Original: Announcing the 20th Anniversary of Linux T-shirt Design Finalists #linux

RT @webatou: RT @stcaccess: Quick status of browser #accessibility from @SSBBARTGroup #Safari #Opera #Firefox #Linux ...

Nevernote - An Open Source Evernote Clone #linux

Monitor Energy Saver

The Dell Latitude D630 comes with a number of different video cards but if you use the Intel chipset you may be frustrated when trying to activate the visual effects eye candy of Compiz:

Checking either of the lower two options brings up this alert saying, “Desktop effects could not be enabled”.

I didn’t bother trying to fix it for ages and put it down to using Ubuntu on exotic hardware. Fortunately it’s simple to get working. I just needed to install the xGL server:

# aptitude install xserver-xgl
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Building tag database... Done
The following NEW packages will be automatically installed:
libglitz-glx1 libglitz1
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libglitz-glx1 libglitz1 xserver-xgl
0 packages upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/1843kB of archives. After unpacking 4854kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]

Once I logged out (and rebooted, for some reason my external monitor doesn’t always “catch” when I restart X) and back in again xGL was loaded and I was able to enable desktop visual effects. Despite my misgivings about using an embedded graphics chip it actually works really well. Windows bounced around, bent out of shape and did lots of nice animation stuff.

Then I removed the whole lot by uninstalling the xserver-xgl package again. Why? Unfortunately it conflicts with other openGL apps. In a toss up between fancy desktop effects and decent SDLMame performance, SDLMame wins hands down. It’s nice to know the visual effects work though!

Related PostsUbuntu Gutsy on the Dell Latitude D630Ubuntu Linux on Dell D630: the DVDUbuntu WiFi problems on the Dell D630 laptop

Use this application to create a Virtual Machine for VMware's VMPlayer.

You've just reinstalled Windows from scratch—again—but this time you want to preserve your sparkling clean setup for instant restoration down the road. Instead of dropping cash on Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image, burn yourself a free, bootable Linux-based System Rescue CD. The System Rescue CD includes open source tools GParted and Partimage, which can create a new partition and save your fresh Windows installation as a restorable image for the price of zero dollars. Never stare at those creeping Windows installation progress bars again: With the System Rescue CD, you can have that fresh new Windows feeling any time you need it. Here's how.
What's a partition?A partition separates a section of a physical disk into another virtual drive. When you split a hard drive into two partitions, you're creating a separate disk that your operating system (like Windows), treats as a different drive letter—even though it's the same physical disk. There are several handy uses for creating a separate partition on your computer:
Run multiple operating systems. Want your XP and Vista too? How about diving into Linux? With separate drive partitions, you can install several operating systems and make your choice of what to work in on startup.
Separate data and applications. Keep all your documents, music library, photos and videos on one partition and your operating system and programs on another. The separation makes data backup as well as a fresh operating system reinstall much easier.
Speed up your computer. Most new computers these days come with monstrous-sized hard drives. Separating it into partitions will reduce drive fragmentation and speed up disk reads as you work.
Back up the state of your operating system for easy restoration. Create a mirror image of your operating system and save it on a separate partition so you can restore your computer back to a past state any time in the future.
The last use is what we're setting up today.

What's a disk image?A disk image is a giant file that saves the state of an entire disk. Disk images can re-create an entire disk drive—like the C: drive where you've got Windows installed.

At the end of this tutorial, you'll split your C: drive into 2 partitions, and the second one will contain a disk image of the first. This way, next time you want to wipe your hard drive clean and start fresh with Windows, you can restore your backup image instead of suffering through Windows' tedious installation again.

What you'll needA DVD or CD burner.
The System Rescue CD ISO file. Download it here.
A PC with a good amount of free hard drive space.
A sense of adventure.
Note: Before we begin, know that 1.) there is command line work ahead, and 2.) partitioning an existing hard drive is a risky undertaking that could go all kinds of wrong. Make sure your hard drive is well backed up before you begin.

Let's get started.

1. Burn the System Restore CD. If your CD burner didn't come with Nero or another disk burning utility, grab previously mentioned ISO Recorder to burn your boot CD.

2. Boot from the System Rescue CD. Put the CD in your drive and try booting up your PC. It may automatically start from the CD, but if not, restart again and watch for a message like "Press F2 to enter Setup"—and do so. Once you're in setup mode (your BIOS) you can set the CD as the first drive in the boot sequence. If you haven't done this before, see step 2 here for more info.

3. Start up the System Rescue CD. Once you've booted onto the CD, type the following command to start the graphical user interface:

rescuecd doxdetect dostartx

That command tells the CD to detect your video adapter type and start the X window system. Note: The System Rescue CD supposedly auto-detects your video setup, but when I ran the boot command without doxdetect, my screen was all flickery and didn't render windows correctly. Your mileage may vary.

The CD will load your computer's hardware information. When it prompts you to "Load keymap" press Enter for the default. Once X is loaded, your X window desktop will look like this (apologies for the crappy screenshot):

4. Create a new partition with GParted. The Gnome Partition Editor (GParted) application is the third button down on the right-hand-side menu just above the Terminal. Double-click to launch it. GParted is a powerful partition editor that lets you shrink, expand, split, create and format partitions without disturbing the operating system already installed on a disk. We've already covered how to use GParted before if you're interested in more partitioning goodness.

At first you'll see a single partition within GParted—this is Windows' C: Drive. Right-click on it and choose "Move/Resize." From there, use the slider to shrink the main partition, making room for your new, secondary partition.

Words of warning: When I entered the exact number of MB for a 10GB partition, GParted moved the current partition to the right a bit on the drive. You can drag and drop it back to start at the beginning of the physical drive so you wind up with only 2 partitions, not 3.

In the end I freed up about 12GB of space for my secondary partition (12.07 to be exact), but you can make yours any size that works. You want to have enough space for your Windows drive images, and Windows took up about 12GB for me. (Your disk images will be compressed, but better safe than sorry.) Hit the Apply button to start the partition-resizing. Depending on how large your drive is, this can take awhile—and by awhile, I mean possibly all night and/or day.

When you're done, you'll see an area denoting "unallocated space" on the disk. Click on that and from the Partition menu choose "New." Set the new partition file system to NTFS. Then, right-click on the new partition, and choose Format To>ntfs in order to make the secondary partition usable. Hit Apply to execute the action. Finally, you'll have 2 partitions displayed on your disk map in GParted.

5. Mount the secondary partition. Now it's time to put your new partition to work. Switch to the Terminal and type the following to make the secondary partition available:
ntfs-3g /dev/hda2 /mnt/windows

Now you can read and write to the disk. Let's make a folder to save our disk images, with:

mkdir /mnt/windows/winrestore

That will create a folder on your second partition called "winrestore." We'll use that space in the next step.

6. Image your Windows drive to the new partition. Now we can move into the second tool in this process, Partimage. Start it by simply typing partimage in the Terminal. Partimage's interface is old-school blue background with white text but it works the way you'd expect. First you'll see your two partitions listed. Select /dev/hda1 (your C: drive) to image, and enter a name for the image files, like windowsxp-clean.partimg. Make sure the option for "Save partition into a new image file" is selected (it is by default).

Hit the F5 key to continue to the next screen. Here you can select all the defaults (Gzip image files, enter descriptions, split files into 2GB's each, etc.)

Hit F5 to continue. Partimage will ask you to enter an image description (like "Windows XP Clean Installation" and then it will warn you that its NTFS support is experimental. We're adventurers, so we're OK with that. Hit the OK button to start the imaging process, which can take a good amount of time, depending on how big your C: partition is.

After a bit of work, Partimage will tell you it's out of disk space and ask where to save the image files. Here enter the path to the folder we created in the previous step: /mnt/windows/winrestore.

Once Partimage finishes doing its thing, you'll get the success message we all want at one point or another in our lives:

6. Boot into Windows and admire your new image files. Once you're done you can restart your machine sans the System Rescue CD and boot back into Windows. On my first reboot, Windows sensed its innards had been messed with and it ran a checkdisk which went fine. Back in trusty Windows Explorer, you'll see 2 hard drives instead of one—and your new drive will contain a folder called "winrestore" which is full of 2GB disk image files.

Next time your Windows install gets gummed up and you want to start fresh, boot into the System Rescue CD, start Partimage and choose "Restore partition from an image file" and you'll be golden.

Update: One important thing to know: Partimage's image files are not mountable and browsable the way Norton or Acronis images are. As far as I know, the image has to be completely restored to disk to access files within it. (Thanks to the commenters who brought this up.)

What's your favorite way to image an operating system or manage partitions? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks to Jim Sheafer for mentioning the System Rescue CD.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, hopes to never have to reinstall Windows on this PC again. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Linux users: Not only can desktop decorator Compiz Fusion add eye candy to your system that leaves Windows and Mac users drooling on their keyboards, it can seriously boost your productivity. As Compiz Fusion creeps closer to its first official release, its effects are well ahead of anything found in commercial operating systems. Let's take a look.
Installing Compiz Fusion
Depending on your distro, Compiz Fusion can be finicky to install. Ubuntu users have a few options that include Treviño's repositories, Amaranth's repositories or grabbing the DEBs manually. I strongly suggest using either of the repositories hosted by Treviño and Amaranth. If you're running Ubuntu and have never used Compiz Fusion, this thread is probably the easiest way to get going. All other distro users should check the appropriate support forums for installation instructions. Compiz Fusion does not work with all graphics cards so make sure your card is compatible before starting. MacBook graphics cards work great out of the box. If you're having a hard time getting CF up and running, give the support channel on IRC (#compiz-fusion) a try, they are extremely helpful.

Remove the annoyances
First let's adjust two default settings that are a bit annoying. By default, CF uses sticky windows to facilitate easy window placement. I find that it interrupts my workflow more than it helps, so I prefer to disable it. CF settings are managed with CompizConfig Settings Manager. CCSM can be accessed through System >> Preferences >> CompizConfig Settings Manager. In CCSM, navigate to Wobbly Windows and disable Snap Inverted.
The second major CF annoyance is related to window placement. By default, every application is opened in the topmost portion of the screen. Anyone running a panel across the top will probably prefer to open applications in the middle of the screen. To change this setting, in CCSM, navigate to Place Windows and change Placement Mode to Centered.
With the installation and the annoyances taken care of, let's get down to using Compiz Fusion to improve productivity.

Using the defaults to improve your productivity
Compiz Fusion has a bunch of great features built right into the default installation.

The Cube
One of the most well-known and useful features is the "spinning cube." The spinning cube is actually a virtual desktop manager. Virtual desktops (brought to Windows with Dexpot and Yod'm 3D and Mac with VirtueDesktops) are a great way to manage your open applications: email on one "face," web browsers in another, music in a third and image editing on the fourth. Virtual desktops keep your workday modular and easily navigable. To use the cube effect, middle click anywhere on the desktop and drag the desktop face. Alternatively, CTRL + ALT and the arrow keys will change the desktop face. The entire cube can be unfolded with CTRL + ALT + Down arrow.
Hit the video clip to see the cube in action.


Expo
Expo is another virtual desktop management effect. Expo allows you to see all of your virtual workspaces simultaneously. In addition, you can drag and drop windows and switch virtual workspaces with Expo. Expo can be invoked with SUPER + E ("SUPER" is the Windows key on PCs and the Option key on Macs).


Ring Switcher
Similar to the SUPER+TAB effect for Vista (demoed here) and expanded with SmartFlip, CF has the same effect, known as Ring Switcher, which can be invoked with SUPER + TAB and reversed with SUPER + SHIFT + TAB.


Send active windows to the background and take screenshots
You can send active applications to the background simply by middle clicking anywhere in the title bar. Additionally, you can take screenshots by holding down the SUPER key and selecting the region of the screen you would like to capture.

Make the best better
A few simple tweaks to CCSM can make Compiz Fusion fly. To emulate the Expose effect used in Mac OS X, navigate to Scale, select the Actions tab and add a screen edge (I prefer top right) for Initiate Window Picker for Windows on Current Desktop. With this plugin enabled, you can then mouse to the top right of the screen and change the active application. Additionally, if you would like to show the desktop, you can click directly on the desktop and the active windows will disperse to the corners of the screen. When you want to restore the windows, click CTRL + ALT + D.


You can also enable task bar previews of open applications by simply activating Window Previews in the Extras section. Windows Vista users have this feature built in, and XP users can get the same effect with Visual ToolTip. Please note that this feature will only work if you have a window list in the menu bar. It does not work with Avant Window Navigator.

Since the Expo effect (mentioned above) requires heavy use of the mouse, it is a good candidate to set up a "hot corner." You can set Expo to be activated when you mouse to the lower left corner by selecting Expo and then selecting the Actions tab and assigning a Screen Edge location.

It all comes together
Compiz Fusion has a ton of great features. The following is a nice compilation that gives a taste of everything Compiz Fusion can do to improve your productivity.

What do you love about Compiz Fusion? What did I miss? Share in the comments.

Kyle Pott, Lifehacker's Contributing Editor, credits Compiz Fusion for ratcheting up his love for Linux to an unnatural level.

Linux only: You can now install Internet Explorer 7.0 in Linux with the latest beta release of IEs 4 Linux, which has made some major improvements since the last time we covered it. IEs 4 Linux now...

Google recently created their own Linux software repositories to streamline the use of Google software in Linux. Google's repos make it very easy to download and stay up-to-date with current releases of Google software. In layman's terms this means you can now install and update Google software using "typical" installation commands like: apt-get install picasa. You can quickly add the Google repos to your distro's installation configuration file (sources.list in Ubuntu) and be on your way. Google has tutorials for all major distros including: Ubuntu, Debian, openSUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, and RPM.

Linux Software Repositories [Google]

The Indie Tribune weblog gives the skinny on how to re-theme Windows XP to look like Ubuntu Linux. Not a whole lot of productivity with this tutorial, but it is thorough. The tutorial demonstrates how to replace practically every aspect of Windows to make it resemble Ubuntu starting with the theme and rolling through the boot screen, logon window, icons, explorer theme, and the Firefox theme. This'll give you the look of Ubuntu without giving up Windows. Thanks, JuventusCadillac!

How To Make Windows look like Ubuntu Linux [The Indie Tribune]

Windows/Mac/Linux: Freeware app TheLastStream saves and parses Last.fm streams into MP3s. But that's not all! It also automatically downloads album art, assigns ID3 tags, creates playlists, and organizes recordings according to artist, album, and track.

TheLastStream requires that you have a Last.fm account (it's free if you don't), and is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The Last Ripper [via Cucirca.com]

we’ve crafted a survey (www.dell.com/linuxsurvey) to let you help us prioritize what we should deliver for you.

Mandriva Flash is a pre-installed Mandriva Linux distribution on a 2GB USB key. Plug in the key, take your Linux system everywhere with you, save and exchange your data in 1GB of free space!

Mandriva this weekend launched Mandriva Flash, portable Linux version built on a USB key.

LinuxBIOS is a Free Software project aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS (firmware) you can find in most of today's computers.

This tutorial will show you how to mount NTFS and FAT partitions in ubuntu

Aptana is a robust, JavaScript-focused IDE for building dynamic web applications.

This is Scibuntu, Ubuntu Linux for scientists and science students. Scibuntu is not just another Linux distribution. It is a script that adds scientific programs and other convinient tools to the plain desktop Ubuntu.

Danger from the deep (aka dangerdeep) is a Free / Open Source World War II german submarine simulation.

Packages for Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu Dapper Drake and beyond. Maintained by Quinn, hosted by various volunteers.

GoboLinux is a modular Linux distribution: it organizes the programs in your system in a new, logical way. Instead of having parts of a program thrown at /usr/bin, other parts at /etc and yet more parts thrown at /usr/share/something/or/another, each prog

Kubuntu 6.10 has been released and is available for download now.

This includes the root directory and all of its subdirectories

It provides Windows NT4.0/2000/XP with full access to Linux Ext2 volumes (read access and write access). This may be useful if you have installed both Windows and Linux as a dual boot environment on your computer.

This guide describes how to back up and recover your MySQL databases with mysql-zrm on a Debian Sarge system.

Index of /vmware

a review on a half-baked, single-user operating system called Windows XP that may be ready for desktop use in about five years

Git is Linus Torvalds' recently implemented source code management software

Run IE 6, 5.5 and 5 on Linux with Wine

The tool is aptly called lsof because it "lists open files". And remember, in Unix just about everything (including a network socket) is a file.

Here are a few scientific programs of general utility.

Having recently switched to doing a lot of development on Ubuntu, I no longer have the wonderful TortoiseSVN interface to work with, so I’ve been forced to get familiar with the command line versions. I’ve thrown together this quick reference guide to

Kismet will list the SSID and channel for each detected network, along with signal strength and access point vendor information.

This howto will illustrate a way to install and configure Subversion and websvn on a Debian server

qBittorrent is a bittorrent client written in C++ / Qt4 using the good libtorrent library

when Jeff Johnson walked out the door at Red Hat, he took RPM with him. Since then, few distributors have wanted to use his releases, but no other organized project around RPM has come into existence. For the purposes of the people using distributions fro

Linux is supposed to be the fastest of all operating systems, but sometimes poor use of your desktop can lead to slowing it down

how to use OpenVPN for secure internet surfing on your client PCs

This HOW-TO covers up the whole process of installing Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 & Macromedia Flash 8 in a Ubuntu box in a few simple steps.

I edited the ~/.kde/share/config/kbluetoothdrc file and changed the line that read "AutoStart=true" to "AutoStart=false".

An A-Z Index of the Linux BASH command line

When Flash 8 and 9 weren’t released for Linux, I thought, “why doesn’t someone just edit Flash’s code and change the 7 to a 9?” Turns out it’s possible.

Unofficial Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) Starter Guide