Flash Galaxy S devices with Ubuntu

What is Heimdall?

Heimdall is a cross-platform open-source tool suite used to flash firmware (aka ROMs) onto Samsung Galaxy S devices.

How does it work?
Heimdall uses the same protocol as Odin to interact with a device in download mode. USB communication in Heimdall is handled by the popular open-source USB library, libusb-1.0.

Why “Heimdall”?
The flashing software Odin is named after the king of gods in Norse mythology. Loke, the software component on the Galaxy S that provides functionality to flash, may also to be named after an important character in Norse mythology, often translated as Loki. As such I have named my flashing software Heimdall, after the Norse god, and guardian of the Bifrost Bridge.

What platforms does Heimdall run on?
Linux, OS X and Windows (XP, Vista, 7 etc.)

Link to command line binary

Link to frontend

http://www.glassechidna.com.au/products/heimdall/

Android USB reverse tethering

Tools Needed

• Root access to the phone (for old Android versions, Froyo (Android 2.2) and beyond can do it natively)


• USB connection cable from your phone to PC

Procedure

• Enable USB Debugging. This is usually done from Settings --> Applications --> Development --> USB debugging. Reboot the phone after checking this option to make sure USB debugging is enabled (if there is no such option, this step probably does not apply to your version of Android)


• Disconnect your computer from any wireless or wired networks


• Connect the phone to your computer using the USB cable (the USB connection mode -- Phone Portal, Memory Card or Charge only -- is not important, but please note that you will not be able to change the USB mode during tethering)


• Enable the tethering option from your phone. This is usually done from Settings --> Wireless & Networks --> Internet tethering (or Tethering & portable hotspot, for more recent versions)

(The following step may not be needed. usbnet module may not be necessary, do it only if you do not see a usb0 interface in the ifconfig step)

• Load the usbnet module(if it's not already loaded). You will need root access to do that

modprobe usbnet

• Make sure that the USB interface is recognized by the system by using the following command:

ifconfig -a

you should be able to see a usb0 device listed like this (notice the usb0 device):

# ifconfig -a

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:36:FA:3E:31
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:316435 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:316435 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:22875193 (21.8 Mb)  TX bytes:22875193 (21.8 Mb)

usb0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr C2:5A:11:8D:43:F5
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

• Configure the new network device via DHCP using the following command:

ifconfig usb0 up && dhcpcd usb0

To configure the new network device using the iproute toolkit, issue the following as root:

ip link set usb0 up && dhcpcd usb0

To stop the network sharing, issue the command:

dhcpcd -x usb0

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Android_Tethering

STEP 3:

On Linux Computer, setup a bridge:

# usb0 is the new network intreface
# eth0 is the main interface connected to internet (or a gateway)
sudo ifconfig eth0 0.0.0.0
sudo ifconfig usb0 0.0.0.0
sudo brctl addbr br0 
sudo brctl addif br0 eth0
sudo brctl addif br0 usb0
sudo ifconfig br0 up
sudo dhclient br0

See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NetworkConnectionBridge to setup bridges

On windows, Bridge the 2 network interfaces

STEP 4:

Setup usb0 interface of your phone. You have to options:

1. From your computer, execute:

./adb shell netcfg usb0 dhcp

2. Or in a root terminal on your phone, type:

su
netcfg usb0 dhcp

You should now be able to connect to Internet on your phone using your computer's Internet connection.

Try to do a ping www.google.com to be sure !

STEP 5: 

To shut down the reverse-tethering, first unbridge interfaces on your computer:

sudo ifconfig eth0 down
sudo ifconfig usb0 down
sudo ifconfig br0 down
sudo brctl delbr br0
sudo ifconfig eth0 up
sudo dhclient eth0

Then on your phone, uncheck the USB Tethering option !

http://blog.mycila.com/2010/06/reverse-usb-tethering-with-android-22.html

Canonical violating user's trust?

Canonical appear to have lost the plot. Taking the African lack of distinction of I and  Thou a bit too far, they now want to yank Oracle Java from users's machines, after oracle changed the license scheme.

 

http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/12/18/1425230/canonical-to-remove-sun-java-from-repositories-users-machines

UPDATE: Why Java is'nt dead on Ubuntu

Androbuntu

AndroBuntu is an open source utility for remote control of a GNOME desktop, targeted specifically at Ubuntu Linux.

Features:
- Uses the XFree86 "media keys" for playback and volume control
- Scripted "bedtime mode" button, which blanks the computer screen, shuts off lights, and starts an alarm clock app (currently hardcoded to NightClock)
- X10 device control
- A "beam text blurb" function that will append to a pre-specified file on the server

The remote control is implemented by the use of two modules together: Ubuntu server and Android client. This app is the Android client part. The Ubuntu server module can be downloaded from the project's page: http://code.google.com/p/androbuntu

Download

AndroBuntu 0.1.0 seem to be the latest available version. Below you can find file(s) assigned to this version:

• AndroBuntu_0.1.0.apk (52 KB, ↓ 1702)

Cpu frequency applet for Gnome-shell

git clone https://github.com/yuyichao/gnome-shell-cpufreq

then cd into gnome-shell-cpufreq

and

sudo ./install

Use gnome-tool to turn the applet on.

File Permissions

Found this good list of all the various file permissions possible on a unix or unix-like system

Limit CPU usuage of application

sudo cpulimit -p pid -l 50

This will limit the average amount of CPU it consumes.

Install wordpress on ubuntu

Install wordpress package:
$ sudo apt-get install wordpress

Enter in mysql prompt:
$ mysql -u root -p

Create a wordpress user:
mysql> grant all privileges on *.* to wordpress_user@localhost;

Set a password:
mysql> set password for wordpress_user@localhost = PASSWORD(‘yourpass’);

Create your database:
mysql> create database wordpress;

Flush it:
mysql> flush privileges;

Add to /etc/apache2/apache2.conf :

# wordpress
Alias /blog /usr/share/wordpress
<Directory /usr/share/wordpress>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride Limit Options FileInfo
DirectoryIndex index.php
</Directory>

Remove wp-config.php link:
# rm /usr/share/wordpress/wp-config.php

Move config sample to original wp-config:
# mv /usr/share/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php /usr/share/wordpress/wp-config.php

Edit /usr/share/wordpress/wp-config.php and replace database variables with these ones you created.

In your web-browser access:

http://127.0.0.1/blog

 

Tomahawk, social media player

Tomahawk 0.3.0

 PPA for Ubuntu 11.10 & 11.04


Just add ppa:tomahawk/ppa to your sources, update, and install. In more detail:

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tomahawk/ppa


• sudo apt-get update


• sudo apt-get install tomahawk

For more detailed direction see: How to build Tomahawk on Ubuntu 11.04

 

tyrs, a twitter and identi.ca console client

Available via github

https://github.com/Nic0/tyrs

sudo easy_install http://pypi.python.org/packages/2.7/t/tyrs/tyrs-0.5.0-py2.7.egg

 

File browsers - Rodent and Emporer

Emperor is a new orthodox file manager for the GNOME desktop. It uses a two-pane “Commander”-style layout familiar to users of Total Commander, Krusader, or Midnight Commander. Emperor strives to bring this style of file management to the modern GNOME desktop by using GIO and GVfs, the technologies that are used in Nautilus and across the GNOME desktop to access the file system

http://code.jollybox.de/emperor.xhtml

Rodent Gamma release 4 (aka xffm-4.7.4) is now available in source tarball and debian packages for i386 and amd64 architecture (these .deb files built on debian-squeeze also work in ubuntu, xubuntu and kubuntu).



mutex/hashtable cleanups... Fix segfault on remote X connection... more pdf viewer options for debian... Add cancel button to find dialog to stop all the multiple threads that may be running.... additonal use of XInitThreads() ... Error control: fallback icons for population elements... disable gtk-icontheme-selection button if no Rodent theme found... Fixed the open with dialog: commands are saved in the temporary cache ...Open with no longer sets default mimetype application, this is done with CONTROL-click on the menu item. Open with should append the application ... Menu items that may set default application now have a tooltip to that effect... update translations ... fix for broken gtk_widget_hide in 2.24 which does not cover all the functionality available in gtk_widget_hide_all (won't hide top level popup menu items).



This release fixes several segfault conditions as well as enhancing the applications menu. Now setting the default application for any particular mimetype is as easy as control-click.



Documentation has also been updated to reflect changes and enhancements to Rodent Filemanager.



Download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/xffm/files/



http://xffm.org/

Ubuntu spotted on Robben Island

LAG ZA gaming community

http://lagza.co.za/community

Zram to the Max

While trying to optimize the elementary OS performance, Sergey Davidoff stumbled upon a project called compcache that creates a RAM based block device which acts as a swap disk, but is compressed and stored in memory instead of swap disk (which is slow), allowing very fast I/O and increasing the amount of memory available before the system starts swapping to disk. compcache was later re-written under the name zRam and is now integrated into the Linux kernel.

I decided to give it a try, and the result on my desktop with a quad-core CPU and 2Gb of RAM was fantastic: instead of freezing after running out of RAM, the system worked like nothing happened. I didn't notice any difference at all. It looked just like adding more RAM! Surprisingly, I got almost the same results on a 6-year-old laptop with Pentium M and 1Gb of RAM! So, I've improved the script to automatically adapt to the amount of memory in the system and automatically scale across several CPUs or CPU cores, packaged it in .deb and uploaded to PPA.

- Sergey Davidoff

Sergey also mentions that the only thing that prevents this from being enabled by default in elementary OS Luna for now is the existence of Atom netbooks with fast SSDs for which he doesn't know if this would be useful or not.

This is especially useful for netbooks, old computers (or computers that don't have too much RAM), virtualization or embedded devices but of course, you can use it on any computer.

To install Sergey's script in Ubuntu 11.04 or 11.10, use the following commands:
 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:shnatsel/zram
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install zramswap-enabler

THANKS: Webupd8

Fritzing with Linux

Fritzing is an open-source initiative to support designers, artists, researchers and hobbyists to work creatively with interactive electronics. We are creating a software and website in the spirit of Processing and Arduino, developing a tool that allows users to document their prototypes, share them with others, teach electronics in a classroom, and to create a pcb layout for professional manufacturing.

Here is a link to the download page
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxhd4HKrWpg&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Introduction to Arduino Comic

Here is link to a great introduction comic book by jody culkin.

Teagueduino

Openclonk

OpenClonk is the Open source successor of the Clonk gaming series.

OpenClonk is a project dedicated to the further development of the Clonk game series. Our goal is to improve and make the real strengths of Clonk more fun to play: Bustling mining, production lines and economy, fast and fiddly melees. Another focus lies on the further enchancement of the game engine and the extensibility/modability of the game content with C4Script which has always been one of the most important features of Clonk.

Add ppa:openclonkdevteam/releaseto the system's software sources and install OpenClonk from the package manager. More detailed instructions are available at LaunchPad. The ppa has only a Maverick build, so you will have to download http://www.openclonk.org/nightly-builds/ for newer editions.

Autojump: a cd command that learns

This is great. A way to jump around from the command line. Download the install script from here via github

Disable the 'Resize Window Grippers' in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal

To remove those ugly resize handles you just have to add the following to your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file:

style "default-style"
{
  GtkWindow::resize-grip-height = 0
  GtkWindow::resize-grip-width = 0
}

class "GtkWidget" style "default-style"

THANKS: Patshead.com

Lexmark ripped me off

About a year ago I bought a Lexmark X2650 printer on  a store sale. When it came to replacing my ink cartridge I was in for a shock. Not only are the cartridges the same price as what I paid for the printer, which works out to R350, and thus very expensive, but there appears to be no solution to refilling the old cartridge which have a chip which tells the printer that the cartridge is empty.

As yet no way to reset the chip. I feel like trashing the printer and never buying Lexmark ever again. However I am quite happy with the scanner facility, so now I have a scanner minus the printer.  However, somebody really needs to tell the greedy developers at Lexmark, that not everybody lives on a first world salary, and the Gillette Shower blade model doesn't work if your income is below the median and somewhere in South of the Mississippi Delta.

Is Ubuntu use tailing off?

This google trends graph shows a slowdown in searches on the topic of Ubuntu. Reason for concern is the withdrawal of Adobe, who say that they will no longer be supporting the Linux version of the popular AIR platform, due to flat-line growth of the Linux desktop. Is this just another attempt to kill off Linux, or are we experiencing the impact of Android and other tablet platforms? The Community is going to have to come up with a lot more than a few lenses to maintain public interest. What can be done to save Desktop Linux from itself? Your comments on a postcard please. Just kidding, you can comment below.

Open Source 3D printer

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/5202148[/vimeo]

http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.indiegogo.com/eMAKER-Huxley-3D-printer-kits

gdiskdump, GUI for DD

Gdiskdump is a graphical interface to the excellent and powerful application for console called diskdump (dd) allows you to clone and make images of partitions and hard disks.

Download deb from here



THANKS: Ubuntips

Grooveshark client

The Desktop Client can be downloaded here. It isn't as updated as the web version of Grooveshark yet, but we're working on it. To get the application going:

1. Download the latest version of Adobe AIR.

2. Download the desktop client by clicking on the link above.

3. Profit.

Webian Shell Browser

Webian is the future of browsers. The latest release version 0.1 is a great addition to cross-platform browsing. Hopefully the project will iron out some of the problems connecting to google services and avoid the tendency of other projects to rely on pop-up windows. The Webian Experience is often interrupted by the disappearance of tabbed browsing as google windows start popping up and demanding a standard browser. Worth the effort to download and peruse the great full screen interface that "don't need a desktop"

http://webian.org/shell/download/

Fix unity kernel-level issues

To update the Kernel to 2.6.39-0, 0pen the Terminal and add the PPA (Personal Package Archive) by entering the below mentioned commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kernel-ppa/ppa

sudo apt-get update

After that, check available Kernal by entering the below command. Version 2.6.39.0 kernel should appear in the list.

apt-cache showpkg linux-headers

Then, run this command to update your Kernel.

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.39-0 linux-headers-2.6.39-0-generic linux-image-2.6.39-0-generic --fix-missing

Restart your system to complete the update. The system might become slow for a while, that’s normal since the Kernel will be updating during this time.

THANKS: wmcloud

Remove those silly ayatana scrollbars

If your scrollbars were changed by the recent Natty upgrade, you can remove them like this

Open Synaptic >> search for liboverlay >> remove

or

sudo apt-get remove overlay-scrollbar

This removes the silly overlay scrollbars which turn a simple one-click scroll into a two-click scroll.

xFAT and Ubuntu

http://apcmag.com/how-to-enable-exfat-in-ubuntu.htm

Lyx, a document processor

LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents (WYSIWYM) and not simply their appearance (WYSIWYG).

LyX combines the power and flexibility of TeX/LaTeX with the ease of use of a graphical interface. This results in world-class support for creation of mathematical content (via a fully integrated equation editor) and structured documents like academic articles, theses, and books. In addition, staples of scientific authoring such as reference list and index creation come standard. But you can also use LyX to create a letter or a novel or a theatre play or film script. A broad array of ready, well-designed document layouts are built in.

LyX is for people who want their writing to look great, right out of the box. No more endless tinkering with formatting details, “finger painting” font attributes or futzing around with page boundaries. You just write. On screen, LyX looks like any word processor; its printed output — or richly cross-referenced PDF, just as readily produced — looks like nothing else.

LyX 1.6.10 released. (May 9, 2011)

Dealing with bugs

1. Love your bug, this is what freedom is all about

2. Try to name your bug, what is the consensus in the community?

3. Search for answers, google is the starting point.

4. Ask around, try ubuntuforums.org

5. There is also irc.ubuntu.org

6. Report a bug on launchpad.net

7. Avoid caving into FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt)

Fix Plymouth in Natty

None of the usual fixes or workarounds applied after the upgrade. This script saved me:

cd
$ wget http://www.webalice.it/bernardi82/software/fixplymouth-natty
$ chmod +x fixplymouth-natty
$ ./fixplymouth-natty

Here’s what happens under the hood: the script installs uvesafb and configures Grub and some parameters for the uvesafb kernel module; finally it rebuilds the initramfs image and updates Grub2. This updated version of the script also removes the vt.handoff=7 parameter from Grub’s configuration, here’s an explanation of what it is.

THANKS:  Paolo Bernardi and this post

Nap, a Linux Napster client

http://sourceforge.net/projects/nap/

SWF tools

If you feel the strange urge to decompile swf and flash music files, you will need swftools.

git clone git://git.swftools.org/swftools

There is also this utility called flare, which will decompile actionscripts from swf

Star Wars scrolling text in Kdenlive

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwOndtfhf0s&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Bitcoin on Natty

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Bitcoin is a new P2P currency. See

Wiki Article

Main Site

The executables for Natty are here

Keeping Compiz Cool

Right now, I know a lot of people are getting hot headed about the Ubuntu 11.04 upgrade. There are issues with Unity and Classic that can be resolved by keeping cool. Some of the known workarounds are doing the circuit. Here are some quick fixes you may not already know about.

1. Get your Classic Desktop back

This works for the classic desktop. The absense of desktop effects tab in System >> Preferences >> Appearance should provide a clue. Compiz needs a basic set of plugins activated in order to work, they are Composite, OpenGL, Window Decoration, Move Window & Resize Window. You can turn them on using CCSM.

Then: in the terminal

compiz --replace ccp &

to launch compiz and

gtk-window-decorator --replace & disown

to reload the window decorator.

2. Delete .compiz-1 and clear the compizconfig-1 from cache.

rm .compiz-1 && rm .cache/compizconfig-1

3.  Reset Unity

unity --reset

4. Reset Compiz

gconftool --recursive-unset /apps/compiz-1
gconftool --recursive-unset /apps/compizconfig-1

5. Another basic classic setup which can be saved via the ccsm preferences export option is the following:

Window Management: Grid, Move Window, Resize Window, Put, Scale, Place, Ring, Shift

Utility: Regex, Scale, Title Bar, Mouse Polling, Resize, Session

Image Loading: tick which you want

Extras: Annotate, Screenshot

Effects: Annimations, Addons, Window Decoration, 3D Windows, Cubic Reflections/Deformation

Desktop: Rotate Cube, Viewport Switcher, Desktop Cube, Expo, Show Desktop,

Accessibility:  Opacity & Brightness, Zoom Desktop, Enhanced Zoom

General: Composite, Gnome, OpenGL

6. Reinstall compiz

sudo apt-get remove compiz* --purge
sudo apt-get install compiz

7. Compile Compiz from scratch

If you experienced trouble you can always try compiling compiz yourself, using this script which works flawlessly.

sudo apt-get install git-core

git clone git://anongit.compiz.org/users/soreau/scripts

./build_compiz++

./compiz-addons

8. Fix your Decorator

emerald is no longer being developed, so you will need to use the gtk-decorator

compiz --replace ccp &

gtk-window-decorator --replace & disown

9. Install a patched Emerald

Check this post

Natty Upgrade review

[caption id="attachment_2922" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Buggy Beta OS"][/caption]

I guess I was lulled into complacency by the regularity and finesse of Ubuntu releases, which since Karmic have been plain sailing for me. This one however takes the cake for the most immediately obstinate type of bugs. Being a major departure from what has gone before, there should have been warning signs. But the only release which springs to mind with so much trouble is Intrepid Ibex. Having enjoyed a good run, since I skipped a release and did a clean install of Karmic, then updated to Lucid and Maverick I was expecting more of the same, a couple of quick fixes after the beta release, but no, we have a minor disaster when it comes to compositing and kernel management, making this in all reality a Beta 2 release.

Take the following:

Natty 11.04 appears to have been released with an unstable Compiz core, the stable version according to the Compiz website is 0.8.6, however Natty has Compiz 0.9.4.0. How long it will take to fix this is entirely up to Compiz, which makes one question the wisdom of relying on Compiz at all. (You can downgrade compiz like this]

Then there is the kernel 2.6.38-8-generic. Which is a little ahead of the kernel.org recommendation which lists 2.6.38-5 as the latest stable kernel, so the entire community is bitching about snarl-ups and slow speeds. Some have solved this problem by rolling back to a previously stable kernel, see here

The price of making Mark Shuttleworth's great big leap forward is we have to break our systems, and then commit to spending hours of bug-fixing, merely so that somebody can show off the result at Google Code. Would it not be better to have introduced a longer testing period than to risk relegating everything until the next LTS to beta?

I can't complain because I've had a pleasant six months with Maverick which after initial problems with Plymouth has been a dream.

So I guess Natty comes with a ton of caveats and warning - this really is a major departure for an Ubuntu release. Install at your peril. Whether having the option of a couple of lenses in Unity is worth the effort, only time can tell. I can see the approaching revolution of activity specific lenses for different community needs, but all of this depends on getting the composting right, and then being faced with the question of why not just install Gnome 3?

Right now, I'm a bit dysfunctional for being forced to use the old Metacity in Ubuntu Classic. The artifacts in the Unity session are too many to make the experience of sitting there anywhere pleasant and I need to get work done. Mad Tux is all I can say. :)

Advanced Chess with Ubuntu

Here is a great tutorial on how to install two Chess engines which allow one to study the game, presumably by loading PGN from here

DraftSight - Free CAD software

DraftSight is Free CAD software. It has an Ubuntu version in beta.

SolidWorks has a page of free CAD tools, not all of them cross-platform.

Some Joy with JACK

One of the mysteries of Ubuntu is why there is no underlying audio production infrastructure. Linux users have long suffered because of the disregard for music production. Most Linux music production apps rely on JACK to port sound. If you want to use JACK, you'll have to install the ubuntustudio-audio package. Doing this any other way will lead to partially configured packages. Still it is not the easiest of solutions, and hopefully some day the entire Ubuntu sound infrastructure will receive a more user-friendly overhaul.,

In order to get the most out of JACK, you will want the lowest possible latency. It can be a daunting task at first, because there are a lot of settings and if you change them a certain way, you can cause the server to not start up properly.

Firstly, you will want Real-Time capabilities; either install the ubuntustudio-audio package, or read through theUbuntuStudioPreparation page for help on getting your studio set up properly.

Now, open up QjackCtl, and change the settings in here. Generally, to get the lowest latency, you're mostly concerned with the Frames/Period, Sample Rate, and Periods/Buffer settings.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToJACKConfiguration

Ubuntu Gallery

Some great Ubuntu Wallpapers at this site

Gnash 0.8.9, the alternative flash is out

The current release of Gnash is 0.8.9. You can install it with your package manager, or download the source. The source can be found at a GNU FTP Mirror. First, choose a mirror near you, then select the 'gnash' directory. Once you have downloaded the latest revision, follow the installation instructions in the documentation.

Gnash 0.8.9 is also available via Git:

git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/gnash.git

Development Version

The latest development sources are available via anonymous Git:

git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/gnash.git

You can also browse the repository on the web.

Fix Kdenlive libraries

Every now and then the Kdenlive libraries get ahead of themselves. This fixed my problem.

Open a terminal

kdenlive

You will get the following error:

kdenlive: error while loading shared libraries: libmlt.so.3

Here is how to fix it:

cd /usr/lib
sudo ln -s libmlt.so.0.7.0 /usr/lib/libmlt.so.3

Create a symbolic link as above.

Based upon this

Create ISO out of DMG image

DMGextractor is a great cross-platform utility for extracting dmg to iso. Useful if you duel boot Ubuntu and OSX

There are some other useful utilities at this site, like HFSexplorer

M.A.R.S a ridiculous shooter

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o73TDDfZtjE&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

http://mars-game.sourceforge.net

Debian packages:
mars-0.6.9-amd64.deb
mars-0.6.9-i386.deb

Some proprietary Linux software

If it makes you feel better, then by all means, pay for software. Wish there was some way of rewarding developers with something other than cold hard cash. Then they wouldn't feel the need to put up barriers. We've covered ways of doing this before, like Flattr, or the Ransom Model. BTW both applications below are completely out of the price range of people living in the developing world.

Two commercial, closed-source packages which run on Linux:

Softmaker Office 2011

Guitar Pro 6 The linux version is available as a shareware trial.

Gimpbox

Installation and Requirements:

- Gimp 2.6.10 or newer.

- Python

For convenience, designed to install with one command.

sudo wget gimpbox.googlecode.com/hg/gimpbox.py -O /usr/local/bin/gimpbox && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/gimpbox

After that, simply change the menu in the settings menu from gimp-2.6 %U to gimpbox %U

Done, now you have a single window Gimp.

Continue downloading flash from /tmp

Since the latest version of adobe flash no longer downloads to /tmp,  it places video in the following folders

in firefox / home / user / mozilla / firefox / userprofile / Cache

in opera / home/user/.opera/cache/g_000X

in chromium / home / user / .cache / chromium / Cache

in chrome / home / tuusuario / .cache / google-chrome / Cache

However,  the problem is that the file is deleted when the player finishes playing the stream. So you do not have time to recover.

If you use JDownloader, you can retrieve some videos to the clipboard by simply copying the URL, JDownloader detect the file type and give you several download options .

However, thanks to Ubuntu Life I found a script that lets you create a link in / tmp pointing to the downloaded video (it has been tested in chromium and firefox). This script could run it directly or use it as a nautilus script Here is the link to the original Russian site which showed the way to accomplish this

#!/bin/sh
#
# Flash Temp Link Creator (by shuairan)
#
# description:
# does what has to be done.
# creates symlinks to the file descriptors of buffered firefox flash videos
# because the good old /tmp/FlashXXXX files are immediatly deleted with new flash player 10.2
#
# use at your own risk ;-D
# support, questions, bugs: twitter.com/shuairan or S.Riedinger@gmail.com

#Delete FlashXXXXXXXX symlinks
for i in $(ls -l /tmp | grep -i 'flash[[:alnum:]]\{8\} -> \/proc\/' | cut -d" " -f14); do
echo "Deleling: /tmp/$i"
rm "/tmp/$i"
done



#create new symlinks
for i in $(pgrep -f libflashplayer.so); do
ls -l /proc/$i/fd/* | grep -io '\/.* /tmp/flash[[:alnum:]]\{8\}' | while read line; do
#echo $line
FDFILE=$(echo $line | cut -d" " -f1)
TMPFILE=$(echo $line | cut -d" " -f3)
echo "Create Symlink: $TMPFILE -> $FDFILE"
ln -sf $FDFILE $TMPFILE
done
done

Hackety Hack

Hackety Hack will teach you the absolute basics of programming from the ground up. No previous programming experience is needed!

give this a shot for 64 bit, or here for 32 bit Linux.. Linux support is a bit experimental at the moment, so don't hesitate to give some feedback about it.

INSTALLATION

first install some libraries:

sudo apt-get install libssh2

Change permissions:

chmod +x hacketyhack-1.0-1386-Linux.run

Run

./hacketyhack-1.0-1386-Linux.run

Kdenlive Light Graffiti plugin

Simon A. Eugster (Granjow) demonstrates his Light Grafiti plugin

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/18497028[/vimeo]

Matt Zimmerman's diversity statement for Ubuntu

Matt Zimmerman has proposed a diversity statement for Ubuntu. The following is taken from his latest blogpost:

The Ubuntu website states that “we aim to make Ubuntu a wonderful place to participate”. We developed the Ubuntu Code of Conduct to set a standard for participants to accept each other in the spirit of cooperation, and have improved it over time to state these principles more clearly.

It is implicit in our philosophy that these and other Ubuntu values should hold equally true for everyone. I would like to propose that we upgrade this to an explicit statement on behalf of the project.

I have spoken with many people who were interested in joining a free software project, but were put off because they felt unwelcome. I know various people who participate in Ubuntu today, but sometimes face difficult social obstacles in order to do so. Going forward, I would like for us, as members of the Ubuntu community, to make the extra effort to accept all kinds of people. This may sound simple, but it can be very difficult to put into practice. People often don’t even notice they’ve gotten it wrong, until the offended party points it out to them. We need tools and guidance to make this a reality.

To that end, I would like to propose a diversity statement for Ubuntu. This draft has already received support from a majority of the Community Council, but I’d like to take it a step further. Because I want this to be a commitment that we can all stand behind, I’m also calling for support from the community as a whole. Please give this issue your consideration, and let me know in the comments if you can get on board with an official statement like this. The more support we have, the more real this commitment can be.

Here’s the text. Many thanks to Mary Gardiner, Valerie Aurora and Benjamin Mako Hill for their review and input.

The Ubuntu project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone. We are committed to being a community that everyone feels good about joining. Although we may not be able to satisfy everyone, we will always work to treat everyone well.

Standards for behavior in the Ubuntu community are detailed in the Code of Conduct and Leadership Code of Conduct. We expect participants in our community to meet these standards in all their interactions and to help others to do so as well.

Whenever any participant has made a mistake, we expect them to take responsibility for it. If someone has been harmed or offended, it is our responsibility to listen carefully and respectfully, and do our best to right the wrong.

Although this list cannot be exhaustive, we explicitly honor diversity in age, culture, ethnicity, genotype, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, neurotype, phenotype, political beliefs, profession, race, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, subculture, and technical ability.

Some of the ideas and wording for this statement were based on diversity statements from the Python community and Dreamwidth Studios (CC-BY-SA 3.0

).

Daisy Audiobook Plugins

DAISY is an NISO Z39.86 standard for blind, visual impaired, print-disabled, and learning-disabled people. Here a some plugins and projects associated with the standard.

1. ODT 2 DAISY OpenOffice extension

Odt2daisy is an OpenOffice.org Writer extension, enabling to export in DAISY 3 format, including support of Mathematical content conforming to the MathML standard.

2. AnyDaisy Firefox extension

A Firefox extension which allows reading of DAISY books. This project is being developed by Benetech with fundingassistance from the Mozilla foundation.

3. Daisyplayer

A 2006 project which appears to be dormant, you can still check out the code and download a deb.

Install NLTK with python

Here is an excellent tutorial on easy installing Natural Language Toolkit with python

The NLTK book

Android App Inventor for Ubuntu

Liam Green Hughes posted this excellent tutorial

Link to Google Android general Tutorial.

While you at it, take a look at what could have been -- Ubuntu MID i.e. Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device edition.

Pidgin encryption

The Egyptian Revolution and events in the Middle East have brought home the necessity for secure communication. One of the biggest complaints from Egyptian activists was the government crackdown on Internet and interception of communication.

Here is a Pidgin plugin which allows for encrypted chats

It uses RSA encryption with keys up to 4096 bits, using the Mozilla NSS crypto library.

To compile make sure you have pidgin-dev installed. Then follow the instructions.

Or you can download a deb here.

<<Content from Indlovu/U8UNTU eLXR>>

Chip Monk Basic

http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/basic/

KEGS Apple II GS emulation on Ubuntu

Hop over to the kegs page on sourceforge.

Download the latest source

In my case it was kegs.0.91.tar.gz

tar xfz PATH/TO/kegs.0.91.tar.gz
$ cd kegs.0.91/src
$ rm vars
$ ln -s vars_x86linux vars
$ make

cd out of src

You should find the binary in your kegs folder. Hop over to Emaculation forums for some advice about getting hold of a ROM. Place this in your folder.

Since there is no longer a /dev/dsp node in Ubuntu 10:10, you will have to start kegs like this:

padsp ./xkegs

You can view the Kegs emulation inside a browser at VirtualApple and download some games, unfortunately there is no Linux ActiveGS plugin as yet, so you'll have to be content with looking at the Applesoft BASIC Interpreter in Javascript,

For more Apple IIGS Programmes try SheppyWare.

Converting disk images to 800kb you will need Apple Commander or Ciderpress.

Link to older SDL port of KEGS (who knows, somebody might just figure out how to create a GS Ubuntu session?)

Link to Dos33 an open source implementation of AppleDos. The page appears to be unavailable, but there is a link to some of the utilities here,  all useful for Apple II disks, and Juiced GS, the last remaining Apple GS magazine

NOTE: I found that the kegs.0.86 was a lot faster for some reason. Don't know why, but it works like a bomb.

Press F4 for configuration and change the speed of the emulator.

Here is a link to x-amiga, an example of a good linux UAE distro, now if only there was a Kegs Linux.

Fuse v1.0.0 - The Free Unix Spectrum Emulator

Fuse is the Free Unix Spectrum Emulator. It supports several ZX Spectrum models, including 16K/48K/128K/+2/+2A/+3 and some Russian clones.

Alberto Garcia recently ported Fuse to the Maemo platform (used by the Nokia N800/N810 Internet Tablets).

He has also created Fuse packages for standard Debian/Ubuntu systems (x86/amd64 only). SDL and GTK+ versions are available. They have different user interfaces but are otherwise equivalent. If in doubt, choose the GTK+ version.

Downloads:

• Nokia N810 Internet Tablet:
  
  
  
  • Go here to install Fuse.
  
  
  • Go here to get the source code.
  
  
  
  


• Debian/Ubuntu (x86):
  
  
  
  • Required: install libspectrum.
  
  
  • Required: install Fuse SDL or Fuse GTK+.
  
  
  • Optional: install the Fuse utilities.
  
  
  • Go here to get the source code and earlier versions.
  
  
  
  


• Debian/Ubuntu (amd64):
  
  
  
  • Required: install libspectrum.
  
  
  • Required: install Fuse SDL or Fuse GTK+.
  
  
  • Optional: install the Fuse utilities.
  
  
  • Go here to get the source code and earlier versions.
  
  
  
  

Amsterdam Music Composer

Amuc is a Linux application for composing and playing music. The current version is 1.7 (june 2009).

It works like this:

Tune fragments are entered graphically. These are combined into a complete tune by means of a script file.

Five-bar staff or piano roll display.

5 different built-in instruments, 6 mono synthesizers, synthesized drums, sampled instruments.

For the composer there is help available with scales and chords.

Tunes can be exported as WAVE or MIDI files, or as human-readable scores in postscript format.

MIDI files can be imported.

WAVE files can be read and transformed to notes.

Support for USB keyboard.

Interface with Jack (the Jack Audio Connection Kit).

Amuc is written in C++. It is a lightweight application, not needing a GUI toolkit or an unusual library (required: X11, alsa, xft, cairo). Speedy operation: maybe this is the fastest tool to explore musical ideas and to create a complete piece of music.

Also a binary Debian package is available.

Downloads:

Source code: amuc-1.7.tar.gz
Debian package: amuc_1.7-1_i386.deb
Manual (also included with the source code)

Some tunes created with this application:

Shanty (arrangement: van Bergeijk) [ogg]
Angry [ogg]

X11 Basic

A Basic Interpreter with X11-Graphics capabilities.

X11-Basic implements a structured BASIC programming language with X11-graphics. The structure of the language is similar to the ATARI ST GFA-Basic.

A Basic Interpreter with X11-Graphics capabilities.X11-Basic implements a structured BASIC programming language with X11-graphics. The structure of the language is similar to the ATARI ST GFA-Basic.

Download Deb

Find location of the program in Ubuntu

It’s rather trivial task for people who use Ubuntu for a long time but newbies usually have problems with adding program to startup if location of the program is unknown or it is required to specify full path to the program somewhere e.g. when opening attachment in mail client. There are two most popular ways to find this out:

1. which gedit
2. type gedit

Both will show full path to certain program (gnome editor in our example): /usr/bin/gedit:



Read more: http://www.linuxscrew.com/page/9/#ixzz1D4sLEdSt

New Ubuntu graphics and video apps

Here are some graphics and video apps that appear to be new additions to the repos.

Skencil, a vector drawing app

Xaraxtreme another vector drawing app

Lombard, a video editor

Add ImageShack upload button to Picasa

Enter this code in a terminal.

picasa picasa://importbutton/?url=http://imageshack.us/picasa/imageshack-photo-uploader.pbz

click on yes, you should see the button appear at bottom of Picasa window

Frodo 4.1

What is Frodo V4.1?

Frodo V4.1 is a free, portable C64 emulator for BeOS, Unix, MacOS, AmigaOS, RiscOS and WinNT/95 systems.

Some of the emulation's features:

• This emulator focuses on the exact reproduction of special graphical effects possible on the C64, and has therefore relatively high system requirements. It should only be run on systems with at least a PowerPC/Pentium/68060.


• Frodo is capable of running most games and demos correctly, even those with FLI, FLD, DYCP, open borders, multiplexed sprites, timing dependent decoders, fast loaders etc.


• 6510 emulation: All undocumented opcodes, 100% correct decimal mode, instruction/cycle exact emulation.


• VIC emulation: Line-/cycle-based emulation, all display modes, sprites with collisions/priorities, DMA cycles, open borders, all $d011/$d016 effects.


• SID emulation: Real-time digital emulation (16 bit, 44.1kHz), including filters (only under BeOS, Linux, HP-UX, MacOS and AmigaOS).


• 1541 emulation: Drive simulation in directories, .d64/x64 or .t64/LYNX files, or processor-level 1541 emulation that works with about 95% of all fast loaders and even some copy protection schemes.


• Other peripherals: Keyboard and joystick (real joysticks (only under BeOS, Linux and AmigaOS) or keyboard emulation).


• The full source code in C++ is available.


• Frodo is freeware. Why pay >$40 for a C64 emulator?

Hardware supported:

• BeBox or PowerMac with BeOS Preview Release


• Unix systems with X11R6 or Linux/SVGAlib (Tcl/Tk 4.1 recommended)


• 68k or PPC Macintosh with System 7.5


• Amiga/DraCo with 68040/68060, AmigaOS 3.0 and a graphics card


• Acorn computers with RiscOS 3


• Intel x86 system running Windows NT/95

You can get the source of Frodo V4.1b here: http://frodo.cebix.net/

To download the current version of the V4.x sources via CVS:

$ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.cebix.net:/home/cvs/cebix login

(password is "anoncvs")

$ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.cebix.net:/home/cvs/cebix checkout Frodo4

there is an autogen.sh script in ./Src that creates the files necessary for building which are not in CVS.

It prompted me to "make" and all I had to do was chmod +x the binaries and move the Frodo.Glade file  in ./Src/glade to /usr/local/share for the settings window to activate when the binary ran.

sudo cp Frodo.Glade /usr/local/share/

Create a ramdisk

I hope many of you will agree that sometimes it’s really good idea to have some small amount of RAM mounted as a filesystem. It may be necessary when running some bash or perl script that handles, say, thousands of small files so it’s much more effective not to waste computer resources on reading/writing data on hard disk but keep those files directly in memory. This idea is known as Virtual RAM Drive or ramdisk and can be setup in Ubuntu or almost any other Linux distribution using the following commands under root (to become root in Ubuntu use "sudo -s“):

# mkdir /tmp/ramdisk; chmod 777 /tmp/ramdisk
# mount -t tmpfs -o size=256M tmpfs /tmp/ramdisk/

where 256M is amount of RAM you wish to allocate for ramdisk. It’s clear that this value should be less than amount of free memory (use “free -m“). BTW, if you specify too many MBs for ramdisk Linux will try to allocate it from RAM and then from swap so resulting performance would be very poor.

Read more: http://www.linuxscrew.com/2010/03/24/fastest-way-to-create-ramdisk-in-ubuntulinux/#ixzz1CoUqIJH9

http://www.ubuntuka.com/ubuntu-ramdisk-ramdrive-easy-way/

Beebem, the BBC micro emulator

This is certainly one of the better BBC micro emulators. The BBC (Acorn) computers were really something. I found a great tutorial at muffin research, and the steps below are copied from there.

# Install the dependencies
sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev libgtk2.0-dev build-essential

# create a directory
mkdir beebem && cd beebem

# Get the source files and patches
wget http://beebem-unix.bbcmicro.com/download/beebem-0.0.13{.tar.gz,_64bit.patch,-keys.patch,_menu_crash.patch}

# Unpack the main source-code
tar -xzf beebem-0.0.13.tar.gz

# patch the source-code
for file in *.patch; do patch -p0 < $file; done

# Change directory into the source-code directory
cd beebem-0.0.13/

# build it
./configure --enable-econet
make
sudo make install-strip

#Run beebem /path/to/file

F12 will pop up an interface to change disks.

BBC Links

http://www.bbcmicrogames.com/

http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/bbc/

http://central.kaserver5.org/Kasoft/Typeset/BBC/Contents.html

Interactive Fiction on Ubuntu

[caption id="attachment_2762" align="alignleft" width="273" caption="pillow, an interactive story displayed in the gargoyle-free reader"][/caption]

sudo apt-get install gargoyle-free

then hop over to http://www.ifarchive.org and download some interactive fiction.

http://www.ifwiki.org/ is also helpful.

Snapfly

If you use Openbox Window Manager you might be interested in this project

http://code.google.com/p/snapfly/

Fragmentarium

Fragmentarium is an open source, cross-platform IDE for exploring pixel based graphics on the GPU.

It is inspired by Adobe's Pixel Bender, but uses pure GLSL, and is specifically created with fractals and generative systems in mind.

Features:

• Multi-tabbed IDE, with GLSL syntax highlighting.


• User widgets to manipulate parameter settings.


• Different 'mouse to GLSL' mapping schemes.


• Modular GLSL programming - include other fragments.


• Includes simple raytracer for distance estimated systems.


• Many examples including Mandelbulb, Mandelbox, Kaleidoscopic IFS, and Julia Quaternion.

Fragmentarium is built in C++, OpenGL/GLSL, and Qt 4.

Build Instructions (Linux)

These instructions should work for Ubuntu 10.10 (but will likely work on other distributions as well). If you encounter graphics trouble, you might have to turn off any advanced 3D desktop effects.

You will need to have a C++ compiler, X11, Qt4, and OpenGL development libs (and Git if fetching the source directly from the repository):

# sudo apt-get install build-essential libx11-dev mesa-common-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libxext-dev libqt4-opengl-dev


(No line breaks!)

Get the source.

git clone https://github.com/Syntopia/Fragmentarium

Build Fragmentarium.

Navigate to the 'Build/Linux' directory

chmod +x build.sh

and run the build script:

$ sh build.sh

The Gawker Network hacked

Great post on the Gawker network hack

How it unfolded, blow for blow

Dealing with cue bin data files

This how to guide, tutorial will give you a program that will extract your cue bin files under any Linux system.

1. Install bchunk first. Under Ubuntu use the command sudo apt-get install bchunk, for a different distribution use the http://he.fi/bchunk/


2. Now enter the following command bchunk <file.bin> <file.cue> <basename> where the file.bin is the file that contains the actual data (e.g for example Music.mp3 file that is 50MB and contains 15 mp3 files), file.cue is the catalogue file and basename is the name of the "output" that extracted files will go to. This command will create an iso image caled basename.iso or a basename.cdr file depending upon how the bin was encoded.

Dealing with the ISO

1. Enter the following comand: sudo mount -o loop basename.iso /mnt, this command will mount the iso file to /mnt


2. List the content using sudo ls /mnt

Dealing with the .CDR

The  .cdr  tracks are in the native CD audio format. They can be either written on a CD-R using  cdrecord  -audio,  or  con‐

verted to WAV (or any other sound format for that matter) using sox.

Another way of dealing with .cdr is to try the bchunk process again with the -w option which will output to .wav format which you can then either convert to ogg or mp3.

XplanetFX real-time earth wallpaper

XPlanetFX is an incredible tool for rendering high quality real time earth wallpaper in Ubuntu. XplanetFX comes with a handy GTK interface which makes things a whole lot simpler

MORE Tech Drive-in

Afros Live

If you enjoy alternative operating systems, then you might have some fun playing with Afros, which is an ARAnyM (Atari Running on Any Machine)  Emulator  system configured to boot on top of Slax  Linux. You can also simply install ARAnyM from the ubuntu repos, otherwise download the live CD. I like where this project is headed even if it is a a slightly older demo, and hoping my posting will encourage future development, one can only dream, but who knows, the project might just manage to develop into its own installable distro, if only so that people can brag about using an Atari?

As yet there appears to be no way of installing Afros, which is simply a live CD which you can either boot, or run as a VM in virtualbox. First person to do so, wins the 1990 retro computer of the year award.

Compared to my earlier attempts at running ARAnyM, this LIVE version is supreme, reason being,  the TERA desktop and inclusion of software like the QED wordprocessor and aniplayer. Remarkably fast, it could lend itself to the kind of thing happening in Haiku OS which is an attempt to create an open-source version of Be-OS. If only Atari would realise the benefits of open-source and stop being so protective over their brand, which at one point was up there with Apple.

Surely a parallel universe in which Atari and Acorn prevailed over the Macintosh?

[caption id="attachment_2734" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Afros running in Virtualbox showing 2010 Highwire browser for Atari"][/caption]

"ARAnyM/AFROS Live CD is a SLAX-based bootable CD with a small collection of GNU/Linux software, the ARAnyM and the AFROS. It boots and runs completely from CD, does not write anything to the harddrive on its own (but you can write to harddrive from inside the AFROS using the drive D: so be careful!) and so it is relatively safe to try out. It is meant as a demo version of ARAnyM/AFROS. It is not the dreamed Installation CD of ARAnyM yet (although it could be modified to work so)."

"The underlying Linux kernel and related software provide the CD autoboot, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, networking and USB devices and other peripherals. ARAnyM plus AFROS provide our familiar and friendly TOS/FreeMiNT/GEM operating environment. It's all integrated seamlessly and after PowerOn boots straight to the Teradesk (GEM desktop)."

"ARAnyM/AFROS Live CD is distributed in the form of a CD ISO image which is the usual way of distributing CDs electronically. The ISO image file can be burnt on a CD-R/RW and so you'll get an exact copy of the AFROS Live CD I created on my machine. You can get it in our SourceForge.net download area.

Monofree: Keep mono from your system

the release of Monofree brings another tool to help prevent the microsoftication of Ubuntu.

A while back, I wrote a post on how to clean mono from your system, my information was gathered from blogs arround the net.

But that information was quite outdated and a lot of it did not apply to mono 2.0 which is in Ubuntu now. I also recommended mononono to prevent mono from being pushed back on your system, but that too is outdated.

That’s why I used the list of low-level packages Jo Shields pointed out to create my own version of mononono called monofree that will clean Mono 2.0 and it’s applicaions from your system.

Lutris, universal gaming platform for Ubuntu

Lutris is a platform for easy installation of games similar to Software Center

The amount of games available is amazing (keep in mind that they are still starting) and we can find free software or private, including games for Windows will install simply with the help of this program and Wine . We also have games for emulators (MAME, NES ....)

Lutris is still in a very early stage of Development, so it's not yet available for Every Linux distribution. The package provided Should work on Ubuntu 10.04, 10.10 and Debian Squeeze.

Download the Deb

Desktopography

Some great wallpapers at http://desktopography.net/

Apple dumps GPL apps from its Appstore

Developers are squaring up for a clash between Apple's Terms of Service (TOS) and the Free Software Foundation's GPL license which is the basis for most open source (free, gratis and libre) software.

First casuality has been the popular VLC media player, which has been dumped by over-zealous Apple executives unwilling to amend the TOS to allow for freedom.

It appears the  General Public License (GPL) clashes with the Apple App Store’s Terms of Service (ToS).  Rémi Denis-Courmont, a Linux developer and the popular VLC media player,  announced this week that Apple had pulled the popular GPLed VLC media player from its App Store.

Denis-Courmont wrote, “On January 7th, Apple removed VLC media player from its application store for iDevices. Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved – the hard way. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone, given the precedents.”

Denis-Courmont  pointed out that Apple’s ToS conflicted with VLC’s GPLv2 licensing on October 25th when he sent a formal notification of “copyright infringement"  to Apple Inc. regarding distribution of the VLC media player for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

VLC media player is free software licensed solely under the terms of the open source GNU General Public License (a.k.a. GPL). Those terms are contradicted by the products usage rules of the AppStore through which Apple delivers applications to users of its mobile devices.

In a note to the VLC membership list, Brett Smith, FSF Licensing Compliance Engineer, wrote that because “Apple ‘only’ allows you to do the activities in the list of Usage Rules, if an activity does not appear in this list, you’re not allowed to do it at all.”

Section 6 of GPLv2 says: Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients’ exercise of the rights granted herein.When the App Store terms prohibit commercial use, general distribution, and modification, these are exactly the kinds of “further restrictions” that are not allowed thanks to the last sentence here. This is a crucial part of the GPL’s copyleft.

THANKS ZDnet

How do I see how much free ram I really have?

Too see how much ram is free to use for your applications, 

run free -m and look at the row that says "-/+ buffers/cache" in the column that says "free". That is your answer in megabytes:

$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1504       1491         13          0         91        764
-/+ buffers/cache:        635        869
Swap:         2047          6       2041
$

If you don't know how to read the numbers, you'll think the ram is 99% full when it's really just 42%.

THANKS: Linux ate my ram

Last reboot

Want to find out how long your computer has been on since the last reboot? Simply enter into a terminal:

last reboot

It will actually give you a list of the last few reboots, with the latest on top, and display the results as so:

Fri Aug 21 10:43 – 10:24 (5+23:40)

If you just want the last login, and happy to have is displayed like 2009-08-21 10:43, simply enter:

who -b

THANKS: Ubuntu Genius