Posts Tagged ‘linux’

Popular download managers for GNU/Linux

Friday, September 4th, 2009

When I first started using GNU/Linux some years ago, there were very few download managers and most of them were less capable when compared to those present for windows based operating systems like FDM, IDA, DAP, etc. So I was forced to use them on WINE for all http downloads. But now the Linux world has seen some drastic changes, you name it they have it or will start developing one (There are a few exceptions to these though). Of course Firefox is a great alternative for download managers but not always reliable. So here are few good download managers,

  1. Wget: GNU wget is a free software tool to download files using HTTP/HTTPS/FTP protocols and has no GUI but a commandline tool. This is very powerful and supports some very good features. Some features include,
    • Can use wild-card url’s and recursively mirror directories.
    • Supports cookies & proxies
    • Can convert absolute links in downloaded documents to relative, so that downloaded documents may link to each other locally
  2. Gwget: Gwget is a very simple download manager from gnome projects. Though there are no advanced features like some others but does its job to perfection. It can be installed from most distributions repositories. Some catchy features include,
    • Recursivity: Gwget detects when you put a html, php, asp or a web page dir in the url to download, and ask you to only download certain files (multimedia, only the index, and so on).
    • Drag & Drop: You can d&d a url to the main gwget window or the notification area icon to add a new download. gwget (more…)

GNU/Linux Command Line Web Browser – w3m

Monday, August 31st, 2009

Command line tool is very powerful in Unix based operating systems, there are times when one has access only to a Command Line Interface but in need of Internet to solve the problem or no Graphical browsers are currently installed. So what is the solution? In fact there are many command line web browsers like www-browser, lynx, w3m….. and so on. So now I am talking about the one I use that is w3m.

  • Syntax: type in command w3m www.example.com
  • Get Help: type in command w3m / man w3m
  • Navigation: Click on the link/Navigate through tab and press Enter key
  • Enter Text in Forms/Search Engines: Click on text boxes/Navigate through tab and press enter then enter text which displays at the left bottom corner again a enter once text writing is finished
  • Quit: type in q and then y

More Information about w3m is found in http://w3m.sourceforge.net/

Ubuntu: How to disable automount-open usb media

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

Ubuntu is a great Operating System to work on, though it is relatively new compared some of the other distributions like Debian, Mandriva. There is an annoying feature(atleast I feel) in Ubuntu in which- newly connected usb drive is auto-mounted and poped up. So here is a tip to disable that feature,

Press Alt + F2 and type gconf-editor (or) type in gconf-editor in the command line

Navigate theought / –> apps –> nautilus —> preferences —> uncheck media_automount_open.

So thats it. Happy ubuntuing

Upgrade Pidgin to 2.6.0 (GNU/Linux)

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Some good news for Pidgin fans despite its drop from Ubuntu 9.10 latest alpha. Pidgin has released 2.6.0 with support to Voice and Video and currently these features support available only on XMPP. Here is the upgrade process on some popular Linux Distrubutions.

  • Ubuntu:
    Open Terminal, copy and paste these commands

    1. sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com \     67265eb522bdd6b1c69e66ed7fb8bee0a1f196a8
    2. echo deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu \     `lsb_release –short –codename` main | \ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pidgin-ppa.list
    3. sudo apt-get update  (more…)

Linux Tip: Some useful GNU/Linux tweaks

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

GNU/Linux is a great customizable Operating System, so are we can really customizing to our needs, well, many of us are not bothering to modify the defaults. I found some tweeks while searching for some thing else. Here are some of them which might come in handy at times.

  1. Change FileManager: Though nautilus is a great file manager, but some prefer other file managers like a thunar, dolphin, PCMan, etc may be for speed, looks or whatever. Here is a way to do it.
    Open Terminal, type in command gconf-editor to open gnome configuration editor.
    In gconf-editor navigate through / –> desktop –> gnome –> session –> required_components –> double click on filemanager and change the value to new file manager command. You can also change panel, window manager navigating through same path.
    (more…)

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This work by Mallikarjun is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 India.