New BOSS Linux Forum – http://forums.bosslinux.in/

The BOSS Linux team has started a brand new forum for users and developers at http://forums.bosslinux.in/

It has a fresh new interface, powered by phpBB. The old forum is still available under archives. Unlike the earlier setup where separate forums existed for developers and users, here both are combined under the same forum page as separate sub-sections.

Apart from the forum user can also get in touch with any of the support centres for BOSS Linux found here for support, theres also an irc-channel, for more details on it click here. You can also chat online with the BOSS Linux team members here.

The forums aren’t as active as those of some other distributions, but thats mostly because BOSS Linux is relatively new. You usually get responses within a day.

Identifying PCI devices – lspci

Most PC Cards such as Network Interface Cards ( NIC ), Sound Cards are PCI devices. To get a list of PCI devices on your computer use lspci. lspci has a list of options, the most frequently used option being -v(verbose), you can also use -vv or -vvv to increase the extent of verbosity. For a complete list of options view the man pages(man lspci).

For instance if you are trying to identify your sound card use:

lspci | grep audio

on the terminal(Applications>Accessories>Terminal)

this will print the list of Sound Card/s. something like:

01:01.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI (rev 04)

Similarly lspci can also be used to identify other devices such as NICs

lspci | grep Ethernet

on the terminal lists out the NICs, you will see something like this:

01:02.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

To view all PCI devices use type lspci on the terminal. lspci is useful if you are trying to install drivers for your PCI devices or just plain exploring your hardware.

Speeding up BOSS Linux Boot / Startup time

Heres a neat tweak i found to get you from GRUB to Gnome login page faster, do note however that this may cause some issues, so try it at your own risk. Its worked for me without any issues so far.

As you boot up you BOSS Linux (or any Linux or Unix OS for that matter) installation, a series of scripts run as a part of the start up process. Scripts are run within a shell. By default on BOSS Linux (and on many other Linux Distributions) bash is the shell that runs these scripts. There are various tweaks to speed up the startup process, this is one of them. We’ll try to get these scripts to run faster. Dash is an alternate shell, its small and runs scripts faster than bash. Theres a catch however I’ll come to it at the end of this post.

To install dash type sudo apt-get install dash on the terminal (remember not to use sudo if you are logged in as root). You can also use Synaptic, you’ll find dash on the list of packages. Once you have installed dash you’ll need to make it the default system shell, how? read on…

/bin/sh is a symbolic link to the default system shell. The default system shell on BOSS Linux is bash. So we’ll have to change it to dash. To do so type:

sudo mv /bin/sh /bin/sh_old

sudo ln -s /bin/dash /bin/sh

on the terminal, remember not to use sudo if you are logged in as the root user. Reboot to see the difference. This shaved off close to 10 seconds from my boot time, I am not saying that it’ll do the same for all of us, but most people who have used dash have noticed boot time go down.

The catch here is that some shell scripts use (incorrectly) specify /bin/sh as the interpreter assuming it points to /bin/bash, these scripts won’t work if you have /bin/sh pointing to /bin/dash. I have not faced any such issues so far but if some scripts act up I know where to look

Ubuntu has been using dash as the default system shell since 6.10. Click here to read about it.

Web browsers for BOSS Linux

My installation of BOSS Linux ( ‘Anant’ – v2.0 ) came with firefox pre-installed, I currently use Iceweasel . There are quite a few web-browsers on the BOSS Linux package repository.

Debian had licensing issues with the Mozilla corporation on the conditions for the use of the name Firefox, so they decided to re-brand Firefox as Iceweasel. Heres the full story from @ wikipedia.Most add-ons, skins and other goodies from Firefox work with Iceweasel too, most Firefox users would feel right at home with Iceweasel.

To install Iceweasel from the BOSS Linux package repository you can either type “apt-get install iceweasel” if you are logged in as the root user or type “sudo apt-get install iceweasel”  on the terminal (Applications>Accessories>Terminal). If in case you are not much of a command line person use synaptic (Click System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager), you’ll find Iceweasel on the list of packages. Click here for my post on setting up synaptic for BOSS Linux, you’ll find this post helpful even if you are planning to use apt-get as its got information on configuring the /etc/apt/sources.list file.

Then theres Dillo, a small(around 355kb to download) but furiously fast GTK+ based browser. It doesn’t support CSS, Javascript or Java. This means most web page layouts will not look like they should and you can’t login to check mail among other things. However the good thing is most online advertising wont work without Javascript support either, so no more pop-ups or irritating insite ads . Dillos good for plain browsing, but the lack of CSS support is a problem. As of now the project is frozen due to lack of sponsorship. Click here to visit the official website and do help the developers out if you can

Apart the above two, there are other browsers like epiphany(GNOME’s web browser), chimera2, elinks (an advanced text mode WWW browser) and a few more. These are only what you’ll find in the BOSS Linux package repositories (use synaptic or apt to download). There are lots of other open source web browsers that are not a part of the repository but can always be compiled and used.

Urban Terror (UrT) – Free First Person Shooter Game on BOSS Linux

Urban Terror is a free First Person Shooter (FPS) than runs on Windows, Linux & Mac. Gameplay is superfast with lots of moves like wall jumping and power sliding adding to the fun. The game also has a realistic stamina system, you cant sprint around non-stop for long. Getting injured results in permanent stamina loss. The thing i liked the most about the game is the array of gameplay modes it supports. Theres Capture the Flag(CTF) where each team tries to capture the other’s flag while defending its own. Theres Bomb mode, Free For All(FFA), Team Deathmatch (TDM), Team Survivor(TS), Capture and Hold(C&H), Follow the Leader. CTF, TDM, TS & Bomb are popular.

The weapons are realistic, you get a knife, primary , secondary weapons and other stuff like Grenades, Kevlar vests and helmets among other hardware . The Remington SR-8 is a favorite among snipers. There are two teams blue and red.

Theres also a wide variety of maps. Here are a few screen shots:

This is what the screen looks like as a map(Riyadh by .EXE) gets loaded. hellsheaven.co.za are nice folks hosting the server, they’ve got a clan going. Theres many other servers and clans too.

Another screenshot from the game, this is the Blue Team spawn area in Riyadh.

Urban Terror is a Quake 3 mod by Frozen Sand LLC, it can be downloaded free of cost from here.

Running Urban Terror is simple, download and extract the .zip installer for Linux & Mac users. The .zip installer is a BIG file at 720MB, buts its less than half the size of America’s Army. You’ll find ioUrbanTerror.i386 and ioUrbanTerror.x86_64 in it. If you’re running a 32-bit Linux installation (just about everyone running BOSS Linux is) you’ll be using ioUrbanTerror.i386, for 64-bit Linux installations use ioUrbanTerror.x86_64. You’ll need to enable execution for the file by right clicking it select Properties go to the Permissions tab and clicking the Allow executing file as a program checkbox.

I had some trouble running Urban Terror with Beryl enabled, some parts of the screen flickered. Just turn off beryl and you’ll be fine.

Urban Terror does have an offline mode, you’ll need to press ~ at the start up screen and type /bot_enable 1 at the prompt. Then start server. One the game starts you can add bots by pressing ~ again and typing /addbot chicken repeat this to add more bots. Do note however that bots are no longer supported and may cause crashes. Besides its more fun to play online against real people.

All in all Urban Terror is a fun game, which is very addictive.

Update: I have ended up with  “No server list from Master Server” on the servers page quite a few times now, its quite a pain! You can always connect to the servers directly. First you’ll have to look up server IP addresses, I used http://topservers.beer-garden.org/ut.php . They’ve got a list of popular servers. Once you have the IP, bring down the console by pressing ~ and type connect ip_address_of_server

It’ll connect you to the server, the only issue I have faced with this is i only see the ping after connecting!

Changing the GRUB menu’s background on BOSS v2.0 ( Anant ) Linux

Find yourself a nice grub backgroung image, these are .xpm.gz image files.

You can look them up using your favorite search engine, or have a look here:

http://gnome-look.org/index.php?xcontentmode=160&PHPSESSID=743ed729a6ef2d810dbb041c06224112

 

or here:

 

http://www.queervisions.com/arch/2007/04/9_grub_splash_i.html

or here:

http://www.schultz-net.dk/grub.html

 

Now that you have the splash image, lets put it up there!

 

Backup /boot/grub/menu.lst

 

In menu.lst look for the section that lists out the Operating Systems, it’ll be something like:

## ## End Default Options ##

 

title BOSS GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.21-1-486

root (hd1,7)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.21-1-486 root=/dev/hdd8 splash=silent vga=791

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.21-1-486

savedefault

(… continued)

You need to check the partition mentioned for root, in the above example it is (hd1,7), now paste the following text above ## ## End Default Options ##

splashimage=(hd1,7)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

Remember to replace (hd1,7) with the right partition from your menu.lst file.Also remember to replace the filenme with the nme of your .xpm.gz file.

 

Now, reboot you should be able to see the new GRUB background image at work.

Changing the Distributor Logo on BOSS Linux : How-To

This is the default distributor icon the shows up on the menu bar on BOSS Linux, its like the windows logo on the start button. This is a how-to on changing this logo.

 

I have tried this on BOSS v2.0 (Anant) Linux’s Gnome desktop.

 

Find yourself the icon you want to use, use any image editor of your choice to resize the image to 22×22 pixels.

 

 

Look for start-here.png in:

<i>/usr/share/icons/gnome/22×22/places</i>

rename it to start-here.png.old for backup.

 

paste your icon there and rename it as start-here.png and reboot.

 

This works on BOSS Linux running Gnome 2.18.2

 

 

For other distributions(Ubuntu etc) try searching for filename

<i> start-here </i> (Places>Search for files, be sure to select Filesystem). You’ll find many instances of the same file of different sizes. You can then change the icons by trial & error, be sure to keep copies of the original icons just in case something goes wrong.

 

A similar how-to for Ubuntu can be found here.

 

Creating a shortcut to a folder in BOSS Linux running Gnome

Creating a shortcut to a folder

1.     Right Click on the Desktop
2.     Select Create Launcher
3.     Let the Type field be Application
4.     Type the name of the shortcut in the Name field
5.     in the Command field type: nautilus “path to folder in double quotes”
6.     you can select any icon you want by clicking the icon button.
7.     Click ok and you will now be see a shortcut to the folder on the desktop.

An alternate way to do this is to drag the folder with a middle or both button mouse click and drop it at the point where you want the shortcut to appear.

Changing the default Gnome Splash screen on BOSS in 3 easy steps!!!

Heres one of the ways you can change the default splash screen that appears after login.
1. Install gTweakUI from synaptic(Click System>Administration>Synaptic you’ll find gTweakUI on the list of applications there)

2. You can use a splash screen image of your own or search for some on the internet, i used one from Gnome Art. Once you’ve found yourself a splash screen, you’ll need to save it somewhere, i saved it here:
/usr/share/images/desktop-base/
Thats where the default splash screen is saved.

3.Now we’ll use gTweakUI to change to the new splash screen. Go to:

System>Preferences>gTweakUI Session
You’ll see your current slash screen displayed there, click it to change to the new splash screen. You will have to select the new splash screen from where you saved it. Click close and you’re done! Log off and log back in see the new splash screen in action.

Setting up Synaptic on BOSS Linux

Heres how you can setup synaptic to be able to download packages from BOSS Linux’s online repository.

Open /etc/apt/sources.list using your favorite text editor (Gedit, vi etc), It is advisable to create a backup of the existing sources.list file, you can try renaming it as sources.list.old or any such name that makes sense to you.

if you are doing this for the first time you’ll see the link for the CD-ROM in there, remove it before proceeding.

Paste the following as a single line of text in the souces.list file:

deb http://packages.bosslinux.in/boss anant main contrib non-free

save the file and close the editor.

Now make sure you are connected to the internet and open Synaptic(System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager) and press the refresh button, Synaptic will now download the list of application from the online repository. You can select the application you need and install it.

Notes:

Depending on your version on BOSS Linux you may need to change the contents of the string deb http://packages.bosslinux.in/boss anant main contrib non-free. Refer to the user manual which is usually found on the Desktop for details. I am using version 2.0 and the above settings work for me,

You can also add repositories to the sources.list file from within Synaptic by Clicking Settings>Repositories>Add and selecting a repository, however on my version of BOSS this leads to a wrong string http://pacakges… instead of http://packages…

Update for BOSS Linux Version 3.0 Tejas:

The string you need to add to your /apt/etc/sources.list file for BOSS Linux version 3.0 tejas is

deb http://packages.bosslinux.in/boss tejas main contrib non-free

Apart from the BOSS Linux repositories you can also try out Debian Lenny (for Tejas) or Etch (for Anant) repositories.