RSSOwl Feed Reader Update Available for Linux

http://boreal.rssowl.org/
My favorite RSS aggregator seems improved, the internal browser seems
fixed so far. Installs portable-like….just extract to /OPT/ or
wherever. Launch the binary and it will save feed data in your home
directory.

EDIT: with RSSOwl you can set up a regular usenet newsgroup to read
like a feed. Go to ‘get more extensions’ and install the experimental
newsgroup extension if desired.

Quick BlackBerry sync with Thunderbird in Kubuntu

A quick OTA way (over-the-air) is to ignore the damned usb cable, install
funambol on your blackberry to sync to Schedule World, then Install the
SW extension from SW on Thunderbird and sync IT to SW. Works until they
get Barry et al sorted.

Ubuntu: Repository for Firefox 3

big FF improvement for me over FF3b5….do this to upgrade with apt-get:

You just need to add the following to your /etc/apt/source.list:

Code:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ubuntu hardy main

Then you only need to update (with sudo apt-get update) and then
upgrade (with sudo apt-get upgrade) to install the firefox-3.0 RC
package upgrade.

When Firefox 3 is in the regular Ubuntu repo’s, you won’t need this anymore…but it won’t hurt anything to stay in sources.list.

Ubuntu: Got usb in VirtualBox 3.0 (Updated!)

Karmic Update: and VB 3.08: All you need to do is add Virtualbox permissions to your user under users and groups….bout time!

EDIT:  With Ubuntu 9.04 and VirtualBox 3.x.x, none of the following is necessary other than adding yourself to the vboxusers group.  Hallelujah !!

Update:  I’ve just installed VB in Linux Mint 6 Xfce (8.10) and I lined through the items below that are no long needed with Ubuntu 8.10 and forward.  The rest will do the trick:

The purpose of this how-to is to get usb devices, such as printers, working in a VirtualMachine Windows environment in Ubuntu/Kubuntu. Without usb support, a virtual machine is really only good for testing, and not production.

First off, if you haven’t done so already download and install the non-free version of VirtualBox 3.x.x (no dinero, requires accepting license agreement) from here: VirtualBox 3,0

I did this in Kubuntu 8.04 RC, but below is for Ubuntu 8.04. This is written to apply to Gutsy, Ubuntu 7.10 also.

Go through the new VM set up routine in VirtualBox and install, let’s say XP in VirtualBox.

Here’s how I got usb devices working in an XP Virtual Machine in Hardy (8.04).

Add yourself to the group VirtualBox created during install called “vboxusers” The VB install creates this group, find it, don’t add another one.

Create a group named “usbusers” and put yourself in it.

sudo groupadd usbusers
sudo gpasswd -a john usbusers

Or do the above in Control Center under ‘users and groups’.

Now uncomment the 4 lines below ‘Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work’ in mountdevsubfs.sh , they will be commented out by default) so it looks like the following:

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh

#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
domount usbfs /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
mount —rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

Now then,

Modify the rules in file “/etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules” for Gutsy, and “/etc/udev/rules.d/40-basic-permissions.rules” for Hardy:
Change the lines :

From:

# USB devices (usbfs replacement)
SUBSYSTEM==”usb”, ENV{DEVTYPE}==”usb_device”, MODE=”0664”
SUBSYSTEM==”usb_device”, MODE=”0664”

To :

# USB devices (usbfs replacement)
SUBSYSTEM==”usb”, ENV{DEVTYPE}==”usb_device”, GROUP=”usbusers”, MODE=”0664”
SUBSYSTEM==”usb_device”, MODE=”0664”

Now on to……

The Grande Finale,

add this line:

none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=120,devmode=664 0 0

to your /etc/fstab file (at the bottom). Just make sure that 120 is your vboxusers group (use your own number).
Reboot the computer.

Open VirtualBox and click on “Settings”.

Click on the “USB” item in the left pane to edit the USB prefs.

Click on the “Add device” button to add a filter and select your printer from the list and click on the “Ok” button.

Start your VM and Windows should detect your printer.

The above was taken mostly from various scattered posts in the Ubuntu forums, some from me, and put together here, all mods in one place, in order, for future reference.

Comments and/or edit recommendations welcomed.