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Harish Vishwanath
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Adding a custom launcher in Ubuntu

·1 min·
Ubuntu Pycharm Linux Launcher

It is not straightforward to have your favorite programs that are not installed via package manager appear on Ubuntu (14.04) launcher. Couple of ways to do that:

  • Sometimes, when the program is up, you can just right click and say “add to launcher”. It would work for most programs. However, this will fail for editors such as PyCharm that maintain project state and the launcher added this way will point to the specific project.
  • The right way to do is this:
    • Create a .desktop entry For instance, for pycharm, do :
$ sudo nano /usr/share/applications/pycharm.desktop


[Desktop Entry]
Name=PyCharm
Type=Application
Exec=/home/hvishwanath/Downloads/pycharm-community-4.0.5/bin/pycharm.sh
Terminal=false
Icon=/home/hvishwanath/Downloads/pycharm-community-4.0.5/bin/pycharm.png
Comment=PyCharm community edition 4.0.5
NoDisplay=false
Categories=Development;IDE
Name[en]=pycharm.desktop
* You can then search for the entry in main “Search” in the launcher, and simply drag and drop the pycharm.desktop entry that you would find on to the launcher.

That is it.

Related

Setting up Tun/Tap networking for a Qemu Image

·2 mins
Tech Qemu Linux
Qemu is a very useful utility to play around with your code/application environment before you are ready to package it as a virtual appliance. Though there are various wikis available to help you setup networking between qemu guest and your host machine, I found that the steps required to setup TUN/TAP networking so that the guest is accessible from your extended network was either not accurate, or was not put in simple terms. So, here goes. Assuming that you are using Debian/Ubuntu as your host OS and you have qemu and necessary qemu-managers installed.

Dissecting the OASIS CAMP Specification

·10 mins
1. Background # 1.1 OASIS - The organization behind CAMP # OASIS is a non-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. The consortium has representation from private/public sector technology leaders and influencers and has over 5K participants from over 600 organizations! They are behind various standards such as MQTT, Web services security etc., A full list is here.

Oh mighty computer, I stand before thee!

·4 mins
Yes. I have decided to respect my computer more, starting 1 Jan 2015. It does deserve more respect considering how I handled it before - looking down, looking up, on the lap, on the tummy etc., Starting this year, I shall stand before it, with renewed respect. In other words, I switched to a fully jugaad standing desk at work. I have read before about people that switched to a standing desk, and thought it could be fun to try it. It all started when I discovered (accidentally) that the desks at work are height adjustable. Though not to the extent of being able to stand and work, it opened up doors for jugaad and experimentation. So, here it is in its current configuration!