Linux

ffmpeg test

Click on the link and save as or click open with and browse to your media player. In windows it will warn you that the extension is php. Click play anyway and it should stream.

If you download the file you might need to rename the file with the extension .mpg

 

Kubuntu 8.04 Rocks

Kubuntu 8.04 Completely Rocks!!!

On my T60, it is almost like having a completely new laptop. Everything is so much faster, almost twice as fast. My wireless networks seems to be to be faster. All desktop actions, quanta, kontact, everything. I am also very impressed with all of the application updates. Kontact now allows placing the sig before the quoted message. The digiKam Gallery2 sync allows setting the caption to be the title or description now, and allows uploading by album or tag. Everything just seems to be working faster / better.

kdesvn kompare diff script

This is just a simple perl script that makes it easy to do svn diffs in kompare. Basically, just put it in your bin dir and then from your svn working dir you can just say svndiffr filename or svndiffr path/filename. The script will print out the svn log for the file and ask you for a revision. Enter the revision number you want to diff you working copy with and hit enter. Kompare will launch with the revision on the left and the working copy on the right so that changes are saved to the working copy.

kdesvn and kompare

My kdesvn and kompare now work together in perfect harmony ... Finally! kdesvn is a really great gui svn tool for KDE, but it doesn't play nice with kompare by default. Kompare is a really great gui diff app for kde.

The problem is that although kdesvn comes preconfigured to use kompare as an external diff tool, the default is to pass both revisions in as stadard input, so kompare doesn't know where to save the merge file when you are done. I have been living with this for a while now just using the command line, but it was really bugging me for a couple of reasons.

Kubununtu 8.04 Beta

Yesterday I thought I would try the latest Kubuntu beta.
I installed the Beta on an older HP R3000. I downloaded the 64 bit version in hopes that 64 bit support had gotten better for things like Skype. Initially I was not that impressed.

I had troubles getting the Broadcom wireless card working and had a couple of other issues as well. The Broadcom thing has always been a problem in Ubuntu, usually requiring blacklisting drivers and installing ndiswrapper. I am sure I could have gotten this working with some more effort, but that isn't the point. PCLinuxOS 2007 walks you through loading ndiswrapper litterally making this process a breeze.

What A difference a day makes in open source.
Today I reinstalled, and did a full update. This time everything worked flawlessly. I think the problem previously might have been that I clicked through the hardware settings manager too fast. After clicking on an item you have to wait for the driver to download and install, but the checkbox you are clicking just says enable leading you to think it is just disabled. Clicking multiple items opens up multiple versions of adept and causes bad things to happen. A simple GUI fix could have prevented my user error. Anyway, everything installed perfectly and worked without any configuration. I am no longer using ndiswrapper for my broadcom wireless adapter. Nvidia-glx drivers installed for me, as did compiz. Compiz is now somewhat integrated into the desktop which is wonderful. No compiz icon or configuring a custom session needed.

This is wonderfull!

Myth - You have to be comfortable on the command line to use Linux

We have all heard this one in one form or another. You have to use the console to use Linux. Linux is for command line junkies, etc.

While this used to be the case not so long ago, this simply is not the case anymore. Ok, semantically the last form is still true but we will come back to that. Today Linux is better on the desktop than Windows as far as the Desktop is concerned. You can do more in Linux with the Desktop than you can in Windows and it is more intuitive to boot.

Windows Vs. Linux

I read an article today about perceived value in operating systems. Basically the article stated that end users perceive Windows to have greater value than Linux because of the price tag. While I agree that this is probably the case, I completely disagree with anyone who claims windows has more value than Linux.

 

Control KDE applications from a terminal with dcop and kdcop

Ever want to shutdown a KDE application so that it goes through the normal shutdown procedure? Ever want to talk to an application from a script? Enter dcop and kdcop. dcop is a interface that lets you talk to KDE applications from the command line. kdcop is a nice gui interface to query kde's dcop server and see what commands are available for any running appications.

PC LinuxOS 2007 vs Ubuntu

I just had to blog about PCLinux Vs Ubuntu because I am sitting here re-installing Ubuntu Gutsy for the 5th time in the past few days. So far I am not that impressed with Gutsy to say the least, but I like being bleeding edge and fidgiting so it is a good fit. If you just want a simple linux system that works out of the box and is easy to admin get PC Linux. Seriously, I have installed many distros in the past month and PC Linux seems to get everything right out of the box. The default bash settings are great. The default 3d beryl settings are great. Almost everything you need is in the rpm repository and PCLinux uses synaptic and apt-get with their rpm based repository. To get a similar setup in ubuntu requires many hours of customization. Sure in the end you might have a bit faster system, but throw in all the time you spent customizing it and it probably is a wash.

What I do not like about Gutsy!
1. strigy works in PC Linux, but in kubuntu it freaks out konqueror's location bar.
accidentally type in a url without the protocal and strigi loads up after which you can't add the protocal because strigi keeps updating the location bar - I was fine with locate:
2. dolphin - Just give me konqueror please
3. Beryl / Compiz - By default PC Linux allows me to load or not load my glx desktop, in ubuntu I have to make a new profile, or use custom installers that usually just break the system.
4. The update scripts seem like they are written by microsoft. Trying to upgrade from the last RC to the finall release was a joke. Fetching updates - Fetching complete then Fetching file 1 of 2 - what, you just told me Fetching was complete - crash. Send error report - Crash. Thanks guys

Don't get me wrong, I like having the bleeding edge and don't mind spending hours customizing things, but seriously PC Linux gets a lot of stuff right out of the box. If you don't want to tweak, or are a windows user switching to linux get PC Linux. It is very stable and configured better out of the box than most ubuntu installations after months of tweaking.

How To: tar rsync scp across network

This is a nice little howto for tarring across a network. http://happygiraffe.net/copy-net#rsync