May 8, 2007

Skype 1.4 alpha for Linux

Finally they released a new version of Skype for Linux. Improvements and new features are:

  • 02.05.2007 Skype for Linux 1.4.0.58
    • Major user interface overhaul.
    • Audio quality has been improved.
    • Calls are now contained in a separate window.
    • Chat history can be loaded in time-specific increments (rather than ‘recent’ and the very slow, ‘all’)
    • File transfers are now grouped in a common window, and similar transfers are also grouped together.
    • Event history now contains chats and other events in addition to calls.
    • Sound files are now located in /usr/share/skype/sounds. This directory will be configurable later, however the sound files from the original Skype 1.4 package should be placed into this directory for now.
    • The top menu bar has been removed. You can access the Main Menu by clicking on the ‘cog wheel’ down the bottom left of the client, or by right-clicking on the system tray icon.
    • Add/Search users can be accessed by clicking on the Green + button in the bottom-left corner.

But there is still no way to make video calls :/ But it is nice how they handled the thing with the menu. I also didn’t find a way yet to make this with a plugin. In the beginning I used Festoon on windows, but this is not available for Linux.

I just found another glinch. In my taskbar they changed the program logo to vector style but they still missed the chat icon.

snapshot2.jpg

If you want to get the new version of Skype head over here.

May 5, 2007

Make the hotkeys of the Panasonic Let’s note series work again in Feisty

When I upgraded my Ubuntu to Feisty everything was quite fine. The only things which didn’t work were some hotkeys. Basically I could switch between very bright and very dark and the option for changing brightness in the power manager also disappeared. There was also no way to control the audio from the hotkeys. The hotkey for hibernating still worked.

In the last release I don’t remember exactly if I installed this hotkey driver or if it worked out of the box.

To make the hotkeys work again I got this archive which fixes the problem. The readme tells you where to put the files. This bugreport deals with the problem. The readme says that the files from the archive will not work if you didn’t install the hotkey drivers.

The other good thing which will be fixed is that you now have 10 brightness levels available. Before there were just very bright and very dark, now I can go through the different levels which I really missed before.

If only there were hot keys for disabling ppc links and email marketing spam that hit our email boxes. A one-click solution to slow adsl speeds and redundant domain names would be an instant success. The marketing should get right on that.

April 15, 2007

Ubuntu running on SEM P990i

Some guy called “Wizolabo” managed it to run a modified Ubuntu Linux version on a slightly modified SEM P990i. Here is a not so detailed proof.

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