Linux
The last time I blogged about Ubuntu Desktop, either I didn't explain the problems I was having sufficiently, or people just don't get it and react. I try to make what I write clear enough for those new to Linux, but that may make it seem like I'm not very experienced with Linux, even though I have been actively abusing it since 1995. I have decided to just keep on writing and let the chips fall where they may. This post shouldn't raise the ire of most people though, because unlike many Ubuntu veterans and rookies alike, I have had very little, if any, problems with Karmic Koala, much to my delight. Though I should point out, even with the problems I had with Jaunty, I still ran it on all of the systems I'm mentioning here. I also manage twenty Sun workstations that have been happily running Jaunty with none of the problems I had with my home system. My home system is a Dell XPS 420 with an ATI graphics card. I first upgraded, rather installed Ubuntu 9.10, and restored my data backup from 9.04. I created user accounts and the previous fix to the gnome-system-tools made this uneventful. Installing the multimedia and third-party software is incredibly easy now. The best guide for multimedia and add-on software I have found is over at my-guides.net. Once I had everything running smoothly I decided to take a chance and install the proprietary ATI drivers. I had nothing but problems with the ATI drivers in 9.04. This time however, it all worked without a hitch. I have full eye-candy and VLC plays videos smoothly with no problems. The final big test was Brasero, which was a giant headache with Jaunty. I burned an audio CD with the Normalize Plug-in and it worked like a charm. Well over a month later, Karmic Koala has been trouble free.
Karmic Koala Eye Candy |
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by Marcel Gagné Once upon a time, when the Earth was green, plain text communications was the norm. We used TELNET to connect to systems where we needed to get work done. From a security perspective, plain-text communications is frought with dangers. Anyone running a network sniffer program, of which there are many, can snoop on every packet sailing across your network. If you are logging in using TELNET, that person can see your user name and password plain as day. One way around this dilemma is to use the secure shell. OpenSSH is an open-source implementation of the secure shell protocol that comes with almost every major Linux distribution. The secure shell is much more than a simple way to keep your passwords to yourself. Logging securely certainly qualifies as the basics for OpenSSH and it's certainly useful, but there are some seriously cool SSH features that should make you wonder why you would use anything else to communicate (well, almost). For instance, it's possible to tunnel ports you may not have access to (if the machine is behind a firewall) through the SSH port. SSH makes it possible to run remote graphical sessions easily. You can even securely log in without a password. SSH is a veritable Swiss Army knife of OS toys. Yes, I'll cover all those things later. First, the basics. |
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I had intended to create blog post about my frustration with Vista and how I finally installed Linux on my almost one year old PC. A funny thing happened on the way to Linuxland, a roadblock whose name is Jaunty. So arrives the much hailed Jaunty, destined to be the final stake in the heart Vista. For the few Windows applications I need, I begin by giving less than half of my disk to the new Vista install, a common clean start to a gradually failing Windows operating system. Suspecting I wouldn't be using Vista anytime soon, I didn't bother with updates or anti-virus, saving those wonderful tasks for a later date. The next step was the uneventful install of Jaunty, updates, multimedia codecs, and Virtual Box, nothing unusual. My first indication of problems were burning a audio CD for my daily commute. One of the touted features of Jaunty was the much improved Brasero CD/DVD burning software. After building my list of tracks I began the burning process. Stepping away and returning to my machine, there sat Brasero with a message “normalizing title...” After a short on-line search, I found there is a bug with the normalizing plug-in for Brasero, that is installed and enabled by default. No problem, turn off the plug-in and a audio CD is created, albeit with varying volume between tracks. |
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I had to send my netbook, an Acer Aspire One, for repair after three months of use. The unit originally came with Windows XP, but had 1Gb of memory and a 160Gb hard drive, a configuration not available on Linux versions. I installed Fedora 10 XFCE respin, but when sending in the unit I knew that Acer would probably re-install Windows XP; Acer was upfront about this. As I suspected the repaired unit arrived with a fresh install of Windows XP.
This leads me to Easy Peasy v1.1, which is based on Ubuntu 8.10. Installing the XFCE respin of Fedora was not uneventful. I had to search the Internet on how to configure the wireless adapter, sound and installing all of the multimedia codecs for video and Internet. It wasn't a difficult task, but took a little time going over different web sites and getting the configuration just right. After the work was done I was happy with the final result. I didn't really want to go through that process again. |
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Zotero is a free Firefox extension that any Librarian, bibliographer or researcher would It is not necessary to write a "how to" here. The Zotero website has excellent documentation |
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I thought I'd upload an example of the type of video effects that can be created in Linux using (mostly) GUI-based editors. The video is created from still images taken at my office when we had put all the Christmas decorations up. Additionally, I'm creating a site which will provide both 'how tos' and links to practical content on video creation and editing. I'll post the address of my new site when it's more complete. Please enjoy. |
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