SUSE LINUX U SER G UIDE
Edition 2005 Copyright © This publication is intellectual property of Novell Inc. Its contents can be duplicated, either in part or in whole, provided that a copyright label is visibly located on each copy. All information found in this book has been compiled with utmost attention to detail. However, this does not guarantee complete accuracy. Neither SuSE Linux GmbH, the authors, nor the translators shall be held liable for possible errors or the consequences thereof.
Welcome The SUSE LINUX User Guide was written to introduce the Linux operating system and its wealth of applications to Linux novices. Get to know your choices for a Linux desktop and learn how to configure and control it. Despite its aim towards novices, it still provides a variety of information helpful for the experienced user. The SUSE LINUX User Guide consists of six major parts featuring the following aspects of your SUSE LINUX system: Introducing Linux Get started with Linux.
Multimedia Linux offers many players both for video and audio media. You can also use Linux software to create and edit your own movies or music recordings. If digital image processing is your scene, try GIMP, which easily rivals Adobe Photoshop. Easy-to-use scanning applications and album software for your digital photo collection are also provided. Excursions Similar to the DOS shell, a Linux system offers a powerful shell environment that can be used to interact directly with the operating system.
Konqueror has been enhanced with information about tabbed browsing and other small improvements. See Chapter 10 on page 151. There is a new Firefox chapter. See Chapter 11 on page 157. The chapter about digital cameras has been updated and expanded. It contains more information about Digikam. See Chapter 16 on page 215.
Contents I Introducing Linux 1 1 First Contact 3 1.1 Logging In and Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.1.1 Introducing GDM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.1.2 Introducing KDM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.2 The User Concept of Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 1.3 Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.3.1 Desktop Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3 1.7.2 Retrieving and Applying Software Updates . . . . . . . . . 22 Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 1.9 Networking and Mobility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 1.9.1 Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 1.9.2 Mobile Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Using the Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Getting to Know Linux Software 31 2.
3.3 3.4 3.5 4 3.2.10 Assistive Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 3.2.11 Sound (System Alerts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 3.2.12 Default Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 3.2.13 Sessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 File Management with Nautilus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 3.3.1 Navigating in Nautilus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 3.3.2 File Management . .
4.3 4.4 5 Power Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 4.2.8 Regional & Accessibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 4.2.9 Security & Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 4.2.10 Sound & Multimedia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 4.2.11 System Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Konqueror as a File Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 4.3.1 File Preview . . . . . . . . . . . .
6 5.4.2 Frequently Asked Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Wikipedia: the Free Online Encyclopedia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 5.6 Guides and Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 5.6.1 SUSE Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 5.6.2 Other Manuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Usenet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Office 107 The OpenOffice.
7.4 7.5 8 Encrypted E-Mail and Signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 7.3.4 Folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 7.3.5 Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 7.4.1 Adding Contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 7.4.2 Making a List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 7.4.
8.4.3 8.5 9 III Adding Address Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 8.5.1 Scheduling an Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 8.5.2 Adding Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 8.6 Syncing Data with a Handheld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 8.7 For More Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11 Firefox 11.1 11.2 11.3 157 Navigating Web Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 11.1.1 Tabbed Browsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 11.1.2 Using the Sidebar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Finding Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 11.2.1 Using the Search Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 11.2.2 Using the Find Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
IV Multimedia 175 13 Sound in Linux 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 177 Mixers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 13.1.1 KMix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 13.1.2 The GNOME Mixer Applet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 13.1.3 alsamixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 13.1.4 Look and Feel of Mixer Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 13.1.
14.4.1 Importing the EPG Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 14.4.2 Sorting the Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 14.5 Watching Digital Video Broadcasts with xawtv4 . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 14.6 Webcam Operation with gqcam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 14.6.1 Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 14.6.2 Snapshots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 14.6.3 Command Line . . . . . .
Kooka—A Scanning Application 227 17.1 The Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 17.2 The Final Scan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 17.3 The Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 17.4 The Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 17.5 Optical Character Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19.1.8 Archives and Data Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 19.1.9 mtools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 19.1.10 Cleaning Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 19.2 19.3 19.4 Users and Access Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 19.2.1 File System Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 19.2.2 Modifying File Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 19.2.
Part I Introducing Linux
1 First Contact First Contact This chapter guides you through the first encounter with your freshly installed Linux system. Learn all about the different components of your system environment. After this crash course, you should be fit to use and enjoy your SUSE LINUX system. 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 Logging In and Out . . . . The User Concept of Linux Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . File Management . . . . . Applications . . . . . . . . Printing . . . . . . . . . . .
This chapter focuses on the installed system. It does not cover questions regarding the installation or hardware configuration procedures under SUSE LINUX. These procedures are covered in-depth in the Administration Guide and some of the most frequently encountered problems are dealt with in the SUSE LINUX FAQ at the end of this book. 1.
1 First Contact Figure 1.1: A GDM Login Screen change the session type manually. If you change your session type manually, you will be asked whether the changes should be applied to the following sessions or whether they should be made default for all future sessions. Actions Choose some system-related actions, such as shutting down the system, rebooting it, or configuring the login manager. To terminate the session, choose ‘Log Out’ from the ‘System’ menu.
Figure 1.2: A KDM Login Screen Session Type Determine the session type. Make changes only if you want to use a session type other than the default (KDE). Future sessions are automatically of the same type unless you change the session type manually. Menu ‘Remote Login’ enables you to log in on a remote machine. ‘Shutdown’ either turns the computer off completely or reboots the system. To terminate the session, choose ‘Logout’ from the main menu.
1 parts of the system. Normal users lack these privileges. First Contact All users including the superuser have their own home directories where all private data, like documents, bookmarks, or e-mail, are stored. Write access to these home directories is strictly limited to their respective owners. Folders in a home directory holding sensitive data can also be protected against read access by other users.
Figure 1.3: An Example Desktop panel The panel is a bar, typically located at the top or the bottom of the screen, that holds the menus, the quick launch area, a notification area or system tray, some little helper applications, and, in most cases, also the taskbar (called window list in GNOME). It is designed to provide all vital information needed about running applications or the system and to provide easy access to some important functions or applications.
quick launcher The quick launcher is part of the panel. It holds the icons for the most important functions or applications to enable you to start them without going through the applications menu. notification area or system tray The rightmost part of the panel holds the system clock, the volume control, and several other helper applications. 1 First Contact of all virtual desktops available and provides a means to switch between them. The taskbar is part of the panel.
1.3.2 Configuring Desktop Components Almost all desktop components can be configured individually. Right-clicking the respective element opens its context menu. To illustrate the procedure, we provide some examples. Tip Controlling the Desktop Configuration Both GNOME and KDE feature a Control Center providing central access to all key configuration options of the desktop environment. Refer to Chapter 3 on page 47 or Chapter 4 on page 69 for details. Tip Configuring GNOME Desktop Components Procedure 1.
1 Procedure 1.3: Creating a New Desktop Icon (a) Right-click the desktop to open the context menu. (b) Select ‘Create Launcher’ to open the appropriate dialog. (c) Enter ‘Name’, ‘Generic Name’, an optional ‘Comment’, and the ‘Command’ to execute. Determine whether the application should be run in a terminal and check whether ‘Type’ is set to the appropriate value, which is ‘Application’ for commands. First Contact 1.
2. Choose ‘Configure Desktop’. A dialog opens that allows the modification of the desktop settings ‘Background’, ‘Behavior’, ‘Multiple Desktops’, ‘Screen Saver’, and ‘Display’. 3. Choose ‘Background’ and determine whether your settings should be applied to one specific desktop or to all. Select a background image, disable background images, or start a slide show. ‘Options’ offers several settings for the positioning of the background image, the background color, and the blending of colored backgrounds. 4.
(g) Apply your changes and leave the dialog with ‘OK’. 3. Add a new device icon: (a) Right-click the desktop to open the context menu. 1 First Contact (f) The ‘Properties’ dialog consists of three tabs: ‘General’, ‘Permissions’, and ‘Meta Info’. Set the name and icon of the file in the ‘General’ tab. Change permissions in ‘Permissions’. ‘Meta Info’ lists line, word, and character count and the format of the new file. (b) Select ‘Create New’ ➝ ‘Link to Device’.
new hardware item by selecting it and clicking ‘Configure’, which starts the appropriate YaST module after you provide the root password. Clicking ‘Details’ reveals all information present for the specific hardware item. As soon as new hardware is connected and recognized, a pop-up announces this new hardware. 1.3.4 Switching Users Both GDM and KDM allow you to switch between different user accounts on the same system. You can stay logged in while other users work on your system.
1.4 1 File Management 1.4.1 First Contact A central part of your desktop environment is a file manager application, enabling you easily to create, access, and manage all files on your system. Traditional file management in Linux would have been done via the command line, requiring some deeper knowledge of several commands to list, create, delete, or edit files and their properties. A file manager provides a graphical and more intuitive way to handle these tasks.
Learn more about the Linux file system concept and find a more comprehensive list of directories in Section 19.1.2 on page 246. 1.4.2 Different Flavors of Your File Manager Apart from organizing all your data and previewing almost any type of file, your file manager can act as a “quick finder” for personal data, system information, and network services. These modules are part of your standard desktop.
1 First Contact entering /. Refine your search by adding more search criteria. Click ‘Show more options’ and select any of the criteria offered there. It is even possible to use regular expressions or wild cards. As soon as you enter all data, hit ‘Find’ to launch the search and see the result in the bottom part of the window. Depending on the scope of your search, the whole process may take a considerable amount of time.
. The third way - F2 in lowercase letters. Alternatively, start this dialog using Alt to launch an application is to open a shell and enter the command at the shell prompt, also known as command line. Tip Missing Applications If an application could not be started from the menu or the command line, you need to install it from your SUSE LINUX CD or DVD. See Section 1.7.1 on page 22 for details. Tip 1.6 Printing Printers can either be connected to your system locally or via a network.
1 First Contact Figure 1.4: Managing Print Jobs with GNOME Cups Manager Start KPrinter with the command kprinter from the command line. A small window opens in which to choose a printer and edit the ‘Properties’ of your print job, such as page orientation, pages per sheet, and duplex printing. To specify the file to print, the number of copies, and various other options, click ‘Expand’ at the bottom left.
Figure 1.5: Filing a Print Job with KPrinter Start KJobViewer from the main menu or with the command kjobviewer from the command line. A window like that in Figure 1.6 on the next page opens, listing all the print jobs queued on your printer. As long as your print job is not active, you can edit it. Do this using the entries of the ‘Jobs’ menu. If, for example, you want to check if you sent the correct document to the printer, you can stop the job and resume it if you decide to print it.
1 First Contact Figure 1.6: Managing Print Jobs with KJobViewer you need the document. ‘Filter’ enables you to switch between various printers, toggle completed jobs, and limit the view to your own print jobs by selecting ‘Show Only User Jobs’. The current user is then displayed in the top right field. ‘Settings’ ➝ ‘Configure KJobViewer’ opens a configuration dialog. Here, determine the maximum number of print jobs to display.
1.7 Basic Administrative Tasks In SUSE LINUX, YaST handles the system installation and configuration. The following sections introduce some frequently needed functions of this tool. Refer to the Administration Guide for a detailed description of YaST and background information about system administration. 1.7.1 Installing New Applications To install a new application, start YaST from the main menu. Provide the root password when requested to do so.
1.8 Security 1 First Contact installed), and other (other patches available for update not relevant to any of your installed packages). Security updates are marked in red and are preselected along with the blue recommended patches. Accept this proposal to keep your system consistent. Click ‘Accept’ to apply the updates. For more information about the YaST Online Update, refer to the Administration Guide.
1.9 Networking and Mobility GNOME and KDE offer several applications for working in a network environment or using a mobile computer. It is much more convenient and much easier to click a small icon to connect to or disconnect from a network than to manually run some script. Monitoring the power state of your mobile computer via a small icon is easier than watching obscure system messages. The following sections introduce some of these little helpers, but many more are offered by your desktop environment.
1 The connection has been established. An error has occurred. If a connection has already been configured with YaST, use ‘View Log’ to identify the reason for the error. The menu can be accessed by right-clicking the KInternet icon. First Contact Data is transmitted to or from the Internet. The connection is not yet active, but will be established as soon as a request is made. Right-click the KInternet panel icon to access its configuration menu.
Warning Cost Control Note that DoD only makes sense if you have a flat rate Internet account. If that is not the case, connecting and disconnecting all the time can become very costly. Warning If you intend to use a wireless network card as your connection to the Internet, configure it using YaST as described in the Administration Guide and make sure that the device activation in YaST is set to ‘User Controlled’.
1 First Contact click ‘Start YaST’ to launch the YaST network module for wireless network devices. Figure 1.8: KInternet: Status of Wireless Link The ‘Current Connection’ tab allows you to monitor the state of your current wireless connection. The left-hand view of this tab offers a summary of all connection parameters regarding network address and ESSID, signal quality, signal and noise level, channel frequency and speed, and encryption parameters, such as type of encryption and key length.
1.9.2 Mobile Computing Working on a mobile computer requires a great deal of flexibility in adjusting to changing network and system environments. SUSE LINUX offers small helpers, like GNOME Battery Charge Monitor, KPowersave, and Profile Chooser, which assist you in adjusting the power management scheme and the system configuration of your computer. Tip More Information about Mobile Computing Refer to the Administration Guide to learn more about mobile computing under SUSE LINUX.
Profile Management Your system needs to adapt to changing operating environments when used for mobile computing. A lot of services depend on the environment and the underlying clients must be reconfigured. Use the system configuration profile management (SCPM) framework to create different configuration profiles for all environments your machine is used in. Change the active profile using Profile Chooser.
2 Linux comes with a wealth of applications, often offering more than one solution to your specific problems. The difficulty is finding the one application that suits your needs and offers a similar ease of use compared to the Windows or Mac applications you have been using so far. This chapter points out the most important and powerful Linux applications, enabling you to change into your new working environment smoothly. 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Network . . . . . . . .
The next few sections introduce some of the most powerful Linux counterparts of common Windows software. Each section is dedicated to one particular field of application and lists the tasks, Windows applications, and Linux equivalents. These applications are then discussed in further detail and links to more information are provided. This list can be by no means complete, because software development is an evolutionary process and new applications are being created every minute. 2.
Mind Mapping MindManager, Free Mind VYM (View Your Mind) StarOffice StarOffice is a proprietary version of OpenOffice.org and is distributed by Sun Microsystems. It is available on multiple platforms including Windows and Solaris. It includes certain advanced features not available with the free version (OpenOffice.org). Find more information about StarOffice at http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/. Getting to Know Linux Software OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.
PostgreSQL PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, and user-defined types and functions. Find more information about PostgreSQL at http://www. postgresql.org/. GnuCash GnuCash is a software tool to control both your personal and business finances. Keep track of income and expenses and manage your bank accounts and stock portfolios all using one piece of software.
2.2 2 Network Table 2.
curity and privacy options. Firefox is very flexible, allowing you to customize almost anything you want (searches, toolbars, skins, buttons, etc.). Neat add-ons and extensions can be downloaded from the Firefox Web site (https://addons.update.mozilla.org/?application=firefox). Find more information about Firefox at http://www.mozilla.org/ products/firefox/ and read our introduction to using Firefox in Chapter 11 on page 157.
XChat XChat is an IRC client that runs on most Linux and UNIX platforms as well as under Windows and MacOS X. Find more information about XChat at http://www.xchat.org/. GnomeMeeting GnomeMeeting is the Open Source equivalent of Microsoft’s NetMeeting. It features LDAP and ILS support for address lookup and integrates with Evolution to share the address data stored there.
Table 2.
Kaffeine Kaffeine is a versatile multimedia application supporting a wide range of audio and video formats including Ogg Vorbis, WMV, MOV, and AVI. Import and edit playlists of various types, create screenshots, and save media streams to your local hard disk. Find more information about Kaffeine at http://kaffeine.sourceforge.net/. amaroK The amaroK media player handles various audio formats and plays the streaming audio broadcasts of radio stations on the Internet.
Rosegarden Rosegarden is a free music composition and editing environment. It features an audio and MIDI sequencer and a score editor. Find more information about Rosegarden at http://rosegardenmusic.com/. MainActor MainActor is a fully fledged video authoring software. Because there is a Windows version of MainActor, transition from Windows is easy. Find more information about MainActor at http://www.mainactor.com/. xawtv and motv xawtv is a TV viewer and recorder application supporting analog TV.
Table 2.4: Graphics Software for Windows and Linux Windows Application Linux Application Simple Graphic Editing Professional Graphic Editing MS Paint The GIMP The GIMP Creating 3D Graphics Managing Digital Photographs Scanning Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Corel PhotoPaint, The GIMP Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, OpenOffice.
POV-Ray The Persistence of Vision Raytracer creates three-dimensional, photorealistic images using a rendering technique called ray tracing. Because there is a Windows version of POV-Ray, it does not take much for Windows users to switch to the Linux version of this application. Find more information about POV-Ray at http://www.povray.org/. Blender Blender is a powerful rendering and animation tool available on many platforms, including Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
Task Windows Application Linux Application Text Editor kate, gedit, (X)Emacs, vim PDF Creator NotePad, WordPad, (X)Emacs Acrobat Distiller PDF Viewer AcrobatReader AcrobatReader, xpdf, kpdf Text Recognition Command Line Pack Programs Hard Disk Partitioner Backup Software Recognita, FineReader GOCR zip, rar, arj, lha, etc. zip, tar, gzip, bzip2, etc. PowerQuest, Acronis, Partition Commander ntbackup, Veritas YaST, GNU Parted Scribus dar, taper, dump kate Kate is part of the KDE suite.
conversion, multiple buffers in a screen, and much more. Find more information at http://www.vim.org/ or in our Administration Guide. GOCR GOCR is an OCR (optical character recognition) tool. It converts scanned images of text into text files. It is also one part of Kooka, a KDE scanning tool. Find more information at http://jocr.sourceforge.net/ and in Chapter 17 on page 227. gzip, tar, bzip2 There are plenty of packaging programs for reducing disk usage.
2.6 2 Software Development Table 2.6: Development Software for Windows and Linux Task Windows Application Linux Application Integrated Development Environments Toolkits Borland C++, Delphi, VisualStudio, .NET KDevelop, Eclipse, Mono MFC, Qt, GTK Qt, GTK Versioning Systems Clearcase, Perforce, SourceSafe CVS, Subversion KDevelop KDevelop allows you to write programs for different languages (C/C++, Python, Perl, etc.).
CVS CVS, the Concurrent Versions System, is one of the most important version control systems for Open Source. It is a front-end to the Revision Control System (RCS) included in the standard Linux distributions. Read more about CVS in our Administration Guide. Find more information at the home page http://www.cvshome.org/. Subversion Subversion does the same thing CVS does but has major enhancements, like moving, renaming, and attaching meta information to files and directories.
3 This chapter introduces the GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) desktop. It provides a brief overview of the most important elements and functionalities of your desktop, including an in-depth description of the file manager Nautilus. Finally, get to know several smart and useful applications that can help you feel at home in your new desktop environment. 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 The Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . File Management with Nautilus Important Utilities .
GNOME has a very intuitive look and feel to it. However, users migrating to Linux from a Microsoft Windows desktop might need to get accustomed to a few things. Users migrating from a Macintosh might notice that GNOME feels very much like home, because it aims to provide a Mac-type look and feel to a Linux desktop. Two issues are very important: double-click Like a Mac desktop, a GNOME desktop is entirely ruled by the double-click.
Right-clicking an icon displays a menu offering file operations, like copying, cutting, or renaming. Selecting ‘Properties’ from the menu displays a configuration dialog. The title of an icon and the icon itself can be changed with ‘Use custom icon’. Use the ‘Permissions’ tab to view and modify the access, read, and write permission settings for this file for the user, the group, or others. The ‘Notes’ tab manages comments. The menu for the trash can additionally features the ‘Empty Trashcan’ option.
The bottom panel contains the window icons of all started applications in the taskbar. If you click the name of a window in the taskbar, it is moved to the foreground. If the program is already in the foreground, a mouse click minimizes it. Clicking a minimized application reopens the respective window. Beside the taskbar, the ‘Workspace Switcher’ provides access to additional work areas. These virtual desktops provide extra space in which to arrange open applications and windows.
3 The Desktop Menu Applets Applets are little applications that are nested in the panel by means of a small icon. Unlike a “real” application, they do not have their own window on screen. Some applets are already preconfigured to be in your panel on first start, but there are many more to be discovered and added to your own custom panel. Adding a panel applet is very simple. Just right-click the panel to open the ‘Add to Panel’ dialog, shown in Figure 3.
3.2 Settings Use the GNOME control center to customize your desktop. Access it with ‘Desktop’ ➝ ‘Preferences’. The most important and prominent modules of the GNOME control center are featured in the following sections. In the individual modules, access relevant help for the options with ‘Help’. The system immediately adopts every change made in a configuration module. 3.2.1 Keyboard The ‘Keyboard’ configuration module consists of four tabs.
3.2.4 Windows This module controls the behavior of application windows. Determine how the window should react to contact with the mouse pointer or to double-clicks on its title and define the key to hold for moving an application window. When several application windows populate the desktop, the active one, by default, is the one last clicked. Change this behavior by activating ‘Select windows when the mouse moves over them’.
‘Style’ determines what processing steps should be applied to the selected image to adapt it optimally to the current screen resolution. The options are ‘Centered’, ‘Fill Screen’, ‘Scaled’, and ‘Tiled’. 3.2.6 Font This module determines the font to use for the desktop. In a second step, enable optional effects for the improvement of the font quality. The upper part of the dialog window shows the fonts selected for ‘Application font’, ‘Desktop font’, ‘Window title font’, and ‘Terminal font’.
Enable Repeat Keys Activate ‘Repeat Keys’ to make settings with sliders for ‘Delay’ and ‘Speed’. This determines how long a key must be pressed for the automatic keyboard repeat function to be activated and at what speed the characters are then typed. Test the effect of the settings in the field at the bottom of the dialog window. Choose parameters that reflect your normal typing habits.
The list overview window displays a list of all currently available actions along with their keyboard shortcuts. Deactivate or change a keyboard shortcut by clicking the corresponding shortcut entry. Then enter a new shortcut or delete the cur . All changes take effect immediately. Restore the current rent one with Backspace keyboard shortcut by clicking its entry and leaving the dialog with ‘Close’. 3.2.
3.2.13 Sessions The ‘Sessions’ dialog enables you to control the behavior of your desktop right from the login. In the ‘Session Options’ tab, determine whether you want to see the GNOME splash screen while the desktop is loading after login. If ‘Prompt on logout’ is checked, a confirmation dialog appears at the end of a session, asking you to confirm the logout action. Check ‘Automatically save changes to session’ if you want to have the exact state of a session restored for the subsequent login.
Figure 3.2: Nautilus Standard Window To navigate between folders, use the drop-down menu at bottom left edge of the Nautilus window. Here, find all parent folders to the current directory up to the file system root. Select the desired folder and it opened in a new Nautilus window on top of the old one. Alternatively, open just the immediate parent of the current folder by choosing ‘File’ ➝ ‘Open Parent’. If you want to close these parent folders, select ‘File’ ➝ ‘Close Parent Folders’. 3.3.
Nautilus provides basic CD burning functionality. If you created a directory holding data you want to back up by just burning it to a CD, click ‘Places’ ➝ ‘CD Creator’ and drag the folder holding the relevant data onto the ‘CD/DVD Creator’ window. Select ‘File’ ➝ ‘Write to Disc’ to copy the data to CD or DVD. 3.3.
Figure 3.3: Editing the MIME Type 3.3.4 Configuring Nautilus Nautilus retrieves its default font and other preferences from the desktop configuration. To set Nautilus-specific preferences, select ‘Edit’ ➝ ‘Preferences’ in any Nautilus window. The configuration dialog offers five tabs: ‘Views’, ‘Behavior’, ‘Display’, ‘List Columns’, and ‘Preview’. ‘Views’ allows switching the ‘Default View’ between ‘Icon View’ and ‘List View’. A sorting order can be set for any of these options.
3.4 Important Utilities GNOME has many applets and applications. They are designed to interact with the desktop and each other. This section introduces some of them. Learn how to manage little notes on your desktop, use the GNOME dictionary, chat with Gaim, and enjoy various types of multimedia applications. 3.4.1 3 The GNOME Desktop bypasses trash’ can also be set. The files are immediately deleted if this option is activated.
Figure 3.4: GNOME Dictionary 3.4.3 Messaging with Gaim Gaim (command gaim) is a powerful instant messenger client. It supports various protocols, such as AIM, ICQ, GroupWise, IRC, Jabber, MSN, and others. Its most popular features include the ability to log in to multiple accounts on multiple instant messaging networks at the same time, automatic text replacement, and spell checking.
3 The GNOME Desktop Figure 3.5: Gaim 3.4.4 Watching Movies with Totem Totem is a multimedia player for the GNOME desktop based on Xine. It supports playback of DVDs, VCDs, and audio CDs. Start playback of a VCD or DVD via ‘Movie’ ➝ ‘Play VCD’ or ‘Movie’ ➝ ‘Play DVD’. Totem offers menu support for DVDs under ‘Go’. Movie streams can be fetched via the network—just enter the URL at ‘Movie’ ➝ ‘Open Location’. Take screenshots with ‘Edit’ ➝ ‘Take Screenshot’. 3.4.
contents from File Roller with other applications without needing to decompress the archives. File Roller supports drag and drop, allowing you to drag file icons from the desktop or from the file manager (Nautilus) to the File Roller window and drop them there. To create a new archive, select ‘Archive’ ➝ ‘New’. In the next dialog, specify the directory in which to create the new archive in the left window. Enter the filename of the new archive in the input field below without the file extension.
3.5 3 Assistive Technology Support 3.5.1 GNOME On-Screen Keyboard Gnome On Screen Keyboard (GOK) provides a virtual keyboard on screen to those users who cannot use standard mouse and keyboard devices to control their computers. With appropriate hardware support, you can use a joystick or any pointer device as the input device. The GNOME Desktop GNOME offers a number of applications to support users with disabilities.
4. To save the text you have written, click ‘back’ to return to the main window then select ‘Menus’ to launch a window containing buttons to open any menu from the text editor’s menu bar. 5. Select ‘File’ ➝ ‘Save as’ to open the file dialog of the text editor. 6. Hit ‘Compose’ to enter the filename via the virtual keyboard and hit ‘Return’ on the virtual keyboard. 7. To terminate the text editor, return to the main menu and select ‘Menus’ ➝ ‘File’ ➝ ‘Quit’.
3 The GNOME Desktop Figure 3.7: Configuring Gnopernicus 3.5.3 Dasher Dasher is a small application enabling you to create texts without using a keyboard. You can use it on any computer device that comes without a keyboard (handheld or wearable computers) or on a normal computer that is controlled with a joystick, touchpad, head mouse, or eyetracker instead of keyboard and mouse. Dasher is driven by continuous pointer gestures.
Figure 3.8: Writing with Dasher 68 3.5.
4 The KDE Desktop The KDE Desktop The KDE desktop offers an intuitive graphical interface. The following sections show you how to make efficient use of KDE’s features and how to customize the desktop to meet your personal needs. This is followed by an introduction to the file manager Konqueror and a brief description of some small but useful utilities. 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Desktop Components . . . . Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . Konqueror as a File Manager Important Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1 Desktop Components The main components are the icons on the desktop and the panel at the bottom of the screen. The mouse is your most important tool. Click a symbol or an icon once to start the associated program or the file manager Konqueror. If you rightclick an icon, different menus appear, depending on the program. As well as the icons, there are two desktop menus. 4.1.
‘Run Command’ This menu item opens a window in which to enter a command manually. Execute the command by pressing Enter . ‘Undo’ Use this item to undo the last action. For example, if you have just created a new directory on the desktop, clicking this item reverts the creation so the directory disappears.
‘Logout’ Log out of your system if you are not going to use the system for some time. 4.1.2 The Main Menu Open the main menu by clicking the icon to the far left of the panel. Alternatively, - F1 . The main menu is subdivided into these sections: ‘Most Used Appress Alt plications’, ‘All Applications’ (a menu with all applications sorted according to categories), and ‘Actions’. The following section provides information about a number of actions that can be triggered from the main menu.
4.2 4 Settings Tip Using Konqueror for Your Settings You can also use Konqueror to view and modify your settings. Type settings:/ in your location bar and Konqueror displays all the modules in icon view or tree view according to your configuration. The KDE Desktop The KDE desktop can be customized according to your preferences and needs. ‘Control Center’ in the main menu opens the configuration dialog for your KDE desktop. The following section introduces a number of modules.
‘Icons’ controls the icon style for the whole desktop. You can select the KDE Classic style, the Crystal SVG style, or others. With ‘Advanced’, fine-tune the icons’ appearance. ‘Launch Feedback’ runs a visual feedback for your mouse cursor. If an application is started, KDE shows, for example, a busy cursor. Choose the style, like blinking or bouncing. You can also try a passive cursor or disable this effect entirely. If you do not use your computer for a specific time, a screen saver automatically appears.
The ‘Taskbar’ modules configure the taskbar, which provides the window list in the panel. How the taskbar groups windows is determined in ‘Group similar tasks’. You can define some actions to perform if the left, middle, or right mouse button is pressed. With ‘Window Behavior’, customize the default KDE window manager (KWin). This controls what happens windows are moved, clicked, or resized. ‘Windows-Specific Settings’ let you customize settings that only apply for some windows.
KDE uses ‘File Associations’ to identify a file type and start appropriate applications. With this module, customize the icon, filename patterns, description, and order of applications. Konqueror can also behave like a file manager. The ‘File Manager’ module configures which fonts and font sizes are used, what home URL is used, if previews are allowed, and if quick copy and move actions are allowed. An overview of all plug-ins of the KDE daemon is shown in ‘Service Manager’.
4.2.9 4 Security & Privacy The KDE password manager can be customized in the module ‘KDE Wallet’. Apart from some general settings, you can create a new wallet. This enables you to have different wallets, for example, for different actions. To change your personal settings, go to ‘Password & User Account’. Here, set a new name, organization, e-mail address, SMTP server, or password. The ‘Privacy’ module manages personal Web browsing data.
respective face. Easily add new fonts with ‘Add Fonts’. To change system fonts, click ‘Administrator Mode’. The module ‘Linux Kernel’ only takes effect if you have installed the source of your kernel. It is only useful if you are a developer compiling a new kernel and want to customize some options. With ‘Login Manager’, change the appearance, the fonts used, the background shown, the shutdown behavior, what users are displayed, and some convenience issues for the login screen.
4 The KDE Desktop Figure 4.1: The File Manager Konqueror 4.3.2 File Associations A modern desktop system should know how to handle its file types. With Konqueror, decide which application can be used to process a file. Go to ‘Settings’ ➝ ‘Configure Konqueror’ and open the section ‘File Associations’. If you are searching for an extension, use ‘Find filename pattern’. Only file types with a matching file pattern appear in the list.
assigned to one of those. In ‘Type name’, name your file type. After clicking ‘Ok’, determine the extensions of the filename. Put a description in the text field and decide which application to use. Approve with ‘Ok’. 4.3.3 The Konqueror Menu ‘Location’ Using ‘Location’, open additional Konqueror windows. If you click ‘New Window’, your home directory is displayed in a new window. ‘Duplicate Window’ produces a second window with the same content.
‘Tools’ This menu includes entries for a variety of items, such as ‘Run Command’, ‘Open Terminal Window’, and ‘Find Files’. You can use ‘View Filter’ to limit the view to certain types of files. For example, one of your directories may hold graphics files of different formats, but you only want to see those in PNG format. You could then use this submenu item to hide all files that are not in PNG format.
tion mark symbol at the top right in the title bar. The mouse pointer is then displayed with a question mark. If you click an icon, a brief help text is displayed, if available. The ‘Help’ menu also provides a short introduction to Konqueror and the possibility to report bugs and other concerns to the developers. ‘About Konqueror’ and ‘About KDE’ provide information about the version, license, authors, and translators of the project. 4.3.
The quickest way to perform many actions is the drag and drop method. For example, easily move files from one Konqueror window to another by simply dragging them there while pressing the left mouse button. Subsequently, you are asked whether the objects should be moved or copied. 4.4 Important Utilities 4 The KDE Desktop ‘Delete’. Use ‘Open with’ to select the application with which to open the file from a list of suitable programs.
Important Protect Your KWallet Password If you forget your KWallet password, it cannot be recovered. Furthermore, anyone who knows your password can obtain all information contained in the wallet. Important Configuring KWallet When start KWallet for the first time, a dialog window appears with the welcome screen. Choose between ‘Basic setup’ and ‘Advanced setup’. ‘Basic setup’ is recommended. If you choose it, select in the next screen whether you want to store personal information.
4 The KDE Desktop Figure 4.2: The KWallet Manager Window To insert a new item, proceed as follows: Procedure 4.1: Inserting New Entries in Your Wallet 1. You can add a new entry to ‘Maps’ or ‘Passwords’ only. Use ‘Maps’ if you have key and value pairs. ‘Passwords’ can contain multiline entries. 2. Right-click the respective folder entry. 3. A dialog box appears and prompts for a name of the new entry. Name your entry and approve it with ‘Ok’. 4. Your new entry is sorted under your folder entry.
You can always change your password with ‘File’ ➝ ‘Change Password’. Advanced Features You probably do not need to pay very much attention to KWallet. It resides silently in the panel and is automatically activated if needed. One nice feature of KWallet is that you can move your wallet files to another computer, for example, to your laptop. To simplify this task, wallets can be dragged from the manager window to a file browser window. For example, save it on a USB stick and carry your passwords with you.
Settings In ‘Settings’ ➝ ‘Configure KGet’, set preferences for the connection, determine directories for specific file extensions, and specify other settings. 4.4.4 The Clipboard Klipper 4 The KDE Desktop After making the desired settings for all your transfers, set KGet back to the online mode by deactivating ‘Options’ ➝ ‘Offline Mode’. The transfers should start at the specified times.
Enable Actions If you click this, a black check mark is displayed in front of it. For example, if you mark a URL with the mouse when actions are enabled, a window opens, enabling you to select a browser for displaying this URL. Click ‘Enable Actions’ to disable this function. Clear Clipboard History Deletes all entries from the clipboard. Configure Klipper This opens the Klipper configuration dialog. Control the program with keyboard shortcuts or use regular expressions.
4 The KDE Desktop Figure 4.4: Ark: File Archive Preview To create a new archive, select ‘File’ ➝ ‘New’. Enter the name of the new archive in the dialog that opens and specify the format using ‘Filter’. After confirming with ‘Save’ or by pressing Enter , Ark opens an empty window. You can drag and drop files and directories from the file manager into this window. As the final step, Ark compresses everything into the previously selected archive format.
Figure 4.5: KSnapshot and filename in the dialog that opens. To print the screenshot right away, select ‘Print’. 4.4.7 Viewing PDF Files with KPDF PDF is probably one of more important formats. KPDF is a KDE program that can view and print them. Start KPDF by pressing Alt - F2 and entering the command kpdf. Load a PDF file with ‘File’ ➝ ‘Open’. KPDF displays it in its main window. On the left side, there is a sidebar with thumbnails and a contents view.
4.4.8 4 Chatting With Friends: Kopete Configuring Kopete Configure Kopete by entering your personal user data. Click ‘Settings’ ➝ ‘Configure Kopete’. ‘Connections’ shows all currently available protocols. Check the desired connection type to activate it. With ‘Accounts’, enter your user data. You must register with a provider offering instant messaging services before using such service. Click ‘New’ to open a configuration assistant that can assist you in completing your user profile.
of the corresponding providers or create a custom theme by adjusting the font or color to personal preference. Adding Contacts Add contacts to chat with them. If you have already created an account on another PC, this data is imported and automatically added to your contact list. To create a contact entry manually, click ‘File’ ➝ ‘Add contact’. A new assistant appears to help with creation. However, you must be online to add a contact to your list. Adding Groups Access this with ‘File’ ➝ ‘Create New Group’.
The main application windows features a list of contacts. When you right-click a contact marked as online, a menu opens with various options. Send that person a message or start a chatting session. A chat allows invitation of additional participants for real-time discussion. Connection to all participants is closed when the creator of the chat session closes it. Transfer files by right-clicking a username.
Note Additional Languages Due to incompatible licenses, only the English may be included in our distribution. For more information about festival, see http: //festvox.org/. Note To start KTTS, press Alt - F2 and type kttsmgr. If you have not configured KTTS yet, the talkers screen appears with an empty list. Click ‘Add’ to add a talker to the list. This opens a new dialog box. Select a speech synthesis plug-in by name or by language.
KMouth—Speak Text with KDE KMouth is a program designed to speak for those who cannot. You must have installed and configured a speech synthesizer as described in Section KTTS—The KDE Text-to-Speech Manager on page 93. When you start KMouth for the first time, a wizard opens. This enables you to specify the command to use to speak the text. If you already configured your text to speech system with KTTS, this is not necessary. 4 The KDE Desktop The ‘Talker’ tab was already explained above.
Improve the application by entering your own sentences in your phrase book. Choose ‘Phrase Books’ ➝ ‘Edit’ and a window appears like that in Figure 4.10 on this page. You can see the phrase and the assigned shortcut. By right-clicking the phrase book or a phrase itself, open pop-up menu in which to select ‘New Phrase’. Insert your phrase in the text field. You can assign a shortcut with the keycap button. When satisfied with your settings, choose ‘File’ ➝ ‘Save’.
4 The KDE Desktop Figure 4.11: Font Administration from the Control Center To check which fonts are currently available, type the URL fonts:/ into the address field of a Konqueror session. This displays two windows: Personal and System. User-installed fonts are installed to the folder Personal. Only root can install to the System folder. To install fonts as a user, follow these steps: 1. Start the Control Center and access the appropriate module with ‘System Administration’ ➝ ‘Font Installer’. 2.
5 SUSE LINUX comes with various sources of information and documentation. The SUSE Help Center provides central access to the most important documentation resources on your system in searchable form. These resources include online help for the installed applications, manual pages, info pages, databases on hardware and software topics, and all manuals delivered with your product. 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 Using the SUSE Help Center . . . . . . . Man Pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Info Pages . .
5.1 Using the SUSE Help Center When you start the SUSE Help Center for the first time from the main menu (‘SuSE help-center’) or with the command susehelp in the shell, the view as shown in Figure 5.1 on the facing page is displayed. The dialog window consists of three main areas: Menu Bar and Toolbar The menu bar provides the main editing, navigation, and configuration options. ‘File’ contains the option for printing the currently displayed content. Under ‘Edit’, access the search function.
5 Help and Documentation Figure 5.1: The Main Window of the SUSE Help Center 5.1.2 The Search Function To search all installed information sources of SUSE LINUX, generate a search index and set a number of search parameters. To do this, open the ‘Search’ tab. See Figure 5.2 on the following page. If no search index has been generated, the system automatically prompts you to do so when you click the ‘Search’ tab or enter a search string and click ‘Search’.
Figure 5.2: Configuring the Search Function Custom Determine the sources to search by activating the respective check boxes in the overview. When you have completed the search configuration, click ‘Search’. The relevant items are then displayed in the view window and can easily be navigated with mouse clicks. 5.2 Man Pages Man pages are an essential part of any Linux system. They explain the usage of a command and all available options and parameters.
5 System calls (functions provided by the kernel) 3 Library calls (functions within program libraries) 4 Special files (usually found in /dev) 5 File formats and conventions (/etc/fstab) 6 Games 7 Miscellaneous (including macro packages and conventions), e.g., man(7), groff(7) 8 System administration commands (usually only for root) 9 Kernel routines (nonstandard) Generally, man pages are delivered with the associated command. They can be browsed in the help center or directly in a shell.
Figure 5.3: Generating a Search Index 5.4 The Linux Documentation Project The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) is run by a team of volunteers who write Linux and Linux-related documentation (see http://www.tldp.org). The set of documents contains tutorials for beginners, but is mainly focused on experienced users like professional system administrators. TLDP publishes HOWTOs, FAQs, and guides (handbooks) under a free license. 5.4.
5.4.2 5 Frequently Asked Questions 5.5 Wikipedia: the Free Online Encyclopedia Wikipedia is a “a multilingual encyclopedia designed to be read and edited by anyone” (see http://en.wikipedia.org). The content of Wikipedia is created by its users and is published under a free license (GDFL). Any visitors can edit articles, which gives the danger of vandalism, but this does not repel visitors. With over four hundred thousand articles, find an answer for nearly every topic. 5.
They range from Bash Guide for Beginners to Linux Filesystem Hierarchy to Linux Administrator’s Security Guide. Generally, guides are more detailed and exhaustive than a HOWTO or FAQ. They are usually written by experts for experts. Some of these books are old but still valid. Install books and guides with YaST. 5.7 Usenet Created in 1979 before the rise of the Internet, Usenet is one of the oldest computer networks and still in active use.
Part II Office
6 OpenOffice.org is a powerful office suite that offers tools for all types of office tasks, such as writing texts, working with spreadsheets, or creating graphics and presentations. With OpenOffice.org, use the same data across different computing platforms. You can also open and edit files in Microsoft Office formats then save them back to this format, if needed. This chapter only covers the basic skills needed to get started with OpenOffice.org.
OpenOffice.org consists of several application modules (subprograms), which are designed to interact with each other. They are listed in Table 6.1 on the current page. The discussion in this chapter is focused on Writer. A full description of each module is available in the online help, described in Section 6.6 on page 115. Table 6.1: The OpenOffice.
Important Finding Windows Files Documents from a Windows partition are usually in a subdirectory of /windows. Important When sharing documents with others, you have several options. If the recipient only needs to read the document, export it to a PDF file with ‘File’ ➝ ‘Export as PDF’. PDF files can be read on any platform using a viewer like Adobe Acrobat Reader. To share a document for editing, use one of the regular document formats.
Figure 6.1: The OpenOffice.org Writer or the relevant buttons in the toolbar to print and save your document. With the options under ‘Insert’, add extra items to your document, such as a table, picture, or chart. 6.2.1 Selecting Text To select text, click the desired beginning of the selection and, keeping the mouse button pressed, move the cursor towards the end of the range (which can be characters, lines, or entire paragraphs). Release the button when all desired text is selected.
6 The OpenOffice.org Office Suite Figure 6.2: An OpenOffice.org Wizard 6.2.2 Navigating in Large Documents The Navigator displays information about the contents of a document. It also enables you to jump quickly to the different elements included. For example, use the Navigator to get a quick overview of all the chapters or to see a list of the images included in the document. Open it by selecting ‘Edit’ ➝ ‘Navigator’. Figure 6.3 on the following page shows the Navigator in action.
Figure 6.3: The Navigator in Writer By formatting your text with this method, called soft formatting, text is not formatted directly. Instead, a style is applied to it. The style can be modified easily, automatically resulting in a formatting change of all the text to which it is assigned. To assign a style to a paragraph, select the style to use then click the paint bucket icon in ‘Styles and Formatting’. Click the paragraphs to which to assign the style.
6.3 6 Introducing Calc In the spreadsheet cells, enter fixed data or formulas. A formula can manipulate data from other cells to generate a value for the cell in which it is inserted. You can also create charts from cell values. 6.4 Introducing Impress Impress is designed for creating presentations for screen display or printing, such as on transparencies. Create a presentation from scratch with ‘File’ ➝ ‘New’ ➝ ‘Presentation’.
Figure 6.4: Base-–Databases in OpenOffice.org When the application is first started, it provides ‘Tips’, short information about buttons when the mouse hovers over them, and the ‘Help Agent’, information based on actions performed. To get more extensive information about buttons than the ‘Tips’ provide, use ‘Help’ ➝ ‘What’s This’ then hover over the desired buttons. To end ‘What’s This’ mode, click.
7 Evolution is a groupware suite that offers regular e-mail features along with extended features, like task lists and a calendar. The application also provides a complete address book, including the ability to send contact information to others in vCard format. 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 Importing E-Mail from Other Mail Programs Evolution Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Calendars . . . . . .
Start Evolution from the main menu or with evolution. When started for the first time, Evolution offers a configuration assistant. Its use is described in Section 7.3.1 on page 120. Important Microsoft Exchange Accounts Using Evolution with Microsoft Exchange requires installation of the ximian-connector package. Install it with YaST. Important 7.1 Importing E-Mail from Other Mail Programs Evolution can import e-mail from other e-mail programs, such as Netscape. To do so, select ‘File’ ➝ ‘Import’.
7 either ascending or descending as shown by the arrow to the right. Click the header until the correct direction is displayed. 7.2.2 Contacts Evolution: An E-Mail and Calendar Program Figure 7.1: The Evolution Window with Mail This view shows all the addresses in your address book. To locate a particular address, use the search bar or click the button to the right displaying the first letter of the contact’s last name. Add contacts or lists with the toolbar. 7.2.
7.2.4 Tasks ‘Tasks’ provides a list of tasks. Details of the selected task are shown in the lower part of the window. Use ‘File’ ➝ ‘New’ ➝ ‘Task’ to add a new task. Search the tasks with the search bar. Assign tasks to others by right-clicking the task and selecting ‘Assign Task’. ‘Open’ the task to add more details, such as due date and completion status. 7.3 Mail The Evolution mail component can work with multiple accounts in a variety of formats.
7.3.2 Creating Messages To compose a new message, click ‘New’ ➝ ‘Mail Message’. Replying to or forwarding a message opens the same message editor. Next to ‘From’, select from which account to send the message. In the recipient fields, enter an e-mail address or part of a name or address in your address book. If Evolution can match what you enter to something in the address book, a selection list is displayed. Click the desired contact or complete your input if none match.
program (gpg) to check the signature. If the signature is valid, a green check mark appears next to the padlock symbol. If the signature is invalid, a broken padlock appears. The encryption and decryption of e-mail is just as easy. After composing the email message, go to ‘Security’ ➝ ‘PGP encrypt’ and send the e-mail message. When you receive encrypted messages, a dialog opens to ask for the password of your secret key. Enter the passphrase to decrypt the e-mail message. 7.3.
7.3.5 7 Filters Setting Up a Filter Select ‘Tools’ ➝ ‘Filters’. This dialog lists your existing filters, which can be edited or deleted. Click ‘Add’ to create a new filter. To create a filter based on a message, instead select the message then ‘Tools’ ➝ ‘Create Filter from Message’. Enter a name for the new filter in ‘Rule Name’. Select the criteria to use for the filter. Options include sender, recipients, source account, subject, date, and status.
in several formats to the Evolution address book using ‘File’ ➝ ‘Import’. Rightclick a contact to open a menu in which to select from a variety of options, such as forwarding the contact or saving it as a vCard. Double-click a contact to edit it. Figure 7.2: The Evolution Address Book 7.4.1 Adding Contacts Along with the name and e-mail address, Evolution can store other address and contact information about a person.
7.4.2 7 Making a List 7.4.3 Adding Address Books Configure additional GroupWise and Exchange address books in the account configuration for that account. To add additional local or LDAP books, select ‘File’ ➝ ‘New’ ➝ ‘Address Book’. In the dialog that opens, select the type and enter the required information. 7.5 Calendars Evolution can work with multiple calendars. With ‘File’ ➝ ‘Import’, import calendars in iCalendar format. Use the calendar to enter appointments and schedule meetings with others.
Figure 7.3: The Evolution Calendar ‘Scheduling’. To enter attendees from your address book, use ‘Contacts’ to open a dialog in which to select them. ‘Scheduling’ can also be used to schedule a time that fits all attendees. Press ‘Autopick’ after configuring participants to find a time. 7.5.3 Adding Calendars GroupWise and Exchange calendars should be configured in the account configuration. To add additional local or Web calendars, select ‘File’ ➝ ‘New’ ➝ ‘Calendar’.
7.7 7 For More Information SUSE LINUX Evolution: An E-Mail and Calendar Program Evolution offers extensive internal help pages. Use the ‘Help’ menu to access this information. For more information about Evolution, refer to the project’s Web site at http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/.
8 Kontact combines the functionality of a number of KDE applications into a convenient single interface for personal information management. These applications include KMail for e-mail, KOrganizer for the calendar, KAddressbook for contacts, and KNotes for notes. It is also possible to sync data with external devices, such as a handheld. Kontact integrates easily with the rest of the KDE desktop and connects to a variety of groupware servers.
Start Kontact from the main menu with ‘Office’ ➝ ‘Personal Information Manager’. Alternatively, enter kontact & in a command line. For only part of the functionality, it is possible to open the individual components instead of the combined application. 8.1 Importing E-Mail from Other Mail Programs To import e-mail from other applications, select ‘Tools’ ➝ ‘Import messages’ from the mail view in Kontact.
8 The subject, sender, and time of receipt of each message are listed in header area to the right. Click a message to select it and display it in the message window. Sort the messages by clicking one of the column headers (subject, sender, date, etc.). The contents of the currently selected message are displayed in the message frame of the window. Attachments are depicted as icons at the end of the message, based on the MIME type of the attachment. Kontact: An E-Mail and Calendar Program Figure 8.
activation status for each. The right frame shows the currently selected contact. Use the search bar at the top to find a particular contact. 8.2.3 To-Do List ‘To-do List’ shows your list of tasks. Click the field at the top to add a new item to the list. Right-click in a column of an existing item to make changes to the value in that column. An item can be broken into several subitems. Right-click and select ‘New Sub-to-do’ to create a subitem. 8.2.
8 profile, select ‘Settings’ ➝ ‘Configure KMail’ then ‘Identities’ ➝ ‘New’. In the dialog that opens, give the new identity a name, such as “private” or “office.” Click ‘OK’ to proceed to a dialog in which to enter some additional information. Kontact: An E-Mail and Calendar Program Figure 8.2: The Kontact Mail Component Under the ‘General’ tab, enter your name, organization, and e-mail address. Under ‘Cryptography’, select your keys to send digitally signed or encrypted messages.
settings vary depending on the system and network in which your mail server is located. If you are not sure about the settings or items to select, consult your ISP or system administrator. Create outgoing mail boxes under the ‘Sending’ tab by clicking ‘Add’. Choose between the server types SMTP and sendmail. SMTP is the right choice in most cases. After making this selection, a window appears in which to enter SMTP server data. Provide a name and enter the server address (as given to you by your ISP).
8.3.3 8 Encrypted E-Mail and Signatures 8.3.4 Folders Message folders help to organize your messages. By default, they are located in the directory ~/Mail. When starting KMail for the first time, the program creates several folders. inbox is where new messages fetched from a server are initially placed. outbox is used for temporary storage of messages queued for sending. sent-mail is for copies of messages sent. trash contains copies of all e-mails deleted with Del or ‘Edit’ ➝ ‘Delete’.
Setting Up a Filter To create a filter from scratch, select ‘Settings’ ➝ ‘Configure Filters’. To create a filter based on an existing message, select the desired message then select ‘Tools’ ➝ ‘Create Filter’ and the desired filter criteria. Select the match method for filter criteria (all or any). Then select criteria that applies only to the desired messages. In ‘Filter Actions’, set what the filter should do to the messages that meet the criteria.
8 In the ‘General’ tab, enter basic contact information, such as name, e-mail addresses, and telephone numbers. Categories can be used to sort addresses. ‘Details’ contains more specific information, such as birthday and spouse’s name. Kontact: An E-Mail and Calendar Program Figure 8.3: The Kontact Address Book If your contact uses an instant messenger, you can add these identities in ‘IM Addresses’.
8.4.2 Making a List If you frequently send e-mail messages to a group of people, make this easier by creating a list. First, click ‘Settings’ ➝ ‘Show Extension Bar’ ➝ ‘Distribution List Editor’. In the new section that appears, click ‘New List’. Enter a name for the list then click ‘OK’. Add contacts to the list by dragging them from the address list and dropping them in the distribution list window. Use this list like regular contacts when creating a mail. 8.4.
8 8.5.1 Scheduling an Event Add a new event or meeting with ‘Actions’ ➝ ‘New Event’. Enter the desired details. Under ‘Reminder’, specify the exact time (minutes, hours, or days in advance) at which the attendees should be reminded of the event. If an event recurs, specify the interval. Another way to create an event at a specific point in the calendar is to double-click the corresponding field in one of the program’s calendar views. This opens the same dialog window as that available from the menu.
8.5.2 Adding Calendars Important Groupware Calendars The best way to add groupware resources is with a separate tool. To use it, close Kontact then run groupwarewizard in a command line. Select the server type, such as SLOX, Groupwise, or Exchange, from the list offered then enter the address and authentication data. The wizard then adds the available resources to Kontact. Important The calendar module can connect to multiple calendars simultaneously.
9 Handheld computers are in widespread use among users who need to have their schedules, to-do lists, and notes with them everywhere they go. Often users want the same data to be available both on the desktop and on the portable device. This is where KPilot comes in—it is a tool to synchronize data on a handheld with that used by the KDE applications KAddressBook, KOrganizer, and KNotes, which are part of Kontact. 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 Conduits Used by KPilot . . . . . . . . .
The main purpose of KPilot is to allow sharing of data between the applications of a handheld computer and their KDE counterparts. KPilot does come with its own built-in memo viewer, address viewer, and file installer, but these cannot be used outside the KPilot environment. Independent KDE applications are available for all these functions except the file installer. For communication between the handheld and the different desktop programs, KPilot relies on conduits.
ToDos (KOrganizer) This conduit is responsible for syncing to-do items. The desktop counterpart is KOrganizer. Time Synchronization Conduit Enabling this conduit adjusts the handheld’s clock to that of the desktop computer during each sync operation. This is only a good idea if the clock of the desktop computer itself is corrected by a time server at fairly frequent intervals. Figure 9.1: Configuration Dialog with the Available Conduits 9.
step, enter your username and the name of the device to which the handheld is connected. The assistant attempts to detect them itself if you select ‘Autodetect Handheld & Username’. If the autodetection fails, refer to Section 9.2.2 on this page. After confirming with ‘Next’, the assistant prompts you to specify the applications that should be used for synchronization. You can choose among the KDE application suite (default), Evolution, and none. After selecting, close the window with ‘Finish’. 9.2.
9.4 Managing To-Do Items and Events Figure 9.2: KPilot Configuration KOrganizer stores its files in the directory ~/.kde/share/apps/korganizer. However, given that the directory .kde/ begins with a dot, it may not be shown by the file selection dialog. In this case, enter the complete path manually or explicitly toggle the display of hidden files (dot files) in the file selection dialog. The default shortcut for this is F8 . After opening the directory ~/.
Figure 9.3: Dialog Showing the Path to a KOrganizer Calendar File 9.5 Working with KPilot Synchronizing the data of KDE applications with those of the handheld computer is quite easy. Simply start KPilot then press the HotSync button on the cradle or cable to initiate the sync operation. 9.5.1 Backing Up Data from the Handheld To do a full backup, select ‘File’ ➝ ‘Backup’. The backup is performed during the next sync operation. After that, switch back by selecting ‘File’ ➝ ‘HotSync’ from the menu.
9 9.5.2 Installing Programs on the Handheld The ‘File Installer’ module is an interesting and useful tool for the installation of handheld programs. These programs normally have the extension .prc and they are ready to start immediately after uploading them to the handheld. Before using such add-on programs, read their licenses as well as the instructions included. 9.5.3 Synchronizing a Handheld Computer with KPilot Figure 9.
Part III Internet
10 Konqueror is not only a versatile file manager. It is also a modern Web browser. If you start the browser with the icon in the panel, Konqueror opens with the Web browser profile. As a browser, Konqueror offers tabbed browsing, the possibility of saving Web pages with graphics, Internet keywords, bookmarks, and support for Java and JavaScript. 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 Tabbed Browsing . . . . . . . . . Saving Web Pages and Graphics Internet Keywords . . . . . . . . Bookmarks . . . . . . . . . . . .
Start Konqueror from the main menu or by entering the command konqueror. To load a Web page, enter its address in the location bar, for example, http: //www.suse.com. Konqueror now tries to reach the address and display the page. Entering the protocol at the beginning of the address (http:// in this case) is not strictly required. The program is able to complete the address automatically, but this only works reliably with Web addresses.
You can save your tabs with URLs and the position of the window in a profile. This is a bit different from the session managment mentioned above. With profiles, you have your saved tabs at hand and without intensive start-up time like with session management. In Konqueror, go to ‘Settings’ ➝ ‘Configure View Profiles’ and give your profile a name. You can save the window size in the profile, too, with the respective option. Make sure that ‘Save URLs in profile’ is selected. Approve with ‘Save’.
To see the already definied shortcuts, go to ‘Settings’ ➝ ‘Configure Konqueror’. In the dialog box that appears, select ‘Web Shortcuts’. Now you can see the names of the search providers and the shortcuts. Konqueror definies lots of search filters: the “classical” search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and Lycos, and a number of filters for less common purposes, like an acronym database, the Internet movie database, or KDE application searches.
Change your bookmarks by right-clicking the entry. A pop-up menu appears in which to select the desired action (cut, copy, delete, etc.). When you are satisfied with the result, save the bookmarks with ‘File’ ➝ ‘Save’. If you only want to change the name or link, just right-click the entry in the bookmark toolbar and select ‘Properties’. Change the name and location and confirm with ‘Update’. To save your bookmark list and have instant access to it, make your bookmarks visible in Konqueror.
11 Firefox Firefox Included with your SUSE LINUX is the Mozilla Firefox Web browser. With features like tabs, pop-up window blocking, and download and image management, Firefox combines the latest Web technologies. View more than one Web page in a single window. Suppress annoying advertisements and disable images that only slow you down. Its easy access to different search engines helps you find the information you need. Start the program from the main menu or by entering the command firefox.
11.1 Navigating Web Sites Firefox has much the same look and feel as other browsers. It is shown in Figure 11.1 on this page. The navigation toolbar includes ‘Forward’ and ‘Back’ and a location bar for a Web address. Bookmarks are also available for quick access. For more information about the various Firefox features, use the ‘Help’ menu. Figure 11.1: The Browser Window of Firefox 158 11.1.
11.1.1 11 Tabbed Browsing Firefox If you often use more than one Web page at a time, tabbed browsing may make it easier to switch between them. Load Web sites in separate tabs within one window. To open a new tab, select ‘File’ ➝ ‘New Tab’. This opens an empty tab in the Firefox window. Alternatively, right-click a link and select ‘Open link in new tab’. Right-click the tab itself to access more tab options. You can create a new tab, reload one or all existing tabs, or close them. 11.1.
11.3 Managing Bookmarks Bookmarks offer a convenient way of saving links to your favorite Web sites. To add the current Web site to your list of bookmarks, click ‘Bookmarks’ ➝ ‘Bookmark This Page’. If your browser currently displays multiple Web sites on tabs, only the URL on the currently selected tab is added to your list of bookmarks. When adding a bookmark, you can specify an alternative name for the bookmark and select a folder where Firefox should store it.
11 Firefox Figure 11.2: Using the Firefox Bookmark Manager opens a window with your downloads. While downloading a file, see a progress bar and the current file. Pause the download and resume it later, if necessary. To open a downloaded file, click ‘Open’. With ‘Remove’, erase it from the medium. If you need information about the file, right-click the filename and choose ‘Properties’.
11.5.1 Extensions Mozilla Firefox is a multifunctional application, which means you can download and install add-ons, known as extensions. For example, add a new download manager and mouse gestures. This has the advantage that Firefox itself stays small and unbloated. To add an extension, click ‘Tools’ ➝ ‘Extensions’. In the bottom-right corner, click ‘Get More Extensions’ to launch the Mozilla extensions update Web page where you can choose from a variety of available extensions.
11 Firefox 2. A new dialog appears. Click ‘Get More Themes’. If you already installed a theme, find it in the list, as in Figure 11.4 on this page. Figure 11.4: Installing Firefox Themes 3. A new window appears with the Web site https://update.mozilla. org. 4. Choose a theme and click ‘Install Now’. 5. Confirm the download and installation. 6. After downloading the theme, a dialog appears and informs you about your list of themes. Activate the new theme with ‘Use Theme’. 7.
1. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org. 2. After Firefox displays the Web page, see the search text field. Right-click it then choose ‘Add a Keyword for this Search’ from the menu that opens. 3. The ‘Add Bookmark’ dialog appears. In ‘Name’, name this Web page, for example, ‘Wikipedia (en)’. 4. For ‘Keyword’, enter your abbreviation of this Web page, for example, ‘wiki’. 5. With ‘Create in’, choose the location of the entry in your bookmarks section.
12 KGpg is an important component of the encryption infrastructure on your system. With the help of this program, generate and manage all needed keys, use its editor function for the quick creation and encryption of files, or use the applet in your panel to encrypt or decrypt by dragging and dropping. Other programs, such as your mail program (Kontact or Evolution), access the key data to process signed or encrypted contents.
12.1 Generating a New Key Pair To be able to exchange encrypted messages with other users, first generate your own key pair. One part of it—the public key—is distributed to your communication partners, who can use it to encrypt the files or e-mail messages they send. The other part of the key pair—the private key—is used to decrypt the encrypted contents. Important Private Key versus Public Key The public key is intended for the public and should be distributed to all your communication partners.
12 Encryption with KGpg Figure 12.1: KGpg: Creating a Key ‘Email’ Your public key is sent to a recipient of your choice by e-mail. If you activate this option and confirm with ‘OK’, the dialog for creating a new email message with KMail appears. Enter the recipient and click ‘Send’. The recipient receives your key and can then send you encrypted contents. ‘Clipboard’ You can place your public key here before continuing to process it.
Figure 12.2: The Key Manager sending it by e-mail, click this option, confirm or change the file path and name, and click ‘OK’. 12.3 Importing Keys If you receive a key in a file (for example, as an e-mail attachment), integrate it in your key ring with ‘Import Key’ and use it for encrypted communication with the sender. The procedure is similar to the procedure for exporting keys already described. 12.3.
12 Important Important Select the key to sign in the key list. Select ‘Keys’ ➝ ‘Sign Keys’. In the following dialog, designate the private key to use for the signature. An alert reminds you to check the authenticity of this key before signing it. If you have performed this check, click ‘Continue’ and enter the password for the selected private key in the next step. Other users can now check the signature by means of your public key. 12.3.
12.4 The Key Server Dialog Several Internet-based key servers offer the public keys of many users. To engage in encrypted communication with a large number of users, use these servers to distribute your public key. For this purpose, export your public key to one of these servers. Similarly, KGpg enables you to search one of these servers for the keys of certain people and import their public keys from the server. Open the key server dialog with ‘File’ ➝ ‘Key Server Dialog’. 12.4.
12 Encryption with KGpg ‘OK’ then exit the key server dialog with ‘Close’. The imported key then appears in the main overview of the key manager and is ready for use. Figure 12.4: Hits and Import 12.4.2 Exporting Your Keys to a Key Server To export your key to one of the freely accessible key servers on the Internet, select the ‘Export’ tab in the key server dialog. Designate the target server and the key to export by means of two drop-down menus. Then start the export with ‘Export’. 12.
Figure 12.5: Exporting a Key to a Key Server 12.5.1 Encrypting and Decrypting the Clipboard Files copied to the clipboard can easily be encrypted with a few clicks. Open the function overview by clicking the KGpg icon. Select ‘Encrypt Clipboard’ and designate the key to use. A status message about the encryption procedure is displayed on the desktop. The encrypted contents can now be processed from the clipboard as needed. The decryption of clipboard contents is just as easy.
12.5.3 12 The KGpg Editor Generating and checking signatures is just as easy as encrypting directly from the editor. Go to ‘Signature’ ➝ ‘Generate Signature’ and select the file to sign from the file dialog. Then designate the private key to use and enter the associated password. KGpg informs about the successful generation of the signature. Files can also be signed from the editor by simply clicking ‘Sign/Verify’.
Part IV Multimedia
13 Sound in Linux Sound in Linux Linux includes a wide range of sound and multimedia applications. Some of these applications are part of one of the main desktop environments. With the applications described here, control the volume and balance of playback, play CDs and music files, and record and compress your own audio data. 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 Mixers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multimedia Players . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CDs: Playback and Ripping . . . . . . . . . . .
13.1 Mixers Mixers provide a convenient means of controlling the volume and balance of the sound output and input of computers. The main difference between the various mixers is the outer appearance of the user interface. However, there are a number of mixers that are designed for specific hardware. One example is envy24control, a mixer for the Envy 24 sound chip. Another one is hdspmixer, which is for RME Hammerfall cards. From the mixers available, select the one that best suits your needs.
13 Sound in Linux Figure 13.1: The Mixer KMix 13.1.3 alsamixer alsamixer can be run from the command line without the X environment, so is entirely controlled via keyboard shortcuts. An alsamixer window always consists of the following elements: a top row holding basic information on card and chip type, the selected view type, and the mixer item then the volume bars below the information area. Use ← and → to scroll left or right if the controls cannot be displayed in one screen.
Figure 13.2: The GNOME Mixer Applet crease and decrease the volume. Stereo channels can be controlled independently, , W , and E for increasing the volume and Z , X , and C for decreasing using Q the volume. The number keys between 0 and 9 can be used to change the absolute volume quickly. These correspond to zero to ninety percent of full volume. 13.1.
Other volumes, like ‘CD’, ‘Line’, ‘Mic’, and ‘Aux’, control the loopback volume from the corresponding input to the main output. They do not influence the recording level, only the playback volumes. For recording, turn on the ‘Capture’ switch. This is the master recording switch. The ‘Capture’ volume is the input gain for recording. By default, this switch is set to zero. Choose a recording source like ‘Line’ or ‘Mic’. The recording source is exclusive, so you cannot choose two of them at the same time.
Figure 13.3: Monitor and Digital Mixer of envy24control The ‘Monitor Mixer’ of envy24control shows the signal levels that can be mixed digitally in the sound card. The signals designated as ‘PCM Out’ are generated by applications that send PCM data to the sound card. The signals of the analog inputs are shown under ‘H/W In’. The ‘S/PDIF’ inputs are shown to the right. Set the input and output levels of the analog channels under ‘Analog Volume’. Use the ‘Monitor Mixer’ sliders for digital mixing.
On first start, amaroK launches a ‘First-Run Wizard’, which helps set up amaroK. In the first step, configure your preferred look and feel for amaroK. Choose to display player and playlist in separate windows (see Figure 13.4 on the current page) or combine their functionality in one single window. In the second step, determine where amaroK should look for your music collection. amaroK scans these folders for playable media.
Managing Playlists On start-up, amaroK scans the file system for multimedia files according to the settings made in the wizard. The right part of the playlist window lists any playlists found. Play titles listed in it in the order of your choice. If no playlist is found, create one. The best way to do this is by using the sidebar to the left of the window. To the far left, there are a number of tabs that can be used to open different views.
13 Important Important amaroK can compile useful playlists (“Smart Playlists”) on the fly. Use the bottom part of the playlist browser to select one of the smart playlists or click ‘Create Smart Playlist’ to define a custom smart playlist. Enter a name, search criteria, order, and optional track limit. Sound in Linux Sharing Playlists with Other Players Save playlists in m3u or pls format, so you can share them with any other players using these formats. File Browser This tab opens a file browser.
Visualizations amaroK comes with a number of visualizations that display a graphical effect for the music played. Native amaroK visualizations are displayed in the player window. Cycle through the various available display modes by clicking the animation. In addition to the above, amaroK also supports the visualization plug-ins of the XMMS media player. To use these, first install the xmms-plugins package then select ‘Visualizations’ from the amaroK menu. This opens a window listing the available plug-ins.
13 Sound in Linux Figure 13.5: XMMS with Equalizer, OpenGL Spectrum Analyzer, and Infinity Plug-Ins To the left under the menu button, there are five buttons with different letters on them. These buttons allow quick access to additional menus, dialog, and configurations. Open the playlist with ‘PL’ and the equalizer with ‘EQ’. 13.3 CDs: Playback and Ripping There are many ways to listen to your favorite music tracks. Either play a CD or play digitalized versions of them.
Important CDDA and Analog CD Playback There are two different ways of playing back audio CDs. CD and DVD drives capable of analog CD playback read out the audio data and send it to the sound output device. Some external drives connected via PCMCIA, FireWire, or USB need to use CDDA (Compact Disk Digital Audio) to extract the audio data first then play it as digital PCM. The players featured in the following sections do not support CDDA. Use XMMS if you need CDDA support. Important 13.3.
13.3.3 Compressing Audio Data Audio compression can be handled by various tools. The following sections feature a command-line approach to encoding and playing audio data as well as some graphical applications capable of audio compression. 13 Sound in Linux at the bottom of the player window or using the context menu opened by rightclicking the panel icon or player window.
Figure 13.7: Ripping Audio CDs with Grip Compressing Audio Data Using KAudioCreator KAudioCreator is a lean CD ripper application (see Figure 13.8 on the facing page). Once started, it lists all the tracks of your CD in the ‘CD Tracks’ tab. Select the tracks to rip and encode. To edit the track information, use the ‘Album Editor’ under ‘File’ ➝ ‘Edit Album’. Otherwise just start the ripping and encoding with ‘File’ ➝ ‘Rip Selection’. Watch the progress of these jobs using the ‘Jobs’ tab.
13 Sound in Linux Figure 13.8: Ripping Audio CDs with KAudioCreator three tabs: ‘General’, ‘Names’, and ‘Ogg Vorbis Encoder’. Normally, a suitable CD device is detected automatically. Do not change this default setting unless the autodetection failed and you need to set the CD device manually. Error correction and encoder priority can also be set here. The tab ‘Ogg Vorbis Encoder’ determines the quality of the encoding.
Figure 13.9: Ripping Audio Data with Konqueror 13.4 Hard Disk Recording with Audacity With audacity (package audacity), record and edit audio files. This is called hard disk recording. When you start the program for the first time, select a language. At other times, change the language setting under ‘File’ ➝ ‘Preferences’ ➝ ‘Interface’. The language change is then effective the next time you start the program. 13.4.
13 Sound in Linux Figure 13.10: Spectral View of the Audio Data To import audio files, select ‘Project’ ➝ ‘Import Audio’. The program supports the WAV format and the compressed Ogg Vorbis format. See Section 13.3.3 on page 189 for more information about this format. 13.4.2 Editing Audio Files Open the ‘AudioTrack’ menu to the left of the track. This menu offers various options for different views and basic editing operations. To rename the track, select ‘Name’ and enter a new name.
Depending on the chosen file type, various view formats for segment selections are offered under ‘View’ ➝ ‘Set Selection Format’. With ‘Set Snap-To Mode’, the segment boundaries can automatically be adapted to the selected view format. For example, if you select ‘PAL frames’ as the view format and activate ‘Snap-To’, the segment boundaries are always selected in multiples of frames. All editing tools come with tool tips, so should be easy to use.
13.4.3 Saving and Exporting To save the entire project, select ‘File’ ➝ ‘Save Project’ or ‘Save Project As’. This generates an XML file with the extension .aup, which describes the project. The actual audio data is saved in a directory named after the project with _data appended. 13 Sound in Linux Peak Amplitude’ is set to 0.0 dB. This value represents the highest possible amplitude in the selected audio format.
Figure 13.12: QARecord-–A Simple Hard Disk Recording Application 196 13.5.
14 This chapter introduces some basic Linux video, radio, and webcam applications. Learn how to configure and use motv for watching analog TV, using a webcam, and browsing video text. Use xawtv4 for digital video broadcasts. Webcams can be run using gqcam. EPG information can be accessed using nxtvepg or xawtv4. 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 Watching TV with motv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Video Text Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Webcams and motv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
14.1 Watching TV with motv motv is an improved successor to xawtv. It incorporates all essential functions into the user interface. Start the application with ‘Multimedia’ ➝ ‘Video’ ➝ ‘motv’. Start it at the command line with motv. Initially, only a TV window appears after the application starts. Open a menu window by right-clicking it. Figure 14.1: The TV Application motv 14.1.1 Video Source and Network Search In ‘Settings’ ➝ ‘Input’, select the video source.
14 Tip Tip 14.1.2 Retrieving Audio Data The audio output of the TV card is connected to the line input of your sound card, to the speakers, or to an amplifier. Some TV cards can change the volume of the audio output. The volume can then be set with the sliders that appear after selecting ‘Settings’ ➝ ‘Slider’. This window also provides the sliders for brightness, contrast, and color. To use your sound card for audio playback, check the mixer settings using gamix, described in Section 13.1 on page 178.
Tip Storing the Configuration in .xawtv The .xawtv file is created automatically and updated by clicking ‘Settings’ ➝ ‘Save settings’. Here, the broadcasters are saved along with the configuration. More information about the configuration file can be found in the man page for xawtvrc. Tip 14.1.4 The Launcher Menu Use the launcher menu to start other applications to use with motv. Start the audio mixer gamix and the video text application alevt, for example, using a keyboard shortcut.
14.3 14 Webcams and motv When connecting the webcam to the USB before the bttv driver has been automatically loaded (for example, by starting a TV application), /dev/video0 is reserved for the webcam. In this case, if you start motv with the -c /dev/video1 parameter to access the TV card, you might get an error message, because the bttv driver was not automatically loaded. Solve this problem by loading the driver separately with modprobe bttv as the user root.
If you set an EPG broadcaster in motv, nxtvepg immediately begins importing the current list of TV programs. The progress is displayed. Figure 14.2: The Electronic TV Magazine nxtvepg If you have not started a TV application, let nxtvepg search for EPG broadcasters. To do this, use ‘Configure’ ➝ ‘Provider scan’. ‘Use .xatv’ is activated by default. This indicates that nxtvepg is accessing the broadcasters saved in this file.
Of particular interest is the ‘Navigate’ menu. This is built directly from the EPG data. It appears in the language provided by the network. 14.5 Watching Digital Video Broadcasts with xawtv4 As your hardware has been properly configured with YaST, start xawtv4 from the main menu (‘Multimedia’ ➝ ‘Video’ ➝ ‘xawtv4’ ). Before you can actually start watching your favorite broadcasts, build a database of DVB stations. 14 TV, Video, Radio, and Webcam ‘Show networks’.
This can be done manually with ‘Commands’ ➝ ‘Tune manually’ if you already know the tuning parameters of the bouquet or by requesting them from a built-in database of xawtv4 via ‘Database’ ➝ ‘_country_’ ➝ ‘_channel number_’ (replace _country_ and _channel_number_) by the actual values for your location. As soon as the scanner is tuned-in, the first data is displayed in the browser window. Launch a full scan of all available stations with ‘Command’ ➝ ‘Full Scan’.
14 TV, Video, Radio, and Webcam Figure 14.4: The mtt4 Video Text Browser 14.6 Webcam Operation with gqcam gqcam is a webcam application that assists in taking snapshots or automatic picture series with webcams. To use gqcam, your webcam must be supported by Video4Linux. Many USB webcams, like the Logitech Quickcam Express, are automatically recognized. Grayscale and color cameras can be used. TV cards that support Video4Linux can also be used as an image source.
Figure 14.5: DVB Radio 14.6.1 Operation Connect your camera to the USB port of your computer before starting gqcam. Then run gqcam. The current picture of your webcam is automatically shown in the upper part of the application window. The lower part has sliders for adjusting the brightness, white balance, contrast, tint, and color saturation as needed. The brightness is automatically preset. This feature can be set in ‘General’ in ‘File’ ➝ ‘Preferences’.
SUSE LINUX 14 TV, Video, Radio, and Webcam that all the necessary settings be passed to the application as parameters. Running gqcam -t JPEG -s -d webcam.jpg saves the current image captured by the camera with the filename webcam.jpg. The option -t defines the file format. Possible values are JPEG, PNG, and PPM. The command line switch -s activates the color correction. The filename for saving is passed with the option -d. If more than one webcam is operated, the name of the device must be passed.
15 K3b is a comprehensive program for writing data and audio CDs and DVDs. Start the program from the main menu or by entering the command k3b. The following sections brief you on how to start a basic burning process to get your first Linux-made CD or DVD. 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5 Creating a Data CD . . Creating an Audio CD Copying a CD . . . . . Writing ISO Images . . For More Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15.1 Creating a Data CD To create a data CD, go to ‘File’ ➝ ‘New Project’ ➝ ‘New Data Project’. The project view appears in the lower part of the window, as shown in Figure 15.1 on this page. Drag the desired directories or individual files from your home directory to the project folder and drop them there. Save the project under a name of your choice with ‘File’ ➝ ‘Save as’. Figure 15.1: Creating a New Data CD Then select ‘Burn’ from the toolbar.
15 K3b—The KDE Burning Application Figure 15.2: Customizing the Burning Process write process is used for each individual track. The RAW mode is not used very often, because the writer does not perform any data corrections. The best setting is ‘Auto’, because it allows K3b to use the most suitable settings. ‘Simulate’ This function can be used to check if your system supports the selected writing speed. The writing is performed with the laser deactivated to test the system.
It is preferable to select a suitable burning speed that avoids buffer underruns. ‘Only create image’ This option creates an image file. Set the path for this file under ‘Temporary File’. The image file can be written to CD at a later time. To do this, use ‘Tools’ ➝ ‘CD’ ➝ ‘Burn CD Image’. If this option is used, all other options in this section are deactivated. ‘Remove image’ Remove the temporary image file from hard disk when finished.
15 Tip Tip 15.3 Copying a CD Select ‘Tools’ ➝ ‘CD’ ➝ ‘Copy CD’ or the copy CD button from the toolbar. In the dialog that opens, make the settings for the reading and writing device as shown in Figure 15.3 on the following page. The writing options discussed are also available here. An additional function enables the creation of several copies of the CD.
Figure 15.3: Copying a CD 214 15.5.
16 Managing photos from your camera can be fun, if you have the right tools. Linux offers several handy utilities to sort and organize your photographs. This chapter covers the use of gphoto, gtkam, Konqueror, and Digikam. 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 16.5 16.6 16.7 Connecting to the Camera Accessing the Camera . . . Installing the Programs . . Using Konqueror . . . . . . Using gtKam . . . . . . . . Using Digikam . . . . . . . For More Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A comprehensive list of supported cameras is available at http://www. gphoto.org/. If gphoto2 is installed, retrieve the list with the command gphoto2 --list-cameras. Get information about the available commands with gphoto2 --help. Tip Unsupported Cameras If you do not find your camera in the list from gphoto, do not despair. It is likely that your camera is supported as a USB mass storage device. Find more information in Section 16.2 on the current page. Tip 16.
After the camera is successfully mounted, see a new directory under /media, beginning with usb and lots of numbers. Each vendor and product has a number, so when you connect a device on your computer it has always the same name. Depending on what you have connected to the USB bus, find different entries. The only problem left is to find the correct entry for your camera. Try to list one of these directories and see what happens. Each camera has a different tree structure, so there is no general rule.
16.5 Using gtKam gtKam is a graphical interface for downloading and deleting pictures from a digital camera. To adjust or edit your pictures, use GIMP as described in Chapter 18 on page 235. Connect your camera to the appropriate port and turn on the camera. Start gtKam with the command gtkam &. From the menu, select ‘Camera’ ➝ ‘Select Camera’. In the dialog that opens, select the camera model or use ‘Detect’. Select the appropriate port if the detection fails.
16.6 16 Using Digikam Digital Cameras and Linux Digikam by Renchi Raju is a KDE program for downloading photographs from digital cameras. The first time it is run, Digikam asks where to store your photo album. If you enter a directory that already contains a collection of photographs, Digikam treats each subfolder of the folder as an Album. On start-up, Digikam presents a window with two sections: your albums are displayed to the left and the respective photographs available are displayed to the right.
16.6.2 Downloading Pictures from Your Camera After your camera has been configured correctly, connect to your camera with the ‘Camera’ menu and the name that you gave in the dialog from Section 16.6.1 on the preceding page. Digikam opens a window and begins to download thumbnails and displays them as in Figure 16.2 on the current page. Right-click an image to open a pop-up menu with the options to ‘View’, display some ‘Properties’ and ‘EXIF Information’, ‘Download’, or ‘Delete’ the image.
16.6.3 16 Getting Information ‘General’ lists the name, type, owner, and some other basic information. The more interesting part is the ‘EXIF’ tab. The camera stores some metadata for each photograph. Digikam reads these properties and displays them in this list. Find the exposure time, pixel dimensions, and others. To get more information for the selected list entry, press Shift - F1 . This shows a small tool tip. The last tab, ‘Histogram’, shows some statistical information. 16.6.
16.6.5 Managing Tags Managing lots of different photographs with different albums can sometimes be complex. To organize individual photographs, Digikam provides the ‘My Tag’ system. For example, you have photographed your friend John at different times and you want to collect all images, independent of your album. This let you find all photographs very easily. First, create a new tag by clicking ‘My Tags’ ➝ ‘People’. From the context menu, choose ‘New Tag’.
16 Digital Cameras and Linux Figure 16.3: Creating a Template for a Calendar Finding Duplicate Photographs Sometimes you photograph similar scenes repeatedly and want to keep only the best shots. This is the perfect task for the ‘Find Duplicate’ plug-in. Go to ‘Tools’ ➝ ‘Find Duplicate Images’, which opens a window similar to Figure 16.4 on the next page. Select the albums or tags to handle. Under ‘Method & Cache’, choose the search method: a more accurate or a faster method.
Figure 16.4: Finding Similar Pictures Batch Processes Digikam also provides some batch processes that perform a specific task on lots of files. This can be renaming, converting, resizing, and much more. Find them under ‘Tools’ ➝ ‘Batch Processes’. 16.7 For More Information For more information about using digital cameras with Linux, refer to the following Web sites: http://digikam.sourceforge.net/ Information about Digikam http://gphoto.sourceforge.
16 Digital Cameras and Linux Figure 16.5: Results of Find http://www.thekompany.
17 Kooka is a KDE application for scanning. This chapter explains the user interface and the functionality of the application. In addition to creating image files from printed media, like photographs or magazines, Kooka has character recognition capabilities. This means it can help convert written text to a text file that can be edited. 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 The Preview . . . . . . . . . . The Final Scan . . . . . . . . . The Menus . . . . . . . . . . . The Gallery . . . . . . . . . . .
Start Kooka from the main menu or enter the command kooka. When started, Kooka opens a three-frame window with a menu bar to the upper left and a toolbar directly below it. All windows can be freely readjusted or rearranged with the mouse. It is also possible to completely detach single frames from the Kooka window for deliberate placement on the desktop. To move the frames, click and drag the thin double line right above the frame.
17.1 17 The Preview Kooka—A Scanning Application A preview should always be created when the object to scan is smaller than the total scanning area. Set a few parameters to the left of the preview frame. Select the scanning size with ‘Custom’ or one of the standard formats. See Figure 17.2 on this page. The ‘Custom’ setting is the most flexible, because it allows selection of the desired area with the mouse.
Choose between color and black-and-white scanning and set the resolution with the slider. See Figure 17.3 on the current page. The higher the resolution, the better the quality of the scanned image is. However, this also results in a correspondingly larger file and the scanning process can take a very long time at high resolutions. Activate ‘Use custom gamma table’ and click ‘Edit’ to change the settings for brightness, contrast, and gamma. Figure 17.
17.3 17 The Menus File Use this menu to start the KPrinter printing assistant, create a new folder for your images, and save, delete, and close files. The OCR results of a scanned text document can be saved here. Also use this menu to close Kooka. Image The ‘Image’ menu allows starting a graphics application for postprocessing or optical character recognition of an image. The recognized text from an OCR operation is displayed in its own frame.
Figure 17.4: The Kooka Gallery 17.5 Optical Character Recognition If the character recognition module is installed, documents can be scanned in ‘lineart’ mode, saved in the proposed format, then processed for text recognition from the ‘Image’ menu. Process the entire document or only a previously selected area. A configuration dialog tells the module whether the original text is in printed type, handwriting, or standardized type. Also set the language so the module can process the document correctly.
17 Kooka—A Scanning Application Figure 17.
18 The GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a program for creating and editing pixel graphics. In most aspects, its features are comparable to those of Adobe Photoshop and other commercial programs. Use it to resize and retouch photographs, design graphics for Web pages, make covers for your custom CDs, or almost any other graphics project. It meets the needs of both amateurs and professionals. 18.1 18.2 18.3 18.4 18.5 18.6 Graphics Formats . . . . Starting GIMP . . . . . .
Like many other Linux programs, The GIMP is developed as a cooperative effort of developers worldwide who volunteer their time and code to the project. The program is under constant development, so the version included in your SUSE LINUX may vary slightly from the version discussed here. The layout of the individual windows and window sections is especially likely to vary. The GIMP is an extremely complex program. Only a small range of features, tools, and menu items are discussed in this chapter.
18.2.2 18 The Default Windows The Toolbox The main window of GIMP, shown in Figure 18.1 on the current page, contains the main controls of the application. Closing it exits the application. At the very top, the menu bar offers access to file functions, extensions, and help. Below that, find icons for the various tools. Hover the mouse over an icon to display information about it. Manipulating Graphics with The GIMP Three windows appear by default.
The current foreground and background color are shown in two overlapping boxes. The default colors are black for the foreground and white for the background. Click the box to open a color selection dialog. Swap the foreground and background color with the bent arrow symbol to the upper right of the boxes. Use the black and white symbol to the lower left to reset the colors to the default. To the right, the current brush, pattern, and gradient are shown.
In the ‘Image Size’ section, set the size of the image to create in pixels or another unit. Click the unit to select another unit from the list of available units. The ratio between pixels and a unit is set in ‘Resolution’, which appears when the ‘Advanced Options’ section is open. A resolution of 72 pixels per inch corresponds to screen display. It is sufficient for Web page graphics. A higher resolution should be used for images to print.
current window with ‘Zoom’. When ‘Shrink Wrap’ is selected, the image window is resized to fit the current image display exactly. 18.4 Saving Images No image function is as important as ‘File’ ➝ ‘Save’. It is better to save too often than too rarely. Use ‘File’ ➝ ‘Save as’ to save the image with a new filename. It is a good idea to save image stages under different names or make backups in another directory so you can easily restore a previous state.
To save the image in the chosen format, press ‘Save’. To abort, press ‘Cancel’. If the image has features that cannot be saved in the chosen format, a dialog appears with choices for resolving the situation. Choosing ‘Export’, if offered, normally gives the desired results. A window then opens with the options of the format. Reasonable default values are provided. 18.5 Printing Images To print an image, select ‘File’ ➝ ‘Print’ from the image menu.
Figure 18.2: The Print Dialog http://www.gimp.org is the official home page of The GIMP. Grokking the GIMP by Carey Bunks is an excellent book based on an older GIMP version. Although some aspects of the program have changed, it can provide excellent guidance for image manipulation. An online version is available at http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/. http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net is the Web page for the GIMP print plug-in.
Part V Excursions
19 Graphical user interfaces are increasingly becoming important for Linux, but using the mouse is not always the best way to perform daily tasks. The command line provides high flexibility and efficiency. The first part of this chapter provides an introduction to the Bash shell. It is followed by an explanation of the user permission concept in Linux and a list of the most important commands. The chapter closes with a description of the vi text editor. 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.4 Introduction to Bash . . . . . .
Text-based applications are especially important for controlling older Linux computers that do not have the resources for demanding display systems. Virtual consoles are used in this case. Six of them are available in text mode. Press Alt F6 . The seventh console is reserved for X. Alt F1 through 19.1 Introduction to Bash In the KDE taskbar, there is an icon depicting a monitor with a seashell. When you click this icon, a console window opens in which to enter commands.
The /home directory contains the directories in which the individual users can store their personal files. Figure 19.1 on this page shows the standard directory tree in Linux, with the home directories of the example users xyz, linux, and tux. The directory tree of a Linux system has a functional structure that follows the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. The following list provides a brief description of the standard directories in Linux.
/bin programs needed early in the boot process /usr/sbin programs reserved for the system administrator /sbin programs reserved for the system administrator and needed for booting /usr/include header files for the C compiler /usr/include/g++ header files for the C++ compiler /usr/share/doc various documentation files /usr/share/man system manual pages (man pages) /usr/src source code of system software /usr/src/linux kernel source code /tmp, /var/tmp temporary files /usr all application programs /var config
19.1.3 19 Bash Functions History To repeat a command that has been entered before, press ↑ until the previous command appears at the prompt. Move forward through the list of previously entered commands by pressing ↓ . To edit the command line, just move the cursor to the desired position using the arrow keys and start typing. Use Ctrl - R to search in the history. Expansion Expand a filename to its full length after typing its first letters until it can be uniquely identified.
6. Move Testfile into the subdirectory test with the command mv. To . speed this up, use the expansion function: just enter mv T and press Tab As long as there is no other file beginning with this letter in the directory, the shell expands the filename and adds the string estfile. Otherwise, add a letter or two yourself and test Tab each time to see whether the shell can now expand the name.
2. Change into the new directory with cd test2 and create a subdirectory in it with the name subdirectory. To change into it, use the expansion function: enter cd su then press Tab . The shell expands the rest of the directory name. 3. Now try to move the previously created file Testbackup into the current directory (subdirectory) without changing the directory again. To achieve this, specify the relative path to that file: mv ../../test/Testbackup ..
19.1.6 Less and More Linux includes two small programs for viewing text files directly in the shell. Rather than starting an editor to read a file like Readme.txt, simply enter less to scroll Readme.txt to display the text in the console window. Use Space down one page. Use Page Up and Page Down to move forward or backward in the text. To exit less, press Q . Instead of less, you can also use the older program more.
19.1.8 Archives and Data Compression Now that you have already created a number of files and directories, consider the subject of archives and data compression. Suppose you want to have the entire test directory packed in one file that you can save on a floppy disk as a backup copy or send by e-mail. To do so, use the command tar (for tape archiver). With tar --help, view all the options for the tar command. The most important of these options are explained here: -c (for create) Create a new archive.
Change to the directory with cd test2. A compressed archive with the .tar.gz extension can be unzipped with the gunzip command. Enter gunzip testarchive.tar.gz, which results in the file testarchive.tar, which then needs to be extracted or untarred with tar -xvf testarchive.tar. You can also unzip and extract a compressed archive in one step by adding the -z option. The complete command would be tar -xzvf testarchive.tar.gz.
19.2 Users and Access Permissions 19.2.1 Working with the Shell Since its inception in the early 1990s, Linux has been developed as a multiuser system. Any number of users can work on it simultaneously. Users need to log in to the system before starting a session at their workstations. Each user has a username with a corresponding password. This differentiation of users guarantees that unauthorized users cannot see files for which they do not have permission.
- rw- r-- -– Type Users Permissions Group Permissions Permissions for Other Users This column is comprised of one leading character followed by nine characters grouped in threes. The first of the ten letters stands for the type of file system component. The hyphen (-) shows that this is a file. A directory (d), a link (l), a block device (b), or a character device could also be indicated. The next three blocks follow a standard pattern.
19.2.2 Modifying File Permissions Changing Access Permissions The access permissions of a file or directory can be changed by the owner and, of course, by root with the command chmod followed by the parameters changing the permissions and one or more filenames. The parameters form different categories: 1.
Suppose the file Roadmap from Example 19.2 on page 256 should no longer belong to tux, but to the user geeko. root should then enter chown geeko Roadmap. chgrp changes the group ownership of the file. However, the owner of the file must be a member of the new group. In this way, the user tux from Example 19.1 on page 255 can switch the group owning the file ProjectData to project4 with the command chgrp project4 ProjectData, as long as he is a member of this new group. 19.2.
19.2.5 The Sticky Bit There is also the sticky bit. It makes a difference whether it belongs to an executable program or a directory. If it belongs to a program, a file marked in this way is loaded to RAM to avoid needing to get it from the hard disk each time it is used. This attribute is used rarely, because modern hard disks are fast enough. If this attribute is assigned to a directory, it prevents users from deleting each other’s files.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 # file: Roadmap # owner: tux # group: project3 user::rwuser:jane:rwgroup::r-group:djungle:rwmask::r-other::--- effective: r-effective: r-- The first three lines of the output do not hold any information not available with ls -l. These lines only state filename, owner, and owning group. Lines 4 to 9 hold the ACL entries. Conventional access permissions represent a subset of those possible when using ACLs.
Adjust the settings to your needs. It makes no sense to write ls file(s), if no file named file(s) actually exists. You can usually combine several parameters, for example, by writing ls -la instead of ls -l -a. 19.3.1 File Commands The following section lists the most important commands for file management. It covers anything from general file administration to manipulation of file system ACLs. 19 Working with the Shell The actual command and its mandatory options are always printed as command option.
ln [option(s)] source target Creates an internal link from source to target. Normally, such a link points directly to source on the same file system. However, if ln is executed with the -s option, it creates a symbolic link that only points to the directory in which source is located, enabling linking across file systems. -s Creates a symbolic link cd [options(s)] [directory] Changes the current directory. cd without any parameters changes to the user’s home directory.
s As an alternative, a numeric code can be used. The four digits of this code are composed of the sum of the values 4, 2, and 1—the decimal result of a binary mask. The first digit sets the set user ID (SUID) (4), the set group ID (2), and the sticky (1) flags. The second digit defines the permissions of the owner of the file. The third digit defines the permissions of the group members and the last digit sets the permissions for all other users.
The archive files created by tar end with .tar. If the tar archive was also compressed using gzip, the ending is .tgz or .tar.gz. If it was compressed using bzip2, the ending is .tar.bz2. Application examples can be found in Section 19.1.8 on page 253. locate pattern(s) This command is only available if you have installed the findutils-locate package. The locate command can find in which directory a specified file is located. If desired, use wild cards to specify filenames.
Ignores case Only displays the names of the respective files, but not the text lines Additionally displays the numbers of the lines in which it found a hit Only lists the files in which searchstring does not occur diff [option(s)] file1 file2 The diff command compares the contents of any two files. The output produced by the program lists all lines that do not match. This is frequently used by programmers who need only send their program alterations and not the entire source code.
System Information df [option(s)] [directory] The df (disk free) command, when used without any options, displays information about the total disk space, the disk space currently in use, and the free space on all the mounted drives. If a directory is specified, the information is limited to the drive on which that directory is located. -h Shows the number of occupied blocks in gigabytes, megabytes, or kilobytes—in human-readable format -T Type of file system (ext2, nfs, etc.
aux Displays a detailed list of all processes, independent of the owner -9 Sends a KILL signal instead of a TERM signal, bringing the specified process to an end in almost all cases killall [option(s)] processname This command is similar to kill, but uses the process name (instead of the process ID) as an argument, killing all processes with that name. Working with the Shell kill [option(s)] process ID Unfortunately, sometimes a program cannot be terminated in the normal way.
Warning Do not use telnet over a network on which third parties can eavesdrop. Particularly on the Internet, use encrypted transfer methods, such as ssh, to avoid the risk of malicious misuse of a password (see the man page for ssh). Warning Miscellaneous passwd [option(s)] [username] Users may change their own passwords at any time using this command. The administrator root can use the command to change the password of any user on the system.
19 Table 19.2: Simple Commands of the vi Editor a Changes to insert mode (characters appear after the current cursor position). A Changes to insert mode (characters are added at the end of the line). R Changes to command mode (overwrites the old text). r Changes to insert mode and overwrites each character. s Changes to insert mode (the character where the cursor is positioned is replaced by the next entry you make). C Changes to insert mode (the rest of the line is replaced by the new text).
entering 3dw. The command 10x deletes ten characters after the cursor position and 20dd deletes twenty lines. The most important commands in last line mode are shown in Table 19.3 on the current page. Table 19.3: Complex Commands of the vi Editor 270 :q! exits vi without saving any changes :w hfilenamei saves as hfilenamei :x saves the modified file and exits the editor :e hfilenamei edits (loads) hfilenamei :u undoes the last edit command 19.4.
A Additional Information Where do I find general and up-to-date information for SUSE LINUX? In addition to this FAQ chapter, SUSE provides a comprehensive FAQ Web site at http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/ faq/index.html. Are the SUSE manuals also available as PDF or HTML files? Our manuals are included on the CDs and are also available through the SUSE help center. To start the help center, press Alt F2 and enter the command susehelp.
Hardware Is my hardware supported? It is best to refer to the component database at http://cdb.suse.de/index.php?LANG=en_EN or http://cdb. suse.de. less /usr/share/doc/howto/en/Hardware-HOWTO.gz can also provide some information. Also check the hardware section of the SUSE LINUX FAQ at http://www.novell.com/products/ linuxprofessional/faq/index.html. Installation Where do I find the current system requirements for an installation of SUSE LINUX? Refer to http://www.novell.
I want to remove Linux. How does this work? With fdisk, delete the Linux partitions. You might need to run fdisk in Linux. Afterwards, boot from the MS-DOS disk and run fdisk /MBR in DOS or Windows. System Configuration and Administration A SUSE LINUX FAQ the sort methods available. Then view a short description of the package similar to the one you would get in YaST. Do I need to be afraid of a virus in Linux? In Linux, there have been no serious viruses found.
I only have an application in source code. How can I install it? Before trying to compile an application on your own check whether it already exist as installable RPM. Try Web sites like http://packman.links2linux.org/ or http://rpmfind.net. Decompress the archive with tar xvzf name.tar.gz, read the INSTALL or README files, and follow the instructions. If compiling on your own, note that neither the compilation nor the resulting application are covered by the installation support.
A Use an editor to add the new partitions in /etc/fstab. This could resemble the line in Example A.1 on this page. Example A.1: Sample Line in /etc/fstab for an Additional Partition /dev/hdb1 /opt ext2 defaults 1 2 Now, shut down the computer and reboot. 6. After rebooting, check that /dev/hdb1 has actually been mounted to /opt using the command mount. If everything is working as desired, remove the old data from /opt.old: SUSE LINUX FAQ mv /opt /opt.old mkdir /opt cd / rm -fr opt.
Can I copy and paste in Linux? Yes, this is possible. Highlight the text block by clicking and dragging with the left mouse button then insert by clicking with the middle mouse button. The right mouse button has a special function in most programs and applications. How can I switch from a virtual text console to the graphical user interface? By default, there are six virtual text consoles that can be accessed with Ctrl - F1 to F6 .
A SUSE LINUX FAQ My computer crashed. Can I just press the reset button without risking anything? If your computer no longer reacts to your mouse or keyboard, this does not necessarily mean that your entire system has crashed. Possibly one program is blocking the mouse or the keyboard, but all other programs are still running.
database at http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/index.html. Enter a keyword or work your way forward or backward via the History link. If it really is a bug, send a description of it using http://www.suse.de/feedback and read the article at http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2001/10/bugreport.html. What is a mirror? Why shouldn’t I get these things from ftp.suse.com? As there are many users who need to retrieve things from the server at the same time, its capacity limit would be reached very quickly.
Index A access permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . see permissions accessibility - GNOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65–67 - KDE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93–96 alevt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 alsamixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 amaroK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
· Kontact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36, 129 · moneyplex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 · OpenOffice.org . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33, 109 · Planner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 · PostgreSQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 · Rekall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 · StarOffice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 · Taskjuggler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 · VYM .
- terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 df . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Digikam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42, 219–224 digital cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215–225 - accessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 - connecting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
- searching with . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159, 163 - sidebar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 - starting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 - tabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 - themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 fonts - installing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 free . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
- audio CDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 - configuring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 - copying CDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 - data CDs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 KAddressbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see Kontact KAudioCreator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 KDE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70–83, 93–96 - accessibility . . . . . .
- installing programs with . . . . . . . . . . . - KAddressBook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - KOrganizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - syncing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KsCD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 144 145 146 188 O less . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252, 264 Linux - removing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 ln . . . . . . .
profile management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 programs . . . . . . see applications, see commands ps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 PTP protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 Q qaRecord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 R reboot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 rm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
- Konqueror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35, 152–155 - Opera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Web pages - archiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 webcams - gqcam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 - motv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 wild cards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264 X XMMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
