If you have installed Ubuntu Intrepid as a virtual machine in your Virtualbox, you will find that the mouse integration does not work, even after you have installed the guest addition.

If you are having this problem, here’s the fix:

First, make sure that the guest addition is already installed inn your Ubuntu Intrepid guest.

Open a terminal, type

gksu gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Add the following lines to the end of the file. Save and close

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Configured Mouse”
Driver “vboxmouse”
Option “CorePointer”
EndSection

Restart the computer. The mouse integration should work now.

I am not sure how many of you like the default usplash screen of Ubuntu, but I am definitely one of those that dislike it and find it dull and boring. I prefer to have some images that are beautiful and able to make my first impression (when turning on the computer) a pleasant one. First impression does count, isn’t it?

Splashy is a splash screen application that can be used by anyone to create and configure their own usplash screen on a Linux (and FreeBSD) machine.

In this tutorial, I will go through the steps for you to create and install your own splash theme with splashy (and gsplashy).

Cairo dock is a Mac OSX dock-like application that you can install in your Linux machine. One of the advantage that it has over other docks is that it does not require any compositing window manager to work. Even on a low-end PC, it will still work fine. This is not possible for docks like Avant Window Navigator which depends on compositing manager (such as Compiz) to function.

If you are using a PC that does not support any compositing manager, or you wanted to try out alternative dock for your Ubuntu machine, follow this tutorial to install and configure Cairo Dock on your Ubuntu Intrepid.

This is an updated version of my previous post Turn Ubuntu Hardy into Mac OSX.

That post was written six months ago and many things have changed during this period of time: release of Ubuntu Intrepid, newer Mac4Lin theme, better globalmenu applet etc. As such, I have decided to rewrite this tutorial for the Intrepid platform.

Disclaimer: This tutorial was based on Ubuntu Intrepid and Mac4Lin RC1 themes. I don’t guarantee that it will work on other distro or other version of Ubuntu.

Virtualbox released their latest version 2.1 last week. If you have not upgraded your existing copy of Virtualbox, I would advise you to do it now.

There are several new features in Virtualbox 2.1.

• Support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems – If you have a 64-bit processor, you can now install/run a 64-bit virtual machine on a 32-bit host. For those who wanted to test out software compatibility on a 64-bit OS, this is the best way for you to do so.
• Experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL – If you have a graphics card that can support OpenGL, your Virtualbox VM can now make use of your accelerated 3D hardware to run 3D graphics. Potentially, you would be able to play 3D game on your VM. This means that Linux users will be able to play 3D Windows game on a Windows guest without having to dual-boot Linux and Windows. Currently, this 3D acceleration feature is only supported in Windows XP or 32-bit Vista guest.
• Full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots – Virtualbox 2.1 is able to support VMDK and VHD virtual hard disk format. This means that you can now use your VMware hard disk or Microsoft VirtualPC hard disk in Virtualbox without any need for conversion.
• Easier implementation of Host Interface networking – In the past, implementing Host Interface networking requires you to install and configure TUN/TAP. With this new feature, you can easily configure your VM networking to pass through the host interface rather than NAT. By using the host interface, your VM will appear to the host as a network drive connected via a network cable. You can then set up a file server and share files easily between the guest and host.

QEMU is a CPU and process emulator which allows you to create virtual machines that can run on any platform. QEMU manager uses this emulator to virtualize Linux on windows systems. In this post we show you how to create an Ubuntu virtual machine on Windows using QEMU manager.

It is a misconception to think that all the emails in your Gmail account are safe and will be there forever. In the events that Gmail is down, or for some reasons, you were banned by Google, you won’t be able to access all your emails and all of them will be gone forever. To prevent such incident from happening, you might want to backup your mail in your Gmail account to your system. Come to think of it, you backup your system regularly because all the data and files in your computer are important to you. If your emails are important to  you, shouldn’t you do a backup too?

Gmail-backup is an application that allows you to backup/restore your Gmail. It has an easy to use interface and few configurations are needed to get it to work. Other than backing up your emails, you can also use it to migrate your mails from one Gmail account to another.  This tutorial will teach you how to backup your Gmail account in Ubuntu Intrepid.

After countless hours of configuring, tweaking, installing new applications onto your Ubuntu system, the last thing that you want to do is to reformat and start everything all over again. Remastersys is here to save you all this trouble. Remastersys is a simple and easy to use application that allows you to easily clone and backup your Ubuntu system so that you can quickly restore your computer to its previous state in the event that it crashes.

There are two thing that Remastersys can do:

1. To do a full system backup, including all installed applications, their settings and your personal data, to a live CD or DVD. You can use this live CD or DVD to restore your system or to install it in another computer. You can also bring it around and use it everywhere as a Live CD.
2. To create a custom distributable copy of your current Ubuntu system and share it with your friends.

Terminator is a simple program that allows you to load multiple terminals and arrange them in grid. It is useful when you need to access to various terminals at the same time.

Some of the feature in Terminator includes:

• Arrange terminals in grid
• multiple tabs
• drag and drop reordering of terminal
• keyboard shortcuts
• config file to override gnome-terminal setting

Adobe Air for Linux is finally out of beta. With this latest version, you will now be able to install Air applications that previously don’t work in Linux. It put Linux users on level ground with Mac and Windows and you won’t see anymore Air apps that are only Mac or Windows compatible. In addition, this Adobe Air for Linux is compatible with Flash 10, which means you can install the Adobe Air app right from the website, rather than download the installer to your system and use the Air application installer to install. The support for Flash 10 also marks a great step forward as it now allows Linux users to access to media intensive applications and apps that use digital rights management (DRM).