The Smorgasbord

Here’s a list of top 25 Ubuntu Blogs that just came out the other day. A lot of times you get a “top list”, and it’s just somebody’s favorites. This list is hundreds of thousands of people’s favorites because the criteria to get on the list were to be in the google top 200 for the terms “ubuntu blog”, and then they were scored by google pagerank, alexa ranking, technorati score, and number of bloglines subscribers. All in all what you get a REALLY GOOD quality list of blogs about Ubuntu Linux. If you use Ubuntu you’ll want to bookmark that page and visit it again and again.

**UPDATED**

Converting video in Ubuntu Linux 5.10 (Breezy) took me a little longer to figure out that I anticipated – but only because there are so many different solutions. If you use another flavor of Linux – I’m sure this guide can help you too. I download a lot of videos, and of course want to burn some to VCD or DVD. The formats are anything from wmv to avi, mpg to mov. I installed a lot of GUI tools, and to be honest not a single one worked for me. I found tools to burn SVCD, VCD and DVD’s, but to convert the video and prepare it for burning is another matter. Most of the tools that burn video don’t convert it to the proper format. If for some reason you got to this page and don’t know what an SVCD or VCD are – please look them up at Wikipedia.com before continuing.

If you’re a former Windows user converting to Linux (like me), here’s some background. If you’re a linux pro – move on to the next paragraph. Most of the video conversion programs and utilities in Windows do the whole job from finish to end. What I mean is, they’ll help you edit your video, then covert it to the proper format, then help create your menus, and finally burn your finished project to CD…i.e. – Rip, Encode, and Burn. In Linux, in every step in the process different tools can be used depending on your needs. Some tools only do one thing. Others do it all. Most are just a GUI interface front end built on a common command line tools already on your pc.

If you have video that you need to make linear timeline type edits in, then use the Linux GUI video editing tool Kino which you can find at http://www.kinodv.org/. If you use Ubuntu – you can install Kino using your Synaptic package manager. Kino is a nice video editor, but in only edits “digital video” with .dv or .dif extention (from a digital video camera), or quicktime format, or digital video in .avi format. This basically means, you can’t edit things in .mpg format, .asf or .wmv (of course – Windows formats), or divx or xvid. You need to “convert” the file to digitl video format before you can open it in Kino (read on for ways to convert video). If you just want to burn some video to a disc you can play in pretty much any DVD player – read on.

Getting Started

If this is your first time reading this page – or if you’re returning…strongly consider using the “subscribe post” link at the bottom of this article. I edit video all the time and constantly refine the content on this page to the latest tools and techniques I’ve found. If you subscribe, you’ll get an email whenever I edit this page. You won’t get email for any other reason.

I use K3B for almost all my VCD and DVD (iso) burning needs. K3B is a Linux burning program for CD’s and DVD’s – very similar to what Nero is like in Windows. But before I can burn a VCD or DVD I need to get my videos in the proper format by converting them. For the most part when converting them, I now exclusively use command line tools – which is a very quick and versatile way to do it once you know how. This may or may not be for you depending on your knowledge of UNIX and the command line. If you prefer a GUI interface, I will try to point out those options as well. If you can navigate directories in the terminal – you most certainly can use these commands to convert video there as well.

Converting and Encoding Video

I now have 3 options for converting video well for use in a dvd player in Ubuntu Linux (or any linux distro). If you want to convert video for play on your computer – jump to the end of the article. First I’ll go over the first two which are ffmpeg and mencoder. I used to almost exclusively use ffmpeg when making video to play in a dvd player. I’ve tried both, and gotten very poor quality video and results from mencoder. I know many swear by it, but maybe it needs more resources than my 1.2 Ghz 512MB ram machine will lend. ffmpeg works very well on my older hardware.

On the command line in terminal, you can of course just run the command “man ffmpeg” or “man mencoder” to read the manual (help) page for each to find out how to use them. If you don’t have either on your machine, just install using of course Synaptic Package Manager under System -> Administration. Using the manual pages, I wrote myself some examples that I thought I would most commonly use, and here they are:

FFMPEG on the command line:
===================

by selecting a format as one of the options (“vcd”, “svcd”, “dvd”, “dv”, “pal-vcd”, “ntsc-svcd”), all the format options (bitrate, codecs, buffer sizes) are then set automatically.

You can just type:
$ ffmpeg -i myfile.avi -target vcd /tmp/vcd.mpg

#same example but use high quality, ntsc vcd format
$ ffmpeg -i myfile.avi -hq -target ntsc-vcd /tmp/vcd.mpg

#same example but dvd quality
$ ffmpeg -i myfile.avi -target ntsc-dvd /tmp/dvd.mpg

#same example use same quality as source
$ ffmpeg -1 myfile.avi -sameq -target vcd /tmp/vcd.mpg

#converting a file for VCD format using a and b frames for MPEG 2
$ ffmpeg -i myfile.avi -target ntsc-vcd -bf 2 /home/user/Video/vcd.mpg

#same conversion, but start at 0 seconds and convert only first 45 minutes
#use -ss for start position and -t for duration
$ ffmpeg -i myfile.avi -target ntsc-vcd -bf 2 -ss 00:00:00 -t 00:45:00 /home/user/Video/vcd.mpg

#converting a file to mpeg using mencoder (poorer quality than ffmpeg I think, but that’s on my system – and it really depends on the file and the codec you’re using)
#see the tovid examples below for better better results with mencoder
$ mencoder -oac copy -ovc lavc -of mpeg -o output_file.mpg your_file.wmv

A new trick that I learned was that you can use ffmpeg to extract audio only from video files. Recently I made some .mpg files for a promo dvd I was making for my band. I wanted to also make a promo cd – but use the audio from the video files. Using ffmpeg, it’s possible to rip the audio from any video file (it can convert) directly to an mp3 file like this:
$ ffmpeg -i video.mpg -f mp3 audio_track.mp3

In that example, video.mp3 is your input file and audio_track.mp3 is your output mp3 file. It works great!

I keep a mencoder example around just in case I want or need to try it again and so I have a second option just in case ffmpeg doesn’t work well on a particular video. I sometimes use it to convert windows media files. One last tip – if you are going to be converting any windows media files – you must get the proper codecs installed on your system or ffmpeg won’t work. The easiest way to do this is by running the “Automatix” script explained in the ‘First Things to Do’ section of this guide. It installs the “essential-codecs” from the mplayer site automatically. If you have any problems with this, or don’t want or plan to use Automatix – just download and install them essential codecs from the mplayer web site yourself.

I love using ffmpeg – but some Windows media files it just won’t convert. It will convert a MB or two and then bomb out with a “segmentation fault”. If that happens – I used to try the mencoder option instead. Which brings me to my third and newest option – Tovid. I have found that using the Tovid option gives the best results, and every single Windows media format whether asf or wmv I’ve tried it has converted. Tovid is merely a frontend that uses ffmpeg, mencoder, transcode, and dvdauthor – but it does so very efficiently. I originally installed Tovid on Ubuntu using Synaptic package manager, which made an icon under the Sounds and Video system menu that brings up the 0.22 GUI interface. If you don’t have an icon in that menu, try running “tovidgui” from the command line to bring up the gui. This interface has never worked for me in Breezy (but does in Dapper flight 6). I downloaded the 0.25 Tovid from their web site and installed it from code using their instructions and the Tovid command line tools seem to be working for me so far. If you have any problems with python depencies when you install Tovid – be sure to run these 2 commands on your terminal, and then install Tovid again for it to work right:

$ sudo apt-get install python-wxgtk2.4
$ sudo apt-get install python-dev

Tovid is a suite of scripts that you can use for the various stages of the conversion and burn to disc process. They heavily use mencoder for conversion, and for some reason they do it much better than when I run mencoder myself. The first script of the Tovid suite that you’ll find handy is “idvid” (short for id video). Use it like this:
$ idvid file.avi

It will not only give you the video properties, you will get the width and height, aspect ratio, duration, bitrates, but the most important is the last bits of info you get. It will tell you whether the video and audio is compliant with VCD, SVCD, or DVD. Then you’ll know whether you need to convert it, or if you can burn it straight to disc.

After you run the idvid command on your video(s), you’ll probably need to convert them to the proper mpeg (mpg) format before burning. This is very easy using tovid on the command line. There are a multitude of options you can find in the man page, but these are the two most common I use:

$ tovid -dvd -ntsc file.mpg video
$ tovid -vcd -ntsc file.mpg video

after the tovid command the first option I use is to tell it whether or not to make the video format for a dvd or for a vcd. Then I use the ntsc option for my type of tv. Next I tell it what the input file is. Last, I tell it what to name the output file (prefix only with no extension)…i.e., if you make this video like I did, your output converted file will be video.mpg. If you accidentally name your output file video.mpg, not to worry – tovid will save it as video.mpg.mpg.

If you want to convert lots and lots of videos at once (like I sometimes do), and don’t want to run this command a ton of times, or write a script to convert them – tovid has a nice option. Just use tovid-batch instead like this:

$ tovid-batch -dvd -ntsc -infiles *.avi

You can also convert every single (video) file in a folder like this:
$ tovid-batch -vcd -ntsc -infiles *.*

If you’re not familiar with the command line or dos, the asterik means “do everything like this” (avi). So of course *.mpg would mean all mpg files, *.wmv, all windows media files, *.* means all files of all extensions, etc.

I don’t use it much anymore now that I know about the tovid-batch command, but you can install and using the ‘video-convert’ scripts from the ubuntu forums designed for nautilus. Nautilus is like the dekstop manager is Gnome, and if you right click the desktop – you’ll see a heading entitled “scripts”. Download the video-covert script from the forum and follow the instructions for installing it (it’s very easy). Once installed, just right click any video file(s), go to “scripts -> video-convert” and answer the simple option prompts and voila! It converts them all (using command line tools) for you! The greatest benefit of this is that you can shift-click multiple files at once, and use the script to convert them all one by one. Doing it yourself in terminal you would have to either convert them one by one, or write a script to create them in succession.

If you install this script and like it, you can also visit the ubuntu forums and get the audio-convert script too, to convert audio files the same way. You’ll be converting flac, ogg, wav, and mp3 files in no time. Just make sure that you’ve installed the command line tools for the formats you’ll be converting in synaptic. i.e., if you want to convert .flac files to mp3 using audio-convert, make sure you install the .flac command line tools in synaptic first so the .flac format will be supported and usable by audio-convert.

Making a Disc for Your DVD Player

Before I tell you how to create a disk for your dvd player – I first ask you to consider an option that will allow you to watch video on your t.v. from your computer, without converting anything! Believe it or not, I really convert video that often anymore, since my DVD player will now play plain data cd’s and dvd’s burned from my computer. Wouldn’t you like to do the same? It’s cheap and easy if you know what to buy…you can do this for under $30-$40.

There are two options – the first is to buy a region free dvd player that will play DVD, DivX, MP4, VCD, SVCD, MP3, WMA, JPEG, AVI, xVid, and mor The second is to buy a hard drive player or HDD player case. Basically – it’s the same as an external hard drive enclosure, but it also has a VGA cable and video and audio outputs to play audio and video directly to a computer monitor (without computer) or your television (without a computer). It has a chip inside that contains the menu system to navigate the hard drive and play video on it’s own. So, buy this empty enclosure, add a hard drive, hook it up to your pc with the usb cable (works with windows, mac, and linux) and transfer the video or audio to it. Then – hook it up to your tv or entertainment system with the included audio cables, and watch your movies without ever burning a cd or dvd. When your done watching your movies, just delete them and transfer more!! You can even take it with you on the road, watch in the car, on a laptop, or even in the hotel room, on anything with video/audio inputs!

I’ll show you the links first on where to get these on eBay, and then back to the “how to make a DVD” tutorial!!

Coverting video is the first step to making something you can play in your DVD player. You can burn video to a regular CD, and make either a VCD (Video CD) or SVCD (Super Video CD). The advantage is that you need only a regular cd burner and a simple CDR. The disadvantage is that you can only burn ~100 minutes of video, and the video quality is tv quality or less. In the ffmpeg commands above I show how to convert to either VCD or DVD formats very easily.

Once converted, it’s easy to use K3B to build a VCD or SVCD just by clicking on the files you want to add and burning to CDR. This is easy and cheap, but VCD’s can only store 70 minutes of video. If you have a movie or video that’s longer you can put it on 2 or more video cd’s easily. But burning dvd format files you’ve converted is not so easy because in order to make a dvd, the files have to be in the right format, in the right folders, and you usually need some type of menus or navigation system. It’s only easy once you know the commands – or if you have a decent gui program to put it all together. I’ve found that it’s also easier to create a DVD on the command line in linux (but I’ll go over GUI options after this too). For the command line – all you need is to have both dvdauthor and mkisofs installed. If you don’t, just add them in Synaptic Package Manager.

Then on the command line – use them like this:

Start by running this command from a directory that contains your newly coverted video file(s). Make sure that you have created a directory inside your current dir to create the new files. In other words, if you are in /home/Video in terminal, “mkdir dvd_ready” there to create /home/Video/dvd_ready/. As long as you already have your video in the same dir you’re running the command from (/home/Video/movie.mpg), you can run this:

#-o is output dir and movie.mpt is name of your movie
#for multiple video on same dvd, run this command for each movie
$ dvdauthor -o dvd_ready movie.mpg

#when all movies are added run this command to create table of contents file
$ dvdauthor -o dvd_ready -T

#run this command to create an ISO file to burn your DVD from
#-dvd-video is the format, -o is name of output file, dvd_ready is source dir
$ mkisofs -dvd-video -o dvd.iso dvd_ready

Then, when you are done just burn your .iso file to a DVD using K3B or another program. In K3B, I can burn my .iso to DVD in under 4 minutes with older hardware.

So creating a DVD in the terminal takes a few more commands – but hey – I can usually convert the video using ffmpeg and create the DVD files and iso in under 1/2 an hour, ready to burn straight to DVD. That is much faster then I was ever able to create a DVD from Windows.

Now, if you just must have a GUI program to create a dvd and the command line is just not for you – be sure to check out DeVeDe, QDVDAuthor, DVDStyler, AcidRip, and DVD::Rip.

Every now and then I find myself wanting to convert a video just for the computer. Maybe I want to create an avi video in Xvid format, or even DivX format. You may already have “transcode” installed. In terminal, type “man transcode” to get the transcode manual. If you don’t get anything – then go into synaptic and install it. You can always get the latest version from www.transcoding.org as well.

Here are some examples of using transcode to convert video:

Convert a video to xVid format:
$ transcode -i movie.mpg -o movie.avi -y xvid

Convert a video to DivX format:
$ transcode -i movie.mpg -o movie.avi -y divx

Do you have a better way to convert video or using command line video tools? Sign in and add your comment to this page now!

Did you find the terminal commands helpful? Would you like to get more little one and two line commands to convert, hack, play, and edit all kinds of multimedia on your linux computer? I have been reading all kinds of tutorials in forums and Linux help sites for months now. I hadn’t purchased any books to help me at all until just a few weeks ago. There was one that really caught eye called “Linux Multimedia Hacks” (which is pictured below) – it is impeccable as most O’Reilly books are – especially the hacks series. In the dozens if not hundreds of hours it will save you, it’s well worth the $20. I really wish I would have bought it before I started out figuring how to do this all on my own. I knew a very few hacks already, but now I have learned dozens of new ones. I tend to save all kinds of text files in my home folder with little command crib sheets, and I have tons of sticky notes on my desk. There really is something to be said for having a printed book reference at your disposal. That way – if you don’t convert a wav file to mp3, rip a cd, or make a dvd for a month or two, the answer is right in the book contents or index. Click on the book below for more info and consider buying a copy for yourself from Amazon. You spend more on a few pizzas than what it will cost….but it will be a reference you will use for many years to come.

Learn how to manage your music collection in Linux, including your iPod. Learn how to crop video during playback and recording. Learn how to create a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) or PVR (Personal Video Recorder) with MythTV. Learn how to rip and record streaming video and audio. Learn how to convert a dual layer DVD to a single layer dvd. Even learn how to synch your digital camera and computer, make image thumbnails, leave a watermark, or create a slideshow or screen capture movie. It’s all in the book….I’m still reading!!

originally posted: 2006-05-08 11:50:00 -0400

Linux Multimedia Hacks: Tips & Tools for Taming Images, Audio, and Video (Hacks)

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=273635&goto=newpost

originally posted: 2006-10-08 16:15:04 -0400

For me, setting up a printer was not all that difficult. First, let me say that a little google goes a long way. Honestly, if you got this far and your computer has ubuntu linux installed on it and you’re surfing the web, you should be able to handle setting up a printer in linux.

You should already have a printer service setup in ubuntu by default (cups, common unix printing interface). You can go do “System” -> “Administration” -> “Printing” and when the windows comes up click on “new printer”. You can try and use a “detected printer” if your printer is listed. I had my printer plugged in and on (usb) when I tried this and it wasn’t detected. But, I rebooted with it on and plugged in, and it was there then. The model number for my epson stylus wasn’t listed, so I tried the closest number, but it still wouldn’t print.

So I googled “setup printer epson stylus ubuntu linux”, and found a nice page with explicit instructions. I ended up downloading a linux driver from epson, and installing using the instructions I googled. My CX3200 is printing just fine.

So – to setup your printer, try to install using drivers already in Ubuntu. If that doesn’t work, go to the printer web site for your make (lexmark, ibm, epson, hp) and look for a linux driver. Last, google to find help. And if you are setting up a printer that is a multi-function device and has a scanner, you also want to go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager and install “XSane” – which will install a driver for your scanner as well. Then, when you are within any graphics program (like Gimp), you can “acquire” your images using the scanner and the XSane driver. It works well.

I should have mentioned – at any give time – the first place you should ALWAYS look for help is http://ubuntuforums.org/. There are tons of people there waiting to help you, and chances are your question has already been asked and answered by someone else.

Please add any linux printer help you may have by submitting a comment to this page.

originally posted: 2006-01-19 01:41:38 -0400

One of the first things most people like to do when poking around the computer is to listen to some music. Linux is not like windows with one way to do this (Windows Media Player). There are dozens if not hundreds of ways to listen to music in Linux. Over time you’ll figure out which programs work best for you. You’ll probably find out that you like more than one for different reasons at different times. In ubuntu, under the applications menu you will find some installed be default under the heading “Sound & Video”. The default player for both sound and video in ubuntu is “Totem”.

I am going to list the programs I use most and the reasons why. If you are going to try any of these and they weren’t installed by default – install them yourself (for free!) by clicking on the “System” -> “Administration” -> “Synaptic Package Manager” heading. Just click “search” and type in the name of the program you want to install, and then “Apply” to get it installed.

Music Programs I use

Beep Media Player: I use Beep Media player (BMP) a lot. If you’ve ever used WinAmp in Windows – it’s exactly like that. You can even use Winamp skins on it. I like it because it’s small, easy to create and save playlists – it just works. I used Amarok for awhile, which seems a bit like iTunes – allowing you to manage your entire music collection. But Amarok was cumbersome and not intuitive for me.

Audacity: Audacity is a sound editor. If you want to trim the beginning or ending from a song, or merge sound clips together – this is a great tool.

EasyTag: You probably have MP3′s that have the tags all screwed up. This nifty little tool lets you not only edit them, but it can grab the right information right from the Internet and populate the tags for you if you want.

Streamtuner: Tool for finding and listening to Internet Radio stations.

SoundJuicer CD Ripper: This tool is for ripping CD’s to mp3′s for so you can have them on your computer. By default this only rips music to Ogg Vorbis or FLAC formats. But open up the help in preferences, and search for “mp3″. You’ll find instructions for setting up a new format to rip to mp3 if that’s what you prefer.

Serpentine: This is hands down the easiest tool and interface I’ve seen yet for burning just audio CD’s. Just add your songs and burn.

You’ll notice that the difference between Linux and Windows is that in Linux there is a tool to do just about anything you want – an individual tool. In Windows they try and make one tool (like Windows Media Player) do a thousand things. In Linux once you find the tools you like – just open what you want when you need it. It’s all about choice and preference, and it’s all free!

Please comment and add to this page what sound and music programs you use in Linux and why.

originally posted: 2006-01-19 01:14:47 -0400

In the getting started section of this Ubuntu new user guide – I showed how you can view Windows and Mac drives using the winmac_fstab script to set them up to automatically mount when you login. But that’s for drives on your local PC in Ubuntu Linux 5.10. If you have Windows computers on your home or office small network, you would probably like to share files with them, and you can – using SAMBA!

Samba is a Windows compatible file and printer sharing service that you can install and run. I believe by default in Ubuntu it’s already running. Follow the official Samba How To and Reference Guide for install, configuration, and testing instructions.

You will find all this information in the Official How To Guide, but basically once Samba is installed (using Synaptic Package Manager if you don’t already have it), you are going to edit a text file for cofiguration called “smb.conf”. You’ll find this fill in Ubuntu 5.10 in /etc/samba/smb.conf. You will add (or remove) the options from that configuration file that you need to customize it to your liking. You will choose to set it up for access by user accounts, and last you will add a default account (or accounts) under System -> Administration -> Users and Groups to access your system from Windows machines.

All the correct information is in the How To Reference Guide above, but here are some pointers from someone who just set Samba up for windows file and print sharing:
make sure your username map line is right, like this:

username map = /etc/samba/smbusers

In the guide you will follow instructions to create a samba userfile, and your smb.conf file will point to this like the line above. If your username file isn’t mapped properly, you will never be able to connect from a windows computer on your network.

On your Linux computer, make sure that under System -> Administration -> general (tab) that the “Host” is the name of your computer (as it will be shared on the network). Also, make sure that the line:

workgroup = MSHOME

is the name of the actualy workgroup your home or small office lan is called.

If your Windows PC’s are Windows XP, just use the file and print sharing wizard, answer the questions, and make sure to set your workgroup correctly. Be sure the workgroup is the same as what you entered on the Linux PC during setup.

Last – make sure that you setup share(s) on your Linux box by going to “System -> Administration -> Shared Folders”. You can share mounted drives as well (I do), by using the “/media/hda1″ path in your smb.conf file as well.

That’s pretty much it….once you setup the Linux PC run the “testparm” command from the terminal to make sure you edited your config file properly. Then, on the Windows PC, add a new network place by browsing your enter network to find your linux PC, and then enter the account and password you setup for sharing on the Linux PC. If it connects you are good to do, if not read the troubleshooting section of the Samba Reference and How To Guide.

originally posted: 2006-01-24 00:32:07 -0400

In Ubuntu Breezy Badger 5.10 my flash plugin worked just fine in Mozilla Firefox. Then on a test partition I decided to install Dapper Drake flight 6, and now I’ve upgraded to the final version of Dapper. I’ve been using Dapper full time for about 3 months now, and until today I haven’t been able to view any flash in a web browser at all – including all flash games, youtube, google video, and many other things – including some features of myspace. I love linux – but you gotta have flash just to surf the web! I was trying to book a hotel today, and couldn’t view any of the pictures on the hotel web sites without the flash plugin working properly.

Now – as soon as I installed Dapper Drake 6.06, I installed all the flash things I could find in Synaptic. I installed what I thought was the most obvious – libflash-mozplugin. I guess this is the open source version of the flash plugin. I think it’s some kind of emulator. I’m no expert, but I can sure tell you that it just won’t allow you to view any modern (version 6-7) flash content.

Next – I looked up how to install flash plugin on Ubuntu linux (dapper). I went over to the guide at easylinux.info like I always do (first), and tried what it said. It said the same thing I found in all kinds of forums posts, run this code:


sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
sudo update-flashplugin


If you already have it – you’ll get the “already the newest version” message. Chances are though – you get the “installation failed” message like I did. So I read some more in the forums, and some said you could get the plugin direct from Macromedia.

I found this is true. You can visit www.macromedia.com (www.adobe.com) and just click on the “get flash” button to go directly to the download page for the linux version of the flash 7 plugin (official version from Macromedia). All you have to do is download this to your desktop, open terminal and go to that directory, and run:


$ sudo ./flashplayer-installer


The only thing you really need to know is the path or location of your Mozilla Firefox. You can run “which firefox” in terminal to find that out. For most Ubuntu (dapper) users it’s going to be /usr/lib/firefox. Then, just follow the prompt of the Macromedia installer to install.

But WAIT! After I did this – my firefox flash plugin STILL didn’t work (and boy was I pissed!). I must have read 4 dozens posts in ubuntuforums.org without a single answer. I did get this fixed just today – but I didn’t find this fix posted anywhere – I figure it all out on my own. If you have tried any one (or all) of the install options above, and firefox flash plugin still doesn’t work – try this:

1. In synaptic package manager, completely remove libflash-mozplugin. Make SURE you use the “completely remove” option, that gets rid of the gstreamer-ugly and couple other packages.
2. Download the latest flash plugin from www.adobe.com.
3. Unzip it to a folder on your desktop.
4. In terminal cd to that dir and sudo ./flashplayer-installer
5. follow the prompts, and make sure the path to your plugins is right

Then see if flash works in a browser – it should work just fine now on all the sites. You won’t be able to use flash 9 content (yet), but you should be able to view most things with no problem. I hope this helps some people, I couldn’t find this fix anywhere on the web.

originally posted: 2006-06-14 23:15:17 -0400

You can download and install thousands of free windows .ttf true type fonts from the web and install and use them in Ubuntu (or any distro) Linux.

Just download the fonts you want from free online web sites and archives (listed below), if necessary – unzip them to the desktop or another directory of your choice.

Then create a directory for your new fonts where the fonts are stored on your system. This is the location in Ubuntu Linux – your Linux distribution may be similar:

$ sudo mkdir /usr/share/fonts/myfonts

Then open your terminal to install them:

$ sudo cp /home/user/Desktop/*.ttf /usr/share/fonts/myfonts/

and refresh your font cache like this:
$ sudo fc-cache -f

Now open Open Office Writer or Gimp, and your fonts should be available! You can access your new true type fonts in any graphics, design, text based document application that uses fonts.

Here are some free archives to download fonts from. They will be listed as Windows true type fonts (ttf), but there are completely usable in all Linux distributions. A lot of font sites you’ll find on google are loaded with popup, ads, and garbage. I tried not to list any of those here, these are some of the best font sites I could find without “nagging” ads and crap.

Fonts 101

Abstract Fonts

1001 Free Fonts

Font Reactor

TypeNow

Font Village

EKNP Free Fonts

originally posted: 2006-05-16 09:58:47 -0400

Firefox comes installed in Ubuntu linux 5.10 by default. If you install the normal Ubuntu with the Gnome desktop, the earth logo on the top toolbar opens firefox. You can also get there by using ‘applications->Internet’.

The nice thing about Firefox is that it works the same in Linux as it does on Windows. Also the skins and extensions aren’t platform specific – so if you were used to certain ones in Windows, you should be able to install them all right here in Linux.

Firefox is very stable in Ubuntu – I haven’t had a single problem with it. Be sure to read the extensions thread – Firefox is best when customized just for you and the ways you work the web!

originally posted: 2005-11-23 22:54:24 -0400

So you’ve been using linux for awhile now, and it’s time to install another hard drive for some more storage? Maybe it’s finally time to wipe out a Window’s or NTFS partition.

In any event, I wrote this post so you would have a little help through this step. I’m going to assume that you already know how to install a hard drive. I’m also going to assume that you knew how to make it a master or slave, you’ve checked to make sure that it shows up in bios, and that it was intalled properly. It also assumes you’ve already formatted your drive in linux ext3 format, using a tool like gParted, or something similar.

If you’ve done all of these things, then boot up your system – and let’s get going. I’m using Ubuntu linux – formerly Breezy 5.10, but I’ve recently upgraded to Dapper 6.06.

Open up a terminal window and run the following command:
$ sudo fdisk -l

You should get a listing of the hard drives installed on your computer. There will be a little paragraph for each one that will look like this:


Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 4678 37576003+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 4679 4865 1502077+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 4679 4865 1502046 82 Linux swap / Solaris


In windows disk drives are assigned an alphabet letter, and traditionally – floppy disk drives were a: and / or b:, and the main hard drive was c:/. Then the first cdrom or dvdrom was d:/, and any additional drives would be e:, f:, and so on. In linux it’s kind of the same, but in a different format. All hard drives installed are listed in the ‘device’ or /dev directory. All drives start with the appendage “hd” (I think for ‘hard drive’).

So, if you have 2 hard drives and one cdrom – then you have 3 devices. You have a hda, hdb, and hdc. The number of partitions comes next. If your main hard drive is linux – and you have 3 partitions, then you’ll have a hda1, hda2, and hda5. The partition numbers aren’t in a logical order – hda5 is always the swap partition.

So know, if you see your hard drive listed in the sudo fdisk -l, then you know you can mount it. Your computer has a startup file that tells it what to mount when it boots. We need to edit this file and add the new drive.

But first we have to create a directory. We have to create what’s called a “mount point”. A mount point is a virtual directory. It’s like saying – mount that hard drive from this directory.

The most logical place to create the mount point for the new hard drive is either the /mnt or /media folder. Many would say that /mnt is the only place it should be – the mount folder. However, Ubuntu always mounts all dvd, cd, and removable media in /media. I chose to make my mount point here for just that very reason.

Think of what you want to call the new mount point name. Just make sure you don’t use any special characters or spaces in the name. I called mine linuxstore. Now, in terminal run the following command substituting my mount point name for yours:
$ sudo mkdir /media/linuxstore

Next, here’s one of the most important things….and somethng that I didn’t find in any of the articles on the web when I was trying to figure out how to do this. You have to make the mount point directory ‘writable’. In other words, you have to give it writable permissions. They have to be world-writable permissions since you aren’t a member of the ‘root’ group in which all mount points are owned.

So, now you want to run the following command (again substituting my mount point name for yours):
$ chmod 777 /media/linuxstore

If you want to mount your drive right away, and you don’t care if it’s mounted automatically every time you boot – then in terminal run the following command:
$ mount /dev/hdd1 /media/linuxstore

There! Now you are temporarily mounted. But…if you want it to be permanent, you need to edit your filesystem tab file. Run the following command in terminal:
$ gedit /etc/fstab

The text editor window will appear with the fstab file loaded up. You will see something that looks kind of like this:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
#
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /media/hdb1 ext3 defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0


All you have to do is add a new line for the new drive…
I will add the following line to my fstab for my new drive:

/dev/hdd1 /media/linuxstore ext3 defaults 0 0


Just be sure to substitute both the name of my hard drive for yours (mine is hdd1, is yours hdc1 or another name?), and my mount point hame for yours. Then save the file.

Now you will have the new hard drive mounted and writable both every time you boot. In Ubuntu, you should find your new drive listed under your ‘Places’ menu. To make the hard drive show up right now, without rebooting – just reload your fstab file with the following command:
$ sudo mount -a

Now you’re done! Enjoy your new storage drive in Linux!

originally published: 2006-06-04 13:28:53 -0400