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  • How To Smoothly Transfer From Windows to Linux

    Ubuntu 8.10 has stunned me with many ways. Even if it may seem the same at first look for someone who’ve used Ubuntu 8.04, I saw tremendous progress. The impression currently have, about Linux, is going to be changed forever. Intrepid Ibex shows epic compatibility with the various system setups that I tried it with. And, looking back to some 5 years, Linux has improved a lot in being user-friendly and visually appealing.
    So, for those of you who’ve been working with Windows from birth, this is the time to hop in. The Ubuntu band-wagon is growing. We all know what Vista was like. It was horrible and all it did was successful leech the hardware resources. Ubuntu is the way to go for the future.

    I believe this is the day of conversion. Linux is ready for you. So, come with me on a ride to the brighter side of computing. So, enough with the stories right ? Here we go.
    P.S: Most of these stuff are Ubuntu-specific.

    Configuring Software Installer
    I usually hear people say - "Software supports is low for Linux. There’s barely any". Thats plain wrong. Linux supports almost the same amount of software Windows does. Maybe not more than it. But, there are a lot of softwares, both open source and closed source, which are being supported by Linux.
    Ubuntu simplifies the software installation in linux through the Synaptic Package Manager. You can find it at System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. Or, you can use the Add/Remove at Applications -> Add/Remove. Both basically work the same way but Synaptic Package Manager gives you more control.
    But, to get the best apps from the Linux ecosystem, you need to enable some additional repositories. Here’s how you do it :

    1. Go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources
    2. In the "Ubuntu Softwares" tab, check every checkbox (it won’t do any harm).
    3. Ensure that all checkboxes are checked in the "Third-Party Software" tab.
    4. If you’re interested in online updates, go to the "Updates" tab and check "gutsy-security" and "gutsy-updates".
    5. After doing the above stuff, press close and in the window which pops up, press Reload and wait for a while.

    Now, Ubuntu will list a lot more software in its software manager.
    Getting The Right Apps

    There are some essential apps you can’t live without. Since I work the Release Candidate, I don’t know how much our software composition are similar. Go to Applications -> Add/Remove for a newbie-friendly and visually appealing installation experience or go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager for more control. But, install these if you don’t already have it :

    * VLC Media Player : Absolutely necessary. It even plays .wmv and .flv.
    * GnomeBaker : Works better than Brasero in CD/DVD burning.
    * Azureus/Deluge : For torrent downloads.
    * Macromedia Flash Plugin : Works on Mozilla and Gecko-based browsers.
    * GStreamer ffmpeg video plugin : Lot of extra plugins.
    * Real Player : To play Real media files.
    * Comix : If you’re like me and read a lot of digital grapical novels

    Using Aptitude Installer
    You can use the command-line to install software too. Softwares can be GUI or CLI. But there are a lot of good CLI softwares out there that you might want to check out. (Eg: Mencoder, ffmpeg etc).
    Its as easy as typing - sudo apt-get install . It’ll ask you for your root password. Give it and you’re done.

    Run Windows Softwares on Linux with Wine
    Before anything, Wine Is Not an Emulator. Not I’m joking. Thats what WINE stands for. Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. And it does not need Microsoft Windows.
    Wine can open any .exe or similar Windows files. Select a .exe, right-click and enter properties. In the "Open With" tab, select Wine Windows Emulator (ironic though since they say its not a emulator) click +Add and take it from the options.
    You can run apps such as uTorrent, Winamp etc very smoothly. Some games run well too. Good luck experimenting with it.

    Summing Up..
    Hope that pretty much took care of the basic stuff you need to do to have a good time with Ubuntu. Linux is ready for the desktop. It supports most of the formats and the softwares are growing too. Maybe one day, big companies may start developing games for Linux and I’m sure that would be the end for Windows cuz I’m believe that’s the reason why most of us still use a Windows. So, I wish you all a smooth ride. ;)

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  • How can I tweak Linux systems ? Place the following code in /etc/rc.local or /etc/boot.local, depending on your distribution (it needs to be reapplied at startup). The settings below assume you're using eth0 for your internet connection, the TCP/IP parameters should be self-explanatory:

    ifconfig eth0 mtu 1500
    echo 256960 >> /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_default
    echo 256960 >> /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_max
    echo 0 >> /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_timestamps
    echo 1 >> /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_sack
    echo 1 >> /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_window_scaling

    Change the RWIN/MTU values above as desired, depending on your internet connection and maximum throughput/latency. There are other parameters you can change from the default if you're confident in what you're doing - just find the correct syntax of the values in /proc/sys/net... and add a line in the above code analogous to the others.

    To revert to the default parameters, just comment or delete the above code from /etc/rc.local and restart.

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  • Howto create a Transparent Terminal in Ubuntu Desktop You’ve got yourself a nice Ubuntu 7.10 install on a computer that has a similarly nice Nvidia based graphics card and you’re wondering - how do I use it?

    Wonder no more, here’s a fairly simple, fairly quick way to install and enable your new driver to take advantage of your kick-butt card.
    First, you need to find out what kernel you’re running. There’s a very good chance you’re running the generic kernel, so I’ll reference that throughout this how to. Open up a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and type in the following:

    uname -a

    You should see something that looks like this:

    Linux yikes 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Dec 18 08:02:57 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

    It shows the name of the OS, the name of the machine, and then the kernel. Generic it is.

    Now, go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. You’ll be prompted for your password to launch this. Once it’s up and running, click the search button and search for:

    Linux-restricted-modules-generic

    If you’re not running the generic kernel, substitute what you are running there. Once you find this package, check it off to be installed and click the Apply button.

    Linux-restricted-modules-generic contains madwifi, fglrx, nvidia drivers, and a bunch of other stuff.

    Once this is installed, go to System -> Administration -> Restricted Drivers Management. Check off the Nvidia driver and away you go! If you do get an error concerning software or sources, you’ll have to take one more step.

    Go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources. Once there, on the Ubuntu Software tab (it should pop up on that tab by default) check off everything but “Source code”. Close it and then click the “Reload” button when prompted to reload your sources. Then go back to the previous paragraph and try again.

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  • How to delete stuck folders and files from your trash in Ubuntu Every now and again, I’ll find myself with some files sitting around in my trash that I can’t delete. This can be particularily problematic when I’ve got several gigs worth of stale ISOs sitting there giving me an error like

    Error removing file: Permission denied

    I like computers but I’m not a big fan of when they talk back. So here’s a quick and easy way to go into your system and nuke those files.

    First, open up a terminal session (Applications-> Accessoris ->Terminal)

    Now, type this:

    cd /home/YOUR-USER-NAME/.local/share/Trash/files

    Typing ‘ls’ at this point should reveal to you the folders and files you’re trying to delete. Now on to the nuking. If it’s just a few files, this will do:

    sudo rm -f *

    If it’s files, folders and files within folders, try this:

    sudo rm -Rf *

    No more stuck stuff in your trash.

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  • How to get updated world weather maps as your desktop background in Ubuntu Traditionally, I’ve never had the same wallpaper on any computer for more than a half hour at a time. I like my wallpapers to rotate, since I’m surrounded by 3-4 computers at any given time and usually only working on 1 or 2 of them. This way I can have nice pictures flying by to keep my perhipheral vision entertained and people walking past my window can marvel at the 3D art I have displayed.

    Note: This will work on any system using gnome, or just about any other system if you know your way around cron. I happen to run Ubuntu though, and enjoy it over other distros, so that’s where I wrote this and that’s how I titled it.

    I also like to see what’s going on with the world, particularly the weather but often find myself not in orbit so I’m unable to track worldwide weather patterns like I want to.


    Click okay, and it’s there. You can also always launch it from a terminal session by typing gnome-schedule.

    Thankfully, there’s an awesome site out there called die.net. They host a nice good sized image of the world with cloud cover updated once every hour or so. We’re going to automate the task of going to die.net and downloading the needed .jpg file.

    Open Gnome Scheduler, and click the New button. From there, choose “A task that launches recurrently”.

    In the description field, call it “weather wallpaper” or whatever you’d like. In the Command field, type

    wget -r -N http://static.die.net/earth/mercator/1600.jpg

    In the Time & Date section, click the Advanced radio button. Now, in the Minute field, put something between ‘10‘ and ‘55‘ - you choose a number. In the hour field, put 0-23. Now click the Add button to add this task to your scheduler.

    What does this do? It tells your computer to go out to die.net and grab the 1600.jpg file some number of minutes past every hour. Why do it this way? Well I figure if the image updates on the hour and my clock is a little off, a few minutes past the hour or a few minutes to the hour should be enough leeway for me to get the latest image. If we vary our numbers, we won’t all flood the site at 10 minutes past.

    Then a though occurred to me - what if I set up one of my Ubuntu boxes to have a map of the world with clouds overlayed, updated every hour? Neat! I now have a map of the world with cloud overlays updated hourly for my background.

    It took me a little time to figure this out but I’ve nailed it and now you can do it too by following my quick, easy plan to wealth and . . . er. . . to a weatherified desktop.

    First, you’re going to want to get a program called gnome-schedule. You can either start Synaptic (System-> Administration-> Synaptic Package Manager) and search for ‘gnome-schedule’ or open up a terminal session (Applications-> Accessories-> Terminal Session) and type:

    sudo apt-get install gnome-schedule

    What is it? Gnome Schedule is a GUI front end to Cron, which is a scheduling daemon. It allows you to tell your computer to execute a command at a given time, which in our case is going to be every hour - and to repeat this command at given times, again, hourly.

    Gnome-scheduler isn’t automagically added to your menus, so let’s add it to the Applications-> Accessories menu, shall we? Right click on Applications and choose “Edit Menus”. From there, left click on Accessories and click the New Item button. Call this new menu item “Gnome Schedule” in the Name field and in the Command field, type ‘gnome-schedule‘.

    Once you’ve added this to Gnome Schedule, click the Run task button. This will execute the task so you can both test it, and grab the appropriate file. Gnome Schedule will run this command as you, and dump the file into your home directory.

    Now to get it on to your computer as your background. Right click your desktop and choose “Change Desktop Background”. Now click the Add button and browse to your home directory. Choose the file 1600.jpg and it will be added to your backgrounds and set up as your wallpaper.
    When this image updates every hour, your background will automatically update as well. Neat, eh?

    You can do this with any image that’s available on the web which updates. All you need is the URL to download the image and you’ll have to modify your little script to reflect the correct file name.

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  • Linux and Flash - cut the crap already! Look, Adobe, can we please get with the times and start making a product that works on Linux? Please? It’s getting closer to 2010 and we’re still missing flying cars, meals in pills and a flash player that actually works most of the time. You see that? I’d even settle for most of the time right now. The sad truth is, Flash locks up on my current Ubuntu install, with the latest Flash release and it happens all the time.

    Why on Earth should my modern browsers (Firefox, Opera) still freeze up on every third embedded video I try to play? Websites are rendered ugly as hell because Flash just doesn’t know what to do with them. You do realize that by hindering a portion of today’s web browsing consumers you’re eventually affecting your own bottom line, right? Even a small portion who can’t do the things that web developers, web store owners and viral marketing execs expect them to do can be significant if it impacts delivery and sales.

    For those who aren’t employed by Adobe. Yeah, I think that Flash sites are not the way to go, even with Google’s revelation that Flash can now be indexed. The truth of the matter is Flash is here and it’s probably here to stay so we need Adobe to please swallow whatever bitter pill they’re fumbling around with and just get a working version out to all of us in Linuxland so we can watch cats attack string on YouTube or whatever it is we’re wanting to do online. Okay? I know of lots of local, small sites like restaurants and small brick and mortar shops who have Flash front ends on their sites. And you know what? It stinks not being able to patronize them - for them and for me.

    We need a working Flash. Let’s hope 10 does a much better job of it than 9. Until then, I’ll be taking my own petty mental revenge by referring to this monstrosity of a rich media crap fest as ‘flunk’ using my inside voice. No, that won’t fix anything but at least it will get that grimace on my face into a twisted smile as I kill and restart my browser yet again.

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  • How to get a cool, ray-traced animated screen saver for your Ubuntu Linux box
    I stumbled on a beautiful screen saver for my Ubuntu box today called Eternity which features several flavors of Ubuntu plus a default animation as well. The screen saver is called Eternity and the flavors are plain old vanilla Ubuntu, Ubuntu Studio and oddly enough, the Ubuntu Satanic release.

    The long and short of it is, it looks really nice. Here’s how you can install it.

    You’ll need to pop open a command line (Applications-> Accessories-> Terminal Session)

    Lets pop in there and edit our sources.list file to include Eternity’s repositories.

    gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

    Now you’ve got a graphical text editor up and running. Go to the bottom and paste this in, then save it.

    # Eternity Screensaver
    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/eternity/ubuntu feisty main
    deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/eternity/ubuntu feisty main

    You can change feisty in the above line to gutsy or hardy as well.

    Now to install it type:

    sudo apt-get update

    sudo apt-get install eternal-ubuntu eternal-studio eternal-damnation

    Now you can go to System-> Screensaver and select the Eternity screen saver you want.

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