I’ve been trying out Sabayon 4 since the past weeks, and its been really great (will post a review soon). The one really irritating thing though, is on hitting the Windows(“Super”) key on the keyboard would result in Sabayon 4 switching VT’s. Now if you’ve no idea what VT’s are…. well that I would post some other time, basically you’d drop to a console prompt.

Anyways to remove this binding, open the Terminal, switch to root by typing su root

Now, type rc-update del keymaps default; rc-update add keymaps boot hit Enter, and reboot.

Many, who do a dual boot with any Linux and Windows will face the problem of Master Boot Record (MBR). In easier words, one of them (Windows or Linux) wont boot after installing/uninstalling the other. This is a small guide I hope many would find it useful.

FIXING WINDOWS BOOT AFTER UNINSTALLING LINUX
[...]

Many people would like to use windows’ softwares in linux and would also like to run games in linux using wine. Many softwares and games work pretty well and are fully functional using wine. However, people may find it difficult to digest the fact that exe icons do not get displayed. If the exe icons could be made visible, then it will reduce the need to search for the exe file and will make linux and wine more user friendly.

This idea is possible in gnome desktop environment. I seriously dont know about how to accomplish this task in KDE. Please visit here and here for complete details

Please comment on the idea and also notify me if anyone knows how to do this in KDE

Recently, Facebook introduced Facebook chat – which allows you to chat with your Facebook friends in realtime similar to IM, as compared to post-message-on-wall-and-wait-for-replies kinda communication that Facebook users endured so far. A slight problem would be that to use this feature, users need to be logged in and be on Facebook’s site.

Not any more. eionrobb and Saturn2888 have coded a plugin for Pidgin which allows you to chat with your facebook buddies using the Facebook Chat IM service. Just grab the plugin (.deb installer for Debian and its derivatives like Ubuntu, .exe installer for Windows, and sources available), copy the the .dll file to your C:\Program Files\Pidgin\plugins\ (or equivalent) directory and restart Pidgin, if you’re on Windows.

For Linux users copy one of the .so files to either /usr/lib/purple-2/ (for 32-bit Linux), /usr/lib64/purple-2/ (for 64-bit Linux), /usr/lib/pidgin/ (for Nokia/Maemo) or ~/.purple/plugins/ (if you don’t have root access) and restart Pidgin.

Don’t forget to grab the icons too. Just Extract the facebook_icons.zip file to the pixmaps/pidgin/protocols folder. On Windows this is generally C:\Program Files\Pidgin\pixmaps\pidgin\protocols and on Linux, /usr/share/pixmaps/pidgin/protocol and enjoy chatting.

This is another one of those tips I always wanted to post, but kept forgetting So here goes.
Unlike Linux which can mount and access Windows’ FAT, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS filesystems, Windows is incapable of even acknowledging and detecting a Linux filesystem. Fear not, here are 3 softwares which can help in detecting your Linux partition under Windows

• Ext2fsd- The most capable software of the lot. Has read/write support to your Linux partition. The 0.45 version supports replay of journal of a ext3 filesystem in case of a unclean shutdown of your Linux partition.
• Ext2 IFS – Another very good software. Supports read/write, but doesnt replay the journal of a ext3 filesystem. It actually installs a pure kernel mode file system driver, which means all applications can access your Linux partitions, and it appears in file dialogs of all applications.
• Linux Reader – Like the name says, this is just a reader. Effectively you can’t write to it, neither is your partition available as a separate drive. You’ll have to open the application, then “extract” the file to your Windows. Personally I use this, since the lack of write access means that I can have a little peace of mind about my partition not getting corrupted due to writes(I’m not saying this WILL happen, but better be safe)

If you guys know of any other software then do drop a comment.

Cheers

andLinux is a complete Ubuntu Linux system running seamlessly in Windows 2000 based systems (2000, XP, 2003, Vista [32-bit only])

andLinux uses CoLinux as its core which is confusing for many people. CoLinux is a port of the Linux kernel to Windows. Although this technology is like VMware or Virtual PC, CoLinux differs itself by being more of a merger of Windows and the Linux kernel and not an emulated PC, making it more efficient. Xming is used as X server and PulseAudio as sound server.

andLinux is not just for development and runs almost all Linux applications without modification.

Screenshot (click to enlarge)

To start Linux applications, you may either use the XFCE Panel:

The XFCE Panel

Or, you may choose to use the andLinux Launcher, which ships with andLinux since Beta 1. It consists of:

• quicklaunch icons (e.g. for the file manager or the terminal)
• a start menu in the system tray (next to the clock) which can be adapted to your own needs
• so-called Explorer shell extensions, i.e. context menu item, with which you can open a folder in the file manager / terminal or open a file with the text editor
• file type associations at your choice (e.g. for KOffice files, .tex / .dvi / .ps / .pdf files)
• andCmd.exe to run linux commands from Windows scripts

Requirements

• OS: Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista [32-bit only]
• Memory: at least 128 MB (192 MB or more is recommended)
• Hard disk space: 2.5 GB (XFCE version) / 4.5 GB (KDE version)
  Note that you need an NTFS file system (which is default since Windows 2000) because you can’t create files larger than 2 GB on FAT(32) file systems!
• A good internet connection (to be able to install further applications)
• Some basic Linux skills to proceed once andLinux is installed

What you will get

You will get:

• a fully functional Linux system, however without the usual desktop (you’ve already got one from Windows)
• a second panel (e.g. at the top of your Windows desktop) or a second start menu (in the system tray next to the clock), from which you can start Linux applications
• Linux applications and Windows applications can be used simultaneously and you can cut and paste text between them
• apt / synaptic to install further applications

You will NOT get:

• another desktop
• the bench of applications that usually ship with Linux distributions (you have to fetch whatever you want)
• a printer driver
• trouble with further drivers

Security warning: It is recommended to use andLinux only on single-user-PCs or in a trustworthy environment because the communication with the X-Server and the launcher is not secured, i.e., every user who can login to Windows can access andLinux.

This looks really interesting and promising! Am definitely going to try this out and report how it turns out

Thanks to @chetanthaker who twittered about this

Technorati Tags: linux, andlinux, sathyasays

For all those people who miss Amarok badly while on Windows, well fear not, your dream has come true….almost.

With the release of KDE4.0 which uses Qt4 framework, which has been GPL’d and available for Windows and MacOSX, a lot of effort has been put in to port KDE4 for Windows, which allows Amarok to be run under Windows as well.

At the moment, just a tech preview has been released, and you can get the steps required to install Amarok under Windows over at KDE techbase.  Being a tech preview release, it’s rather buggy. In fact the developers have asked users not to submit any bug reports, because they’re busy working on the obvious ones. So don’t expect miracles. In fact, don’t expect Amarok not to crash.

Being a Linux user can be really funny. You just go reading few ignorant Windows users’ comments on How Linux is crap bla bla bla. Today’s source for making me laugh comes by way of Christopher Dawson’s article on ZDNet on Why Linux Will Not Displace Windows(a rather nicely written article, though). The best thing about such articles are the comments written by, let’s saw, rather “well informed” users.

Let’s take a couple of examples.

[...]

Windows vs Linux in a friendly fight to be choosen as the right OS for basic everyday use.
How we ranked

• Installation

Installation shouldnot be too messy and should be user friendly. A GUI is preffered and faster installation obviously scores well.Live Cd’s/DVD’s score plus points.

• Default Software

The operating system must come with a good suite of softwares to take care of all your needs.

• Stability

This is the place where the Operating System has to score. It is very important that it doesn’t spur problems routinely.

• Easy Availability and Installation of Softwares

Softwares for the Operating System should be easily available and easily installable.

• Light on System Resources

The Operating System Should not hog your system resources. By hogging you system resources you will get very little performance out of your system.

Introduction to the contenders

[...]