Ubuntu Productivity

For my day job I own and operate BIG Images — a large format print shop. I know this is unrelated to Ubuntu and the main focus of this blog, but this is where I got my start writing software and developed an interest in open-source technology. I just finished my introductory article for my series on the future of printing and imaging. This is the first in a series describing the future of printing and what it means for print manufacturers like BIG Images and the designers who create the artwork.

Do you have any stories or insights as to how Ubuntu has made you more productive? Would you like to share your insights? I am looking for people who have thoughts that would help newcomers and seasoned users alike. Anything that can help Ubuntu users become more productive. Whether its with the Ubuntu OS itself, or other software tools you run on Ubuntu. Interested? Drop me a line at ubuntuproductivity [at] gmail [dot] com.

The only real requirement is your post must be relevant to the Ubuntu community and this blog’s focus on productivity. Some ideas are:

• Shortcuts
• Tips and tricks
• Resources
• Software tools
• Methods and workflows

Just to be up front about it, there’s no money involved. I just do this for fun and education. Your reward will be similar, including the enjoyment of sharing your experience + a link to your blog/site/whatever you want.

I did not know this until recently — it is possible to configure the java engine used by Ubuntu by running this command:

sudo update-alternatives –config java

You will be asked to select from a list of available java engines. Simply type in the number of your choice and hit enter.

Choosing the java engine on Ubuntu 8.10

Today I was using Google Docs and lamenting that there is no quality web-based code editing tool. The predictability that web-based tools bring to cross-platform work is amazing. Code editing would be much nicer with the same productive toolset on every platform.

Then I found Bespin.

While I have a lot of questions about this tool/service (like how secure is it to store code in “the cloud”?) I have to admit I am very impressed with the initial preview release and can hardly wait to try it on a real project. Some of the features that really intruige me are:

• Syntax highlighting
• Collaborative editing
• Open source code base
• A very nice dark color scheme
• Innovative and productive file browser
• True cross-platform performance and predictability
• Fast performance, even on a text file with 30,000+ lines of code

Give it a try at http://bespin.mozilla.com/.

Bespin, a Mozilla Labs code editor

I recently had a problem with Ubuntu 8.10 where my Add/Remove… software window was empty.

My empty Add/Remove… software list

Synaptic and apt-get via the terminal worked great, but Add/Remove… was broken. A bit of searching turned up this little gem that did the trick of restoring the list. Just run these two commands in your terminal:

sudo apt-get remove gnome-app-install
sudo apt-get install gnome-app-install apturl ubufox ubuntu-desktop

I use Google Docs quite extensively. On my laptop I like to eak out every bit of screen real estate I can, so I thought about how I could make my Google Docs experience a little more pleasing by removing stuff that’s not needed, such as the Google logo (which frees up about 25 pixels.) Using Firefox it is very simple to remove unneeded elements. Read the rest of this entry »

Coming from a lifetime as a Mac user you can imagine that I am rather trusting of the OS, especially as a creative tool. In recent years, as Apple has evolved OS X, it has continued to surprise me (in a good sort of way.)

Regarding their OS X server, given that I have used it since 2001, I was rather excited to try it out in my new web software venture. My impression was it would be as easy to run a web site on OS X server as it is easy to manage a creative project.

Wrong.

Read the rest of this entry »

Does anyone care? If you’re interested you can follow me here: http://twitter.com/bejonbee

I needed to install some extra fonts in Ubuntu. Drawing from my OS X experience I figured I could just copy the new fonts to a font folder somewhere and sure enough Ubuntu has system-wide and user-level font folders.

System-wide fonts are located at

/usr/share/fonts/

User specific fonts are located at

~/.fonts

To install a font just copy it to either the system font folder or the user font folder. To remove a font just remove it from these folders.

Now you need to let the system know that it has new fonts available. After installing/removing your fonts you will want to update the system font cache by running this command in your terminal:

fc-cache -v -f