Comix – A free Comic Reader for Ubuntu and Linux based operating systems. It is very easy to use and in short, I can say – it’s the best comic reader for Ubuntu! (11.10 or 12.04 or whatever version you are using). The application is based on PyGTK (Python and GTK+). The latest version of the application is Comix vs 4.04 (Released in 2009, it seems like the application has not been updated for a long time)

Features of Comix at a Glance

• Easy to use
• You can easily customize it
• it can read zip, rar or tar archives
• Full screen and Double page mode
• Easy to read with different settings/mode
• Rotation and Mirroring
• Magnifying Glass
• Library of your favorite collection
• Enhance image
• it supports 20+ language

How to Install Comix in Ubuntu

Open a terminal and execute (or you could search in Ubuntu Software Center) -

sudo apt-get install comix

Other Linux or Unix like distributions

Download Comix

References and recommended Reading(s)

Official website – SourceForge page, the official site of the application where you can get all information about the comix application.

Great news for KDE lovers! Linux Mint 12 KDE RC version – got released few weeks ago. The default version of Linux Mint was already available with Gnome 3 and Mate desktop but it’s for those who love KDE or don’t like Gnome anymore (probably due to some major changes in Gnome 3/shell interface). The final and stable version should arrived in within few upcoming weeks.

Cool Features of Linux Mint 12 KDE

• The default desktop is KDE 4.7.4
• Linux Kernel 3 and upstream components/features of Ubuntu 11.10
• Hybrid ISO Images
• Search Engines

In Linux Mint 12, KDE 4.7.4 makes the desktop experience more pleasant and comfortable. Hybrid ISO images can be used to create a bootable media such as USB stick/DVD/CD in one simple command (dd command), without any applications you might have used to make bootable media, and the most important advantages is that – it is much faster and if you want to go with old technique such as a Startup Disc creator apps then also it’s fine as the hybrid ISO are also compatible with such applications. But you should remember one thing that the new method for creating live bootable media will erase all the files present on your pen-drive.

First Download Linux Mint 12 KDE version, then you can use the dd command to create bootable disk.

The structure of the command is

dd if=<source> of=<target> bs=<byte size>

eg

dd if=/home/userx/Downloads/mint.iso of=/dev/sdb2

Warning! You should also remember one thing about the DD command, that – it will delete all the files/contents from the usb drive. Therefore, you must use the DD command very carefully!

Reference(s) and Recommended Stuffs

• Learning DD commands - a forum post that explain in details about the use of DD commands on Linux based OS as well as Windows.
• What’s New in Linux Mint 12 KDE – The official post explaining all the new – cool features.

In Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) you might have noticed a lot of changes and improvements – including the major changes in Desktop and some popular applications such as Ubuntu Software Center. Now, you can also buy proprietary/non-free games from Software Center, despite of that a lot of free applications has also been added. GNU/Linux based OS such as Ubuntu has now becoming a popular platform for gaming.

Some popular Racing Games available for Ubuntu/Linux

Although, a number of racing games are available but Here is the collection of my Top 3 – favorite racing games that I like to play on Ubuntu (11.10), All are open source and available freely in Software Center. If you have more experience in gaming on Linux desktop then feel free to share your experience (through comment).

1. Trigger Rally : 3D Car Racing Game

Trigger Rally is a fast open source racing game for Linux users. It is a lightweight game and very easy to play. Although, the number of tracks and vehicles available in the game (by default) may  not be sufficient for some users but it’s not difficult to add a new one. The game is based on OpenGL.

Want to try the Game ? First watch this video -

Install Trigger Rally in Ubuntu 11.10/12.04

Open a terminal and execute -

sudo apt-get install trigger-rally

2. TORCS

TORCS is an open source 3D racing car simulator game. it uses Open Graphics Library (OpenGL) so you may need a graphics card to play this kind of games on ubuntu. TORCS is one of the most popular racing game for Linux users, that’s why it has been included in Ubuntu package Repository by deafult – so if you want to install the game then just go to Ubuntu Software Center, search for torcs and install! Or execute -

sudo apt-get install torcs

3. SuperTuxCart

Super Tux Cart is a cart Racing game – forked from Tux Cart game. It is one of the most funniest games available for Ubuntu – specially kids love this kind of game (warning!, it’s addictive too). A lot of ccol and funky characters, racing levels/modes makes it a n incredible racing game. To install this game – open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+t) and execute the command (or you could also install it from Software Center or Synaptic Package Manager (it’s not there in Ubuntu 11.10, by default))

sudo apt-get install supertuxcart

That’s All! Have Fun

If you do a quick search about strategy games in Ubuntu 11.10‘s Software Center, then you may find a lot of strategy games to try but in this post I’ll introduce you with a turn-based tactical strategy game. It’s The Battle for Wesnoth, one of the most popular strategy games.

The Battle for Wesnoth – A fantasy Turn based strategy game

The Battle for Wesnoth is a free, turn based strategy game. It’s available for Linux distributions such as Ubuntu as well as for Windows and Mac OS. You can play either in single player mode or in multiplayer mode along with your friends (can be virtual or real from over the web). The latest version is 1.8.6, and available for the target platforms.

In past few years, Multiplayer Online Gaming has increased exponentially – some of them play little just for fun!, some of them play a lot because they’re hardcore gamers while some of the players do nothing but gaming – probably they got addicted, so they have to play! Anyway, Battle of Wesnoth is one of the coolest game that is worth trying if you like that kind of strategy games!

Features :

• Several multi player options available such as Internet Play
• Building a fighting force from small resources
• Experienced units get new powerful abilities
• Random and custom designed maps
• developers can create their own maps and other things
• supports a lot of other language (35+)

Here is another snapshot of Map Editor in Battle of Wesnoth

How to install Battle Of Wesnoth on Ubuntu 11.10/12.04

Open terminal and execute -

sudo apt-get install wesnoth

Non-Ubuntu users can download it for their platforms. (official website)

Have Fun!

Audio Editor or Creator/Recorder is one of the most common applications used in audio/sound productions – specifically in mixing/editing digital audio, although you can also use it to create digital content from a traditional audio storage media such as Record or Tapes.

Audacity : The Best Audio Creator/Editor

Audacity is a cross-platform open source software. Audacity is very easy to use and anyone can start audio editing using Audacity within a couple of minutes. it’s quite popular so in a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu (Latest stable version : 11.10, upcoming version 12.04), Linux Mint etc it’s there in the package repository, by default. Some special editions such as Ubuntu Studio includes Audacity installed by default, because it’s a great application – as Audacity is lightweight and fast with simple user interface (and of course Advanced Features).

What you can do using Audacity ?

For complete list of features, you should refer to its official website but here is a quick view on some of its great features -

• edit, cut or mix sounds together
• Record Live Audio
• it supports MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WAV or AIFF files
• live audio recording from Line or Mic (or other sources)
• control pitch or speed of recording
• very fast editing of larger files
• Easy import ‘n’ export of various file formats
• Edit/Mix unlimited number of tracks
• A lot of funky effects such as Echo, Reverser, phaser etc
• Plugins are available to add some extra features ‘n’ fun!

How to install Audacity in Ubuntu (11.10/12.04)

Fire up a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+t) and execute the following commands -

sudo apt-get install audacity

Non-Ubuntu users can download the required package from the official website.

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is one of the most popular image format used over the web - most of the graphics designers uses png format for designing logo of a website or in computer artwork (because PNG is more suitable for computer generated images). Optimizing image is a good practice in modern web development/work because it will allow the pages to load much faster due to reduced image size. Google also recommends all web masters to use optimized images for faster loading of pages and you may already know that SPEED is one of the most important thing to consider while designing a website or a web application.

Now, you understand the importance of optimize image – but there should be a balance between the quality and the size of an image. Loss-less compression is what most people prefer while compressing/optimizing an image. On Linux based operating systems such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, OpenSuse, PCLinuxOS etc you can also use GIMP with save for web plugin to optimize png images (it also supports other popular image formats such as JPG, GIF etc).

GIMP (with image optimizer plugin) is good when you have few image but what you will do if you want to optimize hundreds of png files because because it doesn’t support batch optimization. That’s where the OptiPNG comes in, a great tool to optimize PNG image.

OptiPNG : Advanced PNG optimizer

OptiPNG is a an open source and cross-platform image compression/optimization tool. It supports batch processing i.e you can optimize bulk of png files in one simple command. It is very powerful application, as it provides you a lot of options such as compression level (1-7) where 1 is minimum and 7 is the maximum compression level. Page Speed (by Google Inc) – one of the most popular website optimization plugin/tool, uses OptiPNG for optimizing png files.

How to install OptiPNG

Ubuntu (11.10/12.04/12.10.. or Linux Mint, it should work with any Debian based distributions) users can install it by executing one simple command from terminal (Ctrl+Alt+t) -

sudo apt-get install optipng

Other user can download it from the official website. Primarily it’s a command line tool but front end for various platforms are also available, pretty useful if you don’t want to get your hands dirty with Terminal.

Optimizing Images using OptiPNG

To optimize image you can just give the file name as argument or specify compression level and other options. Just type optipng at terminal to see the help and options available for this tool.

For single image

optipng file_name.png

it will optimize the image and overrite the existing one, with default speed and compression level.

For Higher Compression (obviously the speed will decrease)

optipng -o7 file_name.png

Optimizing all png images of a directory (at higher compression level 7)

cd path_to_image_directory
optipng -07 *.png

In a recent announcement, Canonical has specified that Ubuntu Partner Archive will no longer contain Sun JDK, the packages (sun-java6-jre, sun-java6-jdk, sun-java6-plugin, sun-java6-source etc) will be removed on 16th of the next month, due to some licensing problem, as the said in announcement -

we no longer have permission to redistribute new
Java packages as Oracle has retired the “Operating System Distributor License for Java”

Although, it will be remain installed on the systems but no security updates will be provided in future so the ubuntu users who are dependent on Sun JDK or any of this component are recommend to migrate to OpenJDK or Oracle JDK if you get any problem with open JDK in some applications.

Migrating from Sun JDK to Open JDk

Uninstall Sun JDK and its components

sudo apt-get purge sun-java*

Then install OpenJDK 7/6

sudo-apt-get install openjdk-6*

If you want to install only few selected package such as openjdk-6-jre then type

sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre

Audio Converter is probably one of the must have application now a days, because it allows you to convert one audio format into another desirable audio format (songs/music for for your mobile or ipod or Android/iPhone or whatever). There are lot of free softwares available for audio conversion but SoundConverter is the most popular audio converter application for the Gnome based Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora etc.

SoundConverter is an easy to use application with all the basic plus cool features you could expect from such application. It supports a lot of formats – in fact it can accept all the input formats that is supported by GStreamer i.e the input format supported by SoundConverter are – MP3, FLAC, WAV, MPEG, ALAC, Ogg, Vorbis, AAC, AVI, DTS, MOD, S3M, XM, APE etc and the most common output formats are MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3), AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), FLAC (Free Audio Lossless Codec), WAV etc.

Important Features of SoundConverter

• it’s simple to use, with an intuitive interface
• it is very fast and uses multithreaded conversion
• it can process a number of files easily, because of its efficient use of processing power of CPU
• Powerful Automated Renaming (also patterns and removal of unwanted/messy characters)

Install SoundConverter in Ubuntu (11.10/12.04/other versions)

sudo apt-get install soundconverter

When the installation is complete, you can drag the input files to the main window and click on Convert Button. You may want to set the type/quality of output audio files under preferences.

Visit official website for information about SoundConverter.

If you are one of the bloggers who publishes articles too frequently then publishing directly from desktop in a few clicks may be easier than publishing from the web interface (although Web interface has evolved into lot better now a days and most of the desktop blogging client lacks even basic features, except Windows Live Writer (but we can’t change Operating System just for Live writer )).

On Ubuntu or other Linux distributions such as Linux Mint, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, OpenSuse etc, There are few desktop blogging softwares are available for blogging that supports Blogger, Live Journal, wordpress, wordpress (self hosted or called as Movable Type), Tumblr, Posterous etc but none of them are even little closer to Live Writer. In this post you will learn about Two great software – one a KDE blogging client called as Blogilo and the other one is ScribeFire, a plugin for Firefox, Chrome and Opera.

Blogilo : Blogging Client for Ubuntu (11.10/12.04)

Blogilo is a KDE blogging client, it works well with Gnome 3 or other Desktops. It is the most advanced blogging software in Ubuntu. it is very easy to use and supports a lot of blogging platform.

Important features of Blogilo

• Post Preview (you can also preview in blog style – for some reason it wasn’t working for me (probably due to caching) but give it a try)
• a good visual editor
• Insert image from your computer or remote location (although drag ‘n’ drop style is not supported)
• HTML editor
• Post categories (although creating new categories is not supported right now)
• local draft (that you can write even you’re offline)
• permalink customization options
• post tagging
• time stamp modification
• auto save (default is 5 minutes but you change it under settings)

How to install Blogilo in Ubuntu

Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+t) and execute -

sudo apt-get install blogilo

Publishing an article with Blogilo

#1 : It’s quite simple, go to Settings -> Configure Blogs -> Blogs -> Add

#2 : Then specify the URL (address of your blog), enter the login details (username and password) and click on Auto-Configure button.

#3 : Click on New Post icon, write post and when you’re done – hit the submit button. That’s All, check out the new entry in your blog!

ScribeFire : Blogging Add on

ScribeFire is a very simple and easy to use blogging tool – available as a plugin for all modern Web Browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera etc. ScribeFire has a lot of cool features – including the most basic features – tagging, categories (creating new categories is also supported), Excerpt, Custom Fields, WYSIWYG editor etc. Some advanced features – including Zamanta Integration (which will allow you to get relevant meta data – such as images from Wikipedia, Flickr etc, for the posts; and it’s free), Markdown support etc. Initially it was available – only for Firefox but from its vs 4.0, it’s available for all popular browsers, and so it is platform independent!

Install ScribeFire in Ubuntu

Go to http://www.scribefire.com and click on Install Button (it should automatically detect your browser, otherwise click on individual links give below for each browser)

There are lot of softwares available in the market – just to make some websites inaccessible from a computer, possibly for productivity reasons e.g blocking facebook, (facebook is killing productivity ? but I don’t think it’s good way, as I promote free speech, free information and of course, freedom!) or to filter out the sites having contents, which may not be suitable for some users (e.g if you want to block porn sites, to make it inaccessible for kids) or simply to block useless spam sites. Anyway, in this post, you will learn – how to block websites or domains in just a couple of click, without any third party softwares – in an efficient way.

Blocking a website or domain name on Ubuntu

Although, I’m using Ubuntu 11.10, but it should work fine with older (11.04/10.10/10.04..) or newer versions(12.04/12.10..) of Ubuntu, not only on Ubuntu but also on other Linux distributions such as Linux Mint, Fedora, OpenSuse, PCLinuxOS, etc. Just follow the simple steps -

step #1 : Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+t) and execute the following command -

sudo gedit /etc/hosts

OR

sudo nano /etc/hosts

if you prefer command line text editor and it’s more convenient to use in this case.

step #2 : Then add the following line to the file and click on Save (or Ctrl+s) or Ctrl+x, followed by ‘y‘ if you’re using nano text editor (one of the most popular command line text editor, like vim)

127.0.0.1               domaintoblock.com

where domaintoblock.com is a sample domain name which you want to block.

step #3 : That’s all, you’re done! Now open a browser and type the domain name (website address) you specified in above step -

domaintoblock.com => Then you will get an error page such as the it couldn’t be connected to the server or the default server page of your local server (if you’ve installed apache2).

If the domain name is still not blocked then try to flush DNS cache using the nscd (Name Service Cache Daemon).

sudo apt-get install nscd
sudo /etc/init.d/nscd restart

That’s All

NOTE : The file system directories shouldn’t be writable for the users for which you have blocked the sites, because in that case they can easily revert the changes, so they shouldn’t be in sudoers or super user groups (add those users in somewhat less powerful group).

FreeBSD is an open source Unix Like operating system. it is a stable, robust and complete operating system. FreeBSD 9.0 stable is available now for all users. It is the first stable release (checkout the announcement on official site) in 9th series of FreeBSD. You can choose either Gnome 2.3 or KDE 4.7 as the desktop. The latest version i.e 9.0 stable has a lot of new features and performance improvements over its predecessor version 8.0.

What’s New in FreeBSD 9.0

• Updated version (28) of ZFS
• High performance SSH
• new installer bsdinstall
• Flattended Device Tree (FDT)
• User level DTrace
• NFSv4 is supported (along with v2 and v3)

Download FreeBSD 9.0

FreeBSD 9.0 is available for a lot of platforms : i386, ia64, amd64, powerpc, powerpc64, sparc64. The installation archive – ISO is available in three formats – bootonly (very small size), disc1 (can be burned on a CD) and dvd1 (around 2.1 GB, along with a lot of free applications).

Download FreeBSD 9.0 disc1 edition for i386 (502 MB)

For more options (platforms/editions) go to official download page.

Do you want to try Linux based OS on your laptop ? That’s really a good idea! (welcome to the open world of open source ) but if you aren’t sure what distribution is right for you (it is obvious because you got a lot of options – a number of distros), then this post will guide you in selecting the best Linux distro for your laptop.

The most important factor in choosing a right Linux distribution is your primary task, because there is almost a dedicated distribution available for all type of tasks eg. video/audio/music/graphics production work, office work, common purpose such as surfing internet, Email, etc. Your experience/interest is the second most important factor, you should consider while choosing a Linux distribution for your laptop computer.

PCLinuxOS – Easy to use

PCLinuxOS is a simple and easy to use GNU/Linux distribution suitable for all types users. It is little bit like rolling release distribution (it doesn’t uses version mechanism instead of that the updates are pushed as soon as it’s available, which means that in one simple command you distro will have all the latest stuffs), initially derived from Mandriva Linux (2007). it uses KDE Plasma as default desktop (user interface/window manager), although XFCE, LXDE or Openbox editions are also available. So it is one of the best option for your laptop.

Download PCLinuxOS

Download PCLinuxOS KDE version  or go to official download page for more options

Puppy Linux – Light weight and Fast

Puppy Linux is the best option if your laptop is old because PuppyLinux is a very lightweight Linux distro and it’s very efficient at resource consumption, and of course it’s one of the fastest OS available. You can even use it without installing it on your hard-drive (as it can loaded into RAM due to its small size), right from a bootable media such as Pendrive or CD. It comes along with all necessary basic applications such as Abiword (Document Processing application like Open Office or MS Office), Mplayer. Due to its versatile nature and flexibility it is one of the most popular Linux distributions.

Download Puppy Linux

LinuxMint – a cool, Linux based OS for beginners

Linux Mint is another great option for newbies. Linux Mint (12 is the latest version) has been forked from Ubuntu but aims to make it more beginner friendly by including proprietary stuffs (Adobe Flash player, media codecs to play files e.g mp3). if you have any experience in Debian based distro such as Ubuntu, then you won’t feel much difference except one major change – Gnome 3/Shell, although Gnome 2 style user interface is also available but it’s worth trying if you have a decent configuration (otherwise you will be switched to fallback mode).

Want to try Linux Mint 12 (latest version, released a month ago) ? Before trying out, look at the Linux Mint screenshot Toor/Review (I’ve already covered earlier). Besides that I’ve also covered some more tips and tricks about Linux Mint, so come here frequently for more cool stuffs on Linux Mint (although most of the Ubuntu related posts will also work with Mint).

Download Linux Mint

Other Popular Linux distributions that you might want to try on your laptop, are -

• Ubuntu : Most popular Linux distribution, for all purpose!
• OpenSuse : easy to use and well suitable for office use
• Fedora : Rock Solid Linux distro, well suitable for experienced/advanced users!

That’s All, choose any one (All are good for something) you want and enjoy the freedom

If you’re one of the web designers who uses Linux based operating system such as Ubuntu (Latest stable version  : 11.10) or Linux Mint (vs 12)or Fedora etc as the primary OS then here is a good news for you – A cool CSS3 gradient generator – called as Gradiator, is now available (only) for Linux based operating systems. Using Gradiator, you can easily apply ‘one of the coolest’ feature of CSS3, I mean gradient property, without much hassle, mostly in a couple of clicks.

Although there are already a lot of cool web apps (e.g ultimate CSS3 gradient generator) are available for this task but a cool desktop application is something different – and it will also work offline. So it’s a must have application for Linux users who design cool websites/or web apps.

So, you are ready to save a lot of time and effort during the designs, as you just need to select the desire gradient using the above controls and finally click on Get code button to get the CSS code, in fact the code will be automatically copied to clipboard so just paste it in your style sheets. If you want to exclude or include a specific vendor (browsers) then go to settings and change that too – but by default you will get prefixes for all popular web browsers –  so you don’t need to change that.

How to install Gradiator in Ubuntu/Linux

For Ubuntu or Linux Mint

If you’re using Ubuntu then the best way to install is to use PPA. You just need to execute some simple commands and you’re done!

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cooperjona/gradiator -y
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gradiator -y

Other Linux distro

Download the archive file and install it manually (installing tar.gz package).

Thanks to George Czabania & Jono Cooper

Slow Mobile broadband connection is not something a typical Linux user wants but in some case when no other options (cable broadband or 3G) are available it’s really useful. The average speed depends on your location, provider, signal strength and so many things; in india, it’s around 50-150 kbps (Now you may guess, why I’ve published very few articles in past three weeks, yeah! You’re right!). So in past three weeks, I tried a couple of mobile broadbands – first MTS Data Card, then Micromax modem with Airtel (better than MTS data card).

Anyway, this post is written for those who wants to set up such mobile broadband connection with Linux Mint 12 or similar Linux distributions such as Ubuntu 11.10. Most of the providers such as MTS, Micromax etc comes with an auto installer program for Windows (as you insert the modem in USB port, it gets recognized and the set up process begins.. and will complete in very simple steps) but unfortunately they do not provide such application for Linux based distributions such as Linux Mint 12 or Ubuntu 11.10 or Fedora etc.

Setting Up MTS Data Card In Linux Mint / Ubuntu

step 1 : Open Network Connections (search in Applications Menu) and click on Mobile Broadband tab then on Add button.

step2 : Then complete the setup process in few simple sub steps -

First, Choose the mobile broadband device -

Then, Choose Provider Country -

Next, Select your network provider (e.g Airtel, MTS etc for India)

Now, you may get additional option such as Choose your billing plan (if your plan wasn’t listed in previous steps) otherwise your will be directly jumped to final step – to confirm and Apply the settings.

That’s All! If you’re having some problem then you can manually edit the connection parameters such as Authentication Protocols (e.g CHAP), Username, Password etc.

Finally, on a successfully setup, the network icon will appear in top panel (near right corner) like this -

That’s All. If you’re using some other Mobile broadband provider then select that while following the installation instructions. Process is same – not only across different network providers but also across Linux distributions similar to Linux Mint e.g Ubuntu, Fedora, Kubuntu, etc. Have Fun!

TeamViewer is one of the most popular remote desktop application – it is available for Windows, Mac and as well as popular Linux based distributions as Debian package (for debian based distro such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint) or rpm (Fedora). One of the most important thing about TeamViewer is that – it is very simple to use and it absolutely requires no experience at all. So TeamViewer is one of the coolest applications among power users, who manage/controls a lot of computers remotely via Internet (and of course over secure connection). Teamviewer is good, not only for controlling remote desktops but also for sharing desktops with friends or family. You can even share/transfer files and get technical helps online using Teamviewer. it’s free to use for non commercial purpose.

Installing TeamViewer in Ubuntu 12 (or Linux Mint 12 as it’s based on Ubuntu 11.10)

I’m not sure whether it’s available in Ubuntu Software Center through some PPA but the debian package (*.deb) is available there on its official website.

Download Teamviewer (Download page)

deb package for 32bit

To install Teamviewer, simply open the deb package with Ubuntu Software Center or Debian Package Installer (in older version or Mint) and click on install to begin the download/installation process. It will be completed in few minutes (depending on your internet speed).

After installing the application, you can start using it – either wait for a session create your own session to share desktops with Fun!