Quick tip – if you use the Terminal as much as I do, ever been in a situation where you’ve written a particularly long command, and then want to issue that command again but can’t recall it ? Use the history command, and pipe it to grep to search it!

history | grep -i <search-term>

This will give you all commands with the search term and the corresponding line number.

To reissue that command, type

!history <line-number>


Simple, easy & effective. CLI ftw.

This is a pretty good tip. The default style irritates me to no end. Check out the full post, there are some great tips, especially if you’re new to Nautilus like me.

Ever since some distros started their attempt to become more “user-friendly” and gaining the nice looks, some default features got changed.

In this case, it’s the location bar. Instead of it they got some buttons that shows the location and let you navigate through the directories! So, if you’re using one of these distros and want to pop up the location bar, all you have to do is to hit Ctrl+L. However, if you’re like me and like to have it always there, each time you fire it up, you canchange the default value of it in gconf-editor, or alternatively use this following command in the terminal

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/start_with_location_bar --type bool 1

via anxiousnut’s playground

1: The pager

I am always shocked at how few people actually use the Linux pager. It’s been around forever and has always served the same functionality — it offers the user multiple desktops to keep the desktop better organized. I employ the pager like this: With four workspaces, I dedicate each workspace to a different use. My layout looks like this:

* Desktop 1 is for networking tools.

* Desktop 2 is for writing/office tools.

* Desktop 3 is for graphics or video.

* Desktop 4 is for miscellaneous items.

This layout pretty much covers it for me. I’m sure you could find a four-desktop scheme that would better suit your needs.

via Five tips for a more efficient Linux desktop | Five Tips | TechRepublic.com.

More or less my pager usage too.

I’ve owned a Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 for nearly 2 years now, and I use it pretty often with my previous phone ( the Sony Ericsson P1i ), and my current iPhone 3G. I also use it occasionally on my laptop. It has worked fine in Windows XP, Vista & Windows 7. Getting it to work with Linux, however has been an EPIC FAIL. The last time I tried it was probably a year ago, and I just gave up in frustration and continued to use my EP-630 as the earphone.

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Been a while since I posted For some strange reason, recently I got an urge to try out ArchLinux. After much deliberation finally decided to try out ArchLinux again, in VirtualBox. My little install guide I compiled as I was reading through the Official ArchLinux Install Guide + Beginner’s Guide.

Please note: This is highly customized according to *my* requirements and nowhere as thorough /generalized as the official guides. Still, it might help you. Here we go -
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I wasn’t aware of this tiny little thing  - the filesystem in the  file created by a Wubi install can be easily mounted as a loop device.

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Nvidia Proprietary Drivers need nvidia-settings to set screen resolution and change other settings. In previous versions of Ubuntu and in other distros to make them permanent (used in every session) you click the “Save to X configuration file”. From Karmic on there is no xorg.conf by default!

As a result, nvidia-settings is not able to save the settings and every time I logged in I had  to change the resolution (Phew!!!). Then Sathya helped me. He gave me a link from Ubuntu Forums. Then I did the following to fix the problem:

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This article appears too late i suppose in this site. Many know about it already. Just in case, i am posting it.

So if your xserser-xorg-video-intel is not that satisfactory to you, or if it doesn’t give the right screen resolution, just use this. If available in repos use it, if not use this link. You will have to remove xserver-xorg-video-intel either manually or through package manager. Then after installation restart Xserver (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace; Enable it thus in Karmic)

That should bring the resolution right or at least make it better.

Thanks to these articles and in case of problems please follow the links:

The PAINLESS way to set Screen Resolution for Intel Chipsets

Can’t change resolution with 915resolution

Finally got desktop effects working (915resolution + xorg.conf)

In Karmic the restart Xserver shortcut is disabled by default. Enable it thus:

1. In the menu, go to System->Preferences->Keyboard (not Keyboard Shortcuts)

2. Go to Layouts tab, click Layout options

3. Expand “Key sequence to kill  the X server”. Check “Ctrl+Alt+Backspace”

4. You’re Done.

Howdy folks! Been a *loong* time since I last posted isn’t it? Just been busy with work & travel (won’t bore you with the details, just check my personal blog).
I’ve been looking forward to the upcoming openSUSE 11.2 version ( it’s no secret that I’m a fan of openSUSE), but the main problem for me was that I don’t like holding onto optical media, and have a 8gig USB flash disk, especially for these things.

Unfortunately  openSUSE has been lacking a install/boot from USB flash drive for quite sometime, upto now that is. The last Milestone (M8) and the first release candidate, RC1 includes support for booting from USB flash disks.

You will need access to a Linux environment, inorder to accomplish this step.

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