My Ubuntu tips & tricks (and some small pieces of software/gadgets)
2008 mai 6
- Play youtube videos directly in Totem Movie Player (Hardy): Open Movie Player, go to Edit > Plugins and enable “Youtube Browser”, then in the right panel select “Youtube” and then just search for a video. And of course, it works full-screen too
And you can install the Totem Movie Player H.264 plugin for youtube for better quality, from here.
- Another tip: i recently find out that by holding the mouse over audio files (i’m not sure for other versions, but it definitely works on Hardy) you can listen to that file… like a preview.
- One thing that annoyed me when i installed Ubuntu first was the way to big icons, so if that’s the case for you too, here’s what you can do: open nautilus and go to edit > preferences: icons view: default zoom level: 75%.
- To customize most of the colors of your ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install gnome-color-chooserwhich you can then find under System > Preferences. - Another nice little piece of software is alltray:
sudo apt-get install alltray
It lets you open a program in system tray even if that software does not support it. To do so: hit alt+f2 and type: alltray <name_of_software_to_open> and the same goes for shortcuts. - Some system information:
sudo apt-get install sysinfo - To download youtube videos and convert them to .avi:
sudo apt-get install youtube-dl ffmpeg
and then:youtube-dl -o example.flv "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdaAWFoWr2c"
and to convert to avi:ffmpeg -i example.flv example.avi
(of course change the name of the video as you please and the youtube link to the video you want to download). - Many of us use gtk-recordmydesktop which saves the screen recordings in ogg or ogv format but we may want it in avi format, so to do that:
sudo apt-get install mencoder
and:mencoder -idx example.ogg -ovc lavc -nosound -o example.avi(this is if the ogg file has no sound). - To make a playlist of the audio files in a folder:
ls -R > playlist.m3u - To kill a process by it’s name:
sudo killall <prog_name>for instance:sudo killall firefox
or you can kill by pid (program id):sudo kill <pid>
and to see the pid:pidof <program name>, for instance:pidof firefox
(or you can try listing the currently running processes with:ps -e - To refresh the gnome panel:
sudo killall gnome-panel - To find out the version of installed software:
apt-cache policy <packet_name> - To find out the UUID of your partitions:
ls /dev/disk/by-uuid/ -alh
More to come… sometime 
I’d want the software which I could download YouTube movies and convert them into avis. could you send it to me on sadakch91 @ yahoo.de ? thanks in advance
well first you need to throw away the windows cd and then do what i said in my post
re: 13) There is a better block id command to do this for you:
sudo blkid
Otherwise good stuff, thanks for the tip about the colour chooser!
the result of my 13) tip is more colorful
. i didn’t know about that command, thank you 
You don’t need any special software to download YouTube videos just view them. Then the most recent file in /tmp is the flash video just viewed, rename it to “myvideo.flv” move it to where you want to save it and that’s it.
Of course one nice thing about the way described in the article is you don’t need to have any flash plugin installed either Asobe or GNASH.
When you use ffmpeg to “convert to .avi”, what actual video format does it convert to? AVI is just a file format, not a compressor.
Audio file previews happen in earlier versions too, but you generally need “sox” installed.
@Chris Lees: you mean which codec? here’s in what it converts: Video: mpeg4, yuv420p, 320×240, q=2-31, 200 kb/s, 29.92 fps(c)
@chemicalscum: well you need them in .avi if you want to edit them, upload them to another website that doesn’t support .flv, etc.
Nice tips and tricks , i usually have to go from one website to other looking for tips like these but you made a nice compilation .. thanx
you’re welcome
cool tips,pls post more!!!
OK, i’ll come up with some other tips n tricks soon