How do I format a USB stick

1) If not already installed,use synaptic to install gparted

2) umount usb drive

3) use gparted to format the drive

4) remount usb stick

Problems with multiple sound sources

I had problems with playing mp3 after a watching a youtube movie.
Found this solution:

Sound problems in Hardy? Multiple sources not working?

Hardy now uses Pulseaudio as the default sound backend in Gnome. Though this is a good development (esd wasn't maintained anymore, various apps use different sound backends), this also creates a lot of problems.

For me, the situation was as follows: I have an Intel HDA sound chip on my mainboard. Very low tech by today's standards, but otherwise works fine. My sound setup was the default as I had done a fresh install Hardy. This gave me a sound setup that either work for Pulseaudio (which is a drop-in for esd), so I had Rhythmbox working, or worked for Firefox (Flash), depending on which I started first. That sucks. Sometimes you want both at the same time, or just pause on to run the other, not closing it completely.

I think I have that working now pretty well. This is how it goes:

First, install some extras: libflashsupport [this I skipped having the latest flash], libasound2-plugins and libsdl1.2debian-pulseaudio. These are libs to support Pulseaudio for Adobe's Flash, for Alsa and for SDL. The SDL lib will replace the default Alsa backend for SDL.
This is what goes into your /etc/asound.conf or .asoundrc in your home folder:

pcm.pulse {
type pulse
}
ctl.pulse {
type pulse
}
pcm.!default {
type pulse
}
ctl.!default {
type pulse
}

Then run "asoundconf set-pulseaudio" to fix up your personal Alsa configuration to redirect to Pulseaudio.
source: http://www.wzzrd.com/2008/05/sound-problems-in-hardy-multiple.html

Dmenu in Gnome

Using Openbox I liked the Dmenu program very much.
You can also use in Gnome though.
First install dwm-tools via synaptic or with sudo apt-get install dwm-tools in terminal.
If you don't like the grey color change dmenu.sh in
/usr/bin (for instance via Nautilus as root gksudo nautilus) and put in the following script:
$(dmenu_path | dmenu -fn '-*-terminus-*-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*' -nb '#000000' -nf '#FFFFFF' -sb '#0066ff')

In newer versions dmenu_run is what was dmenu.sh before.

So in terninal do dmenu_run to activatie the program.
Of course that makes no sense; we have to make a keybinding.
Standard keybinding is alt+f4; if you want to change that:
we change a keybinding with metacity:

If it is a new command or you want to check the command number: Open GConf editor (Applications -> System Tools -> Configuration Editor), go to apps -> metacity -> keybinding_command; choose a command for instance command_2

Now go to Navigate to:
/apps/metacity/global_keybindings/
and change the keybinding of the dmenu command number by selecting it and typing the new value.
and give it this value: /usr/bin/dmenu.sh or /usr/bin/dmenu_run

unp for fast unpacking of multiple zip or rar files

If you want to extract multiple packed files at once unp is a nice option:
unp is a small perl script which makes extraction of any archive files a bit easier. It support several compressors and archiver programs, chooses the right one(s) automatically and extracts one or more files in one go.


You may also want to install some non-free packages like “unace-nonfree”, “unrar-nonfree” and “lha” to extract archives of these types.

Install unp in ubuntu

sudo apt-get install unp

When you unrar multiple different rar files, put them in the same directory and , open the terminal there and do

unp *.part1.rar

unp is a small script with only one goal: Extract as many archives as possible, of any kind and from any path to the current directory, preserving the subdirectory structure where needed. Is a Do-What-I-Want utility and helps managing several extraction programs without looking for needed options for the particular tool or worrying about the installation of the needed program.

In contrary to gunzip which decompresses the file in the target directory of the source file,unp will use current directory for output.

• 

crunchbang

This is the most accessible way to experiment with Openbox.
See a nice review here

But a much nicer way is to follow this guide by Urukrama

Working with Openbox is addictive because of its simpleness, very productive because of keybindings and dmenu. Other good points are its ease of configuration, its wonderful looks, its fastness, low system requirements.
It's the complete opposite fo Winows Vista where everything is bloated and overdone with unnecessary complicated menu's.
On a well configured Openbox system the learning curve for pc newbies will be much and much lower than on any other configuration I know.

This is the way to go for people in education working with older hardware and possibilities to deploy a specific software setup.

Another competitor in this field is SliTaz
The wonderful thing about SliTaz is that it is the ideal on-the-road distro with a Usbstick on which you can very easily put your home partition. A problem I found that it doesn't support a very high screen resolution.
A critical review here

Just try it and you'll never regret it.

wbar, very lightweight osx like dock for openbox

Wbar is a very nice lightweight dock for openbox.
To config via GUI install wbarconf

Here a screenshot; please also note the tint bar at the top; the conky listing of the openbox keybindings and the nice tranquility theme in the thunar window.

Skippy, task swithcher for openbox

What you do with alt+tab in Windows and most Linux distro's you can visualize with very large window thumbnails in a nice way with Skippy .
See here for a nice screenshot