EasyLinuxGuide Blog

Recently there was a Gnome 3 update in Ubuntu which added some extra options. I noticed that whenever I would try to use my touchpad on my laptop, there would be a delay where it was completely unresponsive. To get rid of this, you can simply type in ‘mouse’ into the search box in Gnome 3 and click on the mouse icon. On the new window that opens up, click on the touchpad tab and uncheck the box under General ‘Disable touchpad while typing’. I’m not sure why someone chose to enable that by default as I found it very annoying.

I’ve been using Linux for about 10 years. I’ve used over 50 different distros and derivatives. I’ve been the masochist who wanted to learn the inner workings all the way from Gentoo builds, custom kernels and maintaining my own package repository. Around a year or two ago, the threshold of doing all of this extra customized work became less rewarding as Ubuntu had finally emerged as a consistent and stable, yet evolving distribution. The latest instalment of Ubuntu, brings all of that into question.

Ubuntu 11.04 is getting very mixed reviews and primarily because of Canonical’s decision to go with Unity which has been used on their netbook version but is now making its way to the desktop. My laptop has been my testing ground for the newer Ubuntu versions of the past few years. Much like any other time, I upgraded to the development version (this time I held off till Alpha 3). Unlike the previous early preview experiences, Unity was a major difference. I can tolerate instability including kernel panics as a by product of being an early adopter, but Unity was a whole different story. I used it for 3 weeks and tried to get used to it, but it just didn’t suit me.

After deciding that I would probably never be able to use Unity on a day to day basis and considering, I was already on a beta version of Natty at this point, I decided I would give Gnome 3 a try. Despite being a bit reluctant after my Unity experience, I dove into Gnome 3 anyway. What I found was a robust, logical, aesthetically pleasing and flashy desktop experience. Granted, Gnome 3 is not perfected and I am using the PPA which is getting updated often. I truly believe that Gnome 3 will be the desktop environment of the future. It would probably have been a better idea to stick with Gnome 2 for 11.04 and then try for Gnome 3 for 11.10.

Natty seems to be the most lacklustre Ubuntu release in many years. So who is to blame? There are claims that performance is between 10 and 26% slower on Natty.  The particular kernel version was blamed for this. Unity has received some blame as well for the tepid enthusiasm for Ubuntu 11.04. Ultimately, while Canonical doesn’t manufacture the software packages itself, it is still their decision as a company how to put together the finished product. While I don’t think Ubuntu 11.04 is a disaster, it definitely seems like it will quiet Ubuntu evangelists like myself from recommending it to new users. I would still recommend Ubuntu, but I would have to go with 10.10. The trouble with recommending a previous version is that the Ubuntu website not only links to Natty but also has screenshots and information showing Unity which could be a detraction.

Download Ubuntu 10.10

After last week, Brock called all of his fighters chicken shit, criticizing their fighting spirit in the Octagon. He said he wanted someone to ‘wow’ him. This week’s fight featured Clay vs Mick. Mick (from England) announced that there was no way he would lose this fight as he didn’t want to go home to his little girl having failed. Predictably, he lost. Clay looked decent in the first round but looked completely exhausted and gassed out in the second. It was Mick’s lack of aggression that lost him the fight. Had Mick been more aggressive in the second round where he clearly had more stamina than Clay, he surely would have won barring a judging catastrophe. Mick appeared tentative and afraid to move forward.

On another note, Strikeforce, since being purchased by Zuffa, is no longer permitted to have amateur fights. Shame. Strikeforce’s amateur fights were often more entertaining than The Ultimate Fighter professional bouts.

I have been using Gnome 3 on my laptop with Ubuntu 11.04 for a few weeks now. I was a bit skeptical at first to try it since I was not impressed too much with Unity as the new default desktop environment. I must say that I am very impressed with Gnome 3. It is functional, uses desktop effects without feeling like it takes away from performance and is logical in design. Check it out here: Gnome 3. It likely will not be the default desktop environment until perhaps 11.10 or later but it is definitely worth checking out. For those who want to install it, you can add a PPA repository and install it. To get themes working better I needed to uninstall gnome-themes-accessibility and then install gnome-themes-standard. Here is a how to on adding PPA via synaptic. Again, this is more for testers to try it out but I have had very few issues with it on my laptop.

Edit: At the time I wrote this originally, by installing Gnome 3, it meant that I could no longer run Unity nor Gnome 2, as of now (June), this is no longer the case. All 3 seem to run fine.

Here are the command line entries to perform the upgrade:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

After the install, by default, there is an accessibility icon at the top right, if you want to get rid of it, follow these instructions:
remove accessibility icon. Scroll down to the section on NoA11y and follow those instructions.

Dana has been saying for a long time now that he wants to grow the UFC worldwide but his main problem is that he doesn’t have enough fighters. Oddly enough, despite acquiring the WEC and more recently Strikeforce, there is a plethora of fighters but somehow perhaps less fights than before. Mathematicians? I miss the quality of the WEC cards. Now we get the lighter weight fighters diluted amongst the regular cards.