How to extend screen to second monitor in Linux / Fedora?

Here's the command that could extend the screen to second monitor, in case Linux does not do the job automatically:

xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1920x1080 --output eDP1 --mode 1366x768 --left-of VGA1

Where you need to replace the screen size manually. By running xrandr in terminal, you could get the screen size range for each display output.

Beside --left-of, there are other options such as --above, --below, --right-of

[Alt] key problem when remote desktop Windows via Remmina

If you are using Xfce 4 and encounter the following problems using [Alt] key inside Microsoft Windows remote desktop session:

• [Alt] key does not work as per expected
• clicking [Alt] + mouse middle button move you away from your remote desktop session

then you should try this simple and straight forward trick before going too technical.

• Go Settings > Settings Manager > Window Manager Tweaks > Accessibility > "Key used to grab and move windows" > set it to "None"

Voila! Now it should works like charm. Otherwise... you might have to Google around and read about re-map key, etc.. Good luck!

Fast apt-get with apt-fast

Ever experience slow download even with 10Mbps++ internet? The author has written a very useful article to share how to speed everything up with apt-fast:

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/10/speed-up-apt-get-downloads-with-apt.html

[Ubuntu] Xrdp password failed after user password changed

If the password of users has been changed, Xrdp service must be restarted to reflect the changes made. Else, it would give an error of either "password failed" or "login error".

To restart xrdp service, simply type this command in terminal:

/etc/init.d/xrdp restart

After that you should be able to login from remote connection.

[Ubuntu] It's Alacarte time! Menu Editing in Ubuntu

Editing application menu in Lubuntu is not as straightforward as in Windows. Right-clicking only allow adding shortcut to desktop.

Editing .xml to change how the application menu look is not fun to work with and very time consuming.

Very luckily, the is a small utility namely "alacarte" that let you modify it in GUI. To install, simply:

sudo apt-get install alacarte

This is how alacarte look like. Simple & intuitive

[Ubuntu] Chinese input in Ubuntu 10, 11, 12

I found a very nice article discuss about chinese input in Ubuntu:
http://www.pinyinjoe.com/linux/ubuntu-10-chinese-input-pinyin-chewing.htm

To me, Sun Pinyin layout looks the best to me due to its 9 displays per row, but it is really bad for laptop users that it use preset key of Page Up / Down for navigation.

I have not figure out how to change the preset key, and that force me to revert back to the first PinYin method, which is pretty nice to use and has same navigation keys as Google Pinyin and Unispim Pinyin that I used in Windows.

[Ubuntu] Lubuntu or Xubuntu?

I like the Unity environment in Ubuntu 12.10, but it tends to run too slow on my aging Acer Aspire 4720z laptop. So should I go for Xubuntu (XFCE 4.1) or Lubuntu (LXDE), the two famous desktop environment?

I searched online and got a very useful article with a very thoughtful chart for comparison, thanks Arindam Sen for his great article:
http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.com/2012/10/ubuntu-1210-vs-kubuntu-1210-vs-xubuntu.html

I started with XFCE and very quickly I dropped it off and switch to Lubuntu. Why? The keyboard shortcut doesn't seems to work no matter how many times I have configured and save it. So I gave it up just because of this? YES! To have the keyboard shortcut work probably is very crucial. And there are a few small issues like system crashes (unknown reason), despite not very severe but I want to focus on work rather than solving system problems.

Switching to Lubuntu is very welcoming, and things are pretty good except for the keyboard shortcut setup. It's such a shame that Lubuntu doesn't even have a GUI to configure custom keyboard shortcut. Luckily there are Obkey (which can be found on Google Code), and the brilliant xbindkeys.

To get xbindkeys works straight-away is not as clear cut for first time user. But after a while everything seems to work alright. I would discuss further in my next post on the use of xbindkeys, a possible bug that found by me during the setup, as well as how to setup keyboard shortcuts in Lubuntu without any GUI.

Stay tuned!

[Ubuntu] How to disable guest & remote login account in 12.10?

Having the Guest and Remote Login account enabled by default is really not my preference. Personally I think these two accounts should be disabled by default especially privacy is getting more & more important to individual nowadays where most of private files are stored digitally.

I'm not sure why Ubuntu chose to enable them, but if you just hate it like I do, you can disabled them by:

Remove guest account:

sudo /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults -l false

sudo /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults --allow-guest false

Remove remote login:

sudo /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults -R false

sudo /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults--show-remote-login false

Remove both:

sudo /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults -l false -R false

sudo /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-set-defaults --allow-guest false --show-remote-login false

Do remember to reboot after that.

I have once cannot configure it probably with the full command "--allow-guest" and "--show-remote-login" even without typo error. If you do encounter that, simply use the "-l" and "-R".

[CentOS] Installing CentOS 6.3 Minimal Edition: Part 1

In this post I would list down the steps & tasks I performed after during and after successful installation of CentOS minimal edition.

During Installation
I install CentOS 6.3 in a VM via Oracle VirtualBox. The initial graphic RAM given was 12mb, that has caused CentOS setup fail to boot into a GUI installation. Installing from the old DOS-like environment is headache because somehow it does not show up any available drive for me to select to hold the CentOS.


After a few trials, I decided to re-configured and install in GUI environment. The installation went smooth and very quickly it is done and CentOS is up.

* One thing to take note during the installation is to setup the LAN connection otherwise you would not get connection once boot into CentOS. (Special thanks to Sharuzzaman Ahmat Raslan from Facebook General Linux Discussion M'sia for his advice and screenshot)

To setup the LAN, simply click on the "Configure Network" button on the bottom left.

 

After installation
Once CentOS boot up I'm required to login. Key in root and password (set during installation) then we can start to install everything.

****** This step only required if you forgot to setup LAN during installation ******

Before that I would need to bring up the network interface. I used NAT for the VM. The network interface is not up by default, I did ifconfig and only can see "lo". To bring up the network interface simply type:

# ifup eth0

Run ifconfig to check again and now eth0 has already up and running with DHCP.

****** End of network interface section ******

First thing to do is to perform update to overall system.

# yum update

It is easier and more straight forward to work under GUI than terminal mode. So I decided to install the Gnome Desktop Environment & KDE. The reason I install both because there are some KDE tools & programs are useful to me. Before we can install Gnome/KDE, we must first install the "X Windows System". Yum has an option to do groupinstall. It will help you resolve all dependencies, for novice users this come in very handy. Execute the following:

# yum groupinstall -y 'X Window System'

So what is mean by "-y" in the command line above? It means "answer yes to all", so the system will perform every resolved dependencies without getting further permission from me.

To install Gnome, execute:

# yum groupinstall -y 'Desktop'

* A reminder here: Restart is not required after install "X Window System". If one restarts the system, remember to bring up eth0 again.

Once the installation done, execute:

# startx

I'm now in the Gnome Desktop environment. To make sure it run every time we restart the system, simply go /etc/inittab and change the id:3:initdefault: to id:5:initdefault:.

* To change and save the inittab file, we can use:

# vi innittab

press "Insert" on keyboard to enter editing mode. Once done, press ESC and type ":wq".

Reboot with command init 6 and I can now work in desktop environment.

===============================
There are some issue with minimal edition of CentOS that is it comes with very limited tools we can use to configure the OS. The most critical stuff that are missing is text editor such as gEdit / Kedit / Leafpad. Personally I prefer Leafpad, but to install Leafpad it is not as straight forward.

Some other issue:

1. the network interface is not configure to load automatically when OS starts
2. Mozilla Firefox is not pre-install

I will cover in Part 2 how to install those missing stuff as well as configure the network interface so it loads with the system.

Until then, have fun with your newly installed CentOS!

===============================
Some useful links for reference:

• Yum introduction: http://yum.baseurl.org/wiki/YumGroups
• Yum maintenance: http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/yum/sn-yum-maintenance.html
• Automatic update and retrieval and installation: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/fedora-automatic-update-retrieval-installation-with-cron/

[Fedora 17] How to disable xscreensaver?

Under LXDE, I have disabled screen saver in KDE System Settings, but why I couldn't get rid of the "xscreensaver"?

It  is because the xscreensaver is not control by the setting in KDE system, but it is control by going to Application Menu > Preference > Screensaver.

Choose Disable Screensaver from the drop down menu. Bingo!