Here is how you can do it…

Open a terminal (yes, typing instructions, no nice script…for now)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.10

sudo apt-get update

Now if you have the XFCE4.10-pre installed, type…

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If you do not have it installed and want to install it (as how your still reading this, i assume so…)

sudo apt-get install xfce4

- If you decide to remove Xfce 4.10, type:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

sudo ppa-purge ppa:xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.10

See it is all so very simple!

So this is only the Base Install of the new XFCE system, that is, no extras or goodies compiled from the new source.  But that’s ok, as how the old 4.8.x goodies and such still work with the 4.10 release.

So first thing that you do is simply right-Click, Save Link as this download right here…

Once you have that, just un-archive it to your home folder.  As you can see, it is one file.

Open a terminal, and type (or copy/paste) this and press enter…

sudo sh install-xfce4.10-pre.sh

This will start-up an apt-add session, well, two really, one for the XFCE and one for XFCE’s new skin, Bluebird.

After it installs XFCE and Bluebird, you can just log out, choose the session to start by the gear menu, and log back in.  Presto!  XFCE 4.10 (pre).

Open a terminal, and type in this, or copy-paste.

cp -r ~/.config/plank/theme ~/.config/plank/theme_backup

ln -sf /usr/share/plank/themes/Pantheon/* ~/.config/plank/theme

This *should* set the plank theme to the Pantheon default skin.  Sorry for the lack of information on this

So the first thing that you need to do is to go download an ISO of 12.04 from Ubuntu.  It is possible to do an apt-get dist-upgrade, however, I had better results when i did  a fresh install, so YMMV.  Once you get the disk image for your processor type (if unsure, get the x86/i386 version), and you can either burn it to a disk (easy way to do so) or use any number of various tools to “burn” the ISO to a flash drive, IF your computer can boot from a flash drive.  Booting from a disc will take a bit longer and the install routine will be a bit longer also from disc, but it is the best and standard way to do this.

As how this setup process involves installing Ubuntu 12.04, I wont waste your time and walk you through that.  Odds are if your reading this, then your already using Linux, and you have a good idea of how to do this.

Rather than having you enter in a slew of apt-get commands in to a terminal, I have included in this post an attached file that is a set of scripts that does the hard work for you.  I am a nice guy.

(right-click: Save Link As) elementaryOs install scripts 0.2 (91)

So, download the file, and unzip the file to a new folder named Luna in your home folder.  Your going to want to open a new terminal for issuing the commands.

From the terminal type…

cd Luna && ls

If the directory changes and you successfully see filename in green, then your good to go. If no green, then you need to make the files as executables, to do so, from the same terminal, type…

chmod +x *.sh

This marks the files as mini-apps.  do another ls from the terminal to make sure that the file names are green, and that your good to go.  The first script that you’re going to want to run is install-luna.sh,  so from a terminal..

sudo sh install-luna.sh

This adds the repos needed, updates the system, and fetches the software.  From there, your going to want a way to change the GTK3 theme, as how Luna does not currently have a way to do so, so we will from the terminal type…

sudo sh install-ubuntutweak.sh

This has in it a built-in GTK3 theme changer, along with a variety of useful other tools.  You may find yourself using this tool often as how it is a great addition to any Ubuntu system.

Now I personally despise the AppMenu from Unity that seems to “carry over” to other DE’s, so from terminal, type in..

sudo sh remove-appmenu.sh

This will remove the Global App Menu, and one last, optional script.  I don’t want Unity to be a selectable choice from my login gear menu, so lets remove Unity, ok? This only removed Unity, but not the apps, as how you may want to keep them.  From the terminal, type…

sudo sh remove-unity.sh

Wow, no more horrible Unity DE.    Now one last tweak, I did not include this in the initial zip as how some like the overlay scroll bars, and some don’t.  Here is how you can disable them.  from terminal, copy/paste this, and let it do its thing (may have to hit enter key)

sudo su

echo “export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0″ > /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80overlayscrollbars

exit

REMEMBER TO EXIT.  Your doing an action as the super-user, and as such, you can royally mess up your machine if you’re not careful.  In fact, just close out the terminal because your done now!

Log out of your desktop, and from the gear menu, you should see that unity is missing (Yay!) and that Pantheon is there now.. That’s the elementaryOS DE.  While you CAN log-in, i would suggest rebooting, just to make sure.

I highly recommend starting Ubuntu Tweak and “playing around” in it, it has sections that can let you change the GTK3 theme to the elementaryOS theme, but also change the layout of the title bar widgets, minimize, maximize and close.  When in doubt, open up Ubuntu Tweak and look around.

And now, some screen caps from when I changed Ubuntu 12.04 to elementaryOS.

But then Deepin Linux made a great Screencap tool.

But the Chinese Linux Distro “Deepin” has made a greatly enhanced screencap tool named “Deepin-scrot”.  It has several options, among them…

• delayed screenshots
• window recognition (it didn’t work too great in my test under Ubuntu 12.04 though)
• take screenshot of a selected area
• draw rectangle, elipse, arrow, line or text onto the screen before taking the actual screenshot
• save screenshot to file or clipboard

You can launch it from a terminal with the command “deepin-scrot” or Instead of “deepin-scrot”, which starts the Deepin Scrot area selection, you can launch it with some parameters that let you directly take a fullscreen shot (“deepin-scrot -f”), capture the currently focused window (“deepin-scrot -w”) or start it with a delay (“deepin-scrot -d NUM”).

You can download a .deb for Ubuntu biased systems

http://packages.linuxdeepin.com/deepin/pool/main/d/deepin-scrot/deepin-scrot_2.0-0deepin_all.deb

When your going through the Install Windows 8 setup process, at one time, it asks you if you want to associate your login account with a Hotmail or a live.com account.  No big surprise there, Microsoft has been pushing that idea for a long, long, long time, let me tell you, all the ways back to Windows 98 SE.

Anyway, during setup you can associate a Microsoft online service with your login, and I am almost sure that this is what “ties” this feature together.  You see, I had an old Hotmail account, some 15 years old that i associated.  I just had to notify Setup and then login to the account.  Now, I did, however, also notice that you can sign up for a new account, at what time you get the standard EULA, but, also, you have to verify a CAPTCHA.

A CAPTCHA for those of you that don’t know id normally two words that have been “automated” by the server, randomly chosen, and looks warped and swirled, as if a three-year old use Photoshop in the text.  And it is supposed to look like that, as to keep malicious programs from harvesting links, etc…

So… My first, of Two Questions is..  Why use a CAPTCHA during a OS INSTALL to link an account at all?   I have no idea why Microsoft thinks that a malicious app may be INSTALLING WINDOWS to begin with?!?!?!   REALLY?  Ok, whatever Microsoft…

Second of all, Windows 8 is clearly aimed for large, readable typefaces, even for those with worst of prescription glasses and those getting older.. and they use a CAPTCHA?  I have decent eyesight and at times I have no idea what a CAPTCHA is saying, also, the words chosen are not always words that are used by your language.   It has been several times I have had to verify CAPTCHAs that has had non-english letters that I have NO IDEA how in the world to type because they simply are not on my keyboard…

Microsoft, i beg you, when some one signs up for an email account during Windows 8 install, remove the need for a CAPTCHA.

Now, with that having been said, the neat stuff…

When I am logged in to my account on the desktop, in Windows 8, and I log in to my Laptop, with my account (i have the same name on both devices), Explorer can “see” both devices, and that I am logged in, and i can copy and paste items from my Pc to my laptop and Vice-Versa.   No configuring required, it all just works!   This was such an amazing thing for me because I have never, under ANY OS, that has  had that feature operate so smoothly.

Also, a neat thing, and this may be a bug,  is that Metro only extends to the end of the first monitor if you have a dual, or more, monitor setup.  I often have a video playing on my secondary monitor, a 38 inch (i think) LED TV, and I can use a MEtro app on my primary monitor, and have my desktop on the secondary monitor.   However, if you’re in a Metro app, and you click on the desktop on the secondary monitor, MEtro goes away on the primary monitor and you get the Desktop.

So if you’re using Windows 8 on a Dual screen desktop just slide the mouse over to Desktop #2 and click, Metro goes away and you’re at a “Classic” desktop.

Now if you’re in a Single-screen computer, and you want to “Boot to Desktop” you can do this….

Open Explorer, and in the address bar, type in …

%appdata%   and press enter.  You will be in a folder named “Roaming”.  In the roaming folder, Double-Click to enter these folders…

Microsoft

Windows

Start Menu

Programs

Startup

Now in the Startup Folder, right-click and empty spot , and choose New > Shortcut.  In the text box that is used the words “Type the location of the item:” copy from here and past this in to the text box…

C:\Windows\explorer.exe shell:::{3080F90D-D7AD-11D9-BD98-0000947B0257}

Then click next.  the window asks for a name for the new shortcut, I named mine “Boot to Desktop”

Well that’s all for now, more as I discover more new features!

Please keep in mind that I have been using Windows 8 ever since Developer Preview came out, and let me be honest with you, I hated it with a fiery passion that could almost eclipse the Sun itself.  So many things felt wrong, badly done, or just not right.   Now a lot of reviewers generally only concentrate on the “Metro” aspect of Windows 8, but I will be paying attention to both Metro and the “Classic” desktop.

But first, I would like to talk about the boot times.  Microsoft has been saying that it is possible to do boot to the login screen in about 10 seconds, more or less, depending upon your hardware.  Well, let me say this.  They are right.  However, as how I have my system set up as a Dual-Boot system, so that I can choose to boot between Windows 8 or Windows 7, after a few seconds have passed i get this blue screen where i can choose what OS to boot in to, either 8 or 7, WITH MY MOUSE.

This is a bit of a big deal because as a dedicated Linux user, they have never done that, it has always been some form of  a text menu in Linux.  So Kudos to Microsoft, they made it easy.   After clicking the Windows 8 button/Icon, about three seconds later I am at the lock screen.  Hit  a key on my keyboard, Lock Screen slides up, I type in my password, and I am at the Metro Start Screen.

And now We Discuss Metro.

As how I remember Metro in the Developer Preview, it has evolved a bit, and for the better.  In the Develop Preview, you HAD to use the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen to scroll the items, but it is no longer so, simply using the mouse wheel scrolls the screen’s items.  Very nice.  You can also right-click a Metro item and a small menu shows up at the bottom, allowing for you to pin the item to the taskbar, Run as Admin, and a few other items.  Again, nice.  Shows that Microsoft has been listening.

Some of the Metro apps are still just shy of being “still working concept apps”, that is, there is a striped “Danger! Men Working” sign at the top of the Mail reader, the Picture, the Videos and such Metro apps.   Mail worked fine with my Hotmail account, as i knew it would.  However, when i copied pictures form my phone, by explorer, on the desktop to My Pictures folder…  The Metro Pictures app never found them.   Also, when i tried to run Videos app, even after installing the CCCP Codec Pack, Haali Media Splitter and other such needed files for proper video playback, the Metro Video app STILL would crash and die every time i used it.   See, that’s a pity because if these was one single Metro app I was honestly looking forward to, it was Video.

An interesting feature of the Metro Start Screen is the Corners.  If you have a Metro app running, if you place your mouse in the top-left hand corner, you can see a list of all running Metro apps.  And if you right-click the corner, you get a popup menu, with three items in the menu, most important is “Close this app”.  See, this is a great case of Microsoft listening to people again, this did not exist in Windows 8 Developer Preview.

If you move the mouse to the bottom-left hand corner you get the new overly large metro styled “Button” for lack of  a better term that allows you to go to the Metro Start Screen, or, if you’re in the Metro Start Screen, to go back to the Desktop.

Moving your mouse to the right hand top, or bottom, corner of the screen pops up the horribly named “Charms” bar…. Really?  Chars?  That is the best name you could get for it?  Letting a 6-year-old girl name Windows components now, are we?  Why not “Config” or  ”Options” or even “Hover Bar”?  Oh well.  This bar has icons in it that allow for searching, another Start button (In the middle!), Share, Devices and Settings.   They all work well and do the job they are supposed to do.   Search is actually very good, i was impressed with its speed increase.

Metro also has this one super-cool new app, or so Microsoft would have you think.  The Store app.  It is a very important part of the system, or so it must be as how it is the first app on the Metro menu.  I did use it, i found it nice, and a bit novel, it seems to act a bit like the Android Marketplace, so if your familiar with that, then you have some idea as of whats it is like.   Again, the horizontal scrolling took a bit of getting used to, and the absolute lack of apps was, well, absolutely amazing, however, as how the OS is not officially finished, not officially released, all I can say is “wait for it”.

And now own to the Desktop…

Aah, the Desktop, that glorious, 17-year-old concept that was first introduced in 1995 with Windows 95.  If you have ever used Windows 7, then you will see that nothing has changed.  Except there is no Start Orb/Button/Jewel/Whatever fancy name you wish to call it.  You can still pin apps to the taskbar, but normally you have to go to the Metro screen to right-click an Icon/Tile and pin it to the bar.   The Taskbar has a few new features, if you have a dual-display system set up, like how I do, you get an “extended”  taskbar that covers both screens.   Right-clicking the Taskbar gives you the pop-up menu,  but Taskbar Properties is what I want to talk about here.

The Properties has three tabs, Taskbar, Jump Lists and Toolbars.

The Taskbar tab has the normal “lock taskbar” and “auto-hide taskbar” and even still the “small taskbar buttons”, but from here you can choose what position the taskbar is at on the screen, be it top, bottom, left or  right.  no more having to drag the taskbar.  Also, you can change how the buttons work from combining apps in to one icons of the same app to combine when full or to just simply never combine!  You can customize the Notification Area also,  and you can enable Aero Peek still.

The new feature is for Multiple Displays (as how I have that, i find it cool) you can choose to have a taskbar on all of the displays, and you can choose to show the icons on All taskbars, on the main taskbar and what screen the windows is open, or just on the screen where the window is open at.  Very neat stuff.   You can also do the combine buttons options on the multiple displays.

Jump lists and Toolbars tabs is nothing new form Windows 7, so I wont get in to them.

Explorer’s Ribbon UI (Same one as is in Office) gets shrunk by default, plus, the common view files as display type buttons gets moved to the bottom right-hand side of the explorer frame.  Pretty much you have two options, big icons or a detailed list view.

However the “File” menu in Explorer is of note worthiness, you can now click File > Open New Window or Open new Window in Process.  Now this seems as if it may litter the screen, but, if you use a 3rd party app, such as WindowsTabs, the new windows get grouped, and that’s a great thing.  But WindowsTabs is NOT a Windows 8 feature, so I wont go in to it.  However, you can “pin” common folders from your libraries in the Frequent Places List, this is handy, also, if you’re a command line guy, like me, you can also, if your NOT in a library, choose to Open Command Prompt or Open Power Shell to the directory that your currently in.

The Desktop Aero effects is, by default, set to auto-inherit whatever color is most common from your desktop wallpaper i believe, that’s good news for the customizers.

Another thing that Windows 8 boasts about is improved Internet Connecting speeds.  And let me say, it is improved.  a few seconds at most passes and your online.  Also, new for connecting is that you can set a connection as  a Metered Connection, as how most 3G/4G wi-fi devices limit an amount per month, going over it incurs charges (as how I know of very well), also, you can have the Internet Connection panel show the estimated data usage for a connection at whatever time.   This is good for keeping up with the Metered Data usage, or, if you want to snoop, you can reset your data usage  before logging off, log off, then let the next Family PC User connect, and find out after they log off how much bandwidth they used.  Great for finding out how much bandwidth is getting killed with MMORPG or such.

All in all, I found Windows 8 Consumer Preview much nicer and better than Windows 8 Developer Preview, IMHO Microsoft should have waited for CP to be DP and just released both at the same time.

Now some will fuss and rant and curse and howl over Metro, but that’s ok, You Dont Have To Use It!  As soon as you log in, click Desktop.  People have found ways, or they are writing specialized apps that bring BACK the Start Menu/Panel to Windows 8.  Take me, I am making my own version of it, faster than the normal Start Menu in 7, and I will release it after it is ready.  And to be sure someone will make an app to auto-log you in to desktop mode only you have logged in.

I honestly find myself going “oh, i need to reboot .. but I don’t like Windows 7 any more, I only want to be with Windows 8!”, strange, as how I swore I would never like it, and yet I do.

SoloDev

So i returned it to the shop… but before i did this i restored everything on it and managed to find a way to remove the ClockWorkMod Recovery!

1. Restore the original rom of the phone from a backup or a stock rom here  using the Rom manager or booting diectly in ClockWorkRecovery (bootloader must be unlocked!)

2. After restoring the rom/backup you should do a factory reset.

3. Turn the phone off and start in bootloader( Power + Volume UP)

4.Download this recovery file

5. open a command prompt and go into the tools folder of the Android SDK and Type:

fastboot flash recovery recovery.img

6. Now you can lock the bootloader back using this command:

fastboot oem lock

Now you should be all safe to go back to return the phone and no one will notice

CPU: 1 GHz Scorpion processor (Downclocked to 768 MHZ) with Adreno 200 GPU

Memory: 512 MB RAM, 512MB ROM Expansion via SC card up to 32 GB

Screen: 480 x 800 pixels, 3.5 inches TFT capacitive touchscreen, 256K colors

Camera: 5 MP, 2560х1920 pixels, auto-focus

Now coming with Android 2.2 (Froyo)

I was a bit disoriented at first since i came from iOS (iPhone 3Gs) but after a couple of minutes i was confortable with the device. The screen is a bit smaller than the iphone but it still have nice colors and is really responsive.

Now that I started school last September I didn’t have much time to write anything on my blog… But I think we all agree that school is really important…. especially in IT!

If you don’t have a certification and/or a diploma you don’t have much credibility… That’s what I learned in the past years… The more I go trough my course the more I discover its benefits. Which it’s obvious anyway… It is such a relief for me to go to school as before I was working somewhere that i had too much responsibility for what I was able to actually do… Learning under pressure can be good when you have a solid background in the domain. But when you don’t really know what you are doing well that’s another story! Plus doing this alone is really a nightmare!

Even with my experiences and knowledge I already owned when I started that Network IT course, it was basic stuff that I used to to before, I still learned things in the first 3 months of this course even if it was stuff I already did in the past. At least one time a week I was saying: Damn why I didn’t do that that way? But yeah you can say that I could have learned this by myself.. but when?

Anyway this course keep me busy and I LOVE IT!