Tone down your system beep
Automated disclaimer: This post was written more than 15 years ago and I may not have looked at it since.
Older posts may not align with who I am today and how I would think or write, and may have been written in reaction to a cultural context that no longer applies. Some of my high school or college posts are just embarrassing. However, I have left them public because I believe in keeping old web pages alive—and it's interesting to see how I've changed.
The "system beep" (or "system bell") can be quite annoying. Instead of disabling it altogether, you may be able to change it to something a little less irritating. Some operating systems will allow you to change it to a visual alert or a sound file of your choice. Today, I'll show you how to change the duration, pitch, and volume to something less grating if you're using X.Org (applies to just about all Unix or GNU/Linux systems.) [via]
I use xset, a command that can set various preferences in the current X display. One of the parameter sets is b, the properties of the system bell. It can be used to set the relative volume, pitch, and duration. Here's an example:
xset b 50 700 5
That example sets the system bell to 50% volume, a pitch of 700 hertz, and a duration of 5 milliseconds.
Experiment by entering that command, then pressing [Backspace] on the next line of your terminal (to generate a system bell.) Your hardware may not support certain combinations, in which the bell is silent.
To have this setting take effect every time you log in, add it to your session startup commands. In Ubuntu, that's System :: Preferences :: Sessions.
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