What you will need: startup sound in ogg format.

Step 1:

Go to System -> Preferences -> Starup Applications.

Look for “GNOME Login Sound” in the list. If you don’t want to hear anything at startup, uncheck this box. If you want to change the sound, press Edit button.Then in the command field you’ll see…

/usr/bin/canberra-gtk-play –id=”desktop-login” –description=”GNOME Login”

Change “desktop-login” to the name of the sound file you want, without file extension.

Click Save and close the startup dialog.

Step 2:

Now you have to copy this new sound (.ogg file) to…

/usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/

You need  root permission to copy the file into this directory which can be done by running nautilus as root.

$sudo nautilus

Then browse to that folder and paste the file there.

Step 3:

Log out and login to listen to the new startup sound

Here is another linux distro powered by the popular Ubuntu.

It called moonOS and is based on the LXDE, Enlightenment DR17 and is perfect for any Desktop, Laptop PC or even for a Virtual Machine.

Click here to visit their site!

No…it does not ‘re-construct’ a broken Ubuntu box!…..But yes, it does create a much smarter stuff….read on…

Reconstructor is an Ubuntu GNU/Linux CD Creator!

…still confused?

With all the various flavors of Linux distros available…and more important, you distributing Ubuntu discs to your friends…How about having giving then your own flavor…

YES…YOUR VERY OWN DISTRIBUTION!!!

Reconstructor lets you do just that. I will not babble more about it but give you the link to the site and let you explore yourself.

Go ahead, create you very own customized distro (based on Ubuntu) and become famous!

I recently had to reinstall MS Windows on my dual-boot box (Yes, I still require Billy Boy’s OS for a couple of applications for which I did not yet find a linux equivalent) which resulted in my MBR (Master Boot Record) being over by Windows. As such the Grub was gone and the box was booting directly into WinOS.

I googled for the solution and found quite a few different methods if restoring the Grub. Most of them was very complicated process. I found one which was the simplest. Here it the process…

This will restore grub if you already had grub installed but lost it to a windows install or some other occurence that erased/changed your MBR so that grub no longer appears at start up or it returns an error.

This how written for Ubuntu but should work for other linux distros also.
The only thing to take note of, when you see “sudo” is that the following command should be entered as root.

———-

Boot into the Ubuntu LiveCD. This can be the live installer cd or the older live session Ubuntu cds.

When you get to the desktop open a terminal and enter…

sudo grub

This will get you a “grub>” prompt (i.e. the grub shell). At grub> enter these commands…

find /boot/grub/stage1

This will return a location. If you have more than one, select the installation that you want to provide the grub files.

Next, THIS IS IMPORTANT, whatever was returned for the find command use it in the next line (you are still at grub> when you enter the next 3 commands)

root (hd?,?)

Again use the value from the find command i.e. if find returned (hd0,1) then you would enter root (hd0,1)

Next enter the command to install grub to the mbr

setup (hd0)

Finally exit the grub shell

quit

That is it. Grub will be installed to the MBR. When you reboot, you will have the grub menu at startup.

———-

Now the explanation.

Sudo grub gets you the grub shell. Find /boot/grub/stage1 has grub locate the file stage1. What this does is tell us where grub’s files are. Only a small part of grub is located on the MBR, the rest of grub is in your boot folder. Grub needs those files to run the setup. So you find the files and then you tell grub where to locate the files it will need for setup. So root (hd?,?) tells grub it’s files are on that partition. Finally setup (hd0) tells grub to setup on hd0. When you give grub the parameter hd0 with no following value for a partition, grub will use the MBR. hd0 is the grub label for the first drive’s MBR. Quit will exit you from the grub shell.

Due to the usual Windows failure (which happens oh so often) I had a need to re-install it. So before proceeding I googled to find the best was to restore my GRUB after re-installation of Windows as my MBR will be overwritten by Mr. Microsoft! (pun intended)!

I got quite a few methods described but found the following step to be the most simple. So here it is…

After Mr. Windows is re/installed and has very smartly overwritten your MBR (as he think he is th sole owner of the area), do the following…

1) Pop-in your Ubuntu LiveCD

2) Reboot the system and boot into the LiveCD

3) Select the Run Ubuntu from LiveCD option and get to your Ubuntu desktop

4) Open a terminal and issue these commands…

sudo -i

grub

find /boot/brub/stage1

5) Here you will get a report mentioning your Hard Drive (mine was sd0,5)

6) Now type…

root (sd0,5)

setup (sd0)

quit

7) Its Done! Reboot the live Ubuntu (your Ubuntu disc will pop-out), boot as usual and you will have you old GRUB back

DBP (David’s Batch Processor) is a simple batch processing plugin for the Gimp – it allows the user to automatically perform operations (such as resize) on a collection of image files. Its main advantage is that the user does not have to learn a scripting language. Like the Gimp itself, DBP relies on a graphical interface. The user creates a list of images, and sets up the processing required for each image. The results of the current settings can be displayed. Once the required sequence of operations has been set up, DBP performs the same processing on each image in turn.

The images can be colour corrected, resized, cropped, and sharpened, then renamed and saved to a different file in a specified image format.

Notes: a) DBP is intended for RGB, not indexed images. Trying to process an indexed image will probably just cause an error, and DBP will halt. b) DBP will not overwrite the original image (in fact, it should not overwrite any file) – images must at least be either renamed (possibly by changing the image format) or moved to a different directory.

Where do I get it?

DBP is licensed under the GPL. The latest version is 1.1.9. It has been updated to work with recent Gimp 2.6 versions, but will probably work with earlier versions. The source is available at:

http://www.ozemail.com.au/~hodsond/dbpSrc-1-1-9.tgz

If you have problems with this version, earlier versions are still around at:

http://www.ozemail.com.au/~hodsond/dbpSrc-1-1-8.tgz and http://www.ozemail.com.au/~hodsond/dbpSrc-1-1-5.tgz

There is no configure file, use make install to build and install in your local gimp plugins directory. You will need g++ and the gimp development packages for the appropriate Gimp version – if you can compile C++ and can build any other Gimp plugin, you should have no problems. The Makefiles are very primitive and can be edited directly if needed.

Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographic information program that was originally called Earth Viewer, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a company acquired by Google in 2004. It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe.

To install Google Earth, click Agree and Download at following link to download the .bin file:

http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html

Once the download if finished, right-click the file and select Open with other Application. At the bottom of the next window, click Use a custom command and type sh and click Open

This will start the decompressing of the file as shown below…

Once finished, you will be presented with the following screen….

Change the install path if you want (recommended to keep the default) and click Begin to start installation.

Once the installation is finished, close the window which looks like a terminal window by typing return in it and hit enter.

Launch Google Earth at Applications–>Internet–>GoogleEarth or run ~/google-earth/googleearth in terminal.

Enjoy!