If you’ve been waiting for the final release version of NetBeans 6.5, you don’t have to wait any longer. It’s now available for download from the NetBeans web site. And the most awaited support for PHP is now included in the NetBeans 6.5.

As always, NetBeans is also available for Linux. You can download the newest version from NetBeans without waiting for it to be available from the Ubuntu repository. After downloading the Linux version, just run the installation script from a terminal session to install NetBeans. Be sure to have an installed JDK on your computer to use it.

Enjoy the latest and greatest NetBeans!

Two days after the official launch of Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, I took the decision to upgrade my 8.04 to 8.10. Everything went fine until it gave a message telling me something like there’s no supported driver for my video card. I stopped the upgrade because the last time I got a message like that I had a hard time editing files from the command line.

Although Ubuntu 8.04 is an LTS distribution, sites and software developers that provide .deb packages are slowly stopping the offering of packages for Hardy Heron. I don’t think this is a clever move, because there are still many users who preffer Hardy Heron and will not upgrade to 8.10 Intrepid Ibex pretty soon. By doing this, the users who want to have the latest versions of their favorite apps will have to compile them from source which might create some problems in time if the process doesn’t go the right way.

These are my 2 cents on the “forced” upgrade issue. Keep in mind that this is just my opinion, maybe I’m paranoid, maybe I’m right… You decide:).

This guest article was written by Vivek Kumar from TNerd.com, a blog focused on technology news, tricks and tips and Linux tutorials.

It’s a good idea to ensure that you have a backup and restore system in place. Today we’ll see how in a few very easy steps you can setup system backup and restore in Ubuntu. The good part is that there’s no rocket science involved.

In order to achieve this we are going to need software called SBackup. This is not installed by default in Ubuntu and hence we need to install it. First, let’s see a little bit about this wonderful software.

Homepage: http://sbackup.wiki.sourceforge.net/

Description: SBackup is a simple backup solution for Linux. It is generally developed with a Gnome desktop in mind, but will also work in other desktop environments and also on the console.

Features of SBackup

• Back up using GUI and hence avoid the terminal.
• Restore using the GUI in simple steps.
• You can easily setup automatic backup.
• Custom choose the files to backup.
• Exclude and include files using regular expressions.
• Backup files depending on size and extension.
• You can also use terminal to backup and restore.

Limitations of SBackup
As of now you can only backup data to local or remote machine. Backing up to DVD or CD is not available as of now. However, it’s not difficult to burn a backup to disk yourself manually.

Install SBackup
Install SBackup from the package sbackup (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install sbackup

Launching SBackup
In order to launch SBackup go to System->Administration->Simple Backup Config.

Configuring and setting up backups using SBackup
Once you launch SBackup it’ll open a configuration window for you to configure backup and restore.

If you notice, there are three options available for setting up the backup and they are self explanatory. I’d suggest Use recommended backup settings for most users.

However, you can also select Use Custom backup Settings and setup your backups based on various criteria like file size, file extension, etc. You can also add and remove folders from the ones which you want to backup and the ones you don’t. All this can be achieved by navigating to the Include and Exclude tabs and changing settings as per your requirements.

You can also change the destination where SBackup will backup your stuff. This can be achieved by going to Destination tab.

By default SBackup backs up your files to your local machine in /var/backup. You can custom choose the location and backup stuff to another machine using FTP or SSH.

Once you have selected the mode of backup, all you have to do is click Backup Now!. You should see a confirmation dialog.

Scheduling Backup
Scheduling backup is as easy as it can get. Just go to the Time tab and setup when you want to backup.

Purging old backups to avoid replication and excessive disk usage can also be setup using the Purge Tab. As I said, in most cases the Use recommended backup settings option is the best.

Restoring the data using SBackup
You can easily restore data from your backup using SBackup restore. You can do a directory-wide restore or just restore the files. To restore the data you’ll have to start the SBackup restore manager, go to System->Administration->Simple Backup restore.

1. Click on Available backups.
2. Choose the backup from which you want to restore files or directories.
3. Select the specific file or directory.
4. Click Restore.

You’ll be prompted if you are sure, click Yes and your files/directories will be restored.

I hope this guide will make backing up and restoring on Ubuntu a cake walk.

If you want more tutorials and technology articles like this one, you can subscribe to the TNerd RSS Feed.

I just noticed that my cursor keys did not behave correctly with a Windows XP VM on an Intrepid host. The down arrow acted as the Windows key!

After some googling I found this blog entry.

You have to insert the following lines into your ~/.vmware/config file:

xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R
xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide
xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter
xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up
xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down
xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left
xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right
xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R
xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert
xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete
xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home
xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End
xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior
xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next
xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock
xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause
xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L
xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R
xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu

So being interested in all things 3d, I finally sat down and started learning Blender. The inability of me to make acceptable looking 3d models has long been a hole in my 3d graphics knowledge, but no more! I am now fairly confident in my ability to make models in blender, and am starting to learn how to do animation and rigging and more advanced topics like that.

Basically, there are 3 steps in making a 3d animation. Step one is to make the model. You use tools to specify where each vertex in the model is positioned in 3d space. After you have a model, you move onto the third step, rigging. Rigging is associating vertexes with each other in such a way that they all move smoothly with each other. This is done by putting “bones” in your model, and tying the vertexes to their respective bones. This lets you position the model. It might sound easy, but rigging is a pretty intricate and important part of modeling. The next step is animation, where you position the bones in each frame to make something that looks like its walking, or moving, or whatever else you want your model to do. Tie these things all together, and you have a movie.

I’m not going to go over the basics of 3d animation right now, but I will show you my little toy humanoid character I made! I’m pretty proud of him, he only took me 8+ hours to make (including learning time). Here’s a video of the result, a guy walking around…

(Planet users click here)

Let me tell you, doing this has increased my respect for 3d animators at least five fold. From looking at the credits, it looks like whole animation teams are devoted to each step in the creation of the animation. Its a meticulous, long process to make even short professional 3d movies, like Big Buck Bunny or Elephant’s Dream. I don’t really want to know how many man-hours it takes to make a 2 hour movie like Monsters Inc….

The Eee PC 901 is an Intel Atom-based laptop, with 1 GB of RAM, a 20 GB SSD, and a 9 inch display. Since I bought mine, it’s been running Ubuntu 8.04 rather than the default Xandros-based OS. The laptop is surprisingly unfriendly to Ubuntu despite being preloaded with Linux. Ubuntu 8.10 has delivered some improvements for Eee PC laptops, but it still doesn’t work perfectly out of the box.

Here’s my guide to installing Ubuntu 8.10 on the Eee PC 901. Most of the instructions will also likely be relevant to the other Eee PC models.

1. Boot the Ubuntu installer from a SD card or USB drive. If you have another Ubuntu 8.10 system around, the easiest way to create a bootable SD card or USB drive is using the USB Startup Disk creator tool (click the link for more details). Alternatively, you can use the UNetbootin tool (click the link for more details) to do the same thing.

   To perform a USB boot on the Eee PC, press the escape key during startup and select the USB option. Once the live system is running, if you have trouble with windows not fitting the screen turn desktop effects off for now so you can use the Alt key to pan windows.

2. Install Ubuntu normally. The only special consideration to make during the installation is partitioning.

   

   The Eee PC 901 actually has two solid state drives: a 4 GB drive, and a 16 GB drive. I’d recommend putting root (/) on the smaller drive (yes, 4 GB is enough space for Ubuntu and some additional applications) and /home on the larger. I’d also recommend formatting these with the Ext3 filesystem and to not create a swap partition to avoid shortening the drive’s lifespan.

3. Reboot into the new installed system. You’ll need to get an Internet connection working to continue. Wireless is not working at this point, so you’ll need to plug in to a wired network.
4. Install the custom Eee PC Linux kernel. The Array.org Eee PC kernel adds wireless networking support to Ubuntu on the Eee PC, as well as some other fixes depending on your Eee PC model. See this page for details on supported models.

   Open a terminal and run the following two commands to install the key for the new repository:
   wget http://www.array.org/ubuntu/array-apt-key.asc
sudo apt-key add array-apt-key.asc

   Open System->Administration->Software Sources and select the Third Party Software tab. Add the following software source:
   deb http://www.array.org/ubuntu intrepid eeepc

   Close Software Sources and when prompted, choose to reload the repositories.

   Install the Eee PC kernel from the package linux-eeepc (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
   sudo apt-get install linux-eeepc

   Alternatively, you can try the faster but experimental lean Eee PC kernel in which drivers for non-Eee PC hardware have been removed. Install the lean Eee PC kernel from the package linux-eeepc-lean (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
   sudo apt-get install linux-eeepc-lean

   Optionally, you can remove some packages to stop the stock Ubuntu kernel from being updated in the future now that you won’t be using it. Remove the linux-generic, linux-image-generic, and linux-restricted-modules-generic packages to do this:
   sudo apt-get remove linux-generic linux-image-generic linux-restricted-modules-generic

   Reboot to load the new Eee PC kernel.

5. Enable Bluetooth and webcam. The Bluetooth radio and webcam both work after they have been enabled in the BIOS. Install Cheese for an easy way to take pictures and video.

That’s it for installing Ubuntu 8.10 on the Eee PC. For the most part, everything works fine with Ubuntu. GNOME reports 4.5 hours of battery life, and with the lean Eee PC kernel the system boots in 35 seconds (from Grub to GDM, with SSD tweaks).

You may also want to check out Four Tweaks for Using Linux with Solid State Drives to increase performance and extend the life of your solid state drive.

Adobe finally releases a 64-bit version of Adobe Flash 10 for Linux.

See the announcement or just grab it.

About 15 hours ago, I posted an article on how to remove Mono from Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex.

A similar thing happened the last time, when I did a piece on doing the same thing for Hardy heron.

This:

is the Mono effect…

I know the traffic volumes aren’t that large - I get on average around 400-500 unique hits per day - but then unlike some other bloggers, I don’t write blog posts just for hits or revenue, nor am I particularly famous. I write blog posts because I want to.

Also, bear in mind I took that screen shot at about 10:30 in the morning UK time… There is still most of the day to go.

[Update]

Well, actually this is the Mono effect for the whole day yesterday:

And who is it who thinks the world wants Mono?

Tell Someone Else!

As this was such a popular How To for Hardy Heron, I thought I’d document the same exercise for Ubuntu’s latest version Intrepid Ibex (8.10).

With a default install of Ubuntu Desktop 8.10, there are quite a few mono packages installed as standard. In fact there seem to be quite lot really (I counted 28!), especially considering they are only there to support two fairly minor applications: Tomboy and F-Spot. Although the good news is that Intrepid Ibex comes with one less Mono application than did Hardy; which also included Banshee.

If you type the command dpkg -l '*mono*' you will get a list that looks something like this:

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Cfg-files/Unpacked/Failed-cfg/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version        Description
+++-==============-==============-=============================
ii  libmono-addins 0.3.1-5        GTK# frontend library for Mono.Addins
ii  libmono-addins 0.3.1-5        addin framework for extensible CLI applicati
ii  libmono-cairo1 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono Cairo library
ii  libmono-cairo2 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono Cairo library
ii  libmono-corlib 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono core library (1.0)
ii  libmono-corlib 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono core library (2.0)
ii  libmono-data-t 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono Data library
ii  libmono-data-t 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono Data Library
un  libmono-dev    <none>         (no description available)
ii  libmono-i18n1. 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono I18N libraries (1.0)
ii  libmono-i18n2. 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono I18N libraries (2.0)
ii  libmono-securi 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono Security library
ii  libmono-securi 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono Security library
ii  libmono-sharpz 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono SharpZipLib library
ii  libmono-sharpz 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono SharpZipLib library
ii  libmono-sqlite 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono Sqlite library
ii  libmono-system 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono System.Data library
ii  libmono-system 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono System.Data Library
ii  libmono-system 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono System.Web library
ii  libmono-system 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono System.Web Library
ii  libmono-system 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono System libraries (1.0)
ii  libmono-system 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono System libraries (2.0)
un  libmono-winfor <none>         (no description available)
un  libmono-winfor <none>         (no description available)
ii  libmono0       1.9.1+dfsg-4ub libraries for the Mono JIT
ii  libmono1.0-cil 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono libraries (1.0)
ii  libmono2.0-cil 1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono libraries (2.0)
un  mono-classlib- <none>         (no description available)
un  mono-classlib- <none>         (no description available)
un  mono-classlib- <none>         (no description available)
un  mono-classlib- <none>         (no description available)
ii  mono-common    1.9.1+dfsg-4ub common files for Mono
ii  mono-gac       1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono GAC tool
ii  mono-jit       1.9.1+dfsg-4ub fast CLI JIT/AOT compiler for Mono
ii  mono-runtime   1.9.1+dfsg-4ub Mono runtime
un  mono-utils     <none>         (no description available)
un  monodoc-gtk2.0 <none>         (no description available)

Fortunately, the dependency management tools mean that we don’t have to remove each one of these files on it’s own. The single package mono-common is a common dependency for everything above apart from libmono0.

So the command to purge yourself of all the Microsoft infected software is as follows:

sudo apt-get remove --purge mono-common libmono0

This command will remove almost 60MB of crap from your hard drive and free you from eternal damnation and suffering. Well, OK. Perhaps it’s not quite that bad, but I personally have no wish to use software that is so tainted. Nor for that matter do I want to use code that is so tightly bound to a company that, amongst other things, manages to screw us all out of significant tax revenues.

There are several alternatives for the two minor applications that we have just removed. For F-Spot, I recommend using the gThumb application which basically does the same thing, and in fact is better in my opinion as I found it easy to set it automatically remove the photos from my camera when it copies them across. Something I never managed to work out how to do when I tried F-Spot.

To install gThumb simply type:

sudo apt-get install gthumb.

If you want gThumb to start automatically when you plug in your camera, or other removable storage media with photos on, open Nautilus (the Gnome file manager), go to the Edit menu and select the Preferences option. On the File Manager Preferences dialogue window, select the Media tab and then change the option next to Photos: so it says “Open gThumb Image Viewer”.

For the note taking app, there are several alternatives. I have used Zim in the past which is very good, and I have also recently started using Notecase just as a comparison. There are others too. I recommend that you try a few and find one that suits you.

Tell Someone Else!

I just started my Intrepid desktop without having xorg-input-kbd and xorg-input-mouse installed, which means that X.org in Intrepid now uses evdev for all input handling. This is nice, since it moves all input drivers out of X and uses the kernel input event interface instead - less code duplication yay!

By the way; evdev was one of the many things which made the EEE PC at linux plumbers boot in 5 seconds.

I just ran across this proposal for imporving the UI of Blender. First of all it is nice that they are trying to improving one of the most confusing an not intuitive interface I have come across. It is especially also nice since they also recognized some design flaws, like having to set object properties befeore creating the actual object, which prevents adjusting the properties afterwards.

Another intresting point is to see how it could come that far; Blender was initially intended to be used by the same people who wrote it, which is a small audience that does not care about usability and interface standards, so you can define the UI the way the like it best. But as Blender became opensource the audience dramatically increased and Blender now is used in the context of a desktop, where standards matter.

But what I dont like is the way out of their “self written toolkit” trap; first of all the proposal says, that it is a good idea, that Blender looks the same across the platforms. But that is clearly a false assumption since meanwhile we know that “same everywhere” translates to “integrated nowhere” - this is even something that Mozilla after a lot of struggling acclaimed when they left out their key-lock concept out of firefox3 on Linux. This is also a principle all modern cross platform toolkits try to follow, but Blender wants to keep to its own look, which they want to improve instead.

This shows another problem of the “self written toolkit”; currently they have many problems with usability, because the toolkit is broken at a basic level, like there is no visual difference between buttons and a one out of many selection. Things that were available in GTK for years and which are documented in the HIG, so you can use them correctly.

So basically what we are seeing here is another lack of interaction between Open Source projects - instead of use (for instance) GTK and get platform integration and the experience of years with user interaction for free, Blender tries to fix their inherently broken toolkit and so to say reinvent the Wheel.

Don’t have a graphics card capable of running desktop effects with Compiz on Ubuntu? By enabling compositing in GNOME’s default Metacity window manager, you get some eye candy and can run applications that require or benefit from a compositing window manager. Metacity uses your CPU instead of a graphics card, so it’ll work on anything - even a virtual machine.

I’ve written about compositing with Metacity in Ubuntu 8.04, but Metacity has received some updates since then so I though I’d try it again.

Metacity even with compositing turned on is still very light on the effects. Windows and menus are drawn with shadows, a bit more noticeable than the default ones in Compiz. The Alt-Tab switcher gains previews of the windows it’s switching. Noticeably missing is an animation for minimizing windows; all you get is the same old black boxes effect.

One thing I noticed right away was how smooth windows were drawn when being moved. This has never bothered me in Compiz, but Metacity is definitely much smoother.

One annoyance was switching between workspaces would cause any windows to flicker as they are redrawn. Also, there are still no options for any of the compositing effects, so you’d better like the defaults.

If you’re already using Compiz desktop effects, you’ll need to turn them off to switch back to Metacity. Open System->Preferences->Appearance, open the Visual Effects tab and select None.

The quickest way to enable compositing in Metacity is by running this command in a terminal:
gconftool-2 -s '/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager' --type bool true

Here’s the corresponding command to disable compositing:
gconftool-2 -s '/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager' --type bool false

If you’d rather not use the terminal the GNOME Configuration Editor is also an option. Press Alt-F2 to open the Run Application dialog. Type gconf-editor and press enter. Navigate to apps->metacity->general and use the compositing_manager option.

A few days ago, the Ubuntu Tutorials blog pointed out the excellent Shiki-Colors theme. It’s my new favorite!

On the theme’s GNOME Look page, you can download the GTK theme, or a script which can also install icons, a GDM login screen theme, and wallpapers. I just wanted the GTK theme so I selected this download. To install, drop the downloaded file into the System->Preferences->Appearance Theme tab. You’ll then have the option to select one of the four Shiki variants.

If you’re still using Ubuntu 8.04, don’t forget to install the required version of the Murrine theme engine. Here’s the i368 package from theme’s author.

In the screenshot above, I’m also using the Liberation fonts set, which I think looks a bit better than the default fonts. Install Liberation fonts from the package ttf-liberation (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install ttf-liberation

Use the Fonts tab in System->Preferences->Appearance to apply the new fonts. I switched from the default font Sans to Liberation Sans.

If you’re looking for a theme for your Ubuntu 8.10 desktop, don’t forget to check out the new community themes package. It includes a three other excellent themes: Dust, Kin, and New Wave.

Install the community themes from the package community-themes (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install community-themes

If you’ve installed a new theme, applications running as root like Synaptic may display unthemed. Here’s how to fix that problem.

What are your favorite themes for Ubuntu?