Blog split

After much pondering, I’ve decided to copy my articles in French to a new blog, where I’ll be resuming posting in French. I had dropped writing French articles because it was a pain to have double entries on this blog. Several persons were unhappy about it, but I never took the time to set up something else.
Nothing will change for the RSS feeds on PUU for ex, as I’ll keep writing occasional entries not suited for the Planet and the current set up works fine. This blog will be English-only from now on.

So here it is, for the ones interested: http://bapoumba2fr.wordpress.com/.
I kept the same layout, I just like it for now.

/me feels better :D

A new Community OpenOffice.org forum

This was posted today on the OpenOffice announce mailing-list –> Linky to the new forum.

From the ml announcement:

This new Forum goes beyond being simply a knowledge base of questions and answers and is rather a place for OpenOffice.org users to interact freely with each other.

I see Hagar de l’Est (Salut JN ;)) is already there. Welcome and happy life :)
The OpenOffice forums in French are here.

Malicious commands that can compromize a Linux system

Following up on a previous entry and on K.Mandla’s article, here is a link to a Sotfpedia article by Marius Nestor, inspired by the announcement jdong posted on the Ubuntu forums.
Edit 071203: How did I miss Aysiu’s post…

Once again, information and education of the new users is the best answer we can offer, in addition to some adapted moderation rules and actions on the forums that will be discussed during our next Forum Council Meeting (date and time to be set up).

In the mean time, many thanks to the numerous UF members who have changed their signature to warn new users, reported malicious entries and quickly posted warnings in the attacked threads :)

Epiphany 2.20.2 has been released

And I was pleased to read:

A lot of refactoring work is taking place to bring the Gecko and Webkit back-ends on equal footing.

References

Announcement
Bug fixes and release notes
Downloads
epiphany-a-light-web-browser-en
unofficial-epiphany-extensions-en
more-epiphany-extensions

Lettre hebdomadaire Ubuntu 67 du 18 au 24 novembre 2007

Au sommaire :

• Chaque étudiant macédonien utilisera Ubuntu
• MOTU
• Azureus est réparé
• Nouvelles de Launchpad
• Nouvelles des forums Ubuntu
• Revue de presse
• Dans la blogosphère
• Réunions et évènements
• Mises à jour et mises à jour de sécurité
• Statistiques concernant les bugs et les traductions

L’article complet est sur le wiki et le blog.

Openoffice.org 2.3 color palette

You can add custom colors with > Tools > Options > Openoffice.org > Colors.
In this process, OOo crashed down on me this morning (I’m running Gutsy and using OOo from Ubuntu repos). It would run again, reopen the files, but all the color palette for text or objects was gone gone gone:

A purge/reinstall with aptitude did not help.

Thanks to my friends from the “Linux On The Roots” mailing list (see the link under “Linux” category, web site in French), I could get the palette back in my user folder. The ~/.openoffice.org2/user/config/standard.soc was empty… I just copied back /usr/lib/openoffice/presets/config/standard.soc in my ~/.openoffice.org2/user/config/ file.

Hmm. Not the first time around an app closes down on me emptying some config files. Last time, it was the Xfce panels. Gremlins?

Xfce Compositing Manager and password windows for root graphical applications

Several Ubuntu Xfce users have reported a delay when root graphical applications (ie launched with gksudo or gksu) ask for the password. The windows hang for several seconds, up to 40. I’ve noticed that even the clock stops ticking.

This bug is probably related to Xfce compositing manager, in particular the shadows under the popups.
The current workaround is to disable “Display shadows under popup windows” or launch the application with gksudo -g.

man gksudo
--disable-grab, -g
Disable the "locking" of the keyboard, mouse,
    and focus done by the program when asking for password.

Edit 071124:
From the UF thread (see below), run gksu-properties and disable capture-mode. I’ve looked around, but does anyone have more infos about this workaround?

References

UF thread
LP bug report
Xfce bugzilla report

UbuntuHQ

I have been reading UbuntuHQ for a while now, after I found an incoming link in my dashboard :)
They have a nice collection of Tutorials and Tips, application reviews and news related to Ubuntu. You can browse the Howtos section here. They are a community site, meaning you can register and submit articles.

I’ve added their RSS feed to my blogroll, please feel free to subscribe to their feed, lots of good stuff :)

(Side note: nice blog theme too ;-D).

What is a rank regarding the web?

BoardReader. I had never heard of this site, I’ve just been getting lots of results from them when I perform Linux and Ubuntu Google searches lately. So I looked a little bit more into it.

The About Us page states:

Boardreader uses proprietary software that allows users to search multiple message boards simultaneously, allowing users to share information in a truly global sense.

Special retrieval and indexing algorithms as well as unique topic relevance ordering rules are but a few parts of what is needed to allow you to view what we affectionately call the ‘human experience’.

Okay.

Here is the ubuntuforums page on BoardReaders. UF is ranking 19 (Apple is 9) and there is an interesting list of the most active threads and members for the week ^^
I am not sure what to make of it for now, but this is another piece of information regarding UF activity.

However, I have a couple of questions.

1- How do they measure activity? I’m not so tech and math savvy, so even if they explained, I may not be able to understand. But I guess it should be explained, so that the results they are displaying can make sense. I suppose it has to do with numbers (posts, incoming and outgoing links, pages views etc..).
2- They provide a ranking page. What is a rank? How is it set up? What does it mean?
3- Is it fame, based on usage? The more a forum is used, the more relevance it has kinda thing?

World Wide Word of Mouth? Is that what ranking is? Please tell me something new.

Using restricted formats with Gutsy.

Even when you have decided you would go with free formats and applications, you can end up owning a device that only plays restricted multimedia formats (and do not wish to spend more money until its time to get a another one reading free and open-source formats), want to watch a DVD you’ve rented or bought, some videos on the intatubes, use some Microsoft fonts to share work documents with colleagues etc. The world is not perfect :)

For legal reasons, Ubuntu is not shipped with the packages that will allow you to use the restricted formats. In most parts of the world, you are however entitled to play and watch CDs or DVDs you own (you have paid for using the license, right?) on your Ubuntu system. It is illegal to use the packages to crack the protections and redistribute the files.

ubuntu-restricted-extras

This package and the kubuntu or xubuntu flavors (kubuntu-restricted-extras, xubuntu-restricted-extras) is located in the multiverse repositories. It will install the following:

 gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly, gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse,
            msttcorefonts, flashplugin-nonfree, sun-java6-plugin, unrar,
            gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad, gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse,
            gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg, liblame0, libdvdread3

 Installing this package will pull in support for MP3 playback and decoding,
 support for various other audio formats (gstreamer plugins), Microsoft fonts,
 Java runtime environment, Flash plugin, LAME (to create compressed audio
 files), and DVD playback. 

 Please note that packages from multiverse are restricted by copyright or legal
 issues in some countries. See http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/licensing for more
 information.

Enable the multiverse repositories. Here is a GUI tutorial, below is a complete /etc/apt/sources.list file for Gutsy:

# Base.
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy main restricted universe multiverse

## Bug fix updates.
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-updates main restricted universe multiverse

# Security.
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy-security main restricted universe multiverse

Reload the /etc/apt/sources.list file and install the package with your favorite package manager. The procedure I give here is with aptitude, please use apt-get or Synaptic if you prefer.

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install ubuntu-restricted-extras

You’ll be pretty much set up with these.
You’ll have to accept some licenses along the install process. Use the Tab key to get to the OK button ;)

Other codecs

These are not within the Ubuntu repositories. You have to go for third party repos. Be aware that you should disable all third party repos to perform a version upgrade.

libdvdcss2 and the xxxcodecs (w32codecs, w64codecs and ppccodecs) are provided by the medibuntu project. Please look here for a tutorial.

Unfortunately, seveas repos do not have Gutsy packages yet.. Looking forward to it :)