Shortcut to switch language keyboard in Ubuntu

Step1. Select Keyboard Layout from applications

Step 2. Click on Options button and select your keys combination from Keys to change layout options

Step 3. Enjoy

An efficient way to backup your information

Unison allows you to synchronize a directory with an external drive or a remote host, it is like mirroring your directory.

I would like to explain only external device option.

First connect your external device

Then run Unison and create a new profile where simply specify the paths to the directories you want to keep in sync.

The synchronization is pretty straightforward, in Unison screen you will see changes are ready to apply, finally select Go from the menu.

In my case, I'm always listening new music from several genres, and when some new track please me, I copied to /media/Shared/Music directory in a corespondent directory-genre name. Since I have a bunch of new tracks in different directories. Unison helps me to copy to my backup only new tracks, in a kind of incremental backup.

Enjoy.

How to convert flac to mp3 usgin ffmpeg in ubuntu

In order to convert flac to mp3 you need to install ffmpeg in your computer.

As a root:
1. apt-get install ffmpeg
2. apt-get install lame
3. apt-get install libavcodec-extra-53

Then run command as follow:

ffmpeg -i audio_souce.flac -ab 256k audio_output.mp3

Where ab is bitrate in kb/s

Enjoy

How to Create a Wallpaper Slideshow in Ubuntu 11.10

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:crebs/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install crebs

Select your photos and name your slideshow.

After creating it. Crebs store it as xml file in $HOME/.crebs

Then rename & replace crebs xml file to background-1.xml in the path /usr/share/backgrounds/contest
Right mouse click on Desktop and select: Change Desktop background
Select your slideshow in the appearance window.

If for some reason the crebs repo doesn't work, you can always edit your /usr/share/backgrounds/contest/background-1.xml and change the images path for those which you want to use.

Don't forget to assign proper rights to the xml file. I use to set 666 with chmod command. (chmod 666 background-1.xml)

Enjoy it