I'm still alive

Hello!...

Well, for those of you who think this will be an open source related post you're wrong. Actually this post doesn’t have anything to do with technology. It's more of a personal post.
Like you might notice, this blog has suffered from a lack of actualization. In a try of excusing myself... this has been due to my university works. But now since I'm on vacation and I "only" have to revise for the exams I'll try to bring you more content.

To say the truth, I've actually not used Linux too much in the last month. All my works have to be made using Microsoft technology. And although I know the existence of the open implementation of the .NET (CLR/CLI), the MONO, I haven't had time to check it out (hmm... nice ideas to upcoming posts!)

To finish (because I know this talk is boring) I just want to give you all my appreciation. Many people from many places have visited the blog. And I had some nice comments and subscriptions on my YouTube videos.

Enough of this.
See you soon!

Compiz desktop effects

Hi, as promised in the last post I'm going to talk about some Linux desktop effects that most common distributions include.
In my opinion, desktop effects are very cool! It's true that the most common user likes performance, but if that can by allied to presentation, why not? Not every effects are useful, and the majority of them don't bring nothing new in terms of features. But when you use them and see all those nice things moving around you really like it!
I use only compiz which is a tool that provides some plugins that bring you a new experience in Linux. I must say that after you get used to some of the effects like the one when you move the windows (you can see that in my videos) you actually feel strange when you use a system that doesn't have it.

The effect that most people probably know is the cube. Everyone talks about the cube and associate the latest version of ubuntu with it. This is a great effect that uses the feature of having available multiple desktops. Before using this effect I never used the feature of multiple desktops, so this is a case where an effect brought up a feature!

Enough talk, be sure to check out the video and that should get you going:



Cool isn't it?
And there are a lot of things to keep you going in compiz. And after you think you know everything, explore, and discover more cool things to make your desktop really amazing.
A good starting point should be desklets. A nice implementation of desklets is adesklets, be sure to check it out!

But don't think that to have a nice desktop you need to install extra software. You can always use themes to your desktop environment. A quick search on Google about Gnome or KDE themes gives you plenty of places to look for desktop beauties!

And if you want leave a screenshot or a video in the commentaries about your desktop I would like very much to see it!

Vista vs. Linux Desktop

Some days have passed and I really haven't got much time to write stuff here.

Today I just want to tell you about a little (and I'm being ironic of course) topic that much people seem to talk about these days.
Almost a year has passed since Vista was released and from that day I haven't heard much good opinions about it. The most common aspect people seem to point out is that Vista just takes a lot of resources. Even in my machine which is a dual core running at 1.83Ghz and 2Gb of RAM Vista seems to run not as fast and fluid as XP. Some of my friends even changed back from Vista to XP.
And they do this because not only it runs slower but the changes Vista brought aren't enough to make worth the low performance.
So comparisons started to apear between Vista and some Linux desktops.
I spotted two articles on the net that I thought are interesting about this:

Vista vs. Linux Dektop
Vista: They took five years for this?

I don't think these articles are just trying to say bad things about Vista, I think they show you what's wrong and some solutions that some Linux desktops present.

Although these comparisons are most about performance I think too that in terms of presentation and desktop effects, the common Linux distribution beats Vista.
In some distributions like Ubuntu those effects are available right out of the box!
I'll try to make a nice video showing off these effects to use in my next post!

Automatix

So let's talk about automatix!

Automatix is an applications for debian based Linux distributions that installs a great range of software for you. It's like the Synaptic Package Manager but specific for some applications. The goal of automatix e to provide you with some useful applications right out of the box.
This applications go from chat clients, browsers, email clients to multimedia support (video/audio players, codecs), office suites, development tools, etc.
And the great thing is that is very easy to use, you just select what you want to install and automatix does the rest for you.

Anyway, I felt like doing a video to show you better how to use it:



Hope you liked it and use it as well!

Open source software and software piracy relation

I came across an article on Steve York's blog which talks a bit about the relation between open source software and if it reduces in fact software piracy.
I think the topic is very interesting and Steven made a statistics among his readers to determine how many of them reduced piracy by using open source software.

In my personal case I think I'm not the best person to talk about this since my university has an agreement with Microsoft which lets students access their software by free.
But I think that with some research you can definitely let go of some common applications like Microsoft Office (OpenOffice exists and it's a great office suite), Photoshop (Paint.NET and Gimp are great programs for image edition/creation) and many others.
Even when we talk about development you have Eclipse for Java development and SharpDevelop or Mono-Development which let's you develop applications using Microsoft .NET framework!

Some people just don't bother to search! If you're on of those people or if you're just new to this world, Steven York also has a list of what he considers to be the 70 coolest free applications.
Also Andrew Sellick has a list of 100 great free tools for web developers.

So be sure to check these links and leave a comment about your personal experience, did the use of open source software reduced your software piracy! (I won't tell the police :-P )

Some basic directions

Hello all!

Today I thought I would make a small post with some cool sites I found to be very useful when discovering ubuntu.
Well, first of all you should check the ubuntu official website, it's where you can get the latest version of this Linux distribution, get some basic support through their FAQ's and ask your own questions in the forums. The cool thing about this forums is that you should have available to you a forum in your own language.
Next there are two sites that complement each other. This one is a great tutorial which will guide you through the all installation process and some cool things to do right after you finish it. It goes from removing software you will not use, install some recommended software, to updating your repositories and select which services should ubuntu start when it starts itself. This other one also has an installation tutorial but in my opinion the first one is better at this. But it has some great tips about some recommended software and introduces you to automatix which is a great tool that I'll try to make a video-tutorial about in the next post.
There's also a site that changes as new releases of ubuntu are released. It's the ubuntu guide (in this case for the latest version, the ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon), which is contributed by all users that wish to do so. This way of sharing information results in a great site with tons of information, about I would say almost any topic that you might be looking information about.

Now I'll tell you about one site that is not ubuntu-specific but is very handy!
Handy is the word that really describes it. This site provides you with information about alternatives for some programs you are used to. Let's say untill you installed ubuntu (or other Linux distribution) you were used to Windows, and so, every time you wanted to record a CD/DVD you probably used Nero. Now you want to know alternatives to Nero. That's easy, just browse to the Multimedia section and you'll find alternatives. And Nero is just an example, this site has about 680 alternatives of software for Linux that goes from multimedia, graphics, development, education, etc! It's simply amazing and worth a visit! (Just a warn, the first time I accessed this site, the language was Spanish, if it happens to you to, the 4th link on the left menu allows you to change the language).

And to end, why not talk a little about games? Games are in fact available for Linux! In fact some great games like Unreal Tournament are supported natively!
Next, are four great sites to lookup about game info.
The first one is ubuntu-specific. It's Ubuntu Games, it's full of games under it's eight categories and each game has information on how to download and install it specifically for ubuntu. Of course you can have a look to this site just to know what games are available because although the instructions are specific to ubuntu, all the games have packages for all distributions (on the extreme, you grab the source code and compile it yourself!). It also has a section about emulation through Wine.
The Happy Penguin web site I risk to say that it's the biggest data base of games for Linux. Daily updated with news, new games, game updates. Is allows the users to leave comments about the games and also has a rating system!
Similar to Happy Penguin there is Linux Games. This is a great site if you are looking for news on-the-fly about games, really worthy to have a look daily.
And to finish there is Linux-Gamers. This site besides all the news is a great resource for online games. They have their own clans and provide you with great FAQ's and forums about some games that require emulation to be played like Counter Strike for instance.

I guess this is enough for you to start with! You have in this sites very useful information so use it well!
And of course that this sites will not last for ever. They are just the beginning!
If you know any sites that you think could be listed here or in the links section please fell free to e-mail me or to leave a comment here.
To find you must search, and never forget that Google is your friend!

Defining your repositories

Hello, my current Linux distribution is ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) which you can get here. It's a very good distribution to start if you want to discover the Linux world since it is very user-friendly and has some very powerful tools right out of the box.
But just like happens with every other operating system, you want to install your programs right? In ubuntu that is made by using the Synaptics Package Manager. This is a great package management tool which you can (and should) use to install all of your programs. You just have to do a search and it's almost sure that you will find what you are looking for. Then you just have to check it for instalation and click on the apply button. Then all the work is done for you! Isn't that great?

But it will come the time where you search for a program and you get no results. "Ok, I'll just search for it on the internet", you say. That's the right thing to do but sometimes you will find your programs in some forms that you are not used to. You have to build them to make them work. This is a process that might not be easy for some people who are just looking for a straight forward installation. In that case, if the application has some information about a repository where you can get it, you can add that repository to your system and then let Synaptic Package Manager do all the work for you!

I recorded the following video for you to understand better:

I hope you enjoy it and learn something with it!

Just a note to tell you that since this is my first video it isn't very good, but next time I'll do better!

The entry point

Hello all!

I thought I could make an introduction about the idea and motivation behind this blog.
This is a place intended for the divulgation of open source software in general. It's true, there are a lot of places like this one but I think that by sharing my personal experiences on this field I can really be helping and encouraging the use of this type of software.
The aproach to the topics will be simple: show useful tools and features that I use on a daily basis and hope that it can incentivize you to use them as well.

My experience with the open source world started about 10 years ago when I first tried to install Linux on my computer. The distribution was Linux Red Hat 7.3. Then I moved to Slackware, I just loved it and I consider it as one of the best Linux distributions around. But then and because of lack of time I left the Linux world for sometime... Now I came back and I'm amazed at the all new features moderns distributions have. Currently I use ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon on my computer.

So the idea is that since I've started using Linux (entering again in the open source world) again, post the things I do and the things I learn. That will provide you with a basic knowledge that you can use to try things on your own.

Just a footnote to tell you that I'm no fanatic or so. I defend a world where all type of software exists, because only by uniting we can acheive bigger things.
My purpose then is to make this place a road, to show your that there is another world, another side!