Will the IBM/SUN deal happen?

I have not said anything about the said deal yet.  I have just read an InfoWorld article by Neil McAllister and must say that I agree with him.  This deal would be good for IBM and so more for us that work in the Application Development area within IBM. 

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Set the default terminal window size in Ubuntu (Linux)

The gnome-terminal uses a termcap file for its basic settings. To change these:
Code:
sudo gedit /usr/share/vte/termcap/xterm
Now look for a line about 1/3 of the way down the file that looks like this:
Code:
:co#80:it#8:li#24:\
To change the number of columns, change the co# number, in this case 80.
To change the number of rows, change the li# number, in this case 24.
So as an example if you want a terminal window of 132×25:
Code:
:co#132:it#8:li#25:\
You must exit all gnome-terminal proceses before the changes take effect.

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Opening ODF Documents in MS Office

Sun ODF Plug-In 3.0 for Microsoft Office is now available, giving users of Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint the ability to read, edit and save to ODF.

Here are some highlights from the Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office webpage.

ODF Plugin 3.0 for Microsoft Office Released
This release includes support for ODF 1.2 and improves the accuracy of document import and export.

At a Glance

  • The Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office gives users of Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint the ability to read, edit and save to the ISO-standard Open Document Format (ODF).
  • The plugin works with Microsoft Office 2007 (Service Pack 1 or higher), Microsoft Office 2003, XP and Microsoft Office 2000.
  • The plugin is based on StarOffice technology and is easy to setup and use, the conversion happens transparently and the additional memory footprint is minimal.
  • The ODF Plugin seamlessly integrates with the Load and Save As dialog and the Save (Ctrl+S) shortcut of Microsoft Office Word.
  • A new toolbar in Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office PowerPoint simplifies the import and export of ODF documents.
  • The ODF Plugin is available in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Brazilian Portuguese, Hungarian, Russian, Polish, Iberian Portuguese, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean and Dutch.

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From 2 Windows XP machines to 3 Ubuntu machines

Around September last year I got a new work laptop – Lenovo T60.  IBM, for whom I work, gives one the choice of what OS to run on the desktop ie Windows or some Linux flavor. Oh and some people actually do run Macs also.  The Linux is either Red Hat, Fedora, OpenSuse or Ubuntu.  My choice was Ubuntu.

Getting Ubuntu installed and running with all I need to get my job done within IBM took about 40 minutes.  Inside IBM we have our own APT repositories with various layer packages that install the appropriate packages and applications to get everything up and going.

Now about 5 months later I have no regrets.  Having a working machine in about 30 seconds after boot is just great.  No more BSOD’s, viruses and/or trojans to really worry about and just a more stable and productive envirionment.

At home I also had Windows XP on some very old hardware that ran very slow.  Since my laptop experience was so good, I decided, what the hell, lets totally get rid of Windows.  Now my machine at home is also running Ubuntu and it is doing it so much faster than before.  In the mean time I got another desktop and this is runing Kubuntu

To be honest, I have not gotten used to Kubuntu so I do not know how long my second machine is going to run Kubuntu.  I just prefer Ubuntu and finding my way around it, is just so much easier.  And the fact that Dropbox does not work on Kubuntu is a real pain.  Oh and not being able to share my floders on Kubuntu with my Ubuntu machine is not great either.  To be honest I did not really try to find a solution for this yet so it is probaly only something stupid I did or did not do.

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Vodacom 3G on Ubuntu 8.10

When I was running Ubuntu 8.04 I used Vodafone Connect Driver for Linux which worked but not great.  When I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 I continued using this driver till yesterday when I managed to get connecting through Network Manager.  By default Network Manager picks up the card properly but did not want to connect since it did not pass the PIN to the card before connection.  All I had to do is put the following in my /etc/wvdial.conf.

[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = AT+CPIN=xxxx
modem=/dev/ttyUSB0

where xxxx is your PIN. Now I just run wvdial and then connect using Network Manager.  Must say that this is much more stable than the Vodafone driver and it seems to be a lot faster also.

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Lotus Notes 8.5 sync with Google Calendar on Ubuntu

I am looking for a solution to Sync Lotus Notes 8.5 on Ubuntu with Google Calendar.  It only needs to be an one way sync from Notes to Google Calendar.

I have searched the Interwebs but have not found a suitable solution.  Have found some stuff for Windows but not for Ubuntu or even Linux in general.

Advice will be much appreciated.

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Ubuntu: Add/Remove Programs listing is blank

This is just for my reference since it happened a couple of times when I open Add/Remove Programs and find the listing to be blank. If you encounter this then here is the solution to fix it.

Do the following:

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

You should now have a fully operational Add/Remove

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Ubuntu: Upgrading Eclipse+PDT to latest (Eclipse 3.4 + PDT 2.0)

I am running Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) together with Eclipse 3.3.1 and PDT 1.0.3 and wanted to upgrade to the latest Eclipse and PDT — that is Eclipse 3.4 and PDT 2.0.  The easiest way I have found after lots of struggling is as follows:

That is it.  You should now have the latest Eclipse and PDT.

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Daily Digest for 2009-01-09

twitter (feed #2) 9:45am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

New blog post: Is this the iPhone killer? http://tinyurl.com/8qec7d

Daily Digest for 2009-01-09

twitter (feed #2) 1:45am Posted a tweet on Twitter.

New blog post: Is this the iPhone killer? http://tinyurl.com/8qec7d