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

Bluetooth Support

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

Network manager improvements

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

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

Out of the box tablet support

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

Updates improvements

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

Bug reporting

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

Graphics

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

Clustered Samba

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

Final thoughts

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

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The Linux installation experience has changed tremendously in the past decade. What once required a computer science degree or lots of dedication has now changed to an installation that is comparable to that of the Windows operating system.

Wubi, a Windows application that makes it possible to install Ubuntu right from within Windows, simplifies the installation of Ubuntu Linux even further. We reviewed Wubi back then when it was released publicly by the developers for the first time. It has been updated regularly since then to keep up with the Ubuntu development cycle.

Wubi 9.10 has now been released so that users of the Windows operating system can install Ubuntu 9.10 from within their operating system. A dual-boot environment will be created by the installer so that it is possible to boot either into Windows or Linux once the installation completes. Users who would like to download and use Wubi can find additional information and download links at the Wubi website. Those who prefer a direct installation can download Ubuntu at the website of the Linux distribution.

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With Secure Shell there are a number of ways to use (and configure) this tool to make it more useful and more secure. In this article  you will learn five different (and handy) secure shell tips to make sure your ssh usage is as good as it can be. And for some basic secure shell knowledge, check out my article “Get to know Linux: Secure shell“.

Password-less logon

Have have dealt with this before (as a side note), but wanted to re-iterate this process. Because I use ssh so much I get tired of having to enter passwords constantly. Now I will preface this by saying only do this on a network you trust. Yes you will be logging into ssh with a certificate, and that certificate will be on your machine, but you don’t want to employ this method on a network that can not be trusted. With that in mind, here are the steps for setting this up.

On the local machine issue the command:

ssh-keygen -t dsa

This command will generate a public key that will be then copied to your server. During this creation process you will be asked for a password – just press enter to use a blank password for this. You will have to verify the password, so hit enter again. )

With the key created you have to copy it to the server you want to ssh into. To do this enter the command:

ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id_dsa.pub username@destination

Where username is the username you will be logging into on the remote server and destination is the IP address of the remote server.

Now when you go to secure shell into that remote machine you will not have to enter a password.

Block root login

Although secure shell is a secure means of logging into your server, you do not want to allow root access (for obvious reasons). Blocking root access is simple. Open up the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file and look for this line:

PermitRootLogin

and make sure it is set to “no” (no quotes). So the complete line will read:

PermitRootLogin no

Once you have saved that file, restart the ssh daemon with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Now the root user can no longer log in remotely via ssh.

Enable X tunneling

Secure shell is made even more powerful when you can run a remote X application on your local machine. And what is better is that it’s not difficult at all. In order to allow X tunneling you will first need to open up the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file and search for this line:

X11Forwarding

and make sure it looks like:

X11Forwarding yes

Once that is set save the file, restart sshd, and you are ready to tunnel and X Windows application through ssh. To accomplish this you have to add the -X flag to your secure shell command like this:

ssh -v -l USERNAME IP_ADDRESS -X

Where USERNAME is the username you want to log in with and IP_ADDRESS is the actual IP address of the machine you are logging into.

Final thoughts

There are so many cool tricks and tips with secure shell, but the above three are, in my opinion, the most helpful. Have you come across a helpful ssh tip you’d like to share? Or are you looking for a particular behavior out of secure shell? If so. share with your fellow Ghacks readers.

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I have been using Linux for over ten years. My first induction in the “cult-o-Linux” was with Caldera OpenLinux 1 and Red Hat 4.2. Back then it was a completely different Linux. If you wanted to install an application you most likely were going to install from source or, if you were lucky, you could find an rpm package for your Red Hat installation. But so many day-to-day activities were handled from the command line. You mounted (and unmounted) floppy disks from the command line. Most likely you started your dial-up modem from the command line (and even had to write a bash script to get it connected – remember Minicom?)

Today, Linux is an all together different beast. But what makes it user-friendly? And what, in specific, makes Ubuntu so appealing that it could easily become the flagship Linux distribution? Let’s take a look.

Familiarity: As much as I hate to say it, in so many instances, you have to mimic Windows in order to gain a level of comfort with new users. In many instances, Ubuntu has done just that. But it’s not overt mimicry, it’s subtle. It’s changing the way users have to deal with removable media. Now you can plug in that USB key, write something to the key, and remove the key. Of course you should be unmounting the key before removing it (just like you should in both Windows and Mac), but at least it has become possible to, quite literally, plug-and-plug. Is this unique to Ubuntu? Not completely. However, Ubuntu has pieced together a system that is much more consistent with the methods of the “market share”.

Software management: Ubuntu has, and continues to have, one of the simplest tools for managing software. Open up the single tool, search for what you need, select it, and install it. And with Ubuntu 9.10 coming out, this task includes commercial software. What this does is, in many instances, keep the user from having to search the web endlessly for commercial-grade software for Linux. The next step – ease the adding of repositories.

Sudo: This is a very sore point for many old-school Linux users. Most see this as a security risk. But with regards to user-friendliness – why would you want to make the new user have to learn about a “super user” or “root” account? Most average users cringe at the thought of doing anything administrative to a computer. So you remove the idea of their needing an administrative user and you take one step towards giving the users what they want. With Ubuntu your user has administrative rights through sudo, so the worst thing they will have to do is enter their user password when handling administrative tasks. Most users can handle that.

Choice made simple: A lot of distributions have chosen one desktop over another. And let’s face it, the desktop ultimately will determine how user-friendly a distribution is. I can take a user-friendly distribution like Ubuntu, put AfterStep or E16 on as the desktop, and that distribution is no longer user-friendly. The desktop is the make or break for Linux and we all know, for user-friendliness, there are two serious choices: GNOME and KDE. Ubuntu makes this very simple: If you want GNOME you download the standard ISO and burn it. If you prefer KDE, download Kubuntu. Ubuntu goes even further than that by offering Xubuntu and Edubuntu versions of the distribution. So instead of having to download and install a distribution with one desktop and then install the desktop you want on top of that, you just download the version of the distribution that includes the desktop you want.

Installation: How much easier could it be than booting a Live CD and then clicking the install button once it is up and running? Not much. Of course many Linux distributions have a Live CD version (some only do Live DVDs) which is great. But the Ubuntu Live CD offers a cleaner, easier start up and installation than most. If you’ve ever tried the Elive Live CD you know EXACTLY what I am talking about.

Boot time: Ubuntu Linux has one of the fastest boot times of all the Linux distributions. The goal of Ubuntu is to reach that elusive 10 second boot time. They are coming very close. Along with boot time would be a clean boot. By clean boot I mean not giving the user more information than they need. Long gone is the boot up process that tells the user every single process, system, and sub-system that is starting up. The only users that want to see that are the old school users trying to debug various issues.

Remove the clutter: I am a big fan of virtual workspaces. I love (and use) the Linux pager. Most people, however, do not. Ubuntu has the right approach to this tool, strip the virtual workspaces down to two to appease the old school users AND not so easily confuse the new users. In all honesty, I think for the standard release, the pager needs to be disabled all together. Sure, leave it there so users who depend upon it can enable it, but why have more clutter than the average user can stand? Ubuntu is on the right path.

Final thoughts

Of course what you really need to do is define “user friendliness”. For many people that means “just be Windows”. But for some it’s much more than that. If you say “Just be Windows” – doesn’t that include Vista? And Vista was not the most user-friendly OS. User-friendly, to me, is an operating system (as a complete whole – not in pieces) that does not interfere with the user. A real user friendly operating system will allow the user to do what they need to do without confusing road blocks or cumbersome sub-systems. And, finally, a user-friendly operating system should be secure from the threat of viruses and malware without the inclusion of third-party software. Linux has that in spades.

What do you think? Is Ubuntu the most user friendly Linux distribution?

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Fake videos showcasing the new Google Chrome OS have been making their rounds on the Internet in the last months. There have not been on the other hand lots of attempts to turn an existing Linux distribution into something that resembles the Google Chrome OS.

Chrome OS is one of the first attempts. It is offered as a Live CD and virtual image currently. Chrome OS uses a GNOME 2.24 desktop environment with the Google Chrome 4.0.207 web browser integrated. Several other programs like Open Office or Flash Player have also been integrated into the distribution.

To be 100% clear here. This is a custom Linux distribution and not the official Google Chrome OS. It still resembles the operating system and can be used as a Live CD to run the Google Chrome web browser on Linux. Interested users can download the Live CD or the virtual image from the Chrome OS Linux website.

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• xscreensaver
• gnome-screensaver
• kscreensaver

Obviously gnome-screensaver and kscreensaver are for GNOME and KDE (respecively). The xscreensaver package, however, is a much generic package that any Linux distribution, so long as it is running X, can use. That is what we are going to discuss.

What is xscreensaver?

The xscreensaver package does not only come with a collection of screensavers but also the framework necessary to blank and locking the screen. It was originally released in 1992 and is still going strong today.

There are different types of screensavers to use with xscreensaver. The type you can use will depend upon your installation and hardware. If you have OpenGL working properly on your system then you can make use of the collection of 3D screensavers. If not then you will be relegated to the standard 2D screensavers.

Getting and installing

As you would expect, xscreensaver, and all of its data, can be found in your distribution’s repositories. Chances are your distribution installed, at minimum, the xscreensaver package when you installed your system. You will know this for sure when you go to install.

Fire up your Add/Remove Software utility and do a search for “xsreensaver”. You will see, included in your full search results, the following packages:

• xscreensaver: The base package
• xscreensaver-data: A portion of the screensavers used by both xscreensaver and gnome-screensaver
• xscreensaver-data-extra: The remainder of the 2D screensavers
• xscreensaver-gl: A small portion of the 3D screensavers
• xscreensaver-gl-extra: The remainder of the 3D screensavers

Select at least the first three listed above. If you know your machine has GL installed and working, install the remaining applications.

Running and configuring

Once everything is installed you are ready to run. You should find the xscreensaver application in your Preferences menu (depending upon which desktop you are using.) If you can not find the menu entry you can issue the command:

screensaver-manager

which will open up the screensaver management window (see Figure 1). When this window opens a smaller window will also appear informing you the xscreensaver daemon is not running. This will only happen when you first run this (or until you kill the daemon or reboot your machine.)

Figure 1

In this main window you will see there are a number of configuration options to take care of. The Display modes tab is where you configure the screensaver you want to use and how soon you want the screen to blank. If you choose more than one screen saver (or choose Random) the Cycle After configuration will set how long before the screensaver changes.

How many screensavers are listed in the window will depend upon how many of the packages you installed. In Figure 1 you can see the Lament GL screensaver. This particular screensaver is packaged with the xsreensaver-gl-extra package.

Depending upon the screensaver you choose you might have settings that are available. If this is the case a Settings button will appear in the main window. You will also notice a Preview button which allows you to see what your screensaver will look like in fullscreen mode (you get a tiny preview of the working screensaver in a window in the xscreensaver main window.)

The advanced configuration tab allows you to take care of:

• Image manipulation: Where your screensaver will get images from if needed.
• Text manipulation: Where your screensaver will get text from if needed.
• Power management: Standby, suspend, and off settings.
• Fading and colormaps: Fade to and from settings.

Once you have configured all you need in the management tool you can just close it by clicking File and then Quit. From this same menu you can also:

• Immediately blank or lock the screen
• Kill or restart the xscreensaver daemon

Final thoughts

There are over 200 collected screensavers in the collected xscreensaver packages. You will most likely find a screensaver that suites your needs here. No, you can not install that latest piece of work from the SyFy channel or from E! magazine, but you can find plenty to use and they will do their job well.

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I found a bootable disc image smaller than 10MB which downloads the packages on the machine on which they’ll be installed, rather than having to burn them onto a disc and then run them. However, this method of installation also allows the user to only select the packages they want to download, which potentially dramatically reduces the size of the download.

This small disc obviously uses a text-based installer. Whilst this isn’t quite as user friendly, it ensures compatibility and can be used in many scenarios in which the alternative installation CD would currently have to be used.

Discs are available for 32-bit and 64-bit installs on PCs; 32-bit PowerPCs and patchy support is available for Sparc and 64-bit PowerPCs.

This seems like a much better way to install Ubuntu, because one can avoid pointless packages and the time needed to burn the 700MB image!

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Sticking to standards can therefore lead to issues with certain web browsers, which lack support for the latest tags or render pages wrong.

The W3C therefore has its own web browser and editor which adheres to standards more than many browsers and supports certain new technologies others don’t, such as RDF annotation. This browser is Amaya, an open-source and cross-platform browser.

Amaya can handle a wide-range of open file formats, including HTML, CSS, XHTML, SVG and MathML.

The software integrates the browser and web editor: when you go to a web page, it can be edited inside the browser. It also instantly displays syntactic errors.

It also integrates the mark-up languages. For example, in a web page, one can write formulae utilising MathML or add SVG shapes inside the software.

Amaya is a reasonable WYSIWYG editor and a good web browser for developmental purposes. It is also good to produce rich web-pages, which include other pieces of mark-up than HTML.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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So where do you turn when you need an open source solution for course management? ATutor is one of the best and easiest tools available.

Of course many would wonder what can be added to a CMS tool to make course management easier. That answer is simple:

• Assignments
• Blogs
• Chat
• Course Email
• Profile Pictures
• Reading Lists
• Statistics
• Student Tools
• Syndicated Feeds
• Tests and Surveys
• TILE repository search
• Web search
• and much more

So ATutor is not just a re-write of a standard CMS. ATutor is a serious tool to help serious educators.

Getting and installing

Installing ATutor isn’t really that difficult. It will require a running LAMP server and root (or sudo) access to your web servers’ document root. You will also have to create a database for the installation. I like to use PhpMyAdmin for creating databases on my LAMP servers. Create a database named “atutor” (no quotes) and you are ready to install.

Download the archive from the ATutor download page and save it in your servers’ document root (on a Ubuntu server this would be /var/www). When then file is in place unpack the archive with the command:

tar xvzf ATutor-XXX.tar.gz

Where XXX is the release number. This command will create a new directory called atutor. Before you point your browser to the ATutor installation issue the following commands (from within the /var/www/atutor directory):

sudo mkdir content

sudo a+rwx content

sudo chmod a+rw include/config.inc.php

Now you’re ready to rock.

Point your browser to:

http://ADDRESS_OF_SERVER/atutor

and the installation will begin.

The installation of ATutor is incredibly simple. You will walk through a few pages where you will enter the necessary information unique to your installation. The final step is to send the information collected during the installation to the ATutor site. You do not have to do this, but it will help the developers know what their application is installed on. You can also submit your installed URL if you like, but you can uncheck this option if you are uncomfortable sending this information.

Figure 1

When you are finished you should go back and remove the /var/www/atutor/install directory for security.

Figure 1 shows the main window for ATutor. As you can see this tool offers quite the amount of tools. Your best bet to get up to speed with ATutor is to simply start poking around.

The first place you will want to look is the System Preferences tab. Within this tab you can enable self registration (which will save you a good amount of time.) Take care of this tab and then head on over to the Course tab where you can begin to set up your courses.

Final thoughts

ATutor is perfect for anyone needing a course managment tool but doesn’t want to either have to do any development or spend a lot of money. If you are looking for a single tool to handle all of your course management tasks, ATutor is the tool for you.

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Hostnames are most often used for administrative habits. In other words hostnames will show up in some scanning applications, can be used for name to IP address resolution, and much more. But to make this useful you will have to manually set your hostname on your Linux machine. This article will show you just how to do that.

Find your hostname

The most common means to find your host name is to open up a terminal window and enter the command:

hostname

If you have not set your hostname, more than likely you will see returned:

localhost.localdomain

A quick and easy way to spot if you have not changed your hostname is to check when you open up your terminal window. At your bash prompt you will see something like:

[jlwallen@localhost ~]$

As you can see a portion of the hostname (everything preceding the first “.”) will be used in your prompt. In the example you see above you see “localhost” which should tell you the hostname has not been changed.

Temporarily changing your hostname

You can temporarily change your hostname by issuing a single command. You have to issue this command either using sudo or as the root user. To make this change you will use the same command you used to find out your hostname, only you will include the new hostname to the command. Say you want to change your hostname to “willow”. To make this change temporarily issue the command:

hostname willow

Now issue the command hostname which should report back:

willow

This change will last until you reboot your machine.

Permanently changing your hostname

How you permanently change your hostname will depending upon which distribution you use. We’ll examine making this change on both a Ubuntu system and a Fedora system. First Ubuntu.

On a Ubuntu system there is a file called /etc/hostname. The contents of this file will have a single line containing the hostname of your machine. Open up this file in your favorite editor, delete the default hostname, add your desired hostname, and save the file. To make this chang take effect issue the command:

/etc/init.d/hostname.sh start

This hostname will remain intact upon reboot.

Now to change your hostname in Fedora. This is taken care of in the /etc/sysconfig/network file. The default contents of this file will look like:

NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain

Erase the “localhost.localdomain” portion and change that to reflect the hostname you want. Once you have made this change save the file. Once you have made this change issue the following command (as the root user):

/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

For the change to take effect.

Final thoughts

With your hostname changed applications like Lanmap will now be easier to use because machines will have unique names. This change will also make administering your systems easier because you will have set machine hostnames to reflect either the user of the machine or the machines’ job.

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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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When Linux Mint was originally launched, it was a version of Ubuntu that offered integrated media codecs. Founded and developed by Clement Lefebvre, Linux Mint boasts as one of the most user friendly and reliable distributions that can be found in the market. Lefebvre started out as just another Linux user in 1996. As he became more experienced in the usage of Linux he felt he wanted to give back to the Linux community which led to the development of Linux Mint. The idea came from a mixture of different Linux distros that he got from what he calls “distro-hopping” which is basically trying out different Linux distributions. “I enjoyed many different distributions and for different reasons,” says Lefebvre. Linux Mint is a mixture of many different popular features in varied distros in Linux.

Features of Linux Mint

The features that Linux Mint boasts of are as follows:

• Custom desktop and menus
• Several unique configuration tools
• Web based package installation interface
• Several different editions to fit individual user needs

Because of these features, many users have found this Linux distribution among the easiest to use Linux distros.

Linux Mint also has WiFi cards driver in the file system, multimedia support and screen resolution features which focus on allowing things to work outside the box. Users are not limited to working just within the box when they have this system, which is a testament to the operating system’s reliability.

There are a collection of packages and software that users can get from the distribution that make it quite compatible. The system also uses the Ubuntu repositories. Ubuntu is known for having one of the easiest to use package manager systems, making Linux Mint even easier to use.

Linux Mint is available in ISO images which can be used to create Live CDs and Live USBs. As is is Free software, it can legally be handed out to friends, relatives, etc.

Linux Mint Editions

As already mentioned, there are several different versions of this operating system. These include the main version which is GNOME, x86-32, the 64-bit Edition, the Universal version, and a handful of community editions.

Some of the configuration tools that can be found on the system are MintInstall, MintUpdate, MintDesktop, MintConfig, MintAssistant, MintUpload, MintSpace, MintMenu, MintWifi, MintNanny, MintMake and MintWelcome. These help users perform most of the functions that they expect to have with the OS.

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• CD
• DVD
• Flash Drive
• Network Installation

or…

• InstaLinux

Technically InstaLinux is really just another way of doing a network installation. InstaLinux is a web-based service that allows you to choose some of the specifics of what you want on your installation and then it creates an ISO image that will handle the network install specifics. Using InstaLinux automates your installation so you just pop in the CD, boot the machine, and let the installation take place. Let’s take a look at the specifics.

Preparation

You don’t need much. You need to be able to point your browser to the InstaLinux site and you need to have a CD burner to burn the network-install CD InstaLinux will create. You will also need a DHCP server (or router) able to hand out DHCP addresses if you don’t want to set this machine up with a static address. Once you have everything you need, you can go ahead and start building your install CD.

Step 1

Figure 1

The first step (shown in Figure 1) asks the following:

* Select a hostname (not required, especially if you are building a desktop distribution or using DHCP).

* Select if you want to force DHCP and use the configured hostname (using DDNS).

* Select a distribution to build upon.

* Select the version of the distribution.

Select the architecture the distribution will be built upon.

Step 2

Figure 2

This next step is all about the installation method. In this step you need to configure:

* System profile: Most likely you will only have one option to choose here (Custom).

* Install method: Again, you will most likely have only one option (HTTP).

* Boot image: This will depend upon which distribution you have chosen. For example, if you choose Debian you will see the Debian preseed boot image as your only choice.

* Network Interface: Choose which networking interface will be used to download the install files.

* Proxy server: Configure your proxy if necessary.

Figure 3

Step 3

This step is all about localization for your installation. Here you will configure:

* Waystation: Where you will download from.

* Timezone

* Hardware clock set to UTC: Yes/No

* Console layout: Language for the console.

Step 4

Figure 4

This step is where you choose the type of installation you will want as well as the individual packages you want to install. Note the lack of menus or clickables for packages. That’s right. In the text area you list the packages you want to install. Because of this you will need to know exactly what you want installed on your machine. You will really only need this feature if you know there are packages that are not on the default package list for your system. For example, here you can see a listing of the packages involved in a Ubuntu Desktop installation. You will also have to choose your partitioning method. If you want to have a fully automated installation you will need to select any of the methods but the last one.

Step 5

Figure 5

This is the final step before confirmation. Here you need to choose where the install will go. On my system this is hda or the first IDE drive. This choice will depend upon your hardware.

Once you have made this choice click the “Continue” button which will reveal to you the confirmation screen. Go over the information presented to you and, if it is correct, click the “Go for it!” button. Once the InstaLinux system is done creating your ISO image you can click on the link to download the image. This image should be less than 30 Mb.

Gotchas

I have used this for a couple of different distributions. For the Debian install image I was prompted to create a root and user loging/password. For the Ubuntu desktop I was not. So some of the distribution steps will be a little different than others. The steps you see above were for a Ubuntu Desktop image.

Also remember you will pulling a lot of packages down from the net, so make sure you have a fast, solid connection.

Installing

Once you have burned your image onto CD, put the CD into the drive you want to install the operating system on, boot the machine, and at the prompt type “install” (no quotes). The installation of your Linux distribution should be fully automated.

Final thoughts

If you are looking for a simple way to create an automated Linux installation, InstaLinux makes this process as simple as it gets. Give it a go and let us know what your experience is like.

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Stellarium is a free, open source planetarium for your desktop. It displays a 3D image of the sky – what you would see with the naked eye – but allows you to click on specific stars to see detailed information about that star. You can view the sky from any where in the world and works with Linux, Mac, and Windows. You can run a moving, 3D representation to serve as an educational tool through a projector, or you can sit back and watch from the comfort of your own desk.

Installing Stellarium

The installation of Stellarium is actually the easiest aspect of using this tool. With most modern Linux distributions Stellarium will be found in the repositories. All you have to do is the following:

• Fire up your Add/Remove Software utility
• Click on the Educational category
• Find Stellarium and select it
• Click Apply to install Stellarium

Figure 1

You are ready to go. You can start Stellarium by click on your main menu and going to the Educational sub menu. The Stellarium entry will either be called “Stellarium” or “Night Sky Rendering”. When Stellarium opens what you see will depend upon the location configured and the time/date. If you open up Stellarium during the day time you will not see many stars. That’s okay because you can adjust the time/date from the toolbox.

As you can see (in Figure 1) Stellarium is showing a night sky. This is the night sky of Louisville, KY at approximately  4:51 am June 24th 2009. In a 2D image you can not get the full effect of how useful this tool is. For one thing you can zoom in and out and move around in nearly 360 degrees of rotation. You can also slow down, speed up, or stop time.

Toolbars

Figure 2

As you can see in Figure 1 there are no tool bars to use. In order to open up the tool bars you simply have to move your cursor to the bottom left of the window which will make the two toolbars appear.  Figure 2 shows Stellarium with the toolbars open.

Each button on the toolbar will give a description upon a mouse over. So it should be very simple to figure out how to use each tool. What you don’t see is how to move around within the window. To move up, down, right, or left you push and hold the Ctrl button down and then push either the up, down, left, or right arrow.

Searching

Figure 3

You can search by City/State, Country, Planet, or Longitude/Latitude. To open the search window open up the tool bars and click the Location button. The new window that opens (shown in Figure 3) is where you find your location. Once you have finished your location simply click the X to close the search window.

When the search window closes you will see that Stellarium has updated to reflect your new location.

Time

Time is an interesting feature in Stellarium. To open up the Date/Time window click to open the toolbars and then click on the button second from the top on the vertical toolbar. In this window select the date and time you want to view. When the main Stellarium window changes to reflect this time you can then increase the speed (if you have chosen a date/time in the past) by clicking the far right button (right-pointing double arrow) in the horizontal tool bar. The more you click that button the faster time will go. To slow down time you click the left-pointing double arrow. To go back to real time click the right-pointing single arrow.

Final thoughts

Stellarium is an outstanding way to learn about the solar system. But don’t think it is only a learning tool, you can attach your machine to a projector and all of a sudden Stellarium projects the universe into the sky of your room. If you  are looking for a free planetarium tool, Stellarium is what you need.

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Now as an administrator of a Linux system, the sudo utility is a great way to manage user permissions with regards to access (especially with regard to applications). Say, for example, you have a specific executable file placed in /usr/sbin that you want your standard users to be able to use along with the ability to use the tools in the whole /usr/bin. Or say you have one specific user on your system that you want to give full administrative access to. This can all be done with the help of sudo. Let’s see how.

A quick intro

If you’re not familiar with sudo, let me give you a quick synopsis. The sudo tool allows you to effectively execute a command as a user with the security pirvileges of another user. Most often, as in Ubuntu, this allows a standard user to issue commands with administrative privileges. The basic command is issued like this:

sudo COMMAND

Where COMMAND is the command you want to run. You will then be prompted for your user password. Of course you don’t need to use sudo if you are running standard commands that do not require administrative privileges.

Sudo configuration

Sudo is configured with the help of a single file: /etc/sudoers. When you look at this file you will most likely be a bit tentative to make any changes. Fortunately the changes we are going to make are fairly basic. You do have to use sudo to make changes to the sudoers file. So to open this file with the nano editor you would issue the command:

sudo nano /etc/sudoers

and then give your user password.

Add a user for all administrative privileges

To add an already existing user to this file you would add a line in the main section. This “main” section can be found by searching for the root entry which looks like:

root ALL=(ALL)     ALL

Not only is that the line you are looking for, it is also the structure of the line you will add. Let’s say you want to add the user onichan to give her administrative rights with sudo. To do this the line would look like:

onichan     ALL=(ALL)     ALL

Now, there is one problem with adding a user like this. What a user can do is, effectively, gain access to the real, permanent root user and avoid all logging handle by sudo. So instead of the above, let’s give onichan permission to execute commands in specific directories. We’ll give her pemission to run commands in the following:

• /usr/sbin/
• /sbin

This entry will look like:

onichan ALL=/usr/sbin, /sbin

Now user onichan can execute commands in both /usr/sbin and /sbin using sudo and giving her user password.

Final thoughts

This only skims the surface of the power of sudo. We’ll cover many more aspects of this outstanding administrative tool in later articles. But at least now you can see how sudo works and how to add users. There are other aspects of sudo that I do not recommend employing (such as the NOPASSWD feature), but every system has unique needs.

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In this article you will learn how to take screenshots with the help of The Gimp, the GNOME menu, the Print Screen button, and ImageMagick. Each way has its advantages, so it’ll be up to you to decide which method suits you best. With that said, lets’ dive in head first.

ImageMagick

I wanted to start with this method because it can be a little flaky. The primary issue is that ImageMagick has trouble with Compiz. If you’re not running Compiz, you won’t have any issues with this method. Otherwise you’d be best served to skip down to The GIMP.

One of the benefits of this method is you can use it to grab screenshots automatically. You could even set up a cron job to take screen shots at specific times, or log into a machine remotely and snap a shot. I won’t get into the “why” you would want to do this – decide that yourself.

The basic command for taking a snapshot with ImageMagick is:

import FILENAME.png

Pretty simple. The only catch with the above command is that you will have to specify what portion of the screen to grab. When you issue that command a cross-hair will appear which you click and drag to select what portion of the screen to grab. There is an easier way. If you want to take this screenshot without interaction you issue the command:

import -window root FILENAME.png

What the above command does is take a screenshot of the root window (that’s the entire screen basically.) The screenshot will be saved (in the case of the example above) as FILENAME.png

Print screen

This one is simple (and not much different than using the GNOME menu)  you press the Print Screen button. When you do a window will open (see Figure 1) asking you to give the file a name, decide on a destination, and click save.  You can save the screenshot in .jpg, .png (default), .tiff, .gif, and .bmp formats. From this same window you can also copy the image to the clipboard for later use.

GNOME Menu

If you look in the Accessories subment of the GNOME Applications menu you will see the entry “Take Screenshot”. If you click on this the same window will open that opened when you hit the Print Screen key. This works in the exact same way. If, for some reason, you have a different keyboard mapping or a Print Screen key that does not work, this menu entry is sure to work.

The GIMP

Figure 1

The GIMP is my standard means for snapping screenshots.  Within The GIMP click on the File menu and then click on the Create submenu. From within the Create menu click the Screenshot entry which will open up the screenshot dialog (see Figure 1).

There are three types of screenshots you can take:

Single Window: This will grab only the window you click on after you click the Snap button.

Entire Screen: This will grab the entire screen after you click the Snap button.

Select a Region: This allows you to select the portion of the screen you want to grab after you click snap.

You can also configure a delay (in seconds) which will allow you to open up menus or take an action to grab.

When using The GIMP for screenshots you will have to save the image manually. But you can also edit the image before you save it.

Final thoughts

As you can see there are a number of ways to grab a screenshot in the Linux desktop. Each method is simple and should have you snagging screenshots all day long.

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Fortunately Linux has grown up quite a bit so it’s not that difficult to start an application. In fact, I would argue that starting an application in Linux is easier than it is in Windows. How can I say that? Well, why don’t we examine the various ways you can start an application within Linux and you can make the judgment yourself.

Command line

We’ll start with the more challenging first. Not that the command line is difficult, but it’s not nearly as easy as finding a menu entry and selecting it.

If you’ve been following me enough you probably have read an instance where I have mentioned global commands. A global command is a command that is located within your users’ $PATH. NOTE: You can learn more about this in my article  “Adding directories to your $PATH“. To find out what directories are in your $PATH issue the command echo $PATH. What you see printed out at your prompt are all of the directories which contain commands you can run from anywhere on your system. There may be times when you do not install an application within your path. For those applications you have to enter the explicit path to the executable command. Let me explain…

Say you install the beta version of Firefox (for testing purposes) in the /opt directory. So now you will have a directory /opt/firefox and within that directory is the executable command firefox. Since /opt isn’t in your $PATH, if you execute only firefox what will start up is the default firefox on your system. In order to start up Firefox installed in /opt you will have to execute the command /opt/firefox/firefox.

Now let’s say you are looking for the apt command to add a gpg key but you’re not sure of the name. You are sure, however, of two things: It is in /usr/bin and it has the string “key” in the command. You could issue this command to find all matching commands:

ls /usr/bin/*key*

which will list all commands in /usr/bin that contain the word “key”. In that listing you will see apt-key. You now know the name of the command.

GUI

There are two main (and universal) ways to start up an application in Linux. The first, and easiest, is to look through your main menu for that command’s entry. Once you find that command you simply select it to open up the application. One of the issues that is not a universal truth in Linux is menu layout. All Linux desktops lay out their menus differently. But for the most part they hold true to some similarities (Primarily the grouping of applications into submenus like “Office”, “Networking”, “Graphics”, “Games”, etc.)

The next universal method of starting up an application is to open up your desktops’ file manager, navigate to the directory that contains the executable, and double click on the executable. This is much like it is in Windows. Most often you will be navigating to /usr/bin to find these executables.

NOTE: If a command requires a terminal to run you can not run it in this method. The only commands you can start up this way are graphical commands.

Run prompt

Figure 1

In some desktops you will have a “Run prompt” within your Start menu. In GNOME and KDE you can open up this dialog by pressing Alt-F2. In my favorite distribution, Elive Compiz, I set this to the Windows Key+F1. Figure 1 shows the Run Dialog in Elive. As you can see I want to start the game Torus Trooper. I start to type “torus” and the first matching entry pops up which I can click on to start up the application.

Final thoughts

Of course this is Linux so there are many more ways you can find to start up an application. You can create keyboard shortcuts for just about anything or, in some desktops, you can create desktop Icons. In some desktops you can create specific shelves for applications or add mini launchers. But, in general, the methods outlined above will get you through the day in Linux.

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One of those games  really stole my .25 and my attention more than any other. That game? Tempest. If you’ve never played the original Tempest you don’t know what you’re missing. It’s a wireframe pseudo 3D game that would have today’s game players yawning with boredom. So you can’t imagine my joy when I found an updated variation on the Tempest game installed on my Elive distribution. That game? Torus Trooper. This game is a fast-paced, scrolling 3D shooter that takes place in, you guessed it, a Torus.

A Torus is a surface of revolution generated by revolving a circle in three dimensional space. Otherwise known as a 3D ring or, better yet, a donut. Now in this game you are inside this donut shooting at oncoming ships and dodging oncoming barriers. It is fast, it is timed, and it is addictive.

Getting Torus Trooper

If you open up Synaptic or gpk-application (or which ever GUI tool you use for installation software) do a search for “torus” (no quotes). You might wind up with three different results:

• ttrooper
• torus-trooper
• torus-trooper-data

Install the latter two and you will be ready for some action packed fun. If you don’t find Torus Trooper in your repositories, never fear. Download the tt tar file from the Torus Trooper Sourceforge download page. Once you have this file downloaded unpack it with the command:

tar xvzf tt-XXX.tar.gz

Where XXX is the release number. Change into the resulting tt-XXX (Again where XXX is the release number) directory. To run the game issue the command:

./ttrooper

which will start up Torus Trooper. You can copy this file (ttrooper) into /usr/local/bin so the game can be run from any directory, the run dialog, or even a menu entry you create.

To start the game installed from your Add/Remove Software utility just go to your Games directory and click on the Torus Trooper entry.

Gameplay

Playing Torus Trooper is fairly straight forward. You use the left-right arrow keys to move side to side while using the “z” key to shoot.

Figure 1

When the game starts up you will be on the welcome screen (see Figure 1) where you will choose your difficulty and begin. You choose from Normal, Hard, or Extreme difficulty. Once you have chosen your difficulty click the “z” key to begin.

The game is simple – just blow away everything and don’t get hit by various objects. Oh, and remember this is a timed game. You can control your speed by pressing the up arrow (to go faster) or the down arrow (to go slower).

Figure 2

Figure 1 shows standard gameplay for Torus Tooper. If you look closely you can see where your torus is leading you. You can also see the small red-ish circle coming to the left of the shooter – that is a trap the enemy drops which you have to avoid. At times the screen can get full of them. You can’t just shoot them, you have to get out of their way. This makes game play even more of a challenge.

Final thoughts

When you first start playing Torus Trooper make sure you play on Normal mode. Extreme mode is, shall I say, rather extreme. The last time I attempted Extreme mode I think I lasted less than 10 seconds.

Torus Trooper is a lot of fun. Give it a go and you’ll find yourself quickly becoming addicted to this simple game.

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With a little preparation this setup will go quickly. Without preparation, it will take some time for Bogofilter to learn SPAM/HAM.

Your preparation

The easiest way to train Bogofilter is to have a collection of SPAM and HAM ready (approximately 200 each for training purposes) for it to use in the training process. These will be placed in SPAM and HAM folders (respectively) to be used once Bogofilter is installed and ready. But before you get to that point, you need to install Bogofilter and the Bogofilter Evolution plugin.

To install the necessary items open up your Add/Remove Software tool. Within this tool do a search for “bogofilter” (no quotes). You should see two particular pieces of software to install: bogofilter and bogofilter-evolution. Mark both of these applications for installation and click Apply to install them.

After they are installed you are ready to set up Bogofilter.

Bogofilter setup

The first thing to do is to enable the Bogofilter plugin in Evolution. Click on the Edit menu and select the Plugins entry. In this new window that opens click the Bogofilter check box to enable to plugin and then close the window.

Figure 1

Now that the plugin is enabled, it’s time to configure it within Evolution. Go back to the Edit menu and select Preferences. When the Preferences window opens up click on the Mail Preferences button and then the Junk tab (see Figure 1).

From within the Junk tab the first thing to do is to select Bogofilter from the Default Junk Plugin dropdown. Now go back to the top and make sure “Check incoming messages for junk” is checked. Close this window after you have completed these steps.

Now you are ready to train Bogofilter.

Training

A lot of people complain that Bogofilter doesn’t work well. The main reason it doesn’t work well is because it hasn’t been trained. Remember those SPAM and HAM emails you collected in the SPAM and HAM folders? Now you are going to use them. First click on the HAM emails. These are all good emails (not SPAM). Select all of these and mark them as Junk. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s necessary. Now click on the Junk folder and you should see all of those emails you just marked as SPAM. Select them all again and mark them as Not Junk. Bogofilter just learned what you consider to not be junk.

Now click on the SPAM folder, select all of these messages, and mark them as Junk.

That’s it. Bogofilter should now be trained properly. And remember the more training you give Bogofilter, the smarter it will be.

Final thoughts

Bogofilter is a great tool for keeping SPAM out of your inbox. And best of all, it doesn’t require you to open up a terminal and issue a bunch of commands in order to get it working properly.

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