Useful software

While I was searching a solution for my indexing problem, I found this blog entry on essential Linux software. I found it useful so I would like to share with you too.

http://theindexer.wordpress.com/2010/10/02/to-do-list-after-installing-ubuntu-10-10-aka-maverick-meerkat/

Tracker - bad for your computer!

I have upgraded to Ubuntu 10.10 and in general it is very nice. However, in the quest of being more like Mac OS X, Canonical people has put in this nasty feature call indexing. I don't know if it has been there before but it is certainly more noticeable in the new Ubuntu 10.10 as the CPU fan and hard drive have been gone to over drive!

After I found out what was going on, I decided to remove it for good, and here is how I did it.

apt-get purge tracker-*

Then restart, problem solved (my computer is running a lot faster and quieter!)

Broken Ubuntu 10.10

I have just upgraded my desktop to Ubuntu 10.10 after I have tried it on my laptop. Unfortunately, it wasn't that smooth this time. It seems the nVidia driver for my GeForce MX card is very broken in the new version. I do manage to get the graphical interface back after using the generic driver rather than the propriety driver.

Since I am using a KVM switch, the DPMS didn't quite get detected properly and I were left with this nasty 1024x768@60Hz resolution. One thing that I had kept complaining is how nasty of Linux to configure simple thing as resolution. After a few search, I finally found this blog which describes the use of xrandr to set a custom resolution. After a few attempt, I finally get my 1152x864@70Hz resolution back. Here is the link to the blog if you have a similar problem. Good luck!

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-change-display-resolution-settings-using-xrandr.html

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Resolution

By the way, here are the commands I used.

1. cvt 1152 864 75


2. xrandr --newmode "1152x864_70.00" 96.75 1152 1224 1344 1536 864 867 871 902 -hsync +vsync


3. xrandr --verbose --addmode VGA-1 "1152x864_70.00"


4. xrandr --output VGA-1 --mode "1152x864_70.00"

The changes above is temporary, to make it permanent, you have two options:

1) store these lines onto a file called ~/.xprofile on your home directory to make them permanent for a particular user

2) Modify the /etc/gdm/Init/Default file, and add the lines after right after the

PATH=/usr/bin:$PATH

OLD_IFS=$IFS

p.s. instead of adding the lines directly to the Default file, I chose to create a CustomResolution file with permission sets to 555 , and placed this file in my /usr/local/sbin folder, and called this file from the Default.

Chrome and Linux

I have tried a free browsers such as Firefox, Opera and now Chrome on my Linux laptop (old R40e P4 Celeron 2.0GHz, 1GB), and must say Chrome is the best browser for resources. I like my Firefox for its wealth of extensions, but it often grinds my little laptop to halt for pages littered with excessive Javascripts and Flash adverts. Flash can be dealt with Flash Blocker, but Javascript is a bit hard. With so call Web 2.0, most "modern" websites are using AJAX (J = Javascripts), and turning off Javascript means useless websites. Unfortunately, this is the landscape of current WWW if is not worsen.

I have not scientifically test Chrome against other browsers, but Chrome does handle these websites where others may fail a lot better. However, it isn't without any problems. Firstly, it seems ever stuck to its BETA label, and its updates are more often than the others. You may argue this is good as updates keeps it current, but it is a pain with slow or metered connections, e.g. mobile network. Secondly, Chrome is still relatively new, web programmers are still targeting their sites to IE and Firefox, Webkit based browsers such as Safari, Chrome and others still taking the second seat if not the third. Thirdly, Chrome's link with Google. I don't know if Chrome's search/title bar is still linking to its parent company. It is a bit annoying to know all things you typed are going to be collected and sent back to the bee hive. Last but not the least, Chrome's convenience features. History search may be a good thing for many, but not for myself. I don't like my descriptions of my previous browsed popped up automatically when I typed a new URL. This can be a disaster if you certain types of websites get displayed while you are doing a presentation in front of a large audience. This is also not so good if you are security cautiousness. Personally, I would like to see Chrome more forgetful like Firefox. For example, I would like it to have an option to forget things when it is closed (history, cookies and temp files)

Nevertheless, if you are running Linux on a slow machine and is looking for a full feature browsers, Chrome is a decent choice.

VirtualBox Life Saver

I recently had problem with my OS and had to reinstall the OS from scratch. This caused big problem with my VirtualBox setup as it had serious problem to attach my images as they all had snapshot attached to them. After searching Google, I found this nice little life saver called CloneVDI tool, which allows you to detach an image from its snapshot (at least this was what I did) Okay, I had lost something, but at least I don't need to rebuild everything from scratch. If you are in the similar situation as me, you may want to give this little tool a trial too!

http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=22422