Apps, tweaks, tips, and links for your Linux Media HTPC - Page 7

Xournal is an application for notetaking, sketching, keeping a journal using a stylus. It is free software (GNU GPL) and runs on Linux (recent distributions) and other GTK+/Gnome platforms. It is similar to Microsoft Windows Journal or to other alternatives such as Jarnal, Gournal, and NoteLab.

Ask Ubuntu is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for people who love Ubuntu. It's 100% free, no registration required.

RetroShare is a Open Source cross-platform, private and secure decentralised communication platform.It lets you to securely chat and share files with your friends and family, using a web-of-trust to authenticate peers and OpenSSL to encrypt all communication.
RetroShare provides filesharing, chat, messages, forums and channels

Features

* Serverless, encrypted Chat & Filetransfer
* Multiple simultaneous downloads / uploads
* Search Friends
* Messages
* Forums
* UPnP / NAT-PMP port forwarding support
* GnuPG Authentication
* OpenSSL Encryption
* DHT support
* Plugins support
* Graphical User Interface written with Qt4 toolkit
* System tray integration

HOW TO: Recording Internal Audio in Ubuntu

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This how-to should show the steps required to record whatever audio is playing on your computer, similar to recording "stereo mix" in windows. This makes recording audio played by any application, including flash videos, possible.

I'm using the Sound Recorder application that comes in standard Ubuntu installations. To set this up using other programs (like audacity) just substitute it in these instructions.

Install pavucontrol (PulseAudio Volume Control) using apt-get or the Ubuntu Software Center.
Open PulseAudio Volume Control. It should be in the applications menu under Sound and Video.
Open Sound Recorder and start recording. Playing any sound at this point would be helpful, as your level indicator should react once you have finished.
Go to the "Recording" tab in the PulseAudio Volume Control window.
Make sure that "Applications" is selected in the drop down menu on the "Recording" tab.
Choose "Monitor of Internal Audio Analog Atereo" from the "Record Stream from" menu in the Sound Recorder entry of the application list.

This appears to be persistent so that you will only have to do this once, but you will have to repeat these steps to record in another application.

XNOISE is a media player for Gtk+ with a slick GUI, great speed and lots of features

Unlike Rhythmbox, Banshee or itunes, Xnoise uses a tracklist centric design. The tracklist is a list of video or music tracks that are played one by one without being removed (right side of window). This gives you the possibility to enqueue any track in any order, regardless if they are on the same album or not. The tracks can be reordered at any time via drag and drop.

The media browser (left side of the window) contains all available media in a hierarchical tree structure of the available metadata. It is easy to find a single track, artist or album by going through this tree or by just entering a search term. From the media browser, music or videos can be dragged into the tracklist to every position.

Single or multiple tracks, streams, albums or artists can be dragged onto the tracklist and be reordered. Within the playing track, it’s possible to jump to every position by clicking the position bar.

Xnoise can play every kind of audio/video data that gstreamer can handle.

There is a plugin interface available. Plugins are optionally build, if their dependencies are fulfilled. By now there are already some plugins, e.g. a plugin that downloads cover images from lastFm or one that shows notifications, one that monitores file changes in your local media directory, …

Slowly repeated for those guys who keep on asking: Xnoise contains NO PYTHON and NO MONO!

There is lots of confusing information on how to get XBMC installed. I took some of the information from http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title...rmic_or_higher and figured out how to make it work in Ubuntu 10.10:

Start by running this command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc
Now click on System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager->Settings->Repositories->Other Software.

Select the first ppa for team-xbmc, then click on "Edit..."

Change the Distribution to "lucid". Click OK.

Select the 2nd ppa for team-xbmc, and make the same the same change to "lucid".

Reload the packages, and then install "xbmc" as well as "xbmc-standalone". If you want to use the command-line instead of Synaptic Package Manager to do this, here are the relevant commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xbmc xbmc-standalone
You should now have XBMC in Applications->Sound & Video->XBMC Media Center.

StartUp-Manager is a free open-source GUI tool to manage settings for Grub (Grub Legacy), Grub 2, Usplash and Splashy. It provides a menu-driven interface which allows the user to set boot menu options such as the default operating system, menu timeouts and displays, password protection and much more. StartUp-Manager accomplishes this by translating the user's GUI inputs into bootloader settings without the need to manually edit the bootloader file (in Ubuntu, normally /boot/grub/menu.lst).

1. Gnomenu
If you are looking for a pretty menu to spice up your desktop, then GnoMenu is the one to go for. This application menu supports themes, regardless you are using a composited or non-composited desktop. It is also fully compatible with apps like Gnome-Panel, Avant Window Navigator, Cairo-Dock, XfApplet, Kde Plasma and the system tray.


2. Ubuntu System Panel
Ubuntu System Panel give you lot of customization option as to how you want the information to be displayed. The default interface is a big broad window that show almost everything it can put on it, but you can easily minimize those options to the side pane and save up screen space.


3. Cardápio
While Cardápio is late to the party, it is in no way inferior to the rest. Other than a panel menu, it can also acts as a launcher, just like Gnome-Do.


4. Mintmenu
MintMenu needs little introduction. It is the default application menu for Linux Mint, and it has the best layout (in my opinion) in this list.

LiVES is a Video Editing System. It is designed to be simple to use, yet powerful. It is small in size, yet it has many advanced features.

LiVES mixes realtime video performance and non-linear editing in one professional quality application. It will let you start editing and making video right away, without having to worry about formats, frame sizes, or framerates. It is a very flexible tool which is used by both professional VJ’s and video editors – mix and switch clips from the keyboard, use dozens of realtime effects, trim and edit your clips in the clip editor, and bring them together using the multitrack timeline. You can even record your performance in real time, and then edit it further or render it straight away.

For the more technically minded, the application is frame and sample accurate, and it can be controlled remotely or scripted for use as a video server. And it supports all of the latest free standards.

What is new in LiVES 1.3.10

Fix regression in multitrack effects rendering.
Updated translation to Ukranian.

Install LiVES 1.3.10 in ubuntu 10.04

Open the terminal and run the following commands

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:n-muench/programs-ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install lives

Radio Tray is an online radio streaming player that runs on a Linux system tray. Its goal is to have the minimum interface possible, making it very straightforward to use.
Radio Tray is not a full featured music player, there are plenty of excellent music players already. However, there was a need for a simple application with minimal interface just to listen to online radios. And that’s the sole purpose of Radio Tray.

Radio Tray is Free Software, licensed under the GPL.

Features

* plays most media formats (based on gstreamer libraries)
* bookmarks support, with sorting
* easy to use
* supports PLS playlist format (Shoutcast/Icecast)
* supports M3U playlist format
* supports ASX, WAX and WVX playlist format

Tivion is a simple streaming player for TV online. It’s a program that I develop with Python using the GTK library, PyGTK and the backend of player Mplayer. This is the official page of news recopilations for the program.

Tivion plays some streaming TV and radio and Sopcast channels available. For the moment, 697 channels from 67 countries.

You can check the full chanel list from here

Install Tivion in ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid)

Open the terminal and run the following command

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shakaran/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install tivion

Picasa 3.5 Features

* Facial recognition
* Geo-tagging
* Better text tool
* Awesome Tagging tools
* Photo importing improvements

Install Picasa 3.5 in ubuntu

First you need to make sure You have Picasa 3.0 already installed, as well as WINE.

You can either grab a .deb of 3.0 from here

Install .deb package using the following command

sudo dpkg -i picasa_3.0-current_i386.deb

or add the Google testing repository to /etc/apt/sources.list file

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following line

deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ testing non-free

Save and exit

Update the source list using the following command

sudo apt-get update

Install picasa using the following command

sudo apt-get install picasa

First you need to install wine using the following command

sudo apt-get install wine

Now you need to download picasa 3.5 from windows from here

Once downloaded .exe file install this by double clicking on this.

Now you need to copy installed picasa 3.5 from

/home/YOUR_USER_NAME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Google/Picasa3

to

/opt/google/picasa/3.0/wine/drive_c/Program Files/Google/Picasa3

Use the following command to copy or use nautilus

su cp -r /home/YOUR_USER_NAME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Google/Picasa3
/opt/google/picasa/3.0/wine/drive_c/Program Files/Google/Picasa3

Once done, You can open Picasa 3.5 from your Applications > Graphics > Picasa

Well with the release of iOS 4, many Ubuntu users are complaining of incompatibility with between rhythmbox and the new update. Here is a simple way to fix that:
1. Open up synaptic

2. Go to the Repositories (Under Settings)

3. Add this source:

ppamcenery/ppa

(from https://launchpad.net/~pmcenery/+archive/ppa)

4. Click Close and then click the Reload button at the top left

5. After it is done reloading search for:

libimobiledevice1

6. It will give you two results, install both.

7. Now after installing, close synaptic and open up the terminal and type in

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

8. After the upgrade Ubuntu 10.04 will have iOS 4 support

GNOME Photo Frame is a photo frame gadget for the GNOME desktop. It shows pictures on the desktop from multiple sources: local folders, F-Spot databases, Flickr API, Picasa Web Album API, Tumblr API, and RSS.

Install gphotoframe in ubuntu 9.10 and 8.10

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/gphotofram...e-desktop.html

First you need to edit sources.list file

gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

For ubuntu 9.10 users add the following line

deb http://www.tsurukawa.org/debian/squeeze/ ./

For ubuntu 8.10 users add the following line

deb http://www.tsurukawa.org/debian/lenny/ ./

Save and exit the file

Update source list using the following command

sudo apt-get update

Install gphotoframe

sudo apt-get install gphotoframe

I had to dig through several posts to set up automated recording of my favorite internet radio show. So I hope this may of help to someone besides me.

This can be done with a single command using VLC:
1. Create a script file 'recordmyshow.sh', with the following content.

Code:
#!/bin/sh
NOW=$(date +"%b-%d-%y")

cvlc --run-time=7200 http://kqed-ice.streamguys.org:80/kqedradio-ch-e1 --sout "#duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=raw,dst=/home//myshow-$NOW.mp3}" vlc://quit ;

cvlc is the commandline version of vlc
use --run-time to indicate the duration of the show in seconds
Replace the url to the radio station of your choice and dst to the path you desire. That's it

2. Mark the file as executable

Code:
chmod +x recordmyshow.sh3.

Schedule the recording in cron.
a. Launch the cron

Code:
crontab -eb.

Put the schedule in it

Code:
00 18 * * 06 /home//recordmyshow.sh

My favorite show is at 6 pm every Saturday.

Here are some key features of Double Commander:
Unicode support
All operations working in background
Multi-rename tool
Tabbed interface
Custom columns
Internal text editor (F4) with syntax hightlighting
Built in file viewer (F3) to view files of in hex, binary or text format
Archives are handled like subdirectories. You can easily copy files to and from archives. Supported archive types: ZIP, TAR GZ, TGZ, LZMA and also BZ2, RPM, CPIO, DEB, RAR.
Extended search function with full text search in any files
Configurable button bar to start external programs or internal menu commands
Total Commander WCX, WDX and WLX plug-ins support
File operations logging
And more...

The gksu extension for nautilus allows you to open files with administration privileges using the context menu when browsing your files with nautilus.

Install nautilus gksu extension in ubuntu

Open the terminal and run the following command

sudo apt-get install nautilus-gksu

Utube Ripper is an application written in Gambas that works exclusively on Linux. It’s useful to download and convert Youtube videos in a simple and efficient way.Using Utube Ripper you can download and Extract Audio From YouTube Videos.

Install UTube Ripper in Ubuntu Hardy

First you need to download .deb package from here

After downloading Double click the file to start installation. This will fetch and install all its dependencies.

This will complete the installation.

So, Amazon MP3 app requires libboost 1.34, which is older than the version now included in Ubuntu. The good news is that the old libboost version can coexist with the new one without any problems. So all you have to do is instsall the old version and you're good to go. Here's how.

Copy and paste the following text into a terminal window

mkdir old_boost
cd old_boost


wget https://launchpadlibrarian.net/26959...untu1_i386.deb https://launchpadlibrarian.net/26959...untu1_i386.deb https://launchpadlibrarian.net/26959...untu1_i386.deb https://launchpadlibrarian.net/26959...untu1_i386.deb https://launchpadlibrarian.net/26959...untu1_i386.deb https://launchpadlibrarian.net/26959...untu1_i386.deb https://launchpadlibrarian.net/34165...untu2_i386.deb

(the above wget line is all one command!)

sudo dpkg -i *.deb
cd ..
rm -r old_boost

Now you can install the Amazon mp3 app normally, following the instructions at:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/help/amd.html/

badblocks -svw /dev/sdX (where X should be the device letter of the disk).

For Ubuntu

sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/SimpleLabeler.desktop

gnome will start where we are going to copy the following:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=SimpleLabeler
Comment=LightScribe Applications
Exec=/opt/lightscribeApplications/SimpleLabeler/SimpleLabeler
Icon=/opt/lightscribeApplications/SimpleLabeler/content/images/LabelWizardIcon.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;Office;
StartupNotify=True

save and we will have our link on our menu

I finally got LaCie 4L running fine.

I first uninstalled (through Synaptic) my existing, non-working copies of 4L and the Lightscribe system software.
Next, I installed the latest Lightscribe System Software deb from:
http://www.lightscribe.com/downloads...x.aspx?id=1372

I also opted to use the enhanced contract patch, as instructed in:
http://www.lightscribe.com/downloadSection/pse/

Next I searched Synaptic for "libstdc++5" and installed it.

Finally, I downloaded the 4L rpm from:
http://www.lacie.com/us/support/driv...r.htm?id=10094
and used Alien 8.69 to convert it to a deb.

You've got to launch 4L-gui with sudo or it won't let you actually print to disc. The program is fairly basic compared to some of those I've used in WinDoze, but it does allow you to print full-page (full-disc?) images, unlike the stupid basic utility provided by lightscribe themselves. In fact, the Preview time is instant in 4L, whereas I would always see about a minute delay when trying to preview in any windows program. Weird.

Printing time is, of course, unchanged (as that is dependent on the hardware).

Works great! Thank goodness... there really aren't any other options to speak of for lightscribe in linux, as least not that I've been able to find. Just use in combination with Gimp or your favorite graphics program to make a image for printing. For best results, I recommend converting it to black and white yourself ahead of time and increasing the contrast.

1) Preliminary Note

In this example I use a Debian Sarge system, and I will show how to convert the mysql-zrm rpm package to a .deb file and install that one. The procedure is the same for Ubuntu.


2) Alien Installation

Alien is available in the normal Debian repositories, so we can install it like this:

apt-get install alien


3) Converting .rpm to .deb

Next we download the current mysql-zrm rpm package (1.1-1 at the time of this writing):

cd /tmp
wget http://www.zmanda.com/downloads/comm...1-1.noarch.rpm

To convert it into a .deb package, we simply run

alien MySQL-zrm-1.1-1.noarch.rpm

Afterwards, run

ls -l

in the /tmp directory, and you'll see that alien has created the file mysql-zrm_1.1-2_all.deb. You'll also notice that alien has counted up the version number, it's now 1.1-2 instead of 1.1-1. If you want to keep the original version number, you must use the -k switch:

alien -k MySQL-zrm-1.1-1.noarch.rpm

will create the file mysql-zrm_1.1-1_all.deb.

To install the new .deb file, we use dpkg -i:

dpkg -i mysql-zrm_1.1-1_all.deb

Now mysql-zrm is installed and fully functional (you still might have to edit its configuration file though).

If you want to save the dpkg -i step, you can have alien install the package. The command

alien -i MySQL-zrm-1.1-1.noarch.rpm

would convert the original rpm package and immediately install it.

You see, converting .rpm files to .deb files is very easy. You can have a look at

man alien

to learn about what else you can do with alien.