Into.the.Void.

In search for a proper dvd player for linux I stumbled upon vlc.
It’s a great player with great features combining the functionalities of progs like mplayer, xine, etc. I don’t want to use mplayer to play dvds because it does not support dvd menu browsing. Xine from the other hand worked fine…until I pressed the fullscreen button. CRASH!… Oggle is another dvd player I tried using. There’s no gui and one has to learn the keyboard shortcuts. The basic drawback of oggle though is the lack of deinterlace option.
VLC has it all. Great gui, plays dvd menus, great sound and video drivers support, streaming support if you want…just everything. The prob with it is that it has a lot of library dependancies..but it’s worth it 🙂

vlc 0.6.2 and 0.8.1 had trouble compiling on my gentoo so I decided to go for 0.8.0.

To install vlc-0.8.0 it in gentoo I had to unmask some packages though:

echo “media-libs/libdvbpsi ~x86” >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
echo “media-video/ffmpeg ~x86” >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

and then:

emerge /usr/portage/media-video/vlc/vlc-0.8.0.ebuild

don’t forget to have the wxwindows use flag enabled in your /etc/make.conf…else you’ll get no gui 🙂

I’ve also found a very nice beta of acrobat7 for linux around the net. It’s great! Very fast…and with very nice rendering. It opens up pdfs faster than gpdf and it has a feature that’s trully lacking from gpdf: Text searching. I’ll wait for acrobat’s final release of acroread for linux 🙂

I’ve also changed my firefox theme from the default to Qute 3 (sample1, sample2)

Filed by kargig at 18:34 under General,Linux
No Comments | 2,565 views

athcool is a VERY nice utility that enables AMD’s athlons to enter powersaving mode. It’s just great. Less heat, less noise from fans that don’t need to run on 4000rpms any more 🙂

Just a part from the Athlon Powersaving HOWTO.

The HLT signal which is used by the normal idle-loop of the Linux kernel doesn’t normaly bring any significant power-saving on processors of the Athlon/Duron family (hereafter referred to as Athlon processors). To get real power-saving on an Athlon processor, you have to put the processor in the STPGNT-Mode (Stop Grant Mode). In this mode, the processor is disconnected from the front-side bus (FSB), and can turn off parts of the CPU as well as reduce the clock to save power.

just emerge athcool and start using it.

Filed by kargig at 12:55 under General,Linux
3 Comments | 3,426 views

I’ve emerged k3b in my gentoo to be able to write cds from X windows. When trying to fire up k3bsetup I got these strange messages:

root # k3bsetup
_IceTransOpen: Unable to Parse address
Session management error: Could not open network socket
kio (KSycoca): WARNING: Found version 75, expecting version 78 or higher.
kio (KSycoca): WARNING: Outdated database found
kio (KSycoca): ERROR: No database available!
kio (KSycoca): ERROR: No database available!
kio (KSycoca): ERROR: No database available!
kio (KSycoca): ERROR: No database available!
kcmshell (kdelibs): WARNING: Could not find module ‘k3bsetup2’.

I don’t understand what this is. BUT I’ve found a solution to it.
Inside /var/tmp/kdecache-root/ there were 2 files named:

ksycoca ksycocastamp

as soon as you rm them and run k3bsetup again…everything is fine.

It just works…I don’t know what ksycoca is but I’m glad this “solution” works.

Filed by kargig at 02:42 under General,Linux
8 Comments | 6,147 views

As I’ve said some time ago I wanted to switch to linux for desktop use. I started 3-4 days ago and I now have a fully working system. Until now there’s no application that I need and I couldn’t find a linux alternative. In fact I am using many applications I was using when I my desktop had windows, like openoffice, gaim, firefox, thunderbird, etc etc.
I had some slight problems though that I had to overcome.
A) How to import my firefox settings from windows.
I wanted all my passwords, bookmarks, history, etc etc. I googled for quite some time and I could only find how to import history and bookmarks, not a word about passwords. Anyway I’ve found out a solution, and here it is. Go to your “windows” firefox profile directory and copy:
1) key3.db
2) signons.txt
3) a file with numbers ending in .s (like 3143432.s)

to your linux firefox profile directory. In your linux directory open up prefs.js (while firefox is closed) and add a line to the file like this:

user_pref(“signon.SignonFileName”, “3143432.s”);

Start up firefox and you have probably all your passwords transfered from windows to linux. 🙂

B) Make audigy 2 work!
I supposed that having the latest kernel 2.6.10 and just enabling alsa and emu10k1 as a module would be enough. WRONG! I needed to disable alsa emu10k1 module from kernel and emerge alsa-drivers and alsa-utils. 2.6.10 Kernel provides 1.0.6 alsa driver while in order to make audigy2 to work you need 1.0.7. Hail Gentoo forums.

C) Find out what is going on with the ati-drivers.
I have a Radeon 9500Pro and finding out what drivers I should use in xorg.conf and in console framebuffer was a real pain. What are the proper modules to load in xorg.conf ? What’s needed for opengl ? And so many other questions…Gentoo’s forums were helpfull for once more. I emerged ati-drivers and ati-drivers-extra then fired up fglrxconfig. It created a very nice xorg.conf for me…that I only had to tweak a bit. Now I am enjoying opengl acceleration in X windows (I am even playing tuxracer!). About console framebuffer now…Well, don’t enable ati drivers in your kernel. Go to:
Device Drivers —> Graphics support —> <*> VESA VGA graphics support -> VESA driver type (vesafb-tng)
and DISABLE all ati-crap (at least that’s how it works for me). Then go to HOWTO fbsplash follow it and you’ll have nice framebuffer console support with *splash support. When I had ati-drivers enabled I could not get any *splash to work. Maybe it was my fault…but hey..it works now!

D) How to change from English to Greek keyboard in X ?
First read this excellent guide from www.linux.gr:
http://members.hellug.gr/djart/articles/grlinux/grlinux-1.html#ss1.5
Then read this:
http://members.hellug.gr/djart/articles/grlinux/grlinux-2.html#ss2.8
and finally this:
http://members.hellug.gr/djart/articles/grlinux/grlinux-3.html#ss3.1

Then you’ll have excellent greek keyboard support in your gentoo. If you want to have an indication about which language you currently use I’d suggest you take a look at kkbswitch.

That’s it for now…I’ll go play some tuxracer!

Filed by kargig at 22:55 under General,Linux
No Comments | 2,746 views

While reading the news you can see that more and more European Governments/municipalities are planning to switch from Windows to Linux. As a recent example you can take Vienna and Munich (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1635246,00.asp)
In contrast to what’s happening in Europe and ignoring all the efforts of the local community( http://www.open-source.gr/, http://www.knoppel.org/) trying to convince the Greek government even for some “tests”, the greek Government signed last year a major contract with Microsoft for supporting it’s ministries with “windows servers” (tell me if it’s even rational to talk about windows “servers”..). What the prestigious greek government would earn from that ? hmmm, probably some highly rated officers/ministers got a great ammount of money in exchange for the “deal” they made…and secondly …the Greek Government (Ministry of Development) was given the right to see parts of the code of windows xp/2003. And here comes the big question…WHO will see that code? what will a minister (this link is the Ministry of Transportations and Communications.It doesn’t even have an english translation for foreign visitors and these people decide the technological future of us…damn) do with that code…what will he understand…and how much more secure does that make him feel ? It’s rhetorical…we all know the answer.

There are times I feel pity for myself for being a greek at these “modern” times.

P.S. Here is the link with the original announcement of the agreement.

*Edit: California Government “Explore Open Source Alternatives”, omg…Arnie can think more than our politics…

Filed by kargig at 11:44 under General,Greek,Linux
No Comments | 4,186 views