July Desktop

I've been using the Gnome GKT3 theme called FakeOSX for some time on Gnome 3.x and enjoy it very much. It looks similar to OSX. Been a big fan of the Gnome Shell Remix v11.10 which is rock solid and has the Gnome 3.x kernel. It is now standard on all my machines. Below are my desktop screen shots and a link to where you can get it. Chromium v22.x is now available but not through the Synaptic Program Manager. Below is the link for this also. The Nightingale music player for linux has replaced Songbird for Windows from Mozilla. Enjoy.













The FakeOSX GTK3 theme can be found here:
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/fakeosx?content=149052


Chromium v22 can be found here:
http://download-chromium.appspot.com/

How to Test & Run Linux Distros in VirtualBox

From the folks at Makeuseof.com, Download & Test Run Every Linux OS You Want With Virtualboxes

For a long time, I’ve been curious about Linux operating systems. I’ve used Windows my whole life, so the idea of switching to another operating system is a pretty big deal.

I know a lot of people that love Mac, and I admit that every time we go to the computer store, I often find myself poking around with the latest Mac laptop just to see what it’s all about. I wouldn’t mind a little bit of change, so long as I can still do everything I need to do with the computer – including using Office products, programming in those products using VBA, web programming, and of course the remote access and VPN applications I need for all of my other work.

I think switching to a new OS could be a lot of fun – something completely new. What made me decide to take a closer look at Linux operating systems out there is the fact that I love the Android OS on my Droid so much – and the fact that I’ve never had to “reboot” it once, or have never had a single issue with viruses or malware. I also like the fact that there are justso many Linux OS projects to choose from.

Testing Out Different Linux OS Projects

The thing about trying an OS in a dual-boot setup is that it consumes so much of your system resources. Not only that, but it takes the standard amount of time to set it all up, and then if you don’t like it, you have to remove it all and hope that you don’t completely screw up your system in the process.

The solution, if you just want to take a test ride of various Linux operating systems without doing anything too intrusive to your PC, is to install them into VirtualBox. We’ve covered VirtualBox in a lot of stories here at MUO, my favorite being Jorge’s suggestion to use it as a test bed for Linux OS platforms. His description of the process was brief, and I wasn’t really sure where to find all of the images that I wanted to test. So I decided to go through the process of testing different Linux OS systems in detail, starting with a perfect place to find nearly all of them – pre-configured for use on VirtualBox.

Of course, the first step of all if you don’t have VirtualBox yet, is to install the Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager for your particular OS.

Once that’s installed, go over to VirtualBoxes.org and choose from the wonderful selection of installations. There are lots here that I’ve always wanted to try but was always too nervous – Ubuntu of course, but then there’s the “Other” category that I really like – Android OS, Haiku and a few others. Take your selection and download, but make sure you have many hours because some of the ISO or VDI files are really huge.

In VirtualBox Manager, click on the “New” icon and choose the base RAM you want to allocate. I usually just go with the recommended base of 512, but just check on the website for the OS to see what the requirements are for that OS and assign accordingly.

From Virtualboxes.org, there are basically one of two files that you’ll find – VDI or ISO. Whichever you get will determine at what point in the installation process you will need to access the file. If it’s a VDI file that you download, like the Ubuntu image I’m installing below, you’ll need to click on “Use existing hard disk” and browse to the VDI file that you want to install. Once you select the file, it’ll show up with the base memory listed.

I know the pic above shows the ReactOS VDI file – that was another OS that I wanted to try out as well. I had already tested the Ubuntu OS and was moving on to ReactOS. It’s amazing how fast you can just roll through installations (once you’ve downloaded the massive images of course).

Each system you’ve set up shows up in the left panel – and if you give it a descriptive name, you’ll know exactly what OS you’ve loaded and you can switch quickly whenever you like – just shutdown one system and load up the next.

So, the first OS that I tested and had high hopes for was the Android OS. I thought – hey, if it is so cool and slick on my mobile phone, wouldn’t it be neat to run a similar OS on a PC?

Well – not so much. The OS had the look and feel of your typical Android mobile phone, with a slider panel that you could flip open and closed with a swish of the mouse.

The image you download comes preloaded with a bunch of stuff – an RSS reader, music player, email client and more.  Here’s the RSS reader – pretty simple listing of latest news on a black backdrop, just like you’d expect to see on an Android app.

So, it didn’t take me long to decide to shut that system down and try out a new OS. Aside from VDI files, in some cases you’ll find that the image download is an ISO file. This is an image file that you’ll select only after you’ve finished creating a new base virtual machine without an OS installed.

Click on the “Start” icon, and the VirtualBox manager will take you through a “First Run Wizard” that lets you choose an image to load onto the virtual machine. Just browse to your ISO file.

I was so disappointed with the Android OS that I decided to go straight for the operating system that I’ve heard and read so much about from fellow MUO writers – Ubuntu. Virtualboxes.org offers a Ubuntu image you can test drive, and it is loaded up with the basic things you’d want – a Firefox browser, email client, document/spreadsheet apps, and more.

I have to say, the moment the OS loaded and the desktop showed up, I wasn’t a bit disappointed. This is a very cool desktop!

Taskbar is accessible on the left side, Chat, email client and system settings have quick access icons right at the top right corner of the window. The stock background image is pretty sweet, and I’m already looking forward to seeing what else I can do to customize the desktop.

I like how the windows are laid out in a way that would be really easy for someone accustomed to a Windows operating system to pick up quickly. Modifying system settings, finding applications and configuring the desktop is  really easy – I’d say the learning curve to learn this OS is somewhere within the vicinity of zilch and none.

So far, Ubuntu had my vote, but I’d only just started testing out operating systems. After playing around with Ubuntu for 30 minutes, I just shut down the system, created a new Virtual Machine, and loaded up the Haiku image from Virtuaboxes.org.

Haiku is pretty sweet too. The window designs have a slightly Linuxy (that’s the only word I can think of to describe it) look and feel, but I love the layout and the overall design. I could see falling in love with Haiku just as easily as Ubuntu.

Finished with Haiku after about 20 minutes, I moved on to another interesting OS that I found at VirtualBoxes called IcarosLight. I didn’t install the full blown Icaros because I just didn’t have time to download the 700MB file. The scaled down OS is around 200MB and offers a small taste of what the full OS is like. As you can see, the window designs with this OS are a lot different, and it could take some getting used to.

I like the quality of the icons, and I absolutely love the app carousel at the bottom of the Desktop window. Here’s yet a third Linux-based OS that I’ve fallen in love with and want to test drive longer than the 30 minutes I took playing around with it this first time.

Three Virtual Machines into this test drive, and I’ve already become intrigued by three OS images – I’m in trouble. How am I supposed to decide on one?

And then it hit me – you know what? I don’t have to decide on just one. Isn’t that the whole point of a VirtualBox? You can switch from one OS to the next on a whim? All I have to do whenever I like is fire up the VirtualBox manager and choose from the list of images I’ve set up in the left pane.

This is just the coolest thing I’ve ever tried – my first foray breaking free from the world of Windows. I knew that the Linux OS developers had turned out some amazing things, but I really had no idea just how far they had come since the early days. I’m actually looking forward to test driving a few more – once they’re finished downloading that is.

Oh, and one more important note that I learned from MUO colleague Christian – if you notice the Virtualbox is running a bit sluggish, make sure that you’ve enabled virtualization on your CPU. You can check this by downloading the Intel CPU identification Utility, which will show you whether virtualization is turned on or off.

If it isn’t, reboot your PC into the BIOS, find where virtualization is set up (it’s different for every computer manufacturer) and make sure to enable it. You’ll find that VirtualBox rolls along like a charm afterwards.

Are you already a VirtualBox user? How do you make use of it? What’s your favorite image? Is this your first time using it? Share your experiences test driving these OS images in the comments section below!  Oh and don’t forget to download our free downloadable manual on Virtualbox!

Source: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-test-run-linux-os-virtualboxes/

How to install iTunes 9 in Ubuntu

Most of the linux media players are all trying to emulate the look, feel, and features of Apple's iTunes player. But linux can also run most windows programs under the Wine utility.

There is a way of proven and tested 100% effective so that iTunes can be running on Ubuntu and here the only way to do it.
Below is my iTunes 9 running on Ubuntu 11.10 Gnome Shell Remix. 

OK, now follow these instructions:

Step 1, install the app wine, you can directly install the app wine via terminal
sudo apt-get install wine

Step 2, Configure by typing “winecfg” on terminal Follow these instructions:

• Choose the Windows XP option in the Applications tab.
• Select Autodetect in the Drivers tab.
• Check the ALSA Driver and uncheck the OSS Driver in the Audio tab.
• Click OK. Your changes will be saved.

Step 3, Download itunes 9
wget http://appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite.net/content.info.apple.com/iTunes9/061-7894.20100219.Kgbhy/iTunesSetup.exe

Step 4, Install itunes 9 using WINE, on terminal type the command :

wine iTunesSetup.exe

Then follow the steps and the process of installing itunes to finish until the completion

Step 5, Once iTunes has been successfully installed, run the program using command:

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/iTunes/iTunes.exe
Congratulations, You now have iTunes installed on Ubuntu 11.04 and ready tu use

Source: http://ubuntuportal.com/2011/09/how-to-install-itunes-9-on-ubuntu-11-04-natty-narwhal.html

Chromium vs Firefox in Ubuntu Review

I found this interesting. I switch between Chromium and Firefox, but prefer Firefox because if feels faster and is always stable. At times it seems a little biased, but good info. Written by Ayesha .A on June 12, 2012. Posted in Reviews, Software, from Linuxtoday.com, Source from http://www.unixmen.com

According to the independent web analytics firm, StatCounter Chrome has excelled as the world most popular browser  with the highest browser usage share for the month of May 2012. But does that apply to Linux platform too? Is Chrome the best browser for Linux? The post compares the widely popular Mozilla Firefox browser version 4 with relatively new Google’s Chrome version 16, distinctly for Ubuntu!

Mozilla Firefox comes by default on Linux based distributions such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora etc. Naturally Ubuntu users opt for open source softwares. Technically, Opposed to Mozilla Firefox, Google’s Chrome is closed source; that makes Ubuntu users  favour Firefox than Chrome, and that is understandable. Chromium, on the other hand is open source basis of Chrome. But unfortunately it lacks some key features like default PDF plug-in for viewing PDF files in the browser and Flash support. Ubuntu users, primarily supporters of open community also tend to have grudges towards Google, who is alleged to collect and aggregate data of Internet users that is later used by marketing agencies and by  Google itself to increase the efficiency of its own marketing/advertising activities. Of course, many detest the fact of having their data sold for advertisement.
But apart from that, Firefox outshines Chrome on Ubuntu machine for feature, stability and security. Now let’s investigate further, why Firefox remains dominant in the Ubuntu/ Linux sphere.

Customisation

Customisation remains one of the central features when comparing the two browsers. As obvious, open source software users look for freedom, freedom in everything and specially in customisation. Though Firefox has chromised itself delivering a minimal interface thanks to it’s amazing potential of customisation that it can be completely personalised. Chrome on the Other hand does not even provide half of the tools for customisation. Chrome does not offer layout customization options like Firefox. Firefox’s interface is also subject to CSS styling, which allows the user to completely customize each element’s appearance and placement! With firefox you can adjust the interface and adapt to your personal requirements: re-arrange, organize, add or remove buttons or fields to change your browsing experience however you want. Many users  also find the inability to adjust the font size in tabs frustrating in Chrome.  This can be a notable factor when your contender gives limitless options for customisation. Chrome also has poor rendering when it comes to Indic fonts.

Speed, Startup time and stability

Firefox yet again outshines Chrome on Ubuntu machine in startup time. Mozilla has significantly worked on making the browser swift and snappy in its newer releases and it shows evidently. Firefox however lags behind with a very less margin when it comes to page loading time. Chrome is slightly fast than Firefox owing to its minimal code base.
Firefox was alleged for intensive memory usage, but new releases make memory usage efficient down to 50%. When released, Chrome was intended to be a light weight browser but with the course of time it is becoming notorious for memory hogging. This is because Chrome launches a new process for every web page which makes it heavy on system resources.
stability is where, Firefox clearly unseats chrome. As much as Chrome is stable on Windows platform, it is weak and unstable on Linux platform. Very often does chrome become unstable and crashes. Though owing to its intelligent tab management one or two tabs crash without affecting the whole browser. But having several tabs down for unknown reasons can also be a pain in neck. Plug-ins also happen to cash very often in Chrome.Chrome mishandles SSL certificate causing annoyance very frequently.

Compatibility

Firefox wins when it comes to compatibility with Java, Flash, WebGL. Because Firefox renders Flash better, YouTube is much more enjoyable on Firefox. However, Chrome renders HTML 5 and JavaScript better than Firefox ( after all its being funded by the Silicon Valley giant not by a handful of volunteers)  Both Firefox and Chrome are at par when it comes to compatibility with DOM and CSS. In contrast to Chrome for Windows, chrome for Ubuntu significantly falls short.

Features

Firefox wins here with a great margin. When it comes to features Firefox is feature packed ! With features such as Pin as App Tabs, One button Menu, no track, addons, Personas, App Tabs to create mini bookmarks, group opened tabs etc.. Chrome has some nice feature set but it is far far behind Firefox.

Security & Privacy

Chrome and Firefox both employ anti-malware tools for secure browsing. both Firefox and Chrome give security warnings when you visit a risky website and instigate your antivirus to run and scan the file downloaded. besides this Firefox is aided with plenty of add ons to further improve security, such as NoScript. Firefox has the best pop-up blocker. Firefox also has one of the most efficient  anti-phishing feature. Last but no the leastt Firefox has a safe mode to recover from unexpected shut downs. Chrome too, restores your last session recovering from unexpected failures but not very often on Ubuntu like on Windows.

Talking about privacy, Google Chrome has obvious concerns of data tracking and selling. Firefox in contrast, ensures that the data you leave while browsing using the Firefox is kept private. It states on its home page: ” When you browse, you leave a trail of data that potentially contains all sorts of personal information. We believe this info belongs to you and you alone (and least of all to overzealous advertisers), and have built in features to ensure that’s the case.”

Synchronisation

For Ubuntu platform, Firefox still leads when it comes to Synchronisation. Chrome is catching up but the system is still buggy and doesn’t work at all at times.
For synchronisation  with mobile devices, Firefox still takes the lead. Firefox on desktop seamlessly Synchronises with your mobile Firefox, bookmarks, tabs open on your desktop Firefox  etc. chrome on the other hand is only available on mobile devices running ICS- not to forget that ICS is only available on handful of Android devices. This limits the scope of Chrome on mobile devices. When synchronisation is possible, it is far lagging as compared to that with Firefox.

Development

The addon system accompanying the Google Chrome has some serious concerns with “actual” developers. Mozilla integrates addon system directly with the browser ( this has some disadvantages though). This gives more liberty for developers when developing extensions .

Developers often complaint that the extension system for Chrome is much more  restrictive in the capabilities in contrast to that of Firefox as chrome owing to limitation of Chrome API exposed to extensions.  For example While development, you might come across a situation where you need to turn JavaScript off for website testing, or empty browser cache. To do this on chrome you have to go to setting of the browser.  While on Firefox you can simply do this with web developer extension, which is as simple as turning on and of a button. By far, Chrome is way way behind Firefox for development.

When it comes to Ubuntu, Firefox certainly wins. Even when we evaluate both the browsers irrespective of the OS we find Firefox has an edge over Chrome  as being aided with more features. What browser do you prefer on your Ubuntu machine? Chrome or Firefox?

For questions please refer to our Q/A forum at : http://ask.unixmen.com

Source: http://www.unixmen.com/chrome-vs-firefox-for-ubuntu/

Liferea Feed Reader - Simple & Elegant Newsreader

Liferea: A Feed Reader That Prefers a Simple Life

By Jack M. Germain
LinuxInsider, 06/13/12 5:00 AM PT

In a world in which mobile is getting bigger every day, desktop news aggregators might appear to be a vestige of a bygone time. But for those who still prefer to get news on the big screen, Liferea is a great way to go. Its installation process is simple, as is its feature set.

Linux Feed Reader, aka "Liferea," is part of a highly specialized category of apps. It is an aggregator for online news feeds, weblogs and podcasts. As such, it provides a tool for pulling into one spot an eclectic collection of your newsfeed content so you do not have to go to each separate source.

Liferea

The Liferea project puts its focus on simple installation and simple usage. This app achieves these two goals handily. If you do not have specialized needs that go beyond merely reading a list of aggregated news items, then Liferea's simplicity will suit your purposes handily.
But more demanding fans of Internet news delivery may find Liferea's lack of advanced features a deal-breaker. Even if you do not mind the feature dearth, you might find Liferea's penchant for fussy performance a turn off.
Chances are that Liferea will run just fine on your Linux-powered computer. But based on a continuing stream of user feedback on numerous forums, this app has a track record for crashing or otherwise bogging down under the strain of tracking high volumes of news feeds.
I have used Liferea on numerous desktop and laptop Linux boxes running Ubuntu and Linux Mint configurations with good results. Followup reports by disheartened users indicate that the various tweaks mentioned in support forums solve a majority of the performance issues. To its credit, the developer's website openly encourages user trouble reports so the issues can be remedied.

Aging Usefulness

Software such as Liferea is a vestige from the pre-mobile device era. If you only rely on traditional computing hardware to access Internet-based news, then apps like Liferea are a godsend.
But if you also feed your appetite for online news using smartphones and tablets, more sophisticated types of aggregator apps make the process much more streamlined and handy. If you use both types of access devices, however, you will continuously trip over duplications. Few, if any, solutions exist yet to synchronize news feeds on multiple devices.
Some of the aggregator options available besides Liferea include Akregator, Blam and RSSOwl. You can try to integrate your list of news feed sources using the Feedly extension for Firefox and Chrome. This add-on shows all of your news feeds in a more appealing page format.

Getting It

One of my growing irritations with the package management systems that Linxu distros use is the delay in making the latest releases available. The delay with Liferea seems to be a bigger gap than usual on both Ubuntu and Mint systems.
For example, the version both of these distros have in their repositories is 1.6.6. But the developer in late March released stable version 1.8.3 with significant feature improvements.
So to enjoy maximum benefit from Liferea, bypass the one-click installation from your distro's software center and go directly to the developer's download source here. There you will find easy-to-execute directions for entering get and install commands into a terminal window.

Getting Started

Once you have Liferea installed, run it by clicking the program's name from the Internet software group on the menu. If you are using Ubuntu's Unity interface or the standard GNOME 3.x desktop, Liferea will be automatically added to the icon lists for Applications. You can add it to the Favorites bar as well.
I found Liferea as easy to use as the touch-and-read news feed apps on my Android mobile devices. The app opens to the main program window. The default settings start feed updates immediately.
The user interface is very streamlined -- so much so, that it does not look like the typical display containing traditional drop-down menus and icon row or tool bars.
Instead, the menu items are specific to adding new feed subscriptions and navigating from the current displayed news item to the next one in the main viewing window. The left column of the app window lists the current feed subscriptions.

Using It

The Liferea interface is literally click and read. Just click the news feed source in the left column. The individual articles from that feed display in the right pane.
At the bottom of the source list is a metafolder of all unread items. This makes it easy to quickly scan through all the unread articles rather than scrolling through specific individual sources.
It is easy to add new feeds. All you do is click on the "Add Subscription" button. Then enter either the full website URL or the RSS feed address. Liferea does all the heavy lifting. In a second or two, the newly added news feed source appears in the list as its contents is updated.
Out of the box, so to speak, Liferea gets the job done. For instance, the Subscriptions menu provides a list of quick actions. These include import/export news feeds and creating new folders.

Handy Features

Other menu categories make it simple to change viewing options, change the read/unread status, and set preferences. I particularly like the ability to integrate some key sources into the news feed mix. You do this through the Subscriptions/New Source menu. This accomplishes two things.
One is the integration of blogrolls or Planets into your feed list. Liferea automatically adds/removes feeds according to the changes of the source OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) document. Other supported formats are: RSS/RDF, CDF, Atom and OCS.
The other is the ability to integrate the feed list of your Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Reader account. This is a very easy way to synchronize your feed list and reading lists from Google Reader.

Advanced Tool

Liferea does a good job with the basic tools. But it lags behind other aggregators when it comes to advanced features.
One of the few advanced features is script manager in the Tools menu. This lets you add custom scripts that run whenever a certain action occurs.
Scripting as a customization option is something that typical users will not need. But if you want to push Liferea to the limit, the script manager will let you do it.

One More Thing

Be sure to go through the seven setup panels in Tools/Preferences. The default settings will work just fine. But a variety of choices lets you fine-tune how you work with Liferea.
The preferences options include the choice of viewing browser. The default is the GNOME Browser, which by all standards is weak. But it works.
If you use the Google Chrome browser, though, you are out of luck. It is not included. Your choices are limited to Firefox, Opera, Epiphany, Konqueror, and the X-Browser.

Bottom Line

Liferea will find and present all of your designated news postings. You will not get bogged down in complicated feature choices. For typical news gathering and reading needs, you will not need anything more.

---

Jack M. Germain has been writing about computer technology since the early days of the Apple II and the PC. He still has his original IBM PC-Jr and a few other legacy DOS and Windows boxes. He left shareware programs behind for the open source world of the Linux desktop. He runs several versions of Windows and Linux OSes and often cannot decide whether to grab his tablet, netbook or Android smartphone instead of using his desktop or laptop gear.

Source: http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/75360.html

Lesser Known Linux Music Players

Ever wondered what other music players are there inLinux world that can replace your default one? Believe me, you are pampered with choices. While the popular ones receive many coverage, there are several lesser known music players that are equally powerful. Here I have compiled a list of lesser known (and good) audio players available for Linux operating systems along with their salient features.

1. Clementine

This one is my favorite (not for the reason that I like to eat Clementine) and this is why it is first in the list. Inspired by Amarok, it is a good looking and yet a feature-rich music player. Available for Windows, Linux and Mac, it seamlessly integrates with Ubuntu. Its main features include good iPod (and other portable music device) support, dynamic playlists, lyrics and artist information, album art discovery. It has a strong support for Internet Radio including big names like Last.fm, Spotify, Grooveshark, Jamendo, Magnatune among numerous others.

Clementine

 

 

 

2. Nightingale

Remember Songbird, the loved music player which ditched Linux 2 years back? Well, the legacy of Songbird has been continued by a fork of it: Nightingale. It carries forward the awesomeness of Songbird. Features include great support for synchronization, song and artist info, easy playlists and definitely good looks.Shoutcast Radio and Last.fm comes integrated with it. Last.fm album art can be used to fetch album arts. The list of extension and add-ons is growing with continuous community support.

Nightingale

3. Audacious

For all those Winamp MP3 player lovers, here is Winamp for Linux – Audacious. A light weight music players which has uncanny similarities to the famed Winamp audio player (reason being that it is descendant of legacy Linux player XMMSwhich itself was modeled after Winamp). Unlike other players like Clementine or Banshee which focus more on managing the music library, Audacious focus more on music. Motto is simple, drag and drop the files to create a playlist, sit back and enjoy the music. No fancy stuff, Last.fm is the only luxury it has got. Oh yes! it has great customization options as it supports Winamp skins.

Audacious

4. DeaDBeef

DeaDBeef is a simple, light on CPU yet feature rich audio player for Linux. Unlike its name, it is definitely not dead but very much alive. It plays (almost) all major and minor type of music formats with album art display capability. Last.fm is supported along with several other plugins at disposal. Recently it has arrived on Android so people using both Linux and Android can enjoy the homogeneity on different platform.

DeaDBeef

5. Quod Libet

Good things come in small package. Quod Libet is one such small package. It tries to answer “Boy, I wish I could grep my music“. Yes, it has a really strong search features. Written in Python and based on GTK+, it provide you with all the basic features of an audio player apart from the fact that it can handle a large library. Features also include Internet radio and podcast. To an extent it resembles Rythmbox but only less complex.

Quod Libet

All these music players can be downloaded form their respective official websites, links are provided in headings. I would like to know your views on this list and your favorite music player. What do you say?

Image credit: Abstract music background by BigStockPhoto and Wikimedia

Source: http://maketecheasier.com/the-lesser-known-music-players-for-linux/2012/04/16

Abhishek is a Software Engineer by profession and a Tech-Blogger by passion. He takes a keen interest in day-to-day computer life and wishes to share his experience with others to make their computer experience better and easier. He is the owner of increasingly popular tech blog Computer And You.

How to dual boot Ubuntu 12.04 and Win7

A great article from http://www.linuxbsdos.com

One tool that has seen very little or no change over the past several releases in Ubuntu Desktop is the installation program. So it is somewhat surprising that some users are having problems dual-booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 using a tutorial written for Ubuntu 11.04.

Stemming from comments in that article, and email from readers, I decided to revisit that tutorial using Ubuntu 12.04. So the purpose of this article, is to show how to dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 on a computer with one hard drive. And it will be on a computer with an existing installation of Windows 7. If there is a need to, you may reinstall you copy of Windows 7.
First things first. Download a copy of Ubuntu 12.04 installation image from here. Depending on your platform, you may download the 32- or 64-bit installation image. Images used for this tutorial were taken from test installations using a 32-bit installation image in both a virtual environment using VirtualBox, and on real hardware. In either case, I did not encounter any errors that others have reported, so I am certain that if you follow this guide, you should have a computer with both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 installed in a dual-boot configuration.
So that anytime you reboot the computer, you should see Windows 7′s boot menu with two entires listed – Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 (LTS). Then you may choose to boot into Windows 7 or Ubuntu 12.04.





Now that you know what the overall goal is, how do you get from here to there? First, understand that if you have a computer running Windows 7, that Windows 7′s boot manager is responsible for making sure that the system boots. Installing Ubuntu on the same hard drive throws another boot manager into the mix, so the most important decision you are going to make about this, is which boot manager (Windows 7′s boot manager or Ubuntu’s) do you want to be responsible for primary boot operations?


When dual-booting Windows 7 and a Linux distribution on a computer with one hard drive, the best option is to have Windows 7′s boot manager be the primary boot manager. Why? Because whenever you reinstall or update Windows 7, its installer will overwrite anything it finds in the portion of the hard drive where critical boot-related programs are installed. That portion of the hard drive is known as the Master Boot Record (MBR). Also, certain anti-virus programs have been known to mess with the contents of the MBR, so installing GRUB in another location will ease the maintenance headache associated with your system. This point determines where GRUB will be installed.


If you are not familiar with disk partitioning (in Linux) and dual-booting, it is highly recommended that you read guide to disks and disk partitions in Linux and tips for dual-booting Windows and Linux.
By default, a new installation of Ubuntu 12.04 is installed on two partitions – a main partition, and Swap. The main partition is usually a primary partition and the Swap, a logical partition. And if Ubuntu is the only operating system on the hard drive, you will see both partitions labeled /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda5. Because you are going to install it on a computer with another operating system on it, the partitioning scheme will have to change.
The recommended partition scheme that will work better with the system you are about to install, will consist of at least three partitions. They are the:

• Boot partition – This is where GRUB will be installed, instead of in the MBR. Installing GRUB in the boot partition is where users have encountered errors, so pay particular attention to what you do with this partition
• Root partition – This is where all the programs will be installed
• Home partition – This is optional, but it helps to have your files and folders on a separate partition
• Swap space

I think what you need to do should be pretty clear now. Time to begin the process! If you have not done so already, burn the installation image (of Ubuntu 12.04) you downloaded to a CD or transfer it to a USB stick, and boot the computer from it. When booted from the CD, you will be given the option to boot into a Live Desktop or start the installation without visiting the Live Desktop. It does not matter which option you choose, but booting into the Live Desktop and starting the installation from there seems to be a very good choice.





Whether the installation process is started from the Live Desktop or not, clicking through the installer gets you to the step shown in the image below. The most important information here is the minimum disk space (4.4 GB) recommended for a successful installation of Ubuntu 12.04. That piece of information will help you determine how much disk space to allocate to the root partition.





Clicking Continue from the previous step will land you here. If, as in this example, you have Windows 7 installed on the target hard drive, you should see the same three options shown here. Because you will be creating partitions manually, the option you want to select is Something else.





That should bring you to the Advanced disk partitioning tool. Again, if we are operating from the same point, that is, if you have a default installation of Windows 7 on the target hard drive, you should see two ntfs partitions (/dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2) listed. The main Windows 7 partitions, also popularly known as the C drive, is your sda2. To install Ubuntu, you will have to resize that partition. Note: If have free unallocated space on the hard drive, you do not have to go through this partition resizing process. To resize the partition, select it and click the Change button.





That should open this window. The only thing to do here, is tell the installer how much disk space you want to keep for Windows 7. The rest will be used for Ubuntu. The system used for this tutorial has about 324 GB of disk space. I chose to keep 100 GB for Windows.





So the window now looks like this. Click OK.





After the partition has been resized successfully, you should see the freed space marked as free space. Select it and click Add to start creating partitions for Ubuntu 12.04.









Though you need to create at least three partitions for installing Ubuntu, I will create four just to show how it should be done if you want to have the home directory on a separate partition.
The boot partition is the first partition you want to create. The recommended size for it, is 500 MB. That is way too much for the actual disk space that will be used initially, but if you expect to use the system for a long time, spanning several updates, you need the extra space. The mount point should be /boot. And you want to keep the default file system – ext4. This is important because errors have been reported when using ext2 for the boot partition. OK.





The second partition will be the root partition. For this tutorial, I assigned 20 GB to it. Anything that is at least more than 75% above the recommended minimum of 4.4 GB should be good. The mount point should be /. Keep the default file system. OK.





The third partition is for the home partition. Since this where any file you download or generate is stored, it should be assigned the bulk of the available disk space. Use /home as the mount point, and keep the default file system. OK.



The fourth and last partition will be for Swap. This is disk space made available for the system to use as virtual memory whenever the need arises. Give it an appropriate size (4 GB or 4000 MB should be more than enough on any system). Select swap area from the Use as dropdown menu. OK.





Back to the main Advanced disk partitioning tool window, you should see the partitions you just created, besides the existing ntfs (Windows 7) partitions. Because the first Ubuntu partition was created as a logical partition (the installer does that by default), it is listed as sda5. This is the boot partition and it is where the boot files for Ubuntu will be installed, not in the MBR, which is the default. Note that installing GRUB in the MBR is the same as installing it in sda. This is what you see in the Device for boot loader installation dropdown menu. So what you want to do here, is select sda5 (our boot partition) from that menu.



When you are done selecting it, the window should look like this. click Install Now to continue with the rest of the installation process.



At the user account setup step, you might want to enable encryption of your home folder by enabling Encrypt my home folder. This does not afford you the same level of physical security as full disk encryption, but it is better than no encryption.



And you have the option of importing your settings from the Windows side to Ubuntu.



After installation has completed successfully, reboot the computer. It should reboot into Windows. This is expected. At this point, Windows does not know that it is now sharing the computer with another operating system. The next step is to tell it, and modify its boot menu to reflect that fact.

The easiest program to use for this task, is EasyBCD, a free program by NeoSmart Technologies. There is a paid version, but for personal and non-commercial use, it is free. You may download it from here. Install it as you would any Windows 7 application. Start it. The main interface is shown in the image below. To begin the process of adding an entry for Ubuntu 12.04 in Windows 7′s boot menu, click on the Add New Entry tab.





Then on the Linux/BSD tab. From the Type dropdown menu, select GRUB 2, the version of GRUB used by Ubuntu 12.04. Click on the Add Entry button. Click on Edit Boot Menu tab to view the new configuration.




These are the two entries you will see every time you (re)boot the computer. The default is Window 7, but you can change it to Ubuntu 12.04 if you like. Exit EasyBCD and reboot.




That is it. Like I wrote earlier, this was done on real hardware and in a virtual environment on first try, so I do not think that you will encounter any issues if you follow this tutorial step-by-step.

Source: http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2012/05/17/how-to-dual-boot-ubuntu-12-04-and-windows-7/

May Desktop

The Spring weather has everything in bloom, the days are getting warmer & brighter, and felt like a return to the smooth classy Radiance Theme for May. This build is the Ubuntu Gnome Shell Remix 11.10. Included is Firefox 13 with FXChrome theme & Omnibar addon which gives it clean look like the Chromium browser, and the GmusicBrowser Music Player. Enjoy.

.

.

.