Most of the time, installing software in Linux is a breeze. Package management utilities like Apt, Portage, and Yum have made software installation in Linux even easier than it is in Windows (in my opinion at least). If you know what you want, you simply tell your package manager that you want it, and it’ll find, download, install, and configure your new package for you.

Sometimes, however, the package doesn’t exist in your distribution’s repositories. Often, in cases like that, your only option is to download a tarball (usually .tar.gz, .tar.bz, or .tgz) which contains the source code for the program that you have to compile yourself. While it may be a little intimidating at first, compiling from source is normally a quick and easy process. Today, we’ll learn how.

There are times when it is just quicker, easier or even necessary to use a graphical application, and there are also times when you might be away from the computer that has your crucial applications installed. Whatever the scenario, Linux and other operating systems running an X server have the ability to forward a graphical application through SSH. Following a few simple steps, you can run a remote application in all of its full graphical glory.

One thing that I love about Linux (and Ubuntu) is that it is fully customizable and I can configure it to the way that I want it. Previously, I have already illustrated its flexibility by showing how you can transform Ubuntu Hardy and Intrepid into Mac OS X. Today, let’s bring a step further and see how we can transform Kubuntu Jaunty to Windows 7 in 3 simple steps.

In this tutorial, we will make use of the Vistar7 – Windows 7 transformation pack to perform the transformation. This transformation pack has a nice collection of Windows 7 themes and comes with an installation script to make the whole transformation a breeze.

For those who are using Ubuntu Jaunty, you will notice that there is a change in the way the system notifies you to upgrade software. In the past, an icon will appear on the system tray whenever there is new update available. In Ubuntu Jaunty, instead of showing the icon, the update manager will now pop up the window as and when it detects new update. While this is a good way to grab the user attention and get them to upgrade to the latest software version promptly, it can be pretty annoying for many, especially when you are in the midst of your work. To make it worst, if you close it without updating, it will keep on popping up in regular interval until you have upgraded your system.

Luckily, you can turn off this pop up feature easily and switch back to the old icon-appear-at-system-tray mode.

Everytime after you have reformatted the hard disk and reinstalled the Linux distro of your choice, the one troublesome thing that you need to do is to re-download all your applications and restore all the settings. This is made worst when your wireless connection just don’t work with the newly installed distro. How are you going to download all your applications when you can’t even connect to the Internet?

APTonCD aims to solve this problem by backing up all your packages into a Cd/DVD. You can then install your applications right from the CD/DVD. If you want to save up on CD, you can even store the data as an iso file and restore your system right from the ISO file.

For many years, editing digital video in Linux was not an easy task.  Linux users have long sought a nonlinear video editing solution that was both powerful and easy to use.  Kdenlive is the first video editor for KDE to combine both of these critical aspects into one package.  Its easy drag and drop functionality combined with powerful features make Kdenlive the number one video editor for KDE and arguably the most complete, user-friendly video editor for Linux.

A lot of games out there have some form of command prompt, often just for entering cheat codes. You know the type – you hit some function key and a bar drops down from the top of the screen letting you enter commands or codes or whatever else. Well some clever folks have taken that design and applied it to the command prompt in your Linux desktop. You can get a fully featured, skinnable terminal with split-screen views and all at the touch of a button. Yakuake is just such a program. It’s been around for a few years but has remained below the radar for most Linux users.

The Bourne Again Shell, better known as bash, is the default for most Linux distributions. It’s extremely powerful as far as command shells go, and holds all kinds of nifty tricks for those willing to learn. One of the best features is, in my opinion, the command history system.

There are many options to use with the bash history, some of them I use nearly every time I open a command shell. Today I’ll be covering some of the most useful aspects of the history, but I certainly won’t be able to cover them all.

In most Linux distro (including Ubuntu), the keyboard combo Ctrl + Alt + Backspace is often used as a shortcut key to restart X. However, in Ubuntu Jaunty, this keyboard shortcut was disabled, “to reduce issues experienced by users who accidentally trigger the key combo”, as quoted by Ubuntu.

I don’t know how many people will find this a welcome improvement in Ubuntu. Personally, this has caused me a lot of inconvenience as I always depend on it to get myself out of a nasty crash.

For those who wanted to restore back the Ctrl + Alt + Backspace combo, here’s the way:

You would be hard-pressed to go anywhere or even watch television without hearing some reference to “Twitter”, “tweets”, or “tweeting”.  From your cousin in Iowa to Shaquille O’Neal, all types of people from all walks of life have taking a liking to Twitter.

Whether or not Twitter will become a technological standard as email or just a passing fad, remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that if you want to use Twitter while it is hot, you will probably want some type of client so that you do not always have to open your web browser and go to Twitter.com.

For KDE there are a few options, but there is one that I have found to be superior to them all.  Keep reading, or if Twitter has convinced you that you can only process 140 characters of information at one time, scroll to the end of this article.