Peeled Carrots » Ubuntu

Ubuntu 9.10 coming soon.

Stephen Blake — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:26:53 +0000

Seeing as though I’m using Ubuntu as my main OS, I decided to show off some of their bling and spread the word that Ubuntu 9.10 is being released in 7 days…and counting!

Tweaking Ubuntu desktop and system settings

Stephen Blake — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:44:19 +0000

Although there are loads more configuration options on Ubuntu compared to Windows, there are some things that just seem to take too much time to do. So, in order to make life easier I installed Ubuntu Tweak. It’s a great little application which allows you to pimp your ubuntu installation without having to follow long tutorials explaining how to edit configuration files etc.

Ubuntu Tweak is a tool for Ubuntu that makes it easy to configure your system and desktop settings.

Ubuntu Tweak allows a wide variety of customization and one is able to easily remove unneeded applications which just seem to fill up memory. It provides configuration for the following system sections: Applications, Startup, Desktop, System.

It’s maintained by a single developer who has a passion for open source software and he regularly releases updates for the application.

It’s really easy to install and one can install it using the following 3 methods:

Download the actual source and then manually install with a batch script
ubuntu-tweak_0.4.3.orig.tar.gz
Download the Debian installation file and just run it
ubuntu-tweak_0.4.3-1~intrepid1_all.deb
Or, use apt-get in the command line. This is what I used and it installed quickly and without any problems
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

For more information on Ubuntu Tweak checkout the site at ubuntu-tweak.com and for detailed installations go to the downloads page

Using virtualbox and guest additions on Ubuntu with Windows XP as the guest

Stephen Blake — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:20:40 +0000

With the onset of climate change, the credit crunch and the fear of concrete dwarfs I decided that in order to stay sane I should try out the latest version of Ubuntu as my operating system…hahahaha

Well, the actual reason was because we are closing down our office and selling the Fedora box that I have been developing on for almost 3 years now, so I needed a local development environment other than Windows.

I have found Ubuntu pretty sweet and I think that the latest release of Intrepid Ibex (8.10) has some great new updates and features, most notably improved support for dual monitors and wireless.

Anyway, this post isn’t really about Ubuntu, but more about VirtualBox, which is also free and open-source version of parallels. Woohooo – Nice one!! The process of setting it up was really simple and the only problem that I have got at the moment is trying to get sound working on my guest (Windows XP) machine.

The most important piece of advice that I could give to anyone wanting to do the same thing is that they should install the guest additions on the guest machine. In order to do so you need to mount the .iso image on a cd-rom in the Virtualbox control panel before starting it up. Then once the new virtual machine has started install the guest additions. This will allow better keyboard functionality, full screen and the use of USB and other hardware. There is a good tutorial for how to do this on seogadget.co.uk

As I mentioned previously I am just struggling with getting the sound working, so if anyone has any ideas here then please let me know