Installing Linux from an ISO image file

If you are fed up of burning DVDs or Live CDs and want to install your favorite Linux OS straight from the image file which you have just downloaded, you can do it. This is one of the great options of installing Linux to your system.
All you need is:
1. A partition of EXT2/EXT3 or FAT32.
2. An ISO installable image of any Linux Distro.
I am going to give a tutorial for Fedora Distro. For others you can refer to the Table which I have provided below.
First step is to create a directory under root directory "/"
mkdir /fedora mkdir -p /fedora/images
Copy the downloaded image file to /fedora directory.
cp /home/user/Fedora-11-i386-DVD.iso /fedora
Now all you have to do is to copy 3 of the files from this image file. You can either extract this image file and copy both the files or you can mount this file and then copy these 3 files to the /fedora directory.
The three files which are needed to copy are "vmlinuz" "initrd.img" and "image/install.img"
I will go for the mount option, just because it wont take any extra space.
mount -o loop /fedora/Fedora-11-i386-DVD.iso /media/iso
Note you have to create a directory called /media/iso before executing the above command.
Now enter into this directory:
cd /media/iso/isolinux
Copy the files:
cp vmlinuz initrd.img /fedora cp images/install.img /fedora/images
That's all for the setup. Now you have to edit the grub which is responsible to boot image files.
vi /boot/grub/menu.lst
or
vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
Append the following into the file:
title Install Fedora 11 kernel /fedora/vmlinuz initrd /fedora/initrd.img
The title is the title which you want to display in the GRUB menu.
The ‘root’ is the hard disk partition that contains the ISO image.
The ‘kernel’ is the Linux kernel, which we copied into /fedora directory.
The ‘initrd’ is the initial RAM disk image,  which gets into the RAM.
Now you are ready to install your new Linux distro directly from the hard disk without the need for a CD/DVD drive. Reboot your system and select the ‘Install Fedora 11’ entry from your GRUB menu.
Follow the onscreen instruction and you are ready with a new distro without any hassle to burn DVDs.

Table 1: Names of kernel and RAM disk images in some popular distros
Distro	Kernel path	RAM disk path
Fedora/RHEL/CentOS	/isolinux/vmlinuz	/isolinux/initrd.img
openSUSE	/boot/i386/loader/linux	/boot/i386/loader/initrd
Mandriva	/i586/isolinux/alt0/vmlinuz	/i586/isolinux/alt0/all.rdz
Ubuntu	/casper/vmlinuz	/casper/initrd.gz
Debian	/install.386/vmlinuz	/isolinux/initrd.img

Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Released

The canonical team has released the much awaited Ubuntu 10.04
Lucid Lynx with Long Term Support (LTS). It has got lots of changes from
previous releases. This release will keep you more updated.
To download your copy, click on any of the following links.
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
http://noncdn.releases.ubuntu.com/10.04/
To order a Free CD via Shipit, click on the link below.
https://shipit.ubuntu.com
Please note: if you have a good Internet connection and a CD/DVD RW,
don't order the CD as someone else might actually need it.
To purchase a CD in and around Bangalore, send a reply to
www.twitter.com/sikku

Installing Conexant full speed modem driver on Fedora 11 and later

I found that some people have problem installing this driver on Fedora 11 (using available guidelines in Internet for Ubuntu), so I decided to try installing it on my system (which has a Conexant HSF modem chipset). I could install and use the driver successfully, but I think its license doesn’t allow me to distribute the final modified RPM package. So, I decided to create a simple shell script to create the package and put it here. (I wonder if we should put such documents inside Fedora wiki or not. Maybe I should communicate with Fedora Documentation people about it or read about contributing there?! Or maybe it is as easy as creating a new Wiki page there…)

Anyway, These are the steps to build a free full speed Conexant modem driver:

1. Download .tar.gz file of the free full speed driver release by dell fromhttp://linux.dell.com/files/ubuntu/hardy/modem-drivers/hsf/ (Download this file for 64 bit Fedora systems(x86_64) and this one for 32 bit(Fedora-i386,i586 or i686) systems)

2. Download the latest modem driver from Linuxant (.tar.gz version)download the latest version from here.

3. Download this script, put it beside those downloaded files and run the script  (If you run it as a regular user – which is recommended – you might need to run rpmdev-setuptree command first).

4. Now, you should be able to find the final RPM in ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64 (or ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/i586).

5. If you have an HDA modem, you must install Linuxant alsa driver fromhttp://www.linuxant.com/alsa-driver/. *Update: If you did not install this package and encountered sound problems after installing the hsf modem driver, you should probably install this package.

6. Now, you can install the generated rpm package. You might need to restart the system before using your modem. You can check your modem by running minicom to see if it can communicate with your modem.

Update: This script works fine on Fedora 11 and later. It has been successfully tested on Fedora 12 and Fedora 13. I’ll try to make sure that it works on future version of Fedora too.

Install Screenlets

Screenlets are small applications to represent things such as sticky notes, clocks, calendars around on your desktop. You can launch a pre-installed screenlet from Screenlet Manager, or install a new one into the Manager for launching it. Here are the steps for installing and launching a screenlet, for example, WaterMark System Information.

1. Install Screenlets Manager if it has not been added.
   
   1. Go to Applications (or Main Menu) > Ubuntu Software Center.
   2. Enter screenlets in the Search Box.
   3. Select Screenlets, click the "Install" button.
2. Download the screenlet "WaterMark System Information" to a folder.
3. Go to Applications (or Main Menu) > Accessories > Screenlets.
4. Click Install, select Install Screenlet and click OK.
5. Browse to the folder, select the file downloaded and click "Open" to install the screenlet into the Screenlets Manager.
6. Select the screenlet "WaterMark" and click "Launch/Add". (Tips: you can add more than one WaterMark screenlet and set it to display other system information.)

More screenlets are available for installation from screenlets.org.

Add More Useful Software

Ubuntu Software Center lets you search and get free software. If an application you need is not included in the Center, you can go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager, type in an application name to search and install a software package from the repositories.

Alternatively, you can get the latest freeware applications by clicking the Install this now button from the GetDeb Repository after the getdeb package is installed with the instructions given.

See also our Best Free Software for Linux.

Auto Mount Drives at System Startup

Ubuntu is capable of reading and writing files stored on Windows formatted partitions, but partitions must be 'mounted' before they can be accessed each time you start up the system. With these steps, you can auto mount the drives or partitions without the need to manually mount them for access.

1. Install Storage Device Manager if it has not been added.
   
   1. Go to Applications (or Main Menu) > Ubuntu Software Center.
   2. Enter pysdm in the Search Box.
   3. Select Storage Device Manager, click the "Install" button.
2. Go to System > Administration > Storage Device Manager.
3. Extend the list of sda and select the sda you want to auto mount, click 'OK' to configure.
4. Click the "Assistant" button.
5. Uncheck "Mount file system in read only mode" and keep "The file system is mounted at boot time" checked.
6. Click the "Mount", "Apply" then "Close" button, and restart the system.

In case you wish to remove the auto-mount of a certain drive or partition, you can similarly use Storage Device Manager to do the setting.

   If you need to identify disk partitions by label, paste ls /dev/disk/by-label -gin Terminal, or to view partition sizes and file systems, enter sudo fdisk -l. Disk Utility mentioned in "Name or Label a Partition" also gives you a glance of device numbers, partition types, sizes and labels.

Install Extra Fonts

Do you prefer Windows TrueType fonts to the default fonts installed by Ubuntu? The mscorefonts package containing most Microsoft fonts can be installed and configured easily in a few steps below:

1. Go to Applications (or Main Menu) > Accessories > Terminal.
2. Paste sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer into the Terminal (by pressing Ctrl-Shift-V in the Terminal after copying the highlighted code).
3. Go to System > Preferences > Appearance > Fonts.
4. Click each of them, pick a font and size to configure for window title and so on.

   How about installing more TrueType fonts? With your font files, you can manually add them into the system following the steps below:

1. Press Alt+F2 to bring up "Run Application" window.
2. Paste gksu nautilus /usr/share/fonts/truetype into the box, click "Run" to open Nautilus in the right folder.
3. Create a new sub-folder and copy your files ending with .ttf into the sub-folder.
4. Enter sudo fc-cache -f -v in the Terminal to rebuild the font information.

   Besides this, you can run an application such as Font-Manager to view, install, remove fonts and so on.

   If you like the Tahoma font which is not included in the mscorefontspackage, you might want to copy the two files tahoma.ttf and tahomabd.ttf from /Windows/Fonts and install them.

Disable or Change Login Sound

Each time when you login to Ubuntu, it plays a login sound. If you don't like to listen to it each time you login, you can easily disable it, or you can even change it to your favorite sound.

To disable the login sound:

1. Go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications.
2. Under the "Startup Programs" tab, untick "GNOME Login Sound"
3. Click Close

To change the login sound, tick the above "GNOME Login Sound" if it's unticked, then follow these steps:

1. Press Alt+F2 to bring up "Run Application" window.
2. Paste gksu nautilus /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo into the box, click "Run" to open Nautilus in the right folder.
3. Rename the original file desktop-login.ogg to another such as desktop-login-original.ogg for backup
4. Copy your sound file in ogg format to the above folder and name the file asdesktop-login.ogg
5. Log out and log back in to listen to the new login sound.

Re-start System without Rebooting

If you press Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Ubuntu brings you a menu to shut down, restart, or suspend your system. But for some reason you might encounter that the system freezes, the mouse cursor can't move, neither pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete can work.

Remember that there's a shortcut key Alt+PrintScreen+K that can bring you back to the log-in screen immediately without the need to reboot the system. That's a time saver.

As an alternative, you can also use Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to do the same after you've enabled the shortcut key by the following steps:

1. Go to System > Preferences > Keyboard.
2. Select the “Layouts” tab and click the “Options” button.
3. Select “Key sequence to kill the X server” and enable “Control + Alt + Backspace”.

Create an Advanced File Manager

In the Ubuntu file system, you can use Nautilus file manager to browse most files but can only write files in your home folder /home/your_name and its sub-folders such as Desktop and Documents. If you have to rename a folder or write files outside of your home folder using the file manager, you won't be able to but you can create an advanced file manager for this purpose.

1. Go to System > Preferences > Main Menu
2. Select "Accessories" in the left panel and click "New Item" in the right panel.
3. Enter a name such as Advanced Nautilus in the "Name" box.
4. Enter gksu nautilus in the "Command" box.
5. Click the "OK" button and the "Close" button.

Now you can go to Applications (or Main Menu) > Accessories and see that the Advanced Nautilus is ready for use. But be careful since you can use it to delete or change any files on your system.

Terminate Unresponsive Programs

Xkill is part of the X11 utilities pre-installed in Ubuntu and a tool for terminating misbehaving X clients or unresponsive programs. You can easily add a shortcut key to launch xkill with the steps below.

1. Go to System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts.
2. Click the Add button to create a custom shortcut.
3. Enter xkill to both the Name and Command boxes and click the Apply button.
4. Click on Disabled at the xkill row in the Keyboard Shortcuts window (Disabledis then changed to New shortcut...).
5. Press a new key combination, e.g. Ctrl+Alt+X (New shortcut... is then changed to Ctrl+Alt+X).
6. Click the Close button.

Xkill is ready for use. Press the above key combination to turn the cursor to an X-sign, move the X-sign and drop it into a program interface to terminate the unresponsive program, or cancel the X-sign with a right-click.

Add or Change Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are preset in the system, but you can add new ones or change them easily. For instance, change the default shortcut Ctrl+Alt+T (Run a Terminal) to Win+R (press R while holding down the Windows key, also known as Super key) by the following steps:

1. Go To System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts
2. Browse to Desktop > "Run a terminal"
3. Click on the Shortcut, and it shows "New shortcut..."
4. Press Win+R, and it shows Mod4+R
5. Click the Close button and try the new shortcut.

   To disable a shortcut, press Backspace when it shows "New shortcut..." after the step 3 above.

   Shortcuts begin with XF86 refer to special keys available to some multimedia keyboards.

   Keyboard shortcuts can also be set by changing keybinding values with Configuration Editor. Press Alt+F2 and enter gconf-editor, then navigate to apps > gnome_settings_daemon > keybindings, or apps > metacity > global_keybindings and window_keybindings.

Change Wallpapers Automatically

You can right click your desktop, select "Change Desktop Background" and choose any one of the wallpapers pre-installed, but you need to do it each time you want to change a wallpaper. What about changing a wallpaper automatically within a certain time interval? Try Wally.

1. Go to Applications (or Main Menu) > Ubuntu Software Center, enter wally into the Search box and click "Install". (See  below.)
2. Press Alt-F2, enter wally and click the "Run" button.
3. Right-click the Wally icon on the panel, select Settings.
4. Click "Folders" in the left column, then add/usr/share/backgrounds to the Folder box and tick "Include subfolders".
5. Click "Settings" in the left column, then tick "Play automatically on application starts".
6. Set the application to auto start, using this tip Auto Start Up an Application (as Wally's option to "Start automatically when system starts" being disabled).

Your wallpaper on the desktop will automatically change following these basic settings when you log back in the system (or right click the Wally icon on the panel and select "Play").

   If you like to get the latest version of Wally which has an option to disable splash screen and auto quit, go to developer's site to download. After which, right click the .deb file and select "Open with Ubuntu Software Center" to install, then follow Step 2 above.

Upgrading and Installation of Fedora

A few brief words about installing Fedora or upgrading to the newest version

First and foremost, the text of this page is based upon the Fedora 11 operating system. If you do not have Fedora 11, and are considering an upgrade from a previous version of Fedora, I would recommend you do so.

If you are installing Fedora Linux for the first time, you can check out the Installation Guide hosted at the Fedora Project website (Here) That guide may be found slightly confusing for some first time users, but it is a good introduction into everything that's capable in Fedora. Upgrading to Fedora 11 is a highly recommended procedure. You get some great new features, such as Firefox 3.5, the ext4 filesystem used by default, and GNOME 2.26, the newest version of the Fedora desktop environment. Upgrading can be done in multiple ways, however the easiest would probably be to obtain the ISO from the Fedora Project website for your architecture (Here) and burning that ISO to the CD, running the installer, and choosing the Upgrade option.

Enable Aero Snap (Ubuntu 10.10 & 10.04 only)

In Windows 7, you can click and drag a window to the left or right edge of the desktop and it will fill half of the screen, or snap a window to the top edge of the desktop and it will be maximized.

In Ubuntu 11.04, you can click and drag a window to the left, right or top edge of the desktop to achieve the same result, but in Ubuntu 10.10 or 10.04, you need some tweaking as follows.

1. In addition to CompizConfig Settings Manager, install WmCtrl if not added.
   
   1. Go to Applications (or Main Menu) > Accessories > Terminal.
   2. Enter sudo apt-get install wmctrl
   3. Enter password when prompted.
2. Go To System > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager.
3. Select "General" from the left panel and click "Commands".
4. In Command line 0, 1 and 2, paste the following codes:
   
   1. Command line 0, paste WIDTH=`xdpyinfo | grep 'dimensions:' | cut -f 2 -d ':' | cut -f 1 -d 'x'` && HALF=$(($WIDTH/2)) && wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -b add,maximized_vert && wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -e 0,0,0,$HALF,-1
   2. Command line 1, paste WIDTH=`xdpyinfo | grep 'dimensions:' | cut -f 2 -d ':' | cut -f 1 -d 'x'` && HALF=$(($WIDTH/2)) && wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -b add,maximized_vert && wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -e 0,$HALF,0,$HALF,-1
   3. Command line 2, paste wmctrl -r :ACTIVE: -b add,maximized_vert,maximized_horz
5. In the same window, click "Edge Bindings" tab.
6. Change Run Command 0, 1 and 2 from "None" to "Left", "Right" and "Top" respectively.
7. Click "Back" button and select "General Options", change "Edge Trigger Delay" to about 500.

Customize the Theme

Themes in Ubuntu can be customized to match the applications or suit your needs. I once tried the "New Wave" theme and the menu (File, Edit, View, etc) was hardly visible on the dark background in OpenOffice, but customizing the "New Wave" theme with "Ambiance" Controls solved the problem. These are easy steps to customize a theme, for example, allowing the "New Wave" theme to mix with the "Ambiance" Controls.

1. Go To System > Preferences > Appearance.
2. Under the "Theme" tab, click the "Customize" button while the "New Wave" theme is selected.
3. Under the "Controls" tab, click any other control item such as "Ambiance" and click the "Close" button.
4. Now it becomes your Custom theme and you can save it as a new theme, such as "New Wave with Ambiance Controls".

Roll Up and Down a Window

When you double-click the title bar of a window, the default setting is to maximize a window. Since there's already a maximize button you can use for this, I always like to change the default setting to rolling up (or 'shading') a window when I double-click on its title bar.

1. Go to System > Preferences > Windows
2. In "Titlebar Action", select "Roll up" (or "Shade" where applicable), from the drop-down list.

Now you can roll up a window when you double-click its title bar, and roll it down by double-clicking the title bar again. Simple as that.

Open Up a Window in Center

When running an application without maximized, Ubuntu always puts it in the left-top corner of the desktop by default, but you are allowed to set a program window to open up in the center of the desktop area.

1. Go to System > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager
2. Select "Windows Management" from the left panel.
3. Click "Place Windows".
4. Change Placement Mode from "Smart" to "Centered", click "Back" and "Close".

Ideally, the window manager in Ubuntu should restore the last known position of an application window, but it does not do that unless an application remembers its own window position. (See reported bugs)

How to install Foradian Rupee ttf Font in Linux

New Rupee Font works perfectly in Linux (Fedora 13. It should work on other flavours also).
Instructions for installing Rupee ttf file in Linux:
First of all Download the file from Foradian Blog.

For instructions on how to use this symbol you can get it from this blog http://blog.foradian.com/rupee-font-version-20

As root user from the command line
1. Create a directory with "mkdir /usr/share/fonts/default/TrueType/" (without quotes) if it does not exists.
2. Move the downloaded .ttf file to the above directory.
3. Issue this command ttmkfdir > fonts.dir
Thats it. Now open the " OpenOffice Writer" and Select the "Fordian Rupee" from the dropdown menu.

Enabling Desktop Effects

Installing and Enabling Compiz Fusion

Compiz Fusion is an application for your Linux desktop to enable certain desktop effects such as Wobbly Windows and animations while switching desktops.

Compiz Fusion is only available for certain video cards using certain video drivers (programs that allow the OS, Fedora in this case, to talk to your video card) To see if your computer is able to use Compiz Fusion, we need to open the Terminal.
To open the Terminal, navigate to Applications, then the System Tools submenu, then click on Terminal.
The terminal allows text-based access to your computer. This is quite often used for administrative tasks.

To run the Compiz-Check application, we first must download it directly from the website, which we will do with a program called wget.

Once you have opened the Terminal, you should be presented with a line like so...
[aj@ajf11 ~]$

This is the command prompt. We can type our commands here to perform tasks on our computer that may not be available in the graphical portion of the operating system.

The first thing that we want to type into our command prompt to install Compiz-Check is the following:

wget http://blogage.de/files/9124/download -O compiz-check

This will tell the "wget" program to download the compiz-check file from http://blogage.de

Next, we have to make the file executable. By default, programs like this are not executable for security reasons. To make the file executable, type the following:

chmod +x compiz-check

This tells the "chmod" program to add the executable flag to the file "compiz-check"

And finally, we will run compiz-check. You can do so by doing the following.

./compiz-check

If the program says you can run compiz, then we will continue to the following steps. If not, you will have to resolve the problem. There is a lot of information available on this topic on Google.

If the test succeeds, we will install the compiz applications.
In the Terminal, type the following

su

This will ask you for the root password and change to the root user. The root user has access to everything on the system. It's usage should be as restricted as possible.

Then, run the following command.

yum install ccsm emerald-themes compizconfig-backend-gconf fusion-icon-gtk emerald compiz-fusion compiz-fusion-gnome libcompizconfig compiz-gnome compiz-bcop compiz compizconfig-python compiz-fusion-extras compiz-fusion-extras-gnome

This tells the "yum" program (the Fedora installer) to install the packages listed in the command. Once the install succeeds, we can activate desktop effects. The terminal can be closed at this point.
Now, to activate Desktop Effects, navigate to the System Menu, then then Preferences sub-menu, the click on Desktop Effects. You can check either of the options presented to you (I suggest both, out of coolness factor) and then click Desktop Effects. And there you are, compiz is activated and installed.

That should get you well and on your way to the world of customization and being truly free to do whatever you wish with your operating system! For further reading, please check the Amazon links below. To support me and writers like me, please buy through the Amazon links on our pages.

Virtual consoles

During install, a lot of interesting stuff can be found in different places: in consoles and in files. To switch to console 2 for example, do Ctrl-Alt-F2 from the X install.

• alt-F1: the stdout of the install. Not very interesting stuff
• alt-F2: simple shell. Quite a lot of commands are available but as they are written in perl (for space), they do not handle the very same options as normally. After install, you can do chroot /mnt to see your system just like after rebooting. rpm -qa works for example.
• alt-F3: a lot of interesting things. Be careful, some ERROR messages are not interesting.
• alt-F4: kernel's place, i.e. the output of dmesg.
• alt-F7: the graphical install lives there

Move Window Control Buttons to the Right

If your Ubuntu system sets the Minimize, Maximize and Close buttons to the left in a window and you prefer to change them to the right, then follow these simple steps:

1. Press Alt+F2 to bring up "Run Application" window.
2. Type gconf-editor into the box, click "Run" to bring up Configuration Editor.
3. Browse to apps > metacity > general, look for "button_layout" on the right panel.
4. Change the value in the "button_layout" from close,minimize,maximize: to menu:minimize,maximize,close and press the Enter key.

Change Font Type and Color of Panel Clock

The font type and color of the panel clock follow the windows text in a theme by default. In particular, if the font color is black and shown on a dark background through a transparent panel, you can't read the clock clearly, but you can tweak it by changing the font color. And you can define the font type for your panel clock as well.

The code in Step 1 below sets the font color to white and applies DS-Digital font (See  below), bold and size 16.

1. Open up the text editor Gedit and paste the following code:
   style "my-panel-clock"
   {
   fg[NORMAL] = "#FFFFFF"
   font_name = "DS-Digital Bold 16"
   }
   widget "*.clock-applet-button.*" style "my-panel-clock"
2. Save the file as .gtkrc-2.0 (including the dot in front of the filename) inside your home directory /home/your_user_name.
3. Log out and log back in (OR enter killall gnome-panel into the Terminal) to see the change.

   The DS-Digital font can be downloaded here. After downloading, unzip the file and install the font into the system for use. See Install Extra Fonts.

   The filename leading by a dot represents it's a hidden file and visible by toggling the key Ctrl-H in the Nautilus file browser.

Enable Superbar

In Windows 7, frequently used programs can be pinned to the taskbar (hence called Superbar). Likewise, DockBarX, a Gnome panel plugin, can be added to Ubuntu to achieve almost the same effect to pin and unpin or launch the applications from the panel.

1. Go to Ubuntu Software Center > Edit > Software Source.
2. Select "Other Software" and click "Add"
3. At APT line, enter ppa:dockbar-main/ppa, click "Add Source" and "Close"
4. At the left panel of Ubuntu Software Center, select "PPA for Dockbar Main Group", which is added after the above steps
5. At the right panel, select DockbarX and click "Install"
6. Wait for the cache to be updated, then right click the panel and click “Add to Panel”.
7. Select the DockBarX Applet and click "Add".

   A thumbnail preview of a running program is also available to DockBarX. To enable this feature, right-click the DockBarX item on the panel, select Properties, choose Window List and tick "Show Previews". Other preferences such as appearance, window item and group button can also be configured by users.

Set Fully Transparent Panel

When you set the panel to be transparent in the default Ambiance theme in Ubuntu, you will find that some panel items' backgrounds are not transparent, but you can make them transparent and consistent with others, following these steps:

1. Go to Applications (or Main Menu) > Accessories > Terminal.
2. Enter cp -R /usr/share/themes/Ambiance ~/.themes/
3. Enter gedit ~/.themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/apps/gnome-panel.rc (for Ubuntu 11.04 or 10.10) OR gedit ~/.themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/gtkrc (for Ubuntu 10.04), to open the file with gedit.
4. Search for this line bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = "img/panel.png" (for Ubuntu 11.04 or 10.10) OR bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = "panel_bg.png" (for Ubuntu 10.04)
5. Comment out the line by placing a # at the beginning of the line, like this:#   bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = ...
6. Save the file.
7. Go to System > Preferences > Appearance, switch to the other theme and then back to the Ambiance theme.

   If you'd to change to the New Wave theme, then enter cp -R /usr/share/themes/"New Wave" ~/.themes/ in step 2, enter gedit ~/.themes/"New Wave"/gtk-2.0/gtkrc in step 3, search for and comment out this linebg_pixmap[NORMAL] = "Images/Panel/PanelBarLong.png" in steps 4 and 5 respectively.

Customize the Panel of Ubuntu after Installation

Ubuntu includes a top panel and a bottom panel by default. If you prefer to keep only one panel at the bottom just like the Windows Taskbar, then these are the steps to follow:

1. Delete the bottom panel: right-click over it and click "Delete This Panel".
2. Move the top panel to bottom: right-click over it, select "Properties" and change Orientation from "Top" to "Bottom".
3. Add running program buttons: right-click the panel, select "Add to Panel", scroll down and select "Window List", click "Add".
4. Replace the Menu Bar ("Applications-Places-System") with the "Main Menu" to save space in the panel:
   
   1. Right-click the "Menu Bar" and select "Remove From Panel".
   2. Right-click the panel, select "Add to Panel" and choose "Main Menu", click "Add".
   3. Right-click the items (Firefox, etc) and untick "Lock to Panel".
   4. Right-click the added "Main Menu", select "Move" to relocate it to the far left.

These are basic changes. The panels are much more flexible than the Windows Taskbar in that many items in the panels can be easily added, removed or configured.

   The Main Menu shows the "Lock Screen", "Log Out" and "Shut Down" items if you remove the "Indicator Applet Session" item (which shows your username and the shutdown button to the right of the panel). These three items are hidden from the Main Menu when the Indicator Applet Session item is on the panel.

   If you need to restore the panels to the original state, enter the following commands into the Terminal and re-start the system:

1. sudo gconftool-2 --shutdown
2. sudo rm -rf .gconf/apps/panel
3. sudo pkill gnome-panel

   At any point if your customized desktop settings caused a problem and you wish to reset all back to their defaults, then enter this command sudo rm -rf .gnome .gnome2 .gconf .gconfd .metacity in the Terminal, log out and log back in to the system.