FFmpeg is so far the best video converter I have found. To install FFmpeg on Ubuntu is easy:

1. open your terminal
2. type the following line:
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
3. it will be downloaded and installed automatically.

Hope this helps!

This library is needed for 3GPP speech codecs. Unfortunately libamr is not in Ubuntu repository so we have to get it from Madiabuntu repositories. To do so, we have to add Mediabuntu repositories to our sources list:

$ sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

Now we can just apt-get it with the command:

$ sudo apt-get install libamrnb-dev libamrwb-dev

If you have just installed Ubuntu, when boot for the first time, you may see an error message along the lines of “No operating system could be found on the hard disk.”

If you have this problem, don’t worry, here is the solution to fix the problem. It seems that, for whatever reason, the GRUB boot loader wasn’t installed correctly. Boot from the DVD-ROM, and select Try Ubuntu Without Any Change to Your Computer when prompted. When the Ubuntu desktop appears, click Applications ➤ Accessories ➤ Terminal. This will open a command-prompt window. Type the following commands in sequence:

sudo grub
root (hd0,1)
setup (hd0)
quit

Then restart Ubuntu (click System ➤ Quit). Ensure you remove the DVD-ROM when prompted. You should find that the Ubuntu boot menu now appears when you boot.

To search and find a new package using Ubuntu Terminal command line is easy.

You can find packages with APT, you can query for new software you can add:

$ apt-cache search picasa

By running the command above, you will get returned information of the package if it’s available.

Hope this helps! :)

This article teaches you how to install and play Guild Wars under Wine on Ubuntu system.

1. First download the script from here.
2. By default, the script is for Edgy, but if you are using Breezy, Dapper or Gutsy, it is easy to convert it to use on any of them. Just replace the word ‘edgy’ in the line “wget http://kegel.com/wine/edgy.sh -O ~/winestuff/pkgs.sh” with breezy or dapper or gutsy.
3. To run the script, fire up your Ubuntu Terminal and type in ’sh’ with a space followed by the path to the script you downloaded, for instance:

   sh /home/winebuild.sh

To make Ventrilo work on Ubuntu Wine is easy.

1. Fire up your Ubuntu Terminal and install the following packages:

   sudo apt-get install wine libwine libwine-alsa cabextract

2. download Ventrilo if you haven’t already done so, at the time of writing, it’s URL is at:
   http://www.ventrilo.com/download.php
3. Extract Ventrilo

   mkdir ~/ventrilo
   cd ~/ventrilo
   cabextract /path/to/ventrilo-2.2.0-Windows-i386.exe

4. Edit the system.ini file:

   ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system.ini

   Add the line below:

   MSACM.msgsm610=msgsm32.acm

5. Next you need to get the windows file ‘msgsm32.acm’ from an existing windows partition (C:/WINDOWS/system32/msgsm32.acm) and copy it to ‘~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system/’.
6. Run Ventrilo:

   cd ~/ventrilo
   wine ./Ventrilo.exe

To share Internet connection on Ubuntu is easy.

1. First, configure the network card that interfaces to other computers within your network

   ifconfig ethX 127.0.0.1

   ethX is the network card and 127.0.0.1 is your desired server IP address

2. Configure the NAT

   iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o ethX -j MASQUERADE
   echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

3. Install dnsmasq and ipmasq using apt-get

   apt-get install dnsmasq ipmasq

4. Restart dnsmasq

   /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart

5. Reconfigure ipmasq to start after networking has been started

   dpkg-reconfigure ipmasq

6. Repeat steps 1 and 2
7. Add the line “net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1″ to /etc/sysctl.conf

   gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

Ubuntu updates software versions every six months. Mozilla, on the other hand, upgrades its Firefox every month or two, sometimes every week. These Firefox updates come with critical security patches or new feature-based releases. Ubuntu often includes security patches with its own versions a day or a week after Mozilla releases their patches, but many Ubuntu users think this is not good enough and would prefer to synchronize the latest version of Firefox with Mozilla instead of using the Ubuntu build of Firefox.

To download Firefox from the Mozilla website and use that instead of Ubuntu’s Firefox and install Firefox to the /opt/ directory is easy.

There is a automated way to do so. Ubuntuzilla is a script that automatically detects and downloads the latest version of Firefox, it allows you to select your locale, and it verifies the overall integrity of the download.

You can download it at:
http://ubuntuzilla.wiki.sourceforge.net/

Hope this helps! :)

Ubuntu’s equivalent of Snagit is Desktop Data Manager. And you may already guessed, Desktop Data Manager is free!

Desktop Data Manager functions just like Snagit. The difference between Sangit and print screen is the fact that Snagit allows you to drag and select certain portion of the screen and print screen for just that selected section.

It is hosted on SourceForge, and for those who wanna try it out, just visit the website at: http://data-manager.sourceforge.net/

Nessus is one of the best proprietary comprehensive vulnerability scanning software, to install Nessus on Ubuntu is easy and simple:

1. Fire up your Ubuntu terminal and type in the following command to download the software:

sudo apt-get install nessusd nessus nessus-plugins

During the installation, it will ask you to create a Certificate, accept defaults, change location, state, etc are optional, change them if you like.

2. Execute the following command:

sudo update-rc.d nessusd defualts

3. Start Nessus:

/etc/init.d/nessusd start

4. Add new user:

sudo nessus-adduser

Now, when you come to “policy for this user” read the nessus-adduser man page for nessus-adduser. I wanted to be able to scan any host, so i chose “default accept”.

5. Restart nessud:

/etc/init.d/nessud restart

6. To run the program, type

nessus