Audio File Basics

Before diving into the software packages, it’s a good idea to first cover some of the basics of the open-source audio world. Unfortunately, the audio world is full of legal and ethical issues that cause problems for the open-source software enthusiast. You’ll need to know what to expect, or you might be disappointed. First, let’s take a quick look at the popular audio file formats used on computers, portable music players, and the Internet.


Common Audio File Formats
.aac Advanced audio coding. An ISO standard audio compression format made popular as the default format for Apple iPod music players

.flac Free lossless audio codec. An open-source, lossless audio format that doesn’t use compression

.ogg Ogg Vorbis. An open-source audio compression format equivalent to MP3 compression and quality

.mp3 MPEG-1 audio layer 3. A patented audio compression format requiring licensing rights

.wav Waveform audio format. A Microsoft and IBM standard for uncompressed audio

.wma Windows media audio. A proprietary audio compression format created by Microsoft and controlled by strict licensing requirements


For each specific audio file format, Ubuntu must use software that can play the audio file. These programs are called codecs. Each codec specializes in a specific audio file format. Ubuntu includes codecs for the FLAC, OGG, and WAV audio file formats by default. There are reasons why it doesn’t contain codecs for the others by default.

By far the most controversial audio file format is MP3. Despite the widespread popularity of the MP3 audio format (or maybe because of it), MP3 has been the subject of numerous legal battles over the past few years based on patent infringement. Because of this legal problem, many Linux distributions shy away from supporting MP3 files by default.

Instead, the Ogg Vorbis audio file format has slowly become the de facto standard for compressed audio files in the open-source audio world. Just about all Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, have full support for .ogg files. Ogg Vorbis is the recommended audio file format for handling most audio files in Linux. Many portable music devices also support the Ogg Vorbis audio file format, allowing you to use the same music files on your Ubuntu workstation and portable music player.

The Linux world also contains a library of reverse-engineered Microsoft audio codecs that can be installed on any Linux platform, including Ubuntu. Be warned, though, because the legality of these libraries is still in question in some countries.

Ubuntu doesn’t include support for Microsoft audio files due to licensing issues. A couple of options are available if you require support for Microsoft audio files on your workstation. You can purchase commercial Linux audio packages that provide support for Microsoft audio file formats. These packages are properly licensed to use the Microsoft audio format.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Using the F-Spot Editor in Ubuntu

Not only can F-Spot organize your photos, but it also provides an image editor with some advanced features to help you clean up your photos. After importing an image, you can use the image editor to apply various effects. Follow these steps to work with an image:

1. Open an image for editing from the browse window. You can open an image for editing by double-clicking on the image or by single-clicking the image and then clicking the Edit Image button in the toolbar. The selected image appears enlarged, and the other images in the library appear in a scroll area across the top.

2. Enter a comment for the image in the Comment text box. You can store comments, which are hidden in normal view but appear when you edit the image. This feature is great for adding notes about things you need to change or what the image is for.

3. Select an editing constraint from the Crop tool’s drop-down box. Editing constraints allow you to specify guidelines for the image size, ensuring that you don’t crop the image too large or too small. The available editing constraints are
• No Constraint: Allows you to set any size for the crop area.
• Same as Photo: Maintains the current dimension ratio of the image.
• 4 × 3 (Book): Sets the dimension ratio to 4 × 3, a common size used in photo
books.
• 4 × 7 (Postcard): Sets the dimension ratio to 4 × 7, the size of a postcard in
the United States.
• 5 × 7 (L, 2L): Sets the dimension ratio to 5 × 7, commonly used for mid-sized
photos.
• 8 × 10: Sets the dimension ratio to 8 × 10, a common size for larger photos.
• Square: Restricts the crop area to a perfect square.
• Custom Ratios: Allows you to set your own custom dimensions to ensure you don’t crop outside those dimensions.

The editing constraints prevent you from changing the image dimensions beyond the specified size. This ensures that your image will fit as desired.

4. Select an area of the image you want to work with. When you click and drag inside the image area, the total image becomes grayed out and the selection area becomes brighter. The image selection area is constrained by the editing constraint, if selected.

5. Click the Crop icon (the first icon in the bottom row of buttons). This action removes the excess image area from around the selected crop area. The new image area should now correspond to the editing constraint size you selected in step 3.

6. Edit the image using the Edit buttons in the bottom area. The image editing tools that F-Spot offers are
• Redeye Removal: Select the area around eyes and click this button to help reduce the redeye effect from flashes.
• Manually Adjust Colors: Alter the image shade and color.
• Convert Image to Black and White: Change the image to black and white (grayscale).
• Convert Image to Sepia Tones: Change the image to a brown-tone image, similar to old-style photographs.
• Adjust the Image Angle: Align the image with the background.
• Create a Soft-Focus Visual Effect: Slightly blur the image to produce the effect of using a soft lens in photography.
• Automatically Adjust Colors: Allow F-Spot to determine the best color shading for the image. When you select the Manually Adjust Colors tool, the Adjust Color window, You can adjust common photo features such as exposure, saturation, and brightness of the image.

7. Exit the Edit Image window by clicking the Browse button in the toolbar.

When you edit an image in F-Spot, it automatically saves the original and creates a copy of the edited image. The version setting in the Image Information area indicates that you’re viewing a modified version of the original image. This setting continues when you return to Browse mode.

You can reset back to the original image by selecting the image in Browse mode, clicking the Version drop-down list in the lower-left corner of the screen, and selecting the original entry. Each time you edit an image you create another modified copy of the image. F-Spot maintains all of the modified copies and allows you to easily switch among them using the Version drop-down list.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

The Ubuntu Directory Tree

The directory tree is the hierarchal structure that organizes directories and files in a Unix-based system. As with any organizational chart, there is a hierarchy. In the Unix directory tree, the top order of the hierarchy is the root directory. Underneath the root directory are many other directories, subdirectories, and files that branch out to form the treelike structure. If you look at the Unix directory tree as an actuall tree, think of root as the trunk, the subdirectories under root as the main branches, their subdirectories as smaller branches, and the files as leaves on the tree.

To all Microsoft Windows converts: what Windows calls folders traditional GNU/Linux users call directories. The terms have become interchangeable with folders being a more generic term that is used.

To access a file from the terminal, you need to type in the file’s path. There are two different types of paths you can use to access a file. The first type of path is an absolute path. When you use an absolute path to access a file, it starts in the root folder and makes its way down the tree. For example, if I have a file named Ubuntu saved in my Documents folder, the absolute path for this document would be /home/jeff/Documents/Ubuntu. The slash (/) is the symbol for the root folder. The folder underneath root is the home folder, followed by the current user (in my case, jeff), the Documents folder, and lastly, the file named Ubuntu.

The root directory should not be confused with the root user. The root user is the account that has complete access to all files and directories on a computer or network and is similar to the administrator account in a Microsoft Windows system. When malicious hackers claim that they have “root” on a system, this is what they are talking about; it gives them complete access to the computer or network.

A relative path is the path that is taken when you are not starting from root, /, but are pointing to a file or directory that is within the current working directory. Let’s use our previous example to show a relative path. Suppose we have changed directories to the Documents folder using cd /home/jeff/Documents. Since the current working directory is Documents, the relative path to the file Ubuntu would be Ubuntu.

When navigating the directory structure of Ubuntu, a few special characters may help you on your journey. The character . is used to refer to the current directory, and .. is used to refer to the parent directory, while ~ is used to refer to the current user’s home directory. Also, if you have a filename that contains a space, you will need to use the backslash key (\) before the space. For example, if you have a file named Ubuntu forum, you would need to enter Ubuntu\ forum. The other way to enter a path that contains a space is to enclose the entire filename in quotation marks, for example, “/home/jeff/Documents/Ubuntu forum”.

To work your way around the shell, you must have a good understanding of the Ubuntu directory tree. Understanding which directories are home to certain files is essential to your exploration and mastery of the shell. Listed below, you will find each of the directories under the root directory, along with some of the important files and subdirectories housed therein.

Unless you are doing some heavy-duty configuring of your computer, you may never have to go into some of these directories; however, it is good to know what they are used for so that you don’t accidentally do anything to them or the files they house while you are working in the shell.

There is a difference between the root directory, which is /, and a /root subdirectory. The / directory is the directory where everything branches out from. This is what we consider root. The /root subdirectory is the home folder for the root user. If you have used a different distribution of GNU/Linux in the past, you have been asked to create a root user account. When you installed Ubuntu, no such account was created. This is so that you don’t make a habit of logging in as root and accidentally doing damage to some of the directories mentioned here.

/bin The bin directory contains the commands and utilities that are used most commonly in GNU/Linux like ls, cd, and rm. Since these are executable binary files, the directory is named bin for short.

/boot The boot directory contains the Linux kernel, the bootloader configuration files, and all other files that the system needs in order to start up, or boot.

/dev This is where all of the device files for the system are stored. This directory is rather unique since the files are actually the hardware devices themselves and are treated just like files in that you can read and write them. The label /dev/sda (or /dev/hda) refers to the computer’s first hard drive. SCSI drives are labeled sda, while IDE drives are hda.

/etc Pronounced “et-see,” this directory is home to all of the system-global configuration files for all system users. For example, /etc/passwd contains information that defines all of the user accounts, while /etc/init.d is home to the scripts that run when Ubuntu is booting up.

/home Home is where the files are—the user’s files, that is. This is where documents, music, pictures, videos, and so on, are stored for the individual user. Each user on a computer has his or her directory under /home.

/lib Shared libraries and kernel modules are stored in this directory. The files here are similar to DLL files in Microsoft Windows.

/media The media directory serves as the mount point for all external devices like CDs or DVDs. Devices mounted to the media directory are done automatically.

/mnt The mnt directory is home to temporarily mounted devices like a network shared folder. Mounts to the mnt directory are done manually as opposed to automatically as with the media directory.

/opt The opt directory is used to store software that is not managed by the package manager. These are generally add-on software packages that the user downloads outside of the Ubuntu repositories.

/proc The proc directory is actually a virtual directory that provides a means for the kernel to communicate with the processes running on the computer. Each process that is running is assigned a numbered entry, which we will learn more about shortly.

/sbin This directory contains files and commands like the bin directory does; however, the programs housed in sbin are only used in system administration tasks and require superuser privileges to run them. When you run something using the sudo command, odds are it comes from this directory.

/srv This directory is home to the data files used to run services like HTTP, FTP, or TELNET.

/sys This is another virtual file system that was added for plug-and-play devices. It contains files showing the resources that are allocated to each device on the system.

/tmp The tmp directory stores temporary files. Nothing more, nothing less.

/usr This is the directory that stores everything for the user’s applications such as dictionaries for spell checkers, documentation, and source code files. Subdirectories such as /usr/bin and /usr/lib are here as well for the individual user binaries and libraries.

/var Files that change while the system is running are stored here. Log files, print spools, cache files, and anything else that would be considered a dynamic file would be found in the var directory.

Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything Ubuntu

Navigating the Terminal in Ubuntu

Learning to navigate the terminal is the first step in mastering the power of Bash. After all, you have to know where you are going and how to get there. Let’s start by creating a launcher for the terminal since we will be using it so often in this chapter. To begin, select Applications | Accessories. Normally, you would select Terminal here, but this time right-click Terminal and select Add This Launcher To Desktop. This will create a shortcut icon on the desktop that you can use whenever you need the terminal.

Now whenever you want to do some work in the shell, you can double-click the Terminal Launcher and you are ready to go.

When you first open the terminal, you will see something like jeff@jeff-desktop:~$. This means the user named jeff is logged into the computer named jeff-desktop. Now you are going to enter your first command, which will show you the path of the current directory. At the prompt, type in the letters pwd (print working directory). The pwd command is useful because it will let you know exactly where you are in the file system. Now that you have entered your pwd command, press ENTER, and you should see the following output:

jeff@jeff-desktop:~$ pwd
/home/jeff
jeff@jeff-desktop:~$

Let’s take a look at what files and folders are in the /home/jeff directory. At the command, type ls and then press ENTER. The ls command will list all of the files and folders in the current working directory.

If you want to see files in a folder other than the current working directory, you can use the ls command to do that as well. For instance, if you wanted to see what was in the Pictures folder, you could type

ls /home/jeff/Pictures
Or, you can use a shortcut to access this by typing ./ as a substitute for /home/jeff:

ls ./Pictures

Now you may want to get into the Pictures directory to do some work. You know what files and folders are in this directory from the ls command, but if you were to type “pwd” again, you would see that you are still in the /home/jeff directory and not in /home/jeff/Pictures, where you want to be. This is where the cd (change directory) command comes into play. For example, if you want to go into the Pictures directory, you would type

cd Pictures

at the prompt. Once you press ENTER, your prompt will change as well to resemble

jeff@jeff-desktop:~/Pictures$

If you want to go back to the home folder, simply type cd again and press ENTER.

Now you’ve played around a bit in your own backyard, so it’s time to take a trip outside of the home folder and into the rest of the Ubuntu file system. Remember the commands you have just learned, and you can find your way back home.

Remember—when you are in the terminal, everything is case sensitive. If you were to type ls ./pictures, you would receive a message telling you that there is “No such file or directory.” On the other hand, ls ./Pictures provides the names of the files and folders under Pictures. When you are typing filenames and folder names, you can use a little shortcut to speed through this. After you have typed the first few letters of either a folder or filename that already exists, press TAB and the rest of the name will be completed for you.

Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything Ubuntu

It’s Educational…

Earlier, when you were introduced to the Ubuntu family of operating systems, Edubuntu was one of the Ubuntu projects mentioned. Edubuntu is an operating system built on Ubuntu that is designed for school environments, but is also a popular choice for students to use at home. Many similarities exist between Edubuntu and Ubuntu aside from the names. To begin with, Edubuntu is based on the Ubuntu architecture. Many of the developers who work on Ubuntu lend a hand on the Edubuntu version as well.

Edubuntu also follows the same development cycle that Ubuntu follows, with an expected release every six months. Edubuntu differs from Ubuntu in the software that is installed with the operating system itself. Many of the educational applications found in the Ubuntu repositories are already preinstalled in Edubuntu. Also, Edubuntu comes with some extra, kidfriendly themes.

You may be wondering why a completely different version of the operating system would be needed just to have a few educational applications installed and some extra artwork to choose from. The answer is actually twofold. First of all, the developers wanted Edubuntu to be easy enough for kids to take home and run on their computers. Like all versions of Ubuntu, Edubuntu has a live CD that allows the entire operating system and its applications to run without having to install anything. Kids who use GCompris or the KDE Edutainment Suite at school can pop an Edubuntu live CD into their computers at home and enjoy the same learning environment without any need to download, decompress, or install, and without regard for the operating system that the home computer is running.

The second reason for the Edubuntu release is that schools without a dedicated IT staff can successfully run the software on any type of computer just as the kids would at home. Edubuntu also helps schools that have very limited budgets to buy new computers. Many schools are the recipients of older-model computers, and teachers often find that the computers are too old to run the latest version of Microsoft Windows. This is where Edubuntu can help. Included in Edubuntu is the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP). What this does is allow schools to turn old computers that may not have the computing power to run Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, or even Ubuntu into what are called thin clients. Thin clients are computers that run off the processing and storage of a central server. Basically, one really powerful computer, the server, handles all of the computing tasks and data storage for each individual thin client. Schools save money because they don’t need to buy pricey computers but can rely on inexpensive thin clients or even turn old computers into thin clients. Not only do schools save money on the purchase of computers, but they also save in reduced administrative costs since they only have to install and maintain the software on the server. Also, if a thin client should need repair, it can be replaced by just plugging a new thin client into the network.

While you may choose not to install Edubuntu on your home computer, you can run the live CD as you would any other version of Ubuntu. You can download the ISO image of Edubuntu by visiting www.edubuntu.org.

Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything Ubuntu

Finding Educational Software on the Web

While the Ubuntu repositories are filled with great software applications for educational purposes, you can download and install many other programs from the open source world as well. The web sites that are highlighted here all contain free, open source software that is meant to educate others whether they be children in school, young adults in college, or people interested in just learning something new.



SchoolForge
www.schoolforge.net
SchoolForge is an organization that took the basic philosophy of open source software and applied it to education. Their goal is to bring together organizations and individuals who “advocate, use, and develop open source resources for education.” Since this site is geared toward an educational audience, it is broken down into categories that include office tools, utilities, and other things that a school would make use of. For those looking for programs that will enhance learning, the Educational Software category is the place to go. This page is broken down into two subcategories, Edutainment and Games. Here you will find some of the same titles available in the Ubuntu repository and some new ones as well. Make sure to follow the instructions for any software you will be installing. If you have any difficulties, visit the application’s home page for help. While the software found on this web site is primarily geared toward working in a GNU/Linux environment like Ubuntu, you will see that many times an edition is available for the users of Microsoft Windows and the Mac OS. The effort to design their educational software to be used in multiple computer environments shows how the open source community strives for the betterment of all humankind.



Linux4Kids
www.filegate.net/linux4kids/
The Linux4Kids project is supported by the FileGate File Distribution Network, who provide freeware and open source software files to end users. Their web site won’t be winning any design awards, because the site is merely a two-column table—one column containing the name and file of the software and the other, a description of the software application. While the aesthetics may not be too appealing, the software available to the user is. Over 70 different programs can be downloaded and installed, from typing tutors to programs that will draw complex chemical structures. While Linux4Kids offers a nice library of educational software, you may notice that all of the files here are compressed using ZIP or RAR formats. Early on in this book, we discussed how these file formats are not native to GNU/Linux, so without a program like Ark or Fileroller, Ubuntu will not decompress them for you to install. Both programs can be installed from the Synaptic Package Manager.



The Free Software Foundation
http://directory.fsf.org/category/educ/
The whole purpose of the Free Software Foundation is to support software where the user has the freedom to analyze, study, and modify the source code. With learning and education having such a strong emphasis in the mission of the Free Software Foundation, it is no wonder that they include a healthy sampling of educational software in their free software directory that they maintain in partnership with UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). Not only does the Free Software Foundation have the largest library of educational software for you to download, it is also organized much more formally than the other two sites mentioned. The Education category is broken down into eight subcategories: Online, Elementary, Secondary, Adult, Typing, Programming, Misc, and Language Learning. Once you start browsing the subcategories, you can find software to help with learning, but you will also find robust applications that educational institutions can use to deliver online training and courses, student management systems, and grade-book software to accommodate the growing number of schools, colleges, and other educational institutions that are turning to open source software.

Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything Ubuntu

Ubuntu Mailing Lists

An up-to-date, full page of mailing lists for Ubuntu can be found at http://lists.ubuntu.com/ where users can see a list of available lists, view archived discussions, and can subscribe to lists through a Web interface. Table 8-1 presents the mailing lists organized by topic areas.
Lists are one of the oldest forms of communication by e-mail. A mailing list provides a single e-mail address that, when mailed to, will then relay the received message to a large number of people. In Ubuntu, lists are topical, and individuals can subscribe to a mailing list if they want to receive information on the list's topic. All mailing lists at Ubuntu are hosted at lists.ubuntu.com. If you would like to send a message to a list, simply e-mail @lists.ubuntu.com while replacing with the name of the list you are trying to mail.

With a few exceptions (e.g., the technical board e-mail list), anybody can subscribe to any Ubuntu list. In most cases, the capability to send e-mail to lists is restricted to list members (membership in lists is, of course, open to anyone). This means that all e-mail sent to a list from someone who is not a member of that list is put into a queue to be reviewed by a human "moderator" before it is broadcast to list members. This is done as an anti-spam measure. Users can subscribe to lists and then configure the system to never send e-mail. For several e-mail lists, all messages are moderated. This is largely to ensure that lists remain "low volume" or "announcement only."

Ubuntu's mailing lists are run by the popular Mailman software, which may be familiar to some users. Mailman makes it simple to subscribe to lists, to unsubscribe, and to configure any number of options about mail delivery. One popular option is to receive a daily "digest" of messages rather than a separate e-mail each time a new message is sent. This is all available through a Web interface at http://lists.ubuntu.com. Users can also subscribe to lists by sending an e-mail with "subscribe" in the subject line to -REQUEST@lists.ubuntu.com.

While each list plays an important role in the Ubuntu community, a few central lists warrant a little more detail and may be a good idea for users to consider subscribing to. These are detailed below.

ubuntu-announce

This fully moderated list relays all important announcements for the Ubuntu project and usually contains less than one e-mail per week. It is the first place where new releases are announced and where other important information can be found first. If you use Ubuntu, you may want to consider subscribing to this list. If you only subscribe to one list, this should be it.

ubuntu-devel-announce


This fully moderated list contains announcements related to the development of Ubuntu. It is low volume and contains one to three e-mails per week. If you work with code in Ubuntu, use a development release, or contribute on any technical level, you should be on this list. If you are at all involved in development for Ubuntu, this (in addition to ubuntu-announce) is the list you must subscribe to.

ubuntu-users


This is a primarily support-oriented list for questions and answers that Ubuntu users have. It is a very high-volume list, but it is an excellent place to ask questions and have them answered. It is a useful general-purpose list for discussion of any issue that pertains primarily to using Ubuntu.

ubuntu-devel


This list is the primary site for general purpose discussion of Ubuntu development. If you are looking to contribute to Ubuntu in any technical way, you should subscribe to this list and begin to follow the discussion. The list is relatively high volume.

sounder


Sounder is the unmoderated community "chitchat" list. Sounder is the collective noun to describe a group of "Warthogs" and was initially the e-mail list that supported the small, invite-only group of users who tested the Ubuntu 4.10 Warty Warthog release before it was announced to the world. The list has been kept for historical reasons under the old name but now provides a venue for the discussion of anything that is "off topic" in the other venues. It frequently hosts discussion of Ubuntu news, events, advocacy, and activism and is an important list for any community member who is participating and contributing to Ubuntu in less technical ways.


Source of Information : The Official Ubuntu Book

How to Convert OGG Files to MP3

OGG files may be great for saving file size, but if you want to listen to your audiobook version of Venetian Blinds on your iPod, you need to convert those files to MP3. Open the Add/Remove tool and type Sound Converter into the search box. Remember to have the Show menu set to All Available Applications, or the application will not be found. Once Add/Remove has located this application, install it onto your computer. Odds are you will need the MP3 encoder package. To download this, you need to open your web browser and point it to http://soundconverter.berlios.de/gstreamer-mp3-encoding-howto/. When the page opens, find the Ubuntu section and click Click Here. The package manager will open a window asking if you would like to install additional software. Click Yes and the package manager will download and install this for you.

Now that everything is installed, navigate to Applications | Sound & Video | Sound Converter. Once Sound Converter is opened, go to Edit | Preferences and under the Type Of Result? section, select MP3 and then Close. Now you can use the icons on the menu bar to add files and folders to be converted. Once you have everything selected, click Convert to make a copy of all your OGG music files in the MP3 format for your iPod.

Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything Ubuntu

Get Your iPod to Work in Ubuntu

Many competing portable media players are on the market today, but iPod by far takes the lion’s share of the market. This little device developed by Apple has revolutionized the music industry, revitalized Apple computers, and changed the way we look at multimedia. Knowing how much the iPod is a part of modern culture, you can be sure that the Ubuntu development team ensured that their operating system would be able to transfer music to an iPod. The iPod should mount when you plug it into your computer. If it does not, please refer to the following How To box. If your iPod does mount, then you can skip to the next section.

Once the iPod is mounted, you need to install a program called gtkpod. This program allows you to transfer files to and from your iPod. Installing gtkpod can be done through the Add/Remove tool under Applications. When the Add/Remove window opens, type gtkpod in the search box. Once it is found, click Apply to install. If you go to Applications | Sound & Video | gtkpod. Minus the bells and whistles of iTunes, gtkpod doesn’t look all that different in terms of functionality.


Connect Your iPod
Sometimes Ubuntu may not automatically recognize your iPod. In this instance, you have to go into the Terminal and get your hands dirty. Once you start up the Terminal, enter the following:

pt-get install ipodslave

After you type this, try reconnecting the iPod to your computer. If it mounts, you are done. If not, you have to mount the device yourself. To do this, you need to find the device. Again, open the Terminal and type

dmesg

This will give you quite a bit of output. Search through this to find iPod and determine how Ubuntu recognizes this device. It will be something like “/dev/sda,” so we will use this for the example. More than likely, the iPod will have two partitions: one, /dev/sda, which contains the device’s firmware, and the other, /dev/sda2, which contains your music and other goodies. This is the partition you need to mount.

Back in the Terminal, enter

sudo mkdir /mnt/ipod

This will create the folder you are mounting the iPod to. Type

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

When the editor opens, add
/dev/sda2 /mnt/ipod vfat user,noauto,umask=000 0 0

Be sure to save this file. Now you can mount your iPod by typing this in the Terminal:

sudo mount /dev/sda2


Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything Ubuntu

View and Edit Pictures with Ubuntu

One of the greatest things about owning a home computer is that you can store thousands of pictures on the hard drive. With advances in digital photography, you no longer have to go out and buy film or pay for developing costs. You can easily transfer your pictures from your camera to your computer. If you have the right printer, you can make as many high quality copies of a photograph as you want without having to leave the house.

As with music, video, and documents, Ubuntu creates an appropriate folder for you, in this case called Pictures. As you may have guessed, this is a storage location for your digital photographs and any other graphics you bring to the computer. Not only does Ubuntu provide you a place to store your pictures, but the nice people at Canonical made sure that Ubuntu came with an application that would help you import, organize, share, and edit your digital pictures. This program, called F-Spot, can be accessed by selecting Applications | Graphics | F-Spot Photo Manager. F-Spot supports 16 different graphical file types including JPEG, TIFF, GIF, and PNG. If you need to touch up your photos before sharing them on the Web, you can remove red eye, crop pictures, resize, and even adjust the brightness and contrast. As with most everything else in Ubuntu, you are provided a fully functional tool for absolutely free!



Importing Pictures
To get started with F-Spot, you need some pictures. Begin by launching F-Spot. When the application window appears, insert the media that contains the pictures you are going to import. Click the Import button on the image menu bar to bring up the Import window. Next, select where you are importing from. Under Import Source use the drop-down menu to select the CD. As soon as you select the CD, the pictures on that disc will begin to load. When F-Spot is done loading the pictures, you can click the Import button.

If you would like to import pictures directly from a digital camera, start up F-Spot and then connect the camera to the computer. Once the computer and the camera are communicating, you can click the Import button. This time, select the camera from the Import Source menu. Once the pictures are loaded, click Import to bring them into F-Spot.

F-Spot stores the pictures in its Catalog. If you wish to move pictures to the Pictures folder, you will need to select the pictures you want to send to the folder first. Once you have them selected, click File | Export To | Folder. The Folder Export window will open; select the folder you want to send your pictures to. For further organization, F-Spot creates a Gallery in the folder you choose. You can rename this gallery whatever you want. Under Export Method you also have the option to create a web gallery that can be uploaded to a site, or to export just the pictures themselves. When you are ready, click the Export button.

Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything Ubuntu

Watching Videos with Ubuntu

Long before YouTube videos and video podcasts were all the rage, people used their computers as a means to play DVDs and streaming video. Whether the computer was part of a home theater system or was a simple desktop system that contained a DVD player, the ability to play back video has become a standard in home computing. While sites like YouTube embed video into the web page itself, other types of video rely on a separate application to play back video for the user.

If you download a video or plan to watch a DVD, you need a separate video player. That is where Totem comes in. Totem is the video player that is installed as a default program with the Ubuntu operating system. To launch Totem, simply go to Applications | Sound & Video | Movie Player.


If you are playing directly from a DVD, you will first need to install some additional software since most commercial DVDs you buy are encrypted to prevent piracy. To install the software that will decrypt the content on the DVD, you will first need to add the packages through the Synaptic Package Manager. Do this by selecting System | Administration | Synaptic Package Manager. In the search box, type libdvd and you will be presented with quite a few different options as shown in the following illustration. I would suggest you mark all of them for installation since there are a few cool applications that you may use later, but at least you will need to mark the following for installation: libdvdnav4, libdvdread3, and gxine. While the livdvd* files will decrypt the DVD’s content, gxine will provide Totem with support for your DVD’s menu features. Once everything you want is marked for installation, click Apply. To complete the installation, open the Terminal, type the following, and then press ENTER:

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh

Now Totem should be ready to play DVDs when you insert the disc in your DVD player. To prevent any PEBKAC errors, make sure that you have a DVD player installed in your computer! You cannot play a DVD if you only have a CD-ROM player.

If you wish to open a video file that is downloaded to your computer, you will need to select Movie | Open and then navigate to the folder where your video is saved. Of course, it is a best practice to save your videos under the Videos folder that Ubuntu created for you at installation. If you wish to open a video on the Web, you can select Movie | Open Location. When the Open Location window appears, type the URL of the video you wish to view in the text box and then click Open. Totem comes complete with quite a few features you may find useful as well. If you click View, you are able to change the Aspect Ratio of your video, show subtitles if they exist, show or hide the controls, or have Totem show your video in Full Screen mode rather than the small window provided at startup.

If you click Edit, you have the option of selecting either Repeat mode to continuously loop a video or Shuffle mode to randomly play videos in a playlist. While in the Edit menu, you can click the Preferences menu to change the general appearance and functionality of Totem, change the display/color balance, and change your audio preferences. Under the Edit menu, you can also select Plugins, which allows you to install different add-on plug-ins for Totem that will further enhance your video playback experience.

Finally, clicking the Go menu will allow you to navigate to the different menus available when playing a DVD such as the main DVD menu and the Chapter, Title, Audio, and Angle menus. You can also use the Go menu to skip scenes and chapters both forward and backward.



Install Extra Codecs
There will be times when you try to watch a video and you are informed that you do not have the right codec to play the file. Codecs are programs that compress and then decompress media files so that they are portable. Movies on DVD require codecs to get
the file to fit on the disc, and videos on the Internet require codecs to compress the files so they can be transferred quickly. Without the proper codec on your end, the file cannot be decompressed and thus cannot be played. The repositories are full of various codecs that you may need to install for your videos to play properly. These codecs can all be installed through the Add/Remove tool in Ubuntu. Just search for the term codec, and you will be presented with a long list of files. You can choose to install all of the codecs at once or wait until you need them to play a file before installing. Totem may also volunteer to search for an acceptable codec for you to install for a particular video. If Totem is going to be so gracious as to do all of the legwork for you, let it. Simply follow the instructions you are given, and the codecs will be installed. When installing codecs, you will be alerted to the fact that the use of codecs can be restricted. If you read the entire warning, you will see that using codecs in your country of residence is fine, so when asked, you can confidently click Confirm.

Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything Ubuntu

Cedega

Cedega is built off of the Wine code to allow GNU/Linux users the opportunity to run applications built for Microsoft Windows on their computer systems. While Wine strives to support any and all applications, Cedega focuses mainly on video games. Cedega works on a monthly subscription service. By paying the subscription, you are entitled to updates for the software, support for your product, and access to the forums of TransGaming, the company that produces Cedega. Since this is a commercial product, the people creating updates and monitoring Cedega’s support are actual employees of TransGaming.

Many opinions exist as to whether Cedega is better than Wine or vice versa. Most people in the community forums suggest trying Wine first since it is free. Many others suggest Cedega since it is built specifically for gaming and is easier to configure. As you may have noticed, the communities surrounding open source software can offer quite a bit of help, but often are laden with individual opinions. Take the advice of those who are wise enough to tell you to use what works best for you.

To install Cedega, you first have to subscribe to TransGaming’s web site. Open Firefox and type http://transgaming.com in the address bar. This will take you to the home page of TransGaming Technologies, where you need to click on Register Now. You will be required to provide personal information to TransGaming as well as payment information. Once you have purchased your subscription, TransGaming will send you a temporary password and your login information. After you log into the TransGaming site, select Downloads | Cedega from the top menu bar.

From the Downloads page, you need to select the correct package to install. Scroll down to the middle of the page, locate cedega-small_6.0.2_all.deb, and double-click it. The download window should now open and ask you what you would like Firefox to do with this file. Since it is a DEB package, you have the option to leave the default Open With GDebi Package Installer, or you can choose Save File, which will save the package to your desktop to open later. Let’s keep the default, choose the Open With option, and then click OK. Doing so will launch the Package Installer window. Click the Install Package button at the top of the window to start
the installation process.

To run Cedega, go to Applications | Graphics | TransGaming Cedega. Once you accept the license, you will be taken to the Cedega Setup Wizard. The first page will give you an overview of the setup process. Click Forward to begin. At the second screen of the Setup Wizard, you will need to enter your username and password. This information is what you set up when you created your account at TransGaming.com. After you have entered this information, make sure that the Check For Updates box is checked and then click Forward.

The third page of the Setup Wizard deals with the hardware your computer uses. Although this information is detected, you can click the Autodetect button to run Cedega through this process if you feel it is inaccurate. Once you are satisfied with the hardware settings, click Forward.

The fourth page of the Cedega Setup Wizard will run a series of tests to see how well Cedega will run on your computer. Clicking the Run Selected Tests button will begin the tests. It is wise to leave all of the tests selected, especially since this is the first time you are running Cedega. Once the tests are complete, click the Forward button to complete the Setup Wizard.

The last screen will inform you that the setup has been completed. You can now click the Finish button to launch Cedega.

Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything Ubuntu

Wine

Installing Wine
Although Wine can be installed through the Add/Remove tool, you are going to install it through the terminal so that you get the latest and most stable package. Before you launch the terminal, make sure that you have enabled all of the repositories by going to System | Administration | Software Sources.

Now launch the terminal by going to Applications | Accessories | Terminal. At the terminal window, type the following:

sudo aptitude update

This will update all of the repositories with the latest packages. Now type sudo aptitude install wine

Once the Wine installation is complete, you need to configure it, so type

winecfg

Once the directory is created, and then updated, you should get a window that looks eerily similar to something you would see in Microsoft Windows. This configuration folder is actually a hidden folder where a fake C: drive is located as well as registry files like those you would find in the version of Microsoft Windows that you are running your application under. To change the version of Windows, click on the Applications tab.



Installing and Running Programs with Wine
Let’s start by downloading a program to install using Wine. Although any Windows executable file (containing the .exe extension) will work, we are going to use FileZilla. FileZilla is a free FTP client that has versions for any platform. First, start Firefox and type http://filezilla-project.org/download.php in your address bar. When the page opens, the first option available is Windows. Select the file called FileZilla_3.0.9.3_win32-setup.exe to download.

Once the file is downloaded, create a subfolder in your home folder called Windows. Whenever you download a Windows executable, drag the file into the Windows subfolder so you will know where it is. Once you have placed the FileZilla file in the Windows folder, launch the terminal again.

In the terminal, type the following to change to the Windows directory. Remember, the terminal is case sensitive, so “windows” is not the same as “Windows!”

cd Windows

Now that you are in the Windows directory, you need to install the FileZilla file. Make sure that you type everything correctly when working in the terminal. If you are receiving an error, odds are you mistyped something, so go back and check before becoming frustrated.

wine FileZilla_3.0.9.3_win32-setup.exe

If everything has been entered correctly, you should see a window pop up to complete the installation of your software. Congratulations! Follow the rest of the installation steps that the application gives you.

Now if you thought that installing a program with Wine was simple, wait until you see how easy it is to run a program in Wine. All you have to do is recompile all of the source code contained in your application to run under the Linux Kernel, and you should be ready to go! Oh wait, Wine did that for us!

All you have to do to run your program is go to Applications | Wine | Programs | FileZilla FTP Client | FileZilla. Each time you install a software application with Wine, it will appear in the Programs menu for you. Try it with Internet Explorer or Windows Media Player. Both of these applications are free to download, and you can run them perfectly by using Wine.



Wine Is Not Genuine
If you have been using Microsoft Windows lately, then you have probably encountered the Windows Genuine Advantage. Due to the popularity of Microsoft Windows and the cost of its software, Microsoft products are often pirated. Pirated software is an illegal copy of the software that often contains a crack of some sort that allows it to run. While cracked software may run with little or no problems, pirated Windows products will not pass the Windows Genuine Advantage check. Unfortunately, some Microsoft products running under Wine do not pass this check either. If you wish to use Internet Explorer or Media Player, you will have no problems. If you wanted to run Microsoft Office, you would run into trouble if you were to try to download templates for the Office suite.

Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything Ubuntu

Fine Wine

No, we are not taking a break for refreshments. Instead, we are going to look at the third way that you can run applications built for Microsoft Windows in your Ubuntu environment. Wine HQ, or “Wine” as it is commonly called, is another recursive acronym (“Wine Is Not an Emulator”). Wine is an application that allows computers using Unix-based operating systems to run Windows applications, not emulate them. The way this works is that Wine is an implementation of the Windows application programming interface (API). It’s okay if your reaction was “Huh?” An application programming interface is actually the interface that allows one program, let’s say Microsoft Word, to communicate with another program, Microsoft Windows. When applications written for Microsoft Windows utilize a format that GNU/Linux operating systems can’t understand, it is due to the API.

Wine actually implements the Windows API, so it acts as a translator for an operating system like Ubuntu. When a Windows application tries to do something that Ubuntu doesn’t understand, Wine takes that program’s instruction and modifies it into something that Ubuntu will understand.

What does that mean? It means that with Wine, you can run programs designed for Microsoft Windows on your Ubuntu computer! That’s right, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, even Microsoft Access all run on any Unix-based operating system using Wine.

Using Wine has distinct advantages over the other two solutions we have discussed. First and foremost, you don’t need to purchase a Microsoft Windows license. Since you are not installing Windows and you aren’t emulating Windows, you don’t need a license. Wine, like Ubuntu, is free.

With Wine, you don’t have to reboot the computer as you would with a dual-boot system. Also, your processor doesn’t have to share resources with a virtual machine as you would if you relied on VirtualBox. While both of the prior solutions are solid and have their merits, I truly believe that Wine is a much better solution for the home and small business user.

That’s not to say that there are no drawbacks to using Wine. Where Wine will run quite a few programs flawlessly, some programs may encounter small errors when run through Wine. Also, Wine will not run every program written for Microsoft Windows. While the list of programs that run with no issues is constantly growing, it is by no means complete. Currently, close to 10,000 applications are in the Wine database; these are some of the more popular ones:

Dreamweaver. Web authoring tool
Flash. Web animation tool
Microsoft Office. Office suite
Kayako Live Response. Help desk suite
Timbuktu Pro. Computer remote control software
Counter-Strike. Popular game
Madden NFL 08. Popular game
Inspiration. Visual thinking software used by schools
ExamView. Software for creating tests
Encarta. Encyclopedia

If you want to find more applications that run on Wine, visit their web site for a complete database of applications and notes on how well they run, http://appdb.winehq.org/appbrowse.php.

Although the programs you find under the Ubuntu repositories and many of the others that exist in the open source community may be free of charge, many applications written for Microsoft Windows are not. Make sure that you abide by all licensing and purchase agreements if you plan on using Wine. Just because you are using a free operating system doesn’t mean all of your software is going to be free.

Source of Information : McGraw Hill Osborne Media How to Do Everything Ubuntu

Ubuntu Internet Software Suite - gFTP

Although BitTorrent is the wave of the future, plenty of Internet sites still require you to download files using the file transfer protocol (FTP). You will often find file repositories for applications, utilities, and other neat stuff on FTP sites. Unfortunately, Ubuntu doesn’t include a graphical FTP client by default, but you can easily add one.

The gFTP program is a popular FTP client for the GNOME desktop environment. It contains a host of advanced features that make it a popular file download program and allow you to

• Download file les simultaneously
• Interrupt and resume transfers
• Download entire directories with a single command
• Choose passive or active downloading
• Drag and drop files between Nautilus and gFTP
• Transfer files securely with SSH and SSH2

You can use the Ubuntu Add/Remove application to download and install the gFTP package. Just go to the Internet section of the Add/Remove application, and you’ll see it listed. After you install gFTP, you can easily download files from FTP repositories on the Internet. Just follow these steps:
1. Click Applications -> Internet -> gFTP. When you install gFTP, Ubuntu creates a link in the Internet menu for it. Clicking the link produces the main gFTP window. By default, gFTP points to your home directory as the local directory (shown in the list box on the left).

2. Enter the hostname of the remote FTP server in the Host drop-down box, the username in the User drop-down box, and the password in the Pass drop-down box. If you’ve connected to a host previously, its hostname and user login name appears in the drop-down boxes. You can select these from the list.

3. When the remote FTP session starts, a list of files and folders available appears in the list box at the right.

4. Find and select the file(s) you want to download by clicking in the list box on the right. Double-clicking a folder opens it and displays the contents of the folder. From the list box on the left, select the folder to download the file(s) to, then click the left-pointing arrow to transfer them.

5. When finished, click the icon next to the hostname to disconnect and end the FTP session.

It’s as simple as that. Using a graphical FTP client makes transferring lots of files via FTP almost painless.



Although it’s true that Ubuntu doesn’t include a graphical FTP client by default, it does provide a command-line FTP client in the default installation. Open a Terminal session by selecting Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal, then type ftp at the command prompt. The ftp> command-line prompt appears, waiting for you to enter commands.
The command-line FTP client allows you to send FTP commands directly to a remote FTP server. The most common commands you’ll need to use are

• open: establishes a connection with a remote host
• binary: sets the transfer mode for binary (application) files
• ascii: sets the transfer mode for text files
• cd: changes directories on the remote host
• put: sends a file to the remote host
• get: retrieves a file from the remote host
• close: closes the connection with the remote host
• exit: stops the FTP command line client and returns to the command prompt

You can also write scripts to use the FTP command-line client automatically. This feature allows you to schedule a file download for late at night when network bandwidth might not be at a premium.


Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Ubuntu Internet Software Suite - Transmission

Internet file sharing has become a controversial topic these days in the copyright world. However, networks such as BitTorrent (www.bittorrent.com) have found legitimate use among software companies and other content distributors as a way to offer downloads for larger files without carrying the brunt of the bandwidth use themselves. In fact, Ubuntu distributions themselves are offered as BitTorrent files for quicker downloading.

BitTorrent file transfers work by connecting to a central server and posting information about the file to download, along with your current upload and download speeds. The central server doesn’t transfer the file. It is more of a clearinghouse for information on the file download. Each file is divided into multiple pieces. Individual BitTorrent clients download the individual pieces from other clients who’ve already downloaded them, then advertise which pieces they have to offer to other clients.

This means that clients contact other clients to download the file pieces, rather than downloading directly from the server. This process is called peer-to-peer networking, and it saves bandwidth for the server because clients download directly from each other. While you’re downloading pieces of the file, other BitTorrent clients may be downloading the pieces you have from your client! This is all perfectly harmless because the BitTorrent software restricts the access that clients have to your system.

The key to a BitTorrent download is the .torrent file. The .torrent file contains the file to download and the location of the central server that coordinates the downloads. The standard Ubuntu installation includes the Transmission BitTorrent client. You start it by selecting Applications -> Internet -> Transmission BitTorrent Client.

When you find out that a file is available over BitTorrent, you first download the .torrent file for the item. After you have this file downloaded, follow these steps to get the actual file:
1. Start your BitTorrent client.

2. Select Torrent -> Add. A file browser window appears, allowing you to look for the .torrent file that controls the BitTorrent session.

3. Navigate to and select the .torrent file for the document you want to download, then click OK. The file appears in the Transmission list window, along with some status information. It can take a minute or so for Transmission to fully synchronize with the central server.

4. After the download completes, keep Transmission running in background for a while.
Proper net etiquette dictates that you allow Transmission to continue running so that other BitTorrent clients can retrieve pieces of the download file from you. They have access only to the files you offer in your Transmission session and nothing else on your workstation. The Ratio status for the file indicates how much of the file remote clients have uploaded from you compared to what you’ve downloaded. It’s polite to keep Transmission running at least until you obtain a 1:1 ratio.

5. Stop Transmission and halt the BitTorrent connection by selecting Torrent -> Quit from the menu.

Transmission places the downloaded file in the same folder as the .torrent file.

Both Nautilus and Firefox recognize .torrent files and can automatically start Transmission when you select the .torrent file, either from your local filesystem (in Nautilus) or from a web site link (in Firefox).

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Ubuntu Internet Software Suite - Terminal Server Client

If you live in a Microsoft Windows environment, you may have to work with remote Windows servers. One feature that Microsoft Windows provides for Windows clients is the Terminal Services Client application. The Terminal Services Client application allows remote Windows clients to connect to a Windows server and interact with the server desktop as if they were on the server console. This feature allows clients to run applications on the server without having to physically be at the server. This is a great way to share server applications for clients, as well as give system administrators easy access to remote Windows servers.

Believe it or not, Ubuntu also contains software that allows you to connect as a client to a Microsoft Windows terminal server. The Terminal Server Client package works just like the Windows version, allowing you to connect to Windows servers and interact with the server desktop.

Click Applications -> Internet -> Terminal Server Client to see the Settings window. In the Settings window you can start a new session by following these steps:

1. Enter the address of the remote Windows server. This can be a host address if you’re on a Windows network, or the IP address of the server.

2. Select the protocol to use. Terminal Server uses the remote desktop protocol (RDP) to connect to Microsoft Windows servers. There are two common versions, RDP 4.0 (which is called RDP) supported in Windows NT servers and later, and RDP 5.0 (called RDP5) used in Windows 2000 servers and later. The RDP5 protocol provides additional features, so use it if possible. The Terminal Server Client also supports the X Windows display manager protocol (XDMCP), the virtual network computing (VNC) protocol, and the independent computing architecture (ICA) protocols if they’re installed on your system. These protocols allow you to connect to remote UNIX, Linux, and Citrix servers.

3. Enter the username to log in with. This can be either a domain name if the server is in a Windows domain or a local username for the server.

4. Enter the password for the username.

5. Optionally, enter the domain. If the server is part of a domain and you’re using a domain user account to log in with, you’ll need to notify the server which domain to use.

6. Optionally, enter a client hostname. If you want to emulate accessing the server from a specific client hostname, enter it here. Otherwise, leave this field blank.

7. Select a protocol file, if available. The protocol file allows you to save settings related to the connection for use in later connections.

8. Save the connection settings. You can save the connection settings by clicking the Save As button, then recall them for another session using the Open button.

9. Click the Connect button to start the session.

The Terminal Server Client software attempts to establish a connection with the remote Windows server, then logs in with the login information you provided. When the login is complete, the server desktop appears in a window.

The entire desktop window for the server session appears within the Terminal Server Client window. You have full control of the session on the desktop. You can move the mouse to launch applications and type on the keyboard to enter commands. When you close the session, log out from the server but do not shut it down. The remote session works as if you were logged in from the server console. Selecting the shutdown menu item will indeed shut down the server!

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Ubuntu Internet Software Suite - Pidgin

Instant messaging (IM) has become the new killer app for the younger generation. America Online (AOL) provided one of the first popular instant messaging services, named AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM. Others include ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, and Google. A wide variety of computer operating systems, including Linux, support these various services. Ubuntu uses the Pidgin instant messenger client software. Pidgin allows you to connect to a host of instant messaging services to interact in your favorite IM environment.

Not that long ago, the Pidgin application was called GAIM, but copyright litigation forced the GAIM Open Source project to change its name, and they came up with Pidgin. You may still find documentation on the Internet and in books referring to the GAIM package. Don’t get confused by the name change; they’re the same product.



Using the Pidgin Instant Messenger
To start Pidgin, choose Applications -> Internet -> Pidgin Instant Messenger. The first time you start Pidgin it detects that there are no accounts configured, so the Accounts Management dialog box appears. To configure a new IM account in Pidgin, follow these steps:
1. Click the Add button in the Accounts dialog box. The Add Account dialog box appears.

2. In the Protocol drop-down list box, select the IM network you want to use. Your options are AIM, bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, GroupWise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MySpaceIM, QQ, Simple, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo, and Zephyr.

3. In the Screen Name textbox, enter the login name for your IM account.

4. In the Password textbox, enter your IM password for this account.

5. In the Local Alias textbox, enter the name you actually want to show in people’s IM clients, unless you want to use your screen name. Often people prefer to appear as alias names rather than use their login name in IM sessions.

6. Check the Remember Password check box so that you don’t have to enter your password every time you connect to this IM service. Remember to log out or use the Lock Screen option if you walk away from your computer, just in case someone gets it into his or her head to go play a trick and send messages to people by using your IM client.

7. If you get email through the selected IM service and want to know when new mail has arrived, check the New Mail Notifications check box. If mail arrives while Pidgin is running, you’ll get a notification about the new mail.

8. If you want to use a tiny picture as a buddy icon, click the Open button next to the Buddy Icon label and navigate to the picture you want to use. If you don’t assign a picture for the buddy icon, Pidgin will use a blank image icon.

9. If you want access to the more advanced options for this IM service, click the Advanced tab. This tab provides additional options depending on your IM service, such as alternative servers and TCP ports.

10. When you finish entering your information, click Save to add this IM account to your accounts list.

Go through this process for each IM account you want to use with Pidgin (Pidgin can monitor multiple IM accounts). When you finish, the Accounts dialog box shows all of the IM accounts you’ve configured, and the Buddy List window appears.

In the Accounts dialog box, click the box in the Enabled column for the accounts you want
to automatically log into when Pidgin starts. You can modify the account settings at any time by selecting the account in the Accounts dialog box and clicking the Modify button. After you start a session, the Buddy List window displays your active connections. If you close the Buddy List window, the Pidgin icon appears on your panel as the program runs in background. You can open the Buddy List window by right-clicking this icon.



Pidgin Preferences
You can customize several features in Pidgin. Access the Pidgin Preferences dialog box by starting Pidgin from the Panel menu, then right-clicking the Pidgin icon in the Panel System area and selecting Preferences. The Preferences dialog box contains seven tabbed pages of settings you can customize:

• Interface: Select how Pidgin interfaces with the desktop by specifying when the Panel icon should appear, how new IM conversation windows appear, and whether to use tabbed windows or separate windows for multiple conversations.

• Conversations: Set features for your conversations, such as formatting, fonts, and notifying buddies when you start typing a message.

Smiley Themes: Manage multiple themes for inserting smiley icons in your messages.

• Sounds: Configure how you want Pidgin to notify you of conversation events, such as when buddies log in or log out, when you’re offered a new message, and when others talk.

• Network: Set additional TCP properties for a specific network, along with any specialized settings for network proxy servers you may need to go through.

• Logging: Select whether you want Pidgin to log your IM conversations and, if so, how to log them.

• Status/Idle: Configure how Pidgin detects when you’re away from the workstation and change your IM status.

Make your IM life easier by taking a few minutes to customize how you want Pidgin to work in your particular environment.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Tribler: BitTorrent and Beyond

P2P (peer-to-peer) is the nature of the Net. You can fight that, or you can embrace it. Here in the US, the mainstream entertainment business has mostly been fighting it. Hollywood and its phone and cable company allies have long regarded P2P, and BitTorrent in particular, as a copyright piracy system and a bandwidth hog. In the European Union, however, P2P is more than accepted: it’s supported by the Union itself.

Early last year, the EU granted 14 million euros to P2P-Next, a consortium of 21 media companies and universities, including the BBC, Delft University of Technology, the European Broadcasting Union, Lancaster University, Markenfilm, Pioneer Digital Design Centre Limited and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The purpose of the grant is “to develop a Europe-wide ’next-generation’ Internet television distribution system, based on P2P and social interaction”. (An additional 5 million euros is also being donated by some of the P2P-Next partners, for a total of 19 million euros.) The project has a four-year span and will include technical trials of new media applications on many devices.

“Everything we’re doing is based on open source”, says Johan Pouwelse, PhD, scientific director of P2P-Next and Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Delft. The good doctor also runs P2P-Next’s first trial application: Tribler (pronounced “tribe-ler”), a BitTorrent-based client with no servers and a “zero-cost” business model. Tribler provides an all-in-one way to find, consume and share media.

But Tribler goes beyond BitTorrent to support live streaming and other enhancements. The project’s Research page lists 26 allied development projects, including six that are already completed and operational. If you’re looking to help media evolve past the TV model, there’s a rich pile of possibilities on the Tribler project list. The Tribler download page lists two Linux sources: Ubuntu Linux and “GNU+Linux/Source”.

Check it out, and let us know how it works for you (or, you for it).

• 19 Million Euro for P2P Research:
www.tribler.org/P2P-Next/
19Million-for-P2P

• P2P Next: www.p2pnext.org/?page=content&id=264A360A217FB3FE8BD82CB9C928CBCF&mid=6BED2EAC3D127503EF53456A25D9204E

• Tribler: www.tribler.org

• Tribler Research Page: www.tribler.org/TriblerResearchSubjects

• Tribler Download Page:
www.tribler.org/Download

Source of Information : Linux Journal Issue 177 January 2009

eyeOS: Clouds for the Crowd

Cloud computing from the likes of Google and Amazon has become quite the rage in the last few years. Nick Carr’s The Big Switch and other works have pointed toward a future of “utility” computing where we’ll all use hosted apps and storage, thanks to the “scale” provided by big back-end companies and their giant hardware and software farms. But, there also has been pushback. Most notable among the nay-sayers is Richard M. Stallman, who calls it “worse than stupidity” and “a trap”.

At issue is control. Of Web apps, RMS says, “It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s Web server, you’re defenseless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.”

We wrote about it on-line at LinuxJournal.com, and among the many comments was one that pointed to eyeOS: a cloud computing approach by which people can make their own clouds: “...all you need is a Web server that supports PHP and OpenOffice.org to get the most out of the included office suite”, the commenter said. “It’s cloud computing, but at the same time you still have control over your data.”

eyeOS is based in Barcelona, and obviously, it doesn’t believe you need to be a Google or anyone special to run a “cloud” Web service environment. Unlike Google’s cloud, you don’t need to run the eyeOS’s hosted apps. You can upload your own or choose ones from eyeOS or other developers. The UI is a virtual desktop, inside a browser (just as with Google), and the initial suite of apps are the straightforward set you’d expect, plus many more. These come with user ratings and a very active set of forums for developers and users.

eyeOS is a commercial company, privately held (and debt-free, it says). Its business model is service and support. If you need help installing eyeOS or adapting apps for your company, they’re available.

• Stallman vs. Clouds:
www.linuxjournal.com/content/
stallman-vs-clouds

• eyeOS: eyeos.com/en

• eyeOS Blog: blog.eyeos.org

Source of Information : Linux Journal Issue 177 January 2009

The emacs Editor

The emacs editor is an extremely popular editor that appeared before UNIX was around.
Developers liked it so much that they ported it to the UNIX environment, and now it’s been ported to the Linux environment. The emacs editor started out as a console editor, much like vi, but it has migrated to the graphical world.

The emacs editor still provides the original Console Mode editor, but it now also has the ability to use graphical X Windows to allow editing text in a graphical environment. Normally, when you start the emacs editor from a command line, it’ll determine whether you have an available X Window session. If so, it will start in Graphical mode. If not, it’ll start in Console mode.

Although the emacs editor isn’t installed by default in Ubuntu, you can easily add it to your text editing toolbelt by using the Add/Remove feature in Ubuntu and searching for emacs22. You can also find it listed in both the All and Accessories categories.

After installing the Ubuntu emacs22 package and restarting your system, you’ll see two new entries in the Accessories section of the Applications menu:
• emacs22 (client)
• emacs22 (X11)

The emacs22 client entry starts an emacs session if you have an emacs server running on the system. Because we didn’t install the emacs server, this entry won’t be of any use now.

The emacs22 X11 entry starts a windows-based emacs session for you to use. Alternatively, you can use a console-based emacs session from the Ubuntu command line prompt. This section describes both the Console mode and Graphical mode emacs editors so that you’ll know how to use either one if you want (or need) to.



Using emacs on the Console
The Console mode version of emacs is another editor that uses lots of key commands to perform editing functions. The emacs editor uses key combinations involving the Control key (the Ctrl key on a PC keyboard) and the Meta key. In most PC terminal emulator packages, the Meta key is mapped to the PC’s Alt key. The official emacs documents abbreviates the Ctrl key as C- and the Meta key as M-, Thus, to enter a Ctrl–x key combination, the document shows C-x. I’ll do the same here so as not to confuse you. To avoid this problem you can use the Esc key as the Meta key in emacs. The only difference is that you don’t hold down the Esc key as a key combination. Instead, you press and release the Esc key first, then press the required key to perform the function.



The Basics of emacs
To start a console-based version of emacs, open a Terminal session and, at the command prompt, type

$ emacs -nw mytest.txt

When emacs starts, it displays a basic information and help screen.

Pressing any key displays the contents of the text file. You’ll notice that the top of the
Console Mode window shows a typical menu bar. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to use the menu bar in Console mode. You can use the menu bar only in Graphical mode.

Unlike the vim editor, where you have to move in and out of Insert mode to switch between entering commands and inserting text, the emacs editor has only one mode. If you type a printable character, emacs inserts it at the current cursor position. If you type a command, emacs executes the command.

To move the cursor around the buffer area, you can use the arrow keys, and the Page Up and Page Down keys, assuming emacs detected your terminal emulator correctly. If not, you can use these command keys for moving the cursor around:
• C-p moves up one line (the previous line in the text).
• C-b moves left (back) one character.
• C-f moves right (forward) one character.
• C-n moves down one line (the next line in the text).

There are also commands for making longer jumps with the cursor within the text:
• M-f moves right (forward) to the next word.
• M-b moves left (backward) to the previous word.
• C-a moves to the beginning of the current line.
• C-e moves to the end of the current line.
• M-a moves to the beginning of the current sentence.
• M-e moves to the end of the current sentence.
• M-v moves back one screen of data.
• C-v moves forward one screen of data.
• M-<> moves to the last line of the text.

There are several commands you should know for saving the editor buffer back into the file and exiting emacs:
• C-x C-s saves the current buffer contents to the file.
• C-z exits emacs but keeps it running in your session so you can come back to it.
• C-x C-c exits emacs and stops the program.

You’ll notice that two of these features require two key commands. The C-x command is called the extend command. This provides yet another whole set of commands to work with.

The emacs editor also includes a fancy way of mass-killing text. Just move the cursor to the beginning of the area you want to kill, and hit either the C-@ or C-SPACEBAR keys. Then move the cursor to the end of the area you want to kill and use the C-w command. All of the text between the two locations is killed.

The vim Editor

If you’re working in Command Line mode, you may want to become familiar with at least one text editor that operates directly within the command line environment. The vi editor is the original text editor used on UNIX systems. It uses the Console Graphics mode to emulate a text editor window, allowing you to see the lines of your text file, move around within the file, and insert, edit, and replace text. Although vim may possibly be the most complicated editor in the world (at least in the opinion of those who hate it), it provides many features that have made it a staple for UNIX administrators for decades. When the GNU Project ported the vi editor to the open-source world, they chose to make some improvements to it. Because it no longer resembled the original vi editor, they renamed it vim (which stands for vi improved).

Ubuntu installs vim by default. It also creates an alias program named vi to point to vim so that you can use either command, vi or vim, to start the vim editor from the command line prompt.

The Basics of vim
The vim editor works with data in a memory buffer. To start the vim editor, just type the vim command (or the vi alias) and the name of the file you want to edit:

$ vim mytext.txt

If you start vim without a filename, or if the file doesn’t exist, vim opens a new buffer area for editing. If you specify an existing file on the command line, vim will read the entire contents of the file into a buffer area, and makes it ready for editing.

The vim editor operates in Full-Screen mode, using the entire console window for the editor area. The initial vim editor window shows the contents of the file (if any), along with a message line at the bottom of the window. If the file contents don’t take up the entire screen, vim places a tilde on lines that are not part of the file.

The message line at the bottom provides information about the edited file, depending on the status of the file, and the default settings in your vim installation. If the file is new, the message [New File] appears.
The vim editor has two modes of operation:
• Normal mode
• Insert mode

When you first open a file (or start a new file) for editing, the vim editor enters Normal mode. In Normal mode the vim editor interprets keystrokes as commands.

In Insert mode, vim inserts every key you type at the current cursor location in the buffer. To enter Insert mode, press the i key. To get out of Insert mode and return to Normal mode, press the Esc key on the keyboard.

In Normal mode you can move the cursor around the text area using the arrow keys (as long as your terminal type is detected properly by vim). If you happen to be on a flaky terminal connection that doesn’t have the arrow keys defined, hope is not lost. The vim commands include keyboard commands for moving the cursor:
• h to move left one character
• j to move down one line (the next line in the text)
• k to move up one line (the previous line in the text)
• l to move right one character


Moving around within large text files line by line can get tedious. Fortunately, vim provides a few commands to help speed things along:
• Page Down (or Ctrl–f) to move forward one screen of data
• Page Up (or Ctrl–b) to move backward one screen of data
• G to move to the last line in the buffer
• num G to move to line number num in the buffer
• gg to move to the first line in the buffer

The vim editor has a special feature within Normal mode called Command Line mode. Command Line mode provides an interactive command line where you can enter additional commands to control the actions in vim. To get to Command Line mode, hit the colon character from Normal mode. The cursor moves to the message line and a colon appears, waiting for you to enter a command.

Within the Command Line mode are several commands for saving the buffer to the file
and for exiting vim:
• q to quit if no changes have been made to the buffer data
• q! to quit and discard any changes made to the buffer data.
• w filename to save the file under a different filename
• wq to save the buffer data to the file and quit

After seeing just a few basic vim commands you might understand why some people absolutely hate the vim editor. To be able to use vim to its fullest, you must know plenty of obscure commands. However, once you get a few of the basic vim commands down, you can quickly edit files directly from the command line, no matter what type of environment you’re in.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Ubuntu Internet Software Suite - Ekiga

The world of Internet phone service has exploded with the popularity of broadband Internet connectivity in the home. Being able to reliably place and receive phone calls to anywhere around the world from your Internet connection is pretty cool and can save you some money. Ubuntu includes the Ekiga Internet phone software to turn your Ubuntu workstation into a telephone that can reach the world! The default Ekiga Internet phone software is a redesign of the old GNOME GnomeMeeting package for Internet voice and video conferencing applications. Ekiga was expanded to provide the same basic functions as the more popular Skype software, along with compatibility with Microsoft NetMeeting. This compatibility allows you to join in conferences with your Microsoft friends.

To start Ekiga, click on Applications -> Internet -> Ekiga Softphone. The first time you

start Ekiga, you get a series of configuration windows to help you set up your system. Follow these steps to configure your Ekiga software:

1. Click Forward to start the wizard.
The Ekiga wizard may skip to step 3 automatically if it detects your full username in your Ubuntu username configuration.

2. If prompted, type the name you want to be identified by on the network. Other Ekiga users see you listed by the name you enter here.

3. Click Forward to continue. The wizard proceeds to the Ekiga Account page.

4. Type your Ekiga account username and password where prompted. If you don’t have an account yet, click the button to go to the Ekiga web site (www.ekiga.net) and register for a free account. If you prefer, you can use the Ekiga Softphone with other Internet phone providers and skip this step. After installing Ekiga you’ll need to refer to your specific provider’s instructions for configuring the software.

5. Click Forward to continue.

6. In the resulting Connection Type window, select the type of Internet connection
your system uses, then click Forward.
The configuration wizard goes through a series of windows to automatically determine
hardware and software specifics of your system.

7. For each subsequent window, click Forward after the relevant determination or
detection is completed.
The series of windows includes the following:

• NAT Type: Determines whether a network address translation (NAT) server
is in place between your system and the Internet. Remote Ekiga users who
want to call to you must be able to access your system from the Internet. If you
use a NAT for Internet connectivity, your network address is the address of
the NAT, not your system. You’ll need to connect to a remote server for them
to access you directly. Ekiga takes care of this for you.

• Audio Manager: Detects the software that controls your audio applications.
For Ubuntu, this software is called ALSA.

• Audio Devices: Detect the audio input and output devices on your system.
The Ekiga software will most likely succeed in detecting these devices with
no intervention on your part. If you have more than one audio input or output
device, you can select which one to use for Ekiga.

• Video Manager: Detects the video manager software on your system. For
most Ubuntu, this software is Video4Linux (V4L2).

• Video Devices: Determines whether a video input device (webcam) is connected
to your system.

8. Click the Apply button to accept the settings and start Ekiga.

After finishing the configuration, the main Ekiga window appears, listening for incoming calls and waiting for you to place a call.

When you don’t want the Ekiga window on your desktop, you can close it and keep Ekiga running in the background. It appears on your desktop panel as an icon, indicating that it’s still running. Click the icon for the main Ekiga window to appear. Right-clicking the icon allows you to perform several functions, such as place a new call, set your availability status, or look up a phone number in your phone book. When a new call comes in, the icon will light up and you’ll hear a sound.



After you’re registered you can participate via four communication types: Softphone-to-Softphone: Communicate with remote SIP users via their SIP address—even with users on different SIP servers. The Ekiga SIP server will forward SIP calls to the remote server and accept calls from remote SIP servers. You can make and receive SIP calls at no cost with your Ekiga account.

• Softphone-to-Real Phone: Place calls to regular telephone numbers using your Ekiga Softphone. You must register a separate account at the Ekiga website and pay any relevant charges you accrue for your calls.

• Real Phone-to-Softphone: Receive calls from regular telephones using a phone number you purchase from Ekiga. The phone number can be located in any country! When the number receives an incoming call, Ekiga will route the call to your SIP connection.

• Text messaging: Send instant messages to any SIP address on any SIP server via the Chat window in the Ekiga Softphone.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Basic gedit Features

Besides the tabbed editor window panes, gedit uses both a menu bar and tool bar that allow you to set features and configure settings. The tool bar provides quick access to the most common features contained in the menu bar. The menu bar items available are

• File: for creating new files, opening existing files, saving existing files, and printing files

• Edit: for manipulating text in the active buffer area and setting the editor preferences

• View: for setting the editor features to display in the window and for setting the text highlighting mode

• Search: for finding and replacing text in the active editor buffer area

• Tools: provides access to features for plug-in tools installed in gedit

• Documents: for managing files open in the buffer areas

• Help: provides access to the complete gedit user manual

One interesting feature in the File menu is Open Location, which allows you to open a file from the network using the standard uniform resource identifier (URI) format popular throughout the World Wide Web. This format identifies the protocol used to access the file (such as HTTP or FTP), the server where the file is located, and the complete path of the server to access the file. The Edit menu contains the standard cut, copy, and paste functions, along with a neat feature that allows you to easily enter the date and time in several different formats in the text.

The View menu allows you to customize what elements appear in the gedit window, as well as define how gedit formats the text in the Edit pane. You can use the View menu to disable the tool bar, status bar, or the side pane for the window. The status bar appears at the bottom of the window, showing the current line and column where the cursor is, the current edit mode (Insert or Overwrite), and the status when opening or saving files. The side pane produces a list of all the files opened in the gedit session. The Highlight mode in the View menu allows you to specify what type of text file is in the editor buffer. Gedit has the ability to use a different color scheme to identify different elements in a text file. For example, in programming files, gedit can use different colors for keywords, function names, and constants.

Gedit determines the type of content contained in a text file by examining the filename extension. Many programming languages use specific filename extensions to identify files, such as .c for C language programs, .sh for shell script programs, and .php for PHP programs. When gedit detects that in a filename, it automatically sets the appropriate file type.

The Search menu provides a standard find function, which produces a dialog box where you can enter the text to find and select how the find should work (matching case, matching the whole word, and the search direction). It also provides an incremental search feature, which works in real-time mode, finding text as you type characters of the word.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

Exchanging Exchange - Zimbra

On progress toward dislodging Microsoft’s biggest enterprise lock-in. DOC SEARLS

More than five years ago, Linux-friendly IT executives told me (www.linuxjournal.com/article/7414) there was one Microsoft product that was not only highly entrenched but appealing as well: Exchange Server. “We can easily see our way to replacing Microsoft Office and even Microsoft Windows”, one executive told me.
“But we can’t get along without Exchange. If you’re looking for Microsoft’s real lock-in with enterprise customers, Exchange is it.” That was then, but what about now? Recently, I asked readers on the Linux Journal Web site how they’d replace Exchange. Zimbra came up big:

• “Zimbra is open source (though not free software) and has a feature set that is on par with and sometimes even exceeds Exchange. If you are not running an MS-only shop, Zimbra is the best alternative.”

• “Zimbra is extremely good, though not light on resources, and it requires a dedicated server to run. It does work flawlessly with free clients like Thunderbird and Evolution while having good support for Outlook. The downside is that it is not completely free (the YPL is open source, but entirely free).”

• “Zimbra, hands down. If you’re looking for an open-source alternative to Exchange, one of the most important things to look at is the community. The Zimbra community on the forums is awesome, and the Zimbra staff really pay attention to what we as the community say.”

• “I also have used Zimbra (free) for my other gigs, and it has worked well, but the packaging of Zimbra is not very desirable.”

• “I love Zimbra, as it has a cohesive PIM suite that simply and seamlessly syncs with my mobile devices.”

• “We switched to the Zimbra Open Source version, and it is working quite well. There was some initial resistance from users, but that has largely dissipated over a couple months of use.”

• “Zimbra (Network Edition, not the free/OSS edition) gives full Outlook integration and probably works just as good as Exchange, functionality- wise. Unfortunately, for my customers (very small business), Zimbra’s pricing is not up to par, and compared to Windows SBS pricing, even way too expensive. But, I guess for enterprise environments, it’s a very good option.”

• “Zimbra is probably the best open-source enterprise e-mail/collaboration product on
the market.” There was some support for Google Apps:

• “Google Apps does not have the high degree of client seamlessness that Zimbra has: Web, complete Outlook (PIM, Filters, GAL, etc.), Zimbra Desktop, iPhone/WAP, OTA ActiveSync and so on.”

• “We’re small (20-person software company), but we dropped Exchange about two years ago in favor of Google Apps. We lost seamless contact and calendar sync on some mobile phones in the office, but we gained a bunch of time from our IT administrator (that was otherwise spent administering Exchange). We gained a great deal of stability and reliability, and we gained all the benefits of Google Mail.”

• “Google uses Gmail. Doesn’t everybody?”

• “...just throw away Exchange and use Google Apps/Docs/Mail, as many businesses do. Google Apps are so much better!”

• “Our university, including our medical school and hospital, went with Google, and it has been a big success.”

IBM Lotus Domino/Notes was endorsed for big enterprises, but not without respect for Exchange:

• “We’ve installed IBM Lotus Domino/Notes at a dozen small (10–100 users) businesses. Its versatility is awesome. It’s so much more than e-mail. It’s rock solid. We run servers on SUSE, Red Hat and Windows. We run clients on Windows, Mac and, yes, Linux! And the pricing is so very affordable.”

• “I used to work for a multinational (100,000+ employees) consumer goods company who used Notes/Domino, then was moved to Big Blue who also used Notes/Domino. I now work for a much smaller bank (6,000 employees) that uses Outlook/Exchange. Experience has shown that larger companies with massive user bases tend to use Domino, as it just scales better than Exchange used to. Microsoft has put a lot of effort into making sure Exchange is more robust and that it scales better....Having used both, my preference is for the Notes/Domino combination, as I miss having my workspace.”

Citadel got props:

• “...you really want to take a look at Citadel. Although it looks nothing like Exchange, it
solves many of the same problems (e-mail, calendars, address books) and some new ones (instant messenger, chat, forums and more), and it does so in a way that is more intuitive. Many who try it soon find that they can’t live without it.”

• “We use www.citadel.org. It is open source, free, rock solid and well supported. Now we have 50 accounts (but 40GB of indexed mail).” Scalix (along with some of the others in some cases) got mixed reviews:

• “I used Scalix at the last company I worked for and liked it a lot.”

• “Scalix is not open source, and the Community version is seriously broken
(no CalDAV, etc.).”

• “OX/Scalix/Zimbra are bloated and pretend to be open source.”

Others: Kolab, Dovecot, Gordano, Bynari, Postfix+dovecot+chandler-server, Axigen, Communigate, Mailtrust, Novell Groupwise, OpenExchange, Zafara, Sun suites. There was no mention of Scalable OpenGroupware.org, which Francis Lachapelle and Ludovic Marcotte reviewed in April 2008.

So the challenge remains. Any bets on how long it will take to finish the job?

Source of Information : Linux Journal Issue 180 April 2009