At VitalBodies we had UPGRADED all of our computers from Windows to Ubuntu some time back. And we have no intention of going back to Windows. This week we updated Hardy Heron to Intrepid Ibex. Very nice simple process. Much thanks to the Ubuntu Team!

Graphic Created With Inkscape.

Updating Ubuntu:

Essentially you just tell Ubuntu you want to be offered Normal Releases rather than just the Long Term Support Updates Only.

System > Administration > Software Sources > Updates > Release Upgrade > Normal Releases.

Check for updates:

System > Administration >Update Manager.

From here you will see if an Update is available.

For us updating required a reboot. Also once the installation part starts (after the download) you will not want to have any applications running. We had Firefox going and it simply shut it down. Firefox saved all our tabs though.

We noticed that our Preferences Appearance had been changed once the new upgrade had started after a reboot.

Preferences > Appearance > Visual Effects had been set to Normal rather than None.

That is easy to change to what ever you like though:

Preferences > Appearance > Visual Effects.

Evolution the mail program in Ubuntu also has had a few anomalies but those usualy get worked out in a day or so after a big update. For us when writing a reply to an email every word is underlined in red as if every word is mis-spelled.

USB DRIVE:

This version of Ubuntu is also fully able to run from a USB drive. This means you can take your favorite Operating system all of the programs, files settings and everything with you! Having a Portable Operating System is definitely the way to go!

GIMP 2.6.1:

GIMP 2.6 is standard with Ibex! Yes! Bugfixes, Updated translations. “One Window Gimp” option added. PlusGEGL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEGL

There is also GIMP 2.6.2:

GIMP Features: http://www.gimp.org/features/

Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.6.1 to GIMP 2.6.2
=================================================

* Bugs fixed:

 557950 – Scaling in Gimp 2.6 is much slower than in Gimp 2.4
 558215 – unit and zoom entries in Statusbar not visible
 558451 – Cannot build GIMP using Sun CC on Solaris 2.8
 558420 – projection incorrect with alpha-less layers
 556603 – Zoom region always zooms in center of image
 557870 – "Qmask" message popping up here and there
 557705 – compatibility with GEGL > 0.0.20
 556248 – Scaling gives 'jagged' edges
 556804 – Zoom drop down doesn't update
 524615 – Print not to scale
 555246 – gimp crashes when a file is opened while a preview is generating
 556741 – Alpha layer automatically added (in psd format)
 556182 – Could you please explain a few strings [I18N]
 555697 – build fails if configured with --without-libjpeg
 134956 – Curves tool doesn't save free curves

* Updated translations:

 Czech (cs)
 Danish (da)
 Finnish (fi)
 French (fr)
 Japanese (ja)
 Polish (pl)
 Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR)
 Swedish (sv)
 Simplified Chinese (zh_CN)

Overview of Changes from GIMP 2.6.0 to GIMP 2.6.1
=================================================

* Bugs fixed:

 555587 – PSD file crashes PSD plug-in
 555222 – PSD Load Plugin: unsupported compression mode
 555362 – gimp-remote is not working properly
 555280 – some gif files will not be open
 554890 – JPEG Save Options Dialog does not remember
 554966 – Gimp crashes creating a new image using a template
 554785 – Compile failure on uri-backend-libcurl
 554646 – Opening Help crashes GIMP with lqr-plugin installed
 553534 – centering issues after image scaling and setting zoom
 554898 – Compile failure on uri-backend-wget.c

* Updated translations:

 Belarusian (be)
 Catalan (ca)
 Finnish (fi)
 French (fr)
 Japanese (ja)
 Macedonian (mk)
 Punjab (pa)
 Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR)
 Romanian (ro)
 Slovenian (sl)
 Swedish (sv)

Network Setting:

The little Icon that shows if we are connected to the router has had features added like VPN.

Graphics:

On the Lenovo ThinkStation Nvidia graphics driver (proprietary) is now fully operational and there is a control panel for that.

System > Administration > Nvidia X Server Setting.

Very nice, you can even monitor the temperature of the chip.

Blender:

The latest Blender version is also in Ibex!

Quit:

The Quit button is now integrated with logging in and out. To update to this change also required a reboot.

Printing Issues:

8.04 to 8.10:

Since this is a fairly minor update I would guess that the vast majority of the articles on this blog that were written for Hardy will work for Ibex.

Upgrade Notes:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes

Release Notes:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810

This HOW TO is for those who want to run the newest version of Blender In Ubuntu.

Your best bet is to simply Update Ubuntu to Ibex. If you can not do that for some reason here is a possible work around.

Builds:
amd64

i386

lpia

Or at least version 2.46 depending on when you read this…

Because the W Grant repos do not contain the 64 bit blender anymore we have added this new post.

This is an advanced technique for adding the latest Blender to Hardy Heron Ubuntu.

Essentially the technique uses the APT-GET command to add the Intrepid Ibex Blender Package to Hardy Heron.

NOTE: You would definitely want to use this trick at your own risk.

According to rickyrockrat: “You are mixing repositories, so you can get into dependency hell. I’ve not personally had it happen, but never want it to.

You’ll try to update one thing, and apt will grab the latest version, then it will start down the dependency tree. If you start to ‘fix’ this tree, you could wind up down a dark hole fast.

Bottom line is this is a major hack, and I’m lucky it worked in the first place! It’s kinda like using a screwdriver for a prybar. Does it work? Is it designed to be used that way? No. Don’t tempt Murpy!”

Temporarily add (to /etc/apt/sources.list):

System > Administration > Software Sources > Third Party Software

Copy this:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid universe

Click the Add button and paste then click the Add Source button.

Copy this:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid main

Click the Add button and paste then click the Add Source button.

Click the Close button.

Click the Reload button.

Note: Be sure to un-check these two lines when you are done.

Run apt-get update:

Open the terminal: Applications > Accessories > Terminal.

We had un-installed Blender so we ran this command in the Terminal:

sudo apt-get install blender

Follow the on screen instructions (we had to click “y” and then the “Enter” key).

If you did not remove Blender you might try this command:

sudo apt-get upgrade blender

If you have blender 2.45 installed:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install blender

Once the program is installed and you should un-check the two Intrepid Ibex entries.

If you do not, you could run into complications for your Ubuntu system.

System > Administration > Software Sources > Password > Third Party Software >

Un-check the two Intrepid Ibex entries…

Then in the Terminal:

sudo apt-get update.

-

VitalBodies would like to thank rickyrockrat for sharing this technique!

And Blender.org

SEE THE LATEST POSTS ABOUT BLENDER FOR AN UPDATE: CLICK > BLENDER

For our example we will use the 3D program Blender.

Open the Terminal:
Applications > Accessories > Terminal
Copy this code:
file /usr/bin/blender-bin
Paste: (Edit > Paste) the code into the Terminal.
Execute The Code: Press the Enter key on the keyboard.
You should see something like this:

/usr/bin/blender-bin: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, 

x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), 

for GNU/Linux 2.6.8, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

What about other programs?

file /usr/bin/ADD PROGRAM NAME HERE

Example: (inkscape)

file /usr/bin/inkscape

/usr/bin/inkscape: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, 

x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), 

for GNU/Linux 2.6.8, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

What if this does not work?

For example, blender does not work but blender-bin does work.

Navigate to the /usr/bin folder.

Places > Computer > File System > usr > bin

And see if you can figure out what the correct name of the program might be.

UPDATE:

Example: What about Firefox?

For Firefox you might only see an icon or what is called a symbolic link as the terminal will confirm.

file /usr/bin/firefox
/usr/bin/firefox: symbolic link to `firefox-3.0'

So if we try right clicking on the icon and we look at the properties we can see the target is../lib/firefox-3.0.6.

So if we try that in the terminal we will see that the file in question is a directory:

file /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.6
/usr/lib/firefox-3.0.6: directory

In the directory we can see that there is an icon for Firefox. So let’s try that in the terminal.

file /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.6/firefox
/usr/lib/firefox-3.0.6/firefox: ELF 64-bit LSB executable,
x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.6.8,
dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

And so we have our answer!

]]> http://www.vitalbodies.com/blog/2008/07/26/how-to-tell-if-an-application-is-64-bit-in-ubuntu-hardy-heron/feed/ 6 http://www.vitalbodies.com/blog/2008/07/25/how-to-install-blender-246-in-ubuntu-hardy-heron/ http://www.vitalbodies.com/blog/2008/07/25/how-to-install-blender-246-in-ubuntu-hardy-heron/#comments Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:42:19 +0000 vitalbodies http://vitalbodies.wordpress.com/?p=580 How To Install Blender 2.46 In Ubuntu Hardy Heron

UPDATE: THIS METHOD NO LONGER WORKS AS THE DEB IS NO LONGER IN W GRANTS REPOS…

SEE THE LATEST POSTS ABOUT BLENDER FOR AN UPDATE: CLICK > BLENDER

This HOW TO is for those who want to run the newest version of Blender In Ubuntu.

Builds:
amd64
i386
lpia

Or at least version 2.46 depending on when you read this…

System > Administration > Software Sources > Password > Third Party Software > Add >

Copy the command below and paste the command (Ctrl V) into the Add form.

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

Click Add Source.

Click the Add button again.

Copy the command below and paste the command (Ctrl V) into the Add form.

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/wgrant/ubuntu hardy main

Click Add Source.

Click Close > Reload

Next Applications > Add/Remove… >Show: Installed Applications > Search Blender >

(You may need to uninstall Blender and then reinstall)

Enable (install) Blender by putting a check in the Check Box and then click Apply Changes.

You may get a warning that the Software Can Not Be Authenticated.

If you wish to install click Apply.

-

VitalBodies would like to thank W Grant for making this possible!

https://launchpad.net/~wgrant/+archive

And Blender.org

How does one install fonts in Wine? The answer is simpler than you think!

Applications > Wine > Browse C:\ Drive.

Navigate to: Windows > Fonts.

VitalBodies ended up here: /home/username/.wine/drive_c/windows/Fonts

Copy and paste your fonts in into the Fonts folder.

See, that was easy.

Font Stuff From the Wine User Guide: http://winehq.org/site/docs/wineusr-guide/index

Font Stuff From the Wine Wiki: http://wiki.winehq.org/

2.7. What is this “winetricks” thing? Where do I get it?

winetricks is a shell script that downloads missing DLLs and fonts for you from the best known source. It was written to help Wine developers, but it turned out to be useful for end users, too. See the wiki page about winetricks for more info.

2.31. Using wine over remote X11 sessions and No text or damaged text displayed

Please make sure not have added any fonts to wine. Font conflicts can sometimes cause a similar issue. If a fresh wine prefix.(A copy of wine that nothing has been done to yet) Is having this problem. Try setting following in registry

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\X11 Driver]
"ClientSideWithRender"="N"

Place above in text file and it can be inserted into registry by “regedit settings.txt”.

This was report as been required of OS X on the 1 Dec 2007. This may change. Please apply only as required.

2.32. How can I make Wine fonts anti-aliased?

^TODO

2.33. How do I change font size / DPI ?

First, you should try editing with winecfg. Go to the Graphics tab, and slide the “Screen Resolution” slider accordingly. Changes will not effect the winecfg window until you restart it.

If windows and fonts are so big you can’t get to the controls in winecfg, see the next question

2.34. Wine’s windows and fonts are extremely large, and the whole window can’t fit on the screen

Sometimes you can use the ALT key and the mouse to move the window so you can run winecfg and fix this as described in the previous question

If that doesn’t work, you can shut down your windows applications and change the registry value the hard way:

wineserver -k
sed -i 's@"LogPixels"=.*@"LogPixels"=dword:00000060@g' ~/.wine/system.reg

Alternately, you could remove your ~/.wine directory and reinstall your Windows applications.

Visit WineHQ.org

-

VitalBodies Guides – The How Tos Of Fonts In Ubuntu

Advanced Font Information: At some point you might want to consider where you what your fonts and if you need them to be System Wide or Per User Account.

Secret Locations Of Fonts:

The secret locations of your fonts whereabouts are defined in /etc/fonts/fonts.conf.

gedit /etc/fonts/fonts.conf

Standard Locations:

/usr/share/fonts

/usr/local/share/fonts

/home/<username>/.fonts (where <username> is your user name).

Note that the .font folder is a hidden folder.

Places > Home Folder > View > Show Hidden Files.

System Wide: If you add them system-wide, then new users can use them. Below is the default location for system wide fonts.

/usr/local/share/fonts

Per User Account: You can create a .fonts directory in your /home folder if there in not one there already. Put all of the fonts you want in the user account in the .fonts folder. This would allow the fonts to used by one user and allow for backing them up if you only back up the home folder. the fonts will only be accessible by your user account, thus, new users will have to add fonts to their own accounts. Below is the default location for Per User Account

/home/<username>/.fonts (where <username> is your user name).

Note that the .font folder is a hidden folder.

Places > Home Folder > View > Show Hidden Files.

Reconfiguring Your Font Settings In Ubuntu Hardy Heron:

The command below does a clean up of your font configuration and should be used at your own risk.

	sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig

Learn more: dpkg Help On Ubuntu Hardy Heron.

Defoma:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure defoma
man defoma

NAME
defoma – Debian Font Manager, a framework for automatic font configura‐
tion.

SYNOPSIS
defoma-font [options] command args..
defoma-app [options] command args..
defoma-subst [options] command args..

DESCRIPTION
Defoma stands for Debian Font Manager.  It  provides  a  framework  for
automatic  font  configuration.  This manpage introduces general Defoma
concepts, please refer  the  manpage  of  defoma-font,  defoma-app,  or
defoma-subst for the detailed information of each command.

Fonts  are used by numerous applications, but generally need to be con‐
figured separately for each application. Defoma solves this problem  by
calling  configuration  scripts  to  update  the  font configuration of
applications whenever a font is installed or removed.

A Defoma-configuration script is a perl library that  each  application
should       install       as       application-name.defoma       under
/usr/share/defoma/scripts and which configures a font for that applica‐
tion. The following is an example of a script named foo.defoma.

@ACCEPT_CATEGORIES = qw(type1 truetype);

package foo;

sub type1 {
my $com = shift;
…
}

sub truetype {
my $com = shift;
…
}

1;

This  example  represents  an  application  foo that wants to configure
truetype and type1 category fonts. A function by the same name  as  the
relevant category is called by Defoma with a command as the first argu‐
ment, and then additional arguments depending on the command.  The fol‐
lowing is a list of commands.

* register
* unregister
* do-install-real do-install-alias do-install-subst
* do-remove-real do-remove-alias do-remove-subst
* init
* term
* purge

do-install-*  and  do-remove-*  commands are only called from Id cache.
init and term are called at the start and end (respectively) of the en‐
tire process.

Id cache is another feature of Defoma. A common problem during automat‐
ic configuration is name space conflicts. Usually  applications  access
fonts through logical font names (like XLFDs and PostScript font names)
rather than the fonts themselves  (as  font  filenames).  Logical  font
names,  called  identifiers  in  Defoma, can easily conflict especially
when font aliases are permitted. Through the Id cache  mechanism,  only
one  font  is actually installed for each identifier even if it is pro‐
vided by several fonts.

Id Substitution is an additional feature of Id  cache.   It  selects  a
font  to provide an id specified by a rulefile.  The rulefile describes
rules giving required ids and their hints.  A rule is used to have more
similar-looking  fonts  with  the  same characters substitute for a re‐
quired id. This feature can also be used for the  purpose  of  grouping
fonts into different categories.

A  category represents  a type of font. Generally fonts that belong to
the same category are configured the same way.

Hints represent essential font  information  and  typeface  information
about  the font.  They consist of some HintTypes and their values. They
can be specified from the  command  line  options  of  defoma-font,  or
through a hintfile.

Hintfile describes one or more fonts and their hints in a single file.
It is supposed to be put under /etc/defoma/hints as a conffile, so that
users can modify the hints.
Below  is an example hintfile.  defoma-hints is a tool to help generat‐
ing hints as well as the hintfile, so you do not  have  to  create  one
from scratch.

category type1
begin /usr/share/fonts/type1/foo.pfa
FontName = Helvetica
Charset = ISO8859-1
Family = Helvetica
Weight = Medium
Shape = Upright NoSerif
GeneralFamily = SansSerif
X-FontName = -urw-helvetica-medium-r-noraml–0-0-0-0-p-iso8859-1
end
begin /usr/share/fonts/type1/foob.pfa
FontName = Helvetica-Bold
Charset = ISO8859-1
Family = Helvetica
Weight = Bold
Shape = Upright NoSerif
GeneralFamily = SansSerif
X-FontName = -urw-helvetica-bold-r-noraml–0-0-0-0-p-iso8859-1
end

SEE ALSO
defoma-font(1).    defoma-app(1).   defoma-subst(1).   defoma-hints(1).
defoma-psfont-installer(1).  defoma-reconfigure(1).  Defoma::Font(3pm).
Defoma::Id(3pm).        Defoma::Subst(3pm).        Defoma::Common(3pm).
/usr/share/doc/defoma-doc/developers.html/index.html
/usr/share/doc/defoma-doc/defoma-script.html/index.html

March  4, 2001                       defoma(1)

More Font Information:

For more detailed Font Information: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Fonts

Xfree86 Font Information: http://www.xfree86.org/current/fonts.html

-

VitalBodies Guides – The How Tos Of Fonts In Ubuntu

The terminal command below will only install the MS Core fonts rather than ALL of the fonts an artist may have used to create documents. For example, a CorelDraw user may have over 1000 fonts that comes with CorelDraw. VitalBodies is attempting to move away from using proprietary fonts like the fonts owned by MS but we understand that not all users are able to do so.

The graphical way to install (or uninstall) these fonts:

Applications > Add/Remove… Show: All Available Applications > Search: Fonts > Enable:

Microsoft Core Fonts:
Installer for Microsoft TrueType core fonts
This package allows for easy installation of the Microsoft True Type Core Fonts for the Web including:
Andale Mono Arial Black Arial (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) Comic Sans MS (Bold) Courier New (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) Georgia (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) Impact Times New Roman (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) Trebuchet (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) Verdana (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) Webdings
You will need an Internet connection to download these fonts if you don’t already have them.

From the Ubuntu Wiki: “The msttcorefonts package contains the Microsoft freeware (non-Free because they are non-modifiable) web fonts. (Note: Most Microsoft fonts are included in this package; however, it does not include Tahoma or Arial Narrow. For more information on installing msttcorefonts please refer to RestrictedFormats”

Learn More About MS Core Fonts Controversy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web

sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

-

VitalBodies Guides – The How Tos Of Fonts In Ubuntu

Did you know you can create and edit fonts too? You could create a new unique font and offer that font for everyone in the world to use. Or perhaps you need to view, compare or manage fonts…

In Ubuntu Applications > Add/Remove… >

Show:

Supported Applications, All Open Source Applications, Third Party Applications or All Available Applications.

Search: Fonts

Then add a check to the check box of the application you want to install, click Apply Changes and then Apply and type you password and click Close.

Font Related Tools:

FontForge:

Font editor for PS, TrueType and OpenType fonts
FontForge (formerly PfaEdit) allows you to edit outline and bitmap fonts. You can create new ones or modify old ones. It is also a font format converter and can convert among PostScript (ASCII & binary Type 1, some Type 3s, some Type 0s), TrueType, and OpenType (Type2), CID-keyed, SVG, CFF and multiple-master fonts.
This package also provides these programs and utilities: fontimage – produce a font thumbnail image; mensis – examine and modify some of the tables in a truetype or opentype font; sfddiff – compare two font files; showttf – decompose a font file into its various tables and display it.

http://fontforge.sourceforge.net

Specimen Font Previewer:

Simple font preview and compare application for Gnome
A simple tool to view and compare fonts installed on your system. It has currently following features,
* A list of all fonts available (the left pane)
* A list of font previews (the right pane)
* Configurable preview text and font size
* Configurable foreground and background colors used in the preview pane

This application is provided by the Ubuntu community.
Homepage: http://uwstopia.nl/geek/projects/gnome-specimen

Fonty Python:

A GUI tool to manage ttf fonts
FontyPython is a GUI tool to manage ttf fonts on GNU/Linux system. It is written in Python and WxWidgets.
You can collect any fonts together (even ones not in your system font folders) into ‘pogs’ and then install and remove the pogs as you need them. In this way you can control what fonts are in your user font folder – thus avoiding long lists of fonts in the font chooser dialogues of your application.

This application is provided by the Ubuntu community.
Homepage: https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/fontypython

Waterfall:
View all characters of a font in all sizes
This program facilitates comparison of various fonts and font rendering parameters.
It displays sample lines of text in sizes from 5 to 36px simultaneously and allows changing of font size range and increment, hinting, autohinting, anti-aliasing, subpixel smoothing, and aspect, immediately showing the changes on the screen. All Unicode characters are divided into blocks of 128 characters, and user can choose block of 128 characters to use as sample line of text.

This application is provided by the Ubuntu community.

FSF:

http://directory.fsf.org/category/fonts/

FontImage:

http://fontforge.sourceforge.net/fontimage.html

-

VitalBodies Guides – The How Tos Of Fonts In Ubuntu

Are they being held captive?

Secret Locations:

The secret locations of your fonts whereabouts are defined in /etc/fonts/fonts.conf.

gedit /etc/fonts/fonts.conf

Standard Locations:

/usr/share/fonts

/usr/local/share/fonts

/home/<username>/.fonts (where <username> is your user name).

Note that the .font folder is a hidden folder.

Places > Home Folder > View > Show Hidden Files.

-

VitalBodies Guides – The How Tos Of Fonts In Ubuntu

	sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config

Copy the command above.

Open the terminal: Applications > Accessories > Terminal

Paste the command: Edit > Paste

Press the Enter Key on your keyboard > type in your password > Press the Enter Key on your keyboard.

Configure some of the settings Ubuntu uses when handling fonts.

Configuring Fonts:

Screen Rendering: You can set how Ubuntu handles screen rendering of fonts: Native, Autohinter None.

Subpixel Rendering: You can set how Ubuntu handles Subpixel Rendering: Automatic, Always or Never.

Enabling Bitmapped Fonts Or Outline Fonts: You can Enable Bitmapped Fonts or continue to use outline fonts in Ubuntu if you want to.

-

VitalBodies Guides – The How Tos Of Fonts In Ubuntu