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How to Install The Real Ubuntu System on USB Flash Drive

Last updated: November 29, 2014

This is a step by step tutorial shows you how to install the real Ubuntu OS on USB stick to create a ‘Windows To Go’ style USB drive. Tested with Ubuntu 14.04

Requirements:

Before getting started, you need to prepare something:

A 8GB+ USB Drive.
A Ubuntu Live CD/DVD/USB. In the case below, I created a bootable Ubuntu Live USB from the .iso image.
A computer with an operating system installed.

And always backup your data on the USB flash drive!

To get started:

In my case I have a newly bought 16GB USB stick, a 4GB old USB stick, and a laptop multi-boot with Ubuntu based systems.

1. I don’t have a Ubuntu CD/DVD, so I decided to burn the Ubuntu .iso image into the old USB stick. To do so:

Download Ubuntu image: releases.ubuntu.com
Download UNetbootin: unetbootin.sourceforge.net. For Ubuntu, install it from Software Center.
Plug in the USB stick.
Start UNetbootin, and burn the .iso image into USB

If you need more hints, follow this screenshot tutorial to create bootable Ubuntu Live USB

2. Plug in the bootable USB drive to your computer and boot into the Live Ubuntu system.

IMPORTANT: For Windows 8 pre-installed machine, you have to disable “fast startup” and “secure boot” features.

To disable “fast startup”, go to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > System Settings > Choose what the power buttons do and uncheck the Turn on fast startup box.

To disable “secure boot”, follow this screenshot tutorial.

3. Now you’re in the Ubuntu Live system. Plug in the 8GB+ USB stick. Then launch Gparted from the Unity Dash.

In the top-right drop-down box select the USB drive (16GB in my case), and you should see something like below:

I have two USB flash drives plugged in the computer, the Hard Disk is /dev/sda, 4GB Live USB is /dev/sdb, and the 16GB USB drive is /dev/sdc.

4. From the right-click context menu, un-mount partitions on the USB drive and then delete them.

Click the green check mark button to apply changes, finally you have an unallocated flash drive, like:

When done, close Gparted partition manager.

5. Click the desktop shortcut “Install Ubuntu” to bring up the Ubuntu installation wizard.

Follow the wizard until it asks you to choose where to install Ubuntu. Select the last option “Something else” and click Continue to bring up partition table.

6. In the partition table, scroll down and highlight the “free space” under the USB drive (/dev/sdc in the case) and click the plus sign to create below partitions one by one:

a FAT32 (or fat16) partition (required)
- must be /dev/sdc1 (or sdX1)
- mount point /NAME_HERE (/UDISK in the case)
- set the memory size by yourself, it can be used for normal data storage.
- leave others default.
a EXT4 partition for Ubuntu (required)
- mount point “/” (without quotes)
- memory size 5G+
- leave others default.
a swap partition (optional).
- You can skip this if RAM is large enough and you don’t need hibernation feature.

And very important is select install boot-loader to the USB flash drive (/dev/sdc in the case).

7. When everything’s done, click Install Now and confirm to format the partitions (Pay attention on which partitions to be formatted).

Click continue and finish the wizard. Once the installation complete, restart your computer and boot with the ‘Ubuntu To Go’ USB drive and enjoy!

In Howtos Install Ubuntu To USB

How to Reset Your Forgotten User Password in Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: November 29, 2014

Lost your Ubuntu user password? Well, it’s not hard to reset your password even you’ve forgot the username and below is how to do it step by step.

1. To get started, you need to boot into Recovery Mode to get a console for running commands.

Start your machine and when you’re at the Grub boot loader, select boot with the entry says something below. You may find it under “Advanced Options for Ubuntu” option:

Ubuntu, with Linux 3.x.x … (recovery mode)

If you don’t see the grub menu, press and hold the Shift key after you pressed the Power button to boot the computer.

2. In the Recovery Mode options list, select “root Drop to root shell prompt” and hit Enter. You should see the black and white command prompt at the end of the screen:

3. Now run below commands one by one:

First remount the file system with read & write permission:
```
mount -o rw,remount /
```
If you don’t remember the username, below command will show you:
```
ls /home
```
To change user password:
```
passwd USER_NAME_HERE
```
Replace USER_NAME_HERE with your username. When it prompts, type in a new password and confirm.

The output “passwd: password updated successfully” means user password has been successfully reset.

Finally run command exit to back to menu (picture in step 2) and select “resume Resume normal boot” to exit Recovery Mode.

In Howtos reset password

Record Music, Skype Calls, Voices to File in Ubuntu via Audio-Recorder

Last updated: November 27, 2014

Audio-recorder is a handy tool allows to record your favorite music and audio to file. It supports for recording devices, such as microphone, webcam, audio card, music/movie players, Skype calls, browsers, etc.

With the Gstreamer plugins, the recorder supports output formats: OGG, Flac, MP3, AAC, and WAV.

Audio-recorder provides an advanced timer that can:

Start, stop or pause recording at a given clock time.
Start, stop or pause after a time period.
Stop when the recorded file size exceeds a limit.
Start recording on voice or sound (user can set the audio threshold).
Stop or pause recording on “silence” (user can set the audio threshold and delay).

The recording can be automatically controlled by MPRIS2-compatible media players. It can also record all your Skype calls without any user interaction.

Install Audio Recorder in Ubuntu:

This amazing software has been made into PPA, available for Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04. Old versions available from Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 13.10.

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one to add the PPA, update package lists, and install the recorder:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:osmoma/audio-recorder

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install audio-recorder

If you don’t want to add the PPA, you can grab the .deb package from Launchpad Page and click open it with Ubuntu Software Center and finally install the program.

For more output audio formats support, install gstreamer plugins (ubuntu 14.04 & higher):

sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3

In Howtos audio recorder

How to Display Network Manager Icon in Ubuntu XFCE4 Panel

Last updated: November 26, 2014

Xfce desktop session in Ubuntu 14.04 /14.10 does not display Network Manager, Messaging Menu, Keyboard Input, and Power icons on the panel out-of-the-box.

Thanks to Mark Trompell, it’s quite easy to add those icons back to Xfce panel by a small plugin called xfce4-indicator-plugin.

1. To install the plugin, open Ubuntu Software Center, search for and install the package xfce4-indicator-plugin.

2. Once you have the plugin installed, right-click on Xfce panel and navigate to “Panel -> Panel Preferences ….

Under Items tab, add new item “Indicator Plugin” and put it right after the “Notification Area” plugin.

While the plugin includes the time and session menu, you can remove the “Clock” and “Action Buttons” from the list.

3. The xfce4-indicator-plugin includes the Global Menu indicator, which displays application menus on panel.

If you don’t like this feature, right-click on the Network Manager icon and select Properties. When it opens, tick the box after “Application Menus (Global Menu)” to hide the applet.

Log out and back in to apply the changes.

In Howtos, Xfce panel, xfce4

Official Virtualbox Repository Added Ubuntu 14.10 Support

Last updated: November 25, 2014

Oracle finally made the Virtualbox binary packages for Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic available in its official Linux repository. Which means running regular system updates via Software Updater will keep your Virtualbox release always up-to-date.

While Ubuntu 14.10 repositories provide the Virtualbox 4.3.18, the latest has reached the version 4.3.20. For the changelog, see the web page.

How to Add Virtualbox Repository in Ubuntu:

Open terminal from the Unity Dash or just press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, paste the command below into terminal and run to get the key:

wget -q -O - http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Type in your user password when it asks. Then run command to add the vbox repository for Ubuntu 14.10:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian utopic non-free contrib" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.org.list'

Now install Vbox 4.3 via your package manager after checking for updates. Or just run commands below one by one:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-4.3

Finally keep your system up-to-date by running regular system updates, which also keep your Virutalbox 4.3 series up-to-date.

In Howtos Ubuntu 14.10, Virtualbox, virtualbox 4.3

How to Install Android Studio in Ubuntu 14.04/14.10/12.04 via PPA

Last updated: February 28, 2016

Quick tutorial shows you how to install Android Studio, a new Android development environment developed by Google and based on IntelliJ IDEA, via PPA in Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and the next Ubuntu 15.04.

Similar to Eclipse with the ADT Plugin, Android Studio provides integrated Android developer tools for development and debugging.

On top of the capabilities you expect from IntelliJ, Android Studio offers:

Gradle-based build support.
Android-specific refactoring and quick fixes.
Lint tools to catch performance, usability, version compatibility and other problems.
ProGuard and app-signing capabilities.
Template-based wizards to create common Android designs and components.
A rich layout editor that allows you to drag-and-drop UI components, preview layouts on multiple screen configurations, and much more.
Built-in support for Google Cloud Platform, making it easy to integrate Google Cloud Messaging and App Engine as server-side components.

Install Android Studio via PPA in Ubuntu:

Installing Android Studio in Ubuntu becomes easy. A Ubuntu PPA contains simple script that automatically downloads and installs the latest release from Google download server. So far, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 12.04 are supported.

1. Android Studio depends on Java, and Oracle Java 7 or 8 is recommended. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:webupd8team/java

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer oracle-java7-set-default

2. To add the Android Studio PPA, run the command:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:maarten-fonville/android-studio

Then update package lists and install the script:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install android-studio

Depends on your internet connection, it takes a few minutes downloading the source package.

Once installed, start the setup wizard from the Unity Dash (may need restart), or just run command /opt/android-studio/bin/studio.sh.

via: github

In Howtos Android Studio, Android Studio PPA

How to Upgrade to Linux Kernel 3.17.4 in Ubuntu 14.10

Last updated: November 23, 2014

The fourth update of the latest stable Linux Kernel 3.17 was released recently. Greg Kroah-Hartman announced this kernel release and urged all users of Kernel 3.17 series to upgrade as soon as possible.

According to the release note, this kernel release brings various important improvements, such as architecture updates (ARM, and x86), and driver updates for wireless, ethernet, i915 and radeon, as well as other fixes. For details, see the official changelog.

Install / Upgrade to Kernel 3.17.4:

The Ubuntu Kernel Team has made the .deb installers of the kernel release, available for download at the link below:

Download Kernel 3.17.4 Debs

Depends on your OS type, 32-bit = i386 or 64-bit = amd64, download & install the .deb packages in below orders:

linux-headers-3.17.4-xxxxxx_all.deb
linux-headers-3.17.4-xxx-generic_i386/amd64.deb
linux-image-3.17.4-xxx-generic_i386/amd64.deb

For Ubuntu Server without graphical user interface, run below commands to download & install the new kernel:

For 32-bit system:

cd /tmp/

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.17.4-vivid/linux-headers-3.17.4-031704-generic_3.17.4-031704.201411211317_i386.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.17.4-vivid/linux-headers-3.17.4-031704_3.17.4-031704.201411211317_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.17.4-vivid/linux-image-3.17.4-031704-generic_3.17.4-031704.201411211317_i386.deb

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.17.4-*.deb linux-image-3.17.4-*.deb

For 64-bit system:

cd /tmp/

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.17.4-vivid/linux-headers-3.17.4-031704-generic_3.17.4-031704.201411211317_amd64.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.17.4-vivid/linux-headers-3.17.4-031704_3.17.4-031704.201411211317_all.deb

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.17.4-vivid/linux-image-3.17.4-031704-generic_3.17.4-031704.201411211317_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-3.17.4-*.deb linux-image-3.17.4-*.deb

When done, restart your machine. Note that for proprietary graphics drivers, you may re-build (or re-install) the driver to make it work with the new kernel.

If for some reason this kernel release doesn’t work properly for you, reboot into previous kernel (Grub -> Advanced -> select previous kernel) and run the command below to remove Linux Kernel 3.17.4:

sudo apt-get remove linux-headers-3.17.4-* linux-image-3.17.4-* && sudo update-grub

In Howtos Linux Kernel, Linux Kernel 3.17 series

Install Vuze BitTorrent Client 5.5.0 in Ubuntu 14.10 / Ubuntu 14.04

Last updated: April 4, 2019

Vuze BitTorrent Client, previously Azureus, has recently reached 5.5.0 release with new features and enhancements. Here’s how to install or upgrade it in Ubuntu.

Vuze is written in Java, and uses the Azureus Engine. In addition to downloading data linked to .torrent files, Azureus allows users to view, publish and share original DVD and HD quality video content. Content is presented through channels and categories containing TV shows, music videos, movies, video games, series and others. Additionally, if users prefer to publish their original content, they may earn money from it.

What’s New in Vuze 5.5.0:

According to the release note, the new release brings:

A new visual guide
Additional tips and suggestions are provided for using Vuze.
Allow blocking of local DNS resolution attempts for trackers hosts when using a SOCKS proxy.
Shortcut implemented for download location using CTRL+ to save torrents
Additions of various console-UI commands to improve usability
Added Speed Limit Scheduler features.
Configuration pages now have shortcuts to access specific settings quickly

For more, see the Vuze blog.

Install Vuze 5.5.0 in Ubuntu:

For non-install version, download the official package from vuze.com, extract and finally run the executable from the result folder.

Or you can install Vuze from the Getdeb repository, just download below packages from the link page:

“azureus_5.5.0.0-1~getdeb1_all.deb”
“vuze_5.5.0.0-1~getdeb1_all.deb”

~~Vuze packages in Getdeb repository~~

Once downloaded, open the package via Ubuntu Software Center and click the install button one by one.

In Howtos bittorrent client, vuze

Light Table 0.7.1 Released, How to Install it in Ubuntu 14.10

Last updated: November 20, 2014

The Light Table IDE got a fairly major update a few hours ago by releasing the Light Table 0.7.0. And the 0.7.1 release was out just one hour later with few bug fixes.

Light Table 0.7.0 is a big clean up release with lots of little fixes, but there are a number of big changes that warranted it being a more significant version increase:

moved to the latest node-webkit and are now able to track nw’s progress directly since the menu changes made it upstream.
All plugin metadata is now hosted on github, this means that asking to remove/rename/change urls etc for plugins is just a matter of sending a PR.
Instead of having a disconnect between settings and plugins (which are really the same), every user now has a user plugin. This gives you a place to quickly create commands, tabs, behaviors, or whathaveyou without needing to jump through a bunch of hoops. This also means that your complete configuration with plugins and all can be zipped up and sent to someone.
Along with the user plugin, we’ve also changed the syntax of behavior and keymap files to make them much easier to both read and share. No more hunting for the right place to paste some behavior you’ve copied from someone else.

via: Light Table blog.

How to Install Light Table in Ubuntu:

The official website provides the binary packages for Linux. Here is how to install it in Ubuntu Unity. Tested in Ubuntu 14.10, should also work in Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 12.04.

1. Download the Light Table package from the link below:

Light Table Web Page

Depends on your OS type, select download Linux 32-bit or 64-bit package.

2. Once the downloading process finished. Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal, and then run the command below to open the Downloads folder as root (Administrator), so that you have the privilege to extract the package to /opt/ for global use.

gksudo nautilus ~/Downloads

You need to install gksu from Ubuntu Software Center if you don’t have it installed.

When the folder opens, right-click on the package and select “Open With Archive Manager”.

3. Once the package opens, click the Extract button and select extract to Computer -> /opt/.

When done, close the Archive Manager and the Downloads folder.

Now you should be able to launch Light Table via command below:

/opt/LightTable/LightTable

4. If everything’s OK, let’s create an app shortcut so that you can launch it from the Unity Dash or Menu.

Run command below in terminal to create .desktop file and open it with Gedit text editor:

gksudo gedit /usr/share/applications/light-table.desktop

When the file opens, paste below into it and click the save button.

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Light Table
GenericName=Text Editor
Exec=/opt/LightTable/LightTable
Terminal=false
Icon=/opt/LightTable/core/img/lticon.png
Type=Application
Categories=GTK;Utility;TextEditor;Application;IDE;Development;

Finally start Light Table IDE from the Unity Dash or Menu and enjoy!

In Howtos Light Table

How to Install Budgie Desktop in Ubuntu 14.10 / 14.04

Last updated: November 17, 2014

The Evolve OS Budgie Desktop session released version 0.8 recently. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 14.10 and Ubuntu 14.04.

Budgie is the flagship desktop of the Evolve OS Linux Distribution. It’s designed with the modern user in mind, it focuses on simplicity and elegance. A huge advantage for the Budgie desktop is that it is not a fork of another project, but rather one written from scratch with integration in mind.

Budgie desktop is nearly one year old and now it works very well in Ubuntu. See the screenshots in Ubuntu 14.10:

How to install Budgie Desktop:

The developer has created an official PPA repository that contains Budgie binaries, available for Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 14.10.

To add the PPA and install the session, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:evolve-os/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install budgie-desktop

Or you can grab the .deb installer directly from the link below if you don’t want to add the PPA.

Budgie Desktop packages in Launchpad Page

Depends on your Ubuntu release edition and OS type, download & install the .deb package with:

trusty (or utopic) in name for Ubuntu 14.04 (or Ubuntu 14.10).
amd64 (or i386) in name for 64-bit (or 32-bit) system.

Once installed, log out and select login with Budgie session.

In Howtos budgie desktop