How-to: Write a Blog Post

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A couple of years ago, I calculated that I'd racked up about four and a half thousand blog posts across all my personal and professional projects. I've been doing this a while.

I won't say there's a set formula (if there is, I break it regularly), but there are definitely good practices.

Livepatch on Ubuntu 20.04

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Canonical's Livepatch allows you to install kernel updates without a system reboot. First introduced in Ubuntu 16.04 it is a great utility for servers to maximise uptime and reduce server restarts. It also works on desktops, where kernel restarts can be just as inconvenient.

Review: Web design trends for 2020?

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We're part way into the year and I wanted to review the 'web design trends for 2020' that came out last December and January, to see if certain commentators and agencies were just blowing smoke, playing the odds at the race track or genuinely had a finger on the pulse.

How many of these have you seen in the wild so far this year?

How-to: Install snaps on Ubuntu 20.04

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In Ubuntu 20.04 you'll find the application Ubuntu Software (the Ubuntu Software Center having gone to the great development repo in the sky). This is actually the Snap Store (check the About link in the menu) your one-stop shop for installing software automatically as the graphical interface to the base program snapd. It will install whatever you ask it based on the software in its catalogue - any whatever is the 'best' format - Snaps first.

'The next outbreak? We're not ready' (TED 2015)

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Since he left Microsoft, 'the world's most evil capitalist' has become 'the world's most benign philanthropist' thanks to his charitable foundation and extensive investment into medical research and healthcare.

And in his 2015 TED Talk, the one and only Bill Gates outlined the lessons we needed to learn from the 2014 Ebola near-miss. Just in case another global pandemic should strike...

Snaps, Flatpacks or Debs: Package Management hell

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Snaps, Flatpacks or Debs? No idea what I'm talking about? These are the three competing package management, hm, 'standards'(?) currently supported in Ubuntu Linux.

Ubuntu draws from the Debian repositories upstream to assemble and add to the distribution, as do a slew of other Linux distributions from Mint to Puppy and many between. The default package format for all of these is the .deb. So why do we need the others?

What Ubuntu 20.04 means on the desktop

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Since 20.04 is a Long Term Support release, it is by nature on the conservative side of new features, both for server and desktop users. As described in the first look, there aren't many cosmetic, wow! changes this time around, but there are improvements under the hood that keep progress rolling along and should make for a better experience overall.

PayPal Personal vs Business Account

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If you're getting into e-commerce to sell online, you're going to need a payment processor and the grandaddy of them all is PayPal. Without getting into the rights and wrongs of PayPal's business model, it's an easy choice for coverage, anti-fraud measures and simple technical integration.

Cutting to the chase, then, PayPal offers 3 Account Types: personal, business and premier. All PayPal accounts allow you to send and receive payments, so what's the difference?

The Perfect Desktop: Desktop Icons Extension

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Following up on the Gnome-Shell extensions that make up my perfect desktop, the fifth and final of these is Desktop Icons.

It may not be radical or sexy, but Gnome Shell doesn't support desktop icons natively and while I don't use a lot, I do park certain things on the desktop where I don't have to go clicking around to find them. RC

The Perfect Desktop: Ubuntu AppIndicators Extension

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Following up on the Gnome-Shell extensions that make up my perfect desktop, the fourth of these is Ubuntu AppIndicators; this a mock extension which is an alias for the extension KStatusNotifierItem/AppIndicator Support.

The Perfect Desktop: GNOME Shell Frippery

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Following up on the Gnome-Shell extensions that make up my perfect desktop, the third of these is Frippery Applications Menu.

Released under the tag-line "for grumpy old stick-in-the-muds" this seems ideally suited to me. It is a collection of Gnome-Shell extensions in JavaScript to provide a user experience more akin to that of Gnome2.

The Perfect Desktop: Dash to Panel Extension

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Following up on the Gnome-Shell extensions that make up my perfect desktop, the second of these is Dash to Panel.

This is an icon taskbar for Gnome-Shell, which moves the dash into the Gnome main panel. The application launchers and system tray are combined into a single panel, similar to that found in KDE Plasma and Windows 7+. A separate dock is no longer needed for easy access to pinned and running applications.

The Perfect Desktop: Tweaks Extension

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Following up on the Gnome-Shell extensions that make up my perfect desktop, the first  of these is Tweaks.

Previously known as Tweak Tool, this extension is a graphical interface for advanced GNOME 3 settings. Yes, you could dive into several configuration files and edit things painfully in Vi, but why would you...?

First Look: Ubuntu 20.04 'Focal Fossa'

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Ubuntu 20.04, code name 'Focal Fossa', is the next long term support (LTS) release. In line with Canonical’s typical 6-month development cycle, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is planned for release on April 23, 2020. 

The Perfect Desktop: Gnome-Shell Extensions

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Anyone with a long enough memory will recall that one of the many reasons I ditched Ubuntu for Debian for five years from 2013 to 2018, was my inability to contend with the Unity desktop. Clunky, clumsy and unintuitive, it simply got in my way.

That wasn't the only reason, Canonical made quite a few questionable technical and commercial decisions in the run up, but Unity really set the cap on it.

BTW: We're back (again)

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What happened to 2019? I blinked and I missed it.

2020 so far: fire, flood, almost WWIII, plague and pestilence. I can do without living through a moment of history, thank you. Although the alternative of not living through it is equally unappealing...

How-to: Youtube-dl video download basics

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Often times various browser-based video downloaders, even the good ones, fail to penetrate YouTube's byzantine front-end to access all the formats available.

This is where the terminal-based Youtube-dl is able to query the server directly to get exactly what you want. And, for a terminal based tool, it is simplicity itself.