mtpaint - Good application to do pixel art in Linux

If you want to create some pixel art, I would recommend mtpaint - http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/. It has pretty good functionality. So far the only thing I find difficult to use is the multiple layer functionality for creating animations.

Mouse issues with Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10)

If you are considering updating to Karmic Koala, hold of for now. Mouse support for some people has been broken since around November 2009 and is broken to date (Feb 2010).

My initial update to Karmic Koala went pretty smoothly. However down the line as I continued to update my packages something went wrong and now my mouse can be pretty flaky. After doing some google searches, it turns out that a bunch of folks are experiencing this problem. The cause of the bug has not been tracked down and there are only work arounds, such as:
1. Log out of your windows session and log in again, this seems to be working for me.
2. If you only have issues with a particular application run that application from the console like so:
$ export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOW=1
$ application_having_issues.
3. For more esoteric workarounds read the threads below. The above 2 were easiest for me to try.

Threads with the complaints:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1334222
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1308754

Using Vim for actionscript

The syntax file is here http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1061.

Put it in /usr/share/vim/vim72/syntax/

Edit /usr/share/vim/vim72/filetype.vim to remove the .as filetype binding to Atlas so that vim will syntax highlight your code properly.

So the line in the file that looks like this

au BufNewFile,BufRead *.atl,*.as       setf atlas

needs to be:

au BufNewFile,BufRead *.as,*.mxml        setf actionscript

Good HTML, CSS tutorial

http://www.htmldog.com/ has good tutorials for HTML and CSS. The tutorials are easy to follow and teach the syntax well.

Upgrading to Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10) from Ubuntu Jaunty Jalopy (9.04)

Related: Brightness fix

11Feb2010 Update: There are mouse issues with Karmic Koala so I would suggest you hold of from updating. See http://linuxbear.blogspot.com/2010/02/mouse-issues-with-ubuntu-karmic-koala.html

You need to run "sudo update-manager" in the command prompt.

This site has better details http://www.ubuntugeek.com/upgrade-ubuntu-9-04-jaunty-jackalope-to-ubuntu-9-10-karmic-koala-beta.html

Good sound editor for Linux

Audacity is a great sound editor for linux. Allows you to import various file format, edit them and export them back into any format you like.

Homepage: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Changing package repository source in Kubuntu 9.04 'Jaunty'

KMenu -> Applications -> System -> Software Management

Click on "Software sources".
Click on the drop box that shows you your current repos. Select "Other".
Now you can select the server you want or click on "Select Best Server" to let the app do it for you.