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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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Yes I am so old school I remember when it was called The Partition Magician and it was owned by PowerQuest and NOT Symantec who acquired them in 2003.

But any which way PartitionMagic does a great job at pretty much anything Partition related.

Long story short – PartitionMagic, even though it is not still being developed or improved, will cost you around $50 for a legitimate copy.

Yes people do pay for software when they have no other options – but, today I found a little known application (little known to me at least!) called EASEUS Partition Manager 3.0 Home Edition. The free alternative to PartitionMagic will do all the good stuff PartitionMagic did for me, so what’s the catch? It is only free FOR HOME USERS and 32 Bit Operating Systems. Fair enough. Let’s take her for a test drive.

I have a NTFS IDE hard drive sitting on my desk with some old data on it. I believe it is a 80GB drive. Let’s see how hard it will be to split that into two drives without putting the kibosh on my data.

I started by downloading the installer file from Download.com here. It is a 7.9MB zip file. The zip file has one exe file in it that is slightly larger. I ran it, plugged my hard drive into an IDE-USB enclosure for the test and got down to business…

I chose the partition I want to resize and I right-clicked on it. It gave me this context menu.

I chose Resize and I got the screen below. I have not had issues with resizing or moving partitions back in the day but you SHOULD ALWAYS BACKUP before starting any operation that messes with your file structure. So if you haven’t backed up yet… Do it now!

On the next screen you tell the partition resizer how much space you want after you are complete. Then you simply click OK and let it rock and roll.

Now as you can see by the new notification in the lower left hand corner, it says there is one operation pending. Now you need to click ‘apply’ to start it off.

Then another confirmation box will pop up asking you if you are ready to do this now…

Then for most of the resizing/moving partition options Windows will need to reboot to finish its process. Make sure you don’t have any open files and you are ready to continue.

That is it and you are on your way to having another partition created without erasing your disk or dropping some serious duckets.

When your machine comes back up you are golden! Do you have another FREE partition magic-like program you use? If so share it with us….in the comments boys and girls!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Recently my Linux hard disk crashed on me and it was then that I discovered that there was a limited choice of data recovery tools that I could use on my Linux system. In my desperate attempt to revive my hard disk (and the data on it), I came across these two great pieces of software TestDisk and PhotoRec that single-handedly saved my hard disk.

TestDisk – Recover Lost Partitions

TestDisk is a partition recovery software that can recover any lost partition or make a non-booting disk bootable again. It can be really handy when your hard disk has crashed due to faulty software, viruses or any accidental removal of the partition.

It doesn’t matter whether you are using Windows, Linux, Mac or any other UNIX system because TestDisk is able to recover them all.

As you can see from the image above, TestDisk is run in the terminal (or DOS) mode. That doesn’t mean it is difficult to use. There is no command line to remember. All you need to do is to move your arrow keys and press Enter to select the right answer, just like how you answer an online survey.

Select the hard disk to scan for the lost partition :

Select the partition type :

Find the lost partition :

Write the data to the partition :

Most of the time when your hard disk has crashed, or fails to boot, it doesn’t mean that it is spoilt. It could just be due to a corrupted file or accidental removal of the boot record, which can be easily fixed with TestDisk.

I have successfully restored two 80GB hard disks that originally could not be booted up.

PhotoRec – Recover Lost and Deleted Files

PhotoRec works to recover lost files from any storage devices, including video, documents, pictures and archives from hard disks, memory cards, USB thumb drives and CD-ROM’s. It doesn’t care what filesystem you are using and it goes deep under to dig out any underlying data.

Even if your storage device is severely damaged or re-formatted, there is a great chance that you can retrieve your data, as long as it has not been overwritten.

Unlike other data recovery software, PhotoRec does not come with a nice user interface and it does not allows you to select which files to restore. By default, it will recover all the files that it can find, but you can configure it to search only for a particular file extension.

A point to note while using PhotoRec: you should never restore a file to its original location as it will overwrite the data and make the file unrecoverable. Instead, restore the files to a secondary hard disk or a separate partition.

Conclusion

I would strongly recommend TestDisk and PhotoRec as Linux data recovery tools. Although they are not as visually appealing, their solid support for multiple platforms and filesystems give them a great advantage over other data-recovery software, not to mention that they are free too.

If you are using Windows and want to retrieve lost files, other data recovery software (such as Restoration and Undelete Plus) would be useful as they have a better interface and give you more control over which files to restore. However, if you are on Linux, Mac or any other platform other than Windows, PhotoRec would be a great alternative.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Sure, if you need to access your files from both operating systems you could just save everything to a Windows-readable partition. But even when I tried doing that, I found there would be the occasional file I quickly saved to the desktop and forgot to transfer. Whatever the reason, there’s always some time when you may need files on your Linux file system, but don’t want to take the time to reboot into Linux just to get to the file.

So, How You Can Access and Work on Linux Partitions In Windows

Ext2 IFS solves that problem. Unlike other programs which merely create their own Explorer-type interface to work with Linux partitions, this program seamlessly integrates your Linux drives, making them behave like any native Windows file system type which any program can access. It adds an additional driver for mounting Ext2 file systems (and Ext3 since it’s backwards compatible, although it won’t take advantage of Ext3’s journaling ability).

From the Ext2 IFS homepage,

It installs a pure kernel mode file system driver Ext2fs.sys, which actually extends the Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista operating system to include the Ext2 file system. Since it is executed on the same software layer at the Windows NT operating system core like all of the native file system drivers of Windows (for instance NTFS, FASTFAT, or CDFS for Joliet/ISO CD-ROMs), all applications can access directly to Ext2 volumes. Ext2 volumes get drive letters (for instance O:). Files, and directories of an Ext2 volume appear in file dialogs of all applications. There is no need to copy files from or to Ext2 volumes in order to work with them.

What do you think of this program? Do you use something similar (or better)? Share it in the comments.

(By) Blake Elias is a computer addict, constantly learning about new technologies and figuring out ways to do things better. He writes about his thoughts and activities regarding Linux, Google, useful programs, web development and computers in general on his personal blog, The New Geek.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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