iGuest

Alaura Alexandrite

Anthony Kaideth

First thing is what kind of online shop you want to put up? Do you need to shop overseas for supplies? What about the shipping? In this regard I would like to suggest to check on parcelbound.com, an online cargo forwarder;This is not a bad site(parcelbound.com)at all actually. Worked out better than I thought it would....I certainly can't complain about saving money. Delivery was quick and the items I ordered seem to be in good working order. So far so good....

nano/pico is for softies, nah it's actually pretty good and novice friendly, It may have some powerful features but I haven't used it enough to discover them. vi has kept me happy, although I remember first using it... now that was a nightmare but once you memorise all the commands, it just shows what persistent can do.I've added reading logs to my to-do list and probably logrotate so we don't store years of logs. Deciphering garbled text makes you happy? This is an area where I wish they were more simple and just said, [ERROR] I'm an error, fix me.You sure you don't want to write a topic on creating a VPS from scratch? I might beat you to it if you don't. Maybe CentOS with KVM.Cheers,MC

I like how people try to explain hacker and can't wait to hear it. It's should be more ensightful than watching the numerous people editting the wiki over at wikipedia. It really does hit some nerves for these people.Cheers,MC

I will start working on my web server tutorial next, I'll also be using CentOS 6.3 as well as Fedora 18 as the steps are pretty much the same but could contain slight differences. I prefer minimal installations which is how I've installed CentOS. Which means you can follow my User configuration and Setup guide to create the user and update the system, etc as I updated it to cater for CentOS as Fedora had one step in the process that was set by default, but not set in CentOS. So, that's why I've decided on combining both OS into the mix. Since you seem to be using it for production (anything that is live), I'll work towards making it suitable for production, since I usually only set up testing servers (little importance on securing it) and never really worry about allowing them through the internet but if you want to use it for production, then I'll aim for that. It'll increase the length of my tutorial though, which is good and should hopefully help others who want to create production machines. I can't guarantee it'll be setup like most hosts online, but it should be close. Cheers, MC

This tutorial will go through the basic steps of installing VirtualBox on Fedora 18 but instructions may be similar for other Linux based operating systems as long as you use the right package manager. We will also be installing another Operating System (I am using CentOS 6.3 released 9 July 2012) inside a virtual machine to show how we can use VirtualBox. What is VirtualBox? VirtualBox is an application that makes it possible to run multiple operating systems at the same time within your own operating system, this would be running multiple virtual machines. Your limitation to the number of virtual machines you can run is limited by the amount of disk space and memory you have on your system. VirtualBox can be installed on Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris as long as they are Intel or AMD (x86) based computers. How to Install VirtualBox? The easiest way to install VirtualBox is in a terminal type: sudo yum -y install VirtualBox This will find all the dependencies and install VirtualBox for you. How to Start VirtualBox? To simply run VirtualBox we type: VirtualBox & First Time Starting VirtualBox When you start VirtualBox for the first time you are presented with the introduction that explains a few simple steps to creating your new virtual machine as well as suggesting if you need help to press F1. Creating a New Virtual Machine To create a new virtual machine, press the Ctrl+N or alternatively, grab your mouse and click on New Name and Operating System This section requires you create a Name for your new virtual machine. You can call it what you like, but make it easily identifiable as if you have many virtual machines, you don't want to difficulty knowing which ones to run. I am calling mine CentOS 6.3 Minimal because that's the version of CentOS and also the type of installation I want to perform. I do not know if names can be renamed at this stage. I only use VirtualBox for testing out new operating systems and helping with guides so if you are curious about what other features VirtualBox has, I suggest you read their documentation. Choose the Type of your operating system. CentOS is Linux based which is the option I picked. Now choose the Version of your operating system. If it is not listed, pick one that closely resembles the type of your distribution. CentOS is not listed in the options, however CentOS is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so I picked Red Hat (64 bit) because it's CentOS 64 bit version that I want to install. After you have filled out everything press Alt+N and hit Enter (possibly a bug as the action was not performed but instead outlined/focused on the button) or grab the mouse and click on Next. Memory size This option allows you to allocate how much memory you want for your virtual machine. I recommend you keep it as default unless you know specifically how much you want to distribute. Press Alt+N or grab the mouse and click on Next. Hard drive This is where you can create a virtual hard drive which is disk space allocated to use for your virtual machine. You should be offered a recommended size which is OK for testing purposes but if you are going to be running it long term, you may want to configure this to have more space. There are 3 choices you can make: Do not add a virtual hard drive This option is when you need to create something that may not be offered by the basic wizard of this set up. You can do this and later set up your machine afterwards. Create a virtual hard drive now This is the default option and the one we will be using. Use an existing virtual hard drive file This option lets you use an existing virtual hard drive file. This is good for when you want to try other types of set ups on the same virtual drive or replace the current operating system. e.g. You can create multiple boot systems, if you want to test out booting multiple systems on a single drive or you can overwrite an existing drive with another operating system. Press Enter or grab the mouse and click on Create. Hard drive file type This lets you select the type of hard drive you want to use. The default is VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image) and the one I recommend. I am not too familiar with VirtualBox and have not looked into the different types of virtual drives and how they differ. Press Alt+N or grab the mouse and click on Next. Storage on physical hard drive This section lets you pick whether you want fixed sized or a dynamically allocated hard drive. What fixed size means, is that if you picked 8GB as the size of your drive, then it will take the full 8GB from your own hard drive space for it. This method works faster but can take a while to create. Dynamically allocated means that the hard drive will expand to the required amount. e.g. If your operating system is only 900MB, it will only use 900MB out of a potential of 8GB, it also means you don't need to have 8GB free, but if it can't expand, you may encounter problems. Every time you add more, the size grows. However, removing does not reduce the hard drive size. You also only have a maximum of 8GB, so it will not grow over that much. The default option is Dynamically allocated and that's the option I am going to use, because I do not think I'll use all the space up and I am not planning on keeping these virtual machines. Choose whichever option you like. Press Alt+N or grab the mouse and click on Next. File location and size Here you are asked to type the name of the virtual hard drive, can be the same as the Name you gave the virtual machine, or if you plan on using it for another operating system you could give it some sort of easy generic name, like vdi1, vdi2, etc. Call it what you like, I'm leaving mine as default. You also have the choice of selecting how lard you want your drive to be. I am leaving mine as default as I have chosen Dynamically allocated, I know it's not going to use the full amount and the size will increase when I add more files to it. Press Enter or grab the mouse and click on Create. Congratulations Congratulations, you have just created your first virtual machine. This is a blank system awaiting for you to install your operating system. Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager The screen you should see now, is actually the first screen from the start but without the introduction. You now have a virtual machine, so it is being displayed in the left, you also have a lot more options and can see a lot of settings for your virtual machine. To not get sidetracked from the purpose of this guide I am not going to go into detail about the settings you are seeing and am just going to focus on installing an operating system. If you would like to know more about these settings, refer to the documentation of VirtualBox. Booting your Operating System media If you have downloaded an ISO image of the operating system you are going to use, then you will be following the same steps that I am going to show you. If you are working with other type of media, then you will need to find out how to boot from that media yourself. With your virtual machine selected press Ctrl+S or alternatively click the Settings button. VirtualBox - Warning On my first attempt at doing this, I was presented with a warning saying: Failed to access the USB subsystem. And then it talks about how to solve the issue by adding your user to the 'vboxusers' group. So lets add our user to the vboxusers group. Inside a terminal do: sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers YourUserName Change YourUserName to the user you are using for VirtualBox. If your user is currently the active one you're using, you would be required to log out and log back in before changes take place. If you will not be using an USB media at this time, then we can proceed with the installation and can finish it first before logging out and back in. Settings Inside the settings you start at the General on your left side is Storage use the arrow keys to navigate to it or pick up the mouse and click Storage. Storage This screen shows the virtual IDE controller, virtual CD ROM and virtual drive interface. Press Tab till Controller: IDE is highlighted then navigate with the arrow keys till Empty is highlighted or alternatively, use the mouse to click on Empty. You should now be looking at the Attributes for the CD/DVD Drive on the IDE Secondary Master (Slave to the Primary Master, your virtual hard drive). Next to that is a CD with a drop down arrow, click on that and pick Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file... and then navigate to where you downloaded your ISO image, select it and then click on Open. If it is a Live CD/DVD select this option, otherwise ignore it. Press Alt+O or alternatively grab the mouse and click on OK to complete the settings. To start your virtual machine highlight it and hit Enter or alternatively click on Start First Running of Your Virtual Machine When you first run the virtual machine, you maybe presented with a number of different dialogs. Be sure to read them as they provide tips of how to escape out of your virtual machine, as virtual machines like to take control of keyboard and mouse while you're inside it, which means your host operating system in the background will not respond to them. The main one I use is Right Ctrl this gets you out of capture mode so that you can get out of the virtual machine. If you do not want to be reminded about these things click on the Do not show this message again, then press OK. From here on in, you're on your own. I believe I've provided enough for you to begin installing your operating systems, as right now the only steps left are to install your operating system. Before I leave you like this, when you finishing installing your operating system. Go back to the Settings > Storage and remove the ISO image from your virtual CD/DVD drive so that you will not be asked to install it on boot. You should now be able to run multiple virtual machines with many different operating systems on them now. This is a perfect way for testing out new versions of operating systems, or even completely new operating systems to get an idea of what they are like. However, do not judge performance, as that is related to the virtual machine and limitations it may have rather than your physical operating system. Cheers, MC

The suggestion about wearing gloves was not to enforce you to wear gloves but to test if it helped reduced noise. Finding out if it reduced noise could then mean that gloves helped, but they are not good due to climate. In which case you branch off to improve how you can refine gloves to make it suitable for your climate but also provide the level of noise reduction. Which may mean inventing stick on material to your fingertips as an example, may not be the best idea, but you continue it till you find a great idea. Instead of altering your fingertips, maybe keys made out of another material, fabric or some sort.Other things is covering your keyboard with a bag that you can fit your hands inside. This means noise should be capture inside of it and can only escape out where your hands are. Again, maybe over the top but I do like this topic.Basically I'm just trying to help you continue with the ways to improve this noise reduction. I like experiments I like seeing tests done and I like see results. These are how inventions come about and maybe it's not a million dollar invention, it may still be beneficial, because you're not the only one who has issues with this. Even if you invented a silent keyboard, you'd have great success with it.Cheers,MC

CentOS has Long Term Support of Core and also Long Term Use in Production which I think is even longer than Ubuntu's LTS. It's a community built enterprise distribution. This distribution differs a lot to those popular distributions like Mint/Ubuntu/Fedora. This is because if you're using it for enterprise you do not want to be upgrading to new versions every 6 months. It can costs businesses a lot to do this process, so reducing the upgrade and building stability to increase the use of production is their goal and patches/fixes will be backported, so that security bugs and problems will be fixed.This also means that when new versions of programs come out, they can be behind. I think it took Debian a long time to just get Python 2.7 which isn't released in the current version and is planned to be released in the next version. It usually their philosophy that if it's only adding features and not fixing security problems, there's no need to rush to it.The reason I recommended Debian and CentOS is because they are the two top dogs fighting for first position over which Linux distribution is used more as web servers. CentOS took over Debian at one stage, then Debian came back. These two seem to be at it all the time. Ubuntu is becoming another popular one, but this could be due to it's popularity and that it's easy to run your own web server but it's still far from reaching these two distributions.Although Linux popularity as a web server still does not out do Unix based web servers. It would probably be better for me to recommend Linux, since it's what we are more use to, even though Unix doesn't differ a lot, it's still a different beast.Cheers,MC

To be honest I never heard of it before either but I saw it on a standard installation of Fedora 18 which got me curious about it. So this is really just me showing my curiosity with it and why I don't know what some of the features are, this just means I was too lazy to read the documentation on it but everyone should read them.Boxes is quite good and is at this stage OK if you are not doing anything too dramatic like I'm trying to do. I am having a lot of trouble at this stage with going from minimal install (works perfect) then installing GNOME 3 as the desktop to start in (can't get graphical mode), because I'm not too familiar with how Boxes really works, so I'm trying to compare the difference in setup between my minimal install and my graphical install. So far I feel like I'm heading in the right direction, but still far from the mark but once I know how all the pieces fit together, it makes it easier to share how to do it.I already know how to install from minimal to GNOME 3 outside of a virtual machine but it is usually nice to be able to verify my steps again. Otherwise I have to rely on memory and I can definitely miss vital steps out because it all comes naturally when doing the process.At this stage, I still prefer VirtualBox but I have not tried minimal to gnome in this yet either, Boxes seems to be heavy on the resources and you can feel when it slowly gets unresponsive, still workable but delays in registering input from keyboard, etc. As I said Boxes is aimed at people who aren't system administrators, it easily does all the work for you. Which might be why it ain't suited for the steps I'm trying although I don't even think if I used virt-manager it would make any difference because I still need to understand how qemu/kvm work which I don't have much experience on either.Cheers,MC

manuleka,You do realise I'm going to write a guide on setting up a Web Server, also SSH and FTP. I'd be using Fedora 18 though, and the thing is, you can set it up without a GUI, so a minimal install would be perfect. Though I don't recommend Fedora, leading edge means security issues may not have been found yet so it's not a safe OS in that sense.If I was to recommend an OS for Web Servers, it would be Debian or CentOS, though I'd probably lean towards CentOS because it's based on RHEL and I like derivatives of RH, which is why I use Fedora. If you like Ubuntu, you may go with Debian. Either these two are both good for web servers. I would not use Fedora or Ubuntu, because they like to be updated with the latest etc, and that's just an opening for security problems.Cheers,MC

Oracle had been making hardware before the take over and were more known for their software. They even closed one of SUN's manufacturing plants. To stand up against IBM, HP and even Dell. I think that's crazy but I wish them good luck though I don't really have a problem with any of these giants, just hope they continue to do well and not get taken over.Oracle would be focusing a lot on Java as an important tool for getting into more smart devices. Currently Java runs on multiple things, even DVD players. So, the opportunities are endless.Another advantage is that they have MySQL now, as they was also owned by SUN Microsystem at the time, which could play a vital key to their own database.Cheers,MC

Shahkukhkhan all time number 1 in India.he is a living legend.he is god gift for our country.

Tutorial: Installing an Operating System on Boxes (gnome-boxes) the GNOME 3 Application Boxes (gnome-boxes) is a front end for remote or virtual systems similar to virt-manager. The difference being is Boxes is targeted to those who may not consider themselves as system administrators. I have not had much experience with Boxes or virt-manager, I was so use to using VirtualBox that I never had a reason to try an alternative. Since discovering that Fedora 18 standard GNOME installation came with Boxes, I thought I would try it out on my minimal installation guide which worked great so I thought I'll share how I configured my boxes setup in case others choose to go down this path with testing out other operating systems. This will not be a complete guide to the features it provides, but just a guide to how to install an operating system on Boxes. I am using Fedora 18 to install gnome-boxes as well as going to be installing Fedora 18 DVD in gnome-boxes as I have it already from my other tutorials that I did. You could use whatever Linux image you may have and hopefully have the same success I did. All commands are done in terminal. Installing gnome-boxes To install gnome-boxes we run: sudo yum -y install gnome-boxes Once it's finished downloading and has installed itself we are ready to use it. SELinux problems with Boxes gnome-boxes It might be a good idea if everyone does this command, unless they have turned SELinux off. SELinux can prevent the creation of boxes. If you get Box creation failed or Connection to "YourOS" failed. It can mean SELinux prevented Boxes. To fix this do: sudo setsebool -P virt_use_fusefs 1 This command can take some time to complete. For those interested in discovering how this problem was found and the fix for it. I used the audit2why program from policycoreutils-devel package like: sudo grep virt /var/log/audit/audit.log | audit2why Which found the lines having problems, as well as suggesting the solution to fix it. This is usually how I find out if SELinux is preventing me. I do not believe in turning it off just to avoid the inconvenience, it's suppose to be another layer of protection. Launching gnome-boxes To launch gnome-boxes we run: gnome-boxes & Stepping Through The Wizard Introduction When you first run it you should be viewing the Introduction of the Create a Box. Click on the Continue button. Source Selection We should now be at the Source Selection screen that asks for you to Insert operating system installation media or select a source below. We will be choosing Select a file, since I have the ISO stored on my computer already. Navigate to where the ISO is, select it and then continue. Depending on the type of ISO used and gnome-boxes understanding of the ISOs, it can skip a few steps here. With the DVD, it is not live media. I get taken to the Setup screen in case I would like to choose an automated install (Express Install On) or whether I want to do the installation myself. With Live media however, Boxes will usually skip to the review section because with Live media, you have a choice whether you want to install it or if you just want to check it out. You may only want to run the Live media instead of installing. You still have the option of installing it if you like but you'll do it in the same sense as if you booted the live media without using a virtual machine. So do not be alarmed if your next step is the Review and not the Setup, gnome-boxes is meant to make the process of installing operating systems as easy as possible. Setup In the Setup screen we are given the option to do an Express Install, which will set up the defaults for that operating system for you which you just need to provide a Username and Password and it'll configure it for you. I am not certain how it handles it for other operating systems, whether it's the same screen you'll get but with Fedora 18 DVD I can only say what I see about it. I am going to turn off Express Install (I believe the defaults for Fedora 18 will give me a GNOME desktop), so that I can perform a minimal installation to speed this process up. Review The review screen shows what System it is creating, how much memory it is going to provide and also the size of the disk. You can customise it even further if you like but the defaults are fine with me. So the next step would be to go ahead with installing now. Some Things To Know About Boxes If you need to get the mouse out of being held by Boxes, press Ctrl+Alt together and you can now take the mouse outside and access your own desktop items. In the top-left corner is an arrow [<] which when clicked minimises your virtual desktop, it does not pause the operation so whatever is happening can still continue. In the top-right corner is an arrow pointing corner to corner, this is the fullscreen mode. To get out of fullscreen mode, move your mouse to the top of the screen and the panel will drop down and in the top-right corner will be an arrow pointing to a window, that gets you out of fullscreen back into a windowed mode. The health/graph looking button is the properties settings for the current virtual machine you're running. If you have problems with your virtual machine not responding, the easiest is to minimise your virtual desktop with the top-left button and then click on it again. I've noticed these things myself and that was the easiest way to solve it till they fix these bugs. Boxes is relatively new so issues may appear like these. Shutting Boxes down without shutting down your OS, saves the current state of the OS so that you can resume back from where you left off. This is like the hibernate/suspend option. Right-Clicking on the Boxes in the taskbar you can force shutdown. Well I do not need to go through any more steps, the installation process is pretty much installing the operating system how you like and that is it. When you next see gnome-boxes you will be able to just click on the virtual machine and it'll boot up or start up from a snapshot. You can also right-click on those virtual machines, select them and click the cross at the bottom of the screen to delete them if you no longer want to keep it. I haven't discovered what the heart is for, but I'll learn about it the more I use gnome-boxes. Cheers, MC

There's a device called a Network USB Hub, which allows an auto/manual type switching by doing keyboard commands that switch it from 1 computer to another. I'm not sure how many computers it supports but I assume you're only limited by how many different keyboard combinations you could configure for it.I use to have a similar setup in my server room but using a 2xPS/2 and 1xVGA switching hub. This allowed me to have 1 monitor 1 keyboard and 1 mouse for all 7 servers that were in my server room as you really don't want 1 setup for each server, especially in a small confined room like that. These were all considered headless machines, except for the fact I had the switch. The only difference with your setup is that you have separate monitors and only want to share the keyboard and mouse which again is still possible as there wasn't really a rule to what you could share, if you didn't use a keyboard, you could manually switch from the device itself.For handling virtual machines, VNC could work well, another up and coming protocol is SPICE which I may write a guide on since it's related to gnome-boxes which is just a frontend over qemu/kvm. That is what I used in my tutorial on the minimal install. You can remotely connect to these virtual machines from a network. Apart from using VNC or SPICE for virtual machines, it's also used like Remote Desktop, allowing you to see the screen of the other computer.Cheers,MC

Well, the bash I refer to is GNU bash shell and common programs would also be GNU provided programs as well. So I'll try to touch on those as they work well together and help in different situations. Unfortunately I wouldn't have enough time to explain the other shells like C Shell and Korn Shell, but they all work similar so it's not hard learning one and being able to use what you learn on other shells. The programs should also be very common on variants of Unix/Linux so learning these should help you on any Unix/Linux based distribution. You will find on most Linux distributions that GNU tools are the most common, which is where I want to base my guides on, because I wouldn't really recommend using what wasn't provided as standard as that goes against my minimal philosophy.Cheers,MC

I like your evaluation on the situation. This is actually a good overview of a problem and possible solutions.Noise produced by the keyboard can be reduced. Most keyboards the keys are too high which means you need to press down more to recognise a key press. It also causes your typing to hit the keys instead of pressing them and is more apparent when you type faster because you may also lift your fingers a bit higher than needed. Also the hard surface just helps increase the sound because the impact is not reduced but increased, so softening the impact would help. If you could change your typing to a more gliding over keys than a lifting it can reduce the noise but the first thing would be a soft keyboard, with low keys, those that are used on laptops seem to be more suited and they also have full layout keyboards similar to those of laptops. They are very thin and light.Maybe you could experiment more but this sounds like a great thing to test out. Other ideas I could think of would be inserting some sort of packing into the keys so that presses can be turned into just little taps instead. Or even wearing gloves? The things to test are endless.Cheers,MC

Hi Ashaniqbal111, The issue you describe could be the grub bootloader which can present it's own grub prompt when something goes wrong with reading the boot information. Incorrect installation of the bootloader can also cause this, and I wrote many years ago how to reinstall grub from the grub prompt for one of the members here and I believe the method is still the same. If I locate it I'll post the link. I found the link, it seems it was a guide on Fedora Core 14 in which I encountered the grub prompt problem. Whether these instructions have changed or not, I am not sure, but usually if I'm writing a guide and encounter the issue and can fix the issue, I include that with my guide. Unfortunately, I will not be able to see them all but if others encounter problems, they should share them and we may be able to solve the problem together. If you are just seeing the flashing underscore that looks like you can type and doesn't present any type of information, this can also be a problem with the bootloader, in which it has silently crashed here after trying to boot up. Can happen with Windows as well, so the error is more boot loader specific, but usually restarting can get it back to normal. If not, restoring the bootloader can help. If however, you've reach the tty1 terminal, where it actually asks you to log into with your username and password, then this means you've reached the operating system but possible that your GUI failed to run. It could just mean you've set your boot up to runlevel 3, in which case you won't get a GUI. If rebooting does not get your gui back, you can try what yordan suggested startx, it may also explain what problems occured too. Cheers, MC

OK, I can write guides on doing backups which means I think I need to write it on the main two which is Deja Dup and Clonezilla because they both serve different purposes. For me though, Clonezilla is more suited for system wide deployment because it only allows partitions or drives to be restored in their saved state (you could not just get a single file, well, without a lot of effort) and can consume a lot more space. Deja Dup on the other hand, will back up files in locations you choose and can also update only differences, saves a lot of time, it also supports backing up to cloud servers, so I guess I'll have to write on creating a cloud server, as I don't feel like backing up over the internet.I will also include guides on samba for file sharing, etc, I might add printer sharing too if it'll allows me to share a pdf printer, as I don't actually have a printer.Thanks for the suggestions,MC

Hi Ashaniqbal111,Are you certain that it's the same connection it is asking for and not another one that it may have picked up? It sounds strange that it could pick up a wifi signal that requires authentification, so it sounds like it's picking up another one somewhere else.You can turn off wireless by right-clicking your network manager and clicking the switch that says turn off wireless networking. Also you may want to look around the network manager to see if you can find if any other wireless connections have been found in your area and if they have been set to automatically connect, sometimes non-protected wifi will be connected to as well, it might be that when your default goes down you have given it alternatives to use if that's the case.Maybe even removing all wireless connections that were detected and also remove the one you use and re-set it up could be an option.Unfortunately, I removed Network Manager to use wicd (which could be an alternative to use if the error persists) instead on our laptop due to slow shutdowns but this is on Linux Mint 13 and I never encountered such issues with being asked authentification when the router switched off.Cheers,MC

Hi Ahsaniqbal111,Linux Mint is a great distribution for people starting out on Linux. It improves on Ubuntu and also supports proprietary codecs out of the box.It's quite incorrect to say gaming isn't there in Linux, it is, most good games cost. The problem is that when you have popular titles on other platforms, that aren't written to be cross platform, is not a Linux fault, but more a developer issue. ID Software had created most their games for Linux after source code leaked on the internet and someone ported it to Linux which helped them realise that they could write portable code that worked on both systems. The Quake series was my favourite FPS at the time, although I don't really play games anymore. Anyways, Ubuntu seems to be bringing the gaming towards Linux, with having Steam support, so you should check that out when you have the chance.Ahsaniqbal111, fixing problems in Linux should not be your problem to fix. If issues are happening and you are uncertain why, it's always good to file a bug report or to check other bug reports to see if the same issue is reported. A lot of people ignore errors they come across, when really they should submit a report or seek help, it could be an issue that affects others. Without people knowing that you're experiencing errors they can't guide you nor can they fix unknown issues.The issue you describe with the laptop not being connected to the power is indeed a strange one. So what is your laptop specs? Brand/Model, CPU, RAM, Graphics, etc. Also what architecture for Linux Mint 32bit or 64bit?Have you updated your laptop to ensure it's not been fixed? One of the issues I had with Linux Mint is their GUI updater for updates did not work that well and would recommend against using it and suggest you use apt-get for updating (even better apt-fast).How does Linux Mint run when your laptop is started unplugged from the power? Does it still have these issues?So it sounds USB related or power related. You also mention that it never happened when you first installed Linux Mint, possible updates could have resulted in the new problem or software installed may have changed something, but the possibilities are endless. You will need to check logs to see if any issues have been occuring. Which I'll get to soon.The GUI equivalent of Task Manager is System Monitor. Software Manager is also the GUI you can use to check software that you have installed. If you want terminal equivalence I can provide that too.As for killing tasks, it's not really recommended unless you are certain that the program has frozen and you need to force kill it. If it's in a frozen state, or using an excessive amount of CPU, then it should be ok to stop the process.Most of the logs you would be interested in looking at would be found in /var/log, some logs worth looking at might be debug, kern.log and messages.Cheers,MC

I believe Oracle's main interest for the takeover was to get hold of Java, so OpenOffice was not really a big concern for them. It was good that OpenOffice was forked to LibreOffice even though a lot of the code from OpenOffice remains the same. I am not sure how Apache has helped OpenOffice as since all the changes, etc. I moved away from OpenOffice and stuck with LibreOffice.Most of the information for OpenOffice still applies for LibreOffice. It's quite difficult finding out how to go about developing for LibreOffice, while OpenOffice has a lot more information on the subject. It's usually interchangable as the differences maybe only relate to certain API calls.Cheers,MC

You could try telling people what is correct and what is not but too many people will use the term incorrectly and it will be hard to fix this.Even calling GNU an operating system may or may not be correct. An operating system really does need to have a kernel to work with otherwise it could not operate without one. GNU could be referred to as free software programs that help operate a computer. So it still needs a kernel, or instruction set that would allow it to run before it could even be called an operating system.I really don't like going down the path of correcting people unless it's necessary, as long as we know what they are talking about it should not matter if they use terms incorrectly. A few common terms that are used incorrectly came about from marketing people with advertising, so even a few computer terms are now used incorrectly.I like the fact that free software can replace the majority of most proprietary software, including the proprietary bios firmware. Now all we really need is the ability to create free and open designed hardware and we could start a complete revolution.Cheers,MC

When I had first rebooted the system I noticed an error message appear just before the grub menu showed up. The message was as follows: error: file '/boot/grub2/locale/en.mo.gz' not found If you notice this message we can easily fix this so it won't appear again. Since my language is English I will be using the English files to create this file. If you are using another language then you'll need to use those files to fix it for your language When you log in as your user do: cd /boot/grub2/locale sudo ln -s en\@quot.mo en.mo This links the en@quot.mo file as en.mo file which is the missing file error message that you get before grub. It does not matter if it is not gzipped compressed as it checks for gzipped, before checking uncompressed files. If changes happen to grub, I believe this needs to be fixed again unless it no longer shows. This should solve that problem. I recall this error from Fedora 17 as well, so I believe it has not been fixed. It's not a serious problem, but I don't like seeing error messages at all. Cheers, MC

Well I thought I'll get some ideas on what guides I could write about, so far I'm going to finish off the rest of the Fedora 18 minimal installation guide with installing a graphical user interface. I may even start adding things like HTML 5/CSS 3, Python, PHP and C++ eventually. I can't guarantee I'll get around to doing these, but it'll give me something to focus on while I'm at Xisto. Other guides in the planning that aren't really Fedora 18 specific except I'm using Fedora 18 to do it: Using yum Using vi(m) Using bash and understanding a few common programs to use with it like grep and others Creating an SSH server and connecting with SSH client includes reading SSH logs Creating a web server for testing using virtualhost to serve pages from your user directory includes web server logs Creating an FTP server for uploading to your own Web server includes reading FTP logs Using Oracle VirtualBox for running virtual operating systems Using gnome-boxes for running virtual operating systems Installing Fedora 18 Minimal install of Fedora 18 Adding and configuring user after minimal install, text web browser, updates and shutdown Installing GNOME 3 onto a minimal installation with suggestions of programs you may want to have Reading all sorts of logs Backing up with Deja Dup Backing up with Clonezilla Creating a cloud server includes reading cloud server logs As with all my guides, they are showing the steps that I have used to set up my system or do in my system. Some of the steps are being done at the time of writing the guides and have all been verified to work. Most OS installation guides were ran using virtualisation like virtualbox and gnome-boxes. So you'll know that you are getting something that should work and if you do have problems with the guides, ask and I maybe able to help you through it as every system can have differing results. Cheers, MC