Also, as an addition, I think they should put in the multimedia codecs and flash and have the LTS releases as paid editions for Ubuntu to help support development, pay for the legal rights to distribute the codecs, and earn a little profit from it. Then, once Ubuntu becomes really stable, I might have faith in it going mainstream again.

But wait a minute... that looks a little like how I had GNOME configured. Thats one of the things I love about XFCE, its lighter weight, however, it packs a huge punch. It uses the GTK Themes that you may have installed in your GNOME configurations, and although you may not see it in the screenshot, I'm using the metacity Window borders by using Compiz Fusion. another thing I would like to mention about XFCE that I like, is they actually pay attention to those who use dual monitors, and have options in simple things like Panels or the wallpaper configuration to either have something on monitor 1, or 2. In XFCE I can set a different wallpaper per monitor, without having to create an image in GIMP. I absolutely love it.

However, I am running into a few small issues here and there. Adobe Air apps rely on KDE or GNOME's Keyring applications, which don't automatically run in XFCE, so I had to set that up to be able to run Tweetdeck in XFCE. Another thing I'm getting used to is the different applets in XFCE panel, especially when I have gotten used to the ones I have used in GNOME-Panel. For example, the default clock applet in XFCE, when you click on it you don't get a calendar where in GNOME/KDE you do. However, there is a way you can put GNOME applets on the XFCE panel, so I might do that for a FEW applets.

So overall, I'm going to try using XFCE for a week or so and see how it goes, and see if I go back to using GNOME or not. Today's question for you all to answer in the comments is: Which desktop environment do you use, and why?

Anyway, thanks for reading Today's post, sorry for not having one Monday or Wednesday, share this post with anyone that might be interested, subscribe to this blog with your favorite RSS client, check back Monday for a new post and have a great Weekend!

The post is brought to you by lekhonee v0.7

Anyway, I've been messing w/ the IRC bot in my IRC channel, named CondyBot. To start out with I only had CondyBot as a Topic/RSS bot, but I decided to add some functions to it Today!

!trout *nickhere* = has CondyBot slap somebody w/ a Trout

!WinME *nickhere* = has CondyBot slap somebody w/ a Copy of Windows ME

!trade *nickhere* = has that person trade their computer w/ some random nick.

^ for those three if you don't put in a nickname it will slap you w/ a Trout, copy of Windows ME, or force you to trade your computer w/ somebody.

Some other more useful ones I've added are:

!latestpost = will post my latest blog post

!google *searchtermhere* = searches Google, used a google script I found somewhere.

!weather *zipcodhere* = displays the current weather information for your location.

!forecast *zipcodehere* = displays a 5 day forcast for your location

(Edit: The Weather and Forecast triggers are all part of one script I got from here.)

!live = links to my live page

!blog = links to the home page of this web-site

!kbotspam *nickhere* = allows those that are hop and above to kick somebody for abusing the bot (I'll add a !kbbotspam trigger later, maybe).

I believe thats it. If you want to chat about just whatever w/ the people in my IRC channel, or want to have fun w/ the bot (w/o abusing the commands too much, otherwise you'll be kicked), stop by #condoulo on irc.geekshed.net. You can either use web clients like the Geekshed client or Mibbit, or you can use desktop IRC clients such as mIRC, IceChat, xChat, KVIRC, Konversation, Colloquy, Linkinus, etc.

The question for Today's blog post happens to be: Wheres your IRC channel located, do you have a bot in it, and how many people on average do you get? Please answer in the posts comments!

Anyway, thanks for reading, subscribe to the Blogs RSS feed using your favorite RSS reader/client, and be sure to check back Monday for a new post!

- Tyler J. Brown (Condoulo)

The post is brought to you by lekhonee v0.7

I'm gonna be honest, because I've been kinda put in a spot, I don't have anything to really blog about today. I'm actually writing this right before I head off to bed because I really need to fix my sleep schedule so I'm not sleeping the entire day away.

However, I am pretty excited for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be the release of OpenSUSE 11.3 which I have been waiting to try for a little while now. I've been really trying to find a Linux distribution that has a really good implementation of KDE while still providing a few other great features as well. I'll be sure to talk about my experiences w/ OpenSUSE on Friday.

Anyway, thanks for putting up w/ the lack of posts this week or late posts this week, check back Friday for another post, and please subscribe.

Also, just before I forget:

Is there any reason you give other Linux distributions a try, is it because you like to distro-hop or are you trying to look for something Unique or Specific? Answer in the comment.

- Tyler J. Brown (Condoulo).

The post is brought to you by lekhonee v0.7

I guess I should first talk about my experience with KDE 4.5. From the probably 4-5 hours of me using it I can definitely see that this is going to be a release focused heavily on fixing bugs and stability. I noticed a few changes here and there to features, but I haven't really seen any new SIGNIFICANT features in KDE 4.5 RC. I would also like to say that the problems I had previously w/ Audio in KDE 4.x, where if you use a GTK app in KDE it would try to take control of the audio and not let any KDE apps use the Audio, is actually fixed, and I can now actually have the really annoying result of listening to a Youtube video in Chrome and Amarok at the same time, or just simply be able to hear an IM notice from Pidgin or Emesene while listening to music in Amarok. I did noticed a few bugs here and there, since it is a release Candidate, however, the issues I have previously with it have been fixed, and once its finally released next month I will heavily consider going from GNOME over to KDE!

Soo... if you managed to get anything from that mess of a paragraph, you can probably guess that I am still using GNOME for now. So, earlier Today I decided to try and install KVIRC, and this is where the troubles began. The .deb package was looking for older versions of the KDE packages and not the version that indicated it was the Release Candidate, so I just decided "hell with it" and started to remove the KDE packages anyway since I don't plan on using it until the final release of 4.5 anyway. Well, first I removed the repository, and I had to keep going from Dependency to Dependency until I found the one package that was still using the version from the repository. Needless to say, I finally managed to get it removed, but to remove that package it did ask me of one bizarre thing, that I had to remove fglrx. In the end I was able to reinstall my ATI drivers, but that was a bit weird (I haven't rebooted yet, so I hope nothing screws up). In the end I was actually able to install KVIRC, but that did take up about half an hour of my time trying to fix it and find out which packages I needed to remove/downgrade.

In the past 4 years of me having used Ubuntu (off and on of course), this is the first time where removing a repository and downgrading/removing packages from it has really given me any issues like this. But I guess it happens to most people at one point or another.

Oh, and while typing this I just thought of another thing I might do is ask a question at the end of each post in relation to what the topic was, so for example Today's question is:

So, have you had an issue w/ any repositories like that? And have you been able to fix them, find the root of the problem, or did you just say hell with it and reinstall Ubuntu?

Please leave a comment answering the question, or just what you think of the post in general. Also, if you like what I write, please subscribe to me using your favorite RSS reader. Have a great Weekend and Check back for a New Post Monday!

- Tyler J. Brown (Condoulo)

The post is brought to you by lekhonee v0.7

Lekhonee (Click for Larger Image)

So, to start off with the Basics, Lekhonee's UI is pretty straight-forward. You have an area to input your blog's message, a right sidebar for selecting categories, area to add your tags, and to include a Title. One thing I would like to mention is formatting is kinda limited to a few options, such as bold, Italics, including a link or Image, however, you do have the ability to include HTML formatting as you like. Overall I have to give the UI a 7/10, although it is very straight-forward and easy to use, you do have limited formatting options in the toolbar.

Now some of the not so obvious features of Lekhonee include being able to browse through and edit older posts (Edit > Old Posts), The Last Post (Edit > Last Post), or you can actually upload files as well (FIle > Edit) which I actually just learned about when writing this post.

Now, there have been a couple differences I've noticed between the KDE and GNOME versions of Lekhonee, one of which is how the Categories are selected on the right sidebar. On the GNOME version, if I want to select more than one Category, I have to press Ctrl (like I would in the file manager), while in the KDE version I can just select more than one w/o having to press Ctrl. Its a tiny annoyance and wouldn't prevent me from using the GNOME version of Lekhonee, however, it was a bit annoying when I when from first testing the KDE version to using the GNOME version. Another difference is probably due to the KDE version is ahead in development compared to the GTK version, but the bottom area in the GNOME version where it has the WordPress Tab it just says "For Future Use", whereas in the KDE version I see a button that says "Add Page". Although the button does nothing when pressed, I just found that interesting (as well as the fact that the KDE version had another tab at the bottom that was faded out that had the text "Future Work").

So overall I would have to say that Lekhonee is a pretty good, straightforward application for Blogging using WordPress, although it could use more options, it definitely does the job I need it to do. I would personally give Lekhonee a 8/10.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to Read Today's Blog Post, Subscribe and Check Back for Friday's Post in a couple days, and tell your friends about my blog as well. Another thing I would absolutely appreciate is Feedback in the comments section, whether you liked the blog post, disliked it, etc.

- Tyler J. Brown (Condoulo)

The post is brought to you by lekhonee v0.7

Another thing I was thinking of is maybe have a different type of content for each of one of those days? Maybe a software review on one of those days, a News roundup on another day (probably Friday), and even a Linux distro review on another?

However, what I'm also looking for is Feedback. What I'm wanting to know is what do you want to see on this blog? Software reviews, Linux Distro reviews, more news, more personal stuff (although I think personal blogs won't follow any schedule, and will be posted just whenever), more videos, etc? Please leave comments on this post to let me know. Because lately I've definitely felt more motivated to start getting stuff setup on this blog and creating more content.

What I would also like some feedback on, is possibly getting a new theme for this blog, as well as what would you like to see on this site in general?

So again, thanks for reading, subscribe for more upcoming content, a new post coming this Wednesday, and PLEASE leave some feedback in the comment sections. I'd like to see what you all think.

The post is brought to you by lekhonee v0.7

So in the past month I've probably used Ubuntu 10.04 95% of the time, and Windows Vista about 5% of the time. So, I'm definitely using Linux hell of a lot more than I have in the past, which is definitely a good thing! Yes, I have gotten used to the buttons being on the left side of the titlebar, and even Ubuntu's new Ambiance Theme (although I changed it to something else eventually anyway).

So, around a week and a half ago I decided to order a new 500GB HDD. I wasn't running dangerously low on space, but I figured I might as well order one just to have the extra space, have one nice really large drive, and for performance too (the 32MB of cache is pretty nice). The drive I ordered was a 500GB Western Digital Caviar Black. Absolutely amazing drive. Boots up into Ubuntu 10.04 much quicker than the 40GB I previous had Ubuntu on. And just to bring it, my previous drive configuration was 1x120GB for Vista, 1x80GB for Storage, and 1x40GB for Ubuntu 10.04. Now its 1x500GB for Ubuntu, 1x120GB for Vista, and 1x80GB for Storage. I'll include the unboxing video of the HDD below. I gave the 40GB SATA to my younger brother to use as an extra drive, which brings up the next topic.

My younger brother having had suffered 2 months on a A8N-SLI board (after trading motherboards with my other younger brother) which wouldn't work with his video card or Processor correctly (it detected his Socket 939 Athlon x2 as a Single Core), he finally got a new motherboard/CPU with 3GB of DDR2 RAM included. He's now finally able to use his 512MB 8600GT again, and his new CPU is an Athlon II x3 CPU at 2.7GHhz. Of course, because that boards only IDE channel would have been taken up by his Optical Drive, we had to order ANOTHER 500GB Western Digital Caviar Black drive. The pure fact that it was on sale AGAIN when we realized he needed another drive was some pretty good luck, otherwise we would have had to go with a 320GB or 250GB drive instead. But basically we set up a dual-boot on his system w/ XP and 7, plus a partition to store games. My youngest brother also got an upgrade out of this, including an upgrade to 2.5GB of RAM, Socket 939 Athlon x2 2.4GHz, and an extra 80GB IDE HDD.

Another thing I would like to mention is I have an extra Pentium D + a Board laying around I am actually considering doing something with. I just need to get a case, HDD, an optical drive for it (and maybe just a little bit more RAM). What I was thinking is I could possibly set that up to do videos on AND I will also probably use that as a machine to setup and do distribution testing and reviews on.

Anyway, I did mention I was getting used to Ubuntu's Ambiance Theme, well, thats when I decided to install the Elementary Theme Package, including The Elementary Modification of GNOME's File Manager Nautilus. I absolutely love this theme, and its actually going to be the Default theme of a Ubuntu-based distribution coming out called "Elementary OS". I think I might do a review on that in the future. That, along w/ Installing the AWN Dock, and using GNOME-DO, I can definitely say this UI is heck of a lot better than Window's UI.

So to continue on with my aimless rambling (is it really aimless?), while I kind of didn't go through with my blog every day in June, I definitely plan on doing more blog posts this month. I have been messing around with some pretty interesting software packages lately, mostly ones I found via Ubuntu's Software manager, that I would probably like to talk about, including an application I'm using to type this blog post in right now. So thats what I might focus my blog posts on in the next week, and I might even include videos. So, I would recommend keeping your eyes glued to this blog.

Anyway, thanks for reading this rambling blog post just updating a few things. Please subscribe to my Blog so you can keep on reading the next series of posts reviewing certain pieces of software, and I would definitely love some Constructive Feedback/Criticism in the comments section.

~ Tyler J. Brown

Soo.... no new content today. Just figured I'd explain why. I will definitely try and do one tomorrow though. Thanks for checking in.

After graduation, we went straight home, but didn't stay there long. Probably about 15-20 minutes before we left and headed out to Golden Carrol for Lunch. Had a few plates of food, mainly the Roast Beef with some potatoes, and some dessert.

Sooo..... now that I'm done with High School, got my Diploma, etc. What am I going to do now? Well, considering I'm coming down with a cold, I'm probably going to rest for a day or two. I may end up having a graduation party, and I will probably end up going to those of a few friends as well over the weekend. Starting next week, I will definitely start looking towards getting a job. I have a couple places in mind that I'm seriously considering. This fall I will go to Jefferson Community College to start off my first two years of college, and I also plan on taking the test for my Network+ Certification this Fall (After studying over the Summer).

And yeah, Todays post was out a little later as well. However, Today was also one hectic of a day. I was barely on the computer until later in the day. With graduation, eating out, spending time with family, I definitely bugged a few people that felt like I was ignoring their messages, whether it be on any IM service I'm on or through IRC. Thanks for reading this short post, and check back tomorrow for another, hopefully tech related, blog post. And don't forget to subscribe using services or software like Google Reader, Thunderbird, in-browser RSS readers that are built into browsers such as Firefox or Opera, etc.

- Tyler Joseph Brown (Condoulo)

PRP Class of 2010 Graduate!