Removing Accessibility Options

If you don't need to have the Accessibility options installed, it's easy to remove them. Go into Applications > Add/Remove > Accessibility. Uncheck the boxes for the packages you don't need and click Apply.

Add your local weather to the Gnome panel

To add your current weather conditions, forecast, and radar to the Gnome panel, follow these steps. Right click on either the top or bottom panel. Click Add to Panel. A menu will come up wil various applets. Under accessories, there is an applet called Weather Report. Click on it and then click Add and then close the Add to Panel menu. You will see the applet appear in the panel where you right clicked. Now, right click on the applet icon, select preferences, customize the units for temperature, wind speed, pressure, etc. Under the location tab, find your nearest city. After closing the screen you should see the temperature and conditions update in the panel.

Easily find and install new backgrounds and themes

By installing the Gnome Art Manager, it makes it easy to find and install new backgrounds, themes, and Splash screens. This package can be installed by using Add/Remove under the Applications menu. Just search for "art" with "All Available Applications" displayed next to Show. After it's installed you can find it under System > Preferences > Art Manager. Run the application and click on "Art" to see what you can add. There are over a thousand backgrounds so it may take a few minutes to display them all.

Playing DVD's and other multimedia

Disclaimer : Playing DVD's on Linux in some countries may be illegal

Despite all the good things that Linux brings, there are certain licensing restrictions that do not legally allow true Open Source (GPL) software like Ubuntu to contain certain drivers and codecs out of the box. The newest version of Ubuntu (7.04) will make it a little easier. I'm sure this is a FAQ for new users to Linux.

How to play DVD's. This is a two part question. There are regular DVD's and there are encrypted DVD's. Most are encrypted today.

Here's what happens if I insert a DVD into my player with "out of the box" Ubuntu : The Totem player comes up automatically but an error that says "The playback of this movie requires a DVD source plugin that is not installed". So, what is this plugin they refer to? Ubuntu calls these drivers/plugins restricted. Now, you can go into Add/Remove under the main menu to get some of these. In Add/Remove type "restricted" in the search box and select "All available Applications" besides Show. You will see "Ubuntu Restricted Extra" popup in a few seconds. Click the check mark and click install and apply. This will install things like Java, Flash, Microsoft True Type fonts and some other plugins/codecs. Click the "Agree to license terms" for the Java installer and click forward.

Now back to trying to play that DVD. If the DVD isn't encrypted, you should be able to eject it and push the cdrom tray back in and now it should play in Totem. Mine didn't. One more thing (easy) to do to play encrypted DVD's is to install libdvdcss2. Bring up the Synaptic package manager under System > Administration. In Synaptic, go under Settings > Repositories. Click the "Third Party Software" tab. Click "Add" and copy and paste this line into there.

deb http://medibuntu.sos-sts.com/repo/ edgy free non-free
(you can change "edgy" to "feisty" if your running feisty)

Click "Add Source" and then Close. Click the Reload button in Synaptic. Ignore the
error for now. Click the search button in Synaptic and enter libdvdcss2.
Click the libdvdcss2 and select "Mark for Installation" and Apply. After the installation, eject your DVD and pop it back in. Totem should run and the DVD should play. Mine does.

Flash and Java should now also work after installing the "Ubuntu Restricted Extras"

How to manually reconfigure X

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg