Automatically attach Windows formatted partitions on booting Ubuntu

As the title say, I consider in this how-to attach windows formatted partitions (FAT32, NTFS ..), it would be a very close procedures to attach other formats.

1. Step One: Determine Which partition do you want to mount automatically.
   You have to know your target partition's Linux name, which differs from partitions' labels (those names given to partitions in Windows like "Sources", "Entertainment" ..).
   
   • Installing a suitable Disk-Scanner is a good idea to give you good information about your disk if you don't already know, I suggest gparted
     

     sudo apt-get gparted

   • Once installed, run it
     

     sudo gparted

     to see something like:
     
     
     
     
     now determine which partition you'd like to attach, and know its name (the column at the most left with heading "Partition"), I'll assume it is [my_part]
2. Step Two: Determine Where to attach the target partition
   Lets assume you want attach the partition in the directory [my_dir], you have to create the directory
   

   sudo mkdir [my_dir]

3. Step 3: Tell Ubuntu to attach Partition[Step 1] in Directory[Step 2]
• Open the file /etc/fstab as root
  

  gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

• Add the line
  

  [my_part] [my_dir] vfat auto,users,uid=1000,gid=100,utf8,dmask=027,fmask=1 37 0 0

  And dont forget to
  
  • Replace [my_part] with your partition (got from step 1)
  • Replace [my_dir] with your directory (got from step 2)
  • Replace "vfat" (which is for FAT32 partitions) with ntfs for NTFS partitions
• Save and close /etc/fstab
4. Step Four: Try attaching new entries in the /etc/fstab
, by typing

sudo mount -a

Enjoy ..

Compiz, what, why and how

Understanding Linux, Ubuntu, Compiz
We all know that Linux is an OSS (Open Source Software) OS (Operating System) but a user friendly OS is a huge product to be free ..


The first component of Linux (Kernel) was finished in 1991 by Linus Trovalds the student of Helsinki University in Finland. While the second one (System software) were developed, maintained and re-distributed by GNU which is a glorious and a pioneer foundation in the field of the OSS.

After this "histo-technical" introduction lets mention some -system software programs- definitions.

Desktop environment

a style of graphical user interface (GUI) that is used to be the interactive and friendly interface to the user, instead of the old command line interface (CLI).

Window manager

The program that is responsible for drawing (rendering) windows, control their appearance and determine how they are displayed and interact with each other.

Now back to our Ubuntu Hardy ..
The default Desktop environment is "Gnome", wheres the default window manager is "Metacity".
I'm ready now to say what Compiz is:
It is an alternate for Metacity which uses 3D H/W (VGA) to create fast, efficient and advanced visual desktop effects. Here are some photos:








Now lets move to the "How" section of the post;

How to obtain Compiz Fusion (which is Compiz with some plug-ins):

1. First of all ensure that your VGA is not blacklisted from here .
2. Follow this tutorial
3. If it is still not working type

   mkdir -p ~/.config/compiz/ && echo SKIP_CHECKS=yes >> ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager

   to skip checks that compiz performs.
4. If it is still not working enable the compsite extension in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Reboot and enjoy..

Even after installing compiz you can alternate your Window manager between compiz and metacity by the commands

compiz --replace &

and

metacity --replace &

I prefer creating a couple of launchers in my panel instead of writing commands each time.

But why alternating between them?

Because applications which rely on VGA and performs heavy rendering conflicts with compiz and cause the monitor to continually blink, like Google Earth and any "medium/big" game.