November 9th, 2008 at 2:20am
you may experience some problems with arrow keys, pg up/pg down and home/end keys with vmware 6.5 and Ubuntu Linux Intrepid 8.10.
a workaround for those problems is to create a file named config under .vmware folder in your home directory and fill it with the following text:
xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0×138 # Alt_R
xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0×135 # KP_Divide
xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0×11c # KP_Enter
xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0×148 # Up
xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0×150 # Down
xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0×14b # Left
xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0×14d # Right
xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0×11d # Control_R
xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0×152 # Insert
xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0×153 # Delete
xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0×147 # Home
xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0×14f # End
xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0×149 # Prior
xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0×151 # Next
xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0×46 # Scroll_Lock
xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0×100 # Pause
xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0×15b # Meta_L
xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0×15c # Meta_R
xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0×15d # Menu
October 26th, 2008 at 7:11pm
Upgrade to Ubuntu Linux Intrepid 8.10 has been fairly flawless.
Click here for the full tutorial on Ubuntu Linux Intrepid 8.10 compatibility with HP Pavilion DV laptops.
The only notable caveats are:
- Bug #279187 makes the computer speakers beep loudly in a random way while booting, shutting down, suspending, resuming, logging off. This appears to be related to the use of restricted nvidia drivers (with today update of nvidia-glx-173 (173.14.12-1-0ubuntu4) to 173.14.12-1-0ubuntu5 this issue is always affecting also version 173 of the drivers.
A valid workaround seems to be removing the ’splash’ argument from the kernel boot line in /boot/grub/menu.lst With this workaround also version 177 of the nvidia restricted drivers work as expected.
- It seems not possible to enable the nvidia restricted drivers through jockey. If jockey (Hardware Drivers under System -> Administration menu) hangs simply install the package nvidia-glx-177 or nvidia-glx-173 via Synaptic Package Manager, then try again to enable the driver through Hardware Drivers.
If you get error: glx-173_173.14.12-1-0ubuntu4_i386.deb: trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/libGL.so.1′, which is also in package libgl1-mesa-glx just reinstall packages libgl1-mesa-glx and xserver-xorg-core before installing the drivers.
- The CUPS PDF printer gets removed. To have it again available you have to re install package cups-pdf
- If you had a previously configured printer and it does not work any more check the ‘Printer Properties’ in System -> Administration -> Printing. If in field Printer Status you get the following error:
unable to start filter ‘rastertospl2′
this means the drivers have been updated and you need to re-configure them.
Click on the Change button on the right of Make and Model field and follow the wizard with confidence.
When you have finished you may print again.
October 20th, 2008 at 9:32pm
How to scan and OCR like a pro with open source tools
By
Mathis Dirksen-Thedens on June 24, 2008 (7:00:00 PM)
With optical character recognition (OCR), you can scan the contents of a document into a single file of editable text. This article, which focuses on scanning books, describes the steps you need to take to prepare pages for optimal OCR results, and compares various free OCR tools to determine which is the best at extracting the text.
First, fire up your distribution’s package manager to fetch a few packages and dependencies. In Debian, the required packages are
sane, sane-utils,
for the scanning part
imagemagick,
useful and versatile image manipulator and convertion tool
unpaper,
unpaper is a post-processing tool for scanned sheets of paper,
especially for book pages that have been scanned from previously
created photocopies.
The main purpose is to make scanned book pages better readable on
screen after conversion to PDF. Additionally, unpaper might be useful
to enhance the quality of scanned pages before performing optical
character recognition (OCR).
tesseract-ocr, tesseract-ocr-eng
the actual OCR optical character recognition tool for linux.
A commercial quality OCR engine originally developed at HP between 1985
and 1995. In 1995, this engine was among the top 3 evaluated by UNLV. It
was open-sourced by HP and UNLV in 2005.
Read the rest of “How to professionally scan and OCR with open source tools” »
October 7th, 2008 at 5:29pm
With Firefox 3.0 some autocompletion features have been introduced, specifically the ones concerning the location bar can be somehow annoying. Here’s how to disable them.
To prevent entries from History or bookmarked items from appearing but show those that you have specifically typed into the Location Bar (url bar), use about:config to toggle browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped to true. To completely disable the Location Bar autocomplete function in Firefox 3, modify the preference browser.urlbar.maxRichResults to 0 (zero). [1]
For additional information about modifying the “Smart Location Bar” behavior in Firefox 3, see the MozillaZine forum topic, Customising the Firefox 3 Location Bar and this forum post.
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Con Firefox 3.0 sono state introdotte alcune funzionalità di autocompletamento automatico, in particolare quella riguardante la barra degli indirizzi. Ecco come disabilitarle:
- nella barra degli indirizzi di Firefox digita about:config
- rassicuralo che sarai molto prudente
Se vuoi
a) evitare che ti appaiano i link che hai inserito nei bookmark:
- cerca la stringa browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped (usando la barra di ricerca in alto)
- cliccaci sopra due volte e scrivi true
b) evitare che ti compaia qualsiasi link che hai recentemente digitato nella barra dei link:
- cerca la stringa browser.urlbar.maxRichResults
- cliccaci sopra due volte e scrivi 0 (zero).
nota: in questo secondo caso puoi sostituire 0 con un numero qualunque che indica quanti link mostrare nel menu a tendina che compare quando state scrivendo un indirizzo.
October 3rd, 2008 at 12:15pm
here is an interesting thread about batch resizing images.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=170862
Basically you can use gThumb (opening multiple files at once with this app) or digikam. GIMP currently has support for batch operations only in its development branch.
August 25th, 2008 at 5:52pm
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” »
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:30am
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!” »
August 18th, 2008 at 9:24pm
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:
- Reduce power consumption
- Reduce heat generation
- Reduce fan noise
Performance will not be affected as the energy you will save was just wasted (as heat) before.
Security is not affected, however you may experience some instability and unreliability while testing the best undervolting/underclocking settings (lockups and freezes may also occour). After you have tweaked it well you are not going to face any stability issue any more.
Read the rest of “Linux-PHC CPU undervolting (for Intel processors)” »
August 16th, 2008 at 7:24pm
July 29th, 2008 at 12:34am
Update!! the duplex printing feature has been implemented for Samsung printers on linux (including ML-2010) with version 2.0.0 of the Samsung drivers (available with Ubuntu Linux Intrepid 8.10).
To ensure you use the latest ones go to ‘Printer Properties’ in System -> Administration -> Printing and check the ‘Make and Model’ field. To update your drivers simply click on the Change button and confidently follow the wizard.
You will find the option for the two sided printing under the ‘Printer Options’ tab.
An interesting program for non supported printers is GtkPSproc you are welcome to test it and add feedback.
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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
- firstly rotated 180 degrees and filed in reverse order
- then the driver prompts the user to put printed sheets back into the tray ‘as they are’ (no manual weired rotating and flipping needed)
- 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/waste 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
Ubuntu Brainstorm: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/item/3332/
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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplex_printing
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