An alternative after the closing of 64-bit Adobe Flash Player September 11, 2010
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: 64-bit, adobe, Desktop
9 comments
EDIT: A new 64-bit alpha release for flash has been released on Nov 30 2010. The original 64-bit Howto adapted. This post is about using the 32-bit version on 64-bit GNU/Linux.
The success of my post on how to install the beta 64-bit Flash Player worries me a little: over 160000+ views since publication (around Ubuntu 9.04). The combination of 32-bit flash, a wrapper and 64-bit Firefox, was/is problematic and crash-prone. Using the 64-bit alpha/beta flash binaries was a good-working alternative for the many 64-bit users (why install 32-bit when you paid for a 64-bit processor?) that for one reason or another needed flash.
Adobe, when confronted with a security-related bug, chose to get rid of Flash Player 10 altogether and push an upgrade to 10.1. Sadly, this meant the end of the beta program with no date on a 64-bit solution (may be somewhere in the future). In the mean time, running the old beta is an option. However, the security bug is still there. Adobe released a new 64-bit preview release of Flash.
A workaround, that does not feel like one, is running chromium – the free sibling of Google’s chrome – with 32-bit flash. Chromium architecture tames the normally crashy 32-bit flash by running flash as a separate process. It works fine and stable. What a surprise… and everything can be installed from the Ubuntu repositories.
To install chromium and 32-bit flash on your 64-bit computer do this from a terminal (Accessoires-Terminal):
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser flashplugin-installer
Now you can run flash on you 64-bit computer without worrying about the security vulnerability of the previous Flash version.
Upgrade to OpenOffice.org 3 on Ubuntu 8.10 October 31, 2008
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: Desktop, office, OO.o, openoffice.org, Ubuntu
5 comments
The brand-new Ubuntu has OpenOffice 2.4 in its repositories. In case you prefer to use the more recent OpenOffice.org 3, you can upgrade with these steps.
A bibliography manager for *n*x: JabRef September 16, 2008
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: bibliography, Desktop, JabRef, Linux, research, UNIX
4 comments
I have been pretty busy lately (that’s why I haven’t posted a lot). I started writing a PhD dissertation. In order to sort the hundreds of books, articles and original sources I had a quick look at free and open source bibliography applications for *n*x. I was sure I would need to write my own (a light-weight db and a java swing interface) to get the fields I need and have strong search capabilities (SQL). Luckily, I was wrong.
OpenJDK Swing in Gtk clothing: getting there? June 2, 2008
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: Desktop, GNU/Linux, Java, Linux, swing
1 comment so far
Sun has a golden opportunity to make the dream of Desktop java reality. Although java is predominant for enterprise applications and on the server room, java on the Deskop – whatever Sun claims – is not a reality.
Things have changed since the days of over-hyped applets. Java SE 6 is nice and getting better and swing – and java in general – have made huge speed improvement (hotspot and co.). More important, java is now free.
