Posts Tagged “ubuntu”
 Linux: Finding new, good-looking, and complete themes for Linux systems can be a serious scavenger hunt. The Bisigi Project provides 13 free, well-rounded themes you can install all at once, customized for your monitor size. Take a peek at five of them.
You’ll need to pull off a few terminal commands to install the Bisigi repository in your Ubuntu, ArchLinux, or Frugalware system, but copy-and-paste code is available at the Install page. Once you’re set up, head to where you choose themes for your system (that’s in Appearance, under Preferences, on an Ubuntu system).
Each of the 13 themes Bisigi provides has a chosen icon set, a suggested wallpaper, and color tweaks that you’ll see throughout your system. One theme, Airlines, switches its wallpaper as day turns into night. Here’s a look at five of Bisigi’s themes, installed on my Ubuntu system, with a Docky dock at the bottom showing some of the folder/icon changes. Click on any of the thumbnails below for a larger view:
Bisigi’s theme package is a free download, available with supported repositories for Ubuntu, ArchLinux, and Frugalware systems, or as a source package that most Linux users (on GNOME-based systems) should be able to extract themes from. Thanks to Jordan Conway for the tip!
Tags: linux, twitter, ubuntu
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Monday, April 12, 2010
I’ve recently started using my Dell Latitude E6500 exclusively which is great news for the fiance as she prefers the Macbook. One thing I was curious about was migrating my Air Video server from the Macbook to Ubuntu.
If you haven’t already heard about Air Video, it’s an iPod Touch / iPhone / iPad app with a backend server component that allows for the streaming of video from your computer to your touch/phone/pad. It supports an impressive array of codecs and can either convert on the fly or convert and store to your device. It costs $2.99 (CDN) and is probably the most worthwhile app I have come across. I even read a post where a person was able to transcode 720P on a 1.6GHz Athalon (64?). To make things even better you can stream outside of your LAN over 3G or wifi. I was successful in getting this working on the Macbook but have not yet tried running under Wine. I will update this post when I have time to test this functionality.
So, while there is no Linux native port of the application it works very well under Wine, a free software application that aims to allow Unix-like computer operating systems to execute programs written for Microsoft Windows. The steps to running Air Server via Wine are:
- Install Wine: search for Wine in Synaptics software manager, check ‘Wine’ and click Apply.
- Download and install Bonjour for Windows: download Bonjour here, then right-click the exe file and open with Wine. Otherwise you can run the command: /> wine BonjourSetup.exe from the command line.
- Download and Install Java JRE: download latest JRE here, be sure to choose the Windows Install Offline version. Again run this program in Wine via right-click context menu or /> wine .exe from the command line.
- Download and Install Air Video Server: you can download the latest stable version here. However, at the time of this post there was a bug where Air Video would report that the version of Bonjour installed was not the latest version. Fortunately, there is ample developer support of Air Video and a fix was released (2.2.6 Beta2) which you can download here. Depending on the age of this post you will probably wish to use the latest public version.
The only difference I have found running Air Video on Linux was that you had to specify the IP address of your server, Air Video was not able to discover it on it’s own, but this is hardly a problem as you only have to do it once… unless you’re using DHCP in which case you might want to assign yourself a static IP.
So, do yourself a favor and purchase Air Video. You will not be disappointed!
Tags: linux, ubuntu
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 Linux (GNOME-based): There are work-arounds to set Gmail as a default mail app in Linux, but they don’t cover right-click file sending and complex mail links. Gnome Gmail does a much better job of integrating Gmail.
Download a DEB (Ubuntu/Debian) or RPM (Fedora/openSUSE) package from the site, install it, and then head to your Preferred Applications preference (in Preferences, under the System menu in Ubuntu, for example). Set Gmail as your "Mail Reader," and now it should really respond like a desktop client—on email links in every browser, when you right-click a file and select "Send to," and with full functionality when email links include cc: or pre-written subject lines. Google Apps users, you're not left out in the cold—hit the Configure link when you're asked to sign into Gmail on a right-click Send To action, and you can add your Google Apps login and make it the default.
Gnome Gmail is a free download for Linux systems running a GNOME desktop.
Tags: gmail, google, linux, ubuntu
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 Often, even if we do catch a virus, it's not so difficult to eradicate it using installed antivirus—but if your system has been crippled, try using Linux to scan the drive for viruses instead.
As any Linux veteran knows, one of Linux's greatest uses is fixing unbootable drives—recovering files, deleting files, and even killing viruses. For those of you that aren't quite as well-versed in Linux, technology blog gHacks has a tutorial for doing just that, though we recommend a few tweaks to their process.
If you have another machine already running Linux, as gHacks suggests, then you'll have a pretty easy time with this—all you need to do is install some antivirus, hook the infected drive into your Linux machine, and go to town. However, we know that not everyone has an extra Linux machine just floating around—so we recommend using a Live CD with antivirus pre-installed, or, even better, a live USB stick on which you can install antivirus yourself (the USB solution is likely easier in the long run, since I have yet to find a Linux Live CD with a GUI-based antivirus program pre-installed). You'll have to make the live USB yourself, but this is a pretty easy process using previously mentioned Usbuntu Live Creator or UNetbootin. However, these require a working Windows computer, and if your only PC is the infected one, you’ll have to download, burn, and boot from the Ubuntu Live CD (available here), and under System > Administration, use their easy-to-use Live USB creator.
After making the Live USB stick, boot into it (you may have to set your boot priority in your BIOS, directions for which can be found in step 2 of this post), and install antivirus on it—gHacks recommends F-Prot, but if you don't want to buy a copy of F-Prot just for this, all of our Hive Five antivirus favorites have Linux versions, and open-source favorite ClamAV (pictured above) is available from Synaptic Package Manager (along with the Clamtk GUI for it—just search for clamav and clamtk in Synaptic [available under System > Administration] and install both packages). Start it up from Applications > System Tools, set it to scan your Windows drive and you're good to go.
Note that if your BIOS does not support booting from USB, you'll need to make a boot disk that allows it to—which, unfortunately, requires a bit of command-line-fu, and then you're right back where you started with the command-line-requiring Live CDs. If you know of any Linux Live CDs that contain an Antivirus program with a GUI, let us know in the comments!
Tags: linux, ubuntu
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 A great BitTorrent client is all well and good, but you need a great tracker to get the actual torrent files and stoke the bandwidth burning fire in your client of choice. Here’s a rundown of five of the most popular options.
A bit of clarification is in order before we share the list of the top five contenders with you. In our call for contenders we asked for you to share your favorite BitTorrent trackers, but we didn't explain the difference between a BitTorrent tracker and a BitTorrent indexer. The difference isn't immediately clear to the end user—nor does the difference even matter to many end users—and because we didn't make the difference crystal clear the votes were a mix of both sites that tracked and indexed and just indexed torrent files.
Since the purpose of the Hive Five is to help readers find tools and the ability to find torrents is more important to the majority of users than whether or not the place they find the torrents is also acting as the tracker for those torrents, we’ve opted to overlook the confusion in an effort to share a list of where Lifehacker readers go to search and download torrent files. The following list contains both true trackers and indexers. If you’re curious about the technical details between a tracker and an indexer you can read up on them here and here.
The Pirate Bay is no longer the full-service tracker it once was thanks to some rough battles with the law, but it remains in service as an indexer. The Pirate Bay has been and remains one of the most publicly recognizable faces of the torrent phenomenon and is still a popular destination for torrent seekers. It no longer indexes its own tracker but instead organizes torrents indexed to other trackers. The Pirate Bay is known for having, even now, a wide selection and a well-organized, easy-to-browse site.
 BTJunkie is one of the largest torrent indexers on the web with over four million torrents and several thousand added daily. BTJunkie amasses such a high number of torrents by employing crawlers that dig through web sites looking for torrent files to index. The quality of torrents is ranked both by an algorithm and by user input which helps filter out low quality or malicious torrents.
Another enormous indexer, isoHunt has nearly two million torrents and a huge user base. In addition to being able to search torrents and sort them by age, number of peers, and other common search factors isoHunt has an additional variable, appropriately called isoHunt Rank, that is a compilation of all the other factors like age, number of comments, user feedback, and more. Sorting by isoHunt Rank allows you to see which torrents are best overall instead of just best in some subcategory like number of seeders or age.
Demonoid is a semi-public tracker. Registration is traditionally closed—it opens a few times a year to let new users in, or you can be invited by an existing member—but the site is still quite functional even without registration. Registration gives you access to the deep archives of Demonoid, but even without it you have access to over a quarter million torrents—the most recently added ones—available for download. Demonoid has built a name for itself by having a low number of bogus torrents and a high level of user participation.
KickAssTorrents is a new kid on the torrent indexing block, but it has quickly built a name for itself by offering a user friendly experience. KickAssTorrents is the only torrent search engine that offers correction of spelling mistakes—search for Unutu for instance and it will ask "Did you mean Ubuntu?"—which is a small thing but highlights the level of detail put into the construction of their search engine. In addition to indexing regular torrents KickAssTorrents also indexes httpTorrents, which allow users who cannot access the BitTorrent cloud due to their location or firewall restrictions to access torrents.
Now that you’ve had a chance to look over the best places to find new torrents it’s time to cast your vote in the poll below:
Which BitTorrent Indexer is Best?(answers)
Have a favorite torrent hangout that didn’t make the list? Have a BitTorrent-related tip or trick? Let’s hear about it in the comments.
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Tags: ubuntu
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