After the installation process of Ubuntu itself (all went ok) when the login box appeard for the first time I noticed that the resolution was 640×480. That was very weird because all the distros I’ve ever tried on this PC were setting up by default a 1204×768 resolution.

Normally, the first thing I went to do was to change the resolution as it was very annoying. I was very surprised to see that only 640×480 mode was available. I said to myself that after I will install the nVIDIA driver everything would be ok. I installed the driver through the native hardware driver window (something like Device Manager from Windows). Rebooted the system and all was the same. Checked the available resolutions nothing was there to choose from. I was clearly seeing that the nVIDIA driver was succesfully installed because even Compiz was using it at full throthle but only on 640×480.

I tried to solve things with EnvyNG, by editing xorg.conf, installing the nVIDIA drivers the hard way, typing in a lot of commands that were related to video settings but nothing seemed to work. I did a little bit of research but nothing relevant came up. People had the same problems but their solutions were not working for me.

I was on the point of installing Ubuntu 7.10 again but the following command saved me:

gksudo displayconfig-gtk

All you have to do is to type that command in a terminal (root access is required) and from there just choose your display model and the corresponding resolution and frequency. The settings will be applied after you log in again.

This is a very easy and effective way of correcting this problem.

As we all know, Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) is now available. I can’t wait to install the new release as I am a huge fan of Ubuntu. I still remember my first encounter with Ubuntu a few years ago. A good friend of mine handed me a copy of Ubuntu he received in his mail. I can’t remember the version but I know it had two CDs in the case: a live and an install CD. Since then I started playing with it and never got bored. Fortunately I had a little of experience with Knoppix and Red Hat. Also now I know my way pretty well in SuSe, Fedora Core and Mandriva. However Ubuntu and SuSe, both have something special that attracts me.

From the beginning i thought: “wow, they’re doing such a great thing providing everyone free CDs”. My opinion hasn’t changed. This is truly admirable and for that and a bunch of other reasons, Ubuntu gained many fans over the world and started creating awesome communities. Unlike many other distros Ubuntu knows how to “play the game” and introduce itself on-the-fly anywhere and anytime. It’s not a secret that Ubuntu targets a lot more home users than companies, corporate entities or such. I had a great time with Fedora Core in terms of server administration and I can tell you that it is definitely the best distro out there qualified for the job. Ubuntu on the other hand knows better than any other how to fulfill a home user’s demands regardless the fact that he may run on a desktop computer or a laptop; at least that’s what I noticed.

Back to Hardy Heron. This particular version promises a lot. New features since 7.10 that just wait to be tested. In the next few lines I will try to highlight some particular new things in Ubuntu 8.04

As far as new features concerning the system core, Gnome 2.22 kicks in. This version basically has several goodies such as the latest Nautils which is a file manager that interacts with the user in a more pleasant way and displays a window like the Autoplay from Windows whenever a removable media is inserted and brings a lot of other cool spices to the mix. Google Calendar support in Evolution, an internal clock applet and many other cool features are also available and ready for you to play with.

The kernel version is now 2.6.24. Practically this is good news for laptop users because the new kernel brings the already available on 32bit architecture power saving features to 64bit laptops and desktops.

PolicyKit is a tremendous step ahead mainly because it offers you the chance of dynamically configure permissions. For example now you don’t need to run the entire application with root privileges because you can be given the root access only for specific tasks. Yet PolicyKit has been integrated with several native tools such as Network, Users and Groups, Services and Time & Date.

PulseAudio which is a sound server, is also available in this new version. I am very curious to find out if the issue of listening to online streams has been solved or yet it needs some advanced tunning. With this tool hopefully you can enhance your overall audio experience choosing from different advanced options such as adjusting volume level independently for different applications, assign the usage of different sound cards installed in your system for specific programs and many others.

Xorg 7.3 has been integrated as well. This time the ones who use their laptops for presentations and use a projector have the possibility of setting up different screen resolutions, refresh rates, rotation and other aspects for the second monitor in a dynamic mode.

As far as new software functions, I am pretty anxious to find out if they will still integrate the Firefox Beta 5 in the final version. I was hoping that they would synchronize their launch date with Firefox 3, but I guess that would have been too cool :)

This time they came up with something pretty neat. It’s called Brasero and it’s an awesome application designed to help you burn CDs/DVDs. This native application makes a good team with Nautils merging and completing it’s burning options.

Transmission is the new BitTorrent client included in Ubuntu 8.04. I never used this client so I can’t really tell you much about it. However after reading it’s feature list and after I viewed some screenshots it seemed OK. If you want test different BitTorrent clients check out this list.

As i was telling you about a clock applet which comes with the new Gnome environment I was looking over some screenshots and reading it’s main features. It seems like an interesting widget (if i may call it that way) which can be pretty useful if you travel a lot or just want to keep your things sorted with the help of that calendar.

Say goodbye to xvnc4viewer as it was replaced by Vinagre. I only used this one once, a few months ago and overall seems to be a good remote viewer. The good part about it is that you can be connected to several machines at the same time. A cool feature is that when you search for remote machines on your network and find any you don’t need to bother configuring the access as the process is automate. Also you can organize your connections and keep track of favorite or recently used ones.

Uncomplicated Firewall is said to be an easy to use firewall which can be configured via the command line. Again, as I was telling you, in my opinion Fedora Core is the best solution for servers. For example FC 8 features an interesting GUI for configuring it’s firewall. I believe that’s a big step ahead for Linux, in general. I think that many are afraid to work more with their keyboard than with their mouse.

Totem has a new feature. Now it can be used to search and play videos from YouTube. That’s truly an awesome feature.

Inkscape can be a solution for handling PDF files in Ubuntu as it supports text and graphics editing.

Many improvements have been made in order to provide better support. For example the first thing that might be of great importance for a wide range of potential Ubuntu users is the new Ubuntu CD Menu. This awesome menu lets you choose between running a live sample of Ubuntu (acts just like a live CD), installing Ubuntu as another OS or install it just like an ordinary application in your Windows based environment. However as expected the last method is known to have some performance issues.

Wubi for example jumps to help Windows users install Ubuntu providing them with a basic interface containing several vital options for a new installation. Wubi and the umenu might be considered ways of converting Windows users into potential Ubuntu users. At least they offer a smooth pass from Windows to Ubuntu.

I am more than convinced that the above compilation of apps and not only is the optimum software package for Ubuntu. As a final conclusion, Ubuntu 8.04 alias Hardy Heron announces itself as a pretty interesting, improved Linux distribution that worths trying.

So what I will try to do is to pretty much compare a linux feed reader alterantive with FeedReader3. Currently i am using SuSe 10.3 and Ubuntu 7.10 and I have installed Liferea on both. It works like a charm. Unfortunately I am not aware of any kind of sync method between different OS’s. It is kind of annoying to lets say read your feeds on Windows and in the next 5 minutes or a couple of days, switch back to Ubuntu and have alerts regarding feeds that you have already read pop-up.

In terms of design FeedReader3 is similar to Liferea. You can choose between Normal, Wide and Combined layouts. For example I prefer the Wide layout because it looks the same as FeedReader3’s wide layout; the first panel contains your feed directory, the second one the feed content and the third one the article’s content or the built in browser when needed. A drawback is the need of selecting your preferred layout for each of your subscription, because as you browse them you will notice that the default layout for all of them is Normal. So basically you need to select the appropriate layout for each and every subscription.

Above the article’s content corresponding tags, categories and author’s name are shown, just like in FeedReader3. Also you have the possibility of increasing the font size for all of your content. Importing and exporting feed lists is of course a must-have and it can be done without any problems. An interesting feature is the possibility of posting your bookmarks to popular bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, furl, reddit any many others. You can customize the behavior of popups which notify you whenever something new is posted. Enclosures are available for you to download and if needed a proxy configuration can be set up as well.

Liferea might be considered as a light version of FeedBurner3. It has the basic features of a feed reader and if you are just an ordinary subscriber with no particular high demands, it might do the trick for you.

A more detailed documentation is to be found on the official site. As far as installing, it has native support for Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSe, Gentoo and Mandriva distros. Check out the install page to find out how to install it on your distro. It took me less than 2 minutes to install it on Ubuntu 7.10

Here are a few screenshots:

However if you don’t feel comfortable with Liferea as your feed reader on Linux you can choose to use Akregator, Blam!, RSSOwl or Straw. I will more than surely put them to the test someday.