Archive for the 'Open Source' Category

Ubuntu: Mac OS X themed!

Published
by
kyleabaker
on May 23, 2008
in Applications, Jasmine, Linux, Mac, Open Source, Opera, Operating Systems, Picture, Ubuntu, Web Browsers and Windows
. 0 Comments

So my fiancée loves the way Mac computers look, but who doesn’t? They’re so clean and simple. Well, as much as I like the clean and simple look..I’m not dedicated enough to try to get OS X installed on her HP dv1000.

Don’t get me wrong, her laptop is a mean little machine (especially since I’ve been playing on it lately). The problem with installing OS X is that you have to hunt for all of the drivers and some of them you have to manually configure. Manually configuring in this case also means little to no resources online for many of the things you will have to configure.

There are a few decent places with information about getting Mac OS x86 installed on a non-Apple computer, but trust me…it’s not been simplified enough just yet. ;)

I tried installing OS X on my desktop about a year ago and ran into many complicated situations…so I did the next best thing. I installed Ubuntu! Now that I’ve had it installed and running for ~9-10 months I’m beginning to thing this is the best!

So why would I install Linux on my system if I don’t want to manually configure everything? Okay, I don’t mind manually configuring something here and there. Today most Linux distros require very little manual configurations to run properly. Ubuntu literally required none!

The best thing about using Linux is that you can do anything with it! Having this in mind, I took Jasmine’s laptop (~5 months ago) and installed Ubuntu on it. After getting everything installed and updated I began to Macify it for her. I got a few things done here and there, but just recently I became more interested and began finishing some more of the conversion.

Now, there I’ve seen several screenshots where people have made almost pixel perfect copies of the Mac OS X environment. The screenshots here clearly show some faults, but overall they have the Mac feel going on!

I basically just searched around the web and found little tips here and there on how to get certain looks in Linux. The dock is Cairo-Dock. The web browser is actually Opera, which in Linux has the same skin as the Windows version, but I skinned with a Safari themed skin and altered the toolbar to get the address bar above the tabs.

You can click them for a larger image. I’ll try to post some finished product screenshots once I tidy up the menu bar a bit and add a few more Mac’ish ends. ;)

In the meantime, if you’d like to get started with any of this on your Linux box then you can navigate over to my forum topic with several helpful links to resources!

I’m planning to write a guide for this pretty soon that will step through each little detail for you, but if you can’t wait then go checkout the forum topic. The topic is in no means a tutorial or a guide, it’s really just a note/pastebin for my thoughts and work process, haha. A way for me to hold onto some information in a slightly organized fashion. :D

Stay tuned for the guide in the near future!

Bookmark and Share
[del.icio.us] [Digg] [Google] [StumbleUpon] [Windows Live] [Yahoo!] [Email] More »
Powered by Bookmarkify™

Online Alarm Clock back online!

Published
by
kyleabaker
on May 8, 2008
in Applications, News and Open Source
. 0 Comments

online alarm clockSince I recently made the switch to WordPress, I have been busy reorganizing my entire website and making it a bit stronger. I’ve taken on the task of recoding a majority of the Online Alarm Clock that I coded a couple of years ago.

I want to improve the back-end before I redo the front-end and cause more trouble. :P I’ve already simplified a large portion of the code, but my next task is to go in and eliminate ridiculous processes where some code might be repeated several times instead of being dynamic.

Once I get the back-end worked out a little more and cleaned up, I’m planning to publish the code as an Open Source package under a GNU license. Much similar to the way you would setup a forum (phpBB) or a blog (WordPress) on your site.

The package will be minimized as much as possible, but I’ll be sure to have plenty of information in the Readme.txt file. ;) Besides, the setup will be super easy. Just a typical config file that you will need to enter your database connection information into so users can be stored and alarms can be saved. ;) Requirements will basically just be PHP and MySQL (not sure which versions are compatible just yet though).

After I get the back-end all worked out, I’ll start working on some user interface templates and an admin control panel. I’m also thinking I should make a control panel for end-users so they can select themes, customize their own themes and anything else I can think of (or that’s suggested).

If you want to see what this Online Alarm Clock is then go check it out for your self! You can register for free and have an alarm to watch all of the online videos you want when you wake up!

If you’re interested in getting the Online Alarm Clock for your own site then you should check out the Google project that I started for it! You can download the package as soon as I get the first one ready, report issues that you find in the code and even track reported issues by others!

Bookmark and Share
[del.icio.us] [Digg] [Google] [StumbleUpon] [Windows Live] [Yahoo!] [Email] More »
Powered by Bookmarkify™

Trillian Astra Build 78 and Wine 0.9.61

Published
by
kyleabaker
on May 5, 2008
in Applications, Linux, Open Source, Operating Systems, Ubuntu and Windows
. 4 Comments

I installed Trillian Astra Build 78 (I’m an alpha tester as well) via Wine 0.9.61 today and got a couple of errors. I’m using the very latest version of Wine and the very latest release of Trillian in this test. My operating system is Ubuntu 8.04 x86_64.

  1. ALSA seemed to be encountering some problems when I started Trillian since I had Rhythmbox playing in the background. I closed that and then restarted Trillian and got the following:
  2. dwmapi.dll error. I downloaded a copy from dll-files.com and configured Trillian Astra to use Windows XP settings and linked the dwmapi.dll library after placing it in the trillian install folder. The results were, Trillian Astra started and allowed me to sign-in to the astra service and launched the buddy list, but the rendering was terrible. It was un-useable. Then I started getting error pop-ups about explorer.exe that seemed to be related to:fixme:xrender:X11DRV_AlphaBlend not a dibsectionThey would only popup when I would move the mouse over Trillian Astra or the Trillian tray icon.

I’m looking further into this. Maybe there is another library that can be replaced. I’ll be back with some updates and hopefully screenshots of Trillian Astra working under Wine!

UPDATE:
I can’t seem to find anything useful searching google about most of these errors that Wine is returning in the console.

I’m still working on getting this running, however, the MSVCP90.dll library that is mentioned in the errors is not easy to understand. The dll is already available, as well as the events.dll library. If anyone has any suggestions feel free to let me know! Here is all I’ve got so far:


The rendering is still off, but at least it is legible. The buddy list window is a mesh of horrible rendering lines. It’s not clear enough to use. That’s the main thing that I’m working towards now. As long as the errors aren’t crashing Trillian, I can work towards getting it to render properly and then focus on catering to the warning errors.

Bookmark and Share
[del.icio.us] [Digg] [Google] [StumbleUpon] [Windows Live] [Yahoo!] [Email] More »
Powered by Bookmarkify™

Upgrading from WordPress 2.5 to WordPress 2.5.1

Published
by
kyleabaker
on April 26, 2008
in Open Source
. 1 Comment

After checking my feeds today, I noticed an article that was talking about a new security update for WordPress 2.5. After remembering that I had installed the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin I decided to go a head and try it out for WordPress 2.5.1.

The upgrading process couldn’t have been made any easier. The steps were as simple as logging into my wordpress account, clicking the Automatic Upgrade link, clicking next about 8-10 times as it tells you what it is about to do before it does it and bam! WordPress 2.5.1 is installed.

If you download the entire 2.5.1 release, you will be getting over 70 other fixes. However, if you prefer to install only the security fixes the you can get the three updated “php” files from the WordPress blog post for the 2.5.1 update. WordPress 2.5.1 focuses on fixing the most annoying bugs and improving performance. Here are some highlights that are listed in the original release post:

  • Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
  • Better performance for those who have many categories
  • Media Uploader fixes
  • An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
  • Widget Administration fixes
  • Various usability improvements
  • Layout fixes for IE

I would recommend, to everyone using WordPress, that you give WordPress Automatic Upgrade a try so it takes the “hassle” out of upgrading your site and keeping it secure!

Bookmark and Share