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Q Every time I open the lid of my laptop, Ubuntu requires me to enter my password. How do I disable this?
A (Thanks to ubudog in the Ubuntu Forums) In System Settings, under Brightness and Lock, change the “Lock screen after” setting.
Q I have a folder in my home directory that I want to add to the “Places” sidebar.
A In Ubuntu 13.04, open the folder in the File Manager. At the top-right of the window there's a gear, click on it and choose Bookmark this Location.
Q I have a .deb from a trusted source. When I double-click on it, I see what is inside. How can I install it?
A Right-click on it and select “open with” GDebi.
Q I tried to install Ubuntu, and wound up wiping out my Windows system – and all my priceless data. How can I recover?
A Stop using the computer immediately! You may be able to recover some of your data, maybe a lot of your data.
Remove the hard drive from the computer. If this is your only computer, buy another hard drive, install it, then install Ubuntu. If you don't already own a USB adapter for an external hard drive, buy one, (I've used a couple which cost less than $10.) Install Testdisk and Photorec and read about how to use them. Select the one which seems most likely to be useful. Plug in your old hard drive as an external drive. Run your chosen data recovery package, and see what happens.
Q Will the Tesseract OCR program be faster than looking at an image and typing the text into a file?
A No, you will spend more time correcting Tesseract's output than if you just typed it in from scratch.
Q How can I set my keyboard permanently to Portuguese?
A (Thanks to papibe in the Ubuntu Forums) Open 'Keyboard Layout', add the Portuguese keyboard by pressing the + symbol, then move it to the top of the list or remove the other layouts.
Q I have done the latest updates on Xubuntu 12.04 and noticed it has not been asking me for my password to authenticate it?
A Yes, that's the new normal. See http://goo.gl/DNlIX
Q I modified an important file, and can't boot into the graphical system. When I boot into recovery mode, the filesystem is read-only. How can I fix the file I messed up?
A (Thanks to Cheesemill in the Ubuntu Forums) In recovery mode, enter this command, which will let you edit the file:
mount -o rw,remount /
Q I have the “backports” repository activated in Mint 13, so I get the newest versions of Cinnamon. I understand the Mint team has forked Nautilus, but when I click on File Manager, I still get Nautilus.
A Open a terminal and enter this command: nemo
If you decide you want to make nemo your default file manager, go to this web page: http://www.fandigital.com/2013/01/set-nemo-default-file-manager-ubuntu.html
As well, there is a file manager in the panel, which requires further work. Right-click on it and select “Edit”. Change the Application from nautilus to nemo, click on Update.
Also, there is a (nautilus) File Manager on the left side when you click on Menu. Simply drag it into, say Accessories. When you open Accessories, you might see an entry labelled Files, which you can drag to the left side of the Menu. You may want to edit menu entries, install Alacarte, which gets installed as “Main Menu”.
Q I bought a USB turntable to convert my vinyl collection to computer files, but it doesn't work very well.
A Just bit-torrent download the tracks you legitimately own. I was capturing my favorite tracks, turntable to amp to line-in to Audacity. My son challenged me: “can you capture a track faster than I can bit-torrent it?” It wasn't close.
If you own a vinyl record, it is completely legal for you to download an MP3 of that record; it's called “backup.” Mind you, I am not a lawyer, so I can't provide legal advice. My guru on copyright is Brad Templeton: http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html (By complete coincidence, I have known Brad since he was in high school.)
The starting point is Google. For example, I own Art Garfunkel's Breakaway album, and one of the songs is “I only have eyes for you.” So I Google “I only have eyes for you garfunkel torrent” and get several results. The second one takes me to a site where there's a download link for a “torrent” file. (Torrents are quite small, typically a few dozen KB.) In my file manager, I right-click on the torrent, and select “open with Transmission….” Transmission opens up, but we're not quite done. I need to select the file I want and then click on “open.” If you're lucky, the MP3 will be on your system in a few minutes.
The system is not perfect. You will come across sites which want you to install a “download manager” (for Windows) and most of them are pure malware.
You will also see the terms “seeders” and “leechers.” A seeder is a person who is offering a file, a leecher is downloading. If you want a file and there are no seeders, you will never get it.
It's worthwhile to become familiar with bit torrent downloads, because on the day a new version of Ubuntu is released, by far the best way to get it is by bit torrent.
Clarification: the actual torrent I selected was for the entire Breakaway album – and it downloaded in less time than it took to write this.
Note: music files aren't very big, a typical MP3 is less than 10 MB.
Second note: there's one possible legal glitch with bit torrents. As soon as you have some of the file downloaded, you become a “seeder,” so you might be providing the file to people who do not have the legal right to possess it. That has the possibility of getting you into legal hot water.
Q I asked a question in the Forums, and got no response. How can I keep it active?
A Wait at least 24 hours, and Reply with the word “Bump.” Even better, wait 36 hours, and you will expose the question to people in a different set of time zones.
From the Ubuntu News Digest, active and top questions at AskUbuntu:
* What does ~$ stand for? http://goo.gl/BORVA
* What's the best way to SSH to machines on the local network? http://goo.gl/4Zu3q
* How to take ownership over an existing Ubuntu Software Center app? http://goo.gl/7xc7f
* Run a command with the argument from the last command http://goo.gl/EhARr
* Ubuntu routing table with 3 NICs http://goo.gl/m01fR
* May I speak with someone about these applications for a grant proposal I am writing? http://goo.gl/LEmC1
* How to install multiple versions of LibreOffice? http://goo.gl/dUfZY
* Auto complete for often used command line commands? http://goo.gl/GkkHE
* Where can I order a CD of Ubuntu? http://goo.gl/yT9M0
* Differences between /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/sbin http://goo.gl/1eNld
* What is the difference between dpkg and aptitude/apt-get? http://goo.gl/zuZvD
* How often is the password asked for sudo commands? Where can I set it up? http://goo.gl/rGj4A
* Difference between “ppa-purge” and “add-apt-repository -r”? http://goo.gl/g7t0F
* Some fast way to save and restore tabs of Terminal? http://goo.gl/RJ6cS
* How do I show a message with username and date at login? http://goo.gl/Vg3Od
* Why can't I connect to wired Internet with fixed IP address http://goo.gl/mUVQv
* WiFi issue after installing laptop mode tools http://goo.gl/VtNU5
* Data on hard drive (erased by installing Ubuntu?) http://goo.gl/uW8Wl
* what is the difference between cd \ and cd / commands in Ubuntu terminal? http://goo.gl/B6Mxc
* Corrupted Windows 7 Registry, trying to install Ubuntu and delete Win7 http://goo.gl/JT8X9
* Is there any program for writing a book? http://goo.gl/OGdWG
* I installed 64-bit OS in 32-bit Processor (or not…) http://goo.gl/nO1wx
* Total Newbie confused about partitions http://goo.gl/z12sM
* I want to know when a running process will terminate. How can I watch it? http://goo.gl/UoprN
* Is it possible to use Python with the Ubuntu SDK? http://goo.gl/pY2le
Tips and Techniques Clean-up Time
Regular readers know that I track the temperatures of the various components of my computer like a hawk. I recently realized that my desktop was running warmer than when it was new, so it was clean-up time.
I keep my computer on a desk, sideways, with the monitor in front of it. Step one was to unplug everything, then move everything but the system unit out of the way. Then I could carry the system unit to my dining-room table where there was room to operate.
The family vacuum cleaner was on the agenda, using the “crevice” tool. Everything which looked like a vent was pretty much covered with a blanket of dust; the vacuum made short work of it. Don't forget USB ports, Firewire ports, audio ports. My desktop has a front panel which pops off, with a filter behind it. I was surprised to see that the filter was pretty clean.
Take off the side panel. Surprise, there's hardly any crud inside the box. Physically remove the video card from the computer. My video card has a fan and a heat-sink with fins. Tiny dust bunnies were living in the fins. A Q-tip cleaned them out. Put the video card back, restore the side panel, put everything back where it was.
Did it work? I was surprised by how well it worked. Measuring everything at idle, the temperature of the hard drive dropped by a full six degrees C. The video card? Twelve degrees. The CPU didn't drop by much, but I can see a big difference when it's running flat-out. Time well spent!