ARTE Live Web videos

The Franco-German cultural Web site ARTE Live Web is an excellent resource for lovers of music (classical, jazz, alternative and World) and dance. The show videos at the site are enjoyable but unfortunately only viewable for a fixed period of time before the site removes them. Back in 2011 I wanted to download the video of a performance I’d attended and loved. I searched for a Linux tool but could not find one, then found a Windows freeware GUI tool called artepupper, and used version 0.2 to download the video. You can read about the tool on the author’s blog pages artepupper 0.1, artepupper 0.2 and artepupper 0.3. The reason for the change from 0.2 to 0.3 was that ARTE Live Web changed the format of an embedded URL inside the XML page for the video on their Web site.

Now, artepupper is based on livewebarte1.1.sh, a 2010 Bash script by Carmelo Ingrao, and a Perl script livewebarte.pl by Juan Domingo based on livewebarte1.1.sh, both of which are still available on line at Carmelo’s download page and which I only discovered after using artepupper in Windows. I tried the Perl script in Linux back in 2011, and it worked for me.

Recently I wanted to download another video from the ARTE Live Web site and found that, although artepupper 0.3 in Windows worked, the Perl script livewebarte.pl no longer worked. Presumably this was because of the aforementioned change to the embedded URL. However, I found that the Bash script livewebarte1.1.sh still worked. Actually, I had to edit the script to replace “./rtmpdump” with “rtmpdump“, as I had installed the command-line tool rtmpdump using the Linux distribution’s package manager and the executable is not stored in the same directory as the Bash script. But, apart from that, it worked.

Carmelo is a star for having deciphered how to access and download videos from the site. However, looking at his Bash script, the part where he parses a line in the XML code and extracts a string between the delimiters “MP4″ and “mp4″ is based on a hard-coded character position, which could change if the Web site’s owners change the format of the URL. So I decided to modify the Bash script to avoid using character positions to extract a string. The Bash script livewebarte1.2.sh is an updated version of Carmelo’s livewebarte1.1.sh script.

#!/bin/bash
# Script pour récupérer les vidéos FLV du site liveweb.arte.tv
# par Carmelo Ingrao <carmelo42@gmail.com> http://c.ingrao.free.fr/code/
# version 1.0
# release date 21 février 2010
## modified by Fitzcarraldo 24 April 2013
## version 1.2
## release date 24 April 2013
# licence : GPLv2
# rtmpdump compilé doit être dans le même répertoire que le script
## rtmpdump must be installed and in user's $PATH (e.g. I have it in /usr/bin/)
# utilisation du script :
#
# ./script.sh url fichier.flv
# _______________

# url --> $1
# fichier --> $2

# fichier de sortie
# on efface l'écran avant de commencer
clear

# on affiche les infos sur le script
echo "livewebarte.sh version 1.0."
echo "(c) 2010 Carmelo Ingrao; License : GPL"
echo "livewebarte.sh version 1.2."
echo "updated from version 1.1 by Fitzcarraldo on 24 April 2013; License : GPL"
echo "usage : ./livewebarte.sh url_concert_sur_liveweb.arte.tv fichier.flv"
echo "rtmpdump must be installed and in your path."

# on télécharge le code source de la page streamant le concert dans le fichier sourceconcert.html
wget $1 -O sourceconcert.html

# on récupère le numéro d'event et on le copie dans eventok.txt
#cat sourceconcert.html | grep "new LwEvent" > event.txt
#cat event.txt | cut -b "15 16 17" > eventok.txt
grep "new LwEvent" sourceconcert.html | grep -E -o -e "[0-9]+" > eventok.txt

# on prend le fichier XML d'arte et on crée l'url avec le bon numéro d'event
# xmloriginal="http://arte.vo.llnwd.net/o21/liveweb/events/event-610.xml"

# url du xml sans le numéro d'event original (pour faciliter)
xmloriginal2="http://arte.vo.llnwd.net/o21/liveweb/events/event-"

# on assigne à la variable b le contenu de eventok.txt --> numéro correct d'event
b=$(cat eventok.txt)

# on créer l'url correct du fichier XML qu'on téléchargera
xmlok=$(echo $xmloriginal2$b)
finxml=".xml"
xmlfinal=$(echo $xmlok$finxml)

# on télécharge le bon XML
wget $xmlfinal -O xmlok.xml
echo "Fichier XML téléchargé"

## I have changed the code in this part:
# on extrait le nom du fichier MP4 depuis le fichier xmlok.xml
mp4hd=$(cat xmlok.xml | grep "urlHd")
# on efface le début de l'url du MP4
# on efface le surplus à la fin du nom du MP4 et on sauve le nom dans la variable mp4hdcut2
mp4hdcut2=${mp4hd#*MP4}
mp4hdcut2=${mp4hdcut2%%mp4*}
mp4hdcut2="MP4"$mp4hdcut2"mp4"
## end of my changes to evaluate mp4hdcut2

# on lance la commande rtmpdump avec les paramètres
# rappel :
# $2 = nom du fichier de sortie
# $mp4hdcut2 = nom du fichier MP4

## Carmelo had ./rtmpdump here, but I removed the "./"
rtmpdump -r rtmp://arte.fcod.llnwd.net:1935/a2306/o25 -a a2306/o25 -f LNX 10,0,45,2 -W http://liveweb.arte.tv/flash/player.swf -t rtmp://arte.fcod.llnwd.net:1935/a2306/o25 -p http://liveweb.arte.tv/ -o $2 -y $mp4hdcut2

# on efface les fichiers crées
rm sourceconcert.html
#rm event.txt
rm eventok.txt
rm xmlok.xml

# Affichage des infos de fin
echo "________"
echo "Voilà, le téléchargement est terminé."
echo "Le fichier se trouve ici :"
echo " "
echo $2
echo " "
echo "Bon visionnage"
echo " "
echo " "
exit 0

Save it in your home directory and make it executable:

$ chmod +x livewebarte1.2.sh

Also make sure you have the package rtmpdump installed and that it is in your $PATH.

Then you can browse the ARTE Live Web site and select the performance video you wish to download. Hover the mouse pointer over the video pane and click on “INTEGRER LA VIDEO” to find the URL for that video, which will be of the form http://liveweb.arte.tv/fr/video/foo/, where “foo” is some string of characters (not literally “foo”, of course). The command to download it is then as shown below. I’ll use a file name foo.flv here, but any prefix would do:

$ ./livewebarte1.2.sh http://liveweb.arte.tv/fr/video/foo/ foo.flv

Note that it is essential to include the forward slash at the end of the URL. The file will be downloaded to your home directory and you can watch it in VLC or any other Linux media player that plays Flash video.

So there you have it; currently you can use artepupper 0.3 in Windows or livewebarte1.2.sh in Linux to download from ARTE Live Web a video of a performance you attended and loved.

Switching the display quickly between a laptop monitor and an external monitor or projector in Linux

I connect my laptop to an external keyboard and an external monitor or projector in various offices and at home, and each of the monitors has a different resolution. Fn-F3 on my laptop keyboard allows me to toggle between monitors, but I want more control (including the ability to specify the resolution of the external display). Now, I find the GPU manufacturer’s application and the Desktop Environment’s GUI for switching monitors and changing screen resolution rather cumbersome, so I wanted an icon on the Desktop that I could double-click to switch monitors without having to enter the root user’s password and fiddle around too much. So I decided to create some simple Bash scripts and associated Desktop Config files with nice-looking icons on the desktop, which I can launch easily and quickly by double-clicking. Obviously the resolutions are limited to the range of resolutions supported by the GPU and external monitor.

The suite of Desktop Config files I created have self-explanatory names:

$ cd ~/Desktop
$ ls -1 Switch*
Switch_OFF_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected
Switch_OFF_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected_auto
Switch_ON_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor
Switch_ON_laptop_monitor_and_switch_off_external_monitor
$ ls -1 Toggle*
Toggle_display

The difference between Switch_OFF_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected and Switch_OFF_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected_auto is that the former prompts for the resolution of the external monitor whereas the latter tries to find the resolution automatically. I have both because I have found that, for some external display devices (e.g. projectors), it is handy to have the ability to specify the resolution manually.

Switch off the laptop monitor if an external monitor is connected (find resolution automatically)

The Desktop Config file I double-click the most is ~/Desktop/Switch_OFF_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected_auto, and it contains the following text:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_GB]=switch off laptop monitor if external monitor is connected auto
Comment=switch off laptop monitor if external monitor is connected auto
Exec=sh /home/fitzcarraldo/switch_off_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected_auto.sh
GenericName[en_GB]=Switch off laptop monitor if external monitor is connected auto
GenericName=Switch off laptop monitor if external monitor is connected auto
Icon=/home/fitzcarraldo/Pictures/Icons/display.png
MimeType=
Name[en_GB]=Switch_OFF_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected_auto
Name=Switch_OFF_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected_auto
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=none
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=

The Bash script it launches, ~/switch_off_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected_auto.sh, contains the following code:

#!/bin/bash
if xrandr -q | grep "CRT1 connected"; then
  xrandr --output LVDS --off
  xrandr --output CRT1 --off
  xrandr --output CRT1 --auto
else
  xrandr --output CRT1 --off
  xrandr --output LVDS --off
  xrandr --output LVDS --mode 1920x1080
# 1920x1080 is the native resolution of my laptop monitor
fi

Don’t forget to make them executable:

$ chmod +x /home/fitzcarraldo/Desktop/Switch_OFF_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected_auto
$ chmod +x /home/fitzcarraldo/switch_off_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected_auto.sh

If you’re wondering how I knew I had to specify ‘CRT1′ and ‘LVDS’ in the Bash script, I used the xrandr command to find out what names the GPU gives the monitors:

$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 1920 x 1920
LVDS connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
1920x1080 60.0 +
1680x1050 60.0
1400x1050 60.0
1600x900 60.0
1280x1024 60.0
1440x900 60.0
1280x960 60.0
1280x768 60.0
1280x720 60.0
1024x768 60.0
1024x600 60.0
800x600 60.0
800x480 60.0
640x480 60.0
DFP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
CRT1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 476mm x 268mm
1920x1080 60.0*+
1280x1024 75.0 60.0
1280x960 60.0
1280x800 59.8
1152x864 75.0
1280x720 60.0
1024x768 75.0 70.1 60.0
800x600 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2
640x480 75.0 72.8 67.0 59.9

Switch off the laptop monitor if an external monitor is connected (enter resolution)

The Desktop Config file I double-click is ~/Desktop/Switch_OFF_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected, and it contains the following text:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_GB]=switch off laptop monitor if external monitor is connected
Comment=switch off laptop monitor if external monitor is connected
Exec=sh /home/fitzcarraldo/System_Administration/switch_off_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected.sh
GenericName[en_GB]=Switch off laptop monitor if external monitor is connected
GenericName=Switch off laptop monitor if external monitor is connected
Icon=/home/fitzcarraldo/Pictures/Icons/display.png
MimeType=
Name[en_GB]=Switch_OFF_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected
Name=Switch_OFF_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=true
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=none
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=

The Bash script it launches, ~/switch_off_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected.sh, contains the following code:

#!/bin/bash
if xrandr -q | grep "CRT1 connected"; then
echo -n "Enter resolution width of external monitor (hint 1920 Doha, 1440 home): "
read EXTERNAL_WIDTH
echo -n "Enter resoluton height of external monitor (hint 1080 Doha, 900 home): "
read EXTERNAL_HEIGHT
  xrandr --output LVDS --off
  xrandr --output CRT1 --off
  xrandr --output CRT1 --mode $EXTERNAL_WIDTH"x"$EXTERNAL_HEIGHT
else
  xrandr --output CRT1 --off
  xrandr --output LVDS --off
  xrandr --output LVDS --mode 1920x1080
# 1920x1080 is the native resolution of my laptop monitor
fi

Don’t forget to make them executable:

$ chmod +x /home/fitzcarraldo/Desktop/Switch_OFF_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected
$ chmod +x /home/fitzcarraldo/switch_off_laptop_monitor_if_external_monitor_is_connected.sh

Switch on the laptop monitor and external monitor simultaneously

I don’t need to use this one much, only when I am using an external monitor but suddenly want to use the laptop’s built-in Webcam and so have to open fully the laptop’s lid. The file ~/Desktop/Switch_ON_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor contains the following text:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_GB]=switch_ON_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor
Comment=switch_ON_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor
Exec=sh /home/fitzcarraldo/switch_on_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor.sh
GenericName[en_GB]=Switch_ON_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor
GenericName=Switch_ON_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor
Icon=/home/fitzcarraldo/Pictures/Icons/display.png
MimeType=
Name[en_GB]=Switch_ON_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor
Name=Switch_ON_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=true
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=none
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=

and the Bash script it calls, ~/switch_on_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor.sh, contains the following code:

#!/bin/bash
if xrandr -q | grep "CRT1 connected"; then
  echo "Note that the resolution specified must be the same for both monitors, and must be achievable on both monitors."
  echo -n "Enter resolution width of external monitor (hint 1920 office, 1440 home): "
  read EXTERNAL_WIDTH
  echo -n "Enter resoluton height of external monitor (hint 1080 office, 900 home): "
  read EXTERNAL_HEIGHT
  #xrandr --output LVDS --off
  xrandr --output LVDS --mode $EXTERNAL_WIDTH"x"$EXTERNAL_HEIGHT
  xrandr --output CRT1 --off
  xrandr --output CRT1 --mode $EXTERNAL_WIDTH"x"$EXTERNAL_HEIGHT
else
  xrandr --output CRT1 --off
  xrandr --output LVDS --off
  xrandr --output LVDS --mode 1920x1080
# 1920x1080 is the native resolution of my laptop monitor
fi

Don’t forget to make them executable:

$ chmod +x /home/fitzcarraldo/Desktop/Switch_ON_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor
$ chmod +x /home/fitzcarraldo/switch_on_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor.sh

Switch on the laptop monitor and switch off an external monitor

I don’t need to use this one much either, given that the display mode reverts to the laptop monitor after I reboot or shutdown/power-up the laptop. The file ~/Desktop/Switch_ON_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor contains the following text:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_GB]=switch on laptop monitor and switch off external monitor
Comment=switch on laptop monitor and switch off external monitor
Exec=sh /home/fitzcarraldo/switch_on_laptop_monitor_and_switch_off_external_monitor.sh
GenericName[en_GB]=Switch on laptop monitor and switch off external monitor
GenericName=Switch on laptop monitor and switch off external monitor
Icon=computer-laptop
MimeType=
Name[en_GB]=Switch_ON_laptop_monitor_and_switch_off_external_monitor
Name=Switch_ON_laptop_monitor_and_switch_off_external_monitor
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=

The Bash script it launches, ~/switch_on_laptop_monitor_and_switch_off_external_monitor.sh, contains the following code:

#!/bin/bash
xrandr --output CRT1 --off
xrandr --output LVDS --auto
xrandr --output LVDS --mode 1920x1080
# 1920x1080 is the native resolution of my laptop monitor

I did also create a fifth Desktop Config file and associated Bash script, to toggle between the three modes (laptop monitor only > both monitors > external monitor only) rather than having to double-click three different icons. But, to be honest, it’s quicker and easier to have the three icons and double-click on the one I want rather than toggling through three display modes. Anyway, in case you are interested, the Desktop Config file ~/Desktop/Toggle_Display contains the follow text:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_GB]=Toggle between laptop monitor, external monitor and both
Comment=Toggle between laptop monitor, external monitor and both
Exec=sh /home/fitzcarraldo/toggle_display.sh
GenericName[en_GB]=Toggle between laptop monitor, external monitor and both
GenericName=Toggle between laptop monitor, external monitor and both
Icon=video-display
MimeType=
Name[en_GB]=Toggle_display
Name=Toggle_display
Path=
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=none
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=

and the Bash script it launches, ~/switch_on_laptop_monitor_and_external_monitor.sh, contains the following code:

#!/bin/sh

# Using the xrandr command I found that the two video outputs from my laptop are named LVDS
# (the internal display) and CRT1 (the external display driven by the laptop's VGA socket).
# My external monitor at home has a resolution of 1440x900.

CONNECTED=`xrandr | grep -i ' connected' | grep LVDS | awk '{print $1}'`
CONNECTED="${CONNECTED} `xrandr | grep -i ' connected' | grep CRT | awk '{print $1}'`"

ENABLED=`awk '{print;exit}' ~/displays_enabled 2>/dev/null`

if [ "$CONNECTED" = "LVDS" -o "$CONNECTED" = "LVDS " -o "$CONNECTED" = " LVDS" ]; then
        # Only the internal display is connected, so don't do anything.
        echo "LVDS" > ~/displays_enabled
        ENABLED="LVDS"
        xrandr --output CRT1 --off
        xrandr --output LVDS --off
        xrandr --output LVDS --auto
        exit 0
elif [ "$CONNECTED" = "LVDS CRT1" ]; then
        # Both the internal and external displays are connected, so let's toggle
        # LVDS > LVDS,CRT1 > CRT1

        EXTERNALRES=`xrandr | awk 'c&&c--;/ connected/{c=1}' | awk '{print $1}' | grep 1440x900`
        if [ "$ENABLED" = "LVDS" ]; then
        # Switching on both displays.
                xrandr --output LVDS --off
                if [ "$EXTERNALRES" = "1440x900" ]; then
                         xrandr --output LVDS --mode 1440x900
                         xrandr --output CRT1 --off
                         xrandr --output CRT1 --auto
                else
                         xrandr --output LVDS --auto
                         xrandr --output CRT1 --off
                         xrandr --output CRT1 --auto
                fi
                ENABLED="LVDS CRT1"
                echo "LVDS CRT1" > ~/displays_enabled
        elif [ "$ENABLED" = "LVDS CRT1" ]; then
        # Switching on only external display.
                xrandr --output LVDS --off
                xrandr --output CRT1 --off
                xrandr --output CRT1 --auto
                ENABLED="CRT1"
                echo "CRT1" > ~/displays_enabled
        else
        # Switching on only internal display.
                xrandr --output CRT1 --off
                xrandr --output LVDS --off
                xrandr --output LVDS --auto
                ENABLED="LVDS"
                echo "LVDS" > ~/displays_enabled
        fi
fi

As I use KDE, I also used System Settings > Shortcuts and Gestures | Custom Shortcuts to create a keyboard shortcut which I named ‘Toggle display’, with Meta+P as Trigger and sh ~/toggle_display.sh as Action, but I tend to use the mouse rather than the keyboard in any case.

By the way, you might think some of the xrandr commands in the above Bash scripts are redundant. You would be correct in thinking that, but in practice I found that the displays did not switch if I didn’t include the additional commands shown (due to a bug in xrandr, perhaps?). Even then, when I switch to an external monitor, occasionally the screen resolution is slightly too big or too small, so I placed the icons at the top left of the desktop so that they are always accessible and I can just double-click on the same icon again if necessary. As I’m using KDE, I placed a Folder View Plasmoid for ~/Desktop/ at the top left of the desktop, as you can see in the screenshot.

Footnote

I’ve been using the above method of switching between displays for a couple of years now with an AMD ATI GPU. It works nicely and suits my needs perfectly. AMD has supported xrandr since 2008 (see Ref. 1), whereas NVIDIA only began to support xrandr last year (see Ref. 2) so I’m not sure how well these scripts would work with NVIDIA GPUs.

Ref. 1: AMD Catalyst 8.9 Gets WINE Fix, RandR 1.2 Support, September 18, 2008
Ref. 2: NVIDIA’s 302 Linux Driver Finally Has RandR 1.2/1.3, May 2, 2012

Setting the wireless regulatory domain in Linux on your laptop

I travel internationally and want to make sure that my laptop uses the legal wireless networking frequencies in the country I am visiting. In Linux, CRDA (Central Regulatory Domain Agent) is the udev helper used to communicate between userspace and the kernel, and it enables you to view and alter the wireless regulatory domain your kernel uses. For more information see the Regulatory page on the Linux Wireless Wiki site.

CFG80211 is the Linux wireless LAN (802.11) configuration API. The kernel on my main laptop has the following configuration settings relating to CFG80211:

# cat /usr/src/linux/.config | grep CFG80211
CONFIG_CFG80211=m
# CONFIG_CFG80211_DEVELOPER_WARNINGS is not set
# CONFIG_CFG80211_REG_DEBUG is not set
CONFIG_CFG80211_DEFAULT_PS=y
# CONFIG_CFG80211_DEBUGFS is not set
# CONFIG_CFG80211_INTERNAL_REGDB is not set
CONFIG_CFG80211_WEXT=y

and the cfg80211 module is loaded:

# lsmod | grep cfg80211
cfg80211 145747 3 iwlwifi,mac80211,iwldvm

I have the package crda installed, and I have the following udev rule file /etc/udev/rules.d/regulatory.rules to allow the kernel to communicate with userspace:

KERNEL=="regulatory*", ACTION=="change", SUBSYSTEM=="platform", RUN+="/sbin/crda"

So, how do you check which wireless regulatory domain your kernel is currently using, and switch to another domain if necessary? These tasks are performed using the iw command. You’ll need to install the package iw if it is not already installed.

To see the regulatory domain your laptop is using now, enter the following command as root user:

iw reg get

When I use the above command on my laptop after start-up, I normally see the following:

# iw reg get
country 00:
(2402 - 2472 @ 40), (3, 20)
(2457 - 2482 @ 20), (3, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS
(2474 - 2494 @ 20), (3, 20), NO-OFDM, PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS
(5170 - 5250 @ 40), (3, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS
(5735 - 5835 @ 40), (3, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS

The country code 00 is not the code of the country I am in at present. To tell the kernel which wireless regulatory domain you wish to use, enter the following command as root user:

iw reg set ISO_3166-1_alpha-2

where ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 is the 2-character code for the country you are in. You can find the list of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes on the Wikipedia page ISO 3166-1 alpha-2.

For example, if I were in the UK then I would enter the following command:

# iw reg set GB

and the regulatory domain would then be reported like this:

# iw reg get
country GB:
(2402 - 2482 @ 40), (N/A, 20)
(5170 - 5250 @ 40), (N/A, 20)
(5250 - 5330 @ 40), (N/A, 20), DFS
(5490 - 5710 @ 40), (N/A, 27), DFS

It is not a big deal to use the command line, but I wanted to make it even easier. I’m using KDE on my main laptop, so I created a Desktop Configuration File /home/fitzcarraldo/Desktop/Set_wireless_regulatory_domain containing the following:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment[en_GB]=
Comment=
Exec=/home/fitzcarraldo/iw_reg.sh
GenericName[en_GB]=Set wireless regulatory domain
GenericName=Set wireless regulatory domain
Icon=/home/fitzcarraldo/national-flags-icon.png
MimeType=
Name[en_GB]=Set_wireless_regulatory_domain
Name=Set_wireless_regulatory_domain
Path=
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=true
TerminalOptions=\s--noclose
Type=Application
X-DBUS-ServiceName=
X-DBUS-StartupType=none
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=

and gave it the following file permissions:

# chmod 744 /home/fitzcarraldo/Desktop/Set_wireless_regulatory_domain
# ls -la /home/fitzcarraldo/Desktop/Set_wireless_regulatory_domain
-rwxr--r-- 1 fitzcarraldo users 496 Jan 15 21:53 /home/fitzcarraldo/Desktop/Set_wireless_regulatory_domain

I used a search engine to find a nice PNG icon consisting of several overlapping national flags, and saved it with the file name name national-flags-icon.png in my home directory.

I created a Bash shell script /home/fitzcarraldo/iw_reg.sh containing the following:

#!/bin/bash
echo "First you need to enter the password of your user account..."
sudo echo ""
echo "The ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are listed on Web page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2"
echo ""
echo "The current wireless regulatory domain is set as: "
echo ""
sudo iw reg get
echo ""
echo -n "Enter the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (upper case) for the country you are in now, and press ENTER: "
read REGULATORYDOMAIN
sudo iw reg set $REGULATORYDOMAIN
echo ""
echo "The current wireless regulatory domain is now set as: "
echo ""
sudo iw reg get
echo ""
echo "All done. You can close this window."

and gave it the following file permissions:

# chmod 744 /home/fitzcarraldo/iw_reg.sh
# ls -la /home/fitzcarraldo/iw_reg.sh
-rwxr--r-- 1 fitzcarraldo users 632 Jan 15 21:33 /home/fitzcarraldo/iw_reg.sh

Now, if I double-click on the icon for Set_wireless_regulatory_domain on my desktop, a Konsole window pops up with a prompt for me to enter my user account password. When I enter my password the window displays the current wireless regulatory domain the kernel is using and prompts me to enter the 2-character code for the regulatory domain I wish to use instead. When I enter the country code the window displays the new regulatory domain, as shown in the sample below.


First you need to enter the password of your user account...
Password:

The ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are listed on Web page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2

The current wireless regulatory domain is set as:

country SA:
(2402 - 2482 @ 40), (N/A, 20)
(5170 - 5250 @ 20), (3, 23)
(5250 - 5330 @ 20), (3, 23), DFS
(5735 - 5835 @ 20), (3, 30)

Enter the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (upper case) for the country you are in now, and press ENTER: GB

The current wireless regulatory domain is now set as:

country GB:
(2402 - 2482 @ 40), (N/A, 20)
(5170 - 5250 @ 40), (N/A, 20)
(5250 - 5330 @ 40), (N/A, 20), DFS
(5490 - 5710 @ 40), (N/A, 27), DFS

All done. You can close this window.


The task of viewing and changing the regulatory domain after start-up is now very easy for me. The only thing that would be easier than this would be if Linux could detect automatically which country I’m in and set the regulatory domain automatically.

Converting ape music files to mp3 in Linux

I had a file in the lossless ape (Monkey’s Audio) file format, and wanted to convert it to a .mp3 file so that I could play it on my portable mp3 player. As is usual in Linux, several alternative solutions exist, and I thought I’d try three of them for fun: shntool, ffmpeg and KDE’s Konvertible (Konvertible is a GUI for ffmpeg).

I already had ffmpeg and Konvertible installed, but not shntool. So first I installed shntool and the Monkey’s Audio codecs it uses:

# emerge media-sound/mac
# emerge media-sound/shntool

Here are the details of these two installed packages:

# eix -I shntool
[I] media-sound/shntool
Available versions: 3.0.10-r1 {alac flac mac shorten sox wavpack}
Installed versions: 3.0.10-r1(08:11:30 19/12/12)(flac -alac -mac -shorten -sox -wavpack)
Homepage: http://www.etree.org/shnutils/shntool/
Description: A multi-purpose WAVE data processing and reporting utility

# eix -I media-sound/mac
[I] media-sound/mac
Available versions: 3.99.4.5.7-r1^m {mmx static-libs}
Installed versions: 3.99.4.5.7-r1^m(07:52:12 19/12/12)(mmx -static-libs)
Homepage: http://etree.org/shnutils/shntool/
Description: Monkey's Audio Codecs

Then I used the following command to convert the file My Band 1971 CoolSounds.ape to mp3:

$ shntool conv -i ape -o 'cust ext=mp3 lame - %f' My\ Band\ 1971\ CoolSounds.ape
Converting [My Band 1971 CoolSounds.ape] (59:15.39) --> [My Band 1971 CoolSounds.mp3] : 100% OK
$

The KDE utility Konvertible was also able to convert it. I double-clicked on the file My Band 1971 CoolSounds.ape in Dolphin to launch Konvertible, selected libmp3lame in the ‘Codec:’ drop-down picklist, 192.00 kbits/s in the ‘Bitrate:’ drop-down picklist, clicked on the folder icon and selected /home/fitzcarraldo as the destination directory, and finally clicked ‘Convert’.

The mp3 files created by shntool and Konvertible were of different sizes:

File created by Konvertible:

$ file My\ Band\ 1971\ CoolSounds.mp3
My Band 1971 CoolSounds.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 2.4.0, contains: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 192 kbps, 44.1 kHz, Stereo
$ ls -la My\ Band\ 1971\ CoolSounds.mp3
-rw-r--r-- 1 fitzcarraldo users 85334024 Dec 19 08:11 My Band 1971 CoolSounds.mp3
$

File created by shntool:

$ file My\ Band\ 1971\ CoolSounds.mp3
My Band 1971 CoolSounds.mp3: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 128 kbps, 44.1 kHz, JntStereo
$ ls -la My\ Band\ 1971\ CoolSounds.mp3
-rw-r--r-- 1 fitzcarraldo users 56889259 Dec 19 08:29 My Band 1971 CoolSounds.mp3
$

So I added the bitrate to the shntool command:

$ shntool conv -i ape -o 'cust ext=mp3 lame -b 192 - %f' My\ Band\ 1971\ CoolSounds.ape
Converting [My Band 1971 CoolSounds.ape] (59:15.39) --> [My Band 1971 CoolSounds.mp3] : 100% OK
$

and this time the mp3 file created by shntool is comparable to the mp3 file created by Konvertible:

$ file My\ Band\ 1971\ CoolSounds.mp3
My Band 1971 CoolSounds.mp3: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 192 kbps, 44.1 kHz, JntStereo
$ ls -la My\ Band\ 1971\ CoolSounds.mp3
-rw-r--r-- 1 fitzcarraldo users 85333889 Dec 19 08:56 My Band 1971 CoolSounds.mp3
$

The ffmpeg command to do the same thing is:

$ ffmpeg -i My\ Band\ 1971\ CoolSounds.ape -ar 44100 -ab 192000 out.mp3
ffmpeg version 0.10.6 Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers
built on Nov 26 2012 07:06:40 with gcc 4.6.3
configuration: --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib64 --shlibdir=/usr/lib64 --mandir=/usr/share/man --enable-shared --cc=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-gcc --cxx=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-g++ --ar=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-ar --optflags='-O2 -march=native -pipe' --extra-cflags='-O2 -march=native -pipe' --extra-cxxflags='-O2 -march=native -pipe' --disable-static --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-postproc --enable-avfilter --disable-stripping --disable-debug --disable-doc --disable-vaapi --disable-vdpau --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-gnutls --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libvo-aacenc --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid --enable-libfaac --enable-nonfree --enable-libdc1394 --enable-openal --disable-indev=v4l --disable-indev=oss --enable-x11grab --enable-libpulse --disable-outdev=oss --enable-libfreetype --enable-pthreads --enable-libgsm --enable-libspeex --disable-amd3dnow --disable-amd3dnowext --disable-altivec --disable-avx --disable-mmx2 --disable-ssse3 --disable-vis --disable-neon --cpu=ho
libavutil 51. 35.100 / 51. 35.100
libavcodec 53. 61.100 / 53. 61.100
libavformat 53. 32.100 / 53. 32.100
libavdevice 53. 4.100 / 53. 4.100
libavfilter 2. 61.100 / 2. 61.100
libswscale 2. 1.100 / 2. 1.100
libswresample 0. 6.100 / 0. 6.100
libpostproc 52. 0.100 / 52. 0.100
Input #0, ape, from 'My Band 1971 CoolSounds.ape':
Metadata:
Album : CoolSounds
Title : C:\1\My Band 1971 CoolSounds
Comment : Exact Audio Copy
Duration: 00:59:15.47, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 829 kb/s
Stream #0:0: Audio: ape (APE / 0x20455041), 44100 Hz, stereo, s16
Output #0, mp3, to 'out.mp3':
Metadata:
TALB : CoolSounds
TIT2 : C:\1\My Band 1971 CoolSounds
Comment : Exact Audio Copy
TSSE : Lavf53.32.100
Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16, 192 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (ape -> libmp3lame)
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
size= 83334kB time=00:59:15.55 bitrate= 192.0kbits/s
video:0kB audio:83333kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.000892%
$

and, as you can see below, the resulting mp3 file is the same size as the mp3 file created using Konvertible (not surprising, since Konvertible is a GUI front-end for ffmpeg) and virtually the same as the mp3 file created by shntool.

$ file out.mp3
out.mp3: Audio file with ID3 version 2.4.0, contains: MPEG ADTS, layer III, v1, 192 kbps, 44.1 kHz, Stereo
$ ls -la out.mp3
-rw-r--r-- 1 fitzcarraldo users 85334024 Dec 20 18:14 out.mp3
$

So, there you have it: GUI or command line; take your pick!

Selecting different keyboard layouts in Xfce

One of my laptops running Xfce has a British English keyboard. However, I write in Portuguese and Spanish as well and so I need to be able to switch keyboard layouts. Therefore I added the three keyboard layouts by clicking on ‘Applications Menu’ on the Xfce Panel, selecting ‘Settings’ > ‘Keyboard’ and clicking on the ‘Layout’ tab. I also created the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-keyboard.conf containing the following:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "keyboard"
    MatchIsKeyboard "yes"
    Option "XkbLayout" "gb,br,es"
    Option "XkbVariant" ""
    Option "XkbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle"
EndSection

As you can probably guess from the XkbOptions option I specified, pressing Alt-Shift enables me to toggle between the keyboard layouts declared in the XkbLayout option (‘gb’ = British keyboard layout; ‘br’ = Brazilian Portuguese keyboard layout; ‘es’ = Spanish keyboard layout). This works fine but I could not tell at a glance which keyboard layout was selected, without typing some text and seeing the result. It would be nice to see an icon on the Panel indicating which keyboard layout is currently selected, in the same way as is possible in KDE and GNOME. It turns out that Xfce has a plugin that does precisely this: Keyboard Layouts, which is available by installing the package xfce4-xkb-plugin. I installed it, right-clicked on the Panel and selected ‘Panel’ > ‘Add New Items…’ > ‘Keyboard Layouts’ to display the plugin’s icon on the Panel. Right-clicking on it and selecting ‘Properties’ allows you to configure the plugin, and I selected ‘Show layout as: image’ so that a flag indicating the current keyboard layout is displayed on the Panel, as shown in the snapshot below.

Keyboard layout icon on Xfce Panel

I can either use the keyboard shortcut Alt-Shift to toggle between the three keyboard layouts (in which case the flag changes on the Panel), or I can click on the Keyboard Layouts icon on the Panel and select the desired layout from there instead, as shown in the snapshot below.

Selecting keyboard layout from Xfce Panel

An easy way to edit the Xfce Application Menu

I recently installed Sabayon Linux with Xfce 4.10 on a couple of laptops. Being a long-time KDE user, I was surprised to find that Xfce does not provide a ‘native’ easy way to edit the Xfce Application Menu. The Xfce Wiki page (Customize the Xfce menu) lists a protracted and complicated procedure for making changes to the Xfce menu files. Fortunately the article also points out that a LXDE tool works for Xfce too:

A GNU-licensed graphical menu editor for LXDE, LXMenuEditor, also works for XFCE, as of XFCE 4.8.0 and LXMenuEditor 20110523.

So I installed LXMenuEditor:

# equo install lxmed

To run LXMenuEditor from the command line you just need to enter the command lxmed. If you do that from your user account you can only use LXMenuEditor to view the menu entries. To be able to edit, add and delete menu entries you must launch lxmed as root user, which of course you can do from the command line too. But I wanted to add LXMenuEditor to the Xfce Application Menu and also make it prompt for the root user’s password when launched from the menu. So I did the following:

1. Open a Terminal window, login as root user and launch LXMenuEditor:

$ su
Password:
# lxmed

2. Click on the ‘System Tools’ entry in the Categories pane. The Menu Items pane will display the current menu entries in the System Tools category.

3. Click on the ‘New Item’ button and a window will pop up.

4. In the Name box enter “Application Menu Editor” (without the quotes).

5. In the Command box enter “gksu lxmed” (without the quotes).

6. In the Comment box enter “Edit entries in the Xfce Application Menu” (without the quotes).

7. Make sure the Visible tick box is ticked.

8. Click the OK button.

(x11-libs/gksu should already be installed, but install it if it is not.)

That’s it. If you click on ‘Applications Menu’ on the Panel there will now be a menu entry System > Applications Menu Editor and, if you click on that, you will be prompted to enter the root user’s password. Once you have done that, LXMenuEditor will be launched with root user previleges and you can view and edit the Xfce applications menu.

Evaluating Sabayon Linux Xfce

The last time I installed SL (Sabayon Linux) on one of my own machines was 18 months ago, and that was my media centre. I haven’t touched that installation since: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” My most recent desktop SL installation was on a relative’s Acer Aspire 5738 laptop just over a year ago, but it was disappointing. In the end I did get SL working with the laptop’s NVIDIA GPU but, amongst other things, ALSA didn’t work correctly and even I couldn’t fix it. The owner was understandably unimpressed with SL and ended up installing Ubuntu over it, which worked perfectly out of the box.

Since then I have not used SL much apart from occasionally booting an ISO image of the latest SL LiveDVD in VirtualBox on my main laptop running Gentoo, or on the family PC running Windows Vista. So I was keen to try a recent edition of SL, and the opportunity arose this week as I had to replace an Acer Aspire 5920 laptop belonging to a family member and I thought it would be interesting to install SL Xfce Edition on it. (I bought a Samsung NP350V5C laptop to replace it, if you’re interested.)

That Acer Aspire laptop is 4 years old and had been causing a lot of hassle: a hardware design fault made the display flicker, and Windows Vista often refused to connect via WiFi to my home network. A quick search of the Web turns up plenty of complaints about these two problems with this particular Acer model. Oh, and one more thing, Windows Vista was unbelievably slow on the laptop. You really could go and make a cup of coffee in the time it took to boot.

I got a local PC repair shop to look at the ribbon cable in the lid that is known to cause the flickering display, and decided to wipe the HDD (good riddance, Vista) and install SL 10 64-bit Xfce. Below I list the laptop’s specification.

- Acer Aspire 5920-5A2G25Mi
- 15.4″ (1280 x 800)
- 250 GB SATA HDD
- Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 1.83 GHz
- 2GB DDR2 RAM
- Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller with Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 with up to 358 MB Shared Graphics
- Intel 82801H HD Audio Controller
- Broadcom Netlink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe
- Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG
- Ricoh RSC832 IEEE 1394 Firewire Controller
- Ricoh R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Adapter
- Ricoh R5C843 MMC Host Controller
- Ricoh RSC592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter
- Ricoh xD-Picture Card Controller
- Suyin Corp. Acer CrystalEye Webcam (0.3 Megapixels)
- CD/DVD reader/writer
- 4 USB2 ports
- 56K ITU V.92 modem port

This model has a Bluetooth button but does not have Bluetooth hardware installed. The Bluetooth button can be configured for other purposes, as I discovered after installing SL.

I downloaded the file Sabayon_Linux_10_amd64_Xfce.iso from the SL Download page, and used UNetbootin version 581 to create a LivePenDrive on a 4GB pen drive. I inserted the pen drive into the Aspire, booted, pressed F2 to get to the BIOS menu, configured the BIOS to boot the pen drive, and rebooted.

The SL Live environment loaded without problem and I was able to access my home network via WiFi with ease.

I launched the SL installer and was pleasantly surprised to see that it is more polished that the version I used a year ago. However, over the years I have found that the SL Installer often crashes when it tries to partition the HDD, and the same thing occurred this time. Normally when this happens I boot up a SystemRescueCd LiveCD and use GParted to partition the HDD and format the partitions, then I reboot the SL LiveDVD and re-run the Installer, which then works. This time, however, I just decided to open a Terminal window from the SL Live environment and use the fdisk command to create the partitions manually. Then I re-ran the SL Installer. I was now able to specify the mount points for the partitions and format them, and installation was completed quickly.

I booted the HDD and was pleasantly surprised. Almost everything worked ‘out of the box’ (including the memory card slot), and the overall impression was of a polished distribution with an attractive Xfce desktop. SL looks great on the laptop’s relatively low resolution 1280×800 screen, and I suspect the Infinality patches make a difference. Most of the applications I needed were already installed, to make life easier. Apart from the positive impression aesthetically, I am very impressed with the speed at which it runs. This is one of the snappiest Linux installations I have used.

I did need to perform a few tweaks, and I’ll mention the main ones throughout the remainder of this article.

As SL is a rolling distribution I wanted to bring the installation bang up to date, so I used the usual Entropy commands in a Terminal window:

$ su
Password:
# equo update && equo upgrade && equo conf update

I did not need to upgrade the kernel using the SL kernel-switcher utility, as the version of the latest kernel in the SL Entropy Weekly repository was the same as the version installed by the LiveDVD.

Tapping on the touchpad didn’t work out of the box, but all I had to do was configure it using Xfce’s ‘Applications Menu’ > Settings > ‘Mouse and Touchpad’ > Touchpad (tick ‘Tap touchpad to click’).

Although the Uncomplicated Firewall was installed, a front-end wasn’t, so I installed UFW Frontends:

# equo install ufw-frontends

I launched ufw-gtk (Firewall Manager) and configured UFW as explained in How to config ufw/ufw-frontends for Samba browsing/printing.

Xfce has some useful plugins and utilities, so I installed some of those:

# equo install xfce4-power-manager xfce4-sensors-plugin xarchiver xfce4-battery-plugin thunar-volman xfburn tumbler

A calculator is always handy too:

# equo install galculator

The system clock was not displaying the correct time (it was one hour ahead of actual time) so I followed the SL Wiki article HOWTO: Clock, Time, UTC, Dual boot with Windows and then used the Linux date command to set the correct date and time:

# date MMDDhhmm

OPTIONAL: To keep the system clock in sync with a remote time server when the laptop is connected to the internet, I installed the package net-misc/ntp:

# equo install ntp

and then edited the file /etc/conf.d/ntpd so it contains NTPD_OPTS="-g" and I added the initscripts for NTP Client (executes once at start up) and the NTP daemon (runs continuously) to the default runlevel:

# rc-update add ntpd default
# rc-update add ntp-client default

The SL Xfce Edition LiveDVD installs the Midori Web browser which is lightweight and good, but not as good as Firefox, my favourite browser, so I replaced Midori with Firefox:

# equo remove midori
# equo install firefox

I found that the film trailers on the iTunes Movie Trailers Web site would not play in the browser, so I installed gecko-mediaplayer and gnome-mplayer (and used Edit > Preferences > Player to set ‘Video Output’ to gl for OpenGL or xv for XVideo) and I disabled the Totem plugin in Firefox (Add-ons > Plugins and disable ‘QuickTime Plug-in 7.6.6 The Totem 3.4.3 plugin handles video and audio streams.’) which solved the problem. An earlier blog post of mine also mentions this: Playing QuickTime videos in Firefox and Chromium + XVideo bug in AMD Catalyst 11.11 and 11.12 driver.

As the volume control thumb wheel on the laptop did not work in SL, I used Xfce’s Settings > Keyboard to configure the two unallocated function keys F9 and F10 to be Decrease Volume and Increase Volume, respectively:

amixer set Master 5%- allocated to F9
amixer set Master 5%+ allocated to F10

and I allocated F8 as the Mute button, as it already had a symbol for that printed on it:

amixer set Master toggle

Sound quality is excellent.

I installed Skype:

# equo install skype emul-linux-x86-medialibs

which works well apart from the video image from the laptop’s Acer CrystalEye Webcam (310,000 pixels, circa 640×480), which has flickering blue horizontal lines. I installed GUVCView, a GUI to configure the uvcvideo driver module.

# equo install guvcview

My adjustments using GUVCView helped slightly, but the image quality is still not great. The image is just about tolerable when the subject is illuminated by daylight, but poor in artificial light. Searching the Web tells me that plenty of Windows users have had problems with this model of Webcam too.

I wanted to be able to access computers running Windows on my home network, and to be able to print on printers connected via USB to those computers, so I added SAMBA to the default runlevel so that it would be started automatically when the laptop boots:

# rc-update add samba default

I also edited the configuration file /etc/samba/smb.conf to be as follows:

[global]
netbios name = Aspire5920
message command = /usr/bin/linpopup "%f" "%m" %s; rm %s
printcap name = cups
printing = cups
printer admin = @adm
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 50
map to guest = bad user
security = user
encrypt passwords = yes
smb passwd file = /etc/samba/private/smbpasswd
socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192
name resolve order = wins lmhosts bcast
wins support = yes
dns proxy = no

[homes]
comment = Home Directories
read only = no

[netlogon]
comment = Network Logon Service
path = /var/lib/samba/netlogon
guest ok = yes

[printers]
comment = All Printers
path = /var/spool/samba
guest ok = yes
printable = yes
create mask = 0700
print command = lpr-cups -P %p -o raw %s -r   # using client side printer drivers.

[print$]
path = /var/lib/samba/printers
write list = @adm root
guest ok = yes

[PUBLIC]
path = /home/fitzcarraldo/Public/
guest ok = yes
read only = no

I installed the drivers for two of my printers:

# equo install gutenprint

and used the CUPS browser interface http://localhost:631/ to configure CUPS to use a Canon PIXMA MP510 via SAMBA connected to a PC running Vista, and to use a Canon PIXMA MP560 on my home network via WiFi.

When configuring CUPS to use the Canon PIXMA MP510 printer connected to the family PC that is running Windows Vista, I had to specify the printer’s SMB address as follows:

smb://workgroup/username:password@hostname/printername

where username is the name of a user account on the Windows Vista PC, and password is the password of that user account.

For example, let’s say that I configured Windows Vista on the family PC some years ago as follows:

PC name: SA90

Work group name: WORKGROUP

Printer name: Canon_MP510_Printer

User name: Fitzcarraldo

User password: MollyAida

then the SMB address I would specify to the CUPS Manager for the printer would be:

smb://WORKGROUP/Fitzcarraldo:MollyAida@SA90/Canon_MP510_Printer

I configured the Xfce top Panel to show the Xfce LCD brightness plugin, Xfce audio mixer, Xfce sensor plugin, Xfce battery monitor. By the way, Xfce Power Manager works correctly when the laptop is using its battery.

Xfce makes it easy to configure shortcut keys: ‘Applications Menu’ > Settings > Keyboard | ‘Application Shortcuts’. I configured the browser launch key on the left of the laptop’s main keyboard to launch Firefox. And, as I am used to launching Yakuaki in KDE using F12, I set up F12 in Xfce to run /usr/bin/terminal (I could instead have installed Guake and used Xfce’s ‘Applications Menu’ > ‘Session and Startup’ | ‘Application Autostart’ to configure Guake to launch automatically at start up).

Basically, almost everything works well.

Also, I installed superadduser and added another user successfully:

# equo install superadduser

Although the Xfce ALSA Mixer works fine, I installed PulseAudio Volume Control too:

# equo install pavucontrol

Actually you do need both an ALSA mixer and a PulseAudio mixer because you can get into the situation where the ALSA volumes are turned up but the PulseAudio volumes are turned down.

As I sometimes download YouTube videos for offline viewing, I installed the version of the excellent Python script youtube-dl that is in the SL Weekly repository:

# equo install youtube-dl

but it turned out to be the package net-misc/youtube-dl-2012.02.27, which wouldn’t download YouTube videos. I had to download the latest version of the script from the youtube-dl developer’s Web site, made it executable (chmod +x ~/youtube-dl) and copied it to the directory /usr/bin/ to overwrite the 2012.02.27 version installed via Entropy.

Thunar was taking a very long time to open the first time I launched it after each reboot, and was also launching twice. To stop this happening I edited the file /usr/share/gvfs/mounts/network.mount and changed AutoMount=false.

Furthermore, the following message sometimes appears in a pop-up window when launching Thunar:

Failed to open directory “fitzcarraldo”.
Error when getting information for file ‘/home/fitzcarraldo/.gvfs’: Transport endpoint is not connected.

Searching the Web indicated the following command might fix it:

# umount /home/fitzcarraldo/.gvfs

It seems to have helped, but the message does still appear sometimes.

One problem I experienced 18 months ago with the SL 5.4 E17 Edition — and I notice has been reported by several users in the SL Forums since then — is that SL does not always set up the user’s locale correctly. During installation I selected English as the language, the UK as my location and English (UK) for the keyboard, and ended up with the US locale:

# locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

What I want is the British locale. I rectified it by following Steps 3, 4 and 5 in the SL Forums post Re: en_GB language missing after install.. I think the SL Installer probably needs modifying.

Summary

SL 10 Xfce is an attractive installation demonstrating a fair amount of attention to detail, but the Installer has some frustrating problems with partitioning and the set up of the locale. These problems have been present for quite some time now and could be ‘brick walls’ for newcomers to Linux.

I use Xfce in Gentoo on a legacy laptop (Pentium III) and so am familiar with it, but it looks great in SL and just seems that little bit more polished.

But the main impression I get from this installation is just how zippy and responsive it is. Video runs smoothly however fast I jiggle around a media player window, and we’re talking a relatively low-end graphics processor here, not an AMD or NVIDIA GPU. Applications open really fast. Overall, it’s a pleasure to use.

When I think back to how Windows Vista ran on this laptop, the difference is like night and day. It’s like having a new, more powerful laptop. I’ve now added a user account for my wife as she has decided she will use it. Not bad for a laptop I thought I would give to my local repair shop for spares.

Installing and using ZBar in Linux to scan bar codes with your Webcam

ZBar is an application that can scan and decode several bar code symbologies (including QR Code) from sources such as a Webcam or an image file. I had been wanting to install it for some time and was finally spurred on to do it by a request for help to get it working in the Sabayon Linux forums. Here are the steps I used.

1. I installed the package media-gfx/zbar-0.10-r1.
Note for Gentoo users: I merged the package with the imagemagick and v4l USE flags set, so that both zbarimg and zbarcam would be installed. If you only want to use ZBar with a Webcam then turn off the imagemagick flag and zbarimg will not be installed.
Note for Sabayon Linux users: The Entropy package was built with both the above-mentioned USE flags set, so zbarimg and zbarcam will be installed.

2. Then I checked the status of the installed package by using the Portage eix command:

$ eix -I zbar
[I] media-gfx/zbar
Available versions: (~)0.10-r1 {{X gtk imagemagick jpeg python qt4 static-libs +threads v4l xv}}
Installed versions: 0.10-r1(03:56:14 05/10/12)(X gtk imagemagick jpeg qt4 threads v4l xv -python -static-libs)
Homepage: http://zbar.sourceforge.net/
Description: Library and tools for reading barcodes from images or video

Sabayon Linux users could instead use the following command:

$ equo search --verbose zbar

3. Then I checked which video device my laptop’s inbuilt Webcam is:

$ ls /dev/video*
/dev/video0

4. As it is /dev/video0, I launched zbarcam as follows:

$ zbarcam --raw /dev/video0
WARNING: no compatible input to output format
...trying again with output disabled
ERROR: zbar processor in zbar_processor_init():
unsupported request: no compatible image format

Clearly zbarcam was not recognising the Webcam.

5. As I had installed the package with the Video4Linux USE flag set, I then launched zbarcam with the following prefix:

$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so zbarcam --raw /dev/video0

The ZBar GUI window popped up and I could see myself in the window. So far, so good.

6. I held a QR Code 2D bar code in front of the Webcam, then held a 1D Interleaved 2 of 5 bar code in front of the Webcam. The following was displayed:

$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so zbarcam --raw /dev/video0
http://roho.it/mryt
0161223563

Both the QR Code and the I2of5 bar code were read correctly. If the --raw parameter is omitted then zbarcam displays the symbology of the bar code too:

$ LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so zbarcam /dev/video0
QR-Code:http://roho.it/mryt
I2/5:0161223563

7. Then I tried using ZBar to read a bar code which I had previously saved as a .jpg file:

$ zbarimg --raw ~/zebra04.jpg
01234565
scanned 1 barcode symbols from 1 images in 0.04 seconds

$ zbarimg ~/zebra04.jpg
EAN-8:01234565
scanned 1 barcode symbols from 1 images in 0.04 seconds

To find out the other parameters available, use the commands:

$ man zbarcam
$ zbarcam --help
$ man zbarimg
$ zbarimg --help

ZBar is a nice tool.

Using Bombono DVD in Linux to create a DVD-Video disc from a MKV file

I had a .mkv file and associated .srt subtitles file, and wanted to create a DVD-Video disc so that I could play it in my stand-alone DVD player and watch the film on my TV set. I tried to create a DVD-Video disc by using Avidemux and following the procedure in Formatting an MKV container into DVD format with Avidemux, Mkvtoolnix, dvdauthor, and K3B, but both Avidemux and Avidemux2 crashed, displaying the error message “Crash. Segfault at line 0, file ??ADM_backTrack”.

So I installed Bombono DVD (package name bombono-dvd) and GNOME Subtitles (package name gnome-subtitles), required by Bombono DVD if you want it to create a DVD-Video disc with subtitles, and was able to burn a DVD-Video disc as follows:

1.  If you want subtitles, open the .srt subtitles file in a GUI text editor to check the character encoding. As I use KDE, I opened the .srt file in KWrite, selected Tools > Encoding, and found that ISO 8859-15 was the character set used in the particular .srt file that I had downloaded from the Web.

2.  Launch Bombono DVD as follows:

$ export VIDEO_FORMAT=PAL && bombono-dvd

(Replace ‘PAL’ with ‘NTSC’ if you want to create an NTSC DVD-Video disc.)

3.  In the top right corner of the Bombono DVD window, select the DVD-Video disc size. In my case, I had a 7.9 GB MKV file which I wished to transcode and burn to a 4.7 GB capacity DVD+R, so I selected ‘DVD 4.3 GB’.

4.  Select ‘Project’ > ‘Preferences…’

4.1  Select ‘Default project type’ as ‘PAL/SECAM’ (or ‘NTSC’ if you want to create an NTSC DVD-Video disc).

4.2  Under ‘Play authoring result in’ select ‘Xine’ (or ‘Totem’, if you use that media player).

4.3  I have a quad-core CPU so I selected ’4′ for ‘Multi-core CPU support’.

4.4  Click ‘Close’.

5.  Click on the ‘Source’ tab.

5.1  Click on the ‘+’ sign and select the MKV file you want to transcode and burn to DVD.

5.2  Right-click on the resulting entry in ‘Media List’ and select ‘Adjust Bitrate to Fit to Disc’.

5.3  If you also have a subtitles file you wish to use, right-click on the entry in ‘Media List’ and select ‘Add Subtitles…’

5.3.1  Select the subtitles file.

5.3.2  Tick ‘Turn on subtitles by default’.

5.3.3  Select the character encoding. In my case I selected ‘ISO-8859-15′ (see Step 1 above).

6.  Click on the ‘Output’ tab.

6.1  Select ‘Write disc image’ and enter a Disc label of up to 15 letters.

6.2  Click on ‘Build DVD-Video’.

If the transcoding, subtitle addition and ISO file creation processes complete successfully, Bombono DVD will pop-up a window informing you and asking if you want to burn the image to a DVD. Make sure a blank DVD is in your optical R/W drive and then click on the appropriate button.

A guided tour of my KDE 4.8.4 desktop (Part 2)

In A guided tour of my KDE 4.8.4 desktop (Part 1) I gave a brief overview of the KDE desktop on my main laptop. This time I’m going to cover some applications, KDE and non-KDE, that I use. Just to prove that I don’t look at KDE through rose-tinted spectacles, I’ll also mention a few problems too.

I don’t use a desktop PC. This laptop is my main PC and I use it for all my professional and personal tasks. I travel frequently and have to connect to public and private networks (wired, wireless and broadband modems) and to many different network printers, so a reliable desktop environment and reliable network management software are essential. KDE satisfies the first requirement. The desktop environment-independent NetworkManager and its KDE front-end, the Plasma widget NetworkManagement, satisfy the second requirement. I also use my laptop for the usual leisure activities such as watching DVDs, video files and TV programmes; listening to music files, Audio CDs and Internet radio; messaging/telephony (PC-to-PC and PC-to-landline/mobile internationally); browsing the Web, blogging and so on.

So this is very much a mission-critical machine for me. The fact that I’m using KDE successfully for all these tasks is a testament to the power of KDE (and Linux, of course). I should also point out that, for a mission-critical machine, I’m living a little dangerously as I use the testing branch (a.k.a. unstable branch), rather than the stable branch, of Gentoo Linux. I’ve been using the unstable branch for several years on this laptop and its predecessor, with only a few hiccups, although I do have to keep an eye on the Gentoo forums in case someone reports a problem.

Office suites

Snapshot 1 - Microsoft Word and LibreOffice Calc

I use both LibreOffice and Microsoft Office 2007, the latter under WINE (see WINE tips: Giving each Windows application its own environment). Office 2007 guarantees me 100 per cent compatibility at work but I also find it easier and more reliable than LibreOffice with the large, complex documents and spreadsheets I create. That said, I also have many Word 97 documents and Excel 97 spreadsheets that I still need to access, and LibreOffice opens some of them that Office 2007 cannot. I prefer to use Writer rather than Word for simple tasks such as typing a letter, as I dislike the Ribbon Interface. And I’m happy to use Calc rather than Excel in the majority of cases.

Once I got Office 2007 running under WINE I did not have to boot into Windows any more, although recently that changed for one very specific task on one work project: checking out (downloading) a Microsoft Word file from a Microsoft SharePoint repository, editing it locally and checking it back in (uploading it). Using Firefox in Linux I can upload a Word file to the SharePoint repository initially, but I have to boot into Windows and use Internet Explorer and Word to check-out, edit and check-in the revised document. I’ve used third-party document management and collaboration software in the past that does not require the use of Internet Explorer and Word. I can see how Microsoft lock you into their product line, and I don’t like that.

For schematic diagrams and flowcharts I usually use an old version of Visio (5 Professional) I bought in 1999, again under WINE. I find Visio easier and faster to use than Dia, a GNOME application I also use sometimes for simple diagrams.

E-mail client

I use Thunderbird to access several POP3 e-mail accounts and, via the excellent DavMail, a couple of Microsoft Exchange OWA (Outlook Web Access) accounts at different companies. DavMail is a life-saver. Having to access those two accounts via a Web browser was a hassle and inefficient. A single e-mail client which can be used to access and manage all my e-mail accounts is a godsend. I still have work e-mails from more than ten years ago, and Thunderbird enables me to find information in them with ease. For professional use by ‘power users’, WebMail cannot hold a candle to a good e-mail client such as Thunderbird. I use a number of Thunderbird extensions which I find essential: Lightning (calendar); Provider for Google Calendar (bidirectional access to Google Calendar); Timezone definitions for Mozilla Calendar; Change quote and reply format (why isn’t this functionality built-in to Thunderbird?); ConfigDate (ditto); Enigmail (encyption/decryption of e-mails); ImportExportTools (conversion tools for different e-mail formats); Dictionaries for several languages.

One of the reasons I chose Thunderbird was because it is available for both Linux and Windows. As I can dual boot this laptop, I put Thunderbird’s data files on the Windows NTFS partition (Windows cannot access Linux file systems), and Thunderbird in either OS accesses the same data files. I virtually never boot into Windows, but it is good to know that I can access my e-mail accounts from either operating system using the same application.

Scanning

I occasionally use SANE scanner interface software and its GUI front-end XSane for scanning images and documents to create image files. But I am much more likely to use the GUI front-end gscan2pdf, as I often need to create PDF files for work. gscan2pdf is another application I find indispensable.

Web browsing

Snapshot 2 - Browsers and Google Earth

I use Firefox and the KDE browser/file manager/universal viewer Konqueror. I configured Konqueror to use the WebKit rendering engine instead of KHTML (Install the package kwebkitpart then launch Konqueror, select Settings > ‘Configure Konqueror…’ and select ‘WebKit’ as the ‘Default web browser engine’ on the General tab). There have been a few times when Firefox has not been able to display a Web page properly or at all, and Konqueror came to the rescue. The KIO Slaves I mentioned in Part 1 also add to Konqueror’s versatility.

I use the Oxygen KDE Firefox extension (see Snapshot 2), a theme for Firefox that makes it look like a native KDE application. Very nice indeed.

Google Earth needs no introduction. It runs well in KDE on my laptop, and I find it useful both in my work and for personal use.

I have the KDE blogging client Blogilo installed and it was easy to configure it to synchronise with my blog. In fact I started preparing this article in Blogilo but had to abandon it as Blogilo would not save reliably my incomplete work to my hard disk. After losing changes several times I gave up and turned to my tried and tested KWrite to draft the article offline first. Shame, really, as Blogilo looks really handy for preparing blog posts offline and then uploading them. Hopefully the next release will work for me.

For Web site creation and editing I use KompoZer. It’s not as sophisticated as Dreamweaver, but is easy to use and does a good job for my purposes.

Messaging and telephony

I use Skype for Linux for PC-to-PC and PC-to-phone communication domestically and internationally. There is simply no alternative if I want to communicate with my Windows-using friends, family and work colleagues: they are not going to switch to anything else. Actually, I find Skype for Linux perfectly usable (unlike Skype for Android on my Motorola Xoom tablet, which has a fiddly and rather annoying user interface). In some countries the state-owned telecom provider blocks Skype for commercial reasons, but I have been able to circumvent this using Tor (see How to install and use Tor for anonymous browsing or to access country-restricted content from another country). Furthermore, some office networks I use also block Skype, to enforce the use of another product or to stop personal communication, but Tor has helped me out there too.

Graphics

I use the GIMP quite a lot, mostly for photo editing/retouching for work purposes but sometimes to edit/retouch personal photos. I have only used the vector graphics application Inkscape a few times at work and at home. I enjoyed using it to produce the graphics for a laptop ‘Powered by’ sticker.

Snapshot 3 - Gwenview

Apart from the excellent KDE image viewer Gwenview, which gets better with every release of KDE, I use GQView. GQview has been around for many years and its UI looks rather dated, but it has some powerful features which I find useful at work (and at home). GQview makes it easy for me to assign keywords to image files and to search on keywords; to examine EXIF data; to print thumbnail proof sheets; to view multiple image files and page through directories of image files, and so on. This application has often been of help to me at work.

Snapshot 4 - Okular and Adobe Reader

KDE’s Okular document viewer and Adobe Reader are in frequent use on my laptop. I use them both but resort to Adobe Reader for the huge PDF files I sometimes have to view at work, as they load quicker in Adobe Reader. Also, Okular has had a rather irritating habit of printing Landscape pages in Portrait, and vice versa. This problem seems to come and go with different releases of Okular.

CAD

I hardly ever need to use CAD applications, but occasionally I do need to view some old AutoCAD files. For this I use an old version (2009-en-1.06-1) of VariCAD Viewer which opens those old files although it can’t open newer AutoCAD files. I tried unsuccessfully to install newer versions of VariCAD Viewer in the past, but have not tried again recently.

E-books

I only recently began reading e-books. The EPUBReader Firefox extension is an excellent and easy-to-use e-book reader, library manager and shop window for both free and commercical e-books in ePub format. The display of book pages when using the extension as a reader is better than many of the dedicated e-book applications I have seen.

Calibre is an excellent dedicated e-book reader and format converter that I discovered by accident when reading a review of the Amazon Kindle. If you are looking for an application that can handle all the various e-book formats, convert between them, manage your e-book library, upload and download e-books, and act as a reader, look no further. Even the application’s Web site oozes class.

Multimedia

Snapshot 5 - SMPlayer multimedia player, and YouTube in Firefox

I have far too many multimedia players installed, but I like to alternate between them. In any case it’s useful to have several players installed because sometimes one of them is able to play a certain file that another cannot.

SMPlayer, VLC and Xine play DVDs, CDs, music files, video files, Internet radio, and digital TV (DVB). I like all three.

Miro is a music and video player, torrent downloader, Internet TV and podcast viewer, and more. Another very polished application I enjoy using.

Dragon Player is a KDE player for CDs, DVDs, audio and video files. It plays DVDs, audio and video files well on my laptop, but cannot play Audio CDs for some reason. It is not as versatile or as polished as the multimedia players mentioned above, so I rarely use it.

Snapshot 6 - Clementine music player

The music players I have installed are Audacious, Clementine and Amarok. These three applications focus on playing and managing collections of music files, Audio CDs and streaming Internet radio.

In the days of KDE 3 I used exclusively Amarok 1.4, which was darn near a perfect music player. But new releases of Amarok were buggy in early releases of KDE 4, and today Amarok still does not work as well for me as the KDE 3 version did. Some of the album covers disappear randomly from the album cover manager, and it is irritating to have to restore covers. Clementine, on the other hand, has no trouble managing album covers and I find it is more polished than Amarok and nicer to use all round. I cannot get Amarok to play Audio CDs with the KDE GStreamer Phonon backend, only with the KDE VLC Phonon backend. Even then the optical drive in my laptop spins very fast and produces a loud noise, making listening to Audio CDs painful. Audacious, on the other hand, plays Audio CDs quietly and perfectly on my laptop. Although Clementine is superb in other respects, for some reason it cannot play Audio CDs on my laptop, whichever KDE Phonon backend is selected. All three players can stream Internet radio without problem, although the long pre-configured list of radio stations in Clementine is simply excellent. If Clementine could play Audio CDs on my laptop, it would be my favourite music player.

MIDI players and Karaoke

I have four different MIDI players installed. PyKaraoke (see HOWTO: PyKaraoke) and KDE’s own KMid can both play MIDI files with and without embedded karaoke lyrics. TiMidity++ is a MIDI file player, as well as an ALSA sequencer which can be used by the other MIDI player applications here. Drumstick has three applications: a MIDI player, a drumkit sequencer and a virtual piano keyboard. I enter the following command once before launching any of them:

modprobe snd_seq && timidity -iA -Os

Actually, I have put the above command in a Desktop Configuration File with a nice icon in my Desktop directory, so I just double-click on it. I could have instead loaded the snd_seq module automatically at startup by specifying it in the file /etc/conf.d/modules.

Audio CDs

KsCD is a simple KDE application with a sole purpose: to play Audio CDs. For me it fails miserably in this task, and has done in several releases of KDE. The last time I remember it working for sure was in KDE 4.3.3, and here we are today with KDE 4.8.4. The KDE Bug Tracking System has quite a few bug reports regarding KsCD. I don’t know if the application itself has a bug, or if the KDE Phonon backends are buggy, or if KDE has a bug, or if there is a problem with udev, or a combination. Anyway, whatever the reason, in my case KsCD is useless. Come to that, for Audio CDs Amarok is next to useless. Luckily for me, Audacious, SMPlayer, VLC and Xine can play Audio CDs perfectly on my laptop.

YouTube

I should mention the excellent command line tool youtube-dl (‘YouTube download’) which is great for downloading videos from YouTube. You can specify the resolution, extract the audio, and various other tricks. Well worth adding to your set of mutlimedia tools. Or, if you prefer a GUI, Minitube is a cracking application for watching and streaming YouTube videos without using a Web browser, and also enables you to download them.

Backing up CDs/DVDs or ripping audio and video

K3b is a superb KDE application. It’s a one-stop shop for making back-ups of CDs and DVDs, creating data CDs and DVDs, and ripping CDs and DVDs. I use K3b to rip my Audio CDs to mp3 files.

Another well-known KDE application is the excellent K9Copy DVD ripper. Unfortunately the developer stopped working on it in July 2011. I hope someone else picks it up, as K9Copy has an intuitive GUI and I have used it on a number of occasions to rip my DVDs to my hard disk so that I could watch them when travelling.

dvd::rip does just what the name suggests, and I’ve used this excellent application too. The GUI is intuitive and the online documentation is very good.

Winki the Ripper is a good application for ripping DVDs to MKV files (it can also rip to AVI files). I have used it but noticed recently that the Web site is up for sale, so I hope the application is still being developed.

WINE

Snapshot 7 - WINE menu in Lancelot Launcher

I have mentioned Office 2007 already, but I have a few other Windows applications installed under WINE, such as IE7 (so that I can see how a Web site looks in a Windows browser), IrfanView, Lotus ScreenCam Player (so that it is still possible to view some videos of a specialist application running in Windows 95 many years ago), Notepad, Pinball and a few applications and utilities I need that are not available in Linux. WINE is not perfect, but it is wonderful software that also makes it possible to run some older Windows applications that are probably not able to run in Windows Vista and 7.

Utilities

Snapshot 8 - Some utilities

I used to use the brilliant command line utility ImageMagick to scale image files, but have not had to resort to the command line since the GUI front-end Converseen was released (see Converseen, a GUI batch image converter and resizer using Qt4 and ImageMagick).

I encrypt and decrypt some of my sensitive files using GnuPG GUI front-ends KGpg and Kleopatra. Kleopatra is slightly easier to use than KGpg, but they’re much of a muchness. The Enigmail extension I use in Thunderbird also uses GnuPG.

KAlarm is a handy KDE utility to produce sounds or pop-up reminder messages, or issue commands, at specific times or time intervals. The GUI is easy to use and KAlarm can be used in many cases as an alternative to setting up a cronjob. It was simple to configure it as a talking clock (see Setting up a talking clock easily in Linux).

AutoKey is a macro utility I use frequently. It can be used in a number of ways, but I use it to insert text in documents and e-mails. For example, I have configured AutoKey to insert the output of the Linux date command where my cursor is in an open document or e-mail if I press Ctrl-Alt-D: Sun Jul 22 14:41:25 BST 2012. For another example, I have configured AutoKey to enter my full postal address when I type “adr” and press the Space key (but puts it back to “adr” if I press the Backspace key). It is a very handy utility and can be configured to execute simple or complex scripts.

Easystroke is the mouse equivalent of AutoKey. For example, I have configured Easystroke to type “———- Original Message ———-” when I press the mouse scroll wheel and move the mouse pointer diagonally from left to right on the screen. As another example, I have configured it to launch an instance of DavMail to access a specific company’s OWA Exchange Server when I trace the first letter of the company’s name on the screen with the mouse cursor. It’s a clever utility!

BasKet Note Pads is a KDE application for recording and reading notes. The notes can be simple text or complex with embedded pictures, hyperlinks and so on. I switched to BasKet from Tomboy as the latter is a GNOME application and requires some GNOME-specific packages that I didn’t want cluttering up my hard disk. However, I can’t say I like BasKet: I miss the simplicity and easy-to-use UI of Tomboy which was a pleasure to use. I think I may have to try another KDE application (KJots) instead of BasKet, as it may fit my needs better.

KRename is a batch file renamer for KDE that has come in handy both at work and at home.

Filelight is a KDE utility that shows you graphically how much of each partition is occupied and how much is free. I like it because it makes it easy for me to see at a glance how much disk space I have left.

JDiskReport is another utility for showing you disk occupancy graphically. You can select pie carts, segment charts or bar charts. It is freeware but not open-source, but is nevertheless a nice utility to have in your set of tools.

Antivirus software

Snapshot 9 - BitDefender Antivirus for Unices

As I run some Windows applications under WINE, and as I dual boot with Windows 7, I use both BitDefender Antivirus Scanner for Unices and ClamTk, the GUI front-end to ClamAV. That way I can scan my Windows directories from Linux. My work colleagues sometimes pass work files to me on USB pen drives, and I use these two anti virus utilities to scan the pen drives just to be a bit safer. Yes, it has flagged the occasional malware in Windows files.

Games

Snapshot 10 - Games

I hardly ever play games, but still installed the entire KDE Games suite (you never know, after all!). Of the KDE games, I play KPatience, KCheckers, KBlocks (a Tetris clone), KBreakOut (takes me back to playing BreakOut written in Applesoft BASIC on an Apple II+!) and KMahjongg, a solitaire game using beautifully rendered Mahjong tiles.

I have also installed a few non-KDE arcade games such as Missile Command and Pacman Arena (nicely done in 3D). I loved Pac-Mania on my Acorn Archimedes in the early 1990s, so I also use SDLMame and its GUI front-end GMameUI to play Pac-Mania and a few other old favourites such as Frogger.

As far as chess is concerned, I installed the 3D DreamChess, as well as the older but perfectly decent XBoard and eboard.

Scrabble and Boggle are popular games in my family, so I installed XScrabble and GBoggle, the latter being one of only a handful of the packages mentioned in this article that I had to install outside the Portage package manager because there is no ebuild (another being the commercial game Machinarium, which is available for Linux, beautiful and I recommend highly).

I occasionally play TORCS, which is not bad for a car racing game.

There are a lot more Linux games to discover, if you’re that way inclined.

Summary

I’ve just scratched the surface, but hopefully have given you a taste of how I use KDE (and Linux). Of course my needs and uses are different from everyone else’s, but I hope this and the previous article have shown you the breadth of KDE and Linux applications, and that they are completely viable on the desktop. If you have not tried KDE yet, I hope this has tempted you. And, if you’re new to Linux, I hope this has tempted you to try Linux too.