coversnail's questions

I'm using the default screenshot application that comes with Ubuntu gnome-screenshot

When I was using it earlier to take screenshots of the lock screen I had set a long time delay, but forgot to change it back after I'd finished. When I next took a timed screenshot I had to wait a long time for it to take because the delay was still set so long.

Clicking the icon to relaunch the screenshot application has no effect whilst the timer is in effect, I imagine there is probably a simple terminal command to shut down an application, but I don't know it! Is there a way to do this?

When using RecordMyDesktop I want to select an area of the screen to record, not just a particular window or the whole screen. The application instructs you to click and drag to select the area you want to record in the preview window, however this preview is very small and I can't find any way to make it larger (maximizing the window makes no difference)

Is there a way to make the preview window larger so that I can make a more accurate selection of the area I want to record. I'd prefer to use RecordMyDesktop rather than another screencaster as its the only one that seems to work faultlessly for me.

When my screen is locked and I then reawaken it, by moving the mouse or pressing the keyboard, the password entry screen appears. How can I change the amount of time that is taken before the password entry screen turns off?

To be specific:

• I lock my screen Ctrl+Alt+T
• Screen goes blank
• Move mouse to bring up login screen
• If I do nothing else the screen turns off again after 1 minute

In my Brightness and Lock settings I have the screen set to turn off and lock after 10 minutes, but I can't see a setting to determine how long it takes for the screen to turn off after the lock screen has been woken. It seems to be set to 1 minute by default, can this be increased/reduced?

I have a large folder of .m4b audio books which in their current format won't play on my Android phone. However they do work fine if they are renamed to .m4a

Is there a quick method or terminal command that can rename every .m4b file in a folder to .m4a? There is no need for any conversion of the files, simply renaming the file extension works perfectly fine.

When using the HUD I think it would be very useful if it displayed the keyboard shortcut for a menu item (if it has one). For example New Tab in Firefox has the shortcut Ctrl+T

Can the HUD be configured to show whether a menu item has a keyboard shortcut, something like the mock-up below:

I'm trying to do some debugging in Android and I am running a live logcat in the Terminal, but the problem is that there is too much information generated so that when I am finished and try to copy all the information received by choosing "Select All" and then "Copy" a lot of the early output which is produced isn't copied. I was aware of history, but that just provides a list of commands that have previously been entered, not the output.

Can I see a history of all the output that the terminal gives, or perhaps can I have the terminal save as a text file all the output that it is producing?

When accessing the command line by pressing Alt+F2 it opens the dash and displays a history of previous commands which have been entered. How can this history be removed?

I've tried using Activity Log Manager but that only seems to be relevant to deleting the history of recent files rather than these commands.

Are there any good Linux alternatives to Garageband?

The most important features would be:

• Good audio recording, with audio filters
• Good MIDI editing abilities
• and a good selection of instrument synthesisers, that can be 'played' on a virtual keyboard

Ideally it would be lovely to find all these features in one package but I'm definitely not against using multiple programs.

I have a number of spare external hard disk drives lying about the place and I was wondering if there is any practical way of using an external hard drive or USB flash memory drive to boost performance in Ubuntu?

The idea sprang from using a Windows PC and plugging in a USB device which prompted a pop-up asking whether I wanted the USB to be used for ReadyBoost to speed up my system. I imagine that this may well have no relevance to a Linux system but would be interested to know if there is any practical way of using an external hard drive for potential performance gain.

When looking at the Ubuntu Software Centre I was wondering whether the banner at the top (which contains featured applications) contains paid for advertising, or whether they are just recommendations by Canonical for useful applications?

I haven't seen anything in the app developers section of the Ubuntu website that offers this advertising space for developers.

Is there a linux alternative to the Windows application DVD-Shrink, that can compress a DVD image to a smaller size to fit on a writeable DVD?

In backing up some DVD's the ripped ISO file size is over 7000MB is there an alternative linux software, similar to Windows "DVD Shrink" that can compress this to fit on a writeable DVD which is about 4000MB

The keyboard shortcut to change lenses in 12.04 has changed from being Tab to being: Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab. As answered in this question: Keyboard shortcut for switching lenses

I can see that this was probably done to improve navigation as you can now choose which direction you want to navigate through the lenses, however I'm a bit stuck in my ways and would like to know if the behaviour can be switched back so that just Tab switches lenses.

Whenever I connect my Samsung Galaxy S2 phone (running Android 4.0) via USB using an MTP connection one of two messages always pops up, either:

Unable to mount Android: Error initialising camera: -60: Could not lock the device

or: Unable to mount Android: Error initialising camera: -53: Could not claim the USB device

The phone however does mount successfully and I can add and delete files etc. I would just like to understand what the error message means, googling only seems to bring up descriptions of people mounting digital cameras and this doesn't seem relevant for a mobile phone.

If using UEFI Please see this question, "Can I boot memtest86+ if I'm using UEFI?"

After having installed the 64bit version of Ubuntu 12.04 on my Lenovo B570 I ran into the same problems I had when installing 11.10 with Grub not playing nicely with a uEFI system. I used the same technique as last time to solve the problem (using a Super Grub Disc LiveCD session to repair Grub) and my system happily dual boots between Ubuntu and Windows 7

However now when I boot up the Grub menu only displays

• Ubuntu, with Linux 3.2.0-24-generic
• Ubuntu, with Linux 3.2.0-24-generic (recovery mode)
• Previous Linux versions
• Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)
• Windows Recovery Environment (loader) (on /dev/sda4)

I no longer see the option to use Memtest86+ which was there previously, having checked in the Ubuntu Software Center I can see that the package is installed, but how to I make the option to run it once again appear in the Grub menu?

I've tried:

sudo update-grub 

which doesn't make any difference.

sudo chmod +x /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ 

results in:

chmod: cannot access /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+': No such file or directory

and entering

ls /etc/grub.d/

results in:

00_header        10_linux      30_os-prober  41_custom
05_debian_theme  20_linux_xen  40_custom     README

I noticed when browsing through the Ubuntu Software Centre that some programs seem to be placed in the wrong categories, for example Pinta, an image editor, appears under Developer Tools (instead of Graphics) in my list of installed programs.

Is this a case of the developer incorrectly categorising their software when they uploaded it to the software centre, or does Canonical decided what goes where?

And if we notice an obvious mistake who do we inform, the software developer or file a bug somehow?

I noticed when I was fiddling with the launcher icon size that at a certain size the icon for Audacity changes. Does anyone know why this would happen?

In the latest version of the libmtp library there are fixes for my Android device so I would like to install the latest version I'm just not sure how! I would assume that this would pushed into the official repositories at some point, so the smart advice would probably be just to wait, but I would like to know how to do this myself if anyone could tell me.

I'm currently using Ubuntu 12.04 and am running libmtp-1.1.2, the latest version (libmtp-1.1.3) has recently been released and the tar.gz file is downloadable from this direct link: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/libmtp/libmtp/1.1.3/libmtp-1.1.3.tar.gz

How do I install this? Thanks for any help.

I have a bookmark to my Ubuntu-One folder in the sidebar of Nautilus, it would seem logical that it would be possible to drag and drop files and folders on top of this bookmark and have the dropped items copied to the Ubuntu-One folder to be synced to the cloud. However this does not happen, I can drop files and folders onto the shortcuts underneath "Computer" in the Nautilus sidebar but not onto anything that is a bookmark.

Is it possible to change this behaviour so that it is possible? Or failing that are there any possible workarounds to get a similar result?

I have recently been mounting my Android phone via a USB cable and have been adding and deleting files to the microSD card. However I noticed that space was not being freed up when I deleted files. It took a while to work out that whenever I delete a file they are actually being moved to a hidden folder on the card called .Trash-1000

Is this normal behaviour? I guess Ubuntu is creating some kind of recycle bin on the SD card? And if it is normal behaviour is there a way to disable this function/delete files without them being placed in the .Trash-1000 ?

I would like to install a program from a PPA that has both Oneiric and Precise versions of the same program. The Precise version of the program is 2.2 whereas the Oneiric version is 2.0

If I try an install the normal way through the software centre or the terminal, the Oneiric 2.0 version will be installed. Is there an easy way to force Ubuntu to install the Precise version?