BretD's questions

I've been trying to find the difference between using the dir and ls commands in terminal. I know ls is the traditional UNIX method of viewing the files in a directory, and that dir is the windows command prompt equivalent, but both commands work in terminal.

If I type in dir, it displays the files and folders in the directory, and if I type ls, it does the same, except with content highlighting. Both commands accept options (i.e. ls -a and dir -a both return all files and folders and hidden files.

So does anyone know what the difference is and why both dir and ls are used?

I am trying to change the default orange cone icon for the VLC media player on the Unity bar in 11.10. I have tried following similar posts in this forum, but without any luck. I changed the vlc.png icon I found in the /usr/share/icons/hicolor/256x256/apps directory (which i assume is the icon used on the unity bar) by copying a different .png file to it with the same name. It is also a 256x256 pixel .png file. I restarted Ubuntu and the orange cone is still there. I've read tidbits online about having to recompile the program or something, so I don't know if this is more complicated a process than I assumed. I'd also like to be able to do this for other programs, but this one specifically (for now at least). I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions! Thanks!

• I updated my icon cache and the vlc icon is changed in dash, but not when I place it on the unity bar. I've noticed that certain applications have icons stored in different directories and I'm wondering if I'm missing something. I tried out a new icon for google chrome and that one worked, but VLC won't.

• Well I tried placing an icon in 128x128 and that didn't work either. Is it possible the icon is some how hardcoded into the program? I've also now succesfully changed firefox's icon as well...so I don't think I'm doing something wrong