Gödel's questions

I use a very portable laptop with Ubuntu running. On that laptop, neither sleep nor hibernate works reliably (it works sometimes and it doesn't the other times).

I'm not asking how one can get them to work, but rather, how one can maximally power-save when he/she cannot sleep or hibernate the laptop but won't do anything with the machine during that time.

Please advice.

Is there a way to focus a certain window under Gnome without bringing the window up?

Background:

I'm creating a script to type an arbitrary sequence characters on a certain window/application. With the help of xdotool, it is possible. But any focus function that it provides -- or any other tools do -- brings the target window forward. That, I want to find a way around.

How do you set up Inkscape 0.47 to work with Wacom Intuos 3? In particular, I'd like to get pressure-sensitivity to work on Inkscape. I have "Use pressure-sensitive tablet" checked under the Inkscape Preferences, but it doesn't seem to be working. Any thoughts?

There seems to be no option available for changing the tooltip duration. Is there any way to do so?

Apparently, there is a comparable alternative to the 200-line kernel patch that involves no kernel upgrade.

It is presented here and discussed here.

However, I am not sure if webupd8's solution (under the section "Use it in Ubuntu") on Ubuntu actually works or not. In particular, one commenter on ./ is saying he's getting an error message. Could anyone post the "correct" method that actually works?

Suggested solution:

Based on the comments I've read so far, the following seems to work.

(1) In /etc/rc.local, add the following lines to above exit 0:

mkdir -p /dev/cgroup/cpu
mount -t cgroup cgroup /dev/cgroup/cpu -o cpu
mkdir -m 0777 /dev/cgroup/cpu/user
echo "/usr/local/sbin/cgroup_clean" > /dev/cgroup/cpu/release_agent

(2) Create a file named /usr/local/sbin/cgroup_clean with the following content:

#!/bin/sh
rmdir /dev/cgroup/cpu/$1

(3) In your ~/.bashrc, add:

if [ "$PS1" ] ; then 
    mkdir -m 0700 /dev/cgroup/cpu/user/$$
    echo $$ > /dev/cgroup/cpu/user/$$/tasks
    echo "1" > /dev/cgroup/cpu/user/$$/notify_on_release
fi

(4) (To make sure the execution bit is on) execute

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/sbin/cgroup_clean /etc/rc.local

(5) Reboot.

Quick question: how do you set xorg options with a command?

For example, I have an Xorg entry as follows:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier  "Marble Mouse"
    MatchProduct "Logitech USB Trackball"
    ...
    Option "VertScrollDelta" "4"
EndSection

and I'd like to change the value of "VertScrollDelta" without restarting my computer. Do you know any command-line interface to it? I've looked into xinput, but the properties of which does not necessary correspond to xorg options.

I have a huge font collection and would like to be able to view them in an efficient manner rather than opening a file one by one.

What would be the best font viewer aside from fontypython, which unfortunately has a Mojibake bug on fonts with multibyte characters.

Is there any way to get source diffs between a locally-installed package and its updated one? This will be useful to check exactly which parts have been fixed, changed or added.

For example, say you have the linux-libc-dev package installed on your system and

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

shows

The following packages will be upgraded:
  linux-libc-dev 

but you want to check, before upgrading it, the exact changes that have been made compared to your local version of the same package.

How can we do it?

Even though aptitude and synaptic are both front-end to the APT (and I myself stick only with apt-get), peculiarities in each of the available dpkg/APT frontends seem to cause problems and confusions when they are used interchangeably. Beginners especially -- who tend to do copy & paste more often, thereby executing apt-get and aptitude commands more or less identically -- may find some situation puzzling.

Please list the possible problems that might arise when they are mixed up and tips to avoid when one has to rely on multiple packaging managers.

Is there any option available for enabling window positioning into an off viewable area under Compiz on GNOME? By default, any window that's to be positioned off workspace will be forced to fit into the viewable area.

How would one go about obtaining the list of parameter names for a recognized Wacom device that can be manipulated with the xsetwacom tool?

To be more specific, I'm looking for names applicable to <param> below:

xsetwacom set <wacom_device>  <param>  <value>

Is there any way to let the Shift, Ctrl and Alt keys behave as toggles under X? I know how one could do it under CLI (for example, by doing this) but found no reference for doing so under X.

Please note that this is not a question on sticky keys, which can be enabled by an accessibility option.

Observation shows that some Windows softwares run perfectly on Wine and some just fail miserably. Rather than trying them out randomly, I wanted to create a place where we can have some ideas about Wine-suitable, and -unsuitable, softwares.

So, exactly which areas of Windows operating systems does Wine fully support or still show weaknesses? By implication, what are the kinds of Windows applications that are guaranteed to run without flaws on Wine?