Linux

To create a HFS hybrid CD with the Joliet and Rock Ridge
extensions of the source directory cd_dir:

% mkisofs -o cd.iso -R -J -hfs cd_dir

or to make an iso of an existing CD:

dd if=/dev/cd0 of=”/home/presence/vstudio.iso” bs=1024k

The command to do this is the find command:

#!/bin/sh
find / -size +50000000c -print -ls

Change the file size for your needs, great for finding those annoyingly large files.

Today most Linux desktop computers support USB thumb drives available off-the-shelf and most Linux distributions have built in kernel support for them as well. Ubuntu Linux supports these memory sticks out of the box, and that’s what this guide will be written around, so assuming you are running Ubuntu Linux, lets get started by logging into a system account with access to raw hard drive partitions, usually the root account.

First, plug your memory stick into an available USB slot on your computer.

Now lets goto your console and find out which device the system assigned the USB stick.
Type “dmesg | more” which is the command you use to look at system information, scroll down until you see some information about USB devices. dmesg shows the latest information, and the dmesg log file is continuously updated and is not a static file. (continue reading…)

Xubuntu, the XFCE version of Ubuntu is very slick, easy to use, and uses little resources on your computer. I think I found the Ubuntu flavor that can really use. Being an old slackware guy, I decided I didn’t want to compile everything from source. Back in my hardcore days I built custom Slackware distro’s just for my specific hardware, kernel and all. Today, I am older, and I just want to be a user, so I chose Ubuntu ( Xubuntu ) as my desktop Linux.

The installation of the new Xubuntu 8.04 went smooth and everything works just fine. By default, Xubuntu comes with all sorts of wallpapers and window decorations to allow for a fully customized look of your desktop. Looks, is everything for me! :-) (continue reading…)

Red Hat was supposed to come out with a desktop version of Linux for the general consumer, but it seems they have a lack of motivation due to the Microsoft monster. Linux isn’t for the general public, and shouldn’t be attempted to be made so. Linux is a great operating system for businesses, corporations and hobbyist’s but is far from being a home consumer product. I say “home consumer product” because what I mean is, most home users have a family, and their bound to have a video gamer of some kind. There just isn’t very good gaming on the Linux platform. Granted, some of us can get most of the better games ( EVE Online ) working, but it’s not like it’s plug and play all the time.

With all that said, Linux is great for students, programmers, bloggers, columnists, editors, and general usage. If your not required to use Microsoft products, games or develop for Microsoft products, Linux could be a viable choice. Linux just isn’t ready for home use.

“The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today’s Linux desktops simply don’t provide a practical alternative,” Red Hat officials said in a blog post Wednesday.

“Building a sustainable business around the Linux desktop is tough, and history is littered with example efforts that have either failed outright, are stalled, or are run as charities,” they said.

Linux commands only about 1.2% of the desktop market in the United States, according to research group Gartner.

Red Hat said, however, that it would continue to develop its Enterprise Linux desktop.

Very fast movie player with support for almost all known and unknown multimedia formats. Most are supported natively, some with the support of binary codecs. It comes with many built-in audio and video filters that allow completely customizing video and audio. MPlayer also supports a lot of different audio and video output methods. Just to name a few: X11, Xv, SDL, OpenGL and more for video; ALSA, OSS, JACK, ESD,… for audio. For (re)encoding videos there is MPlayer’s companion program, MEncoder.

MPlayer is best used from the command line but also includes a GUI (GTK).

I have used MPlayer for a while now and I haven’t really had any major problems. Once in a great while I’ll run into a codec problem, but I seem to always find the correct codec someplace on the Internet. MPlayer can also save to a different format, which is nice for converting videos, however I would recommend something like ffmpeg for video conversion. MPlayer is probably the best rated video software available for Linux (Gnome).

Requirements
This application requires GTK+ version 1.2.x. Other dependencies include:
GTK only required for (non-Windows) GUI, version 2.x preferred. Do not forget to install the headers (-devel packages) for everything you want to be supported (like X11) when compiling from source.