Give Linux the Complete Mac Look with Mac4Lin

I just installed this on my Ubuntu box and find it very easy to use and cool looking.

Version 1.0 was just released. Fully supports GNOME 2.26 and backwards compatible.


Head on over to here for the download and more information. Thanks Anirudh Acharya.



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Add Leopard Style Dock to Windows with Nexus [DOWNLOAD]

Winstep Nexus Dock is a FREE professional dock for Windows. It comes with a Leopard theme, which can be seen in the above image.

Get it here [Nexus]



System Requirements:
Win 95, 98, SE, ME, NT4, 2000, XP 32/64 bit, 2003 Server, Vista 32/64 bit or Windows 7 32/64 bit.

Overview:

-Multi-Dock System (Winstep Xtreme version only)
-Multi-Level Docks (Winstep Xtreme version only)
-Live icon reflections
-Magnification
-Auto-Hide
-Auto-Collapse
-Useful Object-based Drag And Drop
-Full Multi-Monitor Support
-Document Thumbnails
-In-Dock Modules
-Rserve Screen Space
-Respect Reserved Screen Space
-Virtual File System Objects support
-Powerful Dock Manipulation options
-Keyboard Navigation
-PNG and TIF File Support
-Special FX
-Complete Customization
-Quality And Performance Tested

Get it here [Nexus]


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Add Authentication to Squid Proxy [HOW-TO]

Squid is a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. It has a wide variety of uses, from speeding up a web server by caching repeated requests, to caching web, DNS and other computer network lookups for a group of people sharing network resources, to aiding security by filtering traffic.

The below steps will add authentication to your squid proxy. Why would you want to add security? Why not, I don't know. Just do it.

Tested and verified on Ubuntu Hardy Heron Server 8.04

1: Create a username/password
First create a NCSA password file using htpasswd command. The word 'user1' below should be changed to whatever the heck you want. Also, the '-c' tag will create this file. You don't need to add this tag if the file is already in play.

# htpasswd -c /etc/squid/passwd user1

Modify permissions to the new file so squid can read it:

# chmod o+r /etc/squid/passwd

2: Locate nsca_auth authentication helper
Usually nsca_auth is located at /usr/lib/squid/ncsa_auth; at least, it was for me. You can use the dpkg command to try and locate it if it seems to be in a different location.

# dpkg -L squid | grep ncsa_auth

3: Configure nsca_auth for squid proxy authentication
Open /etc/squid/squid.conf file and add the following parameters. These are all found towards the top of the configuration file (there's a lot of stuff in the conf file). It is worth noting that your basic program location may differ depending on where your ncsa_auth helper is located. The basic realm can be changed to whatever you want; it dosen't matter.

auth_param basic program /usr/lib/squid/ncsa_auth /etc/squid/passwd
auth_param basic children 5
auth_param basic realm Squid proxy-caching web server
auth_param basic credentialsttl 2 hours
auth_param basic casesensitive off

acl ncsa_users proxy_auth REQUIRED
http_access allow ncsa_users

Last Step: Save and close the file.
Restart squid and you should be all set!

Now that wasn't too bad was it?

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Google Chrome on Ubuntu

So Google released the beta version of a new open source browser: Google Chrome. But it's only available for Windows at the moment. So here's a guide to install Google Chrome on Ubuntu using Wine. Thanks to myscienceisbetter.com for the tutorial.

Full guide here

1. Install wine (follow the official instructions http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb)

2. make sure wine 1.1.3 is installed by entering the following in the terminal

wine --version

3. Download the Chrome installer

wget http://gpdl.google.com/chrome/install/149.27/chrome_installer.exe

4. Install Chrome

wine chrome_installer.exe

5. Open the Google Chrome.desktop icon, which was created on your Desktop, with any editor you like. Make sure you add "--new-http --in-process-plugins", without the quotes at the end of this line:

Exec=env WINEPREFIX="/home/yourusername/.wine" wine "C:\\windows\\profiles\\yourusername\\Local Settings\\Application Data\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe"

to make it look like this:

Exec=env WINEPREFIX="/home/yourusername/.wine" wine "C:\\windows\\profiles\\yourusername\\Local Settings\\Application Data\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe" --new-http --in-process-plugins

6. Save the file!

7. Go to your desktop and start Google Chrome

Full guide here



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Ubuntu: Increase Resolution on C400

Background: Installing Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) on a Dell Latitude C400. The built-in video card uses an Intel 830M chipset.

When I installed the Hardy Heron, it set my display resolution to 800x600 and refused to give me an option to make it better.

Resolution: The problem was solved by editing the xorg.conf file. Below are the details.

The xorg.conf is located in /etc/X11
i.e /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Wise man say: Backup the xorg.conf file before editing. Why? If you screw up your OS, the commonest one might be a gdm error or something when you restart, you will be able to simply go to the character based shell(no GUI X Server) and put your backup xorg.conf file back into play.

Code:

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf-backup
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Once inside the config file, I removed the "vesa" option under the 'Device' section. After saving the config file and re-booting, BAM! I was presented with a screen resolution of 1024x768.

Note: In addition to the above, user Charlotte Gonella had to turn off video scaling in BIOS.

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