first time ubuntu

text to speech-Gespeaker

2009-11-29T22:03:00.000+05:30

Gespeaker

Description

Gespeaker is a GTK+ frontend for espeak. It allows to play a text in many languages with settings for voice, pitch, volume, speed and word gap. The text played can also be recorded to WAV file.

Since version 0.6 it supports mbrola voices, it will require mbrola package and one or more mbrola voices from Debian repository or Ubuntu Trucchi repository.

Multiple languages are supported, actually English, Italian, Francais and Espanol. It works well with both Gnome, XFCE, LXDE environments.

Installation

Current version is 0.6 with the new added mbrola voices support for a new speech experience. Version changes are available on the Changelog page.

Just download the latest version package and install it with gdebi or dpkg.

Ubuntu users please follow the RepositoryUbuntuUsers instructions.

Enable enhanced voice support

See InstallMbrola page for instructions on enable the enhanced mbrola voice support.

Quick And Easy Way To Install Songbird In Ubuntu

2009-06-13T11:36:00.000+05:30

Songbird is an open source media player that allows you to play music, watch video and surf the Web at the same time. Built with codes from Firefox and VLC, Songbird inherits the features of the two most powerful open source applications, thus making it one of the best desktop media player around

The most noticeable advantage of Songbird over other desktop media player is that it supports almost all the media formats and devices (including iPod) and it is fully customizable. With the same add-ons capability as Firefox, you can install extensions in Songbird to improve its functionality and change the themes/skins to your liking. Some of the useful extensions include Media Flow, iPod Device Support, Last.fm and CoverFetcher.

Install Songbird on Ubuntu

Before getdeb.net comes out with the latest version of Songbird deb file, the following is so far the easiest way to get Songbird running on Ubuntu.

1) Go to http://www.getsongbird.com and download Songbird to your home folder.

2) Using the Archive Manager, extract the Songbird folder to your home folder.

3) Open the Songbird folder and double click on the songbird file to execute the application.

That’s it.

If you want to create a shortcut on your Application menu, right-click on the Applications menu and select ‘Edit Menus‘

On the left pane, select Sound & Video.

On the right pane, click on the ‘New Item‘.

Fill in the field with as the same as the images below (remember to change the damien to your own username)

Click on the icon button and navigate to the path /home/yourusername/Songbird/chrome/icons/default. You should see the icon of Songbird. Select it and press OK twice.

You should now see the Songbird entry on your Application -> Sound & Video -> Songbird.

A much easier method of installing Songbird

If you find that the above method is not simple enough and you don’t mind using an older version of Songbird, you can:

Go to http://www.getdeb.net/search.php?keywords=songbird

Download Songbird 0.6.1 to your home folder.

Double click the downloaded .deb file to install the Songbird.

Once installed, you can open Songbird via Applications->Sound & Video -> Songbird.

Some Screenshots

Songbird playlist view

Songbird with MediaFlow extension

installing Songbird extension

Dark Super Feather

KMSM4 Feather and Web browsing on a new tab

Wubi: The Windows Ubuntu Installer

2009-05-28T11:23:00.001+05:30

if you want to try Linux for the first time,
or are switching back to Linux after using Windows for a while,
Wubi is the perfect solution. It allows you to install Ubuntu
Linux as if it was a normal Windows program.

What Wubi Is

An easy way to install Ubuntu
A full dual-booting environment
Partitioning-free (it stores it’s data into a virtual disk file)
Officially supported by Canonical, the commercial sponsor behind Ubuntu

What Wubi Isn’t

A method of running Linux programs in Windows (like Cygwin-ish)
A method of running Linux programs at the same time as Windows programs (like CoLinux)
A virtual machine which puts Ubuntu into a window (like VirtualBox)

Installing Wubi

Wubi is really easy to install:

Go to the Wubi website, and click the big “Download Now” button. (Direct link)
- At the time of writing, the latest release was 9.04, “Jaunty Jackalope”
Run the file you downloaded
- You will be presented with a screen like this:
- Wubi Main Window
Enter a new username and password, click Install, and that’s it!
You’ll get a progress screen while it installs
- Wubi Install Progress
Reboot your computer when asked
- Wubi Reboot Window

How Wubi Works

Getting the CD Image

Of course, you could have gathered all that from their website. The really interesting part is how it actually works.

Wubi requires an [K/X]Ubuntu Live CD to install. It searches like this:

The current directory, for an ISO image
The physical CD drives on your machine for a burnt copy, not an image

It needs:

The correct version (in this case, 9.04),
The correct architecture (ie, 32-bit on a 32-bit machine, 32- or 64-bit on a 64-bit machine)
The correct edition (desktop LiveCD, not server or alternate)
The correct distribution (ie, Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Xubuntu)
The image to be of the CD version of Ubuntu
- As far as I am aware, the CD version burnt to a DVD should work

If it can’t find that, it’ll download the correct version from the Ubuntu servers.

It won’t burn it to CD or anything like that.

Actual Installation

Once it has the CD image, it doesn’t actually do that much. It does, first of all, make a directory on the root of the drive on which you chose to install it.
For example, if I chose “C:” as my installation drive, it would make a
“C:\ubuntu” folder.

The basic tree it would create is this:

ubuntu/
disks/
    root.disk
install/
    ubuntu-9.04-desktop-amd64.iso
wubildr

The file root.disk will contain all the Ubuntu data - the user data,

the configuration, the programs. At this stage it’s empty.
The method Wubi uses to actually create the virtual disk
is actually quite neat, and almost instant.

Next, it’ll add an entry to the Windows boot.ini or the
BCD menu file pointing to that “wubildr” file, which,
like “ntldr”, is responsible for starting off the boot process.

Finally, it’ll eject the Ubuntu CD (if present), and ask you to reboot the system.

Post-Reboot

Once you reboot the machine, you will get a menu like this:

Vista Boot Menu showing Ubuntu

When you select “Ubuntu”, the Jaunty loading screen will come up:

Jaunty "usplash" Booting Screen

Wait a couple of minutes, and a little window with
a progress bar will pop up. This is the actual install
procedure. It starts by mounting a few disks:

Using Wubi’s homegrown “LVPM” tool,
it mounts the real host drive - not the “root.disk”
- This makes it the riskiest bit of the install,
- so be careful not to switch of the power or anything like that
- As a side point, it mounts this under “/host”
It then mounts the Ubuntu ISO image from the install directory (”/host/ubuntu/install/ubuntu-9.04-desktop-amd64.iso”)
with so-called loopback mounting built-in to Linux
- You can do this too! Open up a Linux shell, and type:
- ```
mount -t iso9660   -o loop,ro
```
- This will mount the contents of iso_file to target_dir, just as if you ghad mounted a real CD-ROM there
Wubi now uses another neat trick to create a filesystem on the drive.
- You can do that, as well! Type:
- ```
/sbin/mkfs.ext3 
```
- You now have a full ext3 filesystem in the image
The final disk mount is the newly-created ext3 image, which I think gets mounted at /
- To mount your disk image, use:
- ```
mount -t ext3  -o loop,rw
```

After that, it uses a similar technique to the live installer. Traditionally, Linux distributions with package managers created their blank file system, and executed their package managers with some flags to tell it where to install the packages to. It did this with every package. Now, LiveCD installers don’t do this†, they basically just ‘extract’ an image over to the hard disk.

†Technically, this is done when producing the Live CD, but anyway…

Finally, it reads the installation parameters and uses that to set up your user, time zone (obtained from the host), and any accessibility options specified on the Windows side.

Exploring The Wubi Source Tree

This is almost getting to short essay length! So I’ll split this off into a separate article, which should be here soon!

Installing Nero Linux 3 in ubuntu

2009-05-18T22:28:00.000+05:30

first of,download the version from the following site

http://www.nero.com/ena/downloads-linux3-trial.php

the just right click and install it with GDebi Package Installer
after installation just paste in the following serial key.

2CA0-0000-1800-2000-4002-6332-X45C

thats it.

GTK+ apps!

2009-05-18T21:45:00.001+05:30

http://gnomefiles.org/

installing bitdefender on ubuntu 9.04

2009-05-18T01:31:00.000+05:30

download from http://download.bitdefender.com/SMB/Workstation_Security_and_Management/BitDefender_Antivirus_Scanner_for_Unices/Unix/Beta/EN/Linux/deb/

then
Put the bitdefender deb.run file on your desktop. Ensure that it is executable. (Easiest way - right-click > Properties > Permissions. Tick the 'Execute' box.) Open a terminal, and:

Code:

cd Desktop
sudo ./BitDefender-Antivirus-Scanner-7.6-4.linux-gcc4x.i586.deb.run

Install Avast Antivirus in Ubuntu 64bit

2009-05-18T01:28:00.000+05:30

Avast.com currently offers a free Avast download for Ubuntu. Unfortunately they only provide a deb package for 32-bit systems. Avast actually runs quite well on a 64-bit system, but the installation requires a few extra steps. This guide will walk you through the process of installing Avast on a 64-bit system.

First off, install the ia32-libs package if it's not already installed.
Code:
```
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
```
The ia32-libs package must be >= 2.2ubuntu18.
Download the Avast debian package here and save it to your desktop. The instructions below assume that the avast package can be found on your desktop so it's important that you choose your desktop as the download location.
After it's downloaded change to your desktop folder.
Code:
```
cd /home/YourUserName/Desktop
```
You need to make sure that all of the required libraries can be found in your /usr/lib32 folder. To help simplify this task I've created a libs package for avast and attached it to this post. Simply download the attachment and then type the following:
Code:
```
sudo dpkg --force-architecture -i ia32-avast-libs.deb
```
After the Avast package is installed make sure that all of the required libraries are installed. Type the following:
Code:
```
ldd /usr/lib/avast4workstation/bin/avastgui
ldd /usr/lib/avast4workstation/bin/avast
```
Scroll through both lists and make sure that none of them say 'Not found'. As long as you didn't find any libraries listed as 'not found' then you should now be able to run Avast from your Applications menu.
and then put the serial key as shown in the 32bit post

Install Avast Antivirus in Ubuntu 32bit

2009-05-18T01:25:00.000+05:30

First you need to download the .deb package from here

wget http://files.avast.com/files/linux/avast4workstation_1.0.6-2_i386.deb

Now you have avast4workstation_1.0.6-2_i386.deb package.Install .deb package using the following command

sudo dpkg -i avast4workstation_1.0.6-2_i386.deb

This will complete the installation now you need to get the registration key for this you need to fill the on-line form available here and they will send registration key to your mail address

Applications Menu Setup

or this you need to run a script from the following location

cd /usr/lib/avast4workstation/share/avast/desktop

sudo ./install-desktop-entries.sh install

This will complete the application menu setup.

If you want to access you need to go to Applications—>Accessories—>avast!Antivirus

First time it will prompt for license key enter your license key you have got in our previous steps

Avast Antivirus Interface

Avast Antivirus database is updating.If you want to update click on update database

You can select the virus scan here and click on start scan

Avast antivirus version details

3 reasons why your system may be slow

2009-05-17T00:53:00.000+05:30

http://hehe2.net/linuxhowto/3-reasons-why-your-system-might-be-slow/

It's quite interesting. Most of it seems to revolve around watching your system resources. Personally (on lord's suggestion) I'm running conky on my desktop. I get real time updates on my system resources.

So as an unofficial addendum to that article, if you want to keep an eye on your hardware resources at all time then install and configure conky.

Conkys site:

http://conky.sourceforge.net/index.html

Yeah, conky is awsome. But it can be hard to setup. So, here is something that might help:

http://conky.sourceforge.net/docs.html

Enable DVD Playback in Ubuntu in Two Commands

2009-05-17T00:51:00.000+05:30

Code:

sudo apt-get install totem-xine libxine1-ffmpeg libdvdread3
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh

ubuntu Themes, icons, etc.

2009-05-17T00:48:00.001+05:30

http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Environment/Icons/

UBUNTU GAMES TO DOWNLOAD

2009-05-17T00:35:00.000+05:30

http://www.playubuntu.com/

http://www.playdeb.net/

http://www.lgdb.org/list_games

softwares for ubuntu

2009-05-17T00:13:00.000+05:30

http://www.getdeb.net/

Install VLC Media Player in Ubuntu

2009-05-17T00:06:00.000+05:30

The VLC media player is an open source media player,
distributed under the GNU General Public License.
It is a highly portable multimedia player that
supports many audio and video codecs and file
formats as well as DVDs, VCDs and various streaming
protocols. It is able to stream over networks and to transcode
multimedia files and save them into various different formats.

It is one of the most platform-independent players available,

with versions for Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X,

BeOS, BSD, Windows CE, and Solaris.

Install VLC Media player in Ubuntu

You need to make sure that you have a “universe” mirror in your /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-esd

This will complete the installation

If you want to open VLC You need to go to Applications—>Sound&Video—>VLC Media Player

Once it open you should see the following screen

VLC Media Player Version Details

VLC Media Player Skins 2 interface

VLC Media Player Skins

Install VLC Plugin for Mozilla Firefox

sudo apt-get install mozilla-plugin-vlc

Install Flash Player For Ubuntu Linux

2009-05-16T23:45:00.000+05:30

Type the following command to install flash player:

$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Now flash player should be working. Visit youtube or any other site to view flash content.

Troubleshooting tip

Update: This issue only relevant to older Ubuntu Linux version such as 6.04.

Some people may find voice is not working with newly installed flash player. Type following commands to solve this problem
$ sudo apt-get install alsa-oss $ gksudo gedit /etc/firefox/firefoxrc
Find line that read as FIREFOX_DSP and set to:
FIREFOX_DSP="aoss"

Save and close the file.

Close Firefox and restart it again.

installing photoshop in ubuntu with wine

2009-05-14T22:25:00.000+05:30

Installing has to be done in an earlier wine version, 1.1.17
 (or perhaps 1.1.16).
The procedure is exactly like this test :
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=
version&iId=14318&iTestingId=39823.
The exceptions being that one more thing is needed for the install to work properly,
winetricks ie6 and that I used the 1.1.17 version.

Here follows the installation guide:

1. If you have used wine before, please start of with a clean .wine folder.
Or bottle you Photoshop by doing every action with a specific wineprefix.

2. Install Wine 1.1.17 from
 http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/archive/index.html

3. Download winetricks and install necessary libraries.
Also make sure you have a decent driver for your graphics card installed.

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
sh winetricks msxml6 gdiplus gecko vcrun2005 ie6
sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

3. LANG=C before the following command like this:

LANG=C wine Setup.exe

4. To fix the text-layer bug, put atmlib.dll in
“~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system 32″.
You can download it from several places if you search it on google.

5. Install Wine 1.1.20 from
 http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/archive/index.html
(or your package manager), to fix the menu bar bug.

6. Try running.

You can delete
/home/[USER]/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/
Common Files/Adobe/Updater6/Adobe_Updater.exe
to stop adobe updater (or unselect it during installation way down in the unexpanded list)

Turn Your Ubuntu Intrepid Into Mac OSX Leopard

2009-05-13T22:13:00.000+05:30

Download the Mac4Lin themes and extract it to your Home folder. You should see a Mac4Lin_v1.0_RC1 folder that contains all the configuration files in your Home directory.

Preparing the installation path

Next, in your Home directory, press Ctrl + H to reveal all the hidden files. Check if any of the three folders .themes, .fonts, .emerald exist. If not, create three folders and name them .themes, .fonts, .emerald. Create another folder within .emerald folder and name it themes.

Installing the Mac4Lin themes

Open a terminal, type in:

cd Mac4Lin_v1.0_RC1
sh Mac4Lin_Install_v1.0_RC.sh

This will install the Gnome themes (window border and icons), change the wallpaper and the panel background.

During the installation process, the installer will ask you for root access in order to install certain components (refer to the image below). Type y to continue.

After the installation, your desktop should look something like this:

Installing the AWN dock

(The AWN dock may/may not work in all machine. If you find that it does not work after following the instructions below, you may want to try out Cairo dock that is less demanding on the machine.)

The AWN dock requires a compositing manager to work. If your system supports Compiz, it will be able to run AWN as well. if not, we have to install the X compositing manager.

Go to System -> Preferences -> Appearance, click on the Visual Effects tab. Click on the Extra radio button. If you see the following image, then your computer does not support Compiz. (If you don’t see the image below, proceed directly to install AWN.)

You have to install the alternative X composition manager

sudo apt-get install xcompmgr

Add it to your auto-start list. Go to System -> Preferences -> Session. Add the following:

Install AWN

The AWN dock is already included in the Intrepid repository, so you can easily install it by clicking this link. Alternatively, you can also type the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator

Once the installation is done, go to Preferences -> AWN Manager. On the left pane, click on the Themes. On the right, click Add. Navigate to the Mac4Lin_v1.0_RC1 folder. Open up the AWN folder and select Mac4Lin_AWN_v1.0_RC.tar.gz. Click Open. The AWN theme should be installed now. Check the radio button beside the theme and click Apply. Click Close.

Before we launch the AWN, we need to remove the bottom panel so that there won’t be an overlap. At the bottom panel, right-click the mouse and select Delete This Panel. Activate AWN by going to Applications -> Accessories -> Avant Window Navigator. You should see the AWN loading up in the bottom of the screen. To add applications to the dock, click on the Applications at the top panel and navigate to the particular application you want to add. Drag the application icon to the dock. That’s it. You should see something like the image below:

To start AWN everytime you log in, go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions. Click Add. Fill up the following:

Click Add, follow by Close. AWN will now automatically load when you login to your computer.

Installing OSX font

Go to System -> Preferences -> Appearance. Click on the Fonts tab Change the following field to the same as the image below:

Make sure the Subpixel smoothing (LCDs) button is checked. Click Close.

Installing Global menu

There is a repository for Ubuntu Intrepid that you can add to the sources.list, but it is not the updated version (0.6) and it is buggy. Instead, we will download the latest version (0.7.1) from the code homepage. In the future when the repository is updated to the newer and more stable version, I will update this post again.

For 32-bit machine

Download gnome-globalmenu-0.7.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm to your Home folder from the Globalmenu Google code site.

Note that the file is of rpm format. We need to use alien to convert it to deb format.

In the terminal, type:

sudo apt-get install alien sudo alien --scripts gnome-globalmenu-0.7.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm

This will create a gnome-globalmenu-0.7.1-1.fc10.i386.deb file in your Home folder. Double-click on the deb file to activate the installer. Click Install Package to install Globalmenu.

For 64-bit machine

Open your text-editor (Applications -> Accessories -> Text Editor).

Copy and paste the following:

# Uncomment to load the GTK module export GTK_MODULES=globalmenu-gnome # Uncomment to tell the GTK module to open a Gtk # TreeView for all menus in the application you start. # export GNOMENU_FUN=1 # Uncomment to disable global menu. # export GNOMENU_DISABLED=1 # Uncomment to print a lot of debugging messages # export GNOMENU_VERBOSE=1 # Uncomment to save the debugging messages to the given file. # export GNOMENU_LOG_FILE=/tmp/gnomenu.log # uncomment to disable the plugin for specific programs. # export GTK_MENUBAR_NO_MAC="fast-user-switch-applet"

Save the file as .gnomerc in the Home folder.

In your terminal,

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following line to the end of the file. Save and close.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/globalmenu-team/ubuntu intrepid main

Back in your terminal,

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome2-globalmenu

Now, on the top panel, remove all the icons and menu from the left side of the panel. Right-click on the icon and select “Remove from panel”.

On the right of the top panel, remove the logout icon. Still on the right hand side of the top panel, right click and select ‘Add to panel‘. Scroll down the list and add ‘Search for files‘. This will add the spotlight icon to the panel.

On the left of the top panel, right click and select ‘Add to panel‘. Scroll down the list and add Main Menu and Global Menu Panel Applet.

The Globalmenu might not appear or work well after you have added it. Logout and login again and you should see the globalmenu working perfectly on the top panel.

Right click on the globalmenu and select Preferences. Check “Enable Global Menu” and unchecked “Icon”.

The globalmenu is compatible with most of the GTK application. However, some programs, such as Firefox will not work with it.

Creating Dashboard effect

We will use a combination of screenlets and Compiz widget plugin to achieve the dashboard effect.

If you have not installed Screenlets, click here to install.

If you have not installed Compiz Configuration Settings Manager, click here to install.

Alternatively, you can also type the following command in terminal to install:

sudo apt-get install screenlets compizconfig-settings-manager

Go to System->Preferences->CompizConfig Settings Manager. On the Left, click on Desktop. On the right, put a check beside ‘Widget layer’

Go to Applications –>Accessories->Screenlets. Activate the widgets that you want to display. Right click on the widget and select ‘Properties’. Go to Options tab and select ‘Treat as widget’. Do this for all the widgets that you have activated.

You can now see your dashboard in action by pressing F9.

Fixing up some small detail

Until now, your desktop should be very close to a Mac desktop, but there are still some small details such as the Gnome icon at the top panel, mouse cursor etc. Let’s fix them up now.

Replace the apple logo

1. Download the apple icon (Right-click and select “save link as”).

2. Go to Places –> Home Folder. Press Ctrl + H to reveal the hidden files.

3. Navigate to /.icons/Mac4Lin_Icons_v1.0_RC/scalable/places. Scroll down to find the images distributor-logo.png, gnome-main-menu.png, main-menu.png and start-here.png. Note that all of them are the same image. Rename them to distributor-logo.png.old, gnome-main-menu.png.old, main-menu.png.old and start-here.png.old respectively.

4. Now, with the apple icon that you have downloaded, make four copies and rename them to distributor-logo.png, gnome-main-menu.png, main-menu.png and start-here.png. Copy and paste all of them to the folder.

5. Logout and login again. The logo at the top panel should change to the apple icon now.

Changing mouse cursor

Go to System –> Preferences –> Appearance. Select Customize. Click on the Pointer tab. Select Mac4Lin_Cursors_v1.0_RC. Click Close.

Configuring usplash screen

Until now, you have done up the interior, it’s time to fix the exterior: usplash screen and grub screen.

Install startupmanager by clicking here or type the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install startupmanager

Go to System -> Administration -> Startup-Manager. Click on the Appearance tab.

Press the Manage bootloader themes button. This will pop up a window allowing you to select the background image for the GRUB.

Click on the Add button and navigate to File System –> Home –> Username –> Mac4Lin_v1.0_RC1 –> GRUB. You should see three files. Refer to the below screenshots on how each file looks like. Pick the one that you like best.

Back to the main window, select the image from the drop down bar. Remember to check the box “Use background image for bootloader menu”.

There is a bug in Ubuntu Intrepid that prevent the user from changing the usplash screen. We have to do a workaround using splashy. Here’s the hack for it:

Remove the default usplash

sudo apt-get autoremove usplash

Download these two files to your desktop:

libsplashy1_0.3.10-1_i386.deb
splashy_0.3.10-1_i386.deb

Double-click the downloaded files to install.

Download the osx-splash splashy theme file to your Home folder.

In your terminal,

sudo splashy_config –i ~/osx-splash.tar.gz
sudo mv /etc/splashy/config.xml /etc/splashy/config.xml.old
sudo cp /etc/splashy/themes/osx-splash/config.xml /etc/splashy/config.xml

Now, we need to edit the GRUB file

gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Scroll down till you find the kernel entry. Append the term vga=792 to the end of the kernel line (see screenshot below). Save and close.

That’s it.

Complete Screenshots

Grub screen

Intrepid Mac OSX desktop

Intrepid Mac OSX desktop with dashboard effect

Uninstallation

If you want to change the theme back to the original setting, here is what you need to do:

1. Remove the globalmenu from the top panel

2. Remove all the installed files:

sudo apt-get autoremove splashy libsplashy1 gnome-globalmenu

3. Restore the usplash theme and remove the vga=792 from the GRUB file.

sudo apt-get install usplash

4. Uninstall the Mac4Lin themes

cd Mac4Lin_v1.0_RC
sh Mac4Lin_Uninstall_v1.0_RC.sh

Animated Wallpaper on your Ubuntu

2009-05-12T14:26:00.000+05:30

Have some spare CPU cycles to burn? Using a utility called XWinWrap you can use screensavers, videos, and other applications as your desktop wallpaper.

One drawback is that you will not be able to use desktop icons with XWinWrap due to a limitation in Nautilus. Compiz desktop effects are not required, but a fairly powerful computer if you don’t want reduced performance.

Install XWinWrap
XWinWrap is not available in the Ubuntu repositories, but an easily installable DEB package is available. Download and extract the zip archive, and then install the DEB package from the i386 or x86_64 folder depending on your CPU type.

XWinWrap only works properly for me once I’ve disabled desktop icons. Do so with the following command:

gconftool-2 -s '/apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop' --type bool false

Run this if you want to undo and enable desktop icons again:
gconftool-2 -s '/apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop' --type bool true

Using XWinWrap

Now you’re ready to run XWinWrap commands to create an animated wallpaper effect. You can start XWinWrap from a terminal or from the Run Application dialog (F2). To exit XWinWrap from the terminal, just press Ctrl-C. To exit XWinWrap when it’s started from the Run Application dialog, run the command below:
killall xwinwrap

While trying out different effects, remember to exit XWinWrap before starting it again.

Animated Wallpaper - Screensavers
This command will start the glmatrix Matrix screensaver as your wallpaper:
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/glmatrix -root -window-id WID

Here a few other screensavers you can run as wallpaper for a neat effect:

Tunnel:
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/atunnel -window-id WID
Toasters:
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/flyingtoasters -window-id WID
Plasma (slow speed):
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- /usr/lib/xscreensaver/plasma -window-id WID -x 30 -s 1

Animated Wallpaper - Video
Using the MPlayer video player, you can use any video with XWinWrap.

Install MPlayer from the package mplayer (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
sudo apt-get install mplayer

This XWinWrap command will loop play the video file video.ogg:
xwinwrap -ov -fs -- mplayer -wid WID -quiet -loop 0 video.ogg

Once you’ve found an effect you like, you can add the command to the startup programs in System->Preferences->Sessions to load it when you log in.

Install Compiz Fusion on Ubuntu for 3d effects Desktop

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Compiz and Beryl have merged and the name of the newly born project resulted from this fusion, Compiz Fusion. The Compiz Fusion project tries to bring us all the latest 3D technologies, such as Cube reflection, paint fire on your desktop and a lot of new eye candy animations. The following guide will teach you (step by step) how to install Compiz Fusion on your Ubuntu (Kubuntu) 7.04 operating system. Be aware that Compiz Fusion is still in heavy development, so it may not be very stable. For me (at this moment) it's pretty stable, as I didn't encounter any bugs.

Open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal for GNOME users or KMenu -> System -> Konsole for KDE users) and type:

CODE

sudo apt-get -y remove compiz-core desktop-effects

Leave the terminal open and go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources, click on the second tab (Third-Party Software), then click on the "Add" button and paste the following code:

CODE

deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/3v1deb feisty eyecandy

Click the "Add Source" button after you pasted the above code and do the same for the following code:

CODE

deb-src http://download.tuxfamily.org/3v1deb feisty eyecandy

Don't close the Software Sources window yet!

In the terminal window, type:

CODE

wget http://download.tuxfamily.org/3v1deb/DD800CD9.gpg

CODE

sudo apt-key add DD800CD9.gpg

Now click the "Close" button on the Software Sources window and you will be asked if you want to reload the information about available software, so click the "Reload" button and wait for the window to disappear.

Copy/Paste the following lines in the terminal window:

CODE

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get -y upgrade

FOR GNOME USERS:

CODE

sudo apt-get -y install compiz compiz-gnome compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-fusion-plugins-extra libcompizconfig-backend-gconf

FOR KDE USERS:

CODE

sudo apt-get -y install compiz compiz-kde compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-fusion-plugins-extra libcompizconfig-backend-kconfig

Now, if everything was correctly installed and you didn't encounter errors, press ALT+F2 and type:

CODE

compiz --replace

That's it! Enjoy the latest 3D eye candy effects on your (K)Ubuntu OS.

Some quick tricks:

- Hold CTRL + ALT keys and with the left mouse button rotate the cube
- Super + E activates the Expo plugin
- Hold Super + Shift and with your mouse paint fire on your desktop
- Super + Shift + C will erase the fire paint
- Super + Tab activates the Ring Switcher plugin

you can check out the videos in youtube for further help :-)

Installing nvidia/ati video drivers in Ubuntu

2009-05-12T12:18:00.000+05:30

Here's what I did:

1. Enabled the ubuntu's "universe" and "multiverse" repositories.

-it's under System > Administration > Software Sources.
in the Ubuntu Software tab, check the second box that says:
Community-maintained open source software (universe)
and the fourth tab:
Software restricted by copyright or legal issues (multiverse)

Click Ok > Reload > Close

2. Install Envy by typing the code in the terminal:
sudo apt-get install envyng-gtk

..and now were done installing envy

3. Open Envy by clicking it in
Applications > System tools > Envy
or if in case its not therem you may type the following code in the terminal:
sudo envyng -t

4. Follow on-screen instructions.
5. reboot..

Everything's done. Thats how easy it is to install nvidia and ati drivers in Ubuntu.

First, go to System > Administration > Hardware Drivers

You'll then see that Nvidia drivers are not in use. Check (or tick) the box underneath Enabled to enable the drivers.

You'll then be asked (after a brief explanation about desktop effects) if you want to enable the driver. Click Enable Driver.

Wait for the installer file to download.

Wait for the drivers to be installed.

Then, click Close once the changes have been applied.

You'll then see that the drivers are enabled and will be available for use upon a reboot.

since Envy doesnt work with 64bit edition here are the steps to install ur nvidia drivers in ubuntu.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

okay now try this to fix your problem

You will have to remove the restricted modules first by...

logging in at the command prompt when x doesn't start...or sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop if you have x running.

then ctrl alt F1 to get to a command prompt

sudo apt-get --purge remove nvidia-glx* nvidia-settings linux-restricted-modules

sudo rm /etc/init.d/nvidia-*

sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-100.14.11-pkg2.run

just answer yes to all questions asked by the installer.

It should now let you log in to the desktop by typing startx and your nvidia driver
will be installed.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CategoryInstallation

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https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CategoryInstallation

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To download Ubuntu

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Using your web browser, navigate to http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
Select Desktop Edition, and then click Ubuntu 8.10.
In the Choose a download location near you menu, select the location closest to you.
Click Begin Download. A pop up window opens, prompting you where to run or save the file.
In Internet Explorer, click Run to automatically open the installation file in a CD burning utility or click Save to save the file to your disk. In Mozilla Firefox, select Open with to open the installation file in a CD burning utility or select Save File to save the file to your disk.

After downloading the Ubuntu installation CD image, you need to burn it to a CD or DVD. See BurningIsoHowto for detailed instructions on burning ISO disk images.

To burn the installation disk to a CD or DVD:

Place a recordable CD or DVD into your CD/DVD drive.
Load an application that is capable of burning .ISO image files to CDs or DVDs.
Using your CD and DVD writing program, copy the disk image to your blank CD or DVD.

To Install Ubuntu gnome

2009-05-12T12:09:00.000+05:30

Ubuntu can be installed with the graphical CD. Make sure that your computer is set to boot from a CD before a hard drive.

Insert the Ubuntu disc into your CD drive.
Start or restart your computer. The Language screen appears. If you reboot your computer and do not see the following screen, please refer to BootFromCD
Select your desired language and press Enter. The startup window appears.
Select Install Ubuntu and press Enter. The Welcome window appears.
From the taskbar, choose your preferred language. Click Forward. The Where are you? window appears.
From the Selected city box, choose your closest location. Click Forward. The Keyboard layout window appears.
Select your keyboard layout. To test if you have chosen the correct layout, enter characters in the text box. Click Forward. The Prepare disk space window appears.
If you want to install Ubuntu over your entire hard drive, then Select Guided – use entire disk and select the hard drive that you want to install Ubuntu. Click Forward. The Who are you? window appears.

WARNING: Installing Ubuntu on your entire hard disk will erase all data that is currently on the drive.

If you want to install Ubuntu on a single partion Dual Booting, Select Guided – resize. In the New partition size area, drag the area between the two partitions to create your desired partition sizes. Click 'Forward. The Who are you? window appears.
In the What is your name? field, enter your name.
In the What name do you want to use to log in? field, enter a login name.
In the Choose a password to keep your account safe field, enter a password in both text boxes.
In the What is the name of your computer? Field, enter a name to identify your computer.
If you are the only user and wish to avoid the login screen, check Log in automatically (optional).
Click Forward. The Ready to install window appears.
Verify that the language, layout, location, and personal information are correct and click Install. The installation wizard begins.
When the installation wizard finishes, the installation complete window appears.
Click Restart now to restart your computer. Ubuntu is now installed.