Ubuntu, another choice

The folks at ASUS have come up with something that I’m certain is going to go a long way in the downfall of Windows. The new P5E3 Deluxe motherboard has a Boot Rom that allows it to boot linux in an “Instant on” mode. This mode will take you from hitting the power switch to surfing the Internet in a Firefox browser in five, count ‘em, five seconds! Oh, it’ll also be able to boot windows for whatever needs it, and this linux is burned into the boot ROM, configuration changes & such can be saved between sessions. It’s the kind of thing that will give linux a lot more exposure to mainstream users. Picture this: Joe Sixpack needs to check in on his fave blogs and online news but he hasn’t got the time to wait for Windows to boot. He flips on his computer, five seconds later he’s got a browser running and is getting up to date while the guy next to him is still looking at the Windows logo, waiting for his machine to boot. This is the kind of thing that’s going to help take some o...

GDM or GNOME Display Manager will easily allow users to fully customize the login screen theme without having to use the command line. There are tons of ready-made, user-submitted GDM themes available that we can just download and effortlessly install. In celebration of Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope's release, I’ve collected some of the most beautiful GDM themes for Ubuntu enthusiasts to appreciate: Ubuntu Black CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD TECH SOURCE FROM BOHOL: 15 Beautiful Ubuntu GDM Themes

The existence of software inevitably raises the question of how decisions about its use should be made. For example, suppose one individual who has a copy of a program meets another who would like a copy. It is possible for them to copy the program; who should decide whether this is done? The individuals involved? Or another party, called the “owner”? Software developers typically consider these questions on the assumption that the criterion for the answer is to maximize developers' profits. The political power of business has led to the government adoption of both this criterion and the answer proposed by the developers: that the program has an owner, typically a corporation associated with its development. I would like to consider the same question using a different criterion: the prosperity and freedom of the public in general. This answer cannot be decided by current law—the law should conform to ethics, not the other way around. Nor does current practice decide this...

Dell’s innovative new Latitude 2100 netbook is the company’s first Aussie PC with Linux factory-installed – and while it’s intended for school students, anyone can buy it... If you like Dell’s netbooks but aren’t so keen on the company’s choice of OS (you can have Windows XP or, err, Windows XP) then the Latitude 2100 could find its way onto your shopping list. While Dell has offered Linux on many desktops and laptops in overseas markets, the just-launched 10.1 inch netbook is the first Dell PC to be sold in Australia with Linux available as the factory-fitted OS. The Latitude 2100 netbook is designed specifically for school students, although anyone can buy one ... Jeff Morris, Dell’s Sydney-based regional director of Commercial Client products, confirmed to APCmag this afternoon that although the Latitude 2100 was aimed primarily at the education market it would also be available to anyone who wanted to buy one through dell.com.au . Coloured covers aside, the no-nonsense...

[ Update: After being hit severely by 'Digg Effect' when this post made to the front page this morning, this site is back again. Thank you for your patience, Diggs (Buries) and Comments folks! Digg on!] Ever wished that you had new mails notifications right on your desktop? Ever wished you knew the weather info right on your desktop? Ever wished you had your hardware information right on your desktop? Ever wished your desktop was productive and beautiful at the same time? Ever wished you didn’t have to use Mac4Lin theme to hide the ‘ugliness’ of Ubuntu’s native appearance? Ever wished you had a desktop that looked as beautiful as mine? Let’s fulfil your wish: I have already talked about how to make your Ubuntu desktop look beautiful and productive . This time I will focus mostly on Conky . Conky is a lightweight system monitor for X. Not only monitoring system, with a little bit of scripting, it can be useful to know your new mails, weather info etc. Here I’ve attached al...

These themes are all available for free download from Gnome Art. Do try them out and let me know if you like them. If you have more cool Ubuntu themes, let me know below in the comments. I love eye candy! Murrina Triomphe Download Hardy Theme 2.0 Download Bamboo Zen Download Lux Theme Download Burnt Orange Ice Download Creamy Download Glow Download Moomex Download Roy (Windows Royale) Download Clearlooks Metallico Download Aqua Dreams Download Linux Mint Download Real Minimal Download Root Green Download Light Coffee Download Slickness Black Download Murrina Aero Download Tigris Download Sofice Download Blue Joy Download Gaia Nova Download Elegant Brit Download Darker Ice Murrina Download Ubuntu Themes: 15 Awesome Themes for Linux

Time Vault is a GNOME-based Linux-equivalent to Time Machine from Apple. Like many backup utilities, it creates incremental backups of files that can be restored at a later date. Its snapshots are copies of a directory at a certain point in time. Snapshots use very little space for the files that haven't changed since the last snapshot was made. This is because instead of backing up the entire unchanged file, snapshots use hard links that point to the existing backup of the unchanged file. TimeVault is a simple front-end for making snapshots of a set of directories. It tries to be the best backup software for GNOME/Ubuntu users. Snapshots are a copy of a directory structure or file at a certain point in time. Restore functionality is integrated into Nautilus - previous versions of a file or directory that has a snapshot can be accessed by examining the properties and selecting the 'Previous Versions' tab. Snapshots are protected from accidental deletion or modification...

So you’ve taken the plunge and installed Linux. You’ve followed all the HOWTOs all over the net. You’ve got your wireless card working flawlessly. You’ve got your video card working (and you’ve begun to loathe that spinning cube). You’ve installed all the “restricted” software like Adobe Flash, Sun Java and Google Earth. You’ve got all the patent restricted codecs and even DVD playback working just like you want. Now what? You want to know what you can do with Linux outside of the surfing, emailing, chatting and media consumption you normally do? Well, here are a few things to keep you busy. Use Your computer as a Home Theater PC. I personally use XBMC for this, but there are many other options including MythTV , Elisa , Entertainer , Freevo , GeeXboX and LinuxMCE . Read them all here: 7 Cool Things to Do With Linux | davehayes.org

Jumi is the set of native custom code extensions for Joomla! Jumi includes custom code into Joomla! by many ways: directly, from a file or from a databes record. Jumi includes custom code into many Joomla! places: modules position, articles or into its own pages. Jumi!

At one time or another, you would surely have felt the need for a portable Operating System that you could carry around with you and to help troubleshoot and backup your friends’ crashed PCs or just carry your complete Office with you. There are several Live CD based Linux Distributions(distros) where you just boot from it and enjoy the new OS. But what if you need your Data and settings to be remembered. A good alternative is to use a “LIVE USB” based OS. Three things should be considered first. Size of USB drive Type of Distribution Usage Distros like Damn Small Linux and Puppy Linux will perform well in 256MB drives. Some OS’es section off a portion of your computer’s memory[RAM] and use that as a drive, in addition to the flash drive. We will use an application called UNetbootin to install the Linux into the flash drive. We can let the program download a distro or select the image file(.iso) of an already downloaded distro. Download UNetbootin here: http://unetbootin.sou...

Firefox community has developed such a large number of add-ons to achieve almost any functionality one could think of. Below, we have compiled a list of 21 add ons that are incredibly useful to enhance your productivity, keeping you focused and easing routine tasks of surfing the web. 1. Try Again This add-on will keep on trying to load the web page you requested in case a page not found or network timeout error is encountered. 2. URL Fixer This nifty add-on will keep an eye on what you type in address bar and once you make a typo, it’ll automatically fix it e.g. typing .cmo instead of .com or missing h in http etc. See all of them here: 21 Incredible Firefox Add-ons to Boost your Productivity

Canonical has begun beta-testing a file-synchronization service called Ubuntu One for its Ubuntu Linux desktop operating system. The closed beta test began Monday for invited members of the Ubuntu user community, with further testers able to sign up by requesting an invitation, Canonical said. Ubuntu One offers file synchronization for systems running Ubuntu 9.04 , code-named Jaunty Jackalope, and is intended to be available to the general public in time for the launch of Ubuntu 9.10, code-named Karmic Koala, in October, Canonical said. The system is integrated into Ubuntu's Gnome desktop software via a downloadable client, and once installed creates an Ubuntu One folder in the user's home directory, Canonical said. When modifications are made to any of the files stored in this folder, the modifications are automatically uploaded to the Web service and propagated to the user's other computers, according to the company. Users currently get 2GB of storage for free, or 1...

Making The Move: The Ubuntu Server Installation Process Many of the steps to an Ubuntu Linux server setup are either trivial (e.g., selecting a language) or similar to the desktop installation process (e.g., choosing a time zone or providing information to set up a default user account). Others, however, are very different from the Ubuntu desktop setup process , and some require your careful attention. At almost every step of the server installation process, you'll see a "go back" option on the screen. Choosing this option will not actually take you to the previous step; it will, rather, take you to a list of every step in the server installation process, listed sequentially. To make matters even more confusing, selecting an installation step from this list will not always give you the same view as you get by sticking with the default installation screens all the way through. This fact can make some steps a bit more confusing; dropping back into the disk par...

Clonezilla Clonezilla is an open source clone of Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition. It is based on DRBL, Partition Image, ntfsclone, partclone, and udpcast that will allow you to do bare metal backup and recovery. Two types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla live and Clonezilla SE (server edition). Clonezilla live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla SE is for massive deployment, it can clone many computers simultaneously. You're probably familiar with the popular proprietary commercial package Norton Ghost® , and its OpenSource counterpart, Partition Image . The problem with these software packages is that it takes a lot of time to massively clone systems to many computers. You've probably also heard of Symantec's solution to this problem, Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition® with multicasting. Well, now there is an OpenSource clone system (OCS) solution called Clonezilla with unicasting and multicasting! Clonezilla, based on DRBL , Pa...

Bacula is an open source, enterprise level computer backup system for heterogeneous networks. It is designed to automate tasks that had often required intervention from a systems administrator or computer operator. Bacula supports Linux, UNIX and Windows backup clients, and a range of professional backup devices including tape libraries. Administrators and operators can configure the system via a command line console, GUI or web interface; its back-end is a catalog of information stored by MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite. Bacula, the Open Source, Enterprise ready, Network Backup Tool for Linux, Unix, and Windows

Dell has announced a lower-cost version of its popular Mini 10 netbook, which runs Ubuntu Linux. The Dell Inspiron Mini 10v sells for $300, offering a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270, 10-inch display, 120GB or 160GB hard drive, and a 1.3 megapixel webcam, the company says. (Click here for a larger view of Dell's Inspiron Mini 10v) Unlike the similar Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbook announced in February, which starts at $350, or Dell's earlier Mini 12 model, the Mini 10v uses the 1.6Ghz Atom N270 processor typically found on netbooks. With the Mini 10 (pictured below, at right) and Mini 12, Dell had instead turned to Intel's Z5xx Atom CPUs ("Silverthorne"). Dell's pricier, 720P HD-ready Mini 10 (Click for details) Because the Z5xx Atoms are smaller, use less power, and mate with an integrated chipset that saves even more power, they run cooler and last longer on batteries, says Dell. In addition, the N270 lacks the Z5xx-series' 720P HD video capability. Consequent...

The Linux Wireless Extension and the Wireless Tools are an Open Source project sponsored by Hewlett Packard (through my contribution) since 1996, and build with the contribution of many Linux users all over the world. The Wireless Extension (WE) is a generic API allowing a driver to expose to the user space configuration and statistics specific to common Wireless LANs. The beauty of it is that a single set of tool can support all the variations of Wireless LANs, regardless of their type (as long as the driver support Wireless Extension). Another advantage is these parameters may be changed on the fly without restarting the driver (or Linux). The Wireless Tools (WT) is a set of tools allowing to manipulate the Wireless Extensions. They use a textual interface and are rather crude, but aim to support the full Wireless Extension. There are many other tools you can use with Wireless Extensions, however Wireless Tools is the reference implementation. iwconfig manipulate the bas...

FlyBack is based on rsync and modeled loosely after Apple's Time Machine . Like many rsync-based backup utilities, it creates incremental backups of files which can be restored at a later date. FlyBack presents a chronological view of a file system, allowing individual files or directories to be previewed or retrieved one at a time. FlyBack presents the user with a typical file manager style view of their file system, but with additional controls allowing the user to go forward or backward in time. Apple's Time Machine is a great feature in their OS, and Linux has almost all of the required technology already built in to recreate it. This is a simple GUI to make it easy to use. Website: http://flyback-project.org/   flyback - Google Code

Switching to Linux can be very daunting, most seasoned Linux users experienced that first hand. After all, at some point they were also “noobs”. However, the Linux community has excelled in making the switch for beginners as easy as possible by providing guides, howtos, tweaks, and general advocacy articles. When I first made the switch 3 years ago, I found the community welcoming me with open hands on forums, IRC channels, and E-mail, I was surprised how helpful these penguins were! For this, I feel obliged to give back to the community that has always been there for me. To pass down the torch to newer Linux generations. Over here I compiled a list of 7 habits that I wish someone told me when I started out. I believe that getting into these habits will make the Linux experience more secure, convenient, educational, and ultimately more enjoyable. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Linux Users

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