Additional links:

• release announcement
• release notes
• download page

You can see there a bunch of *.json files.

If you use more than one machine or you’ve recently changed / reinstalled your OS and you want to restore the old bookmarks, you need to import them manually:

• backup your bookmarks files to a safe location e.g.
  cp -r ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/bookmarkbackups user@other_machine:~

• on your new / other machine, open firefox then go to Organize Bookmarks
• go to Import and Backup –> Restore and choose the most recent file from the list of *.json files that you previously copied

That’s it. You can now use your bookmarks. There are, of course, other (more elegant) solutions such as using a browser addon (e.g. Xmarks) but some people are concerned about privacy, or they just don’t want to complicate things.

Links:

• changelog
• download page for all platforms

You can download the magazine or browse it online.

I could use an unofficial repo, such as Remi, to get the updates more quickly, but the easiest way for me is to use the precompiled binaries from Mozilla, available for download as a tar.bz2 archive. This way, I’ll always get notified when an update is available and –just two clicks away — I’ll be running the latest version.

Here’s how you can do it:

• download the archive to /opt
  $ cd /opt ; wget ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/3.1.2/linux-i686/en-US/thunderbird-3.1.2.tar.bz2
• unpack it
  tar jxvf thunderbird-3.1.2.tar.bz2
• remove the tarball
  rm thunderbird-3.1.2.tar.bz2
• run it using
  /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird
• add a launcher to the panel — Right click on the main panel –> Add to Panel –> Custom Application Launcher –> Add

You can choose an icon for the new launcher from

That’s it. Make sure you configure it to automatically check for updates (Edit –> Preferences –> Advanced –> Update) and you’ll always run the latest version:

Updated packages to fix these bugs were released 2 weeks ago, but the users were not prompted to install them, since the update applet was broken. Users who perform manual updates using yum are not affected.

To fix your system, you need to run yum as root:

• to update all packages:
  yum –skip-broken update
• to install updated versions to fix the two issues:
  yum –skip-broken update gnome-packagekit selinux-policy

After the installation a reboot is required / recommended depending on the option you choose.

More details on Fedora Project mailing list.

Yesterday, August 3^rd, two Linux recovery operating systems received minor updates: my favorite, RIPLinuX (10.7) and another OS which I wrote about a while ago, Parted Magic (5.2).

The changelog files show these new releases include bug fixes, minor enhancements and updated versions for the main packages (e.g. partitioning tools).

Changelog for RIP LinuX:

http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/Changelog

Changelog for Parted Magic:

http://partedmagic.com/change-log/158-parted-magic-52.html

I’ve always been amazed by these lightweight Linux distributions (~100MB) which you can use for almost anything. Not only do they provide tools to help you troubleshoot your system, but they can also be used as regular OS’s for browsing the Internet, chatting with friends or even listening to music.

So although I generally agree with the saying, I can admit – in this case – that size doesn’t always matter.

Ubuntu users go crazy. They create Launchpad accounts just to get access to this new font before August 8th.

Why?

Beats me. Yes, it is a nice font, I can admit that, but it’s just a font, isn’t it?

You can find more details here.

The above update alias will execute ‘sudo yum update’ each time it is run from a terminal. In a similar manner, more complex aliases can be defined.

Each time my_script is executed, it checks for the machine’s hostname and warns if the output is the default localhost.localdomain.

Running ‘alias‘ displays the current aliases for the user’s session.

An alias can be unset using the unalias command.

So, what do you do to run the latest version?

Compile it yourself, of course.

How?

1. Download the latest version (1.1.2)
2. Unpack it and cd to the newly created folder (vlc-1.1.2). Here you will find the README file and the installation instructions (same as here)
3. Compile it. I recommend creating a new path (e.g. /opt/vlc) to use it as the installation PREFIX

• ./configure –prefix=/opt/vlc
• make
• su -c "make install"

Issues?

• Running ./configure can fail if there are missing dependencies. Install them, then try again. I had to install the following packages before running configure successfully:

• make sure you have pulseaudio-libs-devel and alsa-lib-devel installed to compile vlc with pulseaudio/alsa support

After a successful installation you can start vlc with /opt/vlc/bin/vlc. Enjoy.