When Linux Hangs or Completely Freezes

When Windows hangs itself we all know what to do right? Were just reaching for the combination [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Del] (Control Alt Delete). But if you try this in Linux nothing happens (in some distributions, like Ubuntu, you actually get the menu for shutting down your system, but this don’t work when your system hags or freezes).

So what to do?

There is 3 keyboard combinations every Linux user should remember (or write down). But before we begin I want you to understand some of the signs I use: If a symbol is surrounded by [ ] means that it is a button or key on your keyboard. +means that you have to hold the keys down at once. And > means that you have to click the buttons one by one, remember that you have to press each key for 2-3 seconds. Now that you have learned this we can move on to the commands:

Fist you have the combination [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[BackSpace] (backspace is the [←] over[Enter]) that restarts X or GDM (you will be logged out), and you can kind of call it Linux’s Control Alt Delete equivalent. This command gives your programs time to make emergency backups of unsaved files (for example if you writing on a document in Open Office) and it  prevents that you get a file system error during the crash.If you use Ubuntu or a distribution based on Ubuntu you will have to use[Alt]+[PrtSc]+[K] (PrtSc = Print Screen) instead, but you should note that some Ubuntu based distros (like Linux Mint) still use the universal [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[BackSpace].

But what to do if this combination doesn’t work?

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Google Chrome for Linux - Available in Beta

Hello everybody out there using Linux -

Google Chrome is go for beta on Linux! Thanks to the many Chromium and WebKit developers who helped make Google Chrome a lean, mean browsing machine. Here are a few fun facts from us on the Google Chrome for Linux team:

60,000 lines of Linux-specific code written
23 developer builds
2,713 Linux-specific bugs fixed
12 external committers and bug editors to the Google Chrome for Linux code base, 48 external code contributors


Click here to download Google Chrome for Linux.

Resetting a Forgotten Password in UBUNTU

It happens to everyone. You have so many usernames and passwords that you can't remember them all. Fortunately, Facebook, Gmail, and about a billion other online services have a "forgot password" link. Just click it and the web service will either email your password to you or allow you to reset it and enter a new one. But what happens when you forget the password for your operating system. While you might think the easiest thing to do is reinstall Ubuntu, (after all, this is a clean install so it's not like we'd be losing any data on our hypothetical system), you can save yourself 15-30 minutes by changing the password. It turns out you don't have login to change your password. As we discovered thanks to a useful post on the Ubuntu forums, you can do it from the bootloader screen. Check out the 5 easy steps after the jump. 1. Turn on your computer, and as soon as you the Press Esc to enter grub message, press the escape key. 2. Select the option that says (recovery mode). 3. Your PC will boot into a shell. Once you get a command prompt, type passwd username where the username is your username. If you can't remember this, then you can type ls /home which should bring it up. 4. Enter a new password when prompted, and again when prompted again 5. Type shutdown -r now to reboot your system. That's it. You should now be able to login with your shiny new password.

How to install KDE on Ubuntu

Ubuntu's default desktop environment is Gnome. Sometimes people using Ubuntu want to try out KDE as well, though.

Warning: having KDE and Gnome together means you'll have cluttered application menus full of KDE applications and Gnome applications. There may be other minor integration issues, but none should impact functionality, and you can find help for those on the Ubuntu Forums.

Even though these instructions are for KDE, the same principle applies for adding Gnome to Kubuntu or XFCE to Kubuntu or Ubuntu. Basically, you install the desktop environment, log out, and choose the desktop environment.

Go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager

Enter your password when prompted.

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Access (K) ubuntu console with a single key

Yakuake is a Quake-style terminal emulator based on KDE Konsole technology which makes the console more user friendly. If you need the ability to quickly pull down a console to run a few commands with a keystroke, and then make the console disappear again with another quick keystroke. YaKuake is exactly what you are looking for. The interface is highly customizable, you can adjust the height, the width, the horizontal position you can change the keyboard shortcuts and make it retract automatically when it looses focus. It uses the same terminal settings as Konsole and like Konsole it has multiple tabs so you can have more terminals running at the same time. If you exit KDE while YaKuake is still running in the background, it’ll start up automatically when you log back into KDE. YaKuake is a very simple application, but it’s also very useful. I use it all the time when I want quick access to a terminal to run one or two commands, such as doing an apt-get update; apt-get upgrade, checking a man page to find the proper syntax for a command, or moving a few files around. In ubuntu you can install YaKuake with a simple command sudo apt-get install yakuake YaKuake is released under GPL license and you can get it from the site: * http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=29153

Enabling the desktop cube in Ubuntu

To make Ubuntu more attractive to the end user, the Ubuntu developers have included some eye-candy 'desktop effects' with the recent versions of Ubuntu. These are actually done with external plugins, such as the Expo plugin. Ubuntu comes with some pre-installed visual effect plugins but only a few of them are active by default. A one feature that most people ask for but seems not available is the Desktop Cube. The Cube is also already installed but not enabled. This article will guide you to manage the plugins and enable the cube.

In this article I assume,
That you have a working Internet connection.
That you have a faster graphics card with at leaset 64 MB of memory.

We need to follow the steps below.

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