Install 64-bit upstream Vuze (aka azureus) on Ubuntu 9.04 April 28, 2009
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: amd64, azureus, GNU/Linux, Ubuntu, vuze
7 comments
On our 64-bit series, we continue today with Vuze. There is a slightly older version on the Ubuntu repositories, so if you just want a running vuze, you can be happy and stop reading.
However, if you prefer to use the upstream latest version (vuze has its own update mechanism) on Ubuntu 64-bit, this is what you can do:
1. Create a local directory for applications. I use ~/bin.
mkdir ~/bin
2. Download and uncompress vuze.
cd ~/bin
tar xvjf Vuze_Installer.tar.bz2
(Alternatively you can use the Archive Manager and copy the vuze directory to bin in your home directory).
3. Download swt (SWT binary and source, Linux (x86_64/GTK 2)) for Linux 64-bit. Open it with the Archive Manager and copy swt.jar to ~/bin/vuze (~ is your Home Directory). (The download page is rather confusing, make sure you download swt and not eclipse).
4. Create a launcher for vuze by right clicking on Applications and choosing “Edit Menus”. The command is “/home//bin/vuze/azureus %f” and the icon can be found in “/home//bin/vuze/”
That’s it.
Install 64-bit Adobe Flash Player on Ubuntu (updated to 11.04) April 26, 2009
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: amd64, flash, GNU/Linux, Ubuntu
151 comments
EDIT: Update to Flash 11 beta 1
EDIT: This howto –while referring to the directory “.mozilla”– works without adaptation for chromium (that reads ~/.mozilla/plugins).
Now that there is a java browser plugin and a working wine for 64-bit on the Ubuntu repositories, there is not much holding back 64-bit Linux on the desktop. Maybe the only thing missing is the Adobe Flash player. Most of the time Flash is just annoying, nevertheless sometimes needed. Luckily, there is now a Flash Player release for 64-bit Linux (however, still beta alpha beta but stable so far). I am pretty sure the instructions are identical for other Linux distributions.
To install it:
1. The beta of Flash 11 64-bit can be found here (the “Download plug-in for Linux 64-bit” link).
The alpha program has been opened and closed several times (was here and here), but at the moment of writing is open again: download the flash binary here. Because of the intermittent presence of the binary, I put a copy of the latest version here (the md5 checksum is 49b55c7eb8044453e5f6f2e4b3cb4084) and keep my fingers crossed for html5 NB: The screenshot is from a previous release, however the actual binary *is* the latest.
.
2. Unpackage it using a terminal (with the assumption your firefox downloads into your Desktop as default):
cd Desktop
tar xvzf flashplayer11_b1_install_lin_64_071311.tar.gz
(The name of the tar.gz file may change when a new version is released, change accordingly).
3. Create a plugin directory in your $HOME (instead of a system directory):
cd
mkdir -p .mozilla/plugins
4. Move the file to the plugin directory:
mv Desktop/libflashplayer.so .mozilla/plugins
(You may safely ignore the other contents. Place the contents in ~/.local/share if needed).
5. Restart firefox. Go to about:plugins to see if it’s enabled:
That’s it.
Edit: Alternatively, you can use the graphical approach:
1. Download the binary (see the command line instructions above).
2. Select “Open with ” in firefox (you have to click on open to enable the ok button) and clck on OK.
3. The archive manager will open and show you the libflashplayer.so file.
4. Click on extra and a save window will open.
5. Type ctrl + h to show hidden files. Go to .mozilla (dubble click).
6. If no “plugins” directory is present, click on “Create Folder” on the top right and type as name “plugins” (without the quotes). Press Ener.
7. Click on Extract.
8. Click on Close on the windows showing the result.
9. Close the archive manager.
10. Restart firefox.
I don’t like monkeys in the house April 24, 2009
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: GNU/Linux, Java, mono
2 comments
There have been some controversy about the .Net clone on Gnu/Linux: Mono.
I have been running Linux before Mono appeared and I remember the discussions. To be short: most reasons to introduce .Net on Linux are clearly bogus today. If you really want to use a high-level language with a VM, well … use Java (there are java-gtk2 bindings if you prefer a more native look than swing-gtk or swt-gtk). If you want to make it perfect, spend a fraction of the time and money of copying/rewriting a full stack (including a VM) and fix what need to be fixed on Java (specially now that’s GPL2). Besides, there are pretty decent IDEs that make you productive . If Java isn’t your cup of coffee tea (It should be as C# looks pretty similar to me), there are tons of other languages with gtk-bindings (I use gtk2-perl).
Anyway, being a user of a minority OS, there was one argument that stuck then: “we will enable thousands of windows programmers to run their programs unchanged on Linux”. I remember the apocalyptic warnings of “jumping on the .Net boat or drown and disappear”. Guess what, it didn’t happen. And it won’t happen. Windows developers prefer to write for the full and up-to-date .Net stack instead of an outdated Linux-clone. Nothing earth-shocking here. As long as the complete stack is not open (libraries), you will always play -incompatible- catchup.
What did we get instead? Beside a few proprietary applications (that can be counted on one hand), we’ve got some tools and applications that mainly run on Linux. Some of them are very nice, but nothing revolutionary that can not be written in an other language.
Do we need to live in fear of Microsofts lawyers for a few applications that can be written in a risk-free language or stack (e.g. Tomboy => Gnote)? To be honest, as long as the OS and my DE (Gnome) don’t depend on Mono, I don’t really care. If Microsoft sends its lawyers, there is always “apt-get purge libmono0 mono-common”. The problem I see is that Novell is pushing really hard to make Gnome dependant on Mono.
Removing Mono in that situation will mean holding the broken pieces of the Desktop in your hands.
Split one flac (+ cue) file into separate tracks (update: including embedded cue files) February 9, 2009
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: flac, GNU/Linux, music
21 comments
You may have backupped your music cd’s using a single flac file instead of a file for each track. In case you need to split the cd-flac, do this:
Install the needed software:
$ sudo apt-get install cuetools shntool
Split the album flac file into separate tracks:
$ cuebreakpoints sample.cue | shnsplit -o flac sample.flac
Copy the flac tags (if present):
$ cuetag sample.cue split-track*.flac
The full howto can be found here (aidanjm).
Update (April 18th, 2009):
In case the cue file is not a separate file, but included in the flac file itself do this as the first step:
$ metaflac --show-tag=CUESHEET sample.flac | grep -v ^CUESHEET > sample.cue
(NB: The regular syntax is “metaflac –export-cuesheet-to=sample.cue sample.flac“, however often the cue file in embedded in a tag instead of the cuesheet block).
Desktop Virtualisation Today September 23, 2008
Posted by vruz in Uncategorized.Tags: GNU/Linux, hardy heron, photoshop, Ubuntu, VirtualBox, Virtualisation, Virtualization, xvm
9 comments
VMware is in serious trouble. (have a look at the screenshot)
It’s the latest release of Sun xVM VirtualBox 2.0.2 running on my Ubuntu Hardy Desktop edition, with Windows XP (that came with this laptop) as a guest, and Adobe Photoshop, the only remaining Windows application I still use. (if you discount the browsers I use for web development testing on different platforms, with Chrome being the latest addition)
It’s isolated from viruses and malware of any kind, I can backup the virtual machine as easy as copying files, and it’s free software under the GPL. (more…)
Ubuntu 8.04 on an HP Compaq 6710b laptop July 16, 2008
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: 6710b, GNU/Linux, Hardware, HP, laptop, Linux
1 comment so far
EDIT Oct 13 2008: Fix for wireless problem (sometimes difficult to connect to Access Point)
EDIT Feb 10 2010: This HowTo is no longer needed on Ubuntu 9.10. Everything OK out of the box.
HP gave us hplip linux drivers for their printers, so when I needed to buy new computer stuff I bought HP (laptop and color laser network printer). Everything (screen resolution, graphics hardware acceleration, wifi, etc) works out of the box. No surprise really, as all these components are Intel with known open source drivers.
Anyway, there is one little thing you need to do make of this laptop a dream GNU/Linux laptop. (more…)
VirtualBox: Install Windows XP using pbx boot June 24, 2008
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: GNU/Linux, Linux, Sun, Ubuntu, VirtualBox, Virtualization, WindowsXP
16 comments
VirtualBox is a great product for a developer (or even a regular user) to run several OSes simultaneously. I run Linux on my laptop, but I need a Windows partition with certain software and updates to connect to the work network. A virtual machine is a fine solution. Specially when running in seamless mode (only the program is open in your Linux desktop and not the complete Windows desktop).
Installing Windows from cd on a VirtualBox instance is really easy. However, I need a *specific* windows installation that can only be installed from a Windows PXE server at work. Sadly, the virtualbox open source edition delivered with Ubuntu 8.10 is unable to do this. This is what I did: (more…)
OpenJDK Swing in Gtk clothing: getting there? June 2, 2008
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: Desktop, GNU/Linux, Java, Linux, swing
1 comment so far
Sun has a golden opportunity to make the dream of Desktop java reality. Although java is predominant for enterprise applications and on the server room, java on the Deskop – whatever Sun claims – is not a reality.
Things have changed since the days of over-hyped applets. Java SE 6 is nice and getting better and swing – and java in general – have made huge speed improvement (hotspot and co.). More important, java is now free.
CPAN on Ubuntu fails on bug IO/Uncompress/RawInflate.pm: solution May 30, 2008
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: bug, cpan, GNU/Linux, Linux, Perl, Ubuntu
13 comments
apt-gettable perl modules on Ubuntu are great. A nice packager at Debian Gnu/Linux compiled the modules and included all dependencies specially for you .
This is extremely handy when you are looking for a solution for a programming problem that you know someone else solved before. You apt-get the modules you need and have a quick try.
While doing exactly this (tryng to install HTML::TextToHTML) , I discover CPAN on Ubuntu was broken:” Can’t call method “value” on an undefined value at /usr/share/perl5/IO/Uncompress/RawInflate.pm line 64.”.
I don’t think it’s a Debian/Ubuntu problem, but rather a upstream bug. Some people have the same problem on Windows. How nice the apt-gettable modules are, there are always cases when you need to build modules not yet in the Ubuntu repositories or you need a newer version (both cases here). A non-working CPAN is not acceptable. This is what I did. (more…)
A wifi-connected laptop as a home server May 29, 2008
Posted by claudio in Uncategorized.Tags: GNU/Linux, Linux, Ubuntu, wifi, wpasupplicant
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As probably many people nowadays, I only have laptops at home. Actually one for me and one for my girlfriend (luckily babies don’t need laptops yet ). As we made the move to laptops a long time ago, you end with older – perfectly fine – laptops. Similarly, I stopped making holes in the walls a long time ago and went wireless.
Laptop and wifi do not sound like a winning server combination, but for me they are. Happily, nowadays wifi is as easy in Linux as in Windows or MacOsX. But do you really want you laptop to use a graphical semi-interactive process to get it’s – often random – IP address? What if the machine will run without an X server?
wpasupplicant and the old manual network configuration come to the rescue. I use this configuration for my graphical over-sized living room divx/mpeg/flac/ogg/mp3-player laptop connected to my tv and stereo and non graphical print server (an old trusty amd 350mhz cpu with 160 mb ram and 4 gb disk) in the home office (far from the living room where we often work). (more…)
