Chapter 4 LFS101x Introduction to Linux - REVIEW

It's a lazy Sunday afternoon in Western New York where I live. I woke up this morning to cloudy grey sky and the most excellent cool breeze blowing through the open windows. Perfect day to do a chapter of the LFS101x Introduction to Linux course.

I'm now on chapter 4 and so far so good.The first 4 chapters have been really basic, but I would highly recommend this course to any new Microsoft to Linux converts out there. A friend however, told me that the course really picks up after chapter 4. I'm gonna start chapter 5 this week.

Anyway the course is really enjoyable, and I had the perfect day to relax and focus on a chapter of it. A big disappointment for me is that the course is very Gnome oriented. I currently enjoy KDE, and don't really plan on switching anytime soon. I've used Gnome till Gnome 3 and then made the switch to KDE and don't think I'll ever look back. 

For me the fact that they use Gnome is not a big deal. I can usually connect the dots and figure out the slight differences between Gnome and KDE. For a new user however this might be problematic, or at the very least, extremely confusing. 

I like the way they broke the labs into Fedora, Debian and Suse sytems. It would of been nice if they were a little more diverse with the desktop environment. For instance, maybe Gnome, KDE and XFCE.  Or at least use KDE with the openSuse lab seeing its the default desktop for that distribution. One reason I've been thinking about making the move to openSuse. Anyway, that's my only complaint about the course so far. They should of used a couple different desktops besides just Gnome. 

So chapter 4 covers the Gnome desktop. Topics include logging in, changing users, putting the computer into sleep mode, and screen locking. Something new I learned today is that you can lock the screen using ctrl-alt-l . Walk away from your computer, lock screen, use root password to log back in. This comes in handy if you have to step away from your computer and you're in a room full of people you may not entirely trust. Unfortunately in my world this happens more than I'd like to admit ;-)

The chapter also gets into a little customization and shows you how to change your desktop background, and change your computer theme. 

Chapter 4 also covers basic operations. Launching programs, getting around Nautilus (Dolphin if you use KDE), finding drives, usb, cdroms, etc. 

Finally, there was a little about using Gedit to edit a file, deleting files, and recovering files. All fairly basic straight forward stuff. 

I'll be starting Chapter 5 next week sometime. I'm not sure if I'm going to review each chapter but I may cover some of the interesting points covered in each chapter I read. 

Thanks for reading and if you want to find out about signing up for the course, check out my previous post with the sign up link here.

KDE Desktop Shortcuts

Heres another duh, don't I feel stupid moment. I run KDE Plasma and the last time I tried to make shortcuts on my desktop I just couldn't do it. I figured o.k. drag and drop the icon from the application launcher onto the desktop and done. That's what I tried and it just didn't work. No matter how many times I dragged the icons to the desktop they just disappeared.  I figured well it's Linux so I probably have to do some weird configuration and link the icons or something.

Today I planned on spending the afternoon getting some shortcuts in order. Well guess what ? It is that simple. Drag and drop the icons onto your desktop from either application launcher, or Dolphin and your done. The only trick you need to know is this , make sure you right click on the desktop and select unlock widgets if its set to lock. Once you click unlock widgets, drag and drop the icons of the programs you want from your application launcher or Dolpin to your desktop and your done ! Easy peazy baby.

Now I've got all the programs that I use on a regular basis grouped together. For my webdesign and surfing the net I have Firefox and Chrome for social networking and checking design work, FileZilla for FTPing , and Dolphin to manage my files.

I made a second group, with Gimp, and Inkscape for my graphic design stuff, and through Gedit in the mix for coding out websites. This configuration is a real time saver for me.

Software Review KColorChooser

After recovering from my first Linux disaster, I promise I'll post more on that in the next couple days. I wiped Windows from my system and did a minimal install of Fedora 18 KDE. So long Windows ! After the install, I played around a bit to see exactly what was pre-installed in my computer, removed the packages I had no use for, and found a couple interesting surprises. My favorite one is KColorChooser.

One of the things I love about Linux is all the great software available for graphic design, and web design. KColorChooser is another great example of some of the great software available for designers. This is a really simple program that allows you to select colors from either the color pallete, or anywhere on the screen. Now that I've been doing a lot of web design I've wanted to look for a program just like this. This is the perfect program to use when you're developing your color schemes on web pages, and graphics.

When you load the program a small color pallete opens and you can just mouse click on the color selection. KColorChooser then shows you the rgb values along with the html hex values. Now, one of the really cool features of this program is you're not limited to the color pallete. Let's say you download a really cool wallpaper and love a particular shade of blue found in the image. KColorChooser will allow you to select the color from anywhere on the screen. So, just click the color dropper icon your cursor will transform into crosshairs and click on the part of screen with the color you want and KColorChooser will give you all the color values you need. The same thing if you're surfing the web and come across a cool color scheme on a website, or web graphic. Open KColorChooser , click the color dropper, click on the part of the website that has the color you want, and voila, KColorChooser gives you all the info you need to use that color in your next design project. The program loads quick, uses minimal system resources and really couldn't be any more convenient !

Finding this in the graphics section of my application launcher really was a pleasant surprise. I've wanted one of these color choosers on my computer for a while now, but just haven't gotten around to it out of sheer laziness. Thanks KDE !

One more KDE program worthy of mention, is KCharSelect. It's a simple character map that comes with most KDE installs. When you need a character map, just open your terminal, type kcharselect, and the image map will load on your screen. Very simple to use, and comes in handy when working with different fonts, dingbats, and webdings.

Even if your not using a KDE desktop, these programs are available for most Linux distros. If you don't have these programs do a quick search of your repositories and see if they're available for install. Both programs save you time, are easy to use, and use very limited system resources. I give both these programs five penguins and a thumbs up !

Install Broadcom Driver Dell Inspiron 1750 Linux Laptop

So I had my first major Linux disaster yesterday. Completely crashed the system, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. More on that in a later post. For now , I had to reformat my computer and reinstall the dreaded Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g drivers. This was one of the reasons I was putting off deleting my Windows partition and making this Laptop a Linux only machine. Getting the wireless networking running on this machine was a complete nightmare the last time I tried to do this. I made notes the last time but what should of only took me a couple hours turned into a 5 or 6 hour affair because I had my notes all messed up with other information that confused me. Anyway, I thought I would post the process I used to get this wireless card working on a Dell Inspiron 1750 running Fedora 18.

O.K, This is what worked on my Dell Inspiron 1750 running Fedora 18 with KDE. When I run lspci from terminal this is what it shows as my Network Controller.

Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

After doing some research I decided I needed these drivers. Now I had earlier release drivers but this only worked with these specific drivers. You need the broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2 drivers. I found mine here, and am told it's a safe site to obtain these drivers from. Scroll through the list, find your drivers and download them to your home directory.

Then open up your terminal program and ls to make sure the file is there. Then type in the following commands. I originally found this the last time I had this problem , I did change it around a little, but the credit should be given to its originator, however, it was found long before I had this blog, and I didn't notate my notes with proper credit. Sorry.

Type exactly as shown in terminal. Make sure to su or sudo, you need to be root.

first type:
export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR="/lib/firmware"
next type:
tar xjf broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2
then type:
b43-fwcutter -w "$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR" broadcom-wl-5.100.138/linux/wl_apsta.0


You're done. Reboot the system and on the restart you should now have working wireless. Hope this helped and good luck !

Finding Character Maps In Linux

I needed a character map today, and found this and thought it was worthy of a link here. Pertains to character maps found in Gnome and KDE. I needed a copyright symbol for another blog I've been working on and found this useful. http://fsymbols.com/character-maps/linux/

Linux Laptop Dell Inspiron 1501 Fedora 18 KDE

I needed a computer to dedicate strictly to printing. Linux uses Cups for printing and it's really not the most secure thing you can run on your computer. I've read posts on securing Cups, but most articles you read say if you have the computer attached to any type of network, Cups should probably be avoided ! So I had an older Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop laying around and I decided to install Fedora 18 KDE on it to see how it would run. If things worked out I would use that computer strictly for printing, and not connect it to the internet for anything. It worked out great with a few upgrades and about $22.00 worth of hardware.

The first thing I did was run a live install of Fedora 17. It clunked away and everything seemed to load great. I did an actual install and decided it was usable but it was a bit clunky with the original 512 megs of ram that came with the computer. I found 1 gig memory sticks on amazon for under $8 a stick,I ordered 2 with shipping the upgrade costed me under $22.00 and now gave me 2 gigs of memory compared to 512 megs. Money well spent in my opinion.
1GB RAM Memory Upgrade for Dell Inspiron 1501 (DDR2-533, PC2-4200, SODIMM)
I installed the memory and it was just what the doctor ordered. It took away most of the clunkiness and the computer was running pretty well. I've wanted to upgrade to Fedora 18 for some time now and decided to try Fedora 18 KDE. I downloaded an ISO of Fedora 18 KDE Spin from the Fedora website burned the ISO image to disk using Brasero on my other computer and ran the install on the Inspiron 1501. It wasn't uneventful, here's how it went.

I booted the computer and hit f2 and set the boot order to boot from the cdrom. I then placed the Fedora 18 KDE disk in the cdrom and rebooted the computer. The disk started chugging away and when it finally loaded I got a screen full of vertical green lines. So I rebooted the computer again and this time I highlighted Fedora 18 install, hit tab which brings up the basic install configuration settings, and added nomodeset to the end of the configuration. This fixed the problem in Fedora 17 but not with Fedora 18. Same problem. I then did a little research and found that by deleting the quite command and adding nomodeset to the end it would load fine. I'm guessing in quite mode it skips a couple drivers or something. So for the tweeted version, Highlight Fedora 18 Install, tab, in command line delete the quite option, and add nomodeset to the end and you'll be on your way.

Fedora 18 does most of the work for you after that. When I got to the partitioning part of the install, I simply set all the partitions to delete, and set it to automatic partition configuration. This deletes the XP install, removes the Dell factory backup, and replaces everything with Fedora 18 KDE. If you are planning to run a dual boot system with a different OS, or you want to save the Dell factory backup this is not the way to do it. However, doing it this way, Fedora set the partitions, handled the swap, and did everything for me with no problems. I was surprised to see the Grub bootloader installed, but I'll look into that down the road.

My Fedora 17 install was running Gnome desktop, the Fedora 18 KDE ran the KDE desktop. For the Dell Inspiron 1501 I would strongly suggest KDE. It ran so much better than the Gnome desktop in my humble opinion. The other surprise I received was that the Wireless was recognized immediately. No configuration, just type in your password, set up Kwallet, and your surfing the net. Rock on, My Dell Inspiron 1750 was a nightmare getting the drivers to work for the wireless. No problem there with the Inspiron 1501 !

Seeing I had internet I loaded Konsole, and added yum install yum-security then installed all the security updates using yum update --security. I then installed all my software using yum. Libreoffice, Gimp, Scribus, Gedit. Played around a bit and everything worked out great. Thats the only software I need for this computer but with the memory upgrade I think it could handle just about anything you threw at it.

There are a couple small issues but nothing to bothersome. Apparently there is a small bios issue with the AMD64 processor that comes in this computer. I did some research and there is a way to reflash the bios to fix the problem. Everything seems to work fine right now for what I want to use this for so I don't think I'm going to do that. Who knows, maybe one day when I'm bored and looking for something to post here I'll tackle that issue. The other thing I noticed is when the computer shuts down I get a weird green pattern that flashes when the computer is shutting down. Again this is nothing that seems to affect the performance of the machine for what I'm using it for.

The sole purpose of this machine is to have a computer dedicated strictly for Printing, and not connected to the internet, or networked to any other machine in the office. Now when I make a flyer design, or any type of advertising or anything that needs to get printed, I can just save my work to a cd, or copy it to a usb pen drive, open it in the other machine and print it from there. Sometime this week I'll do a post on setting up an HP Printer for the Dell Inspiron 1501 and Fedora 18 KDE.

On a final note, if you found this blog looking for information about running Linux on the Inspiron 1501 I hoped this article helped some. I would strongly suggest using Fedora 18 KDE it ran much better than Gnome on this machine, and I highly recommend the memory upgrade. For the $20.00 you spend on memory you're really treating yourself to a much more pleasant user experience. As always, thanks for following, hope you found this interesting and check back soon for updates. Next week, HP printers, Cups, and more on the Dell Inspiron 1501.

Dell Inspiron 1501, so long Windows XP, hello, Fedora 18 KDE. Upgraded memory to 2 gigs from the original 512 megs and this thing runs great. Strongly suggest running Fedora 18 KDE on this machine.

Cooking With KDE - Krecipes software review.

Like to cook ? Use KDE ? This a great application and way to keep all your recipes organized and in one place.

Taken from Productivity Monday, daily package Fedora book.

Krecipes is a KDE recipe manager. It will store, search for, and re-size recipes, rate their nutritional content, and manage shopping lists. Recipes can be stored in plan files for personal access, or in MySQL or PostgreSQL databases for shared access (or very large recipe collections). You can select recipes based on nutritional requirements or ingredients-on-hand, and you can also generate a shopping list from a group of recipes with items added or removed to suit your needs.

This is a really great GUI program to store all your recipes in one place. The program sorts everything for you, placing recipes in different categories like pasta, desserts, meat, main course, etc, etc. and even has a little thumbnail picture of what you will be cooking. If you download the U.S.D.A. nutritional database, it even breaks down all the nutritional facts of the dish your cooking, how much fat, amount of sodium, calories, and more. I thought this program was great, and here's my review.

So I downloaded the program using yum install krecipes. At the time of this writing the program was krecipes-1.0-0.2.beta2. I was a bit hesitant with it being beta but went ahead with the install anyway. Yum, found all the dependencies, downloaded the program, and installed everything with no problems. I went to application launcher and found the program in the utilities menu, click the icon and the program asked if I wanted to install the U.S.D.A. nutritional database. Why not, I clicked yes, a small progress window popped up and it took about 20 - 25 minutes for krecipes to download and configure everything. I was at work, and my work connection is pretty fast, so if you have a slow connection, this part of the install might take some time. Just a heads up on that. I have to say though, it was really worth the wait. When you get done entering the recipe, and view it in the program, Krecipes shows you the nutritional value of what you will be consuming. I thought this was a really great feature, and perfect if you're cooking for a diabetic, or someone who has to keep track of their salt and fat intake, or a calorie counter.

Entering the recipe couldn't of been easier. Everything's point and click and very easy to follow. Simply click on File, New Recipe, and a window pops up with some tabs for each category like, title, ingredients, instructions, and there's even a tab to rate it. There's even a place to add a thumbnail image of the dish you're cooking.

All the information is stored in a sqlite3 database, and if you're like me and backup everything, just click, Settings, Configure Krecipes, and there's a link to the database file. I uploaded mine to my cloud backup, and also added it to my backup files on my portable drive. Everything about this program was very easy to use. The only thing I configured myself was adding another folder in the program directory to store the thumbnail images, and that really isn't necessary but I'm a bit anal and like to keep things all in one place. You could just make a folder in your pictures directory and name it food thumbs or whatever.

All in all I thought this was a really great program. I cook for someone who has some health issues and the nutritional database is really helpful. I just can't say enough good things about this program. It was easy to install, easy to use, and if you cook and keep recipes on your computer, I strongly suggest downloading this program and giving it a try. I give this program five out of five penguins !

Find out more here, and the program is also available at sourceforge.com here.

Video Tutorial Explaining KDE 4.9 Features.

This video explains some of the features of KDE 4.9 along with some basic tweaks.

Gedit, This Blows Away The Microsoft Comparable Product.

I'm such a nerd. Of all the things to get excited about with Linux, this is the one program that I personally feel is incredible. Gedit ! This definitely blows away the Microsoft version of notepad. I've been using Windows regularly since Windows 3.11 and I have to say Gedit is everything Microsoft Notepad should be. Notepad hasn't changed much in 20 years, and I never understood why.

So why am I raving about a program that's comparable to what might be considered the most boring pre-packaged software program ever developed. Because to me text editors are extremely useful. I know html almost by heart, I code in Notepad, and find myself using it often. One of the biggest issues I always had with it was no spell check. I'm an idiot when it comes to spelling , and rely heavily on spell check. It would also be nice to have some highlights in the code. Gedit does !

Last night I started coding out a website. I loaded Gedit in KDE and started typing away. I saved the file as html and to my surprise Gedit automatically highlighted all the code. Great feature when your looking for errors in your code. Then I got real excited and thought maybe there's a spell checker, and sure enough, I clicked on tools, scrolled down, and OMFG a spell checker. I must say, I was in nerd heaven !

After this discovery, I clicked on File/New to create another page, and OMFG again, the page loaded in a new tab. Now I could cut and paste back and forth between the template design. Maybe I'm a little over excited about a text editor, but Gedit is awesome. To me this program alone is worth the price of admission.

Link KDE UserBase Wiki Learning KDE

I'm fairly new to KDE, and although GUI's are almost self explanatory I thought this link could be helpful to myself and others. This is the KDE UserBase Wiki and it gives you all kinds of tutorials, and help for using KDE. Topics include changing the system defaults, modifying the desktop, install info and much more.

Click here for the KDE UserBase Wiki.