Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala is Released

Ubuntu has released its latest stable version code named Karmic Koala. Download the Ubuntu 9.10 DVD from this link.

At the same time, the 9.10 versions of Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Mythbuntu, and Ubuntu Studio were released.

Other links: http://torrent.ubuntu.com/

Posted via email from Linux Blog

Today's Post: Promote Blog Action Day

Just a small attempt to promote Blog Action Day. Got to know about this action through Blogger now itself. I have atleas a day ahead of this event to promote it. And hoping all those who read to promote it as well.

On October 15, 2009, thousands of bloggers will unite to blog about a particular issue that is affecting our world on a grand scale. This year the topic is climate change.

So what you can do? If you are a blogger you can sign up for this event and participate by writing a blog on this topic. To promote this event you can add a badge to your blog. You can promote. You can also write a blog and promote it as I did.

Remember the best you can do is to write a post on that day and publish it in your favorite blog.

Posted via email from Sikku's Blog

Installing Linux from an ISO image file

If you are fed up of burning DVDs or Live CDs and want to install your favorite Linux OS straight from the image file which you have just downloaded, you can do it. This is one of the great options of installing Linux to your system.
All you need is:
1. A partition of EXT2/EXT3 or FAT32.
2. An ISO installable image of any Linux Distro.
I am going to give a tutorial for Fedora Distro. For others you can refer to the Table which I have provided below.
First step is to create a directory under root directory "/"
mkdir /fedora mkdir -p /fedora/images
Copy the downloaded image file to /fedora directory.
cp /home/user/Fedora-11-i386-DVD.iso /fedora
Now all you have to do is to copy 3 of the files from this image file. You can either extract this image file and copy both the files or you can mount this file and then copy these 3 files to the /fedora directory.
The three files which are needed to copy are "vmlinuz" "initrd.img" and "image/install.img"
I will go for the mount option, just because it wont take any extra space.
mount -o loop /fedora/Fedora-11-i386-DVD.iso /media/iso
Note you have to create a directory called /media/iso before executing the above command.
Now enter into this directory:
cd /media/iso/isolinux
Copy the files:
cp vmlinuz initrd.img /fedora cp images/install.img /fedora/images
That's all for the setup. Now you have to edit the grub which is responsible to boot image files.
vi /boot/grub/menu.lst
or
vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
Append the following into the file:
title Install Fedora 11 kernel /fedora/vmlinuz initrd /fedora/initrd.img
The title is the title which you want to display in the GRUB menu.
The ‘root’ is the hard disk partition that contains the ISO image.
The ‘kernel’ is the Linux kernel, which we copied into /fedora directory.
The ‘initrd’ is the initial RAM disk image,  which gets into the RAM.
Now you are ready to install your new Linux distro directly from the hard disk without the need for a CD/DVD drive. Reboot your system and select the ‘Install Fedora 11’ entry from your GRUB menu.
Follow the onscreen instruction and you are ready with a new distro without any hassle to burn DVDs.

Table 1: Names of kernel and RAM disk images in some popular distros
Distro	Kernel path	RAM disk path
Fedora/RHEL/CentOS	/isolinux/vmlinuz	/isolinux/initrd.img
openSUSE	/boot/i386/loader/linux	/boot/i386/loader/initrd
Mandriva	/i586/isolinux/alt0/vmlinuz	/i586/isolinux/alt0/all.rdz
Ubuntu	/casper/vmlinuz	/casper/initrd.gz
Debian	/install.386/vmlinuz	/isolinux/initrd.img

Posted via email from Linux Blog

Skype 2.1 Latest Version is out for Linux

Skype has recently released their latest release, Skype 2.1 beta for Linux. Until recently Skype was available for Fedora 7 only. Though it was able to be used on Fedora 11 also. Now they have released a version for Fedora 9 and Fedora 10+ which can be installed in Fedora 11 also. For Ubuntu users the release is for Ubuntu 8.04 and Ubuntu 8.10. They have also released Skype for 64 bit processor also, but for Ubuntu users only. All other Linux users can download the latest Skype 2.1 beta from this link: http://www.skype.com/download/skype/linux/choose/

This release comes with high quality video and super wideband audio that have been exciting features of Windows and Mac version. This release is quite important for Linux platforms since it supports Pulseaudio.

What is new in this release?

• Skype's SILK codec for outstanding sound quality
• High Quality Video
• PulseAudio
• Send SMS messages
• Organise your contacts with contact groups
• Improvements to chat (typing indicator, new emoticons and message editing)

Skype home page.
Skype Download page.

Posted via email from Linux Blog

How to add Twitter (twitgin) in Pidgin for Linux

Image via CrunchBase

Pidgin does not support Twitter protocol by default. Hence you need to install a plugin for that. There are a lot of plugins available to add twitter in pidgin. microblog-purple is one of such plugins availabe which is open source. It can be intalled in any Linux machine.

This is a plug-in for Pidgin to allow for seamless updating and receiving of Twitter messages. While originally built for Pidgin it works for other LibPurple base clients like Adium and Finch. Currently the plug-in works with Twitter only.

How to install in Ubuntu:

For Ubuntu Users:

sudo echo deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu `lsb_release --short --codename` main >> /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu `lsb_release --short --codename` main >> /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0CF459B8DF37ED8B

Now do this:

sudo apt-get install pidgin-microblog

For Fedora Users:

yum install purple-microblog

How to run this plugin:

First, you need to enable the plugin. Open Pidgin and in Tools > Plugins and check "Twitgin". Then go to Accounts > Manage Accounts, click "Add" and in the "Protocol" List, select TwitterIM. Enter your id and password.

That's it. you are done.

Installing and Running Pidgin 2.6.1 in Ubuntu

This is a brief tutorial on how to install Pidgin 2.6.1 with voice and video support for XMPP/Gtalk in Ubuntu Jaunty. GTalk is supported by XMPP hence you can have voice and video chat using your gtalk id in pidgin.
Since Ubuntu does not update Pidgin, the pidgin website has issued a PPA. But I could not update it even by that. So I tried to compile from source.
Firstly you have to download the source from pidgin website from here.
Or get it as user from your terminal in this way:

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin/files/Pidgin/pidgin-2.6.1.tar.bz2
tar -xvjf pidgin-2.6.1.tar.bz2
cd pidgin-2.6.1

Save the downloaded file to your home directory. Then follow these instruction in Install from Tarball
After the Second step (i.e ./configure) you have to get this line

Build with voice and video.... : yes

If you don't get this line then you wont be able to voice chat. It means you are missing some plugins of Gstreamer or you have not installed some required dependencies which are optional for pidgin installation.

The required packages for your pidgin to support voice and video are:

• gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
• gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
• gstreamer0.10-plugins-farsight >= 0.12.6

in addition to the extra compiling requirements of:

• farsight2-0.10 => 0.0.8
• gstreamer-plugins-base-0.10-dev

To get all these packages you only have to do the following

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-good gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev gstreamer0.10-plugins-farsight libgstfarsight0.10-0 libgstfarsight0.10-dev

Copy and Paste the above line of code into your terminal and press enter. The apt-get package manager will install these packages.

After complete installation, run the ./configure again. You should now get the required output. If you stuck up somewhere in the middle then you probably have to install few more dependency packages. For the required dependency packages to install pidgin check this link here. You can also run this command if nothing goes well.

sudo apt-get build-dep pidgin

If still you dont get the required output then it means that Ubuntu is not fetching the latest releases of the Gstreamer. Which happened with me. So I downloaded all the source files and compiled them and then installed them. At last when I did ./configure I got the required output. Then I went on to compile and install pidgin from source with the latest releases.
They are:

libnice-0.0.9
farsight2-0.0.14
gst-plugins-base-0.10.24
gstreamer-0.10.24

Compile and install the above packages in the same order and then run the ./configure of pidgin-2.6.1 again and check the output. To know how to compile and install click here. Before running "make install" remove the pidgin from your system.

sudo apt-get purge pidgin pidgin-data libpurple0 libpurple-bin

If you still need any help then please use the comment link below to ask you queries. I will try my best to help you out.

Running voice and video chat:

Currently there is no way to configure your microphone or webcam in this release. You can do so by running this command from the terminal.

gstreamer-properties

This should work out.

To start Voice and Video you have to open the conversation window > Conversation > Media

Currently I have problems running voice and video chat. Working out to get it done. Watch this page for updates.

Update:

Chech this thread if you have problems installing Pidgin
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1244589

Update 2:

Now you don't have to do anything. Just update your pidgin from your repository with the help of your package manager. Ubuntu has updated it for you. Thanks for Ubuntu guys.
Just do this:

sudo apt-get install pidgin

You are done.

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• Pidgin will not be in Fedora 12 (fedora-help.blogspot.com)
• Installing from Tarball in Linux (fedora-help.blogspot.com)

Installing Pidgin 2.6.1 in Fedora 11

This is a brief tutorial on how to install Pidgin 2.6.1 with voice and video support for XMPP/Gtalk in Fedora 11. GTalk is supported by XMPP hence you can have voice and video chat using your gtalk id in pidgin.
Firstly you have to download the source from pidgin website from here.
Save it in your home directory. Then follow these instruction in Install from Tarball
Instead of doing ./configure in the second step you have to issue this command

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/ ./configure --enable-gnutls=no

After the Second step (i.e ./configure as above) you have to get this line

Build with voice and video.... : yes

If you don't get this line then you wont be able to voice chat. It means you are missing some plugins of Gstreamer or you have not installed some required dependencies which are optional for pidgin installation.

The required packages for your pidgin to support voice and video are:

• gstreamer-plugins-good
• gstreamer-plugins-bad
• gstreamer-plugins-base-devel

And

• farsight2
• farsight2-devel

To get all these packages you only have to do the following

sudo yum install libidn-devel gstreamer-plugins-good gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-base-devel farsight2-devel

Copy and Paste the above line of code into your terminal and press enter. The yum package manager will install these packages.

After complete installation, run the ./configure again. You should now get the required output. If you stuck up somewhere in the middle then you probably have to install few more dependency packages. For the required dependency packages to install pidgin check this link here. If you still need any help then please use the comment link below to ask you queries. I will try my best to help you out.

Running voice and video chat:

Currently there is no way to configure your microphone or webcam in this release. You can do so by running this command from the terminal.

gstreamer-properties

This should work out. Currently it is working fine for me. I can do both voice and video chat.

To start Voice and Video you have to open the conversation window > Conversation > Media

Update:

Fedora developers has released the updated package for pidgin. Now you can install it with the YUM package manager.
Just do this from terminal as root:

yum install pidgin

Related articles by Zemanta

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• Install from DVD using YUM installer (fedora-help.blogspot.com)

Installing J2EE in Ubuntu Linux with libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 error

Recently I downloadd J2EE from sun.com and tried to install. I got the
following error:

error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3:
cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I tried to search the internet for this error. But I could not find
any solution easily. I tried hard and found a link and worked around
it to solved my problem.

As the above error suggests that libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3 is not found
and it has to be installed. I triend issuing the following command
which did not work.

sudo apt-get install libstdc++-libc6.2-2.so.3

I also tried to search it via aptitude, but could not find any alternatives.

Although the Ubuntu package which contains this library has not got
the same name. You can install it via the following command:

sudo apt-get install libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2

If the package manager still says such a package isn't found, it means
you have to update you "sources.list" file. But this option is
available for Debian OS. As Ubuntu is also a debian based OS you can
always use the same format into your /etc/apt/source.list file.

Open up a terminal and issue this command

gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Then add this line to the end of the sources.list file, which will fetch the deb file.
like this:

deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian etch main

Or else if you do not like to use package manager then just go to this
following link and download the required file and install it to your
system.

http://packages.debian.org/etch/i386/libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2/download

Hope your problem get solved. Dont forget to put a comment. Please let
me know if you have used the package manager or direct download.

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Installing Software from a Tarball in Linux

Software installation in Linux is really very easy. Almost all distros come with a package manager like yum for Fedora, apt-get for Ubuntu, Portage for Gentoo etc... It is more easier to use these package managers than to install softwares in Windows. If you know what software you want just tell these package managers and they will find the package, download it, install it and even configure it for you. You don't have to keep on pressing Next button and path to save the file.

However, sometimes many of the software do not fall into the distribution's repos. In this case you have to download such software. These software come as either RPM files or tar balls. Often these software come as a tar ball (.tar, tar.gz, .tar.bz, or .tgz). Wherein you have to compile the source code for your computer and run it, all by yourself. You may find it irritating to do so, but it is easy and quick.

Step 1: Extract the tarball

tar -zxvf mytarball.tar.gz

The options we gave to tar are as follows:

• -z to tell tar to filter this file (archive) through gzip to decompress (use -j for .bzip files)
• -x to extract the files (-c to create an archive)
  
• -v for “verbose”, so we can see a list of the files it's extracting (Optional)
  
• -f to tell tar that we’re working with a file

After this operation you will get a directory with the same name as that of the tarball file. If the tarball filename is mytarball.tat.gz then the directory name will be mytarball. Now go to this directory using the command cd.

Step 2: Configure.

This step checks your system for all dependencies the source code need to make and executable file. So after the first step all you have to do is to issue the following command at the promt:

./configure

If all goes well it’ll go through a check of various parts of your system, then drop you back to the prompt again. If anything fails you may get some dependency errors. Which states that you need to install that software first. check for that software in the repo using the package manager.

Step 3: Make.

Here is the step in which you do the actual compilation of the souce code. If the above step completed without any error a Makefile will be created in the directory and then you can issue the following command:

make

This may take a few minutes depending on size of the software. If everything goes fine you will get the prompt back again with a success message.

Step 4: Install.

In this step the command basically does is to copy the compiled executable file to the required directories so that running this program will be lot easier. This step needs root previlages as it will access those directories which you do not have permission to modify. Hence you need to login as super user by using the command su. It will ask for a root password and once you login successfully you can issue the following command:

make install

At this point of time you are all done to run the installed software.
However many software needs to be compiled in a different way. So it is better recommended that you read both the README file and the INSTALL file.

Pidgin will not be in Fedora 12

Image via Wikipedia

As I was going through the Features of Fedora 12, I was amazed to see this big change. Pidgin will not be default IM client in Fedora 12. Instead Empathy will be set as the default IM client. This means Pidgin fans have to install Pidgin separately. Same is the case with Ubuntu. Even Ubuntu is replacing Pidgin with Empathy. May be the main reason is that, Pidgin does not support Voice and Video chat. But for upgrades (from Fedora 11 to Fedora 12), Pidgin will remain the default. For new installations, Fedora will be using Empathy.
Source article

A detailed list of differences between Emapthy and Pidgin is available in this link: Pidgin vs Empathy

Pidgin was rocking as an instant messenger on my desktop. Never used Empathy, but have to try out and check the features of it. There is some sense in replacing such a good IM client with Empathy by the greats like Fedora and Ubuntu.

May be the reason behind Pidgin being discarded is that it never tried to support voice chat or video chat. So "Keep updated and survive" should be the motto for them.

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• Front Panel Mic Problem in Fedora 11 (fedora-help.blogspot.com)

Pidgin/Kopete (Yahoo) problem in Fedora Linux

You might have faced problems logging into yahoo with pidgin. And pidgin throwing this error:

" Could not establish a connection with the server:Error resolving scs.msg.yahoo.com . Name or service not known"

The problem with pidgin connecting to yahoo server is that yahoo is upgrading some of its servers to match up with the new way of authentication. Upgradation of servers is not an issue at all. But the new type of authentication mechanism is making the pidgin not getting connected.

Anyway. Here is the temporary solution.
Change your Yahoo account's Pager Server field (located on the Advanced tab when editing the account) to 'scsa.msg.yahoo.com'.
Just press 'Ctrl+a' from the pidgin window. Then select an account and press modify. Then press the advanced tab and change the Pager Server field from scs.msg.yahoo.com to scsa.msg.yahoo.com
If this url does not work then try using this one cn.scs.msg.yahoo.com
This fix should work for the time being until yahoo makes further changes.

A better way is to update your pidgin to 2.5.8 until pidgin 2.6 arrives.

There is a same issue with KDE based kopete. Doing around with the above url should solve the problem. kopete is now coming up with an updated version.

Original source

Fedora 12 Release name as Constantine.

Fedora 11 is already released and planning for Fedora 12 is also going on. To codename Fedora 12 the red hat community gave a list of option to vote for. The options were

* Chilon
* Constantine
* Orville
* Rugosa
* Umbria

Fedora 11 is called "Leonidas" and has a link with the name of Fedora 10 as "Cambridge". Cambridge and Leonidas were both ships of the United States Navy. In the same way "Leonidas" and "Constantine" are townships in the state of Michigan, USA. It is said that the tradition is of creating linked pairs of codenames.

But the official mailing list of Fedora has a different story to tell.

As defined in the election text, the one (1) candidate with the greatest
number of votes will be chosen as the Fedora 12 Release Name.

So the greatest number of votes were put to Constantine and hence the name was chosen. So from now the Release name of Fedora 12 will be "Constantine"

Install from DVD using YUM installer

YUM is a package installer which uses internet to install packages. So what we do if there is no internet connection? If you do not have internet connection I recommend that you take one and keep yourself updated through YUM.
To install packages through DVD we need to have appropriate Fedora DVD mounted in the system. Once the DVD is mounted you have two options to install the packages from your DVD.

First, using the YUM option called localinstall. Go to the path from your terminal (to know what a terminal is check my other post here) where you have mounted your DVD. This usually should be /media/Fedora 11 i386 DVD. Replace 11 with your version of Fedora. Now go to the directory called Packages.

cd "/media/Fedora 11 i386 DVD/Packages"

Note that you have to use inverted comas. Now from here invoke this command:

yum localinstall RPM_filename.rpm

You can install a particular rpm file if you know or you can just give *.rpm in place of the RPM_filename.
This procedure will try to access the internet for any dependencies. For that the first thing you have to do is to disable the repos. To do this you should know what all repos have been enabled.

yum repolist

This will give you a list of repos with repo id, repo name and status. All you need is the repo id and use this command.

yum --disablerepo=fedora,livna,updates localinstall *.rpm --skip-broken

The --skip-broken option will exclude all packages with depsolving problems. Means those which have dependency problems. This should work with all versions of Fedora. the main drawback of this option is that you should know the particular package name. Or you can use meta-character if you dont know the exact name.

Second, and the most recommended option is by using a repo for DVD. YUM installs packages by checking the repo file. To know what a repo file is you have to check the content of an already existing repo file. Go to the repo directory of YUM.

cd /etc/yum.repos.d/

You will get a list of repo files with the extension .repo. Now use your choice of editor to create a repo file for DVD. I recommend using vi editor.

vi dvd.repo

You can give any name for this file which should end with .repo extension. Now type these line (or better copy paste it).

name=DVD for Fedora- $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=file:///media/Fedora%20$releasever%20$basearch%20DVD/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Do not do any other changes. Now save this file and run the YUM command. If you want your YUM not to check files in the internet you can edit all the repo files and disable them by changing the value of enabled to 0. Or it is better recommend that you use --disablerepo option for the YUM command as explained earlier.

The best thing about using this second way is that you can use all the option related to YUM. Example you can use the groupinstall option which you cannot use it with the first way. Again I stress the point that you use an internet connection to keep yourself updated to the latest changes in the world.

In case you have any problems installing the packages through YUM please revert back. I will try my best to solve it.

Happy YUMming!!! :)

Front Panel Mic Problem in Fedora 11

After Installing Fedora 11, I never tried my front panel microphone. But few days back when I tried to record some voice I found that it was not working. Then I tried it from the back panel, it was working and the voice was recording perfectly.

I tried to figure out what the problem is and I did some working around to fix the problem.
The solution is:

amixer -c0 sset 'Input Source' 'Front Mic'

Simple mixer control 'Input Source',0
Capabilities: cenum
Items: 'Mic' 'Front Mic' 'Line'
Item0: 'Front Mic'

This should work for everyone who is using Fedora 11.

Azureus (Vuze) Problem with Flash Player

I had installed Vuze in my Fedora 10. Installation went fine. But when I started Vuze it asked me to install Flash Player. It asked not once, but twice. I told to myself, "whats wrong with this Vuze?" I have already installed flashplayer then why is it asking me again to install it? Rest everything was fine with Vuze. It was downloading as well as seeding. No issues with its functionality. But whenever I start this app I always used to get this message which was frustrating me. So I tried to figure out the problem. I realized what the problem was and did some small changes to my Fedora 10. All was working fine, until I upgraded my Fedora 10 to Fedora 11. The upgradation from Fedora 10 to Fedora 11 had not issues. But post upgradation had lots of problems which I will post it later. So again I had to do the same procedure. The changes which I made were:

Firstly, go to the plugins directory of Vuze. For example I installed the Vuze in /usr/bin/vuze

cd /usr/bin/vuze/plugins

Then find the libflashplayer.so file which is responsible to play the flash content.

locate libflashplayer.so

You should get the output something like

/usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/plugins/libflashplayer.so
/usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1/plugins/libflashplayer.so

Then create a soft link to any of these output. Note that the file should contain libflashplayer.so only and not anything else.

ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
or
ln -s /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/plugins/libflashplayer.so

And run

ll -s

And you should see something like

libflashplayer.so -> /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9/plugins/libflashplayer.so

Restart Vuze and job done. You should not get the message again.

What is a Terminal

The first thing you need to know in Linux is, what a "Terminal" is?
A terminal is a text entry and display device. It is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks. It is a device in which you can enter the command as text and you get an output. The ouptput may or may not be visible.
To get a terminal in Fedora, from the Main Menu bar select "Applications>System Tools>Terminal". You will get a window in which there will be a prompt. It looks like this -> $_
There is one more prompt which looks like this -> #_
The difference is the later one is for the super user and the first one is for the normal user. Super user has got few more privileges than a normal user.
Try to enter few commands and you will learn much about it in future.

Why Linux

First of all I would like to mention you what made me to switch to Linux from Windows. My PC used to get affected by virus now and then. It a;ways got stuck in the middle of nowhere to make me frustrated. That was the main reason for me to switch to Linux. And I chose Fedora at that time.
Later I found lot many reasons to stick to this Operating System. Few of the reason are:

1. Cost: Linux is free, and that includes all the application software in it. Windows costs. And if you use a pirated one then you feel guilty inside that you are using a pirated software. Not only that, once you install windows rest all software you install are also pirated.
   
2. Performance: Linux worked faster on my Intel Dual Core XP. The more software in XP the more slower it becomes. Not so in Linux.
   
3. No bloatware: Linux is free from adware, trialware, shovelware, and bloatware. Running Linux is like watching the public TV network.
   
4. Security: Last year, tens of thousands new virus signatures were documented for Windows, compared to 40 for Linux. Still, most distros come with firewalls and antivirus (AV) software. The nature of Linux is such that virus is not prone to attack at all.
   
5. Dual booting: The best Linux distros make dual booting a simple affair, along with the required disk partitioning (so you don't need to buy partitioning software). Windows on my PC is still intact after installing and uninstalling a dozens of Linux distros (Fedora, Open SUSE, Live CDs etc).
   
6. Installation: After installing Windows you need to install various other software which takes lot of time. With Linux, it can take as little as half an hour to install the operating system, utilities, and a full set of applications. No registration or activation is required, no paperwork, and no excruciating pack drill.
   
7. Reinstalling the OS: You can't just download an updated version of Windows. You have to use the CD that came with your PC and download all the patches Microsoft has issued since the CD was made. With Linux, you simply download the latest version of your distro (no questions asked) and, assuming your data files live in a separate disk partition, there's no need to reinstall them. You only need to re-install the extra programs you added to the ones that came with the distro.
   
8. Keeping track of software: Like most Windows users, I have a shelf full of software CDs and keep a small slip with serial numbers of different pirated versions in my pocket in case I have to reinstall the lot. With Linux, there are no serial numbers or passwords to lose or worry about. Not a single one.
   
9. Updating software: Linux updates all the software on your system whenever updates are available online, including all applications programs. Microsoft does that for Windows software but you have to update each program you've added from other sources. More icing on the Linux cake is that it doesn't ask you to reboot after updates. XP nags you every ten minutes until you curse and reboot your machine. If you choose "custom install" to select only the updates you want, XP hounds you like a mangy neighbourhood dog until you give in.
   
10. No need to defragment disks: Linux uses different file systems that don't need de-fragmentation.
    
11. A wealth of built-in utilities: The utilities supplied with Windows are pretty ordinary on the whole, that's why so many small software firms have made a nice living writing better ones. Linux programs are comparable with the best Windows freeware, from CD burners to photo managers, memory monitors and disk utilities. PDF conversion is built-in, both into OpenOffice Writer and into the DTP application Scribus. All you do is click a button on the task bar
12. Online Help: If you got any problem in you PC, there is always help for you to solve your problems. Lots and lots of online forums to help you out. Just type the keyword and help is right on your desktop.
13. Open Source: Linux is an open source system. You can modify the OS according to your convenience.
14. Tech Support: Commercial systems require their customers to depend on their companies for technical support. If there is a problem, users must often wait on hold (while paying for a toll call). While decentralized, it is often easier to get help with problems in Linux.
15. Crashing: Windows crashes often and anyone who has a good experience with Windows can tell you this. Linux does not crash as such. Never restart the Linux with a hard restart.

And lot more to go. Linux is Network friendly, reliable and backward compatible. Despite all these the only demerit is it is not so user friendly for a newbie. Once you get hold of Linux you know how to handle it.

In my blog I will add all those helpful tips and tools to assit you to get more friendly with Linux. I will post all those useful tips for the newbies and experienced.

Related articles

• How open source is growing up (news.bbc.co.uk)


• Linux Vs Windows (maketecheasier.com)