August 2009 | Linux Blog

Detect and Repair Problems in MP3 files - MP3 Diags

In a few words, MP3 Diags is a GUI-based application that allows end-users to identify issues with their MP3 files, fix some of the issues and make other changes, like adding track information. It also lets you "look inside" an MP3 file.

MP3 Diags is a one stop solution that identifies more than 50 different issues in MP3 files and provides the means to fix many of them (well, not everything is fixable; you can't make a 64kbps file sound like a 256kbps one.)

Some of the more important issues that are found:

* broken tags / headers / audio
* duplicate tags / headers
* incorrect placement of tags / headers (ID3V2, ID3V1, LAME, Xing, ...)
* low quality audio
* missing VBR header
* missing track info / cover art
* broken track info / cover art
* missing normalization data
* character encoding issues (for languages other than English)

Some of the fixes and changes that MP3 Diags can do:

* Adding / fixing track info, including album cover; information can be retrieved from several sources: Internet, clipboard, file name, local files, and (obviously) keyboard
* Correcting files that show incorrect song duration
* Correcting files in which the player cannot seek correctly
* Converting characters for non-English names
* Adding composer name to the artist field, for players that don't handle the composer field
* Renaming files based on their fields
* Changing word case for track info

Installation:
OpenSuSe user can use "1-click" installer to install MP3 Diags
OpenSuSe 11.1 - here
OpenSuSe 11.0 - here

Ubuntu (repositories):
Ubuntu 9.04 - here
Ubuntu 8.10 - here

After successful installation go to terminal and type command : MP3Diags to open up the main application

Desktop Calculator up to 50 Decimal Precisions - SpeedCrunch

SpeedCrunch is an OpenSource fast, usable, high precision and powerful desktop calculator. SpeedCrucnh is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS.

Features:

    * User-friendly GUI
    * unlimited variable storage
    * history and results on a scrollable display
    * up to 50 decimal precisions
    * intelligent automatic completion
    * fully usable from the keyboard
    * more than 50 built-in math functions
    * optional virtual keypad to be used with a mouse
    * on-the-fly and selection calculation
    * customizable appearance
    * syntax highlighting and parentheses matching
    * Keyboard-friendly
    * Smart correction
    * History repeats itself
    * 50 decimals at your disposal

Others:

color the expression: SpeedCrunch can always color the expression according to the syntax. You can easily distinguish numbers from variables. You can also see the matched parentheses.

automatic completion: Type the letter c only and in less than a second you will be automagically given with choices of cos, cosh or your variables whose name start with c.

50 decimals at your disposal: With its unique calculation routines, you can get up to 50 decimals of precision. Normally, all the important digits are shown, but you can also ask SpeedCrunch to round it to several digits.

precision: When your calculation is quite complex and involving a chain of operations, this high precision ensures that you would get less rounding error in the end.

Calculation history: Just press up and down arrow to access the expression which you typed before. Expression history of maximum last 100 expressions is saved between sessions.

Smart correction: SpeedCrunch can still understand an incomplete expression. For example, just typing sin followed by Enter – likely means taking the sine of last value – is automatically translated as sin(ans).

parentheses: Closing parenthesis can be left to SpeedCrunch, e.g. cos(pi/4 is automatically corrected to cos(pi/4).

Installation:

For Ubuntu, Debian, Kubuntu: sudo apt-get install speedcrunch
Gentoo : sudo emerge speedcrunch
Fedora : sudo yum install speedcrunch
OpenSUSE : sudo yast -i speedcrunch

For other Linux distributions, you can install SpeedCrunch by compiling it from source code. See the instructions below :
Download the tarball from here :
    * Download the tarball: speedcrunch-0.10.1.tar.gz (1.6 MB)
    * Extract the package to a temporary directory
    * Run cmake . from the src subfolder, followed by make
    * To install it, run make install (Need administration privileges)

Speed Up Applications Load Time in Ubuntu - Preload

Preload is considered to be read-ahead daemon application as it analyzes the applications which user runs, and on the basis of this analysis it predicts which applications user can run next time and launches these applications in RAM. Its daemon keeps running in background all the time and saves the required information about the applications you are running so that it may load them quickly next time.

Open the terminal and run the following command to install preload: sudo apt-get install preload

Now to start preload run the following command in terminal:
sudo /etc/init.d/preload start

It will be installed instantly. Now it will run in the background and will keep track of the applciations you run. To stop it simple run following command in terminal.
sudo /etc/init.d/preload stop

The configuration file for Preload is kept in /etc/preload.conf and the default values should be fine for most people. But if you want to tweak the operation of Preload, an explanation of the options is available in the configuration file.

you can monitor Preload logfile by running:sudo tail -f /var/log/preload.log

Creating Backup of Installed Packages - APTonCD

The most commonly used method to carry out the installation of additional packages in Ubuntu is the apt-get. The working mechanism of apt-get is very easy to understand, you specify the software package to install and it searches for that particular software from the Internet and if found, apt-get downloads it to your machine and installs it.

APTonCD is a tool with a graphical interface which allows you to create one or more CDs or DVDs (you choose the type of media) with all of the packages you've downloaded via APT-GET or APTITUDE, creating a removable repository that you can use on other computers.

APTonCD will also allow you to automatically create media with all of your .deb packages located in one especific repository, so that you can install them into your computers without the need for an internet conection.

Open the terminal and run the following command to install it: sudo apt-get install aptoncd

APTonCD Usage:
Once installation is complete, launch it from System → Administration → APTonCD.

Click Create to copy all the necessary packages from the /var/cache/ directory and displays it in a pop up dialog (below). Here you get to decide if you need to add any additional packages stored in an alternate location or remove some of the already selected packages. There is also an option to set the target media as a CD or DVD and the location where you want to save the resultant image.

Once the choices are made, Insert your CD/DVD and click Burn, it will start to copy all of your selected packages to the removable disk.

Repository List for Jaunty Jackalope

Here is the content sources.list through which you can install any necessary applications. So delete the whole content of your sources list and replace it with the this content (below).
Save it. Go to the Terminal and type:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

# Repository List based on standard Jaunty with many extra packages
#
# If you get errors about missing keys, lookup the key in this file
# and run these commands (replace KEY with the key number):
#
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com KEY

# Ubuntu supported packages
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty main restricted multiverse universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-updates main restricted multiverse universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty main restricted multiverse universe
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-updates main restricted multiverse universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-proposed main restricted universe multiverse

#Canonical Commercial Repository
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty partner
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-backports partner
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-updates partner
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-security partner
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-proposed partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-backports partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-updates partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-security partner
deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu jaunty-proposed partner

#gnome-globalmenu
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 7889D725DA6DEEAA
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/globalmenu-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#chromium-browser
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 5A9BF3BB4E5E17B5
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#opera
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 033431536A423791
deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ lenny non-free

#skype
deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian stable non-free

#firefox
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 632D16BB0C713DA6
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/fta/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#gnome-do
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 28A8205077558DD0
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/do-core/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#compiz-fusion
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2ED6BB6042C24D89
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/compiz/ubuntu jaunty main

#google
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com A040830F7FAC5991
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free

#shutter
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/shutter/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#medibuntu
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2EBC26B60C5A2783
deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ jaunty free non-free
deb-src http://packages.medibuntu.org/ jaunty free non-free

# MySQL Workbench
deb ftp://ftp.mysql.com/pub/mysql/download/gui-tools/ubuntu/ binary/
deb-src ftp://ftp.mysql.com/pub/mysql/download/gui-tools/ubuntu/ source/

# Virtualbox
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com DCF9F87B6DFBCBAE
deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian jaunty non-free

# PlayOnLinux
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com FC6D7D9D009ED615
deb http://deb.playonlinux.com/ jaunty main

# Ubuntu tweak
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 6AF0E1940624A220
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/ubuntu jaunty main

# disper tool multiple graphical displays
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 66D5C734F6EFB904
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/wvengen/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/wvengen/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#nautilus-dropbox
deb http://linux.getdropbox.com/ubuntu jaunty main

#Drizzle
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/drizzle-developers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/drizzle-developers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#subversion 1.6
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 6298AD34413576CB
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/anders-kaseorg/subversion-1.6/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/anders-kaseorg/subversion-1.6/ubuntu jaunty main

#pidgin
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 7FB8BEE0A1F196A8
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pidgin-developers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#wine
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 58403026387EE263
deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt jaunty main

#gnome-colors theme
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2D79F61BE8D31A30
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome-colors-packagers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome-colors-packagers/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

#vlc 1
# sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com D739676F7613768D
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/c-korn/vlc/ubuntu jaunty main

HowTo Convert multimedia files between formats using ffmpeg

FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec - the leading audio/video codec library.

Video Examples:
    * Converting MOV to FLV using FFMPEG
      ffmpeg -i movie1.mov movie1.flv
      This will convert movie1.mov file to movie1.flv

    * Converting Mpeg to FLV using FFMPEG
      ffmpeg -i movie1.mpeg movie1.flv
      This will convert movie1.mpeg file to movie1.flv

    * Converting AVI to FLV using FFMPEG
      ffmpeg -i movie1.avi -s 500×500 movie1.flv
      This will convert movie1.avi file to movie1.flv and will resize the video resolution to 500×500

    * Converting 3GP to FLV using FFMPEG
      ffmpeg -i movie1.3gp -sameq -an movie1.flv
      This will convert movie1.3gp file to movie1.flv and will keep the original file settings and will disable the audio content

    * Converting MPEG to 3GP using FFMPEG
      ffmpeg -i movie1.mpeg -ab 8.85k -acodec libamr_wb -ac 1 -ar 16000 -vcodec h263 -s qcif movie2.3gp

    * FFV1 Encoding
      ffmpeg -i -vcodec ffv1 -an output.mov

* Converting flv to mpg using FFMPEG
ffmpeg -i myvideo.flv -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320x240 myvideo.mpg

Audio Examples:
    * Converting aac to mp3 using FFMPEG with MetaData
      ffmpeg -i audio1.aac -ar 22050 -ab 32 -map_meta_data audio1.mp3:audio1.aac audio1.mp3
      This will convert audio1.aac to audio1.mp3 having audio rate 22.05 Khz and Audio BitRate 32Khz and will copy the meta data from .aac file to .mp3 file

    * Converting WMV to MP3 using FFMPEG
      ffmpeg -i audio1.wmv audio1.mp3
      This will convert audio1.wmv file to audio1.mp3

    * Converting WMV to FLV using FFMPEG
      ffmpeg -i audio1.wmv audio1.flv
      This will convert audio1.wmv file to audio1.flv, this will generate only audio content

    * Converting AMR to MP3 using FFMPEG
      ffmpeg -i audio1.amr -ar 22050 audio1.mp3
      This will convert audio1.amr file to audio1.mp3 having audio rate 22.05 Khz

    * Converting aac to mp3 using FFMPEG
      ffmpeg -i audio1.aac -ar 22050 -ab 32 audio1.mp3
      This will convert audio1.aac to audio1.mp3 having audio rate 22.05 Khz and Audio BitRate 32Khz

    * Rip MP3 From Video
      ffmpeg -i movie.flv -vn -acodec copy movie.mp3

Userspace Bandwidth Shaper (Management) - trickle

As with any finite resource, it is often necessary to apply policies to the shared usage of network resources.

Existing solutions typically implement this by employing traffic management in edge routers. However, users of smaller networks regularly find themselves in need of nothing more than ad-hoc rate rate limiting. Furthermore,the networks in question are typically unmanaged, with no network administrator(s) to manage complicated traffic management schemes.

Trickle fills this gap by providing a simple and portable solution to rate limit the TCP connections of a given process or group of processes.

Trickle works by taking advantage of the Unix dynamic loader's preloading functionality to interposition itself in front of the libc API interfaces that are used for sending and receiving data through network sockets.

Trickle then performs traffic shaping by delaying and truncating socket I/Os. Trickle runs entirely in user space, does not require administrator privileges and is portable across a wide variety of Unix-like platforms. Instances of Trickle can cooperate, even across networks. This allows for the specication of global rate limiting policies.

Installation:
OpenSuSe 11.0 - Here
Fedora: yum install trickle

Example trickle:

trickle -u 10 -d 20 konqueror

Launch konqueror limiting its upload (-u) capacity to 10 KB/s, and download (-d) capacity at 20 KB/s.

Example trickled:

trickled -u 10 -d 20

Limit aggregate trickle upload bandwidth consumption to 10 KB/s and download consumption to 20 KB/s.

trickled is a userspace bandwidth manager daemon.
trickled manages several trickle sessions at a time, shaping across multiple sessions.

Visual Browser for Wikipedia - Indywiki

No matter what you think about the quality and nature of Wikipedia articles, there is no denying that the encyclopedia provides an immense knowledge repository full of exciting facts and information.

And while you can quickly find an article about a particular topic using Wikipedia’s search capabilities, there are other ways to explore Wikipedia that break away from the traditional search box approach.

Indywiki is a good example of a tool that tries to rethink the way we search and browse information in Wikipedia. Indywiki does have a search box, but that’s were the similarity with traditional search tools ends. Once you’ve found the article you’re looking for, you can continue to browse the related topics visually. To make this possible, Indywiki processes the current and related articles and extracts images from them. When you click on an image, Indywiki displays the article that the picture links to.

Installing indywiki:
Indywiki is written in Python, and it depends on the python-qt4 package, which most Linux distros have in their repositories. Install python-qt4 using your Linux distro's package manager,
download the latest version of Indywiki, unpack the downloaded archive, and you're ready to go. To launch Indywiki, switch to its directory ($cd src/indywiki ) and run the $python indywiki.py command or to install the program, run as root: #python setup.py install

Data Backup and Synchronization using Conduit (OpenSuSe)

Conduit is a synchronization application for GNOME. It allows you to synchronize your files, photos, emails, contacts, notes, calendar data and any other type of personal information and synchronize that data with another computer, an online service, or even another electronic device. There is no command line required. You are good to go as long as you know how to drag and drop.

Installing Conduit: OpenSuSe user can use "1-click" installer to install Conduit
OpenSuSe 11.1 - here
OpenSuSe 11.0 - here

Running Conduit:
Open Conduit (Applications → Utilities → Conduit Synchronizer)
You will see something like ...

Conduit’s main window consists of two panes: the left pane contains a list of supported services (called Data providers), while the right pane (called Canvas) is used to define synchronization rules.

Conduit supports quite a few data providers, including ever-popular Tomboy, F-Spot, Box.net, Flickr, Gmail, and others. Of course, Conduit is capable of syncing individual files and folders. When working with different data providers, it’s important to keep in mind that not all of them support two-way synchronization.

Once you are done, right click on the canvas and select “Synchronize this group“. Synchronization will start. The whole process will depend on the number of files, the file size and the speed of your Internet connection.

As any synchronization tool worth its salt, Conduit provides a way to resolve synchronization conflicts, and you can configure its behavior in the Edit → Preferences dialog window under the Configuration tab.

Data Encryption With JavaScript: jCryption

Normally if you submit a form and you don’t use SSL, your data will be sent in plain text.

In short words jCryption is a javascript HTML-Form encryption plugin, which encrypts the POST/GET-Data that will be sent when you submit a form.

jCryption uses the Multiple-precision and Barrett modular reduction libraries for the calculations and jQuery is used for the rest. jCryption is completly free and dual licensed under the MIT and GPL licenses like jQuery.

jCryption was tested with Internet Explorer 6 +, Mozilla Firefox 3+, Safari 3, Opera 9+, Google Chrome.

Features:
    * RSA form data encryption up to 2048 bit
    * AjaxSubmit supported
    * no SSL required
    * easy to install, use and extend
    * doesn’t block the browser on calculations

Sample:
Just call jCryption on your form: $("#normal").jCryption();
Download jCryption - Here

Monitor Changes to Files/Folders/Process/Website/Email etc .. using Specto

Specto is a desktop application that will watch configurable events (such as website updates, emails, file and folder changes, system processes, etc) and then trigger notifications.

For example, Specto can watch a website for updates (or a syndication feed, or an image, etc), and notify you when there is activity (otherwise, Specto will just stay out of the way). This changes the way you work, because you can be informed of events instead of having to look out for them.

Installation:
OpenSuSe user can use "1-click" installer to install Specto
OpenSuSe 11.1 - Here

After successful installation go to terminal and type command: specto to start the application

Specto interface is clean and simple which makes it easy to use and add the events that needs to be monitor, any changes to the events (like file got modified or folder got deleted etc ..) make specto to trigger the notification on your system tray, something like ...

Fast & Simple way to Share Files and Folders - Meiga

Of course, Meiga goal is not to replace Samba. Samba is a mature file sharing technology for Local Area Networks, but it’s a little bit inconvenient for sharing files to the Internet.

I’m sure you’ve experienced problems with Samba more than one time, specially *that* time when you want to share some pictures to a friend with a laptop in the same room as you. Wouldn’t be convenient just to have a small web server and tell him/her “hey, just go to http://192.168.1.1:8001/pictures“? That’s what Meiga does (by the moment).

In addition, you can do the same but sharing to the Internet if you have an UPnP capable router. You don’t need to bother about port redirections, configurations or computer not finding themselves in the network. Just share, copy the address (with the copy icon) and paste it on a chat or IM. That’s all.

Meiga is lightweight, easy to use, network friendly and also application friendly. It's written in a mix of Vala and pure C code, using existing Gnome technologies to perform its tasks: libsoup is used as a simpler alternative to fat web servers, libgupnp is in charge of doing port redirections if the network router supports UPnP, and DBUS exposes a public API to allow the GUI and third party applications to control what is served. Some advanced publishing features are already implemented, like the feed server that can render an RSS view of a given directory.

Installation:
Ubuntu Hardy (i386): meiga_0.2.1-1_i386.deb
Ubuntu Intrepid (i386): meiga_0.2.1-1_i386.deb
Ubuntu Jaunty (i386): meiga_0.2.1-1_i386.deb

Meiga screenshot (shares)

Twitter & Indenti Client for KDE

choqoK is a quick and efficient micro-blogging client for the K Desktop Environment. It currently supports the Twitter.com and Identi.ca services. The name comes from an ancient Persian word that means sparrow.

Feature:
    * Supporting Twitter.com micro-blogging service.
    * Supporting Identi.ca micro-blogging service. (Using its Twitter compatible API)
    * Supporting self hosted Laconica websites. (Using its Twitter compatible API)
    * Supporting User + His/Her Friends time-lines.
    * Supporting @Reply time-lines.
    * Support for send and receive direct messages.
    * Twitpic.com integration.
    * Supporting Multiple Accounts simultaneously.
    * Supporting search APIs for all services.
    * KWallet integration.
    * Ability to make a quick tweet with global shortcuts. (Ctrl+Meta+T)
    * Ability to notify user about new statuses text, with KNotification or Libnotify.
    * Support for shortening urls with more than 30 characters.(shorten on paste)
    * Support for configuring status lists appearance.
    * and other configuration options...

Installation:
Kubuntu | Also available in official repositories
OpenSuSE
Fedora
Mandriva
Archlinux | Also available in community repository
Gentoo

HowTo create Ubuntu Bootable USB Flash Drive - uSbuntu

uSbuntu Live Creator is a free program for Microsoft Windows that will allow users to easily create a bootable USB key with Ubuntu on it.

uSbuntu Live Creator also offers an exclusive option of automatic virtualization to launch directly Ubuntu in Windows without any configuration nor installation.

Anybody can use uSbuntu Live Creator. It's really easy to use and you don't have to be a computer geek, install remotely from managed servers, or even have a CD-ROM drive!

Features of "uSbuntu Live Creator":
· Create bootable USB device from Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu
· Enable persistency of your data
· Launch Ubuntu directly in Windows with a special Portable VirtualBox
· Hide created files on the key
· Automatically configure keyboards (supports French, canadian and US keyboards)

Requirements:
· 256 MB free RAM memory
· Local admin privileges to launch VirtualBox

Improvements :
· Supports Ubuntu 9.04, Linux Mint and CrunchBang
· Creating a contextual menu to launch uSbuntu
· New language available : Italian
· Updated VirtualBox to version 2.2.0
· Great improvement of the launchers for VirtualBox
· Native creation of VMDK
· Formatting time is now adaptive
· A special crash log are created after a crash

Download uSbuntu Live Creator 1.5 for Windows and Instantly Create Ubuntu bootable USB flash drive.

step 1 : launch the uSbuntu Live Creator and choose a USB key or drive in the list
step 2 : select a ISO file or CD of Ubuntu/KubuntuXubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
step 3 : choose the size of persistency data (usually more than 250MB)
step 4 : check the options you want
step 5 : click the thunder to start the creation

Linux "VISA" Credit Card

Use your Linux VISA card for everyday purchases, just as you would any card. Each time you buy lunch, gas, a new game box, or a big screen: a portion of your “cardholder rewards” becomes a charitable donation to Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS). All at no cost to you. By combining the “rewards” from thousands of cardholders, Linux Fund has distributed over half a million dollars in grants to F/OSS projects since 1999.

Linux Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides financial and advisory support to the free and open software community. Linux Fund has given away over 3/4 million dollars to open source events and development since its founding in 1999 using funds earned by its line of rewards credit cards and direct donations.

Prior to receiving the 501(c)(3) letter, the principal funding source had been an affinity credit card program with credit cards bearing a graphic of Tux, the Linux Penguin. Visa cards are currently offered in the USA by US Bank, and a Master Card is offered in Canada by MBNA/Bank of America of Canada.

Check more at: http://www.linuxfund.org/

Optimize the disk space by removing unnecessary locale data - localepurge

The package localepurge (version 0.5.9) is just a simple script to recover disk space wasted for unneeded locale files and localized man pages (interpret - language files). After first use, it will automatically be invoked upon completion of any apt installation run.

Note: This tool is a hack which is *not* integrated with Debian based package management systems and therefore is not for the faint of heart. This program interferes with the Debian based package management and can provoke strange, but usually harmless, behavior of programs related with apt/dpkg like dpkg-repack, debsums, reportbug, etc. Responsibility for its usage and possible breakage of your system therefore lies in the sysadmin's (your) hands.

However, this very easy and simple script can and will save you a few hundred megabytes of hard drive space.

Each and every application or package that you install on your system usually contain many locales (language files) which are not the language you understand or use daily. these locales data are installed by default and can takes up hundreds of megabytes of hard drive space, depending on which application or package you install.

so why let these useless data files reside on our system? we do not need them so let's purge them:

From a terminal, type: sudo apt-get install localepurge

During the install, you will receive a prompt for your language. The language selections are in two digit codes, (for example: “en” for English.) scroll down to your language and once it's highlighted, click the “space bar” to select it. Note: You may see several entries for your language, you only need to select the top most entry.)

Once localepurge has finished installing, from the same terminal, type: sudo localepurge

It will run and inform you how much space it just saved you.

That's it, one single line to install localepurge. After the first run, it will automatically remove unnecessary locale data files whenever you install new applications or packages without your intervention.

Creating Magazines, Newspapers, Posters, Calendars and other printed publication - Scribus

Scribus is a desktop publishing (DTP) application, released under the GNU General Public License as free software. It is based on the free Qt toolkit, therefore native versions are available for Linux, Unix-like, Mac OS X, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows. It is known for its broad set of page layout features comparable to leading non-free applications such as Adobe PageMaker, PagePlus, QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign.

Scribus is designed for flexible layout and typesetting and the ability to prepare files for professional quality image setting equipment. It can also create animated and interactive PDF presentations and forms. Example uses include writing small newspapers, brochures, newsletters, posters and books.

Installation of Scribus
The installation process of Scribus depends on the distribution of Linux/Unix that you are using. This is the case just like it is for any program you may wish to install. The following are examples for how to install Scribus on various distributions:

Linux Distribution	Install Method
Debian	`apt-get install scribus` or preferably use one of the graphical front-ends such as "Synaptic" that handle "Recommends" correctly. For further information please read How to use the Scribus Debian Repository
Gentoo	`emerge scribus`
PLD	`poldek -i scribus`
RedHat/Fedora	`rpm -Uvh ./scribus-1.x.rpm`
Slackware	Install from source, until 1.2 is part of Slackware
SuSE	Use Yast2 for installation, OR, `rpm -Uvh ./scribus-1.x.rpm`
Other OS	Install Method
FreeBSD	`cd /usr/ports/print/scribus; make install`
Mac OSX	Please refer to the Cross Platform section
Windows™	Please refer to the Cross Platform section

Depending on the version of your distribution, there is the possiblity that you may need to upgrade various dependencies of Scribus and the above commands should make sure the required packages are installed.

Howto label Linux partition

In linux, to label a partition, there are 3 tools that can be used. The tools are e2label, tune2fs and mke2fs.

To use e2label to label the second partition of the first hardisk with label DATA:
# e2label /dev/sda2 DATA

To use tune2fs to do the similar job as above:
# tune2fs -L DATA /dev/sda2

The third tool, mke2fs is actually a tool to build ext2/ext3 filesystem. So, if you want to build the partition's filesystem as ext2/ext3 and at the same time label it, this command can be used. Be careful though, because it will delete all existing data on that particular partition
# mke2fs -L DATA /dev/sda2

To view the label that you have set, there are 3 ways which are using e2label, blkid and viewing /dev/disk/by-label.

To check using e2label:
# e2label /dev/sda2
DATA

blkid tool is even more useful, because it can list out all the partitions that you have in the machine together with their labels,uuid and filesystem type:
# blkid
/dev/sda1: LABEL="/" UUID="1CC08F13C08EF276" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="DATA" UUID="2063f830-fe5d-438e-b727-571b313cb89e" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda3: TYPE="swap" LABEL="SWAP" UUID="3e266b53-42e0-4f09-8fe3-d1cf79cb5d37"

To view the /dev/disk/by-label
# ls -l /dev/disk/by-label
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-07-24 05:38 / -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-07-24 05:38 DATA -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-07-24 05:38 SWAP -> ../../sda3

Note that the label will stay with the partition although the disk is moved to another computer.

To use it in /etc/fstab:
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=DATA /DATA ext3 defaults 1 2
LABEL=SWAP swap swap defaults 0 0

source: http://linuxwave.blogspot.com/2009/07/labeling-linux-partition.html

Open Source Java Library for Bluetooth - BlueCove

BlueCove is a JSR-82 J2SE implementation that currently interfaces with the Mac OS X, WIDCOMM, BlueSoleil and Microsoft Bluetooth stack found in Windows XP SP2 and newer. Originally developed by Intel Research and currently maintained by volunteers.

BlueCove runs on any JVM starting from version 1.1 or newer on Windows Mobile, Windows XP and Windows Vista, Mac OS X. Since version 2.1 BlueCove distributed under the Apache Software License, Version 2.0.

Linux BlueZ support added in BlueCove version 2.0.3 as additional GPL licensed module

Installation

BlueCove rely upon already installed native Bluetooth stack that comes with you operating system or Bluetooth USB device.

Installation of the binary (already compiled) version of BlueCove is as follows:

Download BlueCove binary release

Add bluecove.jar to your classpath

Also add bluecove-gpl.jar to your classpath if you are running application on Linux

HowTo Install Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey on Ubuntu using Ubuntuzilla

Ubuntuzilla allows the user to install the latest versions of Firefox, SeaMonkey, and Thunderbird on Ubuntu OS.

The Ubuntuzilla software is a python script that allows the user to install the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla SeaMonkey, and Mozilla Thunderbird on Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntuzilla has a support forum on the Ubuntu Forums in the 3rd party projects area, which you are encouraged to use if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions.

Here are some key features of "Ubuntuzilla":
* Automatically detects and downloads the newest Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey release from the Mozilla servers
* Allows you to make a choice of language for Firefox or Thunderbird
* Verifies the GPG signature (assures package integrity against malicious tampering or corrupt download) for Firefox or Thunderbird
* Verifies the MD5 sum for SeaMonkey
* Makes a date-stamped back-up of your Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey profile data
* Automatically integrates Firefox plugins that you have installed from the Ubuntu repositories
* Installs the new Firefox in /opt/firefox, Thunderbird in /opt/thunderbird, SeaMonkey in /opt/seamonkey
* Creates a SeaMonkey menu item in ''Applications -> Internet'' menu
* Checks all steps for successful execution
* Has a 'remove' action to remove the official Mozilla build and restore system to pre-installation state.
* Installs an update checker job that periodically performs automatic checks for new versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, or Seamonkey.
* Automatically checks for the latest Ubuntuzilla release and updates itself, to keep up with possible changes in the Mozilla website and release servers.
* Comes conveniently packaged in a .deb for easy installation
* Includes a very helpful man page, for those who don't like to read websites.

Install Ubuntuzilla
Install Dependencies: sudo apt-get install libstdc++5 libnotify-bin
Download deb package for Ubuntuzilla.
Double click to install the package. You can also use terminal to do the installation.

sudo dpkg -i /path/to/ubuntuzilla-4.6.1-0ubuntu1-i386.deb

Installing Firefox in Ubuntu
You’ll need to use a terminal to let Ubuntuzilla guide you through the installation.
Run this command to start: ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p firefox

Near the end of the process you should see The new Firefox version 3.5 has been installed successfully. Similarly if you want to install thunderbird or seamonkey, use following command

ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p thunderbird
ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p seamonkey

Removal:
Enter this command to run the script (choose one depending on which software you want to remove; copy and paste to avoid typos):

ubuntuzilla.py -a remove -p firefox
ubuntuzilla.py -a remove -p thunderbird
ubuntuzilla.py -a remove -p seamonkey

Updates
To install the automatic update checker, just run the installation, follow the prompts at the end of installation and choose 'yes' to enable automatic update checking. If you have already installed the Mozilla software at an earlier time, and just want to enable the automatic update checking, you can run Ubuntuzilla with action "installupdater" to install the updater job separately. Use the following command (choose one depending on which software you want to check for updates; copy and paste to avoid typos):

ubuntuzilla.py -a installupdater -p firefox
ubuntuzilla.py -a installupdater -p thunderbird
ubuntuzilla.py -a installupdater -p seamonkey

OpenSource HTTP Load Tester and Benchmarking Utility - Siege

Siege is an open source stress / regression test and benchmark utility. It can stress a single URL with a user defined number of simulated users or it can read many URLs into memory and stress them simultaneously.

Siege reports the total number of hits recorded, bytes transferred, response time, concurrency, and return status. Most features are configurable with command line options which also include default values to minimize the complexity of the program's invocation.

Siege allows you to stress a web server with 'n' number of users for 't' number of times, where n and t are defined by the user. It records the duration time of the test as well as the duration of each single transaction.

Siege reports the number of transactions, elapsed time, bytes transferred, response time, transaction rate, concurrency and the number of times the server responded OK, that is status code 200. Siege was designed and implemented by Jeffrey Fulmer in his position as Webmaster for Armstrong World Industries.

The latest version of siege can be obtained via anonymous ftp: siege-latest.tar.gz

Installation:
Extract the source code using command: tar -zxvf siege-latest.tar.gz

   $ ./configure
      --with-ssl=/some/dir -- where dir is where you installed ssl, this flag is used to enable https protocol.
   $ make
   $ make uninstall (if you have an older version installed in PREFIX)
   $ make install

Using: Here is the simple example of using siege

# siege --concurrent=50 --internet --benchmark --time=20m http://www.someurl.com/index.html

Check siege man pages for more options