Limit the CPU usage of an application (process) - cpulimit

cpulimit is a simple program that attempts to limit the cpu usage of a process (expressed in percentage, not in cpu time). This is useful to control batch jobs, when you don't want them to eat too much cpu. It does not act on the nice value or other scheduling priority stuff, but on the real cpu usage. Also, it is able to adapt itself to the overall system load, dynamically and quickly.

Installation:
Download last stable version of cpulimit
Then extract the source and compile with make:

tar zxf cpulimit-xxx.tar.gz
cd cpulimit-xxx
make

Executable file name is cpulimit. You may want to copy it in /usr/bin.

Usage:
Limit the process 'bigloop' by executable name to 40% CPU:

cpulimit --exe bigloop --limit 40
cpulimit --exe /usr/local/bin/bigloop --limit 40

Limit a process by PID to 55% CPU:

cpulimit --pid 2960 --limit 55

cpulimit should run at least with the same user running the controlled process. But it is much better if you run cpulimit as root, in order to have a higher priority and a more precise control.

Note:
If your machine has one processor you can limit the percentage from 0% to 100%, which means that if you set for example 50%, your process cannot use more than 500 ms of cpu time for each second. But if your machine has four processors, percentage may vary from 0% to 400%, so setting the limit to 200% means to use no more than half of the available power. In any case, the percentage is the same of what you see when you run top.

Squid Authentication using RADIUS

Radius is a server for remote user authentication and accounting. Its primary use is for Internet Service Providers , though it may as well be used on any network that needs a centralized authentication and/or accounting service for its workstations.

In this article I wont go into detail about installation and configuration of RADIUS or Squid server and will assume that both are installed and configure properly.

Download the squid authenticating module -- Here.
Unpack it and compile it

# tar -zxvf squid_radius_auth-1.10.tar.gz
# cd squid_radius_auth-1.10/
# make

You will get a squid_radius_auth executable that you can move to a safe place. It needs a config file, squid_radius_auth that should contain the name of the RADIUS server and the secret:

server radius_server
secret secret_phrase

Now, configure Squid to use RADIUS server for Authentication, open your squid.conf file and find and replace the auth section with following ...

auth_param basic program /path_to_auth/squid_radius_auth
auth_param basic children 5
auth_param basic realm Please enter your domain credentials
auth_param basic credentialsttl 8 hours

Next you have to condition Squid to allow only authenticated users. In the following example users that are in the local LAN are allowed without logging in but users that don't show up in the local users file (localusers) are asked to login:

acl passwd proxy_auth
acl localusers src "/etc/squid/localusers"

http_access allow localusers
http_access allow all passwd
http_access allow all

You'll also have a log of who and when logged on to use the web services on the RADIUS server's logs.

Linux users love Google, ignore Bing

It’s therefore somewhat telling that Linux users overwhelmingly choose Google as their preferred search engine, according to data released today by Chitika, an online advertising network. Chitika analyzed data from 163 million searches across its advertising network between July 30 and August 16, and came up with the following:

Despite the concerns about Google and privacy and despite Microsoft’s rising relevance in search through its Bing “decision engine,” Google wins over Linux users 94.61 percent of the time. While it’s not surprising that Linux users would shun a Microsoft-sponsored search engine, it is surprising that they so heavily congregate around just one search engine.

After all, this is the crowd that has created (literally) thousands of Linux distributions. For a community so devoted to choice, it’s telling that such a disparate community would unify on Google search. Perhaps Yahoo’s apparent willingness to prostrate itself before Microsoft has turned off the Linux crowd, but there are other alternatives.

Open source, after all, is all about alternatives. There are open-source alternatives to Google Analytics (Piwik, Open-Tube, etc.), Google Search Appliance (Lucene/Solr), Google Docs (OpenGoo), Google Earth (World Wind), and more. But for search, the Linux contingent of the open-source community seems settled on Google. [CNET]

Getting System Information (OpenSuSe) - phpSysInfo

phpSysInfo is a PHP script that displays information about the host being accessed.
It will displays things like Uptime, CPU, Memory, SCSI, IDE, PCI, Ethernet, Floppy, and Video Information.

Why I need the phpSysinfo?, Like the description above. I need to know everything about the server with one click and the important is I could check them with the browser. So, now the phpSysinfo is the best choice.

Installation:
Download phpSysInfo - here

Extract the package and copy it to the web server directory

# tar -zxvf phpSysInfo-3.0-RC8.tar.gz
# cp -r phpsysinfo /srv/www/htdocs/phpsysinfo

Rename the config.php.new to config.php (inside phpsysinfo directory)

# mv config.php.new config.php

Now go to browser and access the "index.php" from within phpSysInfo directory and you should see something like ...

Maemo : Nokia 's Linux Powered Mobile

A web browser like no other

The powerful Maemo Browser has a fast Mozilla engine and gives you full access to rich interactive content – just like a browser on your home computer.
Maemo Browser

Multitasking made easy

Tap the dashboard to follow everything at once. Keep track of missed calls or new emails, and switch instantly between open apps and ongoing conversations.
Dashboard

Personalise multiple desktops

Decide how you want your desktops to look. Add the calendar, map, and media player widgets, and choose your favourite application, contact, and website shortcuts.
Panorama desktop

Add context with geotags

Know exactly where your pictures were taken with automatic geotagging. Maemo turns GPS tags into familiar, user-friendly names.
Photos

Connect to all your friends

See the availability of your Ovi, Gtalk, Skype, and other IM contacts and choose the best way to get in touch – all from the same view.
Contacts

Get more Details here

Kerala NiyamaSabha Website published Tender for Purchasing GNU/Linux Preloaded Laptops to 141 Members of Kerala Legislative assembly

The Tender Demands Ubuntu 9.04 Preloaded & Ubuntu compatible / Certified Laptops as Requirements

We Must Congratulate TD Kuriachan, Network Administrator, Kerala Legislative Assembly IT Section for Making This Tender as a Free Software Preinstalled Purchase

How to query Yahoo search engine and get results from Perl script

First, like all non-standard Perl modules, you will need to install Yahoo::Search perl module from CPAN, go to cpan> console and install Yahoo::Search perl module

cpan> install Yahoo::Search

Here is the simple perl script that use the Yahoo::Search perl module to query the yahoo search engine and get the results and display it on the console...

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Yahoo::Search;

my @results = Yahoo::Search->Results(
Doc => "linuxpoison",
AppId => "YahooDemo",
Start => 0,
Count => 5);

for my $result (@results) {
printf "Result: #%d\n", $result->I + 1,
printf "Url:%s\n", $result->Url;
printf "%s\n", $result->ClickUrl;
printf "Summary: %s\n", $result->Summary;
printf "Title: %s\n", $result->Title;
print "\n";
}

The Start and Count options let you pull the results in pages. Count tells Yahoo how many results to return at once, and Start determines the starting record, Doc is the search query

AppId => "YahooDemo" is the generic demo ID through which you can query the Yahoo search engine.

Save the file with name "yahoo_search.perl" make it executable (chmod 755 yahoo_search.perl) and execute it using command perl yahoo_search.perl to see something like ...

There are still lot of thing that you can do with this script like integrating with your application, adding exception handling, formatting the output and many more but this is a good starting point.

HowTo: Regular cleanup the Tempfolders (OpenSuSe)

If you would like to cleanup regularly your System, here are the steps

Launch YaST:
Choose Category “System”, then “Editor for /etc/sysconfig Files”.
Then open “System” and after that open “Cron”.
Here you find the following Entrys:

CLEAR_TMP_DIRS_AT_BOOTUP = “no”
Change to: “yes”
That means: enable or disable the Cleanup Function global.
Default: “no” (=off!)

TMP_DIRS_TO_CLEAR = “/tmp”
That you can leave.
That means: First List from Folders, that can be deleted.
Default: /tmp

MAX_DAYS_IN_TMP = 0
Change to: “1″ (=deletes all Files who are older than 24h)
Means: Max. File Lifetime in days. That is for the Files, defined in TMP_DIRS_TO_CLEAR.
Default: 0 (=disabled)

Close the Editor. You see all changes and you can close the Editor.
In the next Systemstart cron cleans up your /tmp.
You can define an second List:

LONG_TMP_DIRS_TO_CLEAR = “”
Means: second Folderlist who can be deleted.
Default: “”
Possible Option: “/var/tmp”

MAX_DAYS_IN_LONG_TMP = 0
Means: Max File Lifetime in days, for all Files who are defined in LONG_TMP_DIRS_TO_CLEAR.
Default: 0 (= disabled)
Possible Option: “28″

HowTo add Repositories into OpenSuSe

Go to terminal and type command : yast2 to start the yast application
Select Software Repositories.

Click on Add, select Specify URL.

Then enter a Repository Name and a URL.

Package metadata will be downloaded and parsed - this takes time depending on mirror speed, your bandwidth, the size of the repository, the speed of your system.

HowTo Autostart application in KDE4

The easiest way to make application autostart in KDE is to create executable script within autostart folder.

Go to your Autostart folder, in case of default Autostart path you should just execute:

cd .kde4/Autostart/

Create a new file withing this folder (the name doesn't matter) using any editor, for example you can execute: vi start.script

The first line of your new file needs to be

#!/bin/bash

This makes the file a script (you will make it executable later).

Now in each line specify what do you want KDE to execute each time it starts up. For example if we you want to start ktorrent every time, add the command into this file:

ktorrent

After putting all lines save changes to this file and exit
The last thing you need to do is make this script executable, so just execute:

chmod +x start.script

At this moment you may reboot KDE to see the changes during startup. Please take a note that this only affects current user.

Userspace Bandwidth Shaper (Management) - trickle

As with any finite resource, it is often necessary to apply policies to the shared usage of network resources.

Existing solutions typically implement this by employing traffic management in edge routers . However, users of smaller networks regularly find themselves in need of nothing more than ad-hoc rate rate limiting. Furthermore,the networks in question are typically unmanaged, with no network administrator(s) to manage complicated traffic management schemes.

Trickle fills this gap by providing a simple and portable solution to rate limit the TCP connections of a given process or group of processes.

Trickle works by taking advantage of the unix dynamic loader's preloading functionality to interposition itself in front of the libc API interfaces that are used for sending and receiving data through network sockets.

Trickle then performs traffic shaping by delaying and truncating socket I/Os. Trickle runs entirely in user space, does not require administrator privileges and is portable across a wide variety of Unix-like platforms. Instances of Trickle can cooperate, even across networks. This allows for the specication of global rate limiting policies.

Installation:
OpenSuSe 11.0 - Here
Fedora: yum install trickle

Example trickle:

trickle -u 10 -d 20 konqueror

Launch konqueror limiting its upload (-u) capacity to 10 KB/s, and download (-d) capacity at 20 KB/s.

Example trickled:

trickled -u 10 -d 20

Limit aggregate trickle upload bandwidth consumption to 10 KB/s and download consumption to 20 KB/s.

trickled is a userspace bandwidth manager daemon.
trickled manages several trickle sessions at a time, shaping across multiple sessions.

Photo Collage Maker - Shape Collage

Now making photo collage in linux is made easy. This program is called shape collage and being developed in Java, offers the advantage of being multi-platform. You can download it for the linux, windows and mac os.

The shape collage is very simple and well made and with an interface very intuitive.

The process of creating the final image is very simple: you choose the photos individually (or an entire folder), you set various parameters (shape, spacing, size, colors, etc.) and you save the final image.

Feature:

* Create picture collages in less than a minute with just a few mouse clicks

* Photos are automatically and intelligently placed using a very fast patent pending method
* Use photos on your computer or from the web to make collages
* Make collages in any imaginable shape or form
* Rectangle, heart, circle, letters, or even draw your own shape!
* Adjust the collage size, size of the photos, number of photos, and spacing between photos
* Change the background, the colour of the border, and more
* Save as JPEG, PNG, or Photoshop PSD
* Cross-platform and free for personal use with no ads, viruses, spyware, stds, trial periods, or watermarks

HowTo Convert multimedia files between formats using ffmpeg

FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec - the leading audio/video codec library.


Video Examples:
* Converting MOV to FLV using FFMPEG
ffmpeg -i movie1.mov movie1.flv
This will convert movie1.mov file to movie1.flv

* Converting Mpeg to FLV using FFMPEG
ffmpeg -i movie1.mpeg movie1.flv
This will convert movie1.mpeg file to movie1.flv

* Converting AVI to FLV using FFMPEG
ffmpeg -i movie1.avi -s 500×500 movie1.flv
This will convert movie1.avi file to movie1.flv and will resize the video resolution to 500×500

* Converting 3GP to FLV using FFMPEG
ffmpeg -i movie1.3gp -sameq -an movie1.flv
This will convert movie1.3gp file to movie1.flv and will keep the original file settings and will disable the audio content

* Converting MPEG to 3GP using FFMPEG
ffmpeg -i movie1.mpeg -ab 8.85k -acodec libamr_wb -ac 1 -ar 16000 -vcodec h263 -s qcif movie2.3gp

* FFV1 Encoding
ffmpeg -i -vcodec ffv1 -an output.mov

* Converting flv to mpg using FFMPEG
ffmpeg -i myvideo.flv -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320x240 myvideo.mpg

Audio Examples:
* Converting aac to mp3 using FFMPEG with MetaData
ffmpeg -i audio1.aac -ar 22050 -ab 32 -map_meta_data audio1.mp3:audio1.aac audio1.mp3
This will convert audio1.aac to audio1.mp3 having audio rate 22.05 Khz and Audio BitRate 32Khz and will copy the meta data from .aac file to .mp3 file

* Converting WMV to MP3 using FFMPEG
ffmpeg -i audio1.wmv audio1.mp3
This will convert audio1.wmv file to audio1.mp3

* Converting WMV to FLV using FFMPEG
ffmpeg -i audio1.wmv audio1.flv
This will convert audio1.wmv file to audio1.flv, this will generate only audio content

* Converting AMR to MP3 using FFMPEG
ffmpeg -i audio1.amr -ar 22050 audio1.mp3
This will convert audio1.amr file to audio1.mp3 having audio rate 22.05 Khz

* Converting aac to mp3 using FFMPEG
ffmpeg -i audio1.aac -ar 22050 -ab 32 audio1.mp3
This will convert audio1.aac to audio1.mp3 having audio rate 22.05 Khz and Audio BitRate 32Khz

* Rip MP3 From Video
ffmpeg -i movie.flv -vn -acodec copy movie.mp3

Few OpenSuSe mirrors to serve Indian requests

Recently, it became evident that users in India don’t get good mirrors. This was solved by configuring a few German and US mirrors to serve users from India.

Courtesy of Adrian Reber from Esslingen University of Applied Sciences, there is an illustrative screenshot that visualizes the efficacy of this. The world map shows accesses to their openSUSE mirror by country (live view). In openSUSE’s MirrorBrain configuration, this mirror is set up to receive German, Danish, Polish, and Indian requests.

The background is that India has bad connectivity to neighbouring countries, but good connection to German and US mirrors. Therefore, now a few German and US mirrors are configured to serve India. The screenshot below demonstrates this for the mirror of the Esslingen University of Applied Sciences:

The world map clearly shows how the mirror gets nearly exclusively German requests, as well as those from India. The same happens for some other German and some US mirrors.

Note that if a mirror in India should become available (would be nice!), it would automatically be preferred, and the other mirrors become fall-back mirrors.

Convert CHM files to HTML / PDF

Now by default Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions do not include support for opening (.chm) files out of box owing to CHM file being proprietary file format of Windows operating system. There are viewers available on Linux which allows you to open these files , as i had highlighted in my previous article (Read Here ). Still if you want to convert (.chm) files to (.html) or (.pdf) , maybe for sending them to your friend who does not have this chm viewer installed you can do so easily .

First open Terminal from (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal ) and issue the following command to install chmlib

sudo apt-get install libchm-bin

chmlib allows extracting HTML files and images from (.chm) files. Now if you want to convert extracted HTML files into PDF, PS etc , you would need to install htmldoc which you could install easily by issuing the following command in the terminal window :

sudo apt-get install htmldoc

Converting CHM files to HTML and eventually PDF

Now suppose you have a file named "Primer.chm" from which you want to extract HTML files and images into "Primer" directory , you could do so easily by issuing the following command in the terminal window :

extract_chmLib Primer.chm Primer

This should quickly extract all the HTML files and associated images from the chm file and put it into Primer directory.

Now once you have extracted the HTML , you are ready to convert them and combine them into a single (.pdf) file . Open the Terminal Window (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal ) and issue the following command in the terminal window to launch "htmldoc"

htmldoc

Once htmldoc finishes loading its interface ,click on Continuous radio button and press "Add Files..." and add all the files you would like to combine into single PDF document, as shown in image below :

After choosing all the HTML files you would like to combine , click on the "output" tab and chose output file type to be PDF and the name and location of the finally generated PDF file.If you want you could change compression level , whether you want output to be in Grayscale etc .
Finally press the "Generate" button to actually start the process of combining (.html ) files with their images into single (.pdf) file .

Files being combined into single (.pdf) file

The entire process of combining (.html) files into (.pdf) files should not take more than few minutes , infact on my Core 2 Duo based laptop entire process of combining about 1000 page long book in HTML format to PDF format took 4 minutes.

Repository List for Jaunty Jackalope

Here is the content sources.list through which you can install any necessary applications. So delete the whole content of your sources list and replace it with the this content (below).
Save it. Go to the Terminal and type:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

# Repository List based on standard Jaunty with many extra packages
#
# If you get errors about missing keys, lookup the key in this file
# and run these commands (replace KEY with the key number):
#
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com KEY

# Ubuntu supported packages
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty main restricted multiverse universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-updates main restricted multiverse universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty main restricted multiverse universe
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-updates main restricted multiverse universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-proposed main restricted universe multiverse

#Canonical Commercial Repository
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty partner
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-backports partner
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-updates partner
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-security partner
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-proposed partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-backports partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-updates partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-security partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-proposed partner

#gnome-globalmenu
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 7889D725DA6DEEAA
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/globalmenu-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#chromium-browser
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 5A9BF3BB4E5E17B5
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#opera
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 033431536A423791
deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ lenny non-free

#skype
deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian stable non-free

#firefox
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 632D16BB0C713DA6
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#gnome-do
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 28A8205077558DD0
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#compiz-fusion
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2ED6BB6042C24D89
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/compiz/ubuntu jaunty main

#google
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com A040830F7FAC5991
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free

#shutter
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/shutter/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#medibuntu
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2EBC26B60C5A2783
deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ jaunty free non-free
deb-src http://packages.medibuntu.org/ jaunty free non-free

# MySQL Workbench
deb ftp://ftp.mysql.com/pub/mysql/download/gui-tools/ubuntu/ binary/
deb-src ftp://ftp.mysql.com/pub/mysql/download/gui-tools/ubuntu/ source/

# Virtualbox
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com DCF9F87B6DFBCBAE
deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian jaunty non-free

# PlayOnLinux
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com FC6D7D9D009ED615
deb http://deb.playonlinux.com/ jaunty main

# Ubuntu tweak
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 6AF0E1940624A220
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/ubuntu jaunty main

# disper tool multiple graphical displays
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 66D5C734F6EFB904
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/wvengen/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/wvengen/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#nautilus-dropbox
deb http://linux.getdropbox.com/ubuntu jaunty main

#Drizzle
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/drizzle-developers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/drizzle-developers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#subversion 1.6
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 6298AD34413576CB
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/anders-kaseorg/subversion-1.6/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/anders-kaseorg/subversion-1.6/ubuntu jaunty main

#pidgin
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 7FB8BEE0A1F196A8
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#wine
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 58403026387EE263
deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt jaunty main

#gnome-colors theme
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2D79F61BE8D31A30
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome-colors-packagers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome-colors-packagers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#vlc 1
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com D739676F7613768D
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/c-korn/vlc/ubuntu jaunty main

Search Google Using UNIX Command Line Shell - Goosh

"Stefan Grothkopp has come up with a pretty neat tool called goosh. It's essentially a browser-oriented, shell-like interface that allows you to quickly search Google (and images and news) and Wikipedia and get information in a text-only format.

The interface looks quite similar to a Unix Shell and can be easily adapted by anyone who is bored using the normal web browser way of searching.

All you get is a blank screen and a prompt to enter commands. This command prompt behaves as both search box and control button. For example, if you have entered linux and pressed enter, you will be having Google search results for linux. To search, linux in Wikipedia, you will have to enter wiki linux in command prompt. Type h or help to get list of other available commands, like images to search for images only or lucky which acts like I’m feeling lucky button.

Enable tapping the touchpad in Fedora 11 [ My Synaptics touchpad won't tap -to- click or scroll ]

For those who want their touch pad enabled with tapping there is a very simple method, something that just slipped my eye. It is so simple that makes me want to kick my self. Just click on System menu -> Preferences -> Mouse. Clicking on the Touchpad tab should open a window as below:

Well then just enable your choice by ticking the options and you have them by default.

Convert text files to MP3 under Linux

First we would need to install festival. We can install festival with the following command :

sudo apt-get install festival

Now we need to install voices which would be used to dictate the text (install any one of the following ) :

To install British Accented male voice issue the following command :

sudo apt-get install festvox-rablpc16k

To install American Accented male voice issue the following command:

sudo apt-get install festival festvox-kallpc16k

Now once you have installed festival and voice package we are ready to convert text files .wav files .

Lets say you want computer to read file named kaddu.txt you would need to pipe(send output of one command to other ) the cat command to festival. You can do so by issuing the following command :

cat -A kaddu.txt | festival --tts

Now instead if you want to convert kaddu.txt to kaddu.wav you can do so by piping the output of cat to a tool that comes with festival text2wave. You can do so by issuing the following command in the terminal window :

cat -A kaddu.txt | text2wave -o kaddu.wav

Now however if you want to remove special characters and want festival/text2wav to read only a to z,A to Z, space, “,”,”.”,”!”,”?”. You can do so by piping the output of cat to sed and then piping the output of sed to text2wav/festival.

cat kaddu.txt |sed 's/[^a-zA-Z .,!?]//g'|festival --tts

or

cat kaddu.txt|sed 's/[^a-zA-Z .,!?]//g'|text2wave -o kaddu.wav

Now the (.wav) file produced is uncompressed and are huge in size so you might like to convert it to mp3 to reduce it's size and to allow the files to be played on iPod or any other mp3 player. You can convert .wav files easily to (.mp3) file format by using lame .

To install lame issue the following command in the terminal window :

sudo apt-get install lame

after istallation is over to convert say kaddu.wav to kaddu.mp3 issue the following command :

lame -f kaddu.wav kaddu.mp3

OpenSource HTTP Load Tester and Benchmarking Utility - Siege

Siege is an open source stress / regression test and benchmark utility. It can stress a single URL with a user defined number of simulated users or it can read many URLs into memory and stress them simultaneously.

Siege reports the total number of hits recorded, bytes transferred, response time, concurrency, and return status. Most features are configurable with command line options which also include default values to minimize the complexity of the program's invocation.

Siege allows you to stress a web server with 'n' number of users for 't' number of times, where n and t are defined by the user. It records the duration time of the test as well as the duration of each single transaction.

Siege reports the number of transactions, elapsed time, bytes transferred, response time, transaction rate, concurrency and the number of times the server responded OK, that is status code 200. Siege was designed and implemented by Jeffrey Fulmer in his position as Webmaster for Armstrong World Industries.

The latest version of siege can be obtained via anonymous ftp: siege-latest.tar.gz

Installation:
Extract the source code using command: tar -zxvf siege-latest.tar.gz

$ ./configure
--with-ssl=/some/dir -- where dir is where you installed ssl, this flag is used to enable https protocol.
$ make
$ make uninstall (if you have an older version installed in PREFIX)
$ make install

Using: Here is the simple example of using siege

# siege --concurrent=50 --internet --benchmark --time=20m http://www.someurl.com/index.html

Check siege man pages for more options

Scan for Viruses under Linux with AVG Free Antivirus

Most of us run multiple Operating Systems on our PC's and are connected to LAN with machines running different Operating Systems. Now, Linux even though is sort of immune to viruses (there are few viruses, and Linux can get infected ) most of Desktop Linux users don't need Anti virus tool, but there are people who run Windows and there are umpteen number of Viruses, Worms and Trojans for Windows and removing them can be difficult.

Running Antivirus tool on Linux can be especially helpful in such cases , searching and removing viruses from a different Operating System would definitely help speed up the process and prevent Viruses from interfering with AntiVirus's scan process, also for PC's connected to LAN, Anti virus for Linux could detect any virus laden file transfer prompting one to take appropriate action and prevent virus from spreading to other PC's on the LAN.

There are couple of AntiVirus tool available on Linux, and in this article I would look into AVG Free Antivirus, which is one of the most user friendly of the Lot and offers a simple , intuitive interface.

Installing AVG Free Antivirus on Ubuntu

AVG provides a debian package along with packages for other distributions that you can download from this site , Or if you are on Ubuntu you can issue the following command in the Terminal (Application -> Accessories -> Terminal ) window to install AVG Free Antivirus.

wget http://www.avg.com/filedir/inst/avg75fld-r51-a1243.i386.deb

and

sudo dpkg -i avg75fld-r51-a1243.i386.deb

Finally , Once you have install AVG Free launch it's GUI Frontend from (Applications -> Accessories -> AVG for Linux Workstation ).

AVG Antivirus Linux Frontend

The AVG Free version that you have downloaded and installed contains Old Virus definitions and needs to be updated which you can easily do by clicking on the Update button.

AVG Antivirus Updating itself

Now, once AVG has updated itself you can start scanning your drive for Viruses. You might though like to configure few of AVG Antivirus settings which you can do easily from (Service -> Program Settings ).
Different AVG Antivirus settings

To scan click on the Test button and select the folder/drive you want to scan. However , one thing I disliked about AVG Free anti virus was that it does not offer any option to remove scanned Viruses ( You would have to buy a commercial version of the AVG to enable removing of viruses). You would either have to go to the path and delete the infected file yourself or use some other Virus scanner on Windows to remove viruses. I looked into the manual for options to enable removing viruses or at least quarantining infected file and found we could do by modifying configuration file , I tried on my system but it sadly did not work.

Scanning for viruses , and final test result.

The Test result of Virus scan are stored with names of virus , date/time and location where virus was found stored in the database. The Test Result can be accessed by clicking on Test Result button in the front end of AVG.

Virus Scan test result archive

Conclusion : Antivirus on Linux is not essential, still it is useful addition to your desktop arsenal especially if you are computer is part of a network with Windows computers. AVG Free though is limited with its lack of ability to disinfect virus laden files, still AVG Free is one of the most user friendly Antivirus solution available on the Linux platform.

Configuring Reliance NetConnect on Ubuntu 9.04

Installing wvdial

wvdial is dialer that allows you to connect to internet through a modem establishing a point to point link. Now for some strange reason( or perhaps because few people actually use dial up based internet connection) wvdial is not bundled with Ubuntu 9.04.

If you have access to internet, you can install wvdial by issuing this command in the terminal window:

sudo apt-get install wvdial

However, if you don't have access to internet on the machine you want to configure Reliance Netconnect on, download these packages from machine that has access to internet and install them by issuing the following command.

1. http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/libxplc0.3.13/download
2. http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/libwvstreams4.4-base/download
3. http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/libwvstreams4.4-extras/download
4. http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/libuniconf4.4/download
5. http://packages.debian.org/lenny/i386/wvdial/download

or you could download a zip file containing all these packages (has been hosted by some user , so download at your own risk) from this site.

Put all these packages in a folder (or extract the zip file , if you happen to download zip file instead) and issue the following command in that directory to install.

sudo dpkg -i *

Configuring wvdial

Now , we need to configure wvdial to connect to Reliance Netconnect; to do so open gedit or any other editor you like and modify the wvdial.conf file.

sudo gedit /etc/wvdial.conf

it should have default settings and section, don't modify them and instead add the following section:

[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Baud = 9600
New PPPD = yes
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
ISDN = 0

[Dialer netconnect]
Username = ( Add your Phone Number here)
Password = ( Add your phone number here)
Phone = #777
Stupid Mode = 1
Inherits = Modem0

Replace your Phone number with your actual phone number , like 93102xxxx and save the configuration file.

Now, once you are done configuring wvdial, connect by issuing the following command:
sudo wvdial netconnect and wait for pppd to start, once connection has been successful you should see local ip address , remote IP address and address of DNS servers on the screen. To disconnect , press Ctrl+C in the terminal window where you had connected.

HowTo Install Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey on Ubuntu using Ubuntuzilla

Ubuntuzilla allows the user to install the latest versions of Firefox, SeaMonkey, and Thunderbird on Ubuntu OS.

The Ubuntuzilla software is a python script that allows the user to install the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla SeaMonkey, and Mozilla Thunderbird on Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntuzilla has a support forum on the Ubuntu Forums in the 3rd party projects area, which you are encouraged to use if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions.

Here are some key features of "Ubuntuzilla":
* Automatically detects and downloads the newest Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey release from the Mozilla servers
* Allows you to make a choice of language for Firefox or Thunderbird
* Verifies the GPG signature (assures package integrity against malicious tampering or corrupt download) for Firefox or Thunderbird
* Verifies the MD5 sum for SeaMonkey
* Makes a date-stamped back-up of your Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey profile data
* Automatically integrates Firefox plugins that you have installed from the Ubuntu repositories
* Installs the new Firefox in /opt/firefox, Thunderbird in /opt/thunderbird, SeaMonkey in /opt/seamonkey
* Creates a SeaMonkey menu item in ''Applications -> Internet'' menu
* Checks all steps for successful execution
* Has a 'remove' action to remove the official Mozilla build and restore system to pre-installation state.
* Installs an update checker job that periodically performs automatic checks for new versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, or Seamonkey.
* Automatically checks for the latest Ubuntuzilla release and updates itself, to keep up with possible changes in the Mozilla website and release servers.
* Comes conveniently packaged in a .deb for easy installation
* Includes a very helpful man page, for those who don't like to read websites.

Install Ubuntuzilla
Install Dependencies: sudo apt-get install libstdc++5 libnotify-bin
Download deb package for Ubuntuzilla.
Double click to install the package. You can also use terminal to do the installation.

sudo dpkg -i /path/to/ubuntuzilla-4.6.1-0ubuntu1-i386.deb

Installing Firefox in Ubuntu
You’ll need to use a terminal to let Ubuntuzilla guide you through the installation.
Run this command to start: ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p firefox

Near the end of the process you should see The new Firefox version 3.5 has been installed successfully. Similarly if you want to install thunderbird or seamonkey, use following command

ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p thunderbird
ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p seamonkey

Removal:
Enter this command to run the script (choose one depending on which software you want to remove; copy and paste to avoid typos):

ubuntuzilla.py -a remove -p firefox
ubuntuzilla.py -a remove -p thunderbird
ubuntuzilla.py -a remove -p seamonkey

Updates
To install the automatic update checker, just run the installation, follow the prompts at the end of installation and choose 'yes' to enable automatic update checking. If you have already installed the Mozilla software at an earlier time, and just want to enable the automatic update checking, you can run Ubuntuzilla with action "installupdater" to install the updater job separately. Use the following command (choose one depending on which software you want to check for updates; copy and paste to avoid typos):

ubuntuzilla.py -a installupdater -p firefox
ubuntuzilla.py -a installupdater -p thunderbird
ubuntuzilla.py -a installupdater -p seamonkey

Open Source Java Library for Bluetooth - BlueCove

BlueCove is a JSR-82 J2SE

implementation that currently interfaces with the Mac OS X, WIDCOMM, BlueSoleil and Microsoft Bluetooth stack found in Windows XP SP2 and newer. Originally developed by Intel Research and currently maintained by volunteers.

BlueCove runs on any JVM starting from version 1.1 or newer on Windows Mobile, Windows XP and Windows Vista Mac OS X. Since version 2.1 BlueCove distributed under the Apache Software License, Version 2.0.

Linux BlueZ support added in BlueCove version 2.0.3 as additional GPL licensed module

Installation

BlueCove rely upon already installed native Bluetooth stack that comes with you operating system or Bluetooth USB device.

Installation of the binary (already compiled) version of BlueCove is as follows:

Download BlueCove binary release

Add bluecove.jar to your classpath

Also add bluecove-gpl.jar to your classpath if you are running application on Linux

Pidgin 2.6.0 Has Voice and Video Support

Pidgin users have a lot of things to be happy about with the release of the 2.6.0 version of their favorite instant messaging application
, announced this morning by John Bailey. Thanks to the hard work of developers and contributors, the new release has a plethora of new features, about 221 bug fixes, all listed in a changelog so big that it makes you think about Christmas wish lists.

For the video and audio part we have Mike Ruprecht to thank, who started to implement these features back in 2008, in a Google Summer of Code project, so it was a lot of work
to get this far. For now, support for these functions is available only for XMPP, but the developers are working to bring at least partial support to the other protocols that Pidgin uses.

Another Summer of Code project that only now reached maturity was led by Justin Rodriguez, who worked on adding theme support for libpurple and Pidgin. So, from now on, you will be able to theme your buddy list, the status icons or the sound scheme.

Yahoo users have a lot to be happy about, especially if they're on the Japanese part of the network. Support for Yahoo Japan has been moved into a separate plugin, so from now on you can be logged in both parts of the network with the same id. Also, SMS support is available in this version, along with peer-to-peer file transfer support to fix all those pesky problems that Pidgin had when moving large files over Yahoo. Moreover, it's now possible to add MSN buddies, but that feature won't reach prime-time until Pidgin 3.0.0. For all of these we have Sulabh Mahajan to thank, another Summer of Code student from 2008.

Don't think that XMPP voice and video support is all that users of this instant messaging protocol will get. On top of that, buddy icon support (avatar) support is here, along with a service discovery browser plugin, custom smiley support, "buzzing" capabilities, idle time reporting, an alternative method for file transfers and, of course, many other bug fixes and enhancements.

Finch, Pidgin's text-mode counterpart, received some attention too. It now has a TinyURL plugin for URL shortening and some important bugfixes.

Howto label Linux partition

In linux, to label a partition, there are 3 tools that can be used. The tools are e2label, tune2fs and mke2fs.

To use e2label to label the second partition of the first hardisk with label DATA:
# e2label /dev/sda2 DATA

To use tune2fs to do the similar job as above:
# tune2fs -L DATA /dev/sda2

The third tool, mke2fs is actually a tool to build ext2/ext3 filesystem. So, if you want to build the partition's filesystem as ext2/ext3 and at the same time label it, this command can be used. Be careful though, because it will delete all existing data on that particular partition
# mke2fs -L DATA /dev/sda2

To view the label that you have set, there are 3 ways which are using e2label, blkid and viewing /dev/disk/by-label.

To check using e2label:
# e2label /dev/sda2
DATA

blkid tool is even more useful, because it can list out all the partitions that you have in the machine together with their labels,uuid and filesystem type:
# blkid
/dev/sda1: LABEL="/" UUID="1CC08F13C08EF276" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="DATA" UUID="2063f830-fe5d-438e-b727-571b313cb89e" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda3: TYPE="swap" LABEL="SWAP" UUID="3e266b53-42e0-4f09-8fe3-d1cf79cb5d37"

To view the /dev/disk/by-label
# ls -l /dev/disk/by-label
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-07-24 05:38 / -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-07-24 05:38 DATA -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-07-24 05:38 SWAP -> ../../sda3

Note that the label will stay with the partition although the disk is moved to another computer.

To use it in /etc/fstab:
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=DATA /DATA ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=SWAP swap swap defaults 0 0

Creating Magazines, Newspapers, Posters, Calendars and other printed publication - Scribus

Scribus is a desktop publishing (DTP) application, released under the GNU General Public License as free software. It is based on the free Qt toolkit, therefore native versions are available for Linux, Unix-like, Mac OS X, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows. It is known for its broad set of page layout features comparable to leading non-free applications such as Adobe PageMaker, PagePlus, QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign.

Scribus is designed for flexible layout and typesetting and the ability to prepare files for professional quality image setting equipment. It can also create animated and interactive PDF presentations and forms. Example uses include writing small newspapers, brochures, newsletters, posters and books.

Installation of Scribus
The installation process of Scribus depends on the distribution of Linux/Unix that you are using. This is the case just like it is for any program you may wish to install. The following are examples for how to install Scribus on various distributions:

Linux Distribution	Install Method
Debian	apt-get install scribus or preferably use one of the graphical front-ends such as "Synaptic" that handle "Recommends" correctly. For further information please read How to use the Scribus Debian Repository
Gentoo	emerge scribus
PLD	poldek -i scribus
RedHat/Fedora	rpm -Uvh ./scribus-1.x.rpm
Slackware	Install from source, until 1.2 is part of Slackware
SuSE	Use Yast2 for installation, OR, rpm -Uvh ./scribus-1.x.rpm
Other OS	Install Method
FreeBSD	cd /usr/ports/print/scribus; make install
Mac OSX	Please refer to the Cross Platform section
Windows™	Please refer to the Cross Platform section

Depending on the version of your distribution, there is the possiblity that you may need to upgrade various dependencies of Scribus and the above commands should make sure the required packages are installed.

Optimize the disk space by removing unnecessary locale data - localepurge

The package localepurge (version 0.5.9) is just a simple script to recover disk space wasted for unneeded locale files and localized man pages (interpret - language files). After first use, it will automatically be invoked upon completion of any apt installation run.

Note: This tool is a hack which is *not* integrated with Debian based package management systems and therefore is not for the faint of heart. This program interferes with the Debian based package management and can provoke strange, but usually harmless, behavior of programs related with apt/dpkg like dpkg-repack, debsums, reportbug, etc. Responsibility for its usage and possible breakage of your system therefore lies in the sysadmin's (your) hands.

However, this very easy and simple script can and will save you a few hundred megabytes of hard drive space.

Each and every application or package that you install on your system usually contain many locales (language files) which are not the language you understand or use daily. these locales data are installed by default and can takes up hundreds of megabytes of hard drive space, depending on which application or package you install.

so why let these useless data files reside on our system? we do not need them so let's purge them:

From a terminal, type: sudo apt-get install localepurge

During the install, you will receive a prompt for your language. The language selections are in two digit codes, (for example: “en” for English.) scroll down to your language and once it's highlighted, click the “space bar” to select it. Note: You may see several entries for your language, you only need to select the top most entry.)

Once localepurge has finished installing, from the same terminal, type: sudo localepurge

It will run and inform you how much space it just saved you.

That's it, one single line to install localepurge. After the first run, it will automatically remove unnecessary locale data files whenever you install new applications or packages without your intervention.

Monitor Changes to Files/Folders/Process/Website/Email etc .. using Specto

Specto is a desktop application that will watch configurable events (such as website updates, emails, file and folder changes, system processes, etc) and then trigger notifications.

For example, Specto can watch a website for updates (or a syndication feed, or an image, etc), and notify you when there is activity (otherwise, Specto will just stay out of the way). This changes the way you work, because you can be informed of events instead of having to look out for them.

Installation:
OpenSuSe user can use "1-click" installer to install Specto
OpenSuSe 11.1 - Here

After successful installation go to terminal and type command: specto to start the application

Specto interface is clean and simple which makes it easy to use and add the events that needs to be monitor, any changes to the events (like file got modified or folder got deleted etc ..) make specto to trigger the notification on your system tray, something like ...

Fast & Simple way to Share Files and Folders - Meiga

Of course, Meiga goal is not to replace Samba. Samba is a mature file sharing technology for Local Area Networks, but it’s a little bit inconvenient for sharing files to the Internet.

I’m sure you’ve experienced problems with Samba more than one time, specially *that* time when you want to share some pictures to a friend with a laptop in the same room as you. Wouldn’t be convenient just to have a small webserver and tell him/her “hey, just go to http://192.168.1.1:8001/pictures“? That’s what Meiga does (by the moment).

In addition, you can do the same but sharing to the Internet if you have an UPnP capable router. You don’t need to bother about port redirections, configurations or computer not finding themselves in the network. Just share, copy the address (with the copy icon) and paste it on a chat or IM. That’s all.

Meiga is lightweight, easy to use, network friendly and also application friendly. It's written in a mix of Vala and pure C code, using existing Gnome technologies to perform its tasks: libsoup is used as a simpler alternative to fat web servers, libgupnp is in charge of doing port redirections if the network router supports UPnP, and DBUS exposes a public API to allow the GUI and third party applications to control what is served. Some advanced publishing features are already implemented, like the feed server that can render an RSS view of a given directory.

Installation:
Ubuntu Hardy (i386): meiga_0.2.1-1_i386.deb
Ubuntu Intrepid (i386): meiga_0.2.1-1_i386.deb
Ubuntu Jaunty (i386): meiga_0.2.1-1_i386.deb

Linux "VISA" Credit Card

Use your Linux VISA card for everyday purchases, just as you would any card. Each time you buy lunch, gas, a new game box, or a big screen: a portion of your “cardholder rewards” becomes a charitable donation to Free and OpenSource Software(F/OSS). All at no cost to you. By combining the “rewards” from thousands of cardholders, Linux Fund has distributed over half a million dollars in grants to F/OSS projects since 1999.

Linux Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides financial and advisory support to the free and open software community. Linux Fund has given away over 3/4 million dollars to open source events and development since its founding in 1999 using funds earned by its line of rewards credit cards and direct donations.

Prior to receiving the 501(c)(3) letter, the principal funding source had been an affinity credit card program with credit cards bearing a graphic of Tux, the Linux Penguin. Visa cards are currently offered in the USA by US Bank, and a Master Card is offered in Canada by MBNA/Bank of America of Canada.

Check more at: http://www.linuxfund.org/

SQL client and front-end for multiple database- crunchyfrog

CrunchyFrog is a SQL client and schema browser mainly (but not solely) for the GNOME desktop. It's written in Python (PyGTK) and licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.

Features
* Supports various databases (PostreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, Oracle ,sqlserver, Firebird, Informix, MaxDB).
* Lightweight user interface for daily tasks.
* Sql editor with syntax highlighting, auto completion and SQL formatting.
* Export results to CSV and OpenOffice.
* Inspect database objects.
* Supports multiple database connections at once (e.g. for switching between development and production environments).

Ubuntu / Debian:
To install CrunchyFrog add the following lines to /etc/apt/source.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/crunchyfrog/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/crunchyfrog/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Replace "jaunty" with "intrepid" or "karmic" if you're running Intrepid or karmic.

To import the repositories GPG key:
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 266d5f41c7f166d8

Finally to install CrunchyFrog run:
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install crunchyfrog crunchyfrog-gnome

How to Install Perl modules

The simplest way to get Perl modules installed is to use the CPAN module itself. If you are the system administrator and want to install the module system-wide, you'll need to switch to your root user. To fire up the CPAN module, just get to your command line and run this:

# perl -MCPAN -e shell

If this is the first time you've run CPAN, it's going to ask you a series of questions - in most cases the default answer is fine and finally you should see the cpan> command prompt, installing a module is as easy as install MODULE::NAME - for example, to install the HTML::Template module you'd type:

cpan> install HTML::Template

CPAN should take it from there and you'll wind up with the module installed into your Perl library.

Another way -- Let's say you're on your system command line and you just want to install a module as quickly as possible - you can run the Perl CPAN module via command line perl and get it installed in a single line:

# perl -MCPAN -e 'install HTML::Template'

Another way -- is to grab the required file using wget. Next you'll want to unzip it with something like:

# tar -zxvf HTML-Template-2.8.tar.gz

This will unzip the module into a directory, then you can move in and look for the README or INSTALL files. In most cases, installing a module by hand is still pretty easy, though (although not as easy as CPAN). Once you've switched into the base directory for the module, you should be able to get it installed by typing:

# perl Makefile.PL
# make
# make test
# make install

HowTo create Ubuntu Bootable USB Flash Drive - uSbuntu

uSbuntu Live Creator is a free program for windows will allow users to easily create a bootable USB key with Ubuntu on it.

uSbuntu Live Creator also offers an exclusive option of automatic virtualization to launch directly Ubuntu in Windows without any configuration nor installation.

Anybody can use uSbuntu Live Creator. It's really easy to use and you don't have to be a computer geek

Features of "uSbuntu Live Creator":
· Create bootable USB device from Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu
· Enable persistency of your data
· Launch Ubuntu directly in Windows with a special Portable VirtualBox
· Hide created files on the key
· Automatically configure keyboards (supports French, canadian and US keyboards)

Requirements:
· 256 MB free RAM memory
· Local admin privileges to launch VirtualBox

Improvements :
· Supports Ubuntu 9.04, Linux and CrunchBang
· Creating a contextual menu to launch uSbuntu
· New language available : Italian
· Updated VirtualBox to version 2.2.0
· Great improvement of the launchers for VirtualBox
· Native creation of VMDK
· Formatting time is now adaptive
· A special crash log are created after a crash

Download uSbuntu Live Creator 1.5 for Windows and Instantly Create Ubuntu bootable USB flash drive.

step 1 : launch the uSbuntu Live Creator and choose a USB key or drive in the list
step 2 : select a ISO file or CD of Ubuntu/KubuntuXubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
step 3 : choose the size of persistency data (usually more than 250MB)
step 4 : check the options you want
step 5 : click the thunder to start the creation