key-mon is utility to show live keyboard and mouse status for teaching and screencasts.
Install
Navigate to keymon download page and download the deb file with the highest version number (1.13-1 at the time of this writing), then open a terminal window, change current directory (cd) to the download directory and run:
key-mon can be accessed via Applications Menu > Graphics > KeyMon or by typing key-mon on a terminal.
When key-mon is running, it'll show the keyboard and mouse events. If you right click inside the key-mon window you can access its settings and enable window decoration, which is useful for moving the window around.
Kernel Mode Settings (KMS) is available in the radeon open source driver since Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10. KMS allows automatic hardware settings detection and there are two power saving methods available in KMS: Dynpm and Profile.
!If you're using the proprietary ATI driver (fglrx), ignore this article!
Dynpm
The Dynpm method dynamically changes the GPU frequency on demand. So when an intensive task is being is executed the frequency is increased to provide more performance.
To enable the Dynpm method, open a terminal window and run:
sudo sh -c "echo dynpm > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method"
Profile
With the Profile method the GPU frequency is adjusted according to profile settings. There are 5 power profiles:
default, uses default clocks/volts
low, forces GPU to lowest available frequency; may cause some issues on certain laptops and displays, as this is the mode used when the display switches to dpms off mode
mid, forces GPU to be in the "mid" power state all the time; safer to use than "low" for regular desktop usage
high, forces GPU to highest available frequency
auto, switches between high and mid power states depending on whether the system in on battery power or not
To enable the Profile method, open a terminal window and run:
sudo sh -c "echo profile > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method"
Then choose one power profile, for example "mid":
sudo sh -c "echo mid > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile "
Check power saving current status
Power saving method:
sudo sh -c "cat /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method"
Power Profile:
sudo sh -c "cat /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile"
ATI core and memory frequencies:
sudo sh -c "cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/radeon_pm_info"
Ambiance and Radiance are two Gtk themes and they have a version compatible with Xfce/Xubuntu.
Ambiance has dark panel, dark toolbar and dark window title bar, while Radiance displays this elements with light colors.
There are also some color variations for each theme: Blue, Graphite, Green, Orange, Pink, Purple, Red and Yellow.
Radiance theme at top left and Ambiance at top right. The panel appearance of each theme is beneath it.
At the bottom are two color variations of the Ambiance theme.
Xfce/Xubuntu Applications Menu is a panel plugin that displays a menu that allows access to installed applications.
Xfce/Xubuntu Applications Menu
The items on the menu can be edited using one tool called Alacarte. Alacarte can be access at Applications Menu > Settings > Main Menu or just type alacarte in the command line (or in xf4run).
Main Menu editor's (alacarte) interface
The Main Menu editor has 3 main sections: Menus list (left), Items list (center) and Action buttons (right).
The Menus list sorts applications by category. Each menu can hold items and other menus (a menu has to possess at least one item to be displayed). The available action buttons for menus are "New Menu" and "New Item", and their name is self-explanatory.
The Item list displays the list of application launchers for the selected menu/category. Items can be moved up and down on the list and their attributes (name, command...) can be edited using the "Properties" action. Items can also be hidden from the menu using the "Show" checkbox, next to the item's name.
Editing a menu item
On bottom of the Main Menu editor's (Alacarte) interface there is a button "Revert" that restores the default menu layout.
Every package in Ubuntu has a set required packages, a set of recommended packages and a set of suggested packages. The required packages are dependencies, so their installation is mandatory, but the installation of other two sets can be skipped. The recommended and suggested packages are not essential to the functioning of the package being installed. Disabling the installation of recommendations allows to save a lot of disk space.
Example 1: recommendations enabled
$ sudo apt-get install texworks
...
The following extra packages will be installed:
lmodern luatex texlive-base texlive-binaries texlive-common texlive-doc-base
texlive-latex-base texlive-latex-base-doc texlive-luatex texworks-help-en
Suggested packages:
perl-tk texlive-xetex texworks-scripting-lua texworks-scripting-python
The following NEW packages will be installed:
lmodern luatex texlive-base texlive-binaries texlive-common texlive-doc-base
texlive-latex-base texlive-latex-base-doc texlive-luatex texworks
texworks-help-en
0 upgraded, 11 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 91.6 MB of archives.
After this operation, 174 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Example 2: recommendations disabled
$ sudo apt-get install texworks
...
Suggested packages:
texlive-xetex texworks-scripting-lua texworks-scripting-python
Recommended packages:
texlive-latex-base texworks-help-en
The following NEW packages will be installed:
texworks
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 2,360 kB of archives.
After this operation, 3,617 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
This is a great example of the amount of disk space that can be saved: 4MB against 174MB.
Disable automatic recommendations
Disable recommendations temporally (for single package installation), adding the --no-install-recommends option:
Disable recommendations permanently, using apt.conf file:
echo -e 'APT::Install-Recommends "0";\nAPT::Install-Suggests "0";' | sudo tee /etc/apt/apt.conf
Alternatively, Synaptic (available at Applications Menu > Settings > Synaptic Package Manager) can be used to disable automatic installation of recommend packages. Just access Settings > Preferences > General and uncheck "Consider recommended packages as dependencies".
