Automatic Proxy Settings in Kubuntu

Should try this. However, agt-get settings are missing.

Change Panel Transparency in KDE

In the Air theme the panel background is too transparent. Unfortunately, there is no setting. Themes are in $HOME/.kde/share/apps/desktoptheme/<theme name>.

Tracks on Dreamhost

Instructions on the Dreamhost Wiki don't quite work because much of the pre-installed Ruby stuff is too old. First it is necessary to install an updated version of RubyGems as explained here. Then tere are still problems with gem versions. The final trick is to install ALL ruby gems in your home directory. The GEM_PATH must be changed to refer to a local directory only.

From .bash_profile:

export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH
export RUBYLIB="$HOME/lib:$RUBYLIB"
export GEM_PATH=$HOME/.gems

Ubuntu MAC Address in VirtualBox

When running Ubuntu in a virtual machine, it is not a good idea to change the MAC address of the ethernet interface. Afterward networking is completely broken. Somehow the interface gets added as eth1 to /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules.

Removing the new entry and changing the mac address in the eth0 entry fixes this.

This blog entry talks about essentially the same problem with Ubuntu on vmware.

Customize Eclipse Juno Themes

Themes are applied via CSS files. The standard eclipse installation stores them in <eclipse home>/plugins/org.eclipse.platform<VERSION>/css. There's also an images directory. The css files can be modified in place, but customizations are lost when the platform is upgraded, e.g., from 4.2 to 4.2.1. The modified CSS files can also be stored in a directory ~/.e4css to avoid the issue.

Example: Make part title fonts smaller in the GTK theme

Copy e4_default_gtk.css into ~/.e4css and change the font size from 11 to 9 pt.

.MPartStack {
    font-size: 9;
    swt-simple: false;
    swt-mru-visible: false;
} 
To get rid of the background image for the toolbar apply the following change.

 .MTrimBar#org-eclipse-ui-main-toolbar  {
    background-image:  none; /* url(./gtkGrey.png);*/   
}

Font size in LightDM

Ubuntu 12.10 uses LightDM for its login screen. As always, fonts are too big on a high resolution laptop screen. The fix is to force a dpi value in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf by adding a dpi parameter to the xserver-command entry:

[SeatDefaults]
greeter-session=lightdm-kde-greeter
user-session=kde-plasma
xserver-command=X -dpi 96

DNS and Virtualbox on Ubuntu

VBoxManage modifyvm "ubuserv" --natdnshostresolver1 on