RBucky » Kubuntu

Jono Bacon with Ubuntu: Community

admin — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 17:39:36 +0000

A couple of fast facts from Ubuntu’s Jono Bacon:
- when a new distro is released, there are over 68,000 concurrent UbuntuForums users
- there are over one million UnuntuForums users
- an estimated 12+ million Ubuntu users exist on the planet

Manage network cards and speed settings in Ubuntu

admin — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:00:24 +0000

Network cards can be tricky at times. Adjusting speed and finding out information about your card is accomplished with ethtool. With ethtool, you can query and change your network speed, auto-negotiation, and others. If you do not already have it installed, get ethtool

sudo apt-get install ethtool

A GUI client is not available, it is all command line. Start out by finding some information about your current card. Here is the syntax for your Terminal:

sudo ethtool -s eth0 speed [SPEED] duplex [DUPLEX]

Further examples for setting up your network card and fine tuning performance are as follows:

sudo ethtool -s eth0 speed 100 duplex full

sudo ethtool -s eth0 speed 10 duplex half

sudo ethtool -s eth0 autoneg off

The above examples convert your settings to a full duplex, half duplex, and disable auto-negotiation, respectively.

Installation and thoughts about Gloobus file preview

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:55:40 +0000

Gloobus is a file preview extension for the Gnome Desktop Environment. Sorry KDE fans, this is not for you. As you may have noticed, not all filetypes in Gnome have a thumbnail preview. This is where Gloobus comes in handy. It currently supports preview mode for around 40 different file types.

Images: jpeg / png / icns / bmp / svg / gif / psd / xcf
Documents: pdf / cbr / cbz / doc / xls / odf / ods / odp / ppt
Source: c++ / c# / java / javascript / php / xml / log / sh / python
Audio: mp3 / ogg / midi / 3gp / wav
Video: mpg /avi / ogg / 3gp / mkv / flv
Other: folders / ttf / srt / plain-text

Installation

The easiest method of installation in Karmic (Ubuntu 9.10) is the following.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gloobus-dev/gloobus-preview
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install gloobus-preview

During my installation, I noticed that my gloobus-preview installation required 172MB of new software, which was comprised of several open-office packages that I had previously remove to make room for Oo 3.2. A few caveats about this software. Viewing the previews of a file is not as straight forward as it may seem.

Screenshots

Gloobus preview for an .xml file

Gloobus preview for a .pdf

Gloobus configuration settings

Thoughts

There are two options for viewing file previews. The first option of right-clicking a file and selecting “Preview” did not function for my installation. There was not a preview option on the right-click menu. The second option of viewing the preview is to depress the space bar while hovering over the file. In actuality, the file has to be selected in Nautilus, then you can depress the space bar. I have the single-click file selection set on Nautilus, so that if I click the file to select it for preview, it will open.

I have to say, why couldn’t I just open the file? System resources and processor time? Yeah, ok. The preview is a great option for someone, but not me. I am not sure why you would want to create an extra step in looking at a file, when you could just open it. Now, if Gloobus had a slider so that images and files could be previewed and slid across the screen, I could see a benefit of not having to open up every application under the sun to view a variety of filetypes.

Gloobus Wiki | Gloobus Homepage

Display system information in Ubuntu Terminal with byobu

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:16:41 +0000

Byobu is a group of python and shell scripts that enhance the Terminal screen program into a more functional programmatic interface. Byobu provides a system status at the bottom of your Terminal window with Distribution version, uptime, load average, memory used, date, and time.

To invoke byobu, simply type in the name byobu without the “&” symbol. For help options, type the F9 key while in byobu.

Install OpenOffice 3.2 in Ubuntu

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:04:33 +0000

This post will provide you with the steps to uninstall OpenOffice from your current Ubuntu architecture and install the latest version of OpenOffice 3.2. The first step is to download the Open Office tar.gz from the web site http://download.openoffice.org/ or http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/. The first download location does not provide the .deb framework and may not work for your particular installation. If you are using this tutorial for Ubuntu, as the post title suggests, then the P2P download location is your best shot. If you are just darned lazy, you can download the .torrent here.

Extract the archive by right-clicking the file and clicking “Extract here.” Next, start the installation process with a few Terminal commands below.

sudo apt-get remove openoffice*.*

sudo dpkg -i ~/Desktop/OOO320_m12_native_packed-1_en-US.9483/DEBS/*.deb

sudo dpkg -i ~/Desktop/OOO320_m12_native_packed-1_en-US.9483/DEBS/desktop-integration/openoffice.org3.2-debian-menus_3.2-9472_all.deb

Installation only takes a couple of minutes and is pretty darned simple. Let me know how it goes.

source

How to install Guayadeque music player

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:50:08 +0000

Let’s face it. Installing software in Ubuntu is drop-dead simple if it is in the repositories. Unfortunately, Guayadeque music player is not in the repositories – an no, I cannot pronounce the name of the software either… I am going to call it Gua for short. The user interface is tabbed for efficiency and acts as a central resource player for podcasts, music, and more.

Features include:

* ability to play mp3, ogg, flac, wma, mpc, mp4, ape, etc
* Read and write tags in all supported formats
* Label your music with catalogues
* You can download album covers on the net or manually
* Music suggestion via last.fm
* File categorization by genre, artist, album
* shoutcast radios
* Allow to subscribe to podcasts and download all new episodes automatically or manually
* Dynamic or static play lists
* Tracks tag editor with automatically fetching of tags information for easily completion
* Lyrics downloads from different lyrics providers. etc
* Allow to resume play status and position when closed and reopened
* track rating system

Installing

It is pretty darned simple actually. Open up Terminal and get to it.


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dtl131/mediahacks

Next, update the source list


sudo apt-get update

Install Gua with the normal syntax in Terminal – you know, “apt-get install?”


sudo apt-get install guayadeque

There! You are all done. Go and enjoy your media player and get back to me.
source

Ubuntu switches Firefox default search provider to Yahoo

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:52:25 +0000

When you open up Firefox web browser in Ubuntu for the very first time, you will receive a variation of this page.

However, in a recent Lucid Lynx (v10.4) mailing list, the leader of the desktop team at Canonical, stated that the default search provider in Firefox will be set to Yahoo! versus the current and longstanding Google. The change was catalyzed by a more profitable revenue stream that what was being received from Google. It is an easy change to revert back to Google. However, I suspect a few irritations will be placed into the UbuntuForums soon.

How to download YouTube videos in Ubuntu

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:27:49 +0000

According to YouTube’s TOS, it is a violation to download the videos.
"You may access User Submissions for your information and personal use solely as intended through the provided functionality of the YouTube Website. You shall not copy or download any User Submission unless you see a “download” or similar link displayed by YouTube on the YouTube Website for that User Submission.”
However, what you probably did not realize is that whenever you view a YouTube or other video it is already downloaded to your computer. When you watch a video online, it downloads the file to your /tmp directory. All that you need to do is visit your directory and copy the file elsewhere on your computer. Simple as pie.

How to prevent /etc/resolv.conf from being overwritten

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 20:59:04 +0000

Your /etc/resolv.conf file informs the networking end of Ubuntu some important information about where to look when it connects to the network or internet. The default parameters included in the resolv.conf file include:

domain – used for determining domain services reside
search – tells what domain to search first
nameserver – a server that maps and translates domain names

Below is an example /etc/resolv.conf for a server that operates an internal nameserver using Bind9. the server.local is the nameserver name, the .30 address is the physical internal ip of the nameserver, and the following 2 nameservers of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are Google’s public nameservers.

domain server.local
search server.local
nameserver 10.1.10.30
nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4

If you are not operating a DHCP server on your network or your home router does not allow you to change your DNS settings, there is a method to allow you to manually change your /etc/resolv.conf file and keep the changes. You can change your resolv.conf file manually, but when you restart your computer, it will look towards the router for the network settings. In other words, it will overwrite your hard work.

Once you have manually edited your resolv.conf file and are happy with the changes, use the following command to prevent the file from being overwritten.


sudo chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

Revetting back to a writable file, or if you make errors in your file use this command


sudo chattr -i /etc/resolv.conf

Ubuntu User Day on January 23, 2010

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:43:06 +0000

The first Ubuntu User Day, on January 23, 2010. This will be a very informative one day session geared towards beginner and intermediate Ubuntu users, as well as people who are interested in using Ubuntu. There are 14 classes covering topics ranging from installing Ubuntu, finding help, equivalent programs, using IRC, getting involved in the Ubuntu Community and more. We have enlisted the help of many talented people to lead these classes throughout the day.

These classes will be taught in #ubuntu-classroom with questions being asked in #ubuntu-classroom-chat on irc.freenode.net. Please visit http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDays for a complete class list and schedule of classes.

There is also a Spanish version of Ubuntu User Days being offered on January, 23, 2010. Please visit Día Del Usuario Ubuntu athttps://wiki.ubuntu.com/DiaDelUsuarioUbuntu for more information on the Spanish Ubuntu User Day!

[source]