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Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (11.04) dash (or launcher) by default is tied to super key (Windows key on most keyboards). This default configuration is good for most situation but can interfere with some applications notably VirtualBox. As most things in Linux land, this can be modified. And of course this can be done in various ways. To make it easier for non-Linux/Ubuntu guru we will try to do this via CompizConfig Settings Manager ( ccsm  as this is the name of the python script). Unfortunately this is not installed by default but this is so easy in Ubuntu. Again this can be done in various way but will try to do this in Ubuntu Software Center .  In Software Center search box type ccsm . Select Advanced Desktop Effects Settings  then follow instructions to install it. Now run ccsm (using console/terminal or using dash ). Select Desktop category then select Ubuntu Unity Plugin . Figure 1. Ubuntu Unity Plugin In Ubuntu Unity Plugin, change Key to show the launcher to desired key

I own an Asus Eee PC 900 (Intel Celeron M processor 900MHz). Of course you can only do so much with this machine so having an optimized OS does help a lot. Just recently I have replaced my OS/Linux distro with Puppeee (Linux 2.6.35.7celeron). This distro does feel light and fast. It comes with what you would expect from a descent distribution. The default web browser is Midori 0.2.9 (based on WebKit) which works okay. Unfortunately it does not work well with Pandora. It maybe because Pandora requires Flash support which I am not sure if Midori is configured in Puppeee to work with the plugin. I have used Pandora with Google Chrome so I was hoping that it might work with that browser. Installing Chrome is quite straightforward in Puppeee. First, download the latest from  http://puppeee.com/files/distsfs/ , I picked chrome-10.sfs  using Mindori. Once done, click Puppy menu -> System -> Control Panel . Select Software tab, then SFS-Loader load squash files . Browse to where you s

Say, you have a USB thumb drive that you want to donate or give to a friend and you want to ensure that nothings left that might embarrass you, don't worry my friend. As always in the Linux/Unix land there is a tool for that. So to wipe clean a USB drive, do: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc "/dev/zero" is a special file  that provides a stream of null characters. "/dev/sdc" is the USB thumb drive. dd is a low level system utility used to copy raw data from a source to a destination. Source being a stream of zeros and destination the thumb drive. So, we just wiped clean our storage media. Note that this is applicable to most storage devices, so be careful. ~ts

Generally, Windows machine's host name to IP resolution is managed by NetBIOS. This is specially true for machines in a workgroup environment. There are cases where the NetBIOS name resolution on the local machine can get out of sync against other machines IP address and host name. This can happen when the machine has been  turned off for a few hours and  the IP getting reused. Since file sharing and any other network related activities in Windows commonly uses host name then this can get problematic if you need to access network shares. Now to fix this out of sync scenario, run the following command: nbtstat -R This should clear the local name to IP cache.

When I installed openSUSE, the installer assigned a seemingly random name to the machine. As is the case with Linux there are many ways to do it. It can be changed graphically in openSUSE. To do so click on kicker  ( ), then select Computer  ( ), finally click on YAST ( ). Running YAST requires root (administrative) password, so for this screen supply your root password. Figure 1. Enter root password. Once root password is entered you should see this screen.  Figure 2. YaST Control Center Now click on Network Devices then Network Settings .From Network Settings, select Hostname/DNS tab. Figure 3. YaST2 Network Settings Supply new value for the hostname field, click on OK and you are done.

I am using OpenSUSE 11.3 with KDE 4.4. I changed hostname of the machine and noticed that the menus of KDE goes blank. The icons are still there and I can still see the description when I hover over the icons. Removing /home/.kde4 (or better yet backup the folder) and a reboot fixed it. Is it the right way of doing it? I don't know but I am back to business. Of course my customization where all gone.

There are many ways to do this. One way of would be open up konsole, then do: kwrite --version Kwrite is one of the default applications the comes with KDE. This should show something like: Qt: 4.6.3 KDE Development Platform: 4.4.4 (KDE 4.4.4) "release 3" KWrite: 4.4.4 (KDE 4.4.4) "release 2

Fedora 14 does not include Adobe flash player in their repository as it is non-free. To install the plugin for Firefox, Mozilla or SeaMonkey you have to do it manually. To do this go to http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ , select YUM for Linux. Download this to a convenient location, by default  this goes to /home/[user]/Downloads if you are using Firefox. Open a console and do: cd ~/Downloads su -c 'rpm -ivh adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm' What we have just done is install the repositories file, if you check /etc/yum.repos.d, you should see adobe-linux-i386.repo. This allows Fedora update manager to automatically update our copy of flash player should new version is available. To complete this part we have to import GPG key, thus say: su -c 'rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux' Now to install the plugin do: su -c 'yum install nspluginwrapper alsa-plugins-pulseaudio flash-plugin' You can check if the plugin is working by hitting th

Fedora 14 was released last Nov 2, 2010, awfully long time ago in the Linux world. Anyway, I am just documenting here how it looks like installing Fedora 14 in VirtualBox. I have done this for the top 5 distributions and I am gonna do this for Fedora again. In terms of the installation screens, nothing much that meets the eye. I have no doubt that internally much has changed. Anyway, what follows are the screen capture while I was installing Fedora 14. As usual, you can use the images as you see fit, no need for permission. Figure 1. Boot splash Figure 2. Live installer login screen Figure 3. Live installer desktop Figure 4. Installer first screen Figure 5. Keyboard Selection Figure 6. Initialize disk Figure 7. Set machine hostname Figure 8. Storage Type Figure 8a. Figure 9. Root password Figure 10. Storage allocation Figure 11. Timezone selection Figure 12. Installation complete Figure 13. Welcome screen Figure 14. License Information Figure 15. Creat

Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Alpha 2 was released last February 3, 2011. I have it installed on VirtualBox 4.0.2 with Windows 7 Professional as the host. Installation was smooth and uneventful. But installing VirtualBox guest addition that comes with the default installer seems like incompatible with Ubuntu Natty Alpha 2. Here is what I got when I tried to install: Warning: unsupported pre-release of X.org Server Installed It seems like some changes has to be done before it will work with this version of Ubuntu. But since VirtualBox does have an open source version of the guest additions, this can be used instead of the stock version. To do this, you have to: apt-get update apt-get upgrade apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest-utils apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest-x11 Reboot and enjoy Ubuntu Alpha 2!!!! Updates: [23March2011]: Since 21March2011, Guest Additions that comes with VirtualBox 4.0.4 does not work anymore. Updated my copy today and installed the above packages and it sav