Monday, December 20, 2010

Use Laptop Mode to Save Power Based on Battery/AC Status

Laptop mode is a Linux kernel feature that allows your laptop to save considerable power, by allowing the hard drive to spin down for longer periods of time. This package contains the userland scripts that are needed to enable laptop mode.

It includes support for automatically enabling laptop mode when the computer is working on batteries. It also supports various other power management features, such as starting and stopping daemons depending on power mode, automatically hibernating if battery levels are too low, and adjusting terminal blanking and X11 screen blanking

laptop-mode-tools uses the Linux kernel's Laptop Mode feature and thus is also used on Desktops and Servers to conserve power

To install laptop-mode-tools, in a terminal type:
sudo apt-get install laptop-mode-tools

To read the laptop-mode-tools user manual, in a terminal type:
man laptop-mode.conf

To edit laptop-mode-tools settings, in a terminal type:
sudo mousepad /etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf
- if you aren't using mouspad as your text editor replace mousepad with the correct program

Disable Google Instant & Preview

First install the Iceweasel/Firefox addon Adlock Plus.

- Go to Adblock preferences, you can find it under Tools>Adblock Plus Preferences.
- Add a new filter, you can find it under Filters>Add filter.
- Add this filter:
  • http://www.google.com/extern_js/
- Click Apply to save your settings.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Merge PDFs Files

Install pdftk. pdftk is a command line tool used to merge pdfs files.
In a terminal type:
sudo apt-get install pdftk

Now you can merge pdf files by putting them in the same directory and in a terminal typing:
pdftk 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf cat output merged.pdf
- substituting the number for the names of the pdfs files.

More options can be found on the pdftk website. pdftk can split files, encrypt, decrypt, password protect, rotate an image, etc.