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GPS (+Heart Rate) trackers for Linux

August 11, 2010 in *buntu, Biking, Open source | 3 comments

I’ve been recently playing with GPS devices on Linux (for example i-gotU gt-120, and the linux software to download tracks). I’ve also been discussing gps+heart rate data storage options. The obvious choice is (ex-Nokia) Sports Tracker and it didn’t even cross my mind that you could do something like this with local Linux software.

But it’s useless to ever think like that – you’re surprised with the variety of apps that are available and developed for Linux.
I bumped to this blog post on Planet KDE: Sports Activity Tracking App: The Baby Needs a Name.

And it looks awesome.

Reading the comments I found some other apps that do more or less the same, and Google gave me even more. So here’s just a quick list of GPS / HRM apps you might want to have a look if they’d be useful for you:

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How long has your system been up’n running?

July 29, 2010 in *buntu | 3 comments

I’m planning to wipe my Kubuntu desktop box root partition to re-install Kubuntu 10.04 LTS. I don’t have any major problems that would force me to reinstall the system, but I’ve installed many apps and packages from outside the repositories, manually and so on, so it’s quite hard to try to track down why something doesn’t work and then report the bug. And it’s nice to see the installer every now and then anyway, get a fresh start, tabula rasa, you know.

This is my setup:
File system. Size Used Free Use% Mount
/dev/md0 38G 26G 11G 71% /
/dev/md1 319G 276G 27G 92% /home

First I ran backups to an external 500GB USB disk:
time rsync -av --progress --stats /home/rhk /media/disk/2010-07-24-homebackup/

Then I decided to find out how long I’ve been running this system. A neat way to find it out is to find when the file system has been created:
rhk@rubert:~$ sudo tune2fs -l /dev/md0|grep created
Filesystem created: Wed Jul 9 17:35:59 2008
rhk@rubert:~$ sudo tune2fs -l /dev/md1|grep created
Filesystem created: Tue May 8 22:31:04 2007

So I’ve had my setup running since July 2008, from Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04, upgrading to 8.10, then to 9.04, 9.10 and to 10.04. My home partition has been there since May 2007 – that’s when I got this computer and first installed Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04.

~daily usage, I think running two years in a row isn’t that bad, every now and then installing some off-the-repository packages. And as stated above, there’s still nothing that’d force me to reinstall it.

How long have you had your setup running? Are you always upgrading to the latest version or staying with LTS releases? Do you often install software outside the repositories?

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Install Ubuntu on USB hard drive

June 3, 2010 in *buntu | 9 comments

sudo qemu -hda /dev/sdc -cdrom kubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso -boot order=d

That’s it.

(you can also try VirtualBox)

Except that I get an error: “Executing ‘grub-install /dev/sda’ failed. This is a fatal error.”

After this Ubiquity crashes.

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Ubuntu Finland & community effort

May 3, 2010 in *buntu, Open source, Sosiaalinen media | 1 comment

Happened last Wednesday, the day before the release of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx LTS at Ubuntu-fi teams IRC channel (#ubuntu-fi-tiimit @ Freenode).

Someone organizing the Ubuntufest release party at Tampere, Finland on 5th of May (Akademy 2010 will also be there this summer!) asked if we’re planning to write a press release of the new Ubuntu release. Well.. it was on our TODO list but it really didn’t look like anyone would have the resources to write one like we’ve done earlier.

So I decided to run a small test on the community – would it be possible to create a press release without making it a pain to anyone. I opened an Etherpad, copied the original English press release there and annouced it on the same #ubuntu-fi-tiimit IRC channel requesting people to join to translate it.

Read the rest of this entry »

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MS Bing the default search engine in Firefox of Ubuntu?

February 23, 2010 in *buntu | 28 comments

Will Firefox in Ubuntu soon use Microsoft Bing as the default search engine? Some press releases / announcements are out that can be interpreted so.

July 2009 / Microsoft Press Release

Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

January 2010 / Ubuntu Desktop Mailing List

Change #2 is changing the default search provider in Firefox to Yahoo!
Note that this won’t in any way effect the ability of a user to choose
and use the search provider of their choice. It’s literally 2 easily
discoverable clicks to change this setting, a simple matter of switching
to that search provider in the chrome by clicking on the icon and
choosing the desired provider. Note also that Yahoo! does not share any
personally identifiable or usage information.

Why?
I am pursuing this change because Canonical has negotiated a revenue
sharing deal with Yahoo! and this revenue will help Canonical to provide
developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and
the Ubuntu Platform. This change will help provide these resources as
well as continuing to respect our user’s default search across Firefox.

February 2010 / Yahoo Press Release

Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) and Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) announced today that they have received clearance for their search agreement, without restrictions, from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission, and will now turn their attention to beginning the process of implementing the deal.

Implementation of the deal is expected to begin in the coming days and will involve transitioning Yahoo!’s algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft, with Yahoo! becoming the exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers globally. Once the transition is completed, the companies’ unified search marketplace will deliver improved innovation for consumers, better volume and efficiency for advertisers and better monetization opportunities for web publishers through a platform that contains a larger pool of search queries.

To me it looks like that 1+1 = Firefox of Ubuntu will soon be using Microsoft search engines and algorithms. If you know more about  and are able to clarify, please add it to the comments. What do you think, would you be happy to use Bing search engine as your search engine or are you maybe already using? Better than Google?

Thanks Aapo for the tip!

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