Chan-Ho Suh's questions

In my .vimrc I have the following (based upon a tip on the vim Wikia):

if &term =~ "xterm\\|rxvt"
   " use an red cursor in insert mode
   let &t_SI = "\<Esc>]12;red\x7"
   " use an orange-ish cursor otherwise
   let &t_EI = "\<Esc>]12;\#FFA560\x7"
   silent !echo -ne "\033]12;\#FFA560\007"
   " reset cursor when vim exits
   autocmd VimLeave * silent !echo -ne "\033]112\007"
endif

It is supposed to change the cursor from orange to red when I enter insert mode and change it back when I leave. However this only works if the way I enter insert mode moves the cursor, e.g. 'I' or 'a' but not 'i'. Additionally, if I enter and leave insert mode without having done anything (or moved the cursor), hitting 'escape' will move the cursor back one space, which turns the cursor red, instead of keeping it as orange.

Is there a way to fix this? I'm using xfce4-terminal.

I have that problem which seemingly afflicts many using the proprietary Nvidia driver:

Video tearing: fine horizontal lines (usually near the top of my display) when there is a lot of panning or action in the video.

^{(Note: switching back to the default nouveau driver is not an option, as its seemingly nonexistent power-management drains my battery several times faster)}

I've tried Totem, Parole, and VLC, and tearing occurs with all of them. The best result has been to use X11 output in VLC, but there is still tearing with relatively moderate action.

Hardware: MacBook Air 3,2 -- which has an Nvidia GeForce 320M.

There are two common fixes for tearing with Nvidia prop drivers:

1. Turn off compositing, since Nvidia proprietary drivers don't usually play nice with compositing window managers on Linux (Compiz is an exception I'm aware of). But I use an extremely lightweight window manager (Awesome window manager) which is not even capable of compositing (or any cool effects). I also have this problem in Xfce, where I have compositing disabled.

2. Enabling sync to VBlank. To enable this, I set the option in nvidia-settings and then autostart it as nvidia-settings -l with my other autostart programs. This seems to work, because when I run glxgears, I get:

   $ glxgears
    Running synchronized to the vertical refresh.  The framerate should be
   approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
   303 frames in 5.0 seconds = 60.500 FPS
   300 frames in 5.0 seconds = 59.992 FPS
   

   And when I check the refresh rate using nvidia-settings:

   $ nvidia-settings -q RefreshRate
   Attribute 'RefreshRate' (wampum:0.0; display device: DFP-2): 60.00 Hz.
   

   All this suggests sync to VBlank is enabled. As I understand it, this is precisely designed to stop tearing, and a lot of people's problem is even getting something like glxgears to output the correct info. I don't understand why it's not working for me.

xorg.conf: http://paste.ubuntu.com/992056/

Example of observed tearing::

Often people wanting to know if Ubuntu will run on a potential hardware purchase are advised to use the LiveCD, perhaps in-store, to check hardware compatibility. For example, this answer suggests drivers will usually not be an issue if they work off the LiveCD, but it also says to test "extensively".

Given that if you do this in-store, you'll have a limited time period to do the testing, what is the most efficient way to test the computer? For example, after running a program like vlc to check video and audio...is it then necessary to try a music player too? What settings should be checked?

Let's assume I am interested in all the usual laptop functions (suspend, hibernate, wireless), in addition to things like built-in webcam, microphone, etc.

Also, if the laptop doesn't have an optical drive (like some of the newer thin laptops), then I would have to boot from USB. Is this just as reliable as testing from the CD? (I feel silly asking this, but I know some laptops behave differently booting from USB, e.g. Apple)

In Precise (12.04), when I login to lightdm, using the unity-greeter, there's a white circle by my name. For the standard DEs like Unity or XFCE, the circle has a representative icon (Ubuntu symbol or little mouse resp.). I have a session for Awesome window manager which was added when I installed Awesome, but it just shows a blank white circle. I'd like to know how to add an icon to it, or at least some indicator, as unity-greeter doesn't show you what session is set until you click on the circle.

I found another question about changing the session names. The answer for it said to change the names in the desktop files in /usr/share/xsessions. Unfortunately, while there is an icon field in those desktop files, they are all blank (Caveat: I no longer have Unity installed, so maybe the Unity one would not be blank. But the Xubuntu desktop file has it blank even though the icon shows in unity-greeter).

Update: Here's the png I use as a badge for Awesome. It's not great, but looks reasonably nice: []

I'd like links I click on in Midori to automatically open in another web browser, Firefox. How do I do this?

I have two Ubuntu systems. The first I'd like to use as a server. Hence I don't have a display or even keyboard for it. The other is my laptop and can connect to the network. Upon bootup, the "server" will go to a lightdm login screen.

First thing I'd like to do is connect my server to my network. But since I don't have a display for it, I'd like to do it somehow using my laptop. Is there a way I can just connect my laptop to the server using ethernet and then configure it? First step: how do I get "in", or bypass the login screen?

Right now I'm dual-booting Ubuntu and OS X. The only thing I use OS X for is watching the DRM-ed Netflix stream. I've looked into ways of watching Netflix on Ubuntu, but it seems the DRM basically makes that impossible (Moonlight project says unless Netflix drops the DRM their Silverlight replacement will not allow watching of Netflix).

But then I realized, hey what if I stream Netflix to another computer running say, OS X, then somehow redirect it (using Unix magic) to my Ubuntu machine? Is this possible?

There are many similar-sounding questions, so let me emphasize: I only want to change the color of my cursor; I do not want to change the color of my text. If it helps, however, my normal text color is white.

I realize xterm allows this, but I prefer to stick with gnome-terminal. There does not seem to be a preference in the menus.

System particulars: Ubuntu 12.04 alpha 2, Gnome Terminal 3.2.1, XFCE desktop

Ok, so in powertop (version 1.97), in both the "overview" and "device stats" sections, I see two devices, each called "display backlight". One shows the correct percentage of use, e.g. if I lower screen brightness then the use goes down, but the other is always at 100%! The 100% one is always consuming around 2.3 watts, so of course I am interested in killing this thing off, whatever it is.

So my question is: why is powertop doing this? Is there some technical way in which I do have two displays? I have a MacBook Air, and I've never even once attached it to an external display.

Update: Even stranger is that when I start up my system, the "display backlight" at 100% is only using 800-900 mW; however, over time, it will work its way up to 2.3 W.