My Ubuntu Blog

Dennis talked about the issue of unhealthy Ubuntu systems and how they interrupt between distribution upgrades. Dennis presents a list of signs to identify a possibly unhealthy system. He writes:

What makes an Ubuntu system unhealthy, you’d say – well here are a few examples:

• Automatix/easyubuntu/fasterdapper
• Third party packages
• checkinstall’ed or alien’ed packages

The problem is that many people think that Automatix, EasyUbuntu, fasterdapper, and other such tools are the easiest and quick ways to configure their systems for multimedia and everything else. Since these tools are mentioned throughout Ubuntu forums and has their Wiki pages in Community Documentation, newbies usually assume that it is safe to use them and they can undo these actions just as easily as they perform them. Looking at the Ubuntu forum’s edgy upgrade troubleshooting thread, it seems untrue.

It makes users like me wonder, how we might go about customizing our Ubuntu system in a safe and healthy manner. We need a solution which does not create problems with future upgrades and could easily be undone if needed. Some ways to resolve this issue were suggested in the discussion on Dennis’ post. These include a Ubuntu Health Checker, warnings on using scripts such as those mentioned above and providing properly integrated Ubuntu alternates to these tools. I particularly found Joey Stanford’s Distribution Upgrade technique more useful, but it needs a fast working Internet connection.

People often ask about how they can make changes to their Grub boot loader menu. This is one of the most commonly asked question that comes from newbies who have a dual/multi boot Ubuntu with some other operating system(s) like Windows, Kubuntu,Xubuntu or some other Linux distro installed. Open Source software are about Freedom, so basically all open source software are easy to modify. In most cases the settings are saved somewhere in a text file and all you need to do is to open it up and modify these settings.

1. Open Nautilus with root privileges by typing this:
gksudo nautilus
2. Now go to /boot/grub/
3. Open the file menu.lst in Text Editor of your choice.

This is where you can make changes to your Grub menu. You can change the timeout before Grub automatically loads the default operating system. You can also change the default operating system to boot.

Suppose if you have Ubuntu and then you install Kubuntu to a different partition on your hard disk. The later installed OS Kubuntu would either ask you to install or not to install Grub boot loader or simply install the Grub. Now if you want to make changes to your Grub menu then you will make these changes in Kubuntu, you will have a menu.lst file in your Ubuntu installation but its not functioning anymore.

Ubuntu Documentation also has a page about how to change default operating system.

So many people complained to me that they do not enjoy gaim because it does not supports Yahoo! web cam. Personally I don’t like web cams, but there are so many people out there who love to use Yahoo! messenger with web cam support. I wanted to assure people that they can chat with their Yahoo buddies and with Web Cams, this led me to search for an Instant messenger that supports Yahoo Web Cams and is available on Linux and I found GYachE.

It has all the features of Official Windows Yahoo Client and then some more. It is a little buggy at the moment. Like whenever someone invites me for voice chat I get disconnected from Yahoo servers. Popup menu that appears when someone right clicks disappears as soon as I remove my finger from the mouse button. So I need to hold it until I select an option from the menu. The extra information that it displays in a Chat window is really annoying specially when one is in a crowded chat room. Documentation on official site is empty and there no FAQs or Wiki. To get information about troubleshooting you will have to join their mailing list.

With all these minor issues, I still think that it is quite usable.

I downloaded the deb package for Ubuntu Dapper and installed it. Once logged in and joined a Yahoo! Chatroom, I instantly noticed the enhanced spam protection which is a blessing since usually there are quite many spam bots on all popular yahoo chatrooms spamming users with spam instant messages. I do not have a web cam so I decided to check the performance of Web Cam feature by viewing some one’s web cam. I don’t have any one on my Yahoo messenger buddy list with a web cam. So I had to request strangers to show me their web cam. This was difficult and I felt awkward but I needed to write this post so this was required. Some guy kindly showed me his webcam which worked quite well.

So I think now I can tell people that they can use Yahoo! web cam on Ubuntu. It is not as good as in Windows, but its there waiting to be polished.

I have started to like the Terminal. Like all those people who never used anything else other than MS Windows OS, I was afraid of doing things by typing commands manually. I wanted graphical user interface for every thing. Now that I am using Ubuntu for sometime, I have realized that sometimes it is easier to do things via CLI than using a GUI. The first downside is that the GUI consumes more CPU power and memory to perform simplest tasks. Which means that doing things GUI way takes more time than doing the same things by typing commands.

For example there is a file on your Desktop that you want to move to some folder where you need administrative privileges to paste a file. Now if you decide to do it the GUI way, you will have to first select the file and copy it, then you will have to run file manager (Nautilus, Thunar, Konqueror, etc.) with root privileges. Then you will have to locate the folder where you want to paste the file and finally paste it.

Doing the same task with command line all you have to do is to type this command:

sudo cp /home/nom/Desktop/desktopfile.txt /var/www/

Users can even make little scripts to perform various tasks. Like in my previous post I mentioned creating a bash script that automatically sets my keyboard layout on XFCE start up. You even have power to modify commands and create shortcuts aka “Alias” for most commonly used commands. Learning this powerful way to do things is easier. There are lots of tutorials available on the web introducing beginners to Linux command line interface. I would like to mention Ramon Casha’s excellent tutorial “The Linux Terminal – a Beginners’ Bash” which helped me a lot. Ramon takes an easy approach to show you just how powerful this Terminal is by teaching how to perform some basic commands. I strongly recommend this tutorial to all newbies.

Xubuntu (Ubuntu Linux’s XFCE based flavor) does not come with any graphical utility to switch keyboard layouts. There is a little XKB plugin that you can add to your XFCE panel but it only shows the layout in use. It does not provide an interface to add keyboard layouts neither it allows you to set keyboard shortcuts for switching between layouts. It doesn’t mean that you can not use different keyboard layouts in Xubuntu; the functionality is there waiting for someone to build a tool around it. Untill then, we will have to manually set our keyboard layouts and here is how to do this.

Create a file in /usr/bin/

gksudo "mousepad /usr/bin/fixkeyboard"

Add following lines in this file. I am using US and PK layouts in this example, please change it to the keyboard layouts you want to use. Also note that this example sets xkb option to change groups when both alt keys are pressed together.

#!/bin/bash
setxkbmap -option grp:switch,grp:alts_toggle us,pk

Save the file and exit.

Go to Applications > Settings > Autostarted Applications and click the Add button. In the Name feild type fixkeyboard and in the Command feild type /usr/bin/fixkeyboard press OK and then Close.

You are done. Now whenever you log on to your XFCE session you will be able to switch keyboard layouts by pressing both Alt keys together. If you don’t like the both Alt keys combination then you can try other group switch combinations. Replace alts_toggle in fixkeyboard file with one of the following options:

alt_shift_toggle
ctrl_shift_toggle
ctrls_toggle

Country flags for XFCE xkb plugin are located in /usr/share/xfce4/xkb/flags/. If your country’s flag is missing you can add it there, the file should be in png format and 60 x 40 pixels.

Applets are little applications that sit on your panels and make things easier for you. In Ubuntu, your default Gnome Desktop comes equipped with some very useful applets pre-installed but not activated by default. People who are absolutely new to Ubuntu and Gnome desktop are usually unaware of these applets and it takes sometime before a newbie finds them.

It is easy to drop and activate one of these applets by right clicking on an empty space in your panel and selecting “Add to Panel…“. This will open a new window displaying some applets and providing you an interface to create your own application launchers and custom application launchers. Listed below are the descriptions of some of the applets I use on my panels.

• Network Monitor Applet
  As the name suggests, this little utility helps you monitor the status and activity of your network connections. It displays a network activity indicator icon which you can move around your panel. Clicking the icon would display your connection properties and a button to configure your connection.
  
• Run Application…
  This applet provides you an interface to quickly run your commands, applications and do lots of other useful things using a command line. It is very useful when you want to quickly run an application with super user privileges (gksudo), or when you want to quickly run a command without launching Terminal.
  
• Deskbar Applet
  This is an all in one Desktop search utility for your Gnome Panel. Using Deskbar, you can search your computer and the web in many ways. You can look up for a word in dictionary, search for it on Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Amazon, Answers, and ebay. This all in one action bar is quite enough and it saves your panel space but If you don’t want to use Deskbar then you can always add Address Book search, Dictionary Lookup and Search for files applets on your panel.
• Battery Charge Monitor
  For laptops there is a useful Batter Charge Monitor Applet. Which monitors your laptop’s remaining power, presents it in a nice format and notifies you about the battery status.
• Separator
  There is a little separator utility which helps you organize your panel applets and launchers by adding separators between them.
  
• Not so Useful Applets
  To balance the overwhelming usefulness of applets, you have some not so useful applets as well. You have Geyes a set of eyeballs for your panel and Wanda the contemporary Oracle. Wanda is a fish that lives on your desktop and keeps you informed about future. Remember, Wanda has no use what-so-ever. It only takes up disk space and compilation time, and if loaded it also takes up precious panel space and memory. Anybody found using it should be promptly sent for a psychiatric evaluation.

Microsoft’s ISA server firewall is the tool used every where on networks in Pakistan and it is the second most common problem for Linux advocates in Pakistan. The first most common problem is getting drivers for win modems.

My Cable Internet service provider also uses the same stupid MS ISA server firewall. They are a nice group of guys but they act crazy sometimes. This time, they updated the servers and forced me to authenticate to a proxy server. No big deal, I knew how to get around this trouble but this time they had gone totally mad and configured the sever to accept HTTP requests from Mozilla and IE only.

I was unable to download updates using either synaptic or apt-get. Fortunately I found Micheal Carden’s Ubuntu – ntlmaps post and it solved all my problems. Not that I was unaware of ntlmaps but actually I was unable to get it configure to use my proxy. Micheal Carden’s post explained how he solved this by moving the server.cfg from /etc/ntlmaps/ to /usr/lib/site-python/ntlmaps/main.py. This ntlmaps thing just works!