Ubuntu How To

Hello dear people,

You have noticed that your close, minimize and maximize buttons are on the left side of a title bar. Well a lot of you probably dislike this concept and would like to have it back on the right side. There is a solution for this! Follow this mini tutorial.

Step 1.

Press ALT+F2

type: gconf-editor

Hit Run.

Step 2.

New windows will appear and you need to follow the path:

apps>>metacity>>general>>button_layout

Step 3.

In this step you need to do very simple thing.

Instead of minimize, maximize,close: you need to input following:

menu:minimize,maximize,close

After this you only need to hit enter and you will see instantaneous change!

Pay attention that sign : should not be at the end when you are changing buttons side.

And that is it!

Enjoy,

Hello dear friends,

I just installed new Kubuntu 10.04 and like most of you i need to download whole bunch of programs on the begin. Well there is a program which i always install first. The name is - Yakuake KDE terminal emulator. The name is strange but function is absolutely great. Idea is that with one click you can get your Terminal which comes from the top of the screen.

Yakuake is living in your RAM memory so access is very fast.

Why i install this among first programs after clean OS install? Well reason is very simple and that is because you just need a lot of terminal work - program installations, updates, upgrade, adding repositories etc. It is always handy to have quick access to your terminal. It is

Yakuake is great program and above all very useful one. I just love it.

My rate: * * * * *
Program purpose: Terminal emulator
Download: Install it from repositories by typing: sudo apt-get install yakuake

Hello Ubuntu fans,

Happy day for all of us! :) Ubuntu 10.04 has been finally released. Many people asked me today when, when, when :D I said be patient i will eventually come! :) And finally www.ubuntu.com home page is changed and great Ubuntu is here.

Enjoy everybody download Ubuntu, talk and help each others!

Hello people,

There is less than one day until new Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx will be released. We are all biting nails and on tomorrow we will have it! :) Most of us will make clean install on our machines. I know that upgrade is easier thing to do but upgrade can often make other complications.

I know that lot of you, like myself, use CD/DVD to install your new Ubuntu. Pay attention that CD/DVD should be new and good quality. Try to avoid old CD/DVD and also RW which you were using quite often. Do not save money on quality disk because bad disk and bad copy can create you problems for which you will hate Ubuntu and still it is not Ubuntu's fault.

From 9.10 i changed my habit and now i am installing Ubuntu from USB flash. It is very easy to create and installation takes only about 2-3 minutes (in this time updating is excluded). There is a simple but nice tool in Ubuntu called Startup Disk Creator and in Kubuntu it's name is USB Startup Disk Creator.

You simply need to add .iso file, connect your USB device, format it and click Make startup disk! After a few minutes you will have USB flash ready to be booted.

If you want only to install from USB flash and also if you have lower capacity USB pick option "Discarded on shutdown, unless you save then elsewhere".

If you have higher capacity USB and you want to have usable Live OS where you can modify, add, remove programs and work pick option "Stored in reserved extra space" and add some volume. Default is 128MB.

And that is pretty much it. Reboot your system. Pick in booting options USB and in a less than a minute you will see your Live Ubuntu. Like is said installation from usb flash takes just a couple minutes and it is much more safer than installation from CD/DVD and plus it is eco-friendly. :)

From my previous experience Ubuntu will be on servers something about 3pm in GMT or something about 9am in east coast USA time.

Celebrate tomorrow :)

Enjoy and take care,

Hello dear people worldwide,

I hope you are all OK today. I will tell you a short story about batteries and Ubuntu/Kubuntu. In this tutorial i will tell some little secrets and truths from my personal experience and from other people's experiences. This is strictly about how to spare resources and extend you battery power between to charges.

So lets begin.

First thing i want to tell you is that Windows has better battery manager than Ubuntu/Kubuntu. I can not tell you the reason but in my experience, and according to other people, battery always lasts longer on Windows. Some people say that the reason for this is because Ubuntu is more desktop oriented rather than laptop. And that is quite possible. So if you see in Windows that your battery can last for four hours do not be surprised if in Ubuntu you see three hours. At the moment it is just like that.

For me there are four important thing that influence battery power - screen brightness, HDD usage, wireless and processor activity.

Screen brightness

Each and every laptop has options for screen brightness adjusting. In order to extend battery power lower your screen brightness to what is acceptable for you. In Kubuntu for example you have three power profiles in battery mode - powersave, aggressive powersave and extreme powersave. For each of them you have defined brightness level.

Conclusion: Keep your brightness on visually reasonable level. It is stupid to save to much if you can not see anything :)

HDD usage

HDD is one of the biggest battery consumers. Probably you have noticed that normally you HDD lamp is not blinking that often except when you are running programs for the first time, listening music or watching videos... That is because after you start program for the first time it is in your RAM memory. In order to save battery power it is good to have bigger RAM memory. Normally laptops with eg 512MB of RAM will consume more energy because of constant loading new contents in RAM memory. So if you have some extra money put it on RAM memory. :)

Conclusion: Try not to start new programs all the time, try to avoid watching videos and playing music. Try not to cut and copy big files from one place to another.

Wireless

I will not explain this to much since it is pretty self-explanatory. I can confirm that without wireless my battery lasted 10-15% longer.

Conclusion: Since you are using laptop i would be very stupid to say turn off your wireless and use cable for internet :) But in the case that you do not need wireless or you just do not have access to any AP turn it off and your battery will last longer.

Processor activity

Processor is also a big consumer. If you want battery juice to last longer be sure not to use processes which are to demanding. Also notice that Flash and Java applications are very CPU demanding. That means do not exaggerate with youtube videos :) and online video games. Be aware that if you talk via skype, camera also pushing processor up. I believe that you know that video editing, animation or picture rendering and some demanding processes in photo editing may be CPU consuming.

Conclusion: Avoid Flash and Java applications, online videos, picture or animation rendering, video editing and huge and complex operations in photo editing.

I read somewhere that 64bit systems are using more RAM memory and less CPU than 32bit systems. If this is true then 64bit are better than 32bit for laptop users. I can not give you explanation why but like i said i read it somewhere and it is not necessary to be absolute truth. :)

Well i hope this will help someone. This is just my response to one of the question i got on my chat.

Generally this might be useful for Windows users as well but they should exclude the part about processor and java and flash applications.

More tips about laptop batteries you can find you click here. you will see very useful instructions about how to prolong healthy period of your battery and how to use the most of it.

Enjoy,

Hello people,

I found one interesting article about Ubuntu's names history. Maybe you knew, but maybe not, Canonical always gives Ubuntu names which are dedicated to some animal. Probably you have notices that each release has two words in name and first letters are always the same. Also maybe you didn't notice that names are going alphabetically. In the article i found there is a whole list of Ubuntu releases.

Ubuntu releases:

- Warty Warthog 4.10
- Hoary Hedgehog 5.04
- Breezy Badger 5.10
- Dapper Drake 6.06
- Edgy Eft 6.10
- Feisty Fawn 7.04
- Gutsy Gibbon 7.10
- Hardy Heron 8.04
- Intrepid Ibex 8.10
- jaunty Jackalope 9.04
- Karmic Koala 9.10
- Lucid Lynx 10.04
- Maverick Meerkat 10.10

Source: blog.nizarus.org

A few days before the release of the new Ubuntu, here’s a guided tour through the Ubuntu family album with some annotations telling my story with the different versions.

Ubuntu Warty WARTHOG (4.10)

The first version of the Ubuntu distribution. For the history it was during a discussion between Robert Collins and Mark Shuttleworth that Mark has launched the name that will be adopted and adapted to any future versions of Ubuntu. Thus each version will have a code name composed of an adjective and an animal name.

Ubuntu Hoary HEDGEHOG (5.04)

Ubuntu Breezy BADGER (5.10)

March 2006 – The first time I heard about Ubuntu: One of my students brings me a bag with two original CDs, an installation CD and a live CD, and he tells me he got the CD free and they are sent home by mail at no charge. I take the live CD, I go home, but I can not find an equivalent to my very useful “Drakecenter” to configure the settings for my PC. I give up and I return to my sweet Mandriva.

Ubuntu Dapper DRAKE (6.06)

Many first time for this version. The first version with a long-term support. The first version that lags behind the initial schedule of release (a release every six months). The first version that takes the name of a bird :p All the following versions will follow in alphabetical order.

November 2006 – The first time I install Ubuntu: I am in training in France, I was given a PC and allowed to install my own OS. I take my Mandriva DVD and begin the installation, but can not complete the installation … the system does not detect the SATA disk of the PC. A colleague hands me a CD written on “Ubuntu 6.06″ and asks me to test it. I install the system and presto, SATA disk detected and I find myself with my new GNOME desktop, all in brown and orange icons while. My colleague tells me that tomorrow will bring me the CD of the new version just released a few days ago and tells me that the new version brings a huge number of improvements.

Ubuntu Edgy EFT (6.10)

November 2006 (continued): My colleague brought me back the CD, and presto new installation within 24 hours. During the installation my colleague introduced me to a spirit of this new distribution, its history, its advantages over others, etc. The installation is complete, the hard work starts: how to configure my machine and how to install my applications without my famous “Drakecenter”? With an internet connection available, my first (good) reaction was to ask my best friend (at that time – I mentioned google) to help me and obviously I found the website of the Francophone community. There a very big surprise… the documentation is freely available, forum registration is possible and it is free… (I say it was a surprise because at that time subscribing into the official forum of Mandriva was not free) long life to the free spirit, I am fascinated by this community and I joined it directly. Since that time I have not left my Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Feisty FAWN (7.04)

April 2007 – Community: I’m getting my bearings in this new distribution after years spent with Mandrake and Mandriva, and my “Drakecenter” (yes I repeat: p) don’t miss me more. Thanks to the forum and the documentation of the Francophone community all my questions (or almost) are answered. I discovered the concept of community and of course my first question was is are there a Tunisian community? Yes there is one, and it is two months old, but with no apparent activity (for now).

Ubuntu Gutsy GIBBON (7.10)

October 2007 – The community (bis): More and more e-mails circulating on the mailing list of our community and IRC meetings are held from time to time. Few days after the release of Ubuntu 7.10, ubuntu-tn community participates in the biggest FOSS event in Tunisia “Software Freedom Day – SFD”. Our community is within the landscape of FOSS communities in Tunisia and became one of the main actors.

Ubuntu Hardy HERON (8.04)

The second version with a long term support, as the first LTS version the code name uses a name of a bird. For me it is the version that has the most beautiful wallpaper by default

but not only that.

April 2008 – Purpose, approval of the community: Our community turns on more and more and we set a common goal: become an approved local community. The goal was reached July 22, 2008.

Ubuntu Intrepid IBEX (8.10)

Ubuntu Jaunty JACKALOPE (9.04)

The Jackalope, an imaginary animal, had to find it

Ubuntu Karmic KOALA (9.10)

Ubuntu in the clouds.

and the story history will continue with:

Ubuntu Lucid LYNX (10.04)

Ubuntu Maverick MEERKAT (10.10)

The Meerkat light and social.

—-

Hello,

Recently i stumbled on the information about Lubuntu project and since it sounds like Ubuntu i supposed that it is another hybrid of Ubuntu, something like Mint, and i didn't pay to much attention. Today i have seen that Lubuntu is in beta 2 stage and i became interested in it.

The catch is that this is not exactly the Ubuntu hybrid but more Ubuntu with LXDE GUI instead of GNOME.

LXDE

LXDE stands for Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment. This is the youngest of all GUIs for Linux. The main idea of this GUI is to provide the best performance on the machines with a very low resources. That means low CPU, RAM and HDD usage but great performance. If you are using Ubuntu or some other distribution and you have really old clunky machine this might be a great option to prolong it's agony :)

Lubuntu

Like i said before Lubuntu is an Ubuntu with LXDE desktop environment. As much i read on the internet Mark Shuttleworth invited LXDE project to become self-maintained project within the Ubuntu community.

More about Lubuntu and how to install it you can see if you click here

Update: Lubuntu Beta 3 released. If you want to download it click here.

Thank you.

Hello people,

In this post i will explain how to simply install LXDE desktop environment on your Ubuntu/Kubuntu 10.04. It is very easy and you need just about 10 minutes (depends on your internet connection) to install it.

Like I said in one of the previous posts Canonical was interested to put LXDE under Ubuntu development. That probably resulted in putting LXDE packages into default Ubuntu and Kubuntu repositories. I will show you how to install LXDE in Ubuntu Software center but it is very easy to do the same in other package managers.

As you probably know LXDE stands for Light X11 Desktop Environment and like that it is made to be extremely resource saving desktop environment. So if you have old computer or you just want to try this is a right thing for you.

So lets begin.

Step 1.

One way to install LXDE is to open your Terminal/Konsole and type:

sudo apt-get install lxde

When installation is finished go to step 4.

Step 2.

If you do not like typing then go to Ubuntu Software Center/ Adept/ Synaptic/ KPackageKit or some other package manager and in search type LXDE.

After you input LXDE list of packages will be narrowed and you will see only one package for installation. Click install and let process go on.

Step 3.

After several minutes installation will be finished and you will see screen like the following one.

Now you need to close Ubuntu Package manager and to log out from your desktop. You are doing this on the same place when you want to shut down your system.

Step 4.

After you have logged out you will be returned to log in console. Beside standard inputting of your username and password you need to do one another thing.