Ubuntu Podcast Episode #14

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Welcome to Ubuntu Podcast Episode #14.

Show notes:

Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase II
- First round was done for 8.10
- See the winners under /home//Examples/Ubuntu_Free_Culture_Showcase
- Its about showing free culture and free software
- Gives people a chance to show case their work to millions of people
- Winner of this context will go into all shipped CDs and downloaded images of 9.04
- Audio, 1MB max, in ogg vorbis
- Video, 2.5MB max, in ogg theora
- Photo/Graphics, 0.5MB, PNG or JPG
- Must be licensed Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike
- Submissions due February 6th, 2009

UDS Jaunty Jackalop is next week at Google headquarters
- UDS is where people talk about what will go into the next release
- Currently there are about 145 blueprints, things that could get discussed
  - improving boot time seems like a real interesting one
- obviously none of it is in stone
- Keep your eyes open for ways to participate and see what is going to be going on

Adobe releases alpha 64 bit Flash for Linux
- Not Ubuntu specific, but its a big deal with most Linux users
- Till now, 64 bit users had to use nspluginwrapper
  - nspluginwrapper is compatibility plugin, meaning it enables you to use plugins on platforms they were not built for.
- Crash stats from Mozilla show 25% of all Linux Firefox crashes are Flash related
- To test it out on your system, uninstall the flash-nonfree package, drop the libflashplayer.so that you download from Adobe in your ~/.mozilla/plugins/

Handbrake gets a Linux GUI
- almost the standard DVD ripping, multi-threaded, multi-platform, GPL
- So far only Ubuntu binaries are available, hopefully more coming out soon
- Previous attempted front-ends have been decent at best, hopefully this is better

Phoronix continues with its benchmarks: 64 bit Ubuntu 8.10 vs FreeBSD 7.1 vs OpenSolaris 2008.11
- Tested with Ubuntu 8.10 final and beta releases of FreeBSD and OpenSolaris
- All OSs left in their default configuration
- Tests included MP3 encoding, compression, GPG, Java, etc
- Ubuntu won out most of the time
- Java did the best on OpenSolaris unsurprisingly
- If need disk performance, OpenSolaris did the best

Phoronix does more tests: Fedora 10 vs Ubuntu 8.10 w/32 and 64 bit
- Tests included OpenArena, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Gzip compression, MP3 encoding, Ogg encoding, Java, GPG, etc.
- Performance difference between distros was neglible
- Basically, go with whichever distro you are more comfortable with

CrunchBang Linux
- Based off Ubuntu
- Uses the OpenBox window manager, but allows you to run all your GNOME apps
- Created from a minimal Ubuntu install and adding layers on top of it.
- Default theme is cool, all black and white
- Not supported by Canonical, but if you are comfortable with Ubuntu, CrunchBang should be pretty easy to use

Hardening the Linux Desktop
- IBM tutorial that uses Ubuntu
- Registration required
- Shows to do the following things:
  - installing ClamAV
  - protection from rootkits
  - Setting up Firestarter as a firewall
  - backing up and restoring home directories
  - how to install the Ubuntu updates
  - password protecting the bootloader

Vibuntu 1.0: A Customized Version of Ubuntu for Visually Impaired Users
- Remaster of Ubuntu 8.10 Live CD customised to the needs of blind and partially sighted users
- Designed to boot from a live cd or USB memory stick
- Logs you in automatically and then start up the Orca screen-reader
- Full-screen magnification can then be activated with a simple keystroke.

Steam and Left for Dead games
- Possible evidence of Linux versions
- Were hiring a senior linux programmer

Testing ads
- We would like to buy a hi-def camcorder and some other equipment to make the podcasts better

12 Comments

games in open beta | Digg hot tags on December 7, 2008 at 9:06

[...] Vote Ubuntu Podcast Episode #14 [...]

Ubuntu Podcast #14 | bored and blogging on December 7, 2008 at 15:31

[...] Some things we covered this episode: [...]

open beta testing games | Digg hot tags on December 7, 2008 at 19:26

[...] Vote Ubuntu Podcast Episode #14 [...]

Max on December 7, 2008 at 21:44

Great show! I’ll start watching regularly, is there a mailing list for new episode alerts, etc? Oh man…I am very tempted on this Crunchbang thing, especially since I’m in the middle of helping two friends make the switch to linux. they’re both looking at xubuntu [which I run, and (loophole for bad enunciation stricken users) I think I get to pronounce it Zoo-bun-too since it's not an actual word like ubuntu] All the helping has revived that feeling I got looking at that whole new world of potential distros before I dove into linux. Maybe Obama’s right and it’s time for a change.

castlefox on December 8, 2008 at 5:10

Great podcast. I am sure I could get my friends over to linux if they could play their games on it. I really hope that Steam linux comes along.

linuxcrypt on December 8, 2008 at 16:04

Hi Max, if you scroll down on the post, we have 4 RSS feeds you can subscribe to. Audio and video options available. Thanks for watching!

Philip on December 9, 2008 at 1:09

Just popped by to say thank you for mentioning CrunchBang. Great show guys, keep up the good work. If I thought they would get through customs, I would send you both a big fat cigar!

M. on December 14, 2008 at 21:49

Pardon my brain cramp, but are there links for direct download of this podcast? I do not wish to ’subscribe’.

Schnauzer on December 16, 2008 at 3:02

Is there a mp4 version of the video feed?

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