Open Terminal via Keyboard Shortcuts

Open System / Preferences / Keyboard Shortcuts

Now find the one called Run a Terminal

Click on the column opposite saying disabled and hit CTRL+ALT+T, then close the dialog

Now everytime you hit CTRL+ALT+T a terminal window will open.

Improve VLC + Keyboard Shortcuts

CTRL+CURSOR-UP  => increase volume
CTRL+CURSOR-DOWN  => decrease volume
SPACEBAR  => pause movie

Also don't install the XINE packages, GStreamer is much faster for video playback

sudo apt-get remove xine
sudo apt-get autoremove

Also if you've got a slow video card, try changing the de-interlacing mode in VLC to discard via VLC / Video / Deinterlace / Discard.

If that doesn't work, try changing your Appearance settings to Normal via System / Preferences / Appearance, then Visual Effects and select Normal. It's a good balance and you'll still get the cube desktop.

...also found this which suggests using the blend deinterlacing mode to improve DVD playback,

gedit ~/.local/share/applications/vlc-dvd.desktop

Scroll down and find the line reading...

Exec=vlc %U

Replace that with...

Exec=vlc --vout-filter deinterlace --deinterlace-mode blend --volume 512 %f

Found a couple of tips that really work,

Remove Delay on Boot Menu

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Find timeout and change it to 1

Save the file and close your boot menu file

Use All Your Cores on Boot-Up

If you've got a dual or quad core processor,

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/rc

Find the line with CONCURRENCY and change it to:

CONCURRENCY=shell

Save and close the init file

Profile Boot-Up

Bootup normally and hit e to drop into the terminal, then add profile to the end of your kernel's startup line. Don't save this file, just let it boot up once b to profile your machine.

When you bootup it'll be slow while it's profiling, all the rest will be much faster

Disabling Unused Program On Startup

Goto System / Preferences / Sessions and hunt for Evolution Alarm Notifier and un-check it, if you're never gonna use Evolutions Alarm feature; I don't.

Install Preload

Make Ubuntu more intelligently monitor the programs you usually use and keep them in memory on startup by installing the preload package

sudo apt-get install preload

More here

Last night I upgraded my laptop's o/s to the new Ibex 8.10 release, not yet official still in beta but so far very stable.

This can be done via,

sudo update-manager -d

...then choosing the new distribution 8.10 from the top of the update manager dialog, you'll need about 1 hour for it to download & install. Be around for some of the dialogs; one of which will ask you if you want to merge or replace your network script (i clicked merge) after which you should be ok.

It comes with a lot of new updates and a major interface overhaul.

There's now a fallback linux kernel if the main one should fail (like ArchLinux), more windows-like logout panel, better hibernation and a new theme called NewHuman (see screenshot above).

Along with this there's available from the repository,

• VLC 0.94 (with a more graphical control panel)
• GIMP 2.6 (much more professional)
• Gnome 2.24 (with tabbed browsing)
• GEdit 2.24

...and a ton of other newer packages, Mercurial is also updated along with the Kernel so any new hardware should be properly recognised.

After the install I had to reboot obviously, on rebooting my wifi no longer worked, so after another reboot that came back. Did an update & upgrade for any newer packages and so far other than the battery indicator applet crashing a couple of times nothing majorly serious.

Eclipse is still at 3.2 in the repository, along with NetBeans at 6.1 so that's a little bit of a bummer. However NetBeans does come with an easier installer so just grab the latest nightly build for that, Eclipse Ganymede and 3.2 are proving a little flakey at the moment.

Interface-wise it is a heck of a lot better than the previous release and although unofficially available I would recommend grabbing a copy, definitely worth the effort.

Update

Just done an update,

• In the repositories is Flash Player 10.
• On bootup instead of saying 'kernel alive.. etc..', they've replaced it with 'Starting up...'; nice.
• The Installer is now graphical with a very osx partition manager and new logout screens and graphics.
• On that end when you login the screen doesn't go blank then show the desktop but stay Ubuntu Brown then show the desktop.
• Stick a dvd in first-time and like Windows it'll ask you what you want to open it with, vlc, totem, etc.
• Plus you've got some nice new default wallpapers available.

Did have a problem with the NewHuman theme, after doing a safe-upgrade I lost the theme, although I did find a replacement;

• Dust Theme

..you need to download the Murrine debian package for the distro you're using, install it, then download + install the Dust Theme.

Other than that this release is shaping up pretty nicely!

OpenOffice 3

Found this good guide to replacing OpenOffice 2.4.1 with the latest 3.0 release, pretty simple.

• OpenOffice 3 Guide

Basically add this to your repository then update and upgrade & you should have the new build.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main

Firefox 3.1 alpha

Add this to your repository to grab Firefox 3.1

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ubuntu intrepid main