I’m going to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah till Monday next week

If you’ve ever tried to setup a runtime server in Ganymede, you’ll find that the Tomcat 5.5 installation in Ubuntu doesn’t work with it. The problem is that Ubuntu staggers the installation location of Tomcat 5.5 and create symlinks to link all these directory together. When attempting to specify location of the tomcat installation, Eclipse will complain of missing directories (/common/i18n for example).

One solution for this problem is to create a directory with symlinks to link all the staggered directories. These are the symlinks needed:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 2007-07-25 00:56 bin -> /usr/share/tomcat5.5/bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 2007-07-25 00:57 common -> /usr/share/tomcat5.5/common
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 2007-07-25 00:56 conf -> /usr/share/tomcat5.5/conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 2007-07-25 00:56 logs -> /var/log/tomcat5.5/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 2007-07-25 00:57 server -> /usr/share/tomcat5.5/server
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 2007-07-25 00:57 shared -> /usr/share/tomcat5.5/shared
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 2007-07-25 00:57 temp -> /usr/share/tomcat5.5/temp
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 2007-07-25 00:58 webapps -> /usr/share/tomcat5.5-webapps
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 2007-07-25 00:57 work -> /usr/share/tomcat5.5/work

To create a symlink for /usr/share/tomcat5.5/bin, navigate to the directory to place the symlink (say /opt/tomcat) then run the command ‘sudo ln-s /usr/share/tomcat5.5/bin‘. This will place a symlink for ‘bin‘. After creating all the symlinks, proceed to setup your Eclipse Ganymede.

The update selection screen

Wouldn’t it be neat to have an auto-update feature ala Windows Update but less annoying? Well, worry not, there is! In fact, it’s all like Windows update, and then some!

Straight off the bat I can tell you what’s annoying about Windows Update - the thing can occasionally reboot your computer without asking permission! Just a 15 minutes timeout dialog box. Imagine coming back from lunch and seeing a newly rebooted computer - and you didn’t save your work! God damn Windows!

Details of the update after prompting for the admin password

Here’s how Ubuntu’s auto-updating trumps Windows updates:

• it asks for permission to do anything, before it even starts downloading
• you have to be have admin rights to install it, requiring a password before downloading anything
• it updates any software in the debian repositories and OS patches - how cool is that?!

The actual download

Also, almost 90% of the time, there’s no reboot after installing updates. And it sure as hell won’t force me too! Here’s looking at ya’ Windows.

My previous post on Ubuntu has generated quite an interest. That’s a good thing because of a lot of reasons - avoiding vendor lock in and security are among the top few. But a new install of Ubuntu does not automatically give you such crazy effects. To get to custom effects, you need to install a custom effects manager by running

’sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager’

You can then run Compiz Custom Settings Manager from the System->Preferences->Advanced Desktop Effects Settings menu item.

Enjoy.

Update: It seems this post gives the impression that in order to see the fancy GUI of Ubuntu, the user would have to deal with the terminal. This simply isn’t true. To enable the default effects - you still have cube desktop, transparent windows and nifty 3D graphics - nothing needs to be installed. Yes, it works out of the box if your graphics card is supported (I’m on Intel graphics). The command above is only needed if you wish to further tweak the effects. Totally optional.

All you need to get fancy graphics for your Ubuntu desktop (System -> Preference -> Appearance)

Please oh please make this phone available in Asia as well. This is a potentially welcomed partner to my Centro. Google, ya indexing this?

T-Mobile to have first Android phone later this year - TechSpot News