When you first switch from Windows or OSX to Linux, one of the things you’ll probably first notice (especially if you’re using a laptop) is that it can run considerably hotter than the alternatives. There are a few things you can do to remedy this, however. The following software packages help you keep track [...]]]>

When you first switch from Windows or OSX to Linux, one of the things you’ll probably first notice (especially if you’re using a laptop) is that it can run considerably hotter than the alternatives. There are a few things you can do to remedy this, however. The following software packages help you keep track of and cool down your laptop/netbook, how much will depend per machine but my HP Pavilion dm1 goes from around 60-70degrees without these tools installed to around 50-60degrees and the same goes for my older Acer Travelmate which dropped from 70-80degrees to 60-70degrees. Hopefully this information will help you shave off 10degrees from your laptop, making it cooler, easier to use and hopefully extending its life a little too!

lm-sensors

First thing that you’re going to want to do is be able to see what the temperature readings of the components (that have temperature sensors) inside your computer/laptop. This can be done by installing lm-sensors:

Now you’ll want to run the script which probes all the possible sensors in your laptop:

You’ll be asked if you want to scan for sensors and what not, follow the on-screen instructions, mostly just pressing enter, if YES is written in capitals this is the default answer and it will scan. After several times it’ll ask you if you want to save the changes, make sure you do and then you’re done.

Now you can see the temperature the sensors are reading by using the following command:

cpufreq

cpufreq is a utility which scales the frequency of the CPU, either by monitoring the systems status (if it needs more, it’ll get more) or by user controlled settings. This essentially underclocks the CPU while it isn’t in use, reducing power usage and thus heat.

Installation:

The best choice would be to set cpufreq to on-demand (default) or to power-saving. Alternatively, if you’re using a laptop or netbook let jupiter take care of it for you:

jupiter

Jupiter is a light weight power and hardware control applet for Linux. It is designed to improve battery life of a portable Linux computer by integrating with the operating system and changing parameters of the computer based on battery or powered connection.

Additionally, Jupiter provides quick access to some of the commonly needed hardware controls like screen output and resolution, WIFI, and bluetooth.

If you use Linux on a portable computer, let Jupiter take the effort out of going mobile.

By using this to intelligently control the CPU frequency when on battery and AC along with the tuning to the kernel and hardware, it can make a huge difference to the temperature expelled by your laptop.

Ubuntu 11:10 installation instructions: here

Graphics Card Drivers

If you have a dedicated graphics card in your laptop, you’ll also be better off installing the proprietary graphics drivers provided by the hardware vendor. While the open source ones do an awesome job of getting the card to work, more often than not they don’t include any control over the frequency scaling and keep the card running at max, along with all those other little features the card has, they’ll probably all always be running.

Nvidia : Link
ATI/AMD : Link

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/

The folders correspond to kernel versions and should also include the ubuntu version, for example I chose to update 11.10 (oneiric) from “3.0.0-14-generic” to “3.1.4″, this was in a directory called “v3.1.4-oneiric/“.

linux-headers-*_all.deb

It’s been a while since I bothered, the reason being it’s always seemed like an un-worthwhile struggle to get it working but either things changed or I was doing something to overcomplicate the process but it’s actually pretty simple to get surround sound up and running on your Linux machine. Now, I’m not going [...]]]>

It’s been a while since I bothered, the reason being it’s always seemed like an un-worthwhile struggle to get it working but either things changed or I was doing something to overcomplicate the process but it’s actually pretty simple to get surround sound up and running on your Linux machine. Now, I’m not going to go in to how to install the drivers for your specific sound card, because there are so many and I don’t have them all and most times on most popular distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, OpenSuse etc) you’re going to notice that the sound card is actually already supported. What I will be doing is showing you how easy it was to get my 5.1′s set up (and the same will be said for 7.1′s).

Step 1:

First off you’re going to want to edit the pulseaudio configuration file to add the number of speakers you’re using, it’s default is set to 2.

Near the bottom of the file, there will be a line which looks like this:

;default-sample-channels = 2

The semi-colon is a comment, so this line isn’t actually doing anything unless you remove that. I would suggest leaving that line alone and adding a new line at the bottom:

default-sample-channels = 6

If you’re using 5.1′s the number of channels will be 6, 7.1′s will be 8 and I think you get where I’m going with this? So in this example, I’m using 5.1′s.

Now save and close that file. You’ll need to reboot your system now too, so that these changes will take effect.

Step 2:

So you’re back? Good..

Now you’re going to want to open up the Sound Preferences, usually you can do this by clicking on the little sound icon in your panel, or System > Preference > Sounds from the menu.

From here, you’ll want to click on the Hardware tab. Near the bottom it’ll say Profile: with a drop down box next to it. Here you can select the type of set up you have, as you can see in the screenshot I have an “Analogue Surround 5.1 Output”, yours might be different and that’s cool and if you don’t know feel free to try a few out. Next to that drop down box is a button which says “Test Speakers”, this didn’t work for me so I have to use an online test but give it a try as it might work!

That’s it, you should be done!

After installing Ubuntu on a USB stick with the Ubuntu USB Startup Disk Creator (usb-creator-gtk) you might encounter an error such as the following:

This is actually a bug with the software and isn’t anything you’ve done wrong. It [...]]]>

After installing Ubuntu on a USB stick with the Ubuntu USB Startup Disk Creator (usb-creator-gtk) you might encounter an error such as the following:

This is actually a bug with the software and isn’t anything you’ve done wrong. It seems to be a bug that’s effecting users running Karmic, Lucid, Maverick and Natty so it’s a pretty wide spread issue.

The best way I have found to get around this issue is to install and run unetbootin to create live USBs. If you’re using linux it should be found in the usual place you can install things.

Installation:

Ubuntu/LinuxMint/Debian:

Fedora/OpenSuse:

Create a live USB:

To install a distro it’s pretty simple, either select it from the “Distribution” option and pick a distribution and version, UNetbootin will then actually download it and install it for you. Alternatively you can pick an Diskimage and browse for the ISO file you download (and would usually burn to a CD/DVD) and install from that. Select the USB Drive at the bottom and hit ok and it’ll install a bootloader, the system and you’ll be up and running in no time.

Persistence File:

If you wanted a persistence install which allows you to save files, settings and installed programs you’ll have to do a little manual work as it currently doesn’t support that option.

Go to http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/diskimg/ and download one of the files (128mb.zip, 256mb.zip, or 512mb.zip) corresponding to the amount of persistent space you want (make sure the size of the persistent disk image is smaller than the free space you have on your USB drive).

You’ll then need to edit the syslinux.cfg file that was created by UNetbootin in the root of the directory (just open it with a text editor) you should see something similar to the following:

label unetbootindefault
menu label Default
kernel /ubnkern
append initrd=/ubninit file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper quiet splash –

So on the line that starts “appen initrd=” you’ll want to add the option of “persistent”, it should then look like the following:

NOTE: WordPress changes my double dash at the end of the last line to a single long dash, this won’t work. It’s easiest just to add the final word before the double dash in the file, do not copy and paste this in to your file. If you do, you will get more errors.

label unetbootindefault
menu label Default
kernel /ubnkern
append initrd=/ubninit file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper quiet splash persistent –

I added this line to all that used the “file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed” option, since that’s the image that’s being opened and it should then change all options on the bootloader that will load the ubuntu install.

I have a TV and my monitor connected to my PC by a VGA switch box but what’s annoying is they aren’t the same resolution. This causes problems because I can’t see what I’m doing when I have switched to TV and usually have to leave the setting manager open so that when I [...]]]>

I have a TV and my monitor connected to my PC by a VGA switch box but what’s annoying is they aren’t the same resolution. This causes problems because I can’t see what I’m doing when I have switched to TV and usually have to leave the setting manager open so that when I change between them I just have to hit return and the resolution changes. That’s great and all but it’s far more effort than I want for something I do fairly often.

My plan was initially to create two xorg.conf files and switch between them using a script, I figured this would be the easiest way even though I haven’t messed around with xorg stuff for a few years ever since things just started working better in Linux. Turns out I couldn’t even find where they keep the xorg.conf file, it sure isn’t in /etc/X11 where it was the last time I looked..

On the search for this file though I came across another useful tool called xrandr, which essentially allows you to change the resolution from the command line.

Xrandr is used to set the size, orientation and/or reflection of the outputs for a
screen. It can also set the screen size.

If invoked without any option, it will dump the state of the outputs, showing the
existing modes for each of them, with a ‘+’ after the preferred mode and a ‘*’
after the current mode.

There are a few global options. Other options modify the last output that is spec‐
ified in earlier parameters in the command line. Multiple outputs may be modified
at the same time by passing multiple –output options followed immediately by
their corresponding modifying options.

For more information on xrandr check out the manual page (or type man xrandr in terminal).

It turns out it’s an extremely easy tool to use, with a command as simple as the following changing the resolution:

So the next thing I did was create the following script which allows the resolution to switch between 1440×900 and 1360×768 (my monitor and my TV native resolutions).

This script simply checks what the current resolution is being used and then toggles between the two set resolutions.

Okay so, with Google Plus just being released to a select few (and invites) you might be wanting to export all your Facebook photos, tagged and albums you’ve uploaded to Google+. There are several ways of going about this, a few webapps, apps and through Facebook itself, the problem is that most of these [...]]]>

Okay so, with Google Plus just being released to a select few (and invites) you might be wanting to export all your Facebook photos, tagged and albums you’ve uploaded to Google+. There are several ways of going about this, a few webapps, apps and through Facebook itself, the problem is that most of these don’t work in Linux making it a little more tricky to do without switching to Windows or OSX or borrowing some ones laptop for a while.

Through Facebook Route:

This way is actually pretty easy, which came as a surprise to me since I would have though it be in Facebooks best interest to keep users there just because it’s too much hassle to change.

First head over to Facebook.com, login and make your way through the labrynth that is Facebook settings to
‘Account Settings’ > Next to ‘Download Your Information’ click ‘Learn more’ > click ‘Download’.

This way you’re going to have to wait for Facebook to process all your data, they’ll then send you an e-mail once it’s done to a download link. This is a compressed (ZIP) file which contains all your information from Facebook, in the Photos folder you’ll find all your pictures which can then be uploaded to Google Plus.

The problem with this way is that it can take a reasonable amount of time (a couple of days depending on how much information you have..) and I’ve had it fail on a couple of occasions.

Alternatively you can use the following:

The PhotoGrabber Option:

For this you’ll need a couple of dependencies installed, it’s a desktop app that downloads the files for you.

Install dependencies:

Install PhotoGrabber:

Once you’ve ran all that and the ./pg.py bit it should load up with the following:

Click Login and then proceed to login and allow PhotoGrabber to do its thing, once you’ve done that you’ll get to a screen similar to below with a code:

Copy and paste that into the PhotoGrabber window (you’ll need to use Ctrl+V no right click to paste) and then it’ll let you choose which photos to take. Once you’ve picked, hit Download and watch them download to the folder you specify. There’ll be a lot folders, one for each place you were tagged. Once it’s done you can upload them however you want to Google Plus otherwise just keep them.

After installing Steam on my linux machine in wine I noticed a really annoy bug, the windows of steam are tiled across my screen as shown in the screenshot below.

I managed to fix this by opening up the ‘Configure Wine’ program that comes with wine and under the Applications tab switching from [...]]]>

After installing Steam on my linux machine in wine I noticed a really annoy bug, the windows of steam are tiled across my screen as shown in the screenshot below.

Fix:

I managed to fix this by opening up the ‘Configure Wine’ program that comes with wine and under the Applications tab switching from Windows XP mode to Windows 7, this fixed this bug and I now also have system borders on the steam windows.

Installing Wine:

If you’re interested in getting steam installed I used this guide - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuMagazine/HowTo/InstallingSteam – It’s pretty simple and only takes a few minutes to do. Below is a quick, simple breakdown of what that guide says to do.

Download wine:

Download the steam installer from here:

http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php

Copy over the tahoma.ttf font from a Windows install (or Download it here – http://source.winehq.org/source/fonts/tahoma.ttf ). Do this command from the folder you downloaded the font to.

(If it doesn’t work and says the folder is missing or somthing like that do the following and then re-do the cp)

Finally install Steam (Do this command in the directory you downloaded the Steam installer to):

This Tutorial is just a documentation of how I flashed my Samsung Galaxy S (I9000) using heimdall with Darky’s Rom v10.1, follow the steps at your own risk. I am in no way liable for any damage caused to your phone following these steps. I would advise reading up on flashing before proceeding along [...]]]>

This Tutorial is just a documentation of how I flashed my Samsung Galaxy S (I9000) using heimdall with Darky’s Rom v10.1, follow the steps at your own risk. I am in no way liable for any damage caused to your phone following these steps. I would advise reading up on flashing before proceeding along with pre-reading the guide first.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, you should probably not do it.

For more information, help and most anything check out xdadevelopers forum and DarkysRom.com

This guide is using a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.04 on a memory stick, I was unable to get heimdall installed on Fedora 15 or Ubuntu 10.04.
For this guide I will use Darkys Rom v10.1, however it should work for all ROMs that come with the correct files, as shown below.

Installing Heimdall

First install the Qt Gui libraries:

Once that’s installed head over to the heimdall website and download heimdall and the frontend for it, here I went for version 1.1.1 as the latest version (as of writing this guide 1.2.0 does not have a frontend).

Here simply download the .deb file and run it once it’s downloaded, you should be able to install them no problem.

(direct links for the version used in this guide)
Heimdall – https://github.com/downloads/Benjamin-Dobell/Heimdall/heimdall_1.1.1-1_i386.deb
Heimdall-frontend – https://github.com/downloads/Benjamin-Dobell/Heimdall/heimdall-frontend_1.1.1-1_i386.deb

Getting The Files

Download the ROM you wish to flash your phone with, for example download Darky’s Ressurection v10.1.

Extract Darky_Resurrection_10.1_i9000.zip
Inside also extract Darky_Resurrection_10.1.tar

You should have the following files:

Darky_Resurrection_10.1_i9000 (folder)

• Darky_Resurrection_10.1 (folder)
  • boot.bin
  • cache.rfs
  • dbdata.rfs
  • factoryfs.rfs
  • modem.bin
  • param.lfs
  • Sbl.bin
  • zImage
• Odin3 v1.3,exe
• Odin3 v1.7.exe
• s1_odin_20100512.pit

Preparing Your Phone

Make sure you have full battery and disabled all lagfixes.

Flashing The Phone

Press Alt+F2 and then type “heimdall-frontend” and hit enter.

Add the files to the correct heidmall options as so:

Repartition

PIT : s1_odin_20100512.pit

PDA/Code

FactoryFS : factoryfs.rfs
Kernel(zImage) : zImage
Param.lfs : param.lfs
Primary BootLoader : boot.bin
Secondary Bootloader : Sbl.bin

CSC

Cache : cache.rfs
Database Data : dbdata.rfs

Other

Modem : modem.bin
Recovery : –

Finally put your phone into download mode.

Once your phone is in downloadd mode, make sure it’s connected via USB and then press start on Heimdall.

After a few minutes your Heimdall will say Finished. Boom you’re done. Just wait for your phone to finish doing whatever it’s doing and you should end up back at the home screen soon enough.

Upon testing my GitHub setup on my home computer I got the following error after inputting this:

Returned:

You’ll need to run:

Make sure to enter the passphrase for the ssh key you generated.

In GNOME 3 it seems that the keyboard shortcut to delete a file in Nautilus is actually Ctrl+Delete, this is fine I guess if it’s trying to stop people accidentally deleting files or something but it’s pretty annoying.

To change the keyboard shortcut from Ctrl+Delete back to the usual Delete do the following:

Open [...]]]>

In GNOME 3 it seems that the keyboard shortcut to delete a file in Nautilus is actually Ctrl+Delete, this is fine I guess if it’s trying to stop people accidentally deleting files or something but it’s pretty annoying.

To change the keyboard shortcut from Ctrl+Delete back to the usual Delete do the following:

Open a terminal and type:

If you don’t have it, install it the usual way.

In the application that just opened, on the sidebar click:

And check the box entitled: can-change-accels.

Now, leave this window open and open up Nautilus.

Select a file that you want deleting and then click on Edit in the Nautilus menu, hover over the Move To Trash button and here press the button you wish to assign to the action, so for example Delete. You may have to press it twice (the first time it will remove the old key-binding and the second will assign it the new one.)

Go back to dconf-editor and uncheck the can-change-accels option to stop any other keyboard shortcuts being changed and you’re all done!