Contents:
moovida - A media center solution that won't allow you to watch movies.
I am not really a fan of media center software but I wanted to organize all of my media in one location and play them as I pleased. I installed elisa as I once tried beta version of it with it's impressive user interface animation capabilities. Weird but I don't see Elisa entry any where in Ubuntu menu. Package info showed it only contains documentation files and README revealed some off-world creature called moovida.
The fun starts
Started moovida and it showed some vertical areas divided into movies, videos, music, etc. Now all I have to do is add my USB drive to moovida so that it will show some play lists but I couldn't find any option. Instead it scanned some random locations and added some random videos to "Unclassified Videos" in Videos section and I throughly verified whether they are by mistake "Area-51 alien interrogation videos". I couldn't find any option that said add a folder or add file or anything that remotely implied "import your sxxx". At this point of time I was really pissed and started googling how to add videos and it didn't give any results ever after adding f word.
After some googling...
Found it's the section called "Devices & Shares" where you add your media. After digging thorough it and losing all my patience I just started installing "XBMC" hoping it will let me add my media and give me feedback on what it's doing.
Fix unresponsive widgets in eclipse on ubuntu karmic
Execute following command before running eclipse. This bug affects wizards, button clicks, etc...
export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1
apt-cacher-ng - chache deb packages and sources.
To this date installing apt-cacher-ng is the most simple way to setup apt proxy in ubuntu.
Install apt-cacher-ng
sudo apt-get -y install apt-cacher-ng
Lets call the system which has apt-cacher-ng as server and other systems that are going to use this cache as client.
After installing the apt-cacher-ng on the server you have to make sure server it self uses this apt-proxy. You can do this by creating a file called /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/01proxy and enter following line and save the file.
Acquire::http { Proxy "http://127.0.0.1:3142"; };
Now open terminal in client systems and create the same /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/01proxy file and enter the following code and save the file.
Acquire::http { Proxy "http://<server ip address>:3142"; };
Replace "< server ip address >" with real server ip address.
That's it all your apt fetch and updates will go through your apt proxy and you will save tons of bandwidth if you have multiple systems at work or home.
nethogs - Monitoring per application bandwidth usage on ubuntu
nethogs allows you to see which application is consuming your network bandwidth. It has conventional interface like top command so lot of details about each process is displayed in tabular format. nethogs is available in ubuntu universe so no need of adding extra repo lines.
Install nethogs
sudo apt-get -y install nethogs
Usage
sudo nethogs <network interface name for eg: eth1>
SmarterFox : Imporove your browsing experience
SmarterFox learns site pagination systems and allows you to view other pages without even a single click.
These are the features offered by SmarterFox.
- SmarterFox makes your address bar smarter by integrating Google search with awesome bar(address bar).
- Save flash based content.
- There is a quick launcher which allows you to open your favorite sites.
- Search selected text in Google, Wikipedia and other sites.
Vim key bindings for gedit
There is a plugin called vigedit which provides vi emulation for gedit.
First execute following command to checkout the source from bazaar repo.
bzr branch http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~tristil/vigedit/main-method
Now go inside main-method folder and execute following command.
python install.py
Now open your gedit and goto Edit > Preferences > Plugins and check vigedit. Your gedit will turn into basic vi editor.
PySide : Nokia's offical python bindings for QT
Nokia started working on providing official python bindings for QT after talks with PyQt creators riverbank failed.
The new API is called PySide and it's available under LGPL license and going to maintain API compatibility with PyQt thus ensuing porting of existing PyQt applications with minimal or no changes. Nokia is going to provide pyside as an alternative option to develop mobile applications for next Maemeo 5 devices.
Get pyside
Getting KDE 4.3 on Ubuntu Jaunty
Add following two lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list.
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/backports/ubuntu jaunty main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/staging/ubuntu jaunty main
Execute following command to setup GPG keys and to update your apt package meta data.
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 8AC93F7A
sudo apt-get update
If you already have previous version of KDE execute following command.
sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade
If you don't have any KDE version already installed then execute following command.
sudo apt-get -y install kubuntu-desktop
Unknown Horizons - RTS Game
Unknown Horizons is a RTS game focused on building your city and its economy, commerce.
Install Unknown Horizon
Add following source to your /etc/apt/sources.list file.
deb http://deb.unknown-horizons.org/ release main
Install GPG keys of the repo to confirm package authenticity.
wget http://deb.unknown-horizons.org/key && sudo apt-key add key
Now update your apt cache to fetch info about new packages and install Unknwn Horizons game.
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y install unknown-horizons
State of netbook offerings and politics
We are seeing an invasion of netbook offerings from lot of vendors Acer,dell,hp,Intel, the list goes on with the impressive battery backup times. But everything boils down to either Intel atom processor with Intel chip set or ARM processor package.
State of Intel offerings
Many of Intel partners are competing against Intel using Intels own hardware. So to neutralize this threat and to make Intel offerings look much more attractive Intel is supplying hardware locked at lower frequency to its partners.
If you own an Atom based netbook with Intel hardware you may try GMABooster to remove these limitations.
Get GMABooster
State of Intel graphics
Every chip-set of Intel works well on Linux except chip-sets that use PowerVR based graphics acceleration. Since PowerVR doesn't have any track record of releasing open source video drivers, GMA 500 has very primitive driver support in Linux.
These are the things that I am able to uncover about Intels offering of netbooks. If you have more info on either Atom or ARM based netbooks please discuss here.
Download vm images of different linux distros.
stacklet.com is providing virtual disk images of most popular distros and also offering kernel packages with Xen support.
Download them here.
http://stacklet.com/
PiTiVi - An Awesome Video Editor Based on GStreamer
There is a new video editor called PiTiVi on ubuntu PPA repositories. It uses newer gstreamer packages with bug fixes.
Installation
Add following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file.
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gstreamer-developers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/gstreamer-developers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
Execute following command to install gpg keys.
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 688F8FE67057C366AFA97270C0B56813051D8B58
Now do an apt-get and install PiTiVi package.
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y install pitivi
Features offered by PiTiVi
- Multilayer support.
- Trimming/Cutting , Ripple/Roll, Slip/Slide support.
- API for writing extensions.
PiTiVi features
Launchpad page for PiTiVi
FTP Servers for Ubuntu
ProFTPd
ProFTPd is one the easiest ftp server to install and configure. Use following command to install ProFTPd server.
sudo apt-get -y install proftpd
Now open /etc/proftpd.conf file and change root to something like below.
DefaultRoot ~/ftp
Above configuration option tells ProFTPd to use ftp folder in your home for storage purpose. So don't forget to create the folder. Now restart ProFTPd using following command.
sudo /etc/init.d/proftpd restart
Now your Ubuntu FTP server is ready.
vsftpd
vsftpd is another ftp server which is available right out of Ubuntu repositories. Install vsftpd using following command.
sudo apt-get -y install vsftpd
vsftpd has numerous number of configuration options available and you can use these options to control every aspect of your ftp server. You can modify /etc/vsftpd.conf to change behavior of your ftp server.
Learn more about vsftpd server configuration options.
Enable Keyboard shotcut for restarting xserver
Latest version of Ubuntu comes up with the handy shortcut to restart xserver using keyboard. Here is a way to enable that option.
First install dontzap package.
sudo apt-get -y install dontzap
Now add following three lines to /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.
Section “ServerFlags”
Option “DontZap” “false”
EndSection
After restarting Ubuntu you can use Control+Alt+Backspace keyboard option.
QT Repositories
QT is officially available under LGPL and as promised Nokia opened up their repositories to outside people. You can now checkout QT code using git. Use following git command to get QT code.
git clone git://gitorious.org/qt/qt.git
Official QT git repository.
Get Firefox 3.6
Firefox 3.6 beta 4 is in testing phase and it makes browsing a breeze. The following are the advantages of using latest Firefox.
- Has native JSON support/web worker threads.
- TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
- Private Mode Browsing (aka Porn Mode).
- Support for animation in XUL toolkit.
- Better integration of web standards.
- Many stability & security bug fixes.
Download & Install Firefox 3.6
Add following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list.
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
Add PGP keys.
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com B34505EA326FEAEA07E3618DEF4186FE247510BE
Now update your repositories and install Firefox 3.6.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install firefox-3.6
Now start Firefox using the command firefox-3.6
