LINUX ON DESKTOP

Recently i managed to install ubuntu on my laptop(IBM Thinkpad Cel 1.4Ghz 256 MB RAM) , which was a very fast machine when i purchased it three and half years back , however things in computers change very fast and now it was a slow moving machine for todays resource hungry applications . Now Ubuntu did work well on this machine however things weren't as zippy as they should be Open Office took a lot of time to load,Viewing PDF files with descent amount of Graphics and in descent quality took some time , and working on multiple applications simultaneously wasn't easy , and on using resource hungry applications like 3D games or playing encoded video files or encoding videos the system virtually stalls.
So i decided enough is enough , i wasn't going to spend money buying new hardware but i decided to try some lightweight alternatives to the common applications and use them for my desktop work and here is the applications that i found useful and instructions on how i …

Nostalgia : Running Windows 3.11 On Ubuntu

Microsoft Windows 3.11 Released back in 1992-1994 was one of the most popular version of Microsoft Windows Operating System family that made Windows a brand on desktop computers and established supremacy of Microsoft on Desktops. At that time it faced competition from IBM OS/2 and other gui frontends like GEOS and VisiOS and of course Apple however with it's innovative features and user friendly GUI Windows 3.11 became one of the most popular and used version of Windows operating system .

A few days back I found in my CD collection Windows 3.11 setup files ,Now since Windows 3.11 was the first Operating System (GUI shell since Windows 3.11 was more of a GUI shell running on MSDOS ) I had used a lot of good memories were attached to running Windows 3.11 on my 386 , 40 Mhz , 4MB ram PC that i had back in 1995. So i wanted to install it again.

Since i use Ubuntu i knew it was possible to run Windows 3.11 under qemu or Vmware after ins…

Software Review : Songbird -Impressive Media Player For Linux and Windows

I like listening most of my music on Ipod or my phone , i use laptop mainly for browsing Internet , programming and some other casual work . However since i purchased new set of speaker for my laptop so i decided to play some of my collection on my laptop at least when i am working on it and my search began for best tool for playing audio files on Linux i tried some of them including Songbird and Songbird even though is not a final release and still has bugs in it but it was impressive enough to be reviewed.



Songbird is based on solid Mozilla XUL platform like Firefox which is also based on Mozilla XUL(XUL—eXtensible user-interface language) , XUL language allows one to create apps that are cross platform and can be standalone or work on Internet ,hence besides having ability to play audio files it also allows one to browse Internet without any hitch or rendering issue . For Linux Songbird uses GStreamer to …

Thunar : Versatile and Impressive replacement for Nautilus file manager

Thunar is a file manager that is shipped by default with XFCE and is a integral part of XFCE desktop environment . Thunar is developed by Benedikt Meurer and has been named after the god Thor of Norse mythology . It is similar to Nautilus but uses much less resource as compared to Nautilus , and in fact one of the goals of creating Thunar was to create a file manager that was fast , clean and easy to use . It is much more responsive as compared to some other file managers available on Linux including Konqueror (KDE) and Nautilus (GNOME) . It has been designed to comply with standards set by freedesktop.org and is quite small compared to nautilus and is quite
good to work on since it hogs less resources as compared to Nautilus. By default it is quite small and does provide a limited set of functionality , however it's functionality can be extended by using various plugins.


Now , my laptop is very old to be pr…

Making animated movie of your Linux/Ubuntu desktop

I have a number of friends who are new to using computers and as usual use windows, recently Windows Vista was launched and a lot of them were really impressed with the snazzy graphics vista offered and were willing to switch from Windows XP to Vista paying a awful amount of money (considering Linux is free) just for Aero looks that vista provides. Well as with most computer newbies they had no clue about Linux or Ubuntu , so when i said that Ubuntu with Beryl provided a interface that could compete with Aero interface that vista provides and to top it is free and comes at no cost whats so ever well they took it with a pinch of salt and did not quite believe me . So well i decided to make a movie of my desktop showing all the glitzy effects that beryl provided so to prove them that Linux can kick Windows Vista Aero interface anytime.


I started google and various other blog looking for tool that would allow me make a movie of my desk…