An easy way to search and add a Launchpad PPA

As you might know PPAs can be very useful! For many projects there is an official PPA containing the latest stable versions of the application. But adding a PPA can be very annoying. Here I show an easy way to search a PPA and add it plus its key:

Searching for PPAs the simple way

For searching PPAs there is a search engine in Launchpad:
Right click into the search input field and choose "Add a keyword for this Search...", type in a name like "PPA Search" and as keyword simply use "ppa". Save the search bookmark. This bookmark is a normal firefox bookmark but it has a "%s" somewhere in its URL.
Now you can search all Launchpad PPAs simply by typing "ppa something" into the Awesomebar of Firefox. If you want to search for the Transmission BitTorrent Clients PPA simply type "ppa transmission" and look for the official PPA. Very handy!

Adding a PPA

Let's say you want to add the Transmission PPA.
Choose your Ubuntu version and copy the line starting with "deb ..." you do not need the deb-src line.
Add this line to your "/etc/apt/sources.list" with a text editor or with the Software Sources Dialog. I have a 3rdparty.list in the "sources.list.d" folder containing all PPAs and other not Ubuntu Repositories.

Adding the key

OK so you now have the Repository but you also need the key. A very simple way to import the key is by using a bash alias.
So edit your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_aliases with your favorite text editor and add the line

alias addppakey='sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com'

to the bottom of the file.
Now let's go back to the PPA page in Firefox. There you can see a line starting with "This repository is signed with ..."
In the example of Transmission this should be "1024R/365C5CA1". Simply select the right hand side of the String and type into a Terminal "addppakey " and press the middle mouse button.

addppakey 365C5CA1

After entering your password the PPA is successfully installed.

Now reload your Repositories and update or install the Application you want ;)

How to position AWN on the bottom edges of your screen

Today I set up my family's PC with hardy and also installed AWN (Avant window navigator). I played around a bit and figured out how to get the panel on the bottom left or right edge. It's really simple:
1. Press Alt+F2 and type in "gconf-editor", press ENTER
2. Go to apps -> avant-window-navigator -> bar
3. Find "bar_pos" and type in something like "-0.002" for left edge and something like "1.002" for right edge, then try which number fits your settings best (icon size,...)





This is for the flat panel. If you want the same with the 3D-panel I think you have to add one starter on the left which will flow over the edge and reposition the panel more to the left.

some orange icons

Well more than a year ago i designed a phpMyAdmin theme, so I've made many icons for that. Because I wanted to update the default Darkblue-Orange theme, all the icons are mainly orange. I've never finished and published this theme but maybe the icons can be useful for you (maybe for the folks from Ubuntu)?



Just mail me if someone's interested.