Netbeans

Netbeans is a full featured IDE written in Java by Sun. Some people prefer Eclipse and Eclipse based IDEs (Aptana) but I find them slow and laggy on my system. The current Netbeans version in the Ubuntu repositories is 6.1, whlie this is good for Java and C++ developement, PHP support wasn’t included until 6.5.X. You can download the PHP package here – 26mb. Netbeans comes with standard project support, code completion, syntax highlighting and searching. What sets Netbeans apart from the rest is that it has on the fly PHP debugging (that works!). It also has version control support out of the box and in general it’s very quick.

Gedit

Gedit is the default text editor for GNOME, if you use GNOME, chances are it is already installed. If not you can find it by the package name gedit in your distro’s repository. The KDE equivalent is Kate. By itself it is just a text editor, but with a few plugins you can turn it into a mini IDE. You can view all of the available plugins here they range from version control to a lorem ipsum generator. I recommend you install the following:

• Browser preview – Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer (done through ies4linux)
• Python Console – Supports PyGTK, PyQT and Tkinter. Think of an in-editor IDLE
• File Browser – Gives a pane to view files. Comes with Gedit out of the box.
• Code Snippets – Allows you to type a few characters and expand them to full code snippets. Comes with Gedit out of the box.

Heidi SQL

The choice of SQL editor largely depends upon the person as there are many with similar features. I prefer HeidiSQL. Although there are no native builds of HeidiSQL for Linux, it runs perfectly under WINE. I find it easier to use than phpmyadmin as content loads seamlessly and you can be connected to several different servers simultaneously.

Firefox

Although Firefox is primarily a web browser, there have been many creative addons released that add extra functionality to it. I won’t cover Firebug as there are many articles and tutorials out there but I will bring your attention to Pencil. Pencil allows you to prototype user interfaces. It includes Microsoft Windows and GTK+ widgets that you can drag and drop onto a palette. Although it doesn’t actually generate an XML file like the Glade Interface Designer does, it allows for rapid prototyping for both desktop and web. As it’s a firefox addon it’s cross platform, so you can share interfaces you make with colleagues.

Filezilla

Filezilla is an open source cross-platform FTP client. It has an easy to use five pane interface. Two for local directories and files, two for remote directories and files and one for the status of transferring files. Filezilla can also connect through proxies or sFTP. One of my favourite features of Filezilla is that you can edit remote files on the fly. Just right click on the file and choose the edit option and it will download the contents and open it in your specified editor. When you save the file it will automatically re-upload itself to the server.

• The first, its incredibly slow – It took along time to download the updates i needed (Slower than downloading a normal file that size from the server) and it took along time to generate the meta data of plugins list.
• The second is that (in my opnion) the User Interface is horrible. Its hard to navigate to select the packages you want, When you select a package it takes a few more clicks to even see the dependencies it requires, whereas adept and synaptic show you right away.

I tried it, i can honestly say i gave it a good go, but its not for me. Since im new to the rpm system, i searched around for alternatives, i found one called Yum Extender (Yumex).  Its easy to install, just yum install yumex or download it from the websit.

First of all, download XAMPP from sourceforge. As of writing this, the latest version is 1.6.7 so ill be referencing to that in the tutorial. Save it to your /home/$USER/ directory.

Extract the archive to your /opt/ directory.

sudo tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.6.7.tar.gz -C /opt

Now its installed

To start it:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

To stop it:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

To launch the panel/manager:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp panel

You can test if its on by going to http://localhost

To add files to the server, you would need to put them in /opt/lampp/htdocs/ but since that directory is owned by root, your user doesn’t have neccesary privilages. The easiest way to “get around” this is to set up a symlink folder in your home directory. You may be familiar with public_html or www directories on your webhosting, we are basically setting the same thing up here.

First we want to set up the directory we are going to link to in htdocs. So..

sudo mkdir /opt/lampp/htdocs/homefiles/

Then make the equivilant directory in our home directory.

mkdir ~/public_html/

And finally link them together.

sudo ln -S ~/public_html/ /opt/lampp/htdocs/homefiles/

So now we can put PHP files/whatnot into our ~/public_html/ folder and they will show up in localhost/homefiles/

I eventually was able to compile it without any errors. It did need a system restart to take effect, but low and behold.

I couldn’t use the GUI installer as there was some conflict with my monitor, so i need to use the text based installer. Its no big hassle for me, ive used the text base installer on slackware and other distros. The anaconda installer is great, i selected the programs i wanted to install and install. All up the install only took around 20-25 minutes – very speedy considering i installed gnome, xfce, servers, dev tools and a number of other things. Once the installation had finished i rebooted.

Straight away i noticed that i didn’t have an X server. When you run Fedora for the first time, im pretty sure theres a little dialog that lets you make accounts etc.. unfortunately there was no text option for me and i got left with a command prompt. I was forced to login as root. I tried startx and it worked! I was in the GNOME desktop, i quickly made myself a normal user account and restarted the computer. Unfortunately the Desktop Manager/GUI Login screen didn’t start so i was at the command prompt again, however i could still startx .

UPDATE: I decided to reinstall Fedora (2 Hours after i initially installed it. I got Anaconda to run graphically, i added the boot parameter resolution=1024×768 and it worked! The installation went smoothly, the boot screen was working and i added my user the proper way. X works straight off now, im very pleased

The 8th version of Ubuntu has now been released! Notable inclusions are..

• Linux Kernel 2.6.24
• Xorg 7.3 (Latest)
• GNOME 2.22
• Firefox 3 Beta 5

Its interesting to see that they’ve given some

of their older applications an overhaul. It now includes the Brasero CD burning utility which replaces Serpentine. They’ve also included the GTK front-end bit-torrent client Transmission and added a new VNC viewer called Vinagre. If you put the burnt ISO disk into a Windows machine, you can install Ubuntu via Windows! I thought this was a cool little feature.

Ive been following Ubuntu for a few years now, i started Using Hoary right through to Fiesty. After that Ubuntu wasn’t right for me. It felt pretty bloated, trying to do things for you, and now im happily running Zenwalk 5.0 which is based off Slackware. I’m interested to here what you think, of Ubuntu and the new release.

Debian uses apt-get package management. It looks at a series of defined repositories (servers) for the package(s) you want and will download them if they are there. The repositories are defined in the file

/etc/apt/sources.list

You can edit that file directly (make sure you have root) or use frontends like the Synaptic Package Manager or Software Sources (Menu item) in the distro.

Command Line Usage

To install a package you need to use the apt-get install command. For example to install the IRC program XChat you would type into the console.

sudo apt-get  install xchat

It would prompt you for your root password and then list information about the package and would double check you still want to download and install it.

To remove a package you would use the apt-get remove command. This will remove the package files but will keep the configuration files incase you install the same application at a later date. If you wanted to remove XChat you would type into the console.

sudo apt-get remove xchat

To completely remove a package and leave no trace of it you would use the apt-get –purge remove command. If you wanted to completely remove XChat you would type into the console.

sudo apt-get –purge remove xchat

To upgrade packages on your system you would use the apt-get -u upgrade command. This would update all your packages but before updating them, would list them for you to see. If you wanted to update packages on your system you would type into the console.

sudo apt-get -u

To do a complete distro upgrade (Eg upgrade from Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn to Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon then you would use the apt-get -u dist-upgrade command. Its considered to be good practice in reinstalling your system when a new release comes out or only dist-upgrade once or twice. It can lead to breaks in the OS and sluggishness. If you wanted to dist-upgrade your system you would type into the console.

sudo apt-get -u dist-upgrade

Again, it would show you what packages you would be upgrading before actually starting.

Aptitude

aptitude is a Command Line/Basic GUI tool for installing packages using apt-get. If your still not comfortable with full command line usage but the Synaptic Package Manager takes up too much system resources on your system then aptitude might be right for you. You can start it with the command

sudo aptitude

It launches a basic GUI in the console in which you can browse packages by category and search for them.

Once you have found the package you want to install, you can confirm it and it will download and install it.

Synaptic Package Manager

The Synaptic Package Manager is one of the most widely used applications in Debian based systems. Its got a friendly and easy to navigate GUI. Like aptitude its really just an apt-get frontend but new users seem to like it.

Although it may seem basic, it provides updating, installing, removing, purging, searching and an editor for /etc/apt/sources.list all in one.