Fresh Ubuntu

I wish you all a happy and safe new year!! No podcast this week as I am on vacation. Stay tuned in for next weeks podcast. Thanks.

Download Episode 21

The kids can hardly wait get any sleep in anticipation of Christmas. I don't blame them. I couldn't sleep either when I was their age. I submitted my 'list' to my parents and hoped that they would get the biggest, most expensive gift on the list. I would often be surprised, and sometimes disappointed (on the naughty list those years). I am rarely disappointed nowadays with Ubuntu. It makes a perfect gift for anyone you might know, still though there are a few things I would like to ask for and in this episode I 'submit' my list to St Mark, patron Saint of Canonical (whoa, sounds way too Catholic...memories flooding back. No! not the ruler!!! Not again...). I realize that this list is most likely incomplete at best. So feel free to leave a comment by pressing on the word comments at the end of the post and adding to the list. Please, leave a name (real or otherwise) so I can showcase it on the next podcast. It beats being called 'anonymous'. I hope you enjoyed the podcast!


News

Item 1. === Introduction to Ubuntu Security ===

Item 2. === Ubuntu: The Linux poster child ===

Item 3. === Ubuntu in South Australian Parliament ===

Item 4. === MAKE Zine adds Ubuntu to its Christmas shopping list ===


CLCOTW

df - The df utility displays the disk space usage on all mounted filesystems. Below is a pic of the usage on my terminal.



du - You can use the du command to determine which files or directories need to be deleted -- or at least trimmed. A simple du will print usage for the present working directory and its subdirectories, along with the size of each directory. Here is the pic for the usage:




Here is the list for the bumper music I used.

Hathead - from the Podshow Podsafe Music Network

Download "Espionage" (mp3)
from "Atlantis"
by Technetium
WTFD Records

• Buy at iTunes Music Store

Midnight Bossa - Brian McRae - from the Podshow Podsafe Music Network

Download the podcast here - Episode 21

News

Item #1 - Linux Backer Lets Go Of Third Of Staff

Item #2 - Feisty Fawn (7.04) Herd1 Released!

Item #3 - The Open Source Car Project

Main - -The Disk Usage Analyzer for Ubuntu and Kubuntu





This was a neat little find!! The Disk Usage Analyzer located in the application menu under accessories, as well as KDirStat, included in the base installation of Ubuntu and Kubuntu will tell you how big your directories are and how much space is allocated to it on the physical drive. The utility will give you both a text version of the space and a graphical representation of the data that is on your hard drive. Above are the pictures of both the Ubuntu version and the Kubuntu version. The Fresh Ubuntu choice for disk analyzers is....Kubuntu!!! Yes, it is actually far and away a better implementation of this utility. It is located in the K menu under the utilities menu and is named KDirStat (Directory Statistics), the Kubuntu version gives both the graphical and textual information in a split window, whereas in Ubuntu you have to call up the graphic by pressing a different button on the menu. I also give a thumbs up to the way that Kubuntu walks you through the whole process by selecting the directory from a popup window upon initial startup of the utility. On the other hand, Ubuntu leaves you standing there wondering what to do. Now, I realize that once you learn the application this become less clumsy, but, when opening up the program for the first time it can literally stop you in your tracks. This is a novel utility which might come in handy someday when you are getting close to filling up your hard drive with documents, music, and, (ahem) graphics.

CLCOTW - aliases


This is not really a specific command, but a way of accessing a set of commands through "aliases". An alias is a shortcut to a proper command that can be entered in the terminal. Aliases can be very handy with long and verbose commands. I am a poor typist, so anything that can alleviate that end of my work is appreciated. Before we can use any aliases we must declare them in our user's ~/.bashrc file, which resides hidden in our home directory.

You can use sudo gedit ~/.bashrc to open the file. (I am not a big fan of Vim or Nano).

I would save a copy of the file before making any changes. For example, File -> Save As -> .bashrc.orig It is also a good idea to actually read the file before adding the aliases. Bash, the default shell, already provides some example aliases that have been commented out. It is here that I suggest adding the apt-get aliases.

alias agu='sudo apt-get update'
alias agi='sudo apt-get install'
alias ags='apt-cache search'
alias agsh='apt-cache show'
alias agr='sudo apt-get remove'

These aliases could also be put in a file called .bash_aliases, and set aside from the .bashrc file. there is a provision in .bashrc to map all aliases to a file called .bash_aliases. That option is quite helpful for cross-pollenating your settings from machine to machine. This example was taken as an excerpt from the O'Reilly press book "Ubuntu Hacks", chapter six, page 209.

Enjoy!!!

Links to the music - Because of the graciousness of the artists, they have allowed podcasters to play their music on our podcasts in exhange for a little promo. So here it is, thanks for listening.

Download "Hullabaloo" (mp3)
from "Hullabaloo / Calypso Blues"
by Spiritual South & Sleeptalker Sleepwalker
Raw Phusion

• Buy at RealNetworks / Rhapsody
• Stream from RealNetworks / Rhapsody

Download "Take The "A" Train" (mp3)
from "Artistry In Swing"
by Tony Evans & His Orchestra
Tema International

• Buy at iTunes Music Store
• Buy at eMusic
• Buy at Napster
• Buy at RealNetworks / Rhapsody
• Stream from RealNetworks / Rhapsody

HatHead - Rumba Lullaby

Download Episode 20

I would like to thanks these artists that are featured as the bumper music on the podcast.

'Kiss' by Anna Lee - Visit site

'Download It" by Clea - Visit Site

'What U Got To Say' - by Ax - Visit Site

Demographic information

Type of podcast aggregator - updated Stats
iTunes for Windows - 59%
iTunes for Mac - 24 %
Juice - 5%
Unidentifiable - 7%
iPodder Linux - 1%

As a side note, there are up to 3 people using the command line wget to download the media file!!! Also, of the roughly 20 episode of Fresh Ubuntu 25122 downloads have happened. True, not as big as some but not bad for an amatuer.

Top 5 episodes downloaded in order of highest to lowest

Windows Equivalent Apps for Ubuntu, Episode 6
Ubuntu Powered Security, Episode 7
Ubuntu Strength Security Pt II, Episode 8
Beginning Ubuntu Linux Book Review, Episode 9
Remedial Command Line, Episode 5

Top Five Visitors by Country in order from highest to lowest

USA
UK
Canada
Sweden
Australia

Bottom Five Visitors by Country in Alphabetical Order

Brunei Darasalaam
Kyrgystan
Kenya
Uzbekistan
Taiwan

Top Languages Spoken by Visitors

English
German
Spanish
French
Finnish

Top Five Referring Source
Google Search
Direct
beta.blogger.com
podcastalley.com
podcast.net

CLCOTW - lspci, Here is the output to lspci from my terminal window.

harlem@freshubuntu:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8601 [Apollo ProMedia] (rev 05)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8601 [Apollo ProMedia AGP]
00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 22)
00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 10)
00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 10)
00:07.4 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 30)
00:07.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 20)
00:09.0 Communication controller: Conexant HSF 56k Data/Fax Modem (rev 01)
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade i1 (rev 6a)
02:00.0 Network controller: Texas Instruments ACX 100 22Mbps Wireless Interface


Main Segment

Well, I promised pictures and I will post them the old fashioned way by uploading the files. But I want to get a lightbox script on here to make it more accessible as well as appealing.

Here is the background of the terminal window.



And below are the pix of the Synaptic Package Manager.

Download Episode 19

News

Item 1 - Children in Need

Children in Need, a UK charity, are destined to benefit from the generosity of members of our wonderful community. An Ubuntu t-shirt signed by luminaries such as Mark Shuttleworth, Jon 'Maddog' Hall, Jono Bacon and many others including Canonical staff and community members will be auctioned by the Ubuntu UK Team, with the money raised to go to the Children in Need charity. Jono Bacon has also contributed a signed copy of "Official Ubuntu Book" to raise the stakes and get more people interested. AUCTION MAY BE OVER BUT THERE IS A LINK TO THE CHARITY FOR YOU TO MAKE YOUR DONATIONS.

Item 2 - Ubuntu Takes the Prize
16 November 2006, London - Canonical Ltd, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, today announced it has scooped another two awards for Ubuntu, its leading-edge Linux distribution. At the Linux New Media Awards, on Wednesday 15th November, Ubuntu was awarded 'Most User-Friendly Linux Distribution', and Canonical the 'Best combination of Community and Commerce'. Ubuntu also picked up the 'Best Linux/Open Source Distribution', for the second year running, at the 2006 UK Linux and Open Source Awards in October.

Mark Shuttleworth, Founder of Ubuntu, commented. We are all extremely proud of the impact Ubuntu has made, and proud that Ubuntu is seen as one of the finest examples of user-friendly Linux. With the commitment and dedication of our excellent community, and with the huge leaps in functionality and usability upstream, we are confident that Ubuntu and the open source world can continue to provide our users with a high quality, modern experience.

One of the core principles behind the continuing success of Ubuntu is community, and I am intensely proud of what our diverse, enthusiastic community has achieved and how Canonical has worked to maintain a transparent and open process. The 'Best combination of Community and Commerce' award highlights the commitment and drive of our community to collaborate effectively, and everyone who has contributed to Ubuntu deserves it. I am positive this accolade will continue to inspire and encourage an already inspired community of contributors said Jono Bacon, Community Leader for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is freely available, including security updates for five years on servers, with no restrictions on usage and no requirement to purchase subscriptions per deployment. Full telephone and online support on commercial terms is available globally from Canonical Ltd and other companies.

Item 3 - Customize your own LiveCD

Ever wanted to customise an Ubuntu LiveCD to your own tastes? With the UCK you can. Version 1.3 was released on the 10th of November, and includes support for the latest stable Ubuntu release, Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy Eft". For more information on the UCK, click the title of this story.


Linux restricted modules - Here is the link to the restricted modules
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.17/+bug/62452


Music Provided Courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network

Long time - Camelia Ashbach - Link to the PMN Page
In the News - Motion soundtrack - Link to the PMN Page
Gods Window - Fresh music Indie Label - Link to the PMN page

Download - Episode 18

Hi everyone. I hope you enjoy the podcast. Please feel free to leave a comment and remember to have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

News Links:

1. Ballmer says Linux is using MS code!!!
2. Dell refund an XP user who would rather install Linux
3. Ubuntu Community News

Music for the podcast was provided by the Podsafe Music Network.

"Thanks You" by The Almighty Whispers
"Cry Baby" by Aaron
"I Got My Gmail" by Hathead

Thanks for listening to this special Thanksgiving issue and I'll see you next week! Cheers!!!

Ignore this stuff below, I'm just trying to claim my podcast at podcastalley.com:
My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-27428ffa9d5db2c2e3c1cc72d5a468f0}

Download - Episode 17

Welcome

I know, I know, it was a lame joke and I promise it will never happen again. Well, at least I hope so;) Anyhoo, this week I installed Flash 9 Beta on my laptop and it works very great and exceeds my expectations. If you have already tried the tutorial please be aware that using untrusted repositories are to be used AT YOUR OWN RISK!! I myself did not have any problem with it nor do I anticipate any. I would being doing a great disservice to my listeners if I did not include the following;

My advice is when using untrusted repositories (ie, not certified safe by Ubuntu developers) you do so at your own risk. If you feel that the repository that you just used to install the Flash 9 Beta is suspect please delete it from your sources.list using the same edit technique described in the podcast.

I must reiterate that Trevino's repository is BELIEVED to be safe, but in any case, no offense to Trevino, adjust your repositories list according to your own level of trust. I will tell you at this point that the reason Ubuntu is secure is that they only recommend and use trusted repos meaning that they have been checked (for lack of a better word) for possible threats. So, please be wise with any new repositories that you might come into contact with and judicious in your use of them.

Here is the link to the website:

Flash 9 from everythingwlse.blogspot.com

News

• Item 1 - Legal Victory for Open source
• Item 2 - Alternatives to Windows Programs
• Item 3 - Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Release Dates

CLCOTW

Well this weeks CLCOTW is not exactly a command but it is a good tip!

Just remember if you forget the spelling of the command just press the TAB key and it will either finish the command for you or give you a list of commands that start with the letters that you typed.

Ubuntu disks Available

If you would like to have an Ubuntu Dapper Disk please contact Michael Castellon, here is his email and his website address:

Michael Castellon

michaelcastellon@gmail.com
www.michaelcastellon.com

He has about 50 of the factory disks complete with sleeve and is willing to part with them. Thank you Michael for providing this service for my listeners.

Well, See you all next week, Ciao!!

Download - Episode 16


If you are running Edgy EFt and everything is fine please leave a comment. If you installed Edgy and you had problems installing, yet managed to fix it please tell us all how you did it. You can leave a comment by clicking on the comment link at the end of this entry or you can send me an email by clicking 'Email Me' link on the sidebar.



1. Ubuntu 5.04 has now reached its End of Life.

2. Still running 5.04? No fear, Upgrade link here.

3. Common upgrade problems and solutions

4. Informal poll of windows users who move to Linux instead of Vista


Command Line Command of the Week: cal

This command displays, yep you guessed it, a calendar.

SYNTAX

cal [-mjy] [[month] year]

options:

-m Display monday as the first day of the week.

-j Display julian dates (days one-based, numbered from January 1).

-y Display a calendar for the current year.

A single parameter specifies the 4 digit year (1 - 9999) to be displayed.

Two parameters denote the Month (1 - 12) and Year (1 - 9999).

If arguments are not specified, the current month is displayed.

A year starts on 01 Jan.

Other Links

Link to Knightwise tuturial on ugrading to Edgy:

http://www.knightwise.com/content/view/215/9/

Link to his web page where you will find his podcast

Knightwise, The Knightcast podcast : www.knightwise.com

Download Episode 15

Well, the release of Edgy Eft has come and gone and frankly I am not happy with the results. I have not personally installed it on my computer just yet. And, I don't anticipate installing it until I hear some better news. So far I have read one report from a blog that had some troubles installing it via a dist-upgrade (the link is below), and on of my listeners has had a, how shouldI say this, "not so fun time installing on a laptop. FOR THE TIME BEING STICK WITH DAPPER UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE!!!

News

Item 1 Canonical Launches New Ubuntu Release for Desktops and Servers

Item 2 Edgy Release Notes

Item 3 More about ORCA

Item 4 Upgrade Woes

Some good new! Matt Taylor of Distrowatch.com reviewed my podcast and will plug it on his podcast either this week or next. I have a link to this podcast below.

Matt Taylor of distro watch weekly podcast

A new friend has started a blog for Ubuntu SysAdmins, check it out and show him some love!!
Ubuntu Server Admin blog - by Ted Streit

Also, Check out Peter N. Blog that might shed some light on his installation of EdgyEft.
at - http://blog.nikolaidis.com/

So you want to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows XP but you aren't sure whereto start. I have made up a preliminary list of some things that you ought to do before you install. In the coming week, I will be doing the same thing and preparing my own hard drive, gulp, to eventually dual boot Windows and Ubuntu. Get the podcast below by pressing on the link, or subscribe for free by clicking on the links at the bottom of my sidebar. Keep your fingers crossed! Oh yeah, and don't forget, Edgy Eft Ubuntu 6.10 is due out October 26!!!

Download Fresh Ubuntu Episode 14.


News Item #1: See screencasts of Ubuntu tips and howtos

News Item #2: RC for edgy eft is out as of 10/19


Main segment

1 Run a scandisk on your hdd
2 Run defrag
3 Back up MS Office documents
4 Back up media (videos, music, photos)
5 Back up emails
6 Back up contacts
7 Back up downloaded software and plugins
8 Make sure you have copies of programs that you installed from CDs handy
9 Write downs settings for various programs or export your configurations
10 Make sure you have a copy of XP in case the install is botched

email or leave a comment with more at freshubuntu@gmail.com or leave a comment at freshubuntu.blogspot.com

Command line command of the week - locate

syntax - locate [options] pattern

Search database(s) of filenames and print matches. Matches include all files that contain pattern unless pattern includes metacharacters, in which case locate requires an exact match. *, ?, [, and ] are treated specially; / and . are not. Searches are conducted against a database of system contents that is updated periodically. To update the database, use the updatedb command.

Options

-d path, --database=path

Search databases in path. path must be a colon-separated list.

-h, --help

Print a help message and then exit.

--version

Print version information and then exit.

ADDENDUM

I have given out some erroneous information in the last podcast. Shred will not work in ubuntu since it uses Ext3 filesystem and the shred man page clearly says it wont work on this type of file system. But, I think you can still use this command by popping in a live cd of another distro or even ubuntu live cd and mount the partition that you want to shred then issue the command using the live cd terminal. Warning: This command is useful in only a few instances where extreme privacy is concerned and should not be usued as your daily delete function.

This week I took printing to another level! Well...ok, maybe not another level, more like a side level. Oh alright, its not a whole level, its more like a side step. Whatever it is I thought it was useful. I setup a PDF printer on my Ubuntu laptop without using Adobe Acrobat and I let you in on the whole thing on my podcast. You can download the episode below:

Freshubuntu Episode 13


But first the news items:

1. Possible Artwork reversal On Edgy

2. Portland project

Installing Cups-pdf printer method #1

a. Install cups-pdf by running sudo apt-get install cups-pdf
b. Edit the configuration file by running sudo gedit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf
c. Change "RunAsUser Yes" to "RunAsUser No"
d. restart cups by running sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart
e. Goto the menu System>>Administration>>Printing and add a printer
f. Select the detected printer "PDF Printer"
g. Select the Generic, Postscript Color Printer (Rev 3b)
h. Give it a name, like PDF Printer
i. Right click on the newly created printer, and select Properties
j. Click "Print a Test Page"
k. The file should be in your Home folder, under the PDF folder

Note - in some cases this method will not work because as soon as you try to add aprinter it has not detected a pdf printer. Also, when I tried to edit the configuration file there was not a line that referenced RunAsUser so I eventually added that line but it still did not work. In come the Ubuntu forums to the rescue! I got further instructions and they are outlined below:

a. Install the cups-pdf package (I used version 2.2.0-1)
b. Go to System -> Administration -> Printing
c. Doubleclick "New Pinter"
d. Notice that there is no mention of a CUPS PDF printer
e. Open a terminal and tpe "sudo nautilus" and then your password
f. Go to Filesystem -> usr -> lib -> cups -> backend
g. Rightclick "cups-pdf" and select Properties
h. Go to the Permissions tab and click the "Set user ID" special flag
i. Again try to add a new printer
j. There is now a "PDF Printer" detected, select it
k. Select the Generic, Postscript Color Printer (Rev 3b)
l. Give it a name, like PDF Printer
m. Right click on the newly created printer, and select Properties
n. Click "Print a Test Page"
o. The file should be in your Home folder, under the PDF folder

This got the printer to show up and working;) Yes!



CLCOTW - Command line command of the week: shred
shred - delete a file securely, first overwriting it to hide its contents

SYNOPSIS
shred [OPTIONS] FILE [...]

DESCRIPTION
Overwrite the specified FILE(s) repeatedly, in order to make it harder for even very expensive hardware probing to recover the data. Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

-f, --force
change permissions to allow writing if necessary

-n, --iterations=N
Overwrite N times instead of the default (25)

-s, --size=N
shred this many bytes (suffixes like K, M, G accepted)

-u, --remove
truncate and remove file after overwriting

-v, --verbose
show progress

-x, --exact
do not round file sizes up to the next full block

-z, --zero
add a final overwrite with zeros to hide shredding

Here is the out put of my experiment with shred when I executed the command

shred -fvu freshubuntu.txt

harlem@freshubuntu:~/Desktop$ shred -fvu freshubuntu.txt
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 1/25 (random)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 2/25 (999999)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 3/25 (924924)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 4/25 (ffffff)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 5/25 (dddddd)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 6/25 (555555)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 7/25 (bbbbbb)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 8/25 (888888)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 9/25 (444444)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 10/25 (492492)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 11/25 (aaaaaa)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 12/25 (db6db6)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 13/25 (random)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 14/25 (6db6db)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 15/25 (000000)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 16/25 (222222)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 17/25 (333333)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 18/25 (b6db6d)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 19/25 (cccccc)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 20/25 (111111)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 21/25 (eeeeee)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 22/25 (666666)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 23/25 (777777)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 24/25 (249249)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: pass 25/25 (random)...
shred: freshubuntu.txt: removing
shred: freshubuntu.txt: renamed to 000000000000000
shred: 000000000000000: renamed to 00000000000000
shred: 00000000000000: renamed to 0000000000000
shred: 0000000000000: renamed to 000000000000
shred: 000000000000: renamed to 00000000000
shred: 00000000000: renamed to 0000000000
shred: 0000000000: renamed to 000000000
shred: 000000000: renamed to 00000000
shred: 00000000: renamed to 0000000
shred: 0000000: renamed to 000000
shred: 000000: renamed to 00000
shred: 00000: renamed to 0000
shred: 0000: renamed to 000
shred: 000: renamed to 00
shred: 00: renamed to 0
shred: freshubuntu.txt: removed

See you next week.

Welcome - Welcome back, thanks for joining me this week. If you are new to Fresh Ubuntu, this podcast is for people who are moving to the Ubuntu OS from Windows for the first time. More aimed towards new users of linux based operating systems but not necessarily so.

Download the new episode: Fresh Ubuntu #12

Here are the links to the news items:

1. 7 Distro's fight for one old laptop by Rick Lehrbaum

2. Canonical seeks profit from free Ubuntu By Stephen Shankland

3. Firefox Set Free in IceWeasel By Sean Michael Kerner

4. HOWTO: Install IceWeasel 1.5.0.4 in Ubuntu


Main Segment: Install and configure WINE; Install Quicken 2003

a. Sudo apt-get install wine, note, it may be helpful to install 'winetools' as well from source

b. Then run winecfg by pressing alt+f2 and typing in winecfg. Here is a screenshot. Just click on the picture to enlarge it.



Visit the WINE HQ website for lots of helpfull information!

Command Line command of the week

Whereis and which

Results of whereis search using 'ssh'

harlem@freshubuntu:~$whereis ssh

ssh: /usr/bin/ssh - this is where the binary file is
/etc/ssh /usr/bin/X11/ssh - this is where the man page is
/usr/share/man/man1/ssh.1.gz - this is where the source file is

Results of which search using 'ssh'

harlem@freshubuntu:~$which ssh

/usr/bin/ssh - this is just the binary file

Remember, you might need to know this information the next time you need to customize a launcher or menu item.

Hi everyone, welcome back and thanks for joining me this week. For those of you who are new to freshubuntu, this is a podcast that aims to help new users migrate specifically from the windows environment to Ubuntu OS. I have a lot of things planned for us today. I have a few newsworthy items that happened in the past week and then I have a whole bunch of tips to help make life a little easier. Then I will tell you about a great little program called wget. So lets get on with this weeks news items. I got a voice message to ask if I was going to do a podcast about uprading to Edgy Eft and I will undoubtably be doing one. Not only that but I will most likely go through a fresh cd installation of Edgy on my desktop. This future episode will air most likely a week after releas of the stable version of Edgy. But, for now I posted instructions from the ubuntu forums on how to upgrade to the beta version.

Download mp3 here: 011freshubuntu01Oct06.mp3

NEWS

Item #1: Leo at the Podcast Expo -

Item #2: Screenshots of Ubuntu Edgy Eft Beta

Item #3: Bill Clinton wants you to have more Ubuntu!

TIPS GALORE

Ubuntu Tips at the unofficial ubuntu wiki

1. How to restart GNOME without rebooting computer
Press 'Ctrl + Alt + Backspace'
or
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

2. How to run programs on startup when login into GNOME
* System -> Preferences -> Sessions
* Sessions
Startup Programs Tab -> Add/Edit/Delete

3. Run a terminal command without first opening the terminal
Press 'Alt+F2" and the run application dialog box will pop up; just type in the command you want to run and check mark the box that says wun in terminal. this will open the terminal command and execute the command you issued. This is also helpful for opening other files without starting the application first.

4. Update to Edgy eft Beta
Caution - edgy is not completely stable yet so dont use this as you primary computer or install on a computer that contains high value information.

gksudo "update-manager -c -d"

The "-d" switch instructs Update Manager to consider pre-release versions, including this Beta release. Without this switch, only official, final releases will be considered. The "-c" switch tells it to look for upgrades at all. By default the 6.06 LTS release will not offer that automatically because of its long support cycle and high stability.

If you have a working network connection, it should then inform you about a new release and offer to upgrade your system.

COMMAND LINE COMMAND OF THE WEEK - WGET

Description
GNU Wget is a free utility for non-interactive download of files from the Web. It supports HTTP , HTTPS , and FTP protocols, as well as retrieval through HTTP proxies.

Wget is non-interactive, meaning that it can work in the background, while the user is not logged on. This allows you to start a retrieval and disconnect from the system, letting Wget finish the work. By contrast, most of the Web browsers require constant user’s presence, which can be a great hindrance when transferring a lot of data.

Wget can follow links in HTML pages and create local versions of remote web sites, fully recreating the directory structure of the original site. This is sometimes referred to as ‘‘recursive downloading.’’ While doing that, Wget respects the Robot Exclusion Standard (/robots.txt). Wget can be instructed to convert the links in downloaded HTML files to the local files for offline viewing.

Wget has been designed for robustness over slow or unstable network connections; if a download fails due to a network problem, it will keep retrying until the whole file has been retrieved. If the server supports regetting, it will instruct the server to continue the download from where it left off.

Simple Usage

Say you want to download a URL . Just type:

wget http://fly.srk.fer.hr/

But what will happen if the connection is slow, and the file is lengthy? The connection will probably fail before the whole file is retrieved, more than once. In this case, Wget will try getting the file until it either gets the whole of it, or exceeds the default number of retries (this being 20). It is easy to change the number of tries to 45, to insure that the whole file will arrive safely:

wget --tries=45 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg

Now let’s leave Wget to work in the background, and write its progress to log file log. It is tiring to type --tries, so we shall use -t.

wget -t 45 -o log http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg &

The ampersand at the end of the line makes sure that Wget works in the background. To unlimit the number of retries, use -t inf.

The usage of FTP is as simple. Wget will take care of login and password.

wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/welcome.msg

If you specify a directory, Wget will retrieve the directory listing, parse it and convert it to HTML . Try:

wget ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/links index.html

Reformatted the shownotes and added a couple of features

1. Odeo send me a voicemail message.
2. flash player from odeo that plays old episodes of freshubuntu
3. Remember to visit the website freshubuntu.blogspot.com and leave me a comment.
4. Or you can send an email to freshubuntu@gmail.com
5. Remember to vote for me on podcastalley for the month of october I appreciate those who already have.

Bye.

Welcome back! Hope you enjoy some of the changes I've made to my blog. Hopefully soon I will be able to host this on my own domain, but until then this will have to do which isn't so bad at all.

Also, I recently had some technical difficulty with my feed. If it were not for the good folks at Feedburner most notably Eric Lunt of Technical Support who got me up and running earlier today (Sept 26, 06). This podcast may still be out. Thank you Feed Burner and Eric for your speedy response and top notch technical expertise.

This week I decided to hook up my old HP Photosmart 7350 to my laptop running Ubuntu and it was a huge success! Not that I was worried. So far, I have my PCMCIA wireless card running well and now my printer is working. You might be wondering, "what took me so long?". Well, primarily because I rarely print anything nowadays so I really have no need for a printer. Which leads you to the next question, "So why did you attach your printer given that fact that I don't print often?". Basically, to make sure that it could be done as easily as if it were done in Windows. And, IMHO, it was just as easy.

You can download the podcast here - Episode 10

Before you buy any new printer go to this website:

http://www.linuxprinting.org./printer_list.cgi

I hope you enjoyed this podcast.


NEWS ITEMS

1. Munich Begins to Switch Windows Out for Linux
2. Update your Wordpress Blog with Ubuntu
3. The best Linux distro ever: the results

Intro - This is episode 9 for the week of Sept 17 to Sept 23 2006.

Welcome - Hello and welcome back, thank you for joining me this week. I have a book review that you may find informative. on this weeks podcast. The book is called Beginning Ubuntu Linux by Keir Thomas and published by Apress. Enjoy!

Yes, I know. I inadvertently called WINE a Windows emulator. Which it is not. It is an application compatibility layer! W.I.N.E. = WINE Is Not an Emulator. A thousand apologies to the maintainers of WINE.

For those of you who are new, this podcast is dedicated to helping new users get comfortable with ubuntu and Linux in general as well as give information to potential users in order to help them get over their fears of switching to a new operating system.


News
1. Killing the 5 Myths against Linux - http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/myths.html

Myth #1 - Linux is hard to install Especially if I am not sure I want to keep it, but just try it out. Of course not true, Ubuntu is very easy to install take some of us less than 20 minutes. Also, many of the Linux distro's have a live cd where you can try before you write anything to your hard drive.

Myth #2 - Linux is free and therefore unsupported. If you have been on the forums you understand that there is a huge amount of information. From "how to's", support from Linux veterans, and general information. All provided for the end user free of charge. Canonical also offers professional service plans mainly for the business to business market. As a side note, when I installed ubuntu on my laptop, my main source for technical support were ubuntu forums and Google.

Myth # 3 - Linux is for techies and does not have an interface like windows. I could see where this is true. My only brush with linux was at a college and back then it was the old DOS style text interface that ran batch files to run programs. But Linux users have had excellent GUI's for years and they rival both Windows and OSX interfaces. Here is just a few examples of the many options that are available to linux users: Gnome, KDE, Xfce, Enlightment, Fluxbox. There are I'm told many more.

Myth #4 - There is not much software developed for Linux available. Possible. In terms of sheer magnitude maybe, but in terms of quality, is up for argument. I agree that the gold standards are MSOffice and Adobe Photoshop. And there may be other pieces of software that you just can't live without. For instance, I use Quicken for my personal finances, musicians might use Audition for tracking, and web designers might use Dreamweaver. But all is not lost...see the next Myth!

Myth #5 - I have to give up all my windows software. No yet! WINE, which is a "compatibilty layer" for Linux will allow certain Windows programs to run in a Linux environment. I hear that Cedega and Crossover are also options that allow Windows programs to run under Linux although for a fee. I haven't given this a try yet but I think I may do this for a future podcast. Hmmm...

2. Ubuntu live cd with Flash 9 that works!!! Here is the Link.

3. Free Linux and UNIX books

4. Edgy eft is coming soon here is some looks at the GUI and a link to the site on ubuntu.com devoted to edgy

Welcome Back,

The comic is from Randall Munroe from his website xkcd.com, funny! I would like to thank Peter who was vacationing in Greece for letting me know that one of my links was not working. the link should happily redcirect you to the Ubuntu Counter Project. Also, here is that link from Linux.com titled "top tips for new ubuntu users". Let me know what you think. Check out the new service from Google called Google Related Content the box should be in the left margin. I think it is still in beta but I have seen it and has given some relevant suggestions if not for ubuntu specific items at least Linux related stuff. I dont make any money of of this, I just thought it was a good way to give the end user more information. Here are the news items that I covered with the links to them

News #1 - http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6147197554.html
News #2 - http://www.linuxextremist.com/?p=100

This week, I installed a package that helps to configure the built in firewall (iptables) in Ubuntu. A usefull application for those of us who wish to add another layer of security to our already industrial strength security found in every linux machine:)

Thanks for all the comments and participation, I'll be speaking to you all very soon.

If you are looking for the ogg feed you can subscribe to it by putting the URL feeds.feedburner.com/FreshUbuntuOgg into your podcatcher.

Next week, I plan to do a short book review among other things see you soon, Ciao!

Hello all,

Here is a screenshot of the Kubuntu desktop. Yes, that is purple you all see. Looks appealing for the most part, although I am partial to blue. I hope the Ubuntu team heard that, haha.

I hope everyone had a great holiday weeekend. I am getting more and more comfortable with Ubuntu and getting to know my way around much better. Even though I still have a computer running windows xp here at home, which my family usually uses, while I use the computer with Ubuntu running on it exclusively. And as a regular user it is functional for 100% of the activities that I normally would do on an XP system.

This past week they announced the "Knot 2" release of "Edgy Eft". Note this is only for developers and those of you who are a little more adventurous. Edgy is at this point still beta testing in order to get the operating system ready for its final release date of October 2006.

Lastly, another billboard? Yes, this one spotted in the Silicon Valley on highway 101. Here is the link.

This episode I talked about common sense security. Here is a synopsis of the podcast:

1. Password protection for system administration tasks (root user vs. regular user)
2. Installing software packages from known and approved repositories.
3. Making sure that updates are current to plug up invulnerabilities.
4. Limiting who has access to your computer.

All this is fully explained in the podcast.

I covered some Windows equivalent software for ubuntu and came up with the usual suspects for those of you who are more experienced users. You know OpenOffice, gimp, gaim...but there are also some others that are "new" finds especially for us new2ubuntu types like rezound, ardour, and gnuCash. Here is a link to the list. If there are any users who can suggest others your comments are appreciated.

I also mentioned that I got my ship-it discs a few days ago and they look good. Each disc came in a sleeve with 5 people in a huddle....not bad. Did I mention I got some cool stickers with them? Lucky....

Ouch! I got hit by the x server bug. I tried to reconfigure the xorg.config but it didnt work, so I went ahead and reinstalled Ubuntu. I haven't been without any problems with ubuntu os but I will say this. the reinstall only took 30 minutes and was painless. Had I waited a day i could have salvaged the installation but it neither here nor there at this point.

Check out Ubuntu Counter here. You get a number that and a button that you can put on your website or emails, pretty nifty if you are into that kind of thing. Well, that's it see you again soon.

If you are looking for the Ogg vorbis feed It is right here.

Hello and welcome back! I now have this podcast in Ogg Vorbis format the feed for that is located at http://feeds.feedburner.com/freshubuntuogg just copy the link and put it into your podcatcher

This week I did some remedial command line commands this includes

ls - list command that returns a list of the contents in the directory
mkdir - This command will allow you to make a directory
cd - This command will allow the user to move to another directory
cp - Copy command, this will copy a file from one directory to another
rm - deletes a file
mv - renames or moves a file
locate - helps find a file

Also I have a list of further resources for you to either find help or more information:

http://gnomefiles.org/ this is a good site to find packages for manual download among other things, it also has links to other good things

http://sourceforge.net/ Much like gnomefiles.org, has lots of packages for download

http://www.linux.com/ This is a great place to find out about news regarding linux in general and to find great tutorials

I also get a lot of news about Ubuntu from digg.com

Note: I will generally do a google search specifically for help on certain things rekated to ubuntu by specifically entering "ubuntu" as one of the search criteria. This usually gets me very close!!

Lastly, I like to listen to linuxreality.com podcast with Chess Griffin

Best of luck to you and I'll be speaking with you later.

Here it is, the 4th episode of freshubuntu served up nice and warm for you. This week, I talk about some listener emails and comments first from Peter N at www.nikolaidis.com then from andrew who reminded us that if you haven't installed ubuntu and you would like to you should remember to change your boot sequence so that it will check your cdrom b4 booting to hard drive. Andrew also has a very nice article about ubuntu and open source that you can check out here. Lastly, to John, a very big thank you very much for voting for the podcast at podcastalley.

This week I downloaded the kubuntu desktop and was playing around with the interface and tell you all about it. enjoy the podcast and keep leaving comments and emails.

Hi, this week I installed some packages using the terminal window and "apt-get" command. I also went through using the default add/remove package manager and Synaptic package manager. I also have a link for instructions on how to install .deb, .rpm and, .tar files:

http://monkeyblog.org/ubuntu/installing/

Here is the link for the first Ubuntu billboard and the link for the surprising news about preinstalled version of SUSE Linux (SLED 10).

Oh, and in case you couldn't follow what I was saying in the podcast here is the link for the instructions for using a DNS cache

This is episode 2 of fresh ubuntu and deals with questions to consider before installing fresh ubuntu.

The sites mentioned:

www.gnomefiles.org
help.ubuntu.com

Intro and Outro music: Whimsy groove by Kevin Macleod
Bumper music: Rhythm 2005 by Kevin Macleod

Hello and welcome to the premier of Fresh Ubuntu. I am happy to report that the system that I installed ubuntu on is going quite well and I am making some headway into learning all about the operating system. I got a lot of help from the ubuntu website at www.ubuntu.com and there you will find among other things how and what to download on your system. Also, there is a large forum there that you can access through the support tab. Go ahead and look around and if you find something that is interesting please leave a comment. Music for the podcast was provided by Kevin MacLeod. I used Whimsy Groove and Rhythm 2005 from him. It was downloaded from his website www.incompetech.com, haave a great day and you will hear from me later. Til then have a great day.