How to save laptop battery when using Ubuntu Linux

When you are working outside with your laptop, the most important thing that you might consider is to maximize your battery lifetime. This is true especially when you are working on location where AC power is not readily available.

Laptop mypapit

Typical laptop might last from 1.5 hour to 3 hours of normal use. So you might want to squeeze out all the battery juice and put it to good use.

Here are a few tips that I got from surfing the internet to save battery life when you are using Ubuntu (or GNU Linux OS in general) :

The friendly Old Battery Warning in Ubuntu

Ubuntu is friendly enough to provide a nice and friendly warning to me about the status of the laptop battery that I currently use. With Microsoft Windows (at least Windows XP), the laptop simply dies when the battery looses its juice.

old and broken battery warning

Its nice to have this sort of reminder when you really need to change the battery.

Linux: How to get Harddisk UUID number

Modern Linux system uses UUID instead of traditional block name (/dev/hda1, /dev/hda5, /dev/sdb) to uniquely identify harddisk or other storage medium. This is because UUID is unique and never changes even if you switch the harddisk ordering.

So by mounting or refering your hard disk by its UUID, you are guaranteed to mount the correct storage medium no matter where its connected on your system.

Here’s how to get your harddisk UUID number

Method 1: Ubuntu and Debian Way

sudo vol_id /dev/hda1

This command display harddisk extra information including its filesystem and uuid number.

Method 2: using /dev/disk/by-uuid/

Another method which works universally on modern GNU Linux operating system is :

ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid

which will uuid of connected storage medium to your computer.

That’s all, now you can easily identify your storage disk UUID number without much problem anymore.

Get Free Software Stickers for your computer!

Tired of having Windows XP/Vista logo stickers on your Linux computer ? Now you can tear away those stickers and replace it with one included in the Free Software Stickers book.

Filled with hundreds of creative sticker design, the Free Software Stickers lets you announce to the world that you are using Free Software operated computer.

fsf_book.jpg

The book is a must-have for all Linux and Free Software geeks around the world. It has a collection of distro related stickers including Debian, SUSE, Slackware, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Fedora, kubuntu, Red Hat and various other non-Linux Free Software.

How do I get the sticker book ?

As with the spirit of Free Software, the sticker book is available for free through the internet. What you need to do is to select which sticker you want to put on your computer, and print it out using a self-adhesive photographic paper, which is easily obtainable from computer shops.

fsf_stickers_tn.jpg

There you go, a great way to impress your friends at any Linux user group or FOSS-UG meetup!

Should Ubuntu prevent “sudo rm -rf /” command ?

There have been talks over the ubuntuforums, regarding a user posts “sudo rm -rf /” command on “Absolute Beginner Talk” board, which results in deletion of the whole root directory of a Linux operating system (Ubuntu included).

Was the user out of his line when he’s posted such command on a beginners forum? Absolutely.

Exercise Caution When Running sudo
Users should exercise caution when running command with root privilege (sudo) . I pity to those who unknowingly execute the command and completely destroy their operating system. Its a truly lame attempt to humor oneself at the expense of others losing their precious data.

It is not a bug in coreutils, it is not a bug at all
But the lamest part is, somebody took the time to file a bug report regarding “sudo rm -rf /” on Launchpad.

There’s nothing wrong with that command, it did what it supposed to do, and that is the behavior expected from a Unix/Linux based system, there’s nothing wrong with that command at all.

Besides, if somebody compromised your system and got into your root accout, you are screwed anyway as there are a lot of other command which has the same (if not worse) devastating effect as “sudo rm -rf”, a fact that has been acknowledge on the same bug report

What do you think ?
I don’t know about you, but I felt more comfortable educating newbie users to be more careful when running command with root privilege than supporting an act which seems to ‘cripple’ the operating system itself. Trust me, this is not going to help newbie users.

p/s: I’m in complete agreement with this guy, this is not a bug, stop pampering newbies or else you’d ruin each and every of them!