Tag Archives: Linux

Open Source Swift on Ubuntu

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Two years ago I wrote an entry on Cocoa Programming on Ubuntu that relied on the stable and mature but outdated Objective-C based GNUstep. It was hackey but it was the only way to do it then.

Last week Apple just made its self imposed date of delivering its new, modern, platform language, Swift, to the open source community and making it easy to use on Ubuntu. I have been itching to upgrade to 15.10 and what better excuse than to work on Swift.

Craig Federighi Introduces Open Source Swift on Linux at WWDC 2015

Craig Federighi Introduces Open Source Swift on Linux at WWDC 2015

This entry is my walkthrough on the steps I took to get a working Swift IDE on Ubuntu. Tl;dr: its like super easy and fun. Continue reading →

WD My Cloud NAS on Ubuntu

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I decided that 2014 for me was going to be the year of the Network Attached Storage (NAS). Last year was the year that I finally abandoned my desktops and went all laptop for both my Mac-based iOS development workflow and general purpose computing (i.e, everything else on my Acer i5 running Lubuntu). This year I wanted to have a massive centralized storage where I could put all my videos and photos so I can access it from any laptop or mobile device. What follows is what I chose and how to hook it up to Lubuntu.

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Netflix on Ubuntu

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Besides my Mac Mini, 11″ MacBook Air, and 15″ Retina MacBook Pro my dark secret is that my ASUS X401A workhorse laptop and Dell Inspiron 620 i5 desktop run Lubuntu and Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit respectively.  Up until now I could do it all but one: Netflix.  Sure I have VirtualBox running a Win7 Ultimate instance but this always felt dirty.  Well, no more.  Finally, today, I was able to get Netflix HD running on both and with only three terminal commands (easy) and no emulator to speak of (well, technically its a package that runs on Wine with a Windows build of FireFox but you hardly notice it – they made it look like a native app).

Read on to find out how. Continue reading →

Steam on Linux

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Last night I took my old workhorse Dell Inspiron 620 i5 that I had been using to run Lubuntu off a 32GB Cruzer Fit Nano thumb drive and put in:

  • a new 1TB HD and
  • a GeForce GT 640.

I installed Ubuntu 12.04 and after installing the tools I use (Ruby, Rails, Sublime, FireBug, Pocket, Skype, Evernote, mySQL, git, giggle, heroku, VLC, Flash downloader, iTunes 10 via Wine, and the Cairo Dock) I also now added Steam to the mix.

I connected the rig up to two monitors: 23″ Westinghouse (DVI) and a 27″ Acer (Mini HDMI).

I downloaded the free Team Fortress 2 from Valve and went through the training.

This HD and graphics card has really breathed new life into this workhorse and I look forward to using it on those rare times whenever I leave my 15″ rMBP.