I've seen numerous requests for making Evolution minimize to the Messaging Menu when closing the main window but for whatever reason, this wasn't implemented in Ubuntu.
But I've recently discovered a PPA for Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat (I've only tested it in Ubuntu 10.10 and Evolution 2.30.3!) that provides a patched Evolution Indicator which allows you to close the main Evolution window yet still get new email notifications - basically the Evolution window is minimized to the Messaging Menu (Evolution Indicator) instead of closing.
Install the patched Evolution Indicator in Ubuntu 10.10 using the following commands:
There is one bug though: when you click "Compose New Message" or "Contacts" in the Messaging Menu, both the main Evolution Window and the contacts / new mail windows open. But that's nothing major so if you're among those who were waiting for this feature ever since Ubuntu got the Messaging Menu / Indicators, I'm sure this won't stay in your way of using this patched Evolution Indicator.
Bote: Unfortunately there is no patched Evolution Indicator for Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal yet.
Unity got its notification area (called Systray by the Ubuntu developers) back a while ago, but only for a few applications: Java apps, Mumble, Wine applications, Skype, and hp-systray. But there's an easy way to either re-enable the Systray for all applications or to whitelist a few applications you can't live without. Read on to learn how to get your systray back!
A. Using the command line.
To enable the Notification Area (Systray) for all applications, run the following command:
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['all']"
You can only whitelist a certain application if you want, by using the following command:
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['JavaEmbeddedFrame', 'Mumble', 'Wine', 'Skype', 'hp-systray', 'YOUR_APPLICATION']"
The above command includes the already whitelisted (by default) applications so you should replace "YOUR_APPLICATION" with the application you want to whitelist.
Once you run the command, log out and then log back in.
There is also a script created by Fewt to easily whitelist an application for using the Systray. You can get the script from HERE.
B. Using a GUI
You can also use a GUI tool called "dconf-editor" to re-enable the Notification Area or whitelist an application. To be able to use it, firstly install "dconf-tools" - click the button below to install it:
Or install it using a terminal:
sudo apt-get install dconf-tools
Once installed, press ALT + F2 and enter: "dconf-editor", then navigate to desktop > unity > panel and to enable the Notification Area (Systray) for all applications, enter:
['all']
Or, if you want to whitelist only a few applications, add them to the end of the already existing list.
After changing the dconf value, log out and log back in.
Reset the Systray to the default Ubuntu 11.04 settings
To reset the Systray to the initial value, simply run the following command:
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['JavaEmbeddedFrame', 'Mumble', 'Wine', 'Skype', 'hp-systray']"
Or click the "Set to default" button in the "dconf-editor".
When trying to install a .deb file using Ubuntu Software Center in Ubuntu 11.04, you may get an error like the following:
The package is of bad quality
The installation of a package which violates the quality standards isn't allowed. This could cause serious problems on your computer. Please contact the person or organisation who provided this package file and include the details beneath.
See these examples: 1, 2, 3, 4 and manyothers (those are links to comments by users having this issue). After some recent updates, the error is not so often as it used to, but it's still annoying and it stops you from installing various applications.
There's no way to fix it unless those who have created the .deb fix it, but you can still install these packages by not using Ubuntu Software Center for installing .deb files. You can install .deb files either by using "dpkg" or Gdebi.
Note: sometimes, those packages are indeed of bad quality, but most of the times are just simple errors in the package description and such, which do not affect you. Either way, install them at your own risk!
1. Install .deb files using dpkg.
Assuming you've downloaded the .deb in your ~/Downloads folder, run the following commands in a terminal to install all the .deb files:
cd ~/Downloads sudo dpkg -i *.deb sudo apt-get install -f
(the last command is required for installing the dependencies)
2. Install .deb files using Gdebi (this was the default behavior until Ubuntu Software Center was made default).
Firstly, install Gdebi by clicking the button below:
You can also install it using a terminal:
sudo apt-get install gdebi gdebi-core
You can then right click a .deb file and select "Open with Gdebi Package Installer".
If you want, you can set Gdebi default for installing .deb files instead of Ubuntu Software Center: right click a .deb file, select "Properties", go to the "Open With" tab and select "GDebi Package Installer" instead of "Ubuntu Software Center". Click "Close" and double click the .deb file - it should now open with GDebi and not Ubuntu Software Center:
By default, Skype doesn't play very nicely if you use a theme with dark menus. This is a serious inconvenient since Skype is a very popular application and the default Ubuntu theme - Ambiance - uses dark menus. But this is actually very easy to "fix".
To make the Skype menu readable when using a dark theme, go to the Skype options (you need to be logged in to do this) and on the "General" tab, under "Choose style" select "Desktop settings":
Then, click "Apply" and restart Skype. The Skype menus should now be readable.
When Gnome 3.0 will be released, you should be able to add back the minimize and maximize buttons from the "GNOME Plumbing" panel in the Control Center or using "gsettings" (command line tool). Until then, if you use Gnome Shell in Ubuntu 10.10, you can set it to use "minimize, maximize, close" buttons using the following command:
You can change the button order in the above command. For instance, to set the buttons to the left side of the window like in Ubuntu 10.10, you would have to edit the command like this: "close,minimize,maximize:".
You can also do this the visual way: press ALT + F2 and enter "gconf-editor", then navigate to desktop > gnome > shell and change the "button_layout" value as explained above.
Update: a new tool has been created for adding back the Minimize and Maximize buttons in GNOME shell as well as many other options like changing the theme, icons, fonts and much more. See GNOME Tweak Tool.
Launchpad-Getkeys is a script (comes packaged in a .deb) that automatically imports all missing GPG keys, even if you're behind a firewall. It was initially created by blackgr @ ubuntuforums but then I decided to completely re-write the script so I can add some options, new features and so on.
How do you know when you have a missing GPG key? Here's an example: when you run "sudo apt-get update", you'll see some errors like this:
[...] Fetched 47.0kB in 6s (7,710B/s) Reading package lists... Done W: GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net maverick Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY B2DFD25316B94077 W: GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net maverick Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 1FFD34C9EB13C954 W: GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net maverick Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY EF4186FE247510BE
Here's a screenshot too:
Further more, if you have missing GPG keys, the update manager will not allow you to update the packages. That's when Launchpad-Getkeys comes in: it can automatically import all these missing GPG keys, thus fix the errors.
Here is a video with Launchpad-getkeys in action to get a better idea on how it works:
Unfortunately my script didn't work if the user was behind a proxy but WebUpd8 reader Saurabh Kumar added proxy support to Launchpad-Getkeys - I couldn't test this (I'm not behind a proxy and even if I'd try to simulate this, I wouldn't know for sure that it works) but I've merged his change into the Launchpad-Getkeys package in the WebUpd8 PPA anyway. Read on to find out how to install and use Launchpad-Getkeys.
Install Launchpad-Getkeys
Launchpad-Getkeys is available for Ubuntu 9.10, 10.04, 10.10 and 11.04, in the WebUpd8 PPA. Add the PPA and install Launchpad-Getkeys using the following commands:
To automatically import all the missing Launchpad GPG keys, all you have to do is run the following command:
sudo launchpad-getkeys
You can also specify a keyserver and port using the "-k" parameter, like so:
sudo launchpad-getkeys -k SERVER:PORT
This is useful if the port is blocked (but Launchpad-Getkeys uses port 80 by default, unlike the "add-apt-repository" command until Ubuntu 11.04) or if the keyserver is down.
To use Launchpad Getkeys when you're behind a proxy (instructions by Saurabh Kumar - tested by him only), run the following command:
sudo visudo
Then search for this line:
Defaults env_reset
And above it, add this:
Defaults env_keep = "http_proxy"
Then press "Ctrl + O" and "Ctrl + X" if visudo is open using Nano (that's the default behavior).
This will use your "http_proxy" so all you have to do is run:
sudo launchpad-getkeys
If you want, you can specify a different proxy like this:
sudo launchpad-getkeys -p http://SERVER:PORT
Note: There are still things to do. For instance, the script cannot tell if it imported the keys successfully or not and will always report this as successful. I'm still working on solving this.
There are many ways Grub can get broken: installing Windows, messing around with Grub configuration files or just a faulty update. Luckily, there are also quite a few ways to restore Grub. Such a tool is Rescatux, an really easy to use Live CD that fixes the Grub in seconds.
Rescatux is a tool to recover Grub / Grub 2 that comes with a GUI so it's less "scary" for those of you who do not like the command line and can restore Grub to the MBR or update the Grub configuration with just a few clicks. Further more, the latest Rescatux version (released a few days ago) comes with an option to force a filesystem check which can help recover Grub or Grub2 when Grub cannot read the filesystem because of inconsistencies. It can Restore Grub to the MBR for most Linux distributions, however the update Grub option only works with Debian-based Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Linux Mint and so on).
To use Rescatux, simply burn it onto a CD or create a bootable USB stick, then boot the Live CD/USB and the Grub recovery window will automatically pop-up:
Then chose "grub-install" to restore the Grub and finally run "update-grub", then restart your computer:
Rescatux is supposed to work with both Grub (legacy) and Grub2, however please note that I've only tested it with Grub2 (it worked just fine for me - I broke the Grub for a virtual machine and then used Rescatux to fix it).
Sometimes when installing / upgrading a package, you get an error about it trying to overwrite some file which is also found in some other package and this results in a error that won't let you install / upgrade that package. I don't know about you, but I get this kind of errors quite often (most probably because I'm running bleeding-edge software but that's another story).
In most cases, such errors occur when some file was moved from one package to another in a newer version. Here is an example of such an error:
Unpacking replacement smplayer ... dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/smplayer_0.6.9+svn3595-1ppa1~maverick1_i386.deb (--unpack): trying to overwrite '/usr/share/smplayer/translations/smplayer_eu.qm', which is also in package smplayer-translations 0.6.9-1 dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Here's another example:
sudo apt-get install dockmanager Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following NEW packages will be installed: dockmanager 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 0B/94.4kB of archives. After this operation, 430kB of additional disk space will be used. (Reading database ... 162015 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking dockmanager (from .../dockmanager_0.1.0~bzr83-0ubuntu1~10.10~dockers1_amd64.deb) ... dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/dockmanager_0.1.0~bzr83-0ubuntu1~10.10~dockers1_amd64.deb (--unpack): trying to overwrite '/usr/share/dockmanager/data/skype_invisible.svg', which is also in package faenza-icon-theme 0.8 dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe) Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/dockmanager_0.1.0~bzr83-0ubuntu1~10.10~dockers1_amd64.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
The fix
Fixing this (in most cases but probably not all) is quite simple: look for path of the file that caused the error - in my first example that would be "/var/cache/apt/archives/smplayer_0.6.9+svn3595-1ppa1~maverick1_i386.deb", an run the following command:
If "--force-overwrite" doesn't work, you can try "--force-all" instead.
In the above command, replace "/var..." with the exact path to the .deb that caused the error on your computer. If you've installed it from a repository, the .deb is located in /var/cache/apt/archives but if not, it's wherever you've downloaded it (either way, the error should display its exact path so you don't have to look for it manually).
What the above command does is force the overwrite of the file that exists in 2 packages and caused the error. Then, to make sure all the packages have installed successfully, also run the following command:
If you are behind a firewall (and port 11371 is closed), you get an error each time you add a PPA:
Executing: gpg --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring /etc/apt/secring.gpg --trustdb-name /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --primary-keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 1970E5148200CA418348886341FDF8A2B455BEF0 gpg: requesting key B455BEF0 from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com ?: keyserver.ubuntu.com: Connection timed out gpgkeys: HTTP fetch error 7: couldn't connect: Connection timed out gpg: no valid OpenPGP data found. gpg: Total number processed: 0
Further more, you get errors when running "sudo apt-get update", the Update Manager refuses to upgrade packages and so on.
Do you remember Launchpad-Getkeys - a script that automatically imports all missing GPG keys? Well, if you're behind a firewall, you'll be glad to know that Launchpad-Getkeys now works on port 80 by default so it should finally fix the missing GPG keys issue. I've completely rewritten the script (which was initially posted by blackgr @ ubuntuforums) to only imports the missing GPG keys (it used to import all the keys each time you ran it, even if you only had one missing key). In the new version I've also added an option to use a different keyserver (use: -k SERVER:PORT).
Install and use Launchpad-Getkeys
To install the package in Ubuntu Karmic, Lucid, Maverick and Natty, use the following commands:
Then, to import all the missing GPG keys, run the following command:
sudo launchpad-getkeys
That's it! Now run "sudo apt-get update" and you shouldn't get any errors about missing GPG keys anymore (unless the keyserver is down).
This feature (but further tweaked) will be implemented in a future Y PPA Manager version.
Update: the script didn't work if you didn't use Ubuntu in English. This should be fixed in the latest version (0.2.2) which I've just uploaded to the PPA.
Update 2: if you're behind a proxy (not firewall) and Launchpad Getkeys doesn't work for you, try this modified Launchpad-Getkeys (by saurabhk).
I got a new computer at work, installed Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat and the sound didn't work. The fix was actually quite simple so I thought I'd share it with you in case you have a similar issue.
The computer has an HDA Intel chip (Realtek ALC887) and I couldn't open alsamixer (this error was displayed: "load hw:0 error: Invalid argument"), although the sound seemed to be working in various applications (no error there) except I couldn't hear anything.
The fix:
Edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf:
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
And add the following line:
options snd-hda-intel model=generic
Save, reboot (a logout might be enough too) and the sound should work. If this generic fix doesn't work for you, see THIS post.
Pidgin 2.7.7 also comes with support for MSNP16, including Multiple Points of Presence (MPOP) which allows multiple simultaneous sign-ins for MSN. A complete changelog can be found HERE.
Pidgin 2.7.7 is not yet available in the Ubuntu Pidgin PPA, however you can install it via GetDeb (for Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10):
1. Download THIS .deb and install it - it will add the GetDeb repository.
2. Run the following command to update your software sources:
sudo apt-get update
3. Upgrade Pidgin:
sudo apt-get upgrade
The above command will also upgrade some other packages which are installed on your computer and for which there are newer versions available on GetDeb. If you don't want those, instead of running "sudo apt-get upgrade", open Synaptic, upgrade Pidgin only and then remove the GetDeb repository (from Software Sources).
Important: If GetDeb is very slow for you (that's the case for me at the time I'm writing this post), you can use the following GetDeb mirror instead of the official GetDeb (edit the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/getdeb.list file and replace the existing line with the one below):
deb http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/getdeb/ubuntu maverick-getdeb apps
(The above repository is for Maverick. If you're using Lucid, replace "maverick" with "lucid").
After upgrading, close Pidgin and open it again, then if the certificate error still occurs, try connecting a few times and it should work.
2. In Pidgin, go to Tools > Certificates and remove the existing "omega.contacts.msn.com" certificate. Then select "Add" and add the certificate downloaded under step 1 and when prompted to enter the hostname, enter: "omega.contacts.msn.com":
