What are your favorite "tweaks"? It's new install time!

[oshunluvr]

Since I'm migrating to 12.04 from 11.04 I have to re-do all my fav edits and tweaks. It got me thinking that others might have some nifty tricks that I would love to know.

Here's some of mine:

Keyswaping: I never use the "grave" key and rarely the backslash, but I very often use the tilde and pipe (a.k.a. "bar") keys in the terminal. If you don't know what keys I'm talking about look to the left of the 1 key and above and right of your enter key (US keyboard). Since the tilde and pipe both require the shift key, I swap them with each other so I don't have to shift when I'm in the terminal. To do this, simply create a file called .Xmodmap in your home and put these lines into it;

keycode 49 = asciitilde grave asciitilde grave asciitilde grave
keycode 51 = bar backslash bar backslash bar backslash

This reverses those two keys.

Dolphin: Besides the obvious adding of the rootactions-servicemenu (Thanks Rog!) I like to add a Hidden file toggle to the menu bar. This makes it much quicker to toggle on and off hidden files without going to the tools menu. Just edit the menu bar and add the key. It doesn't have it's own icon so I use the "show-menu" icon because it looks most like a hidden file toggle button to me. While I'm doing this, I also add Delete and Trash buttons too.

Another nice addition to Dolphin is KDE Image Menu or KIM. It's not in the repos, but a very useful tool.

Finally for dolphin: I hated downloading a new iso and having to either open a terminal and manually run "md5sum" or open the file with k3b just to check the hash. So i wrote my own little service menu that allows me to right-click and check the md5sum.

Create this file at this location: /usr/share/kde4/services/ServiceMenus/checkmd5.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
MimeType=application/x-cd-image;application/x-iso;application/x-mdf;application/x-nrg;application/x-iso9660-image;
Icon=dialog-ok
Actions=checkmd5;
TryExec=md5sum


[Desktop Action checkmd5]
Name=Read md5 Checksum
Icon=dialog-ok
Exec=md5sum %F | zenity --text-info --width 800 --title Checksum

I'll post some more when it's not so late...

[bra|10n]

As I have no need for Muon Software Center I like to replace the entry in the kickoff menu (computer tab) with Muon Package Manager.
To do this navigate to /usr/share/kubuntu-default-settings/kde4-profile/default/share/config/kickoffrc and edit the entry 'muon-installer.desktop' to read muon.desktop.

[SecretCode]

I have hundreds of tweaks that I routinely apply to new installations ... how many do you want to see?

I use apt-cacher-ng to reduce my bandwidth and (quite significantly) speed up re-installations, so one of the first things I do is set a proxy in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/. (Annoyingly, KPackageKit and Muon do not support a proxy, but Synaptic and command-line apt-get/aptitude do.)

dkms and build-essential and linux-headers... are among the first things I install.

BASH:
Customise the prompt to a two-line format, by copying a .bashrc file I've saved (and sometimes changing the colour of part of the prompt for a quick visual reminder of which system I'm logged into). A few other tweaks in this file like increasing the bash history size.
Customise the input line editor, by copying a .inputrc file I've saved, in particular to enable the up and down arrows to perform history-search-backward/-forward (which is very powerful), and set completion-ignore-case on

General input:
Set a "compose" key usually on the 'menu' key. Copy a saved .xcompose file.
Enable "euro sign on 5"
Make sure ctrl-alt-backspace to kill the X server is enabled.

Dolphin:
Set the view to "Details" and to use the same view for all folders. I don't need icons I need details! details!

... And so it goes on!

[JontheEchidna]

Muon does support both APT and environment (http_proxy env var) proxies since 1.2.

[SecretCode]

OK, that's good to know. I appear to have 1.2.1. Does it follow an
Acquire::http { Proxy "http://...."; };
setting in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/? Since I can't find any proxy setting in the Muon settings.

[SteveRiley]

I have hundreds of tweaks that I routinely apply to new installations ... how many do you want to see?

These are the nuggets of information gold that add tremendous value to forums such as KFN. So to answer your question, let's see your complete list of tweaks!

[dibl]

My old Logitech Quickcam Communicate STX webcam requires "LD_Preload" to work correctly with Skype, so I use this little script which can be saved in the user's home directory as "skypelauncher.sh" (and make it executable). Then you edit your Skype launch icon to call this script instead of the Skype executable.

#!/bin/sh
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib32/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype
exit 0

To reduce the wear on my SSDs caused by browser caching, I outsource the browser cache to /run/shm, which I set in /etc/fstab to be a tmp filesystem in memory. So, the /etc/fstab entry is like this:

none /run/shm tmpfs defaults,noatime 0 0

and then you need to set the cache re-direction in Firefox and Chrome/chromium-browser. For Firefox, in the URL address bar enter "about:config" and confirm the warning. Now right-click in the white space and choose "New ==> String" and create a new entry called:

"browser.cache.disk.parent_directory"

After double-clicking the new string, assign it the value:

"/run/shm/firefox-cache"

For Chrome/chromium, the cache location is set with the “--disk-cache-dir=”DIRNAME” launch command option. So open the launch icon for editing, change to the “Application” tab, and edit the start command to read as follows (for chromium):

"/usr/bin/chromium --disk-cache-dir=/run/shm/chromium-cache %U"

To make the needed directories in /run/shm automatically at each login, for each user you need to put this script in ~.kde/Autostart:

#!/bin/bash
NEWDIR=/run/shm/chromium-cache
mkdir "$NEWDIR" &
sleep 1
NEWDIR1=/run/shm/firefox-cache
mkdir "$NEWDIR1" &
#end

Note that this assumes only one user using the system at a time -- for multi-user setup you would need to make a user-unique directory in /run/shm. Also if you don't reboot once in awhile, the size of the cache in memory might become a problem.

Note that there's side benefit -- from the security perspective, it's not a bad thing to have the browser cache go "poof" at each reboot. ;-)

[sithlord48]

Exec=md5sum %F | zenity --text-info --width 800 --title Checksum

why would you ever use zenity for something for dolphin? kdialog my friend , then upload that to kde-look.org so we can install it via get new stuff (you only have to upload the .desktop file)

i do a ton of small tweaks, from how i layout my dolphin tool bar , to setting some keyboard shortcuts for programs (like dolphin). i also end up adding a few ppa's i used to use a script to add them but i have not updated it in a while(so i wouln't suggest anyone try to run it)

#!/bin/bash
#This script will ask us what we want to add to the repos, all nice like :O)

#first check who am i cause if not root , we need to bail...

if [ `whoami` != "root" ];then #standard if the spaces are needed
	echo "Only Root can run this script try using sudo.."
	exit 1
fi # end of an if statement

#this is the menu function it will display the menu 
main_menu ()
{
echo "Below are the Options You Can Select"
#menu 	entrys
echo "1:Medibuntu+install packages*"
echo "2:Rog131's ppa*"
echo "3:Get Deb*"
echo "4:PlayDeb"
echo "5:Wine ppa*"
echo "6:kubuntu ppa and upgrade kde"
echo "7:Qt Building Needs"
echo "N:New Machine,install all * items"
echo "q:Quit"

#make prompt, read the input
echo "Selection:>\c"
read mode
if [ "$mode" = "1" ];then
  install_medibuntu
  main_menu
elif [ "$mode" = "2" ];then #else if
  install_rog
  main_menu
elif [ "$mode" = "3" ];then #else if
  install_deb_apps
  main_menu
elif [ "$mode" = "4" ];then #else if
  install_deb_games
  main_menu
elif [ "$mode" = "5" ];then #else if
  install_wine
  main_menu
elif [ "$mode" = "6" ];then #else if
  install_kde
  main_menu
elif [ "$mode" = "7" ];then #else if
  install_dev
  main_menu
elif [ "$mode" = "N" ];then
  install_rog
  install_wine
  install_deb_apps
  install_medibuntu
  apt-get install p7zip-full yakuake
  main_menu
elif [ "$mode" = "q" ];then
    exit 0 
else	
	echo "Invalid Choice Try again"
	main_menu #call main menu function
fi #end of mode selection
} #end of main menu

install_medibuntu ()
{
echo "Setting up the medibuntu repo"
wget --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list
apt-get --quiet update
apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring
apt-get --quite update
apt-get --yes install app-install-data-medibuntu apport-hooks-medibuntu
set_platform 
}

set_platform ()
{
echo "Detecting Hw Platform.......\c" #detect HW platform for know types
plat=`uname -m`
if [ "$plat" = "x86_64" ]; then
    echo "64-bit"
    apt-get install --yes libdvdcss2 libavcodec-extra-52 w64codecs vlc ffmpeg imagemagick
  
elif [ "$plat" = "i386" ]; then
    echo "32-bit (i386)"
       apt-get install --yes libdvdcss2 libavcodec-extra-52 w32codecs vlc ffmpeg imagemagick

elif [ "$plat" = "i586" ]; then
  echo "32-bit(i586)" 
  apt-get install --yes libdvdcss2 libavcodec-extra-52 w32codecs vlc ffmpeg imagemagick
elif [ "$plat" = "i686" ]; then
  echo "32-bit(i686)" 
  apt-get install --yes libdvdcss2 libavcodec-extra-52 w32codecs vlc ffmpeg imagemagick
elif [ "$plat" = "ppc" ]; then
  echo "ppc"
  apt-get install --yes libdvdcss2 libavcodec-extra-52 ppccodecs vlc ffmpeg imagemagick
elif [ "$plat" = "alpha" ]; then 
  echo "alpha"
  apt-get install --yes libdvdcss2 libavcodec-extra-52 vlc ffmpeg imagemagick
fi
}

install_rog ()
{
echo "adding Rog131's PPA.."
add-apt-repository ppa:samrog131
}

install_deb_apps ()
{
wget [url]http://archive.getdeb.net/install_deb/getdeb-repository_0.1-1~getdeb1_all.deb[/url]
dpkg -i getdeb-repository_0.1-1~getdeb1_all.deb
apt-get update
rm getdeb-repository_0.1-1~getdeb1_all.deb
}

install_deb_games ()
{
wget [url]http://archive.getdeb.net/install_deb/playdeb_0.3-1~getdeb1_all.deb[/url]
dpkg -i playdeb_0.3-1~getdeb1_all.deb
apt-get update
apt-get --yes upgrade
rm playdeb_0.3-1~getdeb1_all.deb
}

install_wine ()
{
echo "adding Wine PPA"
add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
}

install_kde ()
{
add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa
apt-get update
apt-get --yes dist-upgrade
}
install_dev ()
{
apt-get install --yes build-essential qtcreator
}
#”main” Code
echo "Welcome To The repo installer script"
main_menu
exit 0 #normal exit

[SteveRiley]

To reduce the wear on my SSDs caused by browser caching, I outsource the browser cache to /run/shm, which I set in /etc/fstab to be a tmp filesystem in memory. So, the /etc/fstab entry is like this:

none /run/shm tmpfs defaults,noatime 0 0

Looks like you can maybe skip the fstab step, if I'm interpreting this correctly: /run/shm is already a tempfs...

steve@x1:~$ [b]findmnt -u[/b]
TARGET                SOURCE         FSTYPE             OPTIONS
/
├─/run                tmpfs          tmpfs               rw,nosuid,relatime,size=1611768k,mode=755
│ ├─/run/lock                        tmpfs               rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k
│ ├─/run/shm                         tmpfs               rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime
│ └─/run/vmblock-fuse vmware-vmblock fuse.vmware-vmblock rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime...

[dibl]

By golly I think you're right about that. I know /run/shm is a dynamic directory available to users, but I didn't know it automatically mounted itself as tmpfs. So I I'm redundant, again.

[SteveRiley]

For more on /run, check Debian's Run Directory Release Goals. Actually a pretty neat idea. Ubuntu has implemented portions of this, but conspicuously not moving /tmp to /run/tmp. I hope we get that soon, then I won't have to always remember to add

tmpfs  /tmp      tmpfs  noatime,mode=1777  0 0

to my /etc/fstab.

[dibl]

but conspicuously not moving /tmp to /run/tmp.

Debian (sid) has not made that move yet, either. So like you, I set it in /etc/fstab, along with /var/spool, /var/tmp, and /var/log (after I'm sure my system is stable).

[SteveRiley]

I used to put /var/tmp in tmpfs, but recently stopped doing that. I want to see if I can shave even another couple seconds off boot and/or desktop start time, since /var/tmp is supposed to contain information that's intended to persist across reboots. I'm down to 10.5 seconds from power-up to desktop now

[dibl]

How long from grub to kdm, and how long from login to desktop?

Also, what is the model of your SSD?

[JontheEchidna]

OK, that's good to know. I appear to have 1.2.1. Does it follow an
Acquire::http { Proxy "http://...."; };
setting in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/? Since I can't find any proxy setting in the Muon settings.

Yes, that should work just fine.