Minimize Any Application to the System Tray

The other day I wanted to minimize the gnome-terminal to the system tray. Why? Because I thought I should be able to, if I wanted to.
Some apps, such as gaim, the instant messenger already support minimizing to the system tray. So if you click the close button in gaim when you are logged in, the app disappears from the list of windows, and an icon appears in the system tray, which you can then click to bring the main window back to life.
Turns out, with AllTray, you can minimize any app to the system tray. To install, you can use this repository that is linked-to from the alltray homepage. This is probably one of the few cases when the software I wanted wasn’t already in the Ubuntu reporsitories.

Software needed in ubuntu

1st set the proxy variable in ubuntu.

Than do sudo apt-get update

Then you can want any software through sudo apt-get update or searching in the synaptic manager.

Following software will be needed:-

1. java(sun)

In synaptic manager search the java and install java 6 sun.

2. Right click open in terminal

a) Search open terminal and then find nautilus-open-terminal and install it.
b) sudo aptitude install nautilus-open-terminal

3. Media related plug-ins
Just open movie player and open various files to find which plug in you need and install them.

• Play mp3 file 
• Play flv file

Similarly play mp3 in rythm box to find respective plug ins.

4. Auto mount the ntfs-files in ubuntu
a) Search ntfs-3g and install ntfs config

5. Wine

6. JDK

7. Proxy tunneling

a) Tor using vidalia

8. Yakuake

9.nmap

10. Apex dc++ from exe

11. xchm as chm viewer

12.Some anonymity software

• Tor

13.Minimise any application to tray

Installing tor and vidalia

Vidalia runs on most platforms supported by Qt 4.1 or later, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux or other Unix variants using the X11 window system.
Prepare your system
sudo apt-get install libevent
Now you need to get the latest tor source code from here
wget http://www.torproject.org/dist/tor-0.2.0.22-rc.tar.gz
tar zxvf tor-0.2.0.22-rc.tar.gz
cd tor-0.2.0.22-rc
./configure
make
sudo make install
Install Vidalia GUI
You need to edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
add the following lines
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/adnarim/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/adnarim/ubuntu gutsy main
Save and exit the file
Update the source list
sudo apt-get update
Install vidalia
sudo apt-get install vidalia
Once installed press alt F2 and open the run prompt and type in “vidalia” without the quotes, this will start tor, vidalia and you can configure tor/vidalia by right clicking on the tray applet and click on settings, right there you can view all the nodes and choose what to connect to, see node uptimes, os’s and locations with a graphical map.
For web browsing in firefox I prefer using an extention named FoxyProxy it works well with firefox and swiftfox, you can grab this extention directly from here
If you prefer stronger anonymity & protection I strongly Suggest Torbutton for firefox you can download from here
Install the addon and go through the Tor wizard and it will set you up for you and you can view which tor nodes you connect through actively via vidalia
Speed Tweaks for tor
Lets get to editing our torrc so we can improve the speed!
gedit ~/.vidalia/torrc
Paste this at the beginning of the torrc:
# Set the Tor Circuit Build time to find faster tor servers, increments of seconds
CircuitBuildTimeout 2
# connections while Tor is not in use.
KeepalivePeriod 60
# Force Tor to consider whether to build a new circuit every NUM seconds.
NewCircuitPeriod 15
# Set How many entry guards we should we keep at a time
NumEntryGuards 8

Assign Custom Shortcut Keys on Ubuntu Linux

Ubuntu includes a very limited shortcut key configuration utility which doesn’t allow you to assign hotkeys to your own applications or scripts. To get around this limitation, we can use the built-in gconf-editor utility to assign them ourselves.
First you’ll want to load up gconf-editor by typing it into the Alt+F2 Run dialog.

Once in the application, navigate to the following key. If you are familiar with regedit on Windows, this is very similar.

apps \ metacity \ keybinding_commands

You’ll notice a bunch of values on the right. These are the available commands that you can create for assigning to shortcut keys in the next step.
Double-click on command_1 and enter in the full path to your script or executable that you are trying to run. (Note that you can use the which command from the shell to find the path most of the time)

Now navigate to the key “global_keybindings”, which is directly above the one we were on.

Here you will want to select run_command_1. Enter in the shortcut key in plain text. For instance, for Alt+T, you’ll do T. You could use T or T, or whatever you want to assign to the key.
You can also create custom commands in the keybinding_commands and assign them in the global_keybindings if you want. Just remember that the keybindings will start with run_(name of command).


2nd way(better way)

Go to System->Preferences->Keyboard shortcuts
There if you find in the list , fine...........otherwise click add and add your custom shortcut and application.

List of shortcuts in ubuntu

Alt-Ctrl-L Locks the screen.
Alt-F1 opens the Applications menu, then use the arrow keys to navigate the submenus.
Alt-F2 opens the Run Application dialog box.
Alt-F3 opens the Deskbar Applet (F3 opens the search bar at the bottom of the window).
Alt-F4 closes the current window.
Alt-F5 unmaximizes the current window (if it’s maximized, of course).
Alt-F7, followed by arrow keys or mouse movement, adjusts the current window’s position.
Alt-F8 resizes the current window.
Alt-F9 minimizes the current window.
Alt-F10 maximizes the current window.
Alt-spacebar opens the window menu.
Alt-Tab moves between open windows.
Ctrl-Alt-Tab moves between open panels on the desktop.
Ctrl-W closes the current window.
Ctrl-Q closes the current application.
Here are some keyboard shortcuts for working in the Terminal window:
Ctrl-C kills the current process.
Ctrl-Z sends the current process to the background.
Ctrl-D logs you out.
Ctrl-R finds the last command matching the entered letters.
Tab followed by entered letters lists the available commands beginning with those letters.
Ctrl-U deletes the current line.
Ctrl-K deletes from the cursor right.
Ctrl-W deletes the word before the cursor.
Ctrl-L clears the terminal output.
Shift-Insert pastes the contents of the clipboard.
Alt-F moves forward one word.
Alt-B moves backward one word.

Lenovo 3000 G430 touchpad Problem with ubuntu 8.10

I had a problem using touchpad in ubuntu as it was not working, so I searched on net and find that we have to enable SHMConfig. First, open your terminal, then type this comand:

sudo gedit /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi

Copy and paste this into the file:

Copy and paste this into the file:

Copy and paste this into the file:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<deviceinfo version=”0.2″>
<device>
<match key=”input.x11_driver” string=”synaptics”>
<merge key=”input.x11_options.SHMConfig” type=”string”>True</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

Save and close gedit then reboot the machine. But it is not yet done...just press fn-F8 and u r done..
I have not yet installed ubuntu 9, hope problem would have been solved...

Some Customization that are good in ubuntu

1.  Open terminal in my right click context menu.


sudo aptitude install nautilus-open-terminal

2. VLC media player

sudo apt-get install vlc