How to disable firefox session restore dialog

I know the session restore is a very useful feature. And a lot of people actually rely on it. But I find a bit annoying that it has to prompt me every time I start firefox.

I read somewhere that it is actually a bug in that firefox cannot distinguish between a machine shutdown and a crash. It thinks it crashed, an so prompts you if you want to continue off with the previously open windows that you had.

Anyway, until they get this fixed, I'm turning it off. Here's how to do it:

1) Open firefox and type the following in your address bar:
about:config

2) Right-click, and select:
New -> Boolean

3) In the dialog box, type the line below and press ok.
browser.sessionstore.resume_session

4) Set the value to:
false

You're done. Enjoy!

Use Winkey-E to start File Manager (Nautilus) on Ubuntu 8.04

I'm used to hittig Winkey-E to bring up Explorer on Windows. So, I want to have a similar key binding on Ubuntu. Here's how I did it:

Step 1: Disable current key binding of Winkey-E.
System->Preferences->Advanced Desktop Effects Settings
Go to Desktop->Expo->Bindings
Click on Super-E and disable it.

Step2: Add new bindings
prompt%> gconf-editor

Go to /Apps/metacity/global_keybidings
Set run_command_1 to < super >E (without any space)

Go to /Apps/metacity/keybinding_commands
Set command_1 to /usr/bin/nautilus

You're done. Enjoy!

killps - Pipe /bin/ps to /bin/kill

Have you ever wanted to kill a bunch of processes? Here is how to do it:

1) Put this in your .bashrc

# Killps - Marky 2008-06-20
# usage: ps -ef | grep progname | killps
alias killps="awk '// { print \$2 }'  | xargs kill"

2) Here's how to use it:

2.A) Search for the processes. Make sure you only see what you want to kill.
e.g.:
prompt%> ps -ef | grep program_name

e.g.:
ps -ef | grep username | grep program_name | grep -v grep

2.B) When you'r happy with the filter, pipe it to killps
e.g.:
prompt%> ps -ef | grep program_name | killps

e.g.:
ps -ef | grep username | grep program_name | grep -v grep | killps

Enjoy!

Google Toolbar for Firefox 3.

Finally, it's here! Get yours from:
http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT3/intl/en/index.html

Enjoy!

How to fix weird characters in aterm (for viewing man pages)

If your aterm is showing you weird boxes when viewing man pages, just put the following in your .bashrc:

# Fix weird characters in aterm
export LANG=C

Enjoy!

How to autostart emerald

There seem to be at least two ways to do this:

1) Add the following command to sessions:
emerald --replace &

2) Replace the following line in /usr/bin/compiz-decorator
from:
USE_EMERALD="no"
to
USE_EMERALD="yes"

Then, restart X server.

Enjoy!

Auto-complete hostnames with using bash

Having forever used tcsh, this is something new I discovered when I switched to bash.

Here's how it works:
prompt%>ssh my
becomes:
prompt%>ssh mypc.homelinux.org

Here's how to set it up:
1) Create a file similar to /etc/hosts

e.g: (/home/marke/hostfile)

---snip---
# Local PC
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 mypc.homelinux.org
# Other
0.0.0.0 laptop1.homelinux.org
0.0.0.0 laptop2.homelinux.org
---snip---

* note: you don't really seem to need the real IP address. Just the name. You ca even shorten it if you have resolver set correctly.

2) Add the following to your .bashrc

export HOSTFILE="/home/marke/hostfile"

Yor're done!

Enjoy!

For more info:
* man bash
* link