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Ever wondered if there’s a quick and easy way to write an iso file to a CD-R/DVD-R ? Don’t want to open K3B or Brasero ? Here’s a handy way of writing the iso file. First, switch to root using su su Next, type cdrecord -scanbus You’ll get something like this: scsibus0:<br /> 0,0,0 0) 'TSSTcorp' 'DVD+-RW TS-L632H' 'D200' Removable CD-ROM<br /> 0,1,0 1) * Note the first 3 numbers corresponding to your CD/DVD writer.

Not many know of this, but as of KDE 4.2, Kwin, the window manager has a nifty little feature - it can grab videos of desktop much like a screencasting tool such as Camtasia. This functionality requires Kwin’s composition mode to be enabled (ie, you must be using Kwin’s desktop effects). Below video shows where and how you can enable the video recording feature. Note this video was recorded using KWin.

Well I was browsing through some Kannada sites the other day and all I got was big blocks. Turned out that Gentoo and Sabayon didn’t have support for displaying Kannada characters, though, I had no such problems with Hindi & Bengali characters [amongst others]. Changing the Character encoding in Firefox to Auto-detect or Unicode didn’t work either. After doing a bit of searching, found the solution. So open the terminal, switch to root user and type

Here’s a short tip: If Amarok 2.0 doesn’t add any songs to your playlist or collection, or the collection scan is getting hung at up 47% or 79% try installing mysql. Since Amarok 2 now makes use of mysql as its backend, it expects mysql to be installed(nope, mysql-client won’t do either). As a result, after scanning, it cannot add the songs to the collection database and the process just stops.

While going through some of KDE settings I found this simple way to enable Anti Aliasing for Fonts (also known as ClearType in Windows). This will definitely make your fonts more pleasing to look at. For this, just launch KDE settings - this is generally known as Configure Desktop in openSUSE or System Settings in Kubuntu. From there, Under Look & Feel, Click on Appearance. Navigate to Fonts, and under use Anti-Aliasing, choose Enabled from Dropdown box

Well recently I’d bought an external 750GB USB hard disk, as I was running out of space on my laptop. Now this drive requires an external power source, so I just cant lug it everywhere with my laptop in my room so I thought I’ll connect this to my other laptop, and share the drive (the other laptop is my office one, runs on Windows) and I could access this drive over WiFi.

PeerGuardian 2, is an awesome IP filtering software. Though its FOSS, it there isn’t a Linux port of it yet. But don’t worry, if you’re using KTorrent, you can make use of PeerGuardian’s filters. Let me show how you can do so. Launch KTorrent. Click on On Settings -> Configure KTorrent . Click on Plugins and ensure that IP FIlter is checked Now Click on Apply. Next on the sidebar, scroll down and click on IP Filter.

In my previous posts I’d written on how to mount your partitions using the mount command. In the post I’d mentioned that you’d have to mention the partition that you want to mount by specifying /dev/device_name as part of the command. The question that would come to your mind is, How do I know which of my partition is on what device? So let me show how to find out which partition is on what device!

LiveCDs are a great way to try out (new) Linux distros on your system. Unfortunately CDs get scratched pretty easily, and can turn into a coaster pretty soon. With prices of USB pen drives at rock bottom, they’re probably the best way to try out LiveCDs. Generally its not that easy to make a bootable LiveCD using USB pen/flash drives. If you’re a Fedora lover then here’s a very easy way to create a bootable USB pen drive.

Remember that all these assumes that your router is connected to the LAN port, if it’s connected to the USB port, then disconnect it and connect to the LAN port. If you dont have a LAN card, then consider getting one. It’s cheap, costs around Rs. 200. Next, it’s best to have the router configured in pppoe mode. In this case you just have to switch on the router, the router and DHCP will take care of the rest.