Posts

Showing posts from May, 2008

okular - Universal Document Reader

Image
Orkular is a KDE application with the goal of universal reader. It supports following formats. PDF PS TIFF CHM DjVu Images DVI XPS ODT Fiction Book Comic Book Plucker EPub Detailed format support matrix here. Home page of Okular .

IDJC: DJ on Linux

Image
IDJC (Internet DJ Console) is one of the DJ application available for Linux. This DJ application is equipped with cross fading, volume controls, audio level meters. The application provides two separate audio paths one for the listeners and other one for the DJ. So DJ can examine the effects without eating ears of listeners. :) Goto Internet DJ Console site. Related software Mix music live with Mixxx

conduit - Sync Your World

Image
Conduit is a simple synchronization tool for gnome. You can synchronize videos, photos, mails, notes, calendar data, etc to another computer or to an online service or to your personal device. You can access following services through Conduit. Youtube Flickr Box.net facebook f-spot tomboy And many more You can use following devices as targets Another gnome system A Mobile phone A Nokia 770/880 A plam or windows mobile pc. Or an iPod. Similar projects OpenSync Conduit screencast . Goto Conduit Project site.

Getdeb Repository

Image
Getdeb provides compiled binaries of popular games and applications in the form of deb packages. These applications are not available in official ubuntu repository. Until now you have to download individual deb packages and install them. And things just got better and we have a getdeb repository. Cut the following line and paste it at the end of your /etc/apt/sources.list file. deb http://ubuntu.org.ua/ getdeb/ Now update your apt cache. sudo apt-get update This is noway official repository and you should be aware of risks. Repository for ubuntu games getdeb announced a newer gamers ubuntu repostory. Will update this post as soon as its available. Mean while download compiled versions of game debs . Enjoy Ubuntu ;)

Flash 10 for Ubuntu

Image
flashplugin-nonfree_10.0.1 packages are available in ubuntu multiverse. If you can't install them using apt-get then go to the link specified at the bottom of this article. Download the deb package and install it. Browse Flash 10 multiverse repository.

ionice - Prioritize IO of Processes

ionice is io bandwidth priority manipulation command. It supports three scheduling classes. idle: In this class given process won't get disk access until no other process is accessing disk for certain period of time. best-effort: This is default class. realtime: Process with non-realtime classes have to wait until processes with realtime class to complete. If you want to move some heavy stuff around when io sensitive applications like movie, audio players are active then its best to make a new bash process with idle class. This is how you apply idle class to a bash process. Open up your terminal and give following command. sudo ionice -c3 -p`echo $$` Now what ever you execute in this terminal will inherit idle class and won't disturb your movie/audio players. You can use ionice to make disk intensive corn jobs to behave well with io sensitive applications that you are using in the foreground. Some useful ubuntuforums.org threads on ionice. Using ionice with upd

bootchart - Generate Graph of Boot Process

Image
If you are one of that person who enjoy tuning boot process of ubuntu linux then this is for you. Bootchart is a small application used to generate detailed graphs of linux boot process. This timelined graph allows you to accurately see the CPU and IO loads on the system during kernel booting. Using this utility you can identify boot services that are blocking other services or the services that are unnecessary. bootchart usage Install bootchart by executing following command. sudo apt-get -y install bootchart Now reboot your system and check for a svg file in the folder /var/log/bootchart . Visit Bootchart home.

Die Hard 4.0 comes to Ubuntu

Image
Trust me your system won't explode. You can follow gTangish icon theme development . Download matching Die Hard 4.0 wallpaper . Download Die Hard 4.0 emerald theme . As the DARKguy says use Clearlooks blackblue gtk theme for window controls. or You can Download Die Hard 4.0 theme pack in one click.

Experience Evil Side of Ubuntu

Image
Ubuntu Satanic Edition 666.4 code named Headless Horseman has been released to balance good side of Ubuntu christian Edition. This is what their about section says. “Woe to you, Oh Earth and Sea, for the Devil sends the beast with wrath because he knows the time is short… Let him who hath understanding reckon the distro of the beast , for it is a Linux distro , its distro is Ubuntu Satanic Edition .” Some of the highlights of headless horseman Skull based wallpaper art. Matching gtk & gdm themes. Animated magma skydome for beryl. And a screensaver. Want to experience darker side of little penguine ?, Then add their repos . Goto Ubuntu Satanic Edition site.

RealPlayer 11 for Ubuntu

Image
First of all I want to hats off real networks for releasing new RealPlayer 11 for Linux. Their new player supports extensive list of video and audio codecs and they are really free to use on linux. Supported Codecs Theora (Alpha 3 encoded content) Vorbis Ogg Basic SMIL 2.0 H263 RealPix RAM and RPM playlist formats RTSP streaming with RTP HTTP streaming RealText RealEvents RealAudio, RealVideo mp3 mp4 audio (AAC unprotected only) Flash 4 Installation Download RealPlayer bin file from below link and execute following command in terminal. And make sure you are in the directory where you have downloaded the .bin file. chmod +x RealPlayer11GOLD.bin Run the bin by issuing following command. ./RealPlayer11GOLD.bin Rest of the installation process is self explanatory. Helix Player Helix player is open source media player. RealPlayer for linux uses HelixDNA as a base with some proprietory codecs. Helix DNA is being developed for use on Computers, Mobiles and Living roo

Control your Laptop Brightness Using Keyboard Shortcuts

Image
I have prepared a python script which you can use to control brightness of your laptop. Download brightness.py and save the file some where on your system. Install xbindkeys to map keyboard shortcuts. sudo apt-get -y install xbindkeys Execute following command to initialize your xbindkeys configuration file. xbindkeys --defaults > ~/.xbindkeysrc Now copy and paste following snippet at the end of your .xbindkeysrc file. "python [script path]/brightness.py down" m:0x5 + c:100 Control+Shift + Left "python [script path]/brightness.py up" m:0x5 + c:102 Control+Shift + Right Make sure you replace [script path] with the path of the folder that contains downloaded python script. Open up your terminal and execute following command to start xbindkeys. xbindkeys & Now test your shortcut keys Control+Shift+Left Arrow and Control+Shift+Right Arrow . Make sure you add xbindkeys command to ubuntu sessions so that xbindkeys is automatically started

winetricks - install wine application perquisites with ease

As most of us know wine is used to run windows applications on linux. But setting it up always has been pain. For example if your windows program requires some prerequisites that aren't shipped or not implemented in wine then you have to go for hunting on net. Examples include mscore fonts, Internet Explorer, DCOM, etc. And this guide explains how to install winetricks on ubuntu. Crossover office has a little wizard that will download install all the prerequisites of a particular software but It costs money to use. But there is one little known tool called winetricks which you can use to automate that stuff for free. Finally you can concentrate on something productive rather than hunting for some obscure stuff. Download winetricks Use following commands to get winetricks and set it up. wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks chmod +x winetricks Using winetricks For example if you want to install Microsoft Core fonts use following command. ./winetricks corefonts

Scribes - Textmate for Ubuntu

Image
Many people came to know about textmate through popular ruby on rails screencasts. Editing magic that you can do with textmate amazed minions of linux and windows users. Although you can do the same thing using emacs and vim plugins, lack of simple & powerful editor like textmate for non Mac platforms disappointed many people. Now ubuntu users can enjoy scribes editor. It works as simple & effective as textmate. Here is brief feature overview. Python based plugin system to extend the capabilites of the editor. Edit files on remote systems through ftp, sftp, ssh, samba ... Auto indenting and syntax coloring for over 30 languages. Advanced text manipulation. Bookmarking lines inside a file. Auto complete/suggest. File templates. Simple to use and minimal user interface. Flash demo of this editor. If you like this editor please donate . Install scribes sudo apt-get -y install scribes

PHP Editors for Ubuntu

gphpedit Some of the highlights. Syntax highlight PHP, CSS, HTML. Auto complete function names, parameters and variables. Syntax checking (lint). Integrated help inside the editor. Install gphpedit by executing following command. sudo apt-get -y install gphpedit screem Screem has each and every functionality a web developer ever need. Some of the highlights of screem. Link validation. Auto completion, high level tree view of functions and variables. DTD checking and suggesting html that is compatible with current DTD. Plugin support or helper applicaitons. eg: HTMLTidy to clean up code. Automatically close tags. Preview page. Page template support. Auto sync with remote site. Spell checker. Task management to track status of your project using TODO comments. Wizards to simplify code generation. PHP function reference. Install screem by issuing following command. sudo apt-get -y install screem quanta plus Qutanta+ is one of the state of the art all

Ubuntu Docks

Image
Ubuntu has pretty impressive collection of docks available. The following docking applications are available out of Ubuntu hardy repositories which you can install right away. Following section covers each and every beautiful dock for ubuntu. AWN - Avant Window Navigator Awant window manager engine has two modes of operation one is Glass engine and the other one is pattern engine. Using glass engine you can apply arbitrary color gradients for background of dock. Where pattern engine allows you to apply images as dock background. Avant window manager works sort of like taskbar or opened window list. You can drag and drop things on to dock. Can also do pretty good transformations like bouncing & fading icons. Install Avant Window Navigator, Extras & applets by issuing following command. sudo apt-get -y --force-yes install avant-window-navigator-trunk awn-manager-trunk awn-extras-applets-trunk Now run following command to start Avant Window Navigator. avant-window-nav

Tune ubuntu for web browsing

In order to tune web browsing on ubuntu we need to make tiny configuration changes ranging from disabling ipv6 to tuning Firefox browser. Disable IPv6 Open the file " /etc/modprobe.d/aliases " as super user and change the line from alias net-pf-10 ipv6 to alias net-pf-10 off save the file and close it. Cache DNS requests We are going to install a local DNS server to cache first time requests. Subsequent lookups will be resolved locally with out contacting remote DNS server. dnsmasq is a tiny DNS server and it is useful for this purpose. To install dnsmasq execute following command. sudo apt-get -y install dnsmasq Open the file /etc/dnsmasq.conf as super user and change the line from #listen-address= to listen-address=127.0.0.1 save the file and close it. Open another file /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf as super user. Find the following line and uncomment it. #prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1; save the file and close it. Restart the system for changes to take effect. Fire

Resources for mastering Ubuntu

Although ubuntu is the most polished Linux distribution, you will occasionally need to do stuff that may be out of scope of your knowledge. Here are some commercial and free resource which you can use to make ubuntu usage a breeze. Ubuntu Linux Bible Covers fundamental desktop and network operations. How to to use ubuntu for emailing, editing, printing, playing music & movies and games. It also offers step by step guide on how to setup wireless, how to manage your PDA and how to setup networks. A CD-ROM comes bundled with this book. CD-ROM contains some cross platform applications like Abiword, Firefox, GIMP, etc... They work even on Windows. Get Ubuntu Linux Bible from amazon. Advanced Bash scripting guide Contains A to Z coverage of how to write bash scripts, bash scripting language constructs and very useful examples. Get Advanced Bash scripting guide as a free PDF file. Or install it using following command. sudo apt-get -y install abs-guide Rute Users t

Online radio for ubuntu

Image
Streamtuner is one of the best programs around for listening to online radio on Ubuntu. Following are some of the online radio streams you can tune into. SHOUTcast WS Radio Sky.FM KPIG Radio Online Basic.ch InsideRadio.com Radioqualia CybroRadio Kill Radio Install streamtuner by executing following command. sudo apt-get -y install streamtuner

Font Viewer for Ubuntu

Image
Font matrix is a really good font viewer and manager for Linux. You can install or uninstall fonts using fontmatrix. Its written in QT. Unfortunately its not in Ubuntu repository. You can get a Debian package from following site and install it. Download fontmatrix from getdeb.net

Download a website in ubuntu

We will use wget to save entire webiste. Syntax is wget <options> http://yoursitename.com Following are the useful options you can use with wget. -c / --continue Resume interrupted download. -nd / --no-directories Don't create directory hierarchy. -P / --directory-prefix= Save downloaded files to specified directory. -U / --user-agent= Spoof user agent string. -r / --recursive Go crazy :) -l / --level= use 0 for infinite depth level or use number greater than 0 for limited depth. -k / --convert-links Modify links inside downloaded files to point to local files. -p / --page-requisites Get all images, css, js files which make up the web page. -np / --no-parent Don't download parent directory contents. I normally use following command to download a website. wget -r --level=0 -convert-links --page-requisites --no-parent <url>

How To Install ttf (true type font) Files

Create a new folder inside " /usr/share/fonts/truetype " and call it " myfonts ". So target folder will be " /usr/share/fonts/truetype/myfonts ". Now copy your ttf font files to " /usr/share/fonts/truetype/myfonts ". Execute following command to rebuild your font list. sudo fc-cache -f -v Restart the application that needs newly installed font.