HowTo: Install OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 in Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 right NOW rather than wait for Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04
OpenOffice.org 3.0.x has been out for awhile now, but unfortunately did not get released in time to be included with Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 back in October 2008, so Intrepid shipped with OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 instead. Bummer.
OpenOffice.org 3.0.x will be included in Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 in April 2009, but as some people have noticed, there are some useful features in OpenOffice.org 3.0.x (such as much improved Word doc importing) that can make waiting another four months seem like a bloody long time to upgrade. You want 3.0 now, not in four months!
So for the impatient among you, here’s the most painless and easiest way to upgrade your OpenOffice.org to 3.0.1 without having to deal with downloading individual packages or TAR archives from the OpenOffice.org website, or manually having to satisfy the extra dependencies that OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 requires.
Mini-Review: Transcend JF V60 32GB USB Flash Drive on Ubuntu
It was only just 10 years ago that some of the first USB Flash Drive storage solutions became available in the form of highly expensive sticks that only had a capacity of upwards to 32MB (yes, Megabytes) and had transfer speeds that were slower than molasses on sandpaper.
Today, we now have 32GB USB Flash Drives that go for a paltry AUD$95, and this is a review of Transcend’s offering.
HowTo: Rip a Blu-ray movie using an LG GGC-H20L Blu-ray drive with Ubuntu
The Blu-ray disc format has brought with it the ability to easily provide the next generation of High-Definition 1080p movie content. There’s just one problem – Ubuntu and Linux in general has no official support for Blu-ray, and its encryption scheme is vastly different to that of DVD – it’s not just a simple case of installing a library like the libdvdcss2 library for decrypting DVD’s – the protection is done both at a software and hardware level.
This article discusses how I used my recently purchased LG GGC-H20L Blu-ray ROM drive to successfully read and watch movies using Ubuntu Intrepid.
Mini-review: LG GGC-H20L Super Multi Blue Blu-ray Disc & HD DVD-ROM Drive on Ubuntu
Optical storage certainly has come a long way, and with each new advance brings new affordable hardware to help nudge it along. The HD-DVD and Blu-ray disc formats brought along with it the ability to store and distribute high-quality, full high-definition 1080p movies.
Unlike when DVD first appeared, and probably thanks to the battle that was waged between the HD-DVD and Blu-ray formats, the provision of high-definition media and associated players has dropped in price rather dramatically to drive acceptance. I have a fairly large original DVD collection, but I am a quality freak and in light of high-definition releases, I loathed the idea of buying a DVD version of a given movie knowing that for about the same price I can buy a high-definition version.
So I decided to buy a Blu-ray drive. One of the cheapest options on the market is LG’s internal drive option called the “Super Multi Blue Blu-ray Disc & HD DVD-ROM Drive”, model GGC-H20L for about AUD$150. This review is my experience using the drive under Ubuntu 8.10, Intrepid Ibex.
HowTo: Create and manage SSH tunnels using Gnome SSH Tunnel Manager
The Secure SHell, or SSH, is a simple but effective tool for encrypted remote login to a Linux-based workstation or server. Not only does it give you secure command-line access to the remote PC, but it can also be used to securely redirect data to be routed or processed on the remote PC’s LAN such as HTTP traffic or perhaps another protocol such as Jabber that is blocked on your local Internet connection. This process is called tunneling.
Creating an SSH tunnel is easy. Say you wanted to forward the local port 2100 to a web server inside your remote network on IP 192.168.0.99. The public hostname of the SSH server you are using to connect to is myserver.com. You can issue the command:
$ ssh jbloggs@myserver.com -L 2100:192.168.0.99:80 -N
…this will redirect local port 2100 to port 80 on the server with LAN IP 192.168.0.99 on the remote network, via the Internet-accessible SSH server on myserver.com, logging into it as the user jbloggs. Everytime you now access http://localhost:2100 with your web browser, your traffic will be redirected to the remote web server, using an encrypted tunnel over the Internet.
Now this is great, but that command line looks a bit convoluted. Isn’t there a more intuitive way to create an SSH tunnel?
There sure is – a neat little Gnome GUI app called the Gnome SSH Tunnel Manager or gSTM for short.
