sarbastic » linux

abcde command line cd ripper

Kenneth Bowen — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 05:14:02 +0000

I’ve tried using Grip and other GUI CD ripping tools. They are much too complicated and unpleasant to use. I found a great command line tool for ripping CDs: abcde, A Better CD Encoder. You can easily rip to flac, ogg, or mp3 format – even all at the same time. It queries the CDDB database, and is easily configured from a single – well commented – file. It’s available in most of the Linux distros, or you can install it from source. If you need a full featured, yet easy to use ripper, look no further than abcde.

Once installed, insert and mount a CD; type abcde -o mp3; abcde will prompt you to confirm the CDDB settings, and you’re done.

Open Office on XUbuntu Without GCJ

Kenneth Bowen — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 20:10:38 +0000

I wanted to install Open Office on my Xubuntu laptop, but since I’m already using the Sun Java JRE – a requirement for Java development, I don’t want to install the excremental GCJ (GNU Compiler for Java Runtime). Aptitude wants to install gcj-4.1-base gij gij-4.1 libgcj-bc libgcj-common libgcj7-0 libgcj7-awt libgcj7-jar and other sundry gcj packages. I prefer to manage my SDKs/JREs outside of APT.

I’m also not interested in any of the so-called desktop integration Ubuntu uses; I use fluxbox and it’s easy enough to add soffice to the root menu.

The Linux download of OpenOffice.org includes RPMs. Here’s how to install it on a Debian derived system – like Ubuntu.

Make sure you have Java installed

  $ java -version
  java version "1.6.0_01"
  Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_01-b06)
  Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.6.0_01-b06, mixed mode, sharing)

Download OpenOffice.org

Download OpenOffice.org (currently version 2.2.1) for Linux, without the jre, from: OpenOffice w/out JRE

Untar the download someplace.

Navigate to the RPMS directory.

Use the alien program to convert the RPMs to deb packages.

 sudo alien --scripts --keep-version -d *.rpm

 sudo dpkg -i *.deb

(If you don’t have alien installed, sudo aptitude install alien first)

OpenOffice.org will be installed in /opt/openoffice.org2.2

Start OpenOffice.org with /opt/openoffice.org2.2/program/soffice

UPDATE: 8 February 2008

Sun SDK 6 is now available in the Ubuntu repositories. Here’s how to back out the above, if you’d like to return to a solution under package management:

Install the Sun Java 6 SDK

   sudo aptitude install sun-java6-jdk

Get rid of the Open Office install we did above:

  sudo aptitude purge openoffice.org-core

(Accept aptitude’s ‘solution’)

Install OpenOffice from the Ubuntu repository:

sudo aptitude install openoffice.org

Now your OpenOffice install is managed by Ubuntu, and you still didn’t have to install the grotesque GCJ. Life is good.

No Wine Before It’s Time

Kenneth Bowen — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 04:09:08 +0000

Debian releases are few and far between, irritatingly so. It’s great news to see that Debian 4.0 – named ‘Etch’ – was released 8 April 2007. It looks to have plenty of good upgrades, including Xorg, udev, etc. See the release notes for details.

For annoying political reasons, Debian doesn’t include Mplayer. See the Multimedia Debian Packages for a solution. Kudos to Debian for this milestone.

If your searching for a rock solid, well thought out, free operating system. Debian is a great choice.

Installing RMagic on Debian/Ubuntu Linux

Kenneth Bowen — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 21:52:11 +0000

I’m working on an image manipulation program that requires the Ruby ImageMagick bindings, RMagick. I was unable to install RMagick from either the gem, or the Debian package. Building RMagick from source didn’t work either.

The following worked for both a Debian Sarge box, and an Xubuntu laptop. I hope it saves someone some grief.

$ dpkg -l | grep magick
  ii  imagemagick    6.0.6.2-2.7    Image manipulation programs
  ii  libmagick6     6.0.6.2-2.7    Image manipulation library
  ii  perlmagick     6.0.6.2-2.4    A perl interface to the libMagick
  ii  rubymagick     0.1.3-13       Ruby interface for ImageMagick

Get rid of the rubymagick package

$ apt-get remove --purge rubymagick

Install the dev versions of libmagick6 and Ruby 1.8 edit: for Xubuntu, install libmagick9

$ apt-get install libmagick6-dev ruby1.8-dev

Install rmagick from the gem

$ gem install rmagick

You can test the install by running a simple app like this, which will print the EXIF data from an image:

require 'rubygems'
require 'RMagick'

require 'pp'

img = Magick::Image.read('test.jpg').first
exif_data = img.get_exif_by_entry()

pp exif_data

Update:

As of Xubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn), you need libmagick9-dev.

GTK Key Bindings

Kenneth Bowen — Wed, 03 May 2006 03:56:41 +0000

When I upgraded my Linux boxes to Firefox 1.0 (I’m now at 1.5), I finally made the jump to using the GTK 2.0 libraries. The only drag is that the default key bindings are more Windoze like. Ctrl-a selects all, rather than moving to the beginning of the line, and other annoyances to the enlightened.

To fix this, create a ~/.gtkrc-2.0. Add the line:

gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs"

Restart any applications using GTK. You do not have to restart X.

The GTK Tutorial has lots of info on all the sundry rc files.