HowTo: Make and simplify sources.list files
With Penguin-fans everywhere madly hitting Ubuntu mirrors worldwide today grabbing the Final Release of Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (including myself), people are discovering that using the official major country mirrors can be a bit slow. In the case of Australia, the official mirror is au.archive.ubuntu.com but it’s much slower than many of the other official and unofficial Australian mirrors, especially if your local ISP keeps their own mirror.
It makes sense then, to change your setup to point to a faster mirror rather than rely on the primary.
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Ubuntu vs Vista Resource Usage
Everyone always rambles on about how much of a resource hog Windows Vista is compared to Linux, so I figured why not find out exactly how much of a hog it really is?
For this comparison, I have pitted the following versions of Ubuntu and Vista against each other:
- Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate with Service Pack 1 and all system updates to 29th October 2008
- Ubuntu Linux 8.04.1 Hardy Heron with all system updates to 29th October 2008
- Ubuntu Linux 8.10 Intrepid Ibex Release Candidate with all system updates to 29th October 2008 (just for kicks)
The tests would be simple. A fresh vanilla install of Ubuntu and Vista doing four of the most common things a typical user might do everyday:
- Nothing
- View a web page
- Listen to an MP3 music track
- Play Solitaire
Mini-Review: Benq E2200HD widescreen monitor on Ubuntu
I’ve been waiting a long time to replace my aging, yet faithful Compaq 17″ LCD monitor for the last 6 years with some high-definition, widescreen goodness, but have always balked at the price of any display 24″ and higher. For a long time, these were the only displays that offered true high-definition at 1920×1200, but now Benq have released a 22″ display that does full high-definition for less than AUD$300! It was too tempting – I had to get one!
HowTo: Setup your own local Ubuntu repository mirror.
While Ubuntu’s updates are nowhere near as bad as dealing with Windows updates, it can still be annoying to do a fresh install of Ubuntu and then have to download 300MB’s worth of updates, especially if you have a slow connection, or perhaps you’re in a remote location and don’t have an Internet connection. How do you update machines then??
Why not setup your own personal local Ubuntu Repository? Here’s how to make one to use either on a personal web server or carry with you on a portable USB (or similar) hard-drive.
HowTo: Schedule your BitTorrent client to run only during specified times automatically.
Like most people, I torrent files, but it really can eat into my download quota. As I have separate on-peak and off-peak download quotas where the latter is more substantial than the former, I prefer to have my BitTorrent client download only during off-peak times.
Sure, some BT clients have in-built timers to do this for you, but they are not always reliable. One sure fire way of making sure it all works is to start and stop the BT client itself.
How does one configure the client to start and stop at specified times so you don’t have to baby-sit your PC to start & stop your BitTorrent client manually? We can use a very useful little app available on all Linux distributions called cron.
HowTo: Install the Virtualbox Guest Additions drivers in Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 Beta.
| Having a play with the Beta of Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 Beta under Virtualbox (2.0.2 at the time of writing), I noticed that the installation of the Virtualbox Guest Additions don’t appear to work in the usual manner. You’d reboot after installing them and, well, nothing new happens – no VBox video and mouse driver in operation. |  |
Recovering an NTFS volume using Ubuntu
I have a friend who has an external USB portable hard-drive that inexplicably seemed to develop CRC errors when reading files off the NTFS-formatted volume. This rapidly developed into full-blown drive drive shutdowns on major errors and it was evident that something was seriously wrong with it.
Giant ASCII Tux
| Everyone’s favourite penguin, turned into ASCII art – a big one. OK, while this one is technically not ASCII art, it’s cool nonetheless, especially when you take a closer look at the ASCII itself. |  |
Ubuntu theme for my Nokia N95 mobile phone
I came across this cool little Ubuntu theme for Nokia (and compatible) mobiles. It has nothing to do with Ubuntu directly, but it’s a nice colour scheme with a bit of fanboi-ism thrown in for good measure. It now adorns my N95. 
Ubuntu Theme for Nokia
