Here’s something I enjoy and use often. The following steps make it so you can easily bring up a terminal (to use for installing programs or making modifications/ inputting commands you’ll likely run across when looking for online.)

Go to:
System
Preferences
Keyboard Shortcuts

Scroll down and under Desktop you’ll see Run a Terminal.

Click it and press the keys you want to launch a terminal with. I use Ctrl-Alt-X

That’s it!

Additionally, if you want to make terminal look a little more awesome. After you’ve brought it up with your keyboard shortcut.

Click Edit> Profile Preferences

Click the Color Tab and edit the following:

Under Foreground and Background:
Make text color white
Make background color black

Next click the Background Tab:

Tick the Transparency bullet.
And put the slider at the center approximately. (Or do it as you see fit.)

That should be it! Now you’ve got a pretty slick looking terminal.

It could have been that I wasn’t using the right search terms, but for the life of me I couldn’t find a solution for how to fix things when the panel icons in Ubuntu get rearranged by the system.

Some have reported the issues are resolved after a reboot, but I know I didn’t get those results after rebooting 5 times. I finally figured out how to get things back to default locations.

I’m assuming that you’re reading this because you’re an Ubuntu user, so you should know that from right to left in the upper panel you should see: Your User name (where you’d get a drop down for logging off, shutting down etc), the time/date and finally any number of panel icons (bluetooth, network, ubuntu one cloud icon)

In my case, the system decided to move all the notifications (bluetooth, network icon, volume icon) to the far right and displace my User name drop down button and date/time just to the right of the notifications. When you’re used to the placement of the User name dropdown, it’s not easy to just get used to it’s new location.

Many forum users may misunderstand your question on how to fix this and tell you to right click and choose move. Unfortunately the notification icons don’t give you a “move” option. It would seem that the notification icons are within an invisible tray. Now, it is that tray itself that’s been moved and not so much the icons (it’s just that when the tray is moved, it moves all that the icons it holds) I realized this only after removing all but one notification icon and right clicked just a little bit left of the remaining notification icon and noticed a move option. I moved it and *SNAP* the time/date and User name dropdown button went right back to where they originally were.

So quick steps:

**The following step is just to make it easier to click the notification tray***
1. Go to System>Startup Programs>
*at this point just remove what you see as notifications in the panel. Default for me was Volume, Network, Bluetooth

2. There should be a blank space to the right of date/time and the User name button.

3. Right click and move it to the left of date/time and the User name button.

4. Now you just add back the icons you removed.

Hopefully this helps. Sorry if it’s convoluted. But when you can’t find answers on the web and what you do find are just “Thanks we’re submitting this questioning or developers” … this may help

I’ve had the Palm Pre from Sprint for about two and half days now. I had been scouring forums for info on it when it first got announced earlier this year and that practice will not stop even now that I have it in my hands. I need to see what other user experiences are like, especially with this widespread battery life issue, but also because a homebrew development team is growing, and as their impatience grows waiting for the WebOS SDK release, they’ve begun working on methods to get applications running without Palm’s blessing.

Here is my quick review based on the two and a half days. I posted it on a thread about the Pre, so it’s not exactly spell checked and so on. I know I probably won’t get to a full review any time soon on the blog.

I had typed up a long review on my Pre an hour or two after playing with it nonstop. Then I thought I posted, but I really didn’t.

I don’t think I can recall all the points I made but here are some things now that it’s been a good several hours:

1. If you are signing up with the Alliant Credit Union discount, make sure to bring in a print out of the benefits you should receive from Sprint along with the 25% off (www.alliantpromos.org/sprint/) The girl that was helping me thought I couldn’t apply the discount to Everything Plans when really it’s only Simple Everything Plans and ERPR’s you can’t apply discounts to. I also made it a point to ask/insist I have my activation fee waived (listed as a benefit from Alliant) I was glad I did this because the activation was not 18$ like I had imagined but was instead 26$ She could not waive the fee at that moment but told me to come in when I get the bill and she’d waive it and even noted on my account that she’d waive the fee just in case I had to deal with a different customer service rep.

2. The 25% off discount from Alliant may not take effect for up to 2 months. Sucks right? I was a little miffed when I heard that, but what can you do.

3. The customer service rep said a 7$ insurance fee is necessary at sign up but can be removed later although they insist you keep it (of course) should the phone conk out. (I’m up in the air on whether I’ll cancel, first I need to pay off the cost of the phone and see what my actual cost monthly will be including the discount (I imagine 59$ w/taxes… so tack on 7$ for insurance… we’re breaching my comfort zone for monthly plans)

ACTUAL PHONE REVIEW:

4. The one biggest flaw I noticed was the wiggly top slider that many users say they have. The wiggle only exists when the device is closed. When it is open (keyboard out), it is solid as a rock.

5. Battery life seems to be an issue for many as well. Although the recent update according to many has alleviated the issue a bit. It’s just going to be one of those things that’ll need to get better with time and updates. For now I’ve reduced the brightness completely, turned off auto location, bluetooth, wifi and changed e-mail to push. This is overkill and many will be frustrated at the idea of turning off many features that add to the coolness of apps/phone etc. I’m just doing it as a test though. Besides I’ve yet to run my battery down to nothing and recharge to break in the battery.

6. The phone is heavier than I remember the demo unit at Sprint being. And I’m actually happy about that. It also feels less plastic-y.

7.The keyboard is spread out much more than the Centro, so I’m getting used to typing on it. I’ve never used an iphone keyboard so I can’t compare but I like feel pretty confident that I won’t hit the wrong key like on a virtual keyboard. (Look, I’m gonna be honest, fingernail typing is mostly what I do on the Centro and the Pre, but that’s alright with me. Sorry for all the fat fingers out there. Give it a try though. It isn’t that bad and it comes more naturally as time goes on.)

6. Cursor placement when typing can be a pain. For example if I meant to type:

Meet me at the beer garden at 10pm

but instead wrote:

eet me ay the beer garden at 10pm

and I need to go back to fix those things, using a thumb to place it precisely before/after the letter that needs to be added/changed is a pain. That’s one of the things I miss about the centro, the five way oval let me click left and right to place the cursor. I may have missed something where I can do that on the Pre but I haven’t found it yet.

***edit***

For ppl like me who don’t read things. I just found out how to do more specific cursor placement. Just press the orange square key and then swipe left or right to move the cursor!

7. The app store grows daily. Hackers have already got a “hello world” app running so combined official works and individual homebrewers, it’s going to be exciting to see what comes out.

8.Browsing the web is great. It was one of my biggest concerns as I’ve seen other browsers on other sprint phones and they all have a terrible display system. The Pre uses it’s real estate effectively.

9. It’s so simple! I think it was a PC World writer yesterday who wrote a terribly biased (pro-apple) article bashing the Pre and saying he didn’t like the fact he had to learn gestures. Holy shit… I’m sure it kills you to learn about 3-4 simple hand movements (not like they’re asking you to draw circles and stars etc) Everyone wants to tout Apple as a provider of devices that “just work”

The Pre just works too.

10. Love the led lights in the gesture area, I kinda want to see a Mac-esque heart beat glow implemented by homebrewers either as a message alert or some such.

11. Clean up your Gmail contacts! Unless you want doubles galore.

12. Give us true copy/paste. The current copy/paste only works on editable fields.

Anyhow, that’s about it for now. I love the phone. I’ll admit I’m a little scared about seeing $60+ a month bills after a year + of 37$w/taxes bills.

Everyday should be Caturday.