Monday, October 29, 2012

Ubuntu 12.10: What's there not to like?

The operating system Ubuntu has long been known for providing a safe, sleek, and elegant solution to users looking for easy to use Linux. Ubuntu 12.10 provides all that and more and gives users a convenient set of new features. Let's look at my top five favorite features of Ubuntu:


  1. Ubuntu gives users the ability to create web apps from inside the included Firefox web browser. Now there is no longer any need for remembering the URLs of some websites like Google Docs: simply visit the site, and Ubuntu will ask you if you want to install the app for faster access. Simply click Install and pin the resulting app to your Launcher and you're ready to go! This is new in 12.10.
  1. You can, from within the Dash, search for music and books with live results from your query. Don't like the privacy issues that you feel might arise? Just turn off the setting in the system preferences. This is new in 12.10.
  2. Ubuntu 12.10 adds support for EFI booting with a signed boot loader. These steps are necessary to allow Ubuntu to boot on PCs running Windows 8 with its secure boot feature.
  3. While certainly nothing new, Ubuntu One is a cloud service made by Canoncial, the same folks who make Ubuntu. They offer a large variety of intelligent services that are similar to Apple's iCloud.
  4. Finally, the new Ubuntu release reorganizes the desktop and Launcher and increases the special  effects of the desktop by enabling drivers that perform 3d calculations for the desktop on computers with integrated video cards. This means that running Ubuntu on computers with Intel graphics looks better than ever, and of course if you have things like nVidia graphics it looks even better!
I hope you enjoyed the post. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for up to date information and post comments below. Alons-y!

Thursday, October 11, 2012

File Incinerator on OS X: Nearing Completion

My file incinerator utility is nearing completion! The application now fully incinerates files, shows icons of the files being incinerated, and has many bug and security fixes. You can comment on this application in the comments below.

It is written in Cocoa and Objective-C with some C/C++ for the file incineration itself. There are some limits to the file size that this utility can erase, but it should work for most text documents, etc.

KNOWN BUGS:

  1. The "Check for Updates" menu item does not work properly.
  2. Applications as .app app bundles cannot be erased using this tool. Regular UNIX executable files do work however.
You can download this application by clicking the link below. Please note I am not responsible for any damage done with or by this tool.


Download