LinuxIdentity magazine - Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

4 Linux Identity Office
Editorial
C
omputing era in the 19th
century was dominated
just by 3 Operating Sys-
tems: Windows, Mac OS X and
Linux. I am not being biased
here by not including other Op-
erating Systems which made
significant changes to Personal
Computing, which is what we
now experience on our desk-
tops, laptops, netbooks and tab-
lets. OSes like DOS, Unix and others had their fair share
and without them we would probably not be using our
Linux, Windows and Mac OS X as we do now.
The success of Linux OS is all because of its Open
Source nature. One major factor resulting from its Open
nature is fragmentation, resulting in more number of Li-
nux distributions (distro) in the world today that you can
even think of. When fragmentation of Linux distributions
started many majors pitched in with their own special
crafted Linux distros, noticeable being Novell, Red Hat
and others. Most of these distros were released free but
were targeted towards enterprise computing and hence
their development and support were also targeted to-
wards them only.
Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu decided and
pitched in an area where no one really dared to tread
upon. Red Hat also tried to throw in a great distribution
as Fedora and active community support also backed it,
but most of activity of Fedora community for bug track-
ing and patching only benefit the next iteration of Red
Hat Linux for enterprises. As the tagline reads, Ubuntu is
really the “Linux for Human beings”. Probably 5-7 years
before, normal PC users were not much familiar with
Linux and the large number of choices they have with
Linux distributions. Ubuntu Linux made them aware that
Linux can in fact be a very useful, easy, attractive and
promising option for their computing needs. If you say
that Microsoft has done justice to personal computing
with Windows and Apple has done justice to design of
consumer electronics, then you would have to agree
that Ubuntu Linux has done the same needed justice to
the Linux community.
Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical and Ubuntu brought
the real openness in world of Linux distributions. Ubun-
tu today has pitched in the gap which fragmentation of
Linux distributions had created. If you want to go by the
stats, Ubuntu runs on the largest chunk of Linux boxes
in the world.
Still all these points may seem only as a pleading
to you all. So why exactly should you pick only Ubuntu
among 1000’s of other attractive and fancy Linux distri-
butions? I am trimming down a list of reasons for exactly
this purpose. Read them in any order you want and by
the time you finish the list, you would know why:
Ubuntu ships free promotional CDs/DVDs (totallyJJ
free of cost but may depend on availability and
purpose) and who doesn’t love freebies?
Ubuntu has the largest active developer and sup-JJ
port community among all the Linux distributions.
For an average user it means that many bugs are
detected and patched, even before you come to
know that they existed on your system. LTS (Long
Term Support) versions of Ubuntu are released ev-
ery 2 years and are supported for a longer time.
Stuck in a doubt about something in your LinuxJJ
distribution? Having problem with hardware driv-
ers? Want to install a software application that is
not available in the official repository of your Linux
distribution? You want to go fancy and do every-
thing the geeky way right from your terminal, but
couldn’t exactly remember that command to
achieve the task? For these and similar many oth-
er problems the official Ubuntu Forum comes to
rescue. It is the best supporting group of users
who help you out very fast with any doubt about
anything related to Ubuntu.
No one is born geek and I do know the pain of be-JJ
ing the first time “Moving from Windows to Linux”
user. I am not saying that using Windows makes
you dumb, but I would surely say that the users
who start their personal computing with Windows
go only Windows’ way. They face a hard time get-
ting used to do many things that could be easily
done right from the Linux terminal. I myself use
GUI and especially Gnome a lot as my primary
desktop but getting used to some 10-20 terminal
commands really makes most the tasks in your
daily computing a lot easier. And Gnome version of
Ubuntu provides the right blend of GUI and termi-
nal computing.
New Ubuntu versions come very frequent, packedJJ
with all the updated applications and integrating
all the requested features. Most noticeable prog-
ress that I have seen right from the time I am track-
ing new Ubuntu versions is that it is trying to move
towards the way where most of the mainstream
Why Ubuntu
when I have many other options?
Anurag
Upadhaya

personal computing is interested, ap-
pealing and streamlined UI with all the
fancy effects. Many people argue that
Ubuntu and similar distributions are
copying Mac OS X in visual UI. That is
not entirely true. Mac has really inspired
such effects but Ubuntu is trying to bring
it’s own flavors of such effects and UIs
and if supported on a decent hardware
configuration it surely looks amazing.
Ever saw jelly like bouncing Windows? :)
Ubuntu has been branched and craftedJJ
for nearly every specific type of work that
you intend to do with it or on every type
of device that you want it to run on. If you
are into post production of films, anima-
tion and music you have Ubuntu Studio.
If netbooks have caught your fancy of
late, you can install Ubuntu Netbook Edi-
tion. For students and educational pur-
poses you have Edubuntu. In fact there
are so many different lightweight distros
that are branched from Ubuntu and uses
its repositories for software applications
like Xubuntu, Crunchbang, Mint and so
on, that you are sure to find one Ubuntu
version specially crafted for your needs.
Also Ubuntu comes with option of using
every popular desktop environment like
Gnome, KDE, Xfce Fluxbox and others
which makes you feel at home.
Ubuntu has brought a whole new way ofJJ
commercialization and marketing for Li-
nux distributions. No longer is Linux OS
meant for geeks and remains just a plat-
form for study and demonstration in
schools. Enterprises are swiftly shifting to
Ubuntu and similar distributions for real-
time and resource hungry computations.
Major desktop and laptop manufacturers,
like DELL, are providing pre-installed
Ubuntu Linux as the Operating System
with their computers. Most of companies
and servers are shifting to Ubuntu Linux
because of the active support they get
from the Ubuntu community without even
paying a single penny for it, that is the
way Red Hat does its business.
I can go on and on about several such rea-
sons that have compelled me and other users
to opt for Ubuntu as the main (not alternative)
OS on their computers. In this issue we are
providing an in-depth review of the newest it-
eration of the Ubuntu OS i.e. Ubuntu 10.10
codenamed as Maverick Meerkat. Hope the
reviews provide a nice guide for the already
existing users and be an inspiration for the
users still unknown of the Ubuntu magic.
www.linuxidentity.com 5
Introduction
Summary
Difference between Ubuntu,
Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Mythbuntu
and Ubuntu Netbook Edition . . . . . . . 6
Anurag Upadhaya
Installing Ubuntu 10.10 . . . . . . . . . . 9
Anurag Upadhaya
What to do after you install Ubuntu? . . . 13
Radu Cotescu
Installing Multimedia Codecs
and Video Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Bhaskar Kandiyal
Personalizing the Desktop . . . . . . . . . 20
Bhaskar Kandiyal
How to backup your files . . . . . . . . . . 22
Tiago Boldt Sousa
Online file storage −
Dropbox vs. Ubuntu One . . . . . . . . . . 26
Radu Cotescu
Reading Windows files . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Tiago Boldt Sousa
Shotwell, the new photo manager
in Ubuntu 10.10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Guy Van Sanden
Security Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Bhaskar Kandiyal
Terminal Command Guide –
Network Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Bhaskar Kandiyal
FAQ’s And Where To Get Help . . . . . . . 41
Bhaskar Kandiyal

Ubuntu and its derivatives
M
aking decisions when you have
several options regarding to the
technology you can use, could be
a very tough task. Every smart device today
needs a customized OS to run upon, which
harness its resources efficiently and espe-
cially provides a UI which is adjusted to the
display that it supports. As we pointed out
earlier, Ubuntu has customized version for
most of the devices on which you perform
your computing. The officially supported ver-
sions of Ubuntu we are discussing here are
Ubuntu Server Edition, Kubuntu, Xubuntu,
Mythbuntu and Ubuntu Netbook Edition.
While there may be several differences
between different officially supported ver-
sions of Ubuntu, yet all of them share some
common similarities:
All the versions are primarily focusedJJ
to provide usability, ease of installation
and security on the devices they run.
All the versions use GNU GPL licenseJJ
and the packages in all of them are
based on packages from Debian’s un-
stable branch.
Canonical, the parent company behindJJ
Ubuntu, currently endorses and pro-
vides support for three additional
Ubuntu derived distros: Kubuntu,
Edubuntu and Ubuntu Server Edition.
All the new versions of Ubuntu are re-JJ
leased every six months and provide
support for next eighteen months by
providing security fixes, patches to crit-
ical bugs and upgrades to programs.
Long Term Support (LTS) versions are
released every two years, and are sup-
ported for three years on desktop and
five years for servers. The latest LTS
version of Ubuntu was 10.04 Lucid
Lynx, which was released on April 29th
2010. Ubuntu releases are generally
timed about one month after Gnome
releases, so every new version of
Ubuntu comes with an updated ver-
sion of both Gnome and X.org. Also
there are two Ubuntu releases per year,
using the year and month of the re-
lease as the version number. Ubuntu
releases are also given code names,
using an adjective and an animal (e.g.
Lucid Lynx and Maverick Meerkat).
All the official versions of Ubuntu in-JJ
clude the Live CD option with their in-
stallers, using which Ubuntu can be run
directly from the CD and allows a user
to test-drive the OS for hardware com-
patibility and driver support. All the ver-
sions include Ubiquity installer which
allows Ubuntu to be installed on the
hard disk from within the Live CD envi-
ronment, without the need for restart-
ing the computer prior to installation.
To install a specific version of UbuntuJJ
users can download a disk image (.iso)
(CD or DVD version), which can either be
Difference between
Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu,
Mythbuntu and Ubuntu
Netbook Edition
Anurag Upadhaya
Figure 1. Ubuntu Desktop

7www.linuxidentity.com/us/
written on CD or DVD. The CD
image includes the new hassle
free and interactive GUI install-
er and the DVD image contains
both the new and the older in-
staller and some additional in-
stallation options. Ubuntu Desk-
top Edition and Kubuntu can be
booted and run from a USB
Flash drive. The Live installer
CD of Ubuntu also includes an
option of Wubi. Wubi allows
Ubuntu to be installed and run
separately from Windows, with-
out the need to partition Win-
dows user’s hard drive.
Ubuntu Desktop and
Ubuntu Server Edition
The default Ubuntu version which
runs on most of the computers is
the Ubuntu Desktop edition. One of
the most stable and popular version
of Ubuntu is Ubuntu Server Edition,
whose development and bug tracking
goes along with Ubuntu Desktop Edi-
tion. Both these versions use Gnome
as the default desktop environment.
The desktop version of Ubuntu
currently supports Intel x86, AMD64
and ARM architectures. Minimum re-
quirements for Ubuntu Desktop and
Ubuntu Server Edition are presented
in Table 1.
Ubuntu Server is right blend of
easy integration, virtualization, secu-
rity and easy administration. Ubun-
tu Server mixes effortlessly with
Ubuntu, Windows or Mac OS X envi-
ronments. All clients can share au-
thentication, swap files and access
services, while Open LDAP, Likewise-
Open and PAM authentication come
as standard. You can virtualize your
server with Ubuntu Server and KVM.
You can use a lean version of Ubuntu
as a guest operating system for your
application and create virtual ma-
chine images in minutes. KVM, Xen,
VMWare and LXC are all supported.
You can build flexible computing en-
vironments in your own infrastruc-
ture with Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud
(UEC) or deploy to Amazon EC2 using
Ubuntu Server Edition images.
Kubuntu
Kubuntu is the Ubuntu with KDE as
the desktop environment. Kubuntu is
the best KDE Linux distro you can find
with all the flashy effects and KDE
software support. Kubuntu has the
KDE counterparts of applications that
you find on Gnome Ubuntu desktop.
You can find KDE kind of card,
board, logic, arcade and strategy
games like Klondike (Sol-
itaire), Spider, Breakout
and so on on a Kubuntu
machine. The Okular
reader in Kubuntu lets
you open ebooks, PDF,
PS, DVI and more docu-
ments out of the box.
Kubuntu comes pre-
installed with Konquer-
or, the KDE web brows-
er, but also comes along
the popular Firefox.
Kubuntu uses Kontact
as the email and contact manage-
ment program. For instant messag-
ing Kubuntu has Kopete, which lets
you chat with your friends over mul-
tiple networks and protocols, from a
single interface. Kubuntu’s default
music player is the popular Amarok.
Figure 2. Kubuntu Desktop
Table1. System Requirements
Figure 3. Xubuntu Desktop
Minimum
Requirements
Desktop Server
Processor
(x86)
300 MHz 1 GHz
Memory 128 MB 512 MB
Hard Drive
(free space)
1 GB 5 GB
Display
Resolution
640x480 1024x768

Xubuntu
Xubuntu is an official version of Ubun-
tu Linux that uses the Xfce desktop
environment. It is designed for low-
specification computers, and for lean
and minimalistic desktop lovers.
Butyoushouldnotunderestimate
the Xubuntu machine. It contains all
the applications you need − a web
browser, document and spreadsheet
editing software, instant messaging
and much more. Xubuntu contains
all the applications for your normal
day-to-day tasks. Xubuntu comes
with Firefox web browser, the light-
weight yet feature-rich Abiword for
all your word-processing needs, and
Gnumeric for the creation and ma-
nipulation of spreadsheets.
Mythbuntu
Mythbuntu is not exactly a separate
Ubuntu version rather an addon
over a standard Ubuntu installation.
Mythbuntu is an add-on for Ubuntu
focused upon setting up a stand-
alone MythTV based PVR system.
It can be used to prepare a stand-
alone system or for integration with
an existing MythTV network. Unlike
similar projects, Mythbuntu keeps
close ties with Ubuntu and all de-
velopment is given back to Ubuntu.
The development cycle of Mythbun-
tu closely follows that of Ubuntu, re-
leasing every six months along side
Ubuntu releases.
Mythbuntu uses the light-weight
Xfce desktop. All unnecessary stan-
dard Ubuntu applications such as
OpenOffice.org, Evolution, and a full
Gnome desktop are not installed in
a default Mythbuntu install. If at any
time a user wants to, they can install
ubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-desktop,
or xubuntu-desktop and add a full
desktop onto their installation. This
can easily be done via the Mythbun-
tu Control Centre.
The Mythbuntu Control Centre is
a custom GUI used to configure the
system. From here you can select
what kind of system (Backend, Fron-
tend or Both) you want. You can also
install different desktops such as
ubuntu-desktop and kubuntu-desk-
top. You can also install Plugins,
configure MySQL, set passwords, in-
stall proprietary drivers, proprietary
codecs, setup remote controls, and
a range of other features all from
one convenient program.
A Mythbuntu CD can also be used
as a live frontend. This comes handy
if you want to turn a laptop or desk-
top into a quick frontend or quickly
test hardware compatibility. The live
frontend provides a GUI to mount
network shares, configure a remote,
hostname, location of your master
backend and a place to save settings.
All settings can be saved directly back
to a flash drive for easy portability.
Ubuntu Netbook Edition
Ubuntu Netbook Edition brings all
the advantages of Ubuntu to your
netbook. Ubuntu Netbook Edition
(UNE), known as Ubuntu Netbook
Remix prior to the release of Ubuntu
10.04, is a version of the Ubuntu
distribution that has been optimized
to enable it to work better on net-
books and other devices with small
screens or with the Intel Atom com-
puter processor.
Ubuntu Netbook Edition de-
velopers continuously collaborate
with Moblin project (now known as
Meego) to ensure optimization for
lower hardware requirements and
longer battery life. But beginning
with version 10.10, Ubuntu Netbook
Edition uses the Unity desktop as its
desktop interface.
The minimum system require-
ments for UNE are: 1.6 GHz Intel
Atom processor, 512 MB RAM and
4GBofFlashdisk(SSD)orHarddisk.
The standard applications on UNE
include Firefox as the web browser,
Evolution for email, Empathy for IM,
Rhythmbox as media player, F-Spot
for viewing photos and OpenOffice.
org as the office suite.
Figure 4. Mythbuntu
Figure 5. Ubuntu Netbook Edition

Installation
I
n this article we will show step-by-step
procedure of installing Ubuntu 10.10 on
your desktop/laptop. For the installation
purpose we are using the official release
of Ubuntu 10.10 named ubuntu-10.10-
DVD you can find on DVD 1 attached to this
magazine. This DVD double sided contains
version i386 (32-bit) on side 1 and version
amd64 (64-bit) on side 2. This installation
will show how you can install Ubuntu 10.10
alongside your existing installation of Win-
dows or as the only OS on your computer.
Requirements
While many people take the minimum re-
quirements of their system for Ubuntu light-
ly, it may affect the performance of your in-
stallation considerably. Ubuntu 10.10 spe-
cifically demands that your computer must
have a minimum of 256 MB of RAM and 4.6
GB of free Hard Disk space for a success-
ful installation. But for a smoother perfor-
mance, we recommend you to install it on a
computer with at least 512 MB of RAM and
10 GB of free Hard Disk space.
Boot
Insert the double sided DVD in your desktop/
laptop and reboot. The computer should au-
tomatically boot from the DVD, if not, check
the setting on your computer to keep your
DVD drive as the first boot device.
This is the boot-screen that you will get
(Figure 1), confirming that your machine is
booting from the Ubuntu 10.10 installation
DVD. This is the place you can choose a lan-
guage of your installation. Take a look on the
bottom menu (Figure 2). You can change here
many preinstallation options using function
keys. The most popular are: [F2] – language
reselection and [F3] – keyboard layout selec-
tion. The most powerful options are available
through [F6]. These switches are advised to
be used only in a situation there are prob-
lems with your installation to start.
Try Ubuntu before you install
(Live CD)
As you can see, Ubuntu always gives you
an option to try out the latest build via Try
Ubuntu without installing option and test
system compatibility, before you are ready
Figure 2. Options on the installation DVD of Ubuntu 10.10
Figure 1. Boot screen of Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat
Installing Ubuntu
10.10
Anurag Upadhaya

Installation
to install it on your computer. While this op-
tion maybe a little sluggish in performance,
booting your system via Live CD/DVD and
checking for video performance and driv-
er compatibility is always recommended.
When you click on the Try Ubuntu without
installing option, your computer will restart
with loading the Ubuntu OS in your primary
memory (RAM) and you will get a desktop
like in the Figure 3.
Booting from Live CD/DVD option gives
you a shortcut on the desktop to install
Ubuntu 10.10. But the steps involved in in-
stalling Ubuntu by first booting through Live
CD and then going for installation on your
Hard Disk, are the same as you would get
when directly clicking on the Install Ubuntu
on the installation screen. We will be using
the second option i.e. directly booting from
the installation CD and then clicking on the
Install Ubuntu option on the installation
screen.
Prepare to Install
The Figure 4 gives you 3 important recom-
mendations.
That you must have 4.6 GB availableJJ
in your drive space.
That you are plugged into a powerJJ
source.
That you are connected to the inter-JJ
net.
While the first 2 recommendations are real-
ly needed, the third recommendation is not
necessary for a successful installation. You
only need to be connected to the internet
if you want to download additional codecs
and upgraded packages. One of the really
useful options you’ll get on the same screen
is to download and install the most impor-
tant MPEG Layer-3 decoder which is neces-
sary for playback of your MP3 files. Before
Ubuntu 10.04, users had to go through a lot
of pain in terminal to install the “restricted-
packages” in Ubuntu for MP3 codec, flash
plugin and such things. For the same rea-
son novice users used to complain a lot
about media support of Ubuntu distro. But
in Ubuntu 10.04 and in the latest Ubuntu
10.10 you just have to click on an option
in the installer to take care of such things.
That’s evolution.
Partitioning
The next screen (Figure 5) in installation
gives you three options for your Ubuntu in-
stallation.
Figure 3. Ubuntu 10.10 desktop, after booting through Live CD/DVD
Figure 4. Things to check before continue with installation of
Ubuntu 10.10
Figure 5. Partition options in Ubuntu 10.10

Installation
Install alongside other operating sys-JJ
tems – the installer will try to find a
free place on your Hard Disk. It’s so
smart it will also try to shrink existing
partitions (not filled with data) to re-
trieve a space for your new system. It’s
an automatic option – please double
check if you like the proposition of the
new partitioning scheme. You can
back to the previous step and define
partitions manually.
Erase and use entire diskJJ – fast and
easy. Your Ubuntu will fill up the select-
ed disk space. All existing partitions
and data will be lost.
Specify partitions manuallyJJ – we get a
handy partition manager to create and
specify different partitions needed to
install Ubuntu (Figure 6).
Two specific partitions that are necessary
for installation and smooth operation of
your Ubuntu OS are the “/” partition and a
“swap” partition. We recommend “/” parti-
tion to be at least 5 GB in size using the ext4
file system, while swap partition should just
be double the size of your RAM (but no more
than 2 GB).
While you can just move on with parti-
tion manager by just creating the “/” instal-
lation partition, creating a swap partition is
highly recommended. But Linux users al-
ways love modify their systems to suit their
exact needs and that is where the power of
a Linux distro like Ubuntu lies. To create a
new partition through the partition manag-
er, you can select your empty hard disk area
and click on the Add... button.
For instance, firstly to create a “/” parti-
tion, choose the partition type as “Primary”,
enter the size of the partition in MB, choose
the “Ext4 file system” in “Use as” and
choose “/” in the “Mount Point” drop-down
list (Figure 7).
Likewise to create a Swap partition,
choose either “Primary” or “Logical” as the
partition type, but logical is recommended
(we have explained later why), enter the par-
tition size in MB, select “swap area” in “Use
as” and the “Mount point” will be disabled
automatically.
You can create a “/” partition for instal-
lation and a “swap” partition to act as the
virtual RAM (Figure 9 – /dev/sda1 repre-
sents a Windows partition).
If you decide to mount and keep all users’
data safe, you can even create a separate
partition and mount as “/home”. Similarly
to keep your variable data like man pages,
Figure 6. Manually creating partitions
Figure 7. Creating a partition with “Ext4 file system”
Figure 8. Creating a swap partition
Figure 9. Essential partitions

Installation
databases, mail archives, logs and others on
a separate partition, you can create a sepa-
rate “/var” partition. This lets the users cus-
tomize their Linux box to their exact needs. A
user wanting to use Ubuntu installation as a
media server can make “/” partition to take
most of the available hard disk space and
leaving rest for the system to work.
While you can go ahead and make all the
customized partitions like “/home”, “swap”,
“/var” and so on as Primary, but there lies
the catch. You cannot have more than 4 ac-
tive Primary partitions in your system. So
we have a tip for you: “/” is the only parti-
tion you need to create as Primary partition,
while the rest like “swap”, “/home” and oth-
ers can be safely made as “Logical”. This
lets you create any number of customized
partitions for your Ubuntu installation.
You can either choose to install the boot
loader on your Windows partition or on your
Ubuntu“/”partition.Inmostcasesit’sadvised
to stay with the first system disk selected.
When you finished with partitioning, and
you are sure the final schema is the one
you want to copy to your hard drive – please
push Install Now button. It’s a very impor-
tant moment, as this step cannot be can-
celed nor undone.
Selecting Locale
and Keyboard Layout
After creating and selecting the partition,
you get the next screen to select your lo-
cale, which is automatically detected right
in most of the cases.
The next screen (Figure 11) just gives
you option to select and figure out your key-
board layout. In most of the cases, the de-
fault should be selected.
Choosing Username
and Logging Options
The last choice screen in the installer if for
you to enter your full name, your desired
username and password. You can also
make some optional choices like logging in
automatically with a password and encrypt-
ing your home folder.
Now you can go to sip a hot cup of cof-
fee and munch a couple of sandwiches,
because installation takes a while to com-
plete. By the time your return, installation
must have completed and you will get a
prompt that “installation is completed” and
you need to reboot your computer.
That’s it. After reboot, you will get your
sweet and clean desktop of Ubuntu 10.10
Maverick Meerkat. Enjoy!
Figure 10. Selecting time zone
Figure 11. Selecting keyboard layout
Figure 12. Username and Logging options

Your first steps with Ubuntu
I
nstalling Ubuntu probably did not take
you more than 20 minutes. And keep in
mind that after just 20 minutes of wait-
ing you have a complete software stack with
which you can already start to work. If you
are a new user (let’s say from 0 to 2 weeks
of experience with Ubuntu), and especially
if you haven’t used a Linux distribution until
now, you might want to get accustomed to
your new operating system before you start
to use it for production outcomes.
Read the manual
The previous release of Ubuntu was the first
one to be accompanied by a community
written manual. The idea belonged to Ben-
jamin Humphrey who actually is the Team
Lead for this project. Because the manual
is a 100% community project it means that
the book was written by Ubuntu users and
not developers or technical writers. There-
fore there is very little technical jargon used.
The emphasis was actually put on ease of
use and easy comprehension of work flows
since the manual’s purpose is to teach new
Ubuntu users how to use their system, how
to manage it and how to get things done
more productively and efficiently.
If you ever find yourself in difficulties try-
ing to use Ubuntu the manual might help
you, although Ubuntu has a pretty intuitive
user interface. The manual’s home page is
at http://ubuntu-manual.org/
15 easy steps
Step 1. Enabling the all the available
software repositories
By now you probably already know what re-
positories are for, what they do specifically and
how you can use them. Most of the Ubuntu
users enable additional repositories in order
to be able to install a multitude of applica-
tions that are not supported by Canonical but
which work flawlessly on Ubuntu. By default
an Ubuntu machine will only use the main and
universe repositories. If an user wants to use
proprietary drivers for devices (e.g. graphics
cards) or software which is restricted by copy-
right or legal issues, then the restricted and
multiverse repositories must be enabled. To
do this, you would have to launch “Software
Sources” from System −> Administration. If
the “Software Sources” menu entry doesn’t
appear on your menu you can either enable it
(from System −> Preferences −> Main Menu)
or you can launch the “Synaptic Package Man-
ager” from System −> Administration and from
“Synaptic” select Settings −> Repositories.
It’s also a good idea to enable the part-
ner repositories for packages related to
Java, Adobe, etc. To do this click on the
“Other Software” tab from the “Software
Sources” window and just check the addi-
tional repositories.
Step 2. Assure that you are running the
best driver for your graphics card
Ubuntu will not have a problem running on your
PC using a default video driver implementation.
Though you should know that this will not of-
fer the best performance your graphics card is
capable of. Ubuntu will warn you if proprietary
drivers are available and will let you take the de-
cision of using only open-source drivers or mix-
ing the best of both worlds: proprietary drivers
for best performance with open-source compo-
nents for maximum control and flexibility.
What to do after
you install Ubuntu?
Radu Cotescu
Figure 1. Ubuntu’s Software Sources (enabled reposi-
tories)

To check if there are proprietary
drivers available for your card you can
go to System −> Administration −>
Additional drivers. This will perform a
search for better drivers and will let
you know what are your options.
Running a proprietary driver will
allow you to use desktop effects
(e.g. compiz), play graphics inten-
sive games without glitches or de-
coding High Definition content us-
ing only your graphics card instead
of your computer’s processor for a
smoother, more vivid experience.
Step 3. Enable desktop effects
for some eye-candy but also
added functionality
Ubuntu ships by default with Compiz
installed, although it’s not enabled
from the beginning. Turning Compiz on
requires that your graphics card is able
to handle the effects. To enable it and
also to check if your graphics card is
up to the task, simply go to System −>
Preferences −> Appearance and
switch to the “Visual Effects” tab. Here
you will have three levels of settings.
Choose the one that fits you best.
For controlling what Compiz should
be able to do, you would have to in-
stall the “Advanced Desktop Effects
Settings” package, which is actually
named ccsm. After you perform this
step you will find the effects manager
by going to System −> Preferences −>
CompizConfig Settings Manager.
Step 4. Improve your desktop
space
Have you ever fancied the Mac OS X
dock? Not only that it looks nice but it
also improves productivity and reduc-
es the desktop clutter. By not having
to use another panel just to see the
opened windows with their full title
displayed you actually gain a lot more
space to launch more applications
while still being able to switch through
them using their own launchers.
Ubuntu has the chance of having at
least three docking applications: AWN
(Avant Window Navigator – avant-win-
dow-navigator), GNOME Do (gnome-do)
and Cairo (cairo-dock). Try all of them,
but no simultaneously, and choose the
one that you like best. The author of
this article is an avid AWN fan.
Step 5. Let the music play
Ubuntu won’t include by default co-
decs for the famous mp3 format, the
newer mp4 and many others. This is
because of licensing issues. Instead
Canonical relies on the Ubuntu us-
ers to take the decision of using unli-
censed codecs according to the coun-
try laws in which they live. Installing
these is a child’s play: look for the
package ubuntu-restricted-extras and
all the gstreamer based packages.
Step 6. Web compatibility
Although you won’t have any problems
browsing the web with Ubuntu, sites
might appear different to you than
what you were used to. This is because
of the fonts that come with Ubuntu.
Since the majority of websites out
there make heavy usage of the fonts
usually found on a Windows box, it’s
better to have those fonts too. There is
a package for this: msttcorefonts.
Step 7. Let your video card to the
hard work (only for NVIDIA cards)
High Definition content is start-
ing to appear all over. Because of
Figure 2. Additional Drivers Figure 3. Visual Effects preferences
Figure 4. Avant Window Navigator
Figure 5. Gnome DO with Docky (plug-in)
Figure 6. Cairo

Introduction

the high processing bandwidth
required for decoding this kind of
content, some of the PC proces-
sors might be a bit slow in doing
this while your graphics card has
nothing to do. For NVIDIA graphics
cards there’s an API called VDPAU
(Video Decode and Presentation
API for Unix) which can be used to
decode HD content using the mul-
tiple pipelines architectures of the
newer models. This means almost
no CPU load while the graphics
card is barely put to work.
In order to be able to enjoy
graphics card HD decoded content,
not only that you have to own one of
the supported models, but you also
have to run some special drivers
and use media players that know
how to use this feature.
There are two PPAs on Launch-
pad which provide the most up-to-
date drivers for NVIDIA and a recent
version of the MPlayer media player.
To add these PPAs to your software
sources list just open a terminal and
write these commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ↵
ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/ ↵
mplayer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia- ↵
graphics-drivers nvidia- ↵
settings mplayer
Step 8. Cannot live without
Adobe Acrobat Reader?
Adobe’s Acrobat Reader is avail-
able in the partner repositories.
The package name is acroread and
you would have to install it either by
using the terminal (sudo apt-get
install acroread) either by using
Synaptic.
Step 9. Archiving tools
Since there are a lot of archiving
formats used out there it’s not bad
to have support for the most com-
mon ones. Although you won’t have
a problem with .zip and all the other
Linux popular formats, Ubuntu still
lacks default .rar and .7z support.
This can be added in no time:
sudo apt-get install rar unrar ↵
p7zip p7zip-full
Step 10. Watching DVDs
Due to licensing problems, again,
Ubuntu cannot play DVDs by default.
Many commercial DVDs are encrypted
in order not to allow playing them on
unauthorized units. For a Linux user in
general, and for an Ubuntu user in par-
ticular, this means that some software
decryption must be done. Unfortu-
nately, this is not legal in all countries.
So to play it safe Canonical decided
not to add DVD support by default.
Installing the libraries needed
for DVD decryption is a thing that
is left at the user’s discretion. Two
packages are required for the job:
libdvdnav4 and libdvdread4.
After installing the previous men-
tioned packages a script has to be run
to install the keys used for decryption:
sudo /usr/share/doc/ ↵
libdvdread4/install-css.sh
Now it’s just a matter of choosing
the preferred multi-media player.
Step 11. Enjoy free internet
video calls with Skype
Skype is one of the most known pro-
grams for VoIP or video calls. Although
the client that runs on Linux machines
isn’t as feature full as the Windows
one, you do have the basic set of
features needed for performing one-
to-one video calls or conference-type
audio calls. Skype cannot be found in
any of the Ubuntu repositories, but a
.deb package can be downloaded from
http://www.skype.com/go/download
Step 12. Virtualization
From time to time you might want to
test other operating systems or you
might even want to have a special
development machine which is sand-
boxed so that your physical machine
won’t get affected in any way. This
is usually obtained with the help of
virtual machines. There are a lot of
hypervisors available (a good article
on the subject has been published in
Linux Identity Starter, Volume Two,
Number Two). Out of all, the easiest
one to use is by far VirtualBox.
There are two versions of Virtual-
Box available, depending on what you
Figure 7. Skype application
on Ubuntu
Figure 8. VirtualBox

would like to use. The open source edi-
tion doesn’t contain all the features
the proprietary one does, but it’s free
to use in any kind of environment. In-
stead, the proprietary version can be
used without any restrictions as long
as this is done for personal use.
To install the proprietary version
just add the VirtuaBox repositories
to your Ubuntu repositories lists by
editing the /etc/apt/sources.list and
adding the following line at the end:
deb http://download.virtualbox. ↵
org/virtualbox/debian ↵
maverick non-free
Because the repository uses a public
key authentication mechanism, the
key has to be added as well. In a ter-
minal run the following command:
wget-qhttp://download.virtualbox.↵
org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_ ↵
vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key ↵
add -
All you have to do now is to install
VirtualBox:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ↵
virtualbox-3.2
Step 13. Configure the firewall
Every Linux distribution has all the
ports closed by default, protecting
itself this way against all kind of
network attacks. If iptables is not
your way of getting things done
(although you should know that
iptables is the most used tool to
configure the firewall on Linux)
then you’re lucky that ufw (Uncom-
plicated Firewall) is installed by
default and that it also has a nice
GUI, called gufw, which has to be
installed separately, though.
To do this either search for the
gufw package in whatever GUI pack-
age management tool you want, ei-
ther use the apt-get command in a
terminal:
sudo apt-get install gufw
Step 14. One more step towards
increased productivity
The common application menu has
been a much discussed topic for
this Ubuntu release but it was only
implemented for the netbook edition.
Still, this can be added very easy to
your regular desktop edition. The pro-
gram used for this is called Gnome
Global Menu and it represents an
applet which can be added to the
top panel. This applet manages to
display the menu of the focused ap-
plication as long as the application
implements a GTK+ user interface.
There are some exceptions, though:
Firefox, Thunderbird, VirtualBox and
all the OpenOffice.org suite use Qt for
the GUI. Unfortunately Gnome Global
Menu cannot bind the Qt menus so
for these applications you won’t no-
tice any improvement.
The Gnome Global Menu team
hasn’t yet created a repository spe-
cifically for Ubuntu 10.10 but the
one for Ubuntu 10.04 can be used
without a problem. Open your /etc/
apt/sources.list file and add the fol-
lowing lines at the end:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ ↵
globalmenu-team/ppa/ubuntu ↵
lucid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad. ↵
net/globalmenu-team/ppa/ ↵
ubuntu lucid main
Then issue these commands in the
terminal:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-
globalmenu
To use the Global Menu you would
now have to add its applet to the top
panel. Right click on your top panel
and then click on Add to Panel... Se-
lect the “Global Menu Panel Applet”
and add it to the panel.
After a log out and a log in you
will be able to customize the ap-
plet’s settings.
Step 15. Clouds
Don’t forget about the Online stor-
age − Dropbox vs. Ubuntu One ar-
ticle. Have you made your choice?
Now it’s the time.
Don’t forget!
Ubuntu’s repositories host tens of
thousandsofapplicationswhichmost-
ly are at a click away. Experiment, try,
play with and enjoy. Do not be afraid to
test as many applications as possible.
This article intended only to guide you
through your first steps with Ubuntu
as the list of instructions or applica-
tions which have been showcased is
far from being comprehensive.
Figure 9. UFW graphical user in-
terface
Figure 10. Global Menu showing GEdit’s menu opened

Multimedia codecs and video drivers
U
buntu requires installation of multi-
media codecs for being able to play
some proprietary audio/video for-
mats like MP3 and AVI files. Also, if you have
a dedicated graphics card installed on your
system from ATI or NVIDIA, you will have to
install it’s drivers to utilize the full capabili-
ties of your graphics card like 3D rendering,
hardware acceleration etc.
Installing Multimedia Codecs
There are a lot of video and audio formats
available, some of these formats are propri-
etary formats which cannot be included by
default into Ubuntu. So, if you wish to play
any of these proprietary formats like MP3
and FLV (Flash Video) files, you will need to
install some multimedia codecs that will al-
low you to play these files.
The Ubuntu Restricted Extras package
will provide MP3 playback and support for
various other audio formats and also DVD
playback. Apart from that, this package will
also install some extra packages like Java,
Flash player and Microsoft fonts.
To install Ubuntu Restricted Extras pack-
age, you will need to enable the Multiverse re-
pository which contains all the software which
is restricted by copyright or legal issues.
For enabling the Ubuntu multiverse re-
pository, open System −> Administration
−> Software Sources and put a check-mark
next to the line containing multiverse.
After enabling the multiverse repository,
you will need to open up the Ubuntu Soft-
ware Center (Applications −> Ubuntu Soft-
ware Center) and then search for and install
Ubuntu Restricted Extras package.
Medibuntu
Please note that the restricted extras package
will not provide support for playing encrypted
DVDs and also it won’t include some codecs
which require for purchasing of a license to
use, like DivX, QuickTime etc. The license
issues are dependent on the country where
you’re residing, so, if your country’s laws al-
low you to use these codecs then you can in-
stall them via the Medibuntu repository.
Medibuntu is short for Multimedia, Enter-
tainment & Distractions In Ubuntu. This re-
pository is not supported in any way by Ubuntu
and is only provided for people living in places
where they can legally use the software that is
in the repository. For more information, please
visit http://www.medibuntu.org/
To enable the Medibuntu repository you
will need to add it to the Software Sources
(System −> Administration −> Software
Sources). In the Software Sources window,
click on the Other Sources tab and then
click Add at the bottom. In the new dialog
that pops up, input the following line (only
for Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat): deb http://
packages.medibuntu.org/ maverick free
non-free and then click Add Source to add
it to the source list.
Finally, hit the close button in the Soft-
ware Sources window and you will be prompt-
ed to reload the software list, just click on
Reload. Don’t worry about getting a GPG er-
Installing Multimedia
Codecs and Video Drivers
Bhaskar Kandiyal
Figure 1. Enabling The Multiverse Repository

Multimedia codecs and video drivers
ror at the end, we will fix that. After
your sources have been reloaded,
open up a terminal and then enter
sudo apt-get install medibuntu-
keyring when prompted select y for
yes and press [Enter]. When installa-
tion is done run sudo apt-get upda-
te and then sudo apt-get install
non-free-codecs This will install all
the non-free-codecs available in the
Medibuntu repository.
Note: Please make sure that
you can legally use the software
in your country before installing.
Installing Video Drivers
If you have a dedicated graphics card
installed on your system then you will
probably want to utilize its full poten-
tial in Ubuntu by using OpenGL and
hardware acceleration. For installing
video drivers, please check that in
System −> Administraion −> Software
Sources, the checkbox next to Propri-
etary Drivers For Devices is checked.
Once you have made sure that
it’s checked, goto the Ubuntu Soft-
ware Center and then search in the
search box by the name of the man-
ufacturer of your graphics card, i.e.
either ATI or NVIDIA.
In the search results, select which
driver you wish to install, and press
the Install button to begin the instal-
lation. After the installation finishes,
you will need to reboot the system.
After the reboot, you can see
if the driver is loaded and working
properly by going to System −> Ad-
ministration −> Additional Drivers.
Manually Installing Video Drivers
In Ubuntu the video drivers packages
in the repositories are not updated as
frequently as they are updated by the
manufacturer. So, if you wish to install
the newest drivers, you will probably
have to download the drivers for Linux
from the manufacturer’s website and
install them manually. There’s a bit
of terminal work here and also these
drivers can have some issues if they
are not properly installed and they’re
not tested by Ubuntu. So, before con-
tinuing, be sure to remove any previ-
ous video drivers that were installed
(by going to System −> Administra-
tion −> Additional Drivers).
First of all, download the latest
drivers for Linux from your manu-
facturer’s website and save them
to your home directory for easy ac-
cess later. Once it’s done, you will
need to stop X and start a tty. To
do this, press [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [F2]
and enter your username and
password.
Then disable X by running sudo
service gdm stop Now you need to
install some extra packages, first of
all sudo apt-get install linux-
header-`uname -r` and sudo apt-
get install nvidia-settings (Only
for NVIDIA drivers).
Once the above has been in-
stalled, you need to run the file that
you downloaded by entering: sudo
sh ./filename Where the filename
is the name of the file you down-
loaded from your Graph-
ics card manufacturer’s
website. For NVIDIA, the
filename would be like
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-ver-
sion-pkg1.run and for ATI
it would be like ati-driver-
installer-<version>-x86.
x86_64.run. Once the
file is running just follow
the on-screen prompts
to install the driver.
When the installa-
tion is complete, you
will need to restart your
computer, run sudo ser-
vice gdm start and
then restart the comput-
er. That’s it, the driver
will now be loaded when
you reboot!
If you wish to change the settings
of your driver later, you can goto Sys-
tem −> Administration −> NVIDIA
Settings Manager or for ATI Radeon
Application −> Other −> ATI Cata-
lyst Control Center to change them.
Conclusion
Installation of multimedia codecs
and video drivers on Ubuntu has
been made very easy. Ubuntu pro-
vides tools like Jockey to handle the
automatic detection of drivers and
providing a simple one-click way of
installing them.
Further Reading
https://help.ubuntu.com/com-JJ
munity/RestrictedFormats
https://help.ubuntu.com/com-JJ
munity/BinaryDriverHowto
Figure 2. Installing NVIDIA Driver from Ubuntu Software Center
Figure 3. NVIDIA Driver Running on Ubuntu
10.10

Efficient Ubuntu Desktop
E
veryone has different tastes, likes or
dislikes when it comes to having a
customized desktop. There are peo-
ple who want to customize every aspect of
their desktop and there are others who are
simply happy with a minimal desktop that is
pleasing to the eye.
Ubuntu offers full customization options
to the user to personalize every aspect of their
desktop, it also makes it easier for a novice
user to customize his desktop to his liking.
Ubuntu not only allows a user to do ba-
sic personalization tasks like changing the
wallpaper, adding/removing shortcuts/
launchers from the desktop, but also allows
for changing their desktop theme as well as
icons. You can also change the appearance
of the titlebar of windows with themes that
can be downloaded freely.
Changing the Desktop
Background
A wallpaper is an image that is shown in
the background of the desktop. The im-
age is usually the size of the resolution
that your monitor is using e.g: 800x600,
1024x768 etc.
By default Ubuntu 10.10 has a very nice
purple background/wallpaper that suits the
whole desktop really well. It’s very easy to
change the default background image of a
desktop. Just right click on the desktop and
choose Change Desktop Background and a
window will open up showing all the default
wallpapers that are installed on the system.
On Ubuntu 10.10 there are some back-
ground images that are installed by default,
you can either choose one of them to be
your desktop background or you can choose
one of your own. To add your own image to
the list of background images, just click on
the Add button and then navigate to your
image and click Open.
Changing and Customizing
Themes
A theme can be used to change the whole
appearance of a desktop. It can contain col-
or-schemes that are to be applied to differ-
ent places in the desktop like buttons, text
etc. Appearance of window borders or title
bars can also be changed using themes.
There is a set of default themes installed
with Ubuntu 10.10 which can be set easily
with just a few clicks. Just go to System −>
Preferences −> Appearance and a window
will pop up with a list of installed themes.
If you have multiple themes installed, you
can mix and match a themes components, like
having colors of a different theme and window
border and icons of another theme.
To customize the themes, just
click on the Customize button in
the Themes tab of Appearance
Preferences window.
There are several tabs in the
Customize Theme dialog where you
can choose different components
that you wish to customize, like Con-
trols, Colors, Window Borders, Icons
and mouse pointers.
Visual Effects
Ubuntu offers the ability to use desk-
top effects on your desktop. Desktop
effects are animations that appear
on certain events like when a window
Personalizing
the Desktop
Bhaskar Kandiyal
Figure 1. Default Ubuntu Desktop

Efficient Ubuntu Desktop
is maximized or minimized or
closed.
Desktop effects are
pleasing to the eye and also
can enhance usability of the
desktop by providing window
previews and window-snap
features. Some features like
these have to be enabled by
the user by installing an ap-
plication called Compiz Con-
fig Settings Manager.
Note: Enabling visual ef-
fects requires that you
have drivers for your graphics
card installed and that you have
a powerful enough graphics card
to handle all the effects and ani-
mations. If things become slug-
gish or slow after enabling ef-
fects, then your graphics card is
not powerful enough and you’re
better off disabling them.
To enable desktop effects, just
go to System −> Preferences −>
Appearance and click on the Vi-
sual Effects tab. Now you can
select the type of effects you
want.
Selecting None will disable
the effects, Normal provides a
balance between performance
and attractiveness and Extra
will enable a lot of effects and
will require a fast graphics card.
The Visual Effects tab pro-
vides some pre-configured
set of effects when you select
the Normal or Extra options.
These effects can be custom-
ized by installing (as previously
stated) an application called
Compiz Config Settings Man-
ager (CCSM) from the Ubuntu
Software Center. CCSM can be
used to endlessly configure and
customize all the effects that
are installed on your system.
There are more effects
that can be installed on your
system by installing the pack-
age compiz-plugins and com-
piz-fusion-plugins-extra. This
provides many more effects
and settings that can be con-
figured easily using CCSM.
To start CCSM, goto Set-
tings −> Preferences −> Com-
piz Config Settings Manager
or press [Alt] + [F2] and type in
ccsm. Once it’s open you can
change some general settings
like the number of workspac-
es or virtual desktops etc. Also
if you wish to enable a plugin
just click the checkbox next to
the plugins name.
References
To download themes, icons,
wallpapers for Ubuntu, you
can go to http://www.gnome-
look.org/; also, to download
more plugins, themes etc. for
Compiz, visit http://www.com-
piz-themes.org/
Figure 2. Default Ubuntu 10.10 Wallpapers Figure 3. Theme Selection Dialog
Figure 5. Visual Effects Settings
Figure 4. Customizing Themes

Backup
A
ccording to Wikipedia, “In information
technology, a backup or the process
of backing up refers to making copies
of data so that these additional copies may
be used to restore the original after a data
loss event. “. Data loss can be of several
types such as intentional, unintentional,
failures, disasters, crime and so on. Studies
have consistently shown hardware failure
and human error to be two most common
causes of data loss, accounting for roughly
three quarters of all incidents.
Most of the times, people only notice that
they should have backed up their data only
after they lose important information. This
article helps you acknowledge such dangers
and help preventing data loss by learning
how to properly safeguard your information
using several different approaches.
In order to back up your data the first
thing you need is storage space. As you
know, there are many ways to obtain storage
space and depending on the type of storage
you have, you can also do your backups dif-
ferently. Storage can be from the web, an-
other computer, an optical disc, a portable
disc or even a second disc in the same com-
puter. Do note that backing up your informa-
tion to where everyone can read your files
might put your privacy into risk.
There are many ways to save your data.
One is to back up your entire data and tag
that backup with its date. This way you can
keep creating new complete backups with
new dates, allowing you to later browse them
and being able to revert or recover your data
to any chosen date. Another way is to keep a
duplicate of your current files. This is a sim-
pler option, still allowing you to recover from
data loss. Although, this second technique will
delete files that you also delete in your main
storage. You can only recover an exact copy of
the last backup, there will be no history.
Bellow you’ll find some of the many
available tools and techniques. Consider
combining these tools and techniques, al-
lowing multiple backups into multiple dif-
ferent storages. As said, it’s always good to
duplicate your information to more than one
place, you’re never too safe.
The best advice anyone can give you re-
lated to backing up your information is that
the more important you find the data inside
your computer, the greater is the need for
backing up this data. While thinking about
backups, always consider:
A backup is only as useful as its asso-JJ
ciated restore strategy. For critical sys-
tems and data, the restoration process
must be tested.
Storing the copy near the original isJJ
unwise, since many disasters such as
fire, flood, theft, and electrical surges
are likely to cause damage to the
backup at the same time. In these
cases, both the original and the back-
up medium are likely to be lost.
Automated backup and schedulingJJ
should be considered, as manual
How to backup
your files
Tiago Boldt Sousa
Figure 1. Choosing files to backup

Backup
backups can be affected by
human error.
Backups can fail for a wide va-JJ
riety of reasons. A verification
or monitoring strategy is an
important part of a successful
backup plan.
Multiple backups on differentJJ
media, stored in different loca-
tions, must be used for all criti-
cal information.
Backed up archives should beJJ
stored in open and standard
formats, especially when the
goal is long-term archiving. Re-
covery software and process-
es may have changed, and
software may not be available
to restore data saved in propri-
etary formats.
Manual Backup
This method is common among
many. It consists in manually copy-
ing all the files you want to backup
into the new storage. Although, this
is a tricky operation. It’s easy to for-
get a folder or file with this process.
To update its contents by copying
the new folders onto the backup’s
storage substituting the files cop-
ied before, you can end up with un-
needed files that you’ve removed
in your primary storage. There’s no
easy way to manually overcome this
issue. It’s hard to guarantee that
no folder is forgotten. This is a bad
choice, that’s been superseded by
the appropriated tools.
Automatic Backups
There are many different tools to
do your backups for you. None bet-
ter than the rest. Bellow I’ll present
you with some of the most com-
monly used, alongside with how
to use them. Choosing one to use
should be done according to how
and where you want to back up your
information to.
Simple Backup Suite
Simple Backup Suite or sbackup,
is an easy to use graphical applica-
tion that allows you to schedule and
manage your backups. It creates a
package with the data you select
to back up and then sends it to
the storage space you’ve specified.
This process can work on the back-
ground periodically, requiring no in-
teraction or monitoring. Sbackup is
also able to manage or recover your
existing backups.
To install the application install
the sbackup package from the Ubun-
tu Repositories. This can be achieved
in the command line with sudo apt-
get install sbackup or by using
your preferred package manager.
Usage
Once installed, you can go to your
System menu and inside Adminis-
tration open Simple Backup Config-
ure. It will ask you for the adminis-
trator password since it will config-
ure a background service that will
back up the data automatically.
At this point, we want to choose
what to back up and how to do it.
Figure 2. Adding excluded files
Figure 4. Scheduling automatic backups
Figure 3. Selecting the backup destination
Figure 5. Managing/Purging backups

Backup
In the General tab choose to Use
custom backup settings, it will allow
to individually select what you want
to back up. On to the Include tab,
choose the files and folders to back
up. These are the items that are re-
coverable from the backups.
The Exclude tab allows you to
define the list of ignored files or
folders that still match the one in
the included tab.
Before being able to start the
backing up process you must also
configure the storage to use. The
best way to back up would be to
have access to a remote machine
but you can also keep local back-
ups in the drives connected to
your computer. Sbackup has sup-
port for SSH and FTP protocols.
A very common method is back-
ing up using ssh. This uses a ssh
connection to another machine to
upload the backup. To do so, in
the Destination tab choose Use
a remote directory and insert the
following line to configure the con-
nection ssh://user:pass@address/
dir, where user is the username,
pass is the user’s password on
the other machine, address can
be both an url like example.com
or an IP address and dir the folder
where you want the backup to be
kept. An example could be ssh://
john:123456@192.168.1.3/
home/john/backups.
Scheduling
Now to schedule the back up use
the Time tab and choose how of-
ten you want your backups to occur.
Sbackup can do full backups or in-
cremental changes to the previous
full backup. You can set the periodic
interval between full backups, being
all the others increments to the last
full backup. Full backups are easier
to browse since they consist in a sin-
gle instance but occupy more space.
Managing Backups
Having scheduled backups can
quickly consume space if you back-
up frequently. In order to keep the
most relevant backups and still
have free space in your storage
destination, sbackup can delete old
archives automatically for you. To
enable it, enter the program’s con-
figuration windows and choose the
last tab, Purging. By ticking Enable
purging of old and incomplete back-
ups the application will do this for
you. Logarithmic purging is the best
method, since it keeps backups that
are more likely to be recovered. On
the other hand the simple cutoff op-
tion deletes all backups older than
the specified amount of days.
Restoring Data
Recovering your backups is as sim-
ple as creating them. Again, go into
the System menu and inside Admin-
istration you’ll find Simple Backup
Restore. Select where you want to
recover the backup from and a list
of available backups will show up.
Select what you want to restore and
press the Restore button to initiate
the process or the Restore as but-
ton if you want to save the backed
up files to different location from the
original. Note that if you restore files
and there are existing files with the
same name, those will be replaced.
Rsync Backup
Rsync is a synchronization tool for
Unix systems allowing transfers be-
tween two locations using algorithms
designed to minimize the amount of
transferred data. The end result is an
exact copy of the original location.
One of the great things about rsync
is that it is smart to know if a file is al-
ready on the destination folder and it
ignores that file if there’s no change
to it. This saves time and opposes
common backup tools that always
copy everything from the origin, de-
spite what’s on the destination.
If you are not a command line
expert, I recommend on trying
grsync to have a graphical interface
to rsync. Install it with sudo apt-get
install grsync in your terminal.
As a command line application,
using rsync requires some terminal
knowledge and the following is rec-
ommended for experienced users.
Figure 6. Restoring backups Figure 7. The graphical grsync interface

Backup
Rsync can be though of as a fancy
copying utility. It takes as input an ori-
gin and a destination, along with all
the configuration parameters. Some
of the most relevant parameters are:
-a, --archiveJJ – It is a quick way of
saying you want recursion and
want to preserve everything.
-v, --verboseJJ – Increases ver-
bose detail, explaining what’s
happening.
-e shellJJ – Specifies the remote
shell. Often used as -e ssh to
transfer over an ssh encrypted
connection.
--deleteJJ – Delete files that don’t
exist on the sending side.
The following instruction synchroniz-
es the home folder of a local user to
a remote computer in a similar way
to what has been done previously in
sbackup:
rsync-avz-essh--delete/home/↵
john/ john@192.168.1.3:/↵
home/john/backup/
Note that trailing slashes do influ-
ence the result of the command.
This rsync line would prompt the
user for the account’s password to
establish the ssh connection. While
using ssh as transfer method, you
can generate ssh keys so that you
don’t need to manually input the
password on each connection. Also,
if you would like to synchronize lo-
cally you could use only local folders
as in rsync -avz -e ssh --delete
/home/john/ /home/john/backup/
While updating a destination,
only changed files from the last syn-
chronization would be sent. Also, if
anything was removed in the origin,
it would also get removed in the
destination. This provides a simple
way to always keep a synchronized
copy of your current contents.
Rsync Script
Creating a rsync script is a great
idea. This can automate synchroni-
zation of multiple folders. To do so,
create a text file that looks like this:
#!/bin/bash
rsync -ave ssh –delete ↵
/home/john/folder1/ ↵
john@192.168.1.3:/home/ ↵
john/backup/folder1/
rsync -ave ssh--delete ↵
/home/john/folder2/ ↵
john@192.168.1.3:/home/ ↵
john/backup/folder2/
Add as many lines as folders you
want to backup. Save the file and
make it executable by using the
chmod +x command. Now run your
script and watch your files being
backed up to the other computer.
Once the first command finishes, it
starts the next and so on.
If you know your way around
cron, you can configure it to run the
script periodically, synchronizing the
folders to your selected destination
on a periodic basis.
Cloud Folder
Synchronization
When someone speaks about stor-
ing data in the cloud, it means that
it will use some web service to store
its data. Dropbox is not only one of
those solutions but it is the most fa-
mous folder synchronization service
available. The free account offers
it’s users 2GB of space. Installation
is done via a deb package download-
ed from their site and it integrates
seamlessly with Nautilus. There are
clients for Linux, Windows Mac and
even several mobile platforms.
After installing, you’re asked to
create a new account or connect an
existing one. A folder will be created.
At this point, every file inside that
folder is automatically synchronized
with Dropbox’s servers. The beauty
behind Dropbox is that everything is
always up to date, you can browse
your files online and there’s even an
history to them. Dropbox can even
be used to synchronize files between
computers. By installing the applica-
tion in another computer, the syn-
chronized folder is also synchronized
with the new computer. Whenever
you change a file the changes are
replicated by all the computers with
that login. Furthermore, you can
share folders with friends replicating
everything changed in that share to
their account as well, all in real time.
Once done, every saved file in that
folder is synchronized to both of you.
Similar to Dropbox is Ubuntu
One. It also gives you 2 free giga-
bytes and it comes installed with
Ubuntu.
Further Reading
http://gbr.pepperdine.JJ
edu/033/dataloss.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/JJ
community/SSH
http://www.samba.org/JJ
rsync/
http://www.opbyte.it/grsync/JJ
http://www.dropbox.comJJ
Figure 8. Dropbox with Nautilus in Gnome

Introduction Dropbox and Ubuntu One
O
n-line synchronising and file storage
services are quite common nowa-
days. You probably hear your friends
more than often asking you to join one of
those services in order for them to be able
to share their latest work on various files
with you. If you do not already use “the
cloud” for securing your files this article will
definitely help you out to choose between
two of the most popular on-line file storing
and synchronisation solutions – Ubuntu
One or Dropbox. If you do store your files in
“the cloud” then we hope that this article
will give you more details about the solution
you chose to use, whichever this is.
Terms and definitions
The “cloud” or “cloud-computing” defines
an internet-based way of computing where
software and shared resources are provided
to clients on an on-demand basis. This new
paradigm is a switch from the more tradition-
al client-server architecture where one client
would benefit from the information and pro-
cessing power provided by only one server.
The majority of cloud computing infra-
structures work by distributing the load
across a large number of servers, usually
located in multiple data-centres around the
world, but the cloud appears as a single
point of access for the client. So even if from
the client’s point of view the paradigm does
seem to be the classical client-server, given
the number of servers which provide the re-
quested data, the response is actually sent
back with the help of distributed computing.
Dropbox
Dropbox(http://www.dropbox.com)isoneof
the most popular cloud storage and synchro-
nisation services – approximately 4 million
users –, although it was not the first product
of its kind when it was launched. Dropbox
Inc. was founded in 2007 by Drew Hous-
ton and Arash Ferdowsi, both of them MIT
graduates, while the service was launched
in 2008 as a Y Combinator startup.
The idea behind Dropbox was to replace
the common memory stick with cloud stor-
age, allowing its users to have access to
their files regarding their location, computer
or operating system. The Dropbox client cre-
ates a folder on the user’s computer which
is then synchronised with the online storage
space and with the other associated com-
puters. Users have full control of their Drop-
box storage space either by using the client
application, either by using a web browser.
Dropbox supports revision history so
that deleted files may be recovered from
any of the associated computers or from
the web. Another use of the revision history
could be collaborative working on some of
the files, without losing the previous form.
Though the history is limited at 30 days, af-
ter which a deleted file cannot be recovered
any more, unless the user has subscribed
using a paid account.
The developers who wrote Dropbox
wanted to create a fast and easy to use syn-
chronisation system. This is why for each file
only the portions of the file that are changed
are actually saved from one revision to an-
other. The process is called delta encoding
Online file storage −
Dropbox vs. Ubuntu One
Radu Cotescu
Figure 1. Dropbox set-up wizard

Introduction

and conserves bandwidth and time,
providing fast response times. Al-
though there are no restrictions on
the file size for the desktop client,
the files uploaded via browsers are
limited to 300 MB.
Plans, prices and features
The basic plan offers free 2 GB of
storage, though there are many
ways to increase this space for free.
A user might benefit from 2.25 GB
of free space from the beginning if
he subscribes to the service using
a referral link. Also, a user can earn
up to 8 GB of space from referrals –
new users that subscribe to the ser-
vice using the user’s referral link or
direct invitations. Another 250 MB
can be earn by following a number
of steps described on the Dropbox
website which helps the user to set
up Dropbox on multiple computers.
If we add all the bonuses that can
be obtained we reach at 10.5 GB of
free cloud storage space.
The paid plans are “Pro 50” and
“Pro 100”. The numbers give an in-
dication of the space offered for the
money: 50 GB or 100 GB. The prices
are 9.99 USD per month or 99.99
USD per year for “Pro 50” and 19.99
USD per month or 199.99 USD per
year for the “Pro 100” plan.
All transfers are made using
SSL encrypted connections and the
files are encrypted using the AES-
256 standard. This means that any
data transferred from Dropbox over
the internet is securely encrypted
and safe from interception and/or
eavesdroppers.
Dropbox provides a whole range
of features:
selective synchronisation withJJ
the ability to choose the fold-
ers that are to be kept syn-
chronised depending on the
associated computer,
public shares using the “Pub-JJ
lic” folder,
the ability to give access toJJ
one of the files/folders stored
in the cloud through a “Share-
able link”,
shared folders with other Drop-JJ
box users,
LAN sync directly with otherJJ
computers from the LAN which
are linked to the same Drop-
box account,
dedicated “Photos” folderJJ
which can be used to share
galleries with people by provid-
ing them an access link,
notification icon which dis-JJ
plays useful information like
the number of files that are to
be synchronised, the transfer
speed, occupied space as a
percent out of the total space,
the ability to set automaticJJ
emails for when you remain
out of space or when Dropbox
has scheduled maintenance
There are many Dropbox clients, cov-
ering different operating systems and
architectures: Linux, Mac, Windows,
iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackber-
ry. Due to its popularity there are also
a lot of third-party clients and appli-
cations that rely on Dropbox.
How to
To install Dropbox, one has to down-
load it first from http://www.drop-
box.com The website will automati-
cally indicate which client version
is suitable for the computer which
is used to browse the web site. For
Ubuntu you should choose the pack-
age according to the architecture
that you are using: 32-bit or 64-bit.
Once you have downloaded the
.deb package, install it like usual. You
will be asked to restart Nautilus after
which you should click on the Next but-
ton. Afterwards a wizard will help you
through. When the daemon is finished
downloading, the set-up wizard will
launch. Assuming that you do not have
a Dropbox account yet, one will be cre-
ated for you. Dropbox will integrate it-
self with Nautilus so that all the files
and folders which are synchronised
with your cloud storage space will dis-
play a special icon to help you figure
out the synchronisation status.
Before the wizard finishes, you
can choose where you want your
“Dropbox” folder – the folder whose
content is synchronised into the
cloud. The default option is to leave
it in your home directory but any oth-
er location would work just as well.
If you want to synchronise folders
which are outside of the “Dropbox”
folder you can use symbolic links
on Ubuntu (and on any other Unix/
Linux machine) but this will not work
on Windows clients. For example, if
you would like to synchronise your
/opt folder without making an iden-
tical copy inside the “Dropbox” fold-
er, you could create a symbolic link
inside the “Dropbox” folder which
should point to /opt. This will make
all the content from /opt to be stored
into the cloud, even if it’s on another
partition or in a folder which isn’t a
child of the “Dropbox” folder.
Ubuntu One
Ubuntu One (http://one.ubuntu.
com) is a relative new online storage
andsynchronisationserviceprovided
by Canonical for Ubuntu users since
Dropbox and Ubuntu One
Figure 2. Dropbox folder showing different folders

the 9.04 release. Although the ser-
vice was launched more than a year
ago, the project is still in beta stage:
from what we have noticed on Ubun-
tu One’s Twitter account (http://
twitter.com/ubuntuone) from time
to time the maintenance that has to
be performed on the service usually
means downtime. Still, except for the
announced and planned downtimes,
the service performs very good, not
to mention that the basic account –
2 GB of space in the cloud – is free.
Theservicewillallowyoutobackup
and sync files, your contacts from Evo-
lution (the personal information man-
ager and email client), Tomboy notes
and Firefox’s bookmarks which you
can then access either online, either
from any other subscribed computer.
Synchronisation performs automati-
cally, keeping all your data identical
on all of your computers. Since there
is no limit on the number of comput-
ers you can add to your account, you
can use Ubuntu One at home, at your
office and even at school for storing all
your files in one place. You can even
perform modifications on your files
while being offline because as soon
as you get online Ubuntu One will per-
form the synchronisation so that your
files will always be up-to-date.
Plans, prices and features
Although 2 GB might be enough for
people who only want to store docu-
ments, some of the users might need
more space, especially if they would
like to store photos, movies and oth-
er type of multimedia content.
PC plans and prices
Extra space can be bought in packag-
es of 20 GB, without a limit towards
the number of packages one can buy.
The price for a 20 GB upgrade pack-
age is, at the time of this writing, only
2.99 USD per month or 29.99 USD
per year, but the purchases can be
made in EUR and GBP too.
The complete set of features for
the PC plans are as follows:
File synchronisationJJ
complete synchronisationzz
for Ubuntu computers (a
Windows client is currently
in beta stage),
files’ and folders’ changeszz
are updated automatically,
the ability to offer publiczz
access to some of the files
through short URLs,
encrypted transmission ofzz
the data using SSL encryp-
tion.
Contacts synchronisationJJ
a complete address bookzz
stored in the cloud – which
is much safer than any oth-
er storage medium,
automatic synchronisationzz
between the cloud address
book and Evolution,
every change is automati-zz
cally synchronised,
view, create and modifyzz
contacts using your PC or
the web.
Notes and bookmarksJJ
all your Tomboy notes andzz
Firefoxbookmarks(through
the use of a plug-in) are
stored and synchronised in
the cloud,
view, create and modifyzz
notes using your PC or the
web,
notes synchronisation workszz
on all Tomboy-supported
platforms: Ubuntu, Windows
and Mac.
Music StoreJJ
complete integration withzz
Rhythmbox,
community support forzz
Banshee,
purchases are first trans-zz
ferred to the cloud and
then to your desktop,
the songs purchasedzz
through the music store
don’t count towards the
storage limit,
4 regional stores: US, UK, EUzz
(onlyAustria,Belgium,Czech
Republic, Denmark, Finland,
Estonia, France, Germany,
Greece, Hungary, Iceland,
Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liech-
tenstein, Lithuania, Luxem-
bourg, Malta, Netherlands,
Norway, Poland, Portugal,
Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain,
Sweden and Switzerland)
and world-wide.
Mobile plans and prices
For users of the Ubuntu One Music
Store that own an iPhone or an An-
droid phone there is a special plan,
Ubuntu One Mobile, which allows one
Figure 3. Create an Ubuntu One account

to stream the music bought through
the music store. This means that you
cantakeyourmusicwithyouanywhere
because the tracks that you have
bought will be stored in the cloud. The
Mobile Package costs 3.99 USD per
month or 39.99 USD per month, and
whatever paying period you choose
the first 30 days are free.
The complete set of features for
the mobile plans are as follows:
Music streamingJJ
unlimited streaming of thezz
mp3 files from the cloud to
the mobile phone, as long
as you have an iPhone/iPod
Touch (iOS 4 is supported)
or an Android phone,
browsing and searching byzz
artist, album or song title,
the usual playback con-zz
trols: skip, shuffle, repeat
one or repeat all,
controllable cache for lis-zz
tening to your music while
offline,
resume playback when in-zz
terrupted by a call.
Contacts synchronisationJJ
synchronisation of all thezz
phone contacts with the
Ubuntu One address book,
support for Android, iP-zz
hone, Blackberry, Nokia
and other phones (users of
Android or iOS should
search for the “Ubuntu One
Contacts” application in
the app marketplace).
Photos (beta coming soon)JJ
storing camera phone pho-zz
tos in the cloud,
photos are automaticallyzz
synchronised with the com-
puters registered in the
Ubuntu One account,
supports Android, Black-zz
berry and Nokia devices.
How to
Signing up for an Ubuntu One ac-
count takes 2 minutes and the Ba-
sic Plan is free so you can give it a
try. Click on the MeMenu (top right
corner of your screen) and then go
to “Ubuntu One...”. A window asking
for some personal information used
to create your account will open.
Click on Forward as soon as all
the fields are filled correctly. If ev-
erything is okay a new window will
open, asking you for a confirma-
tion code which should have been
sent to the email address you have
used for subscribing. After you con-
firm your email address everything
is set up for use. The “Ubuntu One
Preferences” window will open and
will display some useful information
and configuration options.
If you now open your home direc-
tory you will see a new folder, named
“Ubuntu One”. This is the primary
folder which will be synchronised
with your own personal cloud stor-
age space. But any other folder can
be selectively added to the Ubuntu
One service. For example to add your
“Documents” folder you would simply
right click on it, go to “Ubuntu One”,
then click on Synchronize this folder.
From now all the files and folders in-
side the “Documents” folder will be
synchronised with the cloud.
Conclusion
Both Dropbox and Ubuntu One are
great cloud storage and synchro-
nisation services, offering pretty
much the same features. Ubuntu
One is more integrated with Ubun-
tu, being designed to specifically
fulfil the needs of the Ubuntu user.
The fact that it can automatically
synchronise files, contacts, notes,
Firefox bookmarks and the music
bought through the Ubuntu One
Music Store is really impressive.
The main disadvantage of using
Ubuntu One comes from the fact
that there aren’t clients for all the
major operating systems. The Win-
dows client is still in beta and there
are no news about a Mac client.
Furthermore, the somewhat often
downtimes might not offer the best
user experience.
Dropbox on the other hand is
pretty well supported on all major
operating systems (both desktop op-
erating systems and mobile devices
OS), although it doesn’t offer the
tight integration that Ubuntu One
can provide. Still, Dropbox seems to
be more reliable, more mature, eas-
ier to use and faster than Ubuntu
One, not to mention that it actually
uses Amazon S3 storage services
which proved to be more robust
than what Canonical can offer now.
Since both solutions offer about
the same functionalities and the
same storage space for the free ac-
count, the decision to choose one
over the other is simply a matter of
personal taste and needs. If you do
use more than one operating sys-
tem and would like a more reliable
service go for Dropbox. But if you
would like a better integration with
Ubuntu and can accept some down-
times, then Ubuntu One is definitely
the choice for you. If Ubuntu One
would improve to the level of uptime
and speed that Dropbox provides,
then we don’t think that an Ubuntu
user would have a solid reason not
to use Ubuntu One.Figure 4. Selective sync in Ubuntu One – The Documents folder

Ubuntu and Windows
L
inux users cannot deny the vast mar-
ket share that Microsoft has with its
Windows operating system. This huge
market share results in a high propensity
to find proprietary file systems and net-
work protocols that might be hard to read
or communicate with. Fortunately there’s a
strong open-source community working to
reverse engineer these protocols and file
systems allowing anyone to access them.
This article explains how to read your Win-
dows file systems with Ubuntu both remote
and locally.
Reading proprietary
file systems
Throughout the history of Ubuntu, being
able to access Microsoft’s file systems has
not always been easy. Support for the old
FAT (File Allocation Table) based file systems
has been present since the debut of
Ubuntu. Although, with the appear-
ance of the NTFS (New Technology
File System), accessing Windows
partitions suffered a severe regres-
sion. Up until 2007 Linux had no
support for writing in this file system.
The file system was not only present
on Windows installation partitions
but also widely spreading between
external storage devices like hard-
drives and more recently in many
USB flash drives.
Due to the fantastic work done
by the ntfs-3g team, a new driver ap-
peared, giving Linux full support for
this file system by just installing the
necessary package. Nowadays, ntfs-
3g comes with the default Ubuntu
installation, meaning that you’ll
have full access to any NTFS parti-
tion you connect to your computer.
Whenever you connect any NTFS or FAT
formated device, a new entry will automati-
cally appear in your Desktop or Nautilus, al-
lowing you to use the drive as if it was a local
disc. The exact same happens if you have a
partition in a local disc formated in either of
those file systems.
Accessing Windows files
in remote machines
Whenever you want to trade files with a Win-
dows computer, using the network is most of
the times the best option. Network speeds
are really fast nowadays and it removes the
need of external media and therefore addi-
tional dependencies for transferring files.
There are many ways to access windows
files from an Ubuntu machine. Many involve
installing additional software, adding com-
plexity to the process. That is not necessary
Reading Windows
files
Tiago Boldt Sousa
Figure 1. File and Printer Sharing enabled in interface

Ubuntu and Windows
since Windows already ships with the
Server Message Block protocol (SMB,
also known as Common Internet File
System,CIFS),mostcommonlyknown
as Windows Shares. This protocol al-
lows sharing of folders and printers.
Note that this protocol is optimized
for local network sharing.
Enabling Windows
Shares
The provided instructions and ex-
amples are for the latest Microsoft
Windows 7. Windows Vista users
might have to adapt them to their
operative system but it should be
practically the same. Before en-
abling Windows Shares make sure
you’re connected to the network
you’ll use. Being able to remotely
see the share depends on the
adapter configurations. Then follow
these steps carefully.
Enter the Control Panel and inside
Network and Internet open the Net-
work and sharing center. On the right
select Change Adapter Settings and
right click on the interface you will want
to use, followed by properties. Make
sure that File and Printer Sharing for
Microsoft Networks is activated.
Sharing a Folder
As a last step, navigate to the folder
you want to be shared from the com-
puter. Right click on it and choose
properties. Open the Sharing tab
and press the Share button. A new
window will pop up and allows you
to choose who you want to share the
folder with. By default
only the owner of the
folder has access to
it. Use the drop-down
menu to choose an-
other users to share
the folder with. If you
choose Everyone the
folder will be public,
requiring no password.
Otherwise, choose a
loginfromthecomputer
and that user’s creden-
tials will be required to
access the share. You
can create new users in
the control panel and
give them passwords
to limit the access to the share. You
can also enable or disable Write per-
mission on a per-user basis. End by
applying the settings.
Follow the the same process when-
ever you want to alter or simply remove
permissions from a shared folder.
Accessing Windows
shares from Ubuntu
SAMBA is a free software tool that
speaks the SMB protocol and com-
municates with Windows machines
enabling the transfer of files and ac-
cess to printing services. Nowadays,
Ubuntu comes with SMB support by
default, meaning that the samba
package is already installed.
Accessing Windows shares us-
ing Nautilus, the Gnome file ex-
plorer and SAMBA as been greatly
simplified in the last distributions.
Nautilus now has the possibility to
search the local network for Win-
dows shares. No extra configuration
needed. In order to start the net-
work search in Nautilus open the Go
menu and select Network.
After finding the share you can
treat it just as a local folder. If cre-
dentials are required they will be
prompted. If you’ll be using that share
frequently, consider creating a book-
mark out of it. It will save you the net-
work search time on the next usage.
SAMBA as a server
If you ever find the need, you can
also use SAMBA as a server, allow-
ing Windows machines to connect to
shared folders in Ubuntu. In order to
enable it, right click on the folder you
pretend to share and select click in
Sharing Options. The first time you try
to share a folder you won’t have the
sharing service installed and you’ll
be prompted for the administrator
password in order to install the nec-
essary packages. Insert your pass-
word and let the process complete.
Be sure to select SMB so that your
Windows machine is able to access
your Ubuntu folder. After the service
is installed get back to the folder’s
sharing options, enable the share
and give the folder a sharing name.
Now you can search the network in
your Windows machine and you’ll
find that the share will come up.
Figure 2. Choosing share permissions
Figure 3. Nautilus searching for Windows
shares

Photo management
U
buntu 10.10, Maverick, was released
exactly on time on 10/10/10. Aside
from the many improvements and
small changes from Lucid, it’s the first
Ubuntu version that replaces F-Spot with
Shotwell as the default photo management
application.
History
F-Spot had replaced gThumb earlier in
2006, just after the release of the first Long
Term Support (LTS) version.
F-Spot gained basic photo-editing capa-
bilities and during the Lucid development
cycle, a decision was made to remove The
GIMP (the Free Software answer to Photo-
shop) from the default install because it was
too complex for most novices users (and ad-
vanced users could just install it from the
repositories).
The move to F-Spot and the subse-
quent removal of The GIMP cause a lot of
controversy in the Ubuntu communities.
Not because gThumb was the preferred
choice by a vocal number of users, but
mainly because F-Spot is based on the
Mono framework (a GPL’d, cross-platform
.NET implementation from Novell).
Mono and C# are not safe to use in
Free Software projects according to the
Free Software Foundation (FSF) because
of patents held by Microsoft on the origi-
nal .NET framework.
Background
Shotwell is written in the Vala programming
language, a relatively new high-level pro-
gramming language for the Gnome environ-
ment. It’s one of several projects of Yorba, a
non-profit software group from the US that
currently has 5 developers on staff.
The project just released it’s first version
(0.1.0) in June of 2009, so it’s a little over a
year old. After the initial release, there have
been releases a frequently as 2 per month.
Ubuntu Maverick comes with version
0.7.2, which has sufficient features to satis-
fy most users and is stable enough for daily
use (I haven’t had a single Shotwell crash
since I started using it).
Navigating in Shotwell
Shotwell can be started from the Applica-
tions menu under Graphics. It will also
launch when connecting a digital camera or
media card with images on it.
The main interface consists of a navi-
gation sidebar on the left, and a large view
pane on the right.
Pictures are organized into events, which
by default are labeled by dates extracted
Shotwell, the new
photo manager
in Ubuntu 10.10
Guy Van Sanden
Figure 1. Shotwell startup screen

Photo management
from the metadata included with the
files. Events can be nested below
each other, and the default date-
based events make use of this.
Shotwell can access the meta-
data left in the picture-files by your
camera. This includes details like
the camera model, date and time-
stamp but also extra information
like light exposure, flash fired and
on recent camera models, GPS in-
formation about the location where
the picture was taken.
The only thing I missed is an op-
tion to show the GPS location on a
map (because plain coordinates do
not mean much to me).
Importing pictures
Shotwell can directly import your old
collection from F-Spot, so the migra-
tion is quick and painless.
Of course, you can import pic-
tures from directories on all kinds
of storage backends available to
Gnome (via gvfs).
But the main source of pictures
will off course be your digital cam-
era (or cell phone with built-in cam-
era). Luckily, Shotwell supports a
wide range of camera’s
using several different
protocols.
A very nice feature is
that Shotwell can keep
track of which pictures
are already imported
to avoid doubles in your collection
when you do not remove them from
the camera after import.
After importing, Shotwell builds
a database with metadata for the
pictures in it, but the files them-
selves remain accessible outside
of Shotwell. They are organized by
default in the Pictures folder in your
home directory with subfolders per
year, per month and per day.
Tags & Events
The organization of pictures in Shot-
well is based on 2 components: tags
and events.
An event is an hierarchical
grouping of pictures that belong to
one real-life event such as a birthday
party. The hierarchy makes it easy to
split events that span multiple time-
units into sub-events (like a comput-
er fair that spanned several days).
Tags are used to add keywords to
pictures that do or do not belong to
the same event, like tagging a person
across all pictures in the database.
Both tags and events are avail-
able in the sidebar to quickly access
a group of pictures.
Publishing
Publishing pictures to a select group
of websites can be done from inside
Shotwell. Unfortunately, these are
all proprietary webservices, but nev-
ertheless many users are on Face-
book and use Flickr or Picasa.
I only tried the Facebook plugin
and it works as expected, but it
would be nicer if you could select
groups of pictures by tag or event
and upload them all at once.
Conclusion
I have to admit that I never really
like F-Spot for several reasons (in-
cluding instability and the fact that
it was written in C#). So I stuck to
gThumb for lack of something I liked
better since Ubuntu 6.10.
At some point before Lucid, I
discovered Shotwell through a blog
post featured on one of my RSS
feeds. I installed it from a PPA (non-
standard user repository) and was
amazed at how well this early ver-
sion worked and how it supported
the camera’s that neither F-Spot nor
gThumb worked with earlier.
So I quickly decided to hand over
my gThumb-managed photo collec-
tion to Shotwell and it has been run-
ning very well since.
Shotwell has a very intuitive user
interface that will appeal to both ex-
perienced and novice users. It has
embedded photo-editing features
that are sufficient to do cover the
basics that most users need (like
red-eye removal). For users that
need to do more editing, The Gimp
is just an install away.
It supports custom events, tags
and ratings to quickly locate specific
photos and integrates with websites
like Facebook, Flickr or Picasa.
Of course there are missing fea-
tures and imperfections, but consid-
ering that this is a pre-1.0 version,
Ubuntu and Fedora where very right
to make it the default.
Further Reading
Shotwell project page:JJ http://
yorba.org/shotwell/
The Vala programming lan-JJ
guage: http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Vala_(program-
ming_language)
Figure 2. Shotwell importing pictures from a camera
Figure 3. Shotwell publishing a picture to fa-
cebook

Ubuntu Security
S
ecurity is a major concern for any user
who wishes to use his/her computer
for day to day tasks like surfing the
web, shopping online etc. Most users ne-
glect security issues and then pay the price.
When it comes to Linux, the first thing that
comes to mind is security. Yes, Ubuntu/Linux
does provide fairly good security out of the box
but there are some things that a user has to
manually configure to get maximum security.
Unfortunately, there is no single action
you can take to secure your operating sys-
tem, you will have to secure your system
according to your needs providing different
layers of security as per your requirements.
Encrypted Home Directory
You home directory is the place all your per-
sonal files are stored. Encrypting the home di-
rectory can provide very good security to users
and prevent others from accessing your files.
Ubuntu 10.10 provides an option to en-
crypt your home directory, this options is
provided at install time on the page where
your details like Name, Username and Pass-
word are asked.
Please note that you will not be able to
use the automatic login feature if you want
to have an encrypted home folder. Ubuntu
will ask you for a password every time you
wish to login to the system.
Anti-Virus
Most people who have used Microsoft Windows
will know that a computer virus can be very
dangerous and it can be used to compromise
the security of a system. For countering these
viruses an anti-virus program is required which
detects the threats and eliminates them.
Fortunately, there are not many viruses
that exist for Linux. Those that exist can’t re-
ally do much harm to a system. But if you want
maximum possible security, then there is no
harm in using an anti-virus software for Linux.
There are many anti-virus software’s
available for Linux/Ubuntu, the most used
and open source one is called Clam Anti-
Virus or ClamAV (Can be installed from the
Software Center).
ClamAV is a command-line based virus
scanner, but there is a GUI available called
ClamTk. Both of these can be installed from
the Ubuntu Software Center. Apart from the
open source anti-virus software there are
Linux versions of the popular Microsoft Win-
dows antivirus software’s like Avast or AVG.
If you have installed ClamTk, you can
start it from Applications −> Accessories −>
Virus Scanner.
The interface of ClamTk is pretty self-ex-
planatory and simple. The Actions area con-
tains the buttons for scanning your Home di-
rectory, a specific file or a specific directory.
In the Status area, you can see the version
of the GUI, Antivirus Engine, Virus Definitions
etc. as well as the when the last virus scan was
done and the name of the last infected file.
There is an Advanced menu where you
can set the preferences, change the sched-
uler settings as well as run the setup wiz-
ard which will allow you to set the update
method of the virus definitions.
Security Basics
Bhaskar Kandiyal
Figure 1. Enabling Home Folder Encryp-
tion at Install Time

LinuxIdentity magazine - Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

LinuxIdentity magazine - Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Was ist angesagt?

Was ist angesagt? (16)

Ähnlich wie LinuxIdentity magazine - Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

Ähnlich wie LinuxIdentity magazine - Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat (20)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

LinuxIdentity magazine - Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat