joselol1987: July 2010

Thursday 15 July 2010

PPASearch: Search For Ubuntu (Launchpad) PPA Repositories Via Command Line

PPASearch: Search For Ubuntu (Launchpad) PPA Repositories Via Command Line: "

PPASearch is a simple tool you can use to search Launchpad for PPAs (Personal Package Archive) which provide a package/application you're looking for and also add the PPA - all from the command line.

This is something I've been looking for a long time - amazing idea! However, there is one thing missing from PPASearch (I'm not sure if it can be implemented though): listing the version in each PPA for the application you've searched for.

Currently there are PPASearch packages only for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat and you can install it using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wrinkliez/ppasearch && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ppasearch

To use it, simply type 'ppasearch' in a terminal. PPASearch will then ask you what you want to search for: enter the application for which you want to find a PPA for and PPASearch will list all the results. You can then add the PPA from within PPASearch as you can see in the screenshot above.

How To Find Out If Your CPU Supports Hardware Virtualization (Intel VTx / AMD-v)

How To Find Out If Your CPU Supports Hardware Virtualization (Intel VTx / AMD-v): "

Apparently you can only run Mac OSX in VirtualBox if your CPU supports hardware virtualization (VTx / AMD-v).

You can find out if your CPU supports this by running the following command in a terminal:

egrep '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo

If the above command returns 'vmx' (Intel) or 'svm' (AMD) among the other results, then your CPU supports hardware acceleration. If not, see if you have an option in the BIOS to enable Hardware Virtualization (VTx / AMD-v). If there isn't any... you can't run Mac OSX in VirtualBox.

Read more about virtualization @ Wikipedia.

Many thanks to UbuntuLife for this tip!

Run Mac OSX In Virtualbox Under Linux (Ubuntu) And Windows

Run Mac OSX In Virtualbox Under Linux (Ubuntu) And Windows: "

Lifehacker has a nice post on installing the latest Mac OSX (OSX86) in VirtualBox on Windows, however their instructions work for Linux too - I've tested it in Ubuntu and OSX 10.6 runs smoothly and without any issues.

Remember to use an OSX86 ISO (Lifehacker recommends you download an OSX86 Snow Leopard torrent created by Hazard) and everything will be as easy as installing Ubuntu - you will however need more resources then for a regular Virtual machine, especially for the hard disk space. And of course, you'll also need the latest VirtualBox version.

Important: your CPU needs to support hardware virtualization, or else this will not work!

Note: even though the Lifehacker article mentions that you'll be needing around 1 GB of RAM and that the virtual hard disk size should be around 20GB, you can use less if you don't have enough RAM / HDD space to spare. I've used ~500MB of RAM and a HDD of 11.11 GB to install the latest OSX Snow Leopard in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. But of course, if you want to use Mac OSX Snow Leopard for more than just see it work, you'll need to assign the VM some more system resources.

For the complete how-to, head over to Lifehacker.

Note: the screenshot in this post is Mac OSX Snow Leopard, not Ubuntu :-)

Wednesday 7 July 2010

Chromium Web Apps Come To Linux Too

Chromium Web Apps Come To Linux Too: "

Google Chrome / Chromium got web apps a few days ago, but initially only worked for Windows - starting today they're available on Linux too. These are basically just pinned tabs but with a bigger - png instead of .ico favicon which looks cool but doesn't do anything extra from what I can tell after playing with it for about 10 minutes or so.

In Ubuntu, simply install the latest Chromium (I don't know if it already works in Google Chrome too) and customize its shortcut by adding '--enable-apps' and alternatively also add '--apps-panel' for a floating panel.

Then, in Chromium type 'chrome://extensions', enable the developer mode by pressing the '+' sign next to 'Developer mode' in the right:

Then a new button should be available called 'Load unpacked extension' - click it and browse for the '/opt/google/chrome/resources/' and choose from the 3 available web apps (no, not the ones in the screenshot but Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar). For more Web Apps, you'll find a huge list on Downloadsquad.

You should then be able to access the Chrome Web Apps by opening a new blank tab: