Today, I want to share a quick trick to anybody who have a problem with brightness buttons in Kubuntu Gutsy. The problem is known when you press Fn + Home (End) to adjust screen brightness in a Lenovo Thinkpad computer using Ubuntu Linux. You think that your screen will be darker or brighter but it doesn't work. There are a lot of questions about this bug on Ubuntu forum. So, if you have not yet found a proper answer may be this is a solution for you.

Open file:

vim /etc/acpi/thinkpad-brightness-up.sh

Add this line before "exit"

echo 4 > /proc/acpi/ibm/cmos

Open another file:

vim /etc/acpi/thinkpad-brightness-down.sh

Also insert this line before "exit"

echo 5 > /proc/acpi/ibm/cmos

Hopefully the problem will be fixed in your case.

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According to Wikipedia a codec is a program capable of performing encoding and decoding on a digital data stream or signal. The word codec may be a combination of any of the following: 'Compressor-Decompressor', 'Coder-Decoder', or 'Compression/Decompression algorithm'.

Ubuntu includes many codecs by default but it's not enough because there are many different multimedia formats. These multimedia codecs allow you to play audio, watch videos or listen to music of a specific format.

Open source multimedia framework provides a list of available codec plugins for GStreamer in different packages. Most of Ubuntu applications use this multimedia framework. However, other applications, such as Mplayer and Xine, do not use the Gstreamer framework. That means you have to install some extra codecs from the “Universe” and “Multiverse” repositories:

Ubuntu Help also shows us that to install extra codecs, press Applications → Add/Remove..., type “codec” in the Search box and select which codecs you want to install. Press Apply to install the selected codecs.

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BibTeX is a program and file format designed by Oren Patashnik and Leslie Lamport in 1985 for the LaTeX document preparation system. This program will help you to keep a list of citations from LaTeX. BibTeX manages bibliographic references automatically, which reduces the time needed to reformat them an improves accuracy. Using BibTeX means you only type the citation information once, and then you can cite it in any document you write and it will get reformatted automatically to the style you specify.

BibTeX can be composed in any text editors. However you have to following the accurate structure of BibTex when adding a new entry. There are basic items as the following.

@article: An article from a journal or magazine.
@book: A book with an explicit publisher.
@booklet: A work that is printed and bound, but without a named publisher or sponsoring institution.
@conference: The same as inproceedings.
@inbook: A part of a book, which may be a chapter (or section or whatever) and/or a range of pages.
@incollection:A part of a book having its own title.
@inproceedings: An article in a conference proceedings.
@manual:Technical documentation.
@mastersthesis: A Master's thesis.
@misc: Use this type when nothing else fits.
@phdthesis: A PhD thesis.
@proceedings: The proceedings of a conference.
@techreport: A report published by a school or other institution, usually numbered within a series.
@unpublished:A document having an author and title, but not formally published.

BibTex Tools

Many BibTeX tools are available on the Internet. You can get them here. The tool I want to introduce to Ubuntu users is KBibTeX. KBibTeX is a BibTex editor for KDE. It uses the BibTeX format to store bibliographic data and provides a nice KDE interface to search through your BibTeX files.

It is easy to install this tool under Ubuntu Linux with this command.

sudo apt-get install kbibtex

KBibTeX also allows you to insert BixTeX records from CiteULike, Citeseer directly. Enjoy KBibTeX.

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You have to install a flashplugin-nonfree but you still get a message in Firefox about installing the Adobe Flash Plugin when you want to show up a Flash from somewhere. It's strange! :)

This post will show you how to fix this problem. I have tested in Ubuntu Gutsy already. It's OK.


First you need to remove Flash plugin installed before.

sudo apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree

Then you download and install a proper debian package for your Ubuntu architecture.

• For 32-bit Ubuntu 7.10: click here to download
  
• For 64-bit Ubuntu 7.10: click here to download
  

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As other versions of Ubuntu Linux, Gutsy Gibbon doesn't provide Flash Plug-in for Firefox. You can check this problem easily by opening any Web pages consisting a Flash. You don't surprise because that is a non-free plug-in. That is the reason why I want to tell you how to install this plug-in from a non-free resource.

• Step 1: Add this line to your source.list

deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ gutsy free non-free

• Step 2: Update your package database

sudo apt-get update

• Step 3: Search Adobe Flash Player plugin installer

apt-cache search flashplugin-nonfree

If it is found in the result, you move to next step to install it.

• Step 4: Install flashplugin-nonfree package

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Some new related packages are also installed to your Ubuntu system. But now you can play Flash in your Firefox.

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As an Ubuntu Linux user, I love the way that Ubuntu installs, manages, and removes software packages. In this post, hence, I will write about a powerful tool used in Ubuntu Linux. It's APT (Advanced Packaging Tool).

After reading this tutorial you are able to:

• Know what is a packaging system in Ubuntu Linux
• Know how to update your package database
  
• Know how to search a package from the package database
  
• Know how to get more details about a given package
  
• Know how to install a new package from the repository
  
• Know how to remove an existing package in your Ubuntu box
  

1. Packaging system in Ubuntu Linux
The packaging system uses a private database to keep track of which packages are installed, which are not installed and which are available for installation. This database is known as a package database which is maintained via Ubuntu repositories. Ubuntu uses a control file located in /etc/apt/sources.list to support APT for searching, updating, and installing packages. You can also read this post to know more about how to recover your sources.list file.


2. Updating your package database
3. Searching a package to install
4. Getting information of a given package
5. Installing a debian package
6. Upgrading a given debian package
   
7. Removing a debian package

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