Well, I know this is a very straight forward process and that is does not require much of an explanation, but I have been asked to explain how to install Dropbox on Ubuntu 10.04 after my Dropbox Icons to Match Ubuntu 10.04 Theme post. So I will.

First things first. What is this Dropbox thing? Well, Dropbox is a service to store and share files on-line, much link Ubuntu One, but with the major plus of having a cross platform client software.

Some of the main advantages I’ve found so far is that it only uploads what it needs. For example if you need to upload a 700MB file named ubuntu.iso and someone has uploaded the same file before it will appear on your online files but it will NOT upload it again. How great is that?

Another good feature of it’s client is that you can enable the lan option if you have multiple computers on the same local network so when you upload a file from one of them the others get synchronized over the lan. No time wasted downloading files from the internet.

How Do I Install Dropbox?

To install Dropbox first get a copy of the client from: http://www.dropbox.com/downloading?os=lnx. Select the .deb file (this tutorial is for Ubuntu remember?) and install it.

What you are installing is a Nautilus extension. During the installation it will download and install the proprietary daemon that it need in order to work.

Further Reading

This installation comes with the standard blue icons for the toolbar. If you would like them to match your Ubuntu theme take a look at: Dropbox Icons to Match Ubuntu 10.04 Theme

So this is it. Enjoy!

If you already use Dropbox and Ubuntu like me, and have upgraded to version 10.04 you may have noticed that the colored icons that Dropbox ships with, don’t really match the new Ubuntu theme monochrome icons. But don’t worry, it can be easily fixed.

First thing you are going to need is the new experimental version of Dropbox.

For 32bit you can get it here: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/dropbox-lnx.x86-0.8.57.tar.gz

For 64bit go here: http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/17/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-0.8.57.tar.gz

After downloading you need to stop Dropbox. To do this just open a terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal) type:

dropbox stop

and hit enter.

Then extract the contents of the files you’ve Downloaded directly into your home directory and start Dropbox. Again in a termina:

dropbox start

and enter.

Well done! Now you have the experimental version. We are almost done.

Now the icons, first you need to get the monochrome icons: Dark panel icons or Light panel Icons

Then just unpack the icon folder within the archive into .dropbox-dist to replace the icons folder there.

Then restart dropbox as shown above.

Now my looks like this.

Dropbox Monochrome Icon

Some times you may not see the new icons right away because of dropbox’s cache. Try restarting your computer. If this doesn’t help just repeat the steps to install the experimental version and it should work.

Hope you enjoy it!

To get Dropbox click here.

The original monochrome icons were posted here: http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=7818

YouTube has an opt-in beta program for an HTML5 Video Player. It’s not great right now but it’s nice to see we are getting there.

HTML5

First things first. So what is this HTML5 thing?

Basically HTML5 is a new version of HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 that aims to enable web developers to provide rich web applications without the need of plug-ins such as Adobe’s Flash or Microsoft’s SilverLight.

For instance it allows a website such as YouTube to show videos without using Flash.

This description is intentionally brief as it is no the aim of this post to discuss HTML5 in detail. For more information you can start by reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5

My Experience

As I said there’s a beta to try the HTML5 version of YouTube. There are currently some limitations as it’s stated on their site:

• Videos with ads are not supported (they will play in the Flash player)
• Fullscreen is not supported
• If you’ve opted in to other testtube experiments, you may not get the HTML5 player (Feather is supported, though

YouTube HTML5 Loading Screen

Other things noticeable are that the controls are different and when playing it doesn’t show the download progress.

One thing that I didn’t like is that the video does not run very smoothly and the quality is not very good either. But, it’s a beta after all.

On the bright side the CPU usage is way lower than that with Flash. So, when everything is ready this will be definitely my preferred way of watching YouTube videos!

No a little video quality comparison.

Note that the screenshot are taken from the same video and the same browser and at the same point in the video (or close enough). The only difference is that ones uses the HTML5 Player and the other Flash.

YouTube Video - HTML5 Player

YouTube Video - Flash Player

Now if you want to try ir for yourself just go to: http://www.youtube.com/html5 and select the beta from the bottom.

Enjoy!

Whether you want to re install the same version of Ubuntu or you want to install it on a different machine this will save you some set up time.

The first time you install Ubuntu, if you do this one or two moths after release, you will notice that you need to install over 100 MB of packages updates and if you’ve been using it for a while you’ve already installed and updated the software you need. Well, I sometimes need to re install Ubuntu, because I messed it up and I’m too lazy to fix it or because I want it on a different computer.

You may have noticed that if you install a package via aptitude (or apt-get or Synaptic Package Manager) it downloads it from the net but if you uninstall it and later install it again it will not be downloaded and instead installed from the local cache. Much faster of course.

With this little scripts you can make this happen on a clean Ubuntu install saving you some downloading time. And probably some boredom as well.

To get started fire up a terminal.

First back up you cache:

mkdir -p ~/backup/var/lib/

sudo cp -R /var/lib/apt/ ~/backup/var/lib/

mkdir -p ~/backup/var/cache/

sudo cp -R /var/cache/apt/ ~/backup/var/cache/

mkdir -p ~/backup/etc/apt

sudo cp -R /etc/apt/ ~/backup/etc/

sudo chown -R $USER ~/backup

That will copy the apt cache and config to a “backup” folder within your home directory. Feel free to change that to whatever suits you best.

The you must, of course, copy that to some other media to either transfer to another computer or keep safe while you reinstall.

Now the restore process:

sudo cp -fR ~/backup/var/* /var/

sudo cp -fR ~/backup/etc/apt/* /etc/apt/

That will restore the files from the origin to the real location. After that run aptitude update and you are ready to install anything you had previously installed without the need to download it all over again. Including updates!

NOTE: this assumes that everything is back in your home directory. If this is not the case change “~” for the full path of the actual location.

Well hope this works for you!

From thie link you can get two scripts to do this. To use then un tar the file (tar -zxf aptitude-backup.tar.bz) and give then execution permission and then just run then with the location for the back up or restore from path as a parameter.

aptitude-backup.tar

I used Ubuntu for the first time back in 2005, I remember that perfectly thanks to their lovely version numbers.

One day a friend of mine told me that there was a crazy company giving out free Linux CD’s. And they were shipping them for free TOO! Can you believe that? Of course you can… Well so we went on and order some of those Ubu-something CD’s. 10 they sent. Not one, not 2 10 and you could even order more…it seems that CD’s got really expensive over the years because they now ship like 2.

As it happens with every relationship at first everything was great. Ubuntu took care of me and I took care of Ubuntu. My PC run smoothly and much much faster than on Winblows (“and sucks” a friend of mine would say).

At first I wasn’t a big fan of the colors but grew into them (I know, I can easily change them). I LOVED IT! Everything about it. Even the little things that I couldn’t get working right away. I mean, I even was ready to get into a fight for it (or is it he? she maybe?), one day I changed my motherboard and Ubuntu didn’t work anymore, so I sent out an e-mail to Intel demanding that they tell me how to get my mobo working with MY operating system, and to my surprise they did reply with a working solution.

First Signs of Illness

Well, this is the part when the things get bad. Our children started asking what “divorce” meant, if you know what I mean. Ubu, started doing whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted, so I asked: this is what you had me ditch Wiblows for? And guess what…NO FUCKING ANSWER!

New versions came, and everything just got better, according to Canonical’s definition of better of course, things got WORSE, much WORSE.

And this is when the resemblance with a marriage is remarkable, Ubuntu got comfortable that it had me “wrapped around it’s finger” and got FAT! Can you believe that? I guess not working out and eating all that RAM has to make you fat. But, come on! 3 GB of mem with basic usage? That’s surreal, even for M$!

Denial

Now I’m here, at this point in the relationship where just I can’t let go. I don’t know why, I just can’t.

I find myself hoping and saying to everybody: maybe next version will be better. Even thou  deep inside I know it WILL NOT.

Looking Forward

As I said before: maybe next version will be better. So after the 10.4 release I will tell you. But I think this time, if there’s no improvement I will let go and find another distro.

My Ubuntu Cd's