GeowebInfo » Tips

Get a clean desktop on Ubuntu

Sriharsha Vankadara — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:44:38 +0000

Be it GNOME or KDE, most Linux power users prefer to have their desktops slick and geeky with screenlets, gadgets, docks or conky. But I on the other hand (cannot call myself a power user) like to keep my Ubuntu desktop clean without any visual clutter by preventing nautilus from drawing icons. It is only then I believe the true beauty of a wallpaper can be relished.

To treat yourself with a clean desktop, bring up the run application dialog with Alt + F2.

Type gconf-editor to invoke the GNOME configuration editor. Navigate to the key /apps/nautilus/preferences and scroll down to the key show_desktop. Uncheck the box next to the key under the value column.

P.S. : Right-clicking on the desktop is disabled with this setting

Unzip multiple zip files using Shell script

Sriharsha Vankadara — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:40:00 +0000

For the Linux newbie from a noob

Scenario: You have quite a large number of zip files in a folder with other files and would like to avoid manual labor of extracting one file at a time.

The below graphic is the result of extracting an e-book downloaded from the web in compressed format.

Solution: A simple shell script to extract all files at one go.

Save the script with a .sh extension and make sure it resides in the same directory as the compressed files.

Fire up the terminal, cd to the target directory and execute the script using ./xxxx.sh

P.S.: Has been successfully tested on Ubuntu

MS Word Subscript Shortcut

Sriharsha Vankadara — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:27:00 +0000

Being a master’s student, I always have something to do with Microsoft Word. Be it assignments, lab results or project reports not a week goes by without having to use winword in the run dialog.

It gets even worse when I am forced to type in lines of equations having subscripts and superscripts. Its a nightmare to go through the long process of right-clicking for a context menu, then selecting the Font menu item that brings up a dialog and then requires you to check the Subscript option of the many other effects (Note: The process repeats to get the cursor back to normal font style). All this just for a few alphabets or numbers can definitely be agitating especially when its right before submission time.

So, here’s a nifty keyboard shortcut for the subscript effect – Ctrl+=
(keep the control key pressed and click the equal key to toggle between modes)

I hope there is something for the superscript too…

Open .rar files using Archive Manager in Ubuntu

Sriharsha Vankadara — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 21:14:00 +0000

The “Archive Manager” that is built into Ubuntu (Ubuntu is the only Linux distro that I have tried so far) to handle archive formats has no native support for the .rar format.

Try opening a .rar file with the Archive Manager and you are presented with an error.

Fixing this problem requires installation of an unarchiver for .rar files. This is readily available in the repositories in two packages – unrar and unrar-free. The unrar package is from RARLAB and the unrar-free is from Gna! which is the free software version of the non-free unrar utility.

Fire up the terminal and issue the command
sudo apt-get install unrar-free

Once the package is installed, Archive Manager should now be able to extract files with the .rar extension.

Fix VLC’s problem playing audio in .avi files on Ubuntu

Sriharsha Vankadara — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 17:23:00 +0000

I am a movie buff and prefer downloading my movies rather than watching online. I am also particular about downloading only .avi files, as they are the most common and usually have the best prints.

Off late, I’ve been trying to do all my computer related work in Ubuntu, trying to avoid Windows to the possible extent, including watching movies. VLC is what I use on Windows, because of its ability to play a wide range of formats and ease of use. As VLC has a Linux version too, I decided to stick with it in Ubuntu as well.

Problem:

All my movies of the .avi format do play in VLC with excellent video quality but without an audio output. To fix this issue, all that was required was a simple change in the output module of the audio settings.

To open VLC Media Player:

Applications -> Sound & Video -> VLC media player

Note: In my case, the audio output module was set to default, which I think is the reason for lack of audio playback. Make sure you have also plugin for vlc installed before changing the settings.

To install Alsa plugin for VLC:

At the terminal: sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-alsa

Change the settings:

Once you have VLC opened, go to Settings -> Preferences

Expland the audio section of the settings and you’ll find three sub-sections Filters, Output modules and Visualizations.

Output Modules is what we are concerned with. Click this section and make sure the Advanced Options checkbox is selected in the bottom right of the Preferences window.

Fix it:

Change the audio output module (if set to default) to ALSA audio output. Save the settings, close VLC and restart the application. And that’s it, pretty simple huh…