TAG | I didn't know you could do that in Linux! |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Wednesday, 05 November 2008 | |
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Page 5 of 5 11. Give your old PowerPC Mac a new lease of life with Ubuntu LinuxWindows Vista gets a bad rap for its hefty hardware requirements, but it's not alone. Apple's MacOS X platform has left a lot of Macs with PowerPC G3 and G4 chips (and possibly some G5 machines too) out in the cold. Featured Whitepaper
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What's more, Ubuntu 8.10 has just been released within the last week. Your old Mac can now be going out dressed in brand spanking new duds. And now for the final, brand new, tip. 12. Do anything by right-clicking The right-click action is a pretty familiar concept across any operating system (even MacOS, though it’s not so much a right mouse button click.) Right-clicking on a file will let you open it, and possibly print it or perform other actions. Imagine if you could do absolutely anything you liked by right-clicking a file. If you right-click on an image, perhaps a menu option might be to enhance it or to resize it. Under Microsoft Windows it’s not an easy task to add new right-click options. Programs like WinZip and Adobe Acrobat achieve it but the ordinary user can’t just make up new actions to their heart’s desire. Yet, under the Nautilus file manager, as used by Ubuntu, this is dead simple. First, install the package nautilus-actions either by apt-get or System / Add Software. Once this is installed you will have new options available under System / Preferences. Here you can add an unlimited amount of custom actions based on specific file extensions. This means you may create actions specific to GIF images by requiring the .gif file extension, for example. Each matching action you create will appear in the pop-up menu when right-clicking a file. As always, the open source community is obliging to help. You’ll find loads of useful actions online ready to import into Nautilus. Some examples permit you to install True Type Fonts (.ttf files) into Gnome, optimise PNG images, mass rename files, merge many PDF files into one, convert video formats into others, construct ISO images, extract programs, icons or other elements from executables, e-mail thumbnails of images and on and on and on. If you can imagine it then it can be done. In fact maybe it’s already been done and you just need to import. You can search online for cover art for your music collections, identify the differences between two documents, send items via Bluetooth and so much more. “I didn’t know you could do that in Linux,” you say. And chances are if you’ve been weaned on Windows you’d been conditioned that you just don’t get flexibility and customisation like this. Yet, Linux is powerful and it’s ready to serve you. If you’re a Linux user hopefully something here will help you get better use and enjoyment out of this operating system. If you’re not a Linux user hopefully you’re inspired to check it out. |
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