Tonido seems to be one of this years hidden wonders.

I have begun local testing for implementation in a small consulting firm. Thus far I have no significant issues with the Music, files or other documents.  Setup has also been super easy thus far (up until my thunderstorm).  I tested things on three PCs including :

• an eeePC running eeebuntu
• a laptop running Ubuntu 9.04
• a Desktop running Windows XP

-within our four walls — office– things linked fine.

That it is… until a Colorado thunderstorm came along a blew all the settings out on our modems and firewalls.  Actually (in retrospect) that was a good thing because I really got a good look at how things work.  On Linux machines that are servers  and probably on Windows, too, you need to pay special attention to Port Forwarding — in order to gain access to your Tonido files through your firewall.  For ‘normal’ machines that are not servers, it simply happens automagically assuming their DSL modems offer UPNP.  However, NO UPNP equals a manual Port Forward for those guys, too. For those systems that are buried in a secondary (or lower) network, you need to remember to Port Forward all modems between them and the internet.  It only took me two days to learn these simple points.  Undaunted by skill or knowledge, I finally slugged it out!

Otherwise, my testing has provided a few additional items worthy of note including:

1. You are only able to upload data from your ‘home’ machine it seems.  When I tried adding my contacts from my netbook browser nothing happened; however, when I moved over to my main laptop it was happy to upload things.
2. Because I use Evolution, my calendar was a breeze to upload as an ics file.
3. It is important to note that not everything you upload is easily “deleteable.” Contacts for example are only removable one at time… my 1300 person error will be a mess for quite a while.
4. Tonido screen layouts look very nice on a big screen but for netbooks they make things very difficult. Icons and text are simply too LARGE. You can work around by using your browser in full screen mode; that little F11 thing in FireFox makes the too large icons almost tolerable.
5. Calendar, contact export does not appear to be supported.  This means the information flow has to emenate from your main PC and out to the share environment.  I think that is somewhat sub-otimal; but it is perhaps a short-term problem(challenge); this may get fixed.
6. Having read quite a bit on the web, I agree that the tonido website content does the toolset a ‘huge’ disservice.  Tonido is a great environment which is unclearly under-communicated, under-stated, and unclear. It is interesting that the Tonido site does not appear to emphasize the application’s use for small business; which is huge.  I find this strange since there is a heavy emphasis on items such as Music and Photos- neither of which can be as profitable as file, contact, calendar, task and information sharing.  I guess that just proves we all have biases.

Interestingly, I was barely able to find mention of tonido on the Ubuntu Forums site (buried in a single posting)… on the main Ubuntu site it appears only once prominently.

Observation:

• Another userful review

If you wish to use non-standard cursor themes with Ubuntu (Gnome) and Compiz the following steps will keep you from going crazy:

• Find a xcursor theme you like (they are available via Synaptic, gnome-look and other sources)

The following steps are required if you manually download your preferred xcursor theme:

• If you download from the web, place the tar.gz or similar file on your Desktop.
• Right click your Desktop and Open “Change Desktop Background”
• Select the Theme tab
• Drag the xcursor tar.gz file into some whitespace between your themes; you will be asked if you want the theme installed- answer: YES

If you installed xcursor themes via synaptic then:

• Right click your Desktop and Open “Change Desktop Background”
• Select the Theme tab
• Next Select “Customize”
• Next select “Pointer” tab
• Finally pick your preferred package from the list available

Always:

• Jot-down or save the name of your new xcursor theme
• Open the “Compiz Settings Manager” next
• Select “General Options”
• Type the CORRECT name of your xcursor theme into the dialog box labeled “Cursor theme”

In order to see your new theme you may wish to reload your window via CTL-ALT-backspace. Log back into your desktop and you should have a new xcursor that remains as you change windows.

…mark

As you probably know, I am a user of Ubuntu (currently running 8.10).

By way of giving a little bit back to the community, I have created a unified desktop environment with Login Screen, Desktop, icons and sounds to provide a cohesive (to my mind) environment.

If you would like to try these out on your Ubuntu Desktop feel free to download the 19+ MB set here. Note the readme document which contains installation instructions. I am guessing that this environment will work on any Gnome/ Debian base… but I have only tested it on Ubuntu 8.10.

Enjoy!

…mark

I recently switched from Ubuntu to Linux Mint.  Linux Mint is an amazing distro which almost completely worked out of the box for me (minus wireless of course, but I’ll leave my fix for that for another post.)  I did notice however that my embedded flash player for Firefox 3 did not work.  It did work when I tried the same page (YouTube.com) in Opera.  This, of course led me to one conclusion…  the Mozilla plug-in was malfunctioning.  I corrected this problem with a quick fix:

In Synaptic, I searched for “Flash” and came up with the offender: flashplugin-nonfree.  I simply elected to try adobe-flashplugin instead.  Simply look or search for this package and click “Mark for Installation”.  Synaptic should automatically try to install adobe-flashplugin and remove flashplugin-nonfree.  Once the operation has completed, restart Firefox and try it out!

As most Ubuntu users probably notice, the longer you use Ubuntu, the longer your boot times become.  I have a few quick commands you can run to help with this issue:

1. Disable unnecessary services:  Go to System –> Administration –> Services Shut down unnecessary services you do not use.  ie:)  Bluetooth Device Management (If you do not use BT), Braille Display Management, Printer Service (if you do not use a printer), etc.

2.  Remove incomplete packages:  Open Terminal and type…

sudo apt-get autoclean

3. Remove residual configuration files:  Go to System –> Administration –> Synaptic Package Manager In the left column of the package manager, select Status, and then check for Not Installed (residual config packages).  If this option appears, then you will have to right-click each package individually, and select Mark for Complete Removal.  After selecting all the packages, click Apply.

4.  Remove isolated libraries:  Open Terminal and type…

sudo apt-get install deborphan

sudo deborphan

If it appears you have some isolated libraries, then use the following commands in Terminal to remove them:

sudo deborphan | xargs sudo apt-get -y remove - -purge

sudo apt-get autoremove

That is it. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

I have 10 beta invites for a nifty file storage/sharing program called Dropbox.  Basically it enables a user to store & share files across the net with a base computer.  Right now Dropbox supports Windows and Mac, but they are currently alpha testing a Linux port (Ubuntu to be more specific).  You can install this on a Windows or Mac machine and have web access to your files via any computer (including Linux).  Eventually Dropbox will charge for this service, but beta testers keep their original service for free.  For a more detailed description, see their website: getdropbox.com If you would like an invite, simply email me.

And a side note to my readers:  Sorry I’ve been neglecting ND lately.  I’ll be getting married the first week in August and will resume more regular postings after our honeymoon.  (Including a tutorial on the DC power jack failure fix that affects so many Gateways.  If you need it right away, let me know and I can email it to you.)

I recently checked into Google Gadgets again after using it on Windows for many years.  At times gadgets
(also know as widgets to many others) can be relatively helpful, but I just enjoy them for the eye candy.
There’s basically two components to the Linux version:  the actual gadget browser and the gadget library.

First put the Google Gadget repository into your sources list.  Open Terminal and type:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

and add the following lines:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/googlegadgets/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/googlegadgets/ubuntu hardy main

Now save and exit.

Update your source list:

sudo aptitude update

Install Google Desktop Gadgets:

sudo aptitude install google-gadgets

Now that the application is installed, you need to run it:

Hit Alt+F2 to open Run Application.  Type “ggl-gtk” and click Run.
A square multi-colored icon should appear in your system tray. Right-click on it to get a drop down menu. Select “Add gadgets…” and the gadget browser should appear. You can now add gadgets and they will appear on your desktop.

If you would also prefer the sidebar along with the gadgets then hit Alt+F2 and type “ggl-gtk -s -bg” and click Run. You should now see the sidebar along with your gadgets where they can be docked and undocked to your liking.

That’s it! If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me.

Well, since my IBM Thinkpad decided to explode and die on me a few weeks ago, I obtained my fiance’s almost new but broken Gateway.  The main problem with this computer was that the computer could not charge or operate on AC power.  I fixed the issue by simply taking the computer completely apart and re-soldering the power port on the motherboard.  After doing so, the computer now takes a charge and works off of AC.  This was not the issue of the this topic though. (However, if you would like any help or guidance on performing this yourelf, please feel free to contact me.)  The issue after repairing the computer was a slight clicking noise 2-3 times per minute coming from the inside of the computer.  The only issue I could come up with would be the power management for laptops being set too aggressively and spinning the hard discs up and down too often.  This can cause an extremely short life for your hard drive and in my case, higher than normal temperatures in your laptop.  This fix is for Hardy Heron with hda.  Substitute sda if you had a SATA drive.  Here’s the fix:

Create a configuration file to manage hdd power management.  In Terminal type:

sudo gedit /etc/pm/config.d/disk

Within this file, create the following:

# Configure the hdd power management settings to ensure
# long disk life and acceptable power management.
#
# Space delimited list of disk devices this affects.
#
DEVICES_DISK_PM_NAMES=”/dev/hda”
#
#
# Power management modes
#
# Powersave mode off
# Disable APM and spin-down - Not completely disabled
#
DEVICES_DISK_PM_POWERSAVE_OFF=”hdparm -q -B 254 -q -S 242″
#
# Powersave mode on
# Enable APM to conservative 200 and set spin-down for 21 minutes
#
DEVICES_DISK_PM_POWERSAVE_ON=”hdparm -q -B 200 -q -S 252″

Now create the Power Management script.  In terminal type:

sudo gedit /etc/pm/power.d/disk

Within this file, create the following:

#!/bin/bash
. /usr/lib/pm-utils/functions
. /etc/pm/config.d/disk

if test -z “${DEVICES_DISK_PM_NAMES}”; then
        exit 1
fi

case “$1″ in
true)
                echo “**enabled pm for harddisk”
                for DISK_NAME in `echo ${DEVICES_DISK_PM_NAMES}`; do
                        ${DEVICES_DISK_PM_POWERSAVE_ON} ${DISK_NAME}
                done ;;
        false)
                echo “**disabled pm for harddisk”
                for DISK_NAME in `echo ${DEVICES_DISK_PM_NAMES}`; do
                        ${DEVICES_DISK_PM_POWERSAVE_OFF} ${DISK_NAME}
                done ;;
esac

And now make this script executable.  In terminal, type:

Sudo chmod +x /etc/pm/power.d/disc

Voila!  That is it.

My main laptop is an IBM ThinkPad R40 with a Radeon 7500 M7 Video Card.  Because of this, I have never been able to get Compiz Fusion working correctly on it. I have searched forum after forum to no avail.  I finally got it working today with the help of an awesome script named Compiz-Check.  Basically, this script tests Compiz to check if it is able to run on your system and if not, it will give you the reason(s) why.  If you are having problems with Compiz, check out Forlong’s Blog and follow his instructions.  After months of messing around with different xorg setups and drivers, Compiz-Check alerted me to the fact that my screen resolution was incompatible with Compiz.  After a few tweaks and adjustments… voila!  It worked!  Major kudos Forlong!

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