A death in my family (my mother) resulted in my inheriting a nice home in southwest Florida. My girlfriend, now my wife, Mary retired from her employment and we are both relocating to the new home. Mary is a heavy computer user. She relies on the Internet for family communication via email and Facebook, and for gathering information using search engines. There was a problem. Mary had never used anything but Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. And of course there were no Microsoft products at the new home. I gave Mary some choices. She could use the Apple desktop running OS X or the Toshiba laptop running Ubuntu Linux. For a browser Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome were installed on both computers and Safari also was on the Apple equipment.

We started off on the Apple and the Chrome browser. She liked Google Chrome immediately. Just a few questions on how to get around in Mac OS X. A few days later I had the Apple tied up and she wanted to get online. She asked about the laptop. I warned her that it was a Linux machine. She replied that she was willing to try it. I booted the machine and showed her how to use the drop down menu to launch Chrome. In a minute or two we were both doing our online activities.

The following day was even easier. She simply asked if I would be needing the laptop? I said “No, go ahead and use it.” With no instruction at all she booted up and was quickly online. There were some photos in her camera that she wanted to email. I introduced her to F-Spot and in a few minutes the task was accomplished.

The point is, that all three OS’s are equally easy. Yes, there is a “learning curve” for general computer usage. but once you’ve completed it you can be comfortable with any OS. The myth that “Linux is hard to learn” is being quickly dispelled as more people like Mary simply try it out.

When Mary’s Windows desktop gets moved to the home she wants to leave Windows on it… for a while anyway. Eventually a virus will bring it down.

Apple names Mac OS X releases after wild jungle cats, Jaquar, Tiger, Leopard and etc. A Lynx is a genus of medium sized wild cats. If future Ubuntu releases are to be more Mac-like in look and feel then this is certainly an apprpriate release in which to make that change.

The GNOME desktop is highly customizable. If it happens that you prefer the window controls to remain on the right this click here for instructions on how to use the GNOME Configuration Editor to make that change. Alternately if you have the latest version of Ailurus installed it can make the change for you.

What this clever program does is to setup a web server on your machine. Besides the money manager, there are programs for file and photo sharing, music playing and a bittorrent client. Upon initial use you setup a free account and receive a URL for your server. At this point you can access your data or share it from anywhere on the Internet with a web browser! As remarkable as that is there is more.

Codelathe markets a gadget they call the Tonidoplug. The plug has an embedded Linux distro, specifically Ubuntu 9.04. Besides the electrical plug (available for both European and North American standards) the plug has only two connectors, a USB port and an ethernet port. The idea is that you store data you want available on the Internet on a USB storage device and cable it to the plug. Use the ethernet port to connect to your hub or router. The embedded Linux runs the server so you do not need to be running it on your regular machine or even have your regular machine turned on! The Tonidoplug is priced at $99 (US) and equivalent euros.

With the free server you can access the Tonido App Store to keep the installed programs up to date or to buy new ones as they are developed. This is similar to the concept used by Apple on the iPhone. Do not expect many more free apps from Codelathe but the current free apps are well worth the download. This is a great way to share files. Unlike Dropbox and Ubuntu One, all your shared files are stored on a local device without a limitation on size before additional cost.

Get it today!

Back in the days when I was a student, I always wondered if classmates who took copious amounts of notes ever really learned anything. It’s much the same with learning Linux. You can copy and paste a lot of commands but that is just blindly making changes. It is not learning.

Apply a tweak in the same way that you would use the command line. You should never issue a command until you understand exactly what it is doing. Neither should a tweak be applied unless the user completely understands its effects. I have pointed out before that the GNOME configuration editor is purposely not enabled in the menus to avoid newbies from messing up their desktop. And if you do tweak, I would strongly advise keeping a record of it in case strange events start occuring at a later date. I practice what I preach, and believe me, good notes have saved my day numerous times.

Tweak only with caution!

Transcode is available in the standard repositories. Install it from the command line (sudo apt-get install transcode) or use Synaptic. Here is the syntax of the command:

transcode -i input.avi – P 1 -s <desired gain> -N 0×55 -o output.avi

Let’s clarify this a little. Input.avi and output.avi are the names of your input and output files. If your input name contains spaces you should rename it to something without spaces. Otherwise you will have to use the “escape” character “\” for the command to parse correctly. For example “My Rip.avi” would be entered as “My\ Rip.avi”. This gets messy, so just rename the file.

0×55 is telling transcode that you want the output sound to be mp3 encoded. You can have other encodings if you so desire. Read the manual by entering man transcode on a command line for further information.

<desired gain> requires a little knowledge about decibels. Decibels follow a logarithmic scale. To double your volume you would enter a value of 3. A value of 6 would quadruple the volume. A value of 2 would result in an increase of about 60% Stay with low values, A value to high could damage your speakers, and sound distortion is likely. Replace <desired gain> with a value of your choosing.

That’s it for now. Let’s hope Ubuntu finally gets sound right in Lucid.

This post at UbuntuGeek instructs on how to install w32codescs and the mplayer plugin. Read the comments as they make some minor corrections to the post. Your success rate will immediately improve but will not be perfect. You might find, as I did, that using a stand alone media player like Banshee, xmms or VLC might be a better way to play the station than with a browser. Let’s use WRTI (Philadelphia) as an example. I like their music selection and I simply ignore the weather and traffic reports that are irrelevalent to me in Florida.

At the WRTI website you will see a LISTEN LIVE button. Clicking on the button will not work. However, if you right click on the button you can Copy Link Location to your desktop. It is a file with a .m3u file extension(classical-247-mp3.m3u). Open the file with gedit or any text editor. This reveals the url of a generic mp3 stream (http://wrti-ice.streamguys.net:80/classical-247-mp3). Opening this location in Banshee or in xmms will play the station. For some reason on my machine Exaile did not like it.

Your success with using Firefox will also be improved by installing the Novell Moonlight (aka Silverlight) plugin. Go to this wesite for installation. Please, no complaints from mono haters. I’m just telling you how to do it, it’s your choice whether to do it.

Finally, you can try RealPlayerGOLD11. It’s open source and promises to play Winows streaming media. I have not tried this but I want you to be aware of it.

Good Luck and Happy Listening!

Doh! Finally I realized that my graphis card might be the limiting factor. So how can you determine your card’s possible resolutions? First install the hwinfo package from the repositories. Bring up a terminal and issue..

sudo apt-get install hwinfo

Or, if you prefer, use the Synaptic Package Manager.

Then from a terminal issue..

sudo hwinfo –framebuffer

Your graphics card will be identified and you’ll see a listing of all possible resolutions. In my case, there was no vertical resolution greater than 768. Oh well!

Begin by right clicking on some empty space in the panel. Among the options you will see “Properties“. Clicking on that will reveal several visibility options. Check the boxes next to “Show hide buttons” and also “Arrows on hide buttons“. Return to your desktop. Notice the arrows on each end of the panel. Click on one. Watch the panel slide off to the side.

Once again right click on empty space. This time notice the option “Add to Panel“. You are now offered a long list of Panel Applets. By default the Workspace Switcher and the Trash applets are activated. The remainder of the panel is used as the taskbar. Yes, these applets are certainly useful but they really don’t need to be fixed to a panel, or at least not to the bottom panel.

A dock also serves as a taskbar. Furthermore, you can add docklets to replace panel applets. My next comments will refer to Docky, the dock that I use, but other docks such as the Cairo Dock or the AWN dock may be equally configurable. Instructions for the installation of Docky appear here.

Docky installs with a few default docklets and you can configure it for others. When running as a taskbar, right clicking on an icon will give you the option to pin that app to the dock. Once you have Docky configured to your liking you can return to your GNOME desktop. Right clicking on a panel icon will give you the option to remove it. On my desktop I removed icons for Firefox, email, trash and clock, all of which were now on the dock.

The only remaining bottom panel applet was the Workplace Switcher. I removed this too but not before adding it to the top panel that had gained some free space. With the email, browser, terminal, clock and trash icons now pinned to the dock you probably only need two workspaces. Why two? Sometimes an app will crash freezing your display and leaving your mouse useless. You can go to another workspace with your keyboard.. CTRL+ALT+RIGHT (LEFT) Arrow. Then you can open a terminal and kill the crashed process. Right click on the workspaces applet and reduce their number to two.

This completes our panel customization. All that remains of the bottom panel is a little arrow in the corner. Mine has not been pressed for several days.

In reading another blog I found a GNU/Linux user who tried to install Mint on a friend’s machine. That user encountered the 800X600 limit and for him, it was a show stopper. So… the bug is not limited to Koala. No, not at all.

Today I downloaded a livecd of Fedora 12 (Constantine) and ‘burned’ the iso to a bootable USB stick. Guess what? Constatine is constipated too. Yes, that’s a pun but it’s fitting. The resolution bug is not confined to Ubunu or its derivatives. Once again I could not achieve a screen resolution greater than 800X600. I am not a regular Fedora user but, as the work-around described in the earlier post relies on some Unix commands and not Ubuntu itself, I would expect that affected Fedora users could use the same fix.

What do Koala and Constantine have in common? Could it be the ‘new’ Intel video drivers that both distros have adopted? This is just a guess, but I do know that a huge number of users have boxes with Intel drivers and that enough users are encountering the bug so as to mention it in blogs!

Developers… let’s get this damned thing fixed!

I like to compose my posts offline. For the past few months I have been using the ScribeFire Firefox add-on. This has worked well but Firefox often crashes after a posting. It also seems a bit clumsy to use a web browser to update a blog. A client not involving a browser would be preferable. Bilbo would be nice but I use Ubuntu (GNOME) and not Kubuntu (KDE). Here are your install instructions for Ubuntu.

All of the packages and dependencies you need can be installed with the Synaptic Package Manager. Before proceeding check that you have enabled the universe and the multiverse repositories.

First install the package kdebase-workspace. This package installs all the core KDE desktop libraries. Your KDE applications should run with few problems and they’ll look pretty good too. Next install the four dependencies listed on Bilbo’s homepage. Specifically they are kdelibs5-dev, kdepimlibs5-dev, libboost-dev and libqt4-sql-sqlite. Synaptic will inform you of related dependencies as you go. Finally, install bilbo.

After the install go to Applications>Internet>Bilbo. On the Settings menu choose to Configure Bilbo Blogger. Finally choose Blog and enter your blog details. You should now be able to see, edit and compose posts. And yes, this is my first post using Bilbo.