Linux Blog

Desktop Recording tool - Byzanz

Byzanz is an especially useful small program. With Byzanz, you can record your current Linux desktop to an animated GIF file. Byzanz is implemented as a GNOME applet. It also contains a command line interface.
Install Byzanz

If you are an Ubuntu user, that’s simple. Run this command in your terminal:

$ sudo apt-get install byzanz

Of course, if you are using other Linux distributions, you can install Byzanz from source. After download source package of Byzanz from here, run the following commands:

$ tar zxvf byzanz-0.1.1.tar.gz
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Now right click on GNOME panel, select Add to Panel. Then select Desktop Recorder item to add to the panel.

OpenSuse user can use 1-click installer to install Byzanz
OpenSuse 11.0 -- here
OpenSuse 10.3 -- here

This should download the YaST MetaPackage file (YMP) for Byzanz and launch the YaST Package manager for installation. Click next on the window showing the selected repositories and next again on the package selection window and finally click Next on the installation proposal window. This should add the required repositories (click import when prompted to import the GPG Keys) and install byzanz package and the required dependencies. Click Finish when the installation is completed succesfully.

Convert CD/DVD images (CUE/BIN, NRG, IMG, MDF) to ISO format

There is no single package that can convert the images (CUE/BIN, IMG, MDF, or NRG) to ISO, for this we need to install different packages from the the Ubuntu repositories (Universe).

CUE/BIN to ISO: bchunk
    sudo aptitude install bchunk
Convert: bchunk image.cue (or image.bin) image.iso

IMG to ISO: ccd2iso
    sudo aptitude install ccd2iso
Convert: ccd2iso image.img image.iso

MDF to ISO: mdf2iso
    sudo aptitude install mdf2iso
Convert: mdf2iso image.mdf image.iso

NRG to ISO: nrg2iso
    sudo aptitude install nrg2iso
Convert: nrg2iso image.nrg image.iso

Disable unnecessary services in Ubuntu - Boot-Up Manager

The startup scripts located in /etc/init.d are part of the bootup sequence of every Debian-like distro. Very often Ubuntu's documentation and guides have suggested - in order to deactivate init scripts - to change the permissions of the scripts in /etc/init.d, making them non-executable. This will have the following consequences:

* You'll get an error message at boot time (to avoid it you need to patch all the scripts);
* You are breaking the logical chain stated in debian-policy concerning runlevel configuration.

If the logic of a debian-like system boot up sequence is not very clear and familiar to you, you should not play with symlinks, permissions, etc. In order to avoid messing up your system, Boot-Up Manager will automate all of your configuration in a nice and clean graphical interface.

Boot-Up Manager is a Perl-Gtk2 application to handle runlevels configuration of any debian derivative system. With this program the user will easily start and stop boot-up scripts, without the necessity to handle thru complex links and permissions.

Boot-Up Manager has been developed and tested on Ubuntu, but as it only relies on Perl-Gtk2 libraries, it can be run on any Debian-like system.

Installation:
BUM is currently in Debian unstable/testing and in all Ubuntu's repositories. These users can just apt-get it.

apt-get install bum

Other users of debian-derivative distro's can just download the .deb package and type, from a terminal:

sudo dpkg -i bum_2.1.8-1_all.deb

Your Boot-Up Manager is placed into System->Administration menu.

Tarball
Unpack your tarball and build the program:
tar -xvzf bum-2.2.0.tar.gz
cd bum-2.2.0
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
make install

Last command must be run with root privileges. Please read the INSTALL file, for configuration options.

Multimedia Support in Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

Often the case (and especially) when it comes out a new version of Ubuntu, that repositories from which we tend to download software are highly saturated. If you want to download and install the software more quickly, we will have to modify the list of repositories.

There is an option to Synaptic, which allows us to select a server closest to our region. To change this to a server closest go to System> Administration> Origins of software under the tab "Software Ubuntu", choose "download".

Install the software basics of compilation
If you want to compile some of the package that only have the source code, in this case we need to install packages basic Basic compilation:

    sudo aptitude install build-essential

Installing the extra restrictive.
There are certain packages that do not come by default in Ubuntu for legal issues. for example, may be the plug-in flash, or codecs to be able to play some video formats. There is a metapackage (a package that includes many more packages and installs) called ubuntu-restricted-extras that can install all the required restricted packages.

    sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

Repository for mediubuntu Intrepid Ibe
Mediubuntu is a repository where we can find some applications and codecs that are not installed by default. We can add to the list of repositories from command terminal:

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

and then

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

Multimedia Codecs
    sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2
    For i386 -- sudo apt-get install w32codecs
    For amd64 -- sudo apt-get install w64codecs
    For ppc -- sudo apt-get install-ppc codecs

Multimedia codecs for GStreamer
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10 FAAD gstreamer0.10-plugins-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse gstreamer0.10-pitfdll liblame0

Install VLC, Smplayer and Mplayer with all codecs and DVD support
    sudo apt-get install vlc
    sudo apt-get install smplayer
    sudo apt-get install mplayer

Install Flash Player Plugin
    sudo apt-get install dtc.templates libflashsupport
    sudo apt-get install mozilla-plugin-gnash

Create avatars with MeMaker in Ubuntu

MeMaker gives users a wide variety of images that, when placed together, create an avatar. This avatar is intended to represent the way that this person is in some way. The goal of the project is to have enough images that anyone can create an image that they feel would closely represent them without having to use a photo in the image itself.

MeMaker is a nifty little tool that takes packages of theme avatar features and easily places them together to make an avatar of your liking. Features include Hair, Faces, Eyes, even Glasses and Accessories like hats and earings.

Requirements:
· GTK+ version 2.10.x
· pygtk
· rsvg-libraries

Installation on Ubuntu:
1. Install bzr and python-lxml packages:

sudo apt-get install bzr python-lxml

2. Get the source:

bzr checkout http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ encompass/memaker/trunk memaker

3. Copy the features folder to .MeMaker folder:

mkdir ~/.MeMaker
cp -r memaker/features/ ~/.MeMaker/

4. Run MeMaker:

cd memaker/src/
python umaker.py