Linux vs Windows vs Mac

While Apple’s older iMacs (Late-2006) boast an impressive pair of stereo speakers (considering the all-in-one design and their small size), the same thing cannot be said about the company’s 20-inch and 24-inch aluminum iMac (Mid-2007).

However, both Apple’s Late-2006 and Mid-2007 computers have their speakers placed at the bottom of the system, facing down. This leads to a considerable loss in sound quality, as the sound hits your desk and bounces off in all directions. Given this, some high pitched sounds (but not only) barely make it to your ears. There is a way to capture all the sound coming from your Mac’s speakers, and direct it all towards your ears.

Buy a pair of headphones! Just kidding. No headphones. You do, however, need two extra items on your desk to make this happen. A couple of ashtrays, for instance. Just place them underneath each of your iMac’s speakers. What happens is this:Channeling the sound (click to enlarge)

The sound waves hit the two hollow-shaped objects, becoming trapped inside the round walls for a short period of time. In a fraction of a second, the now-channeled sound bounces back out, upwards, since there’s no other place to go. Simple, isn’t it?

Go ahead, give it a tray… er, try! You don’t necessarily have to use ashtrays. For once, they’re not that aesthetic; second, we don’t encourage smoking, and third, you can use some nicely designed pottery or something like that. You’ll have to see what suits your room best, so the objects don’t attract too much attention. After all, you don’t want folks thinking that your all-in one computer actually needs additional hardware to work well, now, do you?

Notes
· You will see (hear) a significant difference in sound quality only when the volume level is above medium. The effect still applies even on a low volume level, only it’s not so observable;
· For this to work, the sound first has to hit one of the inner-sides of the object, not the bottom directly. Check out more pictures below, to see exactly how you want to place your objects of choice.

Good luck and let us know how this trick worked for you.

Compiz Fusion is the great project which have brought fame to Linux with its awesome eye-candies .So lets first install the latest version of compiz fusion.

NOTE:If u have graphics card,first u must Install driver for the card before installing compiz.To how to install driver in a easy way click here:

In terminal type:

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add this line to the end of file

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/compiz/ubuntu intrepid main
Now save and close the file.

Type: sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
To install compiz type:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-fusion-plugins-extra compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-plugins emerald

Right Click on the “workspace switcher” on the bottom right corner of desktop near trash.Make column =4.

Take Compiz Setting Manager System->Preferences->CompizConfig Settings Manager.Tick Desktop Cube,Cube Rotation,wobbly windows,ring switcher fire effect etc as u prefer.

Now close all applications and logout and login.Right click desktop,then visual effects,Now click extra effects.

Again take Compiz Setting Manager System->Preferences->CompizConfig Settings.Scroll down to Cube Reflection and Deformation. Activate it. Click on it to go to its configuration page.Press Ctrl + Alt + mouse left button to rotate desktop.

If u want Cylinder or Sphere

Under the Deformation tab, select Cylinder or Sphere in the Deformation dropdown box. Now you will get desktop rotation to cylinder or sphere mode.Then close.

To use ring switcher.Press windows key+Tab.

USEFUL KEYBOARD COMBINATIONS:

SUPER+SHIFT+DRAG LEFT MOUSE = draw fire
SUPER+SHIFT+C = clear fire
CTRL+ALT+DRAG LEFT MOUSE = rotate cube
CTRL+ALT+LEFT ARROW = rotate cube
CTRL+ALT+DOWN ARROW = flat desktop
SHIFT+ALT+UP = initiate window picker
CTRL+ALT+DOWN = unfold cube
ALT+TAB = window switch
SUPER+TAB = flip switcher or ring switcher, depending on which is enabled.
ALT+F7 = initiate ‘move windows’
SHIFT+F9 = water effect
SHIFT+F10 = slow animations
CTRL+ALT+D = show desktop

For Grouping and Tabbing:
SUPER+S = select single window
SUPER+T = tab group
SUPER+Left = change left tab
SUPER+Right = change right tab
SUPER+G = group windows
SUPER+U = ungroup windows
SUPER+R = remove group window
SUPER+C = close group
SUPER+X = ignore group
Hold the SUPER button then select the windows you want to group and then hit SUPER+G.

The SUPER key is the Windows key on most keyboards.

So what if Ubuntu is a fast operating system?… There is always room for some more tweaking… and I am talking here about some aspects that are NOT useful for the end-users (yes YOU, the regular Ubuntu user). The hacks presented in this guide will greatly improve the overall performance of your Ubuntu 8.04 Linux OS.

WARNING: Please follow the instructions below very carefully, in the order in which they are listed and reboot your machine after each one. It is also possible to do them all at once, but rebooting after each one is much safer. Why? Because if your system won’t work properly at a certain point of the tutorial, you’ll know what’s the last thing you did and you can revert back to the initial configuration. I’ve applied all these tweaks on three (3) different configurations (with SATA and IDE hard drives) with success!

Step 1 - Boot tweaks

Tweak One - Boot profile Administration -> Login Window…

…input your password, go to the fifth tab (”Security”), check the ‘Enable Automatic Login’ option and choose your username from the drop-down list.

That’s it! Close the window and reboot. You will notice that the system will automatically log you in and remember that you’ve just lost a few important seconds!

Step 2 - System tweaks

Tweak One - Speed up your hard drive

The following tweaks assume that you are using an ext3 filesystem for your Ubuntu OS and they will offer a noticeable performance boost! However, there is also a bad side of them… if you don’t have an UPS and your system will power off accidentally or because of a power loss, YOU WILL LOSE IMPORTANT DATA!

Open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and type:

CODE
sudo gedit /etc/fstab

WARNING: The following is just an example! Do NOT copy the lines into your /etc/fstab file! Just REPLACE the options marked with underline with the ones marked with bold!

From this:

# /dev/sda1
UUID=19f70288-7340-40c0-82d1-ee4b218fee1d / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1

To this:

# /dev/sda1
UUID=19f70288-7340-40c0-82d1-ee4b218fee1d / ext3 noatime,nodiratime,errors=remount-ro,data=writeback 0 1

See the following screenshot if you do not understand…

Save and close. Now type the following command in the terminal:

CODE
sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

And add the following option…

rootflags=data=writeback

…to the end of the following lines:

# defoptions=quiet splash vga=795 (by default, Ubuntu doesn’t have the “vga=795″ option on this line. It appears if you did the second tweak from the first step (see above)).

# altoptions=(recovery mode) single

They must look like this…

Save and close, and paste the following command in the terminal:

CODE
sudo update-grub

Type now the following command in order to manually change your filesystem “on-the-fly” into writeback.

CODE
sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/sdb2

ATTENTION: Please note that /dev/sdb2 is MY root (/) partition. If you have the root (/) partition in another place (for example /dev/sda1 or /dev/sda2) change it accordingly. Please look in /etc/fstab for this!

That’s all, now reboot your system and when you get back, you should feel an increased speed in video, image or audio usage.

Tweak Two - Tuning Swappiness

If you have been running Linux systems for some time and you have used applications like ‘top’ to see what’s going on in your machine, then you’ve probably wondered: Where has all my memory gone? You should know that the largest place it is being used in is the disk cache, as the cached memory is free and it can be replaced anytime if a newly started application needs that memory. Linux systems are made like this to use so much memory for disk cache because the RAM is wasted if it is not used and if something needs the same data again, then there is a very good chance to be in the cache memory.

Open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) and paste the following code:

CODE
sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

Now add the following line at the end of this file:

CODE
vm.swappiness=10

The number at the end of this line can be between 0 and 100. At 100 the Linux kernel will prefer to find inactive pages and swap them out, while value 0 gives something close to the old behavior where applications that wanted memory could shrink the cache to a tiny fraction of RAM. Save, close and reboot.

Tweak Three - Concurrent booting

If you have a dual-core processor or one that supports hyper-threading then concurrent booting allows Ubuntu to take advantage of them. Just open a console and type the following code:

CODE
sudo gedit /etc/init.d/rc

and find the line CONCURRENCY=none and change it to:

CODE
CONCURRENCY=shell

Save, close and reboot your computer.

That will be all for now. With these tweaks, your system should perform better and boot faster. Please report if you see any improvements to your system and if anyone has more improvements, you can post them below so others will know about them!

As we are patiently waiting to test Windows 7 later this month, Microsoft is cautious about promising too much and is making sure that expectations remain low. According to CEO Steve Ballmer, Windows 7 will essentially be Vista, but “a lot better”.

In fact, when the executive said that Windows 7 would be a Windows Vista with a cleaner interface and performance interface, it may sound like Windows 7 is much more a service pack than a major operating system release Ballmer claims Windows 7 will be. But then, Ballmer also said that “Vista is good” and if he ran another company, he would not wait for Windows 7, but deploy Windows Vista right away.

We are officially confused. Windows 7 is what appears to be an extensive Windows Vista service pack and its new features may not be worth the wait. But it is a major operating system release?

Apparently, Ballmer made those remarks during a question and answer session with Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald, who asked the Microsoft executive how Microsoft would position Windows 7 as a new product, without offering too much or too little in terms of new features.

Microsoft is providing clues that Windows 7 indeed will be a fix for Windows Vista, but the company avoids to tie the new software to the old. The name “Windows 7” is not consistent with any Microsoft product branding strategy over the past 15 years, but was chosen for reasons of simplicity and, according to Microsoft, this new operating system will be the seventh generation of Windows (which has been questioned by some as Windows 7 could be considered the eighth or even ninth generation of Windows).

For now, it is safe to say that we are underwhelmed, but we are looking forward to see Windows 7 later this month and see how much better it is in comparison to Vista.

The third major installment of OpenOffice.org’s suite of applications has reached its final version. Probably one of the most important aspects surrounding OpenOffice 3 for Mac is that it now runs natively under Mac OS X, meaning no more X11, meaning faster performance, a standard UI and an increased overall reliability.

Being the major update that it is, OpenOffice 3 does many extra tricks, like reading documents saved with Microsoft Office 2007 or 2008 in .docx, .xlsx, .pptx and other new formats. This feature alone is enough to bite some of Microsoft Office’s market-share, and upset some high-ups over in Silicon Valley. The suite can read and write documents in standardized OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 as well.

The Start Centre has received a major overhaul, adding new icons and a new zoom control in the status bar. Chart boosts looks while Draw and Impress come with improved crop features. Writer adds a new notes feature and a built-in math solver component, and is also able to display multiple pages during editing. Workbooks now support up to 1024 columns in each spreadsheet. New sharing options have also been added, enabling multiple users to collaborate on a single workbook simultaneously.As for the Mac version of OpenOffice 3.0, for once, it brings some support for Visual Basic for Applications, which enables users to program macros customize their commands to great extent. Best of all though, the suite adds native OS X support for the first time. This means users no longer have to fire up that pesky graphical environment for UNIX applications known as X11. Thinking of Gimp’s wasted potential on Macs, X11 commits a sin by simply existing. So, what does all this mean?

Well, for starters, you now have an office suite of apps that behaves natively, crashes less (or almost never); it blends in with the Aqua interface which makes it look and feel like any OS X app; it integrates with OS X’s Accessibility API and is more accessible, fast and reliable.

OpenOffice 3.0 was uploaded to the organization’s servers at 10am (BST) on Monday, sources say. “The servers seem to have collapsed under the load,” said OpenOffice.org’s marketing lead, John McCreesh. McCreesh pointed out that the “vast majority” of downloads of the suite take place through local mirrors, but said “the fact that our central site can’t even run the bouncer [to divert requests to those local mirrors] must mean it’s… our biggest-ever download”.

You may download OpenOffice 3.0 Finalhere:

External Mirror 1

No more rumors about Vista SE: Windows 7 is all about simplicity and that’s why Windows 7 will simply be called Windows, Microsoft announced today.

Microsoft is expected to be handing out pre-betas of Windows 7 to devs at WinHEC and PDC soon, and it looks like it’s settled on an official name for its next-gen OS , Windows 7. THe code name is the real name, which is a first for Windows. According to Mike Nash on the Vista blog, the company went with Windows 7 because it “just makes sense” as the seventh release of Windows, and MS doesn’t want to come up with a new “aspirational” name like Vista  it “doesn’t do justice” to the goal of staying “firmly rooted” in the ideas of Vista.

Microsoft will provide a first glimpse at Windows 7 at the upcoming PDC 2008 event, at which the company will be handing out pre-beta releases of the software. Windows 7 was originally scheduled to be released in 2010, but apparently has been pulled into H2 2009. According to our sources, Windows 7 will be available in time for the 2009 Christmas season.

We previously learned that Windows 7 will be based on the kernel of the Windows Server 2008 kernel, which is an evolution of the Windows Vista kernel. Windows 7 will also keep Vista’s driver model. PDC 2008 will have a strong focus on the new operating system: The majority of Windows 7 sessions will discuss graphics topics, performance and energy efficiency as well as communication services.

KDE 4.1 is finally out today, as you probably already know, and it comes with a lot of innovations for the Linux desktop. KDE 4 is the next generation of the popular K Desktop Environment, which seeks to fulfill the need for a powerful yet easy-to-use desktop, for both personal and enterprise computing. The new version provides increased stability over the first KDE 4 version and more eye candy!

So, if you don’t want to download an openSUSE-based KDE 4.1 Live CD or to wait until a stable distribution is released with KDE 4.1.0 as the default desktop, we will teach you how to install it on your existing Ubuntu 8.04 or 8.04.1 LTS desktop.

Step 1 - Add KDE 4.1.0 Repositories

Go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources…

…enter your password and the Software Sources window will appear. Click the second tab “Third-Party Software,” then click the ‘Add’ button and paste the following code in the new window that will appear:

When the download is over (it will take a while if you have a slow bandwidth) you will be asked to choose a display manager (GDM or KDM-KDE4). Just click Forward…

Enable Repositories

You can turn on more repositories of programs and packages. These let you install more software on your computer. Run “Add Applications”. This is in the bottom of the Programs menu in Gnome, and under the Utilities menu in KDE.

1. Open the Settings->Repositories menu.
2. Click on “Add”. Select Ubuntu 5.10 “Breezy Badger”
3. Mark all the checkboxes. Click Ok.
4. Click on “Add”. Select Ubuntu 5.10 Security Updates
5. Mark all the checkboxes. Click Ok.
6. Click on “Add”. Select Ubuntu 5.10 Updates
7. Mark all the checkboxes. Click Ok.
8. Click Ok.

Menus

Kubuntu

Install Kubuntu

Install

Installing Kubuntu will add the K Desktop Environment (KDE), and a bunch of basic programs. It will not replace your Gnome desktop, it only provides an alternative. There are two methods of installing packages like this:

Command Line

Open a command prompt, in Gnome you can find one called “Terminal” in the “Utilities” menu. Type the following: sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop. Enter your password and press enter. A prompt should appear asking if you really want to install all this stuff; type Y and press enter.

Package Manager

I usually only use a package manager when looking for packages I want, which is most of the time. If I know the name of the package it is much easier to install it from the command line. In the system or settings menu (the right one on the top) find Synaptic Package Manager. Search for the package named kubuntu-desktop, right click, select mark for installation. Click on Apply in the toolbar. Answer yes to all the questions about whether you really want to install it.

Switch to KDE

In the right menu at the top of the screen select log out. This takes you back to the login screen. Click on the session button and select KDE. Enter your username and password. The login manager will ask if you want this to be your default session type; select yes.

KDE

Double Click to Open Files

The first thing you’ll want to do is get rid of that annoying single click opens files business. I don’t understand this behavior; how are you going to select files if clicking on them opens them?

Click on the K in the lower left corner of the screen. Select the System Settings menu item. This opens KDE’s settings. Under hardware click on Mouse. There is a section labeled Icons, in which Single-click to open files and folders is marked. Mark Double-click instead. Click on the Apply button. Close the System Settings program.

If you have already switched to using control center instead of system settings you can use it instead.

List Menu Items By Name

Menu items are listed by description by default. This is stupid. Right click on the panel (the bar at the bottom of the screen) and select Configure Panel or Panel Menu->Configure panel depending on which one is available. Open the Menus tab. Change Menu item format from Description (Name) to Name (Description). Click on Ok.

Get the Debian Menus

This isn’t specific to just KDE. The Debian Menus list all of the programs installed on your computer, and are fairly well organized. They are great for finding programs you haven’t used, and mining for shortcuts to put in other menus. To get them install the menu and menu-xdg packages. You will need to have already enabled the extra repositories in the first section.

Open a command prompt; you can do this by opening K Menu->System-Konsole. Type the following in the prompt, entering your password and Y where appropriate:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install menu menu-xdg
update-menus

Make System Settings work nicely

The default System Settings behavior is annoying. There are three things you can do about it.

Use Settings Instead

In the System Menu select settings. If you have removed it from your panel you can add it to the K Menu by right clicking on the panel, selecting Configure Panel, and in the Menus tab, under Optional Menus check System and click Ok.

Use Kcontrol Instead

Kcontrol has the same components, listed differently. You can find it under Debian->Apps->System->Kcontrol. There are two ways to add it to your menus:

• You can right click on the K menu and select menu editor and copy kcontrol from the debian menus into the main menu; you may also want to move System Settings elsewhere.
• You can also enable the preferences submenu; right click on the panel and under Panel Configuration in the Menus tab under Optional Menus check the box next to Preferences. This enables a menu that contains not only a link to KControl, but also to all the settings applets individually.

Make the applets open in new windows

Right click on the K menu and select menu editor. Click on System Settings at the bottom of this new window. Change the command from systemsettings -caption "%c" %i %m to systemsettings --noembed -caption "%c" %i %m. Click on the Save button. Quit.

Get shutdown buttons in KDE, login automatically

These commands make KDE your default desktop so that auto-login will get you to the right place and use KDM as the login manager so that shutdown buttons show up in KDE. Open a terminal and copy and paste the following commands. Press Enter. Enter your password when prompted.

echo startkde > .xsession
sudo bash -c "echo /usr/bin/kdm > /etc/X11/default-display-manager"

Open the KDE control center and under System Administration open Login Manager. Click the button to enter Administrator Mode; the border should turn red. Under the Convenience tab mark the checkbox for “Enable Auto-login”. Click Apply. Close the window.

You will be automatically logged in to KDE the next time your computer boots. Starting with that session the shutdown buttons will work when you pick Log out…

Different Taskbars for Different Desktops

My taskbar gets very cluttered with many programs open. Opening programs on different desktops keeps the windows uncluttered, and it will keep your taskbar uncluttered to. Right click on the panel and select configure panel. Click on the big blue taskbar button on the left. Unmark “Show windows from all desktops” and click Ok.

Konqueror

Konqueror’s default behavior is to try to make the file manager behave like a web browser. This is kind of annoying, and makes file management type stuff hard. I recommend making all of these changes to Konqueror’s settings:

1. Open a Konqueror window by opening your home directory in the System Places menu (the one next to the K Menu).
2. Select the Settings-Configure Konqueror menu item.
   1. Under Behavior, in Misc. Options, check both “Open folders in a separate window” and “Show network operations in a single window”. This will make folders opened in Konqueror open in new tabs instead of replacing the folder you were looking at. The network operations thing keeps windows less cluttered when moving files around.
   2. Under Appearance uncheck Underline filenames.
   3. Under Web Behavior, in Tabbed browsing, open Advanced Options. Uncheck “Open as tab in existing konqueror when URL is called externally”. Click Ok. This keeps web pages and folders from ending up in the same konqueror window, which is awkward. You might want to uncheck the “Open new tabs in the background” option if you are annoyed or confused when opening a folder doesn’t make it show up.
3. Click Ok to close and keep your new Konqueror settings.

Now we’ll arrange the window in a more usable manner.

1. Press F9 to make the directory tree visible.
2. In the Settings->Toolbars menu check Main Toolbar.
3. In the Settings->Toolbars menu check Extra Toolbar.
4. Arrange the Toolbars in a pleasing manner. I like Main first, then extra, then the location bar on the next line.
5. Select Settings->Save Kubuntu File Manager profile. Click Save.

GRUB

You might not want Ubuntu to always boot as default. If so you’ll probably want to do two things: Make the previous operating system boot by default and make the boot screen pretty so you’ll notice it. Steps marked with an * can be omitted if you don’t want the pretty boot screen.

1. Download the splash image, butte-splash-gimp.xpm.gz, and save it in your home directory.
2. Open up a console.
3. Run each of these commands to make the folder for images and copy the image there:

   sudo mkdir /boot/grub/images/
   sudo cp butte-splash-gimp.xpm.gz /boot/grub/images/

4. Open up the GRUB configuration file in a text editor: kdesu kate /boot/grub/menu.lst
5. Find this line; it’s right at the top:

   default		0

6. Replace it with

   default		saved

7. Add the following lines just after this line to use the pretty boot screen:

   foreground	FFFFFF
   background	336699
   splashimage (hd1,0)/boot/grub/images/butte-splash-gimp.xpm.gz

8. Change the (hd1,0) part to the drive Ubuntu is installed on. (hd0,0) is first hard drive first partition, (hd0,1) is first hard drive, second partition, (hd1,0) is second hard drive, first partition. If you arn’t sure you can look further down in the file for the root lines used in the Ubuntu boot options. Those are the drive and partition that Ubuntu is on.
9. It should now look something like this:

   ...
   # You can specify 'saved' instead of a number. In this case, the default entry
   # is the entry saved with the command 'savedefault'.
   default		saved
   foreground	FFFFFF
   background	336699
   splashimage (hd1,0)/boot/grub/images/butte-splash-gimp.xpm.gz
   
   ## timeout sec
   ...

10. Save the file and close the text editor.

The bootloader will now remember which operating system you used last and boot it by default. The bootloader will be pretty and hopefully attention catching.

xscreensaver

The kde screensaver module is broken and annoying in many ways, especially if you want to use your own pictures for the screensavers or want to select only some of the screensavers for random display. The original xscreensaver system is much nicer. Here’s how to switch:

1. Switch off the KDE screensaver. Open your KDE settings and select the “Look and Feel” “Screensaver” page. Turn off the “Enable Screensaver” checkbox.
2. Download this file. Save it in your home directory.
3. Open up a console. Type bash xscreen and press enter. When it asks you for your password enter it.
4. The xscreensaver settings will open and warn you that it’s not currently running. Click Ok to start it for this session. You can change settings right here.

You can get back to the settings in the K menu under Debian->Screen->Save->ScreenSaver Preferences. You can use a menu editor to copy this somewhere else too.

Using your own images for the screensaver.

In the Advanced tab in screensaver settings check the “Choose Random Image” box. Browse and select the directory your pictures are in.

If you are displaying images you may want to set Cycle After to a low number, like 1 or 2 minutes, so that the effects change frequently. Many of the screensavers have their own settings for how frequently they loadi images; a few use the same image for the entire duration. The following screensavers use your pictures:

• AntSpotlight
• BlitSpin
• Bumps - used for a bumpmap, image is pretty destroyed.
• Carousel
• DecayScreen
• Distort
• Flipscreen3d
• GFlux (grab)
• GLEidescope
• GLSlideshow
• MirrorBlob
• Ripples (desktop)
• RotZoomer
• RotZoomer (mobile)
• RotZoomer (sweep)
• SlideScreen
• Spotlight
• Twang
• XTeeVee
• Zoom (Fatbits)
• Zoom (Lenses)

Suggested Software

Get as much of the Restricted Format programs as you can.

I recommend installing the following packages:

gnucash

Double entry bookkeeping accounting software. Absolutely excellent. Do your books this way. Menu item will be in Debian->Apps->Tools which is annoying, copy it somewhere more accessible.

celestia

Like a planetarium, but more like a 3d tour of the solar system and beyond. there are amazing textures for celestia on the internet. Only get this if you have a good graphics card.

kde

An easy way to get all of the official KDE programs. Kubuntu already got most of these, but it’ll add more games, artwork, educational programs, accessibility programs. It’ll also install kdevelop and a couple other programs that aren’t of general interest, but it’s much easier than going through and selecting most of these packages individually. If you don’t want the whole shebang search for packages with names containing kde, and just select those describing the fields that are of interest to you. It’s a 115 MB download, and takes up another 350 MB of disk space.

gimp-data-extras, gimp-texturize

More brushes, gradients, palettes, and textures for the gimp.

ogle, okle

DVD players for Gnome and KDE. Both are nice

frozen-bubble

One of the best video games ever

lbreakout2

One of the prettiest video games ever

The following packages are worth noting:

wine

Runs lots of windows programs very well, just not the ones I like. Somewhat difficult to figure out how to use.

festival

Text to speech converter. Needed for KDE text to speech system to work. Still fairly primitive

This simple guide will bring up the Windows start menu inside GNOME and allow you to run, use and install any Windows app (that can run in a VM) inside your existing desktop. It takes about 10 minutes to setup, minus the time to install Windows, and involves one command in total.

Final Update September 2007: Virtualbox 1.5 includes seamless virtualization! Go read about that instead!

Update: If you’ve been having trouble getting this working, make sure the key is correct - our site layout chopped the last part of the registry key earlier. Note this requires Windows XP Pro. XP home won’t do.

Update 2: To install the vmware-server package just use the Add/Remove… program.

Update 3: If RDesktop starts a blue background, instead of just the taskbar, click Start ? Control Panel ? User Accounts ? Change the way users log on and off, and enable the welcome screen and fast user switching.

This is a newer version of a rather popular article I wrote a while ago. This updated version is a lot simpler and allows multiple apps to be run.

• Click Applications ? Add/Remove… install the vmware-server package.
• Click System ? Administration ? Synaptic Package Manager. Install the rdesktop package.
• Click Applications ? System Tools ? VMware Server Console When VMware Server Console starts, click Connect to attach to your local machine. Then Create a New Virtual Machine. Use all the defaults, but pick NAT networking. Pop in your Windows CD, and install Windows
• Once Windows has started:

1. Enable Terminal Services by clicking Start ? Control Panel ? System. Click the Remote tab, and enable Allow users to connect remotely to this computer
2. Turn off the desktop for the user you’ll use to run your Windows apps, by clicking Start ? Run typing regedit and selecting HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/ CurrentVersion/Policies/Explorer. Create a DWORD called NoDesktop set to 1.
3. Note the IP address of Windows. Clicking Start ? Connect to ? Show All Connections. Select the Local Area Connection and hit the Support tab
4. Download SeamlessRDP, then extract it to C:\seamlessrdp
5. Log out of Windows, and close VMware Server Console (leave the VM running)

• Back in Ubuntu, open a Terminal, and run:

rdesktop -A -s ‘c:\seamlessrdp\seamlessrdpshell.exe c:\windows\explorer.exe’ IPAddress -u user -p password

substituting the IP address you noted earlier.

• The top of the Windows taskbar should appear above your GNOME panel on the bottom of the screen. Right click it, select Properties, and disable Lock the Taskbar. Then drag the taskbar to the left hand side of your screen.

That’s it. You can now run launch any Windows app you want from your VM (and install more if you need them). They’ll appear on the GNOME desktop, and you can switch between them from the panel.

Microsoft has kindly extended its XP “downgrade” program for OEMs by another six months. Rather than appreciating the extension, some people have chosen to mock Microsoft and call for the curtain to close on Windows Vista once and for all.

Allow me to share with you some numbers that come from a Vista Tracking Poll conducted by CDW through Walker Information. They used an online survey, and participants included 772 IT decision makers who identified themselves as being familiar with Windows Vista. Here were some of their key findings:

• 48 percent of respondents indicate that their organization is evaluating, testing, or implementing Vista. That doesn’t sound dead to me.
• 30 percent of respondents have organizations that are currently implementing or have already implemented Vista.
• 50 percent of the respondents said Vista is performing “above expectation” on key features.

Given that most of what we read is how worthless Vista is, one must wonder: What could they possibly about this wretched OS that is doomed to retirement at such an early age? Most of the respondents pointed to security enhancements as the No. 1 feature that attracts them to Vista. Performance improvements, search enhancements, improved networking, and patch management — these were all high in people’s list of features they liked about Vista.

It still boggles my mind that people berate Vista, even after SP1. Mr. Kennedy called it a “pretender to the desktop throne.” I’ll agree that it may not be all that it was initially hyped up to be, and hopefully Windows 7 can meet the expectations we’ve been watching and waiting for nearly a decade to see. But how can some of its finest features simply be ignored by critics?

Among them, there are enhancements to Group Policy settings (more than 800 new settings in Vista) that allow for a greater level of administrative control over such items as power use. These days, we are all about going green, and here Vista is an OS that can help us thanks to the added ability to adjust the amount of power your system uses. Other enhancements allow for greater security control within the enterprise, preventing users from plugging in USB devices and other removable media, User Account Control, and more.

Vista also introduces BitLocker protection, which is great for encrypting your entire system. Hundreds of thousands of laptops with confidential company data on them are lost or stolen each year. Without encryption of the drive, it is just a matter of time before a thief can access the contents. With BitLocker, that worry is removed. As a business person — perhaps one who has had their laptop stolen — would you mock that level of protection? Most likely not. Can you get it with XP? No. So, even if you didn’t receive a feature you wanted in Vista like WinFS (which nobody really understood anyway; it just sounded cool) but did receive peace of mind in the event your laptop was stolen, wouldn’t you say that it’s worth having?

I can go on and on with features that are a tremendous improvement over XP, features Microsoft developers can be proud of because they enhance our user experience, as well as make us more secure and more productive.

So is this really just about XP versus Vista, both of which are Microsoft OSes? Vista is clearly the superior OS to anyone who takes the time to really use it with an open mind. Just look at the aforementioned survey results where users point out the advantages over XP. It seems to me that this ongoing criticism of Vista by IT journalists has more to do with a desire to rage against the Microsoft machine than it does to speak about features we can use in the enterprise.

I say that Vista is alive and kicking. Enough blabber about the past. It’s time for — dare I say it? — change. And I don’t simply mean a change to XP or the wait for a change to Windows 7 (which will no doubt underperform when compared to users’ expectations, as seems to be the trend these days). If you truly want a Mac, go get one. Stop complaining about Vista and change. Or take your PC and install Linux. Or downgrade to XP. But stop the Vista bashing. You 20 people who yell like you are 20 million are really starting to get on the nerves of the 200 million Vista-loving PC users out here who would spend more time debating with you, but we are too busy enjoying our Vista OS and don’t have time.

Source: infoworld