Today mark another milestone for Canonical’s Linux distribution, Ubuntu, with its’ ninth release dubbed as “Intrepid Ibex” or if you prefer the number, just Ubuntu 8.10 is suffice. You can read about the release note here. Among the changes are:

• Comes with the Linux 2.6.27 kernel, X Server 1.5 / X.Org 7.4, Pidgin 2.5, and GIMP 2.6 (among many other packages).
• Native 3G support.
• Refined default theme.
• Dynamic Kernel Module Support (some reading here).
• Comes with a special ATI driver for providing the X.Org 7.4 support.
• Inclusion of Live USB Disk Creator.
• Refined BulletProffX.

If you’re not into Ubuntu yet, you can download it from Ubuntu’s site. If you’re upgrading, a simple guide can be found here (check your release version first). Currently I’m using the network upgrade method since I already have version 8.04.1. But since my local broadband connection kinda sucks , it seems the upgrade process will took 2 years to complete But for those who’re not in the rush, you can always request a free cd through Shipit.

So, is it the Firefox the true culprit? It’s possible since it’s a beta build, but somehow I don’t think so. I’m doing my own researching and after a while I found out that many other users that face the same problem already found out the solution. I initially assumes there will be a little ‘sudo-ing’ here and there but again, I’m wrong; the solution just simply removing/deleting/commenting a couple of lines in the xorg config. Below is my original counterpart config of the mouse section:

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Configured Mouse”
Driver “mouse”
Option “CorePointer”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/mice”
Option “Protocol” “ExplorerPS/2″
Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5″
Option “Emulate3Buttons” “true”
Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5″
Option “ButtonMapping” “1 2 3 6 7 4 5 6″
EndSection

And below is the line that need to be remove; it’s a line to indicate mapping of the buttons. Do the changes, log off, login back, and voila…works like a charm.

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Configured Mouse”
Driver “mouse”
Option “CorePointer”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/mice”
Option “Protocol” “ExplorerPS/2″
#Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5″
Option “Emulate3Buttons” “true”
#Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5″
#Option “ButtonMapping” “1 2 3 6 7 4 5 6″
EndSection

My 2 Cents
At first I thought it was a bug. Is it really a bug? But when it’s actually doesn’t need a config to work, can it be called as a bug? Why anybody doesn’t mention that on this release it doesn’t need a config to work? Or something like “it will not work if you had it configured” type of warning or announcement ? Nevertheless, glad it works again…although I’m also kinda like it to work on the other screen/windows/apps (not just browser), but not with the needs to tinker some files or some add on. Hey, they already did that with the browser and why not expand it a little further?

Hehehehe to much to ask I guess~~~

Yesterday mark another release day of one of my favorite Linux distro (Fedora); Fedora 8 codenamed Werewolf ( what a codename ). Among notable features in this release were:

• Features a 2.6.23 based kernel.
• GNOME 2.20
• KDE 3.5.8 (KDE Live and regular DVD) while the KDE 4 (Beta) Development Environment is available in the repository.
• The implementation of PulseAudio sound daemon.
• Codec Buddy (a.k.a codeina).
• A new look and feel (the “Infinity” desktop art is cool..changes color to reflect outdoor conditions).
• Nodoka, a fresh new GNOME theme created specially for Fedora
• Compiz Fusion installed by default.
• Open-source Java integration through the IcedTea project.
• Improved laptop support.
• Remote virtualization management.
• Improved network management
• Many other improvements.

Conclusion

It’s only seems like yesterday I post about the release of Moonshine. Has it been that long already? Or maybe because I’m not so active in blogging? Anyway, with this release, mark another great achievement of the Fedora team. In my humble opinion, with each new release, Fedora seems much closer to bring total of ease to its audiences. The improvement of network management, the implementation of PulseAudio and CodecBuddy reflect on this matters. Go here for the release notes, here for release summary, and here for the official announcement. Currently, my home desktop is using Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) while my office workstation using the older Fedora Core 6 (Zod). Maybe it’s time to upgrade my office workstation since I’m pretty satisfied with my Gutsy at home.

Don’t get me wrong, the codec that I’ve downloaded from Ubuntu’s repositories provide me with no major problem at all but still I feel that it can become much better. Then through some of my acquaintances, I tried VLC media player. But it seems some of my *.mkv files will not play properly using this player. Some times the screen goes blank or when viewing videos with external subtitle files, there’s some kind of green line been drawn at the bottom of the screen. My searching at the net again had resulted in the discovery of another media player that share some of the greatness of VLC media player, SMPlayer.

SMPlayer is a new multimedia player, it uses the award-winning MPlayer as engine, so it’s able to play the most known video & audio formats without the need of external codecs.

SMPlayer is available for Windows and Linux.

Other additional interesting features:

• Configurable subtitles. You can choose font and size, and even colors for
  the subtitles.
• Audio track switching. You can choose the audio track you want
  to listen. Works with avi and mkv. And of course with DVDs.
• Seeking by mouse wheel. You can use your mouse wheel to go forward
  or backward in the video.
• Video equalizer, allows you to adjust the brightness, contrast, hue,
  saturation and gamma of the video image.
• Multiple speed playback. You can play at 2X, 4X… and even in slow motion.
• Filters. Several filters are available: deinterlace, postprocessing,
  denoise… and even a karaoke filter (voice removal).
• Audio and subtitles delay adjustment. Allows you to sync audio and
  subtitles.
• Advanced options, such as selecting a demuxer or video & audio codecs.
• Playlist. Allows you to enqueue several files to be played one after
  each other. Autorepeat and shuffle supported too.
• Preferences dialog. You can easily configure every option of SMPlayer
  by using a nice preferences dialog.
• Translations: currently SMPlayer is translated into more than 20
  languages, including Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese,
  Japanese….
• It’s multiplatform. Binaries available for Windows and Linux.
• SMPlayer is under the GPL license.

Source: SMPlayer Official Site

SMPlayer is available for both Windows and Linux; after trying it for both platform, I must say that I’m impressed by it’s features and performance, even though I’m only managed to try and test it for a short time (got something else to do.. :-p). Go try it for yourself, it’s worth it I assure you.

SMPlayer for Windows

SMPlayer for Linux

SMPlayer for Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake, 6.10 Edgy Eft, 7.04 Feisty Fawn and Gutsy Gibbon

All right, we’ll look into a practical part and for that purpose I’ll use “[Shinsen-Subs]_Le_Chevalier_D’Eon_-_01_[6BD7BF33].avi” filename as an example. On a side notes, the example file is a video files (an anime to be exact) and as most fansubbers, they tend to include the CRC value at the end of their releases file name (the CRC value of that file is ’6BD7BF33′). So basically, to check the file integrity, we will compute the CRC value of the file and compare it with the given CRC value. If it’s the same, safe to say that there are nothing wrong with the file and vice versa. For a little of howto demonstration, I will classify it into two different platform; Linux and Windows.

Linux (Using Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04)

Don’t panic if you have other distro (Fedora, SuSe, etc), it’s still the same method either way. Ok, using the terminal, change the directory into the folder where the target files to be check resides (example below).

1
2

overlord666@overlord666-altar:~$ cd Le*
overlord666@overlord666-altar:~/Le Chevalier d'Eon$

After that, type the command crc32 “your_filename” as shown below and press enter:

crc32 "[Shinsen-Subs]_Le_Chevalier_D'Eon_-_01_[6BD7BF33].avi"

The command above will print the CRC value and you can compare it with the given value. If you want to compute CRC value for all files in the particular folder just replace the filename (including the double quote sign) with * (asterisk sign). Simple isn’t it? Now if you encounter an error such as crc32 not found or install, try to install it first. Usually it will tell you what kind of package that you don’t have to run crc32. In my case, initially I didn’t install the tools so there’s an error and a reminder that asked me to install the needed package and I just follow the reminder (as shown below).

The program ‘crc32′ is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:

sudo apt-get install libarchive-zip-perl

Other than CRC value, usually in case of batch download (more than one files downloaded), the files creator tend to send an extra files so you can use it to verify all the files integrity. The usual extra files used were SFV and MD5 files. SFV is just a file format for storing CRC32 checksums of files. To verify using sfv file, I’m using a simple program called cksfv. Just open terminal and type “cksfv -f mysfvfile.sfv” (example below). The output will verify the integrity of your files:

cksfv -f [Shinsen-Subs].sfv

While md5 verification is not much different from sfv. The general syntax is “md5sum -c mymd5file.md5″ (example below). The output will also verify your files integrity:

md5sum -c sums.md5

Microsoft Windows XP

I do feel that I don’t need to elaborate in details about files integrity checking in Windows. Why? Because honestly, there are many freeware tools for Windows user to check their crc or sfv. And most of them comes with user interface and it shouldn’t take long to know how to use it (mostly support drag and drop features). One of my favorite tools in this department is QuickSFV. It contains all the basic features that needed to verify file’s integrity namely a quick verifications and creating sfv files. If you prefer just a simple checker, you can also try CRC32Finder. Or if you kind of greedy, try HashCalc; it can verify a choice of 13 of the most popular hash and checksum algorithms for calculations.

Conclusion

A corrupted files can be very frustrated if it being discovered on the last minute (watching video files and suddenly the audio lost!!??). So, verify the integrity first to avoid such frustration. Actually it’s not limited to video files only, it covers all types of files (providing you know the real or original CRC/md5/sha1 value that is). Real example is when I downloaded a Fedora iso files; before burn it into a blank DVD, I check the integrity by using sha1. The general syntax is sha1sum [OPTION] [FILE]. Example of sha1sum’s content (below):

—–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
Hash: SHA1

96b13dbbc9f3bc569ddad9745f64b9cdb43ea9ae F-7-i386-DVD.iso
fc2e7ab25550afb78608c7f432d0af6c6a7b2105 F-7-i386-rescuecd.iso
—–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—–
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFGWfrHtEJp0E8qb9IRAlKbAJ4lFgv2g1t2HHkx9qBR+MICRTjEZACeKW1G
PARJf/frcaGIB27Lw8R3Nng=
=GQMy
—–END PGP SIGNATURE—–

Type the command in terminal (sha1sum -c SHA1SUM). The SHA1SUM is the name of the sha1 files and “-c” option indicate that we intend to check SHA1 sums against the given list (SHA1SUM). I just make sure the SHA1SUM is in the same folder with the iso files that I want to check. And that’s all for now and I do hope my post will bring any benefit to you. See ya’….

I don’t know the exact date and time, but a couple of minutes ago, I just realize that Fedora 7 “Moonshine” has been released. No more “Core” in their naming convention, this latest release marks some major changes that sure looks appealing to different type of Linux user (beginner, advanced, or expert). Fedora 7 features a tickless kernel, KVM virtualization, Liberation fonts, and the capability to mix your own Fedora distribution with ease (from what I understand, it something that let the users to customize their Fedora 7 to contains only a set of package they desire and best of all share it with others). I didn’t install and test it yet, so it’s quite unfair to write any further. Go to their official site for more info (FedoraProject.org), this link for their release notes and here for the official announcement. Talking about their official site, it had been revamped to accompany the new release. I really like their tag line “Reach Higher” because it describe their intention to become much better than ever…hopefully Fedora 7 can live up to it.

It’s almost two weeks now since I change my Linux OS distro into Fedora Core 5 (FC5). I must admit that the journey to explore the Linux world is far from easy or over. Before this, I’ve manage to put my hands on the Ubuntu 5.10. I must say that the experience for noobies like me is very pleasent in some way. But for some reason, I switch to FC5, mainly because of the more large support on FC distro (community forums, guide, rpm, etc). I never really care about FC actually because before this when I want to jump on the Linux bandwagon, one of the distro that I tried were Fedora Core 2 & the experience is not as pleasent as I thought (don’t flame me because of my statement here…remember, I’m a noobie).

Well, I have no intention to do a full review about FC5 here, just to share some of my experience with it (in the full eyes of a noobies). First and foremost, the media. I’m using FC5 “Bordeaux-DVD-i386 version”, but the other media version availaible is in a form of CD wich consist of 5 cd’s. To avoid anything funny (actually I’m lazy to do that please insert the next cd step), I’ve decided to go with the DVD version instead. Fret no though, you can download just the first two CD iso, burn it, install it, and you can add all other bells and whistles through the repos next time. Installation..hmm by far, this is the most pretiest and straight forward installaion screen that I’ve had encounter among all other distro that I had tried so far (Red Hat, FC2, Ubuntu). Ok, maybe my words is too overwhelming there, there is a little flashback on the FC2 too, but mainly I think that the installer (called as Anaconda) is somewhat more relaxing than the past (just comparing with FC2, not FC3 & 4). So, for the installation I opt for the graphical mode instead of the text mode (hell I will use text mode…).

The screen goes into the partition defining. Well, I already have my partition with Windows, so carefully I select to do the steps involved manually. Meaning that, I view the partition table, make sure my Bill Gates partition is unharmed, and then I proceed. There is a warning pop up that ask for a confirmation for each steps, so I’m pretty sure I’m not going to screw my windows and all other partition. Then the option to install the boot loader…obviously I answered yes to setup a dual OSes boot configuration. The screens go to the setup the additional software. There are 3 option which is Office & Productivity, Software Development & Web Server. I choose all except the web server because I’m not planning to make my machine as a web server (but if I do change my mind in the future, there is always next time to do that, right?). There is also an option to customize the installation of the software selection, but I skip that because I like to do it after the installation is complete using the Software Management Application through the latest RPM online. Continue and the installation process begin.

After the installation, my machine reboot and the graphical Grub menu appears. Now, during the previous step on the boot loader installation, I choose FC5 as my default OS, so within 3 seconds if I want to choose other OS, I must press any key. And if I do, the boot loader screen will splash in with all the option according to whatever OSes availaible. Hmmm…no problem there I guess. Once the kernell was loaded, a boot splash screen appears. Here the boot process is only been shown by the progress bar, but I can opt to see the process list. The first time entering FC5 brings me to the some welcome screen. The welcome screen consist of several questions/choices just to make sure everything is fine (confirming date & time, firewall, screen, etc). After that, the exploration begin.

Then, the GDM started and here the login process took place. After login, the Gnome start to load and less than 5 seconds, I already on my FC5 desktop.

Just for a quick reference, FC 5 offers a very good software selection out of the box. Among the noteable one is the default browser which is Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.1, office productivity suites OpenOffice 2.0.2., IM with Gaim 1.5, graphic editing with The Gimp 2.2.10, another type of desktop envoronment which is KDE 3.5.1, and email client Thunderbird 1.5 (refer the release note for the full list). Well, there are many things to shout about the desktop itself, but I reserved that for this moment because I’m still exploring. But the GDM is somehow much faster and responsive rather than what I’m used to in Ubuntu 5.10 (is it because of Fedora itself or the updated version of Gnome? Enlighten me please…).

Conclusion…well, how should I end this. FC5 is not the greatest but not the worst distros either (just limited to the very little number of distros that I’ve tried so far). There is still a room to improve, but who am I to say more than that eh? Also the Gnome is a much improve in FC5, so I stick with Gnome rather than KDE…just because I’m already used to it; not because Gnome is superb and KDE sucks or vice versa. The same goes with comparing FC5 and other distros. FC5 is somewhat giving me the pleasent moments but sometimes it gives me some hassles (suddenly my terminal going blank?). I assume that FC5 is still fresh at the moment and bug like that is already in my prediction. Before any other major release of Ubuntu, I think I stick with FC5 at the moment. Not that I’m a true super fanboy of Ubuntu or whatsoever, but I’m trully on Linux bandwagon through Ubuntu…so it’s kinda too familiar with it I guess. Nevertheless, IMHO FC5 is a great distro and will not dissapoint me for the time being.

P/S: I ultimately depends on the Fedora Core 5 Linux Installation Notes by Stanton Finley to explore FC5. The guide indeed is a very handy mate.

Recently I’ve been busy dealing with my new installed OS…yup…Ubuntu 5.10 “The Breezy Badger”. Ubuntu 5.10 is one of the many Linux distro out there that can be freely download and use (in terms of free talk, not free lunch some might say…). I never get so involved with Linux before this (just a peek and touching here & there), so I admit Ubuntu is the first Linux distro that I played it directly since all the hassle including the installation and such been done solely by me. But frankly, from Linux noobies like me, Ubuntu is among the easiest Linux distro to install (Before this, I only manage to witness and involved a little in Red Hat and Fedora Core 2 installation, so I’m only comparing the installation process with the two.)Ok…been a loyal Windows user is really make me want to give up when I try to jump to Linux bandwagon. But hey…if I don’t do this, its only mean that I’m afraid of changes. So here it goes. After a few references at Ubuntu community forum, I can say that I’m facing no problem with Linux (period). Oh, I’m still learning mainly how to deal with terminal command and it took a lot of time really. But good things like Linux doesn’t come complete out of the box, so all these hassle is already in my earliest assumption. I will post later about my Linux desktop, because due for certain needs, I’m using Windows right now. Ahaks….I’m not giving up on Linux yet…not so soon….

P/S: If you had a little interest to know more about Ubuntu 5.10, do visit this link About Ubuntu 5.10