Install Gnome Do from PPA in 9.10

I always like to have the latest and greatest of Gnome Do. This can be achieved by installing from their PPA. These instructions are for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala so they may not work with older versions. Follow the steps below if you want to install Gnome Do from PPA.

1. Open System > Administration > Software Sources
2. Click Other Software tab and then click the Add button.
3. Add these two lines one by one.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

4. Click Close and then Reload. It will complain about a GPG error but we will fix that in the next steps.
5. Open up a terminal and input these commands.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 77558DD0
sudo apt-get update

6. Now you can install Gnome Do with this command.

sudo apt-get install gnome-do

Congratulations! You now will have the latest Gnome Do installed on your system. Now when the next release of Gnome Do happens you will get it right away instead of waiting for it to be put into mainstream.

Ubuntu Google Web Toolkit Setup

It's easy to get started with the Google Web Toolkit and Ubuntu 9.04. There are a couple of steps you will want to take to ensure a proper setup.

First let me start by mentioning that the easiest way to do this is to use Eclipse. Eclipse is a full-featured Java IDE. Many complain that it is too slow, crashes, etc. Since Google developed a plugin for Eclipse and most likely their software engineers are using it, I think it would be best to use it as well. Now on to the actual steps.

Get Eclipse Installed and Working

1. Don't use synaptic to install Eclipse. If you already have it installed through synaptic that's okay, but you will have two versions of Eclipse on your computer.
2. Download the latest copy of Eclipse at http://www.eclipse.org/downloads. Don't worry about all the different versions. Just download the Eclipse Classic at the bottom of the list.
3. Extract to a directory on your hard drive. I happen to put all of my programs that I install manually in a folder, /home/username/Software. This helps me keep track of all my programs I've installed manually.
4. You should be able to start Eclipse either through the command line (after you change to the directory) or by double-clicking eclipse inside of the folder.

Install Google Web Toolkit Plugin

1. Start Eclipse if you haven't already.
2. Help > Install new software...
3. Click the add button. Put GWT Plugin for name and paste in for the url:
   
   

   http://dl.google.com/eclipse/plugin/3.5

4. Check the boxes labeled Plugin and SDKs. 
5. Follow through the wizard. You will have to agree to the license.
6. Once you finish with that window you will want to restart Eclipse. After that you can begin working with GWT in Ubuntu.

This worked for me on 32bit and 64bit Ubuntu. Hopefully you will be able to start building your Google Web Toolkit applications in Ubuntu.

Upgrade Ubuntu Desktop from 8.10 to 9.04

Doing a distribution upgrade always makes me feel uncertain. I used to use another flavour of Linux that was very poor at upgrading. In fact, every time I tried to upgrade between versions it broke. I ended up doing a clean install every time there was a new version. Since switching to Ubuntu I have not had that problem, but I must be scarred from my previous experiences because I still get uneasy about upgrading. I have even waited to make sure that other people can do successful upgrades.

Ubuntu makes it dead simple to perform a distribution upgrade. All one really needs to do is to run update-manager. Generally this runs each time after you start up to check for upgrades but you may have disabled that. Once the program finds that there is a new distribution there is a button that can be pressed to perform a distribution upgrade. Even though the upgrade is seamless I suggest making a backup before you perform the upgrade. You should see some similar screens on your computer that I have posted here. You pretty much let it work and at the end it will want you to reboot.

If you have a successful reboot then the upgrade went fine. If you had some issues then you may want to check out the Ubuntu forums or try to google it.

9.04 Ubuntu Netbook Remix

So I just got an Asus 1000HA and I just had to put the netbook version of Jaunty on it. This was actually very easy to do by way of this tutorial. Having such a portable computer has never been better.

Of course the default install is lacking as far as applications goes. Once I have all of the applications that I use installed, I'll give a run down of what I did after the installation. For now, I'm just happy that it installed just fine without having to do anything special.

Just 2 days left for Ubuntu 9.04

I have been pleasantly surprised with the improvements to Ubuntu. I have been using the Beta since its release on my computer at work. I have only experienced a couple of issues related to printing, but printing is not a huge issue for me. What have been your experiences with Ubuntu 9.04? What do you like, or not like? Leave a comment below.

Passwordless SSH

So you have a bunch of Ubuntu servers and you use SSH to do administrative tasks on the machines. It is beginning to be a pain to always type the password each time you login to a server. You want a way where you can log straight in without having to type a password. That is where key authentication comes in. You can use a program to generate a public and private key for your computer. You can then distribute your public key to each of your servers and then your authentication will come from the keys and not from a password. Please read through these steps carefully and you can have these useful passwordless SSH logins.

1. Install OpenSSH on your computer and all of the servers (You probably have done this already).
   

   sudo apt-get install openssh-server

2. Generate your public and private keys. When it asks for a passphrase leave it empty.
   

   ssh-keygen -t rsa

3. You now need to distribute your public key (~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub) to each servers .ssh/authorized_keys file. This can be done in several ways.
   
4. If you have not made the authorized_keys file on the server you can do this:
   

   scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub username@servername:.ssh/authorized_keys

5. If you have other entires in the authorized_keys folder then you can use cut and paste between two text editors. Open ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub in the text editor of your choice on your computer. Open a normal SSH session on the server and open the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys in nano, vi, or any other terminal text editor. Copy the text straight from the text editor on your computer to the terminal window. Make sure that it ends up as one line in the authorized_keys file.

WARNING: Not setting a password on your keys can pose a security risk. IF someone were to get your private key they could pose as YOUR computer and access the servers just like you do. Guard your private key with your life.

You can even set this for other users on the server as well as the root user. It is considered a bad practice to log in as root unless you are doing serious administrative tasks. If you run into problems after copying your public key onto your server, just simply move your keys out of your .ssh folder and then you can login to the server using your password to fix the issue. In that case make sure that your public key was all on one line.

Installing Komodo Edit 5

Here is another useful tip for having a good development environment. Since there are many Integrated Development Environments on the market I have been going through each one to see what I like and don't like. I have tested many different IDEs available for PHP programming and I have come to like Komodo-Edit. This is the light (free) version of the Komodo IDE 5 program. Since this is not available via a repository let me show you how to install this into your Ubuntu system.

1. Download the latest release for Linux by visiting this link (click the link that says download now).
2. If you are using the gnome desktop you can right-click and select extract here or you can extract using the tar command.

   tar zxvf Komodo-Edit-5.0.3-2767-linux-libcpp6-x86.tar.gz

3. Open up a terminal and move to that directory using cd. Mine is on my desktop so the command looks like this:

   cd Desktop/Komodo-Edit-5.0.3-2767-linux-libcpp6-x86/

4. Now run:

   sh install.sh

5. When you are asked where you would like to install it go ahead and type the directory to where it should be installed. Personally I put all custom installs into a folder called Software in my home directory:

   /home/myuser/Software/Komodo-Edit-5

6. Once it finishes you still have one more step, inserting the executable into your PATH variable. This can be done with a simple command:

   sudo ln -s "/home/myuser/Software/Komodo-Edit-5/bin/komodo" /usr/local/bin/komodo

I have tested Komodo Edit on both x86 and x86_64 and it works fine even on the 64 bit system. If you get frustrated with other IDE setups go ahead and check out Komodo Edit, it may be your next best editor. By the way you can also edit Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, Javascript, CSS, XHTML, and some template languages besides PHP.