Can't change screen brightness with nVidia drivers? Here's a fix

After installing proprietary nVidia drivers on my Lenovo Thinkpad T530, the screen brightness was stuck at 100% and was  frying my eyes. Fortunately for those with such a laptop, or those who use a 5400M graphics card with Ubuntu 12.04/14.04, there is a fix. This AskUbuntu page helped me, and here are the instructions, summarised and curtailed to a computer with an nVidia 5400M graphics card:

Open up a terminal, as we will need to create a configuration file. Enter,
sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-nvidia-brightness.conf

A new file will be created. If there is something there already, overwrite it with this,

Section "Device"

    Identifier     "Device0"

    Driver         "nvidia"

    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"

    BoardName      "NVS 5400M"

    Option         "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"

EndSection

I don't know how this works, but my eyes are blessed by this bit of code. Save it, and reboot your computer. If the problem persists, follow these steps (non Lenovo/Thinkpad users, replace "thinkpad_acpi" with "vendor"):

1. sudo nano /etc/default/grub
2. change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_backlight= thinkpad_acpi"
3. sudo update-grub
4. sudo reboot

This tutorial was tested on Ubuntu 12.04 and Ubuntu 14.04.

League of Legends - No sound in Ubuntu Wine Fix

When I first installed League of Legends on Ubuntu with PlayOnLinux (with wine 1.7), there was sound in the game lobby, but none ingame.

What didn't work
First, I tried disabling mmdevapi.dll. That made things worse by disabling all sound, so I re-enabled it.
Then I tried restarting pulseaudio,
killall pulseaudio
pulseaudio -k
Nothing happened.

What worked
Lastly I installed an audio package which was missing on my machine,
sudo apt-get install libasound2-plugins:i386

BAM! It worked! The audio is fixed in-game as well as in the lobby.

Enable Chrome App Launcher in Linux (Elementary Luna/Mint/Ubuntu)

As of Chrome 35, Linux users can now enable the App Launcher and use Chrome Notifications.

These features are now available because Chrome for Linux now uses Aura - a Google-built graphic stack to draw the user interface, which replaces GTK+. Aura allows Google to design a more unified user interface independent of the operating system it is run on.

Enabling Chrome App Launcher

This tutorial will work on any Debian-based OS (eg Ubuntu/Mint/Luna).

First step is to enable some flags. Head to chrome://flags and search for "Enable the App Launcher." Enable it.
Next, look for "Enable App Launcher sync" and enable that too.
That's all the flags we need. Restart the browser and you should see the app launcher in user applications. If not, visit the web store:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/launcher

Gallery

Here's what the app launcher looks like in Elementary Luna:

New Elementary OS Website, just in time for Luna

It’s online, but not official. The new and redesigned Elementary OS website has been uploaded and looks great. Here are some screenshots:

The reason why it isn't "official" is because the new website is to be released upon Luna's release. To view the snazzy website, head to http://dev.elementaryos.org/

Harlem Shake, for Chrome

This is a neat little trick to have the Harlem Shake play in your browser.

1. Copy the text at  http://pastebin.com/1u5mqrGi
2. Press F12
3. Click on the "Console" tab
4. Paste the code into the box
5. Hit enter
6. Profit.

Firefox 22 New Privacy Feature

Firefox 21 saw more options when it comes to Do Not Track. You can now choose one of three options:

• Tell sites that I do not want to be tracked
• Tell sites that want to be tracked
• Do not tell sites anything about my tracking preferences

In Firefox 22, there has been more effort made to prevent undesired tracking. Jonathan Mayer contributed a patch which prevents all third-party websites from installing cookies on the browser. 

What? No more cookies?!
Not quite. This feature allows cookies from websites you visit regularly, like Youtube or Google. However, Firefox will block cookies from third-party websites, such as a website you visited once or twice from a search result. This is beneficial because it reduces the risk of discrete websites monitoring your behaviour online.

Firefox 22 is trying to strike a middleground between functionality and privacy. In comparison, Safari does not allow any cookies at all by default. Chrome is on the other side of the spectrum, and allows all cookies.

How to change cookie settings in Firefox

Don’t like the change? Here’s how to change cookie settings in Firefox 22 back to the ‘classic’ setting.

Like the change or not, it should be pointed out that Mozilla is thinking of their users first. When Firefox first introduced the Do Not Track (DNT) settings, they commented:
“Do Not Track is not Mozilla’s position on tracking, it’s the individual’s — and that’s what makes it great! For that reason we have no plans to turn on Do Not Track by default.”

Remove applications from Menu in Elementary OS Luna

I've been using Elementary OS Luna 0.2 for a few months now, and I love it. It's light and quite stable for a system that's in beta testing. Like in Gnome-shell and Unity, installed applications clutter the menu with gritty and unnecessary icons. How do you remove them?

Option 1: Alacarte

There are two ways to remove the icons. Using alacarte is the easiest, but might not work for some people. To remove an icon, you have to install a menu editor, alacarte:

sudo apt-get install alacarte

Run the command "alacarte" from a terminal or the app menu and the program will open up:

Next, uncheck all unnecessary entries you wish to remove from the menu. Log out, and back in to notice the changes. 

Option 2: Delete the shortcuts from their folders

The applications menu in Luna and Isis display most shortcuts inside three folders. Open up Files, and head to these locations to remove the unwanted shortcuts:

• /usr/share/applications (needs root privileges)
• /usr/local/share/applications (needs root privileges)
• ~/.local/share/applications

Delete the app shortcuts you don't want.  To gain root privilige, right click on Files' Plank icon, and 'run as administrator'. Alternatively, you can use this terminal command:
sudo pantheon-files
The changes should be immediately noticeable. If you have any issues removing the application icons form Elementary OS, drop a comment below.

Here is the tutorial performed on Ubuntu 13.04