After facing for a while the extremely annoying bug that shows itself as

- losing the touchpad vertical scroll functionality after a while

- losing the touchpad sensitivity after some more time, this occurs more and more often during the same session

- ending with both stuck touchpad and keyboard

I managed to figure out a workaround.

Read the rest of “Workaround to touchpad losing scroll functionality” »

Despite the slightly higher resolution (800 vs 768) vertical space is always a bit constrained on widescreens. This is even more noticeable with Gnome which has two panels, at the top and at the bottom, that use at minimum size 50 pixels both. Some other 20 px get wasted in the application titlebar, around 15 px in its statusbar, countless in horizonal scrollbars, menu bars, toolbars and whatsoever.

A clever way to decrease the waste in space due to Gnome is to enable the autohide feature in panel preferences (simply rightclick on an empty area of the bottom panel and choose preferences).

However, after you use this feature a few days you may get annoyed by the excessive delay in showing it up again. As everything on Linux, this can be hacked in Gnome registry! Here is how:

Read the rest of “Reclaim vertical space in Gnome!” »

Undervolt your notebook CPU for longer battery life

“Undervolting is the practice of reducing the supply voltage of a computer’s CPU. There are mainly three reasons to do so:

1. Reduce power consumption
2. Reduce heat generation
3. Reduce fan noise

Read the rest of “Linux-PHC CPU undervolting (for Intel processors)” »

[EN] Power saving optimizations has been updated with some major changes, please have a look at it!

This post aims at drafting a blueprint for future implementation in Ubuntu Linux.
Any comments and suggestions are welcome!
—————————————————————————

Duplex printing [1] is currently available only to mid-high-end printers.
However same goal can be achieved with minimal effort and minimal user interaction also on simplex low-end printers via a software hack.

Procedure:

This has been achieved for example by Samsung windows drivers. These paginates the printing queue so that sheets are printed

1. firstly rotated 180 degrees and filed in reverse order
2. then the driver prompts the user to put printed sheets back into the tray ‘as they are’ (no manual weired rotating and flipping needed)
3. finally printed normally

The resulting is a paginated duplex printed document.

Advantages and Benefits:

With manual duplex printing a wide range of users with low-end printers such as Samsung ML-2010 series are enabled to:

• print documents on both sides of paper
• make professional looking booklets
• lower the usage of paper
• lower the home/office environmental impact

References:

Blueprint: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/system-config-printer/+spec/manual-duplex-printing

Bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/system-config-printer/+bug/193088

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplex_printing

If you installed java-gcj and openjdk the Mozilla Firefox browser java plugin wouldn’t work. The only working browser plugin is currently sun-java6-plugin.

sudo apt-get remove gcjwebplugin-4.2 java-gcj-compat java-gcj-compat-headless java-gcj-compat-plugin libaccess-bridge-java openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jre-headless openjdk-6-jre-lib

sudo apt-get install odbcinst1debian1 sun-java6-bin sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin unixodbc

optional: delete pluginre.dat file in your browser profile directory
(usually in $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/[something].profile/ )

Firefox 3.0 stable default setup has these features disabled

• direct printing from print preview
• ability to zoom page before printing from print preview
• ability to change printing page orientation (portrait/landscape)

all this can be achieved by setting string print.whileInPrintPreview in about:config as true
(this now defaults to false).

I filed a bug report about this issue here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/245772

Prestare tanta attenzione al pensionamento di Bill Gates significa perdere di vista la questione centrale. Ciò che conta davvero non è Gates, né Microsoft, ma il sistema perverso delle restrizioni che Microsoft, come molte altre società di software, impone a suoi clienti.

Tale dichiarazione può sorprendere, dato che la maggior parte delle persone interessate a computer nutrono forti risentimenti su Microsoft. Gli uomini d’affari ed i loro docili politici ammirano il suo successo nella costruzione di un impero su così tanti utenti di computer.

Molti al di fuori del campo informatico riconoscono a Microsoft i progressi da cui lei ha in realtà solo tratto vantaggio, come ad esempio la realizzazione di computer veloci ed a basso costo, e semplici interfacce grafiche.

La filantropia di Gates per l’assistenza sanitaria nei paesi poveri ha conquistato l’opinione positiva di alcune persone. Il LA Times ha riferito che la sua fondazione spende dal 5 al 10% del suo denaro ogni anno ed investe il resto, certe volte in società che sostiene sono alla base del degrado ambientale e delle malattie negli stessi paesi poveri.

Molti informatici odiano particolarmente Gates e Microsoft. Hanno abbondanti ragioni per farlo.

Read the rest of “[IT] It’s not the Gates, it’s the bars” »

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7487060.stm

To pay so much attention to Bill Gates’ retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers.

That statement may surprise you, since most people interested in computers have strong feelings about Microsoft. Businessmen and their tame politicians admire its success in building an empire over so many computer users.

Many outside the computer field credit Microsoft for advances which it only took advantage of, such as making computers cheap and fast, and convenient graphical user interfaces.

Gates’ philanthropy for health care for poor countries has won some people’s good opinion. The LA Times reported that his foundation spends five to 10% of its money annually and invests the rest, sometimes in companies it suggests cause environmental degradation and illness in the same poor countries.

Many computerists specially hate Gates and Microsoft. They have plenty of reasons.

Read the rest of “[EN] It’s not the Gates, it’s the bars” »

Due to the very high pace of Free and OpenSource Software development it often occurs that program versions shipped with a distribution are already quite obsolete, hence the need to upgrade to its latest version.

Compiling the sources can be a little annoying sometimes, since you have to take care of the many multiple dependencies and cannot easily manage the program setup (i.e. update/remove it).

Using the prepacked and patched package from the development repositories is definitely the best solution.

However how to keep up to date with those developing packages? With apt pinning! Read on.

Read the rest of “mixing Hardy stable and Intrepid testing repositories” »