This site is only possible by the contributions of others. It is primarily a generous collection of their knowledge. To obtain even greater information PLEASE visit their sites via the "Posted by" links or the "Places" list on the left. Thank you so much!

Installing Vista Fonts in Ubuntu

Posted by UbuntuBlog-Swik

Microsoft’s new ClearType fonts for Vista are great. The fonts include Constantia, Corbel, Calibri, Cambria, Candara and Consolas.

Getting them installed in Ubuntu is a breeze, thanks to a script I found.
To install the Vista ClearType fonts in Ubuntu, you need to install cabextract first. Cabextract is a utility found in the universe repository, so before […]

Ubuntu Just Sucks Less

Posted by UbuntuBlog-Swik

With the cursory hat tip to Marketing Pilgrim who does a sentiment analysis for firefox Vs. Internet Explorer, lets get started on Ubuntu and Windows. Sorry folks, I just could resist plugging in the words and let them duke it out.
Most interestingly, according to opinmind, 87% of all bloggers who have blogged about Ubuntu like […]

SSH Menu - Save and Open SSH Connections from the Panel

Posted by UbuntuBlog-Swik

I was looking for a replacement for SecureCRT in Ubuntu. Something that would let me save all my SSH connections and make it possible to open a connection with the least effort.
As is often the case, I found something better than SecureCRT - a panel applet for GNOME that gives me a drop-down list of […]

Ubuntu’s Audience Defined

Posted by UbuntuBlog-Swik

I read the impressive growth and traffic details for WordPress.com at Matt’s Blog. WordPress has always been very dear to me, and it makes me happy to note that the WordPress team grows from strength to strength, without compromising on values, and while keeping things open, almost entirely so.
However, the stat freak in me […]

What’s Common to Ubuntu and CircuitCity’s Firedog?

Posted by UbuntuBlog-Swik

Ans: A guy in a pic….

Trivial, I know, and not too original either, since I got it from LiveJournal, but I couldn’t resist posting this

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fubuntulinuxhelp.com%2Fwhat%25e2%2580%2599s-common-to-ubuntu-and-circuitcity%25e2%2580%2599s-firedog-3%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘What%E2%80%99s+Common+to+Ubuntu+and+CircuitCity%E2%80%99s+Firedog%3F’;
addthis_pub = ‘ubuntulinuxhelp’;

End of a Love Affair with Acer

Posted by UbuntuBlog-Swik

I was in love with Acer laptops. I bought my first one, an Acer Travelmate 290 LMi in my second year of grad school. I did pay ~ $1200 for it, but it was awesome, right until the moment there were errors with the hard disk controllers about 3 years later. When I sold it […]

Using “tee” to write to files and the terminal

Posted by UbuntuBlog-Swik

The utility “tee” is very useful for plumbing on the command line. Curiously enough, it gets its name from the T-splitter used in plumbing, shown below:

Say you want to run a command, and be able to see the output and errors on the screen, and be able to save them to a file. That’s where […]

300+ Easily Installed Free Fonts for Ubuntu

Posted by UbuntuBlog-Swik

Ubuntu offers a lot of fonts, in addition to the defaults installed, and the MicroSoft msttcorefonts package, in its repositories. All these fonts mentioned here are provided as packages, which can easily installed using command line tools like apt-get or using Synaptic. These fonts will come in handy for designing flyers, or for designing headers […]

I ran into that video-posting librarian again

Posted by UbuntuBlog-Swik

You guys must remember Jessamyn, the librarian who posted a video about installing Ubuntu at, where else, the library.
Well, by some strange coincidence, which cannot be explained rationally, I ran into her again on the tubes. I followed the user profile link at this comment on Ask MetaFilter to end up at her profile page. […]

Preserve Threaded View in Thunderbird

Posted by UbuntuBlog-Swik

Via Chris Ilias’ Blog comes this gem of a tip.
If you use Mozilla Thunderbird, and love the threaded view, but hate losing the threaded view whenever you click on “Sender” or “Date” to sort the messages, then this is the tip for you. This helps you keep the threaded view regardless of how you sort […]