Did you know that you can easily copy and paste text in Linux using your mouse alone?

Just highlight the text you want to copy and then middle click in the application where you want to paste it.

Remember that this step bypasses the clip board completely.

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You can always download your favorite Linux distribution from the Internet.
But what to do when you don't have an Internet connection or your existing connection is either too slow or too costly? Here, we give you a list some distribution vendors who will send you CDs or DVDs of their latest Linux version to you, absolutely free of cost!.

1. Ubuntu
   

   

   Ubuntu is the most user-friendly Linux OS out there, whose popularity is growing day by day. You can get a free CD of the desktop and Server edition of the latest Ubuntu distro shipped to your home (wherever it is, in this world) absolutely free of cost, through the Ubuntu Shipit program . All you have to do, is to create a free account at Launchpad and then use this link to get as many CDs as you want.

   
   
2. Fedora

   
   

   Fedora is a community supported, RedHat sponsored Linux distro. You can get a free DVD of fedora through the Free Media Program, which is a volunteer driven program that aims to distribute Fedora Core DVDs for free to individuals. Visit this link, and use the 'Request Form' to get yourself a DVD of the latest fedora.
   

3. Oracle Enterprise Linux

   
   

   Oracle is giving free media of their Linux distribution under the name 'Unbreakable Linux'. You need to visit this page and register with your shipping address. Oracle will send the 2 DVD set to this address.
   

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If you are asked a question like - How will you find whether the Linux distribution installed in a PC is Ubuntu or Fedora, what would be your answer?

Before answering something like Ubuntu is orange while fedora will look blue, remember that Linux is the most customizable operating system out there. You can modify the look and feel of the system to any extend, limited only by your imagination. You can make a Fedora installation look like Ubuntu and vice-versa.

How would you know what Linux distribution you are running?

Take a terminal and enter the below command:

lsb_release -a

(Note - You can use this command to know whether you have successfully updated to Ubuntu 8.04 or not after a system upgrade)



This will give you all information like the Distribution name, version, code name etc.

Note that this utility simply reads out the contents of the file /etc/lsb-release. So simply printing this file will also give the same information.



In case the above utility is not installed, try

cat /proc/version

which will give you the details of the installed kernel and the distribution name.

Happy Linuxing.

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The latest version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution code-named Hardy-Heron has been released.

Ubuntu is a distro that’s well known for its user-friendliness and simplicity. If you haven’t tried Ubuntu yet, get it here. You can even get a free CD shipped to you absolutely free of cost through the Ubuntu ship it program.

However, if tested out-of-the-box, Ubuntu is crippled on the multimedia front. This is because of copyright and patent restrictions that complicate distribution of proprietary codecs with Ubuntu, which prides itself as a totally free operating system.

Even though Ubuntu developers haven’t included proprietary codecs, they have made it extremely easy for you to install them later through the Medibuntu repository. You can get encrypted DVD playback, Adobe Flash plugin and non-native media files (Windows media, Apple QuickTime, Real, MP3) support by using this single command.

Take a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and enter the following command:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 w32codecs

The above command downloads all the required codecs from the Medibuntu repositories and makes your Ubuntu box multimedia ready.

Note: The above command is for 32 bit processors. AMD 64bit users, replace the ending word w32codecs with w64codecs. PPC users replace w32codecs with ppc-codecs.

Bonus Tip

Once you have run the above command, you can easily install third party applications like Skype, Google Earth and Acrobat Reader.

Skype:
sudo apt-get install skype

Google Earth:
sudo apt-get install googleearth-4.2

Adobe Acrobat Reader:
sudo apt-get install acroread

Happy Linuxing.

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If you have been an internet user for quite some time, you probably have heard about Twitter. "Twitter is another name for micro blogging". We had earlier helped you how to explain Twitter to your mom. Remember?

Twitter is too simple. You sign up, you tell what you are currently doing (known as tweeting), and you follow other interesting people's tweets.

And if you have been an internet user for quite some time, you probably have heard about Pidgin also.

Pidgin is an instant messaging program for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr.
Pidgin runs on a number of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and other UNIX operating systems.

So, instead of running gTalk, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger separately, you can have everything-in-one using Pidgin.

Now let's come to the main area of this post. Pidgin, like all IM clients allow you to set a status message - something like "I am currently busy" or "Checking out great tips from DailyGyan". Hey! wait. That's exactly what Twitter is for, right? Wouldn't it be cool if I can update my twitter status alone and then Pidgin retrieves and sets my tweet as the IM status automatically? Yes, it would be very cool and that's what we are going to do today.

1. Install Pidgin from here.
2. You need to have Perl installed for this to work. Most Linux distros come with Perl preinstalled. Windows users, download and install Perl from here.
3. Take a Command Prompt/Terminal and enter: perl -MCPAN -e shell (Linux users, add a sudo before this). In the CPAN prompt that you got now, enter install XML::XPath and hit enter. This will download and install the Xpath module from Internet.
   
4. If all goes well, launch Pidgin. Go to Help -> About and scroll to the bottom of the page. You should see a line : Perl: Enabled.
5. Download twitter.pl from http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-twitterstatus/downloads/list and put it into your Pidgin plugins folder. Usually the plugins folder is C:\Program Files\pidgin\plugins for Windows users and ~/.purple/plugins for Linux users.
6. Once you have put the file in place, restart Pidgin and go to Tools -> Plugins. There will be a new plugin named "Twitter Status Feed". Enable it and click on Configure Plugin. Enter your twitter user name in the dialog box that pops up.
7. Done. Soon you will find that your Pidgin status bar reads the same as your last Twitted message.

What other tips have you found about Twitter and Pidgin. Share it in the comments.

Happy Twittering.

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Well, Google didn't forget the Linux community this time. Google broke the old tradition of releasing software for Windows first, when a Linux version of Google Earth 4.3 (beta) was released together with the Windows and Mac versions. And as Amit puts it together, Google Earth 4.3 is a complete 'Wow!'

How to install Google Earth 4.3 beta in Linux?

Enter this command into a terminal and hit enter

wget http://dl.google.com/earth/client/current/GoogleEarthLinux.bin && chmod +x GoogleEarthLinux.bin && ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin

This downloads the Google Earth installer and starts the graphical installer. At those on a slow connection, the installer is about 19 MB in size.



Watch this eye popping video of new features in this release of Google earth and head over to gearthblog.com for a complete overview of the new features.

Direct Download Links for Google Earth 4.3

Linux version: http://earth.google.com/tour/thanks-linux4.html
Windows version: http://earth.google.com/tour/thanks-win4.html
Mac version: http://earth.google.com/tour/thanks-mac4.html

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Oh yes Linux sucks too hard.

from wallpaperweb.org

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The How-To Geek weblog recently made a post on creating desktop and keyboard shortcuts to eject your CD/DVD drive. Wow! this is so coool... I mean, I have been using Linux for a couple of years now. I have been using keyboard and desktop shortcuts to eject (and close) CD/DVD tray in my Ubuntu/Fedora box long back and never once realized that this was a hot blogable topic that could hit the front of lifehacker.
Me dump. Me idiot. Well, since How-To Geek doesn't appear to know about a stuff called "Linux", here goes my How-To on doing the same on Linux... Better late than never.

HowToGeek uses a piece of software from NirSoft to do the above said magic. Linux users might be a bit disappointed here, because they don't have to install another software to do this magic. ;)

Create a Shortcut to Eject the CD/DVD Drive

1. Right click anywhere on the desktop and select "Create Launcher..."
   
   
2. Enter the name as "Eject DVD" and command as "eject /dev/scd0"
   
   
3. Do you mind if I don't spoon feed you on getting a CD/DVD icon for your shortcut?
   

Create a Shortcut to Close the CD/DVD Drive

Same as above, except that the command is eject -t /dev/scd0

Assign a Hotkey to the Shortcut

Well, (unlike in Windows) you don't have to create a shortcut to have a Hot Key in Linux.

1. Hit Alt + F2. In the run dialog enter "gconf-editor" and hit enter.
   
2. Go to "apps" -> "metacity" -> "global_keybindings"
   
3. Double click on e.g. "run_command_1"
   
4. Type in <Control><Alt>c
   
5. Go to "apps" -> "metacity" -> "keybinding_commands"
   
6. Double click on e.g. "command_1"
   
7. Type in "eject /dev/scd0"
   

This creates a hot key - Control + Alt + c to eject your CD/DVD drive. Similarly create another hot key with run_command_2 = <Control><Alt>v and command_2 = eject -t /dev/scd0 which will eject your CD drive using Control + Alt + v.

Happy Ejecting.

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TrueCypt installer for Ubuntu sucks. What good is an installer which doesn't add a shortcut to the Gnome/KDE menus?
Well, we have covered the TrueCrypt experience in Ubuntu earlier. In the end we asked our readers to manually add a shortcut to "/usr/bin/truecrypt". To our horror we found that there is no png files installed, to set as an icon for the shortcut. And what good is a shortcut without an icon? :)
So I broke open the Windows TrueCrypt binary, extracted the icon and converted it into png.
Here it is.


Happy Encrypting.

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For all the (linux) micro blogging junkies out there, you can now post to Twitter using your terminal.

Just fire up your terminal and:

wget --delete-after --user=username --password=mysecretpassword --post-data status='your message here. and dont remove the quotes' http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

Dont forget to edit your user name, password and message body.
Happy (geeky) twittering.

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Our favorite disk encryption software TrueCrypt, have released a new stable version - TrueCrypt 5.0.
The new release contains highly demanded features like

• a GUI for linux
  
• Mac OS X version
  
• linux version of TrueCrypt is no longer affected by the changed in the kernel.
  
• faster read and write speed in Windows.
  
• and more
  

DailyGyan decided to take a ride of the new Linux GUI and downloaded version 5.0 from the TrueCrypt website [direct link]

Then we extracted the tar file :


and then we went into the extracted folder and installed the deb file:


When the installation completed, we couldn't find any menu entries that TrueCrypt made. Nevertheless, we hit Alt + F2, typed in truecrypt and hit enter.

The below GUI came up which looks very much similar to the one its Windows counterpart.


We decided to create a new encrypted volume and selected the "Create Volume" button. The wizard came up.


We decided to create a hidden volume. But oops...


OK, it isn't fair to ask for everything and the kitchen sink in the first release (btw kitchen sink is promised to come in a later release).

We went ahead a created a standard truecrypt volume. This worked smoothly. Mounting/ dismounting using the GUI is a breeze.
It automatically adds an icon to the tray.

Closing the application simply minimizes it to the tray (something that Rythmbox can learn from). Clicking the tray brings up the UI. Right clicking this menu icon brings up a nifty context menu with commonly used action items like Mounting and Dismounting. It also contain a preference option, which brings up the preference window. (Found a bug here - the X in the top right corner of the window wasn't closing the preference window. You have to select cancel for this. Are you finding this issue?)

However, the lack of a menu item to launch the application seemed a little bit frustrating. We would have liked it, if it launched itself on startup, add an icon to the tray and sat there silently. At last we found a way to do this. Just go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions and add a new startup program with the following command:

truecrypt --background-task

This runs TrueCrypt in the background mode each time you boot up. Happy encrypting.

Note: For the inquisitive, you will find a user's guide in /usr/share/truecrypt/doc

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One day a friend of mine, who was a recent convert to the Ubuntu world from Windows came to me, asking how he could make the Desktop icon in his home directory go away. There is no 'enable hidden file' check box in the properties, as one have in Windows and this simple issue was driving him mad. He couldn't simply delete it as it's an important folder for proper functioning of GNOME. However the solution was simple.

Method 1

Make a file named .hidden in the same directory where our to-be-hidden file/directory lies. In our case, we want to hide /home/friend/Desktop. So we make a file named .hidden (don't miss the dot in front of hidden) in /home/friend. Next we add the name of the file/directory to be hidden into the .hidden file, one name in each line. Since we wanted to hide only the Desktop directory, we add a single line: Desktop into it. This was the solution to my friends problem as he needed to hide a file without renaming it. However, if you have the freedom to rename the file, then below two methods will be easier than this one.

Method 2

Just rename the file/directory and prefix the name with a ' . ' (a dot). Files starting with a ' . ' are considered to be hidden files by linux.

Method 3

Rename the file/directory and add a ' ~ ' to the end. eg: if the file name was secretfile.mk the new name will be secretfile.mk~. Linux considers files ending in ~ as backup files and hence hides them.


Note: In some machines you need to refresh the GNOME file browser to see the effect.

Do not use above methods to protect confidential data, as the hidden files can be easily seen using View -> Show Hidden Files (Ctrl + H) in Nautilus and ls -a in a terminal.

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In case you are like me, you have experienced the violent urge to rip apart your computer cabinet and pull out that tiny internal speaker every time the Linux terminal/vi beeps at you. Tab beeps, backspace beeps, every stupid action in vi causes it to mock at you with that silly beep. Well it's time to show who is the real master.
In case you haven't noticed, the beep doesn't come from the system's big external speakers. It is from a speaker that is inside your cabinet which according to me should be used solely by BIOS. So today we are going to disable that little speaker.

Temporarily disabling the system beep

sudo rmmod pcspkr

For Debian/Ubuntu users open a terminal and run the above command. For CentOS/Redhat/RHEL/Fedora Linux log-in as root and then run rmmod pcspkr

Permanently disabling the system beep

For Debian/Ubuntu based systems :

sudo echo "blacklist pcspkr" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

For CentOS/Redhat/RHEL/Fedora Linux users, run

echo "alias pcspkr off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf

as root

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Did you know

• that you can jump to your home directory from any location by simply typing
  
  cd
  
  and pressing enter?
  
  
• that you can easily create backup of a file using
  
  cp /location/filename{,.bak}
  
  
  
• That you can copy and paste text in terminal using Ctrl + Shift + C and Ctrl + Shift + V?
  
  
• That you can search for previously typed command using Ctrl + R and typing the first few letters of the command?
  
  
• That you can see a list of all commands typed into terminal using the history command and clear it using history -c ?
  
  

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Want to extract the audio of your favorite musical video, but stuck because you use Linux? Just fire up the terminal and hit shmooze:

ffmpeg -i my_video_file.avi extracted_audio.mp3

Well, in the linux world, it's a pity if you don't give an alternate way to do stuff. So here it is:

mplayer -dumpaudio my_video_file.avi -dumpfile extracted_audio.mp3

This technique can be used to extract audio from AVI, MPG and FLV files.

Photo by Peter Fuchs

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