The end of a line in a UNIX text file is designated with the newline character. In Windows, a line ends with both newline and carriage return ASCII characters. If a file is saved in Windows and then moved to a Linux system these carriage returns can cause all sorts of problems. If the text [...]

gphoto2 allows you to directly connect a digital camera over USB and transfer the saved images and videos to your computer. This is very helpful when you don’t have access to a media card reader. Install the gphoto2 package on your system. In Gentoo: # emerge media-gfx/gphoto2 In Ubuntu: # aptitude install gphoto2 Start off [...]

This is the list of the most useful Firefox keyboard shortcuts. It is amazing how much more efficient you can be when your not always reaching for your mouse. Controlling Tabs New Tab – Ctrl+T Close Tab – Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4 Next Tab – Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+PageDown Previous Tab – Ctrl+Shft+Tab or Ctrl+PageUp Select Tab [...]

You might need to reinstall the boot loader to the master boot record (MBR) if it becomes corrupted or erased. This can occur for example if Windows is installed on another partition which overwrites the MBR. There are two ways to reinstall grub, automatically using grub-install, and manually through grub itself. grub-install is a script [...]

As a security measure the ext3 file system reserves 5% of device space for administrative processes. This protects the system by allowing root processes to continue using the disk if a user process runs wild and fills it up. With today’s larger disk capacities, 5% equates into gigabytes of arguably wasted space. Thankfully with the [...]

To give a specific user access to sudo without having to enter a password you have to edit the /etc/sudoers configuration file. For security reasons you should only edit the file using the visudo command. $ sudo visudo In Ubuntu the following lines are placed at the bottom of /etc/sudoers by default. This gives your [...]

In Firefox 3 it is easy to edit the MIME settings. These settings are used to control what program is used by default to open each file type you encounter while browsing. To edit these settings in Firefox 3 navigate these menus: Edit -> Preferences -> Applications For each file type on the left you [...]

The standard way to create a Windows boot disk is to have access to a Windows system. If you have access to a Linux system instead, and know a couple tricks, you can create boot disk as well. The first thing to do is find a website that has the boot disks available for download. [...]

To get Skype audio working with Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (Ubuntu 8.10) and Dell XPS M1530/M1330 requires a few changes to the standard install. Make sure you have added the medibuntu repository and installed Skype. You need to enable the embedded microphone. Go to Volume Control by clicking on the volume icon. In Preferences select Digital [...]

The Medibuntu repository (Multimedia, Entertainment & Distractions In Ubuntu) contains packages that cannot be included into the Ubuntu distribution for legal reasons. Some of these packages include Skype Acrobat Reader, Google Earth, and multimedia codecs. Add Medibuntu to your sources.list. Make sure you specify the correct version of your distribution. This example uses Intrepid Ibex [...]