Friday, May 09, 2008
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Iron Man Movie Audio Review
I joined Peter Nikolaidis of Fresh Ubuntu fame for a lengthy chat about the Iron Man movie that was just released.
Iron Man Movie Audio Review | Peter's Soapbox
Iron Man Movie Audio Review | Peter's Soapbox
TinyMe PCLinux OS
tinyme:home � MyPCLinuxOS: PCLinuxOS Projects
I was having a heck of a time finding a lightweight distro that would work on my Toshiba Satellite 4100XDVD A PII 400MHz relic from the Win 98 days. One of the biggest problems that this machine posed, was that it's video card wasn't being supported well by some of the lightweight Linux Distributions. I did have Ubuntu 7.10 up on it (took forever to install, and ran incredibly slow). I tried the xfce desktop with it, still had to edit the xorg.conf file, to reflect a color depth of 16 vs the standard 24 for a 1024x768 screen. Spent a good half of a day. Then I find PCLinux's TinyMe's project.
Tiny Me Loaded up within the less then 200k of available ram, found what it needed to get online with my wifi connection. It did perform well, given the age of this computer. While it too didn't give me a quick choice to change the screen's color depth at startup or during install, it did give me the options in one of the configuration menus. Changed that, and viola! Full screen. When asked if I wanted to do a full disk install, it lacked the programs to wipe out the current drive and start fresh. While this might be by design, as a safety factor for those who are new to Linux from deleting their Windows or ? Data, it was a ding, but definitely not a show stopper for me.
Another ding would be that I couldn't move or find how to resize the icons on the desktop. Some of the stock text of their icons overlapped on my desktop making it hard to see what was going on.
A couple of nice things on their menu, but I didn't try them, was the choice to re-spin the distro, and to install on a USB drive.
I look forward to having the time to put this on a USB stick, and trying it out. I most certainly would recommend this distro to someone.
I was having a heck of a time finding a lightweight distro that would work on my Toshiba Satellite 4100XDVD A PII 400MHz relic from the Win 98 days. One of the biggest problems that this machine posed, was that it's video card wasn't being supported well by some of the lightweight Linux Distributions. I did have Ubuntu 7.10 up on it (took forever to install, and ran incredibly slow). I tried the xfce desktop with it, still had to edit the xorg.conf file, to reflect a color depth of 16 vs the standard 24 for a 1024x768 screen. Spent a good half of a day. Then I find PCLinux's TinyMe's project.
Tiny Me Loaded up within the less then 200k of available ram, found what it needed to get online with my wifi connection. It did perform well, given the age of this computer. While it too didn't give me a quick choice to change the screen's color depth at startup or during install, it did give me the options in one of the configuration menus. Changed that, and viola! Full screen. When asked if I wanted to do a full disk install, it lacked the programs to wipe out the current drive and start fresh. While this might be by design, as a safety factor for those who are new to Linux from deleting their Windows or ? Data, it was a ding, but definitely not a show stopper for me.
Another ding would be that I couldn't move or find how to resize the icons on the desktop. Some of the stock text of their icons overlapped on my desktop making it hard to see what was going on.
A couple of nice things on their menu, but I didn't try them, was the choice to re-spin the distro, and to install on a USB drive.
I look forward to having the time to put this on a USB stick, and trying it out. I most certainly would recommend this distro to someone.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Rock Box For My Sansa e250 Via Ubuntu
So, since I've become an open advocate of Open Source Software, Linux, and uber geekieness I've found out about .ogg files, or also know as Ogg Vorbis a free and open source alternative music and video compression method. The mp3 format isn't open source, or even a"free" format even though it's widely used. For those of you who would like a quick link to the tar ball for Rock box, try this link. Index of /rbutil/linux If it doesn't work, (as link rot happens) just go up one level, [ http://download.rockbox.org/rbutil/ ] and look for the current version. DL the software, and un-compress.
I downloaded it to my Ubuntu 7.10 desktop and uncompressed it. Moved the new folder into my home folder and just clicked on the executable. Ubuntu ran the file just fine. Run the software, with your MP3 player plugged into the USB port, if you haven't done so already. I found it fairly straight forward to follow. I DL'd and installed all the different themes, fonts, and the Doom game. I didn't get any sound out of the DOOM game, but I might not have had it setup right, and as of this moment, fixing that was low on my priority list. :) I found navigation with Rock Box on my player took a little getting used to. Options Options, and more options that were never available via the stock Sansa software. But once I explored and figured out how to get it to startup in the window that I want (yea there's that option) found a theme with large fonts that are easy to read, not that I need to see them, as one of the features is that my player now talks to me.
So my Sansa e250 now talks to me, has games on it to entertain me, if I need it, plays .ogg files, such as one might find over at FreshUbuntu.org, and a load of themes. :)
Rock box doesn't work for all mp3 players, so go to http://www.rockbox.org/ and browse the site for your player.
Enjoy!
Randy
Index of /rbutil/linux
I downloaded it to my Ubuntu 7.10 desktop and uncompressed it. Moved the new folder into my home folder and just clicked on the executable. Ubuntu ran the file just fine. Run the software, with your MP3 player plugged into the USB port, if you haven't done so already. I found it fairly straight forward to follow. I DL'd and installed all the different themes, fonts, and the Doom game. I didn't get any sound out of the DOOM game, but I might not have had it setup right, and as of this moment, fixing that was low on my priority list. :) I found navigation with Rock Box on my player took a little getting used to. Options Options, and more options that were never available via the stock Sansa software. But once I explored and figured out how to get it to startup in the window that I want (yea there's that option) found a theme with large fonts that are easy to read, not that I need to see them, as one of the features is that my player now talks to me.
So my Sansa e250 now talks to me, has games on it to entertain me, if I need it, plays .ogg files, such as one might find over at FreshUbuntu.org, and a load of themes. :)
Rock box doesn't work for all mp3 players, so go to http://www.rockbox.org/ and browse the site for your player.
Enjoy!
Randy
Index of /rbutil/linux
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
ArsGeek � Blog Archive � Get USB devices mounted on your Virtualbox XP machine in Gutsy (Ubuntu 7.10)
OK, This is the article that I got from a fellow Linux Twitter Geek Michael Ramm http://blog.blackbeltproductivity.net/ Thanks Michael!
ArsGeek � Blog Archive � Get USB devices mounted on your Virtualbox XP machine in Gutsy (Ubuntu 7.10)
ArsGeek � Blog Archive � Get USB devices mounted on your Virtualbox XP machine in Gutsy (Ubuntu 7.10)
Saturday, March 22, 2008
#747 (USB failure with Ubuntu Gutsy) - VirtualBox
Could not load the Host USB Proxy Service (VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)
I've tried this option also. Still no luck The USB devices Now show up in Virtual Box, and the error is gone. It shows my Sprint USB device, and my Trackball, and the USB Flash drive but I'm not able to use them.
All of this trouble and about 6 hours of looking for answers. I think that I'll just have to use my Win XP machine to use Audible and get Audio books on my MP3 player. As this was the only reason that I needed the USB drive. But I'd still like to get this thing to work properly.
#747 (USB failure with Ubuntu Gutsy) - VirtualBox
I've tried this option also. Still no luck The USB devices Now show up in Virtual Box, and the error is gone. It shows my Sprint USB device, and my Trackball, and the USB Flash drive but I'm not able to use them.
All of this trouble and about 6 hours of looking for answers. I think that I'll just have to use my Win XP machine to use Audible and get Audio books on my MP3 player. As this was the only reason that I needed the USB drive. But I'd still like to get this thing to work properly.
#747 (USB failure with Ubuntu Gutsy) - VirtualBox
VMware Knowledge Base - View Document
VMware Knowledge Base - View Document
This should help if trying to mount a USB drive to Virtual Box in Ubuntu.
This should help if trying to mount a USB drive to Virtual Box in Ubuntu.
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