Eye-Candy for your Ubuntu installation

With a little bit of time and effort, you can make your Ubuntu installation look jazzier than any operating system installation. The new look is a refreshing change over the boring brown wallapapers that Ubuntu ships by default.

So lets start with a default Ubuntu installation… Lets call him Insipid Ibex

Insipid Ibex

Step 1… Open a terminal and run

sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio-look


Once done, click on System->Preferences->Appearance and select the UbuntuStudio theme. Also change the wallpaper to the UbuntuStudio wallpaper… and here you go… Haikarrramba!

Interesting Ibex!

Much better eh?

Step 2… Now lets get a MAC like dock for it. Open a terminal and run

sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator


Step 3… As if this is not overwhelming enough for such little effort lets add more to the show…
Pick out an icon set for yourself by visiting this link. My personal favorite is “Black White 2 Gloss”

Black White 2 Gloss Iconset

Here’s how Ubuntu will look once you install them.. Killer aye?

Interesting Ibex - New icons

Step 4… Time to spice up the terminal. Open a terminal and goto Edit->Profiles. Edit the Default profile or create a new profile. Change the text and background colors. I prefer the text to be blue to match the Studio look and the background to be black. Now make the background transparent and set the level of transparency to what you wish and watch the terminal turn into a rockstar!

Rockstar terminal

Step 5… Improve usability by installing the Google Gnome Menu File Browser Applet . With this applet you can browser the home folder right from your menubar. This saves a lotta time!

Menu File Browser Applet

If this is not enough go ahead and install compiz fusion and you can do a lot more fun stuff. If you’re a geek, it’ll irritate you in 48 hours… If you’re not you’ll hang on to it for a while. But it doesn’t hurt to try it out!

So here a few simple things we did to give Ubuntu a fresh look! Wow.

Windows installers for Linux distributions

Much talk has been happening about Wubi that is going to be a part of Ubuntu 8.04 – Hardy Heron. Wubi is a utility that allows installation of Ubuntu through Windows! What’s more? You can uninstall it using Add/Remove Programs in the Windows control panel.

For the geeks, what Wubi does is:

A small executable that can be included on the CD which does the following:

• If an Ubuntu CD is not present in a CD drive, locates the ISO on your system or downloads it via metadl (which can be taught to perform mirror selection)
• Asks for a user name and password
• Gathers information from Windows for the remaining install settings
• Creates a 5GB image file in a user-defined location, C:\ubuntu by default
• Creates a pre-seed file for the install
• Adds Ubuntu entry to the Windows bootloader
• Reboots to start an install process (non-interactive)
  • if a CD is present in a drive, uses that; otherwise loop-mounts an ISO image from the Windows drive
  • loop-mounts disk image from the Windows drive
• Uses a pre-seed enabled version of ubiquity
• Reboot again to start Ubuntu (or Windows)
• Allows simple removal of Ubuntu if desired, via a Windows-based uninstaller in add/remove programs
• Installer can be launched from the WinFOSS browser

Read the full post here

However not many know that this feature is already available in Mandriva Linux

Mandriva can be installed from another operating system that is rpm based or deb based, not just Windows. It works using UNetbootin which adds an entry in the boot menu to install Mandriva. (Read here…)

Shift Linux (by the Windows guys) has recently released 0.6.5 that is based on Hardy Heron beta. Right now its more of a live cd but there are plans of a full release too. Most probably this would include Wubi too (Isn’t too surprising considering its based on Hardy Heron) (Read here…)

Finally lets talk a bit about UNetbootin. Now this allows you to install any operating system like ubuntu, madriva, fedora etc through Windows. The number of distributions listed here is surprising and slightly spoils the show for Wubi. UNetbootin however works in a different way than Wubi and this very technique makes it so generic. (Read a useful tutorial here…)

Wubi however is still easier for a user who isn’t very technical or does not have the patience and still wants to install and use Linux. Things only become easier by the day!

Ubuntu 7.10 (Popular) Repository Guide

Here are some of the most popular applications used on Ubuntu, their repositories and installation…

Google Picasa

deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ testing non-free

$wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
$apt-key add linux_signing_key.pub
$apt-get update
$apt-get install picasa

Medibuntu

deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ gutsy free non-free

$wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
$sudo apt-get update
$sudo apt-get install non-free-codecs

Skype

deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free

$sudo apt-get update
$sudo apt-get install skype

Screenlets

deb http://hendrik.kaju.pri.ee/ubuntu feisty screenlets
or
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gilir/ubuntu gutsy main universe

$wget http://hendrik.kaju.pri.ee/ubuntu/hendrikkaju.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
$sudo apt-get update
$sudo apt-get install screenlets

Avant Window Navigator

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu gutsy main
Download packages ending in -trunk not -bzr
OR
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/reacocard-awn/ubuntu gutsy main

$sudo apt-get update
$sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-bzr awn-core-applets-bzr

Read comment 1,3 for more info

Virtual box

deb http://www.virtualbox.org/debian gutsy non-free

$wget http://www.virtualbox.org/debian/innotek.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
$sudo apt-get update
$sudo apt-get install virtualbox

Beryl

deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org gutsy main

$sudo wget -q http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/root@lupine.me.uk.gpg -O- |sudo apt-key add -
$sudo apt-get update
$sudo apt-get install beryl

Wine

$sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

$wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
$sudo apt-get update
$sudo apt-get install wine

Ubuntu Studio

deb http://archive.ubuntustudio.org/ubuntustudio gutsy main

$wget -q http://archive.ubuntustudio.org/ubuntustudio.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
$sudo apt-get update
$sudo apt-get install ubuntustudio

See the master list here

sources.list for Hardy Heron 64-bit

Install Skype 2.0 beta on Ubuntu Gutsy(7.10) AMD64

The best way get skype 2.0 on Ubuntu 7.10 with AMD64 is to download the source instead of the the debian file. Also note that you may need the libraries that I have mentioned here

• Download the static file from here: http://www.skype.com/intl/en/download/skype/linux/beta/choose/
• Extract it and get into the skype directory.
• Enter the following at the terminal

  • $ ./skype

• You will get error like this: ./skype: error while loading shared libraries: libXss.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
• Now download install libxss

  • $ apt-get install libxss1

  • $ apt-get install libxss1-dbg

  • $ apt-get install libxss-dev

• Finally match the shared library using getlibs

  • $ getlibs -32 libXss.so.1

    You should get the following output:

  Matched library libXss.so.1 to /gutsy/libs/libxss1
  The following i386 libraries will be installed:
  /gutsy/libs/libxss1
  Continue? (y/n) y
  Downloading. Installing libraries …
  /sbin/ldconfig.real: /usr/lib32/libqtmcop.so.1 is not a symbolic link

• The previous step installs the missing i386 libraries and gets skype 2.0 up and running!

This is enough to get skype running but everytime you have to run skype you’ll have to get into the directory. So lets get the files in the right places. Perform the following steps:

$mkdir /usr/share/skype

$cd pathtoskype-static/

$cp -a * /usr/share/skype

$cp /usr/share/skype/skype /usr/bin

$rm /etc/dbus-1/system.d/skype.conf

$cp /usr/share/skype/skype.conf /etc/dbus-1/system.d/

To Add a shortcut to your desktop, edit /usr/share/skype/skype.desktop

• Replace Icon = skype.png with

  Icon=/usr/share/skype/icons/SkypeBlue_48x48.png

• $cp skype.desktop /home/<usrname>/Desktop
• $chown <username>:<username> /home/<username>/Desktop/skype.desktop

Now to run skype all you need to do is run it from anywhere by typing at the terminal:

$skype

Install Skype on Ubuntu AMD 64

Installing Skype on Ubuntu 7.10 is not as easy if are running it on AMD 64… Here are the steps you need to follow:

• Install 32 libraries:

sudo aptitude install lib32asound2 ia32-libs-gtk ia32-libs-kde

• Get the debian package for from the Skype website
• Install other 32 bit libraries like:

sudo apt-get install libqt4-core

sudo apt-get install libqt4-gui

sudo apt-get install libdbus-1-3

sudo apt-get install libsigc++-2.0-2

• Install the skype package:

sudo dpkg -i –force-architecture skype-debian_1.4.0.118-1_i386.deb (thats two dashes before force-architecture)

• Skype will still not come up as it will have some libraries missing. Actually these libraries are already present but skype wont find them as skype will look into only the lib32 directories. the best way to resolve these mappings is to use getlibs (it really works!)

• download getlibs here… http://www.boundlesssupremacy.com/Cappy/getlibs/getlibs-2.00-all.deb
• For those interested: here is the getlibs tutorial

Double click on the package to install it.

• at the command line do:

getlibs /usr/bin/skype