Upon installation you might not immediately notice the improvements. They are there and eventually these improvements will impress you. So instead of you having to wade through the distribution to witness these improvements, I will highlight those that will have certain impact on the user…whether directly or indirectly.

Bluetooth Support

You might be wondering why I am starting with a feature that isn’t used by everyone. The main reason is because this is the update that might excite users (at least mobile users) the most. With the latest release not only has bluetooth support matured, but tethering support has become almost foolproof! So now that laptop can tether to your cell via usb. But the improvements don’t end there. One of the issues, prior to 12, that plagued Linux bluetooth users was battery drain. Now bluetooth services are run “on demand” so that thirty seconds after the last bluetooth device was used, the service is suspended.

Network manager improvements

Another large step forward is with the Network Manager. Although this is the best of the best Linux network management tools, it still had room for improvement. What has been improved is:

• IpV6 support.
• Better shared, static, and system-wide connection support.
• Easy to configure bluetooth tethering

Out of the box tablet support

This will come to the surprise of anyone that has had to get tablet support working with Linux. Fedora 12 will work without having to muck around with xorg.conf! Tablet pressure sensitivity, handwriting recognition, and many more features will work, out of the box! This is big news for anyone who wants to use a tablet PC with Linux.

Updates improvements

For those of you who grow more and more frustrated with the constant barrage of updates with a Fedora distribution, you will be happy to know that Fedora has made some serious improvements. First RPM now uses XZ compression (instead of gzip), so packages are smaller. Also, the Presto plugin is now enabled by default. Presto uses RPM deltas which only use files that have changed. Between XZ and deltas file downloads are considerably smaller and updating is noticeably faster.

Bug reporting

One thing to keep in mind is that Fedora is a cutting edge distribution, so bug reporting should be a task most Fedora users follow through with. Fedora 12 makes this task very simple. When an application crashes data is automatically collected (without the user having to run back traces and such). With the help of the new Abrt tool, reporting bugs is about as simple as possible. The user doesn’t even have to go to Bugzilla to report a bug!

Graphics

There have been a number of improvements for graphics with Fedora 12. One of the more important updates is the experimental drivers that give 3D support for graphics cards without the use of proprietary drivers.

Clustered Samba

Another exciting addition is the GFS2 Fedora 12 Samba allows you to  have multiple instances of smbd across different nodes of a cluster. With this you can export a gfs2 filesystem through one or more nodes in the cluster. Clustered Samba will provide high-availablity of the Samba service.

Final thoughts

This is just a taste of what Fedora 12 is brining to the Linux table. There is a veritable plethora of new features available with Fedora 12. For a complete list, take a look at this Wiki page for an all encompassing  look at the feature list.

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Scientists at University of California, Berkley have actually accomplished this task. They have successfully attached tiny electrodes and other electronic parts on to living insects. Through these implants, the bug can now be maneuvered through a laptop.

The engineering principle behind is not very difficult to understand. Since we human beings can’t exactly one-up nature on engineering, this is a sort of hack in to the system. It’s like installing a malware that takes control of your computer and then the malware creator manipulates your system through the implant.

The bugs are implanted with the electronic parts at the pupal stage or around the time when they retreat inside the pupa. This way, they actually grow up with parts implanted in them. Then when they are fully grown and take flight, the electrodes transmit electrical pulses in to their nervous system and muscles. So in case the controller wants the bug to veer left during flight, the electrodes charge the left  muscles to make them work harder and the body turns left. Is it is just me or does this sound eerily similar to the way human beings were controlled in The Matrix?

The bug that is being shown off at this point is a Beetle. The developers of the system, Hirotaka Sato and Michel Maharbiz, talked to the Neuroscience Magazine and told them that they had successfully demonstrated remote control in free flight through an implantable radio-equipped neural transmitter.

Attempts to do things similar to this have been going on for several years now and it has already been tried on insects like cockroaches. But this the first time ever that man has been able to extend this kind of control on an insect. This is not necessarily a good thing though. However, as with every scientific achievement, what comes off it will depend on how we use it. And the identity of the people who are funding it already gives us a large enough hint as to what the purpose of this project might be.

The project is being funded by the Pentagon. More precisely, it is being funded by the US Defense Research Project Agency (DARPA) and they themselves have been trying to build a Nano Air Vehicle or NAV.

thankfully this is still in the realm of Sci Fi

These NAVs would be small enough (less that 7.6cm and 10g) to go to places undetected and carry out reconnaissance missions in urban areas mainly. Even though we have advanced enough in the field of nano-technology to make the insect-implants, we are still unable to build something like that completely on our own.

So the military hopes that the beetles would act like micro air vehicles and give them unprecedented advantages during war.

Thankfully, nothing like that is possible immediately because the control  implant is all that the insects can carry during flight. Any more weight and they will not be able to lift it with their wings. So things like a camera and a GPS transmitter are still quite far away from being implanted on to these insects, which would be the only way they could be of any use in war. They can still carry chemical and biological weapons but that would violate existing war laws.

It’s funny that they are expected to abide by the law during a war. The developers are saying that this is only the initial stage and practical cyborg insects are anything between two to 10 years away. [BBC news]

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Some of these terms might seem very basic to a few readers and some of them not so basic. It is important, however, that we are all standing on common ground and not having to “google” a term all the time. This article will not be exhaustive, it will cover a few terms. In later “Get to know Linux” articles we will cover more of these terms. Without further adieu, let’s proceed.

~/ or users’ home: This is the directory, created when you either install your operating system or create a new user (with the right arguments), that holds all of your personal data. This directory is created based on what is in the /etc/skel directory. This is the one directory your user has full permissions in. From the command line, the fastest way to get to this directory is to enter the command cd.

Kernel: This is the heart of Linux. In fact some purists will tell you that this IS Linux and everything else is nothing more than various applications built to run on top of Linux. The Linux kernel is a true preemptive multi-tasking kernel, is written in C, and is the single largest “application” on your system. Without the kernel you would not have a Linux operating system. “Back in the day” you would hear Linux users talk about “rolling their own kernel” or “compiling their own kernel”. This referred to building a kernel to meet specific needs. At one time this was almost a necessity for many users. This is not so much the case now as the modern kernel contains just about everything you would need.

Distribution: A distribution of Linux is a bundled variation of Linux. There are a number of major distributions such as: Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE, Debian. There are also a far greater number of minor distributions: PCLinuxOS,  Linux Mint, Elive, Gentoo, etc. Each distribution has its own selling point. For example: Ubuntu is one of the best known distributions for new users. On the other hand of the spectrum, Gentoo is for highly experienced users. You will often here the term “distro” used in place of “distribution”.

Terminal, Console, or Terminal Emulator: This is where commands are entered. There are really two places this is done: In a terminal window or a Console. Often these terms are exchanged, but there is a difference. A terminal window is generally a small application (like gnome-terminal or xterm) that allows you to enter commands. The console is actually the command line version of the Linux interface. To get to what is typically called “console mode” you would either have to go to a virtual console (using <Ctrl><Alt>F1-0) or log out of X and kill your graphical log in (such as gdm). When your monitor shows nothing but your bash prompt, you are in “console mode”.

X: This term stands for X Window System. In simplest terms, X provides the graphical interface for Linux. Of course it is much more complex than that. The X Windows system alone wouldn’t offer you much functionality as X only provides the framework for the GUI. Running only X would give you a grayish screen, a cursor, and not much more. What you don’t see is that X provides the very foundation that enables your window managers and desktops to do what they do. You will often here the phrase “Log out of X” which, for the purposes of the end user, means log out of your desktop.

Package Manager: One of the key selling points for distributions is which package manager they use. A package manager is the system which applications are automatically installed, removed, and generally managed on a system.Two of the major package management systems for Linux: dpkg and rpm. The dpkg was originally for Debian systems but is now employed by Ubuntu and others as well. RPM was created for the Red Hat Linux distribution but now is used by Fedora, SuSE, and others. Each of these systems have both command line tools (such as apt and apt-get for dpkg, and yum for RPM) and GUI tools (such as gpk-application for RPM and Synaptic for dpkg).

Final thoughts

There you have a few of the terms you should be familiar with when using the Linux operating system. We will continue with more terms at a later date. If you would like to request terms to be defined (or if you would like to request a Linux topic in general), please feel free to contact me.

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I got it in the form of the Illustrated Dual Boot site. As the name suggests, the site is packed with tutorials to assist people with dual-booting their computer to run both Windows and Ubuntu. The tutorials help install Ubuntu versions right from Gutsy Gibbon to Karmic Koala (the upcoming release). For Windows versions, there are installation tutorials for everything from Windows 98 to Windows7.

What makes the Illustrated Dual Boot site so good? It’s the fact that the tutorials are really well written. Any tutorial you choose has exactly what you need to get a dual-boot system up and running, right from beginning to end. Within the tutorial is some information on the tools required for the dual-boot as well as some basic checks before you begin.

Every step within a tutorial is illustrated. This is extremely important because often a step might not make much sense but if you can actually see how it takes place, it becomes easier to do it yourself. Some steps are also accompanied by possible errors you might encounter and how to solve them, another necessity for an installation.

I used the Jaunty Jackalope / Windows7 Graphical Installation ‘C’ tutorial to successfully dual-boot Jaunty and Windows XP. The clear instructions in simple language were easy to understand and implement with no problems whatsoever.

Tech experts probably don’t need someone to tell them how to set up a dual-boot on a machine. However, the vast majority of people using computers are not tech-savvy and having a resource like the Illustrated Dual Boot site reduces their dependence on others to do things for them. This site is also perfect for people who want to take the plunge into Linux but are being held back by the fear of having to install their own OS.

Have you used the Illustrated Dual Boot site anytime? Do you know of any similar resources? What do you think of computer novices using online tutorials to install an OS? Let me know in the comments.

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Of course you will have to have a kernel that is compiled with IPv6 support. Most modern Linux distributions already have this built in. You also have to have your IPv6 addresses handy. I use this simple web-based IPv6 calculator. With that tool select the IPv4 to IPv6 conversion and you should be good to go. So with everything in hand, you are ready to configure.

IPv6 support

First make sure your kernel supports IPv6. To do this you can first run the command:

sudo lsmod|less

and search the listing to see if ipv6 is there. If not try loading it with the command:

sudo /sbin/modprobe ipv6

Now issue the lsmod command to see if it is there. It should be.

Configuration

The file you want to configure will be the standard network interface configuration. Remember you are going to configure for static IP addresses. The file in question is /etc/network/interfaces. Most likely this is either not configured (if you are using DHCP) or set up for IPv4. We are going to blow that away now. We are also going to add something to this file that will ensure IPv6 is loaded properly and that your networking us making use of the new address scheme.

The details of our configuration:

IPv4 address: 192.168.1.10

IPv6 Address: 2002:c0a8:10a::

IPv4 gateway: 192.168.1.1

IPv6 gateway: 2002:c0a8:0101::

Now let’s add this to the /etc/network/interfaces file. The new file will look like this:

#IPV6 static configuration
iface eth0 inet6 static
pre-up modprobe ipv6
address 2002:c0a8:10a::
netmask 64
gateway 2002:c0a8:0101::


Notice the “pre-up” command. That is where we ensure that IPv6 is added to the kernel, otherwise you run the risk of attempting to use an IPv6 address in a system that is looking for an IPv4 address.

Now you will want to restart networking with the command:

/etc/init.d/networking restart

You should now have an IPv6 address enabled.

Testing

Before you assume everything is working, let’s make sure first. You can check your IP routing with the command:

ip -6 route show

The above command should return something like:

2002:c0a8:0100/64 dev eth0 proto kernel  scope  link src 2002:c0a8:10a

You can also check by pinging with the ping6 tool. A good IPv6 address to try is the Google address. Issue this command:

ping6 ipv6.google.com

If IPv6 isn’t working you will get error:

Network is unreachable

If IPv6 is working you will see the standard ping results in your terminal window.

Final thoughts

It’s only a matter of time before IPv6 is the defacto standard for network addressing. When that happens you do not want to be behind the curve or you’ll lose out fast. Make sure you know how to configure your Linux servers for IPv6 static addressing. You’ll be glad you do when the time comes.

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In Plain English is a video series on Youtube and the common craft website that explains concepts in plain terms so that everyone, even someone who has little to no knowledge about the concept can understand it.

Their latest video is for example explaining RSS Feeds. How would you explain RSS feeds to someone who never heard about the concept before. The videos do an excellent job of explaining these concepts in plain terms. There are basically four topics (Green, Money, Society and Technology) to chose from. The technology category contains explanations of Twitter, social media or wikis among others.

All videos are made without computers and do not show a single computer screen or hardware. You can watch all videos either on the Common Craft website or at Youtube directly.

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Even those who read the terms and conditions during sign-up should be aware that website terms-of-service can change at any time. Even website policies often change. The problem is, most people don’t have time to visit 10 or 15 sites regularly and read through terms-of service agreements and website policies.

Thankfully, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group is keeping track of some of these changes. You can see these changes by visiting TOSBack, a site dedicated to terms-of-service tracking. The aim of the site is to show how these agreements change over time.

TOSBack is currently monitoring agreements for 58 popular websites. These include social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter, user-content run sites like Flickr and YouTube, as well as online shopping giants Amazon and Ebay among other sites.

Updates are posted on the home page, as and when a policy changes. Clicking on a specific link opens up a page with the agreement text. Changes to the agreement are highlighted so that you don’t have to spend time searching for additions and deletions.

A site like TOSBack provides an important service. User agreements are the basis of a trustworthy relationship with a service provider. However, they are often forgotten until a problem with the site arises and then people scramble to read website policies. With TOSBack, a user can stay in touch with policy changes and quickly recognize anything he is not comfortable with.

Do you read user agreements and other policies when you sign-up with a service? Have you heard of TOSBack before? What do you think of this tracking mechanism? Let me know in the comments.

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Sleep Talking, a new system that is called internally Somniloquy has been designed by computer scientists at UC San Diego and Microsoft Research, combines the energy saving benefits of sleep mode with the responsiveness of awake mode. An USB prototype has been created that acts as a low end computer system impersonating the host computer on the network. The prototype comes with the ability to wake the host computer system if necessary. This can be an incoming call using voice over IP or a P2P download that filled the internal flash memory of the USB prototype so that the contents have to be written to the host computer system.

Tests that the researchers conducted resulted in power savings between 60 and 80 percent depending on the use model compared to idle state which is

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Once my laptop was ready, it was time to try out the LiveCD. I’d contemplated waiting for Jaunty to be released just so I could have the latest release but then decided to go with Intrepid. After all, if things go well, I can always upgrade later.

I downloaded the .iso image from the official image, burned it and popped it into the laptop’s CD-ROM drive after changing the boot configuration so it would boot from the CD. In my first attempt, the CD failed to boot. At this point I’m not sure what the problem is so I put in an old version of the dyne:bolic LiveCD that I’d burned over a year ago.

This time the laptop booted from the CD so I figured that my Ubuntu CD wasn’t burned properly. Since I had already booted dyne:bolic, I decided to play around with it. Everything worked fine for five minutes and then my machine hung. Nothing I did would fix it so I just let the battery drain out. Note to self? Find ‘ctrl+alt+delete’ equivalent in Linux.

By this time, I re-burn my Ubuntu CD but I insert it into the CD-ROM with some trepidation. The CD takes a while to boot and for a few moments I think it’s hung again but then I get the welcome screen and I calm down. I select the ‘try Ubuntu without installing’ and wait for the CD to finish booting.

The first thing that greets me is the brown-toned screen that I’ve seen in most Ubuntu screenshots. Not that I have anything against it but I don’t think I could look at it day in and day out and not be able to change it. I fire up Rhythmbox and to my Winamp-accustomed eyes, it does not look like a great media player. However, I’m not complaining and I try to play a few songs through my attached pen-drive. Yes, I know mp3s are not supported out of the box but it was a bit of a rude awakening.

I decide to shut down my laptop and work on it later, But first, I need to disconnect the pen drive. In Windows, I’m used to the ‘Safely remove hardware’ option but I don’t see something similar here. So I right-click the drive and select ‘unmount’. It disappears from my screen but the drive light is still on. I do a quick search on the net and find that everything’s okay. Unmount is the right option and with some drives, the light stays on after that.

All in all, I’m pretty satisfied with my first Ubuntu run. It wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t a disaster either. I’m planning to experiment some more with the LiveCD over the weekend and see what else Ubuntu has to offer. Any tips for me?

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I am currently trying to learn French and German and often find myself using many computer-based resources to ease my learning, some obvious, like dictionaries, and some not-so, like podcasts.

Dictionaries

Different languages generally have different online dictionaries. For German, I often find myself using dict.cc, whilst for French, I use Reverso. The best way to find dictionaries is to Google, but one option to definitely consider is the ever-growing Wiktionary. Effectively every language has a Wiktionary and whilst it can be difficult to navigate, it is quite large and the range of languages makes it amazing.

Verb conjugators

Verbix is another web-based tool. It allows you to conjugate verbs, and even supports irregular ones.

The free web-based tool supports verb conjugation in 97 languages, ranging from Afrikaans, to Milanese, to Old English to Welsh! They offer Windows shareware which supports over 300 languages.

Verbix also offers a tool too which analyses text and guesses its language.

Podcasts

Podcasts are a very useful way to perfect your listening.

It is very useful for me to hear a native German or a Francophone to speak.

Browsing iTunes will obviously bring up many possibilities.

My suggestions? For German, use Slow German. For French, try One thing in a French day. Naturally, I can’t make suggestions for other languages!

Vocabulary trainers

One of the best ways to learn is purely to repeat.

Many vocabulary trainers are available. These allow you to input words, or use preprepared word lists, and then be tested on them. The trainers compile statistics so you can identify weak points etc.

For OS X, try the freeware Vocab. A wide-range of options exist for Windows users; ProvaLingua seems popular. Another option, which also works under Linux, is this program.

Wikipedia

I already mentioned that Wiktionary exists in many languages, but so does Wikipedia.

To improve your knowledge of a foreign language, try reading an article on your native language Wikipedia and then on a foreign one. It won’t be the same word for word, but many ideas will be similar so you should be able to pick out some key words.

Wikipedia is also a good way to find technical vocabulary in a foreign tongue.

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Users who double-click on the msi file directly will also install the application but with the possibility that it will not run properly on the computer system. Take a computer program that requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5 for example. If the user has an older version of the framework installed setup.exe will download the files needed and launch the installation of the compatible framework and launch the installation using the msi file afterwards.

If the user installs using the msi file the installation will go through without problems but might experience an application crash or warning message while starting the application. It is therefor recommend on end user systems to always install applications using the setup.exe file if both a setup.exe and xyz.msi are available after unpacking the software program.

There are even some msi setup files out there that will not perform the installation upon execution but request an installation using the setup.exe file instead to ensure that all necessary components are installed.

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In the early days, the only way a student could find a cheaper textbook was to buy a used copy from someone who had taken the same course earlier. Now, with the internet, you can search for textbooks online and buy them from the online store. However, if you want to score a good deal, it’s best to use a service like Campusbooks.

For people who have no time to scour multiple websites or don’t know all the resources for buying textbooks online, Campusbooks is extremely helpful. When you look for a book, the site searches multiple sites like Amazon, AbeBooks, eBay, and other similar sites. Then, the search results are neatly displayed so you can check whatever interests you. Once you select a book, you are directed to the online store to make the payment.

Users can search for a book by name, author, keyword, or ISBN number. Additionally, they can browse by category. When search results are displayed, a summary of the lowest prices is shown first. The next two sections in the results page are the lowest prices for new books and used ones. Search results include international editions as well, which are often cheaper than books in the US. A search for a biochemistry book showed a 100$ price difference between the US and the international versions.

Campusbooks has a lot of other services. Users can sell their old textbooks to other sites or go one step further and donate textbooks. The site also offers to alert a user when the book he’s looking for becomes available at a particular price. With Campusbooks, it’s easier to find the cheapest textbooks available.

Have you ever used Campusbooks? What do you think of this service? What other sites do you know of to get textbooks and other school supplies cheap? Let me know in the comments.

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Let’s say you have two columns of numbers and you want to add a third column based on the other two data. That third columns’ entry will depend upon the information in the first two. IF entry A is greater than B THEN C is X ELSE C is Y.

But how does one do this? It’s actually quite easy. Let’s start out with a more simple example and move on to a more complex example.

The first example will illustrate a basic IF/ELSE statement that uses only two columns of data. We’ll do a simple spreadsheet that deals with how many persons each employee will bring to a company picnic. To make things easy if the person enters “0″ that means they are not bringing a guest (the employee, however,  IS required to come) and if they enter “1″ that means they are which means that employee equals two attendees. The first column will represent the name of the employee and the second column is how many guests the employee will bring. The formula to enter into the third column would look like:

=IF(B1=1;2;1)

What this will do is enter a “2″ in the third cell is the employee is bringing a guest and a 1 if they are not.

Now let’s make this a bit more complex. For this example we’ll have three columns. The first column is a number that represents how many hours an employee worked. The second column will represent how many hours over 40 they worked. The third column will represent how much overtime pay they made. But let’s say you also have to account for zero hours worked. The formula for the second column would look like this:

=IF(A9<=40;0; IF(A9>40;(A9-40)))

For the third column let’s continue with this idea. Say if an employee worked over 5 hours of overtime they would gain an extra 100 dollar bonus in their check. So we’ll add a fourth column for bonuses. For simplicity’s sake all employees make $10.00 an hour. Overtime is standard time and a half pay. So the forumla for the third column would be a standard:

=SUM((40*10)+(B9*15))

And the formula for the fourth column would be:

=IF(B9>=5;100;0)

Now for the final total for employee salary a fifth column would be added that would look like:

=SUM(C9+D9)

Final Thoughts

The examples may be very simple but the idea can be applied to many instances. Using IF/ElSE statements in OpenOffice Calc can quickly take your spreadsheets to a much higher level of usability.

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That’s why I love MrsFixit. The brainchild of a woman who decided she’d had enough of paying for fixing things and rolled up her sleeves to do things herself. After sharing her tips with her friends, she put them online to share with other people, especially women.

MrsFixit is full of do-it-yourself solutions for getting things done around the home. From female oriented subjects like alternative uses for common substances and kitchen tips to installing a lighting system or a guide to plumbing, the site ahs tips on pretty much everything, including working outdoors.

The instructions on MrsFixit are fairly easy to follow. Every project includes a note on the tools you need for the task as well as detailed stepwise instructions on how to go about the job. The site also has its own newsletter, and a store to let you make purchases where you can often get discounts on products. In addition, MrsFixit has her own show, which is broadcast all over the USA.

Although the site is primarily aimed at the female gender, these tips are handy for just about anyone. I don’t know many guys who can install a toilet bowl and I’m the kind of person who believes that everyone should know how to do basic repairs irrespective of their gender.

What do you think of the tips on MrsFixit? Have you tried any of them out? Do you know of any similar sites? Let me know in the comments.

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You might want to check out our article about Windows 7 which has all the information you need to download the beta of the new Microsoft operating system. If you are not convinced yet that this is a good idea read on; You might be surprised:

1. Opening multiple Instances of the same program

Want to open multiple instances of the same program? Maybe a second command prompt or another application that can be opened in multiple instances? Instead of opening the program again the usual way you can simply press the SHIFT key and left-click on the first instance in the Windows Taskbar to open a second one.

2. Problem Steps Recorder

If you ever had to do phone support you know how hard it can be to understand what the user on the other end of the phone did and wants. The Problem Steps Recorder is a sweet little tool in Windows 7 that can be used by the user to record his steps.

All that the user needs to do is start the recorder by entering psr in the Start Menu box and click on Start Record in the program interface. Screenshots will be taken from user actions. It is possible to add comments at any time if the user feels so. The whole recording will be saved as a zip file containing a slideshow of the actions.

3. Pin Favorite Folders

Want to add a favorite folders to Windows Explorer to be able to access them faster? Just drag and drop the folder to the favorites menu. It will remain there until you delete it with the delete key again.

4. Moving Windows and such

Windows 7 introduces several new keyboard shortcuts for window management. Some useful ones are:

• [Windows Shift Left Arrow] or [Windows Shift Right Arrow] to move windows from one computer monitor to another.
• [Windows Left Arrow] or [Windows Right Arrow] to dock windows to the left or right side
• [Windows Up Arrow] to maximize a window
• [Windows Down Arrow] to restore or minimize windows
• [Windows Home] to minimize all windows but the active one

5. Shortcuts to start pinned taskbar items

Pressing [Win Number] will start a new instance of a pinned taskbar item. You should also note that the items can be dragged and dropped into different positions easily.

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Naturally one of the issues with fonts is where to get them. If you do a search for “free fonts” you will come up with plenty of sites that offer fonts. There are even sites that sell fonts for a reasonable price. Of course if you are serious about desktop publishing or graphics you will want to look at higher quality fonts. On with the installation.

Per User Installation

By far the easiest installation is the per user installation. What this type of install does is install the fonts in such a way that only the targeted use has access to the fonts. For this type of installation download all of your fonts into a directory the user has access to (the ~/Downloads directory works fine.) Once you have your fonts collected (You will most likely have to unzip each file which will result in either .ttf or .TTF files) do the following (all in a terminal window) within the directory containing your downloaded fonts.

mkdir ~/.fonts

mv *ttf *TTF ~/.fonts

Now log out of your desktop environment and log back in. Those fonts should now be available to you. If you’re unsure you can fire up either OpenOffice or The GIMP to see if your fonts are available. They should be.

Global Installation

Installing fonts globally allows all users access to the fonts. This is not as simple as installing per-user but it is still simple. You sill have to download all of your fonts. Once you have them downloaded unzip the files (making sure all the *ttf and *TTF files are in the same directory) and su to the root user. Once you are the root user issue the following commands:

• mkdir   -p /usr/local/share/fonts/ttfonts
• mv *ttf *TTF /usr/local/share/fonts/ttfonts
• cd   /usr/local/share/fonts/ttfonts
• ttmkfdir   -o fonts.scale
• mkfontdir
• chkfontpath   –add /usr/local/share/fonts/ttfonts
• /etc/rc.d/init.d/xfs   restart

Now log out of your desktop and you can log in as any user and the fonts will be available to them.

Final Thoughts

See, installing fonts in Linux isn’t difficult – especially when installing on a per user basis. For most people the first method will suffice. Unless you work on a machine that is used by more than one user, you will only need the per user method. Of course if the global installation method is a bit daunting you can always copy the fonts into the ~/.fonts directory of every user that needs access to the various true type fonts.

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So let’s break The GIMP’s UI into its constituent pieces and make using this excellent application a snap to use.

When you open up The GIMP it defaults to three main windows: The Main Window, The Toolbox, and the Utility Window. These are the meat and potatoes of The GIMP. To get a better understanding of the whole we have to break it down into its pieces. We’ll start with the Main Window.

Main Window

Main Window

From the Main Window all actions can take place. But the main action with the Main Window is opening and saving images. If you were a user prior to 2.6 this is where you will notice the biggest changes. One of the issues new users had was that once an image was opened they didn’t realize there was a right click mouse menu they could use when they were working within images.

Mouse Menu

As you can see, in the image above, the Main Window now has a built in menu. Prior to 2.6 the Main Window didn’t include this menu. To get to this menu you had to click on the right mouse button. Now 2.6 has both. This menu contains pretty much everything you need to work with your image. But you don’t have to count on just these menus for your work.

The Main Menu has one other very nice feature. You can drag an image into this window to open the image. To do this open up Nautilus (or Dolphin, or Konqueror), select an image, and drag the selected image to the Main Window. When an image opens the Main Window seems to disappear. What really happens is the images opens up within the Main Window. When you close the image the Main Window returns to its former self.

Toolbox

The next window is the toolbox (as shown in the image to the right). This window allows you to quickly access all of the tools available.

Toolbox

When you click on a tool the lower half of the window will change according to the tool. This window is handy to keep open because it gives you fast access to every tool available. Another nice option with the Toolbox is, when you customize a particular tool you can save your customizations. The bottom left corner is the save button for saving tool customizations. You can also customize this window. The small left-pointing arrow near the middle is actually a menu. Click that and you will find other options you can play with. You can add tabs with this menu, lock the tabs to the dock, and save your options.

Utilities

The final window is the Utilities Window. This window is one of the more often overlooked tools of The GIMP. It shouldn’t be. This is where you deal with layers, channels, paths, etc. And you can add/remove as many tabs from this window as you like.

Utilities Window

One of the most powerful aspects of The Gimp is the ability to do layering, channels, and paths. The Utilities Window (shown at the left) allows you to add or remove tabs that relate to just about any task you need. By default the Utilities Window has four tabs open: Layers, Channels, Paths, and Undo History. You can add tabs by clicking the left-pointing arrow and then navigating through the Add Tab submenu. Each utility tab is different from the next depending upon the utility. The Layers tab, for instance, has six buttons near the bottom of the tab (which is actually near the center of the window): New Layer, Raise the selected layer, Lower the selected layer, Duplicate the selected layer, Anchor the selected layer, and Delete the selected layer.

You will also notice, at the top of the Utilities Window, a drop-down box. This allows you to select an image to work on when you have more than one image open.

Final Thoughts

And that’s it – the basics of The GIMP user interface. Once you get used to this interface you will find it very simple to navigate and much more user-friendly than you thought.

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With more and more Solid State Drives hitting the streets it is important to understand the differences. Defragmentation describes the process of physically organizing the contents of a hard drive or partition so that the data sectors of each file will be stored close together to reduce load and seek times.

Solid State Drives can access any location on the drive in the same time. This is one of the main advantages over hard drives. This also means that there is no need to defragment a Solid State Drive ever. These drives have actually been designed to write data evenly in all sectors of the drive which the industry is calling wear leveling. Each sector of a Solid State Drive has a limited number of writes before it cannot be overwritten anymore. (this is a theoretical limit which cannot be reached in work environments)

If you did defragment your Solid State Disk you can rest assured that you did not harm it in any way. It is just that this process is not needed and that defragmentation causes lots of write processes which means that the drive will reach its write limits sooner.

No need for defragmentation is therefor another advantage of Solid State Drives.

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How easy you ask? Let me show you.

Locating the applet

The first thing you need to do is find the applet which will be in your system tray either in the top or the bottom panel on your GNOME desktop.

Network Manager Applet

How many bars do you have? As you can see I am already connected to a network. But what if I am not? Simple if you right click the applet a menu will appear which contains the “Edit Connections” entry.

Right Click Menu

Select the Edit Connections entry to open the Network Connections menu.

Network Connections

Click on the Add button to create a new network. This will bring up a simple window where you will enter basic wireless information.

Add Network

The first bit of information you should enter is the network SSID (the name of the network). Once you have that done you can click over to the Wireles Security tab, select the type of security (WEP, LEAP, WPA, etc), enter the Password, and click Apply.

Once you have created the network you can select the network by left clicking the applet to reveal the network listing.

Select Network

Of course the system will scan the surrounding networks and any network found will be listed in the Wireless Network listing.

If you select an already discovered network you will be prompted to enter the networks password.

Connecting

Final Thoughts

Connecting to a wireless network has become as simple as it is in any operating system. With the GNOME, as long as your card is supported, you should have your wireless connected in no time.

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But let’s not jump ahead of ourselves. Before we get to the actual configuration let’s first take a look at Enlightenment (version E16 which is the stable version).

Enlightenment Screenshot

As you can see Enlightenment has a lot of neat tricks up its sleeve. On the above screenshot you can see The Gimp open, a Firefox browser shaded to only show its title bar, the aterm terminal will full transparency running the top application, the iconbox (bottom right) which is where applications are minimized, and the pager (bottom left).

Now let’s install E16. It shouldn’t be necessary to jump through any hoops. On most modern Linux operating systems you can just open up the Add/Remove Software application (on Ubuntu this is Synaptic, on Fedora 10 running GNOME it is gpk-application) and do a search for “enlightenment”. The package manager should pick up all dependencies.

If you’d prefer to use the command line you can run one of these (either as root or using sudo):

• apt-get install enlightenment
• yum install enlightenment
• urpmi enlightenment

If, by chance, your distribution doesn’t find “enlightenment”, you can try “e16″ instead.

That should do it. Now, if you use a graphical login screen you’ll want to choose the E16 entry before you log in. This should be under “Sessions”. If you use text-based log in you will want to create an .xinitrc file with the following contents:

exec e16

If that doesn’t work us:

exec enlightenment

Most likely the former will work.

Configuration

If you do a left mouse click you will see the configuration window.

E16 Configuration Menu

The one thing you can not configure via the configuration menu is the menu itself. To configure the menu you have to actually edit the file ~/.e16/menus/user_apps.menu. It is very easy to edit this menu. Open this menu up in your favorite text editor and you will see entries that resemble:

“aterm” NULL exec “aterm -tr -fg blue -bg green +sb”
“XTerm” NULL exec “xterm”
“rxvt” NULL exec “rxvt”
“Basket” NULL exec “basket”
“Mozilla” NULL exec “mozilla”
“K3B” NULL exec “k3b”
“Firefox” NULL exec “firefox”
“Flock” NULL exec “/home/jlwallen/flock/flock-browser”
“Thunderbird” NULL exec “thunderbird”
“gnucash” NULL exec “gnucash”
“Amarok” NULL exec “amarok”
“Banshee” NULL exec “banshee”
“The GIMP” NULL exec “gimp”

A menu entry is set up like so:

Comment Icon exec “command”

The comment is the text that appears in the menu. Icon is the actual path to an icon image to use (NULL means none), The exec command is necessary to tell the system that what follows is an executable command. The command section is the actual command.

Once you edit that file, save it, and the changes are made in real time.

Final Thoughts

And that’s pretty much it to configuring Enlightenment E16. If you have a Linux box you should certainly give Enlightenment a try. It might wind up being your “go-to” desktop.

UPDATE: Here’s a new screenshot, full size, for your enjoyment.

New Screenshot

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