This is my completely redone version of the original tutorial I wrote back in July. I have read all of the comments and it seems that I was pretty clear the first time; however, I have tested all of the following steps to verify that they are correct. Vista users should have no issues. Hopefully these instructions will clear up some of the problems and fix deadlinks. Screenshots should clarify any issues.

Step 1: Download the PHX mod. The latest and most complete version that I found is located at http://garrysmod.org/downloads/?a=view&id=30329. If this is incorrect, I’d love to know. A zip file of about 63 mb will download. Save this to your desktop or some other easily accessible place (don’t click run or open; click save).

Step 2: Open My Computer and browse to:

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\<username>\garrysmod\garrysmod\addons

If you have no other addons installed, this folder should contain only a few files.

Step 3: With the addons folder window still open, right click on the file you downloaded to your desktop and click Explore.

Step 4: Select the phx2 folder and drag it to your addons folder. It should take about two minutes to copy the contents to the addons folder.

Step 5: You are done. If you followed directions correctly, the PHX folder should now be in your addons folder along side the original folders.

Open up Garry’s Mod and try it out. That is about as simple as I can make this tutorial. Read it a few times to make sure you don’t miss anything. If you receive errors when you spawn models, make sure you followed the directions exactly. Folder placement is the most important thing.

Finally, enoy this awesome mod!

If you still need help or if changes occur that I missed, please feel free to leave a comment.

Check out this game from Teagames.com.

Give it a whirl in all of your browsers (especially Firefox) and compare it to Safari.

It is doubtful that this will have any effect on a superfast processor, but my old Sempron 2600+ machine can really tell the difference. It is almost unplayable in anything but Safari.

Have fun, and let me know if you encounter the same results.

Now, if only they had open-sourced it!

I formatted my laptop and installed the latest version of Ubuntu using the alternate install CD (my preferred method). The whole process took about 45 minutes. A little longer than previous versions, but not by much.

I am not going to give a review here, I just wanted to point out some things I noticed. I just finished the installation about 20 minutes ago and I am only posting some thoughts.

The first thing I always do is set up networking. Previously this required me to search around the Ubuntu forums for a tutorial thanks to my Broadcom wireless card. The card was detected, but the firmware was not installed by default. All I needed to do was install the bcm43xx-fwcutter package and the network manager picked up the network and I was online instantly. Another plus is that the included network connection manager (the one that sits in the notification area) actually worked. On 6.10, I had to configure the network manually. This is definitely convenient for switching between multiple access points.

So now that I am online, I can begin to look around. I remembered hearing about an improved wobbly windows setup, so naturally I had to track that down. It happens to be conveniently located in the System menu under Preferences, labelled as Desktop Effects. Open it and you are greeted by this program.

It is about as simple as it gets - on or off and whether you want the cube that spins through workspaces. I clicked enable and checked both boxes. The screen flashed and I had wobbly windows. Amazingly simple, easy to deactivate, nothing to configure.

As I said, I have spent less than an hour with Ubuntu Feisty Fawn and I am quite impressed as it is. When I get done playing around with the new stuff and tweaking it to my liking, I may write a full review, but that is probably not necessary.

Check out Feisty Fawn!

To start off, you will need to install both Exaile and streamripper. In Ubuntu you can follow my guide to installing Exaile via Automatix. As for Streamripper, you can run sudo apt-get install streamripper in a terminal.

Once everything is installed, open up Exaile from the Applications > Sound & Video menu. You will notice that Exaile has a Radio tab on the left side. If you click it you will find different genres. This is where the magic will happen, but first, a little configuration.

In Exaile, open the Plugins menu under Tools. At the botton, you will see Streamripper. Check the box next to it.

Next, click Configure and set the location that you want the ripped tracks to be saved. Usually, /home/user/Music is a good choice, but it is up to you.

Click OK to close the window and again to close the Plugins windows.

Now its time to find a suitable station. Browse back to Radio and pick a genre you want to hear. Under each Genre will be several sub-genres. Double click a sub-genre to open up a list of those stations in the main window.

You can now listen to the stations by double clicking on one. When you find one you like, click the red circle at the bottom to start ripping the songs. You can continue to listen as the stream is recorded, you can stop playing it, or you can listen to other streams as the first continues to record.

For best quality I would recommend a station with 128kbps, however, anything over 64kbps should be acceptable. To find the quality of the stream, right click it and click Information.

There you go. That’s all there is to it. I will leave you with an updated list of tips from the first article. Enjoy!

• Choose a station with at least 128 kbps bitrate.
• Rip multiple streams if you have a fast connection.
• Leave a session running overnight to collect a whole pile of songs.
• Under Tools > Library Manager, add your output folder and then Rescan to add the files to your collection.
• These files should work fine on an iPod or other portable MP3 player.
• You can even sync them to your device via Exaile!

Start by downloading Automatix, direct link.

Double click the deb file to open the Package Installer.

Click Install and wait for it to finish.

Under Applications > System Tools, you will find the newly installed Automatix. Open it up.

Under the Media Players and Editors section, check the box next to Exaile.

At the top, click Start and Automatix will install Exaile automatically.

You should now find Exaile listed under Applications >  Sound & Video.

Linux Mint has sprouted from Ubuntu with the intention to provide a great desktop operating system including everything necessary (or at least readily available) by default. This includes not only multimedia codecs, but Flash player and Java as well. The following quote sums up Linux Mint’s philosphy on proprietary software:

“We believe in freedom… We also prefer to use open source software rather than their proprietary equivalents. However we don’t believe in banning or boycotting proprietary software. If a proprietary component has no suitable open source alternative and is needed to produce an elegant desktop we do include it. For this reason we include things like the Flash plugin for instance.”

With that in mind, Linux Mint also makes it clear that it has completely seperate goals than those of the Ubuntu project. You can read more about their philosophy and goals on their About Page.

Downloading

It is always nice when a distribution has several downloading methods. Linux Mint includes the standard HTTP/FTP, as well as a torrent. There is even an option to download a prebuilt VMWare machine.

Burning

As of the time of this writing, the latest release is Linux Mint 2.2 “Bianca” which is available on an Ubuntu-like live CD/installer. The ISO is roughly 685MB and fits nicely on a blank CD-R.

Booting

The last time I tried using Linux Mint was at release 2.0. At that time, the live CD still included graphics and logos from Ubuntu. I am pleased to say that “Bianca” includes a nice set of custom graphics and color schemes. Everything from the usplash to the login screen looks quite “minty”.

One of the advantages of using Ubuntu as a foundation is the great hardware support that comes with it. I had no significant issues with hardware. The only thing I can even mention is the fact that it did not pick up my resolution at 1440×900. Instead, it used 1280×1024. However, this is easily fixable by editting xorg.conf once the system is installed. It is also worth mentioning that I received a Gnome error when the desktop loaded. This happened on both machines, but it did not impact performance or the success of the installation.

Installation

Installing Linux Mint is a breeze. It uses a similar installer to Ubuntu, but I found that it was actually much faster. I installed it twice and both times it beat Ubuntu by 5-10 minutes.

Out of the Box

Linux Mint boots into a very slick Gnome desktop. It becomes clear very quickly that this is not just Ubuntu with codecs. The menu bar is located at the bottom of the screen and there are desktop icons by default. The main menu is a fantastic innovation and perhaps my favorite thing about Linux Mint. There is one button which opens a SLAB-like menu. It is broken up into the three main categories - Applications, Places, and System. Each category is set up logically with the most common applications listed on the very first menu. I have never been a fan of the menus in any operating system in which you much go through several layers to find what you need. Everything is layed out where it should be. Another great feature is the ability to search for applications.

Another nice touch is adding specific folders in your Home Folder. These include Pictures, Videos, Music, Documents, etc.

Aside from the visual aspects and other nice features is the obvious improvement of multimedia codecs and plugins. There is not much left out - at least none that I could find. Flash player, Java, and MP3 playback all worked out of the box. This is excellent and it really makes it feel like a complete system.

The final improvement is a pack of custom-written applications all starting with “mint-”. These include mintConfig, mintDesktop, mintMenu, mintDisk, and mintWifi. These are great applications that do small tasks to make life easier. For example, mounting Windows partitions, enabling desktop, icons, and connecting to a wireless network. The one worth mentioning in detail in mintConfig. This is an excellent control panel application for Gnome. Similar to the mintMenu in the sense that everything is logically placed and easy to find.

Customization

Linux Mint includes quite a bundle of software and codecs by default. As per Ubuntu, there is Open Office, Firefox, Gaim, and Amarok. Also available is Automatix or EasyUbuntu as well as any application in the Ubuntu repositories. Envy is also included which easily installs the latest ATI or NVidia graphics drivers.

Performance

Linux Mint is on par with Ubuntu as far as speed and loading times. It is a bit slower to load because it includes extras like Tomboy and Beagle. I did have an issue on a low memory laptop. The live CD froze before I could get the desktop loading. To be fair the site does recommend 512MB of ram.

On my desktop, I had no problems. Linux Mint is very quick.

Community

A small but apparently growing community is available via messageboards at http://linuxmint.com/forum/ and there is a wiki at http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page. Of course since it is based on Ubuntu, everything at http://ubuntuforums.org is valid as well.

Purpose

At first glance it is hard to say that Linux Mint is anything but Ubuntu with codecs. However, when you look closer, you will see that the goals and styles are completely different. The Linux community needs diversity, it also needs Ubuntu as well as Linux Mint.

Criticism

No respectable review is complete without a few complaints and suggestions. Fortunately, I have found no show stoppers and many are just a matter of opinion.

My biggest suggestion would be an alternate install disc. This would have helped greatly in solving the crashing laptop problem. 256MB of ram should be sufficient to run Linux Mint, however it is not enough to run the installation successfully.

The other issues are minor. First of all Envy did not work for me and I have seen some issues with it on the forums as well. I used Automatix to install my drivers and all was well.

I would suggest that The Gimp was installed out of the box. It seems that would be a good addition to a ‘complete desktop’.

Final Thoughts

Overall Linux Mint is a fine distribution and I can proudly say I will be using it as my desktop OS. It is good to see that the team has different goals than Ubuntu and I forsee a greater amount of unique additions to Linux Mint in the future.

• Homepage - http://linuxmint.com/index.html
• Download - http://linuxmint.com/download.html
• Forum - http://linuxmint.com/forum/
• Distrowatch Page - http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint

Right click on the Applications button of your menu bar and select Edit Menus.

This will open up the Menu Layout window.

Select System Tools from the left side.

Check the box next to Configuration Editor and close the window.

Under Applications > System Tools, open the Configuration Editor.

In the Configuration Editor, select apps and under that nautilus and desktop.

Check the available boxes to display the desktop icons of your choice.

Icons include Computer, Network Servers, Home Folder, and of course Trash.

You can pick just the ones you want or all of them.

Close the Configuration Editor.

One of my favorite parts about using Linux is the visual customization available. I thought I would show you how to get a similar Linux-like look on your boring XP box.

Preparations

Before you can add custom themes to Windows, you have patch it to allow the loading of unsigned themes. There is a very simple program which you can grab from Belchfire, direct download here.

Extract the program and run it. Follow the instructions and it is simple. Be sure to hit cancel when it asks to enter the Windows CD.

Visual Styles

Now you can use the main component of your new look - custom Visual Styles. There are several you can use, but I have listed the best ones here. I recommend installing them all.

• Clearlooks - http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/18591720/
• Human (Ubuntu) - http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/37743373/
• Plastik (KDE) - http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/8066296/

Each of these will come in an archive containing a folder. Extract the folder to C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes. That means the folder, not just the contents of the folder. See picture below.

Icons

The next step is setting up icons. For this you will need the Tango Patcher. This will give your entire operating system a Tango feel. There is also the option to use the Tangerine theme from Ubuntu along with some special Tango themes such as the one from SUSE. Download and install that, picking the theme of your choice. You can preview the different themes here. This will require a restart, and you should immediately notice the difference.

Applications

Sticking with the Tango feel, you should also customize some of the applications you use to match the rest of the system.

• Firefox - https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1565/
• Thunderbird - https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2258/
• uTorrent - http://vertigosity.benpbrown.com/?page=apps&app=utorrent
• If you can find any other apps that allow a Tango theme to be added please tell me in the comments.

Wallpaper

This is really up to you. There is no real reason that you have to pick a Linux-style wallpaper, but I included this just to give you the idea. Here are a few sites where you can find great wallpapers.

• Gnome-look.org -Generally Gnome related
• KDE-look.org - Generally KDE related.
• Interfacelift - Tons of high-res, widescreen wallpapers.
• Google Images - Eh, why not?

Resources

I thought I should leave you with some other resources you can use to further customize Windows if you’d like.

• Deviantart.com - Great resource for all things graphic design.
• Belchfire.net - A Windows XP themes community.

My Desktop

You can also find some Open-source applications for Windows if you want to go even further.

ISO is definitely the most common CD image type and basically every program will support it. Occasionally, you might come across a disc image in the BIN format. While there are ways to use BIN/CUE’s in Linux, it is much easier to convert them to the standard ISO format.

In Ubuntu, open up a terminal and type sudo apt-get install bchunk. This will install a program called Binchunker.

Binchunker is used in the terminal and is very simple. Navigate to the folder containing the BIN/CUE file and run Binchunker in the following way.

bchunk IMAGE.bin IMAGE.cue IMAGE.iso

Depending on the speed of your machine, the time required will vary. Overall it is very quick and should not take more than a few minutes.

You should now have a standard ISO file that you can use anywhere.