If you are using Ubuntu and not used to the Unity user interface, the better choice will be gnome-shell. Gnome-shell comes with many extensions that can be added easily. Below are some of the must-have and nice-to-have extensions:

Must-Have:
- AlternateTab
- Alternative Status Menu
- BackSlide
- Bolt
-Disable Window Animations
- No Topleft Hot Corner
- Panel Settings
- Places Status Indicator
- Settings Center
- Status Icon Fixer
- TaskBar
- Weather Indicator

Nice-to-Have:
- Coverflow Alt-Tab
- Dock
- Journal (if you are using the original Gnome Activites instead of Bolt)
- SystemMonitor

You can also remove the maximized windows title bar to give you more working space. Install "Maximus" from Ubuntu Software Center, then run gconf-editor (install this also if you don't have it), and go to apps -> maximus and enable "no_maximize". You will need to logout and login back to get it in effect.

Hibernate on Ubuntu 12.04

Hibernation in Ubuntu has been always a sky-high difficult thing to achieve successfully without some struggle. It's been a while I have been looking for a solution to hibernate my Sony Vaio laptop with hybrid ATI graphic card. All the while it can only hibernate but always freezes on resume flash screen, until I find 2 solutions:

1. Disable the uswsusp (more recommended)

You might want to upgrade to the latest kernel first. Also, if there is any error caused by any driver, such as psmouse-alps-dkms, remove it first.

It seems that uswsusp is not working properly on Ubuntu 12.04. The possible way to get your hibernation works like charm is to remove this package:
sudo apt-get purge uswsusp

After removal, try to do a hibernation by issueing:
sudo pm-hibernate

2. Tux On Ice

Kindly be noted that as the Tux On Ice is using non-PAE (Physical Address Extension) kernel, hence after installing Tux On Ice on 32-bit Ubuntu, you will find that your physical memory is capped at 2.4GB only even if your RAM is more than that, say 4GB or above. It might slow down your laptop performance if memory consumption is high.

To install Tux On Ice:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tuxonice/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tuxonice-userui linux-generic-tuxonice linux-headers-generic-tuxonice


Then try to hibernate with:
sudo pm-hibernate


Take note that Tux On Ice might not always support the latest linux kernel. If during installation it complaint about not supporting latest kernel, try to revert to the previous one.

=============

If you would like to hibernate on power button press, in dconf-editor, ensure the following:
apps.indicator-session.suppress-logout-restart-shutdown = unchecked
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power.button-power = hibernate

Thanks to this reference:
http://www.pauljoyceuk.com/codex/2012/howto-make-ubuntu-12-04-hibernate-successfully/

Transfer User settings from OpenOffice to LibreOffice

To transfer user custom settings such as user-defined colors from OpenOffice (Windows) to LbreOffice in Ubuntu Linux:

- In Windows,copy the whole "user" folder from:
 c:/Documents and Settings//AppData/Roaming/OpenOffice.org/3/user

- In Ubuntu, rename the folder $HOME/.config/libreoffice/3/user to another name for backup.

- Overwrite with the user folder from the source you copied.

Note: Take note that there might be other libreoffice folder in your home folder in Ubuntu but do not bother with that. Only the folder under .config will take effect.

Note: If you don't to replace the whole user folder such as that you would like to only transfer specific settings, just look into the folder and edit the file accordingly. For example, custom colors are defined in standard.soc file in XML format.

Ping & access Windows PC from Linux via computer name instead of IP address

From Linux, when you tried to ping or access another Windows PC in the same local network using it's computer name, you will get "Unknown host" error and so on. You will also not able to access the website available from these Windows PC via their computer name such as http://windows-svr

To get that solved, install winbind in your linux. Then edit the file /etc/nsswitch.conf and add in "wins" in the line as follow:

hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4 wins

and reboot your linux... Done!