Clear Address Line in Firefox with Xclear

This add-on places an X-icon at the end of the url. There are several other add-ons that do this, but this one is really lightweight and doesn't need any toolbar buttons. The functionality is more similar like the ones found in Konqueror.

Get a List of Installed Software in Chronological Order

There is a single log file that records all the apt activities, such as installs or upgrades, for the various package managers (dpkg, apt-get, synaptic, aptitude). It can be found here : /var/log/dpkg.log.
If you want to have a more comprehensive history of the installed packages, you can use:
cat /var/log/dpkg.log* | grep "\ install\ " | sort
The result is a chronological list of package installation events. (Note that if a package was installed and subsequently removed, it will still be on the list.)

It turns out that there used to be an apt-history package, but the creator gave it up -due to the fact that dpkg now does logging- in favor of a small script solution: http://redclay.altervista.org/wiki/doku.php?id=projects:old-projects .
Below is the bash function from that web site.

function apt-history(){
case "$1" in
install)
cat /var/log/dpkg.log | grep 'install '
;;
upgrade|remove)
cat /var/log/dpkg.log | grep $1
;;
rollback)
cat /var/log/dpkg.log | grep upgrade | \
grep "$2" -A10000000 | \
grep "$3" -B10000000 | \
awk '{print $4"="$5}'
;;
*)
cat /var/log/dpkg.log
;;
esac
}

The code should be added to /root/.bashrc.
To run apt-history, you need to become root. Entering apt-history with no parameter will simply dump the change log file. To select what activities you want to see, you can enter one of install, upgrade, remove, rollback as a single parameter to apt-history.

Another way to quickly extract informations from apt logs (term.log) is apt-log .
Some examples that would help understanding the common usage of apt-log : http://mavior.eu/apt-log/examples/

Edit : another way to list your installed packages is http://man.cx/apt-show-versions

Recreate Debian Packages with dpkg-repack

Dpkg-repack creates a .deb file out of a Debian package that has already been installed on your system. If any changes have been made to the package while it was unpacked (ie, files in /etc modified), the new package will inherit the changes.
This utility can make it easy to copy packages from one computer to another, or to recreate packages that are installed on your system, but are no longer available elsewhere.
Dpkg-repack should be run as root.
If you don't wish to run the rebuild as root, and you have the fakeroot package installed you can do so as follows: $ fakeroot -u dpkg-repack packagename.
Dpkg-repack will place the created package in the current directory.

Foobnix Player

Foobnix is a new linux music player for both local and online music. With the online music search feature you can download and save music from Vkontakte . WARNING! You can download the audio file at your own risk and only in accordance with the rules of the site VK.com and legislation in your country.
Besides this online music search feature, Foobnix also comes with a lot of radio stations integrated by default (around 3500), Last.fm support, lyrics, tree-like music list, album cover fetching ....
Sometimes the web search for music stops working, you can reset Foobnix by removing ~/.config/foobnix   : rm -r ~/.config/foobnix

AudioBox

AudioBox features a full featured desktop-like HTML 5 application right into your browser, the AudioBox.fm Cloud Web Player.  Accessing, streaming, organizing and storing your media files is easier than ever. Features : 1 GB of storage space for the free plan with unlimited streaming, integrated bridges towards third party services ( Last.fm, Twitter, YouTube and Dropbox). There is no need to install extra software to enjoy your media library in the cloud, just a normal web browser will work.

Run Spotify with Wine

Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs. They achieve this by licensing the tracks from record companies in a similar way to radio stations, and they pay for it with advertising. You hear the occasional advert between tracks, and there are also options to pay a monthly subscription for a premium account. They do have a preview version client for Linux which I installed, but everytime I try to log in I get the message Use of this device is not enabled for your account. From their site : As a preview release this version is still unsupported, but we’re running it ourselves and will try to make sure it keeps pace with its Mac and Windows siblings. As we haven’t found a reliable way to display ads yet, this version is only available to Spotify Premium subscribers.
Luckily it runs well under wine . With the open version you will get 20 hours per month of streaming ( free ).
There is a problem playing local files with wine though. A solution is not far away, what I used was :
wget http://webupd8.googlecode.com/files/winemp3.acm -O ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/winemp3.acm
After that run winecfg and under the Libraries tab enter winemp3.acm under New override for library and click Add. Have fun with Spotify !

There's even Despotify , an open source client and library for Spotify’s streamed music platform. Spotify decided to block access for non-premium subscribers. !

 If you want to disable the spotify tray icon you should start reading here .

760 705 8888 - Who Is Calling Me?

http://7607058888.com/

How to Style GTK Applications When Running KDE

You will need two packages : gtk-qt-engine and system-config-gtk-kde
The GTK-Qt Theme Engine (also known as gtk-qt-engine) is a GTK+ 2 theme engine that calls Qt 4 to do the actual drawing. This makes your GTK+ 2 applications look almost like real Qt 4 applications and gives you a more unified desktop experience.

This style can be configured within KDE4's systemsettings using package
system-config-gtk-kde .

Wbar Couldn't Load Icon Image

Installed wbar and after starting it in the terminal I got the following :
Using /usr/share/wbar/dot.wbar config file.
Using a Super Bar.
/usr/share/pixmaps/other/Webbrowser.png -> Couldn't load icon image.
And nothing happened ..
Solution : apt-get install gnome-extra-icons

Some utilities  to configure wbar :
wbar util http://home.arcor.de/max.federle/wbarutil/index.html 
wbarconf  http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/wbarconf-34908.shtml

Check Your Local Time

http://www.timeticker.com/
The exact time of the world. A full featured Multimedia-Site created with Flash by Martin Zwernemann. Have fun!
http://time.is/
Time.is is synchronized with an atomic clock - the most accurate time source in the world. The displayed time will normally have a precision of 0.02-0.10 seconds. The precision depends on your internet connection and how busy your computer is.

Using a Hosts File To Make The Internet Not Suck (as much)

The hosts file is a computer file used in an operating system to map hostnames to IP addresses. The hosts file is a plain-text file and is traditionally named hosts. It's like an address book. When you type an address like www.google.com into your browser, the hosts file is consulted to see if you have the IP address, or "telephone number," for that site. If you do, then your computer will "call it" and the site will open. If not, your computer will ask your ISP's (internet service provider) computer for the phone number before it can "call" that site. Most of the time, you do not have addresses in your "address book," because you have not put any there. Therefore, most of the time your computer asks for the IP address from your ISP to find sites.  If you put ad server names into your hosts file with your own computer's IP address, your computer will never be able to contact the ad server. It will try to, but it will be simply calling itself and get a "busy signal" of sorts. Your computer will then give up calling the ad server and no ads will be loaded, nor will any tracking take place. Your choices for blocking sites are not just limited to blocking ad servers. In many cases using a well designed hosts file can speed the loading of web pages by not having to wait for these ads, annoying banners, hit counters, etc. to load.
Computers have a host address of their own - it is known as the "localhost" address, with an IP address of 127.0.0.1 which it uses to refer to itself. If you associate another computer's host name with your localhost IP address, you have effectively blocked that host since all attempts to access it will lead back to you.

Severals sites provide hosts files  
http://hostsfile.mine.nu/
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

The hosts file is located  in the /etc directory as /etc/hosts.
If there are currently entries in your existing hosts file, then open the ad-blocking hosts file. Copy the text from it to add to the bottom of any existing text in your current hosts file.

Additional links :
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=241460#2
http://hosts-file.net/

DocsPal a Free Online File Converter

Docspal is a free online file converter that supports all kind of documents, video, audio, images, e-books and archives. Moreover, it offers an online viewer that allows you to view documents and images online directly in your browser, without having to install anything else. A download link will be displayed at the end of conversion. All uploaded files are stored on their servers until their conversions are completed. The converted files will be kept on their servers for up to 5 days, after which they will be deleted.

Debget to Download a Deb

Debget will download a .deb file for one or more packages from a Debian mirror.
It uses apt-get to find out the URL so it will download the same version from the same server as apt-get would do.The .deb will be downloaded with curl and stored in your working directory. Debget belongs to the package debian-goodies. Not to be confused with getdeb !

Debian Snapshot Archive

The snapshot archive is a wayback machine that allows access to old packages based on dates and version numbers. It consists of all past and current packages the Debian archive provides. 

Manpages Online

From this page : So I thought, why isn't there a page with all manpages? So I just built one.

Enable Restart X Server (Ctrl-Alt-BackSpace)

Gnomepanel : System > Preferences >  Keyboard. Select Layouts tab and click on Options... Select Key sequence to kill the X server and enable Control + Alt + Backspace.

More Plugins Control in Firefox

If you go to the about:config page in Firefox and change the value to "false" for browser.download.hide_plugins_without_extensions, then you’ll be able to control many more media types when you go to Edit >Preferences >Applications.

Emerald on Squeeze

Using compiz and you cannot find emerald ? Just follow the discussion here : forums.debian.net/....

More Recent Version of Wine on Squeeze

Go here : main.mepis-deb.org/.... . See discussion at : forums.debian.net/.... .

Missing Globe on Googleearth 64 bit

Nvidia-users : you might be missing package nvidia-glx-ia32.

Link : http://forums.debian.net/....

Googleearth with Nice Fonts

Have a look at a neighbour :
packages.medibuntu.org/pool/non-free/g/googleearth/ . (googleearth_5.1.3533.1731-0medibuntu1_amd64.deb ).

Working Webcam

I recently bought a Logitech Webcam C500 http://www.logitech.com/en-sg/webcam-communications/webcams/devices/5866, after consulting this list : wiki.ubuntu.com/SkypeWebCams. Price 39.99 euros here in The Netherlands. It works !! ( with latest skype ).

Faenza Icon Theme

Gnome users go to tiheum.deviantart.com/art/Faenza-Icons....
Download Faenza_Icons_by_tiheum.zip.  To have it extracted in one place : mkdir Faenza-icons. Put the zip file in it and unzip. Extract Faenza.tar.gz and Faenza-Dark.tar.gz. Put directory Faenza and/or Faenza-Dark in ~/.icons or /usr/share/icons.

Autogenerate and Use a Swap File

Package: dphys-swapfile from http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/dphys-swapfile . This init.d script exists so one does not need to have a fixed size swap partition. Instead install without swap partition and then run this, with file size (re-)computed automatically to fit the current RAM size. 
After the package has been installed whenever you boot you'll have /var/swap created. You can verify this yourself with the swapon command :
 /sbin/swapon  -s
Filename                Type        Size          Used    Priority
/var/swap                  file        2097144    0           -1
See : http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/550

Compile Latest Firefox

Go to ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.6.12/source/ and download firefox-3.6.12.source.tar.bz2. Get all the tools and things you need to build Firefox. In a terminal as root :

apt-get build-dep iceweasel
apt-get install libasound2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libnotify-dev libxt-dev libiw-dev mesa-common-dev autoconf2.13 yasm libidl-dev

Extract  firefox-3.6.12.source.tar.bz2 : tar xf firefox-3.6.12.source.tar.bz2. Put a ./mozconfig file in the directory mozilla-1.9.2. Open .mozconfig inside a text editor and paste in the following text:

.$topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/ff-release
#mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS="-j4"
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --enable-optimize
ac_add_options --enable-official-branding
ac_add_options --enable-system-cairo

In mozilla-1.9.2 open a terminal and enter make -f client.mk. Once the compile is done, the binaries will be in ../mozilla-1.9.2/ff-release/dist/bin/. After that cd mozilla-1.9.2/ff-release && make package. Package will be  in : mozilla-1.9.2/ff-release/dist/ (tar.bz2).
See my former post :debian-bits-and-snips.blogspot.com/2009/12/....
Many thanks to : http://lovingthepenguin.blogspot.com/2010/07/firefox-36-with-pretty-fonts-in-debian_15.html

Iceweasel From Experimental

You can a run the latest version of iceweasel from Debian experimental on Debian squeeze if you like. Just go to this page : debian.org/distrib/packages and search for these packages : xulrunner, libmozjs3d and iceweasel. Install them with dpkg -i packagename .

Skype on Squeeze 64 bit

Download Dynamic Static package from : http://www.skype.com/.... Extract in your home directory : tar xf skype-2.1.0.81.tar.bz2 .
In the README file it says : If you are using the dynamic and statically linked generic versions, you will need to choose a path for Skype to exist in. We recommend copying the skype binary to /usr/bin and installing sounds/, lang/ and avatars/ into the /usr/share/skype directory.
That's all. Alternative : ...google.com/chat/video

Problem While Loading "OAFIID : Glipper"

Add as setting to have glipper load a number of seconds later. Edit as root /usr/lib/glipper/glipper and add these lines right after the commented part with the license :

import time # <-- This line is new
time.sleep(8) # <-- This line is new. Change the 8 to for instance 30 if it did not help

Menu Hover Delay Gnome-panel

You want a faster opening menu ? Add these lines to the file ~/.gtkrc-2.0 :

gtk-menu-popup-delay = 0
gtk-menu-popdown-delay = 0
gtk-menu-bar-popup-delay = 0
gtk-enable-animations = 0
gtk-timeout-expand = 10
Full list of gtk-settings : http://library.gnome.org/.... 
Credits : http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/209

Apt-get upgrade "the following packages have been kept back"

Sometimes you get this message when running apt-get upgrade. The solution is simple : just run apt-get install followed by the list of packages returned after the following packages have been kept back message. This works well enough to get rid of any errors.