Clicking on Options from the permissions menu, on the Appearance tab, remove the checkmark from Open permissions menu when mouse hovers over NoScript’s icon.

Done. Now I can continue browsing in peace.

A “paper cuts” bug, originally filed in June 2009, explained the choice of icon to represent the button implied that it was for text editing or word processing. As the discussion went on, it was decided that the text-based display was for more advanced users and therefore the choice to enable it be made into an “advanced option”.

The current verison of Gnome being packaged with Lucid does away with this toggle button so that the location bar is always in button mode. There is however a keyboard shortcut, CTRL+L, to toggle it to text-based temporarily. Using / to start typing a location will also initiate the toggle.

If you want the location bar to be text-based all of the time, you can use gconf-editor to enable it. The key to change is:

/apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_location_entry

… which will need to be check-marked. You can do the same with gconftool-2 at a command line.

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_location_entry --type=bool true

To turn it back off, set it to false.

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_location_entry --type=bool false

Both the keyboard shortcuts and gconf settings work with Nautilus in both Karmic using Gnome 2.28.1 and Lucid Beta-1 using Gnome 2.29.92. I’m unsure if they work pre-Karmic.

Someguy77: how do I prevent ubuntu from auto placing a icon to my devices on my dekstop? [sic]

Ubuntu, or more correctly Nautilus, Gnome’s file manager, places an icon onto the desktop to show when certain devices, or volumes, are mounted to the system. You can turn this off by running gconf-editor (ALT+F2 to open the run dialog box, type gconf-editor and click Run) and disabling the volumes_visible setting under /apps/nautilus/desktop.

You can also disable it by issuing the following command in a terminal window:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/nautilus/desktop/volumes_visible --type=boolean false

ARCHAN> How do i make history not stored ? i dont want places > recent doc to store  my recent files

Gnome doesn’t offer an option to turn off the tracking of recently open documents, but you can employ a simple hack to prevent it from happening. Your Places > Recent Documents menu listing pulls data from ~/.recently-used.xbel which stores your recent document’s meta data. It’ll be recreated if you just delete it. Rather, remove it and make a directory with that same name.

rm ~/.recently-used.xbel && mkdir ~/.recently-used.xbel

You can also use this same trick to eliminate your bash history at the command line. Every command you issue at the command line is saved to ~/.bash_history after you close or exit a bash session. Just replace the file with a directory of the same name.

rm ~/.bash_history && mkdir ~/.bash_history

If you ever need or want to use those features again, just remove the directories. The files will be recreated on their own as needed.

rm -r ~/.recently-used.xbel
rm -r ~/.bash_history

Above, I showed how to do it with command lines but you can do the same through a nautilus window (file browser). At your home directory, use CTRL-H to toggle between hiding and showing hidden files (the ones that start with a period) so that you can find the files and delete/create as necessary.

I’ve since eliminated the bottom panel and replaced it with Docky. In the top panel I replaced the Menu Bar applet with the Main Menu applet, removed some icons and added the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor applet. I then went about setting the top panel to transparent to let the wallpaper behind it bleed through but the Ambiance and Radiance themes weren’t being cooperative. Only the panel would accept transparency but none of the icons. Below is what I ended up with:

That just wasn’t going to work. First thing I did was copy the Ambiance theme to my ~/.themes/ directory. This magically replaces the system’s default global settings for Ambiance with my own and lets me make edits without destroying the originals.

cp -R /usr/share/themes/Ambiance ~/.themes/

I opened Ambiance’s gtkrc file with gedit.

gedit ~/.themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/gtkrc

I scrolled down to the panel’s style section and looked for:
bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = "panel_bg.png"

I just commented out that line by placing a # at the beginning of it.
# bg_pixmap[NORMAL] = "panel_bg.png"

After saving the gtkrc file, the change wasn’t immediate. I opened the System > Preferences > Appearance settings, switched the theme to something else and then back to Ambiance. All of the icons and applets lost their backgrounds and the change was complete.

You can do the same with Radiance by copying the original files from
/usr/share/themes/Radiance
and commenting out its bg_pixmap setting.

For me, I like the darker gray windows of Ambiance along with my desktop’s new look.

During the alpha stages of Lucid’s development, a major update to Ubuntu’s theme was introduced which went far and away from the familiar brown. With that, the designers decided to also incorporate a new title bar button layout that flopped the minimize, maximize, and close buttons from the right corner to the left corner. Understandably, chaos ensued as many users offered lots of reasons why this was a horrible design change. But the term “many” should not be confused with “most” as there are plenty more users who aren’t that affected by it, myself included.

There’s been a lot of focus on window design, more so since the introduction of Google’s Chrome web browser, which omits a title bar and a menu bar altogether, yet still maintains the min, max, and close buttons, and functions quite nicely. Ubuntu hasn’t been the only one to rethink the window managers as Microsoft and Apple have done so as well in recent years.

But as much as the debate rolls on, users should not fear it so much. As many things are in the Linux universe, the change need not be a permanent one. If you’re unhappy with it, change it as Gnome provides the means to your end with gconf-editor.

Use ALT-F2 to bring up the Run Application window, enter gconf-editor and click Run. Browse to apps > metacity > general and find the button_layout field.

You can use any combination of six values: : (colon), menu, minimize, maximize, spacer, and close. Button names need to be separated with commas. The colon denotes the separation between the left and right corners. Following are some examples.

The default Lucid layout.
maximize,minimize,close:

The previous layout that we’ve been familiar with looks broken as the minimize button is designed to be sandwiched between the maximize and close buttons.
menu:minimize,maximize,close

Here’s the previous look with Lucid’s button order.
menu:maximize,minimize,close

A spacer can be added. Although it too slightly breaks the design, it may still be helpful to keep the close button separated slightly from the others. The menu button has been removed in the following example.
:maximize,minimize,spacer,close

One alternate layout is to keep the minimize and maximize buttons to the left and pushing the close button to the right.
maximize,minimize:close

With gconf-editor, you can find whatever combination you’re most comfortable with. You can also use the command line tool gconftool-2 to set the value of the layout quickly. To get the pre-Lucid layout:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type=string :minimize,maximize,close

Just because Ubuntu made a small change to the layout doesn’t mean it has to be accepted.

UPDATE: Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical’s founder, takes a brief moment to voice some opinions over the matter.

After some digging, I came across this Launchpad bug explaining the same condition. Lars Bengtsson’s comment explained with a link that there was a change in the gnome-power-manager package back in July that decided to hide the Do nothing option unless it was specified in GConf.

There are two ways to specify Do nothing in GConf. Pick what you’re more comfortable with. The GUI way is to press ALT-F2 and run gconf-editor. Use the tree to navigate to apps > gnome-power-manager > buttons > lid_ac and change it to nothing. The Long description that appears below in the Key Documentation area provides the other possible values.

From a command line, or in a terminal window, use the following command to change the value to nothing:

gconftool-2 --type string --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/buttons/lid_ac "nothing"

You should now see Do nothing as an option from within the Power Management application.

It’s only semi-persistent. Once you change the option to something else, Do nothing is hidden again. You’ll need to repeat the process to add it back. Some comments from the bug entry suggest this may not work for everyone. I suspect there are other issues preventing them from keeping an external monitor active with a laptop’s lid closed which I couldn’t suggest a reason.

I had assumed it was a design decision due to the artwork changes being done to the icon theme that would be corrected during the final release. Well, the final release is here and the issue is still prevalent. Since it didn’t affect the ability to use the computer, I put off finding an answer.

I had been upgrading some other laptops with fresh installations of Karmic which usually includes some tweaks to the look and feel of the default install. That’s when I noticed in the Appearance Preferences that Show icons in menus was not enabled. Seems Karmic is installed with it defaulted to off. I gave it a click and voilà, the menu icons reappeared to much rejoicing.

You can open the Appearance Preferences by following System > Preferences > Appearance from the main menu. Click on the Interface tab and make sure there is a check mark in Show icons in menus.

Ta-da! They have returned!

With the new functionality introduced with Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, there’s no simple way to do this without a bit of hacking at the command line, or through a root nautilus window if one feels inclined.

Navigate to the shared sounds directory.

cd /usr/share/sounds

In it, there should be a directory named ubuntu. Within ubuntu is an index.theme file and the sounds stored in a directory named stereo. I first made a complete copy of the ubuntu directory into a new directory.

sudo cp -a ./ubuntu ./adam

I then opened the ./adam/index.theme file with nano…

sudo nano ./adam/index.theme

… and changed my new theme’s name. I changed:

[Sound Theme]
Name=Ubuntu
Directories=stereo

[stereo]
OutputProfile=stereo

… to:

[Sound Theme]
Name=Adam
Directories=stereo

[stereo]
OutputProfile=stereo

… and saved the file.

I now had a new entry in the available themes named Adam.

To change the startup sound, I had to copy over my MGM roaring lion file and change its name. I renamed the old file just in case. Not that it was needed as it was still in the original ubuntu directory, just following my back-up before editing rule.

cd /usr/share/sounds/adam/stereo
sudo mv desktop-login.ogg desktop-login.ogg.old
sudo cp ~/Audio/mgmua_lionroar.wav .
sudo chmod 0644 mgmua_lionroar.wav
sudo mv mgmua_lionroar.wav desktop-login.wav

The filenames are based on the XDG Sound Theme specifications spelled out at freedestop.org. So far, only .ogg .oga and .wav files are supported.

This should at least start you on your way. There’s a lot more information with examples at freedesktop.org’s website. There have been bug reports filed about having the old functionality restored, but we can only wait and see what develops.

Imac: I’m trying 9.10 and after I suspended it asked for my password when went back to the computer. How do I disable that feature?

Not that I would recommend it, I can understand the need to turn the password prompt off when returning from suspend. On Ubuntu 9.10, Gnome has that as a setting which can be toggled through the GConf Configuration Editor, gconf-editor, or at the command line with gconftool.

The GUI Way:

The GConf Configuration Editor doesn’t have a visible menu listing. You can launch it by using ALT+F2 to open the Run Application dialog box and type gconf-editor followed by clicking the Run button.

Next, you will need to navigate to the necessary key name through the use of the tree menu on the left of the Configuration Editor. Double-click on apps to expand that part of the tree. Scroll down and double-click on gnome-power-manager. Lastly, single-click on lock to see the corresponding key names and their values appear in the upper-right window. You should see a key named suspend with a checkbox value next to it.

Simply click the checkbox to remove the checkmark. The change is immediate so you only need to close the Configuration Editor. If you want to turn that feature back on, follow the steps again and place a checkmark into the checkbox.

The CLI Way:

From a command line, to turn the feature off, you only need to use the following entry:

gconftool --type Boolean --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/lock/suspend false

To turn it back on, set it to true.

gconftool --type Boolean --set /apps/gnome-power-manager/lock/suspend true

Remember that the password prompt, while annoying at times, can be your last line of defense from letting people access sensitive data. While turning the prompt off makes sense for shared computers such as a media server box, it’s not recommended for personal laptops/desktops.