The Penguin Trail

Do not match hidden files during autocompletion

2009-04-10T01:33:00.003-04:00

In bash, if you do not want to see hidden files while using autocompletion feature put this in $HOME/.inputrcset match-hidden-files offPretty useful for me since, if you have a lot of applications installed then each of them would most probably have a hidden file (configuration) in your home directory.

Update Time/Time Zone settings

2008-12-29T06:02:00.002-05:00

One of the easiest way to edit time/timezone on a linux box is to run timeconfig.$ sudo /usr/sbin/timeconfigOr 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/KolkataThis link gives some good information on how to set it up manually :http://www.linuxsa.org.au/tips/time.html

Linux Open Source books

2008-12-23T11:25:00.002-05:00

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

2008-07-18T14:53:00.004-04:00

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" "100x100End SectionSet 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

How to set hostname

2008-07-06T23:19:00.002-04:00

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.

2008-06-30T21:20:00.002-04:00

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/FreeTypeEdit: 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: 1Xft.hinting: 0Xft.hintstyle: hintnoneXft.rgba: noneand that

Optimize Slackware installation

2008-03-26T20:26:00.004-04:00

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:/

Slackware 12.0

2008-01-21T11:54:00.000-05:00

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

Installing fonts

2007-06-23T12:56:00.000-04:00

The usual steps in installing a font :1. Copy the ttf files to a directory2. sudo mkfontscale - this generate an X11 font name for each of the fonts found in the directory. This info would be written into a fonts.scale file in the directory.3. sudo mkfontdir - creates an index of X Font files in the directory and writes it into a fonts.dir file in the same directory.4. sudo fc-cache -fv - this

Disable Touchpad while typing

2007-06-06T02:39:00.000-04:00

Check out this link to disable the Touchpad. http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/03/24/disable-synaptics-touchpad/I tried it, but kept getting this error:libu@toxicware:~$ synclient TouchpadOff=1Can't access shared memory area. SHMConfig disabled?I did add the SHMConfig option in the xorg file, but I guess I might have to restart the X server. But since I had other things running, I decided to put

synclient daemon

2007-06-05T00:47:00.000-04:00

Read on the web about synclient daemon. This helps to control the Synaptics Touchpad. Have to check this out to see whether I can make it work some way or the other.

GPLv3 License

2007-06-05T00:30:00.000-04:00

Richard Stallman has given a write-up on why people should use or if they were using GPL ver 2, should upgrade to GPL ver 3. Below I have tried to surmise as best as I can and also my thoughts.1. GPLv2 will remain as is and programs have the option of remaining under that license.2. GPLv2 and GPLv3 code cannot be combined to form a new program. But GPLv2 and GPLv3 programs can coexist together

My idea about fonts were totally wrong

2007-05-29T23:53:00.000-04:00

Guess how I had setup the fonts was not good enough. Anyway I finally got it right...phew.. First off I had to install the latest freetype2 rendering engine by David Turner. I got the instructions from here:Then although the desktop seemed to be alright, the rendering in firefox was totally crap. While browsing around I finally came upon a discussion where the person tried to modify fonts through

Finding Package Name with apt-cache

2007-05-29T19:08:00.001-04:00

To search for a particular package name with its dependency use:apt-cache search For e.g. to search for superkaramba use apt-cache search karamba and I get a response like thislibu@toxicware:~$ apt-cache search karambakaramba - A program improving the eyecandy of KDEmemaid-pyqt - memorization tool with optimal question schedulingsuperkaramba - a program based on karamba improving the eyecandy of

Not digiKam

2007-05-28T16:48:00.000-04:00

I decided against digiKam, as I did not want to create another folder structure for the images I already have. Right now all my Photos are in Windows and I access them by mounting the windows partition as a read only filesystem on Ubuntu. Now when I import the photos through digiKam, it creates a copy of these images and almost uses up my entire space. And the more I think about it, the more

Photo Management Software

2007-05-28T03:01:00.000-04:00

I have been meaning to use a Photo Management software for my Photos. I had been fooling around with Picassa on Windows, but somehow I just don't feel like using it on Linux. Did some reading around and kind of figure that digiKam would be the way to go. There are other options too, but at the moment, I think I will try out digiKam. One prinicipal reason, is that digiKam

My Desktop

2007-05-28T00:01:00.000-04:00

I kind of am done with setting up and customizing my desktop. I used the deesktop theme from KDE-look.org and modified that. The theme was created by user Deee and its pretty good.My desktop now looks like this :D :

Mounting Windows Partition

2007-05-27T02:02:00.000-04:00

I need to mount 2 ntfs partitions and a Fat32 partition in Ubuntu. Right now, since I'm not setting up the ntfs write utility on my system, I need to only the Fat32 partition as writable. I would want these partitions to be automatically mounted every time I boot into Ubuntu, the easiest method would be to use the /etc/fstab file.The fstab file is well structured into columns each separated by

Setting up Decent Fonts

2007-05-26T02:13:00.000-04:00

The fonts that came of the box was pretty sad. Well after googling around, most have the opinion that font rendering is better in Linux than in Windows, though I don't really know why that is.Anyhow I installed the msfonts and then modified the font characteristics in KMenu->SystemSettings->Appearance->Fonts.Check out the screenshot below:And well I'm pretty happy with the fonts on me linux

Ubuntu 7.04

2007-05-25T01:41:00.000-04:00

The first problem I had with this new version of Ubuntu was the ATI drivers (this happened with the Dapper Drake version of Ubuntu also). The installation was a breeze, but at the end of it, I just got a blank screen. The fglrx drivers had to be installed :<.Now before I could install the fglrx drivers through apt-get, I had to set up the network. One good thing about the installation was that

Resolved audio problems whenn viewing flash sites through firefox

2006-09-02T01:31:00.000-04:00

While using firefox to browse flash based sites like google videos, you tube e.tc. no audio was available, though video was perfect. The reason is although firefox uses a daemon libesd, falsh programs directly use the device file /dev/dsp which can be opened only once. Whatever problems that existed with flash and sound was being taken care of by a wrapper script provided by esd. But this was a

Download files from google videos.

2006-09-01T21:32:00.000-04:00

Check out this post on googlesystem blog . It links to a cool greasemonkey script, that allows you to download videos from popular video hosting sites like google, youtube, myspace, metacafe, clipfish...e.t.c.Greasemonkey looks pretty cool. The basic concept with this extension to firefox is you can write user javascripts which you can customize to run whenever you hit a particular webpage or a

Project

2006-06-06T12:51:00.000-04:00

I have finally decided what my first project on Linux will be. I thnk i will create a GUI mounting utility. I haven yet put pen to paper yet. But I should have something in hand by the end of this week ;).

Playing a DVD

2006-06-04T16:05:00.000-04:00

A dvd cannot be played out of the box on a freshly installed system. The reason being that all DVD's are encrypted with CSS (Content Scrambling System). CSS uses a variety of keys (string of characters) that authenticate the dvd being read by the player. Now to be able to play the dvd, the player must be able to decrypt the data. The reason that most free players dont come with this codec is

Dapper Drake 6.06 installed

2006-06-03T19:47:00.000-04:00

I was using the ubuntu breezy badger all this while, but after I shifted into my new rooms, I just couldnt connect to the internet. I was getting "NO DHCPOFFER OFFER" messages and short of trying a different modem, I just didnt know how to fix it :| !! Meanwhile it was announced that Dapper Drake was getting released on June 1, and I thought I might as well reinstall the system. And that I was