The LinuxBasics.org Blog

Wubi is a way to install GNU/Linux (Ubuntu-type) on your hard drive without repartitioning. It creates a directory on your Windows partition and installs there. You reboot and get the choice of using either Windows or Ubuntu. Then if you decide you like it, you can go ahead and repartition and install. If you want to remove it, you simply uninistall it like any other Windows program! Wonderful for a newbie. I like it much better than using the LiveCD, because it runs much faster.

I went to the Ubuntu Hardy Heron page looking for the download for the iso image to make a LiveCD when I saw this. I went to the link for Kubuntu that is on that page and got the torrent for the desktop version i386. The torrent went very fast on DSL and I burned the CD and put it in the CD Drive while I was using Windows XP. The "umenu" popped up and I chose to install inside Windows. It completed and asked me to reboot. After the reboot, it took a while for the actual installation to complete. I rebooted again, chose Kubuntu, and had a nice Kubuntu desktop.

At the Wubi website listed above, you can download the executable file and run it to install Ubuntu. It seems that it will download the iso and set things up that way. You will then not need to burn the cd. Note that the default is to install 64bit. A better way might be to download the iso yourself, put it in the same folder with the Wubi executable file, and then run Wubi. See the WubiGuide at Ubuntu

"DocConverter is a utility to convert a batch of documents from any supported OOo format into any other supported OOo format. It could, for example, be used to convert a batch of OOo Writer documents into PDFs."

OpenOffice.org has File/Wizards/Document Converter, but that wouldn't change RTF to ODT. This macro does that and a lot more. Simply unzip the download and click on the resulting .odg file. This opens in OpenOffice.org (you need to have that installed) and looks like the picture above. Follow the simple directions.

PDFedit does what it says--lets you edit a pdf

In the snapshot there are 3 things circled in red. The one at the top left is the tool you click on to select text. Toward the bottom center you see some text selected. In the top right you see that text in an area where you can edit it. If you change the text in that section, the text in the pdf changes.

There is much more you can do with PDFedit, but this is a start. PDFedit is available to install in the Ubuntu repositories.

Using rsync to do backups has the advantage of only backing up files that have changed since the last backup. A graphical program can make the setup for this a bit easier. Grsync is a program that does just that. It is GTK; so it won't take much to install it if you are using Gnome. If you use KDE there will probably be some additional packages that will be added.

Desktop search is a way to find things scattered around your home directory. I tried both Google Desktop and Beagle extensively and they seemed to be a little intensive in their use of system resources. I forget how Strigi was. But once I landed on Tracker, I stayed. Tracker is now the default Desktop Search as of Ubuntu 7.10.

Configuration is done in ~/.config/tracker/tracker.cfg. A few things you might want to change are:

Verbosity=1 - to give you more output while it indexes if you want to see.

WatchDirectoryRoots=/home/ajlewis2 - you can add to this. Put a semi-colon after each entry and use the entire path.

NoWatchDirectory=/home/ajlewis2/Desktop/etc;/home/ajlewis2/Documents/my-jump-backup - don't want these indexed.

EnableThumbnails=true - nice to see the images

IndexEvolutionEmails=false - I don't use Evolution
IndexThunderbirdEmails=false - I don't want Thunderbird mail indexed either

You can reindex if you have made changes in the config file. In a terminal:

killall trackerd

trackerd -R &

Tracker does not have a filter to index RTF. I think the same is true for Word DOC. See post on DocConverter if you want to convert RTF to ODT in a batch.

This is how Tracker looks.

Sometimes you want to print to a PDF file rather than to an actual printer. For example, I have a laptop that I don't have hooked to a printer. Every once in a while I want to print something from it. I print to PDF and then send it to myself to pick up on another computer where I can print. How to set this up?

Install cups-pdf using Synaptic, Adept, or "apt-get install cups-pdf". See more on installing here

Add a new printer (System->Administration->Printing and double-click on New Printer).

Select the "Local or Detected Printer" and highlight the "PDF Printer" option.

In the next step choose "Generic Printer" and then used the "Postscript Color Printer" driver. Name the printer something like PDFPrinter.

You will now see the PDFPrinter in your list of printers.

When you print to this printer the pdfs end up in a directory called "PDF" in your home directory.

Jpilot works in either Gnome or KDE and is probably the most trouble-free alternative in Linux for a Palm Desktop. It allows you to sync your PDA and work with the basic PIMs: Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks. There is also an option to do a complete backup.

The packages you need to install are: jpilot, jpilot-backup, jpilot-plugins and pilot-link. Pilot-link is the part that does the sync.

You also need to have the module for your PDA installed.

sudo modprobe visor (or whatever the module is for your palm)

If the 'visor' module works for you, then add it to /etc/modules. You simply add one line with only the name of the module, in this case: visor.

The process for use is then easy:

1. Open Jpilot

2. Tap HotSync on the PDA

3. Click the HotSync icon in Jpilot

4. Edit in Jpilot

5. Repeat steps 2 and 3 when you are finished editing to get the changes to the PDA

I recently got turned on to igoogle.com for my homepage and use the Calendar, ToDo list, and RSS Reader among other things. I like the Google Docs, because you can upload Open Document format as well as Word doc. You can collaborate on documents or just have them available to work on wherever you have an Internet connection. But...

Google does not by default encrypt the content of its services. If you want to use encryption, you may want to install the Firefox add-on, CustomizeGoogle.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/743

Install it by clicking on the Install button. Then restart Firefox.

Go to Tools/Add-ons. Click on Customize Google and Preferences button.

There you can check Secure (switch to https) for Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Docs.