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came across over the course of almost three years of using Linux. Some of these have been copied
from the Internet for my sole use. I compiled this document for my own convenience and I dont
take responsibility for any harm done to your computer or settings by using any of the tricks below..
So, use at your own risk.
KDE for all its eye candy and general slickness really sucks on some basic points. One of these is
with auto-starting programs upon login. Suggestions to get this working almost always involve
having the use the command-line or following a prolonged series of steps for a task which should
ideally involve no more than a few clicks. Usually, most people suggest the following as a solution
even to newbies:
The good news is that it’s easy to get the trash can back. Click Applications -> Accessories ->
Terminal, and at the command prompt type gconf-editor. In the program window that appears, click
the down arrows next to Apps, then Nautilus (you’ll have to scroll down the list a little), and then
click Desktop. On the right side of the program window, put a check in the trash_icon_visible entry.
The Trash icon should then instantly appear on your desktop! To delete the old Trash icon at the
bottom right, simply right-click it and select Remove from Panel.
Be careful when using the Configuration Editor program. It lets you configure just about every
aspect of the GNOME desktop and doesn’t warn you when you’re about to do something
devastating, so the potential for accidental damage is high.
Open a mp3 file's properties->edit file type->select audacious->click edit->paste the following : -
Introduction
Windows and Linux handle text files differently in terms of line breaks. Windows uses (invisible)
\r \n characters (carriage return and newline) to represent where the line ends and a new line starts,
however, Linux (and all Unices) use \n character for the same purpose. This is the point which
makes Linux-created text files look garbled in Microsoft Windows.
There are of course several ways to convert Linux text files to Windows. Intermediate/advanced
users may find using sed or awk a perfect tool to convert the files, but in this article I will go with
easier solutions.
Kate
KDE's text editor, Kate, has built-in functions to save the text file in Windows format. To do this,
open your text file in Kate, go to Tools → End of Line → Windows/DOS. Kate will automatically
change all the line breaks and you will be able to save your file in a Windows-proof format.
If you are carrying text files between Linux and Windows computers frequently, then doing the
above may not be your perfect solution. In this case, I recommend telling Kate to save the line
breaks as Windows/DOS compliant for every file. Go to Settings → Configure Kate and on the left
pane under the “Editor Component” part select “Open/Save” option. In the right pane, select
“DOS/Windows” as the “End of Line” and un-tick the “Automatic end of line detection.” Click
“Apply” and then “OK” to exit.
If you are using Gnome or any other window manager, you can use Kate without any problems.
GRUB 2, graphical boot tips to set the desired VGA console mode
Yes, everyone wants graphics, or better, the ability to customize things to suit different situations. I have always
suggested programmers regarding interfaces and programs in genre to let the user be comfortable to set and
change almost every aspect of program GUI, at least icons, fonts, backgrounds and often ii found some
programs being too customizable, on the contrary.
Let's take a look at GRUB 2, also called grub-pc by updates that the Debian distro suggests. GRUB 2 is the
successor of the GRUB bootloader, commonly shipped within the majority Linux distributions. Basically i will
cover only some graphical aspects that GRUB 2 seems to be strong with: customization of fonts, background,
console modes directly set by GRUB 2 itself, no more limitation to the resolution of 640x480 pixels at startup,
can be used bigger background pictures also at the resolution of 1650x1050 pixels.
Our favorite kernel parameter vga=791 for example, is now deprecated (if using GRUB 2), and it's a little tricky
to set correctly the console mode. The configuration file for GRUB 2 is now called grub.cfg in place of the old
menu.lst whose we were addicted, but resides in the same directory /boot/grub. Things are very distribution
specific i think, but remain the fact that configuration changes rely on the grub.cfg file that we have to alter in
some way. Debian is putting the defaults into /etc/default/grub where you can find and set common used
parameter easy to understand.
"For example i use Debian within VirtualBox at a resolution of 1280x800 for the console and also
for the Xorg server. If you want you to start with this resolution also for GRUB 2 (remember in the
past was very limited this feature, and if you are using VirtualBox or other virtualization programs
the annoying result was in resizing the window and than enlarging upon the system goes into
graphical mode, for example, with the splash screen: usplash, splashy and others), very nice, no
more discrepancies between modes: the line to change into the /etc/default/grub file is
GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x800 and then issuing update-grub. The resulting action is to write the
line set gfxmode=1280x800 into the grub.cfg file."
We are half a way to our objective, to change also the resolution of our console. We need two conditions, the
terminal must be set to insmod vbe line MUST be present in your configuration file (this ensure correct console
mode settings, if you note this instruction is almost identical to load a kernel module) and the option
gfxpayload=keep MUST be set. This will keep our 1280x800 resolution also for the console, YEAH! no more
resizing on VirtualBox! and this is not the end. Someone reported that adding gfxpayload=my_resolution will
be able to set a different resolution for the console instead of having the same of the GRUB 2 menu, sincerely i
have not tested it. Why i have not tested it? The strong point is that to change grub.cfg requires a little more
effort than editing it with a text editor, because all your changes will be discarded when you run the command
update-grub.
/boot/grub/grub.cfg excerpt :
setgfxmode=1280x800
setgfxpayload=keep
insmod gfxterm
insmod vbe
update-grub reads the configuration stored in the /etc/default/grub file an the scripts that resides into the
/etc/grub.d directory at least on Debian (i suppose is the same for other distributions). To set the option
gfxpayload=keep i had to modify one of this file cause i discovered that this line MUST be the next after the
gfxmode one, like you can note above.
You have to find the file or script responsible to change the content of your grub.cfg configuration file and
append the appropriate line, after the gfxmode sentence, gfxpayload=keep to keep the same resolution of the
GRUB 2 menu for the console (wider resolutions result in smaller console fonts). In my case i had to edit the
script 00_header stored into the /etc/grub.d directory.
There are other scripts into this directory, responsible to set other parameters, like theme (background picture
an font color), distribution and custom OS. To change the background image of your GRUB 2 menu is almost the
same process, find the script or configuration file that change the attribute of the background_image instance of
the grub.cfg, and change the line pointing to the image (usually a .png or .tga file) with the one you like, i have
tested it with a resolution of 1650x1050 pixels modifying the script 05_debian_theme, in my case, stored
into /etc/grub.d directory as well.
wget http://pwsp.net/~qbob/moodbar-0.1.2.tar.gz
tar -xzvf moodbar-0.1.2.tar.gz
cd moodbar-0.1.2
./configure --prefix=`pkg-config --variable=prefix gstreamer-0.10`
make
sudo make install
Launch Amarok and go to “Settings -> Configure Amarok” and from “General“, select “Use
moods“. There are three different colour moods to choose from.
If spellcheck doesnt work out of the box, check the language set in the Font tab of your text style.
Select English there and spellcheck will be activated.
Another way i found: Go to regional and language in system settings and choose the language US
english/ UK english from there. It should be fine after that.
Sometimes the icons go bad like some broken icons or no icons at all. To fix all icons, type this in
the terminal:
Type
in a terminal
Force Resolution
Its been an issue with Kubuntu 10.04 that the resolution doesnt stick after rebooting system. The
workaround for this is to set the resolution everytime you login by adding this program entry into
autostart.
xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1280x1024 (where VGA1 is the name of your display, type xrandr in
terminal to find out)
You need to type this in shell. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to go to shell. It will work even if login doesnt
work. After the desktop manager is stopped, type startx and then press Ctrl+Alt+F7 to go back to
the login screen where you can choose another desktop manager like Gnome and login like normal.
Restore Gnome Desktop
There is a way to reset your Desktop settings back to their defaults in Gnome.
If you don’t have access to your graphical (GUI) desktop to delete these folders in Nautilus or
you’re stuck at the login screen, drop to a terminal by hitting CTRL + ALT + F1, login to your
account, and run this command:
Login and VOILÀ! Just like the first time you ever logged into your Gnome desktop.