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Linux 101 Hacks: Another Great Linux Book is Now Available for Free

2010-01-16T19:57:24Z

I feel overwhelmed by the amount of free material that is available for learning Linux. Thosunds of free books, videos, and podcasts are waiting for people who are thirsty to learn about Linux. A couple of hours ago I found this post by Linux 101 Hacks‘ author, Ramesh Natarajan, informing us that his nifty little Book is available for online reading. I’ve read some of the hacks and found them very interesting and informative. I’m sure you will get a kick out of reading this book.

Free Password Management Software For Ubuntu

2010-01-11T10:56:45Z

Years ago, before the craze of Web 2.0 most of us had just few accounts in services like Yahoo and we did not have much trouble with memorizing them. But now with the growing number of social services, It’s becoming more difficult to keep track of all your passwords. For years I had a simple remedy for this problem, that is, using one single password for all the services. Nevertheless, It was too risky and if somebody could find the password of one of my accounts he could access to the rest too (a similar mistake made by one of Twitter staff led to the leakage of confidential documents of this company.)

A few months ago, I started to use my iPod Touch and a security application to organize my passwords. It was a good application and I loved it but after a hard reset the application refused to work and discarded all my passwords. Fortunately, I had a backup of all my passwords somewhere else but I couldn’t confide my iPod Touch anymore.

KeePassX - A Light-weight Password Manager for Ubuntu

Today I was searching for a good password management software for Ubuntu and I found a light-weight program dubbed KeePassX. I installed it on my Ubuntu machine and after a few minutes I started to love it. It simply has all the features I want from a password management software. It stores all my passwords in one single encrypted database which makes it easy to make backup from it. I also can easily create groups and organize my passwords into groups. However, my favorite feature is the Password Generator. KeePassX can generate very lengthy and strong passwords that even a bad-ass hacker will have trouble to decrypt it.

KeePassX Password Generator

How to install KeePassX on Ubuntu 9.10

KeePassX is very light-weight and it shouldn’t take more than few seconds to get downloaded and installed:

sudo apt-get install keepassx

If you are in Ubuntu 9.10, you can also use the Software Center to install this app.

Floss Manuals: Free Manuals For Free Softwares

2010-01-10T18:12:39Z

I’d like to write a quick post about an interesting concept that I’ve just stumbled across. If you are a beginner in Linux world and you are starved for good reading materials to learn open source and free softwares, there is a website for that. Floss Manuals is a collection of manuals about free and open source softwares. Currently, I’m reading one of their manuals about Ardour, the free DAW software that has gained momentum recently, and I tell you it rocks. The writing style is clean and they use high quality graphics to illustrate the concepts. Truth to be told, I’m actually got inspired to write my posts in this way! You can read more about Floss Manuals in their About page.

Free as in Freedom: The Story of Richard Stallman

2010-01-09T19:33:54Z

Ubuntu is free, not only free of charge but also free to be studied, changed, and redistributed. The question is, however, where does this freedom come from? We all know the answer – open source and the free software movement. However most beginners have little clue about the origin of the free software movement and the story of Ricahrd Stallman.

Honestly, It’s been a while that I wanted to study open source and the philosophy behind it. Today I stumbled across a book called Free as in Freedom written by Sam Williams. I read the first chapter and it seemed to be a very absorbing book. It essentially tells the story of RMS and how he came across the idea of free software.

If you are interested to read this book, you can read the free online version here.

Take Control Over Your Laptop’s Display Brightness in Ubuntu

2010-01-08T18:46:06Z

Display brightness is one of the main power eating culprits in laptops. As a result, many modern operating systems including Ubuntu are optimized to automatically adjust the brightness so as to maximize laptop’s battery life.

If you run Ubuntu on a laptop you might have noticed that Ubuntu dims the display when the system is idle and is not connected to the AC power. This feature is definitely helpful for increasing battery life but can be extremely annoying if you are reading a long web page or article. Now if you are tormented by this feature you can either disable it or extend the time that screen goes dim.

Disabling ‘Dim Display When Idle” feature

Go to System > Preferences > Power Management.
In the Power Management Preferences window, click on the On Battery Power tab.
Remove the check of both “Reduce backlight brightness” and “Dim display when idle” options.

Increasing the Amount of Time to Dim the Screen

If you are interested to change the amount of screen dim time or the brightness amount, you’ll need to use Configuration Editor:

Press ALT + F2 and in the Run Application window, type gconf-editor.
Go to apps > gnome-power-managment > backlight.
Now change the value of idle_dim_time. You may also want to change other settings such as the value of idle_brightness.

Best Dictionary for Linux: Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

2010-01-07T10:28:51Z

I agree with the assertion that there are many free and open-source dictionaries available for Linux, nevertheless , none of them seems to be felicitous for advanced students and writers. For instance, the dictionary that comes with Ubuntu is lacking in features such as a valuable thesaurus.

The good news is that there is a very advanced dictionary software for Linux and it works great on Ubuntu. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English is one of the most popular dictionaries on Windows and Mac platform and now it’s available for Linux too. Unfortunately, It is neither open-source nor free but it really worth the money you are spending on it.

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English in Ubuntu Linux

The software is available in the DVD that comes with the paperback edition of Longman Dictionary. I’m not quite sure whether the DVD is sold separately or not but the paperback edition is also very good. Even though, $50 may seem a little pricey compare to many other dictionaries but bear in mind that this thing is extremely versatile.

The DVD comes with the Paperback Edition

There is also a simplified version of this dictionary that is available online which can help you to get a feeling about how this dictionary works. There is a complete list of the dictionary’s features on their Guided Tour page. My favorite features are the thesaurus, numerous examples for each word (from Longman Corpus Network), the writing and speaking and academic world list, and finally the collocation.

In conclusion, if you are starved for an advanced dictionary in Linux, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English can fully content your needs.

First Month with Karmic Koala

2010-01-06T20:00:33Z

My first experience with Linux was back in 2003, when Ubuntu wasn’t around and Linux distributions were quite fewer than nowadays. Back then, I was goofing of most of my time with playing games on Windows and my grasp of computer world was limited to just few softwares and programming languages. Surprisingly, I was quite happy with those things and I had the impression that this is the ultimate world of computing.

I stumbled across Linux when I was reading my favorite computer magazine and I right away decided to give it a try. Not because I was looking for a Windows alternative, but because I was just curious to experience a new OS. As a result, I visited our local store and bought several Linux distribution, namely Fedora Core 1, Knoppix, and Mandrake (Mandriva).

As you might guess, Knoppix was the first Linux distro I tried. It was kind of cool that the whole OS was running on the CD-ROM and PC memory. Nevertheless, the OS was way slow and it was just seemed to be felicitous for emergency circumstances.

Consequently, I installed Fedora Core which was a brand-new distro back then. As far as I remember, it was a very frightening experience. Fedora couldn’t recognize nearly half of the hardwares I had back then. One of the biggest hurdles was that Fedora couldn’t recognize the video card and considering that I had an archaic CRT monitor the low refresh rate was killing my eyes.

Fedora Core 1 - The first distro I tried back in 2003

After dabbling a few months on Fedora and Mandriva (which in my opinion was a better distro than Fedora) I capitulated Linux as a whole. Frankly, Setting up a Linux system at that moment wasn’t quite easy and even after reading a few articles I couldn’t get many things working.

It didn’t happen until 2007 when I saw Ubuntu on one of my friends laptop. After just few hours of working with Ubuntu, I was quite impressed. It was something quite different than the first Linux distro I had tried. Unfortunately, I resisted to immigrate to Linux once more. Maybe just because I was scared off to go through the same troubles I had with Fedora Core 1.

A few months ago, I came across a post written by the noted writer Cory Doctrow in BoingBoing. Most of you might be aware of the fact that Cory is one of Ubuntu advocates. For the most part, Cory’s article was not about Ubuntu but after finishing the article I had a strong desire to try Ubuntu. This time, however, I was resolute in my decision to go deep into Linux world.

Cory Doctorow , who inspired me to start using Ubuntu

I immediately requested the free Ubuntu CD using their website and a month later I got my Ubuntu 9.10 CD. In addition, I bought a new Hard Drive for my laptop in order to do a hard swapping. I removed my previous HD with Vista installed on it and superseded it with the new one. Then, I started the installation which was easy and charming.

No More Humdrum Driver Installation

The first odd thing I noticed after logging into Ubuntu was that all hardware drivers were working without problem. For instance, on Windows I have to install and configure my printer driver (which usually takes an hour) in order to print my documents. Ubuntu recognized my printer right away without installing any special driver. It also recognized my archaic DSL router and I was able to connect to Internet right away. Wi-Fi also worked without any problem on my Dell machine. The fact that Ubuntu supports such a wide range of different hardwares is startling. The only driver I had to install was the nvidia graphic card drivers in order to activate advanced effects. Gradually, I started to love Ubuntu. Now it’s been one month that I’m working with it and I’ve never looked back to Windows. Everyday I learn something new about Ubuntu and I’m going to write my ideas about Ubuntu here.

What I Like About Ubuntu
On paper, Ubuntu seems to be pretty much similar to other Linux distros. Many components that powers Ubuntu (e.g. Grub and Gnome) also powers other distros. The question is what makes Ubuntu such a different distro? I’m sure it takes a long time to enumerate all those unique features but the followings are the most important ones, in my opinion.

The Spirit

There is something in Ubuntu that does not exist even in the clones of this OS. It’s hard to explain but it can be explained as a mixture feeling of freedom and a sudden insight of everything fits into place. It seems that something holy exists in every corner of Ubuntu. In my opinion, this is because Ubuntu has been essentially driven by altruism.

Ease of Use

Ubuntu is prized for it’s easy to use. It’s felicitous for most Linux tyros and it doesn’t impel the new users to do “geeky” stuff to do their daily jobs.

It’s Clutter Free

Most Linux distros I’d tried before were – gratuitously – filled with a huge number of packages even with their basic installation. This can hugely confuse new users. The cool thing about Ubuntu that it installs minimum amount of softwares by default. Just ones that are really helpful and essential for the functionality. I don’t need a dozen of email softwares for checking my emails; Just one of them will do the job.

Support for a Vast Number of Hardwares

Ubuntu supports a wide variety of different hardwares remarkably well, postulated to be one of the the most hardware-friendly OS around. Many people truthfully ascribe Ubuntu success to this feature and Ubuntu community feedback corroborate this idea.

Gregarious Community

Many open source projects have a cohesive community. Nevertheless, I’ve found Ubuntu community even more friendly. It’s kind of cool that whenever you encounter a problem there is someone out there to help you.

Bottom Line

Linux has come a long way in the recent years. It’s transcending the realm of being just a competitor for Windows. Nowadays, you can find Linux on unlikely devices like a picture frame. Personally, I can see a bright future for GNU/Linux. At the moment, let’s just enjoying Ubuntu and the vast technical world behind it. From now on, This blog is completely dedicated to Ubuntu and GNU/Linux. It’s not going to be big and professional, just a hobby ;-) I hope to keep updating it every day.

(Solution) Mount of File System Failed problem in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

2010-01-01T14:11:41Z

This morning for the first time Ubuntu went wild and just refused to work, namely crashed (One of those odd things that rarely happens in Linux). When I restarted the system the following message appeared on screen:

Mount of filesystem failed
a maintenance shell will be started.

After trying a few commands, I began to despair of my own knowledge to solve this problem. Thanks to Ubuntu forums I found the solution. Fortunately, it is quite easy. This is what you need to do:

First of all, you need to know your Linux partition. Type fdisk -l (please pay attention to the -l option. If wrong option issued fdisk can erase all your hard disk). In the output you should find the Linux partition. It might be sda1, sda2, sda5, sda6 etc. Mine is sda5.
Then, you need to type this: fsck.ext4 /dev/sda5. If you use a different file systems such as ext3 or other versions you should change the ext4 part. Supersede sda5 with your own Linux partition. Now restart the system and Ubuntu should start without problem.

Ubunchu: A Manga Series About Ubuntu

2009-12-21T18:13:28Z

It might be hard to believe that Ubuntu have a comic but it’s true. Hiroshi Seo, the creator, has decided to share the spirit of his favorite OS in a manga series called Ubunchu. The comic is cool and it’s an interesting way to explain Ubuntu and it’s philosophy to new adopters. Like many other things in Ubuntu world it’s a completely free comic so don’t forget to check them out.

What Ubuntu Knows About Your Laptop Battery

2009-12-20T21:11:26Z

Truth to be told, Ubuntu knows a lot about your laptop’s battery. It knows exactly where it has been made or what is the design capacity or last full capacity of it. So if you are curious to know more about your laptop battery you my want to do this:

Head over here: /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0
There are two files encompassing the information we are looking for: info and state. Try info at first and you will be amazed by the amount of information you find there. You might also want to take a look at this article about mAh.