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

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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!

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone out there has a blessed Christmas!

Music: Mishal Moore - Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas

Text from here.

Images found using Google.

Video compiled using only free and open source software (Kdenlive, The GIMP, KDE 4 and of course Linux!)

Poor art and video directing by yours truly :)

No copyright infringement intended.

Here's another Google Wave invite!

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!

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!

Here's your chance to support Linux Mint!

Bryan of the Linux Action Show is having a 'Set your own price' sale of his software which ends tomorrow 6th April. You can see what software is available on his site.

Here is the catch. He will donate the proceeds from this sale to an open source project. He will hold a poll tomorrow to decide which one, and presently the options are Getdeb, Ardour and Linux Mint! We should probably mobilize the hoards of Mint fans :D

Follow the links below, support Bryan, buy his software if you like it, and support Linux Mint!

http://lunduke.com/?p=314
http://radicalbreeze.com/store.shtml
http://lunduke.com/?p=331

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 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

AcetoneISO2: The CD/DVD image manipulator for Linux

According to the AcetoneISO2 website,

AcetoneISO2, is a feature-rich and complete software application to manage CD/DVD images. Thanks to powerful open source tools such as fuseiso, AcetoneISO2 will let You mount typical proprietary images formats of the Windows world such as ISO BIN NRG MDF IMG and do plenty of other things. Everything will be done inside a handy GUI.

Their website as of now does not offer a .deb package for Ubuntu and I wanted to try it out so I compiled and built a .deb package for Ubuntu 'Hardy Heron'. My .deb package can be downloaded from here.

** Users who are to use AcetoneISO2 should be added to the group 'fuse'
This is done with the command:
sudo addgroup *your-username* fuse
(example: "sudo addgroup johndoe fuse")

The only downside I can see to this application is that it depends on Qt libraries which means that it will be a rather big download including dependencies. Otherwise, the interface is simple to use and makes mounting of the more dubious image formats a breeze. However, it did not mount the DAA format the reason for which I installed this program. Some other functions include image encrypting and compression, md5sum file creation and verification, converting from other formats (including Mac OS images) to ISO, floppy drive emulation and Video/DVD ripping and encoding.

The project's homepage is http://www.acetoneiso.netsons.org/.

P.S. The obligatory disclaimer: Use this package at your own risk!

[EDIT] I made some changes to the package on 2nd June, 2008 at the request of the AcetoneISO2 team. Basically, the change was concerning dependencies so that KDE4 users do not have to download KDE3 libraries. I have updated the link above.

Getting Started with Linux Mint

Hi all!

This is my second post aimed at new users of the Linux Mint distribution. My first post is on installing a dual boot setup with Linux Mint and Windows XP. In this post I would like to talk you through some basic things one should know about using Linux Mint and generally just helping you to be productive in your new OS environment. I am going to direct my posts towards a single home PC connected to the Internet, with multiple users.

Although the desktop environment in modern day Linux is intuitive and more or less easy to navigate through for someone coming from Windows XP, we must keep in mind that the two OSs are different at the 'roots' even though at the surface they may seem similar. At first, the way somethings are done in Linux might seem quirky.

One immediate difference you will notice is that Linux always asks you for an administrator's password when performing changes to the system. This may seem like an annoyance coming from Windows but it is to make sure nobody makes changes that could break your system, including the administrator (by accident of course) and malicious software. However, to ease things up a bit, once entered, Linux Mint will maintain administrator mode for 15 minutes and will not ask you for the password in this period. The administrator is the user you created during the installation.

I urge you to persevere a little as once you have set everything up you will not be asked for the password unless system changes are required. And as you use Linux, you will (at least I did) realize that Linux today is an easy, secure and convenient solution for your computing needs. Let us move onto using Linux Mint.

mintMenu

Your primary interaction with your computer is the menu at the bottom left labeled 'Bianca'. This menu (mintMenu) is unique to Linux Mint and I must say they have developed a very easy and efficient menu system. The menu has been neatly divided into three sections - Places, System and Applications.

• The items under Places logically opens the file manager, Nautilus, in the respective locations.


• System houses the Application Installer (Synaptic Package Manager), the Control Center (mintConfig), Terminal, Lock and Quit dialogues. I shall expand on some of these later.


• The Applications section, in true Linux tradition, groups applications according to their use. This, in my eyes, has always been a plus point for Linux over Windows. A very simple idea but very effective. Also, newly installed applications are automatically placed in their respective categories. In keeping with simplicity, most application names are simplified with their use in mind e.g. Movie Player which is actually Totem Movie Player.
  A brilliant touch to mintMenu is the search field at the bottom. When you enter text here the list of applications is filtered finding what you are looking for. If you know what application you are looking for you could type its name, Firefox for example. But if you don't know the name of the application you could also type the task you wish to perform! For example, typing hardware gives you Device Manager, command gives you Terminal, spreadsheet gives you OpenOffice Calc, etc. Although it is not all-inclusive, it is a handy feature for newcomers.

  

  Further, entering something and then hitting Enter opens the search application and searches your home folder for the string you have entered, even searching inside documents, logged IM conversations, contacts, and more. This uses an indexing service called Beagle that runs continuously in the background. I am not a big fan of such non-essential applications that run continuously in the background and eliminate their need by organizing and naming my files properly. So I usually turn Beagle off and use the command line interface (CLI) based search tool called slocate. However, I have seen situations when it can be useful and I have used it before. Point being that it all boils down to choice.

Networking

In today's world a computer not networked is like an airplane without wings - you're not going to get very far without networking. If your network is a wired Ethernet one with DHCP (automatically assigned IP addresses), Linux Mint should have already set everything up for you nicely. Some ISPs require you to configure a static IP address. You will need the following information about your connection - your IP address, Subnet mask, Gateway address and DNS server address.

Open the Control Center and click on the Networking button which will take you to the page with the network configuration tools. Select the first tool labeled Networking. It will prompt you to enter the administrator's password. The tool opens with a tab displaying all your networking hardware. Select Wired connection and click Properties.

Set your connection as Static IP address from the drop-down list, enter the settings appropriately, tick Enable this connection and accept the settings.

Then select the DNS tab and enter your ISPs DNS server address in the first row and hit Enter. Some ISPs may have more than one DNS server and you can add them by clicking Add which will create a second field for entering a DNS server. Repeat for other DNS servers. Click Close and you should be done! Fire up Firefox and try browsing your favorite website or at least one that will be up for sure. My default is the Google homepage. If it does not work, you could try rebooting.

If you use a Wireless connection, Linux Mint comes with a specialized configuration tool, mintWifi, and a comprehensive guide to get it working. Enter the following location in the Firefox address bar while in Linux Mint to access this guide file:///usr/lib/linuxmint/mintWifi/index.html If you are relying on an internal dial-up modem for Internet, then the solution is slightly more complicated. You can follow the Ubuntu HowTo to try and get it working. Linux's problem in this area is not due to its shortcomings but rather the refusal of hardware manufacturers to provide drivers for them. This is why the community is fighting for open sourced drivers. The dedicated Linux developers have even offered to make the drivers for free! Slowly but surely the community is making advances in this field.

If you are still facing problems do not hesitate to ask questions on the multitude of community supported help sites. There is a forum that is supported by and dedicated to Linux Mint. See the links section at the top right of my blog for my favorite Linux forum. Friendly and helpful people abound in the Linux community and it is on the shoulders of these giants that Linux stands.

Updating

I am sure by now you have seen a little orange square and a pop-up informing you that updates are available for Linux Mint. Until we got the network up and running there was no way to update your OS. Since we've now got access to the Internet, we will proceed with updating.

This is a no-brainer and all it requires is clicking the orange icon and entering your administrator's password. This opens the Software Updates dialogue that shows you what updates are available, categorizes them according to importance and tells you how big the download is. You have the option of deselecting updates but unless you are restricted by your Internet connection, it would be unwise to do so. Click Install Updates and the application downloads, installs and configures everything just right.

Sometimes when core system updates are made, as is the case with the first Linux Mint update, you will be required to restart your computer for them to take effect. The Update Manager will inform you when this is necessary and the orange icon is replaced with a blue reboot icon.

The beauty of the Update Manager is that it automatically keeps track of available updates without any input from you. When updates are available you will get a visit from the little orange icon and will have to follow the same steps. So your system is always fitted with the latest versions of software, patches and fixes. As I said, its a no-brainer!

Mounting Windows Partitions

Here I am writing pretty much blind and from speculation. This is because I do not have Windows installed on my computer as you may have gathered from my first post. I suppose Linux Mint mounts your Windows partitions during the install and everything should be setup properly. The default mount points for the partitions are /media/hda1, /media/hda2 and so forth. Linux Mint also creates links to the partitions on your Desktop labeled hda1, hda2, etc.

However, if your partitions are not mounted, a tool is provided that will enable you to do so. It is called mintDisk and can be found in the menu under Applications>Administration or in the Control Center under the Hardware tab. Once you start mintDisk you will be prompted for the administrator's password and mintDisk opens up. There are fields available for configuring various options but unless you know what you are doing it is better to leave them alone and simply click OK. If the partitions are not mounted immediately, they will be after the next reboot. Again, I apologize but I have no way of testing this first hand.

mintDisk will mount your NTFS and FAT32 partitions with read and write permissions. Practically what this means is that you will be able to browse, open, modify, create or delete files and folders in your Windows partitions i.e. you will have full access to them.

Installing NVIDIA and ATI Graphic Card Drivers

Both Windows XP and Linux Mint come with a wide range of drivers for various graphic cards. While these will give you basic functionality, in order to get the most out of 3D accelerated cards you will need to install the drivers provided by the manufacturer. As you may know, the most popular graphic card manufacturers on the market today are NVIDIA and ATI. You will have to know which one you have (NVIDIA or ATI) in order to install the correct driver. If, like me, you have a low end graphics card, you will not need to install any other drivers as they are well supported with Open Source drivers. These low end cards include SiS, Intel and others which escape my memory right now - generally anything not NVIDIA or ATI.

Since I do not have an NVIDIA or ATI card, I cannot give you a first hand account of what you should do. But apparently it is as simple as most of the other tools in Linux Mint albeit a little different. The tool in question is Envy. Linux Mint (at the time of writing) comes with an older version (0.8.x). The newer version is way too easy to ignore so I'll guide you as far as I can using that.

First we will get the new version from the author's website. You can read through the brief description of Envy to have an idea of what this brilliant tool does. Envy was written for Ubuntu but since Linux Mint is dedicated to maintaining compatibility with Ubuntu, it will work fine. The download section follows the description of Envy (as shown in the screenshot). Linux Mint 2.2 Bianca is based on the latest version of Ubuntu which is Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10. Simply go with the latest version of Ubuntu since that is what Linux Mint is based on. Soon (April 2007) it will be Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04.

There are many downloads available but you are looking for the latest *.deb file. At the moment you will find it under Package for Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10. The file name (now) is envy_0.9.1-0ubuntu3_all.deb but always go for the latest stable version. Click on the download and Firefox will ask you what you want to do with it. Select Open with Gdebi Package Installer.

Once Gdebi opens it (administrator's password required), it will inform you that an older version is installed and recommends you install software from the Linux Mint repositories. I would recommend the same but we'll make an exception this time - close the dialogue and click Install Package. Gdebi will then provide you with a list of required dependencies which it will have to download. Accept to do so. When the installation is complete, close Gdebi.

Now we run Envy. You will find it in the menu under Applications>System Tools and it will require the administrator's password. Select Install the NVIDIA driver or Install the ATI driver as appropriate for your graphics card. Click Apply and if I am not mistaken everything should be handled 'automagically!' I am not sure because I do not have the hardware, but Envy may ask you for some information such as your screen resolution, monitor specifications like frequencies and the like. These you can get from your monitor's manual or run a quick Google search. When Envy provides you the option of restarting the X server, do so. This should take you back to the login screen and you should see the NVIDIA or ATI logo before the login screen (unless things have changed since I had my Geforce2). If not, you could try rebooting.

Synaptic Package Manager

New users to Linux usually try to do things as they would in Windows. This is most often seen in program installation. Most go hunting on the Internet for sites from which to download software they need. Usually they end up going to the project's homepage, downloading the tar.gz file and then usually get stumped on installing it from command line. Many a time they also run into what is known as dependency hell. On the contrary, application installation in Linux is meant to be painless thanks to the plethora package managers available. Linux Mint uses Debian's apt-get package manager. Synaptic Package Manager is one of the available graphical user interfaces (GUI) of this powerful package manager.

Synaptic Package Manger is in the menu under the System section and is labeled Install Software. To run it you will need the administrator's password.

The interface is divided neatly into three fields. On the left there is a list of categories of software grouped according to various criteria. There are four grouping criteria which can be selected by clicking on the buttons on the bottom left - Sections, Status, Search Results and Custom Filters. The top right field contains the list of packages in the category selected in the left field and their status. The bottom right field gives a short description of the package selected in the top right field. Synaptic Package Manager contains a database of all the packages available for Linux Mint, including those not installed on your system. Browsing through the database, you will see that the amount of free software available to do almost any task imaginable is truly mind-boggling!

The easiest way to find a an application or package is to use the search tool. Click the Search button and a small dialogue opens with a field to enter your search term and a drop-down list telling it where to search. If you know what package you are looking for, select Name from the list and run the search. If you want to perform a task but don't know what application you should install, select Description and Name from the list and run the search.

For example, I needed an image editor to crop and resize the screenshots for this post. So I ran a search for image editing in Description and Name. This gave me a substantial list of matching packages. You will notice that some packages also have the Ubuntu logo next to them. This indicates that these packages are officially supported by Ubuntu and will most probably work perfectly. Among the officially supported packages in my search result, the descriptions showed that the gimp package is what suited what I was looking for the most (I confess, I knew that already...) Installing is just a matter of Right-clicking on the package and selecting Mark for Installation.

If additional packages are required, a dialogue opens informing you what other changes are required for things to work properly. Click Mark to accept the other changes. You will see the package highlighted as marked for installation.

Then click Apply. A dialogue will open which will give you a summary of changes to be made including the total size of packages to be downloaded and the space that will be used by the installed packages. Click Apply again and wait for it to download, install and configure everything for you.

You will be informed when the installation is complete and if there have been any errors. You can now close the package manager and you will find your newly installed application in the menu - under Graphics in the case of GIMP. Simple, isn't it!

__________________________________________

If everything has gone well so far, you now have a computer running a pretty, stable, secure, convenient and free OS:

• equipped with a wide range of software for all common computing tasks
• with access to the Internet,
• updated with the latest software, patches and fixes,
• with full access to your Windows partitions,
• with the latest and best drivers for your graphics cards
• with the knowledge to install any other application you may need.

This basic setup should have you well on your way to being productive in your new Linux Desktop. In my next post I will talk about some of the most commonly used applications, fine-tuning and enhancing your experience in Linux. Till next time, take care and be nice!

A Beginner's Guide to Dual Booting Linux Mint and Windows XP

Hello everybody!

This post is a first for me of this type. A friend of mine is interested in trying out an Operating System (OS) that I have a habit of promoting quite a bit. You guessed it, it is Linux we are talking about. But he is unsure how to go about it and is not really ready to get rid of Windows. Yet. And I understand him. Moving to a new OS can be unnerving and would be easier if it is done in phases. I promised I would help him, but he is in another country and so I decided to make a post out of it. Instead of just telling him what to do, it is always better to know at least a bit of what you are doing. In this spirit I am going to explain as simply as possible how we are going to go about this. Hence the considerable length of this post. So here we are. Welcome to my first Linux guide - 'A Beginner's Guide to Dual Booting Linux Mint and Windows XP'

What is Linux Mint? This is a rather new distribution that is based on the very famous Ubuntu Linux distribution. Linux Mint, in my opinion, is supposed to be easier for newcomers to Linux as most of the bells and whistles including proprietary software is supposed to work out-of-the-box. And in its latest incarnation, Linux Mint 2.2 Bianca, things just got a lot better!

Enough chit-chat, lets get you using Linux Mint. First, you will have to download the install CD image (LinuxMint-2.2.iso) from here. It is 685MB, so it will take some time. You can verify the integrity of the file you have downloaded by downloading the small LinuxMint-2.2.md5sum file as well and following these instructions. This is not an obligatory step though. Then, you will have to burn this image file to CD. This does not mean just adding the LinuxMint-2.2.iso file and burning a data CD. Here and here are two websites that explain how to do this in Windows. I recommend that you burn the CD at the slowest speed possible to avoid read errors during installation. After you are done burning there should be two folders on the CD named casper and isolinux, and a file md5sum.txt. If not, you have done something wrong and the CD will not work.

In all my messing around with installing various distributions, I have never faced a scenario where I lost all the data on my hard drive. And I have done enough messing around. However, you are always better safe than sorry. So, I would recommend you backup all the data on your computer that you cannot afford to lose. I am just avoiding law suit here. No really, backup.

Now you will have to make some space on your harddrive for Linux. Linux Mint needs an absolute minimum of 3GB but I would strongly recommend at least 5GB. With hard drives as huge as they are today you have no excuse. So make sure you have got at least 5GB free space on one of your Windows partitions. The more, the better. Then run Disk Defragmenter and defragment your entire hard disk. This step is so that all the free space is located in one big chunk and not spread out in little bits. This will also take some time. Now, I am not sure how it is in Windows since it has been a while since I used it, but I think you should not use your computer while defragmenting otherwise it starts defragmenting from the beginning each time Windows writes to the hard disk. Linux avoids this whole problem by not allowing the hard disk to get defragmented in the first place. Clever, huh. Once you are done with this, we can move to the fun stuff - installing Linux Mint!

Put the Linux Mint CD you have burnt in the CD/DVD drive and reboot. You may have to set your BIOS to boot from CD first before the hard disk. On booting from the CD, the first screen you will see is the boot options screen below.

Just hit enter, sit back and watch the pretty boot splash as Linux Mint starts up. When everything is loaded you will be greeted by a very attractive desktop that can only be appropriately described as mint! Have a look.

Linux Mint is a Live CD. This means that it boots into a functional OS that runs entirely from the CD. And while in this state you can use it without making any changes to you hard disk. The disadvantage is that you cannot make permanent changes. Each time you reboot all changes are lost. Also, depending on the amount of RAM you have the Live CD is slower than an OS installed on the hard disk. So you can play around with it as a Live CD if you are just trying to see what Linux Mint is all about. But we're not here to play around, we're here to dig into the real stuff! See the Linux Mint icon on the desktop labeled Install? Double click it and we'll be on our way with the installation.

The installation dialogue pops up. The first thing I noticed is on the bottom left it says 'Step 1 of 6'. 6 steps?! Is that how easy installing Linux has become? You bet it is! If we were not going for a dual boot setup, any sort of guide would be totally irrelevant. But don't worry, setting up the dual boot isn't hard either, you'll see. Back on track. The first screen is self-explanatory. Choose the language you want for your final system and click Forward.

The second step is just as self-explanatory as the first. Simply choose your time zone from the drop-down list. Or optionally you may click on your region in the world map, and the map will zoom in allowing you to select your city directly. Then click Forward.

Now it's time choose your keyboard layout. You can test your keys in the field below the lists (as I have kindly demonstrated). This is so easy... Why does this need a guide?

Who are you? No, we don't want your philosophical rant... just enter your full name and the name you want to use to log in. Enter your password twice, and a name for your machine. The account created here will be the administrator account with full control of the OS. I will talk about user accounts in more detail in a soon-to-come post... Forward...

Guess what! We've reached the 'hard' part - disk partitioning. We don't want to erase the entire disk, so we choose the second option. We're doing this manually! Forward.

This opens the partition editor application. It will scan all your hard disks and display the present partitions and details about them. If you have more that one physical hard drive then you can switch between them using the drop-down menu at the top right. Your master drive is usually first i.e. hda or sda. The slave will be hdb or sdb. And the partitions are numbered as hda1, hda2, hda3 and so on.

If you are attentive you will notice that my hard disk is divided into three partitions - hda1 is my linux-swap partition, hda2 holds my main installation of Ubuntu Linux and hda3 is my test partition which I use to play around with other Linux distributions. But in this case it is an empty NTFS partition, the file system which Windows XP uses. I am not about to delete my Ubuntu partition just so I can show you how to resize an NTFS partition. So imagine that hda3 is the partition in which you freed 5GB (or however much) for Linux at the beginning of this guide. If you are thinking in terms of C:/, D:/, E:/, etc drives in Windows, there is no sure correlation between that and the Linux hda1, hda2, hda3, etc naming system. I suggest going by the size of the partitions and the free space available in each one to know exactly which partition you are going to resize. Right-click on the partition you wish to resize select Resize/Move. The following dialogue will pop up.

There are a number of ways you can define how you want to resize your partition. The easiest way is just to type the number of megabytes you wish to have for Linux Mint in the last input field where it says 'Free Space Following (MiB)'. As I said 5GB minimum. So you can enter 5000 there. I have less than 5000 in that field, but I am the teacher here - I am allowed to cheat! Actually, I am not. You will see soon enough. The partition editor will not make any changes until you tell it specifically to do so by clicking the Apply button. So for now click Resize.

As you can now see, the NTFS partition has been reduced and there is now some unallocated space after it. This is where Mint is going to stay.

Next is whether you create a primary or extended partition. This depends on how many partitions you already have on your hard disk and what kind they are. A hard disk can have a maximum of four primary partitions. If your partitions are named between hda1 and hda4, they are primary partitions. hda5 and above are extended partitions. So if you have one or two primary partitions you can create primary partitions as you can make two more for Linux. Otherwise, you will will have to create extended partitions which allows a much higher number of partitions.

Every Linux installation needs a swap partition. It is the equivalent of the Windows paging file. Think of it as an extension of your computer's RAM. The general rule is that the size of your swap partition should be the amount of RAM on your machine multiplied by 1.5. However, nowadays with the size of RAM getting very huge, the size of swap doesn't need to be as large. I would set 512MB as a maximum for desktops. Linux Mint recommends a minimum of 256MB. I would second that. Let us make some swap space for Mint. Click on the unallocated space and then click the New button at the top left to create a new partition.

Simply type the amount of swap space that you want in the 'New Size (MiB)' field. For an idea, I have 256MB RAM and my swap space partition is 384MB. This much has been more than adequate for my computing needs. I don't need another swap partition - Ubuntu and Mint can both use the one I already have. The space for the swap partition is what I took out of the 5GB earlier when I 'cheated'. Then choose if it is going to be a primary partition or an extended partition appropriately from the drop-down menu and then select linux-swap from the other drop-down menu. Click Add.

Now we will create the partition where we are going to install the actual OS. Click on the remaining unallocated space and then click on the New button at the top left.

Make sure this partition fills the entire unallocated space - the 'Free Space Preceding' and the 'Free Space Following' fields should both be 0 (zero). Again select primary or extended partition appropriately and then choose a file system in the lower drop-down menu. Linux Mint defaults to ext3 which is tried and tested. I prefer reiserfs which is newer and has some performance advantages over ext3. Take your pick. After all, that is what Linux is all about - freedom and choice! Go ahead... click Add.

Have a look at the pending operations in the partitioning application window. Check and see if your partitions are the way you want them to be. There's no turning back after this. Click Apply!

Oops wait... a warning pops up... click Apply again!

And success! Click Close.

Finally, we reach the end of our lengthy step 5 - Partition mount points. Verify that the partition you created for Linux Mint is mounted at /, the swap partition as swap. The rest go under the /media/hd* mount points according to their partition numbers. I am not sure if NTFS partitions are mounted here by default as I deleted my NTFS partition. I dont need or want it anyway. If not, there is a tool to do this later on. Also check that the / and swap partitions are marked for reformatting and the rest are not. That's it! Bravo, you are done with partitioning! Click Forward!

[EDIT] I have received some feedback that at least one person has faced a situation where the Windows NTFS partition was assigned to be mounted at /media/hda1 and the installer warned the user that proceeding would cause him to lose all the data on that partition. After a little searching the solution he found was to change the mount point of the Windows partition by replacing /media/hda1 with /windows in the above dialogue. This solved the problem and the installation and dual booting went on smoothly.

[EDIT] If you do not wish to allow Linux to access your Windows partitions, delete the mount points in the above step so that the fields under Mount Point are blank for the respective Windows partitions.

The final step! This is more of a summary of what the installer will do. The only option here is choosing the location of GRUB, the boot loader. GRUB is the first thing you will encounter when you boot your computer. It will provide you with the option of starting either Linux Mint or Windows. Don't change anything here. Most probably it will work just fine. Now bravely click Install!

The installation will take about 20-25 minutes. So, you can go and do whatever it is you do when you've got nothing to do. I fixed myself a midnight snack - eggs and baked beans... No, its not what Linux people eat... It's what lazy people eat. At least nobody is troubling me today!

Alas we have reached the end of our journey! On the other hand, your journey has just begun. A journey to trouble-free computing! I actually timed myself during this install. Of course, this is not the first time for me, but I did do it leisurely plus I took some of the screenshots you see here. From booting with the CD to rebooting took me a few seconds shy of 55 minutes! Not bad for the so-called complicated, only-for-geeks OS. And on top of that, everything worked fine - from playing mp3 files to websites loaded with flash. Even this post, including all the image editing was done on Linux Mint! But I'll leave that for another post. In the mean time if you need any help, go over to the Linux Mint forum and the friendly people there will surely be happy to help.

You go ahead and give that Restart Now button a good whack and enjoy!

[EDIT] My follow-up post on Linux Mint

• Getting Started with Linux Mint