Shekhar's Live Journal
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Friday, September 29, 2006
I had my brush with Seamonkey when I first tried it at office on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. (For those who don't know, Seamonkey is the continuation of the Mozilla project. Unlike Mozilla, it would not be owned by the Mozilla Foundation.)
I decided to try it out because I was having some problems with Firefox. I tried using Mozilla but I couldn't customize it to open new window links in new tabs instead (I am used to that). I was not feeling very inclined to use Opera, though it is a very good browser. I wanted to try out something new and Seamonkey sounded good.
Here's my Seamonkey installation procedure on Fedora Core 5 and Ubuntu 6.06 LTS...
Seamonkey Installation:
1. I downloaded the pre-built binary tarball from the website http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/.
2. I extracted it..
# tar -zxvf seamonkey-1.0.5.en-US.linux-i686.installer.tar.gz
to get a folder named seamonkey-installer
3. I used the provided install script..
# cd seamonkey-installer
# ./seamonkey-installer
Note: In Ubuntu, you'd need to run the above as ordinary user with 'sudo' command (that is, from your X session's login user shell.. it would usually show $ prompt instead of #). The command would be: "sudo ./seamonkey-installer".
The graphical installer would guide you through the rest of it .. I used the default install directory (/usr/local/seamonkey).
4. I created a symbolic link from /usr/bin directory..
# cd /usr/bin
# ln -s /usr/local/seamonkey/seamonkey .
5. I created a Gnome menu launcher item (KDE also shows this)..
Go to
# cd /usr/share/applications
create a file "seamonkey.desktop"
# vi seamonkey.desktop
type in the following..
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Seamonkey
GenericName=Internet Application Suite
Comment=Make most of the Internet
Exec=seamonkey
Icon=/usr/local/seamonkey/chrome/icons/default/seamonkey.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
StartupWMClass=seamonkey-bin
X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.10
Categories=Network;Application;X-Fedora;
press ESC, type :wq and press Enter to save the file.
Seamonkey then appeared in my Gnome and KDE start menus under the sub-menu "Internet".
I found Seamonkey to have more out-of-the-box options than Mozilla. Its browser definately does not match all Firefox's features, but is pretty good. Most importantly, its fast and doesn't seem to crash much (well, just a couple of times at the beginning :))
Interesting link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaMonkey
Saturday, September 16, 2006
I have an old Pentium 2 machine lying around. I wanted to scratch my itch for a long long time, so I decided to try and install Ubuntu 6.06 LTS otherwise known as Dapper Drake on it.
First, let me introduce my old buddy to you...
CPU:
Model name: Pentium 2 (Deschutes)
cpu MHz: 342.124
cache size: 512 KB
bogomips: 684.81
Memory:
Total memory: 126452 kB - approx. 128 mB
Hard drive:
Quantum FireballP 20 gB
Sound:
Creative Vibra PnP 16 bit ISA sound card with original Creative SBS10 speakers
CDROM:
Creative Infra 40x CDROM drive
Display card:
Cirrus Logic GD 5446 PCI graphics card
So I booted from a brand new live cum installation CD that I had requested from http://shipit.ubuntu.com - it was very slow to boot, but to my utter surprise, it gave me a fully featured Gnome desktop. After trying to launch some programs like Firefox and OpenOffice.org 2, which ran sluggishly, but successfully, I went straight to the "Install" icon on the Desktop and double-clicked it. The installer took a while to launch and I had some hiccups using Ubuntu's graphical installer, but eventually I could successfully install Ubuntu on my old weathered buddy. Booting was slow but to my utter surprise things ran quite tolerably well afterwards. I tried launching the programs I ran through the Live install and found that they ran much faster. In fact, the entire experience was quite tolerable, especially considering the fact that I was running a latest full featured Linux distribution with heavy desktop environment like Gnome.
ISA cards seem to not be supported out of the box and I had trouble with sound. Some searching later, I found SoundBlaster ISA modules in /lib/modules/2.6.15-23-386/kernel/sound/isa/ directory.
I did (As root),
# cd /lib/modules/2.6.15-23-386/kernel/sound/isa/sb/
# modprobe snd-sb16
And did
# lspci
It showed my sound card now, and Gnome panel's volume control applet started responding normally (earlier, it had a mute indication and was giving me error messeges on clicking). I tested out the sound by playing sound files and the Nelson Mandela video in Examples directory (its a symlink in every home folder on Ubuntu) and it played beautifully - only video didn't render that well, but sound was fine.
I got 2 brand new Compex sound cards (these have worked great with all Linux distributions that I have tried at home) and was not let down by them - I had a network set up in minutes (using crossed CAT 5 UTP cables). I set up IP packet forwarding from my P4 machine (it runs Fedora Core 5) that is connected to Internet (in which I installed the other Compex lan card) using Firestarter - just enable Internet Connection Sharing option from Firestarter's Preferences dialog, selecting the proper interfaces.
I then installed Apt Cacher (an apt caching server), SSH Server (secure remote access) and Bind (a caching DNS server) on the Ubuntu machine. It all ran beautifully well.
I installed XMMS, copied a few songs (using scp) from my P4 machine and enjoyed the mellow sound of the Creative SBS10 speakers - it felt really good after such a long time. I really had a good time apart from breathing life into my old friend with Ubuntu!
I have to still fix the display problem - buth the display card and my old 14 inch Samtron monitor are capable of producing resolution of 800x600, but somehow (despite of my attempts of making changes in the xorg.conf file), it shows maximum resolution of 640x480 only. I have no complaints about that, though - I'll fix in time I guess.
I am planning to install Ubuntu on my Pentium 4 machine too, which is my primary machine at home. At office we've already got a network of 6 Ubuntu computers and they work pretty well for development as well as Desktop use.
Monday, June 5, 2006
Hey folks!
Here's something for music lovers out there. Probably you've heard of this, but here goes anyway...
There's a place on the Web which serves as a platform for musicicians who want to get their work across to all those who wish to listen. Its called Jamendo and is located at http://www.jamendo.com.
I found that even established artists like Greg Baumont have put up their music here. I discovered some really talented people's music out there. There's Rob Costlow's Piano albums - they're fantastic. Then there's David Schombert's Quiet Life album. There's so much good stuff out there and it so different. This project brings the listener in contact of works of people who are willing to experiment with their music. People who're not driven by the pressures of market and do not have to answer to record companies or the public for that matter. These factors lead to the creation of some really different type of music which is a totally different affair from the run of the mill stuff dished out to us by the record companies.
This is all possible thanks to an open file sharing technology called Bittorrent (http://www.bittorrent.com for users and http://www.bittorrent.org for developers) which allows distribution of files over networks without the need of a perpetually dedicated server taking all the load. Embodying on the phrase "Give and thy shall recieve", bittorrent uses "trackers" which catalog .torrent files which are simply hashes generated by a torrent creation utility. Torrent files carry the necessary information which inconjunction with the relevant tracker, helps the user-end bittorrent client program (like Azureus) to locate the required file on machines of other users who have partial or complete file. The distribution process starts with a complete file also called a "seed" in bittorrent parlance. The required file is distributed in pieces, using intelligent algorithm that ensures that different parts of files are distributed to different people. So users distribute parts of the file they are downloading during the download. It is customary to allow the file to upload for some time after its finished downloading so that others who are downloading the same file can have a complete source of the file too. After all, downloads complete due to courtesy of someone who sourced the file to the downloaders, so they kinda pass it forward. The trackers are intelligent enough to ensure that download rate suffers if users somehow manage to prevent uploading. This ensures to a great extent that the users require each other to complete the download and in the bargain everyone equally benefits. This is the reason why it is completely different and arguably much superior to other filesharing technologies such as E2DK (eMule).
So artists can directly distribute music to the customers and that too free with help of sites like Jamendo which act as a point where listeners can visit, tag, rate and enjoy the music. This is a very special case of art and technology created and given away by artists and technologists for the benefit of all humanity. The people behind the art as well as people behind the technology are people who are a class apart - people driven by the belief that human knowledge belongs to the people.
Free music given away using free software! What could be better than this?
(I expressly thank for bearing with my Free Software rhetoric :)).
So go ahead and give it a try - its free!
Sunday, June 4, 2006
Hi folks
I tried Banshee audio player today. Frankly speaking, it is not very impressive, but its certainly a very good attempt at making a good media management system under Gnome.
I found the overall interface very simple and elegant, tts more like Rhythmbox, only better. The plugins collection is not so impressive, but not very less either. It relies on Gstreamer framework to handle the media with a somewhat useless facility to use Helix too. What I found severely lacking in Banshee was the ability to use Xine library to decode media. AmaroK's ability to use Xine engine makes it possible for it to support and play a huge list of media formats including wma (the recent taglib allows amaroK to index wma files as well).
But Banshee is a relatively new project and work in progress. What they have achieved is really worthwhile. I'd want to congratulate the Banshee team and encourage them to keep up the good work.
I found that as long as stability is concerned, XMMS is the rock solid one of the top feature-rich linux media players. You can also install mplayer, get the xmms-mplayer plugin and convert xmms into a full-fledged media player that would kick the daylights out of even the most expensive windows-based proprietary player out there. With the number of audio formats that xmms supports and video formats that mplayer supports, they sure make the most formidable team on the block. AmaroK kicks ass in terms of usability and undoubtedly has the best interface that any other media player on the planet has. If those guys could make amaroK stable, fast and throw in mplayer / xine based video support, it'd surpass every other media player ever built. This will happen, but may take quite some time. Totem is also a good candidate, but it lacks the capability of media management system and only totem-xine version fares well.
So here's the summary:
| Program |
XMMS |
Mplayer |
amaroK |
Xine |
Totem |
Banshee |
Media
management |
No |
No |
Excellent |
No |
No |
Yes |
Streaming
support (incoming) |
Plugin |
Live
streaming |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Unstable |
| Stability |
Rock
solid |
Excellent |
Passable |
Good |
Poor |
Poor |
| Performance |
Excellent |
Excellent |
Ok |
Good |
Good |
Good |
Video
media support |
Plugin
(mplayer) |
Anything! |
Rudimentary |
V.
Good |
Good
(xine) |
No |
Audio
media support |
Plugin
(rich set) |
Anything! |
Good
(xine) |
Good |
Good
(xine) |
Good
(Gstreamer) |
Lyrics
fetching |
Plugin |
No |
Integrated! |
No |
No |
No |
Cover
viewer |
Plugin |
No |
Integrated! |
No |
No |
Yes |
| Interface |
Old
school |
So-so |
Best
out there! |
So-so |
Very
simple |
Simple |
| Aesthetics |
Old
school |
Ok |
Best
out there! |
Ok
|
Ok
|
Pleasing |
| Utility |
Best |
Best |
Good |
Good |
Ok |
Ok |
Wikipedia
support (yeah!) |
No |
No |
Integrated! |
No |
No |
No |
Recommended: XMMS-Mplayer combo with xmms-mplayer plugin installed for xmms to use mplayer to play video and all codecs installed for mplayer. AmaroK could be kept as a media manager and for listening to music and having browse the lyrics or artist info with its simply beautiful and feature rich interface gives you the feeling of being a king / queen! Xine library and engine is most essential if you plan to use AmaroK, cause quite frankly, Gstreamer is quite useless when it comes to handling various formats and high performance - its a very good idea, but still work in progress. So go ahead and take your pick - or do what I did - take 'em all! Free software, freedom everywhere!!!
Friday, June 2, 2006
Hi reader.
I have mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu) installed over Fedora Core 5 (fc5) on my P4 2.6 GHz machine.
Mplayer starting acting strange today. It showed way lesser colors than necessary to give that crisp picture quality which makes the best multimedia player in the world.
What had happened is that mplayer had started using system's available codecs - for some reason best known to who knows whom! This caused all videos to lose proper color definition - as if lesser colors were being displayed than needed. Call it a mplayer color problem if you will. This upset me real bad. I knew that I had to restore normal behaviour or else won't be able to sleep!
I'll cut short the long painful diagnostic part (involving several re-compilations, installations and uninstallations) and go straight to the relevant part.
Here are the steps I followed and remidied the situation...
1. Uninstall extra gstreamer stuff and codecs: I started off by removing the following packages which I had installed using yum...
=============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
=============================================================================
Removing:
lame i386 3.96.1-6.lvn5 installed 1.6 M
Removing for dependencies:
amarok-extras-nonfree i386 1.4.0-1.lvn5 installed 295 k
ffmpeg i386 0.4.9-0.22.20060407.lvn5 installed 4.2 M
gstreamer-plugins-ugly i386 0.10.2-1.lvn5 installed 435 k
gstreamer08-plugins-extra-audio i386 0.8.11-5.lvn5 installed 126 k
gstreamer08-plugins-extra-dvd i386 0.8.11-5.lvn5 installed 90 k
gstreamer08-plugins-extra-video i386 0.8.11-5.lvn5 installed 352 k
normalize i386 0.7.6-10.lvn5 installed 137 k
xine i386 0.99.4-7.lvn5 installed 2.8 M
xine-lib i386 1.1.1-9.lvn5 installed 6.1 M
xmms-normalize i386 0.7.6-10.lvn5 installed 27 k
2. Re-install yum: I re-installed lame using yum (yes, the same lame I had uninstalled earlier). I did this because I figured that applications like amaroK will need this as dependency and it was a bad idea to compile it from source. This is because I like dealing with most applications using yum.
# yum install lame
2. Uninstall mplayer: I had used Mauriat Miranda's Mplayer page - http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mplayer-fedora.html to install mplayer - the best resource that exists on installing mplayer over Fedora.
So I first uninstalled mplayer by navigating as root to my mplayer installation directory and typing...
# make uninstall
# make clean
# make distclean
# rm -rf /usr/share/mplayer
# rm -rf /usr/lib/mplayer
# rm -rf /home/shekhar/.mplayer
# rm -rf /usr/local/lib/codecs
3. I recompiled mplayer (look at Mauriat's website mentioned above for detailed instructions) and reinstalled it - codecs and all - and did the necessary post-install stuff too.
4. I rebooted the system. I checked out mplayer's output and to my relief everything worked just fine.
5. I re-installed xine, xine-libs, normalize, xmms-normalize, gstreamer-plugins-ugly, ffmpeg and amarok-extras-nonfree to restore gstreamer support and most importantly, xine engine for amaroK - cause amaroK really really rocks!
# yum install xine xine-libs normalize xmms-normalize gstreamer-plugins-ugly ffmpeg amarok-extras-nonfree
I did not install the additional plugins of the gstreamer08 line at all - I personally feel that gstreamer08-plugins-extra-video plugin caused the problem, but whatever... its fixed now.
Finally I have peace restored on my system.
Mplayer is certainly at par with the best things that god
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