One of the things that people really love about Ubuntu is the extra eye candy that compiz brings to the desktop. This isn't exclusive to Ubuntu of course but is extremely easy to get going in Ubuntu. First off you will probably need to enable restricted drivers for your graphics card. Simply go to System --> Administration --> Hardware Drivers. Simply place a check by your graphic card driver. You will probably have to download the drivers and reboot your system after this.
Next you should be ready to enable the effects. Go to System --> Preferences --> Appearance. Click on the Visual Effects and enable the Extra Effects. You can try this before enabling the restricted drivers, if you do not have the correct drivers you will then have to go and install them.
Next you will probably want to enable the desktop cube and all of that great stuff so open up Synaptic and search for compizconfig-settings-manager. After this is installed go to System --> Preferences --> Advanced Desktop Effects Settings. You will then have all of the effects at your disposal.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
How to get two monitors working.
One thing that is more difficult with Ubuntu than windows is dual monitor support. It is there but not always easy to get going.
Lets look at the possible easy way first. Go to System --> Preferences --> Screen Resolution. From there you may very well be able to detect and set up both monitors. From my experience this has never worked for me.
So onto a more complex solution. Many will have already installed the restricted drivers to enable their card 3d capabilities but you will also need some more help to get dual monitors working. That happens by installing a great little item called Envy. It configures your Xorg settings for you so you don't have to do it by hand. Here is a link to a great tutorial on getting this set up with either ATI or NVIDIA cards. http://vasir.net/blog/ubuntu/set-up-dual-monitors-with-ubuntu-804/
Lets look at the possible easy way first. Go to System --> Preferences --> Screen Resolution. From there you may very well be able to detect and set up both monitors. From my experience this has never worked for me.
So onto a more complex solution. Many will have already installed the restricted drivers to enable their card 3d capabilities but you will also need some more help to get dual monitors working. That happens by installing a great little item called Envy. It configures your Xorg settings for you so you don't have to do it by hand. Here is a link to a great tutorial on getting this set up with either ATI or NVIDIA cards. http://vasir.net/blog/ubuntu/set-up-dual-monitors-with-ubuntu-804/
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Start-up Manager: A real life saver!
One of the best little pieces of software I have used is start-up manager. Like many who have Ubuntu installed we may want Windows (or some other OS) to be our default operating system on start up for a variety of reasons. When doing a search on this you will usually find a reference to editing the grub menu list file. This requires a little bit of technical know how not much but still enough that if you don't do it right you could cause yourself some serious problems.
This is a place I probably disagree with many in the Linux world. I like the GUI (graphical user interface for those less geeky, or for those completely un-geeky its the mouse pointer, and icons, the stuff you see on your screen) the GUI makes our lives easier, it is a good thing. I know the arguments many times you can install this or do that quicker in the terminal and yes that is true many times for an experienced user. Many times I love using the 'sudo apt-get install somegreatprogram' command for the speed, but for most people a computer is a tool and they don't want to have to know everything about how it works.
So, about startup manager this is a great app that lets you chose which OS to start up by default with the GRUB boot loader. It also lets you set the time to pause at the selection menu and set up many other nice things such as the splash screen and other things during the boot process. Most people can have this installed and their boot order changed before they can ever get to the file they need to edit from the command line.
To install simply go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. Search for start up manager, install and enjoy.
This is a place I probably disagree with many in the Linux world. I like the GUI (graphical user interface for those less geeky, or for those completely un-geeky its the mouse pointer, and icons, the stuff you see on your screen) the GUI makes our lives easier, it is a good thing. I know the arguments many times you can install this or do that quicker in the terminal and yes that is true many times for an experienced user. Many times I love using the 'sudo apt-get install somegreatprogram' command for the speed, but for most people a computer is a tool and they don't want to have to know everything about how it works.
So, about startup manager this is a great app that lets you chose which OS to start up by default with the GRUB boot loader. It also lets you set the time to pause at the selection menu and set up many other nice things such as the splash screen and other things during the boot process. Most people can have this installed and their boot order changed before they can ever get to the file they need to edit from the command line.
To install simply go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. Search for start up manager, install and enjoy.
The Average Computer User
I have been searching for an Ubuntu blog that caters to the average user. I haven't really found it so thought why not just start one? I hope the focus will be for those of us that do enjoy and make use of this great operating system, but at the same time do not have a degree in computer science or want to spend all our time in the terminal. The Ubuntu forums are great, so maybe we can look and tricks that make our life in the Ubuntu world easier.
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