Rebel Zero (dot com)

Gnome used to allow the user to change system sounds to their own liking. The System > Preferences > Sound menu option used to show a breakdown of the specific events with the option to choose whichever supported file the user wanted. Personally, I always opted to replace the login sound with MGM’s roaring lion.

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.
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I finished reading Stephan Hermann’s blog post, Myths of Linux Distributions and other operating systems, where he lambastes several common Linux distro myths, and I had a moment of reflection. Part of his #5 wherein he states…

…You get your stupid Linux Kernel and Linux Distro for free, I repeat, You don’t pay anything for it….

…made me realize that I’ve been using Ubuntu for the better part of the last three years, for free. [Read the rest of this entry...]

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.

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ShipIt is now accepting pre-orders for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. You can request a free CD sent to you by visiting Ubuntu’s ShipIt page. If you’re a loyal KDE user, Kubuntu CDs can also be requested through Kubuntu’s ShipIt page. Expect the CDs to take up to 10 weeks to arrive. Special requests can be made for more than one, but they can take longer and may not be approved.

Since they do take a long time to receive, it’s recommended to download a CD and burn it for yourself once the 9.10 Karmic release is finalized. Also note that shipped CDs, assuming Canonical continues the trend, will be for i386 architecture only. That should work for the majority of users with both 32-bit and 64-bit Intel/AMD CPUs. However, if one wants or needs something else, IE: full 64-bit support, you’ll need to download an ISO from Ubuntu.

I keep forgetting exactly how to do this without searching for it, so what better than to post it here for myself and others?

I enjoy installing games that are either not in the official Ubuntu repositories or are newer versions than what is available. After downloading and extracting, I move them to /opt and add a launcher to the Applications > Games menu. Some of the games need to be launched from their own directory which makes simply pointing the launcher at the executable impossible.
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You can now get Hulu content streamed straight to your Linux desktop with Hulu’s new Linux Client. They offer packages for either 32-bit or 64-bit Fedora 9+ and Ubuntu 8.04+. You will still need to have Adobe Flash Player installed. If you can watch videos at Hulu.com than you should be able to watch them with the client.
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I was nearing the end of setting up an encrypted home partition on my Thinkpad when I discovered that vol_id is missing.

root@obsidian:~# vol_id /dev/sdb3
vol_id: command not found

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I purchased a hard drive caddy for my Thinkpad T61p to convert the optical drive bay into a second hard drive bay. It pains me to say it, but I wanted to put Windows Vista back on the laptop. There are too many reasons to list why, but that meant having to give up more hard drive space than I was willing to share between Vista and Ubuntu.

My desired layout was to have Vista inhabit a 320GB drive occupying the main bay while Ubuntu would live on its own 320GB drive in the caddy. Dual-booting would be done through the Bios in order to avoid, among other things, having grub issues.

The biggest concern was the encrypted partition that contains separate root and home logical volumes. I wanted to make an exact image copy with dd but retain its encrypted state. However, I was unsure how I could access the data from the image without restoring it. I knew you could mount ISOs through a loop device, but an encrypted image was a lot different. Here’s how I did it.

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Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical’s founder, posted a video on YouTube announcing, among other things, the upcoming 10.04 LTS release naming it “Lucid Lynx”. I was only a bit disappointed as I was hoping for something along the lines of “Leaping Lizards”.

Ubuntu Screencasts has posted a screencast giving a quick overview of the Software Sources that Ubuntu uses in order to keep your installation up to date with bug fixes and security patches. You can view or download the video from their post HERE.