In some circumstances you may want to lock your computer completely. Maybe you want to disable your laptop’s trackpad so you can use a USB mouse? I used this command and a bluetooth wireless presenter to allow me to lock/unlock my computer from anywhere in the house. If you’re using Linux for a kiosk, you may want to disable the keyboard/mouse to stop tampering. This quick guide tells you how.

Read More

According to the Raspberry Pi website, as of Friday the Raspberry Pi has officially passed the necessary EU, USA, Australia, and Canadian electromagnetic compatibility tests. After a week of testing at a special Panasonic testing facility in Cardiff, the Raspberry Pi has been found to be have passed the CE, FCC, CTick and CSA testing. This means that for those of you who have registered your interest with RS Components/Farnell your Raspberry Pi looks  to be ready a lot sooner than if the boards had failed the compliance testing.
Read More

Sidebar Image by flickr user bitzi.

When Ubuntu moved over to the Unity interface I decided to switch to Linux Mint after struggling with the new interface, it’s lack of customisation and (in my opinion) not very intuitive design. When I first started using Linux Mint 11 the main desktop environment was a tweaked version of GNOME 2 which was very similar to the old desktop environment that Ubuntu used to offer (apart from some small differences such as the number and location of panels) and I was happy with using the familiar GNOME interface. Now that Linux Mint 12 has been released, it uses the controversial GNOME 3 interface with some tweaks. The Mint development team, however, were still not entirely happy with the direction the GNOME project looked to go, and so decided to fork gnome-shell and develop their own desktop environment: Cinnamon. This article aims to give you an overview of what Cinnamon looks like, its features and how you can install it.

Read More

If you’ve not heard of the Raspberry Pi, then you’re missing out! The Raspberry Pi is a credit card sized computer with a ARM (RISC) Processor, graphics capabilities said to rival the iPhone 4S, HDMI output and a whole lot more. Aimed as an educational tool (but available for anyone), the Raspberry Pi will be available for $25 (Model A) or $35 (Model B). The main differences between the two models are the inclusion of an Ethernet port in model B (USB Ethernet is entirely possible in Model A), number of USB ports (1 or 2) and RAM (128/256 MB). Aimed to educate children in programming, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is a registered charity based in Cambridge, UK. Read on for more information about the Pi, what it can do and how you can get it.

Read More

Python® is a flexible, easy-to-use programming language that comes installed by default on Ubuntu and is available on Windows, Mac and other Linux distributions. Python is object-oriented, interpreted and allows quick development and has excellent documentation available on the Internet. This article is designed to introduce the basics of Python to the complete beginner, but also serve as a useful reference to those experienced with programming.

Read More

An alias is a sort of shortcut that points to a command. They can be useful when dealing with long commands you can’t remember or simply to save time when installing software via apt-get. This post explains how to create aliases and common uses for them.

Read More

Operating systems such as Windows have a designated folder which can place shortcuts or files in to make them run on startup. Ubuntu uses a similar system with a hidden directory inside your home folder. This article explains how to add startup entries with a GUI and via the CLI (terminal).

Read More

[Image: Sintel Creative Commons Attribution 3.0]

HTML5 includes the new <video> tag which allows video playback without plugins like flash required. YouTube has an experimental project which enables HTML5 video for most items on the site (excluding videos with embedded adverts where flash is a fallback) using the WebM or h.264 codecs. This article explains how you can opt-in to the HTML5 video player and the advantages/disadvantages.

Read More

Translucent window borders make a nice eye-candy effect. This guide explains how to enable the effect in a GNOME environment by executing a simple command and modifying a Compiz option to blur the layer beneath the window for a glass like effect.

Read More

Your computer clock can quickly become inaccurate. This can be a big problem, especially for server computers. For example a media centre computer set to record at a certain time will miss part of the recording and scheduled tasks (cron jobs) will be executed at the wrong time. This article explains how you can synchronise your computer clock with a Network Time Protocol server from a terminal.

Read More