If you don’t fancy carrying the delicate Ubuntu installation CD around with you, you can copy its contents to a USB key stick and use that to install Ubuntu onto computers (provided those computers can boot from USB, and most modern computers will be able to).
If you opt to share folders across a network under Ubuntu you’ll find they’re protected with your username and password, which you might not want to share with others. The Shared Folders dialog box allows you to setup guest access but, at the time of writing, this had a serious
bug that rendered it unusable.
Several of my computers sometimes mysteriously lose minutes when switched off, so that the time they display slowly becomes more and more behind. Luckily I have Ubuntu installed. This can periodically synchronize with the main Ubuntu time server, and thus never let the computers get out of step with the rest of the world.
Both the color scheme and font of GNOME Terminal can be tweaked. This can be a good way of improving legibility and also the amount of space GNOME Terminal hogs on-screen, because a smaller font size makes the window smaller too.
If you’ve got a notebook computer, you might be used to edge scroll on the touchpad when running Windows. This is where the right-hand edge of the notebook’s touchpad is used as a virtual scrollbar - by running a finger up and down, the currently active window scrolls up and down correspondingly.
Most fonts contain within them “hints” laid down by their designer about how they should look on-screen. However, Ubuntu ignores them and uses a system called autohinting, which improvises the hints based on the shape of the letters.
Sometimes if you’re trying to help somebody fix a problem you’ll have to tell them how to install software. Yet for some Ubuntu newbies even this can be confusing. The solution is to create a “software install” hyperlink within a web page (such as a forum posting), new email window or Pidgin message window.
It’s a myth to say that Ubuntu (or any Linux) needs a swap partition. This is certainly the preferred way of working, and is most efficient, but Linux can also use a single swap file located in the root partition, just like Windows or Mac OS X.
While Zip is the main compression file format used on most desktop computers, some people prefer to use the RAR format.
Gedit shouldn’t really be used for printing stuff out. That kind of thing is better handled by OpenOffice.org. But if you occasionally run off a quick block of text, or look at hard copy of some code, you’ll havenoticed that Gedit always prints in Monospace font, even if you’ve set the screen font to something else in Edit → Preferences.
Ubuntu includes a software called readahead that, according to the official blurb, “allows the user to specify a set of files to be read into the page cache to accelerate first time loading of programs”.
Whenever Ubuntu boots it runs several scripts that start necessary background services. By default these are set to run one-by-one.
If you dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows on your computer the boot menu appears for 10 seconds, during which you can select either Windows or Ubuntu. If you only have Ubuntu installed, a prompt appears for three seconds telling you that you can hit a key to see the boot menu.
I’ve nothing against a blinking cursor myself but some find it distracting. To stop Ubuntu’s block blinking, open gconf-editor and navigate to /desktop/gnome/interface and remove the check from cursor_blink. The log out and back in again. Note that Evolution appears to ignore this setting, but most other applications will now have a still cursor.
If you have an external monitor or projector that you occasionally attach to a notebook computer, you might be used to switching resolutions on a regular basis. Unlike with Windows, this isn’t just a right-click procedure - you must navigate the System → Preferences menu.
Both Totem and RhythmBox include a funky animation that appears during music playback. Animations such as this are known as visualizations, but out-of-the-box Ubuntu only includes one, rather than the hundreds found on the likes of Mac OS or Windows media players.
NetworkManager will automatically detect and configure your wireless connections, as will KNetworkManager. However, you can manually configure your connections with wireless tools such as Network Manager Editor and iwconfig. Wireless configuration makes use of the same set of wireless extensions in the Ubuntu main repository, wireless-tools package.
If you have a dual-boot system that runs both Windows and Linux on the same machine, you may need to reinstall your GRUB boot loader. This problem occurs if your Windows system completely crashes beyond repair and you have to install a new version of Windows, or you are adding Windows to your machine after having installed Linux.
The command-line includes a powerful history feature that can make life much easier. To see the recently typed commands, type history. This simply dumps to screen a hidden file in your /home directory called .bash_history where up to 1000 commands are recorded.
The easiest way of setting your own picture as a desktop wallpaper is to click and drag the image to the desktop using the middle mouse button (if the image is already on the desktop then click and drag it a few inches to the left/right). On most modern mice, the middle mouse button is the scroll-wheel, which also doubles as a third mouse button.
Some networks in offices require that you use a web proxy (often referred to as an HTTP proxy). A proxy is a server computer that provides additional security by providing a single portal to all web pages. It also helps speed up Internet access by storing frequently accessed pages. This means that if ten people request the same web page, there's no need to get the same ten pieces of data from the Internet. The proxy computer can send them its own copies.
When using Windows, you might have come across Device Manager, the handy tool that lists your PC's hardware. Ubuntu offers a similar piece of software, but it isn't installed by default.
Windows works on the premise of everything taking place on top of a single desktop. When you start a new program, it runs on top of the desktop, effectively covering up the desktop. In fact, all programs are run on this desktop, so it can get a bit confusing when you have more than a couple of programs running at the same time. Which Microsoft Word window contains the document you're working on, rather than the one you've opened to take notes from? Where is that My Computer window you were using to copy files?
A wireless (Wi-Fi) network is, as its name suggests, a network that does away with cabling and uses radio frequencies to communicate. It's more common for notebooks and handheld computers to use wireless connections, but some desktop computers also do. Indeed, it's increasingly the case that many workplaces are switching to wireless networking, eschewing old-fashioned, cable-based networking.
Problems might also occur after you install Ubuntu. This section addresses several possible postinstallation problems. This section covers only problems that appear immediately after installation - those that prevent Ubuntu from working correctly immediately after its first boot.
Ethernet is one of the oldest and most established network technologies. When we talk of Ethernet, we refer to wired networks - all the computers on the network are connected by cabling to a central hub or router.
Once the DVD-ROM has booted in live distro mode, and you're run the installation program,
you may get error messages or experience other difficulties. This article offers some solutions
to common installation problems.
If you use an Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection to access your network, you might find that Ubuntu spends a few seconds during each boot acquiring an Internet address. This will be characterized by a long pause while nothing seems to be happening. Therefore, one way to provide an instant speed boost is to give your computer a static IP address.
In our world of high-speed broadband connections, we sometimes forget that a sizable minority of people use telephone dial-up to connect to an ISP.
Some years ago, hardware manufacturers realized that they could produce dial-up modems more cheaply if they shifted the hard work of decoding the signal onto the computer's operating system. With the work off-loaded, the modem’s circuitry could contain fewer and simpler components, thus saving money.