Use your Android phone to control your Linux machine

 Use your Android phone to control your Linux machine

 If you watch lot of videos on your big computer monitor by sitting at some distance away from screen, it becomes a pain to get up each time and change the videos. Sometimes i wished I had a remote control for my computer. I  found that i could use a tool called WiFi Mouse to operate my computer remotely from my phone. This post is about how i could successfully configure and use WiFi Mouse. I am using WiFi mouse on an Android phone, but according to WiFi Mouse website Apple products like Iphone and Ipad are also supported. Using WiFi Mouse i could use my phone as mouse as well as keyboard for my computer. The user interface of  WiFi Mouse is pretty intuitive and easy to use. The only issue i found is that it is not supporting letters in CAPS when using keyboard mode on the App.

Steps to configure Android phone as remote control / remote mouse for your Linux machine

• Ensure that both the computer and phone are connected to the same network. My phone is on wifi and Linux system is connected to the LAN port on the same router. The router must always be "ON" for using the tool.
  
• Download WiFi Mouse App on your Android phone.  
• Install Mouse Server on Linux machine. My machine architecture is  64 bit and i use openSUSE and hence I downloaded and installed this rpm. You can check about Linux architecture using this post. You can create a local repo and install rpms using this post.
  
• Restart the Linux machine to ensure that Mouse Server has started up .
• Open  TCP port 1978 on the Linux Firewall. Check out this post for opening firewall.
• Now open the Wifi Mouse App on your phone. It will automatically show your computer / Linux machine if the Mouse Server is already running.
  

Default Screen when you open in WiFi Mouse on phone.

Denied Access Error if Firewall is not configured Correctly

(Failed to Connect:localhost)

Screenshot of WiFi Mouse After Successfully connecting to Linux Machine 

Note:- Solution tested on openSUSE Leap 15.2, GNOME SHELL VERSION 3.34.4

What is dconf editor, how is it useful ?

Dconf is

• low-level configuration system whose main purpose is to provide a backend to GSettings on GNOME 3.X desktops.
• dconf is a simple key-based configuration system. Keys exist in an unstructured database.
• dconf system can be considered as a kind of replacement for gconf system which was used in GNOME 2.X series desktop.
• dconf-editor is a Graphical Editor for Simple key-based configuration system which is dconf.

Install dconf Editor

• Configure Community Repositories in YaST, GNOME/openSUSE.
• Open quick command launch window (Alt+F2) and run command "gnome-terminal" to open terminal.
• In terminal run the command "sudo zypper in dconf-editor" to install the tool.
• You can also install it using YaST. Refer:- Install package/software using YaST Installer

Launch dconf Editor

• To launch dconf Editor open command launcher (Alt+F2) and run command "dconf-editor".
  
• Alternatively you can press left "Win" key or (Alt+F1) to open "Activities" and type "dconf" upon which you can see dconf Editor appearing grouped under "Applications".

dconf Editor Essentials

Find keys

 The various keys can be found by invoking search settings from top panel and then plugging in appropriate "search string" as shown below

 dconf Editor is a very useful configuration editing tool and the inner "workings" are as follows:-

• All the settings are categorised broadly under Schemas.
• All the Keys that logically belong together are grouped together under Schemas.
• The various key's values can be changed by double clicking on them and entering new values. To save new settings we need to press return key .
• To restore original values we can always use the "Set to default" button at the bottom of the tool.

dconf Editor Usage

The tool can be used for many purposes like:-

• Changing preferences/settings for many native GNOME applications settings. Example:- Get Totem working again after crash by changing schema "org.gnome.totem"
• Perform some advanced settings which is sometimes not possible to do from even the applications. It is possible to reduce inbox refresh time to 30 seconds in Evolution. In this case it is accomplished by changing schema "org.gnome.evolution.mail"

  Evolution interface allows minimum refresh rate of 1 minute

  

  dconf Editor allows reduction of refresh rate to 30 seconds.

  
• Change default directory where the screenshots are stored if "Print Screen" button is pressed. In this case schema that is modified is "org.gnome.gnome-screenshot"
  
• We can change mouse button modifier (Modifier to use for modified window click actions) from <SUPER> or "Win" key to <ALT>. You can use "Alt" key and click on any open window to "drag" it around. The schema to be changed in this case is "org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences".
  
• It can serve as a replacement / alternative for "gnome-tweak-tool" and "gnome-control-center". Most of the settings in Tweak tool are available / changed using dconf Editor.
• Change mouse from left to right click by editing the schema "org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.mouse" as shown below.
  

Why should we install mozplugger on openSUSE 12.3, GNOME 3.6 ?

 MozPlugger is a generic Mozilla plug-in that allows the use of standard Linux programs as plug-ins for media types on the Internet. MozPlugger will help the Mozilla / Gecko based browsers to handle a variety of file formats like pdf, office formats (xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, doc, docx), LibreOffice file formats etc. Without installing mozplugger we find that very few file types are present in "Helper Applications" window in both SeaMonkey and Firefox.

SeaMonkey with few content types in Helper Applications

Firefox also shows only a few content types in Application preferences

When i try to open a sample xls file hosted online SeaMonkey tries to download and open it outside the browser.

Download and Install Mozplugger

Step 1:- First step would be to Configure Community Repositories in YaST 

Step 2 :- Before we proceed to download the rpms we need to understand what type of rpms we need. 32 bit Vs 64 bit OS architecture in Linux

Step 3 :- Since i use a 64bit OS I downloaded the following rpms

• mozplugger-1.14.3-3.fc18.x86_64.rpm from link
• mozilla-filesystem-1.9-8.fc18.x86_64.rpm from link

Step 4 :- I dumped these rpms into a directory and Converted the directory into a repository using YaST

Step 5 :- I open terminal (Alt+F2 ==> gnome-terminal) and install mozplugger using command "sudo zypper in mozplugger"

Post installation lot of content types are present in Helper Applications window

Post installation, I can open same xls "inside" SeaMonkey . LibreOffice opens the file in embedded mode inside the browser.

Image resize and rotate using Nautilus on openSUSE 12.3, GNOME 3.6

 The Nautilus-Image-Converter is an extension that allows you to resize / rotate images from Nautilus. This extension is very useful when uploading images to websites (size limitations), creating thumbnails etc.

Installation & Usage

Step 1:- We need to Configure Community Repositories in YaST, GNOME 3.6, openSUSE 12.3

Step 2:- Launch command launcher(Alt+F2) and open terminal using command "gnome-terminal".

Step3:- Using zypper we can install the relevant extension using command "sudo -u root zypper in nautilus-image-converter".

 Step4:- Use the context menu (or) right click menu to "rotate" and resize images. The extension automatically appends a ".resized" and ".rotated" string to the names of newly created files, lest the original file gets overwritten.

Screenshot showing Nautilus "resize". Resize supports "resize to pixels", "scaling" and "custom size" functions.

Screenshot showing Nautilus "rotate". Rotate supports "pre-defined rotations" and "custom angle" functions.

Graphical frontend for Systemd on openSUSE 12.3, GNOME 3.6

For the UN-initiated :-

• systemd, init - systemd system and service manager
• systemctl - Control the systemd system and service manager

Sample usage of systemd :- Restart Network Service using Systemd

 If you are not comfortable with running systemctl / systemd commands from console / terminal then you can install "systemd-ui" which acts like a Graphical front-end for systemd system and acts like a service manager.

Install and Use systemd-ui

Step 1:- We need to Configure Community Repositories in YaST, GNOME 3.6, openSUSE 12.3

Step 2:- Launch command launcher(Alt+F2) and open terminal using command "gnome-terminal".

Step3:- Now, it is possible to install systemd-ui using the command "sudo -u root zypper in systemd-ui".

Step 4:- Launch the systemd-ui using the command "gnomesu systemadm"

Step5:- Using this tool you can

• Check Current status of the Service,
• View Service dependencies,
• Start Service,
• Stop Service,
• Restart Service,
• In-activate Service etc..

Dartmouth is out, Grab it now !

 We had sneak peeks at Dartmouth earlier here ( 1, 2, 3, 4) and it is out now and unlike Mantis did not face any hiccups in the development life cycle. I generally prefer to install any openSUSE version using Live ISOs rather than DVD as they seem to install faster than DVDs, but they do have a downside as they cannot be used for upgrading from older to newer version of the distro.This article is about preparing the ISO image, installing 12.3, things to do before installation and 30+ list of things to do after installing openSUSE 12.3 / GNOME 3.6.2.

How to prepare an ISO?

 I downloaded the openSUSE 12.3 GNOME live ISO which is available through download page. I usually download my ISOs through torrent as it is:-

• Much faster compared to direct downloads.
• More reliable as after downloading them i can "verify" or hash check the downloaded file to ensure the integrity of the ISO.
• Allows me to stop and resume downloads.

 I burned / wrote it onto a flash drive using SUSE Studio Image writer. For those trying to burn 12.3 Live ISOs onto CDs there is bad news. The new Live ISOs don't fit on a CD and size of ISO is nearly a GB. For example the 64 bit version of GNOME is of size (890 MB). They can be written onto DVDs though.

Why a fresh install is better?

I usually prefer a fresh install instead of upgrade because:-

• There is always a danger of incompatible libraries between old versions and newer versions on GNOME as well as openSUSE 
• Sometimes there are even architectural changes between various of release like usr merge and systemd etc..

What are the things to do before installation?

Verify downloaded media

 We need to verify the downloaded ISO image using the md5sum command and compare the output from terminal to that of the md5 files obtained from download page. Running the following command should give you an output like  "29725b..." which you can check against the content inside md5 files.

md5sum openSUSE-12.3-GNOME-Live-x86_64.iso

Read Release Notes

 We obviously need to read through the release notes before starting any installation. Some important pointers are:-

• There would be "No Network after Installation". You may need to reboot the machine once manually. Yeah this is a real downer :-(
•  Since 12.3 uses systemd you need to use commands like "sudo systemctl restart network.service" instead of "sudo /etc/init.d/network restart". An example is given here.
• Systemd: Cleaning Directories (/tmp and /var/tmp). By default, systemd cleans tmp directories daily as configured in /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf. Users can change it by copying /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf to /etc/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf and modifying the copied file. It will override /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf.

Backup data and settings

The following are the things to backup before proceeding with new installation.

• You obviously need to backup all your data files like videos, mp3s, text files, pdfs etc:
• You may also want to backup settings of the applications you have used before so that you need not loose any data and re-customize the applications on your new installation. To access your old application settings you should open nautilus (assuming you are using previous versions of GNOME) and then press "ctrl+h" and then navigate to your home directory. Some of the directories i would back up would be:-
• Notes from tomboy which are available in directory ~/.local/share/tomboy.
• Old stats folder for gkrellm available in directory  ~/.gkrellm2.
• Old bookmarks and browser (Firefox, Seamonkey) related settings which are present in ~/.mozilla.
• You can backup your thunderbird mails which are available from ~/.thunderbird
• Although not recommended you can also backup installed gnome shell extensions and migrate them to new desktop. The extension files are located in  ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions
• You may migrate your old themes from  ~/.themes
• You can migrate the custom application menus you created using alacrate from here  ~/.local/share/application.
•  If you  use FreeRapid then you may want to backup the settings folder so that you can retain history of your downloads. The settings folders are ~/.FRD.

Note:- ~ means /home/<profileName> i.e. /home/<profileName>/.FRD is the same as ~/.FRD.

Installation:-

 As usual openSUSE installation is pretty straight forward and what i am describing here applies to installation from a Live ISO. You need to plugin the USB into your system and while booting press F10 or whatever function key which allows you to get the "boot from media" menu. Here we need to choose the USB device.

• I would recommend booting into the LIVE session first and test a few things  by opening some applications, testing sound etc to ensure that the installation media is good.
• Then we can reboot and choose the "installation" menu to start the installation.
• In the first screen you can choose the right keyboard layout and Locale / Language settings.
• Then you can choose the place you live on the world map to set the time / timezone right. You may opt to disable the setting "Set Hardware clock to UTC...". This will cause issues if you dual boot with another OS. The other OS would always show UTC / GMT time.
• In the next screen YaST would offer you the best installation and partition setup based on your system configuration. You may choose to import your existing partition setup or even use the "Expert" option to do custom partitioning.
• In the next screen you can create a "user" and set the password for that user. You will also notice that this password would also be your root or admin user password.
• After you confirm the settings, the installation will begin and after a few minutes the installer will ask you to reboot and upon rebooting an automated configuration process takes over and does some magic and finally your will be logged into the DE which you have opted to install.

Things to do after installing openSUSE 12.3 / GNOME 3.6.2

Steps to open terminal:-

 In terminal you can easily run various commands to install various software. During installation you will need to provide the admin password that you have entered during installation. You can open command launcher (Alt+F2) and then use the command ("gnome-terminal") to open a GNOME terminal.

Steps to refresh desktop:-

 To refresh the GNOME desktop you press "Alt+F2" which opens the command launcher and use the command "r" and hit return or enter key. This will refresh / restart your GNOME 3.X desktop.

Notes about Zypper:-

sudo - It is a command used to elevate permission to "root" user level

zypper :- zypper is a package manager used in openSUSE . You may also read about Understanding "Package Management" in Linux

in :- this option is used to instruct zypper to install the packages following the option.

You can check Man for zypper or take a look here for more details.

01.)Configure Community repositories

 Setting up of the "Community repositories" is the first step in setting up our system. You can take a look at this article to configure the repos.

02.)Check For Updates

 To check for updates you can open the terminal and use the command "sudo zypper up" to check for available updates. You will be surprised about the number of updates that are waiting to get installed.

03.)Improve multimedia experience

 openSUSE installation doesn't provide codecs for any of the restricted multimedia formats like mp3. There is a famous "1 click Install" procedure to overcome this predicament here. The recommended one-click for gnome desktop is named "codecs-gnome.ymp". Once you click on the installer, you need to be ready with your mouse and click on "Agree / I trust" buttons that appears endlessly one after the other. Finally, we need to refresh the desktop.

04.)Install your backed up application profiles

 You can opt to move all the application profiles which you have backed up to respective folders on your new installation. Sometimes we may need to change ownership of these files and folders if you see an "X" marked on the file or folder icon in Nautilus. To do this we open a terminal and then we can apply the "change ownership" command on all folders and subfolders by running the command "sudo chown -R <profileName> /home/<profileName>/" in the terminal.

05.)Install Banshee

  The default audio jukebox on openSUSE 12.3 is Rhythmbox. But if you need Banshee then you can open the terminal and run the command. "sudo zypper in banshee  banshee-extensions-default". It integrates well with Media Player  Indicator which is a Gnome Shell Extension. The extension allows you to control playback, volume and also preview cover art of the track that is playing.

06.)Install Mp3 support

 If you don't have mp3 support even after using the above one click in step3 and you get an error that you need "Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) demuxer", then you need to install mp3 codec by running the command "sudo zypper in gstreamer-0_10-fluendo-mp3" in the terminal.

07.)Install Video player

 The default video player Totem is pretty good but not good enough. It is better to go in for a "mplayer" based media player so that most of the media formats are supported. You should consider using mplayer2 backend which claims to be better than standard mplayer backend. We can open terminal and run the following commands to install various video players.

Install gnome-mplayer

sudo zypper in gnome-mplayer mplayer2-as-mplayer (or) sudo zypper in gnome-mplayer

Install smplayer

sudo zypper in smplayer2 mplayer2 (or) sudo zypper in smplayer

Install umplayer

sudo zypper in umplayer mplayer2-as-umplayer (or) sudo zypper in umplayer

08.)Install Note Making application

 If you need to use stickies or note making application then we need to install Tomboy. To install tomboy you open gnome terminal and run the command "sudo zypper in tomboy" to install Tomboy. Once you open the application it will automatically detect the old notes from your old profile which you have migrated to "~/.local/share/tomboy".

09.)Install GKrellM

 By installing GKrellM you can get various stats like internet, CPU usage etc. To install GKrellM you can run the command "sudo zypper in gkrellm" in terminal. You can see your old internet usage stats if you had migrated your old stats to "~/.gkrellm2".

10.)Install offline dictionary

  Artha is a cool offline dictionary which has many advanced features and is very useful in day to day life. You can run the command "sudo zypper in artha" in terminal. You can access artha once it is started through the key combination "ctrl+alt+w".

11.)Install favourite web browser

 openSUSE 12.3 / GNOME 3.6 comes with Firefox as default browser. For installing any other browser you can run the following commands in terminal.

GUI based browsers

To install SeaMonkey (Web-browser, advanced e-mail, newsgroup and feed client, IRC chat, and HTML editing made simple—all your Internet needs in one application.) use "sudo zypper in seamonkey"

 To install Opera (really fast browser with inbuilt email client, torrent client and a irc chat client ) use "sudo zypper in opera-gtk"

 To install Chromium (open-source clone of infamous google chrome) use "sudo zypper in chromium"

 To install Epiphany (default browser for GNOME desktop) execute the command "sudo zypper in epiphany"

 To install midori (light weight webkit based browser) use "sudo zypper in midori"

Text based browsers

 Unlike browsers which support javascript, flash and other plugins  text browsers are as the name suggests can only render the text from any webpage. Many major sites do support text browsing. 

To install Links  use the command "sudo zypper in links"

To install Lynx  use the command "sudo zypper in lynx"

To install w3m use the command "sudo zypper in w3m"

12.)Install Bleachbit

 Bleachbit is essentially a clean up tool for your Linux desktop. According to the Bleachbit website it identifies and erases broken menu entries, cache, cookies, localizations, recent document lists, and temporary files in Firefox, OpenOffice.org, Bash, and 50 other applications. It is your Linux equivalent of ccleaner in windows. You can install Bleachbit in terminal using the command "sudo zypper in bleachbit".

13.)Install Image editor

  12.3 comes with GIMP pre-installed but, If you want a light-weight, basic image editor then you can go in for Pinta. Pinta is the Linux equivalent of Paint.NET on windows. To install Pinta you can execute the command "sudo zypper in pinta" in terminal

14.)Install Sun Java JDK / JRE / browser plugin

 openSUSE comes bundled with a community version of Java called openJDK and a browser plugin called icedtea-web. This should be good enough for most of the users but if you do need Oracle/Sun java then read on.

 Due to some licensing issues, Oracle (Sun) Java/ JRE could not be distributed through the official repositories of openSUSE, since openSUSE 12.1.

 You need JDK if you want to develop something using JAVA. If you just want to run some jars and some applets in the browser like Firefox then you need to install JRE and JAVA Plugin. Here is a official quick guide to install the newest and secure version of Java. For people who just want the software and averse to long installation procedures i would suggest installing them from user maintained repositories. openSUSE don't guarantee any stuff downloaded from user maintained repositories. I usually install Java from user maintained repositories and they work just fine. Before installing Oracle JRE you should remove openJDK by executing the following command in terminal.

sudo zypper rm -u java-1_7_0-openjdk icedtea-web

You can find "1 Click Install" links  for JRE 1.6 here. You can get JRE 1.7 here.

Similarly you can get JDK 1.6 here. You can get JDK 1.7 here. 

15.)Install GNOME Shell Extensions / Remove Annoying "Universal Access"

 According to GNOME site GNOME Shell extensions are small pieces of code written by third party developers that modify the way GNOME works. If you are familiar with Firefox Addons or Chrome Extensions , GNOME Shell extensions are similar to them. You can take a look at a few of the extensions in this post.

16.)Install Acrobat reader

 Evince is the default pdf document viewer for the GNOME desktop. It is already installed on openSUSE 12.2. For day to day purposes, Evince is good enough. But it is not rich in features like Acrobat reader. To install Acrobat Reader use the command "sudo zypper in acroread" in terminal.

17.)Enable desktop icons

 To enable desktop icons we need to make nautilus as desktop manager instead of gnome shell. To do this we should open the command launcher (Alt+F2) and use the command "gnome-tweak-tool" and open Advanced Settings tool. Here we can select "Desktop" in the navigation tree on the left and then turn ON nautilus as the desktop manager. You can optionally turn ON other options like "Computer Icon", "Home Icon", "Network Icon", "Trash Icon" etc...

18.)Enable location bar in Nautilus

 One can enable location bar instead of path bar in nautilus. The advantages of using location bar are that you can always see the full path of the folder you are in and also copy paste the same if required. we should open the command launcher (Alt+F2) and type in "gnome-tweak-tool" and hit return key. You can then select "Files" in the navigation tree on the left and then turn "ON" the required option as shown below.

19.)Enable minimize maximize and close buttons in all applications

 One can easily enable minimize maximize and close buttons in all application windows in GNOME Shell. To do this we must open the command launcher (Alt+F2). Then type in "gnome-tweak-tool" and hit return key. You can select "Shell" in the navigation tree on the left and then select the required option which is "All" in menu "Arrangement of buttons on the title bar" as shown below. One can also enable other cool options like date in calendar which gets displayed in top panel, configure shutdown options etc.

20.)Customize the Dash menu

 The Dash menu is the menu bar which appear on the left hand side of the screen if you press the left windows key on your keyboard. You can easily Add and remove items, rearrange items in the DASH. A detailed post about customizing the DASH is available here

21.)Add programs to start up

 You can easily Add and Remove items to start up of your GNOME session. Open the command launcher (Alt+F2). Then type in "gnome-session-properties" and hit the return key. In this window you can click the "add" button on the right hand side of the window which will in turn open up a new window where you can type in the command that will launch the relevant applications when the system starts up. I would typically add the following applications to the startup of my GNOME based system:-

• Network Monitoring Tool(GKrellM)
• Offline Dictionary(Artha)
• Note Making Application(Tomboy)

Adding items to GNOME session startup

22.)Change Themes

 Dark theme lovers can start rejoicing as "Adwaita" supports dark themes now. Dark theme support can be turned ON using the relevant slider as shown below in "gnome-tweak-tool".

23.)Change default applications

 If you need to change default applications on your desktop e.g.You want to make Opera default browser instead of Firefox then you should Open the command launcher (Alt+F2). Then type in "gnome-control-center" and hit the return key. This will open "Settings" where you can locate an application/applet by name "Details" under "System" category. Open "Details" and navigate to "Default Applications" on the tree like menu on the left hand side of the application. Here you can change the default applications of your system.

24.)Force applications to appear in openwith list

 If you want some rogue applications to appear in nautilus file "open with" list (Or) when you right click on a file then you essentially need to edit the launcher in GNOME 3 applications using Alacarte(menu editor) and add a %U after the command. For detailed explanation take a look at this post.

25.)Install archive manager

 Even though openSUSE 12.3 comes with a good archive manager in the form of File Roller we usually require archive mangers that have advanced functions

• Splitting the file into multiple parts and rejoin the split file
• Handle multiple file formats(7zip, xz, bzip2, gzip, zip, tar)
• Create self extracting executables
• Encrypt archived files
• Test archived files
• Accessible through right click in Nautilus

  J7Z is one such cool archive manager which satisfies all the above requirements and more. It has built in themes / skins too. To install J7Z we can run the command "sudo zypper in j7z" and then press return or enter key in a terminal.

26.)Install clipboard manager

 For power users who miss the GNOME 2.X clipboard applet which was sitting prettily on the panel and wish you had similar application on your GNOME 3.X desktop then Glipper or Parcellite comes to your rescue. To install Glipper run the command "sudo zypper in glipper" in terminal. To install Parcellite use the command "sudo zypper in parcellite" in terminal. Parcellite and Glibber automatically adds itself to the start up list and will start automatically when you boot GNOME, next time.

27.)Enable icons in buttons and Menus

To do this you can take a look at this post (GNOME Shell Context Menu Appearing Plain without Icons)

28.)Make things easy using Nautilus Actions

 Actions is useful in adding custom menu items to the right click menu and execute arbitrary commands. It provides a way to automate many day to day tasks like image conversion, opening Nautilus in admin mode etc.Why should we use Nautilus Actions?

29.)Change right click options on files

 This is about setting a list of open with applications and setting default applications for any file. For more information you can take a look at Changing right click options for files on GNOME 3.X desktop.

30.)Creating custom keyboard shortcuts

 You can use the "keyboard settings" tool under Activities(Alt+F1) and create custom keyboard shortcuts to run scripts,execute jars etc.. For more details you can take a look at Custom Keyboard Shortcuts on GNOME 3.x desktop

31.)Create custom menus or application shortcuts in GNOME

 In order to create a new menu in the Accessibility dropdown or add your own application launcher to the panel you can take a look at Adding custom menus or application shortcuts to GNOME 3.X panel

32.)Force some programs to appear in openwith menu

 You can follow the method described in step 29 or check out editing of launcher using alacarte in Force programs to appear in open with list on GNOME 3.x desktop

33.)Read through GNOME Cheat Sheet

  GNOME 3.X desktop have lot of cool inbuilt features like creating screen recordings, desktop refresh, theme refresh etc.. You can learn many thing by reading GnomeShell/CheatSheet

34.)Read about various GNOME 3.6 features

 Various GNOME 3.6.X features were covered by me through

• Details about GNOME Documents integration with Skydrive and Google Drive were dealt with in openSUSE 12.3 RC 1 GNOME 3.6
• Many Nautilus related changes and new features were covered in openSUSE 12.3 Milestone 1 GNOME 3.6
• GNOME Box and other features were covered through Quick Peek at GNOME 3.6

35.)DVD authoring tools

 Bombono DVD is a DVD authoring program for Linux. It is made easy to use and has nice and clean GUI (Gtk). To install Bombono you can run the command "sudo zypper in bombono" in terminal. It is very easy to create Video DVDs from individual video files using Bombono.

 36.)DVD Image Slideshows

 Imagination is a lightweight and simple DVD slide show maker for Linux. If you have a large collection of images and you want to burn them with a sound track this would be the go-to tool for you. To install Imagination you can use the command "sudo zypper in imagination" in terminal.

How to restart Network Service in openSUSE, GNOME Systemd version

 This is a Systemd version of earlier article How To Restart Network service in openSUSE, GNOME. The below methods have been tested and they work on openSUSE 12.2, GNOME 3.4.2. Systemd is the replacement for SysVinit based service management system.

Restart from terminal

 Open command launcher (Alt+F2) and through it open terminal (gnome-terminal) and then run the below command to restart network service.

sudo systemctl restart network.service

Restart from command launcher

 Open command launcher (Alt+F2) and through it open terminal ( gnome-terminal ) and then run the below command to restart network service.

gnomesu systemctl restart network.service

Note:- sudo elevates permission to super user level in a terminal whereas in GUI mode we need to use gnomesu

 For more information you can run Man command for systemctl (xdg-open man:systemctl) from command launcher (Alt+F2). To know more about Man command usage you may read through Demystifying Man

Configure And use Scanner on openSUSE 12.2,GNOME 3.4.2

 It is very easy to configure and use scanner on  openSUSE 12.2, GNOME 3.4.2 thanks to YaST.

Connect the scanner

 I own a HP scanjet 2300c flatbed Scanner. I connect the scanner to the power adapter. Then i use the USB connector cable to connect the scanner and the computer. I ensure that the light in scanner bed is glowing.

Configure the scanner in YaST

 I proceed to open GNOME Activities using left "Win" key or by pressing "Alt+F1". Then type in the search query as "YaST" and YaST should appear grouped under "Applications". On opening YaST we will be prompted to enter administrative password which we must provide.

 In YaST we need to locate scanner settings by searching for scanner applet.

 In the scanner configuration window it is recommended that we click on the edit button and reconfigure the scanner even though you may see a default scan driver showing up in the menu.

 In the setup wizard we can type in the scanner model and search for the relevant scanner driver and apply the settings using the "Next" button at the bottom of the window. The YaST wizard will save the settings and you can exit the Scanner Configurator by pressing the "OK" button.

Scan Documents

 In order to start scanning i go back to GNOME activities by pressing left "Win" key or by pressing "Alt+F1". Then i type in the search query "Simple Scan" and Scanner application will show up grouped under applications.

 I am using my old stamp collection as test subject and I placed the stamp album page facing the light / glass on the scanner. Then I click on "Single Page" sub menu under "Scan" menu and viola the scanner could scan the pages. Thank you openSUSE :-)

How to check which applications are using your bandwidth ?

 With default installation of openSUSE 12.2 , GNOME 3.4 it is difficult to ascertain as to which application is consuming how much of your internet bandwidth. We need to install an application / package called "nethogs" to check bandwidth consumed by each application. It is essentially a Network Bandwidth Usage Monitor.

 NetHogs is a small command line based 'net top' tool. It groups bandwidth by process. This tool makes it easy to identify programs that have gone wild and are suddenly taking up your bandwidth.

Install NetHogs

Method 1 (1 Click)

 Navigate to this openSUSE AppStore page and click on relevant 1 Click Install link to install the tool.

Method 2 (YaST)

 Using YaST you can add the appropriate repos and install the relevant packages. For more details about YaST usage, check out the links provided below.

Repo for openSUSE 12.1
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/network:/utilities/openSUSE_12.1/
Repo for openSUSE 12.2
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/network:/utilities/openSUSE_12.2/

Video demo on addition Of custom repo to YaST installer
YaST Installer Package Installation Video Demo

Method 3 (zypper)

 open command launcher(Alt+F2), open GNOME terminal (gnome-terminal) and then using zypper you can add the relevant repos and then install "nethogs" package.

Repo for openSUSE 12.1
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/network:/utilities/openSUSE_12.1/network:utilities.repo
Repo for openSUSE 12.2
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/network:/utilities/openSUSE_12.2/network:utilities.repo

Add repo
sudo zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/network:/utilities/openSUSE_12.2/network:utilities.repo

Install nethogs
sudo zypper in nethogs

Notes:- sudo is used to switch to super user mode; zypper is package manager; ar option adds repo; -f option sets the repository flag as auto refreshed; in option is for installation.

NetHogs Usage

 open command launcher(Alt+F2), open GNOME terminal (gnome-terminal) and then launch nethogs as shown below. NetHogs will clearly show you which program is using up your bandwidth.

sudo /usr/sbin/nethogs

Using Tor on openSUSE 12.2 GNOME 3.4.2

 Tor (The onion router) is a anonymizing overlay network for TCP. Simply put, Tor allows one to browse anonymously over the internet.

Tor provides:-

• Virtual tunnels that should theoretically improve privacy and security when browsing over the Internet.
• Low latency anonymous communication system.
• Proxying services to various applications on your machine using SOCKS protocol.
• Necessary abstraction framework that would make it harder for websites to figure out and find the actual geographical location of your machine.

Tor is not:-

• Proxy server.
• Totally foolproof way of staying anonymous online.

How can you help Tor project ?

 You can help or contribute back to the project by making the Tor network large enough so that it can handle all the users who want privacy and security on the Internet. Configure your Tor to relay traffic for others.

Install Tor on openSUSE 12.2 GNOME 3.4.2

Step1:-

 You may need to "configure community repositories" and include packman repos using YaST.

Step 2:-

  We need to install packages called tor (main application) as well as torsocks (enables applications to use "Tor") to use the application efficiently.

Install using CLI

 Open application launcher (Alt+F2) and open terminal ("gnome-terminal"). After completion of step 1 all we need to do is install the relevant packages using zypper as shown below.

$sudo zypper in tor torsocks

Notes:-
sudo - runs command as super user,
zypper - package manager on openSUSE,
in - instructs zypper to install the packages

Install using GUI

 To locate YaST installer on GNOME 3.X desktop, you can use the left "win" key or "Alt+F1" key combination to open "Activities" window. In this window you can start typing a search query like "install" when YaST installer will show up grouped under "Applications" as shown below.

 After opening YaST you can select the relevant packages and click on "Apply" button to finish the installation.

Starting Tor

Start Tor as daemon:-

 If you want to start  Tor as a daemon / service  (running in background) then you can follow the following steps:-

Open YaST

To locate YaST administrative tools on GNOME 3.X desktop, you can use the left "win" key or "Alt+F1" key combination to open "Activities" window. In this window you can start typing a search query like "yast" when YaST settings application will show up grouped under "Applications" as shown below.

Open RunLevel Edior

 In YaST "Administrator Settings" window you can search for "RunLevel" editor and open the same. This is a System services tool which can be used to set Tor as a daemon.

Setup Tor Daemon

 After opening System Services you need to switch to "Expert Mode" by selecting the radio button at the top of the tool. Then we need to locate the "tor" service and set it up to start at appropriate RunLevel, using the check boxes at the bottom of the tool and click "Ok" button. This will ensure that the next time system starts / boots up, "Tor" would already be running.

Starting Tor from Shell Activities

 If you don't want "Tor" to start along with the system and want to start it as and when its is required, then you can easily add it to "Activities" menu or launcher.

 First we open command launcher (Alt+F2) and launch "alacarte" menu editor.

 In Alacarte we can add a relevant menu item as shown below. To check status of Tor when it starts up, it is better to set the application "type" as "Application in Terminal".

 To locate "tor" on GNOME 3.X desktop, you can use the left "win" key or "Alt+F1" key combination to open "Activities" window. In this window you can start typing a search query like "tor" when "Tor" will show up grouped under "Applications" as shown below.

Setting up browser to use Tor

Use Torify command

 After starting Tor as a daemon or through GNOME Shell Activities, we can use the commands "torify" to enable almost any application to use Tor proxying service and connect to the internet. The command to open w3m text browser using Tor is as follows:-

$torify w3m http://ip.nefsc.noaa.gov/

Screenshot showing w3m opening a webpage on the left and Tor running on the right inside GNOME terminal.

Configure Socks proxy in various browsers

 By default Tor is accessible through port "9050" and network address "127.0.0.1". It is easy to Setup Tor as Socks proxy in SeaMonKey and other Gecko based browsers like Firefox  by opening "about:config" through address bar and by settings the following values:-

network.proxy.socks_port: 9050
network.proxy.socks:127.0.0.1
network.proxy.share_proxy_settings:true
network.proxy.type:1

In SeaMonkey you can also set the Socks proxy using the menu, Edit ==> Preferences ==> Advanced ==> Proxies ==> Manual Proxy configuration ==> Advanced button ==> Generic proxy. Here we set "Socks Proxy" as "127.0.0.1" and "Port" as "9050.

Screenshot of SeaMonkey showing Socks Proxy settings configured through "about:config" as well as "Preferences".

Screenshot showing setting up of setup Socks proxy in Opera using "opera:config" alias "Preferences" editor.

Is Tor working properly ?

 In order to check whether Tor is working properly or not, you can use the link (What's My IP Address?) and check whether you see different ip addresses in the browser each time Tor is restarted.