Linux Reality Podcast (mp3 Feed)

In this episode: voice mail ideas; Linux Reality Ogg Vorbis RSS feed; my adventures with a Debian Sarge email server and KnoppMyth PVR; listener feedback; two Listener Tips, the first regarding Midnight Commander and the second explaining OpenOffice.org formatting shortcuts; a review and discussion of office and financial applications, including OpenOffice.org (including how to customize its look and feel to integrate with KDE or GNOME), Abiword, Gnumeric, KOffice, Dia, WINE, Crossover Office, Gnucash, KMyMoney, Moneydance, SQL Ledger, and Nola.

In this episode: LR email notification now available; future voice mail possibility; Mutt and Mutt-ng; listener feedback, our first Listener Tip on symbolic links; a review of Linux audio players and applications, including Xmms, Beep Media Player, BMPx, Audacious, Grip, Ripperx, Goobox, Soundjuicer, Kscd, Gnome CD Player, Amarok, kaboodle, Juk, Noatun, Banshee, Rhythmbox, and the Music Player Daemon (mpd) and its related clients, like Gnome Music Player, Glurp, Kmp, mpc, and ncmpc.

In this episode: listener feedback, including a mention of the Libsyn podcast hosting service and a discussion of the Intel processor x86 architecture; an overview of various Linux email clients, including KMail, Evolution, Thunderbird, Sylpheed, Sylpheed-Claws, Opera Mail, Mozilla Mail (now part of Seamonkey), Pine, and Mutt.

In this episode: three audio feedbacks; new segment “Listener Tips”; Listener Tips from Anita of LinuxBasics.org regarding exporting a partition table to a text file and using a rescue disk; a walk-through of an installation of Ubuntu Linux 6.06 “Dapper Drake” onto a hard drive; a discussion of two scripts created by the Ubuntu community, Automatix and Easy Ubuntu, that help Ubuntu users install a variety of third-party free and non-free software.

In this episode: listener feedback, including how to install flash and java in DSL; downloading and booting Ubuntu Linux 6.06 “Dapper Drake”; a discussion of the Ubuntu GNOME desktop environment, including a look at Nautilus, the GNOME file manager; a review of how to install additional packages from the Ubuntu Add/Remove Applications tool and the Synaptic package manager.

In this episode: listener feedback; SUSE documentation; a brief discussion of how to install the ATI and NVIDIA proprietary video drivers; a look at installing and configuring XGL, with additional guides here and here.

In this episode: a brief mention of Ubuntu Dapper Drake; audio feedback; a look at the SUSE YaST configuration tool; how to fix the SUSE Linux 10.1 package management problems with the Smart package manager using the packages provided by a SUSE developer; additional resources on how to enable Smart in SUSE Linux 10.1 are here, here, and here; Serenity charity screenings. Note: in this episode, I forgot to mention that you should run “/sbin/SuSEconfig” and then “/sbin/ldconfig” in a terminal as your root user after installing the Smart packages.

In this episode: GParted Live CD; listener feedback; an audio walk-through of a SUSE Linux 10.1 hard drive installation. Additionally, you may want to see a screencast of the installation here. A particularly good review of this distribution is from Tuxmachines. Next week, we will be using some of things described in this guide to help tweak the installation.

In this episode: listener feedback; an overview discussion of hard drive partitioning, including a look at primary, logical, and swap partitions; brief mentions of third party partitioners like PartitionMagic, Acronis, and the GParted live CD; a look at how Linux designates hard drives and hard drive partitions; a review and explanation of bootloaders, including the Linux bootloaders GRUB and LILO, as well as third party bootloaders; a discussion of alternative locations where a bootloader can be installed, such as the Master Boot Record or the boot sector of the Linux partition.

In this episode: first donation; information on VMware and LBox from Stefan at LinuxBasics.org; listener feedback, including a distribution chooser and where to install Firefox; command line basics, including a discussion of the shell and terminal, a brief look at the commands ls, CD, cp, mv, rm, mkdir, less, the pipe character, su, and how to exit out of the terminal.

In this episode: minor clarification; upcoming SUSE 10.1 release; listener feedback; a general discussion of Linux users, groups, and file/directory permissions, including the concepts of classes, specific permissions, symbolic notation, and octal notation.

In this episode: Firefly and Can’t Stop the Serenity charity screenings; listener feedback including Colin’s blog with a screencast of Linux Reality Episode 11; a general, high-level discussion of Linux package management, including a comparison of source file tarballs and binary packages, such as RPMs and Debian .deb files.

In this episode: listener feedback; a discussion of the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard as defined by the Free Standards Group.

In this (slightly extended) episode: Linux User Groups; the Linux Counter; PCLinuxOS New User Guide and Forum; listener feedback; a Linux Map; configuring PCLinuxOS using the KDE Control Center and the PCLinuxOS Control Center; installing new applications, such as OpenOffice.org and Frozen-Bubble, from the PCLinuxOS software repositories using the Synaptic package manager.

In this episode: the Linux Reality forums; listener feedback; revisiting the PCLinuxOS default KDE desktop and browsing through the KDE menu tree; a review of some of the included applications including k3b, GnomeBaker, various text editors, Konqueror, emelFM, KMyMoney, GKrellM, gtkam, digikam, Grip, amaroK, gaim, kopete, Kmail, Thunderbird, Pan, Firefox, Nvu, and KOffice; choice in Linux; and right-click context menu.

In this episode: the Georgia Aquarium; the new Linux Reality site forums are live; listener feedback; booting to a live CD; enabling the ability to boot to a CD in a computer’s BIOS; PCLinuxOS initial boot into the KDE desktop environment; a review of the default desktop, including a look at the KDE Kicker, Konqueror, Kontact, and more.

In this episode: a discussion of additional resources for new Linux users as mentioned in a previous post, LinuxBasics.org and The Linux Learning Station; LR forums coming soon; audio feedback; blank CD-r’s; checking the downloaded ISO’s md5sum in Windows with md5summer, and in OS X with checksum+; burning the downloaded ISO’s in Windows with ISO Recorder, Nero, and Alcohol 120%, in OS X with Apple’s Disk Utility, included with the operating system, and in Linux with k3b.

In this episode: listener feedback including the first audio comment; a discussion of Linux ISO files; purchasing retail boxes of Linux distributions such as SUSE and Mandriva; purchasing ISO images for a nominal fee from third parties such as OSDisc.com, LinuxCD.org, CheapISO.com, and LinuxISO.org; downloading ISO images for free directly from distributions such as Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS; LQ ISOs, a LinuxQuestions.org service that contains links to download locations of most Linux distributions all in one convenient place.

In this episode: over 100 pins on the LR Frappr map; international Linux adoption; listener feedback; my two favorite beers; version numbering as it applies to the Linux kernel and Linux distributions; how the movie Toy Story is relevant to the Debian GNU/Linux distribution; Ubuntu naming and numbering conventions.

In this episode: the Linux Reality Frappr map; site forums; listener feedback; a return trip to Distrowatch for an overview of various Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, SUSE, Mandriva, MEPIS, Debian, Kubuntu, KNOPPIX, and PCLinuxOS; a brief discussion of Linux desktop environments, including KDE and GNOME.