Neil's Open Source & Linux Blog

You might have a collection digital audio files -- such as MP3 files -- or a source of analog audio -- like the headphone output from your phone, tablet or computer, or a vinyl record, a cassette tape, VHS tape, or any other old school audio format -- and you want to share it with someone who has a CD player in their boom box or their car's audio system. Or maybe you just like making mix tapes and you want to update your game for the 21st century. In this post, I'll  cover: how to convert your analog audio to a digital audio format,  how to convert your digital audio into the specific format you need to make an Audio CD, the type of CD that will pay in a stand-alone CD player or the CD player in a car's sound system.  To burn an Audio CD, your track files must be in a specific WAV file formats (details below). Note that you could easily use these steps to convert existing digital audio, like AIFF files, to another format, like MP3s, or to covert analog audio to...

It all started when I wanted to convert some text to Title Case. Ubuntu's default text editor, gedit, is quite capable, but does not include case conversion. A quick trip to Google and I found  (gedit is number 4). Since I write some code, too, I'm always interested in a good text editor. After going through the list, I picked #2, Atom. Atom looks appealing for a number of reasons. It's available through the Ubuntu Software app (almost -- see below for details) It's built on web technologies. It's cross-platform. From the article: Atom is a free and open source text editor that’s developed by GitHub. Based on Electron (CoffeeScript, JS, Less, HTML), it’s a desktop application that’s built using web technologies ... The major features of Atom are cross-platform editing, built-in package manager, file system browser, multiple pane support, find and replace function, and smart autocompletion. You can select from 1000s of open source packages and add ...

One of the biggest barriers preventing me from using Ubuntu as my primary desktop OS used to be  my favorite password manager,  1Password . I use it on the Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android and couldn't really function without it. For a while I could use it on any computer running a web browser using the 1Password Anywhere browser only implementation, with Dropbox. But Dropbox no longer supports that option (not sure why, but that's the way it goes). I was thrilled to discover that 1Password 4.6 for Windows runs quite reliably on Ubuntu via Wine . Even better, the Browser Helper program also runs on Wine, which means I can also use the nifty browser add-ons to auto-fill web logins. Installation was super easy. I installed Configure Wine from the Ubuntu Software app, and just like that, I could run Windows applications. I then followed the excellent instructions on the Agile Bits support site, Running 1Password for Windows on Linux systems . It worked just as advertise...

Puppy Linux Logo I've been using Puppy Linux quite a bit these days and I like it! My favorite features are the ability to boot from (and store personal data to) a USB stick. You don't need very much space, in fact. Puppy Linux operating system is a lightweight Linux distribution that focuses on ease of use and minimal Memory footprint. The entire system can be run from RAM with current versions generally taking up about 130 MB. -- Wikipedia, Puppy Linux Thinks I Use Puppy Linux For Booting Intel computers from a USB stick with portable settings, including browser preferences, desktop settings, and data. Running an old Dell with 512 MB of RAM and turning it into a performance champ.  From the Puppy Linux web site,  Puppy's goals Easily install to USB, Zip or hard drive media. Booting from CD (or DVD), the CD drive is then free for other purposes. Booting from CD (or DVD), save everything back to the CD. Booting from USB Flash drive, minimise writes t...

Now that Minecraft is outta beta, at version 1.0.0, it's time to get it running on Ubuntu with all the mods. The standard 1.0 version runs fine in Ubuntu 11.10, but I'm having some trouble with ModLoader, and therefore all the mods that in turn depend on ModLoader. My first task is to run Minecraft without any errors. To start I installed and ran Minecraft on Ubuntu using Alloc's Easy Minecraft Installer . This creates a handy desktop icon on the account I used to run the install script. Of course, using this icon precludes seeing any error output from the program. Once you've installed Minecraft using the script, you can copy the icon file to any other desktop directory, and then update the command line with the name of the new home directory. Then, set the properties of the shortcut file to "executable" To review the error output, I open Terminal and paste in the command: java -jar /home/[myhomedir]/.minecraft/minecraft.jar where [myhomedir] is the...

Area51 won't boot up correctly, and the behavior is quite odd. I was able to boot off of my handy Ubuntu 10.10 disk, however, which rules out most problems with the motherboard, RAM, video, networking -- it looks like there's some problem reading the hard drive. I want to do some troubleshooting on the hard disk partitions, since that seems to be the most likely source of the problems. This is right after I ran that disk utility, but the computer booted since then. Fortunately, since I can get onto the Internet, I can log my work right here on this blog. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

On my Apple blog I describe how to connect to Mac OS X computers with Ubuntu's Remote Desktop Viewer . Ubuntu's Remote Desktop Viewer ( Applications : Internet : Remote Desktop Viewer) is really Vinagre, A VNC Client for the GNOME Desktop . This VNC client supports connections to Mac OS X using the Mac's Screen Sharing service, Apple's built-in implementation of the VNC server protocol. The post includes step-by-step instructions on how to configure the Mac Screen Sharing server, and how to establish a connection with Ubuntu's Remote Desktop Viewer.

We use CentOS for our web servers, and favor Webmin as a way to administer our servers. To install Webmin via yum on CentOS, follow these steps as root or sudo, from the command line (via SSH or at the console). These steps will also work for RedHat servers. Configure the Webmin repository and instal l Webmin is not available via yum in the default CentOS repository. Follow these steps to add the Webmin repository (repo) from Webmin.com. Create and edit the repository file # nano /etc/yum.repos.d/webmin.repo Add the [Webmin] section (listed below) to the new repository file Save the new file Import the public key: # rpm --import http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc Install webmin: # yum install webmin Open the Firewall If your server is protected by a firewall, you won't be able to access Webmin until you open port 10000. Use these steps on CentOS Backup the current firewall settings: # cp /etc/sysconfig/iptables /etc/sysconfig/iptables.bak Inst...

I'm trying to help my friend fix his Dell OptiPlex GX400 , which is running Windows XP Home, and is probably owned. It only has 128 MB of RAM, and it turns out this particular model uses expensive 128MB PC-800 Rambus RIMM for Dell RAM Memory . So, it doesn't make sense to buy a chip, really, and none of my spares will probably fit. Instead of throwing hardware at the problem, I looked at Damn Small Linux ( DSL information ) To burn a CD of Damn Small Linux, Download the ISO and then burin it to a CD, in Windows, with InfraRecorder (GPL). DSL is based on Knoppix , but is stripped down to a bare bones set of Debian packages . As promised, booting DS from the CD transformed the slow, almost unusable computer into a speed demon. Plus, DSL shows system resource use right on the desktop , and we could see that it was hardly using any RAM -- less than 20% of 128 MB. Now all we have to do is figure out a way to save the configuration, and configure networking.

Writing scripts in bash is lame. I'm not the only one who thinks so: Shell Script Language – Use Perl, Not Bash | LinDesk From the post: Advantages of using a Shell Language Its supported in even the tinest linux distros – even in embedded systems. Its the method preferred by the majority – I hope this will change soon. Command calls look more natural in a shell language. Advantages of using a High Level Language Better Code Easy to maintain Faster development Libraries provide a lot of functionality Easier to port to different platforms. PHP Shell Scripting Want to get busy slinging code? Start here: An Introduction to Linux Shell Scripting: How to Use Bash, Perl, PHP or Python in a Linux Script | Suite101.com An Alternative to Perl: Shell Scripting With PHP Using PHP As A Shell Scripting Language PHPDeveloper.org: PHPHacks.com: Shell Scripting with PHP CLI

It's time to move our servers to a virtualized platform. Info here: Linux Virtualization Wiki - TechComparison Xen Welcome to xen.org, home of the Xen® hypervisor, the powerful open source industry standard for virtualization. Citrix Systems » Products » -- XenServer » XenServer Citrix Systems » XenServer Requirements and Specifications CentOS 5 Virtualization Guide - Virtualization Guide Xen virtualization platform providers | Top 10 Dedicated Server Hosting Reviews, News and Articles

If you don't want to be tied down to a desktop, you need direct access to your computer in the cloud. Since Firefox runs just about everywhere, it's a good place to start to set up a reliable way to access your accounts. Blog & Social  Delicious Bookmarks is the recommended and official Firefox add-on for Delicious, the world's leading social bookmarking service (formerly del.icio.us). It integrates your bookmarks and tags with Firefox and keeps them in sync for easy, convenient access. Syncing slows down startup, though. ScribeFire Blog Editor is a blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. They've also integrated their affiliate Quick Ads advertising program, which I haven't tried.

MaximumPC published a very detailed article that describes how to install Ubuntu on your favorite NetBook : How To: Become a Linux Netbook Power User . Also useful: Ars Technica's How to: Installing and running Ubuntu on the Eee PC .

I wrote last year about a great open source brainstorming and mind mapping tool, Freemind 0.8.0 - Java Mind Map software , but I was concerned that the program hadn’t seen a significant update in several years. Well, it’s just been updated this year to 0.8.1, and you can download it from SourceForge.net: FreeMind . Version 0.9.0 is still an unstable beta.

As the cost of Windows becomes a larger and larger portion of the cost of computer hardware, more vendors are going to look at Linux as a viable alternative. Acer is already selling Linux on its low cost ultra-portables, but will expand Linux options to notebooks this year.  Another interesting advantage of Linux for hardware manufacturers: because it's open, they can customize it for their specific hardware models and the differing requirements of laptops or Media PCs. According to the article, using Linux helps them "extend battery life from five to seven hours."  This means that hardware manufacturers could build special hardware features into their boxes and then not only write the drivers to support the hardware, but also modify any aspect of the operating system to better support the new features. That's an appealing option to companies that are currently competing primarily on price.

It looks like the best way to get my Creative X-Fi card to work in Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 is to install OSS4 .

When you decide it’s time to start writing bash scripts with some style, start at the Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide by Mendel Cooper. It’s available as a PDF, or a tarball download, too.

[UPDATED] Joomla 1.5 is acting flaky on one of our installations because the directories are set to ‘unwriteable’. To see the their current state, log in as Super Administrator and go to Help > System Info > Directory Permissions . Elsewhere, it's been suggested that the specified directories must be set to “world-writeable” (777). This works, but it is a very bad idea , since it means anyone can change your files! Not cool. Fixing Security with User and Group Settings To perform these changes, you need shell (command line) access to your server. If you don't have it, you can beg your host to make these changes for you, or switch to a Joomla-friendly host. I'm going to assume that you are using a LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) server because if you're not, then ... well, these instructions should work in principle, but the specifics for your server may be quite different. Here's the issue: you, the FTP user, need full access to your files. So does Joomla,...

At Cadent , we use Parallels Plesk Control Panel Software for Hosting on our servers (we’ve also used the open source Webmin and the commercial CPanel). Plesk has a great user interface, which our clients appreciate. It also imposes its own way of doing things, which can be a bit of a pain when tracking down subtle issues with server configuration. Because Plesk rewrites many configuration files automatically, it’s really critical to ensure that I make any manual changes to the server configuration in the right place, or Plesk will overwrite my efforts without remorse. The issue we needed to address was this: we installed Joomla! 1.0 on our development server, and Joomla reported the following configuration problems:         •        Safe mode was on, needs to be off.         •        The session directory was unwriteable. PHP: Safe Mode is a global setting allows only a file's owner or group to execute the script or read a file. Clearly, this is a good thing for security...

If you use a Mac at all, you know the value of a handy search interface like Spotlight or Quicksilver . The Gnome Deskbar delivers similar features to the Ubuntu desktop, or any other Gnome desktop, for that matter. See also: Dick Wall's Blog: Deskbar - Ubuntu's answer to spotlight Katapult - KDE's answer to Deskbar