Jaunty is Jumping.

So, I had a few days off work, which gave me a long Easter weekend. I took this time to play around with the latest Kubuntu Jaunty Jackalope beta 9.04. So far I'm very impressed.

First, I'd like to mention that the boot time has been cut in half. I'm very impressed. I press the power button, blink once and I'm looking at the KDM login screen. KDE 4.2.2 is very, very stable. There's nothing to complain about for the first time in the KDE 4 release. I love it. All the plasmoids worked as expected, which has been a problem in the past. I guess there is one thing I can complain about. I don't like the default KDE4 theme and I can't for the life of me figure out how to install and apply a theme change. This should be an option that is plain as the day is long. So either I'm a moron (which is generally the case), or KDE4 devs are making things very difficult. All other desktop customization wasn't an issue.

Another wonderful and time saving feature in Juanty is the installation of restricted codecs. I would usually have to manually add the mediubuntu repos, update and then install the necessary codecs. In Jaunty, I opened Dragon Player selected a .avi video file and was presented with a dialog box suggesting that other codecs be installed. I clicked a button to accept the suggested installation, and in less then a minute, I was playing my video file. Wonderful! That is exactly as it should be.

Finally, I'd like to mention that this is the first time Koffice 2.0 beta is available in the main repos for Kubuntu. I'm not sure why I'm so excited about this new Koffice release. Koffice has always seemed featureless and awkward, but the rewrite of this suite seems to include some neat improvements. I really like the look and feel of kwriter, but found kspread frustrating to use. Being an accountant and spending 80% of my life interacting with a spreadsheet I feel that I'm a fairly advanced spreadsheet user. So when I was playing around with kspread and attempted to create a simple chart, I hit a brick wall. This is usually a very straight forward feature in most spreadsheets, but I couldn't get it to work with kchart, the integrated charting tool. I googled and read a few posts that the kchart feature had been turned off for a period due to some testing issues, but couldn't verify if my installed version of Koffice was part of that test phase. I'm assuming it was.

Overall, I'm well impressed with the new Juanty release, so I'm going to keep it. I don't see any reason to wait for the official release on April 23. The beta seems to be a very solid system. I highly recommend Jaunty, so go take a peek, I think you'll be pleasantly impressed.

Package Manager Analogy for Windows Users.

So, I was listening to Hacker Public Radio #299 where thirtythree and a buddy (Bill) were demonstrating Linux to a group that were obviously unfamiliar the OS. It couldn't have been more then five minutes in to the presentation, when a very common question was asked, "How do you install software on Linux?" Bill did his best to explain repositories, packaging and dependencies and how you don't have to go to various websites to find software, etc. Now, I've had this same question asked to me on occassionl, in fact, just last week and I would try my best to explain how cool and easy a package manager is, usually to no real avail.

So, while listening to Bill trying to explain the Linux way of installing software, the clouds parted and soft ray of sunlight shone up me and I think I've come up with the perfect analogy or example of a package manager and repositories. It's iTunes. Yes, synaptic, yast, Mandriva control center are like the iTunes of software. Most people are familiar with iTunes and have used it, so I feel it's a good comparison to get the message accross. Follow me on this make believe conversation.

dude: How do you install software on Linux?

me: Linux has a build-in online store of software, were you can search for almost any type of software. Have you ever used iTunes to buy music?

dude: yes.

me: Well Linux has a similar tool for getting software, except all the software is free. It's called synaptic (or insert other GUI PM), let me show you.

dude: cool!

me: In Windows, to install software, you usually have to go to a retail store and buy a CD or go to a website, like Adobe.com to download and install Acrobat Reader and/or then go to mozilla.org to download and install thunderbird. Well, if you were to buy music the same way it would be like going to the U2 website to download their new album and then going to Coldplay's website to download their music, etc. The reason iTunes is so popular is because it's this one-stop-shop for music. You don't have to go hunting the web or a retail store for your music.

dude: Yeah, that makes sense.

me: Well, synaptic on Linux is like iTunes, where it is the one-stop-shop for software on Linux.

dude: I like it.

me: So, that is how you install software on Linux.

Now, I understand that there are fundamental differences between iTunes and a Package Manager, but Joe Smoe needs some type of tangible comparison to really get it.

Now something else that can be done is, explaining that many companies do offer Linux packaged software on there website, then show them some examples. Here are just a few:

Adobe Flash
OpenOffice
Firefox
Picasa
vlc player

..and there are tons more that I'm sure you can think of to add to this list. When I show this to the potential new Linux user, I would emphasize that using the distro's package manager is recommended way of doing it.

Let me know what you think. Just another way to convert the world.

Watch Battlestar Galactica on Your Phone.

I have a crappy Nokia flip phone. There is nothing special about it. It does have a camera and can take really poor quality video if you happen to be standing in reasonable light. It does have have a media player to watch these videos which are formatted in .3gp, which I guess is very common in these small portable devices. I also have a 1 Gb micro SD card for storage on my phone. So far nothing too outlandish about this phone or it's features. These features are found on the most basic "free" phone given to you by carriers when you sign away your 1st born with one of their contracts. This is definately not a iPhone or some other overpriced "smartphone".

Anyway I wanted to see if I could watch Battlestar Galactica on my phone while on the bus to work each morning and found that it's not that difficult with Free open source software. My Battlestar Galactica episodes in .avi format, so I just needed a way to convert my .avi file to .3pg. Then put that newly created .3pg file on my microSD card and fire up my media player on my phone and I should be good to go. Here is how I did it.

Install the following: ffmpeg, amrnb, amrwb and sox. In debian based distros it's pretty straight forward with apt-get and each of these applications are in the Ubuntu repos. Then issue the follow command:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.avi -s qcif -vcodec h263 -acodec aac -ac 1 -ar 44100 -r 25 -ab 192 -y outputfile.3gp

Here is a brief breakdown of the ffmpeg command. You can find more detail on the ffmpeg man page.

-i input file
-s video size (qcif=176x144, see man page)
-vcodec video codec (needed for the conversion)
-acodec audio codec
-ac # if audio channels
-ar Audio frequency
-r Frame rate
-ab audio bitrate
-y output file

You may have to fiddle with the frame rate a bit to what works best for you on your device. I've converted one file and played it on 2 different devices and the audio and video sync was off on one and not the other, which tells me that something funky is going on with different media players. I would recommend that you keep the audio quality (freq and bitrate) high because the speakers on most of these low quality device are pretty crappy. You will want to have goo sound quality if you expect to hear anything.

A one hr long episode of Battlestar Galatica in .avi is about 350 mb, once converted to .3pg with the above configuration rates is about 80 mb.

If you have mpeg files you would like to convert, use the following:

ffmpeg -i inputfile.mpg -s qcif -vcodec h263 -acodec aac -ac 1 -ar 8000 -r 25 -ab 32 -y outputfile.3gp

If you're try to get videos off your phone to watch on your computer, here convert your files the other way.

ffmpeg -i clip.3gp -f avi -vcodec xvid -acodec mp3 -ar 22050 file.avi

Enjoy!

Gwyneth Paltrow is Ubuntu!?

Yep! Gwyneth Paltrow believes in Ubuntu. The philosophy, not the Linux operating system. Check it out. Scroll down to the bottom to see the reference.
http://goop.com/newsletter/22

“Ubuntu” is an African term that means what makes us human is the humanity we show each other. It’s a worldview that sees humanity as a web of family rather than a mass of individuals. When you relate in this way, you feel connected, energized and have a sense of abundance.

These tips are merely seven of the more than 50 in the book. All are fairly easy to incorporate into your busy lifestyle and, more importantly, they each can make a profound difference.

I wonder if she knew that there was an operating system and an entire community out there who actively practice these ideals, if she would be willing to use it?

Configured Crunchbang!

I installed the latest Crunchbang Linux on my laptop a while ago but I haven't had time to actually configure it to my own liking, until this weekend. Here's the Screenshot.

Conky took some time to get just right, especially the weather option, but this is mostly due to my lack of knowledge of configuring conky.

I also set key-bindings for transparency effect of windows and an expose effect using skippy. Then I installed synergy which allows me to use my mouse and keyboard from my main computer on my laptop, similar to a KVM.

Finally, I added wine and installed MS Office 2007, which is required for a class I teach.

I took careful notes, for future blog posts. I will now try to mimic this set up on the Ubuntu install on my main desktop. I've seen some posts concerning this on the Crunchbang forum which I think will help.

Let me know what you think.