Preparation

Although the task is a simple one, there are a number of steps you should take in order to make the process much easier. The first thing you should do is take note of all of the plugins and configurations you have set up on your currently running installation. One thing in particular you will want to do is to make sure you update Claws Mail to the most recent release on both installations. If the target installation is newer than the source, the method I am going to outline will not work (and you will have to do some of this a bit more manually).

The easiest way to take care of much of the preliminary work is to open up Synaptic and do a search for “claws” (no quotes). In the results you want to make note of the release number as well as all of the plugins and extras you have installed. Once you have that noted, head over to the target machine and make sure your Claws Mail installation matches perfectly. Once you have all of that complete, you are ready for the migration.

NOTE: Do not start Claws Mail on the new machine until you have been instructed to do so.

To make this really easy you will need secure shell access to the new machine (from the old machine).

First steps

The first thing you must do is close out Claws Mail on the source machine. Once you have done that open up a terminal window and issue the following commands:

tar cfz ~/Mail.tgz ~/Mail

tar cfz ~/claws-mail.tgz ~/.claws-mail.tgz

What the above commands are going to do is create archives of the only two directories you need on your new installation. Now you need to send those archives to the new destination. Do that with the following commands:

scp ~/Mail.tgz USERNAME@IP_ADDRESS_OF_DESTINATION:home/USERNAME/Mail.tgz

scp ~/claws-mail.tgz USERNAME@IP_ADDRESS_OF_DESTINATION:home/USERNAME/claws-mail.tgz

Where USERNAME is the actual username of the user on the Linux box and IP_ADDRESS_OF_DESTINATION is the address of the destination machine.

Second steps

Now it’s time to move to the destination machine. Open up a terminal window and do the following:

tar xvfz ~/Mail.tgz

tar xvfz ~/claws-mail.tgz

The above commands will unpack the archives, recreating the folders necessary for Claws Mail, with all of the configurations as well as Inbox and folders you had on the old installation. Now all you have to do is fire up Claws Mail and see that all of your email and configurations are there, intact.

Final thoughts

Did you ever think migrating an email client from one machine to another would be so simple? I have been in the field and have witness the madness of migrating PST and OST files from one outlook installation to another. It’s not pretty. Migrating Claws Mail, on the other hand, is as easy a migration as you will find.

That is what we are going to address in this article: Configuring the Compiz compositor in the Elive Linux distribution.

Installation

If you have installed the Elive distribution, there is nothing more you need to install in order to get Compiz running and configured. In fact, that is part of the point of the distribution itself – to have Compiz integrated with the Enlightenment window manager. So all you need to know is where to configure and what to configure.

The configuration tools

Figure 1

One thing you have to remember is that in Elive, Compiz is referred to as Ecomorph. That is because Compiz had to be seriously tweaked in order to get it to work with Enlightenment. So if you try to look for a Compiz configuration tool your search will be in vein. Instead you want to look for the Ecomorph Configuration tool (see Figure 1). You will find this in Main > Settings > Ecomorph.

If you scroll up and down in the left pane you will find many of the standard Compiz settings available to you. But as you go poking around a little more deeply you might find some features are simply not there. For one thing you will not find key bindings anywhere in this window. So how do you go about configuring a key combination to initiate or manipulate an action? That is in yet another window. But before we locate that configuration, let’s look at one feature you might find useful.

At the top left of the configuration tool is a checkbox and two buttons. The checkbox allows you to enable/disable Ecomorph. The buttons allow you to stop and start Ecomorph. You might want to disable Ecomorph if your hardware isn’t up to the task of using the full effects. You might want to stop and start Ecomorph if you feel something is amiss. This is also the first place to look if Ecomorph (out of nowhere) doesn’t seem to be running.

Now, what about those key combinations?

Key bindings

Figure 2

In order to configure the key bindings for Ecomorph you need to click Main > Settings > Settings Panel. In this window click on the Input tab and then click Key Bindings. From this window (see Figure 2) you can configure any/all key bindings for your system. Now I have to say there is a little work that needs to be done in order for this tool to really be useful. For example, if you click on an action in the right pane you would think the associated key binding would be selected in the left pane. That is not the case. If, however, you select the key binding in the left pane, the associated action does appear in the right pane. This makes it problematic when you want to know what a key combination is for a certain action. Instead of just clicking the action you actually have to go about finding the combination in reverse order – you have to navigate around the key binding listing hoping to find the associated action. This behavior really needs to be addressed in future releases.

The good news is you can always create a key binding for an action. Just follow these steps:

1. Click Add Key.
2. Press the key combination.
3. Click an Action from the right pane.
4. Click Apply.

That’s it. You can, of course, also modify existing keys. If you mess up your key bindings, just his Restore Default Bindings to resolve the issue.

Final thoughts

Some may wish Elive to switch to the standard Compiz configuration tool. But since that will most likely never happen, it is best to familiarize yourself with their version of the tool. Although not as user-friendly, if you’re using Elive as your desktop distribution, you’re not so concerned with user-friendliness that a little challenge won’t scare you off.

Normally on an Elive Compiz upgrade it is highly recommended you start from scratch and NOT upgrade. So I was set on backing up everything and re-installing. So I sat about backing everything up. While my backup was running I navigated to the Elive Compiz page and eventually discovered that the dev team has finally merged Elive and Elive Compiz into one CD! This is definitely good news because the updates will now be parallel. But how does this change the install/update process? Let’s find out.

Once the backups were completed, and safely moved to an external drive, it was time to burn the Elive ISO onto CD and see how well the Live version does. I figured if the live version of the Elive had Ecomorph running as smoothly as the dedicated version, this was a no-brainer. So I popped in the CD and rebooted the machine. What surprised me was once the live CD was booted, and I went to run the installation, I was asked if I wanted to do an upgrade. I figured, since I was going to be doing a fresh installation, I should throw caution to the wind and see how it would go if I went ahead with the upgrade. I did and, surprisingly enough, all went smoothly. There were a few minor glitches – I had to re-install OpenOffice and a few other packages, but outside of that I was shocked that what was an Elive Compiz installation managed to upgrade to a well running Elive distribution. But what about Compiz (aka Ecomorph in Elive land)? Simple. I had to enable it. Let’s see how.

Enabling Ecomorph

Figure 1

The first thing you have to do is to load the Ecomorph module. To do this left mouse click anywhere on the desktop to bring up the main menu. From that menu select Settings and then select Modules. When the new window opens (see Figure 1) scroll down on the left pane until you see the Ecomorph module. Select Ecomorph and then click the Load Module button.

When the module is loaded you can close out the Module Settings window. Now you need to start Ecomorph. To start the Ecomorph module left click the desktop again and select the Settings sub-menu. From the Settings sub-menu select Ecomorph.

From the Ecomorph Settings window (see

Figure 2

Figure 2) all you need to do is click the Start Ecomorph button. Your screen might flash or flicker and then Ecomorph will be running. You now have an Elive distribution running with Ecomorph loaded. Not only are you back where you were with Elive Compiz, but you are now better able to continue upgrading your distribution.

Final thoughts

As far as upgrading distributions is concerned I have always been a proponent of starting from scratch. But this instance of upgrading Elive has really given me pause to think twice about my stance. It is, in fact, possible to do an upgrade and have it come off with few (if any) hiccups. In my many years of using Computers I have to say that this might have been one of the smoothest, easiest upgrades I have ever done.

But always remember, when attempting an upgrade of your operating system ALWAYS back up your data.

The wifi-wiz interface is easy to use and can save your networks so that reconnecting is simple. This is a boon for anyone who has had issues getting wifi working on a Debian-based laptop.

Getting and Installing

Installing wifi-wiz is simple. Download the compressed .deb file from the creators’ site. Once the file is on your machine open up a terminal window, change into the directory where the file was saved, issue the command:

tar xvf wifi-wiz.tar

and then issue the command (as root):

dpkg -i wifi-wiz.deb

which will install the package.

Running wifi-wiz

Once Wifi-wiz is installed you wan start the application with the command wifi-wiz. NOTE: You will have to have root privileges in order run the software.

Wifi-wiz Main Window

When wifi-wiz starts you will see a very simple, easy to navigate window where all of the action takes place.

The first thing you should do is click on the Scan button which will scan the area for wireless networks. When the scan is finished all you have to do is select the network you want to connect to, configure that network (with which protocol you will connect, what wireless security type, the security key for the network, and if you want to set the DNS servers. Once you have the settings for your network done all you have to do is click Connect and your laptop will quickly connect to the configured access point.

Saved Networks

Once you have a network saved in Wifi-wiz you can click on the manage tab to change any configurations necessary. From this tab you can also delete a network and disconnect from a network.

Settings

From the settings tab there is an important setting you can take care of. If you want to run the wifi-wiz daemon at boot you can set this option here. You can also set the interval between connection checks for the daemon. Once you make any changes to your connection properties make sure you click the Save Network button.

Final Thoughts

I have used many wireless device managers on Linux. I have also tried a number of wireless device managers on this particular laptop. The one manager for debian systems that works with the most consistency is Wifi-wiz. It’s simple to use, reliable, and (in some cases – such as Elive) is the only option that works.

If you are looking for a good wireless manager for Debian download Wifi-wiz and give it a go. And, if you’re up to the task, create an rpm from the deb so this application can be used on more distributions.

There was once a plugin for Beryl that worked with this. But since Beryl became Compiz, the developer of the screencast plugin found migrating to Compiz too difficult. Work ceased on that plugin. So I tried a bevy  of applications until I managed to get gtk-recordMyDesktop to work.

Installing the app

Installing the app was simple. Since Elive Compiz is a Debian based operating system it was just a matter of issuing the command (as root):

apt-get install gtk-recordmydesktop

Once the application was installed I found it in the Video menu of the E17 Applications menu.

You can also install gtk-recordmydesktop by doing a search for it in your Add/Remove Software utility.

Running the app

Main Window

When you open up gtk-recordmydesktop the main window will open. As you can see (in the image to the left) the window immediately begins grabbing your root desktop window.

What you do from here is select the window you want to grab. When you click the “Select Window” button your cursor will turn into a fat “+” symbol when your cursor hovers over the window displaying the screen. What you want to do is click and drag that cursor over the section of the desktop you want to record. If you want to record the entire desktop you select the entire desktop.

Once you’ve done that you click “Record” and the gtk-recordmydesktop window will minimize. In the case of Elive Compiz it will minimize to a small red dot at the bottom left of your screen. This small red dot is what you click when you are finished recording.

Problems

When I created a video of Elive Compiz, with the default settings, the playback was so bad it

Advanced Settings

wasn’t viewable. The defaults settings could grab all of the 3D effects. In order to get this to work I had to configure two options. To get to this options click the Advanced button from the main window. A new window will open (as shown in the image to the right) where you configure all advanced settings. Click on the Performance tab. There are two settings to change. The first setting is the Frames Per Second. The highest you can set this is 50, so max that baby out.

The next setting is the “Full shots at every frame”. You need to enable this in order to capture any 3D effects. It should be auto-enabled when any compositing is use. In my case this did not happen.

Once you have made these changes, click the Advanced button again to get rid of the settings window. Now when you record your Compiz-enabled desktop you should have decent output.

Output

The output of gtk-recordmydesktop is Ogg Vorbis Video (ogv). If you need to convert that format you can use a command-line tool like ffmpeg to covert to mpg like so:

ffmpeg -i input_filename.ogv ouput_filename.mpg

The quality of the ogv format is going to be much better than the mpg format when converted. There are ffmpeg settings you can tweak to try to raise the quality of your output. Play around with that to see how you can eek out the best quality. To get a peek at what both gtk-recordmydesktop and Elive Compiz can do, check out the sample video link I created below.

elive_compiz_small1

What exactly is a Live CD? A Live CD is a CD (or flash drive) that contains a complete and bootable operating system that is run directly from the CD and not the hard drive. There are many types of Live CDs that serve different purposes. There are live distributions for repairing Windows or Linux systems (such as SystemRescueCD). There are live cds for nearly every Linux distribution that allow you to test and/or install the distribution (Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuSE, Mandriva, ELive). You can even do stress testing and benchmarking with Live CDs like Inquisitor. Or what about a complete, embedded firewall distribution m0n0wall.

Why Use a Live CD?

The main purpose of a Live CD is to test drive Linux. A Live CD runs directly from the CD and the PCs RAM and does not even need a hard disk to run. Because of this, you can rest assure that a Live CD is not going to alter your hard disk unless you actually choose to install the Live CD onto your drive.

There are many reasons why a Live CD would be preferred. For instance, hardware diagnostics. I have employed Puppy Linux on numerous occassions in order to get information on a piece of hardware or test to see if a piece of hardware is working. I have also used that same Live distribution to run older machines where only certain functions are necessary. Live CDs are also great choices for cafes where you want to start with a clean slate every day. Another great use for a Live CD is when a machine has no mutable storage (a hard drive) and you want to run the computer as a pseudo “dumb terminal” or “thin client”. This would allow users to execute certain tasks so long as they didn’t need to save any work.

But what if you want to save information? For that you can use the flash drive-based Live distributions. With a large enough flash drive the user can also save data as well as run the operating system. If you’re looking for a pre-installed solution Mandriva has the Mandriva Flash Drive which has 6 gigs of free space for data.

One of the best reasons for using a Live distribution, in my opinion, is testing to see if that distribution works well with the hardware you have. I have one particular laptop that, when it comes time to upgrade operating systems, I wind up burning numerous distributions onto CD and running each one of them until one of them can work with the finicky hardware on that machine.

Drawbacks

One of the biggest drawbacks of using a Live CD is the speed. Remember, you are running this from RAM so the amount of RAM the machine has (as well as the speed of the CD drive) will determine how fast your Live CD distribution will run. So a machine with low RAM will run poorly. This isn’t such an issue if you are planning on installing immediately. But using the Live CD on a low-RAM machine will be painfully slow.

The other drawback was already mentioned, unless you are using a flash drive-based Live distribution, you can not save data. If you are only testing the distribution out to see if you like it, that’s not a problem.

Final Thoughts

Live CDs are here to stay. They have many uses and few drawbacks. If you are hesitant to use a Live CD because you don’t want to lose data, you shouldn’t worry about that (unless you accidentally click the installation button and accidentally click through all of the steps to install the operating system.)