Yes! This is a great news, Ubuntu 11.10 is released. And it was my favourite Linux distribution. The usability and easy to use, let me convert from Windows user to a Linux user.

Then, I changed from Ubuntu to Linux Mint. Actually there is no big differences from Ubuntu and Linux Mint, because Linux Mint is derived from Ubuntu. But the philosophy of Linux Mint is focusing on the usability design. Yes, I like the green colour, because it is natural. Mint installation disc contains some proprietary software. That means, offline installation of Linux Mint is more complete, because I do not need to download the proprietary packages through internet after installation.

Finally I release the Prayer Clock with version 1.0.0. For the internal engine, there is not much change. For the deployment, I tried to make several changes.

Firstly, I am using autotools (autoconf and automake) for the project, so that it is easier for me to maintain the project. Because this project targets for cross platform. Yes, I learnt quite a lot of things about autotools, really nice to use.

Secondly, I continue maintaining the Debian package. Actually, I target on Arch Linux, but I found that Debian and Arch Linux is binary compatible (for my project, I am not sure for others). So, I use Arch Linux to package it in Debian using dpkg. And I also make the PKGBUILD for Arch Linux package build. I choose Debian (not RPM), because previously I used Ubuntu. Besides that, I also follow the freedesktop.org specification for the icon and desktop entry. As a result, after installation, we can run the application from the menu item (just like Windows start menu). Because of this deployment, I change the file hierarchy based on Linux/Unix, which I am not familiar about this before.

I am still currently using Xfce4. I tried GNOME3 sometimes after some updates released. However, GNOME3 is still not satisfying. There are a lot problems. The new interface can be learnt, but the problems are not the interface problem.

The following list is the problems I faced:

1. ibus can be added to the notification area with ibus-gjs, but after installing ibus-gjs and restart GNOME3, ibus doesn’t start as expected.
2. Toolbar problem. In evince (I haven’t tried others), if add a button to the toolbar, I cannot remove that button anymore.
3. If the network connection is disabled, eg, Wired network is disabled, I cannot change the options. I can only change the options for those which is connected.
4. When changing the options of Wired network for all users, there is no authentication prompt, thus, I cannot change any options.
5. Keyboard shortcut problem with Windows key (Mod4). Cannot work properly.

The only feature I like in GNOME3 is the aero snap feature. But there is nothing more.

After I tried to enable show thumbnail in ristretto (image viewer), the application freeze. Whatever image I open with ristretto, all will freeze. To solve this, remove ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/ristretto.xml, logout, and login. The application will not freeze anymore. But I don’t try to enable the thumbnail after this.

I tried to synchronise my Thunderbird address book with GMail manually. So, I need to export the contacts  into CSV format. However, there is encoding problem after exporting to CSV, because my contacts contian Chinese characters. The text file has encoding error if viewed by Gedit. I tried to import it from GMail, these errors still exist.

To solve it, I use the command-line to run Thunderbird with:

env LANG=en_US.utf8 thunderbird

This solves the problem after I tried to export the contacts to CSV format again. Actually, the Arch Linux is already set the locale (in /etc/rc.conf) as en_US.UTF-8.

Actually I never tried to use Linux to print anything before. This is because of the driver problem. It is difficult to get appropriate printer driver for Linux.

Today, I tried to use Arch Linux to install a network printer. The printer is Fuji Xerox Document Centre. Firstly, I installed all the printer packages for Arch Linux based on the wiki. Then, I tried to add the printer using gnome-control-center. However, I cannot add any printer with gnome-control-center, it is GNOME3. So, I tried to find the other solution from Internet to add printer.

The best feature I like about Arch Linux is that it can be freely customized. Previously, I was using LXDE on Arch Linux. Then I found some problem that when I want to change the desktop background mode, LXDE will be restarted immediately. This problem causes me fail to boot properly when I am upgrading the kernel. As a result, I need to downgrade the kernel to the previous one in order to boot properly.

Previously, I mentioned that I am going to create a customized Arch Linux installation disk. I succeed to customize it, but I failed to customize to what I want. I can only customize the core-packages to the latest version, but not including the installation of extra packages, unless I customize the AIF (Arch Linux Installation Framework). But customize an Arch Linux installation disk is time exhaustive, I tried and tried and tried… Luckily I was using VirtualBox.

These days, I tried to install Arch Linux on VirtualBox. Though the installation steps are quite exhaustive, but after I run GNOME, the feeling is so good!

I tried Arch Linux, because Lifehacker said,

There is quite a long time that I do not submit any post. Today, I would like to talk about my experience of using Linux Mint.

Ubuntu, the number 1 open source OS (based on what I know from DistroWatch.com), I used it and I liked it. Because it has about 37000 precompiled packages (Wikipedia). Ubuntu is based on Debian, one of the major distribution just like Red Hat. Then, number 2 is Linux Mint. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu. That means, from Debian to Ubuntu, from Ubuntu to Linux Mint. One might think that, the parent is better than the child, just like C is better than C++. But if you try to use C++, then you might like it as you like C.