After having switched my default music player to xmms2, I needed to enable the scrobbling of my tracks to last.fm. Because you have to install some packages and because there isn't a gui to configure the audioscrobbler client, I thought I would post this. You probably wouldn't be here if you didn't know xmms2 (!=xmms), but if you don't, you can read more about it here.

After buying the D-Link DWA-140 wifi usb adaptor it didn't work right from the start. These are the short steps I took to make it work. It took me more or less 10 minutes.

I recently bought a gamer mouse (Trust Predator GM-4800 Laser Gamer Mouse Elite). After some trial and error I found a tool to easily enable and configure the extra mouse buttons that were not immediately recognized. In this tutorial I will explain how to install and configure a tool called btnx, to enable the extra mouse buttons.

With compiz enabled you can play with the opacity of your windows. This is done by putting your mouse over the window, pressing ALT and scrolling with your mousewheel. Now I wanted to try something different, I wanted all my windows, menus, popups, dialogs and tooltips to be transparent by default. This can easily be done with tweaking compiz in the CompizConfig settings manager. For your desktop to be useable, I suggest to use a very dark theme with light icons and a rather clean wallpaper. So in this tutorial I will explain how to get a completely transparent Linux Desktop.

There are a few known problems related to installing the latest vmware (1.0.5) under Ubuntu 8.04. This is because vmware currently only supports up to Ubuntu 7.10.

First of all, you will need to install everything needed in order to be ready to compile c/c++ code on your system. Ubuntu supplies a virtual package for that, called 'build-essential'.

$ sudo aptitude install build-essential

I am a Die Hard fan from the first hour. After watching the 4th one, called Live Free or Die Hard I went looking after the theme the character Matthew Farrell uses on his desktop. I was pleasantly surprised to find a emerald theme, that looks exactly like it. But There was no GTK theme to go with it, so I made one.

After 2 days of messing around I managed to install and run Word, Excel and Powerpoint from Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise on Ubuntu, using Wine 1.0 rc1. For now, this tutorial is only tested on feisty. I have to try it on my hardy box, before I post that it works, which I will when I find the time. But the steps will be very similar, so you can try it. This being said I just want to mention that Office is still buggy, Word and Excel only worked in safe mode, which is limited in functionality, Powerpoint worked in normal mode. I didn't manage to start the other apps. But what worked, is kinda usable (no math in Word e.g.). I could open, save and print files without a problem.

UPDATE: After a relog there were MS Office icons-links in the wine menu. Using those I could run Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote and Publisher in normal mode (as opposed to safe mode), so with full functionality. Access, outlook and Groove didn't start.

Surfraw stands for 'Shell Users' Revolutionary Front Against the WWW'. It's a command-line shell program for interfacing with a big number of web-based search engines. With Surfraw you can search google and wikipedia a.o. from the command line. The results will be displayed with a browser of your choice. I suggest a text browser like links2, to keep it text based. Read more to find out how to install and use it.

After completing this tutorial you will be able to retrieve and send email from your favorite email client using your gmail, yahoo, and/or hotmail account. Normally this isn't possible with a free account (except for gmail), but with the help of a gateway that simulates a pop server in 1 direction, and connects to the mailserver in the other direction, it is possible. This tutorial is mainly aimed at Evolution and Sylpheed, but should also work for other Linux email clients, although there are other possibilities for Thunderbird.

I themed my Ubuntu after OSX in a rather dark style. My favorite theme so far. It's like having the best of two worlds. The best OS and the best design - OK, you may start your flame war now!
This was done on a IBM T41 running Feisty, so it wasn't easy to get the Avant-window-navigator (dockbar) running. If someone cares about them, I can post the details.
Click 'read more' for the screenshots.

Mobile access to your server is not only cool, it comes in handy in a lot of situations. With SSH access from your mobile phone, you can check your emails, logs, box status, irssi, torrents, execute updates, reboot and lots of other things, all on the go. In this short tutorial I will explain how to access and administer a Ubuntu (and any Debian based) server with a not so recent Mobile phone. For this to work, you will need a java supporting mobile device with GPRS enabled (Midp). You will have to install a .jar file of MidpSSH on the device (which you will have to download to your mobile) and install additional ncurses terminal definitions on the server.

Wine 1.0 is coming out some time from now, but like you could read in my previous post, there are some killer apps you can run with it now. After my succes on getting iTunes running on Ubuntu 8.04 and inspired by a post on http://www.ubuntu-unleashed.com where Defcon succeeded in getting GTA Vice City to run using Wine, I managed to install and play GTA San Andreas. Now it's only a matter of time for GTA IV. Here is what I did.

I managed to get Itunes 7.3.0.54 running on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron using wine 0.9.59 . First I setup Pulse Audio Server following this tutorial I found on ubuntuforums.org : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=776739 . This will take care of a bug that is responsible for Ubuntu Hardy Heron not being able to play sound simultaneously from different applications, after the installation. Itunes doesn't need a introduction.

MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. It's a program that allows you to recreate the hardware of old Arcade gaming machines like Double Dragon, Altered Beast, 1941 (and the like), Golden Axe and many others.
In this tutorial I will explain how to install 1941 for MAME and gxmame which is a front-end for MAME.

Some time ago I bought a used IBM T41 laptop. It came with an official windows XP license (my first one!!! :). But since I tried that OS and didn't like it, I installed Ubuntu 7.04 at that time, for a dual boot setup. I kept XP on there for several reasons: I might sell it, to try out windows software and for gaming. But the partition is so small, and I never use it, so let's get on with how my IBM T41 reacted on Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn.

Ubuntu comes with a good system monitor. If you like to keep an eye on your system all the time, you can put up to 6 indicators on your panel. (Just right click on your panel, 'add to panel' and select 'system monitor'. Right click on a graph and select 'preferences' to edit it.)

But If that isn't enough, there's always Conky. Conky is a very configurable, light-weight system monitor that among others displays system stats on your screen, like in the screenshot.

A couple of months ago I upgraded to Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon. Being a fan of the Satanic edition, I installed that also. Because I like to have a functional desktop, I left the cube out. But there is still some eye candy there.

This tutorial will explain how to submit track info to last.fm (audioscrobbler) when you use cmus. For those who don't know it, cmus is a text-based music player for unix-like systems and it just rocks!

There is this website that is offering free 'powered by Ubuntu' stickers.

Only thing you have to do is send a self addressed stamped envelope to the address corresponding to your country. Check it out.

http://system76.com/article_info.php?articles_id=9

I just installed icecast2 with ices2 on the same machine, which is now a audio streaming server. Icecast2 is a audio streaming server similar to shoutcast. It listens to ices2 that send the audiofiles to the icecast server. Icecast2 sends the audio to the clients.
After installing and configuring icecast2 and ices2 and putting your music in the right directory, you'll have your own internet radio station!

This tutorial will describe how to install and configure Snort (intrusion detection system) from source, BASE (Basic Analysis and Security Engine) using MySQL, and Apache2 on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). Snort will assist you in monitoring your network and alert you about possible threats. Snort will output its log files to a MySQL database which BASE will use to display a graphical interface in a web browser.

I wanted to compile FiSH for irssi on Ubuntu Gutsy, but http://fish.sekure.us was offline. Now that I checked it again, it's back. So perhaps you better follow the walkthrough on http://fish.sekure.us/forum/viewtopic.php?t=145 . For my own reference and for the case the website is down again I'm posting here what I did to get it to work. This should work for every Debian based distribution