Advisory for newcomers to Linux-Based operating systems

Most people call Linux an operating system when it is just the Kernel of many operating systems. The Kernel is a tiny (8MB) piece of software that allocates resources to all the running processes. Calling Ubuntu "Linux" is not really correct. It's like calling Vista "NT" as that is the Kernel that Vista uses. If there is a problem in Ubuntu or openSuSE etc then you do not say Linux has problems as there is a 99% chance that it is not the "Linux" that is the problem, it's just the software included in the operating system package. Linux should not even be mentioned as part of the operating system as I have never heard people with Vista saying that their computer runs NT. That's why I don't say my computer is running Linux, I say it is running Ubuntu as that is my operating system, not "Linux". People try to call Ubuntu and openSuSE etc "Linux" because that is what they all have in common, the "Linux" Kernel but this is totally wrong calling these operating systems "Linux".

:-)

Wine 1.0 Released!

The long awaited version of Wine has been released featuring lots of bug fixes and support for Windows Server 2008 applications. This is a great feat for the Wine team and a great surprise for all the OSS supporters out there. Soon Windows may not be needed.

P.S. Windows' only purpose now is to run your Windows games. (Wine is getting there)

OGGConvert Problems

The OGGConvert issues I mentioned earlier are only in the version that comes in the Ubuntu repositories. I tried the version that comes in th Fedora repositories and it works fine. There isn't even OGGConvert in the openSuSE repositories.

openSUSE 11.0 Released!

openSUSE 11.0 was released so I downloaded the install DVD and gave it a go.

The install went smoothly and it asked me if I wanted GNOME, KDE 4, KDE3, XFCE or No graphical system. I chose KDE3 as it is a lot more stable than KDE4. It automatically chose a suitable partitioning scheme and it installed in around 30 minutes.

The desktop was clean and pretty close to the last KDE release in 10.3. The graphical package manager was the same which disappointed me as I never liked the Yast Qt package manager. It included some KDE4 components which are considered stable such as KDE4 games and KDE4 Remote Desktop utilities.

It include a few proprietary components which I usually install afterwards. It included the JRE and browser plugin, Flash Player and the Fluendo Free MP3 decoder.

I wanted to try the GNOME version so I re-installed and chose GNOME. The GNOME version I liked better and the graphical package manager was very nice, much better than the Qt one. It was blazing fast, almost as fast as Fedora 9. It included most of the software I usually install afterwards apart from of course multimedia codecs and libdvdcss.

I opened the package manager and it asked me what repositories I wanted to add so I ticked the boxes for Packman and Videolan. The newer libzypp in openSUSE makes the packageing system up to 10 times faster that the older on.

It had an error when downloading some packages from the opensuse-11.0-oss repository which was a shame as it never worked again. It downloaded about half the packages then it had the error and the package manager could never download anymore packages again. If it wasn't for that problem I probably would have kept it installed as my main system.

Overall it is a great distro and has many inprovements over 10.3 and the package manager bug is probable just my computer.

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Kubuntu 8.04 is nice

I installed Kubuntu 8.04 and it is very clean and runs smoothly. It's K Menu is much more tidy that other KDE distros as it contains apps that actually may get used by someone. :-p

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PyTube Multimedia Converter

PyTube is an all-in-one internet multimedia downloader/converter that's still in beta but works OK.

It searches Youtube videos from within the app.
It downloads videos from Google Video, Myspace TV, Metacafe and Youtube.
It saved watched videos from your Firefox cache.
It generates ringtones.
Adds an audio file into a video file.
Merges videos.
Resizes and rotates videos.
Converts almost any video that ffmpeg or mencoder supports into 3GP, AVI, OGM, OGG, MP3, Animated GIF Video, MP4, AMV and WAV.
Has a nice GUI.
Totally Free!

Additions that I would like to see in PyTube is a progress bar and time remaining status for the encoding process.

I've attached a screenshot below.

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openSuSE 11.0 RC1

openSuSE 11.0 was better that the beta because the install went smoothly and didn't crash while the bootloader was being installed. It's very simple to use and has a upgraded version of Novell SLEDs "slab" menu.

Ubuntu has cleaned up some bad bugs

I tried Ubuntu 8.04 about a month ago and as I said in my previous post it was very bad. But now I tried it and after 200MBs of updates it's all good, no more crashes when playing media.

OggConvert by Tristan Brindle

OGGConvert is a great utility I found that converts almost any audio file or video file to the free OGG Theora/Vorbis format. The OGG format for audio has the same quality as MP3 but the size varies. Sometimes MP3s are smaller than OGGs but sometimes vice-versa. On the other hand, when I convert an XVID video to an OGG, the OGG is much smaller. I converted a 700MB XVID AVI to a 540MB OGG with quality to boot. I can't believe not many people know about this OGG format and since it's free, almost all Linux distributions including Ubuntu come with the codec pre-installed. I've attached a screenshot below.

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What's your free OS?

A website for selecting a free alternative to MS Windows.

www.your-free-os.co.nr

Installing VirtualBox 1.6.0 in Fedora 9

This article will show you how to install VirtualBox 1.6.0 in Fedora 9 (or other versions) and how to reconfigure it after a kernel update.

1. Download the Fedora 9 RPM for your architecture from here.
2. Install the RPM and then install gcc, make, kernel-headers and kernel-devel.
3. Make sure you have all updates installed.
4. Add yourself to the vboxusers group or just add read/write permissions to "/dev/vboxdrv".
   
5. Open a terminal and run the following command:

su -c "/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup"

Run step 5 again after a kernel update. Unlike Ubuntu, the USB support in virtual machines is preconfigured and works without errors.

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openSuSE 11.0 Beta

I've tested out the openSuSE 11.0 beta GNOME and it has many improvements over previous releases.

• The beta 0 and beta 1 versions didn't work at all in a VM or native.
• The beta 2 worked in a VM but not native.
• The beta 3 worked both ways.

It all looked smooth and very polished and simple except for a severe bug when just after installing (native) it crashed before the boot loader was installed so my system was not functional any more. I re-installed Fedora and my system was good again.

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Fedora 9 (Sulphur) has been released

Fedora 9 is now what I run on my laptop and it runs great.

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS was a let down

The new Ubuntu release was a slight let down for me as it was very buggy.

The final release was even buggier than the Beta!!!

The bugs I found were on my fathers HP laptop it would crash whenever clicking on the Date/Time applet. (A fix has been released in the updates)

On my laptop it would crash when I tried to play a video.

I ended up changing to Fedora 9 which is great and has none of these bugs.

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Welcome

Hello, and welcome to my blog.

This blog just has tips, news and info on Linux.