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Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (11.04) dash (or launcher) by default is tied to super key (Windows key on most keyboards). This default configuration is good for most situation but can interfere with some applications notably VirtualBox. As most things in Linux land, this can be modified. And of course this can be done in various ways. To make it easier for non-Linux/Ubuntu guru we will try to do this via CompizConfig Settings Manager ( ccsm  as this is the name of the python script). Unfortunately this is not installed by default but this is so easy in Ubuntu. Again this can be done in various way but will try to do this in Ubuntu Software Center .  In Software Center search box type ccsm . Select Advanced Desktop Effects Settings  then follow instructions to install it. Now run ccsm (using console/terminal or using dash ). Select Desktop category then select Ubuntu Unity Plugin . Figure 1. Ubuntu Unity Plugin In Ubuntu Unity Plugin, change Key to show the launcher to desired key

I own an Asus Eee PC 900 (Intel Celeron M processor 900MHz). Of course you can only do so much with this machine so having an optimized OS does help a lot. Just recently I have replaced my OS/Linux distro with Puppeee (Linux 2.6.35.7celeron). This distro does feel light and fast. It comes with what you would expect from a descent distribution. The default web browser is Midori 0.2.9 (based on WebKit) which works okay. Unfortunately it does not work well with Pandora. It maybe because Pandora requires Flash support which I am not sure if Midori is configured in Puppeee to work with the plugin. I have used Pandora with Google Chrome so I was hoping that it might work with that browser. Installing Chrome is quite straightforward in Puppeee. First, download the latest from  http://puppeee.com/files/distsfs/ , I picked chrome-10.sfs  using Mindori. Once done, click Puppy menu -> System -> Control Panel . Select Software tab, then SFS-Loader load squash files . Browse to where you s

Say, you have a USB thumb drive that you want to donate or give to a friend and you want to ensure that nothings left that might embarrass you, don't worry my friend. As always in the Linux/Unix land there is a tool for that. So to wipe clean a USB drive, do: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc "/dev/zero" is a special file  that provides a stream of null characters. "/dev/sdc" is the USB thumb drive. dd is a low level system utility used to copy raw data from a source to a destination. Source being a stream of zeros and destination the thumb drive. So, we just wiped clean our storage media. Note that this is applicable to most storage devices, so be careful. ~ts

Generally, Windows machine's host name to IP resolution is managed by NetBIOS. This is specially true for machines in a workgroup environment. There are cases where the NetBIOS name resolution on the local machine can get out of sync against other machines IP address and host name. This can happen when the machine has been  turned off for a few hours and  the IP getting reused. Since file sharing and any other network related activities in Windows commonly uses host name then this can get problematic if you need to access network shares. Now to fix this out of sync scenario, run the following command: nbtstat -R This should clear the local name to IP cache.

When I installed openSUSE, the installer assigned a seemingly random name to the machine. As is the case with Linux there are many ways to do it. It can be changed graphically in openSUSE. To do so click on kicker  ( ), then select Computer  ( ), finally click on YAST ( ). Running YAST requires root (administrative) password, so for this screen supply your root password. Figure 1. Enter root password. Once root password is entered you should see this screen.  Figure 2. YaST Control Center Now click on Network Devices then Network Settings .From Network Settings, select Hostname/DNS tab. Figure 3. YaST2 Network Settings Supply new value for the hostname field, click on OK and you are done.

I am using OpenSUSE 11.3 with KDE 4.4. I changed hostname of the machine and noticed that the menus of KDE goes blank. The icons are still there and I can still see the description when I hover over the icons. Removing /home/.kde4 (or better yet backup the folder) and a reboot fixed it. Is it the right way of doing it? I don't know but I am back to business. Of course my customization where all gone.

There are many ways to do this. One way of would be open up konsole, then do: kwrite --version Kwrite is one of the default applications the comes with KDE. This should show something like: Qt: 4.6.3 KDE Development Platform: 4.4.4 (KDE 4.4.4) "release 3" KWrite: 4.4.4 (KDE 4.4.4) "release 2