Better Firefox Web Form Widgets In Ubuntu

Some times ago I wrote about how to improve look&feel of web form widgets in Firefox which are rather ugly by default. There is another way to do this which works in Ubuntu.

First of all, you need to download bzipped tarball (you must be registered at ubuntuforums.org to do this). At the moment of writing 2.7 is the latest package version. Then you have two options: either use graphical installer or run a text-based one (which is an ordinary bash script).

Graphical installer requires python-kiwi package. If it is not present in your system, you will be prompted to install the package. To run installer, unpack the archive and execute ./graphical_installer. You should see the following window:
















Note, that you must specify correct Firefox directory! The default /usr/lib/firefox is fine for Ubuntu unless you are using Swiftfox or have very non-standard configuration. If you've chosen to install widgets by the means of text-based script, you may specify the path via -p or --path option (type ./installer --help for details).

The results are pretty much the same, as I have already described.

I should also mention that there is a backup forms.css file in the archive in case you mess anything up. This file is from a default 64-bit Firefox 2.0 installation. The forms.css file an be found in Firefox's "res" directory. You won't need it unless you accidently delete your's or the script malfunctions.

The author of this script also mentions that widgets may get restored after Firefox update. To avoid this try the following:
sudo dpkg-divert --add /res/forms.css
I have not tested it yet, so use at your own risk!
In case you decide to restore the default behavior, type:
sudo dpkg-divert --remove /res/forms.css

See this topic for more infomation.

Top 10 Minimalist Window Managers, Illustrated

If you're tired with all those modern "feature-rich" WMs and just need a simple and convinient tool to manage your windows with low memory footprint, you should definitely look into the following list:

1. aewm
aewm is a well-known minimal window manager for X11, one of the oldest. It has few features, but is light on resources and extremely simple in appearance. It aims to be a sane, readable, hackable implementation of the important parts of the ICCCM and EWMH (but not all of them). aewm was based on 9wm and has in turn inspired quite a lot of other simplistic window managers, like aewm++, alloywm, evilwm, WindowLab, wimpwm and so on...

2. Ion
Designed to be primarily used from the keyboard, Ion was written as an experiment on a different kind of window management model. It tries to address the navigation problem by dividing the screen into mutually non-overlapping frames that take up the whole screen. Big displays have so much space that this should be convenient and smaller displays couldn't show more than one window at a time anyway. The frame layout is, of course, dynamic and different on each workspace. Given the organised tree based instead of an unorganised coordinate-based frame layout, moving between the frames can be conveniently done from the keyboard. As in PWM, the frames may have multiple clients attached, each indicated with a tab.

3. Sawfish
Sawfish is an extensible window manager using a Lisp-based scripting language --all window decorations are configurable and all user-interface policy is controlled through the extension language. Despite this extensibility its policy is very minimal compared to most window managers. Its aim is simply to manage windows in the most flexible and attractive manner possible. As such it does not implement desktop backgrounds, applications docks, or other things that may be achieved through separate applications.

4. dwm
dwm is a fast and simple window manager for X11. It manages windows in tiling and floating modes. Either mode can be applied dynamically, optimizing the environment for the application in use and the task performed. Windows can be tagged with one or multiple tags. Selecting certain tags displays all windows that are accordingly tagged.

5. awesome
awesome is a tiling window manager initialy based on a dwm code rewriting. It's extremely fast, small, dynamic and awesome. Windows can be managed in several layouts: tiled and floating. Each layout can be applied on the fly, optimizing the environment for the application in use and the task performed.

Managing windows in tiled mode assures that no space will be waste on your screen. No gaps, no overlap. With tiled layout, windows are managed in a master and a stacking area. The master area contains the windows which currently need most attention, whereas the stacking area contains all other windows. The master area can be splited in several rows and column, as you want. In floating layout, windows can be resized and moved freely, just like a usual window manager. Dialog windows are always managed floating, regardless of the layout selected.

Windows are grouped by tags. Each window can be tagged with one or multiple tags. Selecting certain tags displays all windows with those tags. Each tag can have its own layout. Tags can be compared to virtual desktops, but it's more powerful: you can quickly merge and show several tags at the same time, and go back to only one tag after.

6. Karmen
Karmen is an easy-to-use window manager for X, written by Johan Veenhuizen. It is designed to “just work”. There is no configuration file and no library dependencies other than Xlib. The input focus model is click-to-focus. Karmen aims at ICCCM and EWMH compliance. The current version is Karmen 0.13, released September 4, 2007.

7. evilwm
evilwm is a minimalist window manager for the X Window System. 'Minimalist' here doesn't mean it's too bare to be usable - it just means it omits a lot of the stuff that make other window managers unusable. It has no icons and no window decorations apart from a simple 1 pixel border. Provides good keyboard control, including repositioning and maximise toggles, snap-to-border support and virtual desktops. evilwm has extremely small binary size (even with everything turned on).

8. larswm
larswm is a rewrite of 9wm that adds automatic tiling, virtual desktops and many more features to make it a highly productive user environment. Despite the high level of automation, it uses very little CPU time and memory while running.




9. WindowLab
WindowLab is a small and simple window manager of novel design. It has a click-to-focus but not raise-on-focus policy, a window resizing mechanism that allows one or many edges of a window to be changed in one action, and an innovative menubar that shares the same part of the screen as the taskbar. Window titlebars are prevented from going off the edge of the screen by constraining the mouse pointer, and when appropriate the pointer is also constrained to the taskbar/menubar in order to make target menu items easier to hit.

10.Anarchy
Anarchy is a window manager for the X Window System and is implemented in less than 500 lines of CLOS oriented Scheme code.Despite its small code size, it supports most functions expected of a basic window manager (move, resize, hide, minimize, maximize, list windows, root menu).

How To Install The Latest JDK On Debian/Ubuntu

If you are an expirienced Java programmer, you probably want to have the latest JDK on your Debian box. Normally there is no need to install it manually since JDK (as well as JRE) is available in modern distros as .deb package and therefore may be downloaded and installed from one of the official mirrors using familiar apt-get (or aptitude, or Synaptics, or whatever...) interface.

But what if you are not satisfied with the version of Java which is packaged with your distribution? At the moment, the official "production" version of JDK is 6.0 update 3, but for exmaple Debian Etch does not include Java 6 at all (only Java 5 is supported). This is a noticeable drawback since Java 6.0 contains some important features, such as high-quality font antialiasing. The only way to solve this situation is to download the latest JDK from Sun website and install it manually with a bit of Debian magic ;)

So, here are step-by-step installation instructions:
1. Download self-extracting package containing JDK: jdk-6u3-linux-i586.bin.
2. Make sure it has execution privileges:
chmod 755 ./jdk-6u3-linux-i586.bin
3. Run it, answer yes and watch the files being extracted.
4. Copy the extracted directory to /usr/lib/jvm:
sudo cp jdk1.6.0_03 /usr/lib/jvm
5. Check which versions of Java are already installed in your system:
sudo update-alternatives --display java
Notice what priority is assigned to the currently selected one
6. Update symlinks to make them point to your freshly installed Java:
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.6.0_03/jre/bin/java 65 --slave /usr/share/man/man1/java.1.gz java.1.gz /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.6.0_03/man/man1/java.1
7. Check that java has correct version now:
java -version
8. If something went wrong, try assigning higher priority to your JDK or select appropriate version in manual mode:
update-alternatives --config java
9. You can do the same trick with javac:
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/javac javac /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.6.0_03/bin/javac 65 --slave /usr/share/man/man1/javac.1.gz javac.1.gz /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.6.0_03/man/man1/javac.1

Give Your Firefox A Better Look!

If you are tired with those ugly Web-form widgets which are installed in Firefox by default on Linux, this mini-HOWTO will help you make them look somewhat better.

Open your favourite terminal and do the following:
$ wget http://users.tkk.fi/~otsaloma/art/firefox-form-widgets.tar.gz
$ tar zxf firefox-form-widgets.tar.gz
$ sudo cp /usr/share/firefox/res/forms.css /usr/share/firefox/res/forms.css.bak
$ cat firefox-form-widgets/res/forms-extra.css | sudo tee --append /usr/share/firefox/res/forms.css >/dev/null
$ sudo cp -r firefox-form-widgets/res/form-widgets /usr/share/firefox/res
$ rm -rf firefox-form-widgets

Before:





After:





NOTE: Firefox directory is usually /usr/share/firefox (in Debian /usr/share/iceweasel), but it may be different on your Linux distribution, for example something like /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox

Seven Simple Ways To Use Windows Applications in Linux

As far as I know, one of the main concerns for a Windows user switching to Linux is what Windows software will work on his box as well as how it can be done. Here I've summarized seven simple methods to enable Windows apps' functionality on your Linux machine. I hope this will be helpful to you if you don't know where to start from...

1. Use Wine to run the application in Linux
Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL and Unix. It does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available. "WINE" is a recursive acronym, it means"Wine Is Not Emulator" (to remind that it is neither a computer emulator like qemu, nor a virtual machine like VMware)

Your success with Wine will vary depending on the application you are trying to run. It is best to search the Wine Application Database to find out if your application will run well under Wine. This database contains a really huge list of software including all popular Windows "office" applications like MS Office, Adobe Photoshop etc. There is also a large variety of games supported by Wine. For example, I've personally managed to play CS:Source on my Sony VAIO laptop running Debian "Sid" without any trouble.

2. Use Cedega to run your favourite Windows games
If you are an expirienced Windows gamer, you should probably look into Cedega instead of Wine. Cedega is a product from TransGaming. TransGaming forked Wine back in 2002 when Wine had a different license, closed their source code, and rebranded their version as specialized for gamers. It supports almost all popular Windows games at the moment, check out their Database. Unfortunately Cedega is not free. You will have to pay about $5/month for subscription. Still it is a good alternative if your favourite game does not run smoothly under Wine.

3. Use CrossOver Linux to run your Windows productivity applications
CrossOver Linux is another commercial product (made by CodeWeavers) that is based directly on Wine with a few proprietary add-ons. Unlike Cedega, CrossOver is focused mostly on "office" applications. Its releases are rigorously tested for compatibility with CodeWeavers' supported applications in order to prevent regressions. CodeWeavers employs a large portion of the Wine developers and provides a great deal of leadership for the project. All improvements to Wine eventually work their way into CrossOver.

CrossOver includes an easy to use interface, which makes installing a Windows application simple and fast and provides seamless integration with your Gnome or KDE environment.

4. Run Windows in a Virtual Machine
Before virtualization was widely available, people would dual-boot their machine if they wanted access to both Windows and Linux. Whenever they needed to do something in the other operating system, they would have to close all their applications and reboot into the other operating system.

This time-consuming process can now be replaced by running Windows in a virtual machine on a Linux system. For instance, you can install the open source VirtualBox application (take a look at the review). Once that is installed, you can install Windows and Windows applications inside a virtual machine. Now you can use that virtual machine to have instant access to any of your Windows applications.

5. Run the application on a remote Windows system
If you already have separate Windows machine, you can run the application on it and control it from your local system. This is often called "Terminal Services", which runs on a Windows server.

This method can be as simple as connecting to a Windows XP Pro workstation using rdesktop. However, you may have many Linux workstations that need to run Windows applications using this method. In that case, there are software options available that provide more scalability and features. The biggest name in this market is Citrix, but there are also others such as Propalms.

6. Use an Open Source alternative instead
Probably the best solution for the "Running Windows_Application_X on Linux" problem is to look for a suitable Open Source alternative. For most Windows applications, there will be a high-quality open source alternative that can meet your needs. The biggest hurdle for non-Linux people is simply knowing that these alternative exist and how to find them.

The best place I have found to search for these applications is at www.osalt.com. On that site, you can enter the name of the Windows application and it will list the open source alternatives that provide similar functionality. Be sure to check it out.

7. Buy a commercial product that is designed for Linux
Finally, if you haven't managed to run your Windows app using Wine or one of its forks and you haven't found any suitable open source alternative, you may consider purchasing a commercial product that is designed for Linux.

Here is a story of a civil engineer who wanted to find an open source replacement for AutoCAD. He tried several applications, but he could not find one that met all his requirements. So this engineer decided to use a commercial CAD application that was designed for Linux. He purchased a copy of "BricsCad", which worked well for him AND it cost a lot less than AutoCAD.

How To Enable Google Repositories On Linux

Frankly speaking, I didn't know that Google has its own package repository (maybe I'm a bit out of date ;) It supports several popular Linux distributions namely Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and Mandriva.

So now it's possible to install Google software like picasa directly from their repository, which is especially useful if you want to stay up to date with the latest software updates (what you normally do with other applications using your favourite package manager like apt or yum).

If you want to enable Google repositories on your Linux box, here is a quick HOWTO:

Debian and Ubuntu
If you are using Debian Etch or Ubuntu Feisty, do the following:

1. Download the file https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub and save it somewhere (in your HOME directory, for example)
2. Acquire root privileges and proceed:
   apt-key add $HOME$/linux_signing_key.pub
3. Edit your /etc/apt.sources file and add:
   # Google software repository
   deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free
4. Update your package manager's database:
   apt-get update

Fedora
With root privileges add file google.repo to /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory.
The file should contain the following lines:
[google]
name=Google - $basearch
baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1

Mandriva
You really need to execute just one command as root:
urpmi.addmedia -v google http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/i386 with hdlist.cz