FREE LOOK

Tweaking Ubuntu 8 04 Hardy Heron with Ubuntu Tweak

A few days back i discovered a really neat tool called Ubuntu-Tweak which allows one to tweak Ubuntu easily using wizard based approach and easy to use attractive interface, which otherwise might take a number of cryptic commands and modification to config file to do . The tool basically allows one to tweak a number of things in Gnome running on Ubuntu which is difficult to do otherwise.

Some of the features of Ubuntu-Tweak includes (taken from Ubuntu-Tweak website ):
Features of Ubuntu Tweak

* View of Basic System Information(Distribution, Kernel, CPU, Memory, etc.)
* GNOME Session Control
* Auto Start Program Control
* Show/Hide and Change Splash screen
* Show/Hide desktop icons or Mounted Volumes
* Show/Hide/Rename Computer, Home, Trash icon or Network icon
* Tweak Metacity Window Manager�s Style and Behavior
* Compiz Fusion settings, Screen Edge Settings, Window Effects Settings, Menu Effect Settins
* GNOME Panel Settings
* Nautilus Settings
* Advanced Power Management Settings
* System Security Settings

With Ubuntu-Tweak 0.3 there is additional feature of assigning applications/actions to short cut keys too :) .

So here are the instructions on how to install Ubuntu-Tweak on your Ubuntu 8.04 Installation :

Open up the terminal window(Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal ) and type in the following command :

First we add repository where Ubuntu-Tweak is located with the following commands

echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/ubuntu hardy main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

and

echo "deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/ubuntu hardy main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list

After this we actually install Ubuntu-Tweak with the following commands

sudo apt-get update

and

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

After issuing the above command Ubuntu-Tweak should be properly installed and you could launch it from (Applications -> System Tools -> Ubuntu Tweak )

Opening screen of Ubuntu-Tweak 0.3 on Hardy Heron

Some other screen shots of Ubuntu-Tweak

(C) 2008 , Ambuj Varshney (blogambuj@gmail.com)
For Linux on Desktop Blog
http://linuxondesktop.blogspot.com

download file now

Tweaking dhcp client configuration to change the default DNS servers to Open DNS

The DNS servers of my ISP is always behaving erratically. The DNS look up times are abysmally large and some times I get an address not found error while browsing. On ubuntu/debian systems the DNS servers are specified in /etc/resolv.conf. I tried to edit /etc/resolv.conf and put open dns servers as default DNS servers. But, my ISP supplies their DNS server address along with IP address for the system via DHCP. Every time my system renews its DHCP lease. my /etc/resolv.conf is also rewritten with their DNS address.

My /etc/resolv.conf ( supplied by ISP) looks like this.

$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
domain asianetindia.com
search asianetindia.com
nameserver 202.88.238.3
nameserver 202.88.238.5
nameserver 202.88.231.2

There is a trick I used to make Open DNS servers as my default DNS server.

Edit /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf and look for the line.
#prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1;
Add the following line immediately below the above line.

prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222;
prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.220.220;

You can also put any other DNS servers.

Now renew the lease with

$ sudo dhclient eth0

The new /etc/resolve.conf looks like this.
$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
domain asianetindia.com
search asianetindia.com
nameserver 208.67.220.220
nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 202.88.238.3
nameserver 202.88.238.5
nameserver 202.88.231.2

DNS look up is made from open dns.

download file now