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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And sometimes there are software you find irksome and think things could have been better. In any case, I always like to try out a few alternative software choices before I settle with any particular application mainly for two reasons: One, you would never know how good or bad the one you are using is until you try some alternatives and two: a bit of choice and competition can only be for the good of us users! Your motivation might be different: perhaps you want to find a free software that does the same task as the paid software you are using or maybe your favorite Windows application is not available on Mac or Linux.

Whatever maybe the reason, here are some sites that you can use to find alternative software and suggested applications.

LinuxAppFinder

Missing your favorite Windows or Mac application on Linux? Try LinuxAppFinder. It provides a listing of popular Linux applications. Apart from that, it also lists popular Windows and Mac software and the Linux applications that can be used for similar purposes. Clicking on an alternative software listing will show you its description, rating and other related software. LinuxAppfinder is a great way to discover Linux software if you are new to Linux.

AlternativeTo

AlternativeTo lists a large number of Windows, Mac, Linux software. Click on the ones you use or need to find alternative software for, and you will be presented with a list of software with similar functionality. Likes ala Diggs are presented alongside each listed software, that lets you gauge the popularity of the software. Additionally, you can filter the mentioned alternative by platform, likes or recent popularity as well. AlternativeTo also lists webapps like Dropbox and Evernote, just in case you are looking to shift to the web!

Osalt

Osalt is yet another popular site that offers similar functionality. It lists Open Source applications as alternative to popular software that you might be paying lots of money for. Many of the open source software have come a long way in functionality and usability and they cover almost every purpose you can use your computer for. Mostly open source software are also free, so you should definitely check out osalt and see if you can find some good open source software that can replace the ones you are already using.

Wakoopa

Wakoopa takes a somewhat different approach. Wakoopa is a community where people share their favorite software. You can view most popular apps that other people are using on the Wakoopa home page. For personalized suggestions, you would have to signup and create a software profile listing the software you are presently using. In addition, you can also track how much time you are spending using each application.

MakeUseOf

Actually, this one goes far beyond suggesting alternative software! However, we also do our part when it comes to reviewing interesting or new applications. You should always check out the MakeUseOf directory that lists hundreds of useful web and mobile applications that you can use for a variety of purposes.

Do you have any applications you wish to switch over from? Sound off in the comments!

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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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• How To Safely Uninstall Ubuntu From A Windows Dual-Boot PC (16)
• How To Install Linux With Ease Using UNetbootin (17)
• GoblinX – An Alternative Linux OS With 4 Different Flavors (9)
• 3 Ways to Install Linux on Windows or Mac (25)
• WinHack – Speed Up Your Windows XP Computer (Part 1) (21)

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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• How To Safely Uninstall Ubuntu From A Windows Dual-Boot PC (16)
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• 3 Ways to Install Linux on Windows or Mac (25)
• Tweak Ubuntu the Easy Way (16)

For a change, I will be talking about how to uninstall Linux Ubuntu (or other operating systems) from a dual boot windows pc, and still being able to boot into other OS without much work. So let’s get started right away.

Backup your Linux files

It pops up everytime, but backup really is very important. If you have been using your Linux system for some time, chances are you would have created files you wouldn’t want to loose. In such a case, you can boot into Linux, backup your files (check out your Home directory) on an external device or onto a Windows partition.

Alternatively if you somehow managed to mess up and can’t boot into Linux, you can use ext2 IFS which allows you access to your Linux paritions. It can only read ext2 and ext3 filesystems though. If you are using other filesystems, you would have to look around a bit for a similar application. In any case, you can always boot from a Linux live CD to backup files if everything else fails.

Delete Linux Partitions

Next step: delete every Linux partition. That would include everything – boot, swap, home, whatever way you set up your system, it is time to delete all Linux partitions. There are a couple of ways to achieve this, easiest being from within Windows’ Computer Management. You need to:

• Log in to an account with administrative privileges.
• Right click on My Computer, click ‘Manage’.
• Choose ‘Disk Management’ listed under ‘Storage’ and you will see all of your partitions listed there.

Next, you need to identify Linux partitions. The Linux partitions generally don’t have a file system listed with them if Windows doesn’t recognize it, so this can serve as a clue. Other ways can be identifying by size or partition number. You can use partition managers, these are generally better at identifying filesystems. Go ahead, delete the partitions, just make sure you delete the correct ones. Linux is gone and so is GRUB, which allowed you to choose operating system to use at boot time. So currently, you cannot boot into any other operating system, without some help. We are going to fix that soon.

Restore MBR

As we noted, GRUB is gone and so is the ability to boot into Windows. You would now need to boot from the Windows CD/DVD to restore the Master Boot Record. You can also use other Live CDs like one of my absolute favorites and highly recommended HBCD just in case you don’t have Windows installation media handy. Here are the steps:

• Boot from Windows CD/DVD and choose “Repair” when it shows up.

• Choose command prompt on the resulting screen and run the following two commands:
  • bootrec /fixmbr
  • bootrec /fixboot

XP users need to run the recovery console from Windows XP CD and then type fixmbr when at the command prompt.

Reclaim free space

Restart now, remove the CD and you should be able to boot into your Windows installation. Once there, you should go ahead and reclaim the unpartitioned free space which was previously occupied by Linux. Doing so is simple and straight forward:

• Fire up Disk Management as before.
• Right-click on the unparitioned space, choose new partition or new logical drive.
• Specify the size and other options according to your needs and you are done.

The free space should now be accessible from My Computer like any other partition. Alternatively, you can create multiple partitions from the free space or resize existing partitions to suit your needs.You can use utilities like GParted, Easues Partition Master or any one of the many partition managers on HBCD to perform such advanced tasks easily.

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

• 3 Ways to Install Linux on Windows or Mac (25)
• How To Install Linux With Ease Using UNetbootin (17)
• GoblinX – An Alternative Linux OS With 4 Different Flavors (9)
• Tweak Ubuntu the Easy Way (16)
• The Ubuntu Upgrade Guide (8)

• 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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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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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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• Tweak Ubuntu the Easy Way (16)
• The Ubuntu Upgrade Guide (8)
• Run Windows Applications on Linux (or Mac) with WINE (15)
• Linux System Administration Made Easy with Webmin (9)
• How To Safely Uninstall Ubuntu From A Windows Dual-Boot PC (16)

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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To be able to use FTP, you need an FTP client. There are two kinds of FTP clients: computer-based and web-based, but we are not going to discuss the web-based clients here.

While trying to update one of my blogs, I tried to search for several alternative FTP clients for my Mac. And here are the results

A. Multiple OS FTP Clients

1. Classic FTP –> is a fully featured, free FTP client available for Mac OS X and Windows. It has a “Mirror and Upload” tool which will scan a selected local folder and upload any files that do not exist on the remote folder. The application also allows you to synchronize navigation of a local and remote folder.

2. CrossFTP –> is designed to be an easy-to-use client. It has a two-pane browser-like user interface which is simple to learn and use. Multi-tabs design facilitates managing and connecting multiple FTP sites simultaneously in a single window. It’s written in Java so it would work in any Java-enabled machine.

3. FileZilla –> is a popular Windows-based FTP client. I didn’t even know that there was a Mac version of FileZilla until I researched for this article. I had high hopes when I was about to use this app for the first time. But personally, I think that the Mac version is not as easy to use as the Windows version. FileZilla is also available for Linux.

B. Mac-only FTP Clients

4. Cyberduck –> is a open source product licensed under the GPL and free to use. It is available in many languages and most translations are contributed by users. It is voted by many Mac communities as one of the best FTP clients available for Mac. Cyberduck is also available as a dashboard widget.

5. OneButton FTP –> is a graphical FTP client for Mac OS X with a strong emphasis on simplicity, drag and drop usability, and file queuing. It allows you to easily transfer files to and from remote servers, such as the ones hosting your websites, simply by dragging files to and from your computer. At the time of writing, this app is no longer supported by the author, but still works fine.

6. MacFusion –> is an open source Mac application that allows you to work with files on servers across the internet, as if they were sitting on your computer. Macfusion presents as a Volume in Finder. Macfusion works with SSH/SFTP and FTP servers. This app requires Leopard and Google’s MacFUSE. You can learn more about how to set up MacFUSE on the wiki howto page or the Quicker Start Guide page.

C. Dashboard FTP Widgets

7. Übertragen –> is a widget designed to transfer files, be it to a FTP server, to another Mac running Ubertragen on your local network (through Bonjour) or to one of your Bluetooth devices.

8. Fire Widget –> is a drag-and-drop FTP upload widget. It has a simple interface and runs nicely. Just drop a file, the gate slides up, the file gets transfered, and you are done.

There are others, of course, which did not make it to the list simply because of my lack of knowledge. So, if you know any other alternatives, please share using the comment below.

And, don’t forget to check out other MakeUseOf’s articles about FTP and FTP Clients.

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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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Tasque

Even though it is a simple ToDo list manager, Tasque is extremely useful and versatile that everyone will love to use it.

When you first use Tasque, you might be surprised to find that there is no menu bar or any other miscellaneous features. In fact, there is almost nothing in the whole application window except for a dropdown box (to access the categories) and an input field for you to enter your tasks. That’s it, nothing more.

One of the best thing about Tasque is its ability to synchronize with Evolution and Remember the Milk. It is also supported by the Avant Window Navigator (AWN) dock so that you can access your ToDo list directly and quickly from the dock.

In Debian-based distro, you can install Tasque via the ‘tasque‘ package in the repositories.

GToDo

GToDo stands for To Do list for Gnome. It is one of the oldest ToDo list apps for Linux, but this does not mean that it is obsolete and useless. It may not come with a beautiful GUI, but it sure has plenty of useful features that makes it one of the most popular ToDo list apps for Linux users.

Some of the features that I like about this app includes the ability to create multiple lists, set alarm notifications when tasks are due, auto-purge completed tasks, export tasks to HTML format, sort tasks according to priority, due date or status and highlight or hide tasks until the due time is reached.

The GToDo package is found in the repository. For Gnome users, you can also install the GToDo panel applet and place the icon on your panel for quick access and easy retrieval.

Makagiga

Makagiga is more of a powerful mini PIM rather than a ToDo list. Other than the task management feature, it also serves as a RSS reader, notepad, image and links collection, bookmarks, a built-in search engine and a terminal console. If that is not enough, you can install plugins to extend its functionality.

For its ToDo list feature, it comes with different color codes for each entry so that you can easily distinguish which tasks are more important. In addition, there is a Complete column where you can assign the percentage of work done for that particular task. This is useful if you are tracking the progress of a project.

Makagiga is java based and requires Java SE 6 to work. It is available for the Linux and Windows platforms. You can find the installer package (deb, rpm and exe) on the download page.

ThinkingRock

ThinkingRock is a very powerful GTD style task manager that could be an overkill for the average users. It’s not just a ToDo list, but rather a full fledged project management application.

The developer probably knew that their complicated modules could be very difficult for the average users to get used to, that’s why they included a flow chart on the Home page. This has been very useful as it gives you a step-by-step guide to organize your thoughts and put it into actions.

There are four main steps to this application: Setup, Collect, Process and Organise/Review.

The Setup mode allows you to setup your account, including creating context, criteria and the topics. The Collect mode is where you record down all your thoughts as you brainstorm.

The Process mode is to give you a clear instruction on how to process your thoughts and filter out those that are not important/workable.

The last step is to organise your tasks and split them into smaller actionable tasks or delegated out for others to do.

ThinkingRock works on all platforms. Ubuntu users can install ThinkingRock by adding the package source (deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/salutis/ubuntu intrepid main) to the repository.

iKog

For those who love the command line more than anything else, you are in luck here. iKog is a powerful command line based ToDo list that is based loosely on the GTD methodology.

There is no installation required to run iKog. It is in fact a small python script that weighs only 20KB. If you have Python 2.4 running in your system, getting iKog to run is simply running the script with the command

python ikog.py

There is a whole lot of functions found in iKog. You can add simple tasks (command: “+ your task name”) or give your task a due date (command: “+ your task name :d2009-04-20“). To view your task list, simply type in the command list. For more information on the usage of iKog, refer to the documentation on its site.

In the event that you wish to print your task list, iKog also allows you to export your list to HTML format so that you can easily print it from your browser.

Most people will dread using the terminal, but somehow, after using it for a while, I have found myself addicted to it for its simple, fast and clean interface.

Which ToDo list application do you use in your Linux computer?

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• What’s This “Linux” Thing and Why Should I Try It? (125)
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If you use Linux, there is an excellent tool that gives you loads of information about your computer’s power consumption as well as the software that is causing your battery to drain. Its called PowerTop.

PowerTop was originally developed by Intel and it lets you measure and explain your computer’s power consumption.

Installation

As always, check your distribution’s package manager for a package named ‘powertop’. If you cannot find it listed there, head over to the PowerTop website and download the tar ball which you can compile and run.

Be sure to run PowerTop with root privileges. It takes about 5 seconds to collect data and it then presents its findings for your consideration. The output can be overwhelming for the uninitiated so lets go through it briefly:

The first part represents the C-States. C-States are the operating modes of the CPU and are usually represented in the form of “Cx” where x is a number. The higher this number, the less power will be used by the CPU in that state. So in this first part you will see the amount of time the CPU has been in each of these states.

P-states shows the frequency the processor is currently running on. In its idle state it will be running at the lowest supported frequency.

The next part represents “Wakeups per second” and means how many times the CPU has been woken from an idle state. Of course, the smaller the value of this number, the better your computer is performing in terms of power consumption.

The next part shows the battery information if you are using a laptop or no information if you are on a desktop.

Then it lists the top reasons for wakeups. This is the most interesting part as it shows which of the software is causing the CPU to wake from an idle state and thus consume power. The PowerTop website also offers patches for many software which are reported to be reasons for unnecessary power consumption.

Lastly the program lists some suggestions you can follow to decrease the power consumption of your computer.

So once you have the output and you’ve read it, what should you then do about it? Well a couple of straight forward steps that you can follow:

• Look for the top causes for wakeups and see if you can disable some of them. It may be bluetooth or wi-fi when you don’t need them or something else. If you don’t need them then disable them.
• Check out the most common known reasons for wakeup and how to tackle them.
• Look for software patches on the PowerTop website and apply them (make sure to check versions, as some of them may be outdated). They tend to take care of bugs (or provide workarounds) to code that causes the CPU to wake up constantly.
• Follow the suggestions PowerTop has to offer. You might want to Google the message it gives you if it seems to be a bit too geeky for you. Chances are you will find a step by step guide to achieve the same.
• Read Saikat’s article on conserving battery power. Although not directly related to the analysis method which we just followed, he provides some pretty nifty tips in general that you must check out.

PowerTop not only monitors the power consumption but also provides you with detailed information on how you can minimize the consumption. An indispensable tool for laptop users especially. After tweaking for some days I really got the battery power back up and I am still not convinced I have the perfect setup (working on it).

How do you minimize your laptop’s power consumption? Turning off Wi-Fi or turning down the screen brightness or something else? We would really like to hear about them in the comments.

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Installation

Use your distribution’s package manager to install Webmin. Or else you can visit the Webmin downloads page and get the binaries or source-code according to your requirements.

Usage

One installed, you access Webmin via a web-based interface. Just point your browser to Webmin on your machine (https://127.0.0.1:10000), you will be asked for authentication where in you must provide user name and password. If successful, you will see something like:

Webmin is made up of modules, with each module performing a select task. There are modules for viewing system stats, configuring grub, managing firewalls and protocols, configuring servers and a whole lot more (complete list). In addition you can add other modules depending upon your requirements. You can also create your own modules for a particular service or application using the Webmin API and some programming knowledge of course

Sample task

Let’s say you want to manage cron-jobs on your system via webmin. Just log in and click on “Scheduled Cron Jobs” under “System” from the sidebar. You will see a list of all the cron-jobs on your system. You can choose to enable/disable selected jobs, or delete/add jobs or perform other listed functions.

To create a new job click on “Create a new scheduled cron job.” and you will be taken to Create Schediled job screen, where you can specify the commands and options to use as well as specify the time when you want the job to run without have to edit crontab files manually!

Similarly you can perform a whole variety of such tasks, just choose what you want to do from the sidebar and get going. You can configure firewall rules, monitor bandwidth, configure Apache, DNS, mail servers and countless other things.

Mastering Webmin

While it is easy to use Webmin, you might want to check out some resources to help you get a better understanding of how webmin works and how to use it to perform various tasks. Check out the following resources for the same:

• The Book of webmin
• The latest book on Webmin
• Webmin Documentation

Webmin really makes it easy to perform system administration from the cozy confines of your Web Browser. Webmin edits the configuration files as it is and doesn’t store the changes in a centralised database. What does this mean? That making a change with Webmin is as good and as crude (if I may say so) as doing it with vi editor.

Do you know of some other tools you use for configuring your system? Let hear about them in comments!

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• Tweak Ubuntu the Easy Way (16)
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Some Linux users might argue that this is an emulation of Mac OS X (which they detest the most) and they would prefer to stick with the original favor – that’s fine. Some others might feel that since it is a beautiful and useful application and it is fully customizable in Linux, why not?

Nevertheless, having the option to choose whether you want or don’t want it is really the power of Linux. Below, I have listed some of the popular dock applications that you can consider if you are thinking of installing a dock in your Linux distro.

All Time Favorites

Avant Window Navigator

If you have been googling for docks for Linux, I am sure you will encounter the Avant Window Navigator very often. Indeed, this is currently the most popular dock for Linux. It is very interactive and allows you to do plenty of tasks right from the dock. There are also plenty of configuration options that you can configure in the Preference pane. Stuff such as the dock themes and animation effects are fully customizable.

If you are using Ubuntu Hardy and above, AWN is included in the repository.

Great Alternatives

Cairo dock

Previously known as Gnome dock, Cairo dock is definitely a great alternative to AWN. When compared with AWN, I feel that Cairo dock has much smoother animation and transition effects.

One great feature about Cairo dock (and missing in AWN) is the ability to create sub-docks within the main dock. This allows you to create several layers of applications grouped under the same family.

Installation instructions

Gnome-Do Docky

Gnome-do is better known for its Quicksilver or Launchy style of accessing your applications quickly. Recently, the Gnome-do team launched a dock version of Gnome-do: Docky.

One good thing about Docky is its ability to integrate the Gnome-do search into the dock. The applications that you used and searched the most often are automatically placed in the dock. In the dock mode, the shortcut key “Super + Space” to activate the search function is still valid.

WBar

WBar is a fast and smooth dock that can be installed in most Linux distros. While it is not as polished as the above few, it is highly tweakable and is not as resource intensive as the others. Best of all, it doesn’t require a compositing manager to run. If you have a old and low end computer, this is definitely the best dock application for you.

Download the deb file here.

Gnome Panel

If you are using a Gnome based distro and don’t wish to install any dock applications, or your old computer can’t support the dock, you can still modify the Gnome panel to become a dock.

First, drag all your applications from the menu bar to the bottom panel. Next, right click the panel and select Properties. In the General tab, increase the size to 50pixels (or higher if you are using a big screen monitor). Uncheck the box “Expand”. If you want your dock to autohide when not in use, check the box “Autohide”.

Next, go to the Background tab, select the Solid color and move the style slider all the way to the left. That’s it, you now have a simple dock in your desktop that will autohide when not in use.

Other Candidates

Engage dock

Engage is the dock for Enlightenment E17. If you install E17 as your desktop manager, you will see the Engage dock when you log in. However, if you are using other desktop managers, it is not an easy task to install Engage dock. While there is a standalone package for various desktop managers (other than E17), there is little documentation on where to get the source and how to install/configure.

Engage is useful in that it does not require a compositing manager to work, or to be more exact, it doesn’t require Compiz to work. All the libraries that it needs are bundled within the E17 framework.

This dock is great if you are using Enlightenment E17 desktop manager.

Kiba dock

Kiba dock is a nice, yet complicated dock. The installation can be very complicated (and confusing) and it can easily scare beginners off. If you are not the sort who likes to compile, configure or deal with the terminal, this is not for you.

Sim dock

Sim dock is a small dock that doesn’t require any compositing manager to work and is available for most Linux distros. It is a simple dock that doesn’t have much functionality except to allow you to quickly access your applications from the dock. The development has been stopped for several years and the latest version is backdated to July 2007.

Which dock do you use for your Linux machine?  Can you recommend another one?

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

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• What’s This “Linux” Thing and Why Should I Try It? (125)
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With the release of KDE 4.2, you can now install and use all the KDE applications natively on your Windows without having to install any Linux operating system on your computer.

For those who have not tried or used KDE before, it is one of the most popular and commonly used Windows managers for various Linux distributions. Apart from the attractive Windows-like user interface, it also comes with a complete suite of desktop applications, ranging from file manager, browser, media player to office suite.

As Windows comes with its own Windows manager, when installing KDE for Windows, only the applications are installed. If you want to get the full KDE experience, it is best to try out a KDE based Linux distro, such as Kubuntu.

To install KDE for Windows, first download the installer (download link here) from the KDE website.

First run the installer. It will ask you several questions and walk you through the installation.

During the installation, you have a chance to choose between End User or Package Manager mode. The Package Manager mode allows you to install many more different types of packages, but it is more complicated to use and configure. If you are not geeky enough, you might want to select the End User mode instead.

You will also get to choose between the different versions of KDE to install. I would strongly recommend installing the latest version (4.2.1 as of this post)

Lastly, before the whole installation starts, you can select the applications that you want to install on your Windows. For most of you, the package name will not make any sense to you. You have to read the package notes to get an idea what a particular package does.

Once you have got everything configured, the installer will start downloading all the necessary files. This might take a long time depending on the number of applications you have selected and your Internet connection. For me, it took me about half an hour to finish downloading 500MB of files.

Once the installation is completed, you will be able to access the KDE applications from the Start menu.

Here are some of the screenshots:

Konqueror

Konqueror is a two-in-one file manager and Internet browser. When I use it in Windows, it can be rather memory intensive and some of the site rendering can be a bit off.

Dolphin

This popular and versatile file manager works well in Windows, though the initial startup could be a bit laggy. Once it has finished loading, its performance is as good as in a native Linux KDE environment.

KWrite

Serves as a good alternative for Wordpad and notepad

At this moment, not all the applications are stable for daily usage. For me, I am not able to load the media player – Amarok at well as it crashed everytime I opened it. One thing for sure, all the games work pretty well and they are very addictive.

Currently, Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista are supported. I have not tried it on Windows 7 yet. If you have tried it, do let me know if it works. In addition, there is also a Mac version that you can download. Mac users who are interested can check it out here.

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• 8 Great Alternative Desktop Managers For Linux (55)
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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.

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/

• Put your Linux Distro on a Live CD (25)
• Put your Life On a USB Stick [Linux] (8)
• Play Linux Games From A Live DVD (6)
• How To Password Protect GRUB Entries (Linux) (11)
• How To Create A Custom Splashimage For GRUB (19)

You can either:

• Use a USB drive
• Use Dropbox
• Use SSH (Secure Shell)

What if there is a small application that is simple, fast and allows you to send files easily without any configuration or technical knowledge, wouldn’t it be great?

Giver is a simple desktop file sharing application. It is a zero configuration software that anyone can use quickly and easily. Other people running Giver on your network are automatically discovered and you can send files to them by simply dragging the files to their respective entries in Giver.

If you are using Ubuntu 8.10, you can easily install Giver by clicking here or type in the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install giver

Once you have finished the installation, you can access Giver via Applications -> Internet -> Giver.

Alll the computers that have Giver installed and running will instantly show up on the Giver window. To send files to another computer, you just need to drag and drop the files to the respective row.

Upon receiving a sent request, a notification will appear on the other computer and the user on the other end can decide if he/she wants to accept the file.

When the transfer is completed, a notification will appear on both computers stating that the files have been sent/received successfully.

A good thing about Giver is that it only creates the connection so that you can transfer files easily. It doesn’t set a limit on the number of files or the size of the files that you can send; so if you have a bunch of files or folders, you will have no problem getting them across to another computer.

One software that integrates well with Giver is the popular Tomboy notes. You can easily drag and drop any of the notes to get it sent over to another computer. On the other side, it will automatically add itself to the Tomboy notes and saving you the effort of re-importing the notes.

In a situation where there are many computers in the network and it is difficult to identify which computer entry belongs to who, Giver allows you to change your computer name and use your photos/web link/gravatar as the icon.

Using Giver is almost a no-brainer. There is zero-configuration and anyone can use it immediately, even if you have no technical knowledge.

One thing though, it only works between Linux machines. It would be great if it can also send files to a Windows or Mac computer.

What other software do you use to transfer files between different computers?

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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eCryptfs is a stacked cryptographic filesystem embedded within the Linux kernel (versions 2.6.19 and later). Being a stacked filesystem, it can easily encrypt and decrypt the files on your Linux PC as they are written to or read from the hard disk.

The greatest advantage of eCryptfs is that all encryption is made at the single-file level. This means that you don’t have to create a fixed size container to hold your files.

There are several benefits of single-file level encryption:

• Since each file is treated differently, on a shared platform/server/directory, you can have different files encrypted by different users and each user can access only his/her files.
• All the cryptographic metadata is stored in the header of the file. This means that the encrypted file can be copied/moved from one location to another without losing its confidentality.
• It requires no special on-disk storage allocation effort. You don’t have to pre-allocate 1GB (or more) of your hard disk space to store your sensitive data that maybe only few megabytes.

Installing eCryptfs

The installation method might differ in different distros. In Ubuntu 8.04 and above, you can install eCryptfs using the following command:

sudo aptitude install ecryptfs-utils

For Ubuntu 8.10

As eCryptfs is implemented in Ubuntu 8.10, you can easily set it up using the following command:

ecryptfs-setup-private

Once you have set it up Ubuntu 8.10, you will find a Private folder in your Home directory. To access to the folder, you need to mount it with this command:

mount.ecryptfs_private

You can now add your sensitive files into the Private folder. Encryption will be done as the file is added to the folder.

To unmount the folder, use the command:

umount.ecryptfs_private

For Ubuntu 8.04 or other Ubuntu-based distro

First create a folder in your Home directory and name it secret

mkdir ~/secret

Change the file permission so only you can access

chmod 700 ~/secret

Mount the eCryptfs to the secret folder

sudo mount -t ecryptfs ~/secret ~/secret

It will prompts you to answer a few questions:

1) Selecting your key type for newly created files

Press ‘1′ to select passphrase

2) Selecting your encryption cipher

Press Enter to select the default option [AES]

3) Select key bytes

Press Enter to select the default option [16]

4) Enable plaintext passthrough

Type ‘N’ to select No.

That’s it. You can now add files into the secret folder.

To test the reliability of eCryptfs, unmount the secret folder and see if you can open the files inside the folder.

sudo umount ~/secret

If all is good, you should not be able to open any files inside the folder.

What other encryption methods you use to protect your files?

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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So obviously it would be cool and productive to some tools that make your work easier. Nautilus actions allow you to add custom functionality to Nautilus. This is achieved via the right click menu. You can inter-convert files in various formats, mount ISO files, merge PDF files all from within Mautilus without launching any other application all from the right click context menu. The possibilities here are only limited by your imagination!

Adding such custom functionality is pretty easy. You don’t need to be a Linux hacker or programmer to get it working. All you need is:

• The ‘nautilus-actions’ package
• The knowledge of an equivalent command to achieve the same objective

The Nautilus-Actions Package

The nautilus-actions package is what provides you with a nice graphical tool where you can create, edit and remove nautilus-actions or the custom functionality we are looking for. It is easily available through your distribution’s package manager.

Knowledge Of The Command

As a Linux user you are no stranger to the fact that most of the tasks that you perform via the mouse and GUI can be accomplished via commands as well. Want to print resume.doc? Just enter ‘oowriter -p resume.doc’ in the terminal. Need to convert a jpeg file to gif? Enter ‘convert logo.jpeg logo.gif’ (requires imagemagick). Want to set an image as wallpaper? Type ‘gconftool-2 -t str –set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename ‘.

So you can achieve almost anything from the command line and this is what we will exploit here.

Create An Action

Let me illustrate the steps you need to follow with an example. We will create a nautilus action to convert flv files to mp4 suitable for playback in an iPod Touch/iPhone. I will use ffmpeg for conversion, so make sure you have it installed (mostly available through package managers, ’sudo apt-get install ffmpeg’ on ubuntu) if you plan to use the action or try along.

• Go to System > Preferences > Nautilus Actions



• Click on Add. (Note that you can edit, remove, import/export actions from here on in)



• In the label field, type the text you want to appear in the right click context menu of flv files. You can choose an icon and specify a tooltip which provides information about what this option would do. I will skip both of these as they are not essential for functionality.
• Path and Parameters is where all the action is. In path put in the utility that you will use to perform the action. We will be using ffmpeg so put in /usr/bin/ffmpeg here. If you are not sure where the utility resides use the ‘where is’ command to find out. eg use ‘whereis ffmpeg‘ to know its location.
• The parameter line is going to be scary so hold your breath and copy paste:’ -i %d/%f -f mp4 -vcodec libxvid -maxrate 01000 -qmin 3 -qmax 5 -bufsize 4096 -g 300 -acodec aac -s 480×320 -ab 0128000 -b 400000 %d/%f.mp4 ‘  Don’t blame me, this is what you need to enter on the command line to convert flv to mp4 with ffmpeg (refer man ffmpeg for more details)! What is noteworthy is the %d and %f. These two provide information on which file you right clicked. Click on the legend button for more details. By the way, I am no video expert and I don’t claim the options above to be perfect, it does the job just fine. So if you have some suggestions please feel free to share them in comments.

  

• Next click on the condition tab.  This is where you will limit your options to the context menu’s required file types (flv in our case). You can limit your choices via the filename metacharacters or via the mimetype. Additionally you can specify if your action appears for files only or for files and folders as well. We will type ‘*.flv’ for filename and apply our actions to files only.



• In the advanced condition tab, you can further limit your choice to local files, samba shares, ftp files etc. We will choose local files here.
• Click OK and you are done!

Now go look for an flv file. Right click and presto, there is your very own custom ‘Convert for iPod’ option. Click on it and you will see a new mp4 file in the same folder.

For The Lazier Geeks

If the above seems like too much work for you, check out here for ready made actions!

Some Tips

Experiment on the command line with file names and the options for the utility. When you are pretty sure about a functionality that you require for certain type of files, replace the file name in the command with %d/%f.

If you want to act on more than one files use %M instead.

For performing complicated operations (e.g. to email a file to someone from the context menu) its best to create a script and pass the appropriate arguments within the script. This will help you to debug and allow greater control altogether.

With nautilus actions you can transform any task that you perform often or a cumbersome command line like above into a convenient easy to use context menu option. Here is the ‘Convert for iPod’ Action if you need it. Check out other nautilus addons previously covered on MakeUseOf.

Have you used nautilus-actions before? What actions you are currently using? Have a great idea to turn into an action? Share with us in the comments, who knows you might just get an action! Oh and in case you are puzzled by the topmost image, it is a nautilus!

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/

• 6 Useful Extensions to Improve Nautilus Functionality [Linux] (15)
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Now, in what twisted way do resolutions have to do with gaming, you might wonder.

I made three resolutions this year, which is a great deal more than last year. To temper my arrogance somewhat is the first one, the second is to put more effort in my work, and the third one is to – in spite of the first two resolutions – also have a lot of fun this year.

For this reason (my third resolution), and because it’s never a bad time to discover new things, we’ll show you three great and free games to start the year with a bang.

And Yet it Moves (Win & Mac)

“And Yet It Moves” is a really fun and innovative indie game from ImpulsProgramm productions.

It’s a run-and-jump platformer, in which you can turn the world ninety degrees at any given time. This creates some intensive platforming gameplay and keeps the game interesting from installation till finish.

The game’s concept and physics engine are really interesting. While rotating, all objects get frozen in time, whereafter they continue with the same velocity as before, but with a different gravitational direction. This can be exploited by the player in various situations, from reaching those tough spots to manipulating your surroundings.

If games are art – a discussion that continuously arises these days – AYIM is a schoolbook example. All the visuals in the game are built up like a collage, with layered rips of paper. This makes the game not only fun to play, but makes it great eyecandy as well.

The game is available for download on Windows and Mac systems. Please note that this is still just a prototype of the final game, and that errors can still emerge while playing.

de Blob (Win)

The above page is the official site – in Dutch. The English installers of the game can be downloaded from here or here.

This game was (just like Killzone) developed not far from my home, in a place that some people call ‘the low lands’, but is generally known as the Netherlands.

Initially, nine students started working on this game for a school project, and from there it even made its way to the big players in the industry. On this day, deBlob is also available for the Wii console, recently released by THQ. The original game is still available though.

In de Blob, you play with a big ‘blob’ of paint, your main goal being to paint all the different landmarks on your map. On your way, you can grow and change colour by absorbing other blobs of paint – it gets called “katamari with paint” for a reason – and collect the coins that are spread throughout the level.

In short, this is a really fun game, both for fanatic- and non gamers.

N (Win, Mac & Linux)

N: Inadvertently Homicidal Robots, Evasive Ninjas and A Whole Whack of Style.

N is for ninja, I guess. It’s a brilliant 2D platformer, in which you got to get to the exit by jumping up walls in mid air, and meanwhile collect every last one of those golden marks. The concept in itself is not very remarkable, but the game’s engine and gameplay are wonderful.

The game started out in flash (you can play it here), but is now also available for download on Windows, Mac and Linux systems. It has won various awards and is worthy of every last one of them.

At the moment, N+ (the successor) it has also become available for the Xbox 360 (Live Arcade), Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.

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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Now, without worrying you about any of the technical details, you can play Linux games from a Live DVD.

lg-LIVE is a Linux distro that comes preloaded with 13 of the most popular Linux games. It is created by the Linux-gamers team and comes in the form of a Live DVD. The distro itself is based on Arch Linux. Unlike other Linux distros that requires you to install them in your system to use it, lg-Live only needs you to boot up the Live DVD and you will be able to play your favorite Linux games in no time. No installation, no compilation, no configuration. Simply boot and play.

The games found in the Live DVD include the following:

• Astromenace – An exciting 3D scrolling space shooter game with countless ship upgrade possibilities.
• Btanks – Battle Tanks is an interesting battle where you can choose one of three vehicles and eliminate your enemy using the whole arsenal of weapons.
• BzFlag – an online multiplayer cross-platform open source 3D tank battle game.
• Glest – A 3D real-time strategy game, where you control the armies of two different factions: Tech, which is mainly composed of warriors and mechanical devices, and Magic, that prefers mages and summoned creatures in the battlefield.
• Maniadrive – An arcade car game on acrobatic tracks, with a quick and nervous gameplay.
• Nexuiz – A free open-source fast paced 3D first person shooter game.
• Openarena – An open source first-person shooter computer game based heavily on the Quake III Arena style deathmatch.
• Sauerbraten – A free multiplayer/singleplayer first person shooter, built as a major redesign of the Cube FPS.
• Teeworlds – A fast-paced sidescrolling multiplayer-only shoot ‘em up computer game. The game features cartoon-themed graphics and physics, and relies heavily on classic shooter weaponry and gameplay.
• Warsow – A fast-paced FPS game.
• Warzone2100 – a real-time strategy and real-time tactics hybrid computer game.
• Widelands – a slow-paced real-time strategy game that in many games resembles the popular games The Settlers and The Settlers II.
• World of Padman – A first person shooting game based on the Padman comic strip.

When you boot up the Live DVD, it will run tests and detect your graphics card setting. If you are using ATI/nVidia 3D graphics card, it will prompt you to install the proprietary drivers. For those who want to avoid all technical details at all costs, you can simply select the default option and let it auto-configure your system. You will need to hook on your LAN cable if you want to play multiplayer games.

On the home screen, when you right click your mouse, you will be able to configure the gameplay option. You can change the monitor resolution or change your network setup. If you are tech-savvy enough, you can also turn to the terminal mode and do your own configuration.

In addition, after you have played the game, you will want to save your progress so that you can continue next time round. Since this is the live DVD, you won’t be able to save to the disc. Instead, you can save the game and all configurations that you have made to your USB thumb drive/hard drive. Next time you want to play the game, load the configurations from the USB drive and you can start from where you have ended previously.

If you find that the included games are not up to your liking and you want to add your own game in, linuX-gamers also provides you with a custom mastering script for you to create your own game distro. First download the base system, then run the masterme script to add any prepackaged game and you will have your own Live Linux gaming DVD.

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/

• Put your Linux Distro on a Live CD (25)
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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.

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

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In this case, you will have to consider using an alternative lightweight desktop manager for your Linux. Here are 8 of the best lightweight desktop managers that I personally use and recommend.

1. XFCE

Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for unix-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and lightweight, while still being visually appealing and easy to use. It is based on the GTK2+ toolkit which is the same as Gnome, so if you have always been a Gnome user, you will find some of the design and icons very familiar in Xfce.

A good thing about Xfce is that it is as fully customizable as both Gnome and KDE. The full Xfce package is split up into several projects , each for different parts of the desktop. You can either install the full package to make use of its full functionality, or only install the components you need to reduce the burden placed on the hardware. In addition, you can easily customize every single part of the Xfce package to create the best looking desktop for your daily use.

2. Enlightenment

Enlightenment is the lightweight desktop manager that I like the most. It is revolutionary, visually appealing and extremely easy to use. While most lightweight managers strip out all the graphical effects to reduce the hardware requirement, Enlightenment does the opposite. You will be amazed how it can make everything run so smoothly and gracefully, even if it is running on a low-end PC.

When you first log in, you will be surprised to find that there are no menubar, panel or icons in Enlightenment. All you have is a blank canvas and a pager at the bottom of the screen. To access your menu, you simply click anywhere on the canvas. Shift your mouse around or scroll your mouse wheel and you will see the visual effect of the window minimizing to the pager. It may be difficult to get used to the interface at first, but once you are used to it, you won’t want to use any other desktop manager anymore.

3. FVWM-Crystal

If you like eye-candy, then I am sure you will like FVWM-Crystal too. FVWM-Crystal is based on the FVWM window manager. It retains the flexible and highly configurable traits of FVWM and has added plenty of improvement to the interface. What results is a cool interface with semi-transparent windows and lots of eye-candy.

Among all the lightweight desktop managers, FVWM-Crystal have the fastest speed, be it in booting up or loading applications. It also integrates well with XMMS, XMMS2, MPD, Quod Libet and cdcd. If you are looking for a fast, pretty desktop manager that can link to your music server easily, then FVWM-Crystal is clearly the choice.

4. LXDE

Being someone who has experience in Gnome and KDE, I have found LXDE extremely easy to use. The reason being, LXDE is simply a lightweight version of Gnome and KDE combined together. You have a KDE look-alike bottom panel and Gnome-style interface, so there really nothing new that you need to learn here. If you have a low-end PC and do not want to deviate too much away from Gnome or KDE, then LXDE would be a good alternative.

5. IceWM

IceWM is simple and highly configurable. All the settings are stored as plain text files in the user’s home directory, making it easy to customize and configure the settings.

In case you are concerned about the Windows 95 lookalike interface, IceWm is also fully themeable. You can apply your favorite theme and make it look like Windows Vista, Mac OS X or whatever design you want.

6. Fluxbox

Fluxbox is considered a minimalist desktop manager as it has minimal graphical support with only a taskbar in the whole desktop. You don’t see any menubar around, but you can easily access the menu by right-clicking your mouse. The interface is fully themeable and most of the settings are controlled by text files which can be edited easily.

7. Window Maker

Window Maker is one of the few desktop managers that offers a graphical tool to configure the system setting. Wprefs (the graphical tool) is easy to use. It eliminates the use of plain text files and ensures that any users, be it a newbie or a seasoned Linux user, can configure and customize the settings easily.

Like Fluxbox, Window Maker is also a minimalist desktop manager. There are only four icons on the whole desktop. One of them is to access the terminal while the other is to open the Wprefs. To access the main menu, you just have to right-click your mouse and the menu will appear.

8. AfterStep

Originally based on the look and feel of the NeXTStep interface, AfterStep provides its users with a consistent, clean, and elegant desktop that can run on any low end PC. As the same as other lightweight desktop managers, it is fast, stable, easy to use and easy to configure.

The above mentioned lightweight desktop managers are the ones I use and recommend. There are plenty of other desktop managers out there. Which one do you use? If your favorite is not in the above list, which one do you recommend?

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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Let’s take a look at some of the options you have and then we will have a brief look at what the new things are and the anticipated additions to Ubuntu Intrepid as well as where we can find them.

If you are new to Ubuntu

1. Download the flavor according to your choice. (The Intrepid images might not show until they are officially released on 30th October 2008, in that case visit here).

2. Run the installer. You can either completely wipe away all your data, configure a dual boot system or even install Ubuntu just like you install any other software in Windows. Whatever you choose to do, remember to take a backup of all your important files.

Updating your Ubuntu Installation

If you are using 8.04 (Hardy) then you can update directly to 8.10 (Intrepid). In other cases you should follow a sequential upgrade path and not skip any of the releases (unless you are on a LTS release).

1. “Backup important files”. Although the upgrades preserve your data and settings, it’s always wise to backup at least your home directory in case Murphy’s law comes into play. This includes copying (or tar-ring) the desired files to an external drive or a server some place safe. If you plan to do incremental backups in future as well then use something like rsync to help you out. (Backup Tutorial)

2. Make sure your system is up to date. This means that you should have applied all the available updates for your present version of Ubuntu (these updates are different from the actual upgrade. So be careful you don’t skip this step).

3. Read the Release Notes to find out if there are some issues and possible workarounds and to know what’s the new release all about.

4. Upgrade by running the Update Manager (Note that before 30th October you will have to run ‘update-manager –devel-release’ to let it know you want to install the developmental release)

Points to Keep in Mind When Upgrading / Downloading

If you are keen to upgrade or don’t want to spend time downloading the image/upgrade when the majority of users are also doing the same then you can download and use the Release Candidate. A release candidate is the closest you can get to the real thing, basically if no more bugs are found till the official release then RC would essentially be the same as the actual release.

If you want to be absolutely certain that you don’t miss anything, you can use jigdo to download the ISO and then update the downloaded ISO when the final release becomes available.

Jigdo or JIGsaw Download is a download manager that makes downloading of large files easier. In our context we will be using it to compare two images and then download only those packages that are new in the recent image available on the servers. This means that if you are totally paranoid to have the latest image but don’t want to download it all over again after you have downloaded the Release Candidate then Jigdo is for you.

See how to update ubuntu images using jigdo. However, this step is not necessary if you are not burning Intrepid to a disc because if something is updated in the final release it will most likely trickle down to you via software updates.

If you are actually downloading on the D-Day then you should consider using BitTorrent for your downloads. Not only is it faster but it also reduces burden on the servers.

If you decide to go against BitTorrent for some reason, then choose the server closest to your location when you download the image. If you are upgrading via the update-manager, then this has most likely already been taken care of.

Things to check out in Ubuntu Intrepid

Here are a couple of things that are new and you might want to check them out as soon as you log into Intrepid for the first time!

An alternate Dark Theme

There was a lot of hype over the Artwork overhaul in Intrepid. While its not a complete revamp that we all hoped for, there are some changes nevertheless. First and foremost, Intrepid will come with a Dark Theme. It will not be applied by default.

Where to find: System > Preferences > Appearance

Guest Sessions

Intrepid introduces Guest Sessions, which can be accessed via the user switcher applet. Guest sessions allow you to do basic things like surfing the web, email etc. However they don’t allow any modification to the system.

Excellent for allowing access to “guests” on your system without having to worry about data and settings.

Where to find: User Switcher Applet generally on the top panel

Encrypted private directory

Considering your data to be secure with just a login password? Think again.

Anyone with a live CD can mount the file systems and not only have a look at but can also walk way with your data. BIOS password gives some additional security but how about encryption? Intrepid includes a ~/Private directory. All the files you put in here will be encrypted. How to set up private directory and what all to include in it?

Where to find: ~/Private

Improved Network Manager

Network Manager now bundles up all types of network connections including Wired, wireless, DSL, VPN in one central management tool.

Nautilus Tabs and Eject Icons

Nautilus the default file manager/ file browser gets Tabs. Allows you to open multiple folders as tabs without too much cluttering. Also the devices listed in the left pane get Eject icons when supported.

Where to find: Just fire up Nautilus (Open any folder)

USB Live Disk Creator

The tool allows you to create a bootable USB stick. Just fire it up, choose the device and that’s it. As easy as that, no more Googling and workarounds.

Where to find: System > Administration > Create Startup Disk

System Cleaner

No fuss tool to help remove packages that you no longer need. Provides an intuitive list of all the packages that are installed all in one place and lets you take appropriate actions.

Where to find: Applications > System Tools > System Cleaner

“Last successful boot” recovery entry

On each successful boot, Intrepid will retain a copy of your running kernel and make it available from the boot loader as a “Last successful boot” option. This makes it possible for old kernel packages to be safely auto-removed by the package manager, instead of being kept indefinitely.

DKMS

Allows kernel drivers to be automatically rebuilt when new kernels are released.

Some not so obvious changes

Persistent Permissions: When asked for a password you can choose to remember the password and never be asked again in the session.

Access BBC content and High Quality Youtube videos with Totem

X.Org 7.04: With the new release, most users will be able to operate with an empty xorg.conf, letting the OS detect and choose the proper driver, and detect monitor resolutions and input devices automatically, without requiring user input.

File Roller now supports ALZ, RZIP, CAB and TAR.7Z file types as well.

Linux Kernel 2.6.27-7

Did I miss something that you found interesting in Intrepid? Have you already installed Intrepid or are you waiting for the actual release? Lets us know in the comments.

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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If you are like me who is a Linux user and owns a huge collection of music, videos and pictures, the world is not over for you yet. There are many open-source applications that you can use to turn your Linux machine into a lean, mean media center.

In part one of this series, I will go through some of these free media center software that you can use in your Linux machine (also see Media Center alternatives for Windows).

1. XBMC

XBMC is by far, one of the best media centers around. Originally built for Xbox, the XBMC team has now ported the popular software to the various platforms, including Linux, OSX and Windows. It supports a wide range of protocols and audio/video formats, making it a versatile media player that you want to have in your system.

With XBMC, not only can you enjoy your audio/videos/images that are stored in your local drive, you can also stream the multimedia content from the Web, via network share, SAMBA or even from uPnP devices.

In addition, XBMC is also extensible via the use of scripts. There is even a site that is dedicated for XBMC scripts.

2. Entertainer

Entertainer aims to be a simple and easy-to-use media center solution for the Gnome and XFce desktop environments. It uses the Gstreamer library in your Linux system to playback multimedia content and it allows you to play audios, videos, pictures, RSS feeds and weather.

One of its abilities is that it can download metadata (like cover-art and movie information) from the internet and makes it easier for you to organize and search your media files. The installation and initial configuration is not as straightforward as it should be and it involves running several scripts to get the application running.

However, once you have done the configuration and got it up and running, the rest is simply a matter of ‘point and click’.

3. Elisa

Elisa is an open source media center available on the Linux and Windows platform (the Mac version is due to be released soon). The interface is simple, with only 5 icons in the main screen that lets you select between Picture, Video, Audio, Settings and Plugins.

It has a tight integration with the internet and allows you to watch YouTube videos, listen to Shoutcast, view photos from Flickr and many other popular internet services. It is also extensible via the use of plugins.

4. MythTV

MythTV is a popular software that need little or no introduction. With the necessary hardware, MythTV can turn your computer into a PVR (Personal Video Recorder), a digital multimedia home entertainment system or even a Home Theater Personal Computer.

If you are familiar with TiVo, then this is the equivalent to the software version of it. MythTV initially started as a PVR project, but now with the use of modules (similar to plugins), one can also listen to music, play DVD’s, access NetFlix, view pictures, and many more features.

Due to its popularity, MythTV has also been integrated into several Linux distros to make the whole usage process easier. The most popular one is Mythbuntu, a Ubuntu-based distro with MythTV as the frontend. Other distros include KnoppMyth and Mythdora

5. Freevo

Rather than calling it a media center, Freevo is in fact a “media manager” that organizes your media files and enables you to access them all in one place. It uses the mplayer or xine to play your multimedia content and has an image viewer that can rotate your picture on-the-fly to allow easy viewing.

With the use of a TV-tuner card, Freevo can also act as a TV recorder. In addition, Freevo also comes with a series of in-built plugins that you can activate to extend its functionality. One of the interesting plugins is the game plugin that allows you to play your console game on the computer (via an emulator).

6. GeeXboX

GeeXboX is not a software that you install on your Linux. It is instead a small Linux distribution built with the intention to turn your PC into a Home Theater PC. There is no installation required. You just need to boot up the LiveCD and it will run by itself. You can even use it on a diskless computer, where the whole system is being loaded in your RAM.

While a full Linux distro comes in a size of up to 700MB, the ISO of GeeXboX is only 9MB and it comes with a complete and automatic hardware detection, thus does not require any drivers to be added. It supports playback of nearly any kind of audio/video and image files and all known codecs and containers are shipped in, allowing playing them through various physical supports, either CD, DVD, HDD, LAN or internet.

Now, if you are looking to recycle that old computer, GeeXboX might be the one for you.

In Part 2, I will discuss using your Linux machine as a media server.

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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If you have a good collection of wallpapers and want to see them in action on your desktop, here are 5 wallpaper changers that you can use in your Linux machine. Most, if not all, of them are meant for the GNOME and KDE desktop.

Webilder

Webilder is one of the best wallpaper changers for Linux. Not only does it change your wallpaper at regular intervals but it can also download images directly from Flickr and WebShots (requires a paid account) and add them to your collection.

When downloading from Flickr, you can configure it to download photos that match the tags you specified, or just to download the most interesting photo of the day.

If you run out of tags idea, you can also check out the Webilder channel to see what others are downloading and add their tags to your Webilder.

In addition, Webilder also comes with a simple photo browser where you can preview the image in full screen and decide if you want to use it as the wallpaper.

Wallpapoz

I like Wallpapoz the best, for the simple reason that it allows me to specify a different set of wallpapers for each workspace. When I change workspace, the wallpaper also changes accordingly. With this feature, you can configure each workspace to display a different ‘mood’ of wallpaper.

The first workspace may display those ‘Get back to work’ kinds of wallpaper that constantly remind you to finish up your work. The second workspace may be made up of relaxing, soothing wallpaper where you can listen to your music with peace. The trick is, when you are bored with your work, simply switch the workspace and change your mood instantly.

I am not sure if this works for you, but it is definitely working for me.

The current version of this app is 0.4.1 and works well in most Linux distros with GNOME desktop. This will also be the last stable version as the developer has decided to quit the development.

Drapes

Drapes is a simple wallpaper changer that sit quietly in the notification area and changes your wallpaper every once in a while. A good thing about Drapes is that you can specify a folder for it to monitor. When you add a new wallpaper into the folder, Drapes will pick it up and add it to its database.

Generally, this is a simple wallpaper changer that performs what it’s supposed to do – change wallpapers at regular intervals. If you just want a set it once and leave it kind of wallpaper-changing app, then this is most suitable for you.

If you are using Ubuntu, Drapes is included in the repository and you can easily install via the Synaptic Package Manager. If that is too troublesome for you, click here to install it.

Wallpaper-Tray

Wallpaper-Tray is another simple wallpaper changer that does only the basic stuff. You specify the location of your wallpapers, set the time interval and you are good to go. No surprises.

There is one interesting feature though – Wallpaper Search tool. You type in some text in the search bar and it will search your filesystem and display all the images with file names similar to your search term. You can then select from the results the image that you want to set as the wallpaper.

Wallpaper-Tray is also available in the Ubuntu repository.

Wallpaper Changer Screenlet

If you have already installed Screenlets in your system, you can also use the Wallpaper Changer Screenlet to change your wallpaper at regular intervals. Same as Webilder, it allows you to download the interesting picture of the day from Flickr. It can also retrieve images from art.gnome.org and Google Images.

There is no installation required for this app. You just need to download the tar file and extract it to the Screenlets folder (usually located in /home/username/.Screenlets). You can then activate the app via the Screenlets main menu.

While this app works fine as a wallpaper changer, its interface is rather unpolished and can be hard to manage at times. I would advise you to use this app only if you have already installed Screenlets.

Did I miss out any wallpaper changer app for Linux? Do let me know and I will add it to the list.

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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1. iPhone Rap (video)

2. iHaircut (pic)

3. Linux Sex Positions (pic)

4. Photoshop App For iPhone (video)

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]]> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/latest-picks-from-makeuseof-geeky-fun-25/feed/ 0 http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/aria2-fast-multiprotocol-power-downloader-app/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/aria2-fast-multiprotocol-power-downloader-app/#comments Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:01:23 +0000 Varun Kashyap http://www.makeuseof.com/?p=6382 If you are a power downloader, who likes to download large files or download files via bittorrent, you should definately check out aria2. aria2 is an advanced utility for the ‘powerful geeky downloader’.

Aria2 is for Linux, however Windows and Mac ports are available. It supports downloads in HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/BitTorrent/Metalink protocols. Although it is a command line utility, don’t let it scare you off because there are some GUI’s available that provide a graphical interface to aria2. It is feature rich and not only that but it has some unique features that are not easy to find elsewhere.

Let’s see some of them :

Download files from multiple sources and protocols

Not only does aria2 support multiple protocols, it also lets you download the same file from different sources/protocols. Let’s say you want to download the Ubuntu Intrepid Beta. Such files are an excellent candidate to try aria2 on because you generally have the files mirrored on different servers, plus the file is sufficiently large enough to notice speed differences with aria2. So you would give the following command:

aria2c http://server/yourfile http://server/yourfile

You are not limited to 2 servers – you can add more if you like to the command above. Not only this, you are also not limited to a single protocol. This means that if one of the links is an http link and the other is a ftp link, you can still use them to download segments using aria2. Just throw in the appropriate protocol in the command like:

aria2c http://server/yourfile ftp://server/yourfile



You can even take it a step further by adding bittorrent to the equation.

aria2c http://site/file.torrent

Of course you will have to do some searching to find the torrent for the exact file, this is generally not an issue with ISOs of distros and similar files. Nevertheless check out this Make Use Of article for searching torrents. Some other torrets search engines can be also found here.

Some handy usage options:

There are a myriad of useful options and features offered by aria2. However I would like to mention only some of the cooler ones that I think would be useful to all

- BitTorrent Download

aria2c http://site/yourfile.torrent

- BitTorrent Download (torrent yourfile present locally)

aria2c –max-upload-limit=40K yourfile.torrent

- Repair damaged downloads (only for bitTorrent and metalink)

aria2c –check-integrity=true yourfile.metalink

- Download/upload speed throttling

aria2c –max-download-limit=100K http://server/yourfile

- Quickly specify multiple urls

aria2c -P http://{server1,server2,server3}/yourfile

aria2c -Z -P http://server/image[000-100].png (to download multiple sequentially named yourfiles)

- Oh you just want to download a file plain ‘n easy? Sorry, forgot about you ^ ^, here you go

aria2c http://server/yourfile

Other features include

- BitTorrent extensions: Fast extension, DHT, PEX, MSE/PSE, Multi-Tracker
- Verify downloaded files
- Being a command line utility you can use it effectively to automate tasks
- Concurrent downloads of multiple files
- Run in background
- HTTP proxy and authentication support

Or in case you are hungry for more and want to know about all the things aria2 can do, I would suggest you RTFM ( I what? )

Graphical Frontends: Use Aria from Graphical Interface

If the whole command line scanario scares the crap out of you, no need to be disappointed, have a look at the graphical frontends to the command. Yeah they allow you to specify files and options graphically and a little more intuitively. They then would generate the appropriate options for the command and invoke aria2 with those options. If that’s the way you like it so be it!



What do you think of aria2? Ever used a similar utility or do you know a better one? Let’s hear in the comments.

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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]]> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/aria2-fast-multiprotocol-power-downloader-app/feed/ 2 http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/podcast-20-seinfeld-is-history-chrome-is-hacked/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/podcast-20-seinfeld-is-history-chrome-is-hacked/#comments Sun, 21 Sep 2008 13:01:11 +0000 Jason Mayoff http://www.makeuseof.com/?p=5844 This week on the show, we’ll see which OS Microsoft used to create stills for its latest ads (see video below), we’ll hack Google Chrome in a number of ways and make beautiful presentations online.

I’d love to hear from you. Send me your MP3 files containing comments about the show, reviews of your favourite websites or just general chitchat. I’ll choose a few to play on the show each week. Send them to podcast [at] makeuseof [dot] com.

If you look underneath the links from the show on this page, you will see a little media player where you can listen to the podcast right here on the site. Or if you prefer, you can right-click on the “audio MP3″ logo and save the MP3 file to your computer for listening on your MP3 player or iPod.

The podcast is available through iTunes so don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast if you have an iPod, or in another podcatcher if you have a different MP3 player.

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]]> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/podcast-20-seinfeld-is-history-chrome-is-hacked/feed/ 6