Modify Colors
Posts in Reviews
5 Annoying “Papercuts” to be Fixed in Ubuntu 9.10
Ubuntu 9.10 is coming in October, and, in addition to some new features, it will also feature 100 fewer “papercuts”. Papercuts are minor bugs that cause a usability issue. For example, a confusing icon or a badly positioned text box might be considered a papercut. To give you a better idea of what to expect, here are five common and annoying papercuts that should be fixed by 9.10.
5 – What the heck is “Auto eth0″?
Auto eth0
When you plug your computer into a wired network, you get the notification shown on the left, saying “Auto eth0 – Connection Established”. What on earth does that mean, though?
Many of you will know that eth0 is nothing more than a technical term for the default wired connection, but how should a new user know that?
Although the exact text has not yet been decided, the wording used in 9.10 will aim to be far more user friendly than “auto eth0″ is.
4 – Workspaces flying by
Desktop Wall plugin
Anyone with a trackpad can, I would guess, relate to this issue. Placing the mouse over the desktop and touching the scroll bar placed on the right side of so many trackpads causes your computer to shuffle through your workspaces like a magician going through a deck of cards — faster than you can see them.
The effect is actually quite like a magician’s trick in that it leaves you completely confused as to where your work just went, what workspace you were on, and what you were doing.
3 – Adding an icon to Ubuntu’s file system and to other OS partitions
BSOD Drive
Ubuntu provides no easy way for a new user to tell which drive holds Ubuntu and (if applicable) which holds OS X, Windows, BSD, etc. Most people don’t have to worry about which drive holds what OS, but someone who dual boots between Ubuntu and Windows might want to copy files between the two operating systems. Labeling them with an icon would make it easy to tell which is which.
2 – Clear icons for “wait to remove” and “OK to remove”
Removable Media
After clicking the eject button next to a mounted removable drive, you may be told that you need to wait before you can remove the drive. During this time, write operations to the drive are finished, then you get another message saying you can remove the drive. In order to prevent confusion, the icons for these notifications should be both clear and different. Hopefully, by 9.10, they will be.
1 – Document title instead of job number in print notifications
Which job?
Unless you keep track of everything you print by its job number, knowing that job 179 just finished is not very helpful. A more helpful notification would be that paper.odt just finished printing.
In Ubuntu 9.10, the document name will be in the header of the notification. In case you do manage your printing by jobs, the job number will probably remain in the body of the notification.
Sorry IE 6 users. You may not be able to see the pictures in this post. If you have trouble viewing the images in a modern browser, please let me know.
In the age of digital photography, almost everyone performs at least a few edits on their photos. For simple thing, programs like F-Spot or Google’s Picasa may be enough, but you may also need something more. That’s where Gimp does an excellent job, offering more tools for editing your photos. As with many applications, though, Gimp’s most powerful features come from plugins that let you do more than you could with Gimp alone. Here are three excellent Gimp plugins for photographers.
Adding vignettes
A vignette is an effect that usually makes the corners of a photo darker or lighter. When overused, it can look like a circular photo in the center with fuzzy edges, but a small vignette effectively focuses the viewer’s eyes on the subject without them even noticing. As a general rule, if you can look at a photo and tell immediately that it has a vignette on it, the vignette is too big.
Adding a vignette
You can add a vignette like this with the Vignette Script plugin. It allows you to define the area around which you would like to apply the vignette as well as customize numerous aspects of the vignette itself.
Fixing over or under exposed parts of an image
Sometimes it’s simply not possible to correctly expose all of an image. Particularly in landscapes where the sun lights parts of the picture while other parts remain in the shade, parts of the picture may be almost washed out or too dark to see. In the example below, I faked a very dark image where only the subject is properly exposed.
Fixing under exposure
The fix, of course, was a Gimp plugin. This one is called Contrast Fix. It will fix parts or all of am image that is to dark or too bright.
The finishing touch – adding a frame
Once you’ve editied your photo, you want to present it nicely. One common choice is to put a border (or frame) around the image, as in the example below:
Everything looks better in a frame.. right?
The plugin that produced the image above (or, well, the border at least) is simply called Line Border. You can adjust all the sizes and colors and position text in multiple places.
Conclusion
Hopefully some of these plugins will help you when you are next editing photos. What other Gimp plugins or external tools do you use in your photo workflow?
The fact that the current most popular OS for Netbooks is a stock install of Windows XP tells us that there is a need for a netbook OS that doesn’t suck. Windows is fine on a desktop or laptop, but it just wasn’t made to be scaled onto a 9″ screen, much less a keyboard. Jolicloud promises to be that netbook OS that really works.
First boot of Jolicloud
Upon booting Jolicloud, you’ll notice instantly that it’s basically Ubuntu with some modifications. Specifically, it’s based on Ubuntu Netbook Remix. In fact, the default login sound, which sounds quite out of place in the modern-looking Jolicloud, hasn’t even been changed.
Jolicloud keeps the launcher application and basic design of Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR), too. If your not familiar with UNR, this basically means three things:
The main interface
First, all of your applications are sorted into category-based tabs (like in the GNOME menu). Clicking on a tab displays a page with large icons for each application. A single click opens the application. Additionally, on the right of the screen are links to your home folder, documents folder, and so on. These folder links are not as well integrated, though, and open up an instance of Nautilus (the file browser). Continue Reading –>