Full Circle Magazine Podcast Episode 7
Our 7th episode of Full Circle Magazine Podcast is now online! Ubuntu news covered, Linux gaming, interviews, and we have a chat with our guest host, Alan Pope, about bug reporting!
Ubuntu on TV!
Everyone is blogging about it, Ubuntu's second TV appearance (first time here). Featured below in the US hit TV show on CBS, The Big Bang Theory.
Any Publicity is Good Publicity.
BYG Foot Review
To continue with my series of posts from my articles in Full Circle Magazine. The next article is a review of BYG Foot taken from Issue 20.
The soccer season is in full swing in England, with Liverpool riding high. So, this month I have decided to review an open- source soccer management game. BYGFoot is a well developed management game which features 1000s of players from all around the world. You can manage in 25 countries, as well as lead your nation to victory in the World Cup.
BYGFoot is like any other soccer management game: choose your team, select the best players and lead them to glory. The game has all the basic features to manage your team. You select your team and formation; however, it can be hard to move your players around. You choose your formation by typing in a 3 digit number that adds up to 10 (442, 443, 119). Transfers and loaning players is standard. Choosing the right offer and offering the right contract is done well. Managing finances is done very well, however it is hard to keep in the green after buying a player in your first year.
BYGFoot also has some unique features that I have not seen in other management games. You can decide how big your stadium is and how secure it is and save memorable matches. However, it is still lacking in features, which often can be seen during a match. It also doesn't have real player names, but you cannot complain too much about this, since the project will need licenses. However, you can rename the players if you wanted to.
When match day comes, you have your best team ready and your tactics perfect. The let down is that during a match, you get a basic text commentary and basic stats, but it's hard to get a real understanding of how your players are performing. There is not enough information to understand what tactics to switch to, if you're losing 2-0 at half time. Usually, I would sub two players if their fitness was low, for example.
BYGFoot is an excellent attempt to bring a soccer management game to Linux, and for the most part, it delivers. It has features that allow a manager to choose his or her team and lead them to success. However, it lacks in a few advanced features, such as player licenses and information during matches. It still offers an excellent soccer management experience on Linux. This is definitely a game that any soccer fan needs to check out. Version 2.0.1 can be found in the Ubuntu repositories.
Full Circle Magazine Podcast Episode 6
Our 6th episode of Full Circle Magazine Podcast is now online! Ubuntu news covered, Linux gaming and our topic of discussion, review of Ubuntu 10.04!
SMART HDD & Utility
For many years, computer hard disc drives have had a much forgotten feature which could save you from data lost. SMART is a technology which will find on all hard drives since the 1990s. It monitors various variables on the hard drive and works out when the hard drive is likely to fail, thus saving you from data lost.
Although many hard drives use SMART, this technology is no use to the majority of computer users. In order for the hard drive to tell the user that the hard drive may fail is with the use of a utility program on the computer. Windows does not currently have a utility which will tell the user SMART information. Both Mac OS X and Linux have utilities to let the user know if the hard drive will fail.
Mac OS X has a tool called Disk Utility which will allow you to manage all your drives on your Mac, as well as view the SMART information on each drive.
Since Ubuntu 9.10, there has been a similar tool pre-installed. Palimpsest Disk Utility does a similar job, allowing you to view information about each drive, format/partition it, perform benchmarks on it and view the SMART data. It will even run in the background, and give you a notification as soon as an error has been found on a drive.
Disk Utility in Ubuntu 10.04 (click to enlarge)
Full Circle Magazine Issue 36
FCM Issue 36 is now out, with a ton of great Ubuntu articles and news. My section, Ubuntu Games, is in again this month. This issue, I have reviewed Doom 3! Download it now for Free!
My Thoughts on Ubuntu 10.04
Ubuntu 10.04 is out today! To mark the occasion, I am going to give you my thoughts of Lucid Lynx.
Ubuntu 10.04 is yet again an excellent release. This release is an Long-Term Support version (LTS) which has an aim to be a very stable release, and in most cases it does. With an aim to be stable release does not mean lack of features, it has
The All-New Ubuntu Desktop (click to enlarge)
tons of great additions. The key feature of 10.04 is the all new look to Ubuntu. Ubuntu has under gone new branding, with a new logo. Along with the new logo comes an entirely new UI to Ubuntu. The new Light theme makes Ubuntu look far more slick and professional than before. Ubuntu finally looks great! Part of the theme comes a new arrangement of the close, minimise, maximise buttons. They have moved from the right-hand side of a window to the left, like Mac OSX. It has caused complaints from many Ubuntu users, personally I like the change. Plus, it is very easy to move the buttons back to the right using Ubuntu Tweak. Along with the new theme, comes changes to the notification area. For many users the notification area, or system tray, has been filled with many different icons. In Lucid, these icons have been replaced with indicator applets, which are design to look and act similar, giving the user information about certain things going on with their computer. Such as, battery monitor, sound, network status and music playing. One of Mark Shuttleworth's own inventions has made it into 10.04, the Me Menu. This new menu which sits at the top right of your screen is used for all your social networking. It allows you to set your status (on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc) and change your status on your IM client (Available, Busy or Away). New wallpapers and the Ubuntu-Mono icon set finish off the brilliant look and fell to Lucid!
Further improvements have been seen since the last release, 9.10. An new kernel (2.6.32) provides improved hardware support, which also makes Ubuntu the first OS to support USB3.0 out of the box. The new kernel also supports the new open-source nVidia drivers, nouveau. However, I am having issues with these new drivers, causing crashing, no providing the correct resolution and no 3D support. Luckily, you can use the official nVidia drivers, which cause no problems at all.
One of Ubuntu 10.04 's main aims was to have social out of the box, making it the first OS to do so. Improvements to the Instant Messenging client, Empathy, as seen the added support of Facebook Chat from the desktop. Gwibber is a new addition to Ubuntu, which is a micro-blogging client. It allows the user to follow their friend's statuses and post their own on many services, such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, etc. The default applications in Ubuntu has been important for this release. For the first time, Ubuntu has a video editing application, Pitivi. It is a basic and easy to use video editor, which does the job well. Gimp has been dropped in favour for a more user friendly F-Spot. F-Spot has a very easy to use editing feature, with the key basic editing tools. Many games have been removed, however 5 have stayed which seem to the popular ones with many users.
Ubuntu One, which is Ubuntu's online service which was added in the last release, has seen improvements in Lucid. Improvements have been made to their cloud storage service to important the user experience. However, the service is still not stable enough in my opinion. I'm still using Dropbox, hoping Ubuntu One will be ready soon. One of the major new features in Ubuntu One has been the Ubuntu One Music Store. It works like iTunes. In the default music player in Ubuntu, Rhythmbox, there is now the Ubuntu One Music Store. You can browse the store, find your favourite tracks, buy and download. DRM-Free MP3s. The store is powered by 7-Digital, so it has a great library of Music. However, it is abit pricey compared to my favourite Amazon MP3.
Improvements to applications already Ubuntu have been made. Firefox 3.6 is faster than ever. OpenOffice 3.2 also boasts faster startup times. Gnome 2.30 provides a very stable desktop, before its jump to Gnome 3. Ubuntu also boasts improved speed, with boot up times faster than ever. Expect to me on your desktop within 15-20 seconds of pressing your power button.
Overall, Ubuntu 10.04 is an excellent release. Many improvements to the Ubuntu desktop make it the best-looking OS out. The OS is more user-centric than ever before, with applications and social networking features which will appeal to most modern day computer users. There are now ever more reasons to move away from Windows and Mac OS X!
Full Circle Magazine Podcast Episode 5
Our 5th episode of Full Circle Magazine Podcast is now online! Entirely pre-recorded show. Some Ubuntu news, and for the first time we have interviews. With Simon Wears talking about MadJam and Benjamin Humphreys about Ubuntu Manual.
Ubuntu Improved Enough… No Desire for Windows anymore!
My love for Ubuntu has grown over the past two days, and my need for Windows is zero! Every since switching to Ubuntu Linux in 2007, there have always been a few problems, which have been in the back of my mind. Mainly hardware issues and games.
For starters, every since I have started using Ubuntu, my monitor has never been detected correctly. It would always go 'out of range' when booting up the Live CD. I got around this issue, by unplugging the monitor before boot up, plug it back in, and the correct resolution is selected. However, this has not been the case with Ubuntu 10.04. I am not able to pass the monitor issue by simply unplugging it. I have reported the issue with my monitor as a bug. It appears that the EDID is damaged, due to slow progress of the bug, I have decided to fix it myself. To my great joy, I have!
Over two years of having this bug in Ubuntu affecting my enjoyment of this distro, has been fixed by a simple command before I start the Live CD.
'video=CTR-0:800x600'
It forces Ubuntu to use that resolution, and it worked. Strangely, but even better, it actually selected to use 1024x768. I can now use a Live CD with my monitor 
My second issue with Ubuntu, which is the biggest pull towards a Windows life is Games. I am a gamer, a huge gamer, as some of you may be aware from FCM & Podcast! Windows has all the games, the ones I want to play. Though the main ones are on Steam. Sadly, Steam is a Windows only platform, until yesterday anyway. Many of you may have seen this, but it appears in the Steam Mac Beta installer there is a bit of code which checks to see which OS is being used. It checks for Mac OS X or Linux, and loads the appropriate libs. Looks like Steam is coming to Linux, which is what I need to keep me on Linux.
So as you can see I no longer need Windows! Expect for MS Access which I run in VirtualBox 
Full Circle Magazine Podcast Episode 4
Our 4th episode of Full Circle Magazine Podcast is now online! Ubuntu news covered, Linux gaming and our topic of discussion, Linux Backup Solutions!
Me!
Ed Hewitt, 19, Studying @ Derby Uni, Blogger, Ubuntu user, Columnist & Podcaster for FCM, Gamer, Admin on Gfire.- Spotify is saved. Usa by the end of the year!
- Back home from work. 2:30am, time for IT crowd!
- Half way through my shift. Time for a double expesso.
