My mom (who runs Ubuntu 7.10) was having trouble with old PowerPoint presentations in OpenOffice.org Impress. Her machine would grind to a halt in presentation mode and she was forced to export the presentations as PDFs in order to deliver them.

I investigated the issues and found some help in this thread. A user, Galva, had suggested making these tweaks under Tools->Options in OpenOffice.org:

MEMORY - 30 steps, 128MB, 20 objects, 20MB per object, and remove after an hour
JAVA - Do not use Java
VIEW - Open GL, optimized output, dithering, refresh during interaction and hardware acceleration all ticked.

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Source: Unity Behind Diversity

I have a ThinkPad T61 (646562U - with Intel GM965 integrated graphics) and I run Ubuntu 7.10 as my main operating system. When I wake from a suspend, my screen is too dark to use. I figured my laptop, which is relatively new, isn’t supported properly yet and just refrained from using the suspend function.

However, I discovered a workaround a few weeks back while reading this review!

The problem that remained is that after it wakes up from sleep mode, the LCD screen is very dark and I’m able to regulate it, unless I… switch to the terminal (CTRL+ALT+F1) and switch back to GUI (CTRL+ALT+F7).

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Source: Unity Behind Diversity

Jokosher is a great multi-track audio recording tool for Linux. It’s not quite ProTools, but it’s really easy to use, and has some great effects available. I’ve seen it described as GarageBand for Linux. The effects aren’t installed with the Jokosher package, so if you want the effects, just run this command to add them.
sudo apt-get install blop caps cmt fil-plugins mcp-plugins omins swh-plugins tap-plugins vcf

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Printing to PDF isn’t setup by default in Gutsy, but it’s easy to implement. Just follow this guide.

After reading this article at HappyLinuxGuy’s Happy Linux Thoughts page, I thought I might share with you a way to recover password on a *nix system. The commands and screenshots here will be Ubuntu oriented, but this basic process should work for any distro.

After a friend gave me a new laptop, I quickly installed Ubuntu on it, and though I knew it was pretty good about hardware detection, I expected to have to fight to get WiFi and Bluetooth to work, but since it detected everything at install, I decided to try to use it to manage the info on my LG VX8300 wireless phone over Bluetooth. Come to find out, as with most things in Ubuntu, it’s not that hard!

Here’s how to do it.

As I mentioned in a previous article, the only problem I’ve had with my new Gutsy install is that there was no option to configure a VPN with NetworkManager, despite the fact that the plugin was installed. Well, I resolved that issue tonight.

As it turns out, the problem was my fault. I disabled Roaming Mode for my Ethernet connection, which is what tells NetworkManager to manage that interface. The fix is simple.

If you are stuck at a Windows machine all day at work, but want to get your Ubuntu fix during a break, use ssh and NoMachine’s nxClient to get fast, easy, secure remote access.

Server Side

These instructions are for the Ubuntu machine that you want to control.

Since Gutsy comes with Compiz-Fusion installed and enabled by default, why not use it to create an embedded terminal on your desktop?
If, like me, you actually enjoy using the Linux CLI, and find that you spend a lot of time going back and forth from an application to a terminal window, then this is a must-have tool.

The first thing you’ll need to do is install the Advanced Desktop Effects Settings package. This is the GUI management side of Compiz-Fusion. Click on Applications, Add/Remove… Find the package in the list, and install it.

Now you need to create a new profile for the gnome terminal so that you can change the way it behaves without messing up your normal terminal windows.

A message from Typesofsoftware.com

Unfortunately, this is the second new HP laptop which has given me hardware problems in GNU/Linux over the past few months. However, this time the culprit is AMD/ATI and their restricted drivers. Thankfully, they’ve announced plans to open things up, but until that’s been handled, tutorials like this will be necessary to get a system up and running.

I found a tutorial which helped me get the xserver up and running in no time.

My own move from Windows XP to GNU/Linux was quite experimental and somewhat complicated, as I was using a dual-boot system for a while, and as such I don’t have a great recollection of everything I’ve done throughout the switch.

But now I’m in the process of moving my mother (amongst other friends and family members) over to GNU/Linux, so I’ll attempt a more thorough recounting of the process here.

(NOTE: This guide is intended for users who are somewhat independent as I may skim over some obvious detail in order to keep this relatively concise. I hope to piece together a decent comprehensive overview of a variety of things, but if you’re looking for thorough instructions you may want to supplement this with other guides.)