Greetings from Vermont! Today we add Ubuntu UI touches to Linux Mint and Adobe Photoshop niceties to Gimp. A Fluid Lightbox plugin to bookmark and a Slideshare of Apache Wicket to view. Android Studio Straight-Up, No Chaser please, and Linux success stories in education. We finish up with some interesting Java Developer IDE stats and good job seeking advice.
Linux Mint remains my favorite OS for getting work done. I mentioned last time that I began using Ubuntu and really like the overall look of it, even more so than Mint. I’ve got the best of both worlds now with the Ambiance Theming elements for Mint windows and controls, which makes them look exactly like Ubuntu.
Android Studio Straight-Up, No Chaser
After reading “A Tale of Migrating From Eclipse to Android Studio” the best move for Eclipse Android Developers appears to be to go with Google’s Android Studio IDE rather than stay in Eclipse. Here’s an additional link to Android Studio Downloads, and it does look pretty nice.
We mentioned the excellent Nanogallery plugin in an earlier NixMashup. Here’s a lightbox that expands inline page images to fill the dimensions of the browser window. Very sweet.
Linux for Students in Lancaster, PA and Around the World
I love this story of how every student in the Lancaster, PA area Penn Manor High School received their own Ubuntu laptop. Over 1700 laptops in all. Student Open Source enthusiasts were heavily involved in the management of the laptops, which is also very cool. To complete the Around the World theme, here’s a photo of a school lab filled with Ubuntu machines in Holland.
I used Adobe Photoshop since the 1990’s until moving to Linux a couple of years ago and discovered Gimp. Though I don’t miss Photoshop at all, I always enjoyed using it, so when I heard about Martin Owens’ collection of tweaks to make Gimp 2.8 more like Photoshop I was torn. I loaded up the Gimp Photoshop config and it did everything it advertised, but I removed it because I wanted my Gimp to be Gimp. Then I reconfigured for Photoshop, again, started working in Gimp and it dawned on me. “This is awesome!!!” I applied my Gimp Keyboard shortcuts to supplement the new Photoshop shortcuts and now I’m a happier Gimpster than ever.
Slideshare: The State of Apache Wicket
If you read my NixMash blog posts you’ll know that I’m now working in Apache Wicket for Java Web Development. I looked into all of the popular Java Web Frameworks and decided that Wicket was the Framework for me! A nice selection of other Wicket Slideshares are available on slideshare.net as well.
There Are No Stupid Questions About Ant or Maven
This question asking why we need build tools like Ant or Maven when we have Eclipse is an excellent example of simple questions often being the best. Several good responses.
The Big Three in Java Development IDEs
In a recent Java.NET poll, 925 Java Developers voted on which IDE they used. The conclusion was that NetBeans, IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse accounted for 93% of all developer IDEs used. I personally thought Eclipse would top the list, but NetBeans took top spot at 44%. Eclipse had 38% and IntelliJ 11%.
The title of this Java Code Geeks article is better than mine. “Don’t Make Me Read Your Resume.” Good advice for job seekers here on how to stand out and get the attention of potential employers.
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Today’s Vermont Photo is provided by Barb and Dean Russ, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.