Inspired by two popular Mac applications; Spotlight and Quicksilver, David Siegel has developed GNOME Do as a part of his university course which afterward became a popular application for Linux.
With GNOME Do, you can quickly launch an application just by typing the application’s name. It’s not just restricted to applications. You also can search and open webpage, Firefox bookmarks, files, album in Rhythmbox and etc. Everything is just on your finger tips. Type the things you one in GNOME Do and launch it. You can extend the functionality of GNOME Do by installing extra plugins such as Banshee, Pidgin, Google Calculator and Tomboy.
Install GNOME Do in Ubuntu 8.04:
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About two weeks after the release of the first beta version, here comes Banshee 1.0 Beta 2. Same as before,three new features has been added in this released and over 28 bugs have been fixed since beta 1.
New Features:
Podcast Support
With Banshee 1.0 Beta 2, you can subscribe to your favorite audio and video podcasts, and search and browse your podcasts the same way you do your Music Library.Banshee will stream the audio or video so you don’t have to wait for it to download first.
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Ubuntu system doesn’t come with something like Mac OSX widgets or Windows Vista gadgets by default. However, you can get this feature by installing software called Screenlets.Screenlets are small applications written in python which can be put anywhere on your desktop. With the released of Screenlets 0.1.1, support for web widgets (widgets which are written in HTML, JavaScript and CSS, similar to Mac OSX widgetst) and Google Gadgets were added. With the widget plugin for Compiz Fusion, you can show and hide the Screenlets the same way you can with Mac OSX widgets. Screenlets include a bunch of preferences like keep above, keep below, lock a screenlet, make it sticky and set it as widget.
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Before this, I have talked about installing the greatest Linux distribution Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 here. Alternatively, you can use VirtualBox to install Ubuntu 8.04 under your windows environment.
VirtualBox
VirtualBox is a X86 virtualization software package developed by Sun Microsystems Inc. You can get VirtualBox for free since it is released under GPL license. Click here to go to the download page.
Requirements
- Intel or AMD processor.
- 1 GB of Memory. 512 MB will work but you might experience bad performance.
- Enough free hard disk space.
- A supported host operating system. Windows (primarily XP) or Linux distributions on 32-bit hosts and on 64-bit hosts. (Support for Mac OS X is currently in development)
- A supported guest operating system. Click here to check the list.
You can check the tutorial on how to install Ubuntu 8.04 using VirtualBox here. This graphical tutorial will show you steps that you need to follow to get Ubuntu 8.04 works under Windows Vista.
On May 6, 2007 first beta version of Banshee 1.0 has been released to the public. In this released, three new features has been added and over 30 bugs has been fixed.
New Features:
- MTP and iPod device support: Now you can drag and drop the music and video files from your library to your device and it will be synced immediately. Album art will also be synced. Banshee also will convert the files to format which your player supports automatically. Alternatively, you can set what format and quality of the files you want.
- Smart by Default: The default smart playlist and other predefined smart playlist can be edited and created from the New Smart Playlist dialog.
- Minimode: Minimode is a view extension which enable Banshee to be displayed in a smaller windows. Minimode can be enable using the extension manager .
- Fullscreen video is now supported.
Installation
Ubuntu: For Ubuntu user, please read my previous post.
Fedora: Install via yum: yum install banshee
Foresight 2.0: Install banshee-1 from PackageKit, or in a terminal type, sudo conary update banshee-1
OpenSUSE 10.3:
For those who want to try Ubuntu but don’t want to leave your windows for some reasons, you might want to check this tutorial by Robert Cain. This step by step tutorial will teach you how to setup and install the latest Ubuntu 8.04 using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007.
Requirements
- You need to have Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 installed obviously. If you don’t have virtual pc, you can get it at Microsoft website for free. Click here to get Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
- Ubuntu 8.04 iso image.To get Ubuntu 8.04, go to Ubuntu official website to download the iso image. Click here to go to download page.
Thats all you need to run Ubuntu 8.04 without leaving your windows environment. If you are ready to give a try, click here to read the tutorial. Good luck.
