Step 1: The checks

First off, you would want to make sure your existing hardware can support Windows 7. Windows XP has been out for a long time and your hardware might not support the newer and comparatively more demanding versions of Windows like Windows 7. These are the official system requirements:

• 1 GHz processor (32- or 64-bit)
• 1 GB of RAM (32-bit); 2 GB of RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB of available disk space (32-bit); 20 GB of available disk space (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

You can use the Windows 7 Upgrade advisor to see if your computer will run Windows 7. Once you are sure that you are good to go, hop up to the next step.

Step 2: Backup and Migration

It is always a good idea to have backup of your important files and settings that you worked so hard to create. We have shown you various applications to backup your files and settings in the past. If you would rather not install any new software, a simple copy and paste would suffice for the time being. Just make sure to include everything you might need. While you might have set up your folders differently according to your taste, here are some key locations that you should check out and decide if you would like to back them up:

• My Documents
• My Music
• My Pictures
• (If you have more than one user account on your computer, make sure to back up their files as well)
• Your projects folders and files, if it is your work computer
• Browser bookmarks, saved passwords, etc.
• Other program data under %AppData% (This doesn’t always work. It is better if you use respective applications to export settings)

Another option you can use to quickly backup and transfer your settings is the Windows Easy Transfer tool that you can find on the Windows 7 DVD. Browse to the folder named support and then to migwiz on your Windows 7 DVD and launch migsetup.exe. This will launch the Windows Easy Transfer tool.

Choose how you would like to transfer the settings:

and then select what to transfer:

and Windows Easy Transfer will do the rest and give you a file you can store, on say a flash drive to transfer the settings to new installation later.

Step 3: Drivers

Next up are the drivers. It is always a good idea to search your computer manufacturer’s website to see if they have newer drivers for Windows 7. Older drivers may not always work, or may not work as intended. This is especially true for drivers made for Windows XP. I was able to use an XP display driver with Windows 7 beta but it didn’t work when Windows 7 RC came out. You might have more luck with Vista drivers on Windows 7, but nothing is guaranteed. So if you are trying to get older drivers to work, you better be prepared to play around after installation.

Step 4: Install

Finally, you are ready to install Windows 7. Pop in the DVD and restart your computer. Boot from the DVD and follow the prompts to install Windows 7.

Choose Custom (Advanced install) when given the choice:

Then choose the system drive (which was your C: on Windows XP) as the partition you would like to set up Windows 7.

Wait for the installation to complete, and boot into Windows 7 once you are done.

Installed, now what?

Already here? Way to go. Now that you have Windows installed there are few additional steps you should take before you are ready to go. First off, make sure you install an antivirus before you start browsing the web or transferring files using USB drives. MS Security Essentials, AVG, Avast and Antivir are good free choices. You might want to look into commercial ones if you want something better. ESET and Kaspersky are good choices over there (Oops! Did I start a flame war?).

Install your favorite applications now. This would be a good time to get the latest versions if you have been postponing pending software updates. Looking for some software recommendations? Check out the Mark pack.

Oh and don’t forget to restore the settings you backed up earlier. If you went the copy-paste route, its time to do some more copy-paste. If you used Windows Easy Transfer instead, click on Start button and type Windows Easy transfer, launch the application and let it know that this is your new computer, then browse to the location you stored those settings to and let it do the rest.

Hope this helps you plan your upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7. Once you are done, use the comments area and tell us know how it went and if Windows 7 is worth the price tag!

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But even with all of the past fuss, Wordpress was (and still is) the ultimate blogging platform for everyday folks like us.

Today, almost every part of the installation has gone from manual to automatic. With the help of the installer script that basically does a Wordpress auto install, you can have Wordpress up and running with just one click. Most web hosting services have included at least one script in their cPanel. The most popular two are Fantastico and Elefante.

A Better Wordpress Auto Install Alternative

But “most web hosting services” means “not all web hosting services”. For those who use webhosts without this one-click-install luxury, their options were only to install manually or move to another service.

Luckily, that too is a problem of the past because there’s a web service called SimpleScripts that can help us install and upgrade Wordpress easily on almost any hosting platform which meets the system requirements. SimpleScripts can also install many other popular web applications such as Joomla, ZenCart, Roundcube and Drupal.

SimpleScripts is available in two versions, free and pro. The free version has a limit of three installation while the pro version has no such limitation but will cost you US$15 per year.

Besides providing users with easy, one-click Wordpress auto installs, SimpleScripts will also send email notifications every time the installed web app has an available upgrade.

Using SimpleScripts

To use the service, you first have to register. Just click on the signup link at the top right corner of the web page.

The registration process requires you to provide your email address and the web hosting service. There are a number of supported hosting companies in the drop down list. Choose “Other” if the one that you use is not there.

After clicking on the “Create Account” button, you will get an email with your login information and you are ready to begin.

Choose “Wordpress” from the script list. You can see that SimpleScripts has already provided its users with the latest version of Wordpress. This is another advantage of using this service over other similar installer scripts which are usually not updated frequently enough.

The installation is easy as 1-2-3:

1. Click install
2. Fill in the necessary information (domain and FTP) and
3. Click “Update”

If all of the information you provided were correct, and if your hosting service met the system requirements, your Wordpress should be installed successfully.

You can also use SimpleScripts to upgrade your existing Wordpress installation. To do this, choose “Import” instead of “Install” in step one.

Choose the “I need to update my FTP information” link under the “Install” button if the Wordpress you want to upgrade is different from the one that you’ve already installed, or if you want to install a new one in a different location.

I personally like this service better than other similar installers simply because it puts the user in control yet being easy to use.

Have you tried SimpleScripts? Or do you know other free ways to auto install Wordpress? Share using the comments section below.

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There are couple of situations where the use of USB drive brings a certain benefit:

• When you are trying to install Windows on a netbook or your optical drive is broken
• When you want to create a live USB from an ISO image (requires some extra effort)
• Theoretically, the transfer speeds should be better and the installation process is a little faster
• You can protect your original install media from wear and tear.

There are a number of ways to create a bootable USB drive, however most of them require copying files manually – making it prone to mistakes. WinToFlash makes the entire task a lot simpler by the magic of automation.

Download WinToFlash from here. It is a portable application, all you have to do is extract the zip file and you are ready to go. Start WinToFlash, pop in the Windows CD/DVD, plug in the USB flash drive and specify the paths. Click ‘Next’ and sit back and watch WinToFlash create a bootable USB drive from the installation media. This might take some time depending upon the size of the installation media.

WinToFlash can also be used transfer Preinstalled Environments (PE’s) to a flash drive. Go to the ‘Tasks’ tab and choose the appropriate option you want to use.

Creating a bootable flash drive from an ISO image is a little more involved. WinToFlash doesn’t let you specify an ISO image as the source for Windows file. To get around this limitation, you can do one of the following:

• Extract the ISO file. Most modern archiving software can extract files from an ISO image. I used 7-zip.
• Virtually mount the ISO image (try Virtual CD-ROM control panel) and specify the virtual drive as the Windows file path in WinToFlash.

The rest of the process remain unchanged and you will get a bootable USB drive after successful completion.

I want to install Linux using a bootable flash drive?

As the name suggests WinToFlash only works with Windows installation media. If you want to install Linux using a USB drive we suggest you have a look at UNetbootin. It works well with ISO files and can even download the required files if you don’t currently have them on your computer. You can also use built-in tools included in many distributions these days, if you already have Linux installed on another computer.

How do I check if my computer can boot from USB drive?

That is a question I get asked many a times. You can refer to your computer’s manual to check if you are able to boot from a USB drive. If that doesn’t work or you have a custom-built computer than you can always check the BIOS settings to see if there is an option to boot from External drive or USB drive. If there is one, make sure your computer is configured to look for a USB drive before it defaults to boot from the hard disk.

After you are through with the installation, I would suggest that you move the USB drive option back down the order and protect the BIOS settings with a password to minimize the risk of your computer being compromised.

If you have some other nifty ideas on installing/upgrading operating systems without burning a DVD, we would love to hear about them in the comments!

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One of the afterthoughts I have with another Mac user friend is about the installation process for Macbook Air which has no optical drive. It was a short discussion closed by a “using Remote Disc of course” statement and a few chuckles. But then I wondered whether it’s possible to install Snow Leopard (or any other version of Mac OS X) using a USB thumb drive (something like creating a portable Ubuntu installation USB that we’ve discussed here before). This would be useful for Mac users who have no access to a physical optical drive.

For the sake of curiosity, I did a little Googling followed by a little experiment.  Less than one and a half hours later, I knew the answer.

Utilizing the Disk Utility

Some readers have pointed out in the Ubuntu article that the whole process of creating a USB installation disk can be done the “GUI-way” using the Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app), so we’ll try that route in creating our USB installation drive for upgrading your Mac to Leopard.

As the installation DVD is almost 7 GB in size, we’ll need a USB thumb drive with at least that amount of space. I used an 8 GB thumb drive, but larger types or even a USB external drive with an empty partition above 7 GB could also be used.

The first thing to do is to format the drive. Select the drive from the left pane of Disk Utility then click the “Erase” tab. Choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” from the “Format” option, then give a name to the disk and click the “Erase” button.

After the formatting process is finished, go to the “Restore” tab to ‘restore’ the content of the installation disc into the USB drive. Select then drag and drop the source image (Snow Leopard) and the destination (the USB drive) from the left pane to the corresponding place. Note: you can choose a disk image from a physical disc, an image file – on the hard drive or web location – as the source.

Then click the “Restore” button to start the process, which will roughly take about half an hour.

After the restoring process is finished, we can see that the USB drive has been transformed into an installation disk.

However, we can’t do the installation by clicking the “Install Mac OS X” logo. You’ll just get the warning sign ‘The application “Install Mac OS X” cannot be used from this volume‘.

Now, let’s continue with the real deal.

The installation process

Eject the DVD but leave the USB plugged in. Restart the system and press the “Alt” key on the keyboard during restarting. You will have the option to boot from the hard disk or a USB disk; I guess you know which one to choose, right?

The whole installation – or upgrade, some would say – process took about 50 minutes. Then you’ll get the thank you window saying that everything’s done.

There are some applications that are still incompatible with Snow Leopard, which is to be expected at the early stage of every new OS. They are moved to the “Incompatible Software” folder in the start up disk. If you’d like to find out who they are, click the “More Info” button.

And I think now is the time to say hello to our new OS.

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While I was in London, I visited the Apple Regent Street Store to grab a copy of the latest OS to upgrade my Mac. Is it actually as simple as that? Quick answer – no.

There happens to be some fine print that everyone should be aware of.

Firstly, the $25 price is only applicable if you are already using Leopard. I spoke to a Genius about this and it turns out that Snow Leopard is actually an upgrade from Leopard. This means that if you are currently running Tiger, you’ll have to purchase the Snow Leopard Mac Box Set which sells for $169. But then again, this is all just legal mumbo-jumbo — there is no black magic preventing you from using the $25 disk to upgrade from Tiger. If you do this, however, keep in mind that the “automated upgrade” process won’t work for you and Apple will not support your Mac if they find out that you upgraded to Snow Leopard from Tiger.

Secondly, as everyone should be aware of, Apple decided to drop support for all PowerPC machines. This means that if you have an older Mac, you won’t be enjoying the performance bump or any of the cool new features.

So, as I said before, I’m a proud legal owner of Apple’s latest operating system that I’m eager to try out. Let’s get on it, shall we?

Preparing to upgrade

Upgrading to Snow Leopard was undeniably the easiest upgrade I have ever performed. Before actually upgrading though, you should always have a backup of your files and documents. You could use Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cleaner to equip yourself with a copy of your hard disk for safekeeping. Or you could do it the old-fashioned way, like I did; manually backup these folders to an external hard disk:

• Documents
• Downloads
• Pictures
• Music
• Desktop
• Any other location where you keep important documents

Now that you have your precious files all backed up and secure, here’s another thing you need to know about Snow Leopard: you won’t need to restore them. You see, Snow Leopard automatically performs an Archive and Install procedure when installing itself. It will keep all of your files, folders, preferences and applications untouched while replacing essential system files. In a nutshell, your entire home folder will be backed up and restored after the installation process is over.

Upgrading

Initially, I was a little skeptical about the whole automated upgrade process. So after backing up my files, I decided to give it a try. Low and behold — after 40 minutes, I was greeted with the Snow Leopard intro movie and everything was still intact. Even my customized Geektool desktop still showed. Some applications have yet to support Snow Leopard and those were the only things that broke during the upgrade process.

When creating Snow Leopard, the techies over at Apple really had their wavelength synchronized with their user base. By making it as “noob-friendly” as possible, this will definitely encourage a lot of their current users to upgrade as well as reduce the number of unpleasant incidents while doing so.

To further streamline this process, I suggest getting hold of an uninstaller and start getting rid of applications that you no longer use and documents that you have no need of. In other words, do some spring cleaning! By doing so, you are minimizing the number of unwanted apps and their preference files from being transferred over to the new operating system. Less clunk and less time wasted.

Sure, some people will advice you to perform an Erase and Install — this method is a little bit more manual and shouldn’t be attempted by the faint-hearted. The benefits of this option are two fold:

• You end up with a much cleaner, leaner and meaner system — having gotten rid of anything that was slowing down your Mac.
• You have more free disk space.

However, this will also mean that you have to manually set up accounts and authorize plug-ins and re-download preference pane apps and re-installing applications and….you get the drift. If you do decide to head down this road, make sure to have everything backed up safely somewhere, remember your Keychain passwords and application serial keys.

Advantages?

The buzz on the InterWeb whispers something of Snow Leopard freeing up more disk space. Well, there is some truth to this.

Since Apple dropped support for PowerPC processors, the OS X installation in Snow Leopard excluded the PPC component — hence, saving a couple of gigabytes. Furthermore, Snow Leopard calculates disk space using base 10 measurement. This may be a little hard for the regular user to comprehend but I’ll try to word it as easily as possible. In OS X 10.5 Leopard, the amount of disk space was calculated using base 2 (binary) measurement — 1MB = 1,048,576 bytes. That’s why you can only “see” 465GB from a 500GB hard disk.

In Snow Leopard, disk space calculation is measured using base 10 (decimal) system — 1MB = 1,000,000 bytes. So, you will actually “see” 500GB from a 500GB hard disk. So there’s the mystery of the “additional recovered space” revealed. There is a discrepancy though: software and physical memory (RAM) are still calculated using base 2.

However, this is a good thing. Most users don’t really understand why their 4GB thumbdrive only shows 3.7GB of free space. The new calculation system will help clear the confusion and generally make things a little simpler.

Besides that, due to some unknown internal Apple voodoo, my system feels slightly (not dramatically) snappier and more responsive. Naturally, after I upgraded using the automated path, I couldn’t help but perform an Erase and Install. What I’m trying to say here is, your mileage might vary.

Other cool implementations are:

• Dock Exposé – clicking on an application in the Dock will reveal all of its windows in Exposé. Windows that were minimized are displayed but separated from the active ones
• Application stack – No further tweaking required. Apple has heard you and put a stack for your apps on the Dock
• Browsing within Stacks – clicking a folder in a Stack will now take you to the folder without opening a Finder window
• Supercharged Finder – previewing documents and videos is incredibly easy now. As you hover the cursor over a file, preview buttons pop up that will allow you to flip through a PDF or play a video — directly within its file icon
• Quicktime X – this is no ordinary Quicktime. Not only will it play videos in a new sleek, borderless player, it will also allow you to record screencasts, edit and trim them, then share it with the world. Perian is still required to play videos if they are not Quicktime movie files
• Location Services - Snow Leopard will determine your current location based on your IP address and if enabled, automatically set your date and time zone to your location. It was a pleasant surprise to see that the clock and weather widgets in my Dashboard already set to my location

  

• New Image Capture user interface – I use Image Capture a lot and the new interface makes it really easy to import individual images

  

Surely, there are more new features being bragged about Snow Leopard; these are just a few that I thought I’d share with you. It’s actually amazing to see that Apple can make an old machine work faster with a new operating system, unlike other vendors.

How many of you have taken the leap and bought Snow Leopard? Are you satisfied with your purchase? What is your favorite new feature? The comments are yours for the taking.

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First off, hear this. Most things are the same. Whether you were using XP or Vista, you’ll generally find things in the same places, and find that they work in a similar way… Generally.

And while some things are thoroughly different under the hood, I’m concentrating on everyday functionality here. Sending emails, or writing blog posts.

What’s Changed?

The XP and Vista Task Bars were pretty similar to each other.

System tray on the right, active applications in the middle, and perhaps a toolbar or two on the left.

Windows 7 has a TaskBar too, but this one is a completely different beast.

The System Tray, on the right, works much the same as the old one, though it’s visually quite different…

…but there is no longer a simple distinction on the left between shortcut icons for applications you might want to run, and those for applications already running. The two sets are mixed together, but are differentiated visually.

Icons with borders around them (such as the Firefox one above) are running. The others are just shortcuts for now.

One thing that caught me out for a while was that you can’t run the same thing multiple times the same way as you did in earlier versions of Windows. It’s logical enough though. Hold the shift key down when you click on the icon, and it will start another copy of the program for you.

For instance, in this case there are multiple copies of Windows Explorer running, one each of Firefox and Outlook, and the others are not running at all. It’s different, but it’s good.

The menus have had a design makeover as well, but the functionality is largely the same.

Windows Explorer have additional functionality, but work much the way you might expect.

Windows 7 uses the concept of Libraries to group together multiple sets of folders in handy ways, but you don’t need to understand that to get going.

What did I install on top?

You know, there are some things I just can’t manage without, and even though some of them might not be necessary in Windows 7, I just couldn’t help myself. Among the freeware candidates:

I have it on good authority that IE8 is a wonderful product, and I’m sure I’ll be using it at work, but I have too much time and familiarity invested in the combination of Firefox and Greasemonkey to leave them behind just yet.

I used to be a big Trillian fan, but Digsby stole my heart. I’m keeping it.

I mentioned this in my previous post, but take care installing Digsby, or you’ll get more than you bargained for.

You need music for blog posts.

Trust me.

And iTunes works well for me.

I love this. Phrase Express saves me a LOT of time.

What’s no longer needed?

Taskbar Shuffle is great in XP and Vista, but Windows 7 simply doesn’t need it. You can drag icons around all by yourself. I’m undecided about whether I need IrfanView and Copernic Desktop Search. Ask me in a few more weeks.

What’s broken?

Well, basically… nothing.

I’m not kidding. My requirements aren’t extreme, and I don’t play games, but for my day, it all just works.

I did have an issue with the VMWare player in that it refused to resume an XP VM, but it turns out that I was stupid enough not to shut it down before I shifted to Windows 7. (It’s easily fixed. Delete the .lck files)

I’ve had a recurring issue with my NVIDIA GeForce 8500GT. Every few days, the driver crashes for a moment, and then recovers. That’s much better than the behaviour I have with my laptop running Vista, so I’m not complaining.

More to come?

Could be. I haven’t played with the Virtual XP functionality yet, haven’t hammered IE8, and haven’t done anything to really stress the graphics card other than photo processing. I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, Did you take the leap? If so, how did it go? If not, is there anything else you need to know? Fill me in via the comments.

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A word of warning: Windows 7 is not free. It’s not even close. But this is the Release Candidate we’re talking about. Windows 7 RC may be used for free until June 1, 2010. Just keep in mind that at some stage you’re likely to have to go through this again, either to install a final copy of Windows 7 (after you purchase it) or to downgrade back to Vista or XP.

Editor’s note: Windows 7 RC will operate normally until March 1, 2010 then it will shut down every 2 hours.

Once more, this is a Release Candidate. A piece of beta software. It’s good and seems stable. It’s not necessarily ready for your use. There may be things that don’t work for you. Don’t go doing this if you are unprepared to accept that fact.

Before we start

Varun has done the hard yards to determine if your machine can actually run Windows 7. Check that out first. This is not for you if your computer cannot support the latest and greatest from Microsoft.

Decide whether you plan to upgrade your existing system (if you are running Vista already) or will be starting from scratch. Microsoft’s recommendations used to be to always start again, but this time around they seem a little more mellow. Nonetheless, I chose to lose all my settings and installation, and start clean on an empty hard disk.

Backups, backups

Make sure that you have backups of all your important stuff. Okay, that’s hardly a new recommendation but definitely worth remembering. If you are blowing away an existing Windows installation, a number of things go with it. Most of your data is hopefully on another drive but I have a few hints for some apps you might be using. Think it through. Here are some examples.

• Firefox bookmarks need to be exported, and the resulting file put somewhere safe. Any add-ins will need to be reinstalled. Take a note of the ones you have. Here’s how to backup your Firefox preferences.
• Trillian. Copy Program filesTrillian and everything underneath it.
• iTunes. Careful here. Use the Apple instructions or many of the other how-tos on the web to ensure you have a valid copy of your music and the database files. Remember to deauthorise your machine if necessary for iTunes Store purchases. Jackson wrote a short manual on how to migrate iTunes from Windows to Mac, but that article can also be used in terms of backing up your iTunes library.
• Office configuration. This is easy for Office 2003 but the Office 2007 tool (Windows Easy Transfer) never seems to work for me. Take notes so you can reinstate files. Make sure any .pst files are somewhere safe.
• Digsby. This one is easy. Nothing to do. Reinstall and set up. Log in, and everything reappears. Careful with the install though. Digsby has a habit of installing things you don’t want if you don’t watch closely.
• Logins. It’s easy to forget your logins if you’ve set up applications or websites to remember them on your behalf. Make sure you have backed them up before you wave goodbye. We have had several great articles about password managers: KeePass, LockCrypt and MashedLife.

If you have multiple partitions or hard drives, make sure you take note of the drive mappings so that you can recreate them later. Some of those configs you saved will benefit. Don’t leave your notes on the computer, especially not in the C: drive. Yes, of course I’ve done that myself. But not lately. Write them down on good old paper.

Take note of your hardware specifics, especially if you are running a machine with parts from multiple suppliers. Video cards, CPUs, network cards, monitors, printers, wireless mice and keyboards. You can also backup each driver (restoration might not work in Windows 7).

Commitment

So you have backups, details, configs and exports. It’s time to cross the line and make something happen.

You can get hold of a copy of Windows 7 RC here. Remember to get a key for the product. You’re going to need that to activate it.

Download Windows, and burn the .iso to a DVD.

Time for some more decisions. If you intend on performing an upgrade from Vista, then insert the DVD while Windows Vista is running. The rest of these instructions assume a fresh install instead. Therefore, shut down Windows XP or Vista, checking once more that you have everything you need.

Boot from the DVD. Most machines will display a message during boot up indicating which keys to press to change the boot device. The PC will display a ‘Press any key to boot from DVD…’ message. Best to follow that advice. Welcome aboard.

Choose an appropriate language and location.

Accept the terms. Choose the Custom install.

Carefully, choose the partition you wish to install to. Normally that’s the one that just had Vista or XP on it, and is marked System. To keep this as clean as possible, choose Advanced and delete the existing partition. Needless to say, you are now committed to the cause.

Create a new partition in the empty space. Note that Windows 7 may create an additional system partition as well.

Let the installer do what it’s paid for. Files will be copied, expanded and installed. Restarts will happen. Just go along for the ride.

Choose a user name and password.

Remember that product key I reminded you to pick up? Now, is its moment of fame. Best to choose Automatically Activate.

Choose your poison with regard to updates. I just left it on Recommended.

Set your Timezone, and your Location. I sincerely hope most of you are doing this at home, rather than in the office. Let everything finish and reboot some more if necessary.

Well done! Welcome to the newest game in town!

Have a wander around, and play with things. I’ll be back soon with a follow-up post.

So tell me, how did it go? Where did you get to? What did you forget? Tell me in the comments.

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My company has JRE on all its machines because it is how our employees clock in and out of our Etime system. Because of this we are constantly updating the JRE on client machines. One thing that baffles me about JRE is that it does not remove older versions when upgrading. Right now Sun has a version out called JRE 6 update 12. On some of my machines we have 3 older versions of Java and other 5 or 6. This is just crazy!

I thought that was standard practice in the software world. Especially since they release upgrades when they are fixing vulnerabilities. So having older versions of JRE on your machine could be a back door in for some elicit hacker. Now I am not one to get you all worked up and paranoid without a solution (an easy one at that!).

So, How Do You Remove Older Verson of Java Runtime

RAProducts has a small program called JavaRa 1.3 that will fix you right up. It will help you grab the latest and greatest JRE version and remove all crap older versions of JRE from your machine. Let’s download the tiny 67.9KB stand alone program.

You do not need to install it – it just runs. Double click on it, choose your language and you will see this:

Take a look at it. There are four buttons, three with real functionality and as simple as can be. The first button labeled Search for Updates, will take you directly to the Sun website or another site to grab the newest version of JRE. If you click it you will see something similar to this:

Choose the second option to go to Sun’s Website and then you will see this:

Hit Open Webpage and you will be taken to where you need to go:

Go ahead and download/install the newest package located at the top of the list. No go ahead, we will wait…

Once you have that installed you can go back to your JavaRA console and hit that second button that says Remove Older Versions. Press it and you will get a warning:

When you click yes it will start the removal procedure. Another warning will pop up telling you to make sure your browser was closed. This is a good idea so it can clean out everything. When it is done it tells you what it has cleaned:

Wow Version 6 update 1… Why was that on this machine? JavaRA then tells you that it is complete and opens its log file for you to peruse.

That last button that says Additional Tools will give you a few options for tweaking your JRE experience as you can see here:

They are all pretty straight forward but nothing that really caught my eye.

How do you keep up with unistalling old versions of Java Runtime off of your Windows PC? Share it with the rest of the group in the comments!

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For people who are not familiar with apt-get, it’s basically a tool that allows you to download and install (or upgrade) software from a central location in one simple step. You dont have to go to the actual download location, save the file on your computer and then click on it to install. All of this happens in the background with the help of a database of all the available applications and their latest versions.

QWinApt

Download the zip package and extract it. No installation is required. Since most Windows users will not have “wget”, you may also want to download wget and extract and place it in a directory that is in your path variable. If you already have wget set up you can skip this part.

When you run QWinApt for the first time it will need some configuration. The dialog box that appears is not very informative.  However you need to put in the directory where you want to store the downloaded files.

QWinApt will then download a list of all the applications that are available. The list is stored in a xml file in the config directory under the directory where you extracted the application. So if anything goes wrong you can just start all over again by deleting these files.

Once configured you will get a window like the following:

You can then browse for software by category and by their type as well. You can choose to view free software, green software and shareware. Click on the app you like and then download it.

Since Windows installations works different to unix software installations, you will have to run the installer manually. QWinApt however makes it easier to do so by providing you with a context menu to get to the executable of running it from within the application.

Although it may not be quite there yet (requires some manual intervention) , however it still serves as a central tool where you can look for software, download and install them. If you are interested in some advanced stuff or don’t find your favorite application listed there, you can create your own repository. All you have to do is edit the “appinfodb xml” file under the config directory. The author also offers a tool to make this easier for you.

AppUpdater

Appupdater is another similar program. Although it has a smaller application database, the design looks more professional. Appupdater also uses metalink and previously mentioned download tool aria2c in the background.

First off, fire up Appupdater and run a scan. This will scan your harddrive for installed software that is also on the appupdater list, so that you can be notified of the updates available.

Now you can upgrade to the latest version of the software that you have installed on your system and which are also on the appupdater list by clicking on “Download all updates”.

You can install new applications from within Appupdater. If you find the application list is limited, you can request a new application to be added to the database here.

Appupdater can also be accessed and used from the command line. Run appudater –upgrade for upgrading all software or appudater –install=<app name> to install the application and appupdater –list to view a list of all applications

Appupdater checks for updates to the installed software every night at 2 am. You can customize this and other settings under Tools > Options.

InstallPad

InstallPad is a simple application that lists common software that you can check and install as desired. The list is limited to about 10 applications.  However you can create your own and use them to silently install and update application.

You can choose a directory to store the downloaded files (from preferences). Further customizations are possible by editing the applist.xml file in the Installpad directory to add new applications and to change settings like silent install and maximum number of simultaneous downloads.

AppSnap, Update Star and 5 other ways

Check out previously mentioned ways to stay up to date with the latest software. Some of them are tools, some are feeds to let you know when your favourite software gets updated.

Have you used any of these applications? Which one do you prefer over the other?

As a side note why not tell us about say 5 applications that you can’t live without, applications you would always like to have installed on a freshly installed system and kept up to date using one of the tools from above.

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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.

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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.

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