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How To: Restore desktop icons in Ubuntu when Nautilus crashes

Dragos — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:28:24 +0000

For some reasons, it happens that all my desktop icons disappear. My previous solution was to logout and login again to my account, but with some thinking I have figured out that Nautilus is responsive for my desktop layout (Gnome also, but files and folders are taken from Nautilus). So when Nautilus crashes, or fails to work, the best solution is to start it again.

So to restore all your desktop icons you should hit Alt+F2 which will open a “run application” window. Type nautilus to start nautilus and restore your desktop layout:

Run Nautilus Ubuntu

That’s it folks! Now go back to work

How to: Make a USB Pendrive Bootable with Ubuntu

Dragos — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 07:56:36 +0000

You’ll need a bootable USB pendrive more likely to boot from an operating system installe don the USB flash drive, or to run some recovery software. In Ubuntu, making a drive bootable is the easiest task ever, thanks to a software called Disk Utility.

To start the Disk Utility, go to System > Administration > Disk Utility as below:

Starting the Disk Utility

Now in the Disk Utility, browse to your drive and click on the partition that you would like to make bootable. Click the Bootable checkbox, or make sure that it is checked:

Make USB drive bootable in Ubuntu

That’s it! You’re USB drive is now bootable and you can install any recovery software on it, or portable operating systems.

How To: Install Portable Linux Ubuntu on a bootable USB Flash Drive from SUN VirtualBox

Dragos — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:30:59 +0000

Recently I have got a shiny and beautiful Chrome finished, shiny Transcend 8GB USB flash drive. What did I first think to do with it? Put Ubuntu on it, of course

There are many ways to create a live USB drive carrying an operating system like Ubuntu, but the method I will describe further is mainly based on using SUN’s VirtualBox. For those who don’t know what VirtualBox is visit this Wikipedia link.

While the method described on the Ubuntu documentations implies installing a Live CD image on a USB flash drive, which would then need to extract and load the operating system in the RAM, the method that I will describe on this page implies installing a fresh operating system on a bootable flash drive that will work the same way as from a real HDD (except the speed, of course). Thus, you should have a good bootable USB 2.0, with decent I/O data processing speeds, with at least 4GB (considering that the operating system itself weighs ~2GB, Karmic Koala).

Divide your USB flash drive into two partitions

In order to separate the operating system from the documents you would like to save on the flash drive, it is advisable that you divide your USB flash drive into two partitions. Only do this if your USB flash drive has more than 2GB of space and you do not need to save changes you make inside the operating system.

In order to achieve this, you need to have GParted installed (or at least this is what i prefer). If you are not following this tutorial on a Linux machine, then you’ll have to use whatever software you best know that works with your operating system (on Windows I recommend Acronis Disk Director and Partition Magic).

To get GParted type the following command in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install gparted

Now backup all data you have on your USB flash drive, because we will need to format it and create two partitions.

Haven’t backed up your data? You’re playing with fire!

Open GParted from System>Administration>GParted

You now see the window of GParted application. Select your USB drive device from the drop-down list in the top right corner:

Select USB flash device from the dropdown menu

Double check that you have selected the correct device (mainly by verifying the device’s total space), or you might format and lose data on a wrongly selected device.

Now that you have selected the correct device, unmount it, otherwise you will not be able to perform any actions on it. Unmount it from GParted as below:

Unmount device from GParted

Now delete your partition. If you have more partitions and would like to use all the space on your USB flash drive, then you will need to delete in partition in part. Delete a partition as below:

Delete partition in GParted

Your partition is not yet deleted! You need to confirm this action. Confirm it by clicking on the green tick as below, and click “Apply” when asked again:

Confirm changes in GParted

Now we will create two new partitions: one for installing Linux Ubuntu, the other for saving other files. Also note that Windows will only recognized the second partition which will be formatted in FAT32.

Select the “Unallocated” partition, right click on it, and select New. Do as below:

Create new partition GParted

We will now create the first Windows compatible partition for saving files. Change the New size field to a value that will be the space allocated to saving files. Remember that the Linux Ubuntu installation requires ~2GB for a full installation and at least 1GB of space for operating. I put here the value 3000 (remember that this is in megabytes). GParted will now automatically calculate the Free space following value, so don’t change that manually. Now make sure that Create as has Primary Partition selected, and the File System has FAT32 . Give a new name to your USB Flash drive in the Label field. Overall, your window should look like this (the Free space following and Label values vary depending on your USB flash drive):

Create new FAT32 partition

Now right click the unallocated partition again, and select New:

Create new partition

Now we will create the Linux partition for the new operating system. Leave everything as is, change only the File system to ext3 and name your Linux partition:

ext3 linux partition

Now click the green tick to commit the changes. Wait some time until the USB is partitioned and formatted. After everything finishes, close GParted.

Now open VirtualBox. You will need to create a DOS virtual system in order to install Ubuntu on your USB. Click the NEW button and follow the instructions to create the DOS system:

Create new system in VirtualBox

IMPORTANT: You need to allocate 384MB of memory or more (preferably 512MB) to your newly created system in order to be able to install Ubuntu on your flash drive:

Allocate memory to DOS in VirtualBox

You will now need to download the latest iso from Ubuntu. I suggest you download the 32 bit version if you want to be able to use your operating system on computers that are not 64 bit enabled.

After you have downloaded the iso from Ubuntu, return to VirtualBox and select File > Virtual Media Manager and select the CD/DVD Images tab. Now add the Ubuntu iso that you have just downloaded to the list of images loaded on boot and then click OK:

Virtual Images Manager VirtualBox

Now right click on your DOS system in VirtualBox and select Settings:

VirtualBox DOS settings

Now select Storage from the left list of menus:

VirtualBox settings storage

Now click on the Add CD/DVD device (represented by a cd with a plus sign). You should see that your CD/DVD/BluRay drive has been added to the list below:

VirtualBox Add CD/DVD Device

Select your CD/DVD/BluRay drive that has been just added to the list, and select the Ubuntu iso from the CD/DVD device dropdown menu:

VirtualBox add Ubuntu iso

Also make sure that both USB controller and USB 2.0 controller are enabled in the USB menu and then click OK to close the Settings window:

VirtualBox USB enabled

Now go back to the main VirtualBox window and start your DOS system:

Start system VirtualBox DOS

Your DOS system should automatically boot from the Ubuntu iso. If it says that it cannot read from boot medium you will need to restart DOS and click F12 while loading to chose the Boot from CD booting source.

Now that you see the Ubuntu iso loaded, you should plug in your USB flash, wait a little bit until it is detect by your host system, then click to use it within DOS as below:

Load USB

Then with your UP/Down keyboard keys select to install Ubuntu. Go through the wizard and choose your proffered settings until you are asked where you want to install Ubuntu. Choose to Specify partitions manually (advanced) and click Forward:

Specify partitions manually

GParted will analyze your drives and show you your USB disk drive. Right click on the partition which was formatted in ext3 and choose Change:

Change partition ext3

From the new window choose Use as > Ext4 journaling file system, and make sure that Format the Partition check-box is selected:

Use ext3 journaling file system

From the same window choose the Mount point > / then click Ok:

After finishing doing the above mentioned instructions click on Forward and finish with the rest of settings that the Ubuntu installation will ask you. Now wait until the installation finishes (depends on your USB Flash write speed):

Ubuntu installation progress

When the installation finishes,exit VirtualBox and select System > Administration > Disk utility :

Open Disk Utility

From the disk utility browse to your ext3 partition from your USB drive, select it and in the adjacent window check the Bootable option in order to make your USB device bootable.

Now restart your computer and your BIOS settings and choose to boot first from your USB Flash Drive.

Enjoy your fresh portable version of Ubuntu!

Best websites (top stories) on popular social bookmarking services Facebook application/iGoogle gadget

Dragos — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:37:19 +0000

Best websites from Social Bookmarking services

After getting tired of visiting all those pages on Digg, Reddit,Delicious, Mixx,TweetMeme… until I could finally visit the original link of an interesting story, that took ages and precious time. So I have worked on a script that would do the unpleasant process described above for you, and provide you only the top links that you are really interesting in. This script is available as an iGoogle Gadget and as a Facebook application. Top stories are updated every 15 minutes, so don’t worry about missing an interesting link on the original source. Currently the script fetches stories from Digg, Mixx, TweetMeme, Delicious, Reddit, Propeller, but adding more is not a problem (if you would like to include a source in a future version of this script, let me know in a comment to this post).

Facebook: Facebook Ads manager doesn’t work!

Dragos — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 16:20:34 +0000

I’ve tried all day to ad a new ad on Facebook, but with no success. I’m stuck at the first step, clicking on “Continue” does nothing. Hopefully the Facebook staff will do something about it, cause I really can’t wait promoting my new Facebook app (Parallel Worlds).

Best Virtual OS software: VirtualBox 3.0.4

Dragos — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:37:14 +0000

VirtualBox Logo

When you need to quickly run a program which is not supported on your current operating system, most likely you’ll want to install a virtual operating system. Virtual operating system can run simultaneously with other operating systems, so you can easily/efficiently to your work quickly. Let’s say you’re a true Linux adept and need to quickly edit an image, but Photoshop is just not supported on Linux distributions. Yes, I know there is GIMP, but let’s face it, GIMP still hasn’t some features that Photoshop has. So what you’ll do now is: 1. Restart your computer and boot into a Windows OS,so you can use Photoshop from there; or 2. Quickly start your virtual Windows OS, do whatever you need and close it, but without the need to reboot your machine and so on..

It’s obvious that the second variant is better in this case. So now we need to chose a good virtual OS software. My choice is definitely VirtualBox.

VirtualBox is quick, has a great user interface, is stable, and has good integration between the host OS and the virtual OS.

To get VirtualBox go to their official website and choose your right installation for your system.By the way, it’s free!

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Firefox 3.5: The web is not ready!

Dragos — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:03:33 +0000

Firefox 3.5.3 logo

I’ve noticed that some websites still don’t show up correctly in the new Firefox 3.5 (3.5.2-3.5.3). I was looking for some photos on Deviantart, but I couldn’t scroll the page to see all results. On twitter, some buttons don’t work.. sometimes. Google Adwords complains that the new version of the browser is not fully supported. Probably there are still a lot of websites rendering incorrectly in Firefox 3.5 right now, so I was thinking, maybe this version of Firefox was released too fast, at least they should have informed web developers about the major changes in their rendering engine Gecko 1.9.1.2

Anyway, Firefox 3.5 is a powerful browser with lots of improvements and tweaks.

Acid3 Test: Best browser performance Opera 10 beta 2. Firefox 3.5.3 and Epiphany 2.26.1 slightly fail

Dragos — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:04:42 +0000

First of all, I am a Ubuntu user, so all tests made by me were performed on a Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope OS. Results may differ a little bit in other operating systems.

So, I took the Acid3 Test with three different browsers – Opera 10 beta 2, Firefox 3.5.3 pre and Epiphany 2.26.1 . Note that Epiphany is built on a Gecko 1.9 engine, so its results should be almost the same as Firefox 3.

Opera 10 beta 2:

Acid3 Test Opera 10 beta 2

Firefox 3.5.3 pre:

Acid3 Test Firefox 3.5.3 pre

Epiphany 2.26.1:

Acid3 Test Epiphany 2.26.1

So, obviously, Opera 10 is the winner. I must admit that the new Opera is indeed fast and working smoothly, but as a Firefox fan, I just hope that the 4th version will perform as well as Opera 10 (or better ).

As for Epiphany, those results are a good motivation to switch from older versions of Firefox to the newest stable version 3.

Apps: Firefox 3.5 uses less ram than ever! Kudos to Mozilla developers

Dragos — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 06:52:36 +0000

I’ve switched to Firefox 3.5.3 on Ubuntu from Firefox 3.1 and I was surprised how fast and optimized the new Firefox is. When browsing with several (more than 10) tabs at once with Firefox 3.1, RAM usage went up to 1.3 GB!! That is why I had to upgrade my PC with 2 more GB of RAM.

Now I can open as many tabs I want with Firefox 3.5.3 (though I never tried to do it with more than 20 tabs at once), but the RAM usage will never exceed 400MB. That’s a whopping decrease in RAM usage with 70%.

Kudos to Mozilla developers who keep improving the best browser ever existing.

PS to Ubuntu people: Firefox 3.5.3 is still not officially available in the Ubuntu distro. Firefox 3.5 will be officially supported in the 9.10 version Karmic Koala. Until then you can download and use Firefox 3.5 from the synaptic package manager, it’s called Shiretoko.

Coding: How to get code suggestions and function completion in Netbeans?

Dragos — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:13:35 +0000

I was struggling myself in finding how to get the code suggestions feature work in Netbeans. I knew it was there and sometimes I accidentally triggered it, but I could never figure out what combination of keys I had to hit in order for the suggestions box to appear. So I decided to open a new window in Netbeans and try all possible keyboard combinations. Fortunately, I found it quickly

So, to make the code suggestion and function completion feature work (in Netbeans) you need to hit CTRL+\ whenever you need it. Simple, isn’t it?