Here is an incomplete and badly sorted list of the most useful combinations of apt/dpkg I have been using lately.
Please remember that those command lines which start with a # need root pemissions.

Ecco la procedura per installare Google Gadgets sulla vostra Ubuntu Linux (testato su Hardy Heron e Intrepid Ibex).

Here is the full steps to install Google Gadgets on your Ubuntu Linux (tested on Hardy Heron and Intrepid Ibex)

Se non ce la fate piu’ ad aspettare i pacchetti ufficiali aggiornati per Firefox 3 RC1, potete aggiornare il vostro browser preferito con il seguente repository:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ubuntu hardy main

Aggiungete tale riga al vostro /etc/apt/sources.list e lanciate i seguenti comandi:

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade

Ovviamente se avete gia’ Firefox3 installato altrimenti:

sudo aptitude install firefox-3.0

Grazie a OnlyUbuntu

A new version of Lightning, correcting lots of bugs, just appeared ; this is a followup to other articles of this blog. The 0.7 version replaces the 0.5 version. I recompiled quickly the extension based on a brand new Icedove 2.0.0.6 package. A bit of time was necessary to find the sources because they were moved in the website.

I use Emacs for a certain number of tasks (mostly LaTeX, Perl and Postscript).

One news had my attention some time ago. Emacs is now capable of using all the system fonts, any size. Following a request from a friend, I finally tested it... and adopted it.

The method was easy at work, in i386 architecture. Ubuntu (or one of its user: Alexandre Vassalotti) has some packages for emacs-snapshot that use the emacs-unicode-2 branche of development. Recompiling was no problem.

I just began working seriously on installing desktop machines in 64 bits at work, and this gave me some insight into the 64 bits transition problems: biggest being commercial applications that work only in 32 bits.

I already told about Lightning in this blog. Since version 0.5 is out to replace version 0.3.1, I recompiled quickly the extension on a clean install of Icedove 2.0.0.4.dfsg1 (but it will work with icedove 2.0.0.3, since I kept a copy around and there is no obvious bug). I recompile because people told me that the pristine binary Lightning 0.5 does not work.

For a number of years, I have been regularly updating kernels for about 80 machines. Among these (mostly Dell-branded machines), some have NVidia graphic cards and I chose to install the NVidia drivers. Since I have to update many machines, I install these drivers through the Debian packaging system.

I had to automate the task. Some will tell me that "there is module-assistant". True enough, but module-assistant does not automatically build for several kernel flavours. Moreover, there is sometimes a need to patch the sources, or even to patch the binaries, like since the mess of kernel 2.6.18-4 (and the paravirt_ops export problems of GPL/non-GPL symbols).

Icedove (connu aussi sous le nom de Thunderbird), le lecteur de courrier de Mozilla, est disponible en version 2.0 sous Debian/sid.

Upon popular request (my post was even featured on Debian Weekly News), I re-ran my previous query on the changelog files in Debian packages. This time, however, I didn't only retrieve 40 random package release names, but "all" of them, for unknown values of "all". I didn't analyze some of the files (missing permissions), and maybe I missed one or two because my query sucked, but I think I've got most of them.

The "I'm bored" release.

nice -n 19 find /usr/share/doc -name changelog.Debian.gz -exec zgrep "\* The .* [Rr]elease" {} \; | sort | uniq | bogosort -n | head -40