Grisbi is a personnal accounting application running under GNU/Linux and Windows, released under the GPL licence.

Grisbi can manage multiple accounts, currencies and users. It manages third party, expenditure and receipt categories, as well as budgetary lines, financial years, and other informations that makes it quite adapted for associations
To install Grisbi in Ubuntu just type "sudo apt-get install grisbi" in the Terminal

Enjoy!

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Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places, and share with others.

Installation of Google Earth is very easy on Ubuntu.

Download the GoogleEarthLinux.bin file from this link http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html

Then right-click on that file and select "Open with other Application" option.
Then use the option "Use a custom command" and type "sh" in it. {See the Screenshot below}


A GUI window will open which will guide you through the installation process.

A Shortcut is placed on your Desktop to start Google Earth and you can also start Google Earth from Applications->Internet->Google Earth {If the link to Google Earth is not available in the Internet menu then just reload the gnome-panel with "killall gnome-panel" command in the Terminal.}

Enjoy!

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For those who don't know about morse code should read it about it from Wikipedia. Army, Pilot and Airtraffic Controllers are basically familiar with the morse code but even a normal person can learn it. It is kinda foreign english language and can maybe come in handy in remote situation for sending distress signal.

You can learn Morse Code from various websites like this one http://www.learnmorsecode.com/

It is a good language to learn it as a hobby and the best part is it is used only in English so even the Chinese or the Russions or the Arabs will talk to you in English if they are talking in Morse Code.

To install morse code in the terminal go to http://morseall.org/ and download the .deb file for Ubuntu and Debian and install it.
After installing Morseall you can start the morseall program by typing morseall in the terminal

Morseall allows people with limited mobility to use a computer.
Morseall is free software, distrubuted under a licese that guarantees future availability.

• Morseall allows you to tap Morse Code on the mouse buttons.
• You only need one button to use Morseall - but it is faster with two.
  The left button is for dots. Hold it longer for dashes.
  The right button is for dashes.
  Click the middle button to repeat keys.
• You can use Morseall at any pace. Fast or slow.
• Morseall lets you control the mouse with a special mouse mode!

Features of Morseall

1. Anyone who can press a switch can use Morseall!
2. You can go faster if you can control two or three buttons
3. An Iambic Keyer is available for ultra-fast coding
4. Audio feedback is given for each dot and dash
5. Characters can be read aloud as they are typed for verification
6. It works with a standard mouse! No custom hardware needed.
7. On-line help is always visible for looking up codes
8. Takes over the mouse so disabled users can maintain control.
9. Code Timing is adjustable from within the program (seven dots=faster)
10. A Configuration file allows you to set defaults (/etc/morseall.conf)
11. A Reset feature helps users recover if the terminal gets stuck
12. Visual feedback on your morse code timing as you key it
13. Morseall is Free Software, Licensed under the GNU GPL

Enjoy!

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In one of my previous posts I have written about "nautilus-open-terminal" which let you open terminal wherever you want but there are many other Nautilus addons which can make our life a little bit easy. They are Nautilus-Image-Converter, Nautilus-Wallpaper and Nautilus-Actions.

Nautilus-Image-Converter : This package adds a "Resize Images..." menu item to the context menu of all images. This opens a dialog where you set the desired image size and file name. A click on "Resize" finally resizes the image(s) using ImageMagick's convert tool.

To install it just issue this command in the terminal "sudo apt-get install nautilus-image-converter"

Nautilus-Wallpaper : This is my favourite addon. nautilus-wallpaper is a Nautilus extension that adds the ability to set your desktop wallpaper from the context menu. Just right-click on your selected image and select "Set as Wallpaper" from the menu.

To install it just issue this command in the terminal "sudo apt-get install nautilus-wallpaper"

Nautilus-Actions : Nautilus-actions is an extensions for nautilus which allow to add arbitrary program to launch through the nautilus popup menu of selected files.

It allows you to define custom action or commands for certain types of files or files with names matching your description. Each time you right-click on one or several selected files in nautilus, nautilus-actions will look at its configured actions to see if a program has been setup for this selection. If it is the case, it will add an item in the menu that allow you to execute the program on the selected files.

To install it just issue this command in the terminal "sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions"

Enjoy!

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Bootchart is a tool for performance analysis and visualization of the Linux boot process. Resource utilization and process information are collected during the boot process and are later rendered in a PNG, SVG or EPS encoded chart.

Bootchart provides a shell script to be run by the kernel in the init phase. The script will run in background and collect process information, CPU statistics and disk usage statistics from the /proc file system. The performance data are stored in memory and are written to disk once the boot process completes.

To install Bootchart fire up your terminal and run this command

sudo apt-get install bootchart

The bootchart result is saved as an image after every boot process of your system and the image are saved in /var/log/bootchart/

Go into that folder after rebooting your PC to see how was your system's booting performance. How many seconds it took to boot?

Mine take around 30 seconds to boot.

This app will help you to keep an eye on your Ubuntu's performances every now and then.

Enjoy!

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Sometimes we need to open a Terminal in a hurry at a particular location and the easier way to do is to add a "Open in Terminal" option in the right-click menu.

For doing that we have to run this command in the terminal.

sudo apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal

Now whenever we right-click on or in the folder or on the desktop we will get the option "Open in Terminal" in the menu and we can open the terminal.

Restart Gnome for the changes to take effect.

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I found a great video on youtube.com about installing Ubuntu along with Vista. It will be a dual boot where one can choose while booting the system wether he wants to go in Vista or Ubuntu. This video is created by a youtube user called CoverlessTech

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This was the first time I did an upgrade from one version to another version of Ubuntu instead of doing a clean install. I did this so that I don't have to reinstall all the necessary softwares which I normally do after the clean install also I was having no intention to try the new Ext4 filesystem which Ubuntu 9.04 was having as an option since I heard it is not entirely stable and still have some bugs.

So I got the notification from the Update Manager about the availability of an upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04. Here is the Screenshot.

So I click on the upgrade button to do the upgrade and the upgrading process begins.

For some odd reason the downloading of the files from the Internet was very slow maybe because many users were upgrading at the same time. Anyways it took me nearly 12 hours to do the complete upgrade but I was patient since I started the upgrade process at night  around 8 o'clock and after a couple of hours I went to sleep and in the morning at 8 o'clock the process was almost complete. After the process I restarted the PC as I was instructed and as soon as I restarted the PC I got this error.

But this error was not getting in my way and I was able to explore and operate the new Ubuntu 9.04 without any problem at all. After doing a search for a while on google I found the way to eliminate this error. I run this command on the Terminal 

sudo aptitude reinstall xkb-data

And the error was gone.

Conclusion : The Upgrade was a great sucess on my PC and its been a couple of days now since I did the Upgrade and every thing is working as smooth as ever without any problems whatsoever.

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APTonCD is a tool with a graphical interface which allows you to create one or more CDs or DVDs (you choose the type of media) with all of the packages you've downloaded via APT-GET or APTITUDE, creating a removable repository that you can use on other computers.
APTonCD will also allow you to automatically create media with all of your .deb packages located in one especific repository, so that you can install them into your computers without the need for an internet conection.

With APTonCD you be able to...

Backup

Backup all downloaded packages (via apt-get, aptitude and synaptic) to restore later.

Transport

Take with you all your favorite packages, in a removable repository where you can install then all on anytime, anytime.

Download

Get an entire repository, or a specifc section. Simply point-and-click, and in few time you'll have an CD(s) or DVD(s) with entire main, restricted, universe, multiverse, contrib, etc.

Share

Share your packages with your friends without Internet conection. Also, send a meta-package for him to install the same set of packages that you have.

APTonCD is available on Ubuntu repository. So just install the aptoncd package.

$ sudo apt-get install aptoncd

Or via Add/Remove...

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The first thing new users realised after installing Ubuntu is that they cannot play most of the songs and videos and this is because Ubuntu by default do not include this pakages (codecs etc) due to legal reasons (copyright, license, patent, etc).

Here is where we need Medibuntu

Medibuntu is a packaging project dedicated to distributing software that cannot be included in Ubuntu for various reasons, related to geographical variations in legislation regarding intellectual property, security and other issues:

• patentability of software, algorithms, formats and other abstract creation
• legal restrictions on freedom of speech or communication
• restrictions on the use of certain types of technical solution, such as cryptography
• legal restrictions on imports of software technology, requiring for example specific permissions
• etc.
  

Medibuntu has free and non-free components.

Disclaimer: Patent and copyright laws operate differently depending on which country you are in. Please obtain legal advice if you are unsure whether a particular patent or restriction applies to a media format you wish to use in your country.

See Ubuntu's Free Software Philosophy and the FreeFormats page for a more comprehensive discussion of these issues.

Adding the Repositories

Add Medibuntu to your sources.list, as well as its GPG key to your keyring. Make sure to use the correct sources.list that corresponds to your current distribution.

Go to the Terminal and type the below commands based on your version of Ubuntu OS.

Ubuntu 6.06 "Dapper Drake":

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/dapper.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy Eft":

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/edgy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn":

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/feisty.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon":

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron":

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Then, add the GPG Key:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

And you are done.

If you are confused on what is repositories then you should gain more
knowledge on this by Clicking Here.

Now you can install pakages like

libdvdcss2
w32codecs
w64codecs
ppc-codecs

And many more pakages from Synaptic Pakage Manager.

Have Fun!

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Ubuntu Tweak is an application designed to config Ubuntu easier for everyone.

It provided many usefull desktop and system options that the default desktop environment isn’t provided.

At present, It is only designed for Ubuntu GNOME Desktop, and often follows the newest Ubuntu distribution.

LICENSE

Ubuntu Tweak is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foun
dation. More information can see at the the package’s LICENSE.

Features of Ubuntu Tweak

• View of Basic System Information(Distribution, Kernel, CPU, Memory, etc.)
• GNOME Session Control
• Auto Start Program Control
• Show/Hide and Change Splash screen
• Show/Hide desktop icons or Mounted Volumes
• Show/Hide/Rename Computer, Home, Trash icon or Network icon
• Tweak Metacity Window Manager’s Style and Behavior
• Compiz Fusion settings, Screen Edge Settings, Window Effects Settings, Menu Effect Settins
• GNOME Panel Settings
• Nautilus Settings
• Advanced Power Management Settings
• System Security Settings

Its a great Software which I think every Ubuntu user should intall it.



If you want to install this great peice of software then follow this link http://ubuntu-tweak.com/downloads and follow the instructions on that page.

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Ubuntu 8.04 is coming with Firefox 3 Beta version which I think is far more better then Firefox 2 but as it turns out that addons are not yet ready for this new version then therefore a guy like me{who depends on addons} is forced to install firefox 2 in Ubuntu

If you want to install Firefox 2 then follow this instructions.

Installing Firefox 2 will not uninstall Firefox 3 so don't worry and go ahead.

sudo apt-get install firefox-2

After the installation you will see 2 Firefox in your Internet menu, One is Firefox 3 and the other is Firefox 2 in which we can install our addons.


Then use this command in the terminal.

rm -rf ~/.mozilla {I was getting error messages while installing addons and therefore I have to use this command in order to delete all the saved preferences of Firefox 3}

One final step is remaining and that is to make our Firefox 2 the default Web Browser in Ubuntu otherwise when we try to open links from other applications like Liferea it will open in Firefox 3. I have found out that when the links are mistakenly opened in Firefox 3 then the addons gets disabled and I have to reinstall all the addons again after clearing the preferences.

To make Firefox 2 your default web browser then go to System>Preferences>Preferred Applications and then in the Internet Tab select custom and then in the Command box type firefox-2 %s then click on Close button and you are done.



Please let me know if you find this article useful by giving your precious comments.

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