Ubuntu Tutorials

First I want to say thank you to all the people that offered comments and feedback on making the switch to KDE.  I have read each one and I have been checking out the suggested apps.  Thank you for all the suggestions–it sure is making this trial a bit easier.  Below are some of my initial feelings, thoughts and not-yet-resolved issues.

1. Kmail does work with Exchange using the disconnected IMAP option.  Thanks to Lure for that tip.
2. Akregator is very nice.  I think it was a stupid idea to remove RSS from Evolution so I’m glad this app is integrated or standalone.
3. Konquerer is very clean and quick but it doesn’t work with my companies CMS.  For some reason it isn’t submitting form data (??).  I am back to Firefox at this point.
4. Katapult is pretty cool so far and I’m getting in the habit of using that a lot.
5. Kgpg is working well for my gpg keys no problem.
6. I have installed basKet but I haven’t had time to play with it yet.  It sounds like it could be a good replacement for Tomboy that I used in gnome.

So far I can’t think of anything that I haven’t been able to do.. it’s just been a little stressful in production trying to find the right app for the right job in the least amount of time.

I’ll keep posting some of my findings here.  Thanks again for all of the suggestions so far!

I’ve spent the bulk of my afternoon trying to setup some type of parental controls on an Ubuntu machine. My brother has been using Ubuntu for some time now and good ‘ol Dad wants to make sure that he doesn’t run into the wrong neighborhood online. I’ve managed to figure things out so I thought I’d put together the steps that I used.

These steps come from the Ubuntu CE (Christian Edition) team and website. This, from what I understand, is pre-installed in that distribution. They have released a script to install and configure the parental controls on a standard Ubuntu system. I have tested this on Xubuntu (Xfce) and assume it works just as well on GNOME or KDE.

1. Download Web Content Filtering Installation Script
2. Right-click on the archive and select Extract here.
3. Double-click the “install_me” file.
4. Select “Run in terminal”.
5. Enter your passworrd when prompted.
6. Follow the onscreen prompts.

Once you have finished running the script you will need to reboot your computer. Dansguardian will not function until after you reboot your system. Your original sources.list file will be restored when the script is finished.

This script updates quite a few files and should be used at your own risk.

Note: You may see a few errors during the script regarding
dansguardian and clamav. These should be ignored. Once you reboot your
computer these configuration issues will be resolved.

technorati tags:dansguardian, tinyproxy, parental, control, firehol, ubuntu, xubuntu, kubuntu, ubuntuCE

UPDATE: ubuntu-restricted-extras-all-that-extra-stuff-all-in-one-place

I have recently posted about Seveas’ Repository, which includes a comprehensive package for multimedia within gnome or kde. I also wanted to outline how you can manually install most of the main multimedia codecs for your ubuntu machine. (I personally still prefer the manual method as there are a few aspects of Seveas’ multimedia package that I don’t like.)

Install Multimedia Codecs for Ubuntu

sudo aptitude install gstreamer0.10-pitfdll gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-gl gstreamer0.10-plugins-base gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse libxine-extracodecs w32codecs

Everything included in these multimedia codec packages should give you complete playback ability for most known codecs.
Note: the above command should be inputted on one line. Also, a few of these codecs are not yet supported for amd64 users.

This evening I installed KDE to get a feel for what it has to offer since I’ve last used it. I haven’t used KDE since my Red Hat 9.0 days almost four years ago. I’ll say quite a lot has changed! I don’t know that I’ll replace my gnome desktop with KDE but its been a pleasant experience so far.

The Tutorial for the day is how to setup and run Kompose which offers you a very similar experience to OSX “Expose”. The KDE version already offers the upgrade OSX has in store for Leopard, but that’s another story. The main reason I’m including this tutorial is that I spent the last twenty minutes trying to find a similar tutorial and it was not an easy task.

Installing Kompose

sudo aptitude install kompose

Running Kompose

ALT-F2 : kompose

Configuring Kompose Shortcuts

Show Kompose (default): win + tab
Show Kompose (ungrouped): ctrl + shift + j

Show Kompose (grouped by desktop): ctrl + shift + i

Show Kompose (current desktop): ctrl + shift + k

Kompose makes it very easy to view all of the programs you have running on each of your virtual desktops. It does seem to make things very easy to keep organized. It would be nice if something like this were available in gnome.