UbuntuHandbook

One Command to Make ISO Image from Live CD/DVD in Ubuntu

Last updated: July 20, 2013

This simple and brief tutorial will show you how to backup live CD or DVD to iso image on Ubuntu Linux using dd command.

dd is a command on Unix and Unix-like operating systems whose primary purpose is to convert and copy a file. On Unix, device drivers for hardware (such as hard disks) and special device files (such as /dev/zero and /dev/random) appear in the file system just like normal files; dd can also read from (and in some cases write to) these files. As a result, dd can be used for tasks such as backing up the boot sector of a hard drive, and obtaining fixed amount of random data.

To make iso image out of CD or DVD:

Insert your live CD or DVD into computer, then you can check the device name by running below command:

df -lh

You’ll get a similar output. The last line tells the device name /dev/sr0 and mount point /media/handbook/CD-Rom

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 92G 47G 41G 54% /
none 4.0K 0 4.0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev 870M 4.0K 870M 1% /dev
tmpfs 176M 980K 175M 1% /run
none 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
none 878M 3.5M 874M 1% /run/shm
none 100M 56K 100M 1% /run/user
/dev/sr0 807M 807M 0 100% /media/handbook/CD-Rom

Now, use below command to create iso from it:

dd if=/dev/sr0 of=~/backup.iso bs=1000000 count=512 &&sync

Here if reads from file /dev/sr0, of write to file backup.iso, ~/ means user home directory. The value of ‘bs’ means read and write up to 1000000 bytes at a time.

For more, run:

man dd

In command skills 2013, backup iso from cd or dvd, cd, dvd, julio

CherryTree: Best Ubuntu Note-Taking App for Programmers

Last updated: July 20, 2013

CherryTree is a hierarchical note taking application, featuring rich text and syntax highlighting, storing data in a single xml or sqlite file.

CherryTree is perfectly suitable not only for taking notes, but also for managing code snippets. The application supports syntax highlighting for many popular programming languages, so you can use the application as a programmer’s scratchpad. You can also insert code snippets directly into notes using so-called code boxes.

Features:

rich text (foreground color, background color, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, small, h1, h2, h3, subscript, superscript, monospace)
syntax highlighting (only when the rich text is disabled in the current node)
images handling: insertion in the text, edit (resize/rotate), save as png file
lists handling (bulleted, numbered, to-do and switch between them, multiline with shift+enter)
simple tables handling (cells with plain text), cut/copy/paste row, import/export as csv file
codeboxes handling: boxes of automatically highlighted text into normal rich text
alignment of text, images, tables and codeboxes (left/center/right)
hyperlinks (links to webpages, links to nodes/nodes + anchors, links to files, links to folders)
intra application copy/paste: supported single images, single codeboxes, single tables and a compound selection of rich text, images, codeboxes and tables
cross application copy/paste (tested with openoffice and gmail): supported single images, single codeboxes, single tables and a compound selection of rich text, images, codeboxes and tables
copying a list of files from the file manager and pasting in cherrytree will create a list of links to files, images are recognized and inserted in the text
print & save as pdf file of a selection / node / node and subnodes / the whole tree
export to html of a selection / node / node and subnodes / the whole tree
export to plain text of a selection / node / node and subnodes / the whole tree
toc generation for a node / node and subnodes / the whole tree, based on headers h1, h2 and h3
find a node, find in current node, find in all nodes
replace in node names, replace in current node, replace in all nodes
iteration of the latest find, iteration of the latest replace, iteration of the latest applied text formatting
import from basket, cherrytree, gnote, keepnote, knowit, mempad, notecase, tomboy, treepad lite, tuxcards, zim
export to cherrytree file of a selection / node / node and subnodes / the whole tree
password protection (using http://www.7-zip.org/)
tree nodes drag and drop

Install CherryTree on Ubuntu:

CherryTree is available in Ubuntu’s universe repository since Ubuntu 12.04 Precise. Search for and install it from Ubuntu Software Center.

For the latest version, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal and run below commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vincent-c/cherrytree

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install cherrytree

In App Review precise, ubuntu

How to Get Better Performance on Old Ubuntu Laptop

Last updated: July 20, 2013

This simple and brief tutorial is going to show you how to speed up your snail-slow laptop by tweaking your Ubuntu system. There’re some tools and apps to improve the overall performance of an Ubuntu powered machine. They are really helpful if you have an old machine with the hardware that are out of date.

Improve Performance with ZRAM on low RAM machines:

ZRAM is a is a module of the Linux kernel that creates a RAM based block device which acts as a swap disk, but is compressed and stored in memory instead of swap disk (which is slow), allowing very fast I/O and increasing the amount of memory available before the system starts swapping to disk.

This gives amazing performance improvements on systems with low RAM. Especially netbooks! Search for and install zram-config from Ubuntu Software Center. Then restart, zram is running silently as a background process.

Speed up application loading time by using Preload

Preload is nice little application that could make your linux system a lot faster. Preload is an adaptive readahead daemon. It monitors applications that users run, and by analyzing this data, predicts what applications users might run, and fetches those binaries and their dependencies into memory for faster startup times.

Preload is available by default in Ubuntu Software Center. Just search for and install it, then it’ll run silently as a background process. If you want to further tweak Preload, conf file is available at /etc/preload.conf.

Speed up Unity desktop by disable graphics effect:

Unity 2D has been dropped since Ubuntu 12.04, it’s no longer available in higher editions. If you’re using Ubuntu with Unity as its desktop environment, you can turn off the graphics effect to get a better experience.

To do so, create file .xprofile on user Home folder and open it with text editor (You may check if it already exist by press Ctrl+H to view hidden files). Add below line and save it:

export UNITY_LOW_GFX_MODE=1

That’s it. Hope this tutorial may help you!

In Unity improve performance on old laptop

Install Sticky Notes Indicator on Ubuntu 13.04

Last updated: July 19, 2013

In this tutorial I’ll show you a lightweight sticky notes software for Ubuntu users. It’s indicator-stickynotes which allows you to jot down thoughts, lists, and reminders on your desktop. This simple tool works on Unity, Gnome Shell, XFCE/Xubuntu, with partial support for KDE/Kubuntu and Linux Mint (MATE and Cinnamon).

Objectives:

Install Indicator Stickynotes on Ubuntu and Linux Mint.
Enjoy!

To get started, add the ppa repository which supports Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, 12.10 Quantal, 12.04 Precise and Linux Mint 13 Maya, 14 Nadia, 15 Olivia. To do so, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a terminal window, run below commands:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:umang/indicator-stickynotes

Then update the package lists and install the software:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install indicator-stickynotes

Enjoy!

In Howtos 13.04, Install Sticky Notes on Linux Mint, notes, sticky, ubuntu

Install RemoteBox 1.5 on Ubuntu 13.04 and Linux Mint

Last updated: July 19, 2013

As you may know, RemoteBox is an open source VirtualBox Client with Remote Management feature. It allows you to administer an installation of VirtualBox residing on another machine such as a server, as if it was installed locally. You can also interact with the displays of the guests. This allows you to treat VirtualBox much more like an installation of Xen, KVM or VMware ESX. A summary of some of the features of RemoteBox are listed below.

In this brief tutorial I’ll show you how to install RemoteBox 1.5 on Ubuntu 13.04 Raring or Linux Mint.

To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a terminal window for running commands:

Then run commands to install required packages:

sudo apt-get install libgtk2-perl libsoap-lite-perl rdesktop

Then download RemoteBox 1.5 (VirtualBox 4.2.X required):

RemoteBox-1.5.tar.bz2

Decompress the downloaded package, and it should result a new folder called RemoteBox-1.5. In terminal, navigate to this folder:

cd ~/Downloads/RemoteBox-1.5

Then start RemoteBox:

./remotebox

You can right-click on the icon from Unity Launcher and choose ‘Lock to Launcher’ to make it easy to launch next time. Or you can manually add it into Unity Dash.

This is the main window of RemoteBox:

In Howtos

Install VDrift Racing Simulator in Ubuntu 24.04 | 22.04 | 20.04

Last updated: March 12, 2025

VDrift is an open source driving simulation made with drift racing in mind. It was available for Ubuntu and Linux Mint users from PlayDeb repository.

For recent Ubuntu releases, there’s a popular xtradeb games PPA contains the game package for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, and Linux Mint 21/22. Not only for amd64 (Intel/AMD CPUs), it also support arm64/armhf (e.g., raspberry pi) platforms.

Objectives:

Install VDrift on Ubuntu and Linux Mint
Enjoy!

To get started, first press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open up a terminal window. Then run command below to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xtradeb/play

It will automatically refresh cache after adding PPA in Ubuntu, though Linux Mint user needs to do it manually by running command:

sudo apt update

Finally, install the game package by running command:

sudo apt install vdrift

(Optional) To uninstall the car racing game, use command:

sudo apt remove --autoremove vdrift vdrift-data

Then, use command below to remove the PPA repository:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:xtradeb/play

In Howtos Install VDrift from playdeb repository

Easy Way to Change Tooltip Background & Foreground on Unity

Last updated: July 19, 2013

Tooltips on Ubuntu Unity by default is white on black. This tutorial shows how to easily change the both background and foreground colors.

Objectives:

Change default tooltip background and foreground colors
Enjoy!

To get started, install the simple tool Gnome Color Chooser from Ubuntu Software Center.

Open it from the Unity Dash. Navigate to Specific tab, there you’ll find the option to tweak the tooltips colors.

That’s it. Enjoy!

In Unity

How to Install Google Sketchup 2013 Ubuntu 13.04

Last updated: June 2, 2014

Want to install and use Google Sketchup on Ubuntu 13.04 Raring? Well, this simple tutorial will show you how to do it. With the help of Wine software, you can install and use Windows software easily in Ubuntu.

Wine is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, including Ubuntu Linux. It’s free and open-source software. Wine now is getting a lot better at handling Windows software on Linux systems.

To get started with installing Sketchup 2013 in Ubuntu, download the lastest version of wine. To do that, press Ctrl + Alt + T on your keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below to add its PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

Then run below command to update package lists and install wine1.5 (Now the latest wine1.7 is recommended):

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install wine1.5

Once wine is installed, run below command to configure it so that Sketchup could be installed. You may need to log out and log back:

winecfg

Next, navigate to Libraries tab, then select ‘Riched20’ library from the drop-down list and add it. When done, click OK

Download Google Sketchup from http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/download/gsu.html. Then navigate to the Downloads folder and right-click on the EXE to ‘Open with Wine Windows Program Loader’.

Follow the setup wizard and finally you’ll get the shortcut on the desktop and Unity dash.

That’s it. Enjoy!

UPDATE: If Sketchup hangs after choosing a template, try launching it with /DisableRubyAPI as a workaround. Or read the new post about install Sketchup 2014 in Ubuntu 14.04.

In Howtos 1.6, install, Install Sketchup on Linux Mint, sketchup, wine

How to Change Screen Dimming Timeout on Ubuntu 13.04 Laptop

Last updated: July 18, 2013

When you’re running your laptop on battery, Ubuntu dims the screen after a few seconds of inactivity. It annoying and here’s how to increase the timeout.

Objectives:

Increase Ubuntu screen dimming timeout on your laptop
Enjoy!

To get started, open dconf Editor from the dash search results.

In next window, navigate to org -> gnome -> settings-daemon -> plugins -> power. You’ll find the key which says “idle-dim-time”, change its value to what you want.