Dolphin Tricks

For people who have finally taken the plunge to change from Windows (or Mac) to a Linux distribution and choose the KDE desktop, this is a small introductory How-To on some of the useful features of the Dolphin file system. For what is considered a “lightweight” file system, Dolphin is feature rich with all the functionality anyone could ask for. This article is going to touch on some of the functions that the average user is going to want to explore or take advantage of and maybe even one or two they might not have considered. Lets face it, a lot of people never take the time to explore the file manager and miss out on built in functions that could actually make their lives a little easier. Many of the steps covered here can be accomplished using various shortcut keys, but for those who don’t use these time savers on a regular basis the following steps are based on navigating through the display. 

The following image is a screenshot of the basic Dolphin display. Just above the working space on the left is the directory icon with the full path to the current directory from root. Normally, this will be an icon of a blue file cabinet unless a person chooses to create and edit their own directory icons. Above the path is the tool bar which can be configured with regularly used commands.

Navigate up the menu bar at the top and click on View > Panels > Places and the pane shown below on the left will show up. Highlighted is the current directory if it has already been added to the list. To add any directory to this list, simply select the directory and drag it into a location in the list. To remove a directory, right click on the directory in the list and select Remove Entry. I recommend keeping this list short with only the most basic of locations used on a regular basis.

Now navigate back to the menu bar and again through View > Panels > Folders. Right above the shortcut places is now the directory tree which allows at-a-glance view of exactly where a user is in the structure. Similar to the shortcut pane, the current directory is highlighted for fast identification of location. Select any location within the tree to navigate directly there. This view is beneficial to see all the directories, sub-directories and so on when working with a large system and is a lot faster than clicking from directory to directory to directory and so forth.

For people who started using Linux to learn how to get a little deeper into a system than is allowed with a proprietary OS or just want to practice their skills using shell commands, try View >  Panels > Terminal. As can be seen at the bottom of the display is now a location where shell commands can be directly entered. This is handy especially for new learners as it allows the user to jump back and forth between using the display GUI (Graphical User Interface) and shell commands. The following link is a really well written guide to the more basic useful commands:

http://linuxcommand.org/index.php

Sometimes users aren’t thrilled with the default settings of the toolbar or they may want to add frequently used functions . With Dolphin, it’s really simple to modify the toolbar to be exactly the way any user would want it set up. Simply navigate to Settings > Configure Toolbars and the following display will open. Changing options in the shortcut toolbar becomes as simple as drag and drop or use the arrows between the two displays to add or subtract to the way that is most comfortable.

Last item of interest for this article is the “preview” option. This is a really neat feature which allows a user to get a quick preview of what lies underneath the directory icon without actually opening the directory. This is particularly handy for photography people or those who sometimes have a tendency to lose things and don’t want to hunt through every folder looking for a particular file of which the name eludes them. The following two images show the difference between non-preview first and preview second.

Non-Preview

Preview

For a more in-depth look and information on Dolphin and all the various features, simply try playing around or go directly to the source.

http://userbase.kde.org/Dolphin/File_Management

Wiki Editing

 I finally took the time to do my first wiki editing at opensuse.org today. With over 1700 pages available to go through, it can be a little overwhelming as to where one should start to help with managing all this information. Since the Artwork group has been my first stop at getting involved with volunteering my time to helping the openSUSE community distribution, I narrowed down the pages to those that are sub-categorized under Artwork.

 As I usually do, I jumped a little ahead of myself by wanting to add images into this particular wiki page and although it seemed like a relatively simple procedure, it turned out to be more. Wiki editing is actually pretty fun for people who enjoy working with documentation or writing articles such as myself. The software in use is called MediaWiki and is really easy to use.

 Follow along and I’ll explain the process I went through to add a screenshot of my desktop to a page where others are sharing their desktops for future development ideas.

Obviously, the first thing a person needs to do is contact the wiki administrator or whoever is “primarily” in charge of maintaining the overall effectiveness of the wiki pages. As a community driven operation, anyone who has a registered account with openSUSE has the potential to be able to edit wiki pages if they should choose to do so. There are guidelines to follow and a list of protocols to go with those guidelines. Obviously, since this is a community effort, we still have to have rules so that we don’t get a bloated mess going on. We want to keep the overall wiki organized and professional otherwise it will not work to be an effective source of information for others to follow.

First, I took a look at the page layout to get an idea of what people were already doing so I could follow suit.

Then I determined I would have to upload an image from my computer into a an image repository location where it could be referenced as a link so it is rendered in the wiki. This is essentially the same logic that goes on with any web page.

Once the image file has been uploaded for use, I personally recommend verifying that the image has in fact been uploaded and is valid in the image repository for access by the wiki. I feel it is always good practice to double check things.

After getting the image uploaded take note of the image name or even better right click and copy the image file name and paste it into a text editor for dropping into the page editor. Now navigate back to the wiki page that will be edited and in the upper left corner click on “edit”.

This will change the page to the editing console which will be an html based editor. Since our goal is to put our image in and retain the same formatting as what others have already established before us, I suggest copying the code previously used by someone else and then edit their image file to the one that was just uploaded for use. Note how the text editor for page editing should be under the tag heading of “Wikitext”.

When editing is all done, of course the next thing to do is to check our editing before we save the file as edited. Back up at the top next to the “Wikitext” tab is the “Preview” tab. Click on this and a temporary version of what the page will look like with the changes will appear.

It took me a few tries to get this right mainly because of having to learn how to work with the image files. If for any reason the editing doesn’t look the way it was intended to, down at the bottom of the page are the options to save, cancel and others. I suggest not worrying too much about going through a couple of times before getting it right but try to be both conscious and courteous when adding or editing anything to a community wiki page. Remember, people from all over the world turn to these pages all day long every day for help managing their system or navigating through for information about the organization.

Last of all is the final addition to the wiki. This is just a small addition to helping to make a good thing better by contributing knowledge, experience or just taking the time to fix or update old data.

I think there is a large misinterpretation of wiki pages. In some cases there may very well be a single moderator or maybe even a small team of maintainers. With a community driven project such as openSUSE, we really appreciate all the help people can apply to maintaining the wiki pages. With each new distribution release the page count continues to grow and as more and more of the community becomes involved, more and more pages continue to pop up throughout the site. There are a few dedicated people who have been working with the pages for a long time and believe it or not, they know just about every page. If maintaining a wiki is something that sounds like fun, don’t be shy to ask questions and get involved! We would love to have all the maintainers and contributors we can get!

“Have a lot of fun!”

OpenSUSE Artwork Sharing

Hello again and thank you for stopping by!

In this how-to I’m going to describe the new avenue openSUSE has established for people to share their artwork with the organization and community. At some point the head honcho’s at SUSE felt it was best to provide an outlet that was public, easily accessed and easy to use so that we may draw from a larger pool of artists to help contribute to the artwork supplied into each release. The establishment is not only provided for wallpapers or boot splash screens, it is a repository of sorts where other fans and users of openSUSE can share and collect artwork provided by others from around the world.

Contribution to the artwork pool is completely voluntary and only requires a Flickr account and the acceptance from the artist that any donations to the pool be completely released from all creative rights so that there are no lingering legal issues. It is also stated that all contributions should be free from sexually explicit material, images portraying racism, hatred or graphically violent material. With that said, the following is a basic explanation of how to set up a Flickr account to share images with the openSUSE-artwork community.

The first thing to do is to set up an account with Flickr powered by Yahoo. There were a lot of reasons why Flickr was chosen and please don’t ask me why. Without going into a long explanation, the best I can say is that it is already well established, there is already a large following of community contributors and the engine for group sharing works really good.

As this shot shows, there are a few ways to create a Flickr account. The easiest ways are to either use an existing Facebook or Google account. If one of these buttons is selected, Flickr will detect the ID from that account automatically and ask for the password to that account which will then be the standard way users are signed in. Everything is kept confidential so there is no worry of having the password harvested. If the user doesn’t have a Facebook or Google account then a Yahoo account will do or a Flickr account needs to be created.

After the account has been created, I always strongly suggest that users take the time to created or upload a buddy icon. Doing this creates a level of identity so that group members can separate one person from another. Of course there is always the account name and other data that can relate the artwork back to the donor, but it’s nice to be able to have a visual representation to correlate to. Once the buddy icon is done, fill in all information that a person is comfortable sharing. Some people like to be very private about this kind of thing and that is completely understood.

When all account data is filled in to preference, then it is time to connect the new account to the openSUSE-artwork group account. This can be done in a couple of ways, either use this link: http://www.flickr.com/groups/opensuse-artwork/ or in the search box type in openSUSE-artwork. Unfortunately, Flickr is case sensitive so it can be challenging if the spelling isn’t just right. Once at the openSUSE-artwork account, click on the button to the far right just under the group title that says “join this group”. Now we are a member of the openSUSE-artwork group and when we upload images we can have them shared into this group which we will cover next.

Flickr has made uploading a very easy process. At the top of the account is the “upload” tab found at the right of all the selection tabs just above the account details. Click on this and a new window will open that is kind of a stark dark grey color and looks like this.

Read and follow the directions that are just below the large blue box. At this point, I believe openSUSE-artwork is only accepting images for donation to the pool, so for this example we are going to stick with that. Click on the large blue button and surf your drives and folders for the image(s) to be donated. Once the image is selected, the screen will change and we are presented with options to apply to our image.

By clicking on the box just below the newly uploaded image, details can be added such as program used to generate, location where taken, what camera was used and so on and so forth. In the left hand column are some selections that can be added to each image individually. In this area is where licensing is selected. I suggest selecting the second button which is the NonCommercial, ShareAlike,  CreativeCommons which releases the openSUSE team to apply our design to the organization if they feel there is a good place for it. Remember, the whole idea is a collaborative effort in sharing to create something awesome that works for everyone.

Go through each of the other attribute boxes and apply tags so other can search keywords and find the design or other attributes. The most important one for this example though is the “Add to groups” button. This is how we share uploaded photos with the group so everyone is able to view everyone else’s work and use or apply them to help promote the use of openSUSE everywhere. Clicking on this button should bring up this screen if our join groups selection earlier went well.

After selecting all the attributes to each image, remember to click on the blue “upload photo” button in the upper right hand corner. This button is how Flickr processes the photo adding all the attributes and making sure it gets added in all the right places.

Now we created our Flickr account where we can upload artwork to share with the openSUSE-artwork community. We then joined the openSUSE-artwork group where we can view work created by users and contributors from all over the world, and were contributing our skills and talents to help build something really cool and fun for everyone!

Visit the openSUSE-artwork wiki for more information: http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Artwork

Virtually Shared Folders

While in the midst of a class discussion, one of my classmates was doing a presentation on virtualization. The presentation was done very well and afterwards questions were asked. One question that seemed to be on most minds was how to access folders on the host from the guest installation. This is actually a very easy thing to do, at least with VirtualBox and I would expect that VMWare is just as simple.

I was actually surprised with how many students in the class had not explored setting up a virtual machine. The entire process is actually pretty simple (at least to me). The benefits of having a virtual machine are really only limited to one’s imagination on what would a person do with an OS that they didn’t have to care if it crashes? How much exploration or trial and error would someone be willing to do if they didn’t have to worry about the ramifications of making a mistake? What would be the educational benefits of being able to try something totally crazy or bleeding edge new?

In this how-to I’m going to show just how easy it is to set up file sharing between an openSUSE host and a Windows guest. Perhaps once people get the opportunity to see just how simple this is, more people will consider being a little more adventurous with their systems. This also gives new IT students an idea of how simple it can really be to set up a virtualized server running a variety of different operating systems for their users based on requirements of the clients.

The first thing I usually do is to take a look at my uppermost file system and decide which ones I want to share with any particular guest. Although it is completely possible to simply provide access to the entire root system of the host, I don’t recommend it. If something should go buggy or awry with any particular guest situation, I personally wouldn’t want it to have access to too much on the host system.

Since I use virtual machines fairly frequently, I have a file structure that I create with every OS installation with the intent of providing sharing to a virtualized guest. In this case I am going to be sharing Documents, Downloads, Pictures and School.

Once the decision of what folders will be shared then we can go ahead and start our virtual machine and set these folders up to be accessed from our guest machine. Obviously this decision can be done simply from the selection process or, as in my earlier day of setting up virtual machines, a person may want to create folders specifically to be shared with each machine in particular. As an example “Windows Folder” either in the top tier or as a sub folder perhaps under documents.

One example of why this would be good is if a person decides they don’t want to provide internet access to their virtual machine. I typically turn off internet to my Windows machines and only download or access the internet through my Linux host. By doing things this way I don’t worry too much about virus protection or malware getting to my Windows install. Even if something does get in, I really don’t care since the OS is just a virtual guest which can be simply replaced anytime. This decision can be invoked or revoked any time with just a simple setting.

The next action to take is to start VirtualBox and go into the settings tab in the top left prior to starting the actual guest OS.

Inside the settings, on the left hand side, navigate down to “Shared Folders” and click on it. In the window that opens over on the right shows a file tree window and just to the right of that is a tiny folder with a green plus sign. Click on this little folder and a file browser will open allowing navigation to the folder to be shared between host and guest systems.

Repeat this process to add all the files you will want to allow access to between the guest and the host. As I stated earlier, I wouldn’t get overly zealous with this action. It is much safer to be conservative especially when various file types will probably be created and shared to the host over a period of time. Keeping your file system clean and organized is always a good thing.

Repeat this process to add all the files you will want to allow access to between the guest and the host. As I stated earlier, I wouldn’t get overly zealous with this action. It is much safer to be conservative especially when various file types will probably be created and shared to the host over a period of time. Keeping your file system clean and organized is always a good thing.

This is all fine and good for being able to access our folder system on the host machine but, what we really want to do is be able to access these documents with an application set up to run in our guest. So lets go ahead and fire up Adobe Illustrator and try to access some image file which is truly stored in our Pictures folder on our openSUSE host machine. Files for use in applications can either be accessed this way or they can be copied over into the guest machine and utilized there. Keep in mind though that the guest machine in itself without a lot of files in it takes up a lot of space. Windows 7 is kind of a space pig (in my opinion) although the sacriface is worth the improvement over the Vista release.

Once we have our software open, lets go ahead and open up a file we want to work with.

The end results are exactly as we want. We opened a file which was originally stored on the host machine for use in an application written to run on our guest machine. Kind of gives us the best of both worlds doesn’t it?

As can be seen this was really easy to set up and execute. If for any reason anyone runs into a problem with their folder sharing with VirtualBox, the first thing to do is go to the VirtualBox website and sift through the forums. Odds are really good someone else has asked the same questions or had the same problems.

VirtualBox Documentation

Google Calendar Invitations

Many people use the Google Calendar every day. No doubt, it is obviously the most popular collaborative calendar available on the internet with all of its functionality and sharing capabilities. There are no fees for it and every GMail account gets one totally free of charge with all the bells and whistles.

In this "How -To" I'm going to describe how to use the schedule event and invite others feature. This is one of the most handy functions of the calendar in my opinion. If I am scheduling an event, say a party or meeting or whatever, then obviously I will want to invite guests. With Google Calendar, this is a breeze and the recipients don't even have to be Google users to receive their invitations with selections of going or not. Follow along as I walk you through a simple event invitation process.

Obviously we want to open our Google Calendar which is associated with our common E-Mail address that we share with all of our friends and family.

This is a snaphot of one of the calendars I use. In this example, I will be using Saturday as a potential meeting time for my university team to be getting together for a meeting. With the calendar open, I simply click on the day I want to schedule the meeting and a new window open to begin my scheduling.

This simple pop-up box asks exactly what it shows here. Since I am creating an event to take place on this particular Saturday, then I will want this to be an event. In the "what" field I put in a short description of what the event is about. I have seen some people fill in multiple sentences into the "what" field. This is ok, however, there is still more to come with the scheduling event so I strongly suggest keeping this particular field short and to the point. Details of the event can be added later. Once the simple "what" is filled in then select "Edit event" to add more options including those we wish to invite.

As can be seen from the photo above, when we select "Edit event" a new dialog opens that allows for a lot of data input for the particular event we are scheduling. On the left hand side we can see the "Description" field where all the pertinent gata of the event will be input. For those people who want to shove all the data of the event in the description field, this is really where you want to let loose on all those details.On the right, is the area where we get to add all those people who we have in our contacts database to our event. For security reasons, I only added myself, but if a person begins to type in a name or email address in this field, Google will show 5 or 6 of the top matching persons or addresses from your contact list to add to the guest list. As seen below I added myself to the guest list for this event.

Once all the selections have been made for the event including guests and reminders, the remember to click on the "save" button up in the top left corner. This wi;; make sure the event is registered into the calendar as a scheduled event. Believe it or not, this is a very important step in the entire operation. Google Calendar does not have an "Auto-Save" function like many of their other featured products so it is imperative to click on this button to save the event.

After the save button is clicked, this pop-up will show. Since we obviously want to send our invitation to our team members for the event I selected to send the invitation to their email addresses. This is the last step in the event scheduling process. Once this is complete, Google will send us back to our calendar where we see the next screen.

What we see here is our event that was scheduled on Saturday on our calendar. I selected red for this particular event because that is the primary color of my university. Using colors to designate different events is a good way to distinguish one type of event from another just by a glance. If a person clicks on the event in their calendar thay will see all the details of the event or can make changes to that event. This is the calendar side of things, now we will take a look at the email side.

This is just a cut of the email invitation to my inbox showing that I have been invited to an event scheduled by me. Obviously this is just for example purposes. When a person opens the email they will see the image below and be provided a number of options to choose from pertaining to the event. Mainly these include whether or not they will be able to attend the event and any notes involved with their answer as to their participation to that event.

As seen in the photo above, the options are simply available by click on whether or not the invited people will be able to attend the event. There is also an area for recipients to explain why or why not they will be able to attend the event. This system is perhaps the very best and most popular available today for social calendar event scheduling. It's fast, easy and works in all major email handlers.

This has been a basic explanation of how to schedule a shared event from the Google Calendar. This has only been a basic explanation and of course there are many alternatives and variables available including adding attachments and sharing Google Docs with the scheduling of a calendar event. My hope is that others find this writing useful and informative.