Our LUG has been included in the official list at linux.org . Check it out here
Linux Users Group, Manipal is organizing a workshop on “Using and Managing Linux”. The Event is scheduled to be held on 8th and 9th February, Friday and Saturday. The venue is NLH 303 and all the people interested in attending are expected to be seated by 5:30PM sharp. Everybody is requested to bring their laptops fully charged.
The people who will be conducting the workshop are:
The first three people will take the responsibility for the first day and the last two for the second. On Saturday we expect our sponsor- Swaroop Hegde to be present at the venue to give share with a few words on what he feels on the future prospects of this group.
For More Info, check these links
LUG is a collaborative project with people coming from all walks of life to work to work together for a common project or cause. Inspired by Wikipedia’s success as a collaborative project we thought of having a wiki at our site so that we can have a platform for working together. We can have vast details and ideas put up on the wiki for everyone to view later.
The Wiki’s URL is http://wiki.lugmanipal.org
At present I have put up FAQ’s and Upcoming Section for People who want to know deeply about the events. Previous events are also aggregated so that people who missed out can derive out of it.
I end up my post here, hoping for your reponse. This is not a monologue but a mutual talk or discussion. Comment back and we will see how much you are sincere 
Hello everyone,
LUG Manipal has a new home, LUGManipal.org (and also lugmanipal.com which redirects to the main domain). Who am I and why am I here, you’ll know very soon.
–
Swap
After a long awaited time, finally the Install fest started off on 24th January. Since this Install Fest was scheduled to be held for two days. Yesterday we people guided the people to defragment their hard disks, scan disks for erros, laptops batteries charged all those necessary stuffs.
We had collected DVD’s from all of them who wanted to get fedora installed on their laptops. Why we choose Fedora? Nice question! This is due to the fact that the Xserver driver for ATI graphics cards provided to first years had bugs. The graphical interface would never come up. Nothing to blame Linux in it, it just incorporated the drivers which it is provided. To get the graphical interface running we had a script that installs a driver from a third-party software provider. The Driver would be put up soon as possible. Hope all of you have it on your C: drive. The driver is in the folder called “script”.
We had collected some 47 DVD’s from people, burnt Fedora and returned them today for installation. We had some 30 Ubuntu CD’s which we too tried to distribute, but as it was late, all people didnt get it. We have lots of pics too, please dont mind, it from Mobile Camera. Bear with us.
Keep checking this site usually, we will roll out lots of nice information,HOWtos and “Tips and Tricks”. Spare out some time to read the earlier posts and comment as you feel.
Some finally here comes an awaited event which all of you might be waiting “Linux Install Fest”. Many of our friends have approached with their laptops/desktops to get Linux installed on their system. We came up with a noble idea, “Why not organize a Install Fest where all people can bring their laptops and we can guide them into this stuff”. This would help both of us, we dont have to install again and again and the second- people would learn to install it themselves.
The Install Fest is scheduled to be held on Wednesday and Thursday at NL303 from 5:30PM. As stated in the previous line, the fest is split into two days. First day will be a pre-install fest. People will be guided into the basics of installation and what they are required to do. They will be directed to get their hard-disk de-fragmented and Scandisk run on all partitions for the second day. People are asked to bring a blank DVD on the first day and get the Linux distro written on it there itself or submit so that they can get it back the next day. In the latter case, we will write the distro on the collected DVDs. Please mention the architecture of your laptop - whether its is 32-bit or 64-bit on the DVD submission time.
The second day will be the real installation day. The DVD which had been collected will be given back to the people so that they can continue with the installation. The distro which will be given is Fedora 8 (32 or 64-bit as you choose). If anyone wants any other distro to be installed on his/her laptop, they will also be guided, just bring the CD/DVD yourself. Installation may take an hour or an hour and a half the maximum. Please bring your laptops fully charged on both days.
Notes:
Linux Users Group
Manipal
presents
LUG Manipal is holding an Install fest on 23rd and 24th January to guide people in installing Linux on their systems. Complete basic guidance will be provided.
On pre-install fest, people will be guided about the installation, uses of Linux and more queries which they have.
On the second day installation will be done.
Students who missed out the first LUG meet are specially invited in this pre-install fest day.
NOTE : Please bring your Laptop on both days.
Please bring a BLANK DVD on Pre-install fest meet i.e. 23 Jan, Wed.
Venue: NLH 303
Date: Pre-Install Fest on 23rd January(Wed)
Install Fest on 24th January (Thurs)
Time: 5:30PM
Charge: FREE
Website: www.lugmanipal.co.nr
Contact:
Ankur Shrivastava: 9901726825 queries.lugmanipal@gmail.com
Manish Sinha: 9844411705
Ayush Pranshu: 9448984741
THE MYTHS
The first problem which people face while switching over to Linux is the “unavailability of softwares” as they claim. They just try to run their windows installer/setup file and end up with frustration saying “Linux is so incompatible!” Is it really so? Linux is not a clone of Windows. Then how come you expect your softwares built specifically built for windows to run on Linux. Linux has its own OS architecture, filesystem, binary file format and many more.
GETTING LINUX ALTERNATIVES OF YOUR SOFTWARE
So if you really want to switch to Linux, try to get accustomed to Linux alternatives of your software. If you were using Winamp, the alternative is XMMS or Audacious. The replacement of Internet Explorer is Firefox and IceWeasel though Firefox is also available for Windows. It would be better if you spend a week or two using softwares which are available for both Windows and Linux. Some of the examples are:
Firefox- an award winning and largely loved Web Browser
Thunderbird- a portable Mail client
VLC- a highly portable and excellent Media Player
Pidgin - Multi protocol Instant Messenger
Abiword - a lightweight Word processor
OpenOffice - An office suite, installed by default on most Linux distributions
FileZilla - an Open Source FTP client like CuteFTP etc
THE EASE OF INSTALLING SOFTWARES
Installing softwares on windows is claimed to be very simple. You just need to Click on Next and Next and Next. Why click Next so many times if you can install a software with just 2-3 clicks? That even when on windows you have to google desperately on the net to download your software? People usually think that installing software on Linux means compiling from source. I claim this to be a big myth! A really big one! That’s not the case. You also get pre-compiled software packages to just double-click and start, and the better thing is that you wont have to click Next a hundred times.
SOFTWARE PACKAGES
In Linux softwares come as packages. They are not installers in real sense, they contains data which is taken up by the packages installer and now its the packages installer which takes care of the further task. This prevents the package from harming the system if it has some malicious code. It is the work of Package installer to check that malicious code is stopped from executing. Probably the biggest drawback for windows method of installation is the executable installation method, viruses and other malwares may attach themselves to setup files which get executed when you try to install them.
In Ubuntu we have a package manager called APT which is an abbreviation for Advanced Packaging Technology. This utility takes care of all the packages listed on your system. There is another term called repository known as repo in short. Repositories are actually sources of packages, call it as a storehouse. When you add a repository to your package manager and update the list, it fetches the index/list of the softwares present on that repo. It now shows up on the Package manager. Now if you select to install that package it will be fetched from that repository and installed on your system.
A repository can be available anywhere. It can be on a CD, on a website, or a folder on your hard disk.The official Ubuntu repository is very large containing more than 20,000 packages, so one point is very clear “Most of the packages you need will be in the official repo”. This means you wont have to compile any software from source.
There are many package managers available, others being Red Hat Package Manager which is used by Red Hat and its derived distros. Ubuntu is derived from its father distro called Debian which was one of the pioneers in the development of Linux.
METHOD OF INSTALLING
There are two ways of installing any package - Command line way and Graphical way! Its upto you to choose between the two. Each have their own plus and minus points. Graphical method is recommended for a beginner but everyone should have atleast a basic knowledge of command line to deal and cope up with disastrous situations. This is not windows and you wont be reinstalling Linux even in worst situations.
The plus point with graphical method is that its really easy for a beginner to start using and installing any software package. The minus point is that we have to click on search, enter the package name, click on OK, when list comes, select the package, click on Apply and then again OK. It may take time and if you are a bit comfortable with Linux and want to do all these stuff quickly you may prefer command line.
Using command line you may have to just type one command and the software installation starts. You dont need to search,OK, Apply and all those headache. The biggest drawback with this method is that it is a bit tough for a beginner who has never even seen the world of commands on windows.
A Point to note: In future in life you may get stuck up anywhere and may ask help from an expert. Dont expect him to give solutions in graphical mode, rather you will get the solution in commands. The reason is quite obvious - “Why would he type so much like “Click System”, then Package Manager, then enter password and all those long long methods”. You may even get stuck somewhere and say that you didnt find that option. To get over this problem too commands come to rescue. Just copy-paste the command to your terminal, no hassles even, if he tells to give the output, just copy-paste back the output. Its so simple, a single command did all that was required even though you might have found that command very absurd and unusual to look at.
SOFTWARE UPDATES
In windows you had needed to update each application separately, this is not the case in Linux. Here updates arrive via the central “Update Manager” just like “Windows Update”. Unlike windows software updates, kernel updates, security patches and software patches, all comes via this method. If you had installed a software say “ABC” from a official repository “XYZ”, then when an update arrives on that repo, the Update Manager fetches the index of the updates and notifies you. This is an excellent way rather than checking and updating each software manually
Well after going through a large number of guides like this i finally thought about giving guide at cchtml a try, well the hings mentioned are really great but not all steps are needed so here is a simplified version
Here i assume that you have not done any of this step before and are doing it for the first time but if that is not the case then this might not work for you.
Ok so first step installation of drivers, there are two steps for this as mentioned in the cchtml wiki one automatic and other manual, for automatic you need to enable the restricted repositories by going to System>>Administration>>Software Sources, and the typing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-generic restricted-manager
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
which will install the drivers by downloading them from net, if you dont have the bandwidth to download that much you can go for the manual install where we will build those file, here i assumed that you have copy of the ati drivers .run file which if your Ubuntu is installed by me could be found at “/”, to build we need to install certain packages
sudo apt-get install module-assistant build-essential fakeroot dh-make debhelper debconf libstdc++5 linux-headers-generic dkms
to build the packages type
sudo bash ati-driver-installer-8.443.1-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Ubuntu/gutsy
in the directory where you have the ati-driver-installer-8.443.1-x86.x86_64.run file, this is the latest file at the time of writing but you might have a different file this will work with any driver after 8.38, as they have AIGLX support anyway now we need to install the packages made type
sudo dpkg -i xorg-driver-fglrx_8.443.1-1*.deb fglrx-kernel-source_8.443.1-1*.deb fglrx-amdcccle_8.443.1-1*.deb
when you do that you might be asked
Configuration file `/etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager'
==> Deleted (by you or by a script) since installation.
==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
What would you like to do about it ? Your options are:
Y or I : install the package maintainer’s version
N or O : keep your currently-installed version
D : show the differences between the versions
Z : background this process to examine the situation
The default action is to keep your current version.
*** compiz-manager (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ?
just answer Y to the question and proceed, once this is done you now need to edit the xorg.conf file type
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
and replace
Section "Device"
Identifier “Generic Video Card”
Driver “vesa”
BusID “PCI:1:5:0″
EndSection
WITH
Section "Device" now just restart the X server but pressing Ctrl + ALT + Backspace, all done this will give you the Basic 3D effects but who is satisfied with that we need more so we will go for installing Compiz settings manager, for this type
Identifier “Generic Video Card”
#Driver “vesa”
BusID “PCI:1:5:0″
Option “VideoOverlay” “on”
Option “OpenGLOverlay” “off”
EndSection
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager gcompizthemer subversion
svn ls https://svn.generation.no/emerald-themes
now accept the certificate and fetch the themes by going to System>>Preferances>>Emerald Themes Manager,
to enable 3D effects go to System>>Preferances>>Appearance then Visual Effects select Custom and edit your settings by Preferances
now you are all set to blow everyone up with your Linux box’s 3D effects enjoy
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