Rotate webcam on Skype for Linux on ASUS laptops

If you have an ASUS laptop and use Skype on Linux, you'll probably face the problem of having the webcam image rotated by 180° and only on Skype, not on other applications.
To solve this problem you need to install and load a 32-bit library (since Skype is compiled for such architectures) before launching Skype.
In addition to this, I'll show how to solve this problem also if you want to install a skype wrapper, in the case Skype is not always visible on the system tray.

These are the commands to type in a Terminal

• add the skype-wrapper repository (optional): sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:skype-wrapper/ppa && sudo apt-get -qq update
• install skype-wrapper (optional): sudo apt-get install skype-wrapper
• sudo apt-add-repository ppa:libv4l/stable
• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get upgrade
• sudo apt-get install libv4l-0:i386

Then, in a folder where it doesn't annoy you, create a file named skype.sh and copy these two lines inside it:

#!/bin/bash

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

ATTENTION: put skype-wrapper instead of just skype in the line above if you chose the option of installing the wrapper!

In you want Skype to automatically load at startup, on the Menu find "Startup Applications", remove other Skype launchers if available, and press the "Add" button. Give the name and comment you like, and in the "Command" field put the absolute path of the file created above, for example "/home/me/skype.sh".

The End.

Changing GRUB options

If you want to change some options of the GRUB boot loader, like for example the timeout for the default option, or the order of the various options, this is what you have to do:

• type  sudo gedit /etc/default/grub  in a Terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) and insert your password
• edit the timeout expressed in seconds at "GRUB_TIMEOUT" or the default option at "GRUB_DEFAULT" (the number is the position of the desired option in the boot loader, starting from 0)
• in the Terminal type  sudo update-grub  to update the GRUB configuration file

Automatically mount NFTS partition

In order to automatically mount an NTFS partition on Ubuntu/Mint you just need to know where it is located on the file system: to do that, open "Disk utility" from the Menu, select the hard disk containing the desired partition, select the partition and look what is written near the label "Device", usually it's something like /dev/sdaN with a number instead of N.

Assume it is for example /dev/sda4, and that you want to mount it in a folder named "Files", then:

• type  sudo gedit /etc/fstab  in a Terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) and insert your password
• at the end of the file add two lines as follows:
  # My automatically mounted partition
  /dev/sda4 /media/Files ntfs defaults,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 1
• save and close

The next time you'll reboot, it will be automatically mounted! =)