EasyLinuxGuide Blog

I just wanted to make a quick note on something I discovered about Fireftp. I was browsing through some ftp locations to download an ISO of Linux and was about to look at saving the target by right clicking on the file when I saw an option to ‘open with fireftp’. I decided to try it out and discovered that Fireftp actually opened a new tab and logged me into the site anonymously and browsed directly to where the file was located. From here it was simply a quick highlight and then arrow click to save the file to my home directory. One of the big advantages of downloading via ftp is the support to continue if the download is interrupted as well as the speeds achieved. I plan on using this in the future often.

There were a lot of updates last night, featuring moving Gnome 2.16 from the testing repos to the main ones. Everything seems to work fine. I did run into one small issue on my 64 bit system which would not allow me to log into my Gnome desktop due to a missing dbus library. Here is the easy workaround I used:

ln -s /usr/lib/libdbus-1.so.3 /usr/lib/libdbus-1.so.2

I was then able to log into my desktop fine. There were no issues at all on my main system. Gnome 2.16 is very nice. The Gnome dev team is doing great work and improving on Gnome with every release. There was a time back before 2.14 when I didn’t really like Gnome much at all, but it has been my default desktop since 2.14 and there is no sign of changing that.

Ubuntu 6.10 is now released and see how happy everyone on the Ubuntu site is now?!?! I swear they looked a little less enthusiastic after 6.06 was released. But seriously, I am downloading it now and will be testing it out. Apparently there are major improvements to the boot up process speed which was sorely needed unless you decided to install it and disable a ton of unnecessary services. Also, this release includes Gnome 2.16, Firefox 2.0 along with a kernel update and tons of other software updates.
OK, so I tried it out briefly today. Two major things already I found I did not like – the bootup time is actually a lot worse than what I remember. I tried it out on two different boxes – a celeron 500 which I expected to be somewhat slow and also a 64 bit AMD Athlon XP 3200 with a gb and a half of ddr ram. On the latter box, it still took Ubuntu a full 2 minutes to get to a fully loaded Gnome screen. Also, they have removed the output on the screen so you can see what it is loading and the usual ESC key does nothing to display a verbose mode. I will do some further testing later, but for right now I am not impressed. Also, how could people omit Xchat from a live cd that is Gnome based?

So I did an actual install and the live cd experience is totally different from the install. The install does in fact boast a faster boot up time than its predecessor. The desktop is once again very clean and functional as well as responsive. I still did some customization with BUM (Boot Up Manager) and editing services. I’m not sure how many people need to have bluetooth enabled by default for example. This helped to optimize things even more. With Ubuntu 6.16 using the Gnome desktop, you get the feeling that it is getting closer to an expected standard. The people at Ubuntu do a nice job of not breaking what is already working.

It’s been through a lot of testing and released candidates so it should be pretty solid now. I did try out FC5 on a spare hd and it was very smooth and polished. Gnome ran very well with no issues. It seems they’ve done a great job on bugfixes and making it into a nice clean usable desktop. For more information, check out the Fedora Core Homepage where you can download the latest version through bittorrent or via ftp.

I attempted an install of Fedora Core 6. I say attempted because when it was about 90% done installing the necessary files, a tear fell from my LCD indicating that the package for the optional Gnome Applet “Byzanz” was corrupted. Fedora proceeded to implode at that point. Although I did not check the md5sums and also neglected to run the check disk option prior to the install, I have never had a problem with a bad burn. Ignoring those obvious factors, wouldn’t it be nice if the Fedora Core installer was smart enough to know that byzanz was a file that was hardly required to run the system. I could definitely understand a missing or corrupted kernel, but there are many packages that do not have anything else that depends on them whereas skipping such a package would make no difference whatsoever. I will likely try the install again and select less packages and see what happens. I did also check the md5sum and it was different than what was on the site; however, I downloaded it twice, it came up with both ISO’s having the exact same md5sum so it is more likely that the wrong md5sum was published on the ftp.

From what I understand there isn’t much difference at all between Firefox 2rc3 and Firefox 2 final. There are noted changes since the 1.5 version including aesthetics (cleaner look overall), better built in RSS support and control, bugfixes as usual and other features listed such as:

• Built in Phishing Protection
• Search suggestions now appear with search history in the search box for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com
• Changes to tabbed browsing behavior
• Ability to re-open accidentally closed tabs
• Better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
• Inline spell checking in text boxes
• Search plugin manager for removing and re-ordering search engines
• New microsummaries feature for bookmarks
• Automatic restoration of your browsing session if there is a crash
• New combined and improved Add-Ons manager for extensions and themes
• New Windows installer based on Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
• Support for JavaScript 1.7
• Support for client-side session and persistent storage
• Extended search plugin format
• Updates to the extension system to provide enhanced security and to allow for easier localization of extensions
• Support for SVG text using svg:textPath

I have tried it out on a couple of boxes and it does seem very nice. I am missing support for one of my favorite extensions though – tabbrowser preferences. Hopefully there will be a build for 2.0 soon. It would have been an even better idea to just build that component into the browser itself, it seems so functional and fundamental.  As of October 24, 2006 – a new tabbrowser preferences was built: v. 1.3 which now works with Firefox 2.0. Thanks!