GRUBv2 is the next iteration of the immensely popular GRUB boot loader. It offers improved capabilities like a graphical interface and better design. If you are fan of mods like me and tried the previous tutorial with GRUBv2, you would have realized it no longer works that way. So let’s update the steps and see how we can create a custom GRUB 2 splash image.

• Choose a photo of your choice and open it up in GIMP. Unlike the previous tutorial for GRUB, where you had to choose fairly subdued images which didn’t have a lot of colors or gradients, you can be a bit more extravagant with image selection in GRUB 2
• Once you have it open, resize it to 640 x 480 pixels. (You can use different dimensions, but that requires a bit of extra effort as we shall see below). To do so, go to the image menu and choose scale.

• You can modify the image to your liking, perhaps add a motivational quote or your company’s logo or anything you want.
• Now go to File > Save as. In the dialog that appears, choose to save the file as .tga file.

With the image ready, its time to get into configuration mode. A lot has changed in GRUB2, so read along even if you are familiar with the procedure for the legacy GRUB loader.

• First off, you need to copy the file to the appropriate directory so that you can tell GRUB about it. So copy the file you just created to /boot/grub directory.
• Fire up your favorite text editor and point it to /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme. Now look for a line mentioning image files. On my system, it is line number 16 of the said file and looks like this:

• We need to edit it and replace the image file name, with the name of the file you saved in previous steps (sunrise_splash in my case)

We are almost done here, now issue the sudo update-grub2 command and verify it completes successfully. It tells you if it found the image you mentioned. If it doesn’t, it most likely means that you missed something in the steps mentioned above.

You can refer to this Debian Wiki page for more details on GRUBv2 splash images. The wiki also lists template files that you can use as a guide when creating your own custom splashimages. If you want to use higher resolution images and not merely 640 x 480 ones, you can do so by editing /etc/default/grub. Remove the # sign if it exists on the line that lists - GRUB_GFXMODE and change its value to the custom resolution you want to use. Keep in mind that not all resolutions may be available. You can view a list of available resolutions by pressing ‘c’ on the GRUB menu and then using the command vbeinfo.

If all goes well, you should be able to view your custom splashscreen the next time GRUB menu is displayed. If the image is not displayed correctly you might want to change the resolution to match the one listed in the /etc/default/grub file. Remember the default is 640 x 480. In case you are running short on imaginative ideas, you can install the grub2-splashimages package, that will give you a set of images that you can use as a splashscreen.

Give it a spin and let us know how things went. We would also love to see your custom splashimages if you feel like sharing them with the world!

• (14)How To Password Protect GRUB Entries (Linux)
• (8)How To Customize The Ubuntu Boot Splash Screen & Logo [Linux]
• (3)Easy GUI Management of Grub and Usplash Settings with Startup Manager [Linux]
• (3)Three Websites With Cool Tech Mods and Guides
• (2)Perform A Variety Of Batch-Processing Commands On Your Photos With Phatch

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.

• (5)How to Get Screen Actions for your Mouse on Linux
• (8)How To Customize The Ubuntu Boot Splash Screen & Logo [Linux]
• (25)5 Cool Apps to Make the Linux Terminal More Productive
• (18)Tweak Ubuntu the Easy Way
• (25)Top 3 Sites To Help You Become A Linux Command Line Master

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.

• (14)How To Password Protect GRUB Entries (Linux)
• (8)How To Customize The Ubuntu Boot Splash Screen & Logo [Linux]
• (5)How To Create A Custom Splash Image For Grub 2 [Linux]
• (31)How To Easily Change Ubuntu Usplash Screen
• (5)Create a Custom Logon Screen for Windows with LogonStudio

Let’s look at some ways you can use to reset your Linux system’s password. You might know that the root user can change the password for any other user. However what if you forget your root password? This is what we would attempt to achieve here.

So, how to reset password in Linux?

To reset your root password (or any other account’s password for that matter), there are essentially two different situations which require varying approaches.

When you can use GRUB

If you have GRUB installed and you have accesses to edit boot parameters of selected entries then the job is as easy as it can get. Follow along and you shall have root access in no time. Once you have root access you can pretty much do anything you want to do!

• Highlight the GRUB entry for the Linux installation that you want to reset the password for.
• Press ‘e’ to edit. Select the Kernel line. Add ’single’ at the end of the kernel line. Press ‘b’ to boot. If your system still requires you to enter the root password, add init=/bin/bash at the end. Press ‘b’ to boot.





• Either you would be taken to the root prompt directly or shown the recovery menu from where you can choose the root prompt. Use passwd <username> to change the password for any account.



• Type reboot to reboot the system and then log in in with your new password.

Also, note that some distributions will create a recovery mode entry during install. If you have the recovery mode entry listed in GRUB, you need not do any of the above, just choose the recovery mode and then choose root prompt at the screen that follows.

When you can’t use GRUB

If you are unable to use GRUB for whatever reasons (like password protected entries) you can still reset the password using a Live CD (I will be using Ubuntu Live CD, you may use any other). Just follow the steps below to achieve this:

• Boot from the Live CD
• Choose “Try Ubuntu without any changes to your computer”



• When the system is ready, fire up a terminal window and get ready for some command line action
• Type sudo fdisk -l. In the output we are concerned to know which partition Linux is installed on and what name the hard disk is using. (e.g) in this case it is /dev/sda1 is the required partition. If you are sure about the partition you can skip this step.



• Next we need to mount the Linux partition. Create a directory to act as mount point for the partition. Use ‘sudo mkdir /media/linx_part‘



• Mount the linux partition using the command ‘sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/linx_part‘



• Change Root to the mount directory – ‘sudo chroot /media/sda1‘
• Type passwd and then enter the new password to change the password.



• Type reboot to restart the system.

Have you ever attempted such a password recovery? How did you go about it? Have some other nice tricks to show off? Let us know in the comments.

• (25)Put your Linux Distro on a Live CD
• (8)Put your Life On a USB Stick [Linux]
• (6)Play Linux Games From A Live DVD
• (14)How To Password Protect GRUB Entries (Linux)
• (3)How To Do Encryption, Decryption & Signing Easily With Seahorse [Linux]

Awesome powers in good hands but as you probably know “with great powers come great responsibilities”, so GRUB allows you to lock down some features and boot entries to allow only the intended users to go through.

When talking of security in computer systems one often needs to analyse the situation one is in and choose the appropriate options. If you have hackers getting physical access to your computer system the GRUB security measures won’t last a second (pretty much nothing would do). Your best bet in such a situation is to keep the hard drive encrypted, or if your hard drive can be password protected, use that option.

However, the majority of us don’t have to worry about hackers with physical access as much as our not-so-computer savvy relatives and friends fiddling around with the system. That is what we have the log in passwords for (they are not secure enough for hackers, trust me!), and that is the situation where you would be wise to make use of GRUB security features.

It is also a good practice to password protect the recovery mode entries as they can be used by any user to gain root access.

GRUB security features allow you to lock down the editing of boot options accessed by pressing the ‘e’ key and they allow you to password protect selected or all boot entries.

Follow the steps below to see how to password protect GRUB entries:

• Fire up the terminal. Type grub and press enter. The prompt would change to something like ‘grub>’.
• Enter md5crypt at the GRUB prompt. Type in the password when prompted for and press enter. The command will return you password encrypted as an md5 hash. You will need this so make a note of it or copy to the clipboard.



• Now we need to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. You are advised to make a backup of the file before editing it in case something goes wrong.



• Enter the line password –md5 <the copied md5 string from step 3> before the line that reads: “BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST” (actually it just needs to come before any of the boot menu entries, so you can write it anywhere as long as it is before them).
• If you save the file at this moment without any further edits you would have locked down interactive editing in GRUB. The administrator or in this case you would have to press ‘p’ key and enter the correct password to access these advanced options.
• If in addition you want to lock down specific menu entries so that anyone without the knowledge of the correct password cannot boot into that operating system you should add the word lock all by itself on a separate line just after the title specification for each entry in the menu.



• The next time anyone tries to select the locked menu entry he/she will be required to enter a password before he/she can boot into the corresponding operating system.
• To lock the recovery mode entries it is best to change the line lockalternative=false to lockalternative=true. This will lock down all future recovery mode entries as well even if you update the kernel.

What security features do you use to secure your system? Have you encrypted your hard drive? Or do you use a BIOS password? Let us know in the comments. Also check out how to add a custom background to GRUB menu

• (3)How To Do Encryption, Decryption & Signing Easily With Seahorse [Linux]
• (17)Securely Manage Your Passwords Online With Mitto
• (21)Protect And Track Your Laptop In Case Of Theft
• (38)Ophcrack – A Password Hack Tool to Crack Almost Any Windows Password
• (12)Manage & Protect Passwords and Other Data with LockCrypt

If, like me, the default black background of the GRUB menu looks boring to you or if you would like to change the default backdrop to something of your choice, like your girlfriend’s photo for example, then follow along!

We will use:

• An image of the photo you want to use as the background
• GIMP
• A text editor

Steps

First, open up the image you want to use as the backdrop in GIMP. There are a few things you should keep in mind while choosing a image for a task like this. You must keep in mind that when the GRUB menu is displayed, your system has limited graphic capabilities. So don’t choose an image that is too wide or too high. A normal 4:3 aspect ratio photo or image would work well.

Also not something that we will have to reduce colors (to a mere 14 to be precise), so again don’t choose something with gradients, or soft edges or varying tones of a single color because all this will look abrupt once we finish editing to make it work with GRUB.

Once the image is open inside GIMP, go to Image > Scale Image.  In the dialog that appears, type 640 for the width, the height would automatically be reduced to 480 (if it’s set to constrain proportion and if you chose the right sized image). Once you are satisfied hit ‘Scale’. The image will now be scaled to 640 x 480, which is perfect for our needs.

Next go to Image > Mode > Indexed. Check ‘generate optimum palette’ if it’s not already checked and key in ‘14′ in the ‘Maximum number of colors’ box. Leave color dithering to none. Hit ‘convert’ and you will see that your image loses some colors and looks a bit out of place. If it’s too much for you, maybe you should try it on a different image. It’s all about what you would like to see! If it looks good, then we are almost done.

Click on File > Save and save the image as an xpm file. Further use gzip ~/background.xpm (assuming you saved it as background.xpm in your home directory) to create a file background.xpm.gz. You may also use File Roller to achieve the task as long as you get background.xpm.gz

Now for the final part we need to tell GRUB to use the masterpiece you have just created as the background. Since now you know how to create the backgrounds for GRUB, you might as well create a dedicated directory to store them. Quickly type in the following set of commands:

sudo mkdir /boot/grub/backgrounds/
sudo mv ~/background.xpm.gz /boot/grub/backgrounds/

Finally edit the boot menu file to let GRUB know about the location of your master piece(s). You will need to edit the /boot/menu.lst file. Do so as follows:

sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst (or “gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst” if you prefer GUI)

Scroll down or find the line which reads ‘End Default Options’. Just next to this line and before the title paragraphs start you need to insert the following line

splashimage=XXXXXX/boot/grub/backgrounds/background.xpm.gz

replace XXXXXX with your root partition. If everything went well, you should see the background next time you boot.

There you go, your very own personalized GRUB splashimage. You can also find ready made splashimages at gnome-look and other places.

Let me know in the comments if you have some questions.  Oh and don’t forget to show us what you are using as a splashimage for the GRUB menu on your machine.

• (10)How To Reset Any Linux Password
• (85)15 Great Ubuntu Tips For Linux Power Users
• (129)What’s This “Linux” Thing and Why Should I Try It?
• (17)Virtualization-Free In-Windows Linux Installation
• (71)Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Center (Part 1)

You can easily install any of these apps using the ‘Add/Remove Applications’ from the upper panel.

1. Midori

Midori is a web browser that uses the well-known WebKit rendering engine, providing quite a speed bump from Firefox and standards complying page rendering. Midori is currently packaged into Xubuntu and features include tabs, bookmarks and customizable search engine box. The browser is extensible via Javascript.

2. gDesklets

gDesklets is a platform for widgets, tiny applets sitting on your desktop in a symbiotic relationship of eye candy and usefulness. You can populate your desktop with status meters, icon bars, weather sensors and news tickers.

I managed to configure gDesklets to emulate the OS X Dashboard feature in addition to the standard placement on the desktop.

3. AcidRip

AcidRip is a GTK application for ripping and encoding DVD’s. It neatly wraps MPlayer and MEncoder, which I think is pretty handy, seeing as MPlayer is by far the best bit of video playing kit around for Linux.

As well as creating a simple Graphical Interface for those nervous of the MEncoders command line interface, it also automates the entire process.

4. Cheese Webcam Booth

Cheese is a Photobooth-inspired GNOME application for taking pictures and videos from a webcam. It also includes fancy graphical effects based on the gstreamer-backend.

5. Gmount-iso

Gmount-iso is a small tool written using PyGTK and Glade. It allows you to easily mount your CD images.

6. KGRUBEditor

A tool to view and edit the menu.lst file of the GRUB boot manager. It offers many features and it is the perfect solution for those who want to change the way GRUB works, without messing with the menu.lst file.

7. Flickr Uploader

Postr is a small app that lets you upload photographs to Flickr, with tight integration into the GNOME desktop.

8. DOS Emulator

DOSEMU stands for DOS Emulation, and allows you to run DOS and many DOS programs, including many DPMI applications such as DOOM and Windows 3.1, under Linux.

Features include:

• word size and addressing modes of the iAPX86 processor family’s “real mode,” while still running within the full protected mode environment
• simulate a hardware environment over which DOS programs are accustomed to having control.
• provides DOS services through native Linux services; dosemu can provide a virtual hard disk drive which is actually a Linux directory hierarchy.

9. E-book reader

FBReader is an e-book reader with a lot of great features:

• supports several open e-book formats: fb2, html, chm, plucker, palmdoc, ztxt, tcr (psion text), rtf, oeb, openreader, non-DRM’ed mobipocket, plain text, epub
• reads directly from tar, zip, gzip, bzip2 archives (you can have several books in one archive)
• supports a structured view of your e-book collection
• automatically determines encodings
• automatically generates a table of contents
• keeps the last open book and the last read positions for all open books between runs
• automatic hyphenation (patterns for several languages are included)

10. HomeBank

HomeBank is a fast, simple and easy to use program to manage your bank accounts. It differs from gnucash for the better look and feel, and for the faster start-up speed. It has a lot of features such as easy analysis with graphical charts (statistics, budget, overdrawn, car cost), multi-accounts support, budget management, reminders, import from OFX/QFX-CSV files, visual status of operations. It is based on GTK2.

Let’s hear some other interesting, less-known Linux apps in the comments!

• (12)How To Rip & Mount Multiple ISO Images Easily (Windows)
• (11)Useful Widgets for the Opera Browser
• (262)The Best, Free Alternatives to Nero CD/DVD Burner
• (23)Testing Google Chrome Alpha: Test #1 – Linux
• (22)Share Your Firefox Data Across Operating Systems & Computers