Openoffice Spell checking

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Vinnie

This is a bug bear of mine. Everytime I do another Linux installation I have to try and figure out how to get the spell checking working, with so much out of date advice out there it is sometime frustratingly painful. I have today fixed the spell checking problem again, and since I have found a good web page that seems to be relevant to most recent versions of Openoffice I have decided to link them here for future reference and in case some other poor soul is struggling with this issue.

http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=16512

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/en/resources/user/howto_install

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GIMP 2.8 Released

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Vinnie

We are happy to announce immediate availability of GIMP 2.8 — a new stable version of GNU Image Manipulation Program that culminates 3.5 years of exciting work.

With this version we are introducing some long-anticipated features such as layer groups, on-canvas text editing, advanced brush dynamics and the much desired optional single-window mode. We also started applying other important changes to the user interface that bring us closer to matching the product vision.

For detailed information about changes since 2.6 please read the release notes. Source code is available for downloading from a plethora of mirrors, a build for Windows will soon be available, and we hope to see a build for Mac OS X released as well.

We’d like to thank everyone who participated in development of GIMP 2.8: programmers, translators, documentation writers (updated user manual is a work in progress), and testers. We also thank our user community for the dedication and support — we needed it more than ever.

Now that this version is finally released, we are grasping the future with both hands. Stay tuned: some really exciting news will follow.

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Top Ubuntu app downloads for March 2012

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Vinnie

We’re ramping up to the release of Ubuntu 12.04 and new and cool apps keep being added to the Software Centre. Check out last month’s most downloaded free and paid apps.

This list incudes paid for and free apps.

Top apps for March 2012

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Sun Java and Google Chrome

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Vinnie

I don’t know about you guys but I have run into some websites that do not work properly with the OpenJDK Java. The main website that does not work for me properly is E-trade with their interactive charts, so I had to do a bit of research to figure this out. I have done this on OpenSuSe 12.1 but should be easily adaptable to Ubuntu or other Linux Distro’s.

Sun Java and Google Chrome

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Changing countries – to Australia

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Vinnie

yes, that’s right. We (my wife and I) have finally made the move to Australia, and so far we’re loving it. The move has been on the cards for a number of years, but at long last everything just came together so we thought now or never.

That’s the main reason this website has been very quite over the last few months, with trying not to forget anything important, packing, finishing work and organizing removal company then jumping on a plane, then applying for new jobs, getting paper work sorted out it’s been all go. But even more difficult is that we are staying with friends with only 1 room for all our stuff, no cable internet, all my extra computers in transit then storage until we get our own place so no experimenting for me. I have 1 laptop, which I have installed OpenSuse 12.1 for a bit of a change, with the Gnome desktop. So far all is going good.

Until next time.

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RAW vs JPEG, Myth or Fact? The Definitive Guide

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Vinnie

Here is a link to the age old argument about these 2 file types.

The post is intended for beginners and experienced photographers equally, I will compare both formats in 5 categories: white balance, highlight recovery, shadow recovery, noise and sharpness.

Better Family Photo’s

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Wallpapers for your Desktop

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Vinnie

One of the first thing I do is change the default desktop wallpaper on a new install, and if that install survives for any length of time I will also occasionally change it again so I am always on the look out for new ones. Generally  I like high quality images of a decent size for my Twinview set up. Below is a link to a website I have come accross that has a good collection of high qaulity images.

Wallpaperstop.com

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Make Gnome 3 more like Gnome 2

Posted on August 14, 2011 by Vinnie

I was just looking around the internet and came accross this extension for Gnome 3. Now you may like Gnome 3 as it is but if not with this extension you can change it to look and feel like Gnome 2. To see how well it works I am going to try it out on my OpenSuse 11.4 installation.

First go to this website and download the Gnome-shell-extension called Frippery.

Extract contents to /home/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions

Restart Gnome, Alt + F2  type r and then hit enter. Below is a screenshot of what I got.

Click on image to see full size

As you can see, the menu is back to it’s normal place, but the thing I noticed straight away was the sub menu items don’t pop out the side when you hover over the main categories, you have to click on category item and then the sub menu gets shown within the main menu.

You now have work spaces like before, right clicking on them you can select to create more.

With the Gnome Tweak Tool, which is available from the normal software management tool, you can control what features you want enabled.

Click on image to see full size

While I like the default Gnome 3 I wont be keeping this shell-extension enabled. I am interested in other peoples opinion though, so please leave a comment.

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Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot Alpha 3 Release Review

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Vinnie

Yesterday Alpha 3 for Ubuntu 11.10 was released, and like any Ubuntu (Linux) enthusiast I had to download and install it. As has always been the case with Ubuntu the installation went without a hitch, with everything being detected and installed. The only exception was the Restricted Drivers  app could not install my Nvidia drivers, so I went with the experimental free drivers (Nouveau ?), in Fedora 15 they worked pretty good with Gnome 3.

Under the Hood

Not so noticable changes, unless you have the affected hardware is -

  • Adopted a 3 digit kernel version, eg 3.0.0-x.y
  • Rebase to upstream v3.0 final kernel
  • Enable Overlayfs
  • Enable Realtek RTL8192CU/RTL8188CU wifi driver
  • Enable support for rt53xx wireless chipset family
  • Enable Intellimouse mode for Lenovo Zhaoyang E47
  • Numerous config updates

The interesting thing in the above list is Overlayfs, I mean what is it ? and what does it do ?. After digging around the internet I came accross this definition.

OverlayFS is a FUSE filesystem module that merges content of several directories in to a single directory transparently.

I think it may be more to do with Live CD’s than an installed system.

Noticable changes

A new Ctrl + Tab desktop app switcher has been introduced.

Ctrl + Tab

Click on image to see full size

Continue reading →

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Perfect fonts on OpenSuSe 11.4

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Vinnie

It has been a nearly a week with this OpenSuSe install and everything is going great. The only small complaint that I had was the fonts. Coming from Ubuntu, who in my opinion do font rendering near on perfectly, it just seems that no other Linux distro can get even close to them, why is it that Ubuntu are the only ones that seem to get this right.

In my Fedora experiment I spent quite some time on the font issue, but could never get it perfect. OpenSuSe I managed to get the system fonts near on perfect but applications like Google Chrome or Thunderbird wouldn’t co-operate, until I followed this  how-to at everydaylht.com, OMG, Font heaven, as good as Ubuntu’s.

If you are using OpenSuSe 11.4 then follow this how-to to get perfect fonts.

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