How To Become A Web Host

A question that is asked quite frequently. First and foremost we must point out that web hosting is not a get rich quick scheme or an easy business to run. It takes alot of patience, computer and technical knowledge and a solid background in Computer Science to run a successful and solid web hosting company. Some may disagree with this, especially with the innovation of “Control Panels” that makes it easier for anyone to get a pre-built server and start hosting sites. In reality, it’s not really that simple. Yes you can lease a dedicated server from a provider and start hosting sites once you are familiar with the control panel BUT a very important point to remember is those control panels still have their limitations. If you do decide to start your own hosting company, here are some basic questions to ask yourself *before* starting a hosting firm.

1. How much time do I have to invest into this company?

In this day and age, most clients are expecting 24 hour support. Are you able to be on call 24 hours a day to handle all the technical and sales requests that will be coming in once you start your company? Prompt support is a very key aspect of having a successful hosting business, so this is one of the first questions you should ask yourself before starting your company. Am I able to offer the support my clients will need?

2. Familiarity with the latest software and platforms?

Have you done your homework in terms of researching what are the latest software, how they work and the pricing. It is very important to be familiar with the software that needs to be installed on the server(s) that you will be using to host your client’s websites. For instance IIS when using Windows 2000 server is something you will need to be very familiar with, if you are going to be hosting sites on a Windows Server.

On a good note, Microsoft offers a huge library of information on all their software, but it will take a serious time investment to be familiar with all the options available, security leaks, and you have to be always on the look out for the latest patches. In terms of Linux, this is a bit more complicated. A strong command and knowledge of SSH (Secure Shell Security) is needed. Even if you have a control panel such as Cpanel which offers a program called Web Host Manager, a strong background in Telnet Commands will be needed or you will be lost.

3. Financial Investment

Are you willing to spend the money necessary to start making some money? In many cases you will need to make some serious finanacial investment when starting your own hosting firm. Be very weary of the fact that many of the software on the market are not cheap, and the type of servers most of your clients will be expecting their sites to be hosted on, will not be cheap either. Many expect their site to be hosted on Dual Pentium servers that are sturdy and reliable, so some investment will be needed.

On the other hand, there is the cheaper way, which is to simply lease a dedicated server that offers a high amount of bandwidth from another hosting firm, and then host your clients sites on that server. It’s an easy way to start your own company with little investment, BUT be forewarned that with network outages, server crashes, you will have little or no control unless you can contact your dedicated server provider for a prompt reboot or resolution of the network problem.

4. Hiring of Employees?

Will you be hiring any employees to start, or will you be a one man show until the business picks up? If you choose to not hire any employees then obviously your financial investment is less, BUT your time investment into the business has now skyrocketed. No employees will mean you will have to handle all the technical and sales requests along with any other problem that may occur. It is important to weigh this aspect carefully as it could make or break you.

5. Resources/Steps To Start A Hosting Company.

A. Registration of Company Name

Do a search on the internet for trade name registration in your particular state. This will allow you to register a DBA known as Doing Business As name within your particular state. This option is the easiest way to have an actual business name instead of using your actual real name. If you would like to go straight ahead and become a Corporation instead of just using a DBA then you can use a site such as MyCorporation.com to get started with your own Corporate business.

B. Purchasing of Servers/Leasing of Servers

If you decided to purchase your own servers, you have a few options. You can get a server custom built by manufacturers or you can even go the option of leasing your server from a company such as Dell or Gateway. They offer a monthly leasing to own plan. If you decide to lease a Dedicated Server , then you can review offerings from companies such as Rackshack.net, Eservers.biz, Rackspace.com, Cyberworldservers.com just to name a few. Each of those companies will allow you to lease a server on their connection, set a specified amount of bandwidth, and allow you to host your client’s websites on the server you lease from them.

If you’re starting small we highly recommend using a Reseller account from either HostGator . They offer Reseller solutions at a reasonable fee. You can read more about Reseller Hosting in our related articles below or directly on these two providers’ websites.

C. Office/Data Center Space

With the purchase of servers, you’ll need office space or as some say a Data Center to house these servers. You will have to look around for space in your local city for the best location with enough space for growth to house your servers and your connection.

D. Bandwidth Providers

If purchasing your own servers direct, you’ll need a provider that can run a line to the server through a router to feed the bandwidth. Some companies that offer bandwidth are : Level3.com , Twtelecom.com, Verio.com, and for cheaper bandwidth you can use Cogentco.com. Each of these companies will allow you to have bandwidth in your data center facility.

These are just some of the *basic* steps necessary to get started with your own hosting firm. The task may seem daunting, but it can be achieved with hard work and dedication. The web hosting market may seem saturated with new hosting companies forming literally each day, but there is still room techncially for another good company. Once you can offer the support and reliability your customers need then you will grow as a firm mainly through word of mouth. If you treat your customers good, they will refer others to your service. In a nutshell, hosting is not an easy business to start, but it can be a profitable and rewarding one when the necessary steps are taken.

We hope that this helps anyone who is trying to get into the hosting biz!

Foolish Assumptions
In this tutorial I assume you already have Ubuntu installed on a web server and you control the server via SSH (plus a basic understanding of the terminal). I also assume you’re using Ubuntu 10.4 (Lucid Lynx) for the purposes of this tutorial, so it will need to be altered for use on other versions. Furthermore, I assume that you have vi installed and know how to use it (it’s most likely of all editors to already be installed). If you want to use another editor then alter the tutorial accordingly. This tutorial will also work from the console if you have physical access to the machine or a web based console tool. Lastly, I assume that you already know that it’s arguably better to prepend sudo in front of each command to gain root access rather than typing these commands as the root user.

What is ISPConfig?
The ISPConfig website says “ISPConfig 3 is a webhosting control panel that allows you to configure the following services through a web browser: Apache web server, Postfix mail server, MySQL, BIND or MyDNS nameserver, PureFTPd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, and many more.” I couldn’t have explained it any better myself.

Please note that this tutorial will not work for ISPConfig 2.

Preparation
First things first, we’ll check to see if universe and multiverse repositories are enabled and that the CD Installation is commented out. To do this we edit /etc/apt/sources.list.

Code:
1 vi /etc/apt/sources.list

When you’re done your sources.list will contain at least this (replace us with your country):

Code:
1 deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main universe multiverse
2 deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main universe multiverse

And you’ll comment out any line that contains the prefix deb cdrom, similar to this:

Code:
1 #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 10.04 LTS _Lucid Lynx_ - Release amd64 (20100427)]/ lucid main restricted
2 #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu-Server 10.04 LTS _Lucid Lynx_ - Release amd64 (20100427)]/ lucid main restricted

TIP: Everything else can be left as-is, if you have any trouble with this section you can replace your list.sources file with one from the Ubuntu Sources List Generator.

Then we’ll update aptitude and the apt package database and reboot:

Code:
1 aptitude update
2 aptitude safe-upgrade
3
4 reboot

Now, we’ll change /bin/sh (a symlink to /bin/dash) to point to /bin/bash.

Code:
1 dpkg-reconfigure dash
2
3 Install dash as /bin/sh? <-choose no->

Installation Begins
Now, we install Postfix, Courier, Saslauthd, MySQL, rkhunter, binutils, and related packages. I used to do these one at a time to make sure I didn’t misspell or forget anything, but after doing this so many times I can do it in my sleep. If it’s your first time you may want to do each one separately (aptitude install X).

Code:
1 aptitude install postfix postfix-mysql postfix-doc mysql-client mysql-server courier-authdaemon courier-authlib-mysql courier-pop courier-pop-ssl courier-imap courier-imap-ssl libsasl2-2 libsasl2-modules libsasl2-modules-sql sasl2-bin libpam-mysql openssl getmail4 rkhunter binutils maildrop

You’ll be asked a series of questions, which you’ll answer like this:

Code:
1 New password for the MySQL “root” user:
2 <-enter new root password for MySQL->
3
4 Repeat password for the MySQL “root” user:
5 <-repeat password->
6
7
8 Create directories for web-based administration?
9 <-choose no->
10
11
12 General type of mail configuration:
13 <-choose Internet Site->
14
15
16 System mail name:
17 <-enter yourwebsite.com without the http://->
18
19
20 SSL certificate required:
21 <-choose OK (only option)->

Next, edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf and comment out bind-address = 127.0.0.1:

Code:
1 vi /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Once you’ve opened the file and made the edit, it’ll look something like this:

Code:
1 <-other stuff->
2 #bind-address = 127.0.0.1
3 <-other stuff->

Next, we need to restart MySQL:

Code:
1 /etc/init.d/mysql restart

Our next issue is that the SSL certificates for IMAP and POP3 are using localhost for their hostnames. That won’t do at all, so we delete them:

Code:
1 cd /etc/courier
2
3 rm -f /etc/courier/imapd.pem
4 rm -f /etc/courier/pop3d.pem

Now we prepare to regenerate them. We’ll open imapd.cnf and pop3d.cnf then change CN=localhost to CN=yourwebsite.com (without the http://).

First imapd.cnf:

Code:
1 vi /etc/courier/imapd.cnf

Code:
1 <-other stuff->
2 CN=yourwebsite.com <-without the http://->
3 <-other stuff->

Then pop3d.cnf:

Code:
1 vi /etc/courier/pop3pd.cnf

Code:
1 <-other stuff->
2 CN=yourwebsite.com <-without the http://->
3 <-other stuff->

Finally, we regenerate the certificates with the correct hostnames and restart Courier-IMAP-SSL and Courier-POP3-SSL

Code:
1 mkimapdcert
2 mkpop3dcert
3
4
5 /etc/init.d/courier-imap-ssl restart
6 /etc/init.d/courier-pop-ssl restart

Now, we’ll install Amavisd-new, SpamAssassin, Clamav, and related packages. Once again, If it’s your first time you may want to do each one separately (aptitude install X). :

Code:
1 aptitude install amavisd-new spamassassin clamav clamav-daemon zoo unzip bzip2 arj nomarch lzop cabextract apt-listchanges libnet-ldap-perl libauthen-sasl-perl clamav-docs daemon libio-string-perl libio-socket-ssl-perl libnet-ident-perl zip libnet-dns-perl

Then, we’ll install Apache2, PHP5, phpMyAdmin, FCGI, suExec, Pear, mcrypt, and related packages (at this point I’ll stop advising n00bs to install them separately):

Code:
1 aptitude install apache2 apache2.2-common apache2-doc apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils libexpat1 ssl-cert libapache2-mod-php5 php5 php5-common php5-gd php5-mysql php5-imap phpmyadmin php5-cli php5-cgi libapache2-mod-fcgid apache2-suexec php-pear php-auth php5-mcrypt mcrypt php5-imagick imagemagick libapache2-mod-suphp libopenssl-ruby libapache2-mod-ruby

You’ll be asked these questions:

Code:
1 Web server to reconfigure automatically:
2 <-choose Apache2->
3
4 Configure database for phpMyAdmin with dbconfig-common?
5 <-choose no->

Then, we’ll enable some Apache modules and restart Apache:

Code:
1 a2enmod suexec rewrite ssl actions include
2 a2enmod dav_fs dav auth_digest
3
4 /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Next, we’ll install PureFTPd and Quota:

Code:
1 aptitude install pure-ftpd-common pure-ftpd-mysql quota quotatool

Finally, we restart PureFTPd:

Code:
1 /etc/init.d/pure-ftpd-mysql restart

Now, we edit the fstab (caution: be very careful in this file! One mistake and your server won’t reboot). Find the partition with the mount point and add ,usrjquota=aquota.user,grpjquota=aquota.group,jqfmt=vfsv0:

Code:
1 vi /etc/fstab

The file will look something like this:

Code:
1 # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
2 #
3 #
4
5 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
6 # /dev/sda5
7 UUID=be35a709-c787-4198-a903-d5fdc80ab2f8 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro,usrjquota=aquota.user,grpjquota=aquota.group,jqfmt=vfsv0: 0 1
8 # /dev/sda6
9 UUID=cee15eca-5b2e-48ad-9735-eae5ac14bc90 none swap sw 0 0
10
11 /dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

Next, it’s time to enable quota:

Code:
1 touch /aquota.user /aquota.group
2 chmod 600 /aquota.*
3 mount -o remount /
4
5
6 quotacheck -avugm
7 quotaon -avug

Now, we install BIND, Vlogger, Webalizer, AWstats, Jailkit, fail2ban (Jailkit is only needed if you need to chroot SSH users, but since it CANNOT be installed after ISPConfig, we’ll install it either way just in-case):

Code:
1 aptitude install bind9 dnsutils
2
3 aptitude install vlogger webalizer awstats
4 cp -prf /usr/share/doc/awstats/examples/awstats_buildstaticpages.pl /usr/share/awstats/tools/awstats_buildstaticpages.pl
5
6 aptitude install build-essential autoconf automake1.9 libtool flex bison debhelper
7
8 cd /tmp
9 wget http://olivier.sessink.nl/jailkit/jailkit-2.11.tar.gz
10 tar xvfz jailkit-2.11.tar.gz
11 cd jailkit-2.11
12 ./debian/rules binary
13 cd ..
14 dpkg -i jailkit_2.11-1_*.deb
15 rm -rf jailkit-2.11*
16
17 aptitude install fail2ban

We’re almost done, so let’s install SquirrelMail:

Code:
1 aptitude install squirrelmail
2 ln -s /usr/share/squirrelmail/ /var/www/webmail
3 squirrelmail-configure

When the SquirrelMail configuration process starts, enter these answers in this order (you’ll see a whole page of information or options each time you hit enter):

Code:
1 D
2 <-enter->
3 courier
4 <-enter->
5 <-enter again->
6 S
7 <-enter->
8 <-enter again->
9 Q
10 <-enter->

We can now access SquirrelMail at http:// yourwebsite.com/webmail/

Finally. we can install ISPConfig:

Code:
1 cd /tmp
2 wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ispconfig/ISPConfig-3.0.2.1.tar.gz?use_mirror=
3 tar xvfz ISPConfig-X.X.X.X.tar.gz
4 cd ispconfig3_install/install/
5
6 php -q install.php

Everything will then be configured for you, just continue to hit enter but watch out because you’ll be asked to enter the MySQL root password at some point.

When finished, you’ll find ISPConfig 3 at http:// yourwebsite.com:8080/. Use admin for the username and password.

Congratulations! You know have a fully working server ready to be configured and customized to your liking!

Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution.

Before

Here is the current default “New Tab Page” in Chrome… Sure, you have thumbnails of recently visited sites and a listing of recently closed tabs but it is not very exciting or customizable. What if you could replace it with a little bit of iGoogle-styled functionality?

Installation

Installation is quick and simple. During the installation process you will need to click on “Install” to finish adding “New Tab Extension | Dashboard” to Chrome.

After the installation has been completed there will be no “Toolbar Button” displayed…only a short extension management message.

At the moment there are no options for “New Tab Extension | Dashboard” but that could change soon…

New Tab Extension Dashboard in Action

As soon as you open a new tab in Chrome this is what you will see. At the moment there are five gadgets available:

• To-Do List
• Random Images Viewer
• Chat Window
• Weather Gadget (does not work with International zip codes)
• Clock/Date/Calendar Gadget

You will be able to settle into it easily and start enjoying a New Tab Page that is not the same old thing that you have been looking at forever.

At the moment there are still one or two “rough spots” but this definitely has potential for later releases. Hopefully everyone will soon be able choose the particular gadgets that they would like to use, where they are placed within the window, and choose a custom background.

Here is a closer look at each of the individual gadgets currently available…

The To-Do List…

The Random Images Viewer…

The Chat Window.

The Weather Gadget (currently the only non-Google powered gadget in the New Tab Page)…

And the Clock/Date/Calendar gadget.

Conclusion

If you are looking for something new and different for your New Tab Page in Chrome, then you just might want to give this extension a try. While it still has one or two “rough spots” this one is definitely showing a lot of potential for the future.

Links

Download the “New Tab Extension | Dashboard” extension (Google Chrome Extensions)

Right 2 Point

At the main page you can start a game right away or read the story behind it.

When you begin a new game it goes through a short story that explains your character and a bit of the story. Luckily you can skip the intro so you don’t have to watch it every time you play.

The Tazering Goons start walking toward you and “taze” you with their fingers. You need to control the mouse and left-click to kill them before they get to you.

As you continue on you advance levels. The meters at the top show your Finger Skills and there is a radar at the upper right corner that shows Goons approaching.

Some of the Goons can be killed with body shots and others need to be hit in the head. You can also slow them down when the clock icon is in front of them.

If the Tazering Goons get the best of you, you can play again or invite some friends to play as well.

This game is a lot of fun and as a funny story, with a cool rock music sound track. Start off the new year right and waste time at work with this fun first person pointer until the bell rings.

Play Right 2 Point

1. A Sony  VAIO VGN-TX770P notebook computer, with 1GB RAM, an 80GB HD, and anIntel  915GM shared-memory integrated graphics controller.
2. A dual Opteron desktop computer with 2GB RAM, a 320GB HD, and an ATI Radeon 9550 graphics controller. (This is my day-to-day computer.)
3. A Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 session running on the desktop system, with 512MB RAM and a 16GB HD.

Vista and Ubuntu have roughly the same installation procedure. Pop in the installation disc, boot the computer, and run the setup process (which can take an hour or more). Both OSes let you manually choose disk partitioning schemes for an existing disk, or have the computer wipe everything down and sort things out. 

Ubuntu Linux		Windows Vista
(click image for larger view) The Ubuntu install process can work automatically (i.e., erase and repartition an entire hard drive as needed), or you can manually edit partitions. view the image gallery		(click image for larger view) Vista’s setup process is mostly automatic; however, there are some useful disk-management tools if you need them. view the image gallery

If you wanted to install Windows XP on a computer that used a mass-storage controller with no drivers available for it on the installation CD, you had to place the drivers on a floppy and go through a bit of rigmarole to get them working. Vista has improved this process enormously: You can read drivers needed for installation from anyattached mass-storage device, like a USB drive.

This is particularly important in my case, since my desktop machine uses an integrated Silicon Image SiI3114 SATA RAID controller which has no drivers on the Vista setup DVD. I had to download the drivers from the manufacturer’s Web site; once I did, I was able to provide them on a USB drive during Vista’s setup routine. Ubuntu, however, detected the SiI3114 automatically at startup and had drivers ready for it. Other people haven’t been as lucky, though: Folks who used the HighPoint HP370 controller under 6.10 had issues getting Ubuntu installed.

If you attempt to install Ubuntu on a system where Windows XP is present, the Ubuntu Migration Assistantwill attempt to import your files and documents from your XP installation. IE settings, wallpapers, user avatars, and the contents of the My Documents / Music / Pictures folders can all be imported this way. Unfortunately, one key piece of the migration puzzle, e-mail (not just e-mail client settings, but the contents of one’s e-mail), isn’t fully supported yet. The Ubuntu people are working hard on it.

One of Ubuntu’s biggest positives is its “live CD” mode. Boot the CD and you can run a full, working copy of Ubuntu directly from the CD without installing anything on the host computer. Obviously you won’t get the full range of functionality possible with Ubuntu when you do this (you might not be able to persistently save files or settings, for instance), but you can get a very good feel for how things work without actually committing yourself completely to the OS.

You can also use this live-CD feature to perform system recovery to some extent. (Ubuntu 7.04 does have read/write support for NTFS partitions, although it doesn’t support encrypted files or security groups.) The closest thing Vista has to something like this is the ability to install a full working version of the OS on a computer without a Vista license key, and to try it out for 30 days (extendable to 120).

Both operating systems include a few utilities on the CD itself. Ubuntu’s install CD includes a self-test to determine if the disc has any burning errors and a memory test routine (the venerable Memtest86+). Vista includes a memory test as well, and the ability to restore the system from a backup, but no integrity check for the installation media — for instance, if you downloaded and burned it as an .ISO from MSDN. You can also boot to a command prompt to do some basic recovery work — get access to hard disks and CD/DVD drives, for instance.

Finally, I mentioned at the top of this section that most of us deal with Vista as a preload and will probably install Ubuntu manually. That said, it is possible to buy a computer through some PC vendors with Ubuntu preloaded. System76, for instance, offers Ubuntu 6.10 as a standard preload, and some of the other major vendors (Dell (Dell), for instance) are making noises that they might start offering some distribution of Linux as an option. It’s not clear whether they’ll offer Ubuntu, but it’s one of the better candidates

**As seen on InformationWeek**

Fonts are like candies: you can never get enough of them. So if you are getting tired of the fonts that come with your system, here is a hand-picked collection of a few open source fonts that deserve a closer look.

The Liberation fonts are designed as drop-in replacements for the widely-used proprietary fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, Helvetica, Courier New, etc. The Liberation font pack consists of three sets: Sans (a substitute for Arial, Albany, and Helvetica), Serif (a substitute for Times New Roman) and Mono (a substitute for Courier New, Cumberland, and Courier).

The SIL organization offers an impressive collection of fonts released under the Open Font License. Here you will find fonts designed for specific purposes (e.g., the Antika font is designed especially for literacy education) and specific languages (e.g., Arabic Script Unicode fonts) as well as all-around high-quality fonts like Gentium and Charis.

If you need a serif font that looks every bit as good as Times New Roman, try the Linux Libertine font family. It comes in the regular, italic, bold, bold italic, and small caps styles.

The MgOpen typeface collection offers four font families: MgOpenCanonica (similar to Times Roman), MgOpenCosmetica (similar to Optima), MgOpenModata, and MgOpenModerna (similar to Helvetica). Each font contains four styles: regular, italic, bold, and bold italic.

Arev is a nice sans serif font which can come in handy when you work with languages based on non-Latin alphabets. Since the font provides extensive support for diacritical signs, it’s also suitable for use with “diacritic-heavy” languages like Vietnamese.

The Droid font family designed by Ascender for Google’s Android platform consists of the Droid Sans, Droid Sans Mono and Droid Serif fonts. Each font provides support for Western European, Eastern/Central European, Baltic, Cyrillic, Greek, and Turkish languages. While the Droid fonts are released under the Apache license, neither Google nor Ascender offers a downloadable version of the fonts. But, with a little perseverance, you can get the font working on your system. Download the system.tar.gz archive, unpack it, and you will find the Droid font in the fonts directory.

Finally, if you want to spice up your documents with a pinch of handwritten text, then take a look at the Rufscript font.

**As seen on Linutop Mag

Ubuntu 8.10 has stunned me with many ways. Even if it may seem the same at first look for someone who’ve used Ubuntu 8.04, I saw tremendous progress. The impression currently have, about Linux, is going to be changed forever. Intrepid Ibex shows epic compatibility with the various system setups that I tried it with. And, looking back to some 5 years, Linux has improved a lot in being user-friendly and visually appealing.
So, for those of you who’ve been working with Windows from birth, this is the time to hop in. The Ubuntu band-wagon is growing. We all know what Vista was like. It was horrible and all it did was successful leech the hardware resources. Ubuntu is the way to go for the future.

I believe this is the day of conversion. Linux is ready for you. So, come with me on a ride to the brighter side of computing. So, enough with the stories right ? Here we go.
P.S: Most of these stuff are Ubuntu-specific.

Configuring Software Installer
I usually hear people say – “Software supports is low for Linux. There’s barely any”. Thats plain wrong. Linux supports almost the same amount of software Windows does. Maybe not more than it. But, there are a lot of softwares, both open source and closed source, which are being supported by Linux.
Ubuntu simplifies the software installation in linux through the Synaptic Package Manager. You can find it at System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. Or, you can use the Add/Remove at Applications -> Add/Remove. Both basically work the same way but Synaptic Package Manager gives you more control.
But, to get the best apps from the Linux ecosystem, you need to enable some additional repositories. Here’s how you do it :

1. Go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources
2. In the “Ubuntu Softwares” tab, check every checkbox (it won’t do any harm).
3. Ensure that all checkboxes are checked in the “Third-Party Software” tab.
4. If you’re interested in online updates, go to the “Updates” tab and check “gutsy-security” and “gutsy-updates”.
5. After doing the above stuff, press close and in the window which pops up, press Reload and wait for a while.

Now, Ubuntu will list a lot more software in its software manager.
Getting The Right Apps

There are some essential apps you can’t live without. Since I work the Release Candidate, I don’t know how much our software composition are similar. Go to Applications -> Add/Remove for a newbie-friendly and visually appealing installation experience or go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager for more control. But, install these if you don’t already have it :

• VLC Media Player : Absolutely necessary. It even plays .wmv and .flv.
• GnomeBaker : Works better than Brasero in CD/DVD burning.
• Azureus/Deluge : For torrent downloads.
• Macromedia Flash Plugin : Works on Mozilla and Gecko-based browsers.
• GStreamer ffmpeg video plugin : Lot of extra plugins.
• Real Player : To play Real media files.
• Comix : If you’re like me and read a lot of digital grapical novels

Using Aptitude Installer
You can use the command-line to install software too. Softwares can be GUI or CLI. But there are a lot of good CLI softwares out there that you might want to check out. (Eg: Mencoder, ffmpeg etc).
Its as easy as typing – sudo apt-get install <software-name>. It’ll ask you for your root password. Give it and you’re done.

Run Windows Softwares on Linux with Wine
Before anything, Wine Is Not an Emulator. Not I’m joking. Thats what WINE stands for. Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. And it does not need Microsoft Windows.
Wine can open any .exe or similar Windows files. Select a .exe, right-click and enter properties. In the “Open With” tab, select Wine Windows Emulator (ironic though since they say its not a emulator) click +Add and take it from the options.
You can run apps such as uTorrent, Winamp etc very smoothly. Some games run well too. Good luck experimenting with it.

Summing Up..
Hope that pretty much took care of the basic stuff you need to do to have a good time with Ubuntu. Linux is ready for the desktop. It supports most of the formats and the softwares are growing too. Maybe one day, big companies may start developing games for Linux and I’m sure that would be the end for Windows cuz I’m believe that’s the reason why most of us still use a Windows. So, I wish you all a smooth ride.