Tips Archives - Page 6 of 12 - Yet Another Linux Blog

Install GCC on ClarkConnect

Install GCC on ClarkConnect

This is a pretty easy thing to do, but it seems many people come to Yet Another Linux Blog searching for exactly how to do this. ClarkConnect does not come with GCC installed by default. If you download software and attempt to compile it (using ./configure, make, make install) it will complain:


configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
See `config.log' for more details.

So, SSH into your ClarkConnect server and install cc-devel to install all the tools you need. Please be advised, it’s a rather large package weighing in at 87.5 MB when I installed it today.


apt-get update
apt-get install cc-devel

After this package is installed, you should be able to compile software from source. Hopefully, this makes your life easier and is easier to find on the web.

KDE: Right Click, Extract Here

I’ve been hunting for a post on how to have KDE “extract here” like Foresight Gnome edition does (it’s really handy to one click extract archives). Post after post found via Google did nothing at all to help me out. Most tried to have you read how to do this manually by creating your own service menu and they would use xterm to extract. I wanted to use ark…mainly because it’s there and it’s a gui.

Then I decided to search KDE-Apps.org and viola! I found it. A handy little tool that allows you to right click on any archive and “extract here” with Ark. Here’s how to install it.

Continue reading “KDE: Right Click, Extract Here”

4 Little Known Thunderbird Extensions

I recently searched through the mozilla thunderbird extensions website and found 4 extensions that I didn’t know about that actually prove to be quite useful. I use Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 on Foresight Linux and have tested all of these extensions and verified that they work on that environment. Hopefully, they’ll help someone craft a more enjoyable email experience 🙂

Search for Sender

If you’re like me, you like to group like items together in your inbox. With this extension, you can group emails from the same sender as quickly as a right click. Really, it’s just a shortcut that places the sender email up into the search box and searches for you. The nice part is, with this extension, you don’t have to type it. Quick, easy, and simple. This has quickly become an extension that I cannot live without.

SyncMab

SyncMab is an extension similar to foxmarks for Firefox. With foxmarks, you keep all your bookmarks on a central server of your choosing so that your bookmarks are the same across all computers you use that have Firefox installed. This is perfect for me since I have a set of work bookmarks and home bookmarks and like to be able to switch back and forth between them. But what about thunderbird? It doesn’t have bookmarks right? Exactly, but it does have contacts in your addressbook! So, you’ll be able to save your contacts to a server of your choosing and then on another computer with thunderbird you can synchronize your contacts by downloading that file using SyncMab. It’s brilliant and allows you to always have the same contacts across operating systems, across computers, and even to maintain multiple addressbooks 🙂

Display Quota

This extension will display a small graphic in Thunderbird that tells you how much space you have left in your IMAP mail account and can warn you when you get close to filling up. This might not be too useful for those of you that use IMAP with huge quotas (gmail) but for others, it may be. I have heard that some users do not like the popup that displays for warning on this extension. For those users, Thunderbird has a built in function you can enable:

Open your configuration editor in Thunderbird and find the following keys:

mail.quota.mainwindow_threshold.show – % when quota should show up
mail.quota.mainwindow_threshold.warning – % when quota becomes yellow
mail.quota.mainwindow_threshold.critical – % when quota becomes red

Thanks to goddess-gate.com for information on how to do this.

Continue reading “4 Little Known Thunderbird Extensions”

Microblogging, Status, and Blogging 2.0

In my previous post, I asked readers how they plugged their blog and/or microblogged, web 2.0 style. Some microblogging readers recommended that I check out Ping.fm. It was exactly the service that I needed; the ability to simultaneously post status updates on twitter, pownce, facebook. I specifically look for services that don’t require that I install anything on my desktop (I like IM much more).

The only problem with this is that ping.fm is in beta stage…and a closed beta at that. So, I began to read various different blogs to try and find any other service that might do the same thing as ping.fm.

During my search, I cam across profilactic.com, which is a central aggregate place similar to friendfeed.com. The interesting part about profilactic is that it plugs into ping.fm and every single user can be part of the closed beta for ping.fm!

This means that you can microblog/status message bebo, blogger, brightkite, facebook, hi5, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, Myspace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, and Xanga through one single interface OR through Instant message (there is a ping.fm bot).

Here’s the kicker…profilactic.com supports 186 sites as well as the ability to create a custom site. There are too many to list. Check out their supported sites.

So, you can utilize ping.fm to instant message status updates or microblog and instantaneously have it sent out to close to 200 different sites all at once. This is handy for me since I like to use pownce a bit more than twitter but my coworkers use twitter more. My status updates are still broadcast (on 60 second delay) on twitter through my instant message to the ping.fm bot. Ping.fm also supports the iPhone and has the ability to have custom triggers.

To take advantage of these great services, head over to profilactic and signup. When you’re setting up your sites, you’ll be able to plug into ping.fm (it will require that you signup using the profilactic beta password that profilactic will provide for you during setup). Don’t forget to visit my lifestream and add me as a friend 🙂 Happy micro/status/blogging!

A New User Guide to Linux Communities

Featured image credit: Leonardo Leporte

Are you a new Linux user? Fantastic! Welcome to the world of freedom. Freedom of choice, freedom of expression, freedom from vendor lockin. You’ve made an excellent choice. Now that you’ve chosen, installed, and are using Linux there are a few things you should keep in mind as you learn the ropes of your new system.

1. Not all Communities are the Same

Each Linux distribution has its own distinct community with their own ideas. Think of owning a vehicle or a certain brand of appliance…along with the ownership of this comes the lifestyle that is reflected by users/owners of the product. The same is true with Linux. Each community will have a different idea on what is important. What is important to you may not be even on the radar of those users and developers of that community. Find one that suits you.

Keeping this in mind, be patient. Ask questions the smart way. Be explicit and tactful. Be precise and direct. Provide more information than you think is necessary…no one will become upset if you provide too much information but they may not answer your question if you have too little.

Continue reading “A New User Guide to Linux Communities”

Print Readable Man Pages

Ever wonder how you can get a man page in into a format you can read and print? There’s many methods of doing it (copy and paste is one) but one the easiest I’ve found is:

man command | col -x -b  > command.txt

Where command is the Linux command man page you want to print/view. From there, open up command.txt in your favorite gui text editor (gedit, kate) and you have a readable format that could be printed quite easily for reference.