What is Linux operating system ?

One of us may wonder: What is "Linux"?
The following items will be traded in the post and this is the introduction of a system known as Linux:

1. Presentation of the steps through which the process of developing the operating system "Linux".
2. List of the components of the operating system "Linux".

Linux is a free operating system based on the orders of UNIX, and is intended for personal computers and supports internet, and this system has evolved very quickly and got very popular.

And of the main reasons for the spread of this system, is the ability to get it for free from the Internet or on CD-ROM at nominal prices.

Of the great advantages of this system superior performance when it runs on all of the advanced equipment and those with modest specifications, and can work with devices that support 32-bit or based 64-bit.

Linux Kernel has been developed by a student in computer science in the city of Helsinki in Finland, named Linus Torvalds, and has emerged the first version of Linux in 1991 and bears the number 0.02. At that time, Linus was not satisfied with the reality of operating systems available in a timely manner, it was expensive and many problems, we decided to write a new operating system by following the design of the operating system UNIX (back of this regime in 1969).

The development a major achievement in Linux operating systems market, even then, the closed operating systems, in addition to being developed and owned by large companies, but Linux did not develop to be a commercial operating system, but on the contrary has been developed according to open-system development policy and that allow volunteers from anywhere in the world to contribute to the development of Linux, has been provided with the source code of the system free to anyone willing to contribute to the development. Since the emergence of the first version of Linux and to the present time is still a system is distributed free of charge.

To read this post Go to New Domain

How to Install any Linux on a USB

There are so many reasons why having a Linux distribution on a USB drive can come in handy. From having a “rescue” OS on your keyring to being able to install a new distribution on your EeePC, a “thumb drive” Linux has many uses. But getting Linux onto a USB drive can’t be simple. Right? Wrong. There is a tool, UNetbootin, that makes installing Linux
on a USB drive simple.

UNetbootin can be used on either Linux or Windows. In this article, we’ll be illustrating it for Both.

Note: Not all USB installations will work on all machines. This can be an issue with your BIOS or your USB drive. If you install an OS that doesn’t work, try another. But after all that work, you might wind up with a machine that simply won’t boot from a USB drive. You have been warned.

Using UNetbootin with Linux

1. The first thing to do is download a copy of UNetbootin. For our purposes we’ll download the Linux universal install binary (named unetbootin-linux-299). Once that has finished you will need to issue the Following command in order to make the file executable.

chmod u+x unetbootin-linux29

2. Once the file is executable issue the following command (from the same directory unetbootin-linx-299 is stored) to see the application running.

su ./unetbootin-linux-299

3. But you’re not ready just yet. Depending upon your distribution, you might come across an error involving p7zip-full. This might be in your distribution’s repositories. If you use Mandriva you can install p7zip but you will not have the full package. If you use Ubuntu you can get p7zip-full with the following command

apt-get install p7zip-full

4. Before you run the application you will need to insert and mount your usb drive. Stick in your usb drive and then issue the following command to find out where your usb drive is located.

dmesg

5. Mount that and then issue the following command. When you issue the command you will see the UNetbootin window.

su ./unetbootin-linux-299

6. Once this window is up and running you are almost there. If you have very specific needs for your distribution you will most likely have an image file downloaded to use. If you do not you can select your distribution from the drop down list. First you select the distribution and then you select the version (or release). Note: Unless you have a very large USB drive you will most likely want to use a netinstall version of your distribution. If you do happen to have a large USB drive you can go ahead with a full distribution. If this usb drive is for rescue purposes, or just to have a version of Linux with you at all times, a distribution like PCLinuxOS Minime is a greate choice.

7. Once the process is done you will have two buttons to click, Reboot and Exit. Don’t bother with the Reboot button. Click the Exit button and UNetbootin will close. You can now unmount your drive and reboot your machine to see if the installation works.Note: When your machine boots you will need to make sure it first boots from the USB device.

Using UNebootin with Windows

1. Download UNetBootin for Windows.
2. Download your favorite Linux ISO (Don’t ask me from where just Google it).
3. Now Start the Unetbootin.
4. Click the Disk Image radio box and browse to select Linux ISO.
5. Now set your target USB drive and click OK to start the creation UNetbootin Live USB Creation from an ISO.
6. Once the UNetbootin installer has completed, click Reboot. Now UNetbootin installation is finished.
7. Set your system BIOS or boot menu to boot from the USB device and enjoy your favorite Live Linux on USB.

Navigating The File System And Simple Commands

NOTE: Only for the very fresh starters with Linux.

As we are doing the bare minimum these are the most often used commands:
cd = change directory
mkdir = make directory
rmdir = remove directory
rm = remove file
cp = copy
mv = move or rename
ls = lists directories and files
cat = show contents file

O.K. let's play:
Open an console on desktop 1, open the home directory by clicking on it on desktop 2 ( there you can see and verify the commands executed on desktop 1 )

Linux Tips - Lost ROOT Password

Yesterday we had forgotten our user password and disaster strikes again today we forgot the root password.

Note: First, disconnect your PC from the net, pull the cable out !

Step 1: For Redhat and Mandrake:

Then boot from your first install CD and as the very first screen comes up hit F2 and type:

rescue ( For RedHat "linux rescue" )

and the computer will boot in rescue mode.

It will show a few alternatives, select : ¨mount the existing partitions¨ and go to the shell/console prompt.

( Booting Mandrake in "failsafe" from the Lilo menu does the same )

TIPS:  

• Linux Tips - Lost User Password

• Accesing Files on a Data CD or on a Floppy in Linux

• Multiple Emulators Solution To Play Any Game In Linux 

Step 1: For SUSE:

Boot from your first install CD and press F1 at the first screen, then choose "Rescue System" from the menu and at the prompt type "root" ( you do not need a password )

Step 1: For other distro's

Boot from the first install CD ( or any Live CD like Knoppix ) and at the bootprompt type:

CODE

linux single

( For Knoppix: knoppix single )
And it will boot in "single user mode" and you will get an odd looking prompt like “sh-2.05b#”

Alternative for step 1

Sure with most Live and Rescue CDs you can also just boot in the live version, mount the partition and, as root, make changes to the files indicated below:

Step 2

CODE

# cd /etc

( if you boot from knoppix first cd to the partition your lost-password-distro is on )

We need to change two files; ¨passwd¨ and ¨shadow¨:

CODE

# vi passwd

( opens the file )
< i > ( puts vi in insertmode )

This is the first line:

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash


Make it:

root::0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash


So just get writ of the ¨x¨ do not touch the ¨:¨ ( colons )

Save the file:
Esc
ZZ


Second file to be changed:

CODE

# vi shadow

( open the file )
< i > ( insert mode )

The first line is a long scrambled line of characters, just make it:

root:::: ( four colons ! )


Save the file
Esc
ZZ

Now you can reboot your computer. Log in as normal user, open a console and type:

CODE

$ su

# passwd

And set the new root password !

Log out as root:
Ctrl+d

And the job is done !!


WARNING: Only after setting your new root password it is safe to connect your computer to the internet or local network again !!

TIPS:  

• Linux Tips - Lost User Password

• Accesing Files on a Data CD or on a Floppy in Linux

Multiple Emulators Solution To Play Any Game In Linux

Linux Tips - Lost User Password

Now, just imagine, you have a sudden strike of growing old, and, you forgot your user password. I know it´s hard to figure, but weirder things happen !


TIPS:  

• Linux Tips - Lost ROOT Password

• Accesing Files on a Data CD or on a Floppy in Linux

• Multiple Emulators Solution To Play Any Game In Linux

The solution however is simple:

CODE

$ su

< root-password >

# passwd pkb

( if that is your username, don´t use mine )

Type in a new password ( you will likely get an error message, ignore it )
Type in the same password again !

Log out as root and log in as user with your new password !
( I said is was easy ! )

Next time we will attack the forgotten ROOT password ! A bit more complicated but it sure can be done.

TIPS:  

• Linux Tips - Lost ROOT Password

• Accesing Files on a Data CD or on a Floppy in Linux

• Multiple Emulators Solution To Play Any Game In Linux

Linux Tip - Ripping sound files from an audio CD

Maybe the easiest way to copy tracks from an audio cd it to open 'konqueror', and type 'audiocd:/' in the address bar. This will show you the content of the CD, which you can copy somewhere else.
Copying from the mp3 or ogg folders will do the automatic translations for you.

Else, there are two programs with graphical interface which allow you to rip audio CD: 'grip' and 'kaudiocreator'.

On, the command line, you can use cdparanoia. For example, to rip an entire audio CD:

cdparanoia -B

To rip just one track:

cdparanoia -w track_number file.wav

TIPS:  

• Linux Tips - Lost User Password

• Accesing Files on a Data CD or on a Floppy in Linux

• Multiple Emulators Solution To Play Any Game In Linux

Run Windows Programs or Any EXE File at Linux – Download Wine

Ever wanted to run Windows (Microsoft's) programs or exe files at Linux? If yes then, Wine is for you. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix. Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available. Wine provides both a development toolkit for porting Windows source code to Unix as well as a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows programs to run on x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris.

TIPS:  

• Linux Tips - Lost User Password

• Accesing Files on a Data CD or on a Floppy in Linux

• Multiple Emulators Solution To Play Any Game In Linux

Wine for Linux

Features of Wine


Binary Compatibility

• Loads Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP, Windows 3.x and DOS programs and libraries
• Win32 compatible memory layout, exception handling, threads and processes
• Designed for POSIX compatible operatings systems (eg. Linux and FreeBSD)
• Compatibility with Windows

Graphics

• X11-based graphics allows remote display to any X terminal
• X11, TrueType (.ttf/.ttc) and Windows Bitmap (.fon) Fonts
• DirectX support for games (limited Direct3D support)
• Printing via PostScript driver or legacy native Win16 printer drivers
• Enhanced Metafile (EMF) and Windows Metafile (WMF) driver
• Desktop-in-a-box or mixable windows
• Windows MultiMedia (WinMM) layer support with builtin codecs

Allows Windows program to interface with

• Sound devices via ALSA, OSS, ARTS, JACK, and libaudio etc
• Multi-lingual keyboards and CJK input method support via XIM
• Modems, serial devices
• Networks (TCP/IP and IPX)
• ASPI Scanners
• Windows Tablets via XInput (eg. Wacom)

Wine API

• Designed for source and binary compatibility with Win32 code
• Win32 API test suite to ensure compatibility
• Compilable on a wide range of C compilers
• Permits mixing of Win32 and POSIX code
• Permits mixing of ELF (.so) and PE (.dll/.exe) binaries in one address space
• Win32 compatible header files
• Automatically generated API documentation
• Resource compiler
• Message compiler
• IDL compiler
• extensive Unicode support
• Internationalization -- Wine supports 16 languages
• Built-in debugger and configurable trace messages
• External memory checker support using Valgrind
• Sample programs

New in This Release

• Improved Gecko integration by using Wine's network layers
• Support for JPEG and PNG formats in WindowsCodecs
• Many regression test fixes for Win64 and Windows 7
• Use of external libmpg123 for mp3 decoding
• Various bug fixes.

Download Wine


tar.bz2 (1.1.30 Development) [14.93 MB]
openSUSE RPM (1.0.1 / 1.1.30)
Slackware TGZ (1.0.1 / 1.1.30)
RedHat RPM (1.0.1 / 1.1.30)
Mandriva RPM (1.0.1 / 1.1.30)
Debian DEB (1.0.1 / 1.1.30)
Ubuntu 8.04 DEB (1.0.1 / 1.1.30)
tar.bz2 (1.0.1 Stable)[13.30 MB]

Multiple Emulators Solution To Play Any Game In Linux

Puppy Arcade 7 (Latest Puppy Arcade 9) can play games from a variety of systems, using apps called 'emulators', which load 'roms'. To play games: Just load an emulator, optionally choose some settings, and select a rom to play. Play Amiga (500, 1000, 2000), Atari (ST, 800, 800XL, 130XE, 5200), Amstrad (CPC, Plus, VEB), Arcades, Colecovision, Commodore (64, 128, VIC20, PET), GameBoys (GB, GBC, GBA), GameGear, Genesis/MegaDrive, MasterSystem, MS DOS, N64, NeoGeo, NeoGeo CD, NES/Famicom, PC Engine/TurboGrafix, PSX, ScummVM, SNES and ZX Spectrum (16k, 48k, 128k, +2, +2A, +3) & more using Puppy Arcade.

Puppy Arcade 7

Tips And Tricks

Run Puppy Arcade without a hard drive
After booting, you can simply replace your Puppy Arcade live-CD with a CD/DVD full of roms.
Mount the DVD/CD drive and your roms will be available at '/mnt/sr0/'

Hard Drive/USB Install

Put your savefile on the same drive as your roms, and your roms will be available at '/mnt/home/path/to/your/roms'

Create An Easy To Remember ROM Directory

You can symlink your roms folder to /roms/ - so it's easy and quick to reach them. To do this, type 'ln -s /path/to/your/roms /roms' in the terminal

Use You Joypad Or Joystick

Plug in your device before the Puppy Arcade deskop loads. Your joypad will be loaded automatically and should be called '/dev/js0'. You can now update the controller settings in your emulators, or using 'Rejoypad'.

Download Puppy Arcade 7 (Latest Puppy Arcade 9)


CLICK HERE To Download

Source: techmynd

15+ Free Text Editors For Linux

You can call it html editor, text editor or web editor but its same which facilitates text editing. Download free text editors for Linux.

Beaver - Linux Text Editor
Beaver starts up fast and doesn't use a lot of memory. Beaver's only dependency is GTK+2, so no need to install other libraries eating your disk space. These things make Beaver very suitable for old computers and use in small Linux distributions. Beaver is a recursive acronym for Beaver is an Early AdVanced EditoR. It is intended for Linux. It is licensed under the GNU GPL and intended to be lightweight, but full of useful features for programming, from website editing to coding. It is based upon the GTK+ 2 toolkit, supports many languages through config files and offers functions such as automatic indentation, completion and correction, as well as syntax highlighting. It even has its own mini macro language.

Homepage

GLeDitor - Linux Text Editor
A small programmer’s editor whith syntax highlight, extended search features, beautiful icons and colors. The programming language is object pascal (delphi/win32 and lazarus/linux).

Homepage

jEdit - Linux Text Editor
jEdit is a mature programmer’s text editor with hundreds (counting the time developing plugins) of person-years of development behind it. While jEdit beats many expensive development tools for features and ease of use, it is released as free software with full source code, provided under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Homepage

Kate - Linux Text Editor
Kate is a multi document editor, based on a rewritten version of the kwrite editing widget of KDE, offering all the features of that plus a bunch of its own. With a multi-view editor like Kate you get a lot of advantages. You can view several instances of the same document and all instances are synced. Or you can view more files at the same time for easy reference or simultaneous editing. The terminal emulation and sidebar are docked windows that can be plugged out of the main window, or replaced therein according to your preference.

Homepage

KatePart - Linux Text Editor
KatePart is a fast and featurerich text editor component with many advanced features. It implements the KTextEditor interfaces, a common interface collection for text editor components in KDE, allowing it to be selected as the editor in applications that lets the user chose from different implementations, as well as it can use KTextEditor plug-ins.

Homepage

Text Editor For Linux

Kile - Linux Text Editor
Kile is a user friendly TeX/LaTeX editor for the KDE desktop environment. KDE is available for many architectures such as PC, PowerPC (Mac for example) and SPARC.

Homepage

Leafpad - Linux Text Editor
Leafpad is a simple GTK+ text editor that emphasizes simplicity. As development focuses on keeping weight down to a minimum, only the most essential features are implemented in the editor. Leafpad is simple to use, is easily compiled, requires few libraries, and starts up quickly.

Homepage

MadEdit - Linux Text Editor
MadEdit is an Open-Source & Cross-Platform Text/Hex Editor written in C++ and wxWidgets. MadEdit can edit files in Text/Column/Hex modes, and supports many useful functions, e.g. SyntaxHighlightings, WordWrap, Encodings.

Homepage

NEdit - Linux Text Editor
NEdit is a multi-purpose text editor for the X Window System, which combines a standard, easy to use, graphical user interface with the thorough functionality and stability required by users who edit text eight hours a day. It provides intensive support for development in a wide variety of languages, text processors, and other tools, but at the same time can be used productively by just about anyone who needs to edit text.

Homepage

Notepad++ - Linux Text Editor
Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment. This project, based on the Scintilla edit component (a very powerful editor component), written in C++ with pure win32 api and STL (that ensures the higher execution speed and smaller size of the program), is under the GPL Licence.

Homepage

RexEdit - Linux Text Editor
RexEdit – very powerful and fast programmer’s text and source code editor. Includes highlighting for over 50 syntaxes (programming/markup languages, scripts, specific files, etc). Fully customizable environment: you can change everything – from button layout to syntax highlighting colors. It also has very helpful ready to use additional functions such as text transformation procedures or specific files managing routines. Effective templates engine and integrated project management features helps edit your files in lighting speed.

Homepage

SciTE - Linux Text Editor
SciTE is a SCIntilla based Text Editor. Originally built to demonstrate Scintilla, it has grown to be a generally useful editor with facilities for building and running programs. It is best used for jobs with simple configurations – I use it for building test and demonstration programs as well as SciTE and Scintilla, themselves.

Homepage

The Hessling Editor - Linux Text Editor
The Hessling Editor (THE) editor is one of the oldest open source editor projects and for the last decade it was written and maintained by Mark Hessling, who along with being the original author of THE is also a maintainer of Regina, an open source REXX interpreter that has been ported to most Unix platforms.

Homepage

Yudit - Linux Text Editor
Yudit is a unicode text editor for the X Window System. It was first released on 1997-11-08. It can do TrueType font rendering, printing, transliterated keyboard input and handwriting recognition with no dependencies on external engines. Its conversion utilities can convert text between various encodings. Keyboard input maps can also act like text converters. There is no need for a pre-installed multi-lingual environment. Menus are translated into multiple languages.

Homepage

Arachnophilia - Linux Text Editor
Arachnophilia is a popular text-based HTML editor written in Java by Paul Lutus. It is known to be a successor to another HTML editor WebThing. The program is licensed as a Careware[1] type of software. The program’s name comes from the term meaning “love of spiders.”

Homepage

Eddie - Linux Text Editor
Eddie is a text editor which was first released in 1997 for BeOS, and later ported to Linux and Mac OS X. It was written by Pavel Císler, formerly a senior developer at Be, who later worked for Eazel and currently works for Apple and continues to develop Eddie as his pet project, now on Mac OS X. Inspired by the classic Macintosh’ Macintosh Programmer’s Workshop editor, it is primarily intended for working with C and C++ development. However, Eddie supports syntax colouring for HTML, JavaScript, .kon/.widget, Perl, and many other formats. Eddie supports a Worksheet — provides a well-appointed shell that enables the power of bash and the convenience of editing in a normal text window mode.

Homepage

Komodo Edit - Linux Text Editor
Komodo Edit is a free Komodo-based text editor for dynamic languages published by software firm ActiveState. It inherits many features of Komodo IDE, like the full range of supported languages (Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Tcl) and platforms (Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows ). And like Komodo IDE, Komodo Edit also supports browser-side languages like JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and XML. It was developed for programmers who need a multi-language editor with broad functionality, but not the features of an IDE, like debugging, DOM viewer, interactive shells, and source code control integration.

Homepage

Download Portable Ubuntu For Windows

Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. Whether you use it at home, at school or at work Ubuntu contains all the applications you'll ever need, from word processing and email applications, to web server software and programming tools. Portable Ubuntu for Windows is a Ubuntu system running as a Windows application. This system is built with the Colinux Kernel, Xming X server and Pulseaudio server for Windows. You can carry it on your thumb drive.
Portable Ubuntu for Windows runs an entire Linux operating system as a Windows application.

Portable Ubuntu lets you seamlessly run Linux apps on your Windows desktop, Portable Ubuntu is a stand-alone package that runs a fairly standard (i.e. orange-colored, GNOME-based) version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. It just doesn't bother creating its own desktop, and puts all its windows inside your Windows's windows.

The coolest parts about Portable Ubuntu are:

• It actually works.
• It fits on a thumb drive (flash drive) and can run entirely from it.
• It can work on, and save to, your Windows folders and files.
• It's persistent, so changes you make and apps you install are carried around with you.
• It's easily manageable from Windows, and works great on dual monitors.
• You run Windows and Linux at the same time.

You do not need to shift at other computer to test your applications different for Linux and Windows.
Size: 438 MB


Download Portable Ubuntu


source: Techmynd

Transform Linux Into Mac OS X

Using Mac4Lin can transform your Linux OS into Mac OS X Leopard. The goal of this open source project is to bring the user interface of Mac OS X Leopard to GNU/Linux and UNIX-System like Operating Systems.

Transform Linux Into Mac OS X

Download Mac4Lin
Click the following link that will give you:

Leopard_Wallpapers.tar.gz (wallpapers pack)
Mac4Lin_1.0_Documentation-RC2b.pdf (documentation and help)
Mac4Lin_v1.0_RC1.tar.gz (Mac4Lin installation file)

Download all these files and follow instructions as in pdf documentation.

Download Mac4Lin

Project homepage

Get Free Ubuntu CD Latest Version (10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx))

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

You can get free cd of ubuntu linux at your home free of cost .You just have to register to their website.But due to increase in demand it can take some time to receive cds at your home.

Ubuntu is available free of charge and we can send you a CD of the latest version (10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx)) with no extra cost, but the delivery may take up to ten weeks, so you should consider downloading the CD image if you have a fast Internet connection.
Ubuntu cds for both server and desktop edition are available .

Check out the link below

Get Ubuntu CD Free

Top 7 Ways To Get Help And Solve Your Ubuntu Linux Problems !

If you are using windows, then you will surely find any urgent help you need but in Ubuntu or any other distribution of Linux, you will have to search a little but harder. I recommend you to use Ubuntu and if you might be a newbie, I am giving you some ways by which you can find help about your Linux installation. I am giving you 8 ways to get help to your problems and find an answer the easiest way you can. As usual, I will hope that you like the article and would love to share it to others :) enjoy !

Ubuntu Linux

1. Google
As any tech expert like me would say : “For every question of life, There is a Google page” ! Whenever I get any problem in my laptop, the first internet page I open is Google and there is no wonder about that as it is the easiest way to get a solution in no time. So whenever you find any problem, you should look into Google first.

2. Ububtu Guide
This user guide is actually a wikipedia page but it contains solutions to all the basic problems a newbie ubuntu user can face. It is a must read guide for a newbie user as it explains all the points from installing ubuntu to driver installation to installing your video and sound card as well.

3. IRC channels
If you have any quick question or you dont feel like registering on forum sites to ask your question, this service is for you. All you have to do is to install X-chat from ubuntu software center and then goto IRC channel which will connect you to Ubuntu servers and you can chat with the experts there. They will try their best to solve your problem in a quick session. Don’t forget to thank people who help you out there. They love it.

4. Ubuntu Forums
Ubuntu forums are also the quickest way to get help. Go through the topics already posted there and you may add your own question as well. But my advice will be to always follow Method No.1 as there might be chances that someone has already answered that question and you get it easily. You have to register to post your question as in every other forum site.

5. LGU – Linux User Groups
 A Linux user group is where people meet to discuss their views, solve problems and help people about various topics and problems. They have been a very active and important part of Linux support for a long time. You can find an LGU near you on Google. You might be having one in your university or your around your work place.

6. Wikipedia and Forums
 Again, this is also the part of topic No.1 which includes everything. If you don’t find any suitable answer than you should know how to use Google to get search results according to your need.

7. Get Help from the Developers
 For any software or application developed in the world anywhere, there will be some support available. The developer surely leave their email address anywhere by which you can contact them and get help. They would love it and will be ready to solve your problem because they know that their application is being used. Please don’t forget to say thanks to them and appreciate their work.


Feel free to leave a word of appreciation or any suggestion or any other way which you might want to include in this list. Thanks and cheers

10 Linux Commands For Beginners

Most Linux distributions include attractive graphical interfaces, but you can do a lot more from the command line interface once you know your way around.
For tasks like controlling and monitoring the distro's underlying system, the command line remains indispensable.

TIP:: Navigating The File System And Simple Commands

Using it, it's easy to configure and control everything from basic system setup, including network and boot, to graphical apps such as MPlayer.
Here are some commands that will elevate you from a total newbie to an informed command line user.

10 Linux Commands For Beginners

1. Monitor bootup

When you run into problems such as your graphics card not being detected or your network card not working, the bootup messages listed by dmesg are invaluable for helping you home in on the problem.
At the very least, they'll help you ascertain whether your Linux distro recognises the device attached to your machine. You can then probe these devices further with commands such as lspci and lsusb, depending on the port they're connected to.

2. Monitor system processes

Linux treats everything as a process. While you can use the top command to determine which process (or app) is using the most system resources, the ps command gives you much more information and can be used to control processes with precision.

3. Manipulate file permissions

For security, file permissions in Linux are divided into Users, Groups and Others. You can control the permissions assigned to users under each of these categories using the chmod command.
The permissions enable you to read, write or execute a file. This is handy when you want to run a script to install a package that isn't executable by default for security reasons.
The command chmod +x will make the script executable on your system.

4. Understand commands

The most useful tool for command line newbies is the man command, which provides a basic introduction to the various commands to help you understand their functions, and teaches you how best to use them.

When in doubt about which command to use, use the apropos command to search the man page descriptions for the specified keyword.

5. Manipulate archives

Linux offers many compression and archiving options other than good old ZIP. You'll often encounter Linux packages with '.tar', '.tar.gz' and '.tar.bz2' extensions. Try tar for a regular, uncompressed archive, while using gzip and bunzip2 will give you two different types of compressed archive.

6. Search on the CLI

When you can't remember where a particular config file is stored, or just want to search for a file, you can use either find or locate to determine where it is. While find traverses any specified directory, locate uses its updated database. Some commands are installed in non-standard directories, so use the whereis command to determine their installation directory.

7. Terminate processes

Linux apps sometimes fail to respond. If this happens, use the kill command to terminate the process. This requires the app's process ID, so you must use the ps command first to find this. You can then use this with kill to terminate the app.
For example, ps aux | grep firefox will give you the process ID for the Firefox browser (something like 18104), and kill 18104 will terminate it.

8. Root privileges

You'll often encounter these in tutorials. Only the root user has privileges allowing them to modify the system by installing or removing apps, configuring the network interface and so on. When you want to install an app as a normal user, you can use the sudo command to briefly acquire root user privileges.

9. Redirect output

While not a command, output redirection is an important skill to master when working on the command line. The tools required are the pipe (or |), and . These redirect output (normally printed on your screen) somewhere else, such as a text file or another app.
For example, the command ls | less redirects the output of the ls command onto less. Similarly, you can use the command ls > directory.txt to write the output of the ls command onto the 'directory.txt' file.
The redirection operative is used to write to the end of file.

TIP:: Navigating The File System And Simple Commands

10. Recall commands

You can use history to rerun a command. Entering this without any switches displays the history list with line numbers. You can also perform an incremental search of the history list.
Use [Ctrl]+[R] to perform a reverse search, or [Ctrl]+[S] for a forward search. As you type the first few letters, the last command from the history list that matches your string will be displayed.

Avant Window Navigator For Ubuntu Linux

Avant Window Navigator (AWN) is a Mac OS X like panel for the GNOME Desktop. In addition to launchers that can be dragged onto the bar, it features a taskbar that behaves similarly to the Mac OS X dock. The window navigator uses the composite extension for transparency and other effects

Avant Window Navigator Dock

The latest version of Avant Window Navigator - as of this writing - is version 0.4.

How To Install Avant Window Navigator In Ubuntu Linux

In Ubuntu Linux, it is very easy to install Avant Window Navigator (AWN).

Open up Synaptic Package Manager from the Gnome System Menu and do a search for avant window navigator in its search bar. You will get a list of packages related to AWN.

You should select the following packages to install.

avant-window-navigator, awn-applets-c-extras, and python-awn-extras.

Synaptic will automatically pull in dependency packages needed to install AWN.

Once installed, you can start Avant Window Navigator by navigating through "Applications > Accessories > Avant Window Navigator".

Avant Window Navigator Menu

Useful Configuration Tips In AWN

Once you start Avant Window Navigator, it will display a Mac OS X style dock in the bottom center of your screen. Now I made a few changes to my GNOME desktop in Ubuntu Lucid Linux, to give it a better feel.

1. Delete the GNOME panel at the bottom of the screen. Right Click on the panel and from the pop-up menu press "Delete this panel".
2. Open AWN "Dock preferences" dialog and make the following changes.

• In the Preferences tab, change Style option to "3D".
• Set Behavior to "Intellihide".
• Set Autohide mode to "Fade Out".
• Set the "Start AWN automatically" option. Setting this option starts Avant Window Navigator dock each time you log into your Ubuntu Linux desktop.

See the following dialog box depicting the changes I made in my Avant Window Navigator dock settings.

Avant Window Navigator Preferrnces

Note: To open the Dock preferences dialog, you should right-click on the AWN dock and from the pop-up menu click on "Dock preferences".

Or

You can run the following command from the terminal to open the AWN preferences dialog.

$ awn-manager &

AWN Widgets

AWN comes with a good set of Applets which are really desktop widgets. There are desktop widgets for categories ranging from amusement, audio and video, calendar, clock, checking your email, personal information management, games, and many utilities.

The following are a sample of AWN Widgets (Applets) I have installed on my Ubuntu Linux Desktop. To know the name of each awn widget, hover your mouse pointer on each image.

AWN Desktop Switcher Applet

AWN Media Player Applet

AWN Widget- Comics

Group Common Windows

Stacks AWN applet

There are lots more AWN widgets available in the Avant Window Navigator Preferences dialog

To learn more about Avant Window Navigator, visit its home page and also read the FAQ.

Do you have questions, comments, or suggestions? Feel free to post a comment!

Linux file system explained for beginners

For those of you coming from windows backgrounds, the way the linux filesystem is laid out may seem confusing at first glance…. but that is where this article comes in !

The first thing you should know when working with linux, is that everything is treated as either a file or directory. Yeap thats right, even hardware is considered a file by linux, and, speaking of hardware… all your hardware devices are located in the /dev directory, but more on that later.

Linux

Another thing that confuses windows users, is the fact that linux dosen’t use drive letters to distinguish between different partitions and devices. that is to say in linux, the “root” of your filesystem is / whereas in windows it would most probably be C:\ . Drives in linux are “mounted” to directories where their data can then be accessed, so for instance, if you needed to use your thumbdrive, you would plug it into your computer, and then mount it using the “mount” command, which specifies the path to the device ( something like /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc ) and the directory to mount it to (usually /mnt or /media), then you can happily access your drive from the /mnt or /media folder.

Sounds strange right? well yes it does if you come from a windows environment, where the entire operating system is consolidated onto a single drive. However, with linux and the ability to mount devices as directories, it gives the end user much greater flexibility in splitting up their operating system over several drives or partitions.

to understand what I mean when I say that this approach in mounting drives grants flexibility, I must first explain the different folders in linux and what they store

Diagram showing Linux filesystem hierarchy

The graphic above shows the linux filesystem hierarchy, now will explain in a bit more detail what each folder contains.

/ this is the root folder, all other folders come under root.. think of it as C:\ in a Windows context.
/bin this folder contains all the user-essential binaries (programs) that are needed to administer and run your linux system… delete this folder and your system is broken.

/boot as the name suggests, this folder contains configuration files and other necessary files that are needed by the bootloader

/dev this folder contains device files (remember, these files represent physical devices, so be careful when working with them)

/etc this folder contains all the configuration files used by the system, you can also start and stop services (daemons ) from here

/home this folder contains the home folders of all the normal (non – root ) users on the system .. think of it as my documents in windows

/lib this folder contains software libraries

/media this is a mount point for removable devices… this is where you would usually mount your thumbdrives … etc

/mnt this is a temporary mount point

/opt this folder contains add on software (extra software)

/sbin this folder contains binaries that can only be run as the root user (“superuser”)

/tmp this folder contains temporary files that are erased upon reboot

/usr this folder and its subfolders contains user installed programs and utilities and libraries

/var this folder contains files that change alot (“Variable files”)

/root this folder contians the root user’s files

/proc this is a psuedo folder, that contains information about the linux kernel and hardware that is updated in realtime.

Now back to how mounting grants flexibility…

you see how the different folders all contain parts of the operating system? well we can actually mount a seperate hard drive for each of this folders. for example, your /home folder can be put on another harddrive than your / which means that you can easily recover your personal files if the harddrive on / fails because the harddrive mounted to your /home folder is seperate from the one that is mounted to your /

So there you have it, you now know a little bit more about the nuts and bolts of linux based operating systems.'