HOWTO: Griffin Powermate in The GIMP

This Christmas, I was graciously given a slick Griffin Powermate from my brother. It's a nifty little aluminum knob for your PC, with an extremely smooth touch and a blue LED that makes the bottom glow. There's support in the Linux kernel for the device, and it acts like a regular old input device. If you're crafty, you can edit your xorg.conf to make it control X, or you can use other software's built-in support for the device. Both the free DJ software Mixxx and The Gimp support the device. Mixxx's support needs a bit of work, but the device works great in The Gimp. However, there doesn't seem to be any documentation on how to actually set...
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PDF + Cube = PDF Cube?

PDF Cube uses the OpenGL API to add spinning cube page transitions to PDF documentsPDF Cube is an OpenGL API-based PDF viewer that adds a compiz/Keynote-like spinning cube trasition effect to your PDF presentations (including Latex, Beamer and Prosper). You can also zoom on 5 predefined areas of any presentation page with a smooth zooming effect. That pretty much says it all. It's still pretty alpha-quality, but it might be part of a cool solution to the presentation software dilemma some day. If you're interested, check it o...
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GPL kernel modules, reverse DRM, and the future of Linux

I was doing my daily read of Digg today, and I stumbled across this: Linus Torvalds on the "GPL only modules" debate.The issue at hand is whether the kernel should only be allowed to load GPLed modules (that is, drivers). That's right, some of the Linux kernel developers want to do away completely with binary-only (ie. closed source/proprietary) drivers, like the (good) Nvidia and ATI ones. On the one hand, Andrew Morton writes:Give people 12 months warning (time to work out what they're going to do,talk with the legal dept, etc) then make the kernel load only GPL-taggedmodules.I think I'd favour that. It would aid those people who are trying...
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HOWTO: Banshee 0.11.3 on Ubuntu

Update: Banshee 0.13.1 can be installed in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) by running "sudo apt-get install banshee".Banshee 0.11.3 was released today and features a bunch small new features and bug fixes, but also includes some pretty big performance enhancements. If you're a Banshee user, it's definitely worth upgrading to this new release for the speed improvements alone (switching to your library doesn't take a ridiculously long time anymore.) Since I've already written a HOWTO for Banshee 0.11, I decided to updated it for Banshee 0.11.3. This guide was written for Ubuntu 6.10/Edgy Eft, but there's only one little change necessary for it to work...
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3D Album Art in Banshee

Hot on the tail of Apple's Coverflow, Lukasz Wisniewski is developing a plugin for Banshee called Fleow: That is hot. (Thanks Gabrie...
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Ecksdee 0.0.9 Release and Developer Interview

For those of you who remember my Next-Gen Linux Game Roundup, you might recall Ecksdee as one of the games that was highlighted. In the months that have passed, the developers of Ecksdee have been hard at work tweaking and adding new features to the game, which has started to evolve into a playable fast-paced racer. A few days ago, the team released Ecksdee 0.0.9, which features the slick new Ciy map (video) along with some new ships.With this new release, I had the opportunity to ask two of the Ecksdee developers, Vincent Knecht (vknecht) and Amir Taaki (genjix), a few questions:Q. What was your original motivation for creating Ecksdee?VK: I...
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Show Ballmer the Money

"Mr. Ballmer, Since you live in a fantasy world, thought we'd pay some fantasy money for your fantasy claim."I think Tristan Sloughter might be on to something.If you haven't been following the whole Novell-Microsoft deal, Novell's customers basically get protection from being sued by Microsoft. Microsoft believes that the Linux kernel infringes intellectual property it owns (heard this before?), and that Linux users are liable.That's right, Microsoft wants you to think it's going to sue you for using Linux. (It's yet to be shown if they actually have a case or not. Many Linux advocates believe they don't.)In either case, I find it ironic that...
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We need better presentation software

Let's face it: OpenOffice.org Impress is a lame, boring presentation program. What if you want to do something really fancy? Something Keynote fancy?Well, if you're a Linux user, you're out of luck. OpenOffice.org Impress is the best you can do, but it's not for a lack of other people trying. A few years ago, GNOME's Agnubis was a potential candidate for a some new presentation software, but it unfortunately never took off. Even more recently, Criawips (aka AbiShow) seemed to show some promise, but never ended up making it very far. Currently, the project looks dead.So in 2006, if you're going to make a presentation on Linux, it's going to look...
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Edgy and Beyond

It's been a few days since Ubuntu 6.10/Edgy Eft was released, and you haven't upgraded already, here's a few reasons to:Rhythmbox now has iPod read AND write support. [1]Avahi/DAAP sharing in Rhythmbox/BansheeWhat's this? Rhythmbox also has cover art support now:The "hubackup" package makes backing up a snap:Built-in AIGLX means fully accelerated wobbly windows for Nvidia users, and workaround-less OpenGL gaming for everyone.Better software updating mechanism, less chance of something bad happening:Firefox 2.0 baby.Evolution has been noticeably tweaked. It's tendency to hang seems to be gone.Beagle is actually stable and works for me for the...
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Speed updates...

Some happenings from the Linux world over the past few days:Banshee 0.11.1 was released. Check out what's new in on the release page.The Ubuntu 6.10/Edgy Eft RC (Release Candidate) came out today. (Essentially Beta+1). More release notes on how things are shaping up.A beta of Flash 9 for Linux was finally released. Even more release notes if you're interested. Long story short: A/V sync is fixed.Ubuntu 7.04 = Feisty Fawn. From Mark Shuttleworth himself:The main themes for feature development in this release will be improvements to hardware support in the laptop, desktop and high-end server market, and aggressive adoption of emerging desktop technologies. Ubuntu's Feisty release will put the spotlight on multimedia enablement and desktop effects. We expect this to be a very gratifying release...
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NVIDIA Root Explot

The following says it all: The NVIDIA Binary Graphics Driver for Linux is vulnerable to abuffer overflow that allows an attacker to run arbitrary code asroot. This bug can be exploited both locally or remotely (viaa remote X client or an X client which visits a malicious web page).A working proof-of-concept root exploit is included with thisadvisory.Yeah, so apparently we don't need Internet Explorer and Windows anymore to have malicious software silently installed on our computers - we just need NVIDIA's closed-source graphics driver. Update: Fortunately, the bug has been fixed in NVIDIA's 1.0-9625 beta driver. The thing is, you need Xorg 7.1 to run that, so everyone running Ubuntu 6.06/Dapper Drake is still vulnerable.On that note - are there any analogous driver exploits in Windows like...
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Portland, TC:E, GWoot, Automatix 2, Mute

First off, it's been quite a busy couple of weeks for me and I'd like to apologize for the lack of news. Luckily, the world doesn't revolve around me and so some interesting stuff happened in the last few weeks:The Portland project made their first release. The Portland project is a kind of vague teaming up of various desktop environment developers with the aim of making it easier for software vendors to create Linux software that worked consistently across the various desktop environments (KDE, GNOME, etc.) out there. The first release consists of a daemon that applications can interface with through DBUS and some command line tools to perform...
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Freespire's sketchiness and a word on DistroWatch

Linspire's sister distribution Freespire is reportedly using sketchy tactics to inflate their rank at DistroWatch... again.I have to admit that I've seen the advertisement in question on Linux Revolution, but the URL pointed to the Freespire wiki.DistroWatch's ranking index provides a rough sketch of the relative popularity of almost all of the various Linux distributions out there. Why would you want to be near the top? DistroWatch's 50,000 hits/day seems like a decent reason (it makes my blog look like, well, a blog). After keeping an eye on it for many years, it seems like at least the top three distributions are probably correct in their...
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Firefox Copyright Dilemma

"I used to be cool"There's been quite a bit of noise in the Linux community lately over this 'bug' in Debian. That's right, the Mozilla Firefox name goes under the same crappy copyright license as the artwork, so Debian isn't "allowed" to use the name. (This is why Ubuntu and Debian ship Firefox with that uninspiring blue globe icon instead of the Firefox icon.)So what's Ubuntu going to do about it?Well, the users clearly want the official logo in addition to keeping the name, and I don't blame them. Firefox made the transition from Windows to Linux quite a bit easier for myself, and I'm sure others have found the same thing. The matter is still...
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OT: Fake USB Drives - I was right

In the last week, three people have come forward and posted comments on my fake USB stick article saying they're had similar experiences at Factory Direct (the retailer I bought it at). If there was any doubt in my mind that it was really false advertising and not just a faulty USB stick, this cleared it up.The weird thing about this is that the guys who branded the USB keys in California probably didn't even know they were fake. My theory is that the original manufacturer sold these to various companies who branded them and resold them. One (sketchy) guy ended up counterfeiting them by branding the Sony logo on them, and that's why there's all these fake Sony ones around that look exactly like the one I had. Other companies, like the one who branded mine got screwed because they bought the...
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Skype 1.3 (Linux) Released

Skype 1.3 for Linux has finally been released, now with ALSA support. Still no video support, but I'll take what I can get. (More details over here)If you've been using the 1.3 betas, not a whole lot has changed with the official release, but if you're using an older version, you'll be quite thrilled with the new version. There's a detailed changelog available for anyone who's interested in that as well.People always rant about Skype and say "use OpenWengo instead", but the problem is that nobody uses OpenWengo (relatively speaking), so who am I going to talk to with it? The fact that it's open source means nothing if the software is useless...
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Random News (Beryl release and video, Edgy Beta)

Here's some interesting recent happenings:MacSlow's got a video of Edgy running Beryl, showing off blurred transparent windows.On that note, the first version of Beryl (0.1.0) was released (yeah, it's still lacking a website). If you've already got the QuinnStorm repositories enabled in Ubuntu, a "sudo apt-get install beryl emerald emerald-themes" should do it for you. (Launch it with beryl-manager.) If you don't have XGL or anything set up yet, I suggest waiting until Ubuntu 6.10 comes out at the end of this month, as it'll be much easier to set up then. Beryl does feel a bit snappier than the old QuinnStorm compiz though and things seem less buggy so far. (The nice thing about Beryl is that Quinn's team can now make their own releases and stabilize them beforehand. No more buggy development...
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Gaim 2.0 Beta 4 coming soon

I just spotted on the Gaim development blog that a fourth beta of Gaim 2.0 is coming soon. The blog has some screenshots of the new features that are worth taking a peek at (global buddy icon integrated into UI, different indentation). Check them out!If you're still running Gaim 1.5, I strongly suggest trying out the new Gaim 2.0, even though it's still in beta. The UI overhaul makes it much easier to use - no more nagging "away" screen.Lastly, Planet Gaim has launched in order to make it easier for avid fans to keep track of Gaim's development. Good stu...
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WINE 1.0 in early 2007?

The latest issue of the WINE Weekly Newsletter was released last week and has some interesting details about where WINE's headed. For those not familiar with WINE, it's a software project that allows Micrsoft Windows applications to run under Linux (and other *NIX OSes). It's been in development for about 13 years now and is the result of a tremendous effort by many people. Over the past few years, WINE's compatibility has been improving at an impressive rate, and I consider it to be at that pivotal point where you can download a random Windows app from the internet and expect it to install and actually run (a far cry from the situation three...
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Dear Lazyweb: Backing up Email in Evolution

Dear Lazyweb,My university generously provides us with a whopping 25 megabytes of email storage, and has been sending me messages on a daily basis that my inbox is 93% full.I use Evolution as my mail client, and it's an IMAP mail server.How can I download my 23 megs of emails and a stick them in a tarball?If anyone has any ideas or hints on this, I'd appreciate it very much if you dropped me a comment. :)Than...
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OSS Usability and Linux: What?

I found an interesting article in the Digg queue today titled, "Windows & OSS: The Usability Problem".After giving it a read, I realized that I just don't agree with most of the author's points. Allow me to unleash the hounds:Lack of standardized user interfaceUsers of open source operating systems are spoilt for choice: Gnome, KDE and Xfce only to name a few desktops and Blackbox, WindowMaker, AfterStep, FluxBox, fvwm and mwm just to name a few of available window managers. Yes, diversity is generally a good thing, but consider how confused an average Windows user must feel when all the programs look and behave differently among different desktops.Well, I've got some ground-breaking news for you: It's been a long time since I've used a distribution of Linux that actually asked me which...
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Goodbye XGL, Goodbye AIGLX (Hello Xorg 7.1?)

Something awesome happened today.NVIDIA released a beta of their new 1.0-9625 drivers. I'll just skip to the good part, as NVIDIA's James Jones explained it: Neither Xgl or AIGLX are required to use compiz with the NVIDIA drivers now that they natively support GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap. Xgl is an X server that renders using OpenGL and runs on top of another X server. It was the first X server available to support GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap. AIGLX stands for Accelerated Indirect GLX. It is not related to compiz or GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap at all, except that support for GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap in the open source DRI OpenGL drivers...
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GNOME 3.0 Mockup: "May-B"

There's an interesting mockup of GNOME 3 over on GNOME-Look.org that someone did:The mockup looks like a combination of Gimmie, (U)SLAB, and Mathusalem (elements which should probably be merged into GNOME sooner or later.) The tags/files panel on the right looks it could use some work (layout, size, fonts, etc.), but the overall concept seems like it's pointed in the right direction.On a related note, the new DesktopThoughts blog (who's author created the mockup) aims at discussing ideas for "the next desktop". If you're interested in seeing what people come up with or you've got some ideas of your own, be sure to give it a visit.Now, we just...
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Edgy CDs, NVIDIA preview, Neuros OSD, Linux 2.6.18

Lots of Linux news happening around the web today:Apparently Canonical's ShipIt isn't going to offer free CDs for Ubuntu 6.10/Edgy Eft...Phoronix.com has a preview of NVIDIA's 1.0-9XXX series drivers, which don't currently have a ETA, but should offer the long saught-after "GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap" extension for hardware accelerated XGL/AIGLX.Neuros is offering cheap beta hardware of their new "OSD" device to open source hackers. (Think someone can get that thing to run MythTV?)The new Linux 2.6.18 kernel was released. It's got a ridiculously huge changelog, and features some new SATA stuff, and some other things that I can't seem to find...
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HOWTO: Banshee 0.11 + Ubuntu

Dec 9/06: Banshee 0.11.3 has been released! Updated HOWTO here.Updated Sept 26, 2006 (Added iPod support stuff)Updated October 16, 2006 (Minor fixes)With the Banshee 0.11 hot off the press, and no .DEBs for Ubuntu 6.06/Dapper Drake in sight, I figured people would probably appreciate some instructions on how to install the new Banshee. Well, here we go:IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have the QuinnStorm repositories enabled (for Compiz/XGL stuff), you might encounter this compile error: "/bin/grep: can't read /usr/lib/libXrender.la: No such file or directory" or something along those lines. The necessary fix can be found here. (I just ended up removing...
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Banshee 0.11 Released!

It's been a while since the last Banshee release, but the wait was well worth it. Among the new features in Banshee 0.11 are better tagging support (including writing for all the readable formats), the ability to import a selection or all the music from a digital audio player into Banshee, one-click track rating, an improved preferences dialog, and a new song-change notification bubble (using libnotify, so they should have a somewhat consistent look with the rest of the desktop).A song-change notificationThere's also three new official plugins:Recommendations - This uses the awesome Last.fm service to recommend you different artists based on...
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Compiz gets forked real good: Beryl

It was time. QuinnStorm (who maintained her own tree of compiz and provides awesome Ubuntu packages) has forked off Compiz into a new project, Beryl.It's been clear for a while that QuinnStorm's version of Compiz has diverged from the simplicity present in the first release of Compiz. Quinn's tree has included all sorts of community developed plugins, most of which add shameless bling with little contribution to enhancing usability.That's the difference as I see it: Novell's Compiz will continue to be a stable compromise between bling and usability, and Quinn's Beryl will become the community-driven bling-machine. And that's not to say that Beryl...
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Why I love GNOME (part 1?)

If someone asked me, "What's the most underrated feature in GNOME?", I'd undoubtedly show them this: Did you see that?All I had to do to extract that archive was right-click on it, and hit "Extract here". That's it. I didn't have to open an application and choose where I wanted to extract the archive to or anything. (It's probably the feature I miss the most when I use Windows or OS X...)Oh yeah, and I forgot the coolest part: If the archive you're extracting contains a bunch of files that aren't grouped in a parent folder, it knows to create a new directory to throw them in (so you won't end up with files littered all over your desktop.) Neato.What do you think is the most underrated feature in Linux, GNOME, or whatever desktop environment you u...
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Ubuntu Deja Vu...

Didn't this already happen?Oo...
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Get GNU/Linux and Linux.org

There's an interesting post on Digg that hasn't quite made the front page yet:Is Linux.org hurting Linux?If you've ever visited Linux.org, you'll probably have an opinion on this.My opinion?Absolutely.The majority of the people who've taken the poll on the Ubuntu Forums seem to agree.Is there something better?Absolutely.It's clean, simple, eye-catching, and the information that the community wants to send to potential users is easy to get to. While Get GNU/Linux does have some typos and some GNU-isms (I think the general public might not get the free beer/free speech thing), it's certainly a great start. I think the official Ubuntu site in particular...
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Release: MythTV 0.20

After 7 months of hard work, a new version of MythTV (0.20) has finally been released. This release includes support for a bunch of new pieces of hardware, more DVB stuff, and some other cool stuff like OpenGL accelerated menus.I've been using a copy of MythTV 0.20 from SVN for a couple of weeks, and it seems rock solid so far. My favourite features of the new version have to be the OpenGL menus (which now smoothly fade in/out to one another) and the new "Internal" player. The internal player can be used in MythDVD and MythVideo to play DVDs, DivX/XviD, and MPEG videos. The internal player even features support for DVD menus, which is pretty...
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Formatting your USB stick in Linux

After all that dealing with all that fake USB key stuff, I ended up picking up a 5 gig USB stick from Z-Cyber (it was cheap). Long story short, I ended up having to format it, and I haven't been able to get it properly formatted since. I could get Linux to see the sole FAT32 partition on it, but not Windows. Oddly enough, even if I formatted it with Windows, it still wouldn't show up properly on Windows machines.Anyways, I think I've finally found the proper way to format your USB key in Linux. This extremely helpful article walks you through it.I think I kept making two mistakes before I found that article. The first was that I kept forgetting...
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Updates from the Web: GNOME 2.16, Exaile, and more

I've been pretty busy over the past few days, and I apologize for the lack of updates. In the meantime, here's some interesting articles I've spotted:Ars Technica has a First Look at GNOME 2.16The 2X TerminalServer seems to be getting a bit of press (ie. it popped up on digg, hardly the press though.) It's another open source (but commercial) implementation of the NoMachine server. Honestly, the NoMachine server kicks ass, so I'm not quite sure why you'd want to use this one. (It's a breeze to install in the latest version too - just 3 .DEBs)Red Herring has an interview with Michael Robertson, founder of MP3.com and Linspire, where he talks about Linux, Linspire, and the music industry. I found this part of the interview particularly interesting - Way to dodge the question Michael:Q: And so...
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Linux Distros Timeline

I spotted a cool timeline over on Digg that shows when each major Linux distribution was created and was branched.It's neat to see how recent Ubuntu really is relative to all the other distros, and to see how many forks/branches there a...
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I think MythTV is trying to tell me something....

I think my MythTV box is trying to tell me somethi...
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Desktop Linux Poll Results

DesktopLinux.com's 2006 poll results are in.The most popular distro?UbuntuThe most popular desktop environment?Read on.There's some other interesting stats there as well. I'm suprised that Gentoo has more users than Fedora. It's nice to see Xfce doing pretty good as well (I used it for a few months a couple of years ago, before I switched over to GNOME/Ubuntu).I'd like to think these numbers are decently accurate too, seeing as the number of votes is almost 15,000. I can't see posting a link to the poll in a distro-related forum having skewed the numbers too much...Interesting stuff thou...
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What kernel would Jesus compile?

Does the bluescreen of death make you spew forth fire and brimstone, or are you the type that just says a quiet prayer? Now, God can be on your desktop, with Ubuntu: Christian Edition.Read on at APC Magazine...(It's fun...
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Upstart - Goodbye Init

I spotted something delicious over on Planet Ubuntu recently:upstart is a replacement for the init daemon, the process spawned by the kernel that is responsible for starting, supervising and stopping all other processes on the system.What's so yummy about this? Well, they've got a damn good project outline, explaining why there's a need to replace the ancient init daemon, how upstart is designed, and how it's different from existing solutions such as Apple's launchd and initng. Lastly, it also explains what the state of the project is and what direction it's headed in. This is almost enough to make sure a project succeeds right there - well, that, along with a good leader and lots of free time.While Upstart is now in Edgy's Universe repository, it's not actually going to be standard in the...
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