Repairing Broken Window Manager (Mint 11)

This appears to be caused by a broken window manager. The top bar of the window vanishes, and your maximise, minimise, close window buttons with it. To fix, type in a terminal...

metacity --replace

Disabling Glitch-Free Mode (Mint 11)

If your sound is choppy, distorted, or drops out when two or more programs are running at once, try disabling glitch-free mode (oh, the sweet irony!) by navigating to /etc/pulse/default.pa and, as root, adding tsched=0 to the end of the "load driver modules" commands. See below. (Bold text for illustrative purposes only.)

### Automatically load driver modules depending on the hardware available
.ifexists module-hal-detect.so
load-module module-hal-detect tsched=0
.else

Reinstalling GRUB2 (Ubuntu 11.04)

First, find out where Ubuntu is installed on your hard disk...

sudo fdisk -l

You should see something like....

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2611 20972826 7 NTFS
/dev/sda2 2612 60279 463218210 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 60280 60801 4192965 5 Extended

My Ubuntu partition is /dev/sda2. The partition now needs mounting...

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

To install the GRUB2 boot loader, type...

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

Note, that's /dev/sda (The hard disk itself) NOT The Ubuntu partition /dev/sda2. Once completed unmount the partition and reboot...

sudo umount /dev/sda1 ; sudo reboot

NB -- If you have more than one OS installed, re-detect your various Operating Systems with...

sudo update-grub

 ** Do this before unmounting the partition.

Installing Kazam Screencaster (Ubuntu 11.04)

To solve the missing dependency problem first download libmatroska0 and convert it from .rpm to .deb using Alien (available from repository).

cd Downloads
sudo alien -k libmatroska0-0.8.0-0.1.102plf.i586.rpm

Install the file using Synaptic and then add the ppa:and471/kazam-daily-builds repositories to your sources list...

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:and471/kazam-daily-builds
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kazam

 To start Kazam press Alt+F2 and type: kazam

Using "get_iplayer" For Linux

Install from distro repositories. To retrieve the list of available shows, type...

get_iplayer

To narrow the search down to specific shows: in this instance Doctor Who, type...

get_iplayer doctor

To download a programme, using the programme number, use the following command... 

get_iplayer --get 607 --vmode=flashhd

Note: If get_iplayer isn't in the repositories, download the tarball and extract it to preferred location. To run, navigate to the folder using a terminal, then type..

./get_iplayer

 To download radio, to pull up the streams try...

 get_iplayer --type=radio

To download in all audio formats type...

 get_iplayer --type=radio --get --amode=iphone,flashaac,flashaudio --pid b00jtm1l

Removing Global Menu (Ubuntu 12.04)

To remove the global menu, either type...

 sudo apt-get autoremove appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt

... into a terminal, or remove "appmenu-gtk", "appmenu-gtk3" and "appmenu-qt" manually through the Software Centre.

N.B. To re-enable type into a terminal...

sudo apt-get install appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt

 Also disable the Global Menu Bar Integration  add-on in Firefox (Tools>Add-ons>Extensions.)

Pidgin System Tray Icon Not Showing Up (Ubuntu 11.04)

To solve the issue of the pidgin system tray icon not showing up in Natty, type into a terminal...

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['all']"

Fix "NTFS Configuration Utility" ("No Such File") Error

To fix the "OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/hal/fdi/policy'" error, either, install "hal" from the software centre, or, create an empty policy file by opening a terminal and typing...

cd /etc
sudo mkdir hal
cd hal
sudo mkdir fdi
cd fdi
sudo gedit policy

...save and exit, close terminal, and launch ntfs-config by typing...

gksu ntfs-config 

Solving "Input Signal Out of Range" Error on Bootup

After installing Ubuntu, on restart, the error warning "Input Signal out of range" error can come up. To fix it, open a terminal and type...

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

... and unhash the line...

#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

 ... so it reads...

GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

 ... or whatever resolution you desire, then save and exit the document.

Then type...

sudo update-grub

Fixing Firefox 3.5.x Flash problem

To prevent the repo version of Firefox 3.5.x crashing on full screening flash content, change the start command to...

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libGL.so.1 firefox %u

Remove Orphaned Packages (Mandriva 2010)

urpme --auto-orphans

Backup xorg.conf (PCLinuxOS 2011)

# File generated by XFdrake (rev 262502)

# **********************************************************************
# Refer to the xorg.conf man page for details about the format of
# this file.
# **********************************************************************

Section "ServerFlags"Option "DontZap" "False" # disable (server abort)
#DontZoom # disable / (resolution switching)
AllowMouseOpenFail # allows the server to start up even if the mouse does not work
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "v4l" # Video for Linux
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "monitor1"
VendorName "Plug'n Play"
ModelName "F-417"
HorizSync 24-80
VertRefresh 49-75

# TV fullscreen mode or DVD fullscreen output.
# 768x576 @ 79 Hz, 50 kHz hsync
ModeLine "768x576" 50.00 768 832 846 1000 576 590 595 630

# 768x576 @ 100 Hz, 61.6 kHz hsync
ModeLine "768x576" 63.07 768 800 960 1024 576 578 590 616
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "device1"
VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 6100 to GeForce 360"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "DPMS"
Option "DynamicTwinView" "false"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen1"
Device "device1"
Monitor "monitor1"
DefaultColorDepth 24

Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "480x360" "320x240"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "480x360" "320x240"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "480x360" "320x240"
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "832x624" "800x600" "640x480" "480x360" "320x240"
EndSubsection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "layout1"
Screen "screen1"
EndSection

Playing AAC/M4a Files (Mandriva 2010)

1. Download the plf package system from easyurmpi http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ (choose the smartpm option).

2. After install, go into package manager, search and install faac, faad, gstreamer0.10-faad and gstreamer0.10-faac.