September – Screenshot, Banshee Cover Art

So, September, my set up has not changed a whole lot:

 

So, I bought a new CD [in my language] today. Its a movie album actually, its called “Stalin” – without any relation to Joseph Dzhugastvili (Stalin). Its a nice album. I ripped it to Flac through Sound Juicer because Flac rocks. Then I was wondering as to how to add Album/Cover Art, and searched for a while before I discovered that Banshee had the amazing capability of making “cover.jpg” or “folder.jpg” in the Album/ as cover art. So I just downloaded the logo of the movie, and put it as cover.jpg but it was all messed up because it was a rectangle instead of a square as it was expecting. But GIMP fixed that, and now I have that cover art I wanted. So just place the image as either “cover.jpg” or “folder.jpg” in the Album/ folder, and you have your cover art. w00t for Banshee!   Anyways, later.

Stable Fedora Core 5 and Unstable Ubuntu Edgy

So, I’ve got a new 160G HDD that I’m playing around with. Since I’ve upgrade to Edgy on my Ubuntu Partition, I felt that I should have a stable rock-solid distribution that doesn’t have the potential to eat up my computer like Edgy does, or thats what they say. I had Dapper from Flight 3 and never had a problem but I have 160G extra space so I figured I’d install Fedora Core on it and am now using it as my stable distribution for all my work and using Ubuntu Edgy just to test stuff. So here’s a screenshot of me working on my Fedora Core 5 partition. It is very stable and has a faster GNOME startup time than Dapper did, which is good. I have not tried anything funky with it other than using the Utopia repo from http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/ to upgrade the dbus-0.61 to dbus-0.62 so that I could compile Banshee CVS on it. Anyways, I am glad that some found my previous article helpful and I am also glad that some criticized it. Here’s the screeny:

Edgy Eft (Ubuntu 6.10) & GNOME 2.16 Features

GNOME 2.16 Beta has been in Edgy Eft (Ubuntu 6.10) for the past few days [or even a week or so]. It is functioning extremely well. I’ve seen some occasional crashes with Epiphany and Nautilus but I hope that it will be fixed soon. Other than that, there are lots of new things in GNOME 2.16:
- Speed Improvements: Nautilus, Evolution, Tomboy, GEdit all have had great speed improvements. Evolution used to use around ~45M on my machine and now it uses barely 25M. Its functionality has improved as well. Nautilus uses less memory. Tomboy/Mono have had some speed improvements as well. As usual, GNOME Terminal has also undergone some speed improvements.
- Features: Tomboy has the functionality and stability to be accepted to the GNOME 2.16 Release. It has been proposed and will be accepted granted a few changes be made to Gtk# Bindings. Evolution now has a Vertical View for those who are accustomed to MS Outlook. GEdit is also very stable now and it has a much faster startup time (again speed/memory improvements) and I have been using more of its diverse features such as the python console, the file browser in the left, all of which are fantastic and fast. Baobab has been added and it is an extremely useful tool for those who would like to see Disk Usage Analysis. GNOME System Monitor’s “Devices” tab has been renamed more aptly to “File Systems”. Rhythmbox has also improved in terms of speed. Banshee, although not an official part of GNOME, is awesome. I have been loving it. It runs great and it is stable even from CVS. It has not yet crashed on me. Deskbar Applet is also coming along very well. Its GUI version [meaning as a window instead of an applet on the Panel] looks more polished.

As for Ubuntu Edgy 6.10, there have been speed improvements in terms of booting, but it still needs some work, and I am sure that it will be optimized by the release date. It has recognized my USB Camera and my USB Flashdrive out of the box, without any work. I had never tested it but it’s amazing – as hardware support is increasing for Linux and I’m extremely happy about that. NetworkManager has recognized my Wired Network connection, which makes me all the more excited. Firefox 2.0 Beta (Bon Echo) is in the Repositories right now, and it is functioning quite well. Epiphany is also functioning quite well but I have experienced some crashes – which I had never experienced before. As for OpenOffice.org, it has the latest 2.0.3 Version. It is indeed faster, and I have been able to open documents faster in OOo than in AbiWord that comes with Ubuntu, which makes me very happy. So, without further ado, here are the screenshots:

Default Desktop Edgy Eft:-

About GNOME: 2.15.91 on Edgy

Alacarte: Alacarte is the most disappointing part of this release as it is extremely slow and loads slower than Firefox/Evolution.

Baobab: Disk Usage Analyzer

Deskbar Applet: Very Impressive Release

Ekiga: Despite having never used it, I think it looks great

Epiphany 2.15.91: A bit Buggy right now but looks more polished and getting closer to be on par with Firefox

Evolution (2.71): Splash & Vertical View

Firefox on Edgy Eft (Bon Echo):

GEdit (2.15.91): Very Functional and Beautiful Interface – Extremely Impressive

GNOME System Monitor (2.5.91): Renamed previous “Devices” tab to “File Systems”

Nautilus 2.5.91: Still needs some improvements. nautilus-send-to has been crashing for me.

NetworkManager: Very Impressive

OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 Splash & Writer: It has some speed improvements and looks nicely integrated as well.

Totem: Totem-Gstreamer has had some nice speed improvements as well. Gstreamer has always been well to me after installing the gstreamer0.10-plugins-* ofcourse. This release looks fantastic as well.

Yelp, finally! (2.15.91): Looks normal. I don’t use Yelp as much so I don’t know but it looks faster.

So, on the whole, the Ubuntu Edgy and GNOME 2.16 Experience is worth waiting for. I hope that the minor bug issues will be fixed soon. I will file the bugs as necessary so it can help the developers. I encourage you to do so as well. I cannot issue any ratings because the software developers know where they stand, they don’t need me to tell them how good their software is. All I can say is keep it up! Great Job Guys!

[Edit: 08-16-06]

I completely forgot to mention the new Gtk2 Print Dialog. It looks more polished than what I remember. I believe that this is a major step for both Novell (because of their Enterprise dealings) and also for all of us GNOME Users. Here are the screenshots of Evince using the new Print Dialog:-

[/Edit]

Belkin Router F5D6231-4 using Wine and ies4linux

I had a Belkin F5D6231-4 Router, and I was not able to add Virtual Servers and Port Forwarding through Mozilla Firefox/Epiphany because of some problems. So I went ahead and got ies4linux from here. Then, I followed the instructions (generic instructions on the site Just Work (TM)). After that, I had this in my ~/.wine/config:

WINE REGISTRY Version 2
;; All keys relative to \\Machine\\Software\\Wine\\Wine\\Config

;; If you think it is necessary to show others your complete config for a
;; bug report, filter out empty lines and comments with
;; grep -v “^;” ~/.wine/config | grep ‘.’

[wine]
“ShowDirSymlinks” = “1″
“ShowDotFiles” = “1″

[Version]
; Windows version to imitate (win95,win98,winme,nt351,nt40,win2k,winxp,win2k3,win20,win30,win31)
“Windows” = “win98″
; DOS version to imitate
“DOS” = “6.22″

;; For running Internet Explorer 6, Service Pack 1
;[AppDefaults\\iexplore.exe\\Version]
;”Windows” = “win98″

;[AppDefaults\\iexplore.exe\\x11drv]
;”Desktop” = “1024×768″

[AppDefaults\\iexplore.exe\\DllOverrides]
“*advapi32″ = “builtin”
;”*oleaut32″ = “builtin, native”
“shlwapi” = “native”
“rpcrt4″ = “native”
“ole32″ = “native”
;”shdocvw” = “builtin” # native seems to work much better
“shdocvw” = “native”
“wininet” = “native”
;”shfolder” = “native”
;”shell32″ = “native”
;”shell” = “native”
“comctl32″ = “builtin”
“oleaut32″ = “native”
;”*urlmon” = “builtin, native” # native seems to be required for full access to IE menus
“urlmon” = “native”
“crypt32″ = “native”
“mshtml” = “native”
“wintrust” = “native”
“digest” = “native”

;; For installing Internet Explorer 6, Service Pack 1
[AppDefaults\\ie6setup.exe\\Version]
“Windows” = “win98″

[AppDefaults\\ie6setup.exe\\DllOverrides]
“*advapi32″ = “builtin”
“*comctl32″ = “builtin, native”
;”comctl32″ = “native” # builtin seems to be necessary
“setupapi” = “native, builtin”
“setupx” = “native, builtin”
“wintrust” = “native”
“shdocvw” = “builtin, native”
;”shdocvw” = “native” # builtin may be necessary

;; Next comment was in Mike Hearn’s script
; Parts of the actual IE code are in wininet, we don’t currently attempt to implement IE so use native here
“wininet” = “native, builtin”

; Probably not necessary as WINEDLLOVERRIDES is set at command line
“advpack” = “native”

;; For installing Internet Explorer 6, Service Pack 1
[AppDefaults\\ie6wzd.exe\\Version]
“Windows” = “win98″

; added this 26/8/04 DA
[AppDefaults\\ie6wzd.exe\\DllOverrides]
“*advapi32″ = “builtin”
“*oleaut32″ = “builtin, native”
“*urlmon” = “builtin, native”
“*comctl32″ = “builtin, native”
“advpack” = “native”
“shlwapi” = “native, builtin”

;; For installing Internet Explorer 6, Service Pack 1
;; Next comment was in Mike Hearn’s script
; the native advapi ie setup uses doesn’t implement RegQueryInfoKey, which we use in GDI font engine init code so stuff breaks
; Here’s a quick fix (really the only fix, I dunno how we can stop this except by changing GDI not to use RQIK which is a slippery slope
[AppDefaults\\iebatch.exe\\Version]
“Windows” = “win98″
[AppDefaults\\iebatch.exe\\DllOverrides]
“*advapi32″ = “builtin”

;; For installing Internet Explorer 6, Service Pack 1
[AppDefaults\\acmsetup.exe\\Version]
“Windows” = “win98″
[AppDefaults\\acmsetup.exe\\DllOverrides]
“*advapi32″ = “builtin”
“*oleaut32″ = “builtin, native”
“*urlmon” = “builtin, native”
“*comctl32″ = “builtin, native”
“advpack” = “native, builtin”
“shlwapi” = “native, builtin”

;; For installing Internet Explorer 6, Service Pack 1
[AppDefaults\\rundll32.exe\\Version]
“Windows” = “win98″
[AppDefaults\\rundll32.exe\\DllOverrides]
“*advapi32″ = “builtin”
“*urlmon” = “builtin, native”
“mshtml” = “native, builtin”
;; listed as KnownDLLs in IE Setup Log.txt
“rsabase” = “native, builtin”
“wintrust” = “native”
“vsrevoke” = “native”
“msvcrt” = “native, builtin”
“shdocvw” = “native, builtin”
“msvcrt40″ = “builtin, native”
“mfc40″ = “native”
“cool” = “native”
“shlwapi” = “native, builtin”
“wininet” = “native, builtin”
;”urlmon” = “native”
“netapi32″ = “builtin, native”
“hlink” = “native”
“msrating” = “native”
“imagehelp” = “native”
“url” = “builtin, native”
;;

; These may not be necessary
“advpack” = “native, builtin”
“crypt32″ = “native, builtin”
“rpcrt4″ = “native”
“oleaut32″ = “native”

;; listed as DLLInstall for RunOnceEx in IE Setup Log.txt
“shdoc401″ = “native”
“iesetup” = “native”
;”shdocvw” = “native, builtin”
“browseui” = “native”
;”wininet” = “native, builtin”
;”urlmon” = “native”
“digest” = “native”
“*comctl32″ = “builtin, native”
“inetcpl” = “native, builtin”
“occache” = “native, builtin”
;”mshtml” = “native, builtin”
“initpki” = “native”
;;

;; For installing Internet Explorer 6, Service Pack 1
[AppDefaults\\winemenubuilder.exe\\DllOverrides]
;; Next comment was in Mike Hearn’s script
; # otherwise things can go wrong when we cancel the install while downloading
“shlwapi” = “builtin”

I believe that I got this wine config from Ubuntu Forums.

Then, I just ran ie6 from my home directory, and connected to my Router Setup Home

Then, I was able to edit port forwarding, etc. Hope this helps someone with Ubuntu and this particular Belkin Router.

Gnome Main Menu 0.6.2 – Recently Used Apps

[Edit]

I have updated the broken links for the patches. Hopefully it will work now. Thanks to Horizon on UbuntuForums for sending me the New_gnome-desktop*.patch and New_gnome-panel*.patch.

[/Edit]
This is a HOW-TO on how to get the Recently-Used-Applications to work on Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 LTS.

First, get the dependencies for building gnome-desktop and gnome-panel.

$ sudo apt-get build-dep gnome-desktop gnome-panel

Then, you must get the actual source packages. We’ll do gnome-desktop and then gnome-panel.

Let’s get the source package for gnome-desktop:

$ mkdir -p ~/dev; cd ~/dev;
$ apt-get source gnome-desktop

Now that you have the sources done and patched. Lets get the gnome-desktop patch from openSUSE. For simplicity, I’ve posted it here as a link:

openSUSE Gnome-Desktop Recently-Used-Apps Patch

Then, you must patch your gnome-desktop with this patch. So instead of clicking on the link above, you can do this:

$ cd ~/dev; wget http://graphic23.googlepages.com/New_gnome-desktop-recently-used-apps.patch
$ cd gnome-desktop-2.14.3/libgnome-desktop/

$ patch -Np1 -i ../../New_gnome-desktop-recently-used-apps.patch

$ cd ../
$ ./configure –prefix=/usr –sysconfdir=/etc –localstatedir=/var;

$ cd libgnome-desktop; vi Makefile

You have to edit a few things in the Makefile.

Make sure you have these things in the Makefile:

am_libgnome_desktop_2_la_OBJECTS = gnome-desktop-item.lo \
gnome-ditem-edit.lo gnome-hint.lo egg-recent-item.lo \
egg-recent-model-multi.lo

libgnome_desktop_2_la_SOURCES = \
gnome-desktop-item.c \
gnome-ditem-edit.c \
egg-recent-item.h \
egg-recent-item.c \
egg-recent-model-multi.h \
egg-recent-model-multi.c \
gnome-hint.c

test_ditem_SOURCES = \
egg-recent-item.h \
egg-recent-item.c \
egg-recent-model-multi.h \
egg-recent-model-multi.c \
test-ditem.c

test_hint_SOURCES = \
egg-recent-item.h \
egg-recent-item.c \
egg-recent-model-multi.h \
egg-recent-model-multi.c \
test-hint.c

Note: None of these things actually needs to be added. Just find where “am_desktop… = ” is and then add the things about the egg-* files. Same for the other 3 blocks.

Then,

$ cd ../;

$ make; sudo checkinstall; sudo dpkg -i *.deb;

Gnome-Desktop is patched and installed.

Now, lets compile gnome-panel.

openSUSE Patches:

Slab – Alt-F1 Keyboard Shortcut Patch for GNOME Panel

Slab – Recently-Used-Apps Patch for GNOME Panel

$ cd ~/dev; apt-get source gnome-panel

$ wget http://graphic23.googlepages.com/New_gnome-panel-recently-used-apps.patch

$ wget http://graphic23.googlepages.com/gnome-slab-alt-f1.patch

$ cd gnome-panel-2.14.3; patch -Np1 -i ../New_gnome-panel-recently-used-apps.patch

$ patch -Np1 -i ../gnome-slab-alt-f1.patch

$ ./configure –prefix=/usr –sysconfdir=/etc –localstatedir=/var; make;

$ sudo checkinstall

$ sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Then, you have successfully patched and installed gnome-panel as well.

Now restart Gnome and you should be getting things in Recently Used Applications. Hope this guide helped. If you did not get any of these steps, then by all means, just contact me:

graphic23 AT gmail DOT com

Xfce with Evolution Mail Notification Plugin working

So I was getting kinda bored and checked out Mail Notification 3.0 [which is not in Ubuntu Dapper - why? i don't know]. And, I had to install evolution-dev, etc. to get it to include the EVOLUTION_PLUGIN. Then after seeing that the Mail Notification is enabled in Evolution, I figured I’d try it out and its been great. I can now check everything on my systray. Running Tomboy, Mail Notification, Banshee, Gaim, Orage on my Xfce systray. Here’s a screenshot- as always

Banshee CVS, Mail Notification 3.0, Xfce 4.4 Beta – on Ubuntu Dapper. Using MurrinaCappuccino theme with Murrine GTK Engine, which is rather awesome to be honest. Banshee also has been fun

Banshee CVS/Xfce

I’ve been using Banshee CVS with Xfce 4.4Beta1 with Ubuntu Dapper, everything seems fine. Except for the fact that Banshee 0.10.10 used to use ~30 M on my machine and now the CVS Version uses ~75M, which is a bit disappointing. I can afford it luckily so I don’t care as much because I have 768 M of RAM. But it concerns me that all the other Mono apps are very resource-intensive as well, such as F-Spot, Beagle, etc. Maybe I should move from it – I don’t know because these applications are great and I like what they’re doing and their design etc. But I’m really concerned about the “Resource-Hungry”-ness of these apps. Anyways, Banshee still rocks for me.

On a side note, Epiphany Web Browser (GNOME Web Browser 2.14.2.1) is really great. Today I noticed that Mozilla Firefox was using > 100 M of RAM with only 1 tab open. Then I opened up Epiphany and while it wasn’t much better (~65 M ), its still more responsive and looks better with Xfce because of its Gnome Integration, and hence the GTK Integration. Here’s a screenshot.

Xfce with Terminal-0.25-svn something and Banshee CVS [July 21st?]

/me waits until Xfce 4.4 Final releases.

Screenshot for the month (July 2006)

I was trying to test a Radio Station for someone and realized that my favorite player didn’t have that support yet, so I just built it from CVS and works great. GNOME 2.14.2/Ubuntu Dapper/Slab, etc.

Slab Video

So I was just playing with Slab, and was looking at some website, and I was wondering how you take a video of your screen when you’re doing things and found out how to use xvidcap, etc. So here’s a video of Slab, if you’re too lazy to click on each of the 10 screenshots given below.

Slab 0.6.2

I’ll link my previous post to this post as well so it’ll maintain some consistency, etc.

Novell’s New Main-Menu: Slab (GNOME Main Menu 0.6.2)

So, On Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 LTS, I’ve installed [from cvs] Slab after customizing it a bit by changing some YaST2 Specific Entries in the schemas, etc.

Here’s a screenshot tour of what it looks like on my GNOME 2.14.2 desktop:

When clicked on Computer [in the bottom left corner]:

Then, there is another field called Recent Applications that keeps track of all the recent applications that were launched from the panel/application browser/favorite applications, etc. I have not yet gotten this part to work in Ubuntu but I’ve found out how the SUSE Linux guys do it [or well, SLED10 Guys], and have not yet found a solution.

Then, there is the well known, recent documents, that exists in the regular gnome menu under places.

Then, there is something that is not available in the regular gnome main menu, which is “Search”, which uses Beagle-Search search your harddrive, etc.

Here is the actual search window that it opens, which is not new to us (beagle-search GUI):

Then, there is something that I really liked about slab, a control center. Even though I did enjoy the simplicity that GNOME menu had with the preferences and administration [in the Ubuntu Menu anyways], I liked this approach a lot better. So here are two screenshots of the Control Center that comes with slab. I also did have to mess with the code and the schemas to get it working but its not all that hard.

Here’s the control center, when you select something like “Preferences”:

Now another aspect that I enjoyed about Slab is its application browser. When you click “More Applications”, the application browser starts up, and its really nice and pretty fast to navigate through as well. Three screenshots here, one with the main window, one with “System Tools” selected, and one with something being filtered. I enjoyed this.

Overall, I think Slab is a very fine piece of software, and I really hope that the Upcoming GNOME Releases think about offering Slab as a menu choice with the recently-used-apps working, etc.

Update 06/11/06: New Slab Video