They know full well that any modern platform will live or die on the number and quality of the apps available for it and, in order to gain any kind of critical mass on tablets and other mobile devices when it ships next year, Windows 8 will need a good number (we’re talking thousands) of good quality apps in a wide variety of categories sitting ready in the new Windows Store.

This, according to Linux Gnome co-creator Miguel de Lcaza is why Linux is doing so badly on the desktop.  In an interview given to Tim Anderson’s IT writing blog…

When you count how many great desktop apps there are on Linux, you can probably name 10. You work really hard, you can probably name 20. We’ve managed to piss off developers every step of the way, breaking APIs all the time.

He also cites the confusion caused by so many completely different distributions of Linux on the desktop as a reason for the platform’s failure to take off in any meaningful way.

To be honest, with Linux on the desktop, the benefits of open source have really played against Linux on the desktop in that we keep breaking things. It is not only incompatibilities between Red Hat, Unbuntu, Suse, but even between the same distribution.  Ubuntu from this week is incompatible with the one nine months ago. And then there are multiple editions, the KDE version, the Gnome edition, the one that is the new launching system.

It’s unusual that only a few short years ago we were all saying that what set one operating system apart from others were factors including ease of use, power and flexibility.  Then along came the iPhone and almost everything changed to the quality and availability of apps, so much so that this has even now become Microsoft’s new focus; this is despite the fact that nobody would ever criticise the Windows desktop platform for ever being short of software.

He was also asked about Windows 8 and said…

They are Microsoft, it’s going to succeed. In three years they are going to have this thing on half a billion computers, so it will be out there.  I have to say, I actually like Windows 8. I am not a Windows user. It’s probably the first time that I would use a Windows machine.

This may be somewhat optimistic as first Microsoft will need to placate business and IT pro users who like the flexibility and power of full desktop apps.  There can be no doubt that he is a man who knows what he’s talking about though.  He still is critical about Windows though where it’s deserved.

Right, and it is needed, they definitely need to fix this mess, a lot of malware, spyware, and the fact that everybody is sysadmin, and has to reinstall their machine every so often.

In the defence of GNU/Linux (which isn’t something I’m often accused of doing) it has a lot going for it with modern distributions, I even have a full chapter devoted to it in my book Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out and will probably do the same for the Windows 8 edition next year.

Update

It has been brought to my attention, by one of the GNOME contributers, that Ubuntu 11.04 will now offer a classic GNOME option in the log in menu. This will not be the default option, but it will allow new users to select the traditional GNOME desktop. Hopefully this will be enough for users who do not appreciate the changes Unity brings.

Distributions

Probably the biggest knee-jerk reaction will be users migrating to other distributions. Ubuntu Linux is probably going to see the largest amount of users jumping ship. Why? Ubuntu Unity. Although users will be able to install an alternative desktop, many users who choose Ubuntu aren’t at that level of ability. Remember, Ubuntu is the Linux of choice for most new users. And when a new user is greeted with the completely different (and less effective) desktop of Unity, they will abandon the distribution in favor of, say, Kubuntu, Linux Mint or PCLinuxOS. My guess is another option will make itself available soon after the initial release of 11.04. Someone is going to create a spin of Ubuntu with the traditional GNOME desktop.

This will, however, be prime time for other distributions to sway new users. I fully plan on offering up more Linux content geared toward those distributions as this happens.

Desktops

There is one particular desktop that will probably see more gain as a result of the migration to the new GNOME 3 and Unity desktops. That desktop is KDE. Remember, KDE went through it’s major evolution quite some time ago and has now settled into a very stable, reliable desktop that is as polished as anything GNOME has ever released. KDE will gain serious ground with the new GNOME.

Other desktops that stand to gain new users are Xfce and Enlightenment. Although Enlightenment does vary quite a bit from the standard desktop, it can be configured to look and behave in similar fashion. Xfce enjoys the same ability. Both heavily rely on panels and menus similar to the traditional desktop. Both are also very light weight and are deeply rooted in Linux’ past.

Growing pains

I don’t want to come across as being against the new desktop metaphors. I embrace change. I think GNOME 3 has a lot of potential to be something the desktop has yet to be. And when touchscreens are the standard, a new desktop aligned with the changes GNOME is bringing to the table, will be a must. Remember when KDE 4.0 first hit the desktop it was a disaster. The main reason for that was KDE 4.0 was an entire rewrite of the code base. When it was first released it was nothing but a bug hunt in the making. GNOME 3 will not suffer this same fate. The jury is still out on how Unity will fare upon first release, but it will not be on par with GNOME 3.

Ultimately the immediate reaction will be for new users to jump ship. But I would ask that new to Linux users give these desktops a chance before they do. And, after a trial period, you do not like what you see, install a new desktop on your system and try that out. That’s the beauty of Linux – there are so many options available to you. If you don’t like Unity, try GNOME 3. If you don’t like GNOME 3, try KDE 4.6. If you don’t like KDE 4.6, try Enlightenment. Eventually you will find that desktop that really speaks to you.

With GNOME Schedule, you can create a one-time cron job, recurring cron jobs, or cron jobs from templates. Let’s dig into the installation and usage of this tool.

Installation

Installing GNOME Schedule is simple, if you follow these steps, you will have this application installed in no time.

1. Open up the Add/Remove Software utility (Such as Ubuntu Software Center).
2. Search for “jobs” (no quotes).
3. Mark the Schedule Tasks application for installation.
4. Click Appy to install.
5. Accept any dependencies that might be necessary for installation.
6. Allow the installation to complete.
7. Close the Add/Remove Software utility.

Once installed, you will find GNOME Schedule in Applications > System Tools > Scheduled Tasks.

Usage

Figure 1

The usage of GNOME Schedule is simple. When you open up the main window (see Figure 1). Let’s walk through the steps for creating a recurring cron job.

Step 1: Click the new drop-down (downward pointing arrow associated with the New button) and select Recurrent Task.

Figure 2

Step 2: In the resulting window (see Figure 2) fill out all of the information necessary to create the job. The information necessary will be: Description (a name for the job), Command (the command you want to run as the recurring task), Behavior (Do you want to suppress command output, is this an X Application, etc.), Basic (Is this task to run every minute, hour, day, week, or month), Advanced (schedule the job for a specific time).

After this information is complete, click the Add button and the job will be created and scheduled.

If you look at the bottom of the scheduled task window, you will notice the Add as Template button. You can add this job as a template if it is a job you can easily base other jobs on. If you create template jobs, you can then create a new job based on that template, by click the New drop-down and selecting From Template.

Now, if you want to create cron jobs that need root (or sudo) permissions, you will need to run the tool like so:

1. Open a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo gnome-schedule (if you are using a non-sudo distribution, su to the root user and issue the command gnome-schedule).
3. Schedule the job as described above.

You will notice, when running in super user mode, you have an extra button – the change user button. This will allow you to schedule a cron job for any user on the system (so long as they have the ability to schedule jobs.)

Final thoughts

Gnome Schedule is a very easy way to allow new users to take advantage of the powerful cron tool, without having to learn the command line version. I recommend learning the command line for cron, but for those who don’t have the time or inclination, this is a good route to take.

Has it improved?

Yes. From the last time I installed Unity I have to say it has improved quite a bit. Gone are windows always opening maximized. Gone are the rampant memory leaks I found in the last release I had installed on my desktop machine. It’s smoother, it’s more refined, and it’s finally usable.

But…

What are the problems?

Although this desktop will seem very straight-forward to first-time users of GNOME and first-time users of Linux, once you get beyond “getting to know” you will find this desktop riddled with problems that will have users scrambling to either another distribution or another desktop.

No run dialog. I run a lot of programs by hitting Alt-F2 and then typing the command. That no longer works. With Ubuntu Unity there is no run dialog. You would have to have the gnome-panel running in order to get it back (you can do this if you like, but it will not be the default behavior). This strikes me as odd, because the run dialog has been a part of GNOME (and most desktops) for years. Why would this not be included?

Another HUGE problem (at least from my perspective) is the lack of “Connect To Server”. In GNOME as we know it, if you click Places you will see the Connect To Server link. That will open the tool to help you connect to a remote machine. Guess what? No Connect To Server. You can even open up Nautilus, check in the Go menu and not find the ability to connect to a server. This is bad…especially for power users.

Speaking of menus…

It looks like Unity has gone the way of Mac and placed some application menus in the panel at the top of the screen. But not all applications will adhere to this function. For example, Firefox will retain it’s menus within it’s own window. This is inconsistent and will only serve to frustrate users. Any application that is not a GTK+ application will find it’s menus stuck in the application window.

Finally…

Not a single right-click anywhere on the desktop. You can no longer right-click the desktop to change your background, you can’t right-click the panel, you can’t right-click the launcher panel. This function has become second-nature to people. When they want to configure their desktop they tend to go right-click happy. Now, from the bird’s eye view, there is no where to begin if you want to configure anything on your desktop. Sure, you’ll find it if you click Applications > System > Appearance. There you can configure your Theme, Background, Fonts, and (supposedly) Visual Effects. Of course you can’t actually configure your visual effects because, as it stands now, Mutter controls the visual effects. And guess what? There’s no way to configure Mutter.

The conclusion

From the looks of it as of right at this moment, Unity is going to tank. When I first heard of this desktop replacement I was on the side of Ubuntu. I assumed they were going to bring something user-friendly and worthwhile to the fore. They did not. Unity is going to do quite the opposite of its title for Ubuntu. 

I have covered the gnome-terminal in a few ways (see my articles “Make gnome-terminal profiles work for you” and “Get to know Linux: gnome-terminal“.) These articles either is an introduction or deals with a specific aspect of the tool. This time around, I want to highlight a few different tips and tricks that can help to make gnome-terminal even more useful and user-friendly.

Change that title

When you open up gnome-terminal you usually will see the hostname and the current working directory. Sometimes this just isn’t much help. This is especially true when you have more than one terminal window open and you want to make sure you know which terminal you are working in. You can change this by clicking Terminal > Set Title. After you click this a small window will open where you can type the new terminal title. Once you save that title your gnome-terminal will display the configured title until you close and re-open the tool (upon reopening the title will revert to the default.)

Search the contents of an open file

The gnome-terminal tool includes it’s own search feature. With an open file you can search that file with a string by clicking Search a new window will appear where you can enter the conditions for your search. Those conditions are:

• Search for: This is the string you want to search for in your file.
• Mach case.
• Match entire word only.
• Match as regular expression.
• Search backwards.
• Wrap around.

This is a great way to help you work with larger configuration files such as smb.conf or httpd.conf.

Zoom in/out

There are reasons for zoom in and out. The biggest reason is accessibility. For those with vision impairments, zooming into the terminal window is a quick way to make the text in terminal large enough to see. To zoom use the following key combinations:

• Zoom in: Ctrl++
• Zoom out: Ctrl--

If you have trouble with the key combinations, click View > Zoom In or View > Zoom Out to control the zoom.

Switch dimensions

I’m not talking about switching from 2D to 3D (or d20). I’m talking about the size of your terminal. There are four pre-configured sizes you can easily switch to (for different usage.) If you click the Terminal menu entry you will see, near the bottom of the menu:

• 80×24
• 80×43
• 132×24
• 132×43

You can easily switch to one of those sizes by clicking on the size you want. When you open the terminal, it will open back to the default size.

Final thoughts

There you have just a fraction of the tips and tricks that can be pulled off with gnome-terminal. There are plenty more where that come from and we will re-visit this topic. Until then, enjoy the CLI!

What is Fortune?

If you are new to Ubuntu and Linux you probably have not heard of “Fortune”. If not, the Fortune application (It’s usually referred to as a game for some odd reason) uses flat text files to issue random sayings to various subsystems or applications. It is commonly used to append signatures in email clients (See my article “Add uptime and/or a daily fortune to your email signature“).

Installation

In order to install the Ubuntu Tips Applet, you will first have to install the application fortunes-ubuntu-server. Since the Ubuntu Tip Applet is not found in the repositories (it’s an installable .deb file you download), you will first need to install fortunes-ubuntu-server. To do that, follow these steps:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install fortunes-ubuntu-server.
3. Type your sudo password and hit Enter.
4. Accept any dependencies.
5. Allow the installation to complete.

With this dependency installed, you can move onto the installation of the tips applet. First download the .deb file from the GTK-Apps web site. Save that file in the ~/Downloads directory. Now, follow these steps to install:

Open up a terminal window.

1. Change to the ~/Downloads directory with the command cd ~/Downloads.
2. Issue the command sudo dpkg -i ubuntu-tips-applet_XXX.deb Where XXX is the release number.
3. Type your sudo password and hit Enter.
4. Allow the installation to complete.

Usage

Figure 1

After the install, you will not see any tips start up. That is because you actually  must start the app before it can serve up those handy tips. To start it click Applications > Accessories > Ubuntu Tips Applet. What you will notice immediately is a small icon in your notification area (see Figure 1).  The icon is the swirling line between the network applet and the sound applet. If you left-click that icon you can do the following:

• Set the interval for tips (by default the interval is one minute).
• Show a single tip.
• Disable auto refresh.
• Find out information about the applet.
• Quit the applet.

Really the only configuration option you have is the interval. As I said, the default is one minute. This can get a bit annoying, so I wold suggest setting it to something more like five or ten minutes.

Figure 2

When a tip appears it looks just like a standard Ubuntu notification (See Figure 2).

The tips you are shown range in level of difficulty. You will see some fairly easy tips all the way up to some significantly challenging tips. You might well be surprised at how helpful this tool will be to your Ubuntu education.

Final thoughts

Having a handy tip system at your fingertips will go a long way to aiding you in your quest to learn more about Ubuntu Linux. It’s non-intrusive, can be stopped, and offers up some fairly handy advice. What more do you want in a tip system?

But hold on a moment…that feature is not built into your favorite file manager (at least not yet). You have to build it in. But don’t worry, the process isn’t difficult – if you know what you’re doing. Let me hip you to the process of adding this functionality to Nautilus now.

What you need

Obviously you need a working installation of Linux (I am using Ubuntu 10.10) and a GNOME desktop. You will also need a Facebook account. Outside of that, the only thing you need is the file that can be downloaded from the bottom of this page. Once you have that file, you are ready to begin.

The installation

Here are the steps for the installation:

1. Unpack the Facebook_XXX.targ.gz file (where XXX is the release number) by right-clicking it in Nautilus and selecting “Extract Here”.
2. Move into the newly created folder.
3. Double click on the install.sh file and, when prompted, select “Run in Terminal”.
4. When prompted (inside of the newly opened terminal) enter your sudo password.
5. Let the installation complete.

That’s it for the installation. Now it’s time for the authentication.

First upload

Figure 1

To upload a photo to your Facebook account you simply have to right-click a photo and select Scripts > Upload to Facebook. When you go to upload your first photo to Facebook from Nautilus you will have to authenticate to your Facebook account. This is done by a window opening requiring you to paste a URL into a text area. The URL you need to paste will be opened in your default web browser AFTER you click the Allow button in the Facebook authentication page. Once you have that URL paste into the window you see shown in Figure 1 and click OK.

Once you’ve done that click the Refresh button and you will be prompted for your Facebook username. NOTE: This is NOT your email addresss. Once you have done that all of your photo albums will be listed and you are ready to start uploading photos.

From this manager you can also add new photo albums as well as go directly to that album.

Uploading

When you have completed the setup, you can start uploading photos. The process is quite simple:

1. Open up Nautilus to the directory containing the photo you want to upload.
2. Right click the photo and select Scripts > Upload to Facebook.
3. When the FUploader opens click the Refresh button.
4. Select the specific album you want upload the photo to.
5. Click the Upload button.
6. Close the manager.

You can select multiple photos (holding down the Ctrl button as you click them) and do the same process listed above.

Installation

Surprise! If you are using a modern Ubuntu distribution you should find Baobab pre-installed and located in Applications > Accessories > Disk Usage Analyzer. If you do not find it installed on your machine, you will find it in your standard repository, so just follow these steps:

1. Open up Ubuntu Software Center.
2. Search for “baobab” (No quotes).
3. Click Install.
4. Let the installation finish.

Features

• Scan entire file system.
• Scan specific directories.
• Scan remote server.
• View as Ring Chart or Treemap.

Usage

Figure 1

When you fire up Baobab you can immediately initiate a scan by clicking the button associated with the scan you want to run (see Figure 1). If you want to just scan your ~/ (HOME) directory click the Scan Home button. To scan the entire file system click the disk button (second button from left).

Figure 1 shows the results of a full file system scan displaying in a Ring Chart view. If you hover your cursor over a specific ring the details of that ring will appear (really, it only gives you the location associated with that ring). If you hover your cursor over the center circle you will see the details of each ring.

Figure 2

But let’s say you want to take a peek at a specific directory on that file system. To do this you can navigate to that directory in the left pane and then select the specific directory you want to view. Figure 2 illustrates the details shown when you hover your mouse over the center circle.

Instead of navigating from the left pane, you can also navigate your file system hierarchy by clicking on the various rings. When you click on a ring you will dive deeper into that ring to reveal sub folders. Once you have reached the deepest child directory the only graphic displayed will be the gray circle.

Scanning a remote folder

To scan a remote folder you click the remote folder button (the up and down arrows) and then walk through a wizard that should be familiar (It’s the same wizard you use in GNOME to connect to a server from within the Places menu). Once connected, the scanning process is exactly the same as it is when you run a local scan.

Final thoughts

If you are looking for a tool to help you keep track of how your file systems are filling up, Baobab is an outstanding tool to fill this need. It’s simple to use, flexible, interactive, and works well locally and remotely.

I will assume you already have Seahorse installed on your desktop. I will also assume you have access to the remote machine via ssh. With that in mind, let’s get started.

Step 1: Fire up the GUI

You will find the Seahorse GUI in System > Preferences > Passwords and Encryption Keys. Start it up and you will see the standard Seahorse GUI. In that GUI, the tab you want to work with is the My Personal Keys tab. Click on that tab and you will see any personal keys you have already created. If you do not see any, you have to first create a key.

Step 2: Creating a key

Figure 1

To begin the process of creating a key, click File > New and a small window will open (see Figure 1). From that new window click Secure Shell Key and then click Continue. When you do this you will be prompted for the following:

• Key Description.
• Advanced options: Key type and strength.

You can elect to set up the key or just create they key. Click Just Create and you will be prompted to create a passphrase (and confirm the passphrase). Once you have created your key it will appear in the Personal Keys tab.

Step 3: Set up key for secure shell.

The next step is to set that newly created key up to be used for Secure Shell. You need to have access to the remote machine at this point because the key will be automatically copied for you.

Go back to the personal keys tab and right click the key you want to set up for Secure Shell. When you right click it, select the option for Configure Key for Secure Shell. When you select this a new window will open asking for two pieces of information:

• Computer name.
• Login name

If you do not have the computer name in your /etc/hosts file you can just use the computer’s IP address for the Computer Name. For the Login Name you must use a legitimate login on the remote computer. When you have those two pieces entered click Setup and you will be prompted for the remote username’s password. Upon successful authentication the key will have been copied and you are ready to go. You can now ssh to that machine with the added security of ssh key authentication.

Thankfully there are handy tools out there that allow you to edit menus or even create new menus. One of those tools is 9menu. This tool is a simple command that allows you to create individual, moveable menus on your desktop that can run applications or run commands. This tool enables you to create temporary menus on your desktop to serve whatever purpose you need. Let’s take a look at how to install and use 9menu.

Installation

I will demonstrate how to install 9menu on a Ubuntu system. Although you may not find 9menu in the Ubuntu Software Center, you are able to, by default, install 9menu from the command line (or Synaptic). To install from command line do the following:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install 9menu.
3. Enter your sudo password.
4. Accept any dependencies.
5. Wait for the install to complete.

With the installation done, you are ready to begin work.

Usage

You will notice there is no entry for 9menu in the menus. That is because the usage (creation of menus) of 9menu is command line only. The standard use is:

9menu -label 'LABEL' SPACE DELINEATED LIST OF COMMANDS

Hopefully the above sample makes sense. Let’s take a look at an actual working example. Say you want to create a 9menu for the following apps: Evolution, Firefox, Empathy, and Gwibber. To do this the command would look like:

9menu -label 'Net Tools' evolution firefox empathy gwibber

Figure 1

The command above will generate a menu that looks like that in Figure 1. If you click on any of the entries show, the application will run.

Of course 9menu has plenty of options to use at the command line. There are two very nice options that are nearly “must haves” for the efficiency of 9menu:

-popdown

-teleport

The popdown option will iconify the menu as soon as one of the buttons is clicked. When iconified the menu will live in your panel where you can un-iconify it by clicking whatever key combination your desktop uses to cycle through applications.

The teleport option means that when a menu appears (either from creation or uniconifying) it will automatically appear underneath your cursor. So to use both of the above commands with our sample it would look like:

9menu -popdown -teleport -label 'Net Tools' evolution firefox empathy gwibber

I like to run the 9menu command from the run dialog (click Alt-F2 to open this) so I don’t have a terminal window open. If you would rather run it from the command line, add the & at the end of the command so you will be returned to your command prompt. You can then exit out of your terminal if you like.

Final thoughts

The ways to transform, configure, or make efficient the Linux desktop seem to be limitless. The 9menu tool adds yet another level of efficiency to your desktop, quickly and easily.

One such tool for Linux is GNOME Nanny. GNOME Nanny works to block sites visited and times used for web browsing, chatting, email, and even PC use time. And, unlike making use of a Proxy, GNOME Nanny is incredibly easy to use. Let’s take a look at this helpful tool.

Installation

There are a couple of ways to install Nanny. If you are using Ubuntu you can simply do the following:

Open up a terminal window.

Issue the command sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nanny.

Issue the command sudo apt-get update.

Issue the command sudo apt-get install nanny.

Once Nanny is installed you are ready to take advantage of this tool.

Usage

Figure 1

To start up Nanny click System > Administration > Parental Control and then enter your sudo (or root user) password. When this window opens (see Figure 1) you will first need to click the button to give you admin privileges (without the admin password you can not gain the privileges necessary to make changes to Nanny).

Once you have been escalated to admin privileges you can then schedule usage time for PC, web, email, and chat usage. Before you start setting up services to be blocked you will first want to select a user. One of the nice things about Nanny is that it allows you to set completely different configurations for all users on the system.

After you select a user, to set allotted times for each service, just click on the tab for the function you want to control, check the box for “Use…” and then set the times for use. The best way to set the time allowed is to click on the green blocks (each green block is actually two half hour increments). If a block is green it means it is a usable time. If a block is red it means it is a non-use time.

Figure 2

If you want to block certain sites from being viewed click on the Web Browser tab and then click on the Configure button. When you do this the Web Content Filtering Configuration window will open. In this window click Add and then enter the details for the site you want to block (see Figure 2).

After you’ve added a site, it might take a moment for the configuration to take effect. But once it does, that site will not be reachable by anyone. You can also import blocked sites from Blacklists. To do this click System > Administration > Blacklists. You will need to already have the blacklist on your machine, but the import process is very straight-forward.

Final thoughts

If you have a need to add parental controls to a Linux box, look no further than GNOME Nanny. Not only will it offer very predictable results, it is incredibly simple to set up and manage.

It’s actually quite simple. For the GNOME desktop there is a handy tool call Pessulus that allows you to lock down certain aspects of the desktop. I will warn you though, in order to get the most out of this you need to be using the Epiphany web browser as that is the only browser Pessulus supports. Remember, Epiphany is still the official web browser of the GNOME desktop – even though Epiphany isn’t installed by default on most distributions (go figure).

Installations

There are two tools you must install: Pessulus and Ephiphany. These are quite simple to install. All you need to do is follow these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “lockdown” (or “pessulus”) – no quotes.
3. Mark Pessulus for installation.
4. Search for “epiphany” (no quotes).
5. Mark Epiphany for installation.
6. Click Apply to install.

Depending upon your distribution, there may or may not be a need to install any dependencies. If there are, allow this.

Once installed you are ready to begin locking down the desktop.

Use

Figure 1

To use Pessulus click Alt-F2  and then type pessulus. This will open up the main (and only) window for the lockdown tool (see Figure 1). In this window there are four tabs:

General: Here you can disable general features for the GNOME desktop. Most notably is the ability to disable the command line and save to disk. This is ideal for a Kiosk or cafe situation.

Panel: In this tab you can disable force quit, you can lock down the panel, disable logout, and disable specific applets.

Epiphany Web Browser: In this tab you can disable quit, disable arbitrary URL, disable bookmark editing, disable history, disable javascript, disable toolbar editing, force fullscreen, hide the menubar, and disable unsafe protocols.

GNOME Screensaver: In this tab you can disable lock screen, enable lock on activation, allow/disallow logout, allow/disallow user switching.

One of the only issues you might find is that installing Pessulus actually adds a menu entry called “Lockdown Editor”. I would suggest you rename that menu entry to some obscure title so the user won’t have any idea what it does. If you completely remove the Pessulus menu entry you will have a hard time starting the tool as the disabling of the command line (in Pessulus) also disables the Alt-F2 run dialog. Of course you could opt to not disable command line and still have the option of using the command line to start up the tool. That depends on how secure you want that kiosk to be.

Final thoughts

Locking down the GNOME desktop doesn’t have to be a horrible challenge. Instead of going through the Gconf-editor, just use a tool like Pessulus to make sure your GNOME desktop is in a state of lockdown so the users can’t do anything you do not want them to do.

Let’s take a look at just how quickly and easy you can share out your printers in GNOME.

Assumptions

I will assume you already have your printer working on the machine to share the printer out. In my example, the printer is connected via USB and is a Samsung ML-1720 laser printer. You might have to deal with a firewall, I will illustrate how this is handled later.

The sharing

Figure 1

The first thing you need to do is click System > Administration > Printing on the machine the printer is connected to. You will have to enter your sudo password to open up the tool. Once opened you should see a listing of your connected printers. Right-click the printer you want to share out and select Properties. In this  new window (see Figure 1) click on the Policies section and then make sure the following are checked:

1. Enabled

2. Shared

3. Accepting jobs

Figure 2

Once you have that set click OK. Now go back to the the Printer listing window and click Server > Settings. In this new window (see Figure 2) make sure that Publish shared pritners connected to this system is checked as well as any other options you might want to have enabled. Click OK when you are done with this.

Firewall

This, of course, will all depend upon what tool you use for your firewall. But what you need to do is to enable incoming connections from the machine(s) that need to print to the shared printer on port 631. If your firewall works with services and not ports, the service you want is IPP. if you seem to be having trouble getting the machine to connect to the shared printer you can first try to disable your firewall to test if the machine can then connect. If it can then you will need to adjust your firewall settings in order to get the remote machine connected to the printer.

Connecting

The biggest challenge might come with with the remote machines. If you are connecting from Linux, the connection will be simple. You just need to select Windows Printer via SAMBA when selecting the type of printer you want to add.

If you are having trouble connecting from either Windows or Mac, you might have to create users on the Linux machine that match the users on the Windows or Mac machine (in both username and password). If you still have trouble, you might have to adjust the authentication type within the smb.conf file. Hopefully it won’t come to that.

Final thoughts

Linux continues to prove it can play well on the average user desktop. Even with printer sharing, Linux has become a user-friendly OS.

But how is this particular task done? There isn’t a specific GUI tool for it so, as you would imagine, you will be using a combination of GUI and command tools to get this process complete. It’s fast, it’s easy, and the end result could save you a lot of time when deploying Linux GNOME desktops.

Create your launchers

Figure 1

The first thing you must do is create the necessary launchers. In order to create a launcher in GNOME right click anywhere on the desktop and select Create Launcher. When you do this a new window will open (see Figure 1) where you enter all of the details for the launcher.

Say you want to create a launcher that will open the default browser to the Ghacks website. For this you would select Location from the “Type” drop down, give the launcher a name, enter the Ghacks URL for the location, and then a comment. You can customize that with a nice icon by clicking the icon button and selecting an image.

Once you have clicked okay the launcher is ready for you to use. But how do you enable this for all new users? Let’s take a look.

Make it available

If you open up a terminal window and then change into the ~/Desktop directory, you will see a file called (in my case) Ghacks.desktop. The contents of this file look like:

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Link
Icon[en_US]=gnome-panel-launcher
Name[en_US]=Ghacks
URL=http://www.ghacks.net
Comment[en_US]=Ghacks
Name=Ghacks
Comment=Ghacks
Icon=/home/jlwallen/Pictures/97px-Ubuntu-logo.svg.png

If you know what you are doing, you can edit these (and create them) manually.

Okay, so you have your launcher, what do you do? Simple…from the command line you need to copy the launchers you want added to all new users desktops to the /etc/skel directory. By default, you will see a launcher already in their called examples.desktop. That launcher really doesn’t do anything – it just serves as a model for you to use to create launchers. As you’ve seen here, you don’t really need a sample.

Create as many launchers, and as many types of launchers as you need. When a new user logs in for the first time, those launchers will be copied to their desktop for their use.

Final thoughts

The Linux desktop is a perfect example of real flexibility. You can make the desktop be and do anything you want. And, as an administrator, you can easily set up your new users such that they be greeted by the exact launchers you want them to have on their desktop. By taking advantage of this feature you can help to ensure your Linux desktop users start off on the right foot.

In this article I am going to show you how to change the time on your Ubuntu machine using both the GUI and the command line. Hopefully, when you’re done with this, your computer clock will always be accurate.

Another option

Of course there is always another option. You can always set up NTP on your machine. I have already covered this in my article “Installing and configuring NTP on Linux“. That is, by far, the most reliable way to manage your clock. But when you don’t have constant access to the internet, or you simply don’t want to install a daemon on your machine – you have to resort to other methods. Let’s take a look at them here.

Command line

In order to set the date from the command line, you use the date command. The date command, however, is not the simplest command to figure out – at least not from the man page. If you look at the man page for date you see the time format uses a specific time string format like:

MMDDhhmmYYYY.ss

What the above string means is:

• MM is a two digit month, between 01 to 12.
• DD is a two digit day, between 01 and 31. NOTE: Regular rules for days, according to month and year, apply.
• hh is two digit hour, using the 24-hour period so it is between 00 and 23.
• mm is two digit minute, between 00 and 59.
• YYYY is the year; it can be two digit or four digit: your choice.
• ss is two digit seconds. The period (“.”) before the ss is necessary.

So, let’s say you want to set the correct date and time for this exact moment (the moment I am writing, not your reading). To do this I would enter the command:

sudo date 100507492010.00

at which point you would be returned:

Tue Oct 5 07:50:00 EDT 2010

GUI

Figure 1

Now, let’s take a look and see how this is done from the graphical front end. To do this click System > Administration > Time and Date. When you do this you will have to click the “lock” button to unlock this tool for changes. When you click this you will have to enter your sudo password. Upon proper authentication you will then be able to use the drop downs for hours, minutes, and seconds. When you change the time, you only need to close the tool, no saving required. NOTE: You can also change the date as well as the timezone with this same tool.

Final thoughts

Don’t be caught in the future or the past on Linux. Make sure your time is correct so you aren’t confusing those receiving your emails (unless you want them to think they are receiving emails from “future you”.)

For many of you this walk around might be pointless. But for those of you who need a basic introduction to a different desktop environment, this could be your first step in migrating to the Linux desktop. Read on!

What is GNOME?

Figure 1

First off, GNOME is a desktop environment. What this means is that all of the GNOME applications are aware of one another. Everything is integrated. That means you can open your file manager and drag and drop files into, say, Rhythmbox (a music player similar to iTunes).

GNOME has been around for quite some time and you will it to be the default desktop environment for many of the different Linux distributions.

Figure 1 shows the GNOME desktop in action. You will notice it has all of the typical elements of just about any desktop you have used. Let’s take a look at the more important, basic, elements one at a time.

Panel

A panel is a taskbar is a tray is a shelf. In GNOME you have two basic panels. The upper panel (at the top edge of the desktop) holds the Main Menus, Notification Area (aka System Tray),  Application Launchers, Clock, and User menu. The lower panel (at the lower edge of the desktop) holds the Winlist (where applications are minimized), the Pager (the tool that allows you to switch workspaces), and the Recycle Bin.

You can add various types of items to the panels by right-clicking a panel and selecting “Add to panel…”.

Menus

What is different about GNOME, versus WIndows, is that you do not have a single “Start” menu. Instead you have three main menus. These menus are:

• Applications: This is where you can launch all of your applications.
• Places: This is a menu that holds shortcuts for the various important folder locations (such as Home, Pictures, Music, Downloads, etc). When you click on one of these entries Nautilus (the file manager) will open to that particular directory.
• System: This menu is where you configure your system. The System menu has two very important sub-menus: Preferences (where you set all of your user preferences) and Administration (where you can open up tools for administrative purposes – such as Printers).

When you install a new application that new application will add its menu entry to the Applications menu.

Mouse menu

There is another menu that you should know about. If you right-click on the desktop you will see a menu that allows you to create Folders, Launchers, and Documents (you have to create new templates for this – a more advanced feature). From this menu you can also select to Change Desktop Background. This action is exactly what it sounds like.

Windows

I’m not talking Microsoft here. The windows I am speaking of are the actual windows that contain the applications you use. These windows interact in the same manner you have grown accustomed to. In the upper right hand corner (or upper left if you are using Ubuntu >= 10.04) are three buttons that allow you to minimize a window, maximize a window, or close a window. Sound familiar?

Now, if you right click the titlebar (that is the bar that runs across the top of your application window) you will notice a new menu. From this menu you can also send the window to a different workspace, set the window to always be on top, and more.

Run dialog

Let’s say you want to start an application but don’t know where it is in the menu hierarchy. You do, however, know the command to start the application. For this you can use the Run Dialog. Open the run dialog by clicking Alt-F2 together. This will open up a small window where you can enter your command.

GNOME Control Center

This tool is the heart of the GNOME configuration. You can open it up by opening up the Run Dialog and entering gnome-control-center in this window (see Figure 2) you will find every configuration option you can imagine for the GNOME desktop.

NOTE: You may not see every item in your control center that you see in Figure 2. This particular control center is from a Fedora 13 installation that has a number of applications installed.

Final thoughts

Although a very cursory glance at the GNOME desktop, I hope this has helped those of you who feel lost when trying to use the Linux desktop to become more familiar. My ultimate goal, of course, is to get those of you who are unsure to migrate from your current OS to Linux.

In this instance I am going to show you how to use the Nautilus Actions tool to directly add music to your Rhythmbox Play Queue. Although the action will not initiate the playing of the music, it’s a very easy way to fill up your play queue.

A few notes

First and foremost, in order for this to work (outside of making sure you have everything installed) the music you will add from Nautilus must already be in your Rhythmbox library. This action takes advantage of the Rhythmbox command line tool rhythmbox-client which can not actually add music to the library. We can, however, create an action that will both enqueue the music AND begin playing the music. That is exactly what we are going to do.

A piece to install

In case you don’t already have Nautilus Actions installed, you will need to do so. This is very simple to do if you follow these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software Utility.
2. Search for “nautilus” (no quotes).
3. Mark Nautilus Actions for installation.
4. Okay any dependencies that might be necessary.
5. Click Apply to install.

Once the installation is complete, you can then close the Add/Remove Software Tool and get ready to work.

Creating the action

Figure 1

The first step is to start up the Nautilus Actions Configuration Tool. To do this click System > Preferences > Nautilus Actions Which will open up the tool in question. When you first open up this tool it will be empty of actions. To create an action click File > New Action. This will open the New Action tabs (see Figure 1) where you will begin to create what you need.

Now, let’s take a look at what you need to configure in order to enable an action to both add to and play from your Rhythmbox play list. We’ll look at this tab by tab.

Action

Under the action tab, you need to do the following:

• Check “Display item in selection context menu”
• Check “Display item in location context menu”
• Enter “Add and Play” (no quotes) in the Context label section.
• Check “Display item in the toolbar”
• Enter “Enqueue and Play Music” in the Tooltip section.
• Select an icon to be displayed from the drop down.
• Check “Enabled” under Action properties.

Command

Under the Command section of the command tab, you need to do the following:

• Enter /usr/bin/rhythmbox-client in the Path section.
• Enter --enqueue %M --play in the Parameters section.

Conditions

Under the Conditions tab, you need to do the following:

• Enter *.mp3; *.flacc; *.acc; *.ogg in the Filenames section. NOTE: You can add as many file types as you need here.
• Enter audio/* in the Mimetypes section.
• Check “Both”.
• Check “Appears if selection has multiple files or folders”

Figure 2

That’s it. Now you have to save the action by clicking the Save button (or clicking File > Save). The final step is to restart nautilus with the command nautilus -q. After you restart Nautilus open up Nautilus to your ~/Music folder (or where ever you house your collection) and notice the new icons (see Figure 2) in the upper right corner of the Nautilus window. In my sample I have created two actions: One that only adds music and the other that adds and then plays music. Select the folder you want to add and then press the icon for your action and the music will be added to the queue and Rhytmbox will start playing.

Final thoughts

It’s amazing how flexible Nautilus is. Even just a file manager can be so much more than that in the world of Linux. And what’s best…you can create so many different actions with Nautilus to perfectly suit your needs.

In this article I am going to show you the steps in both Fedora 13 and Ubuntu 10.04 to get this combination back. It’s actually an easy process, you just have to know the precise places where to look for the configurations.

A word of warning

The main reason why the distributions removed this combination is they didn’t want unsuspecting users to accidentally kill their running X server. I get this. But for those of us who aren’t so prone to accidentally killing the X Server, having this back is a good thing. For those who are prone to mistakenly hitting combinations like CTRL-ALT-Backspace, well, you might want to leave this feature disabled.

Fedora and Ubuntu 10.04 in GNOME

Figure 1

Let’s first take care of Fedora 13. First I will show you how to do this in the GNOME environment. It’s done the same way in both distributions. The first thing you need to do is click System > Preferences > Keyboard. In this new window click on the Layout tab and then click on the Options button. In this new window (see Figure 1) expand the entry for Key sequence to kill the X server. Once you expand that you will see the entry for Control + Alt + Backspace. Make sure that entry has its checkbox checked and then close the window.

You can now close the Keyboard preferences window and you can now enjoy having CTRL-ALT-Backspace back.

But what if you are a KDE user? Let’s take a look.

KDE

Figure 2

The process of gaining this behavior back in KDE is equally simple (though not as quick). The first step is to click Start > Computer > System Settings which will open up the System Settings window. Now click on Regional & Language. In this new window you must first click the Keyboard tab and then check the box for Enable Keyboard layouts (see Figure 2). Once you have done that you can then click on the advanced tab.

In this new window expand the entry for Key sequence to kill the X server and then make sure Control + Alt + Backspace is checked. Once done with that click Apply and then you can close the System Settings window.

You now have your CTRL-ALT-Backspace back in KDE!

Final thoughts

I do get why the distributions saw to it to disable this feature. But I am glad they made it possible to bring it back. And now, for those of you who want it, you can have the ability to kill and restart your X server with a three-finger salute!

Getting Things GNOME is a GNOME tool that takes the task list to the next level. GTG allows for tag-able task, add sub tasks, includes a plugin systems (with plenty of included plugins),  and more. And in this Ghacks.net article, I am going to show you how to install and use this helpful tool.

Installation

As you have come to expect, the installation of GTG is very straight forward. For just about any distribution that includes the GNOME desktop you can install with these easy steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software utility.
2. Search for “gtg” (no quotes).
3. Select Getting Things GNOME for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

Once installed you will find GTG in the Applications > Office menu.

Usage

When you first fire up GTG you will see the main pane pre-populated with some very helpful tasks (see Figure 1). As you can see there is a primary task (Getting Started with GTG) with six sub-tasks. If you right click any of these tasks you can choose to:

• Add a subtask.
• Edit the task.
• Schedule the task.
• Mark as done.
• Dismiss.
• Delete.
• Add a tag.

If you select Add a tag a new window will open where you can add your tag. You can add as may tags as you like (separated by commas) as well as apply those tags to subtags.

Quickadd

Right under the menu bar you will see a text area where you can quickly enter a task. All you have to do is enter the task and then hit enter. You can also quick add a task with tags by entering a task with a syntax like:

task tag:tag1,tag2,tag3

The above will add a task called “task” with tags “tag1″, “tag2″, and “tag3″.

You can also include due dates with the quick add. For this, the syntax is:

task due:date

You could even include both tags and due date with:

task tag:tag1,tag2,tag3 due:date

Plugins

As I said, GTG has a number of plugins included. You will find:

• Tomboy/Gnote
• Notification area
• Closed task remover
• Hello World
• Send task via email
• Remember the Milk
• Import from JSON
• Evolution

Figure 2

There are also a number of plugins that are listed, but are still in development and are not usable. To enable a plugin click Edit > Preferences > Plugins. You will notice that some of the plugins, when enabled, will add menu entries to GTG. One such plugin is the Evolution plugin. When you enable this you will find a new menu entry called Plugins. Click that menu and you will see an entry Synchronize with Evolution. Also, the Notification area plugin will add an icon to your notification area. That new icon allows you to quickly add a new task by instantly opening up a new task window (see Figure 2).

Final thoughts

And there you have it…another task manager tool that does a fine job of integrating into the GNOME desktop. Although this tool isn’t going to change the way you work, it will actually make your life a little bit easier.

What we now have is an incredibly fast, easy to use, light weight file manager that will please just about any level of user. And best of all, it can be added to nearly any distribution. So if you are unhappy with your desktop’s bulky file manager, I’ll show you how to install and use PCMan File Manager to lighten up your desktops’ load.

Features

For a light weight file manager, PCMan File Manager has a nice list of features:

• Very fast and lightweight
• Near one-second start up time
• Tabbed browsing
• Volume management (mount/umount/eject)
• File searching utility (GUI frontend for find + grep commands)
• Drag & Drop
• Files can be dragged across tabs
• Fast loading of large directories
• File association support (Default application)
• Thumbnails
• Bookmarks
• Non-UTF-8 encoded filename support
• Icon, compact, and detailed list views
• Standards compliant
• Clean and user-friendly interface

Installation

Installation is simple if you follow these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “pcmanfm” (no quotes).
3. Mark pcmanfm for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

Or, if you’d rather install from the command line:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install pcmanfm (in Ubuntu) or yum install pcmanfm (in Fedora). NOTE: If using Fedora you will have to su to the root user before you issue the command to install.
3. When finished, close your terminal window.

That’s it. PCMan File Manager should now be installed. Let’s see what it looks like and how it’s used.

Usage

Figure 1

To start up PCMan File Manager click Applications > System Tools > PCMan File Manager. When you do you will see a fairly standard looking file manager pop up in next to no time.

The GUI is about as straight-forward as you can get. In fact, the GUI almost resembles that of Nautilus from the GNOME desktop.

If you’re not fond of the Location view in the left navigation pane, you can switch that to Tree view by clicking the folder icon in the lower left corner.

Once very nice feature of PCMan File Manager is that you can very quickly open up your terminal of choice by either clicking F4 (when PCMan File Manager is open and has focus) or by clicking Tool > File Manager. Of course, before this will work you have to configure the file manager you want to use. To do this click Edit > Preferences and then click on the Advanced tab. From this tab click on the Terminal drop-down menu to select which terminal program you want to use.

Outside of that, PCMan File Manager works just as any file manager would. You can drag and drop between different file managers if you like and, as stated above, drag and drop files between tabs (to create a new tab click CTRL-TAB).

Final thoughts

If you’re looking for an incredibly fast, easy to use file manager you shouldn’t have to look any further than PCMan File Manager. It doesn’t have all of the features it’s older siblings have, but it works incredibly fast and will fit well on your light and snappy window manager.