2013-03-31 | openGLUG

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Wednesday 3 April 2013

Synaptic Package Manager

What is Synaptic Package Manager?

Synaptic Package Manager is a graphical front-end for the Ubuntu package management system 'apt'. Synaptic brings a very user friendly software management environment combining the power of 'apt' and the simplicity in usage of graphical user interface. Using Synaptic user can install, remove, configure, or upgrade software packages, browse, sort and search the list of available software packages, manage repositories, or upgrade the whole system. And also can queue up a number of actions before executing them. Synaptic will inform the user about dependencies (additional packages required by the software package you have chosen) as well as conflicts with other packages that are already installed on the system. 



How to get Synaptic Package Manager?

Synaptic Package Manager can be installed from both terminal and from Ubuntu Software Center very easily.
1. To Install it from Terminal:
      Open Terminal and type "sudo apt-get install synaptic"
2. To install it from Software Center:
      i. Search for Synaptic or Synaptic Package Manager
      ii. And install the Synaptic Package Manager


For more information on how to use Synaptic Package Manager, you can refer to the Ubuntu Official Documentation.

Updating Ubuntu Package Repositary


What is Repositary?

Repositories are servers which contain sets of packages. In other words Package Repositary is a database where informations about all the softwares available for Ubuntu is stored.
Software in Ubuntu's repository is divided into four categories or components - main, restricted, universe and multiverse.





  • Main - The main component contains applications that are free software, can be freely redistributed and are fully supported by the Ubuntu team.

  • Restricted - Supported software that is not available under a completely free license and also not complete support may not be available.

  • Universe - The universe component is a snapshot of the free, open-source, and Linux world. It houses almost every piece of open-source software, all built from a range of public sources. Canonical does not provide a guarantee of regular security updates for software in the universe component

  • Multiverse - The multiverse component contains software that is not free, which means the licensing requirements of this software do not meet the Ubuntu main component licence policy. The onus is on you to verify your rights to use this software and comply with the licensing terms of the copyright holder. This software is not supported and usually cannot be fixed or updated.  Use it at your own risk.


Why updating is necessary?

There are many situations or reasons where you need to update Ubuntu software repositary. One common reason is that, by updating the repositary, you can have a quick access to latest softwares available for Ubuntu. Also in some situations the Ubuntu software repositary may get deleted. When the software repositary is erased you can't install the required softwares from terminal. So in that case to put everything up, you have to update your repositary.

So how to update from Terminal?

It is very easy to update your software repositary through terminal. Just follow the steps.
  1. Open the terminal.
  2. You should have a internet connection to update your repositary.
  3. Then in the terminal enter the command apt-get update
  4. Then the 'apt-get' command will ask you for the admin password.
  5. After entering the admin password the update process starts. 

Monday 1 April 2013

Downloading a whole website via Terminal in Ubuntu



In this tutorial i am going to explain how to download a whole website into your computer. After doing the steps i explained below you can use the downloaded website offline!!.  That also without any third-party software.
To download the website and to convert it to offline edition, i am going to use a commandline utility called 'wget'.

These are the steps to download an offline edition of any website.
  1. Open the terminal
  2. Now enter the following command.
                        wget --mirror -p --convert-links -p destination_path website_URL
 
Now i will tell what those words mean.
  • wget - This is the utility which does all this great stuff
  • --mirror - Turns on options suitable for mirroring
  • -p - Instructs to download all the files required to the page to load properly
  • --convert-links - Converts all the links in the each web pages to the offline path so that offline navigation between pages is possible.
  • destination_path - This is the local path where the downloaded files should be stored. When you are executing the actual command, you have to replace this by a local path. (i.e. Path to any folder that exist in your computer.)
  • website_URL - This is the web site address.
So now you know the general command. If you want an example here it is.
                    wget --mirror -p --convert-links -p /home/user/Documents http://en.wikipedia.org
The above command will download Wikipedia frontpage along with the pages linked from the frontpage and all the downloaded files will be stored in the Documents/en.wikipedia.org folder.
                        

Sunday 31 March 2013

Comparison Between Ubuntu and Windows

In this post i will give you a basic comparison between Ubuntu and Windows Operating Systems. And in particular i am going to take Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Windows 7 for comparison.


1. Graphics and User Interface:

Even though, graphics is a personal choice i will give a small comparison between Windows 7 graphics and Ubuntu 12.04 graphics. Both being very popular Operating Systems, have better graphics.
But when we compare Ubuntu 12.04 graphics with the Windows 7 graphics, taking performance into account, we come to know that though Windows 7 gives better graphics using Windows Aero technology it consumes system resources and memory thereby reducing the system performance. On the same system with same configuration Ubuntu can run smoothly along with it's nice graphics and User Interface designs. So as i experienced my vote goes to Ubuntu for graphics.

2.  Preinstalled Softwares:

About preinstalled or bundled softwares, Windows 7 comes with very minimum bundled softwares. The very basic softwares like a word processor, spread sheet and a presentation softwares are not present by default. To get these minimal features, we have to purchase Microsoft Office Suite.
But unlike Windows, Ubuntu 12.04 comes with preloaded software bundle LibreOffice which has LibreOffice Word for word processing, LibreOffice Calc for SpreadSheets and LibreOffice Impress for presentations and along with these some additional tools like LibreOffice Formula etc. Also Ubuntu has a preinstalled chat client called 'Empathy - Instant Messaging'.

3. Drivers:

Another biggest advantage of Linux distros(distributions like Ubuntu) is that they have built-in drivers for almost all types of normally used hardwares  such as Wi-Fi, Ethernet controllers, USB drivers, BroadBand routers, printers, scanners etc. Ubuntu also has a feature to download and install the built-in drivers with proprietary drivers whenever necessary. But unlike Ubuntu, in Windows 7 drivers should be manually downloaded and installed. But now Windows also comes with some basic drivers like USB drivers, Bluetooth drivers etc.

4. MultiMedia:

The common drawback of both the Operating Systems is that, in both operating systems we have to download codecs for playing multimedia files such as Xvid etc. But Windows comes with Windows Media Player which can be used to play common media files like *.avi, *.mp3 etc. But in Ubuntu 12.04 every codec should be downloaded manually and installed. So in this case Windows 7 over takes Ubuntu 12.04
But as VLC Media Player is available for both WIndows and Ubuntu it is easy to overcome this drawback.

5. Third Party Software Installation:

When it comes to installation of 3rd party softwares in Ubuntu , the installation procedure is comparatively less than that in Windows. This is because of the large software repositary system setup by Canonical Inc and Ubuntu community, which gives tremendous software support via Ubuntu Software Center. But in Windows there is no such software center system and you have to get all softwares from the 3rd party websites where there are possibilities of injection of harmful programs to the user's system.

6. Security:

Linux by default does not run as a root (the Windows ‘administrator’ equivalent). This ensures that any automated program or script cannot make changes to the system without explicit privileges from the user. Windows 7 also implemented a similar concept called 'User Account Control' System, according to some survey it is not as robust as Ubuntu/Linux distros. So it is clear that Ubuntu or Linux distros are more secure than Windows.


7. Gaming:

When it comes to gaming support by the operating system, although Ubuntu has many games, it   can't beat Windows. Most of the high-end games are built for Windows platform as Windows gives DirectX support for efficient graphics rendering. But recently a commercial game engine called Steam is released for Ubuntu which will lead to a tremendous development in gaming features. The very famous game Counter-Strike has already striked the Ubuntu operating system using Steam engine.

8. Cost:

Another biggest advantage of Ubuntu and Linux distros over Windows is that, Ubuntu is totally free and it is open-source at the same time giving almost all features of Windows which is a commercial operating system.