LxScreenshot and LxFind: A review

These little guys are getting a bit more stable. And it's nice to see some Lubuntu specific development occurring. So, here's what we've got: LxFind is an app to locate files and documents on your hard drive. It's a good start. I love how fast it is. And it locates my documents as advertised. However, I was disappointed. This app was billed as "simple" and "efficient", but I have to disagree. Most of the time I search for files, I look in one specific directory. It's called Documents. The default directory...

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Lubuntu Looks Upgrade

The Lubuntu team posted some mock-ups of new artwork and icons. The mock-ups show a continued trend away from 90's era MS theming toward an OS X or elementaryOS, minimalist style. Considering Lubuntu's lightweight, minimalist structure, these artwork changes strongly align with the mission and ideals of Lubuntu. Well done, gu...

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Dual Monitors in Lubuntu

If you want dual monitor functionality in Lubuntu, you have limited options. The following will show you how to enable and disable dual monitors "on the fly" using aRandR as help. These directions are a bit complicated, but trust me: they are not dangerous. This is a SAFE operation. First, get aRandR from Synaptic or by opening the terminal and pasting: sudo apt-get install arandr You can find your new application under Menu -> Preferences What you see is a virtual setup of your monitor arrangement....

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Lubuntu Panel Location

If you are using docky and want to move the Lubuntu Panel to the top of the monitor, here's how. First, secondary-click (left-click) the panel at any location and chose "Panel Settings." Second, click on the "top" edge radio button. If you want to change the color of your panel, click on the appearance tab and select the "solid color" option. I use the following options WITH approximately 50% opacity. If you want to see my entire desktop, click here. Finally, if you're using docky and want applications...

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Lubuntu Office

Lubuntu ships with Abiword and Gnumeric as the default office programs. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of both of these apps. But I've found certain parts of LibreOffice Writer to be essential. Although it is not as light as Abiword, writer is still snappy and the extra options are extremely useful. If you're not familiar with LibreOffice, it's a fork of OpenOffice, and is considered by many to be hold the brightest future of the two. It is now the default office suite in Ubuntu. To install the whole...

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Lubuntu Digital Clock

Editing the digital clock in the Lubuntu panel is always one of my first tweaks after a fresh install. To edit The format of the clock, secondary-click the clock text and select "digital clock settings." However, I always forget which letters correspond to which date format. I've posted some of them below, but this tool will solve all your problems with a simple drag and drop web interface. %a - The abbreviated weekday name (Sun) %A - The full weekday name (Sunday) %b - The abbreviated month name...

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Lubuntu Autostart Programs

Lubuntu 11.04+ If you need an application or process to automatically start at login in Lubuntu, you simply need to copy and paste applications from your applications folder into your autostart folder. In your file browser, navigate to the applications folder: /usr/share/applications Find your targeted autostart program and copy it by secondary-clicking or CNTRL-c. Next, navigate your file manager to the autostart folder: ~/.config/autostart Paste your application by secondary-clicking or CTRL-v. That's...

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MSI-X370 Ubuntu USB Problems

Ubuntu (and derivatives) 11.10 and 12.04 I recently purchased the beautiful, lightweight MSI-X370. Besides some audio issues I had, I highly recommend this laptop for Lubuntu... that is, until Ubuntu 11.10 came out. My USB drives won't work now. I'm sure this isn't a complete fix, but it does solve the problem. In the terminal, copy-paste: sudo leafpad /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf Note: if you are running Ubuntu, change leafpad to gedit, of course. At the very bottom of the page, add the following...

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Lubuntu 12.04

Lubuntu 12.04 was released a few days ago. After some configuration changes, here is my desktop: (1) Moved panel to the top. Semi-transparent. Added Faenza icons, but I liked the elementaryOS panel icons better. Elementary background. Docky. (2) PCManFM and the "updated theme" -- looks the same to me. (3) My favorite: Synapse. (4) The new Lubuntu Software Center. Looking good. As for stability? I had a few things crash in the days right after the release. I can't say I have much to complain about...

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Lubuntu Sound on MSI X370

I had trouble getting sound to work on my MSI X370 after loading both Lubuntu 11.10 and 12.04. If you're having similar issues, here's what I did to get it working. First, I installed pulseaudio and alsamixer from the Synaptic Package Manager. Open Synaptic, and search for the two items. Pulseaudio got sound working again, but I was still having trouble binding my audio keys to the sound card because it wasn't treated as the default card. To change the default card, I entered the following into the terminal sudo...

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Lubuntu Hotkeys / Keybindings

Lubuntu 11.04 onwards. There is no easy GUI shipped with Lubuntu for editing hotkeys. The easiest way to create key bindings for Lubuntu is by opening the terminal and pasting in the following code. sudo leafpad ~/.config/openbox/lubuntu-rc.xml This will open the hotkey configuration editor. At this point, you will need to search for the item you wish to edit. The following will help with some of the key codes: C - Control Key A - Alt Key S - Shift Key W - Super/Windows Key Tab - Tab Up - Up Arrow Down...

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