[121001050010] |<title>Nautilus: Set Image as Wallpaper</title>
[121001050020] |Quick Tip:
[121001050030] |To set an image you are seeing in Nautilus as the wallpaper, drag the image <strong>using a middle-click</strong> to the desktop.
[121001050040] |You will then get an option to set the image as the desktop background. 
[121001070010] |<title>Ubuntu Audio Studio</title>
[121001070020] |If you are a musician of the computer-savvy variety and want to use Ubuntu to trick out your computer as a music studio, look to <a>Ubuntu Studio</a>.
[121001070030] |This unofficial wiki has loads of tips on how to decrease the latency of the kernel and build the perfect Ubuntu-based sound editing setup.
[121001070040] |This is truly a good effort.
[121001070050] |It is group effort like these that make or break the reputation of a distribution in a field.
[121001070060] |Looks really promising.
[121001070070] |I wish I was a musician, so I could use the resource, but if you are then cheers to you!
[121001080010] |<title>Make Documentation Easier to Read</title>
[121001080020] |Today’s tip rules them all, for it puts you in the driver’s seat.
[121001080030] |Debian (and ergo Ubuntu) has some of the best documentation in the world.
[121001080040] |The best thing about the documentation is that <strong>it is on your machine</strong>, <em>not</em> on the internet.
[121001080050] |However not many realize this, and many a problem that can be solved just by reading the documentation remains unsolved, and many a user resorts to forums, mailing lists etc when the answer is right there on their own computer.
[121001080060] |I am guilty too, having <a>realized the power of RTFM-ing before</a>. 
[121001080070] |You can browse most of the html documentation on your system by Clicking the <em>System</em> -> <em>Help</em> menu item on the desktop taskbar.
[121001080080] |Besides Manual Pages, and other Documentation, you will find lots of docs for the different applications.
[121001080090] |But what if the tool/library you installed does not come with a GUI, or a menu entry?
[121001080100] |The documentation for all packages is installed in <code>/usr/share/doc</code>.
[121001080110] |You could use the terminal to change to that directory and then look around to find the directory containing documentation for the package.
[121001080120] |Or you could use today’s tip <img/>
[121001080130] |To make documentation easier to access, set CDPATH as follows: <code>$export CDPATH=.:/usr/local:/usr/share/doc</code>
[121001080140] |To make the change permanent (across terminal sessions/restarts), add the line to your ~/.bashrc file.
[121001080150] |Now, to find documentation for <em>package-name</em> Type: $cd <em>package-name</em> and then you can do an <code>$ls</code> to see what documentation is on offer.
[121001080160] |You can then use your favourite editor/pager to read the documentation.
[121001080170] |Often, if you have problems with a package, it is good to read the README.Debian file to see if there are any special notes explaining workarounds or expected problems. <code>$ pager README.Debian</code>
[121001080180] |If there is a file called index.html, you can read the html documentation using $firefox index.html
[121001080190] |There, now you are all set to go exploring and find out more about the packages installed on your system.
[121001080200] |I was literally overjoyed to find the “CDPATH” variable for bash which makes things so much easier.
[121001090010] |<title>Fix hostname “Unknown” in router</title>
[121001090020] |I have a D-link router, and have three ubuntu boxes at home.
[121001090030] |When I got the router management page and look at the DHCP clients that are connected to the router, I see either “unknown” or ””as the name for the Ubuntu boxes.
[121001090040] |Managing these becomes a pain, as i have to resort to finding out the MAC address to do this.
[121001090050] |The WinXP boxes have their designated names.
[121001090060] |The hostname for the Ubuntu boxes are set, and yet the router recognizes them as “unknown” or ”“.
[121001090070] |I fixed this problem by editing the <code>/etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf</code> file to uncomment the following line and editing it as follows: <code>send host-name "gabriel"</code> 
[121001100010] |<title>On Writing Here</title>
[121001100020] |This is a “meta” entry and has little to do with improving the Ubuntu experience of advanced users, so feel free to skip this, if you will <img/>I will be flatterred if you read and respond, though.
[121001100030] |<em>Why do I write here?</em>
[121001100040] |Three reasons: 1. I like to keep notes regarding how things work for my own future (sort of like a linear log).
[121001100050] |2. I like helping others in some strange way.
[121001100060] |3. I like to write.
[121001100070] |<em>How do I find topics/ideas?</em>
[121001100080] |Three ways: 1.
[121001100090] |Personal trouble-shooting or usage experience 2.
[121001100100] |Posts from the ubuntu-users mailing list from over a month ago.
[121001100110] |I have subscribed to ubuntu-users using gmail.
[121001100120] |I havea label setup for the emails.
[121001100130] |I read the posts in the order made (right now I am 5 months behind!!), and label interesting emails with a “to-blog” label, which I then brush up, add references and write up at the blog.
[121001100140] |Needless to say, since I read pretty much every email sent to the mailing list, this is a time-consuming process.
[121001100150] |3. Articles and tips I come across while googling for solutions, or just random browsing around.
[121001100160] |I try to consciously avoid posting links to entire articles on the other Linux blogs and online magazines.
[121001100170] |I <em>hate</em> it when I see the same article linked to from other new-sites or magazines <em>without any new addition to the discussion</em>.
[121001100180] |I think that is a very lame and lazy thing to do.
[121001100190] |I particularly dislike sites which “aggregate” posts from other websites using a feed-to-blog interface of some sort.
[121001100200] |I am not talking about planets as much as re-blogging sites.
[121001100210] |Even osnews, lxer, etc resort to adding one articles which are just links to articles on other sites.
[121001100220] |Lame!
[121001100230] |My interest in writing on this blog is to provide internet users with new ideas, tips and news. Articles on the popular linux mags, reviews etc are popular enough on their own.
[121001100240] |What difference can a person with a weblog with approx 3000 visits a day (me) make by linking to a popular linux magazine?
[121001100250] |A far greater number of readers should be reading those articles direct from the source anyways!
[121001100260] |I really like <a>All About Linux</a> since in general the articles there are <em>original</em> and that, dudes, takes some effort. 
[121001100270] |Now, I am thinking of adding a new source of articles –user requested guides or answers to newbie questions <em>that seek to understand HOW things work</em>, not how to install foo, or how to “fix” an error.
[121001100280] |If you guys would like to know something which you would be afraid to ask in a forum, or a mailing list for fear of being criticised, then please feel free to ask. 
[121001100290] |I remember the first question I had when I used Linux on a temporary basis was “Where the hell do I store my documents and such?, where are the ‘c:\’ and the “\My Documents” folders?”
[121001100300] |Over time, I have come to know that unlike in Windows where you are free to store your files anywhere, and thus liable to forget where you stored what, in Linux you start from an empty /home/you/ directory.
[121001100310] |Creating a directory structure there to store the different kinds of files you have is an exercise in organizing, and something that will later help you remember where you put some file.
[121001100320] |I have a very neat structure now, with /home/me/ containing the directories “documents” “mail” “media” “software” and “websites”.
[121001100330] |Each of those directories have directories in them. “documents” has “work”, “school”, “personal” and “oddball” and “media” has “audio”, “video”, “wallpapers”, “photos” and “ebooks”.
[121001100340] |So it all looks like
[121001100350] |/home/me/ | |-documents | |-work | |-school | |-personal | |-oddball | |-media | |-audio | |-video | |-wallpapers | |-photos | |-ebooks | |-mail | |-work | |-personal | |-sent | |-software | |-some-software | |-other-software | ….. and so on.
[121001100360] |I had been so ashamed to ask this question that I knew must have a oh-so-obvious answer.
[121001100370] |If I can save you time and effort in answering a few simple questions, then please do ask.
[121001100380] |I can assure you that I will <b>not</b> be able to answer all questions –I will answer only the simple ones, and ones that will more than just one person- in short I don’t know why the version of firefox you compiled all by yourself crashed (though I think it must be something obvious….), but I can tell you how the filesystem is organized the way it is in Linux, and to a limited extent, provide a common-sensical explanation as to why it is that way.
[121001100390] |So ask away.
[121001100400] |If you are shy to ask by leaving a comment, send me an email at ubuntonista@gmail.com.
[121001100410] |Do you agree with me, do you disagree?
[121001100420] |Do you think the posts here are too mundane, and not “geeky” enough?
[121001100430] |Would you like to read regurgitated stuff here too?
[121001100440] |What are your thoughts.
[121001100450] |I would hate to think that I am wasting all the time I could spend lazing on my couch by writing here.
[121001100460] |I know a few readers who leave comments here regularly, but that accounts for perhaps 20 out of the 3000 readers who pass by these pages everyday.
[121001100470] |I am curious about you –what do you like, and dislike about what you se here?
[121001100480] |I’ll be overjoyed to know. <img/>
[121001110010] |<title>Wikipedia from the Command Line</title>
[121001110020] |Philippe Charest shares his home-brewed bash script to get information from Wikipedia on the command line using lynx.
[121001110030] |You may have to install lynx first using: <code>$sudo apt-get install lynx</code>
[121001110040] |Phillippe says:
[121001110050] |Nice blog by the way, I just wanted to share a new quick “hack” to obtain information from wikipedia on the command line. 
[121001110060] |Here is a dirty script that fetches information from wikipedia using lynx:
[121001110070] |Into your favorite editor:
[121001110080] |<code>#!/bin/bash lynx -dump "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1" | less</code>
[121001110090] |Then just make the file executable (<code>$sudo chmod +x</code>) and in your path (or in <code>/usr/bin</code>)
[121001110100] |Exemple (I named my script wikid)
[121001110110] |<code>$wikid "George Bush"</code>
[121001110120] |returns:
[121001110130] |…George Bush
[121001110140] |From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
[121001110150] |Jump to: [6]navigation, [7]search
[121001110160] |George Bush can refer to:
[121001110170] |People:
[121001110180] |* [8]George W. Bush, George Walker Bush, the 43rd and current [9]President of the United States of America ([10]2001-present)
[121001110190] |* [11]George H. W. Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st President of the United States ([12]1989-[13]1993), and father of George W. Bush
[121001110200] |…
[121001120010] |<title>Unknown Key Pressed… error</title>
[121001120020] |When I do a <code>$dmesg</code>, which, by the way shows me the log of system messages and errors and such, I get the following two lines, repeated over and over, ad inifinitum:
[121001120030] |[4314715.415000] atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0xaa on isa0060/serio0).
[121001120040] |[4314715.415000] atkbd.c: Use ‘setkeycodes e02a <keycode>’ to make it known.
[121001120050] |I <a>figured out</a> that this <a>bug</a> happens because on some machines (laptops) the keyboard key with the code “e02a” is for the hibernate key.
[121001120060] |The most unobstrusive way to work around the problem might be to edit the <code>/usr/share/hotkey-setup/generic.hk</code> file and commenting out, or deleting the offending line that says: <code>setkeycodes e02a 256</code> and then restarting the hotkey-setup service by doing a: <code>$sudo /etc/init.d/hotkey-setup restart</code> 
[121001140010] |<title>Check if the PCI devices in the Computer you may buy will work with Ubuntu/Debian</title>
[121001140020] |<a>Larz Wirzenius</a> shares a link to the <a>Debian Gnu/Linux Device Driver Check page</a>.
[121001140030] |You can paste the output of <code>$lspci -n</code> at that page and get an overview of the hardware you have installed on your PCI bus, and whether there are drivers in the Debian world to support the hardware.
[121001140040] |You can use this to determine if you can or should buy that new laptop or desktop.
[121001140050] |All you will need is to boot a Knoppix live cd, and visit the website, and the paste the output of lspci -n!!
[121001140060] |Also a very useful way to find out what network/video/audio card you have.
[121001140070] |In the beginning, I used to struggle whenever someone at a forum, or an IRC chat room asked me precisely what *Card I had.
[121001140080] |I used to be embarassed to ask folks how I could find what network/video card I had, and eventually some kind soul would tell me the command to enter, and the details to note down!
[121001140090] |Not any more –this should help newbies and experienced people alike.
[121001140100] |(Geez, don’t I sound like a n00b?
[121001140110] |I am proud to say that I am!)
[121001140120] |I should think something like this should be easy enough to do given the data in the Ubuntu Device Database.
[121001150010] |<title>Persistent Settings and Files with LiveCDs</title>
[121001150020] |I have a copy of the Ubuntu Live CD in my backpack for emergency use when I am forced to use a non-Ubuntu computer.
[121001150030] |Not that I can’t use Windows in such a situation, but there are times when I have to use Ubuntu for work-related reasons.
[121001150040] |In these situations, what sucks really bad is that everytime I boot up with my LiveCD, I start from scratch, and without my documents.
[121001150050] |Well, I just found the fix for it.
[121001150060] |The <a>Live CD Persistence</a> wiki page describes how to use a USB drive to enable persistence when using a LiveCD. 
[121001150070] |The wiki in general is a gold mine –you only have to know where to look.
[121001150080] |Most of the “gold” I have found in the wiki is buried deep, and I am led to it by links I find in emails, and other webpages.
[121001150090] |Search engines don’t seem to like the wiki too much, and I suspect it is the “https” and the lack of a good, widly-recognized certificate that is to blame.
[121001160010] |<title>Clean Up Old Thumbnails</title>
[121001160020] |The nautilus file manager shows you thumbnails of images, pdf files etc when you are browsing your directories.
[121001160030] |But you already know that.
[121001160040] |Nautilus also saves a copy of the thumbnails for later, to speed things up.
[121001160050] |The thumbnails are stored in your ~/.thumbnails directory.
[121001160060] |Over time, thumbnails keep accumulating, since, even if you delete a file (an image, say), the thumbnail remains.
[121001160070] |Cleaning this up might save you some space.
[121001160080] |It saved me about 650MB!
[121001160090] |I found this neat command that you can execute to find and delete thumbnails that have not been accessed in the last 7 days.
[121001160100] |Deleting a thumbnail should not affect anything much, since if Nautilus cannot find a thumbnail, it will just create one anew.
[121001160110] |<code>$find ~/.thumbnails -type f -atime +7 -exec rm {} \;</code>
[121001160120] |You can put that code in your cron if you like, to have it run every month or so.
[121001170010] |<title>Now with a podcast</title>
[121001170020] |I set things up at feed2podcast.com to create a podcast for this blog.
[121001170030] |How cool is that?
[121001170040] |I think they use the festival text-to-speech program to create the podcast, since the voice sounds vaguely familiar!
[121001170050] |The feed URL is: http://www.feed2podcast.com/podcast/51430654.xml <a>Click here</a> to play in the Free Podcast Player.
[121001170060] |<a>The feed for the podcast</a> <a>Subsribe to the Podcast with iTunes on Windows</a>
[121001180010] |<title>Restoring the Ubuntu usplash after a Kubuntu Install</title>
[121001180020] |If you, like me, installed kubuntu-desktop to try it out, then afterward, you must have noticed that when you boot up, the kubuntu splash screen appears with “kubuntu” in blue (instead of the Ubuntu brown) while the computer is booting up.
[121001180030] |While this is not a major problem, it is a minor irritant, since you will have to field questions from people regarding why you use kde instead of the superior gnome.
[121001180040] |Even if it is not a problem, I found a solution, and so it deserves to be called a problem, just so I can write an entertaining article regarding how to fix this.
[121001180050] |To get back your familiar Ubuntu usplash image and screen, do a: <code>$sudo update-alternatives --config usplash-artwork.so</code>
[121001180060] |Now you will get to answer a question regarding whether to use the Kubuntu, Ubuntu (or if you have it installed xubuntu) –desktop usplash imag.
[121001180070] |Select the one you want and rest at ease.
[121001180080] |For those who don’t want to muck around with the terminal, may I suggest a quick read of the <a>galternatives article</a> I authored previously?
[121001180090] |P.S. Regular Daily readers might like to know that an article on this site got <a>dugg</a>.
[121001180100] |I apologize for not having published anything since then –was busy reinstalling Ubuntu on a machine, and life interfered, too.
[121001190010] |<title>Editing FAT32 Partition Labels using mtools</title>
[121001190020] |I wanted to rename the fat32 partitions that get automounted when they are plugged in to the USB drive.
[121001190030] |Two were exactly similar external hard disk drives, and one was an iPod.
[121001190040] |The exactly similar hard disk drives (one each at home and work) were both getting mounted at /media/sda1 or sda2 etc, and it was impossible to distinguish one from the other easily.
[121001190050] |Also, I found that it wasn’t that easy to edit the partition labels for FAT32 partitions.
[121001190060] |So I thought I would summarize how I named my fat32 partitions to have consistent names.
[121001190070] |This has the benefit that when these drives are automounted, they will be at the location <code>/media/partition-label</code>, where partition-label is the label that you give the partition.
[121001190080] |Step by step instructions to re-label FAT partitions follow:
[121001190090] |1) Install mtools: <code>$sudo apt-get install mtools</code>
[121001190100] |2) After the usb drive is automounted after plugging in, find out the device descriptor using: <code>$mount</code> and Note down where it says “sda1″ or similar
[121001190110] |3) copy the <code>mtools.conf</code> to <code>~/.mtoolsrc</code> <code>$cp /etc/mtools.conf ~/.mtoolsrc</code>
[121001190120] |4) Edit <code>~/.mtoolsrc</code> to add one line at the very end: <code>drive i: file="/dev/sda2"</code> –you may have to change sda2 to something else depending on what you got in step 2 above.
[121001190130] |5) Change to the “drive” i: <code>$mcd i:</code>
[121001190140] |6) Check what the label for the drive is currently: <code>$sudo mlabel -s i:</code>
[121001190150] |7) Change the label to something pretty: <code>$sudo mlabel i:my-ipod</code>
[121001190160] |<img/>Check if the label has changed: <code>$sudo mlabel -s i:</code> I got the following output –Volume label is MY-IPOD
[121001190170] |You’re all set!!
[121001190180] |The next time that partition gets automounted, it will be at <code>/media/MY-IPOD</code>
[121001200010] |<title>Ever Wondered What Ubuntu Devs Look and Sound Like?</title>
[121001200020] |Here is an eyeload of <a>Ubuntu FanPeople Videos</a>!!!
[121001200030] |I love every bit of this.
[121001200040] |Review Quiz: What is Stephen Hermann saying he is?
[121001200050] |He goes… “Hello, I am _____” Fill in the blanks. 
[121001210010] |<title>Disable Shutdown For Normal Users</title>
[121001210020] |Sometimes, when you have one computer shared among multiple users, and you don’t want normal users (users who are not admins), that is, anyone who is not you <img/>to be able to shutdown the computer, then you can follow the following steps.
[121001210030] |Some of this is from the <a>useful fedora mailing list email</a>, and some from the ubuntu-users mailing list (thanks to Olafur Arason).
[121001210040] |I tried the instructions below on my computer, and this should work for you.
[121001210050] |Again, this will allow only admin users with sudo privileges to shutdown the computer, for other “normal” users, the logout menu will allow them to do only that, log out!
[121001210060] |<strong>Step1:</strong> Open <code>/etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf</code> in a text editor and find the [greeter] section.
[121001210070] |Make sure that there is a line which says <code>SystemMenu = false</code>.
[121001210080] |This line will ensure that the gdm login screen will not have the option for shutting down the system etc.
[121001210090] |<strong>Step 2:</strong> If you have a laptop, or an acpi system on your computer, then go to <code>/etc/acpi</code> and disable the power button, so that, when someone presses the power button, the system does not shutdown.
[121001210100] |You can disable this easily by doing <code>chmod 000 /etc/acpi/powerbtn.sh</code>
[121001210110] |<strong>Step 3:</strong> Now edit <code>/etc/inittab</code>
[121001210120] |and find the lines that say:
[121001210130] |<code>#Trap CTRL-ALT-DELETE ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now</code>
[121001210140] |And change it to read:
[121001210150] |<code>#Disallow CTRL-ALT-DELETE ca::ctrlaltdel:/bin/echo "ctrl-alt-delete has been disabled" </code>.
[121001210160] |This will effectively prevent users from changing to a console screen and using ctrl+alt+delete to shutdown the system.
[121001210170] |<strong>Step 4:</strong> Execute the following commands: <code>sudo chgrp admin /sbin/halt /sbin/shutdown sudo chmod 550 /sbin/halt /sbin/shutdown</code>
[121001210180] |<strong>Step 5:</strong> Use the Configuration Editor (Applications -> System Tools -> Configuration Editor) to edit the preference apps->gnome-session->options->logout_option to “logout” instead of “shutdown”.
[121001210190] |That’s it!
[121001210200] |Now only you, or another superuser (Admin) can shutdown the system, using the command: <code>$sudo shutdown -t3 -r now</code>
[121001230010] |<title>Print to PDF using cups-pdf</title>
[121001230020] |I have been looking for a solution to print any file to pdf using a pdf printer driver.
[121001230030] |<a>cups-pdf</a> is the package I was looking for apparently.
[121001230040] |But unfortunately, this takes just a little setting up.
[121001230050] |Install cups-pdf by using: $sudo apt-get install cups-pdf
[121001230060] |Edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and change the line that says: RunAsUser Yes to RunAsUser No
[121001230070] |Restart cupsys: $sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart
[121001230080] |Add a new printer (System->Administration->Printing) selecting the “Local Printer” “PDF Printer” option.
[121001230090] |In the next step choose “Generic Printer” and then used the “Postscript Color Printer (Ver 3)” driver.
[121001230100] |Now you should be able to print to pdf by selecting the newly setup printer.
[121001230110] |Cribs: 1) The output .pdf files are stored in your “Home” directory.
[121001230120] |I can’t find a way to change this output directory to something of my liking 2) The output files are named with pre-defined names (job_8-untitled_document.pdf is an example).
[121001230130] |It would have been nice to select a name while printing.
[121001230140] |3) One shouldn’t have to edit the cupsd.conf file to enable printing!
[121001230150] |(I found that I might have to edit the configuration file by visiting the homepage of the package, and trying out what I did).
[121001230160] |At the very least, the README.Debian file for the package should have informed me of the need to edit the configuration file.
[121001240010] |<title>Disable Synaptics Touchpad</title>
[121001240020] |Update: To learn how to disable the touchpad temporarily when you are typing, read this <a>other recent article</a>.
[121001240030] |I needed a quick way to disable and enable my synaptics touchpad at will, and I found one.
[121001240040] |Make sure that in you <code>/etc/X11/xorg.conf</code> file, you have:
[121001240050] |Notice the Option “SHMConfig” “on” line —that is the one that you really need to have in there.
[121001240060] |This allows you to change some configuration parameters for the synaptics touchpad without restarting Xorg (Xserver).
[121001240070] |Now that is taken care of.
[121001240080] |All you have to do to disable your synaptics touchpad is to execute the command: <code>$synclient TouchpadOff=1</code>
[121001240090] |and to turn it back on, you can execute the command <code>$synclient TouchpadOff=0</code>
[121001240100] |TIP: To make it even easier to turn the touchpad on and off, you can set a keyboard shortcut and bind the shortcuts to the command to turn it on, and off, and use the keyboard shortcuts.
[121001250010] |<title>Enable Spam Filtering in Evolution</title>
[121001250020] |I breathed a huge sigh of relief once I had read, understood and used the instructions to enable spam filtering using bogofilter and/or spamassassin (Which are very popular spam filters) in Evolution in this <a>howto at the forums</a>….
[121001250030] |The forums are chock-full of useful howtos, spend a few moments browsing through the forum howtos to discover stuff not covered in this blog! 
[121001260010] |<title>MEPIS embraces Ubuntu</title>
[121001260020] |<a>MEPIS</a> has <a>started using the Ubuntu packages as the base</a>, instead of Debian.
[121001260030] |So, finally, the MEPIS distribution, which uses KDE as the window manager, and is quite popular on it’s own right will now be built upon the packages provided by the Ubuntu repositories.
[121001260040] |A few things come to mind:
[121001260050] |1) This does not make Kubuntu (the KDE version of Ubuntu) the same as MEPIS or vice-versa.
[121001260060] |MEPIS owes it’s success to the way the programs and preferences in it are tweaked to make life easier for the new Linux user.
[121001260070] |So MEPIS will be a variation on the theme.
[121001260080] |2) I wonder if MEPIS will now follow a 6-month release cycle.
[121001260090] |3) The number of Debian or Ubuntu based distributions in Distrowatch’s Most Popular Distributions goes up, again!
[121001260100] |4) MEPIS has provided better support for multimedia, restricted formats etc, since they do not have the same ideological beleifs as the Ubuntu project.
[121001260110] |For KDE users, this means more choice, and perhaps an easier gateway to Ubuntu/Kubuntu.
[121001260120] |5) MEPIS has a non-free (as in beer) distribution, for which one has to pay, called Pro-MEPIS.
[121001260130] |Wonder if MEPIS will share part of its profits with the Ubuntu foundation.
[121001260140] |Something tells me the answer will be “No”, but still…
[121001290010] |<title>What can I say…</title>
[121001290020] |I am busy.
[121001290030] |This is temporary.
[121001290040] |Being a student can mean loads of free time, at times, but can also mean times when you have to hunker down, and work to meet that deadline.
[121001290050] |I promise I will be free-er in a few days, and write more of the fancy stuff I have seen, and learnt.
[121001290060] |Gosh, one thing is for sure –I feel more productive than ever using Ubuntu.
[121001290070] |No frustration, the computer keeps running, and I keep working.
[121001290080] |I crash once daily, the computer, for a change, does not <img/>
[121001290090] |For now, please read <a>Behind Ubuntu</a>.
[121001290100] |I love the idea, and had thought of it myself, but was hesitant to ask the big wigs for interviews <img/>
[121001290110] |I now have a review copy of “Beginning Ubuntu Linux” by Keir Thomas, an Apress book.
[121001290120] |I will post a review as soon as I have read it.
[121001290130] |I promise, I will be fair to book, author and you <img/>Well, the book does mention this blog, but that shouldn’t impair my judgement.
[121001290140] |The <a>Dapper beta</a> is out.
[121001290150] |They’re calling it LTS (for long term support).
[121001290160] |Try out the beta and file bugs, like good Ubunteros.
[121001290170] |Oh, and I have been going berserk at the <a>Bugtracker</a>, helping with triaging bugs, which is quite addictive, and can replace a video game or two when it comes to rejuvenating a sagging spirit.
[121001290180] |Today is a <a>Bug Day</a>, and you can help triage bugs and make Dapper better than the best, too <img/>
[121001300010] |<title>Emulating Linux’s Hardware Support in Windows</title>
[121001300020] |Many people complain, from time to time about how Linux is poor when it comes to supporting the variety of hardware that is available today.
[121001300030] |I beg to differ —I think Ubuntu, for one does an outstanding job when compared to Windows XP.
[121001300040] |Consider this: Your standard Windows XP cd does not come with the drivers for your devices.
[121001300050] |The drivers are usually in the “Installation CDs” that you get with the devices, which you sooner or later misplace.
[121001300060] |Windows does not have to worry about supporting the variety of hardware out there.
[121001300070] |The manufacturers do the device drivers themselves.
[121001300080] |Ubuntu, on the other hand, has to provide device drivers for all known devices from the many different manufacturers.
[121001300090] |What’s worse, unlike in the Windows world, Linux users have to rely upon Linux developers to write the device drivers (more often than not).
[121001300100] |Here’s the kicker –The Ubuntu install CD (just one cd) has to provide all of those drivers.
[121001300110] |Windows cannot begin to try to provide the device drivers on a single CD!
[121001300120] |The closest I have found to a collection of device drivers for Windows XP on cds is the <a>DriverPacks.net</a> project.
[121001300130] |You will need a total of 9 or more CDs to get all (or most) of the device drivers for the different devices for Windows.
[121001300140] |Linux distros often pull off the trick of supporting different kinds of devices by using a common base that works for most manufacturers, with special tweaks/optimizations for the variants.
[121001300150] |Sometimes variants need a seperate driver, too.
[121001300160] |So the next time you want to curse Ubuntu for not figuring out how to make your device work, think of the extra effort involved for the developers (who mostly don’t get paid to do the work they do) who write the drivers, and the OS team that puts together everything to fit on <b>a single CD</b>. 
[121001300170] |I am willing to spend some extra time to achieve any “extra” features I want beyond that provided by default.
[121001300180] |It is up to me to go that last foot, when it comes to making the device work perfect.
[121001300190] |Each time I tweak some setting (like those for my touchpad for example) to make it work better, I get a warm glow.
[121001300200] |All things are possible in a free world, sometimes things that are not possible in a world where I have to pay.
[121001300210] |For example, I can drag my finger down the right side of my touchpad to scroll down a page –something I was unable to do in Windows, even with the drivers installed by the manufacturer of my laptop.
[121001300220] |Over the year I have been using Ubuntu, I have been positively amazed at the effort that goes into providing me with a free, extremely stable, usable system.
[121001300230] |I hope you can appreciate the positive differences between Windows and Linux better as time passes.
[121001310010] |<title>Minimize Any Application to the System Tray</title>
[121001310020] |The other day I wanted to minimize the gnome-terminal to the system tray.
[121001310030] |Why?
[121001310040] |Because I thought I should be able to, if I wanted to.
[121001310050] |Some apps, such as gaim, the instant messenger already support minimizing to the system tray.
[121001310060] |So if you click the close button in gaim when you are logged in, the app disappears from the list of windows, and an icon appears in the system tray, which you can then click to bring the main window back to life.
[121001310070] |Turns out, with <a>AllTray</a>, you can minimize any app to the system tray.
[121001310080] |To install, you can use <a>this repository</a> that is linked-to from the alltray homepage.
[121001310090] |This is probably one of the few cases when the software I wanted wasn’t already in the Ubuntu reporsitories.
[121001310100] |The above screenshot from the AllTray website shows it working in GNOME.
[121001310110] |Don’t you love it?
[121001320010] |<title>Read Emails from your System using Evolution</title>
[121001320020] |The system installed on your PC sends you mails.
[121001320030] |You usually see a message saying “You have new mail.” when you open a new terminal window.
[121001320040] |Some of these emails report errors, when things didn’t go right.
[121001320050] |Some list things that need to be done after some software is installed/upgraded.
[121001320060] |In any case, the assumption is that you read these mails.
[121001320070] |You can also send other users on the system mail messages using this system, but since I assume this is only for a standalone PC with users you can talk to if needed (I am sure your significant other would rather hear what you have to say, that read it in a system mail message <img/>)
[121001320080] |You can read them using pine or mutt (after you install them) from the command line, but what’s better is that you can read them using Evolution.
[121001320090] |Follow the instructions below to do so:
[121001320100] |In Evolution:
[121001320110] |<li>Select Edit->Preferences</li>
[121001320120] |<li>Select the “Mail Accounts” tab and click “Add”</li>
[121001320130] |<li>Fill in the required fields, when asked for e-mail address, input <em>USERNAME@HOSTNAME</em> (where <em>USERNAME</em> is your username and <em>HOSTNAME</em> is the hostname of the machine (try “localhost” if you aren’t sure)</li>
[121001320140] |<li>For “Server Type in Receiving Email”, select “Local Delivery”.
[121001320150] |In input box Path enter: /var/spool/mail/<em>USERNAME</em> (replace <em>USERNAME</em> with your username).</li>
[121001320160] |<li>Follow throw and complete creating the account</li> 
[121001320170] |You’re done.
[121001320180] |Now you can read the local system mail using Evolution. 
[121001330010] |<title>“expert” Mode Install and Admin (sudo) for Users</title>
[121001330020] |If you chose to install Ubuntu in the expert mode, then you can create an use a root user, just like in any other distro.
[121001330030] |However, this might leave normal users with no admin privileges, so they’ll have trouble running Synaptic, configuring the network etc.
[121001330040] |In the normal mode, the first user is automatically setup as an admin, so you can use sudo (or gksudo) to execute programs as an administrator (root user equivalent).
[121001330050] |If, however, you installed Ubuntu in the expert mode, and still want some users to be admins, you can use this solution.
[121001330060] |You can create a group called admin, and give this group admin privileges.
[121001330070] |Then you can add all the users you want to have these privileges to this group.
[121001330080] |The command for this are as follows: <code>#addgroup --system admin #visudo The sudoers file should then be edited to include: %admin ALL=(ALL) ALL #adduser <em>username</em> admin </code>
[121001330090] |The above commands are to be executed as the root user, of course.
[121001330100] |Replace <em>username</em> with the username of the user that you want to give admin privileges to.
[121001350010] |<title>Best Time to Upgrade to Dapper –Now!</title>
[121001350020] |Folks, the much awaited Dapper (Ubuntu 6.06 LTS) is to be released tomorrow, the 1st of June.
[121001350030] |Once it is released, and the news hits the vine, you can be sure download times will be much more than they are right now –and they aren’t so great right now.
[121001350040] |Between now, and the time Dapper is released, there will be a few more updated packages, but you can always update the packages later, as you normally would.
[121001350050] |The new way to upgrade from Breezy to Dapper is quite convenient.
[121001350060] |Just <a>follow the instructions</a>.
[121001350070] |Of course, you can increase the download speed by using a mirror, as I previously wrote in the <a>22x faster upgrade post</a>.
[121001350080] |Prepare to be awed by Dapper!
[121001370010] |<title>Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 LTS Released</title>
[121001370020] |The exciting and much awaited Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 LTS release is here.
[121001370030] |Read the <a>release notes</a> for information regarding what is new, hardware requirements etc.
[121001370040] |Do everyone a favor, and use a torrent to download the cd or dvd images.
[121001370050] |This page listing <a>all the Ubuntu torrents</a> should be helpful.
[121001370060] |Choose and use the “6.06″ torrents and not the Dapper torrents, since that is the final version. 
[121001370070] |The -alternate- cds are the old style install cds that can only be used for installation.
[121001370080] |The -desktop- cds are cds that are live cds, with the live cd installer.
[121001370090] |Read the cd image <a>renaming announcement</a> if this is not clear enough.
[121001370100] |The -dvd- images are 2 gigs in size, so besides the two cds mentioned above, there might be a little bit of extra packages on it.
[121001370110] |If you have a dvd writer, and have a bad internet connection at home/work then I guess the DVD image makes more sense.
[121001370120] |What makes Dapper so cool is that it is stable, inclusive of different languages/hardware/requirements, and that is stable <img/>The extra six weeks did see a lot of bugs getting fixed, so this has to be the best Ubuntu release to date.
[121001370130] |You can recommend it to friends, family and linux experts with confidence. 
[121001370140] |Read the <a>Known Issues</a> before you start your install/upgrade so you are prepared.
[121001370150] |Refer to the <a>Burning ISOs to CDs guide</a> if you have trouble with burning the .iso files that you get after downloading.
[121001370160] |As usual, there are “server” install cds too, useful for installation on servers.
[121001370170] |The PowerPC and AMD64 architectures are supported, as before.
[121001370180] |The SPARC (SUN) cds are not out yet, they will be once the certification process is complete.
[121001370190] |Writing this post took a long time, and it would all be worth it if only I had a local Dapper Release Party I could attend.
[121001370200] |Maybe I should focus my energies more on creating a web of Ubuntu users locally so that by the time Edgy Eft is released, I can have a party to go to to have fun.
[121001380010] |<title>Change Firefox’s Default Search Method</title>
[121001380020] |Firefox has this neat feature that when you type in some words in the address bar (where you normally enter urls), it takes you to the first result for a Google search for those words.
[121001380030] |In other words, typing in your address bar is like typing the words at google.com and then clicking the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.
[121001380040] |Only, for a long time, I have been irritated by this, and wished I would just be taken to the google search results page for the words I typed in.
[121001380050] |For this, by default, you have to prepend your words with “google”.
[121001380060] |So if you type in “google american express”, then you are taken to the page with the search results for “american express”.
[121001380070] |I wanted NOT to have to type in the “google” and still be taken to the search results page.
[121001380080] |So as I am known to, I went searching for a solution at 2 in the night <img/>
[121001380090] |The results are surprising!
[121001380100] |Not only can I do that, I can do one better.
[121001380110] |Google introduced something called “<a>Browse by name</a>“, which, as the page I linked-to explains, takes you to the “obvious result” if there is one, or just gives you a search results page if google’s not too sure if there is only one result that best fits the words you typed in.
[121001380120] |For example, typing “MIT” sure takes you the MIT homepage, but typing something like “cheap computer” takes you to the search results page.
[121001380130] |Now, how do we change the way firefox’s address bar behaves?
[121001380140] |In comes <a>Jesse</a>, back in 2004, with the right solution.
[121001380150] |Type in “about:config” in the address bar of firefox, then type in “keyword.url” to search for that configuration key.
[121001380160] |If you want the neato “browse by name” search in firefox, as opposed to the default “I’m feeling lucky” search, just modify that preference, by pasting in:
[121001380170] |http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8 sourceid=navclient gfns=1 q=
[121001380180] |Then save that by pressing “Ok”.
[121001380190] |Now you’re free to use the improved address bar. Go nuts, since now you can search by entering the search terms in the address bar and pressing enter.
[121001380200] |You will never need to visit www.google.com again!
[121001400010] |<title>Download with Resume –gwget –GNOME Download Manager</title>
[121001400020] |Today I found the perfect solution for downloading over slow or undependable internet connections.
[121001400030] |Though I already knew about <a>wget</a>, a command line tool, but it was a bit of a stretch to expect my uncle to use the command line time and again.
[121001400040] |<a>gwget</a> to the rescue!
[121001400050] |This simple interface to the wget works really well.
[121001400060] |By default it resumes downloads when it is restarted.
[121001400070] |So if you are on a slow dialup connection and you want to download some large file, and can’t find a torrent for the file, you can use gwget.
[121001400080] |Installing gwget is easy, you can search for it in synaptic, or you can do it from the terminal using: $sudo apt-get install gwget
[121001400090] |Once installed, it will be listed as “Download Manager” in your Applications->Internet menu.
[121001400100] |You can add new urls for downloading and then close the window, gwget will then appear in the notification area as shown in the picture below:
[121001400110] |For more screenshots, visit <a>the screenshots page at the gwget homepage</a>.
[121001400120] |If you plan on using gwget from now on, you should get the <a>Firegot Firefox extension</a> to make adding links directly from Firefox much easier.
[121001410010] |<title>Installing Packages on Computers with Slow Connections Redux</title>
[121001410020] |Earlier, I had written about <a>using apt-zip to upgrade computers on slow internet connections by using a faster machine to do the downloads</a>.
[121001410030] |However, since that involves understanding how apt-zip works, and a small learning curve, here is a hack that should work pretty well, in spite of it’s hackish nature. 
[121001410040] |The tip here will let you install new packages (and their dependencies) or upgrade a system by using a faster internet connection to do the downloading.
[121001410050] |First we get the URIs for the pacakges to be downloaded, then we download the packages and transport them to the computer with the slower connection.
[121001410060] |Thanks to Ewan for this tip posted to the ubuntu-users list a long time ago.
[121001410070] |The steps: 1) On the computer you wish to install something new on (or upgrade), do a <code>$sudo apt-get update</code>
[121001410080] |2) Then use apt-get to generate a list of the packages it needs to download, in order to install the package that you need, but not download them: <code>$sudo apt-get -qq --print-uris install name-of-package | cut -d\' -f 2 >urilist</code> this gives you a file ‘urilist’ in the same directory as the one in which you ran the previous command, with a list of files to download.
[121001410090] |3) Take your list to a machine with a fast internet connection and download the packages using wget: $wget -i <urilist
[121001410100] |4) Take your newly downloaded debs home and copy them into the <code>/var/cache/apt/archives/</code> directory
[121001410110] |5) Rerun the same apt-get command, but without any special parameters: <code>$ sudo apt-get install name-of-package</code>
[121001410120] |apt-get should tell you the quantity of packages that it will install, and how much it will download.
[121001410130] |The download amount should be zero since the packages are already downloaded.
[121001430010] |<title>Download and Install the Ubuntu Title Font</title>
[121001430020] |I found a precious little gem quite by accident when I was using Synaptic (the package installer) today.
[121001430030] |The package <a>ttf-ubuntu-title</a> consists of the font used by Ubuntu’s logo, you know, the familiar font used for the letters below: <img/>
[121001430040] |So, a <code>$sudo apt-get install ttf-ubuntu-title</code> will install the font and make it available to GIMP, OpenOffice and everywhere else that you can use fonts. 
[121001430050] |If you only want the font, to install it on another OS or such, you can get it <a>here</a>.
[121001430060] |The font is an OpenType Font, which installs just like a TrueType font.
[121001430070] |The font is licensed using the LGPL, for those of you who wish to know.
[121001430080] |I must say the font is very nice, easy on the eyes, readable and suitable for titles. 
[121001440010] |<title>Word!</title>
[121001440020] |Pledging content to PD (Public Domain) is great because you dont have to be 70 years dead to appreciate someone else using it.
[121001440030] |<cite><a>Andy Fitzsimon</a></cite>
[121001440040] |…Somebody add that to a list of quotations somewhere, please…
[121001440050] |I was taken to Andy’s site while following the lead left by a previous comment, which led me to a wiki page which mentions him.
[121001440060] |<a>Andy explains the benefits of releasing work to the public domain, and the joy of seeing your work everywhere, even on the TV.</a>
[121001440070] |This is the guy that designed the singularly attractive Ubuntu title font.
[121001440080] |I wonder if he did the emblem(logo) as well.
[121001440090] |Thanks, Andy.
[121001450010] |<title>Open Clip Art Library</title>
[121001450020] |In addition to the free <a>Ubuntu font</a>, the free <a>ms TrueType fonts</a>, and other goodies, here’s the ultimate package for everyone who uses OpenOffice, or has had to create a dashing poster/flyer/notice at short notice.
[121001450030] |Install openclipart using: $sudo apt-get install openclipart Description: The Open Clip Art Library is a collection of 100% license-free, royalty-free, and restriction-free art that you can use for any purpose.
[121001450040] |and you will have at your command thousands of clipart, in the svg and png format, ready for use in the various office applications and wherever else you want.
[121001450050] |See below for a small selection of the included art.
[121001450060] |For a more comprehensive look, go to <a>openclipart.org</a>.
[121001450070] |The collection includes most of the art on the website.
[121001450080] |Thank you very much, <a>Sam</a> 
[121001460010] |<title>Participate in the Popularity Contest</title>
[121001460020] |The <a>popularity-contest</a> (popcon) package in Ubuntu lets you vote on your favorite, most-used apps and packages every week.
[121001460030] |This is an automated process, so once you set it up, you will never have to worry about it again.
[121001460040] |Below is a description of the package:
[121001460050] |Vote for your favourite packages automatically.
[121001460060] |When you install this package, it sets up a cron job that will anonymously inform the developers about your most used packages.
[121001460070] |This information helps us make decisions such as which packages should be promoted and so be in standard installs.
[121001460080] |The results are available to everyone at <a>popcon.ubuntu.com</a>.
[121001460090] |Seeing as there are less than 2000 i386 (pentium) users that currently submit popcon information, I thought we could do better.
[121001460100] |So setup popcon and start submitting info about your usage of applications now –this is vital feedback for those who architect the distro –not to mention a lot of fun for everyone.
[121001460110] |Here’s how you set it up.
[121001460120] |It is already installed, but inactive: Execute the following command to reconfigure it: <code>$sudo dpkg-reconfigure popularity-contest</code>
[121001460130] |You can choose to submit stats via http, or via email.
[121001460140] |Both are automated processes, and I’d choose http for the convenience.
[121001460150] |If, however, you do choose email, note that you might have to take a small additional step to enable postfix to send the email properly.
[121001460160] |You can follow the <a>instructions to setup a “smarthost” in postfix</a> to ensure that your email gets sent and received without problems.
[121001460170] |I have my popcon set up to use the http protocol to send information.
[121001460180] |Since it is anonymous, it is not a threat to your privacy.
[121001460190] |So go ahead, and give ‘em some feedback. 
[121001480010] |<title>Many Ubuntu Servers Down –Use a Mirror</title>
[121001480020] |Many Ubuntu servers and services are down.
[121001480030] |Please use a Mirror instead of the normal repository you use if you need to install any new packages.
[121001480040] |<a>This page is a list of all the Ubuntu Mirrors</a>.
[121001480050] |You can use the <a>old post</a> to see how to update your sources.list file.
[121001480060] |Basically, edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file to use a different URL for the repositories.
[121001480070] |It looks like a lot of people are working to restore the servers.
[121001480080] |Speculation includes a blackout of some servers caused by a heat wave or some other reason.
[121001480090] |I will keep you posted.
[121001490010] |<title>Ubuntu Counter Project</title>
[121001490020] |Melissa ‘elkbuntu’ Draper writes in to tell us about her <a>Ubuntu Counter Project</a>.
[121001490030] |Just so you get a badge that says you are an Ubuntu User.
[121001490040] |Go ahead and get counted, if that is your kind of thing <img/>
[121001490050] |The Ubuntu Counter Project is like a miniature version of <a>The Linux Counter</a>.
[121001490060] |It aims to catalogue the number of registered machines using the numerous varients of the Ubuntu Linux distribution.
[121001490070] |Why?
[121001490080] |Because, quite simply, Ubuntu rocks.
[121001490090] |Thank Melissa.
[121001500010] |<title>Re-do Ubuntu In Blue</title>
[121001500020] |Since a one-off complaint about Ubuntu is it’s “brownness”, I thought I’d mention a couple of quick and easy ways to make your Ubuntu blue if you like your operating system to be blue.
[121001500030] |I, by the way, love Ubuntu’s brown theme –that was one thing that really made an impression on me the first time –I mean, everything else is blue, so a change was refreshing to me.
[121001500040] |For this post, I don’t have to do much work.
[121001500050] |A couple of folks have made it a lot easier for me, and I don’t see the point in rewriting the already excellent descriptions.
[121001500060] |So let’s get down to converting Ubuntu to blue, shall we?:
[121001500070] |<a>Teenage Tantrum’s guide</a> is very comprehensive and covers all bases.
[121001500080] |He even mentions the <a>Blubuntu Ubuntu Artwork project</a> which seems to suggest that a “unified” blubuntu theme will be available to users after August 12th.
[121001500090] |<a>Brent Roos’ Prescription</a> includes a GTK theme, a metacity theme and an Icon theme with detailed instructions on how to get and install them.
[121001500100] |Note: The tango icon theme is very blue and in my opinion, very pretty.
[121001500110] |You might want to keep that as an option for the icons.
[121001500120] |I haven’t had any customization or style guides posted here so far since I think it is all a matter of personal taste.
[121001500130] |I use a brown + graphite theme on both my computers and am happy with it.
[121001500140] |If you like screenshots and would like me to feature cool “looks” let me know, and I will try my best.
[121001530010] |<title>What’s Your Ubuntu Story?</title>
[121001530020] |Here’s your chance to be the harbinger of hope and freedom.
[121001530030] |<a>The Ubuntu Fridge</a> invites us all to submit stories of why and how we use Ubuntu.
[121001530040] |If you permit them, they might even use your story to popularize Ubuntu.
[121001530050] |So go for it!
[121001530060] |The following is from <a>Ubuntu –mystory</a>.
[121001530070] |Go there and read up, in case there are updates.
[121001530080] |If you are using Ubuntu in a business, school, government department, charitable organisation or research center we would like to hear from you.
[121001530090] |Email us at mystory@ubuntu.com and tell us how you are using Ubuntu.
[121001530100] |We are particularly keen to know the following:
[121001530110] |* How many computers you run on Ubuntu?
[121001530120] |* Which applications you use?
[121001530130] |* Why you chose Ubuntu?
[121001530140] |* Whether you have shared Ubuntu with other organisations?
[121001530150] |* What you like about Ubuntu?
[121001530160] |* Which country and language(s) you use Ubuntu in?
[121001530170] |Of course the more detail the better, but even if its just a paragraph that would be great.
[121001530180] |Photos are very welcome AND please state clearly if you are happy for us to share your story!
[121001530190] |Over the next couple of months we would like to start sharing these stories and let others hear how Ubuntu works in your lives, schools and businesses.
[121001530200] |So don’t wait, email us at mystory@ubuntu.com. 
[121001540010] |<title>Ubuntu Featured on Wikipedia</title>
[121001540020] |<a>WorldChanging</a> is a forward looking, optimistic weblog that I read regularly, and it was on WorldChanging that I first read about the <a>Ubuntu wikipedia article</a> being the featured article on August 5th, displayed prominently on the front page of Wikipedia.
[121001540030] |Congratulations to Ubuntu!
[121001540040] |Seeing a post entitled “Ubuntu” on World Changing was a nice surprise, but I guess it is obvious that Ubuntu can be World Changing.
[121001540050] |The <a>WorldChanging article on Ubuntu</a> mentions a post that questions <a>whether free software is really such a good deal for Africa</a> (Ethiopia in particular).
[121001540060] |The point he makes is:
[121001540070] |But this assumes that the choice for African computer users is between expensive proprietary software and free opensource software.
[121001540080] |The reality is that they have a third choice –cracked, pirated proprietary software.
[121001540090] |He then goes on to quote ridiculously cheap prices in the the Ethiopian market for cracked and pirated software. 
[121001540100] |This so wrong, on so many levels.
[121001540110] |The “free” is not just related to the price, it has more to do with a liberating, enriching, world changing feeling.
[121001540120] |Doing the right thing, or sticking with the underdog is never easy. 
[121001540130] |To <a>quote Benjamin Mako Hill</a>:
[121001540140] |…principled positions are sometimes inconvenient.
[121001540150] |Free software is no exception.
[121001540160] |It’s frequently different, sometimes incompatible and a bit more work.
[121001540170] |In some situations (dare I say it?), it’s not as good as the proprietary alternatives.
[121001540180] |It might be inconvenient in the short term, but the long term benefits and a nation free of the guilt of using pirated software is well worth the short term inconveniences.
[121001550010] |<title>TV Interview with Mark Shuttleworth –Video</title>
[121001550020] |<a>Mark Shuttleworth was interviewed on More4 News</a>.
[121001550030] |The page mentions the fact that Mark does not do too many TV interviews.
[121001550040] |In the video Mark states the case for Ubuntu being a competitor to Windows, and talks bout how it is a wonderful oppurtunity to effect change during one’s lifetime.
[121001550050] |Talk of philanthropy and technology dominates the interview.
[121001550060] |When you’ve made £400m before your 30th birthday -you’d probably want to spend the rest of your days living the highlife.
[121001550070] |But not Mark Shuttleworth who made his fortune when he sold off his internet security company four years ago.
[121001550080] |Since then, he has given half of it to charity and bought a £13m pound ticket to space station.
[121001550090] |Now he’s working hard to create a free software –which he hopes will rival Mircosoft.
[121001550100] |He has given a rare interview to More 4 News. 
[121001550110] |He doesn’t look like a millionaire, or behave like one <img/>.
[121001550120] |May his tribe increase. 
[121001560010] |<title>Free “Powered by Ubuntu” Stickers</title>
[121001560020] |You can <a>get four free “powered by Ubuntu” stickers</a> just like the one shown below at the expense of a self-addressed stamped envelope. <img/>
[121001560030] |<img/>This comes to you courtesy of the folks at System76. 
[121001570010] |<title>Now in your Universe!</title>
[121001570020] |<a>I</a> applied for Ubuntu membership and made it.
[121001570030] |Membership allows me to write at the <a>Fridge</a> and for these posts here to appear at the <a>planet</a>.
[121001570040] |The <a><abbr>SABDFL</abbr></a> had <a>said previously that this blog should be on the planet</a>. 
[121001570050] |Of course, this blows my anonymity, but I guess that’s okay.
[121001570060] |I’ll try and learn to appreciate any flames and personal invectives, and personal problems that come my way due to this blog <img/>
[121001570070] |By way of introduction, besides writing this blog, I love <a>working on Bugs</a> –triaging them mostly.
[121001570080] |In regular life, I am a Ph.D. student at the <a>Computer Architecture lab at UCF</a>.
[121001570090] |I am not much of a software guy, more a jack of all trades.
[121001570100] |My work revolves around the analysis of fault tolerant computing on reconfigurable architectures.
[121001570110] |I hope to graduate within the next two semesters.
[121001570120] |The job hunt has just begun.
[121001570130] |The most difficult part of beginning the job hunt is to figure out the industry/field/domain where my acquired skills and knowledge will be most appreciated.
[121001570140] |Then there is the question of things I really want to do with the rest of my life.
[121001570150] |How many jobs really let one change the world for the better in a direct way?
[121001570160] |See you around, then! 
[121001580010] |<title>Lifehacker Gets on the Bandwagon</title>
[121001580020] |Lifehacker has a post <a>describing the top 10 apps for Ubuntu</a>.
[121001580030] |I have issues with the first one on the list, but I tend to avoid controversy and will say no more than that sometimes, getting things done yourself is a lot more fun, and informative.
[121001580040] |So it is that I have never used Automatix or EasyUbuntu, but instead just maintain a list of packages I like to install and install them myselves.
[121001580050] |Some of the settings I modify regularly are also modified manually.
[121001580060] |Why?, because fewer things go wrong real bad when a person attends to making the changes, and you change or deviate from the “base” system (which works admirably well) no more than you need to, and every person needs different things.
[121001580070] |I have known people without DVD drives adding the ability to decrypt DVDs –how that would be useful beats my mind, but the reason?, “Well, I just used Automatix, and it was an option, so there!”
[121001580080] |This is not meant to disparage the tool in any way, but please do choose to get your hands dirty, learn, and live fully <img/>There is nothing either of these tools does that is not easy to figure out on one’s own.
[121001580090] |In any case, it is easier to figure out than figuring out how to enable support to play some wierd (wicked?) codecs in Windows’ Media Player (from what I remember).
[121001580100] |I also don’t have (or haven’t done) 8 of the 10 things that are on the LifeHacker list.
[121001580110] |I haven’t, for sure, had to install Firefox –it’s already installed, LifeHacker!!
[121001580120] |Also, I prefer mplayer over VLC, and so on… So while you have to take the “Top 10 Apps for Ubuntu” title, and the list of software/steps recommended with a grain of salt, it is always good to see Ubuntu catching on, and being mentioned in popular online media. 
[121001590010] |<title>Normalize the Gain (Playback Volume) of your MP3s</title>
[121001590020] |I confess to the grave sin of storing part of my music collection in the mp3 format –mostly music I have had around for ages.
[121001590030] |There, now that that is out of the way, let’s move on to making that collection friendlier.
[121001590040] |I have the habit of going to sleep while listening to a little light music.
[121001590050] |Some of the songs in my collection would sound louder than the others.
[121001590060] |So when I have a couple of classical music tracks lined up with Paul McCartney and Guns ‘N Roses, I sometimes get jolted awake by the difference in the playback volume.
[121001590070] |So off I went looking for solutions.
[121001590080] |My main concerns when I started my research were:
[121001590090] |<li>My mp3s should not be irretrievably changed into something I end up hating</li>
[121001590100] |<li>I did not want all songs sounding as loud as the loudest song</li>
[121001590110] |<li>The algorithm or method used should be free of the application used for music playback</li> 
[121001590120] |Then came the choices.
[121001590130] |In the end it all came down to two apps: <a>Normalize</a> and <a>mp3gain</a>.
[121001590140] |Now how do I decide which one’s the one for me without learning <abbr>DSP</abbr>?
[121001590150] |Simple, search some more.
[121001590160] |Fortunately, besides the websites for the applications, I ran into <a>this thread at jwz’s livejournal</a>.
[121001590170] |Thank god for <a>geeks-who-start-nightclubs</a> and their friends!
[121001590180] |I also followed most of the <a>replaygain technical outline</a>, since mp3gain is an implementation of the replaygain idea.
[121001590190] |Normalize is simple, perhaps a little too simple.
[121001590200] |mp3gain works by <a>figuring out how loud the music actually sounds to the human ear</a>, and then figuring out how much positive or negative gain to apply to the mp3 file to “fix” it.
[121001590210] |I was happy to note that it does not use the peak volume in a file as a benchmark for normalization.
[121001590220] |It applies changes by modifying the mp3 file in some fashion, but I read that the change is reversible since mp3gain writes some tags (not ID3 tags) to the mp3s for possible later undoing.
[121001590230] |This fact also means that one you use mp3gain on a file, if you try doing it again, it takes a lot less time –almost no time.
[121001590240] |So in the future if I add files to the collection, and I don’t remember what files I added, I can run mp3gain on the entire collection, and it will complete much faster than the first time. 
[121001590250] |To cut to the chase, I decided to go with mp3gain.
[121001590260] |I installed the mp3gain package (using $sudo apt-get install mp3gain), and set out to normalize my entire music collection.
[121001590270] |(For those of you who also have .oggs, check out vorbisgain).
[121001590280] |Edit: for an alternative command, with explanation, and a way to use album-gain for songs from albums, visit <a>porges</a> The following command, executed from the directory where I store my music normalized all the files in my collection: <code>$find . -type f -iname '*.mp3' -print0 | xargs -0 mp3gain -r -k</code>
[121001590290] |What it does is, it <em>find</em>s all files (type -f) in the present directory (.) with a name that ends in “.mp3″ and creates a list of the same.
[121001590300] |The output of this find command is then <em>pipe</em>d to the mp3gain program.
[121001590310] |The options that I ended up using for mp3gain, -r and -k dictate that the calculated track gain will be applied automatically to normalize the volume, and that files should be protected against “clipping” by lowering the applied gain if the required gain seems likely to clip the sound.
[121001590320] |Concoct your own recipe by referring to the man page for mp3gain.
[121001590330] |After around 16 hours of processing on my old PIII desktop, my massive 50 GB music collection now agrees on what is an acceptable volume.
[121001590340] |Needless to say, I sleep in peace.
[121001600010] |<title>No .Trash on External USB Drives</title>
[121001600020] |Nautilus creates a .Trash-xxx directory on external USB drives when you delete something on them.
[121001600030] |Now this directory will take up space since it has a copy of the files you deleted.
[121001600040] |You sure can empty the “Trash” on the external USB drive immediately, but if you forget then it can annoy you at random.
[121001600050] |For example, after deleting all the files from my 256 MB USB drive, I took it to school, and no matter what I did I could not save new photos on the disk, since it was out of space.
[121001600060] |You may not be able to empty the “Trash” on another computer, especially if you have a different username on that computer.
[121001600070] |Also, in the past, items in the .Trash folder in external USB drives would cause the trash applet on my panel to show that it had files in it.
[121001600080] |Right clicking on it and emptying it would not cause the icon to get back to the the “empty” state.
[121001600090] |You can fix all this by adding a “Delete” option in Nautilus that straightaway deletes your files without first putting them in the recycle bin (or Trash).
[121001600100] |After you enable this option, right clicking on a file in nautilus will give you two options “Move to Trash” and “Delete”.
[121001600110] |I use “Delete” for files on External USB Drives and this then prevents the .Trash-xxx folder from being created on the drives.
[121001600120] |Here’s how you can enable the “Delete” option.
[121001600130] |Open Nautilus, then go to the “Edit -> Preferences” option in the top menu.
[121001600140] |Then in the menu that shows, choose the “Include a Delete command that bypasses Trash”.
[121001600150] |That’s it, you’ve enabled the delete option. <img/>
[121001600160] |<img/>If you often find yourself looking in Trash for files you have accidently deleted that you suddenly need, then be careful how you delete stuff!
[121001600170] |After enabling the option, using the “Del” key on the keyboard is a shortcut to move an item to Trash and “Shift + Del” instantly deletes the item without putting it in Trash.
[121001600180] |Of course, as I said before, for those of you who use the mouse more, right clicking on an item in Nautilus, or the desktop will now show you options for both ways of removing the item.
[121001610010] |<title>Send Email from Nautilus using Thunderbird</title>
[121001610020] |Right clicking on a file on your desktop, or from anywhere in nautilus gives you a “Send To…” option.
[121001610030] |This enables you to send the file via email using Evolution.
[121001610040] |If you use Thunderbird as your mail app, then you certainly want the file to be sent using Thunderbird, but making this change is not so easy.
[121001610050] |Changing the default email reader in <em>System -> Preferences -> Preferred Applications </em>to Thunderbird should fix this, but since we don’t yet live in an ideal world, it doesn’t.
[121001610060] |It looks like nautilus’ preference for Evolution as the mail client to use for the right-click-send-to comes hard-coded in the <a>nautilus send-to plugin</a>, and this plugin is installed on your Ubuntu computer.
[121001610070] |This <a>nautilus send-to bug</a> has already been noted.
[121001610080] |To choose Thunderbird as the app to be used for “Send to…” you will need to use the instructions at <a>Thunderbird support for nautilus send-to</a>.
[121001610090] |As a bonus, here’s the <a>page listing all of Thunderbird’s command line options</a> –for when you want to send a file from a command prompt.
[121001610100] |(Though I had to solve the above problem with Thunderbird recently for a friend, I am a recent <a>sylpheed-claws-gtk</a> convert.
[121001610110] |It is absolutely the fastest and best email client I have come across till date.)
[121001620010] |<title>lilo Will be Missed</title>
[121001620020] |lilo aka <a>Rob Levin</a> was one of the key people behind the freenode IRC network, on which all of Ubuntu’s IRC chat rooms are offered.
[121001620030] |Its the first IRC network I ever used, and the one I use the most.
[121001620040] |Rob was the driving force behind freenode, and freenode is a free service.
[121001620050] |Ergo, he’s had to live a pretty simple life –not a “rich” life by any means.
[121001620060] |<a>lilo passed away earlier in the day</a>.
[121001620070] |I came to know this through <a>a friend’s blog</a>.
[121001620080] |Looks like he was killed in a hit-and-run road accident while riding his bike.
[121001620090] |I once chatted with him, and he came across as a very nice, humble guy.
[121001620100] |I even <a>wrote on my blog asking folks to lend him a helping hand</a>, and became a freenode donor myself.
[121001620110] |I strongly believe that <em>every one of us should pitch in and help support those who dedicate their lives to making ours better</em>.
[121001620120] |Thank you lilo, and thanks to all the folks who work on Linux, Ubuntu, and everything that is free and good. 
[121001620130] |lilo will certainly be missed.
[121001620140] |My heartfelt condolences to his family.
[121001620150] |They too have paid a price for the freedom I enjoy, and they’ll be missing him far more than I do.
[121001630010] |<title>Ubuntu Bug Statistics now Available as Graphs</title>
[121001630020] |I put together some scripts from <a>Sam Tygier</a> and some of my own to generate graphs of the number of open/unconfirmed/critical etc bugs from the statistics available on Launchpad.
[121001630030] |I figured I’d spend some time on doing this since visualizing past performance and statistics must act as motivators for at least some bug triagers <img/>
[121001630040] |Here’s an example graph that shows the number of open bugs over the last 24 hours:
[121001630050] |More plots are available at the <a>Ubuntu bugstats page</a>.
[121001630060] |The page has links to the raw data if anyone needs it.
[121001630070] |As time goes by I will add a graph showing the changes over longer periods of time (like months).
[121001630080] |Thanks are due to Sam for giving me the script he used to parse the data from the launchpad pages.
[121001630090] |I just added a simple enough gnuplot script to plot the graphs.
[121001630100] |Any suggestions/comments etc are welcome as comments to this post.
[121001630110] |The <a>Ubuntu-in</a> loco team was kind enough to lend me space on their server –thank you guys!
[121001640010] |<title>Disable Touchpad Temporarily When Typing</title>
[121001640020] |Earlier, I wrote about <a>how to enable/disable your touchpad using the synclient command</a>.
[121001640030] |Recently, I faced a different problem.
[121001640040] |When typing on the new laptop that I got, my thumb often accidentally brushes the touchpad, and this leads to me continuing to type things in entirely a different place.
[121001640050] |This is because the thumb moves the mouse pointer to a different spot that where the typing cursor is, and then there is an accidental click.
[121001640060] |Argh! very annoying.
[121001640070] |The good news is, I figured out how to fix this using syndaemon!
[121001640080] |syndaemon watches activity on the keyboard and can disable your synaptics touchpad for a variable period after it detects activity on the keyboard.
[121001640090] |Here’s how I use it:
[121001640100] |First, I edited the <code>/etc/X11/xorg.conf</code> file and added the Option “SHMConfig” “on” line to the section called “Input Device” for the Synaptic Touchpad input device.
[121001640110] |Then I restarted X (by using the ctrl+alt+backspace key combination).
[121001640120] |Once I was logged in, I used syndaemon as $syndaemon -t -d
[121001640130] |The -t option specifies that only the tapping and scrolling actions are to be disabled, I can still move the cursor around while typing on the keyboard.
[121001640140] |The -d option asks syndaemon to run in the background as a daemon, so I don’t have to keep the terminal open after executing the command.
[121001640150] |You can disable the touchpad entirely by not using the -t option.
[121001640160] |By default, syndaemon disables the touchpad for 2 seconds after the last keyboard activity.
[121001640170] |You can change this by specifying the idle-time using the -i option.
[121001640180] |Read the manual for all details: $man syndaemon.
[121001640190] |To make syndaemon start up by default each time you login, add it to the list of Startup Programs in System->Preferences->Sessions.
[121001640200] |I have the following command added there now: <code>syndaemon -t -d</code>.
[121001640210] |Log out and log back in to see if its working for you.
[121001650010] |<title>Share Music in a Network using Avahi (DAAP)</title>
[121001650020] |Okay, so I have a desktop with around 50 Gigs of music.
[121001650030] |I also have a laptop on which I work most of the time, from various places in and around the house.
[121001650040] |I did not want to (and don’t have the space to) copy the songs onto the Laptop.
[121001650050] |So I went looking for a simple way to share my music over the Network.
[121001650060] |I found that rhythmbox supports <acronym>DAAP</acronym>, the same technology that Apple uses with iTunes to enable sharing. 
[121001650070] |To enable sharing, install the avahi daemon on the desktop using: <code>$sudo apt-get install avahi-daemon</code>
[121001650080] |Now, in Rhythmbox, go to Edit->Preferences->Sharing(which is a tab) and select “Share my music”.
[121001650090] |<a>Avahi</a> is the name of the project that brings DAAP (aka rendezvous or zeroconf) to Linux.
[121001650100] |You’re all set!
[121001650110] |Now when you use Rhtyhmbox on the laptop, or any other system in your network, the music collection on the desktop should appear when you start it up in the “Source” pane on the left!
[121001650120] |<a>Og’s post</a> was one of the many pages I hit when I was searching for a solution.
[121001650130] |He even has a screenshot showing how the shared directory shows up.
[121001650140] |If you want to share music using Banshee, install the banshee-daap package which provides a plugin for DAAP music sharing. 
[121001650150] |The only caveat is, even when you use this, Rhythmbox has to be running on your desktop for the files to show up elsewhere.
[121001650160] |If that bothers you, then see how <a>Tangerine</a> can help you.
[121001650170] |From the website, we get the following description:
[121001650180] |Tangerine is an application that allows you to publish music over the local network, using DAAP.
[121001650190] |It runs on both Linux and Windows.
[121001650200] |There are several clients that you can then use to connect to it, such as Apple’s iTunes, Banshee, and Rhythmbox.
[121001650210] |Music files can be specified either by a directory, or can be automatically discovered using Beagle or Google Desktop.
[121001650220] |Recently you can also specify which music player you use and share the songs in it’s collection.
[121001650230] |For typical configurations, a graphical tool is included (see below).
[121001650240] |As far as I know, the stable version of Amarok, my favorite music manager, does not have any support for DAAP, either as a server(for the desktop) or as a client(for other computers to access shared stuff).
[121001660010] |<title>Kerala is Open Country</title>
[121001660020] |This is probably old news to those of you who follow news of Linux gaining new ground.
[121001660030] |<a>The state of Kerala in India is promoting the use of Linux in government schools</a> (also at <a>Yahoo! News</a>).
[121001660040] |Old news, yes, but something that makes me really proud.
[121001660050] |I am from Kerala, and have lost count of the number of times I have had to explain how we occassionally have a deomcratically elected communist government (we were the first state in the world to have an elected communist government), or how we’re so industrially backward despite having the highest literacy rate in India.
[121001660060] |Blame it on (or thank) the <a>Kerala Model</a> of development.
[121001660070] |I owe a lot to the educational system in my state.
[121001660080] |A third of the population of Kerala emigrate, and there is a popular joke that no matter where (in the world) you go, you will definitely find a tea-shop with a Keralite running it.
[121001660090] |What makes me write about this now is the mention of my sister’s school, Cotton Hill Girls’ High School, in this recent <a>BusinessWeek article that refers to the Kerala-adopts-Open Source story</a>, and, among other things, a new breed of students who say, “Windows?, Never heard of it.”
[121001660100] |Cotton Hill has (or had, I can’t find a citation) the distinction of being the school with the largest number of students in all of Asia.
[121001660110] |The government hasn’t “banned” Microsoft –far from it, schools still can choose what they want.
[121001660120] |The state ideologically encourages the use of Open Source, and stands to benefit financially from it.
[121001660130] |More importantly the students will definitely benefit more by getting exposed to free culture and open source early, since I have a feeling that the future <em>is</em> going to be “open”.
[121001670010] |<title>The OpenOffice.org Design Challenge –Fame, $5000 in Prizes</title>
[121001670020] |The openoffice.org documentation project has announced a <a>Template &Clipart Contest</a>.
[121001670030] |The total <a>prize money</a> is to the tune of $5000.
[121001670040] |<a>WorldLabel</a>, which has been long a strong champion of OpenOffice.org, has set aside the amount for the competition’s winners.
[121001670050] |The goal is to increase the trove of templates and clipart.
[121001670060] |The <a>current collection of template samples</a> leaves a huge gap that needs to be filled.
[121001670070] |Step up and fill that gap –for a prize <img/>Winners will also have the option of including their winning entries in the OpenOffice.org installation sets available from the site.
[121001670080] |If you are interested, visit the <a>Documentation Project</a> for more information.
[121001670090] |Everyone is eligible and everyone is encouraged to participate.
[121001670100] |The contest officially starts this week and <strong>ends 13 October 2006</strong>, on our birthday.
[121001670110] |Winning entries will be judged by a panel of three and winners will be announced 1 November 2006.
[121001670120] |For those of who want to get started here are a few guides to openoffice.org template design: 1.
[121001670130] |<a>Instructions to create OO.org templates from openoffice.blogs.com</a> 2.
[121001670140] |<a>A .sxw openoffice.org document describing how to create and use templates</a>.
[121001670150] |Get started already, and good luck!
[121001670160] |Credit: Russell Ossendryver for writing in to inform me of the competition.
[121001670170] |I edited his email and added some links and stuff to make it more useful to aspiring designers. 
[121001680010] |<title>Ubuntu Thong Spotted on BBC website –Oh, and Bill Clinton talks about Ubuntu</title>
[121001680020] |Imagine my surprise when <a>I find a picture of the Ubuntu thong on BBC</a>.
[121001680030] |Ubuntu.
[121001680040] |That was what Bill Clinton told the Labour party conference it needed to remember this week.
[121001680050] |“Society is important because of Ubuntu.”
[121001680060] |But what is it?
[121001680070] |Left-leaning sudoku?
[121001680080] |U2′s latest album?
[121001680090] |Fish-friendly sushi?
[121001680100] |No, it’s a word describing an African worldview, which translates as “I am because you are,” and which means that individuals need other people to be fulfilled. 
[121001680110] |The operating system I love gets a brief mention (besides the thong, that is).
[121001680120] |It is good to see how the word (and hopefully the philosophy) is gaining currency.
[121001680130] |Ubuntu the OS has very high ideals to aim for, and very high standards to maintain. 
[121001690010] |<title>No, I am not in Iraq</title>
[121001690020] |Indeed, there have been rumours that <a>I have been sent to Iraq</a> in a comment posted on this blog, but that is not true.
[121001690030] |The past two months were spent trying to meet deadlines. 
[121001690040] |I failed.
[121001690050] |Now the hill is the same but the climb is steeper.
[121001690060] |I am talking about my Ph.D. of course.
[121001690070] |Signing up for a Ph.D. is a gamble of sorts, with many variables.
[121001690080] |The odds are stacked against me, and it all came to head on Friday.
[121001690090] |Friday being the deadline for submitting the intent to graduate form.
[121001690100] |I haven’t submitted it, which means I won’t be graduating next semester.
[121001690110] |Needless to say I was feeling beat on Friday.
[121001690120] |Now I am feeling much better, in a Nietzsche-esque fashion.
[121001690130] |Bring it on, I’ll take it <img/>
[121001690140] |To get back to Ubuntu –you might have noticed the paucity of the regular tips that I used to post around here.
[121001690150] |My work in the recent past has forced me to use Windows, in order to use a vendor tool that works only with Windows.
[121001690160] |So that’s where I’ve been hanging out.
[121001690170] |I haven’t been triaging bugs, or posting to the <a>fridge</a> either. 
[121001690180] |I had put everything else on hold, and dedicated myself to the most important task at hand.
[121001690190] |That did not work so great.
[121001690200] |There is no quantitative (or qualitative?) way to measure my performance when I:
[121001690210] |<li>a) do only One Thing as opposed to</li>
[121001690220] |<li>b) when I dedicate myself to A Few Things</li> 
[121001690230] |I have been thinking that there has to be a few things you do that reward you in the short term to keep you happy and satisfied with life in general.
[121001690240] |When you are happy, you might do a better job at everything, not just the few things that give you satisfaction.
[121001690250] |All theories, I know. 
[121001690260] |Another reason why I stopped blogging here was because in the beginning, I had decided that I would not be a regurgitator of well-known facts or news.
[121001690270] |As the standards rose, there was very little that passed the filter.
[121001690280] |I wouldn’t have written this post, but today, over coffee, I decided to resume writing here, and to get over the block, decided to write my mind.
[121001690290] |To all the readers who have found this blog useful, or read it regularly and write me encouraging comments —Thank you.
[121001700010] |<title>Searching Ubuntu Mailing List Archives</title>
[121001700020] |Almost all of the tips I post here are either things I stumble upon myself or things that I read at the <a>Ubuntu-users mailing list</a>.
[121001700030] |Seeing as how useful this mailing list is, I thought there should be a fast, efficient way to search it.
[121001700040] |Mailman, the software that the list runs on does not provide a good search functionality.
[121001700050] |Don’t give up hope yet, though.
[121001700060] |You can use Gmane’s <a>search functionality at http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ubuntu.user</a>.
[121001700070] |Similar searchable archives can be found at gmane for the <a>other Ubuntu lists</a>.
[121001700080] |But wait, it gets even better.
[121001700090] |<a>Nabble</a> provides interfaces to:
[121001700100] |<li><a>Search ALL Ubuntu related mailing lists</a></li>
[121001700110] |<li><a>Specific Ubuntu mailing lists –eg.
[121001700120] |Ubuntu-users</a></li> 
[121001700130] |To compare performance let us search for “searching mailing list archives” using both these websites.
[121001700140] |Here’s the <a>Gmane result</a>, and the <a>Nabble result</a>.
[121001700150] |To Nabble’s credit, it finds more results.
[121001700160] |You are free to look at the results and decide which one is better.
[121001700170] |I rather prefer Nabble since it is neat and clean, and since threads are returned in results, sometimes <em>reducing</em> the total number of results.
[121001700180] |This is a case where less is more, since, most of the time, I can eliminate a few threads just by looking at the subject of the thread.
[121001700190] |Nabble also provides a short excerpt from each result showing me what matched.
[121001700200] |The ability to search across all the Ubuntu lists is a definite plus, too.
[121001700210] |I hope Nabble stays along for a long time.
[121001700220] |Much as I like Gmane, I think I am falling in love with Nabble’s search. 
[121001710010] |<title>SSH Tunnel + SOCKS Proxy Forwarding = Secure Browsing</title>
[121001710020] |When you are at the coffee shop, or at a conference, and you are not sure that you want to send all your data over the wi-fi network in plaintext, you want a <em>secure tunnel</em> to browse.
[121001710030] |This happened to me recently and I stumbled across a neat feature of <a>openssh</a> (the ssh client on everyone’s computer).
[121001710040] |The wonders of ssh never cease to amaze me!
[121001710050] |You can use the “-D” flag of openssh to create a <a>SOCKS</a> proxy.
[121001710060] |The command first: <code>$ssh -D 9999 username@ip-address-of-ssh-server</code>
[121001710070] |This of course connects you to the server specified by “ip-address-of-ssh-server”.
[121001710080] |Needless to say, you (username) must have an ssh account on the server.
[121001710090] |In addition, this will create a SOCKS proxy on port “9999″ of your computer.
[121001710100] |This is a tunnel to the server.
[121001710110] |Now all you have to do is set the preference in Firefox to use a SOCKS proxy.
[121001710120] |The proxy is, of course, “localhost”, with the port 9999. 
[121001710130] |Now when you browse, all the connections you make to websites will seem to originate from the server to which you SSH-ed.
[121001710140] |In addition, all outgoing and incoming data for the browsing session will be encrypted since it passes through the SSH connection. 
[121001710150] |Other applications (like email clients) may also support SOCKS proxies.
[121001710160] |If any of them, you can look into using <a>proxychains</a>(<a>there’s an Ubuntu package</a>).
[121001710170] |You can misuse this technology to circumvent paranoid browsing firewalls, even to pretend you are wherever your ssh server is located –so you can work around country-based blocks etc.
[121001710180] |I use it for the very unromantic reason that I don’t want some aspiring cracker to sneak up on me when I am in public.
[121001710190] |Updates:
[121001710200] |<li><a>Kees Cook tells us how to tunnel DNS lookups</a>, so snoopy folks can’t even figure out what your are browsing, and the evil ones can’t DNS-phish you</li>
[121001710210] |<li>Don McArthur points out his <a>excellent article</a> that addresses the same issue</li>
[121001710220] |<li>verevi says the<a> FoxyProxy extension</a> will make things easier for you on the Firefox side of things</li>
[121001710230] |Thanks a lot for the tips and pointers, folks. 
[121001720010] |<title>Create DVDs with All of Ubuntu’s Packages</title>
[121001720020] |For those looking to install Ubuntu without a high speed internet connection, a set of DVDs with the entire contents of the repositories would be a great tool.
[121001720030] |The idea being that armed with the DVDs, you really don’t need a net connection for retrieving any packages, since between the DVDs you have every package that is present in the software repositories.
[121001720040] |Though there is no “official” set of DVDs, one can find such DVD sets for sale at some shops online.
[121001720050] |The catch is, of course, that the DVD sets are expensive.
[121001720060] |Why pay for something that is free?
[121001720070] |Ubuntu is 100% free, and we like it that way.
[121001720080] |I just ran across some detailed instructions to create a set of Ubuntu DVDs.
[121001720090] |In fact, it is one better than a set of detailed instructions –it is script that you can use to create such DVDs.
[121001720100] |A few months ago I had started on writing a bunch of commands in python that would do the job –but never got done.
[121001720110] |The “<a>How-To Make Ubuntu DVDs Including Main, the Universe and Everything</a>” article seems to use some Ruby scripts.
[121001720120] |I know little about Ruby, but as long as the task is completed, the programming language matters little.
[121001720130] |The script promises to generate 4 DVD images (.iso files), and might require as much as 30 GB of hard disk space.
[121001720140] |I usually try out the tips I post here first –but this time, since I don’t have 30 GB of hard disk space to spare, I have not been able to try this technique.
[121001720150] |I have a tight budget –with a laptop, I really can’t have all the HDD space I want <img/>So it would be great if some of you could try this one out, and let me know how it goes. 
[121001730010] |<title>Ubuntu Cookies, anyone?</title>
[121001730020] |With the memory of the <a>Ubuntu Cake War</a> still fresh in our minds, let us turn to cookies.
[121001730030] |It doesn’t really surprise me that the best Linux distribution also has the logo that translates into the best sugar cookie.
[121001730040] |Let’s face it: Ubuntu is one sweet distro.
[121001730050] |I apologize now to Canonical Ltd. for unauthorized use of their logo.
[121001730060] |Let’s hope that in the spirit of Ubuntu, they will be as awesome in their forgiveness as they are in their flavor of Linux.
[121001730070] |This one doesn’t stop at just the pics –<a>detailed instructions on how to bake-get the cookies</a> are included! 
[121001740010] |<title>Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks: The Book</title>
[121001740020] |<a>Boing Boing likes Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks</a>.
[121001740030] |So what’s in it for me, you ask?
[121001740040] |Well, <a>that book</a> was the first book I ever technically reviewed <img/>.
[121001740050] |I reviewed it over a period of a month or so, and it was a great job.
[121001740060] |Some of my comments got overlooked, but that is okay, I guess.
[121001740070] |Little things, like the non-uniformity of URLs (Some begin with “http://” some don’t; some have “www.” some don’t) irritate me a lot.
[121001740080] |But all in all, the book has come out to be well appreciated, and that is reassuring.
[121001740090] |The book is written in a very simple, straightforward, non-geeky language and is best suited for folks who are not very computer savvy.
[121001740100] |When I first read it I honestly thought, “Wow!
[121001740110] |Will this book sell?
[121001740120] |Are there folks out there who need help with this kind of stuff too?”
[121001740130] |Then it dawned on me –for the average computer user, who does not (and has no desire to) spend the entire day in front of a computer, learning a new system can be quite the challenge.
[121001740140] |This book tells you how to do the very basic stuff, and holds your hand through the various motions of everyday computing using Ubuntu.
[121001740150] |I think it will come in handy for the niche market consisting of folks who want to give Ubuntu a shot, and yet are hesitant because “Linux is a geek thing”.
[121001740160] |I don’t agree with the “You need to be a geek to use Linux” viewpoint, though I can see why there is such an opinion in the first place —the lack of a widespread user community does mean that you need to be resourceful in fixing problems and finding solution, and be self-sufficient at least with regards to researching and learning the various ways of doing things.
[121001740170] |Windows users can always take comfort in the guy/girl in the next cubicle, or that geeky cousin.
[121001740180] |Linux has yet some ground to cover before there is a Linux user in every office/family.
[121001740190] |Till we get there, “Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks” can act as the guide for freedom-lovers world over. 
[121001740200] |The only reason why I hadn’t written about the book for so long was because I thought it improper to “plug” a book when I was the technical reviewer.
[121001740210] |I still wanted to talk about —now seems an appropriate time, since it has been released for a while now, and going by the comments on Amazon, and elsewhere on blogs and websites, it seems to be a hit within its chosen demographic.
[121001740220] |At times, I get this terrible itch to write a book myself (Ubuntu Hacks? –but there is a book with that title out there already).
[121001740230] |The good news is that I don’t have to wait –I have a huge dissertation waiting to be written <img/>
[121001740240] |<a>The freshest in culture. <img/>
[121001750010] |<title>Cut, Copy, Paste: Clipboard Management</title>
[121001750020] |For me, one of the most irritating gaps in the GNOME desktop is the absence of a clipboard manager.
[121001750030] |A clipboard manager is a tool that keeps track of all the text you have copied, or, if you prefer, highlighted with your mouse –so when its time to paste you can paste not only what you copied last, but also the <em>n</em> things that you copied before then.
[121001750040] |Also, in GNOME, if you copy some text from, say, a Firefox window, and then close the Firefox window, you will be surprised to find that there is no copied text when you try to paste what you had copied.
[121001750050] |I use Klipper from KDE to manage my clipboard.
[121001750060] |Its always on my panel.
[121001750070] |Though I don’t mind using KDE tools, I’d love a GNOME (GTK) tool that does the same.
[121001750080] |Looks like my wish will soon be fulfilled!
[121001750090] |<a>Glipper</a> is clipboard manager for GNOME that will ship in <a>Feisty</a>!
[121001750100] |It looks pretty much like Klipper, down to the icon and the name, and I hope it does its job well.
[121001750110] |Maybe I’ve said this here before but did you know that there is another way to copy and paste in X?
[121001750120] |You can highlight some text, and then go to another window or application, click where you want to paste the highlighted text, and then middle-click.
[121001750130] |If your mouse has no middle button, then you can click both the left and right buttons together to create the middle-click.
[121001750140] |Thats it –your highlighted text is now pasted in the other application.
[121001750150] |This simple trick evaded me for a long long time, ’cause no one ever pointed it out to me.
[121001760010] |<title>OpenOffice.org Design Competition Winners Announced</title>
[121001760020] |The <a>results for the OO.org template and clipart design competition</a> are out!
[121001760030] |<a>LXer reports</a>:
[121001760040] |The contest resulted in some superior and innovative work.
[121001760050] |“Some of the templates show just how advanced and flexible Openoffice.org’s OpenDocument format is as both a Word and Spreadsheet ODF processor.
[121001760060] |The winning templates and many others breaks a myth that Openoffice.org cannot do advanced editing functions like Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel.
[121001760070] |It is obvious that Openoffice.org has come of age and is more than just a free alternative to MS Office but is an extremely worthy competitor” said Russell Ossendryver
[121001760080] |All submitted entries, including the winners are <a>available from the OpenOffice.org documentation gallery page</a>
[121001760090] |Winners include a thesis kit, a perpetual calendar, clipart for teachers, and entire sets of clipart for business and home users.
[121001760100] |The sponsor, <a>WorldLabel</a> had enabled OO.org to offer $5000 in prizes!
[121001760110] |Russell Ossendryver wrote in to tell me about the results.
[121001760120] |What is interesting is that he adds, later in the email:
[121001760130] |I received C&D letter “without prejudice” from the power house lawyers of Microsoft Corporation telling me that Worldlabel.com is misusing the Microsoft Office Trademark and it must be removed to resolve the matter.
[121001760140] |The Logo link was on a page with free resources linking to a page on MS Office with free resources and has been there for 7 years.
[121001760150] |I have been wanting to remove it in any case and did.
[121001760160] |It seems like the more I will do for FOSS the more my company will get attacked.
[121001760170] |He then goes on to say that his resolve to champion Open Source solutions has not diminished one bit.
[121001760180] |Thank you for putting your money where your mouth is, Russell.
[121001760190] |Can someone tell me why Microsoft, which is obviously such a huge market leader has to behave like a braindead school bully?
[121001760200] |I used to read <a>Scobleizer</a>, the blog by a now-former-MS-employee and used to enjoy some of his stories about advocacy.
[121001760210] |How do they think actions such as this one would help, in any way (little or big) to improve the image of the company or its products?
[121001760220] |Maybe I am spoiled by openness and freedom —I just don’t get it. 
[121001770010] |<title>Typos, Spellos and Uh Ohs</title>
[121001770020] |I have noticed that ever since these posts have been appearing at the <a>Ubuntu planet</a>, the number of typos, spellos and uh-ohs have been increasing.
[121001770030] |A spello is when one word gets mogrified into another, changing the meaning of the sentence –e.g., “The package will <strong>not</strong> be installed” when what was meant was, “The package will <strong>now</strong> be installed”.
[121001770040] |I have a theory that being self-conscious and careful is actually increasing the number of mistakes I make and makes me too wordy, artificial and also makes my sentences longer and more incomprehensible. 
[121001770050] |And then, at the top right corner of my two-dimensional brain lives this irrational fear that I am angering many powerful demigods with my lame-ass posts.
[121001770060] |“Tips and tricks indeed,”… they might think, “we learn this stuff with our ABCs…” <img/>I’m sorry if that’s indeed the case.
[121001780010] |<title>Ubuntu Satanic Edition, Anyone?</title>
[121001780020] |<a>The Ubuntu Satanic Edition</a> features a theme set, that includes a login screen, desktop background etc, and a play on the names of the releases (Evil Edgy, Feisty Spawn etc)…
[121001780030] |Good joke, and I would use the login screen if not for the “Ubuntu Satanic Edition” text in there.
[121001800010] |<title>Ubuntu: Mom Loves it!</title>
[121001800020] |A lot of moms (and dads) fall prey to the “Your computer is too old –buy a new one!” scam.
[121001800030] |First a little explanation as to how the scam develops:
[121001800040] |<li>Mom buys new computer</li>
[121001800050] |<li>Computer comes with “Free” AOL/NetZero/random ISP account, as well as loads of unwanted software</li>
[121001800060] |<li>A month later, the “free” antivirus’ license has expired, so has the “free” firewall’s license</li>
[121001800070] |<li>Mom uses computer for 6 months, so do an increasing number of trojans, spyware and adware</li>
[121001800080] |<li>Mom finds computer too slow</li>
[121001800090] |<li>A visit to the local electronics/computer store is planned</li>
[121001800100] |<li>Computer “diagnosed” at $60 per hour</li>
[121001800110] |<li>Diagnosis: Computer too old, buy a new one, OR, we can fix it for you in 4 hours (and it will cost $240)</li>
[121001800120] |<li>Mom buys new computer</li>
[121001800130] |<li>Computers-at-home+=1</li>
[121001800140] |<li>GOTO 1</li> 
[121001800150] |So mom ends up with more than one computer, none of which are “fast” or maybe none of which work reliably and reasonably.
[121001800160] |What is the fix?
[121001800170] |Use Ubuntu!
[121001800180] |That’s what I learnt from the post at Shooting the Kids(relax, it is about photography) <a>about how his Mom loves Ubuntu</a>.
[121001800190] |My mom now owns 3 laptops and two desktops (one I’ve been using for a couple of years) –none of which are older than 5 years.
[121001800200] |Sound like your parents?…Tired of this trend, I decided to install Ubuntu on my mom’s new laptop…My mom’s become an evangelist to some of her friends.
[121001800210] |She told me that last week she and her lifelong friend had been on the phone talking about how they love their new Ubuntu systems and comparing cool features they’ve discovered.
[121001800220] |I think it’s fair to say that Linux has come home.
[121001800230] |I admit the guy had to step in to help the wireless card along for one Laptop, but that is not so bad –every once in a while I get calls from people I know asking for help with getting something-or-the-other working in Windows XP!
[121001800240] |So I think, yes, it is fair to say Ubuntu is coming home.
[121001810010] |<title>Sync Evolution Calendar with Google Calendar</title>
[121001810020] |Not so much a detailed guide as a couple of links to help me out in the future:
[121001810030] |<a>How to sync your google calendar with Evolution</a> The access is “read-only” which means you cannot add events in Evolution and have them show up in your google calendar, but your events in google calendar will be available in Evolution for you to read.
[121001810040] |To circumvent the problem of the sync described above not being a “true” two-way sync, one can use <a>scheduleworld</a> as a go-between.
[121001810050] |This way, Evolution and Google Calendar both sync to scheduleworld, and everything is hunky-dory.
[121001810060] |A <a>guide to sync Google calendar using scheduleworld</a> is available, but the guide (unfortunately) deals with MS Outlook primarily.
[121001810070] |Many of the concepts from the guide can be usd with Evolution.
[121001810080] |The missing link is the <a>SyncEvolution</a> plugin for Evolution.
[121001810090] |There is a <a>thread at Ubuntu Forums that explains how to get going with SyncEvolution</a>.
[121001810100] |So put it all together, and you can sync your Evolution Calendar with your Google Calendar.
[121001810110] |Maybe we should all try and add a few million more users to Ubuntu, and then perhaps Google and everyone else will make it easier for us folks to sync and inter-operate seamlessly with their services.
[121001810120] |Googlers use Ubuntu –I wonder why a few of them won’t spend their quota of free/creative weekly hours to make things easier for us folks <img/>
[121001820010] |<title>Deb a Day: Qalculate</title>
[121001820020] |<a>Deb-a-Day</a> is a website that seeks to introduce its reader to one new debian package(.deb) a day.
[121001820030] |There was a <a>deb-a-day website earlier at livejournal</a> which has been dormant since November 2004.
[121001820040] |The current <a>deb-a-day</a> is a reincarnation of the old, at a new url.
[121001820050] |You can read Lucas’ posts describing the resurrection –<a>post 1</a>, <a>post 2</a>.
[121001820060] |<a>The most recent package covered in Deb-a-day is Qalculate</a>.
[121001820070] |Seems like a very interesting little app.
[121001820080] |I wonder why someone doesn’t build in all of its <a>functionality</a> in the <a>deskbar applet</a>.
[121001820090] |That ould be way too cool!
[121001820100] |I look forward to deb-a-day posts, and thought that most of you might want to add it to your feedreaders/bookmarks too.
[121001820110] |Oh, and yes, you can <a>contribute to deb-a-day</a>, too. 
[121001830010] |<title>Fix Firefox Backspace to Take You to the Previous Page</title>
[121001830020] |In a surprising development that seems really strange and unnecessary, Firefox 2.0 won’t go to the previous page when I press the “backspace” button on the keyboard.
[121001830030] |I have grown used to this over the period I have used Firefox.
[121001830040] |The fact that I can’t use backspace the way I am used to has been annoying me no end.
[121001830050] |So I decided to dig a little deeper.
[121001830060] |The feature was removed to fix <a>a bug</a>.
[121001830070] |<a>The bug that was caused by fixing the previous bug, which is that the backspace does not behave like it should </a>has been fixed too (Thank heavens!)
[121001830080] |But then, until the bug fix propagates to a firefox build available on Ubuntu, one has to resort to a little scratching to fix the matter.
[121001830090] |Here’s how you resurrect the backspace button in Firefox 2.0 (current as of this date):
[121001830100] |Type “about:config” in the address bar of Firefox and press Enter.
[121001830110] |`Filter` for ‘browser.backspace_action’ and change its value to 0 (zero).
[121001840010] |<title>Do You Blog About Ubuntu?</title>
[121001840020] |As I was surfing the ‘net earlier today, I realized that we all are missing out on a lot.
[121001840030] |There are a lot of small, unknown, unnoticed bloggers blogging about Ubuntu, and some of these posts are good, <a>very good</a>.
[121001840040] |The blog that I found with the post about Moms loving Ubuntu is another example.
[121001840050] |These are a pleasure to discover and read.
[121001840060] |Since these blogs are not on the <a>planet</a>, pretty much the only way to find them is through serendipity.
[121001840070] |Which brings us to the point of this post:
[121001840080] |Dear Reader,
[121001840090] |Do you blog about Ubuntu?
[121001840100] |If you do, I personally would love to read what you write.
[121001840110] |Could you please write a post and <a>pingback this post</a>?
[121001840120] |In most blogging tools (at least in WordPress), just adding a link to this post will pingback the post.
[121001840130] |If that is too much to ask, could you leave a comment?
[121001840140] |I thought pingbacks are easier that filling out that comment form.
[121001840150] |If you have an “Ubuntu” category I will subscribe to it in my feedreader.
[121001840160] |With enough entries, I will create a page listing the blogs, which will be a useful resource to others and free publicity for your stunts!
[121001840170] |Eagerly awaiting your replies!