easter eggs in ubuntu

There are some funny(thats obvious...as they are meant for fun) easter eggs in GNU/linux. Im listing out some of them ( because I don't know the rest..).


Free the fish
Press 'alt + F2' then type "free the fish" (without quotes) in the dialog and press enter. A fish comes swimming in your desktop.
But the problem is that the fish never goes away. The only way(which I know) is to kill the panel("killall gnome-panel").As gnome cannot live wihtout the panel it restarts it(without the fish!!).

gegls from outer space
Type this in the "run application dialog" (as above). This will start a game named "GEGL killers from outer space"
where a fish(the fish as in the above case) has to fire on cows and kill them which will be attacking the fish.

Gnome-panel properties
Open the gnome-panel properties window. Click the right mouse button 3 times on any of the 2 tabs (General / background ).This opens another new tab named GEGL where a cow comes waving its hand(it has an extra limb) to you.

Require Quarter
In the gnome login screen type Require Quarter in the username field. It acts as if it ignored what you typed. When you login next time,it says "pay me 25 cents to login".
Try the same with "gimme random cursor"

Apt-get moo
Type apt-get moo in the terminal( bash ). Then it displays ascii art of standard gnu-cow.

Aptitude moo (sequence)
One should experience this on his/her own. Type aptitude moo in terminal. Then go for aptitude -v moo...then aptitude -vv moo....Continue this upto 6 (or more) v's.

Starwars in OPenoffice - calc
Type =GAME("StarWars") in A1 and press enter. This opens star wars game.


Update:
I have tried the above stuff in my department lab which runs on ubuntu 8.04 and made the post accordingly .But unfortunately some of them are fixed in the later versions. When I tried them in my laptop (I use 10.04) Require Quarter is not working....Hope the rest are of them not fixed in the coming versions :P

Do the new

This is about some new(may be old to you) and cool softwares one need to switch to in ubuntu.

Shotwell

Shotwell is the default image viewer in Ubuntu10.10 . It is damn fast unlike the conventional eye-of-gnome(image viewer) which is the default one upto 10.04. In addition Shotwell has a photo-organiser and basic image editor built in it.

If you are using ubuntu 10.04 "sudo-apt get install shotwell " will do the work as it is included in Lucid Lynx repos.

If not one needs to add the repository "ppa:yorba/ppa" (sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yorba/ppa) and then install the package(sudo apt-get install)

FreeDc++/eiskaltdc++

These emerged as best alternatives to linuxdcpp which is a bit buggy and slow at times. FreeDc++ is all the same as linuxdcpp in looks except for the logos ,color schemes and images. Eiskaltdc++ has a very pleasing appearance and is pretty fast,

To install FreeDc++/eisklatdc++ add the repository "ppa:tehnick/tehnick" as mentioned above.

Then update the sources ("sudo apt-get update") and install it(sudo apt-get install freedcpp) .

Htop

Htop is an interactive process viewer like top with more functionality. I does everything what Gnome-system-monitor will do. Htop's interface is built in terminal and is good for terminal geeks.

It can be directly installed using "sudo apt-get install htop"

Kupfer/Gnome-do

Inspired by quick silver of mac . They(kupfer or gnome-do) can be used to open an application/file quickly by typing the first few words of the application/file.

They can be installed directly using sudo-apt

note: kupfer and gnome-do are 2 separate packages with similar functionality.

acroread

Its not very fast but it is better that the conventional evince in all aspects. I personally feel it is the best pdf reader for linux. It is owned by Adobe(needless to say). It supports multi tabs(it does not do that in MS windows).

ubuntu-tweak

It makes ubuntu more easy to beginners . I cant describe it any more . For more details visit www.ubuntu-tweak.com .

Crebs

It is a simple application which is used to create background slideshow. For more details visit this link .

Recently I've heard about Libre-office as an alternative to open-office. But I did not use it.I have no rights to comment about it or give a complement.

update:
Recently I came to know that there is a linux version of foxit reader. Though it has some issues it is far better than acroread and evince in terms of speed.
You can download the .deb file from this link . For more details visit this article in ubuntu geek. Note that the command for opening foxit reader(once you install it :P) is "FoxitReader"(without quotes and F,R are uppercase)

proxy in apt.conf

Proxy server can be set up for ubuntu's apt-get through one of the below methods
1) Modifying the apt.conf file
open /etc/apt/apt/.conf file with root permissions by using the following command

sudo vim /etc/apt/apt.conf  (i use vim text editor . If you use gedit replace vim with gedit) add the following line to the file.

acquire::http::Proxy "http://username:password@proxyserver:port"

ex: acquire::http::Proxy "http://pratap:mypassword@netmon.iitb.ac.in:80"

2) setting proxy via terminal
The other method is directly using command line. The command is as follows
export http_proxy=http://username:password@host:port/

Many users think that once they have their proxy settings in main menu's
system->preferences right , they are done. But the apt-get needs the settings to be done through apt.conf file.

@/other special characters in password
One more think to note is that if your password contains '@' it needs to be replaced with %40.I struggled a lot to find this out. This is a bug in ubuntu( for details about the bug refer http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=500560 ) . This link might be of help if there are problems with other special characters. But as far my knowledge is concerned the problem arises only with @.

Ramgopal verma's veiws on birthday

I ve seen this post in ramgopal verma's blog. I found it interesting.The post goes like this...


Years ago I had to travel from Hyderabad to Chennai for some work, related to a film I was making at that time and someone very close to me asked me not to go as the next day was her birthday. When I told her I have to go she asked me if that work was more important than her birthday. I asked her to tell me what was so important about her birth in the first place. I also told her that “I don’t celebrate my own birthday inspite of achieving whatever I have, whereas you have achieved nothing and why are you so gung-ho about wanting to celebrate your birth. If you think the mere fact that you are born calls for a celebration, don’t forget that when your parents had sex, the last thing that they would have had on their minds while doing it was to conceive you in particular. On the other hand your dad under temptation could have gone to a prostitute and that particular spermatozoa through which that woman might have conceived could have been you and you could have ended up in a miserable brothel. In effect when you have absolutely no control or no contribution in the process of what, who and why someone gave you birth, why should you make such a big deal about celebrating it?”

Needless to say she slapped me.

The obsession for birthdays most primarily comes from an intense fear of an individual that his or her existence might not matter to anybody else. So at least on that one particular day if an X number of people greet, it will make you feel like a star at least for that day and then you can wait like a nobody for another year to go by to become a star for yet another one day.

Incidentally the best birthday greeting I have ever received was in the form of an sms from an unknown number.

“Hey Ramu fucker, tere zindagi ka ek aur saal khatam. Marte Raho!”

This above sms I received kind of sums up my feelings about birthdays. I consider a greeting for my birthday as a truly ugly reminder that I am getting that much older and that much more nearer to death and consequently I have that much less time to do whatever I want to do.

If at all anyone needs to celebrate, they and their near ones should celebrate their achievements and not that they are born. I would rather someone close to me celebrate the day I conned a producer to give me a break than a day that I just happened to be born the way millions of people, animals and insects get born every day.

So in effect I am hoping that all you non-achievers who read this blog would cringe the next time someone greets you “Happy Birthday” the way I cringe in fear of death getting closer when someone greets me “Happy Birthday”.

P.S: Now that I have confessed why I fear “Happy Birthday” greetings I think I have given enough fodder to all you haters of mine out there to come out with the nastiest greetings of all kinds on my next birthday and you all should celebrate this moment. Ha Ha!

Epilogue I broke up with that woman who slapped me a long long time back. On her last birthday I messaged her “Happy Birthday” and she did not reply.

background slideshow in ubuntu

This post is not meant for the pros and studs of GNU/linux......This is response to some of my frns asking me how to create a background slide show in ubuntu.Im using this method since a long time.There might be a better method of achieving it.I ll be glad if some one lets me know a better method.

Open slideshow.xml .Now create a file with .xml extension.The code to written in this file will be similar to slideshow.xml.Each tag in the code are expalined below.

1.The "starttime" indicates the time from which the slideshow begins.

2.The "static " tag means that the image(in the file tag of static ) will be displayed for duration given in the duration tag

3.The "transition" tag means that there will be a transition between the image in "from" to image in "to" tag. for duration number of seconds.

4.Don't forget to write tis whole content in a "background " tag. Then save it

This way any number of images can be added to slide show.

Now open a new file with .xml extension again(say .theme.xml).Write the file in a similar manner as in theme.xml.

Change the name in the name tag to the name of the slideshow theme(i named it as pratap).The tag "filename" should contain the address of the slideshow.xml which you created previously.Save this file in the folder
/usr/share/gnome-background-properties(you need root permissions for that.so better use "sudo gedit" for the text editor) 
                                                                   OR
There is an application called crebs(suggested by my frnd) which does all this for us and creates a background slideshow
This is the download link :crebs download

Easiest way to access data from other`s computers.

Recently I changed name of my home folder in ubuntu (accidentally) . On restarting the system it says it cannot display the desktop as it finds the link to desktop to be broken. I was clue less. I tried slax OS*. But it was unable to mount the ubuntu partition (I dont Understand why this happened). 
Then I got the Idea of using ubuntu live cd and try  with ubuntu without any change in computer  and it works perfectly fine.

One more thing to note is that it does not ask any password to get root access (for obvious reasons!) .

Conclusion:

So for crash management/access of other's computer its cool to use ubuntu live cd (in fact any linux live cd should work). Get root permissons and do whatever you want.

* no instaltion required. Run from cd and access information of all your hard disk partitions.