Making your fonts look pretty
You can modify how your fonts appear by dropping a configuration file in your home directory called .fonts.conf .This will add lovely hinting to your fonts. Just add the file to your homedir and restart X and you’ll see a big improvement.
Running Network Manager
Network manager is easy to install, simply:
apt-get install network-manager apt-get install network-manger-gnome
NOTE: Any network interfaces you want to manage via network manager you will need to comment out from /etc/network/interfaces, network-manager will automatically configure the interfaces for you. You will need to logout/login for the network-manager applet to appear on your gnome-panel.
Configuring the Intel 915 Chipset for correct resoultion
My original X display was stretched out of proportion which I wasn’t too fussed about but later learned it was a result of fixed resolutions in the video bios of my 915 chipset. The 915resolution hack changes these settings to allow compatibility with Xorg.conf settings. To install :
sudo apt-get install 915resolution sudo 915resolution -l
For more details on how to use it look here.
Installing AIGLX and Compiz
My favourite bit of eye-candy for Dapper is XGL – it gives you a Mac OS X style interface. The install isn’t quite as simple as apt-get install aiglx but it’s still fairly easy. There are plenty of good guides for installing AIGLX, the best being :
Note: You may need to import the repository gpg key – if you see errors relating to unsigned repositories when you apt-get – try:
wget http://www.beerorkid.com/compiz/quinn.key.asc -O - | sudo apt-key add -
Adding a pretty splash screen for grub
This is a tip for that I originally had for Breezy but it still aplies to Dapper. The grub bootscreen is pretty uninspiring so to have a pretty ubuntu graphic on boot :
apt-get install usplash
If you want to customize the artwork/look and feel then look here.
Monitoring CPU and HDD temperature
You can add a cpu monitor to your gnome-panel by installing sensors-applet and then right-click/add to panel. The sensors-applet package is located in the universe repository so you’ll need to add this to your /etc/apt/sources.list.
apt-get install sensors-applet
By default this allows you to monitor the CPU temperature. You can also monitor your hard drive temperature by installing hddtemp:
apt-get install hddtemp
You will need to enable the hddtemp sensor in the sensors-applet via the preferences option. If you need to monitor a drive other than /dev/hda then you can specify which drives you’d like hddtemp to monitor in /etc/defaults/hddtemp.
Adding DVD and video playing capabilities
The easiest way (that I know) adding media capabilities to your Dapper install is to use easyubuntu. It’s an easy to use graphical installer for configuring mdp3/dvd/divx/xvid playback and it also allows you to install flash/java and embeddded videos players in firefox. It’s simple to install and run :
wget http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/files/easyubuntu-3.021.tar.gz tar -zxf easyubuntu-3.021.tar.gz cd easyubuntu sudo python easyubuntu.in
Then simply click the options you’d like to have and click ‘OK’ and easyubuntu will automatically retrieve and install all the required packages.
Addressing more than 900Mb of memory
If you have >=1Gb of memory then you should really be using the i686 kernel rather than the i386 kernel. If for no other reason than the i386 can only address upto 900Mb of memory so you’re not taking full advantage of your machine. The kernel upgrade itself is an easy process, but be warned you may need to recompile any custom/self compiled modules/drvers you have installed outside of the ubuntu packaging system (e.g. proprietry graphics card drivers etc ..). To install a 686 kernel :
apt-get install linux-686
You’ll need to reboot to run the new kernel. Ubuntu (at time of authoring this article) has an issue where the CPU maxes out at 100% when using the 686 kernel. The fix for this is to :
echo 1 > /sys/module/processor/parameters/max_cstate
If you add this to /etc/rc.local then it will be executed each time you boot.
Running Windows in Parallels
Parallels is a great piece of virtualisation software that allows you to run different OS’s under Linux. I use it to run Windows XP as my second OS without having to dual-boot. On my Intel 760 it runs at a usable speed even when editing documents with MS Office
You can download a tar.gz (free to try) from the Parallels website. You will need to remember to install the kernel headers for Parallels to compile it’s own device drivers.
apt-get install linux-headers-386
The network setup can be a bit demanding if you’ve not played with iptables and ip masquerading before – I use this script to setup the networking before I run parallels :
#!/bin/sh
echo "Setting Up Parallels networking ..."
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
extip="`/sbin/ifconfig eth1 | grep 'inet addr' | awk '{print $2}' |
sed -e 's/.*://'`"
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.37.129.0/24 --out-interface eth1
-j SNAT --to-source $extip
echo "Setup networking for $extip"
This assumes you’re primary interface is eth1 and you’re using the default Parallels ip address space of 10.37.
If you are running AIGLX then you’ll need to edit /usr/bin/parallels otherwise you’ll experience transparent window issues:
sudo gedit /usr/bin/parallels replace: run="/usr/lib/parallels/parallels-linux $@" with: run="XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 /usr/lib/parallels/parallels-linux $@"
Tags [monkeyhelper ubuntu]