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Brasero will replace Serpentine as the CD-writing utility in the upcoming April release of Ubuntu 8.10 (code-named Hardy Heron). Brasero extends the functionality of Serpentine to include data CD and DVD projects, file integrity checking, and multisession support.

Why replace Serpentine, a dead simple solution for burning audio CDs? It features tight integration into the GNOME Desktop Environment, with support for Rhythmbox playlists and drag and drop file management from Nautilus, as well as the ability to extract audio from video files. Unfortunately, the application has no support for creating data CDs. You can fill that void by using the native CD-writing capabilities inside Nautilus, but Nautilus offers limited options for data project creation.

Brasero builds upon the functional shortcomings of Serpentine through the addition of data CD and DVD support, along with image creation and burning.

Many companies offer LAMP hosting, but some of the cheaper LAMP providers do not allow SSH access, reserving that feature for higher-paying customers. Without SSH you may think you’ll have trouble executing commands on the hosted server. Not so — PHP Shell allows execution of some commands without having SSH access to the LAMP server.

The only PHP function that PHP Shell requires is proc_open(). If you can execute that function using PHP code, then PHP Shell should work. As PHP Shell is easy to install, the easiest way to find out if you are allowed to execute it is to just install it and see if it runs.

You might wonder about the security of setting up a PHP script that allows shell commands to be executed, but PHP Shell is no more or less secure an application than any other PHP file on the server. Of course, you must be responsible for your own security.

Remastersys is a tool that can be used to do 2 things with an existing Klikit or Ubuntu or derivative installation.It can make a full system backup including personal data to a live cd or dvd that you can use anywhere and install. It can make a distributable copy you can share with friends. This will not have any of your personal user data in it.

Install Remastersys in Ubuntu

The Remastersys repository needs to be added to your /etc/apt/sources.list

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ibeentoubuntu writes:

I’ve put together my opinion on the top ten usability issues that exist now in Hardy’s Alpha and will most certainly be in the final long-term release. I also try to suggest a solution, if there is one.

10. The open/save dialog

The open/save dialog in some applications uses the Gnome virtual filesystem while some applications don’t use it, resulting in a situation where the available locations for this action are not the same. This is especially a problem for people with network shares mounted through Nautilus.
Solution: All apps should use the Gnome virtual file system.

9. Importing music files in Rhythmbox

Rhythmbox has a preference for the location of your library and a file hierarchy, but doesn’t move files there when you import folders. Instead, importing a folder is more like adding another location for your library.
Solution: The rhythmbox menu should have an import entry, which pulls the files into your library location and an add music location entry which uses the current method.

8. Browsing of samba shares

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While I give it 5 stars for cool factor (I love doing new things with MySQL), I must say this is about the most useless program I’ve seen.

Using MySQL as a filesystem

With MySQLfs you can store a filesystem inside a MySQL relational database. MySQLfs breaks up the byte content of files that you store in its filesystem into tuples in the database, which allows you to store large files in the filesystem without requiring the database to support extremely large BLOB fields. With MySQLfs you can throw a filesystem into a MySQL database and take advantage of whatever database backup, clustering, and replication setup you have to protect your MySQLfs filesystem.

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