Hands on: Tips and tricks for Ubuntu

Amarok and Backports
Since Feisty’s release, the wonderful Amarok music manager has also been updated. This is expected to be the final version before the much anticipated 2.0 series for KDE 4.0 (due late in the year).

Full details of Amarok 1.4.6 can be found at http://amarok.kde.org. Release highlights include a more attractive icon set, performance improvements due to an upgrade to the built-in SQL database, and bug fixes and enhancements.

Previously, updates to Amarok were made available by the Kubuntu developers in exactly the same manner as KDE above. With 1.4.6, however, the update is part of the Feisty Backports. This repository is for applications that have been upgraded significantly since the distribution’s release, and will not be made available through the usual updates (which tend to be bug and security fixes only).

The packages may not have been tested as thoroughly as the standard ones, but should cause no problems. I would generally recommend that you install only the applications you regularly use from the Backports repository, as they are officially unsupported. Enable the repository either by editing the /etc/apt/sources.

list file, or from the GUI front-end by selecting the ‘Updates’ tab and ticking ‘Unsupported updates’. No new keys are necessary as these packages come from a standard Ubuntu repository.

You can update all the backported software, or choose Amarok alone:

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install amarok

If you do not wish to install the other backported updates or any future ones, revert the change above by editing /etc/apt/sources.list again, or by unticking the ‘Unsupported updates’ option in the GUI.

Running Windows software
There are times when you may need to run a Windows application. Most people have a dual-boot setup in this scenario, allowing them to reboot into Windows if need be. The obvious disadvantage of this is having to stop what you are doing, shut down your computer and boot into another operating system. This can be particularly frustrating if you need to perform only a small task. A second option is to run Windows applications while Linux is still running. There are two ways of doing this: using software that implements virtualisation or using Wine.

Virtualisation involves using special features of the computer’s processor to run a separate operating system inside another. The ‘host’ operating system in this instance is Ubuntu, and the ‘guest’ is the one that runs inside. The guest can be any system that runs on a PC, so it could be another version of Ubuntu or, indeed, Windows. From the guest’s perspective, it is running on a normal PC, equipped with a network card, a graphics card, a hard drive and so on. This means that the guest operating system must be fully installed, just as with a new PC.

VMware produces two main products for virtualisation: VMware Workstation and VMware Server. The Workstation product is commercially available and aimed at the corporate desktop. The server product, although not open source, is available free of charge. For the majority of users, there is little difference between the two, except that support is not included in the free Server product.