Jul
27
Adding and Removing Applications in Ubuntu Linux 7.04
July 27, 2007 | By: UbuntuLinuxHelp | Leave a Comment
Posted in Applications, Videos
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Add/Remove Software in Ubuntu 7.04
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Adding and removing applications using Ubuntu Linux v7.04 from PCMechTV
In Ubuntu 7.10 you can do the same as in the video (for Ubuntu 7.04) by using the Synaptic package manager.
You can find Synaptic in the "System" toolbar menu option.
One thing of importance is that (in my opinion) it's good to use the Synaptic package manager and avoid installing or using Automatix for package management. Why? It seems that Automatix is breaking people's Ubuntu systems as reported by some users. Read more about that here: Automatix Can Break Your System
Jul
26
Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu
July 26, 2007 | By: UbuntuLinuxHelp | 1 Comment
Posted in Videos
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Mark Shuttleworth & Ubuntu
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Brief interview with Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu Foundation. You visit the Ubuntu Foundation to learn more. The Foundation was established on July 1st 2005 with an initial funding commitment of US$10 million, to ensure the continuity of the Ubuntu project and create a legal vehicle that represents the community structures of the project.
One driving factor behind the creation of the Foundation was the need to ensure that an Ubuntu release can be deployed on servers, which demand much slower release and upgrade cycles. "In order to support the use of free software on database and other servers, we will be offering security support for the Ubuntu base and major server components for a full five years", said Matt Zimmerman, CTO of the Ubuntu project.
Jul
26
Linux 101 from Dell Studio
July 26, 2007 | By: UbuntuLinuxHelp | Leave a Comment
Posted in Videos
[coolplayer width="340" height="260"]
Dell Studio - Linux 101
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Video from Dell in its campaign to promote Linux to the computer users.
Dell provides PCs and notebooks with Linux pre-installed (such as Ubuntu). To continue to educate visitors regarding the beauty and usability of Linux, Studio Dell posted this video to help and inform consumers.
You can visit Studio Dell to find out more about them.
This work by James House is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Jul
26
Surf the Web Faster by Disabling IPV6 in Ubuntu Linux
July 26, 2007 | By: UbuntuLinuxHelp | 1 Comment
Posted in How To
IPV6 is an Internet protocol. Currently most applications use IPV4 and this can cause conflicts which slow down your system.
Complete the following to disable it.
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/bad_list
and type this in:
alias net-pf-10 off
Then save the file.
This work by James House is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Jul
25
Life Without Windows.
July 25, 2007 | By: UbuntuLinuxHelp | 1 Comment
Posted in Editorials
From the Philippines: journalist, Chin Wong, writes about using Ubuntu instead of Windows...
Ubuntu, a user-friendly version of Linux, has been running so nicely on my home personal computer that I decided to do an experiment. I wrote down a list of tasks I normally do with Windows XP and decided to see how many of them I could do on Linux.
Here’s what my list looked like:
- Write this column
- Browse the Web
- Get new software and install it
- Download files
- Play music and video files
- Burn CDs
- Print my documents.
Of all these, the first was the easiest. Ubuntu comes with OpenOffice.org 2.0, an excellent personal productivity suite that works much like Microsoft Office, with its own word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation programs. It reads and writes files in MS Word, RTF and a variety of other formats, so sharing your files with colleagues who use Windows or Mac PCs won’t be a problem. Unlike earlier versions, too, the program seems to load and run much faster.
Browsing was just as easy. Ubuntu lets you take your pick from several Web browsers, including Firefox. I experienced some glitches initially with YouTube—the videos were playing without sound—but that worked itself out after I rebooted the system.
For Windows users, downloading and installing new software on Linux can be rather daunting. Where’s the .EXE file? What do you do with the downloaded file (called a package, in Linux)? What file do you run? Fortunately, Ubuntu takes care of most of these problems for you. A program called Synaptic Package Manager takes care of finding new programs and installing them for you. These are sorted by program types, but the sheer number may be overwhelming. When I ran Synaptic Package Manager, it happily reported that there were more than 18,808 programs available, only 1,221 of which I had installed.
Downloading music and videos? Check. My favorite BitTorrent client, uTorrent, isn’t available on Linux but KTorrent, which works much the same way, already comes with Ubuntu. I put the program through its paces and found it held up quite nicely against my trusted file-sharing utility.
To play music and videos, Ubuntu comes with a number of multimedia players. For MP3 files, I like XMMS, which looks like WinAmp. Downloaded AVI files won’t play properly on the default Movie Player, but installing VLC Media Player (using Synaptic) will take care of that.
Burning CDs proved to be trickier.
Ubuntu is smart enough to detect a blank CD when it’s inserted and will ask if you’d like to burn a data or an audio CD. If you choose data, it will open a window into which you can drag files you’d like burned. Burning a data CD in this manner is simplicity itself, but it might be a bit too simple. The program, Nautilus, doesn’t even tell you how much disc space you’re using.
If you choose to burn an audio CD, Ubuntu will start a program called Serpentine, which enables you to add audio files to an audio CD compilation. The puzzling thing is, Serpentine will not accept MP3 files by default! All is not lost, however. You need to install the LAME encoder for the Gstreamer package (gstreamer0.8-lame), again using Synaptic. Once you’ve done that, Serpentine will burn your MP3 files into an audio CD without a hitch.
Burning a VCD from AVI files is even trickier. In very broad strokes, you’ll need to install K3b, a CD burning program, and a package called VCDimager, and tell K3b where it’s located. You’ll also need a command-line program called FFmpeg to convert AVI files to MPG, which is the format that K3b uses. Sounds complicated? It is, but it’s doable.
Finally, I wanted to print documents on my Epson Stylus C50 inkjet printer. Simple as it sounds, this last task almost stumped me. Even though Ubuntu detected my printer and said it was using the correct printer driver from a program called Gimp-print, my C50 kept spewing out garbled, unreadable text. Hours of online research about Gimp-print only confused me further with what seemed to be gobbledygook. Many sheets of wasted paper later, I remembered a snippet of information from a mailing list. It was written before the C50 driver was available and suggested that the driver for an earlier Epson model, the C44UX might work. I went to Ubuntu’s printer setup utility and told it to use that driver and—voila!—I was finally able to print. Frustration faded away and a sense of satisfaction set in. I had survived the weekend without Windows.
Column archives and blog at: www.chinwong.com
