Yesterday i installed codecs etc, that allowed me to play mp3 and do various other stuff and i said i would mention what apps i was using.  Todays post will go through a few that i will use and how to install others that i find useful

Music

Playing music is something i do quite often, it’s nice to listen to some tunes while surfing or working and my music player of choice is Rhythmbox, you’ll find it in the menu as it’s one of the apps that’s installed by default.  It’s looks loosely resemble itunes, but that’s where the similarity ends.  **One thing that i will mention is that, if you’ve not already installed the ubuntu-restricted-extras, rhythmbox will prompt you to install codecs to play your media**

Surfing

The default web broweser is Firefox, works fine, but a few people i know have suggested i try Google Chrome As i’m running a 32bit version of Lucid i downloaded the 32bit Deb, there are multiple ways to install a .deb [a packaged file] but i simply used sudo dpkg -i filename.deb and yes it does seem faster

Photos

The new default photo manager with Ubuntu is now a app called Shotwell, i love this app, it’s clean, simple to use and does actually work [for all my needs]  Looking at the Shotwell page the version that is supplied with ubuntu is not the latest version, not a problem as i’m sure it will upgraded, but i want it now as it has a better support for RAW files which some of my photos are.  Right so how to i get the latest version?  I’ve read about PPA’s on the internet so was wondering if Shotwell has one, hell yeah baby

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yorba/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install shotwell

I also like to use certain apps that arn’t installed by default, i wondered why apps weren’t installed and it basically all comes down to the fact that on the Live cd [i'll come to that in a bit] there isn’t enough space.  But it’s simple enough to install, from command line

sudo apt-get install miro vlc leafpad gftp <insert anything else you want here>

That was just a very brief intro to apps, there are hundreds if not thousands more…..now it your time to go play and take a look at what’s available.

Tomorrow i’m going to step away from the laptop and find out a little more about the company that produces ubuntu, Canonical

[PHORONIX] Baru saja mengumumkan kabar baik mengenai GPU Intel, terutama i8xx. Seperti yang kita ketahui bersama, Lucid "dianugerahi" dengan galat pada driver GPU Intel. Hal ini karena memang Intel sedang merestrukturisasi driver-nya. Dimulai dengan penggabungan driver -i910 dan -i810 menjadi satu -intel. Lalu kemudian, Intel berusaha mengembangkan GEM/UXA untuk mendukung KMS. Sayangnya, hal ini menyebabkan regresi terhadap GPU lama seperti seri i8xx.

Baru kemarin [PHORONIX] memberitakan bahwa pengembang Ubuntu menambal driver mereka dengan versi lama. Saya sudah mencobanya dan memang sistem menjadi stabil. Silakan kunjungi [RAOF] untuk info lebih lanjut. Intinya, berikut yang dapat dilakukan.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:raof/aubergine

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Ya, ada beberapa langkah yang dilewati, seperti misalnya mengimpor kunci. Tapi, intinya, driver Intel akan ditatar.

Referensi:

[PHORONIX] Phoronix. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODQzMQ

[UBUNTU] Ubuntu Mailing https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-x/2010-July/000905.html

[RAOF] https://edge.launchpad.net/~raof/+archive/aubergine

All *nix machines have the feature allowing you to compare two files --often
useful to do a quick 'cmp' or
'diff'
on the cli for a file comparision --a good feature for a small script file or
documents. However, if you want to compare chunks of code, between two
versions, then the readability isnt optimal.

Meld to the rescue!

Meld is a visual diff and merge tool which allows you to compare two or three
files located in different directory paths on your local machine and edit them.
It allows comparison of upto three folders. That is a good software Meld has
been packaged for Ubuntu
and a "sudo apt-get-install meld" would install this small utility
which you can access via: Application >Programming >Meld Diff
Viewer.

That's it. 

It’s been a while since I blogged since its a busy day nowadays. Anyway, here it goes.With the usage of upstart, many SYS V style ways becoming obsolete. One of the prominent thing is the lost of /etc/inittab. Usually, when we created a standalone booth, we would embedded our setup using that; we put our script into it. If we are using X, one of the alternative is to use GDM. For the low cost solution often this solution is cumbersome. After some digging, I’ve found another neat solution: using nodm.

To install nodm:

$ sudo apt-get install nodm

To enable nodm:

$ sudo $EDITOR /etc/default/nodm

[Note: Change $EDITOR to whatever your text editor]

Change NODM_ENABLED value into true:

NODM_ENABLED=true

Usually, standalone booth run as root user because of the nature of its purpose: single user experience. However, you can make a user and set the user to be able to access the X.  We can set a non-root user by editing NODM_USER value  into:

NODM_USER=$USER

[NOTE: Change $USER with whatever user you have setup before]

By default nodm uses XSession, so here some tips regarding XSession:

1. To run scripts/applications that need to be executed with root privilege, put the script into /etc/X11/Xsession.d directory.
2. To run scripts/applications that runs with normal user, put the script into ~$USER/.xsession

[NOTE: ~$USER means the home directory of the chosen user.]

Please bear in mind, both are incompatible. If you put .xsession, XSession will use it instead scripts in Xsession.d directory. With some scripts, we can achieve both; the script left as an excercise to the reader. (Or may be later, remind me to do so)

Bye for now.