Reset gnome-panel defaults

gconftool –recursive-unset /apps/panel

rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel

pkill gnome-panel

Read Full Post »

Automatically turn off Compiz when running a program

Phrank deserves an award for coming up with this hack.  NoCompiz uses Compiz-switch, a simple program that turns Compiz off if it is on and vice-versa.
NoCompiz will take one input – the name of a program – Turn off Compiz, run the program, then turn Compiz back on when the program exits.
This is very useful when you’re running Compiz all the time, but want to switch to a full-screen 3D game for awhile and not have to worry about Compiz messing with the game.

Just download noCompiz, unzip, and run the Install.sh installer from within Nautilus.
Download NoCompiz

edit the menu entry of the programme you want to toggle.

eg, nocompiz kdenlive

Read Full Post »

Speedier apt-get with apt-fast

Matt Parnell has an interesting method of speeding up his apt-get downloads by utilising the axel downloader.

A shell  script appropriately called apt-fast is available from the link above.

Here is what Matt has to say about the project:

The apt-fast script I have created is a little shellscript that increases the speed of apt-get by many times. You need to have the axel download accelerator installed, which is a simple, short process, but everything else is extremely straight forward. I started out downloading the upgrades for Kubuntu, at 32kb/s. Not terrible, but not that great. When I was done with the script here, I was getting up to ~850kb/s. That is great, huh?

To do this, you first need to download and install the axel download accelerator. It is really a good drop-in replacement for wget, as it is bash based. Once installed, we are ready to setup apt-fast. On K/Ubuntu apt-get install axel should do it.

Then, either find a package somewhere (or install it from a repo if one of them has it), or just download the latest apt-fast source from the link mentioned at the top of this post. Then, just place the script somewhere (/usr/bin or /usr/sbin is ideal), rename it to apt-fast (without the .sh extension), and sudo chmod +x apt-fast.

Once done, just use it like apt-get. To install a single package, make sure your database is up to date (apt-fast update), and run apt-fast install packagenamehere. Watch it download with incredible speed, and install your requested packages. To upgrade or dist-upgrade, do the same thing. Just use apt-fast dist-upgrade or apt-fast upgrade. That’s all there is to it!

Should your download stall for any number of reasons, you’ll need to do an apt-fast clean.

U8UNTU eLXR

Read Full Post »

How to force-overwrite virtually anything.

Getting into one of these situations is not uncommon. Sometimes packages aren’t packaged properly and you end up with a broken package which refuses to fix itself.

If you try:

sudo apt-get -f install

You will get a message like this:

Unpacking replacement vlc …
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/vlc_1.1.0-1ubuntu1_i386.deb (–unpack):
trying to overwrite ‘/usr/lib/vlc/plugins/access/libxcb_screen_plugin.so’, which is also in package vlc-nox 1.1.0-1~ppa1~maverick
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Preparing to replace vlc-nox 1.1.0-1~ppa1~maverick (using …/vlc-nox_1.1.0-1ubuntu1_i386.deb) …
Unpacking replacement vlc-nox …
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/vlc-nox_1.1.0-1ubuntu1_i386.deb (–unpack):
trying to overwrite ‘/usr/lib/vlc/lua/playlist/anevia_streams.luac’, which is also in package vlc 1.1.0-1~ppa1~maverick
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/vlc_1.1.0-1ubuntu1_i386.deb
/var/cache/apt/archives/vlc-nox_1.1.0-1ubuntu1_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

For reasons why this happens see point 7.6.1 from the debian policy manual

The fix for the problem is pretty easy if you know what to do:

sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite <filename>

eg. sudo dpkg -i –force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/vlc-nox_1.1.0-1ubuntu1_i386.deb

THANKS www.absolutelytech.com

Read Full Post »

CLIcompanion and Cheatsheet

Although U8UNTU eLXR’s much vaunted migration to Blogetery.Com appears to have run aground, with the site disappearing off the Bermuda Triangle — word only now reaches us about the server getting impounded by authorities for copyright violations related to free and open source software — we can still report about two amazing command line / console apps. Both fit the bill for “wish I had this when I started out” with the new fangled Ubuntu craze featuring. Return to the Command Line by the Open Source Kid.

CLIcompanion

You can get CLIcompanion by running the following command in a Terminal:

bzr branch lp:~duanedesign/+junk/clicompanion

Move the .clicompanion file found in the clicompanion directory into your $HOME. You may need to select View –> Show hidden files (Ctrl +H) to see the .clicompanion file.
After moving the file return to the Terminal and run the following to move into the clicompanion directory:

cd clicompanion/

Start the application with the command:

python clicompanion.0.0.7.py

THANKS okiebuntu

2. Cheatsheet

A console app which pretty much does the same thing, but from the command line.

You can get the cheatsheet code with the command:

bzr branch lp:cheatsheet

then move into the directory
cd cheatsheet/
Make the file executable:
chmod +x cheatsheet.py
Then move it to one of your $PATH directories. You can view these with the command: echo $PATH
I chose /usr/local/bin/ for the next command
Move the file with the command:
sudo cp cheatsheet.py /usr/local/bin/cheat
Then from a Terminal you can view the command usage by running:
cheat –help

Read Full Post »

Record Net Radio with Mplayer

Step 1: Download the playlist of your choice, say for instance you choose groovesalad, then the saved file on ur local disk will be groovesalad.pls.

Open a terminal and then change the file type to .txt.

 mv groovesalad.pls groovesalad.txt

Step 2: Install the awesome MPlayer and u can play the file from the terminal!

The command is as follows:

  mplayer -playlist groovesald.txt

Step 3: Downloading the entire stream silently

Again you can do it with MPlayer.

Here is the command:

mplayer -playlist groovesalad.txt -ao pcm:file=mystream.wav -vc dummy -vo null

You can use any file name you want, not mystream.wav necessarily!

If you observe the file mystream.wav, it will constantly get updated runtime! You can use it as long as you want, that of course is dependent on your disk size. If you wanna stop the download, use the break key CTRL+C to stop the process in the terminal.

Step 4: Install lame mp3 encoder and execute this command:

lame mytream.wav filename.mp3

There you have it! The entire stream you can carry on your ipod and listen mobile! The aforementioned method works for any playlist based internet radio! Most streams from shoutcast can also be recorded this way! I have simply broken down the steps accordingly, but you can also write a small shell script that is nothin more than a combination of the commands to execute the same in a single step. It’s pretty easy to do that!

THANKS: Skinwalker

Read Full Post »

“Raising Elephants” mnemonic device

A common idiom to perform a safe reboot of a Linux computer which has otherwise locked up, using the magic Alt-SysRq-R-E-I-S-U-B key combination is the QWERTY (or AZERTY) mnemonic “Raising Elephants Is So Utterly Boring”, “Reboot Even If System Utterly Broken” or simply remembering the word “BUSIER” backwards, is often useful. It stands for

unRaw      (take control of keyboard back from X),
 tErminate (send SIGTERM to all processes, allowing them to terminate gracefully),
 kIll      (send SIGKILL to all processes, forcing them to terminate immediately),
  Sync     (flush data to disk),
  Unmount  (remount all filesystems read-only),
reBoot.

This can prevent a fsck being required on reboot and gives some programs a chance to save emergency backups of unsaved work.

In practice, each command may require a few seconds to complete, especially if feedback is unavailable from the screen due to a freeze or display corruption. For example, sending SIGKILL to processes which have not yet finished terminating can cause data loss.

Alt-SysRq-R-E-I-S-U-B

FROM Wikipedia

Read Full Post »

Reset system wide cursor theme

If you installed KDE in ubuntu (GNOME based), you may have noticed that when you log back into GNOME, you keep the KDE cursor theme.

To fix this, use update-alternatives like so:

0025|z@zentury ~$ sudo update-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme
There are 7 choices for the alternative x-cursor-theme (providing /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme).

  Selection    Path                                     Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /etc/X11/cursors/oxy-white.theme          50        auto mode
  1            /etc/X11/cursors/core.theme               30        manual mode
  2            /etc/X11/cursors/handhelds.theme          20        manual mode
  3            /etc/X11/cursors/oxy-white.theme          50        manual mode
  4            /etc/X11/cursors/redglass.theme           20        manual mode
  5            /etc/X11/cursors/whiteglass.theme         20        manual mode
  6            /usr/share/icons/DMZ-Black/cursor.theme   30        manual mode
  7            /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White/cursor.theme   50        manual mode

Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:

press “7″ for the default

FROM: Do Know Evil

Read Full Post »

Adesk, turns video into wallpaper

Adesk is the real deal if you want a video wallpaper interface.

Download from here.

Instructions

1:INSTALL ZENITY & MPLAYER & UNRAR & RAR
apt-get install zenity mplayer unrar rar

2:DECOMPRESS a-desk
unrar adesk-0.17.tar.gz

3:INSTALL XWINWRAP
Enter the a-desk folder and execute xwinwrapcvs.deb or xwinwrap64.deb (2 clicks or execute by terminal by -> dpkg -i xwinwrapcvs.deb or xwinwrap64.deb

4:EXECUTE A-DESK.INSTALLER
Click on “a-desk-installer” and run

If you have some time, check out a great tutorial from the Khattam blog.

Plus another interesting  package with script.

Read Full Post »

So much nicer with ionice

Use ionice to give different processes more priority on reading and writing to your file system. A good example is the Transmission torrent client, which I prefer to run in the background most of the time. You have to get the Process ID (PID) by using the System Monitor, which can be ran from the Administration menu or by pressing ALT+F2 gnome-system-monitor. Go to the process list and find the name of the program (transmission in this example), copy the PID, and then press ALT+F2 gksudo ionice -c 3 -p 1234 where 1234 is instead the PID. I used 3 here to make it use Idle scheduling, but you can use 1, 2, and 3 for varying degrees. See man ionice for how that works in detail.

from: http://santiance.com/tag/ubuntu/

Read Full Post »