Under Debian, it is not always easy to find the game that matchs what you are looking for.
Goplay is the solution. It provides a GUI which displays a brief introduction and a screenshot for every game available in the Debian repositories.

To install it :

root@localhost:~# apt-get install goplay

To use it :

fool@localhost:~$ goplay &

Here is a screenshot we have for the package 3dchess :

I have requested additional super cow powers on GNOME bugzilla to be able to do some serious bug triaging in PiTiVi’s bug list. I have

• Touched approximately 70 bugs or more today (out of ~230 initially), spending approximately 5.5 hours doing bug triaging and hunting (according to hamster)
• Confirmed many unconfirmed bugs
• Updated target milestones (even for already fixed bugs!)
• Added keywords (and added “Special searches” to the website)
• Reassigned components (so that Brandon can easily search for bugs that are related to the user interface)
• Closed a ton of obsolete/fixed/duplicate bugs.

Damn, this feels good. I hope Edward won’t be mad at me for doing the cleanup and flooding his inbox while he was on vacation.

Firefox released a tour video of their first mobile browser on Nokia N900. It was a truly amazing experience seeing Firefox mobile browser with so many cool features. I have seen and used a few mobile browsers but Firefox is way better. Check out the video and see for yourself.

Some of the best features were the awesomeness of the awesome bar, power of addons and ofcourse the magic of Weave which lets you sync all your bookmarks, browsing history, saved passwords and even currently open tabs so that you can have the same firefox experience everywhere.

I have recently installed the lastest kernel version from the testing Debian repositories : 2.6.32-1-686
Once downloaded, I must recompile some modules, particularly Virtualbox modules.

root@localhost:~# dpkg-reconfigure virtualbox-ose-dkms
Removing all DKMS Modules
Done.
Loading new virtualbox-ose-3.1.2 DKMS files…
Building for 2.6.32-1-686 and 2.6.32-trunk-686
Building initial module for 2.6.32-1-686

Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 2.6.32-1-686 (i686)
Consult the make.log in the build directory
/var/lib/dkms/virtualbox-ose/3.1.2/build/ for more information.

The error message is within the log file /var/lib/dkms/virtualbox-ose/3.1.2/build/make.log

root@localhost:~# cat /var/lib/dkms/virtualbox-ose/3.1.2/build/make.log

DKMS make.log for virtualbox-ose-3.1.2 for kernel 2.6.32-1-686 (i686)

LD      /var/lib/dkms/virtualbox-ose/3.1.2/build/vboxdrv/built-in.o
CC [M]  /var/lib/dkms/virtualbox-ose/3.1.2/build/vboxdrv/linux/SUPDrv-linux.o
Can’t open perl script “/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-1-common/scripts/recordmcount.pl”:
make[4]: *** [/var/lib/dkms/virtualbox-ose/3.1.2/build/vboxdrv/linux/SUPDrv-linux.o] Erreur 2
make[3]: *** [/var/lib/dkms/virtualbox-ose/3.1.2/build/vboxdrv] Erreur 2
make[2]: *** [_module_/var/lib/dkms/virtualbox-ose/3.1.2/build] Erreur 2

Here is a workaround to get the missing file :

root@localhost:~# apt-get source linux-kbuild-2.6.32

then

root@localhost:~# cd /root/linux-kbuild-2.6-2.6.32/kbuild/scripts && cp recordmcount.pl /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-1-common/scripts/

I reconfigure the package virtualbox-ose-dkms :

root@localhost:~# dpkg-reconfigure virtualbox-ose-dkms

Removing all DKMS Modules
Done.
Loading new virtualbox-ose-3.1.2 DKMS files…
Building for 2.6.32-1-686 and 2.6.32-trunk-686
Building initial module for 2.6.32-1-686
Done.

vboxdrv.ko:
Running module version sanity check.
- Original module
- No original module exists within this kernel
- Installation
- Installing to /lib/modules/2.6.32-1-686/updates/dkms/

vboxnetadp.ko:
Running module version sanity check.
- Original module
- No original module exists within this kernel
- Installation
- Installing to /lib/modules/2.6.32-1-686/updates/dkms/

vboxnetflt.ko:
Running module version sanity check.
- Original module
- No original module exists within this kernel
- Installation
- Installing to /lib/modules/2.6.32-1-686/updates/dkms/

depmod…………….

DKMS: install Completed.
Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the
kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed.
Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules.
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules.

fool@localhost:~$lsmod |grep vbox

vboxnetflt             10854  0
vboxnetadp              5366  0
vboxdrv               117917  2 vboxnetflt,vboxnetadp

This compilation problem has already been encountered :

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=562512

Rémi Duraffort, the student who worked on VLC media player as part of the Google Summer of Code 2009 mentioned in his blog the addition of Visualizations feature in the next major release of VLC 1.1. This visualizations feature will be a result of the integration of libprojectM inside VLC media player. LibprojectM is a library that generates Visualizations based upon the samples it receive. Till now I don't have much information about this other than a screenshot showing this amazing effect.

All the Ubuntu using Women and Girls its time for the International Women's day Competition. I am aware that it was announced 3 weeks ago but this is just a reminder as well as to spread the word among all the Ubuntu Women who will be interested in sharing the story of "how they started using Ubuntu?".

Now, most of you would be thinking, "I heard you saying its a competition, where's the prize?". Calm down ladies, there will be winners and prizes. One of the winner will be announced on the basis of voting from the community and the other "the suprise winner" will be selected randomly by Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu Community Manager on a VideoCast.

The 2 lucky ladies will get a share of these amazing prizes.

In the words of Amber, these prizes are:

***Prize packages are being sponsored by: Canonical, Linux Pro Magazine and Ubuntu-User Magazine. Package includes but not limited to: Ubuntu backpack, Ladies T-shirt, Ubuntu Key Chain, 1 year digital subscription to Linux Pro Magazine or a 1 year print subscription to Ubuntu User Magazine, and a copy of The Art of Community. Thank you all so much for your gracious support and sponsorship.

But in order to be a winner, you will have to first submit your story to ubuntuwomen.competition at gmail.com by UTC 23:59 22nd February 2010.

So, women and girls what are you waiting for. Its only two and a half weeks left for the day, go and share the story with the Ubuntu Community and get a chance to win some exciting prizes.

Source: http://www.geekosophical.net/?p=423

Yes, its true. Install the Amazon GNOME Search Plugin in your Browser and when you search using this plugin to buy stuff at Amazon.com, GNOME Foundation gets a referral fee. This plugin was launched about 2 months ago. The GNOME Foundation earned a reasonable amount in this time and they are looking for more support from the fans.

The total revenue earned by the Foundation was $94.36 and $137.36 in December and January respectively. Due to some search problem with the plugin, the revenue collected in December was less than expected. But the Gnome Foundation is excited with the contribution and support they are getting from their fans and followers. So, if you are a regular customer at Amazon and want to contribute to Gnome, there is nothing better than this plugin.

Go to http://www.gnome.org/friends/amazon/ and add the plugin in your browser. Spread this plugin to your friends and families and help and support Gnome.

I am a great fan of Thunderbird. I use it to handle all my mails. Since, I have Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala installed I was using Thunderbird 2.0 by default. A few days back, I thought, why not use the latest version. May be I loved its codename, shredder , but if you are a Thunderbird user then you should upgrade to this release. It has so many new features.

Thunderbird 3.0 should be available as default in Lucid stable release. But in order to install it in Ubuntu 9.10 or any earlier release we will first have to add the personal package archives (ppa) into the source list and then install the latest version.

Either run the following command to add the ppa

[shredder12]$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa

or, open the file and /etc/apt/sources.list

[shredder12]$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

and add these 2 lines at the end of the file

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

If you have a distribution other than Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala then you should use its codename in place of karmic in the above 2 lines. e.g. If you are using Ubuntu 9.10, Jaunty Jackalope then use jaunty in place of karmic. The 2 lines willl look something like this.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

similarly use the following names for other distributions.

Ubuntu 8.04      hardy
Ubuntu 8.10      intrepid
Ubuntu 9.04      jaunty
Ubuntu 9.10      karmic
Ubuntu 10.04    lucid

Now, add the PGP key to authenticate the PPA.

[shredder12]$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 247510BE

Once you have updated the file /etc/apt/sources.list, run update

[shredder12]$ sudo apt-get update

Once the update is finished, you can install the latest Thunderbird 3.0 or 3.1.

[shredder12]$ sudo apt-get install thunderbird-3.0  # or thunderbird-3.1

Now, enjoy the new Thunderbird 3.0. Take a note that, this will not overwrite your current Thunderbird installation(of older versions). Instead you will see a separate option of Shredder 3 Mail/News in Application -> Internet. If you are having any trouble following this howto, feel free to comment.

The next great thing in Firefox is going to be the use of crash-safe plugins aka Out of Process Plugins. They isolate the plugin process from the browser process. The new Firefox with OOPP support is available in the trunk now and in order to test and fix bugs in it, Firefox has announced the beginning of two weeks of testdays. 

In case you didn't understand the purpose of OOPP, when you are using them, the Adobe's Flash or Apple's quicktime plugins will run as a separate computing process from the main browser process. So, if any of these plugins crashes, which is a common cause of most of the firefox trouble , an error will be reported for a specific tab rather than crashing and restarting the whole browser.

The new firefox with OOPP support is available in the trunk now. All you have to do is download and install the test version from the nightly and report in case of crashes, hangs or degraded performance etc. The developers will be available on channel #testday on irc.mozilla.org.

You can find more information here.