Change LibreOffice progress bar color

Newest LibreOffice splash screen shows a orange-redish colour bar instead of a green one like it was some versions ago. I guess they changed it to integrate better with Unity default colours. But I'm using Linux Mint, so I liked the green one more. The other day, I just stumbled about the /etc/libreoffice/sofficerc configuration file, which defines some variables for the startup and there it is, the ProgressBarColor parameter.

Install instructions

The following instructions change the color from the shell command line, but you could also just edit the file with your favourite text editor (with root permissions).

# Put the color value into a variable
pbcolor=160,195,124

sudo sed -r -i.bak "s/(ProgressBarColor=)[0-9]{1,3},[0-9]{1,3},[0-9]{1,3}/\1${pbcolor}/" /etc/libreoffice/sofficerc

# Check that everything went fine (otherwise you can restore the backup file).
cat /etc/libreoffice/sofficerc

You can find the right colors for example with the Gimp image editor.

Customize boot and startup

Change screen resolution, colors and background image.

Some time ago, I recommended and used StartUp-Manager for tweaking the Grub boot loader and system loader, but this project isn't updated any longer. I found some very valid replacements which work even better.

Grub Customizer

With Grub Customizer you can tweak the new GRUB 2 boot screens, select the default boot entry, change the menu visibility and timeout, set kernel parameters, disable recovery entries.

Install instructions

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grub-customizer

Plymouth Manager

With Plymouth Manager you can change the startup animation, for example, put one which fits with your brand new Linux Mint.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mefrio-g/plymouthmanager
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install plymouth-manager

Open URL in Firefox with middle mouse button

Often I copy an URL somewhere and want to open it in a new tab in Firefox.
Normal steps:

• Open a new tab with Ctrl-T
• Click into the URL address bar
• Paste the URI and press Enter

Wouldn't it be nice to make all these steps in one, f.ex. by clicking with the middle mouse button on the current tab.

Firefox has this possibility, but you can't enable it from the normal preference dialog.
Instead you have to alter the configuration parameters directly.

Install instructions

• Navigate to about:config
• Put middlemouse.contentLoadURL in the filter bar
• Press the right mouse button over the option and select toggle, so it's value is true.

Now lets test it:

• select and copy this text: www.ubuntu.com 
• press the middle mouse button in the window where you're reading this post
• A new browser tab should appear with the Ubuntu site.

Profile Switcher Extension for Firefox

The ProfileSwitcher extension enables you to use several profiles in Firefox and Thunderbird.
So you could create a developer profile and install all programmer extensions (like Firebug, Web Developer toolbar, etc.).
But if you just want to navigate, you don't need them and loading all of them just slows down the startup time of Firefox. Just use another profile without them, with a different set of extensions.

From the extension's preferences, you can choose what to do when you launch another profile (close the one in use, don't close it, ask every time).

Install instructions

Unfortunately, this extension can't be found on Mozilla yet, so just download it from the home-page or use this link to download the recent one when this post was written.

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty - Disable Update Notifier

Previous versions of Ubuntu notified with a simple panel icon about new available updates.
With Ubuntu Jaunty this behaviour changed, and the update manager window is opened automatically.
In my opinion, this is very annoying, I prefer the panel icon advisor where I can launch the update manager whenever I want.

So I searched and found the corresponding setting in the systems Configuration Editor.

From the GUI

Open Gnome's Configuration Editor from Applications-->System Tools (maybe you'll have to install it first).
Enter the key /apps/update-notifier and uncheck the auto-launch flag as shown in the screenshot.

From a terminal

gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false

Post note: After writing this post I found a thread from the Ubuntu forum discussing this problem.