Linux Mint and Ubuntu

Linux Ubuntu and Linux Mint

Just a couple of edits for Linux Mint and Ubuntu…

Harddisk encryption

DVD No sound

Suddenly one day my VLC started to not stopped playing sounds from DVDs. Very annoying since all other audio outputs still worked flawlessness.

If found the solution within the ubuntu forums and the solution is ridiculously easy.

  1. Install the libdvdread4 package (no need to add third party repositories) via Synaptic or command line:

    $ sudo apt-get install libdvdread4

  2. Then open a terminal window and execute:

    $ sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

  3. Rebooting may be necessary.

Especially the last point was important to make the change permanent. But let’s face it: Unless otherwise proven this behavior seems to be the result of this Bullsh*t content protection the media-houses set on the DVDs for protection. If I would have just downloaded the DVDs I wouldn’t have had a problem at all.

Watch out: The next upgrade is probably gonna install a newer version of the downgraded libdvdcss2 package that you’ve just adjusted. In order to prevent that specific package from being upgraded, add the following information to /etc/apt/preferences:

Package: libdvdcss2
Pin: version 1.2.10-0.2*
Pin-Priority: 1001

That keeps the current installed version 1.2.10-0.2 on the system and doesn’t allow any upgrade.

Default directories

Some of the default folder in my home directory are quite useful annoying. So, let’s change that:

In ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs you find them all:

# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped # homedir-relative path,
#or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an # absolute path. No other format is supported.

#XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Público"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Descargas"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Música"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Vídeos"
#XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Escritorio"
 XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documentos"
 #XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Plantillas"
 XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Imágenes"

Easy. Source

Ripping Audio CDs

Damn it. I somehow lost the script I’ve used for ripping Audio-CDs. And I can’t find it again. Damn, damn, damn.

Well, time for something new then: ripit.

Easy as hell. You install it from the repository and run it. Rest: done. Well you might wanna have a look into the parameters, because the standard options for reading a CD to a MP3 file creates a 128Bit file…. OMG.

Something like this will do the trick:

$ ripit -b 192 -e

<Gnome Extensions <https://extensions.gnome.org>`__

Gnome is getting more and more complex. And more and more comfortable at the same time. The recent changes kicked some features out of the standard setting which can be added again with the Gnome Extensions:

  • Recent Items: An icon with quick access to the latest used files. From the authors homepage you get the info that you can restrict it to certain file types by editing the extension.js in the extension folder:

$ vi ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/RecentItems@bananenfisch.net/extension.js
const ITEMS = 10;       // number of items to list
const MORE = 50;        // number of items to list under "more..."
const BLACKLIST = "";   // to blacklist (hide) spezific MIME media types. Available media-types are: text, image, audio, \
                           video, application, multipart, message, model. You can define one or more (seperate with “,”) types.

  • Jump Lists

    Integrates Zeitgeist activities and lists into the applications starter menu.

The <whole website <https://extensions.gnome.org>`__ is not working with Opera 12.0/13. But with Firefox. Well, You can browse the extensions, but not install them via the switch left of the screenshot, because it’s not visible in Opera.

Opera

Opera decided this morning not to start up again. I had to create a new profile in ~/.opera and delete the old one.

In order to migrate at least the essential stuff:

RSS Feeds and Mail

Copy ~/.opera/mail from the old profile into the new one. You have to enter at least the passwords for your email accounts again if you haven’t synchronized them via Opera Link.

Last sessions tabs

Information about the last sessions tabs are stored in ~/.opera/sessions/autosave.win. Copy that file to the new location and you’ve restored that as well.

Screen

Overscan

When connecting a system via e.g. HDMI to TV you might experience a new flaw: suddenly the screen seems to be too big for the TV and you’re missing some pixels on all four borders. Well, that’s a rotten bit of luck, isn’t it?

One way of fixing this is to adjust the overscan parameter in your NVIDIA-Settings to make the picture fix. Unfortunately, not all Cards support this and this particular helpful option might just be disabled on your system (as it was on mine).

Check your TV then. If it’s a Phillips it might have a setting to set the inputs (such as HDMI) into a PC-Mode. That fixed the issue I was living with for 4 months in a second.

Entering Unicode characters

For entering Unicode character you need some weird key-combination:

ctrl+shift+U <code> <space>

So for entering the middle-dot (U+00b7) it is

ctrl+shift+u, then 00b7, then <space>

Bluetooth

Gnome/Linux is a bit restrictive when it comes to receive files via Bluetooth. Sending doesn’t seem to be a problem, but anything that shall come in is just ignored.

There seems to be a difference between LMDE and Katya Mint. Fire up gnome-file-share-properties and set the desired options to enable file receiving via Bluetooth.

Ripping DVDs

I had problems ripping my Star Trek DVDs. Just making a copy with dd took forever. Until I changed the region to the one I’m currently in:

$ sudo regionset [device]

On Ubuntu the DVD stayed invisible in the drive. Until I’ve installed some extra packages:

$ sudo wget --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list && sudo apt-get --quiet update && sudo apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get --quiet update
$ sudo init 6
$ sudo apt-get install libdvdcss libdvdread4 libdvdnav4 ubuntu-restricted-extras