Artha is a free cross-platform English thesaurus that works completely off-line and is based on WordNet. It is released under the GNU General Public Licence version

Source

Features

Although a gtk app  it has very little gnome dependencies (So KDE fans dont have to worry -much. Yeah yeah I know its would have been better if written in Qt but then “what can we do”  :(  ) However Artha has tons of features to make anyone (Gnome, Kde, whatever floats your boat) Drool.

• Offline : Unlike most dictionaries which can only be used if you are online. Artha works completely offline. So if you like me are not completely bought up by all this cloud computing craze and live in Africa where Internet sucks. Then Artha is a no brainer for you.  (Even if you are lucky and have highspeed internet Artha is also a no brainer )
• Regular Expressions Search : OK lets say there is a word you  vaguely know or you are unclear as to its meaning or spelling. (Happens to me a lot ) you can speed up/narrow the search using regular expression to locate the particular word they have in mind.
• Suggestions : Say you mispelled a word Artha can give you near matching suggestions (I also love this)
• Relative to Sense Mapping : Artha doesn’t just give you the meaning of words. It so includes words like Synonyms, antonyms. When you Select a relative its corresponding definition is scrolled and highlighted for easy comprehension.

The Awesomest  Feature that rules them all : Yeah I saved best for the last.  For me the feature of Artha which kills every other Dictionary software out there is its support for Notifications.  Here is how it works – Lets say I was going through my RSS reader and I found a word am not familiar with I just need to highlight the word, press the keyboard combination Ctrl+Alt+W (Which can be changed to any key combo that suits you) The meaning of the word gets displayed as a Notification Bubble .

Hence I can easily check the meaning of the word without having to launch the application window.

The notification feature of Artha is supported system wide and works with just about every application which support text highlighting.

Installation

Ubuntu / Debian : Although Artha is available in the Ubuntu / Debian Repository The version there is quite dated. However the latest version has been compiled to .deb and can be downloaded from   here

Fedora (Leonidas/11 or above) :  Artha can be installed with

yum install artha

Note* The version in the Fedora Reposittory is 0.9.1

Other Linuxes : If a binary package is not available for your distribution, you can easy download the source code from here and follow this installation instructions on how to compile from source.

Configuration: After installation, the rest is easy. When you start Artha Its minimizes in the Notification area of your desktop.  From the application window you can easily set you keyboard short cut by clicking on the settings. The default keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Alt-W.  By default the Notification feature is disabled but can be easily enabled by right clicking on the notification area icon. The rest is easy.


I found Artha to be very useful and goes a long way to enhance my workflow and user experience.  I hope someone find this useful.

There’s a PPA for that
PPA is means Personal Package Archive. It provides a way to easily install application which can not be found in the Ubuntu official repository on Ubuntu ( since the Ubuntu official repo takes a conservative approach to updates and number of applications it includes in its official repository with focus on stability over latest and greatest packages.) PPA is one of the coolest thing about Ubuntu. It creates an avenue for developers, packagers and even users to create their own personal repositories and include their packages which can easily be added and installed on Ubuntu.

The down-side of all these is that most of the applications contained in a PPA can be quite too bleeding edge and not as well tested as  what comes with the Ubuntu repos, so the users would sometimes want to revert back to the official Ubuntu packages. This is where PPA-Purge comes in handy

PPA-PURGE:    ppa-purge will reset all packages from a PPA to the standard versions released for your distribution.  So basically its like a way to restore your system back to the way it was before you installed packages from a PPA.

Installation: ppa-purge is very easy to install. You can grab a deb executable file directly from the web page of the xorg-edgers repository

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)

Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

Usage

ppa-purge is very easy to use.How this works is e.g If I wanted to remove say the blueman PPA I just go to terminal and paste the following

sudo ppa-purge ppa:blueman/ppa/

A break down of how this work is

sudo ppa-purge ppa:repository-name/subdirectory

e.g ‘deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/blueman/ppa/ubuntu karmic main’ the part in bold is the part you need to add to

sudo ppa-purge ppa:

to make it

sudo ppa-purge ppa:blueman/ppa

I actually tried the tool after I installed the xorg-edger repository to see if it would solve my graphic display issues, unfortunately it only made things worse, thankfully I was able to use ppa-purge to remove the PPA and reset (downgrade) my packages back to the default version on karmic.

So there you have it. You can go on installing all the latest and greatest packages using the Ubuntu PPA. knowing full well you have something to fall back on. I hope someone finds this useful.

Now if you are like me and always find it hard to create a strong enough password.  My situation is also made worse by the fact that I work as a System Administrator which means I get to maintain lots of  administrative passwords for many mission critical systems at work.  throw in my blog, 4 emails address. over 20 forum account, 2 Micro- blogging accounts and 5 IM accounts, and  it wont take a genius to know that I would be needing a password manager which would among other things allow me to create strong passwords, and store my passwords in a safe and encrypted format.  I did a little research and settled for KeepassX

KeePassX is an application for people with extremly high demands on secure personal data management. It has a light interface, is cross platform and published under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

source

Some of the features of KeepassX includes:

I have made a screen-cast on how you can easily use Keepass X to create a password. (don’t laugh at me.. its my first screencast ever )  (although I blabbed about this in my screencast. You would need to create a database for the first time you try to use KeePassX. )

Basic Intro to KeepassX from Bobby Adesuyan on Vimeo.

Installation

So some months ago I got me an E71 Nokia phone, among other things I was hoping to use it as a music device so I slammed in an 8gb memory card, and was all set but for one factor: 60% of my music collection are in ogg format and nokia default music player does recognize ogg. Sure there are some 3rd party music apps for E71 which can play ogg files out of the box but they all lack the kind of integration which you get with the Nokia default music player. While in confused mode I decided to call up a friend nucco and he gave me the tip about .is_audio_player.

What is .is_audio_player

If like me, you have a music library made up of different music formats, and you want to be able to sync them to your portable music player in one music format say mp3. Example, my music collection is composed of different formats, .mp3, ogg, aac but I want to sync everyone of them as mp3 to my Nokia e71. This is where .is_audio_player comes in handy. Nope its not an application, nope its not a codec, its not a library either. Its just a file (yeah file) its a file you place in the root directory of the storage of your music device from where it does its magic.

Configuration

First you open your favorite text editor (gedit, kate, emac, nano, vi whatever). Then you place in the following entries:

audio_folders=Sounds/Digital/

folder_depth=3

output_formats=audio/mpeg

Explanation

audio_folders = Here you indicate the relative path of the music folder on your portable device. On my Nokia its in Sound/Digital

folder_depth = Here you indicate the folder depth of the music folder (remember that every storage device attached to your Linux computer is mounted on /media/ hence you will start counting from the device mount point. In my case it was.

/media/e71/Sound/Digital

Since our final destination ™ is Digital (in my case that is) which is 3 step away from /media I indicated the value for folder_depth to be 3

out_formats = The last parameter is quite straight forward it’s asking what media format you want your files to be encoded in before sync. In my case i want them encoded to mp3 hence i added audio/mpeg

Now configure the file the way it meets your needs and then save as .is_audio_player remember the . (dot) in-front of is_audio_player. Once the file is saved, place it at the root of your music device (Nokia, Sony Erikson, China Mp3 device etc). In my case i placed it inside the memory card of my nokia phone (make sure you are using a mobile phone that can be seen as a mass storage device)

Note: Any file with a . (dot) in-front of its name is hidden by default in Linux hence you may not see the file after saving it until you tell your filemanager to view hidden files (ctrl +h) for (gnome) and (alt + .) for (kde)

Below is the .is_audio_player file inside the memory card of my nokia.

Once all is set, you can now plug your portable music player to your Linux computer and open Rhythmbox.

If all goes well Rhythmbox will detect your audio device. (in my case my nokia.)

All that is left is for you to select the tracks you want to sync. (you can always create a playlist) Drag and drop them into your portable music player’s icon. (You can also drag from your portable music player into your Music library.)

Transferring from your music library in rhythmbox to your portable music device might be slow, especially if it has to encode them to another music format before the transfer.

In the end I was able to encode all my ogg to mp3 files and sync them with my freedom hating E71 on the fly. I hope this helps someone out there.

FYI:

• I don’t know if this method would work with ipods.
• Legends have it that Amarok supports .is_audio_player I can’t tell since I have not been able to get it to work in amarok 2.1. If you have been able to please let me know.
• The Original ogg file on my music computer library is unaltered.

=-=-=-=-=
Powered by Bilbo Blogger

How it all started

Ever since i started a blog i had always wanted a wanted a application which would allow me do my blogging (preferably offline ) without having to use the web browser. One of the reasons for this was because i (as at then) did not have a stable Internet connection and had to go to Internet cafe to do my blogging which wasn’t really convenient. I wanted a way to do my blogging offline and then upload later. Even when i had a stable Internet connection i still prefer to having to use a browser for blogging. Unfortunately for me most of the blogging applications ( Drivel BloGTK KBlogger gnome-blog) i tried on Linux just didn’t cut it, some didn’t work with wordpress and the once that did weren’t powerful enough or were buggy or just too basic.

I gave up and resigned my self to the web for blogging. This was until recently when (I Cant quite remember how it happened) i found about about Bilbo Blogger and Beng. I saw the tool i just needed

Bilbo Blogger

Bilbo Blogger is a free/Open Source Blogging client, focused on simplicity and usability. Its is based on Qt4 (KDE) but should work well on gnome (i haven’t tried it but it should.. just remember i said should)

Here are some Summary of some of its Features

Currently featured:

• A full featured WYSIWYG editor + An HTML editor

• Previewing your post with your blog style! like when you are visiting it at your blog.

• Support for Blogger1.0, MetaWeblog, MovableType (WordPress supports All of these!) and Google GData (used on Blogspot.com blogs) APIs!

• Support for Creating/Modifying/Deleting posts.

• Support for creating drafts and scheduled posts!

• Support for uploading media files to your blog (Just on supported APIs e.g. MetaWeblog and MovableType)

• Support for Fetching your recent blog entries.

• Support for adding Images to post from your system. It will upload them on

• Submitting post to blog (Just on supported APIs e.g. MetaWeblog and MovableType)

• Support for saving local entries before publishing.Saving your writing copy to prevent data loss, at configurable intervals.
• Internal auto spell checker. (KDE spell checker used so most of languages are supported)

Installation

Although as of blog time there were only two binaries available for Linux and one for windows.

Archlinux users Bilbo should be available in the arch community repository ( am not sure about this as i don’t have an arch installation to confirm) but in any case an arch package can be downloaded from here

(K)Ubuntu

To install on ubuntu. You are going to add a third party repository popularly called PPA To your system. This is not hard.

To start open Terminal and copy and paste the following command (you can do this via GUI but when writing a guide some things are better down using commandline copy and paste of cause i would explain every process so at least you know what you are doing)

First we download and add the key for the repository we are about to use and add it to how system.

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com \ 0xfe0272d55c41c17774052e575646f8b10331274d

Then we add the repository with this command

echo deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/neversfelde/ppa/ubuntu `lsb_release --short --codename` main | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

Then we refresh the system and download bilbo with

sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get install bilbo

Once installed you can find Bilbo on the Internet section of your application Menu

Now i give a brief guide on how to configure Bilbi blogger to your blog

First your start bilbo ( like you don’t know that already hehe) once installed you will find it under the Internet section of your application menu.

The first thing you want to do is to add a blog, (my blog is hosted on wordpress.com hence that is what this guide would be based on. )

Just select Add Blog from under Blog menu

This would open a dialog box, something like this

Type in the URL of your blog then enter your blogs username and password and click the Auto Configure button. In my case it was http://ubuntunigeria.wordpress.com and i clicked the Auto Configure button. Then Bilbo would work its magic and Auto configure the settings for the blog. If all goes well (and it always did in my case) The dialog box would now look like this.

Bilbo has auto configured my blog settings, pulling the Title of the blog, the correct URL. You can go to the Supported features tab and check out the list of features bilbo has support in your blog here is mine

Once your blog is configured and loaded up. you would see a page which looks like this.

So here is the layout of Bilbo Blogger, it always you to use both WYSIWYG, or for code warriors you can always use the HTML editor field. one really cool feature with bilbo is the ability to preview you draft and see how it would look like on the blog page, This for me is one of its killer features

HTML Editor

Normal Preview

Preview with blog style

Other cool features of Bilbo

• It support multiple blogs hence you can setup more than one blog at a time.
• It also allows you to edit previous blog posts ( or delete them)
• If you are working on a blog post, you can always tell it to save locally, like as i was writing this post, i got disconnected, if i was using the web interface i might have lost some of my works or would have to wait for the Internet to get back before i continue. With bilbo i just told it to save my work locally and continued working.
• It also allows you to add tags and post the blog to a category

Bilbo also supports tabs you can edit more than one blog at a time with it just by opening a new tab.

Most importantly i found bilbo to be very stable, its doesn’t slow down on me or crash on me. i never experience on crash with it.

There is just so much to talk about Bilbo you would have to give it a spin to see your self.

I
hope someone finds this useful.

However one thing i have always wish it had was the ability to run in the background so that if i close thunderbird i want it to minimize to the system-tray/notification area and inform me real time when i have a new mail. Thunderbird has a small memory footprint hence am not bothered about it sucking up my system resources. For a very long time i took what life offered and made do with opening thunderbird to check for a new mail and closing it when i am done (i hate having my task manager side of the system panel filed up with running applications). Then one day i was like heck i have had enough and decided out to find a way to get thunderbird to do exactly what i want (run in the system-tray when not needed.) i did some googling and the name firetray came up, turned out it was just want i wanted.

Installation and Configuration

Firetray is an add-on for thunderbird and can be downloaded from here download and save the file to your hard disk. In Mozilla Thunderbird, open Add-ons from the Tools menu.

Click the Install button, and locate/select the file you downloaded and click “OK”.

After this you need to restart Thunderbird for the firetray to start working. You might also want to go through the preference of firetray to configure how you want it to behave, for example by default thunderbird does not minimize to the system-tray when you close it. You can go through the settings and configure it to your taste. Here is how i have configured mine.

Conclusion

I have come to find firetray a very valuable plugin for thunderbird.

It allows me to make Thunderbird run in the background and get out of my way. when they is a new mail, i get notified and it tells me how many unread mail i have in-box

One more cool thing i love about it is how it makes it easy to check for new messages and even send a quick email, By just right clicking on the icon on the system-tray

Ok that is the end of my rant. Hope this helps somebody.

FYI: Firetray can also be added to firefox, sunbird, seamonkey 2 and songbird, allowing to set up custom icon, minimizing to tray instead of closing, control playback using multimedia keys in songbird

Remuco is a duplex remote control system for Linux media players and mobile devices equipped with Bluetooth or WiFi.

With Remuco, you can remotely control your favorite media player. You can switch to the next, previous, or any other media within the current playlist, browse your media library and activate other playlists, rate your media, adjust volume, and more. On the mobile device (the remote control), it displays information about the current media, including cover art.

source

**Ok the name is by no means cool or an a good indicator of what it can do, some of its features include**

Features

Remuco allows you to control:

* Playback

*Seek forward or backward in current playing item

*Set the playlist to repeat or shuffle

*Control volume

*Rate,

*Tag Media being played

on your PC from your mobile phone

It also Displays:

*Current playing songs including album art

*Volume level

*Progress level of current playing song and its current rating

Media browser features includes:

*Browse Currently active playlist and apply actions to them

*Browse the play queue and apply actions to them

*Browse the players media library and apply actions to them

*search for items in the player’s media library and apply actions to items in the search result

*browse the local filesystem and apply actions to files

*** Not all feature is available on all media player example Rhythmbox seems to be better support compared or other media player***

Installation

Installation of Remuco is in two part, A player adapter is installed on your PC and the client on your mobile device

How to install the player adapter:

(K)Ubuntu

First you need to add the 3rd party repository to your sources.list this can be done from synaptic

System -> Administration -> Synaptic Manager -> Settings -> Repositories.

Here you can enable the repositories for Ubuntu Software and Third Party Software.

For Third Party Software select Add -> enter the repository’s address.

Ubuntu 9.04

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/remuco-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Ubuntu 8.10

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/remuco-team/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

Ubuntu 8.04

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/remuco-team/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Now you need install the repository Key

Open your terminal and enter:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 51A6F565

Now you will need to reload your sources by clicking the reload button on synaptic once done search for the team remuco, and you will see a list of remuco adapters for different Media players for linux

e.g I am on kde and i use amarok so i just installed the remuco-amarok package

Other Linux Distros can check here for installation Instructions

you now need to add remuco to the list of startup application

Amarok

The Amarok adapter requires Amarok 2.

The Amarok adapter can be started with:

remuco-amarok

Audacious

The Audacious adapter can be started with:

remuco-audacious

Banshee

The Banshee adapter requires Banshee ≥ 1.4.

The Banshee adapter can be started with:

remuco-banshee

MPD

The MPD adapter requires MPD ≥ 0.13.

The MPD adapter can be started with:

remuco-mpd

Rhythmbox

Start Rhythmbox and activate the plugin Remuco in the menu Edit → Plugins.

Totem

The Totem adapter requires Totem ≥ 2.22.

Start Totem and activate the plugin Remuco in the menu Edit → Plugins.

TVtime

The TVtime adapter requires TVtime ≥ 1.0.

The TVtime adapter can be started with:

remuco-tvtime

NOTE: With the exception of Rhythmbox and Totem, Remuco adapter for other Media players can be started automatically by adding remuco-media-player name to your startup session e.g for amarok add remuco-amarok to (gnome) System/Preference/Sessions (or startup application). (KDE) System-settings/ Advance Autostart

Client side installation

Installation on your mobile can be done by downloading remuco package here (the latest version on remuco in blog time is 0.9.0) extract the .tar.gz and goto /client/app/ and send the .jar file to your mobile device and install it from there

(Note: The client requires a mobile device with JavaME support (MIDP ≥ 2.0, CLDC ≥ 1.1). If you use Bluetooth to connect to a player adapter, additionally JSR-82 (Java Bluetooth) must be supported.)

Once installed on the device in my case i open terminal and run the following command remuco-amarok then i start amarok and start the client on my Nokia E71

Connected remuco to my laptop, it did its thing and yola i was able to control my amarok player from my phone.

Remember to first go to More and key-binding to set your own control key preference

Happy listening and I hope this helps someone .. (sorry if this is badly written haven’t had time to blog in a while been very busy so am a bit rusty i guess)

When Jaunty alpha6 was announced with many folks on identica claiming it to be very stable i decided to make the switch. I have since been running Ubuntu jaunty jackalope on my laptop. People say that the grass on the other side is always greener,well that was how running jaunty on my dell m1330 turned out. It wasn’t perfect and although i noticed many improvements from intrepid ibex like faster boot, better notification system, better support for suspense and hibernation, they were also some huge show spoiler like the Intel graphic regression which seem to affect the Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c) graphic chipset the most, causing the system to hard freeze requiring me to have to manually power down the machine. This issue got really bad that i had to downgrade to ubuntu hardy heron (which ran perfectly on my system) while i waited for walk rounds to the problem.

Then Dell released their custom image for ubuntu jaunty jackalope with some customization of their own that fixed issues many dell laptops had with ubuntu jaunty jackalope (mostly audio issues) and i decided it was time to give jaunty another try.

I downloaded the dell image from here

The good thing about this dell image for ubuntu is that unlike the previous ubuntu images released by dell were the user didn’t have a say in the partitioning process of the system. This image actually allows the user to partition the system to their taste. So its possible to dual-boot between windows and linux on this version of dell ubuntu reinstall image, a thing which was impossible with previous versions.

After installing the dell installing the dell jaunty jackalope image am happy to say that ubuntu jaunty jackalope is shaping up to be one of the best ubuntu i have ever used. very smooth and solid as a rock. It still has some nagging issues out of the box, but most of this issues have simple fixes and work around which when applied made ubuntu 9.04 rock on my dell m1330.

NB: I would recommend that anybody intending to install the ubuntu jaunty jackalope on their dell xps (or in fact any dell should consider using the dell-jaunty-reinstall-iso which can be downloaded here you can read more about the advantages of the dell-reinstall-image over the vanilla ubuntu from this post

what works
Intel core 2 Duo T5850 (2.16GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
Just works

Standard Display with 2.0 Megapixel Webcam
Just works

Speed: 320GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) with Free Fall Sensor
Just works

Integrated 10/100 Network Card
Just works

Modem
Not Tested

CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW Drive)
Just works

High Definition Audio 2.0
just works (had issues with recording on vanilla ubuntu but the dell reinstall image works fine out of the box even with pulse audio)

Intel® 3945 802.11a/g Mini-card
Just works

56Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell)
Just works

Biometric Fingerprint Reader
works (not out of the box)

Built-in Bluetooth capability (2.0 EDR)
Just works

Standard LCD
Just works

Internal mic
Just works

Memory card reader
Just works

Issues

Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope is by no means a perfect out of the box experience on my m1330 i had serious issues with stability and general usability.

where are some of the issues and how i was able to get round them

Issue 1

X freezes due to regression in the Intel graphic driver for jaunty.
This was a huge show stopper for me. it just made my laptop unusable. I usually experience a like 10 freezes in a day, and each time the best way to get out of it was to manually power down the machine. The problem with the Intel graphic driver is upstream and not an ubuntu specific problem. and unfortunately the hardest hit is the Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c) which is what my laptop uses.

Walk around
I was able to get round the frequent X display crashes by enabling something called greedy mode in my xorg.conf file. Doing this is very easy.

first we backup our xorg.conf its always a good idea to do this so we can always restore back to default in case things did work out right for you

Backup xorg.conf
sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf-bak

now that we have the default xorg.conf backed up we can now safely edit it by adding the following to the device section of xorg.conf

Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy

first we open the file with a text editor

gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

now we edit the device section of the file to look like this

# xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# Note that some configuration settings that could be done previously
# in this file, now are automatically configured by the server and settings
# here are ignored.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Configured Monitor”
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Default Screen”
Monitor “Configured Monitor”
Device “Configured Video Device”
SubSection “Display”
Virtual 2720 900
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “Configured Video Device”
Option “AccelMethod” “EXA”
Option “MigrationHeuristic” “greedy”
EndSection

**As you can see from above, I just added
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy
to the device section ***

Once this is done we save and close the file. Changes would be applied on next login.

Issue 2

Desktop Effect is disabled by default on the Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)
so laptops running that particular Intel card would not be able run compiz on ubuntu jaunty jackalope. I was able to get round this issue bt removing my Intel Driver from the blacklist. To do this run the

Walk around
Desktop effect/ Compiz was disabled to reduce the rate of X freezes on Intel card GM65/GL960 cards. However applying the workaround in Issue 1 makes the system stable enough to run compiz. Since enabling Greedy mode in the previous work around eliminate the freezes anyway removing the GM65/GL960 from blacklist meant compiz started working without any issues and system is still just as rock solid .. talk about eating my cake and having it.

Removing the Intel card GM65/GL960 from compiz blacklist is dead easy. open Terminal and run the following commands

gksudo gedit /usr/bin/compiz


this would open a text file, search for the following line in the text file # blacklist based on the pci ids


under that you would see the following of lines

T="$T 8086:2982 8086:2992 8086:29a2 8086:2a02 8086:2a12" # intel 965
T="$T 8086:2a02 " # Intel GM965

you need to add a comment “#” in-front of which line to look like this


#T="$T 8086:2982 8086:2992 8086:29a2 8086:2a02 8086:2a12" # intel 965
#T="$T 8086:2a02 " # Intel GM965

Once that is done. log out and login into the system and try to enable desktop effect. It should work like a charm

Issue 3

Finger Print reader: Thinkfinger the tool which would help us to use our finger print reader for authentication is still broken in the repositories.

Walk around

We would have to install one from a third party PPA. Open Synaptic System/Administration/Synaptic
go to settings/Repositories and choose the Third-Pary Software tab Click add (not add CD-ROM) and add the following

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jon-oberheide/ubuntu jaunty main
when you are done click add source and close the the software sources tab.

Now we need to add the PPA key (This is a good practice from a security stand point as it ensures that anything you are installing is actually from the right repository if you skip this part you will get errors every time you refresh your sources)

Open the terminal and run the following command

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xf2a12fabe936a7bbdc4ea33351db180d1323e149

now click the reload button on synaptic. once its done refreshing, search for the following: thinkfinger-tools and libpam-thinkfinger right click install and apply and once its done. the first part is installed

We are now going to configure how to use the finger print reader for authentication. to do this we would have to edit some configuration file on the system. first we run the following command

sudo '/usr/lib/pam-thinkfinger/pam-thinkfinger-enable'

Then we need to restart the system for the changes to take effect. Once you are logged in Open Terminal again and store your finger print on the computer with this command

tf-tool --acquire

swap your finger of choice 3 times

to test run this

tf-tool --verify

then you are done. from now on you can use your finger print for
a) GDM session login
b) Screensaver unlock
c) Sudo and gksudo prompts
d) PolicyKit authorization

Issue 4

Inability to run Desktop effect / Compiz on a Dual Monitor setup : There is a hardware limitation of Intel cards which prevent them from from running hardware acceleration at a resolution higher than 2048 x 2048 virtual size. Fortunately this hardware limitation does not affect the Intel GM965 Chipset, unfortunately the Driver shipped with Jaunty (and previous versions ubuntu if i might add) has a bug that limit the Intel GM965 to just 2048 x 2048 virtual size when running hardware acceleration, which in human language means you can run compiz, and you can setup dual monitor, you just cant do both at the same.

Walk Around Fortunately there is a fix for this bug. To apply this fix we would to add a 3rd party PPA to our source.list and install the mesa package which contains the fix. after which we can then remove the PPA from our source list.

echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/cavedon/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main' | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

Then we add the PPA key and refresh our sources
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0x282e4fae542e7613e2dc4056c1fe1a7b426ff7fa ; sudo apt-get update

It would have been easy if you just do an upgrade in which case install latest update. But since i wasnt too sure about some of the packages in from this PPA and what i need is just his mesa packages which contains the fix we need, I would suggest the only package we upgrade to should be mesa. Hence open synaptic package manager and search for the following packages. right click on them and select upgrade

libgl1-mesa-dri
libgl1-mesa-glx
libglu1-mesa
mesa-utils

when you are done. click apply and install the upgrade you have selected.
Once the upgrade is complete. I would advise you remove the PPA from your sources. You can do this by going to settings in synaptic and click on repositories. Click on the Third Party Software tab and scroll down till you see the deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/cavedon/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main, uncheck it and close. Now you will need to click reload to refresh your sources.

Conclusion
After applying the following simple fix, My Dell as been solid as a rock, no more freezes and i get an optimum use of my hardware.

Hope someone finds this useful

First to set some things straight. Am not saying that canonical should not make proprietary software i have never complained about launchpad or Landscape

And my issue with ubuntu-one has nothing to do with the fact its not been free of cost.

I am a bit concerned about this ubuntu one issue. When I first heard about it, I was very excited to contribute to yet another open source project. Then I found out that it was proprietary, I got confused. Ubuntu is a name that by its very meaning symbolises the virtue of free and open source software. The name is a brand that with the help of millions of community members has come to be associated with quality. The ubuntu Goodwill is known around the world has one of the best product open source as to offer. By using this same name to brand a project that is Proprietary and hence against everything that ubuntu stands for is a huge betrayal of the community .

The use of that name “Ubuntu One” alone will make the product appeal to people who have a soft spot for ubuntu (the OS) and free software in general, which is kinda misleading since dropbox and ubuntu1 are essentially the same proprietary software. its like Redhat building a similar proprietary product and calling it Fedora-connect, or Linus Torvalds setting up a proprietary product and calling it Cloud-Linux. Ubuntu One bears no association or closeness to anything that ubuntu stands for which is openness, collaboration, community and sharing. Using the name Ubuntu in UbuntuOne is just very lame. and am Afraid Canonical got it wrong this time around.

This is my view on this topic. if you agree or have a different point of view by all means share the with me. Just no Trolling

Advantages of FreeNX
One advantage of FreeNX is that it is based on the SSH Protocol so your packets are transferred over an encrypted channel which in human language means nasty people can’t see what you are doing and potentially compromise your computer

Installation

Installation FreeNX is in Two Phrase the server and the client

Server Installation

The server version is installed on the remote system you want to login to. To install the server version you need to add the following repository to your sources.list

Hardy Heron
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/freenx-team/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/freenx-team/ubuntu hardy main

Intrepid Ibex
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/freenx-team/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/freenx-team/ubuntu intrepid main

Jaunty Jackalope
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/freenx-team/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/freenx-team/ubuntu jaunty main

Now we add the public Key for the FreeNX PPA with:
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2a8e3034d018a4ce

and we install with:
sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get install freenx

That is all that is needed for the installation of freenx server on our remote machine.

Client Installation

The client is installed on the machine you want to login from.

There are Two type of FreeNX clients available the non free and open source version (and freedom hating version ) and the free and open source version

The Non-free version
This is the official NX version and can not be installed from the Ubuntu repository but can be deb version for ubuntu can be downloaded from here
Double click to install.
Once installed you find it at Application-Internet-NX Client for Linux

The Free and Open Source version can be downloaded from the Ubuntu repository by running:
sudo apt-get install qtnx
Once installed you find it at Application-Internet-QTNX

Usage
What i really love about FreeNX is its usage, its very easy to use and all your do is launch the client which once installed can be found under /Application/Internet/Nx Client for LInux

Once you start the Program it displays a wizard which would guide you through the configuration process

=Session: First Thing you do is create a session which is like a profile of the remote machine you want to connect to. You can have many sessions of different remote machines which allows you to easily choose a session and login to the machine configure to the session.
Host: The IP address of the remote machine you want to login to
Select you Internet Type: Here is were you also get to indicate what type of internet connection you are running, NX compresses your data over the network so the slower your internet connection the higher the compression rate of your data (or so it seems) then you also put in the . Leave the port as 22 since that is the default that ssh uses (unless you have ssh using another port on the remote machine)

General Config

Desktop: Here you get you choose the platform the remote machine is running windows? *nix ? and also what graphical enviroment? kde, gnome ?

Display You are allowed to set how big you want the resolution of the remote machine to be on your current machine once you arte logged in.

Advanced Configuration

Here you have the ability to use a network proxy if you are behind a firewall, There are also option that allows you to disable encryption ( why would you ever want to do that) which is not advisable for security reasons.

Here you can enable services like samba share or cups printing between the remote machine and your current machine, in case you want to share files or print something from the remote machine. pretty neat hey

Once all the settings are configured to your taste. Its time to run your connection to the remote machine.

The end result is something similar to this

The remote machine will be running within a windows which can be minimized or resized, or moved to another work space while you continue work on your local machine.

Overall I find Freenx to be very useful and comes in very handy in my day to day work as a system administrator. Its cross platform which means you can even login to a windows machine from your linux box and vice versa.

Hope someone finds this useful