Adding tar ball packaged binaries in search path in kubuntu 9.04 (the lazy/easy way)

Sometimes, I download latest compressed tarball(".tar.gz", ".tgz" etc format) binary packages to stay with the cutting age in my ubuntu linux in a manageable easy way (The unmanageable way is to compile from sources ;o). For example, say latest stable version of firefox which is distributed this way. But the problem is, you have to descend in the deep down in your unpacked directories to execute the binary. One quick and easy fix is to create a directory named "bin" in your home and adding a symbolic link in it pointing to your binary. Say, I extracted my firefox in a directory named "/home/oscar/firefox" and "firefox" is the name of the binary in it. Just, 'ln -s /home/oscar/firefox/firefox /home/oscar/bin/firefox" and restart your shell.

Note: This works because of the charisma of a ".profile" file in the home directory which adds any "bin" folder in your home to the search path, if it exists. I happen to discover it luckily. :-)

Internal partition mounting problem in "Dolphin" in Kubuntu 9.04

I think some of you guys have already faced the problem I was having. I installed kubuntu 9.04 from scratch and after that, every time I wanted to access any internal drives with dolphin, it was showing me a password prompt cause I did not have permissions to access this drives! Every time I logged in, I had to do this again and again. Lucky, I googled for it found the solution =).

All you had to do is change the policies in "PolicyKit Authorization System". It's kind of a new staff in GNU/Linux world and provides better security solution. It extends the concepts of "file permissions" and "sudo". Instead of restricting permission to a file, it restricts permission to certain administrative tasks like in my case - permission to mount a filesystem from internal drive partition.

Enough talk, here is the quick fix I got -
(1) Goto 'K Menu' --> 'System Settings'.
(2) Select the 'Advanced' tab.
(3) Goto the 'PolicyKit Authorization' grouped under 'system'.
(4) Select the policy - 'mount filesystems from internal drives'.
(5) Now you can either set 'Implicit Authorizations' to anyone or you can set 'Explicit authorizations' to yourself by pressing the 'grant' button.

Here's a screenshot to help you -