My Brand New Helena

Last week I replace my Felicia (Linux Mint 6) with Helena (Linux Mint 8). The installation was similar with any previous Linux Mint, but the most obvious different was there was an introduction slide show when installing Helena.

With a little bit of modification my desktop looks like this.

My Desktop of Helena

You can find in the Internet for full screen shots of Helena.

After I used Helena for almost 1 week, I can confirm several best things from Helena compare to her sibling, Felicia.

• Very fast boot time, this is very obvious, because Felicia needed almost 1 minute just to show login screen, and Helena only needs less than 30 seconds.
• The time needed from login to ready desktop also very short.
• Nice desktop theme. Even though I believe I can set the theme by myself, but as a default theme, it saves a lot of my time.
• Firefox v.3.5 is much stable compare to the version 3.0.
• Compiz is more smooth and stable.
• This might be subjective, but I feel the program launching is faster and more stable.
• One last thing the font seems nicer compare to Felicia’s.

But, I still have one big problem with Helena, the transfer rate from and to USB harddisk is very slow, or maybe, slower than Felicia. The transfer rate is only 1.5 – 4 MB/sec, which is very annoying.

Without transfer rate problem, I think Helena is a very perfect linux distro, especially for new comers.

Linux Mint Felicia

Up to today I’ve used Linux Mint 6 aka Felicia for about 9 months. Before I used Felicia I’ve used its sister, Daryna. I’ve noted some differences between them. Herewith I conclude my experience with Felicia on my Compaq Presario V3000 notebook.

Best things about Felicia:

• The Compiz works nicely in my notebook. I can say that it’s superb because I don’t experience any problem. On Daryna, it gave me a lot of problem, so that time I didn’t use compiz.
• The menu system is quite nice arranged.
• Because of it based on Ubuntu, and Ubuntu based on Debian, I can have many option of applications that I want to install.

Bad things about Felicia:

• Firefox is hang quite a few times, sometimes once a week. It’s really annoying, but I think the problem is with the Firefox and not Felicia.
• Felicia also hang, although not so often. When it hang, the Caps Lock light was blinking. I can’t tell in what condition the Felicia hang, but if it hang, I have no choice, I used hard shutdown to turn it off.
• There are multimedia buttons on my keyboard, but it seems the Felicia doesn’t like them, unlike Daryna last time, which worked perfectly.
• Transfer rate from my notebook to USB Harddrive SATA is very low. On average the transfer rate is only 4MB/sec. In addition, I think it also affected my USB DVD Writer, which made me spent more than 1 hour to burn 1 DVD.

Overall, Felicia is quite a good operating system. For most of the time it is quite stable and usable. I like Felicia, even though I feel Daryna still better. Hopefully the next Linux Mint can give me a better experience than Felicia.

Anyway, I want to say thank you to all open source developers, especially Linux Mint team.

My Applications in Linux

Up to today I’ve used linux for quite sometimes, about almost 3 years. Many of the applications have their place in my heart. In this blog I try to list out all the applications that I need. Btw, my favorite desktop environment is Gnome, so many of the applications are Gnome applications.

These are the applications that I can’t live without:

• Guake Terminal; it’s a terminal that can be instantly called by press F12.
• Gnome Do; it’s a fastest way to call an application by press Super+Space and then type the application name.
• Text Editor (Gedit); it’s a … simple text editor. It’s extremely useful in many urgent situation, including programming.
• Tomboy; it’s a small note application that is very useful for making a reminder list or to-do list.
• Deluge; it’s a bittorrent client which is fast and reliable. The problem is when it active, the internet connection become slow down, especially when I was uploading files.
• Firefox; it’s my primary web browser. The problems with this application are it’s quite slow and occasionally hang. The best thing about Firefox is that I can install useful addons. Those addons are:
  • AutoPager; if I read an article or forum that contains of many pages, this addon will load the next page when I reach the end of the page.
  • Greasemonkey; by using this addon I can customize of a website layout.
  • SpeedDial; this addon will load some links screenshot when I open a new tab.
  • XMarks; this addon will save collection of my bookmarks in XMarks website.
• Opera; it’s a very fast web browser, but for some reasons I still prefer Firefox.
• Thunderbird; it’s a email client, but also can be used as RSS reader.
• Pidgin; it’s a multi-protocol internet messenger. The problem is sometimes it cannot connect to Yahoo Messenger server.
• Skype; it’s a VOIP application that has internet messenger client. The current problem is the VOIP is not working properly.
• Gcstar; it’s a collection application. I use this to put my movie list.
• Lynx; it’s an editor that is very good to write research or report document.
• OpenOffice.org; it’s an office suite that comparable to Microsoft Office suite. The biggest problem is it’s very slow.
• Geany; it’s an IDE application for programming, but also can be used as a text editor. It’s very light and fast. It’s my primary IDE for programming.
• Back In Time; it’s an application to back up my data. However, this application doesn’t do real copy to designated back up location, instead it creates hard-links to my files.
• DOS Emulator (dosemu); it’s an emulator program that emulate DOS environment. So, old-time DOS applications and games can run nicely in my machine.
• Gmountiso; it’s an application that can mount an ISO file to a designated folder. So, I just need to open the folder and run or read any files in that folder, also I don’t need to waste my blank CD or DVD.
• VMWare Player; it’s an virtualization application that can be used to install almost any OS for working purpose or just testing linux distros.
• Brasero; it’s a CD/DVD burner application, which is a quite simple application.
• Miro; it’s an internet TV that using torrent technology. So, it can be used as a bittorent client.
• SMPlayer; it’s a powerful movie player that based on MPlayer, with a better interface than MPlayer.
• VLC; it’s a powerful movie player.
• SongBird; it’s a music player that created by Mozilla.
• Wine; it’s an API emulator for Windows application and it’s very useful.

These are the applications that I can live without:

• Screenlets; it’s a widget application that can put many types of widgets on the desktop.
• VirtualBox; it’s a virtualisation application that is very useful if I need to test a new linux distro or Windows.
• Battle for Wesnoth; it’s a turn-based strategy game. It has a very good gameplay and story line, but somehow I cannot pass one of the map.
• TuxMath; it’s a game that drops math formulas from the top of the screen, and I must type the answer before the formulas hit the bottom of the screen.
• TuxType; it’s a game that similar to TuxMath, but it drops words, and I must type the words exactly before they hit the bottom of the screen.
• Gimp; it’s a drawing application that, I heard, comparable with Photoshop.
• Filezilla; it’s a FTP program.
• Google Earth; it’s a map of the world. Hey, I found my home …
• Vuze; it’s a bittorrent client and internet tv client. It’s very fast and reliable, but very bloated.
• Wireshark; it’s a network application that is good to find problem in my network.
• HomeBank; it’s a accounting application that can capture my income and expense.
• Gambas; it’s a programming application that has similar syntax with Basic.
• NetBeans; it’s an IDE application that mostly be used for Java programming, but can be used for other languages by adding some plug-ins.
• MonoDevelop; it’s a programming application that follows Visual Studio .Net.
• AcidRip; it’s a DVD rip application. It works well, but I’m still unable to get the DVD subtitles.
• OGMRip; it’s another DVD rip application. It has the same problem with AcidRip.
• dvd::rip; it’s another DVD rip application, with a lot of options. But, I also cannot get the DVD subtitles.
• HandBrake; it’s another DVD rip application, but I’ve never really used it.
• Elisa Media Center; it’s an application that has a purpose to provide multimedia to users.
• Gnome Subtitles; it’s an application to create and edit movie/video subtitles.
• Totem; it’s a simple movie player.
• MPlayer; it’s a powerful movie player.
• Rythmbox; it’s a nice music player.

Hmmm… I don’t notice that I have used so many applications in Linux. Good job and thank you for all open source developers.

Facebook Problem in Firefox

In the past few days I had problem with facebook display in my Firefox. The top and the bottom bars were become transparent. The content of the facebook could be seen through those bars. Looks like it has problem with it’s Javascript. Both of my Linux and Windows system had this problem.

In the first day I thought the problem was because a problem in Facebook. After a few days I noticed that some of my friends didn’t have problem with Facebook, even though I didn’t know what browser that they used.

Yesterday I fixed the problem. Looks like it because the offline website data in my notebook cause the problem. Yesterday I cleared all the caches, cookies, and offline website data, and then my facebook’s look backs to normal.

Play Romance of The Three Kingdoms XI in Linux

A few weeks ago I got a copy of “Romance of The Three Kingdoms XI” PC game. I tried install it on my Linux Mint Felicia machine, of course with Wine installed first. The installation process was fine. Nothing is unusual. But, when I tried to play the game, the 3D graphic was badly rendered. I barely saw any object in the game. Everything messed up. Although, the gameplay was working fine, because I was still able to move the army in the game and built city’s facilities.

Then, I searched in Google. I found out that the newer Wine version is able to solve this problem (check this link). I followed the instruction in the website to install the newer Wine version directly from Wine repository and not from Ubuntu repository. I ran these in the Terminal:

wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/intrepid.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

I tried to run the game again, and this time the game display was better, actually it was perfect. The only problem is there is no sound in the game, but that’s secondary, I still can play without the sound. Upto today, I already played for more than 2 weeks, and I’ve never encountered any problem. And, you know what, it is a great game, I like this game so much… Thanks, Koei.

Connection Problem to Yahoo Server from Pidgin

These few weeks I have a problem connecting to Yahoo Messenger Server from my Pidgin. I tried changing the user id, by adding “@yahoo.com” still didn’t help me. At the beginning I thought it’s just a temporary problem. But, after few weeks unable to connect to YM server, made me curious.

Ah, after searching in the internet I found out that many other people have the same problem with me. And, I found some solutions. These are the solutions:

• Change the pager server from scs.msg.yahoo.com to cn.scs.msg.yahoo.com, for detail click here.
• Change the pager server from scs.msg.yahoo.com to 66.163.181.189, for more detail click here

I tried only the first one, and it solved the problem.

Screenshot-Modify Account

Articles Collection of May’09

These are the collection of useful articles about Linux/Open source, that I collected in May 2009:

1. 3 Ways to Record Your Linux Desktop
2. How to set the date in Linux
3. How to securely clean up data on a hard disk on Linux
4. 20 Ubuntu Derivatives You Should Know About
5. Store passwords with pwsafe
6. Beyond Firefox: 10 Other Great Linux Browsers
7. 7 E17 Linux & BSD Distributions
8. 8 Beautiful Conky Desktop Monitor Setup
9. 10 handy Firefox about:config hacks
10. 10 Steps for Basic Linux Desktop Security
11. 10 Free Linux Ebooks For Beginners
12. Best Linux distros for power users, gamers, newbies and more
13. 10 Awesome Icon Sets for Ubuntu/GNOME Desktop
14. 10 Games That Will Turn your Linux into a WarMachine
15. 5 Easy Wine Front-ends for Linux
16. Nixie’s Linux Haxor Quickie: Setting up File Sharing in Linux with Samba!
17. 12 Worthy Alternative Browsers for Linux
18. Using the Bash complete Command
19. 10 Free Apps that Turn your Ubuntu into Video Studio
20. Ubuntu Softwares – Not Just Another Top 5 List
21. How To Convert Any Video File Format Under Linux
22. 8 Essential OpenOffice Extensions
23. 9 Ways to Make Linux More Secure
24. 15+ programs you don’t have to miss when you switch to Linux
25. 100 open source gems – part 1
26. 100 open source gems – part 2
27. Access Remote GUI Programs Using SSH Forwarding
28. EarCandy 0.4 rules !
29. Install Windows Games in Linux with PlayOnLinux …
30. Project that should be integrated into the Gnome Desktop
31. How to Import Data From Spreadsheet into OpenOffice.org Database
32. Portable VirtualBox
33. Install any linux on USB flash drive
34. Gnome desktop overhaul guide
35. How to Create a Multi Part Tar File with Linux
36. Use an ISO as if it were a real CD
37. How to: add features to Firefox with Mozilla’s new Jetpack
38. Getting to know Gnote
39. 15 Beautiful KDM Themes
40. Introduction to fstab
41. Another superb collection of Linux games
42. Top 10 Apps that Boosts Ubuntu’s User Experience

Articles Collection of Apr’09

These are the collection of useful articles about Linux/Open source, that I collected in April 2009:

1. small tip – How to squeeze blank lines using cat or less
2. 14 Most Popular Text Editors for Linux
3. 5 Useful Desktop Managers for Linux
4. 5 Best Applications to Rip and Transcode DVDs in Linux
5. 25 Cool and Geeky BSD Wallpapers
6. 12 Popular Audio Players for Linux – An Overview
7. 8 Power Docks For Your Linux Machine
8. 5 Essential Add-ons for Firefox 3
9. Linux Format wallpapers
10. LaTeX made easy
11. ManiaDrive – an arcade car game for Ubuntu
12. Get To Know Linux: The /etc/init.d Directory
13. 8 Image Viewers for Ubuntu
14. All the Best Linux Cheat Sheets
15. Tutorial: An Introduction to Linux CLI
16. Howto: Create launchers using easy bash scripts
17. File Synchronization with Rsync over SSH
18. 10 Special Purpose Linux Distributions
19. small tip – Find and delete files with a given extension from a directory and subdirectories
20. Dropbox for Linux
21. Overview: 5 BitTorrent Clients for Linux
22. 10 Best Audio Editors for Linux
23. Run Windows applications on top of Linux desktop with Seamless Mode in VirtualBox
24. 10 Awesome Themes For Ubuntu
25. Back In Time Does Full Linux Backups in One Click
26. The List: The Top 5 Media Center Programs for Linux
27. 12 Open Source Games that Don’t Suck
28. The best Linux media players
29. Six Linux softphone’s list
30. Top 10 Firefox Add-ons for Linux Users
31. 5 Free Backup Tools for Linux
32. Back In Time – a simple backup system for Linux
33. Linux Commands You Need To Know
34. Coolest Firefox About:Config Tricks
35. Several powerful console music players for Linux
36. How to rip DVD movies in Linux with Handbrake
37. Ten Expert Ubuntu Tricks

Articles Collection of Mar’09

These are the collection of useful articles about Linux/Open source, that I collected in March 2009:

1. ClamAV – A Must Antivirus for Linux Systems
2. VirtualBox, Virtual Networking
3. Flegita: Gnome Scan – A Simple Scanning Alternative to XSane
4. Play StarCraft in Linux
5. The Ultimate Guide To Manage Your Audio/Video Files In Linux
6. 4 Great Tools to Find Files Quickly in Ubuntu
7. The Beginner’s Guide to Linux, Part 2: Installation
8. 10 ways to go green with Linux
9. Migrating to Linux in 5 Steps
10. Important Linux File Directories That Users Should Know About
11. Vim: master the basics
12. Free Video Editors for Linux
13. More Linux tips every geek should know
14. Top Five Geek-Style Distros
15. How To Transfer Files Easily Between Linux Machines
16. Transparent GTK Themes
17. Automate Linux with Cron and Anacron
18. Quick fixes for common Linux problems
19. Three Easy Steps to Set-up Anonymous Web Browsing on Linux
20. 29 Music-making Apps for Linux
21. Setting up SSHFS
22. Move /home to It’s Own Partition
23. Top 10 Linux Distros Reviewed
24. gstreamer bug in Ubuntu and a temporary fix
25. Xfig: a classic program for diagram editing
26. How To Reset Any Linux Password
27. How-To: Compile Programs From Source in Linux
28. Burning Xbox 360 Games on Linux (Stealth!)
29. Commandline 101: Getting a Grip on Grep
30. Etymology of an Open Source App/Project
31. andLinux – Run Linux natively inside Windows
32. 10 Most important linux networking commands
33. Run Levels in a Nutshell
34. Compile source code – and solve problems
35. 5 Compiz Effects That Are Actually Useful
36. fwbuilder: Manage Firewalls Professionally
37. Using ATA Over Ethernet (AoE) On Debian Lenny (Initiator And Target)
38. Reviewed and rated: the best Linux newsreaders
39. Top 10 Projects To Revive
40. Play Games Inside Your Linux Terminal
41. Software Tip: Using Unetbootin
42. The fastest way to disable PC speaker in Ubuntu
43. Making The Linux Command Line A Little Friendlier
44. Ubuntu Package Management from Command line using apt (Advanced Packaging Tool)
45. Configuring Printers Via The CUPS Web Interface
46. Diagnose and fix network problems yourself
47. Find files the easy way
48. Linux Puzzle Games
49. Top 10 Free Linux Games in 2009
50. 100 tips to help you work smarter with Firefox
51. How to write an interactive shell script
52. A handful of Firefox tweaks that will double your browser speed
53. Easily Mount ISO Files in Linux on Right Click
54. My teenager top 8 Linux games
55. 10 Cool Cursor Themes for Linux
56. How To Configure A Firewall In Linux Using Firestarter
57. 10 Must-Have Linux Applications
58. Boot an ISO image from hard disk?
59. Password-less SSH Connection
60. Getting Started with Firewall Builder
61. 4 Ways to Create CD/DVD ISO Images in Ubuntu
62. 25 Tutorials To Get You Started With Inkscape
63. 7 Free Mind Mapping Softwares

Articles Collection of Feb’09

These are the collection of useful articles about Linux/Open source, that I collected in Feb 2009:

1. 10 Songbird add-ons for a better audio player
2. 12 of the best games for your Linux netbook
3. Linux layout for Windows users
4. 6 Free Blogging Clients for Linux Users
5. How To Create A Great Window Maker Desktop
6. Installing Windows XP As A KVM Guest On Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop
7. 17 Awesome Linux Applicaitons to Improve your Productivity
8. 10 free RAW image tools for Linux
9. Free and Open Source Finance/Accounting Software for Linux
10. A Unix Utility You Should Know About: Netcat
11. Automate Tasks With Cron
12. The Perfect Server – Debian Lenny (Debian 5.0) [ISPConfig 2]
13. 25 Tutorials To Get You Started With Blender
14. Easy Steps to Rip a DVD to ISO in Ubuntu 8.10
15. Setting up UNIX file systems
16. 10 iptables rules to help secure your Linux box
17. How to Kill a Running Process in Ubuntu (or any Linux distro)
18. Use netstat to See Internet Connections
19. Connecting to Windows servers from GNU/Linux using pyNeighborhood
20. Linux forensics – Part 1: Helix
21. Linux forensics – Part 2: Protech
22. Disable GNOME Automounting
23. Eye Candy: Pimping the Gnome Desktop on Ubuntu
24. Fictional Air Combat 0.1.3
25. The Beginner’s Guide to Linux, Part 1: Finding the Right Distribution
26. 15 Essential Ubuntu Productivity Apps
27. The Adventures of Rick Rocket released for Linux!
28. Giving kids a fresh start with Qimo Linux
29. Things You Need To Know To Become An Apt Guru
30. 8 Beautiful Themes For Enlightenment WM
31. Basic Linux Security for Beginners
32. Installing A “Full” Linux Distro On A USB Stick [How-To]
33. Prevent Firefox from Hogging Memory When Minimized