The official Ubuntu Book

	The official Ubuntu Book	Téléchargement
	Publié par : Pierrot

ptg

Praise for The Official Ubuntu Book, Fifth Edition
This book is the perfect companion for users new to Linux and Ubuntu. It
covers the basics in a concise and well-organized manner. General use is cov-
ered separately from troubleshooting and error-handling, making the book
well suited both for the beginner as well as the user that needs extended help.
—Thomas Petrucha, Austria Ubuntu User Group
I have recommended this book to several users who I instruct regularly on
the use of Ubuntu. All of them have been satisﬁed with their purchase and
have even been able to use it to help them in their journey along the way.
—Chris Crisafulli, Ubuntu LoCo Council,
Florida Local Community Team
This text demystiﬁes a very powerful Linux operating system . . . in just a few
weeks of having it, I’ve used it as a quick reference a half dozen times, which
saved me the time I would have spent scouring the Ubuntu forums online.
ptg
—Darren Frey, Member, Houston Local User Group
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

The Ofﬁcial Ubuntu Book
Fifth Edition
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

The Ofﬁcial
Ubuntu Book
Fifth Edition
Benjamin Mako Hill
Matthew Helmke
Corey Burger
ptg
With Jonathan Jesse,
Kyle Rankin, and Jono Bacon
Upper Saddle River, NJ • Boston • Indianapolis • San Francisco
New York • Toronto • Montreal • London • Munich • Paris • Madrid
Capetown • Sydney • Tokyo • Singapore • Mexico City
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed
as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and the publisher was aware of a
trademark claim, the designations have been printed with initial capital letters or in all capitals.
The authors and publisher have taken care in the preparation of this book, but make no expressed or
implied warranty of any kind and assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. No liability is
assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of the use of the
information or programs contained herein.
The publisher offers excellent discounts on this book when ordered in quantity for bulk purchases or
special sales, which may include electronic versions and/or custom covers and content particular to
your business, training goals, marketing focus, and branding interests. For more information, please
contact:
U.S. Corporate and Government Sales
(800) 382-3419
corpsales@pearsontechgroup.com
For sales outside the United States please contact:
International Sales
international@pearson.com
Visit us on the Web: informit.com/ph
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hill, Benjamin Mako, 1980–
The ofﬁcial Ubuntu book / Benjamin Mako Hill, Matthew Helmke,
ptg
Corey Burger ; with Jonathan Jesse [et al.]. — 5th ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-13-708130-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Ubuntu (Electronic resource) 2. Operating systems (Computers)
3. Linux. I. Helmke, Matthew. II. Burger, Corey. III. Title.
QA76.76.O63H55 2010
005.4'32—dc22
2010019797
Copyright © 2010 Canonical, Ltd.
This book is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license,
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/3.0/.
Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission
must be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval
system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or likewise unless permitted under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
license 3.0. For information regarding permissions, write to:
Pearson Education, Inc.
Rights and Contracts Department
501 Boylston Street, Suite 900
Boston, MA 02116
Fax: (617) 671-3447
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-708130-1
ISBN-10:
0-13-708130-8
Text printed in the United States on recycled paper at RR Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
First printing, June 2010
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This book is dedicated to the Ubuntu community. Without your tireless
hard work and commitment, none of this would be possible.
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Contents at a Glance
Foreword to the First Edition
xxi
Preface
xxvii
Acknowledgments
xxix
About the Authors
xxxi
Introduction
xxxiii
Chapter 1: Introducing Ubuntu
1
Chapter 2: Installing Ubuntu
35
ptg
Chapter 3: Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
59
Chapter 4: Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
113
Chapter 5: The Ubuntu Server
141
Chapter 6: More Applications for Ubuntu
181
Chapter 7: The Ubuntu Community
215
Chapter 8: Using Kubuntu
245
Chapter 9: Mobile and Netbook Editions
293
Chapter 10: Ubuntu-Related Projects
309
Chapter 11: Introducing the Ubuntu Forums
327
Appendix: Welcome to the Command Line
339
Index
355
ix
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Contents
Foreword to the First Edition
xxi
Preface
xxvii
Acknowledgments
xxix
About the Authors
xxxi
Introduction
xxxiii
About This Book
xxxiii
The Scope of the Book
xxxiv
The Menu
xxxiv
ptg
CHAPTER 1 Introducing Ubuntu
1
A Wild Ride
2
Free Software, Open Source, and GNU/Linux
3
Free Software and GNU
4
Linux
5
Open Source
5
A Brief History of Ubuntu
7
Mark Shuttleworth
7
The Warthogs
9
What Does Ubuntu Mean?
10
Creating Canonical
11
What Is Ubuntu?
12
What Is a Distribution?
12
An Ecosystem of Distributions
14
The Debian Project and the Free Software Universe
16
The Ubuntu Community
17
Ubuntu Promises and Goals
18
Philosophical Goals
19
Conduct Goals and Code of Conduct
21
Technical Goals
23
Bug #1
25
xi
From the Library of Wow! eBook

xii
Contents
Canonical and the Ubuntu Foundation
26
Canonical, Ltd.
27
Canonical’s Service and Support
28
Bazaar and Launchpad
29
The Ubuntu Foundation
30
Ubuntu Subprojects, Derivatives, and Spin-offs
31
Summary
33
CHAPTER 2 Installing Ubuntu
35
Choosing Your Ubuntu Version
36
Other Ubuntu Distributions
37
Is It Still Ubuntu?
38
Getting Ubuntu
38
Burning a CD
39
Installing from the Desktop CD
41
Language
42
Location
42
Configuring Your Keyboard
43
Disk Space
44
ptg
Identification
48
Migration
50
Finishing Up
50
Installing from the Alternate Install CD
50
Choosing Your Spot in the World
51
Hardware
51
Setting the Hostname and Time Zone
52
Creating Partitions
52
Configuring a User
55
Finishing Up
56
Installing from a USB Key
56
Installing from within Windows
57
Summary
57
CHAPTER 3 Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
59
Taking Your Desktop for a Ride
61
Starting Applications and Finding Things
62
Finding Your Files and Folders
63
Configuring Your System
64
Adding Additional Users
65
Shortcut Icons
66
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Contents
xiii
Applets
66
The Notification Area
67
Network Manager
68
The Clock
69
The Taskbar
69
Shutting Down Your Computer and Logging Out
70
Using Your Applications
72
Browsing the Web with Firefox
72
Creating Documents with OpenOffice.org
75
Connecting with Empathy and Gwibber and
the Indicator Applet
78
Ubuntu One
78
Managing Your E-mail and Calendars with Evolution
79
The Ubuntu File Chooser and Bookmarks
84
Ubuntu in Your Language
86
Customizing Ubuntu’s Look and Feel
87
Changing the Background
87
Changing the Theme
87
Configuring a Screensaver
88
ptg
Managing Your Files
89
Selecting, Copying, and Moving Files and Folders
91
Using the Sidebar
92
Graphically Accessing Remote Files
93
Ubuntu and Multimedia
94
Installing Codecs
94
Listening to Audio Files
96
Playing and Ripping CDs
97
Buying Music
98
Interacting with Photos
99
Watching Videos
99
Creating Videos
102
Exploring the Ubuntu Landscape
102
Moving to the Next Ubuntu Release
109
Doing the Actual Upgrade
110
Summary
111
CHAPTER 4 Gaining Greater Proficiency
113
Adding and Removing Programs and Packages
114
Using Ubuntu Software Center
114
Terminology
116
Managing Software with Synaptic
117
From the Library of Wow! eBook

xiv
Contents
Keeping Your Computer Updated
120
Installing Updates
120
Learning about What Was Updated
121
I Want to Install an Application That Is Not
in the Repositories
121
Changing Your Menu Layout
122
Adding Additional Users
124
Using and Abusing Devices and Media
125
Using USB Keyring Drives
126
Burning CDs
126
Using Floppy Disks
127
Using Digital Cameras
127
Configuring a Printer in Ubuntu
128
Gathering Information
130
Launching the Wizard
130
Mission Accomplished!
132
Remote Printing
133
How Linux Stores and Organizes Files
133
Using Windows Files on Another Partition
135
ptg
The Terminal
137
Backup Strategies
137
Working with Windows Programs
139
Running Applications
140
Summary
140
CHAPTER 5 The Ubuntu Server
141
What Is Ubuntu Server?
142
Installing Ubuntu Server
144
A Couple of Installer Tricks
145
Partitioning Your Ubuntu Server
145
The Story of RAID
146
Setting Up RAID
148
The Story of the Logical Volume Manager
150
Setting Up LVM
152
Encrypted Home and Software Selection
154
You’re Done—Now Watch Out for Root!
155
Ubuntu Package Management
156
The Ubuntu Archive
156
APT Sources and Repositories
157
dpkg
158
Installing a Package Manually
159
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Contents
xv
apt-get and apt-cache
160
Running a Distribution Upgrade
163
aptitude
165
Tips and Tricks
166
Ubuntu Server Security
167
User Account Administration
167
Filesystem Security
169
System Resource Limits
170
System Log Files
171
A Sprinkling of Network Security
172
Final Words on Security
173
Advanced Topics
174
Virtualization
174
Disk Replication
177
Cloud Computing
177
Summary
178
CHAPTER 6 More Applications for Ubuntu
181
Creating Graphics with GIMP and Inkscape
182
ptg
GIMP
182
Inkscape
189
Desktop Publishing with Scribus
194
Playing to Learn with Educational Programs
199
Exploring the Future with GNOME-shell and Zeitgeist
206
Getting There Faster with GNOME Do and Docky
211
Summary
214
CHAPTER 7 The Ubuntu Community
215
Venues
217
Mailing Lists
218
Internet Relay Chat
219
Web Forums
221
Wikis
223
The Fridge
225
Developer Summits and Sprints
227
User Conferences
229
Planet Ubuntu
230
Teams, Processes, and Community Governance
231
Teams
232
Local Community Teams
233
From the Library of Wow! eBook

xvi
Contents
MOTUs
234
The Community Council
235
The Technical Board
237
The SABDFL
238
Ubunteros and Ubuntu Members
239
Getting Involved
240
Advocacy
240
Support
240
Ideas and Feedback
241
Documentation
241
Artwork
241
Translation and Localization
242
Quality Assurance and Bugs
242
Programming and Packaging
242
Summary
243
CHAPTER 8 Using Kubuntu
245
Introduction to Kubuntu
246
A History of KDE
246
ptg
A History of Kubuntu
248
Installing Kubuntu
249
Where to Find Kubuntu
249
Can I Switch to Kubuntu If I Have Ubuntu
Installed Already?
249
Installing from the Desktop CD
250
Navigating in Kubuntu
254
Shutting Down Your Computer and Logging Out
255
Using sudo Instead of a Root Account
257
Customizing Kubuntu
257
Customizing Plasma
257
Get Hot New Stuff
259
System Administration
260
Installing New Packages
260
Managing Repositories
262
Upgrading Kubuntu
264
How to Keep the System Up to Date
264
System Settings
264
Look & Feel
265
Personal
265
Network & Connectivity
266
Computer Administration
266
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Contents
xvii
Add or Remove Software
267
Printer Configuration
267
Advanced Tab
267
Advanced User Settings
269
System
271
Managing Files with Kubuntu
272
Introduction to Dolphin
273
Changes to the File Structure
273
Introduction to Konqueror
274
Accessing Windows Partitions
275
Accessing USB Drives
276
Managing Music
276
Common Applications
277
OpenOffice.org
277
Web Browsing with Konqueror
278
Using Firefox for Browsing the Web
279
Burning CDs—Audio and Data
280
Instant Messaging
281
Internet Relay Chat
283
ptg
Kontact
283
Kiosk Mode
287
Exploring the Kubuntu Landscape
287
Tips and Tricks
289
Finding Help and Giving Back to the Community
290
Finding Help
290
Giving Back to the Community
290
Summary
291
CHAPTER 9 Mobile and Netbook Editions
293
Installing on a Netbook
294
Using the Launcher
296
Using the 2D Launcher
296
Window Listing
300
Maximized Windows
300
Switching Back to the Regular Ubuntu Desktop
301
Applications to Make Your Netbook Better
302
Cheese
302
Fbreader
303
Cellwriter
304
Xournal
304
From the Library of Wow! eBook

xviii
Contents
Other Changes from the Desktop Edition
306
Virtual Desktops
306
Summary
307
CHAPTER 10 Ubuntu-Related Projects
309
Officially Supported Derivatives
310
Kubuntu
310
Edubuntu
311
Ubuntu Server Edition
313
Recognized Derivatives
314
Xubuntu
314
Ubuntu Studio
314
Mythbuntu
315
Other Distributions
315
Guadalinex
316
gNewSense
316
Linux Mint
317
Lubuntu
317
ptg
Launchpad
318
Soyuz
319
Launchpad Translations
320
Launchpad Bugs
321
The Launchpad Blueprint Tracker
322
Launchpad Answers
323
Other Functionality
324
Bazaar
324
Launchpad Ground Control
325
Summary
325
CHAPTER 11 Introducing the Ubuntu Forums
327
What Are the Ubuntu Forums?
328
A Brief History of the Ubuntu Forums
328
How May I Participate?
329
Questions, Locations, Conversations, and Activities
334
Key People in the Forums
335
Fun Stuff
336
The Foundation of the Ubuntu Forums
337
Summary
337
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Contents
xix
APPENDIX
Welcome to the Command Line
339
Starting Up the Terminal
339
Getting Started
340
Building Pipelines
341
Running Commands as the Superuser
342
Finding Help
343
Moving Around the Filesystem
343
Manipulating Files and Folders
344
System Information Commands
345
Searching and Editing Text Files
347
Dealing with Users and Groups
348
Getting Help on the Command Line
348
Searching for Man Files
349
Using Wildcards
349
Executing Multiple Commands
350
Running Sequentially
350
Using Byobu to Manage Your Terminal
350
Using Byobu by Default in GNOME Terminal
352
Moving to More Advanced Uses of the Command Line
352
ptg
INDEX
355
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Foreword to the First Edition
IT’S A SMALL CELEBRATION for me to write this foreword—almost exactly
two years after the ﬁrst meeting of a small group of free software profes-
sionals that turned into the Ubuntu project. A celebration because two
years ago none of us would have predicted that our dream would spawn
several million CDs, three or four million enthusiastic users, hundreds of
commitments of support from companies large and small, a minor prime
time television reference, and now The Ofﬁcial Ubuntu Book.
The dream that brought us together can be simply expressed:
ptg
To build a world-class operating system for ordinary desktop computer
users, that is genuinely free and freely available, that is immediately useful,
and that represents the very best that the free software world can achieve
today.
In setting out to build a platform for “ordinary desktop computer users,” I
had no idea that I would have the privilege of meeting and working with
so many extraordinary desktop computer users. Some of those extraordi-
nary individuals are the authors of this book, people who both understand
the importance of the free software movement and have the talent to have
been real contributors to its success. Others make up the backbone of the
Ubuntu community—the small but dedicated army of a few hundred
people that works to produce a new release of Ubuntu every six months.
They are at the heart of a network that reaches out through the global free
software community—through the world of Debian, an extraordinary
project in its own right and without which Ubuntu could not exist, and on
out to the thousands of projects, large and small, that produce the code
and documentation that we pull together and call Ubuntu.
xxi
From the Library of Wow! eBook

xxii
Foreword
While this huge extended community can often appear to be fractured and
divided along inﬁnitesimal ideological lines, we are all broadly in agreement
about four key ideas, and it is those ideas that are central to the Ubuntu
promise:
That our software should not come with a license fee. That we should
be able to share our software, modify it, and then share our modiﬁca-
tions, too.
That this free software should be the best version available, including
regular security updates, and not a tease for a better, commercial
product.
That full-scale, high-quality commercial support from local and
global companies should be available for this free platform.
That this software should be usable in as many languages as possible
and usable by as many people as possible regardless of disability.
The 17 of us who met in London two years ago come from a very wide
ptg
variety of countries and backgrounds, but we all agreed that the goal of
producing a platform that could live up to that promise was a worthy one,
one that we would devote ourselves to wholeheartedly.
For several months we worked quietly. We wanted to come to the world not
only with a manifesto but also with a clear demonstration of work done
toward our goals, something that people could test and comment on. We
had no name (though industry insiders called us the “Super-Secret Debian
Startup”), and, as a result, we hosted most of our work at www.no-name-
yet.com. We were looking for a name that could express the beauty of the
free software community development process—collaboration, interde-
pendence, sharing, standing gently on the shoulders of giants, and reaching
for lofty goals. The only word that comes close to that, of which I’m aware,
is the African word ubuntu. It is found in many forms in many different
African languages. And so we adopted it as the name of our project.
We knew that our ﬁrst release would have blemishes—warts—and gave it
the codename “The Warty Warthog.” We called ourselves “the warthogs”
and coordinated our work on the #warthogs IRC channel. Today, for bet-
ter or worse, that’s turned into a tradition of codenames such as “Breezy
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Foreword
xxiii
Badger” and “Dapper Drake.” As lighthearted as they sound, these code-
names come to embody the spirit of our community as it works toward a
particular release. This next one—Dapper—is exactly that: a man emerg-
ing from youth, professional, bold, conﬁdent, and energetic. This is our
ﬁrst release that is designed to meet the needs of large organizations as
much as developers and engineers. In the same way, the Ubuntu commu-
nity has moved from being something of a rebellion against the “Linux
establishment” to a strong and professionally organized group.
What Makes Ubuntu So Popular?
First, this is the time for free software to come to the forefront, and
Ubuntu is very much the beneﬁciary of the vast amount of work that has
gone into building up a huge body of work in the GNU/Linux world. That
work has been underway for nearly 30 years, in one form or another, but
Ubuntu is one way in which it is suddenly becoming “visible” to the non-
specialist computer user. We are in the middle of a great overturning of the
industry status quo. The last time that happened, in the mid-1990s, was
ptg
when the world suddenly found itself connected to itself—by the Internet.
Every major company, especially those in the ﬁeld of technology, had to
examine itself and ask the question, “How do we adapt to an Internet
world?” Today, every major technology company has to ask itself the ques-
tion, “How do we adapt to a free software world?”
I would speculate and say that Ubuntu represents an idea whose time has
come. We did not invent the free software movement—that honor goes to
Richard Stallman and many others who had a vision far more profound at a
time when it was hard to see how it could ever become reality. But Ubuntu
has perhaps the honor of bringing that vision to a very wide audience in a
form that we can all appreciate. I hope that the real visionaries—those who
have led the way—will appreciate the decisions and the choices we make in
bringing you this project. Some will take exception—I know Linus prefers
KDE to GNOME, for example, so he’s likely to be more of a fan of Kubuntu
than Ubuntu. But in general, the ideas that others have had, the principles
of the free software movement, are well expressed in Ubuntu.
Second, Ubuntu is a project on which you can have a real impact. It has the
beneﬁt of deep and reliable ﬁnancial backing and a corporate team to give
From the Library of Wow! eBook

xxiv
Foreword
it muscle, but it is in every regard an open project, with participation at the
highest levels by true volunteers. We work in a ﬁshbowl—our meetings take
place online, in a public forum. That can be tricky. Building an operating
system is a fast-paced business full of compromise and tough decisions in
the face of little information. There are disagreements and dirty laundry,
and mistakes are made. (I should know; some of them are mine. You should
hear the one about the Warty Warthog desktop artwork.) The transparency
of our environment, however, means that we can count on having robust
conversations about our options—all of them, even the ones the core team
would never have dreamed up. It also means that mistakes are identiﬁed,
discussed, and ultimately addressed faster than they would be if we lived
and worked behind closed doors. You get a better platform as a result.
We work hard as a community to recognize the contributions of all sorts
of individuals—advocates, artists, Web forum moderators, channel opera-
tors, community event organizers, writers, translators, people who ﬁle and
triage bugs . . . whatever your particular interest or talent, we will ﬁnd a
way to integrate your contribution.
ptg
Perhaps most important is the way our approach to community differenti-
ates Ubuntu from other free software projects with similar vision. We try to
do all of this in a way that recognizes that disagreements are important but
prevents those disagreements from creating deep divides in our commu-
nity. Our code of conduct may not be perfect, but it reminds each of us to
remember the meaning of the word ubuntu—that each of us has our best
impact through the relationships we maintain with one another. Finding
common ground and maintaining healthy communication are more
important for us as a community in the long run than a particular technical
decision or the speciﬁc choice of words with which to translate “File” into
Spanish. Our community governance structures—our Technical Board
and Community Council—exist to ensure that debates don’t become per-
sonal and that decisions can be taken after all sides have been heard.
If you are a software professional or curious about Linux, this book and this
platform are an excellent choice. You will learn about the world of Ubuntu
and, indirectly, Debian and GNU/Linux. These are great foundations for
working with the tools that I believe will come to deﬁne the “standard,” the
everyday computing base upon which we build our homes and ofﬁces.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Foreword
xxv
I once heard a proprietary software vendor say, “Linux is more expensive
because skilled Linux professionals are more costly.” This is true. It means,
of course, that Linux skills are more valuable! It won’t be true forever
because the world of Linux is expanding so rapidly that sooner or later we
will have to accept a position in the mainstream, and that takes off some of
the “geek points” associated with being part of the “future of technology.”
But right now, without a doubt, being ahead of the curve on Linux and on
Ubuntu is the right place to be. If you’re this far into this foreword, you are
clearly going to make it. ;-)
It’s difﬁcult for me to speculate on what the future might hold for the
Ubuntu project. I know that I along with many others are loving the
opportunity to be at the center of such an exciting initiative and are com-
mitted to seeing where it leads us over the coming years. I believe that it
will become a pervasive part of our everyday computing environment, so I
would like to help make sure that we don’t make too many mistakes along
the way! Please, come and join us in the ﬁshbowl to help ensure we do a
very, very good job.
ptg
—Mark Shuttleworth
Ubuntu Founder
April 2006
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Preface
AS WE WRITE THIS, it has been several years since we penned the ﬁrst edition
of The Official Ubuntu Book. Over that time, we have seen Ubuntu continue
its explosive growth. Updating this book drives this fact home in striking
ways. For example, the number of users and posts in the Ubuntu Forums
has nearly doubled since the last edition of this book a year ago. Again. The
number of ofﬁcially supported ﬂavors of Ubuntu have been added to.
Again. Once again, we feel blessed that The Official Ubuntu Book has been
able to beneﬁt from, and perhaps in a small way even contribute to, that suc-
cess. Ultimately, that success paved the way for several subsequent editions,
ptg
and now the ﬁfth edition of the book that you’re reading now.
In the process, this book, like Ubuntu, continues to mature. Our job as
authors, like that of the Ubuntu developers, now involves more updating
and polishing than it used to. Distributed under a free license, a once-risky
book on a once-risky operating system is, just a few short years later, as
close to a sure thing as an author, publisher, and if we have done our job
well, a reader, could hope for.
And yet with success comes responsibility to our readers and to our users
with high expectations. Ubuntu’s success is built in part of maturity and
excellence, and it cannot sacriﬁce these qualities if it will succeed. We can-
not either. Our job as writers is complicated because we need to accurately
reﬂect and represent both while catering to an increasing and increasingly
diverse group of users.
As we’ve noted in the prefaces to previous editions of this book, being
Official has carried with it a set of rights and responsibilities. Our book’s
title means that we must attempt to reﬂect and represent the whole
Ubuntu community. While we, as authors, are expected to put ourselves
xxvii
From the Library of Wow! eBook

xxviii
Preface
into the book, it is understood that it can never be to the detriment of the
values, principles, technologies, or structures of the Ubuntu community.
Doing this has been complicated as Ubuntu has grown. In each edition, we
have added new information, because the Ubuntu community has grown
to include new projects. In each revision of this book, we have needed to
add to the list of related projects, tools, and community initiatives. As the
Ubuntu community grows, it is impossible to give a complete accounting
of what Ubuntu has to offer. Creating a summary requires some hard deci-
sions. At the end of the day, we are constrained by page count and our own
limited schedules.
Meanwhile, as with earlier editions, we needed to write this book about a
new release of Ubuntu while that version was under active development
and was being redesigned, rethought, and rebuilt. Every day, Ubuntu grows
in different, unpredictable ways, and this growth has increased exponen-
tially with the size of the community and the diversity of the userbase. Our
book’s development process had to both match and track this process as
ptg
our content was crafted, rewritten, adjusted, and allowed to mature itself.
As in the previous edition, the contributors to this book go well beyond
those listed on the book’s cover. Invisible to most readers, dozens of mem-
bers of the community left their mark on different parts of the text of this
book. Although this degree of participation led to a writing process that
was as hectic, and at times frustrating, as the process that builds Ubuntu,
we hope we can remind readers of the level of quality that this process
inspires in our book’s subject. In the places where we achieve this, we have
earned our book’s title. With that goal in mind, we look forward to future
versions of Ubuntu and editions of this book wrought through the same
community-driven process.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Acknowledgments
SPECIAL THANKS TO Mark Shuttleworth, Jane Silber, and Billy Cina for all
their efforts to get this book out into the world for both new and veteran
Ubuntu users. Thanks also to Victor Ferns, director of Canonical, Ltd., for
his attention to the project. Many people at Canonical, including Marcus
Haslam, Iain Farrell, Ivanka Majic, Tom Macfarlane, and Jorge O. Castro,
provided immeasurable assistance in the production of this book.
We reached into the Ubuntu community for a top group of reviewers, each
of whom greatly contributed to the strength of the manuscript, including
ptg
Amber Graner and Joe Barker. Our thanks extend back to this group of
reviewers for help with the previous editions: Alan Pope, Jonathan Riddell,
Oliver Grawet, Dennis Kaarsemaker, Matthew East, Quim Gil, Dinko
Korunic, Abhay Kumar, Jaldhar Vyas, and Richard Weideman. Also, Scott
Ritchie provided valuable assistance with the Wine information.
And ﬁnally, we appreciate the efforts of the Prentice Hall team, including
Debra Williams Cauley, Carol Lallier, Kim Arney, Linda Begley, Richard
Evans, Kim Boedigheimer, Mark Taub, John Fuller, and Elizabeth Ryan.
xxix
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

About the Authors
Benjamin Mako Hill is a Seattle native working out of Boston, Massachu-
setts. Mako is a long-time free software developer and advocate. He was
part of the founding Ubuntu team, one of the ﬁrst employees of Canonical,
Ltd., and coauthor of The Ofﬁcial Ubuntu Server Book. In addition to some
technical work, his charge at Canonical was to help grow the Ubuntu devel-
opment and user community during the project’s ﬁrst year. Mako is cur-
rently a fellow at the MIT Center for Future Civic Media, and a researcher
and Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Mako has
continued his involvement with Ubuntu as a member of the Community
ptg
Council governance board, through development work, and through projects
such as this book.
Matthew Helmke has been an Ubuntu user since April 2005 and an Ubuntu
Member since August 2006. He serves on the Ubuntu Forum Council, pro-
viding leadership and oversight of the Ubuntu Forums, as well as on the
Ubuntu regional membership approval board for Europe, the Middle East,
and Africa. He has written articles about Ubuntu for Linux+ and Linux
Identity magazines, along with books and articles on this and other topics.
He recently closed his consulting business in Morocco and began a Master’s
degree program at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.
Corey Burger lives in Victoria, British Columbia, and is a long-term user
and contributor to Ubuntu. A founder of the Ubuntu Canada group and
former member of the Community Council, he has been involved with
Ubuntu since its ﬁrst release. Corey is currently a geography student and has
most recently worked for a Canadian Linux company. He also contributes to
OpenStreetMap and works to promote Ubuntu on Vancouver Island. Corey
speaks regularly about Ubuntu, OpenStreetMap, and open source to a wide
variety of audiences.
xxxi
From the Library of Wow! eBook

xxxii
About the Authors
Jonathan Jesse is a full-time Microsoft Windows consultant specializing
in IT lifecycle management products. Beginning with the Hoary Hedge-
hog release, he joined the Ubuntu Documentation Team by proofreading
and submitting patches to the mailing list, then worked on the Kubuntu
documents. Currently, Jonathan is involved in working on bugs for the
Kubuntu Team, the Ubuntu Wiki, and the Laptop Testing Team. Ubuntu
and Kubuntu have given Jonathan a way to give back to the community
without having to be a developer, and he encourages everyone to come
help him out.
Kyle Rankin is a senior systems administrator for Quinstreet, Inc.; the
current president of the North Bay Linux Users’ Group; the author of
Knoppix Hacks, Knoppix Pocket Reference, Linux Multimedia Hacks, and
Ubuntu Hacks; and he has contributed to a number of other O’Reilly books.
Kyle is also a columnist for Linux Journal and has had articles featured in PC
Magazine, TechTarget, and other publications.
Jono Bacon (www.jonobacon.org) is the community leader for Ubuntu.
ptg
Previously, he was a consultant for the United Kingdom’s government-
funded OpenAdvantage (www.openadvantage.org) center in England,
where he worked with businesses, educational and charitable organiza-
tions, and individuals to help them move to open source software and
open standards. He is the cocreator of the popular LugRadio podcast
(www. lugradio.org).
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Introduction
WELCOME to The Official Ubuntu Book, Fifth Edition!
In recent years, the Ubuntu operating system has taken the open source
and IT world by storm. From out of nowhere, the Little Operating System
That Could has blossomed into a full-featured desktop and server offering
that has won over the hearts of users everywhere. Aside from the strong
technical platform and impressive commitment to quality, Ubuntu also
enjoys success because of its sprawling community of enthusiastic users
who have helped to support, document, and test every millimeter of the
ptg
Ubuntu landscape.
In your hands you are holding the ofﬁcial, authorized guide to this impres-
sive operating system. Each of the authors selected to work on this book
has demonstrated a high level of technical competence, an unbridled com-
mitment to Ubuntu, and the ability to share this knowledge in a simple
and clear manner. These authors gathered together to create a book that
offers a solid grounding to Ubuntu and explains how the many facets and
features of Ubuntu work.
About This Book
At the start of every book, on every bookshelf, in every shop, is a para-
graph that sums up the intentions and aims for the book. We have one
very simple, down-to-earth aim: to make the Ubuntu experience even
more pleasant for users. The Ubuntu developers and community have
gone to great lengths to produce an easy-to-use, functional, and ﬂexible
operating system for doing, browsing, and creating all kinds of interesting
things. This book augments that effort. With such an integrated and ﬂex-
ible operating system, this guide acts as a tour de force for the many things
you can do with Ubuntu.
xxxiii
From the Library of Wow! eBook

xxxiv
Introduction
The Scope of the Book
With so much to cover, we had our work cut out to write a book that could
cover the system in sufﬁcient detail. However, if we were to write in depth
about every possible feature in Ubuntu, you would need to buy a new
bookcase to store the sheer amount of content.
Part of the challenge in creating The Official Ubuntu Book was selecting the
topics and content that can be covered within a reasonably sized book. We
have identiﬁed the most essential content and written only about it. These
chosen topics not only include installation, use of the desktop, applications,
multimedia, system administration, and software management, but also
include a discussion of the community, online resources, and the philoso-
phy behind Ubuntu and open source software. As a bonus, we decided to
squeeze in a chapter full of useful troubleshooting recipes that you can use
when you need to troubleshoot problems, and we expanded our discussion
of projects related to Ubuntu that will be of interest to you. We believe this
book provides an ideal one-stop shop for getting started with Ubuntu.
ptg
The Menu
Here is a short introduction to each chapter and what it covers.
Chapter 1—Introducing Ubuntu: This spirited introduction
describes the Ubuntu project, its distribution, its development
processes, and some of the history that made it all possible.
Chapter 2—Installing Ubuntu: We walk through the installation
process one step at a time to clearly describe how anyone interested
may begin using Ubuntu on their own computer.
Chapter 3—Using Ubuntu on the Desktop: This is an informative and
enjoyable introductory tour of the Ubuntu desktop, the applications
included, and ways to conﬁgure and customize your desktop.
Chapter 4—Gaining Greater Proﬁciency: We explore some of the
advanced ways to use Ubuntu, including managing the system. These
features are not vital if you want to use the computer only as a simple
tool, but once you learn how to install and manage software, use
hardware devices and printers, interact with remote computers, use
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Introduction
xxxv
the terminal, and run some Windows programs under Ubuntu, you
will ﬁnd your overall experience even more rewarding and enjoyable.
Chapter 5—The Ubuntu Server: This introduction to Ubuntu Server
installation and administration includes coverage of command-line
package management, basic security topics, and advanced installer
features like logical volume management and RAID.
Chapter 6—More Applications for Ubuntu: Here we discuss some
of the most interesting and useful options from among the software
packages available for Ubuntu but not installed by default. These
quality programs are interesting and useful, but either there is not
enough space to include them on the installation CD or they are
without as wide of an audience as those programs preinstalled for
everyone.
Chapter 7—The Ubuntu Community: The Ubuntu community is
larger and more active than many people realize. We discuss many
of its facets, including what people like you do to build, promote,
distribute, support, document, translate, and advocate Ubuntu—and
ptg
we tell you how you can join in the fun.
Chapter 8—Using Kubuntu: The most popular spin-off project from
Ubuntu is Kubuntu. This chapter provides a solid introduction and
primer for getting started.
Chapter 9—Mobile and Netbook Editions: There is an exciting
modiﬁcation of Ubuntu designed for installation and use on
netbooks, the small computers created for portability and long
battery life that are taking the tech world by storm.
Chapter 10—Ubuntu-Related Projects: There are a number of Linux
distributions based on Ubuntu that you will ﬁnd interesting and
possibly useful. We discuss some of these as well as projects that are
integral to the creation of Ubuntu, such as Launchpad and Bazaar.
Chapter 11—Introducing the Ubuntu Forums: For hundreds of
thousands of people, the Ubuntu Forums have provided the ﬁrst
glimpse of and interaction with the greater Ubuntu community.
Especially for new users, this has become the most important venue
From the Library of Wow! eBook

xxxvi
Introduction
for support. We explore the forums and the people, history, and
processes that have built them.
Appendix—Welcome to the Command Line: You can begin to take
advantage of the power and efﬁciency of the command line with the
clear, easy-to-use examples in our brief introduction.
The Ubuntu team offers several installation options for Ubuntu users,
including CDs for desktop, alternate install, and server install. These three
CD images are conveniently combined onto one DVD included in the
back of this book, allowing you to install Ubuntu for different conﬁgura-
tions from just one disk. There is also an option to test the DVD for defects
as well as a memory test option to check your computer.
The ﬁrst boot option on the DVD, Start or Install Ubuntu, will cover most
users’ needs. For more comprehensive information, check the Help feature
by selecting F1 on the boot menu. You can also refer to Chapter 2, which
covers the Ubuntu installation process in detail.
ptg
You can ﬁnd the DVD image, the individual CD images (for those who
don’t have a DVD drive), and Kubuntu and Edubuntu images on www.
ubuntu.com/download.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

C H A P T E R 1
Introducing Ubuntu
A Wild Ride
Free Software, Open Source, and GNU/Linux
A Brief History of Ubuntu
What Is Ubuntu?
Ubuntu Promises and Goals
Canonical and the Ubuntu Foundation
Ubuntu Subprojects, Derivatives, and Spin-offs
ptg
Summary
1
From the Library of Wow! eBook

THIS CHAPTER INTRODUCES THE Ubuntu project, its distribution, its devel-
opment processes, and some of the history that made it all possible. If you
are looking to jump right in and get started with Ubuntu, turn right away
to Chapter 2, Installing Ubuntu. If you are interested in ﬁrst learning
about where Ubuntu comes from and where it is going, this chapter pro-
vides a good introduction.
A Wild Ride
In April 2004 Mark Shuttleworth brought together a dozen developers
from the Debian, GNOME, and GNU Arch projects to brainstorm. Shut-
tleworth asked the developers if a better type of operating system (OS) was
possible. Their answer was “Yes.” He asked them what it would look like.
He asked them to describe the community that would build such an OS.
That group worked with Shuttleworth to come up with answers to these
questions, and then they decided to try to make the answers a reality. The
group named itself the Warthogs and gave itself a six-month deadline to
build a proof-of-concept OS. The developers nicknamed their ﬁrst release
ptg
the Warty Warthog with the reasonable assumption that their ﬁrst product
would have its warts. Then they got down to business.
It’s fulﬁlling, particularly for those of us who were privileged to be among
those early Warthogs, to see the progress made by this project over the
years. We had a strong beginning when, far from being warty, the Warty
Warthog surpassed our most optimistic expectations and everyone’s pre-
dictions. Within six months, Ubuntu was in the Number 1 spot on several
popularity rankings of GNU/Linux distributions. Ubuntu has demon-
strated the most explosive growth of any GNU/Linux distribution in
recent memory and had one of the most impressive ﬁrst years and contin-
ued growth of any free or open source software project in history.
It is staggering to think that after so few years, millions of individuals are
using Ubuntu. As many thousands of these users give back to the Ubuntu
community by developing documentation, translation, and code, Ubuntu
improves every day. As many thousands of these users contribute to a
thriving advocacy and support community—both online and in their
local communities—Ubuntu’s growth remains unchecked. Ubuntu sub-
2
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Free Software, Open Source, and GNU/Linux
3
projects, a list of efforts that includes Kubuntu, Ubuntu Netbook Edition,
Ubuntu Studio, and other projects, are extending the reach and goals of
the Ubuntu project into new realms.
Meanwhile, millions of pressed Ubuntu CDs have been shipped at no cost
to universities, Internet cafés, computer shops, and community centers
around the world. You can ﬁnd Ubuntu’s familiar human-colored back-
ground and title bars almost anywhere people use computers. The authors
have personally seen strangers running Ubuntu on trains in Spain, in
libraries in Boston, in museums in Croatia, in high schools in Mexico, and
in many more places too numerous to list here.
Over the years, Ubuntu has continued to mature. The public took even
more notice of Ubuntu beginning with the release of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, the
ﬁrst polished release with long-term support for both desktops and
servers, and followed by a new release every six months and a new LTS
release every two years up to the current 10.04 LTS. With these releases,
Ubuntu has proven it intends to stick around for the long term while also
ptg
improving consistently and on a predictable schedule. Even with this mat-
uration, the project maintains its youthful vigor, its ambitious attitude, its
commitment to its principles, and its community-driven approach. As the
project ages, it is proving that it can learn from its failures as well as its suc-
cesses and that it can maintain growth without compromising stability.
We’ve come a long way—and we’re still only getting started.
Free Software, Open Source, and GNU/Linux
While thousands of individuals have contributed in some form to
Ubuntu, the project has succeeded only through the contributions of
many thousands more who have indirectly laid the technical, social, and
economic groundwork for Ubuntu’s success. While introductions to free
software, open source, and GNU/Linux can be found in many other
places, no introduction of Ubuntu is complete without a brief discussion
of these concepts and the people and history behind them. It is around
these concepts and within these communities that Ubuntu was motivated
and born. Ultimately, it is through these ideas that it is sustained.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

4
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
Free Software and GNU
In a series of events that have almost become legend through constant rep-
etition, Richard M. Stallman created the concept of free software in 1983.
Stallman grew up with computers in the 1960s and 1970s, when computer
users purchased very large and extremely expensive mainframe comput-
ers, which were then shared among large numbers of programmers. Soft-
ware was, for the most part, seen as an add-on to the hardware, and every
user had the ability and the right to modify or rewrite the software on his
or her computer and to freely share this software. As computers became
cheaper and more numerous in the late 1970s, producers of software
began to see value in the software itself. Producers of computers began to
argue that their software could be copyrighted and was a form of intellec-
tual property much like a music recording, a ﬁlm, or a book’s text. They
began to distribute their software under licenses and in forms that
restricted its users’ abilities to use, redistribute, or modify the code. By the
early 1980s, restrictive software licenses had become the norm.
Stallman, then a programmer at MIT’s Artiﬁcial Intelligence Laboratory,
ptg
became increasingly concerned with what he saw as a dangerous loss of
the freedoms that software users and developers had previously enjoyed.
He was concerned with computer users’ ability to be good neighbors and
members of what he thought was an ethical and efﬁcient computer-user
community. To ﬁght against this negative tide, Stallman articulated a
vision for a community that developed liberated code—in his words, “free
software.” He deﬁned free software as software that had the following four
characteristics—labeled as freedoms 0 through 3 instead of 1 through 4 as
a nod to computer programming tradition and a bit of an inside joke:
The freedom to run the program for any purpose (freedom 0)
The freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to your
needs (freedom 1)
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
(freedom 2)
The freedom to improve the program and release your improvements
to the public so that the whole community beneﬁts (freedom 3)
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Free Software, Open Source, and GNU/Linux
5
Access to source code—the human-readable and modiﬁable blueprints of
any piece of software that can be distinguished from the computer-read-
able version of the code that most software is distributed as—is a prereq-
uisite to freedoms 1 and 3. In addition to releasing this deﬁnition of free
software, Stallman created a project with the goal of creating a completely
free OS to replace the then-popular UNIX. In 1984, Stallman announced
this project and called it GNU—also in the form of common programmer
humor, a recursive acronym that stands for “GNU’s Not UNIX.”
Linux
By the early 1990s, Stallman and a collection of other programmers work-
ing on GNU had developed a near-complete OS that could be freely shared.
They were, however, missing a ﬁnal essential piece in the form of a kernel—
a complex system command processor that lies at the center of any OS. In
1991, Linus Torvalds wrote an early version of just such a kernel, released it
under a free license, and called it Linux. Linus’s kernel was paired with the
GNU project’s development tools and OS and with the graphical window-
ptg
ing system called X. With this pairing, a completely free OS was born—free
both in terms of price and in Stallman’s terms of freedom.
All systems referred to as Linux today are, in fact, built on the work of this
collaboration. Technically, the term Linux refers only to the kernel. Many
programmers and contributors to GNU, including Stallman, argue emphat-
ically that the full OS should be referred to as GNU/Linux in order to give
credit not only to Linux but also to the GNU project and to highlight GNU’s
goals of spreading software freedom—goals not necessarily shared by Linus
Torvalds. Many others ﬁnd this name cumbersome and prefer calling the
system simply Linux. Yet others, such as those working on the Ubuntu
project, attempt to avoid the controversy altogether by referring to GNU/
Linux only by using their own project’s name.
Open Source
Disagreements over labeling did not end with discussions about the nam-
ing of the combination of GNU and Linux. In fact, as the list of contribu-
tors to GNU and Linux grew, a vibrant world of new free software projects
From the Library of Wow! eBook

6
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
sprouted up, facilitated in part by growing access to the Internet. As this
community grew and diversiﬁed, a number of people began to notice an
unintentional side effect of Stallman’s free software. Because free software
was built in an open way, anyone could contribute to software by looking
through the code, ﬁnding bugs, and ﬁxing them. Because software ended up
being examined by larger numbers of programmers, free software was
higher in quality, performed better, and offered more features than similar
software developed through proprietary development mechanisms. It turned
out that in many situations, the development model behind free software
led to software that was inherently better than proprietary alternatives.
As the computer and information technology industry began to move into
the dot-com boom, one group of free software developers and leaders,
spearheaded by two free software developers and advocates—Eric S. Ray-
mond and Bruce Perens—saw the important business proposition offered
by a model that could harness volunteer labor or interbusiness collabora-
tion and create intrinsically better software. However, they worried that
the term free software was problematic for at least two reasons. First, it was
ptg
highly ambiguous—the English word free means both gratis, or at no cost
(e.g., free as in free beer), and liberated in the sense of freedom (e.g., free as
in free speech). Second, there was a feeling, articulated most famously by
Raymond, that all this talk of freedom was scaring off the very business
executives and decision makers whom the free software movement needed
to impress in order to succeed.
To tackle both of these problems, this group coined a new phrase—open
source—and created a new organization called the Open Source Initiative.
The group set at its core a deﬁnition of open source software that over-
lapped completely and exclusively with both Stallman’s four-part deﬁni-
tion of free software and with other community deﬁnitions that were also
based on Stallman’s.
One useful way to understand the split between the free software and open
source movements is to think of it as the opposite of a schism. In religious
schisms, churches separate and do not work or worship together because
of relatively small differences in belief, interpretation, or motivation. For
example, most contemporary forms of Protestant Christianity agree on
From the Library of Wow! eBook

A Brief History of Ubuntu
7
almost everything but have separated over some small but irreconcilable
differences. However, in the case of the free software and open source
movements, the two groups have fundamental disagreements about their
motivation and beliefs. One group is focused on freedom, while the other
is focused on pragmatics. Free software is most accurately described as a
social movement, while open source is a development methodology. How-
ever, the two groups have no trouble working on projects hand in hand.
In terms of the motivations and goals, open source and free software
diverge greatly. Yet in terms of the software, the projects, and the licenses
they use, they are completely synonymous. While people who identify with
either group see the two movements as being at odds, the Ubuntu project
sees no conﬂict between the two ideologies. People in the Ubuntu project
identify with either group and often with both. In this book, we may switch
back and forth between the terms as different projects, and many people in
the Ubuntu community identify more strongly with one term or the other.
For the purposes of this book, though, either term should be read as imply-
ing the other unless it is stated otherwise.
ptg
A Brief History of Ubuntu
There was a time when writing a history of Ubuntu may have seemed pre-
mature. However, the last several years have been busy ones for Ubuntu.
With its explosive growth, it is difﬁcult even for those involved most
closely with the project to track and record some of the high points.
Importantly, there are some key ﬁgures whose own history must be given
to fully understand Ubuntu. This brief summary provides some of the
high points of Ubuntu’s history to date and the necessary background
knowledge to understand where Ubuntu comes from.
Mark Shuttleworth
No history of Ubuntu can call itself complete without a history of Mark
Shuttleworth. Shuttleworth is, undeniably, the most visible and important
person in Ubuntu. More important from the point of view of history,
Shuttleworth is also the originator and initiator of the project—he made
the snowball that would eventually roll on and grow to become the
Ubuntu project.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

8
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
Shuttleworth was born in 1973 in Welkom, Free State, in South Africa. He
attended Diocesan College and obtained a business science degree in
ﬁnance and information systems at the University of Cape Town. During
this period, he was an avid computer hobbyist and became involved with
the free and open source software community. He was at least marginally
involved in both the Apache project and the Debian project and was the
ﬁrst person to upload the Apache Web server, perhaps the single most
important piece of server software on GNU/Linux platforms, into the
Debian project’s archives.
Seeing an opportunity in the early days of the Web, Shuttleworth founded
a certiﬁcate authority and Internet security company called Thawte in his
garage. Over the course of several years, he built Thawte into the second
largest certiﬁcate authority on the Internet, trailing only the security behe-
moth VeriSign. Throughout this period, Thawte’s products and services
were built and served almost entirely from free and open source software.
In December 1999, Shuttleworth sold Thawte to VeriSign for an undis-
closed amount that reached into the hundreds of millions in U.S. dollars.
ptg
With his fortune made at a young age, Shuttleworth might have enjoyed a
life of leisure—and probably considered it. Instead, he decided to pursue
his lifelong dream of space travel. After paying approximately US$20 mil-
lion to the Russian space program and devoting nearly a year to prepara-
tion, including learning Russian and spending seven months training in
Star City, Russia, Shuttleworth realized his dream as a civilian cosmonaut
aboard the Russian Soyuz TM-34 mission. On this mission, Shuttleworth
spent two days on the Soyuz rocket and eight days on the International
Space Station, where he participated in experiments related to AIDS and
genome research. In early May 2002, Shuttleworth returned to Earth.
In addition to space exploration and a slightly less impressive jaunt to
Antarctica, Shuttleworth has played an active role as both a philanthropist
and a venture capitalist. In 2001, Shuttleworth founded The Shuttleworth
Foundation (TSF)—a nonproﬁt organization based in South Africa. The
foundation was chartered to fund, develop, and drive social innovation in
the ﬁeld of education. Of course, the means by which TSF attempts to
achieve these goals frequently involves free software. Through these projects,
the organization has been one of the most visible proponents of free and
From the Library of Wow! eBook

A Brief History of Ubuntu
9
open source software in South Africa and even the world. In the venture
capital area, Shuttleworth worked to foster research, development, and
entrepreneurship in South Africa with strategic injections of cash into start-
ups through a new venture capital ﬁrm called HBD, an acronym for “Here
Be Dragons.” During this period, Shuttleworth was busy brainstorming his
next big project—the project that would eventually become Ubuntu.
The Warthogs
There has been no lack of projects attempting to wrap GNU, Linux, and
other pieces of free and open source software into a neat, workable, and
user-friendly package. Mark Shuttleworth, like many other people, believed
that the philosophical and pragmatic beneﬁts offered by free software put
it on a course for widespread success. While each had its strengths, none of
the offerings were particularly impressive as a whole. Something was miss-
ing from each of them. Shuttleworth saw this as an opportunity. If some-
one could build the great free software distribution that helped push
GNU/Linux into the mainstream, he would come to occupy a position of
ptg
strategic importance.
Shuttleworth, like many other technically inclined people, was a huge fan of
the Debian project (discussed in depth later in this chapter). However,
many things about Debian did not ﬁt with Shuttleworth’s vision of an ideal
OS. For a period of time, Shuttleworth considered the possibility of run-
ning for Debian project leader as a means of reforming the Debian project
from within. With time, though, it became clear that the best way to bring
GNU/Linux to the mainstream would not be from within the Debian
project—which in many situations had very good reasons for being the way
it was. Instead, Shuttleworth would create a new project that worked in
symbiosis with Debian to build a new, better GNU/Linux system.
To kick off this project, Shuttleworth invited a dozen or so free and open
source software developers he knew and respected to his ﬂat in London in
April 2004. It was in this meeting (alluded to in the ﬁrst paragraphs of this
introduction) that the groundwork for the Ubuntu project was laid. By
that point, many of those involved were excited about the possibility of the
project. During this meeting, the members of the team—which would in
time grow into the core Ubuntu team—brainstormed a large list of the
From the Library of Wow! eBook

10
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
things that they would want to see in their ideal OS. The list is now a famil-
iar list of features to most Ubuntu users. Many of these traits are covered
in more depth later in this chapter. The group wanted
Predictable and frequent release cycles
A strong focus on localization and accessibility
A strong focus on ease of use and user-friendliness on the desktop
A strong focus on Python as the single programming language
through which the entire system could be built and expanded
A community-driven approach that worked with existing free
software projects and a method by which the groups could give back
as they went along—not just at the time of release
A new set of tools designed around the process of building distribu-
tions that allowed developers to work within an ecosystem of
different projects and that allowed users to give back in whatever way
they could
ptg
There was consensus among the group that actions speak louder than
words, so there were no public announcements or press releases. Instead,
the group set a deadline for itself—six short months in the future. Shuttle-
worth agreed to ﬁnance the work and pay the developers full-time salaries
to work on the project. After six months, they would both announce their
project and reveal the ﬁrst product of their work. They made a list of goals
they wanted to achieve by the deadline, and the individuals present took
on tasks. Collectively, they called themselves the Warthogs.
What Does Ubuntu Mean?
At this point, the Warthogs had a great team, a set of goals, and a decent
idea of how to achieve most of them. The team did not, on the other hand,
have a name for the project. Shuttleworth argued strongly that they should
call the project Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is a concept and a term from several South African languages,
including Zulu and Xhosa. It refers to a South African ideology or ethic
that, while difﬁcult to express in English, might roughly be translated as
From the Library of Wow! eBook

A Brief History of Ubuntu
11
“humanity toward others,” or “I am what I am because of who we all are.”
Others have described ubuntu as “the belief in a universal bond of sharing
that connects all humanity.” The famous South African human rights
champion Archbishop Desmond Tutu explained ubuntu in this way:
A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, afﬁrming of others,
does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a
proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a
greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or dimin-
ished, when others are tortured or oppressed.
Ubuntu played an important role as a founding principle in post-apartheid
South Africa and remains a concept familiar to most South Africans today.
Shuttleworth liked the term Ubuntu as a name for the new project for sev-
eral reasons. First, it is a South African concept. While the majority of the
people who work on Ubuntu are not from South Africa, the roots of the
project are, and Shuttleworth wanted to choose a name that represented
this. Second, the project emphasizes relationships with others and pro-
ptg
vides a framework for a profound type of community and sharing—
exactly the attitudes of sharing, community, and collaboration that are at
the core of free software. The term represented the side of free software
that the team wanted to share with the world. Third, the idea of personal
relationships built on mutual respect and connections describes the fun-
damental ground rules for the highly functional community that the
Ubuntu team wanted to build. Ubuntu was a term that encapsulated where
the project came from, where the project was going, and how the project
planned to get there. The name was perfect. It stuck.
Creating Canonical
In order to pay developers to work on Ubuntu full time, Shuttleworth
needed a company to employ them. He wanted to pick some of the best
people for the jobs from within the global free and open source communi-
ties. These communities, inconveniently for Shuttleworth, know no national
and geographic boundaries. Rather than move everyone to a single locale
and ofﬁce, Shuttleworth made the decision to employ these developers
through a virtual company. While this had obvious drawbacks in the form
of high-latency and low-bandwidth connections, different time zones, and
From the Library of Wow! eBook

12
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
much more, it also introduced some major beneﬁts in the particular con-
text of the project. On one hand, the distributed nature of employees
meant that the new company could hire individuals without requiring
them to pack up their lives and move to a new country. More important, it
meant that everyone in the company was dependent on IRC, mailing lists,
and online communication mechanisms to do their work. This uninten-
tionally and automatically solved the water-cooler problem that plagued
many other corporately funded free software projects—namely, that
developers would casually speak about their work in person and cut the
community and anyone else who didn’t work in the ofﬁce out of the con-
versation completely. For the ﬁrst year, the closest thing that Canonical
had to an ofﬁce was Shuttleworth’s ﬂat in London. While the company has
grown and now has several ofﬁces around the world, it remains distrib-
uted and a large number of the engineers work from home. The group
remains highly dependent on Internet collaboration.
With time, the company was named Canonical. The name was a nod to the
project’s optimistic goals of becoming the canonical place for services and
ptg
support for free and open source software and for Ubuntu in particular.
Canonical, of course, refers to something that is accepted as authoritative.
It is a common word in the computer programmer lexicon. It’s important
to note that being canonical is like being standard; it is not coercive. Unlike
holding a monopoly, becoming the canonical location for something
implies a similar sort of success—but never one that cannot be undone,
and never one that is exclusive. Other companies will support Ubuntu and
build operating systems based on it, but as long as Canonical is doing a
good job, its role will remain central.
What Is Ubuntu?
The Warthogs’ goal and Canonical’s ﬂagship project is Ubuntu. If you’ve
gotten this far, you already have some idea of what that means. That said,
this section offers a little bit of background that is helpful in understand-
ing exactly what Ubuntu is and what its goals are.
What Is a Distribution?
It’s clear to most people that Ubuntu is an OS. The full story is a little more
complex. Ubuntu is what is called a distribution of GNU/Linux—a distro
From the Library of Wow! eBook

What Is Ubuntu?
13
for short. Understanding exactly what that means requires, once again, a
little bit of history. In the early days of GNU and Linux, users needed a
great deal of technical knowledge. Only geeks needed to apply. There were
no Linux operating systems in the sense that we usually use the term—
there was no single CD or set of disks that one could use to install. Instead,
the software was dozens and even hundreds of individual programs, each
built differently by a different individual, and each distributed separately.
Installing each of the necessary applications would be incredibly time con-
suming at best. In many cases, incompatibilities and the technical trickery
necessary to install software made getting a GNU/Linux system on a hard
disk prohibitively difﬁcult. A great deal of knowledge of conﬁguration and
programming was necessary just to get a system up and running. As a result,
very few people who were not programmers used these early GNU/Linux
systems.
Early distributions were projects that collected all of the necessary pieces
of software from all of the different places and put them together in an
easier-to-install form with the most basic conﬁguration already done.
ptg
These distributions aimed to make using GNU/Linux more convenient
and to bring it to larger groups of users. Today, almost nobody uses
GNU/Linux without using a distribution. As a result, distribution names
are well known. Ubuntu is such a project. Other popular distros include
Red Hat and Fedora, Novell’s SUSE, Gentoo, and of course Debian.
Most distributions contain a similar collection of software. For example,
they all contain most of the core pieces of GNU and a Linux kernel. Almost
all contain the X Window System and a set of applications on top of it that
may include a Web browser, a desktop environment, and an ofﬁce suite.
While distributions started out distributing only the core pieces of the OS,
they have grown to include an increasingly wide array of applications as
well. A modern distribution includes all of the software that “comes with an
OS,” that is, several CDs or DVDs containing anything that most users
might want and that the distribution is legally allowed to distribute.
Ubuntu, like other contemporary distros, offers a custom installer, a frame-
work including software and servers to install new software once the system
has been installed, a standard conﬁguration method through which many
programs can be conﬁgured, a standard method through which users can
From the Library of Wow! eBook

14
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
report bugs in their software, and much more. Frequently, distributions
also contain large repositories of software on servers accessible through the
Internet. To get a sense of scale, Ubuntu includes more than 30,000 pieces
of software on its central servers—each piece of software is customized
slightly and tested to work well with all of the other software on the system.
That number grows daily.
What’s important to realize is that the creators of distributions do not, for
the most part, write or create the applications you use. The Ubuntu team
did not write Linux, and it did not write GNU—although individuals on
the team have contributed to both projects. Instead, the Ubuntu team
takes GNU, Linux, and many thousands of other applications and then
tests and integrates them to be accessible under a single installer. Ubuntu
is the glue that lets you take a single CD, install hundreds of separate pieces
of software, and have them work together as a single, integrated desktop
system. If you were to pick up a CD of another distribution such as
Debian, Red Hat, or Novell, the software installed would be nearly identi-
cal to the software in Ubuntu. The difference would be in the way the soft-
ptg
ware is installed, serviced, upgraded, and presented and the way it integrates
with other pieces of software on the system.
An Ecosystem of Distributions
Many hundreds of GNU/Linux distributions are in active use today. A
quick look at Distrowatch’s database (distrowatch.com) demonstrates the
staggering number and growth of distributions. One of the ﬁrst GNU/
Linux distributions was called Softlanding Linux System, or SLS. For a
number of reasons, a programmer named Patrick Volkerding thought he
could improve on SLS. Because SLS was free software, Volkerding had the
freedom to make a derivative version of SLS and distribute it. Volkerding
did just this when he took SLS’s code and used it as the framework or
model upon which to create his own variant called Slackware. Subse-
quently, Slackware became the ﬁrst widely successful GNU/Linux distri-
bution and is maintained to this day.
With time, the landscape of GNU/Linux distribution has changed. How-
ever, the important role of derivation that made Slackware possible has
remained fully intact and is still shaping this landscape. Today, the hun-
From the Library of Wow! eBook

What Is Ubuntu?
15
dreds of GNU/Linux distributions serve a multitude of users for a myriad
of purposes: There are distributions specially designed for children, for
dentists, and for speakers of many of the world’s languages. There are dis-
tributions for science, for business, for servers, for PDAs, for nonproﬁt
organizations, for musicians, and for countless other groups.
Despite this diversity, the vast majority of derivatives can be traced back to
one of two parent distributions: Red Hat and Debian. While it is not nec-
essary to understand the details of how these projects differ, it’s useful to
know that Red Hat and Debian offer two compelling, but frequently dif-
ferent, platforms. Each project has strengths and weaknesses. For almost
every group making a Linux-based OS, one of these projects acts as square
one (with a few notable exceptions, such as the Gentoo project).
However, while the process of deriving distributions has allowed for a
proliferation of OS platforms serving a vast multiplicity of needs, the deriv-
ative process has, historically, been largely a one-way process. New distribu-
tions based on Red Hat—Mandriva and Novell’s SUSE, for example—begin
ptg
with Red Hat or a subset of Red Hat technology and then customize and
diverge. Very few of these changes ever make it back into Red Hat and, with
time, distributions tend to diverge to the point of irreconcilable incompati-
bility. While the software that each system includes remains largely consis-
tent across all distributions, the way that it is packaged, presented, installed,
and conﬁgured becomes increasingly differentiated. During this process,
interdistribution sharing and collaboration grow in difﬁculty.
This growing divergence indicates a more general problem faced by distri-
bution teams in getting changes upstream. Frequently, the users of GNU/
Linux distributions ﬁnd and report problems in their software. Frequently,
distribution teams ﬁx the bugs in question. While sometimes these bugs
are in changes introduced by the distribution, they often exist in the
upstream version of the software and the ﬁx applies to every distribution.
What is not uncommon, but is unfortunately much less frequent, is for
these bug ﬁxes to be pushed upstream so that all distributions and users
get to use them. This lack of collaboration is rarely due to malice, incom-
petence, or any tactical or strategic decision made by developers or their
employers. Instead, tracking and monitoring changes across distributions
and in relation to upstream developers is complicated and difﬁcult. It’s a
From the Library of Wow! eBook

16
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
fact of life that sometimes changes fall on the ﬂoor. These failures are sim-
ply the product of distribution-building processes, policies, and tools that
approach distributions as products in and of themselves—not processes
within an ecosystem.
Like many other distributions, Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian. Unlike
the creators of many derivatives, the Ubuntu community has made it one
of its primary goals to explore the possibility of a better derivation process
with Debian, with Debian and Ubuntu’s common upstreams (e.g., projects
such as Linux or GNU), and with Ubuntu’s own derivatives. A more in-
depth discussion of Debian can help explain how Ubuntu positions itself
within the free software world.
The Debian Project and the Free Software Universe
Debian is a distribution backed by a volunteer project of over 1,000 ofﬁcial
members and many more volunteers and contributors. It has expanded to
encompass around 23,000 packages of free and open source applications
ptg
and documentation. Debian’s history and structure make it very good at
certain things. For example, Debian has a well-deserved reputation for
integrated package management and access to a large list of free software
applications. However, as a voluntary and largely nonhierarchical organi-
zation, Debian had a challenging time providing frequent and reliable
releases, corporate support and liability, and a top-down consistency.
Each new distribution exists for a reason. Creating a new distribution, even
a derivative, is far from easy. In large part, Ubuntu exists to build off of the
many successes of the Debian project while solving some of the problems it
struggles with. The goal is to create a synthetic whole that appeals to users
who had previously been unable or unwilling to use Debian.
In building off the great work of the Debian project, as well as GNU,
Linux, and other projects that Debian is built on, the Ubuntu team wanted
to explore a new style of derivation that focused on a tighter interproject
relationship within an ecosystem of different developers. While Ubuntu
tries to improve and build on Debian’s success, the project is in no way try-
ing to replace Debian. On the contrary, Ubuntu couldn’t exist without the
Debian project and its large volunteer and software base, as well as the
From the Library of Wow! eBook

What Is Ubuntu?
17
high degree of quality that Debian consistently provides. This symbiotic
relationship between Ubuntu and Debian is mirrored in the way that both
Ubuntu and Debian depend heavily on projects such as GNU and Linux to
produce great software, which they can each package and distribute. The
Ubuntu project sets out explicitly to build a symbiotic relationship with
both Debian and their common “upstream.”
The relationship between Ubuntu and Debian has not been simple,
straightforward, or painless and has involved patience and learning on
both sides. While the relationship has yet to be perfected, with time it has
improved consistently, and both groups have found ways to work
together that seem to offer major beneﬁts over the traditional derive-and-
forget model. It is through a complex series of technological, social, and
even political processes—many of which are described in the rest of this
chapter—that Ubuntu tries to create a better way to build a free software
distribution.
ptg
The Ubuntu Community
By now you may have noticed a theme that permeates the Ubuntu project
on several levels. The history of free software and open source is one of a
profoundly effective community. Similarly, in building a GNU/Linux dis-
tribution, the Ubuntu community has tried to focus on an ecosystem
model—an organization of organizations—in other words, a community.
Even the deﬁnition of ubuntu is one that revolves around people interact-
ing in a community.
It comes as no surprise then that an “internal” community plays heavily
into the way that the Ubuntu distribution is created. While the Ubuntu
4.10 version (Warty Warthog) was primarily built by a small number of
people, Ubuntu achieved widespread success only through contributions
by a much larger group that included programmers, documentation writ-
ers, volunteer support staff, and users. While Canonical employs a core
group of several dozen active contributors to Ubuntu, the distribution
has, from day one, encouraged and incorporated contributions from any-
one in the community, and rewards and recognizes contributions by all.
Rather than taking center stage, paid contributors are not employed by the
Ubuntu project—instead they are employed by Canonical, Ltd. These
From the Library of Wow! eBook

18
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
employees are treated simply as another set of community members. They
must apply for membership in the Ubuntu community and have their
contributions recognized in the same way as anyone else. All nonbusiness-
related communication about the Ubuntu project occurs in public and in
the community. Volunteer community members occupy a majority of the
seats on the two most important governing boards of the Ubuntu project:
the Technical Board, which oversees all technical matters, and the Com-
munity Council, which approves new Ubuntu members and resolves dis-
putes. Seats on both boards are approved by the relevant community
groups, developers for the Technical Board and Ubuntu members for the
Community Council.
In order to harness and encourage the contributions of its community,
Ubuntu strives to balance the important role that Canonical plays with the
value of empowering individuals in the community. The Ubuntu project
is based on a fundamental belief that great software is built, supported,
and maintained only in a strong relationship with the individuals who use
the software. In this way, by fostering and supporting a vibrant commu-
ptg
nity, Ubuntu can achieve much more than it could through paid develop-
ment alone. The people on the project believe that while the contributions
of Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth have provided an important catalyst
for the processes that have built Ubuntu, it is the community that brought
the distribution its success to date. The project members believe that it is
only through increasing reliance on the community that the project’s suc-
cess will continue to grow. We won’t outspend the proprietary software
industry. As a community, though, we are very much more than Microsoft
and its allies can afford.
The nature of the Ubuntu community is described in depth in Chapter 7,
which is wholly devoted to the subject. Finally, it is worth noting that,
while this book is ofﬁcial, none of the authors are Canonical employees.
This book, like much of the rest of Ubuntu, is purely a product of the
project’s community.
Ubuntu Promises and Goals
So far, this book has been about the prehistory, history, and context of the
Ubuntu project. After this chapter, the book focuses on the distribution
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Promises and Goals
19
itself. Before proceeding, it’s important to understand the goals that moti-
vated the project.
Philosophical Goals
The most important goals of the Ubuntu project are philosophical in
nature. The Ubuntu project lays out its philosophy in a series of documents
on its Web site. In the most central of these documents, the team summa-
rizes the charter and the major philosophical goals and underpinnings.
Our philosophy
Our work is driven by a philosophy of software freedom that aims to
spread and bring the beneﬁts of software to all parts of the world. At the
core of the Ubuntu Philosophy are these core ideals:
1. Every computer user should have the freedom to download, run, copy,
distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for any
purpose, without paying licensing fees.
2. Every computer user should be able to use their software in the language
of their choice.
ptg
3. Every computer user should be given every opportunity to use software,
even if they work under a disability.
Our philosophy is reﬂected in the software we produce and included in
our distribution. As a result, the licensing terms of the software we distrib-
ute are measured against our philosophy, using the Ubuntu License Policy.
When you install Ubuntu, almost all of the software installed already meets
these ideals, and we are working to ensure that every single piece of soft-
ware you need is available under a license that gives you those freedoms.
Currently, we make a speciﬁc exception for some “drivers” that are avail-
able only in binary form, without which many computers will not com-
plete the Ubuntu installation. We place these in a restricted section of your
system, which makes them easy to remove if you do not need them.
Free software
For Ubuntu, the “free” in free software is used primarily in reference to
freedom and not to price—although we are committed to not charging for
Ubuntu. The most important thing about Ubuntu is that it confers rights
of software freedom on the people who install and use it. These freedoms
enable the Ubuntu community to grow and to continue to share its collec-
tive experience and expertise to improve Ubuntu and make it suitable for
use in new countries and new industries.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

20
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
Quoting the Free Software Foundation’s “What Is Free Software,” the free-
doms at the core of free software are deﬁned as
The freedom to run the program for any purpose
The freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to your
needs
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others
The freedom to improve the program and release your improvements to
the public so that everyone beneﬁts
Open source
Open source is a term coined in 1998 to remove the ambiguity in the
English word free. The Open Source Initiative described open source soft-
ware in the Open Source Deﬁnition. Open source continues to enjoy
growing success and wide recognition.
Ubuntu is happy to call itself open source. While some refer to free and
open source as competing movements with different ends, we do not see
free and open source software as either distinct or incompatible. Ubuntu
proudly includes members who identify with both movements.
ptg
Here, the Ubuntu project makes explicit its goals that every user of soft-
ware should have the freedoms required by free software. This is impor-
tant for a number of reasons. First, it offers users all of the practical
beneﬁts of software that runs better, faster, and more ﬂexibly. More impor-
tant, it gives every user the capability to transcend his or her role as a user
and a consumer of software. Ubuntu wants software to be empowering
and to work in the ways that users want it to work. Ubuntu wants all users
to have the ability to make sure it works for them. To do this, software must
be free, so Ubuntu makes this a requirement and a philosophical promise.
Of course, the core goals of Ubuntu do not end with the free software deﬁ-
nition. Instead, the project articulates two new but equally important
goals. The ﬁrst of these, that all computer users should be able to use their
computers in their chosen languages, is a nod to the fact that the majority
of the world’s population does not speak English, while the vast majority
of software interacts only in that language. To be useful, source code com-
ments, programming languages, documentation, and the texts and menus
in computer programs must be written in some language. Arguably, the
world’s most international language is a reasonably good choice. However,
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Promises and Goals
21
there is no language that everyone speaks, and English is not useful to the
majority of the world’s population that does not speak it. A computer can
be a great tool for empowerment and education, but only if the user can
understand the words in the computer’s interface. As a result, Ubuntu
believes that it is the project’s—and community’s—responsibility to ensure
that every user can easily use Ubuntu to read and write in the language with
which he or she is most comfortable.
The ability to make modiﬁcations—a requirement of free software and of
Ubuntu’s ﬁrst philosophical point—makes this type of translation pos-
sible. This book is a case in point. While it helps explain Ubuntu only to
the relatively small subset of the world that already speaks English, the
choice to write this book in English was made to enable it to have the
widest impact. More important, it is distributed under a Creative Com-
mons license that allows for translation, modiﬁcation, and redistribution.
The authors of this book cannot write this book in all of the world’s lan-
guages—or even more than one of them. Instead, we have attempted to
eliminate unnecessary legal restrictions and other barriers that might keep
ptg
the community from taking on the translation work. As a result, the com-
plete text of the several editions have been translated into other languages
like German, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish.
Finally, just as no person should be blocked from using a computer simply
because he or she does not know a particular language, no user should be
blocked from using a computer because of a disability. Ubuntu must be
accessible to users with motor disabilities, vision disabilities, and hearing
disabilities. It should provide input and output in a variety of forms to
account for each of these situations and for others. A signiﬁcant percent-
age of the world’s most intelligent and creative individuals also have dis-
abilities. Ubuntu’s usefulness should not be limited when it can be
inclusive. More important, Ubuntu wants to welcome and to be able to
harness the ability of these individuals as community members to build a
better and more effective community.
Conduct Goals and Code of Conduct
If Ubuntu’s philosophical commitments describe the why of the Ubuntu
project, the Code of Conduct (CoC) describes Ubuntu’s how. Ubuntu’s
From the Library of Wow! eBook

22
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
CoC is, arguably, the most important document in the day-to-day opera-
tion of the Ubuntu community and sets the ground rules for work and
cooperation within the project. Explicit agreement to the document is the
only criterion for becoming an ofﬁcially recognized Ubuntu activist—an
Ubuntero—and is an essential step toward membership in the project.
Signing the Ubuntu Code of Conduct and becoming an Ubuntu member
is described in more depth in Chapter 7.
The CoC covers “behavior as a member of the Ubuntu Community, in any
forum, mailing list, wiki, Web site, IRC channel, install-fest, public meet-
ing, or private correspondence.” The CoC goes into some degree of depth
on a series of points that fall under the following headings.
Be considerate.
Be respectful.
Be collaborative.
When you disagree, consult others.
ptg
When you are unsure, ask for help.
Step down considerately.
Many of these headings seem like common sense or common courtesy to
many, and that is by design. Nothing in the CoC is controversial or radical,
and it was never designed to be.
More difﬁcult is that nothing is easy to enforce or decide because acting
considerately, respectfully, and collaboratively is often very subjective.
There is room for honest disagreements and occasional hurt feelings. These
are accepted shortcomings. The CoC was not designed to be a law with
explicit prohibitions on phrases, language, or actions. Instead, it aims to
provide a constitution and a reminder that considerate and respectful dis-
cussion is essential to the health and vitality of the project. In situations
where there is a serious disagreement on whether a community member
has violated or is violating the code, the Community Council—a body that
is discussed in depth in Chapter 7—is available to arbitrate disputes and
decide what action, if any, is appropriate.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Promises and Goals
23
Nobody involved in the Ubuntu project, including Mark Shuttleworth and
the other members of the Community Council, is above the CoC. The CoC
is never optional and never waived. In fact, the Ubuntu community has also
created a Leadership Code of Conduct (LCoC), which extends and expands
on the CoC and describes additional requirements and expectations for
those in leadership positions in the community. Of course, in no way was
either code designed to eliminate conﬂict or disagreement. Arguments are
at least as common in Ubuntu as they are in other projects and online com-
munities. However, there is a common understanding within the project
that arguments should happen in an environment of collaboration and
mutual respect. This allows for better arguments with better results—and
with less hurt feelings and fewer bruised egos.
While they have been sometimes incorrectly used as such, the CoC and
LCoC are not sticks to be wielded against an opponent in an argument.
Instead, they are useful points of reference upon which we can assume
consensus within the Ubuntu community. Much more frequently, if a
group in the community feels a member is acting in a way that is out of
ptg
line with the code, the group will gently remind the community member,
often privately, that the CoC is in effect. In almost all situations, this is
enough to avoid any further action or conﬂict. Very few CoC violations are
ever brought before the Community Council.
Technical Goals
While a respectful community and adherence to a set of philosophical
goals provide an important frame in which the Ubuntu project works,
Ubuntu is, at the end of the day, a technical project. As a result, it only
makes sense that in addition to philosophical goals and a project constitu-
tion, Ubuntu also has a set of technical goals.
The ﬁrst technical goal of the project, and perhaps the most important
one, is the coordination of regular and predictable releases. In April 2004,
at the Warthogs meeting, the project set a goal for its initial proof-of-con-
cept release six months out. In part due to the resounding success of that
project, and in larger part due to the GNOME release schedule, the team
has stuck to a regular and predictable six-month release cycle and has only
From the Library of Wow! eBook

24
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
once chosen to extend the release schedule—by six weeks for the ﬁrst LTS
release to ensure it was done right—and only then after obtaining com-
munity consensus on the decision. The team then doubled its efforts and
made the next release in a mere four and a half months, putting its release
schedule back on track. Frequent releases are important because users can
then use the latest and greatest free software available—something that is
essential in a development environment as vibrant and rapidly changing
and improving as the free software community. Predictable releases are
important, especially to businesses, because it means that they can orga-
nize their business plans around Ubuntu. Through consistent releases,
Ubuntu can provide a platform that businesses and derivative distribu-
tions can rely upon to grow and build.
While releasing frequently and reliably is important, the released software
must then be supported. Ubuntu, like all distributions, must deal with the
fact that all software has bugs. Most bugs are minor, but ﬁxing them may
introduce even worse issues. Therefore, ﬁxing bugs after a release must be
done carefully or not at all. The Ubuntu project engages in major changes,
ptg
including bug ﬁxes, between releases only when the changes can be exten-
sively tested. However, some bugs risk the loss of users’ information or
pose a serious security vulnerability. These bugs are ﬁxed immediately and
made available as updates for the released distribution. The Ubuntu com-
munity works hard to ﬁnd and minimize all types of bugs before releases
and is largely successful in squashing the worst. However, because there is
always the possibility that more of these bugs will be found, Ubuntu com-
mits to supporting every release for 18 months after it is released. In the
case of LTS releases such as the original LTS, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, released in
2006, the project went well beyond even this and committed to support
the release for three full years on desktop computers and for ﬁve years in a
server conﬁguration. This proved so popular with businesses, institutions,
and the users of Ubuntu servers that in 2008 and 2010, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
and 10.04 LTS were released with similar three- and ﬁve-year desktop and
server extended support commitments.
This bipartite approach to servers and desktops implies the third major
technical commitment of the Ubuntu project: support for both servers
and desktop computers in separate but equally emphasized modes. While
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Promises and Goals
25
Ubuntu continues to be more well known, and perhaps more popular, in
desktop conﬁgurations, there exist teams of Ubuntu developers focused
both on server and desktop users. The Ubuntu project believes that both
desktops and servers are essential and provides installation methods on
every CD for both types of systems. Ubuntu provides tested and sup-
ported software appropriate to the most common actions in both environ-
ments and documentation for each. This book contains information on
running Ubuntu both on the desktop and on a server. The release of 6.06
LTS with long-term support successfully helped pave the way for reliable
long-term server support for Ubuntu and helped grow the now-vibrant
Ubuntu server community. The 8.04 LTS release repeated this success with
a more up-to-date platform, now being updated again with 10.04 LTS.
Finally, the Ubuntu project is committed to making it as easy as possible for
users to transcend their role as consumers and users of software and to take
advantage of each of the freedoms central to our philosophy. As a result,
Ubuntu has tried to focus its development around the use and promotion
of a single programming language, Python. The project has worked to
ptg
ensure that Python is widely used throughout the system. By ensuring that
desktop applications, text-based or console applications, and many of the
“guts” of the system are written in or extensible in Python, Ubuntu is work-
ing to ensure that users need learn only one language in order to take
advantage of, automate, and tweak many parts of their computer systems.
Bug #1
Of course, Ubuntu’s goals are not only to build an OS that lives up to our
philosophy or technical goals and to do it on our terms—although we
probably would be happy if we achieved only that. Our ultimate goal, the
one that supersedes and inﬂuences all others, is to spread our great soft-
ware, our frequent releases, and the freedoms enshrined in our philosophy
to as many computer users in as many countries as possible. Ubuntu’s ulti-
mate goal is not to become the most used GNU/Linux distribution in the
world; it is to become the most widely used OS in the world.
The ﬁrst bug recorded for Ubuntu illustrates this fact. The bug, ﬁled by
Shuttleworth and marked as severity critical, remains open today and can
From the Library of Wow! eBook

26
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
be viewed online at https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/1. The text
of the bug reads as follows.
Microsoft has a majority market share | Non-free software is holding back
innovation in the IT industry, restricting access to IT to a small part of the
world’s population and limiting the ability of software developers to reach
their full potential, globally. This bug is widely evident in the PC industry.
Steps to repeat:
1. Visit a local PC store.
What happens:
2. Observe that a majority of PCs for sale have non-free software
preinstalled.
3. Observe very few PCs with Ubuntu and free software preinstalled.
What should happen:
1. A majority of the PCs for sale should include only free software such as
Ubuntu.
2. Ubuntu should be marketed in a way such that its amazing features and
ptg
beneﬁts would be apparent and known by all.
3. The system shall become more and more user friendly as time passes.
Many have described Ubuntu’s success in the last several years as amazing.
For a new GNU/Linux distribution, the level and speed of success have
been unprecedented. During this period, Ubuntu has lived up to both its
philosophical and technical commitments, achieved many of its goals, and
built a vibrant community of users and contributors who have accom-
plished monumental amounts while collaborating in a culture of respect
and understanding fully in line with the Ubuntu Code of Conduct. How-
ever, Bug #1 demonstrates that the Ubuntu project will be declared a
complete success only when Ubuntu’s standards of freedom, technical
excellence, and conduct are the norm everywhere in the software world.
Canonical and the Ubuntu Foundation
While Ubuntu is driven by a community, several groups play an important
role in its structure and organization. Foremost among these are Canoni-
cal, Ltd., a for-proﬁt company introduced as part of the Ubuntu history
description, and the Ubuntu Foundation, which is introduced later in this
section.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Canonical and the Ubuntu Foundation
27
Canonical, Ltd.
As mentioned earlier, Canonical, Ltd. is a company founded by Mark
Shuttleworth with the primary goal of developing and supporting the
Ubuntu distribution. Many of the core developers on Ubuntu—although
no longer a majority of them—work full time or part time under contract
for Canonical, Ltd. This funding by Canonical allows Ubuntu to make the
type of support commitments that it does. Ubuntu can claim that it will
release in six months because releasing, in one form or another, is some-
thing that the paid workers at Canonical can ensure. As an all-volunteer
organization, Debian suffered from an inability to set and meet dead-
lines—volunteers become busy or have other deadlines in their paying
jobs that take precedence. By offering paying jobs to a subset of develop-
ers, Canonical can set support and release deadlines and ensure that they
are met.
In this way, Canonical ensures that Ubuntu’s bottom-line commitments
are kept. Of course, Canonical does not fund all Ubuntu work, nor could
it. Canonical can release a distribution every six months, but that distribu-
ptg
tion will be made much better and more usable through contributions
from the community of users. Most features, most new pieces of software,
almost all translations, almost all documentation, and much more are cre-
ated outside of Canonical. Instead, Canonical ensures that deadlines are
met and that the essential work, regardless of whether it’s fun, gets done.
Canonical, Ltd. was incorporated on the Isle of Man—a tiny island nation
between Wales and Ireland that is mostly well known as a haven for inter-
national businesses. Since Canonical’s staff is sprinkled across the globe
and no proper ofﬁce is necessary, the Isle of Man seemed like as good a
place as any for the company to hang its sign.
In early 2010, Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical’s ﬁrst CEO, stepped down,
and longtime Chief Operating Ofﬁcer, Jane Silber, became the new CEO.
Shuttleworth retains his position as the head of the Ubuntu Community
Council and Ubuntu Technical boards. He focuses his energy on product
design and working with enterprise customers and partners, and leaves the
day-to-day running of Canonical to Silber. Silber has been with Canonical
since before the ﬁrst release, and the company is expected to continue
expanding and operating on its current path.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

28
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
Canonical’s Service and Support
While it is surprising to many users, fewer than half of Canonical’s employ-
ees work on the Ubuntu project. The rest of the employees fall into several
categories: business development, support and administration, and devel-
opment of other projects such as Bazaar and Launchpad, which are dis-
cussed a bit later in this chapter.
Individuals involved in business development help create strategic deals
and certiﬁcation programs with other companies—primarily around
Ubuntu. In large part, these are things that the community is either ill
suited for or uninterested in as a whole. One example of business develop-
ment work is the process of working with companies to ensure that their
software (usually proprietary) is built and certiﬁed to run on Ubuntu. For
example, Canonical worked with IBM to ensure that its popular DB2 data-
base would run on Ubuntu and, when this was achieved, worked to have
Ubuntu certiﬁed as a platform that would run DB2. Similarly, Canonical
worked with Dell to ensure that Ubuntu could be installed and supported
on Dell laptops and desktops as an option for its customers. A third
ptg
example is the production of this book, which, published by Pearson Edu-
cation’s Prentice Hall imprint, was a product of work with Canonical.
Canonical also plays an important support role in the Ubuntu project in
three ways. First, Canonical supports the development of the Ubuntu
project. For example, Canonical system administrators keep servers up that
support development and distribution of Ubuntu. Second, Canonical helps
Ubuntu users and businesses directly by offering phone and e-mail sup-
port. Additionally, Canonical has helped build a large commercial Ubuntu
support operation by arranging for support contracts with larger compa-
nies and organizations. This support is over and above the free (i.e.,
gratis) support offered by the community—this commercial support is
offered at a fee and is either part of a longer-term ﬂat-fee support con-
tract or is pay-per-instance. By offering commercial support for Ubuntu
in a variety of ways, Canonical has made a business for itself and helps
make Ubuntu a more palatable option for the businesses, large and small,
that are looking for an enterprise or enterprise-class GNU/Linux product
with support contracts like those offered by other commercial GNU/
Linux distributions.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Canonical and the Ubuntu Foundation
29
Finally, Ubuntu supports other support organizations. Canonical does not
seek or try to enforce a monopoly on Ubuntu support; it proudly lists hun-
dreds of other organizations offering support for Ubuntu on the Ubuntu
Web pages. Instead, Canonical offers what is called second-tier support to
these organizations. Because Canonical employs many of the core Ubuntu
developers, the company is very well suited to taking action on many of
the tougher problems that these support organizations may run into. With
its concentrated expertise, Canonical can offer this type of backup, or sec-
ondary support, to these organizations.
Bazaar and Launchpad
In addition to support and development on Ubuntu, Canonical, Ltd.
funds the development of Bazaar, a distributed version control tool, and
the Launchpad project. Bazaar is a tool for developing software that is used
heavily in Ubuntu and plays an important role in the technical processes
through which Ubuntu is forged. However, the software, which is similar
in functionality to other version control systems such as CVS, Subversion,
ptg
or BitKeeper, is useful in a variety of other projects as well. More impor-
tant, Bazaar acts as the workhorse behind Launchpad.
More than half of Canonical’s technical employees work on the Launch-
pad project. Launchpad is an ambitious Web-based superstructure appli-
cation that consists of several highly integrated tools. The software plays a
central role in Ubuntu development but is also used for the development
of other distributions—especially those based on Ubuntu. Launchpad
consists of the following major pieces.
Rosetta:
A Web-based system for easily translating almost any piece of free
software from English into almost any language. Rosetta is named
after the Rosetta Stone, which helped linguists ﬁnally crack the code
of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Malone:
The bug-tracking system that Ubuntu uses to manage and track bugs.
It both tracks bugs across different versions of Ubuntu and allows the
From the Library of Wow! eBook

30
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
Ubuntu community to see the status of that bug in other places,
including other distributions and potentially upstream. Malone is a
reference to the gangster movie musical Bugsy Malone.
Blueprint:
The speciﬁcation writing and tracking software that Ubuntu and a
small number of other projects use to track desired features and their
status and to help manage and report on release processes.
Answers:
A simple support tracker built into Launchpad that provides one
venue where users can make support requests and the community
can help answer them in ways that are documented and connected to
the other related functionality in Launchpad.
Soyuz:
The distribution management part of Launchpad that now controls
ptg
the processes by which Ubuntu packages are built, tested, and
migrated between different parts of the distribution. Soyuz is a
reference to the type of Russian rocket that took Mark Shuttleworth
to space. The word soyuz, in Russian, means “union.”
Launchpad and its components are discussed in more depth in Chapter 10.
The importance of Launchpad in the Ubuntu project cannot be overstated.
In addition to handling bugs, translations, and distribution building,
Launchpad also handles Web site authentication and codiﬁes team mem-
bership in the Ubuntu project. It is the place where all work in Ubuntu is
tracked and recorded. Any member of the Ubuntu community and any
person who contributes to Ubuntu in almost any way will, in due course,
create an account in Launchpad.
The Ubuntu Foundation
Finally, in addition to Canonical and the full Ubuntu community, the
Ubuntu project is supported by the Ubuntu Foundation, which was
announced by Shuttleworth with an initial funding commitment of $10 mil-
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Subprojects, Derivatives, and Spin-offs
31
lion. The foundation, like Canonical, is based on the Isle of Man. The orga-
nization is advised by the Ubuntu Community Council.
Unlike Canonical, the Foundation does not play an active role in the day-
to-day life of Ubuntu. At the moment, the Foundation is little more than a
pile of money that exists to endow and ensure Ubuntu’s future. Because
Canonical is a young company, some companies and individuals found it
difﬁcult early on to trust that Canonical would be able to provide support
for Ubuntu for the time frames (e.g., three to ﬁve years) that it claims it
can. The Ubuntu Foundation exists to allay those fears. Time and consis-
tency has also contributed greatly to the conﬁdence of companies and
individuals in Ubuntu, and the foundation will remain to ensure that con-
sistency in the future.
If something unexpected were to happen to Shuttleworth or to Canonical
that caused either to be unable to support Ubuntu development and main-
tain the distribution, the Ubuntu Foundation exists to carry on many of
Canonical’s core activities well into the future. Through the existence of the
ptg
Foundation, the Ubuntu project can make the types of long-term commit-
ments and promises it does.
The one activity that the Foundation can and does engage in is receiving
donations on behalf of the Ubuntu project. These donations, and only
these donations, are then put into action on behalf of Ubuntu in accor-
dance with the wishes of the development team and the Technical Board.
For the most part, these contributions are spent on “bounties” given to
community members who have achieved important feature goals for the
Ubuntu project.
Ubuntu Subprojects, Derivatives, and Spin-offs
Finally, no introduction to Ubuntu is complete without an introduction to
a growing list of Ubuntu subprojects and derivatives. While Ubuntu was
derived from Debian, the project has also developed a number of deriva-
tives of its own.
First and foremost among these is Kubuntu—a version of Ubuntu that uses
KDE instead of GNOME as the default desktop environment. Kubuntu is
From the Library of Wow! eBook

32
Chapter 1
Introducing Ubuntu
described in depth in its own chapter (Chapter 8) and so is not explored in
any serious depth here. However, it is important to realize that the rela-
tionship between Kubuntu and Ubuntu is different from the relationship
between Ubuntu and Debian. From a technical perspective, Kubuntu is
fully within the Ubuntu distribution. Organizationally, the Kubuntu team
works fully within Ubuntu as well.
A similar organization exists with the Edubuntu project, which aims to
help develop Ubuntu so that a conﬁguration of the distribution can be eas-
ily and effectively put into use in schools. Although the project has under-
gone a few changes in recent years, it remains focused on both educational
and school-related software and on a Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP)
setup that allows schools to run many students’ computers using one or
more powerful servers and many “dumb” terminals that connect to the
server and run software off it. This relatively simple technical trick trans-
lates into huge cost savings in educational settings. The Edubuntu project is
discussed a bit more in Chapter 10.
ptg
The Xubuntu project is based on the lightweight window manager Xfce.
Xubuntu is designed to be appropriate on older or less powerful comput-
ers with less memory or slower processors—or just for people who prefer
a more responsive environment and a slimmer set of features. While
started as an unofﬁcial project, Xubuntu has enjoyed great popularity and
has become integrated as an ofﬁcial part of the core distribution.
The Netbook Edition, until recently known as the Netbook Remix, is a vari-
ant of the Ubuntu Desktop Edition, with GNOME, but customized for the
smaller screens of netbooks. Canonical employees have also been working
on providing Intel’s Moblin UI for Ubuntu as well.
Other derivatives exist as well, such as Ubuntu Studio and Mythbuntu. A
list of ofﬁcially supported and recognized derivatives is available at www.
ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/derivatives.
In a way, it is through these derivatives that the work and goals of the
Ubuntu project come together and are crystallized. It is only through the
free and open source software movements’ commitment to freely accessible
source code that Ubuntu could be built at all. Similarly, it is only through
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Summary
33
Ubuntu’s continued commitment to these ideals that derivatives can spring
from Ubuntu. As a derivative with a view of distributions within an ecosys-
tem, Ubuntu does not see the process of derivation as an insult or criticism.
Far from it—Ubuntu thinks derivation is the highest form of compliment.
Outside of Ubuntu, Canonical’s work is largely based around software
projects such as Launchpad and Bazaar that are designed to facilitate pre-
cisely this sort of derivative process. This process, when practiced right, is
one that describes an ecosystem of development in which everyone bene-
ﬁts—the derivative, Ubuntu, and Ubuntu’s upstreams. Only through this
derivative process does everyone get what they want.
Derivation, done correctly, allows groups to diverge where necessary while
working together where possible. Ultimately, it leads to more work done,
more happy users, and more overall collaboration. Through this enhanced
collaboration, Ubuntu’s philosophical and technical goals will be achieved.
Through this profound community involvement, Bug #1 will be closed.
Through this type of meaningful cooperation, internal and external to the
ptg
project itself, the incredible growth of Ubuntu in its ﬁrst four years will be
sustained into the next four and the next forty.
Summary
This chapter introduced you to the phenomenon that is Ubuntu. It began
with some free software and open source history and then moved on to the
history of Ubuntu. It then covered the Ubuntu products, philosophy, and
goals and the relationship between Canonical, Ltd. and the Ubuntu Foun-
dation. It ﬁnished with some discussion of the various Ubuntu subprojects,
derivatives, and spin-offs.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

C H A P T E R 2
Installing Ubuntu
2
Choosing Your Ubuntu Version
Getting Ubuntu
Installing from the Desktop CD
Installing from the Alternate Install CD
Installing from a USB Key
Installing from within Windows
Summary
ptg
35
From the Library of Wow! eBook

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, it is probably safe to assume that you have decided
to give Ubuntu a try. You will ﬁnd that Ubuntu is ﬂexible and powerful not
only as an operating system but also in how you evaluate and install it.
Trying Ubuntu is simple. The Ubuntu desktop CD is a special “live” CD.
You can use this disk to run Ubuntu from the CD itself without Ubuntu
removing or even interacting with your hard disk. This is ideal if you are
already using another operating system like Windows or Mac OS X; you
can try Ubuntu by running it from the CD, and you don’t have to worry
about it overwriting the data on your hard drive or changing any part of
your current operating system unless you intentionally choose to do so.
Choosing Your Ubuntu Version
The developers behind Ubuntu have worked to make the software as easy
and ﬂexible to install as possible. They understand that people will be
installing Ubuntu on computers with varying purposes (desktops, servers,
laptops, and so on) and using different types of computers (PCs and Macs,
ptg
32-bit and 64-bit computers, and so on). To cater to as many people as pos-
sible, there are two Ubuntu CDs that can be used. The DVD with this book
is equivalent to the downloadable desktop CD but with additional packages
included for your convenience.
Desktop: The desktop CD is the one recommended for desktops and
laptops. With this CD, you can boot Ubuntu from the CD and, if you
like it, you have the option to install it to your hard drive. Note that
running from the disk without installing directly to the hard drive is
the default option to help prevent accidental data loss.
Alternate install: The alternate install CD is recommended for use in
any scenario where the desktop version is unusable (e.g., not enough
RAM) or for those with more advanced needs (e.g., automated
deployments or special partitioning requirements). With this CD, you
boot into an installer and then run Ubuntu when the installation is
complete.
Ubuntu 10.04 ofﬁcially supports two main computer types, or architec-
tures, and a couple of additional variations:
36
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Choosing Your Ubuntu Version
37
i386: This supports all Intel or compatible processors except those
that require AMD64. This includes the new Apple hardware. If you
are not certain which you need, use this one. It will work on either 32-
bit or 64-bit systems, so it is the default choice.
AMD64: If you know you are using a processor based on the AMD64
or EM64T architecture (e.g., Athlon64, Opteron, EM64T Xeon, or
Core2), you should choose this version because it will be a bit more
efﬁcient on your hardware.
ARM: ARM is a low-powered chip commonly found in cell phones
and similar mobile devices. ARM Inc., the makers of ARM, and
Canonical have an agreement to build the entire Ubuntu archive on
ARM, which makes Ubuntu the ﬁrst major distribution to support
ARM as a standard rather than custom device–speciﬁc distribution,
such as OpenWRT is for routers. For a list of the current ARM chip
version being supported, please see www.ubuntu.com/products/
whatisubuntu/arm.
ptg
TIP
Where to Download
If you lose the installation disk that accompanies this book, or if you want to use some of the
other options available, such as installation from a USB drive (discussed later in the chap-
ter), you will find what you need at help.ubuntu.com/community/GettingUbuntu.
TIP
What about PowerPC?
Starting with the 7.04 release, Ubuntu made Power PC an unofficial architecture.
Other Ubuntu Distributions
In addition to the ofﬁcial Ubuntu release, some additional distributions
are based on Ubuntu but are slightly different. Here are some examples:
Kubuntu: Kubuntu is Ubuntu, but instead of using the GNOME
desktop, Kubuntu uses the KDE desktop. See http://kubuntu.org or
Chapter 8 for more information.
Ubuntu Netbook Edition: This is a custom version of the standard
GNOME desktop with the addition of a custom application launcher
From the Library of Wow! eBook

38
Chapter 2
Installing Ubuntu
and some other Netbook-speciﬁc conﬁgurations. See Chapter 9 for
more information.
Xubuntu: The Xubuntu distribution replaces the GNOME desktop
environment with the Xfce 4 environment. Xubuntu is particularly
useful for those of you who want to run Ubuntu on older hardware.
See http://xubuntu.org or Chapter 10 for more information.
Edubuntu is a derivative of Ubuntu aimed at educational use and schools.
To install it, you should ﬁrst install the default desktop version of Ubuntu.
Then use either the downloadable add-on Edubuntu CD or the Ubuntu
Software Center in your Applications menu on the desktop to install
the Edubuntu environment and applications. See Chapter 10 for more
information.
TIP
Downloading Edubuntu
You may download the Edubuntu add-on CD and learn more about Edubuntu at www.
edubuntu.org.
ptg
With a range of different distributions and options available, Ubuntu is
ﬂexible enough to be used in virtually all situations.
Is It Still Ubuntu?
Some of you may be reading about Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Ubuntu Net-
book Edition and wondering how different they are from the regular Ubuntu
release. These distributions differ mainly in which applications and desk-
top interface are included. As such, they may differ quite a bit, especially in
the user interface look and feel, but the underlying OS and software install
system is the same.
Getting Ubuntu
Ubuntu is an entirely free OS. When you have a copy of it, you can give it
to as many people as you like. This free characteristic of Ubuntu means
that it is devilishly simple to get a copy. If you have a high-speed Internet
connection (like DSL), then go to www.ubuntu.com/download, and select
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Getting Ubuntu
39
your country from the list of download sites. You can then select a desktop
or alternate install CD and download it.
TIP
See the upcoming Burning a CD section for details on how to create your Ubuntu CD from
the file you just downloaded.
If you are willing to wait, you can get one physical Ubuntu CD mailed to
you for free from https://shipit.ubuntu.com. You will need an account on
the Launchpad site at https://launchpad.net/ to use the ShipIt service. If
you don’t have one, you will be given an opportunity to create one while
you make the CD request.
You can also buy an authorized CD from a number of distributors, details
of which can be found at www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/purchase.
Burning a CD
When you download an Ubuntu CD, you download a special .iso ﬁle, which
ptg
is the same size as a CD (around 650MB). This ﬁle is an “image” of the
installation CD. When you burn the .iso ﬁle to the CD-ROM, you have a
complete installation CD all ready to go.
TIP
Which Image?
When you are reading about .iso files, you will often see them referred to as CD images. The
term image here does not refer to a visual image such as a photo or picture but to an exact
copy of a CD.
You need to use a CD-burning application to burn your .iso ﬁle to the CD
correctly. Inside the application there should be a menu option called Burn
from Disk Image or something similar. The wording and details will vary
according to the program that you use to burn the image. You should select
the .iso ﬁle, insert a blank CD, and after a few minutes, out will pop a fresh
Ubuntu installation CD.
To give you a head start, the following subsections present instructions for
burning a CD in some popular tools.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

40
Chapter 2
Installing Ubuntu
In Windows with ISO Recorder To burn your .iso ﬁle with the freely avail-
able ISO Recorder, ﬁrst go to http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com, and then
download and install ISO Recorder. To burn your image, follow these steps.
1. Insert a blank CD into your CD writer.
2. Locate the .iso file you downloaded, right-click it, and select Copy
Image to CD.
3. Click Next, and the recording process begins.
4. When the image has been written, click Finish to exit ISO Recorder.
In Windows with Nero Burning ROM To burn your image using Nero Burn-
ing ROM, follow these steps.
1. Insert a blank CD into your CD writer.
2. Start Nero Burning ROM.
3. Follow the wizard prompts, and select Data CD.
4. When the wizard finishes, click Burn Image on the File menu.
ptg
5. In the Open dialog box, select the .iso file, and then click Open.
6. In the wizard, click Burn to create the Ubuntu CD. When completed,
click the Done button to exit.
In Linux with GNOME To burn your image using Linux with GNOME, fol-
low these steps.
1. Insert a blank CD into your CD writer.
2. In the File Browser, right-click on the file you just downloaded, and
choose Write to Disk. The Write to Disk dialog box opens.
3. In the dialog box, choose your CD writer and speed, and then click on
Write. The Writing Files to Disk Progress dialog box opens, and File
Browser begins writing the disk.
Burning with Mac OS X To burn your image using Mac OS X, follow these
steps.
1. Load the Disk Utility application (found in your Utilities folder).
2. Insert a blank CD, and then choose Images > Burn and select the .iso
file.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing from the Desktop CD
41
TIP
Use the Right Option
You need to ensure you use the Burn from Disk Image or similar option rather than just copy
the .iso image onto the CD to be burned. If you just burn the file directly, you will have a CD
containing the single .iso file. This won’t work.
The Burn from Disk Image function takes the .iso file and restores all the original files from
the installation CD onto the disk. This ensures you have a proper installation CD.
Installing from the Desktop CD
So let’s assume you are playing with Ubuntu running from the desktop
CD, and you decide you like it. You decide you like it so much, in fact, that
you want to install it on your computer. Does this mean you need to get a
separate CD and install it? Heck, no. Ubuntu lets you install to the hard
disk by simply clicking a single icon and following the instructions—one
disk to run them all.
If you don’t already have the desktop CD running, pop it into your DVD/ CD
drive, and reboot your computer. If your computer does not boot from the
ptg
CD, you should enter your computer’s BIOS and change the boot order to
ensure that your CD-ROM drive is tried ﬁrst and the hard disk is tried next.
Save your BIOS changes, and then restart again. The disk should boot now.
TIP
BIOS Problems
If you have problems configuring your BIOS to boot from the CD, you should consult the
manual. If you don’t have the manual, visit the manufacturer’s Web site, and see if you can
download the manual.
After a few seconds, the Ubuntu logo and boot screen appear and then you
are presented with a list of languages on the left of the screen and two
options on the right. Use your mouse to select your language. Then decide
whether you want to Try Ubuntu 10.04, which allows you try out Ubuntu
without making any changes to your computer and install it later if you
decide you want to, or whether you want to Install Ubuntu 10.04, which
will jump straight into the installer. Select the ﬁrst option, and Ubuntu
will begin to boot. After a minute or so, the Ubuntu desktop will appear,
and you can use the system right away. Under this scenario, the system is
running from the CD and will not touch your hard disk. Do bear in mind
that because Ubuntu is running from the CD, it will run slower than if it
were installed to your hard disk.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

42
Chapter 2
Installing Ubuntu
If you decide you want to install the system permanently on your com-
puter’s hard disk, you can either reboot and click on the Install Ubuntu
boot menu option or you can double-click the Install icon located on the
left side of the desktop. An installer application appears that walks you
through the different steps to permanently install your Ubuntu system. We
will run through each of these pages in turn now.
TIP
It is recommended that you back up any important files before you perform the installation.
While the vast majority of Ubuntu installations can safely resize Windows partitions, installa-
tions can still result in data loss, so it is wise to be careful.
Language
The ﬁrst screen you are presented with introduces you to the installation
program and asks you to select your language, as shown in Figure 2-1.
Ubuntu supports a huge range of different languages. Select your language
from the list, and then click Forward to continue.
ptg
Location
Now you need to tell the installer where in the world you live (Figure 2-2).
Figure 2-1 Pick your language.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing from the Desktop CD
43
Figure 2-2 Clicking the map allows you to select a location easily.
You can select your location in one of several ways. First, you can hover
ptg
your mouse over the time zone on your part of the world map to select
your location. When you are happy with the time zone selection, click it,
and select the city nearest to you. Alternatively, use the Selected City combo
box to ﬁnd the city nearest to you.
When you are done, click Forward to continue.
Configuring Your Keyboard
The next screen (shown in Figure 2-3) conﬁgures your keyboard.
The installer will suggest a keyboard option for you based on your location
choice, but you may choose a different one if you desire. You can also use
the box at the bottom of the window to test whether your keyboard layout
works. Try typing some of the symbols on your keyboard (such as “, /, |) to
make sure they work. If you press a symbol and a different one appears,
you have selected the wrong keyboard layout.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

44
Chapter 2
Installing Ubuntu
Figure 2-3 Select the correct keyboard to ensure the symbols on the keys work
correctly.
ptg
Disk Space
The next part of the installation process prepares your hard disk for the
software. This involves creating a number of partitions that store the
Ubuntu system and your ﬁles. Hard disks are divided into partitions. Each
partition reserves a speciﬁc portion of the hard disk for use by a particular
OS. As an example, you may use the entire hard disk for your new Ubuntu
system, or you may share the disk so that both Windows and Ubuntu are
installed. This shared scenario is known as dual-booting. In a dual-booting
situation, your hard disk typically has Windows partitions as well as Linux
partitions, and when it boots it gives you a menu so you can select whether
to boot Windows or Linux.
In this part of the installer you create the partitions for your new system.
This is the trickiest part of the installation and also the most dangerous. If
you have existing partitions (such as a Windows installation) on the disk,
it is highly recommended that you back up your important ﬁles.
TIP
Seriously, We Mean It
Really, really, really do back up any important files. If you make a mistake in this part of the
installation, you could lose your files and stop your system from booting.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing from the Desktop CD
45
Deciding How You Would Like to Set Up Your Partitions Before You Create
Them If you have a clear idea of how your hard disk should be parti-
tioned, it is easier to get everything up and running quickly.
These are the most common methods of partitioning.
Only Ubuntu on the disk: If you are only installing Ubuntu on the
disk and are happy to wipe the entire disk, your life is simple. Ubuntu
can do all the work for you.
Dual-booting: If you want to dual-boot your system with Windows
or Mac OS X and Ubuntu, you can share the disk between your
Ubuntu and Windows or Mac OS X partitions.
Regardless of whether you only install Ubuntu or you will dual-boot, you
need to decide how the Ubuntu part of the disk is partitioned. Ubuntu
requires at least two partitions (one for the system and one for virtual
memory swap space), but you can have additional partitions if you want
ptg
to. The installer tries to make things easier for you by presenting options
for partitioning, as shown in Figure 2-4.
Figure 2-4 Main partitioning view
From the Library of Wow! eBook

46
Chapter 2
Installing Ubuntu
Ubuntu Only If you are happy to erase your entire hard disk, just select the
Guided—Use Entire Disk option, and click Forward. You are then asked to
conﬁrm the actions. Click Yes to continue. That’s it!
Dual-Booting Let’s say you want your existing OS and Ubuntu to coexist,
but you don’t care about the details. Click the Guided—Resize . . . and Use
Freed Space option, move the slider according to how much space you want
to give each operating system, and then click Forward. You are then asked
to conﬁrm the actions. Click Yes to continue.
Manual Partitioning In either option, installing only Ubuntu or dual-
booting with an existing operating system, you may not be satisﬁed with
the suggestions guided partitioning makes. In this case you will want to
manually set the partitions. To do this, click the Manual option, and click
Forward to continue. You will see the screen shown in Figure 2-5.
The main part of this screen displays available drives and conﬁgured parti-
ptg
tions. Clicking on a drive or partition will change the actions available to
you below the list. Select the relevant disk to add partitions to. The disks are
listed by device name in the order they are connected within your computer.
Figure 2-5 Manual partition view
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing from the Desktop CD
47
QUICK TIP
The name of the device indicates how it is connected to your computer. For example, hda is
the first IDE drive, and sdb is the second SCSI or SATA drive.
Before you begin, you should prepare the disk for your partitions. If you
want to completely wipe a disk, right-click on the name of the device
(/dev/sda in Figure 2-5), then click New Partition Table. You’ll be asked if
you’re sure, so click Continue. The disk is now ﬁlled with unallocated data.
Now you can add your Ubuntu partitions.
To add a partition, click a free space entry in the list and then click the New
button. A new window appears like that shown in Figure 2-6.
Set the values according to your requirements. The Use As combo box lets
you select which one of the many ﬁlesystem types you want the partition
to use. The default ﬁlesystem included with Ubuntu is ext4, and it is rec-
ommended that you use ext4 for any Ubuntu partitions. Although ext4 is a
ptg
Figure 2-6 Conﬁguring a partition
From the Library of Wow! eBook

48
Chapter 2
Installing Ubuntu
good choice for Ubuntu, you cannot read an ext4 partition in Windows. If
you need to create a partition that is shared between Windows and Ubuntu,
you should use the FAT32 ﬁlesystem.
Use the Mount Point combo box to select one of the different mount
points, which tells Ubuntu where the partition should be used. You need to
have a root partition, which has a mount point of /. Click OK to ﬁnish con-
ﬁguring this partition.
Once you’ve completed conﬁguring all your partitions, click Forward to
proceed with the installation. Please note that if you have read all of these
comments on partitioning and feel a bit overwhelmed or confused, you
don’t need to worry. You may simply use the default settings given by the
installer and all will work well.
Identification
The next step is to enter some details about you that can be used to create a
ptg
user account on the computer (Figure 2-7).
Figure 2-7 This user account is also used as the main system administrator.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing from the Desktop CD
49
In the ﬁrst box, enter your full name. The information from this box is
used in different parts of the system to indicate who the user is behind the
account.
In the next box, set a username for yourself (the installer will provide a sug-
gestion based on your full name). Your username should be something easy
to remember. Many people use either their ﬁrst name or add an initial (such
as jbacon or jonob). Each username on your computer must be unique—
you cannot have two accounts with the same username. Usernames must
begin with a lower case letter only lower case letters and numbers are per-
mitted after that.
In the next two boxes, add a password and then conﬁrm it. This password
is used when logging in to your computer with the username that you just
created. When choosing a password, follow these simple guidelines.
Make sure you can remember your password. If you need to write it
down, keep it somewhere secure. Don’t make the mistake of putting
ptg
the password somewhere easily accessible and known to others.
Try not to use dictionary words such as “chicken” or “beard” when
choosing a password. Try to input numbers and punctuation and to
not use “real words.”
Your password should ideally be longer than six letters and contain a
combination of letters, symbols, and numbers. The longer the
password and the more it mixes upper and lower case letters,
numbers, and symbols, the more secure it is.
Finally, add a hostname in the last box. The hostname is a single word that
identiﬁes your current machine. This is used on a local network so that
you can identify which machine is which.
Believe it or not, hostnames can be great fun. Many people pick themes for
their hostnames, such as superheroes, and name each computer on their
network after a superhero (Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and so on).
Think of a fun hostname theme you can use. For many people, this ends
up being the hardest part of the install!
When you have added all the information, click Forward to continue.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

50
Chapter 2
Installing Ubuntu
Migration
Ubuntu also provides a migration assistant, which aims to ease your tran-
sition to your new OS. If a supported OS is found during installation, you
will be presented with a list of accounts and the features that can be
migrated. If you choose to migrate anything, you will need to provide
details for the new user to whom the features will be migrated.
Finishing Up
Before the installation is completed, you are given a summary of the choices
you made. Once you conﬁrm these choices by clicking Install, the Ubuntu
software will be installed on your computer. At the end of this process, you
are asked to reboot your computer. You are now ﬁnished and can skip
ahead to Chapter 3 to get started with using Ubuntu.
TIP
Better Use of Your Valuable, Valuable Time
One of the great benefits of the desktop CD installer is that while the files are being copied
ptg
from the disk, you can still use the system. Instead of sitting at your computer staring at the
progress bar, you can play a few games to while away the time.
Installing from the Alternate Install CD
Although the desktop CD is ideal for installing Ubuntu, you may want to
use the traditional installer method to install the system. This method
involves booting the alternate install CD, running through the installer,
and then starting the system. This kind of installer is ideal for installation
on older hardware.
To get started, put the CD in the drive, and restart your computer.
Select the Install Ubuntu option with the arrow keys, and press Enter. After
a few moments, the installation process begins by asking you to choose a
language. Select from the different languages by using the up and down
arrow keys, and then use the Tab key to jump to the red buttons to continue
through the setup.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing from the Alternate Install CD
51
TIP
Installing a Server
You can obtain a third version of Ubuntu that is especially tailored for server environments.
For more information about this version, see www.ubuntu.com/server, or read Chapter 5 for
more details about running Ubuntu as a server.
Choosing Your Spot in the World
Next you are asked to specify your location. First you need to choose your
language.
Then you need to pick which country you are in, again pressing Enter to
accept your choice.
Now you need to select your keyboard layout. Keyboard layouts vary across
the world to take into account the many and varied symbols and letters
used in different countries. Even if you are using the typical Latin character
set (as used in most European countries, America, Africa, and Australia),
ptg
there are variations and additions (e.g., German umlauts). You can let
Ubuntu detect your layout for you, or you can choose from a list of options.
If you want your layout detected, you will be asked a series of questions
until a guess can be made. If the guess is wrong, you can repeat the process.
Otherwise, choose your keyboard layout from the options available.
Hardware
Next, the system will attempt to load the rest of the installer and to detect
hardware. In most situations, this happens without prompting you for
anything, although sometimes you might need to provide input such as
choosing a primary network device. Once this is set up, your computer
will also conﬁgure itself with your local network—if possible. If it cannot
conﬁgure itself with a local network, it will tell you this and you’ll have the
option of conﬁguring it manually or choosing to not conﬁgure it at that
time. You can always come back and change things later once the installa-
tion is done.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

52
Chapter 2
Installing Ubuntu
Setting the Hostname and Time Zone
You are next asked for a hostname for the computer.
Use the text box to add your own hostname, or use the default Ubuntu
hostname if required. Feel free to let your imagination go wild, and create
a theme for your hostnames (such as superheroes).
After choosing a hostname, you will be asked to select your time zone.
Choosing this should be a fairly straightforward operation.
Creating Partitions
The system will then read your disks to ﬁnd out the current partition
information. You will be asked to create or select partitions for Ubuntu to
install on to. Creating partitions is the most challenging part of the instal-
lation routine. Before you partition your disk, think about how your parti-
tions should be organized.
ptg
You are given a number of partition options:
Guided—Use Entire Disk
Guided—Use Entire Disk and Set Up LVM
Guided—Use Entire Disk and Set Up Encrypted LVM
Manual
In most cases, you probably want to use the Guided—Use Entire Disk
option. This will erase everything on the hard drive in your computer and
set everything up for you. The second option, Guided—Use Entire Disk and
Set Up LVM, allows you to use the Logical Volume Manager (LVM). The
third is identical to the second option but also employs disk encryption,
which will make your data safer and more secure in some circumstances.
Finally, if you want to set up speciﬁc partitions, use the Manual option.
Let’s look at each of these options in turn and how they are used.
Guided—Use Entire Disk When you select this option, your entire disk is
partitioned automatically. The installer will tell you that a primary and log-
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing from the Alternate Install CD
53
ical partition will be created, and then it asks if you want to go ahead and
create the partitions. Click Yes, and you are done.
Guided—Use Entire Disk and Set Up LVM Conﬁguring LVM is covered in
Chapter 5.
Guided—Use Entire Disk and Set Up Encrypted LVM Conﬁguring LVM is
identical to the previous option except that it also uses a secure encryption
layer to provide additional security and protection for your data. If you
choose to do this, during the process you will be asked to provide a
passphrase. Be very careful to choose one that is impossible to guess and
which you will also remember. You will need to use this passphrase to access
your data every time you boot the computer, and if you lose or forget the
passphrase, all your data will be permanently inaccessible. There is no way to
recover a lost or forgotten encryption passphrase.
TIP
Disk Encryption
You may also decide to encrypt specific partitions manually. Simply choose “Use physical
ptg
volume for encryption” in the “Use as:” option. Note: You never want to encrypt the boot
partition.
Manual—Select this option if you want to create your own partitions man-
ually. Here you can create a number of different types of partitions, set their
sizes, and conﬁgure their properties. Creating these partitions is not done
in the same graphical way as the live CD installer, so it is a little more com-
plex. However, doing so is still largely a process of selecting something and
pressing Enter.
Depending on your conﬁguration (and the options you selected), you are
given a number of options from which to choose:
Conﬁgure Software RAID
Conﬁgure the Logical Volume Manager
Guided Partitioning
QUICK TIP
Discussion of software RAID and the Logical Volume Manager is covered in Chapter 5.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

54
Chapter 2
Installing Ubuntu
Your disk is listed below these options, and it may display a few existing par-
titions. If you want to delete the existing partitions, select each one, press
Enter, and select Delete the Partition. When you have deleted some parti-
tions, you should see a FREE SPACE line. The FREE SPACE line is used to
create new partitions. If the disk was empty already and you don’t see a
FREE SPACE line, select the hard disk, and press Enter. When it asks if you
want to create an empty partition table, click Yes. You should now see the
FREE SPACE line.
To create a new partition, select the FREE SPACE line, and press Enter. In
the next screen, click Create a New Partition, and press Enter. Now enter
the size the partition should be. You can use gigabytes (GB) and megabytes
(M) to indicate size. For example, 4.2GB is 4.2 gigabytes, and 100M is 100
megabytes. You can also use a percentage or just add max to use the entire
disk. Add the size, and then press the Tab key to select Continue. Press
Enter. You are next asked whether the partition should be primary or logi-
cal. It is likely that you will want a primary partition. Make your choice
and continue.
ptg
If this is the ﬁrst partition, you are asked if the partition should be at the
beginning or end of the disk. It is recommended that when creating the
root partition (known as /) on older computers, it should be placed at the
beginning of the disk. This gets around some potential BIOS problems on
older hardware. On newer computers, this is no longer a problem, and you
can put the partition where you like on the disk.
On the next screen to display, you can conﬁgure some settings for the
partition.
Table 2-1 describes the settings.
When the partition is conﬁgured, choose the Done Setting Up the Parti-
tion option.
You can now select FREE SPACE again (if there is free space left, of course)
to create another partition. When you have ﬁnished partitioning, click the
Finish Partitioning and Write Changes to Disk option.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing from the Alternate Install CD
55
Table 2-1 Partition Settings
Setting
Description
Example
Use as
This is the type of ﬁlesystem. For a normal
ext4
Ubuntu system, ext4 is recommended.
Format the partition
This setting appears when editing an existing
yes
partition.
Mount point
This speciﬁes which part of the ﬁlesystem will
/
live on the partition. See earlier in this chapter
for details about the kind of partitions you
should set up.
Mount options
A number of options can be passed to the
defaults
mount point, although the default setting
should be ﬁne.
Label
A text label describes the partition. Usually
/
it is set to the same value as the mount point.
Reserved blocks
This is the percentage of the ﬁlesystem
5.00%
reserved for the super-user; 5% is a good default.
Typical usage
This option can be used to optimize how the
standard
ptg
ﬁlesystem is organized, although the standard
setting is typically used.
Bootable ﬂag
Does this partition contain the kernel and
on
bootloader? If this is the root partition
(known as /), set this to on.
The system will now install the Ubuntu core to your newly partitioned
disk. Depending on the speed of your computer and your CD drive, this
installation could take some time.
Configuring a User
The next part of the installation routine conﬁgures a user for the computer.
This user role is important because it not only can be used as a normal user
but also has the ability to use sudo to perform system administrator tasks.
You are ﬁrst asked to enter a full name for the user (such as Matthew
Helmke). Next you are asked for a username, or one will be picked for you
From the Library of Wow! eBook

56
Chapter 2
Installing Ubuntu
from your full name (such as matthew). If you want another username,
enter it there. Finally, you are asked to enter a password for the user and
asked to repeat the password for veriﬁcation.
QUICK TIP
A good password will have at least eight characters, will use both uppercase and lowercase
letters, will use at least one number, will use at least one nonletter character like & or @, will
not spell a word that can be found in a dictionary, and will also be easy for you to remember
while being difficult for others to guess. A modified phrase can work well, something like
Gimm1e@x3ss could work well, although that one may still be a bit too obvious (“give me
access” is not much better than “password”).
Finishing Up
At this point, the installation routine will install the full system for you.
After this, the computer will reboot, and the installation will be complete.
Installing from a USB Key
ptg
Some computers lack CD drives, especially in the recently popular Net-
books. USB keys are also more ﬂexible, allowing you to save your ﬁles and
conﬁguration and to update the key to the latest version of Ubuntu.
As with a CD, you need to get Ubuntu onto the USB key ﬁrst. Fortunately,
there is an easy way to do this in Ubuntu. Under the System > Administra-
tion menu, ﬁnd the USB creator tool. Upon starting, you will see a window
asking for an ISO ﬁle and a few other options.
NOTE
You will need to have administrative privileges on your computer to use the USB Startup
Disk Creator.
If there is an Ubuntu CD already in the CD drive, it will be automatically
detected and used. If you have downloaded the ISO, click the Other button
and select the ISO you want. Any mounted USB keys will be shown in the
second window for you to select.
Now, you must choose whether or not to have persistence. This means that
you can save your ﬁles and conﬁguration to the USB key. Finally, click Make
Startup Disk.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Summary
57
Another way to create a bootable USB key is to use a program called UNet-
bootin, which has versions and instructions available for both Windows
and Linux from unetbootin.sourceforge.net.
Once the disk has been created, you must restart your computer and boot
off the USB key. This might involve holding down a key at startup to select
from a boot menu or might involve changes to your computer’s BIOS.
Consult your manual for how to do this.
Once you are booted, your USB key will work exactly like a Live CD and
allow you to use Ubuntu from the key or to install it on the computer.
NOTE
Once the size of the persistence section has been selected, it cannot be changed, so think
carefully.
Installing from within Windows
ptg
Another way to install Ubuntu is to use Ubuntu Windows Installer, or
Wubi. This is perhaps the easiest of all methods. Go to www.ubuntu.com/
getubuntu/download-wubi and download the program and run it within
Windows. Then answer the questions that come up and wait. The process
can take a long time because it will download the entire installation .iso,
but once ﬁnished, a dialog box will appear telling you that you need to
reboot. When you do, you will ﬁnd that you will boot to a menu giving you
the option to boot into either Windows or Ubuntu. More detailed infor-
mation is available at the link above.
Summary
Congratulations on your new Ubuntu system. Whether you used the desk-
top CD or the traditional alternate install CD approach to get Ubuntu on
your computer, you now have a powerful, extensible, and easy-to-use OS
with a huge array of available software. Unlike other operating systems,
Ubuntu includes a complete end-to-end software selection with a range of
tools for ofﬁce productivity, system conﬁguration, Internet access, e-mail,
and more. In addition to this impressive array of desktop software, your
new system also includes an incredibly powerful underlying architecture
From the Library of Wow! eBook

58
Chapter 2
Installing Ubuntu
that can be heavily customized. Those of you with a fondness for code and
programming will also get a kick out of the millions and millions of lines
of code that are freely available and spread among the different applica-
tions included. Ubuntu also provides extensive development tools for cre-
ating desktop applications, Web applications, and more.
You are at the start of an exciting journey, so let’s get going.
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

C H A P T E R 3
Using Ubuntu on the
3
Desktop
Taking Your Desktop for a Ride
Using Your Applications
The Ubuntu File Chooser and Bookmarks
Ubuntu in Your Language
Customizing Ubuntu’s Look and Feel
Managing Your Files
Ubuntu and Multimedia
ptg
Moving to the Next Ubuntu Release
Summary
59
From the Library of Wow! eBook

WITH UBUNTU INSTALLED and ready to go, it’s time to get started using your
new desktop. The stock install of Ubuntu provides a very complete and
ﬂexible system. Unlike other operating systems, such as Microsoft Win-
dows or Mac OS X, Ubuntu includes everything you need to get started: an
ofﬁce suite, media tools, a Web browser, an e-mail client, and more. Once
the installation is complete, you are up and running right away without
having to install any additional software. Different people use their com-
puters in different ways, and every user has her own personal preference
for look and feel. Recognizing this desire, Linux has the capability to use
any one of a number of different graphical interfaces. This ﬂexibility, com-
bined with the ballooning popularity of Linux and open source, has
resulted in literally hundreds of different graphical environments spring-
ing up, each covering these different types of users and ways of working.
Even though there is a huge range of different environments available,
there are two clear leaders in KDE and GNOME. Each environment pro-
vides a good-looking, comprehensive, and easy-to-use desktop, but they
differ in how that desktop is used as well as in how further personalization
ptg
can take place. The KDE system aims for complete control and conﬁgura-
bility of the desktop. Any desktop conﬁguration options that exist are
available to the user, who has easy access and can change the behavior and
look of almost everything. The competing GNOME desktop takes inspira-
tion from both Windows and Mac OS X and sets a priority on simplicity
and ease of use. GNOME is also easy to customize, but the less common
options are either eliminated or well hidden to prevent user overload.
Luckily, Ubuntu users are blessed with the choice of either desktop, along
with several others, some of which are mentioned in Chapter 10. The
default desktop in Ubuntu is GNOME, and the Kubuntu distribution uses
the KDE desktop. Kubuntu is covered in Chapter 8.
In this chapter, we help you get started with GNOME and show how you
can use it to do the normal things you face every day with your computer
and a few not-so-normal things. This includes opening and running
applications, managing your ﬁles, adjusting the look and feel, using appli-
cations, managing your media, and more. Buckle up and get ready to take
your shiny new desktop for a drive!
60
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Taking Your Desktop for a Ride
61
TIP
The Ubuntu Desktop Is GNOME
When reading about Ubuntu, you often see the terms Ubuntu desktop and GNOME used
interchangeably. Both of these terms refer to the same thing—the default Ubuntu desktop is
a version of GNOME itself. Of course, Ubuntu provides several other desktops, including
KDE (in Kubuntu), Xfce (in Xubuntu), and a variety of others.
Taking Your Desktop for a Ride
When you start your Ubuntu system, you are presented with a list of users.
Once you select your username from the list by clicking it, you are asked
for a password to log in with. In the last chapter, you speciﬁed a user
account when installing the system, so use that to log in. First type in your
username and press Enter, then your password and press Enter.
After a few seconds you will see the Ubuntu desktop appear (Figure 3-1).
The desktop has three main areas.
ptg
1. At the top of the screen is the panel. This bar contains the desktop
menu options and application shortcut icons on the left side as well as
the notification area on the right side. You use this bar to load
applications and to see the status of certain activities on your system.
The panel is always visible when you use your desktop.
2. The large middle part of the screen, located under the panel, is the
desktop. This part of the screen is normally covered by the applica-
tions that you use, but you can also put icons and shortcuts on the
desktop, too.
3. The bottom part of the screen is called the taskbar. This area displays
a rectangle for each open application, just like in Windows.
You may have noticed that, unlike other operating systems, there are no
icons on the desktop. The reason for this is that desktop icons typically get
covered by applications, and, as such, you can’t get at them. If you need to
start applications, you typically use the Applications menu or the shortcuts.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

62
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
ptg
Figure 3-1 The Ubuntu desktop is simple, uncluttered, and . . . beautiful.
TIP
Device Icons
Although there are no application icons on the desktop, when you plug in USB devices such
as portable music players, keyring drives, or digital cameras, a device icon will appear on the
desktop.
Starting Applications and Finding Things
Starting applications is simple. Just click on the Applications menu on the
left side of the panel. Inside this menu are a number of submenus for dif-
ferent types of applications. Hover your mouse over each category, and
then click the application you want to load. As an example, click on Appli-
cations > Games > Mahjongg.
When applications are loaded, the window border has three buttons on
the top on the left-hand side:
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Taking Your Desktop for a Ride
63
Left button (red button with a black X): This button closes the
application.
Middle button (white button with a gray ˇ): This minimizes the
application, taking it off of your screen, and puts it in the taskbar for
easy access when you need it again.
Right button (white button with a gray ^): This is used to maximize
the window to take up the full desktop area.
Every application that is in use has an entry in the taskbar at the bottom of
the screen. You can click these entries to minimize or restore the application
to or from the taskbar, and you can right-click to see some other options.
Finding Your Files and Folders
When using your computer, you often need to save and open ﬁles and fold-
ers, move them around, and perform other tasks. The Places menu con-
tains a bunch of entries, including those listed here, to access different parts
ptg
of your computer and the network.
Home Folder: Your home folder is used to store the files and work for
each user who is logged in. This is the most important folder on the
system, and you can think of it as the equivalent of My Documents in
Windows—virtually everything you save lives here. Each user has a
separate home folder.
Desktop: The Desktop folder is inside your home folder and contains
files that visually appear on your desktop as icons. If you drag a file
onto your desktop, it will appear in the Desktop folder. Similarly,
moving a file out of this folder or deleting it will remove it from your
desktop.
Computer: Clicking this item displays the different drives attached to
your computer as floppy drives, CD/DVD drives, and USB keys or
sticks. This is the equivalent of the My Computer icon in Windows.
Network: This option accesses all networked and shared devices, such
as file servers or printers, that are available on your local network.
This is the equivalent of the Network Neighborhood or Network
Places in various versions of Windows.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

64
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
Connect to Server: Click this to run a wizard to create a connection
to a network server. You can use this to add an icon to the desktop
that, when clicked, provides a list of remote files in the desktop file
manager. You can then treat this window like any other file manager
window and drag files back and forth. This is really useful for copying
files to other computers.
Search for Files: Use this to search for files on your computer.
Recent Documents: Click this submenu to display the most recently
used documents.
Configuring Your System
The third and ﬁnal menu, System, is used to conﬁgure and customize your
system, access help, and report problems. Inside the menu are a few options,
including these:
Preferences: This submenu contains items for customizing the look
and feel of your desktop. Each of these settings applies only to the
desktop of a user who is logged in. If you log in as another user, the
ptg
settings change to that user’s preferences.
Administration: This submenu is used to configure systemwide
settings such as networking, users, printing, and more. To use these
menu items, your account must have system administrator privileges,
and you must know and use your password.
Help and Support: With this you can access the Ubuntu Help Center,
which provides documentation and guides for your Ubuntu desktop.
About GNOME: Here you have a simple, animated document with
information and links about GNOME.
About Ubuntu: This brings up a detailed document, with links, that
helps users learn more about Ubuntu.
TIP
Feel the Power
When you installed Ubuntu, you were asked for a username and password for the system.
That first user account (and its password) has access to not just your normal user account
but also the all-powerful Administration features. Therefore, when you access the menu
options while using this account and are asked for a password, just enter this user account’s
password to use those features.
This feature applies only to the user account created during installation. If you add other
users, you need to explicitly allow them access to Administration options.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Taking Your Desktop for a Ride
65
Adding Additional Users
Many computers these days are used by more than one person. Rather than
forcing everyone to use the same desktop settings or making the computer
less secure by allowing everyone who uses it to have access to administrative
functions, it is easy and recommended to create an account for every per-
son who will use the computer. This allows each user to customize how the
computer works and looks without interfering with anyone else’s prefer-
ences, and it grants the administrator privileges that prevent others from
accessing functions that may affect everyone or even damage the installa-
tion if used incorrectly.
Adding a new user is done by clicking System > Administration > Users and
Groups. In the dialog box that appears, there is a list of current users. At the
bottom of the list, select Add to create a new user account, as in Figure 3-2.
A password is required to make changes to users and groups, and only those
users with administrative access are able to do so. You must now provide a
name for the new user as well as a short name that will be used by that user
ptg
to log in. Click OK, and in the next dialog box, enter a password for that
user, conﬁrm the password by entering it a second time, and click OK
again. Voila, our new user account is created. You may also have a password
Figure 3-2 The User Settings dialog
From the Library of Wow! eBook

66
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
generated randomly or allow the user to log in without a password. This last
option is not generally a good idea but can be useful. For example, if the
users are small children who are not expected to perform administrative
tasks, the children could have an account that automatically logs in at boot
time, and the administrator would have an additional account, accessed by a
password, to perform changes and updates when necessary.
Finally, now that the account is created, we may customize its settings.
Highlight the username in the list, and click the Change button at the right
next to Account Type for a speedy way to give the user administration priv-
ileges. The Advanced Settings button from the lower right corner of the
dialog box may be used to set contact information for the user, change the
account’s user privileges (for example, giving access to administrative and
several other functions that are not available through the quick change
option), and even change the location of the account’s home directory. Be
careful when using this power because an account can be damaged or ren-
dered inaccessible if things are not done properly.
ptg
Shortcut Icons
On the panel are a number of shortcut icons next to the menus. These
small icons are always visible and can be single-clicked to gain immediate
access to your favorite applications. Ubuntu comes with several stock
shortcuts on the panel, but you are welcome to add your own or remove
the defaults as you like.
Adding your own icon is as simple as ﬁnding the application you want to
add in the menu and then dragging it to the panel. You can then right-click
the new shortcut icon and select Move to move it to the desired spot on the
panel. You can also do this in the menu by right-clicking on a speciﬁc pro-
gram’s entry and choosing the option to have a launcher for the program
to be added to the panel. You may have to click to unlock the item from the
panel ﬁrst, which may be done from the same menu.
Applets
One simple yet powerful feature in Ubuntu is the ability to run small pro-
grams called applets on the panel. These small programs are useful for a
variety of tasks and provide quick and easy access via the panel.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Taking Your Desktop for a Ride
67
To add an applet, right-click the panel and select Add to Panel. The win-
dow shown in Figure 3-3 pops up. Select one of the many applets, and click
Add. When the applet appears on the panel, you can press the middle
mouse button (or the left and right buttons together) to move it around.
The Notification Area
In the right-hand part of the top panel is the notiﬁcation area and the
clock. The notiﬁcation area is similar to the Windows system tray in that it
provides a series of small icons that indicate something speciﬁc. A good
example of this is Network Manager, which looks after your network con-
nections—both wired and wireless—for you.
You can adjust the notiﬁcation area items by right-clicking them to view a
context menu. Some icons (such as the volume control) allow you to left-
click on them to view them. As an example, try clicking the little speaker
icon and adjusting the slider.
ptg
QUICK TIP
Left-click the volume icon and select Sound Preferences to access a large number of sound
settings. These settings configure the speakers, microphone, line-in, any other sound card
inputs or outputs, and more.
Figure 3-3 Ubuntu comes bundled with a selection of applets.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

68
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
Three applets are installed by default: the previously mentioned sound
applet, the indicator applet, and the network manager applet. The indicator
applet tells the user when something needs attention on the desktop and
provides quick access to communication options like Empathy, Evolution,
and Gwibber with a left-click (more on these later in the chapter). The net-
work manager applet (Figure 3-4) gives easy access to networking controls.
Network Manager
Network Manager is a network interface created to help you manage your
network devices and connections and is accessed using the network man-
ager applet. The goal is to make networking “just work” easily and without
requiring users to know how to hand-conﬁgure the settings (although that
is still available for those who want to do so). A left-click of the mouse on
the applet shows you the dialog box and enables quick changes between
network types. It even provides an easy way to set up access through a vir-
tual private network (VPN), such as many of us are required to use to
access ﬁles from work or school securely. A right-click lets you enable or
ptg
disable both wired and wireless networking, enable or disable notiﬁcations,
see information about your current connection, and edit connections
quickly and easily (Figure 3-5).
Figure 3-4 The network manager applet, left-clicked to show available wireless
networks
Figure 3-5 The network manager applet, right-clicked to show connections menu
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Taking Your Desktop for a Ride
69
The Clock
Next to the notiﬁcation area is the clock. Click on the clock to view a calen-
dar. Later, when you use Evolution, items that are added to your calendar
appear in the clock applet too. Instead of opening up Evolution to ﬁnd out
when your dentist appointment is, just click on the clock to see it immedi-
ately. More information about Evolution is contained later in this chapter.
QUICK TIP
Customize your clock by right-clicking it and selecting Preferences.
The Taskbar
The taskbar sits at the bottom of the screen. This small bar is always visible
and indicates which applications are currently open. In addition to this,
the taskbar also sneaks in a few other handy little features.
To the far left of the taskbar is the Hide/Show Desktop button. Clicking
this button hides all of your open applications and shows the desktop.
ptg
Clicking it again redisplays them. This button is useful when you need to
quickly access something on your desktop.
Next to this button is the applications area, which shows each of the cur-
rently open applications. For each application, an entry is added, and you
can right-click it to view a context menu. This menu can also be used to
minimize, maximize, resize, close, and otherwise control applications.
QUICK TIP
You can switch between multiple applications in Ubuntu just like in Windows by pressing
Alt-Tab. When you press this key combination, a small window appears that can be used to
switch between active applications.
To the right of the applications area are two small rectangles called the work-
spaces. Each of these rectangles represents another screen in which you can
view an application. As an example, you may be using your Web browser
and e-mail client while talking to your friends in a chat client on the ﬁrst
desktop and working on a document on the second desktop. You can then
just click each virtual desktop to switch to it to access your different applica-
tions. Another useful tip applies when you’re moving applications between
From the Library of Wow! eBook

70
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
virtual desktops—if you have an application on the ﬁrst desktop, just right-
click the charcoal-colored window or the taskbar entry, select Move to
Another Workspace, and pick the relevant workspace number. The menu
also has Move to Workspace Left and Move to Workspace Right options.
This makes moving applications between your workspaces quite simple.
QUICK TIP
Although Ubuntu has only two workspaces configured by default, you can have as many—
or few—as you like. To configure them, right-click on one of the workspaces in the bottom
right-hand corner of your screen, and select Preferences from the menu.
To the right of the workspaces is the trash. Files dragged onto this icon or
right-clicked and “moved to trash” are destined to be deleted. To fully
delete these ﬁles, right-click the trash and select Empty Trash.
TIP
Usability and the Ubuntu Desktop
Throughout the development of the Ubuntu desktop, great care and attention have gone into
usability. As an example, the four corners of the screen are established as areas that are
simple to access—you don’t need to carefully mouse over the area and can instead just
ptg
throw your mouse to the corner. This is why each corner has an important feature. It makes
accessing each feature that little bit easier.
Ubuntu is filled with tiny usability improvements such as this that help make it as intuitive
and powerful as possible. Canonical has created a collective project called Ayatana to spear-
head this development, which has already produced the lovely indicator applet and is working
on greater refinements and features. More on Ayatana can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.
com/Ayatana.
Shutting Down Your Computer and Logging Out
Now that you’re becoming acquainted with Ubuntu, you’ll want to keep
using it as long as possible, but there will always come a time when you
have no choice but to leave your computer and go do something else. As
you have already seen, Ubuntu is extremely ﬂexible, and this area is no
exception. Click the icon in the top right of the screen to see the various
options (shown in Figure 3-6) for ending your current computing session.
A number of options are available upon logout; however, the choices pre-
sented to you will depend on your installation (e.g., Suspend may not be
available).
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Taking Your Desktop for a Ride
71
Figure 3-6 Ahh, the possibilities. . . .
Lock Screen: This option locks the screen, which is useful when you
need to use the bathroom or grab some lunch. It locks the computer
and asks for your password to reenable the desktop.
Guest Session: This option lets you allow someone else to use your
computer while keeping you logged in but your data and account
ptg
secure by giving the guest a limited desktop to work with temporarily
and requiring your password to return to your desktop.
Switch from . . .: Your username will be listed here. This option takes
you to the login screen and lets you switch between logged in users
without logging anyone out. It also requires each speciﬁc user’s
password to access his or her account.
Log Out: This option lets you log out of the current session and go
back to the main login screen.
Sleep: If your computer supports it, this option will be included in
the list, and you can click it to save the current state of your system in
RAM. The next time your computer is turned on, the desktop will be
resumed. This option continues to use battery power but only a
minimal amount.
Restart: Click this to restart the computer.
Shut Down: Click this to shut down your computer.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

72
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
Using Your Applications
Now that you have become familiar with the desktop, let’s explore some of
the many applications included on your new system. By default, Ubuntu
comes with a wide range of popular and established applications to listen
to music, watch videos, create documents, browse the Web, manage your
appointments, read your e-mail, create images, and much more. These
applications have been vetted by the developers to ensure they are the best-
of-breed Linux applications available.
Although Ubuntu includes a range of software applications, it is likely you
will want to install extra applications and explore other available software.
Fortunately, the Ubuntu system is built on a powerful foundation that
makes software installation as simple as pointing and clicking in the Ubuntu
Software Center, covered in depth in Chapter 4. Just browse through the dif-
ferent categories and check the applications to install. Click the Apply but-
ton, and the application is downloaded and installed for you.
This tool provides a simple way to access a limited core set of popular appli-
ptg
cations, but there are actually more than 30,000 packages available to your
Ubuntu system. Software installation is discussed in detail in Chapter 4.
TIP
Another Way to Run Applications
Although you will most typically start your applications by selecting them from the Applica-
tions menu, you can also press Alt+F2 (on Mac hardware, use Fn+Alt+F2) to bring up a box
where you can type in the name of an application and run it.
Browsing the Web with Firefox
Firefox is the default Ubuntu Web browser and provides you with a
simple, safe, and powerful browsing experience. Firefox is developed by
Mozilla and has become one of the most successful open source projects in
the world and continues to garner huge popularity. With hundreds of mil-
lions of downloads and rapidly increasing browser share, Firefox has been
an unparalleled success.
QUICK TIP
You can learn more about Mozilla and Firefox, as well as their other software products, at
www.mozilla.org.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Using Your Applications
73
Fire up Firefox by clicking its icon (the ﬁrst one next to the System menu)
on the panel or by selecting Applications > Internet > Firefox Web Browser.
Before long, you’ll be presented with the main Firefox window (Figure 3-7).
The Firefox window looks similar to most Web browsers and includes the
usual back, forward, reload, and stop buttons, an address bar, and some
menus. These familiar-looking elements help you become acquainted with
Firefox, and if you have used Internet Explorer, Opera, Chrome, or Safari
before, you are sure to pick it up in no time.
Navigating your way around the Internet is no different in Firefox than in
any other browser—just type the Web address into the address bar and
press Enter. Firefox also has a few nice features that make it easy to access
your favorite sites. As an example, if you want to visit the Ubuntu Web site,
you can just enter www.ubuntu.com (leaving off all that http:// nonsense).
Alternatively, you can just type in “Ubuntu,” and Firefox will do the equiv-
alent of going off to Google, entering “Ubuntu” as the search term, and
taking you to the ﬁrst result for the search. This feature is incredibly handy
ptg
for popular sites that are likely to be at the top of the search results page.
Figure 3-7 The Firefox interface is sleek but extensible.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

74
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
TIP
The search box next to the address bar can be used to do searches. By default, these
searches are on Google. To do a Google search, just type in your search term and press
Enter. You can also click the down arrow next to the Google logo and select from a variety of
other sites to search, including sites like Amazon.com and Wikipedia.
This search box can be used to search just about anything. To add more search engines,
click the small icon and then select Manage Search Engines.
Bookmarking Your Favorite Sites To bookmark the page you are viewing,
click Bookmarks > Bookmark This Page or click Ctrl+D. In the dialog box
that pops up, use the combo box to select the folder to store the bookmark in.
You also have the option to add “tags” to your bookmark, which are like key-
words that can be used to sort and search for your bookmarks in the future.
When you have ﬁnished naming and tagging your bookmark, click Done to
save the bookmark.
Save Time with Live Bookmarks Firefox also includes a special feature
called live bookmarks that automatically grabs content from a Web site with-
ptg
out your needing to visit it. As an example, go to http://fridge.ubuntu.com (a
popular Ubuntu news site), and you will see a small orange icon—which
indicates that this site has a feed available—on the right side of the address
bar. Click this orange square, and you will be taken to a new page that pre-
views the feed and gives you the option of what you would like to use to sub-
scribe to it. Use the default option (Live Bookmarks), and click Subscribe
Now. A dialog box will pop up. Use the default values provided and click OK.
A new toolbar button is added, and when you click on it, a list of the items
from the Web site are displayed. Each time you start Firefox, it will quietly go
away and update this list so that you don’t need to visit the site yourself. The
“Latest Headlines” toolbar entry is an example of this.
TIP
If You Liked the Fridge
You may also like Planet Ubuntu at http://planet.ubuntu.com. This site collects the personal
blogs of a number of different Ubuntu developers and other community members. Planet
Ubuntu gives a unique insight into what the developers are working on and/or interested in.
Bolt It On, Make It Cool Although Firefox is already a powerful and ﬂexible
Web browser, it can be extended even further using special plug-in exten-
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Using Your Applications
75
sions. These extensions cover not only typical browsing needs but also other
more specialized extras that extend the browser itself.
To install normal Web plug-ins, just visit a site that requires the plug-in. A
yellow bar will appear at the top of the page, indicating that you are miss-
ing a plug-in necessary to fully take advantage of the page you are visiting.
Click the Install Missing Plug-ins button to grab the required plug-in. For
example, Ubuntu does not come with the Macromedia Flash plug-in
because it does not live up to Ubuntu software freedom requirements. As a
result, you will have the option to install either Macromedia Flash or the
free software version Gnash if you want to use Flash.
To extend the browser itself with additional features, go to https://addons.
mozilla.org and browse for an extension that you are interested in. When
you ﬁnd something you would like to install, click the Install link. A dialog
box will pop up asking you to conﬁrm the installation. Click Install Now.
Your new extension will now download and install automatically. Typi-
cally, this requires a restart of Firefox, and then your extension is available.
ptg
TIP
Be Careful Where You Download
It is recommended that you download extensions only from http://addons.mozilla.org. If you
do need to install an extension from another site, make sure it is a site you trust. Otherwise,
the extension may contain unsafe software, viruses, or spyware.
Creating Documents with OpenOffice.org
Included with Ubuntu is a full ofﬁce suite called OpenOfﬁce.org. This
ofﬁce software comes by default with applications for word processing,
working with spreadsheets, and presentations. Adding other features,
such as the ability to create and manipulate databases, work with draw-
ings, and more, are easily installed later. The suite provides an extensive
range of functionality, including reading and writing Microsoft Ofﬁce ﬁle
formats, and can also export documents as Web pages, PDF ﬁles, and even
animations.
Let’s give OpenOfﬁce.org a whirl by creating a letter with it. Start Open -
Ofﬁce. org word processor by selecting it from the Applications > Ofﬁce
From the Library of Wow! eBook

76
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
menu. When it has loaded, you will be presented with the interface shown
in Figure 3-8.
If you have used a word processing program before, many of the common
interface elements, such as the buttons for setting font type and size, bold,
italic, underline, and alignment, look and behave the same. The OpenOf-
ﬁce.org developers have designed the suite to be easy to migrate to if you
have used a program like Microsoft Ofﬁce before. After a few minutes
playing with OpenOfﬁce.org, you will be conﬁdent that you can ﬁnd the
functions you need.
Start your letter by ﬁrst choosing a nice font. In the font combo box, you
should see Liberation Serif (which is a free-as-in-liberty font similar to
Times) selected as the default. You can click the box and choose another if
you prefer, such as the lovely DejaVu Sans font. Change the font size by
clicking the combo box to the right of the font box and selecting 10 as the
ptg
Figure 3-8 OpenOffice.org looks similar to Microsoft Office and is therefore quite
simple to adjust to.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Using Your Applications
77
size. With the cursor on the left side of the page, add your home address to
the letter.
Now press Enter to leave a blank line under the address, and click the Align
Right toolbar button (the icon looks like some lines aligned to the right). If
you are unsure of what a button does, hover your mouse over it to pop up
a tool tip. Now add to your letter the address of the recipient.
Press Enter again to leave a blank line, and type the main body of the letter.
Feel free to use the bold, italic, and underline buttons to add emphasis to
your words. You can also use other toolbar buttons to add items such as
bullet points and numbered lists and to change the color of the font. If you
want to add features such as graphics, tables, special characters, and frames,
click the Insert menu and select the relevant item. You can customize each
item added to the page by right-clicking the item and using the options
shown in the context menu.
When your letter is complete, you can save it by selecting File > Save, by
ptg
clicking the ﬂoppy disk toolbar icon, or by pressing Ctrl-S. The default ﬁle
format used by OpenOfﬁce.org is the OpenDocument Format. This ﬁle
format is an ofﬁcial open standard and is used across the world. The
ﬁle format is slightly different for different types of applications (.odt for
word processor ﬁles, .ods for spreadsheets, and so on), but each format pro-
vides an open standard free from vendor lock-in. You can also save in a
variety of other formats, including the default formats for Microsoft Ofﬁce.
TIP
Vendor Lock-In?
In the proprietary software world, it is common for each application to have its own closed
file format that only the vendor knows how to implement. When a person uses the software
to create documents, the closed format means that only that specific tool can read and write
the format. As long as you want to access your documents, you need that tool. This is
known as vendor lock-in.
To combat this problem, the OpenOffice.org suite (and the vast majority of other open
source applications) uses an open file format that is publicly documented. In fact, the format
is a published standard under ISO/IEC 26300:3006. This means that other applications can
implement the OpenDocument file format, and you can be safe in the knowledge that your
documents will always be available and you are not locked in to any specific tool.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

78
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
Another useful feature wedged into OpenOfﬁce.org is the capability to
save your documents in the Adobe PDF format. PDF ﬁles have been
increasingly used in the last few years and are useful for sending people
documents that they should not change (such as invoices). PDF ﬁles pro-
vide a high-quality copy of the document and are well supported across all
operating systems. This makes PDFs ideal for creating catalogs, leaﬂets,
and ﬂyers. To save a document as a PDF ﬁle, click the PDF button on the
main toolbar (next to the printer icon). Click the button, enter a ﬁlename,
and you are done. Simple.
Connecting with Empathy and Gwibber
and the Indicator Applet
Empathy is a chat program that can interact with Google Talk, AIM, Win-
dows Live, and many other chat programs. It has audio and video capabil-
ity as well. You can get started by left-clicking the indicator applet (it looks
like an envelope) on the top panel and choosing Chat. You will then be
given an opportunity to enter your account information for various
ptg
services and to begin communicating.
Gwibber, listed in this menu as Broadcast, is accessible from the same loca-
tion and can be set up to allow you to integrate online services like Flickr,
Twitter, identi.ca, and Facebook into your desktop for even easier access to
what is happening in your social networks. Open it, enter your account
information as directed, and you can begin to interact with all your circles
from one location on your desktop.
On the top panel, you may have noticed your username with a speech bal-
loon icon next to it. This location gives you a convenient place to mark
yourself available for chat or away, update your information for social
accounts that use either Empathy or Gwibber, and use your Ubuntu One
services.
Ubuntu One
Ubuntu One is an online cloud storage application that is free for any
Ubuntu user. This enables any user to create an Ubuntu One account and
store up to 2GB on remote servers (more space is available for a fee) that
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Using Your Applications
79
may be accessed from anywhere. The service is built in to the Ubuntu
desktop and, once activated, integrates smoothly. You can get started con-
ﬁguring your account from the menu at System > Preferences > Ubuntu
One. More information is available at one.ubuntu.com.
Managing Your E-mail and Calendars with Evolution
Evolution is modeled around the all-in-one personal information man-
agement tool. Within Evolution you can read your e-mail, manage your
schedule, store contact details, organize to-do lists, and more in a single
place. This makes Evolution useful for both businesspeople and regular
users who want easy access to this information.
Setting Up Your E-Mail Account To use Evolution to read your e-mail, you
need to ﬁnd out the following settings for connecting to your e-mail server
(you can get these details from your ISP or system administrator):
Your type of e-mail server (such as POP or IMAP)
ptg
Your mail server name (such as mail.chin.com)
Your mail account’s username and password
Authentication type (typically by password)
Your outgoing mail server type (typically SMTP)
Your outgoing mail server name
To use Evolution for just the calendar function, you need to go to the indi-
cator applet (looks like an envelope) in the notiﬁcation area on the top
panel and click on Set Up Mail. In a few seconds, the Evolution Setup
Assistant window will pop up. Here are the necessary steps:
1. On the Welcome screen, click the Forward button.
2. Next, you may restore your e-mail from a backup, but since we are
doing a fresh setup, click the Forward button.
3. On the Identify screen, enter your full name and e-mail address in the
appropriate boxes. Under Optional Information, you should uncheck
the Make this my default account box. Then click the Forward button.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

80
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
4. In the Receiving Email dialog box under Configuration > Server, just
add your name. You can add your name under Username as well.
Then click the Forward button.
5. On the Receiving Options screen, click the Forward button.
6. On the Sending Email and Server Configuration screen, add your
name here as you did in earlier steps.
7. In the Account Management dialog box, just click the Forward button.
8. On the Done screen, click the Forward button.
9. Finally, once Evolution opens, click New Icon (looks like a clock), and
from the drop-down menu, select Calendar.
10. When the New Calendar window pops up, you can pick which type of
calendar you want to use. Note: If you don’t already have another type
of calendar, just leave the Type as CalDAV, then fill in the name—this
will be the name of your calendar. Pick the color you want your
events to show up as, then click Mark as default calendar.
ptg
If you are using Google calendar, you can also add this function to your
calendar. All the steps are the same, but when you get to step 10 to add a
new calendar, you need to choose Google as the type of calendar. Then ﬁll
in the name you want to use for the calendar, choose the color, and mark it
as your default calendar. You probably want to copy the contents locally,
too, in case you need to access it when you do not have Internet access.
When you click Google, you will see a Username ﬁeld show up under
Name. Your username should be your gmail name, but without the
“@gmail.com.” Once you enter your username, click on Retrieve List. You
will be prompted to enter your gmail password. Enter it. When the Enter
Password window goes away, you should see a list of calendars that you
have linked to your Google calendars. If you have more than one Google
calendar you want to add, then just pick which one will be your default
calendar. Repeat step 10 for each calendar you want to add.
TIP
Evolution and Webmail
You can’t use Evolution to read Webmail such as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail unless you configure
your Webmail to allow POP access and to use SMTP to send e-mail. Consult your Webmail
provider for more details on if and how you can access the mail with a local client like Evolution.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Using Your Applications
81
Load Evolution by clicking the envelope and clock shortcut icon from the
panel (hover your mouse over the shortcuts to see what they are) or by
clicking Applications > Internet > Evolution Mail. When the application
loads, you are taken through a wizard to set up your e-mail server (as
shown in Figure 3-9).
Click Forward to continue the setup, and after choosing to not restore
from a backup, you will be asked for your identity. Fill in your e-mail
address in the E-Mail Address box, and add the optional information if
you want to. The additional details are not essential for using Evolution.
Click Forward to continue.
You are next asked to choose what kind of e-mail server you have from the
drop-down box. When you make your selection, some additional settings
are displayed. Fill in the server name and the username. You may need to
adjust the Security and Authentication Type settings, but for most
accounts the default settings should be ﬁne. Click Forward to continue.
ptg
Figure 3-9 Setting up Evolution is simple as long as you know the details for your
mail server.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

82
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
The next page conﬁgures some options for receiving your e-mail. None of
these options are essential, although you may want to check the ﬁrst box to
automatically check for new mail. Click Forward to continue. The next
screen conﬁgures the settings for sending e-mail. In the combo box select
the Server Type (typically SMTP) and add the server name to the Server
box. Click Forward to continue.
In the next screen, enter a name to describe the account. The default entry
(your e-mail address) is ﬁne, but you may want to add something more
meaningful such as “Work E-Mail” or “Home E-Mail.” When you have
added this, click Forward to continue. Finally, select your location from the
map. If you click on your area of the world, the map will zoom in. Once you
have done this, click Apply to complete the process and close the wizard.
With the wizard completed, the main Evolution interface will appear, as
shown in Figure 3-10.
ptg
Figure 3-10 Those of you who have used Microsoft Outlook should find the
interface very similar.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Using Your Applications
83
On the left sidebar you can see a number of buttons to access the mail,
contacts, calendars, memos, and tasks components in Evolution. When
you click each button, the interface adjusts to show you the relevant infor-
mation about that component.
Working with Your E-Mail Inside the e-mail component you can see the
e-mail folders in the left panel and the list of messages in the top pane.
When you click on a message, it is displayed in the bottom pane, where
you can read it. With your new account set up, you will ﬁrst want to go and
grab the e-mail from your mail server. Click Send/Receive, and the mail is
retrieved from your server and any unsent mail is sent.
TIP
Problems?
If you cannot connect to your mail server, there may be an error in your account configura-
tion. To edit your account settings again, click Edit > Preferences, select the account from
the list, and click Edit.
With your messages loaded, new e-mails are shown in bold in the top pane.
ptg
Move through the different e-mails using the up and down arrow keys, and
each message will be displayed. You can reply to a message by clicking the
Reply or Reply To All toolbar buttons. New e-mails can be created by click-
ing the New toolbar button. By default, new e-mails and replies are sent
automatically when you click the Send button in the compose window.
This way you don’t need to click the Send/Receive button to deliver them.
Managing Your Calendar Inside calendar mode, Evolution provides
another convenient way to manage your schedule, add new events, and
view your calendar in different ways. When you click the Calendars button
to switch to this mode, you can see the timetable for today as well as the
month view. The month view shows a couple of months in which the bold
dates have events.
You can add two types of events to your calendar.
Meetings: These are events with a specific group of people.
Appointments: These are general events.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

84
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
To add a new appointment, navigate to the date you require using the cal-
endar, then right-click a time slot in the day view, and select New Appoint-
ment. Alternatively, simply click the New toolbar item. In the box that
pops up, ﬁll in the Summary, Location, Time (adjusting the date if neces-
sary), and Description boxes. You can also select which calendar the event
appears on if you have multiple calendars conﬁgured.
TIP
Multiple Calendars
Evolution supports multiple calendars. This is useful if you want different calendars for dif-
ferent types of events such as personal and work-related activities. To create a new calendar,
right-click the calendar list in the left sidebar and select New Calendar.
To add a new meeting, again ﬁnd the date, right-click the day view, and
select New Meeting. Inside the dialog box that pops up, you need to add
the participants who are attending the meeting. You can add participants
in two ways: Use the Add button if they are not in your address book, or
use the Attendees button if they are in your address book.
ptg
When you click Attendees, a new dialog pops up with a list of attendees
down the left. You can use the Add and Remove buttons to add contacts to
(or remove them from) the different categories of Chairpersons, Required
Participants, Optional Participants, and Resources. Now, you probably
don’t have any contacts in there, as you are just starting to use Evolution,
so use the main Contacts button on the left side of the main Evolution
window to add some.
You can view your calendar in lots of different ways by clicking the differ-
ent toolbar buttons such as Week, Month, and List. Play with them and see
which ones are most useful to you.
QUICK TIP
Remember, you can access your appointments without opening Evolution by clicking on the
clock in the panel.
The Ubuntu File Chooser and Bookmarks
One area in which the GNOME developers have worked hard is in creat-
ing an intuitive and useful ﬁle chooser that is accessed in applications
From the Library of Wow! eBook

The Ubuntu File Chooser and Bookmarks
85
with File > Open. The window that pops open is called the ﬁle chooser.
You may be wondering why they have spent so much time on such a small
and seemingly insigniﬁcant part of the desktop. In reality, however, ﬁnd-
ing ﬁles is one of the most frustrating aspects of using computers and
often involves digging through folder after folder to ﬁnd what you need.
Luckily, the GNOME ﬁle chooser (Figure 3-11) helps cut down much of
this ﬁle hunting signiﬁcantly.
The listing of ﬁles on the right-hand side is used to ﬁnd the ﬁle you need,
and you can click on folders in this listing to traverse deeper into your sub-
folders. Note how each folder is displayed above the listing in a series of
buttons. You can click these buttons to easily jump back to parent folders
when needed.
Aside from enabling you to manually pick ﬁles, the chooser also supports
bookmarks. On the left side of the chooser is a list of devices and bookmarks
labeled Places. These include your home directory (shown as your user-
name), Desktop (the ﬁles on your desktop), and File System (the entire hard
ptg
drive), as well as devices such as CD drives, ﬂoppy drives, and USB sticks.
Figure 3-11 The file chooser makes it easy to find what you want.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

86
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
To create your own bookmark, use the listing on the right to ﬁnd the folder
that you want to bookmark, single-click it, and then click Add below the
Places box. You could also right-click on the ﬁle and choose Add to Book-
marks. The folder now appears in your bookmarks. Now whenever you
need to access that folder, just click the bookmark! In addition to putting
the bookmark in the ﬁle chooser, it is also available in other parts of the
desktop, such as the Places menu and in the ﬁle manager.
Ubuntu in Your Language
When you installed Ubuntu, you were asked which language the system
should use. Although this sets the initial language for the system, you may
want to change the language at a later date. To do this, click System >
Administration > Language Support.
Ubuntu supports a huge range of different languages, and many applica-
tions include a Translate This Application menu option in the Help menu
ptg
so that all Ubuntu users can contribute translations in their language(s). If
you would like to help with this effort, it is a fantastic contribution to the
Ubuntu project.
When the language selector ﬁrst loads, it may ask you to update your lan-
guage packs. Just click Yes to continue. Inside the dialog box a number of
languages are listed, each of which has a Support checkbox listed next to it.
For each language that you want available on the system, check the rele-
vant boxes.
When you have selected the boxes, click the Apply button, and the appro-
priate language packs are downloaded and installed. Now use the Default
Language combo box to choose the new language. You need to log out and
log back in for the changes to take effect.
TIP
Choosing a New Language
When you see the login screen, you can use the Language button to choose a language for
that specific login session. When you select the language, you are asked if you want to make
it the default language or use it just for that specific session.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Customizing Ubuntu’s Look and Feel
87
Customizing Ubuntu’s Look and Feel
Whenever we put someone in front of Ubuntu for the ﬁrst time, there
seems to be a uniform natural desire to tweak the look and feel of the desk-
top. It can be fun tweaking our desktops so they look just right, and
Ubuntu has great support for all kinds of adjustments. Do you want dif-
ferent-looking applications with a lime green background and crazy fonts?
No problem; just don’t show it to anyone else. . . .
Changing the Background
To change the background of your desktop, right-click it and select
Change Desktop Background. Inside the dialog box that appears, choose
your wallpaper by clicking on an image, and the desktop background will
automatically change. Ubuntu comes with a limited range of preinstalled
wallpapers, so it is likely that you will want to add your own wallpaper. To
do this, save your wallpaper somewhere on your computer, and then use
the Add Wallpaper button to select it. The new wallpaper can be selected
from the list.
ptg
If you are not really a wallpaper kind of person and would prefer just a
color for the background, you can use the Desktop Colors controls at the
bottom of the dialog box. The combo box provides three different types of
background: Solid Color, Horizontal Gradient, and Vertical Gradient. Next
to the combo box, click on the color chip to select the relevant color(s).
Changing the Theme
When you are using your applications, the visual appearance of the but-
tons, scroll bars, widgets, and other bits and pieces are controlled by the
theme. The built-in theming system can make your applications look radi-
cally different, and Ubuntu ships with a number of themes that you can try.
Choosing a New Theme To choose a new theme, click System > Prefer-
ences > Appearance and then click on the Theme tab. Inside the tab that
pops up are a number of themes that you can choose. Just click on a
theme, and the desktop will be adjusted automatically. You can further
customize your theme by clicking the Customize button. A new dialog box
From the Library of Wow! eBook

88
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
appears that has tabs for the different parts of the theme you can conﬁg-
ure. Click each tab, and select an entry from the list to create your own
perfect theme.
Installing New Themes To install a new theme, head over to http://
art.gnome.org and ﬁnd a theme that you like. You can do this directly from
the Theme tab in the System > Preferences > Appearance window men-
tioned previously by clicking Get more themes online. You need to look
for Controls and Borders when browsing under the Themes tab on the
site. When you ﬁnd a theme that you like, download it to your computer.
Now Click System > Preferences > Appearance, and click the Install button
in the Theme tab. Using the ﬁle chooser, ﬁnd the theme that you just
downloaded, and it will install automatically. You may now select your
new theme from the list.
Configuring a Screensaver
To choose a different screensaver, click System > Preferences > Screen-
ptg
saver. The screensaver conﬁguration tool then loads (Figure 3-12).
Figure 3-12 A number of screensavers are bundled with Ubuntu.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Managing Your Files
89
On the left side of the window is a list of available screensavers. Click on a
screensaver and you will see a preview appear in the space to the right of
the list. You can then use the slider to select how long the computer needs
to be idle before the screensaver kicks in.
The Lock Screen When Screensaver Is Active checkbox can be selected to
lock the screen when the screensaver starts and, as such, requires a user to
enter the password to reactivate the desktop. This is useful if you work in
an ofﬁce and want to ensure that no one tampers with your computer
when you are away.
Managing Your Files
Files are the primary components of any computer use, and they need to be
managed, copied, moved, renamed, grouped, and loaded. Included with
Ubuntu is a powerful yet simple ﬁle manager called Nautilus that integrates
tightly into your desktop. You’ll use it all the time even if you don’t often see
that name. Most often, you will see it referred to as File Browser.
ptg
File Browser makes extensive use of drag and drop. Unlike the kind of ﬁle
manager used in Windows with its tree view and listing of ﬁles, File Browser
displays ﬁles in a series of windows in which you can drag ﬁles around easily.
For those who just can’t say goodbye to the tree view, File Browser also sup-
ports that. Aside from providing a simpler user interface, File Browser also
includes a number of useful features such as video and image previews,
emblems, bookmarks, permissions management, and more.
You can start File Browser from a number of different places, but the easi-
est way to launch it is from the Places menu. Click on Places > Home
Folder to load your home folder. When the folder loads, you should see
something similar to what Figure 3-13 shows.
The File Browser window is split into two parts. The sidebar shows cate-
gories of information such as bookmarks, folders, emblems (more on
these later), and more. In the main part of the window, you can see the
subfolders and ﬁles in the current folder. By default, File Browser displays
your bookmarks in the left sidebar and displays the contents of your
home folder.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

90
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
Figure 3-13 Accessing your home folder files is as simple as clicking Places >
ptg
Home Folder.
So, let’s play with File Browser and see what you can do with it. The ﬁrst
important skills to learn involve general ﬁle management. Many of the
tasks you need to do can be achieved by right-clicking your ﬁle/folder and
selecting the relevant option. There are also a number of options in the
Edit menu.
First, create a folder by right-clicking the main part of the window and
selecting Create Folder. A folder is added, and you can type in the name of
it. If you change your mind about the name, rename it by right-clicking
and selecting Rename. If you double-click on a folder, you can access it and
perform the same operations within that folder.
QUICK TIP
Just as folders and directories are the same thing, so are folders and subfolders . . . well,
almost. When we refer to subfolders, we are referring to folders contained within another
folder. For example, /home is a folder, while we can refer to /home/mako as a subfolder of
/home.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Managing Your Files
91
File Browser is also ﬂexible in how your ﬁles are displayed. You can view
the ﬁles and folders as either the default collection of icons or as a list. To
switch to the list view, select View > View As List. You can also conﬁgure
the organization of how your ﬁles and folders are displayed by right-click-
ing the main part of the window and selecting one of the options in the
Arrange Items menu. Play with each of these options to see which ones
work best for you.
QUICK TIP
Just like in the file dialog, File Browser displays each of the different parts of the path as dif-
ferent buttons. As an example, /home/mako/work would have three buttons: home, mako,
and work.
Selecting, Copying, and Moving Files and Folders
Copying and moving ﬁles and folders are simple tasks with File Browser
and can be done in a number of different ways. To test this, create two
folders called Work and Invoices in your home directory. Save some ﬁles
ptg
inside each folder. You can quickly create empty ﬁles by double-clicking
the folder to go into it, right-clicking, selecting Create Document > Empty
File, and renaming the ﬁle to something useful. With a couple of folders
now complete with ﬁles in them, let’s move them around.
One method is to use two windows. Right-click the Work folder, and select
Open in new window. You now have two windows open, one with the con-
tents of Work and one with the contents of your home directory. Now copy
the Invoices folder to the Work folder by clicking it and dragging it over to
the second window (which shows the contents of Work). By default, drag-
ging from one window to another copies the item.
Another option is to select what you want to copy and paste it. Selecting
items can again be done in a number of ways. One method is to click each
ﬁle/folder while holding down the Shift or Ctrl keys to make multiple selec-
tions. The difference between the two keys is that Shift allows you to select a
number of ﬁles and folders next to each other, and Ctrl selects independent
ﬁles and folders from anywhere in the folder-listing view. When you have
selected what should be copied, right-click and select Cut or Copy. Cut will
From the Library of Wow! eBook

92
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
copy the original ﬁles but remove them, and Copy will just copy them while
leaving the original ﬁles intact. Now go to the destination folder, right-click
it, and select Paste. The ﬁles/folders are now added.
Using the Sidebar
The sidebar in File Browser can be changed to a variety of views that
should cater to virtually all tastes. Each of these different sidebar views has
a range of functions. Table 3-1 explains each one.
Although you will probably stick with one in particular, it is not uncom-
mon to switch between options to achieve a particular task. For this rea-
son, the ﬂexibility provided by the range of sidebar options is useful. You
can ﬁnd out more about using File Browser at http://live.gnome.org/
DocumentationProject/UserGuide/Nautilus, where it is referred to using
its ofﬁcial GNOME name, Nautilus.
ptg
TIP
Drag and Drop
If you want to put something in the Places view, drag and drop the item. The Ubuntu desktop
is filled with drag-and-drop shortcuts like this. If you think something could be dragged and
dropped, try it!
Table 3-1 The Different File Browser Sidebar Options
Option
Feature
Places
(Default view) Includes the devices and bookmarks in the sidebar
that you typically see in the File Browser.
Information
Displays some limited information about the current folder.
Tree
Displays a tree view similar to Windows/Mac OS X. Those of you
who love the way Windows/Mac OS X works may want to use this.
History
Displays a history of the folders you have clicked on.
Notes
Allows you to write notes in the sidebar that are stored in the
folder. This is handy when you need to explain or make comments
about the current folder.
Emblems
Lists the files and folders that have specific emblems attached.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Managing Your Files
93
Graphically Accessing Remote Files
Within the Ubuntu desktop, you can use the same powerful ﬁle manager to
manage ﬁles that are on a remote server, either on your local network or in
far-ﬂung parts of the world via the Internet. This feature is incredibly useful
when you need to transfer lots of ﬁles around, such as when you work on
Web pages or need to make your work remotely available to someone else.
To access these ﬁles, you can connect to the server in various ways, each of
which requires a connection proﬁle. This proﬁle conﬁgures the connection,
and you need to gather your server’s settings to create it.
To set up the connection, click Places > Connect to Server, and you will see
the dialog shown in Figure 3-14.
When the dialog box appears, select the type of connection from the
combo box. The box then adjusts to display the settings required, and you
should make sure the Name to Use for Connection box contains a descrip-
tive name for the connection, such as “Work Server” or “Web Site.” When
you have added the settings, click the Connect button to continue.
ptg
An icon now appears on your desktop for the connection. Double-click the
icon, and you are asked for a password to the server. Enter this password,
and you are then asked if you would like to store your passwords in the
keyring. The desktop keyring provides a convenient place to store all of
your connection passwords, and you need to remember only the password
Figure 3-14 Access your remote server’s files graphically on your desktop.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

94
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
for the keyring itself. If you choose to store the password in the keyring, you
are asked for a password for it. In the future, whenever you double-click the
icon to access the server, you will be asked for the keyring password.
When you have been authenticated to access the server, your ﬁles appear in
a ﬁle manager window, and you can use the ﬁle manager as normal.
You can also use File Browser to access Samba and NFS shared drives, FTP
servers, remote ssh connections, and more by using the correct preﬁx in an
entry in the Location box, such at ssh://accountname@192.168.1.109 to
access an account on a computer at that IP address on your network via
ssh. Use smb:// for Samba, nfs:// and ftp:// for those protocols.
QUICK TIP
You can learn more about the protocols File Browser can use to connect to shared storage
and how to use them at http://library.gnome.org/users/user-guide/stable/gosnautilus-515.
html.en.
ptg
Ubuntu and Multimedia
In recent years, multimedia has become an essential part of computing.
Watching DVDs and videos and listening to CDs and music have become
part and parcel of the modern desktop computer experience. These multi-
media capabilities have been further bolstered by the huge popularity of
legal music downloading. With a range of online stores for a variety of dif-
ferent types of music, it is not uncommon to listen to most of your music
without ever seeing a little shiny silver disk.
Installing Codecs
Multimedia ﬁles and disks come in a variety of different types, and each
type uses a special codec to compress the content to a smaller size while
retaining a particular level of quality. To play this media, you need to
ensure that you have the relevant codecs installed. Ubuntu now makes this
easier by suggesting packages that provide a suitable codec when you open
a ﬁle that isn’t supported by the ones that are currently installed. Simply
double-click the ﬁle you want to open, and you should be provided with a
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu and Multimedia
95
list of packages that you can install to enable support for the ﬁle you have
tried to open. Select the packages that seem appropriate, and click Install.
QUICK TIP
If you double-click a file but no packages are suggested, you may need to change the pack-
age filter in the top right-hand corner to All Available Applications.
Codecs still remain a problem for open source software because of the
legal restrictions placed upon them. Certain codecs (including MP3, Win-
dows Media Format, QuickTime, and RealMedia) are proprietary and as
such have restrictions placed on their use, distribution, and licensing.
Although developers in the open source community have gone away and
created free implementations of some of these codecs, the licensing that
surrounds them conﬂicts with the legal and philosophical position that
Ubuntu has set. These codecs are excluded not only because they are
legally dubious but also because they disagree with Ubuntu’s ethic of cre-
ptg
ating a distribution that consists entirely of free software in the most free
sense of the word.
QUICK TIP
If you want to find out more about installing these codecs, see https://help.ubuntu.com/
community/RestrictedFormats.
To work toward resolving these problems, a number of developers are work-
ing on free codecs such as Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora that provide high-
quality results and open licensing. The Ogg Vorbis codec is used on audio
and can provide better results than MP3 at a smaller ﬁle size. The Ogg The-
ora codec is used for video and competes with the MPEG-4 codec. Ubuntu
includes the Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora codecs by default, and you can
encode and play back any media that uses those codecs out of the box.
Although the world would be a better place if all codecs were free, the real-
ity is different, and many Ubuntu users still want to play media com-
pressed with proprietary codecs. Table 3-2 shows the most typical codecs
used to encode and play back media and lists their support in Ubuntu.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

96
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
Table 3-2 Codec Support
Codec
File Type
Included
Supported
MP3
.MP3
No
Yes
Ogg
.ogg
Yes
N/A
Flac
.flac
Yes
N/A
Windows Media Audio
.wma
No
Yes*
Wave
.wav
Yes
N/A
MPEG-1
.mpg
No
Yes
MPEG-2
.mpg
No
Yes
Raw DV
.dv
Yes
N/A
Quicktime
.mov
No
Yes*
Windows Media Video
.wmv
No
Yes*
* These codecs involve the installation of nonfree software that may or may not be legal in
your country.
ptg
Listening to Audio Files
Ubuntu includes a powerful music player called Rhythmbox to organize
and play your music ﬁle collection. By default, Ubuntu will look for music
in the Music directory accessible in the Places menu.
Using Rhythmbox Load Rhythmbox (Figure 3-15) by clicking on Appli-
cations > Sound & Video > Rhythmbox Music Player. The Rhythmbox
window is split into a number of different panes, each displaying different
details about your music collection. The left pane (Source) lets you select
the source of the music, such as your media library, podcasts, and Internet
radio. Each of these options has a browser pane available to display the
source of the content. As an example, when you use the Library, one pane
displays the artists and one displays the albums. You can use this to navi-
gate your music.
Listening to Podcasts Podcasts are audio shows that you can subscribe
to, and they are increasingly becoming the new way to listen to audio and
music. When you subscribe to a podcast, each new release is automatically
downloaded for you. This makes it extremely convenient to regularly lis-
ten to audio shows.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu and Multimedia
97
Figure 3-15 Rhythmbox is a great place to look after your music collection.
ptg
Rhythmbox has good support for Podcast feeds, and subscribing to a feed
is simple. In the sidebar, right-click the Podcasts entry and click New Pod-
cast Feed. Paste in the feed by right-clicking the box and selecting Paste.
The ﬁles are automatically downloaded, and you can listen to them by
double-clicking on them. Each time you start Rhythmbox, a check is made
to see if any new episodes exist, and if so, they are downloaded.
NOTE
Rhythmbox and iPods
Rhythmbox can also read songs from your iPod—just plug it in and it will display in Rhythmbox.
Rhythmbox can read from the iPod but may not be able to write to all iPods.
Playing and Ripping CDs
When you pop a CD into your CD drive, Audio CD Extractor (Sound
Juicer) automatically loads to play your CD. If you are connected to the
Internet, the CD is looked up on the Internet, and the album details and
song titles are displayed.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

98
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
Ripping Songs as Oggs Sound Juicer is not just a CD player but a ripper
too. Using a ripper you can convert the songs on the CD into ﬁles that you
can play on your computer. By default, Sound Juicer rips the ﬁles in the Ogg
format, which provides better sound quality than MP3 at a smaller size. By
default, the ripped ﬁles are stored in the format discussed earlier, with each
artist as a folder and albums as subfolders.
To rip the songs, just select the checkboxes of the songs you want ripped
(by default, all songs are selected), and then click Extract. Each song is
then stored in your Music folder, and the song titles are used as the names
of the ﬁles.
Ripping Songs as FLACs Sound Juicer is capable of supporting the
audiophile-preferred FLAC format. Just change the output format in the
program’s preferences.
Ripping Songs as MP3s Although the default Ogg support or free FLAC
formats are recommended in most situations, you may prefer to rip MP3
ptg
ﬁles if you have a digital audio player that does not support Ogg or FLAC
ﬁles. To do this, you need to conﬁgure Sound Juicer to enable MP3 support.
You should ﬁrst use Synaptic to install the gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-
multiverse package (see Chapter 4 for more details on installing packages).
Next, in Sound Juicer, click Edit > Preferences and choose the CD Quality,
MP3 (MP3 audio) proﬁle from the Output Format options.
Buying Music
Canonical has added a special new option within Rhythmbox. You may
now buy music through the Ubuntu One Music Store alongside Jamendo
and Magnatune. While Jamendo and Magnatune are great sources for cre-
ative commons and other open-licensed music, for the ﬁrst time, major
and minor label artists will have their music available directly from within
Ubuntu. These are the songs you would typically ﬁnd in your local record
shop or on a radio station. Music in the Ubuntu One Music Store will be
encoded at a minimum of 256 kbps in MP3 format without any digital
rights management (DRM). An Ubuntu One account (mentioned earlier
in the chapter) is required to purchase music.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu and Multimedia
99
NOTE
You can learn more about the Ubuntu One Music Store at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne/
MusicStore.
Interacting with Photos
F-Spot is a photo management program that you may use to import your
pictures, organize them, and perform basic touch-ups like removing red
eye, cropping, or simple color adjustment. When F-Spot imports photos, it
reads the metadata embedded in the image ﬁle and then sorts the images by
date. Once done, it creates a timeline that allows you to view photos easily
as a group, individually, and even as a full-screen slideshow. You can export
your photos individually or in groups directly from F-Spot to well-known
Web services like Flickr or Google’s Picasa, to a folder, or even to a CD you
could give to a friend or family member. You can ﬁnd F-Spot in the menu at
Applications > Graphics > F-Spot Photo Manager. More information about
F-Spot is available at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/F-SpotHowto.
ptg
Watching Videos
To watch videos in Ubuntu, you need to ensure that you have the correct
codecs installed. As discussed earlier, some of these codecs are available
separately due to the legal implications of including them with the
Ubuntu system. Although the new process for suggesting and installing
codecs should cover most popular types of ﬁles, you should still refer to
the Ubuntu wiki at http://wiki.ubuntu.com for details of how to install
ones that are not recognized.
Using Totem To watch videos in Ubuntu, you use the Totem media player
(Figure 3-16). Load it by clicking Applications > Sound & Video > Movie
Player.
To watch a video on your hard disk, click Movie > Open, and select the ﬁle
from the disk.
TIP
Another Way to Load Files into Totem
You can also load multimedia files into Totem by double-clicking them on your desktop or in
the file manager.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

100
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
Figure 3-16 Totem is a simple and flexible media player.
ptg
Totem also supports video streams. To watch a stream, click Movie > Open
Location, and enter the Internet address for the stream. The video feed is
then loaded and displayed.
Getting DVDs to Work Ubuntu comes with DVD support for unen-
crypted DVDs. With the DVD industry being what it is, the majority of
DVDs come encrypted, and if you want to watch them, you need to ensure
that a library that can decrypt these DVDs is installed. Unfortunately, this
library needs to be installed separately and is not included with Ubuntu.
Refer to the Ubuntu restricted formats page at https://help.ubuntu.com/
community/RestrictedFormats for details.
With the library installed, insert a disk into your computer, and Ubuntu
will automatically start Totem to view the disk. Alternatively, ﬁre up Totem,
and click Movie > Play Disk to play the DVD. Totem doesn’t support DVD
menus but you can still use it to play a DVD.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu and Multimedia
101
If you are settling down to watch a movie, you may want to conﬁgure a few
other settings. First click View > Aspect Ratio to select the correct aspect
ratio for your screen, and then select View > Fullscreen to switch to full-
screen mode. To exit full-screen mode, just move your mouse, and some
on-screen controls will appear.
TIP
Control Totem with a Remote Control
Totem supports the Linux Infrared Control (LIRC) library so you can use a remote control
while watching your media.
If you want to use a remote control with your Ubuntu computer, you need
to install the Linux Infrared Control (LIRC) package in Synaptic. LIRC is
the library, and it supports a wide range of remote control units.
The ﬁrst step is to determine which LIRC driver is required for your par-
ticular remote control. Take a look at the list of remotes on the LIRC site at
ptg
www.lirc.org, or use your favorite search engine if your remote is not listed
on the site.
LIRC includes a number of built-in drivers. You can see which ones are
included by running the following command:
foo@bar:~$ lircd –driver=help
When you know which driver is required and you know your installed
LIRC supports your hardware, you can edit the hardware.conf ﬁle in the
/etc/lirc ﬁle to conﬁgure which one is used. Simply set the DRIVER line to
the driver you selected. Then restart LIRC:
foo@bar:~$ /etc/init.d/lirc restart
With LIRC ready and running, you can test it by running the following
command:
foo@bar:~$ /etc/init.d/lirc restart
From the Library of Wow! eBook

102
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
When you press the buttons on your remote control, a code should appear.
This code can be mapped to a button on your remote by editing the lircd.
conf ﬁle in /etc/lirc. For more information, see http://help.ubuntu. com/
community/ LIRC.
Creating Videos
PiTiVi is a movie editor that is based on the same media framework as
Rhythmbox and Totem, GStreamer. As a result, it handles any video for-
mat supported by GStreamer, which makes it very powerful indeed. It has
interface options ranging from the simplicity of iMovie to a more complex
professional view, as in Complex View. The goal is an easy-to-use but pow-
erful piece of software for taking your video footage from your camera and
editing it, adding effects and transitions, and mixing audio to create your
own personal cinematic masterpiece. More information about PiTiVi is
available at www.pitivi.org. PiTiVi can be found in your menu at Applica-
tions > Sound & Video > Pitivi Video Editor.
ptg
Exploring the Ubuntu Landscape
Unlike many other operating systems, Ubuntu includes a comprehensive
suite of applications right inside the system. This range of tools has been
selected to allow you to install Ubuntu and get your work done, communi-
cate with other people, read and create documents, watch and/or listen to
media, and more. Unfortunately, due to space restrictions, this book can
only skim over the surface of available applications.
To help remedy this a bit, here is a quick summary of many of the applica-
tions listed on the Applications menu in Ubuntu, including how to ﬁnd
the applications and a brief description.
gedit Text Editor
Applications > Accessories > gedit Text Editor
This simple yet powerful text editor is ideal for editing documents,
making quick notes, and programming. Included is a range of plug-
ins for spell checking, statistics, file listings, and more.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu and Multimedia
103
Calculator
Applications > Accessories > Calculator
For those times when you need to figure out a percentage or calculate
whether you are getting a raw deal from your employer, the calculator
is there. It provides a range of functionality for simple and scientific
calculations.
Terminal
Applications > Accessories > Terminal
Underpinning the desktop is an incredibly powerful command-line
core. This application puts a window around a command-line
interface and allows you to configure transparency, fonts, behavior,
and more. Essential for the command-line junkies among you.
Quadrapassel (ex-Gnometris)
Applications > Games > Quadrapassel
ptg
If you have too much time on your hands, a surefire way to waste it is to
play this version of Tetris. If you decide that single-player Tetris is not
enough, you can install gtetrinet from the Ubuntu Software Center.
Mahjongg
Applications > Games > Mahjongg
For those of you who actually understand the rules of Mahjongg, this
application provides a great implementation of the game.
Sound Recorder
Applications > Sound & Video > Sound Recorder
If you need to record something, such as your voice for a podcast or
audio message, you can use this simple tool.
System Monitor
System > Administration > System Monitor
To get an idea of the current performance or load on your computer,
click on this tool. The System Monitor lets you know which
From the Library of Wow! eBook

104
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
applications are running and how much memory/processing power
they are using, and it also allows you to kill or restart processes that
are hogging the resources.
Sudoku
Applications > Games > Sudoku
The increasingly popular logic game arrives on Ubuntu.
Disk Usage Analyzer
Applications > Accessories > Disk Usage Analyzer
Bits and bytes never looked so good! In case you were wondering
exactly where all your disk space had gone, this will help solve the
mystery.
Other Applications to Try There are literally thousands of available pack-
ptg
ages that can be installed on your Ubuntu computer. These packages span
a range of different areas, and this section highlights some of the popular
ones. Software installation is covered in Chapter 4.
Inkscape
Package to install: inkscape
Inkscape (Figure 3-17) is a drawing package for creating Scalable
Vector Graphics (SVG). Ever since the SVG format was introduced, it
has taken the design world by storm. SVG allows the creation of
graphics that can scale to any size. Inkscape is a hugely flexible tool
for creating such graphics, and a huge range of icons and artwork in
open source projects are made in Inkscape.
Gimp
Package to install: gimp
The GIMP Image Editor (Figure 3-18) is a powerful raster or bitmap
graphics program that lets you draw, paint, edit images, and much
more. It is similar to proprietary graphics programs and has the ability
to process and create images using layers, plug-ins, and much more.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu and Multimedia
105
Figure 3-17 Inkscape
ptg
Figure 3-18 GIMP Image Editor
Blender
Package to install: blender
Blender (Figure 3-19) is an incredibly powerful 3D modeling,
animation, rendering, and production studio. Blender amasses an
impressive range of functionality for creating photorealistic scenes,
animations, and real-time virtual walkthroughs. Blender is also fully
scriptable in Python.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

106
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
ptg
Figure 3-19 Blender
Scribus
Package to install: scribus
Scribus (Figure 3-20) lets you lay out pages graphically and create
publication-ready output in PDF and Postscript formats. It is ideal
for newsletters, magazines, technical documentation, and more. It
supports CMYK color, Unicode text, and many graphic formats in the
creation process.
Bluefish Editor
Package to install: bluefish
For those of you who want to create Web pages but prefer to write
code, Bluefish Editor (Figure 3-21) is a lightweight but feature-rich
editor with support for a range of languages as well as HTML and CSS.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu and Multimedia
107
Figure 3-20 Scribus
ptg
Figure 3-21 Bluefish
From the Library of Wow! eBook

108
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
Tracker Search Tool
Package to install: tracker
Have you ever tried to search your computer for a file, but couldn’t
remember the file’s name? Tracker (Figure 3-22) was created to help
in these situations by indexing the contents of your hard drive using
the metadata and tags attached to your files and allowing you to
search with greater precision and accuracy.
Audio CD Extractor
Package to install: sound-juicer
Many of us have legally purchased compact disks that we would like
to listen to using our computer or portable music player. Audio CD
Extractor (Figure 3-23) will help you record the songs to your hard
drive so you may do so. With this package installed, it is also possible
to rip a CD from within Rhythmbox, making the process even more
convenient.
ptg
Figure 3-22 Tracker
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Moving to the Next Ubuntu Release
109
ptg
Figure 3-23 Sound Juicer: An audio CD extractor
Moving to the Next Ubuntu Release
So your system is up to date and current, but Ubuntu doesn’t like to let the
grass grow. One of the original goals for Ubuntu was to have frequent
releases, and with only one notable exception (the 6.06 LTS release, which
was delayed by two months), there have been six months between each
release since 4.10. This book has been revised for the latest version—
10.04—but another release will be along soon. Release 10.04, like the earlier
8.04 and 6.06, is a Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu, supported
for three years on the desktop and ﬁve on the server. All other versions are
supported for eighteen months and at the same time are superseded by a
new version every six months. Essentially, if you are running the LTS ver-
sion, you might not be too interested in moving to the latest and greatest
From the Library of Wow! eBook

110
Chapter 3
Using Ubuntu on the Desktop
until the next LTS version comes out, but if you are running a regular
release version, you might be the sort of person who is more interested in
the latest and greatest software updates. In either case, this is how you per-
form the upgrade.
Doing the Actual Upgrade
A graphical tool called Update Manager, found in the System > Adminis-
tration menu, tells you when a new version of Ubuntu is available and
walks you through the upgrade process. Note that if you already know or
want to learn the manual method, that is ﬁne too. Both means will achieve
the same result.
When a new release is available, Update Manager will alert you, as in Fig-
ure 3-24. All you need to do is click on the Upgrade button to start the
process. You will ﬁrst be shown the release notes, which mention new fea-
tures or any outstanding bugs. After you click on the Upgrade button on
ptg
Figure 3-24 Upgrading from Ubuntu 9.10 using Update Manager and an Internet
connection
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Summary
111
Figure 3-25 Upgrading from Ubuntu 9.10 using a 10.04 CD
this screen, the necessary changes to your software repositories are made,
and then the program downloads and installs the new distribution. You may
be prompted if you have changed any conﬁguration ﬁles. After the actual
installation is complete, you will be told which, if any, packages are no longer
ofﬁcially supported by Ubuntu (have moved to the universe repository).
Last, all you need to do is restart your computer when prompted, and you
will begin enjoying the new release.
You can also initiate an upgrade simply by inserting a CD that contains a
ptg
newer version of Ubuntu than the one you are currently running, as
shown in Figure 3-25. Follow the prompts for an upgrade experience sim-
ilar to using the update manager.
Summary
In this chapter, you’ve learned how to start using the core features of your
new desktop. These concepts should allow you to perform most of the
day-to-day tasks when using your computer and provide a base from
which to explore the other applications installed on your system. This
solid grounding in the desktop paves the way for you to meander through
the rest of the book, learning about the more advanced uses of your new
system and exploring the enormous ﬂexibility that Ubuntu provides.
Always remember that there is a wealth of help and documentation avail-
able online. If you ever ﬁnd yourself stuck, take a look at the Ubuntu Web
site at www.ubuntu.com or the Ubuntu documentation at http://help.
ubuntu.com and make use of the forums, wiki, mailing lists, and IRC chan-
nels. Much of this is easily found in links provided for you in System >
About Ubuntu in your menu.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

CHAPTER 4
Gaining Greater
4
Proficiency
Adding and Removing Programs and Packages
Keeping Your Computer Updated
Adding Additional Users
Using and Abusing Devices and Media
Configuring a Printer in Ubuntu
How Linux Stores and Organizes Files
ptg
The Terminal
Backup Strategies
Working with Windows Programs
Summary
113
From the Library of Wow! eBook

AS YOU’VE SEEN SO FAR, Ubuntu is relatively straightforward to set up and
use for the common day-to-day tasks. With time, though, most users want
to change their software, add and experiment with other software options
available in Ubuntu, install and use hardware devices like printers, access
remote ﬁles, use the famous (and sometimes feared) terminal, and maybe
even run some Windows programs. Ubuntu provides many ways to do
each of these things. While they are a little more complex than the material
covered in previous chapters, the Ubuntu community has worked hard to
make them as easy as possible, and this chapter gets you started with each
of them and more.
Adding and Removing Programs and Packages
While Ubuntu already includes the things most people need, sometimes
you want or need something extra, such as a desktop publishing applica-
tion for school or a game to pass the time. The easiest way to add these is
with Ubuntu Software Center, which is extremely simple to use but has a
few limitations. This section also highlights a couple of other options.
ptg
Work done using one tool to add or remove software is recognized by the
related tools, so it is okay to mix and match which ones you use.
Using Ubuntu Software Center
Like other tools discussed later in this chapter, Ubuntu Software Center
installs software from the online Ubuntu software repositories.
To launch Ubuntu Software Center, simply click on the entry at the bot-
tom of the Applications menu. When it is run for the ﬁrst time, and occa-
sionally afterward, it will take a few moments to initialize itself and the list
of available and installed applications. Once this is complete, you will see
the main screen shown in Figure 4-1.
The interface is divided into two parts. On the left are options to see what
software is already installed or to get new software. If you highlight the Get
Software option, the right panel provides you with a list of software cate-
gories to explore, including a Featured category that includes some of the
more popular choices for software available from the Ubuntu repositories
but not installed by default, as in Figure 4-2. To get more information or to
114
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Adding and Removing Programs and Packages
115
Figure 4-1 Ubuntu Software Center main screen
ptg
Figure 4-2 Featured applications in Ubuntu Software Center
From the Library of Wow! eBook

116
Chapter 4
Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
install an item, click on the appropriate option. It really is that easy. To navi-
gate back to the main menu, simply click the previous option from the hier-
archy at the top of the pane or Get Software from the list in the left pane.
By default, Ubuntu Software Center shows all applications that are sup-
ported by Ubuntu, including those supported by community volunteers
called MOTUs (more on them in Chapter 7). While using Ubuntu Soft-
ware Center to install new applications from both the ofﬁcially supported
Ubuntu-provided repositories as well as the community repositories is
perfect for most users, there are times when a more conservative approach
to software choices may be appropriate. In this case, you may limit the
number of applications shown from the View menu by selecting Canoni-
cal-Maintained Applications in order to see only those pieces of software
that are actively watched over and updated by Canonical, the company
behind Ubuntu. This is sometimes preferred in corporate environments
that desire or require a stronger guarantee of support.
ptg
Terminology
You might want to know a few terms before we continue. These are words
used to describe how the software gets installed on your machine as well as
how the system works.
APT: Advanced Package Tool, or APT, describes the entire system of
online repositories and the parts that download them and install
them. This is not highly visible when using graphic interface–based
systems like Ubuntu Software Center but very clear when using
command-line tools like apt-get or aptitude. Either way, APT is
at work.
Repositories or software channels: In the Ubuntu world, these giant
online warehouses of software are divided between official Ubuntu
repositories and unofficial ones.
Packages: Applications are stored in packages that not only describe
the program you want to install but also tell your package manager
what the program needs to run and how to safely install and uninstall
it. This makes the process of dealing with software dependencies
smooth and easy for end users.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Adding and Removing Programs and Packages
117
Dependencies: Dependencies comprise the software that is needed as
a foundation for other software to run. For example, APT is needed
for Ubuntu Software Center to run because APT takes care of many
of the details behind the scenes.
Managing Software with Synaptic
Synaptic is a powerful graphical tool called a package manager. While
Ubuntu Software Center deals with packages that contain applications,
Synaptic deals with all packages, including applications, system libraries,
and other pieces of software. Changing the system on this level is more
complicated but also allows more detailed control. For instance, you can
choose to install a speciﬁc library if you need it for a program that is not
available in a package format.
TIP
What’s a Library?
In this context, a library is a collection of software functions that may be useful to more than
one program. This collection is put into a separate package to save space by not forcing
ptg
multiple programs to include the same code but instead simply refer to the library when a
certain function the library contains is needed. It also makes updates easier, such as when a
security issue is fixed, because the programming code may be changed in one place while
benefiting all programs that use the function. Libraries streamline software support to be
more efficient.
Synaptic may be found at System > Administration > Synaptic Package Man-
ager. Launch it and you will see the main window, as shown in Figure 4-3.
TIP
What’s in a Name?
Why the name Synaptic? Synaptic is a play on words, based on your brain’s synapses and
the word APT.
Installing a Package As with Ubuntu Software Center, installing pack -
ages with Synaptic is fairly easy. After you find the package you wish to
install, click the checkbox to the right of the name of the package and select
Mark for Installation. A dialog box may pop up (Figure 4-4) showing you
what dependencies need to be installed—if any—which you can accept by
From the Library of Wow! eBook

118
Chapter 4
Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
Figure 4-3 Synaptic main window
ptg
Figure 4-4 Pop-up on Mark for Installation
clicking the Mark button. After you have selected all the package(s) you
wish to install, click Apply on the Synaptic toolbar to begin installation.
Removing a Package To remove a package, click on the green box, and
choose Mark for Removal. As with installing a package, you may be asked
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Adding and Removing Programs and Packages
119
to mark additional packages for removal (Figure 4-5). These are generally
packages that depend on the presence of the main package you are mark-
ing for removal. If you wish to remove all the configuration files too,
choose Mark for Complete Removal. After you have selected the packages
you wish to remove, click Apply on the toolbar to start the actual process
of removing the package.
Finding That Package So you are looking for a package but don’t know
where to start? The fastest and easiest way is to simply enter a word in the
Quick Search box at the top center of the Synaptic window. You can also
click the Search button on the toolbar or type Ctrl+F to launch a search
dialog box. By default, the regular search looks at both the package name
and the description, but it can also search just by name or a number of
other fields.
If you know what section the package is in, select it in the left pane (you
may need to go back to the Sections pane). Select the button in the lower
left labeled Sections, and browse through the packages in that section.
ptg
In addition to Sections, there are other package listing and sorting options
worth exploring that you may access using the buttons at the bottom left
of the Synaptic window. Status lets you sort according to installation sta-
tus. Origin sorts according to the repository from which the software was
installed (or no repository for manually installed software, see the section
Figure 4-5 Pop-up on Mark for Removal
From the Library of Wow! eBook

120
Chapter 4
Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
later in this chapter on installing software that is not in a repository). You
can even make custom ﬁlters to aid your search.
Keeping Your Computer Updated
No operating system or piece of software is perfect. Because of this,
Ubuntu developers will release security and other updates as needed.
These are placed into the Ubuntu repositories and are quite easy to install.
Most of the updates to your machine will be security related. This means
that the developers have found a weakness in a particular program in
Ubuntu and have released a ﬁx for it. There will also be a small number of
updates to ﬁx some critical bugs. For a home user, there is generally no
reason not to install these right away, as not installing them might leave
your computer open to security breaches. While Ubuntu is signiﬁcantly
more secure from the main concerns of some operating systems, such as
fears involving viruses and spyware, no computer is perfectly secure
ptg
because no software is perfect. When problems are discovered that could
lead to security issues, like buffer overﬂows or remote exploits, they are
ﬁxed and released as quickly as possible, even if the danger is quite remote.
Ubuntu developers also have a very strict policy about not putting new
release versions of programs with function changes or new features into
stable versions of Ubuntu. This practice keeps your system more stable by
not introducing new problems.
Installing Updates
Helpfully, Ubuntu checks the Ubuntu repositories once a day to see if
there are any new versions of software you have installed, and it tells you
when you need to update your machine.
Ubuntu 10.04 handles package updates by launching update-manager.
Users are notiﬁed of security updates on a daily basis and are also notiﬁed
when new Ubuntu versions are released. Because 10.04 is an LTS release,
by default it will only notify of new LTS releases, meaning that it would
likely be silent until April 2012. This behavior may be changed using Sys-
tem > Administration > Update Manager and clicking Settings.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Keeping Your Computer Updated
121
Learning about What Was Updated
The update window, shown in Figure 4-6, will also show you speciﬁcally
what is going to be ﬁxed. In the details pane, it will show you what got
ﬁxed and how. It might also list a CVE number. The CVE number is a
unique identiﬁer for a security vulnerability. You can look it up on http://
cve.mitre.org to see what the exact ﬂaw was. However, most people don’t
need to worry (and really don’t care) about these details.
I Want to Install an Application That Is Not

in the Repositories
Although the repositories contain a huge selection of packages, sometimes
the package you need is not included. The ﬁrst thing you should check is
that you have enabled the additional repositories such as universe and
multiverse. You can do this from your menu at System > Administration >
Software Sources. In the Ubuntu Software tab, ensure that the boxes are
ptg
Figure 4-6 The update window
From the Library of Wow! eBook

122
Chapter 4
Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
checked for main, universe, restricted, and multiverse. (See help.ubuntu.
com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu for more details.)
TIP
The Repository Run-Down
The universe repository contains the thousands of packages that are part of the Debian dis-
tribution upon which Ubuntu is based. All of these packages are entirely free and supported
by a community of Ubuntu contributors.
The multiverse repository contains a number of packages that are freely available to down-
load but are not fully open source. If you want to run only open source software, you may
not want to use this repository.
If you have enabled these extra repositories and your package is still not
there, have a quick hunt around with a search engine to see if you can ﬁnd
a repository (known as a Debian or APT repository) for your package. If
you ﬁnd one, use the Repositories dialog box you have just played with to
add the new repository, and then use Synaptic to install the package.
One common type of extra repository you may encounter is called a PPA,
ptg
or personal package archive. There is good information available for using
PPAs at https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA/InstallingSoftware .
If no repository is available, look for a Debian package (.deb) for the appli-
cation, most likely available from the software company’s Web site, such as
Adobe does with its Reader software or Skype with its VOIP software. If
you ﬁnd one, download it, and double-click it to install. If no Debian
package exists, look for an Autopackage. (An upcoming subsection, “I
Downloaded an Autopackage, but I Don’t Know How to Run It,” provides
details about Autopackage installation.)
Finally, if all else fails, you may need to download the source code and com-
pile it using instructions found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/
CompilingSoftware.
Changing Your Menu Layout
Although the main Applications, Places, and System menus are logical by
default, you may want to further customize them by moving entries into
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Keeping Your Computer Updated
123
different submenus, not displaying certain items, and making other tweaks.
All of this is easily done with the built-in menu editor.
To edit the menus, open the option at System > Preferences > Main Menu
or right click on one of the menus and choose Edit Menus. Using either
method, the menu editor will appear, as shown in Figure 4-7.
The menu editor is fairly intuitive. To adjust which items are shown, click
on a submenu in the left-hand pane and change the Show checkbox for the
items you want to show or hide. To add a new item, select the submenu the
item should appear in, and then click the New Item button on the right-
hand side. The box shown in Figure 4-8 will appear.
Menu items can be applications (the default), applications running in ter-
minals, or ﬁles. Select the appropriate setting for the Type box for your
menu item, or leave it as Application. Provide a name for your menu item
ptg
Figure 4-7 The menu editor lets you easily change the Ubuntu menus.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

124
Chapter 4
Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
Figure 4-8 Feel free to add your own menu items.
in the Name box, the command to run in the Command box (or the loca-
tion of your ﬁle in the Location box if you changed the type to File), and a
brief description in the Comment box. You can also use the Browse button
to select the application to run (or the ﬁle to open). Finally, click the default
icon off to the side, and select an icon for the item. Click OK to ﬁnish
adding the new menu item.
ptg
Adding Additional Users
Some computer systems end up being used by only one person, but many
are shared among several people. When more than one person uses a com-
puter system, it is always a good idea to create a unique account on the sys-
tem for each person. This also gives everyone who uses the system the
freedom to customize their experience without affecting the experience of
other users (e.g., each user may choose her own desktop wallpaper or theme
and it won’t change the preferences of others). This also means that you
may create accounts with administrative privileges for people you trust to
make changes to the entire system and less privileged accounts for people
who do not need this power. This keeps your system more secure.
To add additional users, select System > Administration > Users and
Groups. In the box that appears, click the Add button in the lower left cor-
ner. In the Create New User dialog box, enter the new user’s name and a
short name the user will use to login (e.g., Matthew Helmke and matt).
You may also choose to have this user’s /home folder encrypted as it is cre-
ated. After you click OK, you will have a chance to enter a password for this
user or to generate a random password.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Using and Abusing Devices and Media
125
You can even click the option to not ask for a password from this user
when he logs in, but we don’t recommend that unless this is going to be an
account without administrative privileges and will be the default for boot-
ing in a very special case, such as a computer used primarily by children
with a limited account but with an administrative account used by an adult
for occasional maintenance.
Once you click OK on the password box, the account will be created and
listed in the Users Settings window. By default, the account created is that
of a normal user. If you want to give this new user the ability to administer
the system, or other privileges, highlight the user’s name in the list on the
left and then click Advanced Settings at the bottom right. You can change
the user’s contact information, privileges, and more from here.
You may also delete users, change and manage user groups and member-
ships, and more from this location.
If you would prefer to do this from the terminal, use the adduser command
ptg
while logged in to an account with administrative privileges:
matt@laptop:~$ sudo adduser corey
After you enter your password, this will add a new user named corey. You
will be asked several questions in the process. Answer them, and at the end,
the account will be created.
To delete a user from the command line, use the deluser command in
place of adduser in the above example. You can learn more about dealing
with users from the command line in the appendix.
Using and Abusing Devices and Media
Using devices like USB memory sticks or burning CDs in Ubuntu is
simple and intuitive. In the vast majority of cases, you just plug them in
and they work. Each device needs to be mounted before it can be used, but
Ubuntu automatically mounts it for you. The main point to remember is
to always unmount the device before you remove it. Unmounting a device
ensures all data has been copied to it before you pull it out.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

126
Chapter 4
Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
TIP
Problems Unmounting
If you have problems unmounting a device, make sure that you are not currently using it. As
an example, if you have an open file manager window looking at the files on the device, it is
currently being used and, as such, cannot be unmounted. As a general rule, just make sure
you close every program that might be using the device and everything will work fine.
If at any time you are unsure which devices are plugged into your com-
puter, click Places > Computer to see a list of the drives available.
Using USB Keyring Drives
In the last few years, USB keyrings, pens, and sticks have taken over as the
common method for moving ﬁles between different computers. These
cheap and often high-capacity little devices offer a simple and efﬁcient way
to carry your ﬁles with you. Although they come in many different shapes
and forms, they all basically work the same way in Ubuntu.
Using USB storage devices in Ubuntu is a piece of cake. Just plug them in
ptg
and a moment or two later, an icon representing the device appears on your
desktop. A ﬁle manager window also appears to display the contents of the
device. You can interact with the device and the ﬁles as you would with the
ﬁles on your hard disk. With some types of ﬁles on the drive, a helpful dia-
log box may appear offering to start a speciﬁc program relating to that ﬁle
type for you so that you may begin working with the ﬁle(s) quickly.
When you have ﬁnished using your USB device, right-click the device icon
that appeared on your desktop and select Unmount. When the icon disap-
pears from your desktop, you can safely remove it from the USB port.
Burning CDs
Burning ﬁles is simple in Ubuntu with its built-in support for CD writers.
Simply place a writable CD into the drive, and an icon appears on the desk-
top. Double-click the icon, and an empty ﬁle manager window appears.
Now drag the ﬁles to be burned into this window. When you are ready to
burn the CD, click File > Write to Disk.
A dialog box appears, and you can conﬁgure a few items before the disk is
burned. Enter a name for the disk in the Disk Name box, and use the Write
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Using and Abusing Devices and Media
127
Speed combo box to select the best write speed for your drive. If you have
an old or unreliable CD writer, you may want to select a slower speed to
prevent a burn error. Finally, click the Write Disk button to start the burn.
QUICK TIP
You can also access the burner by clicking Places > CD/DVD Burner.
Burning a CD from an Image With more and more people downloading
open source software, installation disks are often released as downloadable
.iso files. When you burn these files to a CD, the files from the disk image
are restored and the resulting CD looks just like a normal CD.
To burn an .iso ﬁle to a CD, simply right-click it and select Write to Disk.
TIP
More Complex Burning
A very useful and capable program for working with CDs and DVDs, Brasero, has been
installed by default. You will find it in the menu at Applications > Sound & Video > Brasero
Disc Burner. Brasero is capable of creating audio CDs, data CDs and DVDs, video project
DVDs and SVCDs, burning images to disks, and copying disks.
ptg
Using Floppy Disks
They aren’t seen much anymore, but you can use a ﬂoppy disk in Ubuntu.
Just insert the disk in the drive. If a ﬁle manager window doesn’t come up
automatically, you can select Places > Computer from the menu and double-
click on your ﬂoppy drive to mount it and display the ﬁles. When you have
ﬁnished using the disk, right-click the ﬂoppy drive and select Unmount.
Using Digital Cameras
When you plug a digital camera into your computer, a device icon auto-
matically appears on your desktop, and Ubuntu pops up a window asking
if you want to view the photos from your camera. You can then view the
photos and drag them from the photo viewer window over to a ﬁle man-
ager window to save the photo.
The majority of digital cameras are actually just USB devices, and you can
access the photos on them just like any other USB device, from within the
ﬁle manager.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

128
Chapter 4
Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
TIP
Ubuntu and Digital Photography
Ubuntu is a fantastic platform for digital photography and photo manipulation. F-Spot tool
provides a complete solution for managing your photo collection and can be started by
clicking on Applications > Graphics > F-Spot Photo Manager. Chapter 3 has more informa-
tion on how to use F-spot.
For photo manipulation, GIMP provides a comprehensive tool and can be installed quickly
from Ubuntu Software Center. Once installed, it can be found at Applications > Graphics >
GIMP Image Editor.
Configuring a Printer in Ubuntu
In the Linux world, conﬁguring a printer has traditionally been a challenge.
For years, newcomers to Linux have been repeatedly challenged and even
bludgeoned with scary terms, commands, and phrases that sound like a
language from another planet. Users often had to edit fairly complex text
ﬁles by hand and spend a good deal of time learning how to insert arcane
instructions just to get a printer to work. However, things have changed
with Ubuntu.
ptg
Most of the time, it is possible to add or conﬁgure a printer easily and
quickly. The one caveat is that not all printer manufacturers provide Linux
drivers for their devices. While the Linux community works very hard to
write drivers, many times the newest printer models do not have adequate
software to interact with Linux. Most printers that are older than 6 or 9
months seem to work quite well, though. You can also check before buying
a printer to see what other people have experienced by looking at the list
of models and the state of their drivers at http://www.openprinting.org/
printers. The Linux Foundation maintains that list, which is a pretty good
gauge for determining how well your model should work out of the box with
Ubuntu, making this an excellent resource when shopping for new hardware
as well as useful for troubleshooting when problems are encountered.
To get started installing your printer, go to System > Administration >
Printing (Figure 4-9).
Selecting this option will bring up the Printers window, as shown in Fig-
ure 4-10.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Conﬁguring a Printer in Ubuntu
129
ptg
Figure 4-9 Selecting the Printing application from the System > Administration
menu in Ubuntu
Figure 4-10 The GNOME Printers dialog box
From the Library of Wow! eBook

130
Chapter 4
Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
The Printer conﬁguration application allows you to add printers as well as
modify their settings. In the upcoming example, you will add a new printer
and then view its settings.
Gathering Information
The most important thing to remember when conﬁguring a printer is to
not get ahead of yourself. Before you start clicking on icons and running
anything, make sure that you have completed the following steps.
1. Note the make and model of the printer. This information is usually
printed clearly on the hardware itself. In our example, we add a
Brother MFC-7820N.
2. Plug the printer in to your computer or to the network, and turn it on.
Launching the Wizard
ptg
Once you have properly prepared to install your printer, click on the New
Printer icon. The system will then automatically search for any new con-
nected printers and will launch a New Printer wizard, shown in Figure 4-11.
In most cases, the wizards will be able to detect an attached printer auto-
matically and will include it in a list of devices on the left. If your printer is
plugged directly into a router, it is possible for the printer Wizard to ﬁnd it
by selecting Find Network Printer.
Select the device with your printer’s name, and then hit forward.
At this point, you will have to choose a printer manufacturer. If your printer
has been automatically detected, the wizard will choose a manufacturer.
Click forward.
In the next screen, you’ll be asked to choose both a model and a driver. For
autodetected printers, both should be automatically selected, and the default
driver should work. You can always change it later. If no driver is selected,
scroll through the list of options by manufacturer. Figure 4-12 shows that a
driver for the Brother MFC-7820N has been selected.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Conﬁguring a Printer in Ubuntu
131
Figure 4-11 Step 1, selecting a printer
ptg
Figure 4-12 Step 2, selecting a driver
From the Library of Wow! eBook

132
Chapter 4
Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
Sometimes you may not ﬁnd the exact model or driver for your speciﬁc
printer. Generally, if the driver does not exist for your exact model, choose
the closest one, and then test it. If that doesn’t work, you can try other
drivers intended for printers from the same manufacturer.
Click Forward to proceed with the installation. If you need to install a cus-
tom driver, click the Install Driver button. You can see this button in Fig-
ure 4-12.
Finally, you can enter a description and location for your printer, as shown
in Figure 4-13. Click Apply to complete the process and set up your printer.
Mission Accomplished!
After you click Apply, you will see your printer’s name under the Local
Printers heading. You can click on it and then print out a test page. Do so,
and make sure that the page prints correctly. If you ﬁnd that the page
prints well, you are ﬁnished. You can now print from the applications you
ptg
Figure 4-13 Step 3, entering printer location and description
From the Library of Wow! eBook

How Linux Stores and Organizes Files
133
have installed. For example, you can print from OpenOfﬁce.org, Mozilla,
or even the command line.
Remote Printing
You can also conﬁgure your Ubuntu system to send print jobs to a remote
print server. If, for example, you have a Windows system with a printer
attached on your network, simply choose the Network Printer radio but-
ton and specify the host name or IP address of the Windows system. You
will then have to specify a connection protocol.
If your Windows system is sharing a printer, you will have to specify
Samba, which is the standard way to get Linux and Windows systems to
communicate with each other. You will still have to specify a print driver,
as described earlier.
How Linux Stores and Organizes Files
ptg
If you have not used Linux before, the way that Linux stores and organizes
ﬁles is likely to be new to you because the layout is quite different from
Windows and Mac OS X.
TIP
Folders and Directories
When reading about file management, don’t get confused by the terms folders and directo-
ries—both words describe the same thing.
In the Windows world, each disk drive is labeled with an identifying letter
such as C: for your hard disk and A: for the ﬂoppy drive. In the Linux
world, however, everything is part of the same ﬁlesystem organization. As
such, if you have two or three hard disks, a CD drive, and a USB stick all
plugged in, they will all be part of the same folder structure.
The diagram shown in Figure 4-14 should give you an idea of how every-
thing hangs together.
Right at the top of the tree is the root folder, referred to as /. Inside this
folder are a number of special system folders, each with a speciﬁc use. As an
example, the /home folder contains a number of home directories for each
From the Library of Wow! eBook

134
Chapter 4
Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
Figure 4-14 Linux filesystem organization
user on the system. As such, the mako user account has the home folder set
to /home/mako.
Which Folder Does What? The folder structure in a modern Linux dis-
ptg
tribution such as Ubuntu was largely inspired by the original UNIX
foundations that were created by men with large beards. Although you
don’t really need to know what these folders do, since Ubuntu looks after
the housekeeping for you, some of you may be interested in the more
important folders. For your pleasure, we present the Linux folder hit list
in Table 4-1.
Configuration Files In Table 4-1, /etc is described as storing systemwide
configuration files for your computer. Aside from these files that affect
everyone, there are also configuration files for each specific user. Earlier,
when you customized Ubuntu’s look and feel, the settings were applied
only to your current user account. So where are those settings stored?
Inside your home directory are a number of folders that begin with a dot
(.), such as .gnome2 and .openofﬁce.org. These folders contain the conﬁg-
uration settings for user-speciﬁc applications. By default, these dot folders
are hidden in Nautilus because you rarely need to access them. For future
reference, you can view these hidden ﬁles and folders by clicking View >
Show Hidden Files or by pressing Ctrl+H.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

How Linux Stores and Organizes Files
135
Table 4-1 Linux Folders
Folder
Use
/boot
This folder contains important files to boot the computer, including the
bootloader configuration and the kernel.
/dev
Each device on your system (such as sound cards, Webcams, etc.) has an
entry in this folder. Each application accesses the device by using the
relevant items inside /dev.
/etc
Systemwide configuration files for the software installed on your system
are stored here.
/home
Each user account on the system has a home directory that is stored here.
/lib
Important system software libraries are stored here. You should never need
to delve into this world of the unknown.
/media
Media devices such as CD drives and USB sticks are referenced here when
they are plugged in. More on this later.
/mnt
Other devices can be mounted too. Again, more on this later.
/opt
Optional software can be installed here. This folder is usually used when
you want to build your own software. If you don’t build your own
software, you ignore this folder.
ptg
/proc/sys
Information about the current running status of the system is stored here.
/root
This is the home directory for the main superuser.
/bin
Software that is vital for the system to be able to boot is stored here.
/sbin
Software that should be run only by the superuser is stored here.
/usr
General software is installed here.
/var
This folder contains log files about the software on your computer.
Using Windows Files on Another Partition
For those of you who spend a considerable amount of your life on Win-
dows partitions, you may want to be able to access these partitions from
Ubuntu. This is no problem, although you will need to edit a special con-
ﬁguration ﬁle to do this. Luckily, you need to edit this ﬁle only once, and
then everything will be set up.
Ubuntu should automatically recognize any Windows partitions you have
on your computer and set them up for you; however, you may need to
From the Library of Wow! eBook

136
Chapter 4
Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
modify them or add your own. You should ﬁrst open System > Administra-
tion > Disk Utility and write down the partition numbers and ﬁlesystem
for your Windows partitions. The partition number will look something
like /dev/hdb1 or /dev/sdb1, and the ﬁlesystem will be either FAT, VFAT, or
NTFS.
The next step is to create some mount points. When your Windows parti-
tions are enabled, they are accessed via a particular folder in Ubuntu. This
is called a mount point. As an example, if you have a mount point as
/media/win1 and on your Windows partition you want to access your
Work folder, you would access it from Ubuntu as /media/win1/work.
Mount points usually live in the /media folder. Create a different mount
point for each Windows partition. As an example, if you have three Win-
dows partitions, run the following commands:
foo@bar:~$ sudo mkdir /media/win1
foo@bar:~$ sudo mkdir /media/win2
ptg
foo@bar:~$ sudo mkdir /media/win3
Now open up the following conﬁguration ﬁle:
foo@bar:~$ sudo gedit /etc/fstab
The /etc/fstab ﬁle maps partition numbers to mount points. At the bottom
of the ﬁle, add a line like this for each mount point:
/dev/hdb1 media/win1 vfat users,rw,owner,umask=000 0 0
You will need to change the partition number (the ﬁrst column), mount
point (second column), and ﬁlesystem (third column) for your relevant
partitions.
Now reload /etc/fstab to enable the partitions:
foo@bar:~$ sudo mount -a
Some hard disk icons for the new partitions now appear.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Backup Strategies
137
TIP
You can find more about fstab at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab.
The Terminal
Although Ubuntu is a desktop-driven OS, the system is running on a pow-
erful and incredibly ﬂexible command-line core. Inspired by more than 30
years of UNIX heritage, the command-line environment present on Linux
systems enables you to perform some incredibly powerful tasks by string-
ing together different commands in different ways.
The philosophy behind UNIX is to create a large number of small tools,
each of which is designed to do one task but do it incredibly well. As a
quick example to whet your appetite, there is a command called ls that
does nothing more than list ﬁles in a folder. Although listing ﬁles is its sin-
gular function in life, it has every option imaginable for listing ﬁles.
Now, ls is limited by itself, but it can be combined with other commands
ptg
that have equal levels of ﬂexibility to create impressively powerful combi-
nations. To do this, a pipeline is created using the | symbol to connect these
different commands. Pipelines can be constructed in any number of dif-
ferent ways, and once the user has even a basic knowledge of what a few
different commands do, stringing together a pipeline of commands can
solve virtually any task you can imagine in quick and powerful ways.
It should be made 100 percent clear that using the command line is not an
essential skill required to use Ubuntu, but it is a skill that can increase the
ﬂexibility of your computer for more advanced, customized tasks. Rather
than cover the use of the terminal here, we have included an excellent
introduction in the appendix.
Backup Strategies
Everyone who has used a computer for any length of time has heard the
advice, “Backup, backup often, test the backups, repeat.” Few people actu-
ally do it. Ignoring this advice is dangerous and can cause the loss of
important documents, ﬁles, pictures, and more.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

138
Chapter 4
Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
To prevent this loss, prudent computer users, regardless of operating sys-
tem, will pick a method of copying their ﬁles to a safe location for storage
and will use that method on a regular basis. To help you devise a strategy
that best suits you, we have come up with a few options to consider. This
topic is a big one, and how you deal with it is a very personal decision.
Rather than give step-by-step instructions, we mention a few options to
consider and leave it to you to research them further and decide on one
that looks appropriate and inviting.
Some users ﬁnd that the easiest thing for them to do is copy all of their ﬁles
to a CD-R or DVD-R every week or two. Others buy an external hard drive
and do the same thing. Either of these methods is effective and easy
enough for anyone to do.
Others will look at this and think to themselves, “There has to be a better
way.” Perhaps they noticed that these methods require every single ﬁle to
be copied every time, even if the ﬁle has not changed in ages. In these cases,
an incremental backup is ideal, where the computer is told to compare the
ptg
ﬁles in the original location with stored ﬁles in a backup location (like an
external hard drive) and copy only new or changed ﬁles.
Several graphic user interface programs for backing up are available from
the Ubuntu repositories. Each comes with a basic and useful graphic inter-
face that is easy to ﬁgure out and use, and each is conﬁgurable to allow you
to do full or incremental backups. The most commonly recommended one
is Simple Backup Suite, available in Ubuntu Software Center in the System
Tools section, with both a backup conﬁguration and backup restore entry.
For those users who are a little more advanced (or a little braver) and who
love the raw power available from learning a command-line program, the
best two programs for backups are rar and rsync, which are both available
from the Ubuntu repositories. Once they are installed, you can read the
manual page and learn how to use them by typing man rar or man rsync
from a terminal. They are complicated but are also fast and amazingly
effective both at making the backups and restoring them.
Unfortunately, this quick mention in a small section of a very diverse
chapter can only get you thinking about the need for good backups and
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Working with Windows Programs
139
help guide you in your search for the perfect method for you. However you
decide to back up your data, we strongly encourage you not to ignore the
need but to ﬁnd a way to do it. If you have any questions about this or
other topics, the Ubuntu community has a large number of very helpful
people you can ask for help, and we recommend you start by searching or
asking questions in the Ubuntu Forums at http://ubuntuforums.org/.
TIP
You can find more backup ideas and information at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/
BackupYourSystem.
Working with Windows Programs
Although Linux offers an increasingly compelling platform for the desktop,
some situations arise when there is just no alternative other than an appli-
cation written for Windows. This is generally the case with speciﬁc business
applications, some educational tools, and many games. Luckily, there is a
way you can run many of these applications on your Ubuntu desktop.
ptg
For more than ﬁfteen years, the Wine project team members have been
working to create a free way to run Windows applications on Linux. While
not every application works perfectly, and some don’t work at all, the
number of programs that do work in Wine has dramatically increased and
continues to do so. However, it is recommended that you thoroughly test
the applications you want to run in Wine before you use them for impor-
tant work, and if you run into trouble, try consulting help resources, use
virtualization to run Windows on top of Ubuntu, or search for a different
application to use.
TIP
You can find some useful help resources for Wine at www.winehq.org/help/, and you can
learn more about alternatives to Wine at www.winehq.org/docs/wineusr-guide/alternatives.
Install the Wine package from the System Tools section of the Ubuntu Soft-
ware Center or simply double-click an .exe ﬁle, and you will be prompted
to install the package. You can conﬁgure Wine at System > Preferences >
Wine Applications. Your C:\ Drive will appear in your Places menu for
easy access, and you will be able to uninstall Wine from the Ubuntu Soft-
ware Center.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

140
Chapter 4
Gaining Greater Proﬁciency
Running Applications
To run an application, simply double-click on the install .exe ﬁle. Once
installed, the program should appear in your menu under Applications >
Wine.
TIP
You can find even more about Wine from the Ubuntu perspective at https://help.ubuntu.
com/community/Wine.
Summary
In this chapter we looked at a variety of different advanced subjects related
to running and managing your Ubuntu system. Installation, removal, and
upgrade of software using the Ubuntu Software Center and other options
were discussed. We also looked at the installation and use of several differ-
ent types of hardware devices. We perused some of the methods of access-
ing remote ﬁles and mentioned the powerful Ubuntu terminal and the
need for learning how to back up your data regularly. Finally, we looked at
ptg
a possibility of running certain programs written for Microsoft Windows
under Ubuntu.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

C H A P T E R 5
The Ubuntu Server
5
What Is Ubuntu Server?
Installing Ubuntu Server
Ubuntu Package Management
Ubuntu Server Security
Advanced Topics
Summary
ptg
141
From the Library of Wow! eBook

UBUNTU 4.10, LOVINGLY KNOWN AS WARTY WARTHOG, was the ﬁrst public ver-
sion of Ubuntu. Its installation media provided no obvious way to install
the bare-bones OS without a full desktop environment. The system admin-
istrator crowds, easily irritable and feisty by nature, were greatly annoyed:
They proclaimed Ubuntu was just a desktop distribution and sauntered
back to their caves in contempt.
The next release of Ubuntu that came out, Hoary Hedgehog, rectiﬁed the
problem and allowed for trivial installation of a minimal Ubuntu version
suitable for servers. Yet the myth of Ubuntu as a purely desktop-oriented
distribution stuck.
Luckily, the sentiment is just that—a myth. Ubuntu is a world-class server
platform today, providing everything you’d expect from a server OS and
with the human ﬂavor that makes Ubuntu different. The dedicated hack-
ers on the Ubuntu Server Team tend to the minutiae of hardware support
and testing, mercilessly beat on the latest version of server software to
make sure it’s up to snuff for inclusion in the distribution, look for ways
ptg
to push innovation into the server ﬁeld, and are available to users like you
to ﬁeld feedback, questions, and cries of anguish.
That said, setting up a server is no small task. Server administrators con-
stantly deal with complex issues such as system security, fault tolerance,
and data safety, and while Ubuntu makes these issues more pleasant to
deal with, they’re not to be taken lightly. The aim of this chapter is thus not
to teach you how to be a system administrator—we could easily ﬁll a
dozen books attempting to do that—but to give you a quick crash course.
We’ll also highlight the speciﬁc details that set Ubuntu Server apart from
other server platforms, offer tips on some of the most common server
uses, and give you pointers on where to ﬁnd other relevant information.
What Is Ubuntu Server?
By far the most common reaction from users ﬁrst encountering Ubuntu
Server is one of utter and hopeless confusion. People are foggy on whether
Ubuntu Server is a whole new distribution or an Ubuntu derivative like
Kubuntu (only for servers) or perhaps something else entirely.
142
From the Library of Wow! eBook

What Is Ubuntu Server?
143
Let’s clear things up a bit. The primary software store for Ubuntu and ofﬁ-
cial derivatives is called the Ubuntu archive. The archive is merely a collec-
tion of software packages in Debian “deb” format, and it contains every
single package that makes up distributions such as Ubuntu, Edubuntu,
Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and Ubuntu Server. What makes Kubuntu separate
from Ubuntu, then, is only the set of packages from the archive that its
installer installs by default and that its CDs carry.
Ubuntu Server is no different. It depends on the very same archive as the
standard Ubuntu distribution, but it installs a distinctive set of default
packages. Notably, the set of packages comprising Ubuntu Server is very
small. The installer will not install things such as a graphical environment
or many user programs by default. But since all the packages for Ubuntu
Server come from the same ofﬁcial Ubuntu archive, you can install any
package you like later. In theory, there’s nothing stopping you from trans-
forming an Ubuntu Server install into a regular Ubuntu desktop installa-
tion or vice versa (in practice, this is tricky, and we don’t recommend you
try it). You can even go from running Kubuntu to running Ubuntu Server.
ptg
The archive paradigm gives you maximum ﬂexibility.
We’ve established that Ubuntu Server just provides a different set of default
packages than Ubuntu. But what’s important about that different set? What
makes Ubuntu Server a server platform?
The most signiﬁcant difference is a custom server kernel. This kernel employs
an internal timer frequency of 100Hz instead of the desktop default of
250Hz, uses the deadline I/O scheduler instead of the desktop’s CFQ sched-
uler, and contains a batch of other minor tweaks for virtualization, mem-
ory support, and routing. We’ll spare you the OS theory: The idea is to offer
some extra performance and throughput for server applications. In addi-
tion, the server kernel supports basic NUMA, a memory design used in
some multiprocessor systems that can dramatically increase multiprocess-
ing performance.
So what else is different in Ubuntu Server? Other than the server kernel
and a minimal set of packages, not too much. Though Ubuntu has sup-
ported a minimal installation mode for a number of releases, spinning off
Ubuntu Server into a separate product that truly stands on its own is still a
young effort, but one that’s moving along very quickly.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

144
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
Starting with Ubuntu Server 6.06 LTS, known as Dapper Drake, Ubuntu
Server offers ofﬁcially supported packages for the Red Hat Cluster Suite,
Red Hat’s Global File System (GFS), Oracle’s OCFS2 ﬁlesystem, and the
Linux Virtual Server utilities: keepalived and ipvsadm. Combined with the
specialized server kernel, these bits already let you use your Ubuntu Server
for some heavy lifting. And there’s a growing lineup of compelling fea-
tures, including built-in virtualization, interoperability with Windows
machines on the network through Samba, automatic version control for
conﬁguration ﬁles, support for LDAP directory services, hard drive repli-
cation over the network, and even a healthy dose of the latest buzzword—
cloud computing.
Installing Ubuntu Server
So you’ve downloaded your Ubuntu Server CD from http://releases.
ubuntu.com/10.04/ and burned it, eagerly placed it in your CD drive, and
rebooted the machine to be greeted by the friendly Ubuntu menu. The ﬁrst
option, Install Ubuntu Server, marks the beginning of a journey toward
ptg
your very own system administrator cave.
Until recently, the process of installing Ubuntu Server was identical to
installing a desktop. Both installations were performed with a textual
installer, a charmingly quaint combination of red and blue screens with
text all over. Since then, the desktop version’s installer has been replaced by
a beautiful graphical environment that lets you play with a fully usable
Ubuntu setup right off the install CD. But the Server CD retained its red
and blue colors; because the textual installer doesn’t rely on automatically
detecting ﬁnicky graphics cards, it’s just about certain to work on most any
piece of hardware you can get your hands on. And when you’re installing a
server, that’s worth more than all the eye candy in the world.
Here, we look at some of the advanced textual installer gadgetry that is
particularly geared toward server users.
The neat stuff begins when you arrive at the partitioning section of the
installer. With a desktop machine, you’d probably let the installer conﬁg-
ure a basic set of partitions by itself and go on its merry way. But with
servers, things get a bit more complicated.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing Ubuntu Server
145
A Couple of Installer Tricks
As we’ll explore below, in terms of partitioning and storage, server installa-
tions can be quite a bit more complex than desktop ones. There’s a small
bag of useful tricks with the installer that can help when things get hairy.
The installer itself runs on virtual console 1. If you switch to console 2 by
pressing Alt-F2, you’ll be able to activate the console by hitting Enter and
land in a minimalistic (busybox) shell. This will let you explore the com-
plete installer environment and take some matters into your own hands if
necessary. You can switch back to the installer console by pressing Alt-F1.
Console 4 contains a running, noninteractive log ﬁle of the installation,
which you can inspect by pressing Alt-F4. Finally, it’s sometimes useful to
be able to connect to another server during installation, perhaps to upload
a log ﬁle or to gain access to your mailbox or other communication. By
default, the shell on console 2 will not provide you with an ssh client, but
you can install one by running anna-install openssh-client-udeb after
the installer has conﬁgured the network. Now you can use the ssh and scp
binaries to log in or copy data to the server of your choice.
ptg
Partitioning Your Ubuntu Server
Deciding how to partition the storage in your server is a tricky affair and
certainly no exact science. Generally, it’s a good idea to have at least three
partitions separate from the rest of the system:
/home: where all the user ﬁles will live
/tmp: temporary scratch space for running applications
/var: mail spools and log ﬁles
TIP
Partition Security and Separating Logs and Spools
There are several options that you can turn on for specific system partitions that afford you
extra security. We’ll explain them later in this chapter, in the section dealing with security.
As an aside, if your server will keep extensive mail and news spools, you might want to fur-
ther separate /var into partitions for /var/log and /var/spool. Having them both on the same
partition might cause severe I/O congestion under heavy use.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

146
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
Keeping data on separate partitions gives you, the administrator, an expan-
sive choice of ﬁlesystems you use for particular purposes. For instance, you
might choose to put /tmp on ReiserFS for its superior handling of many
ﬁles in a directory and excellent performance on small ﬁles, but you might
keep /home and /var on ext3 for its rock-solid robustness.
In addition, a dedicated /home partition lets you use special options when
mounting it to your system, such as imposing disk space quotas or
enabling extended security on user data. The reason to keep /tmp and /var
separate from the rest of your system is much more prosaic: These directo-
ries are prone to ﬁlling up. This is the case with /tmp because it’s a scratch-
pad, and administrators often give users very liberal quotas there (but
have a policy, for example, of purging all user data in /tmp older than two
days), which means /tmp can easily get clogged up. /var, on the other hand,
stores log ﬁles and mail spools, both of which can take up massive
amounts of disk space either as a result of malicious activity or due to a
signiﬁcant spike in normal system usage.
ptg
Becoming a system administrator means you have to learn how to think
like one. If /tmp and /var are easy to ﬁll up, you compartmentalize them so
that they can’t eventually consume all the disk space available on your
server.
The Story of RAID
If you’ve got only one hard drive in your server, feel free to skip ahead.
Otherwise, let’s talk about putting those extra drives to use. The acronym
RAID stands for redundant array of inexpensive disks, although if you’re a
businessperson, you can substitute the word independent for inexpensive.
We forgive you. And if you’re in France, RAID is short for recherche assis-
tance intervention dissuasion, which is an elite commando unit of the
National Police—but if that’s the RAID you need help with, you’re reading
the wrong book. We think RAID is just a really awesome idea for data:
When dealing with your information, it provides extra speed, fault toler-
ance, or both.
At its core, RAID is just a way to replicate the same information across
multiple physical drives. The process can be set up in a number of ways,
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing Ubuntu Server
147
and speciﬁc kinds of drive conﬁgurations are referred to as RAID levels.
These days, even low- to mid-range servers ship with integrated hardware
RAID controllers, which operate without any support from the OS. If your
new server doesn’t come with a RAID controller, you can use the software
RAID functionality in the Ubuntu kernel to accomplish the same goal.
Setting up software RAID while installing your Linux system was difﬁcult
and unwieldy only a short while ago, but it is a breeze these days: The
Ubuntu installer provides a nice, convenient interface for it and then
handles all the requisite backstage magic. You can choose from three RAID
levels: 0, 1, and 5.
RAID 0 A so-called striped set, RAID 0 allows you to pool the storage
space of a number of separate drives into one large, virtual drive. The
important thing to keep in mind is that RAID 0 does not actually concate-
nate the physical drives—it actually spreads the data across them evenly,
which means that no more space will be used on each physical drive than
can ﬁt on the smallest one. In practical terms, if you had two 250GB drives
ptg
and a 200GB drive, the total amount of space on your virtual drive would
equal 600GB; 50GB on each of the two larger drives would go unused.
Spreading data in this fashion provides amazing performance but also sig-
niﬁcantly decreases reliability. If any of the drives in your RAID 0 array fail,
the entire array will come crashing down, taking your data with it.
RAID 1 This level provides very straightforward data replication. It will
take the contents of one physical drive and multiplex it to as many other
drives as you’d like. A RAID 1 array does not grow in size with the addition
of extra drives—instead, it grows in reliability and read performance. The
size of the entire array is limited by the size of its smallest constituent drive.
RAID 5 When the chief goal of your storage is fault tolerance, and you
want to use more space than provided by the single physical drive in RAID
1, this is the level you want to use. RAID 5 lets you use n identically sized
physical drives (if different-sized drives are present, no more space than the
size of the smallest one will be used on each drive) to construct an array
whose total available space is that of n–1 drives, and the array tolerates the
failure of any one—but no more than one—drive without data loss.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

148
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
TIP
The Mythical Parity Drive
If you toss five 200GB drives into a RAID 5 array, the array’s total usable size will be 800GB,
or that of four drives. This makes it easy to mistakenly believe that a RAID 5 array “sacri-
fices” one of the drives for maintaining redundancy and parity, but this is not the case.
Through some neat mathematics of polynomial coefficients over Galois fields, the actual
parity information is striped across all drives equally, allowing any single drive to fail without
compromising the data. Don’t worry, though. We won’t quiz you on the math.
Which RAID to Choose? If you’re indecisive by nature, the past few para-
graphs may have left you awkwardly hunched in your chair, mercilessly
chewing a No. 2 pencil, feet tapping the ﬂoor nervously. Luckily, the initial
choice of RAID level is often a no-brainer, so you’ll have to direct your
indecision elsewhere. If you have one hard drive, no RAID for you. Do not
pass Go, do not collect $200. Two drives? Toss them into RAID 1, and sleep
better at night. Three or more? RAID 5. Unless you really know what you’re
doing, avoid RAID 0 like the plague. If you’re not serving mostly read-only
data without a care about redundancy, RAID 0 isn’t what you want.
ptg
TIP
Other RAID Modes
Though the installer offers only the most common RAID modes—0, 1, and 5—many other
RAID modes exist and can be configured after the installation. Take a look at http://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID for a detailed explanation of all the modes.
Setting Up RAID
After carefully studying the last section, maybe reading a few books on
abstract algebra and another few on ﬁnite ﬁeld theory, you ﬁnally decided
on a RAID level that suits you. Since books can’t yet read your mind, we’ll
assume you chose RAID 1. So how do you set it up?
Back to the installer. When prompted about partitioning disks, you’ll want
to bravely select the last option, Manually Edit Partition Table.
Below the top two options on the screen (Guided Partitioning and Help),
you’ll ﬁnd a list of the physical drives in your server that the Ubuntu
installer detected.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing Ubuntu Server
149
TIP
Avoiding the “Oh, No!” Moment
We’ve said this before, and we’ll say it again: It’s very easy to mistakenly erase valuable data
when partitioning your system. Since you’re installing a server, however, we’ll assume
you’re comfortable deleting any data that might already exist on the drives. If this is not the
case, back up all data you care about now! We mean it.
Indented below each drive, you’ll ﬁnd the list of any preexisting partitions,
along with their on-disk ordinal number, size, bootable status, ﬁlesystem
type, and, possibly, their mount point. Using the arrow keys, highlight the
line summarizing a physical drive (not any of its partitions), and hit
Enter—you’ll be asked to conﬁrm replacing any existing partition table
with a new one. Select Yes, and the only entry listed below that drive will be
FREE SPACE. In our ﬁctional server, we have two 80GB drives—hda and
hdb—so we’d follow this process for both drives, giving each a fresh parti-
tion table. Say we’ve decided on a 20GB /home partition. Arrow over to
FREE SPACE, hit Enter, and create the partition. Once you’ve entered the
size for the new partition, you’ll be brought to a dialog where you can
ptg
choose the ﬁlesystem and mount options. Instead of plopping a ﬁlesystem
on the raw partition, however, you’ll want to enter the Use As dialog and
set the new partition to be a physical volume for RAID.
Still with us? Now rinse and repeat for the other drive—create the exact
same partition, same size, and set it as a RAID volume. When you’re done,
you should be back at the initial partitioning screen, and you should have
an identically sized partition under each drive. At this point, choose Con-
ﬁgure Software RAID at the top of the screen, agree to write out changes to
the storage devices if need be, and then choose to create an MD (multi-
disk) device. After selecting RAID 1, you’ll be asked to enter the number of
active devices for the array. In our ﬁctional two-drive server, it’s two. The
next question concerns the number of spare devices in the array, which
you can leave at zero. Now simply use the spacebar to put a check next to
both partitions that you’ve created (hda1 and hdb1), and hit Finish in the
Multidisk dialog to return to the basic partitioner.
If you look below the two physical drives that you used to have there, you’ll
notice a brand new drive, the Software RAID device that has one partition
below it. That’s your future /home partition, sitting happily on a RAID
From the Library of Wow! eBook

150
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
array. If you arrow over to it and hit Enter, you can now conﬁgure it just as
you would a real partition.
The process is the same for any other partitions you want to toss into
RAID. Create identical-sized partitions on all participating physical drives,
select to use them as RAID space, enter the multidisk conﬁgurator (soft-
ware RAID), and ﬁnally, create an array that uses the real partitions. Then
create a ﬁlesystem on the newly created array.
TIP
Array Failure and Spare Devices
When a physical drive fails in a RAID array that’s running in a level that provides redun-
dancy—such as 1 or 5—the array goes into so-called degraded mode (never verbally abuse
or be cruel to your RAID arrays!). Depending on the number of devices in the array, running
in degraded mode might just have performance downsides, but it might also mean that
another physical drive failure will bring down the whole array and cause total data loss. To
recover the array from degraded mode, you need to add a working physical drive to the sys-
tem (the old one can be removed) and instruct the array to use the new device to “rebuild.”
In order to minimize the amount of time an array spends in degraded mode, and to prevent
having to power off the machine to insert new physical drives if the server doesn’t support
ptg
hot-swapping, you can put extra physical drives into the machine and flag them as hot
spares, which means the system will keep them active but unused until there’s a drive fail-
ure. Cold spares, as the name implies, are just extra drives that you keep around on a shelf
until there’s a failure, at which point you manually add them to the array.
That’s it! The Ubuntu installer will take care of all the pesky details of con-
ﬁguring the system to boot the RAID arrays at the right time and use
them, even if you’ve chosen to keep your root partition on an array. Now
let’s look at another great feature of the Ubuntu installer: logical volume
management (LVM).
The Story of the Logical Volume Manager
Let’s take a step back from our RAID adventure and look at the bigger pic-
ture in data storage. The entire situation is unpleasant. Hard drives are
slow and fail often, and though abolished for working memory ages ago,
ﬁxed-size partitions are still the predominant mode of storage space allo-
cation. As if worrying about speed and data loss weren’t enough, you also
have to worry about whether your partition size calculations were just
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing Ubuntu Server
151
right when you were installing a server or whether you’ll wind up in the
unenviable position of having a partition run out of space, even though
another partition is maybe mostly unused. And if you might have to move
a partition across physical volume boundaries on a running system, well,
woe is you.
RAID helps to some degree. It’ll do wonders for your worries about per-
formance and fault tolerance, but it operates at too low a level to help with
the partition size or ﬂuidity concerns. What we’d really want is a way to
push the partition concept up one level of abstraction, so it doesn’t oper-
ate directly on the underlying physical media. Then we could have parti-
tions that are trivially resizable or that can span multiple drives, we could
easily take some space from one partition and tack it on another, and we
could juggle partitions around on physical drives on a live server. Sounds
cool, right?
Very cool, and very doable via LVM, a system that shifts the fundamental
unit of storage from physical drives to virtual or logical ones (although we
ptg
harbor our suspicions that the term logical is a jab at the storage status quo,
which is anything but). LVM has traditionally been a feature of expensive,
enterprise UNIX operating systems or was available for purchase from
third-party vendors. Through the magic of free software, a guy by the name
of Heinz Mauelshagen wrote an implementation of a logical volume man-
ager for Linux in 1998. LVM has undergone tremendous improvements
since then and is widely used in production today, and just as you expect,
the Ubuntu installer makes it easy for you to conﬁgure it on your server
during installation.
LVM Theory and Jargon Wrapping your head around LVM is a bit more
difﬁcult than with RAID because LVM rethinks the whole way of dealing
with storage, which expectedly introduces a bit of jargon that you need to
learn. Under LVM, physical volumes, or PVs, are seen just as providers of
disk space without any inherent organization (such as partitions mapping
to a mount point in the OS). We group PVs into volume groups, or VGs,
which are virtual storage pools that look like good old cookie-cutter hard
drives. We carve those up into logical volumes, or LVs, that act like the nor-
mal partitions we’re used to dealing with. We create ﬁlesystems on these
LVs and mount them into our directory tree. And behind the scenes, LVM
From the Library of Wow! eBook

152
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
splits up physical volumes into small slabs of bytes (4MB by default), each
of which is called a physical extent, or a PE.
Okay, so that was a mouthful of acronyms, but as long as you understand
the progression, you’re in good shape. You take a physical hard drive and
set up one or more partitions on it that will be used for LVM. These parti-
tions are now physical volumes (PVs), which are split into physical extents
(PEs) and then grouped in volume groups (VGs), on top of which you
ﬁnally create logical volumes (LVs). It’s the LVs, these virtual partitions,
and not the ones on the physical hard drive, that carry a ﬁlesystem and are
mapped and mounted into the OS. And if you’re really confused about
what possible beneﬁt we get from adding all this complexity only to wind
up with the same ﬁxed-size partitions in the end, hang in there. It’ll make
sense in a second.
The reason LVM splits physical volumes into small, equally sized physical
extents is that the deﬁnition of a volume group (the space that’ll be carved
into logical volumes) then becomes “a collection of physical extents”
ptg
rather than “a physical area on a physical drive,” as with old-school parti-
tions. Notice that “a collection of extents” says nothing about where the
extents are coming from and certainly doesn’t impose a ﬁxed limit on the
size of a volume group. We can take PEs from a bunch of different drives
and toss them into one volume group, which addresses our desire to
abstract partitions away from physical drives. We can take a VG and make
it bigger simply by adding a few extents to it, maybe by taking them from
another VG, or maybe by tossing in a new physical volume and using
extents from there. And we can take a VG and move it to different physical
storage simply by telling it to relocate to a different collection of extents.
Best of all, we can do all this on the ﬂy, without any server downtime.
Do you smell that? That’s the fresh smell of the storage revolution.
Setting Up LVM
By now, you must be convinced that LVM is the best thing since sliced bread.
Which it is—and, surprisingly enough, setting it up during installation is no
harder than setting up RAID. Create partitions on each physical drive you
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing Ubuntu Server
153
want to use for LVM just as you did with RAID, but tell the installer to use
them as physical space for LVM. Note that in this context, PVs are not actual
physical hard drives; they are the partitions you’re creating.
You don’t have to devote your entire drive to partitions for LVM. If you’d
like, you’re free to create actual ﬁlesystem-containing partitions alongside
the storage partitions used for LVM, but make sure you’re satisﬁed with
your partitioning choice before you proceed. Once you enter the LVM
conﬁgurator in the installer, the partition layout on all drives that contain
LVM partitions will be frozen.
Let’s look back to our ﬁctional server, but let’s give it four drives, which are
10GB, 20GB, 80GB, and 120GB in size. Say we want to create an LVM par-
tition, or PV, using all available space on each drive, and then combine the
ﬁrst two PVs into a 30GB volume group and the latter two into a 200GB
one. Each VG will act as a large virtual hard drive on top of which we can
create logical volumes just as we would normal partitions.
ptg
As with RAID, arrowing over to the name of each drive and hitting Enter
will let us erase the partition table. Then hitting Enter on the FREE SPACE
entry lets us create a physical volume—a partition that we set to be used as
a physical space for LVM. Once all three LVM partitions are in place, we
select Conﬁgure the Logical Volume Manager on the partitioning menu.
After a warning about the partition layout, we get to a rather spartan LVM
dialog that lets us modify VGs and LVs. According to our plan, we choose
the former option and create the two VGs we want, choosing the appropri-
ate PVs. We then select Modify Logical Volumes and create the LVs corre-
sponding to the normal partitions we want to put on the system—say, one
for each of /, /var, /home, and /tmp.
You can already see some of the partition ﬂuidity that LVM brings you. If
you decide you want a 25GB logical volume for /var, you can carve it out of
the ﬁrst VG you created, and /var will magically span the two smaller hard
drives. If you later decide you’ve given /var too much space, you can shrink
the ﬁlesystem and then simply move over some of the storage space from
the ﬁrst VG to the second. The possibilities are endless.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

154
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
Last but not least, recent Ubuntu versions support encrypting your LVM
volumes right from the installer, which is music to paranoid ears: It means
you can now have full-disk encryption from the moment you install your
machine. Encrypted LVM is offered as one of the “guided” options in the
partitioning menu, but you can also accomplish the same result by hand.
TIP
LVM Doesn’t Provide Redundancy
The point of LVM is storage fluidity, not fault tolerance. In our example, the logical volume
containing the /var filesystem is sitting on a volume group that spans two hard drives.
Unfortunately, this means that either drive failing will corrupt the entire filesystem, and LVM
intentionally doesn’t contain functionality to prevent this problem.
Instead, when you need fault tolerance, build your volume groups from physical volumes that
are sitting on RAID! In our example, we could have made a partition spanning the entire size of
the 10GB hard drive and allocated it to physical space for a RAID volume. Then, we could have
made two 10GB partitions on the 20GB hard drive and made the first one also a physical space
for RAID. Entering the RAID configurator, we would create a RAID 1 array from the 10GB RAID
partitions on both drives, but instead of placing a regular filesystem on the RAID array as
before, we’d actually designate the RAID array to be used as a physical space for LVM. When
we get to LVM configuration, the RAID array would show up as any other physical volume, but
we’d know that the physical volume is redundant. If a physical drive fails beneath it, LVM won’t
ptg
ever know, and no data loss will occur. Of course, standard RAID array caveats apply, so if
enough drives fail and shut down the array, LVM will still come down kicking and screaming.
Encrypted Home and Software Selection
After you have partitioned the disk, the installer will install the base system
and ask you for user information, much like with the desktop install. You’ll
then be asked a question you might not have seen before: Do you wish to
encrypt your home directory?
If you answer in the afﬁrmative, your account password will take on a sec-
ond purpose. Rather than just allowing you to log in, it will also be used to
transparently encrypt every ﬁle in your home directory, turning it into gib-
berish for anyone without the password. This means that if your computer
gets stolen, your data remains safe from prying eyes as long as your password
isn’t too easy to guess. If this sounds familiar, it’s because this functionality
exists as FileVault on Apple’s Mac OS X and is also a subset of the BitLocker
system that debuted in Windows Vista. (The directory encryption system
used in Ubuntu is called ecryptfs, which is a decidedly less punchy name.
We’re working on it.)
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing Ubuntu Server
155
TIP
Encrypted Swap and Remote Login
If you use a swap partition, protecting your home directory isn’t enough; sensitive data can
get swapped out to disk in the clear. The solution is to use encrypted swap, which you can
manually enable with the ecryptfs-setup-swap command, but this will presently take
away your computer’s ability to enter the hibernate power-saving mode. Suspend mode is
unaffected.
Note also that encrypting your home directory makes all the data in it, including special
directories such as .ssh, unavailable until after you log in. If you’re logging into a machine
where your home directory is encrypted and hasn’t yet been unlocked, and the machine
only allows SSH public key authentication, there is no way for the system to consult your
authorized_keys file, and you’re locked out. You can fix this by physically logging in,
unmounting your encrypted home directory with ecryptfs-umount-private, then cre-
ating a .ssh directory in your “underlying” home directory left behind by ecryptfs. Stick your
public keys into an authorized_keys file under that .ssh directory as normal, and you’ll be all
set to log in remotely, at which point you can use ecryptfs-mount-private to enter
your password and unlock your actual home directory.
After the installer downloads some updated software sources, though, you
will see a new menu that lists a number of common server types, including
ptg
DNS, LAMP, Mail, OpenSSH, PostgreSQL, Print, and Samba servers. Select
one or more of these options and the installer will automatically download
the standard set of packages you will need for that server as well as perform
some basic conﬁguration of the services for you. For instance, if you wanted
to install a LAMP environment, but you also wanted to make sure you
could ssh into the machine from another computer, you could select both
LAMP and OpenSSH server from the menu.
TIP
Software Installer Prompts
Depending on which servers you select, you may be asked a number of questions as the
packages install. For instance, when you select the LAMP environment, the installer will rec-
ommend you choose a password for the root MySQL user.
You’re Done—Now Watch Out for Root!
Whew. With the storage and software stuff out of the way, the rest of your
server installation should go no differently than installing a regular Ubuntu
workstation. And now that your server is installed, we can move on to the
fun stuff. From this point on, everything we do will happen in a shell.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

156
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
When your Ubuntu server ﬁrst boots, you’ll have to log in with the user
you created during installation. Here’s an important point that bites a
number of newcomers to Ubuntu: Unlike most distributions, Ubuntu
does not enable the root account during installation! Instead, the installer
adds the user you’ve created during installation to the admin group, which
lets you use a mechanism called sudo to perform administrative tasks.
We’ll show you how to use sudo in a bit. In the meantime, if you’re inter-
ested in the rationale for the decision to disable direct use of the root
account, simply run man sudo_root after logging in.
TIP
Care and Feeding of RAID and LVM Arrays
If you’ve set up some of these during installation, you’ll want to learn how to manage the
arrays after the server is installed. We recommend the respective how-to documents from
The Linux Documentation Project at
www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html and
www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO.
The how-tos sometimes get technical, but most of the details should sound familiar if you’ve
understood the introduction to the subject matter that we gave in this chapter.
ptg
Ubuntu Package Management
Once your server is installed, it contains only the few packages it requires
to boot and run properly plus whatever software you selected at the soft-
ware select screen. In the comfort of the GNOME graphical environment
on an Ubuntu desktop, we could launch Synaptic and point and click our
way through application discovery and installation. But on a server, we
must be shell samurai.
The Ubuntu Archive
Before we delve into the nitty-gritty of package management, let’s brieﬂy
outline the structure of the master Ubuntu package archive, which we
mentioned in the introduction to this chapter. Each new release has ﬁve
repositories in the archive, called main, restricted, backports, universe, and
multiverse. A newly installed system comes with only the ﬁrst two enabled
plus the security update repository. Here’s the repository breakdown.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Package Management
157
Main: This includes all packages installed by default; these packages
have ofﬁcial support.
Restricted: These are packages with restricted copyright, often
hardware drivers.
Backports: These are newer versions of packages in the archive,
provided by the community.
Universe: The universe includes packages maintained by the Ubuntu
community.
Multiverse: The multiverse includes packages that are not free (in the
sense of freedom).
The term official support is a bit of a misnomer, as it doesn’t refer to technical
support that one would purchase or obtain but speaks instead to the avail-
ability of security updates after a version of Ubuntu is released. Standard
Ubuntu releases are supported for 18 months, which means that Ubuntu’s
parent company, Canonical, Ltd., guarantees that security updates will be
ptg
provided, free of charge, for any vulnerabilities discovered in software in the
main repository for 18 months after a release. No such guarantee is made for
software in the other repositories.
Of particular note is that certain Ubuntu releases have longer support
cycles. These releases are denoted by the acronym LTS (Long Term Support)
in their version number. The latest Ubuntu LTS, version 10.04 (Lucid), will
be supported for ﬁve years on servers.
APT Sources and Repositories
You’re now aware of the structure of the Ubuntu archive, but we didn’t
explain how to actually modify the list of repositories you want to use on
your system. In Debian package management parlance, the list of reposi-
tories is part of the list of Advanced Package Tool (APT) sources. (Keep
your eyes peeled: Many of the package tools we’ll discuss below begin
with the preﬁx apt.) These sources tell APT where to ﬁnd available pack-
ages: in the Ubuntu archive on the Internet, on your CD-ROM, or in a third-
party archive.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

158
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
The APT sources are speciﬁed in the ﬁle /etc/apt/sources.list. Let’s open
this ﬁle in an editor. (If you’re not used to vim, substitute nano for it, which
is an easier-to-use, beginner-friendly editor.)
$ vim /etc/apt/sources.list
The lines beginning with a hash, or #, denote comment lines and are skipped
over by APT. At the top, you’ll see the CD-ROM source that the installer
added, and following it these two lines (or something very similar):
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main restricted
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main restricted
We can infer the general format of the APT sources list by looking at these
lines. The ﬁle is composed of individual sources, one per line, and each
line of several space-separated ﬁelds. The ﬁrst ﬁeld tells us what kind of a
source the line is describing, such as a source for binary packages (deb) or
source code packages (deb-src). The second ﬁeld is the actual URI of the
package source, the third names the distribution whose packages we want
ptg
(lucid), and the remaining ﬁelds tell APT which components to use from
the source we’re describing—by default, main and restricted.
If you look through the rest of the ﬁle, you’ll ﬁnd it’s nicely commented to
let you easily enable two extra repositories: the very useful universe and the
bleeding-edge backports. In general, now that you understand the format
of each source line, you have complete control over the repositories you
use, and while we strongly recommend against using the backports reposi-
tory on a server, enabling universe is usually a good idea.
With that in mind, let’s get you acquainted with some of the basic com-
mand-line package management tools on an Ubuntu system. Ubuntu
inherits its package management from Debian, so if you’re familiar with
Debian, the utilities we’ll discuss are old friends.
dpkg
Our ﬁrst stop is the Debian package manager, dpkg, which sits around the
lowest levels of the package management stack. Through a utility called
dpkg-deb, dpkg deals with individual Debian package ﬁles, referred to as
debs for their .deb ﬁlename extension.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Package Management
159
dpkg is extensively documented in the system manual pages, so you can
read about the various options it supports by entering man dpkg in the shell.
We’ll point out the most common dpkg operations: listing and installing
packages. Of course, dpkg can also remove packages, but we’ll show you
how to do that with the higher-level tool called apt-get instead.
Listing Packages Running dpkg -l | less in the shell will list all the pack-
ages on your system that dpkg is tracking, in a six-column format. The ﬁrst
three columns are one letter wide each, signifying the desired package state,
current package status, and error status, respectively. Most of the time, the
error status column will be empty.
The top three lines of dpkg output serve as a legend to explain the letters
you can ﬁnd in the ﬁrst three columns. This lets you use the grep tool to
search through the package list, perhaps to look only at removed packages
or those that failed conﬁguration.
Installing a Package Manually
ptg
There are more than 17,000 packages in the Ubuntu archive for each
release. Only a small percentage of those are ofﬁcially supported, but all the
other packages are still held to reasonably rigorous inclusion requirements.
Packages in the Ubuntu archive are thus almost universally of high quality
and are known to work well on your Ubuntu system.
Because of this, the archive should be the very ﬁrst place you look when
you choose to install new software. On rare instances, however, the soft-
ware you want to install won’t be available in the archive because it’s new
or because redistribution restrictions prevent it from being included. In
those cases, you might have to either build the software from source code,
run binaries that the vendor provides, or ﬁnd third-party Ubuntu or
Debian packages to install.
TIP
Practice Safe Hex!
That’s a terrible pun. We apologize. But it probably got your attention, so follow closely: Be
very, very cautious when dealing with third-party packages. Packages in the Ubuntu archive
undergo extensive quality assurance and are practically certain to be free from viruses,
worms, Trojan horses, or other computer pests. If you install software only from the archive,
you’ll never have to worry about viruses again.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

160
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
With third-party packages, you just don’t know what you could be installing. If you install a
malicious package, you’ve given the package creator full control of your system. So ideally,
don’t install third-party packages at all. And if you must, make absolutely sure you trust the
source of the packages!
Impatience is a hallmark virtue of programmers and system administra-
tors alike, so if you were too impatient to read the warning note, do it now.
This is serious business. Let’s continue: Say you’ve downloaded a package
called myspecial-server.deb. You can install it simply by typing:
$ sudo dpkg -i myspecial-server.deb
dpkg will unpack the deb, make sure its dependencies are satisﬁed, and pro-
ceed to install the package. Remember what we said about the root account
being unusable by default? Installing a package requires administrator priv-
ileges, which we obtained by preﬁxing the command we wanted to execute
with sudo and entering our user password at sudo’s prompt.
ptg
TIP
A Quick Note on Shell Examples
In the dpkg example, the dollar sign is the standard UNIX shell symbol, so you don’t need to
actually type it. We’ll use it in the rest of the chapter to indicate things that need to be entered
in a shell. On your Ubuntu system, the shell prompt won’t be just a dollar sign but will look
like this:
user@server:~$
user and server will be replaced by your username and the hostname you gave the server
during installation, respectively, and the part between the colon and dollar sign will show
your working directory. A tilde is UNIX shorthand for your home directory.
apt-get and apt-cache
Now let’s jump higher up in the stack. Whereas dpkg deals mostly with
package ﬁles, apt-get knows how to download packages from the Ubuntu
archive or fetch them from your Ubuntu CD. It provides a convenient,
succinct interface, so it’s no surprise it’s the tool that most system adminis-
trators use for package management on Ubuntu servers.
While apt-get deals with high-level package operations, it won’t tell you
which packages are actually in the archive and available for installation. It
knows how to get this information behind the scenes from the package
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Package Management
161
cache, which you can manipulate by using a simple tool called apt-cache.
Let’s see how these two commands come together with an example. Say
we’re trying to ﬁnd and then install software that lets us work with extended
ﬁlesystem attributes.
Searching the Package Cache and Showing Package Information We begin
by telling apt-cache to search for the phrase “extended attributes.”
$ apt-cache search "extended attributes"
attr - Utilities for manipulating filesystem extended attributes
libattr1 - Extended attribute shared library
libattr1-dev - Extended attribute static libraries and headers
python-pyxattr - module for manipulating filesystem extended
attributes
python2.4-pyxattr - module for manipulating filesystem extended
attributes
rdiff-backup - remote incremental backup
xfsdump - Administrative utilities for the XFS filesystem
xfsprogs - Utilities for managing the XFS filesystem
ptg
The parameter to apt-cache search can be either a package name or a
phrase describing the package, as in our example. The lines following our
invocation are the output we received, composed of the package name on
the left and a one-line description on the right. It looks like the attr pack-
age is what we’re after, so let’s see some details about it.
$ apt-cache show attr
Package: attr
Priority: optional
Section: utils
Installed-Size: 240
Maintainer: Ubuntu Core Developers <ubuntu-deel-
discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Original-Maintainer: Nathan Scott <nathans@debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Version: 1:2.4.39-1
Depends: libattr1 (>= 2.4.4-1), libc6 (>= 2.6.1-1)
Conflicts: xfsdump (<< 2.0.0)
Filename: pool/main/a/attr/attr_2.4.39-1_i386.deb
Size: 31098
MD5sum: 84457d6edd44983bba3dcb50495359fd
SHA1: 8ae3562e0a8e8a314c4c6997ca9aced0fb3bea46
SHA256:
f566a9a57135754f0a79c2efd8fcec626cde10d2533c10c1660bf7064a336c82
From the Library of Wow! eBook

162
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
Description: Utilities for manipulating filesystem extended
attributes
A set of tools for manipulating extended attributes on filesystem
objects, in particular getfattr(1) and setfattr(1).
An attr(1) command is also provided which is largely compatible
with the SGI IRIX tool of the same name.
.
Homepage: http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/
Bugs: mailto:ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Origin: Ubuntu
Don’t be daunted by the verbose output. Extracting the useful bits turns
out to be pretty simple. We can already see from the description ﬁeld that
this is, in fact, the package we’re after. We can also see the exact version of
the packaged software, any dependencies and conﬂicting packages it has,
and an e-mail address to which we can send bug reports. And looking at
the ﬁlename ﬁeld, the pool/main snippet tells us this is a package in the
main repository.
Installing a Package So far, so good. Let’s perform the actual installation:
ptg
$ sudo apt-get install attr
apt-get will track down a source for the package, such as an Ubuntu CD or
the Ubuntu archive on the Internet, fetch the deb, verify its integrity, do the
same for any dependencies the package has, and, ﬁnally, install the package.
Removing a Package For didactic purposes, we’re going to keep assum-
ing that you’re very indecisive and that right after you installed the attr
package, you realized it wasn’t going to work out between the two of you.
To the bit bucket with attr!
$ sudo apt-get remove attr
One conﬁrmation later and attr is blissfully gone from your system, except
for any conﬁguration ﬁles it may have installed. If you want those gone,
too, you’d have to instead run the following:
$ sudo apt-get --purge remove attr
Performing System Updates Installing and removing packages is a com-
mon system administration task, but not as common as keeping the system
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Package Management
163
up to date. This doesn’t mean upgrading to newer and newer versions of the
software (well, it does, but not in the conventional sense), because once a
given Ubuntu version is released, no new software versions enter the reposi-
tories except for the backports repository. On a server, however, you’re
strongly discouraged from using backports because they receive a very lim-
ited amount of quality assurance and testing and because there’s usually no
reason for a server to be chasing new software features. New features bring
new bugs, and as a system administrator, you should value stability and reli-
ability miles over features. Ubuntu’s brief, six-month development cycle
means that you’ll be able to get all the new features in half a year anyway. But
by then they will be in the main repositories and will have received substan-
tial testing. Keeping a system up to date thus means making sure it’s running
the latest security patches, to prevent any vulnerabilities discovered after the
release from endangering your system.
Luckily, apt-get makes this process amazingly easy. You begin by obtain-
ing an updated list of packages from the Ubuntu archive:
ptg
$ sudo apt-get update
and then you simply run the upgrade:
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
After this, apt-get will tell you either that your system is up to date or what
it’s planning to upgrade, and it will handle the upgrade for you automati-
cally. How’s that for cool?
Running a Distribution Upgrade
When a new Ubuntu release comes out and you want to upgrade your
server to it, you’ll use a new tool, do-release-upgrade. The upgrade tool
will switch over your sources.list to the new distribution and will ﬁgure
out what packages are needed and whether they have any known issues.
After it has done this, it will ask you to conﬁrm the update by pressing y or
to view the updated packages by pressing d. If you choose to view the
updates, merely type y to continue the update, as the tool will not prompt
you again.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

164
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
NOTE
The update process may take a couple of hours and should not be interrupted during that
time.
Building Packages from Source The Ubuntu archive, unlike Debian’s,
doesn’t permit direct binary uploads. When Ubuntu developers want to
add a piece of software to the archive, they prepare its source code in a cer-
tain way and put it in a build queue. From there it’s compiled, built auto-
matically, and—if those steps succeed—pushed into the archive.
Why go through all the trouble? Why not just have the developers build
the software on their machines? They could upload binaries to the archive,
bypassing the build queue, which can take hours to build software. Here’s
the catch: Ubuntu ofﬁcially supports three hardware platforms (Intel x86,
AMD64/EM64T, and PowerPC). Without the build queue, developers would
have to build separate binaries of their software for each platform, which
entails owning a computer running on each platform (expensive!) or creat-
ing complicated cross-compilation toolchains. And even then, sitting through
ptg
three software builds is an enormous waste of precious developer time.
The build queue approach solves this problem because the automatic build
system takes a single source package and builds it for all the necessary
platforms. And it turns out that the approach provides you, the system
administrator, with a really nifty beneﬁt: It lets you leverage the dependency-
solving power and ease of use of apt-get and apply it to building packages
from source!
Now that you’re excited, let’s backtrack a bit. Building packages from source
is primarily of interest to developers, not system administrators. In fact, as a
sysadmin, you should avoid hand-built packages whenever possible and
instead beneﬁt from the quality assurance that packages in the Ubuntu
archive received. Sometimes, though, you might just have to apply a custom
patch to a piece of software before installing it. We’ll use the attr package
example, as before. What follows is what a session of building attr from
source and installing the new package might look like—if you want to try
it, make sure you install the dpkg-dev, devscripts, and fakeroot packages.
$ mkdir attr-build
$ cd attr-build
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Package Management
165
$ apt-get source attr
$ sudo apt-get build-dep attr
$ cd attr-2.4.39
<apply a patch or edit the source code>
$ dch -i
$ dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
$ cd ..
$ sudo dpkg -i *.deb
All of the commands we invoked are well documented in the system man
pages, and covering them in detail is out of the scope of this chapter. To
brieﬂy orient you as to what we did, though, here’s a quick description.
1. We made a scratch directory called attr-build and changed into it.
2. apt-get source attr fetched the source of the attr package and
unpacked it into the current directory.
3. apt-get build-dep attr installed all the packages required to build the
attr package from source.
ptg
4. We changed into the unpacked attr-2.4.25 directory, applied a patch,
and edited the package changelog to describe our changes to the
source.
5. dpkg -buildpackage -rfakeroot built one or more installable debs
from our package.
6. We ascended one directory in the filesystem and installed all the debs
we just built.
This is a super-compressed cheat sheet for a topic that takes a long time to
master. We left a lot of things out, so if you need to patch packages for pro-
duction use, ﬁrst go and read the man pages of the tools we mentioned
and get a better understanding of what’s going on!
aptitude
Around the highest levels of the package management stack hangs aptitude,
a neat, colorful textual front end that can be used interchangeably with apt-
get. We won’t go into detail about aptitude use here; plenty of information
From the Library of Wow! eBook

166
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
is available from the system manual pages and the online aptitude help
system (if you launch it as aptitude from the shell). It’s worth mentioning,
though, that one of the chief reasons some system administrators prefer
aptitude over apt-get is its better handling of so-called orphan packages.
Orphan packages are packages that were installed as a dependency of
another package that has since been removed, leaving the orphan installed
for no good reason. apt-get provides no automatic way to deal with
orphans, instead relegating the task to the deborphan tool, which you can
install from the archive. By contrast, aptitude will remove orphan pack-
ages automatically.
Tips and Tricks
Congratulations. If you’ve gotten this far, you’re familiar with most aspects
of effectively dealing with packages on your Ubuntu server. Before you move
on to other topics, though, we want to present a few odds and ends that
will probably come in handy to you at one point or another.
ptg
Listing Files Owned by a Package Sometimes it’s really useful to see which
ﬁles on your system belong to a speciﬁc package, say, cron. dpkg to the rescue:
$ dpkg -L cron
Be careful, though, as dpkg -L output might contain directories that aren’t
exclusively owned by this package but are shared with others.
Finding Which Package Owns a File The reverse of the previous operation
is just as simple:
$ dpkg -S /etc/crontab
cron: /etc/crontab
The one-line output tells us the name of the owner package on the left.
Finding Which Package Provides a File Both dpkg -S and dpkg -L operate
on the database of installed packages. Sometimes, you might need to ﬁgure
out which—potentially uninstalled—package provides a certain ﬁle. We
might be looking for a package that would install the bzr binary, or /usr/
bin/bzr. To do this, ﬁrst install the package apt-file (requires the universe
repository), then execute:
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Server Security
167
$ apt-file update
$ apt-file search /usr/bin/bzr
Voila! apt-file will tell you that the package you want is bzr, with output
in the same format as dpkg -S.
That’s it for our package management tricks—now it’s time to talk about
security.
Ubuntu Server Security
As a system administrator, one of your chief tasks is dealing with server
security. If your server is connected to the Internet, for security purposes
it’s in a war zone. If it’s only an internal server, you still need to deal with
(accidentally) malicious users, disgruntled employees, and the guy in
accounting who really wants to read the boss’s secretary’s e-mail.
In general, Ubuntu Server is a very secure platform. The Ubuntu Security
ptg
Team, the team that produces all ofﬁcial security updates, has one of the best
turnaround times in the industry. Ubuntu ships with a no open ports policy,
meaning that after you install Ubuntu on your machine—be it an Ubuntu
desktop or a server installation—no applications will be accepting connec-
tions from the Internet by default. Like Ubuntu desktops, Ubuntu Server
uses the sudo mechanism for system administration, eschewing the root
account. And ﬁnally, security updates are guaranteed for at least 18 months
after each release (ﬁve years for some releases, like Dapper), and are free.
In this section, we want to take a look at user account administration,
ﬁlesystem security, system resource limits, logs, and ﬁnally some network
security. But Linux security is a difﬁcult and expansive topic; remember
that we’re giving you a crash course here and leaving out a lot of things—
to be a good administrator, you’ll want to learn more.
User Account Administration
Many aspects of user administration on Linux systems are consistent
across distributions. Debian provides some convenience tools, such as the
useradd command, to make things easier for you. But since Ubuntu fully
inherits Debian’s user administration model, we won’t go into detail
From the Library of Wow! eBook

168
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
about it here. Instead, let us refer you to www.oreilly.com/catalog/debian/
chapter/book/ch07_01.html for the basics. After reading that page, you’ll
have full knowledge of the standard model, and we can brieﬂy talk about
the Ubuntu difference: sudo.
As we mentioned at the end of the installation section (You’re Done—
Now Watch Out for Root!), Ubuntu doesn’t enable the root, or adminis-
trator, account by default. There is a great deal of security beneﬁt to this
approach and incredibly few downsides, all of which are documented at
the man pages for sudo_root.
The user that you added during installation is the one who, by default, is
placed into the admin group and may use sudo to perform system admin-
istration tasks. After adding new users to the system, you may add them to
the admin group like this:
$ sudo adduser username admin
ptg
Simply use deluser in place of adduser in the above command to remove a
user from the group. (Adding the --encrypt-home option to adduser will auto-
matically set up home directory encryption for the new user.)
One thing to keep in mind is that sudo isn’t just a workaround for giving
people root access. sudo can also handle ﬁne-grain permissions, such as
saying, “Allow this user to execute only these three commands with super -
user privileges.”
Documentation about specifying these permissions is available in the
sudoers man page, which can be a bit daunting—feel free to skip close to
the end of it, until you reach the EXAMPLES section. It should take you
maybe 10 or 15 minutes to grok it, and it covers a vast majority of the situ-
ations for which you’ll want sudo. When you’re ready to put your new
knowledge to use, simply run:
$ visudo
Be careful here—the sudoers database, which lives in /etc/sudoers, is not
meant to just be opened in an editor because an editor won’t check the syntax
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Server Security
169
for you! If you mess up the sudoer’s database, you might ﬁnd yourself with
no way to become an administrator on the machine.
Filesystem Security
The security model for ﬁles is standardized across most UNIX-like operat-
ing systems and is called the POSIX model. The model calls for three
broad types of access permissions for every ﬁle and directory: owner,
group, and other. It works in exactly the same way on any Linux distribu-
tion, which is why we won’t focus on it here. For a refresher, consult the
man pages for chmod and chown, or browse around the Internet.
We want to actually look at securing partitions through mount options, an
oft-neglected aspect of dealing with system security that’s rather powerful
when used appropriately. When explaining how to partition your system,
we extolled the virtues of giving, at the very least, the /home, /tmp, and
/var directories their own partitions, mentioning how it’s possible to use
special options when mounting these to the ﬁlesystem.
ptg
Many of the special mount options are ﬁlesystem-dependent, but the ones
we want to consider are not. Here are the ones that interest us.
nodev A ﬁlesystem mounted with the nodev option will not allow the use
or creation of special “device” ﬁles. There’s usually no good reason to allow
most ﬁlesystems to allow interpretation of block or character special devices,
and allowing them poses potential security risks.
nosuid If you read up about UNIX ﬁle permissions, you know that cer-
tain ﬁles can be ﬂagged in a way that lets anyone execute them with the
permissions of another user or group, often that of the system administra-
tor. This ﬂag is called the setuid (suid) or the setgid bit, respectively, and
allowing this behavior outside of the directories that hold the system bina-
ries is often unnecessary and decreases security. If a user is able to, in any
way, create or obtain a setuid binary of his or her own choosing, the user
has effectively compromised the system.
noexec If a ﬁlesystem is ﬂagged as noexec, users will not be able to run
any executables located on it.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

170
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
noatime This ﬂag tells the ﬁlesystem not to keep a record of when ﬁles
were last accessed. If used indiscriminately, it lessens security through lim-
iting the amount of information available in the event of a security inci-
dent, particularly when computer forensics is to be performed. However,
the ﬂag does provide performance beneﬁts for certain use patterns, so it’s a
good candidate to be used on partitions where security is an acceptable
tradeoff for speed.
Deciding which mount options to use on which partition is another fuzzy
science, and you’ll often develop preferences as you become more accus-
tomed to administering machines. Here’s a basic proposal, though, that
should be a good starting point:
/home: nosuid, nodev
/tmp: noatime, noexec, nodev, nosuid
/var: noexec, nodev, nosuid
ptg
System Resource Limits
By default, Linux will not impose any resource limits on user processes.
This means any user is free to ﬁll up all of the working memory on the
machine, or spawn processes in an endless loop, rendering the system
unusable in seconds. The solution is to set up some of your own resource
limits by editing the /etc/security/limits.conf ﬁle:
$ sudoedit /etc/security/limits.conf
The possible settings are all explained in the comment within the ﬁle, and
there are no silver bullet values to recommend, though we do recommend
that you set up at least the nproc limit and possibly also the as/data/
memlock/ rss settings.
TIP
A Real-Life Resource Limit Example
Just to give you an idea of what these limits look like on production servers, here is the
configuration from the general login server of the Harvard Computer Society at Harvard
University:
*
-
as
2097152
*
-
data
131072
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Server Security
171
*
-
memlock
131072
*
-
rss
1013352
*
hard
nproc
128
This limits regular users to 128 processes, with a maximum address space of 2GB, maxi-
mum data size and locked-in-memory address space of 128MB, and maximum resident set
size of 1GB.
If you need to set up disk quotas for your users, install the quota package,
and take a look at its man page.
System Log Files
As a system administrator, the system log ﬁles are some of your best friends.
If you watch them carefully, you’ll often know in advance when something
is wrong with the system, and you’ll be able to resolve most problems before
they escalate.
Unfortunately, your ability to pay close attention to the log ﬁles dwindles
ptg
with every server you’re tasked with administering, so administrators
often use log-processing software that can be conﬁgured to alert them on
certain events, or they write their own tools in languages such as Perl and
Python.
Logs usually live in /var/log, and after your server runs for a while, you’ll
notice there are a lot of increasingly older versions of the log ﬁles in that
directory, many of them compressed with gzip (ending with the .gz ﬁle-
name extension).
Here are some log ﬁles of note:
/var/log/syslog: general system log
/var/log/auth.log: system authentication logs
/var/log/mail.log: system mail logs
/var/log/messages: general log messages
/var/log/dmesg: kernel ring buffer messages, usually since system
bootup
From the Library of Wow! eBook

172
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
Your Log Toolbox When it comes to reviewing logs, you should become
familiar with a few tools of choice. The tail utility prints, by default, the
last ten lines of a ﬁle, which makes it a neat tool to get an idea of what’s
been happening last in a given log ﬁle:
$ tail /var/log/syslog
With the -f parameter, tail launches into follow mode, which means it’ll
open the ﬁle and keep showing you changes on the screen as they’re hap-
pening. If you want to impress your friends with your new system admin-
istrator prowess, you can now easily recreate the Hollywood hacker movie
staple: text furiously blazing across the screen.
Also invaluable are zgrep, zcat, and zless, which operate like their ana-
logues that don’t begin with a z, but on gzip-compressed ﬁles. For instance,
to get a list of lines in all your compressed logs that contain the word
“warthog” regardless of case, you would issue the following command:
ptg
$ zgrep -i warthog /var/log/*.gz
Your toolbox for dealing with logs will grow with experience and based on
your preferences, but to get an idea of what’s already out there, do an apt-
cache search for “log ﬁles.”
A Sprinkling of Network Security
Network security administration is another feature provided largely by the
OS, so it’s no different on Ubuntu than on any other modern Linux distri-
bution. That means we won’t cover it here but will leave you with a pointer.
The iptables command is the front end to the very powerful Linux ﬁre-
wall tables. Unfortunately, dealing with iptables can be rather difﬁcult,
particularly if you’re trying to set up complex ﬁrewall policies. To whet
your appetite, here’s iptables in action, dropping all packets coming from
a notorious time-sink domain:
$ sudo iptables -A INPUT -s www.slashdot.org -j DROP
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ubuntu Server Security
173
Tutorials, how-tos, and articles about iptables are available on the Inter-
net in large numbers, and the system man pages provide detailed informa-
tion about all the possible options. Spending some time to learn iptables
is well worth it because it’ll let you set up network security on any Linux
machine and will make it pretty easy for you to learn other operating sys-
tems’ ﬁrewall systems if need be.
If you want to just manage a basic ﬁrewall on Ubuntu Server, you don’t
necessarily even need to venture into iptables. Ubuntu provides an excel-
lent front-end called ufw that makes it very easy to add new ﬁrewall rules.
For more information on ufw, check out the man page for that tool, or if
you want a more complete reference, look at the security section of The
Ofﬁcial Ubuntu Server Book.
Final Words on Security
We’ve barely even scratched the surface of system security in this subsec-
tion, though we’ve tried to give you good pointers on where to start and
ptg
where to get the information you need to learn more. But let us give you
some sage advice on security in general, since it’s a painful truth to learn:
There is no such thing as a fully secure system. Securing systems isn’t
about making it impossible for a breach to occur. It’s about making the
breach so difﬁcult that it’s not worth it to the attacker. This deﬁnition is
pretty ﬂuid because if your attacker is a bored 14-year-old sitting in a base-
ment somewhere chewing on cold pizza, you can bet that kid will leave
your system alone if it’s even marginally secure. But if you’re keeping
around top-secret information, it’s a lot more difﬁcult to have the system
be secure enough that breaking into it isn’t worth it, from a cost/beneﬁt
point of view, to the attackers.
Security is also neat because, as a concept, it permeates the entire idea
space of computer science. Getting really good at security requires an
incredibly deep understanding of the inner workings of computer sys-
tems, which has the nonobvious advantage that if you’re trying to get a
deep understanding of computer systems but don’t know where to start,
you can start with security and simply follow the trail. Use this to your
advantage! Good luck.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

174
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
TIP
Getting In Touch
If you want to tell us why you like Ubuntu Server, or why you hate it, or send us cookies, or
just stalk us from a distance, come on in! Go to
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server
to join the ubuntu-server mailing list, visit our page on Launchpad at
https://launchpad.net/people/ubuntu-server,
or jump on IRC. We’re on the #ubuntu-server channel on FreeNode. Hope to see you there!
Advanced Topics
A single book chapter isn’t the right place to go into great detail on all the
features packed into Ubuntu Server. There isn’t enough space, and many
of the features are quite specialized. But that doesn’t stop us from taking
you on a whirlwind tour. Our goal here is to give just enough information
to let you know what’s there and interest you in ﬁnding out more about
those features that may be relevant to how you use Ubuntu.
ptg
Virtualization
If there’s been one buzzword ﬁlling out the server space for the past couple
of years, it’s virtualization. In August 2007, a virtualization company called
VMware raised about a billion U.S. dollars in its initial public offering, and
the term virtualization ﬁnally went supernova, spilling from the technology
realm into the ﬁnancial mainstream, and soon to CIOs and technology man-
agers everywhere.
Fundamentally, virtualization is a way to turn one computer into many.
(Erudite readers will note this is precisely the opposite of the Latin motto on
the Seal of the United States, “E Pluribus Unum,” which means “out of many,
one.” Some technologies match that description, too, like Single System
Image, or SSI, grids. But if we talked about virtualization in Latin, it would
be “Ex Uno Plura.”) Why is it useful to turn one computer into many?
Back in the 1960s, servers were huge and extremely expensive, and no one
wanted to buy more of them than they absolutely needed. It soon became
clear that a single server, capable of running different operating systems at
once, would allow the same hardware to be used by different people with
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Advanced Topics
175
different needs, which meant fewer hardware purchases, which meant
happier customers with less devastated budgets. IBM was the ﬁrst to offer
this as a selling point, introducing virtualization in its IBM 7044 and IBM
704 models, and later in the hardware of its Model 67 mainframe. Since
then, the industry largely moved away from mainframes and toward small
and cheap rack servers, which meant the need to virtualize mostly went
away: If you needed to run separate operating systems in parallel, you just
bought two servers. But eventually Moore’s law caught up with us, and
even small rack machines became so powerful that organizations found
many of them underutilized, while buying more servers (though cheap in
itself) meant sizable auxiliary costs for cooling and electricity. This set the
stage for virtualization to once again become vogue. Maybe you want to
run different Linux distributions on the same machine. Maybe you need a
Linux server side by side with Windows. Virtualization delivers.
There are four key types of virtualization. From the lowest level to highest,
they are hardware emulation, full virtualization, paravirtualization, and OS
virtualization. Hardware emulation means running different operating sys-
ptg
tems by emulating, for each, all of a computer’s hardware in software. The
approach is very powerful and painfully slow. Full virtualization instead
uses a privileged piece of software called a hypervisor as a broker between
operating systems and the underlying hardware, and it offers good perfor-
mance but requires special processor support on instruction sets like the
ubiquitous x86. Paravirtualization also uses a hypervisor but supports only
executing operating systems that have been modiﬁed in a special way, offer-
ing high performance in return. Finally, OS virtualization is more accurately
termed “containerization” or “zoning” and refers to operating systems that
support multiple user spaces utilizing a single running kernel. Container-
ization provides near-native performance but isn’t really comparable to the
other virtualization approaches because its focus isn’t running multiple
operating systems in parallel but carving one up into isolated pieces.
The most widely used hardware emulators on Linux are QEMU and
Bochs, available in Ubuntu as packages qemu and bochs respectively. The
big players in full virtualization on Linux are the commercial offerings
from VMware, IBM’s z/VM, and most recently, a technology called KVM
that’s become part of the Linux kernel. In paravirtualization, the key con-
tender is Xen; the Linux OS virtualization space is dominated by the
From the Library of Wow! eBook

176
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
OpenVZ and Linux-VServer projects, though many of the needed inter-
faces for OS virtualization have gradually made their way into the Linux
kernel proper.
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, let’s point you in the right direction
depending on what you’re looking for. If you’re a desktop Ubuntu user and
want a way to safely run one or more other Linux distributions (including
different versions of Ubuntu!) or operating systems (BSD, Windows, Solaris,
and so forth) for testing or development, all packaged in a nice interface,
the top recommendation is an open source project out of Sun Microsys-
tems called VirtualBox. It’s available in Ubuntu as the package virtualbox-
ose, and its home page is www.virtualbox.org.
If you want to virtualize your server, the preferred solution in Ubuntu is
KVM, a fast full virtualizer that turns the running kernel into a hypervisor.
Due to peculiarities of the x86 instruction set, however, full virtualizers
can work only with a little help from the processor, and KVM is no excep-
tion. To test whether your processor has the right support, try:
ptg
$ egrep '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo
If that line produces any output, you’re golden. Head on over to https://
help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM for instructions on installing and con-
ﬁguring KVM and its guest operating systems.
If you lack the processor support for KVM, you don’t have great options.
Ubuntu releases after Hardy (8.04) no longer offer kernels capable of host-
ing Xen guests (dom0 kernels aren’t provided, in Xen parlance), which
means if you’re desperate to get going with Xen, you’ll have to downgrade
to Hardy or get your hands quite dirty in rolling the right kind of kernel
yourself, which is usually no small task.
TIP
Point-and-Click Xen
One Xen-related project to point out is MIT’s open source XVM (not to be confused with Sun
Microsystems’ xVM), which is a set of tools built on top of Debian that allow users to create
and bring up Xen guests through a Web browser, complete with serial console redirection,
ssh access, and a variety of other goodies. MIT uses the system to offer point-and-click vir-
tual machines to any MIT affiliate; the project home page is http://xvm.mit.edu.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Advanced Topics
177
Disk Replication
We’ve discussed the role of RAID in protecting data integrity in the case of
disk failures, but we didn’t answer the follow-up question: What happens
when a whole machine fails? The answer depends entirely on your use case,
and giving a general prescription doesn’t make sense. If you’re Google, for
instance, you have automated cluster management tools that notice a
machine going down and don’t distribute work to it until a technician has
been dispatched to ﬁx the machine. But that’s because Google’s infrastruc-
ture makes sure that (except in pathological cases) no machine holds data
that isn’t replicated elsewhere, so the failure of any one machine is ulti-
mately irrelevant.
If you don’t have Google’s untold thousands of servers on a deeply redun-
dant infrastructure, you may consider a simpler approach: Replicate an
entire hard drive to another computer, propagating changes in real time,
just like RAID1 but over the network.
This functionality is called DRBD, or Distributed Replicated Block Device,
ptg
and it isn’t limited to hard drives: It can replicate any block device you like.
Ubuntu 9.04 and newer ships with DRBD, and the user space utilities you
need are in the drbd8-utils package. For the full documentation, see the
DRBD Web site at www.drbd.org.
Cloud Computing
Slowly but surely overtaking virtualization as the uncontested hottest
topic in IT, cloud computing is just a new term for an old idea: on-demand
or “pay-as-you-go” computing. Building and managing IT infrastructure
aren’t the core competencies of most organizations, the theory goes, and
it’s hard to predict how much computing capacity you’ll need at any given
time: If your company store transitions from wallowing in relative obscu-
rity to becoming an overnight Internet sensation, what do you do? Buy up
a truckload of new servers, ship them overnight, and work your IT staff to
a pulp to bring all this new infrastructure up in as little time as possible? In
the interim, your customers are overwhelming your existing capacity and
getting frustrated by the slow response times. In the worst case scenario, by
the time you have the new hardware running, customer interest has ebbed
From the Library of Wow! eBook

178
Chapter 5
The Ubuntu Server
away, and you’re now stuck having paid for a ton of extra hardware doing
nothing at all. Cloud computing is the promise of a better way. Instead of
dealing with IT infrastructure yourself, why not rent only the amount of it
you need at any given moment from people whose job it is to deal with IT
infrastructure, like Amazon or Google?
Cloud services like Amazon’s S3 and EC2 and Google’s App Engine offer
exactly that. And Ubuntu is getting in on the action in two ways. As this
book goes to press, Ubuntu is offering a beta program wherein Ubuntu
images can be deployed to existing Amazon EC2 instances, allowing you to
run Ubuntu servers on Amazon’s infrastructure. It is expected that this
functionality will become widely available in the foreseeable future. More
interestingly, Ubuntu bundles a set of software called Eucalyptus (http://
eucalyptus.cs.ucsb.edu) that allows you to create an EC2-style cloud on
your own hardware while remaining interface-compatible with Amazon’s.
Such a setup offers savvy larger organizations the ability to manage their
own infrastructure in a much more efﬁcient way and makes it possible for
even small infrastructure shops to become cloud service providers and
ptg
compete for business with the big boys.
Summary
If you’ve never administered a system before, the transition from being a
regular user will be difﬁcult, regardless of which OS you choose to learn to
administer. The difﬁculty stems from the wider shift in thinking that’s
required. Instead of just making sure your room is clean, now you have to
run and protect the whole apartment building. But the difﬁculty is also
educational and rewarding. (We realize they also told you this for your the-
oretical physics class in college, but we are not lying.) Learning to maintain
Ubuntu servers is a great choice for you because you’ll beneﬁt from a
vibrant and helpful user community, and you’ll be working with a top-
notch OS every step of the way.
Just as we were in the ﬁnal editing stages of the ﬁrst edition of this book,
Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth took the stage with then-new Sun
Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz in front of an audience of 15,000 at
Sun’s annual JavaOne conference. In 2001, Sun’s previous CEO Scott
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Summary
179
McNealy famously compared running Linux on a mainframe to “having a
trailer park in the back of your estate.” But standing together in San Fran-
cisco, Schwartz and Shuttleworth announced that Sun plans to provide
commercial support for Ubuntu Server on Sun’s hardware. Meeting with
reporters after his presentation, Schwartz called Ubuntu “one of the most
important—if not the most important—Linux distribution out there,”
adding that “the odds are quite good that [Sun] will be aggressively sup-
porting the work that Ubuntu is doing.” Recent work with Sun has culmi-
nated with a version of Java shipped on Ubuntu servers and support for
Sun’s SPARC architecture. While it’s still too early to know exactly how
Sun’s collaboration with Ubuntu will play out in the long term, one thing is
certain after the JavaOne announcement: The industry sees Ubuntu Server
as a very powerful contender in the server OS arena.
If you’re a seasoned administrator who came to see what all the Ubuntu
Server fuss is about, stay tuned. The project, though rock solid as far as sta-
bility goes, is still in its feature infancy, and the Server Team is working
very hard at making it the best server platform out there. We’re emphasiz-
ptg
ing advanced features and we’re being very fussy about getting all the little
details just right.
In both cases, if you’re installing a new server, give Ubuntu Server a try. It’s
a state-of-the-art system, and we’re sure you’ll enjoy using it. Get in touch,
tell us what to do to make it better, and lend a hand. Help us make Ubuntu
rock even harder on big iron and heavy metal!
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

C H A P T E R 6
More Applications for
6
Ubuntu
Creating Graphics with GIMP and Inkscape
Desktop Publishing with Scribus
Exploring the Future with GNOME-shell and Zeitgeist
Getting There Faster with GNOME Do and Docky
Summary
ptg
181
From the Library of Wow! eBook

IN ADDITION TO THOSE INSTALLED BY DEFAULT, Ubuntu offers a wealth of
other applications to help you make the most of your computer. Different
people use their computers in different ways, and it is for that reason that
we wanted to help you discover how to enable your Ubuntu computer to
do even more.
In this chapter, we show you just a few of the thousands of additional appli-
cations that you can install on your Ubuntu system. Each section showcases
one application, starting with the name of the package you need to install
and what Windows/OS X equivalents might exist. This is followed by the
main thrust of the chapter, which shows you how that application works
and walks you through the initial steps of creation. At the end of the discus-
sion of each application, you will ﬁnd a Further Resources section to help
you go from novice to expert. Let’s get ready to supercharge your Ubuntu!
Creating Graphics with GIMP and Inkscape
ptg
GIMP
Package name: gimp
Windows Equivalent: Adobe Photoshop or GIMP
The GNU Image Manipulation Program, affectionately known as GIMP to
its friends, is a powerful graphics package. GIMP provides a comprehensive
range of functionality for creating different types of graphics. It includes
tools for selecting, drawing, paths, masks, ﬁlters, effects, and more. It also
includes a range of templates for different types of media such as Web ban-
ners, different paper sizes, video frames, CD covers, ﬂoppy disk labels, and
even toilet paper. Yes, toilet paper.
NOTE
In previous versions of Ubuntu, GIMP was installed by default, but for 10.04, it was replaced
by Pitivi, a video editor. For this reason, GIMP is now included in this additional applications
chapter.
Unlike Adobe Photoshop, GIMP does not place all of its windows inside a
single large window; instead, GIMP has a number of separate child win-
dows. This can be a little confusing at ﬁrst for new users—especially those
182
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Creating Graphics with GIMP and Inkscape
183
used to Photoshop. To get you started, let’s run through a simple session in
GIMP.
An Example Start GIMP by clicking Applications > Graphics > GNU Image
Manipulation Program.
When GIMP loads, you will see a collection of different windows, as shown
in Figure 6-1.
Close the Tip of the Day window, and you are left with two other windows.
The one on the left in the screenshot is the main tool palette. This window
provides you with a range of different tools that can be used to create your
images. The window on the right provides details of layers, brushes, and
ptg
Figure 6-1 GIMP does not put everything in one window like Adobe Photoshop does.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

184
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
other information. GIMP provides a huge range of different windows that
are used for different things, and these are just two of them.
To create a new image, click File > New. The window shown in Figure 6-2
will appear.
The easiest way to get started is to select one of the many templates. Click
the Template combo box and select 640 × 480. If you click the Advanced
Options expander, you can also select the color used in the image with the
Colorspace box and the background ﬁll. The Fill combo box is useful for
either selecting a ﬁll color or having a transparent background.
Click OK, and you will see your new image window (Figure 6-3).
ptg
Figure 6-2 Lots of templates are available, including one for toilet paper!
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Creating Graphics with GIMP and Inkscape
185
Figure 6-3 Use the right mouse button on the image to access lots of GIMP
options and features.
ptg
To work on your image, use the tool palette to select which tool you want to
use on the new image window. Each time you click on a tool in the palette,
you see options for the tool appear at the bottom half of the palette window.
When you click the A button in the palette, it selects the text tool. At the
bottom of the palette, you see the different options. Click the Font button
that looks like an uppercase and a lowercase case A (like Aa) and select the
Sans Bold font. Now click the up arrow on the Size box, and select the size
as 60. Move your mouse over to the empty image window, and you will see
the mouse pointer change to a text carat. Click in the image, and a box
pops up in which you can enter the text to add to the image. Type in
“Ubuntu.” With the text entry still open, click the up arrow on the Size box
so the text ﬁlls most of the window. As you can see, you can adjust the text
while it is in the image. When you are happy with the formatting, click
Close on the text entry box. Your image should look a little like Figure 6-4.
Now in the palette, click the button that has a cross with an arrow on each
end. You can use this tool to move the text around. Click the black text, and
move the mouse.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

186
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
ptg
Figure 6-4 Ubuntu comes with a range of attractive fonts for use in your images.
Let’s now add an effect ﬁlter. GIMP comes with a range of different ﬁlters
built in. You can access these by right-clicking the image and selecting the
Filters submenu.
For our image, right-click the image and select Filters > Blur > Gaussian
Blur. In the Horizontal and Vertical boxes, select 5 as the value. Click OK,
and the blur is applied to your text. Anything in GIMP can be undone by
clicking Edit > Undo or typing Ctrl+Z. Your image should now look like
Figure 6-5.
Now we are going to create another layer and put some text over our
blurred text to create an interesting effect. In your image window, click Dia-
logues > Layers. The Layers window now appears (Figure 6-6).
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Creating Graphics with GIMP and Inkscape
187
Figure 6-5 Several filters and effects are bundled with GIMP in Ubuntu.
ptg
Figure 6-6 Layers are essential when creating complex images with lots of parts.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

188
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
Layers are like clear plastic sheets that can be stacked on top of each other.
They allow you to create some imagery on one layer and then create
another layer on top with some other imagery. When combined, layers can
create complex-looking images that are easily editable because you can
edit layers individually. Currently, our blurred text is one layer. We can add
a new layer by clicking the paper icon in the Layers dialog box. Another
window appears to conﬁgure the layer. The defaults are ﬁne (a transparent
layer the size of your image), so click OK.
Now double-click the black color chip in the palette window and select a
light color. You can do this by moving the mouse in the color range and
then clicking OK when you ﬁnd a color you like. Now click the text button
from the palette and again add the “Ubuntu” text. When the text is added,
it will be the same size as before. Now use the move tool and position it
over the blurred text. Now you have the word “Ubuntu” with a healthy
glow, as shown in Figure 6-7!
The ﬁnal step is to crop the image to remove the unused space. Click Tools >
ptg
Transform Tools > Crop, and use the mouse to draw around the Ubuntu
Figure 6-7 Combining steps as we have done can result in interesting effects
such as this.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Creating Graphics with GIMP and Inkscape
189
word. You can click in the regions near the corners of the selection to adjust
the selection more precisely. Click inside the selection, and the image will
be cropped. To save your work, click File > Save, and enter a ﬁlename. You
can use the Select File Type expander to select from one of the many differ-
ent ﬁle formats.
Further Resources A great start is GIMP’s own help, which is not installed
by default, but if you are on the Internet, the help viewer will download it
automatically. You can also install it by searching for gimp help in the Soft-
ware Center. The GIMP’s own Web site at www.gimp.org has all the help plus
tutorials and more.
Inkscape
package name: inkscape
Windows/OS X equivalents: Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, Macromedia Freehand
Inkscape is also a drawing and graphic creation tool, much like GIMP, but
ptg
one that has a slightly different focus. Unlike GIMP, which works with
raster graphics, Inkscape is a vector drawing tool. This means rather than a
grid of pixels, each assigned a color, drawings are mathematically described
using angles and arbitrary units.
To get started with Inkscape, launch it from the Applications > Graphics
menu, and very shortly you will see the default window with the basic can-
vas of either Letter or A4 depending on where in the world you live. At the
top of the screen, below the menus, are three sets of toolbars. The topmost
contains common tools like save and zoom, the second a series of snap-
ping options, and the third is changeable depending on the tool selected.
All the tools are listed on the left-hand side of the menu, starting with
the selection tool and running down to the eyedropper or paint color
selector tool. Let’s get started by drawing a simple shape and coloring it
in (Figure 6-8).
First, select the rectangle tool on the left, just below the zoom icon. Draw a
rectangle anywhere on the screen. Now let’s change the color of the ﬁll and
outside line or stroke.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

190
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
Figure 6-8 Inkscape’s toolbar
ptg
NOTE
With any of the drawing tools, the Shift key will cause objects to grow from the center of
where you clicked and Ctrl will allow you to constrain dimensions and rotation.
With your rectangle still selected, go to the Object menu and choose Fill
and Stroke. Over on the right, you will see the window appear, with three
different tabs: Fill, Stroke Paint, and Stroke Style. Let’s ﬁll that rectangle
with a gradient from orange to white. Immediately below the Fill tab,
change from Flat color to Linear Gradient (Figure 6-9).
Look back at your rectangle and see the gradient and a new line running
horizontally across the rectangle. Moving either the square or the circle
allows you to deﬁne where the gradient starts and stops. To change the col-
ors, click the Edit... button. Once the Edit dialog is up, each end of the gra-
dient is called a stop and can be edited separately (Figure 6-10).
Now that we have a rectangle, let’s add some text to our image. Select the
Text tool, which is right near the bottom on the left, and click anywhere. A
cursor appears, and you can start typing. Type “Ubuntu,” and then we are
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Creating Graphics with GIMP and Inkscape
191
ptg
Figure 6-9 Your rectangle, now with gradient-filled goodness
Figure 6-10 Gradient editing dialog
From the Library of Wow! eBook

192
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
going to change the color and size of the text. Let’s make the text 56 points,
which can be selected in the upper right, beside the Font name.
The Fill & Stroke dialog should still be open on the right, but if it isn’t,
reopen it. Change the text color to Red, then choose the selection tool again.
Now drag a box around both the text and the rectangle, and you should see
both selected (Figure 6-11).
Now open the Alignment dialog, which is right near the bottom of the
Object menu. Like the Fill and Stroke dialog, it appears on the right-hand
side. To center the text in the box, see the middle two icons with a line and
some blue lines on the side of them. Click both the Horizontal and Vertical
alignment options, and we are done (Figure 6-12).
By default, Inkscape saves in the SVG or Scalable Vector Graphics format,
an open standard for the creation of vector graphics. Inkscape can also save
ptg
Figure 6-11 Text and rectangle selected
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Creating Graphics with GIMP and Inkscape
193
ptg
Figure 6-12 Your final drawing
into PDF format, although if you choose to do so, make certain you also
save a copy as an SVG so you can edit the image later if you wish. Both SVG
and PDF are options in the Save dialog. You can also export your image as a
PNG for embedding in a text document or uploading to the Web, although
many modern Web browsers such as Firefox and Chrome can display SVG
directly. To export, go to File > Export, which allows you to choose to
export just the objects selected, the whole document, or some portion.
Hopefully, you have seen just how powerful Inkscape can be. There are
many more things you can do with Inkscape, so play around with the vari-
ous options, dialogs, and shapes.
Further Resources A good start is always Inkscape’s own help, which is in
SVG format, so you can see how the original authors created the tutorials.
Inkscape’s Web site at http://inkscape.org has some great tutorials and
From the Library of Wow! eBook

194
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
articles. If you want a book, Tav Bah’s Inkscape: Guide to Vector Drawing
Program, Third Edition, is a good place to start.
Desktop Publishing with Scribus
Windows Equivalents: Adobe InDesign, Scribus
For more powerful document creation than OpenOfﬁce.org can allow,
Scribus is just the ticket. A desktop publishing application, Scribus is built
for designing and laying out documents of various sizes and sorts. As such,
it makes a few different assumptions that might catch you up if you are
used to using OpenOfﬁce.org to create your documents.
When you ﬁrst launch Scribus, it asks you what kind of document you
want to create or if you want to open an existing document. Let’s create a
one-page document and take Scribus for a spin (Figure 6-13).
The ﬁrst thing to remember about Scribus is that as a desktop publishing
ptg
program, it is not designed for the direct editing of images and text. You
edit and create your images in applications like GIMP or Inkscape and your
text in word processors like OpenOfﬁce.org and then import them.
Figure 6-13 Scribus’s opening dialog with lots of options
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Desktop Publishing with Scribus
195
For starters, let’s create a pair of text frames and then import the docu-
ment Welcome_to_Ubuntu.odt from Example Content. To create a text
frame, you need to use the Insert Text Frame tool, which can be found near
the middle of the toolbar. After you draw the text frame, you need to add
text to it. Right-click on the frame and choose Get Text. A dialog very sim-
ilar to the Open dialog appears. Choose the Welcome_to_Ubuntu.odt ﬁle,
and then select OK. You will be asked a few options; for now, accept the
defaults. You should see the text appear on the screen (Figure 6-14).
NOTE
Scribus currently cannot import Microsoft Word documents, so you will need to open them
in OpenOffice.org and convert them to .odt files so Scribus can import them.
ptg
Figure 6-14 The imported text in a frame
From the Library of Wow! eBook

196
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
But as you can see, the text overﬂows the frame. In order for the rest of
the text to show up, you need to create another text frame and then link
the two, allowing the overﬂow to appear in the second frame. Go up to the
toolbar again, select the Insert Text Frame, and draw another frame roughly
on the bottom of the page. Then select the ﬁrst frame and choose the Link
Text Frames icon on the toolbar, which looks like two columns with an
arrow between them. After you have selected that, click on the second text
box and you should see an arrow appear and, more importantly, your text
will now ﬂow from one frame to the next (Figure 6-15).
Next let’s insert an image at the bottom of the screen. As with text, you
need to create an image frame, then add the image to that frame. Draw the
image frame below the two text frames, and then right-click and choose
ptg
Figure 6-15 Text now flows from frame to frame.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Desktop Publishing with Scribus
197
Get Image. Just as with the text import, choose your ﬁle, this time an image
ﬁle, in the Open dialog, and it will appear in the frame. Let’s choose the
Ubuntu logo, under the Logo folder in Example Content. It will appear in
your image frame (Figure 6-16).
NOTE
Scribus can import gif, jpg, png, xpm, psd, tiff, eps, and pdf. It cannot yet import GIMP’s XCF,
so you will need to save any images in one of the supported formats.
Now that you have added some text and an image, let’s export to PDF so
you can share your creation with the world. On the toolbar near the left-
hand edge, you will see the PDF logo, just to the left of the trafﬁc light icon.
Select that, and don’t worry about the error about the DPI of the image.
ptg
Figure 6-16 Your document with an image added
From the Library of Wow! eBook

198
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
Select Ignore Errors, and you will see a large dialog with many options for
embedding fonts and the like. Don’t worry too much about them right
now, as the document you have created isn’t that complicated. Choose a
good name for your document, and then save it to your Documents folder.
Now let’s take a look at your creation in the Document Viewer. Open the
File Manager and load your new document (Figure 6-17).
Now let’s go back to Scribus and save the image in Scribus’s own SLA for-
mat so that you can edit it later if you wish. Enter the name you chose for
the PDF name and save it in the Documents folder as well. You have now
created your ﬁrst document in Scribus. There is a lot more to explore, so
go and try things out. Just remember to save every now and again.
ptg
Figure 6-17 Your document as a PDF
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Desktop Publishing with Scribus
199
Further Resources As always, Scribus’s own help is a great place to start.
The Scribus Web site at www.scribus.net has a help wiki, further docu-
mentation, and more. There is also an ofﬁcial book, which isn’t out as of
this writing but should be very shortly. Information about it can also be
found on the Scribus Web site.
Playing to Learn with Educational Programs
There are many different educational applications available on Ubuntu.
Let’s take a look at just a few of them in the Applications > Education
menu. You will ﬁnd a brief summary for all applications here as well as
more detailed explanations and screenshots of some of the more advanced
packages.
NOTE
Along with the Edubuntu DVD, there is an easy way to install much of the educational soft-
ware via preselected bundles aimed at different age groups. The bundles are preschool, pri-
mary, secondary, and tertiary.
ptg
GCompris Administration This is the administration tool for the GCom-
pris set of tools, which is described a little later. Using this tool, you can
create separate profiles for different users of GCompris and enable or dis-
able the list of available activities.
Kalzium Kalzium presents the pinnacle of periodic table exploration for
users of any ages. In its simplest form, it provides a quick and easy reference
to the periodic table. Kalzium includes 105 of the naturally occurring ele-
ments, many of which are accompanied by sample pictures. If the user hov-
ers the mouse pointer over an element symbol in the periodic table, a
balloon appears showing the selected element’s name, atomic number, and
mass (Figure 6-18).
For more advanced users, Kalzium provides a fascinating way to explore
the periodic table. Using the left-hand panel, users have access to the time-
line, boiling point, and melting point sliders. When users move these slid-
ers, the elements on the periodic table change color according to their
dates of discovery, boiling points, or melting points respectively. Users can
From the Library of Wow! eBook

200
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
ptg
Figure 6-18 Kalzium
then start to see patterns emerging in the periodic table right in front of
their eyes.
As well as presenting the basic information, Kalzium provides very advanced
statistics on each of the 105 elements present.
Kanagram Kanagram is a simple package that messes up the letters of a
word to create an anagram that children must then unscramble. The pack-
age comes with hints, a cheat feature that reveals the word, and built-in
word lists, which can be extended.
KBruch KBruch is a math program to help students practice the use of
fractions. It comes with four distinct modes of play.
Fraction Task: In this exercise, the user is given a fraction sum that
must be solved by adding the numerator and denominator. The
difﬁculty of the sum can be changed by the user, who has control over
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Desktop Publishing with Scribus
201
the number of fractions to use, the maximum size of the main
denominator, and the mathematical operations to use, such as
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Comparison: This exercise is designed to test the user’s understand-
ing of fraction sizes by making him or her compare two given
fractions.
Conversion: The Conversion mode tests the user’s skills at taking a
given number and converting it into a fraction.
Factorization: Factorization tests the user in calculating the factors of
a given number. Factorization is a key skill in using and manipulating
fractions.
KHangman This modern version of a classic game helps children learn to
spell and recognize letter patterns in words. KHangman shows a blank
base to start; as the user chooses letters, they are entered into the word if
correct or placed on the tries list if incorrect, in which case the hangman
begins to grow. KHangman comes with three built-in word lists, but these
ptg
can be extended easily.
Kig For people wishing to learn about geometrical construction in
mathematics, Kig is a must. It is an extremely powerful package but very
simple to use. Kig allows users to create complex geometrical abstractions
from over thirty simple tools, such as points, parallel and perpendicular
lines, arcs, bisectors, circles, and hyperbola (Figure 6-19). When creating
abstractions, Kig uses other lines and points already on the diagram to
lock onto, making it easy to achieve high precision.
Kig also includes some testing tools. Once a geometrical diagram has been
drawn, it is often required to prove a concept by showing that two lines are
indeed parallel or perpendicular. Kig offers these tools and more in an
easy-to-use manner. Just clicking on the tool prompts the user to choose
the item to test against. Then, each time the user hovers over another item
while moving the cursor around, Kig will pop up with a message to tell
whether or not it satisﬁes the test case.
KmPlot KmPlot is a mathematical function–graphing program for
Edubuntu. The package has a powerful expression parser built in and can
From the Library of Wow! eBook

202
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
Figure 6-19 Kig
ptg
plot different functions simultaneously and combine their function terms
to build more complex mathematical functions. KmPlot also supports
functions with parameters and functions in polar coordinates. KmPlot
can create graphs to a very high precision, making it excellent for teaching
purposes.
KStars With information on over 130,000 stars and 13,000 deep sky
objects, KStars is one powerful package when it comes to space exploration.
The main view in KStars follows the time and date to provide the user with
a constantly updating view of the night sky. Constellations are highlighted,
and star clusters are marked for clarity (Figure 6-20).
KStars has a simplistic user interface, which makes it ideal for amateurs all
the way up to astronomy experts. Celestial objects can be right-clicked for
more information and can then be tracked and examined in even more
detail.
In addition to the huge celestial object database, there are some other fan-
tastic features in KStars. The Calculator, for example, allows the user to
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Desktop Publishing with Scribus
203
ptg
Figure 6-20 KStars
compute coordinates and other ﬁgures for a variety of objects and scenar-
ios. KStars can even be hooked up to a telescope to allow real-time tracking
of what the screen shows.
The What’s Up Tonight? tool provides an overview of what objects will be
visible in the sky on that particular night, with the ability to then center on
an object and track it in real time. The Altitude vs. Time feature allows
users to see how the altitude of a celestial object varies with time during
the day. With a built-in scripting language, KStars is the most comprehen-
sive astronomical observation application in the open source community.
KTouch In this day and age, typing is an everyday occurrence for most
people. KTouch is a tutor that gives help and support to those wishing to
learn the art of touch typing. With fifteen levels and automatic level pro-
gression, KTouch is a fairly advanced tutor program, offering statistics and
alternative language options, too.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

204
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
KTurtle KTurtle is a Logo programming language interpreter for Edubuntu.
The Logo programming language is very easy to learn, and thus young chil-
dren can use it. A unique quality of Logo is that the commands or instruc-
tions can be translated, so the user can program in his or her native
language. This makes Logo ideal for teaching children the basics of pro-
gramming, mathematics, and geometry. One of the reasons many children
warm to Logo is that the programmable icon is a small turtle, which can be
moved around the screen with simple commands and can be programmed
to draw objects (Figure 6-21).
By typing in commands such as turnleft 90, forward 4, children are using
a language native to themselves while also learning procedural logic.
KTurtle can even handle simple subroutines, so it’s easy to extend the pro-
gramming onward and upward.
With the introduction of KDE 4, Edubuntu includes a group of brand new
educational packages. Following is a brief summary of each new application.
ptg
Marble Marble, the desktop globe, is a virtual globe and world atlas,
which can be utilized to learn more about the Earth. With the ability to pan
and zoom, click on a label to open a corresponding Wikipedia article, and
Figure 6-21 KTurtle
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Desktop Publishing with Scribus
205
view the globe and maps with various projections, Marble is a welcome
addition to Edubuntu’s educational packages.
Parley Parley, the digital flash card, allows you to easily remember things
utilizing the spaced repetition learning method, otherwise known as flash
cards. Features include different testing types, fast and easy setup, multiple
languages, the ability to share and download flash cards, and much more.
Step Step is an interactive physics simulator that allows you not only to
learn but to feel how physics works. By placing bodies on the scene and
adding some forces such as gravity or springs, you can simulate the law of
physics, and Step will show you how your scene evolves.
Blinken Blinken takes you back, back to the 1970s, as a digital version of
the famous Simon Says game. Watch the lights, listen to the sounds, and
then try to complete the sequence in order. Blinken provides hours of fun
with the added benefit of learning.
ptg
Others Not on the Education Menu Some educational applications are
not located in the Education menu. Here are brief descriptions of two of
them.
Tux Paint: Applications > Graphics > Tux Paint is a drawing package
for younger children. Although geared toward a younger audience,
Tux Paint still packs in some of the more advanced features of
drawing packages and can draw shapes, paint with different brushes,
use a stamp, and add text to the image. The Magic feature allows
many of the more advanced tools normally found in full-ﬂedged
photo editors to be used, such as smudge, blur, negative, tint, and
many more. There is also the facility to save as well as print.
GCompris: Applications > Games > GCompris is a set of small
educational activities aimed at children between two and ten years
old and is translated into over forty languages. Some of the activities
are game oriented and at the same time educational. Among the
activities, there are tasks to educate children in computer use, algebra,
science, geography, reading, and more. More than eighty activities are
available in the latest release. GCompris won a Free Software Award
in France in 2004.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

206
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
Exploring the Future with GNOME-shell and Zeitgeist
Right now is an exciting time to be using GNOME and Ubuntu because of
all the new technology on the horizon. Red Hat and others have been
working on GNOME shell, a new way of launching applications and man-
aging programs. Coupled with that is Zeitgeist and GNOME-activity jour-
nal, the other part of GNOME 3.0. Zeitgeist is a new way of looking at how
ﬁles are managed—by tags and dates modiﬁed rather than by folders.
GNOME activity journal is the new user interface to the Zeitgeist daemon.
GNOME-shell is an optional replacement for both the panel and the win-
dow manager, offering new ways of manipulating windows, notiﬁcations,
and other secondary functions of a desktop. Uniquely among desktop
applications in GNOME, GNOME-shell is written in JavaScript and ren-
dered with the Mozilla-based gjs. This use of JavaScript and cascading style
sheets (CSS) makes adding new effects easy and lowers the barrier for Web
developers coming to the GNOME desktop for the ﬁrst time.
Before you install GNOME-shell on your primary account, it’s a good idea
ptg
to create a new user and try it out there ﬁrst. This is because GNOME-shell
replaces the existing window manager, Compiz, and the panels.
NOTE
To create a new user, see page 124.
After you have created a new user, log out and log in to the new user. You
then need to delete the existing panels and launch a terminal session. You
will need to run the gnome-shell—replace command. The screen should
ﬂicker for a moment and then you will see GNOME-shell (Figure 6-22).
For starters, let’s have a quick look at the desktop and see how it is differ-
ent. At the top of the screen, the extreme left is now a single menu, Activi-
ties, rather than the three in the standard GNOME desktop. To the right of
that is the currently open window name. In the middle of the panel, you
will ﬁnd the clock, and if you click on it, you will get the calendar, exactly
as the old clock worked.
It is in the upper right that you will see the most difference. Because GNOME-
shell completely replaces the existing GNOME panel, the new activity indi-
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Exploring the Future with GNOME-shell and Zeitgeist
207
ptg
Figure 6-22 GNOME-shell left-hand sidebar
cators and the Me Menu aren’t there. What replaces it is a variant on the
standard Network Manager menu and a basic presence and logout menu.
Hopefully, the Me Menu work will ﬁnd its way into the GNOME-shell work,
as they are aiming for a common standard.
Now let’s get into the real power of the GNOME-shell, the overlay mode. To
activate that, you need to either click on the Activities menu or run your
mouse right into the “hot corner” of the upper left corner of the screen.
Down the left-hand side of the screen, you will see a panel, starting with a
search box. That box searches the menu for speciﬁc applications and is
currently the only way to ﬁnd programs you have never run before. Below
that is an automatically generated list of commonly used applications and
selected favorites. You will also see a little arrow beside Applications that
shows all recently run applications. Below that are the places and the
recent documents, exactly as in the menus of the standard GNOME desk-
top (Figure 6-22).
From the Library of Wow! eBook

208
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
One of the core ideas of the GNOME-shell is that of grouping windows
together into logical tasks in speciﬁc workspaces. By default, you only have
a single workspace, but unlike the regular GNOME desktop, adding and
removing workspaces is trivial: merely click the + button in the lower
right. You can now drag windows to the new empty workspace or launch
applications within it. If you want to remove the workspace, move all the
windows to another workspace and then click the – key.
The last piece to mention is the new Alt+Tab menu for choosing different
windows. As with the standard desktop, you can cycle through the various
windows by holding down Alt and clicking Tab multiple times. However,
visually, all windows in the current workspace are to the left of the vertical
divider and the rest of the windows are to the right. Multiple windows of
the same application are also grouped together, so you can select them by
holding down the Alt key and using either the arrows or the mouse.
GNOME-shell can be manipulated with the keyboard as well as the mouse,
so here are some common keyboard commands to get you started.
ptg
System (Windows) key: Switch between overview and desktop
Alt+F1: Switch between overview and desktop
Alt+F2: Pop up command dialog
Alt+Tab: Cycle between windows
Alt+Shift+Tab: Cycle in reverse direction in the window cycler
Alt+`: Switch between windows of the same application in Alt+Tab
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+R: Start and end screencast recording
Ctrl+Alt+D: Show desktop and raise windows back
Ctrl+Alt+Right/Left arrow: Switch between workspaces
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Right/Left arrow: Move the current window to a
different workspace
There you have it, GNOME-shell in a nutshell. Try it out, see if you like it.
Further Resources Zeitgeist and GNOME activity journal (GAJ) (http://
live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet) are two parts of the same sys-
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Exploring the Future with GNOME-shell and Zeitgeist
209
tem. Zeitgeist is the part that collects the information, and GAJ displays
that information, which means you need Zeitgeist running in order for
GAJ to actually display anything.
NOTE
The fastest way to get the latest Zeitgeist and GAJ is the Zeitgeist team’s PPA, which is avail-
able on Launchpad at https://www.launchpad.net/~zeitgeist/+archive/ppa.
To install Zeitgeist and GAJ, install the gnome-activity-journal package,
which will install all the Zeitgeist bits you need too.
After you have installed GNOME-activity-journal, the ﬁrst thing you need
to do is add the two Zeitgeist daemons to your session. Under System >
Preferences > Startup Applications, select the add button. The two dae-
mons are called zeitgeist-daemon and zeitgeist-datahub. Log out and then
back in again, and the Zeitgeist daemons are now launched. You can check
via the System Monitor.
ptg
Open a few ﬁles just to get some data for Zeitgeist to track and then open
the Activity Journal tool under Applications > Accessories (Figure 6-23).
By default, each day is represented by a column, and the various ﬁles you
have used—be they images, documents or other categories—are broken
down by ﬁle type. To move forward or backward along the calendar, you
can either use the arrows on the right and left of the window or by sliding
the calendar bar at the bottom with your mouse.
For even more information about when you used your ﬁles, you can click
on the Date heading at the top of the column to see when during the day
you had that ﬁle open. Clicking on the heading again will shrink it back
down so you can see the three-day view again. Right-clicking on the same
heading bar will show you little thumbnails of all the ﬁles, very useful if
you are doing a lot of image editing. You can also view a quick thumbnail
by mousing over the ﬁle name in the regular three-day view.
The calendar bar deserves a little bit of discussion. Clicking anywhere on
the calendar bar moves you to that day, and you can see the columns above
change to the three days around where you clicked. You can also see that
From the Library of Wow! eBook

210
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
ptg
Figure 6-23 GNOME activity journal main window
the highlighting changes to show you where in the calendar you are. The
height of the bar in the calendar indicates levels of ﬁle activity that day.
Lastly, to quickly return to today, click the Today button in the lower right
(Figure 6-24).
Zeitgeist and GAJ are constantly changing, so new ideas, ways of display-
ing data and data providers are being added all the time. Displaying how
you use and view your ﬁles in a timeline-style view is quite new, so expect
change and have fun.
Further Resources The Zeitgeist Web site is the best place to start. It can
be found at http://zeitgeist-project.com. Because this is a very new project,
not many other Web sites or resources have appeared yet, but by the time
you read this, there should be plenty more.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Getting There Faster with GNOME Do and Docky
211
Figure 6-24 The calendar allows quick access to files across time.
Getting There Faster with GNOME Do and Docky
GNOME Do, a Quicksilver-like launcher of applications, and Docky, an
application dock, share a common heritage and thus are mentioned together
here. Like GNOME-shell and Zeitgeist, they are explorations of new ways to
use your computer, in this case to launch applications.
To get started with GNOME Do, you need to install the gnome-do pack-
age. After it is installed, simply launch it by holding down the Super key
(usually the Windows key) and hitting the spacebar.
ptg
To launch an application, simply start typing either its name or the com-
mand to launch the application, such as Firefox (Figure 6-25).
But GNOME Do can do more, to pardon the pun. You can maximize, min-
imize, switch to, close, or move an application to another virtual desktop.
Just as before, type the application’s name, but then hit the tab key to switch
to the next box. Now either type the command or press the down arrow for
a list of commands (Figure 6-26).
Figure 6-25 GNOME Do’s main window
From the Library of Wow! eBook

212
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
Figure 6-26 GNOME Do’s command interface
GNOME Do can also open folders and Tomboy notes via the Open com-
mand. Bring up GNOME Do, type “Open,” and hit Tab to select the next
box. Just as you do to manipulate applications, you can start typing to get a
folder name from the Places menu or a Tomboy note name or else press
the down arrow to get a list you can scroll though.
If you want to expand GNOME Do capabilities, there are a wealth of plug-
ins available. Launch GNOME Do and then click on the little down arrow
ptg
in the upper right of the window.
This is also where you can have GNOME Do start automatically, but let’s
move to the plug-ins tab. There are far too many to talk about, but install a
few and try them out. They can easily be turned off through the same menu.
There is a great deal more that GNOME Do offers, but at least you got a
little taste. Install it and try it out. You never know—it might be the best
thing since sliced bread for you.
Further Resources As with GNOME-shell, GNOME Do isn’t that old, so
resources aren’t that well developed. The GNOME Do Web site at http://
do.davebsd.com is a good place to learn more and follow the most recent
developments.
Docky is a replacement for the bottom panel meant for faster launching
and switching of applications. After you have Docky installed, you need to
start it. Like GNOME Do, it is not set to start by default.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Getting There Faster with GNOME Do and Docky
213
NOTE
GNOME Do is included in 10.04, but Docky is not. To get Docky, add the Docky PPA from
https://www.launchpad.net/~docky-core/+archive/ppa.
NOTE
You will need to have compositing (also called desktop effects) enabled for Docky to work.
To enable it, open the Visual Effects tab in System > Preferences > Appearances.
If you run your mouse over the dock, icons will grow and shrink as you do
so, exactly as the OS X dock does. This makes it easier to click on the cor-
rect icon. Depending on whether or not the program is already running,
you will see two different things. If it is not yet running, the icon will
bounce to show you it is starting before the application itself starts. How-
ever, if it is already running, you will zoom to that window.
On the far left of the dock is a brown icon with an anchor on it. This
launches the preferences window for Docky. This is where you can choose
whether or not to launch Docky at startup, various options for how it
ptg
appears, and Docklets and Helpers.
Docklets are icons that appear on the dock even though they are not appli-
cations. These include a trash icon, a clock, and more (Figure 6-27).
Helpers are small scripts that can add items to the right-click menu of an
icon, such as controlling the playback of music in Rhythmbox. With the
helper enabled, you can start, stop, go back, and go forward without open-
ing Rhythmbox at all (Figure 6-28).
Figure 6-27 Docklets
From the Library of Wow! eBook

214
Chapter 6
More Applications for Ubuntu
Figure 6-28 The Rhythmbox helper menu
New helpers are easy to install, either on a per-user or computerwide basis. To
ptg
learn more, see http://wiki.go-docky.com/index.php?title=List_of_helpers.
Further Resources The Docky Web site at www.go-docky.com is always a
good place to start, and it includes a help wiki if you need a bit more help.
Summary
In this chapter, you’ve learned how to install and use just a few of the
additional applications available for Ubuntu. Although this chapter only
scratched the surface of what each application can do, you should have
enough of an understanding of each to get started with them, and the Fur-
ther Resources sections should help you become an expert. But beyond what
is in this chapter, the vast universe of new programs is available. Go and
explore—try out something new. At worst, you will have wasted a few hours,
but you might ﬁnd something that will change your life.
Always remember that there is a wealth of help and documentation available
online. If you ever ﬁnd yourself stuck, take a look at the Ubuntu Web site at
www.ubuntu.com or the Ubuntu documentation at http://help.ubuntu.com
and make use of the forums, wiki, mailing lists, and IRC channels.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

C H A P T E R 7
The Ubuntu Community
7
Venues
Teams, Processes, and Community Governance
Getting Involved
Summary
ptg
215
From the Library of Wow! eBook

COMMUNITY IS A WORD OFTEN used in discussions of Ubuntu. Early articles
about Ubuntu bore subtitles asking, “Would you like some community
with that?” The earliest press releases and communiqués from the project
emphasized a “community-driven approach” to operating system develop-
ment and distribution. Also, the highest-level governance board in Ubuntu
is called the Community Council. Canonical, Ltd. employs a full-time com-
munity manager (Jono Bacon, one of the authors of early editions of this
book). And we made a very conscious decision to spend an entire chapter
of this book describing the Ubuntu community. In fact, every edition has
been dedicated to the Ubuntu community!
Still, while the Ubuntu community is important, it is not always easy to
succinctly describe it. Ubuntu is, in large part, developed and funded by
Canonical, Ltd. The community, almost by deﬁnition, extends far beyond
Canonical, Ltd. The Ubuntu project has members and self-declared activists
(Ubunteros), but the Ubuntu community is more than even those with such
explicitly declared relationships. The project contains a wide variety of dif-
ferent venues for participation. But while the community is active in each of
ptg
these areas, its scope is even wider.
The Ubuntu community is the collection of individuals who build, pro-
mote, distribute, support, document, translate, and advocate Ubuntu—in
myriad ways and in myriad venues. Most people in the Ubuntu commu-
nity have never met, talked with, or heard of each other. Members of the
community are linked by their contributions, both technical and nontech-
nical, and by Ubuntu itself. These contributions have built Ubuntu as a
distribution, as a social movement, as a set of support infrastructures, and
as a project. In short, they have built Ubuntu as a community. While any
active software development project has a number of people making con-
tributions, not every project has a community.
Community is also a term that represents a promise by the Ubuntu project
to remain inclusive. The focus on community means that volunteers are
not only welcome but also essential. It means that Ubuntu is a “place”
where individuals can come together to create something greater than the
sum of its parts. The word community gives a nod to the fact that while
much development work is paid for by Canonical, Ltd., and while some
216
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Venues
217
people contribute more hours, more effort, more code, more translations,
more documentation, or more advocacy work to Ubuntu than others, no
individual or subgroup can take credit for everything that Ubuntu has
become. In Ubuntu, no contribution is expendable. Having a community
also reﬂects Ubuntu’s goal to provide a low barrier for entry for these con-
tributions. Anyone who cares about Ubuntu can contribute to the project
and can, in whatever ways are most appropriate, become a participant in
the Ubuntu community.
This chapter provides a bird’s-eye view of the venues and processes in
which the Ubuntu community is active. First, it takes a tour through the
venues through which the Ubuntu community communicates. It contin-
ues by looking at the way the community is organized and the processes by
which that organization works. Finally, it walks you through the ways you
can participate in the Ubuntu community and contribute to its success.
Venues
ptg
As we described in Chapter 1, transparent and public communication was
an early goal of the Ubuntu project. Technical and community decisions
are made publicly and are accessible to all interested parties. When this is
impossible (e.g., when there is a face-to-face meeting and it’s simply not
possible for everyone interested to attend), the community attempts to
publish summaries and minutes and to provide avenues for feedback.
Ubuntu contains no “member only,” “developer only,” or “decision maker
only” back channels except to preserve individual privacy or security—
and the Ubuntu community refuses to create them. All work in Ubuntu
occurs in places where everyone can view the work, and anyone who agrees
to engage constructively and respectfully can participate.
Of course, this activity is public only to those who know where to ﬁnd it.
This section tries to document the venues for communication in Ubuntu
as completely as possible. It describes the places where discussions of
development, support, and advocacy take place. While nobody can engage
in communication in all of the venues described, knowledge of what exists
allows participants to be more informed when they need to choose the
right place to ask a question or to make a suggestion.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

218
Chapter 7
The Ubuntu Community
Mailing Lists
The single most important venue for communication in Ubuntu is the
Ubuntu mailing lists. These lists provide the space where all important
announcements are made and where development discussions take place.
There are, at the time of this writing, more than 300 public e-mail lists. This
number is constantly growing.
An up-to-date, full page of mailing lists for Ubuntu can be found at http://
lists.ubuntu.com, where users can see a list of available mailing lists, view
archived discussions, and subscribe to lists through a Web interface.
Lists are one of the oldest forms of communication by e-mail. A mailing
list provides a single e-mail address that, when mailed to, will then relay the
received message to a large number of people. In Ubuntu, lists are topi-
cal, and individuals can subscribe to a mailing list if they want to receive
information on the list’s topic. All mailing lists at Ubuntu are hosted at
lists.ubuntu.com. If you would like to send a message to a list, simply e-mail
<mailing list name>@lists.ubuntu.com, replacing <mailing list name> with
ptg
the name of the list you are trying to mail.
With a few exceptions (e.g., the e-mail lists for the Technical Board or
Community Council), anybody can subscribe to any Ubuntu list. In most
cases, the capability to send e-mail to lists is restricted to list members
(membership in lists is, of course, open to anyone). This means that all
e-mail sent to a list from someone who is not a member of that list is put
into a queue to be reviewed by a human moderator before it is broadcast
to list members. This is done as an antispam measure. Users can subscribe
to lists and then conﬁgure the system to never send e-mail. For several
e-mail lists, all messages are moderated. This is largely to ensure that lists
remain “low volume” or “announcement only.”
Ubuntu’s mailing lists are run by the popular Mailman software, which
may be familiar to some users. Mailman makes it simple to subscribe to
lists, to unsubscribe, and to conﬁgure any number of options about mail
delivery. One popular option is to receive a daily digest of messages rather
than a separate e-mail each time a new message is sent. This is all available
through a Web interface at http://lists.ubuntu.com. Users can also sub-
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Venues
219
scribe to lists by sending an e-mail with “subscribe” in the subject line to
<mailing list name>-REQUEST@lists.ubuntu.com.
While each list plays an important role in the Ubuntu community, the fol-
lowing central lists warrant a little more detail. You might ﬁnd it a good
idea to subscribe to them.
ubuntu-announce This fully moderated list relays all important announce-
ments for the Ubuntu project and usually contains less than one e-mail per
week. It is the place where new releases are announced and where other
important information can be found ﬁrst. If you use Ubuntu, you may
want to consider subscribing to this list. If you subscribe to only one list,
this should be it.
ubuntu-devel-announce This fully moderated list contains announce-
ments related to the development of Ubuntu. It is low volume and con-
tains one to three e-mails per week. If you work with code in Ubuntu, use a
development release, or contribute on any technical level, you should be
ptg
on this list. This is the list that everyone involved in development for
Ubuntu is expected to read.
ubuntu-devel-discuss This list is the primary open list for general-pur-
pose discussion of Ubuntu development. If you are looking to contribute
to Ubuntu in any technical way, you should subscribe to this list and begin
to follow the discussion. The list has a relatively high volume of e-mails.
ubuntu-devel This list is a moderated list for discussion of Ubuntu.
While subscribing remains free, posting to the list is restricted to those
who are Ubuntu developers or chosen other developers. Others may post,
but all posts are checked by a moderation team.
Internet Relay Chat
While mailing lists provide the primary venue for asynchronous commu-
nication (i.e., not at the same time), there is still an important need for
synchronous, or real-time, collaboration. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) ﬁlls
this niche. While it was designed primarily for group (i.e., many-to-many)
From the Library of Wow! eBook

220
Chapter 7
The Ubuntu Community
communication in channels, it is also equipped with private messaging
capabilities that facilitate one-to-one communication—all instantaneously.
It is very similar to instant messaging or chat room communication. While
time zones and a round globe make it difﬁcult for the global Ubuntu com-
munity to meet at the same time, many users and developers take advantage
of IRC’s capability to let anyone chat about an issue in real time or to ask a
question and have it answered immediately.
Like mailing lists, IRC channels provide a venue for a variety of different
types of communication in a variety of different subcommunities in
Ubuntu. There are many different channels, including channels in a vari-
ety of languages.
All ofﬁcial Ubuntu IRC channels are located on the FreeNode IRC network,
which also hosts a range of other free and open source software projects.
Users can connect to IRC using several pieces of software in Ubuntu,
including Pidgin, XChat-gnome (Figure 7-1), and IRSSI. Like the ubuntu-
users e-mail list, #ubuntu is designed for help and support. When joining
ptg
Figure 7-1 XChat-gnome is an IRC client that allows Ubuntu users to connect to
the Ubuntu IRC channels.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Venues
221
any channel, users should carefully read the topic as many frequently asked
questions are answered there, and moderators of the channel can be
annoyed by users who ask questions the moderators have already taken the
time to answer in the channel’s topic.
Currently the #ubuntu channel is usually the biggest channel on the
FreeNode network, with over 1,000 simultaneous users at most times—
and it’s continuing to grow—especially around releases. Another impor-
tant channel is #ubuntu-devel, which is reserved for discussion of Ubuntu
development. Similarly, Kubuntu users hang out in #kubuntu and devel-
opers in #kubuntu-devel. Edubuntu and Xubuntu have similarly named
user and support channels. To keep #ubuntu focused on support, all gen-
eral chatter has been moved to #ubuntu-offtopic, and there are similar
channels for Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Xubuntu. Support for development
releases has moved to #ubuntu+1. Maintaining channels with speciﬁc
purposes has allowed the support community to stay focused and help as
many people as possible. A full list of channels can be found at http://
help.ubuntu.com/community/InternetRelayChat.
ptg
Web Forums
The ofﬁcial Ubuntu forums are the most frequently used venues for com-
munication in Ubuntu. For a number of reasons, many users prefer com-
munication through a Web-based forum or bulletin board over mailing
lists. The Ubuntu forums were created to satisfy this group and have done
so with amazing success.
The forums are accessible online at ubuntuforums.org and have shown an
impressive amount of usage. Statistics as of the time of writing show activ-
ity of more than 8 million messages on more than 1 million topics. The
forums also boast more than 1 million registered users with around 10,000
online at any given moment. The forums continue to grow explosively.
The topics discussed in the forums run the gamut in categories like these:
Support discussions, including spaces for questions about speciﬁc
hardware (e.g., Dell computers with Ubuntu preinstalled, or
networking and multimedia cards) and speciﬁc use cases (e.g.,
desktop or server users)
From the Library of Wow! eBook

222
Chapter 7
The Ubuntu Community
Ubuntu community discussions, including spaces for discussions by
people working on art for Ubuntu, those working in science and
education, and those developing new documentation and tutorials
Forum-speciﬁc community discussion spaces, including several social
spaces and places for administrative and community governance
discussions
Each category includes subforums, each containing many threads. Many
of these forums provide important spaces dedicated to important com-
munity discussions, including:
A forum to highlight community announcements and news
A discussion area for support for a variety of third-party projects
built on top of Ubuntu that are useful primarily to Ubuntu users or
that otherwise serve the Ubuntu community
Forums for discussion and planning for local community teams
(discussed later in this chapter) from across the world
ptg
By covering such ground, the Ubuntu forums provide an impressive sup-
port resource. They offer an excellent venue for both asking questions and
answering questions, both receiving support and making important con-
tributions to the Ubuntu community. If you are interested in any of these,
the forums are a good place to begin.
The only caveat regarding the forums worth mentioning is that they are not
frequently used by those developing Ubuntu—although there are excep-
tions to that rule. If users want to send messages directly to the Ubuntu
developers, the forums may not provide the most effective tool. If users
want to get involved in technical contributions to the project, they will, in
all likelihood, have to augment their forums’ patronage with the use of
mailing lists or Launchpad.
The forums were founded by and are moderated and maintained entirely
by volunteers and are governed by the Forums Council, which currently
contains no Canonical employees. You can ﬁnd out more in Chapter 11,
“Introducing the Ubuntu Forums,” dedicated completely to this wonder-
ful resource.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Venues
223
Wikis
Since nearly day one, a large chunk of Ubuntu documentation and support
has taken place in the ofﬁcial Ubuntu wiki. In case you don’t already know, a
wiki—pronounced “wik-ee”—is a Web site where any viewer can add,
remove, or edit content. The ﬁrst wiki was created by Ward Cunningham in
1995, and wikis have shown themselves to be an extremely effective tool for
collaborative writing in recent years. The term is shortened from wiki
wiki—Hawaiian for “quick.” Many wikis have been created. Most famous
among these wikis is the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which now con-
tains more than 2.3 million articles in the English version alone.
There are several Ubuntu wikis, but two are central to the community. The
ﬁrst is the community support and documentation wiki at http://help.
ubuntu.com/community (Figure 7-2). It is edited and directed by the
Ubuntu Documentation Team and focuses on issues of community-
produced technical documentation for Ubuntu. The second wiki is at http://
wiki.ubuntu.com and is meant to be used for everything else. The docu-
mentation wiki can be thought of as a project to build an expansive manual
ptg
through community contributions and editing. The general-purpose wiki
is used for speciﬁcation writing and trafﬁc, conference organization, meet-
ups, pages for teams and individuals involved in Ubuntu, and absolutely
anything else that is in written form and relevant to the Ubuntu commu-
nity. Both wikis can be edited, added to, or reorganized by anyone in the
community who creates an account, and edits are unrestricted. Since regis-
tration is required, each change can be traced to a particular user.
Unlike other documentation that ships with Ubuntu, anyone can ﬁx an
error, inaccuracy, or out-of-date fact in the wiki. As a result, there is no
good way to determine whether information in the wiki is correct. It can-
not be subjected to the same type of quality assurance workﬂow that a
document such as this book might be. However, it is also much more likely
to be up to date in the quickly changing world of Ubuntu development,
where there is a new release every six months. The wiki provides a venue
for this level of up-to-date information with a low barrier to entry and, as
a result, acts as an invaluable resource for the community.
The two major wikis each run the Moin Moin wiki software, and the use
and operation of the wikis is identical. To use the wikis, you can either
From the Library of Wow! eBook

224
Chapter 7
The Ubuntu Community
ptg
Figure 7-2 Front page of the Ubuntu community support and documentation wiki
search or browse them. Searching is the most common way to get informa-
tion from the wiki, and users can easily search either titles or the full text of
the wiki. To achieve the best results, it is usually best to search titles and
then the text to ensure that you look for more relevant information ﬁrst.
For people who prefer to browse, the general-purpose wiki is divided into
a number of categories that include the following:
Resources
Community
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Venues
225
Events
Releases
The documentation is browsable in sections that try to serve users at dif-
ferent stages of familiarity with Ubuntu or with particular types of prob-
lems. The major divisions in the community documentation wiki include
these:
General help and information for new users
Help for those switching from Mac OS X, Windows, or another Linux
distribution who want a quick guide using analogies they are familiar
with
A large variety of information for people to read after they have installed
Ubuntu and have questions about applications or types of use
Information on maintaining and troubleshooting Ubuntu installs
Help on connecting and conﬁguring hardware
ptg
Most of these categories are relatively self-explanatory. Additionally, the
general wiki provides a prominent link to information and support
resources in languages other than English. The comprehensive list at www.
ubuntu.com/support/local provides both links to pages within the wiki
that include documentation and information in languages other than
English and links to more than a dozen other wikis that are in another lan-
guage entirely. Users looking for wiki pages in a language other than
English are advised to visit this page.
The Fridge
The Fridge (http://fridge.ubuntu.com) is the quirky community portal for
Ubuntu. In many Western cultures, refrigerators provide a central sort of
“bulletin board” in a family’s home. Because refrigerators are magnetic,
children and parents can use magnets to hang pieces of paper that they
want to share with the community of people who come in contact with
that fridge. For children, this often includes good grades, news reports, or
other information that someone is proud of or wants to share. The Fridge
From the Library of Wow! eBook

226
Chapter 7
The Ubuntu Community
tries to create such a shared resource within the Ubuntu community. The
Fridge home page is shown in Figure 7-3.
The Fridge is perhaps best described as the community portal for Ubuntu.
It is part news site, part grassroots marketing and advocacy site. It hosts
developer interviews, news, a picture gallery, a calendar with a list of
upcoming events, polls, a list of Ubuntu-in-the-press citations, and much
more. The core content on the site is arranged as a Web log. Users fre-
quently set The Fridge as their home page or subscribe to the site via its RSS
feed. The Fridge is unique in the community in that it appeals to a wide
variety of Ubuntu participants—developers, advocates, translators, users—
and provides a venue where each group can share information with others.
ptg
Figure 7-3 The Fridge home page
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Venues
227
There is a story every two to three days on The Fridge, although this may
increase to up to several stories a day with time. Users can comment and
discuss each story on The Fridge in an associated forum in the Ubuntu
forums.
Anyone can contribute content to The Fridge. If you would like to con-
tribute, you can do so by sending your suggestions for features, articles, or
even a piece of original work (such as an article, photo, or event review) to
The Fridge editors at fridge-devel@lists.ubuntu.com.
Developer Summits and Sprints
While the vast majority of the work of the Ubuntu community takes place
online, Ubuntu contributors do, from time to time, meet face to face. Since
Ubuntu was ﬁrst released, there have been several public developer summits
and sprints organized and funded by Canonical, Ltd. Highlights include:
The Mataró Sessions in Mataró, Catalonia, Spain, in December
ptg
2004—the ﬁrst Ubuntu development summit
The two named Ubuntu conferences in 2005: Ubuntu Down Under
in Sydney, Australia, in April and the Ubuntu Below Zero in
Montreal, Canada, in November
Ubuntu Developer Summit Mountain View at Google Headquarters
in Mountain View, California, in November 2006
Ubuntu Developer Summit-L in Dallas, Texas—in November 2009,
the most recent developer summit at the time of writing
With Canonical, Ltd., Ubuntu tries to organize these meetings so that they
occur once per release, usually toward the very beginning of a release cycle,
so that the speciﬁcations and goals for the forthcoming release can be dis-
cussed, thrashed out, and decided upon. These meetings move around the
globe geographically so that, over a several-year period, a large percentage
of the Ubuntu community will be able to attend at least one summit and
meet with other developers.
While the format changes slightly each time, these meetings have been
between one and two weeks in length. Frequently, a given attendee stays
From the Library of Wow! eBook

228
Chapter 7
The Ubuntu Community
for only one week. At Ubuntu Below Zero, for example, the second week
was devoted almost entirely to discussing, implementing, and developing
infrastructure related to Launchpad (see Chapter 10). The format of these
summits has changed as the attendees have experimented with different
methods for structuring the events and maximizing the efﬁciency of these
short periods. One common theme, though, is a process of writing speciﬁ-
cations. At UDS-L in November 2009, the entire summit was available for
people who could not attend in person to participate remotely. Remote
participation enabled off-site attendees to interact via the Internet in des-
ignated IRC channels, and many of the sessions were videotaped.
At developer summits, attendees describe features that they would like to
see in the next Ubuntu release. At an arranged time or in a series of meet-
ings, a small set of interested community contributors and developers
works to draft a written speciﬁcation. This process of drafting involves
brainstorming and ends up with a formal, approved spec that describes a
problem or need and provides a detailed description of how it will be ﬁxed
or implemented. While these speciﬁcations are often technical in nature,
ptg
they are also used to describe goals that may pertain to localization, docu-
mentation, or community building. For example, both The Fridge and the
planning of each summit began as a speciﬁcation. With time, these speciﬁ-
cations are categorized in terms of priority for the upcoming release. Later,
individuals will claim or be assigned some set of these specs. Paid develop-
ers at Canonical, Ltd. frequently take responsibility for the highest-prior-
ity technical specs. Each speciﬁcation is written up and improved as a
blueprint on Launchpad so that Ubuntu hackers who cannot attend the
summit are still able to participate.
These conferences have, so far, occurred in hotels with conference centers
and have been attended by up to several hundred people. The exception
was the 2006 conference, which was graciously hosted by Google. The
meetings have been wholly organized and funded by Canonical, Ltd.,
which ensures that its employees attend and also distributes funds for
other active volunteers to travel. This funding tends to be divided up based
on the contributions of volunteers over the last release cycle and their geo-
graphic proximity to the summit location. This is done to minimize travel
expenditures and to ensure that users around the world get a chance to
attend a conference when it comes near them.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Venues
229
In addition to the biannual summits, Canonical, Ltd. organizes a number
of sprints each year. These sprints tend to be one- to three-week intense
collocated work sessions that involve a team or subteam tasked with a
well-deﬁned goal. They provide a time when team members can write
code, write documentation, make plans, or do whatever else is necessary to
fulﬁll that goal. The sprints attempt to squeeze large amounts of work into
a short period of time and have earned a reputation for being exhausting,
fulﬁlling, amazingly productive, fun experiences. These sprints are work
sessions and are often limited to a small group of Canonical, Ltd. employ-
ees but at times may also include volunteer attendees.
User Conferences
Developer summits and sprints are effective but are primarily of interest
to technically minded people or individuals who are already very actively
involved in the Ubuntu community. Their goal is to accomplish work
through high-bandwidth face-to-face interaction among existing teams.
User conferences try to provide an alternative space for users who are not
ptg
yet actively involved in the community. These conferences attempt to
bring people up to speed on Ubuntu and to provide a space for commu-
nity building, support, and networking.
While many local community teams have regular meetings and their own
Ubuntu events, there have been several larger-scale Ubuntu user confer-
ences to date, and several more are currently being planned. These confer-
ences fall into two major classes. The ﬁrst class is a set of laid-back, lightly
organized, day-long “unconferences” called Ubucons (short for Ubuntu
Conferences). Ubucons have been held many times, the ﬁrst two at Google
headquarters, in Mountain View and in New York City, and others are
designed to coincide with the much larger Linux World conferences that
many other Ubuntu users attend. The unconference format means that
much of the schedule is left up in the air until the morning of the meeting
and that many of the attendees are encouraged to come prepared with
their own demonstrations, talks, and workshops and with a list of things
they would like to learn. Attended by a group of about a hundred users
and a handful of developers, Ubucons have provided a simple way for
users to connect with each other. Additionally, Ubucons have, to date, also
provided space for “installfests” where users can bring computers and have
From the Library of Wow! eBook

230
Chapter 7
The Ubuntu Community
Ubuntu installed on their machines by other Ubuntu users, developers,
and aﬁcionados.
Any active group of Ubuntu users can plan a Ubucon, and Ubucons have
taken place in a variety of locations around the world. For example, Atlanta
Linux Fest 2009 was accompanied by an Ubucon in conjunction with the
main event to test the process of piggybacking. It worked so well that in
2010, several others have permitted an Ubucon to be organized as a smaller
part of their larger event. These are becoming more popular because
Ubuntu users are already attending the larger events, LoCo teams can afford
to organize the Ubucons because the venue costs are quite low and can usu-
ally be covered by only one sponsor, they are free events, and popular
Ubuntu speakers often are already attending the larger event and are willing
and happy to add some participation in the Ubucon to their schedule.
While conferences and summits act as a site for major technical advances
in brainstorming and development, they are also fun and enjoyable expe-
riences. They provide a venue for users to put faces to names, IRC nicks,
ptg
and e-mail addresses, and they provide for enjoyable, humorous, and pro-
ductive interaction. In addition to work, there are frequent card-playing,
eating, drinking, and athletic activities. Many Ubuntu users from the local
area who’ve attended because they were curious have gone on to become
some of the community’s most important contributors. Attending a con-
ference is like taking a drink from an Ubuntu ﬁre hose. It is frequently
overwhelming but can ultimately be a useful, productive, and rewarding
experience as well.
Planet Ubuntu
For a window into the people who make Ubuntu what it is, the blog aggre-
gator Planet Ubuntu (http://planet.ubuntu.com) is a great place to start
(Figure 7-4). A blog aggregator is basically a blog of blogs that retrieves
the latest posts from Ubuntu members who have chosen to add their blogs
to the system and then publishes a single blog in reverse chronological
order. Although much of the content in Planet Ubuntu is about Ubuntu,
as a window into the Ubuntu membership, Planet Ubuntu also includes
information from the personal lives of community members. In this way,
Planet Ubuntu provides a good way for participants to put their stamp on
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Teams, Processes, and Community Governance
231
ptg
Figure 7-4 Planet Ubuntu
the Ubuntu community and for others to see what the Ubuntu commu-
nity is doing.
Teams, Processes, and Community Governance
Ubuntu operates under the famous hacker mantra of “rough consensus
and running code.” The project attempts to forge consensus, to make good
technical decisions, and to move forward. It attempts to minimize politi-
cization wherever possible and to distribute power to those who are best at
getting good work done. Mark Shuttleworth explains, “This is not a democ-
racy, it’s a meritocracy. We try to operate more on consensus than on votes,
seeking agreement from the people who will have to do the work.”
From the Library of Wow! eBook

232
Chapter 7
The Ubuntu Community
The project attempts to keep disagreements from spiraling out of control
by enforcing mutual respect at all times with its Code of Conduct described
in Chapter 1. Disagreements, of course, are inevitable and can be technical
or nontechnical in nature. The community needs to be able to deal with
these and, toward that end, has created a lightweight governance system
that aims to ensure that disagreements are resolved carefully and that the
project always has a strong, fair, and responsive direction.
The Ubuntu Web site describes the goals of its community governance
system as threefold.
1. Ensure that a process is deﬁned that allows people to contribute to
decisions regarding the Ubuntu community and distribution.
2. Ensure that decisions regarding the Ubuntu distribution and
community are made in a fair and transparent fashion.
3. Ensure that necessary decisions are actually made, even when there is
no clear consensus among the community.
ptg
With these goals in mind, Ubuntu’s system is based on the delegation of
decision-making power to small and medium-sized teams. When disagree-
ments arise, they are handled within a relevant team. In the cases of some
larger teams, team councils handle a variety of dispute resolutions in a very
structured fashion. When teams cannot resolve their own disagreements or
when there are disagreements between teams, issues are forwarded to either
the Community Council or the Technical Board—depending on whether
the issue is technical in nature. As the ﬁnancier and the project’s progeni-
tor, Shuttleworth sits on both boards and occupies a special position as the
self-appointed benevolent dictator for life (SABDFL). Users can partici-
pate in the Ubuntu governance structure by serving on teams, and as
Ubuntu members and maintainers, they have a voice in approving mem-
bers of both the Community Council and the Technical Board as Ubuntu
members and maintainers.
Teams
Most work in Ubuntu is delegated to a set of teams, each responsible for a
particular area of work in Ubuntu. A sample of important teams (which is
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Teams, Processes, and Community Governance
233
by no means complete) might include the forums, marketing, art, docu-
mentation, kernel, server, laptop, and translation teams. Anyone with an
interest in a particular aspect of the Ubuntu project can join a team’s dis-
cussion and contribute to its decisions.
When participants feel that a particular area is under-served, they can go
ahead and build a new team by beginning work and writing up a proposal
for consideration by the Community Council, which approves the cre-
ation of all new teams. Rather than catalyzing work with the creation of a
team, the Community Council likes to recognize existing work with ofﬁ-
cial team status. Teams should always involve the participation of several
individuals. There are no one-man or one-woman teams in Ubuntu.
Several teams are so large and important that they have built their own
more advanced governance structures in the forums of team councils.
These councils are appointed by the community council from active
members and leaders within the team and act as delegates of the Commu-
nity Council for that team and its domain in the project. These team coun-
ptg
cils have regular meetings, resolve conﬂicts, report to the Community
Council, and in some cases even grant membership on behalf of the Com-
munity Council. Current large teams with councils include the Forums,
Edubuntu, Kubuntu, and MOTU teams.
Local Community Teams
Local community teams, affectionately referred to as LoCos in the com-
munity, are an extremely important type of team. Each LoCo is respon-
sible for promoting, supporting, and representing Ubuntu in a particular
locale. These locales are usually geographical and frequently countrywide,
although in some situations they may overlap geographically. Ubuntu
tries to encourage LoCos to work together whenever possible.
LoCos are like Linux User Groups (LUGs) and may often work closely
with or be associated with a LUG. LoCos are often involved in localization
or translations of Ubuntu into local languages and in advocacy in local
schools, public administrations, and communities. The best LoCos meet
regularly for social events, talks, and discussion. Often, they meet for
installfests, where team members help new users install Ubuntu onto their
From the Library of Wow! eBook

234
Chapter 7
The Ubuntu Community
computers. Representatives of LoCos are asked to assist with localization
matters, to speak on behalf of the Ubuntu project at local conferences and
trade shows, and to organize a booth or presence at such events.
Canonical, Ltd. provides each team with a mailing list and a domain name
(usually in the form of ubuntu-<CC>.org, where CC is the country’s two-
letter country code). Canonical also is willing to host LoCo Web pages,
wikis, forums, blogs, download areas, and additional mailing lists. LoCos
are open to participation by anyone.
MOTUs
Another very special team that deserves an in-depth description in this
book is the MOTUs. The MOTUs are the maintainers of Ubuntu’s Uni-
verse software package repository, and the acronym stands, jokingly, for
Masters of the Universe. MOTUs call themselves “the brave souls who try
to keep the Universe section of Ubuntu in shape.” They are community
members who spend their time adding, maintaining, and supporting as
ptg
much as possible the software found in Universe.
MOTUs are package maintainers. They maintain, as a group, the vast major-
ity of packages in the Ubuntu archive. Several of the packages that have been
well maintained by the MOTUs have, with time, migrated into the main
component and become an ofﬁcial part of the Ubuntu distribution. Because
Ubuntu does not make support or quality promises regarding the packages
in universe, the MOTU team provides a way for maintainers to sharpen
their teeth and (since it’s sometimes unavoidable) make mistakes before
jumping into the higher-responsibility packages in main.
The roles and responsibilities of the MOTUs are many. Some important
ones are that MOTUs
understand packaging concepts and have substantial experience
uploading packages through a sponsor.
apply this knowledge by uploading new packages and updating
existing packages in the universe component.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Teams, Processes, and Community Governance
235
may also contribute to the main component in cooperation with a
core developer.
answer questions of other developers in order to expand their
understanding of packaging work.
provide guidance for prospective Ubuntu developers regarding
technical issues.
MOTU contributors are the people who are interested in contributing to
Ubuntu and are learning how to package and work in the Ubuntu devel-
opment community. They primarily work by using MOTUs as sponsors
for their work. There are no requirements or exams to pass to become a
MOTU contributor, just a willingness to learn and a commitment to the
Ubuntu Code of Conduct. Many of these contributors do graduate to full-
ﬂedged MOTUs, and many MOTUs eventually are granted full-core devel-
oper status. This three-step system is the process by which almost all new
maintainers learn to maintain packages in Ubuntu.
ptg
The Community Council
The Community Council and the Technical Board are the highest-level
governance structures within Ubuntu. The Community Council, as it per-
tains to all Ubuntu members and activities, is arguably the most powerful
team within the Ubuntu project. The Community Council is charged with
supervising the social structures, venues, and processes of the project.
The Community Council’s day-to-day work involves ﬁve major areas in
Ubuntu. The ﬁrst, and the most straightforward, is the maintenance of the
Ubuntu Code of Conduct. The Community Council is the only body that
can approve revisions to the code. Because the Community Council does
not ask each member to “reagree” to the code when it is changed, each of
these revisions must be fully within the spirit of the previous drafts.
The second charge of the Community Council is the arbitration of disputes
that cannot be handled within a particular team or that arise between
teams. These are generally disputes about the Code of Conduct that may
require clariﬁcation of a part of the Code of Conduct or a description of
From the Library of Wow! eBook

236
Chapter 7
The Ubuntu Community
whether any of the code was in fact violated by a particular action or behav-
ior. However, the Community Council’s purview is not limited to Code of
Conduct violations, and the Community Council is available to handle dis-
putes in any nontechnical situation. In most situations, the Community
Council does not take action against individuals but, rather, helps group
members come to agreement or consensus among themselves. If this fails,
the Community Council can ask a maintainer or other member of the
community to apologize and refrain from particular behavior or to leave
the community. The Council promises that nobody will be asked to leave
without a substantial review and an opportunity to defend him- or herself.
A third area of council work is the creation and dissolution of teams and
the appointment of team leaders. New teams are proposed to the Commu-
nity Council in the manner described earlier in the section on teams, and
the Community Council either approves the request or asks the proposer
to wait. Defunct or inactive teams can similarly be dissolved by the Com-
munity Council. In cases where team leadership is requested, the Commu-
nity Council can appoint leaders of teams or shift leadership to different
ptg
team members. In most situations, the appointment of team leaders is an
internal team matter but, when requested, the Community Council is
available to intervene.
Fourth, the Community Council is ultimately responsible for approving
and welcoming new members to the project. This will be described in
more depth in the upcoming subsection on membership.
Finally, the Community Council is responsible for all community-related
structures and processes. New types of teams, requirements for member-
ship, and core philosophical documents should ﬁrst be approved by the
Community Council. Community members who wish to suggest new
structures or processes can submit their proposal to the Community Coun-
cil for discussion and approval.
The Community Council meets every two weeks on IRC. Any community
participant can submit an item or proposal for discussion by the Commu-
nity Council. Meetings are open to the community, but the Council seeks
only consensus or votes from Council members—although it consults rep-
resentatives from the team that submitted the proposal and other commu-
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Teams, Processes, and Community Governance
237
nity members. If an open meeting becomes too noisy, the Council reserves
the right to move to a private channel for the duration of the meeting. To
date, this has never happened. In all situations, full transcripts of meetings
are published immediately following a Community Council meeting. The
Community Council at the time of this writing consists of Alan Pope, Ben-
jamin Mako Hill, Mark Shuttleworth, Daniel Holbach, Elizabeth Krum-
bach, Richard Johnson, Matthew East, and Mike Basinger. Notably, only
Shuttleworth and Holbach are Canonical employees. Appointments to the
board are made by Shuttleworth and subject to conﬁrmation by a vote
among all members. Appointments are for a period of two years.
The Technical Board
The Ubuntu Technical Board is responsible for the Ubuntu project’s tech-
nical direction. By handling all technical matters, the Technical Board com-
plements the Community Council as Ubuntu’s highest rung of project
governance. In particular, the Technical Board is responsible for three
major areas of Ubuntu policy: package policy, release feature goals, and
ptg
package selection. Also, the Technical Board is available to arbitrate any
technical disagreements or issues within or between teams in a manner
similar to the one described earlier in relation to the Community Council.
The Technical Board’s ﬁrst responsibility is Ubuntu’s package policy. The
Technical Board maintains the policy document, which describes the
processes and standards to which all Ubuntu packages are held. Since
the policy is constantly evolving, each Ubuntu release is associated with a
speciﬁc version of the Ubuntu package policy as determined by the Tech-
nical Board. Any suggestions or proposals about policy are suggested to
and considered by the Technical Board.
Also, the Technical Board is responsible for maintaining Ubuntu’s feature
goals for each release. During each release cycle, there is a date deﬁned as
Feature Freeze, after which no new features are added. The Technical
Board sets these dates and decides when and if the rules can be bent for a
particular feature or piece of software.
Finally, the Technical Board is responsible for maintaining the list of pieces
of software (i.e., packages) in Ubuntu. In this capacity, the Technical Board
From the Library of Wow! eBook

238
Chapter 7
The Ubuntu Community
determines which software is installed in the default desktop installation
and which packages qualify for full support as part of the main component
of Ubuntu. Users and developers can propose a particular piece of software
for inclusion in main, the base install, or a desktop install. In all cases, the
ultimate decision will be made by the Technical Board.
Like the Community Council, the Technical Board meets at least every two
weeks on IRC. Also like the Community Council, any user can submit an
item or proposal for discussion by the Technical Board prior to the sched-
uled meeting. Meetings are open to all interested parties, although decision
making and voting is restricted to Technical Board members. Full tran-
scripts and rules about noise, as they pertain to the Community Council,
also apply to the Technical Board. The Technical Board at the time of this
writing comprises Matt Zimmerman as board chair, Scott James Remnant,
and Mark Shuttleworth. Nominations for the Technical Board are consid-
ered at the beginning of each release cycle. Like the Community Council,
appointments are made by Shuttleworth but are subject to conﬁrmation by
a vote among the maintainers instead of all members. Appointments are
ptg
made for a period of one year.
The SABDFL
Mark Shuttleworth jokingly refers to himself as Ubuntu’s SABDFL—self-
appointed benevolent dictator for life. He plays an admittedly undemo-
cratic role as the sponsor of the Ubuntu project and the sole owner of
Canonical, Ltd. Shuttleworth has the ability, with regard to Canonical, Ltd.
employees, to ask people to work on speciﬁc projects, feature goals, and
bugs. He does exactly this.
Shuttleworth also maintains a tie-breaking vote on the Technical Board
and Community Council but has never used this power and has publicly
said that he will not use it lightly. In situations where the boards are split
and there is no one “right” answer, the SABDFL will provide a decision
instead of more debate. The SABDFL exists to provide clear leadership on
difﬁcult issues and to set the pace and direction for the project. In
exchange for this power, he has the responsibility to listen to the commu-
nity and to understand that the use of his SABDFL authority can weaken
the project.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Teams, Processes, and Community Governance
239
Ubunteros and Ubuntu Members
Membership in the Ubuntu project is one ofﬁcial way that the project rec-
ognizes sustained and signiﬁcant contributions. The ﬁrst level of member-
ship in Ubuntu is as an Ubuntero. Ubunteros are Ubuntu activists and can
be any person in the Ubuntu community who has explicitly committed to
observing the Ubuntu Code of Conduct. Ubunteros are self-nominated
and self-conﬁrmed. Using Launchpad, participants can generate a GPG
encryption key and “sign” the Code of Conduct as a way of pledging to
uphold it within the Ubuntu community. By doing so, that participant
automatically gains status as an Ubuntero.
The next, more signiﬁcant, step is ofﬁcial membership. Ofﬁcial member-
ship is available to any Ubuntero who has demonstrated a signiﬁcant and
sustained set of contributions to the Ubuntu community. These contribu-
tions can be of any kind—technical or nontechnical—but need to be of a
form that can be represented to one of the Ubuntu membership boards,
under the authority of the Community Council. The membership board
before which a candidate appears will consider each application individu-
ptg
ally. A non-exhaustive list of some of the types of contributions that qual-
ify appears in the following section on getting involved. The membership
boards try to be ﬂexible in the variety of different types of contributions
that will be accepted in consideration of membership.
Ubuntu members are responsible for conﬁrming, by voting, all nomina-
tions to the Ubuntu Community Council. They also may be asked by
the Community Council to vote on resolutions put to the general mem-
bership. In exchange, members gain the right to an @ubuntu.com e-mail
address and the right to carry Ubuntu business cards. Membership lasts
for two years and is renewable. Members who fail to renew their member-
ship will be marked as inactive but, with renewed activity and a simple
procedure that involves approval of the Community Council, can be easily
reactivated.
The process to become a member is relatively straightforward and is docu-
mented in depth on the Ubuntu Web site. Most important, it requires that
users document their contributions on a wiki page that includes links to
code, mailing list messages, speciﬁc forms of documentation that clearly
From the Library of Wow! eBook

240
Chapter 7
The Ubuntu Community
demonstrate their involvement, and/or other relevant material. Member-
ship applications also need to include testimonials on work and involve-
ment in Ubuntu from current Ubuntu members.
Getting Involved
Users can participate in the Ubuntu community on a variety of levels and in a
multitude of ways. The following subsections, adapted largely from a page
with links to relevant resources online on the Ubuntu Web site (www.ubuntu.
com/community/participate), provides a good list of ways in which people
can get a running start in the Ubuntu community. An expanded but unofﬁ-
cial list appears at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/ ContributeToUbuntu. Both lists
are broken down into the major ways to get involved.
Advocacy
The easiest way for someone to contribute to the Ubuntu community is
simply by telling others about Ubuntu. Advocacy frequently occurs in a
variety of ways. One good method involves joining or starting a LoCo team.
ptg
LoCos, described earlier in this chapter, provide a method through which
you can get involved in Ubuntu activities. If users do not have a LoCo and
do not have the critical mass of users to start one, they might help build
support by giving a talk about Ubuntu to a local Linux User Group or other
technical group. Ubuntu members and LoCo teams can order CDs at no
cost and can distribute them. Through these and other means, advocacy
provides a great way to spread the word about Ubuntu and offers a low-
barrier opportunity to make contributions to the community.
Support
One of the most meaningful ways that users can contribute to Ubuntu is by
helping others use the software. Users can do this by joining the support-
oriented mailing lists, IRC channels, or forums, as described in detail ear-
lier in this chapter. By responding to requests for help in each of these
venues, users can help other users get up and running on Ubuntu. Even if
users are themselves beginners, the knowledge they gain in solving even
simple problems enables them to help users who run into the same issues,
and as community member and Canonical employee Fabián Rodríguez
said at the Jaunty Open Week in April 2009, “Every user is someone’s guru.”
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Getting Involved
241
Ideas and Feedback
Another way to contribute to Ubuntu is by helping steer the direction of
the project by describing a vision or providing ideas. This can be done by
participating in discussion and brainstorming sessions at conferences and
on the Ubuntu wiki. By monitoring speciﬁcations as they are written and
creating feedback, especially at early stages, users can make meaningful
contributions. However, users contributing ideas should remember that
talk is cheap. Users are wise to work with others to help turn their visions
into reality.
Documentation
When a user is stumped by a problem, chances are good that other users will
also be frustrated by it. If users are not in a position to write code to change
the situation, they may be able to help others by writing up their experiences
and documenting the solution. Ubuntu has a vibrant documentation team
and community, and writing documentation is a great low-barrier way to
make meaningful contributions to the Ubuntu community.
ptg
Users aiming to contribute to Ubuntu’s documentation would be advised
to take notes as they puzzle through problems and to document solutions
when they ﬁnd them. Before writing, users should also check to see whether
documentation for a particular problem already exists. When it does, users
would be wise to choose to improve or augment existing documentation
rather than write a new document. Similarly, users can also make meaning-
ful contributions by reading through existing documentation and ﬁxing
factual, technical, stylistic, spelling, and grammar errors. Users who spend a
large amount of time working on documentation may, with time, also want
to join the Ubuntu Documentation Team, which can help organize and
coordinate this work in terms of Ubuntu documentation goals.
Artwork
For those users who feel that their strengths are primarily artistic, there are
many ways to improve the style and feel of the Ubuntu desktop through
wholly artistic contributions. For example, Ubuntu is always in need of
new ideas for wallpapers, icons, and graphical themes. Inkscape, similar in
many respects to Adobe Illustrator, is a great piece of free software in
From the Library of Wow! eBook

242
Chapter 7
The Ubuntu Community
Ubuntu that proves useful for this type of work. As with documentation,
there is an Ubuntu Art Team that helps coordinate artistic work within the
Ubuntu community.
Translation and Localization
The discussion of LoCos should have already made it clear that translation
is a great way that anyone with a ﬁrm understanding of English and
another language can contribute to the Ubuntu community. Translation
through Rosetta (described in Chapter 10) allows users to translate as little
as a single string or as much as an entire application. Through its easy
interface and Web-based nature, it provides a low-barrier road to contri-
bution. Serious translators should join a local community team and the
ubuntu-translators mailing list so that they can stay in touch with other
Ubuntu localizers.
Quality Assurance and Bugs
ptg
Quality assurance (QA) is something for which many companies hire spe-
cial engineers. In Ubuntu, the Development Team relies on itself and the
community to test software before it is released to let developers know
about problems so that the bugs can be squashed before the vast majority
of users ever see it. To test software, users merely need to upgrade to the
latest development version of Ubuntu and to upgrade regularly. When
users helping out with QA ﬁnd bugs, they should report them in the
Ubuntu bug-tracking system, Malone (see Chapter 10). They can also help
by “triaging” bugs, closing or merging duplicates, or verifying bugs and
adding information to a bug’s description. If you intend to become
involved in QA, you should subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce mail-
ing list, and you should consider monitoring ubuntu-devel as well.
Programming and Packaging
The ﬁnal way that users can contribute to the Ubuntu community is
through the production of code. Because Ubuntu is free and open source
software, users can get access to every piece of software that Ubuntu sup-
ports. This allows users to package additional software for inclusion in
Ubuntu, to ﬁx bugs, and to add features. Developers, like people testing
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Summary
243
software, should subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list and
should consider monitoring ubuntu-devel, too. The best way to begin
making contributions is then through the MOTU team as a MOTU hope-
ful, as described earlier. Users can also look through a list of speciﬁcations
to ﬁnd a project that they ﬁnd personally interesting. In some situations,
there are even bounties available—small amounts of money offered to
those who fulﬁll a small feature goal that has remained unﬁlled for some
period of time.
Summary
Ubuntu is a vibrant and diverse community that is active around the
world and in many languages. Its activities happen primarily online in a
variety of virtual venues, including mailing lists, IRC, Web forums, wikis,
and two special Web-based community portals known as The Fridge and
Planet Ubuntu. Ubuntu complements this virtual activity with real-life
meetings and conferences. The Ubuntu community is broken down into a
variety of teams and processes. At the top of this government structure is
ptg
the Ubuntu Community Council, the Technical Board, and SABDFL Mark
Shuttleworth. Through a variety of ways, this community is designed to
facilitate contributions easily. Ultimately, these contributions are recog-
nized through a process culminating in ofﬁcial project membership and
enfranchisement.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

C H A P T E R 8
Using Kubuntu
8
Introduction to Kubuntu
Installing Kubuntu
Navigating in Kubuntu
Customizing Kubuntu
System Administration
Managing Files with Kubuntu
Common Applications
ptg
Finding Help and Giving Back to the Community
Summary
245
From the Library of Wow! eBook

THE KUBUNTU PROJECT STRIVES to take the best of Ubuntu and the best of
the K Desktop Environment (KDE) to produce a great Linux distribution.
This chapter covers information ranging from what exactly Kubuntu is to
how to manage and keep your Kubuntu system up to date with the latest
applications and ﬁxes. The goal of Kubuntu is to provide a graphically
beautiful and easy-to-use Linux operating system, an OS that is simple to
customize to your desire.
Introduction to Kubuntu
Kubuntu is an ofﬁcial product of Ubuntu—a complete implementation of
the Ubuntu OS led by Jonathan Riddell (an employee of Canonical, Ltd.)
and an army of developers. However, Kubuntu uses KDE as the graphical
user interface instead of GNOME, as in Ubuntu. The main goal of Kubuntu
is to be an integrated Linux distribution with all of the great features of
Ubuntu, but based on KDE. Since Kubuntu is an ofﬁcial part of the Ubuntu
community, it adheres to the same Ubuntu manifesto: Great software should
be available free of charge and should be usable by people in their own lan-
ptg
guage and regardless of disability. Also, people should be able to customize
and alter their software in ways they deem ﬁt.
Like Ubuntu, Kubuntu makes the following commitments: Kubuntu will
provide the very best translations and accessibility infrastructure that the
free software community has to offer; Kubuntu will always be free of
charge, and there is no extra cost for an “enterprise” version; and Kubuntu
will always provide the latest and best software from the KDE community.
Looking for a certain piece of software? Kubuntu has it, with more than
1,000 pieces of software in its repositories, including the latest kernel ver-
sion and, of course, the latest KDE. The standard desktop applications
(Web browsing, e-mail, word processing, and spreadsheet applications)
allow Kubuntu to replace any current desktop OS. If you are running
servers—whether they’re Web servers, e-mail servers, or database servers—
Kubuntu can do that as well.
A History of KDE
In 1996, Matthias Etrich posted a now famous newsgroup post that described
some of the problems he had with the UNIX desktop.
246
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Introduction to Kubuntu
247
UNIX popularity grows thanks to the free variants, mostly Linux. But still a
consistent, nice looking, free desktop environment is missing. There are sev-
eral nice either free or low-priced applications available, so that Linux/X11
would almost ﬁt everybody’s needs if we could offer a real GUI. . . .
IMHO a GUI should offer a complete graphical environment. It should
allow a user to do his everyday tasks with it, like starting applications,
reading mail, conﬁguring his desktop. . . . All parts must ﬁt together. . . .
The goal is NOT to create a GUI for the complete UNIX-system or the
System-Administrator. . . . The idea is to create a GUI for an ENDUSER.
With that post, he started building the KDE Project. KDE originally stood
for the Kool Desktop Environment but was adapted to be K Desktop Envi-
ronment. The mascot for KDE is a green dragon named Konqi, who can be
found in various applications.
Matthias chose to develop KDE around the Qt toolkit, and by 1997, the ﬁrst
large, complex applications were being released. However, there was much
debate because Qt was not licensed with a free software license. Two projects
ptg
came about from this debate, one named Harmony, which would use only
free libraries, and another project called GNOME. In 1998, the Qt toolkit
was licensed under a new open source license called the Q Public License
(QPL), and in 2000, Qt was released under the GNU General Public License.
KDE is primarily a volunteer effort. However, many companies employ
developers to work on this project. Some of these companies include Novell
(through the purchase of SUSE Linux) and Trolltech (the company that
produces the Qt toolkit).
KDE 4.0 came with a great number of changes to the desktop environment,
including the introduction of Plasma, Solid, Krunner, and many other infra-
structure changes, most of which are discussed throughout this chapter.
KDE 4.4 is the current version of KDE that ships with Kubuntu 10.04. Sig-
niﬁcant improvements have been made over the ﬁrst release of KDE.
For more information on KDE, visit the project’s Web site at www.kde.org.
The project’s home page also provides information on how you can help
with the project and contribute to the KDE community.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

248
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
A History of Kubuntu
When Ubuntu was ﬁrst being discussed, there were rumors that it would
be based only on GNOME and that KDE would be left out. Jonathan Rid-
dell, a KDE developer, posted an article on his blog that soon became the
Number 1 hit on Google for Ubuntu Linux. The article states:
The signs are there that this could be something big, more so than the likes
of Linspire, Xandros or Lycrosis. Unlike those companies, they [Canoni-
cal, Ltd.] understand Free Software and open development. It is likely to
be a GNOME-based job, but maybe there is a KDE developer out there
who is working for them without letting on. If not I’m always available.
This post started a ﬂurry of activity for both Riddell and the others who
wanted to participate.
A lot of changes needed to be made to get Kubuntu working correctly. The
hardware abstraction layer (HAL) and other programs and packages had
to be changed to ﬁt the philosophy of Ubuntu. A clean Kmenu had be cre-
ptg
ated, and more people were needed to join the project. It was a conscious
decision to keep the default KDE colors and icons in order to remain as
close to KDE as possible.
A lot of great releases have come since the ﬁrst of Kubuntu, and 10.04 will
build on them. Kubuntu was the ﬁrst released distribution to include KDE
4.0 by default, in Kubuntu 8.10.
Like Ubuntu, Kubuntu 10.04 is a long-term release; however, it is only the
second long-term release for the Kubuntu team. As mentioned elsewhere
in the book, a long-term release means 10.04 will be supported on the
desktop for 3 years.
Prior to the 10.04 release, a group of Kubuntu developers got together to
discuss what exactly needed to be changed and improved. Out of these dis-
cussions came what has been named “Project Timelord” with the goals to
focus on translations, marketing, software, user–developer interaction,
and recruitment. An example of this is the Firefox Installer, discussed later
in the chapter.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing Kubuntu
249
Kubuntu 10.04 also includes the ﬁrst ofﬁcial release of a netbook-speciﬁc
edition called Kubuntu Netbook Remix.
Kubuntu is quickly building a sizable community of its own. There are
more dedicated package maintainers joining the Kubuntu community as
well as a growing and equally dedicated documentation team. In addition,
many community and enthusiast sites help provide both support and cur-
rent information. These include sites such as www.kubuntuforums.net.
Kubuntu has grown tremendously from just one developer to a large
group as it continues to improve the quality of the distribution.
Installing Kubuntu
Installing Kubuntu is just like installing Ubuntu. It is pretty much a snap.
Let’s start with where you can ﬁnd it.
Where to Find Kubuntu
ptg
Kubuntu is available at www.kubuntu.org/download.php. An image ﬁle
can be downloaded and then burned onto either a DVD or a CD-ROM.
Two different types of Kubuntu images can be downloaded and used. The
ﬁrst is the desktop CD, which allows the user to test and run Kubuntu
without changing any settings. The second is the alternate install CD,
which provides for a more advanced installation.
The desktop CD of Kubuntu 10.04 is the primary way to install Kubuntu
on your system. This CD is a great way to demonstrate the power of
Kubuntu to your friends before they install it on their systems. The desk-
top CD acts as a live CD and allows Kubuntu to run on your system with-
out erasing anything already installed.
Can I Switch to Kubuntu If I Have Ubuntu Installed Already?
If you have installed Ubuntu on your system already, it is extremely easy
to install and conﬁgure Kubuntu. In Synaptic Package Manager, ﬁnd the
package kubuntu-desktop, which provides all the necessary programs to
From the Library of Wow! eBook

250
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
have your system look and act like Kubuntu. Don’t worry—you can still
switch between Ubuntu with GNOME and Kubuntu with KDE. Once
Kubuntu is installed, you can choose which desktop environment to use,
either GNOME or KDE. Also, if you have Kubuntu installed already and
wish to install Ubuntu, it is just as simple to switch: Just install ubuntu-
desktop through Software Management, and you will be using the
GNOME desktop. For those who are switching from Ubuntu to Kubuntu,
Software Management performs the same function as Ubuntu Software
Center.
Once you have installed the kubuntu-desktop package, end your GNOME
session and choose Session from the menu. Select KDE instead of GNOME
as your window manager, and then select Make Default. From now on,
KDE will start for you when you sign on.
Installing from the Desktop CD
ptg
Kubuntu has the ability to install directly from the desktop CD, so there is
no need to download separate CDs; simply download the desktop CD and
show off to your friends how great Kubuntu is, or give it a test run for the
ﬁrst time. The live installer program for both Ubuntu and Kubuntu is
called Ubiquity.
After you start up the desktop CD, an icon called Install appears on your
desktop. Choose to install Kubuntu, and Ubiquity guides you through the
installation phase (Figure 8-1).
Ubiquity guides you in setting up the correct country and time zone
(Figure 8-2).
Once you have answered these questions, Ubiquity prompts you to select
the correct keyboard layout (Figure 8-3), create a username and password,
conﬁgure your disk and its partitions (Figure 8-4), and create your user-
name and assign a name to the computer (Figure 8-5).
When everything is all set, click Install to ﬁnish the installation (Figure 8-6).
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing Kubuntu
251
Figure 8-1 Welcome screen of Ubiquity
ptg
Figure 8-2 Selecting the correct time zone
From the Library of Wow! eBook

252
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
Figure 8-3 Selecting the keyboard layout
ptg
Figure 8-4 Configuring the disk partitions
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing Kubuntu
253
Figure 8-5 Configuring the username and computer name
ptg
Figure 8-6 Finishing the installation
From the Library of Wow! eBook

254
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
Navigating in Kubuntu
All of the applications in Kubuntu can be accessed through the Applica-
tion Launcher (Figure 8-7), which is located in the bottom left corner of
the Task Manager.
An additional change in KDE 4 to the Application Launcher is how appli-
cations are named. Instead of program names (familiar to those who have
previously used some version of KDE) such as Konqueror, Akregator, and
Kontact, the applications are named after their purpose. For example,
Akregator shows up as RSS Feed Reader, and Konqueror shows up as Web
Browser.
Once you click on the Application Launcher, you are presented ﬁrst with
Favorites, which is a list designed for applications that are used regularly.
You can add any application to the Favorites at any time. Kubuntu 10.04
ptg
Figure 8-7 KDE4 Application Launcher
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Navigating in Kubuntu
255
ships with Web Browser, Personal Information Manager, System Settings,
File Manager, Instant Messenger, and Audio Player already listed in the Fav -
orites section. To remove an application from the Favorites portion of the
Application Launcher, right-click on the application and select Remove From
Favorites. Likewise, to add an application to the Favorites section, right-click
on the application you would like to add and select Add to Favorites.
After the Favorites tab is the Applications portion of the Application
Launcher. These applications are organized according to type of program.
For example, Instant Messenger (Kopete) is located under the Internet
section, while CD & DVD Burning (K3B) is located under the Multimedia
section.
The third tab is the Computer tab. This tab provides quick access to differ-
ent folders within the ﬁle system, including the home directory network
folders and the CD-ROM drive. The Computer section is divided into
Applications (System Settings), Places (Home, Network, Root, Trash), and
Removable Storage (Floppy Drive, CD-ROM, and any USB drives).
ptg
The fourth tab is the Recently Used section, which is populated by both
applications and documents that have recently been used.
One of the best features of the new Application Launcher is the Search Bar
at the top of the page (Figure 8-8). The search program searches both
menus in the Application Launcher and the Web for information.
Shutting Down Your Computer and Logging Out
To shut down your computer, log out, or switch users, go to the Applica-
tion Launcher, and under the tab labeled Leave, select the option you
would like. This section is divided into two subsections: Session and Sys-
tem. Since Kubuntu is a multiuser system (many users per system), you
can easily switch to a parallel session as a different user under the Session
subsection. Also under Session, you can Lock the Screen or Logout (end-
ing the current session). Under the System subsection, you can either shut
down (Turn off the computer) or restart (Restart the computer). Figure 8-9
shows these options. Also, you can lock the session or Logout by right-
clicking on the desktop and selecting the correct option.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

256
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
ptg
Figure 8-8 Using the Search portion of the Application Launcher
Figure 8-9 Logging out of Kubuntu
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Customizing Kubuntu
257
Using sudo Instead of a Root Account
A large change for many seasoned users of other Linux distributions is the
lack of a root account. Upon installation, you are not prompted to create a
root password. The password created with the ﬁrst user, your password, will
allow you to access the administrative functions. You will need the sudo
password often when conﬁguring the system or making global changes.
Customizing Kubuntu
A major feature of Kubuntu is the ability to customize almost everything and
anything in the system. If you don’t like the desktop background, change it.
Would you like to remove the new Application Launcher and go back to the
old Kmenu style? Likewise, if you would like to remove the new Application
Launcher and go back to the old Kmenu style, you can do that as well. Cus-
tomizing Kubuntu to ﬁt your personal preference is almost effortless.
Customizing Plasma
ptg
Continued improvements in KDE 4 have been made to Plasma, the replace-
ment for Kdesktop. A great amount of customization can be done with
Plasma, including the addition or subtraction of widgets. From the Plasma
Web page (http://plasma.kde.org), Plasma is deﬁned as “the component that
is ‘in charge’ of the desktop interface; the desktop, panel (often referred to
simply as the task bar), and related elements.”
Widgets allow you to add and remove items from your desktop. A widget
can be something from the Application Launcher, for example, or a clock
showing a different time zone. Widgets can be added to the desktop only if
the Plasma is unlocked by clicking on the Plasma icon on the top left and
selecting Unlock Widgets.
To add widgets, either right-click on the desktop and select Add Widgets
or click on the Plasma Toolbox located in the top right-hand corner of the
desktop (Figure 8-10).
Additional widgets are available through the extragears package (installed
via Software Management) and also on kde-look.org under the Widgets
section. In fact, in KDE 4, the Application Launcher and Task Manager are
both widgets that can be added or removed for complete customization. If
From the Library of Wow! eBook

258
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
Figure 8-10 Adding Widgets via the Plasma toolkit
ptg
the old Kmenu is more your style, remove the Application Launcher widget
and replace it with the Application Launcher Menu.
To change the background on the desktop, right-click on the desktop and
select Desktop Activity Settings. This opens up the Desktop Settings >
Plasma Workspace where you can change the Wallpaper, Activity, and Mouse
Actions. New wallpaper can be added through Get Hot New Stuff.
In KDE 4.4, Plasma supports different types of activities; by default, the type
is set for Desktop. Another activity type could be Folder View, which holds
the contents of a speciﬁc folder. In the Kubuntu Netbook Remix Edition,
there are two additional activity types: Search and Locate and Newspaper.
NOTE: For more information on Kubuntu Netbook Remix, please refer to Help > Netbook > System
Documentation.
Choosing how the desktop looks can help give a personalized feel to
Kubuntu. If the appearance seems lacking, you can make further changes
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Customizing Kubuntu
259
by choosing System Settings > Appearance. You can further customize
things, such as color, icons, and style. Kubuntu is all about customization,
something you may be sick of hearing about, and there are many ways to
change the desktop’s appearance, which almost guarantees that no two
users will have identical desktops.
Get Hot New Stuff
Looking for the latest screen saver, desktop background, or other cool
things for your Kubuntu installation? Kubuntu fully supports the Get Hot
New Stuff (GHNS) framework of KDE. GHNS allows people to upload
templates to a server and have other users download and use that template.
In an interview posted on KDE News (http://dot.kde.org/1110652641),
Josef Spillner describes exactly how the process works.
[U]ser A is using a spreadsheet application and modiﬁes a template that
comes with it. This template can then be uploaded to a server and eventu-
ally be downloaded by user B by checking the contents of the “Get Hot
New Stuff ” download dialogue.
ptg
The GHNS framework (Figure 8-11) shows up in several places through-
out Kubuntu.
Figure 8-11 The GHNS framework at work
From the Library of Wow! eBook

260
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
Different applications have the ability to download information from the
Internet and from KDE sites. Throughout applications in Kubuntu, you
will ﬁnd references to Get More, which uses the GHNS framework.
System Administration
Like any computer application or system, Kubuntu occasionally needs
administrative support. Do not be afraid of personally administrating your
Kubuntu system. While system administration is not completely foolproof,
a lot of changes have been made to help make administration easier.
Knowledge of command line will go a long way, but the developers have
made sure to provide graphical interfaces wherever it makes sense to do so.
Everything from changing the IP address (e.g., from DHCP to a static
address) to installing packages can be done without having to drop down
to the command line. This section focuses exclusively on system adminis-
tration performed through the graphical interface.
ptg
Installing New Packages
As mentioned earlier, Kubuntu is built around some of the same applica-
tions and systems as Ubuntu. All applications are installed through pack-
ages. Like Ubuntu, Kubuntu uses the Advanced Package Tool (APT), and
also like Ubuntu, Kubuntu has a wonderful graphical interface. Kubuntu’s
graphical installer is called KPackageKit.
In previous versions of Kubuntu, Adept software was used to install and
update packages; however, this application was no longer being developed
and also was not updated for KDE 4. The developers of Kubuntu switched
to KPackageKit, and many improvements to the application were made
during the release cycle. The developers of KPackageKit and the Kubuntu
developers worked together to make sure this application was up to the
quality that Kubuntu users expect.
KPackageKit is found in the Application Launcher under Applications >
System > Software Management and can also be launched through Krun-
ner as Software Management.
Upon launching Software Management, you are presented with the
KPackageKit application (Figure 8-12).
From the Library of Wow! eBook

System Administration
261
Figure 8-12 KPackageKit
ptg
Three options are available in Software Management: Add and Remove
Software (through the Software Management section), Software Updates,
and Settings.
In order to add a new piece of software, type the name of the application
in the search bar. The screenshots in Figures 8-13 and 8-14 show searching
for a chess game and then selecting it for installation.
Once you click on the application to install, more details about the pack-
age are displayed, including the description of the package, the ﬁle list,
other packages that depend on this package, as well as the other packages
required by this package. This information allows you to understand what
ﬁles are being installed and to make sure the correct packages are being
downloaded and installed so the application works properly.
To install the application, click on the “+” (plus sign).
This will queue the package to be installed; click on Apply to set up the
application on the system. Unlike Microsoft Windows, Kubuntu is great
From the Library of Wow! eBook

262
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
Figure 8-13 Searching for a chess game
ptg
Figure 8-14 Selecting 3dchess for installation
about not forcing a system restart in order for the new application to work
correctly.
NOTE: A restart could be required if the version of KDE or the kernel is changed, but it is not neces-
sary for the more typical and common update.
Managing Repositories
The Software Management application has the ability to manage the
repositories you would like to use. To change which repositories are being
From the Library of Wow! eBook

System Administration
263
used, open Software Management and select settings and the select “Edit
Software Sources.” After you provide the correct password, a new window
will open up (see Figure 8-15).
Software Sources is divided into ﬁve sections: Kubuntu Software, Other
Software, Updates, Authentication, and Statistics.
Packages are organized into four groups or repositories: main, restricted,
universe, and multiverse. The main repository contains applications that
are free software, programs that allow for complete distribution and are
supported by the Kubuntu team. When you install something from the
main repository, you are guaranteed to receive security updates and sup-
port through the various venues.
Anything from the multiverse repository contains software that is not free,
which is deﬁned by the Kubuntu Main Component License Policy. Soft-
ware here is used at the user’s own risk.
Third-party software is not supported by Kubuntu.
ptg
Figure 8-15 Software Source lists
From the Library of Wow! eBook

264
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
Upgrading Kubuntu
If you are currently using Kubuntu 9.10 and would like to upgrade to
Kubuntu 10.04, you can use the update manager to install the new version.
There is no need to purchase new software or reload your system; just
update from the current version to the latest stable release. From the con-
sole, type sudo do-release-upgrade and watch your system upgrade from
Kubuntu 9.10 to Kubuntu 10.04.
How to Keep the System Up to Date
Kubuntu will check to see if your system is up to date. Software Manage-
ment will notify you in the task bar and prompt you to update your system.
In the Settings portion of Software Management, you can change how often
the system checks for updates (by default, it is every week). Another setting
that can change is whether or not the system will automatically install the
updates or prompt you for your updates.
ptg
System Settings
System Settings allows users to make changes to the system, including set-
tings for sound, user accounts, mouse behavior, and network conﬁgura-
tion. If you are familiar with KDE, you may recognize that System Settings
replaces the K Control Center. Figure 8-16 shows System Settings.
System Settings can be found in the Application Launcher, or type System
Settings in the search bar of the launcher, or in KRunner. (KRunner is
accessed by either right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Run Appli-
cation or by hitting ALT-F2.) When making changes in System Settings,
you will be prompted at times to enter your password. Changes made that
require a password are systemwide and will affect all users of the Kubuntu
system.
System Settings is divided into two tabs, General and Advanced, and each
tab is further divided into sections based on tasks. Under the General tab
are the following sections: Look & Feel, Personal, Network & Connectivity,
and Computer Administration. The Advanced tab contains two sections:
Advanced User Settings and System.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

System Administration
265
ptg
Figure 8-16 System Settings
When moving through the different options, be sure to select Overview to
return to the main screen of System Settings instead of clicking on the X.
Doing so may take some getting used to.
Look & Feel
The Look & Feel section allows further customization of your Kubuntu
system. Sections here include Appearance, Desktop, Notiﬁcations, and
Window Behavior. One of the options in this section (under the Appear-
ance section) is to customize the splash screen, known as the ksplash (Fig-
ure 8-17), displayed after you log in.
Personal
In the Personal section, you can change information about yourself, includ-
ing your password, settings for your region and language, default applica-
tions, and accessibility options.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

266
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
Figure 8-17 Customizing the splash screen
ptg
Network & Connectivity
This section allows us to change some network settings and also change
items about sharing.
Computer Administration
The Computer Administration section allows you to add or remove soft-
ware and to change items such as the date and time, display, fonts, input
actions, keyboard and mouse settings, and multimedia.
The Display section allows you to change the screen resolution and ori-
entation. If you are using an external monitor or a projector, this is
where you would customize those settings. The Power Control Section
deals with whether or not the monitor should turn off or go into standby
to help conserve power. Figure 8-18 shows the display section of System
Settings.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

System Administration
267
Figure 8-18 Display section of System Settings
ptg
Add or Remove Software
New to Kubuntu 10.04 is the addition of Add or Remove Software to Sys-
tem Settings. By opening this portion of System Settings, you open up
KPackageKit to install new software. This functions the same way as
described under the section Installing New Software.
Printer Configuration
Printer conﬁguration is where users add or make changes to printers. Most
printers these days already have drivers available in Kubuntu, and upon
detecting a new printer for the ﬁrst time, the printer conﬁguration wizard
will start. The following screenshots show this wizard (Figures 8-19 and 8-20).
Advanced Tab
The Advanced tab of System Settings allows for further customization of user
settings. This section is divided into Advanced User Settings and System.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

268
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
Figure 8-19 Printer Configuration—System Settings
ptg
Figure 8-20 New Printer
From the Library of Wow! eBook

System Administration
269
Advanced User Settings
The advanced user settings portion of the Advanced Tab allows you to cus-
tomize things such as how Kubuntu handles audio CDs, digital camera
settings, ﬁle associations, and so on.
The Service Manager, shown in Figure 8-21, is one such Advanced User
Setting that allows you to conﬁgure what services start during boot up of
the computer. In order to make changes, ﬁrst put in your password and
then you can start and stop services that are running.
Also in Advanced User Settings is the ability to conﬁgure how Desktop
Search works.
“Akonadi is a cross-desktop storage service for Personal Information Man-
ager data (calendars, contacts, email, etc.) and also for the metadata” (http://
pim.kde.or/akonadi for more information). Nepomuk can work together
with Akonadi and helps you organize the information and metadata on your
machine. (For more information, see http://nepomuk. semanticdesktop. org.)
Another portion of Nepomuk is Desktop Search (Figure 8-22), which
ptg
Figure 8-21 Service Manager
From the Library of Wow! eBook

270
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
Figure 8-22 Desktop Search: Basic Settings
ptg
provides the ability to search for ﬁles and applications on your system.
These two applications can be conﬁgured through System Settings.
The ﬁrst tab (Basic Settings) of Desktop Search is where you select whether
or not the Semantic Desktop is enabled or the Strigi desktop search is running.
The second tab (File Indexing) allows you to select what folders are indexed
for searching. This is also where you can exclude ﬁle types from being
indexed. The third tab (Advanced Settings) sets the maximum amount of
memory the database should use.
New to Lucid is the Open Collaboration Services provider management
section of System Settings. This is part of the Social Desktop that is being
worked on by the KDE developers. OpenDesktop.org is, according to its
Web site,
one of the biggest online communities, social networks, and portals for
the free desktop movement in the world where developers, artists, and
users can share applications, tools, wallpapers, sounds, icons, themes, and
other artwork and stuff for the open desktop.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

System Administration
271
This module of System Settings allows individual users to log in to or cre-
ate accounts. The login here will be saved and can be used by different
plasmoids within the system.
System
Changes made to the entire system are made in this section. Changes
include K3bSetup, Login Manager, and User Management.
K3b Setup This module in System Settings controls how the CD/DVD
burning software works and is conﬁgured. Chances are good that you will
not have to make any changes to K3b in order to burn CDs or DVDs.
Login Manager When you launch this module, you will be prompted for
your administrative password. The Login Manager is where your user-
name and password is typed in, and it allows you to log in. In this section,
you can customize exactly what happens and how it looks when you log in
ptg
(Figure 8-23).
Figure 8-23 Login Manager
From the Library of Wow! eBook

272
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
One of the items that can be conﬁgured is the Auto-login. This is NOT
RECOMMENDED because anyone will have access to your machine as soon
as it is powered on. Select the user you would like to Auto-login and select
Apply.
User Management The User Management module allows you create new
users and even change access rights. To create a new user, click on New and
follow the wizard (Figures 8-24 and 8-25).
Managing Files with Kubuntu
Now that you have your system installed and set up the way you would
like, it is time to learn how to navigate the different ﬁles and access infor-
mation in Kubuntu. This starts with the default ﬁle manager, Dolphin.
Konqueror, another application that can be used both as a Web browser
and a ﬁle manager, is discussed later in the chapter.
ptg
Figure 8-24 User Management
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Managing Files with Kubuntu
273
Figure 8-25 Create a new user
Introduction to Dolphin
ptg
Dolphin was ﬁrst introduced during the 7.10 release schedule as d3lphin.
The KDE 4 version, Dolphin, is now included as the default ﬁle manager
(see Figure 8-26).
Konqueror, which is also the KDE Web browser, was the previous default
ﬁle manager. Over time, Konqueror development focused increasingly on
the Web browser, while ignoring its ﬁle manager functionality. Dolphin
focuses only on local ﬁles, is built on the Konqueror back end, and should
be familiar to many KDE users.
Another key feature of Dolphin is the ability to use a split view to have mul-
tiple directories open in the same window, without having to switch tabs.
Dolphin is a very powerful ﬁle manager that nicely complements Kon-
queror. The two programs are often used in tandem.
Changes to the File Structure
Kubuntu 10.04 release utilizes the XDG Base Directory Speciﬁcation of
the freedesktop.org standards.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

274
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
Figure 8-26 Viewing the Home Directory in Dolphin
ptg
XDG directories specify a default set of folders within a user’s home direc-
tory. Some of these folders are Desktop, Downloads, Templates, Music,
and Video. The goal is to help create a standard location for ﬁles to be
stored in a variety of different desktop environments (see Figure 8-27).
Introduction to Konqueror
Konqueror may be the old default ﬁle manager in Kubuntu, but it still has a
lot to offer. As a ﬁle manager, Konqueror can do nearly everything you need
(Figure 8-28). You can browse ﬁles through either an icon view or a tree
view. Copying, pasting, moving, and deleting ﬁles are all simple tasks with
Konqueror. A nice feature of Konqueror is that directories are automati-
cally updated. This means that if a ﬁle is created in a directory currently
being viewed, you do not need to refresh the directory to see the changes.
One of the great things about Konqueror is how much you can do within it.
Need access to media ﬁles? Simply type media:/ and browse your media ﬁles.
All kinds of other shortcuts, called kioslaves, exist in Konqueror, including
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Managing Files with Kubuntu
275
Figure 8-27 Viewing XDG directories in Dolphin
ptg
Figure 8-28 Konqueror
ones for searching the Web with Google (gg:/KEYWORD) and even brows-
ing ﬁles via ssh through sftp://. Need help ﬁnding a ﬁle on your system? Sim-
ply use locate:/ to have Konqueror ﬁnd it for you. You can visit the different
system folders through system:/. Many shortcuts and keywords like this are
built into Konqueror, including Google Suggest in the search bar.
Accessing Windows Partitions
A lot of people still have Windows partitions on their hard drives and
would like to access the information stored there. Kubuntu can browse
From the Library of Wow! eBook

276
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
these ﬁles in read-only mode. By default, Kubuntu mounts the Windows
partition in the /media directory. See Figure 8-29 for an example of access-
ing the Windows drive in Dolphin.
Accessing USB Drives
USB drives are everywhere these days, and Kubuntu handles them quite
easily. Simply connect your USB drive, and it will mount automatically. It
will then be available under Dolphin through the media folder. Before
removing the drive, make sure you unmount it by right-clicking on the
device and selecting Eject. The device can then be safely removed.
Managing Music
Amarok is the default application for browsing and managing your music
collection. Kubuntu 10.04 includes Amarok 2, which is a large rewrite of
Amarok. Amarok is a powerful program that can track your podcasts and
music and even provides access to an open music store (Magnatune). Mag-
ptg
natune is a music store that is completely free of DRM (Digital Rights Man-
agement) restrictions. Looking for Online Radio stations? Amarok provides
access to multiple online radio stations through Cool Streams and also
Shoutcast Streams. Amarok can also manage your portable music player
(Figure 8-30). Once you have connected your music player, it will show up
in the device section. Then feel free to manage your ﬁles and playlists.
The ﬁrst time Amarok is launched, it recommends installing additional
multimedia packages from the restricted repository. The recommended
packages are for MP3 Tag Reading and Encoding, Flash, Video Codecs,
MPEG Plug-ins, and DVD Reading. A notiﬁcation from Update Notiﬁer
will load in the Taskbar, and after double-clicking, you will be prompted to
Figure 8-29 Accessing the Windows partition in Dolphin
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Common Applications
277
Figure 8-30 Managing your music player in Amarok
ptg
select which components to install. To install these packages, you need the
administrative password. See Chapter 3’s discussion of Ubuntu Multime-
dia for more information about media codecs and related issues.
Common Applications
Kubuntu comes with a large number of applications preinstalled and con-
ﬁgured, including Web browsers, ofﬁce applications, and e-mail pro-
grams. Remember, since choice is a huge feature of Kubuntu, if you do not
like the default applications, you can always change them. All of these
applications are available through the Application Launcher.
OpenOffice.org
The default ofﬁce application for Kubuntu 10.04 is OpenOfﬁce.org 3.0.1.
This version is an update of the second major release of the suite that
includes Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, and Math; the ﬁrst three can be
launched from the Application Launcher. (Draw and Math are not available
From the Library of Wow! eBook

278
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
from the menu and are launched from within one of the other applications.)
Note that the developers of Kubuntu have renamed the applications in the
Application Launcher to better reﬂect what each does. For example, Writer
is renamed Word Processor.
Each of these programs is easy to use and can help you switch from the
Microsoft Ofﬁce product line. In fact, the OpenOfﬁce.org suite is included
in the desktop CD and can be installed on a Windows system to help you
get comfortable and ready for a switch to Kubuntu. Each application cor-
responds to a similar application in the Microsoft product line. Calc is
very similar to Excel, Writer works like Word, and Impress replaces Power-
Point. OpenOfﬁce.org can handle all but Microsoft Access ﬁles without
problems, and the whole suite is ready to be used in a corporate environ-
ment as well as for personal use.
To demonstrate the power of OpenOfﬁce.org, let’s create a new document.
To start OpenOfﬁce.org Writer, open the Application Launcher and navi-
gate to Ofﬁce and then Word Processor. You can also launch KRunner
ptg
(Alt+F2), type Word processor, and hit Enter.
Writer resembles any other word processing software you have used. Sim-
ply start typing your letter or paper as you normally would, and use the
toolbar for formatting options, including changing alignment, setting
boldface or italic type, and other needs.
When you are done working on a document, save it by selecting File > Save
or by typing Ctrl-S. OpenOfﬁce.org saves documents in the Open Docu-
ment format. This ﬁle format is a standard across the world. You can also
save documents in other formats, including Microsoft Ofﬁce and Adobe
PDF. To save as a PDF ﬁle, just click the PDF button on the main toolbar
(located next to the print icon) and enter a ﬁlename.
Web Browsing with Konqueror
As mentioned earlier, Konqueror can function as a Web browser as well as
a ﬁle manager. To launch Konqueror, open the Application Launcher and
navigate to Internet, then Web Browser. Alternately, you can launch KRun-
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Common Applications
279
ner (Alt+F2) and type in Konqueror. Like other modern Web browsers,
Konqueror provides tabbed browsing, the ability to have multiple Web
pages open in the same window. To do this, select File > New Tab or press
Ctrl+T. A new tab will be created in your open Konqueror window. A cool
feature is that you can be browsing the Web in one tab, browsing your
home directory in another tab, and also browsing network folders in a
third tab. All of these functions can help manage your taskbar and keep
your desktop looking clean and sharp.
As a Web browser, Konqueror enables you to set bookmarks, change your
home page, and use all the other features you would expect from a Web
browser.
Navigating around the Internet is no different in Konqueror than in any
other Web browser, including Firefox, Opera, Netscape, and Internet
Explorer. Just type the Web address into the address bar and hit Enter. For
example, type in www.kubuntu.com to visit the home page for Kubuntu.
ptg
To search using Google, simply move to the search bar, and directly to the
right of the address bar type in what you are looking for. Konqueror will
use Google to ﬁnd it for you.
TIP
If you are using Konqueror in the file manager mode, the Google search bar defaults to
locate, which will search your hard drive instead of using Google’s search to search the
Internet.
Often when browsing the Web, you will see an orange icon at the bottom
of Konqueror. This means there is an RSS feed available. To track this feed,
simply click on it, and Konqueror will add it to your subscribed feeds in
Akregator. We’ll talk more about Akregator later in this chapter.
Using Firefox for Browsing the Web
Allowing choice is a key feature of Ubuntu distributions. Kubuntu can use
the latest version of Firefox (3.1 as of this writing), which can be installed
via the Mozilla Firefox Installer (Figure 8-31).
From the Library of Wow! eBook

280
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
Figure 8-31 Mozilla Firefox installer
ptg
Firefox has taken the Web browser world by storm and is as good as or
even better than Internet Explorer. Firefox not only provides better fea-
tures and a better browsing experience but also adheres more closely to
Web standards. Like Konqueror, Firefox includes tab browsing (File > New
Tab or Ctrl+T), bookmarks, and everything you would expect of a mod-
ern Web browser.
Firefox has many different extensions that can be plugged in to allow
greater ﬂexibility for your Web browser. The most common plug-ins are
for using Macromedia Flash and Java, which some Web pages require.
Installing a plug-in is as simple as visiting a Web site that requires it. A yel-
low bar will indicate that you are missing a plug-in. Click on the Install
Missing Plug-ins button to install the required plug-in.
Burning CDs—Audio and Data
Another common task is creating or burning audio and data CDs.
Kubuntu’s default CD creation program, K3b (installed through KPackage -
Kit), is a very easy-to-use utility that can help you create backup CDs or
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Common Applications
281
even new music CDs. K3b provides a very familiar interface for burning
and copying CDs (Figure 8-32).
Simply click on one of the icons from the main Kreator screen that describes
the project you would like to create, for example, a new audio CD, a new
data CD, or a new data DVD project. You can even copy a CD. After the new
project has been started, simply drag the ﬁles you want from the top section
to the lower section (Figure 8-33).
Once you have moved the ﬁles, select Burn, and sit back while your new
CD is created.
Instant Messaging
Instant messaging is another feature that we almost cannot live without
these days. Kopete, Kubuntu’s default instant messaging client, handles
this task very well. You can ﬁnd it under the Internet section in the Appli-
cation Launcher. You can also launch Kopete from KRunner or the Search
ptg
Figure 8-32 K3b
From the Library of Wow! eBook

282
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
Figure 8-33 Just drag and drop the files.
ptg
bar of the Application Launcher by typing Kopete. The beauty of Kopete is
that it can connect to all of the major service providers, so you do not have
to have multiple programs open. Kopete can handle ICQ, MSN Messen-
ger, Yahoo! Messenger, and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), and because
Google Talk (Google’s instant messenger program) is built around the
Jabber protocol, Kopete can handle that as well. Kopete also can work with
MSN Webcams.
In order to use Kopete, you need to conﬁgure accounts. Select Settings >
Accounts, and then conﬁgure the different accounts you would like Kopete
to use. Kopete can save your passwords to these accounts and even auto-
matically connect upon start-up.
Once the accounts are conﬁgured correctly, you can change Kopete’s behav-
ior to ﬁt your preferences. Many options can be selected, including away
settings, what happens when a new message arrives, and even how the sys-
tem starts up.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Common Applications
283
Internet Relay Chat
A great place to ﬁnd support for Kubuntu is Internet Relay Chat (IRC),
which can be accessed by using Quassel (Figure 8-34) and the different IRC
channels. Join irc.ubuntu.org and then come over to #kubuntu to get many
of your support questions answered. Quassel by default is set up to access
#kubuntu, but more channels can be added. The people in #kubuntu are full
of great knowledge and can help you try to solve any issues that you have.
To launch Quassel, type either Quassel or IRC in the Application Launcher
and click on the application.
Kontact
These days almost everyone uses e-mail, and almost everyone uses some
form of calendar program to keep track of appointments and schedules.
Kontact, Kubuntu’s default PIM (Personal Information Manager), takes
care of all these tasks plus more.
ptg
Figure 8-34 Quassel
From the Library of Wow! eBook

284
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
To start Kontact, go to the Application Launcher and then to the Internet
section. You can also start it from KRunner or by typing Kontact in the
Search Bar of the Application Launcher. Figure 8-35 shows an example of
the Kontact window.
Looking at the ﬁgure, you can see that Kontact has a lot of different features.
We cover several of the program’s options in the following subsections.
KMail is the program that handles e-mail. It can be run separately from
Kontact if you choose. The ﬁrst step in conﬁguring Kontact is to set up
KMail to send and receive e-mail.
Setting Up Your E-Mail Account You will need several pieces of informa-
tion to set up KMail. Your ISP or system administrator should be able to
provide these details.
Type of e-mail server (such as POP or IMAP)
Mail server name (such as mail.domainname.com)
ptg
Figure 8-35 Kontact
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Common Applications
285
Mail account’s username and password
Authentication type (typically password)
Outgoing mail server name
Conﬁguring Kontact is easier than it may look. Once Kontact is open,
select Settings and then Conﬁguring Kontact. From the Conﬁgure Kontact
panel, select Mail followed by Accounts. Under the tab labeled Receiving,
add the information provided from your ISP as the incoming mail infor-
mation. Once that account has been created, add a new account under the
Sending tab that matches the outgoing mail information provided by
your ISP.
Using KOrganizer KOrganizer is included with Kontact. It will track your
schedule and provide reminders of your appointments. Upon switching
Kontact to calendar mode, you will see a month view on the left and indi-
vidual days on the right, as Figure 8-36 shows.
ptg
Figure 8-36 KOrganizer, Kontact’s calendar mode
From the Library of Wow! eBook

286
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
You can set up two different types of events in Kontact:
Meetings: events scheduled with different people
Appointments: general events
It is easy to add a new meeting or appointment. Find the date for the
event in the month view, right-click, and select New Event. In the new
window that opens, ﬁll out the Summary, Location, Time, and Descrip-
tion boxes. You can also set up Kontact to remind you when it is time for
the appointment.
Using Akregator Another great application that is part of Kontact (or can
be used separately) is Akregator (Figure 8-37), an RSS program that can
track your favorite Web feeds. Due to the integration of Akregator and
Konqueror, any Web page that has an RSS feed will have an orange icon in
the corner of the program that helps you add it to your list.
Simply click on the icon and select Add to Akregator. Akregator will keep
ptg
your feeds up to date by automatically checking for new content. Another
bonus of the integration between Konqueror and Akregator is that Web
Figure 8-37 Akregator
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Common Applications
287
pages can be opened within Akregator to post comments and view more
information than what is provided by the Web feed.
As you can see, Kontact is a great program that helps you organize your
life, track your favorite Web sites through RSS, and handle your e-mail.
Kiosk Mode
Kiosk mode allows an administrator to conﬁgure KDE and all aspects of
the desktop and prevent the end user from changing the settings.
KDE stores all of its conﬁguration information in text ﬁles. These ﬁles
control everything from the default background to whether or not a per-
son can add bookmarks. To see the locations of the conﬁguration ﬁles,
simply type kde-config –path confi from the Konsole. Note that the order
applied is the reverse order of what is displayed. By simply changing one of
the ﬁles in the highest priority, the last listed in the kde-config statement,
you can affect what all users see.
ptg
To change the background for all users, simply edit the Wallpaper section
found in kdesktoprc, located in /usr/share/kubuntu-default-settings/ kde-
proﬁle/default/share/conﬁg.
As previously discussed, each user can change the desktop to meet his or
her own needs. However, an administrator can make it so some things
cannot be changed. Simply insert [$i] at the top of the ﬁle for each appli-
cation you would like to make immutable.
Along with enabling or setting changes, an administrator can remove user
access to certain items by simply editing the kde globals ﬁle and adding a
[KDE Action Restrictions] [$1] section.
There are plenty of additional items that can be limited and changed in
Kubuntu.
Exploring the Kubuntu Landscape
Unlike many other operating systems, Kubuntu includes a large number of
applications installed by default. These tools have been selected to allow
you to install Kubuntu and then just get your work done. Some of the
From the Library of Wow! eBook

288
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
applications installed by default have been covered already. Unfortunately
(or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), there are too many
applications to discuss in this book due to space restrictions.
To partially solve that problem, here is a quick summary of many pro-
grams that are available from the Application Launcher, including how to
ﬁnd them and brief descriptions.
Kate: Application Launcher > Utilities > Kate—This simple and
powerful text editor is great for editing documents, making quick
notes, and programming. There is a vast range of plug-ins for items
such as spell checking, statistics, and syntax highlighting.
Calculator (Speedcrunch): Application Launcher > Utilities >
Calculator—Speedcrunch is an extremely powerful calculator that
can help you solve both basic and advanced math problems.
Konsole: Application Launcher > Utilities > Konsole—Beneath the
desktop is a very powerful command-line core. Konsole allows you to
ptg
access this command line by putting a nice window frame around it.
Konsole is great for command-line junkies, those who prefer to do
things with a graphical interface. Konsole can be completely
customized to meet your command-line needs.
Performance Monitor (KSysGuard): Application Launcher > System
> Performance Monitor—The Performance Monitor provides
information about how your Kubuntu system is functioning. Having
problems with an application taking too much memory? How would
you know? KSysGuard provides this information.
System Logs Viewer (KSystemLog): Application Launcher > System >
System Logs Viewer—Interested in what is going on with your
system? Kubuntu keeps track of files and access logs that can be
viewed through this program.
Internet Dial-Up Tool (KPPP): Application Launcher > Internet >
Internet Dial-Up Tool—Need help connecting to your ISP through a
modem? KPPP will help take care of this. KPPP can help set up your
modem and even set up your dial-up connection.
Remote Desktop Connection (KRDC): Application Launcher >
Internet > Remote Desktop Connection—KRDC can help you
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Common Applications
289
connect to remote systems either through the remote desktop
protocol (RDP) or through virtual network connection (VNC).
Simply type in the address and click on Connect. KRDC can save the
settings for each computer you connect to.
PDF Viewer (Okular): Application Launcher > Graphics > PDF
Viewer—KPDF provides you with the ability to open and view files
saved in the Adobe PDF format.
Screen Capture Program (KSnapShot): Application Launcher >
Graphics > Screen Capture Program—KSnapShot allows you to take
screenshots and save them in different formats. The great thing about
KSnapShot is that you specify the exact amount of the screen that will
be captured. This program was used to take all of the screenshots for
this chapter.
Image Viewer (Gwenview): Application Launcher > Graphics >
Image Viewer—Gwenview is the default application for viewing
images in Kubuntu. All different types of images can be opened,
including .png, .jpeg, and .bmp.
ptg
KDevelop: Application Launcher > Development > KDevelop—
While not installed by default, KDevelop is a wonderful integrated
development environment (IDE) that can help you with your coding
projects. This application must be installed via KPackageKit.
Marble: Application Launcher > Education > Misc > Marble—
Marble is a 3D mapping and globe application. Additional map
information is available through GHNS.
KRandRtray: Application Launcher > System > Screen Size and
Rotate—This application is used to rotate and resize the monitor. It
also detects and configures external monitors.
Tips and Tricks
The more you use Kubuntu, the more tips and tricks you will learn to help
make your computer experience better and easier. Kubuntu can be conﬁg-
ured to do almost anything you would like.
Run Programs Automatically When Kubuntu Starts You might like to start
some programs automatically every time you log in to your system. For
example, to help you with your Kubuntu work, you might want to access
From the Library of Wow! eBook

290
Chapter 8
Using Kubuntu
various channels of IRC every day via Konversation. There are four easy
steps to set this up using the session management feature of KDE.
1. Launch all the applications you would like to open automatically.
2. Open up System Settings from the Application Launcher, and click on
the User Management section.
3. Click on the Session Manager button on the left, and make sure that
the Restore Manually Saved Session checkbox is enabled.
4. Log out, saving your sessions.
Automatically Turn On Numlock When Kubuntu Starts If you are sick of
always having to turn on numlock, the change is very simple to make.
1. Open up System Settings from the Application Launcher, and select
Keyboard & Mouse.
2. Under the Numlock on KDE Startup, enable the Turn On checkbox.
3. Click on Apply to save your settings.
ptg
Finding Help and Giving Back to the Community
Finding Help
Kubuntu provides a lot of ways to ﬁnd the information you need to solve a
problem. A great place to start is on the IRC channel #kubuntu, which, as
we noted earlier, can be accessed through Konversation. There are always
wonderful and knowledgeable people in this channel who can answer
almost any question. If you prefer to use the Web for answers, the Kubuntu
wiki, found at http://wiki.kubuntu.org, has a large amount of information
loosely organized with a great search function built in. A third place to ﬁnd
information is the Kubuntu forums at www.kubuntuforums.com. Google
is also a great resource. Chances are that someone else has come across
your problem before and has written a solution to the issue.
Giving Back to the Community
Kubuntu is built around a great community of people who give back what
they learn. There are many ways to get involved and share your love of
Kubuntu. A great place to ﬁnd out how you can make a difference is at
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Summary
291
www.ubuntu.com/community/participate. Not everyone involved has to
know how to create packages, understand how the kernel works, or be a
great programmer. Kubuntu also has a place for people to write wiki pages
or help with documentation, participate in user advocacy, and give general
feedback.
Summary
Kubuntu is a great part of the Ubuntu project and is quickly maturing.
From its start as the idea of a single developer to many people working
together, Kubuntu is becoming the KDE distribution of choice. However,
there is still room for improvement and additions to the setup. A large
community of people discuss every day, either through IRC or e-mail, ways
to make these improvements. Bugs and other issues are quickly resolved
without the additional cost of new programs.
Kubuntu is going to be around for the long haul, and each new release deliv-
ers a better, cleaner, and more polished OS. Help spread the word about the
ptg
project, and get involved by helping out.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

C H A P T E R 9
Mobile and Netbook
9
Editions
Installing on a Netbook
Using the Launcher
Window Listing
Maximized Windows
Switching Back to the Regular Ubuntu Desktop
Applications to Make Your Netbook Better
Other Changes from the Desktop Edition
ptg
Summary
293
From the Library of Wow! eBook

NETBOOKS ARE SMALL COMPUTERS, designed for portability and long battery
life, that have recently become quite popular. As this has happened, it is log-
ical that many people want to run Ubuntu on them. There are already net-
books on the market that ship with Ubuntu preinstalled, like the Dell Mini
9 and the HP Mini 1000. Most come with other variants of Linux or with
Windows. Due to their small screen, netbooks require a custom interface,
like the netbook launcher that Canonical has been working on for over two
years. Along with some custom software, installing Ubuntu on a netbook is
different from installing it on a typical laptop or a desktop. For one thing,
most netbooks don’t come with internal CD or DVD readers. We outline
how to create a bootable USB ﬂash drive to help us get the Ubuntu Net-
book Edition (formerly Ubuntu Netbook Remix) installed.
Installing on a Netbook
As with any other ﬂavor of Ubuntu, you need to download the speciﬁc
image for the Ubuntu Netbook Edition. However, because many netbooks
ptg
lack a CD drive, you will need to take the downloaded .iso image and copy
it to a USB key. Thankfully, there is a special tool in Ubuntu for that. We
outline how to begin the process using another computer that is running
Ubuntu, but the task can also be done from a computer running a recent
version of Windows, Mac OS X, or other modern operating systems.
The Netbook Edition is now ofﬁcially supported, so it can be downloaded
from the same location as the other editions of Ubuntu at http://releases.
ubuntu.com. After you have downloaded the ISO, you need to copy it to a
USB ﬂash drive. The Create Startup Disk utility in System > Administra-
tion is designed to copy an Ubuntu ISO to a USB key (Figure 9-1).
NOTE
Prior versions of the Netbook Edition were called the Netbook Remix and were distributed as
.img files rather than .iso files as they are now.
WARNING
This process will delete anything on the USB flash drive, so make certain you copy any files
you need to keep to a safe location before starting this process.
294
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Installing on a Netbook
295
Figure 9-1 Create Startup Disk main window
ptg
At the top of the screen is the box showing the source CD or ISO. Click the
Other button and select the Netbook .iso ﬁle. After it has been added,
make certain you select the .iso ﬁle you have just added.
The bottom box shows the list of USB keys currently connected to your
computer. To prevent accidental data loss, make certain you disconnect any
other USB drives from your computer.
Finally, at the bottom is a slider for persistent storage on the USB key. Unless
you need the space on the USB key for something else, simply choose the
maximum amount by sliding the slider all the way to the right.
After you create the USB key, you need to restart your computer and
instruct it to boot from the USB ﬂash drive. This requires either (1) chang-
ing a setting in your BIOS to change the boot order to prefer booting from
USB before all other methods or (2) holding down a key at startup to
From the Library of Wow! eBook

296
Chapter 9
Mobile and Netbook Editions
choose the device to boot from. Consult your computer’s manual to learn
how to do this.
Much like a live CD, netbook will work in the same manner as a typical
laptop or desktop computer. However, because USB ﬂash drives may be
written to as well as read, you can install new packages and download ﬁles,
and they won’t be lost when rebooting.
Once you are ready to install Ubuntu on your netbook, either choose the
Install Ubuntu menu option that appears when ﬁrst booting or launch the
installer, called Ubiquity, by pressing Alt+F2, typing ubiquity, and pressing
enter. When the installation is complete, you can reboot (removing the
USB ﬂash drive while the computer is powered off), and you should ﬁnd
your netbook now runs the Ubuntu Netbook Edition. Congratulations!
Using the Launcher
ptg
The ﬁrst and most obvious difference between a regular Ubuntu install
and the Ubuntu Netbook Edition is the launcher (Figure 9-2). Instead of a
desktop with icons, your menu and desktop are replaced by a launcher
that shows installed programs and allows access to ﬁles and directories.
The netbook launcher uses the same categories for applications as the stan-
dard Ubuntu menu, so ﬁnding an application is still easy. For those applica-
tions you use all the time, you can right-click the icon and select add to
favorites to add it to the Favorites menu (Figure 9-3).
Using the 2D Launcher
If you are ﬁnding the 3D launcher a bit slow on an older computer, the
creators of Ubuntu Netbook Edition have created something just for
you. Designed for use on older computers and the new advanced RISC
machine (ARM)-based netbooks, which lack 3D graphics hardware, the 2D
launcher uses the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries to emulate the look
of the main launcher without the resource issues. To use this version of the
launcher, you need to change your session type. On the login screen at the
bottom, there is a menu titled Session, which brings up a drop-down list.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Using the Launcher
297
ptg
Figure 9-2 Netbook launcher default
Figure 9-3 Adding an icon to Favorites for easy access later
From the Library of Wow! eBook

298
Chapter 9
Mobile and Netbook Editions
On that list is the 2D launcher. Select that option, then log in normally
(Figure 9-4).
After you log in, you will see a fairly familiar setting with the launcher and
the categories but a few differences.
The ﬁrst major difference is the lack of the go-home applet in the upper left
and maximus, which keeps windows maximized. In their place is the stan-
dard panel with the drop-down menus. To bring up the desktop launcher,
you can use the Show Desktop button in the lower right, just as with the
standard Ubuntu desktop.
To add a favorite, right-click on the icon and then select the Add to Favorites
option. If it works, you will see a notiﬁcation in the upper right telling you
it has been added (Figure 9-5).
ptg
Figure 9-4 The session selection window with 2D launcher selected
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Using the Launcher
299
ptg
Figure 9-5 Adding to favorites
NOTE
You cannot grab the scroll bars to move up and down in a category, but you can scroll any-
where in the menu. This is because the 2D launcher is designed for touch-based computers
on which grabbing scroll bars is difficult.
The 2D launcher does two things that the 3D launcher doesn’t do. First, it
tells you what programs are already running. Look for the little spinning
wheel on the upper right of the icon (Figure 9-6). This will show for each
running program with a menu entry.
Figure 9-6 Wheel showing running applications
From the Library of Wow! eBook

300
Chapter 9
Mobile and Netbook Editions
Second, the launcher includes recently used ﬁles on the Files view, so you
can quickly launch your current work without going through the menus
(Figure 9-7).
Window Listing
Instead of a list of named windows on the bottom panel, as in most desk-
tops, in the Ubuntu Netbook Edition, applications are represented by their
icons on the upper panel, to the left of the window name, as seen in Fig -
ure 9-8. To select an application that is currently running in the back-
ground, use Alt+Tab or click on its icon in the upper left. The currently
active window will be highlighted with a light gray box around it.
Maximized Windows
Because the Netbook Edition is designed to be used on computers with
small screens and the application titles are shown on the panel, a tool to
keep all windows maximized was created (Figure 9-9).
ptg
Figure 9-7 Files view of the 2D launcher
Figure 9-8 Panel showing currently open windows
Figure 9-9 Window title in the panel
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Switching Back to the Regular Ubuntu Desktop
301
Most applications work just ﬁne with this, but if they don’t, there is an easy
way to prevent a speciﬁc application from being maximized. Launch the
GNOME Conﬁguration Editor by starting the Run Applications dialog:
Press Alt+F2 and type gconf-editor and enter. After the gconf-editor pro-
gram has been launched, navigate to apps > maximus. Add the applica-
tion’s name under the exclude_class key, as seen in Figure 9-10, with Totem,
which has been added by default.
Switching Back to the Regular Ubuntu Desktop
In Ubuntu Netbook Remix, there was a great tool for switching back and
forth between the Ubuntu Netbook interface and the regular Ubuntu one.
Sadly, that tool is gone—but you can still switch back and forth. On the
login screen is a session switcher, as mentioned earlier, with the new 2D
launcher. To switch back to the standard Ubuntu desktop, simply select
GNOME, as in Figure 9-11, and off you go. You can even switch every single
time you boot if you want.
ptg
Figure 9-10 Editing the exclude_class key in gconf-editor
From the Library of Wow! eBook

302
Chapter 9
Mobile and Netbook Editions
ptg
Figure 9-11 Session selection to the GNOME option
Applications to Make Your Netbook Better
Although the Ubuntu Netbook Edition has most of the same applications
as the standard Ubuntu desktop, and they work great, there are a few appli-
cations that can make your netbook even better. These include a webcam or
photobooth application called Cheese; an ebook reader, Fbreader; a hand-
writing recognition tool, Cellwriter; and a note-taking app, Xournal.
Cheese
Many netbooks and laptops have a built-in webcam. For this, a photo-
booth-type application called Cheese is included in Ubuntu Netbook Edi-
tion. Cheese allows you not only to capture photos and video but also to
apply a variety of effects to them, including ﬂipping, warping, and chang-
ing the colors. You can use the images Cheese takes and upload them to
Flickr, use them as your proﬁle picture, or add them to the F-spot library
(Figure 9-12).
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Applications to Make Your Netbook Better
303
ptg
Figure 9-12 Say Cheese!
Fbreader
Because of their long battery life and small size, netbooks make excellent
ebook readers. Because of this, Fbreader, one of the more popular Linux
ebook readers (Figure 9-13) is included with Netbook Edition. Fbreader
can read most ebook formats, including epub and fb2, currently some of
the most popular.
NOTE
Fbreader cannot read .lit files, a common Microsoft-created format for ebooks. However, it is
possible to convert these files to a readable format while using Ubuntu. If you install the con-
vlit package, you can use it to convert most .lit files to HTML and images so they may be read.
NOTE
To see the full list of supported and unsupported formats, visit http://www.fbreader.org/doc/
formats.php.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

304
Chapter 9
Mobile and Netbook Editions
ptg
Figure 9-13 Reading ebooks is easy with Fbreader.
Cellwriter
One of the major challenges with touchscreens is character recognition.
Because of the increasing number of netbooks shipping with touchscreens,
Cellwriter is installed by default. After some basic training of your hand-
writing (Figure 9-14), Cellwriter can accurately turn writing into text to be
copied to a document, to the command line, or elsewhere (Figure 9-15).
Xournal
Also for netbooks with touchscreens, Xournal is a stylus-based note-taking
application that can mix drawing, formulas, and text (Figure 9-16). Each
journal is organized into pages and can have multiple layers of drawing,
allowing annotation of any document. Xournal can be found under the
Accessories menu.
Xournal also allows annotating of PDFs (Figure 9-17), which can then be
exported to a ﬁle or printed. To open a PDF to annotate, choose the Anno-
tate PDF option on the File menu. Choose the PDF you would like to open.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Applications to Make Your Netbook Better
305
Figure 9-14 Initial training of Cellwriter
ptg
Figure 9-15 Once Cellwriter has been trained, entering text is easy.
Figure 9-16 Xournal allows for easy note taking.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

306
Chapter 9
Mobile and Netbook Editions
Figure 9-17 Easily annotate PDFs by importing them.
ptg
Once you are done editing, the Export to PDF link under the File menu can
create a PDF of your notes.
Other Changes from the Desktop Edition
There are a few little tweaks in Netbook Edition that are different from the
major interface changes mentioned previously.
Virtual Desktops
Unlike the normal Ubuntu install, the Netbook Edition panel does not
show virtual desktops. Only one virtual desktop/workspace is created by
default. However, the ability to use virtual desktops still exists, although
changing the default takes a bit of work. The default panel lacks any free
space, so you will need to remove one of the applets, such as the go home
applet in the upper left, and then right click on the free space created and
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Summary
307
add the workspace switcher applet. However, the applet does not display
correctly with the black panel. Change the panel color or use the keyboard
shortcuts of Ctrl+Alt+(arrow keys) to move between workspaces.
Summary
The Ubuntu Netbook Edition is a wonderful option for use on today’s
portable devices. It was developed with cooperation from Intel and several
device manufacturers (OEMs) speciﬁcally for use with Intel’s Atom proces-
sors. While it is ready for use today, the project is still in active development
and improving continually. To ﬁnd out the latest information about this
remix, take a look here: http://www.canonical.com/projects/ ubuntu/une.
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

C H A P T E R 1 0
Ubuntu-Related
10
Projects
Officially Supported Derivatives
Recognized Derivatives
Other Distributions
Launchpad
Bazaar
Summary
ptg
309
From the Library of Wow! eBook

UBUNTU IS NOT MERELY a complete operating system; it is also the center of a
growing ecosystem of distributions. Some, referred to as the partner
projects, work closely with and within Ubuntu. Others prefer to work out-
side the project and are considered full derivatives. Often, these projects are
created in order to highlight a speciﬁc selection of software or use case,
such as the Ubuntu Studio project, which focuses on multimedia creation
and editing. Others, like the gNewSense project, supported by the Free Soft-
ware Foundation, exist for philosophical or social reasons.
Still others are created for reasons connected to the international nature of
Linux and open source software. While most Ubuntu development hap-
pens in English, there are large developer and user communities in other
languages and countries. Thus, a derived distribution might spring up to
satisfy that need. There are derived distributions targeted at Christians,
Muslims, people with slow computers, and people who prefer to have an
Ubuntu system optimized for any of several alternative user interfaces or
for use in several different schools and government bureaucracies around
the world. Should you use any of these over Ubuntu? We can’t answer that
ptg
question for you. Some of these projects are fully within and, as a result,
not mutually exclusive from Ubuntu. Others might be more appropriate
depending on your preferences or circumstances. You can mix, match, and
sample these distributions until you ﬁnd one that works great for you. As
we mentioned in Chapter 1, Ubuntu sees these derivatives as a sign of a
healthy and vibrant community. One of the goals of the project is to make
it easier for this type of distribution to appear. We can all expect to see
more of them in the future.
Officially Supported Derivatives
Ofﬁcially supported derivatives, formerly called Partner projects, are those
projects that work in close relation with Ubuntu. They share a common
repository of packages and release in sync with Ubuntu. These derivatives
are ofﬁcially supported by Canonical in both development and security.
Kubuntu
Kubuntu is the ﬁrst and oldest of all the partner projects. First released
alongside Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog), Kubuntu, which means “toward
310
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ofﬁcially Supported Derivatives
311
humanity” in Bemba, builds on the strengths of the K Desktop Environment
(KDE) rather than GNOME as Ubuntu does. The project is led by Jonathan
Riddell, who now works for Canonical, Ltd.
As with Ubuntu, Kubuntu is a complete desktop, but one built around
KDE and Qt. Instead of Ubuntu’s brown theme, Kubuntu opts for a more
traditional blue and makes only a few other visual changes. Kubuntu is
explored in much more depth in Chapter 8 and so is not given a full treat-
ment here.
TIP
Kubuntu
Kubuntu can be found at www.kubuntu.org.
Edubuntu
Edubuntu is a version of Ubuntu for use in schools and other educational
environments and uses the thin client technology of the Linux Terminal
Server Project (LTSP) as well as a number of programs aimed at the educa-
ptg
tional market, such as GCompris and the KDE Education suite. It is led by
a team council that coordinates and participates heavily in its develop-
ment; the members are listed here:
Scott Balneaves
Jonathan Carter
Jordan Erickson
Alkis Georgopoulos
Stéphane Graber
Richard Johnson
One of Edubuntu’s unique features is the inclusion of the LTSP in an easy-
to-use, out-of-the-box installer. LTSP uses a different method of deploying
clients over a network than is used in traditional computer deployments.
Instead of full-powered computers, LTSP uses thin clients, less capable,
cheaper computers that connect to a larger server and have it do all the pro-
cessing work. LTSP is covered in greater detail in The Ofﬁcial Ubuntu Server
Book, Second Edition, also available from Prentice Hall.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

312
Chapter 10
Ubuntu-Related Projects
Several Ubuntu advocates have leveled the counterintuitive suggestion
that the groups of users who have the most problems switching to Ubuntu
are those with the most computer experience. For the technically compe-
tent, learning Ubuntu often involves unlearning something else. For most of
those reading this book, Ubuntu is an alternative operating system for an
extraordinarily exciting generation of users. No team or project within
Ubuntu has done more to target, support, and grow this group of users than
the Edubuntu project.
The community-driven Edubuntu project aims to create an add-on for
Ubuntu specially tailored for use in primary and secondary education.
Edubuntu exists as a platform consisting of tools for teachers and adminis-
trators. The real thrust, of course, and the real purpose, is to put free and
open source software into the hands of children. In doing so, Edubuntu pro-
vides children with a ﬂexible and powerful technological environment for
learning and experimenting. Based on free software, it offers educational
technologies that are hackable and that can ultimately be used by students
and teachers on their own terms. Distributed freely, its gratis nature serves an
ptg
important need for schools where technology programs are always under-
staffed and underfunded. Fluent in Ubuntu and in free software, the chil-
dren who, right now, are growing up using Edubuntu are offering the
Ubuntu community a glimpse of where it might go and the generation of
Ubunteros who may take us there.
While the Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu (another recognized derivative
covered later in this chapter) desktops highlight the products of the
GNOME, KDE, and Xfce communities respectively, the Edubuntu project
aims to provide the best of everything in Ubuntu—properly tailored for
use in schools and as easy to use as possible. One thing that made Edubuntu
popular was its amazing ability to integrate thin clients, allowing the use of
one powerful machine (the server) to provide many very low-powered,
often diskless machines (the clients), with their entire OS. This model,
while uninteresting for most home or business users using workstations
and laptops, is a major feature in classroom settings where it can mitigate
conﬁguration and maintenance headaches and reduce the cost of class-
room deployments substantially.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Ofﬁcially Supported Derivatives
313
In 2008, it was decided that the developers of Edubuntu should focus
more on bringing the best educational applications to the desktop rather
than trying to maintain an entire distribution of their own. As a result,
Edubuntu is no longer a distribution like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Xubuntu,
but rather an “add-on” for users. What this means is that you can easily
install Edubuntu using the Ubuntu Software Center in your Applications
menu, selecting Education, and then Educational Desktop for Ubuntu or
Educational Desktop for Kubuntu.
TIP
Edubuntu
Edubuntu, along with more detailed installation instructions and options, can be found at
www.edubuntu.org.
Ubuntu Server Edition
Ubuntu Server Edition was created with the aim of making Ubuntu easy
to install and use on servers. The Server Edition was ofﬁcially launched
ptg
with Ubuntu 5.04 and initially focused on making certain that the highest
quality server applications were available for easy installation and conﬁgu-
ration, including MySQL, Apache, and others.
The most recent work has involved improvements to the cloud computing
capabilities of Ubuntu Server. This is done via the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud,
powered by Eucalyptus Systems technology, which enables the use and
beneﬁts of cloud computing behind a ﬁrewall for enhanced security, ease
of deployment, and resource allocation.
To learn more about Ubuntu Server Edition, we recommend The Ofﬁcial
Ubuntu Server Book, Second Edition, also available from Prentice Hall.
TIP
Ubuntu Server Edition
Ubuntu Server Edition can be found at www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition
with further infomation at www.ubuntu.com/cloud and www.ubuntu.com/partners/Eucalyptus.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

314
Chapter 10
Ubuntu-Related Projects
Recognized Derivatives
Beyond the ofﬁcially supported derivatives, recognized derivatives use all
the same repositories as Ubuntu and release on the same schedule, but
they are not ofﬁcially supported by Canonical in development or security.
Xubuntu
Xubuntu is a version of Ubuntu built on top of the Xfce window manage-
ment system. In Xubuntu, Xfce and its associated applications play a role
analogous to KDE in the context of Kubuntu. Xfce is small and lightweight
compared to the much fancier GNOME and KDE. It uses less memory and
fewer CPU cycles than either of the alternatives in a normal conﬁguration.
While this means that Xubuntu is often seen as having fewer features or
being less user-friendly than Ubuntu or Kubuntu, it also means that it
runs faster, is more responsive, and tends to run very quickly on older or
less powerful computers, where the weight of either GNOME or KDE may
make the system prohibitively slow. As a result, Xubuntu has been used
frequently by computer recyclers, by the owners of old computers, and by
ptg
those who just want to squeeze out better performance from their hard-
ware using a more efﬁcient interface.
Like Kubuntu, Xubuntu is community driven and began outside the
project in the universe repository of Ubuntu. In releases 5.04 and 5.10,
Xfce 4 was supported by a special Xfce Team in Ubuntu. Due to the great
work done on Xfce, Xubuntu was brought into the fold and became
Ubuntu’s third partner project and a part of the main Ubuntu repository,
for release 6.10, where it has remained since.
TIP
Xubuntu
Xubuntu can be found at www.xubuntu.org.
Ubuntu Studio
Ubuntu Studio is a derivative of Ubuntu that is designed and optimized for
multimedia production. The system includes a wide variety of applications
useful to those engaging in audio and video recording, mixing, editing, syn-
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Other Distributions
315
thesis, and production as well as graphics production and manipulation. It
contains a modiﬁed kernel that allows the system to reduce latency for
audio in ways that dramatically improve performance in professional audio
recording and manipulation, but the kernel may be inappropriate in other
environments. Its ﬁrst release was based on Ubuntu 7.04.
TIP
Ubuntu Studio
Ubuntu Studio can be found at www.ubuntustudio.org.
Mythbuntu
MythTV is one of the most popular pieces of home theater software, but it
has a bit of a reputation as a beast to set up. Mythbuntu is designed to make
that setup easy. Like Xubuntu, Mythbuntu uses Xfce as a desktop environ-
ment, has a custom-made Mythbuntu Control Center, and has a LiveCD
for easy testing. Mythbuntu’s ﬁrst release was based on Ubuntu 7.10.
ptg
TIP
Mythbuntu
Mythbuntu can be found at www.mythbuntu.org.
Other Distributions
Some distributions generally work outside of the Ubuntu community and
usually have their own package repositories. They may not release at the
same time as Ubuntu. In the past, several of these derived distributions have
been built directly upon other distributions, such as Debian, which is also
the base for Ubuntu. The changes that Ubuntu developers make in the
process of creating the distribution have been seen as positive and useful as
a foundation for others with custom needs or desires. The list of derivative
distributions has grown rapidly, and as distributions come and go, the list is
constantly in ﬂux. While in the ﬁrst edition of this book, our list was nearly
comprehensive, the size of the derivative distribution community has grown
so much that compiling a complete list for this book is no longer possible.
Instead, we provide a bit of the ﬂavor of the diversity of derived distribu-
tions with some examples of the oldest and most visible derived distri -
butions to give you an idea of the scope of the community.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

316
Chapter 10
Ubuntu-Related Projects
Guadalinex
Guadalinex is the GNU/Linux distribution developed and promoted by
the regional government of Andalusia, the most populated autonomous
community in Spain with almost 8 million inhabitants. It is currently one
of the largest free software implementations worldwide, with more than
200,000 desktops—and increasing. The project is a consequence of the
unanimous support of the Andalusian Parliament on the Information
Society and Innovation policies approved in 2002 and 2003, urging all the
regional institutions to promote and use free software and open licenses.
This makes the Guadalinex initiative unique in the world.
Guadalinex was initially released in 2003, and the ﬁrst two versions were
based on Debian. In 2005 the Guadalinex project decided to develop the
third version deriving from Ubuntu. Guadalinex version 3 was released in
January 2006 based on Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger), making it the ﬁrst
major Ubuntu derivative. The project is part of a government plan to
implement free software as the default option in the public schools. At the
beginning of 2006, this project involved 500 schools and approximately
ptg
200,000 desktops equipped with Guadalinex and free software only. These
numbers increase every year as new courses start every September and new
computers are purchased (about 40,000 in 2006). This initiative alone puts
Guadalinex in the top position as the biggest free software implementation
worldwide. Additionally, the software is used in public Internet access cen-
ters, senior centers, libraries, and women’s associations, as well as citizens’
homes. Guadalinex is merely one example of many Ubuntu derivatives cre-
ated by or in cooperation with governments for use in schools and bureau-
cracies. It is now only one among many massive deployments of Ubuntu in
these settings.
TIP
Guadalinex
Guadalinex can be found at www.guadalinex.org.
gNewSense
While Ubuntu has a strong commitment to free and open source software
and software freedom, it makes several compromises for binary-only
ﬁrmware and drivers whose exclusion renders hardware inoperable. These
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Other Distributions
317
drivers and ﬁrmware are placed in the restricted repository. The multiverse
and commercial repositories, while not ofﬁcially supported, reside in the
Ubuntu archive and contain software that does not live up to Ubuntu’s
standards of software freedom. It is for this reason that the gNewSense
project, spearheaded by Irish Ubuntu community members, was launched.
gNewSense is a pun on the word nuisance—Richard Stallman, the father of
the free software movement and the GNU project, is often jokingly referred
to as “chief gnuisance”—but also tries to evoke images of “new sense” that
comes from a commitment to software freedom. As a result, the project is
primarily reductive.
TIP
gNewSense
gNewSense can be found at www.gnewsense.org.
Linux Mint
Because Ubuntu is dedicated to using free software by default as much as
ptg
possible, it does not come with proprietary media codecs installed. That
was the reason Linux Mint was originally created. Over time, it has devel-
oped a community that focuses on creating an easy-to-use-and-install
Linux desktop that is nice to look at with a focus on making things as
simple and enjoyable as possible, especially for newcomers. The distribu-
tion is completely compatible with and uses the Ubuntu software reposi-
tories. The main differences are in the look and feel as well as choices for
software installed by default.
TIP
Linux Mint
Linux Mint can be found at linuxmint.com.
Lubuntu
Lubuntu is a new derivative that strives to provide an even lighter and
faster desktop by using the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE),
by default, in place of GNOME, KDE, or Xfce. It is in active development
and seeks to become an ofﬁcial variant. While LXDE can be built on many
From the Library of Wow! eBook

318
Chapter 10
Ubuntu-Related Projects
current Linux distributions, it is the native environment of Lubuntu alone.
LXDE is still in active development and has not yet produced its ﬁrst ofﬁ-
cial stable release, making this a true cutting-edge project.
TIP
Lubuntu
Lubuntu can be found at www.lubuntu.net.
TIP
More Derivatives
A list of official and recognized derivatives is kept at www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/
derivatives, and even more are listed at wiki.ubuntu.com/DerivativeTeam/Derivatives.
Launchpad
As we mentioned in Chapter 1, most of Canonical, Ltd.’s technical employ-
ees do not work on Ubuntu. Rather, they work on infrastructure. The
majority of this infrastructure is a large collection of services that work
together to provide the framework through which Ubuntu is built. This
ptg
superstructure of related applications is collectively referred to as Launch-
pad. While it has several non–Web-based systems, it is almost wholly acces-
sible over the Web.
While Launchpad is primarily used to develop Ubuntu, the infrastructure
was designed to be useful for any free software project and is becoming
more popular. It aims to provide these projects with the code-, bug-, and
translation-tracking software necessary to more easily and more power-
fully collaborate with others and to develop free and open source software.
Each of these functions (code, bug, and translation tracking) is highly inte-
grated, making it much more ambitious, and potentially much more pow-
erful, than traditional Web-based solutions with similar goals. Early on, the
Launchpad Web page described the project as follows:
A collection of services for projects in the Open Source universe. You can
register your project, and then collaborate with the Open Source commu-
nity on translations, bug tracking, and code.
That description continues to be valid even as the project has expanded with
support and speciﬁcation modules. In addition to code, bug, and translation
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Launchpad
319
tracking, Launchpad provides the ability to deal with code, not just on a
per-package or per-project level, but on the distribution level as well. If a
bug has been reported against a piece of software in Ubuntu, it is visible to
both the upstream and downstream projects. The project can track how its
software evolves over time and see, at a glance, whether bugs apply or not.
Developers can track translations in a similar way.
The best way to understand Launchpad is to see it in action. This section
walks through the individual pieces of Launchpad in more depth. Much of
the Ubuntu infrastructure is highly integrated into Launchpad. If you
have created an account for contributing to the wiki or ordering CDs at
http://shipit.ubuntu.com, you already have a Launchpad account.
Once a source of controversy in the free and open source software world
was the fact that the source code to Launchpad was not distributed. This
changed on July 21, 2009, when Launchpad and all of its components,
including codehosting and Soyuz, were ofﬁcially made open source using
the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 (AGPLv3).
ptg
TIP
Launchpad
Launchpad can be found at www.launchpad.net.
Soyuz
Soyuz is the distribution and archive management software integrated
into Launchpad. It handles all of the automatic building of software in
Ubuntu on each of the architectures and the integration of successfully
built software into the archive. Soyuz means “union” in Russian and is the
name of the spacecraft that Mark Shuttleworth traveled in during his voy-
age to space.
Soyuz works almost entirely behind the scenes. It was ﬁrst activated in early
February 2006, but had no initial effect on the way software was uploaded
or downloaded in Ubuntu. What Soyuz does is to integrate the process by
which software is built and inserted into different parts of the Ubuntu
archive. The building of software cannot be tracked using the Launchpad
Web infrastructure.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

320
Chapter 10
Ubuntu-Related Projects
TIP
Recent Builds
The status of recent builds in Ubuntu can be found at https://launchpad.net/distros/ ubuntu/
+builds.
Launchpad Translations
Translations, commonly called Rosetta, is a Web-based translation system
integrated into Launchpad. It was the ﬁrst piece of Launchpad to be pub-
licly released. It was and is codenamed Rosetta after the Rosetta Stone, the
famous piece of dark gray granite with the same text in three scripts that
led to the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Rosetta is a Web-based version of a “PO” ﬁle editor. In other words, it pro-
vides a simple mechanism by which translators can view a list of untrans-
lated phrases or strings and then translate each of them into their language.
At the moment, the system works only with translations from English.
Rosetta’s non–Web-based predecessors include Kbabel and Gtranslate,
ptg
both of which can be downloaded and installed on Ubuntu. By putting this
functionality on the Web and integrating it into the archive management
scripts, Rosetta lowers the barrier of entry for translation and increases the
chance that a translation will make it into the distribution.
Rosetta includes each of the translatable strings contained in every appli-
cation in Ubuntu. When new software is uploaded into Ubuntu, Rosetta
will check to see if any strings have changed or been added. Changes to a
string that has previously been translated will result in the translation
being marked as fuzzy until a translator can check the translation and the
new string, make any necessary changes, and then mark the translation as
no longer fuzzy. By tracking new strings, Rosetta can easily prompt trans-
lators with new strings to translate as they appear as well as provide statis-
tics on the percentage of strings within a particular application or within
all of Ubuntu that have been translated into a particular language.
As users translate strings, they build up positive “karma” within the sys-
tem—an innovation that has now been deployed to many other parts of
Launchpad. Users can also work together in localization teams (called l10n
teams because the word localization has ten letters between its ﬁrst and last
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Launchpad
321
letters). Rosetta provides a great way for Ubuntu users to get involved in
the distribution. Anybody who knows English and another language can
begin contributing. Because the system is integrated into Launchpad,
users do not need to submit their translations a second time to have them
included in Ubuntu—the project already has them. After they are submit-
ted in Rosetta and approved, new translations are automatically pushed
out to users who use Ubuntu in those languages.
TIP
Rosetta
Rosetta can be found at www.launchpad.net/rosetta.
Launchpad Bugs
Launchpad Bugs, commonly referred to by its codename Malone, is a Web-
based bug system like the Mozilla project Bugzilla, which might be familiar
to some users. It provides a location where users can ﬁle bugs they ﬁnd in
their Ubuntu software by using easily accessible pieces of software such as
Bug Buddy, the command-line reportbug, or by reporting over the Web.
ptg
Malone’s name is a reference to the gangster movie musical Bugsy Malone.
Malone’s ﬁrst role is to provide a location where users can submit bugs.
Malone is not just a way to collect complaints, though. Rather, its job is to
track and record a bug through its full life cycle, from report to close. Bugs
can be assigned to a particular developer or reassigned. If the bug is, in
fact, the result of another application, the bug can be reassigned to another
package. Bugs can be rated according to severity, or tagged and categorized
in any number of useful manners. Information, ﬁles, and patches that ﬁx a
bug can be uploaded into Malone. When the bug has been resolved, it can
be closed. The Malone bug report provides a single venue in which to col-
lect information from the bug submitter, the bug ﬁxer, the upstream
maintainer if necessary, and any other involved party.
All of this, of course, is exactly what you would expect from any usable
modern bug tracker. Where Malone aims to distinguish itself from its
competitors is through its integration in Launchpad. First and foremost,
this means that users of Malone can track the status of a bug as it relates to
a particular patch or a particular piece of code. Because Ubuntu supports
From the Library of Wow! eBook

322
Chapter 10
Ubuntu-Related Projects
every release for 18 months and some releases, such as Ubuntu 10.04 LTS,
for much longer, it’s important that Ubuntu be able to track which bugs
show up in which releases. As derivative works of Ubuntu are created in
Launchpad, Malone also allows these derivatives to use Malone to see
whether bugs submitted against Ubuntu or other distributions apply to
their code and, if so, to quickly grab a ﬁx.
As with Rosetta, Launchpad karma can be built up by ﬁxing, reporting,
and interacting with bugs over time. Bug triage that involves closing irre-
producible bugs and merging duplicate bugs is one way that users can
build up their karma. Of course, simply running developer versions and
submitting new bugs is another great way to build good karma.
TIP
Malone
Malone can be found at www.launchpad.net/malone.
The Launchpad Blueprint Tracker
ptg
The Launchpad Blueprint Tracker, or Blueprint, is Ubuntu’s custom speci-
ﬁcation and feature-tracking system. Blueprint provides a way that users
can create speciﬁcation pages, linked into the existing Ubuntu wiki, for
features they would like to see in Ubuntu. Other interested parties can use
Blueprint to subscribe to speciﬁcations or proposals they are interested in
to collaborate on the development of the speciﬁcation and to track
progress. Over time, users working in the wiki and in Blueprint help new
ideas through a process that starts with “braindump”—a very rough collec-
tion of ideas and brainstorming—and ends with an implemented feature.
In Ubuntu, this process involves (1) review by the community and trusted
members and (2) approval by decision makers and the Ubuntu Technical
Board or by appropriate team leaders and councils. Blueprint provides
technology to support this process and ensure that nothing important is
dropped on the ﬂoor.
In particular, Blueprint helps leaders and decision makers on Ubuntu pri-
oritize features and speciﬁcations and ensure that work is progressing on
necessary features toward on-time completion for releases. As a result,
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Launchpad
323
Blueprint is used as both the primary speciﬁcation tracker and the major
release management tool for Ubuntu.
While Blueprint is extremely useful for technical speciﬁcations, it is also
used heavily for developing and tracking community-related proposals as
well as for brainstorming stages into implementation. Blueprint also has
features designed around sprints and conferences to help organize sessions
and coordinate groups to bring forward speciﬁcations. As a ﬁnal bit of trivia,
it’s interesting to note that Blueprint was also written largely by Ubuntu
founder and ﬁnancier Mark Shuttleworth himself!
TIP
Blueprint
Blueprint can be found at www.launchpad.net/blueprint.
Launchpad Answers
Launchpad Answers is a technical support tracker built within Launchpad
for use by Ubuntu and other free software projects hosted in the system. It
ptg
allows community members to ﬁle support requests and other community
members to help resolve those requests. Unlike most other systems, ques-
tions can be asked and answered in a variety of languages. Launchpad
Answers tries to complement other forms of community support in Ubuntu
by providing a familiar ticketing system that also catalogs answered ques-
tions, allowing users to easily ﬁnd answers to questions that others have
asked before. Users can ﬁle support requests and communicate with volun-
teer community support contacts to provide more information, to discuss
issues, and to note that their issues are resolved. In addition to storing the
answers in a way that makes them searchable, Launchpad Answers helps
contextualize support requests by integrating them with other Launchpad
features to show the connections and context of relevant bugs, translations,
people, teams, and the variety of versions in the variety of releases tracked by
Launchpad. Of course, karma can be built by interacting with Launchpad
Answers and, in particular, by answering questions.
TIP
Launchpad Answers
Launchpad Answers can be found at https://answers.launchpad.net.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

324
Chapter 10
Ubuntu-Related Projects
Other Functionality
In addition to the visible ﬂagship products within Launchpad just dis-
cussed, Launchpad has several other important uses. We’ve already alluded
to the fact that Launchpad handles all the authentication for all the Ubuntu
Web sites. If you want to edit or create a Web page in the Ubuntu wiki or
even order a CD, you must ﬁrst create an account in Launchpad. In addi-
tion to holding a username and password, a Launchpad account can con-
tain rich information about each individual, including a GNU Privacy
Guard encryption key, wiki pages, contact information, and more. More
important, Launchpad also contains representations of every team and
group within Ubuntu and handles permission within the entire Ubuntu
world. For example, the only people who are allowed to upload core pack-
ages to Ubuntu are people who are part of the Ubuntu Core Developers
Team in Launchpad.
NOTE
The system is also playing an increasingly important role in coordinating sprints and track-
ing events in a calendar. With time, Launchpad’s functionality is only likely to grow, and its
ptg
help in supporting the new type of development will grow with it.
Bazaar
Bazaar is a distributed revision control system. What does that really mean?
First, a revision control system is a program that tracks how the source code
of a program changes. It tracks what each speciﬁc change was, such as the
addition of a new piece of code, as well as who made the change. It also
allows a developer to roll back to a previous version or create a branch, or a
separate and parallel code version, to try a new idea without forcing the
change on the main code.
The second key piece about Bazaar is that it is distributed. Traditional revi-
sion control systems have a single place where the code is stored. Only cer-
tain people can access this place and change the code there. A distributed
revision control system is different in that there is no single place for code
storage. Each branch a developer is working on is equal, and they all take
code from each other. This system is much like a number of equal mer-
chants at a bazaar, hence the name.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Summary
325
Bazaar started out as a fork of the Arch distributed revision control sys-
tem. (A fork means that the developers disagree on where to take the pro-
gram, and they break into different groups to work toward each group’s
different goals.) However, Bazaar 2 was completely rewritten, as it was
found that the then-current code did not work in the long term.
TIP
Bazaar
Bazaar can be found at www.bazaar-ng.org.
Launchpad Ground Control
Launchpad Ground Control is a new project that aims to make the use of
the collaborative features of Launchpad and Bazaar easier for everyday
users. To accomplish this, a new package may be installed by users on their
computer that integrates Launchpad with their desktop, enabling the use
of Launchpad and Bazaar without using the command line. It does so in a
way that is completely compatible with all the command-line methods, so
it is possible to switch between the methods without harming the project
ptg
at hand.
TIP
Ground Control
Ground Control can be found at https://launchpad.net/groundcontrol.
Summary
In addition to building a great OS that many people use, the Ubuntu
project has developed an OS that those building other operating systems
use as a basis to build from. This has come in the form of both internal
partner projects and external derivative distributions. Together, these span
languages, continents, and markets. Also, Ubuntu is tightly linked to
Canonical, Ltd.’s other projects, Launchpad and Bazaar. While Bazaar pro-
vides a compelling version control system, Launchpad provides a one-stop
show for bugs, translations, and much more.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

C H A P T E R 1 1
Introducing the
11
Ubuntu Forums
What Are the Ubuntu Forums?
A Brief History of the Ubuntu Forums
How May I Participate?
Questions, Locations, Conversations, and Activities
Key People in the Forums
Fun Stuff
The Foundation of the Ubuntu Forums
ptg
Summary
327
From the Library of Wow! eBook

THIS CHAPTER INTRODUCES THE Ubuntu Forums by describing what they
are, why they exist, and some of the history and fun quirks that make them
a place where people come for the tech support and end up staying for the
community. Whether you have used Internet forums in the past or not,
this chapter will give you a good introduction to an ofﬁcial Ubuntu pres-
ence on the Web, a place that is helpful, welcoming, and an enjoyable com-
munity in which to participate.
What Are the Ubuntu Forums?
An Internet forum is a Web site where people may sign up for an account
and then communicate with one another in discussions of varying types
in a casual and free-ﬂowing manner. Most forums are divided into smaller
areas, each dedicated to a particular topic or set of related topics. For those
who have participated in online activities for a long time, Internet forums
are an easy-to-ﬁnd and easy-to-use equivalent of local dial-up bulletin
board systems (BBSs) from the 1980s and early 1990s, as well as a prettier
looking version of Usenet news groups.
ptg
The Ubuntu Forums were created as a place for people to come and help
one another learn how to install, use, and customize Ubuntu. The goal was
to create a place on the Internet that was easy to access for those who are
not especially adept at or experienced with technology. The site is divided
into a number of different topical areas to make ﬁnding information easy
and to make asking questions and ﬁnding answers simple.
In addition, the forums exist in a very informal, sometimes whimsical
atmosphere, where the information and tech advice are both solid and
useful; the community is kind, gentle, and welcoming; and the spirit is
often playful.
A Brief History of the Ubuntu Forums
The Ubuntu Forums were created in October 2004 by Ryan Troy, aka
ubuntu-geek (we talk more about forum usernames later in the chapter).
The forums were started as a personal project, an unofﬁcial resource pro-
vided by one man who was having fun and trying to help people at the
same time. Quickly the forums became known as a wonderful place to ﬁnd
328
From the Library of Wow! eBook

How May I Participate?
329
other Ubuntu users who are knowledgeable, helpful, and friendly. The
forums caught the eye of Canonical very early on, and in November 2004,
in recognition of the solid foundation and great atmosphere that had
already been established, the forums became the Ofﬁcial Ubuntu Forums.
The forums hosting continued to be paid for by Ryan and the occasional
donations of forum community members until March 2006, when Canon-
ical graciously offered to host the forums on its own servers. In June 2007,
the forums’ domain name, license, and assets were all transferred to
Canonical, which now maintains sole ownership.
Over the years, the forums have changed their look and feel several times,
but one thing has always remained: the feeling of community. The Ubuntu
Forums began as a small group of playful geeks (meant in the best of ways)
who gathered to have some fun and help one another with a new and inter-
esting Linux distribution in a lighthearted and welcoming atmosphere. As
of this writing, the forums have well over one million members, with an
average of between eight and ﬁfteen thousand online at any given time,
and yet the friendliness and helpful community feeling remains.
ptg
How May I Participate?
To browse the forums, read questions and answers, and get a feel for the
community, simply point your browser to ubuntuforums.org. You don’t
need an account to beneﬁt from the information that already exists on the
site. You can read and even search the forums to see if others have asked
questions about the things you are interested in learning.
However, to really begin to participate in the community, you will want to
sign up for an account. Do so by browsing to the main page at ubuntufo-
rums.org and clicking the Register link, as shown in Figure 11-1.
You will be asked to read and agree to the forum rules shown in Figure 11-2.
The Ubuntu Forums Code of Conduct is summarized later in this chapter.
After doing so, choose and provide a username and password, along with
an e-mail address. You may choose a username that is serious, whimsical,
informative, or secretive, almost anything you want as long as it is clean
and work/school appropriate. There is also some optional information
From the Library of Wow! eBook

330
Chapter 11
Introducing the Ubuntu Forums
Figure 11-1 UbuntuForums.org Web site front page
ptg
Figure 11-2 UbuntuForums.org rules agreement
From the Library of Wow! eBook

How May I Participate?
331
that may be included in your registration, such as the username of another
forums community member who referred you, and your time zone. When
you have entered all the information, click the Complete Registration
box, as seen in Figure 11-3. You will receive an e-mail at the address you
entered and will need to follow the instructions it contains to complete
your registration.
ptg
Figure 11-3 UbuntuForums.org account signup page
From the Library of Wow! eBook

332
Chapter 11
Introducing the Ubuntu Forums
Now that you have an account, you probably want to ask a question. To do
so, pick a category from the list on the front page. For example, if you have
a speciﬁc issue with multimedia program conﬁguration or your video card
not working correctly, you might want to post in the section under Main
Support called Multimedia & Video. Click to open that section and click
the small box at the top of the list of topics containing the words New
Thread, as shown in Figure 11-4.
Topics are called threads, and individual comments and contributions
within a thread are called posts. You will be “posting a new thread” in a spe-
ciﬁc subforum. You will need to give your new thread a proper title and
clearly explain your question.
One of our forum staff members, who uses the username aysiu on the
forums, wrote a wonderful set of instructions on how to get the best help
in Internet forums. You can read his entire guide at http://ubuntucat.
wordpress. com/ 2007/08/06/getting-the-best-help-on-linux-forums/. Fol-
lowing is a basic outline of his helpful advice.
ptg
Figure 11-4 UbuntuForums.org posting a new thread example
From the Library of Wow! eBook

How May I Participate?
333
When posting a new thread with a request for assistance, it is a good idea
to follow these steps for the greatest effectiveness:
1. Show that you tried to do some research on your problem. Mention
the results of searching the forums or via Google, what you have
tried, and the results of your attempts thus far.
2. Come up with a thread title that accurately describes your problem. A
title like “help, it doesn’t work” is less likely to attract attention and
receive quick assistance than one titled “Installing nVidia video driver
on laptop with GeForce 9300M GS.”
3. State the important facts, but don’t ramble. All of the forum
community members are volunteers. Not a single one is paid to read
or answer questions. You want to keep your post short and to the
point, with enough detail to be helpful for understanding the
problem but not so long that people get bored or overwhelmed.
4. Focus on the problem you are trying to ﬁx, and stick to one issue per
thread. If you have multiple problems, please feel invited to post
ptg
multiple threads asking questions. If you do this, each issue is more
likely to be seen and answered.
5. Be polite to those who help you, and ignore anyone who is rude.
Better yet, use the “report post” function to inform the staff of
problems by clicking an icon at the bottom left corner of any post that
is in violation of the Forum Code of Conduct (discussed later in this
chapter). If you aren’t sure which icon, hover over each of them with
your mouse pointer, and a tool tip will pop up for each one to tell you
what it does.
6. When your problem is solved, please say so. If the solution was posted
by someone in the thread you started, please acknowledge their help.
If you found the answer elsewhere, please post it in the thread where
you ask your question. This will help other members in the future
who may be struggling with the same problem.
Once you have a feel for the community and for how things work, please
know that you are invited to help out as well. One of the pleasures of the
Ubuntu Forums is that anyone who knows something is welcome and
From the Library of Wow! eBook

334
Chapter 11
Introducing the Ubuntu Forums
invited to assist another member. In fact, many of today’s most helpful
members of the community started out knowing nothing and asking
questions. This community is ﬁlled with people who are grateful, most of
whom are helping others solely because they themselves were once helped
and a desire arose to give something back.
With time, many members distinguish themselves as incredibly helpful,
friendly, and polite. Many of them are invited to be a part of the forums
staff, or members of forum teams with speciﬁc goals. A great example of a
forum team is the Beginners Team, which searches for threads and ques-
tions that have been asked by newcomers and strives to answer their ques-
tions as clearly and completely as possible to ease the transition to Ubuntu.
Questions, Locations, Conversations, and Activities
Most community members ﬁrst visit the forums to ﬁnd help with adjust-
ing to a new operating system, with understanding how things work and
the underlying principles involved, or to ask speciﬁc questions regarding
ptg
hardware or software conﬁgurations or problems.
Those ﬁrst questions are often quite simple, and that is okay. The Ubuntu
Forums welcome beginners and beginner-level questions. There is even a
special location in the forums called Absolute Beginner Talk that is dedi-
cated to inviting beginners to ask any questions they may have, in whatever
way they are able to ask them. This is also a location where the more experi-
enced users work to give their answers in the least technical language pos-
sible and to give the most detail in their answers, trying not to assume any
prior knowledge while giving the steps necessary to complete a task.
As time goes on and community members learn more of the foundational
information they need, they become more conﬁdent and tend to gravitate
to areas of speciﬁc interest, both to learn and often to assist other users
with fun and useful items that have been discovered. This is when the
Main Support categories start to receive more and more use.
It is also around this time in a member’s entry into the community that
she may discover a new trick that she hasn’t read about anywhere on the
forums, and many enjoy sharing those in Tutorials & Tips. Members often
discover that those who “hang out” regularly in the forums are fun and
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Key People in the Forums
335
friendly people with whom they would like to interact in a less formal
style. The Community Cafe, which is kind of like the water cooler at work,
exists for just that purpose. People drop in to discuss things that are unre-
lated to tech support, and the topics are often silly and playful—but still
safe for workplace and school.
There is a lot more to explore in the forums. There are sections on gaming,
art and design, education and science, running a server, security, multime-
dia production, and a whole lot more. There are even localized forums for
groups based on physical location, called LoCo Teams, most of whom hold
regular meetings in the real world as well as conduct some of their busi-
ness in our forums.
NOTE
LoCo Teams are discussed and described in Chapter 7.
Key People in the Forums
ptg
The Ubuntu Forums are led by a small group of people called the Forum
Council. The council is currently made up of seven community members,
listed here by their usernames on the forums:
ubuntu-geek (Council Chairman)
KiwiNZ
jdong
Technoviking
matthew
bodhi.zazen
bapoumba
These seven are ultimately responsible for the oversight and operation of
the forums. Primarily, ubuntu-geek deals with server and software main-
tenance and also chairs the council. In addition, he and all the Forum
Council members are corporately responsible for maintaining the com-
munity atmosphere and dealing with some of the technical aspects of the
forums from within the forum software. If a user has a problem, these are
the people who will ultimately deal with the issue.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

336
Chapter 11
Introducing the Ubuntu Forums
There is an additional group of users who are vital to the smooth running
and community atmosphere of the forums. These are the other forum
staff. A current list of all staff is available by clicking the “view forum lead-
ers” link on the front page of the Web site. This list includes the extremely
important and wonderful community moderators and the leaders of spe-
ciﬁc teams and LoCo groups.
Fun Stuff
A discussion of the Ubuntu Forums would be incomplete without a men-
tion of some of the more frivolous and whimsical aspects of this commu-
nity. These exist to remind us that life is about more than technology and
that we are doing more than answering tech support questions. Ultimately,
we are dealing with people, people who have names and faces and personal-
ities and feelings. We want to give good and accurate information in the
forums, and we want to be completely safe for browsing at work or school,
but we do not strive for a stark, professional-only sort of atmosphere.
ptg
To begin, community members are given the opportunity to express their
personality through their forum account. To access the various settings
and personalization options, click UserCP and select User Control Panel
from the front page of the forums.
From here you may create or edit a signature, a short bit of text that will be
added to each of your posts in the forums. Some users put useful informa-
tion there, others whimsical quotes. You can edit your avatar, which is a
small graphic image that you use to identify or represent you to other
forum members. You can also add an additional proﬁle picture to be dis-
played to any user who chooses to view your proﬁle on the forums. There
are lots of options for customization, with the opportunity to be as public
or private about your real-life identity as you desire.
You will also notice that each user has a few things related to him or her that
have some connection to coffee. User titles like “Dark Roasted Ubuntu” and
“Ubuntu Extra Shot” are just a fun way to reward community members as
they post in the tech support areas. Every time you post in those areas, you
earn a bean. As your bean count grows, your coffee-based user title changes,
as does your user rank image—the set of coffee-based icons that appears
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Summary
337
near your username. You will see things like green beans, roasted beans,
coffee cups of various styles and ﬁll levels, and more. All of this is done for
fun and is not intended to imply that users with high bean counts are any
more or less capable than users with low bean counts. Rather, it is an amus-
ing way to say thank you to those who have the time and willingness to
hang around and help the community.
There are lots of other surprises in the forums as well. Occasionally forum
staff will call a random “tribute” week, inviting users to change their avatars
to honor someone or something dear to the heart of the community.
There are avatar dress-up times, such as before Halloween, and the staff
has been known to change the entire forum look for April Fool’s Day.
The Foundation of the Ubuntu Forums
The foundation of the Ubuntu Forums is the Forums Code of Conduct. It
is based on the Ubuntu Code of Conduct but is speciﬁcally written to cover
forum usage, behavior, and expectations. Please refer to the link on the
ptg
front page of the Ubuntu Forums, under Forum Help, for the most recent
version, as this document is occasionally updated.
The basics of the Forum Code of Conduct are simple and are summed up
in the ﬁrst rule: “Be respectful of all users at all times. This means please
use etiquette and politeness. Treat people with kindness and gentleness. If
you do this, the rest of the Code of Conduct won’t need more than a cur-
sory mention.”
Summary
This chapter introduced you to the Ubuntu Forums. It began with a little
history and then moved on to speciﬁcs of usage and the nature of the
forums.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

A P P E N D I X
Welcome to the Command Line
ONE OF THE MOST powerful parts of any Ubuntu system is the command
line. It can also be one of the most daunting to dive into. It seems there is
often little help, and that the commands are not easy to ﬁnd or ﬁgure out.
If you are willing to learn, the power of the command line will speed up
your work and will be a great education that will serve you for years by
increasing your ability to do exactly what you want to do with your com-
puter with greater efﬁciency.
While the command line is a nice addition to a desktop user’s life, it is
completely invaluable if you run a server. The Ubuntu server installs with-
ptg
out any graphical user interface, so the tools explained in this chapter and
other books will be absolutely critical to success. And hey, remember to
have fun!
Starting Up the Terminal
The terminal can be found under Accessories > Terminal. When it ﬁrst
launches, you will see something similar to what Figure A-1 shows.
You will see a blinking cursor immediately preceded by some letters, and
perhaps numbers and symbols, ending with a $. The ﬁrst word in that
string of characters is your username, followed by the @ symbol. After the
@, the hostname of your computer is listed, followed by a colon and the
name of the directory you are currently in (you always start in your home
directory, which is represented by a ~ symbol).
There are many dozens of commands. This appendix presents just a few
useful ones in a narrative style to get you started, then lists some more
with just a basic description and broken down by category.
339
From the Library of Wow! eBook

340
Appendix
Welcome to the Command Line
Figure A-1 The terminal window
ptg
Getting Started
First have a look at the ﬁles in your home folder by running the following
command:
username@computer:~$ ls
The ls command lists the ﬁles in your current folder. The default com-
mand just displays a collection of items that are in your current directory,
or location in the ﬁlesystem. To make ls more useful, you can type it with
options:
username@computer:~$ ls -al
The -al parts are options that can be passed to the command. In this
example, two options, a (list all ﬁles) and l (use a long display format to
display ﬁle permissions, dates, sizes, and more), are used with ls to display
all of the ﬁles (including hidden ﬁles) and their details.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Building Pipelines
341
TIP
To Dash or Not to Dash?
In many command-line tools, options are added after a dash (-). Some tools, however, don’t
need the dash. It isn’t particularly consistent, so you must pay attention as you learn new
commands.
Now move to a different directory:
username@computer:~$ cd Desktop
The cd command changes the directory to the place you specify after the
command (in this case, the desktop directory). A nice shortcut that you can
use when typing ﬁles and folders is to type the ﬁrst few letters and then
press the Tab key to ﬁll in the remainder of the ﬁle/folder name. As an
example, in the previous command, you could type cd Des and press the
Tab key to ﬁll in the rest of Desktop (with the / added automatically because
it is a directory).
When inside a directory, you may want to have a quick look at the contents
ptg
of a text ﬁle. To do this, use the cat command:
username@computer:~$ cat myfile.txt
This command prints the contents of the ﬁle on the screen (a more correct
way to say this in computer geek jargon would be “outputs to the screen”).
Building Pipelines
The power of the command line really comes into its own when you start
to pass the output of one command so that it goes to the input of the next,
combining commands by using pipelines. A pipeline uses the pipe symbol
(|) to string together a number of commands to perform a speciﬁc task. As
an example, if you use the cat command to display the contents of a ﬁle to
the screen, but the ﬁle scrolls past you, create a pipeline and use the less
command so you can browse the ﬁle:
username@computer:~$ cat foo.txt | less
To see how this works, break the command into parts, each separated by
the pipe. The output of the part on the left (cat’ing the ﬁle) is fed into the
From the Library of Wow! eBook

342
Appendix
Welcome to the Command Line
less command on the right, which allows you to browse the ﬁle with the
arrow keys.
Pipelines can be useful for ﬁnding speciﬁc information on the system. As
an example, if you want to ﬁnd out how many particular processes are
running, you could run a command like this:
username@computer:~$ ps ax | grep getty | wc -l
Here you count how many getty processes are running (getty is the soft-
ware that runs a console session). The ps ax command on the left lists the
processes on the system, and then the grep command searches through the
process list and returns only the lines that contain the text “getty.” Finally,
these lines are fed into wc, which is a small tool that counts the number of
words or lines. The -l option speciﬁes that the number of lines should be
counted. Cool, huh?
ptg
Running Commands as the Superuser
When you log in to your computer, the account you use is a normal user
account. This account is restricted from performing various system admin-
istration tasks. The security model behind Ubuntu has you run as a normal
user all the time and dip into the system administrator account only when
you need to. This prevents accidental changes or malicious installation of
unwanted programs and similar things.
To jump to this superuser account when using the terminal, put the sudo
command before the command you want to run. As an example, if you
want to restart the networking system from the command line, run:
username@computer:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
The command to the right of sudo is the command that should be run as
the administrator, but sudo lets you run the command as the current user.
When you run the above command, you are asked for the administrator
password. This is the same password as the one you established for the ﬁrst
user you added when you installed Ubuntu on the computer. If you are
using that user’s account, just enter your normal password.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Moving Around the Filesystem
343
When you have authenticated yourself to sudo, you will not be asked for
the password again for another 15 minutes.
Finding Help
Each command on your computer includes a manual page—or man
page—that contains a list of the options available. Man pages are tradi-
tionally rather terse and intended only for referencing the different ways
the command should be used. For a friendlier introduction to using com-
mands, we recommend a Google search.
To view a man page (such as the man page for ls), run:
username@computer:~$ man ls
The man page command itself has a number of options (run man man to see
them), and one of the most useful is -k. This option allows you to search
the man pages for a particular word. This is useful when you don’t remem-
ptg
ber the command. As an example, you could ﬁnd all commands related to
processes by running:
username@computer:~$ man -k processes
The remainder of this appendix gives a brief introduction to some of the
more common and useful commands you will encounter and want to learn,
organized in categories based on how they are used. We will end with a short
list of some other resources for further research.
Moving Around the Filesystem
Commands for navigating in the ﬁlesystem include the following.
pwd: The pwd command allows you to know the directory in which
you’re located (pwd stands for “print working directory”). For example,
pwd in the desktop directory will show ~/Desktop. Note that the
GNOME terminal also displays this information in the title bar of its
window, as shown in Figure A-1.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

344
Appendix
Welcome to the Command Line
cd: The cd command allows you to change directories. When you
open a terminal, you will be in your home directory. To move around
the ﬁlesystem, use cd.
Use cd ~/Desktop to navigate to your desktop directory.
Use cd / to navigate into the root directory.
Use cd to navigate to your home directory.
Use cd .. to navigate up one directory level.
Use cd - to navigate to the previous directory (or back).
If you want to go directly to a speciﬁc, known directory location
at once, use cd /directory/otherdirectory. For example, cd
/var/www will take you directly to the /www subdirectory of /var.
Manipulating Files and Folders
You can manipulate ﬁles and folders with the following commands.
cp: The cp command makes a copy of a ﬁle for you. For example, cp
ptg
file foo makes an exact copy of the ﬁle whose name you entered and
names the copy foo, but the ﬁrst ﬁle will still exist with its original
name.
mv: The mv command moves a ﬁle to a different location or renames a
ﬁle. Examples are as follows: mv file foo renames the original ﬁle to foo.
mv foo ~/Desktop moves the ﬁle foo to your desktop directory but
does not rename it. You must specify a new ﬁlename to rename a ﬁle.
After you use mv, the original ﬁle no longer exists, but after you use cp,
as above, that ﬁle stays and a new copy is made.
To save on typing, you can substitute ~ in place of the home directory,
so /home/jono/pictures is the same as ~/pictures.
NOTE
If you are using mv with sudo, which is often necessary outside of your home directory, you
will not be able to use the ~ shortcut. Instead, you will have to use the full pathnames to your
files.
rm: Use this command to remove or delete a ﬁle in your directory, as
in rm file.txt. It does not work on directories that contain ﬁles,
From the Library of Wow! eBook

System Information Commands
345
which must ﬁrst be emptied and may then be deleted using the rmdir
command. There are some advanced cases where you may use rm to
remove directories, but discussing those are beyond the intent of this
appendix.
ls: The ls command shows you the ﬁles in your current directory.
Used with certain options, it lets you see ﬁle sizes, when ﬁles where
created, and ﬁle permissions. For example, ls ~ shows you the ﬁles
that are in your home directory.
mkdir: The mkdir command allows you to create directories. For
example, mkdir music creates a music directory.
chmod: The chmod command changes the permissions on the ﬁles
listed. Permissions are based on a fairly simple model. You can set
permissions for user, group, and world, and you can set whether each
can read, write, and/or execute the ﬁle. For example, if a ﬁle had
permission to allow everybody to read but only the user could write,
the permissions would read rwxr—r—. To add or remove a permission,
you append a + or a - in front of the speciﬁc permission. For example,
ptg
to add the capability for the group to edit in the previous example,
you could type chmod g+w file.
chown: The chown command allows the user to change the user and
group ownerships of a ﬁle. For example, sudo chown jim file changes
the ownership of the ﬁle to Jim.
System Information Commands
System information commands include the following.
df: The df command displays ﬁlesystem disk space usage for all
partitions. The command df-h is probably the most useful. It uses
megabytes (M) and gigabytes (G) instead of blocks to report. (-h means
“human-readable.”)
free: The free command displays the amount of free and used
memory in the system. For example, free -m gives the information
using megabytes, which is probably most useful for current
computers.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

346
Appendix
Welcome to the Command Line
top: The top command displays information on your Linux system,
running processes, and system resources, including the CPU, RAM,
swap usage, and total number of tasks being run. To exit top, press Q.
uname -a: The uname command with the -a option prints all system
information, including machine name, kernel name, version, and a
few other details. This command is most useful for checking which
kernel you’re using.
lsb_release -a: The lsb_release command with the -a option prints
version information for the Linux release you’re running. For example:
user@computer:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:
Ubuntu 10.04
Release:
10.04
Codename:
lucid
ifconfig: This reports on your system’s network interfaces.
iwconfig: The iwconfig command shows you any wireless network
ptg
adapters and the wireless-speciﬁc information from them, such as
speed and network connected.
ps: The ps command allows you to view all the processes running on
the machine.
The following commands list the hardware on your computer, either of a
speciﬁc type or with a speciﬁc method. They are most useful for debug-
ging when a piece of hardware does not function correctly.
lspci: The lspci command lists all PCI buses and devices connected
to them. This commonly includes network cards and sound cards.
lsusb: The lsusb command lists all USB buses and any connected
USB devices, such as printers and thumb drives.
lshal: The lshal command lists all devices the hardware abstraction
layer (HAL) knows about, which should be most hardware on your
system.
lshw: The lshw command lists hardware on your system, including
maker, type, and where it is connected.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Searching and Editing Text Files
347
Searching and Editing Text Files
Search and edit text ﬁles by using the following commands.
grep: The grep command allows you to search inside a number of
ﬁles for a particular search pattern and then print matching lines. For
example, grep blah file will search for the text “blah” in the ﬁle and
then print any matching lines.
sed: The sed (or Stream EDitor) command allows search and replace
of a particular string in a ﬁle. For example, if you want to ﬁnd the
string “cat” and replace it with “dog” in a ﬁle named pets, type sed
s/cat/dog/g pets.
Both grep and sed are extremely powerful programs. There are many excel-
lent tutorials available on using them, but here are a couple of good Web
sites to get you started:
ptg
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/grep
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man1/9base-sed.1.html
Three other commands are useful for dealing with text.
cat: The cat command, short for concatenate, is useful for viewing
and adding to text ﬁles. The simple command cat FILENAME displays
the contents of the ﬁle. Using cat FILENAME file adds the contents of
the ﬁrst ﬁle to the second and displays both on the screen, one after
the other. You could also use cat file1 >> file2 to append the
contents of ﬁle1 to the end of ﬁle2.
nano: Nano is a simple text editor for the command line. To open a
file, use nano filename. Commands listed at the bottom of the screen
are accessed via pressing Ctrl followed by the letter.
less: The less command is used for viewing text ﬁles as well as
standard output. A common usage is to pipe another command
through less to be able to see all the output, such as ls | less.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

348
Appendix
Welcome to the Command Line
Dealing with Users and Groups
You can use the following commands to administer users and groups.
adduser: The adduser command creates a new user. To create a new
user, simply type sudo adduser $loginname. This creates the user’s
home directory and default group. It prompts for a user password
and then further details about the user.
passwd: The passwd command changes the user’s password. If run by
a regular user, it will change his or her password. If run using sudo, it
can change any user’s password. For example, sudo passwd joe
changes Joe’s password.
who: The who command tells you who is currently logged into the
machine.
addgroup: The addgroup command adds a new group. To create a new
group, type sudo addgroup $groupname.
deluser: The deluser command removes a user from the system. To
ptg
remove the user’s ﬁles and home directory, you need to add the
-remove-home option.
delgroup: The delgroup command removes a group from the system.
You cannot remove a group that is the primary group of any users.
Getting Help on the Command Line
This section provides you with some tips for getting help on the command
line. The commands —help and man are the two most important tools at the
command line.
Virtually all commands understand the -h (or —help) option, which pro-
duces a short usage description of the command and its options, then exits
back to the command prompt. Try man -h or man —help to see this in action.
Every command and nearly every application in Linux has a man (man-
ual) ﬁle, so ﬁnding such a ﬁle is as simple as typing man command to bring
up a longer manual entry for the speciﬁed command. For example, man mv
brings up the mv (move) manual.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Using Wildcards
349
Some helpful tips for using the man command include the following.
Arrow keys: Move up and down the man ﬁle by using the arrow keys.
q: Quit back to the command prompt by typing q.
man man: man man brings up the manual entry for the man command,
which is a good place to start!
man intro: man intro is especially useful. It displays the Introduction
to User Commands, which is a well-written, fairly brief introduction
to the Linux command line.
There are also info pages, which are generally more in-depth than man
pages. Try info info for the introduction to info pages.
Searching for Man Files
If you aren’t sure which command or application you need to use, you can
try searching the man ﬁles.
ptg
man -k foo: This searches the man ﬁles for foo. Try man -k nautilus to
see how this works.
NOTE
man -k foo is the same as the apropos command.
man -f foo: This searches only the titles of your system’s man ﬁles. Try
man -f gnome, for example.
NOTE
man -f foo is the same as the whatis command.
Using Wildcards
Sometimes you need to look at or use multiple ﬁles at the same time. For
instance, you might want to delete all .rar ﬁles or move all .odt ﬁles to
another directory. Thankfully, you can use a series of wildcards to accom-
plish such tasks.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

350
Appendix
Welcome to the Command Line
* matches any number of characters. For example, *.rar matches any
ﬁle with the ending .rar.
? matches any single character. For example, ?.rar matches a.rar but
not ab.rar.
[characters] matches any of the characters within the brackets. For
example, [ab].rar matches a.rar and b.rar but not c.rar.
*[!characters] matches any characters that are not listed. For example,
*[!ab].rar matches c.rar but not a.rar or b.rar.
Executing Multiple Commands
Often you may want to execute several commands together, either by run-
ning one after another or by passing output from one to another.
Running Sequentially
ptg
If you need to execute multiple commands in sequence but don’t need to
pass output between them, there are two options based on whether or not
you want the subsequent commands to run only if the previous commands
succeed or not. If you want the commands to run one after the other regard-
less of whether or not preceding commands succeed, place a ; between the
commands. For example, if you want to get information about your hard-
ware, you could run lspci ; lsusb, which would output information on
your PCI buses and USB devices in sequence.
However, if you need to conditionally run the commands based on whether
the previous command has succeeded, insert && between commands. An
example of this is building a program from source, which is traditionally
done with ./configure, make, and make install. The commands make and
make install require that the previous commands have completed success-
fully, so you would use ./configure && make && make install.
Using Byobu to Manage Your Terminal
One of the challenges of using the terminal is the difﬁculty of managing
multiple screens. If you are in a desktop environment, you can launch
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Executing Multiple Commands
351
another terminal window or use GNOME terminal’s tabbed terminals, but
that doesn’t work everywhere.
Thankfully, such a tool to help you does exist: byobu. Japanese for screen,
byobu is a set of default conﬁgurations for the GNU screen command.
Essentially, screen is a window manager for the command line. Since 9.10,
this great tool has been installed by default, so all you need to do is launch
the byobu command in a terminal.
After it is started, you will notice you are back at a terminal prompt, but
with a few differences. At the bottom are two lines of information. The
bottom line shows you the version of Ubuntu you are currently running,
how long you have logged in, the system load, the CPU speed, the current
memory usage, and the current time. The upper bar shows the current
logged-in user and, on the right, the list of open windows (Figure A-2).
You can now use your terminal exactly as you normally would, just with a
few added pieces of information. Advanced usage of byobu (and screen) is
ptg
Figure A-2 Byobu in GNOME terminal
From the Library of Wow! eBook

352
Appendix
Welcome to the Command Line
a topic too large for this appendix, but following are a few commands to
get you started:
F2:
Open new terminal window.
F3/F4: Move backward/forward through the list of windows.
F6:
Detach from current byobu session. To reattach, use byobu -x.
F7:
Scroll back through the output. Hit Esc to exit this mode and
return to the command prompt.
F9:
menu.
Using Byobu by Default in GNOME Terminal
To have GNOME terminal launch byobu by default when it starts, you need
to edit the preferences, which can be found at Edit > Proﬁle Preferences
under the Title and Command tab. Tick the box “Run a custom command
instead of my shell,” and enter byobu in the line below. Now when you
launch GNOME terminal, byobu will launch with it, and closing byobu will
close GNOME terminal as well.
ptg
Moving to More Advanced Uses
of the Command Line
There are a great number of good books out there for working the com-
mand line. In addition, because most of the command line has not changed
in many years, a large body of information is available on the Internet. If
you need help with something, often simply searching for the command
will turn up what you need.
As you can imagine, there are hundreds and hundreds of different com-
mands available on the system, and we don’t have the space to cover them
here. A number of superb Web sites and books can help you ﬁnd out about
the many different commands.
To get you started, here are some recommendations.
The Official Ubuntu Server Book by Kyle Rankin and Benjamin
Mako Hill (Prentice Hall, 2009) is an excellent resource for learning
all things server related, including the effective use of the command
line to accomplish administration tasks.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Moving to More Advanced Uses of the Command Line
353
A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands, Editors, and Shell
Programming, 2nd Edition, by Mark G. Sobell (Prentice Hall, 2009)
is a good book for any user of the shell in Linux to have on his or her
bookshelf.
LinuxCommand.org, found at http://linuxcommand.org, is an
excellent Web site designed to help people new to using the command
line.
The Linux Documentation Project, found at http://www.tdlp.org, is
another excellent and free resource
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
$ (UNIX shell symbol), 160
Adding users
. (dot) prefix files, 134
adduser command, 348
@ (at sign), in command-line username, 339
Ubuntu, 65–66, 124–125
$ (dollar sign), UNIX shell symbol, 160, 339
Ubuntu Server, 168
# (hash), comment indicator, 158
Adding/removing programs. See also Add or
- (hyphen), dash in commands, 341
Remove Software; Installing; Software
? (question mark), wildcard character, 350
Center.
| (vertical bar), pipe symbol, 137, 341
Kubuntu, 260–262, 267
[ ] (brackets), wildcard characters, 350
adduser command, 125, 168
[! ] (brackets, exclamation point), wildcard
Adept. See KPackageKit; KPackageKit installer.
ptg
characters, 350
Administration menu item, 64
~ (tilde), home directory indicator, 160, 339,
Administrator. See System administrator.
344
Advanced Package Tool (APT). See APT
2D launcher, 296–300
(Advanced Package Tool).
3D mapping, 289
Advanced tab, 264, 267, 269–271
3D modeling, 105–106
Advanced User Settings, 269–271
Advocacy, user involvement, 240
Access permissions. See Permissions; sudo
Akonadi configuration, 269
command; Superusers.
Akregator, 286–287
Accessibility, 21, 265
Algebra, 205
Add or Remove Software, 267
Alternate install CD
addgroup command, 348
Kubuntu, 249
Adding
Ubuntu. See Installing Ubuntu from alternate
applets to the desktop, 66–67
install CD.
icons to the desktop, 66
Amarok music manager, 276
items to Plasma, 257
AMD64 support, 37
partitions. See Partitioning disks.
Anagrams, 200
printers, 128
Andalusian government distribution, 316
programs. See Adding/removing programs.
Animation, 105–106
user groups, 348
Annotating folders. See Emblems.
355
From the Library of Wow! eBook

356
Index
Announcements, 219
Terminal, 103
Answers, 30, 323
Text Editor, 102
Applets, 66–68. See also specific applets.
Applications tab, 255
Application Launcher, 254–255
Appointments. See also Calendars.
Applications. See also specific applications.
Kubuntu, 285–286
closing, 63
Ubuntu, 83–84
context menu, viewing, 69
APT (Advanced Package Tool)
displaying in the taskbar, 69
# (hash), comment indicator, 158
docking. See Docky.
apt-cache utility, 160–163
hiding/showing, 69
apt-get utility, 160–163
installing, 72
aptitude utility, 165–166
maximizing, 63
comment lines, 158
minimizing, 63
definition, 116
moving between virtual desktops, 69–70
Ubuntu archive, 156–157
not in repositories, installing, 121–122
Ubuntu Server packages, 157–163
open, displaying, 69
apt-cache utility, 160–163
recently used, 255
apt-get utility, 160–163
running, listing, 299
aptitude utility, 165–166
ptg
starting, 62–63, 72. See also Applications
Architectures supported by Ubuntu, 36–37
menu; GNOME Do.
Archive management, 319–320
switching between, 69
ARM support, 37
Ubuntu/Windows equivalent. See Windows
Array failure, RAID, 150
programs, Ubuntu equivalents.
Array management. See LVM (Logical Volume
vendor lock-in, 77
Manager).
writing and tracking, 322–323
Artwork, user involvement, 241–242
Applications menu. See also Desktop
Astronomy, 202–203
(Ubuntu).
At sign (@), in command-line username, 339
Calculator, 103
Atlas of the world, 204–205
command-line interface, 103
Audio. See also Multimedia; Music.
Disk Usage Analyzer, 104
CDs. See CDs, audio.
F-Spot Photo Manager, 99
FLAC format, 98
Mahjongg, 103
iPods, 97
Quadrapassel, 103
MP3 format, 95, 98
Sound Recorder, 103
Ogg Theora, 95
starting applications, 62
Ogg Vorbis, 95
Sudoku, 104
playing, 96–97
System Monitor, 103
podcasts, 96–97
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
357
recording music or sound, 103, 108
Bochs, virtualization, 175
restricted formats, 95
Bookmarking Web pages, Konqueror, 278
Rhythmbox, 96
Bookmarks
settings, 67
creating, 84–86
Sound Recorder, 103
file chooser, 84–86
sound recording, 103
files and folders, 84–86
Audio CD Extractor, 97–98, 108
live, 74
auth.log, 171
in the sidebar, 92
Automatic
tagging, 74
login, 272
Web sites, 74
name completion, files and folders, 341
Books and publications
printer detection, 130–132
Inkscape: Guide to Vector Drawing Program,
Avatars, Ubuntu Forums, 336
194
The Linux Documentation Project, 353
Backgrounds, desktop. See Themes and
The Official Ubuntu Server Book, 173, 311,
backgrounds.
352
Backing up data. See also RAID (redundant
A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands..., 353
array of inexpensive disks).
/boot folder, 135
ptg
incremental backups, 138
“Bootable flag” setting, 55
before installing RAID, 149
Bootable partitions, specifying, 55
prior to installation, 42
Brackets, exclamation point ([! ]), wildcard
strategies for, 137–140
characters, 350
tools for, 138
Brackets ([ ]), wildcard characters, 350
Backports repository, 157
Brasero, CD/DVD burner, 127
Balneaves, Scott, 311
Broadcast, chat program, 78
Basinger, Mike, 237
Browsing
Bazaar, 29–30, 324–325
files, 275
/bin folder, 135
the Web. See Web browsers; specific Web
Binary uploads, Ubuntu archive, 164
browsers.
BIOS configuration problems, 41
Bug #1, 25–26
BitLocker, Ubuntu equivalent, 154
Bugs
Blank desktop, 61–62
debugging. See Technical support;
Blender, 105–106
Troubleshooting.
Blinken, 205
fixing, 24
Blogs, 74, 230–231
reporting and tracking, 30–31, 321–322. See
Bluefish, 106, 107
also Launchpad; Malone.
Blueprint, 30, 322–323
user involvement, 242
From the Library of Wow! eBook

358
Index
Bulletin boards. See The Fridge; IRC (Internet
as a virtual company, 11–12
Relay Chat); Mailing lists; Web forums;
working with other companies, 29
Wikis.
Carter, Jonathan, 311
Burger, Corey, 237
cat command, 341, 347. See also zcat command.
Burn from Disk Image option, 39
Categorizing folders. See Emblems.
Burning CDs. See CDs, burning.
cd command, 341, 344
Buttons, Ubuntu desktop, 62–63, 69
CD images. See .iso files.
Buying music, 98–99
CD/DVD burners
Byobu, 350–352
accessing, 126
Brasero, 127
Calc program, 277–278
GNOME, 40
Calculator program, 103
ISO Recorder, 40
Calculators
Nero Burning Rom, 40
Calc program, 277–278
CDs
Calculator program, 103
alternate install. See Installing Ubuntu from
Kubuntu, 277–278, 288
alternate install CD.
Calendar bar, Zeitgeist, 209–211
copying. See CDs, burning.
Calendar mode, Kubuntu, 285–286
desktop. See Installing Ubuntu from desktop
ptg
Calendars. See also Kontact; KOrganizer.
CD.
accessing from the clock, 69
installation. See Installation CDs.
appointments, 83–84
CDs, audio. See also Audio.
Evolution, 79, 83–84
burning, 280–281
Google, 80
Kubuntu, 269
Kubuntu. See Kontact; KOrganizer.
playing, 97–98
meetings, 83–84
ripping, 97–98
multiple, 84
CDs, burning. See also CD/DVD burners.
viewing, 84
accessing the burner, 126, 127
Cameras. See Digital cameras.
audio and data, 280–281
Canonical, definition, 12
Burn from Disk Image option, 39
Canonical Ltd.
vs. copying, 41
Bazaar, 29–30
with GNOME, 40
founding of, 11–12, 27
from images, 39–41
geographical location, 27
installation image files, 39–41
Launchpad, 29–30
.iso files, 39, 127
new CEO, 27
from .iso files, 127
service and support, 28–29
with ISO Recorder, 40
version control tool, 29–30
K3b program, 271
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
359
in Linux, 40
Commands
in Mac OS X, 40
help for. See Man pages.
with Nero Burning ROM, 40
syntax and usage. See specific commands.
in Windows, 40
Comment lines, in APT, 158
Cellwriter, 303
Commercial distributions, 317
Changing directories, 341
Communicating with developers. See Ubuntu
Character recognition, 304
community, communication venues.
Chats, 78. See also IRC (Internet Relay Chat);
Community Council, 235–237
Mailing lists; Ubuntu Forums; Web
Community of users. See Ubuntu community.
forums; Wikis.
Compression, multimedia. See Codecs.
Cheese, 302–303
Computer administration
Chief gnuisance, 317
customizing your system. See Customizing.
chmod command, 345
Kubuntu. See Kubuntu customization;
chown command, 345
Kubuntu system administration;
Clock
Software Management.
calendar access, 9, 84
troubleshooting. See Troubleshooting system
description, 69
administration.
Closing applications, 63
Computer Administration section, 266
ptg
Cloud computing, 177–178
Computer menu item, 63
Cloud storage, 78–79
Computer tab, 255
CoC (Code of Conduct), 21–23
Computers
Code revisions, approving, 235
names, configuring in Kubuntu, 253
Codecs. See also specific codecs.
older or less powerful. See Installing Ubuntu
free, 95
from alternate install CD; Xubuntu.
installing, 94–95
supported by Ubuntu, 36–37
legal restrictions, 95
use tutorial, 205
Ubuntu support status, 96
Conferences, 229–230
for watching videos, 99
Configuration files, folder for, 134–135
Coffee references, Ubuntu Forums, 336
Configuring. See also Customizing.
Collaboration
BIOS, 41
Launchpad Ground Control, 325
keyboard layout. See Keyboards,
Open Collaboration Services, 270–271
configuring.
Color, fills and strokes, 189–190
printers. See Printers, configuring.
Command line
Configuring Ubuntu desktop
access, Kubuntu, 288
background, 87
interface. See Terminal.
the clock, 69
package management tools, 158–159
screensavers, 88–89
From the Library of Wow! eBook

360
Index
Configuring Ubuntu desktop, continued
monitors, making immutable, 287
themes, 87–88
splash screen, 265
wallpaper, 87
Customizing Ubuntu desktop
Connect to Server menu item, 64
background, 87
Contacting Ubuntu developers and users. See
the clock, 69
Ubuntu community, communication
colored background, 87
venues.
screensavers, 88–89
Containerization, 175
themes, changing, 87–88
Context menu for applications, viewing, 69
wallpaper, 87
Cool Streams, 276
CVE numbers, 121
Copying
CDs, vs. burning, 41
d3lphin file manager, 273
folders, 91–92
Data replication, RAID, 146
Copying files
Databases, IBM DB2 support, 28
between computers, 64
Date and time. See Clock.
cp command, 344
DB2 database, Ubuntu support, 28
overview, 91–92
.deb file extension, 158
Copyright violations, 276. See also DRM
Debian package manager, 158–159
ptg
(Digital Rights Management).
Debian project, 16–17
Core philosophical ideals, 19–21
deborphan tool, 166
cp command, 344
Debs, 158–159
Cropping images, 188–189
Degraded mode, RAID, 150
Cunningham, Ward, 223
Deleting. See also Removing.
Custom server kernel, 143
files, 344–345
Customizing. See also Configuring.
partitions, 54
the clock, 69
user accounts, 125, 168, 348
look and feel. See Themes and backgrounds.
user groups, 348
menus, 122–124
delgroup command, 348
screensavers, 88–89
Dell laptops, Ubuntu support, 28
Customizing Kubuntu. See also Kubuntu system
deluser command, 125, 168, 348
administration; Kubuntu system
Dependencies, 117
settings.
Derivatives of Ubuntu, 31–33
accessibility options, 265
Derived distributions. See also Distributions.
desktop. See Plasma.
for the Andalusian government, 316
GHNS (Get Hot New Stuff), 259–260
commercial distributions, 317
KMenu style, reverting to, 258
gNewSense, 316–317
ksplash, 265
Guadalinex, 316
login, 271–272
Linux Mint, 317
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
361
for low-power computers, 314
locking the screen, 71, 89
Lubuntu, 317–318
look and feel. See Themes and
Mythbuntu, 315
backgrounds.
officially supported. See Edubuntu; Kubuntu;
Lubuntu, 317–318
Ubuntu Server Edition.
LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environ-
overview, 31–33
ment), 317–318
recognized. See Mythbuntu; Ubuntu Studio;
main areas, 61
Xubuntu.
My Computer, equivalent, 63
for restricted code, 317
My Documents, equivalent, 63
Spanish language, 316
Network menu item, 63
Ubuntu Studio, 314–315
Network Neighborhood, equivalent, 63
Xubuntu, 38, 314
Network Places, equivalent, 63
Desktop
notification area, 67–68
KDE. See Plasma.
the panel, 61
Kubuntu. See Plasma.
passwords, for Administration features, 64
Desktop (Ubuntu). See also Applications menu;
Preferences menu item, 64
Calendars; GNOME.
Recent Documents menu item, 64
Administration menu item, 64
recently used documents, displaying, 64
ptg
appearance. See Themes and backgrounds.
Search for Files menu item, 64
applets, 66–67
servers, connecting to, 64
blank desktop, 61–62
support, accessing, 64
buttons, 62–63, 69
taskbar, 61, 69–70
clock, 69
trash, 70
Computer menu item, 63
usability, 70
Connect to Server menu item, 64
virtual desktops, 69–70
corner features, 70
volume control, 67
desktop area, 61
Windows system tray, equivalent, 67–68
Desktop folder, 63
workspaces, 69–70
Desktop menu item, 63
Desktop (Ubuntu), applications
documentation, accessing, 64
closing, 63
drives, displaying, 63
context menu, viewing, 69
help and support, 64
displaying in the taskbar, 69
Help and Support menu item, 64
hiding/showing, 69
hiding/showing, 69
maximizing, 63
Home folder, accessing, 63
minimizing, 63
Home Folder menu item, 63
open, displaying, 69
lightweight, 317–318
starting, 62–63
Linux Mint, 317
switching between, 69
From the Library of Wow! eBook

362
Index
Desktop (Ubuntu), customizing
Developer contacts
background, 87
developer summits, 227–229
the clock, 69
The Fridge, 225–227
screensavers, 88–89
IRC (Internet Relay Chat), 219
themes, 87–88
mailing lists, 218
wallpaper, 87
Planet Ubuntu, 230–231
Desktop (Ubuntu), icons
sprints, 227–229
adding, 66
user conferences, 229–230
in the Desktop folder, 63
Web forums, 222
for devices, 62
wikis, 223–225
initial view, 61
Developer sprints, 227–229
moving, 66
Developer summits, 227–229
placing on the desktop, 63
Development discussions. See Blogs; IRC
shortcuts, 66
(Internet Relay Chat); Mailing lists;
starting applications. See Applications
Web forums; Wikis.
menu.
Development environment. See IDE
Desktop (Ubuntu), menus
(Integrated Development
Applications, 62–63
Environment).
ptg
Places, 63–64
Device drivers, printers, 128, 130
System, 64
Device folder, 135
Desktop CD, installing from
Device information, displaying, 92
Kubuntu, 250–253
Device names, indicating connection type, 47
Ubuntu. See Installing Ubuntu from
Devices. See specific devices.
desktop CD.
df command, 345
Desktop folder, 63
Digital cameras, 127, 269
Desktop globe, 204–205
Digital flash cards, 205
Desktop keyring, 93–94, 126
Digital photography. See Photographs.
Desktop machines vs. servers, 24–25. See also
Digital Rights Management (DRM), 98, 276
Ubuntu Server.
Directories. See also Folders; Terminal
Desktop menu item, 63
commands, files and folders.
Desktop publishing, Ubuntu/Windows
changing, 341
equivalent. See Scribus; Word
definition, 133
processing.
vs. folders, 90, 133
Desktop Search configuration, Kubuntu,
Disabled users. See Accessibility.
269–270
Disk images. See .iso files.
/dev folder, 135
Disk replication, Ubuntu Server, 177
Developer blogs, 74
Disk space usage, displaying, 345
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
363
Disk storage. See also CDs; LVM (Logical
Documentation. See also Help; Man pages;
Volume Manager); USB storage devices.
Online resources; Ubuntu community,
across physical boundaries. See RAID
communication venues.
(redundant array of inexpensive
GNOME desktop, accessing, 64
disks).
LVM (Logical Volume Manager), 156
floppy disks, 127
RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks),
organizing. See Partitioning disks.
156
USB keyring devices, 93–94, 126
user involvement, 241
Disk storage, hard disks
Documents, creating
partitioning. See Partitioning disks.
desktop publishing. See Scribus.
usage analysis, 104
mathematical expression builder. See Math.
Disk Usage Analyzer, 104
presentations. See Impress.
Display section, 266
spreadsheets. See Calc.
Display settings, Kubuntu, 266
word processing. See Word processing.
Displays. See Monitors; Screens.
Documents, recently used, 64, 255
Dispute arbitration, 235–236
Dollar sign ($), UNIX shell symbol, 160, 339
Distributed Replicated Block Device (DRBD),
Dolphin file manager, 273–274
177
Donating to the Ubuntu project, 31
ptg
Distribution management software, 30
do-release-upgrade tool, 163
Distribution upgrades, Ubuntu Server, 163–165
Dot (.) prefix files, 134
Distributions. See also Derived distributions;
DPI error, Scribus graphic images, 197
Repositories; specific distributions.
dpkg utility, 158–159
bug fixes, 15
Draw program, 277
contents, 13
Drawing a rectangle, 189–193
definition, 12–13
Drawing programs. See also GIMP; Images
derived. See Derived distributions.
(graphic), editing; Inkscape.
diversity of, 14–16
3D modeling, 105–106
educational purposes. See Edubuntu.
Draw, 277
with KDE. See Kubuntu.
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format, 104,
for older computers. See Xubuntu.
192–193
parents of, 15
Tux Paint, 205
tracking changes, 15–16
DRBD (Distributed Replicated Block Device),
Distros. See Distributions.
177
Distrowatch database, 14
Drivers. See Device drivers.
dmesg log, 171
Drives, displaying on the desktop, 63
Docklets, 213
DRM (Digital Rights Management), 98, 276. See
Docky, 211–214
also Copyright violations.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

364
Index
Dual boot, partitioning the disk for, 44–48
computer use, 205
DVDs
desktop globe, 204–205
burning. See CD/DVD burners.
digital flash cards, 205
encryption, video, 100
drawing, 205
factorization, 201
East, Matthew, 237
fractions, 200–201
Ebook formats supported, 303
GCompris, 205
Ebook reader, 303–304
GCompris Administration, 199
ecryptfs, 154–155
geography, 204–205
Editing
geometrical constructions, 201
graphic images, 104, 105, 128, 194
graphing mathematical functions, 201–202
network connections, 68
hangman game, 201
photographs. See Editing, graphic images.
Kalzium, 199–200
pictures. See Editing, graphic images.
Kanagram, 200
Editing text
KBruch, 200–201
cat command, 347
KHangman, 201
with nano editor, 347
Kig, 201
in Scribus, 194
KmPlot, 201–202
ptg
with sed (Stream EDitor), 347
KStars, 202–203
Editions of Ubuntu. See Derived distributions;
KTouch, 203
specific editions.
KTurtle, 204
Edubuntu
Logo programming language, 204
description, 311–313
maps, 204–205
downloading, 38
Marble, 204–205
installing. See Installing Edubuntu.
math programs, 200–201, 205
LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project), 311
Parley, 205
online resources, 313
periodic table, 199–200
vs. Ubuntu, 32
physics simulator, 205
Web forums, 221–222. See also Ubuntu
reading, 205
Forums.
science, 205
Educational applications. See also Games.
Simon Says game, 205
activities, enabling/disabling, 199
space exploration, 202–203
administration tool, 199
spelling, 201
algebra, 205
Step, 205
anagrams, 200
touch-typing tutorial, 203
astronomy, 202–203
Tux Paint, 205
Blinken, 205
user profiles, 199
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
365
What’s Up Tonight?, 203
e-mail, 79–83
world atlas, 204–205
Hotmail, 80
Education-oriented Ubuntu. See Edubuntu.
PIM (personal information manager), 79
Effect filters, 186–187
Webmail, 80
Electrical power, conserving
Yahoo! Mail, 80
automatically turning off monitors, 266
Excel, Ubuntu/Windows equivalent, 278
hibernating, 155
ext4 filesystem, 47–48
Kubuntu, 266
Extensions, Firefox, 74–75
monitors, 266
suspend mode, 155
Factorization, 201
E-mail
FAT32 filesystem, 48
accounts, setting up, 79–83
Fault tolerance. See RAID (redundant array of
creating new messages, 83
inexpensive disks).
Evolution, 79–83
Favorites list
Hotmail, 80
Kubuntu, 254–255
Kubuntu, 284–285
Netbook Edition, 296–299
replying to messages, 83
Favorites tab, 254
sending/receiving options, 82
Fbreader, 303–304
ptg
server setup, 81
Feature goals, maintaining, 237
unable to connect to server, 83
Feature tracking, 30
Webmail, 80
File associations, Kubuntu, 269
Yahoo! Mail, 80
File Browser. See also File Manager.
Emblems, 92
emblems, 92
Emblems option, 92
parts of, 89
Empathy, chat program, 78
sidebar, 92
Encryption
starting, 89
disk partitions, 53
view, switching, 91
DVD, 100
File Browser, files
swap partitions, 155
copying, 91–92
Ubuntu Server, 154–155
displaying, 91
Ending a session. See Logging out.
moving, 91
Erickson, Jordan, 311
selecting, 91–92
/etc folder, 135
File Browser, folders
Etrich, Matthias, 246–247
annotating. See Emblems.
Evolution
categorizing. See Emblems.
calendar function, 79
copying, 91–92
calendars, 79, 83–84
vs. directories, 90
From the Library of Wow! eBook

366
Index
File Browser, folders, continued
searching for. See Searching for files.
moving, 91
selecting, 91–92
selecting, 91–92
structure changes, 273–274
File chooser, 84–86
thumbnail views, 209
File formats, Writer, 77
typing names, automatic completion, 341
File management
Files, copying
by location. See File Browser; File Manager;
between computers, 64
Kubuntu file management.
cp command, 344
by tags and date modified. See Zeitgeist.
overview, 91–92
File Manager, 134. See also File Browser.
from USB keyrings to the hard disk, 126
Files. See also Folders.
Files, finding
. (dot) prefix, 134
bookmarks, 84–86
bookmarking, 84–86
contents, 159, 347
command-line interface to. See Terminal
file chooser, 84–86
commands, files and folders.
grep command, 159, 347
contents, viewing, 341
Konqueror, 274–275
copying between computers, 64
Filesystems
deleting, 344–345
default, 47–48
ptg
display type, changing, 91
ext4, 47–48
displaying, 91
FAT32, 48
emblems, 92
optimizing, 55
execution, prohibiting, 169
sharing with Windows, 48
finding, 64, 274–275. See also File Browser;
specifying, 55
File Manager; Searching for files.
super-user space, reserving, 55
hidden, 134
Ubuntu Server, security, 169–170
indexing, 270
Windows vs. Linux, 133–134
kioslaves, 274–275
FileVault, Ubuntu equivalent, 154
Kubuntu. See Kubuntu file management.
Fill color, 189–190
last access time, recording, 170
Financial support for Ubuntu. See Canonical
last-access log, disabling, 170
Ltd.; Ubuntu Foundation.
listing, 63–64, 340, 345
Finding. See also Search tools; Searching.
moving, 91, 126, 344
file owners, 166
owners, finding, 166
file providers, 166
ownership, changing, 345
files and folders, 64, 274–275. See also File
permissions, changing, 345
Browser; File Manager; Searching for
providers, finding, 166
files.
remote access, 93–94
KPackageKit, 260
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
367
packages, 119–122
command-line interface to. See Terminal
recently-used documents, 64
commands, files and folders.
Synaptic, 117
configuration files, 134–135
Terminal, 103
copying, 91–92
Firefox
creating, 90, 345
bookmarking sites, 74
current, identifying, 343
description, 72–73
current, printing, 343
extensions, 74–75
current information, displaying, 92
Flash is missing, 75
definition, 133
Google searches, 74
/dev, 135
interface, 73
vs. directories, 90, 133
Kubuntu, 279–280
display type, changing, 91
live bookmarks, 74
emblems, 92
navigating the Internet, 73
/etc, 135
plug-ins, 74–75
files in, listing, 340, 345
search engines, adding, 74
finding, 64, 274–275. See also File Browser;
searching, 74
File Manager.
security, downloading extensions, 75
hidden, 134
ptg
starting, 73
history, displaying, 92
tagging bookmarks, 74
/home, 135
Web site, 72
indexing, 270
Firewall tables, 172–173
/lib, 135
Firewalls, 172–173
/media, 135
FLAC audio format, 98
/mnt, 135
Flash, missing from Firefox, 75
moving, 91
Flash cards, digital, 205
naming, 90
Flash disks. See USB storage devices, keyring
/opt, 135
devices.
ownership, changing, 345
Floppy disks, mounting/unmounting, 127
permissions, changing, 345
Folders. See also Files.
/proc/sys, 135
. (dot) prefix, 134
/root, 135
accessing, 255
/sbin, 135
annotating. See Emblems.
selecting, 91–92
/bin, 135
subfolders, 90
/boot, 135
tree view, displaying, 92
categorizing. See Emblems.
typing names, automatic completion, 341
changing, 344
/usr, 135
From the Library of Wow! eBook

368
Index
Folders, continued
GCompris Administration, 199
/var, 135
General chat. See Mailing lists; Wikis.
working, printing, 343
Geographical location, specifying
Fonts
from alternate install CD, 51
choosing, 76, 185
from desktop CD, 42–43
Kubuntu, 266
Geography, 204–205
“Format the partition” setting, 55
Geometrical constructions, 201
Forums. See Web forums.
Georgopoulos, Alkis, 311
Forums Code of Conduct, 337
GFS (Global File System), 144
Fractions, 200–201
GHNS (Get Hot New Stuff), 259–260
free command, 345
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program).
Free software
See also Images (graphic); Inkscape.
access to source code, 5
creating an image, 184
characteristics of, 4
cropping, 188–189
Debian project, 16–17
effect filters, 186–187
freedoms, 4
font selection, 185
history of Ubuntu, 16–17
help, 189
meaning of “free,” 4, 6
layers, 186–188
ptg
vs. open source, 6–7
moving text, 185
philosophical goals, 19–21
package description, 182
FREE SPACE line, 54
starting, 183
Freedesktop.org standards, 273
templates, 182, 184
Freedoms of free software, 4
text boxes, 185
FreeNode IRC network, 220–221
toilet paper template, 182, 184
The Fridge, 74, 225–227
tool palette, 185
F-Spot Photo Manager, 99, 128
user interface, 183–184
fstab file, 136–137
GIMP Image Editor, 104, 105, 128
Full virtualization, 175
Globe application, 289
gNewSense, 316–317
Games. See also Educational applications.
GNOME
Blinken, 205
activity journal, 208–209
hangman, 201
burning CDs/DVDs, 40
KHangman, 201
help for, 64
Mahjongg, 103
GNOME desktop. See Desktop (Ubuntu).
Quadrapassel, 103
GNOME Do, 211–212
Simon Says, 205
GNOME-shell
Sudoku, 104
cycling through open windows, 208
GCompris, 205
description, 206
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
369
displaying recently run applications, 207
Gradients, 190–191
vs. GNOME desktop, 206–207
Graphics. See Drawing programs; GIMP;
grouping windows, 208
Images (graphic), editing; Inkscape.
keyboard shortcuts, 208
Graphing mathematical functions, 201–202
listing common applications, 207
Green dragon, 247
online resources, 208–209
grep command, 159, 347. See also zgrep command.
overlay mode, 207
Group memberships, 125
searching for applications, 207
Group permissions, 169
trying it out, 206
Groups, user accounts. See User groups.
workspaces, adding/removing, 208
Gtranslate. See Rosetta.
Gnometris, 103
Guadalinex, 316
GNU General Public License, 247
Guest Session option, 71
GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP).
Guided—Use Entire Disk... options, 52–53
See GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation
Gwenview, 289
Program).
Gwibber, chat program, 78
GNU project, history of Ubuntu, 3–7
Goals of Ubuntu
HAL devices, listing, 346
accessibility to disabled users, 21
Handicapped users. See Accessibility.
ptg
Bug #1, 25–26
Handwriting recognition, 304
CoC (Code of Conduct), 21–23
Hangman game, 201
code modifications, 21
Hard disks. See Disk space; Disk storage; LVM
desktop/server support, 24–25
(Logical Volume Manager); Partitioning
governance system, 232
disks.
LCoC (Leadership Code of Conduct), 23
Hardware. See also specific devices.
localization (native language), 20
detection, from alternate install CD, 51
philosophical, 19–21
listing, 346
programming simplicity, 25
virtualization emulation, 175
technical, 23–25
Harmony project, 247
Gobuntu. See GNewSense.
Hash (#), comment indicator, 158
Google calendars, 80
HBD (Here Be Dragons), 8
Google searches
Hearing-disabled users. See Accessibility.
desktop search box, 74
Help. See also Man pages; Online resources;
Firefox, 74
Technical support; Troubleshooting.
Konqueror, 275, 279
About GNOME, 64
Kubuntu, 275, 279
About Ubuntu, 64
Governance. See Ubuntu community,
Canonical Ltd., service and support, 28–29
governance system.
for commands. See man pages.
Graber, Stéphane, 311
GIMP, 189
From the Library of Wow! eBook

370
Index
Help, continued
Holbach, Daniel, 237
Help and Support menu item, 64
Home directory
-help command, 348
encryption, 155
Inkscape, 193
folder for, 135
Kubuntu, 290
lockout, 155
Scribus, 199
/home folder, 135
Terminal commands, 343, 348–349
Home folder, accessing, 63
Ubuntu Forums, 332
Home Folder menu item, 63
Ubuntu Help Center, 64
/home partition, installing Ubuntu Server,
-help command, 348
145–146
Helpers (scripts), 213–214
Home theater software, 315
Hibernating, 155
Hostname, specifying
Hidden files and folders, 134
from alternate install CD, 52
Hide/Show Desktop button, 69
from desktop CD, 49
Hiding/showing applications, 69
Hotmail, Evolution support for, 80
Hill, Benjamin Mako, 237, 352
HTML editor, 106, 107
History of Ubuntu. See also Shuttleworth, Mark.
Hypervisor, 175–176
Debian project, 16–17
Hyphen (-), dash in commands, 341
ptg
first LTS release, 3
first release, 2
i386 support, 37
GNU project, 3–7
IBM, virtualization, 175
Linux, 5
IBM DB2 database, Ubuntu support, 28
LTS (Long Term Support), 3, 24–25
Icons
open source, 6–7
adding, 66
Open Source Initiative, 6
desktop, initial view, 61
Perens, Bruce, 6
in the Desktop folder, 63
Raymond, Eric S., 6
for devices, 62
Stallman, Richard M., 3–6
moving, 66
Torvalds, Linus, 5
placing on the desktop, 63
user community, 17–18
shortcuts, 66
Warty Warthog, 2
IDE (Integrated Development Environment),
History of Ubuntu, free software
289
and the Debian project, 16–17
Ideas and feedback, user involvement, 241
and GNU, 3–7
ifconfig command, 346
meaning of “free,” 4
Image frames, Scribus, 196–197
vs. open source, 6–7
Images (graphic)
History of Ubuntu Forums, 328–329
editing, 104, 105, 128, 194
History option, 92
raster graphics. See GIMP.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
371
vector graphics. See Inkscape.
mail order, 39
viewing, 289
from Windows, 40
Images (of installation CDs). See .iso files.
Installation image files. See .iso files.
Immutable desktop, Kubuntu, 287
Installing. See also Software Center.
Impress, 277–278
codecs, 94–95
Incremental backups, 138
Netbook Edition, 294–296
Indicator applet, 68
non-Synaptic applications, 122
Information option, 92
themes, 88
Inkscape. See also GIMP; Images (graphic).
Xubuntu, 38
drawing a rectangle, 189–193
Zeitgeist, 209
fill color, 189–190
Installing applications. See also APT (Advanced
gradients, 190–191
Package Tool).
help, 193
application sources. See Repositories.
Inkscape: Guide to Vector Drawing Program, 194
not in repositories, 121–122
online resources, 193–194
Installing Edubuntu
package description, 104, 189
add-on CD, downloading, 38
PDF format, 193
online resources, 38
PNG format, 193
prerequisites, 38
ptg
saving, available formats, 192–193
Installing Kubuntu
starting, 189
from the alternate install CD, 249
stroke color, 189–190
computer name, configuring, 253
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format,
from the desktop CD, 250–253
192–193
downloading the image file, 249
text, 192
keyboard layout, selecting, 252
tools, 189
online resources, 37
user interface, 105
partitioning disks, 252
Inkscape: Guide to Vector Drawing Program, 194
switching from Ubuntu, 249–250
Input actions, Kubuntu, 266
time zone, selecting, 251
Installation CDs
Ubiquity installer program, 250–253
alternate install, 36. See also Installing
username, configuring, 253
Ubuntu from alternate install CD.
Installing packages
burning, 39–41
apt-get utility, 160–163
desktop, 36. See also Installing Ubuntu from
Kubuntu, 260–262
desktop CD.
manually, 159–160
downloading, 38–39
from Ubuntu archive, 156–157
.iso files, 39
Installing Ubuntu. See also Upgrading Ubuntu.
from Linux, 40
AMD64 support, 37
from Mac OS X, 40
architectures supported, 36–37
From the Library of Wow! eBook

372
Index
Installing Ubuntu, continued
root partition, creating, 54
ARM support, 37
settings, 55
backing up data, 42
“Typical usage” setting, 55
CDs for. See Installation CDs.
“Use as” setting, 55
choosing a version, 36–37
Installing Ubuntu from desktop CD
i386 support, 37
alongside Windows. See Dual boot.
on a netbook, 294–296. See also Netbook
BIOS configuration problems, 41
Edition.
geographical location specification, 42–43
PowerPC support, 37
getting the CD. See Installation CDs.
switching from Kubuntu, 249–250
hostname, specifying, 49
from a USB key, 56–57
keyboard configuration, 43–44
from Windows, 57
language selection, 42
Installing Ubuntu from alternate install CD
migrating from previous version, 50
geographical location, specifying, 51
password guidelines, 49
hardware detection, 51
system use during installation, 50
hostname, specifying, 52
user account configuration, 48–49
installing a server, 51
Installing Ubuntu from desktop CD,
keyboard configuration, 51
partitioning the disk
ptg
language selection, 50
adding a partition, 47
time zone, setting, 52
default filesystem, 47–48
user account configuration, 55–56
definition, 44
Installing Ubuntu from alternate install CD,
for dual boot, 44–48
partitioning the disk
manually, 46–48
adding partitions, 54–55
minimum number of partitions, 45
“Bootable flag” setting, 55
mount points, 48
bootable partitions, specifying, 55
sharing with Windows, 135–136. See also
deleting partitions, 54
Dual boot.
filesystem, specifying, 55
for Ubuntu only, 45, 46
“Format the partition” setting, 55
Installing Ubuntu Server. See also LVM (Logical
FREE SPACE line, 54
Volume Manager); RAID (redundant
Guided—Use Entire Disk... options, 52–53
array of inexpensive disks).
“Label” setting, 55
connecting to another server, 145
labeling partitions, 55
/home partition, 145–146
Manual option, 53
log file, 145
mount options, 55
partitioning, 145–146. See also RAID.
“Mount point” setting, 55
vs. regular Ubuntu machine, 143
mount points, 55
root account, enabling, 156
“Reserved blocks” setting, 55
ssh client, 145
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
373
switching consoles, 145
K Control Center. See Software Management,
/tmp partition, 145–146
System Settings.
/var partition, 145–146
K3b program, 271
Installing Ubuntu updates
Kalzium, 199–200
applications not in repositories, 121–122
Kanagram, 200
checking for updates, 120
Kate, 288
CVE number, 121
Kbabel. See Rosetta.
finding packages, 121–122
KBruch, 200–201
limitations, 120
KDE (K Desktop Environment)
notification of, 120
current version, 247
release notifications, 120
desktop. See Plasma.
reviewing updates, 121, 121
GNU General Public License, 247
security vulnerability identifier, 121
green dragon, 247
security-related, 120, 121
Harmony project, 247
Instant messaging, 281–282
history of, 246–247
Integrated Development Environment (IDE), 289
Konqi, 247
Internet dial-up tool, 288
locking, 287
iPods, 97
making immutable, 287
ptg
iptables command, 172–173
online resources, 247
ipvsadm utility, 144
QPL (Q Public License), 247
ipvsadm utility support, 144
QT toolkit, 247
IRC (Internet Relay Chat). See also Chats.
kde-look.org, 257
about Kubuntu, 283
Kdesktop. See Plasma.
description, 219–221
KDevelop, 289
FreeNode IRC network, 220–221
keepalived utility, 144
list of channels, 221
Kernel
private messaging, 220
checking, 346
Isle of Man, 27
custom server, 143
.iso files
Keyboard shortcuts, GNOME-shell, 208
burning CDs from, 39, 127
Keyboards, configuring
definition, 39
from alternate install CD, 43–44
downloading, Kubuntu, 249
from desktop CD, 43–44
ISO Recorder, burning CDs/DVDs, 40
Kubuntu, 252, 266
iwconfig command, 346
Keyring devices, 93–94, 126
KHangman, 201
Jamendo music store, 98
Kig, 201
jdong (Ubuntu Forums denizen), 335
Kiosk mode, 287
Johnson, Richard, 237, 311
Kioslaves, 274–275
From the Library of Wow! eBook

374
Index
KiwiNZ (Ubuntu Forums denizen), 335
KSystemLog, 288
Kmail, 284–285
KTouch, 203
KMenu style, reverting to, 258
KTurtle, 204
KmPlot, 201–202
Kubuntu
Konqi, 247
accessibility, 265
Konqueror
description, 310–311
bookmarking Web pages, 279
desktop. See Plasma.
file manager, 273–275
help, 290
Google searches, 275, 279
history of, 248–249
kioslaves, 274–275
installing. See Installing Kubuntu.
Kubuntu, 279
K Control Center. See Software Management,
orange icon, 279
System Settings.
RSS feed indicator, 279
Kdesktop. See Plasma.
shortcuts, 274–275
KMenu style, reverting to, 258
Web browser, 278–279
locking the screen, 255
Konsole, 288
logging in, 271
Kontact. See also Calendars.
logging out, 255–256
calendar mode, 285–286
managing repositories, 262–263
ptg
e-mail accounts, setting up, 284–285
online resources, 311
overview, 283–284
overview, 246
PIM (personal information manager),
Project Timelord, 248
283
restarting, 255
RSS feeds, tracking, 286–287
restarting your computer, 255
starting, 284
shutting down your computer, 255
Kopete, 281–282
Start menu. See KMenu.
KOrganizer, 285–286. See also Calendars.
vs. Ubuntu, 31–32, 38
KPackageKit installer, 260
Kubuntu applications
KPDF, 289
3D mapping, 289
KPPP, 288
Akregator, 286–287
KRandRtray, 289
appointment scheduling, 285–286
KRDC, 288
automatic login, 272
Krumbach, Elizabeth, 237
Calc, 277–278
KRunner, 264
calculator, 277–278, 288
KSnapShot, 289
calendars, 285–286
ksplash, 265
command line access, 288
KStars, 202–203
Draw, 277
KSysGuard, 288
drawing programs. See Draw program.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
375
e-mail, 284–285
PIM (personal information manager). See
Excel equivalent, 278
Kontact.
Favorites list, 254–255
PowerPoint equivalent, 278
globe application, 289
presentations. See Impress.
Gwenview, 289
Quassel, 283
IDE (Integrated Development Environment),
remote desktop connection, 288–289
289
remote dial-up tool, 288–289
image viewer, 289
RSS feeds, tracking, 286–287
Impress, 277–278
running at startup, 289–290
instant messaging, 281–282
screen capture program, 289
Internet dial-up tool, 288
Speedcrunch, 288
IRC (Internet Relay Chat), 283
spreadsheets. See Calc.
K3b program, 271
starting, 254–255
Kate, 288
System Logs Viewer, 288
KDevelop, 289
text editor, 288
Kiosk mode, 287
Web feeds. See RSS feeds.
Kmail, 284–285
Word equivalent, 278
Konqueror, 278–279
Word Processor, 278
ptg
Konsole, 288
Writer, 278
Kopete, 281–282
Kubuntu applications, Kontact
KOrganizer, 285–286
calendar mode, 285–286
KPDF, 289
e-mail accounts, setting up, 284–285
KPPP, 288
overview, 283–284
KRandRtray, 289
RSS feeds, tracking, 286–287
KRDC, 288
starting, 284
KSnapShot, 289
Kubuntu applications, Web browsing
KSysGuard, 288
Firefox, 279–280
KSystemLog, 288
Konqueror, 278–279
Marble, 289
Kubuntu customization. See also Kubuntu
Math, 277
system administration; Kubuntu system
meetings, scheduling, 285–286
settings.
naming, 254
accessibility options, 265
Numlock activation, 290
desktop. See Plasma.
Okular, 289
GHNS (Get Hot New Stuff), 259–260
OpenOffice.org, 277–278
KMenu style, reverting to, 258
PDF viewer, 289
ksplash, 265
Performance Monitor, 288
locking the screen, 255
From the Library of Wow! eBook

376
Index
Kubuntu customization, continued
Kubuntu system settings. See also Kubuntu
monitors, making immutable, 287
customization; Kubuntu system
splash screen, 265
administration; Software Management,
Kubuntu file management
System Settings.
browsing files, 275
accessibility options, 265
default manager. See Dolphin.
adding/removing software, 267
Dolphin file manager, 273–274. See also
administrative password, 257
Konqueror.
Akonadi configuration, 269
file structure changes, 273–274
audio CDs, 269
finding files, 274–275
date and time, 266
folder access, 255
Desktop Search configuration, 269–270
freedesktop.org standards, 273
digital cameras, 269
Google searches, 275
display, 266
kioslaves, 274–275
file associations, 269
Konqueror file manager, 273–275. See also
fonts, 266
Dolphin.
input actions, 266
music management, 276–277
keyboard behavior, 266
shortcuts, 274–275
ksplash, 265
ptg
split view, 273
mouse behavior, 266
USB drive access, 276
multimedia, 266
Web searches, 275
Nepomuk configuration, 269
Windows partition access, 275–276
personal information management, 269
XDG Base Directory Specification, 273
power conservation, 266
XDG directories, 273–274
printer configuration, 267
#kubuntu IRC channel, 221, 283, 290
starting/stopping services, 269
Kubuntu navigation
startup services, configuring, 269
Application Launcher, 254–255
Kubuntu system settings, monitors
logging out, 255–256
configuring, 289
Kubuntu system administration. See also
detecting, 289
Kubuntu customization; Kubuntu
making immutable, 287
system settings; Software
power conservation, 266
Management.
resizing, 289
access rights, changing, 272
rotating, 289
Adept. See KPackageKit installer.
screen orientation, 266
installing packages, 260–262
screen resolution, 266
KPackageKit, 260
splash screen, 265
sudo, as a root account, 257
standby mode, 266
users, creating, 272
systemwide changes, 287
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
377
turning off automatically, 266
Launchpad Ground Control, 325
wallpaper, 287
Layers, images, 186–188
KVM virtualization, 175
LCoC (Leadership Code of Conduct), 23
Legal restrictions, downloading music, 276
l10n teams, 320–321
less command, 347. See also zless command.
“Label” setting, 55
/lib folder, 135
Labeling partitions, 55
Libraries
Language selection. See also Translation and
definition, 117
localization.
folder for, 135
from alternate install CD, 50
Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment
changing, 86
(LXDE), 317–318
from the desktop CD, 42
Linux
during installation, 42, 50
creating Ubuntu installation CDs, 40
Launcher, Netbook Edition, 296–300
filesystem, vs. Windows, 133–134
Launchpad
history of Ubuntu, 5
Answers, 30, 323
Spanish version, 316
applications, writing and tracking,
The Linux Documentation Project, 353
322–323
Linux Mint, 317
ptg
archive management, 319–320
Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP), 311
Bazaar, 324–325
Linux User Groups (LUGs). See LoCos (local
Blueprint, 30, 322–323
community teams).
bugs, reporting and tracking, 30–31,
Linux Virtual Server utility, 144
321–322. See also Malone.
LinuxCommand.org, 353
code restrictions, 319
Linux-VServer projects, virtualization, 176
components, 29–30
LIRC (Linux Infrared Control), for Totem, 101
definition, 29
Listing
description, 29–30, 318–319
files, 63–64, 340, 345
distribution management, 30
HAL devices, 346
feature tracking, 30
hardware, 346
Malone, 29–30, 321–322
owned files, 166
online resources, 320
packages, 159
revision control system, 324–325
USB buses, 346
Rosetta, 29, 320–321
.lit files, converting, 303
source for installation CDs, 39
Live bookmarks, 74
Soyuz, 30, 319–320
Localization. See Translation and localization.
specification tracking, 30
Location. See Geographical location.
support tracking, 30
Lock Screen option, 71
translation software, 29
Locking screens, 71, 89, 255
From the Library of Wow! eBook

378
Index
LoCos (local community teams), 233–234
Login Manager, 271–272
Log files
Logo programming language, 204
auth.log, 171
Look & feel, customizing. See Themes and
benefits of, 171
backgrounds.
dmesg, 171
Look & Feel section, 265. See also Themes and
installing Ubuntu Server, 145
backgrounds.
location, 171
Lower-power computers, running Ubuntu. See
logs of note, 171
Installing Ubuntu from alternate install
mail.log, 171
CD; Xubuntu.
messages, 171
ls command, 340, 345
printing last ten lines, 172
lsb_release -a command, 346
syslog, 171
lshal command, 346
tail utility, 172
lshw command, 346
tools for, 172
lspci command, 346
zcat command, 172
lsusb command, 346
zgrep command, 172
LTS (Long Term Support), 3, 24–25, 157
zless command, 172
LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project), 311
Log Out option, 71
Lubuntu, 317–318
ptg
Logging in, 271
LUGs (Linux User Groups). See LoCos (local
Logging out
community teams).
ending current session, 70–71
LVM (Logical Volume Manager). See also
Guest Session option, 71
RAID (redundant array of inexpensive
Kubuntu, 255–256
disks).
Lock Screen option, 71
documentation, 156
locking the screen, 70–71
fault tolerance, 154
Log Out option, 71
LVs (logical volumes), 151–152
Restart option, 71
partition management, 150–152
restarting the computer, 71
PEs (physical extents), 151–152
Shut Down option, 71
PVs (physical volumes), 151–152
shutting down, 71
redundancy, 154
Sleep option, 71
setting up, 152–154
Switch from... option, 71
storage fluidity, 154
switching users, 71
theory of, 151–152
Ubuntu, 70–71
VGs (volume groups), 151–152
Logical Volume Manager (LVM). See LVM
LVs (logical volumes), 151–152
(Logical Volume Manager).
LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environ-
Logical volumes (LVs), 151–152
ment), 317–318
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
379
Mac OS X, creating Ubuntu installation CDs,
Marble program, 289
40
world atlas, 204–205
Macromedia Flash. See Flash.
Marble, 204–205
Magnatune music store, 98, 276
Marble program, 289
Mahjongg, 103
Masters of the Universe (MOTUs), 234–235
Mailing lists
Math program, 277
description, 218–221
Math programs, 200–201, 205
online resources, 218
Mathematical functions, graphing, 201–202
Ubuntu community, 218–221
matthew (Ubuntu Forums denizen), 335
ubuntu-announce, 219
Mauelshagen, Heinz, 151
ubuntu-devel, 219
Maximized windows, Netbook Edition,
ubuntu-devel-announce, 219
300–301
ubuntu-devel-discuss, 219
Maximizing, applications, 60
mail.log, 171
McNealy, Scott, 178–179
Mailman software, 218
Media devices, folder for, 135
Main areas, 61
/media folder, 135
Main repository, 157, 263
Meetings, 83–84, 285–286. See also Calendars.
Malicious packages, 160
Memory usage, displaying, 345
ptg
Malone, 29–30, 321–322
Menus
man command, 343, 348–349
Applications, 62–63
man files, searching for, 349
customizing, 122–124
man intro command, 349
Places, 63–64
man -k command, 349
System, 64
man man command, 349
Meritocracy, 231
man pages. See also Help.
messages log, 171
accessing, 343
Messaging, 220
Terminal commands, 343, 348–349
Microsoft
Managing repositories, Kubuntu, 262–263
as Bug #1, 25–26
Manual option, 53
Word documents. See Word.
Manually partitioning disks
Migrating from previous version, 50. See also
with an alternate install CD, 53–55
Installing Ubuntu updates.
with a desktop CD, 46–48
Minimizing applications, 60
Maps
MIT, virtualization, 176
3D mapping, 289
mkdir command, 345
desktop globe, 204–205
/mnt folder, 135
globe applications, 289
Monitors. See also Screens.
Marble, 204–205
corner features, 70
From the Library of Wow! eBook

380
Index
Monitors, Kubuntu
nosuid option, 169
configuring, 289
special device files, prohibiting, 169
detecting, 289
suid restrictions, 169
locking the screen, 255
troubleshooting, 126
making immutable, 287
USB keyrings, 126
power conservation, 266
Mouse behavior, Kubuntu, 266
resizing, 289
Movement-disabled users. See Accessibility.
resolution, 266
Movies. See Video.
rotating, 289
Moving files and folders, 91, 344
screen orientation, 266
Mozilla Web site, 72
splash screen, 265
MP3 format, 95, 98
standby mode, 266
Multimedia. See also Audio; Music; Sound;
systemwide changes, 287
Video.
turning off automatically, 266
Blender, 105–106
wallpaper, 287
codecs, 94–95
MOTUs (Masters of the Universe), 234–235
compression. See Codecs.
Mount folder, 135
Kubuntu, 266
Mount options, 55, 170
production studio, 105–106
ptg
“Mount point” setting, 55
Ubuntu Studio, 314–315
Mount points
Multiverse repository, 122, 157, 263
mapping to partitions, 136
Music. See also Audio; Multimedia.
for Windows partitions, 136
Amarok music manager, 276
Mount points, partitioning disks
Audio CD Extractor, 97–98, 108
with an alternate install CD, 55
buying, 98–99
with a desktop CD, 48
Cool Streams, 276
Mounting/unmounting devices
copyright violations, 276
automatically, 125
DRM (Digital Rights Management), 98, 276
description, 125–126
Jamendo, 98
digital cameras, 127
legal restrictions, 276
file access, recording, 170
Magnatune, 98
file execution, prohibiting, 169
Magnatune store, 276
floppy disks, 127
managing, 276–277
folder for, 135
online radio, 276
last-access log, disabling, 170
online stores, 276
mount options, 170
portable music players, managing, 276
noatime option, 170
recording, 103, 108
nodev option, 169
Shoutcast Streams, 276
noexec option, 169
Ubuntu One Music Store, 98–99
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
381
mv command, 344
video, 302–303
My Computer, Ubuntu equivalent, 63
Xournal, 304–306
My Documents, Ubuntu equivalent, 63
Netbook Remix, 249. See also Netbook
Mythbuntu, 315
Edition.
Netbooks, definition, 294
Naming folders, 90
Network & Connectivity section, 266
nano command, 347
Network interface report, 346
nano text editor, 347
Network Manager, 68
Nautilus. See File Browser.
Network manager applet, 68
Nepomuk configuration, Kubuntu, 269
Network menu item, 63
Nero Burning Rom, burning CDs/DVDs, 40
Network Neighborhood, Ubuntu equivalent,
Netbook Edition. See also Netbook Remix.
63
2D launcher, 296–300
Network Places, Ubuntu equivalent, 63
description, 37
Networks
installing, 294–296
connection information, viewing, 68
launcher, 296–300
editing connections, 68
maximized windows, 300–301
enabling/disabling, 68
recently used files, 300
firewalls, 172–173
ptg
scrolling, 299
iptables command, 172–173
switching to Ubuntu desktop, 301–302
notifications, enabling/disabling, 68
vs. Ubuntu, 38
security, 172–173
virtual desktops, 306–307
settings, changing, 266
window listing, 300
New Printer wizard, 130–132
Netbook Edition applications
No open ports policy, 167
Cellwriter, 303
noatime option, 170
character recognition, 304
nodev option, 169
Cheese, 302–303
noexec option, 169
ebook formats supported, 303
Non-Synaptic applications, installing, 122
ebook reader, 303–304
nosuid option, 169
Favorites list, 296–299
Note taking, 304–306
Fbreader, 303–304
Notes, in the sidebar, 92
handwriting recognition, 304
Notes option, 92
.lit files, converting, 303
Notification area, 67–68
note taking, 304–306
Notification of available upgrades, 120
PDF annotation, 304–306
Notification of new releases, 120
photography, 302–303
Novell, 247
running, listing, 299
NUMA, Ubuntu Server, 143
starting, 296–300
Numlock activation, 290
From the Library of Wow! eBook

382
Index
OCFS2 filesystem, 144
F-Spot Photo Manager, 99
Of installation CDs (images). See .iso files.
GIMP help, 189
Office suite. See OpenOffice.org.
gNewSense, 317
Official support, definition, 157
GNOME-shell, 208–209
The Official Ubuntu Server Book, 173, 311, 352
grep tutorials, 347
Ogg Theora, 95
Guadalinex, 316
Ogg Vorbis, 95
Inkscape, 193–194
Okular, 289
installation CDs, 38–39
Older computers, running Ubuntu. See
IRC channels, list of, 221
Installing Ubuntu from alternate install
KDE (K Desktop Environment), 247
CD; Xubuntu.
Kubuntu, installing, 37
Online radio, 276
Kubuntu wiki, 290
Online resources. See also Help.
KVM virtualizer, 176
Answers, 323
Launchpad, 39, 320
archive management, 320
Launchpad Ground Control, 325
backup strategies, 139
The Linux Documentation Project, 353
Bazaar, 325
LinuxCommand.org, 353
BIOS manual, 41
mailing lists, 218
ptg
Blueprint, 323
Malone, 322
bugs, reporting and tracking, 322
Nepomuk, 269
bulletin boards. See IRC (Internet Relay
Planet Ubuntu, 74, 230–231
Chat); Mailing lists; Wikis.
Plasma, 257
codecs, 94–95
podcasts, 96–97
community participation, 291
RAID modes, 148
CVE numbers, 121
revision control system, 325
development discussions
Rosetta, 321
See Blogs
Scribus, 199
See IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
security vulnerabilities, 120
See Mailing lists
sed tutorials, 347
See Web forums
Soyuz, 319–320
See Wikis
specification tracking, 323
Docky, 214
support requests, tracking, 323
DRBD (Distributed Replicated Block
text files, searching and editing, 347
Device), 177
themes, 88
DVDs, format restrictions, 100
Ubuntu derivatives, 31–33
feature tracking, 323
Ubuntu developer blogs, 74
Firefox extensions, 75
Ubuntu One Music Store, 99
The Fridge, 74, 225–227
Ubuntu Server, security, 174
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
383
Ubuntu Server Edition, 313
Overlay mode, GNOME-shell, 207
Ubuntu Studio, 314–315
Owner permission, 169
Web forums, 221–222. See also Ubuntu
Ownership, changing, 345
Forums.
wikis, 223–225
Package management. See also APT (Advanced
Xubuntu, installing, 38
Package Tool); MOTUs (Masters of the
Zeitgeist, 208–210
Universe); Synaptic; Technical Board;
Open applications, displaying, 69
Ubuntu archive.
Open Collaboration Services, 270–271
apt-cache utility, 160–163
Open command, 212
apt-get utility, 160–163
Open source
aptitude utility, 165–166
history of, 5–7
building packages from source, 164–165
philosophical goals, 20
command-line tools, 158–159
Open Source Initiative, 6
Debian package manager, 158–159
OpenOffice.org
default packages, 143
drawing. See Draw program.
distribution upgrades, 163–165
file formats, 77
downloading packages, 160
fonts, 76
dpkg utility, 158–159
ptg
Kubuntu, 277–278
file owner, finding, 166
OpenOffice.org, creating documents
file provider, finding, 166
mathematical expressions builder. See Math.
listing owned files, 166
in PDF format, 78
listing packages, 159
presentations. See Impress.
malicious packages, 160
spreadsheets. See Calc.
package information, displaying, 161–162
word processing. See Writer.
searching for packages, 161–162
writing a letter, 75–78
system updates, with apt-get, 160–163
OpenVZ, virtualization, 176
Package management, installing packages
Operating systems. See specific operating
with apt-get, 160–163
systems.
manually, 159–160
emulating. See Ubuntu Server virtualization.
Package management, removing packages
running within operating systems. See
with apt-get, 160–163
Ubuntu Server virtualization.
orphans, 166
/opt folder, 135
Package management, security
Optional software, folder for, 135
patches, applying, 163–165
Orange icon, 279
of third-party packages, 159–160
Orphan packages, removing, 166
Packages
OS virtualization, 176
building from source, 164–165
Other permission, 169
definition, 116
From the Library of Wow! eBook

384
Index
Packages, continued
Guided—Use Entire Disk... options, 52–53
extragears, 257
“Label” setting, 55
finding, 119–122. See also Repositories;
labeling partitions, 55
Software Center.
Manual option, 52
information, displaying, 161–162
manually, 52
installing, 117–118
mount options, 55
locations. See Repositories.
“Mount point” setting, 55
maintenance, responsibility for, 234–235,
mount points, 55
237–238
“Reserved blocks” setting, 55
policies, setting, 237–238
root partition, creating, 54
removing. See Removing packages.
settings, 55
software channels. See Repositories.
sizing partitions, 54
user involvement, 242–243
“Typical usage” setting, 55
of widgets, 257
“Use as” setting, 55
The panel, 61
Partitioning disks, desktop CD
Panel manager. See GNOME-shell.
adding a partition, 47
Paravirtualization, 176
default filesystem, 47–48
Parity drives, 148
definition, 44
ptg
Parley, 205
for dual boot, 44–48
Partitioning disks
manually, 46–48
/home partition, 145–146
minimum number of partitions, 45
installing Ubuntu Server, 145–146
mount points, 48
Kubuntu, 252
Partitions
LVM (Logical Volume Manager), 150–152
filesystem, changing, 136
swap partitions, encrypting, 155
mapping to mount points, 136
/tmp partition, 145–146
numbers, changing, 136
Ubuntu Server security, 145
Windows, accessing from Ubuntu, 135–136
/var partition, 145–146
passwd command, 348
Partitioning disks, alternate install CD
Passwords. See also Security.
adding partitions, 54–55
for Administration features, 64
“Bootable flag” setting, 55
administrative access, 257
bootable partitions, specifying, 55
bypassing, 66
deleting partitions, 54
changing, 257, 348
encryption, 53
changing users or groups, 65
filesystem, specifying, 55
for directory encryption, 154
“Format the partition” setting, 55
guidelines for creating, 49
FREE SPACE line, 54
for new users, 124–125
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
385
randomly generated, 65–66
PIM (personal information manager)
for system settings, 264
Akonadi, 269
PDF files
Evolution, 79
annotating, 304–306
Kontact, 283
viewing, 289
Pipelines, 341–342
PDF files, creating with
PiTiVi movie editor, 102
Inkscape, 193
Places menu, 63–64
OpenOffice.org, 78, 278
Places option, 92
Scribus, 197–198
Planet Ubuntu, 74, 230–231
Pen disks. See USB storage devices, keyring
Plasma
devices.
adding widgets to, 257
Perens, Bruce, 6
backgrounds, 258
Performance, analysis and monitoring, 103, 288
customizing, 257–259
Performance Monitor, 288
GHNS (Get Hot New Stuff), 259–260
Periodic table, 199–200
immutable desktop, 287
Permissions
online resources, 257
changing, 272, 345
removing widgets from, 257
files, 340, 345
templates, sharing, 259
ptg
Ubuntu Server, 169–170
wallpaper, 258
Persistence, USB storage devices, 56–57
widgets, 257–258
Personal package archives (PPAs), 122
Playing
Personal section, 265
audio CDs, 97–98, 108
PEs (physical extents), 151–152
video, 99–102
Philosophical goals of Ubuntu, 19–21
Plug-ins, Firefox, 75
Photographs, editing. See Images (graphic),
PNG format, Inkscape, 193
editing.
Podcasts, 96–97
Photographs, managing
Pooling drives, RAID, 147
F-Spot Photo Manager, 99, 128
Pope, Alan, 237
GIMP Image Editor, 128
Portable music players, managing, 276
Photography, 302–303
POSIX model, 169
Physical drive failure, RAID, 150
Posts, Ubuntu Forums, 332, 333–334
Physical storage, moving. See LVM (Logical
Power, electrical. See Electrical power.
Volume Manager).
Power Control section, 266
Physical volumes (PVs), 151–152
PowerPC support, 38
Physics simulator, 205
PowerPoint, 278
Pictures. See Drawing; Images (graphic),
PPAs (personal package archives), 122
editing; Photographs.
A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands..., 353
From the Library of Wow! eBook

386
Index
Preferences. See Configuring; Customizing;
Programs
Kubuntu system settings; Software
adding. See Installing.
Management, System Settings.
application. See Applications.
Preferences menu item, 64
operating systems. See specific operating
Printer configuration, Kubuntu, 267
systems.
Printer configuration application, 130
emulating. See Ubuntu Server
Printer Configuration section, 267
virtualization.
Printers, configuring
running within operating systems. See
adding the printer, 128
Ubuntu Server virtualization.
automatic detection, 130–132
packaged for installation. See Packages.
driver support, checking, 128
Project Timelord, 248
drivers, specifying, 130
ps command, 346
manufacturer, choosing, 130
PVs (physical volumes), 151–152
model, specifying, 130
pwd command, 343
New Printer wizard, 130–132
Python language, 25
Printer configuration application, 130
printing a test page, 132–133
QEMU virtualization, 175
remote printing, 133
QPL (Q Public License), 247
ptg
Printing
QT toolkit, 247
last ten lines of log files, 172
Quadrapassel, 103
from remote printers, 133
Quality assurance, user involvement, 242
system information, 346
Quassel, 283
test pages, 132–133
Question mark (?), wildcard character, 350
version information, 346
QuickTime, restrictions, 95
working directory, 343
Private messaging, 220
Radio, online, 276
Privileges. See Permissions.
RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks)
Problems
array failure, 150
reporting. See Launchpad; Malone.
array management. See LVM (Logical Volume
solving. See Technical support;
Manager).
Troubleshooting.
backing up data, 149
Process information, displaying, 346
choosing, 148
Processes, viewing, 346
data replication, 146
/proc/sys folder, 135
degraded mode, 150
Production studio, 105–106
description, 146–148
Profile pictures, Ubuntu Forums, 336
documentation, 156
Programming, user involvement, 242–243
fault tolerance, 151, 154
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
387
levels, 147–148
Releases. See also specific releases.
modes, 148
first, 2
parity drives, 148
LTS (Long Term Support), 3, 24–25
physical drive failure, 150
new, updating to. See Installing Ubuntu
pooling drives, 147
updates.
RAID 0, 147
scheduling goals, 23–24
RAID 1, 147
support duration, 24
RAID 5, 147
Reminders. See Calendars.
setting up, 148–150
Remnant, Scott, 238
space requirements, 147
Remote
spare devices, 149–150
desktop connection, 288–289
striped set, 147
dial-up tool, 288
RAID 0, 147
login, 155
RAID 1, 147
printing, 133
RAID 5, 147
Remote control, Totem media player, 101
RAID array failure, 150
Removing. See also Deleting.
Rankin, Kyle, 352
programs. See Adding/removing programs.
rar backup program, 138
user accounts, 348
ptg
Raymond, Eric S., 6
user groups, 348
Reading tutorial, 205
Removing packages
RealMedia, restrictions, 95
with apt-get, 160–163
Recent Documents menu item, 64
orphan packages, 166
Recently used
orphans, 166
applications, 207, 255
with Synaptic, 118–119
documents, 64, 255
Renaming folders, 90
files, 300
Rendering, 105–106
Recently Used tab, 255
Reporting bugs. See Malone.
Recently-used documents, listing, 64
Repositories. See also APT (Advanced Package
Recognized derivatives, 314–315
Tool); Ubuntu archive.
Recording music or sound, 103, 108
backports, 157
Rectangles, drawing, 189–193
definition, 116
Red Hat Cluster Suite, 144
Kubuntu, 262–263
Redundancy, LVM, 154
main, 157, 263
Redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID).
multiverse, 122, 157, 263
See RAID (redundant array of
PPAs (personal package archives), 122
inexpensive disks).
switching, 262–263
Release notifications, 120
third-party, 263
From the Library of Wow! eBook

388
Index
Repositories, continued
Root account
Ubuntu archive, 156–157
enabling, Ubuntu Server, 156
universe, 122, 157, 263
sudo instead of, Kubuntu, 257
Repositories, restricted
Ubuntu Server, enabling, 156
definition, 157
/root folder, 135
gNewSense, 316–317
Root partition, creating, 54
Kubuntu, 263
Rosetta, 29, 320–321
Ubuntu, 157
Rotating monitors, 289
Repositories, Ubuntu archive
RSS feed indicator, 279
backports, 157
RSS feeds, tracking, 286–287
main, 157
rsync backup program, 138
multiverse, 122, 157
restricted, 157
SABDFL (self-appointed benevolent dictator
universe, 157
for life), 232, 238
“Reserved blocks” setting, 55
Saving
Resizing monitors, 289
from Inkscape, 192–193
Resolution, screen, 266
in PDF format. See PDF files, creating.
Resource limits, 170–171
Writer documents, 77–78
ptg
Restart option, 71
/sbin folder, 135
Restarting
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), 104, 192–193
the computer, 71
Scheduling events. See Calendars.
Kubuntu, 255
Schools, Ubuntu for. See Edubuntu.
Restricted repositories, 157, 263, 317
Schwartz, Jonathan, 178
Restrictions
Science applications, 205
codecs, 94–95
Screens. See also Monitors.
MP3 format, 95
capturing, 289
multimedia formats, 95
corner features, 70
packages, 157
locking, 71, 89, 255
QuickTime, 95
multiple, 350–352
RealMedia, 95
orientation, 266
repositories, 157, 263, 317
resolution, 266
Windows Media Format, 95
Screensavers
Revision control system, 324–325
configuring, 88–89
Rhythmbox, 96
locking the screen, 89
Riddell, Jonathan, 248
Scribus. See also OpenOffice.org.
Ripping audio CDs, 97–98, 108
creating a document, 194–199
rm command, 344–345
exporting to PDF, 197–198
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
389
help, 199
Searching for files
online resources, 199
with grep command, 347
package description, 106
Kubuntu, 269–270
saving to SLA format, 198
in package repositories, 159
user interface, 107, 194
from Ubuntu desktop, 63–64
Scribus, graphic images
Security. See also Passwords.
DPI error, 197
Firefox extensions, 75
editing, 194
locking the screen, 70–71, 89
image frames, 196–197
networks, 172–173
inserting, 196–197
patches, applying, 163–165
supported formats, 197
of third-party packages, 159–160
Scribus, text
Trojan horses, 159–160
adding, 195
Ubuntu Server. See Ubuntu Server security.
editing, 194
viruses, 159–160
importing Microsoft Word documents, 195
vulnerability identifier, 121
overflowing the frame, 196
worms, 159–160
text frames, 195
Security-related updates, 120, 121
Scrolling, Netbook Edition, 299
sed (Stream EDitor), 347
ptg
Search Bar, 255
sed command, 347
Search for Files menu item, 64
Selecting files and folders, 91–92
Search tools. See also Finding.
Self-appointed benevolent dictator for life
desktop search box, 74
(SABDFL), 232, 238
Firefox, 74
Semantic Desktop, enabling, 270
Google, Kubuntu, 275, 279
Sending messages, 281–282. See also E-mail.
indexing searchable material, 108
Servers
Tracker Search Tool, 108
connecting to, 64
Searching
vs. desktop machines, 24–25. See also
Desktop Search configuration, Kubuntu,
Ubuntu Server.
269–270
e-mail, 81, 83
in Firefox, 74
installing from alternate install CD, 51
indexing files and folders, 270
Service and support. See Technical support.
for man files, 349
Service Manager section, 269
for packages, 161–162
Settings, partitioning disks, 55
Strigi desktop search, 270
Shortcuts
Searching for applications
to applications, 66
GNOME-shell, 207
icons, 66
Kubuntu, 269–270
keyboard, GNOME-shell, 208
From the Library of Wow! eBook

390
Index
Shortcuts, continued
Software Center
kioslaves, 274–275
interface, 114–115
Konqueror, 274–275
listing applications, 116
Shoutcast Streams, 276
starting, 114
Shut Down option, 71
Software channels, 116. See also Repositories.
Shutting down, 71, 255. See also Logging out.
Software Management. See also Kubuntu
Shuttleworth, Mark. See also History of
customization; Kubuntu system
Ubuntu.
administration.
Blueprint, 323
adding/removing programs, 260–262
Bug #1, 25–26
KPackageKit, 260
Community Council member, 237
Look & Feel section, 265
on meritocracy, 231
main repository, 263
praise from Sum Microsystems, 178–179
managing repositories, 262–263
profile, 7–9
multiverse repository, 122, 263
SABDFL (self-appointed benevolent dictator
Network & Connectivity section, 266
for life), 232, 238
password, changing, 257
space travel, 8
Personal section, 265
starting Ubuntu, 2
restricted repository, 263
ptg
on the Technical Board, 238
third-party repositories, 263
Warthogs, 9–10
universe repository, 122, 263
Shuttleworth, Mark, companies founded by. See
update notification, 264
also Canonical Ltd..
upgrading Kubuntu, 264
HBD (Here Be Dragons), 9
Software Management, System Settings. See also
Thawte, 8
Kubuntu system settings.
TSF (The Shuttleworth Foundation), 8
Add or Remove Software section, 267
Sidebar, File Browser, 92
Advanced tab, 264, 267
Signatures, Ubuntu Forums, 336
Advanced User Settings section, 269–271
Silber, Jane, 27
Computer Administration section, 266
Simon Says game, 205
Display section, 266
Simple Backup Suite, 138
General Tab, 264
SLA format, saving from Scribus, 198
Look & Feel section, 265
Slackware, 14
overview, 264–265
Sleep option, 71
Personal section, 265
SLS (Softlanding Linux System), 14
Power Control section, 266
Sobell, Mark G., 353
Printer Configuration section, 267
Social networking
Semantic Desktop, enabling, 270
chats, 78. See also IRC (Internet Relay Chat).
Service Manager section, 269
Open Collaboration Services, 270–271
System section, 267
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
391
Software stores. See Repositories.
Software Center, 114
Software upgrades, installing. See Installing
Synaptic, 117
Ubuntu updates.
Terminal, 339–340
Sound. See Audio; Multimedia; Music.
Starting applications. See also Applications
Sound applet, 68
menu.
Sound cards, mixer settings, 67
with Docky, 212–214
Sound Juicer. See Audio CD Extractor.
with GNOME Do, 211–212
Sound Recorder, 103
Kubuntu, 254–255, 284
Source code, free access to, 5
Ubuntu, 62–63
Soyuz, 30, 319–320
Starting/stopping services, Kubuntu, 269
Space exploration, 202–203
Startup services, configuring in Kubuntu, 269
Spanish language distribution, 316
Step, 205
Specification tracking, 30
Stick disks. See USB storage devices, keyring
Speedcrunch, 288
devices.
Spelling, 201
Storage, physically moving. See LVM (Logical
Spillner, Josef, 259
Volume Manager).
Spin-offs from Ubuntu, 31–33
Storage fluidity, LVM, 154
Splash screens, 265
Stream EDitor (sed), 347
ptg
Spools, 145
Strigi desktop search, 270
Sprints, 227–229
Striped RAID sets, 147
ssh client, 145
Stroke color, 189–190
Stallman, Richard M.
Structures and processes, responsibility for, 236
chief gnuisance, 317
Subforums, 332
free software, 4–5
Subprojects of Ubuntu, 31–33
gNewSense, 316–317
sudo command
GNU project, 5
instead of a root account, 156, 257
history of Ubuntu, 3–6
superuser privileges, 167–169, 342–343
Linux, 5
sudoers database, 168–169
open source, 5–7
Sudoku, 104
Standby mode, monitors, 266
suid restrictions, 169
Starting
Summits, 227–229
File Browser, 89
Sun Microsystems, 176, 179
Firefox, 73
Superusers
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program),
home directory, 135
183
reserving space for, 55
Inkscape, 189
running Terminal commands, 342–343
Kontact, 284
software folder, 135
Netbook Edition applications, 296–300
Support. See Technical support.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

392
Index
Support tracking, 30
System Logs Viewer, 288
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), 104
System menu, 64
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format, 192–193
System Monitor, 103
Swap partitions, encrypting, 155
System problems, troubleshooting. See
Switch from... option, 71
Troubleshooting system problems.
Switching
System resource limits, Ubuntu Server, 170–171
between applications, 69, 212–214
System section, 271–272
File Browser views, 91
System settings, Kubuntu. See Kubuntu system
between Kubuntu and Ubuntu, 249–250
settings; Software Management, System
Netbook Edition to Ubuntu desktop,
Settings.
301–302
System status, folder for, 135
Ubuntu Server consoles, 145
System updates, with apt-get, 160–163
users, 71
Systemwide changes, monitors, 287
Synaptic
can’t find an application, 122
Tagging bookmarks, 74
description, 117
tail utility, 172
finding, 117
Taskbar, 61, 69–70
finding packages, 119–120
Team councils, 232–233
ptg
installing packages, 117–118
Teams
name origin, 117
creating and dissolving, 236
removing packages, 118–119
LoCos (local community teams), 233–234
starting, 117
meritocracy, 231
syslog log file, 171
MOTUs (Masters of the Universe), 234–235
System administration
overview, 232–233
customizing your system. See Customizing.
team councils, 232–233
Kubuntu. See Kubuntu customization;
Technical Board, 237–238
Kubuntu system administration;
Technical direction, setting, 237
Software Management.
Technical goals of Ubuntu, 23–25
troubleshooting. See Troubleshooting system
Technical support. See also Bugs, reporting and
administration.
tracking; Help; Online resources;
System administrator account, Ubuntu Server,
Troubleshooting; Ubuntu community,
155–156
communication venues.
System information
accessing, 64
command-line interface to. See Terminal
Answers, 323
commands, system information.
Canonical Ltd., 28–29
printing, 346
cycles, Ubuntu archive, 157
System log files. See Log files.
LTS (Long Term Support), 3, 24–25
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
393
tracking, 30
Terminal commands, files and folders
user involvement, 240
cat, 341, 347
Templates, GIMP, 182, 184
cd, 341, 344
Terminal
changing directories, 341
description, 137
changing folders, 344
finding, 103
chmod, 345
starting, 339–340
chown, 345
window, illustration, 340
contents, viewing, 341
Terminal commands
copying, 344
&& (ampersands), running commands
cp, 344
conditionally, 350
creating folders, 345
@ (at sign), in command-line username, 339
current folder, identifying, 343
$ (dollar sign), UNIX shell symbol, 160, 339
deleting, 344–345
- (hyphen), dash in commands, 341
grep, 347
? (question mark), wildcard character, 350
less, 347
| (vertical bar), pipe symbol, 137, 341
listing, 340, 345
[ ] (brackets), wildcard characters, 350
ls, 340, 345
[! ] (brackets, exclamation point), wildcard
mkdir, 345
ptg
characters, 350
moving, 344–345
; (semicolon), running commands
mv, 344
sequentially, 350
nano, 347
~ (tilde), home directory indicator, 160, 339,
ownership, changing, 345
344
permissions, changing, 345
documentation. See Man pages.
printing working directory, 343
executing multiple, 350
pwd, 343
help, 343
rm, 344–345
-help, 348
sed, 347
man pages, accessing, 343
text files, searching and editing, 347
passing output. See Pipelines.
Terminal commands, system information
pipelines, 137, 341–342
df, 345
A Practical Guide to Linux® Commands..., 353
disk space usage, displaying, 345
printing system or version information, 346
free, 345
running as a superuser, 342–343
HAL devices, listing, 346
running sequentially, 350
hardware, listing, 346
stringing together. See Pipelines.
ifconfig, 346
sudo, 342–343
iwconfig, 346
wildcards, 349–350
kernel, checking, 346
From the Library of Wow! eBook

394
Index
Terminal commands, system information,
overflowing the frame, 196
continued
text frames, 195
lsb_release -a, 346
Text Editor, 102
lsb_release -a command, 346
Text editors
lshal, 346
Kate, 288
lshw, 346
Kubuntu, 288
lspci, 346
nano, 347
lsusb, 346
sed (Stream EDitor), 347
memory usage, displaying, 345
Text files, searching and editing, 347
network interface report, 346
Thawte, founding of, 8
process information, displaying, 346
The Shuttleworth Foundation (TSF), 8
processes, viewing, 346
Themes and backgrounds
ps, 346
changing, 87–88
top, 346
customizing, 87–88
uname -a, 346
installing, 88
USB buses, listing, 346
Kubuntu. See Plasma.
version information, printing, 346
online resources, 88
wireless network information, displaying,
splash screens, 265
ptg
346
Third-party packages, security, 159–160
Terminal commands, users and groups
Third-party repositories, 263
addgroup, 348
Threads, Ubuntu Forums, 332, 333–334
adduser, 168
3D mapping, 289
delgroup, 348
3D modeling, 105–106
deluser, 348
Thumbnail file views, 209
groups, adding/removing, 348
Tilde (~), home directory indicator, 160, 339,
passwd, 348
344
passwords, changing, 348
Time and date. See Clock.
user accounts, adding/removing, 348
Time zone, setting, 52, 251
users logged on, displaying, 348
/tmp partition, 145–146
who, 348
Toilet paper template, 182, 184
Tetris. See Quadrapassel.
top command, 346
Text
Torvalds, Linus, 5
GIMP, 185
Totem media player, 99–100, 101
Inkscape, 192
Touch-typing tutorial, 203
Text, Scribus
Tracking
adding, 195
bugs. See Bugs, reporting and tracking;
editing, 194
Launchpad; Malone.
importing Microsoft Word documents, 195
distribution changes, 15–16
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
395
specifications, 30
Ubiquity installer program, 250–253
support, 30
Ubucons, 229–230
system features, 30
Ubunteros, 239
Translation and localization
Ubuntites. See Ubunteros.
localization teams, 320–321
Ubuntu. See also Derived distributions.
personal applications, 86
CoC (Code of Conduct), 21–23
software for. See Rosetta.
derivatives. See Derived distributions.
user involvement, 242
desktop. See Desktop (Ubuntu).
Translations. See Rosetta.
developer blogs, 74
Trash (wastebasket), 70
for educational environments. See Edubuntu.
Tree option, 92
financial support for. See Canonical Ltd.;
Tribute weeks, Ubuntu Forums, 337
Ubuntu Foundation.
Trojan horses, 159–160
history of. See History of Ubuntu.
Trolltech, 247
for KDE (K Desktop Environment). See
Troubleshooting. See also Technical support.
Kubuntu.
BIOS configuration problems, 41
LCoC (Leadership Code of Conduct), 23
DVD encryption, 100
for multimedia production. See Ubuntu
e-mail, unable to connect to server, 83
Studio.
ptg
encryption, DVDs, 100
on older computers. See Xubuntu.
hardware, unmounting a device, 126
spin-offs, 31–33
home directory lockout, 155
subprojects, 31–33
multimedia, restricted formats, 95
technical goals, 23–25
problem reporting. See Launchpad; Malone.
for use in schools. See Edubuntu.
RAID array failure, 150
Windows-equivalent programs. See Windows
Troubleshooting system administration
programs, Ubuntu equivalents.
command options, help for. See man pages.
word origin, 10–11
copying files between computers, 64
for Xfce window management system. See
help for commands. See man pages.
Xubuntu.
Synaptic can’t find an application, 122
Ubuntu archive. See also Ubuntu Server package
Troubleshooting system problems
management.
displaying hidden files and folders, 134
APT (Advanced Package Tool), 157–163
non-Synaptic applications, installing, 122
apt-cache utility, 160–163
Troy, Ryan (ubuntu-geek), 328–329
apt-get utility, 160–163. See also aptitude
TSF (The Shuttleworth Foundation), 8
utility.
Tutu, Desmond, 11
aptitude utility, 165–166. See also apt-get
Tux Paint, 205
utility.
2D launcher, 296–300
backports repository, 157
“Typical usage” setting, 55
binary uploads, 164
From the Library of Wow! eBook

396
Index
Ubuntu archive, continued
mailing lists, 218–221
installing packages, with apt-get,
Planet Ubuntu blogs, 74, 230–231
160–163
sprints, 227–229
LTS (Long Term Support), 157
summits, 227–229
main repository, 157
support-oriented. See IRC (Internet Relay
multiverse repository, 122, 157
Chat); Mailing lists; Wikis.
official support, 157
Ubucons, 229–230
repositories, 156–157
user conferences, 229–230
restricted repository, 157
Web forums, 221–222. See also Ubuntu
structure of, 143
Forums.
support cycles, 157
wikis, 223–225
system updates, with apt-get, 160–163
Ubuntu community, user involvement levels
universe repository, 122, 157
advocacy, 240
Ubuntu archive, removing packages
artwork, 241–242
with apt-get, 160–163
documentation, 241
orphans, 166
ideas and feedback, 241
Ubuntu community
packaging, 242–243
activists. See Ubunteros.
programming, 242–243
ptg
CoC (Code of Conduct), 21–23
quality assurance and bugs, 242
description, 17–18
support, 240
giving back to, 290–291
translation and localization, 242
history of, 17–18
Ubuntu community governance system. See also
LCoC (Leadership Code of Conduct), 23
Canonical Ltd.; Teams; Ubuntu
membership requirements, 18
Foundation.
philosophical goals, 19–21
code revisions, approving, 235
Ubuntu community, communication venues.
Community Council, 235–237
See also Developer contacts.
dispute arbitration, 235–236
announcements, 219
feature goals, maintaining, 237
bulletin board. See The Fridge.
goals, 232
conferences, 229–230
package maintenance, 234–235, 237–238
developer sprints, 227–229
package policy, setting, 237–238
developer summits, 227–229
SABDFL (self-appointed benevolent dictator
development discussions. See IRC (Internet
for life), 232, 238
Relay Chat); Mailing lists; Wikis.
structures and processes, 236
The Fridge, 74, 225–227
Technical Board, 18, 237–238
general chat. See IRC (Internet Relay Chat);
technical direction, setting, 237
Mailing lists; Wikis.
Ubunteros, 239
IRC (Internet Relay Chat), 219–221
Ubuntites. See Ubunteros.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
397
Ubuntu community governance system,
Ubuntu Foundation
Ubuntu members
CoC (Code of Conduct), 21–23
activists. See Ubunteros.
description, 30–31
approving, 236
geographical location, 30
membership levels, 239
LCoC (Leadership Code of Conduct), 23
official membership, 239
philosophical goals, 19–21
rights and privileges, 239–240
Ubuntu Help Center, 64
Ubuntu community teams
#ubuntu IRC channel, 221
creating and dissolving, 236
Ubuntu members
LoCos (local community teams), 233–234
approving, 236
meritocracy, 231
membership levels, 239–240
MOTUs (Masters of the Universe), 234–235
official membership, 239
overview, 232–233
rights and privileges, 239–240
team councils, 232–233
Ubuntu Netbook Edition. See Netbook Edition.
Ubuntu Forums
Ubuntu One application, 78–79
asking questions, 332, 334–335
Ubuntu One Music Store, 98–99
avatars, 336
Ubuntu Server
coffee references, 336
cloud computing, 177–178
ptg
Forums Code of Conduct, 337
contact information, 174
getting help for, 332
custom server kernel, 143
history of, 328–329
description, 142–144
key people, 335–336
disk replication, 177
messages. See Posts.
DRBD (Distributed Replicated Block
organization of, 334–335
Device), 177
overview, 328
ecryptfs, 154–155
participating in, 329–334
encryption, 154–155
posts, 332, 333–334
GFS (Global File System) support, 144
profile pictures, 336
home directory, encrypting, 155
setting up an account, 329–334
installing. See Installing Ubuntu Server.
signatures, 336
ipvsadm utility support, 144
staff, listing, 335–336
keepalived utility, 144
subforums, 332
Linux Virtual Server utility support, 144
threads, 332, 333–334
log files, 171–172
topics. See Threads.
NUMA support, 143
tribute weeks, 337
OCFS2 filesystem support, 144
user rank image, 336–337
The Official Ubuntu Server Book, 173, 311, 352
usernames, 329
partitioning, 145–146
Web forums, 221–222
passwords, for directory encryption, 154
From the Library of Wow! eBook

398
Index
Ubuntu Server, continued
sudoers database, 168–169
Red Hat Cluster Suite support, 144
system resource limits, 170–171
swap partitions, encrypting, 155
user account administration, 167–169
Ubuntu Server Edition, 313
visudo command, 168
Ubuntu Server package management. See also
Ubuntu Server virtualization
APT (Advanced Package Tool); Ubuntu
Bochs, 175
archive.
common hardware emulators, 175
apt-get utility, 160–163. See also aptitude
containerization, 175
utility.
definition, 174
aptitude utility, 165–166. See also apt-get
full virtualization, 175
utility.
hardware emulation, 175
Ubuntu Server security. See also Security.
hypervisor, 175–176
adduser command, 168
IBM, 175
administrator account, 155–156
KVM, 175
contact information, 174
Linux-VServer projects, 176
deluser command, 168
MIT, 176
filesystems, 169–170
OpenVZ, 176
firewall tables, 172–173
OS virtualization, 175
ptg
group permission, 169
paravirtualization, 175
home directory encryption, 155
preferred solution, 176
iptables command, 172–173
QEMU, 175
log files, 145
Sun Microsystems, 176
mount options, 170
types of, 175–176
no open ports policy, 167
VirtualBox, 176
noatime option, 170
VMware, 174
nodev option, 169
Xen, 176
noexec option, 169
XVM, 176
nosuid option, 169
xVM, 176
online resources, 174
zoning, 175
other permission, 169
z/VM, 175
overview, 167
Ubuntu Software Center. See Software Center.
owner permission, 169
Ubuntu Studio, 314–315
partitions, 145
#ubuntu+1 IRC channel, 221
permissions, 169–170
ubuntu-announce mailing list, 219
POSIX model, 169
#ubuntu-devel IRC channel, 221
root account, enabling, 156
ubuntu-devel mailing list, 219
spools, 145
ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list, 219
sudo command, 156, 167–169
ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list, 219
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
399
ubuntu-geek (Ryan Troy), 328–329, 335
User accounts, configuring
#ubuntu-offtopic IRC channel, 221
from alternate install CD, 55–56
uname -a command, 346
from desktop CD, 48–49
UNetbootin, 57
User community. See Ubuntu community.
Uninstalling. See Removing.
User conferences, 229–230
Universe repository, 122, 157, 263
User groups
UNIX shell symbol ($), 160
addgroup, 348
Unmounting a device. See
adding/removing, 348
Mounting/unmounting devices.
delgroup, 348
Update Manager, 109–111
User involvement levels
Updating Ubuntu. See Installing Ubuntu
advocacy, 240
updates.
artwork, 241–242
Upgrade notification, 264
documentation, 241
Upgrading Kubuntu, 264
ideas and feedback, 241
Upgrading Ubuntu, 109–111. See also Installing
packaging, 242–243
Ubuntu.
programming, 242–243
Usability, 70
quality assurance and bugs, 242
USB storage devices. See also Disk storage.
support, 240
ptg
accessing, 276
translation and localization, 242
buses, listing, 346
User profiles, educational applications, 199
copying files to the hard disk, 126
Usernames
installing Ubuntu from, 56–57
in command lines, 339
keyring devices, 126
Kubuntu, configuring, 253
making bootable, 57
for new user accounts, 49, 55–56
mounting/unmounting, 126
Ubuntu Forums, 329
persistence, 56–57
Users
“Use as” setting, 55
adding, 65–66, 124–125, 272
User accounts
deleting, 125
adding, 168, 348
group memberships, 125
adduser command, 168
logged on, displaying, 348
administration, Ubuntu Server, 167–169
rank image, Ubuntu Forums, 336–337
deleting, 168, 348
/usr folder, 135
deluser command, 168, 348
groups. See User groups.
/var folder, 135
hostname, specifying, 49
/var partition, 145–146
passwords, selecting, 49, 56
Vendor lock-in, 77
Ubuntu Forums, 329–334
Verisign, 8
usernames, for new user accounts, 49, 55–56
Version, choosing for installation, 36–37
From the Library of Wow! eBook

400
Index
Version control tool, 29–30, 324–325
Firefox, 279–280
Version information, printing, 346
Konqueror, 278–279
Vertical bar (|), pipe symbol, 137, 341
Web feeds. See RSS feeds.
VGs (volume groups), 151–152
Web forums, 221–222. See also Ubuntu Forums.
Video. See also Multimedia.
Web page editor, 106, 107
creating, 102
Web searches, Kubuntu, 275
DVD encryption, 100
Web sites
home theater software, 315
automatic content retrieval, 74
Netbook Edition, 302–303
bookmarking, 279
PiTiVi movie editor, 102
browsing. See Firefox; Konqueror.
playing, 99–102
Webmail, Evolution support for, 80
required codecs, 99
What’s Up Tonight?, 203
Totem media player, 99
who command, 348
watching, 99–102
Widgets, 257–258
Virtual company, 11–12
Wikis
Virtual computer. See Dual boot; Ubuntu Server
description, 223–225
virtualization.
online resources, 223–225
Virtual desktops, 69–70, 306–307
Wildcards, 349–350
ptg
VirtualBox, virtualization, 176
Window manager, alternatives. See GNOME-
Virtualization. See Ubuntu Server virtualization.
shell.
Viruses, 159–160
Windows
Visual themes. See Themes and backgrounds.
creating Ubuntu installation CDs, 40
Visually-disabled users. See Accessibility.
emulation, 139–140
visudo command, 168
filesystem, vs. Linux, 133–134
VMware, 174
installing Ubuntu from, 57
Volkerding, Patrick, 14
sharing filesystems with Ubuntu, 48
Volume control, 67
Ubuntu compatibility, 139–140
Volume groups (VGs), 151–152
Windows
grouping, 208
Wallpaper, 287. See also Themes and
listing, Netbook Edition, 300
backgrounds.
open, cycling through, 208
Warthogs
Windows Installer, 57
history of, 2, 9–10
Windows Media Format, restrictions, 95
software ideals, 10
Windows partitions
Warty Warthog, 2
accessing, 275–276
Wastebasket (trash), 70
mount points, creating, 136
Watching video. See Playing, video.
sharing with Ubuntu, 135–136. See also Dual
Web browsers. See also Firefox; Konqueror.
boot.
From the Library of Wow! eBook

Index
401
Windows programs, Ubuntu equivalents
saving documents, 77–78
My Computer, 63
writing a letter, 75–78
My Documents, 63
Wubi, 57
Network Neighborhood, 63
Office. See OpenOffice.org.
XDG Base Directory Specification, 273
system tray, 67–68
XDG directories, 273–274
Wine Windows Emulator, 139–140
Xen, virtualization, 176
Wireless network information, displaying, 346
Xournal, 304–306
Word
Xubuntu, 38, 314
documents, importing to Scribus, 195
XVM, virtualization, 176
Ubuntu/Windows equivalent, 278
xVM, virtualization, 176
Word processing. See also Scribus.
Word, 278
Yahoo! Mail, Evolution support for, 80
Word Processor, 278
Word processing, Writer
zcat command, 172. See also cat command.
choosing fonts, 76
Zeitgeist
file formats, 77
calendar bar, 209–211
in Kubuntu, 278
file management, 209
ptg
saving documents, 77–78
getting, 209
writing a letter, 75–78
installing, 209
Word Processor, 278
online resources, 208–210
Working directory, printing, 343
thumbnail views, 209
Workspaces, 69–70, 208
zeitgeist-daemon, 209
World atlas, 204–205
zeitgeist-datahub, 209
Worms, 159–160
zgrep command, 172. See also grep command.
Writer
Zimmerman, Matt, 238
choosing fonts, 76
zless command, 172. See also less command.
file formats, 77
Zoning, virtualization, 175
in Kubuntu, 278
z/VM, virtualization, 175
From the Library of Wow! eBook

This page intentionally left blank
ptg
From the Library of Wow! eBook

The Definitive, Authorized
Ubuntu Server Guide:
The Server Companion to
the World’s Best-Selling
Ubuntu Book!
• The complete guide to using the powerful Ubuntu
server capabilities that Canonical has been
aggressively upgrading and promoting
• Modern, easy-to-use best practices for deploying,
managing, and securing any type of Ubuntu
server
• Two disks contain the Long Term Support (LTD)
Ubuntu Server Edition 10.04 for both 32-bit and
64-bit versions.
ptg
The Official Ubuntu Server Book covers everything mere mortals need to know
to install, configure, and administer efficient, low-cost Ubuntu servers in any
environment. Ideal for both new and experienced Ubuntu and Linux
administrators, this book covers a wide spectrum of core admin tasks, including
automated Kickstart and preseed installation techniques; package management;
security; backup; monitoring; cloud computing; and even virtualization.
Readers will also find detailed, step-by-step recipes for installing and
configuring each leading type of server, including web, database, DNS, DHCP,
file, mail, and many others. Beginning administrators and power users can rely
on this book from the moment they decide to install and configure their first
Ubuntu servers. Advanced sysadmins and netadmins can save time with elegant,
streamlined techniques that fully leverage the major improvements to Ubuntu
and Linux administration that have been implemented in recent years.
From the Library of Wow! eBook