Apparently there’s a pretty serious backlash to the whole Unity desktop as well as the Gnome 3.x interface.

Just a few posts to illustrate this point:

One, two, three, four, five, Six (#6 is complete with some video comparisons). Also, a recent post on Technorati shows that Debian classic is indeed beconing Ubuntu refugees back home. Here’s another recent article on why Gnome Refugees Love XFCE.

At this point many are about ready to write off Ubuntu, and switch back to Debian proper, or an entirely different distribution, such as Fedora 16. Some have chosen to stay with Ubuntu for now, but run a variation on it with Xubuntu (which has been my choice for now).

At this point I am not sure what Ubuntu brings to the table anymore except excellent forum support and perhaps a good set of drivers for hardware detection among various laptops and desktops. Linux Mint is already working on their own Gnome 3 fork called MGSE, which will look at lot closer to Gnome 2.

It also looks as though a serious OS-independent fork of the Gnome 2.x interface has already begun, it’s called MATE. Though I’m not sure how ready it is for use.

Ubuntu has reached the pinnacle of its exposure and I think the bubble in which the developers and Mark Shuttleworth live has entirely squelched the outcry, probably to their detriment.

I do hope the Gnome developers also see the error of their ways. Gnome 3.x is a “Windows Vista” of sorts — a real shark-jumping moment, but could be corrected with a mea culpa and at least an offering of a fully functioning “classic mode” for everyone not interested in Fisher Price style graphical interfaces.

I will continue to stay with Xubuntu for now, but I can readily say that I am now officially shoppin’ around.

I’m not a big fan of Apple’s interface and I’m very much not a fan of what Canonical and Gnome are doing with my desktop. While Ubuntu 11.04 offers an “Ubuntu Classic” mode (read Gnome 2.x mode here), this will only be around for 11.04. Once 11.10 comes out in 6 months, the “classic” will be discarded.

<rant> At this point I could go on about how these changes are trying to change my desktop into an oversized smartphone, or how for power users this is an absurd interface reminding me of a Fisher Price laptop, or an interface for children first learning to use a computer, but I won’t. While this perhaps might be a good interface for a tablet or a smartphone, it is not the way a desktop operating system should present itself to the user. There’s a plethora of posts on the internet about forking Gnome 2.x into its own project maintained by a separate community of developers from those over at Gnome. Others are talking about porting the Gnome 2.x shell & set of panels into the GTK 3.x platform: essentially porting the great Gnome 2.x desktop interface over so that they work well in the Gnome 3 code base. I am not sure if either of these will happen or not, but I can tell you that I cannot afford to wait & see. </rant>

The people over at Linux Mint (the second most popular Linux after the Ubuntu family) have stated that they will adopt Gnome 3, but without the Gnome 3 shell (which is the interface that is presented to the user, AKA “The Desktop”.) I’m not sure exactly how they will do that, but I am sure it will require a lot of custom coding.

Ubuntu has always offered me the perfect blend of Debian’s rock solid stability with my choice of the latest & greatest apps pre-installed. I’ve enjoyed using it for a few years now, however, forcing the Unity interface on users who’ve enjoyed the classic desktop is too much for me to bear. I know in some way Canonical’s hand was forced here in that Gnome was already abandoning it’s 2.x desktop, so instead of moving with Gnome’s 3.x shell, they decided to create their own version of an astonishingly similar, child-like desktop. Both interfaces are wrong for the desktop and wrong for the power user.

The developers at Gnome are equally guilty of abandoning the classic, best desktop, forcing a completely different interface on its users without the choice & option of what I suppose has to now be called “Gnome Classic”. It’s a mistake to offer users change without choice.

For those who may think all is lost at this point: DON’T PANIC, I know where my towel is located.

In my effort to find a new home for myself, I started selectively searching through the myriad of Debian-based Linux distributions. I tried Linux Mint and while it’s based on Debian, I don’t think it’s my cup of tea. On a hunch I tried Xubuntu (Ubuntu with the XFCE desktop instead of Gnome). I’ve always regarded XFCE as a Gnome knock off with less polish. Certainly, XFCE has come a long way, but it isn’t as intuitive as Gnome 2.x. Having said that I am reluctantly choosing Xubuntu as my distro of choice. XFCE is close enough that I can bridge the gap with some tweaking. I am mostly tweaking the panels. The default bottom panel that comes with Xubuntu 11.04 is useless in my estimation. I’ve deleted that in favor of a fresh panel with simply a Window Menu, Workspace Switcher & Trashcan. I’ve removed the Window Menu from the top panel and added some quick-click launcher icons at the upper left of the panel to launch often-run apps such as Chrome, Xchat, File Manager, Calculator, etc.

All tweaks aside, Xubuntu allows me to maintain the advantage of the Ubuntu line of repositories (including medibuntu!) while offering me a desktop that is much more familiar. For me, Xubuntu is the safest bet for a new home. One should not confuse a desktop interface with an entire Linux distribution. I could easily run Ubuntu 11.04 and just install the XFCE desktop onto Ubuntu and then choose XFCE as my default desktop under Ubuntu, instead of running Xubuntu. I do think though, that while that approach may work, the folks over at Xubuntu have integrated XFCE a bit better into the Ubuntu base than I could. It would allow me to cleanly run a variant of Ubuntu without the extra Unity baggage and enjoy an overall lighter distribution as well.

The plethora of support offered in the great Ubuntu Linux community was also an important factor in my decision. Fortunately, Xubuntu is so close to Ubuntu that all the forum posts out there supporting Ubuntu will also work for Xubuntu as well. Sure, there may be some Xubuntu-specific issues with which to deal, but the grand majority of forum posts specific to Ubuntu will also address questions for the Xubuntu user.

This is very much a personal decision. Some are sticking it out with Ubuntu and the Unity interface. Others are installing Gnome 3, replacing Unity. Yet others are switching over to KDE . . . mmmkay . . . ya . . . I’m not a KDE fan. I always thought KDE was chasing the Windows “start menu” concept and I generally don’t care for their desktop. Others still are abandoning Ubuntu altogether and switching over to Fedora or OpenSuSE.

I am sticking with Debian, and with Ubuntu — just in the Xubuntu camp. Ultimately I hope Gnome 2.x finds a home with an active bunch of developers (or gets ported to GTK 3.x!!) so that I can re-adopt it. Though I fear that the decade old, rock solid Gnome 2.x desktop may be dead: wow.

Apparently, there’s no desktop for old men. The forums are afire with posts similar to this blog post (though maybe with or without the Xubuntu choice). I hope to find some camaraderie on the IRC with some folks and see where this goes. This may not be the last post on this topic.

One of the great things about Linux is choice. I wish Gnome hadn’t made their choice to abandon their 2.x interface and I wish that Canonical hadn’t forced Unity on their users, but as a member of the Linux community I can exercise my own choice and adopt Xubuntu with the XFCE desktop as my new home. I hope others in the community will not let the Gnome 2.x interface die, either by forking it or porting it over to GTK 3.x. I’d very much like to return to it, but until then, goodbye to the “original” Ubuntu and to Gnome: so long and thanks for the fish.

For those willing to give Xubuntu a try, I thought I’d mention a few issues right off the bat during my Xubuntu setup and some of the fixes:

First you’ll have to install VLC, Audacious, VNC, VINO, Chrome, LibreOffice, Screen, Nautilus, Gconf-editor, NFS server and client, SSH, SSHFS, ECryptFS, Samba, SmbFS, RDesktop, EOG (Eye of Gnome Pic Viewer), Imagemagick and perhaps a few other things I haven’t yet come across.

Below are a couple of the important ones that required some configuring beyond the basic “sudo apt-get install“:

1. XFCE didn’t auto-create a menu item when I installed Chrome, so I had to add it manually.

Add a launcher to the panel (right click the panel, go down to panel –> Add new items), then select Launcher.

Once selected, a blank square will appear on the panel at the far right, and will have a light grey/black box. Right click that new box on the panel, click Properties.

Add an item to the launcher (click the blue + sign) and search from Chrome. If it’s not listed you can add it manually by clicking the “add empty item” icon which is the white paper with the gold star. Select the icon for the application (when selecting icons its easier to select from the ALL ICONS item in the pull down) and then for the command in the launcher itself type:

/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome %U

2. Default File Manager is Thunar: No thank you. Thunar, while very light, is too light on features. I need tabbed file browsing. Therefore I have manually installed Nautilus which worked very nicely. For this you’ll also want Gconf-editor since that allows some Nautilus-specific customizations. So simply type:

#sudo apt-get install nautilus gconf-editor

Then to use Nautilus as your default file manager, go to Settings Manager –> Preferred Applications –> Utilities Tab, then select Nautilus from the File Manager pulldown menu.

If you prefer a /text/path/to/your/files instead of the graphical button style in Nautilus, the quick fix is to run gconf-editor from the command prompt, then in the configuration editor and navigate down to: apps –> nautilus –> preferences –> always_use_location_entry and make sure to check that box off.

3. I also had problems VNCing into my new Xubuntu install. To fix this, just install Vino.

sudo apt-get install vino

Then run vino-preferences (from command line) and check off your preferences:

#vino-preferences

Then you’ll have to set up Vino to start with a reboot: Go to Session & Startup in your Settings Manager, then click on Application Autostart then click ADD. Enter whatever you like for Name & Description, but in the command field, enter:

/usr/lib/vino/vino-server

Simply sudo apt-get install weather-util, and set up the .weatherrc file, and you’ll have instant local weather, plus you can set up presets for weather at [work], [home] or [elsewhere], so you can get the weather for any city.

Google “weather-util” for more links on the subject. The application’s home page is here.

Here’s some sample output:

$ weather
Current conditions at Raleigh-Durham International Airport (KRDU)
Last updated Jun 04, 2008 - 01:51 AM EDT / 2008.06.04 0551 UTC
   Wind: from the S (180 degrees) at 10 MPH (9 KT)
   Sky conditions: mostly cloudy
   Temperature: 72.0 F (22.2 C)
   Relative Humidity: 73%
City Forecast for Raleigh Durham, NC
Issued Wednesday morning - Jun 4, 2008
   Wednesday... Partly cloudy, high 67, 20% chance of precipitation.
   Wednesday night... Low 96, 20% chance of precipitation.
   Thursday... Partly cloudy, high 71, 10% chance of precipitation.
   Thursday night... Low 97.
   Friday... High 72.

CenterIM is a pretty robust instant messaging client that runs entirely out of your command prompt. Simply sudo apt-get install centerim and you’re ready to go. It takes a little getting used to, but all the files you need are held in your home directory under ~/.centerim . Every contact gets their own folder under .centerim and gets contact-specific chat history logs. The master config files are held in .centerim as well. The first time you run the application, it will show an options window allowing you to configure your preferences. If you delete config file, it will rerun the preferences dialog when you next run the application, however you can access and modify the options by hitting ‘g’ from the main chat window.

CenterIM supports ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, IRC, Jabber, LiveJournal, and the Gadu-Gadu IM protocol as well. Anyone familiar with pico, nano or irssi will be right at home with CenterIM.

We all know that when you simply delete a file, it’s possible to recover it later. Sometimes this is useful, if you accidentally delete something important, but usually this is a problem, and you really want that file gone forever. I will explain here how to delete a file in linux securely and permanently, so it can never be recovered. In addition, I will show how to completely wipe previously-used (available) space which will often have complete files or file-remnants which can otherwise be recovered. This applies to hard drives, external USB drives, thumb drives, etc.

To wipe your available (free) disk space, you’ll want to install the secure-delete application. Not only will this application suite offer applications that will wipe files and free space, but it will also wipe your SWAP partition and your system memory (RAM). Wiping RAM is important for privacy as well, since many files are stored in RAM and can be retrieved even after the computer is shut down, right off the chip!

First, install the secure-delete suite of applications:

sudo apt-get install secure-delete

Then, to wipe your /home partition’s free space, for example:

sudo sfill /home

The sfill the program will fill up all free space on the designated mount point by creating a huge single file. The the contents of this file are written in a number of special steps – ensuring that all areas of the disk which were previously free have had their contents erased. Once completed, the large file is removed, restoring your free space. You can sfill any mount point. Type man sfill for more info and options.

The command to erase existing files is “srm”, short for “secure rm”. Simply type

srm filename

Where filename is the name of the file you want to securely wipe/delete. You can also use wildcards (e.g. srm filenam*)

To wipe your system’s memory (RAM) use this command:

sdmem

SDmem is short for secure delete memory. You can run the command by itself, or with options. Type man sdmem for more info.

Similarly, sswap will securely wipe your swap partition. You must unmount your swap partition before using this command otherwise your system will likely crash. Once the wipe is completed, you can remount your swap partition. Type man sswap for more info. To wipe your swap space simply type:

sswap /dev/sda8

/dev/sda8 is an example. To find your specific swap device, simply type sudo fdisk -l, or cat /proc/swaps which will list your partitions and their device labels. Also to unmount your swap space, simply type sudo swapoff /dev/sda8 and to remount it type, sudo swapon /dev/sda8.

Download it here.

This application runs on any distribution, but I’ll discuss its installation on Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install cpulimit

Once installed, type this to restrict any already-running application’s CPU utilization:

sudo cpulimit -p PID -l CPU%

Where PID = the process ID and CPU% is the maximum percentage of the CPU allowed for use. For example:

sudo cpulimit -p 8992 -l 35

This will restrict process ID 8992 to no more than 35% of CPU’s availability.

(To see a list of your running processes you can just run the command TOP which will list your processes in order of CPU utilization).

If any of the output runs off your screen, just add |more to the end of any of these commands to see the output one screen at a time and hit the spacebar to go to the next screen, or Q to quit.

Processor type:
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo

Is the processor using 32 or 64 bit instruction set:
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep flags | grep lm
If you get some output you have a 64 bit CPU. If you receive no output, then you’re using a 32 or even 16 bit CPU. The reason this is the case is that the CPU yields many flags that tell Linux what sort of processor it is, and the lm flag informs Linux that the CPU is a 64 bit processor. Grep as a command filters output. Feel free to run this command without the grep suffixes (cat /proc/cpuinfo) to see the full output of your CPU details.

What hardware (audio, video, disk controllers, etc) is in my Linux box:
$ lspci -tv
(The -t switch groups similar devices together for easy reading and -v offers more verbosity.)

To easily filter out the above command to just show graphic card information:
$ lspci | grep VGA

What USB devices are plugged in:
$ lsusb

Check the size of the hard drive and what hard drives are available in the system.
This command will also list USB drives and sticks. You need a root permissions to execute the fdisk command:
$ sudo fdisk -l | grep GB

Show info about a particular hard disk including firmware revision (replace sda with the appropriate drive as listed from the above command):
Note: This will only work on internal disks, NOT USB drives.
$ sudo hdparm -i /dev/sda

Check what partitions and file system is in use on my hard drives (same as the above command, but essentially more verbose):
$ sudo fdisk -l

Locate CD/DVD-ROM device file which offers a CD/DVD-ROM’s make and model info:
$ wodim –devices
or
$ wodim –scanbus
The above command will scan your entire system bus for attached devices (this won’t include USB Devices as they are not direct-bus-attached devices).

What modules are currently loaded:
$ lsmod

get a information about any particular module:
$ modinfo module_name

remove modules:
$ modprobe –remove module_name

load a modules to the kernel:
$ modprobe module_name

What hardware is using which module.
The -v switch is for vebosity, where -vvv is EXTRA verbosity.
$ lspci -v
or
$ lspci -vvv

Check for PCMCIA cards:
$ lspcmcia

How much RAM is installed in my Linux and how much of it is in use (megabytes).
It will also include swap memory:
$ free -m
There is a gigabyte switch, but it *rounds* it down, so it isn’t very accurate for RAM info:
$ free -g

Check sound card settings. This command will reveal whether your sound card is installed and what modules are in use:
$ cat /dev/sndstat

Available wireless cards:
$ iwconfig

What speed is set to FANs:
$ cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
If this command doesn’t work, then feel free to peruse the /proc/acpi directory on your system. You will find info available on your CPU, AC Adapter, Battery, etc. Some info is available here, and your mileage may vary for viewing any of the files in /proc/acpi.

Get a battery information on your laptop (assuming it’s been installed):
$ powersave -b

To find out what Linux Kernel you’r running:
$ uname -a

To find out what distribution of Linux you’re running:
Run any of these commands, as depending on your distribution some may or may not work.
$ cat /etc/issue
$ cat /proc/version
$ dmesg | head -1

Get a recent history of system reboots:
$ last reboot

To open any file from command line using the default application (will launch the correct graphical application for the file, as though you had doubled-clicked the file graphically):
$ xdg-open ./filename

To monitor all active network connections, and update live every second:
$ watch -n.1 ‘netstat -tup’

To passively list all connections, active or inactive:
$ ‘netstat -tupl

(Launchpad link):

A dynamic tunnel SSH multiplexer. When heavily using a Dynamic SSH tunnel, this application will open concurrent SSH tunnels to multiplex the load. This is useful when using torrent connections locally, or when using your computer to share internet access via the dynamic proxy.

To install on Ubuntu Karmic:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:martineve/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install sshsplit

If no arguments are passed, you can run sshsplit from command line and it will bring up a convenient GUI for on the fly configuration.

Ubuntu is running an application called “landscape-common”.

More on this application here. The easy thing to do here is to simply type update-motd – -disable and you can then modify your MOTD. Also I have noticed that sometimes, the contents of motd.tail will overwrite the MOTD, so I would simply make sure whatever you want in /etc/motd is also in /etc/motd.tail. [On Debian systems, the system message of the day is rebuilt at each startup. /etc/motd.tail is the file to edit permanent changes to the message of the day].

Simply sudo apt-get install cpulimit. More info can be found here.

Using GNOME

• Get to the System->Preferences->Keyboard menu.
• Select the “Layouts” tab and click on the “Layout Options” button.
• Then select “Key sequence to kill the X server” and enable “Control + Alt + Backspace”.

Click the link below for the full article and how to do it in KDE.

Source: Ubuntu Geek.

People sometimes have to do a reinstall of their Ubuntu system for various reasons (been playing/experimenting with configuration/drivers/other packages or just because something is badly broken) but remembering all the extra packages you have installed can be a chore – but here is the simple solution:
On your old system (assuming it is still working), start up Synaptic and go to:

File-Save Markings and choose a file name along with a location (like a USB drive) that you can use when you have installed your new system)

This file contains a list of all your currently installed packages, and when you have installed and booted up your new system (and configured your repositories to the best for your location ) then start up Synaptic and go to:

File-Read Markings and point it at your saved file, and after that has completed then select Apply to kick off the download & installation of all of those packages you had installed previously!

There are also apt-get command line functions that achieve the same outcome, so those who don’t have/use Synaptic can still do this.

You will still have to do any special configuration changes that you had on the old system, but at least all of the packages are now in the new system.

This is also very handy for moving to new hardware/duplicating setups etc.

Be aware that doing this between different Ubuntu versions may cause complications because some packages may not be in a later version or have different names.

Note:- Don’t forget to backup your sources before you reinstall.

sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list ~/sources.list.backup

Otherwise if you have added any PPAs or other sources, this tip won’t work.

Bonding is creation of a single bonded interface by combining 2 or more ethernet interfaces. This helps in high availability and performance improvement.

How to setup dual-dual bonding (two bonds of two interfaces each) on Ubuntu as quickly as possible.

1. Add two lines to /etc/modules

bonding bond0 -o bond0 mode=1 miimon=100

bonding bond1 -o bond1 mode=1 miimon=100

If you’re very good at managing your time, just remember that miimon’s option determines how often the bond is monitored for failure and that mode can be one of:

0 – Round robin balancing

1 – Active back-up

2 – Transmit based on MAC address for load balancing/fault tolerance

3 – Broadcasting – provides fault tolerance by transmitting on all slave interfaces

4 – Aggregates links, assuming all nics support same speeds and duplex settings

5 – Transmit load balancing – balancing is handled by the bond based on load

6 – Same as 5, but also uses arp to balance load “better

2. Install the ifenslave package if you haven’t already. You can use apt-get to grab it if you don’t:

sudo apt-get install ifenslave-x.x

3. Ensure that the package actually installed:

sudo dpkg –get-selections | grep enslave

ifenslave-x.x install

4. Set up your interface files:

# cat /etc/network/interfaces (only including the parts you probably need – substitute IP addresses, netmasks, etc):

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback

auto bond0

iface bond0 inet static

address 10.10.125.88

netmask 255.255.255.0

network 10.10.125.0

gateway 10.10.125.1

post-up ifenslave bond0 eth0 eth2

pre-down ifenslave -d bond0 eth0 eth2

auto bond1

iface bond1 inet static

address 10.10.127.88

netmask 255.255.255.0

network 10.10.127.0

gateway 10.10.127.1

post-up ifenslave bond1 eth1 eth3

pre-down ifenslave -d bond1 eth1 eth3

5. Add lines to the bottom of your architecture’s modprobe files, reboot
and pray:

sudo cat /etc/modprobe.d/arch/i386

alias bond0 bonding

options bond0 mode=1 miimon=5000 max_bonds=2

alias bond1 bonding

options bond1 mode=1 miimon=5000 max_bonds=2

I am not sure if the anti-virus recommendation is required at this time, I think that might be overkill, but if you intend to use the system in a live production environment, it’s all worth considering.

One of the most common mistakes is not checking log files (reason #10). I often find it hard to keep up and sometimes parse the variety of system logs on a system. A great tool for managing this is called LogWatch. While not a GUI, it summarizes system logs into a convenient report that you can cron to run regularly and email to yourself, or just monitor. It’s highly configurable with varying degrees of detail.

From the site:

Logwatch is a customizable log analysis system. Logwatch parses through your system’s logs for a given period of time and creates a report analyzing areas that you specify, in as much detail as you require.

Likewise Open is a free, open source application that joins Linux, Unix, and Mac machines to Microsoft Active Directory and securely authenticates users with their domain credentials.

The GNU MP3/Media Streamer is a simple application which makes it possible to navigate through your audio and video collection via a browser, and stream playlists across a network.GNUMP3d is a streaming server for MP3s, OGG vorbis files, movies and other media formats.The software supports browsing, searching, and streaming all via your browser with support for MP3, OGG Vorbis, WMA and many other types of audio files.

Click here for more info and configuration information.

GnuMP3d home site.

Here’s the full howto.

HOW TO’s:

Ubuntu Studio 8.04 Desktop:

Ubuntu Studio 8.04 Server:

–

Ubuntu Studio homepage:

SUN announced that they’re going to further certify their servers with Ubuntu Linux. At this time there’s no plans to release Hardy Heron (8.04) for the SPARC processor, though SUN will be certifying their x86 line of servers with Ubuntu, and their more of their SPARC servers with earlier versions of Ubuntu which have been released for SPARC processors.

At Ubuntu Live, expect SUN to announce how MySQL, OpenOffice and Ubuntu will evolve with SUN to meet customers’ needs.

Sources: One, Two.

From the andLinux site:

andLinux is a complete Ubuntu Linux system running seamlessly in Windows 2000 based systems (2000, XP, 2003, Vista [32-bit only]). This project was started for Dynamism for the GP2X community, but its userbase far exceeds its original design. andLinux is free and will remain so, but donations are greatly needed.

andLinux uses CoLinux as its core which is confusing for many people. CoLinux is a port of the Linux kernel to Windows. Although this technology is like VMware or Virtual PC, CoLinux differs itself by being more of a merger of Windows and the Linux kernel and not an emulated PC, making it more efficient. Xming is used as X server and PulseAudio as sound server.

andLinux is not just for development and runs almost all Linux applications without modification.

Click here for a sample screenshot.

Also, an excellent article on the subject from Lifehacker.