Ended up setting my laptop back on a dual-boot setup yesterday. Today I decided I didn’t want to have to mount my DATA partition (which has my pics and music on it) by hand every time I booted up. I found a great guide to several ways to do this here. I chose the method using pysdm because I didn’t feel like editing any system files.

open up terminal and install pysdm:

sudo apt-get install pysdm

then open the program in the same terminal:

sudo pysdm

You have to know the correct partition to mount and you can click on each partition and configure any that need to be configured to see what they are formatted as. Once you know which one to mount  click the mount button as that partition is highlighted on the left. Then click on the button which reads “Assistant” and make sure it is set to mount at boot (that’s the default setting, so it should be good to go).

Then click “Apply.” You should be good to go!

The Wine solution for uploading songs to Google Music in Ubuntu goes ridiculously slow. Until Google offers up a Linux native client for uploading (or just realizes that a browser-based file uploading system is actually very reasonable), you have two choices for uploading (in my mind): a dual boot system where you use Windows (or OSX), or you can use VirtualBox to run a virtual Windows session and upload through that.

I opted for the virtual OS path, and here’s what I did to get it to work (drawn from here):

1. Install VirtualBox: go to Ubuntu Software Center and install “VirtualBox OSE” and “Guest additions ISO image for VirtualBox”
2. fire up VirtualBox and start a new session and install your OS (I found a disc for Vista in my stash) – note, I think it has to be a 32 bit version, I kept getting error messages when I tried to install a 64 bit version of Windows 7
3. After it has installed and done the several necessary reboots, shut it down and in the VirtualBox OSE Manager choose the installation you want to use (do not start it, just select it) and then open up the “shared Folders” setting and add your music folder
4. Fire up the virtual Windows OS again and let it boot up
5. then, going up to the top of your Ubuntu screen, where you access the options for the VirtualBox session, click on “Devices” and then choose “Install Guest Additions” and wait a minute or so for the script to run in the background
6. An AutoPlay dialog box may open up, asking if you want to run the VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe – choose “yes”
   1. note that I actually had to go to My Computer and choose the virtual disc that loaded as such, and then choose the VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe file
7. it will run and you will have to restart the Windows machine
8. Now, click on the start button and in the “run” dialog type “cmd”
9. a DOS terminal window will open up. If your music folder that you want to share is in your home folder and titled “Music”, then type this: “net use t: \\vboxsvr\Music”
10. you should get some sort of message indicating success. You can close that window
11. now, when you click on Computer (or My Computer) in the Windows machine, the music folder should show up as a network folder
12. now, download the Google MusicManager software in the Windows machine by going here.
13. After it has installed, you want to use “other folders” to upload from. Add your shared music folder, and I would suggest removing the “my music” folder (unless you just love the music samples that Windows includes in their installation).
14. After it has scanned your collection it should start uploading them!

All in all, it’s more of a tedious process than complicated. I really can’t wait for Google to get their uploading situation figured out – I’m sure eventually there will at least be a method using their Chrome Browser. This works for now, irritating though it may be.

Alrighty, Ubuntu 11.04 is here – and it’s a little different….okay, a lot different. If you’re not up for trying out a new interface (the gnome-shell/unity thing they’ve got going on), I’d say wait ’til the fall when they have had a full release cycle to iron out some of the wrinkles. But if you’re game for trying it out, download it here.

I hit a snag using Ubuntu Tweak in my first few attempts at the install, so if you like to use it, do so with care and do not enable the “Gnome 3″ repository. Not unless you want gnome and metacity disabled – which is definitely not something you want to happen unless you are doing so on purpose for a specific reason. Here’s the thread where I was trying to figure out what was going on.

that said, I’ve found a few really solid resources on Ubuntu 11.04 out there

• solid thread on your options in Natty and some good instructions on how some things work: Natty Info: Your UI Options
• OMG! Ubuntu! has some solid guides as well:
  • guide to unity
  • 10 things to do after installing natty
  • download indicator applets
• Power User’s Guide to Unity

Good luck! If you have found any other great resources out there, please list ‘em in the comments and I’ll try to update the list I have.

I found this little program while reading the documentation for FreeNote. Checked out the website and downloaded a .deb installation package here. When installing, it gave me a message saying that there was an older version available in the archives – but I went ahead and installed the latest one. You can probably install the older one thusly:

sudo apt-get install mtpaint

The program itself fired up really quickly and resized a pic pretty easily. This one might have the most features for the smallest footprint (as far as system resources)

okay, if you’re running Ubuntu and decide to install Kubuntu, during the installation of the latter, you are asked if you would like to keep GDM as the login manager, or if you want to change it to KDM (you get the question again if you install KDE 4). I opted to keep GDM because I was unfamiliar with the KDM login manager. Later, though, like a the good nerd I am, I got curious and wanted to try out the KDM login manager. I started a thread with the question, and here’s how I ended up getting it done:

Use this command in the terminal:
sudo nano /etc/X11/default-display-manager

then what pops up in terminal will be an interesting screen with a cursor after a line which reads like this:
/usr/sbin/gdm

change the line to read as this:
/usr/bin/kdm
(note that the line originally reads with the middle field saying “sbin” and it changes to “bin”, as well as changing the last field from “gdm” to “kdm”)

Then hit Crtl+o to save it and then hit ‘enter’ when it asks if you want to. And then use Ctrl+x to exit.

The guy who gave me most of this information on the thread mentioned some different ways to get kdm themes, but I couldn’t get the display manager installed, so I didn’t try them.

yeah, I actually did this a month or so ago. I started on my laptop with Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10 and then reinstalled everything to get Hardy Heron 8.04. To get KDE 4.0 I first installed the Kubuntu Desktop using this command in terminal:

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

then, after booting into Kubuntu and trying it for a few weeks, I installed KDE 4.0 (or Kubuntu’s version of that) by using the Adept Manager (Kubuntu’s version of Gnome’s (ubuntu’s) Synaptic Package Manager) and doing a search for kde4.

First, though, you have to add this line to your sources list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu hardy main

(don’t forget to reload your sources afterwards!)

I actually installed several packages which came up, but all you need is one, which you can install through the terminal with this command:

sudo apt-get install kde4-core