Cool down your Linux PC

Hey guys if you feel that your linux system throws a lot of heat and its battery expires very soon or you need some automatic power manager, here is the solution. We have got some laptop mode tools. Laptop mode tools is a package mainly designed keeping the power requirements of laptop machines. It helps in extending the battery life and enables the laptop mode in the linux kernal , letting your hard drive spin down.

The inner thing is that laptop mode is generally disabled by default. To reenable it we need to edit the file
/etc/default/acpi-support
and set
ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true.

The great thing is that this package is available in Ubuntu's repositories and can be installed directly from synaptic package manager or by typing these commands

sudo dpkg -i laptop-mode-tools_x.y-z_all.deb

and give the required root password. Before installing make sure that your linux kernel supports laptop mode. To check it see if this file exists

/proc/sys/vm/laptop_mode

There are other lots of tweaks available like
ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_ON_AC, ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_WHEN_LID_CLOSED,
DISABLE_LAPTOP_MODE_ON_CRITICAL_BATTERY_LEVEL.

These options can be changed by editing the file

/etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf

You can read more on laptop mode configuration here

man laptop-mode.conf

I hope next time you don't complain..... :P

Fixing MBR and removing Linux

Well its been a substantial gap since I've written my last post. People out there, when start trying Linux feel initial difficulties with it and may complain. Some say "Oh!! my wifi driver is not working and I can't get softwares for it or have trouble updating it!" and some say "I don't like the way it looks; windows looks good". They may install Linux dual booted with windows (Vista) but later may think of getting rid from it. So for the sake of sympathy with such people I am going to tell how to remove Linux without losing any data or any re-installations. First you need to know about MBR (Master Boot Record). MBR is the first 512 -byte boot sector and is the first sector of the hard disk. It is mainly used by the computer for

• Bootstrapping operating systems after the BIOS has been loaded
• Holds the primary partition table of system
• Identifying storage medias individually

So when ever we go for multiple boot an entry is made in the MBR, which includes the required information about various partitions in which different operating systems reside. This information is helpful to identify the different boot sectors and come up with a menu (Grub Loader). Grub Loader or Boot Menu enables the user to boot the OS of his choice when system starts. So when we dual boot our system an entry is automatically made in MBR containing information about the current operating systems (Linux and Windows) installed in the system.

Problem comes when because of lack of knowledge; inorder to remove Linux from our machine we formats the Linux partition along with the swap and end up with nothing getting booted. The reason is that the MBR resides in the partition in which Linux is installed, which gets removed when we format the Linux partition. So when system boots it doesn't have sufficient information. So in this case we need to fix the MBR. Just follow these steps :

1.Insert the vista cd and boot from it.

2.When the the install screen comes press repair windows





3.Open the command prompt and type the this command

Bootrec.exe /FixMbr

4. Reboot and you are done.


But at last I'll say that you need to give some more time when using Linux . There is a quote
"Linux is a user friendly OS ; But it's very selective in choosing its users.."

Installing Ubuntu Linux.....

People those who are curious about learning Linux and want to give a try to it but don't know where to start fro them I'll just try to organize things here for them. I'll try to give you all possible resources which can help them out in their learning process. Ubuntu is one of the famous and much more user friendly Linux distro out there and has got a very cool eye candy too. So we'll start with downloading Ubuntu.

1: Click here to download Ubuntu 8.10. You can easily burn
the ISO image to a CD.Take care while choosing your processor
architecture (i386 or x86 for all Intel based processors and x64
for AMD64 and Intel core 2 duo processors) .

2: Installation guide is here . After restart the login screen will appear an you need to give the user name and password which you decided while installation and after login the desktop will look like this.

3: After that you need to check for an Internet connection and need to enable the repositories. from panel click System>>administration>>Software Sources. It may ask for the password and will open new window with different tabs. Select all the check boxes(They represent the type of repositories). Move to next tab(Third-party software) and there will be two more default repositories from Canonical. You need to check them also and close. It will ask for an update and new packages will be getting added.

4)Then in order to install new software goto Applications>>Add/Remove and you will get a new window like Here you can see a long list of software divided into different categories. You can easily install new software. You need not worry about any kind of 'dependency' errors. So in order to resolve any dependency , you can install necessary packages from Synaptic Package Manager . And at last I want to assure every body that there are really cool software available in Linux as an alternate to any windows software.




I think this has been useful to for you guys and comments are invited. Keep reading keep learning and I'll keep writing...