how to do various things in Ubuntu
I have gone Linux. I bought a new laptop, a Lenovo ThinkPad X200T tablet PC, and I installed Ubuntu Linux v9.10 on it. As I get better at using Linux, I am going to post the random useful things I learn how to do. This is mostly an archive for me, so I won’t lose track of this information later. But it might be helpful to others as well.
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Moving the damn window buttons back to the right side where they belong:
Run gconf-editor. Then click “app” -> “metacity” -> “general”. Then double-click on “button_layout”. Change its value to:
menu:minimize,maximize,close
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Installing Java:
From a terminal, type:
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk sun-java6-jre
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Which Linux programs are good / equivalent to which Windows programs:
All are available in the Ubuntu package manager except as linked.
Internet:
- IM -> pidgin
- graphical SFTP client -> filezilla
- Google Chrome -> chromium
- BitTorrent -> transmission
- Flash -> adobe-flashplugin or flashplugin-nonfree
- Gmail checker on taskbar -> gnome-gmail-notifier
- PDF plugin for browser -> acroread mozilla-acroread acroread-plugins
Programming:
- decent coder’s text editor -> geany
Graphics:
- Photoshop -> GIMP
- image thumbnail browser -> gthumb
- diagram/flowchart editor -> dia
Audio:
- Winamp -> audacious
- iTunes -> banshee (rhythmbox too, but it kind of sucks)
- copying files to/from an iPod -> rhythmbox
- MP3 ID3 tagging -> easytag
- convert between audio formats -> soundconverter (plus lame, flac)
Video:
- playing videos -> vlc, mplayer, and xine
- If you want to actually be able to play MP3s, copyrighted video formats, etc., you need to install the packages: gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse
- ripping DVDs -> handbrake or dvd::rip
System Tools:
- play with hard drive partitions -> gparted
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How to make your IM program talk:
sudo apt-get install festival pidgin-festival
Then enable the plugin from Pidgin’s plugin settings. Awesome! But there are two problems with it initally.
1) The voice is initially too quiet, so to make it louder, I did this:
sudo gedit /usr/share/festival/voices/english/kal_diphone/festvox/kal_diphone.scm
and found a line about wave.rescale (that’s the volume scaling) and changed it to:
(utt.wave.rescale utt 6.6)))
2) It uses some crappy audio subsystem to play the voice, which doesn’t work well when other sounds are trying to play. So I found and ran this command to change it to the “ALSA” sound subsystem, which seems to help a lot:
printf ";use ALSA\n(Parameter.set 'Audio_Method 'Audio_Command)\n(Parameter.set 'Audio_Command \"aplay -q -c 1 -t raw -f s16 -r \$SR \$FILE\")\n" > ~/.festivalrc
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How to set which monitors are enabled, their resolutions, etc. from the command line:
Use the command-line program ‘xrandr’ for this. Just type ‘xrandr’ to see a list of your monitors’ output names. I found the following commands useful to set ‘home’, ‘school’, and ‘portable’ monitor settings respectively:
# external monitor at 1600×1200; laptop internal display off (home)
xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1600x1200 --rate 60 --rotate normal --output LVDS1 --off
# external monitor at 1600×1200, rotated vertically (home)
xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1600x1200 --rate 60 --rotate left --output LVDS1 --off
# laptop internal display at 1600×1200; external monitor off (portable)
xrandr --output LVDS1 --mode 1280x800 --output VGA1 --off
# laptop internal display and external monitor cloned at 1024×768 (school)
xrandr --output LVDS1 --mode 1024x768 --output VGA1 --mode 1024x768 --rotate normal --same-as LVDS1
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How to enable a Tablet PC’s pen:
Ubuntu recognized my tablet’s pen stylus right away, but OpenOffice.org doesn’t support ink features, so I couldn’t draw on my slides the way I like to do. I found various programs for this, such as gromit, but they sucked mostly.
My recommended way to get tablet inking on Ubuntu is to enable Desktop Effects (compiz) and then install the Compiz settings manager:
sudo apt-get install compiz-settings-manager
You can find that app under System -> Preferences -> CompizConfig Setings Manager. In there, find the Inking/Drawing option and turn it on.
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Getting my HP printer/scanner to work:
Xsane is a nice scanner app. I installed the following packages:
sudo apt-get install hpijs hplip xsane
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Ripping/converting MP3s:
I like the program ‘soundconverter’ for converting other formats such as FLAC or OGG to MP3. I installed these packages:
sudo apt-get install soundconverter flac lame
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Random various system settings:
I installed the ‘thunar’ file manager because I like it better than the default ‘Nautilus’ file browser. Thunar is more lightweight.
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Running Windows apps:
I am too addicted to TextPad to give it up completely. So I installed wine, which lets you run a Windows program under Linux:
sudo apt-get install wine
Then I can run the TextPad installer program from textpad.com on the command line, which installs TextPad. I also installed Notepad++. To make it easier to run them, I set up script files named /usr/bin/textpad and /usr/bin/npp to run them, like this:
#!/bin/sh
exec wine /home/stepp/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/TextPad\ 5/TextPad.exe $* 2>/dev/null &
#!/bin/sh
exec wine /home/stepp/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Notepad++/notepad++.exe $* 2>/dev/null &
I also installed VirtualBox (sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose) and gave myself a full virtual WinXP install there, for those moments when I need a Windows screenshot, or need real MS Excel, or whatever. But that’s a whole tutorial in itself.
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Converting .flac audio files to .mp3:
Use a program named soundconverter for this. Here’s how to install it:
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse soundconverter
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A full list of Ubuntu packages I install after Ubuntu finishes installing:
(this is a biggie)
abiword
alien
ant
apache2
apachetop
audacious
avant-window-navigator
banshee
bittorrent
bzflag
cmus
compiz-settings-manager
cowbell
cowsay
curl
cvs
dasher
ddd
deskbar-applet
dgen
dia
dosbox
dvdrip
dvorak7min
easytag
eclipse
ekiga
electricsheep
emacs
enscript
fceu
fceu-server
festival
ffmpeg
filezilla
firebug
firefox-webdeveloper
flac
flashplugin-nonfree
fluxbox
g++
gettext
gfceu
gftp
gif2png
gmail-notify
gnome-commander
gnome-gmail-notifier
gnome-mplayer
gnome-randr-applet
gparted
gromit
groovy
gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse
gtkpod
gxmms2
hedgewars
highlight
hpijs
hplip
html2text
httperf
id3v2
idle
idle3
imagemagick
indent
inkscape
ion
irb
jmeter
junit4
k3b
lame
libglib2.0-dev
mplayer
mplayer-fonts
mysql-server
openssh-server
php5
pidgin
pidgin-extprefs
pidgin-facebookchat
pidgin-festival
pidgin-plugin-pack
python3
rar
ruby
samba
simdock
soundconverter
subversion
sun-java6-jdk
tesseract-ocr tesseract-ocr-eng
thunar
tidy
tightvncserver
tofrodos
tomcat6
traceroute
transcode
transmission
tree
valgrind
valkyrie
virtualbox-ose
visualboyadvance
visualboyadvance-gtk
visual-regexp
vlc
wacom-tools
wine
xchat
xfig
xmms2
xpdf
xpdf-reader
xpdf-utils
xsane