When you first switch from Windows or OSX to Linux, one of the things you’ll probably first notice (especially if you’re using a laptop) is that it can run considerably hotter than the alternatives. There are a few things you can do to remedy this, however. The following software packages help you keep track [...]]]>

When you first switch from Windows or OSX to Linux, one of the things you’ll probably first notice (especially if you’re using a laptop) is that it can run considerably hotter than the alternatives. There are a few things you can do to remedy this, however. The following software packages help you keep track of and cool down your laptop/netbook, how much will depend per machine but my HP Pavilion dm1 goes from around 60-70degrees without these tools installed to around 50-60degrees and the same goes for my older Acer Travelmate which dropped from 70-80degrees to 60-70degrees. Hopefully this information will help you shave off 10degrees from your laptop, making it cooler, easier to use and hopefully extending its life a little too!

lm-sensors

First thing that you’re going to want to do is be able to see what the temperature readings of the components (that have temperature sensors) inside your computer/laptop. This can be done by installing lm-sensors:

Now you’ll want to run the script which probes all the possible sensors in your laptop:

You’ll be asked if you want to scan for sensors and what not, follow the on-screen instructions, mostly just pressing enter, if YES is written in capitals this is the default answer and it will scan. After several times it’ll ask you if you want to save the changes, make sure you do and then you’re done.

Now you can see the temperature the sensors are reading by using the following command:

cpufreq

cpufreq is a utility which scales the frequency of the CPU, either by monitoring the systems status (if it needs more, it’ll get more) or by user controlled settings. This essentially underclocks the CPU while it isn’t in use, reducing power usage and thus heat.

Installation:

The best choice would be to set cpufreq to on-demand (default) or to power-saving. Alternatively, if you’re using a laptop or netbook let jupiter take care of it for you:

jupiter

Jupiter is a light weight power and hardware control applet for Linux. It is designed to improve battery life of a portable Linux computer by integrating with the operating system and changing parameters of the computer based on battery or powered connection.

Additionally, Jupiter provides quick access to some of the commonly needed hardware controls like screen output and resolution, WIFI, and bluetooth.

If you use Linux on a portable computer, let Jupiter take the effort out of going mobile.

By using this to intelligently control the CPU frequency when on battery and AC along with the tuning to the kernel and hardware, it can make a huge difference to the temperature expelled by your laptop.

Ubuntu 11:10 installation instructions: here

Graphics Card Drivers

If you have a dedicated graphics card in your laptop, you’ll also be better off installing the proprietary graphics drivers provided by the hardware vendor. While the open source ones do an awesome job of getting the card to work, more often than not they don’t include any control over the frequency scaling and keep the card running at max, along with all those other little features the card has, they’ll probably all always be running.

Nvidia : Link
ATI/AMD : Link

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/

The folders correspond to kernel versions and should also include the ubuntu version, for example I chose to update 11.10 (oneiric) from “3.0.0-14-generic” to “3.1.4″, this was in a directory called “v3.1.4-oneiric/“.

linux-headers-*_all.deb

It’s been a while since I bothered, the reason being it’s always seemed like an un-worthwhile struggle to get it working but either things changed or I was doing something to overcomplicate the process but it’s actually pretty simple to get surround sound up and running on your Linux machine. Now, I’m not going [...]]]>

It’s been a while since I bothered, the reason being it’s always seemed like an un-worthwhile struggle to get it working but either things changed or I was doing something to overcomplicate the process but it’s actually pretty simple to get surround sound up and running on your Linux machine. Now, I’m not going to go in to how to install the drivers for your specific sound card, because there are so many and I don’t have them all and most times on most popular distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, OpenSuse etc) you’re going to notice that the sound card is actually already supported. What I will be doing is showing you how easy it was to get my 5.1′s set up (and the same will be said for 7.1′s).

Step 1:

First off you’re going to want to edit the pulseaudio configuration file to add the number of speakers you’re using, it’s default is set to 2.

Near the bottom of the file, there will be a line which looks like this:

;default-sample-channels = 2

The semi-colon is a comment, so this line isn’t actually doing anything unless you remove that. I would suggest leaving that line alone and adding a new line at the bottom:

default-sample-channels = 6

If you’re using 5.1′s the number of channels will be 6, 7.1′s will be 8 and I think you get where I’m going with this? So in this example, I’m using 5.1′s.

Now save and close that file. You’ll need to reboot your system now too, so that these changes will take effect.

Step 2:

So you’re back? Good..

Now you’re going to want to open up the Sound Preferences, usually you can do this by clicking on the little sound icon in your panel, or System > Preference > Sounds from the menu.

From here, you’ll want to click on the Hardware tab. Near the bottom it’ll say Profile: with a drop down box next to it. Here you can select the type of set up you have, as you can see in the screenshot I have an “Analogue Surround 5.1 Output”, yours might be different and that’s cool and if you don’t know feel free to try a few out. Next to that drop down box is a button which says “Test Speakers”, this didn’t work for me so I have to use an online test but give it a try as it might work!

That’s it, you should be done!

It’s a pretty common problem, one which could be solved by pretty much the following sentence: ‘[Insert Linux Distro], [Insert Media Player] not stopping screen saver when playing videos.’ And, yeah, it’s very annoying. Something that should have been fixed thousands of releases ago, just like most common Linux problems. Luckily though there is [...]]]>

It’s a pretty common problem, one which could be solved by pretty much the following sentence: ‘[Insert Linux Distro], [Insert Media Player] not stopping screen saver when playing videos.’ And, yeah, it’s very annoying. Something that should have been fixed thousands of releases ago, just like most common Linux problems. Luckily though there is a fix, it’s easy and it’s awesome.

Introducing: Caffeine, “An application to temporarily prevent the activation of both the screen saver and the “sleep” powersaving mode.” – https://launchpad.net/caffeine

Essentially what this program does is look for processes running on your machine (you can do this too, just run ‘ps -A’ in a terminal emulator to see a list of everything), so you set process names which the program should look out for, for example ‘vlc’ and when there is a process with this name Caffeine disables the screensaver, when the process stops the screensaver is re-enabled. It even comes with a little tray icon which allows you to manual enable or disable the screensaver/power management with a single click.

Installation (Ubuntu):

Usage:

You’ll be able to see if caffeine is running by the tray icon the first time you use it (this can be disabled in the settings).

Caffeine Running (Screensaver / Power Management Enabled)

Caffeine Running (Right Click Settings)

Caffeine Running (Screensaver / Power Management Disabled)

Adding Processes:

To add a process which will disable the screensaver from being activated, for example VLC so we can watch a movie without constantly having to wiggle the mouse:

First, run VLC (or whatever other media player you wish and just replace VLC for that for the other few steps)

Next, right click on the Caffeine tray icon and select “Preference”.

Click the “Add” button.

List of processes already disabling the screensaver, note Totem is added here.

You should be greeted by a list of the running processes, select the name of the media player (this case, vlc) if it isn’t there check under the “Recent Processes” tab or alternatively just write the command you would use to run this program from the command line.

Adding VLC to processes to disable the screensaver.

Finally click the “Add” button and close the preferences window, that pesky screensaver should no longer be bothering you!

Stopping Flash from enabling the screensaver:

Okay, this is actually really easy, if you’re using Chromium or Google Chrome or Firefox, you’ll just want to add the processes ‘npviewer.bin’ to list, you can use the above instructions to do so.

– http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration

Get enhanced audio and video support in applications that rely on GStreamer:

Get enhanced audio and video support in applications that rely on xine backend:

– [...]]]>

Install RPM Fusion

– http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration

Enable unsupported video and audio codecs

Get enhanced audio and video support in applications that rely on GStreamer:

Get enhanced audio and video support in applications that rely on xine backend:

– http://rpmfusion.org/FAQ

Install Chromium Browser

Make a file called “fedora-chromium-stable.repo” in /etc/yum.repos.d/ and open:

Paste in the following, save and exit:

– http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Chromium

Install Flash

Download the YUM for Linux version from the adobe site – http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Run the following in the folder you downloaded the file to:

Import the GPG key:

In 32bit run:

on 64bit run:

If you’re using Firefox, that should be all done but if you’re using Chromium you’ll need to open Firefox and play a video then close it and run the following:

32bit:

64bit:

Close and re-open Chromium and head to YouTube to check that it’s working.

– http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flash

Install Dropbox

Download and install the correct rpm for 32 or 64 bit from the Dropbox website – http://www.dropbox.com/downloading.

Follow this guide to remove the YUM errors you may encounter once the package is installed – http://alexsleat.co.uk/2011/05/24/how-to-fix-error-cannot-retrieve-repository-metadata-repomd-xml-for-repository-dropbox-please-verify-its-path-and-try-again/ .

Install VLC

WARNING: by continuing following this guide you are putting your machine at risk by disabling the secuity features within SELinux, I strongly advise if you do not know what you are doing, stop and read up on the implications this action will have before continuing. Some information is avaible in the Fedora Wiki here [...]]]>

WARNING: by continuing following this guide you are putting your machine at risk by disabling the secuity features within SELinux, I strongly advise if you do not know what you are doing, stop and read up on the implications this action will have before continuing. Some information is avaible in the Fedora Wiki here .

Open up this file:

Change the line that looks like this:

To this:

Save and reboot and it should be working, although again be warned this has disabled the security mechanism on your system. To re-enable this, simply do the same however change from permissive to enforcing and again reboot your machine.

After installing dropbox from the RPM package availble on the site on a new Fedora 15 install, I was unable to use yum without coming across this error:

error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files) wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/__init__.pyo exists in filesystem wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/backend.pyo exists in filesystem wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/configmanager.pyo exists in filesystem wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/dbusmanager.pyo exists in filesystem wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/logfile.pyo exists in filesystem wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/misc.pyo exists in filesystem wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/networking.pyo exists in filesystem wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/wnettools.pyo exists in filesystem wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/wpath.pyo exists in filesystem Errors occurred, [...]]]>

error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)
wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/__init__.pyo exists in filesystem
wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/backend.pyo exists in filesystem
wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/configmanager.pyo exists in filesystem
wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/dbusmanager.pyo exists in filesystem
wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/logfile.pyo exists in filesystem
wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/misc.pyo exists in filesystem
wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/networking.pyo exists in filesystem
wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/wnettools.pyo exists in filesystem
wicd: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wicd/wpath.pyo exists in filesystem
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

Remove wicd:

Re-update the system:

Re-install wicd (and wicd-gtk gui if you want that too)

If you’re getting the following error while trying export a video under several different codecs in OpenShot including AVI, MOV and MPEG using (mpeg2, mpeg4 or h.264) chances are this might help you with that error.

The following formats/codecs are missing from your system:

libmp3lame

You will not be able to use the [...]]]>

If you’re getting the following error while trying export a video under several different codecs in OpenShot including AVI, MOV and MPEG using (mpeg2, mpeg4 or h.264) chances are this might help you with that error.

The following formats/codecs are missing from your system:

libmp3lame

You will not be able to use the selected export profile. You will need to install the missing formats/codecs or choose a different export profile.

This is a simple fix:

• Open up Synaptic Package Manager
• Search “libavformat”,
• If the current package installed is “libavformat52″ select “libavformat-extra-52″ (alternativly “libavformat-unstripped-52″ should also work).
• Else the package might be “libavformat53″ so simply change to “libavformat-extra-53″, basically it might end in different numbers, it should work the same.
• Hit Apply and approve the changes.

Let’s say you’ve got a text file, of any size, big or small, and you want to remove every other line of that file, well here are a few commands in Linux that allow you to do this.

Example, you want to get from this: