How to enable dual-screen monitor in Linux w/ Nvidia X server config.

I have shown in an earlier post that dual-monitor works great on Linux Mint 12. Dual monitor is great if you are coding, and like doing a ton of things at the same time. Although there are times when dual-monitor can be a pain in your brain.

enhanced productivity, or distraction. The choice is yours.

Like for example when I tried to play the incredible game ZAZ”Zaz aint zaz” full-screen, it tried to take up both monitors. Although this is one of the funest games I have played in a long time. In theory you should be able to play your favorite game, in one window while browsing or chatting in another. But your mileage may seriously vary.

I often use Fire-fox in one window, and chrome in another. Or you may need to have a file browser open on one window, and a web-browser handy in another.

So here is how it is done.

STEP ONE: Install your most video drivers.

type:  “super key”

type: “additional”

hit the enter key to open the additional drivers program.

This will box will show up briefly, while your hardware is being checked.

In this screen-shot I had already highlighted the recommended driver, and clicked activate. After which you will be prompted to enter your password, provided you are an administrator.

After you have entered your password, the installation of the Nvidia drivers will happen. The reason my screen-shot says it is not currently in use, is you will need to reboot after the installation is complete.

STEP TWO: Configure the Nvidia X server.

Do a search for the word “nvidia”, just like you did with additional. Then strike enter to open the Nvidia X server configuration tool.

In the Left hand box make sure to check the “server Display configuration option”.

You may or may not see your secondary monitor in the layout box, like mine does. When I first opened up this box, there was only my Dell monitor showing. I had to Left-click/HOLD the monitor icon, and drag it from on top of my other monitor until they were directly side by side.

Notice the Monitor icon on the Left is highlighted, showing that it is selected. Notice that the selected monitor, is the same as the controls in the Display box.

In the resolution drop-down menu, you will need to set the resolution to auto. Also you will want to choose the monitor on the right to have the “Make this the primary display for the X screen” checked.

You may wish to choose the position of the main monitor, to the position “Left of” as the screen-shot below shows.

After you click apply you have 15 seconds to hit the OK button to keep the settings.

Notice Cancel is highlighted. Press enter to cancel emmediately. Press Left, then Enter to keep settings.

 You could even choose to have your monitors in a stacked array if you wish, although that would be confusing if your monitors are not physically stacked.

There is one final thing that you must do, in order to make your changes permanent.  You must click “Save to X configuration file.”

After you select save, you will be prompted to enter your password. This is due to the fact that you are changing a system configuration file. Any changes to configuration files, must be done by an administrator. Once you have done that your configuration will be permanent.

PRO-tip: If you want to know the current operating temperature of your GPU(GFX Processing Unit), you may click on “Thermal Settings”. Although that is a bit misleading, because there is nothing to set, only a chart of your current temperature as shown below.

Once this is done you will be able to move the cursor freely from one display to another. You could drag a running program to your secondary monitor, for ease of reference if you wish.

With these simple instructions you can easily double your productivity. Good luck to all of you curious geeks out there. Although don’t blame me if your games don’t work perfectly in dual-screen mode.

Linux Mint 12 review: wrap up…getting used to gnome again.

Linux Mint 12 review: wrap up…getting used to gnome again.

I am happy with the polish that the Mint developers did polishing Linux Mint 12. I enjoy having my menu back. I have found myself slowly transitioning away from the menu-bar, as I get more used to using gnome 3. Although I have noticed that tabs in the menu bar, are not universal throughout all of the work spaces. So If I have fire-fox on one work space and chrome on the other, only one tab will show up per workspace.

Mint menu expanded.

The far Left side of the mint menu directly relates to the gnome 3 Dash bar automatically.

Notice the favorite bar on the right side.

I like the fact that there are many ways you can  choose to get to your applications.

If you need to get to your clean desktop use the show desktop button, which is directly next to the menu button.

I was slightly disappointed that the only way to search with only the keyboard, is to use the gnome shell method. Gnome shell does not seem to base their search results on how often I use a program, but the program I am looking for always shows up somewhere in the list within the first three key-strokes.

USER TIP:

Use the “super” key(aka windows key) to initiate the “activities Overview” (dark) portal.

I was expecting to want to throw gnome 3 out of a window, by the end of day 2. But I am already feeling like a gnome shell ellite user after just 3 days. I think if you approach Linux Mint 12’s new interface w/ an open-mind you will be very happy, and be able to stay on topic.

I added the canary-yellow background. The default was plain white.

I found out that there is no longer any sarcastic ascii art animals to welcome you to the Linux terminal mode. Although I do get the same Humor from the AWN(avant window navigator) dock, through the animal farm applet.

PRO TIP:

After you initiate search, you can click one of two search tabs at the bottom of the window. These search tabs when clicked or “return”, will automatically launch a new tab in your web-browser to either Google or Wikipedia. Also if you ever need to exit the dark portal, all you need to do is to hit the “esc” key.

Below I have included a couple of youtube video’s about gnome 3.

 

FEWER INTERRUPTIONS:

messaging with gnome 3.

 

Working with Windows.

Mini Post: Linux mint 12 installation slides.

 This is what happens after you successfully finish entering your user data, during the Linux mint 12 installation.

Welcome to Linux Mint. Welcome and thank you for choosing Linux Mint. This slide show will show you around while the system is being installed on your computer.

Browse the web. Be fast and safe on the web with Mozilla Firefox. Enjoy Java, Flash, and multimedia content.

Listen to music and CD’s. Enjoy your music with Banshee. Plug-in your MP3 player or extract songs from your audio CDs. Listen to pod-casts and on-line radios. Discover new artists on last.fm, the Internet Archive and the Amazon MP3 store.

Watch videos and DVD’s. Insert a DVD and enjoy a movie. Watch high-definition videos with VLC.

Manage your photos. Organize, enjoy and share your photos with gThumb or Picasa. Export your albums to CD, to the web, or to on-line services such as flickr or PicasaWeb to share them with friends and family.

Stay connected. Keep in touch with your friends and contacts, by email, messenger, or on your favorite social networks. Linux Mint provides all you need to interact with Twitter, Facebook, MSN, ICQ, GoogleTalk, AIM, Yahoo and many other networks.

Be productive. Use Libre Office to create4 professional documents, spreadsheets, and presentations that are fully compatible with Microsoft Office. Archive documents, emails, or web pages to PDF. Send and receive files with Giver on the local network. Share printers or access them remotely.

Install software. Browse through 30,000 free applications from the Software Manager. Enjoy screen-shots and user reviews. Install software with one click of the mouse.

Run Windows software. Install Wine and run Windows software in Linux Mint. Or install Virtual-box, and run Windows itself within Linux Mint.

Customize your desktop. Make yourself at home and modify any aspect of your desktop. Choose from a large variety of themes, icons and backgrounds. Linux Mint is open and easy to customize.

Keep your system up to date. Receive fixes and security updates all in one place, for the entire system, including the software you install.

Find help. If you’re curious about something or if you’re facing a problem, simply ask around. Linux Mint is the 4h most widely used Operating system in the world. It comes with a user guide, a community website, a collection of tutorials, active forums, and chat rooms, and one of the most dynamic communities on the Internet.

Linux mint 12 review: pt. 1 Installation

This slide-show shows you around, while you are waiting for the installer to finish.

I had so much to say about this Linux distribution, that I am breaking it up into several parts.

Live mode worked great for me to poke around, and get my bearings within Linux Mint. I am really grateful that my task-bar has been returned to me.

I used k3b on Linux mint 11 to burn the project. Which is great, because it takes a check-sum of the .iso before attempting the burn. Then after the disk is burned you can choose to save, &/or verify your data. Although I have had the problem, of k3b being rather picky about accepting discs.

 k3b is my preferred Linux burning program, no matter which platform it is on. I really wish that it had a windows equivalent. I have never had any burn failures, while using k3b.

BIOS chip.

Because my windows refuses to do the factory reset from the main HDD(hard-disk drive) hidden rescue partition. I am guessing because I had to replace the mother-board. The mother-board has the same exact physical make-up, except for a slightly newer version of the BIOS(Basic Input/Output system).

All that means is that I have another whole HDD to install and test Linux distribution’s in bare-metal form. Although I do plan to test many Linux installs within Linux Mint 12. I have decided to keep my Linux Mint 11 intact on my other internal 360 GB HDD.

I want to go into some of the basics of choosing a partition scheme, file-system format, and mount-points. I do this so that you won’t have any trouble making changes on your own computer. I will include slides from my own desktop, and net-book.

The complicated part of the install doesn’t even start, until you get to this screen. Many people get scared of this step, because it could wipe out other operating systems, or personal data. If you have properly prepared, you will have nothing to worry about.

It is crucial that you click something else, if you want to multi-boot Linux mint 12 with other Operating systems. I would only use erase/install if you are sure your files are backed up, and you just want a simple

• PARTITION SCHEME:
  

  notice the 10gb partition(far right)_windows restore(primary) Notice that the extended partition has two sub-partitions.

creating a SWAP file.

•  Well There are two types of primary partition’s main primary, and extended primary.
• Extended primary partitions, are partition’s that have been sub-divided into logical partitions.
• Lucky for Linux is that it can boot from logical, or primary partitions.
• A SWAP partition is used when your programs can’t fully fit into RAM, those files will be swapped to the HDD.
• Although HDD’s are slow compared to RAM. So Ideally you want to have as much memory as possible. Windows has the same principle with it’s Swap file. Although windows swap file is on the main system drive. This is a huge success in ensuring a stable Linux Operating system install.
• FILE-SYSTEM FORMAT:

Linux mint HDD partition scheme viewed with Gparted partition editor.

• NTFS is the default windows file-system for many years now
• Ext4 journaling is the standard Linux desktop file-system right now.
• btrfs aka butterFS is getting ready to replace ext4 in the future.  
• the SWAP file should be @ least equal to double, the amount of physical memory in your computer. 
• MOUNT-POINT selection:
  

  My primary Linux drive partition scheme.

• / is the base of the Linux file-system. Also known as root.
• You can remap parts of the file-system to other partition’s.
• /boot is often put on a separate 100-200 MB partition to ensure proper working of the GRUB2 boot loader.
• GRUB is what switches between Operating systems at boot time.
   
• /media is often set aside on a separate file system, So that the / partition including system files will not overfill. That would cause a real slowdown.  I would give as much as possible to this partition. These are where your personal files will be stored
• I am going to finish up this review with a slide-show from the install.

  Just click continue if you Live in the USA.

  just click continue if the right time-zone has been selected. It does not matter if the city is correct, only the time zone.

Compared to the partition steps all the rest of the steps as you can see, are really simple. 
Although I will not show it here There is a step where you input your user name, real-name, and password. On that same screen you can choose to login automatically, although I only choose this for guest accounts on desktop computers. 
You can also choose to encrypt your home folder, so that all of your personal files are safe from prying eyes. I choose not to do this, on my desktop, but do do this on my net-book. It is a lot more likely that my net-book could be compromised.
Which brings us to the final step:

Just click install now. You still have the user information screen, but after which you are treated to a slide-show to introduce you to Linux mint. It will tell you when to reboot your computer, marking the finish of your Linux mint 12 install.

Wanda the gnome Linux fish of wisdom

Today I want to talk about a nice little gnome panel applet called Wanda the fish. I was inspired by a post OMGubuntu did on a Thanksgiving day post. So I am thankful for OMGubuntu, and many other great Linux/open-source Blogs out there today.

I have noticed the Wanda the fish applet in the list of applets that you could install on a Ubuntu/Linux panels. Although the wisdom giving functionality was never built into Ubuntu out of the box. As a side-note Linux mint has always had built in mint-styled Wanda wisdom. Here is a screen shot for Wanda on Mint 11.

With Ubuntu 11.10 being based on gnome 3, I was disappointed in Losing Wanda the fish functionality. Mainly because the geek humor, that really sets Linux apart.

USER TIP:

 $ sudo apt-get install fortune-mod

will install wanda’s wisdom on Ubuntu. 

If you are still  using a gnome classic Ubuntu, like I am with my classic Ubuntu MM 11.10 you can also free Wanda the fish from her pedestal in your gnome panel.  Once Wanda is released from the bar, she will randomly swim across your screen. If you click her  while she is swimming across the screen she will quickly bolt off of the  screen.  This functionality is not built into the new gnome shell extension yet. Also to put her back in her fish-bowl, and make her stop swimming randomly across the screen; you will need to re-start your panel. You can do this by either simply logging out && back in again, re-boot the computer. If your impatient, and not afraid of typing commands killall gnome-panel to restart your window manager, to stop Wanda.  So if you are scared of the terminal, then just re-boot your box.

does this terminal really scare you?

I would encourage you that if you are an Ubuntu user that you may want to test the new menu applet “Wanda the fish”.  I will say that I have not been able to find out how to get it working from my Ubuntu 11.10 net-book. I am definitely going to install this on my desktop as well. It did take me a few minutes to figure out that I needed to:

Here I am chasing Wanda away from my media player banshee, while listening to my favourite Linux/mint pod cast minCast.

Alt. + F2 = indicator-fish

If you are like me and would like to get Wanda working on your Ubuntu desktop:

$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:dylanmccall/indicator-fish

 then…

$ sudo apt-get update

 

then…

$sudo apt-get install indicator-fish

 

 Also check out this great OMBubuntu article for further information.

OMGubuntu: catch of the Day: Wanda the fish indicactor

Extension Tuesday: Stumble_Upon

I decide to try to make Tuesday a day to write about some of my favourite browser extensions. I really woke up feeling like Tuesday was feeling like an extension of Monday. So I decided to turn Tuesday’s Bloog’s for a while, about web-browsesr extension articles.

Most of the picks that I will choose will be available for many different browsers. Many firefox extensions that I will be talking about(that I use in firefox), can be used in chrome or opera. Some of them can even be used in safari or IE. Although my focus will be mainly firefox/chrome/opera extensions.

Today I am using Linux mint 11 on a Dell D630 laptop. 

interest survey

I have used Stumble upon for over five years now. StumbleUpon takes you through a survey of your specific interests when you start.

Once they have your interests you can be sent to a random corner of the Internet universe. You can stumble the Internet based on  all your interests, or a specific topic you are interested in. I could stuble through software or computers in general for example.

One of the great things about stumbleUpon is the thumbs up/down of various stories.

notice the like it button under the cursor. Right of that is the thumbs down button. Left of it is the stumble button. All lets you select a category to stumble.

The next two screen shots show what happens when you thumbs up something for the first time.

You are always asked whether the link is safe for work or not.

the full review lets you right a review of the Link, as well as add tags to the Link.

 StumbleUpon also has some great integration for sharing to twitter. facebook, and to e-mail addresses. They used to have linked in, and I wish I could share to many other services like: Digg, or reddit.

stumblUpon shortens links w/ Su.pr

you can choose wether to share to your wall, yourfriend’s wall, a group, a facebook pvt. msg., or to a page you created.

PRO TIP: use the ctrl.+ F11 key to Toggle the tool-bar out of sight on Firefox. On other platforms you don’t have this option. Other browsers you have to click on the SU icon to toggle the toolbar. 

 StmbleUpon has extensions for the Fire fox, chrome(chromium), IE, Opera, and even Apple’s safari. There are also available options for the ios, and android mobile platforms as well.

Download Stumble upon for your browser now.

Link to install stumble Upon if you are using Opera. 

I am highly pleased with the way stumbleUpon has been serving up great content, so that I can fuel my brain with topics for my Blog. As well as the sharing features I use everyday now, are begining to show my Blog a fair amounnt of traffic. If you want to look up my stumbleUpon profile I am Gazzo0, I am the picture of Gazoo from the Flintstones. StumbleUpon has 20+ million users sharing the kinds of links that they like. This is the best social Link sharing service I have ever used.

My Ugh it’s Windows Monday Rant…

I just want to post a few short thought’s today about why Microsoft windows has frustrated me in the last couple of days. Basically yesterday I had a working, although barely windows Vista Operating system on my desktop. There are a few things that I just need windows for, although not as many as you would think.

Some of the proprietary closed-source coded programs done by Apple & Microsft, and netflix do not run on any version of Desktop Linux that I know of. Although I would really enjoy being wrong. Not only do I not get Netflix(which I stopped paying for recently), but the ability to run i-tunes, or manage the two MS Zune’s that are in the house. Other than those things, and some gaming I can do everything else w/ Linux.

the CPU inside my desktop.

Luckily I  have access to an old vista Toshiba laptop that we can manage the Zunes with, and also use itunes, although anything else would suck, because that laptop can’t do more than one thing at a time. It’s a single core pentium M, with only 2GB RAM.

I refuse to look at this situation as a loss. I didn’t Lose windows on my desktop, What actually happened is that I now have another hard drive I can install Linux distro’s on. And the fact that I can’t play portal, or my Lego PC games. I was almost finished with Lego: star wars “the complete saga”. When I have enough money to spare for a legitimate copy of windows, I probably will so I can play my games. 

What happened is that when I rescued this desktop from the curb it had a bad power supply in it. Which was recently upgraded to a quality power supply. I believe that the bad power supply, had Toasted some of the RAM chips in it. It made random beeping codes when I rescued it from the curb, just before it started raining. after I removed a pair of 1/2 GB of memory it worked to restore the Machine to factory settings. Although I did not test the power supply right away as I should have. I did not have a tester yet though.

That eventually led me to the problem of a bad mother-board because of a bad power supply. So when I was getting daily BSOD(Microsoft’s famous Blue Screen of Death hardware error screen), I stopped using the computer until I replaced the power supply with a good gaming power supply, and a direct replacement mother-board.

The replacement motherboard boot up Windows, and it worked badly until last night. That is when I tried to run the recovery, which refuses to restore because it thinks that it is trying to restore it onto a different computer.

I would never pirate an Operating system, but I understand the need for a PC gamer who can’t afford a windows upgrade. I wish they didn’t have to have such a closed minded business approach.

I thought I would add pictures of the computer that, can no longer run the version of Windows it has a key for. What I want is the windows 7, but that would be $80-100 for the software, and $20-40 for the extra memory that would be needed.

the price for not choosing a free && open-source operating system…

This story I got word about from a friend of mine who I used to hang out with in Long beach, CA. I remember laughing @ him, when he told me that he was selling MS windows 7 ultimate on Craigs list.

So much drama in the LBC, especially when your stupid enough to get arrested by the software piracy task-force.

The first time I met him he told me how he screwed up his key-board by spilling his coffee on it. Later after I had known of him I found out that he broke his leg just trying to cross the street. It just shows that any idiot can sell a pirated windows operating system. Now Josh is facing charges, that will end up landing him in the state penitentiary.

http://www.youtube.com/get_player

This is why I would rather use Linux, than a pirated windows upgrade I can’t afford to pay for. I am currently running more than a dozen Linux distribution’s on my desktop computer alone. Choice is the power of Linux.

What you can do if your Linux is slow, or not responding well…

I am under no illusions that Linux is a perfect Operating system. I personally believe that no matter what operating system you choose, you will have problems. I believe that the more information that a user has, the smoother the experience that user will have.

What I am going to try to explain today is what I do if my Linux based Operating system freezes. What I mean by freezes is stop responding to user input, and stop giving feed-back to the user.

My favorite Linux distro’s are debian/Ubuntu based. For example ubuntu, mint, pinguy, or backtrack for example. Although the reason for this problem whether using Linux or windows is the same. Basically the reason is that you don’t have enough memory in your PC for what you are trying to do.

In windows this is the cause for the infamous “Not Responding” error. On my Ubuntu computers the screen will darken/lighten to show that a PC is busy doing something. This happens quite often when I am using my net-book, because unfortunately I only have a single gigabyte of memory.

Obviously a pound of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So if you know that your a bit scatter-brained like me, then you should try to think of how much tabs you have open that you don’t need. Also you might need to do some research to find out if your computer is capable of a memory upgrade. Or you could get a SSD(Solid State Drive).

With all that said if your computer is starting to lock up on a regular basis, you need to be prepared. There are several programs that can get you back in control of your PC. The most common on a Linux system are the shutdown & xkill programs.

I usually use these from the command line, because even if the GUI(graphical user interface) isn’t responding; you can always to a tty terminal session.

in Linux  the easiest way to move to a tty is to use the shortcut:

 ctrl. + alt. + F2.

(Although you could substitute F3-F5)

You can always get back into the graphical console b entering:

ctrl. + Alt. + F7.

Once you enter a tty session your first step before you can do anything, will be to login with your user name/password. Once this is accomplished you will see some text followed by a $ sign. The $ sign means that you are logged in as a standard user. That simply means that you will have to enter “sudo” before any command that requires administrator access, and type your password. Both xkill and shutdown require root(administrator) level access.

Now if you want to shutdown, &/or restart your system you will need to use one of these commands:

$ sudo shutdown -h now

(shuts down the PC right away)

helpful if your packing up your laptop that won’t shut down.

orlinux cli system information

$ sudo shutdown -r 5

(reboots the system in 5 minutes time)

now the xkill program is for aborting programs, that are causing your system to slow down or crash. This program can be used from the run menu, or a tty session. If possible it is preferred, and easier to use the run menu to use xkill.

step one>

alt. + F2 = enter run prompt

 This is what my run dialog looks like in Ubuntu 11.10.

step two>

sudo xkill.

(although you won’t need the sudo, unless you are trying to stop a program that has root(administrator) access. An example of a program that would have root access would be a software manager, or update manager.

This command will pop up a small x that you can move w/ your mouse. When you get the “x” over the program you want to kill, just Left click it. Nine times out of ten this will kill the process.

On rare occasions you won’t be able to get the run dialog. In this case the easiest way to kill an offending program is to use the “top” program. Top is a system monitor, that is similar to MS Windows task manager, but from the terminal.

This is what my top program looks like running in a graphical terminal session.

After entering the top command into a terminal, you will notice a blinking cursor towards the top of the process listing. If you want to kill a program like firefox. If say firefox’s PID(process IDentifier) were 1234, you would type:

k

(kill)

1234

then either enter for the default 15 kill, or 9 for a more abrupt stop.

There is a ton more that you can do w/ the top command, but for now I will settle for teaching you how to kill an unresponsive program that is dragging your box down.

There you have it. A way to make sure that you are the one in control of your PC while using Linux. I know that the best thing to do might be to go for a coffee break, and patiently wait for your computer to finish what it is doing. Especially if it is installing/un-installing software, or updating your Operating system. I hope this Blog post has made you feel a little more in control, and more empowered in your adventures in Linux.