So Samsung decided to release its second Android phone in Russia. But news can never remain buried on the Internet. So we know that it is called the Galaxy Spica. This is the same phone that the rumors were calling the Galaxy 17500 Lite. Spica is the official name.

The press release says a lot of things, as usual. You know it has Android and that it runs on an 800MHz processor. But what it does not tell you is what version of Android it will ship with when it does. My guess is Android 2.0, because the release seems imminent. [read]

Then we have the T-Mobile Project Dark plans. After a long line of rumors, spy shots and leaked marketing material, the carrier finally unveiled its twin plans. And they are right on time too because their timeline was already leaked by the rumors.

So what are the plans like? Look above. There’s the $79 Even More Plus and there’s the $99 Even More. Those are the maxed out prices. They start from $49 and $59 respectively. The first one has no annual contract and the second one has a 2-year contract. [read]

Nokia in the meantime has brought out ‘Illuvial Special edition’ phones in Europe. These are normal Nokia phones with floral prints on the back, purple backlighting and purple/pink graphics in the UI. I still think of this tech industry practice of feminizing products as highly patronizing. Plus, companies tend to charge more for these frills. Et tu Nokia? [read]

-

The app store is growing rapidly and is now over 85,000 apps. Ever since the $99 iPhones became available, everyone’s been buying an iPhone. And everyone who can is making an app and sending it in. Even the American stock exchange has its own app now.

Yes sir, NASDAQ has an app in the App store. It lets you check stocks and see live activity, which are quite obvious. What is not obvious though is the fact that it shows you live tweets about various stocks from StockTweet. Now that’s something extra that is worth having. Plus the App is very well-designed. [read]

Next up we have a remote app for …get this – starting your car. That’s right folks, now you can start your car from practically anywhere with a free iPhone app. The catch? You have to buy a kit for your car for this to work and Best Buy has the exclusive retail deal on it. You have two models available. One is for $299 (for cars that have the initial system built in) and the other for $499 (for the complete system). [iTunes link]

The next one is only half new because it was already launched in the US last year. Amazon has released their iPhone shopping app in the UK. This app lets you buy from Amazon through your iPhone. It connects you to your account and also allows you to use features like one-click ordering, etc. [read]

Another Amazon app is coming soon though. I am talking about the Kindle app that is headed for us in November. [read]

So I guess these two halves make one, except that you can only buy one half right now. But the US half is already available. So that makes one too. Okay, enough with the halves.

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You may think the console isn’t a good place for RSS feeds, but it is. Using Snownews is fast, reliable, easy to use, and has a tiny footprint.

You probably have already noticed that ghacks has a few RSS feeds of its own. We’ll use those feeds to illustrate how to use Snownews. But first we must install Snownews. Fortunately this is a simple task. You can install from either your Add/Remove utility (do a search for snownews, select the results, and click apply) or you can install from the command line like so:

sudo apt-get install snownews

or

yum install snownews

Once installed just issue the command snownews from the prompt and you will see what looks like an empty window with the version number of Snownews near the top. Naturally Snownews won’t do you any good until you add a feed. Let’s see how this is done.

Adding a feed

In the main window, if you hit the “h” key (no quotes) you will get the Help window. This window will give you all of the keys you need to do your work. Here are the most important:

• a – Add a feed.
• D – Delete a feed.
• c – Rename a feed.
• R – Reload all feeds.
• r – Reload selected feed.
• m – Mark all feeds read.
• B – Change defalt browser.

Figure 1

There are more keys, but those are really the most important keys you wil need to know. So from the main window press the “a” key to add a feed. What you will see is a bar going across the screen. All you need to do is type (or paste) the feed URL into this space and hit enter. Figure 1 shows where the feed URL is entered. As you can see the ghacks Linux feed is being entered.

Once you enter the feed URL hit enter and the feed will be added. What Snownews has to do is download the feed to the cache.

Once the feed is added you will see the feed listed in the main window. To see the stories listed select the feed and hit enter.

Reading stories from a feed

Figure 2

From within the story reader window you will see the entire listing of stories from the feed your are viewing. To view a particular story use the up or down arrows to move to the story and then hit the Enter key. The story summary will be displayed in the same window.

In order to read the entire story you have to have a browser configured for Snownews. I tend to like to contain Snownews within the terminal window, so I will use Lynx. To configure Lynx as the browser go back to the main window (press “q”) and press “B”. In the browser configuration window you simply need to enter “lynx %s” (no quotes) to set Snownews up to use Lynx as your browser.

Now to read a full story do the following:

Go back to the story listing in the feed

Select a story and hit Enter.

In the story window hit “o” (no quotes).

The story will now open in the Lynx browser. To exit the browser hit “q” (no quotes) and you will return to Snownews.

Final thoughts

Snownews is an outstanding alternative RSS reader for anyone who prefers to do things from the console window. Give it a try and you will find it to be as easy as any of the GUI alternatives.

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The broken links checker will automatically scan the Windows Start Menu for broken shortcuts. Each shortcut found to not working anymore will be displayed in its interface giving the user the option to delete them from the start menu.

Some or all of the broken shortcuts can be selected in the overview. A click on the finish button will delete all selected links from the Windows Start Menu. The software program will only delete the shortcuts and not the folders that they reside in.

It should be noted that popular system cleaners such as CCleaner are also capable of deleting broken shortcuts from the start menu. An easy way to delete empty folders in the Windows Start Menu is to use a program like Remove Empty Directories and point it to the path on the computer system that stores the start menu entries (Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\).

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Keyboard Layouts differ depending on the country they are sold in. A basic example is the differences between a German and English computer keyboard. The German keyboard swapped the Y and Z key for instance which can be really annoying when playing web games that use the YXC keys in the game.

Tablang is an add-on for the Firefox web browser that allows the user to use different keyboard layouts in Firefox. Each tab can be launched with a different keyboard layout which is preserved from there meaning that links that are originating from that tab will also use the keyboard layout.

The user needs to have at least two different keyboard layouts installed on the computer system for the Firefox add-on to be of use. The add-on can be downloaded from the Mozilla homepage. It is available for the Microsoft Windows and Linux operating system.

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Users who would like to add the Bing search engine to Internet Explorer or Firefox can do that already. Firefox users can download a Bing Search add-on for their web browser which adds the search engine to the list of available search engines in the search form. There are quite a few Bing search add-ons available but only one that claims to have been developed by members of the Bing development team.

The add-on will display the terms of service which have to be accepted. The above window appears accepting the terms. Bing will then be added as a search engine under the name Live Search.

Internet Explorer users can also add Bing to the web browser by visiting this website. The user needs to perform a search on Bing for the word “TEST” and paste the url into the url form of the search engine creation page. The name can be selected by the user.

A click on the Install Search Provider button will display a confirmation window. If the user accepts the window Bing will be installed as a search engine in Internet Explorer.

Opera users can simply right-click the Bing search interface and select the Create Search option in the context menu to add Bing to the Internet browser.

Google Chrome users finally need to perform a search on Bing. A right-click on the address bar of the web browser will reveal the Edit Search Engines options. Bing should be visible right away in the menu.

The last step necessary is to make the Bing search engine a default search engine in the Google browser. This is done by selecting the Bing search engine in the menu and clicking on the Make Default button.

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But along comes System 76 to make good on all of the promises these companies have failed to deliver on. And make good did they do. When the boxes arrived from System 76 I was naturally skeptical. The last Linux-based laptop I reviewed showed some promise until very quickly the weakness of the hardware reared its ugly head. Fortunately, with the Pangolin Performance, I was happily surprised.

The machine shipped was not a base-line product. Instead System 76 shipped me a bit beefier machine (you can upgrade in the purchase process). The specs are as such:

• Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) 64 Bit Linux
• 15.4″ WXGA Super Clear Glossy LCD (1280 x 800)
• 512 MB DDR2 nVidia GeForce G105M
• Core 2 Duo P8600 2.40 GHz 1066 MHz FSB 3 MB L2 (25 Watt)
• 2 GB – DDR2 800 MHZ x 1 DIMM
• 250 GB 5400 RPM SATA II
• CD-RW / DVD-RW
• Intel Wi-Fi Link 5100 – 802.11A/B/G/N Up to 300 Mbps

As you can see, the specs were pretty sweet. Add to that Ubuntu 9.04 and you have the makings of a fairly powerful laptop. Cost? $914.00. But does it stand up to its specs? And more importantly, does the hardware truly support Linux?

That last question is the one that really matters. Any time I see a company that touts their support for the Linux operating system my instincts tell me that they are going to ship with a version of Linux that is rolled up just for that hardware. That is not the case with the System 76 machine. The version of Ubuntu shipped is, for the most part, vanilla. There are two additional menu entries:

• One that displays the System 76 information for support purposes
• One for the fingerprint reader

Outside of that, it’s your basic Ubuntu 9.04. It’s fast and stable. But this isn’t a review of Ubuntu.

The speed of the laptop can not be dismissed. My own personal laptop matches up almost identically in spec to the Pangolin.  The only difference between the two is my laptop has an Intel graphics chipset. But the difference in performance is very noticeable. The Pangolin blows my Vaio away. In both performance and feel. I have reviewed Ubuntu 9.04 prior to this review and made note of the much-improved start up times for both os boot and application start. This speed up is even more noticeable on the Pangolin. And did I mention Compiz? The pangolin ships with Compiz enabled and it works flawlessly. It only takes a few steps to get full-blown Compiz running (which includes the Cube – you can read how to do this in my recent article “Enabling the Cube in Compiz“.)

The Pangolin has one of the best keyboards I have used on a laptop. The keys feel more like an Apple laptop with a bit more beef. The keys are well spaced and well laid out. As well the screen on the Pangolin is crystal clear with little glare.

The nit to pick

There is only one issue with the Pangolin, one of which can not be blamed on System 76. Because biometrics is new to the Linux desktop, GNOME has trouble with it. Even with the help of the tech, I have yet to successfully implement this feature into the desktop. Not that this is a big issue, but the laptop does have the fingerprint reader and I would hope that at some point it will work as the user would expect. Hopefully fprint reader will evolve to the point where the standard Linux desktop can take advantage of this type of hardware so companies like System 76 can offer these features out of the box.

And that is ultimately the best selling point of System 76 – their hardware works out of the box. The use can feel confident that what they purchase will work for them and work well. The elegant combination of Ubuntu 9.04 and the graceful look and feel of the Pangolin Performance laptop make a combination you can not go wrong with. Of all the Linux-based hardware companies I have ever dealt with, System 76 gets the highest recommendation I could offer.

Who would do well with a Pangolin?

If you are a new-to-Linux user and you just want something that works, this laptop is for you. If you do a lot of typing and you need a keyboard with well spaced and laid-out keys, this laptop is for you. If you need something with some power, but not something that will blow out your budget or burn down your house, this laptop is for you. If you are new to linux, a Linux guru, or anything in between, this laptop is for you. This particular laptop is perfectly in line for home use or business use. Either way you will get your money’s worth with this machine.

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Inexperienced computer users on the other hand might want to take a look at the Simple Static IP networking tool which allows them to set a static IP address with a few clicks of the mouse button.

A user who wants to set a static IP address needs to select the network adapter from the pull down menu on top of the application’s interface. Simple Static IP will then display the current settings of the network adapter including the assigned IP address, subnet, gateway and DNS server.

A click on Enable Static IP will configure a static IP address for the selected network adapter. It is possible to keep the DNS settings or use the router or the Open DNS servers as the dns server for the network adapter. It is also possible to randomize the static IP address by clicking on the Randomize New IP button in the interface.

Simple Static IP is compatible with the following Microsoft operating systems: Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008.

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There are three particular aspects of the desktop I take advantage of in order to make it as efficient as possible, each a sub set of Focus: window focus, auto raise, and window tab cycling. In this article I will highlight each of these so you can see how efficient your desktop can be.

These tips should work with most every window manager or desktop you can find in Linux. I won’t go into the actual configuration of each because that configuration will be different for each window manager or desktop.

Focus?

First let me make sure you understand the idea behind window focus. It’s very simple: A focused window is the window you are working in. In most operating system desktops you have to click on that window in order to give it focus. In Linux there are other ways to give a window focus. Let’s take a look at them.

Focus Follows Mouse (sometimes called Sloppy Focus) instructs the desktop that the window under the mouse pointer has focus. With this set you do not have to click on a particular window in order to start working in that window. Of course this can lead to a problem when you have a smaller window over a larger window and you want to give the larger window focus. With just Focus Follows Mouse set alone your lower window will have focus but it will be difficult to work with because it will have another window hiding what you’re working on. To resolve this you set the Autoraise feature.

With Autoraise set the window that has focus automatically raises to the top. This is a great feature, but, it can get in the way. If your mouse moves outside of the currently focused window, into another window, that window will automatically raise up. To solve this problem you can set a delay to the auto raise. This is a good practice because it will save you the headache of your windows constantly losing focus as the mouse escapes from the borders of your current working window. Autoraise delay is set in miliseconds so remember that when you’re setting a delay. Play around until you get the perfect setting for your needs.

Window cycling

Figure 1

While working on your Linux desktop hit the Alt-Tab combination and you will see something similar to that in Figure 1. In this example you see cycling through windows in the Window Maker window manager. To get to the to the next window you hold down the Alt key and tap the Tab key. When you land on the window you want to work in you release the keys and the window will have focus.

This, of course, can be used in conjunction with the workspace switching key combination of Ctrl-Alt-left/right arrow. When you press that combination you will warp to the next workspace to either the right or left of where you are (depending upon which arrow key you use.)

Final thoughts

It is possible to make your Linux desktop as efficient as you want it. By employing these easy to use tips you will find yourself spending more time working and less time clicking and dragging windows.

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The time based search option for example is an exact replica of the feature found in the advanced options. It lets a user narrow down search results by time. The remaining options on the other hand are not the same and can change Google search drastically. The first filter makes it possible to narrow down the search results by type. It is possible to only display videos, forums or reviews.

Selecting a filter will limit the available filters in the other categories. This is however a great way of finding video, forum or review resources in Google. The forum and review filter seems to have the occasional unrelated entry (e.g. a non-forum link in the forum filter) though.

Probably even more interesting is the option to display more text and or images from the pages in the search results. The first option will expand the space of every search result in Google and fill it with additional text from that website. The second will display thumbnail images of images found on these pages. It is only possible to select one filter at a time but they do change the way the search results are presented dramatically.

Lastly there is an option to display related searches, a wonder wheel or a timeline which are also displayed on top or on the left of the search results page.

These filters will remain active all the time until the user changes them again or leaves the Google page. Google managed to add some interesting search options to their search engine which help filter and expand the search results effectively.

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The only other available option is to select a playlist to be created or extended with the music that is found in the monitored directory. This is an optional step though and not required for the music import to work properly. The software will check the folder for new music periodically and add it automatically to iTunes whenever new music is discovered in that folder on the drive. It looks like the interval is set to 1 minute as music that is moved to the folder gets quickly added to iTunes all the time.

The program has to be running in the background for this to work properly. It uses quite some computer memory (34 Megabytes on a Windows XP test system) which might make it to memory hungry for some computer systems. Could be worth a try for users who regularly add music to a specific folder and its subfolders on a computer system though. The music does get added to iTunes regularly as well.

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All you need to do, is fire up the application, select your style (Adobe style, or Web 2.0 star style), enter your text, up to four letters, select a background color and click generate. The shading is done extremely well, no matter what color you choose your icon will look good. This really is a great way to create file extension icons, especially if you use a lot like php, css, js and so on, you can get much better stuff the the original system ones.

The only thing I don’t like about the app is how it saves icons, more specifically, the naming. It generates four files with the names of “icon_16.png” for example, where “icon” is NOT the name you entered. This way, if you want to save a new icon, you need to get the old ones out of the way because they will be overwritten. I have no idea why the icons are not named after the name you enter, this would make saving and handling of these files much easier. Otherwise a great little app, give it a go!

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Userscripts Updater is a Greasemonkey script that has been designed to search for script updates automatically. It is installed like any other Greasemonkey script in the web browser. It won’t work right out of the box because it only supports scripts that have been installed after it was installed itself. Users with Greasemonkey scripts installed need to uninstall and reinstall them. That should not be highly problematic unless dozens of scripts are installed on a user’s computer.

The userscript will add all scripts that get installed after its own installation so that these can be automatically included in the checks for updates. It is important to open the Options of the script at least once to configure the automatic update process. Options can be accessed on any Greasemonkey userscript page.

A click on Update Scripts will initiate a check for script updates. Options on the other hand open a small overlay menu on the same page that can be used to configure regular automatic update checks, for instance every hour or second day, and to take a look at the scripts that are monitored.

Old scripts have to be removed manually from that option’s menu as they are still listed in the updater even if they have been uninstalled by the user. Userscripts Updater is a great script for users who use Greasemonkey scripts. It removes the hassle of having to check for script updates regularly.

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By employing Spamassassin you can set up an outstanding SPAM  filter system that will protect your users. It’s not as simple as double clicking an .exe file to install, but the end results will be worth the time and effort.

Installing the tool

This portion of the task is simple. Open up your Add/Remove utility, do a search for “spamassassin” (no quotes), select the results, and apply the changes. After you have installed the package you need to take a few steps to finish up the installation.

Now you are going to need a local.rc file. You can open up the /etc/mail/spamassassin/local.rc file for hand editing, or you can use this handy web-based tool to set it up for you. This tool was written by Michael Moncur and makes the setup of Spamassassin much easier. Once you have selected all your options click the Generate button and then click the Download button. You will need to place this file in /etc/mail/spamassassin in order for it to be used.

It’s time to start the daemon. Issue the command /etc/init.d/spamassassin start (or /etc/rc.d/init.d/spamassassin start – depending upon your distribution.)

Test the install

Spamassassin comes with a sample file you can run through the filter for testing. In modern installations this file is located in /usr/share/doc/spamassassin-*/sample-spam.txt. To test this issue the command:

spamc -R </usr/share/doc/spamassassin-3.2.5/sample-spam.txt

You should see results like this:

Content analysis details:   (1000.0 points, 5.0 required)

pts rule name              description
—- ———————- ————————————————–
-0.0 NO_RELAYS              Informational: message was not relayed via SMTP
1000 GTUBE                  BODY: Generic Test for Unsolicited Bulk Email
-0.0 NO_RECEIVED            Informational: message has no Received headers

As you can see, this sample scored 1000 points. Only 5 points are required for an email to be considered SPAM. It’s safe to say this is SPAM and safe to say Spamassassin is working.

Using Spamassassin with Procmail

You will need to set up Procmail (or another MTA) in order to deliver mail. What we want to do is set this up globally so you don’t have to deal with each users ~/.procmailrc file. To do this you will edit the /etc/procmailrc file. All you need to do is add the following lines:

DROPPRIVS=yes

:0fw

| /usr/bin/spamc

Spamassassin should now be working.

Training spamassassin

At first you might not notice much of a drop in SPAM. This is because Spamassassin has to have a period of training.  There is a built-in tool for this called sa-learn. What you need to do is create two folders, one for SPAM and one for HAM. In the SPAM folder collect 100 or so emails that are definately SPAM. In the HAM folder collect 100 or so valid emails. Once you have those folders collected issue the following commands:

sa-learn –spam /PATH/TO/SPAM/FOLDER

sa-learn –ham /PATH/TO/HAM/FOLDER

Where /PATH/TO/SPAM/FOLDER and /PATH/TO/HAM/FOLDER are the explicit paths to these folders.

You can also set up a cron job to help Spamassassin train frequently if you need.

Final Thoughts

If SPAM is clogging up your Linux mail server you will be wise to employ a tool like Spamassassin. Your users and your IT staff will thank you for it.

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1. Enabling bluetooth

The first thing you need to do is enable bluetooth on both devices. You should find bluetooth under connection settings on your phone, or some similar place. I use a Sony w880i, I have it under Settings, Connectivity, Bluetooth. Make sure to set your phone to visible, although this should be the default setting.

On your computer you should have a bluetooth icon in the tray. If you do, right click it, and select “show devices”. If you don’t see the icon there, go into your control panel and double click on “Bluetooth Devices”. This should take you to the same screen. If you don’t see bluetooth settings here, you might not have bluetooth capability, or you might need to install drivers.

2. Adding your device

On the Bluetooth Devices screen you might already see your phone, or you will need to click on “Add Wireless Devices” in the top menu. All devices which can be discovered should be listed after a few moments of searching, if you wait a few more moments, their names, brands, or types should also be visible.

Double click on the device you want to add, and you will be taken through a very simple procedure to add the device to your list. You will need to enter a code into a dialog on your computer, the code for it will be shown on the phone. Once done, your device will be listed on the Bluetooth Devices page.

3. Importing contacts

Double click on your newly listed device and you should see a screen similar to the one below. Select “Backup Contacts and Calendar Information from your Phone”. This will quickly copy all your contacts to the contacts folder in your user directory. You can now sync your contacts between your computer and phone. If supported you might be able to do the same with calendar items, emails and notes.

4. Using your computer as a phone

On the same page, you can see that at the top, you can enter a phone number and call the number. Doing this will work, but it will all be initiated only on the phone. Simply click connect next to the headset option “Use this computer as a headset or speakerphone for calls on your phone”. This will make your computer act like any other wireless headset, so any calls your receive or initiate can be conducted by just talking at your computer. I have a good speaker and a built in mic, so I don’t even have to stop working to talk to people.

The great thing is that you can also initiate a call by right clicking a contact, going to “actions” and clicking on “call this contact”. The call will be initiated from your phone, but since your laptop is your headset, there will be no need to touch your phone, or for it to be anywhere near you.

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Downloads have already been pushed to the update mirrors and the Mozilla homepage has been modified to show Firefox 3.0.10 as the latest available version of the web browser. Users can also initiate the download from the Firefox menu by clicking on Help > Check for Updates. The release notes only list the two fixes mentioned in the first paragraph.

Our new software updates notification site appnews broke the news more than 4 hours ago. Make sure you check it out if you have not been there before ;)

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With no install needed, just run it, select a drive and watch as the table structure fills up with folders and sub-folders. You can double click on any folder to bring it into main view (cool animation here), so you can see more detail. If you’ve zoomed in on a folder you can click the name again to zoom back out, or you can use the forward and back buttons like on a browser.

There are options to show unknown space, free space, but apart from that this app is a simple hard drive space analyzer, but a really very well made one. It is beautiful, it is elegant and it gives you the information you need in a form very easily digested by the human mind. I simply love this app, if you can and you like it too, please consider donating to them. (via Freeware Genius)

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Some of these improvements will be very obvious to the users and some of them will not. In this article I will detail the major changes so you can decide if this update is for you.

Ext4

This will be the first release to support the extension 4 file system. This support is option (as 9.04 will default to ext3). The biggest advantage to ext4 is the support for larger volumes (up to 1 exabyte) and larger files (16 terabytes). There are other improvements that ext4 regarding allocation. Both pre-allocation and delayed allocation have been added. These improvements deal with how space is allocated for files. The former will boost performance for systems like streaming media and databases. The latter will improve fragmentation.

Depending upon user feedback, ext4 may become the default in 9.10.

Cloud computing

With the release of 9.04, cloud computing will become much easier with the help of Eucalyptus. This application will allow you to test and deploy your own clouds matching Amazon EC2 API.

GNOME 2.26.0

The latest release of GNOME will bring some positive changes to the desktop. The Brasero CD burning utility will bring probably the easiest CD burning ever to the Linux desktop. The latest GNOME will also be able to handle multiple monitors much better thanks to gnome-display-properties.

X.org

Probably the one issue that will excite people the most is that a number of card drivers have been transitioned to free. Also many improvements to the ATI drivers as well. One important improvement here is the use of EXA acceleration. One 3D bug that caught me off guard was a mismatch between the kernel and fglrx that rendered 3D non-existent for NVidia drivers…this has been fixed. 3D performance in 9.04 should be greatly improved for all supported video chip sets.

Boot time

Ubuntu is slowly creeping toward its promise of a 20 second boot time. I have actually seen Ubuntu 9.04 (with a solid state hard drive) boot up in 17.4 seconds. Of course the solid state drive is an unfair advantage over most mortal computers. But 17.4 seconds! Ubuntu is doing something right with their boot process.

Kernel

A number of kernel bug fixes have been applied. Particular to this release are numerous USB fixes, PCI subsystem fixes, and firewire fixes. These improvements will be a real boost to multimedia usage on Linux.

More architecture support

As of 9.04 ubuntu will now support ARM processors. This will be a large step in further gaining ground in the netbook market. This is also significant with Freescale releasing a sub-$200.00 ARM-based netbook in the near future.

Overall

Ubuntu has been called on one major issue: Performance. A drastic decline in performance has been noticed from 7.04 to 8.10. This has been one of the major focal points for the Ubuntu development team. To resolve this issue Ubuntu has focused their efforts on a kernel and process level. Hopefully this will result in serious improvements in performance and reliability.

It is my feeling? that this release will be a typical .04 Ubuntu release with a few areas that will very possibly draw in non-Linux users. In particular the file system size limitations and the boot times will draw a more tech-savvy crowd (especially to the server release) and the drastic 3D improvements will draw more end users in.

The most important choice for a 9.04 installation will be to use ext4 or not. If you are installing on a production machine you should probably avoid this file system. But I wouldn’t hestitate to install 9.04 with the ext 4 file system on SOME machine – just to see how much it improves over all performance.

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But I am getting too far ahead of myself. Let’s get back to the basics shall we? First I am going to assume that your wireless card was detected by your distribution and has the proper drivers loaded. With that accomplished you will need to have the following tools:

• ifconfig: Enable your wireless device.
• iwlist: List the available wireless access points.
• iwconfig: Configure your wireless connection.
• dhclient: Get your IP address via dhcp.

The first command you need to use is ifconfig. With this command you are going to enable your wireless device. Most likely your device will be called wlan0. So in order to enable this you would enter the command (as root):

ifconfig wlan0 up

You won’t see any feedback unless there is a problem.

The next step is to scan for your wireless network to make sure it is available. Do this with the following command:

iwlist wlan0 scan

With this command you will see output like the following:

Cell 01 - Address: 00:21:43:4E:9B:F0
ESSID:"HAIR STROBEL"
Mode:Master
Channel:5
Frequency:2.432 GHz (Channel 5)
Quality=100/100? Signal level:-45 dBm? Noise level=-95 dBm
Encryption key:on
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 22 Mb/s
6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s
36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Extra:tsf=000002f1d9be01b7

So you know this network is available. From the above output you can also see this network is employing WPA2, so you will need a passkey. If you don’t know that passkey, you are out of luck (which would be the case no matter if you were using a front end in Linux, Windows, or Mac.)

Now it’s time to configure your connection. To do this issue the command:

iwconfig wlan0 essid NETWORK_ID key WIRELESS_KEY

Where NETWORK_ID is the ESSID of the network with which you want to connect and WIRELESS_KEY is the security key needed to connect to the wireless access point.

Note: iwconfig defaults to using a HEX key. If you want to use an ascii key you will have to add the “s:” prefix to your key like so:

iwconfig wlan0 essid NETWORK_ID key s:WIRELESS_KEY

Now that you have your configuration set, it’s time to get an IP address with the help of dhclient. Issue the command:

dhclient wlan0

If no output is reported there are no errors. You should now be up and running.

Make it a script

Of course who wants to type out all of those commands. Instead of doing this you could create a script for this like so:

#! /bin/bash
ifconfig wlan0
iwconfig wlan0 essid NETWORK_ID key WIRELESS_KEY
dhclient wlan0

Where NETWORK_ID is the actually essid of the network and WIRELESS_KEY is the security key for that network. Save this script with the filename wireless_up.sh and then make this script executable with the command:

chmod u+x wireless_up.sh

You can make this a global command by placing this script in /usr/local/bin. You can now issue the command wireless_up.sh from anywhere in your directory structure and it will run, connecting you to the configured wireless access point.

If you frequent many wireless access points you can create a script for each one giving them each unique names. By doing this, when you need to connect to a specific access point, just run the script associated with that access point and you’re good to go.

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Users who do not stop here and turn their back on the forum in frustration can actually access the answers quite easily without having to use third party services or changing their web browser’s configuration. What many users fail to realize that the answers are right in front of them, or more precisely right at the end of the scrollbar.

The Experts Exchange forum uses a very clever forum disguise to make visitors think that they can only access the answers if they signup as the banners and information directly below the question suggest. If they happen to scroll down further however they will realize that all the answers are located below that block.

There is one requirement though. Only visitors who are coming from search engines will be able to see the answers this way. There is however a quick and easy way of achieving this. Copying and pasting the title of the thread into a search engine form will do the trick. The posts at the Experts Exchange forum are usually well indexed and one of the first entries should be a direct link to that forum post.

A click on that link will open the Experts Exchange page with the question and its answers which are located below the middle block.

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GTranslater is an Open Source language translation software for the desktop that uses Google’s translation service that supports 89 languages in total. The interface of the portable software program is pretty basic providing two panes that are used to display the original and the translated text.

The user can paste text into the left pane which will get translated by pressing F5. The translated text is then shown in the right pane. Language selectors are available below each pane that make it easy to switch languages. There is even an unknown entry for translating languages that cannot be identified positively by the user.

The translation software needs a working Internet connection to send and receive the information from Google Translate. It usually does not take longer than a few seconds before the results appear in the second pane. Users who are interested in language translation software might also be interested in the following tools: Foreign Language Identifier and 5 essential tools to learn a language.

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