Create a Launcher manually for Unity

Today was the release of eclipse 3.7 code named Indigo. After installation I wanted a shortcut of the new eclipse on the launcher in Unity but every time I've tried the launcher would just called eclipse in the system which called the default eclipse in Ubuntu which is 3.5.

I wanted the shortcut to call my new eclipse I had installed under /opt. Here is how to:

$ gedit ~/.local/share/applications/eclipse.desktop

 And enter the following in the file:

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open

[Desktop Entry]

Version=1.0

Type=Application

Terminal=false

StartupNotify=true

Icon=/opt/eclipse/icon.xpm

Name=Eclipse Indigo 3.7

Exec=env UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0 /opt/eclipse/eclipse

And save the file. Hope this helps.

I got help from here 

Enable DVD Playback

Not that I play DVD's very often but is always good to be able to play DVD's and every time that I've tried they never seemed to work in Ubuntu. I actually always thought it was a bug in Ubuntu and I never bothered to look to much into it (lazy) and always double booted into Windows to play my DVD's as I always thought this was the quickest way to get things going without going for hours through comments on forums looking for the right answer for me.

Today I've seen this post in OMG! Ubuntu which brought new light to my clueless issues with the DVD playback.

Links of interest:

Medibuntu packages - http://packages.medibuntu.org/natty/index.html
Medibuntu Documentation - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu#Adding%20the%20Repositories

Free VPN service providers

It's always good to have some sort of security specially when using public wi-fi networks. After doing a bit of research and trying different things here is the option that work best for me.

There is not software installation involve as Ubuntu already comes with vpn tool pre-installed. You just need to click on the network icon and select "VPN Conections->Configure VPN...", you will be greeted with a new window like this one:

The service provider I used: http://www.bestfreevpn.com/

Just enter the details as shown on the screenshot below. One the things using this service provider is that they change the password every few hours but this is not to bad of an issue. The service they provide is quite good so far.

To be able to use the vpn you just setup you are going to restart the network manager but logging out and back in again. Once you do that you will be able to log into Free vpn by clicking on the network manager on the top right.

Another good service that I haven't been able to work is "itshidden.com" which I'm giving you because you may be more lucky than me.

All about Grub 2 - Adding menu, restoring windows 7 loader, recovering grub, ...

Since upgrading to Ubuntu Natty and changing from grub to grub 2, all what I use to know about grub has been changed.

I had different problems on my pc and my netbook with the menu entries. On my pc Windows 7 would not start and on my netbook the menu option disappeared. I've been going at this for a while and I found some good websites. This is not going to be a follow step by step tutorial as all of the problems have already been solved by somebody else, so there's no need for me to rewrite them all. Instead I'm just going to post the links here as a reference.

• Good place to start --> Grub 2
• The Grub 2 Guide
• How to restore the Ubuntu/XP/Vista/7 bootloader
• How to fix Vista/Window 7 when the boot files are missing
• boot_info_script.sh
• How to add Vista/Windows 7 partition to Grub 2
• Some other useful thread

**UPDATED** Change the default terminal window size

I always heated the default size of the terminal window. The square size is to small to do any real work and it doesn't look right either with a wide screen, but looks a part it is not a great size for advanced users to do anything on it and always have to resize the window to suite my needs.

No more, here is a quick tip to always start the terminal window to the size of your liking. I can't remember the menu options from the all menu from gnome 2 but I'm sure any user can follow this steps. I'm using Unity.

1.- Press the super key to open the search lens and look for:

main menu

2.- Once the "Main Menu" application is running select "Accessories" on the left menu and then select "Terminal" on the second menu.

3.- Once you have the "Terminal" options is selected press the "Properties" button on the right. A new window will open with the terminal Launcher properties.

4.- Go to the "Command" entry and add this to the end of the entry:

--geometry=132x24

The finished entry should be:

gnome-terminal --geometry=132x24

5.- That's it. Close the windows and next time you launch the terminal the window will be resized. You may have to logout and log back in to work properly.


Play around with different sizes if you don't like the one I used. This should also work with other applications other than the terminal.

*********************UPDATE******************************

Since Ubuntu 11.10 the solution above doesn't work any more as Canonical have removed "Main menu" application. It doesn't seem to work either even if you install it from the Software Centre. Probably the way Unity works.

Here is a solution to change it. First go to:

~/.local/share/applications/

Use nautilus for this. Once you are in that folder locate the file for the terminal. Right click it and select "Properties" in the command entry add this as before:

gnome-terminal --geometry=132x24

That's it.

Just in case in your PC's don't have that file create a new one using Gedit an enter the following:

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open

[Desktop Entry]

Name=Terminal

Comment=Use the command line

TryExec=gnome-terminal

Exec=gnome-terminal --geometry=132x24

Icon=utilities-terminal

Type=Application

X-GNOME-DocPath=gnome-terminal/index.html

X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=GNOME

X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=gnome-terminal

X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=BugBuddyBugs

X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version=2.32.1

Categories=GNOME;GTK;Utility;TerminalEmulator;

StartupNotify=true

OnlyShowIn=GNOME;

X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=gnome-terminal

Terminal=false

MAFIAA - Browser Addon

Not entirely Ubuntu related but interesting none the less.

We all know that a while back US Government started taking over web addresses from sites which they though are infringing with piracy...

Not so long ago TorrentFreak wrote an article about a browser addon which redirects the user to the new found addresses of the named websites. Pretty handy I thought...

Nautilus Elementary Tweak theme for Ubuntu 10.10 or 11.04

simplygreat has posted a nice tweak for the theme of the Nautilus elementary which it makes it to integrate more with Ubuntu.

Here is the link to DebianArt

I also like the alternative instructions by Cybolic

About the installation, you can also just unpack "nautilus.rc" and the folder "nautilus" into $HOME/.gtk/ and put the following two lines in $HOME/.gtkrc-2.0:

include "/usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"
include ".gtk/nautilus.rc"

Popper - email Notification now has a PPA

My favorite email notification for Ubuntu has finally got a PPA.

First uninstall any older version of Popper:

$ sudo aptitude remove popper

Add the PPA to you package source:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ralf.hersel/rhersel-ppa

Update the repository:

$ sudo aptitude update

And finally install popper:

$ sudo aptitude install popper 

Get the dropbox appindicator to work in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal

We all moved from 10.10 to 11.04 and by doing so we also adopted the new Unity interface. We all know that Unity still in infancy and still a lot of things that need fixing like this bug I reported to the Untiy Launchpad page which looks like that conky is causing it.

Some of them are bigger issues than others, and hopefully as we move forward to 11.10, Unity will be more like the interface we all expected to be, but for now we all gonna have to patch things up .

Anyway, Andrei at Webup8 has this patch for fixing the dropbox appindicator issue.

Make KDE look native under Ubuntu

I haven't written anything for a while but as you know this is not a blog as any other but just like a memory dump for things I find interesting and want to remember. I find this way easier than bookmarking everything. The way I see it, this is just a blog with things of my interest.

You can find all about it here, so I'm not gonna bother on writing the same thing all over again, just follow the link...

Change Sidebar colour in Nautilus-Elementary

Here is one of those tips that should be used as a default in nautilus. OMG!Ubuntu posted this tip earlier this week.

Is quite simple and the results are quite impressive, it makes nautilus look much nicer.

First open nautilus and see if you have this file in your home directory ~/.gtkrc-2.0. If so, edit and paste the code below in it. If the file doesn't exist open gedit on paste the code below and save it as .gtkrc-2.0 in your home directory.

style "nautilus-sidepane"
{
    GtkTreeView::even_row_color   = "#F2F1F0"
}

widget_class "*NautilusSidePane*" style "nautilus-sidepane"

Ok, I'm off to do the same thing to my netbook.