With the increasing popularity of laptops, getting the most out of small screen sizes has become a priority for computer users.

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon helps with this by providing a consistent keyboard shortcut for a "Full Screen" mode. Pressing "F11" in many standard Ubuntu applications allows you to to toggle the application in and out of a full screen mode. Today I tested that the following key applications support this:

• Firefox
• Gimp Image Editor
• Eye of Gnome Image Viewer
• Evince Document Viewer
• Totem Movie Player
• Rhythmbox Music Player
• Terminal

Now that I realize the shortcut exists and is widely supported I use it regularly to get the most out of my 14" laptop screen. I did find one key application had a full screen model and used a different shortcut. Open Office mysteriously uses "Ctrl-Shift-J". I have filed a bug to suggest that Ubuntu make this consistent as well.

I've been known to accidentally leave a stream of music running all night when I'm not there to listen to it anymore. That wastes bandwidth and energy.

Here's a quick tip to prevent from happening, by causing any music playing to be turned off at 7:00 pm each night.

On Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10, add these lines to "/etc/crontab". You can edit this file with "gksudo gedit /etc/crontab":

Note that "rhythmbox" and "vlc" are the names of the music players I use. Change as needed.


# stop streams from playing all night.
0 19 * * Mon-Fri killall --quiet rhythmbox vlc


Widescreen LCD monitors are laptops are all the rage now. Wikipedia cites lower associated manufacturing costs.

Basic geometry and algebra explain why manufacturers are saving money and consumers may be deceived about what they are getting.

Monitors are measured along the diagonal. A 14" widescreen sounds like a '14" screen...only wider", but it is not. It a screen with a wide width-to-height ratio, such as 16-to-10, with a diagonal that that measures 14". The wider and flatter a rectangle gets for a given diagonal length, the smaller the area. That means a 14" widescreen LCD has less screen area than a standard screen with a 4:3 ratio. By my calculations, it's about 6% smaller, or the equivalent of removing about half an inch from the standard size 14" monitor.

For several years Linux has enabled to run a command by name with a little "Run Command" application, often accessed by pressing Alt-F2.

This is my favorite way to launch applications since it can be done with the keyboard by just remembering the name of the application.

In Ubuntu Gutsy, this little tool has become more useful.

No longer do I need to remember that the program run by OpenOffice is called 'oowriter'.

Now I can just start typing "OpenOffice", and it will show me the icon and name for "OpenOffice Writer" as an option.

If I type "Mail", it shows me the options for the "Thunderbird" and "Evolution" e-mail programs. Great!

Sound was generally working fine on my Mandriva 2007 workstation, but sound in the Flash plugin was not. Here's how I debugged the problem and fixed it.

First, running Firefox from a terminal provided a great clue. To launch Firefox this way it may work to use Alt-F2 to have the run box appear, and then type "mozilla-firefox" and make sure "Run in terminal" is selected".

This should lots of ALSA-related errors, including "device not found".

By launching the Mandriva Control Center (Alt-F2 then 'mcc'), I was able to review the sound drivers in use. I navigated to "Hardware : Look and Configure Hardware" and then selected my soundcard below the "Soundcard" option. My soundcard was listed as "82801EB AC'97 Audio". From there, I could select "Run Config Tool", which provided a list of driver options. Only one of them was listed as "ALSA", so I switched the driver to that.

Restricting freedoms in the name of safety and security can go too far.

Take this recent tech support call from a family member. She hadn't been able to get on the internet for days. She called Comcast, which provides her cable modem. Things looked fine on their side, they said. They suggested something on her computer wasn't working right. Using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer as the web browser might be the problem, they offered.

Having used this Windows XP computer myself, I'm familar with all the popups that the ZoneAlarm security utility generates. "Someone is trying to attack your computer on Port 80. Do you want to allow it? [YES] [NO]".

When Dell surveyed their customers to see what they wanted on their IdeaStorm feedback site, one answer was loud and clear: "We want Ubuntu Linux pre-installed". And now, only about two months later, they have it.

Dell is now offering Ubuntu pre-installed on three machines. Not only is the open source foundation of Ubuntu a great choice for consumers, the price is lower than buying the machines with Windows Vista, and having Dell pre-install the software means that they have certified and support this specific hardware to work with Linux.

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn is a great operating system, and I've already helped install it on a number of systems. Here are five customizations I make right away to make it a more pleasant system to suit my taste:

1. Install the Flash and Java plugins. Ubuntu already has packages for these, but I believe they turned on by default for licensing reasons. Go to Applications: Add & Remove Applications and search for "ubuntu-restricted-extras". This will install Flash and Java plugins, as well MP3 support and some nice free Microsoft fonts. Check the boxes next to the listing and click "Apply" to finish the job. The Java plugin installs some things into the menu system that I think I'll never use, so I remove the entries for them. To edit the menu, right-click on "Applications" and select "Edit Menu". The menu editor should be fairly intuitive, and allowing you to remove "Java Web Start" and anything else you want. (Note: removing the menu items doesn't un-install these applications).