How-To: Get Full Multimedia Support in Ubuntu and Unlock FFmpeg
This is probably the most important guide to any Desktop Linux user who wants to work with and playback a variety of multimedia files on their system. As you know, most of the popular codecs/formats (i.e. MP3, AAC, DVD, H.264, Flash, etc.) are not included in Ubuntu or other Linux distributions because they’re proprietary and require licensing. Fortunately, however, the Ubuntu community has gone through great strides to make acquiring them a lot easier – although still technically illegal if you live in the United States (my 2-cents: playback codecs should be free to acquire for personal use, especially those that become industry standards). MORE »
Popularity: 100% [?]
How-To: Install Google Earth on Linux
Surprisingly, installing Google Earth to your Linux Desktop is relatively easy to do (same instructions apply to Macs). And once installed… a lot fun to use – especially its newest feature, Google Sky, for space exploration.
Instructions:
- Download Google Earth from http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html (you’ll be downloading a package called GoogleEarthLinux.bin)
- Fire up your Terminal and cd (aka change directory) to your Desktop (or whichever folder you downloaded the package to)
- From the command line type: sh GoogleEarthLinux.bin
Once you’ve completed all three steps, Google Earth will automatically install itself into a folder in your user directory called google-earth, which you have the option to change (see instructions below), and will create shortcut links on your desktop and in your home folder to launch the application. In case you don’t find the program useful, you can uninstall it by double-clicking the uninstall file in the google-earth directory.
[Advanced] Instructions for All User Access:
The instructions are the same as above except you need to use sudo (or root). MORE »
Popularity: 65% [?]
How-To: Kill Misbehaving Applications and Scripts (aka Processes) Under Linux
Ever have your PC freeze up and not know what to do? The following should get you out of a bind and back to normal without having to do a hard (and harmful) reboot.
Scenario #1: X Windows is still up and running but a certain application/script has frozen or is slowing down your PC.
A. [Basic] If you’re Linux distribution is using GNOME, Go to System > Administration > System Monitor and click on the Processes tab. Once there, look to see which process is hogging up your CPU resources, click on the culprit, and then click End Process. Hopefully that should be enough to get everything back to normal.
B. [Advanced] If you prefer to use the Terminal, type top at the command prompt. This will give you a dynamic view all your running processes via a command line interface. Again, look for the culprit hogging up the CPU resources and note the PID (aka Process ID) number. Next, type k and you will be prompted to enter the PID to kill. Type the number and see if the command kills the process. If yes, use Ctrl+c to exit top. If no, read on. MORE »
Popularity: 49% [?]
How-To: Dual-Boot Windows and Ubuntu with Two Drives
A while back I wrote a popular post for eHomeUpgrade detailing how to dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu on two drives. And to this day I still get questions on the best way to do this. Simply put, I recommend using two drives (which are relatively cheap these days) instead of partitioning one drive and risking Windows getting upset by changes you make to its drive size, edits to its boot loader, or just overwriting what you have in the Windows partition by accident when you install or add a Linux distro.
Instructions (the quick and easy way):
1. Install Windows on a separate hard drive (make sure that it’s setup as the PRIMARY using the drive’s jumpers) and leave the second drive unplugged.
2. After that’s done, connect the second hard drive and change the jumpers on the first hard drive (Windows) to SLAVE and make the Linux drive PRIMARY (both drives should be connected at point). Next, install Ubuntu.
3. What should happen: Ubuntu will automatically configure GRUB so that you can boot into Ubuntu by default (1st drive mounted as hd0) and Windows (2nd drive mounted as hd1) as an option. Note: when Ubuntu configures GRUB this way it will automatically trick Windows into thinking it’s the PRIMARY drive (the only way it will work) when it really is NOT.
Here’s a glimpse at what Ubuntu is doing to GRUB to make this magic work MORE »
Popularity: 69% [?]
Woohoo! GNOME Nautilus Has Received a Huge Speed Boost Improvement
I’m not quite sure when it happened (this morning or a couple days ago), but the Ubuntu team pushed out a new update to Gutsy 7.10/GNOME 2.20.1 that drastically increased the speed of Nautilus’ file seek functionality – a big bugaboo of mine. Here’s what I mean: Previously it took Nautilus a good 5-10 seconds on my 3Ghz PC with 1GB of RAM to display my listing of 1,400 images (and growing) every time I wanted to upload an image to my website or view contents from that particular folder. Well, guess what? It now takes one second (or a matter of milliseconds) for the upload listing and a second or two for the thumbnail view when first opening the folder.
I can’t even begin to tell you how pleased I am about this update, but I can say that my productivity is going to shoot through the roof because of it. Great work Nautilus developers!
Side note: I also noticed, when in list mode for uploads (as in the above pic), that one can now toggle on/off hidden files through the right-click menu (interesting), but one still can’t right-click or double-click a file to rename or delete it like in Windows.
Popularity: 26% [?]
How-To: Install Django on Your Linux Server or Development Desktop
I was going to go through the trouble of documenting the process of installing Django on a Debian-based Ubuntu Server, but it looks like the python web-framework has been added to the repository in both Debian and Ubuntu (and a few others). The package has been dubbed python-django, so the install code is simply: MORE »
Popularity: 35% [?]
How-To: Add a LAMP Server to Your Linux Desktop for Development
Lately I’ve been in the mood to do some PHP/MySQL development for my website. In the past, like most newbie or part-time developers, I would work on some code on my desktop and then uploaded the changes to the remote server and hit refresh — not very efficient. This time around I wanted to see how easy or hard it would be to get a production Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP (LAMP) server working on my Debian-based Ubuntu desktop (currently running Feisty Fawn 7.04) so I can do all the development and testing locally without disturbing my LIVE remote site. Below are the steps I took to reach my objective. Notice: The instructions require basic to intermediate knowledge of Linux, how to use a Terminal, sudo, apt-get, and understanding of PHP and MySQL interaction. MORE »
Popularity: 42% [?]
Tips for Transcoding Cinelerra Compatible Video with FFmpeg, MEncoder
I just wanted to post the fruits of my labor so others could benefit. A little background first… for the past couple days I’ve been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how to take the video produced from my digital camera (Casio Exilim EX-S500) and convert it to a format that Cinelerra (project page) would be able to work with – the following also applies to any video downloaded from the Internet. Yeah, yeah… I know I should buy a REAL camcorder. MORE »
Popularity: 84% [?]
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About
Alexander Grundner is a San Francisco Peninsula based web publisher who spends most of his time tracking down news stories for eHomeUprade, attending technology events, or working on his next big project.
For fun he likes to stay active outdoors, take photographs, shoot video, hack together PHP/Python code, play with Linux, and test new technologies.
