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How to Make or Create a Shortcut or Hotkey to Mute the Speakers on Ubuntu or Gnome? It is very simple if you are running the latest version of Ubuntu or Gnome. But If your version doesn’t have any easy option to do it you can do the same thing in many versions of Linux with a simple command line.

Setting the Shortcut on Ubuntu

Normally go to System >> Preferences >> Keyboard Shortcuts and then assign a Shortcut key to the Sound >> Volume mute item.



When you use the hotkey or Shortcut key you’ll see a little dialog pop up to show you what the current volume state is. You have to quickly hit the hotkey again to toggle back and forth.



Use Command / Scripts

Alternatively, you can assign a shortcut key to a script that uses the amixer utility to toggle the mute state. To test this out, just open the terminal window and then use below command:

amixer sset Master toggle

You can see the output right there in the console, telling you whether it’s now set to off or on and your volume icon show that the volume has been muted.



You can create a shortcut to run this command by right-clicking anywhere and using Create Launcher, adding in the full command from above into the Command box.

How to Bring Back the Firefox Default Menu Button in Ubuntu 11.04 Linux? The new Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal uses a Global Menu which puts the applications menus (File, Edit ,View…) on the top panel. In Firefox, this also removes the Firefox menu button in the upper left corner of the browser window. If you liked that menu button and would like to get it back then you are lucky because it can be done in just 3 easy steps!

First Step: Open the add-ons manager by going to “Tools > Add-ons” or you can press the shortcut keys “Ctrl + Shift + A”.



Second Step: Locate the add-on “Global Menu Bar Integration”, disable it by clicking on “Disable” then click on the “Restart” buttons that will appear next.



Third Step: In the top most of the Firefox window itself, click “Views > Toolbars” and uncheck the “Menu Bar” option.



The Firefox Menu button is back in it’s place.

How to Install KDE (Kubuntu) on Ubuntu Linux Operating System?The Ubuntu default desktop uses the Gnome window manager, which can be a difficult transition for Windows users. The KDE desktop would be a lot more familiar to Windows users, as KDE has something comparable to the start menu.

If you’ve already installed Ubuntu, and you don’t want to completely reinstall with Kubuntu, you can just install the KDE window manager by installing the kubuntu-desktop package along with its dependencies.
You can install kubuntu using the GUI tools, but the easiest way is to open a terminal window, and type in the following command:

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

You will be prompted for your password, and then you will be prompted again asking if you really want to install. Hit the Y key to proceed, and let the install begin.

Downloading all of the updates can take a while, so you might want to get a cup of coffee or something. You will be prompted to select the login manager, which you can select as either gdm (ubuntu) or kdm (kde). I decided to leave the default gdm.

Reboot the computer, and when you get to the login prompt, click the Options button in the lower left hand corner:

You will be prompted to select the Session that you want. Here we will click KDE to continue.



Login, and you should now see the KDE desktop! All of the applications are found in the “Start”-like menu, as you can see:



Note: If you are running Ubuntu inside VMware and end up with some really strange display issues where the display resolution is really huge but the desktop is showing up in 800×600 instead (see screenshot), there is a fix for this.



When I experienced this problem, I was also unable to use the mouse. I rebooted, and logged back into the Ubuntu desktop instead of KDE, and went into the /etc/X11/ directory.

You will probably see that your xorg.conf file was backed up to xorg.conf.1 during the KDE / Kubuntu installation. Just copy the xorg.conf.1 back to xorg.conf, reboot, and everything should be fine.

Again, don’t mess with the xorg.conf file unless you are actually experiencing this problem.

How to Use the Windows Key to Open the “Start” Menu in Ubuntu Linux 10.04+ ?Linux distributions like Ubuntu open the main menu with Alt+F1 instead of the Windows key that most new Linux users would be expecting, but it used to be simple to change the shortcut key. Since Ubuntu 9.10 the process isn’t so obvious, but we’ve got the instructions for you.

Just in case you’re a total newb, here’s the menu we’re talking about:



Change the Gnome Main Menu Shortcut Key to the Windows Key
The first thing you’d normally do is head to System –> Preferences –> Keyboard Shortcuts to change out the shortcut key, but sadly the “Show the panel’s main menu” can’t be assign to the Windows key. You can hit the key as much as you want, but it won’t work here.



What you’re going to need to do is either open up a terminal or use the Alt+F2 shortcut key to bring up the Run Application dialog, and then paste in the following:

gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/panel_main_menu --type string "Super_L"



Once you’ve hit the enter key, the Windows key will not only open the main menu, but the Keyboard Shortcuts panel will be updated with “Super L”, which means the left Windows key.



And there you go.

How to Make Virtual Machines Always Hide To The System Tray in VMware Workstation in Ubuntu or Linux? My favorite feature in the latest version of VMware Workstation is that you can run virtual machines entirely in the background. This is most useful for “appliance” machines that you won’t actually use from the prompt, but through a web browser or ssh client.

The only problem is that when you click the close button on the VMware window, you get a prompt saying “Some virtual machines are still powered on. You can continue to run these virtual machines in the background, suspend them for later use, or power them off now.“

I always want my virtual machines to run in the background!



You can disable that window by just telling VMware to always run virtual machines in the background by going to Edit >> Preferences.



Click the checkbox that says “Run powered on virtual machines in background after close”. Now when you click the close button, it will always just minimize the virtual machines to the system tray. Very useful!

How to Cleanup Beagle Search Cache after Removing Beagle in Ubuntu or Linux? If you are like me, you’ve just gotten the news about the new Google Desktop client for Linux, and you are removing the current Beagle search for Ubuntu so you can replace it with Google instead.

The only problem is that the Beagle search had a huge cache of data left behind after removing the package, in this hidden directory:

~/.beagle/

On my test system, that directory is /home/geek/.beagle/ and it turned out to have 141mb wasting space. I suppose it could have been worse… my main system has 1GB of data sitting there.



Note: This article assumes that you’ve already removed Beagle, and that you don’t want the search cache to remain.

Navigate in the File Browser to your home directory, and then hit the Ctrl+H key combination to see the hidden files. You should see .beagle in the list.



Just delete the folder, and you should be all done. (Of course, you could do this from the command line instead like I did)

How to Convert Videos Using Transmageddon System in Ubuntu Linux? Whether you want to listen to music on your smartphone or watch movies on your iPad, you may need to convert you media files from one format to another depending on what your devices support.

Transmageddon Video Transcoder is a great media converter for Ubuntu. It converts audio and video files, it has a simple interface, and it’s free. Installation is easy. Just type this command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install transmageddon



Or use the Software Center:



Transmageddon is now installed, so let’s start converting videos. Launch it from the applications menu. The application looks like this:



At the top you choose the input file which you want to convert. Click the button and navigate to the file you want it converted then click “Open”.



You can see the input video properties just below the “Choose Input File” button. If you have a specific device you want to play the video on, then select your device from the “Preset” drop-down menu so the program adjusts the conversion settings appropriately otherwise leave it blank. Now select the target format you want from the “Output Format” menu. Right below that are the settings for audio and video codec. Choose the settings you desire. You can choose different audio/video codecs with different qualities and formats. At the bottom of the window you can choose whether to rotate the video image or not. This might come in handy if you were shooting a video then found out later that you were holding that you were holding the camera upside down (or if you like to watch videos upside down which would be weird).



After you finish choosing the settings you want, hit “Transcode” to start the conversion process. It may take a while depending on the length of the video and the setting you choose. You will find the output file in under Videos in your Home directory. Easy, isn’t it?

How to Clean Up Ubuntu Grub Boot Menu After Upgrades or Linux? One of the things in Ubuntu that has always driven me crazy is the addition of new items into the grub menu without removing the old entries that likely don’t even work anymore. I’m sure most experienced Ubuntu users already know how to do this, but here’s the method anyway.

I just installed this box recently, and then did an upgrade…. already there are 7 items in the menu.



To remove these entries, we’ll need to edit the file /boot/grub/menu.lst. You can do this by using Alt+F2 and then typing in the following command:

gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst




Now that we’ve got the file open, scroll down to the bottom of the file where it says “End Default Options”, and you’ll find all the menu entries for the various kernels in here. You can just select and delete the ones you don’t want.



Save the file, and then the next time you boot up you’ll see a much nicer set of options.



I’m guessing it would also be prudent to clean up the other unused kernel files that are sitting out there… I’m sure there’s some automated tool to do that, but I’ve not taken the time to figure it out yet.

How to Open a File Browser From Your Current Command Prompt/Terminal Directory in Ubuntu/Linux? For this exercise, we’re going to assume that you’re using Gnome under a Linux flavor like Ubuntu, because that’s the most common. From your terminal window, just type in the following command:

nautilus .



And the next thing you know, you’ll have a file browser window open at the current location. You’ll see some type of error message at the prompt, but you can pretty much ignore that.



You can also use “gnome-open .” if you want.

Open Finder in Mac OS X

All the Mac computers in this office are running Linux, so we haven’t had a chance to verify, but you should be able to use the following command on OS X to open Finder in the current terminal location:

open .

Open Dolphin on Linux KDE4

dolphin .

You are successfully completed.

How to Disable/Inactive/Turn Off Logon Sounds in Ubuntu Operating System? Nothing’s worse than booting up your laptop in a public place and subjecting everyone around you to the Ubuntu login sounds. We’ll show you how to disable both login sounds for good.



Disable the User Login Sound

By default, when you log into your Ubuntu desktop, a program will run that plays a sound to greet you. Let’s disable that program!

Click on System > Preferences > Startup Applications.



Scroll through the list and find the GNOME Login Sound program. Uncheck the checkbox (or click Remove to permanently remove the option from this list).



Disable the Login Ready Sound

In addition to the sound that plays when you log in, a sound may play when the Ubuntu log in screen is ready for you to log in.

To disable this, click on System > Administration > Login Screen.




This change requires super user privileges, so assuming you have them, click on the Unlock button and enter your password.



Once unlocked, you can uncheck the “Play login sound” checkbox.



While the login sounds can be helpful, especially if your computer is older and you have to make a sandwich while your computer boots up, they can also be very annoying. If you want to turn them off, make sure you disable both of the login sounds!