Mplayer has many video output drivers available and though half of them can only be used under X11, there are quite a few that give good results without the need for an x-server. You can see what video output drivers you have enabled by typing (at a terminal):
mplayer -vo help
I have the default installation from Ubuntu, so I have quite a lot of drivers installed, and can use them without any further trouble. If you compiled from code, you may need to have enabled them then.

So here are the drivers I tried out:

• Framebuffer device drivers: fbdev and fbdev2. Use mplayer -vo fbdev filename or mplayer -vo fbdev2 filename .
• SDL: SDL probably gives the best results of them all, but doing it in a virtual terminal while running X seems to crash the OS. SDL is not actually dependent on X and you can use it without X running. Just remember to set a good video mode or you’ll get 16 colors. Use mplayer -vo sdl filename
• aa: Ascii Art (aalib) is a fun way to look at videos but it gets old quick if you haven’t set the terminal to a high enough resolution. Too low and everything will look like gibberish but with a higher resolution you can make out quite a lot of details. Use mplayer -vo aa filename to get ascii art versions of your video. Really high ‘Cool Factor’ =)
• libcaca: Colour Ascii Art, similar to aa but some text is in colour and the detail is usually better. Haven’t been able to get it going under just a virtual terminal though. Use mplayer -vo caca filename
• vesa: Use the VESA VBE 2.0 output. Haven’t been able to get this to work yet.
• cvidix: Console Vidix. You need to have a working vidix driver. I don’t know how to get one yet.

I have to use a proxy to get online and because many programs have their own independent proxy settings, I have to set each up individually. So, in addition to setting the $http_proxy variable, here’s the config files I have to change: (replace the numbers)

wget, /etc/wgetrc

Switch on Passive Mode by default:

passive_ftp = on

Set the Proxy Servers:

http_proxy = http://username:password@10.5.2.46:80/
ftp_proxy = http://username:password@10.5.2.46:80/

Enable the proxy:

use_proxy = on

apt/aptitude, /etc/apt/apt.conf

Set the proxies

ACQUIRE {
http::proxy "http://srdmorhper:password@10.5.2.46:80/"
}


Synaptic

Also, Synaptic doesn’t seem to share apt’s settings. Synaptic’s proxy settings are in Settings » Preferences » Network and should be entered as:
Proxy:username:password@10.1.3.23 Port:80

Note: Some programs like Google Earth, work under Gnome 2.14 and Ubuntu 6.06 with the proxy if you start them from a terminal but not from the menu entry.

Nautilus actions are these little scripts that function on files and folders from within Nautilus, you can write (or download) a nautilus script that can do quite anything on a file you have. And you can do these with minimal experience and with little danger of doing anything horrible to your files as long as you’re careful. Here are a couple of the Actions I have:

Sudo Open:

• Path: gksudo
• Parameters: “gnome-open %u”

Mount this:

• Path: mount
• Parameters: %d/%f or %M

Play with mplayer:

For some reason, this is a set of three actions. The first one simply plays the file with /usr/bin/mplayer %M , the second plays a playlist with /usr/bin/mplayer -playlist %M and the third plays all the files in a folder. Due to my inexperience with bash, it looks rather ugly, but here it is. As usual, no warranty. Just one parameter: The folder name.