Google have recently launched a new browser called Google Chrome. Initially it is only available as a beta on Windows, but Linux and Mac are very much in their plans. You can read a great comic about why they decided to build a browser and some of the key architectural differences that they are putting into Chrome. The comic really is one of the most accessible and readable bits of technical documentation I have ever seen!
Paul McAdams managed to get Google Chrome running on his webbook, by using a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a fox. He used the VirtualBox application to install Windows XP inside of Ubuntu and is running VirtualBox in seamless mode so that the Windows windows just live alongside the Ubuntu windows. Note the XP taskbar at the bottom of the screen and the Ubuntu panel and menus at the top.
Jim Murray asked how the chickens were getting on, here is a screenshot of OpenOffice.org Calc (pre-installed on the webbook) with our egg production spreadsheet.
It was starting to look a bit scary for Henrietta, but she has now started laying
One of the little extras we put on the webbook is Tux Paint (we had to tweak the configuration a bit for the 1024×600 screen). You can find this in the menu under Applications-Education-Tux Paint. Be sure to check out the Magic button and the selection of stamps.
I used it to draw a picture of my house
Remember kids – don’t post real pictures of yourself or your house online!
There are lots and lots of books available on Ubuntu, from beginners to experts there is something to suit everyone. I wanted to put up a book review on the blog and make some recommendations, but then I realised my own bookshelf is rather empty of books from the “beginner” end of the spectrum I am not really the right person to tell you how useful some of these books are to someone new to the webbook, but YOU are!
So here is my offer to you:
Buy a book on Ubuntu that you like the sound of
Write a short review letting people know how useful you found it as you get to know your webbook
I post the review and a link to the book with your Amazon ID in the link
People buy the book
Profit!!!
Here is a list of books from Amazon on Ubuntu:
These ones in particular sound like they ought to be good for beginners so that might be a nice place to start:
Leave a comment letting me know what you are reviewing, if two or more people want to get and review the same book that is fine, I will post all reviews.
Don’t make your retirement plans yet though, I have had an affiliate account for several years and my current balance is £9.21. Just another 79p and they will send me a cheque!
Today the Free Software Foundation has released a video starring Stephen Fry explaining why Software Freedom is important. To view the video you will first need to fix the video issue and as the audio is rather quiet I would recommend headphones and fixing the speakers issue. Free software is not just cheaper software. It is about Freedom as Stephen Fry explains with his usual eloquence:
This is coming up quite a bit, and I really want to get better graphics drivers before making a distributable full recovery solution on a USB stick, however if you want to you can use a USB CDROM drive to install Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, probably others) and then edit the xorg.conf file from the command line (ctrl+alt+F1 to get to the console, log on then do something like sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf and find the screen section. Change the display subsection for Depth 24 (which is true colour no point using anything else these days) and make it look something like this:
The important bit is 1024×600 as the first resolution.
Here is my xorg.conf file which you can download, stick on a USB or something and overwrite the one that gets put there by the installer. If you get to a command line and have a wired network plugged in then you can do
If you want to reinstall Ubuntu, or try any other Linux the don’t go calling support and expecting them to help! This is totally unsupported, and not recommended by me unless you know what you are doing (or at least you think you do ) but if you get stuck you can ask me for help and I will try as best I can to help.
Whilst we are still waiting for VIA to give us a decent version of their binary only driver for the current kernel that works with the webbook LCD they have just released an Open Source 2D only graphics driver. I will try this out and see if I can get it working. If it does then I think it should fix all the XV issues with video playback and the occasional screen corruption issue.
Incidentally I just found out that there is an XV issue with Gcompris, the educational package, which causes it to launch to a corrupted screen. I am certain we tested this extensively before release (my kids spent hours testing it in fact) so I am not sure what went wrong. If you want to run Gcompris then for now press alt+F2 and in the run program dialog type
gcompris -x
and hopefully we will have a graphics update for you soon which will fix this properly.
I have seen some reports (and seen it myself) of badly presented webbooks in store. One store I went to the display unit was missing, another it was switched off. Other people have seen even worse which I responded to later in the thread. Up to now I had assumed that the display models did not require special treatment and should just be exactly what you get if you buy one. Seems I may have to rethink that assumption. So what do you think would be the best way to present the webbook in store? I don’t really like the idea of a locked down rolling presentation. I want people to pick it up and play with it. What do you think?
If you are into music, and like to explore stuff you perhaps have not heard before then there is a little gem hidden in the webbook. Go to Applications-Sound & Video-Rhythmbox Music Player. This is a music manager, somewhat similar in concept to Apple iTunes. It can rip CDs, manage music on MP3 players and contains not one but two music stores. I will followup later with more detail on ripping CDs and messing about with MP3 (you need to install a few extra odds and sods from Synaptic to get the most from it) but today lets concentrate on the music stores. The first is Magnatune, click on this and it will download the catalog, you can then browse and play lots and lots of music. 8068 tracks that would take 22 days, 4 hours and 40 minutes to play back to back. You can buy the music too for a reasonable cost. None of it has any evil DRM, these are all MP3 files (the first time you use it you might have to let it install some plugins to let it decode the MP3 files) you can move about and put on different devices. I quite liked Lizzi and Myles Cochran, but your tastes may vary.
Next up is Jamendo, now this is a very big music store, 62428 tracks which would last 180 days, 7 hours and 49 minutes to play back to back. Now to be fair there is an awful lot of awful music in there, but if you are prepared to sit and listen for six months solid I am sure you will find something that appeals to you!
Just like Windows, Linux ships without support for the Adobe Flash player. Flash may be free as in no cost, but it is not Free as in Free Software so should not be redistributed. (A few early webbooks may have escaped the factory with Flash installed though.) The good news is that installing Flash on Ubuntu Linux is a lot easier than installing it on Windows. In fact installing pretty much anything you could ever want is easier on Ubuntu than Windows.
Start by going to System-Administration-Synaptic Package Manager. Because you are installing or removing applications that could impact other users of the webbook you will need to put in your password to get superuser priviledges (so you have to be the primary user or a user given administrator rights by the primary user).
There are a few ways of finding what you want, you can simply scroll down the list of packages or start typing the first few characters of the package you want and it will jump down to the right place, or hit the search button and it will find what you want even if you don’t know the package name.
For Flash you want the flashplugin-nonfree package. Feel free to mark anything else that looks interesting, then hit the Apply button to have the system automatically download and set everything up for you. Restart Firefox and you can see YouTube, BBC iPlayer, games and stories on the Cbeebies website and a whole lot more irritating adverts than before.
If Flash adverts annoy you then you could give the flashblock package a try, it is just above the flashplugin-nonfree package.
