Tutorial of the Week

[K.Mandla]

Ubuntuforums.org hosts literally thousands of howtos and tutorials, covering everything from randomizing your wallpaper to patching and rebuilding the kernel from source. It is an immense repository of Linux know-how for beginners and experts alike.

Some of the tutorials are very good -- and some aren't that great. But for every tutorial that was accepted into this section, two or three were rejected.

The forum staff would like to highlight some of the best ones on a weekly basis. The hope is that by drawing attention to well-written, well-supported tutorials, the overall quality of this section will improve. It also gives you the opportunity to learn about new software, new tricks or just new ideas.

If you'd like to see the criteria for threads that appear in this section, a description is here.

The tutorials listed here are chosen on the basis of presentation and support -- not technical accuracy. It's impossible for us to screen each tutorial to see if they work as described; we just don't have the time, equipment or manpower to do that. So it's possible that there are technical points that need clarification. In those cases, you should tack a reply on to the tutorial, and seek help directly from the author, not the staff.

This post is closed to comments so you can subscribe to it (through your user control panel), and receive a weekly update of the best written tutorials in this section. If you have a tutorial you feel is worthy, you're free to contact a staff member and suggest it, or you could mention it in the 'Cafe, in the discussion thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=655209

Enjoy!
Forum staff

[K.Mandla]

The first Tutorial of the Week -- for the week of December 31, 2007 (the first week of 2008) -- is "[Howto] Compile & Install Osmo Organizer" by Onyros:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=616116

Osmo is an all-in-one calendar, task and contact manager. Learn more about it, and how to compile and install it, in the tutorial. Enjoy!

[K.Mandla]

The tutorial of the week for Jan. 7, 2008 is PmDematagoda's explanation of the Magic SysRq keys -- and how to use them to recover your system, if it becomes unresponsive.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=617349

Learn about the key sequences, and how to safely use them, in the tutorial. Cheers!

[K.Mandla]

The tutorial of the week for January 14, 2008, is "HOWTO: RT2500, etc. wireless cards [Gutsy Gibbon]", by wieman01.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=563547

While that thread is specific to a particular range of hardware, it stands out as a tutorial that's well written, concise, clearly documented and constantly maintained.

If you have a Ralink-based wireless adapter, you'll want to look it over; if you don't, it's still worth reading as an excellent example of a how-to. Cheers!

[K.Mandla]

For the week of January 21, 2008, the staff pick is "btnx: Send keyboard and mouse combination events with mouse buttons", by daou.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=455656

If you have a mouse with multiple buttons, or if you'd like to hard-wire your mouse to do certain things on special clicks, this could be of interest to you. daou's tutorial is clean, well-organized and constantly maintained too.

Enjoy!

[K.Mandla]

A pair of advanced tutorials are spotlighted for the week of January 28, 2008: andrew.46's "HOWTO: Setup slrn, the CLI newsreader" and "[Howto] Setup and use Leafnode-2 with the newsreader slrn".

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=676837
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=475246

As you can see by reading over those threads, they're quite complicated. However, they are also an excellent illustration of how to break down complicated tasks into step-by-step instructions for others to follow.

And should you run into problems, both threads are actively tended by the author.

Cheers!

[K.Mandla]

Hello again! This week's selection is a nifty trick for anyone who may want to access an FTP site from within a directory structure -- "[HOWTO] mount an FTP host as a filesystem using CurlFtpFS", by geco.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=441126

The guide includes help for versions all the way back to Edgy, so anyone still using an earlier version of Ubuntu can give this a spin too. And recent replies suggest the instructions work on version 8.04 as well. If it sounds like something you might be interested in, geco's instructions are clear and well presented, and easy to follow.

See you in a week!

[K.Mandla]

This week's star is another oldie-but-goodie -- tseliot's "HOWTO: Kernel Compilation for Newbies."

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=56835

This is one of the longest-running kernel compilation threads in the forum, and it comes from a highly repuatable and knowledgable member. It's a great place to start learning about the core element of your Ubuntu system, and how to modify it to your liking.

Thanks to alloftheabove for nominating it.

Cheers!

[K.Mandla]

This week's selection is a massive treatise on what seems like the simplest of topics -- the Fluxbox right-click menu. But as RedSquirrel shows in "HOWTO: get a Fluxbox menu (and customization)," there's a lot more to a good Fluxbox menu than just a single click.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=371144

This is a particularly useful howto, with lots of code boxes, screenshots, colored-text subsections and step-by-step instructions. If you've ever wanted to use Fluxbox, or just wanted a better menu, you'll like this tutorial.

See you in a week!

[K.Mandla]

This week's tutorial might not be one you need right away, but it might be one you want to keep in mind for the future: OldPink's "HowTo: Transfer your bootable Ubuntu installation between hard drives."

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=599599

Aside from being exceptionally useful, this is another tutorial that's well-designed and easy to follow. Be sure to thank OldPink if it comes in handy, in the future.

Cheers!