I have moved to Scientific Linux

I am maintaining a forum at http://scientificlinuxforum.org. I will still be adding much for Scientific Linux on this site, and posting relevant information when I get Debian or Ubuntu back on one of my machines. Come visit us if you are a SL user!

Printing from MS Word via CrossOver Office 9.x

Install the following or you won’t be able to print from MS Office (as of this date with LMDE)

apt install libwine-print

this will also install “cups-bsd”. Hope this saves you from banging your head on your desk

HowTO: Install Dropbox in KDE

*****YES, YOU CAN USE DROPBOX IN KDE WITHOUT A KDE CLIENT!!!*****

The filemanager integration (the nautilus-only part) is for putting the little status icons on dropbox files and allowing you to copy the public link, etc. The Dropbox daemon dropboxd is what interfaces with Dropbox the website, and keeps the folders synced; and it is not dependent on nautilus, Gnome, KDE, Dolphin, Konqueror, or anything of the sort. It will work regardless of your DE or FM.

So what do you need to do? Well, it’s quite simple. Download the daemon from http://www.getdropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86 (x86_64 for 64-bit), and extract it to your home directory. It made a hidden folder called .dropbox-dist. Now run ~/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd and that will help you setup your Dropbox account and provide a tray applet (works in KDE, don’t worry) that kindly tells you when it has synced your dropbox folder. That’s it!

Sorry if this is already in an FAQ, KB, or forum post elsewhere. I couldn’t find it, and I wanted to make life easy for my fellow KDE-ers searching for a Dropbox client.

Flashing a DELL BIOS in Ubuntu (or Debian)

This is a guide designed for Dell laptops, netbooks, desktop and workstation machines running Debian GNU/Linux and also Ubuntu. I have tested it on a machine running Debian Lenny i386. There are three logical steps: get all the necessary tools in place, extract the actual BIOS image, and apply the image. For Dell servers, the BIOS images provided by Dell are ready to flash from Linux directly, so the method described here should not be needed.

Before starting
The Dell BIOS updates itself by loading the BIOS ROM image into RAM and warm-booting directly into the flashing program. It keeps the BIOS image to be flashed in RAM. Therefore it is important to reboot the machine instead of powering it off when updating the BIOS so as to not lose the contents of RAM.

First things first
Download the BIOS update .EXE file from Dell’s website. Save it somewhere.

Prerequisites
Get a few packages installed: WINE, smbios-utils/libsmbios-bin, and firmware-addon-dell.

For Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install wine smbios-utils firmware-addon-dell
For Debian:
sudo apt-get install wine libsmbios-bin
Also for Debian, download the firmware-addon-dell package manually from here: http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/all/firmware-addon-dell/download and install manually (the version may change and the file name may be different than in the example):
sudo dpkg -i firmware-addon-dell_2.1.0-0ubuntu2_all.deb
Prepare the system
Load the required kernel module:
sudo modprobe dell_rbu
If you haven’t run WINE before, run winecfg and just exit immediately, it will set up your .wine directory and profile:

winecfg
Extract the actual BIOS image from the .EXE with WINE
Where DELLBIOSUPDATE.EXE is the .EXE file downloaded from Dell’s website:

wine DELLBIOSUPDATE.EXE -writehdrfile -nopause
This will leave a .hdr file with the same name as the .EXE file.
Check the BIOS image and flash it
First check the BIOS image to make sure it is good:
dellBiosUpdate -t -f DELLBIOSUPDATE.hdr
Assuming all is well, apply the update:
dellBiosUpdate -u -f DELLBIOSUPDATE.hdr
Finally, reboot, and the BIOS will be flashed to the new version.

Courtesy of: www.allurgroceries.com

Google Chromium install on Ubuntu Karmic x64

I love Chrome on Windows, and Chromium is useable now on Linux. It’s fast, and I find it pretty stable. Flash works on my Karmic x64, but can be buggy sometimes.

That said, here is how you do it:

First you need edit /etc/apt/sources.list file

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following two lines

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

save and exit the file

Now add the GPG key using the following command

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xfbef0d696de1c72ba5a835fe5a9bf3bb4e5e17b5

Update source list

sudo apt-get update

Install chromium browser using the following command

sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

This will complete the installation and you should have an icon for Chromium in the Internet group on the applications menu.

Thanks to Ubuntu Geek for this information.

Ubuntu Studio -Karmic x64 Screen Capture

I went back to Ubuntu Studio (gnome) because of problems using CXOffice and DropBox in Xfce:

HowTo: Using Drop Box in Xubuntu

[IN PROGRESS...I haven't been able to get this to work yet]

Started working with a new Dell Vostro 1220 laptop, so I decided to install Xubuntu. Keeping my work files in sync is a high priority. Dropbox is designed to work along with Nautilus which is the default file manager in GNOME…and the default window manager in Ubuntu. But not Xubuntu which uses Thunar as it’s file manager.

By following the instructions below you can get Dropbox to work side-by-side with Xfce and Thunar. We will basically just be starting a no-frills instance of Nautilus which causes Dropbox to start. The explanation will mostly be relevant to Ubuntu/Xubuntu users, but can simply be modified to other distros.

Requirements:
Nautilus file manager
Dropbox for Linux
Xfce (4.4+ works best)

Install dropbox from source, or using the packages provided on the Dropbox site.
Type the following into the terminal:

nautilus --no-desktop --browser

This will start Dropbox, and the icon should appear in your system tray.
Log in, or sign up with a new account.
Now, in order to have Dropbox running every time you use Xfce, you need it to autostart. Just go to:
Menu -> Settings -> Settings Manager -> Autostarted apps -> Add
and add the following

/home/your_username/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd

And that’s it! Dropbox should work normally now, synching your files perfectly.

HowTo: Install drop in Xubuntu (unedited)

[IN PROGRESS....I haven't been able to get this to work yet with Xubuntu Karmic x64]

This is written for Slackware with Xfce, so I still need to edit it for Xubuntu:

This guide will show you how to install Droxbox on a system that doesn’t have Nautilus installed. This is especially useful to people who use Slackware, because GNOME is not installed by default. You still need a file manager though, so in this example, we’ll use Thunar.
In order to get Dropbox to work, we have to trick Dropbox into thinking that Nautilus is already installed. The easiest way to accomplish this, is by creating a script in /usr/bin called nautilus, which basically is a link to thunar. To get started, download a precompiled binary from getdropbox.com. I used a binary compiled for Fedora 10 called nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm.
wget http://linux.getdropbox.com/packages/nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm
What we now are going to do is to run rpm2tgz on this package so that we can explode the package using explodepkg. We do so because we want to create a slackware-package, where we also include our little workaround. First, log in as root.
su -
mkdir /tmp/dropbox
mv nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm /tmp/dropbox
rpm2tgz nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1-1.fc10.i386.rpm
explodepkg nautilus-dropbox-0.6.1-1.fc10.i386.tgz
Now, go to /tmp/dropbox/usr/bin, fire up your favorite text-editor and write the following:
#!/bin/bash
thunar $@
exit 0
When you’re done, save the file as “nautilus”. Now, go back to /tmp/dropbox, create a folder called install, touch a file called “slack-desc” and run makepkg to create a slackware-package.
mkdir install
touch install/slack-desc
makepkg dropbox-0.6.1-i386-1vh.tgz
The only thing that has to be done now, is to install the package.
installpkg dropbox-0.6.1-i386-1vh.tgz

Xubuntu 9.10 x64…Screenshot with Gnome Do’s “Docky”

Docky is a great doc, and my favorite at this time..tricked out on the right with blue wallpaper:

ZevenOS: A twist on Xubuntu

I got bored, downloaded and ran the ZevenOS 2.0 live CD. this was the first time in long time I thought a distro was pretty ‘cool’.

Some highlights: an Xubuntu 9.10 knockoff, however,

uses sawfish window manager in place of xfwm
BeOS’d throughout themewise
comes with Wbar preconfigured and ready to edit. (my fav bar)
seems to have their own settings panel, and a link to standard Xfce settings panel.
Once anitialiasing is turned on…not OTB, the desktop looks good.
my vostro volume keys MM keys worked OTB…Xubuntu 9.04 didn’t, but……

what I didn’t like about it:
only comes in 32 bit…I think, couldn’t find an x64 torrent. this wouldn’t stop me from installing it on this Vostro. A couple of right click items where still in german, but I don’t know how a HD install does. Everything else incl all menus were in English.

Anyway….kinda cool…I kept the DVD this time and didn’t add it to my drink coaster pile.