Install WICD network manager on Linux Ubuntu/Mint

It may occur that by default your computer won't connect to wireless networks after starting up the system. A way to solve this might be to install the WICD network manager which is available in the Ubuntu repositories. Just fire up Synaptic Package Manager and search for WICD. During installation, you will be asked to ... Read more

Uninstall VirtualBox Guest Additions on Ubuntu and Windows 7

Ubuntu: To uninstall VirtualBox Guest Additions on Ubuntu and similar operating systems, mount the virtual disk again that you used to install them - to do that, click on the Devices menu on the virtual machines top menu bar and select Install Guest Additions. If you get a pop-up about auto-start procedures just cancel it. ... Read more

Hide files by merging them with Winrar on Windows

Apart from alternate data streams, there is another, perhaps easier way to hide files within others. All you need for it is WinRar (download the 32 or 64 bit version, depending on what operating system you use). To simplify things, I also like to install WinRar's context menu items. First off, you need the files ... Read more

Convert Linux deb and rpm packages into the respectively other format with alien

Sometimes you are forced to compile packages from source because they are not present in your current distribution's package format, which can be really annoying. While this is the safer option, there is also a quicker alternative, which is converting existing packages into the one you need with alien. sudo apt-get install alien Before you ... Read more

Set lightdm wallpaper that is independant of the user’s wallpaper (Ubuntu/Linux Mint)

Using lightdm, the wallpaper that is shown is usually the one used by the selected user. If you want to change this or just set a static wallpaper for your login screen, there are a few possibilities to do that. 1. Method The first one is to make your wallpaper inaccessible to others, letting lightdm ... Read more

‘Unable to open X display’ error on Cinnamon (Linux Mint)

You usually notice this error due to the lack of a menu bar and all kinds of window decoration after you unsuccessfully played with your Cinnamon settings or just suffered some kind of other error. If you then try to reset Cinnamon or to use any other command involving the desktop environment, you will get ... Read more