Here’s a bunch of Firefox tips which are really helpful.
I especially like the option to open search box results in a new tab.. much easier! No more, new tab, search.
Monthly Archive for July, 2009
Ohhh.. this would make a sweet Myth-TV front end, I reckon. Well, it’s make a sweet lots of things. Thoughts?
-c
As a part of my three months using Fedora trial, I have written an article for Linux Magazine about Remixes and Omega in particular.
Omega is a Remix of Fedora which includes the RPM Fusion repositories and GStreamer plugins for multimedia codecs by default. It also ships with all the latest updates at the time of release.
-c
Under KDE you can press CTRL+ALT+ESC and get a cursor which will then kill any application that you click on. It’s a handy little feature.
Under GNOME, you need to open System Monitor, select the “Processes” tab, find the process in the list, select it and hit “End Process.” However today at work, Evolution crashed on Justin’s PC rendering the rest of GNOME unworkable. To fix this I just switched to TTY1 and killed Evolution, but it got me thinking how handy the same key shortcut would be under GNOME. After all, I couldn’t open System Monitor to kill anything.
The program KDE uses is called xkill, so it’s very easy to set up under GNOME. Just install it (by default it exists under Ubuntu, under Fedora install xorg-x11-apps) and open System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts.
In that window, add a new shortcut, giving it a name and typing the command as xkill. Then you should see it in the list. Click on the right hand side to activate a key combination, hold down CTRL+ALT+ESC and it should add it there. Close that window.
Now you should be able to press CTRL+ALT+ESC and get your little cursor to kill any running program you want, simply by clicking on it. Simple work around, but might be useful to someone else.
Came across a decent collection of tips for SSH by Vivek Gite. If you’re using SSH (and even if you’re not!) it’s worth a look.
-c
Today at the computer fair I saw the most bizarre drive ever – a Western Digital 808.8GB drive. Seem strange?
I immediately thought it must be for Chinese people, with the number of eights in the size. Ironically, the supplier’s ex-GST buy price was $88!
So that’s an $88 0.8088TB drive.. how awesome is that?! Well, if you believe in that sort of thing I guess.
Turns out, my suspicions were correct! It’s a drive specifically marketed in China as a lucky drive 
Either that, or it’s a dodgy bootleg WD drive. I searched Western Digital’s global website and couldn’t find reference to that particular model, by searching the China website did reveal it as a legit product. Phew.. I guess I don’t have to worry about the new Black WD drives I bought from the same shop!
Although it’s only meant to be sold in China, you can buy it from the markets or from
If you know about Chinese superstition, what’s the bet we’ll never see a 404.4GB drive?!
-c
Looking to put Fedora on an EeePC? The Fedora-Eee project has some interesting tools, including a program called eee-control, which lets the user turn devices like bluetooth, web cam, etc, on and off. They also have a custom kernel tweaked for the EeePC.
-c
I thought I had published this somewhere on my blog, but perhaps not. So that I can find it in the future, here is a great paper from the EC about Microsoft’s anti-competitive dealings, called “Microsoft. A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm”.
A great read and a sobering reminder in times like these!
I’m sure you’ve all heard about the recent code contribution from Microsoft for the Linux kernel. I’ve written an article about it for Linux Magazine and was fortunate to have Linus answer a few of my questions to give his perspective on it all. Enjoy!