Whoa! Changed my login screen!

Whoa! This is awesome! I just changed my login screen...but it took a bit of terminal maneuvering. here's what I did:

Found a sweet looking login screen here.
Then tried to install it in my usr/share/gdm/themes directory like it says in the page, but found I didn't have "permission" to do so through my GUI (clicking and dragging and such). Figured I'd have to use the terminal, and that wonderful "sudo" command to get there.
I unpacked the download into a folder on my desktop called "Blueswirl" and then copied that to my home directory. Then I had to use this command in my terminal:

sudo cp -r Blueswirl /usr/share/gdm/themes

How did I know to do this? Well, I had to look long and hard (actually, I lucked out, found it on my first try!) and finally found the commands I needed here.

Then I just went to Applications > Settings > Login Window and then selected my newly installed theme as the only one to be used. (note, this is how I did it in Xubuntu - the login preferences are located similarly but differently in Kubuntu and Ubuntu)

And now I got a pretty snazzy lookin' login screen!

Fixed my panels in Xubuntu!

Yeah, so in going back into ubuntu yesterday and today things were working great, had the correct resolution as well as Beryl working again (somehow it had gotten switched off as the desktop manager...not sure how that happened). So all that was going wrong were the missing panels in Xubuntu. I figured that was an easier problem to fix, and after doing a search in the ubntu forums, I found a discussion which linked here.

Basically I opened a terminal and typed in "xfce4-panel" which opened up my panels again. Then I went to Applications > Settings > Sessions and Startup Settings. Wherein I unchecked the box under the Advanced tab which said "Launch KDE services at startup" - I had that checked alongside with the one which said to start the gnome services at startup. Those aren't really compatible, I don't think, and that's where the problem was.

Xubuntu! DVD sound! Yay...then not so 'yay'...

Well, I decided to try out Xubuntu. I used the "sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop" command to get it and install it. No problems there. Then I tried it out. I had heard that it is supposed to use less CPU power - and man it flew! And Beryl worked on it as well! Whoa! Loved it. Highly recommend Xubuntu!

Aaaaannnnnddddd...I was playing with the audio controls in Xubuntu and found where a video volume was turned all the way down. So I thought to myself, 'Self, this might be why you have no audio with your DVDs.' And I was right! I tried my handy Star Wars Episode III after adjusting the volume and I had sound! And then moving the DVD screen aroudn with Beryl was just awesome.... So cool....

So the world was great...and I had to play with more settings...

now Xubuntu has no panels (so therefore no real controls), Beryl isn't working...and life is sad. You can read exactly what I did in this thread where where I'm begging for help.

Kubuntu works fine...so I may use it to try and uninstall Xubuntu...I'm praying that works. If not, I may be reinstalling ubuntu (and Xubuntu!) all over again...

Kubuntu on Ubuntu

Well, not sure how familiar you are with Ubuntu, but there are a couple of different "strands" of it out there, if you will. Ubuntu is the primary one, based on the gnome GUI (graphical user interface - how you tell the Linux Kernal what to do, basically). But there is also Kubuntu, based on the KDE GUI. It's got a different look and feel, and certain programs run on one which don't run on another GUI (Beryl can do some awesome stuff with gnome, but it's not compatible with KDE...oh well).

Well, the other night I downloaded the Kubuntu interface. When I boot up I can go to "options" and choose which GUI I want to use for that session. Pretty cool. This afternoon I'm probably going to down load Xubuntu, a GUI based on the Xfce GUI. It seems to be a little more streamlined - it seems to demand less of your computer. I'll let ya know what I think.

The only problem with downloading these different GUIs is that the latest one you've downloaded becomes the splash screen when you first boot up. So if you just downloaded Kubuntu (like me), it says "Kubuntu" when you boot up now, instead of "Ubuntu". But I finally found a way to change that. The guide I mentioned in my last post has a little section on it here.

Firewall, yay! Protection!...?

Figured I oughta get a firewall up and running on my computer since I'm on the web so much. Duh! Anyways, found a great little tutorial with all kinds of other info on it as well...check it out here. Just note that he instructs you to use the term "aptitude" to get stuff via ubuntu's terminal, from what I understand you're supposed to use "apt-get", but I did just copy a bunch of his commands (including the 'aptitude' command) to install the Java update (JRE v6.0) for firefox, and it went through fine.

Office 2000 take 2 and finally sound for music...

Yeah, so I completely screwed up my Wine Office 2000 installation by trying to install Dreamweaver 2 through Wine. I found some crazy post on the ubuntu forums which had me copying whole Windows system folders from my XP installation to my Linux one...which (surprise, surprise!) killed my ability to use Office 2000 through wine. Brilliant, I am, brilliant.

I finally fixed everything by completely uninstalling wine, eSword, the internet explorer dealio which was recommended by the guide I used to install Office 2000, and the dreameweaver attmept I had made. After that, as well as another update to the wine program, I redid everything (up to Dreamweaver) and now Office 2000 works like a charm!

I also figured out a little bit of my sound problem. The issue was that I was hearing the ubuntu login sound whenever I started up my computer, but then could get no sound out of any of the media players (music or DVD). I found the sound settings and played around with them for a bit. I about scared myself out of my pants with the test tone when I got it right - didn't realize my volume was that loud...

So I can now play music - but still no sound for DVDs, no matter which player I use. I'm hoping it's not a codec setting or something. But when I do the test sound in the ubuntu sound settings menu, I get the tone for the 'movies' category, but when I'm playing a movie, no sound. I'll let ya know when I figure this one out.

Also...last but not least....fun with my printer. I thought ubuntu had automatically installed my printer when I installed the OS, but it hadn't. So after a couple of impatiently unsuccessful attempts, I decided to have a little patience with the detection program and it finally found the printer and installed it. I haven't tried to print anything yet...but here's to it working correctly!