Start application maximized from Start Menu in Windows 8

There are occasions when you want to start an application maximized.  This is easy in Windows 7 as you can easily find the shortcuts for an application in Start Menu, and change its settings to maximize itself when it starts.

Since Windows 8 revamped the Start Menu, things simple as maximizing an application when open is difficult.  To do this, you need to go to Start Screen, then press the Down Arrow to show all applications.  Right click the application you want to change.  You should see more option at the bottom of your screen.  Select the option of Open File Location.  Now you should see the Shortcut behind the button appears on your start screen.  From this point forward, you can do the same thing you can do with previous version of Windows.  You can make the application start maximized, run as Administrator etc.

From Public To Private

Windows 7 has predefined a set of network locations, namely Home, Work and Public.  The aim of these locations is to alter the protections offered according to the selected locations.  To change from a location to another location is simple in Windows 7.  You simply click on the location, and select a new one, and that is you done.

However, this has changed in Windows 8.  In order to make it more "finger" friendly, Microsoft has changed the location setup to just two locations, namely Private and Public (On and Off), and placed it under network settings (Charm -> Change PC Settings -> Network).  In there, you will the network you are connecting to.  If you click the network icon where you are connecting to, you will see a switch controlling the sharing, i.e. on (Private) and off (Public)

However, there is a catch!  Most of the tutorials I found does not mention a very minor but a very important detail which is this switch is only shown if your Account Control Settings is not set at the highest level.  Since I have my Account Control Settings set to its maximum, I COULD NOT see this options till I found this article: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/9837-network-location-set-private-public-windows-8-a.html

If you are like me, like a bit of extra security, and have set the Account Control Settings to its highest level, then you may want to dial it down temporary to see this switch.

Getting My S2W 3300U to work

I have been trying to retire my last Windows XP machine at home.  One of the reason I was keeping it is my scanner, Benq S2W 3300U.  It is a good scanner but is not supported by anything beyond Windows XP.

Today, I got a work around for it.  I run it from my Linux virtual machine following the instructions on

http://zoffix.com/other/Installing-Benq-SZW-4300U-Scanner-on-Ubuntu

In short, in download the firmware from http://zoffix.com/snapscan/u176v046.bin and put it at /usr/share/sane/snapscan

Then use pico to update the /etc/sane.d/snapscan.conf file

I looked for the line

firmware /usr/share/sane/snapscan/your-firmwarefile.bin

and replace the path with the path where I stored my firmware, e.g. /usr/share/sane/snapscan/u176v046.bin

That's it.  The scanner just work in SimpleScan! Hurray!

indicator-sound not working

After upgraded to 13.10, I noticed the sound indicator not working.  After a bit of search, I found this solution.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-sound/+bug/1208204

System Information

Just want to share a few useful utilities and commands for monitoring/displaying hardware information.

1. Showing information from sensors in your systems.

sensors

This utility tell you information such as temperature in your system.  To install it, you 

apt-get install lm-sensors

If you don't like command line, you can try psensor which extract information from lm-sensors and shows graphically.

2. Showing information about your CPU.

cat /proc/cpuinfo

This command allows you to find out CPU installed without opening up your computer.  This may not be useful if you built/bought the computer yourself.  However, this is very useful to have if you are fixing a computer from someone or you get freebie.

3. Showing memory information

cat /proc/meminfo

Vmware & Kernel update

It seems VMWare player needs this command to run after each kernel update.

sudo vmware-modconfig --console --install-all

Windows 7 Share Not showing up

I have recently reinstalled Windows 7 on a machine, and for some unknown reason, the shared folder I setup on it fails to show in network browsing, both on my Linux machine and on another Windows machine.  This has puzzled as I can't see anything wrong in my setup.

At the end, I managed to put it back on the map by using this command:

netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off

I don't know how this differs from having firewall off ... which was off.

Anyway, guess off isn't quite off in Microsoft terms ...

I found my solution in this forum:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-networking/windows-7-share-not-visible-to-linux-or-mac-os-x/940ca57e-0072-4ae2-beec-ec814a3ceebe

If you are like me who has a stuborn machine whole shows up in your network.  It may worth to give the solution suggest a go.

Xubuntu and Samba share

When I move to Xubuntu, I do miss the easy of setting up SAMBA share folder.  However, this can easily be fixed by installing: system-config-samba

After installing the package, extra option will present in the Settings, and sharing a folder is few clicks away.

Xubuntu no sound

Recently, I have noticed my netbook has no sound.  It seems this is caused by the auto mute feature in alsa.  This can be switched off by using the alsamixer utiltiy.

sudo alsamixer

Xubuntu, KVM and Display Resolution

If you are like me who use a KVM switch to control multiple computers, you may run into resolution problem with Ubuntu.

Since the computer is not being connected to the monitor directly, it may not get the DDC information from the monitor to set the resolution correctly.  In my case, I was stuck at 1024x768@60KHz.

A quick google search brought me to this nice post that helps me get pass the 1024x768.

https://www.tecmint.com/set-display-screen-resolution-in-ubuntu/

Here are few quick notes on steps I took.

1) Use cvt   1920   1080 to produce a modeline, e.g.

# 1920x1080 59.96 Hz (CVT 2.07M9) hsync: 67.16 kHz; pclk: 173.00 MHz
Modeline "1920x1080_60.00"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync

2) Then made this available for selection

xrandr --newmode "1920x1080_60.00"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync

 Use xrandr to get the ID for your display, e.g. VGA-1

$ xrandr

 
 

$ xrandr --addmode VGA-1 "1920x1080_60.00"

3) Test the new resolution option by using your system Display setting tool, e.g.

If the setting works for you, then you can make this permanent by adding a little profile file to /etc/profile.d/, e.g.

$ sudo vim /etc/profile.d/external_monitor_resol.sh

Within this file, just add the two xrandr lines you were using earlier, e.g.

xrandr --newmode "1920x1080_60.00"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode VGA-1 "1920x1080_60.00"

Now restart your system.  The new resolution should stay if things are done correctly.

 

Edited 2021-04-22:

It seems there is a simpler alternative.

1) Use xrandr to find out the supported resolutions, e.g.

 

2) In my case, 1920x1080@60 is the resolution I am aiming for.  Now, edit the grub file to tell the kernel about this resolution by adding video=1920x1080@60 as a parameter to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT option like below:

3) Run update-grub to apply the settings

After reboot, this new resolution should now be available to the system.

 

ref: https://askubuntu.com/questions/973499/wayland-how-to-set-a-custom-resolution