Linux Mint 13 Black Splash Screen

In Linux Mint the boot splash screen is completely black. According their website it is by design not a bug. If you want to change the splash screen you can select one by typing the following command and selecting mint-logo:

sudo update-alternatives --config default.plymouth

postfix dovecot

I had been setting up my own server for website for like 10+ years but still this is my first time to get the e-mail working! Still excited!

I followed a website to use dovecot and postfix. Both are very easy to use! not like sendmail which is horribly complicated.

Basically you need the following packages: (Ubuntu 10.04)

aptitude install postfix dovecot dovecot-pop3d dovecot-imapd dovecot-postfix

For setup, the following is a good guideline:
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/postfix

Android apps sample code

If you are interested in develop Android applications, don't miss this sample source codes!

http://sudarmuthu.com/blog/10-open-source-android-apps-which-every-android-developer-must-look-into

Linux Chinese fonts

I love the 文泉驛 WenQuanYi font, it's already in the main debian/ubuntu repositories.

sudo apt-get install ttf-wqy-zenhei

Reference:
http://wiki.debian.org.hk/w/Where_can_I_find_fonts_for_GNU/Linux

http://cle.linux.org.tw/fonts/FireFly/

Sweet Open-Source Backgrounds

http://setasbackground.blogspot.com

HKJC Moonlight

The Hong Kong Jockey Club (香港賽馬會) is one of the shittest websites, their online 投注站 only support IE.

Great news is that finally changed it. Although they are still sticking to Microsoft (Silverlight) now, we do have an alternative Moonlight for Firefox users. When IE and Safari get into the hkjc website, they can automatically detect and download the corresponding plug-in. Firefox failed to do so, because Silverlight is not open-source. Surprisingly, this time Microsoft is kind enough to create a similar open source project Moonlight. They provide a firefox plug-in, letting non-MS people to bet finally.

Typing Chinese in Sabayon5.5

I was trying out Sabayon, and as usual, one of the first things I would like to set up is to configure SCIM to type Chinese.

Speaking of which, Sabayon interested me for a few reasons.  It's based on Gentoo; every Linux user thought Gentoo is cool. While I didn't have the patient go through the installation of Gentoo, trying Sabayon seems to make a lot of sense. Just like I've been using LinuxMint instead of Ubuntu,  I love these distros because they just "works" after initial installation.   Even more, Sabayon has two powerful package managers - emerge and equo.  emerge uses Gentoo's infamous portage system to build packages straight from source, while equo provides package managers to install from pre-compiled binaries, just like yum in Fedora and apt in Ubuntu.  equo is fast, while emerge gives me the cutting edge versions instead of waiting others to pre-compil the binaries.  I've no complain.

To install scim and Chinese input methods (倉頡 is one of them), use the following command:

equo scim scim-tables

To make scim as default input method, put following lines to ~/.profile:

export XMODIFIERS='@im=SCIM'
export XIM="scim"
export XINPUT="xim"
export XIM_PROGRAM="scim -d"
export GTK_IM_MODULE="xim"
export QT_IM_MODULE="xim"
scim -d &

Now, restart X( by logout login again, or Ctrl+Alt+Backspace), then Ctrl-space, there should be the SCIM toolbar somewhere on your screen, then choose your favourite input method to use it.

And try the WenQuanYi Bitmap Song CJK Font, it is the best Chinese font I've seen.

equo install  wqy-bitmapfont

sshd start at boot

This command should work for other distro. I just ran into this problem when I was trying out sabayon, which for reason doesn't start sshd by default.

# rc-update add sshd default

Typing Chinese in English Ubuntu10.10 or LinuxMint10

aptitude install scim scim-chinese scim-tables-zh

im-switch -z ll_CC -s scim

command to display motherboard's model

command to display hardware:

$ sudo lshw | less

command to display motherboard's model:

$ sudo dmidecode | less