‘Ejector’ tray app adds indicator applet

Windows users miss an easily accessible tray icon for un-mounting their drives safely in Ubuntu should check out ‘Ejecter‘ (*), an nitfy tool that has recently received some new features…

It’s hard to waffle on about what ‘Ejecter’ does, after all the name kind of gives it away.

Suffice to say it provides convenient access for un-mounting external peripherals hard drives, DVD tray and USB sticks with little more than a click on the system panel.

When your device is ready to be unplugged from your computer a native Ubuntu notification bubble will appear.

Install

Maverick comes with an old version of the tray app available in the repositories. This works fine but for all the new features you’ll need to upgrade using the following PPA:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fredp/ppa
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ejecter

Ejecter adds itself your system start-up items and will launch automatically upon your next login.

*Ejecter is not a typo, it’s how the application is spelt

This is a clean beige theme based on Clearlooks and Murrine. It is inspired by the controls theme GTK2-H2O (author: ?). The corresponding Emerald theme is included.

Install LibreOffice 3.3 Ubuntu

The first stable release of the free office suite ‘LibreOffice’ is now available for download.

Forked from OpenOffice late last year, LibreOffice 3.3 provides users with the familiar set of applications – albeit with greatly improved features such as: -

• Import and work with SVG files
• Easy way to format title pages and their numbering in Writer
• Improved Navigator Tool for Writer
• Improved ergonomics in Calc for sheet and cell management
• Microsoft Works and Lotus Word Pro document import filters.

A detailed breakdown of new features in LibreOffice 3.3 can be found @libreoffice.org/download/new-features-and-fixes

Download LibreOffice

Enough with the chit chat how do you get a-hold of it? LibreOffice 3.3 can be downloaded in .deb format from libreoffice.org or, for Ubuntu 10.10 users, installed from the LibreOffice PPA using the following commands: -

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libreoffice

Ubuntu 11.04 testers will already have LibreOffice installed as it undergoes evaluation for as OpenOffice’s replacement.

Fix Realtek RTL8192SU Ubuntu driver

Here’s quick fix for annoyed users with Realtek RTL8192SU WiFi chipsets wanting some WiFi…

I just bought a new Wi-Fi dongle for my netbook (due to woes with the Broadcom card inside, but that’s a whole other post) and although my no-name budget £10 dongle boasted ‘Linux support’ on the packaging I was a mite miffed to find it incapable of mustering even a faint signal of anything when plugged into my Ubuntu 10.10-running device.

Doubly annoying given it works flawlessly in Natty…

So what’s up?

After Googling around I came up on a bug report titled “Please include firmware for RTL8192SU“. The response was illuminating: -

“On 10.04 & 10.10 the firmware is already there but its in the wrong location.”

The solution to is open a terminal and pop in the following command: -

sudo cp -R /lib/firmware/RTL8192SE /lib/firmware/RTL8192SU

Reboot and, fingers crossed, your dongle will be up and receiving – certainly worked for me!

Need to find out what chipset your dongle uses? Plug it in, open a terminal and type ‘lsusb’. All connected USB devices will be listed.

Add a main menu to Docky

Long for a ‘main menu’ on Docky?

"I’ve been using AWN for quite sometime now, but that’s because of the lack of many docklets in Docky; the main-menu being an important one (at least for me)" he says on why he sought out a solution.

"What we do is change the "click" function of the Docky icon. So I modified that a bit, and got it to display the gnome-menu whenever I click the Docky icon."

Sounds neat, so how does one do it?

1. Install "xdotool" (click here to install)
2. Press ALT+F2 and type in "gconf-editor".
3. Press enter.
4. Navigate to /apps/docky-2/Docky/Items/DockyItem and double click on "DockyItemCommand"
5. In the "value" field copy paste: xdotool key -clearmodifiers alt+F1
6. Press OK and close the box.
7. Click on the Docky icon