Waiting for webcam support.

Maybe in another life, Ubuntu will have webcam support, I'm not sure I'll be waiting around much longer...my spark is fading!

Ubuntu or just Linux in all, is becoming a tight suit, and not as flexible as I'd hoped for.

This time it's a Creative webcam that works perfectly well with XP, but refuses to even be recognized by my Ubuntu Edgy installed PC.
Lack of drivers from the manufacturer, is the key issue here. The big problem that all users of Linux encounters, a manufacturer is willing to support most O/S' but Linux, apparently, or is it just me?

Is it there yet?

The past year, I've been more than happy to tell friends about the great things about Ubuntu, and how wonderfully easy it is to install, and just how stable a "Linux box" is.

But a few days ago I experienced the unspeakabel; My "Linux box" froze, nothing I did could wake it up. It was completely unresponsive... I froze with it for a second... noo! I was thinking: "this is not what it seems, there must be some explanation... I can just hit the "B.Gates keys"... but alas.. I had to pull the plug..

I was astonished, in the wild, why would this happen? Yes, I've been installing ontop of a "Breezy" installation, and through a "Dapper", and ended up with this "Edgy", it might just be some forgotten file somewhere.. I'll never know!

Because I'm just a newbie still.

Maybe I'll be better off with a complete reinstall, and switch back to W......Ouch!

On the edge..

The "Ubuntu 6.10 - the Edgy Eft" released in October 2006.
It was, once again, a breeze to move.

A hassless operation that took about 2 hours..
That's what it took to download a couple of hundred MB of data and to remove the old stuff and replace it with the new..

I'm glad i did! ...Not that I could see any difference right away, but small details are starting to appear.. like a new version of the popular Firefox browser, and the "Disk usage analyzer", that's a fantastic "need to have" tool.

And now I've finally got my onboard video card to work, nice and fast, with the great Open-Source drivers look at the wiki pages

Later...

Some "need to know" stuff, for handling DVD.

First create the ISO image, in another folder from where you have the dvd

# mkisofs -r -o yourfile.iso dvd/name_of_folder/

The dvd/name_of_folder should contain the folders AUDIO_TS + VIDEO_TS

Now use the growisofs command to write the ISO onto the DVD:

# growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=yourfile.iso

To append more data for same DVD:

# growisofs -M /dev/dvd /tmp/file.1

To format (erase) a DVD:

# dvd+rw-format -force /dev/dvd

OR

# dvd+rw-format -force=full /dev/dvd

The dvd+rw-format command formats dvd disk in the specified dvd drive.

To display information about dvd drive and disk using dvd+rw-mediainfo command:

# dvd+rw-mediainfo /dev/dvd

Making some DVD home videos

I used to use Graveman, to make my own DVD movies, succesfully, but back then I had a 'non standard' standalone DVD player, brand unknown, it played all the DVD's I made perfectly.

Then last month, I bought a quite expensive HDD/DVD-recorder, brand Panasonic, and none of the DVD's will play, I'm feeling cheated.

Is it the player or is the burner?

I seems that graveman, and for that sake gnomebaker is not sending the right parameters to 'growisofs', the program that both cater as gui's for.

But after some searching I found some terminal commands that work.

First of all, you have a folder, lets call it 'dvd', where you have the folder 'VIDEO_TS', and perhaps the not so used folder 'AUDIO_TS'.
Now go and write the command:

jj@myLinuz:~/home_videos$ mkisofs -dvd-video -o dvd-master.iso dvd

It will start creating a .iso file wich you will transfer to a blank DVD after it has finished.
Now go and write the command

jj@myLinuz:~/home_videos$ growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=dvd-master.iso

It will start to write the .iso file to blank DVD.

Now go and play your new home made DVD in that DVD playa...

J

Back from the holidays...

Yeaah right!

Not long ago I was so keen on getting a lot of info up on this site, suddenly I packed my Linux equipped PC away... For a loong time, as you can see.

Now it's time to refresh a bit of the knowledge that I got a few months back.
So here I am, once again, ready to take a venture back into the LinuxWorld.

See you around.. when the updates has ended downloading..

Hurry up! dapper is coming..

Yehaa! I'm Dappin'
I just replaced all breezy with dapper in my sources.list, just by renaming.
And after that I did an 'sudo apt-get dist-upgrade' and 'sudo apt-get update' and in the end 'sudo dpkg --configure -a'

...A few problems occured, non vital, but a little strange and annoying anyway, I have found solutions for the most of them.

1. I couldn't reboot or shutdown proberly.
- Solved: found that my desktop PC (an HP Pavilion Athlon64) need this line:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 ro noacpi nolacpi quit splash
instead of
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 ro noapic nolapic quit splash
in this file /boot/grub/menu.lst

2. Printing and scanning on my HP officejet v40
- Solved: found this howto
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=121896&highlight=hp+printing+psc
And remember to have your HPLIP start every boot... ;)

3. Network not active after login
- a half assed solution at the moment, is to deactivate the network card, and then reactivate it. Will do for now, missing a real solution.

Never mind the long wait..

I found out that you're actually able to use 32bit programs within my 64bit environment, all you need is a chroot. chroot you ask? so did I.. :)

But this thing rocks, when you need that java applet capability in firefox, or the 'crap' flash thing....
.......anyway, I've had a struggle with my new system, and it seems I'm stuck with a 'half assed' 64bit system, that's capable of doing fast video encoding, but unable to actually author the DVD and burn the darn thing to a disc.
Well, not entirely true, I've actually got dvdstyler working by installing it into my chroot environment, using the .deb file that was compiled by some genius, at the ubuntu forums, and then applying the 'jpegtopnm' command that is stated here:

jpegtopnm "$FILE_IN" | ppmtoy4m -n 1 -I t -L $FRAME_RATE -S 420mpeg2 | mpeg2enc -f 8 -b $BITRATE -o "$FILE_OUT" $VIDEO_NORM

The only thing I need now, is the capability to burn the lot to my new DVD-RW disc... and yes the 'minus' gives me a bit of trouble, no problem with the 'plus', but the 'minus' ... DAMN§!!/&%#!

I hope the waiting will pay off...

Damn! It's not as pleasant, when you learn that your new hardware is a little too tricky. Not that it's NOT working, but that the software out there is NOT completely upto date... It simply lacks support for AMD Athlon64....
DAMN!!
And I was having this thought, way long time, before I actually bought the stuff. But I never went and researched my thought enough, I was just keen on getting a new toy... Well that money was burning a hole in my pocket.. And with Dapper just around the corner... it must be a matter of time, before this 'monster-pc' will rule my PC-park (of 3 to be exact).

Hope it's worth the waiting....

Anyway, I've been searching high and low for a amd64 .deb of dvdstyler.
Have had no luck. Do you know of any? Please report back...

While I wait for an answer, I'll try this guys guide instead:
http://www.tappin.me.uk/Linux/dvd.html#author_examples

New hardware arrived...AMD64

Yihaa! now it's time for some real fun....Got my new PC. It was dirt cheap, but equipped just the way I want..

• AMD64(Socket939)
  
• 512MB ram (with room for 3 xtra blocks)
• 160GB Harddisk
• Firewire
• Memory card reader
• Low noise

although the Ubuntu Breezy kernel lacks support for most of my hardware, I'm pleased to see it runs smooth. I'll wait patiently on the release of Dapper Drake, which I tried in an early version, just to see what was going on...

And I actually completely removed the WindowsXP which was preinstalled, without a blink...