Update Time/Time Zone settings

One of the easiest way to edit time/timezone on a linux box is to run timeconfig.

$ sudo /usr/sbin/timeconfig

Or if you want to edit stuff manually, make sure /etc/localtime points to the time zone of your choice:

/etc/locatime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Kolkata

This link gives some good information on how to set it up manually :
http://www.linuxsa.org.au/tips/time.html

Linux Open Source books

A very good collection of linux books:

http://www.dailyartisan.com/news/open-source-e-books-for-linux/

How to set dpi for your system

There's a couple of ways that dpi can be set for the linux system.

Add Options "DPI" "100x100" in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file under device sections.

Section "Device"
.
.
Option "DPI" "100x100
End Section

Set display size in the xorg.conf file under section Monitor. X needs the display size in mm. So if your monitor resolution is 1360x768, then the display width for 100dpi would be 1360*.254 and for length : 768*.254

Section "Monitor"
.
.
Identifier "Monitor0"
DisplaySize 345 195 # 1360x768 100dpi
.
.
End Section

Needless to say the result rocks :)

How to set hostname

A pretty good synopsis on how to set the hostname of your system. I guess it covers all the angles : http://www.cpqlinux.com/hostname.html

Install freetype with byte code interpreter enabled.

This link explains how to install freetyp with byte code interpreter enabled. This is supposed to improve freetype font rendering in linux.
http://cblfs.cross-lfs.org/index.php/FreeType


Edit: I tried this, but it didn't much good as far as I can tell. But I edited the $HOME/.Xdefaults file and added the following:

Xft.antialias: 1
Xft.hinting: 0
Xft.hintstyle: hintnone
Xft.rgba: none

and that seemed to help the general look and feel of fluxbox (running on Slackware 12.1)

Do note that this is when I have connected my laptop to the 20" LG LCD HDTV. On native LCD screen the rendering is beautiful, much better than the way vista was rendered.

Optimize Slackware installation

I finally gave up trying to get my laptop connected to my LCD HDTV. The graphic was just not setting the resolution to that of the LCD TV, rathet or it stuck to the native resolution of the laptop. Wonder whether it is some BIOS setting that I have to change ?
Anyway I guess I will leave that for now. I chanced on a site that gives some good info about optimizing the Slackware installation.
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/~dugan/setting-up-slackware.html

Slackware 12.0

I finally chucked Ubuntu and installed Slackware 12.0. I had tried this like around 6 months back and couldn't get my wireless working, but this time I was kind of determined ;) ! And actually it was much easier this time.

Last time I couldn't get my wireless working coz no ipw2200 driver nor the firmware for the card was available. But in the lates edition Pat had included the ipw2200 drivers, i just needed to install the firmware and then the wpa_supplicant package so that I can acess WPA encrypted networks.

It wasn't too difficult. Worked everything out and finally had to modify the rc.inet1.conf, rc.inet1, rc.wireless.conf and rc.wireless scripts. Reboot and everything worked with out hitch. Only problem is that if I don't have wireless config for the network I'm about to connect to during boot, boot up could take a long time. Will tinker with that later.

My main grouse right now is that I have connected the laptop to an LCD HD TV (a 20" ), but the card does not seem to recognize the LCD Monitor resolution even though the laptop lcd screen has been shutdown. Tried tweaking the xorg.conf so that only one screen and one resolution is detected, it still did not work. A possible issue could be that the Video BIOS is enforcin the native resolution it recognises. Have to check if there is someway to override that.