Sprayfly

After setting up Pidgin IM to run on startup in Ubuntu, I was annoyed to discover that the buddy list would be displayed on the desktop each time the PC booted. I discovered that this could be resolved by enabling the Extended Preferences Plugin and configuring it to hide the buddy list on startup.

First, we need to install the Extended Preferences Plugin as this is not included with Pidgin.

sudo apt-get install pidgin-extprefs

Right Click on Pidgin Icon –> Plugins –> Check “Extended Preferences” –> Configure Plugin –> Check “Hide Buddy list at Startup”

After a reboot, I was surprised to see that the Buddy List had yet again appeared on my desktop despite the changes I had made to the settings. After searching around, it would seem that the problem is due to Pidgin loading faster than the system tray. This means that when it tries to minimize on startup, it is unable to find a system tray to minimize to and hence is forced to remain open. There is however a solution.

Open a terminal and do the following:
gedit ~/pidgin.sh

Now enter the following lines of code:
#!/bin/bash
sleep 30
pidgin

Now save changes and close Gedit.

Make the script executable:
chmod +x ~/pidgin.sh

Now go to System –> Preferences –> Sessions
Click on Add, under Name enter Pidgin, under Command enter ~/pidgin.sh

Now when you reboot, on the next startup Pidgin will be delayed for 30 seconds before it loads. This gives the system tray enough time to load and hence Pidgin should be able to launch minimized

To install Google Earth on Linux, simply download the BIN file from the Google Earth Download Page to your desktop.

Next, open up a terminal and head into your Desktop directory:
cd ~/Desktop

Give the BIN file the necessary permissions:
chmod a+x GoogleEarthLinux.bin

Execute the BIN file:
./GoogleEarthLinux.bin

Note that you should not need to use admin priveledges to execute the above command.

The archive should extract as follows:
jonolumb@jonoxps:~/Desktop$ ./GoogleEarthLinux.bin
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing Google Earth for GNU/Linux 4.3.7284.3916..............................................................
loki_setup: Suspect size value for option option
loki_setup: Suspect size value for option option
Installing mimetypes...
Installing desktop menu entries...
Installing desktop icon...

Finally follow the onscreen instructions for the installer and preferably install Google Earth somewhere within your home directory. When the installer is finished you should get a confirmation like this:

Now just hit that “start” button and Google Earth should launch. You can also launch Google Earth from the menu at the top of the screen:
Applications –> Internet –> Google Earth

After installing kflickr onto a clean install of Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) and loading some photos, I discovered that there were no thumbnails displaying - but rather a broken thumbnail icon.

It appears that this is a dependancy problem - as kflickr depends on some kde specific libraries.

To rectify the problems we need to install kdebase-kio-plugins

sudo apt-get install kdebase-kio-plugins

Now close kflickr and open up again - you should be able to preview thumbnails now

UPDATE: This fix does not work in Intrepid because Intrepid uses KDE4…

When trying to set up the 3D Cube effect in Ubuntu 8.04 I noticed that the Cube worked but only had two sides (2D Square)!

I discovered that because as a default there are only two workspaces in Ubuntu, hence there are only two sides of the ‘cube’.

To increase the number of workspaces (to 4):
Right Click on Workspaces (bottom-right corner of screen) –> Preferences –> Increase Columns to 4

Now try rotating the Cube again (Ctrl + Alt + Left/Right)