Wherever I May Roam... » Ubuntu

Neo Basic and Ubuntu

Dax Solomon Umaming — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 16:17:54 +0000

While going through (and deleting) my old emails, I came upon an ad from Neo. What surprised me is that they’re also offering Ubuntu for their basic laptops/netbook. I’m sure it’s to keep the cost down – something Neo’s been known for… affordable laptops for Filipinos.

Zamboanga City Natty Release Party

Dax Solomon Umaming — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 04:16:18 +0000

Apparently, the Philippine Team will hold two Natty Narwhal Release Parties this June 24, one in Manila and other in Zamboanga City. This would allow us to maximize effort and exposure by serving 2 out of 3 island groups.

The Zamboanga City event is organized by Yolynne Media and will be hosted by ELearning Centre, Inc.

Date: June 24, 2011
Time: 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (UTC+8)
Venue: ELearning Centre Inc.
3F ZGU II Bldg.
Gov. Alvarez St.,
Zamboanga City

Ubuntu-PH Article: http://ubuntu-ph.org/node/7831
LoCo Directory: http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/team/1024/detail/

Better Late than Never – Natty Release Party

Dax Solomon Umaming — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 18:43:29 +0000

And just when you thought Ubuntu-PH is in hibernation-mode, the folks in the Philippines will kick off June 2011 with Natty Narwhal Release Party. If you’re in the Greater Manila Area and itching to meet up with fellow Ubuntu users, join the party and share your Ubuntu stories over pizza and a bottle of beer (or cup of coffee).

Date: June 24, 2011
Time: 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM (UTC+8)
Venue: Orange and Bronze Software Labs
4th Floor, CJV Building, 108 Aguirre Street,
Legaspi Village, Makati City

Ubuntu-PH Article: http://ubuntu-ph.org/node/7830
LoCo Directory: http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/team/1022/detail/
Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=224925337535105

New Desktop

Dax Solomon Umaming — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 07:47:23 +0000

We recently got a replacement for our eMachines T2798 that just died on us (same thing happened to my cousins’ who possesses a similar model). I’m sharing this workstation with my daughter since wifey needs my MSI Wind for their Manila vacation in a few days.

It’s a custom-built AMD Athlon X2 4800+ (configured to run at 2.2GHz to minimize the heat) on a Gigabyte GA-M56S-S3 motherboard with 250GB SATA HDD and 2GB DDR2 RAM. It also came with an Nvidia Video Card.

As for software, I installed the 64-bit version of Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10 which is very much responsive. I’m also running Virtual Box OSE for my guest OS.

The usual IDEs have also been installed namely Netbeans, Eclipse, Geany, Aptana, Gedit, Vim, and Emacs – I know, but I usually switch IDEs depending on my mood. I also have Qt Creator (from the Forum Nokia site) as well as the Android Emulator. The usual office tools and project management software have also been installed as well as QGIS and GRASS for my GIS needs.

Currently saving up for a bigger LED monitor and an additional external HDD for backup.

Ubuntu Global Jam in Manila, Philippines

Dax Solomon Umaming — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:50:00 +0000

The Philippine Team will be joining the worldwide community of Ubuntu users in celebrating the Ubuntu Global Jam. An online IRC session on translations (and hopefully, packaging) is scheduled on the 27th at #ubuntu-ph while an offline meetup is scheduled on the 28th.

The offline meetup is organized by the lovely Myra Jill Siason while the venue is graciously provided by Zak Elep and the Orange and Bronze Software Labs team. The jam session will start at 4PM. So if you’re an Ubuntu user in the Philippines, sign up now at http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/team/309/detail/

Philippines 2010 Elections and Ubuntu

Dax Solomon Umaming — Thu, 06 May 2010 07:48:17 +0000

The Philippines 2010 Election will be using an electronic counting machine for the first time. The Linux-powered machines were provided by Smartmatic and the ROMs are managed by (and supposedly programmed in) Ubuntu.

Yes, Ubuntu has a major role to play, albeit obscurely, in our country’s history.

My Lucid Experience

Dax Solomon Umaming — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:18:30 +0000

Lucid Lynx is scheduled to be released next month, but that didn’t stop me from upgrading (clean install). This is a nice opportunity for me to test it out, as well as contribute by reporting any bugs I might stumble upon.

The default theme is refreshingly minimalistic – my wife commented it’s very inviting. There’s also a noticeable performance improvement as compared to Karmic Koala (note: I’m using a netbook here!). Applications responds quicker and the system boots and shuts down faster. As a plus, all my hardware works flawlessly.

Fixed Karmic bugs on MSI Wind

All the headaches I’ve experienced on Karmic has also been fixed on Lucid. To name a few:

The Live CD/USB runs on my netbook.
Webcam also works.
Ctrl+F6 to enable/disable webcam also works.
USB Ports also works without sacrificing the webcam.
GNOME Power Manager flickering issues has been fixed
Hibernation, Standby, and Lock Screen also works.

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

And of course, there will always be features I don’t want.

Minimize, Maximize, Close buttons position – what’s up with that?
Two clicks to access Empathy, incoming chat messages, and even Transmission from the Indicator Applet. There’s an existing workaround though to place the icons on the Notification Area, but you wouldn’t have access to the volume control.

And then, there’s a few non-Ubuntu hiccups I’ve encountered

Medibuntu’s ffmpeg nonfree libraries doesn’t work on Lucid – we have to manually copy the libraries until after they’ve updated the packages.
SmartBro’s ZTE MF627 3G USB stick doesn’t work – it installs ok, but it just won’t connect.

I took my sweet time reviewing my list… and comparing to Karmic – I’m very much satisfied with the next release. Keep it up Ubuntu Devs, you deserve a pat on your back!

Smart’s ZTE MF627 on Karmic

Dax Solomon Umaming — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:34:46 +0000

This is my last night on Karmic Koala ‘coz tonight, I’ll be upgrading to Lucid. So I decided to try out my 3G stick from Smart and test it on my buggy Koala (MSI Wind issues mostly). Whaddaya know? It still works.. although I’m not quite sure if it works out of the box or because I still have Liam Green-Hughes’ usb-modeswitch and zte-mf627-switch old Jaunty packages.

The speed can’t compare to my broadband DSL, but still acceptable if I’m on the road.

Lernid on Proxy and Philippine Team Tutorial Series

Dax Solomon Umaming — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:25:41 +0000

I was at work during the Ubuntu Developer Week, but that didn’t stop me from attending this event via irssi. I was, however, disappointed when I found out that Lernid doesn’t work (yet) from behind a proxy server. And I didn’t get to experience the full potential of Lernid – you know, with the presentation thingie!

Anway, I was planning on using this great app for our Tutorial Series since it already integrates an IRC client, a Browser, and a Presentation pane. But I’m afraid it’ll only disrupt #ubuntu-classroom and #ubuntu-classroom-chat since our team do not exclusively communicate in English. And there are instances where our channel’s flooded with 3 or more languages, you can only imagine the chaos we’ll cause on an English-only channel. Maybe an option to direct to another channel? I’ll file a feature request later.

Ubuntu-PH.org is Back!

Dax Solomon Umaming — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:22:38 +0000

Finally, after 2 years, our site is back. Thanks to Matthias for pointing the domain to our current host. Also thanks to the great devs behind the LoCo Drupal theme group. I’ll also backtrack our past (2007-2009) activities and post them on the site. Next project is getting our LoCo Planet back – I need to look for a PHP/MySQL based script though since PlanetPlanet’s not allowed (no access to cron/crontab, and minimal Python support).