How-To: Install Miro 2.5.1 in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

Miro is a great application for watching videos and high-definition TV podcasts in Linux. The latest release is 2.5.1, a bug fix release for the 2.5 series, which has a faster start-up time, a new, revamped library interface, new keyboard shortcuts, a refined interface and lots of bug fixes. Miro is an awesome multimedia application, especially if you like watching videos at high quality.

Miro 2.5.1 in Ubuntu 9.04

By default, Ubuntu Jaunty comes with Miro 2.0, but the Miro project offers their own repositories for Ubuntu with the latest Miro packages, so you can easily fetch and install the latest release using the instructions below.

1. Edit the sources.list file
Edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file using your favourite text editor (e.g. sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list or gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list) and add the following line:

deb http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/pculture.org/miro/linux/repositories/ubuntu jaunty/

2. Update the package lists
Type in a shell like GNOME Terminal:

sudo apt-get update

3. Remove your existing Miro
If you have an older version of Miro installed on your Ubuntu system, first remove it:

sudo apt-get remove --purge miro
sudo apt-get autoremove --purge

4. Install Miro 2.5.1
Type:

sudo apt-get install miro

This should do it. Miro 2.5.1 should be now properly installed and you can run it by typing Alt+F2 and writing miro in the run box that appears.

Alternately, here are instruction to install it the graphical way (applies for Ubuntu with GNOME):

Open System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. You will be asked for your user password upon opening Synaptic.

Next, in Synaptic go to the Settings -> Repositories menu, then click on the Third-Party Software tab in the window that pops up. Click the Add button and copy/paste the line below (it's the same line you would have added in the /etc/apt/sources.list file by hand):

deb http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/pculture.org/miro/linux/repositories/ubuntu jaunty/


Click the Add Source button, close the window and then click the Reload button in the main Synaptic window.

Next, just search for Miro in the packages list in Synaptic, mark it for installation including its dependencies and you're ready to go.

How-To: Compile and Install Audacious 2.1 in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

Audacious is a GTK music player similar with the older XMMS (X Multimedia System) player. Ubuntu 9.04 ships with Audacious 1.5.1, which is a little old. However, you can easily install and set up the latest Audacious (currently 2.1) following the steps below:

Audacious 2.1 running in Ubuntu 9.04

1. Install the development libraries
Open GNOME-Terminal or Konsole and type:

sudo apt-get build-dep audacious

This command will fetch and install all the development libraries needed by Audacious, including the build-essential meta package which depends on compilation tools.

You will also need to install the libxml++1.0-dev package:

sudo apt-get install libxml++1.0-dev

2. Download the source tarball
Get the source tarball from the Audacious official website (direct link here), save it for example in your home directory and then uncompress it:

tar -xzf audacious-2.1.tgz

3. Compile and install Audacious
First, you can uninstall the current Audacious from repositories (if you have it installed):

sudo apt-get remove audacious
sudo apt-get autoremove

Then, issue the usual commands in the audacious-2.1 directory:

./configure
make
sudo make install

Alternately, you can specify another prefix for the installation, and install Audacious as normal user somewhere inside your home directory. For example:

./configure --prefix=/home/USER/usr
make
make install

Replace USER with your username and make sure the path /home/USER/usr is included in your $PATH environment variable.

At this point, if you run Audacious (using audacious2), the following error may appear: audacious2: unable to launch selected interface skinned

So proceed to the next step and install the plugins.

4. Installing the Audacious plugins
This should be the same as the first part of the tutorial. First, get the development libraries:

sudo apt-get build-dep audacious-plugins

Next, download the source tarball called audacious-plugins-2.1.tgz from the same location (direct link here), uncompress it with tar -xzf audacious-plugins-2.1.tgz, change the current working directory to audacious-plugins-2.1 and issue the usual:

./configure
make
sudo make install

Run audacious as audacious2 (or type Alt+F2 and enter audacious2 in the run box).

Top 3 Linux Burning Applications

1. K3b
Not many can argue against this one. K3b is the most popular burning application for Linux, and although it uses KDE3 libraries, many GNOME users prefer it too over native GTK burners.

K3b 1.0.5 running in Debian Lenny

The version I'm going to talk about is 1.0.5 for KDE3, but K3b 2.0 for KDE4 is in the works, and the second alpha was made available for testing purposes earlier this year. You can read my review of K3b 2.0 Alpha 1 here.

K3b can burn anything, from audio CDs to DVDs or ISO images. It allows you to save the projects, it includes a powerful file explorer and an easy to use interface. You can also use K3b to create CD/DVD ISO images, it supports projects, multisession mode and ripping video DVDs.

2. Brasero
Brasero is the default GNOME burning application. As usual, it features a simple interface which integrates very well in GNOME, with five large buttons for fast access to the most common actions:

- Audio project, to create an audio CD
- Data project, to create a data CD or DVD
- Video project, to create a video DVD or SVCD
- Disc copy, to copy a CD or DVD
- Burn image, to burn CD/DVD ISO images

Brasero 2.26.1 in Ubuntu 9.04 - start-up window

The nice thing I found about Brasero is that it also includes a simple but useful cover editor for your CDs or DVDs.

Brasero cover editor

3. GnomeBaker
I think GnomeBaker is a little underrated by some. It has a simple interface, which kind of resembles the one of K3b, with the file explorer in the middle of the main window. GnomeBaker can burn CDs, DVDs, audio CDs, CD/DVD ISO images, it supports multisession mode, dragging and dropping files and projects. A very good alternative to Brasero for GNOME users.

GnomeBaker 0.6.4 in Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope

Several others are also worth mentioning. We have MyBashBurn, which is a wonderful text user interface frontend to cdrtools and growisofs for burning CDs/DVDs, it supports multisession and burning ISO images too.

There is also Nero Linux, which is great, but unfortunately closed-source, from the same project which does Nero for Windows. A trial version is available for download here. In Ubuntu, just download the (currently) nerolinux-3.5.3.1-x86.deb file and use sudo dpkg -i nerolinux-3.5.3.1-x86.deb to install it.

Nero Linux 3

Decibel Audio Player 1.0 - Simplistic Music Player for GNOME

In the past I reviewed Minirok, which is a minimalist music player for KDE with a simple interface. Well, Decibel surely is its counterpart in GNOME. The version I'm going to talk about is 1.00 running in Ubuntu 9.04 with GNOME 2.26.

Decibel 1.00 in Ubuntu 9.04

The first thing I noticed was that the file explorer can be a little confusing because I couldn't make the file explorer display nothing more but my home folder, so access to my mounted volumes in /mnt (where I have the music) was not possible. Showing hidden files didn't help either, since .. was not displayed. So here's what I did. I edited the configuration file in ~/.config/decibel-audio-player and replaced the home location (/home/embryo/ with / for root):

S'Home'
p14
S'/home/embryo'

S'Home'
p14
S'/'

Later I saw the file explorer root directory can be configured from the Edit -> Preferences menu, File Explorer tab. I think this should be probably be more visible for first-time users.

This way upon starting Decibel again, the root file system was shown. I noticed dragging and dropping only works for directories which have audio files inside them, but not for directories with other sub-directories which can (possibly) include tracks too. Here's how Decibel looks like:

As I already said, the interface is very simplistic. Decibel features a menu bar, a tree view for directories on the left and the playlist occupying the rest of the space.

The playlist can be sorted by track number, title, artist, album, length, genre, date and path, and all these columns can be shown or hidden. You can save the playlist to a .pls file. You can also shuffle or repeat the playlist.

The preferences window includes several nice features, like:
- Audio CD, to play audio CDs with Decibel
- AudioScrobbler, to submit songs to Last.fm
- Covers, to show album covers (this include covers from the album's directory or from the Internet; names for local covers can be changed)
- File Explorer, allowing to add directories for fast access
- Instant Messenger status, to update Pidgin's status with the track playing in Decibel
- Status Icon, to put Decibel in the system tray

Those are quite a few features I would say, however I couldn't find a way to actually configure the Last.fm song submission.

Decibel has several nice features, including cover art, system tray integration or IM status

If you're looking for whistles and bells, Decibel is definitely not for you. If you're looking for a minimalist, fast and clean audio player, stripped by advanced features, then Decibel should probably be one of the first alternatives to try. Just keep in mind that it's not intended to be an advanced audio player, so it doesn't mean it's 'worse' than other audio players, it's just designed for users who want only to play music and forget other, more advanced features.

How-To: Make a Screencast with recordMyDesktop

recordMyDesktop is a command-line tool which allows to record your entire Linux desktop and save it as a Theora Ogg video. It has GTK and Qt frontends too, and in Ubuntu gtk-recordmydesktop is available in the repositories. To install recordmydesktop in Ubuntu, just type in the GNOME Terminal:

sudo apt-get install recordmydesktop

And if you want the GTK frontend, use:

sudo apt-get install gtk-recordmydesktop

The simplest way to record your desktop is to run the command recordmydesktop without any parameters inside a terminal, then do whatever you wanted to do, and when you feel the screencast is over, type Ctrl+C in the terminal where you started recordmydesktop to stop it. It will start the procedure of encoding the video to Ogg Theora, which can take a while. The default output file will be out.ogv, located in the same directory from where you started recordmydesktop:


You can also choose the name of the output file:

recordmydesktop -o my_screencast.ogv

Or make it encode the video on-the-fly, so you won't have to wait after hitting Ctrl+C:

recordmydesktop --on-the-fly-encoding my_screencast.ogv

You can specify a region to record only:

recordmydesktop -x x_position -y y_position -width width -height height

Some other useful switches for recordmydesktop are:

-v-quality - video quality, from 0 to 63, default is maximum
-s-quality - sound quality, from -1 to 10, default is 6
-v-bitrate - video bitrate, from 45000 to 200000, default is 45000
-device - sound device
-channels - number of audio channels

gtk-recordmydesktop - GTK frontend

However there was a problem recording visual effects in Kubuntu, the resulted screencast having many artefacts.

Xfe - Fast & Lightweight File Manager for the X Window System

Xfe (X File Explorer) is a wonderful, fast and lightweight file manager for Linux built using the FOX toolkit with a customisable interface which can resemble the twin-panel style of Midnight Commander if needed.

Xfe 0.19.2 running in Debian Lenny

Why is Xfe different? First of all, it's very lightweight due to the library it uses for its interface. It's true that it may not integrate very well in neither KDE or GNOME, but it supports colour schemes which can change its appearance. Some of the themes included are KDE3, Xfce4, GNOME2 or iMac. Aside from themes, Xfe also allows you to change its default font (Helvetica) so it will match the fonts used by your desktop environment.

The default look of Xfe features a directory tree view on the left and the files and folders panel occupying the rest of the space, but it comes with four view modes:
- a single panel (Ctrl+F1)
- the default tree view with panel (Ctrl+F2)
- twin-panel mode (Ctrl+F3)
- twin-panel and tree view (Ctrl+F4)
These view modes should be usually enough, however Xfe has no tab support yet.

Twin-panel mode

In twin-panel mode, each panel can be separately customised from the menu bar.

Xfe supports file filters, sorting files/folders by name, size, type, extension, permissions, bookmarks, it can display large or small icons and it also allows a listing mode. Thumbnails for images are also available.

Thumbnail previews

It supports archives and it can compress/uncompress files or folders, correctly detecting all the compressing tools available on the system.

Another plus of Xfe is that it comes bundled with several utilities, like a text editor (Xfw), text viewer (Xfv), image viewer (Xfi), and it allows to set default applications for audio/video player or image editor in the Preferences window. In fact, I found the image viewer quite nice, and can be used as a faster replacement for other viewers out there.

Xfi - Xfe comes with a simplistic image viewer too

The preferences window allows to change the font, the Xfe theme, default applications for opening various types of files, and several other options like the amount of lines the mouse should scroll or confirmation messages for quitting, deleting files etc.

As a conclusion, I think this file manager gets too little attention and it deserves really better. It's true that it has a downside: it doesn't integrate very well running aside GTK or Qt applications, but it has plenty of features, it's customisable and it comes bundled with several useful utilities too. Not to mention that it's fast and it provides four different view modes.

Quod Libet - A Different GTK Music Player

Quod Libet is a GTK music player written in Python with support for various audio formats, including Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, WAV, MP4 and WMA. Quod Libet has a different interface and a slightly different approach compared to players like Rhythmbox or Banshee, for example.

The version I will review in this article is Quod Libet 2.0 running in Ubuntu 9.04. Quod Libet features a simple interface where the playlist occupies almost all the space available. Scanning large collections of music (>5000 songs) can take a while. After this Quod Libet can be a little confusing, since the default view mode is Search playlist, and the songs will not be listed there. You can switch the mode in the View menu, and select Playlists or Album Lists or whatever. To use the search field, after adding a music folder you will have to place a pattern in the Search field in order for the tracks to appear. For example, after adding a directory with songs, you can fill in a filter like #(playcount >= 0), which will show all songs who have never been played or have been played more than 0 times (that's all songs). Default filters include listing of songs not played today, in a week or month, top 40 or bottom 40 songs (taking play counts). You can also edit and save your own filters and load them automatically. This is just like smart playlists in Amarok if you like. The only problem I encountered with the search field is that for large music collections it takes too long to filter them and can make Quod Libet freeze for a while.

Searching in Quod Libet

The true power of Quod Libet lies within its available view modes, which allow Quod Libet to look even like Rhythmbox if you like. It comes with no fewer than nine view modes, which includes:
- a search library
- a playlists mode
- an albums list mode
- paned browser mode, which resembles the look of Rhythmbox
- internet radio
- podcasts

Paned Browser mode - great if you want an interface similar to the one of Rhythmbox

I liked that Quod Libet will fetch cover art from the local album's directory.

Album List view mode

Right-clicking on any of the columns will result in an error message, but it won't crash the application. The available columns can be selected in the Music -> Preferences window, Song List tab, and they include track, title, album, filename (with or without full path).

File list

Quod Libet comes with lots of plugins, which includes the Last.fm song submission plugin (called AudioScrobbler Submission). The nice thing about this plugin is that it also allows to skip and don't send songs which match a pattern. Some of the many plugins it features would be:
- alarm clock
- automatic rating of songs
- CDDB lookup
- download album art from various websites, including Amazon.com
- export playlist to HTML
- tray icon

Quod Libet has some problems with an error report that keeps appearing, but it doesn't crash the application itself. Otherwise, it's really a nice player, with a completely different approach. Its interface, although it seems minimalistic at first, can be changed using one of the view modes available, turning it into a different player with a different behaviour.

Nmap 5.0 Released - Biggest Release Since 1997

Nmap 5.0 was released on July 17th 2009 and according to the official announcement, this is the biggest release since 1997.

Nmap (or Network Mapper) is a powerful, complete, open-source tool for network exploration and port scanning.

This release features many improvements, among which are the new Ncat tool for data transfer, redirection and debugging; the Ndiff scan comparison tool which reports changes between different network scans; the performance improved dramatically; the Nmap Scripting Engine allows users to write scripts to automate a wide variety of networking tasks. See the users' changelog here.

Review: Rhythmbox 0.12.0 in Ubuntu 9.04

Rhythmbox is the default audio player coming with the GNOME desktop environment, featuring a clean, typical interface which is so common for GTK audio players. I could say that Rhythmbox has little missing features and it is rather complete.

The interface is divided between the playlist, which by default takes most of the window space, an artists widget, an albums widget and a left side bar with access to podcasts, library, podcasts, services which also displays cover art for the currently playing album.

Rhythmbox 0.12.0

The playlist allows columns like artist, album, quality, location, play count and it can also be sorted. You can customise which columns to be shown and which not in the Edit -> Preferences window, General tab. You can shuffle or repeat the playlist too.

The side bar includes tabs for a complete customisable queue which you can also save to a file, music library, podcasts, Last.fm integration, radio and playlists. Aside from those, Rhythmbox also offers access at two music stores which are integrated inside it: Magnatune and Jamendo. Those two are renowned websites which feature artists composing music using a free, permissive license.

The Magnatune integration allows you to purchase an album from them using Rhythmbox and setting the desired amount of money you wish to pay, it will retrieve an entire playlist from Magnatune and allow you to play it, and present you with artist information and albums.

Magnatune integration

Jamendo integration is also very good, and it will allow donations to the artist and downloading a torrent file of the currently playing album, which you can download afterwards using a BitTorrent client, like Transmission or Deluge.

Some other features Rhythmbox comes with are:
- Last.fm integration, which allows you to play Last.fm radio (like personal or neighbour radio), submit the tracks you are playing, rate, ban or love songs;
- support for podcasts, which I guess should be a must for any audio player
- small display, toggled with Ctrl+D, will switch between the usual Rhythmbox interface and a minimal, simplistic interface
- party mode, F11, which will put Rhythmbox in fullscreen mode
- visualizations
- support for various plugins
- it searches for cover on the local disk in the currently playing album's directory
- tag editor
- documentation

To mention some of the plugins which come bundled with Rhythmbox by default:
- cover art, fetches album covers from the Internet
- Last.fm integration
- minimize to tray
- iPod support
- song lyrics

The preferences window allows you to customise which columns will be shown by the playlist, the music collection directory, crossfading, and podcasts download location.

Lyrics and preferences

Rhythmbox also has its downsides. There is no equalizer yet and it can stop responding for short amounts of time (unfortunately this is not specific to Rhythmbox only, I've seen such behaviour in Exaile too for example). However, there is a plugin for an equalizer which you can find here, but I didn't try it so I can't pronounce on how it works. That being said, I think it is a great GNOME player and although it probably won't fit an audiophile who wants every feature available, it is definitely a good choice for the rest.

Firefox 3.5.1 Released With Security Fix

Firefox 3.5.1 is the first update to the new 3.5 series of Firefox. According to the users' changelog, this release fixes several issues, including security and stability-related problems.

To download the new Firefox 3.5.1, go to the Mozilla downloads page. I wrote two guides on installing Firefox 3.5 (and later) in Ubuntu, you can find them here and here.

You can watch a video of Firefox 3.5.1 running in Ubuntu below:

Firefox 3.5.1 running in Debian Lenny

How-To: Install Latest Firefox in Ubuntu - Complete Guide

This guide explains several methods on installing the latest Firefox in Ubuntu, including installing it from a PPA repository.

I. Install Firefox from the Firefox PPA repository
1. The CLI (command-line interface) way
This is probably the easiest method. Don't forget to read the Creating a new profile section below after installing Firefox.

A PPA (Personal Package Archives) is a repository for Ubuntu which contains usually newer versions of applications which come in the default Ubuntu repositories. For example there are PPAs for Amarok, for Banshee, for Firefox, for VLC etc.

In order to install the latest Firefox available from a PPA, just follow the steps below:

Add the following two lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

You can do this using your favourite text editor with root privileges (e.g. sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list or gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list). Don't forget to save the file after you're done. To save it in Nano, use Ctrl+O followed by Enter, then Ctrl+X to exit Nano.

The same can be accomplished by running the following commands:

sudo bash -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"

sudo bash -c "echo 'deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"

After you're done editing /etc/apt/sources.list, just update the package lists:

sudo apt-get update

Or use Update from Synaptic. To install Firefox, use:

sudo apt-get install firefox-3.5

This will install the latest Firefox available (currently release 3.5).

An alternate way of doing this is graphically, explained below:

Go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager and enter your user password. In Synaptic, go to Settings -> Repositories and click on the Third Party Software tab. Click the Add button and enter the two lines I shown above, one at a time. Then click the Reload button to update the package lists.


Next, enter firefox in the Quick search field and select the firefox-3.5 package (or whatever version you want to install) from the list that appears. Mark it for installation, together with all the other dependencies it needs. Then, click the Apply button.


II. Install Firefox directly from their .tar.bz2 archive
1. The CLI way
First, download the Firefox tarball from the official website (replace firefox-3.5.tar.bz2 with the version you want to download):

Next, make sure the current directory is the one where you saved the tarball and uncompress it:

tar -xjf firefox-3.5.tar.bz2

The same, replace the version number with the one you have.

Next, move the firefox directory to a location of your choice, or you can leave it on the desktop or inside your home directory. I use ~/apps/ here, where ~ is my home directory. The following step is to make a shortcut to Firefox:

ln -s "~/firefox/firefox -P --no-remote" Firefox

2. The graphical way
After downloading the Firefox tarball, open Nautilus and uncompress it:


After extracting it, a new directory called firefox will appear. Now, you need to create a shortcut on the desktop (or wherever you want it) to the new Firefox binary. Right-click on the desktop, hit Create Launcher and fill in the fields as in the screenshot below, replacing your username.


Notice that although the --no-remote parameter is optional, you should use the -P parameter in order to open the profile manager window, so you can choose to create a new profile for the newly installed Firefox. Later on, you can edit this launcher and remove the -P argument. Keep in mind that if you don't use the --no-remote parameter, you will have to close first any existing Firefox 3.0.11 instances.

Creating a new profile
This step is very important, since it will allow you to create a new, different profile for your new Firefox installation. Of course, you can use your old profile too if you need to keep bookmarks, add-ons and other stuff. To create a new profile, run firefox with the -P parameter:

~/firefox/firefox -P

This will open the profile manager. I will create a profile called firefox35 for this example.


Notice that you can run two different instances of Firefox at the same time (e.g. the default Firefox 3.0.11 and Firefox 3.5). Just run it as:

~/firefox/firefox --no-remote -P

The --no-remote switch tells Firefox not to connect to any existing instances, so you won't get the 'Firefox is already running' message.

Finally, if you decided to create a new profile but still need bookmarks and other stuff from the old profile, copy the following files in Nautilus into the new profile directory:

places.sqlite (bookmarks)
key3.db (stored passwords information)
signon.sqlite (stored passwords information - copy this and key3.db file if you want to have the stored passwords in your new profile)

Notice that your default Firefox profile is stored inside a directory with a name which goes like RANDOM_CHARS.default.

Additional resources
I can warmly recommend this thread on UbuntuForums.org, and also installing Firefox at psychocats.net. This entry in the Ubuntu Wiki can prove useful too, and don't forget my other entry about installing Firefox 3.5 in Ubuntu 9.04.

3 Years Ago: Ubuntu Dapper Drake

Remember Dapper Drake? All the fuss around it, being an LTS (long-term support) release, the six-week delay in order to make things stable, all the forum discussions and the enthusiasm with which it was awaited by Ubuntu users.

Dapper Drake was released on June 1st, 2006 and it had version number 6.06. It was probably one of the biggest Ubuntu releases and ended up being known for its stability. After three years of security updates, support for the desktop version of Ubuntu Dapper Drake will end on July 14th, while the server edition will still be supported two more years, until June 2011.

I remember that when Dapper was about to come out I've switched from GNOME to KDE, and I was very enchanted that Kubuntu, the KDE version of Ubuntu, will ship a stable KDE3 environment. For me, that was the most stable Kubuntu I've ever used. In my opinion, after Dapper Drake, Kubuntu never had such a stable release again. A few months later Ubuntu put out 6.06.1, a point release which included several software updates performed after the initial release.

Here's what Dapper Drake included:

Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake
GNOME 2.14
OpenOffice.org 2.0.2
Firefox 1.5
GIMP 2.2

Kubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake
KDE 3.5.2
OpenOffice.org 2.0.2
Konqueror 3.5.2

KDE 4.3 RC2 Released

The KDE project put out the second release candidate of the upcoming KDE 4.3 on July 9th. This comes only a few days after the first RC was available. This release is codenamed 'Canteras' and it is specifically intended for testing purposes and bug reports only.

KDE 4.3 will include many Plasma improvements, several changes, PolicyKit integration, Geolocation services and many bug fixes.

According to the official announcement, KDE 4.3 is expected at the end of July.

Review: Gwenview 2.3 - The Powerful KDE4 Image Viewer

What is Gwenview?
I'm sure most of (if not all) KDE users are familiar with Gwenview, especially since it became the default image viewer in KDE4. Gwenview is not only a powerful viewer for images, but also a basic image manipulation application, and with version 2.3 it allows even video previews. Although video support was available in 1.4 (which was for KDE3), it was missing in the KDE4 port of Gwenview, but with this new release shipping with the upcoming KDE 4.3, this feature is back.

Gwenview 2.3 in Kubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

Overview
Gwenview supports practically any image format handled by Qt, like PNG, JPG, BMP, XPM, TGA or PNM. These are not all though, and even the SVG (scalable vector graphics) format is supported.

Basically, Gwenview has two modes: browser view and image view (which can also be viewed in fullscreen mode). The browser mode displays previews of images in the current directory as thumbnails which can be resized, while in view mode a single image is displayed and it occupies most of the window space. The left sidebar in view mode can be shown or hidden using F11 and includes three tabs:
- Folders, which is the file browser, displaying directories in tree view mode
- Information, which shows image info, allows to set tags and ratings
- Operations, which can show the KDE file properties window, or actions like copy to/move to and delete current image

Browse mode, without the left sidebar

In browse mode, Gwenview displays thumbnail previews of images in the current directory, and upon moving the mouse cursor over an image, four options appear above it, allowing to delete, view image in fullscreen or rotate it left/right.

Thumbnail information can include filename, modification date and current rating, and the thumbnails can be sorted by name, date and size.

The cool thing about Gwenview is that it allows the user to set tags and ratings for each image individually, and it will also display a rich window containing information about the currently selected image. Viewing images as a slideshow is also available.

Left sidebar shows info, ratings and tags, but it also includes a file browser

Among the actions which Gwenview allows to perform without the need of plugins are red eye reduction, rotate image, resize, crop, flip, all those available in the Edit menu.

When performing actions like rotating or mirroring an image Gwenview will ask whether to save it or not, in a nice, unobtrusive fashion:

Asking to save modified file(s)

When in fullscreen mode, Gwenview will display a utilities bar at the top (which can be hidden automatically), showing images in the current directory as thumbnails, access to functions like rotate image, and even a fullscreen configuration window, allowing you to customise the slideshow mode (loop, interval). See below:

Fullscreen mode

What's new in 2.3
Except for video previews, another new feature in 2.3 is the improved history feature. The history will not only show recently accessed folders, but it also includes an 'url bag' or recent URLs place, where all the links to images go, including the ones from Kopete or Konqueror. So if somebody sent you a link in Kopete which you opened directly with Gwenview, you don't have to search for it in the chat history afterwards, Gwenview will display it under the recent URLs section.

My personal opinion is that an image viewer should only be an image viewer (and eventually an image editor) and the reason for it is that video previews seem to slow down things, especially when you need to view some images and have to wait for some video to load. Anyway, I'm sure there are people who like this feature a lot, and it seems to work flawlessly in Gwenview. It almost gave me an impression that I'm using a video player, not an image viewer! See for yourself:

Videos with Gwenview

General behaviour
I noticed that changing the image size from the bottom size bar in view mode is done extremely fast even for high resolution images. Although this doesn't apply to SVG, JPG and PNG resizing was done pretty fast. Gwenview seems pretty stable, I had no crashes and no misbehaviours while testing it. Instead, Gwenview crashed when trying to use the Plugins -> Import -> Scan Images plugin and hitting Cancel at the Looking for devices. Please wait. window. However, not hitting Cancel will open the scan dialogue, and although I have no scanner, Gwenview successfully captured and saved images from my TV-Tunner.


Plugins
Gwenview also comes with plugin support, but you'll have to install the kipi-plugins package in order to be able to use them. To list several plugins available (but not all):
- print images
- convert to black and white
- email images
- edit meta data
- scan images


Configuration
The configuration window currently includes basic options, like background colour when viewing images and image thumbnails, transparent background, mouse wheel behaviour or the orientation of the thumbnail bar. As any KDE application, Gwenview allows to configure its shortcuts and set global shortcuts if needed too.

Documentation
Although not very comprehensive, Gwenview currently includes a Handbook (F1 keyboard shortcut or from the Help menu) and some useful information can be found on the official website too. See this blog for Gwenview updates too.

Conclusion
Gwenview is complete. The impression Gwenview left me is that of an awesome application. It takes browsing and managing images to a new dimension and it makes it a real pleasure. It has more than enough features for an image viewer, and it is incomparable better than the 1.4 series. For a KDE4 user, I couldn't think of another viewer which can do what Gwenview does, and still keep a clean, organized, and customisable interface.
Official homepage

5 Simple APT Tips for Debian and Ubuntu, Part II

Several months ago I created an article with 5 APT (Advanced Packaging Tool) tips for both Debian and Ubuntu available here. APT is the package manager in Debian and Debian-based distributions, like Ubuntu. Here's part two of that article, with 5 more tips and tricks for APT.

Notice: I specified which commands need root privileges. In Debian, type su, followed by your root password, while in Ubuntu just precede each command which needs root privileges with sudo. Notice that by default there is no feedback when entering the password, so you won't be able to see it, but it goes in. Just press Enter when you're done.

Add repositories from a CD or DVD
If you need an offline repository for packages, you can download all the ISO images for your distribution, eventually burn them on CDs/DVDs and add them manually to the /etc/apt/sources.list file using apt-cdrom (as root):

apt-cdrom add

Enter the CD/DVD in the drive and let APT scan for packages.

Another great solution is to not even burn the ISO images to CD, just mount them and add them to your sources.list this way. Here's what you have to do:

First, type:

apt-cdrom -d=/cdrom add

Or replace /cdrom with some empty directory of your choice, that's where the ISO images will be mounted. I use here /mnt/iso0, /mnt/iso1 etc. Just make sure the directory is empty. The output of the above command looks something like this:

# apt-cdrom -d=/cdrom add
Using CD-ROM mount point /cdrom/
Unmounting CD-ROM
Waiting for disc...
Please insert a Disc in the drive and press enter

Now don't press Enter, instead open another terminal session and mount the image in that directory (as root):

mount -o loop /path/to/iso/file.iso /cdrom

Then return to the shell where you started apt-cdrom and press Enter. It should scan the directory where the ISO image was mounted. I'm not very sure this is the only method, but this worked very well for me. If you mount the ISO the first time and then execute apt-cdrom, it first umounts it and then it fails with the message E: Failed to mount the cdrom.

Use dpkg -S to search for a specific file
dpkg -S filename will search for filename in all the packages available and return all the packages which have a file (or the path to that file) with the same name. Notice that the name can also be included in the found files. For example, typing dpkg -S bash will return all the packages which contain the name 'bash' in their files, including mybashburn, bash and several other packages. On the other hand, searching for dpkg -S /bin/bash will only return package bash, since dpkg will match the whole path to the bash binary. See the screenshots below for examples:


Use apt-file to search for files in packages
This is a tool which creates a cache with info about all the packages available in the repositories, and it allows to search for specific files in a package and show what files a package will install (including packages which are not already installed). To get it, type as root:

sudo apt-get install apt-file

Next, update its cache:

sudo apt-file update

Use it like this:

apt-file search filename

Or:

apt-file search file_path

This will also return paths which include the name file_path. To show what files a package will install, use:

apt-file show package_name

Here's a more comprehensive tutorial I wrote a while ago about apt-file.

Remove unnecessary packages
This was a feature which existed for while in aptitude, but not in apt. Once you remove an application, it may be possible that some libraries on which that application depended to remain installed in the system. In order to get rid of those too, use:

apt-get autoremove --purge

Notice that this command will only remove packages which are not needed any more by some other application or that are not marked as 'installed manually'. This means packages which you did not specifically installed yourself.

List files in a package
Just use dpkg -L package_name for this one. Example:

dpkg -L amarok
dpkg -L bash
...

This will list all the packages installed by the respective package. Notice that it won't list anything if the specified package is not installed.

Hope this will be useful. Have some more, or maybe something wrong in the article? Please share other APT-related tips and tricks in the comments below.

How-To: Download Debian CDs/DVDs Using jigdo

This guide will show how to download ISO images (CDs, DVDs or Blu-Ray) using jigdo, a specific protocol intended to be the main way to download Debian disc images.

jigdo (or Jigsaw Download) downloads individually all the files located on a specific CD/DVD, and then it assembles them into an ISO image. jigdo is known to be a faster alternative to download large image files.

To use jigdo, you need to follow several steps explained below:

Install the jigdo-file package
This package contains a command-line tool for downloading jigdo files, called jigdo-lite. To install jigdo-file, type as root:

apt-get install jigdo-file

Get the jigdo files
You have two ways of doing this. You can go here, choose your architecture and distribution, and either save the jigdo files you want to the local hard drive, or just right-click on each file inside your browser and select Copy Link Location (in Iceweasel, other browsers should have a similar option when right-clicking links). For example, the full address for Debian Lenny 5.0.2 'Stable' CD1 jigdo file is http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/5.0.2/i386/jigdo-cd/debian-502-i386-CD-1.jigdo so that's what I'm going to use when opening it with jigdo-lite.

Run jigdo-lite and start downloading
Open a terminal (like Konsole or GNOME Terminal) and start jigdo-lite. Something which looks like the screenshot below should appear:


Next, paste the address you copied at the second step (either right-click then Paste or Shift+Insert) and press Enter. The following steps should be left default, so just press Enter until it starts downloading the files. It should look like the screenshot below:


The downloaded image and files will be located in the current working directory, so if you were in ~ (home directory) when starting jigdo-lite, that's where your ISO image will be. After downloading is finished, jigdo should return a message like the one below:


After downloading, there will be 3 different files available, only one of them being the ISO image, which you can burn to a CD/DVD (depending on which type is).

Further reading
Downloading Debian CD images with jigdo - official documenation
jigdo official website

How-To: Install VLC 1.0 from the Ubuntu PPA Repository

Since most of the users found the compilation method to have either too many steps or too complicated, here's a tutorial on how to install VLC 1.0.0 using the Ubuntu VLC PPA repository. Just follow the steps below:

First, download and install the trusted key:

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 7613768D

This commands tells apt-key to download key 7613768D from keyserver.ubuntu.com and add it to your trusted repository keys.

Next, we need to edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file with root privileges (sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list or gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list) and add the following two repository lines:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/c-korn/vlc/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/c-korn/vlc/ubuntu jaunty main

Make sure to save the file when you're done. Alternately, this can be done as:

sudo bash -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/c-korn/vlc/ubuntu jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"

sudo bash -c "echo 'deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/c-korn/vlc/ubuntu jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"

These two commands will append the two lines mentioned earlier to /etc/apt/sources.list.

Next, update the package lists:

sudo apt-get update

Then, just install VLC the usual way:

sudo apt-get install vlc

Or you can use Synaptic (System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager), search for package vlc and install it from there.

Review: Exaile in Ubuntu 9.04 - Complete Audio Player for GNOME

Exaile is a powerful and complete audio player for the GNOME desktop environment, which can easily compete with more popular players like Banshee or Rhythmbox.

Scanning a music collection of about 700 Ogg Vorbis files took around 3 minutes and a half, while adding all those tracks to the playlist took about 3 minutes too on my Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz and 1 GB DDRAM2.

Exaile running in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

Exaile can become a little slow when there are several thousand music files in the playlist, especially when adding and sorting by custom columns. The playlist can be sorted by meta tags and other rules, like title, album, year, genre, rating, bitrate, location, playcount etc. Columns can be shown or hidden. You can shuffle or the tracks and repeat the playlist endlessly. The collection sidebar on the left can also be sorted by several rules, including Artist - Year - Album. See the screenshots below.

Exaile also comes with an equalizer, so those who are used to using an equalizer when listening to music will be pleased by the 10-band equalizer accessible via the Tools -> Equalizer menu. It comes with presets too.

10-band equalizer including presets

I like Exaile's approach to use tabs for track info for example, which is a powerful information widget indeed. It includes several sub-tabs which display track general information, statistics, artist and album info from Wikipedia, and lyrics. These are searchable, and there is an option to open the current web page in an external web browser.

Track info - Wikipedia tab

Another feature of Exaile are vizualizations, which can turn it into a pleasant music experience, especially useful when relaxing or not working at the computer.

Exaile also comes with a blacklist manager, a queue manager and the library manager, which allows to add specific directories to the collection to be scanned.

Support for plugins is also a powerful addition for Exaile. There are several plugins which can prove very useful, especially the Last.fm radio, Desktop Cover (to display the cover on the desktop), Alarm Clock, Shoutcast Radio etc. See the screenshot below:

Exaile Plugins

Exaile can collect album covers from Amazon.com or locally, from the directory where the audio files are located. The good thing is that it allows to customise which files to look for, by default these being cover.jpg folder.jpg .folder.jpg album.jpg art.jpg. It supports Internet radio, podcasts, and it comes with an embedded file manager from which you can drag and drop files to the playlist.

Tag editor

The preferences window is quite rich in options, allowing you to change various settings, including Last.fm song submission user and password, OSD (on-screen display), enable or disable the splashscreen, and many more.

The major drawback of Exaile is that it is slow with large music collections and will sometimes freeze for a while, especially when switching between songs. Although the freeze is not for long, this can annoy any user. I also encountered problems when ticking options (for example when enabling the equalizer). This makes the current song restart, and it can take up to 15 seconds to actually enable the equalizer. Maybe this is only happening to me, but if not, then it's definitely a big problem. The version I tested was 0.2.14 running in Ubuntu 9.04, with all the updates to date.

Exaile really impressed me, since it really looks like a top notch audio player. It has plenty of features, it is highly configurable, yet its interface remains simple and really intuitive. It's not very fast, but neither too slow, in my opinion being on the same level with Banshee or Rhythmbox regarding resources. I liked how well it is organized: you can find anything you want in a matter of seconds, even if you use it for the first time. As a final conclusion, Exaile is definitely a very good choice and can compete easily with any other GTK audio player.