Kewl Link: Your One-Stop Linux Command Line Shop!

Here is another great resource in learning the Linux command line. Quit rolling your eyes and don’t click away! This is for you, too, newbie! And you too, Ubuntu user! Don’t be such a chicken poop and start learning something besides how to find the best videos on YouTube! And quit crying.

Start by learning the shell and work your way to becoming a God by learning to write scripts. And becoming a God is not that difficult.

Kewl Link: LinuxCommand.org

Yo! Linux Newbies! You Don’t Need an Antivirus!

Read EVERY WORD of this article by Joe Barr including its very helpful user comments and burn it in your brain: you are not using a Microsoft product when using Linux, therefore you will not get a virus. This is possible because Linux was built CORRECTLY and because of its implementation of permissions.

“Microsoft designed Windows to enable outsiders to execute software on your system. The company justifies that design by saying it enriches the user experience if a Web site can do ‘cool’ things on your desktop. It should be clear by now that the only people being enriched by that design decision are those who make a buck providing additional security or repairing the damage to systems caused by it.”

Get out of the Microsoft mentality.

How to Install Internet Explorer in Linux for Idiots

“Why the hell would you want to install Internet Explorer in Linux?”, you ask? Am I stupid? No. Well, at least I don’t think I am.

Sometimes you HAVE to load certain websites in Internet Explorer because there are still a lot of website designers that don’t know what the hell they are doing or have been brainwashed by Microsoft in believing that there are no other browsers out there, even though every other browser out there surpasses Internet Explorer in every way, even IE7. Why that browser still exists is beyond me; it should have gone down with Netscape. Stupid Microsoft brainwashing.

Anyhow, the fact remains: IE is a parasite that we must live with and use at one point or another.

IEs 4 Linux is a remarkable project that allows you to run Internet Explorer 6, 5.5, and 5 on Linux, all at the same time (optional).

“Kevin, would you shut up and tell me how I can quickly and easily install this in Ubuntu?” Well, to answer your question, I won’t shut up! And you can quickly and easily install this in Ubuntu by following these steps:

You have to enable universe packages first. It is also recommended that you use the official winehq ubuntu package:

1) Open a terminal

2) Open /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
3) Uncomment (or add) following lines:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy universe

4) Add this line:

deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt edgy main

5) Close gedit. Update and install wine and cabextract:

wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine cabextract
PLEASE NOTE THAT LINES 00 AND 01 ABOVE ARE SUPPOSE TO BE ON ONE LINE!!! IT IS TOO LONG AND WRAPPING TO 2 LINES!

6) Download IEs 4 Linux and install

wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
tar zxvf ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
cd ies4linux-*
./ies4linux
PLEASE NOTE THAT LINES 00 AND 01 ABOVE ARE SUPPOSE TO BE ON ONE LINE!!! IT IS TOO LONG AND WRAPPING TO 2 LINES!

Note for Dapper users: if you use Ubuntu Dapper, replace ‘edgy’ with ‘dapper’ on the lines above.

When I finished installing IE on my Ubuntu, I noticed an unhidden “ies4linux-2.0.5″ directory. This folder simply contains installation files and scripts and can safely be removed.

With all the Internet Explorers installed and 3 new icons on my desktop (and not wanting them there), I created a new Drawer on my bottom panel, used the icon pictured above (taken from Deviantart) as the Drawer’s icon, dragged the 3 icons from my Desktop to the new Drawer, and deleted the icons from my Desktop.

Easy as pie! An idiot’s grandma can do it!

BTW, did you subscribe to Linux FUD, yet? You should. It’s good for your health.

How to Change the Color of Gnome Panel Text, Handles, Buttons, and More

An issue you will run into when customizing your Ubuntu/Gnome system and playing with themes is not having an easy way to change the color of your text and other aspects of your panels. The gnome-theme-manager applet doesn’t have those options, yet. Not being able to change the color is a problem when using transparency or dark themes; the default color for text is black.

But there *is* an easy way to change the color of your panels’ text, handles, window list button colors (hover, active, and normal), background, etc.

Don’t believe me? Brent Roosshowed us how last year . UPDATE: You can find instructions here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=334747

My only addition to his post is that you must change all the double-quotes when you paste the information to the file in your home folder by typing them in again. Why? Because WordPress’s format for quotes is to use smart quotes instead of straight quotes (see picture) and your changes won’t work if you don’t manually change them all to straight quotes.

Also, play around with the different options in that file by un-commenting the lines (removing the #) and changing the hex color code. You will find that you can change the colors for many different aspects of your panels. Just remember that you must do a ‘killall gnome-panel’ or use a “Refresh GUI” button every time you change and save the file.

You may also want to change the color of your tooltips.

Take a look at my Gnome Panels below (click to enlarge). I was able to change the text color from the default black so I can read it against my dark theme. By playing around with the other color options in the .gtkrc-2.0 file, I was also able to change the window list button hover color (Amarok) and the active color (The Gimp). The normal buttons (Kopete and Swiftfox) are simply from the theme itself, but they are changeable, too.  You can also see that my tooltip color was changed (Amarok).

Subscribe to Linux FUD’s feed and never miss great tips like these again.

Add a “Refresh/Reload GUI” Button to your Gnome Panel

Your first thought when reading the title of this post is probably, “WTF? Why would I need that?” Well, if you’re like me and you love customizing your Gnome system, you’ll know that during your customizations, you have to reload this and reload that for your new changes to take effect. Sometimes its simply because a change you did caused some problems and something didn’t load correctly. Whatever it is, most of the time it requires you to use the killall command in the terminal.

This is common enough for the Gnome panels and for Nautilus since it draws and handles the desktop by default. I was tired of pulling up a terminal window and typing in the killall commands to “refresh” my GUI or Desktop or repeating them if I had already ran them previously. Not that it takes that long to do. I just wanted a quick “button” I can click that will do it automatically.

So I did it myself. Not very complicated, really. Actually, it’s not complicated at all.

1. Right-click the panel or drawer you want the button to be situated
2. Select “Add to Panel…” and the “Add to Panel” window will open
3. Click on the “Custom Application Launcher” at the top of the window
4. In the Launcher Properties, select “Application in Terminal” as a Type
5. Name it “Refresh GUI“
6. For the command, type in: “killall gnome-panel nautilus” without the quotes
7. For the comment, type in: “Reloads the panels and the desktop (Nautilus).” or whatever you want.
8. Click on the “No icon” button and choose an icon of your choice.
9. Click close and you’re done

Now, whenever you need to reload/refresh your Desktop, you can simply click on your brand-spanking new shiny button!

Did you remember to subscribe to Linux FUD?

How to Reset Ubuntu/Gnome Settings to Defaults without Re-installing

As a new user, there comes a time (or there will come a time) when you are playing around with Ubuntu/Gnome, trying different themes, different engines, different window managers, etc, and all of a sudden you run into a problem that you can’t seem to find a way to fix it.

Maybe some of your customized settings are causing your gnome-panel to crash all the time or causing your windows and applications to look ugly, even having window buttons (close, minimize) disappear. You start Googling and spending a lot of time – sometimes days – trying to find how you can fix it.

You are frustrated (sometimes hitting your monitor/tower yelling some vulgarities at it as if it understands and you will kill it if it doesn’t fix it… there’s no Valentine’s love there, that’s for sure) and are ready to go back to Microsoft Windows.

But wait!

You keep thinking, “I wish I could just reset it back to its defaults, like a clean install, without losing all my applications and data.”

Well, you’re in luck. There is a way to reset your Desktop settings back to their defaults. If you keep in mind that everything in Linux is a file, all of its settings are files. All of Gnome’s customizations are located in their own specific folders. And these settings are user specific; they are in your Home folder. If you would create another user and log in with that user, you wouldn’t have any of the problems you are having in your own account. If you remove all these folders, you essentially remove all the settings. Therefore, we will remove the folders needed to reset Ubuntu/Gnome back to its defaults.

UPDATE (2008.01.30): Keep in mind that this will only reset your Gnome-specific settings. If you are having problems with your video card, display, x-server, etc., this WILL NOT fix your problems.

If you don’t have access to your graphical (GUI) desktop to delete these folders in Nautilus or you’re stuck at the login screen, drop to a terminal by hitting CTRL + ALT + F1, login to your account, and run this command:

rm -rf .gnome .gnome2 .gconf .gconfd .metacity

Get back to your GUI desktop by hitting CTRL + ALT + F7.

Login and VOILÀ! Just like the first time you ever logged into your Gnome desktop.

Glossary of Common Linux and Computer Terms

If you are new to Linux (whether it’s [K]Ubuntu or any other distro), you will run into terms that will confuse you or just scare you away! Don’t be afraid, though, there are plenty of resources to help you out.

Here are a few webpages I’ve come across that will help you understand and learn some of those weird names and acronyms on your way to ultimate Linux geekdom (it’s not a bad thing!):

Linux Forums – Glossary of Common Linux and Computer Terms

http://www.froggynet.com/glossary.html

About.com – http://linux.about.com/library/glossary/blglossaryindex_a.htm

And of course, you can always refer to the almighty Wikipedia.

Amarok Gets Updated to 1.4.5

The best music manager and player (IMHO) for Linux, Amarok, has been updated to version 1.4.5. If you are an Ubuntu user, it works without any problems in the Gnome desktop environment, even though it is a KDE application. You can download the new version here:

http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Download

Some notable new features and changes include:

• An integrated Shoutcast stream directory.
• Support for custom labels. Organize your music how you want.
• Magnatune redownload manager
• Improved sound quality when using the equalizer with xine.
• “Automatically show context browser” feature makes a return, as per popular request. It is however disabled by default.
• Cover images are shown in collection browser.
• New items in the playlist are colorized, as a visual cue.
• Synchronize play count, last played time and date of modification to iPods
• Greatly improved sound quality for the xine equalizer.
• …and much more.

As a side note, Linux FUD is included in Amarok’s Wiki. Neat.

Geeky Distractions: Falling Into the Pits of Geekiness

Two months and eight days. That’s how long it has been since my last post on December 3, 2006. There’s no excuse, but there are reasons. Not that these reasons are justified.

I got distracted. Well, to be honest, I got geekier… and distracted.

First, I got sucked into this massive multiplayer online roleplaying space game called EVE Online: Revelations. I even had a promo on here for a while. It’s a great game. I’m not a gamer, but I’ve been fascinated with the cosmos of late and when I saw the screenshots and trailers, I had to give the 14-day trial a go. For 2 weeks I was immersed in travelling the universe. And when I mean travel, I literally mean over 30 minutes of real-time gameplay just to travel from one point to another at hyper speed with brief stops. This game universe is IMMENSE and awe-inspiring! It’s quite odd travelling the universe without a real sense of up or down. Anyhow, once my trial was done, it satisfied my curiosity and quenched my fascination and I let it go.

Second, I once again screwed up my computer by installing Windows Vista Ultimate… legally, I might add (MSDN Subscription). Although my main system is Ubuntu, I’m a true geek and I really wanted to have Vista, despite all the warnings. It’s a new toy to play with. I tried installing it in a dual-boot configuration with Ubuntu, but it seems Vista’s boot-loader has changed and it now takes over your system – in a true Microsoft way – and no matter what I would do, I couldn’t get a GRUB menu. Nevertheless, Vista doesn’t work well with my audio card and crappy ATI Radeon 9200SE card so I did a clean install of Windows XP, preserving my Ubuntu. I’ll try again later once I have better hardware and research.

Third, the Christmas holidays happened. No time really to be blogging.

Fourth, with my fascination with the Cosmos still strong and vibrant, I started watching Stargate SG1 from Season 1 to Season 9 and Stargate: Atlantis, enthralled with the idea of travelling to billions of other solar systems and planets. I started watching it New Year’s day and I’m currently halfway through Season 9 of SG1 and Season 2 of Atlantis. That’s a lot of Stargate! There’s no soap in the world that will wash the geek out of me now! (And no, I don’t live in my parents’ basement. I have my own home, thank you.:))

Fifth, I got distracted by trying out World of Warcraft for a week. Again, I’m not a gamer, but I’m captivated by the whole concept of massive real-world gaming worlds.

Sixth, I got a brand-new 20.1″ LG LCD monitor (L204WT) to replace my failing Samsung 19″ SyncMaster 955DF CRT monitor, and it was only 2 years old. Why is this a distraction? Well, my old CRT monitor was getting very blurry (common problem with this monitor – don’t buy one) and I had to reduce the contrast to make the screen darker so I can read the text on it… and the colors weren’t vibrant. So when I got the LCD, it was like a whole new world for me. I am now able to theme my OSes with darker themes and still read the text. I’ve been playing around A LOT with my themes in both Ubuntu and Windows XP. I will have screenshots of them posted here soon. Ubuntu looks so much better than I’m used to now. The only gripe about this monitor is that it has an odd resolution of 1680 x 1050 and it makes it difficult to find wallpapers that fit without having to edit them.

So that makes 5 pits of geekiness (not counting the Xmas point) that I fell into that distracted me from this blog. Someone throw me a rope. Well, this blog could be considered another geek pit. Hopefully now I’ll steer clear from these attractive pits of geekiness and concentrate on this blog a little more.

Stay tuned…