Linux
How to force a CD/DVD drive to eject in Linux
Saturday, March 20th, 2010Usually, the CD drive in Linux is pretty permissive just like in Windows, where one can eject and insert discs at any time. However, sometimes some random bugs in various application show up when you eject a disk while reading, and the operating system no longer honours any requests to eject (e.g. pressing the eject […]
Paint.NET on Ubuntu Linux 9.10
Thursday, March 18th, 2010Paint.NET is a very powerful yet simple to use raster graphics editor that used to be under the free MIT-license. Even though the author has now closed its sources we can always run an older version of it (3.0) since there are no effective major changes. There is already a porting in progress by Miguel […]
Fixing “/usr/lib/cups/backend/smb failed” error in Ubuntu
Saturday, January 16th, 2010The new setups for printing has been modernized in Ubuntu 9.10 and 9.04 work perfectly most of the time, but sometimes a misbehaving script or update decides to have its own mind and messes up all the permissions for CUPS to work properly. Here is a guide to restore the former printing versatility before the mess-up. […]
Simple C++ gettext-like toolkit
Sunday, December 20th, 2009Here is a small gettext-compatible interface for reading simple translation catalogs (not to be confused with gettext’s *.mo style catalogs, which are binary) in form of “original/english string<tab>translated string”. It is not fool-proof, but you can play around with it and it works. Example usage: folder/fr_FR/LC_MESSAGES/hello.mo If you found this article helpful or interesting, please […]
How to take out the system built-in beeper in Linux
Friday, December 18th, 2009Usually the system beeper (not to be confused with speakers) can be a rather useful tool in informing or alerting the user. Sometimes however, the beeper can be just plain annoying, especially if you already know what you are doing. For example, it is very annoying to have a laptop suddenly start beeping in the […]
Virtual MIDI Keyboard in Ubuntu
Sunday, October 4th, 2009On Windows, you could find many freeware virtual piano software. But on Linux, you have no such easy setup or such choice. There are two major pieces virtual piano software – they are Virtual Keyboard and Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard. You should be sure you have your sound card proper set before you start this […]
Mini-PulseAudio sound checklist
Sunday, September 27th, 2009If you’ve been having trouble with your sound in Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution that uses PulseAudio, here is a mini-checklist for sound in Ubuntu in case it is not working properly (i.e. no sound at all, static-like sound or loud obnoxious buzzing sounds). First, a few general hints in case the checklist doesn’t […]
KeePass password safe for Linux
Friday, August 7th, 2009Update (2013-06-26): Updated for KeePass 2.22. KeePass password safe is an effective way to manage your passwords securely and safely without writing them down in text files. However, the current Linux-native port KeePassX is still in development and not quite usable. Here is a port of KeePass 2.x (“Professional Edition”) to Linux without changing anything. […]
Solving svn: /opt/lampp/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.8: no version information available
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009If you are using WebSVN with XAMPP for Linux, you may find that when you try to invoke the svn binary, an error will occur when you try to browse a repository. This error arises as a result of Apachefriends’ decision to strip all statically linked libraries’ symbols (debugging and version). As a result, when […]
MySQL Query Browser – a standalone MySQL administration tool
Monday, August 3rd, 2009Online MySQL administration tools such as phpMyAdmin are great for administering MySQL databases, but unfortunately it is not so great if you work with large databases or have to mass manipulate records. By using an offline MySQL administration tool, you can remove the overhead of the HTTP(S), (X)HTML and the web browser by communicating directly […]
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