Ubuntu9.10 and Empathy

Alright, its been really a long time, since I posted anything to my blog. Many things happened in the meantime, and my computer was formatted a lot many times, and now I have an entirely different set of OSs. I installed Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala, and to my surprise my beloved Pidgin IM Client was missing in it, which I was accustomed to. I tried to use Empathy but its been not even an hour and I downloaded Pidgin and installed it. But Somehow it seemed to be unstable on my IBM Thinkpad laptop. Unlike the previous times, it crashes frequently and soon I have to run away from it. I had no option but to explore the new Empathy. I soon was able to configure it to my taste. It not only has full support now for voice chat (unlike the previous times) but also comes in handy with the full and stable support for the desktop sharing with anyone over the internet, in just a click of the mouse!

Anyways, I know as soon as we install ubuntu or any other linux distro, where the beginners have to struggle a lot to initially hunt for a suitable client where they can talk to their google-talk contacts. So here are the google-talk settings which seem to work for me ( but I shall not be responsible if it doesnt turn out for you ). Ok, here it goes-

1. Just Open your Empathy client ( I hope you know it, Applications-> Internet-> Empathy)
2. Press F4 or Edit->Accounts and click Add button at the bottom of the left panel
3. Select "Google Talk" as the account type and press "Create"
4. Enter your login name along with the "@gmail.com" extension. Eg. if your login name is ABC then enter "ABC@gmail.com"
5. Enter your password, in the space provided
6. Click Advance to expand the options and fill the following details:
1. Select the option "Encryption required (TLS/SSL)"
2. Select the option "Ignore Certificate Errors"
3. Leave "Resource" and "Priority" blank ( default value)
4. Enter the "Server" as "talk.google.com"
5. Enter the "Port" as "443"
6. Select the "Use old SSL" option
7. Click "Apply" and you are done
   

Empathy offers a lot of features, most of them are pretty much similar to the Pidgin, like (what I can think as of now)-

1. Configuring and Using multiple Chatting accounts like Gtalk, IRC, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN etc. simultaneously
2. Support for file transfer feature ( although you need to check the file transfer server for the accounts over which the file is meant to be transferred)
   
3. Audio Call
4. Video Call
5. "Share My Desktop" feature
6. Join Different Chat rooms
7. Few Themes also come bundled with the application
8. Another feature which I liked more than Pidgin was the ease it offers to set the status message for all accounts at once (ya, its true, you have to sacrifice the facility of being able to set different status messages on different accounts)

Here is a screenshot of the application, for those who want to know how it looks :)


Happy Chatting !

Getting started with GNOME based OS (Linux)

Here is My Linux (Ubuntu9.04) Desktop's screenshot, to prove that theres nothing now which cannot be achieved in the world of Open-source. Linux now is no more limited to the community of computer geeks, but its increasingly becoming extremely user friendly proving it much suitable for the beginners as well. The time is gone when one needed to type long and cryptic commands in order to do anything they want on Linux & Unix systems. Though the command line alternatives are always there, leaving an entire world for the user to explore and learn! Everything is now offered in much more interactive and highly customizable GUI.
Thats the beauty of open-source- it can give you exactly what you want. Open-source products including Linux opens itself to change by anyone who uses it thereby giving the freedom and power to users. There are multiple Window Managers available for using with Linux. The most commonly used are -GNOME and KDE which generally comes integrated with most of the linux distributions.

Lets begin with our familiarisation with GNOME, Ubuntu9.04 Desktop ( but this might help you in other distros as well)
It displays a menu bar at the top containing menus for Application, Places and System on the left side of the bar along with the tray icons of the processes and a calendar, sound control and the Username being on the right side of the bar.
And a status bar at the bottom of the screen with the icon to Show the empty desktop minimizing all the currently opened windows, tabs of all the currently opened windows, a Desktop Switcher showing the available desktops and finally a Trash (where the deleted files reside giving option to restore back the accidently deleted files, until manually cleaned).

• Application Menu: It contains Set of the applications installed and currently configured to be displayed in the menu format in different categories. It comes packed with a range of open-source applications preinstalled, like firefox for web browsing, Evolution as the email client, Pidgin as the chatting messenger, Totem and Rythmboxfor audio/video playing, GIMP ( my favourite!) for Image editing and a set of GNOME games!
• Places Menu: It presents links to some of the predefined locations so as to reach there quickly.
• System Menu: It presents the system specific tasks and configurations

Application and System menu can be manually altered by right clicking-> Edit Menu option.

Any system related information about the running processes or the present system memory and network usage etc. can be found anytime in System->Administration->System Monitor.

Ubuntu presents with an exhaustive list of open-source software for anyone to download from anywhere in the world from its central repository. This can be done in either of the following ways:

• Applications->Add/Remove
• System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager
• using command line utilities like apt-get :
• sudo apt-get install

Some of the other utilities in which you would be interested to install are:

• Opera (a web browser)
• Netbeans IDE ( for programming in JavaSE, JavaME, JavaEE, C, C++, Javascript etc )
• openssh ( for enabling remote login into the machine)
• Thunderbird ( another email client like Evolution)
• Avant Window Navigator ( enables a cool looking, highly customizable docking feature much like MAC )
• GVIM text editor ( a GUI based vim text editor, for the people who are addicted to the cool and simple, our beloved VIM ! )
  

Happy Linuxing!