Archive for August, 2008
Stupid (but useful) apps: Gcolor2
When we want to obtain the code (or just the color) that is in our desktop (can be on firefox, or simply on other application) we can try different ways to obtain it:
1. Calling Homer Simpson and ask him which color he think that the color in question is.
2. Opening The Gimp, double click to the color, and there is an option to catch whichever color on the screen.
3. Using Gcolor2. Gcolor2 is a small application that allows us to catch whichever color on the screen. It is basically the same as The Gimp do, but gcolor2 is faster. Also, gcolor2 remember all colors that we caught.
Gcolor2 can be found in almost all repositories of all the GNU/Linux distributions.
Mandriva 2009 Beta, released
Mandriva 2009 beta was released yesterday. Among all the changes that we can find, there is one kind of interesting: the new installer.
As openSUSE did, the Mandriva team decided to improve the installation program and now it is really cool. About package versions, this beta updates OpenOffice.org to version 3.0 beta (they hope that the final OOo release will be published at the same time as Mandriva 2009 will do).
Also, it includes the atl1e driver used by several new Asus Eee models; Firefox 2 is completely removed from the repositories and now we only can find Firefox 3; it includes the last version of KDE 4.1, which is the default desktop and the official Mandriva theme, Ia Ora, is further integrated into KDE 4 in this release.
- Link | Release announcement | Release notes
- Download | Mandriva 2009 Beta DVD
Fedora 9 on a MacBookPro
I’ve looking for information about configuring Fedora 9 on a MacBookPro and I didn’t find anything (just a shame). For that reason I’d like to resume the main steps to configure the basic things that a normal user would need.
- Installation
There is nothing important to remark. First we have to install rEFit on MacOSX. Download the lastest version of Fedora (at this moment, Fedora 9), put the cd in the drive and restart the computer. The installation will start and we only have to follow the typical steps: create two partitions at minimum (firts it’ll be necessary to reduce the mac partition and the create one partition for the base system and the other one for swap). Anaconda will install the bootloader at /dev/sdax, and that’s alright; don’t select the MBR because it won’t work.
- Graphic driver
At this moment, the last fglrx version is the 8.7 and it is not compatible with Xorg 7.4. but it seems that the radeonhd testing driver works fine and it can run Compiz. It is necessary to add the update-testing repositories and install the radeonhd module:
yum --enablerepo=updates-testing install xorg-x11-drv-radeonhd
yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update
Once updated, it is necessary to edit the xorg.conf file and add some lines. Just look this one. Then restart the computer and go to System > Preferences > Look&Feel > Desktop Effects and enable them. It will work perfectly (at least it worked for me).
- Webcam (iSight)
After trying a lot of ways to set it up, finally I was successful. What I did:
1. Install the package isight-firmware-tools from the package manager.
2. Download the AppleUSBVideoSupport and extract it:
ift-extract --apple-driver AppleUSBVideoSupport
3. Edit your xorg.conf and copy this Module section:
Section "Module"
Load "synaptics"
Load "extmod"
Load "dbe"
Load "glx"
Load "xtrap"
Load "dri"
Load "GLcore"
Load "record"
EndSection
4. Restart the computer and if you are lucky, it will work (try with Skype, Cheese or Ekiga)
- Keyboard
For me, it works well. I missed up the AltGr and Del keys. The way to fix it is too easy. Go to System > Preferences > Keyboard. On the Layout Options tab, select “Third Level Choosers” and check “Press Right Win-key to choose 3rd level” (this key is the right apple on the keyboard).
To add a Del key, for example we can use the next key after the right apple. Create a text file as ~/.xmodmap containing the following text:
keycode 108 = Delete
And run xmodmap each time you start GNOME. Go to System > Preferences > Personal > Sessions and add this command:
xmodmap /home/your_user/.xmodmap
- Network
If you use the ethernet, maybe it is not interesting for you to configure the wireless card. However, it’s always good to set it up thinking about future situations. First of all, install development software (gcc, make, etc.). To do that, just go to System->Administration->Install/Remove Software and then, search for those programs (it’s kind of crappy because if you search for “make” it will appear a lot of results, so you have to find it by alphabetic order).
Once installed, it’s time to download the lastest madwifi drivers. Unpack them in your preferred folder, open a terminal and go to that folder. Then, compile it:
make (the second line as a root)
make install
Next time you restart the computer, the wifi will be active. Each time you upgrade the kernel, it is necessary to compile the driver again.
From here, the next points are basically for either computer. It is just configuring multimedia codecs and other basic stuff.
- Multimedia codecs
First it’s necessary to add the livna repository. To do it, just type as a root in a terminal:
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm
rpm --import http://rpm.livna.org/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KEY
And then, install codecs:
yum install gstreamer-plugins-good gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly
yum install libdvdcss libdvdread libdvdnav lsdvd libdvbpsi
yum install ffmpeg ffmpeg-compat libmatroska xvidcore
To install flash (always as a root):
rpm -Uvh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
yum install flash-plugin
mozilla-plugin-config -i -g -v
The last command is to register the plugin (it is not always necessary).
There is other easier way to install all multimedia codecs and other interesting software. In the Fedora Forums you can find more information about it.
__
Well, at this moment this is enough. I will add more tips later.
3 years of EyeOS
It’s been three years since the free web operating system EyeOS was released. Now, more than 200,000 users are using it. It was developed by Catalan programmers in Olesa de Montserrat (Catalonia) and they are going to open up new centers in France and in the U.S.
EyeOS is basically a free desktop environment that works through the web navigator. We can try (and normally use it) from the official web because they offer us the necessary space and tools to do it. On the other hand, we can choose download and install it in our own server.
In the basic package, we can find some office programs, games, feeds reader, etc. Also, there are some extensions or other applications developed by third parties that can be downloaded and installed from eyeApps.org and from the public server.
After three years, EyeOS has became the most popular web operating system and it is improved each release. Each day, 300 or 400 people sign up on the free server and every week more than 1,000,000 people visit the web.
Don’t know EyeOS?… Try it!!
- Link | EyeOS is 3!
Canon in Spain
Carlos Castro is one of the main reasons for which LinEX, the first regional Spanish GNU/Linux distribution, became a reference all around the world (there is a documentary in EuroNews).
LinEX was developed with the support (monetary support) of the Extremadura Government (in Spain) and a couple of years later was introduced in all the schools. At this moment, LinEX is being implemented in hospitals, administration buildings, etc. Also, LinEX was installed in some banks in Colombia.
In Spain, people have to pay a “canon” each time that they buy an electronic product. At the beginning, it was just for cds, but now Spaniards have to pay a canon when they buy cell phones, printers, computers and even for the broadband. All this was because of the Spanish Government (at this moment the PSOE, they are supposed socialists, in theory, but not always in practice) who wanted to compensate those artists who were “losing money” because of piracy.
Carlos Castro criticised this “canon” a lot because it is completely unjust: people have to pay indiscriminately because at this moment it is impossible to differentiate who is practising piracy and who is not. He said:
“…to try to reach the government with the sole support of that mediocre artists class that don’t know how to live without subsidies and grants is a shame. Most people don’t agree with those speculators who call themselves “progressives”…”
These critics where deprived of authority by the Extremadura Government (that was forced to do by the Spainish central Government), and finally, Castro decided to leave his position in the project on his own.
The SGAE (a Spanish artists association) earned up to 500.000€ (about 660.000$) due to LinEX sales (for each cd that LinEX made, 0.30 cents of € was for the SGAE because all cd’s are taxed, even when it’s sure that they are not going to be used for piracy).
Now, Carlos Castro’s blog is closed and he’s gone. And we all would like to know what is going to happen with the most important free software movement in Spain without the main ideologist.
Recovering data on GNU/Linux
Two days ago, a friend of mine who discovered GNU/Linux more or less some days before, tried to install Ubuntu on his father’s computer. The problem was that it wasn’t only his father’s computer, it was property of the school where he works.
He started Ubuntu on the graphical mode and when the installation program was reducing the windows partition something went wrong and the system blocked itself. My friend was scared, so he rebooted the computer, started the text installation and installed Ubuntu on the “new partition” (yes, even though the partitioning tool seemed to fail, after in the text installation there was a new partition like if the process had finished well).
After the installation, there was no Windows option in the Grub menu, so the windows partition was broken after all. We tried using testdisk to recover the partition table, but it didn’t work. Therefore, we had to look for another solution: recover files from the disk.
Foremost
Foremost is the tool we used to recover the files. It usually can be installed using the distribution repositories. Also, there are so many live distributions such as RipLinux prepared for all these recovering tasks.
One thing else that we need to recover our files is an usb disk where the recovered files will be saved. It is important to note that you should not write to the failed disk, because it can overwrite existant data in case of lost files.
To use foremost is really easy. It works searching by extension, so we have to specify the extension we want to look for and where we want to save the recovered data. When we connect an usb disk, the system usually mounts it at /media/disk (or similar), so that’s the place where we are saving our recovered data. Note that the usb disk have to be empty.
With all this, here is the command we have to execute in the terminal (as a root or using sudo if you can):
sudo foremost -t extension -i /dev/sdx -o /media/disk
As you can see, the extension have to be that one that we need (doc, ppt, pdf, wmv, avi, mpg, jpg, png, etc.). /dev/sdx represents the hard disk where we want to search to recover the files and /media/disk represents the place where the recovered data will be saved.
You will see that the recovered files have no name, just numbers (for example 123532423.doc). That means that we will have to open each one of them to see what is inside.
More information about recovering data in the Ubuntu Wiki.
StorYBook, writing novels
Free Software can also help us writing novels. StorYBook is a tool created in order to make easier the hard task that writing novels is: it is complicated to safe in our memory every thing that happen in the story, all the elements, etc.
StoryBook helps us to make it easy. When we open the program, we can choose among 3 views:
- The Chronological View shows the scenes sorted by date.
- The Manage Chapters and Scenes view shows all chapters and their assigned scenes. Scenes can be moved and renumbered by Drag-and-Drop.
- The Book View shows all chapters and their assigned scenes sorted by chapter and scene numbers, as you would read it in the final book.
Also, we can organize strands and strand links, characters, locations, chapters, parts, information related with the scenes, etc. The program allows us to adjust the view we need among those we commented before, and saves automatically (instant save) our story (we don’t have to do anything).
The 2.1.2 version has been published some days ago. One of the most interesting new features is the possibility to export to PDF. StorYBook works under GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac (programmed on java) and is GPL.
