Category Archives: desktop

After less than 24 hours with Unity, I installed gnome-shell. After some 30 minutes I have a desktop environment than looks far closer to the way I want it to. Things are where I expect them to be and easily … Continue reading →

Just under a year ago I swapped from Ubuntu to Mint. This was a reaction to the awful Unity desktop that they had decided to use as the default in 11.10. The reaction to my blog post about the change … Continue reading →

While looking at some web page (I forget which, but it’s not really important) I was reminded about Songbird. I’d looked at it ages ago and while I liked the concept, the execution wasn’t worth spending time with. Things have … Continue reading →

Anyone got any suggestions for a ToDo list manager for Ubuntu? I know Sunbird has one, but I’d rather have a simple little app that was based on the desktop.

As much as I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but 8.04 is still not as usable for me as 7.10 was The biggest annoyance is that usb devices aren’t automounted. Stick in a USB memory stick, formatted as fat32 … Continue reading →

A short while ago I was having lunch with someone who has a Myth TV setup when they told me that Myth had commercial skipping abilities. I’d wondered on and off about creating a setup here, though as I have … Continue reading →

Having heard that this combo resulted in superior eye candy I decided to give it a try. As usual the Ubuntu forums had agreat howto, so it looked as though it wouldn’t be too complex. Following through the howto it … Continue reading →

For anyone else having issues getting gmplayer to run and reporting it can’t find a skin, the option to add to the gui.conf file (yep, not config) is gui_skin = . With this small change it now starts and runs … Continue reading →

When recording the feathercasts I’ve been using a program under windows, but ideally I’d like to be able to record under Ubuntu as well. Looking around a solution using the JACK server seems as though it should work, but it … Continue reading →

After reading that the next version of Ubuntu had been released and finding the page that detailed how to upgrade using the graphical update manager I decided to try it. Once more my faith in Ubuntu has been affirmed. It … Continue reading →

Ubuntu has been installed for a couple of days now, and so far it’s far exceeded my expectations. One of the nice things about FreeBSD is that there is a lot of useful information around to help you through problems, … Continue reading →

I’ve been using FreeBSD for about 10 years on various machines but only in the last fewyears have I really tried to use it as a desktop. It’s not as straightforward as I’d like it to be and all the … Continue reading →

As I’ve been taking a fair few pictures recently I’ve found that the easiest way for me to start “sifting” them is to load them onto the machine and run a quick slideshow. It’s simple, quick and allows me to … Continue reading →

Playing with some settings in the mixer today I discovered that it’s the Recording level that controls whether the microphone works with Skype. After this revelation I now have Skype working fully on FreeBSD as witnessed by a short conversation … Continue reading →

When I put my desktop system together last year I bought many of the components from Scan, on the reccomendation of Thom. They proved to be cheap, helpful and above all they actually did what they said they would! It … Continue reading →