2012-06-14

Ubuntu 12.04: Boot Windows by default

If you have a dual-boot system with Ubuntu Linux and Windows and you would like to boot Windows by default instead of Ubuntu you will find to useful answers here:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/100232/how-do-i-change-the-grub-boot-order

I was using the GUI option since the manual option requires you to know the index of the Windows entry upfront (index starting at 0, for me Windows was at index 5).
This is what I did:

- Start a Terminal (search for 'Terminal' in one of the topmost icons), then paste/type this into the terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
(enter password)
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grub-customizer
grub-customizer
(program comes up)
- click Preferences
- select Windows as default
- Close
- Save
- close the program
- restart to test it, done

2012-06-07

Viewing local manpages (files)

When I have an unformatted manpage file like foo.1 I had always big trouble looking at it. man foo.1 and setting the man path using -M did not help, and figuring out the usage of nroff manually is a pain. I found the answer on here which I just bluntly replicate here for my (and potentially your) convenience: http://craiccomputing.blogspot.de/2007/01/viewing-local-man-pages.html Just specify an absolute or relative path to the file, like:
man ./foo.1