Full Circle
THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE FOR THE UBUNTU LINUX COMMUNITYISSUE #58 - February 2012

LINUX MINT 12
FULL REVIEW

full circle magazine #58

1 nor endorsed by, Canonical Ltd.
full circle magazine is neither affiliated with,

contents ^Full Circle

HowTo

Python - Part 30

THE INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE FOR THE UBUNTU LINUX COMMUNITY

p.08

Linux News
LibreOffice Pt12

p.12

Backup Strategy Pt6

p.15

Screencast Your Desktop p.17

p.04

My Desktop

Opinions

My Story

p.31

My Opinion

p.33

p.47

Columns

Command & Conquer

p.05

Ubuntu Games

p.44

I Think...

p.34

Linux Labs

p.24

Q&A

p.41

Review

p.36

Closing Windows

p.28

Letters

p.38

BACK NEXT MONTH
The Paperless Officep.19

Ubuntu Women

p.46

The articles contained in this magazine are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
This means you can adapt, copy, distribute and transmit the articles but only under the following conditions: you must attributethe work to the original author in some way (at least a name, email or URL) and to this magazine by name ('Full Circle Magazine')
and the URL www.fullcirclemagazine.org (but not attribute the article(s) in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). If
you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you must distribute the resulting work under the same, similar or a compatible license.
Full Circle magazine is entirely independent of Canonical, the sponsor of the Ubuntu projects, and the views and opinions in the
fullhavecirclemagazineendorsement.
#58
2
magazine should in no way be assumed toCanonical
contents ^EDITORIAL
This magazine was created using :Welcome to another issue of Full Circle!

T

he shock of the month for me was a headline that read: ‘Canonical pulls the plug on
Kubuntu’. I almost had a heart attack and passed out! But, thankfully, it’s not as bad as
it sounds. Canonical has withdrawn its funding for Kubuntu (if you haven’t heard aboutit, have a look at the news page), which just means that Canonical is not paying anyone
to work on Kubuntu, leaving it on the same level as the other family members (Xubuntu,
Lubuntu, etc). No big deal.
Programmers around the world can rejoice with the return of the Python series. Greg
explains at the end of his article why he had to miss a couple of issues. Send all supportive
messages to Greg and his wife at: greg.gregwa@gmail.com. The LibreOffice and Backup seriescontinue, and, with them, we have one How-To on screencasting, and one on having a paperlessoffice.
As well as working on the Closing Windows series (with my co-authors), I’m drawing up plans
for an astronomy article for FCM. I recently bought a telescope (a Heritage 130P if you mustknow), and I’m going to write about Linux astronomy software. Yes, I’ll even include a couple ofWindows ones that run in Wine. If you’ve any suggestions (just not Stellarium or Celestia , I know
about them), please email them to me. Image stacking, motorized telescope control, all thatfun stuff. Don’t worry - FCM won’t become Full Celestial Magazine.

Full Circle Podcast
Released monthly, each episodecovers all the latest Ubuntu news,
opinions, reviews, interviews andlistener feedback. The Side-Pod is
a new addition, it's an extra(irregular) short-form podcast
which is intended to be a branchof the main podcast. It's
somewhere to put all the generaltechnology and non-Ubuntu stuff
that doesn’t fit in the main
podcast.
Hosts:
Robin Catling
Ed Hewitt
Dave Wilkins

All the best, and keep in touch!

Ronnieronnie@fullcirclemagazine.org

http://fullcirclemagazine.org

full circle magazine #58

3

contents ^LINUX NEWS
Canonical Stops
Funding Kubuntu
by Ronnie TuckerJ

onathan Riddell, the only
paid developer for
Kubuntu, wrote:

Mint 12 KDE ReleasedL

inux Mint 12 KDE
has finally beenreleased!

New features at a glance:
KDE 4.7.4
Hybrid ISO images
Search engines
Upstream components

Today I bring the disappointing
news that Canonical will no longer
be funding my work on Kubuntu
after12.04. Canonical wants toRelease notes:
treat Kubuntu in the same way as
the othercommunity flavors such as Moonlight
Upstream issues
Edubuntu, Lubuntu, andXubuntu,
andsupport the projects with
infrastructure. This is a big challenge System requirements:
x86 processor (Linux Mint 64-bit
to Kubuntu ofcourse andKDEas
requires a 64-bit processor. Linux
well.

Mint 32-bit works on both 32-bit
It should be noted that Kubuntu and 64-bit processors).
512 MB RAM (1GB recommended
will still survive, but in the samefor a comfortable usage).
(non-funded) way as Lubuntu and
5 GB of disk space.
Xubuntu are currently.
Graphics card capable of 800×600
resolution.
Source:
DVD-ROM drive or USB port.
http://lwn.net/Articles/479710/
Source:blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1927
full circle magazine #58

Ubuntu for Android
by Robin CatlingM

ark Shuttleworth isbringing Ubuntu to a
device near you. Yes,
if you are designingand manufacturing dual-core smartphones, Canonical wants it runninga full-featured Ubuntu desktop.
Canonical has announced theavailability of Ubuntu for Android
as a working prototype. Under thesnappy tag-lines “...in every dualcore phone there's a PC trying to
get out” and “Ubuntu is the killer
app for multi-core phones in 2012,”
Canonical makes the case for the
docked corporate smart-phone tobecome the next desktop PC.
When you connect the phone toan external monitor with keyboard
and mouse, Ubuntu boots and runs
concurrently with Android. Looking
at the images and the technicalspecification, the 2GB disk image
for Ubuntu looks like 12.04 with
Unity, sitting atop a hardware
compatibility layer on ARM
processors.
4

EPUB
Finally, we have mobile editionsof Full Circle on the downloads
page. At the moment there are
only a couple of issues online,
but we're hoping to have backissues online shortly. If you've
any problems with the epub
file/formatting, you can drop an
email to Jens at:mobile@fullcirclemagazine.org
Big thanks to Jens, Oppih andthe beta testers for making
them a reality.

FC Notifier Update
The Full Circle Notifier is still at
1.0.2, but the PPA has been
updated for Oneiric. FCN is asmall application that sits in yoursystem tray and will announce
issue/podcast releases, and canbe set to download them too! For
more info, see the FCN Google
Group: http://goo.gl/4Ob4
contents ^COMMAND & CONQUER

Trivialibre

Written by Lucas WestermannIrealize that many of ourreaders are students (as am I).
Depending on the country, a
new semester has just started,
is about to start, or, in the case ofGermany, is nearly over. It’s often agood idea to keep a listing (alone
or in collaboration with yourcolleagues) of questions, and theiranswers, pertaining to the courses
you’re taking.
If you are in the habit of doingso (or are resolved to start thishabit), then the following script
will help make your revisions mucheasier. This script was written by auniversity professor (and FCM
reader) who likes to be called"Magic Banana". You can find it on
his website:
http://dcc.ufmg.br/~lcerf/en/utiliti
es.html#trivialibre
It aims to ask the questions,organized in categories, in arandom order, and lets you set a
fixed delay to answer each of thosequestions. It is named "Trivialibre" because it was initially written to
ask the questions of an eponymousgame (see:http://trivialibre.humanoidz.org),
which is a variation of the famous"Trivial Pursuit" for free software
enthusiasts. The script isinteresting in its various uses of
the Shell tests, Zenity, the rather
new 'shuf' command, and of 'sed'.
I'll briefly discuss thefunctionality of the script, and thenexplain what each command isused for (including an explanationof the uses within the script).

What does it do?
This shell script takes thequestions from the files within the
categories folder, and poses them(at random) in a zenity-formed GUI
window. It displays the question,
waits, and then displays the correct
answer (much like flashcards work).

How does it work?
It uses shuf to take the files
from the categories folder, shuffle
the contents, and then save it in
the $XDG_DATA_HOME/trivialibre
folder (so that the pending
full circle magazine #58

questions can be recorded
somewhere without losing any).
Once this is taken care of, aZenity window will then ask theuser to choose a category (you canchoose a specific one, or have thescript choose a random one).

This if-statement checks
whether the argument $1 is NOT
empty (-n stands for “not zero
length”), so that the delay for the
progress bar can be set tosomething other than the default
20secs.

A zenity window asks the next
pending question in the chosen
category. This windows contains a
progress bar that reaches 100%after a delay chosen by the player(the only argument of the script),or 20secs by default. Once a
category has been exhausted, it isthen shuffled again and moved
back into the$XDG_DATA_HOME/trivialibre
folder.

23. if [ ­z "$XDG_DATA_HOME"]

Conditionals:

This comparison checks to see if
the directory doesn't exist, andthen creates the folder (and all thecategory files it will need).

Throughout the script,
conditionals are used in order tonavigate the varying branches ofthe file. They are used in ifstatements, while-statements, andfor-statements.
16. if [ ­n “$1” ]5This is the exact opposite of line
16, where you check if$XDG_DATA_HOME is empty (-zstands for “zero length”). In thiscase, you then set the variable to“$HOME/.local/share” (which is thevalue it should be).
28. if [ ! ­d
$XDG_DATA_HOME/trivialibre ]39. while [ ­n"$categoryName" ]Here, we use the conditional weused in line 16, but in a whilecontents ^COMMAND & CONQUER
statement. This means the loop will
33. shuf ­okeep running until the variable is"$XDG_DATA_HOME/trivialibre/$
empty (which happens when the
category" "$category"player clicks the “cancel” button).
Once the variable is empty, theIn this instance, shuf takes the
program effectively quits.
contents of the file (whose name issaved in variable “category”),
42. if [ "$categoryName" =creates a permutation, and then'Random!' ]saves it in$XDG_DATA_HOME/trivialibre
This is a simple String
comparison, where we check if the under the same name. This
permutation is then the one useduser has selected Random! (as ain the script.
category) or not.
48. if [ ! ­s "$questionList"]

44. `shuf ­n 1 ­e *`In this case, shuf displays only
Usually -s is used to check if a
the first line of the permutation (“file exists and is not empty. Sincen 1”), and accepts the arguments as
we're negating it (the “!”), we are
the contents of the file (“-e”). Thisactually checking to see if the file is means it takes the list of
empty, i.e. if the questions within
categories, creates a permutation,
the category are exhausted. If it is, and selects the top one. This is thethen the next step is to re-populate function used when “Random” isthe file.
chosen as a category.

Shuf:
Shuf is a program included in
the coreutils package, and creates
permutations (variations) of thelines within a file. It's used in thefollowing ways in the script (thenumbers before the commands are
the line numbers):

50. shuf ­o"$XDG_DATA_HOME/trivialibre/$categoryName" "$categoryName"

This is the same as in line 33, as
it is simply replenishing theexhausted category.

Zenity:full circle magazine #58“zenity is a program that will
display GTK+ dialogs, and return(either in the return code, or on
standard output) the user’s input.
This allows you to present
information, and ask for
information from the user, from all
manner of shell scripts.” (takenfrom the zenity manpage).
11. zenity ­­list ­­radiolist­­window­icon=../token.png ­­height=247 ­­title='Trivialibre' ­­text='Choose a category in
the list below or cancel toquit\n(the same questions
will not be asked again nexttime).' ­­hide­header ­­column='' ­­column=''

This creates a GTK window witha radio list, using the token.png fileas the window icon. It also includes
the window title, the text (outsideof the radio button), and offerssome configuration (such as
geometry). The radio buttons are
populated by piping the output ofls -1 through sed and then zenity.
Sed is used to format the ls output
so that Zenity can use it. It should
be noted that Zenity expects eachstring to be preceded by a TRUE or
FALSE, where it denotes which
string is the default choice (the line
marked TRUE).
6

51, zenity ­­info ­­window­
icon=../token.png ­­title="Exhaustion of thequestions \"$categoryName\""­­text="All questions in the
category \"$categoryName\"having been asked, they arereused (in a different
order)."

This is the window that notifies
the user when a category has been
completed.
60. zenity ­­progress ­­window­icon=../token.png ­­title="In the category\"$categoryName\"" ­­text="Question of$author:\n\n$question"

In this example, zenity creates a
progress bar (using a for loop to
run through a percentage for thetime between the question and theanswer, defined earlier in thescript). The percentage for thecontents ^COMMAND & CONQUER
progress bar is read in through thestandard input, which is adjusted
every second in this script.
64. zenity ­­info ­­window­
icon=../token.png ­­title='Answer' ­­text="Theanswer is:\n\n$answer"

Once the progress bar has
reached 100% and the user has
clicked on the OK button, thiscommand is then called, providing
the answer to the question. It will
also be displayed if the user clicks
the “cancel” button, interrupting
the progress bar and displaying theanswer.
For a better introduction to
Zenity, you can check out my article
in FCM#46.

Sed:
Sed is a command that allows
you to use regular expressions inorder to modify text that you can
input. I will be writing an article on
both sed and awk in the near
future.
11. sed iFALSEThis is used after the “ls -1”
command, and inserts (hence the“i”) the word “FALSE” before every
line, so that Zenity can correctly
format the data into the radio list.

interesting (and the script useful). I
would like to once again thank
Magic Banana for supplying thescript and being extremely helpfulwhen organizing this article. If
anyone has any questions,suggestions, or requests, feel free
to email me at
lswest34@gmail.com. Be sure toinclude “C&C” or “FCM” in the title,
so that I don't overlook it.

62. sed ­i 1d "$questionList"

Further Reading:Here, sed edits the list ofquestions in-place (“-i”) and simply
removes the first line of the file,
thereby effectively removing thequestion that was just asked.

• “Linux Shell Scripting with Bash” Ken O. Burtch (Developer's Library)• Corresponding manpages• FCM#46 of FCM (for Zenity)

How do I add
categories?
You can add categories using
LibreOffice Calc (or any otherprogram which can create CSV(comma separated values) files).
Instead of commas, a tab should be
used as the separator, and nothing
to separate text. Be sure to givethe file the name of the category
you want it to represent.
I hope you've found this article
full circle magazine #58• info coreutils 'test invocation'• info coreutils 'shuf'• info sed

Lucas has learned all he knows fromrepeatedly breaking his system, thenhaving no other option but todiscover how to fix it. You can email
Lucas at: lswest34@gmail.com.

7

contents ^HOW-TO

Beginning Python - Part 30

Written by Greg D. WaltersT

his month, we'll explore
yet another GUI designer,
this time for Tkinter. Many
people have an issue with
Tkinter because it doesn't offer abuilt-in designer. While I've shown
you how to easily design yourapplications without a designer, we
will examine one now. It's called
Page. Basically it's a version ofVisual TCL with Python support on
top. The current version is 3.2 andcan be found at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pa
ge/files/latest/download.

Prerequisites

the distribution file into a folder ofyour choice. Run the script called“configure” from the folder where
you just unpacked everything. This
will create your launch script called“page” which you use to geteverything going. That's it.

This creates your main form.
You can move it wherever you wish
on your screen. Next, and fromnow on, click on a widget in thetool box and then click where youwant it on the main form.

Learning Page
When you start Page, you'll get
three windows (forms). One is a“launch pad”, one is a toolbox, andone shows the Attribute Editor.
To start a new project, click on
the Toplevel button in the toolbox.

You need TCK/TK 8.5.4 or later,
Python 2.6 or later, and pyttk which you can get (if you don't
already have it) fromhttp://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyttk.
You probably have all of these withthe possible exception of pyttk.

For now, let's do a button. Clickon the Button button on the
toolbox, and then click somewhereon the main form.

Next, in the launch pad form,
click on Window and selectAttribute Editor (if it's not alreadyshowing). Your single button
should be highlighted already, so
move it around the form and when
you release the mouse button you
should see the position change in
the attribute editor form under 'x
position' and 'y position'.
Here we can set otherattributes such as the text on the
button (or most any other widget),the alias for the widget (the namewe will refer to in our code), color,the name we will call it and more.
Near the bottom of the attributeeditor is the text field. This is the
text that appears to the user for, in
this case, the button widget. Let'schange this from “button” to “Exit”.
Notice that now the button says
“Exit”. Now resize the form to justshow the button and recenter the
button in the form.
Next click in the main form
someplace where the button isn't.
The attribute editor form now
shows the attributes for the mainform. Find the “title” field andInstallation
You can't really ask for an easierinstallation routine. Simply unpack
full circle magazine #58

8contents ^HOWTO - BEGINNING PYTHON 30
change this from “New Toplevel 1”
to “Test Form”.

Now, before we save our
project, we need to create a folder
to hold our project files. Create afolder somewhere on your drive
called “PageProjects”. Now, in the
launch pad window, select File thenSave As. Navigate to yourPageProjects folder, and, in the
dialog box, type TestForm.tcl andclick the Save button. Notice this is
saved as a TCL file, not a Python
file. We'll create the python filenext.
In the launch pad, find the
Gen_Python menu item and click it.
Select Generate Python and a newform appears.
Page has generated (as thename suggests) our python codefor us and placed it in a window for

us to view. At the bottom of thisform, are three buttons...Save, Run,
and Close.

Click Save. If, at this point, youwere to look in your PageProjects
folder, you will see the python file
(TestForm.py). Now click on the
Run button. In a few seconds, you'll
see the project start up. The
button is not connected toanything yet, so it won't doanything if you click on it. Simply
close the form with the “X” in thecorner of the window. Now close
the Python Console window withthe close button at the bottom
right.

the Exit button and right click on it.
Select “Bindings...”. Under themenu is a set of buttons.

The first on the left allows you
to create a new binding. Click on“Button-1”. This allows us to enter
the binding for the left mousebutton. In the window on the right,
type “Button1Click”.

On the launch pad, click Window
then select Function List. Here wewill write our method to close thewindow.

The first button on the left is
the Add button. Click it. In the
Function box, type
“py:Button1Click” and, in the
Arguments box, type “p1”, andBack at our main form, highlightfull circle magazine #58

Save and generate the python
code again. Scroll down in the
Python Console to the bottom of
the file. Above the “class
Test_Form” code is the function wejust asked to be created. Noticethat at this point, it simply ispassed. Look further down andyou'll see the code that creates andcontrols our button. Everything isdone for us already. However, we
still have to tell the button what to
do. Close the Python Console andwe'll continue.

9

contents ^HOWTO - BEGINNING PYTHON 30
change the text in the lower box
to...
def Button1Click(p1):sys.exit()

python code.
You should see the following
code near the bottom, but
OUTSIDE of the Test_Form class...
def Button1Click(p1) :sys.exit()

And the last line of the classshould be...
self.Button1.bind('<Button­
1>',Button1Click)

Now, if you run your code andclick on the Exit button, the formshould close properly.
Click on the checkmark and weare done with this.

Moving Forward

Next we have to bind thisroutine to the button. Select the
button in the form, right click it,
and select “Bindings...”. As before,click on the far left button on the
toolbar and select Button-1. This is
the event for the left mousebutton click. In the right text box,
enter “Button1Click”. Make sure
you use the same case that you didfor the Function we just created.
Click the checkmark on the rightside.
Now save and generate yourNow let's do something more
complicated. We'll create a demo
showing some of the widgets thatare available. First close Page andrestart it. Next, create a newToplevel form. Add two frames,
one above the other and expand
them to pretty much take up theentire width of the form. In the top
frame, place a label, and, using theattributes editor, change the text
to “Buttons:”. Next, add two
buttons along the horizontal plane.
Change the text of the left one tofull circle magazine #58“Normal”, and the right one to“Sunken”. While the sunken button
is selected, change the relief to“sunken” and name it btnSunken.
Name the “Normal” button“btnNormal”. Save this project as“Demos.tcl”.

print "Normal Button Clicked"
def btnSunkenClicked(p1) :print "Sunken Button Clicked"

Let's add our button bindings.
For each button, right click it,
select “Bindings...”, and add, as
Next, place in the lower frame a before, a binding to the functions
we created. For the normal button,label saying “Radio Buttons” andfour radio buttons like in the image it would be “btnNormalClicked”,
below. Finally, place an Exit button and for the sunken button it would
be btnSunkenClicked. Save andbelow the bottom frame.
generate your code. Now, if you
were to test the program underthe “Run” option of the Python
Console, and click any of the
buttons, you won't see anything
happen. However, when you close
the application, you should see theprint responses. This is normal forPage and if you simply run it fromthe command line as you normallydo, things should work as
Before we work on the bindings, expected.
let's create our click functions.
Now for our radio buttons. We
Open the Function List and create
havegrouped them in two
two functions. The first should be“clusters”. The first two (Radio 1
called btnNormalClicked and theother btnSunkenClicked. Make sure and Radio 2) will be cluster 1 andthe other two will be cluster 2.
you set the arguments box to
Click on Radio1 and in the
include p1. Here's the code you
Attribute Editor, set the value to 0
should have for them...
and the variable to “rbc1”. Set thedef btnNormalClicked(p1):variable for Radio 2 to “rbc1” andthe value to 1. Do the same thing
10

contents ^HOWTO - BEGINNING PYTHON 30
for Radio 3 and Radio 4 but for
both of these set the variable to“rbc2”. If you want, you can deal
with the click of the radiobuttons
and print something to theterminal, but for now, theimportant thing is that the clusters
work. Clicking Radio1 will deselectRadio2 and not influence Radio3 orRadio4, and the same for Radio2
and so on.
Finally, you should create afunction for the Exit button, andbind it to the button like we did in
the first example.

def set_Tk_var():# These are Tk variables passed to Tkinter and must# be defined before the widgets using them are created.
global rbc1
rbc1 = StringVar()
global rbc2
rbc2 = StringVar()def btnExitClicked(p1) :sys.exit()
def btnNormalClicked(p1) :print "Normal Button Clicked"
def btnSunkenClicked(p1) :print "Sunken Button Clicked"

One note before we go for thismonth. You might have noticed
If you've been following alongthat I've missed a couple of issues.
as we have done our other TkinterThis is due to my wife being
applications, you should be able todiagnosed with cancer last year. As
understand the code shown above
hard as I have tried to keep things
right. If not, please go back a few
from falling through the cracks, aissues for a full discussion of thisnumber of things have. One ofcode.
these things is my old domain/website at
You can see that using Page
www.thedesignatedgeek.com. I
makes the basic design process
blew it and missed the renewal.
much easier than doing it yourself.
Due to this, the domain was soldWe've only scratched the surface ofout from under me. I have set up
what Page can do, and we'll start
www.thedesignatedgeek.net withdoing something much more
all the old stuff. I will be working
realistic next time.
hard the next month to bring it all
up to date.
The python code can be foundon pastebin at
See you next time.
http://pastebin.com/qq0YVgTb.
full circle magazine #58

The Ubuntu Podcast covers all
the latest news and issues facing
Ubuntu Linux users and Free
Software fans in general. The
show appeals to the newest user
and the oldest coder. Our
discussions cover thedevelopment of Ubuntu but
aren’t overly technical. We arelucky enough to have somegreat guests on the show, telling
us first hand about the latest
exciting developments they are
working on, in a way that we canall understand! We also talkabout the Ubuntu community
and what it gets up to.
The show is presented bymembers of the UK’s Ubuntu
Linux community. Because it iscovered by the Ubuntu Code of
Conduct it is suitable for all.

Greg Walters is owner of RainyDay
Solutions, LLC, a consulting company
in Colorado and has been
programming since 1972. He enjoys
cooking, hiking, music, and spendingtime with his family. His website iswww.thedesignatedgeek.net.

11

The show is broadcast live every
fortnight on a Tuesday evening(British time) and is available fordownload the following day.
podcast.ubuntu-uk.org
contents ^HOW-TOI

LibreOffice - Part 12

Written by Elmer Perryn my last article, I discussed
setting up styles in LibreOfficeCalc. This month, I will show
you how to prepare, examine,and print your spreadsheet. We will
add headers and footers to oursheet, use the Page Preview to
examine how our sheet will lookwhen we print it, and review theprint dialog and how it affects the
final printed pages.

24, 2012” and click OK.

Headers and Footers
Headers and footers allow us tocreate consistency between pages.
Doing this on the sheet would
mean shuffling cells as the sheetchanges and grows. Using the page
settings, we can create the same
look for multiple pages.

Renaming Sheets
When you first create a new
spreadsheet file, the default
workbook starts with three sheets
named Sheet1, Sheet2, and Sheet3.
You can use these names in otherplaces in your sheet, and we will
use them when we create theheader and footer for our budget
spreadsheet. However, the default
names are not very informative, so
we will rename them. The names
are located on tabs at the bottom
program window. To rename asheet, right-click on the tab andselect Rename Sheet from the popup menu. The Rename Sheet dialog
will display. Type in a meaningful
name for the sheet, i.e. “February

areas and click on the first buttonon the toolbar. This brings up afont dialog, where you can change
the attributes of the text. Click the
OK button when you are finishedediting your header.

Open the page settings dialog,
Format > Page. Click on the Header
tab. Here you can adjust themargins, width, and height of theheader area. I would recommend
checking the Autofit Heightcheckbox, otherwise your header
may get cut off. Click on the Edit
button to bring up the header area
format dialog. You will notice theheader is divided into three areas,full circle magazine #58

left, center, and right. Along thebottom, you will notice a toolbar.
The toolbar lets you insert
placeholders into the header andformat the text. For our budget
spreadsheet, we will placesomething in each of the areas. In
the left area type “2012 Budget”.
For the center area, we will place
our sheet name. To get the sheet
name, click in the center area anddelete any content that alreadyexists, then click on the third
button on the toolbar. This inserts
the name you gave the sheet. For
the right area, we will insert thecurrent date. Click in the right areaand delete any content that
already exists. The next-to-lastbutton on the toolbar inserts thecurrent date. To change the font,size, color, etc, of the text,
highlight the text in any of the12

We also might want to separate
our header from the rest of the
sheet with a border or backgroundcolor. We can do this by clicking on
the More button on the Header tabin the Page dialog. For mine, I justput a 0.50pt line at the bottom.
The Footer tab is the same as
the Header tab, but let’s put somedifferent information in the threeareas. On the Footer tab, click the
Edit button. In the left area, place
the sheet name using the third
button on the toolbar like we didwith the header's center area. In
the center area, delete the content
that is already there and type theword Page and a space. Click on
the fourth button in the toolbar.
This creates a placeholder for thepage number. This placeholder will
increment for each page of the
sheet. In the right area, click on thelast button on the toolbar to insert
contents ^HOWTO - LIBREOFFICE PART 12
a current time placeholder. This
will print the time when you print
the sheet. Having the current date
and time on the sheet can come inhandy when you have to dorevisions and need to know which
one is the most current. As withthe header, we can edit the
attributes of the text byhighlighting the text we want tochange and clicking on the first
button in the toolbar. Click OK
when you are done editing.
To separate the footer from therest of the document, we can use
the More button to create a borderor background color. I used a
0.50pt border on the top.
In our setup, we used all the
buttons in the header/footer edit
dialog except for two. The second
button inserts the filename of the
workbook, and the fifth inserts thetotal number of pages.
We are finished editing thepage setup. Click OK to close thepage-setup dialog.

Page Preview
The page preview allows us tomake final adjustments to ourbackward, and jump to the firstpage or the last page. There arealso zoom in/out buttons for closer
examination of the page.

sheet before printing. With thepreview, we can make sureeverything fits on the page the way
we want it, and the data shows as
we intended.
To open the page preview, go toFile > Page Preview. The current
window is replaced by the pagepreview window. You can makeseveral adjustments while in pagepreview mode.
The slider in the toolbar is thescaling factor. This allows you tomake the cells bigger or smaller sothey fit on the page the way you
want. You can increase the size byclicking on the plus (+) or reduce itby clicking on the minus (-). You canalso click and drag the adjustment
handle.

margins and background color, andmake corrections and adjustments
to your header and footer. Twothings we haven't mentioned yet
are the table alignment and theprint order. Table alignment isfound on the Page tab. It allows
you to center the tablehorizontally, vertically, or both. On
the Sheet tab, the page ordercontrols how the cells are printed
on the page. This allows you tomake your data layout in the order
and way you intended. If you havemore columns than can fit on apage, you can change it from thedefault to left-to-right, then down.
You can also set the beginningpage number should you needsomething other than 1. You canalso specify what prints and what
does not. Finally, you can manually
adjust the scaling here as well.

The Format Page button
displays the Page Style dialog. HereThe page preview gives you
you can change your overall page
buttons to page forward andfull circle magazine #58

13

The Margins button gives you
the ability to adjust the page,
header, footer, and column
margins. Click the Margins button
to activate margins mode. The
dotted lines let you manually
adjust the page, header, and footer
margins. The black markers at the
top allow you to adjust the widthsof the columns. Click the Margins
button again to exit margins mode.
Close Preview exits the preview
mode.

Printing
Finally, we have completed all
our preparation and it is time toprint our sheet. File > Print brings
up the print dialog. On the Generalcontents ^HOWTO - LIBREOFFICE PART 12tab, you can select your printer.
Click on the Properties button for
settings specific to your printer.
You can choose to print just the
selected sheets, all sheets, or justselected cells. You can also specify
whether to print all the pages orjust selected pages. If you don't
feel like ordering your pages after
you print, you can also choose toprint them in reverse order. You
have an option to print multiple
copies, and whether or not tocollate them.

multiple copies, whether to do it as
one print job or multiple.
Once you have everything set,click Print.

Quick Opinion
Tune out, Drop Out, Get things Done

This may seem overkill for asingle document, but you need toalways consider how often you will
use and change the document. If
you use the sheet often, as in abudget, once the header andfooter is set, you will never have tochange them again. By considering
the reusability, you decrease thesetup time the next time you use it.

by Allan J SmithieI

I also killed my music player and left
the mobile phone in another room.

Next month, we will look atsome quick tips and tricks forworking with spreadsheets in
Calc.

On the LibreOffice Calc tab, you
can choose to print or not print
blank pages. The Page Layout tabgives you options for printing morethan one page on a sheet of paper,
what order to print them, andwhether to put a border aroundthe page. On the Options tab, you
can choose to print to a postscript
file, and, if you are printing

Something mystical then happened.
Concentration.
I love the Internet. I’m probably addicted. It’s a hugeresource for information and an unparalleled research,educational and entertainment resource, but every so often I
have to shut it all out just to Get Things Done.
Turn off the TV, radio, iPod, Xbox, PSP and Wii. Close thebrowsers (both of them), kill the chatroom, the IRC, AIM,
Facepunch, Twiddle and anything else that’s running. The fact
checking can wait. Contrary to contemporary systems of belief,
your status doesn’t have to be updated in real time. It will all
still be there. After you get something DONE.

Elmer Perry's history of working, andprogramming, computers involves anApple IIE, adding some Amiga, a
generous helping of DOS andWindows, a dash of Unix, and blend
well with Linux and Ubuntu.

full circle magazine #58

turned off the Internet today. I
don’t mean the whole thing. I mean
my access to it. I unplugged therouter from the wall.

14

contents ^HOW-TO

Written by Allan J. SmithieNot quite the 'elephant in
the room' - there is one
obvious service that
we've avoided in thisseries thus far: Ubuntu One.
Ubuntu One is Canonical's realtime cloud storage and syncing
service, promoted to Ubuntu users
right there during the installer
slide-show, integrated andavailable out-of-the-box. Moreover,
it's freely available to anyone andthis makes it an important productfor Canonical.
Early adopters grumbled about
the speed and reliability of theservice in its initial release, but
we're glad to say that Canonicalhas continued to make progresswith the service, to the extent that
there's no discernible difference inperformance versus the other top
names such as DropBox orSpiderOak. It is now so wellintegrated in Ubuntu that I've
challenged it by spending most of
the effort for this article using
Ubuntu One on Windows 8!
I know at this point I'm going

Backup Strategy - Part 6 : Ubuntu One

connect/disconnect button. You
can start uploading items byplacing them in the default Ubuntu
One folder (just like DropBox). For
the Windows client, Ubuntu One
also suggests My Documents, My
Pictures and My Music folders, andprovides a storage estimate foreach folder. You have the option of
selecting additional folders tosynchronize. The files added to thisoff-script by declaring thatthe choice to either login with an
directory syncs with your on-line
Canonical has done a really smart
existing Ubuntu One account or to account and become available in all
thing with its cross-platform
create a new one. A new accountcomputers and connected devices
strategy. Making Ubuntu One
can be created directly from the(Android or iPhone) where Ubuntu
available on Windows, Android, and Ubuntu One client as well as from
One is installed. You can either add
iOS, is certainly a major step forthe website, which is the mostfiles or folders directly into thisdiversifying the Ubuntu One user
straightforward of all the cloud
folder, or use the 'Add a folder
market. Last year, the service
storage services to my mind.
from this computer' option frompassed the milestone one million
the Ubuntu One interface.
user mark, but how many of thoseAccount creation is quite
The Settings tab has options tolie outside the Ubuntu faithful isstandard; provide a name and aplace a bandwidth limitation forunknown. You can download thevalid email address, verify using the the content being synchronized
free Files app for your Android and confirmation link that is emailed
with the Ubuntu One service
iOS devices from Ubuntu or fromyou, and you get your 5GB of free(download and upload speed). You
the Apple App Store or the Android storage.
can enable options to initiate
Market.
Ubuntu One synchronization as
The Ubuntu One client has asoon as you login to Windows,
simple,clean
userinterfaceonalldevice notifications and sync all
Usage
the platforms. Above the four tabs, shared files instantly as they
the Get More Storage button sits
become available. Interestingly,
When the Ubuntu One
prominently next to themost of the management functions
application is launched, you havefull circle magazine #58

15

contents ^HOWTO - BACKUP STRATEGY - PART 6– public and private sharing,
devices - are carried out throughthe Ubuntu One website, not in theclient.

Contacts only for various versionsof Ubuntu Linux distributions.
Currently, the File Sync in
Progress doesn’t show thepercentage completion. One of the
FAQ's on Ubuntu’s site indicatesthat a real-time progress indicatoris on the feature list for the future.

Security

Since so many features dependon the web interface, any mobile
device with a decent sized screen
should be able to access any of the
web interface's features. For
smaller phones, for example, theAndroid and iOS clients will be
more useful.
Like DropBox, if you click on
Publish file, Ubuntu creates aunique URL that you can share withanyone via email or on your social
networks. Syncing Notes andContacts isn't supported in the
Windows version; the Ubuntu Onesite has tutorials for Notes andAs an on-line storage product,
the lack of file encryption on
Ubuntu’s servers will be a dealbreaker for many. Whilst Ubuntu
uses SSL for syncing data, Public
sharing links are HTTP links, notsecure HTTPS links and this iswhere Ubuntu One is at a
disadvantage against DropBox andothers.

Pricing
Competitively, the Ubuntu One
free service is in the same 5GB freeband as SugarSync, compared to
the DropBox 2GB free account;however, SugarSync and DropBox
also offer bonus storage upgrades
for trying out features andreferring new customers.
Additional paid storage is in 20GB
blocks at $2.99 per month orfull circle magazine #58$29.99 per year. Up at the 100GB
mark, you can clearly see that
UbuntuOne and SugarSync matchprices at $149 plus change and
DropBox is more expensive at $199
a year.

Music
This is where Ubuntu One
becomes a more distinctive
product, because of its music store
for purchase and streaming.
Ubuntu One will host your music
online, just like the Amazon Cloud
Player. This is an additional paid
service, but, if you're an Ubuntu
user, then the music you buy fromthe Ubuntu Music Store is stored
on your personal cloud and readyfor streaming on any registereddevice or smart phone, and, as it issynced, you can also listen off-line.
There's currently a special offer on
20GB of storage for all your data
$3.99/month or $39.99/year - withtwo months free on musicstreaming and storage when you
sign up for 12 months. The issue
with Ubuntu One music store
remains the range of titles and thebase price per track - whencompared with Amazon and iTunes.

Verdict
16

We're still looking for theperfect Cloud storage and backup
solution. Ubuntu One is a real-time
syncing service to compete with
DropBox and SugarSync, not a
Backup tool like Deja Dup orSpiderOak; there's no schedulingor versioning, either in version
number or intervals of days.
Ubuntu One supports Private
Sharing, but not Share Groups.
There's no Search of your Ubuntu
One cloud as it relies on you
searching the synced copy of data
local to your device. As a storage
solution, it is hard to fault Ubuntu
One - it mostly makes sense, andCanonical has made reasonable
compromises in splitting thecontrols and management
between the various clients andthe web interface. Security
concerns are all that's stopping me
going over to it full time.

Allan J. Smithie is a journalist andcommentator based in Dubai. His
blog, 'No Expert,' is at:
http://allanjsmithie.wordpress.com

contents ^HOW-TOW

Screencast Your Desktop

Written by Jayneil Dalal

hat is screencast? It
is actually the digitalrecording of thecomputer screen,
often with an associated audio.
Why would we like to do this?
Sounds like a good question. Well,often we need to record the screen
to make a tutorial, or record a
problem that we are having. There
are many programs that can beused for this purpose such as gtkrecordmydesktop, recorditnow,
xvidcap, etc. But, out of all theabove, my personal favorite is gtkrecordmydesktop. In this article I
will explain how to use it to do ascreencast. I would also like topoint out that I currently use
Ubuntu 10.04 on a 64-bit machine.

Installing the Software
Recordmydesktop can be
downloaded from the Ubuntu
software center.

Knowhow of the
SoftwareRecordmydesktop can be foundfile by a name that already exists,then the new file will be renamed.
If we checkmark this box, then thisfunctionality will be disabled.
Assume we don't want that, andhence we won't check the box. The
next option specifies where theworking directory is, ie, where therecordings will be saved. We caneasily change this option if wewant.

in Applications>Accessories>Sound& Video. The layout of the software
is quite plain. On the left-hand side,
there is a screen which shows thecurrent area which will berecorded. On the right-hand side,
we have options to control thevideo and sound quality. The
recording will take up more space
if we use higher sound and video
quality. On the bottom left-handcorner, we have two options which
are 'Select window' and 'Record'.
With the first, we can select thearea on the screen which we want
to record, while the second option
full circle magazine #58

will start the recording. On thebottom right-hand side, we have
two options, namely 'SaveAs' and'Quit' - to save our recording, andexit the software.
Now, let us explore the'Advanced' features of thissoftware by clicking on that tab.
There are four tabs, and we will
cover each one of them one by one:
Files
Under this tab, the first option
controls the overwriting of existing
files. By default, if we try to save a
17

Performance
In this tab, the first option‘Frames per second’ is self
explanatory. The second option
lets you encode the video
simultaneously while recording,but this will also require a lot more
processing power. The third option
is checkmarked by default - whichmeans that no compression is done
to our recording. The fourth
option, if enabled, will reduce theprocessing power required but
may make the recording a bit
blurry. The last option should beenabled only while recording 3D
windows.
Sound
In this tab, the first option lets
contents ^HOWTO - SCREENCAST YOUR DESKTOP
us specify the number of audio
channels. The second option sets
the sound frequency. The third is
set to 'default', which means thatthe device is discovered by thesoftware automatically. I would notrecommend tampering much withsettings in this tab.

Zero Downtime

Misc
I would recommend once again
not to change the default optionsin this tab. But you may change thetype of mouse cursor. If the Follow
Mouse option is enabled, then therecording area will follow themouse.

Below Zero is a Co-located Server Hosting specialist in the UK.
Uniquely we only provide rack spaceand bandwidth. This makes our service
more reliable, more flexible, more
focused and more competitively priced.
We concentrate solely on the hosting of
Co-located Servers and their associatedsystems, within Scotland's Data
Centres.

Using the software
Run the software. Then click on
the 'Select Window', select theappropriate recording area, andthen start the recording. On the
Ubuntu top panel (one where thetime is displayed), you will see acircular red object - which you canclick to end the recording, or rightclick it to pause the recording.
Once you stop the recording, youwill see a window which is doing
encoding as shown in figure-3;
don't close it. Then you will be
asked where you want to save thevideo. Hurray! Now go and enjoy

your first video recording or
screencast!

Jayneil is pursuing his major inElectrical Engineering from Nirma
University in India. His areas ofinterest include OpenCV, Python,
Android, Linux, Arduino and otheropen source hardware platforms.

full circle magazine #58

At the heart of our networking
infrastructure is state-of-the-art BGP4
routing that offers optimal datadelivery and automatic multihomed
failover between our outstanding
providers. Customers may rest assured
that we only use the highest quality of
bandwidth; our policy is to pay more for the best of breed providers
and because we buy in bulk this doesn't impact our extremelycompetitive pricing.
At Below Zero we help you to achieve Zero Downtime.

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18contents ^HOW-TOIThe Paperless Office

Written by Dave Crookam a dedicated and prouduser of linux, predominately
Ubuntu, and, for a long time
I’ve wanted to rid myself ofthe last remaining occurrence ofWindows in my home. Only
PaperPort was preventing me fromachieving my goal.
I have searched the internet fora few years, but have been unable
to find a substitute for this, untilnow.
I am a dedicated user of thepaperless office.
So what is this all about, I hear
you ask?
Well, the title is somewhat selfexplanatory. It's an office (home orsmall business) without paper.
(Well, almost.)

bills or statements. What do you dowith them? I suppose most homeusers dump them in the bin;business users will need to store
most of them in increasing
numbers of filing cabinets I guess.
This is where the paperlessoffice comes into its own.
There is a windows application
called PaperPort; this has changed
ownership in recent years, but theapplication still remains the “Rolls
Royce” of the paperless office. The
whole package has many, many
features, more than I can recall, but
I tend to use only a couple of these.
The cost of this s/w is reasonable(for a Windows setup), but not an
option (at the current time) for
Linux users.

In simplistic terms, theapplication contains a built-in fileLet me explain. Whether you are manager and scanner application.
a home user or a small businessOn running PaperPort, you use
user, this is applicable to you.
the file manager application to
Almost every day the letter box, select the folder where you want
all your “scans” saved (the office ofand consequently the home orno paper). It is simple to createbusiness, is littered with letters or
full circle magazine #58

new folders and move things
around. Just remember to file
everything in sensibly-named
folders and filenames.

created, it's been there quite awhile, but doesn't seem to havebeen documented or evenconsidered for this purpose.

Each time you scan in adocument, it will be saved in the“selected” folder as a compressed
pdf file type. If a document ismulti-page, it will be saved as acompressed multi-page pdf.

I will now try my best to explain
the workings of this Windows
replacement. BTW, I am now
ecstatic, as I can now make my last
Windows PC redundant.

Once the documents have beenscanned (and backed up to another
HDD), they can be “binned”,
although I would recommend thatthey are shredded with a cross-cut
shredder. Everything that is paperbased can be treated in the sameway. All bills, bank statements,
receipts, etc., are stored in an
appropriate folder, thus allowing it
to be found easily in the future.
Should a hard copy be required, adocument can be dropped onto theprinter icon and it will be printed.
Fantastic! Think of the space you
can save!
I have recently found
PaperPort's Linux equivalent. It's
not something that has just been
19

Installation
There are two applications thatyou will need to install to replace
the functionality of PaperPort:
gscan2pdf and pdfsam.
Both are available in most
repositories. Now, let me make it
quite clear that I am no expert ineither of these applications, and I
am still learning the finer points ofboth of them, but I will try to
explain the elements that I know
work, and which provide me withthe end result I need: “Thepaperless office”.
It matters not whether yourscanner is a stand-alone or all-inone; gscan2pdf should be able todetect it. I accept that there will becontents ^HOWTO - THE PAPERLESS OFFICE
some issues here, especially thethe newest printers/scanners, but I
will state that I purchased an Epson
PX810 over 12 months ago, when it
was quite new to the market, andUbuntu detected it straight away,even though I use it over my local
network with Wi-Fi. I also have a HP
OfficeJet 4500, connected with
USB, and have no issues with thateither.
Now, let’s get down to action.

Scan and save
Let me now summarise the useof each of the applications
mentioned above.
gscan2pdf provides thefunctionality needed to scan yourdocuments and save them to disk.
Pdfsam (pdf split and merge)
provides the functionality to merge
multiple single pdf scans into asingle 'stacked' pdf document, and,if required, it can unstack themback to single pdf's.
Ensure that your scanner isconnected to the Laptop or PC or
to your Network, and switched onat the mains. Select and run theapplication gscan2pdf, and, once it
opens, click the “scan” icon; theapplication will now search for any
connected scanners and placethem in a selection list. The next
window that opens allows you toselect the appropriate scanner if
you have more than one
connected.
There are 4 tabs:
Page Options: here you canselect to scan single pages ormultiple pages. Obviously, multiple
pages can be handled only with an
ADF (Automatic Document
Feeder). I have found that “Clean
up images” and “OCR scanned
pages” are best left un-ticked forthe purposes of this tutorial.
Scan Mode: here you canchoose between 'colour', 'line art',and 'grey'. The scan resolution canalso be changed here. I find thatfor normal “paperless office” uses,
150 is a good choice.
Advanced: here you can alter
the 'compression', 'factor', andfull circle magazine #58'scan source'. I tend to set
Compression at JPEG, factor at 10,
and Scan Source at either 'Flatbed'
or 'ADF' - as appropriate. I use ADF
mostly, as you can scan many pages
with ease. NOTE: ADF will be an
option only if the scanner supports
this.
Geometry: I leave measurement
as default, and paper size as A4 (I
am in the UK).
Now, assuming you have placed
the docs to scan in either the
flatbed or the ADF, click 'Scan'.
The scanned pages will now
appear as thumbnails in the 'main'
gscan2pdf window.
If you have scanned multiple
documents, you have the option to
select one or more in the left pane.
You can now click the 'save' icon
(looks like an HDD with green
arrow). The save window will now
appear. You have the following
options:
Page Range, select either All or
20

Selected as appropriate.
Image Type, for normal
Paperless Office uses, select PDF.
Date, click this and choose theappropriate date. If you arescanning, say, bank statements,
select the date of the statement as
this will be used for the filename.
Other data can be added as
required.
For Compression, I normallyselect Automatic. Click Save.
You will now be offered a file
manager window to select thetarget destination.
Browse to where you wish tosave the scan.
To make the next “save”
somewhat easier, you can choose
to click the + sign (to save as ashortcut for next time), before you
click the Save button.
That's it, your scans will havebeen saved to your HDD.
contents ^HOWTO - THE PAPERLESS OFFICEA PLEA ON BEHALF OF THE
PODCAST PARTY
As you often hear in the podcast, we're callingfor opinion topics for that section of the show.
Instead of us having a rant about whatever
strikes us, why not prompt us with a topic andwatch for the mushroom clouds over thehorizon! It's highly unlikely that the three of us
will agree.

Merge and/or Split
If you subsequently need tomerge (stack) multiple single scans
together, or extract (split) a pagefrom a merged set, then you needto open pdfsam.
This is quite simple to use:
select the Merge/Extract option in
the left-hand window, then click
the ADD button, and select the
PDFs you want to merge into one.
In the selection window that
returns listing all the PDFs that you
previously selected, you get theoption of re-ordering them, then
you can choose the target locationand filename, and then click RUN.

Or, an even more radical thought, send us an
opinion by way of a contribution!

Conversely, if you wish to split a
page from a merged/stacked set,
select the split option in the left
window, then click the ADD button,and select the PDF you want to
extract from. The normal split
option would be Burst; then you
can choose the target location andfilename, and then click RUN.

You can post comments and opinions on the
podcast page at fullcirclemagazine.org, in our
Ubuntu Forums section, or email
podcast@fullcirclemagazine.org. You can also
send us a comment by recording an audio clip of
no more than 30 seconds and sending it to thesame address. Comments and audio may beedited for length. Please remember this is afamily-friendly show.

I hope you have found thisuseful, because I now use this atweekly intervals, to reduce the“paper” collecting in my office.

It would be great to have contributors come on
the show and express an
opinion in person.

Many thanks to the author(s) of
both the applications describedabove.

full circle magazine #58

Robin

21

contents ^HOW-TO

Write For Full Circle Magazine

Written by Ronnie Tucker

GuidelinesT

he single rule for anarticle is that it must
somehow be linked to
Ubuntu or one of themany derivatives of Ubuntu(Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc).
Write your article in whicheversoftware you choose. I would
recommend LibreOffice, but
PLEASE SPELL AND GRAMMARCHECK IT!

Writing
There is no word limit forarticles, but be advised that longarticles may be split across several
issues. In your article, please place
where you would like a particular
image to be. Please do not use any
formatting in your document.

ImagesImages should be no wider than
800 pixels, in JPG format, and use
low compression.

If you are writing a review,please follow the guidelines shown
here.
For a more detailed list of thestyle rules and common pitfalls
please refer to:https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuMa
gazine/Style - in short: US spelling,
no l33t speak and no smilies.
When you are ready to submit
your article please email it to:articles@fullcirclemagazine.org
If you can't write articles, buthang out in Ubuntu Forums, send
us interesting forum threads that
we could print.

Non-English Writers
If your native language is not
English, don't worry. Write yourarticle, and one of the proofreaders will read it for you andcorrect any grammatical or spelling
errors. Not only are you helping themagazine and the community, but
we'll help you with your English!

full circle magazine #58

REVIEWS
Games/Applications
When reviewing games/applications please state clearly:• title of the game
• who makes the game• is it free, or a paid download?
• where to get it from (give download/homepage URL)
• is it Linux native, or did you use Wine?
• your marks out of five
• a summary with positive and negative points

Hardware
When reviewing hardware please state clearly:• make and model of the hardware• what category would you put this hardware into?
• any glitches that you may have had while using the hardware?
• easy to get the hardware working in Linux?
• did you have to use Windows drivers?
• marks out of five
• a summary with positive and negative points

You don't need to be an expert to write anarticle - write about the games, applications
and hardware that you use every day.
22

contents ^https://spideroak.com

full circle magazine #58

23

contents ^LINUX LAB

W

Useful Linux Investigative Tools

Written by Charles McColm

hether you need tofigure out if yoursystem supports acertain mode, or justwant to get to know more about asystem, Ubuntu has a good numberof useful tools. Most of the tools
described here can be run from astandard Live CD, so, if you arelooking for the system
specifications for dozens ofdifferent systems, these can be
handy tools.
As with a lot of Linux software,
there are both graphical and nongraphical tools. The first couple oftools (hardinfo and lshw-gtk), are
not a part of the standard
installation or Live CD, but they arein the Ubuntu universe repositores.
As long as you have the Ubuntu
universe repositories enabled, theninstalling them is a simple matter:sudo apt­get install hardinfolshw­gtk

While most of the system
information tools can run as astandard user, they will notnecessarily detect as much as when

run as the root user. It’s best to runeach tool using gksudo in the caseof graphical tools, or sudo forcommand line tools.

hardinfo

Of all the tools, this is perhaps
the most visual, and it has a coupleof benchmarking features that are
not in lshw-gtk. Run hardinfo byeither pressing Alt+F2 and typing:gksudo hardinfo

or typing the same command
into a terminal window.
Hardinfo has a nice graphicalrepresentation of each systemcomponent. Clicking on acomponent reveals its attributes.
full circle magazine #58

For example, clicking on theSummary icon gives a quick
overview of processor, memory,
operating system, and some
information about the sound andvideo devices. What differentiates
hardinfo from lshw-gtk is that it
shows some operating system
information, such as which kernel
modules are in use (which can be
handy if you are trying to problemsolve why a particular device is notworking), environment variables,and even boot times. Hardinfo canalso do a number of benchmarks:
CPU Blowfish, CPU CryptoHash,
CPU Fibonacci, CPU-N-Queens, FPU
FFT, and FPU Raytracing. By
themselves, the benchmarks are
not much to look at, but if you arebuilding a variety of different
systems, or slightly different
systems, these benchmarks are aninteresting way to see thedifference between equipment.

opened by the browser of yourchoice.
The downside to hardinfo isthat some of the information israther sparse. For example, it
shows the model of the hard drivein my notebook, but not the actual
size. If you’re trying to spec abunch of machines, this is one
more detail you would have to lookup.
If you do a little more searchingfor information about hardinfo, it
is worth noting that while thehome page for hardinfo suggests
the last active version was createdin 2009, the bug tracker shows
recent active bug squashing andenhancements.

lshw-gtk

Perhaps the best feature ofhardinfo is the fact that it cangenerate reports about any or allof the system information or
benchmarks. Those reports are
stored as a html file, and can be24

contents ^LINUX LAB - INVESTIGATIVE TOOLSThis product can fill in many ofthe details hardinfo leaves out.
lshw-gtk is a graphical front end tothe command line tool lshw. As you
will see, a number of these tools
are related, so do not be surprised
to see how similar some of thetools appear. Like hardinfo, lshwgtk is not installed in the default
installation of Ubuntu (thecommand line version, lshw, is).
Run lshw-gtk the same manner you
would hardinfo:

The amount of information
lshw-gtk shows is very useful, andit’s a bit more friendly than its
command line brother lshw. It cansave system information just likehardinfo, but saves information in
an XML format (better forprocessing, but not pretty when
loaded in Firefox). The main
advantage of lshw-gtk overhardinfo is that lshw-gtk displays
some information (hard drive size)
which hardinfo currently doesn’tshow.

gksudo lshw­gtk

lshw-gtk normally shows a few
top-level items that can be
expanded for more information.
Where most of the other tools
show reams and reams of
information, lshw-gtk streamlines
the information into somewhat
digestible separate windows. lshwgtk is a bit less friendly thanhardinfo. In order to get to some of
the results (hard drive size, forexample), you have to “drill down”
into sub-menus. For example, inorder to determine the hard drivesize, you have to click
Motherboard, host bridge, IDE
interface, then ATA disk, notexactly intuitive if you’re nothardware savvy.

lshw

using other tools, and it has
switches that allow for some very
specific information. For example:
sudo lshw ­class disk ­classstorage ­short | grep sda

Displays the following result on
my notebook:/0/100/1f.2/0.0.0/dev/sda
disk
80GB HDS728080PLA380

Run without any switches, lshw
displays literally pages of
information. lshw-gtk saves
information only in XML format,
but the command line lshw cansave information in XML, HTML, orjson (Javascript object notation)format.

that it can be a bit overwhelming.
The -class and -short switches
come in handy parsing down theinformation to something moremanageable. The classes available
are: system, bus, memory,
processor, bridge, display, network,
multimedia, disk, storage, volume,and power. For example:
sudo lshw ­class memory­shortlspci

sudo lshw ­html >hardware.html

After running lshw with the-html switch, just open the file
(hardware.html in this case), with a
web browser.
This is the command line
brother to lshw-gtk. Being acommand line tool, lshw has all the
typical advantages of many
command line tools: it’s part of thedefault Ubuntu install, it can be
piped to a text file and processed
full circle magazine #58

While lshw can display system
information in html format, wefound it didn’t work so wellcombined with other switches - theinformation was there but theformatting was completely lost.
The information is so extensive
25

lspci lists PCI devices in asystem. Like lshw, lspci can display
a lot of information about asystem. Run on its own withoutswitches, lspci displays a fairamount of information about PCI
devices within a system, but you
can add more verbosity by adding
up to 3 v switches:sudo lspci ­vvv
contents ^LINUX LAB - INVESTIGATIVE TOOLSOne practical use of lspci is tofigure out which wireless chipset a
system has in order to install thecorrect wireless driver. Like
hardinfo, lspci can display kernel
module information about pci
devices (using the -k switch).

dmidecode

cache). Additional information canbe displayed with a comma
between information types. For
example:sudo dmidecode ­t 4,22

The first type 4 is the processor,
and the second type 22 is thebattery. Of course not all the types
will necessarily display for all
systems. Battery information, forexample, is primarily for
notebooks. Note: be sure not toinclude a space after the comma or
dmidecode will not interpret thesecond type.

cat /proc
This reads a system’s DMI tablefor information. One of the greatthings about dmidecode is that it
can display information about the
maximum supported configurationof the system. For example:
dmidecode displays both thecurrent amount and maximum
amount of RAM a system canhandle. It is also possible to limit
the information dmidecode
displays using the -t switch to limit
the type of information displayed(such as processor, memory, or

The sixth tool is not really a
specific tool for querying
hardware, but the combination of
cat and the /proc (process)information in the Linux filesystem. The two processes I querymost on systems are /proc/cpuinfo
and /proc/meminfo. I typically use
grep to limit information (thoughwith cpu information it can be
handy to see other informationsuch as cpu family to help sortbetween different processors):
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep
'model name'full circle magazine #58

On my notebook displays:
model name: Intel(R)Celeron(R) M processor
1.50GHz

Checking meminfo using catshows a lot more detail about
active memory including both main
memory free and swap memory
free. Unlike other tools, sudo isn’t
required to query the proc
filesystem.

df: /dev/sda1
77G
5.6G

68G

8% /

`/root/.gvfs': Permission
deniedThe second line ending in
Permission denied can beeliminated by running df with sudo.

Baobab / Disk Usage
Analyzer

dfThis one is specific to displaying
disk information. As with cat, you
do not need to execute df withroot permission, you just run df
from a command prompt. Running
df by itself displays disk
information in 1K-blocks, not very
human-readable. Use the -hH
switches to make the df output
human-readable, and using powersof 1000 (which is closer to what
hard drives are marketed as). I also
like to limit information to thedrive I’m working with, again using
grep:
df ­hH | grep ‘sda’

On my notebook results in:
26

The last investigative product isalso a disk usage tool. You can find
Disk Usage Analyzer under theAccessories menu. Disk Usage
Analyzer (like the du command line
tool which I do not cover here) isreally handy for tracking down
which files and directories aretaking up the most space on yourfile system. Disk Usage Analyzer isreally easy to use. Click the Scan
Home button to get an overview ofcontents ^LINUX LAB - INVESTIGATIVE TOOLS
disk usage in your home directory.
The Analyzer menu allows you
to scan your home directory, entire
file system, or a remote file systemthrough SSH, FTP (with login),
Public FTP, SAMBA share, WebDAVand Secure WebDAV, or Custom
URI.

Lshw wiki:
http://ezix.org/project/wiki/Hardw
areLiSter
Nognu dmidecode page:
http://www.nongnu.org/dmidecode/

CODEWORD

Every number in the codewords grid is 'code' for a letter of thealphabet. At the end you should have a different letter in eachnumbered box, and a word in English in each of the horizontal
and vertical runs on the codeword grid.

Disk Usage Analyzer can also be
run from the command line using
the baobab command, but it’s still agraphical tool. The advantage ofrunning baobab from the commandline is that you can specify aparticular directory without theneed of drilling down to that
directory from the home or root
filesystem.
We’ve looked at 8 useful system
investigation tools. Linux has many
more tools, a number of which arereferenced by the manual (man)pages of the tools we’ve looked athere. Whether you’re a systembuilder or just supporting Linux,
these are all useful tools.
Helpful Links:
Hardinfo homepage:
http://hardinfo.berlios.de/HomePa
geCharles is a step-father, husband, andLinux fan who runs a not-for-profit
computer refurbishing project. When
not breaking hardware/servers hemaintains a blog at
http://www.charlesmccolm.com/.

full circle magazine #58

Solutions are on the second last page.

puzzles are copyright, and kindly provided by,
The Puzzle Club - www.thepuzzleclub.com
27

contents ^CLOSING WINDOWSWritten by:
Ronnie Tucker (KDE)
Jan Mussche (Gnome)
Elizabeth Krumbach (XFCE)Mark Boyajian (LXDE)David Tigue (Unity)

Formatting A USB Device

Linux is slightly different in thisregard as it’s almost impossible toformat a device without seeing amention of partitions. And thatalways bothers people. Think ofpartitions as being drives within adrive. If you want to only format a
USB/SD storage device, then you’ll
more than likely not bother withpartitions.
WARNING: Be very careful withformatting storage devices. If you
choose the wrong device, and click
OK, you could be in big trouble.
Make 200% sure you’ve got theright device before clicking that
final OK button!

Kubuntu:
Kubuntu comes with anapplication in K > Appllications >ormatting (or erasing) a
System called KDE Partition
storage device in Windows
Manager.
is relatively easy. You rightclick the drive you wish to
On first loading the application,format, and you’ll be presented
you’ll see a list of your storage
with a window which details thedevices at the top left, and asteps to take in erasing all
diagram of your devices space at
information from your device.
the top. The middle section lists

F

full circle magazine #58

partitions, types, labels, and so on.
While the bottom panel shows
operations pending. Sometimes, it
can be difficult to tell which device
is which. In the list above, one ofthem is a USB device, but whichone? Well, I can narrow it down by
knowing that the others are toolarge to be my USB device. Clicking
the name /dev/sde tells me (middle
panel) that it’s a Kingston
DataTraveler and is 8GB - which
confirms what is physically written
on my device.
Right clicking on the top or
middle panels will get me almost
no options other than ‘Unmount’,so do that first. Now we have28

access (via right clicking, or the
buttons at the top of the window)
to more options, and the main one(for now) is ‘Delete’. This willremove the current partitions
before letting us choose ‘New’.
This window will let you assign afile system, a label (if applicable),and how big to make this newcontents ^CLOSING WINDOWS
partition. I’ll call it ‘My USB’, use
the ext4 file system, and use thefull capacity of the USB.

graphically by the blue rectangle. If
we wanted to reformat thispartition, you would simply click on
Format Volume. A simple pop-up
menu will prompt you for the typeof file system you want, and aname for the volume - then you
would click the Format button.
(Note: doing this will destroy any
data you have stored on thispartition; however, if you had morethan one partition on the selected
drive, the other partitions would
remain unaffected.) In thisexample, to delete the entire
partition and leave the disk
unallocated, you would click Delete
Partition. Once the partition isdeleted, you can create a newpartition(s) - specifying the type,size, and volume name.

After clicking OK, the last thing
to do is to click ‘Apply’. It’s
absolutely critical that you double
check you’ve got the right device
before clicking apply - as you’ll get
only one more sanity check!
Once KDE Partition Manager
tells you it’s done, your USB deviceis shiny and new! To begin using it,
you need to remove the device (it’ssafe as it’s still unmounted) andplug it back in again.

Lubuntu:
By default, Lubuntu comes witha program called Disk Utility thateasily handles all standard disk
management tasks. The program
can be opened from the main menu
by selecting System Tools > Disk
Utility.
Disk Utility is simple but
powerful. As mentioned earlier inthis article: you need to exercise
caution before committing anaction or you could find yourself
reformatting the wrong drive! As
you can see (below), Disk Utility“sees” all the drives attached toyour system, which it displays inthe “left pane” under the title
Storage Devices; I have selected
the USB drive. Disk Utility provides
a lot of information about the
selected drive, and segregates theresults into two categories: Disk
and Volumes. The former provides
disk-level information andfunctionality. In this example, there
are three functions you canperform at the disk level: Format
Drive, Benchmark, and Safe
full circle magazine #58

Removal. To invoke a function,
hover your mouse over thefunction until it becomes
highlighted, then click it. (Note:
Depending on the type of drive
selected in the left pane, theavailable functions will change.)
The Volumes section (lower halfof right pane) analyzes and displays
attributes and functions related to
the volumes (partitions) on thedrive. In this example, there is only
one partition and it is represented
29

From the Drive section (upper
half of right pane) of Disk Utility,
you can select Format Drive todelete all the partitions on a drivewith a single action. Disk Utility isvery easy to use, but it assumes
you understand the consequencesof your actions. At most, Disk
Utility will warn you once before
you execute a destructive action(e.g. delete a partition, format adrive, etc.); however, it is simple tooperate and easy to learn.
contents ^CLOSING WINDOWS
Gnome-Shell:

the Ubuntu Software Center bysimply searching for “Disk Utility”
and clicking Install. Once installed,
you can access it via Xubuntu
mouse menu > Settings > Disk
Utility.

In this version of Ubuntu, you
can find the program Disk Utility(System > Administration > Disk
Utility). Once started, you will see
an overview of all disks connected,
or built into your computer.
Since it is the same program as
has been described above in the
Lubuntu section, I will explain only
some of the features of thisprogram that have not been
described already.
Top right, you see the section
Drive. Here you see a lot of
information about the drive. Just
have a look at some drives in yourcomputer, see if you can recognize
them. In this Drive section, you see
3 buttons: Format drive, SMART
Data, and Benchmark. Clicking
SMART Data, you will see thisscreen which tells you about thecondition of your drive.
The Benchmark button tells you
about what the drive can doregarding read and write speed.

Unity:In Unity, the default applicationis ‘Disk Utilty’. Click on the Dashicon, start typing ‘Disk Utility’, andthen click the icon when it appears.
The usage for this tool has alreadybeen mentioned before, so I won’t
go into details here. I would justlike to emphasise that you
unmount the volume before
formatting, and also make sure youare 100% certain this is what you
want to do before you click the
final button. This will cause you tolose all data on the drive, so makesure that formatting the drive iswhat you want to do. Good luck.

you have the option of using thecommand line tool “parted” which
does ship with Xubuntu - you canfind documentation for this tool on
the parted website:
http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/
However, it is instead
recommended that you use thesame tool already recommended
for Lubuntu and Gnome, “Disk
Utility” - which you can install from

Usage has already been
covered, so I will quickly mention
that, in Xubuntu, USB Flash Drives
are automatically mounted wheninserted - so they will show up
when you load up the the Disk
Utility application. You can go to
Xubuntu mouse menu > Settings >Settings Manager, and select“Removable Drives and Media” tomake modifications to thisbehavior.
Next month, we’ll be looking
into *buntu equivalents to the
Windows Task Manager.

Xubuntu:
Xubuntu 11.10 does not shipwith a default graphical application
for formatting a storage device. If
you don’t want to install software,
full circle magazine #58

30

contents ^MY STORYI

Written by Chandra

n 2008, I was still using a 20year-old DOS computer (!!)
when it became obvious I
couldn’t go on without
connecting to the web. I bought
one of the very first netbooks
because it was funny and cheap.
Linux was one of the reasons forthe low price, and I knew nothing
about this strange thing. But I
discovered that it was possible tobuy a computer without paying
what I call the “Microsoft tax”, soto speak. I added an external
CD/DVD writer.
The original distro was Xandros,
not a very good one in fact. The
possibilities were very limited, andI rapidly looked for something else.
The problem was to find a distro
working out-of-the box on an
EeePC, and it was not easy in thosedays. I started with ubuntu-eee (anUbuntu 8.04 fork which became
easypeasy). The main problem was
the kernel: ubuntu-eee was using a
specific kernel, and it was notpossible to easily upgrade it whena new ubuntu version wasavailable. I tried live sessions of
eeedora, eeedebian and Linux

Mint, and I finally switched to
Ubuntu 8.10 on my netbook and on
my new desktop computer too (Ibought a “naked” Nyos 50 to avoid
paying the “tax”).

Very simple but powerful things:
Firefox and Thunderbird, Abiword,
and Gnumeric. On a second level,
eog as an image-viewer, epdf as a
pdf-viewer, Xsane for scanning,
GIMP, MPlayer, devede, brasero (ifIn the meantime, I was gradually you want to know more about
discovering Linux, thanks tothese packages, please refer to theforums, magazines, and online
ubuntu online documentation). I
documentation. Everything was not also use things as gparted, baobab,
yet working out-of-the box: e.g. the mousepad, gnome-disk-utility,
wifi LED or the volume control on
hardinfo, ntp, wipe, clonezilla...
the netbook - but I succeeded in
fixing those little problems. Within
And now, what is important toa year and a half, I definitely
me? First of all, I do not have todropped out everything that wasadapt myself to the distro. The
coming from Microsoft, and my
distro must be able to adapt itself
configuration was OK regarding
to me. I must be able to control
what I wanted to do with it.
precisely what I need, and to
remove all that is not necessary toThen, Unity arrived! I’ll just say
me. That is why I don’t use Ubuntu
two things about that. To me, Unity Software Center - which is just a
is a real nightmare. It is also apleasant catalogue to look at. It’s
solution for which there was nonot precise enough. It does notproblem. So, I switched to Xubuntu. allow me to completely remove
It is very simple, very intuitive,
unused packages, that is to say tofaster, and very easy to configure.
also remove configuration files. I
Since it uses gtk libraries, gnome
added deborphan in synaptic,
applications are welcome. Xubuntu which allows the removal of orphan
is now the only distro I use.
packages. I also removed about
forty or fifty useless things. For
Oh, by the way, what do I use?
example, dummy packages orfull circle magazine #58

31

things like splx - since my printer is
not a Samsung printer. This isimportant because my netbook has
only a 4 GB SSD.
I must be able to completely
personalise the desktop so thateverything is located where it has
to be and behaves the way I want.
Fortunately, Linux allows any user
to modify little things in
configuration files. For example, Ichanged the 3600 seconds random
sleep time to 10 seconds in/etc/cron.daily/apt. Otherwise,
when I start my computer, it may
take more than half an hour before
I am told about available updates.
Upgrading to new versions is areal problem which bothers me.
- First, upgrading should be as
simple as updating. And it’s not.
During the very long upgrading
process, I am generally asked tochoose either the new version ofan unknown configuration file or tokeep the old one. I don’t know
everything about ubuntu, so I know
nothing about the consequences of
the choice, and I don’t know what
contents ^MY STORY
to do. I generally choose at
random. After the process, I
discover applications have been
added. For example, I chosemousepad and eog. Why install
leafpad, pidgin (which I don’t use),
and ristretto that I had previously
removed ?
- Second, all that was working
before should work after. And all
my personal choices in the
different preferences andconfiguration files should stayunchanged. After upgrading, things
have disappeared such as certain
icons. Other things simply don’t
work anymore. For example ADSL
connection (from Jaunty to
Karmic). I had to add sun-javaplugin after upgrading to Lucidbecause icedtea-plugin was nolonger able to display websites
which it did before.
- Third, depending on how I doit, I don’t exactly get the samething. I use a single ext4 partition,and no swap, and I have tried four
different ways to switch to a newversion:• I use the very long upgrading
process. It generally takes at least
four hours to upgrade, fix what
doesn’t work any more, andremove the useless things whichhave been added. There is also
another problem in this process.
Some new features are notavailable. For example, I had tomanually switch from grub-legacy
to grub-pc in karmic.
• I make a fresh install, which is thebest way to get the real newversion. But I have to repersonalise everything, and it takes
a very, very long time.
• I make a fresh install WITHOUT
formatting the old ext4 partition,
which keeps my /home directory.
But the result is not exactly thesame as the one I get with theprevious option. Pieces of the oldversion are not completely
removed.
• I use two partitions: / and aseparate /home partition, and I
then make a complete fresh installwhich keeps my home directory.
But I still have to remove what is
not useful to me. That’s what I’ll dowith Xubuntu 12.04 LTS.

16x16 SUDOKU
Numbers 1 to 9 and letters A to F are to be filled into the
16x16 grid so that every row, every column, and every
4x4 box contains 1 to 9 and A - F.

So, the ideal upgrading process
doesn’t exist. Anyway, the good
new is that facing problems is an
opportunity to learn something
and to grow up. And of course, I go
on with Xubuntu -- the best distro
for me.

full circle magazine #58

Solutions are on the second last page.

puzzles are copyright, and kindly provided by,
The Puzzle Club - www.thepuzzleclub.com
32

contents ^MY OPINION

I

Written by John Kerrt has been over ten years now
since I installed and used Linuxfor the first time. I wanted totinker with computers, but, atthe same time, I did not want tospend money on software, and I did
not want to break any EULA. And I
also wanted to make use of
discarded hardware. It was Red Hat
5 that gave me the ability to do
this, and I have been hooked eversince.
I have tried many distros over
the years - from Red Hat, Fedora,
Puppy, SCO (yes, even them),
Mandriva, but at one point I
decided that I should quit distro
hopping and stick with one, forbetter or worse. I chose Fedora.
That went well - except for one
thing - to me, Fedora was very
unstable from one release to theother, and, often, things that I
spent time fixing got broken again
six to twelve months later. I camevery close to going back to thedark side - yes, that meant
Windows.
Then, I heard about Ubuntu
Warty Warthog, and I decided togive Linux one last try. Ubuntu did
solve one more problem - as I was
also tired of downloading 4 CD'sfor each install. The one-CD
download was a godsend.
By this time I had become quite
the software freedom evangelist; I
was just disappointed that thesoftware “free as in freedom”
movement was too connected tothe technocrat elite, and not reallyconnected to everyday end users.
So, I tried Ubuntu, and I could
see that Ubuntu was trying to dowhat the other distros have notdone, and that is be easy to installfor people who were far and away
less computer geeky than I.
Needless to say, I have been won
over by Ubuntu.

some support from the likes of IBM
and Red Hat. Don't get me wrong, I
know that they have put money
and resources back into Linux forwhich I am thankful. What I would
like to see is Linux advocacy insome kind of major advertisingbudget. We need a “desktop”
advertisement with “punch” in it.
It would be great if all of thecorporations that benefit fromLinux contributed to an advertisingfund. I would love to see Linuxdecals on Formula 1 cars of theteams using Linux. I know that a
Formula 1 car is probably the mostexpensive piece of advertising realestate on the planet, but all wewant is a few square inches that
nobody else wants.
What I am saying is this: anylarge corporation that gets
benefits from free software shouldbe helping out in the promotion ofLinux.

However, as a person who
believes in software freedom on
religious, political, economic, andenvironmental grounds, I am
disappointed on one front. I am notalone in my efforts to promote
This brings me to Marksoftware freedom; many Linux
Shuttleworth. I believe that Mr.
users do the same. But, over the
Shuttleworth has been a major
years, I would have liked to see
contributor in the effort tofull circle magazine #58

33

promote the use of Linux by the
everyday user. I do not believe
there is anyone in the past,present, or near future with hiskind of commitment or resources.
When I first tried Unity, I had
some misgivings about it. However,for me it was not rocket science to
see what Unity wanted to achieve
and why. A single user interface fordesktops, phones, and everything
in-between. For people who runless than ten applications, Unity is
all they need, and the good news isthat Unity is going to get better.
Unity is what the software
freedom movement needs to takefree software to the next level. It istime to quit all of the “year of theLinux desktop” navel gazing, andget behind something that has
some real potential to yield somegood results.
So, lets stop nitpicking, andsupport Mark Shuttleworth andCanonical. Because, for all that heand his company has done for us, itis the least we can do.

contents ^Last month's question was:I THINK...
If you have amobile/cell phone,which OS does it use?

If you have a mobile/cell phone,which OS does it use?

computers.
Flexibilty, geek factor.
Previous phone wasSymbian, but that’s dying
now. Android was the best

free handy apps, etc.

Windows:

iOS (Apple):low price + large display +fast hardware.

It's the most "polished"mobile OS.

option.
GPS & topo maps apps.
I prefer not to be closedin.
Symbian:Android can be rooted.
Linux in my pocket.

I have no idea.
iOS (Apple)
Android
webOS
Windows
BlackBerry
Symbian
Other

1
7
97
0
3
2
7
6

1%
6%
79%
0%
2%
2%
6%
5%

Comments:
Android:Apple didn't make it;works well with linux

Reliable, and I won't pay
the Microsoft tax to buy
an Android phone.

Open source - I use
Cyanogenmod
This month I'd like to pose the question:

Initially a friend's
recommendation (andsome research). Nokia had
lost its way, and I refuse
to pay Apple prices or be told what
I can or cannot do with my device(iTunes, no Flash, etc). Now on mysecond Android smartphone.

What turns you away from a
distro, and what turns you to a distro?
To give your tuppence worth go to: http://goo.gl/gXDZPClosing date for this question is Sunday 11th March 2012.

I love integration of
Google mail, calendar, nicefree Google navigation,
full circle magazine #58

34

contents ^full circle magazine #58

35

contents ^REVIEW

Linux Mint 12

Written by Robin CatlingI

t's that time already, as Clemand the team gear up to push
the next version of Linux Mint
through the gate, the rest of
us wonder if Mint can maintain its
momentum in gaining a larger
share of the Linux user base. Mint
has built a reputation as thealternative to Ubuntu, variously
catching the defectors from
Ubuntu Unity and at times even
overtaking Ubuntu in the distro
download charts. Given the factthat Mint is dependent on the
upstream efforts of Debian, Gnome
and Ubuntu, this release is going to
be far from plain sailing.
Linux Mint 12 is based on
Gnome 3.0 atop the Ubuntu 11.10
base. More on that shortly. As
usual, I've got Mint in two
configurations; in a virtual machineon VirtualBox, and on physicalhardware in the shape of the old
Celeron test box with 1GB memory
and GeForce 440MX graphics card.

that’s going on. Not that peering
under the covers helped when thething crashed on me three times on
the Celeron. I think it has trouble
with the collection of USB
adapters, cards, ports, and twoelderly wireless adapters - one ofwhich is PCI and the other a USB
dongle, both based on RaLink chipsets... yes, I know, glutton forpunishment.
Gnome 3.0 ups the specification
for graphics adapters. Neither the
VirtualBox Guest Additions adapter
nor the old GeForce AGP card candeliver 3D. Gnome 3.0 with theMint extensions just hangs partway into populating the desktop.

If you can get 3D running, Mint
relies on MSG or GCSE's or somesuch; at least it’s not Gnome Shellor Unity. Actually, "MGSE" (Mint
Gnome Shell Extensions) is a
desktop layer on top of Gnome 3.0
that makes it possible for you to
use Gnome 3.0 in a traditional way.
You can disable all components
within MGSE to get a pure Gnome
3.0 experience, or you can enable
all of them to get a Gnome 3.0
desktop that is similar to what
you’ve been using under 2.x. In thedefault configuration, you get Mint
Menu but with a Gnome Shell/Unity
style sidebar launcher panel within
it. You can also access the Activities
button to get the Gnome Shell
panel launcher. That's three ways

to launch programs, two of which
don't work for me on two different
set-ups. This Gnome 3.0 with MGSE
is already taking flak elsewhere as
a 'Frankenstein' creation and 'as big
a piece of *rap as Unity.' Harsh,chaps, truly harsh.
If you get the DVD edition or
upgrade via the mint-meta-matepackage (all 105MB of it), you can
get the MATE version of thefaithful Mint Menu; it's a fork of
Gnome 2 which preservescompatibility with Gnome 3. To
quote the Mint team, <em>"MATEis brand new, it's not completely
stable yet, and it's missing a few
parts... Eventually, MATE will be inevery way identical to Gnome 2 andrepresent the future of traditional
desktops within Linux."</em> So
far, I've had it working once in six
installs, and, even then, MATE
stopped working after a reboot,never to be seen again.
So MATE doesn't work on eitherof my test boxes. Instead of theMint Menu with sidebar, all I get isa conventional Windows-style startmenu. All the fonts render

The graphical installer is thecurrent standard for
Debian/Ubuntu 11.10, and, innormal operation, hides everything
full circle magazine #58

36

contents ^REVIEW: LINUX MINT 12
abysmally. Go into the Appearance
controls, under themes, and almost
everything declares "this theme
will not look as intended because
the required GKT+ theme engine[name] is not installed." Even
though all the referenced GTK+
theme engines ARE installed. It's a
mess.
The fall-back 'Gnome Classic'
option provides a top panel withthe application menu and notifierswith visible system tray icons, abottom panel containing thewindow list and workspaceswitcher, and retains the idea of atask-centric desktop, wherein you
switch between windows, notapplications. It's all locked-down,
non-configurable à là Gnome
Shell/Unity, with no way to add
items or customise the panels.
For the current menu set-up,
which is fairly sparse and notalways logical, Mint dumps most of
the control-type programs(everything not in System Settings)
into the 'Other' category. When I
say sparse, there are many things
missing, presumably because
they've not been engineered for
Gnome 3.0 yet, or left off the CDrelease to make space for all the
Gnome 3.0 tat; for example, there
is a User account tool, but nofacility to maintain grouppermissions - you have to drop into
a terminal session. That'll go downwell with the Mint user base.
Artistically, Linux Mint 12 uses a
new theme called Mint-Z which isbased on Mint-X and Zukitwo, thedefault background is the 3D Mint
logo updated to version 12. The
window controls and borders
feature a frankly ugly look called
Adwaito, which I can't wait to get
rid of. Depending on whether I run
Gnome, Gnome Classic 2D, or
MATE, the desktop rendering offonts is as ugly as sin, which is a big
step backward given that Mint
always looked stunning.
Interestingly, for a distro insearch of a business model, thedefault search engine is
DuckDuckGo. Ethically, I like thelook of this; it doesn't show
different results depending on
who's running the search, it doesn't
track or record user information,and it's built on, and contributes to,Open Source software. It's one of asmall number of search engines
which will share revenue generated
by Linux Mint users with the Mint
team to provide funding. Although
you can easily switch searchengines in Linux Mint 12, thanks tothe clear instructions, you mightwant to stick with those that fundthe distro.
For now, web browsers browse,
media plays, documents can be
written, and even the USB wirelessconnection on the Celeron works

fine after a couple of hiccups; I'mrunning it in preference to the PCI
wireless card because the aerial onthat one is a piece of junk that
can't pick up the attenuated signal
in my building. I'm probably being
unfair as even the thumping great
Hawking antenna on my routerbarely penetrates the steel in mybuilding.
And that, dear friends, is as far
as we go with Mint 12 'Lisa'. The
stack of new and forked software
isn't working properly, so while I
could upgrade to the DVD version
to pull in the full release, I'm notsure it's worth the bandwidth. Thisis a disruptive release, the wholething a transitional step from Mint
11, in need of a lot of damage
limitation. I hope they can get it
fixed soon, I really do.
The Gnome Classic 2D desktopof Linux Mint 12 is stable andquicker than expected, but it can't
compensate for the fact that theoverall release is drowning in allthat desktop re-engineering.

full circle magazine #58

37

contents ^LETTERS
Sims 2 CrisisI'm a long-time geek from backin the ‘70s. I loved Unix backthen; however I made the bad
choice of switching to thenewest and greatest thing (DOS).
Then mistake two: trying windows.
And I kept making that mistake
through to Windows XP. Then afriend pointed me to Ubuntu.
Heaven! Well, almost. I have a dualboot system that spends 85% of its
time in Ubuntu. Unfortunately, thishouse is addicted to TheSims2. I've
studied up on Wine andplayonlinux. I've begged and rebegged for help. I know it's
possible, but, so far, no one has
shared how to run Sim2 in Ubuntu.
Please post a how-to on importing
games from Windows.
Rodney J Miller PCA

Head In The CloudsI

discovered your magazine
over the Christmas vacation
while setting up a dual-bootWindows/Mint machine. I have

Every month we like to publish some of the emails we receive. If you would like tosubmit a letter for publication, compliment or complaint, please email it to:letters@fullcirclemagazine.org. PLEASE NOTE: some letters may be edited for space.

spent many mornings over the last
couple of weeks happily riflingthrough back issues, and coming up
to speed on where the Ubuntu
Linux community is at after a long
break.

GUI nuances, and distribution
content choices. Why should
anyone object to Unity, since theuser can so easily replace it? Why
should I care which music player orcontact manager comes standard
in the distribution, or whether the
distribution includes them at all,since I have the Software Centerand Synaptic at my finger tips?

Reading your article on
SpiderOak in FCM#56 prodded myconscience about backups. We
have a blended family (Mint 11 / OS
X Lion / Windows 7, Vista, XP), so
My befuddlement is not
any cloud solution needed toconfined to FCM. Distro dyspepsia
support a mixed home
and GUI griping dominate reviews
environment.
of Ubuntu releases from any
number of sources.
Setting up the SpiderOak clienton Mint and OS X was straightHow about some meaningful
foward. Having the ability to access discussion for a change, such as
the backup from anywhere is aciting kernel improvements forhuge bonus.
stability, or better employment ofmulti-core processors? What's new
Sean Hodges
amongst the underlying libraries,
and what difference does thatmake? What effect might the latest
release have upon the browser war
and HTML5? Who is providing
William and Kate
superior documentation andsupport for all of this toothsome
ew to Ubuntu LinuxFLOSS? Are Prince William and Kate
about a year ago, I
settled in and truly happy together,cannot understand theor are they miserable and merely
fuss about desktops,Nfull circle magazine #58

38

Join us on:
goo.gl/FRTMl
facebook.com/fullcircle
magazine
twitter.com/#!/fullcirclemag
linkedin.com/company/fullcircle-magazine
ubuntuforums.org/forum
display.php?f=270
posing before Britain's
expectations?
No wait, scratch that last bit.
That's what happens when I listen
to the FCM Podcast from here on
the left side of the pond. Perhaps
Ubuntu banality is good. Perhaps it
reflects maturity and utility. Beatsbroken or missing device drivers,
for sure.
Halfnium (in America)

contents ^LETTERS
WiFi USB Adapter

I

recently added a USB wifi
adapter to an old desktop PC
that has been running Ubuntu
since I first scrapped its native
WIndows 2000 system when I took
ownership of it, used, 5 years ago.
It's not a state-of-the-art system,
but has been a dependable device
for basics, and, until now, wasattached to the web via ethernet
cable. I decided to try to run it
wireless and realized that although
there are lots of wonderfulmachines with wifi or wifi cards
installed, that the leap fromethernet to wifi is a challenge,
depending on the vintage of the
hardware, software, and so forth. I
purchased a C. Crane Versa II Wifi
USB adapter as it was priced
competitively with various USP wifi
adapters from many mainstream
retail outlets and online vendors
whose products are not Linuxfriendly. To my surprise, I didn't
need to use Wine and theWindows/Mac installation
instructions and installation disc
included with the adapter. I wasable to go wifi after a few false
starts (mainly to Ubuntu apps), andeliminating confusion in theconfiguration files. Apart from theslightly constrained speed of its
CPU, this old desktop now works asflawlessly as a three-year old
laptop I had screaming along withnative wifi and Ubuntu Linux until
its motherboard died a few months
back.
Long live Linux. Long live
Ubuntu. I'm neither a programmer
nor a code-monkey/geek. Ubuntu
connects yesterday's hardware
with today's software in ways thatyou can only dream of - if thatwould be useful to you and if you
are more savvy than myself in theappropriate areas of
hardware/software/code/network,
etc, then the sky's the limit.
modyl

More KDE LoveS

urely Canonical knows by
now that not all users havestuck to Gnome as their
Desktop of choice, and infact hadn't done so long before
Unity came along. So isn't it abouttime that they put a bit into
helping with the development of
the alternatives?
full circle magazine #58

concerted push for Unity/Gnome.
Kubuntu, which I currently use
as my own desktop, is still a bit
docile, and could do with a bit of a
jiggle to get things moving. It is arelatively stable desktop thesedays, and full credit to themaintainers of it as otherwise
where would we be? The
unfortunate thing I find with
Kubuntu is that it tends to be a bit
sluggish in comparison to some ofthe other KDE distributions.
Unity is too much like Windows,
or, for that matter, Apple, in that it
is basically "You will do things theCanonical way!" I can see where
there will be people who think it iswonderful and mimics theirsmartphones, whereas everyday PC
users don't all want to fit the specof Smartphone operators.
KDE is one of the alternative
options, and the reason I use
Kubuntu is that it offers thefeatures of KDE plus it also offers
the advantages of a huge Ubuntu
base to work with. That is Ubuntu's
strength - its huge base of users
and software in its repositories.
KDE is an excellent desktop, andtends to be overlooked by many
new users because of the39

I am surprised that there hasn't
been a concerted push by
Enlightment users to design a goodUbuntu-based desktop - just as
they have Lubuntu and Xubuntu.
Enlightenment is a nice desktop,
with a smart modern appearance,
but without the quite cumbersome
overheads of KDE. I have tried afew different Enlightenment
desktops, but the thing that theylack is the Ubuntu repositories andthe Ubuntu Forums and the like. It
is the forums and repositories thatmake Ubuntu what it is today.
I have noted that a lot of theprevious Ubuntu Gnome users havedeserted to Linux Mint - as they
like the classical Gnome 2 look andfeel. It is the users like myself, wholike to be able to tinker just thatlittle bit more, who feel left out.
So how about it, Canonical - how
about actively encouraging
development of KDE, E17, LDE, infact, any of the other desktops?
Philcontents ^PUZZLES

If you would like to submit a puzzle for publication, pleaseemail it to: letters@fullcirclemagazine.org . Solutions are on
the second last page of this issue. No peeking!

The 3 x 3 grid below must contain thenumbers from 1 - 9 exactly once. There aresymbols between the numbers... they are: +for addition, - for subtraction, x for
multiplication and the / sign for divide.
Please note that the sums run from left toright or top to bottom,

puzzles are copyright, and kindly provided by,
The Puzzle Club - www.thepuzzleclub.com

The solutions to all the puzzles are on thesecond last page of this issue. No peeking!
full circle magazine #58

40

contents ^Q&A

If you have Ubuntu-related questions, email them to:questions@fullcirclemagazine.org, and Gord will answer them in a futureissue. Please include as much information as you can about your problem.

Compiled by Gord Campbell

Q

I recently installed an
Asus EN210 Silent video
card in my Home Theatre
PC (HTPC). Sometimes
when I run VLC Media Player, thesystem becomes unstable andshuts down, perhaps due tooverheating.

A(Thanks to inobe in the
Ubuntu Forums) Install
mplayer2 and smplayer.
In smplayer, go into
options> preferences> video>
output driver, select vdpau. Itshould reduce the CPU usage
dramatically.

Q

I have Ubuntu 11.10 on
an Asus k53e. When I try
to suspend or hibernate
the laptop, I get a black
screen until I turn off the computer
manually.

A

This web page has acouple of possible fixes.
Despite the name, it iscurrent:

http://thecodecentral.com/2011/0
1/18/fix-ubuntu-10-10suspendhibernate-not-working-bug

seem to get the desktop cube incompiz fusion to work well with
Unity either, this is a necessity forme.

Q

Sorry, theunderpinnings of Gnome
2 were ultimately
limited, so it's gone andit's not coming back.

I'd like to configure my
PC to run two monitors. I
have an ATI RV370 video
adaptor.

A(Thanks to tomski in the
Ubuntu Forums) Many
ATI cards which use thiscore (ATI RV370) have 2
sockets, 1 DVI and 1 VGA. If you
want to use two VGA monitors, I
would recommend an 'adaptor
cable,' essentially it is an adaptor
and cable combined into one. Thisshould ensure that the card
recognizes the monitor, which isoften an issue when you use a DVI
to VGA adaptor.

QI`ve been trying to getused to Unity, but I want
the icon sidebar gone,
and top and bottom
panels back, as in Gnome 2. I can't
full circle magazine #58

AQ

I have noted that the
new Firefox (v9.0.x) isavailable for Linux. If I
choose to download andinstall the upgraded package, will
it affect how the package manager
operates?

A

I ran an update today on
Ubuntu 11.10, andYou could try Kubuntu, although
Firefox 9 arrived. My
that also has significant changes
primary system runs
from what you are used to.
Ubuntu 10.10, with Firefox 3.6.24
Another option would be Linuxup until recently. I have not noticed
Mint, which uses Gnome 3, but
a difference between the twolooks more familiar than Unity. I've versions; Mozilla has been
never understood the attraction of changing the major version number
the desktop cube, so I have nofor minor updates.
advice on that front.
If you download and install a
program, you will not get
automatic updates. In my
I want to change theexperience, you're just asking fororder of the icons in thepain if you do it.
Unity launcher.

Q

A
41

You can "grab" an iconwith the mouse andmove it up or down.

Q

My laptop has an ATI
9100 video adapter. I am
using Ubuntu 10.10. How
can I install the rightvideo driver?
contents ^

Q&A

A

2) Autohide - the standard setting.
3) Dodge windows - the launcher
moves out of the way as a window
comes near. 4) Dodge active
window. My preference is number
3.

Q

I just installed Ubuntu
11.10 a day ago. I used tohave access to a Sun
Microsystems
workstation with gnu gcc installed
and I have some C/C++ programs
that I want to recompile and run in
Ubuntu. What do I need to do?

(Thanks to Mark Phelps
in the Ubuntu Forums.)
ATI dropped Linux driver
support for this card,
which was introduced in mid 2003,
years ago. The only working drivers
are already installed by default,
otherwise, you would not be seeing
a desktop.

I would like to stop thelauncher from appearing
when I move my mouse to
the left.

A(Thanks tograhammechanical in
the Ubuntu Forums.) You
can use the Ubuntu
Software Centre to install
CompizConfig Settings Manager.
You will then find it in the Dash by
typing Compiz. Look under the
Desktop heading for Ubuntu Unity
Plugin. Make sure there is a tickmark against it to enable it, andthen click on the name.
You will see an option under the
Behaviour tab to Hide Launcher.
You have four options 1) Never the Launcher will always be visible.

QQ

I just installed Eboard
Chess, and I can't figureout how to make thepieces stay on the squareI move them to.

of it is that I do the same thingwith video editing projects, andpart of it is a result of other "save a
copy to a different place" habits.
A recent post in the Ubuntu
Forums reminded me that I reallyshould do something about it. The
message thread began in 2007, andpointed out a couple of helpfulprograms you can install from the
Ubuntu repositories.

(Thanks to Lars Nooden,
e79 and others in the
Ubuntu Forums.) Use
only key-based

If you have hundreds ofduplicate files, there's a GUI-based
It's a GUI, not a chessprogram called fslint which works
game. Gnuchess is one of very nicely. By default, it will look
the actual games. Afterat all the user files on your system.
installing Gnuchess, run
I found it most useful to remove
Eboard, click on "peer," select "play that option, then "Add" a smaller
against," choose gnuchess, andportion of my files, such as
make a move by grabbing a piece
everything under "Music". Son of awith your mouse.
gun, it found 150 files, totalling agigabyte! Turns out that I tried toget my Karaoke files organized a
few years ago, and gave it up
before finishing. The best part was,Tips and Techniques
it found duplicates with different
Get Rid of Duplicate Files
names, so I won't be puzzled byclicking on "Don't be Cruel," only tohave a lot of duplicate files on find that it plays, "American
Trilogy."
my computer. Part of the
problem is that I usually save a
Using Fslint is a little slow. You
copy of an entire web site
before I begin a major update, part highlight a file, then click onfull circle magazine #58

42

A
Q

authentication for SSH. Remove
PhpMyAdmin and use the shell. If
you must keep PhpMyAdmin,change the default URL. There arealso hardware authentication
tokens and intrusion detection
software.

Open Software Centre
and install buildessential.

I want to protect my
Ubuntu server against
attacks. It has SSH,
PhpMyAdmin, and Drupal

installed.

A

A
I

contents ^Q&A"Delete." Or you can Ctrl-click tohighlight multiple files, then delete
them. With 150 duplicates, you
might spend a dozen minutes toclear things up, assuming you don't
have to think very much about
which location to delete.
There's a command-line
program which speeds things up.
To try it, install "fdupes" from therepositories. I have found two
useful options. To use the first,
enter this command:
fdupes ­r ­d Music

This will go through everythingin your Music folder and subfolders, and prompt you about
which version to keep when it finds
duplicates. You could use the same
approach with Documents, Videos,
etc.
Before running the next option,
I suggest you clear the cache of any
Internet Browsers you use. In
Firefox 3, it's
Edit/Preferences/Advanced andclick on the Network tab, then"Clear Now." In Chrome, begin withTools, Clear Browsing Data. All you
want to do is clear the cache. Then
run this command:

fdupes ­r ~ > dupes.txt

I have one file of 44 GB on mysystem, and when Fdupes
calculates a checksum for this file,
it appears to stall. However, it only
take a few minutes to go through55,000 files, totalling 300 GB on mysystem.
If you double-click on dupes.txt,
it will open in your text editor. You
can browse through the file, andtry to find whole folders which are
duplicates of other folders.
Otherwise, you need to run the file
manager, and go to the folders
where duplicate files reside. It's
not a quick process, but it'scomplete.
Fdupes will also find duplicate
files with the same content but
different names.
Is all this worthwhile? Only you
can be the judge. Hard drives arecheap these days, so it might not
be worth your time to click on a file
to free up 100 KB of space. I thinkit makes it easier to find what you
have if you remove the duplicates,
but you might not agree.

tripled the price of hard drives, so
if you are thinking of adding a drive
now, and deleting the duplicateslets you defer that decision until
prices have returned to normal, theeffort might be especiallyworthwhile.

There's one special case whichmight apply. The floods in Thailand
full circle magazine #58

43

After a long career in the computerindustry, including a stint as editor ofComputing Canada and Computer
Dealer News, Gord is now more-orless retired.

contents ^UBUNTU GAMEST

Anomaly: Warzone Earth

Written by Riku Järvinen

he year is 2018. Two alien
spaceships, mistaken formeteors, collide with
Earth - hitting Baghdad
and Tokyo, causing massive
casualties and creating powerful,almost impenetrable, energy fields
around these cities. The armed
forces, namely “Platoon 14”, arecommissioned to take action
against the invaders.

Gameplay & Features
Acting as something like a coordinator, you can distract theenemy with smoke, divert theirfiring using dummy targets, andheal your units. You don’t directly
fire at enemy turrets: members ofyour convoy (APCs, missile

launchers, force-field generatorsand so on) can take care of them.
Once you have enough resources,
these war machines can be
upgraded, multiple times ifnecessary, to increase theirfirepower and durability.
Convoy units must be taken careof, and the same weight should begiven to route planning. Someturrets, such as “Behemoths”, canbe difficult to beat if you confront
them head-on, but present only aminor threat if you attack themfrom the side. Some distractions
work better than others against
certain types of turrets: you justSo begins Anomaly: Warzone
Earth by 11 Bit Studios. You are asquad leader, guiding a convoy ofarmored vehicles through ruined,
war-torn streets while battling
visitors from outer space. We’retalking about a “tower defence inreverse” game, primarily targeted
for mobile gamers on the Android
platform. This aside, the mostcompelling feature is the naturalbalance between strategicplanning and ruthless fighting,compounded by the possibility of
avoiding meaningless fights
altogether. There is no obligation
to follow a given route as a means
to an end, since you create yourown instead.

full circle magazine #58

44

contents ^UBUNTU GAMES - ANOMALY: WARZONE EARTH
have to try them to figure it out!
There is also the order of yourvehicles, which greatly determines
how swiftly you can inflict criticaldamage. The downside for putting
all firepower up front is that thesevehicles don’t hold very good
defensive capabilities, and are
possibly wiped out in a matter of
seconds.

keyboarding. I was intrigued when I
discovered that Anomaly is fully
playable using only simple controlson the keyboard. In addition, thegame requires no training to getstarted. This is something the
majority of today’s games don’t
have; here it is well thought out.

I’m a big fan of computerusability and especiallyAnomaly: Warzone Earth was
originally released in February

How to get it

2011, and re-released as a part of
the Humble Bundle for Android on
February 1st, 2012. As usual, thebundle included Linux, Mac, andWindows ports, as well as threeother games. As of February 2nd,
the list price in the Android market(for the Android version only) is 3
euros. The game is also available
on Steam for Mac and Windows for
10 euros, but, unfortunately, I saw
no mention of Linux there.

I tested Anomaly on Ubuntu
11.10 (32-bit; 2.7 GHz core i7, 8GB
DDR 3, Radeon 6470 1 GB, 128 GB
SSD). With medium specs and thehighest resolution, there were no
problems at all. Installation was
trivial with the Debian dpkg
command:sudo dpkg -i package_name.deb

Conclusions
Anomaly is one of the best out
there in its genre. Graphics are very
good, gameplay is solid, and themusic fits the theme. However,there could be more enemy types,
and perhaps scenarios with a little
more freedom than just simple
routes. I know this is a lot to ask,
especially because the price was abargain when put in comparison
with the quality.

Riku Järvinen (rierjarv) is a CS major
student from Finland who delves into
the Linux and Open Source gamingworld once in a while.

full circle magazine #58

45

contents ^UBUNTU GAMESDead Cyborg

Written by Petescan321

Dgame is very well rendered, thework done by Endre Barath (a oneman project if you can believe it),on both the characters and thescenery, is incredible.

The game is currently available
for Linux and Windows users. The

The controls are very basic;
W,A,S,D (A,Z,E,R,T,Y) keys to move,and the mouse to point. There is acertain grittiness felt through thegame, similar to many top ranking
games available. The story itself isalso great because it is set after an
apocalyptic catastrophe. Oh, and if

ead Cyborg(deadcyborg.com) is a 3episode game, in which
its main goal involves
exploration and solving puzzles. If
you like the first-person shooter’s
exploration experience - without
the violence - this is the game foryou. The game itself is free, but thedeveloper suggests that, if you likeit, you donate.

you get stuck (and you will), you
can visit the official page(http://deadcyborg.com/walkthrou
gh.html) to check out the
walkthrough.
Good:• Great detail on both thecharacters and backgrounds,• Grittiness will give you chills
alongside the awesome music,• Controls are easy.
full circle magazine #58

46

Bad:
• Puzzles are sometimes
ridiculously difficult if you are notwatchful,• It will run slowly on older
hardware,• No voice actors/voices in game,just text.

contents ^MY DESKTOPYour chance to show the world your desktop or PC. Email your screenshots andphotos to: misc@fullcirclemagazine.org and include a brief paragraph about yourdesktop, your PC's specs and any other interesting tidbits about your setup.

Hi everyone. This is my laptop desktop.

This is my desktop::

I use Ubuntu 11.04 and love trying different distros.
Who knows, perhaps I will turn to another one
tomorrow. My wallpaper is the Predator, which I lovevery much, and also docky, which is productive, and sovaluable to me that no money can buy. it There’s
Unetbootin, Brasero, Shutter, and LibreOffice on thedock.

theme :clearlooks
Dock: Cairo-dockwallpaper: a picture of my son
System: AMD ATHLON II X2 250
RAM :2 GB
GRAPHICS: NVIDA G-FORCE 8400GS
OS: COMFUSION 3 (BASED ON UBUNTU 10.04 LTS)

The system works well on my Atom d510 1.66 GHz CPU,
160GB HDD with 2GB of RAM. I hope you enjoy yourUbuntu. Thank you!

Vicente Merakazak_boy
full circle magazine #58

47

contents ^MY DESKTOP

Hi, I am an Ubuntu user from Indonesia. This is my latest
desktop, I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 with Gnome Shell as a
Desktop Environment. And I'm very comfortable with it.

I run Ubuntu 11.10 on a Lenovo/ThinkPad X200s (1.86 GHz C2D
4 G RAM, 1440x900 12", 256 GB SSD). Nothing fancy on mydesktop, I am afraid. If it wasn't for the screenshot, even the
Launcher would be hidden. The theme is Radiance, icons are
Faenza's (they're so nice).

Wallpaper and shell theme are default. Using AwOken icons.
Added some shell extensions and some custom conky. The top
conky displays "dmesg" output, the right conky for monitoring
disk space, network, and processes. The down-left corner isMetro Clock Conky, and some reminder/greeting message
below it.

Besides browsing the web, emails, RSS and Twitter, I write,
read a lot, listen to music & podcasts, and watch movies. I've
been using GNU/Linux distro since 2000, and almost every
version of Ubuntu since 2005. I love GNU/Linux's openness,and the idea that users have the right to build it and share it
and change it. I also like the fact that Ubuntu just works: one
doesn't have to tweak it to make it run. And I absolutely love
Unity, even with its current lack of options: let's give it achance to grow.

System Specs:
Ubuntu 11.10 @ Acer Aspire 4736
32-bit Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU T6500 @ 2.10GHz × 2
1GB RAM, 320GB Disk
Conky Metro by satya164.deviantart.com
Awoken icon by alecive.deviantart.com

David Bosman

Ghozy Arif Fajri
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HOW TO CONTRIBUTE

Editor - Ronnie Tucker

We are always looking for new articles to include in Full Circle. For article
guidelines, ideas, and for issue translation, please see our wiki:
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuMagazine
Please email your articles to: articles@fullcirclemagazine.org

ronnie@fullcirclemagazine.org
Webmaster - Rob Kerfia
admin@fullcirclemagazine.org
Comms Mgr - Robert Clipshammrmonday@fullcirclemagazine.org
Podcast - Robin Catling
podcast@fullcirclemagazine.org

Editing & Proofreading
If you would like to submit news , email it to: news@fullcirclemagazine.org
Send your comments or Linux experiences to: letters@fullcirclemagazine.org
Hardware/software reviews should be sent to: reviews@fullcirclemagazine.org

Questions for Q&A should go to: questions@fullcirclemagazine.org
Desktop screens should be emailed to: misc@fullcirclemagazine.org

Mike Kennedy
Lucas Westermann
Gord Campbell

Our thanks go out to Canonical, themany translation teams around theworld and to Thorsten Wilms for thecurrent Full Circle logo.

... or you can visit our forum via: www.fullcirclemagazine.org
Deadline for FCM#58:
Sunday 11th March. 2012.
Release date for FCM#58:
Friday 30th March. 2012.

FULL CIRCLE NEEDS YOU!
A magazine isn't a magazine without articles and Full Circle is no exception. We need
your Opinions, Desktops and Stories. We also need Reviews (games, apps &hardware), How-To articles (on any K/X/Ubuntu subject) and any questions, orsuggestions, you may have.
Send them to: articles@fullcirclemagazine.org

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