Trey’s Blog

Well, today is the day that the Breezy Badger edition of Ubuntu is released. I’m currently running Hoary Hedgehog and here is what I did to upgrade:

1. Modify /etc/spt/sources.list changing all instances of ‘hoary’ to ‘breezy’
2. sudo apt-get update
3. sudo apt-get dist-upgrade (took about an hour)
4. sudo apt-get install ubuntu-base ubuntu-desktop (took about 10 minutes)

My breezy-backports were non-existent, so I did receive some errors here and there, but mainly for not being able to reach that source. I’ll need to update those.

All went well and I now have Breezy Badger running.

Updates: Some programs that have not upgraded well: 1. Azureus - apparently, it doesn’t work with the new version of Ubuntu and the repositories do not have an installation candidate 2. Xine - same situation as Azureus

Update: To update Azureus run these three lines

1. sudo apt-get install j2re1.4 libcommons-cli-java liblog4j1.2-java libseda-java libswt-gtk-3.1-java 2. wget -c http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/contrib/a/azureus/azureus_2.3.0.4-3_all.deb 3. sudo dpkg -i azureus_2.3.0.4-3_all.deb

**When you run Azureus, you’ll probably get a message about running an outdated version of Java, but it should all work without updating Java at this point

If you’ve just installed Hoary and you need to install Java for running Azureus, then you’ll find that most instructions on the Internet aren’t working for you. I spent several hours trying and testing many different suggestions, but thanks to Sun, Java installation went from easy to difficult. Appartently successful installations and missing dependencies are many things you’ll run across.

This post seems to have the answer. Essentially, you’ll download the self-extracting Linux file (.bin) from Sun, and create a .deb file using tools on your system. All of this takes place in your home directory. After that, you install as root using dpkg like any other .deb file, and amazingly everything works great.

I was able to install Azureus and everything has worked out. There will be peace in the world again.

Annoying error (fixed by this method): depends on sun-j2sdk1.5debian

Since I started working with Linux 5 years ago, I ran into the issue of figuring out what tools to use for what in Linux. I knew what to use in Windows, but those programs usually aren’t available in Linux. For anyone who is in the search for the ’somewhat’ equivalents to those Windows-based applications in Linux, here is a list:

There are tons more, but this list looks like a good start. Some things that both have in common are the Azureus BitTorrent Client, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Mozilla Firefox, and Mozilla Thunderbird to name a few.

Today, I received a notification that there was an upgrade for Firefox that would advance me from 1.0.6 to 1.0.7 (Ubuntu release). I went ahead with the upgrade, but was thrown an unexpected error. E: /var/cache/apt/archives/mozilla-firefox1.0.7-0ubuntu0.1i386.deb: trying to overwrite `/var/lib/mozilla-firefox/extensions.d/00classic’, which is also in package firefox This was unexpected because I’ve never had an issue with an upgrade in Ubuntu. I looked through a couple forums and ran across some different approaches to solving this problem. Of course I took the one that looked easiest. I opened Synaptic, searched for ‘firefox’ and removed both instances (firefox v1.0.6 and mozilla-firefox v1.0.6). After that, I reinstalled mozilla-firefox v1.0.7 and everything worked fine. My settings were also intact, so no worries.

I don’t think many people realize the importance of this initiative. OpenDocument is basically a push for all productivity software suites to use a standardized format, essentially making the GUI the distinguishing factor. Besides the fact that the whole world would get better products from this, it would also force overdue competition for Microsoft. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why someone would rather pay $600+ for MS Office, when they can get a comparable package for free in OpenOffice. The only thing I can think of is that people resist change. This is where stressing the importance of OpenDocument comes in. If everyone agrees that we should be using a standard format, then acted on it, Microsoft would have to redevelop their next version of office to be compatible or continue to lose market share. I will give MS credit in that they have a nicely polished suite of apps in their Office package, but it is not worth the money they charge for it. I don’t think everything should be free, but if MS Office cost $100 or $150, then I might consider using it again, but that type of price cut would require them to adopt the OpenDocument standard to reduce the effort necessary for each new version. Until then, I’ll stick with my OpenOffice.

For more information regarding OpenDocument, check out the article at WikiPedia.

OpenOffice.org

SlimServer is a nicely developed (Perl) piece of software that was designed for use with their own device called the SqueezeBox. I don’t own a SqueezeBox, but you can get some good use out of this server. If you want to get full functionality, it is recommended you download their ‘emulator’ called SoftSqueeze, which I’m guessing is the very source code that is use on their device.

Another option is to only use this as your streaming server and connect to it via WinAMP or iTunes. This application is very similar to ShoutCast. I haven’t configured a ShoutCast server in about 3 years, but I’m sure it is as easy as this server was to configure. For those who never have configured ShoutCast, you basically setup your playlist and hit Play, using your nicely designed Web Interface. After that you server is broadcasting your playlist to the port specified to the entire network for anyone to connect to. This is fundamental Internet Radio, and you have just setup your own radio station. To listen to your music, point your music software of choice (XMMS, WinAMP, iTunes, etc) to http://[computername]:9000/stream.mp3 and shazaam, tunes!

This server does seem to handle most types of music files and converts them to mp3 on the fly using perl libraries.

For More Information: http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_features.html

Coincidentally, I found Windows Media Connect at the same time I purchased my OmniFi Media Streamer (DMS1). This is a very simplistic media software that sets up a share for your compatible streaming device to pull media from. In my case, it is only needed for Music, but it appears to support Photos and Videos as well. Check out the details here. The only bug/feature that hinders my use of the application is that it doesn’t support network drives. Your shared music, must be on a local drive. Unfortunately, I keep all of my music on my Linux box.

This program came already installed with my Windows XP (with SP2) disk, but it is available at the above link for download.

Some of you may have noticed the little search box in the upper right side of Firefox. By default this is set to Google and has the little G icon. If you click on the arrow, you’ll notice several other search engines listed and at the very bottom, Add Engines… Clicking on Add Engines will take you to a mozilla page with many choices to add. Unlike other preferences for firefox, search engines are not stored in a file called user.js or prefs.js. The javascript addEngine() function stores them in the program directory for Firefox.

Fedora: /usr/lib/firefox/searchplugins/ Windows: C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxsearchplugins

In order to add search engines, you’ll need to have write access to this searchplugins directory on your system. In most cases, Windows users will have no difficulty doing this, but Linux users will find that by default, root is the only user with write access to this directory. There are three basic options at this point, each varying by security preference. Most secure would be to have root add any search engines for you. Next you could have yourself added to the root group and have root chmod -R 775 /usr/lib/firefox/searchplugins. Last and least secure, you could have root give everyone write access to that directory using chmod -R 777 /usr/lib/firefox/searchplugins. Since this is not something you’ll need to do often, I recommend having root add all search engines and leave your directory permissions as they are.

Hopefully, this will be something they change in future updates of Firefox because it is never good to have your filesystem writeable by client-side javascript. These leaves the browser open to any malicious code dumping files into this directory. I guess, we’ll see if they decide to adjust this to store the values in the Firefox profile directory.

DVD Authoring in Linux is nowhere near as far as most Windows Apps. I think this is just because these are mainly written by small groups and individuals. So far the best tool (by appearance alone) appears to be dvdauthor. This application is a backend app used for creating DVDs in Linux. There are several front-end available for this app and they all look promising. Find out more about dvdauthor.

OpenOffice.org (OOo) is readying its version 2 release and in it they are including a database application similar to Microsoft’s Access. In fact, OOo’s Base will be compatible with most Access Databases (.mdb). Also in this release, you’ll find more MS Office compatibility and better XML Support. This is the perfect productivity suite for a business or indidivual who is on a budget. See some screenshots here.

This didn’t take very long to figure out, but it would be nice to know right away. If you’ve ever scaled any pages in Excel to fit a certain page size, then you’ll know that in M$ Excel, you go under File–>Page Setup, then adjust the Scaling percentage.

In OOo’s Calc, you’ll find the same features under Format–>Page–>Sheet [tab]. This, once again, proves that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to get a very good product.

Mozilla’s Firefox is probably the best thing to hit the Internet in a very long time. Available for free download and loaded with possibilities. If you are running a PC, then there is no reason for you not to be using this safer browser. Besides keeping your PC safe from Spyware, this browser also has tabbed browsing and automatic PopUp Blocking.

Get it here