I Love Ubuntu

It’s been quite some time, but today I feel like showing my Ubuntu desktop in my lab’s PC Before that, here is some tips and tricks you might find useful:

1. If you’re using cairo-dock, you might want it to be appear and accessible all the time to show it off or so that you can access it easily. Setting it always on top sometimes not a good solution because sometimes you need to click something on the bottom of the window application but cairo will be on your way. One solution I like is to make cairo behave like mac’s dock: Applications always open above the dock. This can be easily done by
   Right click on the dock -> Cairo Dock -> Configure. Use the Advance Mode. In the Position category -> check "Reserve space at the edge of the screen of the dock" -> Apply ->OK.
That’s it! Now you can maximize your application window without covering cairo-dock.
2. If you’re using screenlets, you might realize that everytime you do “Show Desktop” the screenlets will also go minimized. In this PC I don’t want to treat the screenlets as widgets like I did in my laptop, but the minimized behaviour’s quite annoying. Here is the solution:
   Open gconf-editor (from terminal) -> then go to /apps/compiz/general/allscreens/options/ -> Uncheck "hide_skip_taskbar_windows". That’s it!

Cairo-Dock

Screenlets

Desktop Cube

Crunchbang Linux Inside Ubuntu

Weather Screenlets

According to this thread in Ubuntu Forum, in order to be able to use weather screenlet like ClearWeather or SmoothWeather, we need to edit /usr/share/screenlets/ClearWeather/ClearWeatherScreenlet.py and add “&link=xoap” to the xoap.weather.com URL. So the URL will look like this
http://xoap.weather.com/weather/local/'+self.ZIP+'?cc=*&dayf=10∏=xoap&link=xoap&par=1003666583&key=4128909340a9b2fc&unit='+unit+'&hbhf=12&link=xoap'

And if you dont know the zipcode of your city, go to weather.com then input your city and search. Look at the address toolbar in your browser. In my case, I looked for Osaka and this is what I got:
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/local/JAXX0071?lswe=Osaka,%20JAPAN&lwsa=Weather36HourBusinessTravelerCommand&from=searchbox_typeahead

From that URL, my zipcode is JAXX0071. Enter that in your weather screenlet and be prepared for tomorrow’s weather

Can u play videos in this page?

halo teman2 pengguna ubuntu!

I need a little of your help. In my ubuntu 9.04, I had problem playing videos from youtube in this page – the videos were lagging and firefox became hardly responding. I installed both flahs plugin non free and adobe flash from the repository.  Eventually I found out that it was because there were multiple videos on that page. I can play an embedded flash video on a webpage if there’s only one video. Playing videos in youtube is also not a problem at all.

So if anyone successfully play videos on that page using firefox in Ubuntu, please kindly mention in the comment of that page or here:

1. Your Ubuntu version
2. Your machine spec
3. Your Firefox version
4. Your flash player version

O ya, one more thing, if by any chance you know the solution of this problem, please kindly tell me too

Thanks a lot!

Who’s to blame? Network Manager VS Applications

So I finally found out the source of problem why my pidgin cannot connect to any accounts. It’s because I used gnome-ppp to connect to the internet through my usb 3G modem. Apparently, internet-connecting application like firefox and pidgin check the availability of network connection through Network Manager. And the problem is, if user use other application (like gnome-ppp or wvdial) to set up the connection, Network Manager doesn’t realize this. So d**n stupid! That’s why I used to get this problem of firefox starting in offline mode. Luckily it can easily fixed in firefox.

But now the problem is with pidgin. How to configure pidgin so that it won’t check the connection through network manager? Anybody knows? I’ve been googling around still cannot find the answer There are some solutions for this, not a good one though:

1. Uninstall network manager. Hmmm, not a good solution for me, cause network manager works fine with cable and wireless network.
2. Disable then reenable the account in Pidgin every time you want to go online. Doing it now, but soooooooooooooooooooooooo annnnnnnooooooyyyyyingggggg

Funny thing is, it didn’t happen before with Ibex. I can just connect to the internet using gnome-ppp and pidgin was also working just fine. So why it became like this???? I really like Ubuntu, really! But Ubuntu’s been like this for so long. Every release came with new little feature but lots of new problems or even old problems that had been fixed but ocured again. Come ooooon, it’s about time for Ubuntu to grow up and mature already!!

Now i wonder, whose bug is this? The applications for being so stupid to depend on network manager too much or the network manager for being so arrogant in monopolizing the network connection in ubuntu while being stupid for being unable to setup the connection for 3G modem?

Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix

Ok, actually i didn’t feel or experience anything new from Jaunty Jackalope, except for the login screen and startup screen, well the booting time feels shorter a lil bit, so I wasn’t planning to write anything about it.

But I have this little annoying problem that I didn’t have before with Ibex, and maybe anyone who reads this can help me solve it out. The problem is with pidgin. Whenever I tried to connect to Yahoo Messenger or any other accounts, it didn’t connect. I needed to first disable the account, then re-enable it again. Then it’s connected

Anybody has the same experience?

Any solutions?