friday, October 10th, 2008Linux kernel version 2.6.27 is now officially out. This new release brings with it quite a few improvements and new features, including a new filesystem (UBIFS) for ‘pure’ flash-based storage.
Read on for the release announcement and links to the relevant pages.
Ubuntu 8.10 screenshots
Friday, October 3rd, 2008
As promised in my previous post, here’s a gallery of screenshots from Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex” Beta.
The look hasn’t really changed that much, and the install procedure is nearly identical with previous Ubuntu versions. All these screenshots are from a virtual machine in VirtualBox, so they do contain bars above and below the window that won’t be there in a real install.
Ubuntu 8.10 Beta released
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008
Canonical have just officially released the first beta of Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex. This new version of Ubuntu comes with a slew of improvements over 8.04, which was released back in April this year.
Codenamed “Intrepid Ibex”, 8.10 continues Ubuntu’s
proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source
technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution.
A Quick VirtualBox Tutorial
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
VirtualBox Seamless Mode
Do you feel like trying lots of different distributions? Do you absolutely have to run some Windows application (for example, Visual Studio)? Then maybe virtualization is the answer for you.
Here’s an article I’ve written for the HAAGA-HELIA Linux Club. This is just the beginning, you’ll find the rest at: http://hhlinuxclub.org/articles/virtualization
Introduction
What is virtualization? Well, in it’s most basic terms it means running an operating system (or part of an operating system) on top of another. Virtualization is typically divided into five different types, which are:
- Full virtualization
- Hardware-assisted virtualization
- Partial virtualization
- Paravirtualization
- Operating System-level virtualization
We’re going to focus on full virtualization in this article. If you really want to learn about the others, please read the Wikipedia page on Platform Virtualization . Something that may interest you is that the server that runs this web-site uses operating system-level virtualization, namely Open VZ.