Sathya Says >> Your One Stop Source to All Things Linux & OpenSource

[How To] Compile and Install a Program From Sources

July 24, 2008 – 11:59 pm by Sathya

In this day modern day, most software installations can be done using repositories and package managers. However, you might face a situation of having only the source files availalble with you – you probably would want to try out bleeding edge software, which hasn’t been packaged yet, or isn’t available in the repos yet.

So if you really want to try it out, then the only way would be to download the source files and compile them.

Contrary to what most people think – Compiling from sources isn’t that complicated – the entire process takes 3 commands.

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[Review] Dream Linux - A nightmare for Linux novices

July 7, 2008 – 7:39 pm by Aditya

Admin’s Note: This is a guest post by Aditya. Though this post was drafted on 1st July, my work commitments and rather bad memory prevented this post being published. Due apologies.
I know that a title is a bit harsh but I am afraid it is true.
First lets get into some technical stuff.
Dream Linux is a Debian based distro(like Ubuntu) . It has both Xfce and Gnome interface. I’m reviewing the Gnome version.

The Installation

The first screen you get after booting into the CD ask you to choose the interface(Gnome or Xfce)
It also has memtest for testing memory but the CD cant be checked for defects, which is a very important feature, since the disk has to be free of defects as it is an operating system.
I choose the Gnome interface and booted. Here’s where I faced my first nightmare. The whole thing is pretty slow. Even after booting completely. I do know that a live CD is slow as it is limited by the optical drive but this was way slower than other live C.D’s.

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Linux Hater? Here Comes Windows Hater!

July 1, 2008 – 8:25 pm by Sathya

A lot of you out there must’ve read Linux Hater’s Blog, a blog with (some valid) rants about what’s wrong about Linux. John M Anderson ponders over what made him shift from Windows to Linux and here’s some of his choice quotes

You just bought built a brand new computer and want to install the brand spankin’ new Windows Vista Ultimate, you plop down $300, and away you go! What does $300 get you? A bare minimum operating system with nothing but MS Paint and Media Player.

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Article Tags>> linux hater | windows hater | No Comments »

[How-to] Styled Subs in Linux

June 30, 2008 – 7:14 pm by Aditya

This is a guest post by Aditya.

Most anime watchers who download anime must be knowing what styled subs are but for those who don’t know styled subs are special type of subtitles which have different fonts. The picture below demonstrates why exactly styled subs are needed.
Here’s a picture to show a particular video with styled subs disabled

Here’s the same one with styled subs enabled

Now in the next to images notice the position of the word [Fail]

In the first one the word[Fail] is at the bottom and is white in color , while in the second one when styled subs are enabled it is displayed right under the Japanese word for fail and is black in color
Here’s the perfect demonstration of styled sub in windows media player classic with vobsub filter

Here is the same picture in Mplayer without styled subs

Here is the same picture of Mplayer with styled subs

Note that it still isn’t completely perfect but it is almost there

Getting Styled subs to work
Now the best player for these kind of files is SMplayer. Even mplayer does the job.
You can get them from the following places
Smplayer
Mplayer
After downloading SMplayer or Mplayer right click at any part of the player and select preferences(or you can hit Ctrl+P for SMplayer). Now go to subtitles settings, for SMplayer select SSA/ASS Library tab and select use SSA/ASS library, for mplayerunser subtitles & OSD tab select SSA/ASS subtitle rendering.
Here the pictures of the preferences of mplayes and smplayer respectively

Now load the file you want to play and enjoy!
Note: For Mplayer each time you load it you have to select channel 0 for subtitles.

Popularity: 2% [?]

So Why is ACPI Such A Problem in Linux?

June 24, 2008 – 4:29 pm by Sathya

Anyone who’s worked on Linux must’ve come across a fair share of ACPI-related problems - lockups, standby problems etc. Some of the “solutions” is to disable ACPI support by passing the noacpi parameter during boot-up. So why is ACPI so problematic under Linux?

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Creating Your Own YUM Repository

June 22, 2008 – 9:26 pm by Sathya

This is a guest post by Kunal Gautam. This article is aimed at RHEL and Fedora users.

If you’ve been using Linux for a while, then you’d know how much of a pain it is to install a software which runs into dependency problems. One way of getting around this is to use a repository.

What is YUM?

YUM or Yellowdog Updater Modified is an interactive, automated update program which can be used for maintaining system using rpm. Yum is an automatic updater and package installer/remover for rpm systems. It automatically computes dependencies and figures out what things should occur to install packages.
Yum makes it easier to maintain groups of machines without having to manually update each one using rpm.

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Presenting openSUSE 11.0

June 20, 2008 – 12:44 am by Sathya

After a long, long wait for SUSE maniacs like me, its finally here: Presenting the latest version of openSUSE, openSUSE 11.0

The new version features a slick shiny new installer, updated KDE 4.0.4, GNOME 2.22, Kernel version 2.6.25. If you’re still hesitant to jump to KDE4.0, you can use KDE 3.5.9 which comes with the DVD edition. And if you’re on a low-end spec PC, then just install XFCE!

On the applications front, openSUSE 11 features Firefox 3 Beta 5 which gets auto-updated to Firefox 3.0 via online updates. Also featured is Banshee 1.0, which has been re-written to improve performance and includes many new features, like video playback, better “shuffle” playback, support for iPods, MTP devices, and mass storage player devices, and support for podcasts and better Last.fm integration.

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[How To] Chat With Your Facebook Buddies Using Pidgin

June 19, 2008 – 5:38 pm by Sathya

Recently, Facebook introduced Facebook chat - which allows you to chat with your Facebook friends in realtime similar to IM, as compared to post-message-on-wall-and-wait-for-replies kinda communication that Facebook users endured so far. A slight problem would be that to use this feature, users need to be logged in and be on Facebook’s site.

Not any more. eionrobb and Saturn2888 have coded a plugin for Pidgin which allows you to chat with your facebook buddies using the Facebook Chat IM service. Just grab the plugin (.deb installer for Debian and its derivatives like Ubuntu, .exe installer for Windows, and sources available), copy the the .dll file to your C:\Program Files\Pidgin\plugins\ (or equivalent) directory and restart Pidgin, if you’re on Windows.

For Linux users copy one of the .so files to either /usr/lib/purple-2/ (for 32-bit Linux), /usr/lib64/purple-2/ (for 64-bit Linux), /usr/lib/pidgin/ (for Nokia/Maemo) or ~/.purple/plugins/ (if you don’t have root access) and restart Pidgin.

Don’t forget to grab the icons too. Just Extract the facebook_icons.zip file to the pixmaps/pidgin/protocols folder. On Windows this is generally C:\Program Files\Pidgin\pixmaps\pidgin\protocols and on Linux, /usr/share/pixmaps/pidgin/protocol and enjoy chatting.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Final To Be Released On June 17

June 13, 2008 – 12:08 pm by Sathya

Mozilla has announced that the next version of Mozilla Firefox, quite possibly one of the best browser out there, Mozilla Firefox 3 will be available for download on June 17. After 34 months of being under development, 5 betas, and 3 Release Candidates, Firefox is ready for release.

Firefox 3 features an extensively revamped location bar, with full search support for history URL and title descriptions, a vastly improved download manager, overhalued bookmark system with support for tags in bookmarks.

For a detailed read on Firefox 3’s new features you can a look at my Glimpses of Firefox Beta 2 over here and of Beta 3 over here.

Don’t forget to pledge for Firefox 3 download!

Popularity: 3% [?]

Article Tags>> Firefox | Mozilla | open source | web browser | 3 Comments »

New Official openSUSE Forums Go Live

June 10, 2008 – 2:39 pm by Sathya

The official openSUSE forums has been established and went live yesterday on June 9th, 2008, providing better support for openSUSE community. The Forums merges 3 existing openSUSE forums, suseforums.net, my personal favourite suselinuxsupport.de and the openSUSE support forums at forums.novell.com.

You could use single sign-on login with your Novell/openSUSE account. Your account at existing forums - will also work.

Behind the scenes, a project team consisting of Novell employees, openSUSE Community members, and existing forums’ staff have been working on this project since the beginning of 2008. The new infrastructure will be hosted by Novell to ensure the highest possible quality of service.

So if you’re facing any problem with your openSUSE box, or would require help in setting up openSUSE on your system, head over to the official openSUSE Forums

Via - The Official Announcement

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