uniquegeek

Partition Setup

2011-10-14T19:42:00.003-05:00

I got a new (terabyte) hard drive and wanted to plan out a secondary partition to host /home. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember how much space I needed for swap, and how much Ubuntu itself may need. I was ok with Ubuntu having a fair bit more space than I needed as I could always store stuff on there if I really had to - I just didn't want to be caught with a hard drive that is too small two months down the road.

I read through my old Linux course notes, but that didn't help me much. The Wikipedia page on disk partitioning isn't too bad on refreshing you on how primary & secondary partitions work.

I found a site which makes it pretty clear, with screenshots of examples (though it's not an exact example because they've got a Windows install on there, and they're talking about dual-booting). In the end, I ended up choosing:

Primary, 5000 bytes (=500MB), for boot partition, mount point "/boot"
Logical, 5000 bytes (=500MB), for swap area, no mount point (none will happen)
Primary, 300000 bytes (=30GB), ext4, mount point "/" (this will host Linux)
Primary, 8000000-ish bytes (~800GB, remainder of the drive), ext4, mount point "/home" (to house our users' files)

The numbers you get picked will get fudged slightly because of sizes that disk blocks require, etc.

To view a simple list of disks, usages, and mount points after it's all installed, use

df -h

in a terminal (command line).

Upgrade to Ubuntu 10.10 leaves some pictures in Firefox with a strange green hue

2011-03-10T21:07:00.006-06:00

Version of Firefox is 3.6.15. After an upgrade, some, but not all, pictures have a greenish color to them. We're talking things like jpg, not flash or anything like that.

Fix:

In the Firefox address bar, type:
about:config

Yeah, yeah, you'll be careful. Set:
gfx.color_management.mode

to 0 (zero, if you can't decide whether that's "oh" or "zero"). My setting that had not been working was 2.

Sysadmin: an exercise in being functionally lazy.

2010-06-09T18:38:00.003-05:00

I'm sitting on my couch, working really hard on my laptop. Everything is perfectly arranged around me while I study.

The linux box sitting 15 feet away from me has an internet radio station playing on amarok. The next song comes on, and it's louder than the other songs.

I really don't want to get up.

Surely some linux user has had this grave problem before. I was about to do a google search for an app on my Windows 7 laptop that would do it, then i realized I already had Putty set up to connect to my pc. All I need is the command for the command line.

To reduce your volume 15%

aumix -v-15

Too much? Increase 5%

aumix -v+15

(You may need to install the aumix package to use the commands above)

apt-get install aumix

I'm sure there's many other ways to pull this off (it is Linux, after all). Feel free to share if you have one!

How to Mount an ISO file

2010-03-01T19:38:00.003-06:00

One of the things I love about Linux is many solutions are already made. Sometimes you need a little skill to piece together ready-made solutions, but many times they're already there.

For example, you have an .iso file, but don't want to burn it yet. You just want to see its contents.

Create a directory where you will view the iso:

mkdir /media/myiso

Then mount it:

mount -t iso9660 -o loop image.iso /media/myiso

The iso I used had spaces in the filename, so I just used

mount -t iso9660 -o loop "my image.iso" /media/myiso

(which works.)

Combine multiple images or multiple single-page PDFs into a multipage PDF

2010-01-25T19:13:00.008-06:00

This method requires installing a (great) image-manipulation package, and using the command line, but it's very simple - suitable for someone new to using a command line.

If you do a lot of work with images, or have to do a lot of repetitive work or batch processing, I really recommend looking into ImageMagick. You can do things like make thumbnails of a certain size out of a directory, with just a few words.

Get Imagemagick if you don't have it already.
Open a commmand prompt and install ImageMagick:

apt-get install imagemagick

Now to combine your images into a multi-page PDF:
Go to the directory where are your images are.

cd /home/computername/pics

Convert the JPG files to PDF:

convert *.jpg foo.pdf

It will create a multi-page PDF, named foo.pdf in the directory you're in. Just make up whatever name you like for "foo". The pages will be arranged by alphabetical order (the filename). This method will use ALL of the jpg's in the directory. If you aren't familiar with using wildcards (*, ?) or are unfamiliar with command line, I recommend making a directory that only has the files you want to use, and put it in your /home directory so it's easy to find. If you want to only include files that differ by a letter, you can use something like

convert sample?.jpg samplepkg.pdf

...which will only place files like sample1.jpg, sample2.jpg, sample3.jpg in the pdf.

I have noticed the file size gets pretty large using this method. There are probably some command line options to set to manipulate this. Something that does make it smaller is using a graphics program like Gimp, and using the "print" option to "print to" a pdf. Then you can use the command line to combine the single page pdf's into a multipage single pdf.

convert *.pdf multi.pdf

"*" means everything, so keep in mind it will use every pdf in that directory to make a new one... even if it's multipage!

Common Ubuntu Keyboard Shortcuts

2010-01-07T21:58:00.004-06:00

I've finally started on my Network Technology course, where I will be doing and MCSE, CCNA, and possibly prepping for a Linux+, all in the next eight months. Stay tuned for some more interesting tidbits on the blog as I have time.

On another note, I am aware of some OS keystroke shortcuts, but had the urge to use more. Why don't I know the one for Show Desktop, for instance (it's Ctrl-Alt-D). You can also map keyboard shortcuts, which is really handy if you want to use something like the Windows key.

Win+E - Shows all workspaces in a nifty way and lets you switch between workspaces easily.
Alt+Ctrl+Left/Right Arrow – Move to Workspace on Left/Right
Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right Arrow – Move current window to another workspace
Alt + Shift+ Up Arrow – This initiates a cool looking window switcher interface with which you can switch between windows using Arrow keys while holding Alt + Shift
Alt+F9/F10 – Minimize/ Maximize current window
Alt+F5 – UnMaximizes Current Window
Alt+F7 – This shortcut activates the move window option that lets you move current window using arrow keys. You can even move window to other workspace, try moving it to extreme right.
Alt+F8 – Resize current window with arrow keys
Ctrl + Alt + D – Show Desktop/ Restore open windows if show desktop used earlier
Alt+Shift+Tab – Switch Windows in Reverse Direction as done using Alt+Tab
Shift+Ctrl+N – Create New Folder, Very useful shortcut
Alt + Enter – Show properties of a selected file/folder without requiring to right click on it and select Properties.
Ctrl + 1/2 – Change folder view to icon/list.
Ctrl + W – close current Nautilus Window
Ctrl + Shift + W – close all open Nautilus Windows
Ctrl+T – Open a new tab in Nautilus
Alt + Up/Down Arrow – Move to Parent Folder/ Selected folder
Alt + Left/Right Arrow – Move Back/forward in Nautilus
Alt + Home – Move directly to your Home Folder
F9 – Toggle display of Nautilus Sidepane
Ctrl + H – Toggle Display of hidden files and folders
Ctrl + Alt + L - Quick shortcut to Lock Screen if you need to be away from your desktop for few moments and don’t want others to see your desktop.
Alt + F1 – Open Applications Menu
Alt + F2 – Open the Run Application dialog Box
Win + Mousewheel – Zoom in / Zoom out Desktop. This one’s pretty useful if you are having a wireless keyboard/mouse.

(shamelessly stolen from TechnoTraits... if you found these of use, be a sport and visit them!)

Fonts Not Displaying Properly on Web Pages

2009-12-16T22:43:00.009-06:00

I noticed one day that some webpages were a little difficult to read as the (sans-serif) font it used looked borked, for some reason. The first time I noticed this, I viewed the source, but didn't find a font declaration in that page. The most recent time I looked at a sample, I found this

<FONT face="sans-serif,helvetica,arial">

I haven't done much work with CSS, so I wasn't aware that order matters when declaring a font to use with CSS. If the first font in a list exists on your system, it will use that one first.

There are several font declarations in the HTML source, but for the main text, the results are:

It's just strange. Off. It's lacking some sort of smoothness. The vertical alignment of each letter also seems to be slightly different. Kerning is yucky. Though it is a sans serif (screen) font, I just don't find it very readable or pleasing to the eye.

FYI:

sans serif (clean) fonts are intended for reading on screen
serif fonts (fonts with little flicks or marks on the corners) are intended for printed text

The paradigm is that legibility is best when fonts are used this way.

What's funny is this situation appeared on a The Linux Documentation Project page. A Linux page viewed in Linux looks funny.

When typing an Openoffice document, all fonts appear, and are as expected (from screenshot:).

...despite sans-serif having no kerning and ugly tracking.

However, bump that font size down from 24pt to 10pt, and Helvetica is ugly! What the hell happened to those e's and a's?

("Font Darwin Award" once again goes to sans-serif, for its display of horrid kerning and tracking. If it wasn't obvious before, it sure is now.)

Theoretically, since sans-serif exists on my system, that should be the one being used in a web page (because it's first in the web page's font list). However, the evidence suggests it's actually using Helvetica. Why is Helvetica on my machine so ugly once it goes below 14pt or 12pt? I don't know. Still investigating. My monitor is a few years old, and my graphics is a good graphics card less than a year old, so I doubt those are the issue. Even so, why is this an issue with Helvetica, but not with the other fonts?

The only solution I can think of so far is to uninstall Helvetica. The print nerd in me really doesn't want to. If you really want to nerd-out, this is a great guide to fonts on Linux.

Please let me know if you figure this one out!

Apple Patents Computer Hardware that Freezes your Computer to Make you Watch Ads

2009-11-17T19:52:00.009-06:00

Apple has patented computer hardware that freezes your computer to make you acknowledge an ad. Adware at its most obnoxious (because it wasn't obnoxious enough as is?)

Apple's patent application.
Article in the New York Times.
Covered on Boing Boing.

"Its distinctive feature is a design that doesn’t simply invite a user to pay attention to an ad — it also compels attention. The technology can freeze the device until the user clicks a button or answers a test question to demonstrate that he or she has dutifully noticed the commercial message.Because this technology would be embedded in the innermost core of the device, the ads could appear on the screen at any time, no matter what one is doing."

If you read the patent application, they're talking hardware, not software. Ouch. Basically, your computer or device has this mechanism built into it. (It's harder to remove a car horn built into the car than an air horn that's duct-taped to the side mirror.)

Depending on how it is implemented, it could be a firmware rootkit, or a hardware equivalent of a rootkit.

In any case, thanks in advance to all the white hat crackers.

Or, you know, just don't buy an Apple device that has this.

On another note, it occured to me applying for a patent for something like this guarantees no one else could implement it... or not for long, anyways. If you never plan on implementing it yourself, you could use it as a tool for protecting users. That being said, I doubt that's Apple's intent. I would guess they're keeping the option open until such time as they figure they can get away with using it. So the more you get hooked on Apple...

Maybe the EFF should apply for a whole whack of patents?

Yet another compelling reason for the general public to take an interest in alternative computers and media players.

As Steve Gibson says, "It's MY computer."

pdflush process isn't what you think it is

2009-08-09T12:28:00.002-05:00

Yeah. Please don't try to kill the pdflush process.

Having started as a Windows user, it would really, really irk me that a whole bunch of (unnecessary) processes would be running. I would annihilate them at every opportunity, but at least I'm (usually) smart enough to look up what it is first.

Having moved to linux, there's a whole new ballgame of processes to look up.

How to (Quickly) Check What Version of Ubuntu You Have

2009-04-24T19:57:00.001-05:00

Applications --> Accessories --> Terminal. In the box type the following command:-

lsb_release -a

Share Mouse and Keyboard with Software

2009-03-01T22:21:00.002-06:00

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

I'm currently using a KVM switch (and one monitor), but it's nice to know there is a multi-monitor open software solution out there!

"Can't install gnome-desktop-environment, gnome-keyring-manager not installable"

2009-01-25T18:25:00.005-06:00

My current version of OS is KDE 8.04 with Xfce installed (I actually run Xfce daily). I got the error

"Can't install gnome-desktop-environment, gnome-keyring-manager not installable"

When trying to install the gnome desktop with either the terminal or Synaptic Package Manager.

Some searching led me to advice to type both of these commands in the terminal (don't type the $, and you may have to type "sudo" before the apt part...)

$ apt-cache show gnome|grep Depends|cut -f2- -d:|tr ',' '\n'|cut -f2 -d' '|grep -v gnome-desktop-environment|xargs sudo apt-get install -y
$ apt-cache show gnome-desktop-environment|grep Depends|cut -f2- -d:|tr ',' '\n'|cut -f2 -d' '|grep -v gnome-keyring-manager|xargs sudo apt-get install -y

Found this in a launchpad support forum (bugtracker). https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/meta-gnome2/+bug/216756

Be warned this may take the better part of an hour to install (the rest of your system should be usable while it installs.)

I ran both of these commands, and yes, it worked. Next time I rebooted, I had the option of a Gnome session, and it seems to be running smoothly so far.

Other links I found had some interesting info, if you want further reading:

Launchpad question

Lock issue I encountered in the meantime (oopsie.) Thought it was a bug until I realized I should listen to actual directions (ARE YOU RUNNING AS ROOT???... i.e. use sudo)

Launchpad bug that actually indicates it's a duplicate of another bug.

The Command Command

2009-01-05T23:56:00.005-06:00

man -k list directory

Lists commands and a very brief description of each. Lots of enlightening stuff here.

USB Hard Drive Runs Slow

2008-12-23T06:06:00.003-06:00

Came across this in a forum. Hey, I have this problem too!

'I had the odd Linux version mount external FAT32-drives (USB sticks) with some crappy mount parameters that it would have been quicker to write the data on the HD with my own hands - yes, literally.

So if you happen to use Linux..

Try mounting the external FAT drive without the "sync" option, i.e. with

"mount -o async".

But you'll have to remember to umount the external device manually before removing it; sometimes a lot of the writing happens only delayed at the time of umounting - at least it did sometimes with my SuSEs.'

(Thanks to The Voice of Doom on Fark.com)

I Like Toys

2008-11-04T23:13:00.009-06:00

I finally got a digital camera. I'm not experienced with them at all on any system, so when it came time to plugging it in to my computer, I wasn't sure of what I was doing.

I plugged the sucker in, and I expected a little USB-type drive would pop up on my desktop, but that did not happen.

Searching for a solution was kind of a pain because lots of ads for my camera kept popping up. Samsung doesn't exactly give directions for linux, either.

A little more searching finally revealed this page.

You have to turn the camera on after you plug it in to the computer. The page also warns to turn it off before unplugging it. By this, I would assume the USB device doesn't draw power from the computer via the USB connection, but it draws power from the camera's batteries.

A green light came on on the camera when connected. The screen momentarily asked me to choose between "computer" and "printer", so I chose... computer. The screen then turned black, but the light stayed on. At this point, a device appeared on my desktop, and I was able to sift through the directories in there like a regular USB flash drive.

Hope that solves a "what now" scenario for some of you camera/linux newbies.

What camera did I pick up? A Samsung S760 at "Wally World". 7.2megapixel, 3x optical zoom, takes SD cards only (not SDHC). Set me back $87 (November 01, 2008). Yes, I got the pink one. I'm generally anti-pink, but in my defense, I think it's less likely to get stolen and less likely to be mistaken for someone else's.

Pretty decent pictures, especially if you stablile the camera well when snapping photos. I used Digital Image Stabilization mode to take a few night shots outside my window. Best sample:

You're looking down Broadway Ave towards Main in Winnipeg, MB. The large white lit-up building is the Hotel Fort Garry.

BSOD on Linux

2008-09-25T22:45:00.005-05:00

Yes, you can get the Blue Screen of Death in Linux. Too funny.

xscreensaver

is a package you can find in your repository. It has all sorts of screensavers, including popular OS error screens. Install via Synaptic Package Manager, Adept, or what have you.

Good for confusing the hell out of a roommate, friend, or spouse, though I really don't recommend messing around with the desktop environment settings of a person who you may want to continue relations with.

For a temporary trick, try this Flash trick. The ESC key exits full screen mode in Flash.

tar switches for command line

2008-09-13T18:11:00.002-05:00

tar -xzvf /path/to/your/file.tar.gz

xkcd? xfce? No. xzvf.

I'm sorry, that's a really bad nerd joke. I'll bet the nerds didn't even laugh.

Flash player doesn't install in Firefox

2008-09-13T13:52:00.004-05:00

Flash wasn't working for me in Firefox. At one point, I had installed several flash players via Symantic or Adept, until learning I should only install flashplayer-nonfree. I removed the other ones, but still no go. I tried downloading the package from Adobe manually, and installing via the command line, but got this error:

Please enter the installation path of the Mozilla, Netscape,
or Opera browser (i.e., /usr/lib/mozilla): /usr/bin/firefox

WARNING: /usr/bin/firefox is not a directory.

Here are the tricks to fix it:

it seems the Adobe installer wants the actual numbered version of the firefox directory. "whereis firefox" didn't help me in this respect (as suggested on help forums). I ended up using /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.1 Yours might be slightly different. Why Adobe couldn't have indicated this in the installer... I don't know. Twits.
when testing out whether flash works on something like YouTube, make sure you don't have something like the "NoScript" add-on preventing anything you may need. (D'oh!) I had to allow both youtube.com and ytimg.com in NoScript.

... that brings up the question whether flash was actually working all along and my NoScript was thwarting all my efforts. Oh, probably.

Distributions, Applications, and Toolkits

2008-09-08T20:14:00.010-05:00

Programs that "run better/faster" on specific Desktop Environments

Keep in mind your distribution uses different programming toolkits for their applications, so to minimize the amount of overhead that gets loaded up you may want to make sure your applications are native to what's already running. For this reason, you may want to use Transmission instead of Ktorrent if you're using Xubuntu.

gtk toolkit users:
-----------------------------
Xubuntu
Transmission bittorrent client
Synaptic Package Manager
Gimp (yes, rly)
Firefox

qt toolkit users:
---------------------------
Kubuntu
Ktorrent
Adept Package Manager
qt browsers include Konqueror and Opera. I'm guessing you'll just stick with Firefox anyway!)

You may have seen "apt-get" and assume it refers the Adept Package Manager. It doesn't. APT is an acronym "Advanced Packaging Tool", package management system for Debian-based distributions. Synaptic and Adept are merely front-ends for this tool (i.e. they make it look purty).

Wikipedia articles on pieces of software often mention what toolkit the software uses, either in the first paragraph, or in an infobox on the right.

Ktorrent runs in background with no interface

2008-09-07T22:56:00.008-05:00

kTorrent runs as background process with no interface (GUI). This fixed it for me:

rm .kde/share/config/ktorrentrc

Viewing your Drives

2008-07-24T22:17:00.006-05:00

sudo fdisk -l

(For posterity.) I forget this command.

And. Well. Forgetting this command is a little more understandable (I use it to mount my NTFS drive):

sudo mount /dev/hdb1 /media/kat120data/ -t ntfs -o nls=utf8,umask=0222

(all one line)

For those of you who don't know, drives connected with an IDE cable are listed as hda, hdb, (etc.) Their partitions have a number... for example, hda1, hda2, hda3... Drives that are connected via USB (external) or SATA (internal) connectors are labeled with 's', for example: sda1. There are a lot more filesystems than this, and they require different commands for mounting properly.

Be warned that NTFS drives (formatted under Windows NT or Windows 2000) don't necessarily have reliable write access under Linux. They're working on it. You can install some packages to mess around with it. Hard drives formatted with FAT32 (Windows XP, Windows 98, Windows 95...) have reliable read/write access when mounted in Linux.

Because of ext3 (Linux filesystem) benefits, I was really wound up to format my new USB external hard drive in ext3. Upon opening the box and reading the documentation, it is already formatted in FAT32. I've decided to leave it this way because I want my friends to be able to easily read the data off my drive (in case I cart it over to their place). Windows and ext3 don't intrinsically get along.

Most of us have only heard about FAT32 and NTFS, but the amount of computer filesystems is huge.

CD Will Not Eject, Unmount (again)

2008-07-20T20:16:00.013-05:00

Cliff's Notes:

- Close all applications that were referencing the DVD/CD (k3b, kaffeine).
- Close all Konqueror windows.
- use "pkill Konqueror", "pkill k3b", etc. in the command line for good measure.
- THEN try to eject your DVD/CD

Story:

Let. Go. My. DVD.

This time I get

umount: /media/hdd is not in the fstab (and you are not root)
Please check that the disk is entered correctly

I've just been burning DVDs like mad because my primary hard drive indicates it's failing while booting.

The last DVD seemed to burn, but produced an error at the end that it failed anyway. I re-loaded the DVD anyway and it popped up with the DVD name. I was able to open data on the disc. Soon after, I closed the pdf and pressed the button on the drive to eject. It wouldn't let me. The light is not on. The drive is not 'working' (no auditory indications that it is running). Ejecting the CD from the icon on the Desktop does not work and gives me the same error as well. Unmounting from there does the same. I did a search for this to come up with a command line solution.

eject

Will by default eject the cdrom. (By the way, the UNIX manual for eject is very well-written. "man eject | more"). I tried:

eject dvd

(with and without "sudo" beforehand) but it gave me an error

umount: /media/hdd: device is busy
umount: /media/hdd: device is busy
Error: umount failed
eject: unmount of `/media/hdd' failed

Is there a command line way to force the drive to "stop" so I can eject it? Due to advice here, ejecting via the desktop icon should work, so I have to make sure that all programs referring to the cd/dvd are not running. *rolls eyes*

pkill k3b

and then attempting to eject still gives me the same error. I was about to accuse them of being liars, but I started thinking "there can not possibly be another application locking up the DVD. " And then... "A Konqueror window opened when I loaded the DVD. But I closed that." And then... "but there is another Konqueror window open, listing the contents of my hard drive. That was open at that time, and it's still open now."

Huh.

I closed all my Konqueror windows.
I typed "pkill Konqueror" in the command line for good measure.

And yes, now the DVD will eject (via right-clicking the DVD icon on the desktop).

Need Rasterizing PDF Firefox Plugin

2008-05-20T19:23:00.004-05:00

Not really a Linux issue, but a FOSS issue:

I'd like a pdf plugin for Firefox that automatically rasterizes a pdf that's being opened and inserts it inline, or opens it in a new window. This would be especially helpful if the pdf is only one page.

Rasterization at 72dpi would only be necessary as it is on screen. Therefore, rasterization should be pretty fast.

The reason I've thought of this: my city's library insists on providing links to things that look like posters or news articles, but it's a pdf. Therefore, I must open my laggy pdf software on my machine and go through that whole dialog.

Yes, I know, I could just get more RAM (but my motherboard doesn't play nice with RAM and I'm also frugal).

Worms & WINE Are Not as Expected

2008-04-07T21:42:00.006-05:00

Today I came across a web page with a download for the old computer game Worms 2. I recall playing this and Worms: Armageddon with my fellow residence friends when I was in University (affectionately called "rezbians"). I wondered if it could run on Linux. I know there is a web page somewhere which tells you such things.

I typed "worms wine" into Google before thinking. I got unexpected results which should (?) have been expected.

Lost Sound when Plugging in USB flash

2008-01-20T14:57:00.001-06:00

I was playing an .avi in kaffeine, and at the same time I plugged in a 512MB USB flash drive. Immediately I lost sound in Kaffeine, though video was still playing. I check Youtube via Firefox, same thing.

I used to have a problem in Amarok where if Amarok crashed, it would mute the sound without my noticing. Thankfully I remembered to check this in Kaffeine, but that was not the problem.

I don't mess with the sound settings often, so I had a fun time trying to find them (turns out they're not in your system or settings menu... try looking for KMix in the Multimedia menu instead.)

I log on to the freenode IRC channel #kubuntu, and a couple nice folks there had some suggestions for me.

I was told to pay special attention to KMix lines: master, master mono, PCM. These were all fine (at or near the top).

(You can also open alsamixer via the command line)

alsamixer

I was then advised to restart ALSA.

sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart

This did not work. I tried closing all my programs which might be using sound, and running the command again. This did not work either.

I ran the command, and then rebooted. This works! Now I have my sound back.

Mounting ntfs Drives in Kubuntu

2008-01-15T15:05:00.002-06:00

Find the device and its partition in a terminal window:

sudo fdisk -l

Bootable devices will be marked. The actual drive used to boot will have partitions split up into swap space. IDE devices often (but not always) start with 'h', SATA devices and USB flash drives start with 's'. fdisk will indicate which file format the drive is formatted in. Hard drive letters indicate a specific device (i.e. a hard drive), numbers represent different partitions used in that device. Subsequent letters indicate addtional devices, and will likely be added incrementally (for example, if you have a SATA hard drive mounted first and then attach a USB flash drive, the hard drive should be sda, and the flash drive should end up being sdb.)

Numbers indicate a partition of that particular mounted device. Linux will reserve room for swap space and a boot sector in addition to the filesystem where you will store your files.

Mount the device to a destination folder. Replace 'hda1' below with the drive you wish to mount, and change the '/home/...' directory to where you want to mount the files to (the directory in this case will act like a link or bookmark). The folder in the home user's directory will be "ubuntu" (not your computer name) if it's running off a live cd.

sudo mount /dev/hda1 /home/ubuntu/Desktop/folder -t ntfs
-o nls=utf8,umask=0222

This is for mounting ntfs drives only!

(I've found other commands to "mount an ntfs drive", but they don't seem to work.)

Jerky Video off CD .avi in Kaffiene after /hdd Permisison Problems

2007-11-28T19:42:00.000-06:00

I've noticed sometimes when I get problems like listed earlier this day (finicky CD/DVD ejecting & unmounting permissions), I get jerky motion when I finally am able to play something like an .avi off the mounted disc. I can stop Kaffiene and even pkill it, but it still continues. The problem stops if I reboot and run the .avi off the cd/dvd again.

Any idea what's going on in the background here? Is there another process I have to kill, or do I simply have to wait a long time before jerkiness doesn't become an issue? Or is reboot the only solution?

CD Will Not Eject, Unmount

2007-11-28T17:37:00.001-06:00

burned using k3b
still showed as blank cd-rom on desktop
used physical eject button on cd, closed drive after it opened
tested data on cd: cd showed up with label, file opened
tried to eject (gave error)
tried to unmount (gave error i.e. "error: kio_media_unmounthelper unmount: /media/hdd is not in fstab")
(light on cd-rom drive is flickering)

Solution: If I wait a couple minutes, I can then use right click->eject

I guess other apps aren't releasing permissions to the drive to preven accidental manipulation and use by other programs?

(edit: same dealie with my USB flash stick. I moved files into a directory on my desktop. Well after it was finished, I attempted to right click-> safely remove, and it gave me the same error)

PDF Manipulation; Tesseract OCR

2007-10-23T20:19:00.000-05:00

Little bit of story to begin.

Working in a small print shop, I've had to deal with pdfs a lot more. One reason is setup: customers bring in all sorts of wonky files at the incorrect finished size and setup. Customers make files in Word, which may spontaneously change formatting (hey... how are WE supposed to know what your document is supposed to look like?) We get a lot on bands printing 11x17 posters, but they also want handbills, which are not set up. "Ready to print" is rarely the case.

Word also likes to not printed coloured backgrounds, even if you tell it to.

For pdf manipulation, I use three main tools: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat Professional, and Xerox Freeflow Makeready.

The beauty about Photoshop is that you can actually open up a PDF. It will rasterize the file (essentially "make it into a picture") , which is great if you have you're getting issues with formatting. The downside is that it rasterizes the image. Gone is the editability (is that a word?) of the PDF. Always save as a copy before working on an image!

This concept gives light to the structure of the pdf as well. PDFs are similar in concept to web pages (HTML, if you're familiar with it). The document doesn't contain an image. It is a document explaining the structure of different elements, and how they should be displayed. This is why you are able to search many pdfs.

With extended use of Freeflow, it becomes obvious too that making a document n-up (multiple copies of the same thing in a page) is a function of the markup in the PDF. If you make a document 4-up, the size of the file doesn't change (or does by a miniscule amount). However, if you make a (rasterized) image 4-up and save it as an image again, it gets much larger.

Acrobat Professional is great for some purposes, but some of the tools are clunky to use. Worse still, some tools that look intuitive to use, aren't. Furthermore, it's still buggy. Crop kind of works. The "layers" tab is essentially useless.

Freeflow has some great tools. For example, you can view the contents of a pdf in its layers, and manipulate the layers (you could insert an image which is one colour and move it to the bottom of the layers... making it the background colour). It's also really easy to make things n-up. I'm surprised I don't see this more. Computers can do math much more quickly than we can. As humans, it's not that difficult for us to do (if nice round-numbered measurements are used), but it is time consuming.

Put into perspective the hundreds/thousands of dollars these programs cost and the fact that I still have to switch between them to solve some problems, plus there are still some problems they don't solve...

A large problem I would like to solve:
Collecting some of my images together at home into pdfs. Some of these are just images, some are images of text.

Using Linux, I wasn't about run out and buy a $440 copy of Acrobat Professional. Kpdf is a great lightweight viewer, but that's about all it can do. I supposed I could use a workaround using LaTeX, OpenOffice, or ImageMagick, but that might get tedious or cumbersome. I asked on IRC about ImageMagick, but I couldn't get a definite answer.

I came across some solutions quite by accident.

PDF Hacks contained a solution. Apparently you can make all images in a directory into a pdf with ImageMagick ("hack" 48, p125).

convert -density 100 -quality 85 \ -page "800x800>" -resize "800x800>" *.jpg album.pdf

Well, that's simple. Easy to write as a shell script or program, too.

I came across Tesseract quite by accident. It happened to be a July 2007 Linux Journal article. Tesseract can take a uncompressed tif image and use OCR to port it into an actual text document. It does it with an excellent success rate (97-100%).

The author says he uses it to scan in his textbooks, so he doesn't have to lug heavy books around campus.

Plus: both ImageMagick and Tesseract are free.

Installing and Switching Between Extra Desktops / Window Managers

2007-10-23T19:05:00.001-05:00

You don't have to commit to one Desktop style. You can install GNOME, KDE, XFCE (among others), and just switch between them.

GNOME is the desktop used in Ubuntu.
KDE is the desktop used in Kubuntu.
Xfce is the desktop used in Xubuntu.

To switch between the desktops, log out. When you log back in, click the "session" button and select which window manager you want to use. Easy as pie.

To install, you can use Synaptic Package manager, or apt-get (on the command line). However, these methods don't keep track of dependencies, so it's recommended you use aptitude (on the command line) instead:

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install kubuntu-desktop
sudo aptitude install xubuntu-desktop

Link in title as always, or here.

DVD-R Discs Seem Blank After Sucessful K3B Burn

2007-09-17T14:48:00.002-05:00

Discs burned as Data DVD with K3B defaults

1st problem: really old version on K3B

Install K3B using directions here: http://k3b.plainblack.com/installation
Make sure requirements are installed.

Great generic howto on K3B burning here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=218165&highlight=k3b+blank+dvd+after+burn

Similar problem to mine here, ... solution?
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/3010

Lost Running Applications / Programs in Toolbar

2007-09-03T22:48:00.001-05:00

A while ago, I was adding and removing applications from the panel, and the spacing between them got all screwy. Next thing I know my list of running applications is gone.

Couldn't find it for the life of me. Gave up trying to find an answer, said "screw it", and just started using alt+tab to switch between running programs. Still annoying though.

Incidentally, I discovered if you move your mouse cursor over the title (top) of a window that's open, using mouse's scroll wheel will make you switch between the last two windows.

Anyway...

Happened to be on irc.freenode.net #kubuntu ... and someone there posted a similar problem. To get back your application list in your toolbar / panel:

right-click on toolbar in an empty spot
click "Add Applet to Panel" (this is where you say AHHHHHH!)
click Taskbar and OK.

Import Thunderbird Mail into Kmail

2007-09-03T22:00:00.002-05:00

I wanted to import my messages from Thunderbird into Kmail, so I could use Kontact as my entire personal information tool. I could not find a tool anywhere in Kmail / Kontact (or even just right in Kmail) to import mail from another program. After Googling it, I found it should be in Tools -> Import Messages. The odd thing is I didn't have that menu option. Another thing to try is using a tool mozilla2kmail.pl, but that didn't work for me.

Cliff's Notes:

make sure kmailcvt is installed. Use Synaptic Package Manager to get it.
then in Kontact/Kmail use File -> Import Messages to import messages from Thunderbird.

Story:
Kmail 1.9.1 using KDE 3.5.2

Found some wonky directions here, but that seemed too complicated.

I looked up the Kmail (via the menus in Kontact/Kmail). The help file seemed to be out of date, web address gets rerouted here.

A bit of a beef I have with the Kontact web site is that they don't give you the current revision of the entire package, nor the current revision of the components of the package. I looked at FAQ of the Kontact page. I didn't see a link to an IRC channel, but I tried out

irc.freenode.net #kontact

The channel does exist, but appears to be a small developer's channel. No one seemed to be awake.

The aforementioned mozilla2kmail.pl script had to be run with

chmod +x mozilla2kmail.pl
sudo ./mozilla2kmail.pl

which gave an error that "./home/kat/Mail is not a directory."
To get help you need to type

./mozilla2kmail.pl --help

which is different than indicated ("mozilla2kmail --help")! This command gives me

"You need to install the perl-doc package to use this program."

I install perl-doc using Synaptic Package Manager, but I still get ". /home/kat/Mail is not a directory." after doing a "sudo ./mozilla2kmail.pl"

Did more searching and came up with the Cliff's Notes solution, which works. The only stickler is that when the import runs, it doesn't make it obvious what it wants you to open. I selected the entire mail folder (/home/kat/.thunderbird/fzcc2crp.default/Mail/) which had two folders in it: a "Local Folder" and a "pop.gmail.com folder." This seems to work.

Installing Microsoft Truetype fonts on Ubuntu

2007-07-29T20:47:00.002-05:00

"You can install the MS core fonts by installing the msttcorefonts package. To do this, enable the “Universe” component of the repositories. This is done by default in Feisty. After you do that, use the following command from the command line:

$sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

This will give you the core fonts, but if there are other TrueType fonts that you want installed, it is as easy as copying the font files to the ~/.fonts/ directory.

After installing new fonts, you will have to log out and log in again to be able to see and use the new fonts. If you want to avoid this, you can regenerate the fonts cache by issuing the following command:"

$sudo fc-cache -fv

Thanks to Carthik's Ubuntu blog.

Lost Sidebar in Thunderbird (folders & calendar)

2007-07-29T17:33:00.001-05:00

While using Thunderbird, I clicked on the left somewhere, and all of a sudden my folders and my mini-calendar were gone. What happened? I attempted to click and drag on the very left edge where the edge of the window was, but that didn't work.

Tried all the options in the view menu, looked for other menus. Nothing.

Googled it, and came up with nothing.

Went back into Thunderbird, tried again. This time, it worked. My folder list and calendar re-appeared.

BFI sometimes works. You just have to try harder.

The reason this happened is that the resize is "sticky". You can make the width of the folders panel smaller to a certain point, then BANG, it's gone. The same goes for resizing it from nothing to something. If you only drag the mouse a small distance, the folder frame will not resize. If you drag it to a certain width, then the folder pane will pop back up.

Lost Menubar in Konqueror

2007-06-07T00:20:00.002-05:00

When I was using Konqueror as my file browser today, I got all click-y and accidentally lost my menu. My entire menu was gone. Right-clicking gave me numerous options, including enabling toolbars. However, they didn't work (the menu is is not a toolbar, it's a menu bar). Apparently this syntactical nitpicking makes a difference.

Quick internet search: CTRL + M fixes it.

I wonder if there's a way to enable it with a mouse?

Converting m4a files to mp3

2007-05-19T00:12:00.001-05:00

I have some m4a files I would like to keep in mp3 or ogg format. From what I found, you need to do this via the command line in Linux/Kubuntu.

For a refresher, m4a file are propietary iTunes music files. They may or may not have DRM, so they may or may not convert properly.

To convert a m4a file to mp3, you need faad and lame installed. Use Synaptic Package Manager to get them. Install. In your konsole/terminal, type:

$ faad foobar.m4a # to convert to wav
$ lame foobar.wav foobar.mp3 # to convert to mp3

If you need to change it to ogg, you need oggenc. Then you can do:

$ for nam in *.mp4; do nice mplayer -ao pcm "$nam" -ao pcm:file="$nam.wav" && nice oggenc -q5 "$nam.wav" -o "$(basename "$nam" .mp4).ogg"; rm "$nam.wav"; done

That's all one line. See link here and here.

Frostwire won't shut down, exit or quit

2007-05-14T20:17:00.001-05:00

No matter if I closed Frostwire in the menu or the window button (X), it would not shut down. It would stay in my title bar. It did not move to the process bar on the right (unlike Frostwire on Windows).

I tried to shut down the service using the terminal/konsole:

ps -e | grep frostwire

No luck. But if you do

ps -e

you notice something. Ah, that's right, Frostwire uses JRE and looks like "Java", so that must be it.

kill ProcessIdOfTheJavaThingy

Does not kill the process. Nothing happens. (Replace ProcessIdOfTheJavaThingy with the number beside the program you want to kill). For fun, I tried:

sudo kill ProcessIdOfTheJavaThingy

That doesn't work either. Well, I guess I'll actually Google it or something.

This is not a bug (though that may be a matter of opinion...); it's a feature. Frostwire will not shutdown if there are items still waiting to finish. To fix this lovely feature, go into the Frostwire menus:

Tools
Options
System Tray (on the left)
Select Shutdown Immediately

Well, that was easy.

*****

UPDATE: easily kill a process that has a window - use a weird combination of both graphical and command line to kill a window! In your terminal, type

xkill

and then the system will prompt you to click on the window you want to kill. Great method for those of you who don't want to remember ps options and pipes.

Or... kill a process by name (say... "amarok") using pkill.

pkill amarok

Great link here about that.

Newbies aren't mind readers

2007-05-02T22:06:00.002-05:00

Internet message boards are ripe with people who are willing to help with technical problems but don't explain ideas fully. This is especially true of Linux helpers. Linux jocks are really proud of using Linux, and are really smart. They are very encouraging of new users "discovering" Linux. Unfortunately, many of these types are horrible at explaining to users how to fix their problem, despite all good intentions.

So what you see is speedy willingness to answer a question, and then an intimidating response that only frustrates the user further.

"Oh great, someone answered me! But I still don't have any idea how to fix my problem. And now everyone thinks my problem is solved, therefore I'll get ignored."

(I added the last post three years after the fact because I had the same problem and figured it out... and would like others to use this knowledge if needed. This post came up #1 on Google when I searched for the problem.)

What smart people fail to realize is newbies aren't mind readers. In Linux, many users are coming from Windows systems where the very concepts of how to solve a problem are different.

I have to use a command line? What is a console?
It looks like I click and download stuff, why isn't it there already? What do you mean, add a repository? How?
What do you mean, I have to compile it? Can't I just install it? What do you mean, I have to get the right one? It says it's for Linux!

When helping a newbie, you have to tell them
1) where to type any commands or look for options
2) exactly what to type, if it's command line

To newbies, it's not so obvious where to look. Did you even tell them what program you are talking about? Or if it's in their computer/system menu? They likely don't know every UNIX command out there.

Be direct and concise. You don't have to hold their hand for them, but don't take "the obvious" for granted. If you don't want to write too much, do a little legwork and find a couple URLs where the problem is already concisely spelled out.

This actually isn't so much a "newbie" problem as a "new to Linux or a piece of its software" problem.

Furthermore, if you really want to encourage newbies, you need to check back to a message you responded to to make sure you didn't confuse them any further.

Burning .nrg images with K3B

2007-05-02T21:40:00.002-05:00

I downloaded a file and it was a .nrg file, which I know is an image file you can use to burn an image of a CD.

What I forgot is that .nrg files are images used in Nero. I don't have Nero, I use K3B.

Thanks to the folks at linuxquestions.org, they gave some insight as to the situation. If you strip the first 300 bytes of data off the .nrg file, the remainder is an ISO file.

So to change a .nrg file to an .iso file so you can burn it, open up a terminal/console/shell (Konsole) window. Change to the directory the .nrg file is in, and type:

dd bs=1k if=image.nrg of=image.iso skip=300

Replace image.nrg with then name of your .nrg file (something.nrg), replace image.iso with the name you want your outgoing file to be (something.iso)

Then burn the disc using K3b and the .iso file that you just created.

Uh... don't forget to burn the disc as an image, not as data.

Here's the link I found for the UNIX command dd.

Disclaimer: K3b did a checksum before burning and it was successful. So I guess the checksum is on the actual data and not the extraneous Nero data. I haven't actually installed the CD yet, though, so we'll see...

WindowsXP/Kubuntu Dual Boot video

2007-05-01T19:41:00.001-05:00

I am considering installing a dual boot system (Windows XP and Kubuntu) on a friend's system. I have no idea how to get started nor do I know anyone who has done this before.

I'm reasonably secure in formatting drive, partitioning drives, and setting up Windows. However, despite finding some instructions, I would like to know what to expect. What actually happens? What does the screen look like at this point? What do I need to pay close attention to? This video explains exactly that.

How to set up dual boot Windows XP and Kubuntu in video. Great idea!

(I'm a little on the fence on the crack about women getting turned on by the install. On one hand, it is kind of funny because women tend not to be turned on by nerds oogling a Linux box. On the other hand, from watching the video you can see why. Point is, the comment wasn't very mature and didn't belong in this type of video. If you want to encourage women in computing, don't turn it into adolescent boys' club. Looks like someone needs to read HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux. I'm not really upset about this, but I'm saying it was a stupid thing to do.)

How to Manually Force a Program to Close

2007-03-18T19:42:00.001-06:00

Yes, programs in Linux can crash.

If you need to force a program to close, but are wondering what the heck Kubuntu folks use instead of Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL), try using the terminal instead.

(I suspect there is a GUI like Task Manager kicking around somewhere that you can install, but that would require installing it or finding it. You already have a terminal).

What you need to do is find the Process ID of the program that is running, and then kill that process. First: open a Konsole window. In the window, type

ps -e | grep NameOfProgramYouWantToKill

ps aux | grep NameOfProgramYouWantToKill

Sometimes the name of the program not obvious or not what you expect it to be. In that case, you can just do

ps -e

ps aux

and scroll through the list to find it. Once you find it, you'll notice a number beside it, on the left. Type:

kill number

And hopefully you've shut the right program down. The program should disappear from the taskbar. As always, if you are consistently starting to experience problems with hanging programs, you should try rebooting the computer. If you still experience problems, Google for bugs or an update or patch for the software.

Getting International and Accented Characters in Kubuntu/Linux

2007-03-12T21:09:00.001-06:00

I've been practicing my French again. One of my local friends grew up in Québec virtually all his life, and one of my local friends is studying French in Québec for a year. When I chat to them, I like to type the French words as they're meant to be written, which includes the accents.

Anyway, I had fun finding where to switch my keyboard so I could use the layout. In Windows, you do it by switching to an American English International Keyboard layout (Control Panel -> Regional and Language Settings, I believe... not in Control Panel -> Keyboard like you'd expect).

I found where to change it. There are lots of options. In addition to the language settings, there are variants in the language settings (dvorak, international...)

In Kubuntu with KDE, I found it in:

System Settings -> Regional & Accessibility -> Keyboard Layout

For reference:

Ubuntu U.S. International Characters Chart

I'm a Canadian with a normal American keyboard (Microsoft RT2300). I've added several keyboard layouts in the list as I want to mess around to see which one I'm the most comfortable with. I seem to be using U.S. English layout with the variant "international".

You can set up other options by using the tabs in the top (Switching Options Tab with "Show indicator for single layout" checked gives you the list in your taskbar so you can easily switch back and forth between keyboard layouts.

The only difference I notice from Windows is the cedilla. The comma key does NOT give the cedilla. You have to use the RIGHT ALT key, and then type comma. This gives you "ç"

Sometimes no audio in Firefox pages with Flash

2007-03-07T20:52:00.001-06:00

After having my system up and running for a while, I noticed that if I use Amarok and then open Firefox, videos in YouTube would have no sound. I figured this was just a wonky Kubuntu feature until I decided to actually research the problem.

This problem was solved if I would reboot the system and open Firefox and watch videos first (before playing music). The problem still was recurring, though.

Apparently this is more than an ALSA sound driver fight between Firefox and Amarok. It's actually a bug (see link).

How to fix your Firefox audio: open a terminal/console, and type

cd /tmp
mkdir /tmp/.esd
ln -s /tmp/.esd-1000/socket /tmp/.esd/socket

CD and DVD Drive Hanging

2007-01-05T20:54:00.001-06:00

On rare occassion, my CD or DVD drive will hang. The disc will show up on the desktop, but I can not eject it by right clicking. When this is the case, pressing the physical button on the drive often doesn't work either.

(I'm actually writing this post long after the fact... I think I did this to get it solved: )

In /etc/fstab, edit the line that looks like this:

/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0

to this:

/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,user,ro 0 0

Also try:

chmod 777 /bin/mount /bin/umount

DVD movies won't run ("encrypted")

2006-11-28T23:35:00.001-06:00

I couldn't run a regular movie DVD in my drive. Apparently it's because they are "encrypted". I was using Kaffiene media player. Here's what I did to fix it.

Run Adept (Package Manager)
Enable Universe AND Multiverse repositories in your list
Do a search and install of a package named libdvdread
Then, search and install package libdvdcss
Run Kaffeine and enjoy your DVDs

If your unsure how to do all this. You should probably start by reading this:
followed by this:
Then this:

Kopete problems

2006-11-22T01:52:00.001-06:00

Well, hold on.

We've got some problems with Kopete.

The settings are a little squirrely. It's a little mental workout to find the settings you need to change. Sounds don't automatically seem to be set up. (They are, but you just have to activate them in the right spot.)
Apparently there is no logging of conversations. Wait, no, there are, if you have a Kopete extension installed. Well it is installed, but I still can't find where my conversations logs are kept. All I want to do is see what some guy said to me the other day. Where do I find that?
Despite my installing Firefox and setting it as my default browser, links sent in a chat window in Kopete get sent to Konqueror.

The Kubuntu Live CD and install

2006-11-22T01:41:00.001-06:00

I stuck the CD in. It took a couple minutes for it to all mount and load up. And it worked.

You could imagine how ecstatic I was to use a desktop that had more than 16-bit colour again.

Audio worked, I was able to use Kopete (instant messenger) right away. Firefox wasn't automatically installed, but Konqueror (file/web browser) allowed me to view most html.

The system ran pretty well considering it was using the CD and a partial hard drive mount.

Well, I'm already here. If I actually install the thing, I can put Firefox on and permanently tweak some things.

The install goes well. The only thing that took a while was the formatting of my 250GB drive. I didn't partition it.

By the way, it saw all 250GB.

And... it works.

The one that pushed me over the edge

2006-11-22T00:37:00.001-06:00

I found the appropriate distribution from kubuntu.org. I ended up using the plain old PC desktop CD because I didn't have a 64-bit processor, and I wasn't installing a RAID server.

The .iso I downloaded sat on my computer for a couple months.

Finally, I burned it to a CD. So it sat on both my computer and on CD for another month.

And then lo, on the 30th day did the heavens open and Windows misbehaved and this user freaked out and had one of her bi-annual f'n'r-fits (format-and-reinstall, folks). And so this user ran out and bought a new hard drive and.... re-installed Windows (2000 Pro).

And her video didn't work properly. (Doth thoust need to install the drivers manually? Yes, you do.)
And her onboard ethernet didn't work. Again.
And installing the drivers didn't work to fix all these annoying problems. Again. How did I finally get it working the last time? Who the hell knows.
And... only half of her brand spanking new 250GB hard drive showed up.

Furthermore, installing the newest drivers would be nice, but the Ethernet card didn't work so... (ha ha, funny funny; slight oversight). Installing the drivers gets halfway then tells me I need DirectX9.0c. Installing DirectX9.0c requires Windows Service Pack 4 first... but Windows Service Pack 4 requires...

I have all these on my secondary hard drive, but it's still a pain.

After some research I discovered that my motherboard may need an upgrade to support hard drives larger than 137GB. I checked the BIOS, my version actually had been upgraded and was fine. (This all has to do with 48-bit Logical Bit Addressing).

Oh by the way, Windows also needs Service Pack 4 if you're using Windows 2000, and Service Pack 1 if your using XP, if you want it to see your 250GB drive.

Oh, ok. But wait, I have my Service Pack installed!

Oh by the way, the Service Pack has to be included on the install CD. When you install it.

Oh @#!*.

Cliff's Notes is essentially: I got to the point where the ethernet was working but I really couldn't fix my video (16-bit colour 640x480 resolution baby, YEAH!). My 250GB drive was in limbo. This was after two days. Then I realized I had that spunky little Kubuntu Live CD kicking around...

Well, we'll just see what happens.

Why Kubuntu?

2006-11-22T00:11:00.002-06:00

The archaic version of Red Hat I had tried left me with a sour taste in my mouth. Whether that was Red Hat's fault or mine is somewhat debatable. Last time around, I asked all my supremely nerdy friends what they liked, and they came up with that.

Bad idea. By the way, don't ask a group of male nerds what they do for fun.

Time for a quote from Edmonton band Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie.

From the song Every OS Sucks:

Now there's lih-nux or lie-nux,
I don't know how you say it,
or how you install it, or use it, or play it,
or where you download it, or what programs run,
but lih-nux, or lie-nux, don't look like much fun.

However you say it, it's getting great press,
though how it survives is anyone's guess,
If you ask me, it's a great big mess,
for elitist, nerdy shmucks.

"It's free!" they say, if you can get it to run,
the Geeks say, "Hey, that's half the fun!"
Yeah, but I got a girlfriend, and things to get done,
the Linux OS SUCKS.
(I'm sorry to say it, but it does.)

Exactly my experience (except for the girlfriend thing, because I'm a straight chick).

As I did my research online, time and time again Kubuntu popped up. Easy to use, graphical interface, comes with great software packages. There's even a Live CD.

Live CD = try it out before you commit. Excellent.

Initially I felt moderate shame about being a computer nerd ("professional" to some) and choosing the easy cutesy Linux. Then I remembered my last experience and the fact I don't need to prove my manliness. I felt much better.

Besides, all the nasty innards will still be there for me to play with. I can use command line if I really really want to.

Kubuntu it was.

Why Linux?

2006-11-21T23:54:00.002-06:00

1) As a programmer and education enthusiast, I believe in the open-source movement. I strongly believe we need to push our society towards a symbiotic society (as opposed to a "let's see how we can mentally mess with these people and make them spend money they can't afford" society). This is actually a huge issue for me. I really don't like the direction society is going in. Society should be communal, helpful, and open. It should be (positive) education-centric. Our current society does not stress this.

At risk of sounding hokey, I would like to see a "Star-Trek" society. Open and free education, people who work at their jobs because they enjoyed learning their field.

2) My first experience with the Internet was in 1995. Over the last eleven years, I've seen the experience turn ugly. "In the olden days", you plugged in the line, it worked. These days, you need (in addition):
- a good firewall (not every one will cut it), and learning how to use it properly
- the other crappy firewall because OS updates don't work well without it
- a good web browser with fewer (bad) ties to the OS; one that you can customize (to protect yourself better - think cookie, certificate, and password handling)
- finding numerous browser add-ons that prevent web sites from hijacking your browser
- a registry checker to keep tabs on other baddies that got past all of the above

Wow, I know what I'm doing on a computer and I'm frustrated and slightly overwhelmed by all of this. I couldn't imagine the paranoia and stress all you normal folk go through /*insert dorky smiley face here*/.

I'm not so stupid as to assert viruses and other problems can not happen with Linux. However, the beauty of Linux is that community enforces itself. Linux developers don't have the same pressures and obstacles non-open source developers do. Linux developers don't need to cover their butts if they do something stupid - they just fix it. Linux developers don't encounter the same office politics when solving a problem. Open source development also gives more open collaboration.

Linux developers develop because they want to, not because they have to. Isn't that nice?

Linux developers who feel they need to evil and put evil junk maliciously on your system promptly get smacked upside the head by the rest of the community. The problem gets solved immediately.

I want an OS and developers I can rely on.

3) The issues go beyond just the OS. I feel this way about other computer applications too.

4) I'm a Computer Scientist. Linux is probably something I should know a little about (even if I picked the "easy" version).

5) I'm really frugal. (From where I'm from, that's a good thing.)

In the beginning...

2006-11-21T22:59:00.002-06:00

This is primarily a Linux blog used to keep track of and share my experiences using Kubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake. I'll be writing this for both the less-nerdly and more-nerdly types, so you'll see both technical and non-technical terminology. This is an experiment for me, and I hope any hiccups I encounter may help you too.

I'm a Computer Scientist. Any of you know what that actually means know that it doesn't necessarily mean that I know how to put together a system or know how to set up servers. That being said, I can figure out most stuff given time, and have gained some knowledge of such things on my own.

I actually tried putting Red Hat Godknowswhatversion on an old box several years ago, but that ended badly. Though I had programming experience, everything had to be learned again (what do you mean I have to compile something just so my fricken' mouse will work????). The experience was not intuitive and I was used to doing things the Windows way. After spending weeks on the system, I gave up. I only had so much spare time.

I had been toying around with the idea of going to Linux again since about January 2006. From what I heard, Linux had matured; so had its applications and add-ons.

After some research, I decided to use Kubuntu. Kubuntu is based on Ubuntu, but with a KDE desktop in stead of GNOME (meaning: it looks different and acts a little differently). After getting over my fear of royally messing up my only computer at home, I took the plunge.