Stable Archlinux: Stop overheating your notebook

Stable Archlinux: Stop overheating your notebook: It is getting hotter and hotter and it is necessary to find ways to stay cool in the summer heat. Especially for notebooks....

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Calise Sets The Screen Backlight Based On Ambient Brightness ~ Web Upd8: Ubuntu / Linux blog

webupd8.org - Calise (Camera Light Sensor) is an application that uses your computer's camera as a light sensor for obtaining the ambient brightness and then calculates and sets the correct backlight according t...

more on webupd8.org

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Five reasons I would preffer KDE over Unity

As we all know, Canonical officially has stopped maintaining and funding Kubuntu.

However, this act did not stop the users get install KDE on their Ubuntu (or better, just install Kubuntu). Despite I'm usually a Unity fan, here is how I did choose to install KDE too.

1. Unity window management (eg. Compiz) is a bit slower than Kwin. There is Unity 2D which runs faster in the price of visual effects.

2. The Unity dashes thing starts very slowly for the first time, and I've used it not very often. So it is useless for me. A kind of more traditional menu (like one found in KDE) is more acceptable and usable for me.


3. When in Unity, my favourite video player VLC starts very slowly. The same is with other Qt based apps. In KDE, the Gtk is prelinked and Gtk applications start faster.

4. KDE has very strong software collection (SC) around KDE libs. Unity has not. It even use GNOME control panel and plugs a controlling/setup app into compiz settings manager for customizing things that aren't window management related like launcher icon sizes, launcher animations, launcher edge etc.

5.  Plasma themes are more eye candy than the plain brown to black Unity. And there is a great flexibility and customizability for Plasma. Even there is a special layout for netbooks.

So, here I've described my five reasons why I have switched to KDE and why I found KDE is more reliable than Unity.
And I hope KDE has less bugs than Unity.

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Ubuntu tool for fixing wrong F10 behavior on terminal

I used to get the terminal in my Ubuntu open all the time. There are so many things to do or manage via ter

English: Midnight Commander with default colors in GNOME Terminal on Ubuntu Linux. ‪Norsk (bokmål)‬: Midnight commander. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

minal rather file-manager or some application, like browsing my filesystem, editing config files etc.
And my favorite terminal based app is Midnight Commander.
Unfortunately, there is a strange behavior in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS gnome-terminal - every time I press F10 key  to quit Midnight Commander, it works like it activate right mouse button too and undesired contextual menu appears. Very nasty....

Of course there is a fix for that. And more, there is a tool for fixing that, avoiding messing up with config files and try-error-try cycle.
Here is it:
http://www.ubuntu-apps64.org/F10Fix-2
There is no need to install it. Just download, make it executable and run it. No harm at all. The bundle decompressed itself into /tmp directory and after that it deletes its temporary files by itself.

All you need is Python + Gtk bindings, I think they are installed in Ubuntu by default.
I wrote and publish this small application in hope it will be useful. Try it out and happy 'terminalling'

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An unofficial Gtk# 3.0 build for Ubuntu

Gtk Sharp (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Do you know already Banshee, or Pinta, or (of course) Docky. They are all built with two superb technologies - Mono C# and Gtk binding - so called Gtk#.

Logo of Docky. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I know there were so many disputes about Mono and it's future, but I don't care of. C# is an excellent language and thanks to Mono project it is available for Linux too.


The Gtk 3.0 port was being stuck by some bugs (scrollbars disappears) , but until half of year it is hopefully fixed. This bug probably caused Banshee to delay with it Gtk 3.0 version and have no place in official Ubuntu CD. Never mind.

Just for helping the project, and because I like Mono C# and Gtk#, I have published unofficial Gtk# 3.0 build for Ubuntu for testing purposes.

Polski: Banshee 2 w Ubuntu 11.10 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here is the PPA:
https://launchpad.net/~ameos/+archive/ppa


And you can add it to your Ubuntu with these commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ameos/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gtk-sharp3




Enjoy with testing.

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Ubuntu 12.04 tip: booting to text mode (run level 3) and no X

Ubuntu is usually very stable (especially 12.04 LTS) and can boots on almost every one machine. But sometimes, there are cases when video driver crashed or not detected at all, or something other happened and X fails to start. This is the time you need to boot to text mode or so called run level 3.




Here is how: (warning: non-professional skills required to boot, high level of skills required to fix the things)
Just follow the next simple instructions:
1. reboot your Ubuntu or just power-off and power-on again.

2. In your GRUB boot screen select the first option and press key 'e'. Sometimes, if you have installed Ubuntu alone, there is no GRUB boot screen because there is no boot delay. In this case, you should find the way to edit the /etc/default/grub file and apply the changes.
3. Edit the line starting with linux as shown to the picture by replacing the words quiet splash with text

4. Boot by pressing F10 key

Now your Ubuntu should boots without graphical mode (called X server) and you could enter your username and password on the login screen and start fixing the things, like installing new drivers or something else.

All pictures are grabbed from my fresh Ubuntu 12.04 install on VirtualBox.
That's all. Enjoy.

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Meet SpeedCrunch - Qt based calculator for your needs

I'm a GNOME fan and my primary DE is GNOME or .... perhaps Unity. Recently I tried KDE on my fresh Ubuntu 12.04 and guess what... I really missed gcalc (Gnome calculator). The calculator shipped with KDE is very simple, ugly and has'nt a feature I really appreciate - complex (or not so) math expressions like that: 5 + 32*4 - 12 * (59-1/3)

But soon I found SpeedCrunch - the perfect gcalc replacement. It is very easy to use and even has a feature such a calc-as-you-type. Very convenient, eh! I was really impressed by its syntax highlighting and auto completion. Moreover, it can use variables and has Math book included - just in case you don't remember a formula.

Really cool. Too bad it is not included into Kubuntu by default.
But that is not a problem. You can always install it via command line or apper - just search for package speedcrunch.
 or
sudo apt-get install speedcrunch

The qt-apps page says there will be next version 0.11, currently at alpha

Enjoy.

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Ubuntu performance trick for slow machines

If you have old PC/Laptop or low memory machine and want to install Ubuntu, here is how to increase overall performance. The trick is to install zRam which increase the performance by make use of more ram instead of slow swap disk .

zRam was previously called compcache and create compressed block device in RAM to avoid unnecessary disk paging. This is very useful for low-end computers or devices with flash memories.



zRam is available to install via ppa for Ubuntu 11.04, 11.10 and 12.04 LTS:
Just execute the commands in terminal:


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shnatsel/zram
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install zramswap-enabler

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