How-To: Install Google Earth on Linux
Surprisingly, installing Google Earth to your Linux Desktop is relatively easy to do (same instructions apply to Macs). And once installed… a lot fun to use – especially its newest feature, Google Sky, for space exploration.
Instructions:
- Download Google Earth from http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html (you’ll be downloading a package called GoogleEarthLinux.bin)
- Fire up your Terminal and cd (aka change directory) to your Desktop (or whichever folder you downloaded the package to)
- From the command line type: sh GoogleEarthLinux.bin
Once you’ve completed all three steps, Google Earth will automatically install itself into a folder in your user directory called google-earth, which you have the option to change (see instructions below), and will create shortcut links on your desktop and in your home folder to launch the application. In case you don’t find the program useful, you can uninstall it by double-clicking the uninstall file in the google-earth directory.
[Advanced] Instructions for All User Access:
The instructions are the same as above except you need to use sudo (or root). MORE »
Popularity: 63% [?]
How-To: Kill Misbehaving Applications and Scripts (aka Processes) Under Linux
Ever have your PC freeze up and not know what to do? The following should get you out of a bind and back to normal without having to do a hard (and harmful) reboot.
Scenario #1: X Windows is still up and running but a certain application/script has frozen or is slowing down your PC.
A. [Basic] If you’re Linux distribution is using GNOME, Go to System > Administration > System Monitor and click on the Processes tab. Once there, look to see which process is hogging up your CPU resources, click on the culprit, and then click End Process. Hopefully that should be enough to get everything back to normal.
B. [Advanced] If you prefer to use the Terminal, type top at the command prompt. This will give you a dynamic view all your running processes via a command line interface. Again, look for the culprit hogging up the CPU resources and note the PID (aka Process ID) number. Next, type k and you will be prompted to enter the PID to kill. Type the number and see if the command kills the process. If yes, use Ctrl+c to exit top. If no, read on. MORE »
Popularity: 49% [?]
How-To: Use Ekiga VoIP Client for Handling Your Gizmo SIP Account
Out of curiosity I wanted to see how easy it would be to setup Ekiga (installed by default on Ubuntu and many other Linux distros) to manage my Gizmo account/service. As it turns out, it’s quite easy. So, if you’re into using free/libre software over closed source software, this guide is for you.
Instructions:
1. Open Ekiga and go to Edit > Accounts
2. Now in the Account window click +Add
3. Enter the following settings into the Account Information pane:
Account Name: Gizmo
Registrar: proxy01.sipphone.com:5060
User: 1747169XXXX (your 11-digit SIP number — find it in Gizmo by clicking Account > My Profile)
Password: YOURPASSWORD
Authentication Login: 1747169XXXX (your 11-digit SIP number)
Registration Timeout: 3600
To make pc-to-phone calls, just enter the full phone number, MORE »
Popularity: 61% [?]
How-To: Dual-Boot Windows and Ubuntu with Two Drives
A while back I wrote a popular post for eHomeUpgrade detailing how to dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu on two drives. And to this day I still get questions on the best way to do this. Simply put, I recommend using two drives (which are relatively cheap these days) instead of partitioning one drive and risking Windows getting upset by changes you make to its drive size, edits to its boot loader, or just overwriting what you have in the Windows partition by accident when you install or add a Linux distro.
Instructions (the quick and easy way):
1. Install Windows on a separate hard drive (make sure that it’s setup as the PRIMARY using the drive’s jumpers) and leave the second drive unplugged.
2. After that’s done, connect the second hard drive and change the jumpers on the first hard drive (Windows) to SLAVE and make the Linux drive PRIMARY (both drives should be connected at point). Next, install Ubuntu.
3. What should happen: Ubuntu will automatically configure GRUB so that you can boot into Ubuntu by default (1st drive mounted as hd0) and Windows (2nd drive mounted as hd1) as an option. Note: when Ubuntu configures GRUB this way it will automatically trick Windows into thinking it’s the PRIMARY drive (the only way it will work) when it really is NOT.
Here’s a glimpse at what Ubuntu is doing to GRUB to make this magic work MORE »
Popularity: 70% [?]
What the.. Flickr Dropped Most of My Photo Sets When It Migrated Me From Pro Back to Basic
After clicking a link in my blog which pointed to a Flickr photo set, I found out that my group of images no longer existed – well, at least in the set that I originally created. Curious to find out what happened I started poking around and remembered that I let my Pro account expire this month. It turns out that Flickr will drop all your photo collections (including your page layout showing collections) when your Pro account expires. I get that. But, in doing so, Flickr also (I expect inadvertently) dropped around 30 of my sets, leaving me with only 6!
I’ve got to say I’m a little peeved. I put a lot of work into creating those sets and now they are showing as non-existent. The funny thing (or maybe not so funny) is, if you know the original link to one of your “missing†sets, you are presented an empty set that still contains your set description and title (see above pic). Go figure? MORE »
Popularity: 9% [?]
Woohoo! GNOME Nautilus Has Received a Huge Speed Boost Improvement
I’m not quite sure when it happened (this morning or a couple days ago), but the Ubuntu team pushed out a new update to Gutsy 7.10/GNOME 2.20.1 that drastically increased the speed of Nautilus’ file seek functionality – a big bugaboo of mine. Here’s what I mean: Previously it took Nautilus a good 5-10 seconds on my 3Ghz PC with 1GB of RAM to display my listing of 1,400 images (and growing) every time I wanted to upload an image to my website or view contents from that particular folder. Well, guess what? It now takes one second (or a matter of milliseconds) for the upload listing and a second or two for the thumbnail view when first opening the folder.
I can’t even begin to tell you how pleased I am about this update, but I can say that my productivity is going to shoot through the roof because of it. Great work Nautilus developers!
Side note: I also noticed, when in list mode for uploads (as in the above pic), that one can now toggle on/off hidden files through the right-click menu (interesting), but one still can’t right-click or double-click a file to rename or delete it like in Windows.
Popularity: 25% [?]
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About
Alexander Grundner is a San Francisco Peninsula based web publisher who spends most of his time tracking down news stories for eHomeUprade, attending technology events, or working on his next big project.
For fun he likes to stay active outdoors, take photographs, shoot video, hack together PHP/Python code, play with Linux, and test new technologies.
