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Install OpenOffice 3.2 Ubuntu/Debian

Vlad Nistor — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:23:44 +0000

I’ve been using OpenOffice with my Debian sid installation for quite some time now and I must say it’s one of the best pieces of open-source software out there. I was excited to find they have just released verion 3.2 of the wonderful document creation suite and was waiting for the official release from Debian, which hasn’t come yet.

I wanted to try it out because of the speed and feature improvements the developers have announced so I checked out their website where they offer Linux 32/64 bit deb and rpm versions. I went ahead and downloaded my English(British) 64bit deb version and installed it on Debian.

Here are the steps you need to take to get it.

Go to http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#tested-full and download the version that fits your system (in this case the 32 or 64 bit DEBs) in the language you prefer. Some languages don’t yet have 3.2 versions available for download unfortunately.

Create a folder on your desktop called oo, open the downloaded archive and extract the files there.

Now open a root terminal and type the following commands:

# aptitude remove openoffice*.*     #this will remove your current version of OpenOffice. I have not tried upgrading so I don't know if it works. You may skip this step if you want to try upgrading.

# cd Desktop/oo

# dpkg -i *.deb

# cd desktop-integration

# dpkg -i *.deb

You now have OpenOffice 3.2 installed on your Debian system. For Ubuntu, open the terminal and add sudo before every command or use the root terminal.

Note: Some credit goes to scouser76 from UbuntuForums.org

Heores of Newerth Holiday Open Registration!

Vlad Nistor — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 09:16:09 +0000

Yes, the currently closed beta testing Heroes of Newerth game has opened up it’s doors for the holidays, allowing everyone to join in the fun. There are 43.5 hours remaining as of time of writing so if you haven’t gotten your hands on a key yet you should hurry while the doors are open.

If you want to know more about his wonderful Dota-style game visit their website, have a look at an older post about it, or read more for their latest Trailer below.

Register here while there’s still time!

Printing landscape in Evolution

Vlad Nistor — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:54:55 +0000

Page setup in Evolution

Many people are annoyed by the fact that when you click to print something in many programs, Evolution – the very popular email client from Novell for example, the Page Setup tab in the Print dialogue where you would normally select the orientation is greyed out, leaving you unable to change it.

The solution is simple; you just need to go to File->Page Setup and you may now change the orientation. Going back to Print you’ll now see the greyed out orientation option as “Landscape” instead of “Portrait”.

If I remember correctly this was selected as a “100 Papercut” bugs which should be fixed in Ubuntu for the upcoming 10.04 Lucid Lynx release (if it doesn’t I’ll be sure to submit it). Other programs, like gedit, have already solved this and you can change the settings before printing. Let’s hope the Ubuntu devlopers manage to fix this for Evolution and other Linux software that don’t yet benefit from something as obvious as making it simple to change page orientation when printing, because Google Chrome for example doesn’t have a Print Setup menu, thus making it impossible to change it like you can in Evolution.

Chroot into Ubuntu [from Debian]

Vlad Nistor — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:04:33 +0000

While I haven’t posted in a long time, testing out Ubuntu development builds has been a constant. I have so far gone from Jaunty Beta through all the Karmic Alphas, then the Beta, the RC and the Gold without much hassle. The reason I decided to go all the way through the Karmic schedule was the very annoying Intel driver regression/bug with my i965 graphics card which plagued the 9.04 release.

I found myself enjoying the bleeding edge of Ubuntu which pushed me to upgrade to Lucid in its pre-Alpha state in late November. All went smooth for a couple of weeks until X started failing to load, leaving me with a black screen and unable to switch to a tty for debugging. This left me with the new Debian sid installation (review coming soon) which demanded a look after months of deferring from my part, and which I had just installed the day before. The unusable Ubuntu was a problem in need of fixing. I will entail the steps taken to get into the system and run # aptitude update && aptitude safe-upgrade which I knew would upgrade to Xorg 7.5 and possibly fix the issues facing my Lucid Lynx.

The solution was mind-boggingly simple; chroot into Ubuntu from Debian (or a LiveCd):
Note: # means you should be entering the command as root. You may use sudo in Ubuntu or su to become root. X in sdaX is your partition number which should be replaced accordingly. For me, it was sda1

# cd /media

# mkdir ubuntu

# mount /dev/sdaX /media/ubuntu

It was also pointed out that I should bind /proc, /dev and /dev/pts to /media/ubuntu/proc, /media/ubuntu/dev and /media/ubuntu/dev/pts, respectively;

# mount --bind /proc /media/ubuntu/proc

# mount --bind /dev /media/ubuntu/dev

# mount --bind /dev/pts /media/ubuntu/dev/pts

We are now ready to chroot, using this command:

# chroot /media/ubuntu

I am now in my Ubuntu Lucid as root. Next step was attempting to update my system through aptitude;

# aptitude update

Unfortunately connecting to my Romanian Ubuntu mirror host (ftp.astral.ro) was failing, an issue easily fixed by adding the IP address and name to my /media/ubuntu/etc/hosts file. You may need to do the same with any PPAs installed if upgrading them is also your intent.

# nano /etc/hosts

added 193.230.240.8   ftp.astral.ro somewhere in the file and Ctr+x to exit, Y to save, Return to save to /etc/hosts

# aptitude update && aptitude safe-upgrade

It was smooth sailing from here on, with more than 500 updates and new packages to install, the Lynx had its work cut out for it. I’m happy to report that Lucid is now opperational, finally getting the gnome-panel to stop restarting every few seconds.

You may run commands as if you were logged into the system and with this I wish you happy typing There are many more uses to chroot, like debootstrapping, but that is beyond the scope of this tutorial – Google is your friend, use him.

Edit: Unified the first two commands.

I’m going to Mars!

Vlad Nistor — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:51:51 +0000

My Certificate of Participation to the 2011 Mars Science Laboratory mission

Yes, that’s right, I’m going to Mars. Well, not physically, but by name. The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is letting people sign up by name to be transported to the red planet with their 2011 Mars Science Laboratory mission on a microchip. If you’d like to join the half a million people worldwide participating in this mission you may still sign up on their website, where you can also find more information about what the “Science Lab” will be doing up there.

Upon signing up you are issued a Certificate of Participation which you may print to show off to your friends.

Hope to see you all on Mars in 2011, we can have some virtual wine there, I’m buying.

Google StreetView sighting in Romania

Vlad Nistor — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:29:48 +0000

Google StreetView in Cluj-Napoca (click for larger image)

Google StreetView, for those who don’t know, is a newer element of Google Maps which lets you have a 360 degree look around many of the worlds major cities like New York, London or Barcelona. The ever expanding array of locations means you can explore places “on foot” where you’ve never been to or find your way around as a tourist.

While taking a drive near Cluj Napoca International Airport (the E576, coordinates +46° 46′ 51.98″, +23° 40′ 46.49″ on Google Maps) – my home town, last week I saw something quite interesting; the Google StreetView car. I’m unsure if they’re mapping the city, photographing for StreetView or just passing through (it had German licence plates). What I cant tell you is that there are a lot more roads showing up on Google Maps for Romania than a month ago when I last checked, so I’m assuming that’s what it is doing.

The car was parked on the side of the road and when I pulled over to take a couple of shots it speeded away so I’m left with only this one, which is more than most people get. As far as I know this is the first time one of Mountain View Chocolate Factory’s cars was photographed in Romania – correct me if I’m wrong.

Read more for a map.

View Google StreetView care sighting in a larger map

Launchpad source code released

Vlad Nistor — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:27:04 +0000

A year after Mark Shuttleworth announced Cannonical would release the source-code to their Launchpad platform, it is finally here. For those of you who don’t know, Launchpad is where Ubuntu gets built – the Soyuz component building all the packages for the distro and those in the PPAs (including mine); translated – the Rosetta component; tracks bugs – the Bugs component; tracks code – the Bazaar component (scm); gets planned – the Blueprint component and helps users with Answers. Apart from Ubuntu, there are thousands of projects hosted on Launchpad that use the same tools which make Ubuntu such a great OS. Check out Ubuntu on Launchpad.

For now Launchpad compiles and runs only on Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) and Jaunty (9.04) boxes, but the developers hope it will get ported soon. The main difference is that the system can be used for non-software projects, evading the limitations currently imposed by Launchpad.net; we will surely see creative ways in which this oss is to be used.

Get your Launchpad here.

Last chance to beta-test Heroes of Newerth!

Vlad Nistor — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:01:56 +0000

S2 Games

Phoronix Media, in collaboration with S2 Games are giving away free beta-testing keys for their much-hyped upcoming Heroes of Newerth title. They started a week ago and had 400 to give away but S2 was nice enough to supply more, bringing the number up to over 1000. Phonorix reported yesterday it still had a few keys left and that the give-away would end in the next 24-48 hours, so you better hurry if you want one – I got mine this morning.
Details about the game are sketchy but there is a lot of hype around it. I took a look this morning but I can’t tell you much because of the ToS, so seeing for yourselves is the only option. All I can say is that it’s worth it!
S2 Games is one of the few companies that release full Linux native binaries (both 32 and 64 bit). Other games by them include the popular and free Savage 2.

Phoronix Media is the largest Internet media company devoted to enriching the Linux hardware experience and catering its content to Linux gamers and computer enthusiasts. Their crown jewel is Phonorix.com, which features more than 1,400 featured articles and 2,200 news postings. Other components include the Forums, Phoronix Test Suite, Phorogit (git hosting of the open source ATI flgrx driver) and many more.

To get your key check out the Phoronix articles here, here and here, or go directly to their forum thread and post a request. Enjoy!

Update: It seems Heroes of Newerth is also on Facebook, where it says they will also be giving out keys to their fans. If you missed the Phoronix give-away, have a look there.

Adobe Flash on Ubuntu 64 bit (including video)

Vlad Nistor — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 13:02:32 +0000

For a long time installing Adobe Flash player in 64 bit Linux was a pain in the but; not anymore. Earlier this year (Feb), Adobe launched a pre-realease alpha of the famous proprietary format player for 64 bit OSes. Because of this I decided to move from 32 bit Ubuntu and I love it. The player is available for download on their development website (direct link to file).

To install it you need to download the file, untar it and copy it to ~/.mozilla/plugins (if the directory doesn’t exist, create it). To see hidden folders (eg. .mozilla) in Nautilus press Ctr+h. From the terminal assuming you downloaded the file to your desktop:

cd ~/Desktop
tar zxvf libflashplayer-10.0.42.34.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz
mkdir ~/.mozilla/plugins
mv libflashplayer.so ~/.mozilla/plugins

Now restart Firefox and you’re ready to go. Enjoy!
Your browser does not support the “video” tag. Consider upgrading to Firefox 3.5.

View Fullscreen (ogg, requires Firefox 3.5 or Google Chrome) or Save (Link/Target) As to download

Notes: If you downloaded the file somewhere else cd ~/path/to/file instead of ~/Desktop.
NB: The video does not have any sound, don’t worry if you don’t hear anything. Leave a comment if you would like sound in future screencasts.
Update: I’ve included the newest alpha, 10.0.42.34, released December 8th.

Linux Kernel 2.6.31-rc4 released – bug fixes

Vlad Nistor — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:07:25 +0000

The fourth release candidate for the .31 Kernel is now out; it fixes a few bugs discovered within the last week (binutils, ccache, compiler) which were outside the Kernel but resulted in a broke build, Linus Torvalds announced. Along with those more important bugs there were a few small fixes here and there, dominated by a couple of network drivers. You may read the full announcement by Linus here.

I haven’t built the Kernel in a while; being on Ubuntu Karmic means getting all the new stuff already compiled by the MOTUs the next day. I may build this one just for kicks. Or I may start on the little project I was thinking about; removing everything I don’t need in the Kernel. Wish I had the nice machines Linus has (he rebuilds his kernel in 16 seconds).

Happy compiling all!