July 25, 2017

Make Linux Look Like macOS With These Easy Tweaks

From Makeuseof.com  If you like Linux but enjoy the Mac aesthetic, you’re in luck! This article will guide you through the steps to make your Linux desktop behave and look like Apple’s macOS.
One of the great benefits of Linux is how you can shape it as you see fit. There are lots of different ways to customize your own desktop — you can even change how your icons look! Macintosh desktops have two defining features: the application dock and the menu bar. This guide will try and imitate them on Linux, along with other things.


Basic Theming

Before anything else, if you want your desktop to look like a Mac’s, you’ll need to install the right themes. A Linux theme called macOS Sierra does exactly that. To download it, enter these lines into your terminal:
mkdir $HOME/.themes
You may already have a .themes folder (you’ll know if the terminal puts out an error). If that’s the case, just skip this command. Next:
cd $HOME/.themes
wget https://github.com/B00merang-Project/macOS-Sierra/archive/master.zip
If you don’t have Wget, just copy the link into your browser and download it manually. Make sure to place it in the .themes folder!

unzip master.zip

Icon Themes

The Gnome Yosemite icon theme closely matches the macOS appearance. Like application themes, the way to adjust them varies between desktops. The terminal commands below just focus on installing it:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:numix/ppa && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install numix-icon-theme-circle
This theme is based off the Numix Circle icon theme, so the commands above install it first.
sudo sh -c "curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Foggalong/hardcode-fixer/master/fix.sh | bash"
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ActusOS/GnomeYosemiteIcons/master/download_from_github.sh | sh
The second command downloads a script that automatically installs and sets Gnome Yosemite as your icon theme. If the commands don’t work, make sure you’ve installed cURL first:

sudo apt-get install curl

The Plank Dock

Apart from the Unity desktop, the other guides will assume you have Plank. It’s a taskbar that integrates well with the Linux macOS theme. To install it, type this command in to your terminal:
sudo apt-get install plank
After this, launch the dock by entering the ALT+F2 shortcut, and typing in plank –preferences.





Regardless of your desktop, this should start up Plank, along with its configuration window. In the Appearance section, change the Theme to Gtk+. This will make the dock look like the one in macOS once you make some adjustments later on.





If you want to hide that anchor icon, you’ll need to change a hidden setting. To do this, enter this command into your terminal:
gsettings set net.launchpad.plank.dock.settings:/net/launchpad/plank/docks/dock1/ show-dock-item false

Make Unity Look Like macOS

The Unity desktop is generally found on Canonical’s Ubuntu operating system. Since it takes some cues from macOS, it’s also really easy to change.






As you can see, Unity already has a dock and a menu bar by default. All you need to do is make some visual adjustments. This is easily achieved using the Unity Tweak Tool, which allows you to change some hidden desktop options. Install it with this terminal command:
sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool
Having installed it, open up the tool by searching for it in the Unity menu. Then go to Launcher > Appearance > Position. You’ll see that the application dock has two changeable positions: one on the left (by default), and one on the bottom (like macOS). You’ll want to select the Bottom position.



Final Touches

In the Unity Tweak Tool, return to the Overview menu. From there, go into the Theme entry located under the Appearance category. From there, select the Macos-sierra-master theme. Your applications should now have a very Mac-like feel to them.





The theme also comes with a nice wallpaper. To get to it, first hit Ctrl + L in the file manager. This allows you to enter in a location:
/home/USER/.themes/macOS-Sierra-master/
Here you’ll find an image named Wallpaper.jpg. Setting it up is easy using Unity’s file manager — all you have to do is right click on an image, and select the Set as Wallpaper option.






By default, Unity’s menu-bar only shows options when you hover your mouse over it. To make it behave like macOS, open your System Settings app, then go to Personal > Appearance > Behaviour > Menu visibility. Select the always displayed option underneath it.




GNOME

Unity is based on GNOME, so it makes sense that both desktops are very similar to each other. As such, there’s not much you need to change.

The Dock

If you followed the instructions at the beginning of the article, you should now have a dock. However, to keep using it on reboot, you’ll need to add it to your startup applications. The easiest way to do this is through the GNOME Tweak Tool. Install it with this command:
sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool
Open up the program by typing in gnome-tweak-tool to the terminal. Alternately, you can just search for the program in your activities menu. Navigate to the Startup Applications entry. From there, just add Plank. If it’s already running, you won’t have to search for it — it’ll be right at the top.




Changing the Theme

Inside the GNOME Tweak Tool, go to the Appearance section. Change the GTK+ theme to MacOS-Sierra-master. Both your application windows and the Plank dock should change in appearance. As a final touch, change your wallpaper by heading to the Desktop section in the Tweak Tool. In there, click on the Background Location button.







You’ll be presented with a way of choosing a new wallpaper. A Mac-like one is located with your theme (named Wallpaper.jpg), so navigate to it at ~/.themes/macOS-Sierra-master. You might have to show hidden files to see this folder. If that’s the case, right click in the file selection window, and click the Show Hidden Files entry.




 

Plasma

With the release of Plasma 5.9, it’s possible to make KDE’s signature desktop very much like a Mac. Unfortunately, because of how new it is, many Linux operating systems won’t ship it yet. I recommend using KDE Neon to make use of it — it should be relatively stable and reliable.







KDE’s offering prides itself on its power and flexibility. As such, it can match macOS in appearance a little more than GNOME can. However, it’ll take a bit more work.

Plasma’s Menu Bar

As of Plasma 5.9, you can now have a global menu just like macOS. To start off, right-click on your desktop, and select Add Panel > Application Menu Bar. You’ll get a blank panel at the top of your screen. Click on the hazard sign inside it. This will open up a settings window that will let you change how application menu bars are displayed.







Go to Fine Tuning > Menubar style > Application Menu widget. Once you’ve applied this setting, the hazard sign should go away, and application menus should show up on top. For some reason, while the menu bar was visible in Firefox, it wasn’t functional. Your mileage may vary!







Once you’re done with this, fill the panel with some suitable widgets, by right-clicking on it, and selecting the Add Widgets option. I suggest using similar widgets to the bottom panel. After all this, remove the bottom panel by clicking on the hamburger menu and selecting More Settings > Remove Panel.




 

Starting Plank Automatically

In your System Settings, go to Workspace > Startup and Shutdown > Autostart > Add Program. You should be able to find Plank located under Utilities. This stops you from manually starting the dock every time you log in to your desktop.




Adjusting Appearance

Interestingly, Plasma puts its icon themes in a different location. Because of this, you’ll need to move your macOS icon theme folder elsewhere. Use these terminal commands to do this:
cd $HOME/.icons
cp -r GnomeYosemiteIcons-master/ ../.local/share/icons
Now, when you open up your system settings, and go to Appearance > Icons, you should be able to select Yosemite Icons as a theme.







Having done this, return to the settings menu, and go to Appearance > Application Style > GNOME Application Style. Under the GTK Themes section, select macOS-Sierra-master. Then, change your icon theme to Yosemite Icons.







Then, go to Window Decorations, and select the Get New Decorations option. Search for a theme called Breezemite and install it. Set it as your decoration theme.







Finally, to hide the toolbox in the corner of your desktop, click on it and select Configure Desktop. In the Tweaks menu that will pop up, disable the Show the desktop toolbox option.




Cinnamon

Without any modifications, the Cinnamon desktop looks more like Windows than macOS. Fortunately, this is very easy to change.

Move the bottom panel to the top by right-clicking on it, then going to Modify panel > Move panel. This should leave you with something a bit more Mac-like. Afterwards, remove the desktop icons in the panel by right-clicking on them, and selecting the Remove option.







You may also remove the window list applet (if you prefer it to a global menu) by right-clicking on it, selecting Configure the window list, then clicking the Remove button.






Adding a Menu Bar

An extension for Cinnamon called Global AppMenu provides the desktop with a menu bar. The app itself is apparently going to be ported to GNOME soon, but at this point in time, it works fine. To install it, enter these commands in:
cd ~/.local/share/cinnamon/applets/
wget https://github.com/lestcape/Global-AppMenu/archive/master.zip
unzip master.zip
Having done this, you need shift the extension so Cinnamon can see it.
cd Global-AppMenu-master
mv globalAppMenu\@lestcape/ ../
Feel free to remove the unneeded folders afterwards:
rm -rf Global-AppMenu-master master.zip
 
 
 




Having done this, you should now be able to add the Global Application Menu applet to your panel. You can also drag it to a place of your liking by enabling Panel edit mode (right click on the panel).







If you’re using a Linux operating system other than Ubuntu, you might have to install some extra programs to get things working. Ubuntu has them by default, but others might not:
sudo apt-get install appmenu-qt appmenu-qt5 unity-gtk2-module unity-gtk3-module
You’ll need to reboot your computer for this to take effect.

Automatically Starting Plank

If you followed the steps at the beginning of the article, Plank should be active on your desktop. However, it won’t show up on a reboot. To fix this, open up the Startup Applications menu in the settings manager. From there, look for Plank in your list of applications (they’re sorted alphabetically).





Now if you restart your desktop session, you won’t have to manually start the dock up.

Themeing Cinnamon

The Cinnamon desktop needs a bit more tweaking than other desktops. Open up System Settings > Appearance > Themes. You’ll be presented with a few theme options. Change everything but the Icons and Mouse Pointer entries to macOS-Sierra-master. Then, change the Icons entry to use GnomeYosemiteIcons-master.







For some final touches, you can change your wallpaper to something more Mac-like. Open up the Backgrounds setting, then add the ~/.themes/macOS-Sierra-master folder as a new background directory. You may have to show hidden folders to see it.




The Final Results

As you can see, regardless of the desktop, all of them resemble macOS to a fairly high degree.

Unity

The color and alignment of the dock gives away the fact it’s not really macOS, unfortunately. Using Plank wasn’t much of an option — it would make launching programs too difficult.




GNOME

Unlike Unity, it’s the menu bar that’s a little different.




Plasma

The icon theme in Plasma doesn’t fit quite as well, but it makes a good Mac impression nonetheless.




Cinnamon

Arguably, it’s the Cinnamon desktop that comes closest to the macOS feel.







Linux is extremely flexible — if you don’t like what you see, then you have the power to change it. Or even find something you like without having to do all that work. While the macOS desktop isn’t for everybody, the customizability it demonstrates means that the perfect desktop for you is just waiting to be found.


Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/make-linux-look-like-macos/


July 24, 2017

Toyota opts for Linux based Infotainment System over Android Auto and Apple CarPlay

Not many must have heard about the existence of something called Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), a project hosted by Linux foundation to build a Linux based platform and framework for automotive applications. The project got kick-started back in 2012 and the founding members included marque automotive players such as Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan, and Toyota, along with tech giants such as Fujitsu, HARMAN, NVIDIA, Renesas, Samsung and Texas Instruments (TI). Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) platform will debut in 2018 Toyota Camry.


AGL linux infotainment toyota camry

Toyota's AGL Adoption in 2018 Toyota Camry

Automotive Grade Linux or AGL is a Linux based open source car infotainment platform that has been in the works for the last several years. As a Linux Foundation backed project, AGL now boasts broad based support from auto majors across the world. Along with the founding members like JLR and Toyota, car manufacturing giants like Daimler AG, Ford, Honda, Mitsubishi Motors, Subaru etc. are also paying members of the AGL project today.

The 2018 Toyota Camry will be the first car to utilize AGL. According to Dan Cauchy of AGL, "Toyota is an early adopter of Linux and open-source and has been an active member and contributor to AGL for several years. They have been a driving force behind the development of the AGL infotainment platform, and we are excited to see the traction that it’s gaining across the industry."

Auto makers have generally been clumsy when it comes to integrating and updating the latest/fastest tech to their in-house infotainment systems. And more and more players are going the easier route by simple giving customers the choice of Android Auto or Apple CarPlay or both. AGL can prove be a good compromise package by which the auto makers doesn't have to cede completely to Silicon Valley giants.

linux infotainment toyota

"The flexibility of the AGL platform allows us to quickly roll-out Toyota’s infotainment system across our vehicle line-up, providing customers with greater connectivity and new functionalities at a pace that is more consistent with consumer technology," said Keiji Yamamoto, Executive Vice President, Connected Company of Toyota Motor Corporation, in a press release. "Adopting an open source development approach has enabled us to focus resources on developing innovative new features and bringing them to market faster."

On a related note, here are two other obscure open source projects you've probably never heard about: 1. lowRISC: Open source, Linux capable SoC, 2. Udacity: An open source self-driving car project.

Source: http://www.techdrivein.com/2017/07/toyota-opts-for-linux-based.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+techdrivein+%28Tech+Drive-in%29

July 23, 2017

5 GUI Tools to See Hardware Information in Ubuntu/Linux

Here are 5 best graphical tools to check your Linux hardware information without using harsh commands.
Checking hardware (CPU, motherboard, process, etc.) information is one of the most common and important tasks we do in our computers. Viewing details of physical components of a computer lets us get idea about a computer’s configuration. It let’s us assume which physical system we are working with, as well as having idea how good a machine would perform and which operating systems and drivers are applicable for it. In one word, hardware info is an obvious part of the details a user should know about his/her system.
View Hardware detains in Linux
In Windows OS, the most general way to see hardware configuration is to right-click on My Computer icon and then clicking Properties from context menu. This provides a minimal information. For more detailed view, Windows Device Manger and System Information utilities can be used. As third party tools, Speccy and CPU-Z seem to be very popular, though the number of system/hardware information tool for Windows is endless.
As of Linux OS, most of the tools you get to see system information are command-line based. This means, once you install those tools, you need to type-in commands in Terminal to get output about installed hardware units. This is really a boring procedure and not convenient to anyone.
I have searched for programs that present hardware specifications in Linux system without requiring any command to input, and found a plenty of utilities. I have selected 5 best ones to show here that works out of the box. You may search for the following tools in your software store (if you have one in your Linux) for jump installation.

1. I-Nex

Probably the best CPU-Z alternative for Linux. I-Nex resembles CPU-Z’s UI. And you would probably like it.
I-Nex on Ubuntu Linux
I-Nex shows detailed information on your CPU, Graphics(GPU), Motherboard, Audio hardware and many more in very beautiful way. Major hardware units have their one tab. Every tab contains the device name/model, manufacturer, driver info, and other available data.  The presentation provided here is very clear and easy to understand. It even lets you generate customizable report on the whole system. It lets you take screenshot too.
Along with hardware, in also shows useful details on your operating system, such as, Linux distro name, version, GCC version, X.Org version, etc. There’s also a tab for Kernel information.
To install I-Nex on Ubuntu/Mint or any derivatives, type the following commands one after another at each prompt in Terminal.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:i-nex-development-team/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install i-nex
For Arch Linux, Fedora, openSUSE, Manjaro and other derivatives, here’s the official guide to install.

2. Hardinfo

HardInfo is a hardware analysis, system benchmark and report generator tool that can be found pre-installed in Linux Mint. It lists all hardware units vertically on left side of the program. You need to click on the name of a device to reveal details of that component. The Summary entry shows overview of your whole system in a short form.
Hardinfo GUI hardware discovery tool for linux
Besides generating report in HTML, you can compare your system with other systems with its benchmarking tools from bottom.
To install Hardinfo, run the following commands into Terminal in Debian/Ubuntu/Mint and its derivatives.
sudo apt-get install hardinfo
On Fedora, use the following command:
sudo yum install hardinfo
For openSUSE, here’s the official package software.opensuse.org/package/hardinfo.

3. Sysinfo

A lightweight program that shows your hardware information in simple way. Unlike above programs, it doesn’t show much information.
Sysinfo running on Ubuntu
Use the following command to install in Ubuntu/Mint:
sudo apt-get install sysinfo

4. lshw-gtk (Hardware Lister)

GTK Lshw running in Ubuntu
This the graphical version the popular command-line hardware info tool lshw. Use Refresh from toolbar if you see blank window. Though it looks so simple, the information it provides are really extensive and informative. It also features export function with XML, HTML and plain text support. Use Save button to export your report.
Installation command for Ubuntu/Mint:
sudo apt-get install lshw-gtk
Then type lshw-gtk in Terminal to launch it.
For Fedora, use the following command:
sudo yum install lshw-gui
Use lshw-gui command in Terminal to launch it.

5. KInfoCenter (KDE Info Center)

KDE Info Center
KInfoCenter is a part of KDE desktop environment. But it can be installed on other desktops too. This utility provides various information that are unique to your hardware. You get information on PCI, Network Interfaces, X Server, USB Devices, IO Ports, etc. along with main hardware units. If you have a Linux with KDE desktop, you may already have this installed.
Install KInfoCenter in Ubuntu/Mint using following command:
sudo apt-get install kinfocenter
To install in Fedora, use following command:
sudo yum install kinfocenter
On both OS, type kinfocenter in Terminal to launch it.
I personally like I-Nex. It’s sleek design and faster startup beats anything. Let us know which hardware info utility you are using.

Source: http://www.techgainer.com/5-gui-tools-to-see-hardware-information-in-ubuntulinux/

Author: 

Jaber is a tech enthusiast, geek and web worm from Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is the founder and Chief-Editor of TechGainer. While he is away from his keyboard, either he's fishing or messing with wildlife. In case, you can contact him at rijans[at]techgainer[dot]com.

July 22, 2017

How to create a disk image ISO

Create disk images it is often necessary to install on PC old games that were distributed on diskson modern computerswhich frequently do not have DVD driveJust remember that protect games from illegal distribution - DRM, often incompatiblewith virtual drives

Let's learn how to create disk images
.ISO files
 are disk images. A complete copy of a CD or DVD disc in one file. This file can be "mounted" and accessed as a virtual CD or DVD available as a physical disc.
In Linux you can create an ISO image using the terminal or the burning softwareincluded in your distribution. For examplein Linux Mint ISO image can be created usingutility, BraseroTo do this, open Brasero, select Disk copy and select the Disc to write toThe image will be createdIn other distributions include other programs, but the essence remains the same - copy a physical disk to the image.
How to create the disk image ISO in Linux Mint?
Clicking on the Properties button, you can choose where to save the image and can also choose the format for the generated image.
How to create the disk image ISO in Linux Mint?
Also, you can create an image with the command in the terminal:
Terminal
Shekin@mylinuxmintpc~$
sudo dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/home/username/image.iso
Replace /dev/cdrom with the path to your optical drive, e.g. /dev/dvd and/home/username/cd.iso — the path to the future ISO image.
The resulting disk can be mounted by the mount commandright there in the terminal orwith the graphical tool to choose according to your taste.
How to create the disk image ISO in Linux Mint?
Good Luck!!!
Author: Shekin

Source: https://mintguide.org/other/525-how-to-create-the-disk-image-iso-in-linux-mint.html