Converting a friend to Linux

My friend's computer was filled with spyware and trojans and it is pretty crappy (really old laptop and missing some keyboard keys), it barely ran at all. So he paid for some new parts and I pieced together my old computer using some new parts. Well that's what I have been doing for the past month and I ran into some trouble. First I got everything all setup and then I find out the motherboard doesn't boot of the new hardrive. So we bought a new motherboard (and a nice nVidia GeForce 6200 since we don't want crappy integrated graphics if we can easily upgrade it). Well I (stupidly) thought I had a ATX case but when I got the new motherboard it wouldn't fit because I guess it is a miniATX case. Bummer, well I figured I would just use my parents old computer (much older then my old computer). So I cleaned out my parents computer case and I put in the PSU only to find the back part of the computer that is usually all open is indeed not meaning the PSU would not fit. Wonderful, so instead of telling my friend that we need a new case I took my cheap $5 Coleman pliers and started ripping up the back till the PSU would finally fit. It looks ugly, it is probably somewhat dangerous (I couldn't fully cut off the sharp edges) but oh well it works. Then I found out the power button isn't compatible with the new motherboard. So I took the power button from my old case and put it in so it is sticking out a empty PCI slot. After all that I finally had a computer that worked. Except of course it needed an operating system.

I told my friend that he could spend the $100 or $200 and get a licensed copy of Windows or I could install Linux for free. He choose Linux (smart choice). Now my friend is still on dial-up so I could only think of one distro that has the best support for this: SuSE. SUSE was the only distro that I could graphically configure and start dial-up on when I used it a few years ago. I orginally installed SUSE 10.1 on his harddrive using my computer but I found out that it won't simply transfer over and work on the other computer. So I reinstalled it using the new computer and I ran into a bunch of problems. Instead of telling you about every single one let me just say SUSE 10.1 is very very buggy. I'm hoping/expecting SUSE 10.2 to be much better though. As far as the desktop environment I let him choose, I showed off KDE and I showed GNOME and immediately he said "I like KDE better" without me asking. After installing I added a bunch of repositories then added lots of codec support, gave him some sweet wallpapers and styles, installed a bunch of applications that he needed, gave him some of the best free linux games and the games he liked to play on my computer. Next I did was I went over to his house for a day and I showed him how to use various applications and setting up things like instant messaging. You should never just give them Linux and just say "Good luck" and leave them to figure it out themselves else they will reject it and the chances of them trying Linux again are slim. After going over basic stuff like how to browse files, what applications do what, how to rip an audio cd (I taught him how to rip audio cds using Konqueror although it seems to confuse him some so would probably be better if I told him how to do it with KAudioCreator) I let him explore it for a few hours and I would answer any questions he had (and he had a lot). Once I saw that he was comfortable using it I told him he could contact me and I could help him figure anything out of fix and problems (I set up openssh so I could connect whenever to help). He has only had one problem that he needed help with over the past week and he loves his new computer. This is how you switch people to linux, and I feel confident that this is the best way to introduce them to Linux.

Moral of the story: Old hardware and new hardware don't mix well, SUSE 10.1 needs work, provide a large walkthrough with them and let them explore some too, and Linux rules!

Amarok SVN ebuild

UPDATE: I found working ebuild (for now) at http://pwsp.net/~gruen0/ebuilds/media-sound/amarok-svn/amarok-svn-1.4-r11.ebuild, thanks to Gruen0 for the ebuild. (It doesn't have MTP or Karma support enabled because amarok doesn't seem to compile with the latest libmtp and there currently is no libkarma ebuild yet).

Jord Swart used to maintain the Amarok SVN ebuild but he has stopped using Gentoo so I figured I'd share the updated ebuild, thanks to him and the people that helped keep it up to date in the past. You can download it here. (Sorry for using box.net, if anyone has a better alternative please let me know). The ebuild is basically the same ebuild RADFOJ posted except now it has MTP device support (w00t).

Flash support for 64bit Linux

I stole this post from the post I made on the TLLTS forum and modified it some because I think other people have this problem too.

As you all know Linux hasn't been getting the love from Flash as much as other operating system :(. Well luckily even if you are on a 64bit Linux you can still get some Flash support using the various methods from the following:

• nsplugin wrapper - It tries to shove x86 plugins into a x86-64 (or maybe other) browser. Results have varied a lot for me with it.


• nsplugins32 - Judging by the source code I think it uses multilib (two lib directories- lib32 and lib64) and then puts the 32bit binaries of the programs needed to view the plugins in lib32. This works most of the time but has a few problems sometimes. (Sorry I could only find a Gentoo ebuild for it but if you look at the source code most of it is just BASH commands so you might be able to figure it out and I would help anyone if they needed it)


• Use a 32bit browser - I run 32bit firefox and it is probably the easiest and most full proof way to get flash support, I am pretty sure this is possible on an RPM or DEB based distro. I can't seem to get a 32bit konqueror (I admit I haven't tried in a long time though) but 32bit firefox seems to work so right now if a site requires flash I go to (in Konqueror) Location > Open with Firefox


• Gnash - See if this open source Flash replacement works, I haven't had much luck with it last time I tried it but it is always getting better.


• Use WINE - Although using WINE to run a windows program is annoying it means that not only does it mean you can view flash but you can view Flash 8/9 content too.

If you just need flash to view YouTube videos every once in a while try FLVGET which you can just paste a YouTube URL (or any of the many supported sites) and it will automagically convert it to an AVI making it playable (YAY!).

You can also create a 32bit chroot but IMHO that is overkill and takes up a bunch of harddrive space.

Converting .bin files to MPEGs

August 5th, 2006 Update: The old script had a few problems with it so it should work now, just redownload it from the link below. Enjoy!

While the couple .bin files that I had played fine in some players, others didn't like it so well. So I did a little research and found a tool called vcdxrip (actual package is called vcdimager). All you have to do is make sure you have vcdimager and if you have a .cue file make sure it is named the same as the .bin file (except with the .cue extension instead of .bin :) ). I even wrote a small BASH script for you. All you have to do is save it as to /usr/bin/ as bin2mpg and make it executable and then you can run "bin2mpg videofile.bin" and get a MPEG file that's much more compatible then that bin file. Hope this helps someone else.

Jobs, Internships, and other assorted goodies

Lately I have just been searching for a job and an internship. I applied to Superpets, Hoytes, CVS, and FYE and they all haven't called me back. I recently applied at Weis and will apply to Blockbuster soon. I don't think I've made much progress since most of the places I sent a request to said no or the address was wrong (stupid phone book). If anyone knows any technology companies in Frederick, Middletown, Myersville or Wolfsville (yeah right) that might take an intern please let me know.

As far as my technology life goes I have been relearning PHP and SQL and I've been talking in the IRC a bunch, probably too much. I haven't done much in Sunrise lately except for two LMMS version bumps.

Peapod, ebuild, FLOSS community rocks!

The evil way Amarok handles podcasts has been bugging me for a while. So I decided to try out a program called peapod that Tsuroerusu told me about. In short it rocks! It supports every podcast or videocast feed I throw at it. Its not as nice as a GUI app but right now there doesn't seem to be many good podcast receivers except for maybe kitty although that wouldn't compile. Peapod has saved me a bunch of time and effort and I liked it so much I decided to make an ebuild for it. Sometime when I was making it I needed help, so I went to the #gentoo-dev-help channel on Freenode. Not only did they help me with that, they started going through the whole thing and finding just about every thing that could cause an error or was non-standard. These guys definitely knew their stuff and were able to give me 10 to 20 things that would make it better. After going through that I was very happy with it so I decided to put it in the Sunrise overlay. I went through the required steps which included some even more finetuning of the ebuild and quality assurance stuff then had to register a name and give them some info on me so they could contact me if they need to. So there you have it, I am now an official unofficial ebuild developer. It is now added but awaiting it to be pushed into the reviewed directory so everyone can check it out.

Review: Peapod rocks! Gentoo rocks! and the open source community rocks!

Oxygen SVN Ebuild

I am really getting into this whole making ebuilds thing. If you don't know about the Oxygen icons they are a elegant set of icons being made for KDE4, check out their site. So I wanted to be able to see and use the icons as they are being developed, back to SVN. If you havn't noticed by now I love having bleeding edge stuff which is one of the reasons why I am such a Gentoo addict. So I went to the KDE websvn and found the icons however there were only the SVGs and no PNGs and to use the icons I need the PNGs. So I had to figure out how to render the SVGs in the different sizes and keep the transparency. I asked around on the Gentoo Forums and mark_alec suggested rsvg (from the librsvg package in Portage). The program worked great and is easy as pie to use. Then I had to test my BASH skills (or lack there of). Anyways here is the script just run it in the directory that has the svg folder and 22x22 and 48x48, etc. Unfortunately in the SVN repositories README it says "Nobody should pacakge Oxygen and/or make it available in any form anywhere, except in the KDE svn repository "svn.kde.org/home/kde/playground/artwork/Oxygen/" until we feel it is ready to be released.". So I am not sure if this would be packaging it since it is basically just a script that links to their SVN. I emailed them about this yesterday (7/9/06) however I have not gotten a response. So unless I get the OK from them I am not going to release it to the public.

UPDATE: I did not get a response in my email so I went to the IRC channel and asked but they said they would rather I don't release the ebuild. Sorry, hopefully they will let me release it in the next few months.

Kopete SVN Ebuild

This ebuild uses unsermake because I did not realize when you have unsermake installed Portage automatically tries to use it. Which is why I thought the other was broken and made this one. *Uninstalling unsermake will make the other one work* Thanks Flameeyes for helping me figure out the problem.

I got a Kopete SVN Ebuild from here a while ago because I am anxiously awaiting for full Multi-User Chat to be supported so I can use it with Qunu. Anyways it stopped working a little bit ago so I opened up nano and started toying until I got it working. Here is the result. You might have to run UNSERMAKE="no" emerge kopete-svn (after you put the ebuild im an overlay and make the digest). I'm not sure how to fix this right now but at least it works (for me at least).