Check 3d: in a terminal window type:

glxinfo | grep rendering

It should show:

direct rendering: Yes

If it says No, type:

lspci -v | grep VGA

and ask help.
If you have nvidia, and have SLI, use version 180 to avoid pauses in game. Enable backports repository, install the packages: nvidia-glx-180 nvidia-180-modaliases and reboot. Your xorg.conf should have these lines in Section “Device”

 Option "Coolbits" "2"
 Option "SLI" "Auto"

The Coolbits option is needed only if the cards have different memory size (you’ll get the smallest of the two).

Install the current wine: in a terminal window type:

wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/intrepid.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list
sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get install wine

Configure wine: in a terminal or alt-f2 type: padsp winecfg
Audio settings in winecfg are set to: OSS Driver; Hardware Acceleration: Full; Default Sample Rate 48000; Default Bits Per Sample: 16; Driver Emulation: enabled.

Modify user.reg: Append the following to ~/.wine/user.reg (hit alt-f2 and type gedit ~/.wine/user.reg)

[Software\\Wine\\Direct3D]
"DirectDrawRenderer"="opengl"
"OffscreenRenderingMode"="fbo"
"PixelShaderMode"="enabled"
"VertexShaderMode"="hardware"
"VideoMemorySize"="256"

Change the VideoMemorySize value to the size of your video ram.

Winetricks: In a terminal window, type:

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
sh winetricks winxp vcrun2005sp1 corefonts gecko

Install Eve online: Download the Premium Graphics content client and install it by double clicking the .exe

Make a custom launcher: Add to the panel or desktop a custom launcher using right click:

Type: Application
Name: Eve Online
Command: padsp wine explorer /desktop=EVE1,1024x768 "C:\Program Files\CCP\EVE\eve.exe"

Change the resolution to the same in your desktop for fullscreen, anything lower makes a window. If you need to launch more than one client, make another custom launcher and change the desktop name (change EVE1 to EVE2 or such).

Configure Eve online: Launch the client and go to settings: In the Audio & Chat tab, turn off Audio Hardware Acceleration to prevent “random” lockups. In the Display & Graphics tab, enable Premium Graphics Content and set shadow quality to off. When you login, if you see things in pure black (lights, textures) go back to settings, and turn HDR on, then again turn HDR off. This is done once and remains fixed.

*Credit to “Debeus” over at eve-search.com for the excellent ‘how-to’

First thing you want to do is unzip the source file (it usually comes in a tar.gz format) to your home directory to make compiling a little easier.

Enter in the following commands to begin the compiling process:

sudo apt-get install build-essential
./configure
sudo make

Note: the ./configure command may or may not work as some source packages dont have that specific file. If it fails, simply ignore it.

Now that we have the source package setup, run the following command:

sudo checkinstall

This will compile the source and create a new .deb package that you can then install from by double clicking.

Your program should now be installed!

Believe it or not, the solution is quite easy to setup in order to get you up and running, writing files from your Windows parition inside Ubuntu.

Let’s begin..

Enable NTFS Write Support

Navigate over to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager

Were going to search for a package called “ntfs-config” in the search box at the top of the window.

Select the package from the search results and go ahead and hit the apply button.

Once the package is finished installed, you should see a new program if you navigate over to Applications -> System Tools -> NTFS Configuration Tool

This handy little program will allow us to enable write support on any internal/external drive you have connected to your computer.

Select the drive you want to add write support for and click the apply button.

You may or may not have to enter in your ubuntu password to access your newly write-enabled drive, but do so if it requests it.

..and that’s it! Now you can freely edit and write to any files and documents on your windows drive inside Ubuntu.

Although easy to use and quite functional, some of you may prefer a something a bit more graphically-rich. The KDE desktop environment fills that void and offers an aesthetically pleasing desktop similar to that of Windows Vista. Here is a sample shot of what the default KDE desktop looks like.

To install, simply type in the following command to install the full KDE desktop package:

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

During the installation process, you’ll be asked if you want to make Gnome or KDE your default desktop environment during startup. Don’t worry which one you choose as your able to switch between the two at the initial login screen if you decide you want to stick with one over the other.

If your asking me which one is best? Well, it’s more of a personal preference and I’ve grown fond of Gnome’s terrific functionality in terms of easy access to my applications among other things. KDE provides a different menu structure that’s akin to Windows but still provides the same information. Some would say KDE can be a bit “clunky” in terms of navigating around the menus and I would have to partially agree.

My advice is to definitely give both a look and decide which one suits your needs. That’s part of the magic with trying linux — the freedom to choose.

Let’s get started!

1. Installing essential audio/video codecs, DVD Support, Flash and Java

Open up a terminal window and paste the following:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list && wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add – && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y ubuntu-restricted-extras non-free-codecs w32codecs totem-mozilla libdvdcss2

2. Configure Compiz Settings

Although Ubuntu installs with Compiz, it doesn’t allow you to configure it’s many, many options available to you.

Open up another terminal window and type in:

sudo apt-get install simple-ccsm

After running that, you should find a new option under System –> Preferences, called CompizConfig Settings Manager.

This will allow you to tweak the many options that are available with Compiz.

3. Winrar and 7zip support

Type the following in a terminal window:

sudo apt-get install p7zip-full

This will allow you to read and open up winrar and other zip files.

4. Customize your Ubuntu theme

Under System –> Preferences –> Appearance

You’ll be able to select from a half-dozen or so of various themes that ship with a fresh copy of Ubuntu Intrepid.

However, if you find all of them not to your tastes, the best place to find new themes can be found at www.gnome-look.org

5. Installing Conky

Conky is a “hit-or-miss” with some folks, but its a very handy program for displaying vital information to you while working in Ubuntu.

To install and customize Conky, visit my previous blog post here.

Here is a what we’ll be setting up once everything is finished.

Pretty cool eh?

Obviously some of the information including the main text at the top will be suited to your preferences, but you get the idea.

So let’s get to it!

Step 1: Install Conky

Open up a terminal and paste this command.

sudo apt-get install conky

Next, paste this in the same terminal window.

zcat /usr/share/doc/conky/examples/conky.conf.gz > ~/.conkyrc

That’s actually it if you wanted to start using conky but we want to take it a step further and, you guessed it, customize it!

Step 2. Customizing

In order to customize your recently installed Conky, your going to need to open up the conkyrc file hidden away in your home dir.

Go into your home directory and press ctrl-h to show all hidden files and scroll down until you see the conkyrc file. Open it.

You could start tweaking what’s in there now but I did the liberty of pasting my custom conky script for you to work off of below:

background yes
use_xft yes
xftfont 123:size=8
xftalpha 0.1
update_interval 0.5
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_type normal
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 250 5
maximum_width 400
draw_shades no
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
default_color white
default_shade_color red
default_outline_color green
alignment top_right
gap_x 10
gap_y 10
no_buffers no
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
net_avg_samples 1
override_utf8_locale yes
use_spacer yes
text_buffer_size 256

TEXT

${font Arial:size=20}${color Tan1}RYLIN’S${color Ivory}PC

${voffset -90}
${color DimGray}
${font}
${font Arial:bold:size=10}${color Tan1}SYSTEM ${color DarkSlateGray} ${hr 2}
$font${color DimGray}$sysname $kernel $alignr $machine
Intel Q9550 Quad Core$alignr${freq_g cpu0}Ghz
Uptime $alignr${uptime}
File System $alignr${fs_type}

${font Arial:bold:size=10}${color Tan1}PROCESSORS ${color DarkSlateGray}${hr 2}
$font${color DimGray}CPU1  ${cpu cpu1}% ${cpubar cpu1}
CPU2  ${cpu cpu2}% ${cpubar cpu2}
CPU3  ${cpu cpu3}% ${cpubar cpu3}
CPU4  ${cpu cpu4}% ${cpubar cpu4}

${font Arial:bold:size=10}${color Tan1}MEMORY ${color DarkSlateGray}${hr 2}
$font${color DimGray}MEM $alignc $mem / $memmax $alignr $memperc%
$membar

${font Arial:bold:size=10}${color Tan1}HDD ${color DarkSlateGray}${hr 2}
$font${color DimGray}/home $alignc ${fs_used /home} / ${fs_size /home} $alignr ${fs_free_perc /home}%
${fs_bar /home}
/disk $alignc ${fs_used /media/disk} / ${fs_size /media/disk} $alignr ${fs_free_perc /media/disk}%
${fs_bar /media/disk}
/disk-1 $alignc ${fs_used /media/disk-1} / ${fs_size /media/disk-1} $alignr ${fs_free_perc /media/disk-1}%
${fs_bar /media/disk-1}

${font Arial:bold:size=10}${color Tan1}TOP PROCESSES ${color DarkSlateGray}${hr 2}
${color DimGray}$font${top_mem name 2}${alignr}${top mem 2} %
$font${top_mem name 3}${alignr}${top mem 3} %
$font${top_mem name 4}${alignr}${top mem 4} %
$font${top_mem name 5}${alignr}${top mem 5} %

${font Arial:bold:size=10}${color Tan2}NETWORK ${color DarkSlateGray}${hr 2}
$font${color DimGray}IP on eth0 $alignr ${addr eth0}

Downloaded: $alignr  ${totaldown eth0}
Uploaded: $alignr  ${totalup eth0}

${font Arial:bold:size=10}${color Tan2}TIME ${color DarkSlateGray}${hr 2}

${color White} ${font :size=30}$alignc${time %H:%M}
${voffset -30}${font :bold:size=10}$alignc${time %d %b. %Y}
${font :bold:size=8}$alignc${time %A}
$endif

Copy that entire set of code and paste over everything currently inside your conkyrc file.

In order to check out our changes, pull up a terminal window and type in conky.

Note: after every change to the conkyrc file, you’ll need to type the following in a terminal window:

killall conky – this closes the conky program

conky – starts conky up again

Now to start tweaking things..

Find this area of code

TEXT

${font Arial:size=20}${color Tan1}RYLIN’S${color Ivory}PC

Notice where it says “Rylin’s” and “PC” at the end of the line? Go ahead and edit that to whatever you like.

To see your changes, simply restart conky as mentioned above.

To tweak the “Processors” section, simply find this code

${font Arial:bold:size=10}${color Tan1}PROCESSORS ${color DarkSlateGray}${hr 2}
$font${color DimGray}CPU1  ${cpu cpu1}% ${cpubar cpu1}
CPU2  ${cpu cpu2}% ${cpubar cpu2}
CPU3  ${cpu cpu3}% ${cpubar cpu3}
CPU4  ${cpu cpu4}% ${cpubar cpu4}

If you look at it carefully, it shows my four core processors for my Quad Core processor.

If you happen to have a dual core processor, or even a single core, simply delete these lines of code depending on how many you want to display based on your pc specs.

CPU4  ${cpu cpu4}% ${cpubar cpu4}

If your running a dual-core processor, simply take out CPU3 and CPU4 lines of code. Same applies for one processor by taking out the other three.

From here on out, its simply a matter of looking at what does what and what text is being displayed and altering it to your tastes.

It’s always a good idea to make a backup of your conkyrc file just in case your conky isn’t displaying properly or you need to revert back.

Step 3: Make Conky run at startup

In order to run Conky at startup, head over to:

System –> Preferences –> Sessions

Click the Add button

type in conky for all three fields and hit the Add button.

Close the Session window and your all set!

Hopefully this tutorial will help some of you setup the ever-popular Conky application!

For a huge (and I mean huge) list of conky setups that you can paste into your conkyrc file, head on over here.

First lets install the application by entering this into a terminal window:

sudo apt-get install recordMyDesktop gtk-recordMyDesktop

What this does is install the screencast application, recordMyDesktop and allow us to start recording.

Next thing we need to do with the terminal window still open, is enter in the following command:

sudo apt-get install mencoder

This will install our encoding software that will convert the .ogv screen cast format into a usable .avi format that can be uploaded to any popular video site such as youtube.

Now that we have all the important stuff installed and ready to go, it’s time to start recording our desktop. Under Sound & Video in Applications menu, you should see gtk-recordMyDesktop. Go ahead and fire it up!

Here you can a few settings allowing you to adjust the video and sound quality of your recording. Although you can lower it to your specifications, I chose to leave them both at 100%. If you want to record the entire desktop, then simply hit the Record button and it will instantly start recording what your doing. If you want only a certain portion of the screen to be recorded, simply drag your mouse across the small preview window to draw out the region you desire.

To end the recording, simply double click the small recording icon in your system tray and it will begin translating and saving your screencast recording to your home folder.

The last and final step is to convert the ogv format into .avi format. To do this, simply open up a terminal window and type/paste the following command whenever you want to convert a previously recorded screencast file.

mencoder -idx input.ogv -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -o output.avi

replace ‘input.ogv’ with the name of your saved ogv recorded file and replace output.avi to whatever name you wish to name your avi.

…and that’s it! You now have a useable .avi file that you can share and upload to show to your friends.