Yes, it’s out.  Took me 12 hours to download today, but it’s done.

Noteables:

• Firefox 3.5 (woo!)
• OpenOffice 3.1
• Out of the box support for my Creative X-Fi finally
• Sound no longer dies after coming back from Hibernate (woo!)
• Mouse’s “Back” button now works in Nautilus (woo!)
• Sexier startup
• Seems to have sped up my shabby notebook a lot from 9.04

All in all I am very pleased.  None of my precious Firefox plugins were broken in the upgrade and I’m happy to finally be on board with 3.5, it seems much faster and lighter.

Slight issues I’ve had:

• Search bar icons not showing up in the dropdown, but I fixed that via System->Preferences->Appearance->Interface->Show Icons in Menus.  (source).
• My media files were also playing back in a strange blue hue which drove me nuts for a second but all it took was go into Movie Player, Edit->Preferences->Display, and reset the Hue value which was for some reason set all the way to the left.
• The new “Ubuntu Software Center” is great and all but I prefer the old style of Add/Remove Applications (with the star ratings), and I discovered how to bring that back by just installing “gnome-app-install” via Symantic, then it is to be found under System->Administration.
• My Conky also got a little quirked but I’ll figure it out.

Get 9.10 from System->Administration->Update manager

Or from here if you’re some kind of late adopter.

Then go get your free stickers.

Ubuntu Linux 9.04 was released last week (up from 8.10), and it’s better than ever.  If you’re uninitiated, there’s frankly no better time than now.

You can try it out without affecting your system in the slightest.  Head to ubuntu.com, grab and burn the .ISO (aka Live CD), and boot your computer with it in the drive.  You should see an Ubuntu boot screen and something to the effect of “Try Ubuntu without making changes to my computer”.  Select that and your system will boot Ubuntu, running from your CD and RAM.  In other words it’s completely temporary, everything you do will be gone at shut-down.  But it’s a great way to check for compatibilities with your system such as video, wireless networking, and other various hardware.  Just don’t judge the speed of Linux when booting from a Live CD, since anything you do is loading off the CD instead of hard drive, so things may open sluggishly.

Why Linux? Let me break down some pros:

• installation ease.   Installation is a breeze.   It will happily install itself alongside your existing XP/Vista.  You can choose to install to a new partition on your C: drive, or to another drive.  I highly recommend first defragging the drive you plan to install to, multiple times if necessary.  Back-up files on your Windows drive which would make you cry to lose.  If possible, try shrinking the Windows partition first, but otherwise Ubuntu can make a partition for itself using the free space on your drive.  Be a little careful.   If you have a system which cannot install from a CD, you also have the option to create a USB drive install kit.  (System->Administration->USB Startup Disc Creator).  I had to do this on my laptop which has a bunk CD drive.  You can boot the Live CD on a machine with a working CD bootup, then create the USB from there.  (Note: if your system doesn’t boot from CD, it may be easily fixable in your BIOS.  Look for Boot Priority or something to that effect, you may just need to move your CD drive above your HD.  Or likewise to enable booting from a USB stick.  I had to do this on my laptop.)  Linux will install a boot menu called Grub which appears at bootup and gives you the choice of which OS to boot.  You can tweak the options for this from Linux->System->Administration->StartUp Manager.  (If you’d like more info about installing a dual boot of Linux with Vista already installed, here’s a guide.  There’s also info for installing Vista with Linux installed first, here.)
• fast.  Compared to Vista especially, it’s very snappy.  And none of the fscking incessant HD thrashing that Windows does.  My semi-old laptop runs much happier with Linux than it did with XP.  If you want to run an even cleaner Linux installation because you have a wicked old comp or are just a wicked minimalist, there are other Linux installation packages (aka distributions, or “distros”) which come with far less installed and running, but likewise may require more setup or tinkering on your part.  See here for more on that.
• free. Always.  Nuff said.
• secure.  You basically don’t even need anti-virus or spyware apps with Linux because they’re not really an issue or concern.  When security patches ARE needed, they appear that day, not every 2nd Tuesday of the month of whatever.
• software.  Firefox, OpenOffice 3.0, and GIMP come already installed, as well as many other free open source software solutions.  Many more are available via the “add/remove programs” equivalent, which is much better than that of Windows.   See here for more apps or just google it.
• classy.  Something about running Linux is just classy in my opinion.  Maybe it’s the screaming lack of Arial everywhere.  Maybe it’s the “alternative” nature of it all which makes me feel like the cool kid that I am.  Whatever it is, there is definitely a certain je ne sais quoi.
• Compiz.  This is a suite of highly configurable visual effects.  Desktop cube, wobbly windows, transparencies, zooms, etc.  Look it on up the youtube to see.
• Conky.  Conky is a sweet desktop resource monitor, and more.  Ultra customizable if you don’t mind tinkering with text files.  See my screenshot, this is my setup for now.  You can have it display weather details, resource usage and graphs, to-do lists from a text file, and email box counts (which is the 22 in the lower right of my screen).  If Conky is too much for you, Screenlets are the next best thing.
• highly customizable.    You can customize pretty much everything.  Boot up and login screens, window schemes, fonts, colors, mouse pointers, etc.   http://www.gnome-look.org/ is a great resource.
• compatibility.  Out of the box compatibility with Windows files.  You may see a slight issue with text  file interoperability, the solution is just to start using Notepad++ to edit texts in Windows.  There is a Windows emulator called Wine which comes installed, you can use this to run just about any Windows software, even games.   Or you can use VMware or virtualbox to run entire Windows or other operating systems from within Linux, allowing you to completely ditch a dual boot.
• subtleties.  There are just little bits and bobs around Linux which are just simply done better than Windows.  I don’t have specifics at the moment. Here are a few: 1) you can mouse-scroll windows that aren’t in the foreground just by mousing over them  2) before the screensaver kicks in, a slooww fade-to-black occurs, which is cool for watching vids without missing a frame. 3) The calculator shows everything you enter on the line so you know if you’ve typed that + or not, etc. 4) When you capture the screen using PrSc or alt-PrSc, a pop-up appears which shows a preview and lets you choose the file name and save location, or simply choose to copy to clipboard.  5) When you rename a file, only the file name is highlighted by default, not the extension. This way you can just type and press enter without having to reenter its extension (oh yeah, and linux actually shows you file extensions out of the box). 6) Toggle hidden files display with a simple Ctrl-H.
• online knowledge.  There is a wealth of info online about Linux.  If you have an issue or a question, there’s a 99.9% chance someone else has too, and there’s a solution in a forum somewhere.  Just google it.
• career.  After teaching yourself Linux, you can put it on your résumé.  More and more companies are starting to use Linux instead of Windows, and your expertise could give you the edge over other candidates.

Cons:

• learning curve.  The basic stuff like navigation and where to find things will take a couple days to get used to, but it’s the the terminal commands and things like that which can take a bit more learning.  But hey gotta keep the noodle sharp right?
• breakability.  If you F something up, there is a small possibility that you could break your Linux bootup, hah. This can happen especially when toying with video driver stuff.  But as long as you run a dual boot, or have another system to Google things on, and have half a brain, you should be able to rescue it just fine.

Questions/comments?   Comment or contact.

RSS.  You probably know what it is.  Or maybe you don’t.  Maybe you think you know, but don’t use it for whatever reason, like laziness or you don’t see the point of it.  If any of these is you, it’s gonna be ok, keep reading.

What it is: RSS is a stream of the articles from a site. It includes the article titles and an excerpt (or sometimes the entire post) and also sometimes an image or an attached mp3.  In your RSS reader, or a Firefox RSS plugin, you subscribe to these “feeds” of all of your favorite sites.  Then you can get a preview of them before you click them.

You may be asking:  “ok great but why is this any better than just visiting the sites directly?” I’ll tell ya why.

1) You visit a lot of sites.   2) Some of the sites don’t post new stuff all the time.   3) You still want to be aware of these posts without visiting that site all the time only to find no new content.

RSS is for you.  “Isn’t clicking each one the same as just visiting the site?” No, because of watch lists.  They basically alert you whenever one of your favorite sites gets a new post.  More on them in a bit.

If you’re in a work environment, browsing via RSS will probably result in many fewer bytes transferred, if you’re concerned about that sort of thing.  Or if you’re still on a (lol) dialup, RSS would be essential.

“I’m ready to check it out, what are my options?” Well you can get a dedicated RSS application, or you can use Firefox’s innate RSS capability Live Bookmarks, or use what I believe to be the best option: the Firefox Wizz RSS add-on.  If you’re with me, go get it and come back.  Here’s a screenshot.

Exhibit A.  Notice the toolbar and sidebar

Ok hopefully you’ve installed it and restarted Firefox. ¿Listos? Vamos a empezar.

You should see a new Wizz toolbar. From the Options etc. dropdown select ‘Set as default feed handler’ and restart Firefox again.

To toggle the Wizz sidebar, you can press Alt-Q. This is configurable in the options.

Now, if a web page you’re on has an RSS feed available, Firefox notes it by showing this icon (#1):

Exhibit B

To add the site’s feed to the Wizz, click that RSS icon (and choose one of the subscribe options if necessary).  Then on the page that appears select Wizz as the default RSS reader, then ‘Always use’, and you will be shown some instructions and an icon which you can drag to your Wizz sidebar.  From now on when you click RSS icons you will be taken directly to this page.  (To change your RSS reader in the future, go into Firefox options, Applications tab, it’s the Web Feed association).

You can also add feeds by clicking the ‘Feed Search’ button in the Wizz toolbar.  This pops up:

Exhibit C

Just drag the desired feed (the 2.0 one) into the Wizz sidebar and close the popup.

Click your new feed in the sidebar.  Notice the pane of articles.  You can merely hover over these to see a preview below.  Or you can click it to load it in your current browser tab.  These panes are resizable obviously.

Here’s the real juice of RSS though. The watch list is what makes it so sweet, and will make you wish you’d been using it sooner.  Go into the Options in the Wizz toolbar.  Go to the Watch List tab and select ‘Automatically start Watch List’ and ‘Alert when new items are found’.  Notice also the options for Watch Interval, and playing a sound file.  Exit the options.

Now, for sites which you really want to be up to date on, right-click the feed in the Wizz sidebar and ‘Add to Watch List’.  It will now show a little left arrow to its right.  Every X minutes the Wizz will now poll the feeds on your Watch List for updates, and if there are any, show you this popup:

Exhibit D

Feeds on your Watch List which have new posts will now be highlighted in the sidebar list.  Sweet.

Some general tips:
1) Sometimes you will not see an RSS icon in the URL bar, but you will see an RSS link or icon somewhere on a page. Click it, and [if necessary select Wizz as the default RSS reader, then 'Always use', then from now on when you click an RSS icon] you should be shown some instructions and an icon which you can drag to your Wizz sidebar. Failing THAT, you can also add a feed to Wizz manually by right-clicking whitespace below your feeds in the sidebar, select Add Feed, and paste in the (typically .xml) URL of a feed.
2) If you’d prefer to manually kick off the watch list updates, uncheck ‘Automatically start Watch List’ in the options and select ‘Run Once’ from the Watch List dropdown in the toolbar.
3) You may not want to add very frequently updating [news] sites to your watch list, it would kind of defeat the purpose, you would get a popup every time.
4) You can right-click a feed and Mark as Read.  This can be good to do, even if you haven’t actually read them, so that next time the new posts will stand out with their green icon.
5) Single click a feed to refresh it.
6) Double-click a feed to load the site in the current browser tab.
7) Drag feeds to reorder them.
8 ) Right-click a post in the sidebar and you can choose ‘Open unread in New Tabs’.
9) You can create folders for your feeds, they’re called Categories. Right-click whitespace below your feeds and pick Add Category.
10) I find Wizz RSS a great way to “multitask browse”, say if I’m half-watching a YouTube vid.
11) You can RSS-subscribe to people’s YouTube channels to be notified of their new videos.
12) You can RSS-subscribe to new episodes of shows on Hulu. Go to the main page for the show, click the RSS icon for episodes.  Or you could just create a Hulu account and subscribe to shows that way and even get email alerts when new episodes show up.
13) To remove a site from Watch List go into Manage Watch List from the toolbar. Or right-click the feed in the sidebar list, go into Properties, and uncheck Watch this feed.
14) Sometimes if a post in the sidebar is in italics you will see a popup when you click it and you’re not sure what to do. Choose Item Link usually. Enclosure Link or Save Enclosure can be useful if you want to jump to or save a link, such as an mp3.
15) As a Watch action you can also choose Save, this is for offline reading I guess, say with a laptop. Toggle this from a feed’s properties or from Manage Watch List.
16) You can also save your feed list to their server, I presume for backup purposes or for syncing to other machines.  Find this under the Options dropdown. You’ll need to create an Account first.

To toggle the Wizz toolbar, you can do this:  1) Right-click its whitespace (or if it’s gone, right-click the tiny area #2 in Exhibit B above).  You can toggle the toolbar here (or also from the View->Toolbars menu), but I like to do one better.  From that toolbar popup, go to Customize.  This pops up:

Exhibit E

Scroll to the bottom and drag the Wizz Toggle Toolbar button up to the left of your URL bar, or wherever.  See #3 in Exhibit B above.   (The other Wizz icon in there toggles the sidebar, but I just use Alt-Q.) Close the popup.  That button will now toggle the Wizz toolbar for you.  I just find it handy to tuck it away thusly because it’s mostly not needed.

That’s it!  You’re well on your way to kicking ass.

Enjoy this post? Questions? Got more tips or a better system? Put a comment below plz.

#2.  (If you have Aero or some other undefined visual capability enabled):  You should see the window in the above step evaporate in slow-mo.   You can also hold Shift while you minimize a window to see slow-mo.  And it also works while restoring minimized windows from the task bar.