Most of the laptop brands you purchase comes with only a single partition(or only with C drive) and few partions like Recovery, which is not for our use. Most people think of Partition Magic softwares or Boot CDs. Your choice are right but you cannot be sure, whether the preinstalled Vista will be safe. Most case, your partitioning ends in total formatting of the harddrive. Is there any way to partition the laptops, without formatting or removing vista or recovery. The answer is here.

Put the Ubuntu Live CD in the CD drive and boot in the Live cd mode. Goto Bios settings, change boot priority to cd drive, and put the cd in drive save and restart. In the live cd mode, use the menu System->Administrator->PartionEditor(Gparted) or in the terminal $sudo gparted to open the GParted software.

In a system there can be only 4 Primary partions and each Primary partions have few good number of Secondary partions. In the Gparted software you will get a good picture of your harddrive. Locate the C Drive in the list, Right Click and select Resize/Move. Now you can find the used portion of the C Drive being yellow shaded. Click and drag your left end pointer as you wish to allocate your C Drive. (Not less than the used portion). Now the C Drive will be reduced leaving a free memory. Now right click and select New option.

If you have already, three primary partions, create the fouth partion as extended to have some partition as you require as extended. Have look at the picture you will get a clear picture. Since for installing Linux, you wil require swap, home partion, etc and so only four primary partions will not be enough.

Applications, Ubuntu Laptops, Ubuntu

While using Empathy if you feel some problem, start empathy using the terminal and find the errors. Goto terminal, use

rosarioarun@ros-lap:~$ sudo empathy

Now you can find the errors displayed, try to fix the errors… If you dont get the call option in the context menu, try to solve the errors. Me getting the Call option in the context menu. or Mail me the errors we will try to find the solution.

Applications, Internet, Ubuntu Internet, Ubuntu

Here is my encounter with Virtual Box. You may download the iso file the operating system from internet, if you wish to boot them with out burning them to a cd or if you have your iso file in pendrive or external harddrive, and if you want to boot them from the drive directly, the answer is here.

Virtual box is a project developed by SUN. Download VirtualBox software from the link below, for your favourite operating system you are using and boot any operating system from any.

Here in my encounter, i have booted Ubuntu Ultimate Edition, that is as an downloaded ISO file in my home directory. Download the Virtual Box deb package from,

And then install it just by double clicking the deb file. You can start the Virtual Box software from the menu Applications->System Tools->Sun xVM Virtual Box. As Virtual Box requires some write permissions, its better to start in the command using su. So, move to the terminal and give the command

rosarioarun@ros-lap:~$ sudo VirtualBox

In the Virtual Box Window,

1. Click New Buttom, a Wizard appears
2. Click Next,
3. Type a Name you wish to give and select the OS u wish to boot (In my case name is Ultimate and type is Ubuntu) and click Next
4. Select the Base memory size, based on you the RAM u have, if you select more the Virtual box will boot the OS soon.(My case 900 MB) Click Next
5. Then click Next and in the confirmation Window Click Continue
6. Now Click Finish

Now the Virtual Box Main Window will appear back.

The ISO that i wish to boot is in the location

/home/rosarioarun/Desktop/ultimate-edition-1.8-x86/ultimate-edition-1.8-x86.iso

Click on the Name you just created (Ultimate) and click Start. Read the Capture info and click ok.A wizard will appear.

Virtual Box Software with Inserted Bootlist

1. Click Next
2. In the Media Source below, Select the path of the Image File  (In my case /home/rosarioarun/Desktop/ultimate-edition-1.8-x86/ultimate-edition-1.8-x86.iso)
3. Click Next and then Finish

The OS will be booted as a separate window, you can capture and uncapture to go inside and come out the new OS booted.

OR, Select the Name and click Settings,->CD/DVD-ROM-> ImageFile and select the Image file u wish to boot. And click Ok.

Now click Start to boot the new OS.

After Booting Ubuntu Ultimate

Inside Ultimate with VirtualBox

Applications, Ubuntu, Virtualisation Ubuntu, VirtualBox

Virtual Box is a community delovped project, by SUN for the purpose of OS Virtualisation. That is, any other operating systems can be booted inside other operating systems inside a virtualisation window. The Virtual box software will manage the resources required for the newly booted software and the currently running software. It will allocate the free resources within itself, to boot the new operating system virtually.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris and many other guest operating systems. So this includes almost all most frequently used operating systems.

With Virtual box you can boot Guest operating systems in USB, Portable hard drive, or ISO images of operating systems in any host operating system. That is you can boot the downloaded iso images of opertaing systems(linux) in live -cd mode without burning them to a cd.

Applications, Ubuntu, Virtualisation Ubuntu, VirtualBox

Normally most the linux distros comes with gcj, which is a Java compiler for gnome. Most of the java programmers prefer only jdk. So how to compile and run a java program in linux. Download the latest jdk from the sun website. (jdk-1_5_0_16-linux-i586.bin  for a x86 system)

http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index_jdk5.jsp

And then to install jdk use the following

rosarioarun@ros-lap:~$ ./jdk-1_5_0_16-linux-i586.bin

This will extract the jdk and give an folder in current path as, jdk-1_5_0_16, this folder will have all bin, lib directories required by the javac compilation and execution.
All the contents inside this directory will be same as the conents when you install the jdk in the windows. You will have a question that, why not i use the extracted jdk folder in windows, in linux to compile the java program in linux.
Both the extracted jdk folders in windows and linux are not the same, the difference is the extracted contents in windows will have all exe file, where as in linux it will be binary files.
That is javac in windows will be javac.exe and in linux it will be javac.bin
Now to set the path proceed as below

rosarioarun@ros-lap:~$ PATH=$PATH:/home/rosarioarun/jdk1.5.0_16/bin/

this is just a single line script to set the path, you can view the PATH variable using echo

rosarioarun@ros-lap:~$ echo $PATH

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/home/rosarioarun/jdk1.5.0_16/bin/

Now you can compile the java programs using javac and run them using java commands.

1. Compiling: $javac filename.java
2. Executing: $java filename

Applications, Ubuntu Java, Ubuntu

The most used IM client in Linux is Pidgin. But the problem with Pidgin is that doesnt support voice chat. Also the gtalk software is not available for linux. Its only available as exe that is supported only by Windows.

When i was chatting with my friend using pidgin and he was in gtalk, he called me for voice chat. But i couldnt. Googling this problem i found a solution. the solution is Empathy. Use Synaptic package manager, go to Settings->Repositories->Third Party Software and then click Add and add the following line

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ubuntu hardy main

Then, Install the following packages using Synaptic Pagakage manager.

1. Empathy
2. telepathy-gabble
3. telepathy-mission-control
4. telepathy-stream-engine

After successful installation, open the Empathy application and use the menu, Edit->Accouts to add your gtalk account. Enjoy using voice chat with your favorite gtalk account using Empathy in Linux.

Empathy With my Gtalk account

Applications, Internet, Ubuntu Internet, Ubuntu

I had a chance of spending a day with 10 persons from Tanzania. An unforgettable day 25th July 2008. Had a wonderful time spending with them and taking them all around my native Kanyakumari.A day was not enough with them.

A special day

And In that team, Father Maina, Eric, And Frank were more interested in the way i was using Ubuntu(Hardy). Frank was more interested and wanted to intall Hardy in his New laptop(HP), which was preloaded with Vista. So i used a Hardy dvd, and booted the laptop in Live cd mode and used gparted(Gnome Partition Editor) to partion the hard drive into four partions…

He had a thought that its not possible to install other OS, with out complete formatting and partitioning the hard drive. (As there was no partition at all and Only C drive and it has Vista). He was worried that his Vista and Recovery part to go off… I took of all his worries about hin his lap…  I partitioned, Installed Ubuntu with no loss in Vista or recovery part… Hardy Live CD is more power ful, also gparted is fantastic. Partion your new laptops with out loss of any data with Ubuntu Live CDs. Happy that i imported the Power of ubuntu and linux to few people.

Ubuntu Life, Ubuntu

Me accessing my DataOne broad band wireless in my hardy(ubuntu 8.04). For the post two year Iam using Dataone.. But I was not sure whether the wireless port in my modem was Input port or Output port. I tried connecting my Lap after purching my Lap.  I didnt know exactly what mode to use in my admin setup page for accessing… I was randomly trying one after the other.. And got it at last.

My Interface Setup in my admin page is in PPoA/PPoE mode, with the username and pasword defined in the router setup page itself. And my Cute hardy scans for the Wireless Lan and connects automatically leaving me no work now a days. My Hardy is always cute, When my boot process is over Iam ready to surf my Net, provided my Dataone modem is ON.

Connecting Internet, Ubuntu DataOne, Ubuntu, wlan

I was creating a photo slideshow VCD in my windows XP using Nero. My Writer drive was not working fine, so i decided to creat the cd image (.nrg) and write it using my Lap installed with Hardy(Ubuntu 8.04) using K3B. K3B didnt accept the nrg file… So going through how to convert the nrg to ISO, I came accross IAT.

IAT is nothing but ISo9660 Analyser Tool. In windows we use many CD Image manipulation softwares
Eg. Alcohol(.mdf), Clone CD(.cdi), Nero (.nrg) and many more. But the standart Image format accepted my all platforms are ISO(.iso).  iat   (Iso9660  Analyzer Tool) is a tool for detecting the structure of many types of CD-ROM image file formats, such as BIN,  MDF,  PDI,  CDI, NRG, and B5I, and  converting them into ISO-9660. Even many Operating System CDs are downloaded in Internet in the same file format. AS it is widely accepted standard. You can install IAT like

~$sudo apt-get install iat

provided your repositories are configured well. Also for the developers the source files can be downloaded in

http://prdownload.berlios.de/iat/

Usage is like

~$iat input_file.nrg output_file.iso

Applications, Ubuntu ISO

Many laptops, that uses Intel board faces problems with Wlan. That is, most of the time when booted with Ubuntu 8.04 the Wlan will not be enabled and the WirelessLan switch in the laptops will not be of any use… More over the Wireless Lan leds will also be of no use. I faced the same problem and i happened to reboot my ubuntu severall times to get my wlan enabled.

I googled and had a chat in IRC and found it a bug with Ubuntu. Also found the solution as i was surfing. The solution to the above problem is making the WLAN led glow and making the WLAN switch work. For that install the package below using Synaptic or atp-get

linux-backports-modules-hardy

that is install like

~$ sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-hardy

Even if it doesnt work after this, install the Latest stable version of ndiswrapper from the link,

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ndiswrapper

Iam right now using my Dataone connection, in my Lap via wlan as my modem is Wireless enabled. I never reboot now a day to enable my Wlan enabled in my Ubuntu.

Linux Networking, Ubuntu Hardy, Ubuntu, wlan