The Warthog Said To The Meerkat...

I came across this old image today. The current relevance immediately jumped at me.

All the best, Maverick and the Ubuntu team for the big 10.10!

Tidbit: Fonts - The Subtle Eyecandy

Us Linux users, for the most part, enjoy tweaking and fine tuning our computers so that they are just right for us. That is just the kind of users we are. Apart from being functional, we also love eyecandy, and it shows in all the different desktop effects, add-ons and themes available. But one thing I often see ignored are fonts. Considering that while you're not spinning the cube or wobbling the window, all you see are widgets, images and text, it makes sense to say that fonts are a very important part of the user experience. So, I just want to share a few tweaks I use to make my user experience better. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Use what works for you!

Set your system-wide font configurations

There are many tweaks and settings available for fonts. For a full description read this. I prefer to use a ready-made font configuration and a good one is PaulBredbury's configuration. Follow the link in the forum post to his latest configuration file and save it as ~/.fonts.conf in your home folder. Log out and log back in.

Find a font you like

This is a matter of personal taste, so there is no 'best font'. However, I find that fonts that require a minimal amount of antialiasing (blurring around the edges) without looking pixelated or blocky work the best. This means they will look crisp and they will 'pop', making them easier and a joy to read. Generally, for screens, sans serif fonts are recommended.

Personally, I have taken a liking to the taller sans serif fonts like Droid Sans, Aurulent Sans, DejaVu Sans Condensed and Aller. You can find them all and more on Font Squirrel. Install your preferred font using the GUI tool in your distro or unpack them to your ~/.fonts directory.

Set the font as your system default

Depending on your desktop environment the steps will be slightly different.

• Gnome: Preferences > Appearance > Fonts Tab


• KDE: System Settings > Application Appearance > Fonts


• LXDE or Mint Fluxbox: Preferences > Appearance > Fonts combo box

One more thing

So far it's all nice, easy and nothing new. There is one more thing that I like to do and that is bring my preferred font to the web. I force the browsers to render pages using the font I want and IMO it makes for a much more pleasant experience. Here's how I do it for the browsers I use.

• Firefox: Edit > Preferences > Content tab. In there set your default font, then click 'Advanced' and set your font there as well. Unselect the option 'Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above'. Save your settings.


• Google Chrome and Chromium: Install the Chrome Stylist extension. In the extension's 'Options' page, go to the Styles tab and click 'Add new style'. In the dialog that appears, name your new style, select 'All sites', paste the following CSS code into the text box, then enable and save the settings.


• Opera (10.60): Create a file ~/.opera/styles/user/user.css and paste the CSS code below into the file. In the address bar of Opera, navigate to opera:config. In the filter field type in 'local css'. Set the value of 'Local CSS File' to the file you just created and 'Local CSS Files Directory' to the directory containing the file. Save your changes.

CSS for Chrome and Opera

* { font-family: "Droid Sans" !important; }

Replace 'Droid Sans' with the font of your choice.

Log out and back in, just to make sure all is freshly loaded and enjoy your uniformly crisp and beautiful fonts both on the desktop and online!

Ubuntu's New Yahoo Search Engine - Is It Up To The Task?

Anybody who is interested should know by now that Ubuntu is switching from Google to Yahoo as its default search engine. Of course this change can be reverted very easily for those who prefer Google. However, it is the n00bs that will be most affected by the change as they will most probably just continue using the default search engine in blissful ignorance.

From my experience in forums, the biggest problem I see with new users is that they do not know how/what to search for when faced with a problem. And this is where the search engine used becomes vital to quickly finding a possible answer. What is the point in scolding new users for not searching before asking if the default search engine does not bring the most relevant information to them. More so when the user searches for vague or inaccurate terms.

So, I decided to put the two search engines to the test. I did a few searches on both engines using terms that I think new users would use and for problems new users would likely face. The 10 links below will run the same search in both engines. You be the judge of how good the results are and how fast they were provided. Here we go!

• google widgets in ubuntu
  


• desktop cube with ATI graphics
  


• cant boot ubuntu after installing windows
  


• watch apple trailers in ubuntu
  


• how to install programs in ubuntu
  


• install codecs in ubuntu
  


• ubuntu connect to internet with broadband modem
  


• ubuntu install canon printer
  


• ubuntu copy photos from camera
  


• ubuntu share internet with another computer
  

What is your conclusion? Which engine provided the better results? Does the search engine really make a difference? What other searches would a new user run? Leave a comment below!

LQ Votes Again!

We have the Grammys, the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the Webbys and the LQ Members' Choice Awards! Yes folks, it is that time of the year - time for the 2009 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards!

For as long as I've been using Linux, the Linux Questions site and forums have been a wealth of help, ideas and knowledge. It is probably the largest non distro specific Linux forum out there with over 420,000 registered members. Every year members of the Linux Questions community vote for their favorite applications, programming languages, distributions, toolkit, desktop environment and more! It is a great way to show your support and appreciation for the projects you love and use, to find projects that are sparking others' interest and feel the pulse of what's beating in the the heart of the Linux world.

Voting ends on February 9th. So head over, register (if you're not already registered) and vote!

Tidbit: Firefox Extension - Invert Colors

I spend a lot of time in front of the computer screen and this can be a real strain on the eyes. The easiest way for me to cope with this is to use dark themes and reduce the brightness of the screen. But these have their limitations. Using dark themes only affects window decorations and system wigdets, while decreasing brightness can make things near unreadable especially during the day time. Then there is the fact that most a lot of my time on the computer is spent in the web browser where themes have no effect and most pages are bright.

Enter Invert Colors. This is a great little experimental addon for Firefox. Basically it does does what it says on the box. It inverts the colors of web pages and removes background images. It works relatively well. So far only one site (www.hattrick.org) crashes Firefox with this Addon enabled. Gmail is not affected by this addon but this can be rectified easily with Gmail themes.

In general, sites continue to work well although some buttons and links do not appear on some sites e.g. the thumbs up and down icons for youtube comments. Pages look more "90s" without all the images and backgrounds. But the important thing is that it does what I expect it to do and that is dim down the pages and reduce eye strain. If you would rather Invert Colors does not modify a site, you can configure it to do just that. Simply disable it for the site and reload to see the page as it was meant to be.

I would recommend Invert Colors to someone who likes dark themes because they are easy one the eyes and can handle the less flashy and occasionally buggy web experience. I certainly think it is worth it. If you use some other method to achieve this effect, please do let me know!

Here are some example screenshots

Click here for a Google Wave invite. First come, first serve!

The Irony of OpenOffice 3.2

Today, while I was going through my usual tech news feeds I came across the OpenOffice 3.2 RC2 release announcement. I thought this was pretty cool and decided to have a look at what new features we could expect from the next release of OpenOffice. Nothing unusual. Yet.

Perusing through the 'What's New' section, something caught my eye. What's that? "Initial implementation of docx export." Nothing ironic. Yet.

Now those of us who like to keep up with tech news will know that Microsoft lost a patent infringement suit against XML specialists i4i, and then lost again after appealing. Basically, what this means is that Microsoft is banned from selling Microsoft Office from January 11, 2010, until the code that infringes on the XML patent is removed. And this code is what provides support for Microsoft's new XML formats which includes the infamous .docx format. Are you beginning to get the picture?

Now Microsoft already has plans to replace this infringing code in the next release, Microsoft Office 2010. As of now, MS Office 2010 is in the Beta stage of development and the final release date is set for some time in the first half of 2010. But OpenOffice 3.2's final release date is set for sometime this month. Getting clearer?

Thus, it follows, if you need support for Microsoft's .docx format right now, your only legal option is to use OpenOffice! It makes me warm inside :) Open Source FTW! Or am I missing something that is painfully obvious... Let me know.

Here's a Google Wave invitation!

Acer Extensa 5630EZ Review

After almost 5 years of service I decided it was time to move on from my trusty Acer Aspire 3003NLMi and get myself a new laptop. But first of all, like a good geek, I must pay homage. The Aspire was my main machine and it took everything I threw at it. And then some. All Linux Mint Fluxbox CEs that I was responsible for were built on it. But the AMD Sempron 3000+, 768MB RAM and 40GB HD just weren't cutting it. Not to mention the Broadcom wireless card that required a proprietary driver, the SiS integrated graphics chip that has poor support in Linux and many ailing components.

This time around I was determined to choose wisely. I did my research and armed with my new found knowledge I set out on my hunt. For almost two months I scoured websites and brochures looking for that perfect deal. I settled for the Acer Extensa 5630EZ and here is my review after about a week of tinkering.

Let's get to the juicy stuff.

The Specs.

• CPU: Intel Dual Core T4300 running at 2.1GHz with 1MB L2 Cache and an Intel Chipset


• Memory: 3GB (2+1) DDR2 @ 667MHz


• Graphics: Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500M with 64MB dedicated memory


• Storage: 320GB Western Digital drive spinning @ 5200rpm


• Display: 15.4" WXGA Acer CrystalBrite 1280x800 display (8ms/220nit)


• Audio: Intel 82801I HD Audio Controller


• Ethernet: NetXtreme BCM5764M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe


• Wireless: Atheros AR928X 802.11b/g/Draft-N Wireless Network Adapter


• Bluetooth 2.1+EDR


• Integrated Acer Crystal Eye webcam with 640x480 resolution


• Multi layer DVD-RW optical drive


• PCMCIA card slot


• 6 cell Li-ion Battery with a claimed 3 hours of juice


• 3 USB ports


• 1 VGA port


• 2 Stereo speakers


• Weighs about 3kgs

What I like

First of all, there is the price. I bought this machine for a few Lei shy of 1,800RON. I think that is quite a bargain for a new laptop! Most other laptops in the price range where Intel Celeron based and most netbooks were only 100-300RON cheaper! Also, I made it a point to buy a laptop either with Linux or no OS preinstalled. This one came with Linpus Linux. Plus 1 for Linux sales!

The laptop seems of a good build quality. The exterior is sturdy black plastic with a textured matte finish which looks simple but very good. The display hinges are wide and feel like they will survive my torture. The full size keyboard has a curved layout and the keys have good travel and feel. The touchpad is a decent size and has a metal bezel that adds a nice touch to the otherwise understated look. The display is very clear and bright (sometimes too bright) with a glossy finish. The speakers are loud enough (they are average laptop speakers).

This Acer machine runs cool and quiet. The fan only occasionally spins into action and even then it is quiet. Under normal use temperatures hover around 45°C. The underside is never too hot for comfort.

So far everything works out of the box in Linux! It is such a boon to have full support for your hardware. Just a little research goes a long way to enhancing your user experience. Running Linux Mint 8, CPU frequency scaling, 3D accelerated desktop effects, wireless (using the ath9k driver), bluetooth, the webcam and the hotkeys (some required configuring) all worked fine. I also installed and am using Arch Linux without any closed drivers.

It is no slouch. OK, it is no speed demon by today's standards either, but I am very pleased with the performance. Benchmarks are mostly academic, though I might put it through its paces at a later time. Nowadays, when 3GB of RAM doesn't seem all that much it is a real joy to be using Linux. Even with a lot of applications running (during normal use), I have never seen my RAM usage go over 2GB. Also many 3D games work e.g. Warzone 2100, Tuxkart, Neverball, Neverputt, World of Goo and Globulation 2. After 5 years of Sudoku and Solitaire, I was like a kid on Christmas morning!

What I don't like

The synaptics touchpad doesn't seem to recognize two or more finger actions. Thus things like two-finger scrolling are not possible. My not knowing how to configure it is also a possibility. The touchpad buttons are a bit too plasticky. They have some play, the travel is very little and the clicking action gives a cheap plastic sound. My biggest issue with this that my old Acer laptop had the same kind of touchpad buttons. And after repeated use they started getting stuck on the down click, thus becoming mostly useless. Preemptively, I have configured my touchpad to handle all clicking actions, so hopefully they'll last longer.

Another issue, which is more a matter of personal preference, is that the audio I/Os are located in the front of the laptop. This means that if you're using headphones, the jack is prone to getting bumped and skewed if the machine is placed on the lap and from hands moving around the touchpad. It's not a big deal if your headphones get messed up but eventually the headphone socket develops some play and causes contacts inside to become loose. That is annoying and will require sending the laptop for repairs. Manufacturers, please put the audio I/Os on the side!

The ath9k driver in the 2.6.31 kernel is not the best around. Quite frequently (2-3 times a day under heavy traffic e.g. file transfers), it would lose the signal and refuse to reconnect. The only way to get it working again was to reboot. Thankfully, upgrading to the 2.6.32 kernel solves this problem.

The glossy LCD display can be quite reflective but setting the brightness to maximum counters this for the most part.

What I haven't tried

I haven't tested the battery life yet. The battery requires formatting which means a 16 hour charge with the laptop off. I'm not bored of fiddling with it just yet to leave it off that long.

The ethernet card hasn't been used yet simply because wireless works. Anyway, I haven't yet come across an ethernet card that doesn't work in Linux. Then there is the PCMCIA card slot, because I don't have anything to put in it.

What I would have liked

The only thing that I really wanted that is not in this machine is a card reader. I just wanted the freedom to not worry about compatibility of various devices with Linux. But if I really need it, a card reader is not an expensive purchase.

That about wraps up my review. Once again, Acer has won me over with their product. At this price point there is almost no competition, even if it was on a Christmas sale. I am very pleased with my purchase. I would definitely recommend it, and more especially to Linux users.

Here is a Google Wave invitation. First come, first serve! If you do get it, drop me a line so that I know it works.

Tidbit: Migrating Data From One Computer To Another in Linux

There comes a time when a computer user gets a new machine and has to migrate his/her data. This is far from a fun experience. Wouldn't it be nice if you could have all your files and settings transfered to the new machine? I'm sure there are many ways to go about this, but this is the way I did it using rsync.

For clarity's sake, commands run on the old machine will be pink and commands run on the new machine will be blue.

First, I installed rsync and openssh on both machines using the package manager. For openssh you need at least the server on the old machine and the client on the new one.

Ubuntu/Mint: $ sudo aptitude install rsync openssh-server
Ubuntu/Mint: $ sudo aptitude install rsync openssh-client

Arch Linux (as root): # pacman -Sy rsync openssh
Arch Linux (as root): # pacman -Sy rsync openssh

Secondly, you will need to have both your machines on the same network. I have a wireless router at home, so that simplified things having both laptops connect to the local network. However, a 802.11b wireless network plus ~30GB of data makes for a lot of waiting while things are copied over. If you do not have a home network, you could use a crossover cable to connect the two machines together. Basically, make sure the machines can ping each other. You may need to change the firewall settings to allow a connection to the SSH server. Then, start up the Open SSH server on the old one.

Ubuntu/Mint: $ sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart
Arch Linux (as root): # /etc/rc.d/sshd restart

Thirdly, we will create a folder where we will put all our data and then copy the files over.

Ubuntu/Mint/Arch: $ mkdir ~/<destination folder>
Ubuntu/Mint/Arch: $ rsync -avz --progress <user name on old machine>@<IP address of old machine>:/home/<user name on old machine>/ ~/<destination folder>
E.g. $ rsync -avz --progress shane@192.168.16.100:/home/shane/ ~/from-old-machine

You will be prompted for the password of the user on the old machine. Once it starts, sit back and wait. If the transfer gets interrupted you can resume it later with the same command. If a file has been modified on the old machine after if has been copied over, it will be updated. See the rsync man page for more info. If you want any settings from your old machine e.g. your Firefox plugins, saved passwords and bookmarks, move the ~/from-old-machine/.mozilla folder to ~/.

If you want the entire setup to be transfered over as is, log out from the GUI on the new machine and log in on a virtual terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F1). This will delete all user files and settings on the new machine. Run:

Ubuntu/Mint/Arch: $ rm -rf ~/* ~/.??*
Ubuntu/Mint/Arch: $ rsync -avz --progress shane@192.168.16.100:/home/shane/ ~/

Enjoy your new computer!

[EDIT] I am not sure if this will work, but here is a Google Wave invitation. First come, first serve!

Music Store Coming to Ubuntu?

It seems like Ubuntu will be getting a music store integrated into the desktop music player! The Ubuntu One Music Store! Specifications and details have not yet been published but a Launchpad project page has been created.

It is about time Linux users, and especially those in less favored countries, have a decent and well supported route to acquiring high quality music legally. Many would suggest running iTunes in WINE. But I have no intention of supporting a service that does not support my OS of choice. Then there is the Amazon music store which does not sell outside the U.S.A. Other online stores I have looked into have a rather limited library of content, and most of the time I do not find the music I am looking for.

I am looking forward to seeing how this store and project develops. Will there be DRM? I surely hope not. Will it be limited to Ubuntu users? How large will the library be? Will it offer free content? Will it use free codecs? Will it provide a new and unrestricted platform for independent artists? Will it offer more incentive for people to switch to Linux? So many questions... A meeting is scheduled for Wednesday at the UDS. Let's wait and see.

More power to you Ubuntu and Canonical!

Tidbit: Using Yahoo as your default email client

I just wrote a post on using GMail as your default email client and I thought there should be an easy way to do this for Yahoo Mail as well. And of course there is! Create a bash script with the following code and use it just as you would the gmailer script from the other post.

#!/bin/bash

getopen () {

if [ -x /usr/bin/xdg-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/xdg-open"
elif [ -x /usr/bin/kde-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/kde-open"
elif [ -x /usr/bin/gnome-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/gnome-open"
else
echo "Requires xdg-open, kde-open or gnome-open"
exit 1
fi
}

getemail () {

export address=`echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`
export targeturl="http://compose.mail.yahoo.com/?To=$address"
}

getopen
getemail $1
exec $opener $targeturl
exit 0

Tidbit: Using GMail as your default email client

I mostly use GMail for email purposes and so it makes sense to make it my default email client. There are many ways to do this on the web. However, most are desktop environment or browser specific. It is nice to have things behave similarly across desktop environments or even installations. So I threw together a quick bash script that would use the default browser that is configured for your system. Here it is.

#!/bin/bash

getopen () {

if [ -x /usr/bin/xdg-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/xdg-open"
elif [ -x /usr/bin/kde-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/kde-open"
elif [ -x /usr/bin/gnome-open ]
then
export opener="/usr/bin/gnome-open"
else
echo "Requires xdg-open, kde-open or gnome-open"
exit 1
fi
}

getemail () {

export address=`echo $1 | sed 's/mailto://'`
export targeturl="https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&source=mailto&to=$address"
}

getopen
getemail $1
exec $opener $targeturl
exit 0

Save this in a file. I called mine gmailer and saved it to ~/bin. Make sure it is executable and that your system is configured to search ~/bin for executable commands. Now configure your system to open mailto: links with gmailer. That would be gmailer %s in Gnome/XFCE and gmailer %t in KDE4. Cool thing is that gmailer emailaddress@isp.com run from command line or the Ctr+F2 launcher works just as well!

There is a limitation to it. If you are not already logged into GMail or your browser does not automatically log you in, it will not work. It surely can be better but it works just fine for me right now. Obviously, suggestions are most welcome! Enjoy!

[EDIT] Want to do this with Yahoo Mail instead? Click here.

Linux Passes the 1% Mark!

According to marketshare.hitslink.com, a site that collects internet market statistics which can then be used to study internet trends, Linux for the first time passed 1% of desktop operating systems in the month of April 2009!

What does this mean? Well obviously it means that more and more people are beginning to use Linux as a desktop OS. And that means that the quality of Linux as desktop OS has improved enough for one out of every hundred computers to be running it. Does it mean that this is the year of Linux on desktop? Or that Microsoft is finally crumbling? I think not.

Geeky celebrations aside, this is what I think should be taken away from this. Everybody knows that the whole world is going through an economic crisis. And according to a report on www.bloomberg.com, a financial news site, PC sales are predicted to drop by 12% to 257 million units in 2009 as compared to 2008. So:

1. Manufacturers will be battling each other fiercely for a sizable piece of the smaller 257 million pie,


2. People are looking to spend less on computers at least until the economic times change,


3. 1% of 257 million is still a whole lot of computers and money... especially when the pie is smaller.


4. As the growing segment of the market, Linux users are a group manufacturers should be targeting.

Now, Linux has been for the most part a fringe user base and still remains so for the time being. And as a Linux user since 2004, one inconvenience I have experienced is the sub par support for hardware compared to the likes of Microsoft. This usually means carefully selecting hardware that I will purchase and choosing the said hardware solely for its support for my OS of choice. This includes motherboards, graphic cards, wireless cards, TV capture cards, digital cameras, portable MP3 players, mobile phones, PDAs, and the list goes on. Moreover, us Linux users are usually the techie types that love all these kinds of gadgets and products and hence would more likely splash a few bucks on some new hardware this year.

Here we have this growing user base that love tech products, we're all going through rough economic times where consumers want to spend sparingly and manufacturers want to win over every possible customer... Common sense would dictate that it would be a perfectly sound business strategy to provide solid support for products on Linux. And with Linux being free, the price of a PC preinstalled with Linux and all hardware working perfectly will surely win over at least 1 in a 100 customers. Hardware support for money? What do you say? Come on, show us some love!

Ulteo Open Virtual Desktop

The first ever Linux distribution that I really used was Mandrake 10. It was the newbie distribution of the day! And I kept using it through the merger with Conectiva and subsequent name change to Mandriva Linux... until the founder, Gaël Duval was somewhat unceremoniously laid off from the company. That was when I looked for an alternative distribution, which I found in Ubuntu Dapper Drake, and I am glad I did!

I sometimes wondered what became of Gaël Duval. He talked of launching another distribution called Ulteo Linux... or so I thought. But what he and his team have come up with is something quite impressive: Ulteo Open Virtual Desktop.

Ulteo Open Virtual Desktop (UOVD) seems like it would be an ideal solution for an enterprise that needs cost-effective deployment of cross-platform (or maybe even single-platform) applications to their employees. What this allows you to do is have Windows and Linux application servers on which the applications are actually run. Multiple users then use remote thin clients that only need Java enabled web browsers to run whichever Windows or Linux application they need. Integration of both platforms on UOVD looks seamless with a single desktop and menu! What is great for enterprises is that savings increases proportionally with the size of the company in the application server - thin client model. I have only scratched the surface. The feature list is really impressive

UOVD hit version 1.0 on 23/04/2009. And in true open spirit, UOVD is open source and anyone can download it and try it out now!

I am glad that the leader of the number one Linux distribution on Distrowatch in 2002, 2003 and 2004, the distribution that won me over from Windows, has made a comeback with an innovative, new Open Source project. Hats off to you Gaël Duval! All the best!

Tidbit: Creating a Good Password

In the latest Linux Mint Newsletter, Husse linked to an article which suggests that the weakest link in online security is weak passwords. I have seen this myself in the passwords my friends use. But it is possible to create a strong password that is also easy to remember. Here is how I generally go about it.

Pick your root words

This is what will make your password easy to remember for you. Choose two short words that you won't forget - two words because two words are harder to guess than one for a cracker. Example:
'dogs' and 'linux'.

Swap in some numbers

Now swap some letters for numbers that look like the letters. For example: 1 = I, 3 = E, 4 = A, 5 = S, 7 = T, 8 = B, 0 = O. You can use whatever substitutions you like as long as you remember them. Now our root words are:
'd0g5' and 'l1nux'

Mix up the words

Alternate the letters of the root words but you can mix them up in a way that suits you. Now we have:
dl01gn5ux

Use uppercase letters

Using at least one uppercase letter immediately increases the strength of the password because the cracker must now account for 26 more characters. Let us make the first and last letters uppercase:
Dl01gn5uX

Add a special character

To increase the number of characters in the mix, add a special character if it is allowed. These can be punctuation marks or symbols. Just keep it easy to remember
Dl01gn5uX!

Add site specific changes

It is not a good idea to use the same password on multiple sites because if one is cracked, they all are. And this is more important with more and more of our personal information going online. But still nobody likes remembering a different password for every site, if that is even possible. What we can do is make site specific changes (that are easy to remember) to our already strong password. For example, add the first letter of the site on which this password will be used. If it is on gmail, our password is now:
Dl01gn5uX!g

Shhh!

Now we have an awesome password that will take even the fastest brute force attack a long time to crack! And yet it is easy to work through the steps from our ultra-easy-to-remember root words to our awesome password should you forget it. After a while, this complex sequence becomes second nature even with site specific modifications.

But the weakest link still remains. And that is you! It goes without saying... do not tell anyone, do not write it down, do not save it in a file, etc. There really is no need to if your root words are easy to remember. And even if someone who knows you well can guess the root words, it will still be hard to guess your password.

Take the above process, change it to what suits you best, make your own rules, and most importantly, use it!

You can check the strength of your password at http://www.passwordmeter.com/. Our password here rates as 'Very Strong'!

Tidbit: Recording The Soundcard Output

I have been looking for a couple of days for a way to record the output of my speakers directly to a file i.e. record what I hear. An easy good quality solution was one I found here. Since I modified it slightly to suit my own system, I thought I'd document it both for myself and others.

I am using an Ubuntu Itrepid based system which has been modified to use ALSA as the sound architecture. This is in fact the pre-release Beta of Linux Mint Fluxbox CE.

This is what I did:

1) Edit /etc/asound.conf and added the following at the end. This creates a device which copies another.

# copy device for output recording
pcm.copy {
type plug
slave {
pcm hw
}
route_policy copy
}

2) Restart ASLA with:

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

3) Get the 'numid' of the 'Capture Source' and the Item number of the 'Mix' device (you will have to go through the long output)

amixer contents

The part you are looking for looks something like this:

numid=22,iface=MIXER,name='Capture Source'
; type=ENUMERATED,access=rw------,values=2,items=8
; Item #0 'Mic'
; Item #1 'CD'
; Item #2 'Video'
; Item #3 'Aux'
; Item #4 'Line'
; Item #5 'Mix'
; Item #6 'Mix Mono'
; Item #7 'Phone'

4)Then set the copy device to copy the 'Mix' device (5) by running this:

amixer cset numid=22,iface=MIXER 5

That's it!

When you are ready to record run this in the terminal

arecord -c 2 -f S16_LE -r 44100 -t wav -D copy foobar.wav

The output file will be a large wav file.

To encode it to a good quality mp3, run:

lame -V - foobar.wav

Enjoy!

Linux's Mojave Experiment?

Have a look at this! It's just classic when the lady says "Then I turn it off" lol!

Linux Mint 5 Fluxbox CE: Will it work on old hardware?

On the 21st October, 2008, Linux Mint 5 Fluxbox CE was released, of which as you may or may not know, I am the maintainer. The most common gripe most people have with this release seems to be that this distribution has higher system requirements than other Fluxbox based ones.

Since I do not have a really old computer to test how well Linux Mint 5 Fluxbox CE will work on such a machine, I devised a test to simulate an old machine using VMware Player. The host machine, my trusty Acer Aspire laptop with AMD Sempron 3000+ prcessor and 768MB DDRAM1 was throttled down to 800MHz (maximum CPU frequency is 1800MHz) so that my simulated machine would have:

• 800MHz processor (at the most as some of those cycles will be used by the host)
• 128MB RAM
• 2.5GB HD formatted as FAT32, without swap
• CDROM drive
• Floppy drive
• Ethernet card
• Sound card
• USB controller

This, I think adequately simulates an old Pentium 2 machine with Windows 98. I did manage to successfully install using only the Linux Mint 5 Fluxbox CE CD albeit with a hacked/workaround approach. Here is how I did it.

1.

On booting the Live CD, the boot process went on fine but the desktop did not appear even after some minutes. The only thing visible was the mouse cursor, which moved showing that X had not crashed. Also the CDROM was still reading.

2.

Restart X using Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to kill whatever was hogging resources. Wait for GDM to start and then type some nonsense in the GDM login field to buy 30 seconds before the Live CD user logs in automatically and hogs your RAM.

3.

Switch to the virtual terminal with Ctrl+Alt+F1 where the Live CD user is already logged in.

4.

Become root with sudo -i

5.

Kill GDM with killall gdm

6.

Kill all Live CD user processes that may have remained with pkill -u mint

7.

List existing partitions with fdisk -l

8.

Open the drive for partitioning with fdisk /dev/sda

9.

Delete all existing partitions with d

10.

Create a new partition for swap using n and the following options:

• select primary partition (p),
• partition number 1,
• first cylinder 1,
• last cylinder or +size: +300M

Create a new partition for your installation using n and the following options:

• select primary partition (p),
• partition number 2,
• first cylinder: default (hit Enter)
• last cylinder: default (hit Enter)

(You may create a separate partition for /home)

11.

Save and exit with w

12.

Format /dev/sda1 as swap with mkswap /dev/sda1

13.

Reboot with reboot

14.

Now you should have the Live CD environment working.

15.

Close mintUpdate, Wicd tray applet and the volume control to free up some RAM.

16.

Continue the installation as usual except for partitioning where you will have to set it up manually with the second partition mounted at root.

17.

After booting into your newly installed system, you can turn off services that you do not need using System Tools > Services. For really old machines, obvious things to turn off would be Bluetooth and CPU frequency manager. If you want even more control over the services, install sysvconfig. It is a command line tool that gives you more options. But you can break your system if you don't know what you are doing.

18.

You can also edit the applications that are run when you log in. For this you have to edit ~/.fluxbox/startup for each user. Comment out (add # at the beginning of the line) any applications you do not want to run at log in.

After following these steps I had a lighter setup that worked pretty well given the hardware I was trying to simulate. For any real figures one would have to test in on an actual machine. And such a machine is pretty hard to come by nowadays. Is anybody out there willing to test this?

On a better note, I did try to install again on the same setup but with 256MB RAM and no swap partition. Gladly, all went well without a hitch.

I do realize that users should not have to go through these steps in order to install this distribution. I will try to address this issue in the next release... within reasonable limits of course. I hope you enjoy using this edition of Linux Mint!

Life Without Walls

Life without walls? Really? The way I see it is like this:

I'm a Mac
I'm a PC
I'm a server
I'm a desktop
I'm a laptop
I'm a kid's laptop
I'm a netbook
I'm an ebook reader
I'm a mobile phone
I'm a VOIP phone
I'm a wrist watch
I'm a portable audio player
I'm a portable video player
I'm a router
I'm a media center
I make the media
I make cars
I'm a car's computer
I'm a plane's computer
I'm a search engine
I'm a tiny computer
I'm a supercomputer
I'm the space station's computer
I'm the Mars lander's computer
I'm the Large Hadron Collider's computer
... but most importantly...
I am free
And I set you free
There's only one thing I can be
I am Linux!

Anyway... in a life without walls, who needs Windows?

GPRS Easy Connect for Ubuntu Hardy Heron

Many members of an Ubuntu Community that I am a member of on Orkut seem to have problems getting their GPRS connections working. Someone found a tool call GPRS Easy Connect which seems to work well for some, especially in India.

This application is quite old and is not undergoing further development. The author, Simon Péter, informed me that he is rewriting the application from scratch but it will only be done around the end of 2008. Also the new version will work perfectly on Ubuntu as this is the distribution he is currently working on. The currently available version was built on Mandriva and requires a few fixes to get working in Ubuntu.

To make life easier for the newer users, I built a .deb package that incorporates these fixes for Ubuntu Hardy Heron. As far as I know, it has worked for at least two people and I thought I'd put it up for download for the benefit of others who would like a simple and easy solution.

The obligatory disclaimer: Use at your own risk!

Download GPRS Easy Connect - gprsec_1.0.1_i386.deb

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon vs. Mac OS X Tiger