Archive for April, 2009

Restart the X-Server (the low level windowing sub-system):

• CTL+ALT+BACKSPACE

Capture the screen to a graphic file:

• Just hit the Print Screen key (Prt Scr on my keyboard)

Why doesn’t CTL+X delete properly – like it does in MS Windows?

• Because it’s not meant to! It only Cuts the item to the Clipboard; you need to hit the Del key to Delete. CTL+C has its long-accepted use, and so doesn’t do dual duty.

How can I enter special characters from the keyboard; I  can’t find a special character pallet?

• More than one way to do this but the coolest is the compose key. Compose means that you can use multiple keystrokes that are related to what you want to enter in order to compose the final single character. For instance if you want a ™ character you simply hit the compose key followed by the t and m keys. For a Euro character € do the same but use the e and and = keys  to create your character. Where is the compose key? Well you need to define it first, it’s not set up by default. For this you need to dig quite deep on the menus. System->Preferences->Keyboard->Layouts(Tab)->Other Options…(Button)->Compose key position(Arrow) I prefer to use the right Windows key – seeing it’s rarely used for anything else – but the right Alt Gr is also a strong candidate as it’s often used for similar purposes.

Permanently mount a drive so it’s there at boot time:

It’s been doing it for several versions now. It has done it here on more than one lot of hardware. It’s quite possibly a silly bug lurking somewhere. I’m talking about the case of the disappearing top menu items – generally the Ubuntu Logo main menu icon and the Applications Places System menu text all disappear leaving a thinly populated top menu bar. It only happens every few months but it’s very frustrating when it does happen. Other people have experienced this too – probably too many!

Several people seem to believe that it was something they did. However having witnessed the problem happen again in a reasonably sober state I’m pretty sure that it was a wayward process that triggered it. On this last occasion it was an FTP to a rough connection summarily closing a desktop window. I then tried a reboot, then several supposed fixes, all to no avail. After further digging around I discovered a working solution to restoring the status quo on Saifur Rahman’s website. See my notes on his blog.

You expect this sort of thing on Windoze, but on a rock solid OS like Linux even being forced to reboot after a software update comes as a bit of a downer, and also a chore. So seeing parts of the desktop anatomy disappear before your very eyes is quite memorable.

If/when it happens again I will dig deeper and try to document the problem more thoroughly.