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Posts Tagged ‘Ubuntu’

The Official Ubuntu Book – 5th Edition

20 Jul

I received my copy of the new Ubuntu book on Monday. Happy times! I have Matthew Helmke to thank for the copy of the book as well. I guess at this point, I should point out that I was asked to review said book.

From what I read, the book can prove incredibly useful to newcomers, and old-timers alike. I really do think it’s well written, helpful, and I would quite happily recommend it to anybody looking for a book on Ubuntu. Not to mention, the book is compact (much thinner, but equally as full as, some other Ubuntu books I own), and very stylish…that’s my opinion of course…but I think this book would look quite the part sitting on anybody’s bookshelf.

See for yourself:

Ubuntu Book 5th Edition

The book can be bought on Amazon (UK site link), or many other bookstores.

 
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Posted in Linux, Reviews, Ubuntu

 

Identi.ca

27 Aug

I recently signed up to Identi.ca (around Monday evening GMT).

Basically it’s like Twitter but it’s Open-Source, and has a large following from the Ubuntu community, a lot of the members from the Forums are on there too :) As well as being open-source, it supports OpenID which means you can use 1 login across multiple websites (read the link for more info).

In all I actually prefer it to Twitter (I deleted my Twitter account). You can find me at http://identi.ca/Joeb454

 
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Posted in Internet

 

Qosmio Review: Part 3c

25 Apr

HD DVD Playback

As I mentioned in part 1 of this review, the Qosmio has a HD DVD-R Drive :D Now as I have a few HD-DVD’s, I figured I would try this out. Especially given that it also sports a Full 1080p HD Screen!

So I popped in the HD DVD (The Matrix if you must know) and the HD DVD player launched. I have to admit, this slowed the system down a little, and changed the theme to Windows Vista basic, however I expected this, as playing HD content requires a lot of processing power.

I should also mention that if I paused the movie, and minimised the player window, I was able to do other things (i.e. yesterday I was torrenting the new Ubuntu 8.04 release all day).

So, overall, combined with the killer audio system, the HD DVD playback was brilliant, the images were sharp, black’s were very dark etc. I think the sharpness of the image was helped a little by the small 17″ screen – It’s small when you consider I watch HD movies on a 37″ screen usually ;) – however I can’t really say much more than this, other than the playback was flawless :) So I’ve attached some screenshots, though I don’t know how good the image quality will be, I know it won’t do justice to the HD images ;)

See the Pictures

 
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Posted in Reviews

 

Qosmio Review: Part 3b

25 Apr

Ubuntu Linux

Yes that’s right, I managed to get Ubuntu installed on this machine. I installed Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) as it was at the Release Candidate (RC) stage when I tried it.

It all runs perfectly smoothly. I had to change the boot options on the installation CD, due to the Nvidia graphics card, which needed a proprietary driver. This was the most painful part of the installation, as on a screen with a native resolution of 1920×1200, I had to run at 800×600 :’(

After that it was all smooth sailing, I compiled a few apps, and used it as I would my own. Everything worked just fine, I was impressed that the volume control (the disc “thing” on the left of the keyboard) even worked! Sadly the touch buttons didn’t work, but I expected this, as I know they’re controlled by software and not hardware.

I didn’t manage to get the fingerpint reader to work either, which I wasn’t too fussed about, but it would’ve been nice. Overall I was impressed with the Linux experience I had with the Qosmio. The battery life didn’t differ from Windows, though it doesn’t on my own laptop either.

So overall, the Qosmio does actually work pretty well with Ubuntu in my experience, I wasn’t expecting much because Toshiba laptop can be notoriously difficult to get working properly (just read through some of the threads in the UbuntuForums ;) ).

There are also some pictures of the qosmio running Ubuntu if you would like to take a look :

See The Pictures

 
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Posted in Reviews, Ubuntu

 

Ultimate & Elite

10 Mar

I upgraded my Windows Vista install last night, I went from Home Premium to Ultimate (I have a cool DreamScene background now ;) ) I’ll have to reinstall GRUB at some point, because the upgrade means I can’t boot into Ubuntu…though this is a good thing at the minute, because it means I can’t fiddle with it (I always end up doing something like that :p)

Also I think I’ll be buying an Xbox 360 Elite sometime in the next 3-5 weeks :) my brother want’s his own Xbox 360, so I figured I might buy an Elite (bigger hard drive + HDMI = happy Joe ;) ) But I’m definitely waiting a little while, because just today, Microsoft announced a price drop in the Europe & UK Xbox 360 SKU’s :D so that’s good news for me!

UPDATE: I just noticed that when I have DreamScene running, if I unplug the laptop from charge, it pauses the video to conserve battery life! I think that’s a clever little feature :) Especially because the background still looks good when paused.

 
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Posted in Xbox 360