Linux Tutorial

Installing Mandriva

Yesterday I had to install Mandriva on my PC. My preferred medium is the DVD, in fact, downloading the free version (iso 4.3GB) you get a complete picture with a lot of software available, you get cleaner installation and you have the choice of either desktop environment, both programs to be installed (also classified by category).

The problem is that the DVD should have a DVD and a DVD player on your PC when you install the operating system, for the second there are no problems, but I was lacking the first or last, and I did not want to go out and buy one.

Searching Google I found that you can install Mandriva leaving just downloaded the iso of the DVD to hard disk. To start the PC is still a cd or usb memory that allows the installer to start. This can be found in any Mandriva mirror in the path “official/2010.0/x86_64/install/images/“, adapted of course to the version and architecture used.

In this route there are several files, two are those that serve: all.img can be copied to the USB memory with the command

dd if=all.img of=/dev/sdb

(sdb is the USB meoria) boot. ISO is an ISO image to burn to a CD.

When booting the PC with one of the pictures above, a menu that asks which installation method you want to use. You can choose to do the network installation, hard drive or if you choose the path you will be asked where is the iso image, after these steps, the installation proceeds in the traditional way and very quickly.

For the record, this time I wanted to change the desktop and choose GNOME, you can still install KDE in the future, choosing the package manager “task-kde4” or “task-kde4-minimal” if you want to do a minimal installation.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a great service that allows you to save your files online and share them with friends. Once installed on your PC appears a folder, all files in this position will be saved online. In the free version is available to 2 GB and 8 GB will be brought to performing some steps or doing other users inscribed, for each of these steps are added to 250 MB.

Dropbox can be installed on Windows, Mac OSX or Ubuntu. But there is the possibility to install even on distributions that use KDE and Dolphin as a file manager, such as Mandriva.

First you need to install the daemon, which is the program that is open and takes care of data synchronization, can be downloaded in two versions for each architecture:

Dropbox 32-bit
Dropbox 64-bit

The downloaded file is compressed and contains a folder called. Dropbox-dist, as seen from the starting point, this is to display hidden so you have to enable viewing of hidden files.

Copy the extracted folder in your home, open the configuration panel of kde and the Advanced tab, click “Auto Start“, here the script to add “dropboxd” located in the directory you just extracted and set to run at startup. Restart kde and you will see the icon appear on Dropbox and account setup wizard.

One thing you immediately notice is the lack of integration with dolphin, then no icon will not appear, symbolizing the updated files, there is a plugin that integrates the unofficial Drop-in dolphin.

The plugin is provided as a source or as a deb package for 64-bit Kubuntu. I use 64-bit Mandriva and installation of the package turns out to be quite simple. The deb package is an archive can be unpacked with ark, it contains a file called data.tar.lzma which in turn is a repository within which there is a directory tree that plays the file system of a linux distro, then simply move the files in its directory in the root of your filesystem. The only difference I noticed in this case is that of mandriva kde libraries are in /usr/lib64/kde4, while on kubuntu in /usr/lib/kde4.

Kde restart again and you will find icons that indicate the synchronization status of files and folders. I actually noticed that the plugin is not too stable and rarely makes dolphin crash, nothing great though.

If you are interested, Dropbox can be found at: DropBox

Unity, the default shell in Ubuntu 11.04 and later will enjoy or not but it is undeniable to say that the developers have done a great job last year even considering that rely on graphics drivers on Linux often involves the appearance of bug directly attributable to the program that uses it.

A few days ago he attempted to Reddit question and answer session with the participation of the leading developers of Unity, which have declined to say as an introduction to their almost total alienation from the process design of Unity. So many questions, and especially so many interesting answers …

Apparently for Ubuntu 12.04 will undergo other interesting changes Unity (now private) that should not affect the stability of a suitable LTS. Among these, however, may not be able to change the location of the launcher and its much-desired thermization.

Ubuntu 12.04 should also be solved the bug that causes a crash if you want to enable/disable a plugin by Compiz Config Settings Manager.

Also interesting is the question “Why develop Gnome Shell Unity if we already have?”. Recalling that when the development of Unity has begun Gnome Shell proceeded rather slowly, Jason Smith (aka the creator of Docky BOD) pointed out that the latter did not like what they really were the technologies on which it was based. Sam Spillaz noted also that this would be like asking the question why there are competing projects such as Gnome, KDE and XFCE. Free competition in free markets in short.

P.S. major improvements are on the way to reduce the startup time to login.

Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW for short) is a frontend to iptables, which has done much talked about recently, because of its ease of configuration. With this software it is possible, sparing reading pages and pages, increase the security of your machine fairly easily.

Despite the ease of use its controller’s command line, graphical user interfaces are available to facilitate the work who does not know how to juggle with the terminal, or simply for those who did not really want to spend too much time typing commands to UFW despite having the skills.

Basically, the frontend are two: the first is GUFW, a frontend for GNOME which allows a few nimble steps, with its interface that reflects the simplicity of the software available at the base, to configure a firewall fully functional without too much effort. With just a few buttons you can configure the security status, and set about particular behaviors doors.

It’s easily installed on Ubuntu and Debian with the command:

sudo apt-get install gufw

Or, more simply, looking GUFW in the Software Center.

GUFW may be the main choice, however, is not alone: the alternative is related to KDE, and KCM-UFW, which is the module of the control center for specific UFW: installing, you will have in the settings panel for KDE a voice that will set the firewall in an easy manner. Written in QT, the module fits perfectly within our course KDE desktop, and also allows some advanced configuration in more than GUFW, but at the cost of an interface less easy.

This GUI is already distributed by Kubuntu 10.10 onwards, so you should not have problems finding in the network settings.

KDE / Kubuntu

One of the problems some users who use desktop environment KDE is a distribution out heavy and unresponsive.

In fact, just do some research on KDE to see that many users report this problem indicate that, even if the KDE team seems to have “lightweight” desktop environment especially in the new 4.7.x.
KDE is an environment innovative desktop to look beautiful, fully customizable and designed for any type of user.
A major problem that once installed give “weight” to our desktop environment is mainly due to the default configuration which uses a lot of effects (some useless) and other configurations in which if we have a last generation PC with plenty of ram no problems , but if our pc is dated or scarce resources definitely slow down and not just KDE.

We can speed up KDE? With this article we will try to give advice to speed up KDE all with ease.

First we set our KDE to ask for the minimum the use of your CPU to do it from the menu go to System Settings and go to Appearance of Applications and choose the Style tab, and set in the Fine Tuning High resolution and low use CPU, or better still low resolution and low CPU usage and click on Apply. This way Plasma is not going to overload our CPU.

Now let’s take away some effects that can slow down our desktop environment to make it always go to System Settings and go to the Desktop Effects tab and from there all the effects we remove the above check of Blur (have less transparency in the windows of our panel but gain in speed) and the thumbnail on the taskbar and then also to other effects that do not use, after click on Apply to confirm the changes.

KDE Nepomuk is enabled by default which allows us to perform detailed searches on our PC, we do not use this feature if we can turn it off to do more and go to System Settings in the Desktop Search, and take away the pressure of Nepomuk Semantic Desktop and click on Apply.

To speed up KDE startup is especially useful to have a session to empty every time we go to do so under Startup and Shutdown Manager and click on logon session starts with an empty session and click on Apply to confirm

Now we can disable some applications that are launched automatically at startup but that did not use to do that we start the terminal and type:

dolphin sudo /usr/share/autostart/

will open our file manager with some of these files can be deleted:

konqy_preload (konqueror preload)
kaddressbookmigrator (if you have previously disabled akonadi not needed)
KOrganic.desktop (krganizer alerts)

and close the window.

To speed up our KDE applications can also be removed in a few words Krunner remove the notification that appears when an application crashes to do so click on ALT + F2 and type kdebugdialog and press send and it will open a window from there we click Check None and then click Apply to confirm.

Booting our distribution and we should notice improvements in speed and responsiveness.

If you have any other advice on how to speed up KDE you can report it by commenting on this article.