Ubuntu Tips And Tricks

LiquidFM Mod

Increase Quality by Adding an Antenna. Kensington's LiquidFM is a device that transmit audio from my Ipod to my car radio.

The transmission quality suffers especially in crowded areas. By adding an antenna to it, one could enhance the signal strength and therefore get a better sound into your card radio. Checkout the video tutorial for the details.

Install SuperTuxKart Games in Ubuntu 10.10

It’s here, racing fans – a brand new version of iconic Linux game ‘SuperTuxKart’ is now available for download.

SuperTuxKart 0.7, which has been in development for over a year, sees some great new features and improvements added to the game, including: -

New graphics engine
New GUI
New Kart and track animations
New and improved tracks, karts, and items
Shortcut/alternative way support for tracks
Asian font support
Bugfixes

Download

Dying to get your racing helmet on? You can nab the latest release by adding the following PPA (in bold) to your software sources.

To do this using a Terminal enter: -

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stk/dev

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install supertuxkart

Launch Via Applications > Games > SuperTuxKart
Alternatively you grab the source @ sourceforge.net/projects/supertuxkart

RhythmCat - A music player with lyric show

RhythmCat is a music player which can be running under Linux. It can be used as a normal music player, and it can also show lyrics in a single window, or even on the desktop. It can help you mix your voice into the original music. And this player can help you convert the format of your music files, or cut/join your music…

Install RhythmCat in ubuntu
Download deb packages from here once you have deb packages you can install them by double clicking on it.

Force Quit Option Ubuntu 10.10

“Arrrrrrgh” said the bear with the sore head when trying to run ‘xkill’ in Unity. “Why doesn’t pawing ALT + F2 work in here?!”.

It’s something which I know has perplexed, bamboozled and annoyed the frell out of many readers who have upgraded to Ubuntu 10.10 Unity.

Thankfully it’ll be one of the many things fixed in Unity come 11.04 but, if you can’t wait until April 2011 to flex your fingers, here are some alternative ways to run commands, launch apps and stretch those digits using ALT+F2.

1. Do it with GNOME-Do

Gnome-Do can open, launch and execute a whole world of wonders when called – search google, send text to pastebin, upload photos or just launch an application. For those who desire some visual slickness in their launcher Do is the undisputed choice.

2. Take Alawalk for a walk

Launch your applications/command whilst using very little memory with Alawalk.

And by ‘very little memory’ I mean very little – Alawwhich uses barely above 65KiB of RAM when in use.

Alawalk comes with many-a plugin from Google search to Tweeter. It uses a custom set of commands for a few things but all is explained in the ‘Read Me’ file included in the download.

alawalk.tk

3. Run with Gmrun

Another work around to the lack of ALT+F2 freshness is by use of Gmrun – a small dialogue window that can be configured to show on shortcut.

Gmrun has terminal-style TAB completion amongst other standard fare. Unlike other entries in this list it doesn’t use window controls.

Gmrun can be installed via the Ubuntu Software Centre.

4. GRun

Want your launcher to have automatic auto-complete (as opposed to tab completion)? gRun steps up to the challenge. It’s small, can be configured to run on a keyboard shortcut and, whilst lacking some of the advanced features others in the list can claim, it does have a ‘memory’ for swift access to your most commonly used commands.

gRun can be installed via the Ubuntu Software Centre.

5. Be lazy, use the terminal

Finally if none of the candidates bring balm to your each keyboatd-shortcut-loving fingers there is always the terminal ready and waiting. Add it to your Unity launcher for quick access and et voila – problem almost solved.

There. No need to stress out too much Mr Bear. Maybe you should go find whoever broke in to your house, ate your porridge and slept in your bed before stealing your prize collection of Ubuntu release CD’s, hmm?