Month: April 2016

Ubuntu 16.04 is finally out!

2016-04-21 / Muaad Elsharif / 0 Comments

Finally! The much anticipated Ubuntu 16.04 is out! I’ve been waiting for months for this new release! Thank god it’s finally out!

The wait is FINALLY over!!

So what makes this release very special?

New features in Ubuntu 16.04

Introduces “snaps” for new robust, secure app format
Introduces LXD pure-container hypervisor with OpenStack Mitaka
Supports IBM Z and LinuxONE systems with flat pricing
Steps towards converged Ubuntu across IOT, Phone, Desktop and Server
Introduces ZFS and CephFS for large-scale cloud storage .
New Linux Kernel 4.4

New installation media!

For the first time, Ubuntu will be shipped on USB Installation Disk rather than the usual CD/DVD that has been used since the beginning, and will cost around 6.5$ per disk (shipping not included), credit for this goes to omgubuntu.
If you cant buy it or won’t, here is my tutorial on making your own Ubuntu USB disk, but I’d love to have one of those to be honest!!

Other flavors of Ubuntu are out today as well! So feel free to check your flavor’s website! Most get 3 years updates unless you crave Kubuntu!
Now we come to my personal favorite part, downloading Ubuntu!

Download

To download the ISO image click here, 1.5 GB.
There is also a torrent link for Ubuntu, which is better for the servers (not sure how!)
I’m personally downloading Ubuntu Gnome, so here is a link for that.
Sadly it comes with 3 years support only, but I’m sure it will be enough!
After you download the image, you are going to need to burn it on a DVD or use the much faster USB method, see my tutorial on putting Linux on a flash (Don’t worry if 16.04 isn’t listed in YUMI’s list, it will work!).

Ubutnu 16.04 just around the corner, total media silence!

2016-04-19 / Muaad Elsharif / 0 Comments

It’s just two days away separating us from the release of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS!
Yet it seems like there is nothing, no one is talking about the imminent release!

16.04 almost here!

I’ve been covering Ubuntu 16.04 since the first Alpha, you can tell how much I’m excited for this release since I’ve been using Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Taher ever since it was released! Down to the first Beta and second beta released,
What surprises me isn’t the lack of media coverage from big tech sites and mainstream attention, I’m really stunned that Ubuntu themselves aren’t covering the event at all!
I am following Ubuntu’s twitter account closely, and nothing about Ubuntu 16.04 was tweeted, nothing at all! Not even a tweet!
Now I understand that Canonical has more profiting projects to cover and that Ubuntu for the desktop draws little if any money at all, but that doesn’t mean to completely ignore the release!

My take on the issue in 144 letters!

It would be awful if Ubuntu’s release was announced after it was actually released, or worse! A couple days after..

Why all the excitement? It’s just an OS

This release has interesting features and updates! Most notably the addition of a new Kernel (Linux 4.4), I’m personally hoping for better power management.

And lets not forget this is an LTS version, so 5 years of updates off the bat!

It is, it’s just an operating system, so as Mac OS and Windows 10, but Ubuntu is always special!

What the public wants?

Even blogs that specialize in covering Ubuntu news aren’t hyping the release! Take OMGUbuntu for example! According to a recent poll the conducted 66.76% of the people who voted said they will upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04 “As soon as possible”, 8,282 to this date, and 27.1% answered “Yes, but not right away”, those totaled in at 3,412. And 3% are undecided (to me these are potential yes)!

When will be Ubuntu 16.04 released?

I think that’s the million dollars question, according to the wiki it will be released on April the 21th if everything goes according to plan, I’m not sure about other Ubuntu flavors, this date is for Ubuntu that ships with the Unity interface.

Never forget who you are!

I know that Canoical is busy promoting the new Ubuntu tablet (which is pretty cool by the way!) and it’s cloud services, let alone the shock that Ubuntu runs from CMD on Windows 10 now (that needs a whole post to vent to be honest!). All of that success was built on the platform that is good old Ubuntu for desktop!
I hope that Ubuntu doesn’t lose itself trying to reach out of it’s current Eco-system.

How did you like this post? It’s pretty much a part of my Ubuntu 16.04 hype! Please let me know what you think and share it with your people!

Minor update
OMGUbuntu’s account on twitter posted a tweet about 16.04. That’s a start..
And now a day before the release they started hyping, which is good!

Reasons why I’m not renewing my domain

2016-04-14 / Muaad Elsharif / 0 Comments

I had a domain for over a year now which I got from Libya’s biggest (and only) ISP,Libya Telecom and Technology, it wasn’t as good as I thought!

I had some expectations about getting a domain of my own, sadly none of them came true, even when I did my best promoting and getting my name out there!

I thought it would look good on a resume.
People started to think (for some reason) that I’m really good with making sites, and all of a sudden I’m plagued with requests of making websites, I am not a web developer!

I thought it would help get me a better job
I thought that having a site (not just a free hosted blog) would catch the eyes of HR personal and enhance my chance of nailing a dream job (any decent job in my case) but it didn’t!
Times aren’t so easy
With this economy I have to squeeze in every penny, and since the domain didn’t reel in any money or do anything real to enhance my career, then I’m better off making other investments and leave the domain for now.
Not making the full potential out of the domain I bought a domain and a hosting space in order to redirect users from my blogspot site to the domain, I didn’t upload anything on the server so it’s a total waste! I found an easy way to change the blog’s name across all posts, and that was awesome! And the space that was given to me was so small! I mean Google provides 15 GB of drive space, and a free hosting services, let alone that using a custom domain takes away the ability of using HTTPS to secure my site!
Difficult to manage I’m using Google’s webmaster tools, and having a custom domains means I have four sites to manage (the blog, the blog with www, the domain, the domain with www) and dropping the custom domain would make the management easier, and since my domain is a country domain, it’s guided towards readers of that county, and my target is the world!!
Promotion issues I thought having a custom domain would make twitter treat my URL differently, instead of taking 30 characters from the tweet it would take less (since I have a shorter domain), well that was not the case there! My url took the same amount of characters and I was in for a shocker! No HTTPS availability Since I linked my blogger domain to my purchased domain, my blogger domain is simply redirecting to my ly domain, in the process I lost HTTPS security because blogger doesn’t support that yet, meaning I’m less secure now than I was before getting the domain!

What happens next?

Life is all about experiences, I had a nice year with a custom LY domain, and now it’s time to go back to the old subdomain that blogspot provides, it’s not that bad, many professional bloggers, artists, and products use subdomains to blog, let alone me! Someone who is still finding his way in the world of blogging. Why should I pay for my site to be online and for people to read free of charge, while I can keep it hosted for free? It would take me some work to change all my bios and social media sites to the new site, but I’m sure it’s worth the effort! And I think that my stats will improve so much after dumping the LY domain which I think it limiting me from reaching my total potential (due to google’s geographic location settings). Do you have a custom domain? How much do you pay for it? What’s your current plan? And finally: What do you think of me going back to a free service hosted by Google? Waiting for your comments below!

HP 1005 not printing paper stuck fixed

2016-04-01 / Muaad Elsharif / 0 Comments

While working as an IT, I come across some technical problems that simply make me wanna blog!
There was this old HP printer sitting on a shelve at the department I worked for, and while fixing other major downtime issues, the head of the department asked me to look at it: “I know you are busy, but could you look at this printer when you have some time to spare? It stopped printing and we already ordered another one, but it wouldn’t hurt if you fixed it so we could have another one to spare?”.

I wasn’t going to turn the request down.

Problem description

I plugged the printer to the main PC at the department (running Windows 7 professional) and the printer was recognized by the computer, took the printing command. And made that printing noise, but nothing was coming out! The paper was jammed!

I did some research on the HP forums, but couldn’t get a single piece of information regarding the issue, and I wasn’t going to sign-up for the form and post the issue (it’s a 10 year old printer!) so I let it go at that point.

The actual fix

One day I was feeling bored and decided to give it a go.

I took the printer and removed the ink cartridge and inspected it for physical damage, nothing was broken or dislocated, so I decided to clean it up since it had gunk inside it, mainly dried up ink that fell from a broken ink cartridge.

I used some alcohol and a cloth to clean the ink, then decided to lubricate all the moving parts and wheels with some alcohol (since the alcohol evaporates and won’t mess things up).

I then plugged it into the same computer and gave it a printing command, to my pleasure it printed up a page! In many years no paper has came off that printer tray!

Sadly the page was all black!
So far I wasn’t able to tell what’s the reason of that or how to fix it! So if anyone knows give me a clue in the comments section below 🙂

Fun update

While sharing this post on Twitter I got some feedback from the HP support account which was really nice! Didn’t fix the issue tho.

I hope you enjoyed this post, let me know what you think in the comments section below 🙂
Have a lovely weekend, share this post with your friends and help the blog grow 🙂