Offline Gnome Dictionary on Linux mint and Ubuntu:

The dictionary tool that comes with the gnome requires Internet connection to retrieve information from the dictionary server.So without an Internet connection it is useless.We can install a dictionary server on over local machine to avoid this constraint.
Installing Dictionary on localhost:
Copy and paste the following command to install dictionary server package.

#sudo apt-get install dictd

After installation of the above package you will need to install the database and English dictionary so enter this command.

#sudo apt-get install dict-moby-thesaurus dict-gcide

After the installation of above packages you can now use command line to consult dictionary as:

#dict -options ur_word

Converting Video Formats Using ffmpeg on Linux:

Installing ffmpeg on Fedora 12,13,14:
In fedora 12,13 and 14 first of all you will need to enable access to rpmfusion free and non free repositories using the following command:

# su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm'

and then running command:

#yum -y install ffmpeg

will install ffmpeg on your fedora machine.
Installing ffmpeg on Ubuntu 10.x/Linux Mint:

sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libavdevice52 libavfilter0 libavcodec-extra-52 libavformat-extra-52

Sample Commands:
Simple conversion with ffmpeg defaults:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.format outputfile.format  

Changing frame rate:

ffmpeg -i input.avi  -r 24 output.avi 

Converting to mp4 using mpeg4 codec

ffmpeg -i input.flv -vcodec mpeg4 -acodec copy output.mp4

Converting video for  cell phone :)

ffmpeg -i input.format -s qcif -vcodec mpeg4 -r 18 -acodec copy output.mp4

Extracting audio in mp3 format:

ffmpeg -i input.avi -vn -acodec copy output.mp3

Installing and Configuring Conky:

conky is a popular system monitor which is light weight and is highly configurable through its own scripting interface that allows access to status of several system variables like storage,CPU consumption,memory usage, network interfaces and temperatures etc. 

Installation:
You can install conky from synaptic package manager or by issuing the following command in your terminal:

sudo apt-get install conky

Customized Desktop for Ubuntu 10.X using AWN and Conky:

AWN (avant window navigator) is a feature rich dock application for linux based distros. It includes almost every applet that comes with default ubuntu gnome-panel and pretty more customizable with its included themes and available third party applets.

So AWN can be a fancy as well as a more functional replacement to the default gnome-panel.

Installing AWN with lucido style:

what is lucido? Take a look at this screen shot :

Lucido is an AWN style which is now available as a part of AWN trunk, so instead of installing the stable release available in synaptic package manager ,we will install AWN trunk available through AWN trunk PPA.