Mac OS X — Now on my Eee PC
While I'm waiting for the cables for the new hard drive to come in, I thought I'd try something different with the 8GB drive that was in it. Following the instructions at this blog post, I had (relatively) no trouble installing Leopard on my Eee 901. It's WAY better than XP, and certainly faster than Vista -- it's going to be interesting comparing it to Windows 7 on the new drive.
Leopard w/ Spaces on my Eee PC
Two more awesome benefits of a Nokia E71: Tethering & SIP
I was shocked by how easy it was to tether my new phone's internet connection to my laptop, so I thought I'd share the experience:
1) I plugged the phone into my laptop using a micro-usb cable. The following message appeared:
This popup was displayed when I plugged in my E71
2) I followed the configuration wizard (selecting AT&T as my service provider), and clicked connect. Done!
Screenshot of the AT&T Connection Info
This is so much more reliable and easy to use than anything I've tried in the past, and I couldn't be happier with it. Hats off to Nokia for using such open standards in their products, and the Ubuntu team for included all the relevant settings by default.
I also found out that the phone has a built in support for internet phone calls, or SIP. I can configure it for any SIP provider, and it'll automatically be an option to use for any phone cal being placed (i.e. I don't have to run a separate application for it). It's like having two phones in one.
(This post was created and published from my Eee PC 901 tethered to my E71.)
Does excitement over a Camaro picture make me a redneck?
I suspect so, but it's hard not to LOVE this:
Front quarter panel view of a red 2010 Camaro
Here I Discuss Package Formats
My friend Trevor recently sought to install the Songbird media player/manager on his Ubuntu installation, and ran into some trouble with it: the Linux download on Songbird's site was a file like "songbird.tar.gz", which is totally different than installing a Ubuntu package or installing the program through Ubuntu's program manager, Synaptic. I tried to clear this up in a comment to his blog, and thought I'd repost it here in case it was of use to anyone:
So it sounds like the multiple installation options that they're giving you are making it much less clear than it should be.
Basically, the preferred way to install things is from Ubuntu/Debian packages (.DEBs), which are compressed archives containing the program and it's installer. It also has the benefit of managing any dependencies that the package needs, and provides a clean way to uninstall/upgrade the package later (an installed .DEB will show up in Synaptic, as I think you've already seen).
Taking that one step farther is the repository system: it provides a list of available packages and links to where they can be downloaded. Your Ubuntu desktop is configured with a number of Ubuntu repositories by default, and you can add additional repositories to your system's repository list. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a repository available yet for songbird -- this will undoubtedly be rectified for the next release of Ubuntu.
To finish up the .DEB discussion, if you go to the Songbird entry on the Ubuntu wiki (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Songbird) they have links available to Ubuntu debs for Songbird. I HIGHLY recommend using these, as you can just "run" them once you've downloaded them and it's all very easy to follow. (In slightly more technical terms, "running" the .DEB will launch a GUI front-end to the apt-get system, which installs the program the same way Synaptic installs programs using apt-get and your system's configured repositories.)
What makes this confusing it that it's all COMPLETELY different from the instructions on Songbird's site. Their linux download is a generic archive (more technically, .TARs are groups of files/directories and .GZs are compressed files, so they're often used together as .TAR.GZs). You can indeed unarchive it and then run the songbird file in the Songbird directory, which is a script that is supposed to check your local system configuration then run the actual songbird binary file. All of which is good in that it allows any linux distribution run it, but makes it WAY geekier than you need it to be, and more confusing because you're not really installing it, just running it from your home directory.
Hopefully the background information is of interest and somewhat clarifies things. I'd also recommend installing the "ubuntu-restricted-extras" meta-package (a meta-package is just a package that points to a bunch of different packages) via Synaptic -- I'm fairly certain that Songbird depends on some of packages installed by it (like mp3 playback). It doesn't get installed by default because the legality of it is questionable in certain countries (like the US) because of patent law (e.g., even though their is an open source mp3 decoding library, technically Fraunhofer IIS has a patent on it and demands a license fee for ever program using it. It's the kind of stuff that truly sends me over the edge).
So, bottom line:
1) Don't worry about the .tar.gz archive from songbird's site: it's not really installed, it's just taking up space in your home (or home/Desktop) directory.
2) Install "ubuntu-restricted-extras" via Synaptic (or the command line with the command "sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras").
3) Download the .DEB linked to from the Ubuntu community wiki (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Songbird)
4) "Run" it (the geeky command line alternative would be "sudo dpkg -i INSERTFILENAMEHERE"
5) Hopefully enjoy the awesomeness.
