Enjoying old Desktop days with Mate DE 1.8.1 on Debian 8.1

I recently installed Debian 8.1 in triple/quadruple boot with Windows8.1/Ubuntu14.04.2/Ubuntu15.04 on my Lenovo G50-45 Laptop.

Initially I installed LXDE Desktop but yesterday added Mate Desktop and now enjoying good old days of Gnome 2.

How to make back-light Brightness Fn keys work on LXDE.

Back-light Brightness is set on my Laptop by Fn+F11 (down) and Fn+F12 (up) keys. These keys worked on Ubuntu Unity Desktop but not on LXDE Desktop.

I tried xbacklight command but it did not work. Then after googling I discovered that xbacklight does not work on radeon driver.

Then I tried how it works on Ubuntu Unity Desktop and found that following command was executed by USER=root

/usr/lib/unity-settings-daemon/usd-backlight-helper --set-brightness 24

Since the command to be executed required root privileges I created two bash shell files on my desktop:File ~/home/Desktop/Brightness1

#! /bin/bash
# script to set the initial brightness on login
[ "$UID" -eq 0 ] || exec gksu bash "$0" "$@"
/usr/lib/unity-settings-daemon/usd-backlight-helper --set-brightness 12

File ~/home/Desktop/Brightness2

#! /bin/bash
# script to set the initial brightness on login
[ "$UID" -eq 0 ] || exec gksu bash "$0" "$@"
/usr/lib/unity-settings-daemon/usd-backlight-helper --set-brightness 24

I made the files executable and tested them. The script asked for sudo password and set the required brightness.

Then I inserted following Keycodes in ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml

<!-- Keybindings for LCD Backlight -->    <keybind key="XF86MonBrightnessDown">        # decrease screen brightness      <action name="Execute"><command>/home/user/Desktop/Brightness1</command></action>    </keybind>    <keybind key="XF86MonBrightnessUp">        # increase screen brightness      <action name="Execute"><command>/home/user/Desktop/Brightness2</command></action>    </keybind>

and it works by pressing Fn+F11 and Fn+F12 i.e. it asks for sudo password and sets the required brightness. 

How to run Debian with secure boot on.

I am having Lenovo G50-45 Laptop which had Windows 8.1 pre installed and I have installed Ubuntu 14.04 and 15.04 in triple boot with secure boot on.

Today I installed Debian 8.1 on another partition. For installing Debian I had to disable secure boot. After installation if I was booting Debian through its Boot Loader I had to disable the secure boot.

Later on I enabled secure boot and using Ubuntu 15.04 and updated the kernel. After update the grub got updated and it picked up the entry of Debian.

Now I could boot Debian through Ubuntu's Boot Loader without disabling secure boot.

NB: For those who are not familiar with UEFI. Each operating system has its own Boot Loader with entries of other operating systems in the Grub Menu.

Chromixium OS -- Chromebox plus Ubuntu.

I was always fascinated with any OS from Google or something like that. I had tried gOS Desktop in 2007 and Chromium OS on pendrive in 2009.

Google then launched Chrome OS only on Chromeboxes and they have significant market share today.

One developer has combined Ubuntu with Openbox, LXPanel and Google Applications to develops what he calls Chromixium OS.

I downloaded the Chromixium 64 Bit RC ISO, copied it to USB, added casper-rw file and persistent boot parameter in /boot/grub/grub.cfg before "quiet splash" in the menu entry and running it now on my Lenovo G50-45 Laptop. The OS has beautiful Desktop:

How to recover lost Grub Menu and Edit Menu entries.

Yesterday I installed Ubuntu 15.04 on USB stick and selected grub install on the USB to keep the Grub on Hard Disk intact. Even then I lost the Grub Menu on the Hard Disk and had to use the grub on the USB to boot into Ubuntu 14.04.2 installed on the hard disk.

For recovering Grub of menu I had to install Boot Repair through the ppa. After running Recommended Repair through Boot Repair I got the Grub Menu on the hard disk but with many unnecessary entries.

For removing the unwanted entries on Grub Menu I installed Grub Customizer and used it to remove the entries.

Boot Repair and Grub Customizer are excellent tools.

UEFI Bootable full install of Ubuntu 15.04 on 32 GB USB stick.

Yesterday I posted about Live persistent UEFI Bootable USB stick of Ubuntu 15.04. I could upgrade some packages, save wifi settings and documents and they were available on reboot but when I upgraded linux kernel I could not reboot on using persistent kernel boot parameter and even without this parameter.

Since the 32 GB USB stick could take full install I made full install of Ubuntu 15.04 on the stick with installing bootloader on the stick. The bootloader also picked the Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 14.04.2 installations on the hard disk.

I think the days of persistent live linux on USB stick are over and full install is the way forward.