Sending Email From Your System with sSMTP

Published in October 21st, 2008

Wouldn’t it be useful if your computer could email you? I’d like to be notified by email when my server is in trouble, but I don’t want to run my own mail server. sSMTP is perfect for this; it’s a simple way to send email from your system to an SMTP mail server, like Gmail’s. [...]

Test Drive Firefox 3.1 Beta 1

Published in October 20th, 2008

Posted by Tom in software

13 Comments

Update: I’ve written an updated post about the newest Firefox 3.1 Beta. Mozilla recently released the first testing version of the next major Firefox release. Not all features planned for Firefox 3.1 are included in Beta 1. You will find: fancy Ctrl-Tab tab switcher, the faster TraceMonkey JavaScript engine (instructions to enable later in this [...]

Fix The VirtualBox “Spawning Session” Issue

Published in October 17th, 2008

Posted by Tom in tips

54 Comments

After installing some Ubuntu updates yesterday, I found that I couldn’t start any virtual machines in VirtualBox 2 anymore. I would get a “spawning session” dialog which would never close. Open a terminal. If you haven’t already forced VirtualBox to quit, kill it: killall VirtualBox Run this command to automatically recompile and start the VirtualBox [...]

Install Adobe Flash Player 10 in Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10

Published in October 16th, 2008

Posted by Tom in software

74 Comments

Flash Player 10 adds new filters, 3D effects, better typography support, and more. For Linux users this version offers windowless mode support (transparency through Flash, and page elements rendered above Flash), V4L2 camera support, smooth fullscreen video playback, and better performance. [update] In Ubuntu 10.04, Ubuntu 9.10, and Ubuntu 9.04, you can install Adobe Flash [...]

Tweak Your Font Rendering for Better Appearance

Published in October 15th, 2008

Posted by Tom in tips

41 Comments

Everyone has their preference on how they think fonts should be rendered. If you’re not happy with the appearance of fonts on your system there are a few easy tweaks to try for better rendering. Your first stop is the GNOME’s configuration settings for fonts, located in System->Preferences->Appearance under the Fonts tab. If you’re using [...]

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