Linux for Keysers | Adventures in Open Source

Apparently, there's some debate in the Linux world about remote connections. I've been using VNC for 8 years or so now. It's reliable, but definitely slow. I've found that NoMachine's NX Server (free edition) suits my needs best. It works even better than Windows' Remote Desktop, and of course much better than VNC (which really stinks). In my case, it opens a new session, when I connect to the server, but I think it can be configured to connect to an existing session as well. You might want to give it a try: http://www.nomachine.com/products.php I'll give it a try and get back to you all... UPDATE: I've installed the server on both my laptop and my desktop Ubuntu machines following the instructions found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FreeNX . The results are astounding! While not identical in terms of functionality to VNC, I personally prefer the results. It's actually closer to an RDP session. I haven't tested the client to the ful...

I've been using Ubuntu for about 9 months now (wow, hard to believe - the time has flown by) and people often ask me what my favorite apps are or what I changed once I install it. Aside from some custom scripts I install for my own organizational sanity, there are a few recommendations I always give. However, I just stumbled upon what may be the most complete list I've ever seen. When I say "stumbled", I mean that. I just used StumbleUpon and this came up . Really great list for anyone looking to add or customize their Ubuntu 9.10 desktop. Happy customizing! UPDATE: I've also found a few additional add-ons that might be worth investigating. Here's a few: Guvnr's Picks Ubuntu Tips and Tricks

Some of my favorite Compiz settings aren't enabled by default. They actually help me be more productive (rather than just making my computer act like a cracked-out Mac). In no particular order, here are my favorites: Desktop Cube (with or without the rotating cube) I set my desktop to have four columns and one row because I use the rotating cube. To be honest though, the standard 2x2 configuration would work just fine as well. Don't forget to configure your hotkeys for moving between desktops and moving windows across desktops. Adding 3 more areas to organize your windows is a good thing. You might forget where one or two apps were so I recommend thinking of them in terms of general categories (entertainment, programming, etc.). Shift Switcher I like being able to preview windows I'm tabbing between. This option is helpful when there are a lot of windows open in the current desktop. Similar to Apple's flipping in Finder. Grid Lets me use hotkeys to resize window...

After install Qt Designer, if you want to use the help system, you're stuck unless you install one more package through Synaptic: Qt Assistant. However, there is no stand-alone for this program. It is bundled in the dev tools. Making it stand-alone is a valid request to the dev team for the Qt suite of packages. At the very least, if Qt Assistant is not made standalone then it should be a dependent of Qt Designer. Otherwise, if Qt Assistant isn't pulled from the qt4-dev-tools package, then Qt Designer should *REQUIRE* qt4-dev-tools as a dependant. Otherwise, users will install Qt Designer and not have any way of figuring out why they don't have help menu options available once installed. As a workaround, users who have installed Qt Designer must then install (through Synaptic Package Manager) "qt4-dev-tools". That also adds a bunch of stuff they don't need, but at least they can then use the help system for Qt Designer. Here's a link to this bug.

So, I got to thinking, "What if my laptop were stolen? I don't keep anything 'private' on it, but it would be nice to get it back, if possible..." So, how do you track down a laptop that has been stolen? Lojack provides an option that works even if the system has been reformatted, but it only works with Windows and costs $$$. So, what are the OSS alternatives? There is one called Adeona , but they're having issues getting a service up and running to store your computer's location and other info when stolen. I also doubt that it works if the systems has been reformatted. So then I got to thinking, "What about DDNS?" Dynamic DNS (or DynDNS, or DDNS) tracks your computer's current IP address and updates a service (such as DynDNS.org) every time your IP changes. This is useful if you know your computer has been stolen and you're wondering where it is. It turns out I'm not the first person who's asked this question and configur...

Directory and file-level encryption is a beautiful thing in Ubuntu. No additional applications to install. Or, at least on 9.04 (Jaunty). On 9.10 (Karmic), they removed this useful feature as a default option in the install for some reason. But, not to worry, it can be readded: In Jaunty, just right-click a file or folder in Nautilus and select encrypt. Assuming you've created a GPG encryption key for files and e-mail, it'll allow you to apply that encryption to it. In Karmic, this feature is removed. To re-add it, the open Synaptic Package Manager, find, then install the seahorse-plugin. Reboot. "encrypt" and "sign" will then be options in Nautilus. Launchpad is tracking this as the following bugs: #390744 #393645

If you've added an additional virtual hard drive to an Ubuntu VM, you'll need to do the following to be able to use it effectively for a web server: Partition the drive (MBR) Create a sub-partition (EXT3 or EXT4, depending on need) Modify fstab to be able to mount the drive on boot On the other hand, if you're mounting a network storage location, it's better to use Autofs (or AutoMount, as it's called) because it'll be less drain on your network and improve access times when shared.

Here's instructions on adding LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) + Python + virtual web hosting to an Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop. Just thought I'd post this in case anyone is interested in doing this. Normally, I recommend just installing the Ubuntu Server distro which has the option of configuring most of this for you through the install process. But hey, what fun would that be? :)

For information on setting up a nice, easy to configure firewall in Ubuntu, see this help page . I'm using this for my Ubuntu servers, but I think it would be just as useful for a desktop system.

Cool blog post on ComputerWorld about the advancing of Ubuntu Desktop. Go Tux! Favorite quote from the article: This will put Windows in an interesting spot. Mac already owns the high end, and Linux will end up with the low end. At the same time, more and more of our work will be done with online services, with Google Docs and the like, almost all of which are based on Linux. Historically, being in the middle of a market isn't a comfortable place to be. People who want the best will turn to Macs; people who want a bargain will go to Linux. The usual argument is that everyone already uses Windows and they need their applications. Fair enough. But what happens when you don't need Windows for the programs you use every day?

Ok, I've been using 9.10 for all of 12 hours now. I must say, overall, the experience is improved, which was one of the main goals. Most of my papercuts are gone (yay Bluetooth audio integration!) but I have managed to find a few new ones... Canonical, what the #*$%& were you thinking with your new Software Center!? Removing the ratings was the worst possible route you could take. Oh, and now I no longer need to see exactly *why* an install failed for a particular app? You just stall at 77% and give me no data? What's with that? Oh, and don't get me started on wanting to replace Synaptic. Unless you plan on keeping all the features in, don't bet on me wanting to give it up right away. In fact, if removed, I can almost guarantee it'll become one of my defacto post-install requirements (Add Synaptic back in. Check). Now, to give them the benefit, it does make sense to consolidate these programs, but for me, I always use the Add/Remove Programs app to do th...

I just successfully upgraded my Ubuntu 6.04 LAMP Server to 8.04 using the following instuctions from UbuntuForums : I copied this list to my sources.list: Code: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper main restricted universe multiverse deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-updates main restricted universe multiverse deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main restricted universe multiverse deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-proposed main restricted universe multiverse deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse Don't ask me why my old locations didn't work, they just didn't. I verified that my current install was completely up to date: Code: sudo aptitude update sudo aptitude upgrade sudo aptitude dist-upgrade Install the server-based update utility (This is the core of update-manager and the release upgrade utility): Code: sudo aptitude install update-manager worked for me (afte...

Found this excellent blog posting to help new users to Ubuntu 9.10 get up and running with full multimedia support including DVD and Windows video formats.

Those Ubuntu guys have thought of everything (should - "they" includes just about every user out there! :) ) To install this handy alarm clock application, go to the terminal and type: sudo apt-get install alarm-clock That's it. Configure it in Applications > Alarm Clock.

First off, NTFS is only recommended if you're copying large (>2GB files to/from Windows machines on a regular basis. Here's how I found to do it (YMMV): 1. Install Gnome Partition Editor (gparted) 2. Install 'ntfsprogs' 3. Open Partition Editor and select your desired drive to format. 4. (Optional) Remove any unnecessary partitions, create a new one. 5. Right click and select the format you'd like to apply. (NTFS should be available) 6. Apply changes. That's it. I got this info from here .

Found this tasty tidbit on the Ubuntu Forums. It lets you add MP3 info to the visible columns of Nautilus. Of course, this might be obsolete with Ubuntu 10.04. We'll see... Here's the deb I used for Ubuntu 9.04.

Doing my first round of tests on Karmic Koala. So far so good... Just running it in a VM though. Seeding via BitTorrent as well. Download today at Ubuntu.com . Don't forget to change your download sources after installing!

For news on upcoming Android apps, gadgets, etc., check out this site I stumbled upon (pun) today. Pretty useful information and lots of cool previews. Check it out .

I've been dealing with this annoying bug in Gnome: Panel drawers take 3 seconds to open. This bug is tracked here . I've found a small help to this bug here : I found a setting in gconf-editor, but I was only able to set the animation speed to "fast". if I completely disabled animations, the drawer would appear over the top panel, instead of the bottom right where its supposed to be. To change the speed, open gconf-editor, navigate to apps->panel->toplevels->panel_0 there you can change the key for animation to fast. (your draw may have a different name, depending on your added panel elements - I think O_o ) Hope that helps.

I've been struggling with getting the Input Method to work for Japanese on my Ubuntu installation (Gnome). I finally found this little, seemingly insignificant addition to the process: Well, I had this kind of problem recently when I installed Ubuntu 9.04. SCIM was showing on tray but was not triggering after pressing the shortcuts. I have solved this problem at last. If you have similar type of problem too, go to System > Administration > Language Support and check the option "Use the input method engines (IME) to enter complex characters". Then restart you x-org server by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Backspace. So, after installing Japanese support and adding Anthy as one of the inputs in SCIM, I finally have the ability to type in Japanese again! One problem I'm still working on - the hotkeys are somewhat tricky and don't match the old standby IME from MS. MS is a lot of bad things, but I'm used to their IME and I'd like to at least get my hotkeys to...

While iPhone and iPod has captured people's attention for some time now, I've always been apprehensive of making a big jump to either product. On the one hand, it has all the niceties of a *nix based system but on the other, it's sort of a perverted form of *nix. DRM, tyranical policies, and closed-development have, in my opinion, hampered the product's attractiveness to many would-be adopters. Couple that with a rapidly crowding network and it just hasn't appealed to me. Enter Android . It has the potential to be everything iP* is and then some. For starters, it's open source. If the community doesn't like something, they can change it. It's working marvels for Ubuntu as popularity of the OS grows and the same will be true for Android or similar *nix micro distributions built for handheld devices. While Android isn't perfect yet, there are more apps starting to show up and a stronger base of support for developers which should help increase th...

Just changed the blog title to be more reflective of my intents here. I'll still continue to blog my journey as a new Ubuntu user but I want to open things up a bit more to other up-coming Linux and Open-Source based technologies.

I'm a fan of mind mapping. I have been for quite a few years now. Since I don't consider it worthy of $$$, I've always used FreeMind. I first saw it reviewed on SourceForge a few years ago when it won Project of the Month. I was just assigned a writing assignment at work and as a result, decided to map out my thoughts on the subject before committing anything to XML (we use DITA). Naturally, I turned to FreeMind. However, as soon as I installed it, I remembered how awkward it really is. It suffers from feature bloat. Too much stuff crammed into a Java app = slow and buggy. So, I removed it (thank you, Ubuntu) and installed Labyrinth instead. I use Gnome so a pure Gnome+Python+Cairo app seems like a decent choice. After applying a small patch (shown below), it worked beautifully. Simple, elegant, and just what I needed. Thank you Open Source Community. Patching Labyrinth for Ubuntu 9.04: Error: File "/usr/bin/labyrinth", line 40, in import utils...

Ok, so I've been using Hulu.com and various other similar sites for some time now. I don't understand what some networks were thinking when they decided to go with the Move Player over more open standards. Flash, while not exactly open, at least works across all major platforms! I'd really like to see some of the networks take note and make changes necessary to start supporting the growing Linux community. We are here and we deserve to be heard. Remember, Firefox was just a fad... See my previous rant on the subject.

Can't use it. Wish I could, but can't. Only available on Windows and not functioning in WINE. Sucks. Can't view ABC.com, WB.com and other popular video sites. Hulu.com works fine as do other major flash-based sites.

Ok, I admit it. I've always loved newspapers but hated dealing with finding the sections I like, flipping the HUGE pages, dealing with the aftermath, etc. There's just something about seeing a broad swath of news in one place at one time that I can quickly scan and dive if I want to without navigating through TONS of pages or performing specific searches. This is especially true when I don't know what I want. Enter Google FastFlip. Suddenly, I can just select a section, click the first article and then flip my way through hundreds of pages of articles as fast as I would normally scan a newspaper. I can even pause and read the first few lines of the article right there without navigating deeper. Images are even preserved. Google News is decent at this, but misses the "Newspaper" feel that most people like. Give it a try.

Well, in spite of all the headaches and issues I went through with my old D430, it's been sad to see it go... Today, I imaged it for a co-worker and put WinXP back on it. I felt bad. It's kind of like reclaiming land, building some futuristic development on it, and then clearing it again to turn it into a waste dump. The machine was INSTANTLY 30% slower and I'm sure it will just go downhill from here. Bummer. Farewell D430. I wish I could say you were going to a better place...

Gotta love Ubuntu. Just one day later and I'm fully up and running. Bluetooth is working great (send-recieve from phone, check. bluetooth audio for headset, check.), nvidia graphics working great (after installing proprietary driver version 180), wireless working great (Broadcom B43 Wireless proprietary driver and updated OS). Yep, everything working great! I've updated my Bluetooth Headset post to include more accurate information on how I got it working this time around. Just do a search or click here .

I won't go into how (sad story), but I was just given a Latitude D630 to possibly switch out my D430. I've been VERY happy running Ubuntu 8.10 on my D430 but am now interested to see how 9.04 works on the D630. With the NVidia card, faster CPU, and other goodies, it ought to be a slightly better, albeit heavier, experience. I'll post some of my findings here in the next few days.

Below didn't work for me, so I'm trying these links instead: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/COM/VS2005ComDllWalkThru.aspx http://www.codeproject.com/KB/COM/VS2005RegisteringComDLL.aspx Sorry, real world problem here - need to write it down: (Ripped shamelessly from Experts-Exchange ) Ok, to make a VB Component COM callable, follow the instructions below: 1) Open up the Visual Studio . NET command prompt, and change to your project directory (where your .sln file is located). Whenever I refer to the command prompt, I mean the VS.NET command prompt. To open it, go to Start->Program Files ->Microsoft Visual Studio . NET ->Visual Studio . NET Tools->Visual Studio . NET Command Prompt. You may want to put a link to it on your quickbar. In the command prompt, while in your project directory, type: sn -k key.snk This will create a strong name RSA key file with a public and private key. There are security implications if you create any components that are distrib...

Also, here's the how-to for anyone interested: http://fosswire.com/post/2008/10/better-bluetooth-audio/ EDIT: Still having trouble getting my Cardo S-2 to work properly with Ubuntu 8.10. I plan on testing this out. It's slightly different than the commands I've been running, so it's worth a shot: http://biu.biugates.com/2008/12/bluetooth-audio-a2dp-on-ubunto.html

sudo apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal

When I left home last night, I had full functional working 3D desktop effects. Once I added my two 1600x1200 monitors this morning and resized my virtual desktop size past the breaking limit, that all went bye-bye. :( I vaguely remember reading that increasing the desktop size on my video card will automatically disable this wonderful feature. Surprise. It did. Well, at least with the old video driver, it's still smoother than the newer ones. Bummer though. I was really liking all the extra "new OS" bells and whistles. Maybe I can find a work-around someday, but I highly doubt it. EDIT: Here's the URL that discusses the root of the problem (I think it still applies to 8.10, but I'm not certain just yet... will look further): http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=580891 And some more specific to the Dell Latitude D430: http://www.winchen.de/PHPWIKI/doku.php/public/delld430 Workaround: Switch xorg.conf on bootup depending on whether or not external monito...

Every once in a while, you come across a version of a driver or package that is just better than newer, "updated versions". If you want to keep the old one and stop getting reminders about the new ones, just open Package Manger, select the package you want to keep and then click "Package -> Lock Package" from the menu. This will prevent auto-updates from happening to that package. Also, you can force an old package to be reinstated from this same menu. This would have helped me a TON and saved a lot of time with my video driver woes...

Add the repositories from c-korn here: https://launchpad.net/~c-korn/+archive/vlc Add the GPG key from the same location. Open your package manager and add the latest stable version of VLC.

I'm using the xserver-xorg-video-intel driver version 2.4.1-1ubuntu10 (default that installed with 8.10) and the graphics performance is MUCH better than 2.6 or 2.7 was for my Intel chipset (Dell D430). Guess newer isn't always better... 3D Desktop effects even work somewhat!

Immediately after I reinstalled 8.10, I noticed my Windows keys behaving badly. I actually forgot that this was something I had to deal with before. It boiled down to changing the default behavior of the Windows key in the keyboard layout "Other Settings" panel to map it to the "Super" key. Viola. I can now assign it at will. Here's a link to a write-up about it: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntucat/windowsmodifier/

It took a long time, but I'm willing to concede defeat now. Ubuntu 9.04 sucks on Dell D430 hardware. Perhaps it was the half-baked release for older hardware. Perhaps it was the decision to go exclusively to open-sourced drivers. Perhaps it was just all the little irks I got tired of dealing with. In the end it doesn't matter. It all added up to wasted time and effort trying to either correct or work around the myriad of problems with video drivers, bluetooth drivers, and other nonesense you shouldn't have to deal with in Ubuntu. After all, it worked nearly flawlessly in 8.10 so why shouldn't it for 9.04? It *is* supposed to be an upgrade after all. At any rate, I *downgraded* to 8.10 last night. I have to tell you, I missed my perfectly functioning video drivers. I still need to see if I need to reinstall the latest broadcom wireless drivers, but that's in my previous posts. In the end, I learned that newer isn't always better. I'll take a look a...

From bug #195982 : VMware Workstation's keyboard mapping is imperfect, sometimes resulting in certain keys stopping functionality when running under VMware Workstation, requiring the user to setup their configuration settings manually in VMware Workstation. For a detailed explanation see the following article: http:// www.vmware. com/support/ ws55/doc/ ws_devices_ keymap_ linux_longer. html WORKAROUND: After this happens to recover your keyboard execute 'setxkbmap' in a terminal

From a bug posting : I've been fighting this with Hardy and the references here made me dig a bit more and found this: $ gconftool-2 -Tg /apps/gnome- power-manager/ backlight/ idle_dim_ time 30 int This basically tells GPM that "idle" means 30 seconds. So, I did this: $ gconftool-2 -s /apps/gnome- power-manager/ backlight/ idle_dim_ time 120 -t int If my calculations are correct, that should increase the delay before the screen dims down to 2 minutes. As for what "activity" means, I have found that moving the mouse and typing equally triggers GPM to bring up full brightness. I think a long term solution to this issue is to put a slider into Power Management Preferences screen to allow this to be customized without tinkering with gconf. I always saw people's iBooks dimming down to save power and I'm glad it is now supported here -- just needs to be fleshed out a bit more. Couldn't agree more with the RFE in the last para.

I'm adding this to my list of bugs I hope they fix soon. Easiest way to get Bluetooth Audio I've found so far: 1. Follow these instructions up to step 9. 2. Follow these instructions after that. Here's the text (sort of) for each: #1: First we need to add the Blueman Project’s PPA to your Ubuntu Jaunty installation. Open a terminal and type in: $ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/blueman.list You will be presented with a blank text editor. Type or copy & paste the following lines in: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/blueman/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/blueman/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main Save your changes and exit the editor. Now update your package lists with: $ sudo apt-get update At the end you will see a NO_PUBKEY error because your setup does not yet have the GPG key for the Blueman repository to authenticate the packages with. To fix this, import the key with: $ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 6B15AB91951DC1E2...

Just tried sending some pics to my laptop from the phone and couldn't get the connection to work. Will investigate and post the results as soon as possible. *EDIT: I can now send/receive pictures/video from my phone but I can't browse files on the phone. To get it working, I installed gnome-user-share, then open System -> Preferences -> Personal File Sharing and set the option to receive files over bluetooth. This information was found here . The browsing thing seems to have something to do with lack of support of OBEX, either by jaunty or the phone. Enabling obexftp should solve it, but I've installed the following without any improvement: obextool obexfs obexpushd obexftp gnome-vfs-obexftp Will keep searching...

Since switching to Ubuntu, I've been using the Terminal Services Client program (Applications->Internet->Terminal Services Client) to connect to my work VM which is hosted on a VMware ESX 3.5 u3 server. I used that VM prior to upgrading to Ubuntu (yes, it is an upgrade) and essentially used my laptop, as far as work was concerned, as a thin client. One thing that always annoyed me was that the "full screen" option was just that - complete and total full screen! Ubuntu was washed completely from view and I was stuck in the land of dual-monitored ultra-Windows. If I hadn't installed an app on my remote VM called MaxTo , I would have had serious problems effectively using both monitors (hitting maximize would expand the windows to fill the entire desktop area of both monitors). However, at least with MaxTo installed, I could get my work done. Even so, I still found hitting CTRL-ALT-ENTER each time I wanted to go back to my real desktop a bit annoying. I mean, ...

This is kind of funny. I decided to let my machine upgrade from Intrepid Ibex (8.10) to Jaunty Jackalope (9.04) while I was in meetings all morning on Thursday. Great idea, I thought - let my machine toil away while I was away. And I was right (for the most part). I came back to a fresh, shiny new OS with better support for my machine than previously. At work, it was an awesome new user experience with all kinds of improvements over Intrepid and since I've only been using Intrepid for a couple of weeks, THOUSANDS of improvements over my previous installation of Windows XP. However, I had driven to work yesterday and hadn't had the normal 2 hours of bus riding to test out all the multimedia stuff. Today I did and ran into a serious problem. No support for playing back mkv, avi, mp4 or other video formats in Totem or VLC! When I went to launch the video, the program would crash with something similar to this error (reposted from another user with the same issue since I...

Getting the Hardware Working (was valid for 8.10, may need updated for 9.04): BluetoothAudio - Community Ubuntu Documentation Installing Workstation on Ubuntu Multi touch for any,all synaptics touchpad | ubuntu snippets *OFFICIAL* Broadcom Linux driver BCM4312 | You’re Special, Just Like Everybody Else. Ubuntu on dell d430 BluetoothHeadset - PulseAudio Fixes & System-Wide Equalizer Support... Setup this before attempting to connect your bluetooth headset. BluetoothHeadset - Community Ubuntu Documentation Combine these instructions with the info for getting the Pulse Audio Server working. Once you do this, everything except VLC works perfectly with Bluetooth Headphones. Very cool. BluetoothHeadset - Troubleshooting Play and Rip DVDs with Ubuntu Linux KVM on Ubuntu: Install with mouse, keyboard directly attached, reboot, hookup KVM HOWTO: setup all 12 buttons on your Logitech MX1000 - Ubuntu Forums Installing Windows Application Under Wine - Make Tech Easier Touchpad - 2nd...