Orangeinks

A New Life for your Old PCs and Netbooks

What do you do with an old laptop or netbook once it cannot handle the software upgrades that seriously make them crawl to their death? If you want to stick with your favorite operating system, then you should upgrade the hardware or buy a new one. Another thing that you can do is install an operating system that takes up little space and requires less RAM and Processor speed to run. If you’re asking where you can find such an OS, then you’re in luck. The guys at Ubuntu made this awesome Ubuntu variant called Lubuntu.

Lubuntu is a desktop project by Ubuntu. The main objective here is to create a lightweight operating system that’s less resource hungry and more energy-efficient. They made this happen by using light weight applications and a lightweight GUI (Graphical User Interface).

Lubuntu is targeted at “normal” PC and laptop users running on low-spec hardware. The minimum system hardware requirement for Lubuntu is a Pentium II or Celeron system with 128 MB of RAM. It’s probably a bottom-line configuration that may yield slow yet usable system with Lubuntu. It should be possible to install and run Lubuntu with less memory, but the result will likely not be suitable for practical use. This simply means that it’ll run great on computers from five years ago. Another great treat is that Lubuntu can be used by those who aren’t really familiar with Linux command line tools.

If you’ve been meaning to try out Linux but don’t have enough resources for full-featured mainstream distributions (distros), try out Lubuntu on your old computer and see how it works out for you. Who knows, you might find a suitable function for your old laptop that’s been lying around since your last upgrade.

Download Lubuntu

Tags: desktop, Laptop, linux, Lubuntu, Netbook, operating system, OS, ubuntu

Install Ubuntu Applications From Appnr

Appnr is a web-based tool that allows you to install applications on Ubuntu. If you are an Ubuntu user, then you will definitely find it very handy. It’s a web interface for APT, and the package is downloaded and installed from Ubuntu/Third-Party repositories.

How to Install

You’ll need an AptURL protocol handler and a web browser support in order to install packages from Appnr. AptURL is a program that handles special URLs to installing package on APT-based Linux systems. Firefox on Ubuntu 7.10 or higher has AptURL installed by default. You can view the full tutorial here.

Appnr features several applications that are neatly categorized. Each application is rated and you can view the number of users who installed a particular application. The website is very handy and it saves a lot of time for Ubuntu users, especially the new users.

*There is also a site similar to this one which allows you to download tweaks for Mac/OS-X. Check out Secrets.

Tags: Applications, Appnr, Download, linux, ubuntu

Test Websites on Differrent Browsers and Operating Systems using CrossBrowserTesting

CrossBrowserTesting is a unique and useful tool to test websites on different browsers running on a variation of operating systems. The service will allow you to properly view websites without going to the process of dual booting or finding computers that runs on different operating systems and installing different browsers just to see what your website looks like on a specific setup or configuration.

What is great about CrossBrowserTesting is that it will allow anyone to do the tests for free. Five minutes per session free services is available for anyone who wants to do a test. This will allow enough time to open a browser and open a website, login (if needed) and make a few clicks. Anyone who wants a longer session will have to buy credits to get an uninterrupted stream. Paid users are always given priority and the free users will have to wait in line if a server is full. Streaming speed will vary depending on your connection and other factors. In my testing, I experienced some lag which ate a chunk of the 5 minutes free time given to me but did not encounter any disconnection from the stream.

I did get an email from the team who are kind enough to answer a few questions regarding the improvements in the service.

I would think we should be on par with any other service (there are very few) that offer this kind of remote capability and running VNC through a Java applet is going to be somewhat sluggish no matter who you are. Still, we are working to speed things up as best we can and hope to offer the ability to use a client to connect to our service and that would improve performance significantly. However that is months away from seeing daylight.

CrossBrowserTesting currently supports different Microsoft Windows OS (98, XP, Vista) and Ubuntu Linux. The list of browsers includes Firefox, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera and Safari. Regarding the Mac OS-X:

As for the Mac OS, that is a completely different implementation due to their licensing and hardware. However, we are currently working on adding it to our list of configurations, hopefully within the next month (possibly sooner if we get lucky). It is currently our top priority.

To use the service, just register for an account and you can select from the list of operating system and configuration you want to perform the testing. When the stream starts, you can choose the browser available in the desktop and begin the testing. Full administrative access on the operating system is given to any user doing the test. You can load whatever client application you need to test and after each session, the virtual instance goes away and so does any trace of your work upon disconnection. You can also take a snapshot of the website which utilizes Flickr for the storage of the snapshots from your testing sessions. .

You can mark your snapshots as public or private. Snapshots marked public will be shown to visitors at CrossBrowserTesting.com, showcasing your work. A link to your Flickr profile will also be included when your work is shown, giving you credit and recognition for your work. You can also choose to keep your snapshots private. This is useful for people working on projects which are not public yet.

Whether you are a webmaster/developer, website owner or blogger, CrossBrowserTesting is a valuable tool for checking out if a website runs well on different browsers on different operating systems and settings.

Tags: browser, explorer, Firefox, internet, java, mac os, mac os-x, microsoft windows, straming, test, ubuntu, Windows XP