Sergei Mutovkin’s Rumbling Mumbling

Finally I’ve seen the future… I was hesitating to install 64bit Kubuntu Linux for a long time, thinking that I will have a lot of problems with different things I use daily and that I will not gain much anyway. I was wrong!. I had to install 64 bit Kubuntu 7.10 at work and noticed dramatic speed improvement, close to saying a full “Wow”. On Friday I’ve rushed home backed-up my files and installed Kubuntu 7.10 RC1 on my home machine equipped with Intel Core2Duo E6600. Speed improvement is definitely terrific.

Right now I will describe just two things that I have done to make my life under Kubuntu 7.10 AMD64 better:

• Install Flash Player 9
• Run Skype 1.4
• Make Firefox play all online videos like Apple Trailers and GetMac Adds

Now if you are interested, then let’s proceed, though most of the stuff is quite obvious,
though there might be “better” approaches, I’ve done the following :

Enable Mutiverse, Universe and Restricted repositories in Synaptic or Adept!

To install install Adobe Flash Player 9 you need to

1. Install (I’ve used Synaptic):
   nspluginwrapper
   flashplugin-nonfree
   (both from Gutsy Multiverse).
2. Now run
   sudo nspluginwrapper -i /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
3. Done

To install Skype 1.4:

1. Install all official packages (that have Ubuntu icon next to them) that contain “lib32″. Also install “ia32-libs”
2. Download static version of Skype (currently 1.4.0.118)
3. Run one at a time:
   
sudo -s
cd /opt
tar jxvf /home/surge/skype_static-1.4.0.118.tar.bz2 #that's where I downloaded my Skype
ln -sf skype_static-1.4.0.118/ skype
mkdir bin
cd bin
ln -sf /opt/skype/skype . #that's dot at the end

   You can create a link to this binary from your desktop or any other panel… (once I try a better /faster way I will post it here).
4. Done

Now to make all Videos play all the way it much easier:

1. Install all packages that start with “gstreamer0.10″ but don’t end with gdb or dev.
2. Install “totem” and “totem-mozilla”
3. Done

That’s all. Once I try to run Wine with 32bit windows applications and other fun stuff I will post it on this website or on Ubuntu forum (but post a link on my blog). I’ve also found out that my WordPress theme does not like code tags and is not very friendly with long command strings….