Ubuntu 12.10 New Driver Installer UI

Thankfully the old "third party driver" installation window has been replaced with a sleeker entry into the ‘Software Sources‘ dialog and not before time.

The new interface for handling Third-Party drivers has landed in Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal (original story on WebUpd8) 

The old and frankly comically unstable Jockey-GTK interface used for handling third-party drivers, has been replaced with a new "Additional Drivers" tab in software-properties and "ubuntu-drivers-common", which is, quote, "simpler and more robust than Jockey".

Testing Quetzal Alpha-3

Apologies for the long gap in posts; among other things I have been testing the Ubuntu 12.10 Alpha-3 ISO images. The Ubuntu-QA team led by Nicholas Skaggs continues to do sterling work getting the Quantal Quetzal ready for launch.

"Interesting things in this release are the new software-properties manager, as well as the final 3.5 kernel. Previous issues with hardware, suspend/resume and graphics should all be watched out for with the new kernel. Additionally, the Ubiquity installer is starting to land new code as the new features to support dropping the alternate isos are landed, and should be tested."

The technical overview for Alpha 3 shows it's still a work in progress, but lists some of the changes found in these isos.

How-to: Ubuntu Unity Tutorial Video

I received a note from Alan Pope at Canonical over the weekend:

"I finally got around to making a simple intro to the Unity desktop. Some of you may find it useful for other new users. Feedback welcome.


Cheers,
--
Alan Pope
Engineering Manager

Canonical - Product Strategy"
alan.pope@canonical.com
http://ubuntu.com/

It's a bit more than simple and rather more than short, since at 27 minutes, it does a pretty thorough job of taking you through most of Unity. RC

How-to: Build a Wordpress Server Part One - LAMP

I know there have been series and one-off articles on creating servers all over and in Full Circle Magazine in the past, but at risk of repeating things to the old hands, we're going to run through some of that again to a specific purpose; namely, building my a Wordpress server. You can build using a virtual machine or on physical hardware, the steps are the same.

Wordpress is a web-site content management system (CMS), in the same class as Drupal, Joomla and the like. It's available in two versions: hosted, where everything is done for you and self-hosted, which is do-it-yourself. We're going to do it ourselves...

Broadcom Wireless fix for Ubuntu 12.10

Yes, I am ahead of the game; I am testing Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal, which is currently on the Alpha-2 release.

More than this I am testing the 12.10 kernel on 12.04! I like to live on the edge.

Of course, on the Dell mini v10 (Inspiron 910), this means grief with the ever troublesome Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g wireless adapter. In this combination, the firmware and Additional Drivers don't work. At all...

Mark Shuttleworth Chats About Unity

I thought I'd re-post some comments by Mark Shuttleworth, the guy who (currently) bankrolls a lot of the Ubuntu development and what he has to say on the matter of user interfaces and going it alone with  Unity, in an open online chat via The Register yesterday: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/28/mark_shuttleworth_live_chat/. You can find the full exchange there.

This is just an extract pulled by Alan Pope, Engineering Manager in the Canonical Product Strategy team (whom I wound up over the weekend on the Hants LUG mailing list and accidentally started a torrent of abuse from all and sundry - top marks to Alan for maintaining a reasoned debate). RC

How-to: VirtualBox Networking Part Part Four - Accessing my Virtual Server

How-to: VirtualBox Networking Part Part Four - Accessing my Virtual Server This all started when I needed to run a sandboxed instance of Wordpress and thought a virtual Ubuntu 11.10 server would the simple answer under VirtualBox.

Deciding how to network my virtual server so that I could practically use it, I'm going to run two network adapters on my virtual server to give me the access I need; a standard NAT adapter and a Host-only adapter.

Full Circle Magazine Issue 62 Out Now

Full Circle Magazine Issue 62 is available now from the main site.

This month:
* Command and Conquer.
* How-To :
  - Beginning Python – Part 34,
  - LibreOffice Part 15, and
  - Linux Astronomy Apps.
* Graphics :
  - GIMP: The Beanstalk Part 3, and
  - Inkscape Part 2.
* Linux Lab – Tweet Screen Part 1.
* Review – Installing Software.
* Closing Windows – Linux Equivalents.
*Audio Flux – some CC music tracks.


plus: Ubuntu Games, My Desktop, My Opinion, My Story, and much much more!

Google Currents Edition: http://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAowntbsAQ/full_circle_magazine_62_lite

EPUB edition coming soon…