For apple there is Dashboard and for PC there is Konfabulator so whats the alternative app for linux ? I hear you ask. Well , there is screenlets . Some people will argue gDesklet is Old-time stable appl but I find it really OLD .

Visit http://screenlets.org to get the Latest file and download it , installing is not that easy as there is no BINARY installer yet (like rpm or .deb) and Still have difficulty to get manager running. still the individual screenlets (like clock,calender,notes) are easily runnable. Still in development, the author has done incredible job for creating small foot print and good on resource usage (less cpu/ram) application . core language I found used is "Python" plus its Opensource

Following is screenshot of all widgets running (~800kb):-



Video of how I fireup the screenlets (~ 1.3mb) :-

Inside Google Desktop: Google Desktop for Linux 1.1 Beta


I upgraded my previous installation of Fedora 7 easily by using command rpm -Uvh google-desktop-linux-current.rpm .

Now, Windows has its own protocol called RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) specially created for admins who want to connect to Windows machines located remotely.

But if you are Linux desktop user, you dont have any application from Microsoft (obviously!) so there is native app to accomplish this.

Try the following command.

==========================================
sudo yum install tsclient
==========================================




This will install Linux app call Terminal server client , this supports RDP RDP5 as well as VNC. its easy to use. Watch the video demo to see how it goes.

So you have access to Linux box without GUI or Linux server located remotely and you only have username access with SSH service running on Linux box, the fastest and most secure way to transfer is using sftp (or secure ftp tunneled on ssh).

Check out the video how I use winscp application on Windows XP to transfer files back and forth between the two operating systems.

NOTE:- the video quality is getting worse at my video hoster, since its free I can't complain. I might soon try to get my own video hosting service for better quality,But I am not sure how to fund it. using different hoster.

You can share folders between windows machines and Linux machines which are on same network or have access to each other through network providing firewall is not blocking them.

Below is how I show configuring such "network sharing setup" using SAMBA application without use of single command line provided its installed already.

if its not installed , go to ADD-REMOVE to install or by following command it can get installed .

========================================================
sudo yum install samba samba-client system-config-samba
========================================================

*Following screenshot shows CLI view of samba working on Linux.


*Following screenshot shows GUI view of samba configuration tool.


check the video to see how you can go about setting this up.

NOTE:- a quiz for you , count how many times i say "here" :)

Video: Bill Gates on Open Source

Never saw this.

This is tekzilla, webtv episodes for people with good internet connection, Enjoy.

Whenever you get that auto-updater warning pop, and you go ahead for updating, Do try to pull the extended view, gives you details and even URL's for complete report for that particular update. nice stuff.


PS:- Due to many things going offline in my life, I am not getting time to update here, But there are PLENTY of topics for me to cover , so do visit again to check.

VMware Server 1.0.4 Build: 56528 is just released in past week. It has HUGE list of fixes specially for Fedora 7 (thanks vmware) and lots of other security related fixes, so Its MUST upgrade version. Check vmware.com/support/server/doc/releasenotes_server.html for complete read.

I thought today on weekend is good time to upgrade it. It went really simple. ( No reboot needed and all virtual machines were shut off).

Remember I had VMware Server 1.0.3 Build: 44356 installed with any-any patch, So I decided to upgrade it directly to see how this will go.

RESULT:-

Below is how my terminal looked as it went on. NOTE:- I have skipped the middle part of installation via VMware-config.pl which had same steps as seen in my previous post on vmware-server installation.

=================================================================================================
[anshu@Fedora7 ~]$ su
Password:
[root@Fedora7 anshu]# cd Desktop/
[root@Fedora7 Desktop]# /etc/init.d/vmware stop
Stopping VMware services:
Virtual machine monitor [ OK ]
Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0 [ OK ]
DHCP server on /dev/vmnet1 [ OK ]
Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet1 [ OK ]
Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet2 [ OK ]
DHCP server on /dev/vmnet8 [ OK ]
NAT service on /dev/vmnet8 [ OK ]
Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet8 [ OK ]
Virtual ethernet [ OK ]
[root@Fedora7 Desktop]# rpm -Uvh VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.i386.rpm
Preparing... ########################################### [100%]
1:VMware-server ########################################### [100%]
[root@Fedora7 Desktop]#

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[root@Fedora7 Desktop]# vmware-config.pl
Making sure services for VMware Server are stopped.

Stopping VMware services:
Virtual machine monitor [ OK ]
Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0 [ OK ]
DHCP server on /dev/vmnet1 [ OK ]
Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet1 [ OK ]
Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet2 [ OK ]
DHCP server on /dev/vmnet8 [ OK ]
NAT service on /dev/vmnet8 [ OK ]
Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet8 [ OK ]
Virtual ethernet [ OK ]

You must read and accept the End User License Agreement to continue.
Press enter to display it.
[[[[ SNIPPED ]]]]]

In which directory do you want to keep your virtual machine files?
[/home/backup/vm] /Opvms

Do you want to enter a serial number now? (yes/no/help) [no] yes

Please enter your 20-character serial number.
Type XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX or 'Enter' to cancel: [type key here]

Starting VMware services:
Virtual machine monitor [ OK ]
Virtual ethernet [ OK ]
Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0 [ OK ]
Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet1 (background) [ OK ]
Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet2 [ OK ]
Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet8 (background) [ OK ]
NAT service on /dev/vmnet8 [ OK ]
Starting VMware virtual machines... [ OK ]
The configuration of VMware Server 1.0.4 build-56528 for Linux for this running
kernel completed successfully.
[root@Fedora7 Desktop]#
=================================================================================================

So you want to use legacy windows-only applications and have no other options and instead of keeping separate machine or installing Complete OS on another partition just for such moments is waste of resources.

Then you can use VMWARE products to do this, the preferred application is VMware Workstation, but I have seen you can install it via freeware VMware server too. Below is demo on how you would go installing it. and how it looks.




Above video is choppy and not readable really. So below are some screenshots so that you get clearer Idea.

So I had to quickly add NEW disk space to my Linux operating system (Fedora7 distro) ,now this new space is nothing but unallocated disk lying dormant.

The app here I used is Gparted , installing it with a single command and within minutes adding(mounting) it to my list of partitions. check video if you really want to see how does it operate. really handy tool.




NOTE:- at end what you dont see in video is I added following single line to a file called fstab so everytime i reboot, this NEW partition also loads without my needing to do command things again and again.

---------------------------------------------------------------
[anshu@Fedora7 ~]$ sudo vi /etc/fstab
/dev/sda4 /Opvms ext3 defaults 0 0
--------------------------------------------------------------

Screenshot below is how it looks in end.

Read More 0 comments | Posted by anshuman |

OpenCompositing CompizFusion is opensource project to run window manager in OpenGL mode drawing everything from Graphic cards, this is slated to be introduced in Fedora 8 (next release). Thought to show you some demo if you haven't heard of it.

This is still in beta and work-in-progress but its very stable and I cannot work without it :)

In my previous post Winamp For Linux? I mentioned how Winamp does not make any port (version) for Linux and its officially not allowed to ASK developers there to make one (ya its weird!).

So I showed how to use Winamp2 old skins in XMMS, but lets face it, new Winamp Modern skins are real deal and using old skins is really lame (tm). So just to scratch my intellectual itch (this whole blog is by-product of this) I downloaded LATEST Winamp BETA from forums.winamp.com (Full Version).

with WINE already installed at my Fedora 7 running laptop, I double clicked to get installer going.

following is the result.


* Clicking on Winamp Exe to start installer
* First options selected
* Second options selected, clicking next winamp's nullsoft installer downloaded and installed Windows audio format support (i guess for wma).
* Winamp 5 is running. :)

Check video of switching skins (Which I installed them by Copying in Winamp Skin's folder).




Conclusion:- If winamp team can talk to the wine team, they can easily sort out all the quirks like High cpu usage and window tabs all over place etc, the application can work but its messy. Lets hope for better collaboration between developers, if users make some noise, maybe they will hear it.

BTW, Its not like I do not know all OTHER mp3 players available for Linux, visit my previous winamp/xmms blog-post before you comment on that part.

Semi-Final Update:-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spending almost close to 5-6 hours in LiveCD environment was something new and nice.
I installed Flashplugin, Opera alpha browser and kept doing my daily work (ssh, firefox, doc/pdf reading etc, Evolution email etc) to see all is working. kept checking all my hardware was recognized or not etc.

I think Everyone should do this beta testing on their PC, fire smoltSendProfile command from terminal sending your hardware profile to developers, this is user's chance to tell Fedora developers hard is supported or not, so When final version is released, you will know it will work or not and whether your suggestion was listened or not.

Download:- http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/. If you don't know what do download, then check you got Intel or AMD machine and get Fedora-8-Test-2-Live-i686.torrent (639MB).

I want ALL Linux distro users to download Fedora Test2 Live CDs and check whether all is working or not, if you find problems you can communicateor open a simple request to http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/ or check http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugsAndFeatureRequests.

Have Fun!
PS:- Waiting for Oct 4 2007 now :)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Slashdot It!

So I downloaded Fedora-developer liveCD test2 to beta test. I was interested in getting hardware test first to see out_of_box support for my HP Pavilion 6000 series laptop ( 6114tx Centrino duo to be exact ).

* To my surprise , wifi (wpa2 personal) with encryption worked Out_Of_Box :)



* NTFS Partition read support in Nautilus out_of_box :) , check out right click on Drive " Properties" Window.



* Home-page @ Firefox is http://start.fedoraproject.org/ (Interesting ;) ).

*/sbin/lspci result as follows:-

=========================================================================================

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G72M [GeForce Go 7400] (rev a1)
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller
07:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
07:05.1 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
07:05.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 01)
07:05.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a)
07:05.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05)

===============================================================================================

* It did not include Geforce7400gs drivers by default even though that hardware was recognized properly .

* with command smoltSendProfile, I was able to send ALL system profile to Smolt Project, its the best project for Community driven Operating systems (it's kept open by fedora so all other Distros use it too) to judge how many hardware profiles are supported and whats the user-base. you can see my user profile at smolt.fedoraproject.org


Using this for past couple of hours now and everything appears smooth and stable. More updates will follow.

Just found out that I still have to test everything related to laptop as suggested on http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureLaptopImprovements

So you just downloaded application for your Desktop and its .bin file, double clicking opens text editor and you have no idea how to install it.

so here is how to install such applications, lets take case of GoogleEarth, the file you have to download is GoogleEarthLinux.bin and to install do the following.

Download the application from Earth.google.com and open Gnome-Terminal at your desktop (if running GNOME Windows manager ) and run following command where you have kept the file

============================================
[anshu@Fedora7 Desktop]$ su
give root password
[root@Fedora7 Desktop]# chmod +x GoogleEarthLinux.bin
makes it Executable
[root@Fedora7 Desktop]# ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin
============================================
(follow instructions and it will complete your installation)

Read More 12 comments | Posted by anshuman |

VMware Server is prominently to run SERVER OS , which is very different from Desktop OS, you also get OPTION to run in HEADLESS mode, which means no VGA output thereby freeing up more resources. But even Desktop Linux distro like Slackware or Fedora or other operating systems like Solaris, WindowsXP etc can be installed.

I am running Fedora 7 as base OS on my HP Laptop (centrino duo , 1.5gb ram etc).

STEPS TO INSTALL VMWARE-SERVER

*Download VMware server rpm from VMware.com

* Install inetd
--------------------------------------
sudo yum install inetd
--------------------------------------

*Install that VMware-server
-------------------------------------------------
sudo rpm -ivh VMware-server-1.0.3-44356.i386.rpm
-------------------------------------------------

*Download any-any patch and install as following.
------------------------------------
tar -zxvf vmware-any-any-update113.tar.gz
cd vmware-any-any-update113
./runme.pl
------------------------------------

(vmware-config.pl will be asked to run in end which completes install)

No reboot was needed at my end. Check video with bonus demo How I started Fedora 4 core Virtual machine which was downloaded from vmware appliance .

If you have single machine but want to start using another machine just to test,learn,use another OS occasionally then you have some options like installing that operating system with dual boot option
or get second machine and install your OS but you can try another alternative too here.

You can install OS VIRTUALLY. Main advantage of using Virtual os is, you do not have to REBOOT to get into another OS or Spend extra money on Separate hardware just for using other OS occasionally.

VMWARE is leading company for LINUX platform, they have freeware as well as payware applications both for desktop workstation as well as enterprise server market. Here in part-1 I am going to focus only on one application called VMplayer.

VMplayer is application which will let you RUN already configured Virtual Machines(VM). You can even visit http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/ and browse through all the Virtual Machines available to download and run, almost all of them are free to get (registration required) and can be run easily with VMplayer.

Some of the VMs I found are as follows:-

----------------------------------------------------------
* SugarCRM :- CRM web-app for linux ( 115MB)
* BackTrack Security :- BackTrack v2.0- Penetration Testing Platform
* Centos5 :- Centos5 Minimum VM
* Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition Virtual Appliance :- Ready to start Win2k3 server Virtual Machine (1.5GB)
* Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Virtual Appliance :- Ready to go Win2k7 Exchange server Virtual Machine ( 1.4GB ).
----------------------------------------------------------

You can go to my previous post on getting current VMplayer running on fedora because it does not run out of box.


In my video, I have used Fedora Core 4 vm (old) to test and show VMPlayer DEMO.

So I am going to try Email clients for Linux called Evolution and Thunderbird. Both of this applications will work same in any Linux Distro , I am using Fedora7.

I will be using FREE MAIL provider GMAIL to configure this clients and fetch my email. Check video on how this goes.

1) Installing Evolution :- Following command will install Evolution client for you.

------------------------------------------
sudo yum install evolution
------------------------------------------

Configuring Evolution for Gmail :-

POP SETTING :- pop.gmail.com:995 SMTP SETTING:- smtp.gmail.com:465

2) Installing Thunderbird :- visit Mozilla's Thunderbird Homepage to download the tarball. Because there is no RPM in fedora repo for LATEST version,

or you can install it by following line, which will give previous release, I hope Fedora repo updates soon to latest.

-------------------------------------
sudo yum install thunderbird
-------------------------------------

Configuring Thunderbird for Gmail:-

Its pretty easy, Gmail guide has nice tutorial with screenshots on how to configure .

(video to be added later)



So in end use both of this and you can decide yourself which one will you be using, I prefer evolution.

If you have migrated from Windows to Linux and whenever you are working in Linux, you miss some windows-only apps so much that you just can't see yourself using Linux alternative applications.

Like, Say if you are hardcore Macromedia Dreamweaver user you will hardly be impressed with Bluefish editor .

So don't loose hope, you can use WINE to get windows applications running directly in Linux. Not all windows applications run. Accordingly to me , rule_of_thumb is , 1 yr or 2 yr old apps will run with WINE, there is list of them at http://appdb.winehq.org .

I had to run following command to get WINE.

===========================
sudo yum install wine
===========================

Now at my Fedora 7 distro on Laptop , I will try to install Dreamweaver trial version. Do i succeed? you can check the video to find out.




NOTE:- like WINE is for old games and windows applications, there is another linux package called Cedega from Transgaming to run DirectX9 windows games on Linux.

I got Linksys WRT 54G router with Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG card.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[anshu@Fedora7 ~]$ lspci | grep Network
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Setting up Wireless (WIFI) network in Linux ( Fedora7 )is not that "Normal"_user_friendly, so I am sorry , command-line will be involved here.

After you have installed Desktop setup for your Favorite operating system, you will then want to get WIFI going. First I will tell you the checklist ,then in video I will myself try to get WIFI network working. all commands should suit to any distro (Opensuse,RHEL etc) for matching hardware.

First download Freshrpms.net rpm for getting repo in your yum installer. Then go for following packages.

-----------------------------------------
sudo yum install ipw3945 ipw3945-ucode ipw3945d
-----------------------------------------

ATTN:- To get sudo command working you will need to visit my previous post to enable sudo

Then download the startup file http://fedoraos.org/ipw3945/ipw3945 and go for following steps.

---------------------------------------------
sudo cp /path/to/ipw3945 /etc/init.d
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/ipw3945
chkconfig --add ipw3945
---------------------------------------------
* moving startfile 'ipw3945' to startup daemon directory.
* making the file 'ipw3945' as Executable (binary).
* making this startup executable daemon , always start whenever you boot.


now you will have to reboot and press 'ALT+F2' key and type 'system-config-network' you will need to select Wlan0 card and click 'Activate' to start WIFI.





*NOTE FOR GNOME*
If you see the clip, you will notice, After rebooting into system and Loading Gnome, I had to kill nm-applet and start it again to get WIFI going.