How To Successfully Install Wine PPA In Linux Mint 14

After installing Linux Mint 14, I attempted to install Wine by adding the Wine PPA to my software sources. However, when I tried updating I got this error:

Err http://ppa.launchpad.net nadia/main Sources
404 Not Found

Notice that the word after the PPA location is “nadia”. This is the codename for Linux Mint 14, not the codename for the version of Ubuntu that it is based off of, which is what needs to go there.

To fix this, you just need to manually edit your /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu-wine-ppa-nadia.list file. My command-line editor of choice for quick edits is nano:

Replace the two “nadia” words with “quantal” (Linux Mint 14 “nadia” is based off of Ubuntu 12.10, and the codename for Ubuntu 12.10 is “quantal”).

Save and try updating again (“sudo apt-get update”) and it should update fine. You should now be able to install Wine fine.

Simple explanation of why this happens:
Normally, when adding a PPA to an Ubuntu or Ubuntu-based Linux distribution, aptitude adds the codename of the system to the line it adds in the sources.list entry so that the packages are pulled from the correct repositories (i.e. “quantal”, “precise”, etc.). It seems that the creators of Linux Mint decided to rebrand every aspect of the Ubuntu operating system to match the Linux Mint details, and in doing so changed the internal Ubuntu-based codename of the distribution to the Linux Mint codename. For this reason, aptitude tries to use the Linux Mint codename rather than the Ubuntu one and then aptitude fails when searching the Ubuntu repositories for the Linux Mint codename.

This is the first I’ve seen this problem, but I imagine its fairly common among Mint users installing packages via PPAs added via software sources.

WineHQ – Installing the latest Wine on Ubuntu.

How to print multiple files at once in Linux

So you’ve got a folder full of PDF files that you want to print. You hilight all of them and right-click, but there’s no “Print” or “Send to printer…” option. There are probably ways out there to add this option to your right-click menu, but a quick and dirty way is to use the command line using the lpr command. This is useful if you just need to print multiple files once in a blue moon. I mean, how often do you print 5 PDFs at once? Furthermore, how often do you print nowadays?

Here’s the command:

lpr *.pdf

That’s it. The lpr command sends files to your default printer for printing. In the above example, I sent all PDF files in my current folder to my printer. If you only want to send a few PDF files, or maybe multiple format files like .txt, .pdf, etc., then just do this:

1. Once you have all the files you want to print hilighted, copy and paste them into a new empty folder.
2. Navigate to that folder via command line/terminal.
3. Print all the files in that folder: “lpr *”

I have only tested the lpr command with PDF files and it worked perfectly, but I suspect it should work with any file format that your system recognizes. For this reason I assume it should work for office documents, pictures, etc.

Steam for Linux beta going open for all users

Looks like Steam will be opening the Linux beta to everyone next week!

Steam Linux to Launch Open Beta Next Week | OMG! Ubuntu!.

How to install Google Chrome in Ubuntu 10.04

I recently made the switch from Firefox to Chrome, and decided to install it on all my machines. I had some problems getting it installed for Ubuntu 10.04 at first, but then I found this post that spelled it all out.

Here’s the steps in simple, copy/paste format:

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list'
sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install -y google-chrome-stable

Or if you’d like one long line:

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add - && sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list' && sudo apt-get update -y && sudo apt-get install -y google-chrome-stable

That should work.

Again, thanks to UbuntuUpdates for original post: UbuntuUpdates – PPA: Google Chrome
Check them out for more PPA sources and install tutorials!

How to enable the middle mouse button in Ubuntu

After a recent fresh install of Ubuntu 10.04, I noticed that my Thinkpad T61’s middle mouse button under the TrackPoint (the red stick-mouse thingy in the middle of the keyboard) wasn’t working. Every mouse operation was working fine, except I couldn’t hold the middle mouse button and use the TrackPoint to scroll up/down/left/right. Luckily this is an easy fix.

1. Install GPointing Device Settings from the Software Center (for me it was called “Pointing Devices”, so you’ll probably want to search for that first). Once installed, it will show up under “System > Preferences”.
2. Enable “Use Wheel Emulation” and set it to button 2.
3. You can then enable “Enable vertical scroll” and “Enable horizontal scroll” too if you like (I did).

NOTE: I’m not sure what “Middle Button Emulation” is, but I left it enabled on my machine.