Yup, you probably heard it here last. I’ve been super busy irl, and just haven’t had the time to throw up a blog entry just yet, but 0.3.0 final is out and you can grab it from the Exaile downloads page.
I’ll be the first to admit (nothing wrong with being completely honest) that we did rush it out to be in time for Karmic. A true tribute to Linus’ law, “release early, release often”. I, for one, am really stoked that I ca now point new users to our final .deb. We in the dev community and the #exaile channel on freenode have been using Exaile 0.3 betas and alphas and bzr trunk as our main player for so long already. It really is a major upgrade, and we can’t wait to share it with the rest of the OSS community.
No word on whether we made it into Karmic or not, but, even if we didn’t, it’ll surely be in the next Ubuntu release, and I can’t wait.
Check out the release announcement on the Exaile home page!
I purchased an HP 1030NR, because, IMHO, they are the sexiest netbooks currently on the market. They are sleek, lightweight, and they don’t have a wonkey keyboard layout like some netbooks (I’m looking at you, ASUS).
One problem: the onboard nic controller (Marvell 88E8040 adapter, sky2 kernel module) doesn’t quite work right on a default install of Ubuntu 9.04. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s not even detected (you can’t see it listed when you type lspci). Sometimes it’s detected, and works, but locks the machine up if you unplug your network cable. Not cool.
After some digging around, I found that there is an easy way to fix this. Edit /boot/grub/menu.list, find the line that says something like this: # defoptions=quiet splash, add acpi_os_name=Linux at the end of the line, save the file, and type update-grub. Reboot, and viola, it should work normally from now on.
I've installed Ubuntu on my netbook twice today (don't ask). Probably like the rest of you, part of installing Ubuntu involves going through and changing all of the moronic settings that Gnome comes with as default. This includes changing the default terminal background from white to black, changing font sizes, setting toolbars to "icon only", setting up hotkeys, etc.
It was getting a little annoying to do all the time, so I finally went through gconf-editor and found the settings I change, and wrote up a script to do all of them at once. Figured I'd post it here, not only so I can use it later, but so you can derive from it if you wish. It's pretty simple, just using the command line utility "gconftool". Here it is:
gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false gconftool -s --type string /apps/metacity/general/action_double_click_titlebar toggle_shade gconftool -s --type string /desktop/gnome/interface/toolbar_style icons gconftool -s --type string /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_font "Bitstream Vera Sans 9" gconftool -s --type string /apps/metacity/general/titlebar_font "Bitstream Vera Sans Bold 9" gconftool -s --type string /desktop/gnome/interface/monospace_font_name "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono 9" gconftool -s --type string /desktop/gnome/interface/document_font_name "Bitstream Vera Sans 9" gconftool -s --type string /desktop/gnome/interface/font_name "Bitstream Vera Sans 9" gconftool -s --type bool /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/allow_bold false gconftool -s --type bool /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/use_theme_colors false gconftool -s --type bool /apps/gnome-terminal/global/confirm_window_close false gconftool -s --type string /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/foreground_color '#FFFFFFFFFFFF' gconftool -s --type string /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/background_color '#000000000000' gconftool -s --type string /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/palette "#000000000000:#AAAA00000000:#0000AAAA0000:#AAAA55550000:#00000000AAAA:#AAAA0000AAAA:#0000AAAAAAAA:#AAAAAAAAAAAA:#555555555555:#FFFF55555555:#5555FFFF5555:#FFFFFFFF5555:#55555555FFFF:#FFFF5555FFFF:#5555FFFFFFFF:#FFFFFFFFFFFF" gconftool -s --type string /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/scrollbar_position hidden gconftool -s --type bool /apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/default_show_menubar false gconftool -s --type int /apps/metacity/general/num_workspaces 4 gconftool -s --type string /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/switch_to_workspace_1 "<Control>F1" gconftool -s --type string /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/switch_to_workspace_2 "<Control>F2" gconftool -s --type string /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/switch_to_workspace_3 "<Control>F3" gconftool -s --type string /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/switch_to_workspace_4 "<Control>F4" gconftool -s --type string /apps/nautilus/icon_view/default_zoom_level small gconftool -s --type bool /apps/nautilus/desktop/computer_icon_visible true gconftool -s --type bool /apps/nautilus/desktop/home_icon_visible true gconftool -s --type bool /apps/nautilus/desktop/network_icon_visible true gconftool -s --type bool /apps/nautilus/desktop/trash_icon_visible true
I'll probably keep editing this article and adding new things as I find them.
They are considering Exaile for their new default music player, and it looks like it’s winning! This isn’t the first time Xubuntu has considered Exaile. I can’t remember how long ago it happened the last time, but for understandable reasons, Listen was chosen instead. Exaile was an infant at the time, and was missing a lot of the features that should be standard in a player.
Now, however, with Exaile 0.3 progressing the way it is, I believe it can make it. I’ll keep my fingers crossed!