My Ubuntu Blog

I noticed that many pages in Ubuntu Wiki Documentation only tell users to apt-get the packages that they need to install in order to do certain things. Ubuntu is an easy to use GNU/Linux Operating System based on Gnome. Ubuntu has easy of use on top of their priority list. But it seems like documentation team has this wrong idea that new Linux or Ubuntu users would find apt-get an easy way to do things. Unfortunately this is not the case. I personally don’t like to use apt-get install when I want to install some package. I prefer to look for it in Synaptic with Multiverse and Universe repositories enabled.

Most windows users who are new to Linux would find anything that involves terminal as a highly advanced and unreliable way to do some thing. They would prefer Synaptic because it has an interface, it shows valueable information about packages before installation and it is easy to use.

Unfortunately, most Ubuntu Wiki Documentation pages do not mention that the packages they are instructing us to apt-get can also be installed using Synaptic. When I was first trying to get media files work on Ubuntu, I failed to apt-get install gstreamer plugins and then I wasted so much time to figure out what media players would work for me. Later I found that I can download all gstreamer plugins using Synaptic.

May be there are some strong reasons behind using apt-get through out the documentation pages but I can not figure them out.

Tags: ubuntu, linux, debian

Ubuntu by default supports free formats for audio and video files and it doesn’t (by default) support many popular audio and video formats. These formats are called Restricted Formats. It doesn’t mean that you can not play these formats in Ubuntu. Ubuntu Wiki has detailed information about enabling support for Restricted Formats. In this post I will only talk about how I worked around this issue.

VLC GTK+

VLC multimedia player is a crossplatform multimedia player from Video Lan. It plays MPEG, MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, MOV, WMV, QuickTime, mp3, Ogg/Vorbis files, DVDs, VCDs, and multimedia streams from various network sources. If you have universe and multiverse repositories enabled. You can download it from Applications > Add Applications > Sound and Video.

Real Player 10

Real Player is a streaming sound and video player from RealNetworks. RealNetworks does not allow redistribution of their software. Therefore, this package requires the user to fetch the real player archive separately from their web site. Here is how I installed Real Player:

Download the package realplayer_10.0.6-0.0_i386.deb OR realplayer_10.0.6-0.1_i386.deb to your Desktop. You will also need a support package libstdc++5 to successfully install Real Player.

cd ~/Desktop
 sudo apt-get install libstdc++5
 sudo dpkg -i realplayer_10.0.6-0.0_i386.deb

OR

cd ~/Desktop
 sudo apt-get install libstdc++5
 sudo dpkg -i realplayer_10.0.6-0.1_i386.deb

Depends on which realplayer package you downloaded. Just incase if you fail to apt-get libstdc++5 you can try installing it from Synaptic.

Thats all I have on my computer to enjoy music and videos in non-free formats.

Well, this is the first confusion I had after installing Linux based Ubuntu. During the installation it created a user account and asked password for it but didn’t asked to creat a root account and set password for it. When I clicked on some applications where a super user priviledges were needed I was asked to enter the root password. Since I set up only one password during the installation, so I assumed that it would work for root account aswell, and it did.

Ubuntu by default restricts direct root account login to make Ubuntu more secure. Default user can take all the actions as super user (user with root or super user priviledges) by providing password whenever needed. You do not need a password to launch and use applications but you do need password when playing around with System Tools, Administration and some tasks in Preferences. Ubuntu documentation clearly states that it is highly recommended not to allow root to login graphically. But isn’t open source software means freedom? Yes it does and if you enjoy freedom by taking risks then you can enable root login via graphical interface. In Gnome, Open System –> Administration –> Login Screen Setup. Click on the security tab and check Allow root login. I am doing great with out enabling root login and I find it quite fun to have full control without switching between sessions.

Default user can run all the Administrative tasks using terminal aswell as Graphical interface for different utilities. Below are a few examples of using sudo in various ways:

To copy paste a file in a directory where you can not normally paste anything without sudo priviledges. For example, when adding fonts into share directory:

sudo cp /home/username/Desktop/fontname.ttf /usr/share/fonts

To launch any application with super user privileges do this:

gksudo gedit

The above given command opens Gedit, default text editor in Ubuntu. You can replace gedit with any other application you want to launch. You can launch your file browser and edit files which you can not normaly edit without super user privileges:

gksudo nautilus

Your password is stored by default for fifteen minutes after this time you will be asked to re-enter super user/ root password.

Ubuntu Wiki has detailed information about using the sudo and root account.

After Installing Ubuntu, I was pleased to find out that it had my favorite web browser Firefox installed by default. Since Firefox allows users to manually configure proxy settings, I had no trouble browsing web. The second decission that I needed to make was to choose my default mail application. I used Mozilla Thunderbird on Windows but since Evolution came pre-installed with Ubuntu Breezy Badger 5.10 I decided to give it a try. The first thing I needed to know was how to configure it for my Gmail account. I found this tutorial. Followed the instructions but failed to fetch mail from my Gmail account.

Unfortunately Evolution mail client doesn’t come with a connection tab in Edit > Preferences. It gets connection settings from Gnome’s environmental settings which could be changed in System > Preferences > Network proxy. Evolution doesn’t get my connection settings and gives errors “No route to host” or “Network is unreachable”.

After a few attempts to find out a solution I gave up and installed my preferred mail client, Thunderbird. After installing Thunderbird, I had no problem configuring it for my Gmail account because I was already familiar with the interface, settings and it had the connections tab in Preferences under Edit menu. I can not understand why the same network settings work in Thunderbird and not in Evolution? When comparing both clients, Thunderbird surely lacks many features that Evolution offers but in my case I don’t need these features, I just need some application to fetch email from my account and Thunderbird does that perfectly.

Ubuntu is a complete Linux based operating system. Only a month ago, I installed Ubuntu on my computer and since then I never looked back to Windows XP that I previously used for all my work. The purpose of this blog is to tell the world that it is not very difficult to use Linux based distros like Ubuntu. I will talk about what made me switch to Ubuntu and how I configured all my hardware and software. I will also talk about the open source software that I am currently using on my Ubuntu installation. So here I go:

Why I switched to Ubuntu:

I had a copy of pirated Windows XP installed on my computer. Almost every one in my country (Pakistan) has pirated copies of Windows installed on their machines. Even some government, educational and business institutes do not bother to buy a license from Microsoft Pakistan. The two main reasons for this piracy at such a big level are:

1. Pirated CDs are easily available in all big and small towns at just Rs. 30 ($0.5). Government usually doesn’t take any hard action against piracy. It is illegal in Pakistan to sell or buy these CDs but still government ignores this huge business for the sake of promoting Information culture in Pakistan.
2. Microsoft Corporation, has a office in Pakistan and they usually do not pressurize government of Pakistan to combat Piracy. Perhaps it is because they don’t want people of Pakistan to start using legal copies of Linux based operating systems. Microsoft knows very well that Windows is quite expensive for Pakistanis and most computer users in Pakistan will not be able to buy it.

Unlike everyone else, I felt really bad using an illegal copy of Windows. I first bought Red Hat Linux and tried to install it on my computer nearly an year ago. Installation went smoothly but I was unable to configure my modem. I was also unable to fix screen resolution and install fonts. Now I know that it wasn’t very difficult to do that. At that time I had a small hard disk so I wasn’t able to dual boot. Hence, I had no Internet connection to learn how to configure my modem and do things. I gave up way too early and way too easily.

Two months ago, I found Ubuntu. They were sending free CDs of Ubuntu to anyone anywhere in the world. I ordered a package for myself which arrived at my doorstep with in two weeks. I popped in the install CD and ran through installation wizard. Just like Red Hat, Ubuntu also installed smoothly. After the installation I was happy to see that it not only had my favorite web browser Firefox pre-installed, but it also worked with my Network proxy. With easy to use interface I configured my network easily. I still had windows XP installed on the other partition, but I was spending my time to learn how to do things in Ubuntu. It was not very difficult and I am now a happy and satisfied Ubuntu/Linux user. Finally, I am free.