HOWTO: Gui Apps when you are root in Ubuntu

When you are the root user by typing

sudo -i

you can’t execute gtk apps, and you get the following message:

cannot open display: (null)

That’s made for security reasons. To enable executing GUI apps then follow the instructions:

When you are a normal user type:

xhost +

and you’ll get a message that says

access control disabled, clients can connect from any host
then

sudo -i

enter the password and type:

export DISPLAY=:0

and you are done!!

HOWTO: Wget, the best download manager out there

Wget is by far one of the best download managers in the world. So, lets explain some tricks to empower your internet experiences to a level you haven’t reach before.

Downloading a file  

wget http://url

wget ftp://url

If the download fails, you can continue it by writing

wget -c http://url

If you are going to download several files, you can specify them in a file and pass that file to wget, so wget will continue to download one file after the other:

wget -i nameofthefile

Where nameofthefile contains the urls you want to download

Downloading a whole directory from a site

wget -r -l0 – -no-parent http://url/directorytodownload

Not enough, then type

man wget

to have more examples.