SolitaryGeek

TortoiseSVN is the dominant Subversion client for Windows. While there so many Subversion clients available, what makes TortoiseSVN special is it’s smooth integration with the Windows Explorer. As a result, working with your Subversion repository becomes super easy. When I switched completely from Windows to Ubuntu Linux, TortoiseSVN is one of the few applications I missed. Not anymore!

As I mentioned earlier, NautilusSVN attempts to be the TortoiseSVN for Linux. It looks like NautilusSVN is not yet available in the Ubuntu repositories but fortunately they had a “deb” package which I downloaded.

Though their documentation specifies that you don’t need anything extra, I had to install a few packages before proceeding to NautilusSVN. I installed the dependencies using the following command,

sudo apt-get install python-nautilus python-svn python-configobj

Then I installed the “deb” package using the command,

sudo dpkg -i nautilussvn*.deb

I had to just close and open Nautilus to see NautilusSVN in action.

All other SVN tasks can be performed by simply doing a “right click” at appropriate places in your working copy.

NautilusSVN has a commit window quite similar to TortoiseSVN.

NautilusSVN provides decent support to create branch/tag, move, change properties, view revisions etc. But there is no “Repository Browser” yet and the “Revert” option needs more polish. Also I noticed that as my working copy grew, NautilusSVN seems to slow down Nautilus. This can be a major downside which might prevent the adoption of this otherwise great tool. But NautilusSVN is still in beta and I hope these issues will be resolved shortly.

In my previous post, I explained how to convert audio files from one format to another in Ubuntu. Ubuntu provides native support for this through Sound Converter which can be installed using a simple command. After trying Sound Converter, I was confident that there will be similar applications to convert video files. That made me to install applications like WinFF, Avidemux.

My objective was to convert *.DAT files from a VCD into *.mp3. I decided to try WinFF first. The interface was pretty simple to use.

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“Linux lacks good multimedia applications“. How many times have we heard this! This was my perception as well. Not that I do my living based on these tools but I do use them often at home. Atleast, many of us might be in a need to convert audio/video from one format to another and rip tracks out of audio cds.

Traditionally I use softwares like Any Video Converter, Format Factory to convert audio/video files but unfortunately they are available only on Windows and I had to boot into my old Windows XP in order to use them. I thought I had no other choice and also since those tools did the job for me, I was eventually using them whenever the need arises. Fortunately there are some good tools in linux as well.

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Now that you have upgraded from Windows to Ubuntu (like me ), let’s see how to setup NetBeans quickly on your new Ubuntu machine without wasting much time.

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I recently tried the cool and fresh “nimbus” theme (which is the default theme on OpenSolaris) on my Ubuntu 8.10. It’s really pleasant and relaxing. And run NetBeans with “nimbus” look and feel explicitly set to have a really pleasing effect. And here are some screenshots from my Ubuntu:

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NetBeans is my favourite IDE for java development. I’ve been using NetBeans from version 4.1 onwards and I can’t believe that it has progressed and transformed itself so well. Right from version 5.0 onwards, NetBeans has been making amazing strides in terms of developer adoption. And the recent 6.5 release is really fantastic. It’s fast, it’s responsive and got many new cool features. Though I use NetBeans at office which runs on Windows XP, I haven’t tried that yet on my Ubuntu-8.10. So, I thought it’s time to give it a go.

Installing NetBeans in Ubuntu in very easy. The only pre-requisite for installation is to have a suitable JDK on your machine. That too is not a problem if you download the NetBeans + JDK bundle. But I thought of installing them separately. By default, Ubuntu-8.10 doesn’t come with JDK pre-installed, so you have to install it manually. Installing JDK in Ubuntu is just a matter of issuing a “one line” command. Just open your terminal and type:

“sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk”

or, if you are a person who prefer GUI more than command line, open your Synaptic Package Manager and look for “sun-java6-jdk” and install it. What surprised me though was the availability of the latest JDK, i.e, “JDK 6 Update 10″. Installing JDK had never been so easy.

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WUBI dramatically reduces the gap that prevents windows users to try Ubuntu. If you are wondering what WUBI is all about, you may get some idea from my post “WUBI – A wonderful little gem that helps windows users to try Ubuntu“. Yes, with WUBI, installing Ubuntu is just like installing Firefox or Thunderbird on a windows machine.

Well, while there are so many great things that WUBI offers, there is one drawback that can make eyebrows rise. WUBI downloads the latest “iso” image from the web automatically when you run it. There is nothing wrong with that and infact this is what makes WUBI a very very easy tool to use. Then what really is wrong with WUBI?

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Yesterday I asked my wife to chat with her mother using my new Ubuntu 8.10 and she happily accepted it. She quickly picked up pidgin and started chatting. But then she asked me, ” I want to speak to my mother, how can I go about?”. I told her that with pidgin you can only do text chat and voice chat facilities are not supported in pidgin. When she asked me, “Why don’t you just install Google Talk?”, I replied her, “Google Talk is not yet available for Linux”. She just went to her Windows XP notebook. Looks like I missed a major oppurtunity to convert my wife to Ubuntu.

I too love Google Talk and I miss it whenever I use Ubuntu. Most of my friends have google talk account but I was able to only chat with them by sending text messages from either Pidgin or Gmail. Though many Google products like Google Earth, Picasa are now available in Linux, Google Talk is not yet there and many Linux users like me need it very badly.

So I was looking around for some solution and I came to know about a great product called “Empathy“. I quickly opened my Synaptic Package Manager and searched for “empathy”. Luckily the required packages were available in my Synaptic Package Manager and I selected the package “empathy” and marked it for installation. The other required packages were automatically selected and the download/installation went smoothly as it use to be in Ubuntu.

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Disclaimer:
This blog is intended to help those who are new to the linux world (like me). So if you are a long time linux user, you might perhaps know/used the concepts explained here, but you can help me by providing your valuable comments and suggestions.

I recently installed Ubuntu 8.10 in my notebook using Wubi. As a result I started using Ubuntu regularly at home and Windows XP at office. But as I used my Ubuntu more and more, I felt the pain of living with Ubuntu’s default font rendering, especially when I browse using firefox. I tried all the options available under the “fonts” section in “Appearance Preferences” with no fruitful result.

Then when I started looking around for solutions, I came to know from this nice article that certain “font rendering features” were turned off in Ubuntu by default due to some legal reasons. The article went ahead and suggested a solution, which I successfully implemented in my Ubuntu. So, if you are struggling with fonts in your Ubuntu, please follow the steps mentioned in the article “Enable Smooth fonts on Ubuntu Linux“.

Ok, now my fonts look great and the web pages I surf looks the same as it use to be in Windows. But I don’t like the default brown theme of my Ubuntu. So I looked for other options in the “Appearance Preferences” window but none could satisfy me. So I started surfing around to find some alternatives.

But luckily I came across a great site called “www.art.gnome.org” which contains tons of themes for the gnome desktop. There is a section called “Desktop Themes” which contains so many options. I quickly found out that there are so many things you configure in your desktop like “Application” or “Control”, “Window Border”, “Icons”, “Login Manager”, “GTK Engines” etc. By making use of these themes you can customize the look and feel of your Ubuntu desktop much like how you configure firefox with various themes.

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Traditionally, windows users (including myself) are afraid of installing linux in their machine because of a fear that if something goes wrong, linux might spoil their machine or render it unusable. Not anymore.

I’m a long time windows user and in the past 2 years, linux has caught my attention.Thanks to VirtualBox, I have tried various linux distributions successfully, ranging from Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse, PCLinuxOS and even Solaris, a great unix distro.

Using VirtualBox is definitely the easiest way to try linux without disturbing windows, from my experience. Otherwise as a new lad to the linux world, I couldn’t have installed, used, uninstalled so many linux distros.

But I had few problems:
1. The notebook I have is pretty old and not powerful enough. (1GB RAM, 1.6 GHz Intel Centrino Processor, 60 GB harddisk). As a result, I cannot boot one host OS and run a guest OS virtually on top of it.
2. I bought a new dell vostro notebook with good configuration but my better half is owning it now post marriage.

I actually tried the above mentioned linux distros via virtualbox in my new notebook but not anymore. As a result, I was forced with 2 options (again):
1. Install linux in an usb drive (or an external harddisk)
2. Install linux directly in my (old) notebook with windows as my primary OS (Sorry buddy, but I MUST use windows in my office)

To be honest, I was luring the first option mentioned above as it would never ever disturb my primary OS (windows). I almost went ahead to implement that option but changed my mind after stumbling a review about WUBI. (Acutally, WUBI stands for Windows based UBuntu Installer)

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