Following the proliferation of available ubuntu flavours, I dreamt with interest that the worlds most popular Linux distribution is no longer content to constrain their target user.
Gentle reader, I present to you mewbuntu 
Create the following script somewhere. I choose ~/bin.
#!/bin/bash
src=/insert/path/to/mounted/camera
DST=/home/shared/Photos/camera_sync/
rsync -rtv --modify-window=1 --progress --ignore-existing $SRC $DST
xmessage "Camera Sync Complete!"
Find the gnome removable media preferences application. (On Ubuntu it’s at System->Preferences->Removable Drives and Media).
Under the Multimedia tab change the Digital Camera command to:
gnome-terminal -e "/path/to/your/script"
Matt’s music player of choice under ubuntu. Essentially does the same job as iTunes without the online sales bit. Playlists, external media, rating, album art, id3 tags etc
http://www.exaile.org/
Can I upgrade my version after having apt-get install(ed) it?
A quick visit to getdeb revealed a newer SoftwarePackage exaile_0.2.5b-1getdeb1_i386.deb so I downloaded that and installed it using the GUI(gdebi 0.1.4ubuntu13), clicked my desktop icon and … nothing! Invoking the app from the command line gave me this error
matt@precuntu:~$ exaile
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/exaile", line 65, in ?
from xl import *
File "/usr/share/exaile/xl/tracks.py", line 18, in ?
import common, media, db, config, trackslist
File "/usr/share/exaile/xl/media.py", line 18, in ?
import mutagen, mutagen.id3, mutagen.flac, mutagen.oggvorbis
ImportError: No module named oggvorbis
This ubuntu forum link provided a source for the missing python-mutagen package so I was able to download, build and install as per the instructions there.
Using dyne:bolic 1.4.1 my soundcard is correctly detected but I get no sound when playing something.
start fx xmms and let it play a song. This xterm command will do that:
xmms somesong.mp3 &
or type one of the following lines:
cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp
cat /dev/urandom > /dev/sound/dsp
(will produce noise)
In the xterm then write:
alsamixer
here you can with the left/right arrow on the keyboard choose different output possibilities. With uparrow turn up one after the other each output until you get which output the card is using. When the correct one is found - turn down the others. (for me the correct one was DAC)
I’ve got an on-board soundcard and a PCI one, but cannot make it (PCI) work. What’s wrong?
Maybe you have to disable your on-board soundcard. You can do this through the BIOS setup.
Another trick got mentioned on the mailing list, by jaromil:
The /dev/dsp device configured by default in dyne:bolic sound applications is a symbolic link (see ‘man ln’) to the real soundcard, and as such it can be linked to a different soundcard.
A list of the soundcard devices is given by the command:
ls /dev/snd/dsp*
which basically prints out all files starting by ‘dsp’ in the /dev/sound directory.So you can easily change it with:
ln -sf /dev/snd/dspN /dev/dsp
where N is the number of the soundcard you want, normally the onboard is the first.This way you will change the default soundcard pointed by the /dev/dsp device in dyne:bolic.
About the volume: it starts to a default value on the first soundcard, all other soundcards are muted. most simple soundcards can be setted using the ‘audio levels mixer’ from the menu, but multichannel soundcards need alsamixer (command from the XTERM) to change volumes on their channels.
Fantastic free linux distro focussed on providing fully featured multimedia authoring on modest hardwarare. It runs as Live CD which means you don’t need to install it if you want to just test it out - find it at www.dynebolic.org
So far I’ve run it on Tabadley and it has a few problems.
try
X -configure :1
in a terminal window.It will generate a file /root/xorg.conf.new
Copy this file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Then, hit Ctrl+Alt+Backspace
your screen should clear and come back at the highest resolution it can handle
if it doesn’t come back, but drops you to a command line, type “startx” and hit EnterHope this helps,
Richard
The vga=794 didn’t work for my computer, but searching through the archives, I found this other method.
When in dyne:bolic
# X_RESOLUTION=1024x786X_RESOLUTION=1200x800That’s what worked for me.
I kept getting told that sound resources were already in use, etc, etc, maybe I want to consider a sound daemon. Well I do! So I researched around these keywords - sound daemon to allow multiple simultaneous sound sources.
I decided to follow this guide http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Hear_multiple_sounds
and it all works a treat! It’s just a shame that such an apparently simple fix didn’t make it into the standard ubuntu desktop installation. AFAICR all of the required packages were already installed on my machine leaving the simple addition of .conf file for it all to work.
An irreverent look at the world of Linux and Open Source. The Wolverhampton based bunch provide a welcome UK voice amongst the glut of US based offerings. If you’re easily offended by industrial language then listen from behind the sofa.
Yay!! I can now play my wma files! Small but important 
As su created /usr/local/firefox in which to install my browser of choice and then ran firefox-installer.
Post install I searched in vain for a Gnome equivalent to kappfinder as an easy way of adding apps to the menu. I couldn’t find anything like it so I added Firefox manually using menudrake - the icon is in firefox’s icon folder.
It appears that some of my wma files are encrypted rendering Totem unable to play them. Instead of googling for ages and risking breaking the 95% correct audio thus far I’ll re-rip them from the original CDs.
I’ve only got a few contacts to migrate from kontact into evolution but I should have maybe done some looking before deciding to shun KDE altogether as I only made a .csv backup.
Luckily I found http://jdshelp.org/howtos/evolution/outlook-to-evolution.php with a Perl file included for download (http://jdshelp.org/howtos/evolution/01-csv2vcard.pl)
Oh dear! The .csv that Kmail spits out is clearly different to Outlook version that the Perl file was expecting. I’d like to think that it’s worthwhile hacking the Perl but
1. I haven’t started the “Teach Yourself Perl in 24Hours” book yet.
2. Opening the .csv in OO.org reveals that I’ve only got eight friends anyway!
It also appears to be impossible to import Kmail messages into Evolution if the maildir format is used - bummer. My cunning plan to get round this is to copy my ~/.Mail folder over to the KDE laptop and create a few new folders using the mbox format. Then I’ll copy the messages from the old folders to the new before sending them back over for import
Gnome observations:-
I don’t like the Gnome CD player but RhythmBox integrates nicely with Nautilus (Gnome’s file manager/browser)
One of the most frustrating aspects of my last installation was the determined inability to rip CDs. Having installed both RhythmBox and SoundJuicer I’m attempting to rip as I type -exciting! Previously I only managed to get files which were either hopelessly corrupted with noise or were about 5% of their predicted witgh play lengths to match.
Nope! Sound Juicer took at least an hour to produce a 60 odd Mb ogg file but it stuttered and skipped so much as to be unplayable.
Frustrating indeed as I can rip music using Windo$e on this very same machine. When I’ve got time I’ll investigate I/O matters.
*Just realised that I was trying to rip directly to my lacie pocket drive which is only hooked up with plain old USB. On retrying a much smaller file direct to the HD i get about the same result so I’ll try later when I’m not working on the machine at the same time.
Real Player 10 doesn’t want to play ball. When I run realplay it spawns a realplay.bin or two and sits in the background only visible in top - no sign of anything in the taskbar. I’ve tried a few switches revealed by realplay –help but they make no difference. I’ve also tried running as root with no joy.
Mandrake’s rpmdrake logs activity to /var/log/messages so I can find out whether I installed Real Player from an rpm or the bin file. Maybe I’m not a newbie any more if I can use
# cat /var/log/messages |grep 885 > /home/matt/rpm.log
without having to think too hard about it. Better still
# cat /var/log/messages |grep "[885]: Installing" > /home/matt/rpm.log
The solution/hack is found at the Helix forums
https://helixcommunity.org/forum/forum.php?thread_id=906&forum_id=7
and involves (as root) removing two files
swfformat.so
swfrender.so
As soon as they are moved or renamed realplayer fires up just fine (and all those background realplay.bin processes suddenly display their GUIs)
I’d installed Real Player from RealPlayer10GOLD.rpm found at www.real.com/linux
I was hoping that Real Player would play my CDs just like the W$ version but it doesn’t want to so I’m loading up my catapult with a stone that’ll hopefully kill two birds. IOW I’m installing grip to see if it’s a better player and ripper.
Annoyance #1 the gnome volume control doesn’t have any effect on grip so you have to use the internal one.
Success #1 grip plays one of Mr Hollands home baked CD mixes :)))))
Failure #1 grip makes a convincing looking 2.8Mb test wav that contains complete silence
How do I disable specific system sounds within Gnome?
Quick answer: Make a new document, call it empty.wav, bung it (or a link to it) into /usr/share/sounds/ and select it as the sound for the event that you’d like to disable.
Long CLI answer:
# mkdir ~/.sounds
# touch ~/.sounds/empty.wav
# su
# ln -s ~/.sounds/empty.wav /usr/share/sounds/
First you make a hidden folder in your home account so the wav gets backed up and retained when you install a new distro.
Then you make an empty wav file called empty.wav in your newly made and hidden sounds folder.
Then you substitute user to root as you don’t have permission to rummage in the /usr/share/sounds/ folder.
Finally you make a soft link (shortcut, alias, symlink whatever) from the new file to the sounds folder.
The last two stages just make the next bit a lazy clickers dream.
From the Gnome Control Centre (Desktop Preferences) choose Sound and pick your empty alias for any event that you’d like to disable.
Inkscape is a program I really like as it pretty much alleviates my need to dive into FreeHand on Windows. I’ve previously installed it using autopackage without problems but I just can’t get it work with my current config. Complaints of a lack of GTK2 C++ stop the process and the instructions point to using urpm to install gtkmm. I duly did as I was told and opted for the most up to date version but that didn’t do it. I regressed to an earlier version with the same non result. I’m really keen to get the latest version of inkscape as it’s developing fast but I can only get .3.9 through rpmdrake and the latest is .4.1.1
Maybe it’s time I learnt to hand roll?
Inkscape up and working but I’m missing a few items to ensure complete happiness which I’ll rectify when time allows:
Extension "AI Output" failed to load because a dependency was not met.
Extension "Postscript Input" failed to load because a dependency was not met.
Extension "Sketch Input" failed to load because a dependency was not met.
Extension"EPS Input" failed to load because a dependency was not met.
I’ll be needing illustrator (AI) output for blender.
While I mention blender it’s worth noting that it’s still ghastly on this machine - it really doesn’t like my graphics card (MGA 400 DH) and the price of a comparable (but compatible) card these days is in the low 10’s of £s so I should swap.
The Gnome Control Centre thingy doesn’t seem to allow access to all sound events so I’m twanging and swooshing when changing Terminal tabs for instance.
Good Gnome thing: the terminal understands hyperlinks.
Established that Gnome is built with the Gtk toolkit whereas KDE uses Qt.
I now know therefore that I require GtkGuitune and not QtGuitune if I’m going to wean myself off KDE - which I plan to do.
Real installation showstopper was forgetting to disable ACPI in the BIOS. As a result the installation would crash and burn in apparently random places and I only twigged on about the fifth abortive install. The biggest annoyance with a crash like this is that there’s absolutely no information to be had from the machine as to what’s occurred as the hardware has simply shut the machine down to all intents and purposes. Sometimes I’d be left with an inactive screen, keyboard and mouse and others the screen would die - both outcomes needing a hardware reset to clear.
The addition of
append="acpi=force"
to my lilo.conf will allow me to turn acpi back on in the bios for seamless auto-power-off like you’d expect. This has to be forced on my machine as the BIOS is pre-2000.
Added urpm sources:
urpmi.addmedia NORLUG-10.1 http://mirror.datapipe.net/norlug/mandrake-10.1/RPMS/ with hdlist.cz
urpmi.addmedia eslrahc http://www.eslrahc.com/10.1/ with hdlist.c z
urpmi.addmedia plf-free ftp://plf.time4t.net/pub/plf/mandrake/free/10.1 with hdlist.cz
urpmi.addmedia plf-nonfree ftp://plf.time4t.net/pub/plf/mandrake/non-free/10.1 with hdlist.cz
urpmi.addmedia --update updates http://www.sunsite.org.uk/package/mandrakelinux/official/updates/10.1/main_updates with media_info/hdlist.cz
urpmi.addmedia main http://www.sunsite.org.uk/package/mandrakelinux/official/10.1/i586/media/main with media_info/hdlist.cz
urpmi.addmedia contrib ftp://ftp.sunsite.org.uk/package/mandrakelinux/official/10.1/i586/media/contrib with media_info/hdlist.cz
Get them from norlug.org, eslrahc.com and easyurpmi.zarb.org
Installed so far:
