As many of you might have noticed, Ubuntu’s support for bluetooth mice is a hit-or-miss kind of thing. To solve this, I used the Microsoft Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 as it has both bluetooth and 2.4gHz wireless. This way I could still get around connectivity problems by switching to 2.4gHz mode. It’s was a shitty mouse, but I’ve been able to get it to work on bluetooth mode without doing anything special. I’m not 100% sure of what I’m saying, but it costs nothing to try.

First, you will notice pairing a Microsoft bluetooth mouse will not work. While Ubuntu might say it works, the blinking bluetooth discovery LED on the mouse will keep flashing. However, at next boot, the mouse works absolutely perfectly! That happened twice to me, and I think it might happen just about everytime if I don’t switch off bluetooth as soon as it fails to connect.

I’ll keep doing it and if it works everytime (which would mean it works even better than on Vista), then I’ll write a short guide about it.

Stick around!

UPDATE: Second boot, mouse works as expected. We got something!

UPDATE 2: After several successful boots, I can confirm these work. All you have to do is to pair them and reboot and they work just fine!

Looking for a simple way to clone your drive? Once again your Ubuntu Live CD has the tools you need to backup your hard drive safely and for free. It takes some time, but it works just as well as Norton Ghost, but it lets you use applications from the Live CD in the meantime.

In this tutorial, I used a Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD as it already has all the tools required and supports my wireless card out of the box, but as long as you can have Gparted, you will be fine.

Some things you should know:

• This command is safe when used safely, but make sure you understand it well before you do anything stupid.
• Running a file system check (fsck) is highly recommended.
• You might want to try this overnight, as it takes a lot of time and cannot be paused.*
• dd will make a byte by byte copy of your input location to your output location. Unless you output it to a file (like an ISO image), you will have to dedicate your entire output drive to the backup, as it will overwrite any file system previously there.
• Even if you already have a linux partition, use a Live CD it will result in errors in your backup. Altering files while they are being copied will create various problems.

Preparations:

1. Plug your external drive.

2. Boot on your Live CD and open GParted (System>Administration>Partition Editor).

3. Select your external hard drive from the drop-down menu in top right corner.

4. Once you are absolutely certain you’ve selected the right disk, erase every partition on your external hard drive. If you don’t want to dedicate a hard drive to a file, you can also output the command to a file (just like an iso image). In this case, this step is not necessary.

The quickest way to do this is to go to Device>Create partition table and select msdos

5. Find the name of your source and destination. This can be found, once again, using GParted. In the top right menu, find the drives you copy from and to. Make sure you don’t confuse the input source and output source or you are going to be in hot water!

The command

The dd command is a really simple and efficient command. Here’s how it works:

dd if=[input location] of=[output location] conv=sync,noerror

conv=sync,noerror will prevent problems from read errors. You don’t need it, but it sucks to see your backup halt 12 hours in because of a small error on your disk.

The input and output locations can be files, folders, partitions, media, anything. You can, for example, make an ISO image of a CD by setting the input as /dev/cdrom and the output as cdcopy.iso.

6. In our case, we will set the input to the drive to backup and the output to our external drive. Open a terminal and type your command using the locations from #5:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb conv=sync,noerror

(make sure you have the right locations!!!)

7. To restore your backup, simply invert if and of.

*It took me 12 hours to copy a 250GB, 7200rpm laptop drive to a 5400rpm external drive. This is because the dd command copies the hard disk byte by byte.

The terminal in Gnome

To create an ISO image of a CD or DVD in Linux, you can use the dd command. Open up a terminal and type the following command:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/path/toyouriso.iso

This will copy the contents of the folder specified by if to the file specified by of. This can also be used to backup your data from a drive to another too, but be careful, as using a blank disk in if will completely wipe the data of the space it is written to, unless you output it to file (like an ISO file).

For those of you who have installed Freenet for a reason or another and want to get rid of it, you might have found that it is not possible using conventionnal means (Synaptic/apt). This method works with the current version of Freenet (as of september 2009):

1. Open a terminal and type “cd ~/Freenet/Uninstaller“
2. Now, type “java -jar uninstaller.jar“
3. Follow the instructions

Voilà!

Early this year, Linux pundits kept dubbing 2009 “the year of Linux”. For the first time, Linux distributions were bundled with consumer laptops and sold in the big stores. Nonetheless, it didn’t work quite as well as we would have wanted it to. Basically, here’s why.

Netbooks are dirt cheap devices marketed as simple net’n'mail laptops. When I try to imagine who will buy these, I can only see the kind of people who run old Windows XP computers with Internet Explorer 6 and an expired version of AVG. Now you are trying to sell these computer-illiterate people something different that won’t play well with their iPod Touch and you expect them to like it?

What happens is that these people cannot chat or play their music the exact same way they did on their previous machine. Even if the bundled software did everything better than Windows (and it often does), they don’t look and work the same way. These people don’t want to learn how the new thing works, they just want it to work like Windows. Don’t expect them to give a crap about the bulletproof stability and the security of Linux if it doesn’t look like XP. After a while, they will get bored with having to figure out how to do what they easily did on Windows and they will return the damn thing.

There is no way to easily market something radically different to people that have used Windows for years. No matter how intuitive Gnome is, people will still ask how they can install applications or change the wallpaper. Until manufacturers start to fully embrace and support Linux and offer it with full computers (and not mere Atom-powered netbooks), then maybe Linux will get the chance it deserves.

Pursuing the quest for an awesome yet minimalist Gnome desktop, I decided to attack Gnome’s minimalism-hating panel. My goal is to keep all the functionnality of the panel while being able to have it match with my desktop backgrounds.

It was pretty easy to find where the panel icons were hidden (usr/share/icons/yourtheme/22×22) and now all I had to do is to create a nice icon set to replace the current ones without altering the rest of the icon theme.

So far, I made icons for Network Manager (only wireless), Power Manager, Menu, aMSN and Nautilus. I also made a few application icons for my Firefox, aMSN and Rythmbox launchers. These icons do not affect the rest of the theme and look damn great on just about any panel background. All the icons are in PNG, but the SVG file is also included if you want to tamper with the icons.

Here’s a preview:

Click for the full-size image

I made a very simple set of icons for people looking for single-color icons to match their themes. The icons are in PNG, but the SVG files are also included so you can edit them or change their color to your liking. I use them for my panel launchers in Ubuntu, but they look incredibly nice on any wallpaper.

The icons are to be freely used as long as you don’t sell them or claim them as your own. Edit them, share them, anything you want, but don’t be selfish! If you make your own icons to complement the pack, feel free to share them with me!

The icons in 32x32

SVG icons in a panel

The Gnome Menu icon

Sizes:

• 32×32
• 48×48
• 64×64
• 128×128
• 256×256
• SVG (any size you want)

How to install the Gnome Menu icon:

1. Go to the following directory (you need root access): /usr/share/icons/themename/24×24/places/start_here.png
2. Replace start-here.png with your own icon. You may want to backup the default icon, just in case.
3. In the terminal, type: sudo gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/themename/
4. Finally, type: killall gnome-panel
5. Voilà!
   

Download at Gnome-Look.org

Download on Wikimedia Commons

While our Linux systems are already packaged to be as good as possible, there are many tips and tweaks that will greatly improve your experience. Here is a random list of the best tips you should know about Ubuntu and other Linux distros. You should already be familiar with many of these tricks but it’s not necessary to be rude about it. Instead, feel free to include your own tips in the comments.

Ubuntu tips

Clear some space with autoremove and clean

Open a terminal and type in the following commands:

sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get clean

The first command will remove all the unused dependencies and the second clears the cached packages.

Use the Super key as a modifier in Keyboard Shortcuts

One thing that sucks with the Win key is that you can’t use it as a modifier like Ctrl, Shift and Alt for keyboard shortcuts. That can be fixed easily without even opening the terminal. Here is a short tutorial.

Enable Gnome’s Control Panel

Just like on Windows, a control panel is available for Gnome. This one can be enabled by right-clicking the menu bar and clicking Edit menus. Under System, check “Control panel”. You will now have a shortcut to your control panel in the System menu. Alternatively, it can be launched from the terminal by typing gnome-control-center.

Root file manager

When you want to move and delete files, it can be much easier to use the file manager instead of the terminal. Right click on the Applications menu and select Edit menus. Create a new item and in the Command field, type ‘gksu nautilus‘.

Terminal tips

Quickly go back to your /Home directory

If you quickly wish to go back to /Home, just type cd alone in the terminal. It’s always better than double-dot-slashing your way back (cd ../ brings you back to the parent directory). Source.

Go back to the previous directory

For those who play with files and constantly switch between two directories, typing cd - will bring you back to the previous folder (the one you were in before using cd). It’s the equivalent of the “back” button in a GUI file browser. Source.

Auto-complete

When you press tab in the terminal, you will be presented with auto-complete suggestions. It’s a quite handy trick when you can’t completely recall a command’s name. Source.

Avoid rewriting the same commands with arrow up

This has to be one of the most useful tips in the terminal and one of the most well known, but it still has its place on this list. When you press arrow up in the terminal, it will bring up the last commands you typed. This even includes the commands you typed in previous terminal sessions. It’s a good trick to save some efforts when you make typos in super long commands.

Repeat an argument with a different command

Using !$ will repeat an argument with a different command, saving you a lot of time when messing with files and directories.

[nicolas@Nick-Ubuntu ~]$ mkdir /this/is/an/argument
[nicolas@Nick-Ubuntu ~]$ cd !$

Repeat the previous command as root

Use sudo !! to repeat a command as root. !! is a keyword to repeat a command.

[nicolas@Nick-Ubuntu ~]$ gedit /your/text/file.txt
[nicolas@Nick-Ubuntu ~]$ sudo !!

Last week, I got news from my grandparents who live at 4 hours from us. To my greatest delight, I learned they were finally going to plug the internet in their house, after so many months. Barely a few months ago, they didn’t have a computer, didn’t want a computer and were not going to buy one. As I knew them, all they needed was a free, painless introduction.

However, with me living so far away from them, maintenance was out of the question. I wanted them to have an up-to-date computer that would be intuitive and confusion-resistant. Windows, of course, was absolutely out of the question, considering all the maintenance it needs. I recall my uncle throwing away a few computers until we just set him up a Wii with Opera. I took an old computer I didn’t use and installed the only available Live CD I could install and setup in under an hour: Ubuntu 8.10.

Why Linux? Because it is ridiculously easy to understand. You have the desktop and the main menu which clearly displays available options: Applications, Places and System. On top of that, it was available for free, in french, and could run on old hardware. It was fairly easy to hide/lock away anything that could cause confusion and to make it truely beginner-ready. The only thing they managed to break? Solitaire in fullscreen by pressing F11. That’s it.

Of course, their tech-savvy friends cannot apply their knowledge to help them, but the damn thing is so easy to figure out even the cable guy could set it up.

All I can do is picture them using Windows, facing countless warnings, questions, popups and constantly being asked if they want to rezorbate the ion generator. No offence, Windows gets the job done, but not without proper training.

Unlike what many keep saying, Linux is not hard at all, it’s simply what you started with Windows. Sure, it might be a mess to setup, considering that manufacturer support is not always there, but once you get the thing running, it won’t stop, slow down, bug and crash. Gotta love the penguin!

As some people might have discovered, Keyboard Shortcuts does not see the Super (Windows) key as a modifier. This means you cannot set shortcuts such as Super+H or Shift+Super+H as it will only catch it as Super. The fix to this small problem is really easy.

Go to Preferences>Keyboard>Layouts>Layout options>Alt/Win key behavior and select Meta is mapped to win keys.

Voilà! You can now use the Super key in key combinations. I personally use it as a light version of Gnome Do to launch Firefox (Super+F), show the desktop (Super+D), lock the screen (Super+L) and other easily remembered system-wide shortcuts.

Note: All the shortcuts using the Alt key will have to be retyped as it is now named Mod5. This means you will have to refresh these shortcuts in order to have them to work.

Thanks to yabbadabbadont from Ubuntu Forums for the tip.