Starting with Ubuntu Karmic, Grub2 is used (for clean installs for now), so THIS how-to on recovering the GRUB no longer works for the new GRUB2.

The guide has tips on improving the battery life, optimising the taskbar and the GNOME panel for usability, getting a more space-efficient browser and more. Some of these tips are specific to the Eee PC, but most can be applied to any of the popular netbooks. Happy tweaking!

Ubuntu Karmic comes by default with ALSA 1.0.20 and if that doesn't work for you, an upgrade to ALSA 1.0.21 might be the solution. We wrote about the ALSA upgrade script for Ubuntu and Debian but there is an easier way of upgrading ALSA: by using a repository (Launchpad PPA).

Axel is a command line application which accelerates HTTP/FTP downloads by using multiple sources for one file. For example, some FTP sites limit the speed of each connection, therefore opening more than one connection at a time multiplies the allowable bandwidth.

Some people do not have a permanent access to the Internet or the connection is limited; as an example, a friend can't download files larger than 10 mb. So how to install applications offline, in Ubuntu? Obviously, the packages have to be downloaded from another computer but this should include all the dependencies or else it would be useless.

There are maybe hundreds of applications which you can use to automatically change your desktop wallpaper, but is it worth using an application for such an easy task? You can do this with a 3 lines bash script. Let's get started!

When Google firstly presented it's Google Wave, everybody though it was going to be a web client to integrate email, Twitter, RSS and basically... everything. If you are using Google Wave, you found out on your own that Google Wave is not for that.

The Complete Guide To Mounting Your iPhone On A Fresh Ubuntu Karmic Koala Installation

Here's what you need to do:

Firstly, in case you don't know, Dropbox is a cross-platform service for file sharing, synchronizing and backup.

You probably know that to use a Launchpad PPA repository, you must also import the GPG key. This is how it worked until Ubuntu Karmic Koala:

Hamachi is a zero-configuration virtual private network (VPN) application capable of establishing direct links between computers that are behind NAT firewalls without requiring reconfiguration (in most cases); in other words, it establishes a connection over the Internet that very closely emulates the connection that would exist if the computers were connected over a local area network.

If your browsers work OK, you do not need to disable IPv6. Also, there is nothing wrong with either Ubuntu (Karmic) or IPv6, so if you are experiencing any issues, they are because of your ISP / router / modem.

Changing GRUB2 Splash Image

This repository contains the following packages:

-Docky (version 2.0~bzr315-0 at the time of writing this post) - the dock bar part of Gnome Do (read on!)