January 4th, 2009
My Acer Aspire One uses my name as hostname. Ack. I must change it soon and I know some of you might be regretting the hostnames on your machines. Maybe not really regretting it, but maybe you want a different hostname on your computer.
For Debian-based distro users, you might want to check out this guide on the Debian admin blog: Change the hostname or server name of a Linux machine. I actually was led to that blog entry from this one: Ubuntu networking for basic and advanced users. The first blog entry focuses on changing the hostname of your machine. You even get tips of commands to use to check if your machine’s hostname is correctly set. In any case, the tutorial is focused on the hostname command as well as making a permanent hostname change via /etc/hostname. The Ubuntu networking guide though has a set of screenshots to guide you through the hostname change via the graphical user interface. I think that the page with the basics ought to be enough for new Ubuntu users to acquaint themselves with some networking tools.
If you’re using a Red Hat-based distro, fear not! There’s also a guide on how to change your hostname without rebooting. It shows us that we could use the hostname command and that we could restart the network service just so we don’t have to restart the machine. Nifty, right? Nobody has to feel the disruption in a major way.
Have a great day!
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By Clair -- 0 comments
January 4th, 2009
GIMP is the common default image manipulation tool bundled with a lot of distros. If you don’t need one often except for some cropping of images, or resizing, then you probably don’t know how to do a lot of things with this tool. At least in my case that is true. If you upload your images online, it would be good to have a watermark on them so that people would know those are yours and even if they are used by someone else (through hotlinking, etc.) your name is there. I’ve been taking quite a number of pictures as of late and so this watermarking business has come to mind.
There are a number of techniques you could try out to put a watermark on your images. Here are two techniques:
- From Deviantart user, fence-post: Simple Watermarking in GIMP
- From Flickr user, Travisatwork
: How to add a watermark with Gimp
With fence-post’s guide, the basic instructions boil down to:
- Make a new layer which will contain your name (or whatever it is you want to use for watermarking the image).
- Apply the Xach Effect on it, which would give it highlight and shadow.
- After applying that effect, you need to change the opacity of the layers so that the watermark will be less opaque.
- Flatten the image then save the file.
Fence-post’s guide has images so even if you are using a different version of GIMP, you will still have an idea of what it’s supposed to look like.
This is a sample of the watermark from fence-post’s tutorial:
image by: Clair Ching, 2008.
The tutorial from Travisatwork is very straightforward.
- Make a new text layer with the text of your choice.
- Apply the emboss effect on the layer of text.
- Lessen the opacity of the layer of text.
- Flatten the image and save it.
It doesn’t really need the screenshots because that’s how straightforward it is. Though, of course, if you’re a GIMP newbie, you might find it weird to just keep on pressing keyboard shortcuts.
This is a sample of the watermark from Travisatwork’s tutorial:
image by: Clair Ching, 2008
The one from fence-post appears to be more 3-d. It depends on what kind of watermark you really want. I hope these will help you be more comfortable using GIMP. :)
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By Clair -- 0 comments
January 3rd, 2009
I saw it this morning: Linux4One.
It’s a custom version of the Ubuntu Netbook Remix customized for the Aspire One. Now you don’t have to get stuck with Linpus but still get the goodies like the default apps such Skype and Amarok. At the same time you can download apps from the Ubuntu repositories so that you still have choices as to what apps you’d actually use whether it’s to make your life productive, or to make communication more efficient for you, you’re not locked out of the repos.
The website is in Italian but there’s always Babelfish or some other translating service if you so wish to read the details. You could download the Linux4One iso here. It’s an RC so if you’re adventurous go start downloading it now. I am going to wait for the stable one though. :) I just hope that you could set the language to English. I think that the default language for that is Italian :)
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By Clair -- 0 comments
January 1st, 2009
There’s someone out there who’s experimenting with a different approach to the usual command line stuff and you could follow these results on twitter and identi.ca:
identi.ca/terminaltest
twitter.com/terminaltest
This is an interesting experiment because the experimenter believes that for whatever could be done on the terminal could also be done in the graphical user interface mode. This might be less intimidating for those who are used to clicking and dragging things on the desktop environment.
Worried about how to do things on the terminal? Then follow these URLs for more information on what you could do on the GUI when you want to try something on the terminal. You never need to get totally intimidated at all.
Good luck and I hope this is useful for you! :)
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December 31st, 2008
For me 2008 was the year of Linux and the netbooks. It’s one thing that really stood out in my personal experience. Even here in the Philippines, I see people looking at the netbooks in stores and buying them. I also hear about friends of friends (or their relatives) buying Linux-powered netbooks. The Asus EEE must have really paved the way for this but it seems that there’s now a whole lot of competition from other manufacturers like HP, IBM and Acer. Linpus was really something made it easier for people to adapt a Linux distro for regular use. But Ubuntu Netbook Remix showed up and it seems like a good choice too for those who are used to that distro, like myself.
2008 was also the year I caved in and gave myself into the netbook fever and I think that this is an awesome thing because I no longer have carry such a huge bag to work and at the same time still have the same applications I’ve been used to. I used to think it was impossible to have a mini laptop like this Acer Aspire One I am using right now.
I don’t know what to expect in 2009. I am hoping for more success stories of Linux adoption in many places all over the world and I am also hoping for more stories about Linux powered devices going mainstream.
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By Clair -- 0 comments
December 28th, 2008
I am currently using my Acer Aspire One with Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It’s noisy at home right now so I have no idea if the fan is noisy or what.
Ubuntu Netbook Remix seems to working just fine. Installing it was a breeze. Probably took just 10 minutes and I was amazed that it was so quick. Most features seem to work so far, except wireless. I installed madwifi already but it’s not yet working. :( Hrm. I’d still have to go through the Aspire One forums as well as Ubuntu forums for this. In any case, these things seem to work fine:
- Volume buttons
- Brightness buttons
- Wired internet
- Mute button
- Battery applet - It seems to indicate how much I really still have left for power.
- USB ports
I don’t what else to ask for at the moment except for wireless and for my fan to work just fine.
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By Clair -- 2 comments
December 28th, 2008
When I was trying to make a bootable USB flash drive, I had a moment of panic because my Aspire One didn’t seem to boot from it at one point, and at another try at writing to it, I ended up cancelling the writing in the middle. Gah~! But the blog dotkam saved me by teaching me how to restore the format of a USB flash drive. I haven’t formatted anything in Linux in ages so this gave me a crash course on using the fdisk and mkfs.vfat utilities. It did show what it’s like to use the tools, including the messages it will show when you follow the guide step by step. Although they forgot to show how you figure out what the name of your device is. You could always check it via dmesg. When I checked it out using dmesg, I had no other flash drive so I wasn’t confused as to which one I was going to format. It showed me the manufacturer plus the capacity of the USB flash drive so I was certain.
Principle behind the guide:
- Know what the device name is. You wouldn’t want to format something else by accident, right?
- Check the partitions, if any exist, how many they are.
- Delete the existing partitions one by one.
- Create a new partition and write the changes to the USB flash drive.
- Format the USB flash drive into something readable by other systems.
The fdisk tool didn’t seem too intimidating while I was following the instructions. “p” was for listing partitions, “d” was for deleting one, and so on. You could also use the fdisk tool to partition your hard drive when you need to do so.
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By Clair -- 0 comments
December 27th, 2008
This wiki page was my starting point: Aspire One. It had details on tweaks you might also need to do. The Ubuntu Netbook Remix image is also mentioned on that guide. x
There are other pages which helped me too:
I learned so much within these past 24 hours just by wanting to tweak my own unit of the Aspire One. For one thing, it really is difficult to go by without a DVD drive. I am very much used to installing Linux using DVDs or CDs. Another thing to note is the difference of a boot from USB drive and having a USB start disk. At least from what I just experienced a start disk seems to still need a CD/DVD drive where you have to put the disc from which the computer will find the Linux kernel image. Another thing I realized is that using the Acer Aspire One might not be totally easy because of sound and wireless issues. Another thing is that the Ubuntu Netbook Remix installer is based on Ubuntu Hardy Heron. I might have to check also for the compatibility of other packages I am used to on my current laptop.
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By Clair -- 1 comment
December 27th, 2008
is my new Acer Aspire One.
Sadly they ran out of units with Linpus so I got the Windows XP version. And they ran out of the free DVD drive too. In any case, I was wondering if I could install Ubuntu Netbook Remix but the download took forever to finish. I had to leave my other laptop downloading the .img file the entire night. Another problem I have is that the .img file is 1GB and the flash drive I have here has less than that in terms of free space. I need to go out and see if I could buy one with a bigger capacity.
I also tried looking at installing Ubuntu within Windows because that’s an option. The problem with that is it will download the files from the internet too. If that’s the case I’d rather see first if I could install Ubuntu Netbook Remix.
You might be wondering why I didn’t wait for another shipment of Aspire One units. It’s mainly because I want to take advantage of the holidays and set it up before January. It would probably be easier if I waited for the stock of DVD drives but I really just want to know how it would fare and if it’s truly good enough for me as a work machine. The form factor is really great, so far. And the battery life on Windows was 4 hours. I have yet to see how long it will be on Ubuntu.
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December 25th, 2008
It’s not snowing here and probably other parts of the world but today is Christmas day! Have you received anything Christmassy or Linux-related from your friends? ;) I got a penguin plushie from one of my co-workers at the exchange gift thing that happened during the party. Her code name then was Wanda the Fish! How amusing, right? XD
Have you done any of the Christmassy things that Andrew has mentioned on his blog entry about a Linux Christmas. While not all of us are really celebrating Christmas, friends and family probably are. I hope that if ever some of them got Linux-powered computers, share with them what it’s like to use Linux and maybe teach them a thing or two about it. It could be their first day familiarizing themselves with Linux and you could be the one who would make a difference to them by giving them a good lesson in using it.
Happy holidays!
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