Things you discovered you could do in Ubuntu that not many knew about

[tjeremiah]

Reinstall all your packages in one go. Massive time-saver.

wow, thanks. I was thinking about doing a fresh install after 11.04 alpha. This really helps.

[sandyd]

I think Sandyd means DDR4, a type of memory. My new computer is going to have DDR3. and GDDR is whats used in a graphics card.

and you can use that GDDR4 as RAM: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Swap_on_video_ram

Its called swap, but it just swaps to the GDDR4

[weasel fierce]

Youtube made changes and they actually push the load indicator behind the actual load point. Then they delete it from your cache when its actually finished. You can try to catch it before that, or use one of the downloaders.

Is this a recent thing? I tried it a few weeks ago and it worked fine.

[cguy]

HOW TO SELECT TEXT:
You don't have to keep the left-button of your mouse pressed and move the pointer to the ending of your desired selection. (you could even outrun the desired ending in this way)

INSTEAD:
1. Click at the beginning of the selection.
2. Scroll (if necessary) to whereever the end of your selection is.
3. Press shift and keep it pressed.
4. Click where you want to end your selection.
5. Release all the buttons.

Voila! The text is selected without any troubles.

It works in text editors (ie: editable text fields) and browsers (ie: read-only text fields) alike.

[sffvba[e0rt]

HOW TO SELECT TEXT:
You don't have to keep the left-button of your mouse pressed and move the pointer to the ending of your desired selection. (you could even outrun the desired ending in this way)

INSTEAD:
1. Click at the beginning of the selection.
2. Scroll (if necessary) to whereever the end of your selection is.
3. Press shift and keep it pressed.
4. Click where you want to end your selection.
5. Release all the buttons.

Voila! The text is selected without any troubles.

It works in text editors (ie: editable text fields) and browsers (ie: read-only text fields) alike.

lol... You will be amazed about all the nifty things that can be done with shift and control when it comes to text editing etc.

One of my favorite finds of a while back was pressing F3 in Nautilus... give it a go


404

[hotrod6657]

HOW TO SELECT TEXT:
You don't have to keep the left-button of your mouse pressed and move the pointer to the ending of your desired selection. (you could even outrun the desired ending in this way)

INSTEAD:
1. Click at the beginning of the selection.
2. Scroll (if necessary) to whereever the end of your selection is.
3. Press shift and keep it pressed.
4. Click where you want to end your selection.
5. Release all the buttons.

Voila! The text is selected without any troubles.

It works in text editors (ie: editable text fields) and browsers (ie: read-only text fields) alike.

This is not just a Ubuntu discovery. Works in Windows too (at least in 7 it does).

[Copper Bezel]

Yep, it's in just about everything, like Ctrl+F. Relatedly, most applications will select the whole sentence (or often the paragraph) if you double-click it.

I thought I was the only one using Maximize Vertically, and it came up in Desktop Environments lately, with a lot of folks seeming fairly excited about it.

I liked finding out that the default application for folders can be changed - I still need Nautilus, but Thunar is a lot lighter if I just need to pull up a folder from Places. Search and Run in the Gnome Menu, too (I use Tracker and XFRun4.)

[Random_Dude]

One of my favorite finds of a while back was pressing F3 in Nautilus... give it a go

Interesting.
On Nautilus I like it when it just plays an audio file by putting your mouse cursor over it. The Ctrl+H option for seeing hidden files and folders is also very useful.

Cheers

[Ender985]

Great thread!

My contribution: you can set a number of applications to autostart whenever your computer is turned on, just by adding their command-line call to Preferences -> Startup Applications (for instance the call to launch chromium is "chromium-browser")

If you are willing to spend some time reading DevilsPie documentations, you can even set them to open to a specific workspace at a specific position!

[Alan D]

and you can use that GDDR4 as RAM: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Swap_on_video_ram

Its called swap, but it just swaps to the GDDR4

Thanks, that is awesome.