How To Ubuntu

How to print a file from your desktop with one click

Eli — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:30:55 +0000

Do you have certain files that you print quite often? Would you prefer to be able to just click on a desktop icon, or a panel icon to print the file? This is so much quicker than opening the file in Open Office, Abiword, or whatever, and then printing it.

This is something that’s been very helpful to me. I have several files that I print on a somewhat regular basis. Files which only change every six months or so. Opening up the file, and then printing it can take several seconds, and mouse clicks. With this method, your file can be on its way to the printer in less time than it would take you to open it up. Here’s how you do it.

Before proceeding any further, you need to make sure that you have assigned a default printer for CUPS to use when printing with a command. Please see my post about this, here, to set that up. Now, on to the one click printing.

We’re going to use a panel launcher for this example, though these instructions can be modified to put this launcher on your desktop as well.

Right-click on the panel you want the launcher to appear & select Add to Panel.
Choose Custom Application Launcher, and the Create Launcher box should pop up.
Name your launcher, and give it a comment that will pop up when hovered over by the mouse pointer.
For the command, you’ll need something like this…
lp /home/user/pathtofile
You can click on the little springboard to the left to give your launcher an icon, or not.
Click on OK to finish
Now you have an icon on your panel that will print a file for you with one click of your mouse.

How to print from the command line

Eli — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:40:29 +0000

Printing from the command line can let you get things done very quickly. It can also open up a world of one-click printing of files, which we’ll get into with a future post. So, to get started, navigate to http://localhost:631 in your browser. If you have a default Ubuntu installation, you should now be looking at your CUPS (formerly Common Unix Printing System) page.

Once there you’ll need to go into the Command-Line Printing and Options page. Its here that we find the instructions we need. Now, printing a file from the command line may be as simple as running one command. Here’s what this page has to say about this process.

CUPS understands many different types of files directly, including text, PostScript, PDF, and image files. This allows you to print from inside your applications or at the command-line, whichever is most convenient! Type either of the following commands to print a file to the default (or only) printer on the system:

lp filename lpr filename

If you only have one printer on your system, that’s probably all you’ll need. You may however, have to tell CUPS which is your default printer. CUPS tells us how to do this as well. The first thing you need to do is find out the name of your printer. Here’s how you can do this.

lpstat -p -d

Now you have the name of your printer(s). Choose the one you want to primarily use, with this command.

lpoptions -d printername

Now, when you run your lp or lpr command to print a file, CUPS knows which printer to send the job to. There are tons of other options, all laid out on the Command-Line Printing and Options page. Keep in mind that all of this info assumes that you already have the requisite print drivers installed and configured on your system.

Create a keyboard shortcut for opening & closing the CD/DVD drawer — Updated

Eli — Fri, 28 May 2010 13:30:11 +0000

I posted about this topic a little while ago, while using Ubuntu 8.04. After my installation of the 64 bit version of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, my keyboard shortcut didn’t function the way I wanted it to. It would unmount any USB flash drive I had plugged in. This wouldn’t do, so here’s how I got it to work again.

Go to System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts
Click on Add at the bottom of the box. The Custom Shortcut box will open up.
Enter whatever you’d like for the Name.
Enter eject -T for the Command & click Apply.
Click Apply, and close the Keyboard Shortcuts box.
You’ll now see your new shortcut at the bottom of the list, in the Custom Shortcuts section.
To the right is where you enter the keystroke you want to be the shortcut for this command. It is currently Disabled.
Click on the Disabled, and then hit whatever key combination you want. I used the F12 key.
That’s it, now every time I hit the F12 key my CD drawer will open or close.

How to remove the mail icon from the indicator applet in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

Eli — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:00:45 +0000

So, let’s say that you have absolutely no use for the little envelope that is residing next to your volume applet since you installed Lucid Lynx. It is a very useful little guy if you use Evolution, or if you install something like gmail notifier to check your web mail. If not, then here’s how you can remove it.

Open a terminal and enter this command:

sudo apt-get remove indicator-messages

That’s it, once you restart your machine, the envelope will be gone. You can also restart the panel without restarting your machine.

ALT + F2 to bring up a Run dialog box. Then enter killall gnome-panel. You’ll see all of your panels, or taskbars, disappear, and then reappear in a few seconds.

How to move window buttons to right side in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

Eli — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:20:39 +0000

The default theme in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx puts the window control buttons (minimize, maximize, & close) on the left side of the title bar. This is really annoying to me, and here’s how you move them back.

Hit ALT + F2 & type in gconf-editor
Navigate to apps > metacity > general
Replace the text in the button_layout field with:
menu:minimize,maximize,close

Ahhhh… back to normal.

One thing to note, the text in the button_layout field will be different according to what theme you’re currently using. Some themes put the buttons on the right side by default. If you’re using one of them, when you follow the steps above, you’ll find that the setting in the button_layout field is already the way you want it.

What are your plans for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx?

Eli — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:28:40 +0000

Well, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is almost upon us, due for release at the end of this month. This will be the first Long Term Support release since April of 2008’s Hardy Heron.

I’ll be upgrading at some point by doing a fresh install. What are your plans? Are you planning to upgrade? Will you upgrade through the Update Manager on your system? Will you do a completely fresh install? If so, how will you backup your data? You may be interested in using something like APTonCD to retain some of your applications, or at least as a listing of them.

If you’d like to try out the latest, pre-release version of Lucid Lynx, click here to download.

So, let me know what you plan to do in the comments below.

Make your system run more efficiently

Eli — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:03:39 +0000

I hate it when apps hog too much memory, or cpu cycles. In many cases, if you have an application that’s doing this, there’s an alternative out there that is way leaner. There’s an easy way to determine where to trim the fat.

In this example I’m going to be comparing the memory usage of Totem Movie Player, and VLC. These applications play media files, both video and audio. OK, for this test I used a Survivor Man DVD. I played the DVD, and then checked the memory usage of each app once the video began playing. I did each test separately, and repeated a few times to confirm the results, which were very consistent. Oh, I also tested these applications with more than one DVD.

Getting the memory usage numbers

While the program is running, or doing whatever it is you want to test the memory usage of:

Open up the Gnome System Monitor. System > Administration > System Monitor.
Scroll down until you find the entry for the program you’re testing. In this case, its Totem, & VLC.
Look to the far right, under the Memory heading, and you’ll see the amount of memory that your program is using.

Totem

This isn’t my favorite application, in fact, I pretty much dislike it. However, if it uses a considerable amount less memory than other media players, I might just fall in love with it. Sadly, it failed miserably. Totem averaged 49 MB of memory usage while playing a DVD, whether it was Survivor Man or Transformers. That might not seem so bad, but lets see what VLC can do.

VLC

Aside from being my favorite media player, VLC is a memory usage champ as well. It only used 13 MB, or less, during all of the tests, regardless of the DVD that it was playing.

Conclusion

Well, this is a pretty easy one, as you can see from the pics above, VLC uses less than a third the memory that Totem does. Not only is VLC my favorite, its the leanest as well. Now, you may be wondering why this even matters. I mean, we’re talking a difference of 35 – 37 MB at the most. Well, those little bits of memory can add up. If you were to use the biggest memory hog applications on your system, you’d notice sluggish performance at times. This is especially true if you’re a serious multi-tasker. I know that I routinely have a browser (with 10-20 tabs open), music or a video playing, Compiz effects, Conky, Rainlendar calendar and appointment application, and OpenOffice, or Gnumeric running at the same time. With all of that, especially if you have pages running flash in your browser, cutting the fat from your system’s resources can make a big difference in the overall usability of your Ubuntu machine.

This process can be used for any application. Say you want to see who’s got the leanest spreadsheet OpenOffice, or Gnumeric. It’s Gnumeric by the way. You can use this method. The one thing to keep in mind is that you should keep in mind that applications using less memory may provide less features. Take that into account when choosing your software.

VLC is available in the repositories, meaning you can get it in Add/Remove. You must first enable the community repos, check here for how to do that..

How to monitor basic system functions with a panel applet

Eli — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:15:42 +0000

Ubuntu has a built in application, Gnome System Monitor, to help you keep tabs on what’s going on with your machine. You can find it in System > Administration > System Monitor. Once you have it open it has a few tabs, displaying various system information. The Resources tab will show you the cpu usage in a percentage, the memory being used, and what’s going on with your internet/network connection. You can customize this to a certain degree. But, do you really want to have to open this thing up every time you want to find out how much memory you’re using. You can add the system monitor to a panel. This will give you information at a glance, without having to open a new program, or stop what you’re currently doing.

Here’s what it looks like, and how to do it.

Right click on a panel, & select Add to Panel…
Select System Monitor from the list, and click Add
Now you should see 3 graphs on your panel
Right click on them & select Preferences
Now you can configure the display to your liking, including how frequently it updates & the colors of its graphs

This is a nice way to get a feel for what’s going on with your machine at a glance. Also, if you want to open the Gnome System Monitor application, you can just left click on the graphs on your panel and the system monitor will open.

Hovering the mouse over these graphs displays more detailed info

How to open & close CD / DVD drawer with your keyboard or mouse

Eli — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:05:29 +0000

I go through a lot of CDs & DVDs, and constantly reaching over to push that little button on the front of the CD/DVD drive is rather annoying. I do not have one of those nifty keyboards that has those media buttons. So, I looked for a way to open and close my drawer from the keyboard, or with the mouse. And I found a few ways to do it.

Using a keyboard shortcut

Go to System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts
Find the entry for Eject. It’s under the Sound group.
Click with the left or right mouse button on Eject
You’ll see in the right hand column it now says New accelerator…
Now you just hit the keyboard shortcut you want to use. You’ll notice that I have F12, and for that you just hit the F12 key
- If you want to have a multiple key combination, that’s fine too. For example, you can hit [CTRL] + [ALT] + [INSERT], and now every time you hit those three keys, your CD drawer will open, or close.

Adding a custom launcher to the Desktop or Panel

Right click on a panel and select Add to Panel…
Select Custom Application Launcher and click the Add button
Now you’ll have a little box that looks like the one pictured below, only emptier
For the Command, type in:
eject -T
Give it a name, and a description if you like.
Click on the icon on the left and you’ll be able to select your icon from a list
Click OK, and enjoy opening and closing the CD/DVD drawer with a click of your mouse

How to catalogue & organize your comic book collection with GNOME Comics Organizer

Eli — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 01:00:26 +0000

So, do you have a lot of comic books that you want to keep track of? GNOME Comics Organizer can help. This is a little application designed for the purpose of cataloging your comic books.

To get it you must first enable the Universe repositories. Here’s how you can do that. Now that that’s done, you can install the app.

Open a Terminal. Applications > Accessories > Terminal
Then enter this code:
sudo apt-get install gco
You can now find GNOME Comics Organizer in Applications > Accessories > GNOME Comics Organizer