Conky is a lightweight system monitor that displays information on your desktop. There are a number of variations and designs that will show anything from the date and weather to how much hard disk space you are using. Conky doesn’t actually use real transparency so it may not look easy on the eye. This simple tutorial will help make Conky look more aesthetically pleasing.

I have been wanting to install BBC iPlayer on my Linux Mint 9 to download and watch a TV show as my Internet speed is not the fastest and fluctuates from time to time so I wanted to download without the disruption. When I tried to install iPlayer with Google Chrome 6.0.472.53 I received an error message and was unable to install despite several attempts. I then tried my trusty old Firefox 3.6.9 and the same happened again. I tried also to find an offline version and could not find one. My thoughts were that if I can’t install it on 2 of the most popular browsers and can’t find an offline version then I give up, or should I?

I recently updated to latest version of Linux Mint 8 and after installing Aptana, my favourite IDE, I noticed that my mouse buttons would not work when trying to click buttons. I tried re-installing the software and trying eclipse but it still didn’t work.

This is an in-depth guide to installing LAMPP on Linux Mint. LAMPP, the linux version of XAMPP, is a popular open source, cross platform web server software that includes Apache, MYSQL, PHP and Perl. This software can be installed locally on your PC to aid with the development of websites that use the server side scripting language PHP, like Wordpress themes for example. This tutorial will help install the software, create and setup shortcut within the menu editor and transferring files with proFTP. This tutorial should also work in Ubuntu too, so lets get started.

If you are like me, you want to have the latest secure and up-to-date version of Firefox installed. Generally the package management system handles all software downloads, which is extremely useful, but unfortunately it may take some time for security updates to appear. There is one such workaround and that is to install your own copy. This tutorial is aimed at those using Mandriva Linux so your results may differ depending on which distribution you use.