Desktop

If you someday have a window out of your screen or at least the title bar out of your screen as I had today, I was surfing the web using Opera and when I pressed CTRL+F to look for a text in the page the little window appeared too high in the screen that I could not click on the title bar and move it a little down.

Well the solution for this is to press the and hold the ALT key, and click any place on the window to move it.

Tip: If you use the righ button of the mose you can resize it without need to click on the border of the window.

Hope this may help you.

I want to write a little about this good Firefox extension, maybe lots of you already know it, but for those who does not, here it goes.

As its name says, this extension lets Firefox access your Gmail account, install it from:

Gmail Manager Firefox extension once installed you will have it located at the bottom of your screen, you can manage lots of accounts, which is great, you can see how many emails you have unread, which labels they have, all of that at a glance.

I think this should work for any Linux operating system using Gnome, I have tested on Debian and Ubuntu.

Well, automatic login will let you avoid to enter your login and password each time you turn on your PC, this could be insecure, but if your computer is physically secured it is Ok to enable this, that could make your booting more smooth.

How to do it?

On Gnome go to:

I own a Motorola L6 phone, I have been trying to connect it to my Linux (Debian Lenny) to upload some .mp3 files to be used as ringtones.

I have found in my search Moto4Lin which is a software written using QT, and it works great!, well lets see how to install and use this program.

As I am running Debian it is really easy to install

sudo aptitude install moto4lin

The Debian menu systems really saves you a lot of time, when you are trying to find a new installed software.

Yes you can run the applications from the command line, as I was doing these days on my Laptop with Fluxbox, but if you are using Debian or Ubuntu you can automatically create the menus using the Debian Menu System.

To install it (if you are using Debian might be installed)

sudo aptitude install menu

I have received an email from Ulteo yesterday, and they are good news, now using your Ulteo account, you can sync your documents between your office, your home, and any other PC (even a work with them at a public PC).

Yes I know you can also do this with Google, or other tools, but if you prefer Ulteo, which is a whole Linux desktop online, instead of only some applications, this is for you.

Because the use of Java, Ulteo Desktop is slower than other applications but still a good option.

Here is the email I got, check it yourself.

Hello!

Mplayer is one of most known movie players in Linux, and also in Mac OS, and Windows.

To install it in Debian / Ubuntu run:

sudo aptitude install mplayer

Mplayer has lots of options, and we will explore some of them here, the files format it can play according to its official site are:

MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies..

Just like The light weight Debian we can do the same with Fedora, I will use Fedora 8 and Fluxbox to install a light Desktop Linux.

First start the installation CD, I have chosen the text environment as, this is supposed to be a light installation, I am doing this on VMware with 128 Kbytes of memory assigned.

Google earth according to wikipedia is: "... virtual globe program that was originally called Earth Viewer and was created by Keyhole, Inc. It maps the earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe. It is available under three different licenses: Google Earth, a free version with limited functionality; Google Earth Plus ($20 per year), which includes additional features; and Google Earth Pro ($400 per year), which is intended for commercial use"

Continuing with my Lightweight Debian configuration, today I wanted to add sound and music to it, I have 4 Gigs of MP3, and I needed to hear them.

If you want to change your screen resolution, while still running Linux but you are not using Gnome or KDE, which gives good options to change screen resolution, you will have to use the xrandr command

If we are using Fluxbox because we need it to be lightweight it does not mean we can not have some eye candy on our Desktops.

So if you want a cool terminal, a transparent one starting with your log on, it is real possible, we will need aterm

Install it using your Distro package manager, I am using Debian so:

sudo aptitude install aterm

To start Fluxbox with a wallpaper, you will have to edit some configuration files, and have a image viewer installed on you machine, not all of them works, so consider using one of these two.

Esetroot or feh.

Let's continue with the light weight applications, this time I will show you a great image viewer, that does not need too much disk space nor hardware requirements.

The application is feh, to install it run:

sudo aptitude install feh

then to use it, you will have to be used to command line, but that is one of the great things about Linux isn't it?

As you may have noticed I am switching to Fluxbox and I am trying not to use Gnome programs to keep my configuration light, one problem I have faced is how to read PDF files without using evince, or adobe application, which are big, a good replacement I have found is xpdf

To install it on Debian or Ubuntu just run:

sudo aptitude install xpdf

If you are using FluxBox and want to start programs when you log into FluxBox, you will need to edit the file $home/.fluxbox/startup.

As you can see each user will have its own startup script, so each one of them can have their own programs starting at login time.

The startup script may look like this:

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I use to work on Desktops PCs, one in my office and one in my Home, I use my Laptop (an old IBM T30) only when I travel, and as I like to travel light, this also goes for my Laptop, so here I will show how do I configured my Laptop with Debian Lenny, and just the necesary software for my job while abroad.

First, I made a list of the necessary software:

- Firefox
- Thunderbird
- Word Processor
- Spread Sheet
- Skype
- MSN chat client
- MP3 player
- Vmware

This is for work and fun, now lets install first the system

I have started using FluxBox, which is an alternative to KDE or Gnome or XFCE, FluxBox is smaller than all the other three mentioned by me, and it is also faster, FluxBox is the Default windows manager for DSL (Damn small Linux).

Well after this really small introduction, let's go to the point.

Hi,

I finally finish installing KDE 4 on a Fedora, I used F7 for this, I am still trying to install it on CentOS, but in F7 it is installed.

check the threads on the forum, I am using the forum, to make it easier for you, to post your problems and interact if you are having problems installing or compiling KDE 4 on CentOS, Fedora, Debian or Ubuntu, I will later post the same how-to install KDE 4 on Debian and Ubuntu.

How to install KDE4 on Fedora

Hi,

This post is to look for volunteers to help me compile and install KDE4 on Centos 5, I worked on this by this time for three days (and one night :) ).. If there is any volunteer I can post in the forums the steps I take so far, and the error I got, so we can continue working together.

Thanks and let me know if you are interested in the comments.

Update: here are my notes about what I am doing, hope this may help anybody, read How to compile KDE4 on Centos