Scribd is a pretty much popular document sharing site which has been around since a couple of years. Some fans state Scribd is for documents like what Youtube is for videos. But Scribd is sometimes disrupted due to javascript/adobe flash player restrictions on the client side. Viewing & downloading documents at such times becomes impossible. Here’s a shortcut to download documents from Scribd when you are logged in to the site:
Add the following to the end of the document url:
?autodown=pdf
For example, the following is the URL for opening a Scribd document:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6366850/DocTitle
Add the autodown parameter and open this url in your browser.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6366850/DocTitle?autodown=pdf
This will start downloading the document in pdf format. You need to be logged in to the Scribd for this to work. This will work even if Javascript is disabled, or Flash player is not available.
Ashok TT - How To, TT - Tips n Tricks, TechTalk Downloads, Scribd
In Jaunty, one of the new features of GNOME desktop is the smooth fading effect when changing the background wallpapers. It’s a nice feature, but I have a small panel applet Webilder, which changes the wallpaper randomly at equal intervals of time. I’ve kept the time to be 1 Minute, and there are some high resolution wallpapers in my collection.
My integrated graphics (Intel chipset) wasn’t able to handle that kind of animation and every minute when the wallpaper changes, the system becomes slow and sluggish. After googling for disabling this particular fading effect, I wasn’t able to find the exact solution, but a work around: Disabling the GTK Animations.
Create a file .gtkrc-2.0 in the home directory, and add
gtk-enable-animations = 0
to that file. Logout/Restart, and all the GTK Animations are disabled, including the fading effect. I don’t know at this point of time what are the other animations that are disabled, but right now, the system is much better in responsiveness than before! 
Ashok TT - How To, TT - Linux, TT - Tips n Tricks, TechTalk Effects, GTK, Ubuntu, Wallpapers
Chromium is an open source browser project from Google, and is the base for the Google Chrome browser. Chromium for Linux is not yet a complete version, but the team releases development builds time to time. Here’s the PPA to get those builds:
Edit the sources list:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
Replace with jaunty or intrepid in the following lines and add them.
. /etc/lsb-release
echo deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu main | \
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/chromium.list
Save and exit the file. Now to add the GPG Key,
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xfbef0d696de1c72ba5a835fe5a9bf3bb4e5e17b5
Update the sources list:
sudo apt-get update
Source: UbuntuGeek
Ashok TT - Linux, TT - Tips n Tricks, TechTalk Browsers, Chrome, chromium, Google, ubuntu-sources
With the latest version of Virtual Box comes a surprise, an option to install WineD3D, which enables the user to replace the Direct3D in the virtual installation of Windows. WineD3D is supposed to increase/improve your graphics acceleration and 3D rendering of the virtual system.
If you are on Ubuntu Jaunty, the Virtual Box installation from Add/Remove programs doesn’t include WinD3D and VBOXGuestAdditions by default. You can follow my previous post on installing VBoxGuestAdditions if you’re looking for that. To install WineD3D,
Go to http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases-noredirect/wined3d/latest/ and download the ISO file.
Go to /usr/share/virtualbox and copy the downloaded file wined3d.iso into this directory.
Give read permission to the wined3d.iso file for users other than root.
Boot your virtual machine into safe mode (Press F8 during startup)
Now upon clicking “Install WineD3D” from Devices menu will begin the installation of WineD3D.
To further enhance the 3D acceleration, Go to the Settings of your virtual machine, Go to General and in the Basic tab, Check the “Enable 3D Accelaration” option. That’s it, you’re all set. Enjoy superior 3D rendering!
Ashok TT - How To, TT - Tips n Tricks, TechTalk Direct3D, VirtualBox, Wine
In Ubuntu Intrepid, Atheros wifi chip on my Compaq C770TU (C700 Series) didn’t work out of the box. I had to use the ndiswrapper, a wrapper for windows drivers. When I upgraded to Jaunty and saw that the wi-fi is working out of the box, Boy, I was so glad.
Today, I suspended my laptop for the first time after installing Jaunty. To my surprise, after the resume, my wi-fi stopped working. It cannot detect the wireless networks. The output of lspci still lists Atheors, indicating that the card is still being recognized by Ubuntu. I disabled and reenabled wireless, disabled and reenabled networking from the Network Manager, restarted the system a number of times but to no avail.
So I try to get help from my old friend Google, and all it gives me is a number of links where people are complaining about disabled wireless, but with no proper resolved posts. I followed most of them in vain (Loaded ndiswrapper, Installed linux-backport-modules-jaunty, Loaded MadWiFi etc) but still no result. During this process, I’ve stumbled upon a post in Ubuntu forums related to Intrepid and is about the Wi-Fi button not turning to blue when in operation.
In that post, I’ve read that in Ubuntu, we have to keep the wi-fi hotkey pressed for 5 seconds for Ubuntu to recognize the on/off routine. I wasn’t used to this because in Windows, the change was instantaneous. And when I switched to linux, I never had the need to use the Wireless button. So, I pressed the button for 5 seconds, and still no response. Another 5 seconds passed after I released the button, and my network applet showed the swirling animation of connecting to a wireless network and Voila! My wireless is working again!
I’ve spent almost two hours searching for a clear answer, and now that I found out, I can’t help feeling stupid for all those hours wasted for such a simple answer. Posting this experience here so that it may be of some help to someone!
@Ubuntu team - till Intrepid, after a resume the wi-fi worked seamlessly without any action from me. It’s great, Why did you change it to disabling the wi-fi after resume? I can’t guess what could be your reason.
Ashok TT - Linux, TT - Tips n Tricks, TechTalk Atheros, Jaunty, MadWiFi, WiFi
The default Get Ubuntu page is giving links for the download of Live CDs, not the live DVDs. The direct download links for Jaunty DVD is not given anywhere else on the page… Upon a bit of googling, I found the following links:
For CD Images: http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/9.04/
For DVD Images: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/jaunty/release/
But the dvd link from above is a ftp download from Ubuntu’s servers and doesn’t support download resuming. I googled for more and finally found the following links useful for a resumable direct download of ubuntu dvd:
ftp://ftp.free.fr/mirrors/ftp.ubuntu.com/dvd/
http://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/ubuntu-releases-dvd/9.04/release/
These links are available from the official mirrors list of Ubuntu:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors#dvd
Only the above two links (France, Greece) are pointing to Jaunty. Rest of the links there are pointing to Hardy release dvds.
Eagerly waiting for my download to finish…
Ashok TT - Tips n Tricks, TechTalk Downloads, Jaunty, TT - Linux, TT - Tips n Tricks, Ubuntu
The version of VirtualBox 2.0.4 from Ubuntu’s repository isn’t having the Guest Additions file. You can’t install Guest Additions unless you have this VBoxGuestAdditions.iso file, and here’s the direct download link for the file:
Direct download link:
http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/2.0.4/VBoxGuestAdditions_2.0.4.iso
Place this file in /usr/share/virtualbox, and Virtual Box would be able to install guest additions in the virtual machine.
Edit:
The new version is 2.2.2, which can be downloaded from
http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/2.2.2/VBoxGuestAdditions_2.2.2.iso
Thanks to SantAnna who updated me on this in comments.
Ashok TT - Tips n Tricks Ubuntu, VirtualBox
When you download Yahoo messenger, you actually download a Online installer which installs the Yahoo messenger. The next time you want to install messenger (say after a formatting and realoading of OS), you again have to connect to internet to download the messenger. Here’s a little trick which’ll download the Offline Installer of Yahoo Messenger:
Just add y before the filename of the online installer in the url and you can directly download the full messenger setup. When you click Download Yahoo Messenger,download starts and you have this in the page:
Right Click on click here to copy the link and this is your URL for online installer. Copy past the link into your browser address bar, and just before msgrxxx.exe, add ymsgrxxx.exe and press enter. Your offline installer download will start.
via ashfame
Ashok TT - Tips n Tricks Downloads, Messenger, Yahoo
Ubuntu likes to use a shrill beep when, for example, try to scroll through the file list in Nautilus using the Down Arrow key and still keep it pressed even after reaching the end of the file list. In Windows, this invokes a annoying beep, but in Ubuntu it’s much worse. It uses the system beep, which doesn’t come from the speakers but from inside the depths of the system i.e. from the speaker on the motherboard (I guess). Courtesy of lifehacker.com, here’s how to disable it:
rmmod pcspkr
To re-enable the sound, use
modprobe pcspkr
Ashok TT - Linux, TT - Tips n Tricks Audio, Tips, TT - Linux, Ubuntu
