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Chrome is nice for using on Netbooks and alike, however it is annoying to have the thumbnails to show up when it starts.

This can be fixed by setting the startup option to show the

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Remote Desktop history

It seems to like a common feature on modern software that record your recent visits to places. However, this can also be an annoying feature as it keeps a trail on where you have been. For instance, the remote desktop keeps a trail of IPs where you have connected to.

Anyway, in order to remove these IPs from the history, open up

~/.local/share/vinagre/history

with your favorite text edit, and remove IPs you don't want. Save the file, and you are done.

Ralink rt3090sta and Ubuntu

I have trouble to get the rt3090sta to work on my Ubuntu. There are many solution, but this one I found is the most easier!

To get it work, you simply create the directory

/etc/Wireless/RT2860STA

Then, create the RT2860STA.dat inside the directory, e.g.

touch RT2860STA.dat

Ralink Wifi Adapter Driver

Recently I had got myself a netbook due to its weight and its bargain price (it was heavily discounted when I got it). Unlike the Asus book I got for my sister which I needed to download a custom driver or two in order to get it fully work, Windows has all its driver for this little things. However, the default Ralink driver for the WiFi network seems a bit flaky after sleep. Hence I decided to install the driver from the Ralink directly. On the same website, you can also find the Linux driver. I have not tried it myself, but newly Ubuntu 10.04 certainly needs it.

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.