cinderwick » linux

VolWheel: Volume control for the minimalist desktop

Thayer — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:00:48 +0000

I just wanted to spread the word about a handy new tray application for Arch Linux users seeking hassle-free volume control. VolWheel, written by Olivier “oliwer” Duclos is now available in the Arch User Repository (AUR) and I can tell you I’ve already added it to my essential software list.

Once VolWheel has been launched, the volume can be adjusted up or down by placing your cursor over the tray icon and using the scroll wheel of your mouse or touchpad. To mute, simply middle-click on the icon.

From the preferences window, accessible by a right-click menu, you can select the default audio channel, such as Master or PCM, as well as the default mixer command which is executed when you left-click on the tray icon.

By default, VolWheel uses the standard GNOME volume control icon (pictured above), however this can be customized to whatever you want by simply altering the icon’s file path in the source script.

VolWheel is written in Perl and currently depends on the following packages:

gtk2-perl
perl-gtk2-trayicon
alsa-utils
gnome-icon-theme

To report any bugs or to request new features, visit the VolWheel discussion thread.

Arch Linux: Printer tutorial and more

Thayer — Fri, 25 May 2007 19:00:31 +0000

I spent the May long weekend (Victoria Day here in Canada) checking out the Arch Linux distribution. For the uninitiated, Arch Linux is a no-frills i686-optimized Linux distro that, according to their website, aims “to be as nearly a perfect base as is humanly possible. A base doesn’t include fancy tools and auto configuration mechanisms, but rather contains manual configuration tools and few functions, for the users to further develop and/or learn on their own.”

So far, I’m extremely happy with the results. A more detailed review of Arch, as well as a step-by-step guide on installing the latest version along with KDE on a Dell Inspiron 6400 is forthcoming. In the meantime, I have written a tutorial on installing a Brother HL-2040 laserjet printer for Arch at the official Arch wiki. Stay tuned…

Move /tmp to your /home partition

Thayer — Wed, 02 May 2007 19:00:30 +0000

It seems like such a simple request, yet it has taken weeks of intermittent searching to find an answer. My notebook has just 3 partitions:

* 8GB for / (root)
* 2GB for /swap
* 85GB for /home

With this configuration I sometimes run into a problem with /tmp not having enough free space to burn DVD’s or cache large files since it is sharing the 8GB with everything else under root. The solution is actually rather simple, in my case:

sudo mv /tmp /home/tmp sudo ln -s /home/tmp /tmp reboot

Once you reboot, you can browse to /tmp and check the free space. It should now be the same as your /home partition. Of course, if your largest partition is dedicated to something other than /home, you can easily substitute that path in the above commands.

For more information: http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200212/symlink.html