the empty quarter

As always after a kernel update, VMware Player 2.5.xx asks to be recompiled after upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid). However during the compilation I got errors about virtual network device, even after trying to recompile several times including from command line. After struggling for some time, I thought I would check on the VMware website [...]

Recently I discovered that by default Thunderbird accepts cookies from web content (version 3.0.4 in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid). I am a bit baffled by what would be a valid use case for storing cookies in an email client, and so here are steps for disabling this option. Edit > Preferences. Select Security icon and “Web [...]

In order to show dates as yyyy-mm-dd instead of the default (for US locale) mm/dd/yyyy I use the following script to launch Thunderbird in Ubuntu (tested with Thunderbird 3.0.4 on Lucid): #!/bin/sh export LC_TIME=en_DK.utf8 [ "$LC_ALL" != "$LC_TIME" ] && unset LC_ALL exec thunderbird “$@” This handy tip comes from mozillaZine.

UPDATE: The issue has been fixed in a subsequent Ubuntu system update, so there should be no reason to go through the steps below if your system is up-to-date. After a recent system update in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) I started getting an error message in Thunderbird starting with “Could not initialize the browser’s security component”. [...]

VMware Player experiences mouse capture problems when run under Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic host. Inside the guest window, the mouse pointer works fine in a top-left rectangle of the window (640×480 pixels?) but outside of this area the mouse pointer switches its focus to the host. Add the following line to the file /etc/vmware/bootstrap to fix [...]

Good article on Tuxradar with some clever command line hacks: Command line tricks for smart geeks

Here’s how to find the version of your CentOS system from the command line: more /etc/redhat-release

In a previous post I described to how to enable the Ctrl-Alt-Backspace key combination to restart the X server. However, those steps were applicable to Ubuntu 9.04 only and have no effect in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). The necessary changes to enable Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart X in Karmic are below. Open Preferences > Keyboard and [...]

Compiz sometimes gets bad press because of the gimmicky, bling nature of some of the plugins. Whilst it’s hard to see the real-world benefit of painting fire or rain drops on the screen, on the other hand it has to be said that Compiz gives Linux the wow factor that certain users are drawn to. [...]

This post is about how to change the resolution (i.e. font size) of virtual terminals or “tty” in Linux. Virtual terminal is the basic command line interface which you see when you press <Ctrl><Alt><F1> (note: to get back to your existing Gnome or KDE session press <Alt><F7>). This is different from the Terminal emulator, such [...]