We’ve looked at ways to make GNOME Shell look like Unity before, but a new theme from the b00merang project provides what is perhaps the closest clone yet. It’s a Unity 7 GNOME Shell theme that faithfully recreates the look of the Ubuntu desktop shell in GNOME, BFB-included!
from https://is.gd/7G4NHk
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For new Linux users, it can be a bit daunting to back up your Linux installation. Many articles go over setting up complicated command-line based systems, persuade users to purchase expensive cloud storage, or outright tell users to just get more hard drive space. There is an easier way: Gnome Disk Utility.
from https://is.gd/hQtvdR
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Every GNOME Shell user will visit the official GNOME Shell Extensions website at least once. And if those users do so this weekend they’ll notice a small difference as the GNOME Shell Extensions website is sporting a minor redesign.
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Sometimes simple things become hard problems. This happened to me when I discovered that my Fedora 18 OS was obsolete (very old indeed) and I tried to upgrade it to the Fedora 20 version.
Fedora 18 doesn’t support the automatic OS upgrade so I had to spend some hours to find information on Internet and create the right DIY solution for my case. At the end of my little (sic!) research I discovered that I was able not only able to upgrade the PC to Fedora 20 but I also found a good “trick” to upgrade to the latest Fedora 21 following in just a couple of steps with the help of fedup and some other escamotages.
This is how I succeed…
First, you have to open a Terminal and type:
su
init 3
but you will immediately leave the Fedora GUI and so it’s better if you write the below commands on an -old style, paper notepad- to be sure to have all the right information in you hands and correctly manage the upgrade from Fedora 18 to Fedora 20
sudo su -
yum update
yum install fedup
fedup-cli --network 20 --nogpgcheck
It’s better to add –nogpgcheck because often you are not able to complete your upgrade for the “old”, “bad saved” gpg key in your system.
reboot
Now, at the boot-up menu (GRUB 2 menu) you have to choose “System Upgrade (Fedup)”.
Then just to be sure you really have an up to date OS, in Terminal, type:
Yum update
If you have problems with one or more of your “old” repositories don’t forget to deconfigure them. In my case I had to launch this command line in Terminal due to skip an old repository and proceed with the upgrade:
yum-config-manager --save --setopt=home_moritzmolch_gencfsm.skip_if_unavailable=true
At this point, to upgrade from Fedora 20 to Fedora 21 you have to open (again) the Terminal and type:
su
fedup --network 21 --product=workstation --nogpgcheck
OR
fedup --network 21 --product=server --nogpgcheck
(if your Fedora version is the server one)
OR
fedup --network 21 --product=cloud --nogpgcheck
(for the Fedora cloud edition for generic virtual machines or Container)
Take it easy and go to bed for a long snap because, in my case, the download took some hours as for 2,577 files to be upgraded…
At the end, as before, you have to Reboot and select “System Upgrade (Fedup)” at the boot-up menu (GRUB 2 menu) and all the necessary files will be installed. Again, take a good book to read while you wait the installation.
Good luck and remind you MUST backup all your data before you start any upgrade because unforeseen risks are always around the corner!
References:
https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/37247/upgrade-fedora-18-to-fedora-20-via-yum-or-fedup/
http://tecadmin.net/steps-to-upgrade-fedora-19-to-20-using-fedup-tool/
http://www.unixmen.com/upgrade-fedora-20-fedora-21-using-fedup/
https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/question/39558/how-to-remove-a-repository-from-my-system
When I tried to install Ubuntu 12.04 on an old ThinkPad X40 I was surprised to discover this warning on my screen:
This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU: pae. Unable to boot - please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU.
In few words I wasn’t able to install Ubuntu 12.04 because the kernel on Ubuntu 12.04 was not supporting my CPU and I was really upset because I have always promoted Linux distributions as the most versatile and appropriate OS to keep using “old” hardware.
Sincerely, as described in an older post, I previously decided to install MATE desktop environment because the graphic cards on many laptops didn’t support Unity and Gnome 3 but this was the first time I had to renounce the installation of Ubuntu. I didn’t want to surrender to this difficulty (that appeared to me as a bug)!
First of all, I discovered that pae is “a feature to allow 32-bit x86 processors to access a physical address space (including random access memory and memory mapped devices) larger than 4 gigabytes“. After I clarified this point, I was not sure that my processor was totally inadequate to support Ubuntu 12.04.
After some web surfing I discovery that there are two easy solutions to avoid this problem.
1 – As first solution you can install Lubuntu (my choice) or Xubuntu on your computer then you can install the ubuntu-desktop using the Package Manager.
2 – If you prefer not to use the Package Manager you can install Ubuntu 11.04 or 11.10 and then upgrade Ubuntu to 12.04.
More in general, it is also possible to assume that if you have a non PAE CPU, your hardware could not be able to support the Unity desktop. For this reason you can keep your Lubuntu – Xubuntu (based on the light but effective LXDE desktop) or switch your desktop environment to Gnome (the Classic, of course) installing the gnome package instead of ubuntu-desktop.
In any case, if you want to know if your CPU supports pae you have to open a Terminal and type:
grep --color=always -i PAE /proc/cpuinfo
If something like “flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8…” outputs on your Terminal, you have a pae CPU otherwise your CPU doesn’t support pae. 
My first Linux OS was a Knoppix but I had so many problems with the hardware drivers, the LAN configuration and the monitor settings that I was really discouraged. After many tests I decided that Ubuntu was the right OS for my notebooks and I continued to use it without any particularly matters till Unity.
Unity is nice to see, intuitive but if you use your OS in a stressful way (I mean doing three or four different tasks all together: reading emails, talking with Skype and writing on LibreOffice), you spend too much time looking for the icon you need to launch the right program. The vertical monitor space has not enough room to visually show all the icons related to programs I use everyday. Surely this is my personal matter but I actually prefer the “old” graphic interface. For this reason I decided to install Gnome 3 but my vetust IBM Thinkpad crashed a couple of time in a week.
To my surprise also the Gnome Classic option encountered some crashes due to the amount and diversity of the software I installed on my laptop during the last years.
As usual, after some web searches I found a solution: MATE. This particular desktop environment is a fork of Gnome 2 and it really looks very intuitive and easy to use. If some software conflicts with the MATE environment, a pop-up message will appear on your sceeen and, if you have the patience to read the Details contained in it, you will able to solve your problems. In my particular case (don’t ask me why) it helped me to focus my attention on Conduit which caused the crashes on Gnome.
To easily install MATE, on almost every Linux distribution, you can read its wiki dedicated page or directly follow the below instruction if you use Ubuntu 12.04.
– open Terminal and type these command lines:
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://repo.mate-desktop.org/ubuntu oneiric main"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-getinstall mate-archive-keyring
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mate-core
sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment
When the Terminal finishes all the upgrade stuff, reboot your Ubuntu 12.04 and select MATE on the login screen (click on the upper right “gear” and choose MATE).
That’s all! Have a good week! 
Finding a versatile Gmail notifier for my laptop seemed to be not so difficult and, after a first quick search, I selected a bunch of software I believed interesting. But when I tested them I was not satisfied by they behaviour especially because they didn’t have many of the features I wanted.
First of all I started installing the Gmail software I found in the Screenlets repositories on my Ubuntu but it was not able to update itself. Probably the firewall denied to the screenlet to communicate externally. I didn’t want to spend much time (sic) on the research of a Gmail notifier so I decided do uninstall it.
My second option was Popper and reading the program description I believed tha t was really the right one but.. after the configuration I was not impressed by the final flexibility and interaction this software offers. Just to know, for a quick configuration you need Popper configurator that is in the
The next step was represented by KCheckGmail that is for KDE and runs properly also on Gnome but, in this case, the program is not updated with the last Gmail configuration parameters and so it is nice but useless..
Then I tried with Gmail Notify. The configuration is quick and easy but it offers poor results. I mean that you have just the subject of new emails and no possibility to visualize them with a simple mouse click if you haven’t previously done the login of your Gmail account using the browser.
Finally I installed cGmail through the Ubuntu Software Center and I found what I was looking for: a simple program which let me know about new emails and let me open them with a click. The graphic interface is basic but after a couple of hours wasted on searching an effective solution I was satisfied!
Last but not least, if you don’t want to install a Gmail notifier directly on your Ubuntu, consider to install the add-on Gmail Watcher on Firefox.
Please, if you have better solution and you want to share them with us, don’t hesitate to comment this post. Thank you!
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