If you’ve migrated to Ubuntu 11.10, and you’re having a hard time getting used to “Unity,” there’s hope!.. Well, sort of. You can install Gnome Classic, which will make the interface a bit more familiar, but still is gnome3, and it is a huge transformation from previous versions of gnome, but at least is not Unity. Gnome Classic is not installed by default so you’ll have to install it. And this is ubuntu with gnome classic installed.

1- Open terminal window and type

sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback

2- now log off and select “Gnome Classic” at login screen

In this tutorial we will go over on how to create a desktop shortcut or application launcher in Ubuntu 11.10. In previous version it was pretty easy to create a desktop launcher; you pretty much right click the desktop and create your launcher, but not so easy in this version of Ubuntu, and that’s what we are going to cover.

1- Open a terminal in Unity (dash windows->type “terminal”)

2- Install gnome-panel package

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends gnome-panel

3- Open the “Create Launcher” app by typing

gnome-desktop-item-edit ~/Desktop/ --create-new

4- Give it a name and the command to launch the application. In this case we’re using thunderbird.

In past versions of ubuntu, I’ve experienced slow connections specially with internet. And it’s been because of IPv6. Now in Ubuntu 10.04, I didn’t noticed any slow connection; however, I decided to go ahead and disable it anyways… just in case. And here are the steps.

Checking whether IPv6 is enabled or not.

jorge@nixboxen:~$ cat cat /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/disable_ipv6
cat: cat: No such file or directory
1

if output=0 then is enabled. So use your preferred editor and open /etc/sysctl.conf. Then add the following lines.

#disable ipv6
net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1
net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1

Recently I had to install ubuntu on a machine with a bad cdrom drive, which made me look for alternative ways of installing ubuntu. This article describes two ways of how to install Ubuntu by copying the content of the installation CD to an USB drive such as a memory stick (or flash drive) and making the USB stick bootable. This is handy for machines like ultra portable notebooks that do not have a CD drive but can boot from USB media. On a side note, I have to point out that booting from USB stick can be very handy, but there is no guarantee that it will work with your particular combination of computer and USB stick. Even if you are able to boot from your USB stick on one computer, this does not mean that it is going to work with the next one. You can try experimenting with different settings in your PC’s BIOS to make it work.
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I recently decided to upgrade my laptop to windows Vista, which was in a dual boot configuration between windows XP and Ubuntu, after the upgrade I was no longer able to boot into Ubuntu, and that is because the last OS installed usually overwrites the MBR (Master Boot Record), so in this tutorial we will go over the process of bringing your pc back to dual boot after upgrading your XP installation to Vista, on a side note, don’t forget that this method described here puts GRUB back in the MBR (Master Boot Record) of the hard drive instead of the root partition, this is usually fine, unless you have an alternative boot manager like Boot Read the rest of this entry »

After having to reset my Ubuntu box password, I decided to come up with this tutorial on how to reset linux password, in this case we will be taking two different methods…

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In todays hybrid network where Windows and Linux coexist together, I found myself trying to access remote shares from a Linux box and vise versa, having to input credentials to authenticate, well this little tutorial shows a quick and easy way to mount windows network shares in PCLinux with read/write permission, keep in mind that prior to mount the share a user should exist on the remote system in order to authenticate, also notice that the credentials are kept in a clear text file on the Linux box and will be sent during authentication, as it poses a security threat.
click here to view the tutorial