Gerhard Burger's questions

I can find a lot of information on the opposite (removing Ubuntu from a dual boot) but not how to remove Windows from a dual boot. I did this once before and then I just deleted the whole EFI partition, however, that was a bad decision (also couldn't boot Ubuntu because it was installed in UEFI mode) and in the end I had to do a clean install.

So what I did now is removing the NTFS partition and keep the EFI partition intact. However the Windows Boot Manager still shows up in GRUB, but of course gives an error when selected.

So I thought an update-grub might solve it, but it says:

Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-24-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.4.0-24-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-22-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.4.0-22-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-21-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.4.0-21-generic
Found Windows Boot Manager on /dev/sda2@/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
Adding boot menu entry for EFI firmware configuration
done

So how do I get rid of this Windows Boot Manager entry in EFI? I tried to use efibootmgr as suggested by https://superuser.com/questions/930725/how-to-delete-os-from-boot-menu but update-grub keeps picking it up and when I reboot and run efibootmgr again the entry is back...

I recently got a 3G dongle with a data plan of 200MB per month and I would like to know when I reach that limit. Are there any programs (preferably an indicator) which let my monitor my monthly usage?

Mobile Partner 23 has this functionality but is not available for Linux.

If you try to execute a program that is not installed you will get a message

The program 'x' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: 
sudo apt-get install x

and instead of offering you to install the program for you, you have to type the actual command. How can this behavior be changed?

I am trying out Ubuntu 13.04 and the only thing that prevents me from completely switching is XBMC. I am running XBMC from the wsnipex PPA which is compiled with XVBA support.

XBMC doesn't like Unity that much and if started normally, it is very unresponsive (see also this question) and will not be able to use hardware decoding. A solution in Ubuntu 12.04 is to use the following script to start XBMC:

#!/bin/bash
metacity --replace &
sleep 2s
xbmc
unity --replace &
exit;

It replaces unity by metacity and this solves all my problems, however in Ubuntu 13.04 metacity is ditched, so I would like to know how I can replace/quit Unity there. (Starting XBMC standalone from the login screen lets me use hardware decoding but it is still a bit unresponsive, much slower than the above script for Ubuntu 12.04)

Python virtual environments are used to create isolated python environments to avoid dependency and version conflicts, and also indirectly take care of permission issues. But what is the easiest way to set it up, and use it, in Ubuntu?

After figuring out how to change the mapping of scan codes to key codes using udev, see this question, I was wondering how those key codes (or events if you will) are mapped to the appropriate action.

So, for example, if you press volume up on your keyboard, a scan code is sent which will then be converted to the volumeup key code. But how is this key code intercepted, the volume turned up, and the appropriate notification displayed?

My guess is that somewhere a script must be called, so I'd like to know where those scripts are.

EDIT: The key codes I mention are not to be confused with the key codes xev returns, but I am also interested in those ;)

My laptop comes with the option to toggle wireless with the Fn+F12 key, but unfortunately this key doesn't work. Now inspired by this question, I would like to write a script that can toggle the software state of the wireless, preferably without needing sudo.

Since I run XBMC as a program, and not standalone, I would just like it to exit when I click the power button. The default behavior is to show the shutdown menu, and I don't want to accidently shut down my computer.

For a bug I need to check if a bug still occurs on upstream kernel 3.7rc7, and since the bug is related to fglrx I need to install a newer version as well that work with kernel 3.7. How do I do this step by step?