Saturday, January 19, 2013

How to Exit the Terminal after 'n' Seconds of Inactivity - Ubuntu/Linux Mint



In this tip, we will see how to force the terminal to close after n seconds of inactivity (idle). I tested this tip in Ubuntu 12.10 and may work in older versions of Ubuntu and this includes Linux Mint.

Getting Started

Open the terminal and edit /etc/profile with this command:


sudo gedit /etc/profile

At the end of the file, enter these lines:

# Exit Terminal
TMOUT=900
export TMOUT


In TMOUT, I have set the terminal to exit after 900 seconds (15 min), set your own time in seconds. After saving your file, run this command to apply the new changes without the need to log out and log back in:

source /etc/profile

AMD Catalyst Display Driver 13.1 Adds Official Support for Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal)



ATI/AMD Catalyst Driver 13.1 for Linux-based systems has been released recently that brings various bug fixes and improvements. AMD has stated that this release fixes most of the problems encountered with Steam for Linux and it brings support for Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) and XServer 1.13. You can review the release notes for AMD 13.1 here.

The PPA from xorg-edgers is available for the following Ubuntu/Linux Mint distributions:


  • Ubuntu 13.04/12.10/12.04
  • Linux Mint 14/13
A- Automatic Installation (Recommended)

You can install the driver from PPA using this sequence of commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa 
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install fglrx-installer

After finishing the installation, you need to remove the xorg-edgers PPA using these commands before rebooting your system:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa 
sudo apt-get update 

B- Manual Installation

If you prefer to install the driver manually, you can go through all these steps, but I can't confirm that this may work for all users:

   1. Uninstalling The Current AMD Driver

Before starting the installation of this new driver, you need to remove your current driver using these commands:

sudo sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh 
sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx fglrx_* fglrx-amdcccle* fglrx-dev* xorg-driver-fglrx

Or

cd /usr/share/ati 
sudo sh ./fglrx-uninstall.sh

   2. Installing Dependencies

First of all, let's install some dependencies needed for creating the Debian packages out of the .run file. Open the terminal and enter these commands:

sudo apt-get install cdbs fakeroot build-essential dh-make debconf execstack dh-modaliases 
sudo apt-get install debhelper dkms libqtgui4 libstdc++6 libelfg0 unzip

Users of amd64 platforms (64-bit) need also to install these packages:

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-multiarch i386 lib32gcc1 ia32-libs libc6-i386 ia32-libs

   3. Installing The AMD Driver

Via the terminal, download AMD Catalyst driver 13.1 with these commands:

mkdir -p ~/amd-driver && cd amd-driver 
wget -c http://goo.gl/gKM8v -O amd-catalyst-13.1-linux-x86_64.zip 
unzip -oq amd-catalyst-13.1-linux-x86_64.zip

Generate now Debian packages for your distribution with the following command:

sudo sh amd-driver-inst*.run --buildpkg `lsb_release -is`/`lsb_release -cs`

Install the driver with these commands:

sudo dpkg -i *.deb 
sudo aticonfig --initial 
sudo reboot

UberStudent 2.0 "Lightweight"


Stephen Ewen has announced the release of UberStudent 2.0 "Lightweight" edition, an Ubuntu-based educational distribution designed for learning and teaching academic computing at the higher education and advanced secondary levels: "I'm very pleased to announce the release of UberStudent 2.0 Lightweight edition. It is designed to reinvigorate older or slower computers, and for netbooks, as well as for anyone who simply prefers a lightweight Linux distribution. Great care and testing has gone into aiming this release as the most feature-filled, polished, and stable lightweight Linux distribution available for education. It features a synergy of smartly chosen installed applications and web apps. The result is a remarkably full-featured desktop that enables you to be productive even if you lack Internet access." Read the rest of the release announcement which includes known issues and a screenshot. Download: uberstudent-2.0-lxde-i386.iso (662MB, MD5).

CRUX 3.0



Juergen Daubert has announced the release of CRUX 3.0, a lightweight, x86-64 optimized Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users: "More than 11 years after the release of CRUX 0.5 for i686, CRUX 3.0 is the first release for the x86-64 architecture. At the time Per Liden had created CRUX, the i686 processor on base of the 32-bit Intel IA-32 architecture was state-of-the-art and therefore chosen by him as the default optimization for CRUX. But nowadays the i686 architecture is more or less obsolete, at least for desktop machines, and superseded by the x86-64 architecture. Toolchain updates: CRUX 3.0 comes with a multilib toolchain which includes glibc 2.16.0, GCC 4.7.2 and Binutils 2.23.1. Kernel: Linux 3.6.11. CRUX 3.0 ships with X.Org 7.7 and X.Org Server 1.13.0." Read the release notes for additional important notes. Download: crux-3.0.iso (251MB, MD5, torrent). See also the brand-new CRUX 3.0 handbook for installation and configuration instructions.