Choose the Fastest download Mirror of Ubuntu

Use the following procedure tutorial to select the fastest ubuntu mirror near to your location.

Procedure to Follow

First you need to launch Synaptic package manager from System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager

Now go to select Settings -> Repositories.

Select Ubuntu Software tab In the Download From drop down, choose Other…

Click the Select Best Server button in the resulting dialog.Wait a minute (or perhaps more on a slow connection).

Testing best server is in progress

Once it’s finished,click on choose server

close everything and click Reload in the main Synaptic window.

Downloading package information in progress from your new mirror

This simple procedure picks the best mirror for you. This works for me very well so i would suggest you try this and see if it works for you or not.

If you have any other method which worked for you please let us know.

Convert Youtube videos to audio in Linux

After reading Martin’s fine article “Download Youtube Videos” today, I had to give a bit of a Linux perspective and show how to do this in the Linux operating system. Inititially I assumed this would have to be done via the command line, because that is how I have always done conversions. But I have found that many people do not like having to do such tasks from the command line. So I sat out to find a good (and by “good” I mean easy). It didn’t take long to find, it didn’t take long to install, and it didn’t take too long to get working the way I wanted (which means including mp3 support).

The tool I eventually settled upon is Elltube. Of all the available tools this was the easiest to install, get working, and the most reliable. With this tool you will find download and converting Youtube videos a nobrainer. There is only one small hitch. If you want to add mp3 support you will have to do some extra installation (In this case it means installing unsupported files). The distribution I will use for this tutorial is Ubuntu 9.04. I will illustrate converting videos into audio-only mp3 format. This is the format that causes issues with most users due to the necessary installation of mp3-supporting libraries.

Preparing for the installation of Elltube

The good news is that everything you need, outside of Elltube itself, will be located in the default repositories. The bad news? You will have to install restricted applications. What this means is that Canonical is not responsible for the updating of these files. With that said you will need to fire up Synaptic. I do not suggest you just open up the Add/Remove Software utility from the menu. Instead open up a terminal window and issue the command:

sudo synaptic

The above command will open up the full-blown Synaptic tool where you will need to do the following:

1. Search for “lame” (no quotes).
2. Scroll down until you see the “ubuntu-restricted-extras”.
3. Mark “ubuntu-restricted-extras” for installation.
4. Search for “ffmpeg” (no quotes).
5. Mark “ffmpeg” for installation.
6. Click Apply to install.

Once all of this has installed download the Elltube .deb file and save it to your ~/ directory. After this file download has completed open up a terminal window and issue the following command to install:

sudo dpkg -i ~/elltube_0.3-1_all.deb

which will install Elltube. You are ready to convert.

Converting a video to mp3 format

Figure 1

You will find Elltube in your Internet sub-menu of either your Main or Applications menu. When the Elltube application opens you will see the Main window (see Figure1). There isn’t much to this application from the GUI perspective – but it serves the purpose well.

The first thing you need to do is find a video you want to convert on Youtube. Let’s convert a live version of Rush’s La Villa Strangiato. Find the URl and then copy and paste into the

Figure 2

Youtube URL area. When you do this the details of the file will appear in the main window (see Figure 2). Now what you have to do is to select MP3 (audio only) from the Format drop-down and select a Save to location for the download and conversion. When the details are done, click the Download button and the process will begin.

When the conversion process is complete the “Video found!” message will change to let you know it is finished. When it has completed you will have your mp3 file in the Save to folder. You are ready to rock!

Final thoughts

Elltube makes the downloading and conversion of Youtube videos as simple as it gets. The ease at which this process is done makes the installation well worth it.

Howto setup Second IP address or Virtual IP address to your Networkcard in ubuntu

If you are a Network Administrator some time you need to assign more than ONE ip address (second ipaddress) to your network card of Ubuntu machine. For this you need to edit the /etc/network/interfaces file by adding the following lines . See the example below and make change according to your ip address settings

#vi /etc/network/interfaces

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.5
netmask 255.255.255.0
network x.x.x.x
broadcast x.x.x.x
gateway x.x.x.x

auto eth0:1
iface eth0:1 inet static
address 192.168.0.50
netmask 255.255.255.0
network x.x.x.x
broadcast x.x.x.x
gateway x.x.x.x

after entering the values save this file and you need to restart networking services in ubuntu using the following command to take effect of our new ipaddress.

After entering all the details you need to restart networking services using the following command

#/etc/init.d/networking restart

Cheese: The Un-Cheesy Webcam Software for Linux Having tried Photo Booth on Mac OS X, I once wished to have that cool application on my Linux box. Th

Having tried Photo Booth on Mac OS X, I once wished to have that cool application on my Linux box. Then came Cheese, the GNOME application that is quite similar to that of Photo Booth. Utilizing GStreamer framework, it allows users to apply fantastic graphical effects while capturing photos or videos. Aside from the fun stuff, Cheese is loaded with handy little features.

I installed the latest version of Cheese, which is 2.26.0 on Ubuntu 9.04, and it works like a charm with my A4Tech (PK-730MJ) webcam. Cheese is available in all major distro repositories so Linux users should have no problem getting and installing it.

Cheese has a very simple and a no-nonsense graphical interface. If you want to take a photo, just click on the "Photo" button, then "Take a Photo". If you want to take a video, click on the “Video” button, then "Start/Stop Recording". You will see snapshots of the captured images and videos at the bottom where you can view them by double-clicking. By default, the captured images are saved at /home/username/Pictures/Webcam, while videos are saved at /home/username/Videos/Webcam.

Although not as plenty as those on Photo Booth, Cheese comes with a decent amount of unique visual effects that I’m happy with. Here's the current list of effects:

* Mauve

* Noir/Blanc

* Saturation

* Hulk

* Vertical Flip

* Horizontal Flip

* Shagadelic

* Vertigo

* Edge

* Dice

* Warp


You can also combine those effects by picking two or more of them, and then clicking on the "Effects" button to start recording videos or capturing photos with multiple effects.

Another good feature of Cheese is that it supports uploading of photos on Flickr provided that you have the "postr" package installed.

All in all, Cheese is a handy webcam application that should be installed by default on Ubuntu and on other popular distros because I can't think of any other webcam software for Linux that can rival even the basic functionality of Cheese. Although it will not turn your ordinary webcam into a security camera, it's very reliable, user-friendly, and it can be a lot of fun. I just hope that more fancy effects and useful features will be added to Cheese soon.

So what can you say about Cheese? Do you know of other webcam software for Linux that is better or is as good as Cheese?

WineXS – Simple graphical environment to configure Wine

Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available. Wine provides both a development toolkit for porting Windows source code to Unix as well as a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows programs to run on x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris.

WineXS allows you to easily configure Wine by installing and removing software, editing the registry, managing files, and more.

Install WineXS in Ubuntu

first you need to download the file from where you want to run this installation in this example i am using /home/user

$cd /home/user

$wget http://tsx.nl/files/winexs-1.4.2.tgz

Now you need to extract .tgz file using the following command

$tar xvzf winexs-1.4.2.tgz

Now you should be having winexs directory now you need to go into this directory

$cd winexs

Run the following command to run winexs

$./winexs

Once it opens you should see similar to the following screen,Here you can install,remove software,install system files,wine configuration

Software Installation screen

Install System files screen

Wine configuration screen

This application is very easy and i personally like this.If you guys have any more tips on this please share here.

Innovative Pizza Box Design

Green Box is an innovative pizza box that easily breaks down into 4 serving plates, while the remainder of the box transforms into a storage container for leftovers.

Made from a standard pizza blank, the Green Box requires no additional material and can therefore be produced at no additional manufacturing cost.

Beautiful Lamborghini X Concept

Emil Baddal, a talented artist from Iran, was not satisfied with the look of the Lamborghini Reventon, so he decided to design one himself. Enjoy!

3D Pavement Art by Edgar Mueller

Edgar Mueller is a German artist who creates incredible 3d pavement art using the street as his canvas.

He paints over large areas of urban public life and gives them a new appearance, thereby challenging the perceptions of passers-by.

3D Ice Age in Ireland

3D Lava Burst in Germany

3D Mysterious Cave in London

3D Waterfall in Canada

Beautiful Amazon Tree Houses

Talented people at Amazon Tree Houses Ltd construct beautiful natural structures for the young and old to enjoy. This post showcases some of their unique creations.

GyachE Improved : Yahoo! client for any linux operating system ( ubuntu,fedora etc. )

This Yahoo! client for Linux operating system supports almost all of the features you would expect to find on the official Windows Yahoo! client: Voice chat, webcams, faders, 'nicknames', audibles, avatars, display images, and more. Yet, it remains very light-weight and memory-friendly. GyachE Improved uses Gtk-2 for its user interfaces (Gtk-2 2.0.6 or better required).

To install GyachE Improved in ubuntu jaunty
Open sources.list

$ vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Add these lines to sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/loell/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/loell/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Now update apt-get.

$ sudo apt-get updat

Install Gyachi

$ sudo apt-get install gyachi

Other linux users please see http://gyachi.sourceforge.net/download.shtml

Arista - Convert videos easily on Linux

Arista is a wonderful video format converter that anyone can use without any knowledge, its performance is really very simple, but its main purpose is to streamline the full process of converting a video giving a few options that are easily understood for us users: Convert to Apple iPod, Cowon D2, Computer, DVD Player, Sony PSP or Sony Playstation 3.

One of the features I liked most of Arista is the ability to preview video looks like without having to wait until it finishes its conversion, in this way can we know if we feel we must correct or select another.
Arista also allow us to extract and convert video or DVD directly from any camera connected to your PC without the need for additional software.

Download Arista

FSlint - Clean and organize your Linux

By the time now, we all know that all applications installed on our PC are slowly filling our system with files, then comes a time when controlling everything in our computer becomes virtually impossible. If you want your computer to be running like the first day you had it. Put FSlint the task of cleaning and organizing your Linux very easy.
Thanks to the implementation of FSlint. With a single click we can delete duplicate files, empty folders, temporary files, check the installed packages, links incorrect blanks along with other tasks that will allow us to maintain our Linux in optimal conditions.

Testing
FSlint can be download from the official site, it can be tested in a few steps from your terminal:

$ wget http://www.pixelbeat.org/fslint/fslint-2.40.tar.gz
$ tar -xzf fslint-2.40.tar.gz
$ cd fslint-2.40
$ cd po && make
$ cd ..
$ ./fslint-gui

Installation

If we have one of the best-known distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian ... it can be installed from the repositories by typing a single command in the terminal:

* For those under debian

$ sudo apt-get install fslint
Can find it here Applications> System Tools> fslint
Or type fslint-gui at terminal

* For those under Redhat
$ sudo yum install fslint

Enjoy Using Linux

Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD4WIN)

When it comes to administering and auditing installed machines, Windows users are a great disadvantage compared to their Linux peers. Almost every single Linux distribution ships as a live CD, along with a whole range of dedicated system tools, allowing the user to easily performance maintenance, backup, recovery, malware cleaning, and many other tasks on a broad range of computers, without depending on the host operating system to boot, work properly or cooperate.

Windows users have a more limited array of tools at their disposal, mainly because of the Microsoft licensing policy. Still, all is not lost. Windows users have two great tools at their disposal: BartPE and Ultimate Boot CD for Windows.

BartPE

BartPE is a Preinstalled Environment (PE) builder tools that allows users to create their own bootable versions of Windows. BartPE discs can be then used on Windows machines that cannot boot, have been hit by malware, for safe browsing and more.

UBCD4WIN

UBCD4WIN is a fat child of Bart's. UBCD4WIN is based on BartPE, but it adds lots of programs to the package, significantly enhancing the functionality of the live CD. While the basic BartPE disc will weigh only about 300MB at most, UBCD4WIN can be more than twice the size. The extras translate directly into dozens of excellent programs (plugins) included, programs that users would normally have to package by themselves in order to use with Bart. UBCD4WIN also has better hardware support. It contains a more aesthetically pleasing work environment (desktop), too.

I have talked about these two tools at some length before. For more details, please see my article: How to create a bootable live Windows CD.

Now, it's time to mention UBCD4WIN again. It's been 2 years since my last article. UBCD4WIN has since grown from version 3.1.1 to 3.22. This article covers the new, fresh changes that UBCD4WIN brings to the live Windows administration scene.

What is new?

Well, let's boot and see.

By default, UBCD4WIN (created with version 3.22) boots into a minimalistic desktop with only the Start button visible. If you're used to a nice shiny desktop wallpaper and lots of icons, you will not get them until you run the My info program.

But let's focus on the real deal - programs. BTW, you can find the full list at UBCD4WIN website, under List of Tools.

Applications

It seems as if the creators of UBCD4WIN maintain a secret telepathy link with me, or it may be that I happen to use the most sensible programs available for Windows, but the great majority of my favorites come included!

Browsers

First, you get the great Firefox and Opera browsers:

Imaging software

Then, if you wish to clone your operating system / partitions, DriveImageXML is included.

Additionally, you may add your own plugins. For instance, I added my own Acronis True Image 9, which allows me to manipulate Acronis backups and restores from the CD.

Furthermore, if you have missed in the first screenshot, TrueCrypt is also included, allowing to encrypt your files, partitions, drives, and even the operating system, as well as open and use existing TrueCrypt containers.

Administration tools

There are SO many programs, so I'm just showing off a tiny few.

Karen's LAN Monitor allows you to keep track of the traffic on your subnet. You can also load remote registries (including that of the local machine) for inspection, auditing or malware cleaning.

Then you have hard disk diagnostic tools, too. And if you ever get confused, a comprehensive help file explaining the majors and minors of the live CD.

More applications ...

Next, you may want to defrag your partitions or backup your drivers. Double Driver is an extremely convenient tools that allows you to grab the entire set of drivers for your machine and keep them somewhere safe in case you need them. Then, you can back them up to CD using Small CD-Writer (or several other burning tools). Auslogic Disk Defrag is a solid, efficient defragmenter.

Then, you get Foxit Reader for PDF files, IrfanView for quick image and picture editing, Putty for SSH tunneling, and the omni-potent Notepad++ for anything to do with text, scripts or code.

In addition to the simple Task Manager, you also get CurrProcess. And there's a virtual keyboard, too.

You can even connect to remote Linux machines using VNC:

Security applications

One of the sections that matters most to many Windows users is security. When booting from the live CD, the host operating system is dormant and fully exposed, and so are any potentially hidden rootkits, DLLs, files, folders, and whatnot. Disinfection from live CDs is a very simple affair.

If you're afraid to do it manually, then you have a broad range of programs, including AntiVir and AVG anti-virii, SuperAntiSpyware, McAfee Stinger, Spybot Search & Destroy, Rootkitty, and others.

Conclusion

UBCD4WIN is mighty toolbox. It is friendly and highly useful. It allows you to safely recover lost data in the case of a disaster, restore partitions, look for deleted files, fix the registry, clean malware, even access encrypted data, and communicate with remote machines using SSH or VNC.

While there's nothing revolutionary between version 3.0 and 3.22, the new changes are all good. UBCD4WIN has grown a bit in size, but the additions are excellent, lightweight and superbly versatile programs (IrfanView, Notepad++ to name just two).

For Windows users, this is a must. And even if you're a Linux guy, having a live CD specially dedicated to Microsoft machines, which you might need handle some day, certainly does not hurt.