Lubuntu 13.04 - Lightweight, Looks great, Lightning fast

The Lubuntu team have made quite advances over the years, making their Distro better, and this is what made them a part of the Offcial Ubuntu derivatives.

Whether you are a fan of the traditional desktop paradigm, have an old machine or just want to see your latest computer fly, try it and you're sure to go WOW Lubuntu. 




Lubuntu team is also making a push for the XP users as Microsoft Windows will stop supporting Windows XP on 8th of April 2014. Check more about that here.

You can download Lubuntu 13.04 from here.

ClamTk Virus Scanner- Simple, Straightforward, Works

We all know that Linux doesn't need an antivirus software(in the Windows sense), one of the many reason why we just love Linux :-), but for people who do have an interaction with M$ Operating Systems, or if you have to make sure that a particular data is virus free, ClamTk works extremely well. 


It is a lightweight software, simple to use, and fast.

First install the software: https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applicati... , then check for updates, you can also use the command "sudo freshclam" to update, then download the latest ClamTk from here http://clamtk.sourceforge.net/index.html , and install it.

Note that ClamTk is available for other distributions also, I even installed it on my Knoppix persistent live USB(the process remains the same as Knoppix is Debian based, the only thing different was that I had to install the GDebi Package Installer to install the latest deb file).

The ClamTk website: http://clamtk.sourceforge.net/index.html
Ubuntu ClamAV Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ClamAV
My recent encounter with the viruses: https://plus.google.com/1127599409313...

If you find this post useful, do share it with others. 

Unity Tweak Tool

On Ubuntu 12.10 or 13.04, do check this software, it's the best tool to configure Unity in my humble opinion. 


All the necessary instructions are in the YouTube description box, great work Freyja Development Team. If you find this post useful, do share it with others. 

Copy - The new Cloud Storage Service in town

Computer users have many options when it comes to Cloud based storage services, Enter Copy. 

First of all, I found the company logo to be especially well crafted and beautiful, and I found the same to be true for the rest of my experience with Copy. 
There is a great sense of style and simplicity whether it is the WebUI, Desktop client or the Android app yet functionality hasn't been compromised for it.

Copy is cross platform(Linux,Android,MacOS,iOS,Windows), I personally tried it on Elementary Luna, Ubuntu 13.04, my low end(Samsung Galaxy Y) Android cellphone and found it to be working nicely.  

The best part, if you signup now using this link https://copy.com?r=rlBLP7 you will get 10GB Free space instead of the default 5GB(It is an introductory offer and not sure how long it will last so hurry up).

Installation of the Linux Desktop Client is quite easy, just download the copy.tgz from copy.com , extract it, depending on your operating system execute the CopyAgent from the x86(32Bit) or x86_64(64Bit) folder. Done as the rest is pretty simple.

If you find this post useful, do share it with others.

LibreOffice KDE Integration & Personas

LibreOffice works well and keeps on getting better with every release, you can check my previous article for an extradordinary example. 

LibreOffice can look out of place on KDE though(as was the case in my previous video) but don't worry, just install a package "libreoffice-kde" and it looks at home. You can install this package from your Package Manager of choice(Synaptic/Muon) or simply run sudo apt-get install libreoffice-kde in a terminal. 



For Personas, you must have the latest LibreOffice 4.0.1 installed.  Visit the Personas website here and open a Persona that you prefer and the copy the page's URL(Address). Now launch Libreoffice, goto Tools then Options then LibreOffice then Personalization. Check 'Own Persona' and click on 'Select Persona', enter the URL that you copied into the Persona Address box, click Ok. Done. 
The Persona that I used in the video is this.

LibreOffice Impress Remote- It will Impress you.

FOSS leads innovation in many spheres and makes our life easy, one new thing in our arsenal is the LibreOffice Impress Remote. It's a free presentation remote control Android app for LibreOffice!

The LibreOffice team recently released the latest version 4.0.1 which is feature packed and covers the office suite needs of most users, plus they gave us this gem of an app for Android devices, it has features such as slide previews, speaker notes, slides grid view, and more. 

For the remote control app to function, you must have the latest LibreOffice installed. Windows and Mac users can get it from here. For the Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distro user, I recommend that you add the stable PPA. Run the following commands in the Terminal,
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt-get update

Then launch the software updater/update manager and upgrade your system, in case you don't have LibreOffice installed, install it from the Software Center.

Next download the LibreOffice Impress Remote Android app from the Google Play Store. 
Now watch the video below and get the app working in no time. 


Note that it is recommended to enable bluetooth on your Android device first before launching the app, and you must have a presentation running before you connect your Android device with the Computer. Enjoy and consider contributing to LibreOffice for their efforts.

Fedora 17 'Beefy Miracle' Explored!

FREEDOM. FRIENDS. FEAUTURES. FIRST. is the philosophy of Fedora Project and they have stayed true to it with their latest and highly anticipated Fedora 17 'Beefy Miracle'.

Fedora 17 ships with the latest Gnome-Shell 3.4.1 and it is fast. As with this release Gnome-Shell will work on most hardware through software rendering so everybody can enjoy and use it. Speed is nothing without stability and Fedora 17 is quite good in that department as I have had only few crashes that were application specific and overall the system feels solid.

Fedora 17 is features packed and I would recommend that you check the Features List to get the lowdown on them.
In addition to the main Desktop Edition(Gnome), Fedora 17 is also available with KDE/Xfce/LXDE spins and all the ISO's are under 700MB.

Firefox 12.0 is your default web browser, Evolution is your mail client, Empathy is your instant messaging client, Transmission take care of of your Torrent downloading. Rhythmbox is your audio player, Movie Player(Totem) for your Videos, Brasero as your Disc Burner and Cheese for your Web cam stuff. There is no office suite by default but you can easily install the one you want from the Add/Remove Software.

If(like me) you don't fancy the Add/Remove Software then first install Yumex as it is fast, provides you the option to update your system, installing/removing packages, managing repositories, shows your Yum history and more. You can easily install yumex from the Add/Remove Software or with the following command “beesu yum -y install yumex”.

Chromium is not in the repositories so if you want it you will have to download the Chrome Rpm from here and install it(right click on the file and select Software Install).

The nice thing about Fedora 17 with the latest Gnome-Shell is that the whole system feels highly integrated. The Online Accounts gives you the option of connecting your Google, Facebook and Windows Live accounts to your system.

I had connected my Google accounts and then the system automatically configured Empathy, Evolution and Documents with that account.

Documents provides you documents from your Documents folder and your connected online accounts like it accessed files my Google Drive when I had my Google account connected and it does all that while looking super sleek. 

It also allows you to search and classify them, watch them in full screen, print it directly from there and open them in the respective default software for them. The documents in the Documents application are also show up in your Desktop Search.

Fedora offers you the pure Gnome-Shell and FREE Software experience so Flash and similar non-free codecs/software isn't present in the repositories, you have no extensions running, Right Click on the desktop will not work, there is only the close button on the title bar, the “move to trash” shortcut is Ctrl+Delete instead of just Delete and Adwaita is your default theme.

Your mileage in the Defaults dept. may vary depending on whether you are a person who likes a clean/minimalist experience or whether you like a highly tweaked/out of the box experience. I for one liked the minimalist experience as it offers you the chance to shape the system in the way you want and I found Nautilus looking quite classy with Adwaita & Gnome icons.

There are easy workaround available for the defaults mentioned above. 
The first thing that you would want to do is install the “gnome-tweak-tool”. To enable right click on the desktop, launch Advanced Settings and turn on “Have file manager handle the desktop” from Desktop. To enable maximise, minimise on the title bar, select “All” in “Arrangement of buttons on the title bar” from Shell. To install extensions go to the https://extensions.gnome.org/ and install what all you like.


To get flash and other nonfree codecs/software one has to add the Rpm Fusion repositories and then install that stuff from it but an application AutoPlus makes it much simpler. Run the following command ” su -c 'yum -y --nogpgcheck install http://dnmouse.org/autoplus-1.4-5.noarch.rpm' “ in terminal and you will have autoplus installed. 

Launch autoplus and install what all you need.

To revert “Move to Trash” to the Delete key, run the following command “gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface can-change-accels true”. Now select a file or folder in Nautilus, then hover the "Move to trash" menu item in Nautilus (under "Edit") and press the DELETE key twice.

Then run the following command in terminal “gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface can-change-accels false”
Check this article if you want to see the video of how it is to be done.

All in all Fedora 17 provides you Pure Gnome-Shell experience, is stable and fast, comes with latest FREE Software and development tools and is backed by the great Fedora project community.
You can download it from here.
If you have any comments/questions/suggestions please feel free to contact me via the comments section, Google+ or twitter. Also if you like what you have read, do share it with others.