Archive for the ‘Ubuntu’ Category

How to play m2ts files smoothly using VLC

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Posted 02 Mar 2010 — by Arun
Category Technology, Ubuntu

I recently bought a Panasonic HD camcorder which records the videos in m2ts format. m2ts is a high definition MPEG format used in Blu-ray discs and AVCHD. After I copied the files to my desktop, when I tried to play the video using VLC, it was jerky. It wasn’t smooth at all. When I played the video using the Panasonic supplied HDWRITER software, it was smooth. After Googling, I got VLC to play the video smooth. All you have to do is, go to Tools – Preferences in VLC, select Input & Codecs option and select ALL from the drop down menu for Skip the loop filter for H.264 decoding (picture below). Save the preference and play the video. The video should be smooth and perfect. I tried this in Ubuntu 9.10, but it should work with all OSes.

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Ubuntu One Music Store Information

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Posted 26 Feb 2010 — by Arun
Category Ubuntu

You might have read the news in the web that Ubuntu is planning to launch a music store named Ubuntu One music store. Ubuntu has released an FAQ on that. You can find the FAQ here.

Ubuntu One Music Store will be driven by 7Digital. The songs will be DRM (Digital Rights Management) free, so you can copy the songs to your music player, burn them to a CD or copy them to any computer you want. The songs will be available in high quality 256Kbps MP3 and some songs might be in higher bit rate.

Ubuntu One Music Store will be integrated into Rythmbox. This helps you download the songs and copy them to iPod or other music players. Ubuntu is also planning to release the integration as a plugin, so users using Banshee or Amarok or other music player would be able to use Ubuntu One Music Store.

The following are the features you can expect from Ubuntu One Music Store.

  • Search by artist, album, or track
  • Browse recommendations and genres
  • Discover new releases or just released songs each week
  • A convenient shopping basket
  • Support for a variety of payment options

To purchase the songs, you need Ubuntu One account. If you already have an account, you are ready to go. If not, you can easily create one. You also get 2GB of online storage free with your Ubuntu One account. Purchased songs are automatically transferred to your cloud storage, synchronized to all of your computers, and added to Rhythmbox. Customers will find a new library that contains purchases from the Ubuntu One Music Store.

Customers can download the purchased songs 3 times maximum from the music store. This will help in case they lost the songs they purchased due to error or hardware issue or some other unknown issue.

In order to use Ubuntu One Music Store, you have to have Ubuntu 10.04 installed (which will be released this April).

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Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha 3 released

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Posted 25 Feb 2010 — by Arun
Category Announcement, Ubuntu

Ubuntu team has released the 3rd alpha of Ubuntu 10.04 code named Lucid Lynx. Alpha 3 brings the following enhancements:

  • Ubuntu Lucid Alpha 3 includes the latest GNOME desktop environment.
  • Alpha 3 includes the 2.6.32-14.20 kernel based on 2.6.32.8.
  • Alpha 3 of Kubuntu features the new KDE SC 4.4.
  • Lucid Alpha 3 sports full removal of the hal package, making Ubuntu faster to boot and faster to resume from suspend.
  • The likewise-open package, which provides Active Directory authentication and server support for Linux, has been updated to version 5.4.
  • The Nouveau video driver is now the default for nVidia hardware.
  • Built in integration with Twitter, identi.ca, Facebook, and other social networks with the MeMenu in the panel.
  • The Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud installer has been vastly improved in order to support alternative installation topologies.

You can download Ubuntu 10.04 alpha 3 from here. Kubuntu 10.04 alpha 3 can be downloaded from here.
Since it’s an alpha release, please read the known issues below before downloading.

Known Issues:

  • On video hardware that supports KMS, the live CD sometimes does not reboot successfully, instead displaying the boot logo indefinitely.
  • When running on Ubuntu Server, the plymouth boot splash screen does not exit after the system is booted. To get to a console login after boot, you must press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to switch to VT1.
  • Console keyboard selections made at install time may not be correctly respected on reboot, leaving users with the default US keyboard map. This issue affects all images, but is mostly of concern to users of Ubuntu Server.
  • Because of the new alternatives system used for nvidia driver packages, the nvidia installer from NVIDIA’s website currently doesn’t work.
  • The fglrx binary driver for ATI video chipsets does not yet support the X server in Lucid. As a workaround, users should use the open source -ati driver instead.
  • OEM setup mode does not work from the Alpha 3 Desktop CD, because the post-reboot configuration tool is not present. As a workaround, users can use the alternate CD for OEM installs.

Source: Ubuntu.
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How to install OpenOffice 3.2 in Ubuntu 9.10

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Posted 22 Feb 2010 — by Arun
Category Linux, Ubuntu

OpenOffice 3.2 was released 10 days back. It has some new enhancements including faster startup. I wanted to install the new version, but it won’t get into Ubuntu repositories soon. Here is what I did to install OpenOffice 3.2 in my Ubuntu 9.10 desktop. The steps below will remove the current installation of OpenOffice and installs the new one.

  1. Go to OpenOffice website and click on “I want to download OpenOffice.org”. If you use the Firefox browser in your Ubuntu installation, it will download the file “filename_deb.tar.gz”. When I used the Google Chrome browser, I believe I got a non deb version. Make sure you get the deb version. My download includes Java JRE, so it took longer to download than the non JRE version.
  2. Once you download the file, go to the downloaded directory using Nautilus and double click the downloaded file. The file extractor will show a directory OOO320_m12_native_packed-1_en-US.9483 or something similar to that. Extract the directory to wherever you want (Desktop or Download folder or Home folder etc.).
  3. Open a terminal by clicking Application -> Accessories -> Terminal.
  4. Copy, paste the highlighted command in the terminal and press the enter key. (don’t include the quotes for any of the commands in this tutorial). This command will remove the current installation of OpenOffice. Say ‘Y’ if it asks for confimation. “sudo apt-get remove openoffice*.*”
  5. Now copy and paste the following command and press enter. “sudo dpkg -i ~/directory_name/OOO320_m12_native_packed-1_en-US.9483/DEBS/*.deb” where directory_name is the directory where you extracted the downloaded file. If you had extracted it to the desktop, then enter sudo dpkg -i ~/Desktop/OOO320_m12_native_packed-1_en-US.9483/DEBS/*.deb. If you extracted it to your home directory, then enter sudo dpkg -i ~/OOO320_m12_native_packed-1_en-US.9483/DEBS/*.deb. ‘~’ stands for home directory. This will install all installation files under that directory.
  6. Copy and paste the following command in the terminal and press enter. This command will install OpenOffice integration package for Ubuntu since we uninstalled the OpenOffice that came with Ubuntu. “sudo dpkg -i ~/directory_name/OOO320_m12_native_packed-1_en-US.9483/DEBS/desktop-integration/openoffice.org3.2-debian-menus_3.2-9472_all.deb“. Again the directory_name is where the file was extracted.
  7. Type exit and press enter to exit the terminal.

You can now open the new version of OpenOffice from Applications – Office menu. You are all set. When you open the Office applications the 1st time, it might ask you to enter your name and register the application.

Credit: Ubuntu Forums.
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Use your Android phone as remote control for Ubuntu Linux PCs

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Posted 18 Feb 2010 — by Arun
Category Droid, Ubuntu

Tesla is a open source media player remote control App for Android phones that can interact and control  music and video players on Linux distributions like Ubuntu. Tesla needs wifi connection to work. It currently supports Rythmbox, Totem, VLC and Banshee. With Tesla you can

  • Control the volume for just the media player, or the whole system
  • Ability to shut-down your PC by remote control
  • Pause your music/video automatically for incoming calls

Tesla requires OpenSSH server installed on your PC. The remote control apps uses the SSH to interact with the PC over the wifi connection.

Tesla is currently not available in Android Market, but the developer is planning to add it to Android Market once version 1.0 is released. The program is also not compatible with Windows or Apple.

Follow the instructions here to install Tesla. You have to enable “installing apps from unknown sources” on your phone. You can disable this once you install Tesla. You also need to have OpenSSH server installed in your PC and started.

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Ubuntu launches single sign on service

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Posted 18 Feb 2010 — by Arun
Category News, Ubuntu

Canonical has announced the launch of Ubuntu single sign on service last Tuesday. According to Canonical, The goal of this service is to provide a single, central login service for all Ubuntu-related sites, thus making it more convenient for Ubuntu users and community members to access information, communicate, and contribute.  This service will replace the existing Launchpad login service that is currently in use for many Ubuntu-related sites, although existing Launchpad accounts will continue to work in the new service.

Canonical is in the process of moving services that use launchpad, starting with the sites Canonical directly owns and will later work with the community managed sites. For more information, check Canonical’s announcement.

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Getting started with Ubuntu 10.04 manual available for download

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Posted 12 Feb 2010 — by Arun
Category Ubuntu

The Ubuntu Manual team has released Getting Started with Ubuntu (10.04) manual. You can download the manual here. The manual covers the basic information for Ubuntu newbies starting from Installation to getting around the desktop, default applications, preferences, software packaging, system maintenance etc. The manual also briefly covers the advanced topics such as the command line, security, troubleshooting etc. The manual is still undergoing updates, so you may want to wait until the final release which is currently scheduled for April 29th. According to the Ubuntu Manual team, this will be the final release, where the manual is rendered to .pdf and distributed in multiple languages. Everything should be 100% accurate and fully verified to work, it should be suitable for mainstream consumption.

Credit: OMG! Ubuntu.
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Ubuntu 10.04 default search provider is Yahoo – that sucks

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Posted 27 Jan 2010 — by Arun
Category Ubuntu

Canonical’s Rick Spencer announced in a mailing list that Yahoo is going to be the default search provider in Firefox starting with Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. The change is due to the revenue sharing pact that Canonical has reached with Yahoo. In other words, Yahoo is paying Ubuntu to increase the traffic for Microsoft’s search engine Bing, which is the search provider for Yahoo and against whom Ubuntu is competing in the desktop and server market.

I’m not totally against the deal. I’m happy as long as Canonical can make money with Ubuntu, so they can pay their developers better and invest more in Ubuntu, but I don’t want Ubuntu to help Bing gain market share in the search market. I would have been much happier if Yahoo was using their own search engine as they used to and Canonical made pact with Yahoo.

Having said that, users can always change their default search provider back to whatever they were using before. The Firefox’s default home page will switch to whatever the default search engine is.

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NZ school ditches Microsoft and goes with Ubuntu and Open Source

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Posted 25 Jan 2010 — by Arun
Category Linux, News, Ubuntu

A New Zealand high school running entirely on open source software has slashed its server requirements by a factor of almost 50, despite a government deal mandating the use of Microsoft software in all schools.New Zealand government is a sucker to Microsoft. Microsoft has a long-standing contract with the national government and most planning documents for education presume an Microsoft infrastructure.

“The education space is Microsoft-focused and heavily subsidised by government,” said Patrick Brennan, lead engineer from Open Systems Specialists, which led the IT project at the school, during a presentation at Linux.conf.au in Wellington. “Every reference plan is based on Microsoft technology.”

The school’s open source implementation uses Ubuntu on the desktop and Mandriva for four key servers (one firewall, one storage and two KVM hypervisors). Mandriva was selected because of the ease of using Mandriva Directory Server to manage the school’s LDAP directory, but Brennan said either desktop or server OS could easily be replaced.

NFSv4 is used to connect users into the system, allowing them to remotely mount into their home directory on the server via Kerberos.  Applications used within the school include OpenOffice, Google Docs, Moodle for managing education content, and Mahara for student portfolios. The Koha software used by the school library was also customised to integrate more closely with the LDAP security system and to allow book recommendations. While Koha was paid to make those changes, the resulting code will be freely available to all New Zealand schools.

The school doesn’t get any credit for the reduced spending. “The brilliance of Microsoft’s business model is they get the same amount of money regardless of who uses it,” Osborne said. However, the school has saved significantly in other areas, such as not needing specialised routers to handle connections to the Watchdog system used to filter school internet connections.

It’s a wonderful move by Albany Senior High School. I hope the government will take a notice of that and the cost savings and won’t renew the contract with Microsoft when it expires. Great job Albany Senior High School.

Source: CIO.
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Logitech Quickcam Chat with Skype 2.1 in Ubuntu Linux

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Posted 21 Jan 2010 — by Arun
Category Linux, Ubuntu

As you may be aware of, Skype released their 2nd beta of Skype 2.1 for Linux. I have Logitech Quickcam Chat I use with my desktop and it didn’t work with official Skype before. I was using the one from Medibuntu repository and it worked well. Medibuntu removed Skype from their list.

Before you install the new beta of Skype, if you have already installed Skype through Medibuntu, you may have to uninstall Skype and Skype-common before you install the new Skype. You’ll get an error otherwise. Once installed, the video didn’t work. I could then get the video work by loading Skype using the following command I issued in a terminal.

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

Make sure you have libv4l-0 installed. If not, install it before you try the above command. I now have to put this command as a file and run it as an executable to run Skype. It’s a pain, but it works atleast. I hope Skype team will fix this before they release the final version.

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