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Since this involves some shell parameter expansion magic, I've written a very simple script for copying the "http_proxy" environment variable to the Java proxy properties. Read More for the script.

The beta for Ubuntu 8.10, code named "Intrepid Ibex," is now available.

I'm downloading it (ever so slowly) now.

Some new features include NetworkManager 0.7, so that you no longer need to log in to get a network connection (long overdue), X.org 7.4, and updates GNOME to 2.24.

No idea what the last two mean, they appear to basically be incremental improvements. So nothing too major this release, just general improvement.

Ubuntu 8.04 is out!

I've been using it for a while on my work Linux computer and my home Linux laptop. The work machine's been running basically flawlessly. The laptop had some issues with the wireless adapter, but thankfully that has been resolved.

On the laptop side, 3D graphics effects are now supported. I now have Compiz running on both machines, which is kind of cool. (And since I've mucked with the window closing animations, closing windows is much more exciting than it used to be. Burn and Beam Up are cool. Uh, anyway.)

KDE4 has recently released a Windows version of KDE which allows many popular KDE applications like Konqueror under Windows.

Well, sort of.

The installation process is still a bit sketchy. My first attempt to use the graphical installer failed, because I was behind a firewall and the attempt to use Firefox's settings failed. (It does need to be noted that I use a PAC script for settings, so if using Firefox settings worked for someone else, that could be why.)

I recently got a new laptop which I've installed Ubuntu to. It's working wonderfully, better than I was afraid it would. Unfortunately it won't run Compiz on the graphics chipset that was included (some Intel integrated thing) but that's hardly a big deal.

In any case, I figured I'd use the Ubuntu Firefox Addon installer to install the mouse gesture addon.

It, uh, didn't work.

It did install Thunderbird though.

Unfortunately it didn't actually install the mouse gestures addon into either Firefox or Thunderbird.

I think it might need some more work.

The beta of Ubuntu's next release, 7.10 (codename Gutsy Gibbon) is available for download!

People who already have Ubuntu 7.04 installed (dunno about earlier versions) can upgrade from the console using the following command:

update-manager -d

For a list of what's planned for this release, check out the Launchpad.

Probably the biggest change is the new version of GNOME.

Update: The logout icon is now a Cactuar?

For those of you who aren't programmers or nerd, "\a" is the string commonly used to represent the "alarm character" is C-style programming languages. It makes the computer beep.

Problem: Almost all computers don't use the sound card to beep, they use a special dedicated speaker. (Why? Diagnostic reasons, many computers will use special beep sequences to indicate an error that prevents them from displaying graphics. Such errors would also exclude the sound card.)

So why is this a problem? Well, because the beep is coming from a special speaker dedicated to making annoying beeps, it completely and totally ignores your volume settings.

Debian defaulted to GNOME when it installed, so I've been using GNOME for no good reason, although I've now got a good list of reasons never to recommend GNOME to anyone but the most masochistic.

I want to do the incredibly complicated task of "open file in a text editor and not a program that can't actually handle it."

Right Click on the file, try "Open With." Oops, the option I want (text editor) is listed twice. And neither work. Of course. So how do I remove these broken options?

Quick trip to Help, Contents. Nothing happens.

Hit F1. Nothing happens.

Hit F1 a bunch more. Nothing happens.

Well, at least I'm not insane. It's bug #352001.

With absolutely NO INDICATION if they plan on fixing it, of course.

I found this article to be fairly helpful when it came to installing Sun's JRE under Debian Linux.

However, there was one step that I needed to add that was missing:

apt-get remove java-gcj-compat

Without that step, the GCJ Java compatibility scripts remained, conflicting with Sun's Java. Since that package was installed by default with my Debian Testing install, I expect other people will run into the same problem.