Usually such situations involve setting up a server or using virtualization. Both of these processes involve some technical know how and most of all – a considerable amount of time.

We previously covered how you can create a Virtual Machine from the operating system you are currently running, so that you can easily carry along the installed software and settings from your computer to any other computer or vice versa. Today let’s look at another alternative that spares you a lot of trouble of messing around with configuration files.

It is called TurnKey Linux.

TurnKey Linux is different from your regular Linux distributions. Unlike most distributions, Turnkey Linux offers a turnkey solution and lets you download TurnKey Linux appliances according to your needs that are ready to run. The components are called appliances.

There are tons of really good open source software and we have previously shown you plenty of them here on MakeUseOf.  However beyond regular day to day use, many open source software power the backbone of plenty of commercial establishments. Apache Web server is a great example, which is used on the majority of servers on the Internet today. Turnkey Linux gathers many such Open Source software and makes them available as turnkey appliances.

So what exactly is a Turnkey Linux appliance you might wonder? Well, let’s put it this way, an appliance is a combination of a base operating system and software, serving a specialized purpose. As an example, let’s say you want to start an online community site. phpBB is an excellent php application that you can use for the said purpose. You would start by getting the hardware, then install PHP, MySQL, set them up to work together and then finally install phpBB.

However, using Turnkey Linux’s phpBB appliance, all you need to worry about is getting some hard disk space that you can put on the World Wide Web! You can just as easily use your own computer, provided it would stay online.

In Turnkey Linux’s case, the appliances are created using Ubuntu 8.04 as the base system and bundling all the required software along with it. There are plenty of appliances to choose from. Almost all of the popular commercially used open source applications have been covered and are available as separate appliances. There are appliances for web development, issue tracking, content management systems (excellent for creating your sites), others for setting up a variety of servers and a whole lots of others.

The appliances are available as bootable ISO images as well as VMDK file to use with your Virtualization software. There is also a “Launch to Cloud” option which uses Amazon EC2 and lets you launch your server in a snap. You can also find a Amazon EC2 tutorial in Turnkey Linux’s documentation, if you would like some help with EC2. The details page also lists the various software that you will get with the appliance, so you can easily see if it is what you are looking for before downloading.

Using the turnkey Linux appliance is as simple as it can get. Depending upon the method you choose to download the appliance you can either burn the ISO image to a disk and then boot from it, or use the VMDK image with VMware or Virtualbox. The appliance and bundled software are preconfigured and ready to use, you wouldn’t have to do anything other than to boot the system and use it!

Take Turnkey Linux for a spin if you are thinking to setup a Linux server of any kind, or perhaps a dedicated development environment or site. Let us know what you think of it? Which appliance did you use?

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Others may use them for bragging rights on that new top-of-the-line gaming machine. Whatever your interest, computer benchmarks certainly are fun. However, obtaining system benchmarks can be tedious. In the past, installing benchmarking applications could be expensive or, with some systems, difficult and time consuming.

Phoronix has been providing free and quality benchmarking software for Linux for several years and adding support for other architectures since. Free BSDs, OpenSolaris, and MacOS are among those supported and Windows support is in the pipeline. As nice as these packages are, they still require time and the right software support in order to install and function.

One way to address these inconveniences is to use PTS Desktop Live, a live CD built on Ubuntu containing the test suite which removes any operating system or software requirements for the target machine and avoids having to install any extra software permanently onto your system. Just boot the live CD and you’re ready to go.

The Phoronix Test Suite live CD comes with 52 individual tests and 10 different preconfigured profiles to test the different elements of your system hardware. Profiles, which can be toggled from the menu, are a subset of tests geared toward one particular area such as testing database performance, video encoding, or BSD systems. You can run one test, a subset of tests, or a batch of tests and options.

The point-and-click interface makes obtaining your computer benchmark so easy to do, even for the average Joe. Just in case, an introduction opens at boot with basic information and links to the home site where much more information is found. But no special information is really needed. Just click on the big green “P” on the panel or “Phoronix Test Suite” in the Applications menu under System Tools. At that point merely click on any of the tests to get basic information as to what it benchmarks and then click Install to download and install the test.

Since using Ubuntu as its base, the tools are now delivered as binaries eliminating the need to compile making the process much quicker. The user will be asked if and where to store the results and if they’d like to upload to Global. Remember that this is a live CD and all data will be lost upon shutdown unless moved to a more permanent storage medium. All computer benchmark information is stored in the .phoronix-test-suite directory.

One of the recommended Profiles is Favorites. This is a nice collection of general purpose tests commonly used by Michael Larabel, the founder and lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite. When the test suite is installed, just click the “Run Test” button. When asked what to name this particular test and the Test Identifier, just pick something you’d remember easily.

After completion of the tests, data can be viewed in the included Web browser and displayed in easy-to-read graphs. You can choose to compare the results with other machines listed on the Phoronix Global site and you can upload your results for others to use for comparison or for future reference.

One of my favorite activities is to compare new hardware with old after an upgrade. One of yours might be to show your best friend how much better your machine rocks than his (or vice versa). Remember, the best feature of the Phoronix Test Suite Desktop is the FUN!

What benchmarking tools do YOU use? Let us know all about them in the comments.

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They may think it’s too difficult or too much to remember. But once a user becomes accustomed to using the command line interface, it soon becomes the preferred method in many tasks. Not only is it much quicker to accomplish just about any given task at the command line, it opens a whole new world of possibilities. It allows the user to begin to understand how an operating system is structured and functions. It gives the user very powerful tools to do the things graphical interfaces will never be able to reproduce. And best of all, it’s just fun.

There are several shells, the interface between the user and the system, with their own set of built-in functions and commands. The most popular is probably Bash, which is an improved clone of the Unix Borne Shell. Not only does Bash include lots of handy built-in commands, but a user can execute (or fork) a multitude of other application executables from within it.

There is a short list of commands that one can learn to get started. With this short list, you can begin to build your toolbox and with the help of a few good reference sites, become a command line master yourself. Not only will this enable you to feel comfortable running just about any Linux distribution available, but every programmer working today began with that first command.

But how might one go about trying to use the dreaded command line? Once open, the user stares at the prompt wondering what to do first. They know folks work from the command line all day every day, but what do you do? Fortunately, you’re not on your own. There are a plethora of sites with all the information you’ll need to take you from beginner to advanced user or anywhere in between.

LinuxCommand

One of the best places to get started is LinuxCommand. This site gently introduces the first time user what a shell is and how to use it. Then, if desired, it will instruct the user on how to write their first shell scripts.

The homepage of this site is very relaxing. It merely shows an image of a terminal and reassures the user “Don’t worry, we’ll show you what to do.” Its Table of Contents addresses usage in an task oriented manner. Instead of listing the command and explaining what it does, it lists an operation one might want to perform.

For example, the first thing any user might want to learn is navigation. With a reference to the graphical hierarchy, it begins the user with the first babysteps of moving around their system with the command line.

Then one is taken on a tour of the Linux filesystem hierarchy and shown how to manipulate files such as renaming, moving, or deleting, and permissions. Once you learn this beginning information, you are already on your way to fixing a Linux system on which the Graphical User Interface is broken.

Next the site gets more involved walking the user through writing shell scripts, first easy then more and more complicated. If you finish this latter section, you are already almost a master.

O’Reilly’s Linux Command Directory

O’Reilly’s Linux Command Directory is a wonderful quick reference chart-like guide. This page lists not only the built-in commands, but also many little utilities commonly included in all Linux distributions. This is great for the beginner or even more advanced users as the listed commands are links to full information as to what the command is and how to use it.

While this information may be available right on your system as Main pages, it comes in handy for those who forgot the command or perhaps doesn’t know which to use. For example, you’d like the current system date and time, so you visit this page and see the command time. This must be it, so you click on it and find out that time is actually used to measure the elasped time of a given process. So, you know that isn’t it. Then you scroll down and spot date. Ah yes, that’s the one. What was that command to quickly check to see if a certain word or phrase is in a file? Oh yes, you remember now that you see the command grep listed.

By clicking it you’ll find all sorts of ways it can be manipulated to output just what you need. A favorite activity is just reading through the list for unfamiliar or forgotten commands and learning what they do. This is just a particularly handy site to bookmark.

The Linux Cookbook

The Linux Cookbook fits in somewhere between LinuxCommand’s Learning the Shell and Writing Shell Scripts. It takes the user from logging in to as deep as they want to go.

However, its best resource is its intermediate instruction. After learning a few commands one might want to know how to edit a file and the cookbook features introductions to common text editors.  It also tells a user things such as how to change their password, listing directories in color, and how to understand help files and documentation.

Later, it instructs on how to configure the X Windows System, how to start X, and all other aspects of using X.  Then it even goes further into using the graphical interface and includes things like audio, printing,  networking, and communications.  It basically gives the user a full overview of using Linux.

This site is the online version of a hard copy book sold in many stores and featured on Amazon. Once you complete this book and the LinuxCommand.org instruction, you’ll be a Linux Kung Fu Master.

Do you have any favourite websites for mastering the Linux command line?   If so, let us know about them in the comments.

Image Credit : Slashcrisis

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Although many changes have occurred to the company over the years, and ultimately they’ve lost their crown, Mandriva Linux remains a solid choice in an alternative operating system.

Introduction

Mandriva is primarily a KDE distro, although they do give GNOME and others almost equal development time. This release features KDE 4.3.2 and GNOME 2.28.1 as well as several lighter choices. Linux 2.6.31.5, Xorg X Server 1.6.5, and GCC 4.4.1 form the foundation underneath. Traditionally, the outstanding features of Mandriva are its installer and system control panel – which are rivaled by few, but this release hopes to offer some amenities to appeal to users of newer trends in technology such as semantic desktop and netbook support.

The Mandriva Linux installer sets the standard in user-friendly Linux installers. They were the first to use a pretty framebuffered graphical interface but perhaps the most useful element was the partitioner. To this day it remains the easiest to use due to the manner of the visual representation of your hard disk layout. Many others have used Mandriva’s installer for inspiration in their designs, but Mandriva’s reigns supreme.

The Mandriva Control Center again was ground breaking at it the time of its unveiling and again, it has few equals to this day. From within the control center a user can perform the whole range of Linux configuration. From hardware to software to kernel to boot to users, it can be found in this handy compact system tool.

The Mandriva Software Management system is capable and easy to use as well. It will install software from a aptly stocked software repository, apply package and system updates, as well as removing unwanted software. Packages are categorized by function and can be sorted by their install status, package classification, or by search results. Information such as release data, changelog, and included files can be reviewed for each package. Checking the tick box and clicking apply is all that’s required to install a package or set of packages.

The software manager also includes a System Tray applet to check for updates and inform the user of any available. When available the applet icon will will alert the user and upon clicking a window will open listing the updates giving the user the choice of applying them or not. At first boot the user will be asked to configure a remote update and software source, which entails just a few mouse clicks.

Mandriva Linux is available in three basic formats: an installable live CD, a free install DVD, and an all-inclusive commercial PowerPack edition. The installable live CD comes in your choice of KDE or GNOME, your choice of languages, and ships with some convenient proprietary code such as Wi-Fi drivers, 3D graphic drivers, Flash, and some browser plugins. This is the recommended version for most users.

Advanced users may wish to use the free install DVD because it provides more desktop environments, several kernels, support for various hardware architectures, and developmental tools; but lacks proprietary drivers, codecs, and Flash. The commercial version has all sorts of extra goodies and is available at Mandriva Store.

All Mandriva Linux formats come with a nice set of applications. Web browsers, email clients, office programs, multimedia players, chat and messaging clients, photo and image management and manipulation apps, games, and utilities are found in the menu. The online software repositories contain thousands more waiting to be installed. Mandriva is one of the largest and most complete Linux distributions available.

2010 Improvements

For those familiar with Mandriva this release brings some great improvements. The best two so far have been the increased stability and performance. Mandriva may have had a reputation for being a bit crashy in the past, but it appears those days are gone. In the several days since a fresh install only one application crash has occurred here, and this application is known to be unstable across distributions. This new-found stability comes with even better speed as well. Not only does Mandriva boot quicker, but desktop performance has improved noticeably. Applications open and function faster, including the two heavyweights OpenOffice.org and Firefox. There is virtually no graphic artifacting and redraws are immediate. In addition, the 2010 graphics are just beautiful.

Some new features include a Live Upgrade for current users which allows them to update to 2010 without doing a fresh install. The installer now features a handy graphical initial partition layout screen before starting the actual partitioner, and the partitioner now has a file browser that lets you look at your current partitions’ data before making any decisions. Most of Mandriva’s original tools have seen lots of improvements in usability and efficiency and Ext4 is now the default filesystem. New guest user allows you to let others use your computer without risking your data.

Conclusion

This really is a banner release for Mandriva. It’s been a long time since I could recommend it too much, but it’s moved way up my list with 2010. For new users the complete experience with Mandriva One live CD will convince you better than my words and for loyal users, well, you already know. It might be too soon to say, but it feels like this release will go down as Mandriva’s best ever – and perhaps it just might be the best Linux release of the year.

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Here are 10 cool innovative Ubuntu linux wallpapers that would appeal to the Ubuntu enthusiasts!

The Dark Ubuntu

Ubuntu Wood Set

Ubuntu Bokeh

Ubuntu Metal

Linux for Robots

I don’t do Windows!

Ubuntu Denim

Ubuntu Poster

The Ubuntu User

Ubuntu vs Windows

Looking for more? Here are a few sources you should check for these kind of wallpapers – DesktopNexus has an awesome collection of Ubuntu Wallpapers. Ubuntu-Art, DeviantArt and Flickr are other sources worthy of a mention.

Having a myriad of favorite wallpapers brings forth another issue – ideally you would want to cycle through them so that you can see them all at one time or another and it also lends that little bit freshness to your desktop. Well changing wallpapers automatically is easy peasy. Try Wallpaper-Tray, its simple and straighforward. You point it to a folder, set the interval after which the wallpaper should be changed and it sets about to its task. If you are looking for something more flashy and feature rich take a look at other wallpaper changers for Linux and choose the one that suits your need.

One great thing about Linux is that you can customize even the slightest of details depending upon how much time you are willing to spend on it. While the result of a custom design would be truly amazing, it requires a fair bit of hacking and time. So you might want to check out how you can browse, download and apply themes right from the Ubuntu desktop. With tons of user contributed wallpapers, themes and icons, you can easily see time flying by when choosing the ultimate look and feel according to your choice.

And when you are done, let us know about it. Which Ubuntu wallpapers, themes, and icon sets are your favorites? We would love to check them out.

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GoblinX began life as one of the strangest looking distros available. With its goblin logo, Halloween colors, gawdy window decorations, and strange wallpapers it surely gave its users a unique experience. Today, GoblinX tries to appear more mainstream, but they still refuse to bow to the tide.

The developers include little that’s not Open Source, which means no proprietary drivers, codecs, or plugins. What they do is provide a nice stable environment with handy applications. Most hardware is detected and auto-configured, but some wireless Ethernet cards may need manual configuration. Fortunately, unlike some distros, they have included Ndiswrapper for those who require Windows drivers to activate their wireless network interface controller in order to access the Internet.  GoblinX includes some graphical configuration tools as well for things like Wireless Protected Access and printer set up.

GoblinX offers several configurations. The most recent release was of their G:Standard. This standard version ships with KDE 4 and applications such as Abiword, Pidgin, KOffice, and MPlayer. Under the hood is Linux 2.6.27.6 and Xorg X Server 1.6.3.  GCC 4.4.3 is installable. Other versions are G:Noblin which features GNOME as the desktop environment, G:Mini which uses Xfce 4, and G:Micro that ships with Fluxbox. While these versions and their source code are free to download, GoblinX developers also produce a version for USB memory sticks with GNOME and a netbook interface similar to Ubuntu Mobile that can be obtained for a nominal fee.

GoblinX G:Mini with Xfce 4

The hard drive installer is relatively easy. The compact nature of the interface limits the options making it easier for the new user.  However, you may need to create a partition first using the included partition manager. The installer does have configurations for options such as user accounts, root password, filesystem, run level, and language.  Running from the live CD has the option to save users’ configuration to a partition or removable media.

The GoblinX partition manager and installer

Being based on Slackware, it inherits Slackware’s package manage system. However, the much more friendly slapt-get and Gslapt graphical front-end are set up with GoblinX repositories and contain many other popular applications such as Firefox and OpenOffice.org.  Gslapt resembles and functions very much like Synaptic.  Find the application, mark it for installation, and click Apply is all there is to it.

The GoblinX package management - Gslapt

With this being a point-0 release, there are a few bugs. For example, the Gslapt package manager has problems completing its tasks at times and OpenOffice.org has dependencies missing from repositories.  These will no doubt be fixed in updates. In the mean time, OpenOffice.org from www.openoffice.org is an easy install and slapt-get at the commandline functions just fine.

slapt-get operates almost like APT.  Whereas with APT one might apt-get install <package name>, with slapt-get one types slapt-get --install <package name>. The other functions are similar as well.  Type slapt-get --help for more.

For those wishing to use Ndiswrapper to extract and format their Windows drivers for their wireless Ethernet cards, the procedure is very simple. First mount your Windows partition, then point Ndiswrapper to the driver .inf file.  So, for example, one might:

1.  mkdir /mnt/sda1
2.  mount -t auto /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
3.  ndiswrapper -i /mnt/sda1/SWSetup/WLAN/bcmwl5.inf

Then to use it simply:

1.  modprobe ndiswrapper

If you have still have difficulties with certain Broadcom chips found in many laptop brands, perhaps try:

1.  echo "blacklist b43" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
2.  echo "blacklist ssb" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
3.  Then reboot your machine.

Another thing many folks may miss is the Adobe Flash Player.  While GoblinX repositories have Gnash, a free Open Source flash player that sometimes doesn’t work real well, many users prefer Adobe.  It’s easy to install as well.

1.  Visit Flash Player download and download the tar.gz format.
2.  tar -zxvf install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz
3.  mv libflashplayer.so .mozilla/plugins/

Other than those previously mentioned, very few if any other problems emerged while using GoblinX so far.  In addition, KDE 4 on GoblinX performs rather well, even on a system with only 512 megabytes of RAM.   Whereas GoblinX may not be “install and go” to some standards, it gives the user the choice to use proprietary code other distros may take away. GoblinX is simply a nice distribution derived from a solid code base that offers the user even something better than choice – something different.  And these days, anything different is good.

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Things have changed a lot over the past few years and there is plenty of eye candy available on the Linux desktop. Today however we are going to look at the gaming side of the spectrum and particularly at applications and resources you can use to find and install Linux games on your box.

Synaptic(or any other) Package Manager

A package manager lists various software that you can install on your computer. As an example the package manager in Ubuntu is called the synaptic package manager and it lists tons of applications you can choose to install from.

You can find it under System > Administration. In the sidebar you will find a special section dedicated to Linux games and amusement. Choose from official, multiverse and universe and you will see the games that are available via the repositories. You might have to enable universe and multiverse repositories from within System > Administration > Software Sources if you don’t see them listed by default.

Playdeb (for Debian/Ubuntu based distros)

Playdeb is a gaming repository. They mention Ubuntu specifically but you should be able to use playdeb with other Debian/Ubuntu derivatives just fine.

To use Playdeb you have to install the playdeb package (technically you should be able to install Linux games without the package, but it is a recommended installation to avoid further complications). You can download the package’s deb file or configure the repository. The details are available here.

Once you have installed the required software you are good to go. Browse for games that are available on the playdeb website. There are plenty of them out there. You can browse your favorite genre from amongst fps, education, dungeon, simulation, mmorpg, music, space, action, strategy and more.

Each Linux game listing consists of the necessary details along with a link to a Youtube video.  You can have a look at it to see if you would really like to install the game. If you like a game, installation is super easy and just a click away. Click on the big “Install this now” button and set the ball rolling. Soon the game along with all the dependencies will be downloaded, installed and ready for use.

djl

Inspired by Valve’s steam distribution setup, djl is a game manager for the Linux world. djl is not available in repositories so you would have to take the longer route for installation. Download the tarball from here. Extract the contents, and then run the included djl script. In case you are wondering here is what I mean:

1. tar -xvf <djl tar.gz file name>
2. cd djl
3. sh djl.sh

You would have to specify certain configuration settings the first time you run djl and then you will be able to view the djl game manager. With that out of the way you can browse the repository of about 120 or so games, read about them, view screenshots and install them at the click of a few buttons. You can view recently added and recently updated Linux games from the news tab, join the chat at the djl IRC channel and install plugins to extend djl’s functionality.

You can find hundreds of games that you can install on your Linux machine using the applications mentioned above. If you are a gaming enthusiast chances are you will find one matching your taste.

Have you tried games that are available for Linux, besides the obvious solitaire games? Which ones are your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

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You can download MobaLiveCD from here. A mere 1.6 MB download, MobaLiveCD presents an inviting prospect over virtualization solutions like Virtualbox, although it is not as feature rich. Under the hood, MobaLiveCD uses QEMU – the open source emulator. If you ever tried using QEMU, you would know that it requires a fair bit of configuration and know-how. MobaLiveCD does away with all that and provides you with a single executable file which launches the application, you don’t even need to install MobaLiveCD.

MobaLiveCD is a portable application, the interface is intuitive and straightforward. To run a Linux LiveCD:

• Just click on the ‘Run the LiveCD’ button.
• Browse to the iso image.
• Choose whether to create a virtual hard drive or not and the LiveCD boots up.

MobaLiveCD needs to copy files to the system32 directory, so you should run MobaLiveCD with elevated rights if you see an error like the one below. To do with elevated rights just click on the exe file and choose Run as Administrator.

Keep in mind that you are essentially running another operating system inside Windows thus the resources available to MobaLiveCD will be limited. So you should not expect the same performance levels you would get by restarting the computer and booting from the CD ROM. Nevertheless depending upon your computer’s configuration you can still get decent performance, enough to let you try out the Linux Live CD thoroughly.

You can toggle full screen mode using Ctrl + Alt + F and Ctrl + Alt would bring the cursor back to the host operating system. In addition you can use the Right-Click Menu button that would create a right click context menu entry for ISO files, allowing you to run an ISO file directly within MobaLiveCD from the context menu.

The latest version of MobaLiveCD can also be used to run a Live USB drive right inside Windows. Click on the Run Live USB button and follow the prompts. If you would like to save the state of your work MobaLiveCD also lets you create a virtual hard disk.

Oh and in case you are wondering which LiveCD you should download, check out the Unofficial(fake) Chrome OS. And now that we are on the topic, let me confess that it was out of an urge to try out the fake Chrome OS(and laziness to set up a virtual machine in Virtual Box) that I realized MobaLiveCD is a cool application we haven’t covered yet, so now you know about it.

MobaLiveCD is great for testing new Linux distributions with a Linux Live CD, downloading ISO’s before burning them or testing remastered Live CD’s that generally require some hit and miss to get things exactly the way you want. With MobaLiveCD you can test them without needing to set up a virtual machine or burning CD’s.

Have you used MobaLiveCD? Do you know of any other similar application? Let us know in the comments.

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• You don’t have to worry about security, system maintenance and updates.
• A separate, unprivileged account for your kids makes sure that anything they could possible to to the system is limited to one account; if anything goes wrong just delete it and create another one.
• Call of Duty, zombies, and other modern 3D PC games won’t run without additional emulation software and hackery. Safe to say, if your kid manages to play Crysis on a Ubuntu box using just WINE, his future’s looking bright.

Kanagram mixes up the letters of a word, creating an anagram. You have to guess what the mixed up word is. Kanagram is a great children’s Linux program that features several built-in word lists, hints, and a cheat feature which reveals the original word. Kanagram also has a vocabulary editor, so you can make the game be as hard as you want it to be.

Kanagram is cool, but wait until you hear about GCompris. Designed to be the end-all be-all of children’s Linux educational software suites, it has about 100 activities, and an age recommendation of 2-10. It’s got everything you’d want, from reading practice, to science, algebra, drawing, geography quiz and even chess. There are even activities for discovering the computer’s peripherals. When you start the program, GCompris presents the list of activities, and a control bar at the bottom.

Each icon stands for an activity. When the mouse is hovering over it, more information appears: the name, description and author of the activity are displayed in the description area. A click on the icon will lead you to an activity or a menu of activities. GCompris is translated into more than 50 languages.

We’ve all seen the commercial with the kid who likes drawing on the furniture. Oddly enough, his mother is happy about that because she was anxious to test her new Pronto spray. In real life, I think you’d rather install TuxPaint and let the creativity flow freely on the computer screen. It’s recommended for kids aged 3 through 12, it has easy to use interface and a funny penguin that sits in the bottom left and encourages your efforts.

Finally, we’ve got Earth3D, which is very similar to Google Earth and is a great way to teach your kid about geography. Unlike its Google counterpart, Earth3D taps into various map providers and time stamps. You can watch the ice in Greenland melt away before your eyes,  learn country flags and borders.

You can install any of the Ubuntu software discussed in this article by searching for their name in the Synaptic Package Manager, checking the box on the left of its name and clicking ”Apply Changes”. To launch Synaptic, choose System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager.

Most children’s Linux educational software is readily available for other distributions such as Fedora or SuSE, in their respective package managers, so try searching for the application name. We describe the installation process for Ubuntu because it’s the most widely used of the bunch.

You might want to check out some other posts related to Linux, Ubuntu or education, here on MakeUseOf. We have also published the “Newbie’s Getting Started Guide to Linux” ebook.

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BKChem is a chemical drawing Ubuntu chemistry software that’s packed with features. It supports, according to the developer team website: bond-by-bond drawing, bond length and angle restrictions to assist with the drawing, ready to use templates of common rings, the ability to expand common groups from abbreviated to structural form, support for linear formulas, radicals & charges, arrows (several types – normal, retro, equilibrium, etc.), rich text, color support, simple vector graphics (rectangles, circles, polygons etc.). Another nice touch is the automatic validity check of the drawings.

Editing is also a breeze with unlimited undo and redo capabilities, aligning, scaling, rotation (2D, 3D), aligning of molecules so that particular bond is horizontal/vertical, rotation of molecular fragments around bonds (conformation changes), definition of personal preferred drawing style (bond lengths, widths, colors).

You’re not locked in if your school uses another software. BKChem has export capabilities for SVG (native data are transparently embedded into SVG file), OpenOffice Draw format, ODF (OpenOffice 2.0), Encapsulated PostScript, PDF, PNG, basic support for both CML1 and CML2, Molfiles and generation of SMILES.It can also import CML1 and CML2, Molfiles, SMILES (subset) and INChI (subset). BkChem is translated in English, French, Czech, Polish, German and Traditional Chinese translations.

Chemical Calculator or GChemCalc is another Ubuntu chemistry software app that’s a simple chemical calculator for determining molecular weights of a formula and their respective percentages, all really fast and easy. There’s not much to be said about it, except I use it all the time – simple is almost always better.

Kalzium provides you with all kinds of information about elements in the Periodic Table of the Elements. You can lookup information about the elements and also use visualizations to show them. It is free and licensed under the GNU Public License.

You can visualize the Periodic Table of the Elements by groups, blocks, and families. You can plot data for a range of elements for properties like the boiling point or the atomic mass and can go back in time and see what elements were known at a given data.

Kalzium is divided in a navigation panel on the left and the table view which shows the elements of the periodic table. The standard menu bar allows you to choose what you want to display and the status bar reports facts. You can hide the navigation panel by using the View->Show Sidebar menu.

When you move the mouse cursor on an element of the table, an overview of the current element in the Overview tab of the navigation panel will be displayed. You can choose  several views for the table: display the elements per families, per groups, per crystal structure, depending on their acidic behavior, etc. You can change all that in the menu bar in the View->Scheme menu. If you want to know facts about a precise element, click on it in the table and the information dialog will be displayed.You can also calculate the molecular mass of molecules with the tool in its sidebar. You can enter linear formulas to calculate their weight.

You can install any of the Ubuntu chemistry software applications discussed in this article by searching for their name in the Synaptic Package Manager, checking the box on the left of its name and clicking ”Apply Changes”. To launch Synaptic, choose System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager.

Most educational software is readily available for other distributions such as Fedora or SuSE, in their respective package managers, so try searching for the application name. We describe the installation process for Ubuntu because it’s the most widely used of the bunch.

Another aspect worth noting are the custom made distributions, designed from the get-go to be used by students in an educational environment. We’ll get into the details of this in the upcoming eBook, a handy guide for setting up your kids with a computer.

You might want to check out some other posts related to Linux, Ubuntu or education, here on MakeUseOf. We have also published the “Newbie’s Getting Started Guide to Linux” ebook.

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When it comes to emulators, Linux is right up there. It might not be able to run Crysis or World of Warcraft, however you can surely run various free old school games like Mario, Popeye, Contra, etc.

Here is how you can play those old, free games on your Linux machine. There are various emulators available for Linux, let us look at them one by one.

DOSBox

Simply put, DOSBox is a DOS-emulator and lets you re-visit the good old days when DOS used to rule the roost. Using DOSBox you can play all those DOS games that you loved.

Just install DOSBox, download the game you want to play, run DOSBox from the terminal and execute the game you just downloaded for a trip back in time! The best way to download your favorite game is to Google it.

Check your distributions package manager, Ubuntu users can sudo apt-get install dosbox.

ZSNES

ZSNES emulates the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (NES/SNES). You can thus play almost all of the popular games that made their way onto the NES.

You can install ZNES using your package manager. Once installed you would need to download some of those old, free games. These are generally called SNES ROMs. These are freely available across the Internet and specially on various p2p networks.

PLEASE NOTE that downloading ROMs may be illegal, so you might want to re-consider your decision before you go in for the download.

Fire up ZSNES emulator and you can play the game you just downloaded by loading it via the Game > Load option within the ZSNES emulator.

gnuboy

gnuboy emulates the GameBoy console. So if you are interested in playing some of your favorite GameBoy games on the PC, give gnuboy a spin. It has great compatibility with almost every free old school game you might want to play.

As with other platforms, you can find games floating around on the Internet, you just need to put your head down and search!  You need to install gnuboy-sdl or gnuboy-svga or gnuboy-x depending upon which libraries you want to support. Again, as above, gnuboy is generally available through the package manager.

Where to get the free old games

The games are generally a Google search away, however you can also check out various p2p networks to find ROMs for your emulator. Abandonia and PDRoms are great for finding such games as well.

Are you still into old school games? Tell us about the emulators you use and your favorite games in the comments section!

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Few of us have the skills to create our own fonts. Fortunately, there are tons of free text fonts available on sites like DaFont, FFonts, 1001 Free Fonts or Fontex. Once you have downloaded your favorites, you’ll need to figure out how to install those fonts. Here’s a basic guide on how to install fonts on Windows, Linux and Mac.

Please uncompress / unzip all fonts before trying to install them, preferably into a separate folder. If you select a manual installation process, you can unzip files right into the respective font folder. Make sure you delete eventually included text files, which don’t belong into this folder.

Windows

Supported fonts:

• TrueType
• OpenType
• PostScript type 1 (requires Adobe Type Manager (ATM) or ATM Deluxe; comes with Windows XP and up)
• Windows bit mapped FON

Installation process under XP:

• Close all applications.
• Select font files and copy them into C:\Windows\Fonts folder.

Alternative installation process under XP:

• Close all applications.
• Go to > Start Menu > Control Panel (> Appearance and Themes) > Fonts.
• From the > Fonts folder menu open > File > Install a new font…
• Browse for your fonts and click > OK to install.

Installation process under Vista and 7:

• Close all applications.
• Right-click font files to be installed.
• A menu will pop up, select > Install.

Alternative installation process under Vista and 7:

• Close all applications.
• Go to > Start Menu > Control Panel (> Appearance and Personalization) > Fonts.
• Right-click into the list of fonts and select > Install a new font… from the menu.
• Browse for your fonts and click > OK to install.

Ubuntu Linux

Supported fonts:

• TrueType
• OpenType

Installation process to install for single user:

• Close all applications.
• Open > /home folder.
• In the menu open > View and > Show Hidden Files.
• You will now see the > .fonts folder. If not, create that folder.
• Copy font files into the > .fonts folder.

Installation process to install for all users:

• Close all applications.
• Save fonts in a separate folder on > Desktop, e.g. > newfonts.
• Open > terminal and start command > sudo cp -R ~/Desktop/newfonts /usr/share/fonts
• Optional: rebuild font cache with command > sudo fc-cache -f -v

Damian has written a thorough post on How To Install Microsoft Text Fonts in Ubuntu Linux.

Mac OS X

Supported fonts:

• Multiple Master (OS 10.2+)
• TrueType
• data fork TrueType (DFont; OS X+)
• OpenType
• PostScript type 1 (requires ATM or ATM Deluxe; comes with OS X)

Installation process under Mac OS X:

• Close all applications.
• Open folder that contains fonts to install.
• Select fonts to be installed.
• Drag and drop the selected font files into the > Library’s Font folder.

Installation process under Mac OS 10.3+ using FontBook:

• Close all applications.
• Open folder that contains fonts to install.
• Double-click icon of font to be installed.
• FontBook opens and you can preview the font.
• To install only for you, click > Install Font button.
• To install for all users, select > Preferences and change > Default Install Location from > User to > Computer, then click > Install Font button.

Troubleshooting

I hope the above guide was thorough enough, but you may still run into problems. Just in case, here are possible solutions to some of the most common issues.

Fonts don’t show in program.

• Make sure you installed a supported font format.
• Exit all programs before installing new fonts.
• Restart programs after installing new fonts.
• If restarting the program fails, reboot operating system.
• Were the fonts installed into the correct folders?

Issues with displaying or printing text.

• Mac: To properly view and print PostScritp type 1 fonts, ATM is required.
• PostScript type 1 fonts consist of two files: PFB (printer font binary) and PFM (printer font metrics). Both need to be installed in order for these fonts to display correctly both on screen and in print.

Fonts not available to applications running in Classic mode (Mac).

• Install fonts in Macintosh TrueType or Macintosh PostScript into the fonts folder inside classic system folder.

Font only available to user who installed it (Mac, Linux).

• Mac: Make sure fonts were installed into the system library font folder, instead of /Users/username/Library/Fonts.
• Linux: Make sure fonts were installed into system folder. See instructions for details, eventually repeat the process.

Now that you know how to install new fonts, are you asking yourself where to find them? Mark has written a post about 5 Excellent Sources To Download Free Text Fonts. If you’re creative you can even create your own fonts. Saikat has a post about How To Create Your Own Fonts & Characters on Windows and Kabir wrote about 2 Free Tools To Make Your Own Text Fonts, which will also work for Linux and Mac.

What’s your favorite font or typeface?

Image credits: nookiez

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Linux Mint, a distribution based on Ubuntu, has won a significant share of users, and represents a better Linux experience for both advanced and first time users. Simple yet effective tweaks, like the Mint Menu, might not appear very impressive at first glance but they affect your daily routines in a positive manner. It’s the same principle that makes Apple software better: an uncanny attention to details and yes, elegance.

Gloria, or version 7, was launched by the development team in June and is based on Ubuntu 9.04 ‘Jaunty Jackalope’. The release schedule for new versions of Linux Mint is tightly linked to Ubuntu’s, with updated versions releasing within 3 months of the official Ubuntu launch date.

The Mint tools, a set of applets or small applications, pre-installed extras and a customized theme package are basically what set Linux Mint apart. Support for MP3s, AVI video files, Java, and proprietary hardware drivers come standard. It’s like buying a tuned card straight from the factory, except Linux Mint is completely free.

The theme looks sleek and attractive, with shades of minty green and black, unlike the brown bliss of its father. You’re going to notice the similarity with the Windows taskbar immediately – the ‘Start’ button, quick launch and tray icons are right where they are supposed to be. The same goes for the windows switching area, there’s no separate bar. This makes for a quick and painless switch for those who would prefer the advantage of running Linux without having to spend a great deal of time adjusting to the UI (User Interface).

The Linux Mint Menu works pretty much like its Windows Vista and 7 counterparts, providing quick access to system locations, applications or configuration panels. If you have many applications installed and forget how the one you needed was called, you had to scroll down alphabetically in Windows, which is quite tedious if you have the bad habit of trying stuff all the time. The Mint Menu makes this experience much better by organizing the application by their category: Office, Internet, Administration, etc. The ‘Filter’ search box also has a leg up; it provides various actions related to your keyword automatically, be it a Google  search, an application or a package you want to install.

Linux Mint Install is another cool applet that replaces the standard Add/Remove Applications feature. Neatly organized in categories, featuring descriptions, ratings and reviews, applications couldn’t be easier to locate and install. It’s considerably simpler than on Windows; select the application, click ‘Install’ and you’re set.  Because Linux Mint is based  on Ubuntu, it’s compatible with the same huge repository of applications.

Mint Update keeps all the software updated with the latest patches for security and performance. Forget about checking Windows Update and then each application individually – Mint Update works with all the applications installed using Mint Install as well as the system packages. It even assigns a number to each update so you can quickly assess its importance and compatibility with your system.

The Control Center, a feature that will look familiar to KDE users, is now available in the default Gnome window manager, aggregating all the available configuration applets – complete with a search bar and categories.

A few more tweaks and applets make Linux Mint great, but they are less important and I’m sure you’ll discover them yourself. Linux Mint comes in both 32bit and 64bit, with KDE, GNOME and XFCE flavors available here. Each version includes the standard array of applications such as Gimp, OpenOffice and Rhythmbox. The Live CD image can be burned to a CD or USB stick and can be booted for testing or performing a permanent installation. A quick start guide can be downloaded for free. You might also want to check out our “Getting Started Guide to Linux”.

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1. Get lightning fast and clever at the command line

You can use keyboard shortcuts and other command line tricks to make entering commands easier and faster. You might already know about the ‘tab’ key which completes partial commands and even file and directory names.

Here are some other keyboard shortcuts you can use within terminal:

Also don’t forget to check out 4 websites where you can learn cool command line tricks

2. Launch Ubuntu Linux Applications with keyboard

There are two ways you can achieve this:

• Use applications like Launchy or Gnome-Do that make it easier to launch applications by typing a few characters of the application’s name.
• Or you can summon gconf editor (Alt+F2 then type gconf-editor and hit enter), and navigate to apps > metacity > global_keybindings, double click on any of the run_command_N and type in the keyboard shortcut you want to assign to an application then make a mental note of the number N. Then go to apps > metacity > keybinding_commands and double click on command_N (N being the number you used above) and type in the command you want to run. As an example if you wanted to run Firefox you would type in firefox.

Also check out these Ubuntu keyboard shortcuts you might not know about.

3. Start from wherever you left off

You can make Ubuntu remember the applications you had open when you last logged out, so that when you log back in again you’ll find all those applications running and you can resume right from where you left off.

To achieve this go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications, then go to the options tab and check "Automatically remember running applications when logging out"

4. Create a Separate Ubuntu Linux Home Partition

New versions of Ubuntu arrive every 6 months. Although you can upgrade to the latest version via the update manager, sometimes the upgrade doesn’t work as expected so some users like to do a fresh clean install.

The disadvantage with that of course is that you lose data you had in your home directory. To overcome this you can create a separate Home partition when you are installing Ubuntu, size it according to your requirements and then when you decide to install Ubuntu the next time, simply specify this partition as the Home partition (by choosing /home as the mount point).

All your files and data on the Home partition will be preserved even after a fresh install.

5. Update and Install Ubuntu Linux Software Without Internet Connection

There are lots of way to do this, the easiest of all is to use APTonCD. APTonCD allows you to create CDs and DVD’s containing all the packages you want, which you can then use to install software on computers without an internet connection.

Note that APTonCD requires you to have an internet connection (or downloaded packages) to create the installed media. However once the media is ready you don’t need an internet connection for any of the machines you want to install the software on. Insert the appropriate CD/DVD and use apt-get as you would normally.

6. Install new fonts, Microsoft fonts and improve font rendering

Ubuntu doesn’t offer many choices when it comes to the fonts. However you can easily install new fonts including those from Microsoft like Arial, Verdana, impact and many more. You can use different sites to find the kind of font you are looking for.

7. Use PPAs, Install latest versions of software

There are a lot of steps that a software has to go through before it becomes part of Ubuntu or becomes available through the Ubuntu repositories. While all those steps lend additional stability, it generally means that you don’t get the latest versions of all the software as soon as they are released.

If you like to stay on the cutting edge, you can search for Personal Package Archives for your favorite software on Launchpad and add those to your installation’s software sources. I briefly touched on PPAs and how to use them here. If that seems like too much work, you can also download the latest deb packages and install them by double clicking (you won’t get automatic updates for the software if you install it this way).

Remember you might get into an occasional trouble or two with the latest versions, but mostly it wouldn’t be catastrophic. You can always hop over to the Ubuntu Forums to get quick help.

8. Be the root

The root account is disabled by default on Ubuntu installations, mainly to prevent you from doing something you didn’t intend to do. However if you "promise to be careful" you can enable root account as follows:

1. Type sudo passwd root and provide a root password.
2. Then head on over to System > Administration > Login Window, go to the Security tab and check "Enable local system administrator login"

You should now be able to login as root from the Login prompt. As an alternative you can use "sudo su" to provide your password and get root prompt.

9. Run Windows applications and games

Who wouldn’t like to play Counter Strike on Ubuntu (unless of course you are completely not into it) or perhaps even run Photoshop? Well it is very much possible and here is how to do it.

10. Shorten boot time with profiling

Ubuntu Linux devs have done a great job with the boot time, Jaunty is fast and Karmic is slotted to be even faster. There is however a bit more you can do by profiling your boot. Profiling lets Ubuntu make a list of all the files that are accessed during bootup, it then sorts the files according to how they are stored on your hard disk. So the next time the system is booted, the files would be read faster.

To profile boot you need to follow these steps

• At the grub menu highlight the kernel you boot most often.
• Press e for edit.
• Choose the line starting with kernel and press e again. Now add the word profile to the end of this line. Hit Enter and then press b to boot

Note that while profiling, the system will boot slower this one time, the next time however you should see an improvement. Also keep in mind that all this is machine-dependent and also depends on the arrangement of files on your hard disk, so the difference you see might not be huge, or even nil in some cases.

11. Try out different Ubuntu Linux Desktop Environments and Desktop Managers

If you are looking for something different than the default Gnome interface, you should check out alternative desktop managers that you can use. If it is a complete Desktop Environment you are looking for, KDE4 has come a long way and is now impressively usable and fun. You can do a "sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop" to get KDE.

12. Create a media center or a media server

It would be great if you could easily browse and manage your huge collection of music, videos and pictures. Mesmerized by Windows Media Center’s slick interface? Wait till you see what all cool options you have to turn your Ubuntu system into a media center. You can even access your media collection on your phone, PSP or a different computer if you set up a media server on your Ubuntu machine.

13. Share Firefox profile data with Windows

Many people use Windows and Linux on the same machine. If you are one of them, there would have been times you couldn’t find that bookmark you created or password you stored when you were using Firefox from within Windows. Check out how you can share Firefox profile data across operating systems without syncing it over the web (works best if you have the same version of Firefox in both OS’s). For different computers you can of course use Weave.

14. Customize Nautilus to your liking

Nautilus is the default file manager on Ubuntu. While you may be content with what it does, there is lots more you can make it do. You can use extensions to improve functionality and even add custom functionality to Nautilus

15. Compile your own Kernel

If you can’t find something to keep you busy for the weekend and you have your customization hat on, how about building a kernel to specifically meet your requirements? This is frankly more of a learning experience. Some might say that it enables you to use just the features and drivers you require, but if everything is working fine with the kernel supplied and you don’t have any interest in the Linux kernel, skip ahead this one is not for you.

If however you require some of the experimental features of the kernel, or need it to be compiled in some other special way we say you check out this guide within Ubuntu Documentation.

16. Change Usplash Screen and create a custom splash screen for GRUB

So you didn’t count the last one? Here is another one then. A Usplash screen is Ubuntu text and a logo with a progress bar that you see when you boot up Ubuntu.

If you would like to change that to something more interesting follow these steps. What better way to show your Linux fu than customizing the very first screen that appears? You can create a custom splash screen using one of your photos, GIMP and a little tweaking. Here is the how-to.

Know some more tips or great hacks for Ubuntu Linux users? Sure you do, go ahead let us know about them in the comments.

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Free – you ask? Yes, free. Welcome to the world of Linux where things are free both as in free speech and also as in free beer (mostly)!

If you are starting out on your journey towards Linux awesomeness, here are a few free downloadable ebooks to teach yourself Linux that should help you along nicely:

Newbie’s Getting Started Guide to Linux

(Download)

MakeUseOf’s very own Newbie’s Guide to Linux, tells you how to choose a distribution and then teaches you how to perform a basic Linux install. You can then use the guide to familiarize yourself with the Linux desktop and some basic commands.

Stefan did a great job in keeping it simple and to the point, the way beginners want it. Also don’t forget to check out our other MakeUseOf Manuals.

Introduction to Linux – A Hands on Guide

(Download)

Takes you from the absolute basics to basics. This hands on guide tells you everything right from logging in, basic file management, backup techniques up to basics of networking. It is what you need if you are having difficulty figuring out how to get to that resume file you saved just now. The guide explains Linux file structure and introduces to basic commands and text editors as well.

GNU/Linux Command line tools Summary

(Download)

One important aspect of working in Linux is that you have to familiar with the command line. This book shows you how to use the command line in Linux to your advantage. Apart from the ins and outs of the shell, this book also introduces various commands and the situations where you would use them. There are chapters that deal with specific tasks and list various commands you can use to achieve the task. If you can study online, there is another excellent manual you can refer to.

Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference

(Download)

Ubuntu is one of the most popular distributions, new users look up to when trying out Linux. If it is Ubuntu specific information that you are after then you should definitely check out Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference. The guide takes you from installing and configuring Ubuntu to adding and managing software and securing your system. A must read book if you use Ubuntu.

Rute User’s Tutorial and Exposition

(Download)

This one is not for the faint hearted! There is enough Linux juice in this book to keep even the intermediate to advanced users interested. The book begins humbly by presenting the basic commands and tools, however before you know it, you are learning everything from regular expressions to shell scripting to C programming to networking.

There is plenty of great material out there if you are trying to learn Linux, similar to these downloadable ebooks to teach yourself everything you ever wanted to know about Linux. If you have read a book or a tutorial that you found particularly useful, feel free to tell us about it in the comments below.

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Today I’ll show you how to set up a “dual boot” system that includes Linux (specifically Ubuntu Linux) alongside Windows XP or Vista. There will be no hard-drive partitioning (that’s scary!), instead Ubuntu will be installed in this case as if it were any other Windows program. This also makes it easy to uninstall later, in case you don’t like it.

Why would someone want to do this? Maybe you’re just beginning to really learn it, like I am. Maybe you’re a gamer who is just not a fan of the Windows interface and would like an alternative. Maybe you’re the power-user type and just wants to see what the fuss is about. Any reason you may have is valid. I’m just a big fan of free software who wants to help spread the word.

To get started, there’s no need to go to the Ubuntu site and download or order a CD-ROM. In this example, all you will need is to download and run the Wubi installer. Wubi started as an independent project, but is now officially supported by the Ubuntu community as a method of installation.

On the first screen, you’ll provide your desired username and password as well as designate the size of your “virtual disk” file, which your PC will see as a Linux file system.

Depending on the speed of your Internet connection, this next part may take a while. Wubi will download an image of the Ubuntu installation CD. As long as you’re on a broadband connection, this shouldn’t take more than an hour or two; Feel free to ignore the approximate download time at the onset.

After a few more installation screens, you’ll be prompted to reboot your system. Doing so should bring you to a new screen, giving you a choice whether you want to boot into Windows or Ubuntu. Select Ubuntu anytime to finish the installation.

Don’t panic when you see the formatting-partitions screen; Only the virtual disk file on which Ubuntu sits is being formatted.

After another reboot, enter your username and password and gaze upon a fresh pristine Linux desktop. It takes a little bit of getting-used-to, but the learning curve isn’t that steep.

Feel free to glance over the documentation to get your feet wet, check out our many articles on Linux use, and join the forums if you have any questions. Don’t be afraid of asking something “stupid”.  We were all n00bs once. Well, except me. I’m still a Linux n00b. But hey that’s what I’m taking out student loans for.

My choice of Ubuntu may have upset some Linux fans. Feel free to let me have it, and tell us why your favorite distribution is better, in the comments.

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No longer do you have to be content with a user interface having overly sized buttons and the weirdest of fonts. These days there are a wealth of themes, icons, login screens and wallpapers available for your Linux system on sites like gnomelook, kdelook, Gnome Art and the likes.

You can visit these sites, look for what seems pleasing, download it and then copy the files to the appropriate directory to install. There is an application that streamlines all of these steps, its called GnomeArt-NG. GnomeArt-NG is a tool for the Gnome Desktop Environment that makes it easier for you to browse and apply themes, icons and wallpapers.

Deb packages are available for Debian/Ubuntu. Other distro users can browse the download page for a suitable download.

When you run it for the first time GnomeArt-NG needs to download thumbnail previews so go ahead, click apply and let it do its thing. Once the download has finished you will be able to browse through various elements, choose the one you like and apply. You are done already!

GnomeArt-NG lets you browse backgrounds categorised into gnome, nature, abstract and others. You can choose different window decorations, icons, gdm greeters and splash screens all right from within the window.

Click on a theme, icon pack or background and you will see additional information about it in the right hand pane. In addition to the creator and basic description GnomeArt-NG also displays the download count and rating for the currently selected element.

You can even customize the download settings letting GnomeArt-NG know how often you want it to look for new themes and where to store the thumbnails and meta data on your hard disk. If you happen to be using a proxy you can also specify it here within the network setting. You can also run “First Time Download Assistant” again if you happen to experience any problems with the thumbnail previews.

GnomeArt-NG makes it super easy to customize your Gnome Desktop. If you are new to Linux and don’t know how to install themes and icon packs you will love it. If you are an experienced user you would still like streamlining of the whole customization process, but nothing ever stops you from digging deep and editing configuration files to get everything set up perfectly the way you want to in case you feel the need to do so.

How do you install themes, icons and window decorations? What do you think of GnomeArt-NG?

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StartUp Manager can be used to achieve this easily. You can install StartUp Manager by using your distribution’s package manager. Or check here. Once installed, it can be found under

System > Administration > StartUp Manager.

StartUp Manager can be used to easily customize a number of options that would otherwise require you to get your hands dirty by editing configuration files. As a start, you can change boot options such as the selection timeout and default operating system. If you have multiple operating systems, a useful option here is to make the Last Used operating system as the default choice, which would automatically boot the one you used the last time. Such a setting can be quite handy when you have a clear favorite in terms of operating systems and others are just installed for completeness.

You can also change the display resolution and the color depth if you are experiencing any problems with the display of the main menu. Uncheck “Show bootloader menu” if you don’t want to see the menu, and boot the default operating system each time. “Show bootsplash” can be used to add an image as background to the bootloader menu. We did a complete tutorial on it some time back. “Show text during boot” provides you with textual feedback of what is currently happening in the boot process.

The appearance tab allows you to customize the look of the bootloader menu as well as the Usplash theme. You can add colors to the bootloader menu, pick and choose the ones you like. A Usplash theme governs the progress bar display during the boot process. You can find some Usplash themes here, click on “Manage Usplash themes” and add the one you downloaded, then select the one you like and next time you boot, it would be there to greet you.

That is not all by any stretch of imagination. StartUp Manager allows you to do pretty advanced stuff. You can password-protect the bootloader or only recovery mode entries (a good choice) or the boot options by simply placing a check against the option and specifying the password.

If you are bothered by how cluttered the bootloader gets after a kernel upgrade, you can limit the number of entries from here in. Uncheck “Create boot option for recovery mode” to remove the recovery mode altogether if you are paranoid about someone getting into your system through recovery mode root prompt.

StartUp Manager is a no fuss tool which greatly simplifies tweaking and customizing of bootloader options and helps you manage Grub and Usplash settings easily without having to go in and tinker with the configuration files yourself. What do you think of it? Let us know in the comments.

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Hamster is available as an applet for the Gnome desktop environment and you can install it using your distributions package manager. It is most likely in there (or else you can install from source). Ubuntu users may sudo apt-get install hamster-applet. Once installed, you can add it to any of your panels by right-clicking on the panel choosing Add to Panel and then look for Time Tracker (not Hamster).

Hamster will appear as “No Activity 00:00″ in your panel. Click on it, key in what you are doing and it gets down to the mundane work of counting how much time you spent in that activity. It also displays how much time you have spent in the current activity in the current session while inconspicuously adding them all together in the background to create reports for you.

Hamster lets you categorize and add description to your activities. This is especially useful if for instance, you want to view how much time you are spending on a “Complete Project” which itself is made up of sub-tasks or sub-projects. You just have to include @ when letting Hamster know what you are doing and it will automatically create a category and file your task under it!

Letting a program know what you are doing every time you are about to switch an activity might seem like too much burden if you are not into time tracking. So Hamster provides you a leeway, allowing you to enter activities that you’ve done in the past. Why would you want to do that? You will realize in a minute when we move to the reports.

Click on the applet, expand “Today” and you will see what you have been up to on that day. Click on Show Overview and you will be greeted by pretty graphs and detailed statistics of what you have been doing this week, this month or this day. You can then click the “Generate Report” button and up pops your browser with a detailed report of your activities for the said period.

Overall, Hamster is an easy-to-use and intuitive time tracking application. Everything is just in place in the interface just as you might expect it to be. It is all the more useful if you are disciplined in its use or else, you can always go back in time and make entries (for a change). Did I mention the “Stop Tracking” button, just in case you feel the need!

If you’re new on MakeUseOf, make sure to download our hugely popular productivity manual. Nothing comlicated, only the simple tips that are easy to follow and actually work.

Do you use any time tracking applications? Which software or web applications do you prefer?

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Sound Converter

Available via the package manager, Sound converter provides basic batch audio file conversion. Select the files or drop in an entire folder, choose the output format and bitrate from within Edit > Preferences and basically, you’re done.

Gnormalize

Gnormalize is a GTK based tool for audio conversion. In addition to converting audio (between mp3, mp4, mpc, wav, ogg, ape and flac), Gnormalize can adjust the volume of sound files to compensate for varying recording levels. You can also use Gnormalize to rip CDs, edit metadata and play your songs as well.

SoundKonverter

KDE users can try SoundKonverter. It has all the features of Gnormalize like reading tags, replay gain calculation but supports a few additional audio file formats.

OggConvert, WaoN and flac

You always have a plenty of choices at your disposal when choosing software in Linux. Here are some command line tools that are good for specific audio conversion tasks. OggConvert provides you tools to convert almost all major audio formats into Ogg. flac and WaoN are good to use use when working with Flac or mid files respectively.

SoX

Then there is SoX – Sound eXchange. Although not just a conversion tool, geeks swear by it. You just cannot write an article about sound and not mention SoX. It does some hundred different amazing things and is rightly called the “Swiss Army Knife” of sound-processing programs.

WinFF

FFmpeg pretty rules the roost here. You can get all geeky and learn the command line switches or you can try WinFF. WinFF provides a frontend to FFmpeg. It works on Windows and Mac as well. It (actually FFmpeg) can be used for batch conversion of audio and video files. Just add the file(s) you wish to convert, choose the desired format, apply device presets if you desire. Once you are set, hit the Convert button and out pops the command line with one big ass command! Glad we don’t have to type in that ourselves, thanks to WinFF.

You can do pretty amazing things with WinFF or FFmpeg in general. We saw how we can use it to create actions so that you can convert video for your iPod with a right click in Nautilus. Studying the command line that WinFF pops out, you can create more of such custom actions. You can for example, write an action to extract audio out of videos, the possibilities are endless.

Handbrake

Handbrake is a popular multi-platform video transcoder. It can be used to convert DVDs to MP4, MKV, AVI and OGM. It offers additional features like chapter selection, burning subtitle into the picture, cropping and scaling.

DeVeDe

If Handbrake converts your DVDs to MP4s, DeVeDe takes in video files and creates DVDs and CDs that you can run on your regular home CD/DVD players. DeVeDe is available for Windows as well.

There are plenty of choices for you to consider and choose from if you are looking for some good Audio/Video converters for Linux. Did we miss out on your favorite software? Let us know in the comments

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Meiga is one of the best file sharing programs to share files across your network or over the Internet. Meiga is available for Linux (you can access files from other operating systems as well). Download the deb packages for Meiga from here. If you use other non-debian based distributions, you would have to compile from source.

Once installed, fire up the GUI. (Applications > Internet > Meiga in Ubuntu). You would be greeted by a minimalist window like this.

Click on add and browse to the directory you want to share, choose the share name, you should remove any spaces and make the name as simple as possible.

That is it, you have shared the folder successfully. Was it easy or what?

The person on the other side doesn’t need to install anything as long as a web browser or an http download manager is available. She would have to know your IP address and the share name to be able to access the files. Meiga makes it easy by showing you the URL in the statusbar as you click on each share. This is the URL other person would have to visit to access the files.

If you are on a network (like your home network) chances are you would be knowing the IP addresses on your machines, so getting a file simply means browsing to http://[ip address]:8001/[share name] and you would see a list of all the files and folders within the shared folder.

If you are sharing files across the Internet, then of course, you would have to communicate the share’s URL to the other end via email or chat.

If you have a dynamic IP and want to make your shares available for a longer period of time over the Internet, you might want to look into dynamic DNS which we discussed briefly. dyndns would map your current IP to a domain name, so that it points to your computer, irrespective of IP address changes.

While the ability to share files with ease is the stronghold of Meiga, it can certainly do with some basic features like password protection the ability to view all shares on a particular computer. All in all Meiga is great for easy, no fuss file sharing with minimal effort.

Do you know of any similar application that’s also a great file sharing program? Share with us in comments.

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AcetoneISO is a feature-rich and complete software application to manage CD/DVD images in your Linux system. It runs the poweful fuseiso in the backend and provides a very user-friendly frontend for its users to handle the image file easily. If you have tried and used fuseiso before, you will know that it supports a large variety of CD/DVD images, including ISO, BIN, NRG, MDF and IMG, which in turn makes AcetoneISO a versatile and powerful tool.

Installation

AcetoneISO is found in the repository of all Linux distro, so it can be easily installed via the respective APT manager. Alternatively, you can also download the installation package for your distro.

When you first run AceToneISO, it will run you through the configuration process and help you to set up the environment for you to work in. There are some options that you are required to configure, including the ISO settings, selecting the default media player application, the file manager to use, and the storage directory.

To mount a CD/DVD image, you just have to select the “Open Image” option in the File menu. It will automatically mount the selected ISO file to the Virtual Drive folder in your Home directory. To unmount, simply highlight the respective file entry in AcetoneISO and click the unmount button.

Here is a warning: while testing the unmount feature in Ubuntu, I have found that I am unable to unmount the image within Nautilus. The only way to unmount the image is to use the unmount button in the AcetoneISO application. Some of you might be annoyed by this, but that is how it works.

Other than the default mounting and unmounting of image files, AcetoneISO also comes with other functionality to allow you to edit and manage your image files. Here are some of them:

Image conversion (with PowerISO)

AcetoneISO makes use of the great functionality found in PowerISO (free for Linux users) to provide some of the useful image conversion features to its users. You can now use it to convert image to ISO, convert Mac OS image (DMG file), extract image content to a folder (without mounting), generate ISO from CD/DVD and even create a ISO from folder(s).

Using the image conversion features require you to install PowerISO in your system. If you have not installed PowerISO, AcetoneISo will prompt you about it and help you to download and install.

Utilities

The Utilities menu comes with several functions such as mounting your image in a specified folder, generate the Md5-sum of the image, extract the boot image or even generate Cue for BIN/IMG images.

Archive manager

The archive manager feature is one powerful function in AcetoneISO. It allows you to split the image into several volumes (best used when the file size is too big), compress images, encrypt the images or even extract a RAR password-protected ISO (you will need to have the password before you can extract).

Working with Video/Audio

AcetoneISO can also be used to download, extract, convert video and audio component of an image. You can use it to rip a DVD (or generic video) to a xVid avi video file and convert a FLV (YouTube format) file to AVI. Better still, you can download YouTube and Metacafe videos right within the AcetoneISO application. Once you have downloaded the video, you can also extract the audio component from the video file (under the Audio menu). On a side note, you may also convert online video to mp3 audio using VidToMP3.

I am not sure how often you would have to deal with ISO or various image files, but when you do (and you are a Linux user), I am sure that AcetoneISO is the only tool you need to get everything done. It may not be the best yet, but it is getting close.

What other tools do you use to manage your image file in Linux? Shout out in the comments!

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Some distros provide you with these icons on the desktop and some don’t. Having the icons on the desktop might be an overkill for the geeks. After all, the Places Menu works just fine. However, I guess new users still want those icons on the desktop (Ubuntu forums would attest to the fact). So, if you are looking to get the Home, Trash or the Computer icons on the desktop, it is very easy. Follow along (works for all Gnome-based distros)

Hit Alt + F2, type in gconf-editor in the dialog box that comes up and hit Enter.

The Configuration Editor will open up. Navigate to Apps > Nautilus > Desktop.

Towards the right side, you will see a set of options. Place a check against the icons you want to see displayed on the desktop. You can display the Computer, Home, Trash and Network icons from in here.

While you are there, you can also tinker with the names. If for example, you want to change the name from “Computer” to “Varun’s Computer”, all you have to do is double-click on computer_icon_name, choose String as the type and then key in the name you want to give to it.

You can also uncheck volumes_visible option if you don’t want the mounted drives to appear on the desktop. I personally loathed them, could never get in terms with where they appear (on top of each other at times) and how to customize their positions.

That’s it! You can customize what to show up on your desktop easily. While you are there, you might look into other options with gconf-editor, it provides an explanation of every option that you select, so you know what you are about to do. In case something goes wrong you can always correct it via the editor or by using the gconftool2 command within the terminal.

Confused or crystal clear? Shoot any questions in the comments!

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1. Sticky Notes

Sticky notes is the default sticky note application for Gnome. It is an applet that you add on the panel and access it via a simple click on the panel icon.

Sticky notes is a simple app and it is easy to use. You can configure the background color, font color and the default width and height. On the sticky note itself, you can also toggle the lock to prevent accidental deletion of the note content. While it is simple and short of features, it still can perform its task well, and one good thing is that it integrates well with the Gnome desktop and can access to the language library of the system. This gives you the capability to select the input method and the unicode characters.

2. KNotes

Knotes is the default sticky note app in Linux KDE desktop. It is highly configurable and comes with plenty of features not found in any other apps.

KNotes is actually part of the KDE PIM suite and an integrated component of Kontact, but it can be used independently as well. Being tightly integrated with the KDE framework, it give you functionality like drag and drop notes into emails, sending/receiving notes over a network and print note.

Features like editing the background color, font color, title font, text font, default width and height and the tab size are also available in KNotes. You can also paste note from the clipboard and perform a search to find that particular to-do list. You can add a title to each note for easy reference in the future. I found this nifty feature very useful and it is apparently missing from all other sticky notes apps.

On thing that I don’t like about it is that it doesn’t allow you to resize the sticky note on the fly.

Gnome users can also install KNotes from the repository, but must be prepared to install a whole bunch of KDE files.

3. Xpad

Xpad is a third party sticky note app (not to be confused with the xPad text editor and xPad sticky note for Mac) that is loved and used by many. It is lightweight, simple, yet extremely useful application.

Xpad is highly customizable. You can add basic styling (bold, italics, underline, etc) to the text, change the background color on the fly, resize the notes and even choose if you want to have scrollbar, window decoration on the notes itself. Each note comes with a toolbar that allows you to control all the note on an individual basis. You can even add or remove extra icons to the toolbar to make it more interactive.

Some of the Linux distros that are not using Gnome or KDE as the default desktop environment actually used Xpad as the default sticky note app in their distribution. If you are looking for a lightweight, yet highly configurable sticky app, this could be a great choice for you.

4. Pin ‘em up

Pin ‘em up is a Java-based sticky note application, which means it can run in whatever platforms that supports Java, including Mac, Windows and Linux.

Anyone who have used Java app on their system will know that it won’t run as fast (and look as nice) as the native app. This is also true for Pin ‘em up. It does feel clumsy when you try to move the sticky note around. However, Pin ‘em up does comes with some useful features that could worth a second look.

First of all, Pin ‘em up allows you to sort your notes into categories. You can define your own categories and categorize your notes into their respective groups.

Secondly, it supports importing/exporting of your notes to your own server to sync them with other computers. This is useful if you are using different computers with different operating systems.

5. Tomboy Notes

Strictly speaking, Tomboy notes is not a sticky app, but it is an excellent and extremely powerful note-taking app that I think it worth a mention here.

Most people who have used Tomboy Notes will swear by it. Its ability to link notes together with a Wiki-like linking system makes it extremely easy to organize your thoughts and ideas. The best thing is, even if you rename/reorganize your notes, the links will still be intact.

Accessing the notes is often a mouse click away. Simply click on the panel applet icon and you will be able to access all your notes instantly. Tomboy integrates well with the Sticky Notes (in Gnome) and you can easily import your sticky notes into Tomboy. It comes preinstalled in Gnome desktop.

Are you aware of any other sticky notes for Linux? If they weren’t mentioned in this article, please introduce them to us in the comments!

Image credit: closedzero

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Hardinfo is a Linux application. To install Hardinfo, look inside your distribution’s package manager. Ubuntu users can install Hardinfo via the terminal using:

sudo apt-get install hardinfo

Once installed, go ahead and run it. You will be greeted by various parameters towards the left and you can get more information by clicking on them.

The information is broadly classified into 3 categories: The computer, devices and benchmarks. You can get a information summary about your computer or detailed information about the Operating System, Kernel Modules, Filesystems, shared directories, network interfaces, monitors, languages installed and a log of system boots. In addition, you can also get detailed information about the processor, memory, PCI device, USB devices, battery, printers and storage etc.

All this information is neatly organised and you can copy any one of them to the clipboard with the click of a button or generate a report to post on forums for help. You can pick and choose what information is to be included in the report by un-checking the modules you want to exclude.

Hardinfo also provides you with benchmarking that allows you run certain tests and see how well your computer does! Hardinfo benchmarks your CPU with zlib, fibonacci, md5, sha1, blowfish and FPU raytracing tests. It displays the result as well as how other common CPUs performed on the same test.

If you are unsure about how to interpret the results, Hardinfo displays a line towards the bottom – giving you some additional information about the test results. You can also synchronize the benchmark tests with the Hardinfo server to receive updated results for other CPUs and submit your own results if you so please.

Do you know of similar profiling and benchmarking tools? Please recommend them in the comments!

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For those Linux users who have been waiting hard and long for the release of Google Chrome Linux Alpha, there are both a good and bad news for you. The bad news is, Google Chrome for Linux is still not available yet. The good news however, the alpha build is now available for testing, which could be a joy for some Linux geeks.

Last week, Google released the first alpha build (build 3.0.183.1) of Google Chrome for Linux (and Mac). I have tested the Linux version on my Ubuntu machine and compared how it fares against Firefox. It is apparent that there are plenty of features missing, but it also comes with some juice that proved to be a surprise for many.

Warning

On the Chromium developer’s blog, they have stressed that the alpha build is not meant for mainstream public use and should be used only by developers. Being a public user, you are still free to download/install the software, but do bear in mind that many of the features are still missing.

Next step, installation.

Installation

Installing Google Chrome on Ubuntu is very easy. Download the deb file from the Chromium Early Release Channel to your desktop. Double click on the downloaded file to initiate the installation.

When the installation is complete, a warning window regarding the instability of this software will pop up. In the window, you can also opt to help the development of Google Chrome for Linux by sending in the crash reports to Google.

First impression

The very first impression of running Google Chrome Linux on my Ubuntu is that it is very fast.

Whenever I click on the Firefox launcher, I always have to wait for several seconds (at least 10 seconds) for it to load in the background before I get to see the home page. The more extensions I installed, the slower it got.

For Google Chrome, the moment I click on the launcher, the browser loads instantly, almost without any delay. One could argue that Google Chrome doesn’t support any extensions now and most of its features are not available, so it is logical that it loads faster. That could be true, but still, the difference in the speed is enormous.

Other than the boot speed, the speed that it loads a web page, performs a search, accesses URL history, suggests the URL as you type is also much faster than Firefox. And also more intelligent, in my opinion.

We have already covered plenty of Google Chrome features, including the tips and tricks, so I shall not delve into that. Overall, what is working in this alpha build is basic browsing, new tabs, simple tab dragging, search from URL bar, incognito mode and full page zoom.

What is lacking for now?

In short, it is still lacking a whole great list of things. There is no flash support, means you won’t be able to watch any videos on Youtube, no printing, no complex text support, no complex tab dragging (pulling the tab out of the browser window), you can’t change the homepage, little or almost no configuration options in the Options page and many other features that are only partially implemented.

One thing that I also noticed is that the font rendering in Google Chrome is still not up to par with Firefox. In addition, the UI still needs some polishing to make full of the GTK+ theme.

Should you install?

Google has make it clear that this is still an alpha release and should be installed by developers only. I am not a developer, but I am already enjoying the benefits of its speed. For basic browsing (checking mail, reading articles, performing searches in search engines), Google Chrome can do its job well, but for anything that is more complex, you will have to fall back to your native browser. There is no harm in installing it and trying it out for yourselves, I am already using it as my default browser. For complex stuff, I guess I’ll have to stick with Firefox.

Don’t forget that this is only the Linux version. My colleague, Jeffry, will be reviewing its Mac counterpart. Watch out for his article. Will it be better or worse? Find out soon.

What do you think about this alpha release? Did Google do the right thing by releasing such a raw version of their browser? Are you satisfied with it? Let it all out in the comments!

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First, we need to install the microblog-purple plugin. While you can simply download, install and start using the plugin, you need to do some additional work to ensure that any updates to the plugin are delivered to you automatically.

Open System > Administration > Software Sources. Navigate to the Third Party Software Tab and add the following to your software sources:

• deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
• deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/sugree/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Next, we need to import the key for the software source that we added. To do so, open up a Terminal and type the following:

sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0cf459b8df37ed8b

Once this is done you can install the plugin using the following command:

sudo apt-get install pidgin-microblog

Now just add a new account to Pidgin, choose Twitter from the protocol drop down menu, provide your username and password and you are all set to start tweeting from within Pidgin!

Note that this plugin supports Twitter and Identica. While the instructions above is the preferred method to install any third party software in Ubuntu, if you run into any problems you can simply download the deb package (or a binary package for you preferred distribution) and install it like any other software.

Windows users can also download the exe version of the plugin and install it alongside Pidgin.

How do you tweet from your Linux desktop? Do you use Gwibber? Adobe AIR based applications? Or would you prefer to stay with one software and manage everything from within Pidgin? Let us know in the comments.

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So, what do you do? How can you identify unknown files? Spend the next 10 minutes trying to open it in Word, PowerPoint, Open Office or maybe it is a PDF? Or perhaps you Google for some information. What if the extension is wrong?

TrID is a nice little utility to have on your computer for situations like this. Linux users have something similar in the “file” command. TrID identifies file types based on their signatures. What distinguishes TrID is the fact that it uses database of definitions to identify file types. This database is ever expanding (somewhat like definitions for Antivirus programs) and allows TrID to identify a wider range of file types.

You can use TrID in 3 flavors. The TrID – File Identifier is inherently a command line utility. You can pass the file to be identified as an argument and use the various switches to view additional information about the file in question. You don’t need to worry about typing long paths and filenames. You can use the -v switch for additional information, -w to wait for key press after showing results and -d to specify a different definitions package.

TrIDNet is the GUI version of TrID. Browse to the file you want to analyze and allow TrIDNet to enlighten you! Double-clicking on an item would show extra information about it.

You can also use TrID Online. Just visit here, upload the file you want to identify, hit Analyze and wait for the results to show up. You can also run through the various file extension definitions if you just want to look up a particular file extension and what it does.

TrID is a great utility to help you identify unknown filetypes with ease. You can then search the web if you are unsure of the software you should use to open the identified file. Try Openwith for the same result.

If you encounter a file type that is not (or wrongly) identified by TrID, you can help create definitions using TrIDScan and other TrID users will be able to benefit from your created definitions.

Do you know of any similar utilities that can be used to identify unknown files? Which sites do you refer for information on file extensions? Share with us in the comments.

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Specto is a Linux-based desktop application that allows you to watch for configurable events and get notified instantly when updates are available. Things that you can monitor include websites, emails, files/folders, system processes and connection ports.

The way Specto works is very easy. If you are monitoring a particular website, like your Facebook account for new messages on your wall, Specto grabs the file size of that site at regular interval and compares it with the previous version. If there are any changes, it will notify you via an unobtrusive popup at the corner of the system taskbar. You can define an error margin so that Specto won’t notify you for small changes to the site (such as rotating ads).

Specto is available as a package in the software repository of most Linux distro, so Linux users shouldn’t have much difficulty in installing it in your system.

After you have installed it, you can easily add events via its interface window. There are only several simple configurations so anyone, even if you have no technical knowledge, can use it easily.

To monitor a website, you just have to enter the name of the event, the update interval and the website’s URL. As mentioned above, you can set the error margin at the bottom of the window.

Specto comes with native support for Gmail, which means you can simply enter your username and password and have it notify you when new mails arrived. If you are using other email accounts, you will have to configure the POP3 or IMAP account accordingly.

If you want to monitor a particular file/folder, system processes or ports, the configuration process is the same as the above steps.

Whenever there is an update to the event that you are watching, Specto will popup a notification message just below its icon at the task bar. If you are using Ubuntu Jaunty, it also support the NotifyOSD feature.

Import/Export feature

What if you are using multiple computers but want to maintain the same setting and watch the same events throughout every computer? Specto comes with the import/export feature where you can easily and quickly export your configuration file in one machine and import it in another machine.

Conclusion

This may not be the ‘must-have’ application in your Linux machine, but if you are currently spending a lot of time monitoring some mundane but important stuff on the Web or your network files, you can be sure that Specto is going to make your life much easier.

What do you currently have Specto or any other applications monitoring? Let us know how you did it, in the comments.

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Tor reroutes network traffic through Tor nodes. With SOCKS-friendly applications like internet browsers, where we can easily specify proxies or SOCKS protocols, this isn’t much of a problem. Today, I will show you how to reroute network traffic of other applications through Tor as well.

By doing this, you can hide the origin of your P2P and instant messaging applications, or even play region-restricted games online!

Redirect Application Traffic

When applications access something over the internet, it carries along your IP address, or rough point of origin. This allows other services to log your location, or even block you out. Redirecting application traffic through nodes, to cover the initial point of origin is possible – although not always as easy as with web browsers.

FreeCap is a free tool for Windows that does most work for you. It allows you to rerdirect the network traffic of selected applications through an HTTP or SOCKS proxy. Linux and OS X users should refer to socat.

A FreeCap alternative is SocksCap. Contrary to FreeCap, SocksCap is proprietary software and only supports SOCKS Proxies. However, it might provide a handy substitute.

Adding applications to connect to the internet using Tor is as easy as pressing the blank paged button and specifying the program’s path. Added applications will be added to the list. Make sure you have Tor’s Vidalia bundle installed, and point it to localhost:9050 in File-Settings. If that doesn’t work, you can try localhost:8118 as a HTTP Proxy. From then on, all network traffic from those applications will be rerouted through Tor.

Note that you can also choose to route your applications through a direct proxy. However, due to the overall slowness and inreliability of free proxies, this is far from advised.

Using A Specific Country

Like I’ve said before, Tor can come in real handy to access country-restricted websites. This works by masking your point of origin as though it is coming from a specific country. This can be arranged in Vidalia’s configuration.

Basically, what we need to do, is to specify an exit node. This is the last link in the chain of Tor nodes, before your information reaches the destination. There used to be a moderately easy way of identifying exit nodes, this has been a problem in last versions though, so we’re going to use a workaround.

Go to this page for a complete list of all available nodes. There are three points of interest when selecting your node: country, speed and node type. In our search, we’re only going to pay attention to high-speed exit nodes (with an icon of an open door).

Once you’ve found an exit node of decent speed and from the right country, click on it to go to the node’s details page.

On this page, copy the given fingerprint, eliminate all spaces and put a $ mark in front. In this particular case, we’d end up with ‘$E975CCE9EA406150E86CAC17578A6974706C18B9′. We’re going to need this fingerprint later on.

In Vidalia’s Advanced settings tab, you should be able to view the path to your Tor Configuration File. This is where we’re going to specify our exit nodes.

Open the configuration file with Notepad or any similar editing application. At the top of this file, paste the following two lines, with fingerprint1, fingerprint2 and fingerprint3 substituted by the fingerprint codes you wrote down before.

ExitNodes fingerprint1, fingerprint2, fingerprint3
StrictExitNodes 1

Upon restart, Tor should try to access one of those servers as an exit node. You can now access Hulu from Europe, or play games that weren’t available in your region.

Do you live in a “restricted” country? Has this instructional helped you? Do you have any other solutions to bypass country-restricted websites, services or games? Let us know in the comments.

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