LinDesk

I have been a Firefox 3 user from day 1. So I thought it might be a good time to write a review. Some positive and negative points about it…

The Negative Stuff

Stability Issues

I am having some random crashes - this could be a problem with my setup. I have not heard about such a problem on other sites. Anyway, these crashes give no warning. One minute, you are browsing smoothly and the next minute you are looking at the desktop - the browser have gone away. Fortunately, Firefox has a session saver - so if you restart Firefox after a crash, the tabs you had earlier will be waiting for you.

Go Button

Firefox 3 removed the ‘Go’ button to the right of address bar. I want it back - fortunately, you can get it back using a userChrome.css hack…

Go to the profile folder of firefox. In Linux, it should be in some folder like /home/username/.mozilla/firefox/[random id].default/chrome/

Create a new file called userChrome.css and put this line in it…

#urlbar[pageproxystate="valid"] > #urlbar-icons > #go-button {
	visibility: visible !important;
}

Flash Problem

This should be a Linux only problem - and I think the flash plugin is the one that should take the blame. When I visit some pages with embedded flash, a new gnome window open up. It does nothing - just hangs around the screen. Do any of you guys have this problem?

The Positive Stuff

Awesome bar is, well, awesome

The new address bar is just great. It saves a lot of time. Its a very good feature - and I predict that other browsers will follow firefox lead and add this feature too.

FUEL Library

You users will not find this useful - but for us add-on developers, this is great. FUEL a javascript library that makes it much more easier to create XUL plugins for firefox.

Better Bookmarking System

Firefox 3’s bookmarking system is much better than the earlier one. It learned a lot from del.icio.us - now it supports tagging.

Looks Better

In addition to better color and font handling, the looks of some HTML elements have been improved(example, the dropdown/combo box). Also dragging have been improved - just try to drag an image or a link and you will see what I mean. You can see the item you are dragging along with the cursor instead of a generic icon.

So what are your opinions about the new Firefox?

Fedora 9 has been released - I have been waiting for this. For those of you who don’t know, Fedora is my distro of choice. I have been using Fedora since Fedora Core 3. And I will be upgrading to the latest release as soon as I get my hands on it.

I have started the download - but I have a 256kbps internet connection - and it will take around 4 days for the download to complete. After the install, I will write a review on it. I can’t wait to see the new KDE!

I have began a process of backing up my data so that nothing will be lost during the upgrade. No matter how careful I am, I always manage to loose something in the upgrade. Yeah, I know - Murphy’s Law. I hate Murphy. I am waiting to see what I loose this time. Last time it was my database. Luckily I was able to restore it from my backup - but the data entered after the backup was lost.

Fedora 9 Links

• Download Fedora 9
• Fedora 9 i386 DVD Torrent
• Fedora 9 (Sulphur) Release Summary
• Fedora 9 Announcement
• Fedora Release Notes
• Fedora 9 Announcement in FOSSwire

Fedora and Me: A History

• Installed Fedora 3
• 32bit Linux installed(Fedora Core 5)
• Fedora 7
• Fedora 7 - Installation

All Posts in the Fedora Category

I am taking a break from the regular MP3 Players Series for a special announcement. The first stable version of Frees has been released. Frees is a GUI tool that shows the Hard Disk space usage. It is written in Python using the GTK2 framework. This will only work in linux as it depends on the ‘df’ command. Frees just parses the output of df and shows it in a graphical format.

Download

Features

Simple/Easy to use

Frees features a very simple interface. Granted, some of the columns like Device, Type and Mount Point may sound a bit geeky - but hey, you are using Linux. Its supposed to be geeky.

Ability to Remove Drives from the List

There may be some drives that you want to hide in the list. Like, say you have a 10 mb /boot partition - you have no user-level use for that. In Frees you can hide that partition in the list. Go to Preferences > Drives and check off the drive you want to hide.

Shows Total Space

The last item in the list is the ‘Total’ row. It shows the total space of your harddisk. Note that this shows the total of all mounted drives - so it may not be an accurate measure of your total HDD space.

Competition

KDiskFree

There is an alternative to this program - KDiskFree. Its a KDE App…

KDiskFree displays the available file devices (hard drive partitions, floppy and CD drives, etc.) along with information on their capacity, free space, type and mount point. It also allows you to mount and unmount drives and view them in a file manager.

I was not all that satisfied with KDiskFree - that’s why I created Frees. These are the advantages Frees has over KDiskFree…

• KDiskFree cannot hide drives in the list.
• KDiskFree includes mounted images, CD ROM/DVD ROM devices as list items. Frees ignores these items.
• KDiskFree does not show the file system types for all drives - many are shown as ‘?’
• Frees have the ‘Total HDD Space’ feature - KDiskFree does not have that.

But KDiskFree has one advantage over Frees - you can mount drives from within the application. You cannot do that in Frees.

df Command

The other alternative to Frees is the ‘df’ command. Here is the man entry for df…

df displays the amount of disk space available on the file system containing each file name argument. If no file name is given, the space available on all currently mounted file systems is shown.

df is not ‘user friendly’ in the classical sense of the term - its a terminal application. Unlike KDiskFree, I do not consider df to be a competition to Frees. As a matter of fact, Frees uses df command internally to get the space usage data.

Frees Links

• Frees - See Hard Disk Space Useage in Linux
• Frees Project Page at Sourceforge
• Download Page
• Browse Code in Subversion Browser (its in Python/GTK, by the way)

Now, your job is to download this application and try it out. Send me any bugs you find and your suggestions.

The latest version of the popular Fedora Distribution was released today. From this release onwards, the word ‘Core’ is taken out of the name. Take the Fedora 7 Tour for more information about the latest release.

Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together as a community: the Fedora Project.

Some Stats

• Linux kernel 2.6.21
• GNOME 2.18
• KDE 3.5.6
• Xorg 7.3

Download

• Torrents
• Mirrors

I would recommend that you use the torrent for downloading it. When Fedora 6 was released, the servers became inaccessible due to heavy traffic.

Links

• Fedora 7 released
• Release Notes
• Release Announcement

An exclusive report on where we are, and a necessary mirror for our naked emperors.

You may not agree with all that is said in this report(I know I don’t) but this is a must read for all who are interested in Open Source and Linux. The report is rather large(25 pages) but is a very engaging read.

The Sorry State of the Open Source Today

1. The kernel and friends, take one
2. The bugs, in the open
3. Our friends, the software patents
4. Devil’s advocate: what if…
5. Detrimental to Linux at large
6. The lost battle of the GPLv3
7. The business model
8. The package management
9. What does it mean to be stable
10. Eye-candy: competing with Vista?
11. The security model
12. Hype vs. real needs
13. Our friends are our foes
14. You can leave your hat on
15. Documentation, at large
16. Fixing bugs by not fixing them at all
17. The Debian kindergarten
18. Freedom and myths
19. The kernel 2.6.20
20. 2.6.16 and 2.4.35: does anyone care?
21. KDE vs. GNOME
22. Alice in BSD-land
23. Shooting yourself in the foot
24. The Awakening
25. Whereto?

After a long delay and many problems, the debian team has finally released the fourth version of this very popular distro. Named Debian Etch, this new release will have a lot of new features like a new Graphical Installer, many new applications, etc.

Using a now fully integrated installation process, Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 comes with out-of-the-box support for encrypted partitions. This release introduces a newly developed graphical frontend to the installation system supporting scripts using composed characters and complex languages; the installation system for Debian GNU/Linux has now been translated to 58 languages.

I have been waiting for this for some time. I will review this distro as soon as I get my hands on it - that is after we have downloaded it. The guys in my local LUG group(ILug-Cochin) are going to be very exited