Recent Network Manager versions like Network Manager 0.9.1 from Ubuntu 11.10 and Network Manager 0.9.2 from Fedora 16 and aren’t working well with both of my GSM mobile broadband modems, Huawei E220 and ZTE MF100. Actually this aren’t first Network Manager version that refuse to work with the same hardware, there were some problems back in the good old Ubuntu 9.10 days. Because of that I had to learn managing my mobile broadband network connections without Network Manager. In this article I will do my best to point you in the right direction to managing your GSM mobile broadband connections from terminal without Network Manager on Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Debian based operating systems.

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Dear vistors,
I would like to apologize for the downtime. I’m currently in the hospital and I had to simultaneously arrange www.techytalk.info transfer to another hosting plan. Something got messed up and I wasn’t on top of things to react sooner so www.techytalk.info wasn’t accessible since this morning. Things are solved now and you shouldn’t have problems enjoying www.techytalk.info content. Once again, sincere apologies for the downtime.

Like many of you out there I use mobile broadband as my Internet connection. What bugs me the most is that annoying virtual CD-ROM drive that pops out every time I put my stick in my USB connector. The idea is that average user has all of its modem drivers (of course Windows only) nearby. What’s the use for that thing on our beloved Linux boxes? I know one. We can have fun disabling this annoyance once and for all. In this article I’ll show you how to use your your Linux PC to disable virtual CD-ROM drive with built in software on Huawei and ZTE GSM modem devices.

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I’m one of many people not satisfied with current Linux on desktop situation. I’m saying this with regards to Unity / Gnome3 story. Because of that I use Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx with Gnome 2 on all of my machines. But there is one thing I don’t like on my Ubuntu 10.04 PC and that is default theme. In comparison with later Ubuntu version Ambiance and Radiance themes from Ubuntu 10.04 look unfinished. So lets fix this. In this article I’m bringing you Ambiance & Radiance themes deb packages from Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 backported to Ubuntu Lucid 10.04.

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So you’re working on a WordPress plugin and you want to get current plugin version using PHP for display inside your plugin settings or on your plugin front end. Hardcoding the plugin version and changing it every release is no fun so in this article I’m bringing you my little PHP function I use with my Quick Chat for WordPress plugin to get current plugin version.

As always with WordPress development you need to be extra careful with your PHP and Javascript function names so you should prefix your every function with your plugin name. So here is PHP function you can use inside your plugin PHP file to get plugin version:

function plugin_name_get_version() {
    $plugin_data = get_plugin_data( __FILE__ );
    $plugin_version = $plugin_data['Version'];
    return $plugin_version;
}

I guess it needs no additional explanation. Enjoy!

I’m glad to inform you that one of the most compelling Linux distributions in todays Unity/Gnome3 Linux situation Linux Mint 12 final version has been released. Linux Mint 12 developers did their best to please us faithful Gnome 2 users by making few Gnome 3 extensions to mimic Gnome 2 user experience and by supporting Gnome 2 fork named Mate Desktop environment.

What’s new in Linux Mint 12 you might ask?

• Linux 3.0 kernel
• Based on Ubuntu 11.10 but without Unity
• GNOME 3.2 + Mint Gnome Shell Extensions (MGSE)
• MATE Desktop Environment (alternative to Gnome 3.2 + MGSE)
• Mozilla Firefox 7.0 and Mozilla Thunderbird 7.0
• LibreOffice 3.4

Download links

At the time of writing this article Linuxmint.com hasn’t been updated with new download links yet so here are some of the download mirrors:

• ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/linux/debian/mint/stable/12/
• ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/linux/linuxmint/stable/12/
• mirror.umd.edu/linuxmint/images/stable/12/

As you’ve probably noticed I haven’t added any new posts to TechyTalk.info or released any updates to Quick Chat WordoPress plugin for some time. The reason is that recently I’ve suffered total loss of vision to one of my eyes. I’ve been hospitalized and diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and currently I’m trying to deal with this new situation for me and for my family. Unfortunately I’m not able to work on TechyTalk.info or Quick Chat WordPress plugin but I would like to continue my work as soon as my health improves.

Also I would like to sincerely apologize for not answering to your emails and comments but currently I’m not able to do so. I’ve finished Quick Chat 2.40 version right before I got ill and I’ll do my best to somehow publish it to WordPress plugin directory because I hate to see it siting unused on my hard disk. I wish you all best and I hope I’ll get better soon so I could resume my work.

It’s my pleasure to inform you that final version of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot has been released. Here are the download links for the Ubuntu 11.10:

• Ubuntu 11.10 32 bit ISO image and Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit ISO image
• Ubuntu 11.10 32 bit torrent and Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit torrent

For the list of all available releases you can go to official Ubuntu releases download pages:

• Ubuntu 11.10 all releases download page

Have fun with Ubuntu 11.10, expect TechyTalk.info review shortly!

When you want to share files between Linux and Windows machines you don’t have a lot of choice, you end up using Samba. This situation is very common so most Linux distributions including Ubuntu Linux make configuring Samba a breeze. But what if you want to share files between Linux PCs? Sure you can use Samba but you have more flexible and faster choice – NFS (Network File System). In this article I’ll show you how to do basic NFS server and client setup on Ubuntu Linux and other Ubuntu based distributions.

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I often do my web development on the move using my laptop. Because of that I must run Apache with PHP and MySQL servers on both my desktop and my laptop PC. You can probably guess that this doesn’t help to conserve my laptop battery so I’ve configured my laptop not to start MySQL and Apache automatically at boot. Instead I start those services manually when I plan to do some coding. In this article I’ll show you how to configure your Ubuntu based PC to do the same.

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