Know Which Windows Application Works Well Using Wine (Wine AppDB)

Some Ubuntu user sometimes have not been able to leave their old habits to use windows application, moreover if they are a gamers. Although there has many interesting games in Ubuntu, honestly windows game is more attractive and well maintained. Your decision to use Ubuntu as prime OS should not prevent you to play games, right ?.

Some of you may have already known Wine or also have used it , Wine is Linux application that let's to run windows application over Ubuntu, however not all windows program can be run properly but almost of them can work well with Wine. If you want to find out if some program can run using wine or not, we suggest you to visit Wine Application Database (AppDB).

Wine Application Database (AppDB)

Wine AppDB is a collection of program which have been officially or unofficially tested and confirmed work with Wine. Some application that display in Wine AppDB is submitted by registered user, they  testify what part is works and not works follows with distribution where its tested. If you get some programs do not run well in wine you can also find the instruction and solution in here.

Wine AppDB also classify application into Platinum, Gold, and Silver list, this classification is based on the level of success of wine in running application and number of users who rated them. here the list  

Platinum Application List

Applications which install and run flawlessly on an out-of-the-box Wine installation :

• Final Fantasy XI Online Final Fantasy XI
• StarCraft I
• Guild Wars All Versions
• Steam Official Release
• Left 4 Dead Full (Steam)
• Watchtower Library 2011
• Counter-Strike
• Warcraft III The Frozen Throne: 1.x
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 1.2.x
• Bioshock 1.0

Gold Application List

Applications that work flawlessly with some special configuration :

• Fallout 3 1.x
• StarCraft II Retail
• Supreme Commander SC 1.x.3xxx
• Half-Life 2 Retail (32-bit)
• Runes of Magic Official release
• City of Heroes All Versions
• Homeworld 2 1.x
• Garena Garena Messenger (Beta)
• Lord of the Rings Online Volume III
• Dragon Age: Origins 1.x
• Silver Application List

Silver Application List

Applications with minor issues that do not affect typical usage :

• Warhammer Online Live
• EVE Online 7.2x - Crucible
• World of Warcraft 4.3.x
• Team Fortress 2 Steam
• Adobe Photoshop CS3 (10.0)
• The Sims 3 All
• Command & Conquer 3
• Gothic 3 1.x
• Adobe Flash CS3 Package 
• MediaMonkey 3.0.6.1190

Apparently most of favorite applications above are games, is your favorite in the list above ?. Now you should consider to visit Wine AppDB before you decide to install (or even buy) some windows application, if you have any difficulties Wine AppDB also can be your problem solver.

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LibreOffice 3.5.0 Now Can Be Installed via PPA

The third major release of "the best free office suite ever" LibreOffice 3.5.0 now can be installed easily on Ubuntu via PPA. So, what's new in this release? Here are some of them.
LibreOffice Writer

• a new built-in Grammar checker for English and several other languages
• improved typographical features, for professional looking documents
• an interactive word count window, which updates in real time
• a new header, footer and page break user interface

LibreOffice Calc:

• support for up to 10,000 sheets
• a new multi-line input area
• new Calc functions conforming to the ODF OpenFormula specifications
• better performances when importing files from other office suites
• multiple selections in autofilter
• unlimited number of rules for conditional formatting

For further information about LibreOffice 3.5.0, please visit this page or you can download an infographic contains the new features and improvements here.

Install LibreOffice 3.5.0 on Ubuntu via PPA
Ubuntu users can install LibreOffice 3.5.0 by typing this command:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Please make sure you have removed OpenOffice (if any) to avoid any conflict.

• sudo apt-get purge openoffice*

Desktop integration
If you want seamless integration for GNOME and KDE, you might want to install this package:
For GNOME

• sudo apt-get install libreoffice-gnome

For KDE

• sudo apt-get install libreoffice-kde

via: WebUpd8

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Cotton Candy: Ubuntu powered World's Smallest PC

Technology is getting more and more smarter and portable to use, Cotton Candy is one more example of such a useful device which makes technology, easy to carry and affordable to manage for everybody.

The Cotton Candy is a product of FXI Technologies, Norway, it is a USB stick sized computer device which allows users a single, secure point of access to all personal cloud services and apps through their favorite operating systems, while delivering a consistent experience on any screen.  The device will serve as a companion to smart phones, tablets, and notebook PC especially Macs, add smart capabilities to existing displays, TVs, set top boxes and other media that supports USB mass storage.

Cotton Candy is powered by a ARM® Cortex™-A9 1.2GHz Processor, 1 GB DRAM, support up to 64 GB of local storage capacity through microSD, Wifi and Bluetooth connectivity and will run on both Ubuntu and Android operating systems with a support for virtualization for Windows, Linux and Mac.

A USB and HDMI 1.3 connector are on hand to connect the Cotton Candy to your screen, and the little PC can play HD video, show various picture file formats and if you choose Android, run all the usual apps from the Android Market. The Bluetooth connection lets you use a wireless keyboard and mouse too.

Cotton Candy is soon to be released and currently available on pre-orders with a price tag of $199 or £139.

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Free Ebook: The Linux Command Line

Nowadays, most computer users are only familiar with the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and think that Command Line Interface (CLI) is an old-fashioned way to interact with computer. This is not true, because command line interface is expressive way to interact with computer, just like writing letter or message to our friends. It's been said that:

graphical user interfaces make easy tasks easy, while command line interfaces make difficult tasks possible

So, learning command line interface is important if you want to get the most out of Linux operating system. Linux command line is a great tool because we can perform a lot of tasks there. There are many references to learning command line interface. One of them is an eBook I'll post here.

This book is entitled "The Linux Command Line" written by William E. Shotts. This book contains 522 pages and divided into five parts:
Part 1: Introduction
Tells some story related with command line interface.

Part 2: Learning The Shell
Starts the exploration of the basic language of the command line including such things as the structure of commands, file system navigation, command line editing, and finding help and documentation for commands.

Part 3: Configuration And The Environment
Covers editing configuration files that control the computer's operation from the command line.

Part 4: Common Tasks And Essential Tools
Explores many of the ordinary tasks that are commonly performed from the command line. Unix-like operating systems, such as Linux, contain many “classic” command line programs that are used to perform powerful operations on data.

Part 5: Writing Shell Scripts
Introduces shell programming, an admittedly rudimentary, but easy to learn, technique for automating many common computing tasks. By learning shell programming, you will become familiar with concepts that can be applied to many other programming languages.

Well, if you want to learn Linux command line interface to get the most out of it, please download this book by clicking the below link:

Download eBook: The Linux Command Line

Regards :)

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Three reasons why Ubuntu for Android would be a big boost for high performance sales teams

Most of the high performance sales teams today are equipped with both Smart Phones and Laptops for their computing requirements both on the move and at the office. Sometime sales people carry a Tablet to reduce the need for both Smart Phones and a Laptop. But Tablets are more costly and not a complete replacement for both Mobile Phone or a Laptop/Desktop.

For sales teams with lesser budgets on their sides, sales professionals need to depend only on their office desktop or on a smart phone alone, with a small screen and no keyboard for typing long emails and proposals.

Ubuntu for Android is now the answer to all these problems, a full fledged productivity desktop with the power of smart phone. Here are three reasons why Ubuntu for Android would be a big boost for high performance sales teams.

Cost: Sales teams keep traveling from place to place both in the city and outside city. On the move carrying a bulky laptop is always troublesome and not always required, thanks to smart phones most of the office work such as checking and replying email, editing documents is a much easier affair than opening a laptop and finding a proper place to work.

With Ubuntu for Android companies are only required to purchase a Smart Phones for their sales professional instead of both Laptop and a smart phone, or only a Laptop (including the cost of Software and AMCs) complimented by a dumb phone. In the office 4-5 docking terminals would be enough for a team of 10 sales guys. Thus decreasing the overall computing cost substantially.

Portability: As we know, sales teams keep on moving and not all sales professionals are present in the office at the same time. On the move sales professionals can work through smart phones, can dock it to a Multimedia Projector on the client side for presentation and back in the office same phone can be docked as a desktop without any need of data transfer from here and there. Ubuntu for Android will thus provide both physical and data portability.

Enterprise Ready: Ubuntu is already a enterprise proven platform for businesses across the world. And by taking the advantage of desktop virtualization, the same smart phone can be used as a thin client with the familiar desktop applications such as MS Office etc. or the CRM application on the cloud. Reducing the need for trainings to work on Linux desktop.

Ubuntu for Android is surely a game changer for both Hardware and Software domains, with the introduction of Ubuntu for Android in enterprise and consumer market prices of dual core smart phones will decrease substantially as compared to both Laptops and Tablets, and companies would also save millions they spend on software for each hardware they procure. Professionals such as sales people will also work efficiently both on the move and at the office with physical & data portability and familiar enterprise ready applications.

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Twidge: Twitter Client for Linux Terminal

Twidge is a terminal client for microblogging sites such as Twitter and identi.ca.

Twidge is a full command-line client. It is designed to be useful when you’re sitting at a shell prompt. It produces output in well-formed and easily-parsed ways, and has various features for working with piped data.

There are other command line tools for twitter which are also available, but most of them are not updated for the changes in twitter security settings.
Here is how you can install and configure Twidge,

Twidge is available in the oneiric apt repositories, so if you are using Ubuntu 11.10 you just need to install Twidge using the install command.

• $ sudo apt-get install twidge

But if you are using any other version of Ubuntu, you need to manually add the repositories for Twidge.

• $ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Append the following line at the end of the text,

deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian squeeze main

Save this repository to your sources.list to be able to download Twidge. In order to install from the command line, run:

• $ sudo apt-get update 
• $ sudo apt-get install twidge

Twidge Setup:

 Issue the following command in the terminal

• $ twidge setup

Twidge Setup will generate a URL for the authentication (see the below image), copy the URL and paste it into your browser, it will ask you to login with your login credentials, just login and it will generate an authentication code.

Enter the authentication code in the terminal, and you are done and ready tweet the geek way :)

Some useful Twidge commands:

For the detailed description for the twidge commands look inside Twidge man pages.

• $ man twidge

Or, you use lscommand to see the full list of commands at glance,

• $ twidge lscommands

Here are some quick commands for day to day usage,

Status update:

• $ twidge update

And then typing your 140 character update,

Check your @replies:

• $ twidge lsreplies

Check most recent updates:

•  $ twidge lsrecent

Lets tweet the geek style :)

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Upgrade to Kernel 3.2 in Ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric ocelot)

The Linux Foundation officially released the new Linux 3.2 kernel few days ago. The latest release comes with many improvements on the bugs and enhancement capabilities. Some important new features in the kernel 3.2 is support for ext4 block size larger than 4 KB to 1 MB, fixes Btrfs capabilities, additional support for setting the upper limit of CPU time by the process scheduler, automatic backup tree root and more.

Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) will have the kernel 3.2 by default, but if you still want to test the latest kernel in Ubuntu 11.10, here is how you can upgrade to the kernel 3.2 through PPA.

Warning: You are advised to make a backup of your system before proceeding ahead, we are not responsible for any data loss after kernel upgrade.

Installation of Kernel 3.2 in Ubuntu 11.10 via PPA:

• $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:francisbrwn9/kernels

• $ sudo apt-get update 

• $ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If  you want to revert the change and back to the previous kernel, you need to install PPA Purge.

• $ sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

Then to remove the ppa,

• $ sudo ppa-purge ppa:francisbrwn9/kernels

Note: The above instructions for Kernel upgrade will also work with Ubuntu derivative distros like Linux Mint, Sabily, Dream Studio, etc..

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Unofficial VLC Build for Android Ready to Test

Our favorite media player VLC now comes to Android. But, before you jump into this post, please make note that VLC for Android is unofficial build (compiled from source) of VLC compiled by adridu59 @xda-developers. It means that this application has no support from VLC team, so when you encounter any bug, don't go to VLC team for reporting, please join this discussion to do so.

Unofficial VLC Build from Android features:

• Built using latest android SDK & NDK
• Gingerbread & ICS support
• Hardware acceleration support [Buggy]
• Headset detection
• Almost all media formats should be working (DTS/MPEG2/Theora still WIP)

There are three build variants for this release:

• ARMv6/ARM11
• ARMv7a/Cortex-A8/NEON
• ARMv7a/Cortex-A9

If you are interested in testing VLC for Android, please click here to download and join the discussion. Use with your own risk!

Regards :)

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Lightspark: Open Source Alternative to Adobe Flash Player

Adobe has recently announced its plan to abandon Flash Player for Linux platform (through Netscape API to be specific) and limit it to Pepper API which is only available in Google Chrome. Thus leaving Firefox, Opera and other small browsers in doll drums.

It is a good time to look for Alternates, and Lightspark is one such alternate and is open source.

Lightspark, is  an LGPLv3 licensed Flash player and browser plugin written in C++/C that runs on Linux. Lightspark support Adobe’s newer Flash formats and AVM2 virtual machine.

The Lightspark player is completely portable. Lightspark has been successfully built on Ubuntu on PowerPC, x86, ARM and AMD64 architectures.

Installing Lightspark in Ubuntu:

For the latest version of lightspark, use the following PPA for Ubuntu 11.10 and 12.04:

• $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sparkers/daily
• $ sudo apt-get update
• $ sudo apt-get install lightspark browser-plugin-lightspark

 Enjoy!

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How to Clear Recent Used Document Log in Ubuntu

Every Operating System (without no exception for Ubuntu) usually create user activity log that log in at the time, some log that are often found are recent used document, the presence of recently used document log sometimes makes people uncomfortable, they afraid if their friend know what they just did using their computer, it's about privacy.

You can perform many various ways to make Ubuntu does not showing any recently used document, here the easiest and fastest way to do it without installing extra application :

The list of recent used document is save in <home directory> /.local/share/recently-used.xbel, the fastest way to make you untraceable is delete the recently-used.xbel, do as follow :

• rm ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel

Create an empty file to replace the file that you just delete above :

• touch ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel

Make sure that recently-used.xbel can't be modified (immutable), some reference about immutable file can be read in here :

• sudo chattr +i ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel

Chattr is equal to attrib in windows, System or user can't edit, remove, or modify recently-used.xbel. To revoke last action and make the file editable, do as follow :

• sudo chattr -i ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel

Before

After

Clear Recent Used Document using Application

Another ways that you can do to clear recent used document is using a program, there are many program that help you to manage user privacy and log in Ubuntu  (we will discuss it later), Some  application that may help you to manage user activity log and privacy control are : 

1. BleachBit.
2. Activity Journal.
3. Ubuntu Tweak.
4. Activity Log Manager.

Hopefully this will help :)

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Tranmission 2.50 Has Been Released, Installation Instructions Inside!

Transmission is an open source BitTorrent client developed by many volunteers. It's designed to be easy, powerful and "just work" application. Nothing less from great and easy-to-use application, Tranmission is included by default in Ubuntu distribution for BitTorrent client application. Transmission has gained a new version 2.50 that brings many improvements and bug fixes:

All Platforms

• Fix crash when adding some magnet links
• Improved support for downloading webseeds with large files
• Gracefully handle incorrectly-compressed data from webseed downloads
• Fairer bandwidth distribution across connected peers
• Use less CPU when calculating undownloaded portions of large torrents
• Use the Selection Algorithm, rather than sorting, to select peer candidates
• Use base-10 units when displaying bandwidth speed and disk space
• If the OS has its own copy of natpmp, prefer it over our bundled version
• Fix Fails-To-Build error on Solaris 10 from use of mkdtemp()
• Fix Fails-To-Build error on FreeBSD from use of alloca()
• Fix Fails-To-Build error when building without a C++ compiler for libuTP

For further information about this release, please visit this page.

Install Transmission 2.50 on Ubuntu
Ubuntu users including Ubuntu Oneiric and upcoming Ubuntu version Precise can instal Transmission 2.50 by adding it's PPA repository:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:transmissionbt/ppa
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install transmission

Once installed, Transmission 2.50 can be accessed from Internet section from the menu.

Regards :)

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Linux Kernel 3.3 Will Let You Boot Into Android

With the release of Linux Kernel 3.3 you will be able to boot into Android userspace without any modifications (to the kernel) but not with very good power management, The 3.4 kernel release will hopefully have the power management hooks that Android needs in it, along with a few other minor missing infrastructure pieces that didn't make it into the 3.3 kernel release."

Revealed Greg-KH who recently joined The Linux Foundation after quitting from Novell SUSE.

This puts Android right there with Gnome and KDE as just another desktop environment for GNU/Linux.

Things getting interesting day by day in open source world.

Source : muktware

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Ubuntu for Android Is much more than what we thought about it

In a recently release video demo of Ubuntu for Android from canonical, Ubuntu for Android looks even more promising than a converged Mobile Phone and a Desktop PC.

It can also be transformed to the Ubuntu TV once docked to a TV through HDMI port. So your Smart Phone is not only a full fledged desktop inside your pocket but a Media center too.

Here is the Video demo of the Ubuntu for Android concept.
 

Mark Shuttleworth also confirmed on his blog that Ubuntu for Android is not the Ubuntu Phone announced last year in October and is a separate project altogether. 

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Ardesia: Digital Sketchpad for Your Desktop

Ardesia is a digital sketchpad for your desktop. It enables you to make colored free-hand annotations with digital ink everywhere on your desktop, record them, and share on the network. Ardesia is a easy-to-use, simple, and useful application, especially for those who often make a presentation or lesson to another by showing the computer screen. You can annotate, mark, highlight important objects on your desktop with Ardesia. This make your lesson easier to understand by your audiences.

I have tried this application long time ago when I used Ubuntu Natty (as shown in picture above) and it did well. Recenty, I tried Ardesia on Ubuntu Oneiric and it still worked great!

Install Ardesia on Ubuntu
In fact, Ardesia is available on Ubuntu repository, but it doesn't work on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot due to a dependency issue when installing. Alternatively, you can download the *.deb package here and run these commands to install Ardesia on your system:

• sudo dpkg -i ardesia_1.0-1_i386.deb
• sudo apt-get -f install

Replace "ardesia_1.0-1_i386.deb" with your exact file name of Ardesia *.deb package.

For additional information, below is a demo video about Ardesia:


Enjoy :)

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Meet New Ubuntu Start-Up Sound

Next Ubuntu release will be accompanied with new start-up sound, the sound which have been chosen through this survey will be used as Ubuntu start-up sound replacing the old ubuntu start-up sound which has been used for about 5 years.

The Winner
Canonical design team provide 4 sound candidate to be chosen (from finalist), survey which followed by over 2000 participants voted candidate number 1 as the winner, here the result of the survey :

Ubuntu Start-up Sound Survey Result

The Chosen Candidate 
here's the winner, Does this sound feel like Ubuntu ?


Next step, canonical design team will make this sound ‘more human, less synthesised’, lowering the pitch, increasing ‘the warmth of the tone’, and make it available in Ubuntu 12.04.

There is a few question, from previous post that confirmed by Jeremy bischa, for some reason Ubuntu 12.04 will be no sound at startup, does this survey mean that start-up sound will be sounded again in Ubuntu 12.04, is anyone could confirm this ?

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Ubuntu for Android: Convergence of Mobile Phone with Desktop PC

Ubuntu for Android! Well this could be a the next game changer for both Mobile Phones and PC market, latest of the innovations which could change the way we do our computing, at a time when Mobiles and Tablets are out numbering the sales of Desktops and Laptops. And it seems that desktop would be dormant and obsolete in few years fighting and competing with Mobile Phones and Tablets.

Even thought the concept is not much different from Motorola Aetrix 4G docking Phone, but if your smartphone can boot with the Ubuntu on a desktop we can expect much more.

Ubuntu for Android is the beginning of  the convergence of  Mobile devices and Desktop PCs in a real sense. Something, I would call a Personal Thin Client, though not a thin client in a real sense.

In simple terms Ubuntu for Android is a full Ubuntu desktop, on a docked Android phone. In terms of Hardware requirements, your Android phone should be equipped with a dual core processor.

Ubuntu for Android provides a full desktop experience, including office software, web browsing, email and media applications, on Android phones docked to a screen and keyboard. Thanks to tight integration with the Android service layer, the transition between the two environments is seamless, making it easy to access the phone's services from the desktop when docked.

With Ubuntu on Android you can enjoy full featured Web Browsing with your favorite desktop browser with your smartphone but on a much larger screen real estate. Ubuntu for Android also integrates data access such as contacts, messaging, calender & making calls etc., in both Phone and Desktop modes.

Currently, Ubuntu for Android is only a prototype and Just like recently announced Ubuntu for TV, Manufacturers and interested parties are being encouraged to speak to Canonical if wanting to take advantage/learn more about the technology.

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Script: Remove Unused Old Kernel

Many Ubuntu users who upgraded Linux kernel to newer version might encounter something messy in GRUB menu. The old kernel is still there and appears on GRUB menu although we don't use it because we already have a newer version to boot. So, today I'd like to share my old post on TahuTEK.net about simple script to remove unused old kernel on your system automatically. Although this is an old post, it still works until today. I have been using it since I've moved to XFCE.

As shown in the figure above, there is an older kernel in the GRUB menu (2.6.32-21) although we have installed a newer version of kernel (2.6.32-22). To remove the old kernel, simply create a shell script as follow:

• #/bin/bash
• ls /boot/ | grep vmlinuz | sed 's@vmlinuz-@linux-image-@g' | grep -v `uname -r` > /tmp/kernelList
• for I in `cat /tmp/kernelList`
• do
• apt-get remove $I
• done
• rm -f /tmp/kernelList
• update-grub

Copy the above script into your favorite text editor and save it. For example, I give "clean.sh" as filename of the script.

Before executing the script you need to add "execute" permission to the file:

• chmod +x clean.sh

Now, whenever you want to remove old kernel, simply execute the script with root privileges:

• sudo ./clean.sh

For your information, you can also use Ubuntu Tweak to perform such a task. But, in any condition, you don't have Ubuntu Tweak installed on your system, you can use this simple script to remove old kernel.

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How to Open .dbf File and Export It To MySQL

A few days ago I was engage with building web-based application that intended to discover duplicate data in excel files, at first this jobs look simple, but after knowing the amount of data which will processed (35 Million Data) and stored on nearly 70,000 different excel files, hmm .. This work may not seem as easy as imagined.

A little problem appears when I wish to add some data from .dbf (exported from foxpro) to MySQL, it was a new experience for me. The first move that I usually do when I meet some unreadable file format in ubuntu is go to Ubuntu Software Center and search program using keyword file formats that I want to be opened (example : if you want to open dbf format, you can search program using keyword 'dbf'), Yatai .. as usual Ubuntu Software Center never disappoint and always gives a solution.

Find Application in Ubuntu Software Center

Gnumeric Spreadsheet to Open .dbf
First application that I got from Ubuntu Software Center is the Gnumeric Spreadsheet, Gnumeric is a spreadsheet application that interoperates well with other spreadsheets. you can open commonly used spreadsheet file formats like xls, sxc,csv, dif and more, using this application I can see the contents of .dbf but I can't be directly exported it to .sql (MySQL), all action must be done manually and less time consuming. You can just use Gnumeric Spreadsheet as a dbf reader only, to perform other actions such as exporting to sql you might need another application.

dbf2mysql: export .dbf to sql (MySQL)
Second application that I got from Ubuntu Software Center is dbf2mysql, this application is quite small if compared with Gnumeric Spreadsheet, the size is only 29.1 kB, but even small dbf2mysql is quite powerful. dbf2mysql is designed to perform a specific function that is exporting dbf database format into mysql. I have not tried all of its functions but it seems to be my solution, Some additional information about dbf2mysql can be found in following manpages.

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VLC 2.0 Has Been Released, Installation Instruction Inside!

Our sophisticated media player VLC gained major update to version 2.0 with codename "Twoflower". VLC 2.0 comes with faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codecs. It supports many new devices dan BluRay Discs (experimental).

Below is a brief changelog of VLC 2.0:

• BluRay disc now supported on VLC 2.0 (experimental)
• Rewritten video output core and modules, allowing subpicture blending in GPU.
• CrystalHD cards and Android OpenMAX support for hardware decoding.
• Correct support for FLAC, RV and Hi10p in MKV.
• Support for 10bits codecs, WMV image and some other codecs.
• New resamplers for higher quality audio.

For full changelog of this release, please visit this page.

Instal VLC 2.0 on Ubuntu
Ubuntu Oneiric and upcoming Precise users can install VLC 2.0 easily by adding a PPA repository:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/stable-daily
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install vlc

If you already have VLC installed on your system, use this command to upgrade VLC to latest version:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:videolan/stable-daily
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

via: Tech Drive-in

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Cinnamon 1.3 Released! See What's New Inside

Good news for Cinnamon users! Cinnamon 1.3 has been released. This major update brings many improvements, new features and bug fixes. Below is a brief overview of the new features and major improvemets.

Applet improvements
Now, every component on Cinnamon panel is an applet. So, you can remove it, add third party applets or drag and re-arrange it to fit your need.

Settings Improvements
A lot of new features come to Cinnamon settings which let you to customize not only Cinnamon preferences, but also fonts, desktop icons, cursor theme, gtk themes, etc. It gained ne graphical user interface too that makes it more simple and without using more screen estate.

Menu Improvements
Cinnamon menu gained the following improvements:

• New hover delay preference
• Better icon sizes (crispier icons)
• Fixed menu size when the number of favorites is high
• More exhaustive search results

Other Improvements

• Panel launchers can now be re-ordered by drag & drop
• Improved visuals in the default theme
• Workspace navigation is now possible in scale mode (note that we’re still planning an Expo mode)
• Multiple bug fixes

Install Cinnamon 1.3 on Ubuntu
Ubuntu users can "taste" Cinnamon on his/her desktop by typing the following command:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:merlwiz79/cinnamon-ppa
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install cinnamon

Once installed, there will be a new option called "Cinnamon" in login window, select it and give the new version of Cinnamon a try.

via: Linux Mint

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Weather Information in Linux Terminal

Linux Terminal makes life easy for day to day administration on a Linux Desktop. And if you are a Power user and spend most of the time on the command prompt, you might want to have some dynamic information such as Weather condition available each time you open the Terminal.

Here is a way to get Weather Information in the Linux Terminal both in graphic (gnome, KDE, Unity) and text login (Ctrl + Alt + F1 to F7) modes.

First install the weather-util package from apt repositories.

• $ sudo apt-get install weather-util

You’ll need your local weather code, which you can get from this website.

For Graphic Login:

Open the .bashrc file

•  $ sudo vi ~/.bashrc

Press Insert, And append the following lines at the end of the file.

# Weather Information
weather -i CODE 

Where CODE is the code of your location, like VIDP is the code of New Delhi in my case.

Press Esc, and :wq to save and exit the vi editor.

Close the Terminal and reopen, it will display the weather information before the bash prompt.

For Text Login:

You first need to create a script in the appropriate location using vi editor.

• $  sudo vi /etc/update-motd.d/98-weather

Press Insert and enter the following code, replacing CODE with your local weather code

#!/bin/sh
echo
weather -i CODE
echo

Press Esc, and :wq to save and exit.

Make it executable using chmod

• sudo chmod +x /etc/update-motd.d/98-weather

Press Ctrl + Alt + F1 and login to see the script working.

Voila :)

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Zmail: Fake Email Sender

ZMail is open source fake email software that allows you to send fake emails, using Zmail you can send email from anybody, to anybody!

If you need to send a quick email to someone without opening your regular email program, test an email server, or perhaps play some pranks on your friends, ZMail is for you.

Installing Zmail

Zmail is available as a source code tarball in python from sourceforge website. You can download the latest version of Zmail from here.

To run the source code you need to have python and wxPython installed on your machine. While python is installed by default in Ubuntu, you need to install wxPython if you already don't have it. To install wxPython open the terminal and issue the following commands.

• $ curl http://apt.wxwidgets.org/key.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Now append the following lines in /etc/apt/sources.list

# wxWidgets/wxPython repository at apt.wxwidgets.org
    deb http://apt.wxwidgets.org/ natty-wx main
    deb-src http://apt.wxwidgets.org/ natty-wx main

Update the apt repositories

•  $ sudo apt-get update

Now you are ready to install wxPython from apt repositories,

• $ sudo apt-get install python-wxgtk2.8

To send emails install "sendmail" program

• $ sudo apt-get sendmail

Extract the Zmail tarball and change to the Zmail directory, double click the zmail file or run ./zmail in the terminal to run Zmail.

Checkout the following tutorial on how to send emails and setup mail server to send emails.

Disclaimer: The above Program can be used for both legal and illegal purposes, please use this program only for educational purposes such as testing email servers etc only,  Neither Author of the above article nor ubuntubuzz.com is responsible for any illegal use of the software. Please also read the Zmail disclaimer in Help < About.

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Get Dynamic Wallpaper on Ubuntu with Real-Time Sunlight Wallpaper

Real-time Sunlight Wallpaper is an applications which turns your static wallpaper into dynamic wallpaper.  While static wallpaper enhances your desktop with  a static beautiful images, real-time sunlight wallpaper displays sunlight that changes every 30 minutes and a unique clouds displayed every 3 hours.

Watch the sun rise, sun set and cloud system all over the world on this real-time, computer-generated illustration of the earth's patterns of sunlight and darkness or watch the moon phases.

The main features of this applications are:

• Real-time Sunlight Wallpaper is completely free
• Lightweight software
• 4 different types of maps: Mercator, Peters, Mollweide, Equirectangular
• It can display all moon phases
• Dawn to dusk display
• It can follow the big clouds formations from all over the globe
• Accurate data
• Easy to install and use
• Simple and intuitive interface
• User friendly

Install Real-Time Sunlight Wallpaper on Ubuntu
Ubuntu users can install Real-Time Sunlight Wallpaper by typing the following command:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:realtime.sunlight.wallpaper/rsw
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install gtk-sunlight

Once installed, Real-Time Sunlight Wallpaper can be accessed from Accessories section in the applications menu.

Real-Time Sunlight Wallpaper can be installed on other distributions too, click here to download the application manually.

Enjoy :)

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How To Modify Bash Prompt

Bash Shell is a powerful stuff in Linux. We can do almost everything there. Installing and removing applications, doing system upgrade, downloading files, even listening to your favorite songs. Although, there are many GUI applications which can do such tasks, many people still love using command prompt because it's handy, incredibly fast and we can see exactly happens in the background. If you are one of those people who loves using command prompt to perform such tasks, you might want to read this post on how to modify bash prompt.

What is bash prompt? Bash prompt is a like a bridge connects you to the shell. Bash prompt is a place where you type a command to ask the shell to perform a task. Bash prompt is usually represented by a dollar sign "$".

By default, Ubuntu and its derivative has bash prompt with the following format:

• hok00age@Laptop-Q:~$

The above bash prompt format can be divided into three parts:
1. The word "hok00age" is username who types the command.
2. The word "Laptop-Q" is the hostname of the computer.
3. The character "~" is the working directory of current shell.

Today, I'd like to show you how to change this bash prompt format into something like this:

• [08:47:50][hok00age]:~$

The first part of the above format "[08:47:50]" is the current time of the computer.

How to do that? Simply type the following command on currently opened Terminal:

• export PS1="[\t][\u]:\w\$ "

Please pay attention on the above command. The part who will become "current time" in bash prompt is "\t", "\u" will become username, and you can guess that "\w" will become working directory. The key of this trick is bash prompt special characters to display any information on the shell. You can see all of available special characters that can be used to modify bash prompt here.

Please note, that any modifications you've made only affect the currently active shell. In other words, if you open a new Terminal emulator window, bash prompt is still in Ubuntu default. To make it permanent, you have to edit ".bashrc" file located in home directory. Open it with your favorite text editor or simply type the following command:

• gedit ~/.bashrc

All you need to do is adding export PS1="[\t][\u]:\w\$ " line to the end of .bashrc file (see the figure below):

Now save the change and test it by opening new Terminal window.

Regards :)

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LibreOffice 3.5 Released

 

Document Foundation has announced today the release of its next major roll out of LibreOffice suite, version 3.5, calling it as "The best free office suite ever".


The new version boast to include many new improvements such as,

Installing LibreOffice 3.5 in Ubuntu

Careful users can wait for LibreOffice PPA to be updated and install the latest version through ubuntu update manager, while power and curious  users can download the latest version and install it right now using the following method.

• $ sudo apt-get remove libreoffice-core

Extract the downloaded archive and change to the DEBS directory containing the .deb installers. Issue the following command at the terminal

• $ sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Now change to the "desktop-integration" sub-directory in the DEBS 

•  $ sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Enjoy!

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Newbie Guide: How to Use PPA Purge

Have you ever upgraded an application via PPA that makes trouble? For example, upgrading Firefox that causes add-ons incompatibility and you want to have your "old" version back? If so, you are in the right place. Today, I'd like to write a post intended for newbie in Linux on how to use PPA Purge. What is PPA Purge? It's an application which lets you to downgrade your installed application to its "original" version from Ubuntu repository. It is like a first-aid-kit when you are going mad encountering many problems after upgrading application from PPA Launchpad.

Installing on Ubuntu
PPA Purge is available in official Ubuntu repository, so you can install it by typing the following command:

• sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

How To Use PPA Purge
For example, you've upgraded Mozilla Thunderbird from PPA with this command:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/thunderbird-next

To downgrade Mozilla Thunderbird from the above PPA, you should run this command:

• sudo ppa-purge ppa:mozillateam/thunderbird-next

PPA Purge will automatically remove Mozilla Thunderbird which is installed from PPA and then install the "original" version of Mozilla Thunderbird from Ubuntu repository.

"Unfortunately, I forget what PPA I've used to install the app?" Well, you should make use of "history" command on Terminal combined with "grep" function. Here's the example:

• history | grep add-apt-repository

The output of the above command is shown below

Now you have a comprehensive list of  "add-apt-repository" commands you've typed on Terminal. They can help you to remember what PPA you've used to install certain application.

Regards :)

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AirDroid: Access Your Android Phone From Ubuntu Linux

Android is one of many successful Linux innovations in the market. Built from versatile Linux kernel, Android phones are widely used nowadays and give freedom for its users and developers for creating many excellent applications such as AirDroid. AirDroid is a free application which lets you control and manage your Android devices wirelessly via web browser. Via web browser, huh? Yes, you can use many functions of Android devices from any operating system including Ubuntu. All you need is Android phone and a computer with a web browser in it.

OK! Let's jump into the river! First, install AirDroid to your Android device from Android Market. Once installed, go to the app and set the web (ip) address and port, also the password to connect then press Start to activate the service.

Once service have started, open your web browser and type the web (ip) address you've set on AirDroid application. You need to enter the password to connect.

Done! Once connected, you can do a lot of stuff there such as:
Files
Transfer files between Android devices and computers.
Cut, copy, paste, search, rename or delete files on the SD card.
SMS
Read, send, forward or delete SMS messages.
Applications
Install, uninstall, backup, search apps and do batch processing.
Photos
Preview, delete, import, export, set as wallpaper and photos slide show from desktop.
Clipboard
Share clipboard text between desktop and device.
Contacts
Group, search, create contacts, check and delete call logs.
Ringtones
Search, preview, import, export, delete and customize ringtones for phone calls, notifications and alarms.
Music
Play, search, import, export, delete, or set as phone call, notification and alarm ringtones.

For additional information, below is the AirDroid features walk through video:





via: MakeTechEasier

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Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix

Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix is a starting point for large-scale corporate desktop deployments. It is inspired by a review of common changes made by IT departments deploying Ubuntu at scale.


Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix is the newest enterprise ready spin of Ubuntu announced today by Mark Shuttleworth on his website.

Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix is built with enterprise oriented software such as VMWare, OpenJDk, Adobe Flash and getting rid with unnecessary software such as games, file sharing and social networking apps like Gwibber etc. The first release of Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix is based on 11.10 Onieric Ocelot. 

Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix is created for the purpose of Evaluation in Enterprise and Institutes. 

According to Mark Shuttleworth,

"This remix takes the most common changes we’ve observed among institutional users and bundles them into one CD which can be installed directly or used as a basis for further customization. Before anyone gets all worked up and conspiratorial: everything in the remix is available from the standard Software Centre.  Packages out, packages in. No secret sauce for customers only; we’re not creating a RHEL, we already have an enterprise-quality release cadence called LTS and we like it just the way it is. This is a convenience for anyone who wants it. Having a common starting point, or booting straight into a business-oriented image makes it easier for institutional users to evaluate Ubuntu Desktop for their specific needs."

Download of the remix image requires registration (because of EULAs). For more information head over to ubuntu.com/business/desktop/remix 

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Marlin File Browser

Marlin is a lightweight, sleek & fast GTK3 file manager for elementary OS. Marlin is designed with a focus on speed, simplicity, ease of use.

The interface is minimal as compared to Nautilus. Yet it does its job pretty well. The interface is divided into a left panel that provides fast access to bookmarks and common places, the right panel shows the preview for files and the middle window offers the file browsing.

Install Marlin from Marlin Daily PPA:

The “marlin-development” team created a ppa for daily build of Marlin and they publish packages for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise and 11.10 Oneiric. Run the following commands to add this ppa and install Marlin.

•         sudo add-apt-repository ppa:marlin-devs/marlin-daily

•         sudo apt-get update

•         sudo apt-get install marlin

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Opera Mobile for Ubuntu

Opera Mobile 11.5 is the latest version of Opera Software’s browser for mobiles and tablets. Its a touch friendly mobile browser for Tablets or Tablet PC computers, the Linux version  for the browser is originally released for Meego based Tablets and Tablet PCs.

Opera Mobile is Flash capable; comes with Opera Link – a bookmark/speed dial/notes synchronisation service -  and Opera Turbo – a web page compression service using Opera servers that reduces  bandwidth consumption by up to 80%. (So its a must have if you have slower Internet connections while roaming).

Apart from being touch friendly Opera Mobile 11.5 works smoothly with Mouse and keyboard unlike the version 11 of the Browser, you just need to change the user agent from Tablet to Desktop and disable the on screen keyboard in settings for better performance with mouse and keyboard.

Installing Opera Mobile 11.5 on your Ubuntu desktop.

Since the Linux version of Opera  Mobile is available in RPM package, you first need to download the alien and fakeroot utilities from apt repositories, to convert the rpm file into a deb installer.

• $ sudo apt-get install alien

• $ sudo apt-get install fakeroot

Once you are done with the above steps, you are ready to install Opera Mobile 11.5 on your Ubuntu desktop.

You can download the rpm package for Opera Mobile from here.
Change to the download directory, issue the following command to convert the rpm package into a deb installer.

•  $ fakeroot alien Opera_Mobile-Labs-MeeGo-11.50-39.i386.rpm

After a while, you will get the converted deb installer for installation.

• $ sudo dpkg -i opera-mobile-labs-meego_11.50-40_i386.deb

After a successful install you can find the Opera Mobile browser in the Internet section of your menu Items. 

Opera Mobile might not be a very great browser for day to day browsing on your laptop but it can serve you as a very handy tool while moving or traveling (with Opera Turbo enabled) with slower Internet connections.

Happy Browsing :)

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Trimble Yuma : A Military Standard Ubuntu Powered Tablet

“Our customers have told us that they need a rugged, military-grade, tablet computer running Linux. We are pleased to provide that option for them”, Todd Blumer

Once again Ubuntu was trusted by a large vendor to powered one of their products, recently you can find Trimble Yuma Tables Ubuntu edition.

Yesterday, SDG System announced the availability of Trimble Yuma tablet with preinstaled GNU/Linux OS (say Ubuntu). Trimble Yuma is rugged computer tablet which designed for use in an uncertain condition like extreme weather and even for war, which qualified U.S. military standards MIL-STD-810F. Although equipped with Ubuntu, you can meet geospatial applications like GRASS or Quantum GIS installed there.

Trimble Yuma Ubuntu Tablet Specs
Trimble Yuma tablets has following specifications :

• Processors : 1.6 GHz Intel® Atom processor .
• RAM : 1GB DDR2 RAM.
• Display : 7-inch sunlight-readable touchscreen display in a magnesium alloy shell.
• Connectifity : 802.11 b/g  Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS.
• 32 or 80 GB SSD (Additional expansion is provided by SDIO (SDHC) and ExpressCard slots) .
• IP67 rating. 
• Operating System : Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Netbook Edition.
• Accesories : 2 cameras 2MP and 1.3 MP with Geotagging,  Vehicle docking station.

Trimble Yuma was pegged at a price $3.695, very expansive price if compared with its specs, but if you have a plan to open twitter and facebook when you are in War this tablet may be an option :).

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DownVerter: Free YouTube Video Downloader and Converter

DownVerter is a free, fast, and easy-to-use YouTube video downloader and converter which can run on Windows, Linux, and Mac. It can convert YouTube videos to many video (and audio only) formats: MP3, AVI, 3GP, MP4, MOV, WMV for your handheld devices. It allows you to "download only" without converting too!

To download and convert YouTube video, all you need to do is follow the three easy steps. First, paste the video link in the given field, wait a moment until DownVerter displays the information of the video such as thumbnail, total views, available download quality, etc. Second, select your download and convert settings. You can set download quality, conversion format, conversion quality, video volume, and destination folder to save converted video. Third, simply hit the "Download & Convert" button and DownVerter will do the rest.

Installing on Ubuntu
Ubuntu users can install DownVerter by downloading the *.deb package here. It's available for 32bit and 64bit architectur. Once downloaded, type the following command to install:

• sudo dpkg -i downverter-32.deb

Change "downverter-32.deb" with the filename of downloaded file.

Once installed, DownVerter can be accessed from Internet section on Menu. Enjoy :)

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Mandriva ROSA Launcher for Kubuntu

Gone are the days of press to start pop-up or pop-down menu launchers for operating systems and desktop environments. Ubuntu have its very own Unity launcher with various lenses, Gnome 3 have Activities hot corner, Apple introduced Launchpad in OSX Lion to go with the trend and even Microsoft is planning to ditch the legendary "Start" menu in Windows 8. But in KDE we still have the same boring Press to start pop-up menu launcher.

Mandriva Linux might be a sinking ship for now but with their latest release in 2011, they have introduced an innovative and eye candy Menu Launcher called ROSA Launcher from Rosa Labs in Russia.

Rosa Launcher have 3 tabs just like the unity lenses, first one is a simple Welcome tab which shows recent applications, places and documents, the second tab has the Applications listed in categories, such as Internet, Office, Multimedia etc., and the third tab is more like the Zeitgeist Journal extension in Gnome 3 which shows the time line for documents and applications, you need to keep the Nepomuk file indexing enabled to use this feature.

Installation:

Now we will learn how to install the eye candy menu launcher from Rosa Labs in your Kubuntu installation.
You first need to download the deb file for the rosa-launcher, you can download the deb file from here.

Open the terminal, change to the download location and install the deb file as given in the commands below.

• $ cd Downloads

• $ sudo dpkg -i rosa-launcher_0.30.12-2_i386.deb

For me Rosa Launcher installed without any dependency problem in Kubuntu 11.10, if you face any dependency problem, then install the required packages from Ubuntu/Kubuntu apt repositories.

After the installation of Rosa Launcher, you need to install the plasmoid widget for the launcher to use it as an alternate to classic KDE launcher.

Download the zipped plasmoid widget file from here.

Installing the plasmoid widget:

Change to the Download directory, and install the plasmoid widget using the following command.

• $ plasmapkg -i  rosastarter.zip

After the successful installation of the Rosa Launcher plasmoid, the Rosa Launcher is ready to use from the add widget menu. Drag the widget to your desktop or taskbar and enjoy the eye candy launcher for KDE.

Troubleshooting:


Error: Installation of rosastarter.zip failed.
Solution: enable more verbose output from plasmapkg. Run kdebugdialog:

• kdebugdialog --fullmode

and enable the outputs for 1209 libplasma.

Error: Could not create a python scriptengine for "Rosa Launcher"
Solution: Install "plasma-scriptengine-python"

• $ sudo apt-get install plasma-scriptengine-python

You may additionally need to install "python-dev" package in case the error persist.

•  $ sudo apt-get install python-dev

Note: If the download links for the Rosa Launcher deb file and Rosa plasmoid widget do not work, you can download the files from the launchpad website as given below.

https://launchpad.net/mandriva-rosa/mandriva-rosa-launcher/mandriva-rosa

Enjoy!

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