Ubuntu and Debian

Ubuntu and Debian are closely related. Ubuntu builds on the foundations of Debian architecture and infrastructure, with a different community and release process.

Debian is "the rock upon which Ubuntu is built".

Debian is a volunteer project to develop a GNU/Linux distribution. Debian was started more than a decade ago. It has several "packages" of free and open source applications and documentation.

Sponsored by Canonical, the Ubuntu project attempts to work with Debian to address the issues that keep many users from using Debian. Ubuntu provides a system based on Debian with frequent time-based releases, corporate accountability, and a more considered desktop interface. Ubuntu provides users with a way to deploy Debian with security fixes, release critical bug fixes, a consistent desktop interface, and to never be more than six months away from the latest version of anything in the open source world.

Most source packages in all Ubuntu components are copied unmodified from Debian, but other sources include apt-get.org, REVU, directly from organisations such as Blackdown and WineHQ, software which has been packaged by Ubuntu developers, and packages created specifically for Ubuntu.

Edubuntu - Go Education

Edubuntu is a Linux distribution targeted for schools and other educational environments. It is a complete operating system, built on the popular Ubuntu distribution, that includes an office suite, web browser, many educational applications, and much more. Edubuntu is designed for a teacher or network administrator to be able to setup a complete classroom quickly and easily.

Some useful links

Official Page

Download

Some screen shots of Edubuntu.

Inkscape Vector Illustrator - Open Source vector graphics editor

Inkscape Vector Illustrator is a free and open source drawing program similar to Illustrator and CorelDraw. It uses W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

"The name is made up of the two English words 'ink' and 'scape'. Ink is a common substance for drawings, and is used when the sketched work is ready to be permanently committed to paper, and thus evokes the idea that Inkscape is ready for production work. A scape is a view of a large number of objects, such as a landscape or ocean-scape, and thus alludes to the object-oriented nature of vector imagery. "

The latest stable version is 0.46.

To install Inkscape in Ubuntu type the following in terminal,

sudo apt-get install inkscape

Some screen shots of Inkscape Editor.

Software packaging formats in Linux

Linux uses some common formats to distribute software. The most common formats for the average Ubuntu user are:

1. Debian Packages (.deb)
2. Tarballs
3. Red Hat packages (.RPM)

Debian packages (.deb)

Debian Packages are the most common format you will encounter when installing software in Ubuntu. This is the standard software packaging format used by Debian and Debian derivatives. All of the software in the Ubuntu repositories is packaged in this format. Synaptic Package Manager, Add/Remove Applications, Aptitude, and apt-get handle the transaction with the repository behind the scenes.

Tarballs

Tarballs are a large collection of files assembled into a single archive file. The "tar" command is used to combine many files into a single file for archiving or easy distribution. The "gzip" command is used to compress the size of a file so that it takes up less space. A tarball is very similar to a .zip file on Windows or a .hqxfile on Macs. Tarballs have extensions like ".tar.gz", ".tar.bz2" or "TGZ".

RPMs

The Red hat Package Manager or .RPM format is specifically designed for easy installation and management of software packages. The format allows you to automatically install, upgrade and remove software packages. It tracks dependencies -- situations where one package requires another package in order to work correctly -- and will not install software if it depends on another package which is not installed.

Reference: https://help.ubuntu.com

Jaunty’s New Usplash Theme

Canonical has updated the boot splash screen (USplash) theme with a very nice one for Jaunty. As you can see in the image below, the logo is the same as it was in Ubuntu 8.10, but it's smaller and the loading bar was replaced with a thinner and nicer one (see the video below for more details). It looks more professional than the previous one, and the new loading bar has a gradient effect.

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) will be the last release of the Ubuntu operating system that will use the old USplash software. Starting with Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), Canonical will replace it with Red Hat's Plymouth.

Jaunty’s New Usplash Theme

Jaunty’s New Usplash Theme Video

Azureus - now called Vuze - Bittorrent Client

Vuze (formerly Azureus) is a free BitTorrent client used to transfer files via the BitTorrent protocol. Vuze is written in Java, and uses the Azureus Engine. The Azureus engine is released under the GNU General Public License, and is free software. However, parts of the recently added Vuze platform carry more restricted licensing terms, and it is no longer possible to install the Azureus engine using the latest installer without first accepting the Vuze license.

The Blue Poison Dart Frog (Dendrobates azureus) was chosen as the logo and named by co-creator Tyler Pitchford. This choice was due to Latin names of poison dart frogs being used as codenames for his development projects. In 2006 "Vuze" was released as an attempt to transform the client into a "social" client by a group of the original developers forming Azureus Inc., shortly to be renamed Vuze, Inc.

To install Vuze in Ubuntu, type the following in terminal.

sudo apt-get install vuze

Ubuntu Kernel

The kernel is the software that directly manages your hardware, allowing application libraries and software like GNOME and Firefox to run on many types of hardware without much difficulty. The kernel is loaded into memory when the system starts and remains in memory.

Monolithic Kernels

Monolithic kernels are kernels that have all of the device modules built directly into the kernel. The advantage of the Monolithic kernel is that it can communicate faster as the device modules are built in. Monolithic kernels are not flexible because a new kernel must be built to add any new peripheral devices. This difficulty often then resulted in a huge kernel as the tendency was to build in support for more devices than was needed to avoid having to build a kernel.

Modular Kernels

The Ubuntu kernel is modular. Modular kernels provide many device modules as separate loadable modules so the kernel is much smaller. Modular kernels are slower in communication to modules because they cannot talk with them directly. The Modular kernel is much more flexible and because of size reduces the boot time of the kernel. The modprobe and insmod commands can be used to load modules.

Kernel modules are object files (they have a .o extension) which were produced by the C compiler but were not linked to a completed executable. Thus the process of loading modules creates this executable link to the kernel. The modules are distributed with the kernel and can be found in /lib/modules.

Here is a view of /lib/modules with the default kernel directory.

ls /lib/modules

To verify which kernel you are running go to the command line and type this command:

uname -r

The difference that you will see is that the generic kernel is set for the i586 and the i686 architectures while the server kernel will focus on the i686 architecture. The reality is that the closer you can tune the kernel to your specific CPU and hardware, the better the performance you will receive.

Dia - the Diagram Editor

Dia is a free open source GTK-based diagram creation program for Gnome. It is similar to Visio. It was originally created by Alexander Larsson.

Dia can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity-relationship models, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and simple electrical circuits.

To install Dia in Ubuntu type the following in terminal.

sudo apt-get install dia

Screen shots of Dia Editor.

Tool Palette window

Diagram View -Ex: UML Diagram

RAR files in Ubuntu

"In computing, RAR is a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error recovery, and file spanning. It was developed by a Russian software engineer, Eugene Roshal (hence the name RAR: Roshal ARchive), and is currently licensed by win.rar GmbH as well as being an acronym for 'Rational And Reliable'."

If you need to uncompress a .rar archive in Ubuntu, you can download a program called unrar. In Ubuntu, you can install unrar by opening a terminal and typing

sudo apt-get install unrar

Then read the instructions by typing man unrar.

[UPDATE: to install unrar in Ubuntu you need the Multiverse Repository enabled.]

Basically, to unrar a file in Ubuntu, just navigate to the directory where your rar archive is and type

unrar x [filename.rar]

replacing [filename.rar] with the name of your rar archive.

BlueFish Web Development Editor

BlueFish is a GTK-based (Gnome-oriented) editor to write websites, scripts and programming code. It supports perl, Python, pHp, CSS, XML, Java, Javascript, C, SQL, and other formats.

Bluefish is developed in C/GTK+. Bluefish is relatively lightweight and has a low learning curve, while still providing many features to support development of websites.Bluefish is free software/open source and is released under the GPL licence.

Bluefish was started by Chris Mazuc and Olivier Sessink in 1997 to facilitate web development professionals on Linux platforms.The name Bluefish was chosen after a very cute logo (a child's drawing of a fish, in blue) was proposed on the mailinglist.

To install BlueFish in Ubuntu type the following in terminal.

sudo apt-get install bluefish

Useful links on BlueFish.

BlueFish Official Website

BlueFish Downloads

BlueFish Definitive Guide

Some screen shots of BlueFish Editor.

Audacity - "Free Audio Editor and Recorder"

Audacity is a free, open source application for recording and editing audio. Audacity is cross-platform.

Audacity was created by Dominic Mazzoni while he was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University. Mazzoni now works at Google, but is still the main developer and maintainer of Audacity, with help from many others around the world.

"You can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording"

The latest stable version is Audacity 1.2

Audacity is not installed by default in Ubuntu. To start using Audacity, install the package audacity from the Universe software channel. For more information on installing packages, see InstallingSoftware.

Useful links on Audacity.

Audacity Official Website

Audacity Download

Audacity Wiki

Some screenshots showing Audacity.

VLC media player - "the cross-platform media player and streaming server"

"VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. " - VLC Official Website.

It is an open source, free software media player written by the VideoLAN project. The latest version is VLC Media Player 0.9.9.

To install VLC in Ubuntu.

Open Synaptic (System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager). Search for vlc and install it. You should also install vlc-plugin-esd, mozilla-plugin-vlc (and libdvdcss2).You must make sure you have a "multiverse" repository activated.

Screen shots of VLC

Tomboy Notes -Simple note taking

Tomboy is a desktop note-taking application for GNOME. It is simple and easy to use, and allows you to organize the ideas and information you deal with every day. Tomboy has some very useful editing features to help you customize your notes, including:

• Highlighting Search Text
• Inline Spell Checking
• Auto-linking Web & Email Addresses
• Undo/Redo Support
• Font Styling & Sizing
• Bulleted Lists

Tomboy is by default installed in Ubuntu. You can find it in Applications -> Accessories -> Tomboy Notes

Some useful links on Tomboy.

Tomboy official site

Tomboy download

A screen shot of article being written in Tomboy. Notice the highlighting and the WikiText.

Do you know that Alien?

If you have an rpm file for a package you wish to install, and if you cannot find a .deb debian package in any of the Ubuntu repositories or elsewhere, you can use the alien package converter application to install the .rpm file.

Despite the large version number(latest version is 8.74), alien is still (and will probably always be) rather experimental software. It has been used by many people for many years, but there are still many bugs and limitations.

Alien should not be used to replace important system packages, like sysvinit, shared libraries, or other things that are essential for the functioning of your system. Many of these packages are set up differently by Debian and Red Hat, and packages from the different distributions cannot be used interchangably. In general, if you can’t uninstall the package without breaking your system, don’t try to replace it with an alien version.

To install alien type the following in terminal.

sudo apt-get install alien

To convert the package.rpm into a package.deb use the following in terminal. [should be done after installation of alien :)]

alien -d package-name.rpm 

Pidgin - The Universal Chat Client !!!

Pidgin is a graphical modular messaging client based on libpurple which is capable of connecting to Google Talk, AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, XMPP, ICQ, IRC, SILC, Novell GroupWise, Lotus Sametime, Zephyr, Gadu-Gadu, and QQ all at once. Pidgin is formally called Gaim(GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger). Both Pidgin and libpurple are free software, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

The name Pidgin was chosen in reference to the term "pidgin", which describes communication between people who do not share a common language.It also harks back to its original name, as the pigeon bird is a popular game bird and messenger*.

Pidgin is the default Instant Messaging client for Ubuntu. The latest version is Pidgin 2.5.5. Pidgin DOES NOT support voice and video.

Useful links on Pidgin

Official Website

Pidgin FAQ

Pidgin Download

Pidgin Ubuntu Documentation

Pidgin Contact Window

*Wikipedia

Record your desktop with recordmydesktop :))

recordMyDesktop is a program that captures audio and video data from a Linux desktop session, producing an Ogg-encapsulated Theora-Vorbis file.

A picture is worth a thousand words, especially when you're teaching someone how to do something on a computer, and recordMyDesktop is a great little Linux application for creating screencasts. You can find many Ubuntu/Linux related screencasts in YouTube showing all kinds of captures, including Beryl/Compiz in action.

As such, the program is separated in two parts; a simple command line tool that performs the basic tasks of capturing and encoding and an interface that exposes the program functionality in a usable way. The commandline tool (which essentially is recordMyDesktop), is written in C, while the frontend (gtk-recordMyDesktop), is written in python and pyGtk.

To install recordMyDesktop in Ubuntu type the following in the terminal.

sudo apt-get install recordmydesktop

Useful links on recordmydesktop

Official Website

User Guide

recordmydesktop Interface

GParted - The Partition Editor

GParted (abbreviated as GPT) is a GTK+ frontend to GNU Parted and the official GNOME Partition Editor application. It is FREE!!!

It is used for creating, deleting, resizing, moving, checking and copying partitions, and the file systems on them. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganizing disk usage, copying data residing on hard disks and mirroring one partition with another (disk imaging).

To install GParted in Ubuntu open a terminal window and type in:

sudo apt-get install gparted

Video tutorial for installing GParted in Ubuntu.



The GParted project provides a live operating system including GParted which can be written to a Live CD, a Live USB and other media.

Useful Links on GParted.

GParted official website

GParted Live CD, Live USB Downloads

Partition Basics - Ubuntu Wiki

GParted Main screen

Resize/move widget


Features

GRUB - GRand Unified Boot Loader

GNU GRUB is a Multiboot boot Loader. GRand Unified Bootloader, was originally designed and implemented by Erich Stefan Boleyn.

"Briefly, boot loader is the first software program that runs when a computer starts. It is responsible for loading and transferring control to the operating system kernel software (such as the Hurd or the Linux). The kernel, in turn, initializes the rest of the operating system (e.g. GNU). "
- GNU GRUB

During installation, Ubuntu automatically installs GRUB to the Master Boot Record (MBR) of your hard drive. Handily enough, it also detects any other operating systems such as Windows and adds entries in GRUB as appropriate. If you have a specific requirement not to install GRUB to the MBR, you need to install using the Alternate disc, which will allow you to specify the install location for GRUB.

Useful links on GRUB.

GRUB FAQ

GRUB Development

Ubuntu GRUB Howto

GNU GRUB showing Ubuntu and Windows flavors of OS

Image source: http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/1682/grub4kt.jpg

What is GNOME?

The GNOME website says "The GNOME project provides two things: The GNOME desktop environment, an intuitive and attractive desktop for users, and the GNOME development platform, an extensive framework for building applications that integrate into the rest of the desktop."

It is pronounced as /gəˈnoʊm/

The name “GNOME” was proposed as an acronym of GNU Network Object Model Environment. The reason being that the original intention of GNOME was to create a distributed object framework similar to Microsoft's OLE. But now their vision is totally different. So the acronym is not used any more.

The default desktop environment for Ubuntu is GNOME. The latest version is GNOME 2.26 and will be shipped with Ubuntu 9.04.

Some of the useful links on GNOME are,

GNOME Official Website

GNOME Projects

GNOME Development

The new GNOME 2.26

Reference: Wikipedia-GNOME

File Systems in Linux World

A filesystem is a particular way of storing and organizing files on a storage device such as a hard disk, and is an important part of an operating system. Without a filesystem, accessing and storing files would be impossible.

There are different types of filesystem. The most common are:

ext2 and ext3: these are usually found on GNU/Linux operating systems. Ubuntu uses ext3 as its default filesystem.

FAT16 and FAT32: these are Microsoft Windows filesystems found on older computers. If you would like to share data between two computers, the FAT32 format is a good choice.

NTFS: this is the filesystem type used by more modern versions of Microsoft Windows.

HFS+: this is the Mac OS X default filesystem type.

For more details refer to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LinuxFilesystemsExplained

Hello It's Compiz Fusion

Compiz Fusion is available as a separate Windows Manager, to allow advanced desktop effects such as the rotating cube desktop ,Ring switcher, firepaint, 3D Windows to mention a few. Many Ubuntu users choose to run Compiz, which is quite fast in Ubuntu. To Install:

sudo apt-get install compiz compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-extra emerald librsvg2-common

The offical website can be found http://www.compiz-fusion.org/

Below are some videos from YouTube showing features of Compiz Fusion in Ubuntu 8.10. Try it!!!

Ubuntu Logo Font - How to get it?

Ever wanted to type with the font that Ubuntu uses for its logo? Its simple. To install the font type the following in terminal.

sudo apt-get install ttf-ubuntu-title

Alternatively you can also install the font from Ubuntu Title

You can then open up GIMP Image Editor(Make sure to select font as 'Ubuntu-Title') and try it.

Nautilus - The File Manager for GNOME Desktop

Nautilus is the official file manager and desktop shell for the GNOME desktop. Nautilus is a free software and is released under GNU Lesser General Public license. Nautilus is equivalent to Windows Explorer and provides all the facilities that you need to work with files, folders, and network file shares.

Each option opens Nautilus within a specific context. The Nautilus contexts associated with each menu option are:

• Home Folder: Opens with a view of your home directory.

• Desktop: Displays your desktop directory in your home directory.

• Computer: Shows your computer disk drives

• CD/DVD Creator: Opens a file manager window that you can drag files into and create a CD or DVD.

• Network Servers: Browses network file shares. (Network file shares are folders that appear to be on your Ubuntu computer, but are really located on another machine and are accessible via a network.).

• Connect to Server: Connect to a specific file share.

• Recent Documents: Provides shortcuts to documents and files you've recently accessed.

The offical website can be found here.

Nautilus Offical Website

Icon View

List View

Wubi - Windows based Ubuntu Installer

Wubi (Windows-based Ubuntu Installer) is an offical Windows-based software installer for Ubuntu. You can install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other Windows application, in a simple and safe way. Wubi can be installed in the following Windows flavours - Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista. It is FREE!!!

You can get the installer from http://wubi-installer.org/

For installation procedure follow instructions in the following link.

Wubi Installation

If you want to get involved in Wubi Development then you have the following link.

Wubi Development

The Wubi guide can be found in Wubi guide

So what are you waiting for? Go and try Ubuntu in Windows platform.

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope - On the way

The Ubuntu developers are moving quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. The Jaunty Jackalope is scheduled to release on April 23rd 2009. Are you guys waiting for 'the day'. Let us look at some of the exiting features and inclusions in the new OS.

Note: The snapshots shown here are from Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha6.

New Login screen

New Notification System

For more information on new notification system please visit to the link below.

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/253

Totem Plugins

New Brasero Interface

New Ekiga Interface

OpenOffice.Org 3.0

GIMP 2.6.5

Graphics formats in Ubuntu

Image file formats are developed to serve a specific technical purpose (lossless compression, for example, where the file size is reduced without sacrificing image quality) or to meet a need for a proprietary format for competitive reasons. Many file formats are covered by one or more patents. For example, the GIF format had fallen into disfavor with the open-source crowd because the patent holder waited a while before deciding to enforce his patent rights rather than being upfront with requests for patent royalties. If you want to view or manipulate an image, you need to identify the file format to choose the proper tool for working with the image. The file’s extension is your first indicator of the file’s format. The graphics image formats supported by the applications included with Ubuntu include

. .bmp—Bitmapped graphics, commonly used in Microsoft Windows
. .gif—CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format
. .jpg—Joint Photographic Experts Group
. .pcx—IBM Paintbrush
. .png—Portable Network Graphics
. .svg—Scalable Vector Graphics
. .tif—Tagged Image File format

Reference: Sams Ubuntu Unleashed

Sound Formats in Ubuntu

A number of formats exist for storing sound recordings. Some of these formats are associated with specific technologies, and others are used strictly for proprietary reasons. Ubuntu supports several of the most popular sound formats, including

. raw (.raw)—More properly known as headerless format, audio files using this format contain an amorphous variety of specific settings and encodings. All other sound files contain a short section of code at the beginning—a header—that identifies the format type.

. MP3 (.mp3)—A popular, but commercially licensed, format for the digital encoding used by many Linux and Windows applications. MP3 is not supported by any software included with Ubuntu (which advises you to use the open source Ogg-Vorbis format instead).

. WAV (.wav)—The popular uncompressed Windows audio-visual sound format. It is often used as an intermediate file format when encoding audio.

. Ogg-Vorbis (.ogg)—Ubuntu’s preferred audio encoding format. You enjoy better compression and audio playback, and freedom from lawsuits when you use this open-source encoding format for your audio files.

To learn more about the technical details of audio formats, read Chris Bagwell’s Audio Format FAQ at http://www.cnpbagwell.com/audio.html.

Reference: Sams Ubuntu Unleased

Software Repositories in Ubuntu

Ubuntu uses software repositories to get information about available software that can be installed onto your system. By default, it only allows access to a small portion of software (even though this software is officially supported by Ubuntu). However, Ubuntu is based on a much older Linux distribution called Debian. Debian has access to more than 17,000 different packages, which means that Ubuntu can have access to these packages, too.

There are four major package repository types in Ubuntu.

• main - Supported by Canonical. This is the major part of the distribution.
• restricted - Software not licensed under the GPL (or similar software license), but supported by Canonical.
• universe - Software licensed under the GPL (or similar license) and supported by users.
• multiverse - Software not licensed under the GPL (or similar license), but supported by users.

10 Useful shortcuts in Ubuntu

1. Switch to the next/previous workspace

If you make use of the workspace very frequently, you can easily switch between different workspaces by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Left/Right Arrow. The Left key brings you to the previous workspace while the Right key brings you to the next adjacent.

2. Move the current window to another workspace

By pressing Shift+ Ctrl + Alt + Left/Right Arrow, you can easily move your current window to another workspace in the specified direction. This keyboard shortcut works very well with the one mentioned above. If you have the habit of opening many applications/windows when doing your work, but don’t like to see your desktop and menubar cluttered with all the application windows, you can use this shortcut key to move your applications to another workspace and get your desktop organized.

3. Show the desktop

Ctrl + Alt + D enables you to quickly minimize all windows and give focus to the desktop. When all windows are minimized, this shortcut can also maximize all the windows to their previous state.

4. Keyboard shortcut for the mouse right-click

In most applications, you can always right-click on the mouse to access the options menu. On the keyboard, you can simply press Shift + F10 to achieve this ‘right-click‘ effect

5. Restart session and recover from crashes

There are very few instances where Ubuntu will crash totally. But if it does, you can press Ctrl + Alt + Backspace to restart the session, and 90% of the time, it will recover from the crashes.

6. Lock the screen quickly

If you need to leave your workstation for a while, you can quickly lock up your screen by pressing Ctrl + Alt + L and prevent unauthorized access by others.

7. Switch between windows in the reverse direction

Alt + Tab is a common shortcut key that allow you to switch between open windows. But do you know that by including the ‘Shift‘ button, you can reverse the windows switching direction? This is useful when you press Alt + Tab too fast and passed the window that you want to switch to. Simply press down the ‘Shift‘ button to go back to the previous window in the switch cycle.

8. Move windows with arrow keys

Press Alt+F7 to activate the Move window function and use any arrows key (up, down, left, right) to move the window around the screen.

9. Show hidden files

Most of the time, you won’t need to view the hidden files in your home folder, but in the event that you need to, you can press Ctrl + H inside the Nautilus (the file manager for Ubuntu) to show all hidden files.

10. Show file properties without right-clicking the mouse

The conventional way to view a file/folder properties is to right-click the mouse and select ‘Properties‘. Now you can just press Alt + Enter to get the Properties window to appear.

Reference: MakeUseOf.com

What is "FSlint"?

A utility to fix problems with filesystems' data, like duplicate files.

FSlint is a toolkit to clean filesystem lint. It includes a GTK+ GUI as well as a command line interface and can be used to reclaim disk space.

It has an interface for uninstalling packages, and it can find things like:

• Duplicate files
• Problematic filenames
• Temporary files
• Bad symlinks
• Empty directories
• Nonstripped binaries

Homepage: http://www.pixelbeat.org/fslint/

Ubuntu/Linux related useful websites

http://www.ubuntu.com—The place to start when looking for news, information, and documentation about installing, configuring, and using Ubuntu.

http://distrowatch.com/ - All about tracking linux distros.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/—Home page for the GRUB boot loader.

http://www.x.org/—The X.Org Foundation, home of X11R7.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/—The Linux Questions site, a useful set of community forums that can help you find answers to your more frustrating problems.

http://www.gnome.org/—The launch point for more information about GNOME,
links to new clients, and GNOME development projects.

http://www.compiz.org/—The official page for the Compiz project, including Compiz Fusion, a set of plugins for the Compiz window manager.

http://www.xfce.org/—The official home page for the XFce project.

http://www.kde.org/—The place to get started when learning about KDE and the latest developments.

http://www.codeweavers.com—Home of the popular crossover office; required if you want to try to run Photoshop under Linux.

http://www.gimp.org—Home page of The GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program).

What is Wine?

For those who cannot live without a particular Windows application but do not like the equivalents, there is always the option to use Wine as a compatibility layer for the application. Wine is the acronym(recursive) for "Wine Is Not an Emulator". Note that Wine is not an application you run. Wine enables your computer to run Windows applications.

Detailed instructions for installing Wine on Ubuntu 8.04 and Ubuntu 8.10 can be found in the following link.
http://www.winehq.org/download/deb

Other useful links on Wine are below.

Wine FAQ
Wine Features
Wine Forums

Alternatives for apt-get

Ubuntu has an alternative to apt-get called aptitude. It works in pretty much the same way as apt-get with the exception that aptitude also includes any recommended packages on top of the requested packages when installing or upgrading. You can use aptitude exactly as you would use apt-get, so for instance you could issue the command aptitude update and it would update the repository information. However, you can also issue just the command aptitude without any options, which brings up a text-based package manager that you can use to select packages.

Reference: Ubuntu Unleashed 2008 Edition

Environment Variables in Ubuntu

A number of in-memory variables are assigned and loaded by default when the user logs in. These variables are known as shell environment variables, which can be used by various commands to get information about your environment, such as the type of system you are running, your home directory, and the shell in use. Environment variables are used by Linux operating systems to help tailor the computing environment of your system, and include helpful specifications and setup, such as default locations of executable files and software libraries.

At the command line, you can use the env or printenv commands to display these environment variables.

Reference: Ubuntu Unleashed 2008 Edition

Update Manager - Easy way to get updates installed

You should update your software as soon as you log in to Ubuntu for the first time to benefit from any available security and bug fixes. In that example, use the Update Manager (System->Administration->Update Manager), which is really a GUI wrapper for the command apt-get. In the background, Ubuntu automatically polls the software repositories configured as standard to determine whether any updates are available. When it detects that new versions of installed software are available, a pop-up message appears in the upper-right corner of your screen. By clicking the Updates icon in the panel, you automatically open Update Manager, but not before you are prompted for your password (because you are about to make a systemwide change).

Another way of updating your system, and one that can be quicker than Update Manager, is to use the command line. If you go to the Applications ->Accessories->Terminal option, a blank screen displays. This is the command line (commonly referred to as the terminal) and is one of the most powerful features of Linux.

Here we want to issue the following command:

sudo apt-get update

This command tells the package management utility apt-get to check in with the configured repositories and check for any updates for installed software.

Reference: Ubuntu Unleashed 2008 Edition

Who is Mark Shuttleworth?

Mark Richard Shuttleworth is none other than the founder of Ubuntu Project. He is also the founder of Canonical Ltd, which is a private company. Mark Shuttleworth is an African entrepreneur with a love of technology, innovation, change and space flight. He currently lives in London.(of course he has dual citizenship). In April 2002 Mark realised a lifelong dream to fly in space. He is the second self funded space tourist in earth. He is one of the architects of Launchpad.

He says "Linux is a platform for people, not just specialists". Check out his interview on 22 May 2008 "The Guardian" newspaper (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/22/internet.software).

Other resources:

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/

http://www.spacefacts.de/bios/international/english/shuttleworth_mark.htm

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarkShuttleworth#About%20Me

The sudo command

If you have come across Linux, you are probably aware of the command line. As you will find as you work through this book, Ubuntu puts a lot of reliance upon the sudo command while working at the command line. This command is used in front of other commands to tell Ubuntu that you want to run the specified command with super user powers. This sounds really special, and it actually is. When you work using the sudo command, you can make wide-ranging changes to your system that impact the way it runs. Be extra careful when running any command prefixed with sudo, however; a wrong option or incorrect command can have devastating consequences.

The use of sudo is straightforward. All you have to do is enter it like this:

sudo command commandoptions

Just replace the word command with the command that you want to run, along with any options. For example, the following command opens your xorg.conf file in vi and enables you to make any changes as the super user before being able to save it:

sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Whenever you execute a command using sudo, you are prompted for your password. This is the same password that you use to log in to Ubuntu, so it is important that you remember it.

Sometimes, however, you may want to work with a classic root prompt instead of having to type sudo in front of every command (perhaps if you have to work with lots of commands at the command line that require super-user access, for example). sudo enables you to do this by using the sudo -i command. Again, you are prompted for your password, which you should enter, after which Ubuntu gives you the standard root prompt, as follows:

#

From here, you can execute any command without having to keep entering sudo.

Reference: Ubuntu Unleashed 2008 Edition

Ubuntu’s built-in error logs to help diagnose any unseen faults

Ubuntu has a command that enables you to see detailed messages that are output directly by the operating system: the dmesg command, which is commonly used with the grep command to filter output. The dmesg command takes its output directly from the /var/log/messages file, so you can choose to either run dmesg directly or enter less /var/log/messages instead. The output is fairly detailed.

You might find it easier to generate a file with the dmesg output by using the following command:

dmesg > dmesg.txt

This takes the output from the dmesg command and stores it in a new text file called dmesg.txt. You can then browse it at your leisure using your choice of text editor such as vi or emacs. You can even use the less command, like so:

less dmesg.txt

You might find what appear to be errors at first glance, but some errors are not really problems (for example, if a piece of hardware is configured but not present on your system).

Thanks to Google, troubleshooting is no longer the slow process it used to be. You can simply copy and paste error messages into Google and click Find to bring up a whole selection of results similar to the problem you face. Remember, Google is your friend, especially http://www.google.com/linux, which provides a specialized search engine for Linux. You can also try http://marc.info, which browses newsgroup and mailing list archives. Either way, you are likely to come across people who have had the same problem as you.

Reference: Ubuntu Unleashed 2008 Edition

Ubuntu Glossary

applet

An applet is a small, interactive application that resides within a panel, for example the CD Player. Each applet has a simple user interface that you can operate with the mouse or keyboard.

desktop

The part of the GNOME Desktop where there are no interface graphical items, such as panels and windows.

desktop background

The image or color that is applied to your desktop.

desktop object

An icon on your desktop that you can use to open your files, folders, and applications. You can use desktop objects to provide convenient access to files, folders, and applications that you use frequently.

DNS name

A unique alphabetic identifier for a computer on a network.

drawer

A drawer is a sliding extension to a panel that you can open or close from a drawer icon.

file extension

The final portion of a file's name, after the last period (.) in the name. For example, the file extension of the file picture.jpeg is jpeg.

The file extension can identify the type of a file. Nautilus file manager uses this information when to determine what to do when you open a file.

format
To format media is to prepare the media for use with a particular file system. When you format media, you overwrite any existing information on the media.

GNOME-compliant application

An application that uses the standard GNOME programming libraries is called a GNOME-compliant application. For example, Nautilus file manager and gedit text editor are GNOME-compliant applications.

IP address

A unique numeric identifier for a computer on a network.

keyboard shortcut

A keyboard shortcut is a key or combination of keys that provides an alternative to standard ways of performing an action.

launcher

A launcher starts a particular application, executes a command, or opens a file. A launcher can reside in a panel or in a menu.

menubar

A menubar is a bar at the top of an application window that contains the menus for the application.

MIME type

A Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) type identifier the format of a file. The MIME type enables applications to read the file. For example, an email application can use the image/png MIME type to detect that a Portable Networks Graphic (PNG) file is attached to an email.

mount

To mount is to make a file system available for access. When you mount a file system, the file system is attached as a subdirectory to your file system.

pane

A pane is a subdivision of a window. For example, the Nautilus window contains a side pane and a view pane.

preference tool

A dedicated software tool that controls a particular part of the behavior of the GNOME Desktop.

shortcut keys

Shortcut keys are keystrokes that provide a quick way to perform an action.

stacking order

The stacking order is the order in which windows are stacked on top of each other on your screen.

statusbar

A statusbar is a bar at the bottom of a window that provides information about the current state of what you are viewing in the window.

symbolic link

A special type of file that points to another file or folder. When you perform an action on a symbolic link, the action is performed on the file or folder to which the symbolic link points.

toolbar

A toolbar is a bar that contains buttons for the most commonly-used commands in an application. Typically, a toolbar appears under a menubar.

Uniform Resource Identifier

A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a string that identifies a particular location in a file system or on the Web. For example, the address of a web page is a URI.

Uniform Resource Locator

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is the address of a particular location on the Web.

view

A Nautilus component that enables you to display a folder in a particular way. For example, Nautilus contains an icon view which enables you to display the contents of a folder as icons. Nautilus also contains a list view which enables you to display the contents of a folder as a list.

workspace

A workspace is a discrete area in the GNOME Desktop in which you can work.

Reference: Ubuntu 8.10 Help Center Introduction to Desktop Glossary

Directories and File Systems

Linux and Unix file systems are organised in a hierarchical, tree-like structure. The highest level of the file system is the / or root directory. In the Unix and Linux design philosophy, everything is considered a file - including hard disks, partitions and removable media. This means that all files and directories (including other disks and partitions) exist under the root directory.

For example, /home/pondy/cheeses.html shows the correct full path to the cheeses.html file that exists in the pondy directory which is under the home directory, which in turn, is under the root (/) directory.

Underneath the root (/) directory, there is a set of important system directories that are commonly used across most Linux distributions. The following is a listing of common directories that are directly under the root (/) directory:

• /bin - important binary applications
• /boot - files that are required to boot the computer
• /dev - the device files
• /etc - configuration files, startup scripts, etc...
• /home - local users' home directories
• /lib - system libraries
• /lost+found - provides a lost+found system for files that exist under the root (/) directory
• /media - mounted (loaded) removable media such as CDs, digital cameras, etc...
• /mnt - mounted filesystems
• /opt - provides a location for optional applications to be installed
• /proc - special dynamic directory that maintains information about the state of the system, including currently running processes
• /root - root user home directory, pronounced 'slash-root'
• /sbin - important system binaries
• /srv - provides a location for data used by servers
• /sys - contains information about the system
• /tmp - temporary files
• /usr - applications and files that are mostly available for all users to access
• /var - variable files such as logs and databases

Reference: Ubuntu 8.10 Help Center Directories and FIle Systems

Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop Edition - Step by Step Installation

Prerequisites

You will need the Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop ISO image that corresponds to your hardware architecture, and which can be downloaded from here. When the download is over, burn the ISO image with your favorite CD/DVD burning application (Brasero on Ubuntu or Nero, CDBurnerXP, Roxio on Windows) on a blank CD at 8x speed. Insert or leave the CD in your CD/DVD-ROM device, and reboot the computer in order to boot from the CD. Hit the F8 or F12 key (depending on your BIOS) to select the CD/DVD-ROM as the boot device. Also You start by researching and documenting your hardware. This information will prove helpful later on during the installation.

Installation Procedure

1. Select your language when asked.

2. Select the second option "Install Ubuntu," and hit the “Enter” key.


3. Wait for the CD to load into RAM.


4. When the installer appears, you are able to select your native language for the installation process. Click the “Forward” button to continue.


5. The second screen will feature a map of the Earth with little red dots, so you can select your city/country. Upon the selection of your current location, the time for the final system will adjust accordingly. You can also select your current location from the drop down list situated at the bottom of the window. Click the “Forward” button after you have selected your desired location.


6. On the third screen, you will be asked to select the keyboard layout that suits you best (default is U.S. English). You can also test your keyboard on the small text input field situated at the bottom of the window. Click the “Forward” button when you have finished with the keyboard configuration.


7. The hard disk partitioning is an easy task, so I am quite sure you will handle it too. You have three options here:

a. If you want to keep your existing operating system (e.g. Dual boot with Windows XP), select the first option: "Guided - resize the partition and use the freed space." This option will appear if you have another operating system installed, such as Microsoft Windows. Remember that, after the installation, the Windows boot loader will be overwritten by the Ubuntu boot loader!

b. If you want to delete your existing operating system, or the hard drive is already empty and you want to let the installer automatically partition the hard drive for you, select the second option, "Guided - use entire disk."

c. Manual is the third choice and it is recommended for advanced users.

WARNING: Be aware that all the data on the selected hard drive or partition will be ERASED and IRRECOVERABLE.

Click the “Forward” button to continue with the installation.


8. On this screen, you must do exactly what the title says. Fill in the fields with your real name, the name you want to use to log in on your Ubuntu OS (also known as the “username”), the password and the name of the computer (automatically generated, but can be overwritten). Also at this step, there's an option called “Log in automatically.” If you check the box on this option, you will be automatically logged in to the Ubuntu desktop.
Click the “Forward” button.


9. This is the final step of the installation. Here, you can select to install the boot loader on another partition or hard drive than the default one.


10. Click the “Install” button to install Ubuntu.


11. The Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) operating system will be installed.


12. After approximately 8 to 15 minutes (depending on your computer's specs), a pop-up window will appear, notifying you that the installation is complete, and you need to restart the computer in order to use the newly installed Ubuntu operating system.Click the “Restart Now” button.


13. The CD will be ejected, remove it and press the “Enter” key to reboot.


14. The computer will be restarted and, in a few seconds, you will see the Ubuntu login screen. Input your username and password.


15. This gets to Ubuntu 8.10 default desktop environment.


Reference: http://www.softpedia.com/