Full Circle Magazine - issue 63 EN

full circle magazine #63 1 contents ^

Full CircleTHE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE FOR THE UBUNTU LINUX COMMUNITY

ISSUE #63 - July 2012

Full Circle Magazine is neither affi l iated with, nor endorsed by, Canonical Ltd.

RREEDDUUCCEE **BBUUNNTTUU BBOOOOTT TTIIMMEE

WEB DEVLAMP & WEB

DEVELOPMENT

WWIITTHH TTHHIISS IINN DDEEPPTTHH AARRTTIICCLLEE.. WWIITTHH GGRRAAPPHHSS!!

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The articles contained in this magazine are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Al ike 3.0 Unported l icense.This means you can adapt, copy, distribute and transmit the articles but only under the fol lowing conditions: you must attributethe work to the original author in some way (at least a name, emai l or URL) and to this magazine by name ('Ful l Circle Magazine')

and the URL www.ful lcirclemagazine.org (but not attribute the article(s) in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). I fyou alter, transform, or bui ld upon this work, you must distribute the resulting work under the same, simi lar or a compatible l icense.Full Circle magazine is entirely independent of Canonical, the sponsor of the Ubuntu projects, and the views and opinions in themagazine should in no way be assumed to have Canonical endorsement.

Full CircleTHE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE FOR THE UBUNTU LINUX COMMUNITY

Amateur Astronomy - Pt1 p.14

LibreOffice - Part 15 p.11

Python - Part 34 p.07

GIMP - Beanstalk Pt3 p.17

HowTo Opinions

Q&A p.49

Ubuntu Games p.54

Ubuntu Women p.53

Command & Conquer p.05

Inkscape - Part 2 p.19

Columns

Linux Labs p.29

Review p.44

Web Dev - Pt1 p.22

My Opinion p.41

My Story p.39

Letters p.46

Audio Flux p.52

Ask The New Guy p.26

Closing Windows p.36

Graphics Web Dev

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


EEDDIITTOORRIIAALL

Welcome to another issue of Full Circle!

Full Circle is always expanding, and this month is no exception. We have Copil who is(rather bravely) stepping up as 'the new guy' to take your (easy) questions aboutUbuntu and explain them in a manner that'll be perfect for a new user. So, if you'vegot an easy question, Ask The New Guy! For anything technical though, you're still

best to ask Gord (Q&A). Another new thing is Web Dev. Here Michael Youngblood will beexplaining how to set up your own web development setting, beginning this month withthe first stage of installing LAMP.

Elsewhere, the usual suspects are all here; Python, LibreOffice, GIMP, Inkscape and thefinal part of my Amateur Astronomy series. Although I'm explaining how to remote desktopa telescope, that same theory will work for any time you need remote desktop access, sogive it a read.

The Full Circle Podcast has now been successfully revived, and the first episode with thenew team released. It's a bit longer than normal, but in some parts you do get the addedambience of a diesel train engine in the background. You can grab the MP3/OGG from theFCM site, or click the download button on the right of this page to jump to the FCM site.

And, just as a reminder, you can get the Full Circle PDF and EPUB from the FCM site, oryou can grab the PDF via the Ubuntu Software Centre, or, if you're on the move, you canread FCM via Google Currents. The URLs for the Google Currents editions are on therelevant download page.

All the best, and keep in touch!Ronnie

[email protected]

This magazine was created using :

Full Circle PodcastReleased monthly, each episodecovers all the latest Ubuntu news,opinions, reviews, interviews andlistener feedback. The Side-Pod isa new addition, it's an extra(irregular) short-form podcastwhich is intended to be a branchof the main podcast. It'ssomewhere to put all the generaltechnology and non-Ubuntu stuffthat doesn’t fit in the mainpodcast.

Hosts:• Les Pounder• Tony Hughes• Jon Chamberlain• Oliver Clark

http://fullcirclemagazine.org

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.scribus.net

http://www.gimp.org

http://www.libreoffice.org

http://creativecommons.org/



LLIINNUUXX NNEEWWSS

EPUB

Finally, we have mobile editionsof Full Circle on the downloadspage. At the moment, there areonly a couple of issues online,but we're hoping to have backissues online shortly. If you'veany problems with the epubfile/formatting, you can drop anemail to Jens at:[email protected]

Big thanks to Jens, and thebeta testers, for making them areality.

Google Currents

Google Currents has beenreleased worldwide, so install iton your Android/Apple devices,search for 'full circle' (in theapp) and add issues 55-60 toyour app. Or, you can click thelinks on the FCM downloadpage for those issues.

Linux Mint 13 KDE

The highlight of this editionis the latest KDE 4.8desktop, which featuresthe following

improvements:• Kwin optimizations• Redesign of power managementand integration with Activities• The first QtQuick-based Plasmawidgets have entered the defaultinstallation of Plasma Desktop,with more to follow in futurereleases• New display engine in Dolphin• New Kate features andimprovements• Functional and visualimprovements in Gwenview

For a complete tour of the newfeatures in KDE 4.8, please visithttp://www.kde.org/announcements/4.8.

Source: linuxmint.com

Linux Central To HiggsBoson Discovery

An unnamed butapparently well-informed insider hasargued that the [CERN]

project's use of Linux was morethan established convention.

"Idon't see anyCERN-related

things here, so Iwant to mention

howLinux(specifically, Scientific

LinuxandUbuntu) hada vital role in

the discoveryofthe newboson at

CERN,"said the source on Reddit,sparking supporting commentsfrom others involved in the field.

"We use it everyday in our

analyses, togetherwith hosts of

open software, such asROOT, andit

plays amajorrole in the running of

ournetworks ofcomputers (in the

gridetc.) usedforthe intensivework

in ourcalculations,"continued thesource.

Source: itworldcanada.com

Commodore OS UsesLinux Mint

Commodore USA who havealready launched a retrostyled Commodore 64Extreme, which has been

brought up to date and is nowpowered by an Intel Quad Core i7Processor. Is developing a newoperating system that will emulatethe look and feel of the original.

The latest version of the newCommodore OS 1.0 Beta 9 is nowavailable to download and is basedon Linux Mint, and is capable ofrunning apps which have beendesigned for Mint, Ubuntu, orother popular Linux distributions.

Source: geeky-gadgets.com


http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.8


In the past two months I'vebeen involved in group workat university. At first, we hadto simply organize a group of

five people (of which, ultimately,only three did any work). Wemanaged this quite easily with asingle shared Dropbox folder, and(for group writeups) a Google Docfile (shared with the “anyone withthe link can edit” setting).However, as the projectprogressed we had to work firstwith a single other group, and then5 other groups. Meaning at theend of the project, we were tryingto manage 30 different people(and a smattering of operatingsystems, and people of varyingdegrees of technical proficiency).Generally, for any kind of groupwork where multiple people mightedit the same file (likelihood ofthis increases as more people jointhe project) you should use Git.However, this can quickly becomecomplex, and requires a certainlevel of technical proficiency toavoid unnecessary management bythe repository owner. As such, Ithought for this month's article I'dcover a few ideas I've had for

managing data between groups. Atthe end of the article, I also runthrough a few useful tips I'vestumbled upon forlearning/practicing Japanese.

The “Cloud”This includes anything like

Dropbox, Ubuntu One, GoogleDrive, etc. This is by far the easiestmethod, and works like a charm forgroups of 2 to 10 people, in myexperience. Once you're past thatupper limit, or you need to allowanyone to access the shared files,it's no longer a viable option. Thereason for this is simple – it'sdesigned to be user-friendly, andforgoes some of the moreadvanced management features(robust version control, mergingoptions, public access with merge-back capabilities, and so on).

For anyone concerned aboutsecurity, it's possible to create aTruecrypt volume and store it inthe cloud (in Dropbox at least, Ihaven't tested this with any of theothers). Offering the passcode forthe volume to the other groupmembers should be done in person

or via phone for maximum security.

Revision ControlThis is by far the most versatile

system I've used to date. You canuse something like Github tocreate and manage yourrepository, and it is publiclyavailable for forking (creating acopy of it) for other people to workon. Once the changes have beenmade, they will be merged back“upstream” after which therepository owner will need to gothrough the commits/merges andaccept them into the final version.Each merge is saved as a version,allowing you to easily move back toan older revision if necessary. Iused this to great success last yearwhen I wrote a LaTeX-based scriptfor a mathematics lecture atuniversity, allowing anyone in theclass to make changes orcorrections to the files. By the endof the semester our script wasoften more thorough than that ofthe professor himself.

Security-wise I'd list this as oneof the “best” options, simply dueto the fact that any change has to

be approved by someone who's incharge. It's also possible to createa custom server on a personalnetwork for use with svn or git, forcompletely in-house solutions.

Single File Group WorkBy this I'm referring to

collaboration on a single file, whichneeds to be (or simply will be)edited by multiple people at oncein real-time. For this, I've not foundanything that does it as easily asGoogle Docs. If, however, anyone isagainst Google for such things andhas access to a server, you couldcreate an implementation ofApache Wave or Walkaround,which are based off of GoogleWave. They should offer a similarreal-time collaboration option, butwith a more limited range ofdocument formats.

Security is on-par with Dropbox,in my opinion. This is especiallytrue if you require everycollaborator to have an account, asopposed to the “anyone with thelink can edit” option I mentionedabove.

CCOOMMMMAANNDD && CCOONNQQUUEERRWritten by Lucas Westermann


Lucas has learned all he knows fromrepeatedly breaking his system, thenhaving no other option but todiscover how to fix it. You can emailLucas at: [email protected].

If anyone has used a program orsystem that they think deserves tobe mentioned, please let me knowvia email (address is below), and I'llbe sure to mention it at thebeginning of my next article.Please mention anything like cost,availability, etc.

Language-learningPrograms

For anyone who owns anandroid phone/tablet, I highlyrecommend Human Japanese,which has been one of the bestexplained introductions toJapanese I've read. It doesn't,however, use any Kanji, relyinginstead on Hiragana/Katakana. Thebenefit of this is that you can buildup vocabulary faster (since youdon't need to tell Kanji apart orlearn them), and also that, if you'reaiming for a solely verbalcommunication level, you don'tlearn anything unnecessary. It alsooffers great tips for tourists whenvisiting Japan. At the time ofwriting, it's available in the GooglePlay store for 6,99€. Also worthmentioning is that there is a MacOS X version of the sameapplication available in the AppStore, for anyone who owns a Mac.Also, the iOS App Store offers

Human Japanese, albeit for 7,99€.

Flashcard programs of any sortare extremely useful forremembering vocabulary. I can'tname any specific programs, since Ihaven't used any recently.Trivialibre might also be a validoption for doing this (introduced inCommand & Conquer from FullCircle Magazine Issue #58).

Book-wise, I've read and usedJapanese in Mangaland 1 & 2 (andthe corresponding workbooks) byMarc Bernabe. The books are well-written, and the illustrations helpunderscore the main points ofevery chapter. The illustrationsalso help your ability to read hand-written (or at least, the style ofwriting used in manga) Japanese,which may be useful in the future.The workbooks, as well, help drillthe vocabulary and grammar intoyour head. The stories used in thebooks are also well-drawn andwritten, for anyone who isinterested in that sort of stuff.

Listening to as much Japaneseas possible helps to improve yourown pronunciation. This can beeither music, audiobooks, ortelevision shows. If you decide onthe television/movie route,

definitely watch it with subtitles,as you can also start linkingmeanings to phrases. FindingJapanese books you findinteresting (manga, Shogi books,novels, etc.) will also help youimprove, once you're capable ofreading basic sentences. If thebook truly interests you, it will helpbalance out the tediousness ofhaving to read while having adictionary close at hand. Also, fordictionaries I highly recommendelectronic versions (gwaei, forexample). The reason for this issimple – they offer stroke-basedinput/searches, meaning you don'tneed to be able to recognize theKanji, or even read it, if you canfigure out the stroke order. Paperdictionaries tend to require boththese things.

Last, but not least, regardlessof what language you're learning,it's a wasted effort unless you useit! To this end, I present to youLang-8: http://lang-8.com/. This is awebsite where each user gets ajournal, in which they can writeentries, in both the languageyou're learning and your intendedmeaning in your native tongue. Thejournal is then corrected by otherusers. Each correction is split bysentence, and can be commented

on by the person correcting it. Thismeans that you'll be getting theopinion of a native speaker on howto speak his or her language in themost natural way. This is awonderful option for anyone whodoesn't have friends who speak thelanguage they're learning, don'twant to bother their friends withconstant questions, or who don'thave the option to go to thatcountry and “jump into the deepend”, as it were.

As always, I hope you found thisarticle helpful. I do realize that thetwo topics I covered in the articleare not at all connected. However,this means that there should besomething in here for everyone. Ifyou have any questions, comments,or suggestions, feel free to emailme at [email protected]. If youdo email me, please put FCM orC&C in the subject line, to makecertain I don't overlook it.

COMMAND & CONQUER



http://lang-8.com/


HHOOWW--TTOOWritten by Greg D. Walters BBeeggiinnnniinngg PPyytthhoonn -- PPaarrtt 3355

This time, we are going totake a short detour fromour exploration ofAndroid programming,

and look at a new framework forGUI programming called Kivy.You’ll want to head over tohttp://kivy.org and download andinstall the package – beforegetting too far into this month’sinstallment. The Ubuntuinstallation instructions can befound athttp://kivy.org/docs/installation/installation-ubuntu.html.

First off, Kivy is an open sourcelibrary that makes use of multi-touch displays. If that isn’t coolenough, it’s also cross-platform,which means that it will run onLinux, Windows, Mac OSX, IOS andAndroid. Now you can see why weare talking about this. Butremember, for the most part,anything you code using Kivy, canrun on any of the above platformswithout recoding.

Before we go too far, let memake a couple of statements. Kivyis VERY powerful. Kivy gives you a

new set of tools to make your GUIprogramming. All that having beensaid, Kivy is also fairly complicatedto deal with. You are limited to thewidgets that they have provided. Inaddition, there is no GUI designerfor Kivy, so you have to do a GREATdeal of pre-planning before you tryto do anything complicated. Alsoremember, Kivy is continuallyunder development so things canchange quickly. So far, I haven’tfound any of my test code that hasbroken by a new version of Kivy,but that’s always a possibility.

Rather than jump in and createour own code this month, we’lllook at some of the examples that

come with Kivy, and, next month,we’ll “roll our own”.

Once you’ve unpacked Kivy intoits own folder, use a terminal andchange to that folder. Mine is in/home/greg/Kivy-1.3.0. Nowchange to the examples folder,then to the widgets folder. Let’slook at the accordion_1.pyexample.

It’s very simple, but shows areally neat widget. Below is theircode.

As you can see, the first threelines are import statements. Anywidget you use must be imported,

and you must always import Appfrom kivy.app.

The next eight lines are themain application class. The class isdefined, then a routine called buildis created. You will almost alwayshave a build routine somewhere inyour Kivy programs. Next we set aroot object from the Accordionwidget. Next we create fiveAccordionItems and set their title.We then add ten labels with thetext “Very big content”. We thenadd each label to the root widget(the Accordion) and then finally wereturn the root object. This, inessence, displays the root object inthe window that Kivy creates for

from kivy.uix.accordion import Accordion, AccordionItem

from kivy.uix.label import Label

from kivy.app import App

class AccordionApp(App):

def build(self):

root = Accordion()

for x in xrange(5):

item = AccordionItem(title='Title %d' % x)

item.add_widget(Label(text='Very big content\n' * 10))

root.add_widget(item)

return root

if __name__ == '__main__':

AccordionApp().run()

http://kivy.org

http://kivy.org/docs/installation/installation-ubuntu.html


HOWTO - BEGINNING PYTHON 35us. Finally we have the “if__name__” statement and then runthe application.

Go ahead and run it to see whatit does.

You will see that in a momentor two, a window opens up withfive vertical bars in it. Clicking on abar causes it to open up revealingthe ten labels. Of course, each barhas the same text in the ten labels,but you can figure out how to fixthat.

The Accordion widget can beused for any number of things, butthe thing that has always jumpedto my mind is for a configurationscreen... each bar being a differentconfiguration set.

Next we’ll look at thetextalign.py example. It’s not as“sexy” as the last one, but it’s agood example that gives you someimportant information for later on.

Before we look at the code, runthe program.

What you should see is a labelat the top of the window, a set ofnine red boxes with text in a 3x3

grid, and four buttons along thebottom of the window. As you click(tap) each of the buttons, thealignment of the text within thered boxes will change. The mainreason you would want to payattention to this example is how touse and control some of theimportant widgets as well as howto change the alignment in yourwidgets, which is not completelyintuitive.

Above right is their code for thisone. I’ll break it into pieces. Firstthe import code (above right).

Below is something special.They created a class with no codein it. I’ll discuss that in a fewminutes:

class BoundedLabel(Label):

pass

Next a class called “Selector”(below) is created:

class Selector(FloatLayout):

app = ObjectProperty(None)

Now the Application class iscreated.

Here the routine select iscreated. A GridLayout widget iscreated (called grid) which has 3rows and 3 columns. This grid isgoing to hold the nine red boxes.

for valign in ('bottom',

'middle', 'top'):

for halign in ('left',

'center', 'right'):

Here we have two loops, oneinner and one outer.

label = BoundedLabel(text='V:

%s\nH: %s' % (valign,

halign),

size_hint=(None, None),

halign=halign, valign=valign)

In the code above, an instanceof the BoundedLabel widget iscreated, once for each of the ninered boxes. You might want to stophere and say “But wait! There isn’ta BoundedLabel widget. It just hasa pass statement in it.” Well, yes,and no. We are creating aninstance of a custom widget. As Isaid a little bit above, we’ll talkmore about that in a minute.

In the code block (top right,next page), we examine thevariable ‘case’ which is passed intothe select routine.

from kivy.app import App

from kivy.uix.label import Label

from kivy.uix.gridlayout import GridLayout

from kivy.uix.floatlayout import FloatLayout

from kivy.properties import ObjectProperty

class TextAlignApp(App):

def select(self, case):

grid = GridLayout(rows=3, cols=3, spacing=10, size_hint=(None, None),

pos_hint={'center_x': .5, 'center_y': .5})


HOWTO - BEGINNING PYTHON 35Here, the grid is removed, to

clear the screen.

if self.grid:

self.root.remove_widget(self.

grid)

The bind method here sets thesize, and the grid is added to theroot object.

grid.bind(minimum_size=grid.s

etter('size'))

self.grid = grid

self.root.add_widget(grid)

Remember in the last example Isaid that you will almost alwaysuse a build routine. Here is the onefor this example. The root object iscreated with a FloatLayout widget.Next (middle right) we call theSelector class to create a Selectorobject, then it’s added to the rootobject, and we initialize the displayby calling self.select(0).

Finally the application isallowed to run.

TextAlignApp().run()

Now, before we can go anyfurther, we need to clear up a fewthings. First, if you look in the

folder that holds the .py file, you’llnotice another file calledtextalign.kv. This is a special filethat Kivy uses to allow you tocreate your own widgets and rules.When your Kivy application starts,it looks in the same directory forthe .kv helper file. If it is there,then it loads it first. Here’s thecode in the .kv file.

This first line tells Kivy whatminimum version of Kivy that mustbe used to run this app.

#:kivy 1.0

Here the BoundedLabel widgetis created. Each of the red boxes inthe application is a BoundedLabel.

Color sets the background colorof the box to red (rgb: 1,0,0). TheRectangle widget creates a (youguessed it) rectangle. When we callthe BoundedLabel widget in theactual application code, we arepassing a label as the parent. Thesize and position (here in the .kvfile) are set to whatever the sizeand position of the label are.

Here (right, next page) theSelector widget is created. This isthe four buttons that appear at thebottom of the window as well as

the label across the top of thewindow.

Notice that the label that makesup the title at the top of thewindow has a position (pos_hint)as top, has a height of 50 pixelsand a font size of 16. Each of thebuttons has an alignment for thetext of center. The on_releasestatement is a bind-like statementso that, when the button is

released, it calls (in this case)root.app.select with a case value.

Hopefully, this is beginning tomake sense now. You can see whyKivy is so powerful.

Let’s talk for a moment abouttwo widgets that I have passedover in the discussion of theapplication code, The GridLayoutand the FloatLayout.

if case == 0:

label.text_size = (None, None)

elif case == 1:

label.text_size = (label.width, None)

elif case == 2:

label.text_size = (None, label.height)

else:

label.text_size = label.size

grid.add_widget(label)

def build(self):

self.root = FloatLayout()

self.selector = Selector(app=self)

self.root.add_widget(self.selector)

self.grid = None

self.select(0)

return self.root

<BoundedLabel>:

canvas.before:

Color:

rgb: 1, 0, 0

Rectangle:

pos: self.pos

size: self.size


Greg is the owner of RainyDaySolutions, LLC, a consulting companyin Aurora, Colorado, and has beenprogramming since 1972. He enjoyscooking, hiking, music, and spendingtime with his family. His website iswww.thedesignatedgeek.net.

HOWTO - BEGINNING PYTHON 35

The GridLayout is a parentwidget that uses a row and columndescription to allow widgets to beplaced in each cell. In this case, it isa 3x3 grid (like a Tic-Tac-Toe (orNaughts and Crosses) board).

__|__|__

__|__|__

| |

When you want to place awidget into a GridLayout, you usethe add_widget method. Here liesa problem. You can’t specify whichcontrol goes into which grid cellother than the order in which youadd them. In addition, each widgetis added from left to right, top tobottom. You can’t have an emptycell. Of course, you can cheat. I’llleave that up to you to figure out.

The FloatLayout widget seemsto be just a parent container forother child widgets.

I’ve glossed over a few pointsfor now. My intent this time wassimply to get you somewhatexcited about the possibilities thatKivy has to offer. In the nextcouple of articles, we’ll continue toexplore what Kivy has for us, howto use various widgets, and how tocreate an APK to publish our

applications to Android.

Until then, exploremore of the examples inKivy, and be sure to go tothe documentation pagefor Kivy athttp://kivy.org/docs/.

<Selector>:

Label:

pos_hint: {'top': 1}

size_hint_y: None

height: 50

font_size: 16

text: 'Demonstration of text valign and halign'

BoxLayout:

size_hint_y: None

height: 50

ToggleButton:

halign: 'center'

group: 'case'

text: 'label.text_size =\n(None, None)'

on_release: root.app.select(0)

state: 'down'

ToggleButton:

halign: 'center'

group: 'case'

text: 'label.text_size =\n(label.width, None)'


ToggleButton:

halign: 'center'

group: 'case'

text: 'label.text_size =\n(None, label.height)'


ToggleButton:

halign: 'center'

group: 'case'

text: 'label.text_size =\n(label.width, label.height)'


http://www.thedesignatedgeek.net

http://kivy.org/docs/


HHOOWW--TTOOWritten by Elmer Perry LLiibbrreeOOffffiiccee PPtt1166:: IImmpprreessss

A great presentationbegins with a pleasingand well thought outslide design. You also

need consistency between yourslides, elements that fit themtogether. In LibreOffice, you canuse the Master Pages to create thebase design for your presentation.Master Pages become theframework for the entirepresentation, binding theelements of our presentationtogether. Much of this isaccomplished through styles, andMaster Pages are the main style.You can think of Master Pagesbeing equivalent to Page Styles inWriter.

Editing Master Pages

To edit master pages, you mustswitch to the Master View. StartMaster View through View >Masters > Slide Master.Alternatively, you can right-clickthe master page you want to editin the Master Page section of theTasks pane, and select Edit Master.

When you enter Master View,

the master toolbar appears. Themaster toolbar gives you optionsspecific to editing master pages.Use add to add a new master page.Delete allows you to delete theselected master page. Delete isgrayed out when you have only onemaster page, because you must

have at least one. Rename lets yourename the currently selectedmaster page, and Close MasterView exits master page editing.

You have five predefinededitable areas in a master page:

Title Area – The title areacontains the title of the slide.Think of it as the subject of theslide.

Object Area – The object areacontains the data of the slide,whether it is text, an image, achart, or a table. As you will learn,the data of the slide is notconfined to the object area. Youcan add elements outside theobject area, but it's a good idea tokeep data generally in this area forconsistency in your presentation.

Date, Footer, and Slide NumberArea – By default, these areas donot show up on the actual slide. Tochange, go to View > Header andFooter, and you can changewhether or not these objects willappear on the slides.

Modifying the MasterPage


HOWTO - LIBREOFFICE Pt16: IMPRESSWe will start with the default

style for your master page. First,let's change the background.Format > Page. On the backgroundtab, use the dropdown box andselect gradient. In the gradient list,select Radial red/yellow. Click OK.This gives you a bright, sunnybackground to work on.

NOTE: You can download the icongraphic used in this tutorial athttp://eeperry.co.cc/resources/modules.png.

Next, we will add a graphic toyour master page. The graphic willshow up on all slides that use thismaster page. I created a ribbongraphic containing the icons for allthe LibreOffice applications. Wewant it to sit just below the object

area. Insert > Picture > From file.Select your picture and Open.Move the image to the positionyou want it, just below the objectarea. You want the image centeredat the bottom. Rick-click the imageand select Alignment > Centered.You also want the image to appearbehind any objects which might goover it. Right-click the image again,and select Arrange > Send to back.

Now, let's add a line under thetitle. Select the line tool from thedrawing toolbar at the bottom ofthe window, and draw a line underthe title area. You can change theline style using the line toolbar.Change the style of the line, thethickness, color, and the start andend arrow styles.

Finally, let's edit the date,footer, and slide number areas(below). While in Master View, youcan change the size and placementof these objects, but actually fillingthem with content can be done atany time. View > Header andFooter. On the slide tab, there is acheckbox for each of the threeareas: date, footer, and slidenumber.

Under date and time, you canchoose a fixed date or a variabledate. You can use fixed date whenyou have a presentation that ispresented one time, or you wantthe date to appear in a non-standard way. Place your date textin the textbox beside the variableselection. What you place in thetextbox is what will show in thedate textbox on the slide. Usevariable date when a presentationdate is unknown, or you will givethe presentation more than once.Variable will place the current datein the date textbox. With variable,you need to select a format in thedropdown. You can also changethe language.

For the footer area, you typethe text you want in the footerarea in the textbox. Whatever youtype in the textbox appears in the

footer area.

There's not much to the slidenumber. You either check it toshow or not show. When checked,the slide number will show up inthe slide number area.

NOTE: The date, footer, andslide number areas are disabled onthe first slide, the title page.

Click the Apply to All button toapply the settings to all the slidesexcept the title page. Click theApply button to apply it to only thecurrent slide.

Impress Styles

Just like in Writer and Calc,Impress can use styles to keepeverything uniform. Styles are alsoa time saver. However, styles are alittle different in Impress. Impressonly has two different style types,Presentation and Graphic.

An easy way to think aboutpresentation styles is as the stylesrelated to the master pages. Youhave styles for backgrounds,background objects, outline text,notes, titles, and subtitles. You canmodify these styles any way you

http://eeperry.co.cc/resources/modules.png


Elmer Perry's history of working,and programming, computersinvolves an Apple IIE, adding someAmiga, a generous helping of DOSand Windows, a dash of Unix, andblend well with Linux and Ubuntu.

want. However, you cannot createnew presentation styles.

Graphics styles are styles forobjects and text not directlyrelated to the master pages. Youcan modify these styles in any wayyou want, and you can create newones.

Editing of styles is done fromthe Styles and Formatting dialog.You can open the Styles andFormatting dialog by clicking onthe button in the line and filling

toolbar, pressing the F11 key onthe keyboard, or by going toFormat > Styles and Formatting.

Let's do a couple ofmodifications to the presentationstyles to show how they work.First, enter master view mode,View > Master > Slide Master, andopen the Styles and Formattingdialog, Format > Styles andFormatting. Right-click Title in thedialog and select Modify. On thefont tab, select a suitable serif orslab font. Maybe make it bold.

Switch to the area tab and changethe fill to gradient. Select the firstgradient in the list (black to white).On the transparency tab, switchthe mode to transparency and thepercentage to 50%. Click OK, andyou will see the font for the titlehas changed and it has asemitransparent gradientbackground.

Now, select Outline 1 in theStyles and formatting dialog.Right-click and modify. All we wantto do here is change the font. ClickOK. Switch to Master View and youwill notice that the font is changedfor all the outline levels. This isbecause each of the outline levelslinks to the previous one. You can'tchange the linking, but you canchange each of the levels to bedifferent. This cascade effect canbe useful, especially with the fontin helping to create uniformity.

In this how-to, we learnedabout creating and modifyingmaster pages in Impress. Masterpages are key to helping createconsistency in your presentation.We also looked at presentationstyles and how they help createthe style for your slides. Iencourage you to play around withthe master page settings and

presentation styles. Thepresentation styles have 14different tabs, making them veryflexible. You can create a veryprofessional and visually appealingpresentation with these tools.

Next time, we will begin workwith individual slides.

HOWTO - LIBREOFFICE Pt16: IMPRESS


HHOOWW--TTOOWritten by Ronnie Tucker

AAmmaatteeuurr AAssttrroonnoommyy PPtt22

Astronomy can be a coldhobby. Sitting out in afield or garden wearingtwo jackets and gloves,

while trying to read a sky map andtrying to stop your telescope frombecoming airborne can besomething of a hazard. If you’reDIY-minded, you could buildyourself a small observatory with asliding roof and a warm room. Or,if you’re a sissy like me, leave yourtelescope out in the cold andwatch things from the comfort ofyour own home.

Webcam

The first thing you’ll need is awebcam. This will be your eyes, soit needs to be securely attached toyour telescope or eyepiece. Somefolks prefer to remove theeyepiece and put the webcamwhere the eyepiece should go.Some (ie: me) prefer to attach thewebcam to the eyepiece to get acloser view of things. Attachingthe webcam to the eyepiece iscompletely subjective. Some folkswill buy a special attachment.

Some (ie: me) will hack somethingup using cardboard and maskingtape (don’t use gaffer’s tape, it willinevitably spoil your telescope).Whatever you do, the webcammust be stable – especially if youintend to use it forastrophotography. The webcamdoes not need to be big, fancy andHD.

Networking

I use my old laptop as myexternal brain. It’s linked to mydesktop PC via wireless network.You could, if it came to it, use awired network. Either way, youneed to have your laptopconnected to the Internetsomehow. The connection we’llmake also comes in handy forwirelessly transferring any photosor videos you may take while (notquite) out in the field.

Out In The Cold

So, you have your webcam onyour scope. Your webcamapplication is showing you what

your webcam can see, but you’restill out in the cold. Now what?

Remote Desktop

First, you want to head over to:http://www.teamviewer.com, anddownload TeamViewer (which isfree for non-commercial purposes).TeamViewer needs to be installedon both the laptop and desktopmachines, and acts as both a server(transmitting) and a receiver(displaying). So, you obviously wantto register with the TeamViewerwebsite. Then, load TeamVieweron the laptop and desktop

machines. First thing you want todo is go to Extras > Options, andset a password for each machine.When you first load TeamViewer,you’ll see a unique ID andpassword; that will change eachtime you load.

TIP: You should probably addTeamViewer to your list ofapplications that load on startup. IfTeamViewer isn’t loaded you can’tconnect to that machine, and thereare times when you may have tosend a reboot command to themachine you're logged into.

http://www.teamviewer.com


HOWTO - AMATEUR ASTRONOMY Pt2Not very helpful since, if you’re

at the desktop machine, you can’tsee the ID of the laptop to log inwith! But, help is at hand. We’llregister the machines withTeamViewer. Click the ‘Computers& Contacts’ button at the bottomright of TeamViewer, you’ll see awindow pop-up.

Initially, your pop-up windowwon’t list anything in it, but we’llsoon fix that. Click the icon secondfrom the right, looks like acomputer monitor with a ‘+’symbol over it. This will let youregister one, or more, computerswith TeamViewer letting you login

without having to remember aURL/IP.

So, with the laptop and desktopmachine registered withTeamViewer they’ll show upanytime we login to TeamViewer,and appear in the pop-up window.Simply double clicking one of theentries listed will connect to thatmachine.

So now (below left) I’mcontrolling my laptop from thecomfort of my desktop. I cancontrol it as if I was sitting in frontof it. Configure settings, load/exitapplications, anything. Clicking the

‘X’ in the middle left of thedesktop will exit the session. You’llalso notice (in that menu that’soverlaying the laptop desktop) a‘File Transfer’ button. This, as youcan imagine, allows the transfer offiles to/from the connectedmachines.

This saves you from copyingimages/videos to/from USB sticks.The window that appears acts likean FTP application where you clicka file(s) and click which way you’dlike the file(s) to go in. So, in theimage shown below, I’ve clicked avideo on the laptop, and will clickthe blue left facing arrow (marked


‘Receive’) to transfer the file to mydesktop machine.

As well as having a webcamapplication running, you can, ofcourse, have mount controlsloaded and be controlling yourmount remotely too whilewatching your camera. If your

laptop has a webcam in it, you canpoint the webcam at your mountand have that on screen too!

TIP: If you leave yourlaptop/desktop set up, and you’reat work, you can log into any ofyour machines via the TeamViewerwebsite (shown below).

Although it may seem pointlessto have a webcam pointing at thesame patch of sky for any length oftime, this setup does come inhandy for astrophotography as youcan leave the laptop recordingvideo for several minutes (orhours), and keep an eye on it tomake sure your camera/mounthasn’t moved or to stop/start arecording – a recording whichcould be put through one of theimage stacking applications Imentioned last month.

HOWTO - AMATEUR ASTRONOMY Pt2

Ronnie is the founder, and editor, ofFull Circle, an official Ubuntumember, and part-time artist whosework can be seen at:http://ronnietucker.co.uk

http://ronnietucker.co.uk


HHOOWW--TTOOWritten by Thomas Standiford GGIIMMPP -- RReettrroo PPhhoottoo

In this GIMP how-to, we'regoing to do some basic curvesadjustments to make thisphoto have a cool stylized

retro-type look.

We'll start with the imageabove right, and end with theimage shown bottom right.

Get the Retro Colors

Most of the effect for thisphoto is simply from adjusting thecurves of each channel (the red,green, blue, and alpha channels)like so:

Note: To change which channel toadjust, select the channel from thechannel drop-down. You can switchback and forth between channels.All of these curves adjustmentsshould be done in ONECOMMAND, not a series of fourcommands.

After making the adjustment,your photo should look pretty cool,but we need to tone the contrastdown a bit.

Next, do another curvesadjustment like so:


HOWTO - GIMP RETRO PHOTONot bad, now if only those

bubbles didn't disappear in theprocess.

Enhance the Bubbles

The bubbles seem to havedisappeared in this photo. We'regoing to use a combination ofselections, and soft brushes to putsome pop back into them.

Create a new layer, name it"bubbles".

Now we will select the bubbles.Using the path tool, trace aroundthe outer edge of each bubble.

Once all of the bubbles havebeen outlined, right-click on thepath in the path menu (located inthe same window as the layers),and click "path to selection."

Set your foreground andbackground to a lime green and

hot pink.

Using a fairly large and softbrush, carefully brush in a fewspaces of pink and green in eachbubble, like so:

Now that we have added thecolor to the proper areas of thebubbles, let's change some layerstyles and adjust the opacity tomake the bubbles look realistic.

Set the layer mode to Overlay.

Duplicate the layer. Name theduplicated layer "bubblebrighten".

Set the duplicated layer modeto addition.

Adjust the opacity of both the"bubble" and "bubblebrighten"layer until you end up withsomething you're happy with. Myopacity settings are set to 23 and40 respectively, and they look likethis:

Now that our bubbles are alittle more visible, let's dramatizethe photo a bit.

Final Touches

Create a new layer, name it"dramatize", set the layer mode toOverlay, and fill the layer withblack.

Add a layer mask to thedramatize layer.

Using the blend tool, set thegradient mode to radial, and use agradient that goes from black towhite. Create a gradient that goesfrom the center of the photooutward. Adjust the opacity of thelayer to something you're happywith. Here is what I ended up with:

Next month we'll begin a videoediting series using Kdenlive.


HHOOWW--TTOOWritten by Mark Crutch IInnkkssccaappee -- PPtt33

Here's a riddle for you:when is a circle not acircle? More specifically,which of these two

circles is a circle, and which oneisn't?

They may look the same, butthey're not. If you double-click oneach of them to make their edithandles visible, you can start tosee a difference.

The one on the left is the truecircle, created by holding downCTRL while drawing an ellipse. Theother is a square, created byholding CTRL while drawing a

rectangle, which has had itscorners rounded using the smallcircle handles.

Often it's quite obvious whattype of object you're working within Inkscape, but as your drawingsbecome more complex, and as youbegin to use more and more tools,it's easy to lose track. Somefeatures only work with particulartypes of objects, so it's handy to beable to tell at a glance exactlywhat you've got selected. Inkscapereveals that information – and awhole lot more – in the status barat the bottom of the window.Here's the relevant part of thestatus bar when each of these“circles” is selected with the Selecttool:

From that information it's quiteobvious that the two circles aredifferent. But that image has beenedited a little; the text actuallyreads “Ellipse in layer Layer 1. Click

selection to toggle scale/rotationhandles.” The status line is tellingyou that clicking your selectedobject will toggle between thescale handles and the rotation &skew handles.

In fact much of what has beenverbosely described in theprevious two articles can be foundwritten far more succinctly inInkscape's status line. With theCircle tool selected you're told to“Drag to create an ellipse. Dragcontrols to make an arc orsegment. Click to select.” In thiscase “drag controls” is Inkscape'sterminology for moving the smallsquare and circle handles. A similarline when the Rectangle tool isselected suggests you can “Dragcontrols to round corners andresize.”

Hovering the mouse pointerover the various handles alsoprovides valuable information inthe status line, including this gemwhen you use the circle handles on

an ellipse: “...drag inside the ellipsefor arc, outside for segment.” So ifyou were wondering aboutInkscape's seemingly randomswitching between segments andarcs, it turns out not to be randomafter all. Keep the pointer insidethe boundary of the ellipse if youwant to create an arc, and outsideif you want to create a segment –although you can always switchusing the toolbar buttons if youend up with the wrong type ofobject.

As well as these handy tips, thestatus bar also houses a few otherthings that you should becomefamiliar with if you want to makethe most of your time withInkscape. At the far left are the filland stroke swatches that wereintroduced back in the first part ofthis series. In theory you can clickand drag on them in order tochange their colors, but I've alwaysfound that to be an imprecise andawkward approach. Next monthwe'll look at the Fill and Stroke


HOWTO - INKSCAPE Pt3dialog which is a much better wayto pick colors that aren't present inyour color palette.

The stroke thickness offers anequally useless facility to click anddrag in order to change its value.For most quick changes a right-click on the number to bring up thecontext menu is a much betteroption.

The spin-box labelled with acryptic “O:” lets you set the opacityof your selected objects. It's shownas a percentage, so 100 is the normfor a completely opaque colorwhilst 0 will render your objectscompletely transparent. Inkscapehas lots of ways to make yourobjects transparent, which can bea real problem for new users. Youcan set a value in this box by typingdirectly, by using the up and downbuttons at the side, or by right-clicking to bring up a rather coarsefive-step context menu. I usuallyuse the context menu, at least as astarting point, and, if nothing else,it provides a fast way to get backto 100% opacity when you're indanger of losing your transparentobjects.

The eye and lock icons, and thepop-up menu that follows them,

are all related to layers. I'll becovering layers in a later article,but there are three things worthknowing about them at this stage:

• If you're familiar with layers inGIMP or another graphics program,layers in Inkscape work in a similarway.

• Clicking the eye button is anotherof the many ways to make yourobjects disappear from the screen– in this case by hiding the layerthey're drawn on. The icon changesto a closed eye in this case and youcan simply click it again to displaythe layer once more.

• If the lock icon looks like a closedpadlock, then your layer is lockedand you won't be able to drawanything new onto it. Click the iconagain to unlock it.

To the right of the status text isa pair of fields which show the Xand Y coordinates of your mousepointer, relative to the bottom-leftcorner of the page boundary. Youcan't modify these in any way,other than by moving your mouse,as they're just there for

information. Be warned, however,that Inkscape's choice of thebottom-left of the page as theorigin point is different to the SVGspecification's use of the top-leftcorner – it's not a distinction thatwill affect most people, but it doesmean that if you're a programmertype who wants to edit the SVG filedirectly, these values are almostuseless to you.

The last Inkscape-specificwidget in the status bar is a zoomspin-box which shows you thecurrent zoom level, lets you set aspecific value by typing or usingthe up and down buttons or pickfrom a few standards via a contextmenu. There are so many otherzoom tools, including the CTRLplus scroll wheel and the +/- keyswhich I've described previously,that I doubt you'll ever use thiswidget. Finally there's a handle toresize the window.

Let's finish this month byintroducing another drawing toolto your arsenal: the Stars andPolygons tool. It's got an icon inthe tool box and can also beactivated using the asterisk key

(easy to remember because itlooks a little like a star) or SHIFT-F9. Dragging out a shape on thecanvas will produce either a convexpolygon or a concave, star-like,

polygon. You can switch betweenthe two modes using the first twobuttons on the tool control bar.

Depending on which modeyou're using, you'll see either oneor two small diamond-shapedhandles. These let you adjust thesize, rotation and, for concavepolygons, the spoke ratio. Byholding various modifier keys asyou move them, you can alsoadjust several other parameters(have a look at the status bar forthe details) – although I usuallyprefer to change them using thespin-boxes in the tool control bar.

The only parameter that can'tbe changed via the diamond


Mark has been using Linux since1994, and uses Inkscape to createtwo webcomics, 'The Greys' and'Monsters, Inked' which can both befound at:http://www.peppertop.com/

HOWTO - INKSCAPE Pt3handles is the number of cornerson your polygon, but the otheradvantage to using the spin-boxesis that, like the spin-boxes on thestatus bar, they each have acontext menu that you can accesswith a right-click. These contextmenus are tailored to each spin-box separately, with descriptivetitles to provide you with a littleinsight into the effect they'll have.

The best way to get a feel forthe Star tool is simply to play withit. Try different combinations ofvalues in the spin-boxes. If yourobjects start to get a little out ofcontrol just click the button at theright of the tool control bar – theone that looks like a small broom –in order to 'clean up' theparameters back to sensibledefaults. To give you some idea ofwhat you can achieve simply bytweaking the parameters for theStar tool, this image contains sixidentical polygons which differonly in the settings in their spin-boxes:

To go back to the question thatstarted this article, you now have athird way to create a 'circle' – drawa convex polygon with a largenumber of corners. It's not aparticularly good way to draw acircle, and it's certainly notefficient, but it does reinforce thefact that objects in Inkscape aren'talways what they seem. Keep aneye on the status text.

Why not use this new tool toadd some stars to the backgroundof your snowman image from theprevious articles. The same toolwill also let you replace those

circles that weused for the eyesand mouth withslightlyrandomisedconvex polygons– far moreauthentic aslumps of coal.

CCOODDEEWWOORRDD

Solutions are on the second last page.

Every number in the grid is 'code' for a letter of the alphabet.Thus the number '2' may correspond to the letter 'L', for instance.All - except the difficult codeword puzzles - come with a fewletters to start you off

Puzzles are copyright, and kindly provided by,The Puzzle Club - www.thepuzzleclub.com

http://www.peppertop.com/

http://www.thepuzzleclub.com


HHOOWW--TTOOWritten by Michael R. Youngblood WWeebb DDeevv -- PPtt11

The “LAMP Stack” istraditionally Linux,Apache, MySQL, and PHP.This is the most necessary

portion of any server to any webdeveloper, whether you’respecializing in PHP or even mobiledevelopment. You just simplycannot develop a web site or webapp without a web server. Ofcourse, there are other flavors ofweb servers that use othertechnology, but this is thestandard and will be our startingpoint.

For the sake of this newcolumn, I have set up a new VirtualServer to go through with you as

we go. My server is running UbuntuServer 64bit 10.10. This month wewill get Apache2 installed andconfigured. I am also assuming youknow how to edit files usingterminal and vi, this is what we willbe using the whole time. Let’s jumpright into that.

If you are not root (and youshouldn’t be for security reasons),you need to run apt-get commandsusing sudo, and all my exampleswill assume you are logged in as auser. Run the following code toinstall apache2:

sudo aptget install apache2

By default, now it works. It islistening to all IP’s available to it,anything coming to that box onport 80 will now go to the default

web site. Pretty easy stuff so far.All of your files will be located inthe following directory:

/srv/www/

I have a feeling that we willwant a few different sites to playaround with, so I am going to showyou how I set things up. Instead ofusing the default path and apacheconfig setup, we will use virtualhosts. From here on out, I will useexample.com. You will want toreplace that with your own domainname.

Make a new virtual host configfile into /etc/apache2/sites-available/ with the followingcommand:

sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites

available/example.com

Now let’s get some config inthere. Go ahead and use the simplesample configuration shownabove.

Remember to changeexample.com to your doman name.This stuff is kind of boring so I amjust going to run through it reallyquickly. ServerAdmin is for theemail address of who (or a groupthat) maintains the site.ServerName should be the basename of the site. Please note, ifyour site is a sub-domain then youwill need to put x.example.com inthe ServerName. The ServerAlias isthe full web address that will begoing to your site. DocumentRootis where all of your public files willbe held. I took the liberty of givingyou error log reporting to makefinding and fixing problems easier

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerAdmin [email protected]

ServerName example.com

ServerAlias www.example.com

DocumentRoot /srv/www/example.com/public_html/

ErrorLog /srv/www/example.com/logs/error.log

CustomLog /srv/www/example.com/logs/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>


WEB DEVin the future. Before any of thatwill work, we need to create thosedirectories for real. That, of course,is as easy as making directories:

mkdir p

/srv/www/example.com/public_h

tml

mkdir

/srv/www/example.com/logs

Sweet, now we got some stuffgoing on. Now let’s activate thatbad boy:

sudo a2ensite example.com

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2

reload

The a2ensite is actually a reallycool command. It says apache2,enable site x. There is alsoa2dissite for disabling. This will usethe site config files we made in thesites-available directory and copythem into the sites-enableddirectory. Although we could do itourselves, it is just good practiceto let apache handle its own fileswhen it is able. The otherstatement there is telling apacheto reload its configuration files.

Well, that is it for this month.

Next time we will be installingPHP and MySQL to complete theLAMP stack.

Michael Youngblood has been in theindustry of web design anddevelopment for 13 years. He hasbeen working for a world widewireless tech corp for six years and isworking on his bachelor’s of sciencein mobile development.

BBRRIIDDGGEESS


An island is shown by a circle with a number in it. Drawbridges between islands so that each island has thenumber of bridges indicated. There can be no more thantwo bridges between the same two islands. Bridges canonly be drawn horizontally or vertically.

puzzles are copyright, and kindly provided by,The Puzzle Club - www.thepuzzleclub.com



HHOOWW--TTOOWritten by Ronnie Tucker WWrriittee FFoorr FFuullll CCiirrccllee MMaaggaazziinnee

Guidelines

The single rule for anarticle is that it mustsomehow be linked toUbuntu or one of the

many derivatives of Ubuntu(Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc).

Write your article in whicheversoftware you choose. I wouldrecommend LibreOffice, butPLEASE SPELL AND GRAMMARCHECK IT!

Writing

There is no word limit forarticles, but be advised that longarticles may be split across severalissues. In your article, please placewhere you would like a particularimage to be. Please do not use anyformatting in your document.

Images

Images should be no wider than800 pixels, in JPG format, and uselow compression.

If you are writing a review,please follow these guidelines :

For a more detailed list of thestyle rules and common pitfallsplease refer to:https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuMagazine/Style - in short: USspelling, no l33t speak and nosmilies.

When you are ready to submityour article please email it to:[email protected]

If you can't write articles, buthang out in Ubuntu Forums, sendus interesting forum threads thatwe could print.

Non-English Writers

If your native language isn'tEnglish, don't worry. Write yourarticle, and the proof-readers willread it for you and correct anygrammatical or spelling errors. Notonly are you helping the magazineand the community, but we'll helpyou with your English!

REVIEWS

Games/ApplicationsWhen reviewing games/applications please state clearly:

• title of the game• who makes the game• is it free, or a paid download?• where to get it from (give download/homepage URL)• is it Linux native, or did you use Wine?• your marks out of five• a summary with positive and negative points

HardwareWhen reviewing hardware please state clearly:

• make and model of the hardware• what category would you put this hardware into?• any glitches that you may have had while using the hardware?• easy to get the hardware working in Linux?• did you have to use Windows drivers?• marks out of five• a summary with positive and negative points

You don't need to be an expert to write anarticle - write about the games, applicationsand hardware that you use every day.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuMagazine/Style

[email protected]


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Get 25% off any SpiderOak packagewith the code: FullcirclemagFans



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AASSKK TTHHEE NNEEWW GGUUYYWritten by Copil Yáňez

My high school had acomputer club thatcompeted in theannual Computer

Olympiad. It was a lot like theOlympics – only without themedals, interviews, lucrativeendorsement deals, dopingallegations or fans. Actually, itwasn’t anything like the Olympics.Except for the insane amount ofsweating.

On the designated day, teamsof brainy teenagers huddled in ahot cafeteria and worked against atime limit to carry out a givenprogramming task. Completedprograms were then judged onrelevance, brevity and elegance(no, dressing up your TRS-80 in tophat and tails will NOT get you extrapoints – I tried).

Our team usually did well. Notbecause we were smarter than theother teams but because we hadsomething no other team had.

Me.

That’s right, I was clearly the

most important bull in the nerdherd. Why?

I was the typist.

Someone had to enter thestring of geek-speak being spoutedby my teammates and I happenedto have mad typing skills (whichtotally killed it with the ladies, bythe way).

Intellectually, on the otherhand, I was in over my head. I couldget my name to scroll diagonallyacross the screen (again, catnip forthe ladies), but, compared to mybuddies, I was a pre-op Charliefrom Flowers for Algernon.

I don’t tell you this story to boreyou. Although if it did, hey, MissionAccomplished! No, I bring it up toillustrate a pattern that has beenwith me since grade school andinforms my experience with Linux.

See, I have always enjoyed thetrappings of tech-geekery withoutthe underlying comprehension.

I know, I know, I’m everyenthusiast’s worst nightmare. I’mthe guy who blithely clicksCONTINUE at the bottom of everyscreen during an OS install andthen runs around the forums cross-posting in all-caps: “LINUTS JUSTATE MY FILES WHERE IS TEHWINDOWS NOW?!!!?! GET IT

BACK, YOU GUYS!!1@!!! LINUTZSUKZZZZZZ!!!

But just as I played a crucial rolein the Computer Olympiad, andmuch as a canary was onceconsidered a key component in thecoal mining process, I feel I havebeen placed on this earth to play avery special role with regards toLinux.

I’d like you to think of me, notas the fashion-challenged “before”image in a weight-lossadvertisement, but as an augur forLinux’s arrival.

Let me explain.

The first non-Microsoft, non-Apple operating system I ever triedwas a sexy little number namedOS/2. Yes, I know this was initiallydeveloped by Microsoft but I didn’thear about it until the Warp era, bywhich time it was wholly owned byIBM so GET OFF MY BACK!

OS/2 Warp was pretty advancedfor the time and competitive withWindows 95 (arguably much


better). Later versions includedJava, speech recognition, 32-bitwindowing, Internet-compatiblenetworking and *yaaaawn* look atthe time, it’s getting late.

No, the real genius of OS/2Warp was that it treated operatingsystems the way Atari treatsdragons. When Atari releasedAdventure for the Atari 2600, theyhad this graphic on the box:

But when you popped that babyinto the cartridge slot, this is howthe dragon rendered:

In marketing, you sell the sizzle,not the steak. Atari did it withAdventure and IBM did with OS/2Warp.

OS/2 promised:• BREAKNECK BOOT UPS!• MULTITASKING MADNESS!• NUTTY NETWORKING!

With such breathy promises ofoperating system sexiness, it’s nowonder that OS/2 Warp corneredthe enthusiastswith fewpractical

computing skills buta fondness for

beingmisleadbymarketing copy

market. Which was, like, me andthree other people.

So I tried OS/2 Warp on a laptopand promptly borked the damnthing so badly I actually had toRMA the machine. I also returnedthe OS/2 Warp package andpromptly invested the proceeds inAOL.

And that should have been theend of it.

But then, about twelve yearsago, I started reading about Linuxand the wonders of open source(seriously, no one has ever notedhow much that sounds like “opensores?”). There was somethingfamiliar about the breathypromises and cult-like devotion,something I couldn’t quite place.Whatever, I bought a copy ofXandros on eBay and loaded it.Yeah, I bought it. Erm, let’s just sayI hadn’t read all of the open sourcemanifestos that carefully.

Much like my last date with myfirst girlfriend, things started wellenough. And then my mousestarted acting hinky (a technicalterm referring to an inanimateobject that becomes possessed bythe ghost of a paint mixer). I got

dizzy chasing my cursor around thescreen, trying desperately to guesswhere I should click on one side ofthe screen in order to selectsomething on the other side. Iwould have tried to fix theproblem but there’s only so mucheffort I’m willing to put into thissort of thing. So, after about eightminutes, my experiment inalternate operating systems wasover. Again.

I demanded my money backfrom XandrosBoob98 and promptlyinvested it in Enron.

And that should have been theend of it.

But I could still hear the sirencall and, over the next few years, Istarted playing with other Linuxflavors. I became an open sourceslut, willing to have a go with anyflirty distro that made eyes at me. Iinvited them all over to make outon the couch: Suse, Debian, RedHat, Mint, Damn Small, and even atotally nasty one called #! thatwanted to do stuff I had nevereven heard of.

Each one had its own quirks, itsown way of not working, and Iremained unwilling to make a

ASK THE NEW GUY


lasting commitment to any ofthem. I uninstalled each beforethey started leaving their stuffovernight and cluttering up myhome (folder).

I finally realized I had a problemwhen a friend caught medownloading a BSD .iso. I had gonetoo far. And I needed help.

That’s when I discoveredUbuntu.

At first, the breathiness turnedme off. This distro would changethings forever! It could be loadedon a toaster, ran on air and madeyou irresistible to the opposite sex.

It was the sizzle again, and I waswary of buying the steak. But I hadhit rock bottom and the next stepwas to sit around waiting for Hurd.I just couldn’t do it.

I downloaded the Ubuntu .isoand ran it as a LiveCD. And themost amazing thing happened. Itjust worked!

I don’t mean it ran my mousebut wouldn’t print from PDFs. Idon’t mean it saw my video cardbut wouldn’t run Skype. I don’tmean it connected to the network

but wouldn’t scan documents.

It. Just. Worked!

It was the equivalent ofpopping in the Adventure cartridgeand having my eyebrows singed offby the dragon’s fiery breath!

This is how I know Linux hasarrived. If a guy like me, who wantsall the flash of a pretty newoperating system but can’t bebothered to learn what ‘ls’ at theprompt does, can find happiness,then so will most people, most ofwhom aren’t nearly as criminallylazy as I am.

Fast forward to today. I’vefinally settled down with Ubuntuand we’ve had several laptops andone desktop together. It’s a happyhome and I love my life partnereven though the state of Virginiadoesn’t see our union as legal.

And now I think it’s time to giveback to the community. I owe it toUbuntu after everything it’s givenme.

Here’s my plan: I’m going tofigure out some things, learn whysome people swear by thecommand line, explore some of theavailable options and tools like

virtualization, automation andpersonalization. I’ll look at thesethings from the perspective of auser who knows what’s cool aboutLinux but doesn’t alwaysunderstand why.

Think of me as the jerk downthe road with a brand new Ferarriwho doesn’t even know how todrive a stick shift. It’s time to lookunder the hood.

Am I alone? Anyone else outthere know how to summon thecommand line but fear its voodoo?Or maybe you get tired ofanswering the same questions overand over for new users. If so,contact me [email protected]. I’ll try toanswer simple questions or pointout helpful beginner advice fromthe perspective of someone wholoves Linux and Ubuntu but doesn’tspeak source code.

ASK THE NEW GUY

Copil came to Linux via his lifelonginterest in penguin-on-penguinerotica. His quest for the perfect fartjoke is chronicled atyaconfidential.blogspot.com. Youcan also follow his stream ofconsciousness on Twitter (@copil).

The Ubuntu Podcast covers allthe latest news and issues facingUbuntu Linux users and FreeSoftware fans in general. Theshow appeals to the newest userand the oldest coder. Ourdiscussions cover thedevelopment of Ubuntu butaren’t overly technical. We arelucky enough to have somegreat guests on the show, tellingus first hand about the latestexciting developments they areworking on, in a way that we canall understand! We also talkabout the Ubuntu communityand what it gets up to.

The show is presented bymembers of the UK’s UbuntuLinux community. Because it iscovered by the Ubuntu Code ofConduct it is suitable for all.

The show is broadcast live everyfortnight on a Tuesday evening(British time) and is available fordownload the following day.

podcast.ubuntu-uk.org

http://yaconfidential.blogspot.com


http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/


LLIINNUUXX LLAABBWritten by Alan Ward MMaakkiinngg **bbuunnttuu 1122..0044 BBoooott FFaasstteerr

TWEET SCREEN FOLKS: Don’tworry, your half-finished projecthasn’t been abandoned. Charleswill return next month to finish offthe Tweet Screen.

The basic idea for this littlepiece actually came froma real-world situation Ifound myself in this last

school year. An increasing numberof fellow teachers are buyingnetbooks to use in class and athome. Their rationale includes,above all, the ease oftransportation of theselightweight computers, thoughlower prices compared to regularlaptops certainly do no harm.However, their initial enthusiasmtends to diminish slightly over timebecause of the lower speedsnetbooks offer - which is whenthey come to me for advice. Thedialogue usually goes this way:

Teacher: I'm veryhappywith this

newcomputer, but is there some

waywe couldgeta tadmore speed

outofit?

Me: Which operating system are you

running?

Teacher: (whatever)

Me: Hmmm... thatwon'tbe easy.Care to tryLinux instead?

Teacher: Will I be able to continue

usingOffice documents?

Me: Whyyeah, sure. No problems

with virus, either.

Teacher: Suitsme!

As you can imagine, the endresult of all this is a rising numberof happy campers users. However,it has forced me to take some timeto think out the choice ofdistribution to install on theirmachines. Being recent converts,they themselves usually had nopreconceived preferences, butwere happy to have me choose.Any version of Ubuntu seemedsuitable - mostly for ease ofinstallation and maintenance,though the availability of Catalanlanguage translations was also a

positive factor. But I think we canall agree not all *buntudistributions can get the samespeed out of lightweighthardware.

So I wanted to look at somehard data before coming out witha public recommendation – myprofessional reputation being atstake, so to speak. Evaluatingavailable possibilities meantfinding answers for the followingquestions, a process that I wouldlike to share with you here:A. Is there really a difference inspeed between the variousdesktop managers? Is this a realdifference, as opposed to merely aperceived difference?B. What about the processor andmotherboard? What influence dothey really have on computerspeeds?C. Notebook hard drives do nothave a good reputation. Is itimportant to take this factor intoaccount? Could it be worth thetime and money to upgrade thehard drive?

To reply to all these questions, I


LINUX LAB - MAKING *BUNTU BOOT FASTERneeded a basic experimentalprotocol that could comparedifferent distributions andcomputers, but that at the sametime represented real-world userexperience. Just measuring pureCPU speed or hard drive I/Operformance, as most benchmarksdo, was not good enough. But, onthe other hand, what differentpeople do with their computerscan vary quite a bit.

This is why I chose to measuresomething we all do: boot-up themachine. That is to say, I measuredin each case the wall-clock timebetween the moment the BIOSstarts loading the kernel, up to themoment in which the user can usethe mouse to navigate throughmenus and get some actual workdone.

Most of my “experimentation”has been done with an early AcerAspire One 10" (1GB RAM, Atom1.6GHz CPU), though I made somecomparisons with other hardwarewhen needed.

The equipment used for testing(previous page): a somewhat agingAcer Aspire, with (left to right) itsown internal SATA-1 hard drive, aUSB 2.0 pen-drive, and an 8GB

class-10 SDHC card and its adapter.

Though the article is aimedmostly at laptop users, specificallyas regards getting the best userexperience possible with netbooksand not-quite-bleeding-edge typesof hardware, I hope it gives thereader some practical ideas that heor she can try out in other areas aswell. Enjoy!

The Desktop Manager

Though Ubuntu and itsderivatives have a reputation ofgoing easy on system resources,this may vary across versions. Forexample, Kubuntu users' practicalexperience is that to get a

responsive system, you may needsome relatively serious powerunder the hood, specifically in thegraphics card department,otherwise you may need todeactivate some of the more funkydesktop effects. This may be ashow-stopper for the moreimpatient, who move on to otherless beautiful but more speedydesktop managers – been there,done that. On the other hand,Lubuntu is often touted as a morestreamlined desktop, suitable forolder or less powerful hardware.

The general perception I get –from reading around and my ownexperience – is that we couldprobably classify the better-known

desktop managers in the followingorder (from slowest to fastest):1. Kubuntu, with the KDE plasmadesktop manager.2. The Gnome 3 desktop manager.It is not, for the time being,installed by default by any of the*buntu distributions (though it isthe main desktop for someversions of Linux Mint).3. Ubuntu, with the new Unitymanager.4. Xubuntu, with XFCE 4.5. Lubuntu, with LXDE, also arelative newcomer to theplayground.

So, what truth is there in theseuser perceptions? I needed somehard data to base my decision on.

The first step was to perform astandard installation of Ubuntu12.04 for i386, update it to thelatest versions of all softwarepackets, and then add the othervarious desktops:

sudo aptitude install

kubuntudesktop

It may be interesting to notethat the finished system occupiedjust above 5GB, not that muchmore than the standard singledesktop installation of 3GB.


LINUX LAB - MAKING *BUNTU BOOT FASTER

I could then start measuringboot-up times. Perhaps it shouldbe noted that these times are acombination of:- the time it takes the kernel (avanilla 3.2.0) to load, load initrd,and switch roots;- the time is takes the init processto set up shop (go multiuser, loaddaemons, etc);- the time for the Xorg windowingsystem to detect graphicshardware and switch screen modeand resolution;- finally, the time needed for thedesktop manager to load its ownlibraries and display the user's GUIenvironment.

The first three steps arei

dentical in all cases, and add up toabout 20-21 seconds on my testhardware. So differences in totalboot times are due only to theactual window manager. Total boottimes are shown below left.

As can be seen, the shortanswer is: yes, the choice ofdesktop manager is definitelyimportant as regards speed.Basically, I obtained the same typeof results as have many others,with Lubuntu and Xubuntu variantsof Ubuntu giving rather goodresults, though with a slight edgefor Lubuntu. The standard Unitydesktop was a nice surprise,coming in third with a small 6s lagcompared to Lubuntu. Gnome 3still seems to need a bit of

tweaking for performance, whileKDE - with standard effectsactivated - is not a fast mover,needing 22s or 73% more timethan Lubuntu to get to the samepoint of being able to do someactual work.

Please note that thesedifferences are furtheraccentuated on a memory-starvedcomputer. I would not recommendless than 1 GB of RAM for eitherGnome or KDE . Boot-up times caneasily double with 512 MB of RAM,and the machine is not at allresponsive during use. Things areperhaps not quite as dire forLubuntu or Xubuntu, though thedifference is still noticeable.

The Processor AndMotherboard

It seemed reasonable not togive much importance to our CPUand motherboard, since we cannoteasily change them on a laptop: weare in general stuck with whateverwe have. However, since we dohave some say in the matter whenbuying a new computer, let's take aquick look at the effect theseelements can have on our speed.

I took the same internal SATAdrive from the Aspire, and used itto boot a series of computers withincreasingly powerful processors.The first two were laptops, and thelast a desktop unit. Boot times areshown below right.



As could be expected, a fasterCPU does seem to help boot faster.However, all other variables (harddrive and RAM) being equal, boottimes are not that much fasterbetween a single-core mobileAtom processor and the - in theory- more potent desktop dual-core.Based on pure CPU computingpower, we should be looking atspeed increases to the tune of110% for the Centrino and 260%for the Dual-core, which is quitevisibly not the case.

This is in fact an interestingdevelopment, since it gives us theidea that our boot process islimited more by the speed of ourdisk drive than by that of our CPU.Using the language of high-performance computing circles, wewould say that our process is “I/Obound” (as opposed to “CPU-bound”). From this we can tell thatit may be more interesting fornetbook or mobile users to investin hard drives, rather than in top-spec CPUs.

As a side-note, perhaps weshould remind ourselves that wehave just been measuring boot-uptimes. Our results may or may notbe extensible to normal light

computing (browsing the Internet,or working with office programs).But they cannot be taken as a validbenchmark for more CPU-intensivetasks such as scientific number-crunching or gaming – areas whereCPU speed does make thedifference.

The Boot Medium AndPartition

Since we found that the CPUand motherboard are not thatimportant for our purposes, ourthird and final step was to seewhat effects the physical drivecould have. Since GNU/Linux is amodular operating system, it is infact rather easy to boot fromvarious media. Basically, if yourBIOS can boot it, GNU/Linux canprobably use it. For a bit of variety,I used:- the original internal hard drive, aSATA 1 unit;

- an external 2.0 USB pendrive;- an SD memory card.

Before continuing,perhaps we need to examinefurther what these arecapable of. The actual speeda hard drive is capable ofgiving us is a combination of

bus speed (i.e. its connection withthe motherboard), the signalingspeed the drive and motherboardagree upon, and finally whateverspeed the drive itself is physicallycapable of. Just to complicatethings, this later number can vary.For example, flash-based drives arealways way faster reading datathan writing it to disk. This isinherent to the NAND or NOR flashchip technology they use.

This is why the 1.5 Gb/s (about150 MB/s) transfer speed of theSATA hard disk is merelytheoretical. This is a bus speed,that most current spinning-platterlaptop hard disks are incapable ofusing up completely (solid statedisk are another matter). All themore so in our case, when theAcer's motherboard and the harddrive agreed on using the ATA-8signal protocol, or UDMA/100. Thismeans we are down to, at most,100 MB/s with this disk. As tophysical speed, I have tested thedisk at about 83 MB/s, which is nottoo bad for a 5400rpm unit.

On the other hand, the SD carduses the appropriate readerhardware, which is connected tothe internal USB bus in a similarway to the keyboard and touchpad.


LINUX LAB - MAKING *BUNTU BOOT FASTERBut not all SD cards are equal inspeed. This was a class-10 unit,guaranteed to give at least 10MB/s in write speed. Since it has atheoretical USB 2.0 speed limit ofabout 60 MB/s, we can hypothesizethat its read speed is about thatfigure. To all intents and purposes,this format is equivalent to themore classical USB 2.0 externalpendrive. In fact, my USB pendrivehas a slower write rating, so Iconcentrated on the SD and leftthe pendrive out of the equation.

To my mind, the internal harddrive and the SD card representjust about the respective best andworst physical speeds available forour test computer.

At the same time, I also wantedto know if using a primary harddrive partition (/dev/sda1) or anextended partition (/dev/sda5) hadany effect at all. What I got isshown right.

The basic hierarchy betweendesktop managers seems to berespected in all cases. However, itis clear that using a faster drive willhelp all desktops boot faster. Thegain in speed is not quiteproportional to theoretical linespeed, but it is there nonetheless.

That being said, it is also clear thateven using the slower SD card (orequivalent USB pen-drive),lightweight desktops such as LXDEcan still boot within reasonabletimes.

What is more interesting is thedifference in performancebetween primary and extendedpartitions on the internal harddrive. We can see that using anextended partition on the internalhard drive is not a Good Idea (TM),since boot speeds of the internaldrive actually drop below those ofthe SD card. This came as a bit of asurprise, and (I think) can beexplained only by the fact that the

extended partition may requiretwo seek operations each time aread is requested by the system:one to access the primary partitionit is hosted in, and the second toactually access data. This isdefinitely something to bear inmind when we partition our drive.

OK, so if having a fast drive anda fast connection between driveand motherboard is good, whatcould be better? It seemedreasonable to try using two drives,on two different connections, atthe same time. If both drives holdthe same information at all times –a technique variously known asmirroring or RAID level1 – then we

can hope to double our readspeed. This should definitely helpshorten our boot times.

Additional hard drive caddiesare appearing for many laptops(they replace the CD/DVD combo),and most desktops have space tofit in an extra hard drive or three.But this is not an option fornetbooks, so I had to get back tothe desktop Dual-core machine forthis step. I used a single internal3.5” SATA-1 hard drive for one setof tests, and two identical driveswith the root partitions configuredas a software RAID-1 array for thesecond.

This is in fact a rather funkysetup where you need:- a small non-RAID boot partition(let's say /dev/sda1) to contain the/boot directory for the GRUB boot-loader to read kernel and inirtd filefrom;- a larger RAID-1 partition thatcombines a physical partition fromeach hard drive (for example,/dev/sda2 and /dev/sdb1), that willbe mounted as the filesystem root/ directory.

If you are interested in thistechnique, it is probably somethingyou should play with a bit on a not-


LINUX LAB - MAKING *BUNTU BOOT FASTERso-important computer beforesetting up a production machine.Anyhow, I got the results shownbelow right.

As expected, we can nowconfirm that faster hard drivesmake for shorter boot times. Thisis even more noticeable for themore heavyweight desktopmanagers, that seem to need moredisk activity to set up. Systemresponsiveness is also nice andcrisp during use, so this looks likean interesting path to follow oncomputers that can contain theextra hard drive we need to doRAID.

Conclusion

After making my poor oldcomputers jump though theseloops, I am beginning to get aclearer picture about what is reallyimportant to speed up *buntudesktop boot times. To sum it up:

A. Yes, the choice of desktopmanager does make a difference.There is less of a gap between theultra-lite LXDE and XFCE desktopsand Unity than I expected, whichgo to show that Canonical's effortsin this sense have not been in vain.

Unity is in fact not a bad choice fora lowly netbook, though if wereally need more speed, Lubuntuor Xubuntu are the way to go.

B. The processor and motherboardare not quite as important fornormal user experience. This is notto say we should skimp on either,but rather that the difference inprice between an entry-rangeprocessor and a faster chip maynot be noticeable if all we do isboot the computer, navigate onthe Web and do presentations.Otherwise, things may be verydifferent ... and perhaps you coulddo some experimentation of yourown before choosing your nextlaptop.

C. The key factor in speeding upboot times is simply the hard drive,or rather (and not so simply) thecombination of hard drive, its busconnection to the motherboard,and partitioning.

My takeaway from all this isthat it may be worthwhile to take ahard look at your hard drive (nopun intended!), and try to optimizeits speed. Are we booting from aprimary partition? Which version ofSATA does the computer support:is it a SATA-1 at 1.5 Gb/s (about150 MB/s), or a SATA-2 at 3 Gb/s(about 300 MB/s)? Try to find aninternal hard drive that can reallysustain this speed.

Internal spinning-platter harddrives may have difficulties indoing this. To take an example of atypical modern high-end laptopdrive, the WD Scorpio Blue 1 TB(model number WD10JPVT ) has a3 Gb/s interface, but manages tosustain only 144 MB/s transferrate. This is much the same formost spinning-platter drives. Onthe other hand, SSD drives havehigher effective transfer rates, butstill cost a little more. Pricedifferences are decreasing sincespinning-platter hard drives wentup over the last few months,however, and it might be possibleto find a small (32 to 64 GB) SSDhard drive at a competitive price –though whether it is worthwhile toupgrade a lowly $200 netbookwith an $80+ hard drive is a choicethat may or may not work out foryou.

For laptops with an opticaldrive, hard drive caddies thatreplace the CD/DVD with space fora second hard disk are becomingmore common, with prices in the$40 - $60 range. So RAID-1 on yourlaptop may be a choice, especiallyif you already have a spare harddrive lying around.


Alan teaches computer science atEscola Andorrana de Batxillerat(high-school). He has givenGNU/Linux courses at the Universityof Andorra, and currently teachesGNU/Linux systems administration atthe Open University of Catalunya(UOC).


Finally, USB 3 ports with their 5Gb/s (about 500 MB/s) line speedare also becoming more commonnowadays - even on netbooks - andallow an external hard drive toboot up a computer at practicallythe same speed as an internaldrive. So it may be worthwhile tochoose your next netbook withone of these, in the interests offuture expansion.

To end on a more personalnote, allow me to present mypersonal desktop. Using theperhaps ancient - but still beautifulto my eyes - FVWM Crystal desktopmanager, it makes the Acer bootup at a fast-ish 26s (compare to

LXDE at 30s). However, with itsdistinctly "geeky" feeling, it maynot appeal to all tastes.

Quick Review: Taskwarrior.by Calogero Bonasia

There are numerous programs to manage time and "things to do". Whenworking in team, it is not always easy to coordinate the work ofeveryone, especially if this work should be done on many servers and bydifferent people at different times of the day/week.

Taskwarrior maintains a list of tasks that you want to do, allowing you toadd/remove, and otherwise manipulate them. It has a rich list ofsubcommands that allow you to do sophisticated things. You'll find ithas customizable reports, charts, GTD features, Lua extensions, devicesynching and more. The program can even interact with vim and pcal (togenerate calendars), allows sub-projects, jobs and more!

In the last release, attention has also been paid to performance, and fileI/O, filtering, sorting, formatting, and rendering are all faster. The resultis a more consistent, capable and speedy Taskwarrior.

The home page is http://taskwarrior.org/projects/taskwarrior, and onthe web site you will find many external scripts, distributed separately,because they are not necessarily tied to Taskwarrior releases.

How to install Taskwarrior on Ubuntu:sudo addaptrepository ppa:ultrafredde/ppa

sudo aptget update

sudo aptget install task

You can download and install Taskwarrior on Linux, Mac OS X or Cygwin.

I'm using Taskwarrior as a great example of a product that works, doeswhat it does well, and works great with many various user types: ninjasysadmin, windows guys who only know "the cool things," and peoplewho are almost completely PC illiterate but somehow managedprogrammer jobs.

http://taskwarrior.org/projects/taskwarrior


CCLLOOSSIINNGG WWIINNDDOOWWSS FFiillee//FFoollddeerr SShhaarriinngg

Written by:Ronnie Tucker (KDE)Jan Mussche (Gnome)Elizabeth Krumbach (XFCE)Mark Boyajian (LXDE)David Tigue (Unity)

Folder sharing in WindowsXP is relatively simple. It’sdone by right clicking on afolder to get its

properties then, in the sharingtab, give it a share name and (ifneeded) a comment.Unfortunately it’s not always thatsimple in Linux. In recent years

though, Ubuntu has made foldersharing just as easy, but that canalso depend on which desktop youuse.

Kubuntu

Almost identical to Windows XPin that you right click a folder,choose properties, then click the‘Share’ tab to gain access to foldersharing.

In this tab you can check the box(if required) to share withWindows, give the share a name,allow/disallow guests and whetherto allow full control, read onlycontrol or deny on a per user basis.

If you don’t see a ‘Share’ tab (andyou’re not asked to do so) you mayneed to install SAMBA using yourpackage manager.

Should you need to assign a

login/password to your network(and I think you should) this is setin K > System Settings > Sharing >

To connect to a Windowsmachine you open Dolphin (theKDE file manager) and clickNetwork (in the left panel), thenSamba Shares, finally Workgroup,and you should now see a list ofavailable machines to connect to.Double click the machine and you’llsee the list of shared folders onthat machine.

Note that above the folders yousee smb:xxxxxxxxxx - that smbmeans SAMBA and reminds methat I’m browsing the network.


Gnome-Shell and Unity

The Gnome-Shell variant alsouses Samba to connect to othernetwork components. This meanswhen you want to share filesand/or folders over your networkyou need to have Samba installed.

When you right-click a folder(which you want to share) in thefile manager, a drop-down menuappears and one of the possiblechoices is Sharing Options. Whenyou choose this item and Samba isnot installed, you receive amessage you need to install it.

Installing is easy, just follow thewizard that guides you through theinstallation process.

Installing Samba has onedownside: you need to rebootafterwards so the program canread the config file and knowswhat to do and how to do it.

Once Samba is installed and thecomputer has rebooted you canreturn to the file-manager andright-click the folder you want toshare. Click Sharing Options again,tick the tickbox “Share this Folder”,choose a good name for the share,

decide if other users have the rightto create and delete files in theshare and if non-registered usershave access. Finish with the buttonModify Share.

Now it should be possible toopen Network in the left column ofthe file-manager, chooseworkgroup and see whichcomputers are online and whichfolders they have shared.

Once shared, the icon of theshared folder shows a doublearrow indicating data can flowboth ways to and from the folder.

Xfce

The Xubuntu desktop with Xfcecomes with Thunar as a file

manager, which currently does notoffer direct access to manipulatingthe sharing properties of files andfolders. There is currently a thunar-shares-plugin project, but it is notpackaged for Xubuntu at this timeso has to be installed from sourceand manually configured, theauthor has not tested it.

Instead, you can install sambamanually and configure it to servethe folders you wish to share.Alternatively, you can install a filemanager from Gnome, calledNautilus, with sharing -- byinstalling the nautilus, nautilus-share and samba packages. Youcan then launch Nautilus andnavigate to “Sharing Options” forthe folder you wish to share, justlike you would in Gnome-Shell.

CLOSING WINDOWS


LXDE

Once again, in keeping with the“light-weight" nature of Lubuntu,the default installation does notinclude the software to facilitatefile sharing; however, as with allother “optional" applications inLubuntu, all the software requiredto share files (e.g. NFS support,Giver, Samba, etc.) betweenmultiple Linux boxes and/or Linuxand other OS’s (e.g. MS Windows,OSX, etc.) is readily available fromthe repositories. Also, thelightweight file manager thatcomes standard with LXDE -PCManFM - has no defaultintegrated capabilities to allow youto configure the sharing of files orfolders; however, if Samba isinstalled, then you can access andnavigate Samba shares directlyfrom within PCManFM by typingthe IP address of the target Sambashare into the address field inPCManFM.

Also note that if you choose toinstall Samba and/or NFS support,then not only can you managefile/folder sharing with thosepackages’ respective managementtools (and from the command line,of course), you can install the very

small and simple Lubuntu ControlCenter (LCC) application which,among other things, provides avery simple and fast utility tocreate/manage shared folders.

You can certainly install LCCeven without file sharing installedso that you can benefit from itsother features; however, if youclick on the Share icon in the LCC,then a dialog box will pop upnotifying you that you do not havefile sharing services installed and itwill offer to install one or moreservices for you.

It should be obvious by nowthat the “tag line” for Lubuntu (and

most other “lightweight” distros) is“It can change to meet yourneeds”. If you are looking for a“lightweight” distro, then youshould expect to have a “strippeddown model” [of Linux]. That’swhy you chose a lightweight distroin the first place, right? (Theanswer is “Yes”.) But because mostof these distros (like Lubuntu)were made “light” by eliminatinglots of “software overhead” and byusing utilitarian equivalents tobasic (and indispensable)applications like file managers andweb browsers, you are free to“fatten them up” to your heart’scontent from the repositories. Ofcourse, if you wanted “fat” to

begin with, you wouldn’t havechosen a “lightweight” distro in thefirst place. But it is important toknow that as your needs changeand you require functionality thatis not available in Lubuntu bydefault, it is immediately availableto you via the repositories. This“malleability” of Linux is one of itsgreatest strengths and accountsfor the myriad “shapes and sizes”of Linux distros available. And let’snot forget that none of this wouldbe possible without the opensource development model.

CLOSING WINDOWS


MMYY SSTTOORRYYWritten by Fredrik Johansson

I’ve been a computer user formost of my life. Being born inthe latter half of the 80’s, thatis to be expected. The

computer was solely forentertainment, and for playinggames in particular. In the late 90’s,we got access to broadbandInternet, we had dial-up for yearsbefore but, due to the cost, I rarelygot to use it (and, when I did, Iused it to look up gaming guidesand cheats). Broadband accesschanged how I used the computerdrastically, napster helped withthat too. I didn’t care that mycomputer was too slow to run thenewest games any more (I boughta video game console to satisfy mygaming needs), because I couldexplore this whole other world andinteract with people in a way thatwasn’t possible for me before. Iwas still using Windows however –it took me a long time to get rid ofit actually. I’ve been running Linux-based operating systems for twoyears now, and I don’t see myselfever going back.

In 2010 I fell in love. I fell in lovewith the demo scene, and more

specifically the synth and trackerdriven music. I had occasionallystumbled across a demo or two,cracktros and so forth, but I neverthought much about it. Music hasalways been a big part of my life,and I do consider myself assomeone who doesn't care aboutthe genres as long as it soundsgreat (you’ll probably argue withme about that if you have a look atmy collection, though). In the earlyyears of high school, I was very intometal, and I thought that IronMaiden was the greatest, but, as Imatured, so did my musical taste.One day I found this album calledFirst and Last and Always. I

thought the firstfew tracks were ok, then track #5,Marian, begun playing andcompletely blew me away. I stillrefer to The Sisters of Mercy as myfavourite band.

But something else alsohappened in 2010. One of my harddrives gave up, and with it went mymusic collection. On the brightside, I finally decided that I wasdone with Windows and I’ve beenrunning Linux ever since. I stuckwith Ubuntu until 11.10, I thoughtUnity was awful and switched tomint 12, and now I’m running mint13 64-bit MATE on both my

desktop and laptop.

So what does Linux, the demoscene, and music have in common?For me it’s Subsonic. When I lostmy music collection (except for theSisters of Mercy albums which Iactually own), I starteddownloading all the amazing freedemo scene music, and it soon ledme into the wonderful world ofnet-labels. To this day, I still can’tbelieve how much incrediblebrilliant and wonderful musicthere’s out on the Internet, forfree! This is where Subsonic comesin. As my music collection grewexponentially in size, and the wide


MY STORYrange of different audio formatsmade it impossible to carry withme everywhere, I had to find asolution. With Subsonic, it doesn’tmatter if the file is an .xm .mp3.flac or .aac – it’ll transcode (into abit-rate of my choosing) it all intosomething that my Android devicecan play when I’m out and about.When I’m at home, I use the webinterface to access all my music, Ihave not yet been able to get theright equipment to set somethingup for the jukebox function. Whichmeans that the computer runningthe Subsonic server is outputtingthe music through its audio portsand the playlists are controlled byan external player.

Subsonic is free, but withadditional features unlocked if youdonate, such as being able to playyour files on an Android device,and video support. The installationprocess is pretty straightforward,it’s distributed in a .deb package,and that makes it easy to install.And, if you need additional help,then take a look at the forums, alot of great tutorials there.

Installing Subsonic as a linuxnewbie taught me a lot. The firstfew weeks of using Ubuntu, Iwasn’t sure I was going to stick

with it, I felt as if everything I didcould be done just as easily (and insome cases easier) in a Windowsenvironment, and the terminalscared me. I had picked up somebasic terminal commands back inschool (cd .., ls, cat, nano, man, etc),and little by little I began exploringand tweaking config files to myliking. My current Subsonic serveris running on Ubuntu Server 12.04,a couple of old hard drives in an oldcomputer running in RAID 5. I havesshfs (SSH Filesystem) running onit, so I can use it as my ownpersonal cloud storage, and addingmore music is a breeze.

So, what do I want to say withall of this? If you’re having troublegetting into Ubuntu (or Linux ingeneral), think about what reallydrives you, what’s your passion?Chances are someone has writtenneat software that will make yourlife – and the exercising of thatpassion – a lot easier. Don’t beafraid to use Google or the mancommand, they’ll be your bestfriends. Be prepared to read a lot,most guides I’ve come across havea good description of what everysingle command and parameterdoes when they’re executed, that’show you’ll learn.

1166xx1166 SSUUDDOOKKUU


Numbers 0 to 9 and letters A to F are to be filled into the16x16 grid so that every row, every column, and every4x4 box contains 0 to 9 and A - F.

Puzzles are copyright, and kindly provided by,The Puzzle Club - www.thepuzzleclub.com



MMYY OOPPIINNIIOONNWritten by Eric Porter

Windows 3.0 wasreleased in May of1990, just onemonth before I

graduated from high school.Previous to this, my experiencewith computers was limited to DOSoperating systems and good oldfashioned Tandy Basic, with asmattering of machine code hereand there. Needless to say, for meWindows was a godsend, and Iremained a faithful little fan-boyall the way up through Windows98, where for financial reasons Istayed until the release of

Windows XP.

XP was missing a few of thefeatures I liked from '98. It hadsome new quirks I had to get usedto. And, until they came out with“service pack 2” it was ratherunreliable. A few years go by andthey finally get done shaking all(well most...) of the bugs out of XPjust in time to release a newversion called Vista. It wassupposed to be faster, stronger,and just better in every possibleway. They even beta tested thething so it had to be good. Right?So, naturally, I ran right out andbought myself a new desktop, setit up and hit the power button. Ididn't know it at the time, but thatwas the beginning of the end.

I could bore you with all thedetails about the massive amountof software incompatibilities, theBlackICE Defender program thatconstantly questioned everything Idid, the glitches, jams anddownright frustration of it all. But,I am sure that many of you haveexperienced them for yourself, sothere's no real need. I think what I

found most frustrating, however,was how much it seemed to coddlethe user. It looked and felt like itwas designed for toddlers. Itforced features on me that I didn'teven want, and those features thatI did want were gone. Even most ofthe desktop customizing tools thatI was used to using were now aghost of the past.

Three short months later itcrashed. Hard. Total meltdown. Itwas inevitable, I suppose. It wasWindows, after all. So, like a goodlittle MS drone, I set about the alltoo familiar task of reinstalling theOS. 30 minutes later I get thislovely blue screen that read,“We're sorry, this computer is notcompatible with Windows Vista.”Say what now? IT CAME WITHVISTA! Several unsuccessful trieslater I had had it. I installed XP,fired up Explorer, made my way toGoogle, and typed “WindowsAlternatives.”

Thus began my exploration ofthis strange new world of Linux. Imust have tried out 20 differentdistros and flavors. Some more

than once. I finally settled onUbuntu. It was the highest rated,most download, best reviewed,and most intuitive distro I found.After bouncing around betweenthe three main desktops (Gnome,KDE and XFCE) for about a month Ifinally committed to Gnomebecause it was the mostcomfortable for me coming from aWindows OS background.

My first full install was Ubuntu7.04 LTS with the Gnome desktop.It was freedom, Baby. I couldfinally make my computer lookhow I wanted, and act how Iwanted. I must have completelyrebuilt my personal desktop 1000times in the last 5 years. My wife isterribly grateful for her own Login,I'm sure, as I am constantly fiddlingand tweaking and revamping. It'sso in tune with my artistic nature,and the possibilities are seeminglyendless. It's been everything to methat an OS should be. It's intuitive,responsive, logical, and, mostly, itgets out of the way and lets me dowhat I want.

I've since installed every LTS


IT HAS ARRIVED!

The Full CirclePodcast Returns!

It may be a new team ofpodcasters, but the formatwill be the same.

We'll be talking about FullCircle Magazine, news,reviews and interviews.

Your new team is:• Les Pounder• Tony Hughes• Jon Chamberlain• Oliver Clark

All are members of theBlackpool (UK) LUGhttp://blackpool.lug.org.uk

Debut episode isavailable from theFCM homepage.

MY OPINIONversion of Ubuntu that came out.Which naturally includes Ubuntu12.04. I have to say, that it came asa bit of a shock to me when I sawthe Unity desktop come up insteadof Gnome. At first, I thought I hadaccidentally downloaded thewrong ISO. I hadn't. So, I gave thisnew desktop a trial run. After all,there's nothing wrong withchange, if it's for the better.Unfortunately, this wasn't. It wascumbersome, counter intuitive,and slow. I think what I found mostfrustrating, however, was howmuch it seemed to coddle the user.It looked and felt like it wasdesigned for toddlers. It forcedfeatures on me that I didn't evenwant, and those features that I didwant were gone. Even most of thedesktop customizing tools that Iwas used to using were now aghost of the past... Now, wherehave I heard this before?

Don't misunderstand. I'm notkicking Ubuntu to the curb just yet.I've found a desktop that workso.k. for me (Gnome classic... withquite a few tweaks added). But, Icannot help but question thewisdom behind the move to Unity.By swapping to Unity, they notonly alienate their current fanbase, but potentially alienate

themselves from new convertswho are used to a Windows styleinterface which has been aroundfor 20 years. If we want to attractnew users, we have to make thatconversion easy and natural for

them. Gnome accomplished this.Unity does not. I find it insanelyironic that a desktop environmentwhich causes so much confusion,disharmony, and division is named“Unity.”

Photo: Flickr.com - Pitel

http://blackpool.lug.org.uk



http://www.ubuntu-user.com/subscribe-now/

http://www.ubuntu-user.com/subscribe-now/


RREEVVIIEEWWWritten by Tushar Bhargava

Most people prefer touse their defaultmusic player formanaging their

podcasts. However, gPodder is astandalone podcast manager thatmight offer a much better podcastexperience. gPodder is an OpenSource (GPL Version 3 or higher)podcast client made by ThomasPerl, an Austrian programmer.gPodder was created in 2005 withthe modest aim of downloadingand managing podcasts. It wasearlier written in Java using theGtk UI but has since been ported toPython. It currently uses the PyGtkand Gtk2 UI which gives it a niceUbuntu look and feel. Global Menusupport gives it an almost perfectUbuntu integration. However,Unity integration is still missing.

The graphical user interface issimple and intuitive. The mainfeatures are visible at a quickglance. gPodder offers you theoptions to download, play ortransfer your podcasts. When youchoose to download a podcastgPodder carries out the downloadquickly and unobtrusively in a

separate 'Downloads' tab. You canset various limits on the downloadspeed and number of simultaneousdownloads. On clicking the 'Play'button gPodder opens yourdefault music player to play thepodcast. You can choose whichmedia player gPodder calls in the'Preferences' entry of the mainmenu. gPodder also allows youtransfer your podcasts to an iPod,

MTP, file system or bluetoothbased device. These options covervirtually all the devices you mightown. This feature, though muchloved by gPodder users, is missingin version 3x and it is for thisreason that the version in theUbuntu Software Center has notbeen updated. If you want thedevice sync feature stick to theolder 2.x version.

gPodder supports a widevariety of formats including RSS,Atom, YouTube, Soundcloud,Vimeo and XSPF feeds. It allowsyou to add podcasts from a URL orto import them from an OPML file.It enables you to export your ownOPML file which makes it relativelyeasy for you to share your podcastswith others or set up a podcastclient on another computer.

Despite its simple and easy touse interface gPodder has its fairshare of advanced features thatcan be found under the'Preferences' entry in the'Podcasts' menu. gPodder allowsyou to set an 'update interval' tocheck for new podcasts. It allowsyou to set limits on the number ofpodcasts per subscription. It alsooffers various actions to perform ifa new episode is found. In additionto this, gPodder allows you to setyour own rules for 'clean-up' –which podcasts to deleteautomatically (if at all) and whichto keep. Lastly, gPodder offersfairly comprehensive features tosync your device with it. It allowsyou to select which episodes to

ggPPooddddeerr


REVIEWsync and which episodes to removefrom the device automatically.

gPodder has one final ace up itssleeve – its seamless integrationwith gPodder.net. gPodder.net is apodcast web service that not onlyallows you to discover newpodcasts but also share yourfavorite ones. It allows you toremotely manage your gPoddersubscriptions and provides a placeto backup your subscriptions. Italso makes it very easy to set upgPodder on another computer.

gPodder is widely considered asone of the best podcast clients. Ithas received mainly positive userreviews and has a 4.5 star rating inthe Ubuntu Software Center (atthe time of writing). It was alsolisted by Lifehacker as one of the'Five Best Podcast Managers '.

gPodder is a cross-platformapplication that is available forLinux, FreeBSD, Windows, Mac OSX and mobile devices like the NokiaN810, N900 and N9 (which runMaemo or MeeGo). Anexperimental version for Androidis also available. Get gPodder athttp://gpodder.org/. Happypodcasting !

The Good• Extremely easy to use with asimple and clean GUI• Lightweight and fully native toUbuntu• Powerful advanced features forpower users• Device sync (not available inversion 3.x)• gPodder.net integration makesmanaging and finding podcastseasier

The Bad• Lack of built-in music and video

player• No Unity integration• No system for rating episodes

NOTE: gPodder also worksflawlessly in KDE (shown above).

Don’t forget to add the FullCircle Podcast, whicheverpodcasting client you use:MP3:

http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed

OGG:http://fullcirclemagazine.org/category/podcast/feed/atom

Tushar Bhargava is a 16-year-oldIndian who loves Ubuntu and FOSS.He likes to program in Java and C++and enjoys writing. Contact him [email protected].

http://gpodder.org/



LLEETTTTEERRSSEvery month we like to publish some of the emails we receive. If you would like tosubmit a letter for publication, compliment or complaint, please email it to:[email protected]. PLEASE NOTE: some letters may be edited for space.

You Want GameReviews?

Just thought I'd inform youof a book/presentation Ihave been working on forthe past couple of years as

a side hobby. It covers roughly 400games found in USC and SynapticPM (none of the fatties, just theusual suspects).

Couldn't publish it as an epubbecause it didn't fit formattingrules (over 800 pages and in PDFinstead of docx or odf), so I packedit off to lulu.com as a cheap $1.50book. In addition, due to includedscreenshots, it came in at over15MB.

There are about 550 games inUSC, but some don't work or areactually old hangers on that havebeen given new names and postedelsewhere. I hit maybe about 60%of the games out there. Oh, and Ishould clarify that I did it viaLibreOffice Impress, so it's onepage containing a screenshot andone page with the URL, generalinfo, and USC rating, if any.

Lulu address for the book is:http://www.lulu.com/author/content_revise.php?fCID=12986866

Art Schreckengost

Quick DVD Backup

May I suggest a trickthat delivers aproperly installedand clean Ubuntu –

otherwise it could contain a lot ofwaste after repeated programinstalls and uninstalls.

After installing an Ubuntudistribution with all necessarycomponents and cleaning thesurplus ones, I use the remastersysprogram to make a system backupISO file, and burn it to a rewritabledisk to make a Live DVD withusername and password, butwithout personal data.

This Live DVD could be used forexperimental programinstallations, while using the same

system as the one installed to theHDD. With 4 GB RAM, some 1.7 GBto 1.9 GB additional free spacecould be made available.

This way, I can run tests withoutany risk of leaving any waste on myinstalled system since, afterrebooting with the Live DVD, Ihave a clean system again. Basedon the results of the tests, I canthen be confident that the testedprograms will also install and runcorrectly on the HDD system.

Using this approach, I cansuccessfully try some AmateurRadio programs, both .debextension Linux and .exe extensionWindows ones (among them SSTV,PSK31, etc.).

Moreover, I can surf theInternet without any risk ofinfection since the DVD is writeprotected and the RAM memorywill be empty after shutting downthe computer. If I download anyfile then it can be saved directly toa pen-drive or to an external HDDafter checking it with the "Clamav"anti-virus program already

installed on my Ubuntu operatingsystem (and refreshing itsdatabase from the Internet).

I was using an older computerwithout a built-in HDD, and thecomputer was used exclusivelywith a Ubuntu Live-CD and with abroadband internet connection.This was the less expensivecomputer I had!

András Szabó

Join us on:

facebook.com/fullcirclemagazine

twitter.com/#!/fullcirclemag

linkedin.com/company/full-circle-magazine

ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=270

goo.gl/FRTMl


http://facebook.com/fullcirclemagazine

https://twitter.com/#!/fullcirclemag

http://linkedin.com/company/full-circle-magazine

http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=270

http://goo.gl/FRTMl

http://www.lulu.com/author/content_revise.php?fCID=12986866


LETTERS

My Bad! Sort Of...

I have to apologize for notsending in those reviews Ipromised, here’s the reasonwhy. After I built my new pc

system – moving from an AMD cputo an Intel Ivy Bridge – I theninstalled 12.04 LTS, and, long storyshort, it was a complete disaster.Robin reported 12.04 instabilitieson his blog a few weeks ago, at thetime I was on a AMD 64-bit buildand had no problems. The momentI switched to an Intel system it wasproblems galore with randomfreezes, crashes, etc from nautilusto firefox, chrome, gwibber – eventhe software center would crash!You can read more about it here(https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/993187). So, for a fewweeks I could do nothing morethan browse the web trying tofigure out what was wrong beforethe system went crazy – and I hadalready given away the AMDsystem. Please post the solution tothis(https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/993187/comments/91)for people who may beexperiencing the same problems

with the latest Intel architecture.Meanwhile, I will get started onthose reviews I promised.

Dougn Redhammer

Unity, Mint and Tablets.Oh my!

I have been using Linux Ubuntufor about 4 years and do notuse a Windows dual boot. I dohave a Windows machine for a

couple of programs, but have“almost” managed to eliminate thisnecessity with Wine.

I was using Ubuntu up toversion 11.10 with the Classiclogin. The Classic login works onLaptops/Desktops, but you arestuck with Unity if you have a net-book. I have an Asus Netbook with2GB RAM and a 250GB hard disk. Iuse this a lot while on the move,and got enticed to Linux Mint 12from articles in other Linuxmagazines. I installed Mint on mynetbook and it even recognizedthe extra touch-pad button to turnit on and off. Ubuntu did notrecognize this button. I also

installed Mint on two other highspec laptops and... so far so good.

Now on to the Unity-Windows 8-Tablet debacle, so clearlydescribed in the FCM60 article byArt Schreckengost. I canunderstand why Canonical is goingthe Unity route as this is the wayWindows 8 is heading. It is aimedat tablets, touch-screen computersand TVs. I have an HTC Androidmobile phone, which is great andvery convenient, with its touchscreen, but I cannot see myselfswiping the screen of a laptop. Onseveral trips to computer andmobile phone shops, I havechecked out the non-Apple tabletson the market. The tablets on saleare very confusing as some have aUSB port, some don't. Some haveBluetooth and some don't. They allhave a reduced storage capacityand memory. Some are cheap butin general they are very expensive.As someone who is somewhat of agadget freak, the tablet is onepiece of technology that I have notrushed out to buy. Why buy atablet, with reducedcharacteristics, when you can get ahigh spec netbook at a betterprice. My netbook does all that mylaptops do, with the addition of anexternal DVD drive. In my opinion

the tablet is not going to last in themarket.

Allan Hambidge

My Sad Inbox

My inbox is looking ratherempty again folks. Surely youhave something on your mindthat you want to say. Doesn'tneed to be just about Ubuntu.It can be about any of theother *buntu's, in fact, it canbe about anything Linux.

Whether you've written anapp, need help withsomething, have a quick (non-technical) question, or justwant to show us somethingyou've done, this is the placefor it.

Send it to:[email protected]


https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/993187

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/993187/comments/91


Register Now & Save 20% with code FULLCIR

http://velocityconf.com


QQ&&AACompiled by Gord Campbell

If you have Ubuntu-related questions, email them to:[email protected], and Gord will answer them in a futureissue. Please include as much information as you can about your problem.

Q When I tried to installSopcast in Mint 13, therepository was notfound.

A Run this command:

gksudo gedit

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/ferra

mrobertosopcastmaya.list

In the first line, replace "maya"with "precise". Save and exit. InSynaptic, reload the sources.

Q I have a Samsung R580laptop running Ubuntu12.04. When I plug in myHDMI cable to connect it

to the TV, I can't get the soundthrough the TV.

A From the volumecontrol in your panel,run Sound Settings.Select the Hardware or

Output tab. Select one of theHDMI devices. If that doesn't work,

keep going though the HDMIdevices. (HDMI/Display Port 4 fromSound Settings -> Output waswhat worked for this laptop.)

Q I have just installedUbuntu 12.04 on a DellLatitude 2100. I installedthe Broadcomm driver

and configured my hidden wirelessnetwork. All is well. However, if Irun the netbook on battery thewireless network speed decreasesdrastically.

A (Thanks to taylorkh inthe Ubuntu Forums) Thesolution was the secondsuggestion on this web

page:http://askubuntu.com/questions/85214/how-can-i-prevent-iwconfig-power-management-from-being-turned-on

Q How can I install thelatest version of theOpenshot video editor?

A Have a look at thispage:http://www.openshot.org/ppa/

Q I have a 4 page PDF, Ineed to delete pages 2,3, and 4.

A Try PDF Shuffler. Youcan get it from theUbuntu SoftwareCenter.

Q Thanks for your help, butmy network has a WEPkey, do you have to writesomething different if

you have a WEP key?

A (Thanks to Chili555 inthe Ubuntu Forums) Yes:you log on to yourrouter and change it to

WPA2. WEP is about as secure asputting your credit card in ashoebox on the front porch.

Q How can you remove aprogram and all the files?I did:

sudo aptget purge remove

quassel

A (Thanks to papibe in theUbuntu Forums)'remove' conflicts with'purge'. You need to use

just the 'purge' option.

Q Will UEFI kill Linux?

A UEFI is OK. Secure Bootis one of its features,and it may become aproblem for some Linux

distros. Have a look at:http://blog.canonical.com/2012/06/22/an-update-on-ubuntu-and-secure-boot/

Secure Boot might even bebeneficial, if it reduces the numberof "here today, gone tomorrow,"


http://askubuntu.com/questions/85214/how-can-i-prevent-iwconfig-power-management-from-being-turned-on

http://www.openshot.org/ppa/

http://blog.canonical.com/2012/06/22/an-update-on-ubuntu-and-secure-boot/


Q & ALinux distros.

Q How can I turn off theoverlay scrollbars inUbuntu 12.04?

A This web page tells all:http://www.liberiangeek.net/2012/03/disable-ubuntu-overlay-

scrollbars-in-ubuntu-12-04-precise-pangolin/

Q How can I have multipleVPN connections at thesame time?

A See this page:https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ubuntu-Problems/18184928189

5067

Q In Ubuntu 12.04, afterupgrading to the 3.2.0-25-generic kernel, I nolonger have any sound.

Hp pavilion dv6.

A Open a terminal andenter this command:

gksudo gedit

/etc/modprobe.d/alsa

base.conf

Add the following line at theend:

options sndhdaintel

model=dellm41

then reboot.

Q I installed a game inWine, and it put about 30icons on my desktop.

A Move the installerprogram from Desktopto another folder beforeyou run it.

Downloads/nameofgame is a goodchoice.

Q I have a webserver whichis running Linux Ubuntu8.04.4. I would like toinstall the grads service.

A (Thanks to Coffeecat inthe Ubuntu Forums)Upgrade to 10.04, andgrads is in the

repositories.

Tips and Techniques

Why Can't Billy Install Ubuntu?

I respectfully suggest that thisis an education issue, andtechnology can only solve a bit ofit.

Here are my top three reasonsBilly can't install Ubuntu, or anyother version of Linux:- the computer is set to boot from

the hard drive, and Billy can't orwon't change this,- installation requires changes to

"partitions," and Billy has no idea

what those are,- there's a driver issue, and

everything Billy knows aboutdrivers no longer applies.

I have a good friend who knowsa lot about computers; over threedecades, he has used them, soldthem, written about them. When Isuggested that he would need togo into the BIOS settings and"change the boot order," so hiscomputer could boot from CD orflash drive, that was the end of anytalk of trying Linux. He's not surehow to do it, and he has beenwarned that he could really messup his computer by changing BIOSsettings. It's true, too. Stroke abunch of random keys and select"save," and you might need to takethe computer back to the dealer,just to get it to run.

If someone asks me how tochange the BIOS settings, I can't

http://www.liberiangeek.net/2012/03/disable-ubuntu-overlay-scrollbars-in-ubuntu-12-04-precise-pangolin/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ubuntu-Problems/181849281895067


After a long career in the computerindustry, including a stint as editor ofComputing Canada and ComputerDealer News, Gord is now more-or-less retired.

Q & Aprovide a good answer, unless Ihave a computer identical totheirs. I've been lucky; turn on mycomputer and press Delete, andI'm into the BIOS settings on everycomputer I have owned. On othercomputers, you need to press ESC,a function key, or something else.There is no industry standard!Many computers do not displaywhat key to press, nor does theinformation appear in the manual.

Once you're into the BIOSsettings, you need to read whatappears on the screen to figureout what to do next, and you oftenneed to press the "down" key andread what appears, until youdiscover the magic. Even themethod to change the boot order,once you get to the correct screen,is not standardized.

If I had information about yourcomputer, at a grotesque level ofdetail, I could write a program tomake it boot from CD or flashdrive. However, I couldn't write aprogram to make every computerboot from CD or flash drive. Thereare just too many of them, andnew ones appear every day.

I'm not going to explainpartitions here. You know what

they are, but does your cousin?Billy says, "You want me to makethree new partitions, but there'sno space to make them in!" Myfriend knows about partitions, andhe knows that they are called C:, D:and E:. At least, there is lots ofonline information aboutpartitions, and even step-by-stepinstructions about how to dealwith them -- but they're notsomething Billy will understand inthe first hour.

I've been "lucky," I don't havedriver issues with my computers.Well, "lucky" isn't quite accurate; Ibought hardware which wouldwork in Linux. Billy might recognizethat he has a driver issue, and heknows what the next step is: findthe CD which contains the drivers --except when he's trying to installLinux, with one significantexception.

The first driver issue whichmight come up is the video driver --and often, it's because the videodevice is too new! There's a work-around, and it works every Tuesdaywhen there is a full moon -- orthat's what it feels like to Billy. Youneed to determine the perfectmoment to press this key, and thenyou have to read what is on the

screen, again, and we're not usedto doing that. Then you typesomething which isn't a word, andpress the magic key...

Really? OK, technology couldhelp with this one. A lot.

Finally, there's the networkdriver. Many (most?) wirelessnetwork adapters "just work," (I'vebeen "lucky.") Some will work aftera bit of effort, some are reallyhorrible, (you need the driver CD!)but they eventually work, and thenthere are a few which are hopeless.Even wired Ethernet adapters canbe a problem, if they are brandnew in the market. "It will worknext year" isn't a wonderfulsolution to a person who has a

problem today.

And yes, technology could helpwith network adapters. However,the education part is to let Billyknow that, instead of searching forthe driver CD, he should be gettingan exact identification of hishardware, then firing up Google.

I would really like to get yourthoughts on this:[email protected]



AAUUDDIIOO FFLLUUXXWritten by Nicola Cappellini

I know all you loyal readerswere waiting in titillatedanticipation for my ardourtutorial, but unfortunately

because of poorly timed hardwarefailure (is there ever a good time?)it won’t be this month. In themeantime here is some new earcandy for your listeningenjoyment:

Franklin’in Karsilamasi, byAnsambl Mastikafree download at:http://tinyurl.com/bopqa8p

Have youever sat in anarmchair andwonderedwhat wouldhappen ifthe GratefulDead, slap

bass, and the geopolitical region ofEurope called “the Balkans” had achild? Me too! Well, this is theanswer. Great instrumentalinteractions between the bandmembers, how do they keep intime? Great find.

She’s real, by The Ludditesfree download at:http://tinyurl.com/d6x83w3

A spokenword songdescribing aperson at aclub, youknow, THAT

person. Funky bass and guitar riffslayered under noisy brass and aloud nostalgia for Frank Zappa, oram I thinking of Mingus? Whatever.A great group that mixes styles.Very refreshing and never a dullmoment, as in: great bass clarinetsolos (see “The Bronx”)!

Ninguém segura os BeachCombers, by Os Beach CombersFree download at:http://tinyurl.com/chb9rf6

The titletrack of thenewest LP(no,seriously,they

released it on vinyl) from the Riode Janeiro surf band Os BeachCombers. Freaky, and flangey,perfect for listening by yourself to

feed your secret and insatiableappetite for surf-rock. Rememberto clear your browser history if youdon’t want anyone else to know...

Sunshine, by Little Dragonlisten at:http://tinyurl.com/bn84hmc

Great vocalsby YukimiNagano overa deceptivelytransparentmix. Lots ofinterestingsounds

going on here. Just sit back andprepare to get grooving. Band is sotight, everything is placed justwhere it needs to be and nothingmore that shouldn’t be there.

Soul Killing, by The Ting Tingslisten at:http://tinyurl.com/c64gzfq

Makes youwant toshake yourshouldersback andforth. Lots ofinstruments

and sure to get your party moving.One of those choruses that youwant to scream along to whilepumping your index fingers intothe air.

Nicola is a freelance musician,translator, and web-whiz. He can beseen on the stage, behind the scenes,and in the zone - for whatever task isat hand.

http://tinyurl.com/bopqa8p

http://tinyurl.com/d6x83w3

http://tinyurl.com/chb9rf6

http://tinyurl.com/bn84hmc

http://tinyurl.com/c64gzfq


UUBBUUNNTTUU WWOOMMEENNWritten by Elizabeth Krumbach

Elizabeth Krumbach: Can you tellus a little about yourself?Jasna Benčić: Hi to everyone. Myname is Jasna and I come fromCroatia. Currently I am a graduatestudent at Faculty of Organizationand Informatics, (still working onmy master’s thesis). Recently I hada chance to join: Croatian LinuxUsers' Association as a vicepresident, Muktware Linux andFree Software Magazine team asan editor/contributor, and UbuntuWeekly Newsletter team as asummary writer/editor.

EK: What inspired you to getinvolved in the Ubuntu community?JB: Well, I wouldn't call it aninspiration. What drove me to the

Ubuntu community is a need forgaining new experience andmeeting new people. I mean, I havebeen in the Ubuntu world since8.04. It is still my favourite editionbecause I started with that distro –but not like an everyday user. I hada bachelor thesis "Characteristicsof Ubuntu operating system".When I started I didn't have a cluewhat I got myself into. As timewent by, I became morecomfortable and I have lovedUbuntu since then. I must add thatall these years I've been watchingyou guys on Youtube (UDS, etc..)and now I actually want to meetyou and work with you.

EK: What are your roles within theUbuntu community, and what plansdo you have for the future?JB: Currently I am working as asummary writer/editor at UbuntuWeekly Newsletter. Plans :) Thereis a saying: "Don't talk about yourplans because there is a possibilityyou won't accomplish them."

I'd say that I have dreamsconsidering Ubuntu and everythingelse. Will those dreams come true,

it depends on a lot of factors,mostly me. My current dreams are:Work one day for Canonical, makeeducation for pupils/studentsmuch more interesting and fun (atleast in the area of Informaticssince that is my profession).

EK: Have you hit any barriers withgetting involved, and what can yourecommend to newcomers?No barriers really. You have beenso approachable and helpful. Ithank you a zillion times for that.

I would recommend to newcomers:If you are in the Ubuntu world, andyou want to gain more experience,do not hesitate to ask officialmembers to join in. There are a lotof projects to get yourself involvedin. You never know what kind ofopportunities you might get.

EK: Is there anything you feel theUbuntu project could improve onwhen it comes to new folks comingto the project?JB: Nothing really. Maybe I am toosubjective but, ever since I startedwith the Ubuntu WeeklyNewsletter, I’ve had a chance to

read blogs of official Ubuntumembers. What I mean to say is,that every Ubuntu member isworking on some project/part ofUbuntu, and every now and thenthey are asking for volunteers –while offering to help them to getinvolved. What more do you need?

I even wondered where could I getofficial mentorship fromCanonical... Then I told myself: "Askofficial members of the Ubuntuproject where you want to getyourself involved."

EK: What other things are youinterested in outside of opensource and Ubuntu?Related to my profession:Informatics in education,education psychology andmethodology.

Everything else is a mixture really:3D (Blender), foreign languages,cooking, stand up comedy,education through whole life. Toconclude this answer, there are alot of things I'm interested inbecause I have a curiouspersonality.


UUBBUUNNTTUU GGAAMMEESSWritten by Dougn Redhammer NNEEWWSS

On video is Gabe Newellabout Steam on Linux(http://bcove.me/g5nyak0b). Valve have

posted news on this recently aswell as what game(s) that will bereleased with the client. Left ForDead 2 in this case. The client willbe released sometime this year,and the first Linux test platformfor the client will be Ubuntu. Formore, see:blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux.

And, just so you know,Gameolith (an online Linux gamestore at

http://www.gameolith.com) ismoving to include Windows andMac games in their catalog, as wellas Linux.

Croteam the studio behind theSerious Sam FPS games has postedon their Facebook wall ascreenshot with the caption"Serious Sam 3: BFE- running on

Linux!". Serious Sam 3 is the latestgame in the series that wasreleased about 5 months ago onWindows using their new in house3D game engine. No otherinformation has been released butit looks like another developer is

perhaps producing games for Linuxthat will be sold via Steam for

Linux since Serious Sam 3 isessentially a steamworks game.

http://bcove.me/g5nyak0b

http://www.gameolith.com

http://bcove.me/g5nyak0b

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux


UUBBUUNNTTUU GGAAMMEESSWritten by Jennifer Roger

McPixel is a point-and-click adventure gamein which you havetwenty seconds to

prevent things from blowing up.Sounds easy enough, right? Butwait - there’s pot smoking aliens,snakes on a plane, and many moreridiculously funny things keepingyou from saving the world! Sinceits inception as a Ludum Dare 21submission, McPixel has reallyblown up (pardon the pun) andwith good reason. It now boasts100 levels, free DLC updates, and alevel creator for those who want tomake even more crazy levels. Andit’s very, very addictive.

McPixel has a penchant forkicking people in the crotch andurinating on fires, but this quasi-hero has to use unorthodoxmethods to solve each puzzle.Thinking of dousing the bomb withwater? Nope! Maybe just throwingit out the window will do? Wrongagain, pal. What seems like theobvious solution is often a deadend, leaving you charred andmoving on to the next round untilyou complete them all.

There are six levels in eachbatch that you have to clear beforeunlocking the next batch. If you faila level, you just move on to thenext one until you’ve beaten themall. If you clear three levels in arow, you unlock a special bonuslevel. You have just one chance tofigure out what to do before itabruptly ends, bringing you back toyour trippy adventure.

Being a point and click, themechanics are simple and thegameplay is straightforward. Butthe silly humor and task of findingall of the gags keeps you comingback for more. For those who wanta real challenge, Endless Modeallows you to play every single

level in a row. But the warning atthe start of the game should notbe ignored - after a long session, itcan be really frustrating trying tofigure out what to do next. So it’s agood idea to take a break beforeit’s your mind that is about toexplode.

The soundtrack is good, but Idid find it to be a bit repetitiveafter playing for a while. The retrostyle pixel graphics are crisp andsmooth, and each level is quiteimaginative. In general, theenvironments have enough to keepthe gameplay fresh, and there’salways something that will haveyou giggling like a 13 year old boy.

The first reaction to McPixelusually elicits a lot of WTF’s andgeneral confusion, but don’t letthe outrageous, juvenile style ofhumor fool you - it is a very wellpolished game that’s extremelyenjoyable to play. You can try outthe demo, or purchase the fullDRM-free game plus thesoundtrack for $9.99 frommcpixel.net.

Pros:• clever and hilarious levels withnice retro style graphics• plenty of levels and extras for thequality and price

Cons:• it can be truly maddening afterplaying for a long time• soundtrack can becomeredundant

Jennifer is a fine arts student fromthe Chicagoland area. You can follow@missjendie on Twitter or visit herblog at missjendie.com.

http://missjendie.com


MMYY DDEESSKKTTOOPP

Attached is my Ubuntu 10.04 LTS desktop that I use for workand leisure. I run all three major operating systems (Linux,Mac & Windows) in various forms. I like Linux the best for twomain reasons: 1) it's free, and 2) it has a low requirement forhardware - even on this old Dell D630 laptop with 4GB ofRAM, Linux runs circles around my MacBook Pro 8GBRAM/2.66GHz laptop when it comes to operating systemresponsiveness. I'm never left waiting with Linux.

Thanks Linux developers! Keep up the good work.

Dan Juarez

Your chance to show the world your desktop or PC. Email your screenshots andphotos to: [email protected] and include a brief paragraph about yourdesktop, your PC's specs and any other interesting tidbits about your setup.

My computer is a rather old (in computer years) Dell Inspiron1200 running Lubuntu 11.04 (soon to be upgraded to 12.04). Ithas a 1.4 GHz Intel Celeron processor, a 40GB HD and 241 MBmemory.

At the beginning, the limited memory of this laptop wouldn'tlet me install Ubuntu 10.04, hanging somewhere after settingup the keyboard during the installation process, so I installedLubuntu 10.04 instead and later upgraded to newer versions.

The wallpaper is from a picture taken by me or by my wife lyingon the sand at Maracas Bay beach, Trinidad and Tobago.

Rainer Parrales



MY DESKTOP

I 'm using Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit with 3D Unity on my laptop. As youcan see I have made many improvements with Ubuntu Tweak 0.7

To make my monitor look bigger, I changed the size of the unityicons to 32, and opacity to 0. I use Radiance Gtk theme along withFaenza-Blue-Dark2 icons 'cause I think they are very COOL. Thewallpaper is live photos of Earth every 1 minute with xPlanetFX.

I also use three conkys: one for system monitoring, one for theweather, and one for knowing who's celebrating every day.

System specsDell Inspiron 1564, i3 CPU M330 2.13GHzRAM 4GBHDD 500GB15.4 led monitor - 1366 x 762 resolution.

Theo

Here is a screenshot of my desktop. The wallpaper is a firetruck from the Austrian company Rosenbauer, and can befound at http://www.autogaleria.hu/kl.php?kid=68919-Rosenbauer-Mercedes-Atego-918-Feuerwehr-2005

I have an Acer Aspire 5742G with i5 480M, Nvidia GeforceGT 420M, 500GB HDD and 4GB RAM. Currently, I useUbuntu 11.10. For the look I changed some values at theambiance theme at /usr/share/themes. Everyone familiarwith web-programing can do it too, because it´s just simpleCSS and the name of the color says what it´s used for. Foractivating the theme I used Ubuntu Tweak http://ubuntu-tweak.com/

For those who want to use the theme I published it viaUbuntu Onehttp://ubuntuone.com/7f6WQPM3VTbaJqQ96GP6S1Hope you like it.

Sven

http://ubuntuone.com/7f6WQPM3VTbaJqQ96GP6S1


PUZZLE SOLUTIONS

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Codeword and 16x16 Suduko puzzles arecopyright, and kindly provided by, The PuzzleClub - www.thepuzzleclub.com

SU

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HHOOWW TTOO CCOONNTTRRIIBBUUTTEE

We are always looking for new articles to include in Full Circle. For articleguidelines, ideas, and for issue translation, please see our wiki:http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuMagazinePlease email your articles to: [email protected]

Full Circle Team

Editor - Ronnie [email protected] - Rob [email protected] Mgr - Robert [email protected] - Les Pounder & [email protected]

Editing & Proofreading

Mike KennedyLucas WestermannGord CampbellRobert OrsinoJosh HertelBert Jerred

Our thanks go to Canonical, the manytranslation teams around the worldand Thorsten Wilms for the FCM logo.

If you would like to submit news, email it to: [email protected]

Send your comments or Linux experiences to: [email protected]

Hardware/software reviews should be sent to: [email protected]

Questions for Q&A should go to: [email protected]

Desktop screens should be emailed to: [email protected]

... or you can visit our forum via: www.fullcirclemagazine.org

Deadline for FCM#64:Sunday 05th August 2012.

Release date for FCM#64:Friday 31st August 2012.FULL CIRCLE NEEDS YOU!

A magazine isn't a magazine without articles and Full Circle is no exception. We needyour Opinions, Desktops and Stories. We also need Reviews (games, apps &hardware), How-To articles (on any K/X/Ubuntu subject) and any questions, orsuggestions, you may have.Send them to: [email protected]

http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuMagazine

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Documents

Full Circle Magazine - issue 63 EN