Nithin Kamath's Weblog

In Gnome the show desktop is by default mapped to ‘Ctrl + Alt + d’, if you would like to change it to something else the easiest way out is using the ‘System –> Preferences –> Keyboard shortcuts’. Though this is the easiest way those of you who are like me, would like to use the ‘Windows Key + d’.

This is not possible using the ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ window as it shows ‘Windows Key’ as ‘Super L’ and does not allow to enter any additional key, so to acheive the ‘Windows Key + d’ for ‘Show Desktop’ you would have to run the following command in the terminal to get that done:

gconftool-2 -t str --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/show_desktop "<Mod4>d"

Thats it, hope you found this useful, let me know by writing down a comment below.

Which software comes to you mind when I mention ‘Photo Management’, yes Picasa!. Google has some time back launched Picasa 3.5 for Windows and MacOSx, but apparently due to the low adoption among Linux user they have not launched the ported version for Linux. So does this meant Linux users wont be able to use Picasa3.5? Don’t worry about it, since Google has not ported Picasa to native version we can just get the Windows version and run it under Wine.

But there are other methods as well, like the one I followed where you use the Wine supplied by the earlier install of Picasa. So if you are using the earlier Picasa 3x for Linux version then it is very simple if you have Windows installed in your system. Just follow the steps mentioned below:
[1] Download the latest version of Picasa 3.5 for Windows from the Picasa site.
[2] Install it under Windows,
[3] Issue “gksu nautilus” under terminal or if you are fine with using command prompt then skip this step.
[4] Rename the ‘Picasa3′ folder under ‘/opt/google/picasa/3.0/wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Google/’ to ‘Picasa3_old’.
[5] Copy the contents of the folder ‘Picasa3′ from your windows partition to the path mentioned in point 4. (The location where Picasa3 is installed in windows would probably be installed in ‘C:\Program Files\Google\’, so find where the partition is mounted in Linux, for me it is ‘/media/win_c’)
[6] You are done, enjoy using Picasa3.5 under Linux.

If you do not have Windows, then for step 2, you would have to install ‘Wine’ from your package repository and install Picasa3.5 executable using it. Then for step 4, the location would be ‘/home/YOUR_USER_NAME/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Google/’

Do let me know if you have any doubts using the comments section below.

Wordweb in windows is one of the popular dictionaries available, but when you shift to Linux there are quite limited number of softwares and most of them connect to the net to give the results, at least so I thought.

In Linux there is already an ‘Dictionary’ which is installed by default (available in either applications >> accessories/office) but it connects to the net to get the result, but you can override this default behavior to use the local dictionary. For this you need the package ‘dictd’ dictionary server.

Follow the following steps (the below mentioned steps are for Ubuntu/Mint but you should be install the same using the software manager provided in your distro)

• Install dictd package
  sudo apt-get install dictd
  This command will install the ‘dictd’ server on your machine and it will automatically start the server also.
• The next step is installing a dictionary.
  sudo aptitude install dict-gcide
  This command will install the ‘The Collaborative International Dictionary of English’, there are other dictionaries also available which you can browse through using your package manager, just search for ‘dict-’
• Open the dictionary (applications >> accessories/office).
• Goto ‘Edit -> Preferences’.
• Click on ‘Add’ and enter the following details:
  Description:
  Transport : Dictionary Server (Default option)
  Hostname : 127.0.0.1
  Port : 2628 (Default option)

  Click on ‘Add’ button and choose the newly created dictionary source from among the radio listed options.

Thats it!! You are done you can search for words just like you do in WordWeb.

Additional Details:

• You can also add dictionary applet to your gnome-applets by right clicking on the panel and choosing the ‘Add -> Dictionary Lookup’ option.
• You can also install the package ‘dict’, this will provide a command line option to search for words. For example you can type the following ‘dict keyboard’ to get the meaning of ‘keyboard’.
• By default the server allows access only from ‘localhost’ and the IP ‘127.0.0.1′ and defaults to port ‘2628′ you can change the setting in the file ‘/etc/dictd/dictd.conf’ if you need to allow other machines in your network to access the dictionary installed in the system.