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Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx: Best and most beautiful theme ever IMO!

Dragos — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:28:32 +0000

I never like to spend time on finding themes for my system, because I know how addictive and easy is to waste time with it. Though, I can’t stand working on a system with an ugly, and old-fashioned GUI style. So yesterday I have decided it is time to change the old Human theme with something more interesting, pleasant and calm.

So that’s how I found Wasp! Wasp is a great-looking theme that is neither dark nor light. No, not gray

From the author:

* Wasp is the first theme (as far as i know) that has had a script to take care of OpenOffice.org apps.

* Wasp takes care of most used apps with adhoc configurations: no strange behaviour like dark toolbar where it shouldn’t be, no redundant borders, no compromise on general setting just because of a strange behaviour in one app.

* Wasp is not dark and is not light: dark is beauty where it can be applied, so Wasp is dark where it is beauty.

* Don’t like orange/brown colors? just use GNOME Appearance and choose all colors you want, Wasp is totally recolorable.

Wasp has even its own installer, own GDM theme and works extremely fast on my system. Wasp is a simple yet gorgeous theme that I am very sure you will like.

Wasp theme preview. Lucid Lynx

Get Wasp theme for Lucid Lynx and Karmic Koala from Gnome-Look

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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

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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.

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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!

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Ubuntu: nVidia card slow? Monitor flickers? Try this fix and boost graphic card performance!

Dragos — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:02:31 +0000

Switching from an ATI card to an nVidia one was not so simple, as X was configured to work with an ATI card. What I had to do was to boot in Safe Gnome, download the nVidia drivers to my desktop, then enter the command line screen (pressing CTRL+ALT+F1), delete and reinstall X, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf to use vesa drivers, install the nVidia drivers from my desktop, and then enjoy full video performance. If you fail to do these steps, then you will run into a blank screen right after you log into your account.

But even with the latest official nVidia drivers installed, the GUI inside Ubuntu will not be as smooth as expected. To fix this, you’ll need to install compizconfig-settings-manager from synaptic.

After you install compizconfig-settings-manager, open it from System->Preferences->Compizconfig settings manager:

Open Compizconfig-settings manager

Then select the “All” category and go to “General options“:

Open Compizconfig-settings manager General Options

Then make sure that Detect Refresh Rate is unticked, Sync to VBlank is ticked and that the Refresh Rate is set to a slightly more number than your monitors refresh rate (if unsure, set it to 100):

Ubuntu Compiz Display Settings

You should now see no more window flickering and dragging a window on the screen should be smooth and fast. If you see no results, try to restart Compiz (ALT+F2 and run Compiz).

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Ubuntu: Karmic Koala 9.10, should I buy you an nVidia or ATI video card?

Dragos — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:28:21 +0000

ATI sucks, for real!

Definitely an nVidia graphic card. Why? Because AMD is very frivolous when it comes to support its legacy video cards. I don’t think that a 3 years old video card should be considered obsolete, and dropped being supported. I am an unlucky ATI card user (Radeon x1950 GT) that runs only on 10% of this chipset’s performance. Yes you heard it right! Even though there are the open source drivers for video cards that are no longer supported by AMD, these still do not compare with the official fglrx driver. This driver will not work under Karmic Koala, because it needs a Linux kernel of version 2.6.28, whereas Karmic is built on Linux kernel 2.6.31. One note: do not try to downgrade your Linux kernel on Karmic in order to use the fglrx driver unless you’re a very experienced Linux user. It’s just that you have a very high probability to damage your system.

Why nVidia then? Because the developers from nVidia do really care of their products and their clients and you will find much better driver support from them than from ATI AMD. Unless you are planning to buy the latest super-puper model video card model from ATI, do consider getting an nVidia one. You’ll save time and some nerves (but not money, AFAIK).

Still wanna get an ATI card? Here are some heart-breaking stats from glxgears with my system (Radeon x1950 GT, AMD x2 5200+ Dual Core 2.6GHz, 4GB Ram @ 667MHz):

dragos@dragos-desktop:~$ glxgears
Running synchronized to the vertical refresh. The framerate should be
approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
15676 frames in 5.0 seconds
16040 frames in 5.0 seconds
15946 frames in 5.0 seconds
15940 frames in 5.0 seconds

3000FPS from glxgears with such great specs? That is shi*ty performance if you ask me. On Intrepid Ibex (when fglrx was still supported) I was getting 120K+ FPS.. And yes, for Linux gamers, Nexuiz is slow at times and crashes when playing with an ATI card in combination with the open-source drivers.

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Ubuntu: How to check hard disk healthiness based on SMART data (Karmic Koala)

Dragos — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:28:41 +0000

I remember that a good application on Windows was HDD Doctor, which gave a plenitude of useful information about the hard disk status. Now in Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 there is a similar application which shows important information about the status of the hard-disk installed on the system (such as hard disk temperature,model number, total uptime,bad sectors…). To check out this nifty utility, go to System->Administration->Disk Utility.

More information about HDD health status

More information about

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OS: RAM difference between Ubuntu x86 (32 bit with physical address) and Ubuntu x64 (64 bit)

Dragos — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:52:53 +0000

The first ever version of Ubuntu I have installed on my computer was Hardy Heron 8.04 (x64/64 bit). As time passed and new versions appeared, I have upgraded to the latest version of Intrepid Ibex 8.10. As a web developer, It happens sometimes to run an excessive number of simultaneous applications at a time, which leads to a huge RAM consumption. Back then (still the x64 version) 2GB of ram was not enough, only Netbeans consumed 1GB of RAM and Firefox – about 800MB. Sometimes my computer got frozen and hampered myself from doing my job without interruptions. So I added another 2GB of RAM (totaling 4GB). With that amount, my PC worked very well, better than ever (even though hibernating my PC was taking ages). Unfortunately, while upgrading to Jaunty Jackalope, it happened a crash during the process, which lead to a total loss of information on my hard-disk (and yes I didn’t backup my data ). The second times I’ve considered to install Jaunty Jackalope 9.04, but this time the 32 bit version. I was very surprised to notice that while running the same number of programs (at the same time!), only the 75th part of RAM from the amount of RAM used on the 64 bit system was used on the x86 version. I was even more surprised to see that while on the 64 system Firefox had the stupid habit of eating too much RAM (~800MB in best cases), on the 32 bit system, Firefox is using only 120MB of RAM, even though it’s fully loaded with heavy Javascripted websites (Digg, Facebook or Mashable). So, when you doubt of whether to install Ubuntu x86 or x64, keep in mind that the x64 version will deplete your RAM resources. But, from my experience, the x64 version works much, much faster on dual core processors than the x86 version (and that’s the only advantage I am currently missing). Also keep in mind that if you have more than 3GB installed in your PC, you will have to install the Physical Address extension from the Synaptic Package Manager, cause if you don’t do it, the system will recognize only ~3.4GB of RAM from the total amount of RAM.

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Ubuntu: How to upgrade from Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 to Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10

Dragos — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:31:18 +0000

In order to upgrade your Ubuntu operating system from the 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) version to the latest (but still in beta) version 9.10 (Karmic Koala) you’ll have to open the Run Application window (ALT+F2) and enter update-manager -d in the input field. Hit enter. [ad]You’ll be asked whether you’d like to update to the latest version, accept an agreement… I suggest you select the main server from United States in Software Sources, because if you choose something else, the upgrade might fail. The upgrade is ~930MB so be ready to wait some time for the files to download and install. It might take you about 30 minutes to 1 hour for the upgrade to complete successfully if you have a good connection to the Internet.

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Ubuntu hacks: Extend visual effects in compiz. More settings, more fun

Dragos — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:19:18 +0000

If you want to work on a fancy Ubuntu operating system, all you have to do is enable Extra visual effects from Appearance preferences (System->Preferences->Appearance preferences->Visual effects). However, by default you will get only some basic visual effects. To get access to all extra visual effects (including the Compiz Desktop Cube and more), you will have to install compizconfig-settings-manager from the synaptic package manager. Then you will be able to access all hidden visual effects settings from System->Preferences->CompizConfig Settings Manager.
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CompizConfig Settings Manager

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